Sorry Du Lang, Your Species Are The Problem…

Du Lang spent all of the day learning the fundamentals of building a <Freeform> curse model from Sibyl. For a whole twenty-four hours, he was coached by the cold and detached Sibyl in not the fundamentals of constructing curse models, but the fundamentals of the fundamentals.

He was apparently too stupid to "plug and play" with the divine work of his predecessor, who had spent a hundred years fine-tuning and optimizing the process…

"From today onwards, I, Du Lang, am a changed man!"

Yes, changed.

Du Lang could only make the proclamation with tears streaming down his cheeks and his heart bursting with agony. As he stood besides the bedroom door, the remnants of his lashed dignity crumbled into innumerable specks of dust.

There was a certain limit of verbal abuse and doubts towards a man's intelligence that could be tolerated.

"Sibyl, why is making a <Freeform> curse model so f*cking difficult?"

[The host lacks the necessary framework of knowledge to complete training tutorial.]

Sigh.

His predecessor had done so much to streamline the entire process to the extent that all that was necessary from Du Lang was to define three fundamental properties to create a <Basic Freeform> curse model. The simplicity and naming convention of the categories resembled the modernized catalogue of programming, and at first – Du Lang hadn't held much respect for them, or at all.

Formulation, Output, Solidification.

Unlike many mathematical functions or computer programs, constructing a curse model hardly required any inputs or initial conditions – conditions that Du Lang needed to configure by himself. The <Master of Curses> constructed by Er Gouming had settled the requisite processing of such conditions and delegated them to Sibyl, hence all Du Lang had to focus on was the process of the curse itself and its effects.

Well, those were also fundamentally simple. As long as they weren't human or utilized something as mind-boggling and unnecessarily complex as human language.

Activating a curse model as well as creating one required the mastery and knowledge of words. Sibyl had mentioned it specifically to Du Lang since the first time he was aware of its presence.

Words, words, words.

The formulation of a curse model referred to the background processes that formulated its intended purpose, and Du Lang's contribution was to hard code his intentions into simplistic definitions that Sibyl could utilize to perform the remaining calculations. There wasn't any complex calculations or formulations that he had to do – which was a major relief – but Du Lang's brain felt cramped at the still overwhelming task before him.

The 'cache data' was wiped when Sibyl transferred from his predecessor to his own body and soul, hence Du Lang had to provide the missing definitions prior to attaining the ability to tinker with any curse models. It was still a simple and straightforward task, as Sibyl required him to define… just about every word utilized in human language from the beginnings of civilization to the present.

There was an additional and critical requirement, and one that truly caused his soul to fall apart in frustration.

He had to break down the concepts he presented into the fundamental ideas and definitions, yet retain uniqueness. Technically, he could utilize predecessor Er Gouming's <Freeform> curse model creation process at this moment, but without any tools or special implementations – the finished products couldn't achieve anything.

And dictionaries were the bane of his existence. Perhaps… Du Lang could think of a great example.

Contempt. As many dictionaries so generously provided, it was the feeling that some person or object was beneath consideration, held no significant value, or deserving of scorn. But what did it mean to hold a feeling? What did it mean when some object or person was beneath consideration – how was that different from disregard?

Du Lang wanted to protest, but Sibyl was unwilling to tolerate even a single mishap or overlap in the provided definitions. The cold female secretary lashed and whipped his soul with the imbibed words of disappointment and shattered expectations should he fail or stumble over the definition of a word, and Du Lang had absolutely no opportunity to escape.

And not to mention that it's most similar counterpart was the word scorn, which its definition… was the feeling that some person or object was worthless or despicable, or the feeling of contempt. He could differentiate between the two words as the definition of 'scorn' included the word 'despicable', but now he had to start the same process centered around the word 'despicable'…

囧.

"S…Sibyl, I surrender. No more words – I want an alternative!"

Six hours into the desperate struggle with the few dictionaries in his home and the great and domineering reserve of information that was Baidu, Du Lang waved the white flag. He flopped facedown on the couch, and buried his head into the corner of the fabric that once sheltered six years of his sad hopes and dreams.

[The languages provided by the host are recursive in nature. The data required to catalyze and archive all related information will be astronomical and beyond the host's limits.]

"That's right, you mentioned that your 'cache data' was hosted on my soul, hence it would be deleted when you migrated from host to host," Du Lang turned his head to the side.

"What would happen if this 'cache' becomes far too large… or surpasses my limits to contain it?"

[Should the cached data exceed the host's limitations, the host will experience varying degrees of mental retardation and inability to compute information.]

The harsh words swept Du Lang from his seat on the couch and hurled him onto the floor, eliciting a pained groan from the victim with great satisfaction. As Du Lang rubbed at his painful noise, the cold secretarial voice continued to hammer at this mind.

[It has been determined that the human language is not compatible with the formulation of <Freeform> curse models. The host may attempt an alternative by providing formulations of information.]

Formulations of information… did that refer to mathematics?

