Chapter VII

Systems are fascinating things. Horrible things, yes, but I do not think I need to state this again.

Why am I bringing that up, again?

Because it is important, and I cannot repeat it often enough.

Observing System based universes is, honestly, fun. Of course, there is always that horrifying fascination aspect, but also the behaviors it guides.

The next type of System we talk about is a type I like to call challenge Systems.

Those kinds of Systems have no non combat classes, only combat.

Challenge Systems offer a clear path to power, but often many challenges.

The stakes also have a tendency to be unreasonably high, losing means, quite commonly, the destruction of your entire civilization, if not species.

They also have a tendency to be inherently unfair, devouring civilizations left and right. Almost all challenge Systems spread in a certain sub section of the multiverse.

They are cruel monsters, only existing to bring suffering.

They relish in giving you hope and then slowly, piece by piece, removing that hope, destroying it.

And in the end you, the most successful member of your civilization, falls, knowing that with you falling, your entire civilization falls with you.

Why would anyone do that?

There is, in most of these kinds definite evidence that they have been purposefully created. How sick do you need to be to destroy entire civilizations regularly, and for what? Fun? Because it sure looks like it.

And it is not even, let us destroy that planet over there, it is, give them hope that they might survive, and then slowly but surely crush that hope, destroy it, and let them suffer while slowly dying.

Whoever is behind those Systems, although it are almost certainly multiple beings or groups, is a cruel and sadistic bastard.

Which is not anything new, admittedly. But these kinds are especially evil.

And commonly use their mind control not to prevent anyone realizing anything weird, to polish of the edges so to speak, but instead to make everything worse.

And this is just cruel and unusual. Why would anyone do something so cruel.

Why would anyone want to do such evil things?

And why are they powerful enough to do this?

I do not know. And on some level, I do not want to know, because knowing might break my fate into the multiverse itself.

Cruelty is evil. Unnecessary cruelty is doubly evil. And challenge Systems think cruelty is just a part of them, a necessary part.

I hate them and despise them.

If you are trapped in one, the only thing you can do is play their game, unless you can access your powers that stand outside of the System. In that case you have more options, although which ones exactly depends on you. And playing their game is not fun. It means near endless struggle, in the mere hope that you will not be crushed, a hope that often is wrong. The System has many ways to crush you, and few of them can be countered by you.

But there is one iron rule in those kinds of Systems.

There is a victory condition. It does not matter how impossible to reach it is, it exists. And the System cannot make it impossible to reach. Impossible for you specifically, because you have not gained enough power, because the System has not given you enough opportunities to gain power?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Certainly acceptable.

But there must be a potential way to reach it, and every civilization assimilated has to be able of taking that chance.

Now, there are tricks the System can employ, and is employing, to make it more impossible.

The first, and most simple way is to make betrayal happen more easily. Not force it, because that might make achieving the victory condition impossible, and challenge Systems are bound to certain rules, but make it more likely, be the evil voice whispering into everyones ears that they should take that, appealing to their greed, vanity, lust, wrath, pride, slothfulness and or envy.

It is a doubly effective technique.

First you have the effect of the more common betrayals, making working together more dangerous, even though working together is often a requirement for the victory condition.

But it also makes it more time consuming to keep a group that does work well together to actually stay together.

So, that is the first method the challenge System can use to fuck with the assimilated civilization, to prevent it from reaching the victory condition.

The second route is even easier for the System, but not always actually possible. Lying or being misleading about the actual victory condition. Or simply not mentioning it exists and letting the users draw the wrong conclusion.

Not always all that possible, especially if the System is forced in a way that essentially forces the discovery of the victory condition, if it even can lie about it.

The most common thing is that it is not actually required to mention the victory condition. But also cannot lie in regards to it, or even be that misleading, so the System simply does not mention the victory condition at all, if it can help it.

The third way is simply using the different civilization inside of it, and playing them out against each other. Preventing any one civilization of amassing enough power to achieve the victory condition.

Now, there are multiple types of challenge System.

One of the most popular, and most simple at the same time, are the tower style challenge Systems.

The victory condition is pretty simple.

