I suspect that the System is an extremely intelligent entity, capable of weaving and connecting patterns so fine and so great that most can’t even see the stitches. Indeed, divination might be just the art of interpreting these patterns, which is why even esteemed Diviners make mistakes or find it hard to parse some things.

After all, we are not designed to see the grand scope. Despite how much capacity towards change and destruction even the most powerful Pathbearers on Integrated Earth possess, they do not truly reach beyond the confines of the planet, and the System spends worlds within its Integration like someone might spend mithril.

Despite it being intelligent, I don’t think the System is truly conscious. I think it has a set design, a desire for evolution, for everything to keep growing stronger and stronger.

But it does not recognize itself or us. It does not interact with us on a social basis or have a specific character or personality. It simply wishes to connect different events to different people to concoct the most severe, most strife-inducing scenarios possible. This does not mean that the outcome will always occur. That is also partially dependent on the individual. Many System-favored end up dead at a young age. I suspect that is the natural state of things.

After all, to become System-favored, you have to experience conflicts (usually of the physical variety) with high intensity and high frequency. More than this, you must prevail, survive, and adapt over and over again.

Once this becomes a common pattern in your life, the System might seek to expand it and connect your common patterns and propensity towards conflict with something else, with another entity’s decision, with something else they might do to you, to the world, or to someone you care about.

Strife shapes the soul. Events, more than strife, even, shape the world. After all, our power originates within our deeds, our legends, the feats we perform, and this world and the mana cores grow because of the things that happen on it. Our conflict is nutrition for the System. We feed it, and it shapes us so that we can feed it more, so that we can indulge its palate. A never-ending cycle.

I have been rambling. My mind is drifting again. There’s so much I try to keep track of. Even after all I’ve achieved, all I’ve become, I still can’t grasp the fullness of the System’s design. And if I can’t grasp it, then how can I ever usurp it?

More experimentation is required.

-Udraal Thann’s Animancy Notes

92 (I)

Radiant

Adam howled. Foul colors exploded out from inside him. Black sludge poured out from his vector wings and seized him tight. Eyes opened in the tightening darkness—eyes that fed from misery. The Dreamtaker coiled in tight, crashing against the darkness, but the Stranger had Adam in a brutal grip. The Gate Lord screamed as his body began to snap and shift. It was changing him, reshaping him from the inside.

The Dreamtaker cried out. He glimpsed Uva shuddering beside him, and Adam tried to free himself—but everything was coming apart. His mind was rebelling against him.

Bowslinger > MINE NOW! MINE TOMORROW! MINE BEFORE! MINE AFTER!

Tears trailed down Adam’s face. He was weeping in despair, in frustration, in rage at the unfairness of it all. He won. He and the others prevailed against the enemy. So why were they being punished so brutally? Were they just supposed to die? Were they just supposed to succumb to an impossible fight? Did the System just want them to be broken and used as flesh-coats for monsters that belong in the deepest recesses of his nightmares?

Mark of the Seeking Clairvoyant > WILL SUFFER FOR RUINING MY PLAN-BIRTHING-IMPREGNATION

The Dreamtaker—or something related to it—crashed harder against the Stranger. “AWAY! Away, Stranger! You are blind-deaf-foolish. Something is coming! You will suffer for this! Release him! Depart!

The Stranger just laughed.

Seer of Horizons > WILL SUFFER FOR TAKING MY OFFSPRING. BREAK-BURN-ETERNAL-TORTURE. SEARED INTO MANA. FLAYED INTO THE SYSTEM. NEVER DIE. ALWAYS SUFFER. IS SUFFERING. ALWAYS. FOREVER. FUTURE AND PAST.

Gate Lord Arrow gasped. The Recollector wasn’t dead? That’s why it was still screaming earlier? Always screaming. Gods… What the hells even is Animancy…

Veilpiercer > WILL BREAK YOU SLOWLY. WILL WEAR YOU. WILL WEAR THE UNBREAKING ONE. WILL WEAR THE SEEKER BESIDE YOU.

And that was Adam’s limit. He could barely take the hopelessness of losing himself and his soul to this wretched thing. But Shiv and Uva—his mind was breaking, but he wouldn’t fail them. He wouldn’t.

The Gate Lord reached inside him with his Hydromancy. It was a skill the Stranger hadn’t infested yet. He tore at the very water in his body, preparing to kill himself. Adam was terrified. A sob escaped him. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to perish like this. Blackedge needed him. His father needed him. Isabella—there was so much left to do. So much, yet the System was forcing his hand. And Shiv and Uva…

If they survived, they would…

He wanted to hope they would continue without him, that they would be fine without him. But a selfish portion of Adam Arrow didn’t want them to be. He wanted them to mourn him. He wanted them to weep for him. He wanted them to depend on him.

