Lilith was reading alone in her room when she was interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in!” She said, looking up from her book. The door opened, and Kali stepped in, shutting and locking the door behind her.

Lilith felt a…pressure of sorts, much like she had when the Council was all together in her living room, only stronger.

Much stronger.

Kali let out a sigh of contentment. “It feels good to let my hair down every now and then.” She said, smiling brightly as she turned to Lilith. “Alright, so, time for me to spill the beans. I’m not really a member of the Council sent to keep an eye on you.”

Lilith felt a knot growing in her stomach. “Then…you’re with the Society? I can’t imagine someone capable enough to deceive the Council and obviously working with some agenda is just a free agent…”

Kali laughed. “Yes and no. Mostly no. But, kid, if you think those two are the only factions kicking around, you’ve got another thing coming.” She walked over to Lilith, sitting down on the bed next to her. She adopted a more serious expressions as she looked at Lilith’s increasingly alarmed face.

“Ah, my bad. I might have gone a little too far there. Calm down, I’m not here to hurt you in any way, I was just trying to mess with you a little by being vague. No, truth is, I’m something of…well, let’s call me the Administrator. I’m the one responsible for creation, maintenance, and expansion of this particular universe.”

She flicked a finger, and the two were suddenly standing in a completely different room, although it also appeared to be a bedroom of sorts. It was roughly 20 feet on each side, decorated liberally with all kinds of stuffed animals and cushions. To one side of the room there was a desk with a computer on it, next to a bookshelf filled with books. Directly across from the bed was an entertainment center filled with gaming consoles and games below a TV mounted on the wall. The pressure was nearly gone in this room; Lilith had to strain to even feel it. It was as if the room itself was absorbing the excess energy, or at least redirecting it away from Lilith.

“I’m afraid that, unfortunately, I can’t really give you any satisfactory proof that I am who I say I am. All this might well be an illusion I’ve somehow put on you, despite your resistances.” Kali said, flopping onto the bed. She’d changed into pajamas during the transition, and Lilith couldn’t help but feel like that was a strange thing to do, given the subject matter at hand.

“I just like being comfortable in my own home is all.” Kali said, not even attempting to hide the fact that she was reading Lilith’s mind. “Yeah, it’s rude, but right now it’s important I know how you’re feeling. Don’t wanna overload you.” She patted the bed next to her. “Come sit down, make yourself comfortable. Can’t have you standing on any sort of ceremony.”

“But…” Lilith said weakly. “Aren’t you…god?”

Kali shrugged. “You could say that. I wouldn't. I’m not omnipotent, and I’m certainly not omniscient, or we likely wouldn’t even be here. What’s important is that I’m the same person I’ve always been. I haven’t put up a front or even used a fake name while I’ve been down there, so nothing has actually changed.”

Hesitantly, Lilith sat down next to Kali.

“That’s better.” Kali said, beaming at her. “So, let’s continue with the bean spillage, shall we?” She took a breath before continuing. “So, you’re here because I need your help. No, don’t give me that look, it’s true. So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the magic system is kind of a huge mess. You don’t even know you’ve gotten something new until you go through some sort of identification magic, conditions for unlocking things are unclear, even the exact benefits of any given thing are often vague. To be honest, it’s just an enormous pain to work with. The whole thing is dreadfully inefficient, from the user’s end, to the administrator’s end, to the energy consumption. I got all cocky when I was younger and tried to make something on my own and ended up with this."

“Unfortunately, I can’t just up and change the whole thing on a whim. Believe me, if I could I would have done that ages ago. The last time I tried to even incorporate something new into the system we got the eldritch, and, if my peers are to be believed, that’s one of the simpler things to put into any given world. The system I made just couldn’t handle the new information, and it ended up harming almost anyone who got those abilities. So, I made the whole thing off-limits and made some simple AIs to act as the Elder Gods in hopes of driving people away."

“As for where you come into this, let’s talk about Perfect Chimeras. As you know, Perfect Chimeras are tied more intimately to the system than just about anything else, including me. Think of it like this – if everyone had read access to the system, you would have read-write access, and I would be someone who could mess with the hardware, but not much of the software. So, I was hoping to be able to work together with you to be able to introduce the changes I want.”

Lilith nodded. “Alright, that makes sense…I think. Still, why me in particular? Aren’t there other Perfect Chimeras?”

Kali grimaced. “That is correct. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t really work for what I have in mind. They’re far too conservative after living this long and would probably never agree to something like this. And it’s not like Perfect Chimeras are a dime a dozen, either. I have to personally mark someone as a Perfect Chimera, which is pretty draining. So, rather than expend all that energy at once on a person who might not even get me my desired result, I decided to make an investment that I think paid off rather well."

