Black with blurred white dots... was the first thought that crossed my mind as my apostle's eyes opened. A world of darkness revealed itself to us, a strange world that was impossible to shake one's head in incomprehension. Yet we had to face the facts: this was our world now, whether we liked it or not, and whether we felt comfortable in it... or not.

Fortunately, this state of confusion and disorientation, caused by a sleep longer than our minds could bear, ceased. Then a spark of understanding dawned on us and... Ah! I remembered at last! We'd fought an enemy who'd forced me to use pure Will, thus undiluted by mana and with potentially more harmful consequences.

【 Debuffs〔1〕】

➨ Reduction of all stats 〖 Irreversible 〗《 Application failure: Missing Body, Spirit and Soul 》

I had to look at my Status at all costs, and... the debuff remained the same. However, this meant nothing, as I needed to know how much the stats were dropping due to my low Authorization level. Nevertheless, all was not lost! And if, as I suspected, my debuffs were passed on to my apostle as long as she was my host, I'd find out soon enough.

I sincerely hoped that the stats had stayed pretty high, which unfortunately proved to be a vain illusion. Indeed, no sooner had Systalia wiggled her limbs to get out of the rubble than she felt an intense fatigue. I could feel her muscular fatigue and her breathlessness in the face of a task that her body had experienced as superhuman.

So, to get back to the surface, my sister had no choice but to push her body beyond its capacity, even if it meant that some cracking noises could be felt in her body. These noises already sounded suspicious, but the pain they provoked soon after was even less reassuring, confirming my belief that some of those bones had been broken or dislocated.

And if that wasn't enough, we could soon feel a deep muscular ache, indicating that the muscles needed a rest. In any case, as soon as we could extricate ourselves from the mound of objects under which we were buried. And as we looked around, we soon realized what had happened.

No doubt, due to the non-lethal spells our opponent had cast into the scenery when he missed us, the weakened structures ended up collapsing. At the same time, we slept, burying under tons of objects, metal, wood, and other odds and ends that had made my sister's poor body bleed, gradually draining her of her internal fluids.

After all, all these objects were extremely sharp, as if by chance. It was hilarious! Of course, that's sarcasm, not being in the mood for jokes. Incredibly muddy, foul-smelling water combined with toxic substances stinking worse than rotten eggs, piss, and defecation combined had seeped into the mass of objects, causing an odor on my sister's body I'd instead not describe.

All I'll reveal is that I longed for her to take a bath for the first time since we met. Yet I was a little amazed that we were still alive despite everything because it wouldn't have surprised me if that toxic mixture had finished taking our souls. I could only marvel that the body held many mysteries and was far more resistant than I had ever imagined.

Nevertheless, don't think all was well in the best of worlds. We were alive, but we'd also come very close to the reaper. Between the smell and the noxious substances, it was hard to know who to pick as the winner. It was like choosing between the plague and cholera; either way, we were in for incredible, interminable pain.

Indeed, how could we choose between that smell so unbearable that it caused us gastric reluctance and an omnipresent sensation of vomiting, as well as an urge for the body to faint, and dubious substances whose only role was to corrode the skin, cause respiratory distress, irritate the throat and make robotic beings spit the equivalent of blood abundantly?

All this is to say that our situation at the time was far from enviable and that only the passing hours could save us from suffering. Because everything has an end, even death. Or rather, this passage is so close to death, so close to eternal rest. Of course, I hardly wanted to die, but if it were without suffering, then I would do nothing to prevent my death. Because more than death, it was suffering that I couldn't stand.

And maybe that's why I loved the Void, the only one capable of offering me a painless death, a slow death of the spirit. I'd been convinced of this for a long time, and it was one of the reasons I loved the Void. The Void would allow me to finally be at peace and thus to have a slow agony of my mind in perpetual boredom. After all, my existence was created to want neither happiness nor unhappiness.

But while such a thought would be restful, I can't dwell on my failures to realize such an Ideal. This is your fault, my dear System, isn't it? All I wanted was to be neither alive nor dead, neither unhappy nor happy. All I wanted was a world without anything, without feelings, without other people, and without events that could cause anxiety.

