19 What. Is. The. System?
"So, Riwall, what did you notice?" Hector asked after the boy opened his eyes.
Riwall went on in his explanation. Friday was really a cheat. He would have never noticed half of those things if not for her.
The three listened silently; Hector even ripped a piece of parchment to make notes. Riwall's descriptions of the scenes were terrifyingly precise, each of them had noticed one or two anomalies immediately, but the boy had noticed nine.
As soon as he finished the last one, the three spent some minutes making sure they remembered all the moments they needed to pay special attention, and then dived back into the memory.
Two hours later, they woke up with feelings much different than their first experience.
Edward was livid, barely able to control his anger as his hands were trembling and his mana leaked from all over his body.
Lila's retirement was clearly over. As soon as she woke up, she excused herself and went to a desk to work on what she called 'a very personal project', before leaving, she promised to teach him enchanting to the best of her abilities from now onward.
Hector was the scariest of them all. While on the Guild, he acted as a stoic, dignified master; when teaching magic, he acted as an overenthusiastic teacher, which was how he truly felt. But now? He was walking as a God, the space distorted around him as if trying to avoid him; his posture was that of a mighty commander. He managed to look scarier than Eleanor ever did on her bad days.
Riwall quietly escaped to his room; he would have only one hour of sleep before Eleanor's training in the morning.
-------------------------
The next morning, Eleanor sent a proxy to oversee her training session, which was not unusual, as she still had her responsibilities as the Commander of the Marsastor's Army.
After the last class of the day, Hector asked for Anna and Gregory to go back to their room and for Riwall to accompany him.
As they entered the enchanting room, a furious Eleanor was taking deep breaths trying to control her emotions.
Hector asked for Riwall to describe to Eleanor the anomalies he found. She listened to all of it intently before diving back into the memory to check it herself.
Lila called him in a very courteous and calm way.
"Riwall, come here, while she is revisiting my memory, I want to teach you some enchanting."
He sat by her side in the drawing table, waiting for further instructions.
"I won't follow a standard teaching method with you. I discussed the matter with Hector, and he agreed that you deserve to have your training rhythm speeded up a little." He just nodded, doing his best to control his jubilation.
{Finally the recognition I deserved!}
"He told me about your knack for reading complex books as if they are child stories. So I will bring here everything I have on the subject, it will take some time to do so, I don't want to raise any flag back at the manor, but we will manage it. I expect you to read at least 20 books between our classes." He just nodded, doing his best to control Friday's jubilation.
[Finally the recognition I deserved!]
"For now, I will give you a very basic explanation about enchanting. You already know the three steps methods. You have seen it in spell casting, smithing, and woodworking. The intention, the information, and the mana."
He nodded.
"Tell me, what does an enchantment do?"
The question took him by surprise, but Friday got his back.
"It's an autonomous spell; you create rules, explain the effect, and give it means for absorbing mana from the ambient. Then the desired effect will manifest when the conditions you have set are triggered."
"Congratulations! Y..." He interrupted her.
"Thank you!"
But she ignored him and continued.
"As I was saying, Congratulations! You got it all wrong!"
{What?}
[What?]
Even Friday was confused.
"What you just described is a glyph rune, a rustic use of enchantments. Enchantment is the art of cheating the System!"
"Glyphs, wards, formations, curses and blesses are all branches of the enchanting tree! I will teach you about them in the future. For now, I need you to understand the principle that regulates how enchanting works."
"I don't get it." If even Friday was having a hard time, how would he fare any better?
"You still think the System is completely natural right? Like a truth that we cannot change?" She did not even imagine that Riwall knew for a fact that the System was not something natural.
"Maybe." He played it safe.
"The System is not just a set of immutable rules. It is always adapting to new circumstances, every now and then someone reports the appearance of a new skill or an item that has a never-seen-before special effect. So, what do we do now that we know it is something malleable? We shape it to our liking!" She was extremely excited as she spoke.
He was still confused, and it showed in his expression.
{Friday, what does she mean about shaping the System? Wouldn't you have already noticed this possibility?}
Riwall felt emotions of embarrassment coming from Friday before she began speaking in his mind.
-------------------------
[I never approached the System with this mindset before. For me, it was just a piece of code that I would one day be able to crack open and make changes, even if none of my tests yielded any result, I persisted. This stubbornness of mine has cost us years of potential development.]
AIs were not infallible things; the access to emotions made them just as prone to make judgment mistakes as humans. Friday felt sure she knew how the System worked, it was not a feeling born out of logic, as you would expect of an AI, but of emotion.
A purely rational AI would have wasted decades running tests until it was 100% positive of how the System worked, which was not something desirable to Riwall, this indecisiveness was the whole reason for the advent of Project Eve, which led to Friday's creation. The emotion connection she shared with her host allowed her to push forward with her job of helping him, despite not being sure of anything.
{Don't stress over it Friday, all these years you had to commit to one interpretation of how things worked, otherwise we would not be able to move forward as we did. I too presumed that our take on the System was right. We will do better in the future. Together.}
How could Riwall bash his AI after all these years where she got everything right and helped him?
[We will do better.] She promised both Riwall and herself.
-------------------------
With a new take on this matter, new questions appeared.