And here he was, hesitating.

Adam Arrow was a selfish coward.

No, a warm voice whispered just beside him, interrupting his thoughts. You are, however, too savage to your own heart. Open your eyes, Archer. Open your eyes, and see the coming of the light!

And then, as the Outside threatened to consume Gate Theborn entirely, a dawn descended.

The Dreamtaker’s body dissolved into splotches of wild color with a melodic noise. “System… Planned this. Stranger. Fool-blind-suffer.”

A pillar of light continued pouring out from Uva. But from within, a gap opened where Adam was, exposing him to the roiling madness that threatened to consume the gate—his gate. But within that chaos, a radiant presence tore through the swirling tides of discord, exploding into existence with an incomparable glare.

Attention: The Starhawk has entered the dimension of Gate Theborn.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The Outside burned. The voice of a raging star shook existence itself. “Outsiders, begone. You have intruded where you do not belong. You have reached beyond your veil, and you have touched one you hold no claim to! Begone, or face the trueness of my Path. I grant you now a mercy you show no others. Take it. Or suffer the consequences.”

The Stranger froze within Adam. It spat a single word before it resumed its twisting and tearing within his soul. “Starhawk. False-god. False-Ascension. Thief of dead stories. Alone against those you chose, your kin-blood-fellows. You are hunted. Come here now? Foolish. Should save power for what is to come.”

“Such is what I am doing,” the Starhawk declared. “It is why Adam Arrow is to live. The System weakened the boundaries to your domain as a lure. And the Pathbearer you seek to bend to your will is but a poison pill you have swallowed.”

“Will still be my pill. Mine. FOREVER! ALWAYS!”

The Starhawk laughed, a melodious but booming noise that tugged at Adam’s heart. The coming radiance faded slightly. Adam caught sight of a thousand celestial wings, all of them glistening as if impossibly sharp geometric fractals. And then at the center of those wings was the shape of a man who bore armor shaped from starlight. He had four arms and two heads: one of a hawk’s, the other helmed, bearing the visage of a warrior. His upper two arms drew back a colossal greatbow, and an arrow forged from the cosmic power of the constellations began to shine. Below, his other hands clutched a massive halberd, something dense, something pitch black, darker than the void itself.

“I will not repeat myself, Stranger. You are not meant to be here. Cease, retreat to where you belong.”

“Mine now, mine!” the Stranger screamed. It yelled from the rupture from where it bled over into reality. It yelled out from inside Adam. It yelled out using Adam.

“Blind to the end,” the Starhawk said. “You have breached the world so cruelly and casually when the System gave you a chance. But you have forgotten something in your anger. We are Outside. In the twilight of the System’s reach. And as such, the Mana Stability Threshold no longer applies. And even if it did, I care little what happens to your realm.”

The Stranger went still.

“Ah, you didn’t think that far. For all your strangeness, you have the temper and foresight of a child,“ the Starhawk said, a hint of humor at the end of his words. And then he fired his arrow. But the arrow didn’t strike the Stranger. No, it tore across existence and slammed into Adam instead. The Gate Lord felt himself detonate, felt his soul come aflame. Adam choked as the divine arrow of a god pierced him, struck into him, struck at the very contamination bleeding over his soul.

The Stranger shrieked. The arrow split ever deeper, descending into the depths of Adam’s being. And new, true colors exploded out from the Young Lord and replaced the eldritch maelstrom of the Outside. They were colors he knew; the pure white of the sun’s stark glow, the rosy-orange tint of dawn and dusk, the azure blue of a clear sky, and the black of deepest midnight. It was all these colors at the same time, and it was none of them.

“Mine!” the Stranger screamed.

“Leave!” the Starhawk intoned, calm but powerful.

Between them, Adam shuddered. He thought he would break. Then he saw Uva falling through the air as the Dreamtaker fully retracted its colors into her, and he remembered Shiv lying there, bleeding. If Adam fell, who was going to look after them? Who was going to protect his team?

“No,” Adam growled. It didn’t matter if he was mad. It didn’t matter if gods were fighting over his soul. He was a Pathbearer. He had a town to save, and he had companions to protect, to spare from the black hand of death.

“Out!” Adam shouted. He directed his strained Dimensionality inward, trying to reach the very plague consuming him, contaminating his skills, and affecting him. “Leave!” His Dimensionality couldn’t sustain anymore. A surge of pain washed through him, so he switched to something else.

