I’ve had a dream. In it, I was walking through the Wildlands without a care in the world. I don’t think I had any particular destination in mind, I simply marveled at the beauty of the world. I saw people happily live their lives, children playing, and adults working. I could see animals roam the fields and the forests in peace, as there were no beasts in sight. I don’t know when or where this was supposed to be, but it was beautiful. I thought that this was how the world should be. If only it could be.

Then, my vision went black and I woke up.

***

I opened my eyes and looked at a vaguely familiar ceiling. Propping myself up slightly, I looked around. The mayor’s house, I thought. What happened?

“Miles!” I heard Riala shout and no sooner than I had turned in the direction her outcry had come from, she tackled me into a hug.

“Oof! Hey, Ria...” I said with a chuckle and patted her head.

Wait. Miles? Right... I’m Miles.

Berla approached the bed I was lying on as well and looked me over. “Welcome back. You worried us,” she said with a warm smile. “How are you?”

“I feel fine... What happened?”

They explained that I had apparently fallen unconscious when I tried to use a script without a stone two days ago. While I remembered the experiment, I didn’t remember what came afterwards. But I was still here. We had been worried that the mana might kill Miles, but I felt fine.

“Didn’t... Tomar take over?” I asked them, but Berla shook her head.

“No. You two were completely unresponsive. Is he okay?”

My eyes widened. I couldn’t hear anyone in my mind. “Hey, you okay up there?” I said in a panic, when a sharp pain shot through my head.

‘Huh? Am I... Oh, you’re in control. Wait, what happened!?’

As if a veil had been lifted, my mind was suddenly clear and I breathed a sigh of relief that Tomar was okay. “For a second there I thought we had lost you. He’s okay,” I told Berla and Riala, who looked relieved as well. I then filled him in on what had happened.

‘Right! The experiment! You were in pain. But we’re okay? I guess you really just had to get through the initial pain of having mana?’

“I guess so... I feel okay.”

Maybe my mind had locked away the memory of being in the biggest pain of my life. Or maybe I just had a terrible short-term memory. Whatever the case, I seemed like we were good.

“Did anything happen while we were gone?” I asked Berla.

“The mayor was here a few times. He’s desperately waiting for you to wake up again. He seemed relaxed the first day, but this morning he looked worried as well.”

“The deal... Of course. I guess we only have four days left. That kinda sucks,” I said while furrowing my brows, before addressing Tomar. “We should get going. Do you mind if I take charge?”

‘Go ahead, it will be faster that way. I’ll just chill up here.’

“Alright, up we g—” I said and swung myself out of bed, but I stumbled and almost fell over. “Oops... Okay, a little dizzy.”

“Are you really okay...?” Riala asked me with a worried look.

“Yea, don’t worry,” I said with a chuckle and finally stood up.

I went straight for the door and opened it, Riala and Berla hurrying after me. Nodding to the guards in greeting I went past them and down the hallway and the stairs, on the way to the garden.

We lost a lot of time, and we don’t actually know whether we can even do what we promised the mayor. I can’t waste any more time. We’ve got to find a way to analyze the white stones, figure out where the knowledge comes from exactly, test what we can do without stones, and then—

“Mil— Tomar! Stop!” I heard Berla say and came to a stop.

“What is it?” I said as I glanced back at her, confused.

“Before you do anything else, you’re going to eat and drink something. You’re clearly not fine yet.”

“What do you mean? I...” but as I tried to respond, I noticed that I was swaying slightly. To prevent myself from falling over, I leaned against a wall. “Oh... Okay, maybe you do have a point.”

The guards supported me and brought me into the kitchen, where Riala immediately entered her protector mode and watched me like a hawk to make sure I ate and drank properly.

How bad do I look to them...?

Berla had definitely been right, however, as I felt way better after taking care of myself. And for real this time. Apparently this was evident to the girls as well, as they finally allowed me to go to the garden and continue our research.

As the first test of the day, I made sure that using scripts without stones was something we could do freely now, and it seemed to work well, though it required a lot of concentration, and if you broke it, the effect would cut off immediately.

“Still amazing...” I said. And without pain it’s even better, who would’ve thought?

Next, I wanted to try to reproduce the effect we got with a white stone. Specifically, the Fighter Calling sign, which I had felt when using the script. I tried it a few times, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do it. I briefly switched with Tomar, so he could try the same thing with the Charmer sign that he had experienced, but he failed as well. If we assumed that the stones were a kind of mental component, maybe you needed to understand what was going to happen, and while “make water” seemed straightforward to us now, we technically didn’t understand the white stones yet.

Berla, Riala, and the guards looked on as I tried different scripts, variations, and effects, both on us and the water source. Sometimes curious, but mostly bored, since I was trying more or less random things for a long while, hoping to find something new.

The biggest hurdle was that the stones would dissolve when they were used with a script, and unlike blue and black stones, they stopped working if you broke them into smaller fragments, indicating that the “data” needed to stay intact. You wouldn’t be able to determine the Calling someone would get this way. That’s when I thought about the randomness component once more.

One stone, one Calling. It made sense on the surface, and based on the ritual platform script, something was extracted from the stones and “installed” on the person standing on the platform. I considered that the gods were somehow involved after all, but based on the script, that seemed unlikely. How is it random then? I thought, and finally something clicked.

I wrote multiple Calling sign scripts onto the water source and designated one input, as I had done when I originally researched the water source script and discovered that I could execute multiple scripts at once. What we saw when I executed the script confirmed my suspicion. Instead of one effect, there were several. And they were all different.

“What the hell!?” I heard one of the guards say while me and the others were staring at the display with wide eyes. A blue sphere, a pink sphere, a white figure, a blinding light, it seemed like every sign possible appeared. Curiously, however, some appeared multiple times.

I blinked, unbelievingly. “This is a freaking gacha system!?”

Nobody else understood what I was talking about. After trying another stone and getting similar results, I looked at the floor, dejected. My initial understanding had been correct. The white stones held people, or their souls, and they were transferred to the inhabitants of this world to level them up. The only reason it was random, was that a random soul inside the stone was selected. And it would possibly be the one that was most suited for the person on the ritual platform. I had just been one of these random souls.

“God damn it!” I said and kicked hard against the water source in frustration, hurting my foot. “Ngh! Fuck...”

I was mad, but I had to hold back, since I didn’t want the guards to learn too much about our situation. I told Berla and Riala about what I had just discovered, and at least Berla understood what I was implying and why I was so mad. However I might’ve gotten here, and however I had gotten inside a white stone, there was almost certainly no simple going back. At least not by using the ritual platform script. We were at a dead end once again.

***

“... you spent how long on this?” a translucent figure said to another with a sigh.

“Hm... I’m not sure actually. It was a little while,” the other said, as they were neatly placing white, crystal-like stones in rows on the wooden table they were sitting at.

“And these are supposed to give your humans... abilities?”

“Look, I know you find my ideas weird, but think about the advantages. They can start their lives properly as soon as their minds are developed enough to take on the additional knowledge and power.”

The first figure took one of the stones and examined it closely. “Okay, maybe that makes sense. The stones all look the same though. How will the humans know which one to choose?”

“The world will be dangerous, and most people wouldn’t choose to put themselves in harm’s way. It will be a random process in the beginning. Eventually they’ll figure out how to determine the ability a stone gives, and then they can choose.”

Prodding a stone with their finger, the first figure looked surprised. “Why are there multiple souls in these stones?”

“It would be too simple if it were just one per stone. Can’t make it too easy for them. It should take a while until they learn how it works.”

“That sounds like you’re trying to bridge the initial cultivation period... giving them abilities they shouldn’t have yet and hoping they’ll figure out your weird system. Not too fast though, because society needs to develop first. Is this another shortcut because you’re running out of time?” the first figure said in exasperation.

The other figure twitched at the accusation, but continued on with determination. “Of course not. It’s just a random job system. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one.”

“I haven’t, no. There’s a lot here that I’ve never seen before. At least your sun is not purple anymore. Is there anything else that’s normal about this world, however?”

The second figure looked around, thinking the question over, when they noticed a deer walk out of a nearby forest. “How about that over there? A cute little forest critter.”

The deer looked in their direction curiously, when a black wolf that was twice as big as it should be suddenly launched at the deer out of nowhere and killed it with a single bite before carrying it back into the forest as if it was nothing.

“Okay, bad example...”