Chapter 12: Radiance, P11

~12.11~

*****

“Aneue!” Yami called out as she ran up to Kye. The fourteen-year-old, white-haired girl jumped into Kye’s arms as soon as she returned to the palace in New Tokyo. “Welcome back!”

“I missed you, Yami.” Kye held her younger sister tightly. “I’m home.”

Nearby, the king pushed his bashful son toward the sisters. “Go on.”

Empowered, the year-older black-haired boy ran up and joined his sisters. “Welcome home!”

“I missed you, too, Zen.”

Alethea smiled warmly as she watched the scene between siblings unfold.

While chatting, Yami glanced behind Kye to see who all was there, and stopped short when she laid eyes on Alfia. “Ane...ue?”

Returning from Atlas with them were Liliana, Aliana, Adele, Michelle, Astarte, Astraia, and Alfia. The latter had mostly stayed to herself at the resort, and decided to follow Kye back to Nippon Sekai when she left.

Alfia smiled at the younger girl, and Michelle raised an eyebrow.

“I want to tell you two something,” Kye said to her siblings before looking up at her father. “Is mother here?”

“She’s in your palace.”

Kye blinked in response. “Palace?”

“You’re married now. As much as I want you to stay here in Izanagi Palace with me and your siblings, it’s time to have a palace of your own.”

“Oh.”

“I had the staff begin preparing months ago in secret. Amaterasu Palace is ready and all yours.”

In the royal grounds in New Tokyo, Izanagi Palace was the main palace where the King and his family stayed and met with guests. Directly behind Izanagi Palace was Izanami Palace, which belonged to Hatsume Akari. Standing in front of Izanami Palace, to the left was Amaterasu Palace, followed by Tsukuyomi Palace and Susano Palace. To the right were the gardens and training grounds.

“Who are your friends?” Yami asked.

Kye smiled and gestured at each in turn. “You know Alethea, Astraia, and Astarte. The others are Adele and Michelle from Drachenheim, and Alfia... and we’ll talk more about her and us in a bit, okay?”

The girl nodded and greeted them. “I am Yami Akari of Nippon Sekai.”

Her brother also greeted them, “I am Zen Akari II of Nippon Sekai.”

Michelle was looking at Yami with stars in her eyes. Kye sighed, and Yami was confused.

“Can I help you?”

Michelle ran over and hugged the younger girl. “You’re so cute! I could hug you all day!”

“I... ca... breath!”

Kye grabbed Michelle and pulled her away from Yami. “Sheesh.” The king was standing there holding back laughter the whole time. “Okay, Yami and Zen, would you mind waiting for me for a bit? I need to talk with father real quick. I can meet up with you in my...” She had a sour face. “I have to get used to not staying here now.”

“We’ll go wait at Amaterasu Palace!” Yami said as she dragged her brother away. After they ran off, Kye nodded to the king, and they joined him in his study.

“You’ve had quite a year.”

“Indeed. I wanted to pick your brain about your perspective regarding the system.”

“Go ahead.”

“What comes to mind first is a question. Why do the people of this world make so little use of the system’s functions?”

“Hmm... good question.”

“What do you mean?” Astarte asked. “I thought we used it to its fullest extent. The system tracks our worldly contribution and the archive. It makes spell casting possible. It even displays our status, attributes, and a list of every spell and skill we know.”

“There are many more things you don’t realize.” Kye looked at Alethea. “Are you aware of the system’s deeper functions? I remember creating it, but not when. I don’t know if it was in place before any of us transmigrated.”

Alethea nodded her head. “You created it before, but didn’t explain the details. You started transmigrating almost immediately.” She had a strained look in her eyes that Kye noticed, but she decided not to pressure her about it.

“I see. I’ll explain some of the basics. There are four user tiers. The System User, System Administrator, System Operator, and System Creator. I, as Elysia, am the Creator. There are currently no Operators, and there are a handful of Administrators. The Administrators can do a number of things, including viewing contribution, adding to the Spell Archive, and adding to the Skill Archive. Operators can enable, disable, edit, and remove all of those things. That tier only exists for emergency cases and will automatically apply to an algorithmically selected Administrator if the system deems it necessary. The Creator can freely do literally anything to the system, of which there are two accounts. Mine and Eve’s.”

“So, then you could make changes whenever you want?” Zen asked.

“No.” She shook her head. “On Atlas, I discovered that my user account is that of Kye Akari, not Elysia. I am a standard User and as such, I currently have no power over the system.” She turned to Astraia. “Would you mind bringing up your control panel so that all of us can see it?” Astraia nodded. “Okay, top left. Access that dropdown and you’ll see a number of options. Go to Custom Command Input.”

“We were told never to mess with that,” Astraia said.

“By whom?”

“Mother and I,” Alfia said.

“Oh. Well. No matter. It’ll be fine.”

“Well, okay.” Astraia selected the option and a keyboard with a single input field above it appeared.

“Type this: ‘SysAd.user.KyeAkari.elevate’. It’s case sensitive. Father, Astarte, do the same. I’ve already had mother, James, Allison, Hannah, Ginchiyo, Alexandra, and Edward do this. When submitted by an Administrator, it requires ten to execute. Doing so will elevate my account to Administrator.” They nodded and followed her instructions. Soon, Kye was able to open the administrator control panel herself. “Okay, now that I have access...” She pulled up the Custom Command Entry and began furiously typing ‘SysAd.soul.evaluate’ followed by a very long string of characters. Once she finished, a simple circle appeared on the screen and her body suddenly glowed in radiant gold.

“Soul Mana?” Alethea said. “What are you doing?”

“Promoting myself.”

“Uh...”

Kye placed her hand on the circle and allowed her aether to flow into the screen. A female voice suddenly began speaking. “Mana identified as a match for System Creator Elysia Athas. User Account Kye Akari may be elevated to System Operator. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Command accepted. Elevation complete.”

*****

Revision: 2024-2-28