Degritone woke up, his head throbbing. "If I didn't think it'd hurt more than my head, I'd try to cut out my heart to stop this throbbing," he said, eyes still closed, as he reached up to his head.

He felt a poke on his arm and opened his right eye enough to see his Patron standing beside him, holding a cup out to him. He took it, laid it on his chest, closed his eyes, and said, "Thanks."

"If you're up for talking, what happened? I didn't think I'd see you for another year or so," she said.

He held up a finger to wait before activating his calming image, basking in the calm wind and warm sun as he heard rain land all around him. After just a few seconds, he said, "A lot and nothing at the same time." He then explained about Music and Chuuni, taking over the city, their plans for the future, and what happened to them.

He let his image go and sat up, taking a sip from the cup he was given. "With getting the invasion quest and whatever just happened happening at the same time, plus the insane pain I had, I decided to come here, as it's... well, not guaranteed to be safe, as you could have me do some combat trial, but blah. With Chuuni disappearing into the void, I panicked and thought this would be the safest place I could get on my own. How long was I out?" After that, he took a large gulp from the cup, his headache reducing slightly.

"Roughly 9 days. From what I've heard from other patrons, your invasion has already started and is nearing its end. It should end some time today or tomorrow. It's only a level 7 invasion and your planet's average level is already in the 20s," his Patron said, taking a sip from her own cup.

"Wow, the average? Also, invasion level?"

"Invasion level is basically the same as a Dungeon's level. The primary level of enemies in the invasion will be the specific level, while the boss will be triple that. However, other, non-boss enemies may be up to twice that level in invasions, unlike in Dungeons, though they will be few, and invasion monsters can gain levels, unlike Dungeon monsters."

Degritone and his Patron sat for a while in silence while they drank, Degritone's head's pain slowly lowering to levels where he'd feel comfortable moving around again. "I have a ton of questions regarding various things involving the system," he said. "Can I ask them, or, beyond keeping me safe while my head was exploding, will this be a purely business visit?"

She got up, refilled her cup, and looked in askance toward Degritone. He looked up left for a second and nodded, holding out his cup. She refilled it, sat the pitcher down, and sat on his lap. "Pat," she said. Trying to keep himself from losing sight of anything but her, Degritone began to pat her head and play with her hair. "Ask away."

"Well, first, can I add you to my friend list? I tried earlier, but it wouldn't let me add 'Patron of Loyalty' to my friend list."

"Try Melena," she responded.

He tried to add "Melena" to his friends. His Patron nodded and Melena was added to his friend list.

"So, Chuuni said he wasn't getting a Skill for anything he did, despite actually doing a lot. Why?"

"I have a couple ideas. The best one I have is that he was innately tier 2, and that a few images of yours are tier 2. Specifically that your storm is a tier 2 image and that both Music and Chuuni were effectively tier 2 images. Though, normally, tier 2 images of humans aren't recognized by the system as actually separate people, but I have no idea if it's actually impossible, just that no one has accomplished it before."

"And what does tier mean in this context?"

"Ah, right, you're that new. Well, there's 4 unofficial tiers that people are put into. I'm uncertain where it originated, as I'm the second newest Patron, but tier 0 is people who exclusively use Skills from Paths, Classes, and Patrons. Tier 1 is people who have strong enough images to generate Skills and materialize images. Tier 2 is people who have images so strong that the system misidentifies them as natural phenomena, causing them to not get Skills for their images.

"However, the system still recognizes you had some part in the act, giving you experience as it would if you had pushed a boulder down a hill. No Skill for it, but you are the inciting action in the natural phenomena. Tier 3 is people who are capable of forcing the system to create Skills for their images.

"Generally, the power of people gets higher as they go up tiers, but there is a small gap right near the start of tier 2 where they're technically weaker, so many people willingly stay peak tier 1, fearing the power drop at the start of tier 2. Skills are always useful, even if you can cause the same effect with an image. Skill-enhanced image usage is measurably better than non-Skill images, assuming the images are the same strength without the Skill."

Degritone began moving his hair-playing hand to a random beat he made up on the spot as he thought. "Is there a way to tell invasion level before it hits?"

"A new section will appear on your status counting down to when it will arrive. The number of days it starts at determines its level. Unlike village monster spawns, however, the time from quest to invasion is determined by local time. Village monster spawns are exactly 10 day-equivalents on some world somewhere, and are always that number, even if the conversion leaves it a strange number. Invasions are always an integer multiple of local days."

"Hm. Do we know where the world is that has the 'standard day?'"

