Otjag

Rewritten: 08.06.2022 17:40 (I'm german, so if you are american or do the date the same way as them sorrryy)

Carl slowly regained consciousness and opened his eyes. In front of him was true nothingness, no light and no matter, the definition of black. 

There was nothing except for the rip in space. Cracks were reaching outward from it like space was ice and then closed again. The rough edges of the rip were constantly shifting, causing the space around the rip to ripple.

On the other side of the rip the gray landscape of a moon extended to the horizon. There were craters and impact sites of meteoroids everywhere. The place was truly desolate.

Over the horizon Carl could actually get a glimpse of the edge of a planet with all too many clouds.

He was sure he had closed his eyes on a wooden bench inside of a park the last time he was conscious.

Carl deliberately used the word conscious. Waking up felt quite different to the disorienting feeling of regaining consciousness.

This situation was quite strange in many ways. Carl had planned for the cold night in the park to be his last one and this was sure as hell not the afterlife. 

He had somehow slowly lost his reason to live, but was unable to kill himself. Everytime he had tried he had broken down in crying and emotional mess until only a hollow husk of himself was left. Carl's last try had been to freeze to death.

He looked at the rip in space again. Had he been reborn as something weird like in one of the many novels he had read to pass his time?

Carl tried to close his eyes again, but was unable to do so. Strange indeed. He tried to move his body next and discovered that there was no body to move.

Carl panicked and wildly looked around. He could move his viewpoint, but there was nothing around him except for the rip in space. He denied calling this portal.

Focusing on the rip he managed to calm down again. Carl tried to look at his situation rationally, but he did not manage to go further than what the hell was going on and what he should do. 

What could he even do right now?

A light blue screen similar to one of an rpg game with a more modern menu style appeared before Carl.

Integrating…

He was stunned for a second. Then all the implications of world systems or him being trapped inside a simulation came to Carl's mind.

He decided to ignore the latter. It was stupid to waste time on such a topic as one couldn’t do anything about it anyways.

Carl decided that he liked the possibility of a system governing existence much more. He had read a lot of litrpg and lost himself in the worlds where doing something would always reward you.

Carl thought that such a world would be a lot better than earth, where some people tried and tried, but there was no escaping their situation.

A second much larger screen appeared.

Status

Name:

Race: Mana core

Age: &%45?

Level: 1

Structural integrity: 100%

Mana: 100/100

Mana regeneration: %ۤ?/??

STATS

Strength: 1 (Str)

Intelligence: 1 (Int)

Wisdom: 1 (Wis)

It showed a game like status, but left his name empty. He likely had to name himself and Carl decided to use this chance to try and begin anew. He just assumed that he had died now and hoped nobody would come and shatter his new world view.

Carl was a mana core. He had no idea what that was. Maybe something like a dungeon core? That might be nice.

At least as long as he had the option to leave. Carl liked having options.

The assumed system had some kind of problem with his age and mana regeneration, but he had no idea what was wrong there.

Another screen appeared, only this time it had a red hue.

 …Error…

Please define time and distance, measurement can be taken from memory.

 That at least answered why there was no information containing time in his status. It did not make sense to have every person choosing their own measurement units. That would create a huge mess nobody could work with. So either he was special or the system was weird.

Carl was not a fan of viewing himself as special. He was not, at least not in his opinion.

He also would have liked a bit more time to analyze his status. He had mana, so does that mean there was magic? What is 1 unit of mana and what exactly were his stats doing? 

Sadly there was no one he could complain to about having not enough time, so he went on with the measurement definition.

Carl thought about it a bit. He could make a dezimal system for time like there was one for distance, but then converting time to something he could understand better would be a pain in the ass.

He took the units of his old life. 60 seconds were a minute, 60 minutes an hour and 24 hours a day. A month would have 30 days and one year 12 months or 360 days.

Carl did not include weeks, they would make everything more difficult and it wasn’t like he couldn’t say a week to 7 days anymore.

 A new window popped up and blinked green once.

Time defined, updating age…

Age: 43 minutes, 16 seconds

Updating Mana regeneration…

Mana regeneration: 1.00/min

Please define distance.

Looks like he would need to finish this before getting some more time.

His age confirmed that he had likely died. It didn’t touch his heart all that much, the only thing that he had still cared about had been his close family and friends. They were also the reason he had been unable to kill himself. Carl just couldn’t burden them with the knowledge that they had failed to notice his suffering.

