Book 2, Chapter 4: Creating a System

[Alen]

The morning came as quickly as it always did; a flash of blankness; a sudden burst of light, then the wave of sleepiness that never failed to come. Alen rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. Outside, the sky was just beginning to brighten. Last night, he and Lynn spent a long time just talking and joking. In the end, they slept at around the three AM equivalent of this world’s time in the terms of ‘how fucked you’ll feel when you wake up the next morning’. In short, he felt quite fucked.

He stretched, breathing in the fresh air that flowed into his room through the window he kept open the night before. It was still chilly, being early in the morning, the desert heat still hadn’t set in.

He quickly changed into his traveling gear, tossing his robe over his shoulders and strapping his leather armor to his chest. Alen felt the strings of mana connected to him and nodded when he saw that the strand that linked him to Cuck was still intact. He’d left the chicken in the Galeboat as a sort of horribly ineffective security measure. Well, the little bone chicken couldn’t make much noise, and most it could do was pounce and claw at people with its feet, but a security measure was a security measure—regardless of how well it would work. Why did people store savings in easily shattered piggy banks that essentially screamed ‘break me!’ at incoming robbers? Same reason. Not really.

Alen gripped his staff and slung his bag over his shoulders. Roland had told him that they’d be leaving early, so it was definitely much better to prepare ahead of time. He walked to the door, and as he swung it open, he spotted Roland with his hand raised in a knocking gesture.

The warrior blinked, before he coughed. “Well, I’m glad to see I didn’t need to wake you up,” He said, lowering his hand and motioning to Lynn’s room. “You should help me wake that up.”

“I’m good,” Alen said, beginning to close the door in his face.

A hand reached onto the gap between the door and stopped it from closing. Roland’s voice rang out from the little gap. “Help me. You can roll a tooth out from under the door and wake her up with a skeleton. I don’t want to wake up the rest of the town screaming at her door again.”

Alen glared at him. “My undead are weapons Roland. Tools to take the lives of the filthy infidels that populate this Earth. The use of a weapon is not to wake someone up, but to silence.”

“Can you stop talking nonsense and help now?” Roland asked.

“…Fine,” Alen sighed and opened the door, stepping past the warrior and casually sliding a small tooth under the gap between the door and the floor. He activated Summon Skeleton Minion and gave it an order. Seconds later, the sounds of something crashing entered their ears, along with the sounds of someone being startled awake. After a few more seconds of someone chasing something around the room and their muffled complaints, things began to quiet down. Lynn opened the door in glared hatefully at the two of them, rubbing her eyes and yawning as she fixed her untied white hair that flowed like a waterfall over her shoulders.

“You two can knock you know,” She said, kicking the undead chicken out of her room.

Roland gave her a look. “I tried. Many times.”

“I didn’t want to waste time trying,” Alen added. “This is much easier.”

“The same can’t be said for me,” She said, stepping to the side and motioning to the room behind her to show them a mess of clothes, magic stones, and other belongings. “That, is not easy.”

Alen shrugged, smiling lightly. “At least I don’t have it pounce on you.”

Eilynn glared at him and closed the door. Roland knocked lightly, smiling. “We’re leaving in a few minutes Lynn,” He said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Her muffled voice left through the door, sounding grumpy. “I’m getting changed and fixing this… mess. I swear to the gods, if another chicken forms from a tooth to wake me up next time we stay at an inn, I’m setting traps inside my room.”

Alen laughed and walked downstairs, ordering the chicken to go into his room as he cut the connection between him and his undead, reducing it to a pile of bones. He trailed behind Roland as they sat in front of a table. The warrior glanced at him for a few moments and suddenly lowered his voice. “There’s something happening in town.”

Alen gave him a look. “What?”

“There are lizardmen everywhere. If I’m correct, they’re Cava’tal, and let me tell you right now that those do not have a good reputation with regards to being riled up in the Sandsea.”

“Cava’tal? Lynn mentioned them yesterday. What are they, anyways?”

“The Cava’tal are… independent from the lizardmen’s usual society, but when there’s ever a threat, they come in and act as another military unit of sorts. A few years ago, when I was still in my eleventh threshold, friction began to sprout between them and the main group. I don’t know why, but the Cava’tal have resorted to banditry and pillaging since then.”