In short, it was a world of perpetual boredom and solitude. In this unchanging world, I'd be nothing more than a shell devoid of personality, a world where I'd have no human qualities and be closer to automatons than living beings. In short, a world that reflects the Void, a world that reflects me, a world where I no longer exist as an individual, the world I desperately want to reach.

Am I crazy to run towards this Ideal? What do you think of me, dear reader, dear successor to my poisoned throne? For my part, I don't think I've ever been crazy, neither at the time of my adventures around the World nor at the moment I'm writing these lines. Because, indeed, I was simply an irreparable object from the start? Who knows why, even before I woke up, even before this life began, I've been like this?

The only conclusion I can draw is that I was born to have a self-destructive ideal in the eyes of others and not to be able to change into a better version of myself. I'm a flawed being from conception, a failure in every way. After all, if I were like the others in this System, like all these fabulous individuals living in this World, I wouldn't have failed to change myself.

Yes, I know my place in this World, having come to understand that I don't belong to this World that rejected me. A World for whom my mere existence was a scourge. My existence threatened everyone, so this may be a fitting end for me. However, as I'm rambling too much, having let myself get a little too carried away by my disgust, sorrows, and inferiority, let's get back to the story.

As the hours passed, my sister's body recovered fully, except for the drop in stats and the stench beyond conception. The latter gave us a lot of trouble, as Systalia had to keep walking without falling because of the dizziness caused by her own body odor.

Moreover, I had to guide her all the way, as her mind was too focused on the smell, and I had to keep her on the right track. Suffice it to say, it took a lot of work to test the attention span of both our minds. Nevertheless, one positive element in all my unhappiness was a happy idea: multitasking. The thought of trying such a skill appealed to me more and more.

In fact, I'd thought of such a practical skill before. My only problem with this skill would be if the algorithms required for multitasking evolved. Would I then be divided into multiple personalities? However, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered what I feared. After all, I didn't have a highly developed sense of self, if not practically none.

Could I fracture something that didn't exist in my being? After all, I had no knowledge of my likes and dislikes; my memory, even of previous days, was quite hazy and blurred and yet so clear and limpid at the same time. Not to mention that I felt like I'd been in this World for an eternity and a second. As a result, I knew nothing about myself or what "me" meant.

I was lost in a World far too complex for it. These thoughts went round and round in my mind during our long escapade to the Refuge. A very long walk lasting several months could only lead to more fruitless introspection as time went by.

Deep down, I knew I had to relax, but seeing the monotonous landscape of ruins didn't create an atmosphere conducive to relaxation. Especially during all those months, a time much longer than on the outward journey, due to the physical deterioration of my apostle and the body of Nalys, we had to drag along.

If I had previously doubted the transfer of my debuffs to my apostle, the striking difference in physical and mental stats compared to before left me in no doubt. What's more, each use of Will produced more substantial adverse effects. Or, as I'd become more familiar with the Void's energy, I used it more each time.

In any case, I had to be careful with this energy, even when it came to my Magic. After all, it was only mana incorporated with a tiny amount of Void's energy. Even if the quantity was laughable, it was still harmful in the long term, as the weak effects accumulated. I had to consider that with each use of this energy, my sister's and my life expectancy were diminishing.

Now, about Nalys, she wasn't waking up, although she wasn't precisely dozing either. She wasn't exactly dead or alive. Indeed, unlike my apostle, even if the Void repaired her wounds, her body had already ceased functioning, so she wouldn't revive. At the time, my sister was at death's door, in a kind of coma, but still alive.

In short, this body was nothing but a walking corpse, preserved by the Void's energy and whose Soul was forced to be hooked by the Void's Will, even though it had already ceased to govern this body. The only possibility I could foresee for his awakening was to recreate his Body and Spirit.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Of course, I didn't have the skill to do this, so I would proceed in the same way as with my apostle and let his Soul recreate them on its own, the only difference being that, in the end, I wouldn't become his host. I wanted to have only one host; otherwise, it could complicate my future emancipation and create unnecessary problems I could have done without.

