NOVEL NEXT Chapter 184: Office Space?!
Only once I confirmed that the floor 150 boss's body had been consumed by the dungeon did I turn to continue my work.
This time, I opted not to take anything from its corpse. Not even its essence. Such a dense source of [light magic] was only harmful to my body, and I've already forced myself to consume plenty of such beings for the sake of gaining [light magic] for my own use years ago.
After a casual examination, I kicked open the chest that had spawned after the boss's death. I once spent quite a lot of time examining every treasure chest for the trace of traps, but I've never once found one on a chest. Rather than a precaution, my examination was more of a formal procedure than anything at this point.
But what I saw inside the chest only made my nose crinkle in displeasure.
Inside was a bar of dull grey metal. At a glance, it simply looked like a poor quality ingot of iron. But to my enhanced vision, there was little doubt to its true nature.
I condensed and crystallized a small bit of my own mana before dropping it onto the ingot. The shining diamond of mana evaporated even before it could touch the dark slab.
Of course it wouldn't. There was no way such a tiny amount of mana could survive this big gaping void that surrounded this seemingly innocuous grey lump.
"Cold iron huh? So this is where it comes from."
Memories of my previous encounter of this terrifying material welled up within me, but I forcibly suppressed them.
For a mana based life form such as myself, there was nothing more terrifying than this material. But at the same time, it was only an object. No matter how powerful an object was, it meant nothing if you simply bypassed it and defeated the one wielding it.
That was why, no matter how powerful this scythe I had received was, I would never rely solely on it. The same went with my other forms of fighting. I never knew when any one part of my fighting abilities could be completely countered, so it was important to maintain at least a minimum of ability in as many other aspects of combat I could.
I turned my eyes away from this disgusting lump and made my way towards the exit.
Passing through the usual portal, my eyes widened to saucers as an unexpected scenery expanded before me. Unlike the usual dimly lit cavern with a prominently standing fountain, what greeted me was a white expanse of the inside of a white dome. The shape and size was the same as all the fountain rooms up until then, there was even a fountain placed where they usually stood. But the colouration and wall texture was completely different.
Aside from that, there was a door on the far side close to the fountain, though the material it was made from blended with the white walls to a degree that one could easily miss it if they weren't paying much attention.
Somehow, all of this felt familiar, but as to where, I couldn't place a finger on. Of course there was the fountain, but I was sure that this wasn't what was giving me such a strange feeling.
I shook my head. If I couldn't figure out why I was feeling this way, there was no way I would be able to figure it out without investigating this room first.
Fortunately, I had plenty of time to examine things, as floor 150 didn't take that long to clear due to how little time I could afford to spend learning the details of monsters that had the potential of dealing serious harm to me if I messed up.
But before that, I walked over and touched the fountain. Just in case.
Once I did, I walked over to open the door. All the fountain rooms simply had a cavernous passage leading to the next area, so having to open a door was strangely novel. The moment I touched the handle, there was a beep and a sound reverberated from the door that reminded me a deadbolt being opened.
I hesitated for a moment, but as it seemed like whatever was going to happen had already done so, I continued to open the door.
Passing through, I was greeted with another room. This one square in shape. While the colour theme was the same, the purpose was completely different. On one side, there was a pedestal, the same design as the one built into the fountains on each floor of the dungeon, but built directly into the floor for some reason. Beside it was another door.
Across from that, there was a plain counter built into the far wall with a glass orb embedded into it, and a comfortable looking seat in front of it.
Leaving the door open, I went over to the closest of the unusual items: the lone pedestal.
While the stone object was identical to the empty platform's, this one was simply embedded into the ground for some reason rather than raised from the surface of a fountain's pool of water.
Looking closer, there was a glass orb embedded in the front of the pedestal.
Curious as to what that was, but still leery to all the strangeness of this room, I pulled out an empty clay jar from my folded subspace, broke off pieces from it and lightly tossed them here and there. A few bounced off of the glass orb, others landed on the pedestal. None had any sort of reaction.
While I couldn't say I was entirely satisfied with my test, there was little more I could do to check to see if it was dangerous. On top of that, my curiosity was getting the better of me, so this time, I tried touching the orb directly.
