Before me lay a field of corpses, and behind me, a field of ruins. And no matter how far I walked, I couldn't help but stumble across this desolate landscape. Some corpses looked really old, while others were smacked of early decay. I wanted to know whether we'd set foot in the proper town.

After all, the scenery was so different from ten years ago, when I had left this town to head to the Refuge for new experiences. In fact, when I returned that day, I was delighted to see all the free energy I now had at my disposal. Although I did give a little of it to the Void to continue strengthening it.

I then set about increasing my skill levels and even creating new ones, the primary skill I wanted being evaluation. Even if, according to my predictions, it would give little information relevant to its low level. I could only sigh that it was the curse of low levels and dream that all my levels would be high one day.

However, I was still confident in the future usefulness of this skill since creating a skill from scratch was infinitely more complex than increasing their level once this process was made possible. Ultimately, I was satisfied to have devoted these ten years to research.

Indeed, I had succeeded in finding and appropriating the mechanism for increasing skill levels. And I consider it my most outstanding achievement to date. In the future, I hoped to replicate this success with other attributes, although I suspected that Skills had to be one of the most straightforward attributes in algorithmic terms, at least for the starting levels.

Indeed, when we emerged from the Refuge nearly half a day ago, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that in updating my Status, the System had also altered the skill pattern during the skill recognition process. Ultimately, although this was upsetting, I couldn't stop the process of analyzing the skill's validity from getting underway.

On the other hand, this revelation enabled me to concentrate on another research topic. And I could only rejoice, as I had discovered a passion for research. It may be part of my being and my Identity as a Void. Was eternally searching a facet of the Void? Or was it simply another expression of my propensity to seek my true nature, my Identity.

Of course, I have also made some inquiries on the Authorization side but have yet to be successful. Although my searches were not fruitless, the algorithms gradually revealed their secrets. So I needed more time. An estimate that would prove accurate much sooner than I had ever thought.

Among other things, I continued my exploration of the Refuge, even if the remoteness of the rooms and the inordinate size of the whole structure meant that I could only go a little further. I could only pray that I would one day obtain a tool, spell, or skill to teleport or link two distant places, as the door at the place of my awakening had seemed to do.

Incidentally, I was talking about spells, a research subject I was also unraveling and failing at for the moment due to its complexity. After all, reverse engineering had reached its limits, and it was complicated to go any further in a reasonable time unless I wanted to research for centuries or increase my analytical capacity.

And much to my chagrin, neither option was possible. Could I remain stuck for hundreds of years on one subject while hoping that in the future, I would decode all the secrets of spells, at least enough to develop others? The one I'd created before didn't count, as this spell was linked to the Void’s Will and only used the abilities of this Will while modifying the variables a little.

What's more, my lifespan was unknown to me. Perhaps I was living out my last days? My Age, which exceeded the maximum level authorized by the System for someone with no Class, prevented me from grasping my true longevity. After all, maybe I was immortal and was scaring myself for nothing. But my instinct didn't find that convincing, at least not for this kind of immortality.

And I could only be pessimistic about my other alternative – increasing my analytical capacity. Of course, as I strengthened my Void, my analysis capacity increased, but the development was smaller and smaller. It was linear: twice as much analysis capacity required energy and twice as many corpses. A single corpse, therefore, brought an ever-smaller improvement.

And even if I dedicated all the corpses' energy to the Void, I was only delaying the inevitable. So I had no choice but to get more and more corpses, drastically increasing my chances of meeting the human with the revolver. And if I did meet him, I could only say goodbye to this World and my sister. Although, now that I thought about it, my sister would also have left the world of the living.

In conclusion, I needed bodies with more energy to extend the conversion process to spiritual, etheric, or even entropic energies or to improve the cadaver/energy conversion rate. But none of these three alternatives was easy to achieve in practice, at least with my current knowledge, and in less than a century.

And even then, I was optimistic since I had no guarantee of possessing the mental faculties necessary for such a task. At the time, I had no way of knowing that even the reverse engineering I was performing was prodigious. But you can ignore that comment because I was more interested in glorifying myself. Why do I feel unease seeping into me afterward? It's best if we all forget this slip of the tongue for a while!

And in any case, I had no desire to stay much longer on a floor where I could meet my death at the corner of a street, even more so now because of the threat of the revolver. And all those corpses around us were only witnesses to this murderous frenzy. I felt it would be harder for me to go out on the town in the future, and perhaps it already was.

Of course, I couldn't be sure that the human with the revolver had caused all these deaths, but seeing all the collapsed buildings and the arrangement of the debris, which seemed to indicate that all the edifices had been destroyed at once, I could only come to this conclusion. I knew of no other weapon so destructive, nor did I want to.

Moreover, this landscape of death told me that this part of the city was no longer safe. Unless that is, the human never returns to the portions he nuked, allowing us to relax our vigilance here. Even if, in any case, this place was no longer of any interest other than as a route to the Refuge, with no more living people to kill.

You're probably wondering why I wasn't replenishing my stocks with the numerous corpses littering the corridors and halls. It's simple: my magic only worked on people I'd killed myself because Our Will allowed a direct link with the Soul of living beings, from which it became possible to access their physical energy. Thus, the corpses along the way were utterly unusable.