“During that war, I decided that I would nudge things to go the way they did. When it was eventually over and that massive spell was attempted, I was the one who did all the heavy lifting. The spell itself was modified by yours truly to just siphon their mana to me so I would have the excess of power needed to temporarily block the inhabitants of Earth from using the system, mostly erase their memory of it, and create Haven for people to use."

“There were a few benefits to this. First, I got to see what would happen if people were still generating magical energy but couldn’t use the system. The result were cryptids, by the way. Those mostly got cleaned up by the Council once they were seen, but it was rather fascinating to watch new life spontaneously generate. That aside, the second big benefit was instilling a spirit of technological advancement into people from Earth, which should help bump up the tech level significantly. The third benefit is preparing people for what’s to come. I planted the seeds of what I want into the media from Earth, which in turn filtered over to Haven. I’m hoping that this will ease the transition to the new system a bit more, so I’m not just dropping everyone in blind."

“Lastly, it gave me some wiggle room to work with in making you. I’ve been subtly altering Tunem’s divinations to lead him towards this specific outcome, specifically getting Vithi to you. I wanted that stored power to be in a form I could use, and I wanted there to be a lot of it. So, I got him to store her with some things that were leaking mana, guided him to you, and we ended up here. As for why you in particular, your temperament matched what I needed, and I thought you were cute. Nothing more to it, really.”

Lilith frowned. “If you thought I was cute, why change me into a girl? Actually, can’t you just change me back?”

Kali’s smile, which had returned to normal as she talked, cramped again. “Honestly, not my choice there. That was all on Darragh. I added the mental components of your change and chased that weasel away after he pulled that stunt, but the damage was done.” She quickly shook her head, holding her hands out in front of her. “Don’t get me wrong, though! I swing both ways, so I still thing you’re just as cute! Unfortunately, you’re in kind of a rough position for me to do much to. Remember, I’m not omnipotent. Even though my mind magic is the best there is, outside of that I’m only moderately skilled in other types of magic. To go back to the previous analogy, if I wanted to try and change you permanently, I’d have to do it by messing with the hardware of the system, which could lead to irreparable damage, and I’m frankly just not confident in doing it safely. I’m really hoping this new system will allow me to get to the level where I can interfere like that more, but it’s just not in place yet.”

“Alright, fair enough.” Lilith said, “But I still don’t get how I can help here.”

“Getting there, getting there. So, I was rather fortunate I made Perfect Chimeras the way I did. Well, at least in this specific situation. So, like just about everything else with this system, I royally messed up making Perfect Chimeras. I recently found that I unintentionally introduced a backdoor to the system with them; changes made to a Perfect Chimera’s internal system have the potential to alter the system as a whole if the changes come from outside the system. Once I found that I did my best to hotfix it, but I’ve intentionally left it open in your case, since I plan to exploit it to change the system more naturally this time. I tried it with Eldritch abilities as a proof of concept, and from what I can tell it’ll work great once I get the new system up and running."

“So, I basically just need you to be the first to get the new system. And then, after everything is officially implemented, I’m going to need you to help me smooth things over with everyone. You see, I’m planning to undo the thing keeping people from Earth using magic, and then link Earth and Haven more permanently. And, as you can guess, that’s going to cause some friction. The Society should pretty much fall apart into individuals who, well, a lot of the core group is probably going to find some excuse to stay together and search for power, but the group as a whole should be greatly diminished. No, the real problem’s going to be the Council.

“Thanks to Elenoa’s faction, they’re probably going to throw a hissy fit the moment things change. I’ve already prepped their information division to collapse when it happens, which should help blunt their fangs, but they’re probably still going to try and dominate the people from Earth even more than they already have. So, I’ll be needing you to be the muscle that prevents them from doing that.”

Seeing Lilith’s worried face, she laughs. “Don’t worry about it. I’m going to give you an enormous head start in the new system, as well as a few unique benefits for working so closely with me. They shouldn’t stand a chance against you until well after the danger period is past and the people from Earth can reasonably stand up for themselves.”

“Now, the catch is that while I’m getting the new system set up, I’ll be needing you to stay here with me, and that could take a few months. I’m going to disconnect you from Carmen, leave her behind, and mess with everyone’s memories, Carmen included, to make them remember her as the only active personality until you come back. Fortunately, I’ll be able to bring Siph here to act as company and a bodyguard, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

She extended a hand to Lilith. “If you accept, I’ll let you in on the details of the changes, and we’ll begin immediately. If you don’t, I’ll return you to the academy, and you’ll forget this whole conversation. So, will you help me?”

