I could not see my own hands or body! I knew I was there, but it was all blurred out of existence like the dude who’d trashed the suit.

I continued to scream.

“Ambulance! Ambulance!”

I needed an ambulance right now! The suit had damaged me on an existential level! I tried to unlock my phone but it didn’t recognize my fingerprint.

Immediately, I ran out of my room/home and into the stairway. “Ambulance! I need an ambulance! I’m getting erased!”

“Out of the way!”

“Oof!”

I was shoved aside by an elderly wizard with a very mean looking staff and multiple arcane glyphs hovering around him that emanated immense pressure, freezing me in place. A conga line of others with foci and magics out ran after him.

“I lost the signal!” one of them shouted.

“It’s somewhere here.”

“No, it must’ve warped away.”

“We should turn back!”

People kept running past me despite me doing my best flailing and crying in panic. “Ambulance! I need an ambulance! The suit deleted me!”

None of them stopped, however.

I started crying and pondered the cruelty of our modern multidimensional evil overlord wizard society. Was a little old Nol truly so useless that they’d watch me erode from existence, rather than lend a helping hand?

I guess I was.

After some more sobbing, I crawled back into my room. Fine. If nobody was calling an ambulance for me, then I would die alone inside a locked room and leave a huge nasty warp stain behind. That’d show them!

I lay down and accepted death.

An hour later, after taking a dump, regaining my body, and realizing whatever had happened was just an extra perk of the suit, I was ready to inject the artifact with a [System]. 

A cheap bootleg base version of the popular one used in System Apocalypse 12. It was the only one I’d ever used during a system engineering lecture. Even with the child-friendly user interfaces, I doubted I’d have been able to work the newer ones. This one I could trust though.

I scratched open the plastic packaging, slipped the injector handle around my fingers, removed the safety tip, plunged [System] injector against the artifact, and pressed. Liquid made up of four dimensional numbers and colors beyond reality’s spectrum entered the suit on an existential level.

Bright yellow starlight began hissing out of the suit. It began flailing and flapping around as if possessed as [System] juice dug its claws into whatever magic the artifact possessed. Despite having no one inside, the suit’s writhing reminded me of a person dying from their head getting drilled open (like that necromancer dude in season 24 of System Apocalypse).

With my job done, I tuned off the suit’s death throes and caught up on season 54. The  [Returnee] was having one of those moments where she walks through a room, owns everything instantly because she’s lived through it before, and then ignores the gawking onlookers with a cool line, and keeps on moving. So relatable! Also, her level went up and she earned a new [Title]! Oh damn, oh damn, shit was getting hype.

I’d gotten tired and napped at some point. The beeping of a [System] alert woke me up.

Yawning, I sat up to find the suit had crawled to my old school supplies. In its last moments, it had grabbed a pencil and written on the floor.

“I was once alive. My name is…”

Thank goodness it hadn’t managed to finish that, or I might’ve felt sorry for whatever echo had been used to create its magical energies. Welp, time to test if I still had enough grey matter left to calibrate a [System].

I sat down beside the suit and pressed the tiniest amount of mana into it in a practiced hand-shake information package.

A jolt ran through me as the [System] latched onto my mana. A single blue screen pressed itself into my mental imagery.

[Handshake protocol recognized.]

[Calibrating interface…]

[Calibration complete.]

[Enter key code.]

“Crap. Where’s the box? The box?”

I rummaged around trash for the plastic wrapping the injector had come with. It had a tiny paper slip with a 248 number code on it. Took me a bit to type it into the box, but I did.

[Root access user recognized.]

Screens began popping up in my vision. Lots of overly complicated data about the details of the artifact’s power source, the type of energy it emanated, energy generation, sentience levels, soul intensity, reality level, the list went on. Thousands upon thousands of pages worth of data.

I skipped it all and went straight into the options menu. Then I started fiddling around.

System personality came with various sliders. There was a snarkiness slider, an ominousness slider, obtrusivity slider, encouragement slider, raging alcoholicness slider, mischievousness slider, and plenty more funny personalities to pick and customize from! Personality settings even had an open box where you could type and have [System] then generate a new personality based on it. Or, you could insert a soul or some other personality engram straight in and use that as a base.

I was pretty sure that a snarky setting would have destroyed me with one mean comment, so I put that into minimum and slid encouragement to maximum.

[Congratulations! Settings successfully changed :)]

“Yeah, go me.”

[Good job!]

Maybe a bit too much? Felt a bit patronizing.

I played around with it a bit, before settling at 55% encouragement, 25% pervy wingman uncle who wants to get the user laid, and 25% wise cultivation mentor. Going over the 100% in personality usually gave the [System]s some extra zest.

Next I changed the user interface. I clicked off pretty much every advanced setting I could find and enabled the baby tutorial wheels.

My vision cleared as the countless data streams and info boxes disappeared. Sweet bliss! 

[Would you like to adjust user experience next?]

“Yep, let’s go.”

[System] opened one window with a few user experience settings. The most important one was a Handholding Slider, which defined how much the [System] helped you use magic. The hardmode forced you to actually learn to control and understand magic yourself and use your brain and stuff (no thanks). The lower end basically did all the magic for you and reduced the learning experience to screens that popped up when you did stuff and said [Skill Obtained!], [Level Up +1], [Xp Obtained], [New Quest: Cast Fireball].