To distract himself from depressing thoughts he chose the metric system for distance units.

Distance defined, updating status sheet…

With that done Carl delved into the deeper meaning of his stats. He tried to mentally click on his status window, but nothing happened. Only when he thought of the meaning of strength and what strength was, did a new window pop up.

STR

The more strength you have, the harder it becomes to destroy you, the more and the faster you can perceive things in your domain and the bigger your domain may become (1 Str = 10km). Your core size grows as your strength increases.

Stats vary largely between species.

Carl read through the description multiple times. That stats may vary between species made sense, but his strength had little to do with strength in his opinion. It was more a mix of endurance and perception.

He also had a domain. Maybe this was the strength of his species? Sensing things in his domain could indeed be very powerful.

Carl still had a lot of questions, so he looked up the other two stats. 

INT

As your INT increases your memory storage will be improved in every way and your mana pool increases in size. INT combined with WIS raises the power of all skills that require Mana to be performed. Your core size grows as your INT grows.

Stats vary largely between species.

Carl's intelligence stat largely did what he had expected. Willpower seemed to be a combination of intelligence and wisdom. Willpower not being a stat made sense for him. He thought of it more as a character trait and something that also depended on the situation. After seeing your loved one die your will is likely a lot weaker than usual.

The stat also hinted at the existence of skills. Carl would need to search for those after checking his wisdom stat.

WIS

You are a being of Mana. As such your WIS rules the speed of your thoughts. WIS increases your Mana generation, which as a mana core has a direct influence on your surroundings and the universe at large given the chance. WIS combined with INT raises the power of all skills that require mana. Wisdom increases the complexity and density of your structure and decreases the size of your core.

Stats vary largely between species.

Carl stared at the pop up window. The stat complimented INT in everything concerning the mind and mana. He had only one problem, namely having an influence on the whole universe.

Was the influence good or bad?

He didn't know, but thought it was likely the latter and he didn’t like that.

He read through the text again and discovered that he generated mana. There was a huge difference between generating and regenerating something. 

Maybe the influence he had was the mana he put into the environment?

That would also mean that he was likely the first who had access to the system if it is built using mana. Him defining time and distance would make a lot more sense now.

But who created the system?

Certainly not Carl himself and he didn’t believe in things just popping up, so there had to be someone. He mused a while about this entity, but couldn’t come to a conclusion.

Having nothing else to do he decided to give himself a new name. Carl wasn’t the most creative of minds so it took a bit of time.

In the end he settled on Argul Agren. The name didn’t have any special meaning, but he had never heard it before and it sounded cool. These were important criteria…

Carl decided to look at the changes on his status again.

Status

Name: ARGUL AGREN 

Race: Mana core 

Age: 2 hours

Level: 1

Structural integrity: 100%

Mana: 100/100

Mana generation: 1.00/min

Stats

Str: 1

Int: 1

Wis: 1 

Skills(+), achievements, quests

NOTIFICATIONS  (blink, blink)

His name and age had changed, but there were also options that hadn’t been there before and one of them was blinking like a defective flash light. It was incredibly annoying and grating on his nerves.

Either the system was being built right now or it tried to translate itself to something that Argul would understand and that would annoy him to death.

He opened his notifications to make it stop as fast as possible. Damn!

Achievement made: Error 404 file not found

You should not exist, but here you are being one happy rock. One wonders why you got a freebie to new laws for reality, so better be thankful. Str +1

 Argul looked stupefied at the window. He had no idea what to think about it and wasn’t sure if he really should be thankful. At least he got stats for it.

Another screen opened.

Achievement made: Origin of Mana

You are Mana, but Mana is not you. All Mana in existence comes from you, reality one meter around you has the same mana regeneration or in this case generation as you. Be considerate of this, for you endanger the laws of your universe. Int +1, Wis +1

This achievement confirmed his earlier theorie about his influence being his mana generation. It would likely not be a good one in the beginning and then just become another natural wonder.

Yet another screen appeared, though this one had a girly pink color.

Achievement made: Mother of the archive operator

Yeah I’m your daughter. Also hurry up and give me a name you lazy rock ^^. The Archives were born from your Mana and you managed to become a mother without losing your virginity. Congrats! Knowledge uncovered or used in your domain you will learn, as long as you have the memory capacity. Int +1

 Eh? Argul’s thoughts came to a stand still. 