"No. The only way we know it's that way is some people who cared did math on every world's time to village monster spawn and found it to be that way. We haven't actually found the world that some believe to be the origin of the system."

"If you're allowed to, and want to, answer, how many... patrees? Is that a word? Patronees? Whatever, how many people have you as a Patron?"

"Just you, at the moment. I used to have twelve a long, long time ago. They died when their world had a level 30 invasion while their world had an average level of 40. They stood no chance against the level 90 boss. Their world got saved after the 10 local day ban on cross-world travels was lifted and maxers could come save them, though very few actually made it out alive, none of which included my old proteges."

Degritone hugged her, not knowing what to say. She placed a hand on his arms. After multiple seconds, he asked, "What's the max level?"

"As far as we know, there isn't one. However, no Dungeons above level 25 can exist and no invasions above level 30 have ever happened. Few people are willing to run a level 25 Dungeon 427800 times to go from level 91 to 92, or get anywhere near there, so most people stop around level 85 to 88. Once you his level 92, you stop getting experience for level 75 enemies.

"For level 30 invasions, however, you need over half a million experience to get to the level those bosses stop giving you experience, 107. However, invasions above level 9 give a flat experience bonus to anyone participating in killing the boss. The exact equation is irrelevant, but it gives 3000 experience for a level 30 invasion. The highest someone currently alive has reached is level 105, though the record is 108."

"What is the world travel ban?"

"For invasions below level 10, anyone can travel in or out of a world, assuming they have the ability to actually do so, like any other day. For level 10 invasions, a 1 day ban is instated, and from there, it linearly increases by 0.45 days per level, all the way to 10 at level 30. We're uncertain exactly why this is the case, but most assume it's to prevent the monsters from doing something involving cross-world travel."

"Assuming we're living in a world similar to the one from an old RP I was doing with a friend for like a year or two, I'm pretty sure I already know the general idea for what," long pause, "it's trying to prevent. Unless you want me to explain it in detail I won't because it would take too many words for me to not mess up speaking."

After forming what he'd say next in his head, he continued, "The basic idea is that each world is a separate bubble and the monsters are being sent at us from outside that bubble. Higher level monsters might leave some scaffolding or something that either interferes with cross-world travel or would somehow endanger one or both worlds that the person is moving across. Probably multiversal destruction or something of that scale, given what things at that scale can do.

"Again, this assumes that the thing from that old RP is how the world works, but blah. Kinda falls apart that even the weakest of the monsters can't just instantly blow up everyone everywhere, but I guess that could be explained by," very long pause, "whatever the invasions are either being system-driven or driven by something that wants the multiverses they invade to exist for one reason or another."

Degritone went back to playing with her hair. After a minute or so of neither person saying anything, Degritone asked, "What's the earliest a world has been invaded?"

"Yours takes that record. It's not even close. The next closest was over triple the length from world induction to first invasion at around 138 local days."

Degritone raised his eyebrows a bit. "Wow. What was the level of technology on that world? Well, I guess my next question should be if level of technology actually correlates with invasion," short pause, "frequency as I was told."

"It does, quite heavily. The most frequently attacked world, and the one with the previous record, had this technology that could work like the system's messaging feature, but it required wires and could only transmit an on or off. They had to have people specially trained on how to interpret the signals, but it allowed people to transmit messages over long distances."

Further eyebrow raising. "Wwwwwow. That is old technology. I'd expected space-fairing civilization or something. Well, Earth is in for a ton of invasions, then. We've gotten to the point of being able to talk to anyone in the world almost anywhere, or literally anywhere above ground if you had some equipment that most people didn't, in the world with zero training required.

"More than that, we're able to do more than I'd be able to prop-pup-pr-prop-MOUTH PLEASE!-properly describe to someone with zero experience with it. We could play games of many types. Including, but not limited to, simulate entire wars, insert ourselves into wars, be near-omniscient gods pitting armies of," long pause, "creatures against each other, create nearly any building we could within the limits of the game itself, play around with systems somewhat similar to the system that governs reality now, and so, so much more.

"And that's just the games. There was a site, Wikipedia, that held a large majority of the world's information that was important enough to someone somewhere to document it. If that specific site didn't have the information, another site in the same format, but much more specialized, would have it. Wikipedia held more... I guess broad-term information about the topic, while the more specialized sites would hold," very long pause.

"Say, the precise mathematical formula for dealing damage in a game, listings for every item in the game, and so on. If you wanted to know about something, it would take you at most 10 minutes to gain a very basic understanding of the topic. 'I know a lot about a little and a little about a lot' is a quote I liked to say about myself when strange topics came up, but it applied to almost everyone.

"Without Skills, images, inherent magic, or anything but physics, we sent people to the moon and always had at least one human in space at all times, usually 4 or more, if I remember correctly. Given the fact that we're almost 200 years out from what we call the telegraph, the technology you described being from the most technologically advanced world, I expect to have an invasion almost always, then."

Realization hit him and Degritone leaned his head back and let out a sigh groan. "Great, add that to the list of many, many things I'm going to have to deal with at some point. Hopefully the police golems can deal with it, if Chuuni ever returns to create more or I get as powerful as Chuuni was."

"I think I'd like to experience your technology someday," his Patron said. "It sounds like you're very passionate about it."

"I did spend almost all my waking hours in front of one of the devices capable of accessing all that information and playing all those games, before the system hit," Degritone responded, poking her cheek. "By choice, I wasn't forced to," he added as an afterthought.

"How's your head?"

"Still explodey, but much less so. I assume whatever that drink was was intended to help. At the very least, it seemed to help."

After a few seconds of silence, Degritone said, "I feel like I had more questions, but blah. My head hurts. Give me a few minutes, maybe an hour, and we can do the test or whatever you have planned, assuming I don't think of those questions or you don't want to answer any more."

For the next roughly 8 minutes, Degritone played with his Patron's hair while she primarily interacted with her interface, probably sending messages to people. He leaned back in his chair and laid his head back, closing his eyes, focusing on the now reduced throbbing in his head, using his somewhat old image of using blue lightning to envelope the pain with each throb and chuck it out of his body.

With the system, it may even stop being just a placebo that only works until I think about how ridiculous it is, Degritone thought. It didn't help. For the next roughly 18 minutes, he thought about questions he had. "Oh! Right. Do you die the instant your health reaches zero, or negative if that's possible?"

Melena jumped a very slightly when he spoke up, startled at the sudden noise. "Negative is not possible, and no. You need to take a wound that is normally fatal to your species and also get to zero health. When you reach zero health, health regeneration is disabled for one hour and the system stops forcefully binding your soul to your body. Anything that would kill you in under an hour will kill you if you reach zero health. Anything that takes longer may just reset the timer, if it's some ongoing damaging effect."

"Speaking of souls, that reminds me, can you inspect mine? I haven't gotten Soul Sight back yet, if I ever will. I probably will. I want to know if there's anything more weird than normal."

"Normal weird?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, turning to look at his soul. "Ok, yeah, that is weird. There's lines on it."

"My theory is that it's splitting my soul between me, Music, and Chuuni. With them gone as they are, I expected it to just be me, whether that meant actually missing soul chunks or not."

"You said they had their own classes, right?" Melena asked. Degritone nodded and she continued, "It'll be interesting to see how the system reacts if they die. Or maybe they already have and whatever has been done to your soul is permanent."

"Eh, I doubt that it's permanent. Can I lay down again? You can sit on my belly or lay down on me or something while I do," he said. She stood up and he went back to laying down. She sat on his stomach and he continued, "I used to have two other brain inhabitants before Music and Chuuni. Three, if you count a thing when I was even younger, and another if you count a very short 'conversation' I had with 'my future self' that I don't remember.

"The first one was that future self. Don't remember what was said. The next was a dude who claimed to be half demon half angel and just kinda hung out in my head with me for like 2 months when I was in 4th grade or so. The two that actually stayed with me as long as Music and Chuuni were Mind and Scout. Music and Chuuni were named after their properties of me they took.

"Mind and Scout were not. Mind was my pervertedness while Scout was my analyticalness, if that's even a word. Scout's kinda hard to define what he was. Anyway, they hung around for years, from some time in 6th grade to the summer before freshman year. And I just realize you have no context for what that means. Uh... I don't know the ages for those things. Basically, those two were around for two and a half years or so.

"One day, I woke up and found myself alone. We'd been gradually merging over the last few weeks, but I hadn't been noticing it because it was slow, but looking back, it was happening. I'd gotten a portion of Mind's pervertedness and a portion of Scout's analyticalness. Those portions were less than what they had individually, but significantly higher than I'd expect to have had, had I simply grown alone."

He activated his calming image once again. Melena's legs dipped into the calm waters under Degritone. "I expect something similar will happen, even if they're gone, simply because they're still part of my soul."

As he lay there inside his calming image, his Patron, Melena, on his stomach, he heard a nondescript voice. As he breathed out, it said, "Oh," stretched out for the entire exhale. As he breathed in, it said, "Kay," stretched out for the entire inhale. He knew what that meant. Music was back, and was doing her version of snoring.