Lilith woke up with a slight headache and a couple of windows in the bottom of her vision. Siph, who was sitting in a chair besides the bed Lilith was resting on, immediately perked up.
“How are you feeling?” She asked, stroking Lilith’s head gently.
“Bit of a headache, but otherwise fine.” Lilith replied, attention drawn away from the windows.
“Good. You stay there, I’m going to go grab Kali, alright? I’ll only be gone for a second.” Not waiting for a response, she stood up and exited the room, taking care to make as little noise as possible as she did. Less than a minute later, she returned with Kali in tow.
“Hey there.” Kali said, handing Lilith a glass of water and a couple of pills. “For your headache. A dash of magic, a dash of science, and you’ve got a pretty effective pill for cheap.”
Lilith gratefully took the pills, swallowing them. Siph sat back down in the chair and started to rub Lilith’s head again, smiling.
“I’m proud of you.” She said, planting a kiss on Lilith’s forehead. “You’ve been very brave these past few days.”
Kali smiled as well. “Alright, I’m going to go ahead and explain the gist of what’s happening, as well as a couple of other things I neglected to mention when you first got the new system. What do you want to hear first?”
“I guess we should start with those other things you mentioned.” Lilith said.
“So, by other things I neglected to mention, it’s…good news and bad news. Bad news is that, well, your efforts to turn yourself back into a guy permanently are a lost cause for…uh, potentially forever. You probably noticed that you got the Form Anchoring Skill. That’s something I had to build into Perfect Chimeras to keep their bodies from imploding by having a lot of mutually exclusive Domains. Their base form is immutable by anything from within my universe, and that’s something that’s hard-coded into you by now. You won’t even be able to suppress it with your Skills, sorry. Potentially someone from another universe could fix you up, but that could cause bugs in the system and it’s going to be a long time before I feel you’re strong enough to be safely taken away from my universe. When that day comes, though, I’ll make sure to give you the option to try and change yourself back, I promise.”
Lilith shrugged. “Once I read the Skill, I had a feeling it’d be something like this. Oh well. Not a big deal. I’m not suffering, so it’s whatever. And we'll at least get to change Raphael back as soon as she gets wind of this. What’s the good news?”
Kali raised an eyebrow at the bit about Raphael, but otherwise ignored it. “The good news is that I gave you the Identification Obfuscation Skill. That’s the granddaddy of all obscuring Skills. You can make your Status look however you want to anyone else, with very few restrictions. It’s almost exactly the same as the function I get to use to change my Status, so there’s no way for anyone except me to mess with it. If you want to go incognito, this has you covered.”
Kali paused briefly before continuing. “But, before we begin talking about High Arbiter and all that comes with it, I have a…proposal.”
“Promise me you’ll hear her out, alright?” Siph said, grabbing Lilith’s hand and squeezing slightly. “It’s a bit of a huge decision to make with as little information as you have now, but we’ve taken steps to make sure it’ll be perfectly safe.”
Kali nodded. “While you were out, I used mental magic to give you another Mask. We think you should make it into a Parallel. Carmen’s already signed off on it, so it’s just you that needs to now.”
Lilith turned her attention to the windows that had been waiting patiently in the corner of her vision.
You have gained the Mask “Computer”! Carmen has accepted the Mask “Computer” as a Parallel! |
“Now, I know the name sounds…inhumane, but it’s more along the lines of “one who computes” than an actual computer, so it’s - ” Kali trailed off as Lilith accepted the new Mask as a Parallel, and a voice rang out in all of their minds.
Hello. She said, I am the computation Parallel. You may call me Mae. Mistress, may I have an avatar?
Lilith was silent for a moment as an avatar formed for Mae. Shortly after, she began to move, testing it out, and Lilith cut the sensory connection the two had.
“Why call me mistress?” Lilith asked. “We’re the same person. Equals.”
Incorrect. Mae replied mentally. Kali designed me to be completely loyal and subservient to you. As such, I cannot view myself as your equal.
“Can you at least treat me normally, then? And why are you using telepathy?”