But that was easier said than done since I had to continually supply his Soul with the Void's energy, even after recreating his Body and Mind had been completed. But the only way I knew to provide so much energy at once was to become the person's host.

Obviously, I had become one because I had converted my body, mind, and soul into Void's energy, so I had no choice but to parasitize someone. Even if I hadn't sacrificed them, the flow of Void's energy far exceeded what a simple Void's link could offer a Soul.

Indeed, it wasn't simply feeding a Soul so that it could regenerate body or mind, but enabling a Soul to achieve the impossible. That is, to recreate a Body and a Spirit and maintain them despite their natural collapse due to the System, which does not allow structures to subsist beyond their maximum age or to come back to life without its authorization.

It was the latter in particular, as I'd already noticed with the corpses of my prey that their Souls left their bodies shortly after their deaths. Where to, I didn't know? I needed clarification on why reviving someone was so complicated in the long term.

All I knew was that I strongly suspected a link with the System, although I hardly knew its exact role. So I had to deal with these constraints and this lack of knowledge of how the world worked, forbidding myself from bringing Nalys back until I found an alternative solution. But even if the search took time, I'd soon have enough.

Time was all I could spare in the safe haven that was the Refuge for me. In fact, I was so comfortable in this place that I hardly noticed the passage of time, so much so that before I knew it, ten years had passed by when I decided to return valiantly to the surface... or not, because let's be serious, there were hardly any people who could serve as my adversaries apart from gun owners if there were any again.

Otherwise, no other person was threatening enough to induce me to use my basic Willpower instead of my Magic. Thus, fighting would be, at best, off-putting, at worst, pointless, no matter how you looked at it. Indeed, even if killing people to increase my power surprisingly didn't do anything for me, I didn't derive any great joy from it other than the excitement of experimenting with a new weapon in my arsenal.

What's more, my Magic had progressed less than before. I didn't know it then, as I still needed to get the experience bar display, but facing people of the same level gave a diminishing return. In other words, each person I killed in the lower world gave me less experience than the one before.

For a bit of clarification, the number of experiences given per person killed also depended on the foregap between two people. If the gap was too broad, slaughtering thousands, millions, or even billions of people could result in no experience at all, no matter how many people were slaughtered.

This measure prevented overpowered individuals from slaughtering too many people simultaneously to compensate for the lower experience gain. However, even if it did have a dissuasive effect on mass killings perpetrated by overpowered individuals, there was still a flaw.

For example, if a person had a sadistic streak, getting visibly excited at the sight of his carnage. That wasn't my case, although I must admit I did enjoy myself during the fights, mainly when I was entirely using Will and feeling so powerful. However, don't worry; fortunately, the System had other strategies to counter this.

Especially as slaughtering people wasn't the only way to gain experience, the most common way, even for combat-related abilities. So, it wasn't my return to the city we would discuss but a fascinating discovery that could only reinforce my curiosity about this special place called the Refuge.

And that's how I found myself in front of stairs, similar to those I used to descend into the Refuge from the surface. Only this time, I had hoped that the stairs would take me to a place quite different from the city dump. A place I could only hope would be cleaner and less smelly. I could only repeat the text's warning one last time in my mind.

How did I get here? I admit I was a bit hasty, so let's look back in time and examine the discoveries I'd made in those ten years. First of all, the first task I had in mind was to raise my skill level, which was vital if I was to maximize the conversion rate of Void's energy to body energy.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get past the next level, i.e., qualitative skill enhancement. Of course, each level required a qualitative increase in the algorithms forming the skill, but that didn't change the nature of the skill.

Now, if I could widen the scope of the skill's effect, whether in terms of the number of planes I could convert its energy to or the possibility of allocating energy for abilities other than Skills. If I succeeded, I would create new magic without going through Skills, create buffs, and raise the level of my Authorization or Authority, to name a few examples.

Eventually, I'd like to add energy to all Status skills and influence their growth. In fact, other than limiting algorithmic complexity, it was the possibility of adding energy recognized by the System and, therefore, the available space needed to write new algorithms or extend existing ones, holding me back in my influence of the Status.