"Wah!"
The orb flickered to life the moment my finger came in contact with it. But even more surprising was a glowing pane that appeared above. The style was extremely familiar, yet what it was much less so.
The design style was almost exactly the same as the one used for my status window, except it was floating in space like a hologram rather than being embedded as part of my personal sight. The window was split into three parts. The first was an image of an empty pedestal, next to it was a message, and the last was another pedestal, but there were pieces of clay on it.
The message in between the two images read: [No saved data found. Transcribe? {Yes/No}]
I tried touching the {Yes}, and the first image was overwritten with the second. The text changed.
[Transcribed data 1 found. Save this data? {Yes/No} Or transcribe another? {Yes/No}]
(Is this some sort of holographic camera?!)
While the image I was looking at was distinctly 2D, the fact was that it seemed like the device was recording whatever was on the platform.
Excited at the sight of something in between modern Earth and completely futuristic, a deep desire to try the system out welled up within me. And that was despite the fact that I originally had little interest in taking photos in my previous life.
Viewing pictures others took, sure. But taking any myself? Only in the rarest of occasions.
But the chance to use something that was at least a little close to what I was familiar with on Earth filled me with nostalgia that made me want to immediately play with this new toy I had found.
Stepping onto the pedestal, I could see the second image on the hologram change to reflect myself as it updated in real time. It was completely a live video stream!
I hit {Yes} once again, and the first image was replaced with a picture of me leaning over to push the holographic button. The text changed again to reflect the fact that there was now two transcribed data.
Now I really wanted to play around with this even more, but having to press the button each time I used it would severely limit what I could record without bringing someone else to help me. But I didn't have the patience for that, nor did I want to annoy someone with such a request.
Instead, I tried manipulating my shadow to press the button for me. Posing with my arms crossed and smiling, I touched the button with my shadow.
The first image was overwritten with the new image of myself.
Excitement overflowed as I stared at this new picture.
One thing that I noticed was that while the broken pieces of claw was in the picture as I hadn't cleared it, my shadow didn't appear at all.
Playing around with taking a few more pictures confirmed that the device only recorded physical objects. My shadow would appear if I manipulated parts of it from within the platform, but if I left it in its natural state and only lifted it off the ground off of the platform, it wouldn't appear at all.
Other objects appeared just fine, but creating a light source had no effect on the recorded image, so while I could produce a flame in my hand, the light it cast didn't appear in the image.
The rules felt a little arbitrary, but they were easy enough to understand and it could have been a limitation of the equipment.
Either way, once I had figured this much out, I quickly started to play around, making various poses, taking pictures, setting up props, taking pictures, changing outfits, taking pictures, and even changing the shape of my body or spiritualizing parts and taking even more pictures.
Interestingly, the equipment had no issue recording my spiritualized self with [spirit form]. It was unfortunate, but it made a few of my ideas impossible to perform.
After quite a long time and over a hundred pictures taken, I was going through the recordings as I giggled to myself.
Frankly speaking, I couldn't say I was really one who put much effort into my appearance, but even without doing so my natural looks were impressive. Being able to see it like this really reinforced that idea in my head.
And when I actually put in some effort into dressing up and fixing my hair a bit, the results were quite stunning.
Unfortunately, this equipment wasn't able to save more than one image for some reason, but I really wanted to keep the pictures I had taken, being the first time since my reincarnation that I had the chance to do something like this.
Sure, I could've invented the camera in this world as well, but I hadn't really thought about it, as I've never really taken much interest in pictures in the first place. Though after this experience, it might be worth putting in the effort.
In the end, only being able to select one picture to save, I carefully selected my favourite, one of the last ones I took.
The picture was an unusual one. I had opened up my robes, tied loosely only at my waist and the shoulders dropped all the way to my elbows. Instead, my upper body was covered with one of the traditional dokkalfar shawls Elli had given me. It was one that was decorated with jewels in a similar style to my favourite robes, like the milky way flowing across its surface.
From behind, I grew out a pair of large black bat wings, and my hair fell in between them, loosely braided in a mermaid style. In my right hand was my favourite scythe, the orihalcum side held down while the majority of the weapon was kept behind me.