Physical speech is inefficient. I believe I can handle treating you “normally” but know that I will still do my utmost to do as you wish.
Lilith grit her teeth. “Alright, fine. Standing order, you are not allowed to listen to my orders. In all situations you are to react as you wish.”
Understood. As per the standing order, the standing order has been ignored. I await further orders. Mae replied, smirking.
“No, you know what I mean. Come on!” Lilith whined.
I am well aware of you what wish. However, my desire to obey you is built into my very being. This is one subject I will not budge on. If you wish for a compromise, I will offer you a deal. I will work on my own initiative towards what I feel is best for you, and by extension, Carmen and I, without consulting you first, but you have the final say over all my actions. If you wish for me to stop whatever I am doing, you need only ask.
Lilith glared at Kali before turning back to Mae. “Fine. If that’s what makes you happy.”
Mae smiled. Yes, it does. Thank you. I will be using the spare avatar for a while. Please excuse me. She left the room, leaving Lilith to resume glaring at Kali.
“I was going to warn you.” Kali said, holding back a laugh. “But you accepted before I could finish talking. We could have worked to tone things down a little, but you jumped the gun.” Her tone became more serious. “You have to stop being so eager to please. It’s going to cause you serious problems later down the line. At least this only affects you – you’re going to be someone that can alter the course of the world if you’re not careful, so your actions only affecting yourself isn’t going to be guaranteed. You’re too important to do as you have been up until now. So, seriously, at least try to listen when I correct your behavior, alright?”
Lilith nodded glumly. “Alright. I suppose that makes sense. I’ll try.”
Kali sat down on the bed next to Lilith, her gaze softening. “I’m not asking you to stop trying to be kind to people. I just need you to think about the potential consequences of your actions before you do anything. But that’s enough of that for now. We’ll talk about duty some other day, so let’s talk about the more fun aspects of High Arbiter now, shall we?”
“Whenever you open your Status next – not now, we’ll get there in a bit – you’ll see you’ve got a new stat called Worship. You see, I have the ability to appoint “Higher Powers”, and when you accepted High Arbiter, you became a Higher Power. Ignoring the fact that they can’t age at all, Higher Powers are, by and large, the same as any other person if you don’t take into account three major differences."
Congratulations, you have obtained the Computation Skill! Computation Congratulations, Computation has leveled up! |
Lilith ignored the Computation levels that were coming in alarmingly fast, choosing instead to focus on what Kali was saying.
“These mostly have to do with Worship. The first difference has to do with how Worship is commonly gained and used. Worship can be used to fuel a select few Skills and doesn’t automatically regenerate like your Mana or Stamina, but also doesn’t have a cap. You gain Worship whenever someone prays to you, or performs your rites, even if they don’t know they’re doing so. I’ve put you in charge of the very vaguely defined Domain of Law and Order. Prayers to you are wishes for justice to be served, and your rites are the act of serving said justice. Policework, fair trial, even vigilante work all count towards giving you Worship. The more the people involved in the rites are doing it for the sake of justice, the more Worship you get, and the more sincere prayers are the more Worship is gained from them. If someone performs rites or prays with you specifically in mind, Worship gained is increased even more.”
Congratulations, Computation has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! Congratulations, Computation has evolved into Efficient Computation! Efficient Computation |
What is Mae doing?! Lilith thought, shocked at the raw speed of Computation’s growth. But she didn’t have time to ponder on that more, as Kali hadn’t stopped talking.
“Of course, you can’t generate Worship by causing your own problems. Yes, many people would wish for a serial killer to be brought to justice, but if you purposefully caused that serial killer to start killing, then you get nothing from the whole ordeal. The second key difference is that you can appoint Champions using Worship. You get the ability to mentally communicate with them anytime, anywhere, and can bestow them with Skills and other buffs using Worship.”