And there was another problem: the human with the magic revolver had decided to use a more significant fraction of his power. The further we wandered, the more the ravages of battle became apparent, indicating a power use, as if the person wanted to get down to business or was getting impatient. Although I needed to find out which of the two answers was valid, the future of this city looked bleak.

The devastation looked endless and unchanging. Was there anyone left in this city? Unfortunately, only the wind could answer my question. A breeze that carried all the smells and dust from the ground upwards. Did it go all the way to the ceiling? Although I'd sworn never to look at the roof again, I could hazard a guess as to its function.

One of the ceiling's uses could be air renewal, thanks to magical spells between them. An even crazier assumption could be made: what if the roof served as a transmitter for the System? This explained why the System couldn't be picked up in the Refuge, which generally appeared to be a separate structure from the rest of the World's halls and corridors.

In fact, my past self's conjecture was credible, even if it wasn't entirely accurate, and I underestimated the role of the ceiling in this World too much. But hey, we'll have time to dwell on the subject of the ceiling another time. It wasn't the last time I'd ponder one of the World's greatest mysteries or contemplate its haunting and fascinating abyss.

Whatever the direction, the only distinguishable elements were corpses, dried blood, dubious luminescent substances, water contaminated by, I don't know what, rubble, and the remains of tools made of wood and various unknown alloys. And I won't even mention the dust that irritated my apostle's throat or the indescribably repulsive general smell in the air.

In any case, knowing that this smell was permanently nauseating, my sister was a direct indicator that we had to get away from this place as quickly as possible. Going beyond the borders of this infernal landscape where only malodorous ruins kept us company seemed insurmountable. And so the hours, then the days, even the weeks passed without any change, until...

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

As the blues returned to our minds, desperate to find someone or at least know the truth of the situation, we got an answer soon enough. A memorable encounter that I'll remember for a long time to come. A dear companion gone too soon. However, I can't regret any of my actions because the same outcome would have been selected even if I could have chosen now.

It was the only viable alternative to satisfy Our Desire. What am I saying? It's not time to digress into the distant past when I'm still presenting a much more distant past. I'm already deviating from my memories, even though this is only the beginning of our journey. I hope to make it to the end of our adventure through my memory. Isn't that right, dear System?

We were walking on the ground so dusty that the patterns were indistinguishable. Nevertheless, I still needed to discover the patterns on this floor. I thought it was necessary but had no clues to formulate the slightest hypothesis. Especially since Systalia knew very little about the symbolism of these shapes.

As I stared at the symbols with my sister, diverting our attention from the surroundings, we were startled by a noise. My apostle could only turn around, anxious and unsettled by the broken silence. And it was at that very moment that we saw a human staring at us, suspicious and alternately witty, as if waiting for the slightest suspicious movement on our part to skewer us with her... trowel.

This type of weapon didn't shock me at the time, although recalling it makes me laugh a little. Imagine someone holding a trowel, which wasn't exactly the first thing you'd think of when you say "weapon". Honestly, it was the only time I've ever had the opportunity to watch such a spectacle. It's too bad I couldn't find it surprising and funny.

All the more so, my apostle hadn't flinched either. However, in his case, it was undoubtedly due to the anxiety of finding himself face-to-face with an unknown person after having spent weeks desperate to find someone in the middle of this post-apocalyptic environment. Besides, being in the same frame of mind, I obviously wouldn't have found it funny, even if I'd understood the rarity of the choice of weapon.

So I realized there was only one thing I could do, even if I knew beforehand that the result would be disappointing. However, even if the response provided by the skill was disappointing, using it would increase my Experience with it, although I didn't know the exact nature of what was being raised.

Even more so, I couldn't train the skill with anything other than living beings, like humans, who had an official Class system run by the System. Animals that didn't have such functions in their supposed Statuses didn't count. This was my only opportunity to train my skills.

Safe mode version enabled〘 ⚠ 〙

Evaluation skill screen ❢

Age〖 1 〗｟ Max: 10 ｠

Permission〖 Lvl. 1 〗

Class〖 None 〗

Magic 〖 None 〗

Authority〖 Impossible 〗

Granted, there was little information to go on. But even this little information was enough to validate some of my conjectures and make me wonder about some intriguing aspects of this Status. First, the age was well under ten years, with no error messages.

But did this necessarily mean that the maximum age wouldn't be exceeded or that I couldn't see another person's error messages? Something told me I'd have to wait a long time before deciding. Fortunately, this intuition was wrong, even if the circumstances weren't happy, far from it.

Then there was Permission, which was the standard of this World. I wanted to know the usefulness of differentiating between Permission and Authorization. In any case, the System had to find one. And one day, I, too, would understand this subtle and decisive difference.

After that, I quickly reviewed Class and Magic, which confirmed my idea that no one had Class or Magic. And that was why all the humans I'd met so far were casting spells with scrolls or had already enchanted tools. All humans on this floor must have been incapable of forming magic independently.

The following two functions, however, were more surprising. The first, Authority, was not at level 0 as I had been before, but Impossible. The System simply considered that the person could not have Authority. And I had no hypothesis to formulate on this fact. The second was an absence of the characteristic I'd most expected: the Name.

I am curious that the Name seemed to be too important a piece of information to be obtained at the Evaluation level. This fact hid something important about the nature and usefulness of the Name in the System. It also raised the question of my Name as displayed on my Status. Would an unanalyzable Name for the System be a blessing or a curse in the future?

I looked again at the young human. Long ashen hair towered above a light gray face. If I do say so myself, a rather pretty face with piercing eyes that formed a magnetic gaze. The human seemed smaller than my apostle, and her figure could not be seen precisely because of her loose-fitting clothes.

In fact, they far surpassed the finest fabrics in this city. Or rather, the least ugly, if I'm being honest. This made me very suspicious as to her origin or affiliation. All the more so as the fabric was embroidered with numerous shiny shapes of varying luminous intensity. They really did look as if they were pulsating with life.

We stared at each other in deafening silence as the minutes passed again and again, lengthening so much that they seemed to have turned into hours. Fortunately, this was not when the stranger broke the anxiety-inducing calm. All I could do was ask my apostle to act as interpreter.

"I didn't think there'd be any survivors around here. It's astounding. Tell me, who are you?"

From this sentence, I could only deduce that she knew something about what had happened here, and knowing that she was only a year old, either she had heard it from others or the event in question had been recent. And personally, I was leaning toward the latter. In any case, we had to be careful with the answer to avoid unnecessarily increasing her distrust of us.

Besides, even if my apostle was whispering, this stranger seemed to suspect her of repeating her sentence or at least talking to herself. I had to be careful not to reveal my existence to the other party, but simultaneously, I couldn't hear Systalia unless she spoke to me with her mouth. And it would be a long time before I could read her mind or use telepathy.

So we decided to confer briefly, even if it seemed odd to the human. And once this was over, my apostle looked the girl straight in the eye and exclaimed, with a confident, unshakeable air:

"I'm simply a traveler from another part of the city not destroyed by this spectacular rampage. I wanted to escape a rival gang, and the only solution was to flee as far as possible until I landed in this ruined place. But back to you? Now that I've introduced myself, would you care to do the same? You know, it's funny when I think about it. I've been walking for some time now, desperate to see anyone here. But all I've seen so far are lonely ruins. And then, all of a sudden, you appear. Somewhat suspicious.

Judging by the stranger's slightly wrinkled eyes, I wondered if my sister hadn't been too aggressive with her accusations. Maybe it was a bad idea to talk to her in that tone and be openly suspicious. At least you could always say you were sincere and not trying to trick her.

Which was undoubtedly a good thing if you wanted to start establishing a relationship of trust. At any rate, it was enough for the human to stop brandishing her trowel at us as if preparing for a confrontation at any moment. As much as I wanted to experiment, I needed someone to tell me about the current situation in the city even more.

After a long moment when she stared at us as if not entirely convinced by our words or simply trying to throw us off balance to find out if they were the truth, she sighed, seeming to relax a little.

"I'm just a stranger passing through, like you. Let's just say I, too, was expelled from a gang."

Wait!? Is that all? I couldn't believe it, but the human wasn't very talkative for the moment. And I wasn't at all pleased. I wasn't much of a conversationalist, but on the other hand, having to deal with an awkward silence wasn't in my plans. And the worst thing about the whole situation was that my sister was no more of an expert at small talk than I was. She was even begging me to do something.

So I had to push my thinking to its limits just to get out one simple sentence:

"As both travelers, would you like to join me momentarily? We could help each other as gang outcasts if we encountered anyone maliciously. Unless you've got some bad intentions of your own?"

You're probably wondering the reason for such a reckless proposal to a stranger. First of all, I wanted to have a more extended conversation with her to get some information out of her, and from what I could see from my analysis, she didn't seem too dangerous to me. My magic was always ready to be deployed in less than a second, and my sister was doing the same.

After a short moment in suffocating silence, the young stranger stopped staring at us with her sharp gaze before huffing, puffing, and lowering her shoulders as if all tension had left her muscles. She dropped her trowel, still paying attention to our movements.

She took a little more time, seemingly lost in thought, before finally looking at us with determined eyes and saying, with a mischievous little smile at the corner of her mouth:

"Thanks for the offer. After these long, lonely days, I could do with some company. Then, I'll go along with your proposal to form a group for now. Indeed, you never know what darkness might lurk in this place."

I wasn't sure I'd made the right choice at that moment. And clearly, I wasn't the only one, for Systalia seemed just as confused as I was by this dear stranger's enigmatic last words. Of course, in hindsight, I could only laugh at my distrust of one of my most incredible future supporters.

But then, it's always easy to mock reactions in retrospect. After all, I can't claim to be any wiser than I was then or better at judging people. Otherwise, I would have made only some of those mistakes. Above all, I must never again become complacent about my knowledge, even if it may be too late now. All the damage has already been done, after all.

And it was in this tense beginning that I met one of my most loyal and devoted servants. But I will know that much later.