God… I’m full, like really full. Stuffed even. I lay on my back and try to ignore my full to bursting stomach. The stupid thing never even figured out what was going on. I just kept safely gorging myself on its insides as it thrashed around in pain and confusion. Dumb worm.

“Alex.” Betton’s small voice comes from far away, trying to cut its way through the haze of my food coma. 

I groan loudly, and roll onto my side. My eyes crack open, revealing the remains of the house we entered a few hours ago. Only the fragments of the outer walls remain, the rest crushed into debris. Looking past that, I see that things around the house didn’t escape the monster’s sudden appearance either. The nearby trees and fields were completely demolished, only furrowed dirt and splintered wood left behind.

“Alex!” Betton says with a bit more force. I look around, eventually finding the scrawny kid sitting next to me.

“Yo.” I croak. He has the gall to snort at me. “What do you want?” 

He smirks until I ask that. Then his face twists into a grimace. “I… don’t think we’re getting our reward.” 

“Huh?” A burp forces its way from my body, causing me to shrink a bit. “Why not?”

Instead of answering, the probably-orphan just points behind me. With much effort, and even more complaining, I roll to face what he’s pointing at.

“Oh… dammit.” I mumble. The shack that the old man was using lies crushed, flattened along with everything else around the house. “Now what?” I ask Betton. I’m too full to think.

Betton walks around me, sitting in my line of sight so I don’t have to move again. “Well, since we aren’t getting paid…” He pulls something from his shirt, something very bag-shaped that makes a slight clinking sound. “I guess we have to pay ourselves?” His face twists into a wicked grin that I can’t help but copy.

“Guess so…” I eye the coin pouch. “So, where’d you get that anyways?” 

He shrugs. “It was in one of the drawers we went through, I don’t remember which.” His fingers tighten around the bag as he holds it against his heart. “I was… going to return it, but since the old man is dead…” 

I nod, knowing full well he was gonna pocket the thing either way. But plausible deniability is nice. “Of course, of course.” He snickers at my exaggerated nodding.

We sit in silence for a while, the calm of the night air somewhat odd after eating a monster from the inside out while a ghost watches. Eventually Betton is the one to break the strangely tranquil mood.

“What do we tell the guild?”

 

────────────

 

After about twenty minutes of silently sitting in the carcass of a house, the two of us finally start to get a move-on. Betton is the first to get up, and shockingly offers me a hand. I give it a long look before taking it and pulling myself to my feet. I guess he’s really not scared of me anymore. Which is funny, since I just ate a sealed away calamity of nature. 

Betton leads the way, much to my relief. The past few days of being in this world have made me face a disturbing fact. I am horribly directionally challenged. So as much as I hate letting the kid take the lead, I follow his back to the inn.

While the two of us snake our way through backstreets, a small message pops up.

Well that’s a bit… really late. And what’s this about a MP limit? Since when was there a limit? I smell bullshit, is the admin trying to rob me of all the millions of points that worm would’ve given me? I bet that’s it. I’m gonna write a complaint. 

Anyways, I should probably get rid of that limit, if possible. Quickly making a small tendril from my wrist, I run it around Betton’s palm, giving him an effective leash on me. As embarrassing as it is, this way I don’t have to pay attention to where I’m going as I fool around in menus, which I am so going to do. 

Without any further delays, I pop open the body menu. The long list of enhancements fills my vision, totally blocking out everything else. Yeah, the leash was a good idea. I quickly skim the list, looking for anything pertinent, but get nowhere. So instead I search for ‘MP’ and see what pops up.

Which is nothing, there’s no upgrades or anything that interacts with MP in the list. With one menu a bust, I switch to the next one. Again I quickly skim the mind enhancements, and again find nothing. With a quick search, I confirm that there’s nothing in this menu either.

