I woke up in an unfamiliar bed, and it took me a second to remember that Jack and I had booked ourselves a hotel suite. We were staying there while we were figuring out our next move. I was hoping to find a more permanent address soon, so we could merge that space with the space we’d lived in during our time in the jungle. The furniture I made was several notches more comfortable than the hotel’s furniture. Everything in the hotel was all either too squishy, or too overly firm.

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Lately, when I dreamt, I found myself in a maze of books. I knew without being told that this was THE Archive. The place that I would eventually spend the rest of eternity in. Some days it was a stifling thing to remember. I mean being trapped anywhere sucks on a very basic level, and being trapped forever sucked infinitely more. Yet, even if it was potentially just the brainwashing of my Idle-Clicker system, I found myself feeling increasingly less trepidation about the prospect of becoming the new Empty Archivist. The idea of getting to read all those “stories” as much as I wanted, for as long as I wanted, had its appeal.

I already knew from experience the almost addictive effect of the nigh-infinite power that came from being exposed to the nigh-infinite knowledge stored within the archive. Beyond the practical benefits, there was also an undeniable sense of fulfillment and progress that came with the study of a story. By reading the stories within my archive, I could live and experience all the lives gathered therein. That was something that few other beings in the cosmos could attest to. Getting to almost-perfectly experience a life that wasn’t one’s own from the safety and comfort of one’s chair. One could even say that rather than being trapped, I was getting a different sort of freedom.

Over the years, as I continued to study the [Tale of the Empty Archivist’s Heir] I realized that the Archive wasn’t a fixed place. It wasn’t just a structure. It was a world all of its own, and it was a world subject to its ruler’s will. I was the new ruler, thus the archive was subject to my will. It was a library bigger than most universes, and it was totally under my control. Heck, I could even bend the laws of time and space to bring the rest of the cosmos to me, if I really wanted to.

Thinking along these lines brought further questions to the matter of whether what I’d be receiving was actually a form of imprisonment. I mean, yes, I was bound to the role of record-keeper, and librarian for the Empty Archive, but I could create constructs similar to Jack’s fadelings to help me. I could alter the terrain and landscape of the archive to suit my desires. I could make use of all of the archive's contents to further empower myself. Truly, it was looking more and more like this deal was purely upsides.

And huh...yeah, I’m definitely being brainwashed here, but damn if the Idle-Clicker System’s method of doing so doesn't make it feel like coming to any other conclusion would be unreasonable. That being said, I was pretty sure my Wisdom stat was paradoxically high-enough that I could tell where the brainwashing started and I began. Though then again, maybe that was just another layer to the brainwashing.

I probably should have felt a bit more trepidation about this whole matter, but I’d seen enough from all my stories, both the old and the new, to know that even forever wasn’t necessarily “FOREVER”, and the [Tale of the Fool] told me that in time, if after a few googolplexes, I truly found the position intolerable, I’d be able to do what my predecessor had done, and prepare a new heir for the task.

Then I could leave to do whatever else I apparently insisted on doing, taking all the power, knowledge, and experience that I’d accrued as Empty-Archivist, with me, when I left. Which all sounds like an incredibly iffy deal, up until one realizes that I was barely entering my twenties and already well on my way to nigh-omnipotent and nigh-omniscience.

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So in regards to the Idle-Clicker system, I’d experienced a fair amount of change and gains. Honestly, it’d be simpler if I just list out all the stories I’d gained either by watching stuff, doing stuff, or reaching certain realizations and plateaus within multiple stories.

Old Stories

Tale of the Empty Archivist’s Heir: My guide to the Idle-Clicker system and my future role.

Tale of the Soldier: Taught and is teaching me all about war, combat, and associated military skills.

Tale of the Hunter: Taught and is teaching me all about, stealth, tracking, hunting, and making the kill.

Tale of the Scholar: Taught and is teaching me about learning, which is exactly as obtuse as it sounds. Also grants me random information about random crap.

Tale of the Alchemist: Taught and is teaching me all about the identification of materials, and the transformation of one kind of material into another kind of material.

Tale of the Craftsman: Taught and is teaching me all about the creation of items and structures.

Tale of the Cultivator: Taught and is teaching me all about cultivation.

Tale of the Arcanist: Taught and is teaching me all about magic.

Tale of the Fool: I have no clue what this has taught me, or is teaching me. I suspect it’s something about fate, but I don’t necessarily know.

New Stories

Tale of the Healer: Taught and Is teaching me about Healing and Medicine in pretty much all its forms.

Tale of the Death: Taught and Is teaching me about Deaths, Ends, and Entropy. Which ironically has gone a long way in keeping me alive. What better way to avoid death than to see all the signs that warn of its coming? This tale also helps me spot/guess enemy weaknesses.

Tale of the Devil: Taught and is teaching me…???... It feels like the path of the fool, but it takes me to darker places. This was a tale of power. It wasn’t necessarily evil, but it easily found itself in the neighborhood of evil. Instead of beginnings there are only ends. Many of them are tragic. Many of those endings are grand in a way that’s unsettling and often destructive. A scant few of them plainly glorious. There’s something seductive about this story that makes me wary of it. Maybe Jack is a bigger influence on me than I thought.

Tale of the World: Taught and is teaching me...about my place in the cosmic hierarchy, and what it meant to have your own personal dimension/universe. As I learned less and less from the [Tale of the Empty Archivist's Heir] I suspected that this and the [Tale of the Fool] would soon become the tales I turned to the most.

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The door opened and in walked Jack. Wearing only a t-shirt and a pair of boxers. As she crossed the space between the door and then bed. Without any concern for so-called femininity, she scratched her ass and released a soft toot that thankfully wasn’t too foul in scent. The cultivation arts she used often forced her to ingest, process, and evacuate, materials that made Jack smell like a coal refinery manned only by the restless dead.

“Alright...that’s enough bloody cultivation for the night,” she mumbled.

When she reached the bed, she pulled open the covers on the bed and then slipped inside. Joining me on the bed. Clinging to my frame like some body-heat stealing leech. I think at this point, it need not be said that my Idle-Clicker System wasn’t the only thing that experienced some changes.