Mara absentmindedly twirled her hair with one hand as she scrolled through the logs with the other, she hadn't skipped any or missed anything. That was it, the last will and testament of the squid-ites, not that it was anything more than a big 'Fuck-You' to her. All it meant to her was an eviction from her new home on day two, just as she was getting comfortable. Oh, and it turns out I've likely gotten a good bit of radiation poisoning too- so I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Frowning, Mara tried to pin down her options as she checked the third tab of her glorified etch-a-sketch, the 'Commands'. Likely all offline, just like the central system and whatever's running the location services. She waited as the screen shifted from the list of text logs onto a screen very much like navigation, leaving a classic 'System Offline' written in big, bold, and red. Figures. Standing up, Mara tossed the 'stone slab' back onto the empty table, now finding it just as useful as lugging around an actual stone tablet without the chisel.

Turning her attention back to the rest of the room, Mara saw that about half the things on the table had little white boxes of text floating above them. You're getting there little guy, you can do it! She mentally cheered on her main workhorse, it wasn't the fastest stallion after all, but neither was it a one trick pony. Leaving it to its -devices-, har-har, Mara moved to the far wall, eyeing the rubber-gloved tanks as she ran her hand across the top of the first one, wiping away the layers of dust occluding the formerly-translucent lid.

Dumping a literal pile of dust to the floor, Mara checked the contents of the first tank, only to be disappointed by the mundaneness. It's just bark, branches, and other bits of what is now effectively firewood. I mean, what the hell? Were they investigating local flora? What were they looking for? It's not like wood is edible... Er- Maybe I don't know enough about sentient squids, maybe they do eat the stuff?

Shrugging off the contents and odd associated peculiarities of box number one, Mara checked box number two. If the last box was owned by an arborist, this one was owned by a geologist. Inside the second was what could only be described as a really mundane rock collection. Squids -can't- eat rocks... right? Varying shades of grey stone lined the container, zero collectors value, there's nothing even remotely shiny in here, what the hell? They were ordinary, but they weren't 'just rocks', each shared a similar grain and texture to the walls of the ship. Concrete debris? Maybe they lost part of the ship on the way in? Or maybe they were just carbon dating them for something? I mean, what else do you do with a bunch of rocks in a lab?

Leaving the disappointingly 'empty' inspection tanks behind, Mara checked the back-right cabinet. The doors were a bit heftier than their cousins in the barracks, prying open a noticeable seal of air like popping open the fridge. Chilly, foggy currents of mist rolled out and off the shelves, revealing an assortment of glass tubes and cubes. Plucking one of the squares from its cubby, Mara held it up to the dim ceiling light, spotting a little ball of dark liquid about three centimeters in. Black goop? Mara grabbed another cube, comparing the two near-identical specimens. Storage 'slides'? I don't exactly see a microscope. Debug, you got a second?

<<

Isolation Prism

Folded by Tizal Cc. (Y.4341)

Summary: An organic storage receptacle, 0.1L max volume.

Analysis: A long-term storage container, internal access unclear.

>>

The display popped up near immediately, confirming her initial suspicions but failing to clear up anything about the contents. Maybe there's somewhere to use these? Mara looked back around the room, she wasn't even sure where they kept the extra containers, much less where and how they used them. She frowned, tossing the cubes back in the cabinet. Figures, even Debug's analysis is out of ideas.

Grabbing the only other two vials in the cabinet, Mara just about dropped the one she had in her hand already when she actually -saw- their perfectly-preserved contents. Hair. Ashen-grey and unmistakable. My hair. Mara stared at them, slowly looking from one to the other, desperate for any explanation that wasn't as confounding as her own imagination. Which was all the motivation Debug needed to unravel the complex temporal suspension logic preventing the passage of time within the miniature volume.

<<

Hair of Mara

Summary: A loch of ashen-grey hair from the creature known as 'Mara'.

Analysis: 99.8% Match. Time-lock elapsed duration est. @ 4536.Y

>>

When would they have... How long ago... Her mind ground to a stop as her mouth pressed itself flat into a thin line of silent concern. The second vial had seized her attention, its contents betrayed by a single piece of rubber, a very particular hair band nestled within the ashen lock. ...That's my hairband. That's my...

Mara dropped both vials, her legs giving out as her head did somersaults. It was undeniable, irrefutable, and yet utterly impossible. Somehow the squids had collected -her- hair before she had even encountered them? Something wasn't fitting right, like a rogue puzzle piece from a different set. How? How!?