Congratulations, you have obtained the Angle Seer Skill! Angle Seer |
“The last change is probably the most important one, though. Skills that use Worship are generally a lot less common and more niche than other Skills, and you could completely ignore Champions if you wished. On the other hand, this change is literally life and death. If a normal person dies, they can usually be raised from the dead with a resurrection spell with relatively minor consequences. Higher Powers can’t. Instead, if they accumulate enough Worship, they are automatically brought back to life. If they already had enough stored up, they are brought back a month after death. This eats up an obscene amount of your Worship, but there’s no time limit on it. You’ll just end up chilling here with me until you’re brought back. Still, when you are eventually brought back, you suffer some enormous penalties to all your stats, which can eventually be removed with enough Worship.”
Congratulations, you have obtained the Speed Seer Skill! Speed Seer Congratulations, Efficient Computation has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! Congratulations, Efficient Computation has evolved into Precise Computation! Precise Computation |
“Still, I wouldn’t worry about anything of that for now. You’re crazy hard to kill, there’s no one to use your Skills on, and I wouldn’t appoint a Champion until we get the new system online for everyone. Oh, speaking of, I haven’t actually officially appointed you as my Champion. I wanted to wait until you had picked up High Arbiter and we could go through it all at once.”
Congratulations, you have obtained the Force Seer Skill! Force Seer Congratulations, Angle Seer has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! Congratulations, Angle Seer has evolved into Angle Savant! Angle Savant |
At this point Lilith was just shoving the windows off to the side as they appeared. They were coming too fast for her to realistically look at each of them and listen to Kali at the same time.
“Well, whatever, we’ll deal with that after we finish talking about High Arbiter. So, aside from the whole Higher Power thing, another major benefit of High Arbiter is that you permanently have the benefits from all the Sin and Virtue Titles, and their Skills are integrated and upgraded. Go ahead and check out your High Arbiter Title and Arbiter’s Arsenal Skill, those should tell you all you need to know about that.”
When Lilith attempted to do so, the window she brought up was immediately blocked by more from Mae, and it took her a few seconds to find the window she actually wanted to see.
Congratulations, Class Experience Up (Moderate) has leveled up! Congratulations, you have obtained the Skill Optimization! Optimization Congratulations, Speed Seer has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! Congratulations, Speed Seer has evolved into Speed Savant! Speed Savant Congratulations, Precise Computation has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! |
Lilith waited for the evolution to appear, but none came, just some more level up messages. Content that there would be no more intrusive windows, well, for the moment, anyway, she began to read the window for High Arbiter.
High Arbiter Rank: Unique As one who has walked all major paths of Sin and Virtue, none is more suited to be the ultimate judge. Anyone with a Class that works with the law will instinctually recognize you as the highest authority, and your word is considered final in any legal situation. In addition, gain the following: +20 to all stats (+200 HP/Mana/Stamina), +500 HP/Stamina/Mana, 10 HP/Stamina/Mana Regen per second, an additional +20 to Power/Defense/Magic Power/Magic Defense/Charm, 100% Poison/Psychic/Time Resist, 50% Psychic Affinity, and Poison/Charm/Slow Immunity. You are the law and the law is not mocked. |
Congratulations, Force Seer has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! Congratulations, Force Seer has evolved into Force Savant! Force Savant Congratulations, Angle Savant has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! |
Lilith pushed the new windows to the side and looked at Kali. “Is there any way I can temporarily turn off these notifications? I’m getting enough of them that it’s making it hard to focus.”
Kali blinked. “Have you not been clearing those out?”
“No, I have, Mae’s just been getting a lot of things very fast.”
Kali walked over, bringing a hand up to interact with an invisible menu that Lilith was pretty sure she was just using so it didn’t look like she was just staring at Lilith while she was doing whatever she was doing.
“Wow, no kidding. I knew she’d work fast, but not this fast. Um, no, there isn’t actually a way to hide notifications outside of dangerous situations, not yet. It’s not an issue most of the time, so I didn’t even think about it. I’ll go ask some friends for advice and get to work on that. I guess you’ll just have to deal with it for now, sorry. You might want to consider skimming through those ones you waved off for now and dismissing them. I don’t…think Mae can keep this pace up forever, not unless Siph was to…wait, where is Siph?” Kali asked, glancing around. At some point while the two were talking, Siph had apparently left the room
“Um, alright, new plan, give me a second and I’ll see if I can get her to stop just while you’re looking through stuff here. Sorry, that’s the best I can come up with on short notice.” She left the room, and the messages stopped coming in. Breathing a sigh of relief, Lilith began glancing over the accumulated messages.