Alen frowned. “If you could identify them so easily, why aren’t they getting arrested?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Roland sighed. “Their influence spreads far, and even though they’re weakened now that the main group has more or less cut ties with them, they still have a large amount of support. In fact, a majority of the Sandsea’s populace accepts them.”

“What the fuck? Aren’t they bandits? Last time I checked, that was a no-no.”

“The Sandsea doesn’t have a single power controlling it, so by helping around the area protecting small towns and villages from monster attacks, people support them and grant them influence. As for banditry, they only target corrupt people of influence and don’t bother the normal citizens. Because of this, they have a bounty on them, but no city-assigned guards are obligated to arrest them on sight. Most they get are bounty hunters, and those are put down quite quick by their leader Alexandrius,” Roland let out a breath, concluding his explanation. “Anyways, let’s just go early before we get involved in whatever’s happening.”

“Hm, alright,” Alen nodded, making double sure that the leathers on his chest were secure. He looked up and saw Lynn going down the stairs, fully equipped to go. The two of them stood up and walked to her, the three of them talking normally as they left the inn.

The sun glared down at them, and Alen winced as he pulled up his hood, sighing in relief as he felt his head cool down. Around them, he noticed what Roland was talking about. People were going about their business like usual, but lizardmen in cloaks were walking around a good distance away, talking to people and pointing to a piece of paper. Roland tapped his shoulder and sped up his walking speed.

Of course, Alen and Lynn followed.

“What’s up? Why’s Roland speeding up?”

“Long story,” Alen said. “Someone essentially pissed off some lizards and now they’re molesting the town looking for the guy who made fucky with them.”

“Huh,” Lynn nodded. “You don’t see people wanting to, as you said, make ‘fucky’ with the Cava’tal. They’re all pretty strong because of the Red Drake blood in their ancestry.”

Alen pursed his lips in thought. “You know, I’ve been curious about this for a while. Did a Red Drake make the sex with a human or something? How the fuck do they have a dragon’s blood inside of their family tree?”

“Not dragon. Drake,” The elf corrected him. “And well, yes. A very long time ago, a Drake Queen fell in love with a person I’m not sure is human, then gave birth to the entirety of the lizardmen’s race. All that separates them is the color of their scales, but their ancestors all come from a single drake.”

“That’s just…” He pursed his lips. “Yes.”

“Yes, it is.”

The rest of the way was in silence, they kept a low profile and avoided lizardmen as much as they could as they walked. Roland figured that although it had most likely nothing to do with them, it would be better to avoid attention regardless of involvement. They reached the hangar in relative peace, placing their bags inside a compartment with Cuck, who gave them a questioning tilt of the head, as they opened the sails by just little bit to control the speed. The boat swam out from the hangar, heading towards the town’s main gate for Galeboat departures. Upon reaching it, Roland was surprised to see a lizardman instead of the usual guard inspecting Galeboats as they left the town.

The warrior frowned and looked his two companions who were messing around in the front seats like nothing serious was happening. “Are you two absolutely sure we have nothing to be guilty about?”

“Aside from my various guilty pleasures involving things I’d rather not share, no.”

“I picked up an apple from the ground yesterday and ate it.”

Alen looked at her in horror. “Lynn, what the fuck.”

“What?” She looked at him helplessly. “It fell from a tree in the square. I couldn’t just leave it.”

He shook his head. “Shame on you, Lynn. Shame on you.”

Roland sighed and ignored them. Although the two usually messed around, they wouldn’t hide something potentially life threatening from him. At least, without a good reason. He trusted them enough to not doubt it. What were the chances they’d piss off the Cava’tal anyways? They hadn’t even been in the Sandsea for half a week. There’s no way this was because of them.

As the boat approached the gates, the lizardman with crimson scales opened the compartment and checked their belongings. Seeing that nothing was wrong, he looked back at them with a scrutinizing gaze as he stared straight at Alen.

“Take off your hood,” The lizardman said.

Alen blinked and did as told. No use resisting and mounting suspicion on themselves, right? “Hi,” He said, waving at the lizardman as he took off his hood.

The scaly person in front of him paused, slightly stunned at his greeting. He brought out a piece of paper and looked at Alen, before looking back at the paper. Roland saw this and frowned, his hand slowly reaching towards the lever that would fully unfurl their sails. The lizardman looked seriously at the three of them and spoke darkly as he raised the flag he was holding in one of his hands. “We’re going to have to ask you to stay.”

As he spoke, the three of them saw more and more Cava’tal crowding in the area, their weapons drawn as a large lizardman with scales the color of blood stepped out and looked straight at Alen.

“Return it, and I will only cut off four of your fingers before I kill you.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

Alexandrius sneered and drew the greatsword hanging from his back. Roland saw this and cursed, throwing one of the discs he had prepared the night before at the ground in front of Alexandrius as he pulled on the lever. Immediately, an explosion rang out from behind them as a large shockwave sent a massive pillar of sand and dust into the air. The Galeboat sped forward with a loud hissing sound, slicing through the sands as an enraged shout boomed out from behind them.

“Chase them!”

Roland pulled another lever, increasing their speed further as other Galeboats shot out from the smoke. “What did you do this time!?”

Lynn stood up in her seat and drew her bow as other boats flanked their ship from the sides. She prepared an arrow and glanced back at Alen. “You think that guy in the bookstore took more offense than he should’ve?”

Alen was about to respond when he suddenly remembered the piece of paper tucked behind his phone’s cover. “Oh shit.”

“What ‘oh shit’!?” Roland swerved the boat to the side, dodging bolts as lizards wielding crossbows shot at them from afar. “That Cava’tal are after us!”

“I may have picked up something really important yesterday.”

“What!?”

Boom! An explosion rocked the side as a spellcaster leveled the earth nearby their boat with an explosion of sand and earth. Lynn plucked a normal arrow from her quiver and channeled her mana into it, the arrowhead glowing a bright cyan as she released it. It tore through one of the enemy ships’ hulls, sending ice everywhere as it exploded.

“I don’t know man! The man dropped a treasure map and ran away and the fucker didn’t even bother to talk properly before attacking us!” Alen defended himself indignantly, raising his staff and gathering mana for a spell.

“Shit!” Roland swerved the boat again, avoiding another Evocation spell as he glanced murderously at the people behind them. “There’s no use going back now, they’re out to kill, and Alexandrius has never had a reputation for being kind and forgiving!”

A torrent of black flame exploded out from the necromancer’s staff as he pointed his staff at one of the boats behind them. With a silent explosion of flame, the boat was enveloped in Rotfire, the screams of lizardmen ringing out as Alen grimaced. He thought his first time killing a person was going to be more… climactic. Not this. It happened in such a relaxed, natural manner that he ended up spacing out as he stared at the burning wreck of the ship they were leaving behind.

Lynn suddenly kicked him as she bent her upper body backwards, a bolt sailing over her chest as one meant for Alen’s neck slammed into his shoulder. The impact sent him back, his head hitting the side of the boat as he let out a gasp from the pain flooding his senses.

He grasped the bolt in his shoulder and screamed in pain as he pulled it out, his vision blurring from the hurt as he forced himself to drink a potion. The wound knitted up as Lynn pelted the boats chasing them with arrows. Suddenly, Roland screamed.

“They set up a blockade in front of us!”

Alen looked back up to see a wall of Galeboats and lizardmen awaiting them just ahead, weapons drawn and spells ready to meet their arrival. He looked back at Roland with a pale face. “Don’t stop the boat. Speed up.”

“What are you…” Roland stopped his words, looking at him seriously as he pulled at a lever. There was no use arguing. Immediately, wing-like contraptions extended out from their boat, catching more wind as they reached a speed that caused the wind to shriek against their ears. This would end horribly if Alen didn’t have any good plans, but they would be screwed either way so Roland chose to place his trust in him one more time.

Their necromancer retrieved two large bone fragments from his pouch, tossing one to Lynn as he connected the two fragments to him using threads made of his mana. “Stab the sharp point into the bottom of the boat!”

She did as told, barely moving her body in time to dodge another bolt fired at them from behind. Alen plunged the sharp end of the bone into the wood at the bottom of the boat with a grunt, his increased strength showing its effect as the bone sunk securely into the wood. He looked back up. The blockade was getting closer as mages chanted their spells and fired their arrows. Some arrows pierced the hull of the boat, sinking into the wood as Alen mana surged through his staff, a whole fifty percent of his total capacity surging into the two bones as he forcefully executed the incomplete mana program for his bone-shaping spell.

With a powerful boom, the bones exploded into rapid growth, a pillar of white enamel shooting out from the bottom of the boat to plunge into the sand below. Bang! It hit a solid surface and the boat lurched upwards, rising into the air as explosions boomed out from below them.

The sails caught an even faster wind, carrying the boat forwards at a blistering speed as they sailed over the blockade, looks of shock below them as spells and arrows hit the spot they were previously at. Roland turned another lever to the right, the wings to the side of the boat adjusting their position to set their landing properly. With a boom and a rising cloud of sand, they landed on the ground, nearly throwing the three of them completely off the boat.

Wood snapped, and one of the wings was torn off and sending the boat into a sideward spin as Roland manipulated the wheel with difficulty and retracted the wing-like contraptions on the side of the boat.

Alen felt a hand grab his arm as he hung from the side of the boat, about to fall off. Lynn pulled him back in, sending him crashing into her as Roland adjusted their movement. From behind them, they heard a large roar as dozens of Galeboats ripped through the sands to catch them. Roland saw a valley and steered the boat towards it, entering it not even a few moments later as Lynn scrambled up and plucked an arrow from her quiver. A stone in her bracer glowed with an earthen light as her arrow morphed into a stone-like texture that shone with an yellow radiance.

With a silent scream, it shattered the air under its seemingly immense weight as it shot into the side of the cliffside around them, their ears ringing from the deafening explosion that followed as rocks and boulders rained down to block the entrance they passed through.

Smoke rose up from the sands behind them as silence dawned on the three of them, nervous thoughts filling their minds. A few tense minutes later, they left the canyon as Roland nervously glanced back behind them. It would take the Cava’tal a long time to go around it, so for now, they were safe. He set the sails to full sail and took a detour, heading towards a small desert village that their map indicated was to the northeast.

The orange haired warrior locked the steering wheel in place as he stepped down from the main seat. He reached the front of the Galeboat and glared at Alen, standing over him as he pointed behind them with a dark expression.

“What in the hells was that about!?” He shouted, anger filling his chest. If this idiot didn’t answer him seriously, Roland was prepared to bloody his nose in. They angered the Cava’tal for gods’ sake. This desert was no longer safe to mindlessly travel in. Fucked wasn’t accurate enough to describe them.

Alen looked at Roland’s expression and sighed, lowering his gaze. “Sorry.”

Lynn watched from the side silently as the anger in Roland’s face died down by a good amount. He kept the glare on him as he once again asked. “What happened? Explain.”

Alen set down his staff and tiredly explained his side of the story, from the bookstore, to finding the riddle, to what happened just a while ago. Roland’s expression became increasingly full of disbelief as he went on. The emerald-eyed young man finally finished, and Roland sighed, slumping against the side of the boat as he looked at the two of them.

“How can you be that unlucky? To catch a secret exchange of information, to bumping into the receiver, to having the item of value fall into your hands without your knowledge… Which god did you piss off before coming here?”

He climbed back up to the pilot’s seat and surveyed the boat. There were holes all over the hull, which they needed to patch up before the boat filled up with sand and slowed them down, one of the side-sails had been torn right off from their landing, and the bottom sides of the boat had small cracks on it from the sudden impact of the bone against wood that was caused by their sailing over the blockade.

Roland jutted this down in their notes, along with keeping track of expenses. They were going to need a new Galeboat. “The budget isn’t going to hold out if we buy another Galeboat.”

Alen furrowed his brow at him. “What are you on about?”

“We don’t have enough money to buy another boat, Alen. Your little misadventure has our Galeboat on the verge of falling apart,” Roland scowled at him.

“No Roland, listen,” Alen said, waving his hand to the side. “We don’t need to buy another boat. We can just get one ourselves.”