Lilith hesitated for only a moment before grabbing the hand. “I’m in.”

Kali’s eyes lit up. “Awesome, I knew I could count on you! So, details!” She sucked in a large breath before continuing. “So, I want to transition the world to a system more like a video game’s system. Levels, stats, skills, that sort of a thing. The biggest reason for this is that it’ll apply some sort of rigid structure to the formless mess I’ve created, but I’ve got a couple of other hopes for it.”

“First off, I’m hoping that it’ll help the inhabitants of this world grow stronger. Right now, everyone’s too busy with either surviving or dealing with the enemies that no one is really getting any more powerful. By giving a tangible measurement of strength that grows in easily understood ways, I’m thinking people will be incentivized towards improving themselves. By and large, everyone is either on Earth and unable to do anything in this regard, or cooped up in one of the three cities on Haven, content to just sit there because venturing outside is too dangerous. This means that on the magical side of things, there’s next to no innovation occurring.”

“Second, I’m hoping it’ll give me a little more leeway to interfere directly with people’s magic, so I’m not stuck as powerless as I am now. Which directly translates into my third objective, getting ready to expand my influence. I’ve only been able to grab planes that no one else wants because I don’t have the force to back up anything more. So, more planes, more resources, easier lives for everyone involved.”

“So, my plan right now is to use you as a way to ease the systems I want together. Last time I tried to just force them, we ended up with magic that made people insane by just knowing it. I’m going to mess around with the metaphorical hardware while you install the metaphorical software. Once I’m satisfied everything’s working as intended, we’ll roll out the new stuff to everyone. Let me know when you’re ready, and then I’m going to knock you out while I tinker with the magic system. Don’t want anything going wrong while that’s happening. Any questions?”

Lilith frowned. “A lot, but nothing that can’t wait. Go ahead, I guess.”

“Perfect! See you in a few hours!”

And everything went black.

Fighterman481

OK. Here we go. The biggun. 

So, uh, where do we begin.

Well, in the sake of full transparency, we'll start with the more meta talk for this chapter. If I'm being real, I could honestly throw half of what Kali's saying into this author's note and the opinions would match 100%, even if they're the same for different reasons. I began this story somewhere from a year to two years ago (I don't remember when, honestly), and in my excitement, I came up with the magic system we've been using most of this time.

And then I took a break from writing it for a while, came back, wrote some more, took another break, and in that time I started reading a lot of web fiction. Lots of translated web novels, and more recently a lot of things on here and Royal Road. When I began work again, I very quickly realized that my system was hot garbage.

While I was working, I found that I didn't even really understand what was going on under the hood half the time and I couldn't really accept that. To make matters worse, there was no clean way to scale power. Whether or not this is a drawback is entirely dependent on the story being written or read, but I feel for what I want I need a better way to keep myself in line when making the scale of the protagonist's power.

So, having been reading a lot of litRPGs lately, I thought that a litRPG or gamelike system would actually fit pretty well with what I needed. Unfortunately, that would require a massive rework of the story that I know I wouldn't be able to do, as I'd lose motivation to work on the project from doing such a thing.

Then I realized I don't need to retool the story. I didn't exactly have a direction before, not beyond a vague "resolve the Society/Protectorate conflict", and the more I thought the more I liked the idea of exploring what a world that just transitioned to this sort of system would be like, and dealing with the fallout from that. That gave me both direction and a way to escape the awful magic system I made.

You can see the lack of direction pretty well with the school arc before this. I tend to focus on a scene when writing, finding myself unable to even think about what happens after that without actually writing the thing, and so I wrote a lot on impulse. I had the idea for being dropped into the Wildlands for a long time, and during that school arc I had nowhere to go so I just sort of...threw it in. And then I realized I didn't have enough engaging content to keep it going for more than what was happening, so I ended it.

Now that I'm actually posting this thing somewhere, I'm going to attempt to clean up my act with how I write, and actually plan a bit more so as to bring out a better finished product. And that's also why I want to rewrite the last 20ish chapters - to bring them up to the quality I want to give from here on out.

Why Kali specifically? I have no clue. When I thought about this, my first thoughts went to Kali and it just seemed right.

