Nox slipped out of the room, leaving Serian still asleep. The princess looked like she hadn’t moved much since he’d woken up with his head on her lap. The thin blanket was still pulled up to her chin, and her breathing was soft and even, her features relaxed in a way he hadn’t seen them when she was awake.
He figured she needed the rest more than he did right now. He carefully closed the door behind him.
The hallway of the old hotel was dim and smelled faintly of dust and old cigarettes, a scent that was almost comforting in its normalcy compared to the reek of monster guts. He walked down the creaky stairs, his boots making soft thuds on the worn wood, and out the front door into the brighter light of day.
The sun was high, probably around noon, judging by the short, sharp shadows cast by the broken edges of nearby buildings. The air here, a few blocks away from where they’d fought Lola, felt a bit cleaner, less like a tomb.
He took a deep breath, the air filling his lungs. His body still ached, a network of throbs and sharp twinges reminding him of Lola’s daggers and the self-inflicted gunshot wound. But underneath the persistent pain, there was a strange, undeniable lightness.
It was as if a heavy, invisible pack he hadn’t even consciously realized he was carrying for years had finally been cut loose from his shoulders, from his heart.
’That feeling...’ he thought, tilting his head back to look up at the clear blue sky visible between the jagged silhouettes of the ruined cityscape. ’It’s like... I can finally breathe again.’
He wasn’t sure if it was just the relief from surviving another near-death experience, or if it had something to do with that "Corrupted Mana" now settled inside him, a dark, potent energy that felt uniquely his.
Maybe it was the undeniable knowledge that he hadn’t just survived his encounters; he’d fought back, he’d made a high-level mercenary run. He’d taken control, in a brutal, ugly way. And it felt... good. The crushing weight of always being the victim, of always being on the receiving end, that was what felt gone.
The fear was still there, a healthy respect for the dangers of this new world, but the helplessness that had defined his old life was fading.
He found a relatively intact stone ledge a little way down the street, part of what might have once been a storefront window display, and sat down, stretching his legs out. The city noise was a distant hum here, punctuated by the occasional shout or the rumble of a vehicle somewhere far off.
His thoughts drifted to the System. It had been a constant, silent presence since everything went to hell, feeding him information, tracking his progress, even giving him skills. It was his guide, his toolkit, his only real advantage. But it had always felt like a machine, a complex program running in the background of his new reality.
’Is it just... code?’ he wondered, idly kicking at a loose piece of rubble with the toe of his boot. ’Or is there something more to it? Something actually listening on the other side of all those blue screens?’ He’d never tried to just... talk to it. Not like it was a person. The idea felt a bit stupid, even to him.
But the question lingered. He’d seen Auraelia’s overly enthusiastic messages, the other gods bickering like spoiled children. They were conscious, clearly. What about the System itself, the interface that managed it all?
He focused his mind, not on a command like ’stats’ or ’inventory,’ but on a direct question, directing it towards that unseen, ever-present interface. ’System,’ he thought, his mental voice surprisingly hesitant, even to his own internal ear.
’Can you... I don’t know... can you actually hear me? Are you conscious, or just a bunch of automated notifications?’
He waited, half-expecting nothing, or maybe just another error message. The usual pop-ups were instantaneous when he used a skill or got an update. This felt different. He was just... asking.
Then, a simple, clean blue text box appeared in his vision, just as it always did. The formatting was the same. But the words it contained were different. They weren’t a stat update or a mission log.
[...yes, I can converse.]
He stared at the message. He read it again. And then a third time, just to be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. His mind, which had felt strangely clear and light just moments before, now felt like it had been hit by a stun gun. A jolt, not of pain, but of pure, unadulterated shock, shot through him.
’It... it can talk?’ he thought, a wave of something he couldn’t quite name – surprise, profound unease, a spark of intense, almost dangerous curiosity – washing through him. ’Holy shit.’
This changed... well, he wasn’t sure exactly what it changed yet, but it felt like it changed a lot. The impersonal interface he’d been treating like a video game menu had just spoken back to him.
"Why didn’t you ever say anything before?" he asked out loud. He felt a bit foolish, talking to empty air, but the blue screen had answered his mental query.
A new text box appeared.
He stared at it. ’You never asked.’ It was that simple. He hadn’t considered it might be capable of more. A thought, maybe irritation at his own lack of foresight, passed through him.
"What are you, then?" he voiced his next question, the words feeling heavy. "Some kind of god, like those others yapping in my head? Or something else?"
[I am unable to provide a definitive answer to that query. My own awareness began when I chose you.]
He processed that. That was right before the earthquake, right when he’d been about to... He pushed that particular memory down. "So you don’t know what you are, but you know you chose me."
The System didn’t reply to that, taking it as a statement. He remembered the first message he’d received from it: ’[Congratulations! You have met the requirements!]’
"What were those requirements?" he asked, his voice still low. "You said I met them. Back in the classroom. What did I do?"
[At that moment, your soul was undergoing a state of profound evolution. A similar state was detected during your recent confrontation with the mercenary, Lola, which resulted in the forceful creation of your ’Corrupted’ skill tree.]
His eyebrows drew together. He thought back to that cold, consuming hatred, the feeling of power that had surged through him, allowing him to fight on despite his injuries. And then he remembered the classroom. The fear, the rage, the crushing despair that had finally clicked into a hard resolve to end it all. Was that the same thing?