The pose I took was something akin to a divine figure descending down from the heavens, a hand stretched out in mercy and a gentle smile lifting her cheeks.
Frankly, it was cheesy as all hell, but somehow it had turned out so well that in the end I couldn't help but admire it, and chose that one to be saved.
When I hit {Yes} to save it, a flash of light from my side blinded me.
"Wha!"
I blinked away the bright spots in my eyes and looked around. The light seemed to have come from the previous room, so I carefully made my way over and had a look. But I froze when I saw what had happened.
Standing there near the doorway, on the pedestal mounted on the ever familiar fountain, was a stone statue of me.
To be exact, it was the picture I had saved in statue form.
If my cheeks could become any paler than they already were, they would've.
I examined the holographic, but all it said was [Data saved. System resources depleted. Please restore before trying again.]
I could only hope that there wasn't some sort of serious repercussions to my action, but the bad feeling I had was going deep enough that I couldn't help but think there was no way that was possible.
Instead, I turned my attention elsewhere, more out of trying to delude myself and pretend nothing had happened than anything else.
Over on the other wall, there was another crystal ball embedded in the wall mounted table. There was a good chance I could find out more about this place using that.
I quickly fixed myself up, erasing my wings and putting my weapon away before raising my robes over my shoulders again. The shawl I left underneath as it was a hassle to remove, though it also didn't really get in the way either.
Sitting down in the seat, I touched the orb.
Just like before, the glass ball flickered to life and a holographic window appeared before me.
What words appeared though, surprised me even more than what had just happened.
[Welcome Administrator Scarlet. Warning: apotheosis status not found.]
"...Wha...?"
My mind reeled. Just these few words alone had so many implications, my brain simply had a blue screen trying to figure out where to even start.
(Apotheosis? What kind of status is that?! How does one get that? What does that even mean? Or rather, it recognized me in the first place?)
With my brain reeling as countless thoughts charged headlong into each other forming an incoherent mess, I put a few fingers to my forehead and took a few deep breaths.
(Okay, first of all...)
No amount of speculation would get me anywhere. What I needed to do first was learn what I could.
The next line wasn't much help at all. Rather, it only increased the number of questions I was filled with.
[Enlightenment level: 99.97%. Forced transcendence available. Apply? {Yes/No}]
While the wording was a bit ambiguous, it suggested that I had the qualifications to be transcended. What it meant in relation to this [enlightenment level] as well as apotheosis, the questions only swelled exponentially. Instead, I just shut off all related lines of thought and just continued to go through what was written.
Overall, there was quite a lot to digest.
Probably the most important discovery was that there was a connection to my status as administrator with this console. Perhaps this entire facility buried at the bottom of the dungeon. A quick survey suggested that I had full access to the inner workings of this world's system, something which I only got limited access normally.
To be exact, the systems I had access to normally could be selected here, though there were severe limitations to how many parts I could access to at one time. The skills system was such a large part of the overall system that with it selected, I couldn't access any other part of the base system that ruled this world.
Whether the reason why I could specifically access the skills system in the first place was because it was the first one I had tried or if for some reason it was the one last set by whoever the previous administrator was, I didn't know.
But while all this was intriguing, what interested me the most was the log files. It seemed like a previous administrator had left a log detailing their work.
Opening it up, I went directly to the first entry.
[Log 0.0.1. We've finished the initial setup of this new world, Terheim. All the basic biomes have been organized and installed. We'll be moving on to generating the first generation of inhabitants once we've confirmed the world's stability. Hopefully all will go well. I've heard enough stories about the fuckups some of the other departments have made, and the entire point of this world was to help reduce the chances of such things from happening again.]
Presumably, this was the log of the administrator from when this world was first created. The implications of these words were immense, but once again, there was so many things I couldn't understand without further context.
I continued to skim through the logs as it described the early days of this world from the perspective of the administrator. That was, until I encountered a particular log.
