I stared at the rectangles floating in front of me for what felt like centuries. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen any before, but they were a rare event and one that usually affected everyone.

These notifications usually came with a godly proclamation of some sort or an announcement of great importance. The last time I saw one, it had been my own damnation being made public.

Where the notifications came from was, similar to the gods’ own omnipotence, a hotly contested matter. Some claimed it was simply the will of the gods made manifest. Others believed it was a tool made by the gods that they could use to communicate with mortals. Finally, a mostly quiet minority was saying the notifications had always existed, even before the gods — and that the gods merely made use of them. Those who held this belief tended to be hunted down by overzealous worshippers.

Many years ago, a paper was published by an anonymous writer, claiming that Heroes were empowered through the very same system that the gods used to send these notifications. I was studying at the Academy at that time, moonlighting as an assistant for the Mages’ Guild Publishing House to pay for my tuition — it was only for that reason that I got to read the paper, because the following day, all copies of it vanished as if they had never existed.

I may have been a naïve teenager at that time, but even I knew to keep my mouth shut about that particular event.

Whatever the truth was, I now had clear evidence before me — literally, even — that this System, for lack of a better word, had a far greater reach than any of us had ever known, and the implications of it were worrying.

The one that disturbed me the most was that the System clearly had the ability to look inside and modify my own soul, bypassing any and all protections one might have set — and I would know because I had tons of them.

This also more or less confirmed that the gods were merely using the System, and not in control of it, else they could have killed me several times over by now. The relief I felt was palpable, and after being led by the nose the way I had been the past few weeks, it felt like an overdue victory.

And the contents of the messages themselves! The System had tried — and failed — to use the newly constructed mana well to create something. And to offer recompense after destroying my work, it had to be at least somewhat sapient and, at the very least, fair if not outright benevolent.

If the message was to be believed — and I was indeed inclined to do so — then I would now be able to catch up on my weaker Aspects much more quickly. It was still a long road ahead of me, but it was a great boon nonetheless.

I wondered what would have happened had the System not failed to… attach its main process? I wasn’t yet sure what that meant, though I did have a few ideas where to begin my research. It did seem like the process failed because of the frailness of my mana well, and it was simply a matter of time before I could construct one that would be able to withstand the System’s intervention — but I wasn’t going to blindly trust it with my soul, of course.

After all, if the mysterious paper had been right, then I had the world’s two greatest System experts as my minions.

“It’s just like in video games,” Shiro declared somewhat unhelpfully.

Sarah scoffed, rolling her eyes with contempt. “It’s not. What video game have you ever seen where all your stats just start at 1? It’s more like in those game-inspired books.”

“Which is still like in video games,” Shiro argued.

“This would be a lot more useful if you could just explain what these video games are,” I interrupted the pair’s heated debate. I had been content to let them hash it out, but they had been going in circles for the past five minutes and it was clearly going nowhere.

“Video games are like… you create a character, and they have these stats that describe how good they are at different things. You have attributes, which measure things like your strength, intelligence, charisma, and so on. And then there're skills which measure how good you are at a specific thing, like magic or sword mastery,” Shiro explained.

“Except the stats here aren’t much like someone like us would expect,” Sarah explained. Nodding towards Shiro, she continued, “Unlike the ones he mentioned, intelligence and charisma don’t seem to be a thing here — instead, there’s this thing called Will that I don’t even know what it’s supposed to do… though I’m pretty sure it has something to do with magic.”

“Indeed,” I agreed with a nod, “unless this System is completely out of touch with reality, Will should refer to one’s ability to impose their, well, Will on reality. It’s usually a mixture of mental fortitude and simple confidence in what one is doing.”

“Huh, does that mean that if I start putting points into it, I’ll be able to do magic?”

Now that was a good question — my knee-jerk reaction was to say no, not unless she opened a conduit, but the idea couldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

“Possibly,” I finally settled on an answer. “Normally, I would say no — to do magic, you need to be able to draw mana, and to draw mana, you need to first open your conduit. But it could be that the mana well in your soul can fulfill the same purpose. Or maybe the System could force open a conduit if you put enough points.” I paused to think before finally spreading my arms in defeat. “At this point, I wouldn’t even be surprised if the System can just cast spells on your behalf. It’s anyone’s guess.”

“I don’t think Will would be a stat if magic was barred to us,” Shiro pointed out. “So far, the System has been pretty accommodating.”

“That’s a good point,” Sarah agreed. “Maybe I can try using my next points on Will and see what happens?” she offered.

“Let’s not be too hasty,” I said, facing a palm towards her. “I want to know more about these stats first. You said you can put points into them. What exactly happens when you do so?”

“Uh…” Sarah blanched. “Well, I put mine into Strength and Dexterity, so obviously I got stronger and faster but…” she snapped her fingers few times, seemingly lost in thought.

“Nope, I can’t tell what each point did. I assigned them in batches, and at the same time I was also learning new things about fighting, so I’m not sure how much the points helped.”