“What do you…” Roland started, but Lynn suddenly let out an exclamation of realization. She looked at them with a grin on her face. “We’re going to steal one from the Cava’tal, aren’t we?”

Alen smiled lightly. “Yeah. We already pissed the fuckers off, so what’s wrong with pissing them off even more? Another inch doesn’t matter when we’ve already traveled a mile.”

Roland began to contemplate the matter seriously. While the Cava’tal that met them were grouped together, they were bound to spread out in order to search for them. If they could catch a small group unprepared, they could take them out without much of a commotion and take their supplies, while fixing their problem of the Galeboat at the same time. There was one thing bothering him though.

“Alen,” He said. “Can you kill?”

The necromancer hesitated just like he thought Alen would. New arrivals were unlike them who grew up in this world. Most were strangers to the concept of killing, and some even went as far as to despise it. Alen looked at him and spoke slowly. “…I killed those lizardmen on the boat a while ago because things were going so fast, but I’m not sure if I can do it in another situation.”

Roland nodded. “That’s good enough. Just remember that when push comes to shove, you better be prepared to take another person’s life, or it could very possibly cost us ours.”

“Yeah,” Alen simply said, falling into silence as he crossed his arms and stared ahead.

Alen had seen Lynn’s expression as well. She wasn’t fazed by it. He was in a boat with murderers, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He touched the scar that marked his palm like a perennial reminder. This was just how things were here. He couldn’t use Earth’s standards to judge people here. Plus, these people were his friends. If they were just bloodthirsty murderers, then what did the conversations he had with them mean? He refused to strap labels to them. They were Roland and Eilynn. Two people he trusted.

Plus, he’d killed people just then too. It barely weighed on his mind, even. It would most likely be different when he did it in a different situation, but… he was a murderer now too. He was usually a hypocrite, but he wouldn’t let himself be one now.

Alen nodded to himself. No use thinking about things he couldn’t do anything about, he told himself. He’d followed these words before, and he’d follow them again.

For now, he’d just see where the river he was riding would take him.

A breath left his mouth as he opened up his notepad and began to write a program. He wanted a distraction right now; he needed it. His focus went to the bone-shaping spell he’d been developing. It was a good thing he was able to use it the way he did a while ago, and just thinking about the possibilities this spell presented was something that made him especially enthusiastic. If he could develop this properly, he could have armor grow on his undead upon summoning. Even weapons could be grown and snapped off for use, which would drastically increase his contribution to fights. Right now, he still felt like dead weight to his two party members, a feeling he absolutely wanted to get rid of.

With a breath, he began. The variables were a mess, and even after he polished it so much, the spell was still considered incomplete for some reason. Alen lapsed into thought. Everything was compressed, assigned to variables and functions, and he had a clear image of what he wanted to create in his mind. He could complete this spell right now and make it show up in his skill list, but Alen wasn’t satisfied with that. This spell wasn’t good enough. Would he be able to create skeleton chimeras from this? Armor? Weapons? Just variables and text wasn’t accurate enough to shape something so accurately, so he needed something to fix that.

He closed the notepad. Instead of programming a spell through mana programming, he was going to do something he hadn’t done since his first week in Talaria.

Alen was going to create a system function, or more accurately, an application.

For that, he’d have to create the Java-equivalent of his mana programming language. It was something that would take a disgustingly long while, and a lot of effort, but he had the luxury of not having to worry about things like compilers or interpreters, due to Mana Programming being a lot more flexible and uncomplicated than normal programming. If he could complete this, his magic would go a long way, and he was absolutely certain his control over the system would increase.

Like his spells, the system was made of mana. It was like a mana program infinitely more complicated than his, something he hadn’t even begun to understand.

But since he couldn’t understand the way the gods created their system… wasn’t he already creating one for himself through Mana Programming? If he couldn’t join them, he was going to Steve Jobs the fuck out of the system and do shit himself. All of this needed to start somewhere.

His answer to that would be… this.

Alen felt the will and mana coalescing inside his mind, signaling the creation of a much, much more complicated system function than his system-created notepad. He grinned widely.

This shit wouldn’t finish itself.