As my last bit of meta talk, I drew a fair amount of inspiration from World Keeper for what's going on on Kali's level of things. That being said, I'd like to think that what's actually happening is different enough that I'm not just straight up ripping it off, but the general concept of a being that is in charge of the systems of the universe and the notion of there being other universes with their own administrator is pretty heavily inspired by it. Again, though, the rest of the stuff that's happening on that level isn't quite the same and we won't be focusing on it nearly as much (at least, not for a long time. If we do, it'll end up being after this portion of the plot is resolved. It'd basically be the start of a new 'book'. I don't have anything really planned for that now, though.)

That aside, let's talk about in-story stuff.

First things first, Addendum B to The Talk. The hard limit for number of people in a long-lived race is set by Kali. And can be changed whenever she feels like it. She does not feel like it at the moment, not with the way things are now. This will likely change in the future when things settle down more.

For Kali, this all started 4000-5000 years ago when she realized her mistake and started experimenting with ways to change the magic system. Unfortunately, the one she made was not very cooperative with her, and she ended up introducing the Eldritch. The reason it drives people mad has an innate incompatibility with her current system (well, more the system has an incompatibility with it and everything else), and having both at once is not great for people.

Still, she didn't give up just yet. She put in some work, and about 1000 years later she came out with her next attempt, The King in Yellow. It wasn't called that then, but it was basically a book that contained a master copy of the inner workings of both systems, and she hoped by introducing that to people they would be able to separate the systems well enough that it wouldn't cause problems.

It caused problems. Really bad problems. So, she tried to censor it by turning it into a play titled The King in Yellow. It didn't work. While the words themselves changed, the knowledge still wormed its way into people, driving them mad. So, she pulled some strings and got it banned.

And then she researched. It was during this period of research that war started brewing on Earth due to lack of resources. This sent her into panic mode, and she went and begged one of her friends to help her get a plane that would have resources for the people from Earth.

In the chapter she offhandedly mentions being able to grab planes. In this world, there are two main types of universe. One is simply a "universe", which is a term referring to all the planes under a given person's control. These "planes" are basically just worlds within the universe, and travel between them is possible with planar magic or sufficiently advanced technology. That's not to say that there's only one habitable planet (or even a habitable planet) within any given plane, and the sizes of them vary wildly. Due to the mess of a magic system and the war going on, Kali's been unable to get anything but the leftover planes, which are what the demiplanes like Tunem's place are. They're basically just really small planes that she pretends people within her universe had made.

Now, the issue with getting this plane from a friend is that it's WAY beyond the level of what the average person in Kali's universe can handle, but she needs it bad and so takes it anyway.

So, she gets this plane, segregates the two factions, and starts looking more in-depth at the system, and comes across the Perfect Chimera backdoor. And she starts to hatch a plan. She'll use a Perfect Chimera to properly integrate her system with the Eldritch, and if that works she'll integrate her system with a better one suggested by friends she was too stubborn to listen to the first time around (which is not a dig at me in real life, by the way. That's completely in universe stuff).

Unfortunately, the four she currently has all have the "eldritch is bad" mindset firmly engraved in them, and so she began looking for someone who didn't have that nearly as much.

So, the mastermind behind just about everything that's happened so far is Kali. She worked her way into the inner circles of both the Society and the Protectorate, and used her superior prowess with mental magic to influence the way things worked.

She applied the mental effects to Lilith, as well as to Raphael (Carmen says she did it, but it was actually done by Kali, who tweaked Carmen's memories to make her think she did it), gave Lilith The King in Yellow, manipulated King's knowledge to get outcomes she wanted, orchestrated the Society attack on Tunem's plane and broke the teleport in such a way that it sent them to Siph, all to get to this point. She wants Siph for some muscle right after the systems integrate within Lilith, as she'll be fragile until she levels up some more, and she'll basically be having Siph force-feed Lilith levels by killing things while in a "party". While normally this wouldn't work due to them using different systems, thanks to King's Knowledge and Familial Bond, there'll be enough of a connection to do so.

She'll be using Carmen as a convenient way to get more knowledge into Lilith while this happens, preparing for the official merger. She's been manipulating the Council to get Lilith easy access to all these forbidden books the whole time, and she's not going to stop now.

Oh, and if you're wondering, now that Lilith's getting that third integration done successfully, her copy of King's Knowledge (and hers alone, although that's a moot point since no one else will be getting it, as Kali's going to confiscate every single copy of The King in Yellow after she determines the merger to be a success) will hold the "master" set of knowledge for all three systems, and is going to continue to be absurd.

While I'm sure I'm forgetting something in all this, my last bit in the author's note is going to be spilling the reason why Lilith can't change back to her old form permanently. It'll be brought up in either the next chapter or the chapter after, so it's not too big a spoiler, but it technically is one so I guess don't read this if you don't want to know yet?