“This we could test out pretty safely, I believe. We can have you try out some punches against identical targets before and after you next assign your points, and we should be able to extrapolate some data,” I said.

“That would be pretty nice. I used to play video games a lot before… all this, and I was very much into min-maxing,” Sarah admitted. “Uh, min-maxing means optimizing your stats to maximize the benefit you get,” she explained.

“I think I have some numbers already,” Shiro volunteered as he stared at something in front of him. “So we both started with 100 health, right?” Sarah nodded, and he continued, “well, I put all my points into constitution — I’m level 29 now — and my health is at 1550.”

“Damn, that’s a lot of health,” Sarah exclaimed, then blinked a few times. “So you got 50 points of health for each point of Constitution?”

“Yeah, something like that,” Shiro agreed.

“So it’s linear,” Sarah concluded.

“I’m afraid you lost me somewhere along the way. How is this health supposed to work, exactly?” I asked, suddenly overwhelmed by their discussion.

“It’s a…” Sarah stared into the air, looking for the right word, “resource that you have, and it goes down when you take injuries. If it hits 0, you die.” She paused, her expression pensive. “That’s how I died the first time, actually. I took a lot of damage from the traps and then it only took a single stab to take my health to 0.”

“Traps? You didn’t tell me about this part.”

She looked embarrassed. “I might have exaggerated how good my assault was.”

Shiro grinned, giving her a mischievous look, but Sarah just rolled her eyes.

“So your survivability went up linearly,” I concluded, smiling at their antics, “so that means the other stats scale similarly?”

“Probably, yeah,” Sarah nodded, “or, at least, up until level 29. There could be a cap to how many points you can put in a stat, or there might be diminishing returns after a number of points. Like you said, it’s anyone’s guess.”

“And so far it hasn’t acted against you?”

“What, the System? No,” Shiro said, shaking his head. “Unless the haze, maybe…” he said, staring blankly in the distance.

“The haze?” Sarah asked, confused.

“You know, before…” he glanced at me hesitantly, then continued, “before he freed us.”

“Oh, that. I don’t think it was the System, though. It, I don’t know, had a different feel about it,” Sarah argued.

“The haze?” I prompted, and the pair winced a bit.

“Sorry,” Shiro started. “So before the whole undead thing, our thoughts weren’t our own, not really.”

“For me, it felt like one of those dreams where you’re driving a car, but instead of sitting in front of the steering wheel, you’re trapped behind, in the backseat. And the car is swerving on its own too,” Sarah added.

“Pretty much. We were only partially in control, basically.”

“But you said you removed whatever it was, right?” the knight asked, suddenly worried.

“Yes,” I assured her. “I’m fairly certain it’s not related to the System.” For one, the System seemed to rely on Origin mana, while the controlling construct was much more simple, being merely constructed of Soul mana.

She seemed to relax, and I heard the younger boy release a breath of relief. What had been done to them was…

I focused my thoughts. This was not a good time to get angry.

I still had a good amount of questions about the System, but I had already learned a great amount. I couldn’t help but find it odd how the fiction in the Heroes’ world mapped close enough to the reality in our world that they could use it to make predictions about how things work or what events are likely to happen.

When I met up with them earlier, they had been arguing about dragons, and I couldn’t help but scoff at the idea that they’d end up fighting one. Dragons, here of all places? I would not believe that in a thousand years.

But their uncanny knack for piecing things together like that gave me pause — and in the end, I resolved to put the issue of investigating dragons on the backlog, to figure out after finally understanding the System.

As I pondered over my newfound knowledge, the silence stretched somewhat awkwardly. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sarah shuffle about, removing a deck of cards from… where had she even hidden the damned thing?

She noticed me looking and gave me a sly grin. Rolling my eyes, I admitted defeat. One day I would find out where she kept hiding things, but today was not that day.

She was already shuffling the deck when I finally came to a decision.

“A few more questions, if you don’t mind,” I said, grabbing their attention.

“You gain experience from doing difficult things, yes? Especially from advancing your skills?” I got a nod from both of them. “And this gives you levels, which give you stat points.” I continued, eliciting another set of nods. “And this makes you stronger.”

“Yup.”

“Mhm.”

“Sounds like we can kill two birds with one stone, then.”

A pair of frowns bloomed on the two Revenants, and Sarah reluctantly set down her deck.

“I will aid you in training to your limits, and together we will map out the best way to use your stat points.” And I would hopefully get enough information on the System to prepare me for another attempt at creating a mana well.

“I’m not sure I like this idea,” Shiro said hesitantly.

“Gotta agree with him. I don’t like that smile on your face. That’s bad news,” Sarah added.

Hmm, I hadn’t even realized I was grinning. The nostalgia must have hit me more strongly than I expected.

“Nonsense, I’m sure you’ll love it. I’ll just have to talk to Leon first, this is exactly his kind of thing.”

Despite being undead, Shiro managed to pale considerably. “If it involves Leon it can’t be good.”

Sarah just sighed, accepting her fate. “So what are we doing, Boss?”

"We," I said, my smile widening even further, "are going dungeon delving!”