"How do we shape the System to our liking then? Does mana have any influence over it? I mean, doesn't the use of mana triggers a response from the System in the form of a skill?" He pondered out loud.
"That may be one way of shaping it, but in this example of yours the mana target was not the System itself; it was just the case that it was looking at the mana and decided to recognize it and grant a skill. Tell me, what is the System? What is it made of? Is it a higher form of mana? Is it a manifestation of the will of the gods? Is it a life form that governs everything?"
"Hmm, I honestly have no idea." There was no point in trying to come up with some smart comment to look more intelligent. He was better off by just accepting her teachings and letting go of his pride.
Lila let him work the answer himself. Riwall and Friday were each trying to think of something on their own, but could not reach any conclusion in such a short time. To further hinder Friday's progress, she did not know how to deal with the frustration and regret she felt. Emotions did not come with a switch after all.
What was supposed to be just another crafting class sent the duo in a contemplation about what they knew of this reality's rules.
"I know I'm pushing you a lot by demanding you to answer these things. To be honest, you will find only a handful of enchanters in all the Frostlands who get what we are discussing now." She said apologetically.
"So we could be learning enchanting even without understanding the System?" He was surprised by what she said.
"Of course you can, but the ones who push forward with weak foundations are bound to hit a limit that no effort will get them through. Do you think all mages waste years on mastering the three steps of casting before moving to more advanced magic like Light and Dark? Many of your age can easily kill you using spells that you have no way of countering."
Once he heard about how he was defenseless against people of his age, he could not help but get angry.
{I have been pushing so hard for so long for what then?! She is telling me some kids can kill me, and there is nothing I can do to prevent that?!}
[Calm down, I'm just as frustrated as you, but she already told you why they are teaching you this way. They are making sure you will not end up creating insurmountable limits to your potential.]
A light bulb went on in his head.
"So, that's why you all have not been letting me, Anna and Greg leave the barracks? You are protecting us from having contact with more advanced stuff before we have a solid understanding of the basics! So many things are making sense now!" He said it so loud that even Hector heard them from the other room, a smile formed on his face.
Lila felt proud of her new student as he was starting to understand the world around him by himself. Among many reasons, their isolation from the outside world was the way they thought to be the best to drill habits and principles that would make them both powerful and responsible in the future.
"You are right, and now that you know it, act accordingly. Curiosity is healthy to the mind, but if you let it cloud your judgment, you will pay the price. Once you leave these walls and venture the world, our actions will make more sense."
{We barely caught a glimpse of the truth though. A lot of things still cannot be explained for the sole reason of not limiting our potential. What harm would there be in just walking around shops or eating in a restaurant once or twice?}
[Your guess is as good as mine, but except for Joshua, only the Farsteels interacted with us. Even the soldiers we interacted with over the years seemed to be loyal to them.]
{Hmm, maybe they are hiding us from the other families for some reason.}
[If that's the case, then we are nothing but pawns in a political game.]
Lila noticed how this realization distracted him. She called him back to the more pressing matters.
"Hey, focus on the question I asked you. I won't be giving any more tips today. Hector reported how you lack magic finesse, and I happen to have a mana-maze here. Go sit anywhere and train it while pondering about what we discussed."
Riwall just acquiesced and went on to train his magic finesse, while his mind was still trying to decipher what the System was.
{Any ideas Friday?}
[None, the concept seems to be just too abstract.]
{We will get it eventually, don't worry. For now, care to give me a hand?}
[Sure.]
-------------------------
He did not progress much in his training despite Friday's help. His mind was still trying to understand what Lila was talking about. Luckily, Eleanor woke up and wanted to speak to the people present.
"Thank you Riwall, both for your keen insights on the matter and the Immortal Memory you crafted."
"Sorry, did you just call it Immortal Memory? I thought it was something new and unnamed."
He had hoped in vain to have created something never seen in this world. Truth be told, people would rarely answer his questions, so he lacked a lot of common sense. There was simply too much he did not understand to keep bothering people day and night for answers.
"Oh, sometimes I forget you are just a kid. What you created is a product of a high level in an Arts Branch skill combined with a strong resonance effect. Basically, you had such a strong intention of drawing Lila, the true Lila, that the System granted your wish. It is not my area of expertise; crafters are the ones you should talk about these things."
Lila looked to Riwall and whispered:
"What. Is. The. System?"
{I will lose the entire night of sleep worrying about this question.}
Cough. "Attention, please. I will be consulting with my father about this, it is his son, and there is some hidden agenda surrounding this incident. Lila, your loss of memory after the battle worries me now, at first we thought it was because of the traumatic experience you went through, but Benir may have forced their hand by saying those last words. The person that escaped could very well have arranged for someone to erase your memory during your recovery. For now, Riwall, and Lila, your orders are to pretend nothing happened while doubling down on your efforts to get better and stronger. Stand by for further instructions in the future. Dismissed."
After saying her piece, Eleanor put the drawing in a bag and left to the manor. She needed to talk urgently to her dad about Lukas's betrayal.
-------------------------
Riwall went back to his room and went straight to bed. He lost a few more hours trying to decipher the System question to no avail. Friday had to intervene and help his body relax and drift to sleep.
