Before they even left the forge, Life agreed to trade one of her divine essences for everything Sofia had taken from the admins’ house, so Sofia started to bring the things out from her storage ring one by one.
The documents on the creation of the trial were first, along with all the electrical doodads Sofia had pilfered and the accessories like the Sun Compass, and no one really cared about those. Then she started taking out Anna’s stuff. The clothes, the shoes, and the one strand of blue hair rolled around a small bone.
Lina teared up when Sofia brought out the enchanted robes, she said nothing as she held them with both hands like a fragile historical relic. Clint's facial expression was tense watching all this, and ended up stepping away to walk around in his forge while Lina received the items.
It’s really hers… Lina muttered as she delicately unrolled the hair from the small bone.
Then Sofia stopped bringing out things.
“Is this everything?”Kyle asked, seeing how both Lina and Clint were not in a state to talk much.
“Well, no. There is more… But…”
But? Lina repeated, looking up at Sofia.
“The rest are things related to the Dragon admin.”
Dragon? Lina repeated again. There was no dr- She stopped in the middle of her sentence, and her eyes opened wide. K- Kyle. What did you say this child’s name was, again?“It’s Aphenoreth,” Sofia answered with a smile, “Sofia Aphenoreth.”
Lina stared at Sofia in horror.
“I understand there is no need to introduce my adoptive Uncle,” she continued, “This has allowed me to ‘bring back’ some of the third administrator’s things. Like this picture,” Sofia said as she brought out the group photo of the three admins together.
Space distorted in the forge as Lina’s eyes landed on the picture. Her appearance flickered, and she disappeared. It was more violent than a simple teleportation, as if she got sucked out of reality itself.
What?!
Clint cursed from the other side of his forge, FUCK, NOT AGAI-
He also disappeared, leaving Sofia alone with Pareth and Kyle.
“Wha- What was that? Are they alright?” Sofia asked Kyle, who held his face in his palm.
“They will be alright,” he answered with a sigh, “Life just lost control of her emotions too much and her connection with the physical plane got cut off. Creation got cut off as well because this is one of their restrictions for coming to our plane. They cannot stay away from each other.”
“Does this happen often?” Sofia asked, storing the picture back into her ring.
“No. But this isn’t the first time… They will be back in a matter of hours, at most.”
“Oh. Should we take that time to go to the secret base location then?”
“They’ll kill me if I go without them,” Kyle dismissed the idea, “I would rather hear the full story of how a young human could possibly get ‘adopted’ like this. It was already hard to piece things together from your system records before, and now that everything about you has been deleted…”
“Scripture fucked himself over without realising it is how. I can go into details if you want, but it is a really unbelievable story. Also, I have a favor to ask…”
“Let me guess,” Kyle cut her short, as he sat on one of the forge’s giant anvils, “You want more mana to upgrade your weird skill during the heart forging process, right?”
“H- How do you-”
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“The high-scribes know,” Kyle simply revealed, “Who do you think created the skill? Your scribe did a lot of the work, yes, but could such a young scribe really come up with something this big by themselves?”
“No, but-”
Kyle cut her off again, ”You know what, screw the regulations, let me explain this crap. You’re already involved in so much stuff anyway, who cares. The three high-scribes run the system. HANDLER deals with managing staff and connecting everything together, EXPLORER does what the name implies, and most importantly, DATABASE manages all of everyone’s magic and data. When we sent your signature skill to be approved, DATABASE was the one who upgraded it and HANDLER sent it back to us. So, for your primordial void thing skill, of course DATABASE knew, they had a hand in designing it.”
“Wait wait wait. So you knew I would ask for this from the start?”
“Absolutely not, I just got a notification seconds before you asked. Anyway, let it go, you don’t need any extra mana, you will already get all we can afford to send, because your mana heart needs that much. Since you have a tier three scribe now, they’ll be able to gather what they need from the resulting mana wave. Just like the traitors harvested your sister’s mana wave to fuck with your records.”
Sofia took a few seconds to absorb the flood of new information. “Alright, I get it. But… If I understand things correctly… When ‘the traitors’ as you call them erased any trace of me in the system, they directly attacked the Database high-scribe?!”
Kyle sighed again. “Without Anna around, the high-scribes are vulnerable to attacks from the inside. It was not much of an issue ever, but with Archangels turning their back to the system… This whole situation is a huge mess.”
“That’s an understatement,” Sofia agreed,”It sounds like the very existence of the system itself is in danger, that’s a lot worse than I thought.”
“Hence my previous recommendation. I still stand by my words, stay away from our mess as much as you can, simply focus on getting stronger. This goes for everyone right now, you, your friends, personnel strength is always the best insurance you can have. But I can say this, the system will be fine.”
“How can you be so sure?” Sofia asked. I used to think the system was untouchable but now…
“Everyone stands to lose if the system disappears. Everyone. We expect that they might try to take over, but the system will stay,” Kyle explained while adjusting his hair, “and worst case… Well, this I better not speak about.”
“Thank you for telling me so much either way,” Sofia thanked him with a nod as she sat not too far from him on the huge anvil, her legs dangling in the air, “I understand how weak and insignificant I am in the grand scheme of things. For now.”
That brought Kyle out of his somber mood, he laughed. “For now, she says. Sen was right about you on all counts. Well, I can’t wait to see it, you do have the potential, that I won’t deny. A few more players in the big pond is always good. Shake those old murky waters.”
“Right? I also want to help with the Phageid, if I can.”
“Yeah, that’s also a thing. You really do know a lot. A given considering your name, I suppose. We are going to have rewards for people who help with that, actually, it’s getting worked on right now. But the next eclipse might be a bit soon for you.”
“Will it? I’m growing fast. Level 500 doesn’t feel that far away.”
Kyle stared at Sofia silently for a few seconds. “I’m not even going to say anything. Have you chosen how you want to level up from the options in the book yet?” he asked.
“My Scribe’s got it all figured out. Which one did you use, by the way?”
Kyle laughed lightly, “Ahah, you just figure I was already strong before the system?”
“Call it my feminine instincts.”
“Power-hungry beast instincts, more like, no?”
Sofia shrugged.
“Ancient human method,” Kyle finally answered, “I don’t recommend it for someone who’s already at your level. Too slow. If you ever want to train a human child without having to use the system, though, this is the fastest method for the first hundred levels. Just don’t have them cross the filters without a trial or they’ll be booted out of the system too.”
“Good to know, thanks. Who knows if I’ll ever be able to have children after the race evolution coming my way, though?”
“You can trust Clint,” Kyle said with a smile, “You’re in good hands. If he wants to compete with us Vampires and the Elves, he’s got big shoes to fill.”
“Moon created the Vampires, right?” Sofia asked.
“Yeah. Guess who Moon used as the base?”
“Humans?”
“You got it. Race evolution is mostly a feature intended for humans, though a lot of other races use it. Some monsters can even evolve an intellect sometimes, so they get integrated into the system and get a race evolution… And this is where our blabbering ends, it looks like; they’re coming back.”
“It was great to get to know you a bit better, Kyle.”
“Feelings shared. Now you better get stronger and survive, alright? I’ll be waiting for the story of your adoption.”
“Oh, I totally forgot about that, sorry…”
Clint and Lina appeared in the forge at the exact same spots they had disappeared from.
Aherm. Sorry for the wait. Clint apologized as he adjusted his leather apron.
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