In other words, a maximum numbers go BRRRRRR smoothbrain option. I slid the slider as down as it went.

[Congratulations! While learning can be rewarding, research shows that smooth brain option has maximum reachability and user enjoyment. Your end users will for sure love this setting.]

“Yeah, I’m sure I will.”

[Root user, are you the end user? How wonderful. Would you like to engage dual mode as a root access and user?]

“Yup. Let’s go.”

[Quest obtained: Finish adjusting the settings. Reward: ???]

I got goosebumps. My first quest? Damn, and a mystery reward? I couldn’t help but giggle.

“Let’s go! We can do this,” I said, channeling my inner Edvard Evryman from System Apocalypse season 54 (he’s dead by now, but he was kinda wholesome for a bit).

I checked the arcnet settings, but everything was already grayed out, thank goodness. Might’ve been in trouble if my [System] went online and told the big people upstairs I hadn’t filed and wasn’t gonna file taxes on this thing.

Then I went to the infamous ‘twist’ settings. This was the bit that made System Apocalypses so entertaining to watch. There was stuff like making your [System] sentient and an enemy of the wizard overlords, making it believe it was a captive God, making it maximize entertainment value instead of power gain, or making it obfuscate the underlying magic system from the users on purpose, only to reveal them as a season finale twist.

At the top there was a small box that allowed you to define your own ‘purpose’ for the [System]. 

I typed in, “Help me earn worship and live lazy. I’m da queen of all the dimensions and total goddess. Life is fake. Nothing is real YOLO!”

[Purpose accepted. YOLO.]

“Eyyy… Let’s go pal.”

[Let’s go.]

“High five.”

A virtual palmprint appeared in my vision. I slapped it. Confetti filled my vision.

[Congratulations! High five successfully administered. High Fiving level +1]

“Sweet.”

[That was a joke. Would you like to continue with the setup? I suggest defining the level of freedom vs guidance next.]

“Uhh… What’re those again?”

[Do you want to be able to design your own build or have me guide it by providing specific options?]

“I dunno, give me like three options or something? They always get three to five in System Apocalypse, so you get an illusion of choice. It’s fun.”

[Guidance set to severe.]

[Would you like to define the user controls next?]

“Sure, suggest stuff for me.”

[Certainly! You have three options!]

 

[Mental activation: Powers and abilities are activated mentally. This requires the least amount of effort and thus aligns with your ‘lazy’ goals.]

[Gesture activation: Powers are activated through easy gestures and/or words. This could help you cultivate a divine queenlike demeanor.]

[Digital interface: A forever popular option. Accessed through mental controls and physical movements alike, this allows you to maximally gamify your experience. This aligns well with your YOLO and Life is fake goals.]

 

“Hmmm…” All of the options had their advantages. “That’s a tough one.”

[Take your time. If you’re having trouble deciding, I would suggest thinking back to your core goal.]

What did I want to do with this suit and system? Essentially, it was to be someone else. Okay, I’d made up my mind.

I selected the digital interface.

[Digital interface added!]

[Excellent choice, we are almost finished with your first Quest!]

“Nice! Can you show me a progress bar for the Quest?”

[Quest progress 95%]

Ohh… sweet stars. 95%? I couldn't wait to finish that imaginary bar! “Show me the last options.”

[Beware, this is a tough one…]

Several sliders and open boxes to type in appeared.

1. Power Ceiling. What is the estimated top ceiling of your System’s typical end game user? 
2. Scaling. What size of power ups should levels represent? Should they be linear or exponential?
3. What is the estimated growth speed for your energy source?

“Urgh.”

[The task is difficult, but you are almost done.]

[Quest progress 96%!]

What? The progress bar had gone up an entire percent from me just looking at the task? Damn, I had to do it now. Four percent I could complete.

With sluggish motions, I began the labor.

The Power Ceiling question I answered with, “Fuck if I know. Figure it out yourself, you’re the System.”

Scaling question I answered with, “I told you I wanna be goddess already ty.”

Expected speed question I just left empty. I had no clue and couldn’t be arsed to figure it out.

“There,” I sighed, slumping into the ground. “Done.”

[Quest progress 100%!]

[Quest complete!]

[Prepare for a reward!]

Okay, maybe I put the smooth brain option a little too smooth. I didn’t need so many boxes.

[Smooth brain slider lowered lightly.]

“Thanks.”

[Quest reward: Divine Avatar. Divine Avatar is a catch-all term for the disguises and simulacrum that deities use to infiltrate mortals. They are potent sources of divine energy. Your Divine Avatar has been formatted and blanked for you to customize it to your desires!]

[Divinity: 7900]

[Domains: Illusion]

[Manifestations: Awe, (New manifestation slot!), (New manifestation slot!)] 

 

[Attributes: 79 (20 new points!)]

[Brawn: 30]

[Speed: 29]

 

[Congratulations! You have two new manifestation slots for new abilities and 20 unused Attribute points! Would you like to make your selections now?]