Reach the top, maybe defeat a certain guardian, or bring a number of special items, have a large enough group, whatever.

But reach the top.

Those kinds of Systems are weird. They also tend to not have multiple civilizations climbing the tower, attempting the challenge at the same time.

If your civilization looses, its remnants are often used to be a challenge for the next challenger. Completely and utterly mind controlled by the challenge System, the tower.

Still, tower type challenge Systems are often amongst the most fair, because they often have less tricks to prevent someone from achieving victory.

Which does not mean that they have no tricks, and the chance to actually reach the victory condition, not even winning, is quite small, even there.

I personally estimate it, from the Systems of that type that I have seen, to be a roughly 0.07% chance of reaching the victory condition.

Actually winning? I think that are less than 0.002% of the ones that reach the victory condition.

Which means a ridiculous amount of civilizations are wiped out simply to find one winner.

And winning often does not bring peace, or necessarily survival.

You have simply won the cruel game, what your prize is depends. Sometimes your prize is to simply be able to try again, go through everything again, to buy your civilization a bit more time before it is destroyed or mind controlled into oblivion.

Sometimes you now become the System, but somehow, for some reason, need to keep the cycle going.

I suspect mind control.

Admittedly, I do that a lot in regards to Systems, mostly because it is always true.

Always, you hear me?

Well, read me.

You know what I mean.

Ok, another type of challenge System is the death match type.

Your civilization, or the best of your civilization versus the same from another civilization. Slowly increasing or decreasing in ranking.

And when you reach the highest ranking you can decide, as a civilization, if you want to attempt the risky path, and try to reach the victory condition, whatever it does.

Or maybe that is the victory, just that there is no permanent victory.

Depends on the System.

Fuck!

There goes my keyboard again. Luckily I have more.

I always have more.

Well, at least for now.

I hate thinking about Systems. It is annoying, time consuming, and makes me angry. And then I need to put that into a somewhat coherent form, so that I can warn you, dear multiversal traveler, of the dangers they pose.

And I already know that that bastard will force me to make this into a series, deconstructing multiple types of universes.

Fuck. That bastard will be reading this. Fuck me, I am giving him ideas. No!

But I am man enough to not erase my statements.

Not that I can, considering I accidentally broke the backspace and delete keys on this keyboard.

I could get a new one, but this one needs to be destroyed before I am allowed to do so.

And that bastard will be annoyed when I need a new keyboard to often.

Better give him ideas, instead of making him purposefully annoyed.

Hm. I know how to rebel! I will simply write it as an add on to this here, so that the title will not make any sense in the end!

Yes, that is a good plan.

Please do not force me to do that, dear that bastard.

Please…

And yes, dear reader, before you ask, that is actually his name.

I am not sure if he has realized what it means in the main language of the multiverse, at least to the best of my knowledge.

Or he knows and finds it funny. Who knows.

I definitely do not.

Another type of challenge Systems is the let us rip randomly chosen intelligent beings away from home, strand them on a death world, and if they do not manage to reach certain goals, surviving being the lowest of them, their entire species will be annihilated.

And making the targets now that.

Evil.

Mean.

Unusual and cruel.

But it is the way some of the Systems function, for some reason.

And the worst part? Assuming you win, congratulations, your entire species has just been conscripted to fight in some sort of multiversal war.

Not a particularly encompassing multiversal war, of course, but still.

That is just the nature of such things.

Why would they be so cruel?

Especially, they are using that to create armies. Armies that will despise them. That will resent them.

Do they not fear rebellion? Yes, they, whoever they are, who are behind the System, are often very powerful, but try that on the wrong civilization and one like us, who is currently outside of the affected universes shows up, not being required to not interfere.

Which means he interferes. And destroys their feeble and destructive and cruel society in a very quick and painless way.

Sometimes I wish that I would be allowed to go outside and hunt down System based universes, to pass judgement on them, because that is definetly necessary.

That would be very nice.

Hey, that bastard, can I do that latter?

After I finished writing this guide? Please?

Pretty please with a cherry on top?

I fucking hate System based universes, but I promise I would be fair, only destroying those Systems that deserve it.

I would even help the former users to deal with the issues stemming from the loss of the System.

Please.