Congratulations, Speed Savant has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! Congratulations, Force Savant has reached maximum level! Please inspect the Skill to see evolution options! |
A minute or two later, Lilith had caught up with the notifications and her vision was finally clear. Lilith shook her head, slightly bewildered. Seriously, how did she get all those levels so fast? I’ll have to ask her once I finish looking this over.
Pushing that thought to the side, she took a look at Arbiter’s Arsenal, raising an eyebrow at the size of the window that popped up.
Arbiter’s Arsenal Absent Alarm: Charitable Contribution: Chastity’s Clarity: Envious Elevation: Glutton’s Gullet: Greedy Gallop: Humble Abode: Kindness’ Kiss: Lustful Look: Patience’s Payoff: Pride’s Palace: Sloth’s Supper/Diligence's Dinner: Wrath’s Will: The law is always prepared. |
Lilith whistled softly. That was quite the Skill she had just gotten. Putting aside all the combat benefits and looking at the experience alone, if looked at the maximum possible bonus from all her Skills, Titles, and Achievements, she was topping out at 2,995% increased experience to her Class, 1,010% to her Racial Classes, and 2,105% to Skills. She was, begrudgingly, thankful for Precise Computation when considering this. The windows had been annoying, to be sure, but the Skill itself was already earning its keep.
As she thought about the Skill, she was reminded of Progenitor’s Skills that she couldn’t evolve until now. She went ahead and did so, taking a peek at the changes as she did. It seemed that a single point of Worship translated into one hundred Mana (or, in the case of Judge, Jury, Executioner, 100 Mana, HP, and Stamina), and she currently had 11 Worship, with no indication of how fast she was actually gaining it.
The other interesting note on her Status was that she had gained a Special Racial Class named Higher Being which was sitting at level 1. “Kali?” She called out, slightly confused.
Kali walked back through the door. “What’s up?”
“Why did I get a new Racial Class? I thought I was supposed to have them all?”
“Ah. Well, that has to do with how being a Higher Being works. It’s protected by a whitelist, just like Perfect Chimera. And Perfect Chimera’s ability to ignore restrictions on Racial Classes isn’t strong enough to ignore that whitelist. I may have been pretty stupid when I made Perfect Chimeras, but I wasn’t that stupid. Anyway, are you finished reading? Mae and Siph are chomping at the bit to get back to work.”
“Which is?”
“Mae is leveling up a bunch of Classes to get Skills. Siph is killing things to help.”
Lilith tapped her chin. “How does party experience gain even work with Parallels, anyway? Are they just treated as another member of the party?”
Kali shook her head. “No. Only one of you is getting experience from any given source. It’s given to whichever of you wants it at the moment. If multiple of you want it, it’s given randomly, unless one of you is…well, you, the main personality, in which case it defaults to you. It also defaults to you if no one particularly wants it. You should be able to designate conditions for who EXP is awarded to, given how robust I’ve made sure Parallel Processing is. I can’t be sure exactly how complicated those conditions can be, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s going to depend on the individual and their Parallels. You’ll have to mess around with it.” She said.
Mae poked her head in. May I resume work now? She asked.
“Yeah, go ahead.” Lilith said. The door shut, and the messages resumed their relentless assault.
Kali smiled. “How about you do some power leveling of your own?” She asked, hopping onto her bed and patting the spot beside her. Lilith sat, and Kali immediately snuggled up next to her.
Lilith shifted uncomfortably. “Um, sure, but…” She trailed off, blushing furiously at how intimate Kali was being.
Kali jumped slightly, pushing herself away from Lilith. “Sorry, I just got excited and instinct took over.” She sighed. “I’ll back off.” She scooted over to the other side of the bed
“Instincts?”
