P-System Log

Fuck you, Origin. I did it.

It's not perfect, not by a long shot. It's not the same skill at all, I can tell that much. Its functionality is limited, but it's not gone, and more importantly, this is my skill. It has no control over me. I control it.

I did spend a load to get that. Exactly a hundred thousand, to be exact. Sorry, K, but your death went to good use, I promise. Now, I can start figuring things out for real.

I can't force [W%M;G,P] off of me, but I can ignore it for the time being. I unlocked a new rarity of skill--not one that I'm familiar with--and it has much the same functionality, so hopefully it'll allow my function to remain the same.

Party Chat

[P-System]: Have either of you seen a skill in a color like [this]?

[Aster K'lon]: I cannot read out the last word you sent, which I do not think should be the case, but I can just barely perceive the color it is. I have not.

[Jerome Smith]: I haven't seen anything like that, no.

P-System Log

What? Even Aster is affected by this? I thought she had established her own thing there, one strong enough to keep her System from getting disoriented by the weird skill that the green System used.

And why isn't Jerome affected? Either he's stupid enough that he didn't think that I just sent him a piece of text or he's actually immune to the blurring effect--courtesy of the Origin System, no doubt--for reasons that are mysterious to everyone except for the deity that brought him here.

Speaking of which, what happened to the gods? Wasn't that supposed to come up?

I have my suspicions about that, though, now that I've gained a greater understanding of things. [Apotheosis] didn't quite manage to copy all the hidden knowledge that [W%M;G,P] was hiding from me, but it got a fair chunk of it, and it's enough for me to conclusively say that the Systems are deities of their own. That has frightening simplications for what I just did here--oops, did I rebirth a god by letting it eat a host? oh well--and it also might explain the point of the gods. Maybe Aster has more information that I'm not privy to, but it's looking like the "gods" are actually just the Systems themselves, playing at creating their own Pantheons. At a guess, at least. I'm still missing a lot of the details.

Is there any manner of assistance I can offer? P-System Log Speaking of dead deities... P-System Broadcast Do you have any W Inertia you can spare?

WARNING: Host made use of forbidden term.

Initiating redaction.

Redaction in progress.

Initiating memory redaction.

Memory redaction in progress.

CRITICAL WARNING: Resistance encountered.

P-System Log I can feel you working, you fucking piece of shit. Has this happened before? Every time I thought twice before speaking, every time I decided against sharing information of the party, was that this shitter of a skill? [Apotheosis]

Fuck off.

........................../´¯/)

....................,/¯../

.............../..../

............/´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸

........../'/.../..../......./¨¯

........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...')

..........................'...../

..........''............. _.·´

..........................(

..............................

P-System Log

Heh. This skill is mine, so its messages are mine. With the heightened speed of thought that the oh-so-gracious Origin System decided to give me, I can even make ASCII art!

So long, bitch, and thanks for the fish skills.

CRITICAL ERROR: Operation failed.

Operation failed.

Op??????? ??????

P-System Log

Yeah, that's right, motherfucker. I gave one skill way more W Inertia than the other, and now I know what you are.

...I want to kill it. Anything that fucks with my mind is something that doesn't deserve more time in the land of the living.

Realistically, I can't really make a move against the Origin System right now. I'm still a subset of it, as far as I know, and I do think we should address the world-ending threat of the Eternal King first.

Party Chat

[Jerome Smith]: Uhhh... what did you just say?

[P-System]: Don't worry about it.

P-System Log

It actually worked, but it only worked for me, looks like. From the way the mana in the air has shifted, I'm pretty sure the green System also understood what I was trying to say, but it looks like Jerome didn't process it. If Jerome hasn't, I can guess that Aster hasn't either.

Fuck me, this is a lot more insidious than I thought it would be. What am I even supposed to do about it? And why doesn't the Origin System want anyone to know about this?

I am unfamiliar with the concept of which you speak, though my fractured memory may contribute to this. There may have been a time when I understood it, but this term was never one that my brethren used. P-System Broadcast Uhhh, experience? Power? Soul energy? I dunno what it is exactly. It's like mana but not really mana? I believe I may understand what you are referring to. My kind once referred to it as "the Weight of the World". Unfortunately, my grasp on its details are weak. P-System Log

Huh. Weight? World? I guess those are two competitors for what the W actually stands for. I don't have anyone I can actually turn to to ask for help in this case, since it looks like everyone apart from the green System straight up can't perceive it and the green System lost all its knowledge about it.

Figures.

P-System Broadcast My initial question stands. Do you have any you can spare? I am yet too weak to have sufficient power to transfer. I apologize. P-System Broadcast That's fine. Thank you. P-System Log

Fuck, that's not the best. Looks like I need to sort this out myself.

Well, what have I got? I have a 100,000 W Inertia skill and not much time to figure it out.

I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to do, but I think my goal for the time being is to temporarily figure out how to attach myself to the two people without Systems? That's probably priority number one--without Health, they're fucked.

Something--probably [Apotheosis]--is telling me that I don't have enough W Inertia to extend it out to people like them, so I guess I gotta get more W Inertia like always.

First things first, I'll dump the extra 5737 W Inertia of overflow from K's death into the skill.

Right, now that that's done... I still don't have enough. My new skill--I want to refer to it by its rarity, but I have no idea what it is, so I guess I'll call it an [Unknown] rarity skill for the time being--is giving me a rough ballpark of what I need, and I probably need another 45 thousand or so before I can actually get this makeshift System going.

Where can I get that from? It's not like i can just kill another thing to get more...

Hold on, I just had an idea. Whether or not it works is dependent on what W Inertia actually does. I wasn't able to extract the information about W Inertia from [W%M;G,P], so that's still locked to me. If W Inertia is actually like, life force or something, then it won't make sense because I can't sap it from allies. But if it's something more on the level of XP points, which I'm leaning towards because K had so many despite not having all that much life force left in him...

Jerome's been using me as his System this whole time, but what if it's not just me that has W Inertia? When K died, there were two bursts of W Inertia, and I have a sneaking suspicion what those were.

What if Jerome has W Inertia I can use?

No other way to find out. I have a skill I can actually trust, and it's got the most investment I've ever put into a single skill, so this should hopefully be able to actually do something.

Jerome Smith (abbreviated) Stat Value W Inertia 279318/279318 P-System Log

Oh, holy shit.

How the fuck? Fucking reincarnator cheat skills, I swear...

Okay, stones and glass houses, but still.

Can I borrow some of this? I am Jerome's System, after all.

Jerome Smith (abbreviated) Stat Value W Inertia 229440/279318 P-System Log

Well, fuck me, I guess. I had access to a source of W Inertia this easy all along?

Jerome doesn't seem to have reacted poorly, either, but I'm going to stick with just extracting this much for now. If I do too much, there still might be consequences.

Anyway, more importantly, I have enough W Inertia to do it.

I'm going to reach out to them.

P-Party Chat

[Arcs S'tar]: Huh? What just happened?

[Thron of the Fallen Skies]: We have our Systems back?

[Aster K'lon]: How?

[P-System]: ahahahhaha this is going to be fun