As a result, even if I eventually figured out how to increase the Authorization level, for example, I'd never be able to increase it when I wanted to. All the more so as I dreaded the nature of the prerequisite for changing the Authorization level. Of course, I couldn't be sure since Authorization worked differently from Permission, mostly after conversing with my apostle about it.

At the same level, Authorization gave rise to more privileges within the System and a strange mechanism compared to Permission, as if Authorization were a freer prototype of it. And for good reason: the simple possibility of creating a skill that allowed the addition of a function for manually expanding the energy available for adding or modifying algorithms seemed to be an element specific to Authorization.

Of course, I couldn't trust my sister to know all the secrets of the Permission, but the function specific to my Authorization seemed impossible to her at first glance. Moreover, seeing the analysis results, even if they weren't beneficial at the moment, most indicated that the analysis had failed and gave no opportunity to observe the details of the analysis logs, which was the same situation.

In fact, it might have seemed strange, and I was the first to be astonished, but I was convinced that she knew far more about the System than anyone else in this World, even if I would then have to explain the reason for her silent refusal to share her knowledge. Honestly, I wasn't sure what to make of this insane intuition.

Should I follow my intuition and build my plans around this unverified information at the risk of making erroneous assumptions with unforeseen and potentially fatal consequences? Or, on the contrary, should I ignore it at the risk of cutting myself off from a possible advantage that could harm or even kill me? In either case, death would be a possible end, so I might as well choose the former.

Especially since my intuition hadn't fooled me so far, even more so when it was so persistent, pestering my mind with its constancy. The more I allowed myself to be carried away by this intuition, the more it seemed like a distant piece of knowledge, like an echo of evidence from before my amnesia, carried by the remnants of this past memory. And so, after much deliberation, I trusted this intuition.

Thus, I had raised the level of all my skills, needing more energy for the task. The higher levels required more and more energy, much faster than the increase in corpse energy conversion.

But I had other plans, such as understanding how the revolver worked, although this could only be achieved after some time. After waking up, we noticed that the gun was still on the ground, partially buried in rubble. We had tried to use it but were unable to activate it. Either there was no mana left inside, or I needed to fulfill a prerequisite for its use.

And what that prerequisite was, I sensed, was the level of Authority that was the only visible difference between my evaluation skill and the other Statuses. In short, I need a Level 2 Authority. And I could only put my research on the revolver on hold until my Authority had reached that level, much to my dismay.

As for the wheelbarrows, we had yet to find them, as they'd indeed been stolen by someone else. In any case, my apostle no longer possessed the physical ability to pull them, so we quickly abandoned our search. Apart from that, I had also explored the surrounding corridors and rooms before giving up this activity in favor of something a little more tedious and intellectual.

Indeed, despite all the time I'd spent in this room, I had yet to explore it in depth, at least not its books and tools. It was finally time to start decoding the language of these texts and tools, hoping that the former would help me with the latter. I could only think of all the weapons I was going to be able to obtain as a result of this large-scale operation.

And I was definitely not disappointed! Even if I hadn't made much progress in decoding the texts, at least not to the point of being able to read even one word of them, I had discovered something that would forever change my understanding of the World and become my greatest asset for my ascent. In fact, for the time being, it was essentially the latter.

Nevertheless, even so, it was already an incredible discovery that I could not but exult in, for without it, I would undoubtedly never have been able to get to where I am now. Without this possibility, my ascent would have been doomed to failure, being one of my most important discoveries, even if I was far from even conceiving it at the time.

And so, in the year -875, I, Æther, the Supreme and undisputed Representative of the Void, had discovered the means to reach the upper worlds despite my insufficient Class, overriding the laws and the System's Will, as well as to orient myself in the interminable labyrinth that was the Refuge.

This event was a turning point in my history, for better... and for worse, as I would soon experience being far from imagining the appalling strength of beings inhabiting the higher worlds beyond all comprehension. Thus, I was about to understand the insignificance of my knowledge...