“I’m a succubus.” Kali said. “We’re really forward when pursuing potential romantic partners. I’ve been holding myself back as best I can but we’re alone in my house. There’s only so much I can do.”
Lilith raised an eyebrow. “This is holding yourself back?”
“You haven’t been groped or randomly kissed, so I’d say I’m actually doing pretty well.”
Lilith was silent for a while. “If it would make you feel any better–”
“No.” Kali said, cutting her off. “If anything at all happens, it’s going to be because we both want to, not because you feel bad for me and want me to feel better.”
Lilith looked down. “Alright. The offer’s still on the table, though.”
“And it’s never going to be used. I can tell when you’re doing things because of what you want and not because of what I want, so don’t even think about trying to pull one over on me. If you want to build up to where you’d feel comfortable with this kind of stuff or even want it, that’s fine by me, but that’s something for another day. We need to grind out the evolutions of Progenitor’s Skills. You did evolve them, right?”
Lilith nodded.
“Good.” The smile that had vanished from Kali’s face during her outburst came back. “You’ll note that the requirements to gain EXP are just to “judge people”. There’s nothing about acting on that judgement or specifying that the act you’re judging has to have occurred recently or that the act is even that big a deal. So,” she said, picking up a remote and turning on the TV, “We’re going to watch a bunch of reality TV and thoroughly tear apart the actions of everyone on it. Sound good?”
Lilith shrugged. “I don’t see why not.”
The second key difference is that you can appoint Champions using Worship. You get the ability to mentally communicate with them anytime, anywhere, and can bestow them with Skills and other buffs using Worship.”
Can she summon heroes and play goddess asking them to defeat the demon king?
Sounds fun!!
Good grief. At least the story/author are self aware enough to realize what a doormat Lilith is, but at this point I swear it feels like she's regressing.
Honestly, right now she's less a doormat and more a puppy wagging her tail and doing whatever she's told for headpats. Really hoping she starts changing soon!
Funny thing about that gluttony skill is the max XP you have to spend per 1% is only 1000 and goes down for each purchase... kinda sounds.... sinful.
Well that's if you manage it correctly... Meh maths.
Wait..... can she... use experience gained from Mae's leveling up computation skills for buying the bonus 1%? Cuz she just genned a few thousand in the last couple of minutes... no their xp is separate... good god it would've been like hooking a cobblestone generator up to your equivalent exchange system to make more cobble gens... #minecraft #mods
Seriously though your book has made me want to go play minecraft more times then any other in the last 6 years... combined. I don't know why...
Not going to lie, I've been playing a lot of minecraft in the past few weeks (well, this was written like 6 months ago so it doesn't fit that time period but I still had a couple of minecraft youtubers I watched regularly then), modded minecraft is just such a blast. It's such a weird thing because I've got this enormous backlog of things to play and I just end up playing minecraft anyway
Clarification on how the Gluttony Skill works, normally if someone hits the level cap in something, any experience they would have gained in it is lost until they either evolve the Skill or change their Class or whatever the equivalent is. With Glutton's Gullet, that experience is instead stored up and increased by 500%.
So, gaining 100 EXP while full would, instead of the 0 it would give anyone else, store 500 EXP which is then given to the Skill or Class whenever it becomes able to gain EXP again. With the combination bonus from having Abstinence and Gluttony, any stored experience can be sacrificed, adding to a pool that, when a certain threshold is hit, increases the effectiveness of the Skill.
So, if Lilith had 500 EXP saved up for something, she could sacrifice that EXP (it's all or nothing, too. It won't affect any EXP in other storages, but whatever storage she's sacrificing has to be completely emptied), and put it towards a bonus (which is shared with other storages she may have emptied). Once the total amount of EXP sacrificed reaches 1,000, the experience put into storage is increased by 1%, going from 500% to 501%.