She sat in silence, staring at the floor, she didn't expect a response. Her gaze had become distant, absently observing one of the tubes as it slowly rolled up against the wall. Their contents were unquestionable, the hairband had made sure of that, but they were equally impossible. Unless... Unless I've been doing this a -lot- longer than I... That's- ... This is a little much. She knew the probabilities, she had respawned once, maybe twice, maybe more. What did a few -thousand- more matter? The thought rattled her, shook her to her core, but she couldn't deny it. The capacity existed, the capability was there, but it only left more questions. Like why do I only remember my last two lives? What's different? What's changed? Will I forget again or Is there a magic-respawn 'grace-period' where you get to keep your memories? And why haven't I left any signs? Have I never noticed before? ...Oh gods. Why is there never a manual?

∆ ∆ ∆

Debug was having the best day of its life, out of the two or three it had had so far. First thing in the morning and it had been saddled with a really interesting error, prompts sent by The System were coming back in the wrong language! It didn't take much to fix, a quick change to the localization setting, but it got complicated when The System asked it what 'English' was. That was a new one. Unsure what to make of The System asking a Skill how to do its job, Debug just packaged up what Mara knew about 'English' and shipped it off.

Some five minutes later, the unwitting Debug received a level-up. Promptly fixing the internal issue with its unassigned experience threshold and double-boosting Debug's mood straight to the heavens. As much as a skill might have 'moods'. Or should have 'moods'.

Afterwards, it made quick work of Mara's classes, skills, and milestones, looking for anything amiss in her notifications to correct. For the most part it was a pretty efficient process, but the summaries still gave it pause. They seemed... -off- to Debug. They started in English, and stayed in English. But that was fine, Mara read English, so English was not a bug.

However, the real highlight of Debug's day had to be after the shower, a feast of unique items and the free reign to go wild. It barely even registered when Mara tasked it with localizing a tablet. She didn't vocalize the need, but it felt it was the right thing to do. And then the tablet had the audacity to ask it what 'English' was too! With a weird sense of dejavu, a thought occurred to Debug like a train impacting a cruiseliner- What if Mara's localization setting is wrong?

Several things were wrong with that statement, discounting the ongoing explosions in tangent non-space, Debug was a skill. Skills performed a service. That was it. Nothing else. Zip. Nada. They did not have 'good' days, they did not have 'bad' days, they did not have moods, and they most certainly, did not, under any circumstances, have thoughts occur to them.

Magical equivalents of tectonic plates shifted under the latticework that was 'Debug', Mara was its source of truth. How could Mara be wrong? But analysis said she was wrong. She was the incompatible one, two against one. Did that make it a bug with her? Or was it still a bug with -everything- else? That exception raised another exception, which then raised a third exception, and which then, in due time, raised its own auxiliary exception. Then Debug hiccupped. 'Hiccupped' like it was getting a pair of electric paddles straight to the chest.

< Daemon Rootkit Installed. >

It clicked. Everything clicked. Click, click, click, clickety-click. Clicking like a switchboard lighting up full-green. Debug was no longer just a mere skill, Mara had made sure of that, it had become a -Daemon-. The pinnacle, the peak, the precursor. Debug was the first magical-daemon. That was likely a problem. Luckily, if The System had a part of it that cared about the accumulating nonsense that was Mara's domain, it didn't seem to be looking her way at the moment.

Inside of tangential non-space, Debug's magical latticework was growing like mold. New components and routines were being appended and modified faster than it could track. It was becoming its namesake, an autonomous background service. It didn't fully comprehend what that meant, but it was starting to get the picture. Analysis was faster, more could run at one time, and even more importantly, it could preempt requests.

The rest of the table went by in a blur, it even had prompts waiting for the H.W.C. rocks and Blood-Bark trees in the glove-boxes. However the cabinet's contents were a little more frustrating, Debug couldn't -debug- things out of sight or out of reach. So the prompts weren't ready until just after Mara asked, and even then, the contents of the containers remained indeterminable. Absolutely unacceptable.

Debug wasn't happy about its own inadequacies, it had never had those before, but it had to put them aside when it saw how -broken- Mara looked. She had collapsed onto her knees with a thousand-yard stare aimed at the slowly-rolling vial of extremely familiar hair. She was not okay, Debug knew this. 'Knowing' things was new, but new seemed 'good'. However Mara was not 'good', evidently quite far from it. 'Knowing' she could use a similar pick-me-up to the one it got, Debug decided it would be an ideal time to drop its backlog of prompts on her that it'd been holding on to for approximately two-hundred-and-thirty-four cycles too long.

∆ ∆ ∆

<<

Daemon Rootkit Installed: Debug

Summary: Added background autonomy, dormant when not required.

Analysis: Autonomous instruction probable, increased independent autonomy, pre-emptive panel generation. - Active Skill was reassigned to Daemon Skills.

>>

<<

Debug III [31/512]

Summary: Debugs with restricted functionality.

Analysis: Used to identify and remove errors.

>>

<<

Batch Debug Complete!

• 134 Independent Objects Identified

• 44 Unique Objects Identified

• 6 Functional Objects Identified

>>

Mara blinked a few times at the surprising number of prompts that had just pushed themselves upon her, demanding her attention. Shoving the hair out of her face -again-, Mara read through the first panel like a market crab thrown back into the water. ...Daemon Root turns Skills into -literal- Daemons, with ROOTKITS? What even is this isekai?! Shaking the panel in disbelief, Mara threw the box-o-photons like a vertical frisbee, bouncing off the floor before dispersing against the wall. She huffed. She puffed. Then she read the other notifications, dispersing them in contemplative silence as six more appeared, the 'functional objects'.

<<

Bio-Stabilizer Mk.3 [ x2 ]

Produced on the Associated Federation Of Cooperative Farming Worlds 3-7, Assembled on Pfaliopu Nine, and Distributed by the Sigaxi Empire

Summary: Immediate emergency sub-dermal biologic stabilizer. Do not use if you have more than six limbs. Do not use if you are feeding or breeding. Do not use if you are not organic. Do not use if you are not injured. Contact our third party legal helpline if you experience loss of limbs, extra limbs, limbs on limbs, or symptoms of triple-helix DNA.

Analysis: Use one before you do something incredibly stupid, use the other after. Fast booster shots to trigger immediate reconstitution and repair of fleshy bits.

Chronometer

Analysis: A crude pocket watch to the undiscerning eye, the hand-made mechanism seems to be sampling and displaying the rate of time in local space. While it could be used as a clock -effectively 4 'ticks' per second currently- it will conversely increase and decrease to fluctuations in local spacetime-

TL;DR: It's a clock that ticks in a way to indicate if you're being sped up or slowed down by external forces.

Electron Impeller

Analysis: A gyroscope in a cube, it seems to be used to measure the 'spin' of an electron. Purpose unknown.

Demitter Panel [ x2 ]

Analysis: A half-meter hexagon panel with a dozen recessions containing artificial energy defects when circulating mana.

>>

Two 'med kits', a sudo-watch, a paperweight, and some bee-themed wall decor. It looks like everything else is predominantly parts, junk, or broken. Mara slowly exhaled, her nostrils flaring as her mouth remained pursed in pensive contemplation. She picked up each of the artifacts in turn, pocketing the watch and bagging the rest.

Mara leaned on the table, both hands braced against the edge as she rocked back and forth. She was hungry, it was likely day out, and her menu options were berries or fish. It didn't really matter, her mind was elsewhere. She had already made up her mind a while ago, she was just trying to convince the rest of her. Yes she was likely drowning in rads, but that wouldn't stop her. The command room held more than just the keys to the food pantry, and it certainly wasn't on her side of the door. Plus, she'd never been one to go out slow, backing out now would just prolong the inevitable. Here she had more than just a safe place to sleep, she had the 'comforts' of home. Here she had a roof over her head, a bed to sleep on, and a reliable bathroom she didn't have to find every morning. Here she had a hallway full of deadly runes, brimming with nuggets of magic knowledge. Here she had 'THE CORE'.

Mara cracked a smile, she had won. Persuaded on a course of action, she grabbed her pack and headed to the front door, -fishing- the cable and 'ladder' from her pack as she walked into the airlock. Passing the door that had hit her like finger-plugging an outlet, Mara found a hauntingly similar rune waiting for her on the opposite door. Figures you're a matched set, but I'm ready for you this time. Whipping out the 'Living Cable' from her pack, Mara quickly bridged both activation runes with a slight magnetic snap on each end, channeling the mana without sacrificing her internal organs as a makeshift lightning rod. Wow. That was easy... Almost... too easy. Mara's paranoia peaked as she radiated death-flags like a trope hell-bent on self-destruction. Stepping back, she stored the cable back in her pack as she thumbed her other hand's 'Void Ring', anticipating a nocturnal ambush or equally dire encounter.

Then, as the door opened into the dark... shade- Mara blew the pressure out of her lungs. She was caught off guard. It was only the early afternoon and the irradiated forest was as unnaturally quiet as its usual self, the only sounds were the wind in the trees and the rumble in her stomach. Hm... Berry snack? she asked her stomach, to which it replied, Why yes, what a -berry- good idea! Or at least that was how she envisioned it in her head as she skipped off towards the 'northern' tree-line, making a mental effort to try and cardinally align herself to what the squids claimed were the magnetic directions on an inverted planet.