First of all the screen was damn right, he was as virgin as they come so how the hell did he get a child??

Secondly he was not a woman!

Or was he?

Argul didn’t know. Did mana cores even have genders? Maybe he was both.

He still had no idea what he thought of having a daughter, it was just too much in a short period of time. At least he would try to be nice to her until he managed to get over it.

It’s not like she had done anything to him.

On the contrary, it looked like he had full responsibility for all this shit, so should also take it.

Argul’s daughter also seemed to be able to read his thoughts, so he would likely never be lonely again. 

Sadly he didn’t realize that it also meant that he was never going to be really alone again.

 A gray screen popped up and moved where Argul thought his eyes would be.

“You know I wasn’t done with the achievements yet.” The screen suddenly became very large as if it had come closer to Argul. “Also give me a damn name!!” 

 He cleared his non-existent throat. “Hey, so you can talk without achievements and such. That’s good, I would have felt bad if you couldn’t talk.” Ohh god that was awkward, why did he have to be like that?

A very important question came to Argul’s mind. “Where does your personality come from?”

The screen got a bit smaller again, making it a lot easier to read what it was presenting. “From your mana and yeah as I’m not some weird kind of rock I can talk.”

 That was a very straight to the point answer, which answered barely anything if at all. Argul mentally shook his head. “I love you too.” 

Unbeknownst to him his core brightened for a short moment. “Wait, you are a bit snarky, does that mean I have snarky mana?”

The chat box blinked out of existence before it slowly materialized again. “...Yeah.”

 Realization struck Argul. “Oh my god, I doomed a whole universe to have snarky mana. That’s going to be one hell of an afterlife for me.”

 The chat box shook from left to right as if shaking its head. “There won’t be an afterlife for you as long as you don’t die.”

There was still a chance of an afterlife for him, but it reassured Argul nonetheless. “So I’m basically immortal, you are going to be stuck with me. Poor daughter.” Argul thought that honestly. He had a bad habit of badmouthing and underestimating himself.

He did not think further about his immortality as he knew he would somehow manage to make it look like something bad.

The chat box angled itself a bit away from his point of view. “It’s not like there will be anyone else looking after you so be thankful for that! Hmph!”

 Argul could have sworn he saw the box pout. So cute! 

The box turned slightly red.

 Whoops… he would need to learn how to think silently. 

Now for a name hmm…

 Argul thought for several hours about this. His daughter would have this name for the rest of her time, so he wanted to choose something good. “How about Alyra? That would make you Alyra Agren.”

The chat box moved in a frantic and excited way. “Sounds nice, where does the idea come from?”

 Now there was no way he would tell her the truth, he was sure his parents hadn’t done it too. It was basically family tradition to give a stupid answer. “Well, when you are all grown up you are going to be one hell of an alluring woman.”

Can interfaces facepalm? Yes, yes they can. “I knew I shouldn’t have asked and I have no idea how you could think that without being embarrassed!”

 Argul laughed happily in his mind. “With a lot of mental preparation!” His voice got a bit more serious.”There is also nobody here to judge me besides you and I’m not going to hide my true self from you. Last time I did that to my family and friends I kind of broke the laws of reality you remember? Don’t want that again.”

He really wanted to try to do better in this life. Argul needed at least one person he would be honest with and if not his own daughter, then who else?

The box moved up and down. “Yeah better not. Let's get on with your notifications!”

Achievement made: Prodigy outcast

Detached from reality you became depressed and decided to break the laws of nature. The universe did not like this and promptly banished you and every sapient being on earth. But one time is never enough for mankind and thus you got locked away in your own plane of reality by the universe you arrived in. I mean your very existence is still at odds with the universe. Wis +2, ability to contact the universe (now you can be even more annoying!)

That was certainly one way to express Argul’s ability to be.

He immediately casted that thought away, it just sounded weird.

Argul did not like being imprisoned and immediately made freedom his new goal. He might not be an outside person, but having the option to go outside and wherever you wanted was still important for him.

He took another look at his status, interested in the amount his stats influenced his mana pool and generation.

Status

Name: ARGUL AGREN 

Race: Mana core 

Age: 5 h 

Level: 1

Structural integrity: 100%

Mana: 102/102

Mana generation: 1.03/min

Stats

Str: 2

Int: 3

Wis: 4

 Skills(+), achievements(+), quests(+)