[Log 1.7.19. The first guests have successfully entered Terheim and integrated themselves in their time playing. Ten guests in two groups. No problems so far. The light group has opted to start slowly, hunting the local fauna and making a name for themselves. The dark group on the other hand is spending their time interacting with the mortals. It seems like they are doing well, having conquered the small tribe they had spawned near. There hasn't been any complaints from any of our guests. Rather, they all seemed to be enjoying themselves quite a bit. Frankly, I don't know how the others convinced the higher ups, but the concept was interesting enough. Create a world where two equal sides are perpetually at war, inhabit mortal bodies and pretending to be them while fighting in their wars as great heroes of both sides. I kinda regret volunteering to be the administrator. Hopefully they'll approve my vacation in the next century. I'll definitely spend my time as a dragonkin when it happens. Maybe I'll even be able to become a demon lord?]
"Wha...?"
I had to read the entry three times before my brain could accept what I was reading.
(Guests? Playing? Perpetual war?)
My teeth clenched, making an audible grind. My fists tightened until blood dripped onto the table.
From then, I quickly scanned through the logs and found more and more similar entries.
No matter how much I wanted to deny it, what I was reading was clear: this world was made for the enjoyment of those who created it. To them, everything was nothing but a game, like people playing some sort of MMORPG, joining one of two competing factions and warring against the other.
There's never been a point to this war that the people here had been suffering through for countless ages. The origin was completely artificial for the purpose of entertainment.
I started skipping through the logs, but all I saw was simple status updates. That was, until I reached the end.
[Log 2167.2.8. It's been a long time, but there hasn't been any guests for a decade now. I guess everyone's gotten tired of playing the same old war over and over. Starting tomorrow, I'm going to be put onto a different project. I wonder how long this world will last without anyone supervising it? A century? Maybe two? Not like it matters. Once the inhabitants wipe themselves out, this world will be automatically scrapped. At least it managed to serve its purpose. With so many of us gods refreshed thanks to the chance of having such novel experiences, everyone's work has been going much better and the number of failed worlds have gone down quite a bit. Anyways. So long Terheim.]
I was astonished.
This world has been abandoned like some defunct game. Since this last log, it's been running all on its own, with its creators no longer caring about it.
There were countless automated logs going on, reporting on important events in the world, yet from what I could tell, the creators, nor any other higher being had even glanced at any of them. At the very least, there was no logs left by them.
But interestingly, looking at the dates on the logs, this world has been surviving fine without any divine intervention for quite some time. The latest automated log was dated 3890.10.31.
[New idol data registered and saved.]
While I couldn't confirm it for sure, it was possible that this referred to that image I had saved just earlier. That bad feeling came back, but I forcibly suppressed it.
I quickly scanned back through the automated logs. For the most part, they either detailed events I was familiar with, for example whenever I made changes to the skill system, or were of events which had no consequence to myself nor the Hourai Commonwealth.
Eventually though, I did come across something extremely strange.
[Log 3569.7.20. Changes to species [Vampire] saved by Administrator Scarlet.]
"Hah?!"
This log was clearly from far before I was born. In fact, it was so old, it was from before my previous life on Earth, unless if there was some sort of time dilation shenanigans involved. Yet for some reason it strongly pointed at me being the reason why this log was made. Or at least someone with the same name and status as me.
Confused, I continued through the logs and found another that stood out in particular.
[Log 3569.7.16. User Scarlet promoted to Administrator status.]
There were a few more references to someone of the same name as me, but this one pointed out when she got the administrator status.
(And more importantly, she had the name Scarlet before becoming an administrator.)
There were a few quite important implications, but I couldn't figure out more from these logs.
It was unfortunate, but I was at a bit of a dead end regarding this particular line of questions at the moment.
Authors Note:
Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (≧∇≦)/
Now, finally! Some really important points I've been holding onto for about two years now! ＼(◎o◎)／
So how did everyone enjoy the reveal? Was it satisfying? Or maybe a bit too unexpected? Tell me what you think!
So, after almost two hundred chapters and more than two years, we're starting to get real deep in the world. What the purpose of the world was, what happened since the beginning, the reason for some of the weird stuff going on in the background. (@[email protected])
Well, stuff, I guess. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Anyways, I hope everyone's doing well.
I'll see you in the next one.
Peace! (·ω·)∩