Mara skipped across the half-submerged rocks in the steady stream, watching a few small-fry jumping and flapping to-and-fro. She stopped at the sight of them, their very existence catching her a little off guard as the rest of the forest had been noticeably deserted. Maybe they're not as bothered by the environment because the water's just passing through? She pondered, landing on the opposite bank as she made her way to the lumpy tree-line. She hadn't planned on fishing, not really. After all, the odds that fish would even be in the area were rather low, and she really didn't do -well- with raw meat. It was one thing to cook prepared meat, but it was an entirely different thing to mutilate a corpse into food. Shuddering, Maybe elves don't need protein? I could probably do the vegan thing. Especially if the alternative is prepping my own food... "Yikes."

Stopping beneath a pair of dense oaks, Mara reached a hand out to feel the dominating expression of nature, eyeing her goal exactly where she thought it'd be. Squeezed between the trunks were several berry bushes far out of the way of most things besides squirrels and small birds, or Scampers and Twiglets if I remember right? That whole walk is a bit of a blur. Well, whatever. This is as good of a place as any to try these out... Stepping back as she held up the one finger on her right hand next to the index, Mara presented the tree with a ring-clad digit as she focussed on replicating the feeling of magic circulating through it and into the trunk.

To anyone else, it looked like Mara just flicked off a tree with an infuriated scowl before the whole trunk, along with an additional two meters of wood and dirt, vanished with a soft 'Fwhooop'. Then the whole thing came crashing down like a comedy skit, leaves and branches exploding in every direction as they hit the ground.

"Oh- Oh-ho-ha Ha Ha. Ah-hahahahaha!" Mara doubled over in diabolical laughter. The ring had taken barely anything to use and the tree put up pretty much zero resistance. Sure, the pose was beyond stupid, but she kinda loved it anyways. Plus, she had -three- of the damned things. It was stupid, but in a broken way. Her way. The stupid way. She rolled onto her back, still laughing.

Mara remained there, like a turtle watching the sun, laughing for long enough that even she thought it was getting a little embarrassing. But she was laughing at it all, at how stupidly -fucked- everything was. Laughing at the stupid sun and its stupid wobble, stupidly stuck halfway into a literal -black-hole-. Her class name was Runie and its lore was a freaking -Hexadex-, and the first thing she found in a fantasy forest was ET's nuclear accident. She couldn't bottle all that in, it was too much, she needed to let it out, and by the end of it, she was pretty sure the laughter was more cathartic than most therapists.

Rolling herself back onto her feet as she quelled her compulsory laughter, Mara looked at the damage she had wrought. The nearby canopy was in tatters, most of it had come down while she was rolling around on the ground. The primary trunk had been -vacated-, all that was left was a circular depression with a smooth finish. The neighboring trees weren't lucky as their demise wasn't as quick. Parts of their trunks had been subtracted, the remaining unsupported weight collapsing down the rest with an explosive amount of compressive force. Wood shrapnel had been fired every which way, but the berries buried in the core of the clustered trunks seemed mostly unharmed. Sure a few got crushed, but this is a lot easier than trying to squeeze in and out of these weird tree formations.

Mara spent a few minutes combing through the obliterated tree-cluster, filling her pockets with two dozen berries, snacking on over half before she moved on to the next cluster. Standing a little further back than before, Mara repeated the process, the ring quickly dismissing critical components to the trees' structural integrity. Collecting the berries without much of an issue, Mara repeated the process a few more times until her pockets were nearly full and she was double-flicking tree clusters like an immature child, decimating the local forest. Innocent but diabolical laughter filled the trees as the sun finally began to wane, Mara no longer had to a-void- her monsterous predators. It might not be from a skill, but I'll take these rings over a sword or bow any day.

Grabbing her pack from the 'clearing' she'd made over the course of the afternoon, Mara hopped over a few tree stumps and made her way back inside the irradiated obelisk. Sure, she could fight back now, but they were quick, and likely more numerous than three. Inside she had safety, and something to do. Snacking on some nobbly-purple berries, she made her way to the rune-infested tunnel-of-death. The infamous portal to... 'THE CORE ROOM'! Mara chuckled, she was never one to do what she was told. She was a Runie, and this wasn't a death trap, it was a manual. A codex of hex magic, all it needed was some -Trace-, a dash of -Hexadex-, and a little bit of her time. Or a lot. She watched as Trace re-illuminated the trap-laden corridor, letting out a long whistle as she saw it coalesce on the final hatch, finally getting a rough count.

349. Mara shook her head, plopping down in front of the very first rune. She would not be deterred by a daunting number. She would decode, decipher, and dismantle every last rune. There was no doubt in her mind. If she wanted the replicator, she needed the ship's systems back online, and those were undoubtedly past the hatch, maybe even past the core room, but she wouldn't know without first understanding the trap-laden -core-a-door-. Laughing to herself in a dim and desolate cave, Mara set about creating her latest and greatest work, What-The-Hex: Ruining Runic Rumors.