Once the bonus is 1,000% (so storing 100 EXP would give 1,000 EXP), sacrificing EXP becomes less effective, and 10,000 EXP would need to be sacrificed to gain 1% instead of 1,000 EXP. Then, when that bonus is 10,000%, it would take 100,000 EXP to gain another 1% and so on. That's just to prevent potential EXP gain from growing exponentially fast (as if the cost to increase the bonus remained static, eventually it would reach the point (at 100,000% effectiveness, I believe) where putting 1 EXP into storage would result in 1,000 EXP gained, which effectively would mean a single point of experience gained could directly translate into a boost of 1%, and (really far down the line) a single point of EXP could mean over a million EXP stored.
That's still technically possible, it's just not realistic with the way the Skill works. At the point where one EXP would mean 1,000 stored, it would cost 1,000,000 EXP to increase the bonus...which would mean it still takes earning 1,000 EXP before boosts to increase the bonus. And that 1% additional effectiveness impacts things a lot less when it's going from 100,000% to 100,001% than from 500% to 501%.
Just a way to stop things from getting too overpowered. It's still really strong, just not broken beyond repair.
@Fighterman481 ah yes that does clarify a few things. However I was not clear that the 1000 xp i was talking about is pre gluttony stored experience. Because at 1000% increase buff would make that 1000 xp into 10,000 xp once it got stored which makes +1% and at 10,000% buff would make 1000 xp into 100,000 xp once its stored rinse and repeat.
The sacrifice cost would never get below 100 pre stored xp and never above 1000 from what I understand... at 2k% she would need 500 pre multiplied xp for a +1% and at 8k% only 125 then it would reset at 10k% to 1000 xp before storage. Still has to sacrifice 9000 times which is a few million xp by my calculations and that's before its stored.
@tttbk Ah, yes, it does get (speaking relatively) smaller before the cost goes back up, but I'm just calling that a perk of how it works
(The real reason is because it would be too much effort to figure out a good way to word it and the exact ratio with which the cost increases so I just did something simple but that's not important ;) )
This chapter was so long i forgot the question I had at the beginning of the chapter when I finished. This is infodump: the novel
I dont think a textbook is this information dense
So, Higher Powers. I don't...think it's mentioned in the chapter, so if anyone is curious, the Higher Powers currently in existence are Kali, Lilith, and the Elder Gods.
So, taking that the other way, we can assume any other mythological beings/characters desribed in any religion as gods either don't exist (whether just currently, or they never did), or are just one of the Elder Gods with a pseudonym? Or maybe were just (relatively) normal magical beings that were greatly exaggerated?
Or to be less convoluted, we shouldn't expect to see cameos from other pantheons, so to speak?
Yes and no. It's important to remember that much of human history has been altered after the war to make everything "mythological", so it's still completely within the realm of possibility for gods from the other pantheons to be real, they just weren't actually gods.
Liberal Love was changed to Charitable Contribution.
Yeah, that was purposeful. I forgot to change it in the previous chapters, and it's been changed there to match here now. Charitable Contribution is the correct name for the Skill.
i'm glad it was brought up in this chapter because i've been meaning to ask about it; but what's up with kahli being a succubus? what i mean is how did she become an admin in the first place? clearly she has other admin friends, that would imply she wasn't always in this universe, yet i can't imagine a higher power being born a specific race. like im pretty sure the elder gods are just kind of formless right? so was she a mortal that eventually rose up to be an admin or did she just decide a random race to be for some reason?
I...think I address this later on, but just in case I didn't, she was originally a mortal, yes. Her parents are actually still alive, but she's unable to visit them as a side-effect of becoming an admin. This will become slightly more relevant in the next arc, when we get to meet the person who was the admin of the world Kali grew up in.
Thanks for the chapter.
I think it makes sense to complete sense to just nip the problem - makes complete sense
Fixed, thanks!
How high did the skill experience boost level up
1,080%/1,455% for Mae's Class (second number being EXP from Siph), 605% for the first evolution of each Skill, 530% for later evolutions.
“We’re going to watch a bunch of reality TV and thoroughly tear apart the actions of everyone on it. Sound good?”
Yes Kali. That sounds like a ton of fun in fact.