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An Otherworldly Scholar - 173
🕑 Added 2024-11-03 02:26:52 +0000 UTCThe Man in Yellow sat cross-legged behind the bamboo bars. His yellow shirt was smeared with mud, the left sleeve was torn, and his tortoiseshell glasses were crooked. His arms were scrapped as if he had been dragged through the dirt. The beginning of his adventure in this world had not been smooth. He had arrived in a dangerous world where humans weren’t the dominant species but mice hiding in caves, and the System wasn’t a thing yet.
Two warriors guarded the bamboo prison, seemingly unaware their prisoner was tinkering with runes. I approached. To my surprise, it wasn’t the Access Rune what the Man in Yellow was engraving on his skin.
“If it isn’t my favorite teacher,” a familiar voice came from behind me.
I turned around to find the System Avatar in the middle of the cave, his shirt spotless and his body healthy. Thick Corruption lines showed under his skin, almost like oil ran through his veins instead of blood. It wasn’t a reassuring sight. The Avatar’s silence, Astrid’s Corruption, and the Lich's rise didn’t augur good news.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I am a copy of the consciousness of that guy behind bars, so technically, I’m not alive. As a System subroutine, I’m starting to accumulate errors,” the System Avatar said, his tone unsettlingly devoid of feelings. “The code is hanging from a thread. The Zealot Quest routine is about to crash, and the Safety subroutine is flagging healthy parts of the code as errors. Corruption is snowballing, and I’m not sure the System will see the end of the next decade.”
Still, he sounded defeated, unlike the previous time they had met.
The humans in the cave continued working without paying attention to us.
“A decade is plenty of time to fix whatever is failing. I can learn how to properly runeweave. I just need guidance,” I said. The words automatically came to my mouth. So far, I’ve been trying to guess the rules of runeweaving the best I could, but I needed a teacher. I needed a solid foundation from which to construct my knowledge.
The System Avatar gave me a sardonic smile.
“You don’t understand, Robert Clarke. It’s not just about runeweaving. The System processes the mana of millions of users. Hundreds of thousands of users cast skills every second. The amount of Fountain mana the System transforms into safe, usable mana is incommensurable. Even if I guess how to inject runes into your Rune Encyclopedia, you wouldn’t be able to touch the System without the mana currents burning you to ashes,” the System Avatar said. “We need time for your body to get used to the true strength of runes.”
I knew the System Avatar was withholding information, but I didn’t expect that.
“Can’t we shut down the System for a day for repairs?” I asked.
The System Avatar laughed.
“Come on, Robert. I’m not that stupid. I created the thing, and I know everything about it. Like the human brain, the System isn’t built to shut down,” he said. “I need you to be skilled enough to move through energy currents without dying while channeling similar amounts of energy to engrave the runes. Like fixing a nuclear plant while it's working.”
I massaged my temples.
“Couldn't you tell me that from the beginning?”
“Would it have changed your answer?”
Probably. I glanced at my left arm. Channeling mana through my body wasn’t something I was eager to do ever again.
“Why did you give me the Access Rune and that weird set of coordinates if I’m so unprepared to fix the System?” I asked.
The System Avatar sighed.
“Forget about it. Maybe I was wrong from the start. Creating the System was a mistake. No matter how much we push back, humans can’t stop nature. Without the System, Corruption will slowly disappear. Sure, people will have no Classes to fight the already existing Corruption, but some will survive.”
Logically, that was a sound solution. To eliminate Corruption, one had to eliminate its source. I looked around. The living standards of ancient humans were far from good. If the System stopped existing, we’d be sentencing Ebros and all the other human kingdoms to ruin.
Suddenly, the realization hit me.
“That was Byrne’s solution,” I said. “He refused to fix the System because he wanted to destroy the source of Corruption.”
The System Avatar raised his hands like saying, ‘You caught me’.
“Byrne wanted to introduce key technologies before the System's collapse, create a haven, save a few thousand, and ensure the survival of our species,” the System Avatar said. “But playing defensively never worked for humanity. I know what life was like before the System, and no haven is safe. No matter what you do, this world is too cruel for humanity to thrive.”
I couldn’t help but think of the ramblings of a dying man.
“Look.” The System Avatar pointed out one of the holes in the ceiling.
An instant later, a red wyvern slipped through the hole and dropped into the lair near the mage’s circle. I tried to identify it out of instinct, but the skill didn’t respond. Before anyone could react, the monster caught a magician and crushed it with its maw. Chaos ensued. The guards jumped the beast, wielding their spears, but it took only a tail flick to send them crashing against the jagged walls.
Just like the System Avatar had said, there was no true safe haven in this world.
I expected the red wyvern to clear the human settlement, but a lightning bolt hit the drake, blowing a hole through scales and muscle. The bamboo cage was reduced to splinters, and specks of pure-white natural mana fluttered around the Man in Yellow’s hands. Then, a second drake entered the cave. The Man in Yellow created a lighting ball in his hand and blew the monster’s head.
“Despite my looks, I played a lot of baseball,” the System Avatar pointed out, satisfied with the act of his past self.
A rune gleamed in the palm of his hand.
“How long have you been in this world when that happened?” I asked, surprised. The amount of mana he could channel was outlandish, even by my standards. That wasn’t the tame blue System mana I was used to, but wild Fountain mana.
“A few days? My first contact didn’t go as well as yours. I blame the culture of that time. They believed I was a spy sent by the elves or the orcs,” the System Avatar said.
The scene continued. The sound of a horn broke the silence, and the warriors rushed towards the entrance while others helped the wounded. The Man in Yellow followed. Outside, between the treetops, a flock of wyverns drew circles above our heads. I’ve never seen so many monsters gather together. Hundreds of dragons darkened the sky.
The human sentinels panicked, but the Man in Yellow remained calm.
“For the record, that wasn’t my first time seeing that flock,” the System Avatar pointed out.
“The Farlands were a wild place, uh?” I pointed out.
The scene was breathtaking.
A black dragon with a wingspan like a small plane darted through the wyvern flock. The trees around us creaked and shattered, and the human sentinels who weren’t holding to anything were sent flying against the rock. The black dragon landed a few meters away from the entrance. A woman dismounted from its back. She was dressed like an office worker: a navy cardigan, a pencil skirt, and loafers.
“Your dragons killed two people inside the cave, Rebecca,” the Man in Yellow nonchalantly said.
“I’m not Rebecca anymore. You will call me Beck, Queen of Dragons from now on, Jeremiah,” the woman said, pissed.
I raised an eyebrow, looking at the System Avatar. I just noticed he had been avoiding telling me his real name all this time.
“Call me Jeremy, and I’ll nerf every single one of your skills, Rob,” the System Avatar replied.
Meanwhile, the woman named Rebecca walked up to the Man in Yellow. She was shorter, but the black dragon at her back gave her a poise that was hard to mimic.
“We should be looking for a way back to Earth, not terrorizing random people with a horde of dragons,” the Man in Yellow said.
The woman broke into hysterical laughter. It wasn’t hard to see that something was wrong with her head. She laughed for a long minute, holding onto the black dragon beside her to avoid falling. She wiped a tear from her eye.
“No. I’m not going to return to Earth. Nobody will. From now on, you and your tribal friends will serve me; we will expel those green skins from the lowlands, and everything in this valley will be mine,” she said.
The Man in Yellow remained unfazed.
“Come on, Rebecca, this is not okay. You are not like this.”
“You always lacked vision, Jeremiah. When was the last time you got a promotion? Oh, wait, you haven’t, despite being one of the older hires in your department,” Rebecca grinned.
Her eyes were the ones of a crazy person, and the Man in Yellow seemed to be aware she was about to burst.
“Remember the Conflict Resolution Training, Rebecca.”
That seemed to trigger the woman.
“Kill him, Umbra.”
The black dragon roared, but the Man in Yellow was faster. He pointed his finger at the woman, and a lightning bolt hit her in the chest through her cardigan and blouse. The woman fell flat on her back, and the dragon seemed to wake up from a trance. Above our heads, the wyverns screeched and charged into each other.
“In my defense, she was from human resources,” the System Avatar said. “She wasn’t the worst of the lot, though. Corporate America doesn’t attract the most virtuous people.”
“How many more came here with you?”
The System Avatar closed his eyes in deep focus.
“A hundred and twenty-six, mostly from HR, sales, legal, and marketing. I was on-site turning on a projector, which three different department heads had assured me was already plugged in. I was IT, evidently,” the System Avatar snapped his fingers, and the world stopped moving like we were trapped in the frame of a movie.
The smoke from Rebecca’s wound remained still, and a hint of guilt appeared on the Man in Yellow’s face. Still, I understood he was already used to the sight of death. Something told me that a hundred and twenty-six humans with magical powers trapped in a high-stress environment couldn’t end well.
“How did you get into this world?” I asked.
The System Avatar shook his head.
“I don’t know. There was a high-pitched beep and a bright light, and the next thing I knew was that a chunk of our office building had been transported to the middle of a forest.”
The world moved under our feet. Forests and hills became a blur as we traversed kilometers and kilometers in a single instant. We stopped before a cubic section of a corporate building in the middle of a shallow lake. Chairs and desks had rolled through the windows of the tilted monolith. There were fax machines at the bottom of the lake. Paper and shards of glass were everywhere. Everything inside the third floor was turned to ashes.
I didn’t know why the System Avatar was showing me that.
“It took them about a day to realize they had magic powers. I thought we could survive; we had a fire guy, a girl who could create water, and even someone who could create food out of dirt. At first, we abided by the company’s organizational chart, but the emergence of powers turned the tables,” the System Avatar said. “The fire guy blew up everyone on the third floor. Rebecca from HR briefly controlled the minds of everyone in her department. An invisible guy from sales went on a stabbing spree. There were simply too many warlords for so few lackeys. I didn’t want to fight, so I fled to the forest, where the local humans caught me.”
If the System Avatar had footage of that period, he didn’t show it. I felt we were going on a tangent, but my curiosity got the best of me.
The world moved beneath my feet, and we returned to the human hideout. There must’ve been a time skip because the landscape had changed. The forest had been cleared and replaced by farmland. A high stone wall surrounded the area, and the settlement population had skyrocketed. The Man in Yellow held a stone hoe. He had shed his khakis and bowl cut, his shoulders had broadened, and his blonde hair hung off his back like a lion’s mane.
I wondered why the System Avatar wouldn’t use that version of his past self.
“Only half of us otherworlders survived the first week. After a few months, we realized there was no way back to Earth. About thirty of us allied and helped to defend the human settlement from monsters. We were like superheroes. We could control great amounts of Fountain mana, but that made us far from immortal. It took a single slip for a wyvern to snap your spine in half, and our local allies weren’t near strong enough to assist us.”
There was another time skip.
The settlement continued growing. Its inhabitants were not just humans anymore. Orcs, gnomes, and beast folk joined its ranks, probably searching for safety against the wilderness. There was a burg, a marketplace, a second wall, and more farmland. A river had been diverted and now crossed the walled city from side to side.
“The years passed, and our numbers dwindled. We lost a few companions each year. Despite our powers, the wilderness always had something in store for us. Dragons, banshees, mind controllers, or just sickness. It was clear that the settlement would disappear without us,” the System Avatar said. “We decided to use my runes to create the System. That way, even after our deaths, humans and other species had a chance to thrive.”
The scenery changed. We were inside a building. The room was wide, with a circular table in the center. I counted eighteen chairs occupied by men and women and a few more empty. There was no leader, but all the glances were focused on the Man in Yellow. Runes written on paper were scattered over the table. It vaguely reminded me of Byrne’s cabin, although [Foresight] was deactivated, so I couldn’t compare them.
“This is where we created the System. Fifteen years of development, it started as a simple program to create a ‘party’ of four, and it grew from there. The Power module was one of the easiest to figure out, as our connection to the Fountain was tight. Then, we had to decide how people would use the Fountain mana. We weren’t keen on giving people full control, so we decided to create Classes and Skill pools,” the System Avatar said.
The scene before my eyes rushed, days and nights of constant work. I saw the passing of seasons through the windows. As time passed, their numbers dwindled until only nine remained. However, after the eleventh winter, their numbers grew to ten.
“Stop it,” I said.
The scene froze. A man with straight black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, dressed in a long red tunic, leaned over the Man in Yellow’s shoulder, pointing at the paper sheet.
“That’s Alex from R&D. He escaped from the office building during the first night, and we didn’t reunite until years later when he heard about our city,” the System Avatar explained.
I wasn’t paying attention to his words anymore.
A shiver ran down my spine.
“I know that man. He’s the Lich.”
Comments
Matt Bradock
As someone hailing from a former Warsaw Treaty country, I have to say that you Sir, are completely and utterly out of your mind.
I Dare Korval
This is a story about ordinary people gained too much power, too fast, and how they become utterly corrupt. Most people cannot handle power and authority and it just amplifies their worst qualities.
Ben Bass
TYFTC! I love the lore dump, backstory and creation of the System and the Man in Yellow is awesome. Having spent a loong time in IT myself I feel the Man in Yellow’s pain, having lived it many many times. Now let’s see what Rob can learn from the System Avatar, and see what else he can tease out about Alex from R&D, aka the Lich. It does make sense that he would survive in some form, he initially bolted from the group to save himself, and then found a way to keep on surviving in some form after all this time.
Patrick
Sure it is
blaze87b
Lol no. No it is not
Patrick
That's objectively true though...
blaze87b
This isn't going to become a " western capitalism bad, socialism good" story is it...?