So, that leaves me with two conclusions. One, the limit is hard and fast and can’t be changed, which I don’t buy for a second. Or, two, that the upgrade is in the…

Motherfucker! I was really hoping I’d be able to open that by now… So to fix the MP limit, I need the soul menu. To get into the soul menu, I need to upgrade something, which is covered by an error… Fuck. 

I mull over my situation for a few minutes, eventually thinking of something obvious. What if the error message is being literal? My status said ERR as well, maybe its become some kind of fucked up stat of its own? Wanting to find out if I’m wrong, I immediately open the body menu. With a quick input into the search bar, I get some results.

Well, that’s something! Which is a marked improvement over what I had before, which is nothing. Not wanting to be hasty, I don’t buy anything and instead open up the mind menu. With an identical search query, I get similar results. 

Well, I think we have a winner. That last entry looks extremely fucked. Maybe fucked enough to unfuck my soul menu! I don’t buy it yet, remembering the extreme headache that the language gland gave me. I’ll wait until we’re back in our room.

Just as I finish my menu browsing, I see the familiar sight of our previous inn. The two of us quickly move inside, immediately hit by the warmth. Like it’s not muggy enough already. 

The dining area is surprisingly empty, which probably means that the owner already kicked out the rowdy customers. A few quiet drinkers sit in the corners, silently nursing their mugs. Without saying a word to me, my scrawny companion walks up to the counter and talks to the barmaid. After a few moments, he returns and hands me an old fashioned key.

He smirks at me. “You gonna eat with me?” Immediately a wave of nausea hits me. My face must’ve shown it, because Betton starts laughing. Is that the first time he’s laughed? It might be. I turn in a big huff and stomp up the stairs.

Reaching the upper landing, I realize I have no idea what room we have. Well, I’m not going back down to ask Betton. I study the key closely, hoping that it’ll tell me what room is ours. Which it does. Clearly embossed into the dark metal is the number three. It’s an Arabic numeral… How does that work? Is my gland translating it after I see it? If it does, shouldn’t the number feel different then what I see if I touch it? Doing a quick check with my thumb, the feeling matches up with the visual. Do they just happen to use the same numbers? 

Whatever, I have things to do. I quickly unlock the matching door and slip inside. I lock the door behind me, little bastard can knock when he comes up. What he gets for teasing me. With a graceful leap, I land hard onto the bed. Instead of the expected bounce, I just crumple into the mattress. Right, not a modern bed. Grumpily I shuffle around on the thing and get into a comfy position. Once I’m all settled, I get to work. 

Purchase IncrERR ERR ERR! 

A spike of pain hits me in the chest, and small notification windows start appearing everywhere. All of them have nothing but gibberish, with the occasional red ERR thrown in. Just as the windows start numbering into the hundreds, and my vision starts to go hazy, a large window opens over everything.

All at once, every one of the screens blink closed. Oh, and I black out.

 

────────────

 

When I wake up, everything feels… off. Like really off. I quickly glance down to see what’s wrong, and hiss in anger. Where the finely crafted body I’ve had for the past while has been, lies a disgusting form. One that I’m all too familiar with.

Somehow I’ve been put back in my body from Earth, the one that was forcibly detransitioned by those scientist fucks. Feeling an intense urge to kill something, I look around, but find nothing. And I don’t mean I don’t find a target for my misplaced emotions either. There’s literally nothing.

I’m floating in a white void. I feel like I’m standing, but looking at… the feet I’m using, it looks like I’m stepping on nothing. Did I die? Did that stupid upgrade actually kill me? If so, why am I in this wretched body again?

I sit down, realizing with great revulsion that I’m totally naked. Not sure how I missed that, maybe I blocked it out? Anyway, I sit down on nothing and wait for something. 

After about an hour of waiting, I feel my patience run out. “Alright, fucker, god, whatever! Whoever runs this joint! Where the fuck are you? I want out!” Anger floods me, and is amplified as my current voice irritates me further. 

 

Please Wait, Administrator Action in Progress.