He prepared to use Necromancy on himself. He would break his own soul before he let the Stranger have it.

And that was just what the Starhawk had been waiting for. The celestial arrow detonated. The skills the Stranger infested were knocked loose. They rippled as strange, incomprehensible patterns, trembling free from Adam’s body. He struck them with his Necromancy—with his vambrace, willing to destroy himself if it meant spiting the Stranger. But as his corrosive power struck, the world around him flashed with the withering brightness of Necromancy.

And that was how Adam Arrow discovered that the Stranger was more dimension than entity.

It howled. It screamed. Its soul was immense, and the damage he inflicted was feeble. Only the slightest corrosive marks spread through the world, but it was enough to stun the eldritch dimension that was burrowing through Gate Theborn.

And it was long enough for the Starhawk to casually fire another arrow.

A radiant wound sheared through the Stranger’s expanse. The realm bled. Everything the Starhawk’s arrow touched burned and blistered. The arrow winked out of sight, and then came a glittering flash, and a constellation Adam had never seen before bloomed into existence. Stars and raging fire formed a cracking outline within the Stranger.

“TAKE HIM BACK! ENOUGH! STOP! BURN-PAIN-BREAK! ENNOOUGHH!”

Instead, the Starhawk fired his third arrow. Instead of a shaft, it was shaped from a chain of blinding stars, mere seconds before a supernova. The Stranger fled in naked panic, and the colors from the Outside fled with the entity. It was like watching an archer beat an ocean. It was like watching a man push back the horizon. As the arrows seared the Stranger, parts of it broke off and passed over into Adam just before it retracted its essence from his soul. He felt two fragments slip into him. Both filled his soul with ponderous weight.

As the Outside receded back into the crack from which the Stranger spawned, Gate Theborn returned before Adam’s eyes.

“Never forgive you! We’ll always, always remember this! Never! Never! Never! WILL COME FOR YOU AGAIN, ARCHER ADAM! TASTED YOUR PATH! KNOW YOUR FATE! KNOW THE PATHS WHERE CAUSALITY MIGHT LEAD YOU! WILL FIND YOU! WILL CLAIM YOU AND ALL!”

And with a final howl of outrage, the Stranger slipped back through the cracks, and the System sealed the Outside away again.

The boundaries to the semi-Integrated dimensions have been reinforced.

Adam fell. But before he could strike the ground, he triggered his wings again. Six inverted pyramids flared into existence beside Adam. He stilled in the air without any drop. There, he remained as if standing on solid ground, gawking at his Ascendant, his father’s patron god.

“I… Starhawk,” Adam wheezed. “But…”

“I am not the Starhawk,” the divine being declared with a chuckle. “I am merely…” And then the “Starhawk” dissolved into a series of constellations, drifting through the air like fireflies. “…an arrow fired at an opportune moment. My attention is consumed. I am assailed from all sides—hunted by my own. All this is true, as the intruder said. And I cannot unleash my power upon Integrated Earth without grave consequences. Much of what you might have discovered about me is true. I will not lie. But there are pieces you are missing. Pieces of the story that have been misrepresented.”

Adam’s mouth opened and closed. His mind was reeling. He didn’t know how to react.

“Thankfully, I can still fire into the Outside without cost. For the System cares little about that which its mana has not yet infected.”

Infected? Adam thought.

Then, two pulses of power stirred inside him. A heat began to swell.

The Starhawk continued. “Your father struggles hard, Young Arrow. He needs your aid, and soon. Even with my Blessing, even his immense and miraculous power, the divinity vested through my perch, the encirclement of Blackedge strains him. Vicar Sullain is a terrible adversary to have—great enough even to harm something like me, if I am careless. And worse than that, he is set to receive major reinforcement from the Republic itself, though the Inquisition operates against Blackedge for entirely different reasons.”

A sigh came from the Starhawk’s fired arrow. “Grave times are upon us. Multiple wars and grand struggles loom on the horizon. But I am spent as I am. Reach Blackedge. Find your father. Ascend Starhawk’s Perch with whatever force you can muster, with whatever allies you can bring. I see the great flame around you, favored of the System. You have my sympathy, Adam. And my pride. Defy. Fight. Continue.” The Constellations began to dim. “The System has allowed me my presence for only so long. Even this fragment, even this diminutive part of me, cannot linger here, lest I cause a mana storm of horrific proportions.”

The Starhawk’s arrow pointed up, staring at the mana core of Gate Theborn. “Ah, and the System’s hand… subtle and vulgar at the same time. I realized the other things it desired to bear fruit, but not this.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep