“Ohh boy, are you ok?” the automaton asks me.

I take a shaky breath, trying not to think of the pain that only now receding.

“I think so, but I feel like crap, like every muscle and tendon in my body was worked over, but luckily it is over.”

“No, it is not.” He says.

“What?” I ask fearing that it will come again.

“Look, even with the leeway the system gave me and a lot of information, I can only roughly tell what happened. It shouldn’t happen again, but that’s not the problem.”

I sigh guessing what the problem is, but even as memories and dread over the prospects try to rise, I’m drained. There is little emotion left in the tank.

“I know… Pando. This is about his injury.” I see the sorrow in his eyes. “You said it is not over…?” He swallows, his action a lot more ingrained than the human ticks he usually imitates. “Don’t you fucking tell me the system… I will... I..”

“I’m sorry, best as I can tell, a void wraith ripped his soul in half and even ate a bit of his Aether. The wraith is dead now, but… nothing could survive after a monster like that gets its fangs on you. There are no defenses against their type of attacks this early in integration. The thing is, you are a system user and still under protection. I don’t know how you could be affected from so far away, even if you somehow shared a soul with Pando, but the system is offering recompense for your troubles given the statistical likelihood that its actions caused your injuries, even if in a roundabout way.”

“Take me to Earth.”

“Just like that?” He asks surprised.

“There is nothing and nobody that matters more right now.”

“You have no idea what you will be giving up by returning so early. Hell. You won’t even get there for centuries if things develop the way I think.”

“I’m talking about returning now. I don’t care about anything else. I have my priorities straight and Pando is at the top of my list.”

“That is a short sighted view,” he whispers. But then sees my face. He won’t change my mind, but he gives one last effort anyway. “You need the power that you will gain here to protect Pando if he is even alive.”

“Power I can get anywhere, I only need to desire it enough. People, however, once they are gone there is no coming back. Even whatever magic the system uses for resurrecting the troops attacking us is highly restrictive and unreliable from all accounts. I know Pando is alive. I can feel him, for if he wasn’t the very stars would cry at the loss of such a being. But that is likely to change. I got too comfortable here, I… turned into someone else here and he needs me so there is nothing that will stop me from coming back.”

“I cannot take you there. I might be able to bend the rules slightly and take you back with the first wave coming back from the instance. But from ‘Pando’s point of view’, you will arrive in a couple of centuries. Hell, even the Judge couldn’t overrule such a fundamental principle of the integration process. And if before you had a chance in a thousand to succeed, now you have none…”

I won’t convince him to work against the very rules he is tasked with protecting, but...

“What do you mean?”

“Ahh, can’t you feel it?”

“All I can feel is pain. In every single cell of my body, pain and weakness.”

“Take a look at your stat screen.” With a frown on my face, I open it.

Name: Nash

Level:100

Titles:3

Class: One with the World (*)

100 M+/0 EXP

Strength

104

Soul

58

Constitution

103

Agility

104

Dexterity

116

Endurance

134

Perception

230

Intelligence

141

Willpower

155

Health

1698/1705

1147

/day

Mana

206/2196

191.1

/hour

Stamina

1072/1075

16.06

/min

“What the hell?”

I tap my class.

Unknown damage type to system’s user.

Class damaged, level damaged. 50 percent penalty to all stats applied from the system.

“I thought you knew this void wraith.”

“So did the system. We have never seen something quite like this. Usually, the person dies quickly, is crippled beyond the need for reparations or they are strong enough to resist entirely. In that sense, your case is… unique.”

“Well, I want my stat points back and high tier title for having survived an encounter with a void wraith. It doesn’t even come close to repaying all the system owes me, but it is a start.”

“I don’t… neither of those is an option. The title because you didn’t survive an encounter with it and the stat points… the system already repaired as much of your soul as it could.”

“What? Yeah, I suspected it was the system helping me.”

“You felt that? “

“Yeah, I used the chance to reorganize a few things and strengthen my soul. Not sure how useful it will be against another attack, but there is at least a little redundancy and rigidity in the outer layers.”

He passes his hand over his metallic hair in frustration.

“Messing with your soul is dangerous. But perhaps… that is why you are not a drolling idiot in a world of pain on the floor right now. You could interact with it enough to properly heal it, but not fully defend yourself.”

“The question stands.”

“Your class and the system are not part of your soul, they are just Aether addons. All the system can do is send more pieces inside and slowly grow them. In the very rare cases something breaks, sending a replacement usually makes things worse. That is the reason you need to stay in the instance. You need every advantage after losing so many stats, especially given your balanced approach to stat increases.”

“I disagree. I decide what is important to me, and like I said…”

“Listen to me. It was all fun and games when you were playing with little firecrackers that in the worse case would burn your fingerprints off, this… you are piling boxes of dynamite underneath your bed while using open candles as your lighting source. I have seen the results of Aether wielders more than once. You can rush past a few bottlenecks, you can cheat the system and get access to stuff earlier than was intended, you concentrate on rare titles… but that is it. You work best skirting the line to achieve amazing things, but eventually everyone comes back and falls into line.” His voice is strained, but he keeps going. “It is the nature of things. Even the council...” weight increases around him and his elbows propping him up crack the wood floor as we suddenly drop a few meters.

I reach with my Qi, trying to approximate the shape of the runes and directly power it extracting every smidge of lifting power, but even as I start to halt our drop the weight is gone.

“Ahh shit …” he says.

“Don’t worry about it. I get the gist of it.” With a sad twinkle in my eye, I say: “Considering that and what I already know, I have to say three things to say.

“First: thank you.

“Second: the council has different goals from me and I will ‘cheat’ my way right to the top or as close as I can get.

“Third: You don’t know me. It doesn’t matter that the world is against me. It has been before and may be again. I didn’t give up when Pando was dying the first time around, nor when people tried to stop me from expanding his reach. Now… the task is just larger.”

“Entire universes have said the same and I have yet to see a single person succeed. The system… being a simple system user at low levels doesn’t give that many advantages, but they stack up for those at a high enough level. Inventing and making a better incandescent light than what is on the market is trivial. Inventing a better entropy light, that sucks in the heat from an environment and transforms it into visible wavelengths, your science doesn't even have the prerequisites to understand how that would work let alone how to replicate the most basic of applications of that tech.”

“I don’t need to rule the universe, I just need to protect a planet or three in my corner of the galaxy. Help me do that and I will be eternally grateful.

“You have seen how developed your friend Alex has become. Sure, he is skirting the rules, and if the council had their way he wouldn't even have that, but all he did is develop a little early. There is value and protection in that. Do not stray too far.”

“You are one to talk about…

“My situation is different, and in the grand scheme of things, it is like Alex’s. I’m not really moving against the system, I’m just bending its rules in a way that is… acceptable, hell most of them are not even the system’s rules, but the council’s. You… you don’t care for the system and while there are some advantages to that, do not underestimate the danger.”

I hear his words, the words of someone concerned with my well being, someone older and in many ways wiser than I’m. But though he has lived longer than me, sometimes a child could cut through all the bullshit and see the truth and right now… I am the child.

Pando… My will.

That is more in line with my path. I can’t just move off of it, for a few pretty words. If I’m wrong, I will pay the price but it is the only chance I have.

“Not even all the riches and knowledge of the entire galaxy would be enough recompense… not with the system trying to kill Pando. That said how much can I take it for? What should I choose?

“That is simple. Aether, a lot of Aether.”

And then, for an instant, our minds are one and even with the inherent danger that misusing Aether, the glimpses of madness that I had, the way that rapidly shifting my course for someone without a single defined path like me was absolutely perilous is gone. We both smile and a hint of greed creeps, as I wonder what would it be to work with a lot more Aether, and I even ask:

“How much?”

“Probably the maximum allotment for this millennia. So about 5 times the initial tide of Aether. Perfectly attuned Aether. It will cost something, but you can handle it. Even if it was possible to get more than this, I wouldn’t recommend getting it all at once.”

I look out of the flying craft, as we fly with every word he speaks bouncing off a privacy ward.

Interesting runic formation. It even has a few hints that are similar to another set in the depths of my memory, but I promised I wouldn’t look too closely at Blackwood’s work, so I try to put it out of my mind.

I let myself feel for a moment what it would be to have that much Aether. About 8 fold the amount I arrived in the instance with. With my ever improving use of Aether, it will never run out, or rather it will last lifetimes.

Still… I can’t just pick a ‘reward’ for the system's actions. Even if these are only reparations.

What would the system care that comes even close to as much as I cared for Pando?

Aether sounded good, but I don’t want a finite source of it. Back on Earth, there was enough loose Aether that Pando could absorb it slowly over the years, but even then, that seem to have been influenced by the Aether that the council used to speed up our integration timeline.

Even making the system pay like this is not a lesson. It needed to voluntarily give up its resources, to acknowledge its mistake, and maybe even desire to change, as much as its artificial mind can grasp.

I cover my bases, just see what's possible.

“Is knowledge, specifically relating to traveling the void, on the table?”

“No, your case has nothing to do with the void. It makes no sense for the judge to sign off on any deal trading such information.”

“What is on the table?”

“Aether, money, healing might have been if it was possible depending on the type of injury, but not in your case. As an insular option is the changing of minor rules that may have caused this situation and to help prevent future instances, but nothing that would be effective in such an edge case. Even telling you this much is reducing my ‘information allotment and will eventually it will eat into the reward that you can get, do take that into mind.”

“Then I know the only thing that would come even close to being as dear to the system as Pando is to me. I want an Aether Spring.”

His eyes widen. “What… how have you heard of that?”

“I haven’t,” I say simply not trying to capitalize on his shock. “Just one question: Can the system simply turn off an Aether Spring?”

“Not based on its rules. Just like the system can’t enter your soul to either heal or change anything, it also can’t turn off an Aether spring. The most it can do has to do with the external assistance powering your stats.”

“Ok. Then I will stay the course. A single ‘payment’ of Aether is not going to make a difference.”

“You have no idea what an Aether spring really is. Even a level zero spring… unless the system killed all the users in your planet by mistake and it was for some reason paying reparations to you, it might balk at giving you a spring.”

I look at him and my resolve firms. Not in an attempt to negotiate, or any kind of power play, but simply laying out my point of view.

“I will take nothing less, for that would be a disservice to Pando. The very fact that it won’t let me even check back with him just compounds its mistake. Any lesser offer is hereby refused.”

Almost unwilling, I feel as space grabs him for an instant and his instinctive attempt to remain in the instance, but the system was paying close attention to our meeting.

I speak in the suddenly empty place.

“I told the truth. You will never understand anything if we only continue to treat you like a machine. I may never succeed, but the sun will die before I compromise on something like this. Even if I made mistakes, I cannot simply grow numb. I will find my way back to Pando… I will BE.”