 

Something inside me audibly cracks, not unlike when I went inside the barrier a few days ago. I reach out and grab the window in my irrational fury, and shockingly my hands make contact. Not missing a beat, I take the pop-up and snap it in half over my knee. After being cracked in two, the message box dissolves into visual artifacts, looking like I jiggled the cartridge of the world a bit too much. Holy shit that felt good. 

Just as my anger is beginning to abate, the horrible sound of microphone feedback fills my mind. The horrible screeching lasts for a minute, before finally petering out. 

“FUCK!” I’m a bit upset. 

“Yes, yes, you’re very scary.” A choir of voices says. “You’ve gotten my attention, now what, little one?” Many voices layered together speak as one, in a horribly condescending tone. 

My irritation rapidly returns. “Are… are you talking to me?” I ask.

What sounds like thousands of people snorting in amusement echoes through the white space. “Obviously, do you see anyone else here?” 

I start to grind my teeth. “Before we… talk, change me back.” My voice, the voice I’m using, is a low growl. 

“What do you…” The voices begin to ask. “Oh! Right. I apologize.” For the first time since they started talking, the choir sounds genuine. 

For just a second my perception ripples, and my body is replaced with an adult version of the body I’ve been in the last few days. Dress included. 

“That better?” They ask. I nod. Honestly, yeah, that kinda killed ninety percent of my anger about being here, so I’m mostly calm now. Not that I’m going to tell them that.

“So, who are you?” I ask, my voice the correct pitch now. 

“Hmm…” They go silent for a few seconds. “I guess you could call me the Administrator.” Wow, very creative. 

“Alright… why am I here?”

A pulse of surprise floods my mind. “Oh, right! You’ve been causing problems, Ms. Error.” Their voices sound like a parent scolding their kids. “Problems that I’ve had to manually fix.” The word manually is said like it had recently killed their dog. 

“Hey, bud, I just woke up in this world. I didn’t pick to be an error. Actually, why the hell am I an error anyway?” A long silence follows my question.

After several minutes of quiet the Admin eventually answers. “After reading the logs… I don’t understand what went wrong. All the mechanisms worked correctly, it even had a full profile made for you, and then…” The voices again go silent. “It just… didn’t apply correctly? That doesn’t…” 

After another full minute of silence, I decide it’s time to say something. “Hello? You still there?” 

“Hmm? Oh right, yes… I need more time to see what went wrong. In any case, your soul was corrupted by the error as well, so it’s permanent.” Their tone is totally offhand, like they’re telling me about my taxes. 

“So… Am I going to die? Or soul die?” I can’t help it, a small amount of fear filters through my voice. 

Again the choir of assholes laughs at me. “Oh, no, you’re fine. I just can’t reverse it. You’ll be just fine as you are. Maybe have some intrusive instincts, but that’s nothing you haven’t dealt with in your last world.”

I’m… I’m going to punch them, square in the jaw. Or jaws. Whatever. 

Before I can say anything about them mocking me, they start blathering away again. “Well, I’m going to just add all those errors as official stats that only you have access to, since I can’t remove them. I’ll attach an effect onto that bugged blessing… weird, it already has one? Whatever, less work…” At this point it’s very clear they’re talking to themself and not me. They must not get out much.

“Aaaand, done! That wasn’t too bad, the work I need to do to sort out all the corruption you caused until now is going to be the real pain…” They sigh loudly. “At least I didn’t have to make a whole new system for you. Honestly, I don’t know what’s up with this batch of otherworlders, but they’re a huge pain.” They grumble. “Who do they think they are, showing up in the hundreds? That’s more than all of the otherworlders up until now put together! How nuts is that?!” 

I take a turn to sigh. “Yeah, nuts.” Again a wave of surprise floods my mental space. 

“You’re still here?” They go silent for a second. “Forget you heard that…” 

“Sure, whatever, can I go back now?” I plead. Please I beg you, let me go back to the shitty inn. 

“Right.” They say, embarrassed. 

With that small victory, I get knocked out.