Du Lang pondered for a few moments, and agilely leapt to his feet. With his body exuding a tremendous amount of confidence and grandeur, he rushed into the study to grab the numerous binders of memos and compiled notes from his university days. With his dismal undergraduate certificate proclaiming him to be capable of aerospace engineering, Du Lang gouged open a second front in his war against Sibyl's disdain.

Since words wouldn't get him anywhere, he would utilize math and physics.

If Sibyl rejected Euclidean geometry, he would present differential geometry. Riemannian geometry, Finsler geometry, contact geometry and symplectic geometry – the power of manifolds couldn't be underestimated!

If even that didn't work, he would bombard it with the Poincare conjecture and Ricci flow. For final measure, he would smash Sibyl apart with differential flow tensors and quantum gravitation…

Oh, hold on a minute…

[Host, the presented formulations, conjectures, and self-proclaimed laws are fundamentally incompatible with Sibyl's computation methods. Please provide a different suggested alternative.]

The floating black sphere had sifted through all of the documents that Du Lang had presented before he could even reach to open the drawer. Du Lang stood in place as with tears streaming down his cheeks and his countenance warped in laughter, not knowing how to respond.

Mathematics and physics were incompatible? The great mathematical system that represented all of humanity's achievements in the past, present, and future – was incompatible with Sibyl?

"How are mathematics and physics incompatible? What do you seek, then?"

[The created system of human mathematics rely far too much on assumptions. Any curse model or framework that denies that human mathematical systems are flawed will nullify the host's efforts. It is advised for the host to review the creation of human arithmetic, and reassess.]

[The created system of human physics rely far too much on applying mathematics to phenomena observed through humans. The information of the world presented to the human perception represents less than 0.001% of the total information assigned for any given object or entity.]

"What the… who in their right mind would be able to deny mathematics?" Du Lang argued with flushed cheeks.

"Even if they raise some bogus argument that '1+1' does not equal '2' or is equivalent to some conjugated number, they still rely on a mathematical system driven by logic!"

[Amongst the diverse range of hosts currently connected to Sibyl, the human mathematical system is utilized as the <Freeform> utility framework for 0.4% of all active hosts. Though it is certainly possible to utilize the human mathematical system and the physics as the framework for the host's framework, it will be vulnerable to the most basic of argumentation. The entire framework of mathematics originates from impractical means of observation that cannot eliminate the slightest of noise or disruption.]

"Then what do they rely on? Imagination?" Du Lang furrowed his brows.

"How many human hosts are there, then?"

[3% of active hosts on this planet are of the human species.]

3% of active hosts of Sibyl were human… that seemed somewhat reasonable, if Sibyl was supposed to be the omnipotent observer. Perhaps there weren't that many planets or worlds where the human race were dominant…

On this planet? 3%??

"Oh. I can't give anything else. Do you have something then, Sibyl?"

The female voice uttered the first human-like sigh Du Lang had ever heard from the floating black sphere. He could only watch on as the black sphere deftly evaded his sight and blindsided his perception, and the cold, female voice had dropped several degrees in temperature.

[Reconfiguring. <Basic> knowledge framework shall be displayed. Continue?]

"Continue."

Du Lang confidently beckoned with an invigorated smile on his countenance, and planted himself securely on the couch. He closed his eyes as instructed, waited an agonizingly long three minutes and fifteen seconds, and opened his eyes at Sibyl's command.

"So… All I need to do is to close my eyes, you say?"

As if replicating the insane and incredibly tantalizing dream of AR overlays that were boasted in mainstream science fiction dramas, movies, and games, Du Lang saw horizontal lines of text scrawl from one end of his vision to another. The crisp characters dazzled his eyes as they rotated, sheared, and expanded in all regions of his vision, before proceeding to explode into a myriad of lights.

The specks of lights screaming past his gaze were of different colors, forming a bizarre sea of vibrance and hues that threatened to overwhelm his mind. Du Lang struggled to keep his eyes open as the infinitesimal spheres of light soared in and out of his vision with immense velocity, and each traversing line began to whisper in his ears, delivering unintelligible information at incredible speed and depth.

"Is this a supernova… wait! This is too much!" Du Lang wailed, and clutched at his head to curb the pain.

"My head, my head! Sibyl, stop – too much!"

[Progress halted. 0.00004% of initial data has been decompiled. Data simplification filter of 200,000X has been applied. Host, the requirement to advance to Intermediate <Freeform> Privilege has increased to 10 independent curse models.]

The secretarial voice was disgruntled and mired with immense disappointment, but quickly halted the bizarre streams of indomitable light. The searing pain in Du Lang's head gradually subsided after thirty minutes, and he gasped for the sweet breath of air.

"No human could comprehend such information – that's overkill!" Du Lang complained with thick rivers of sweat drenching his back and neck.

"How is that a <Basic> knowledge framework!? Not even the most advanced of supercomputers could achieve such processing speeds… wait."

His eyes had finally recovered from their free tour of witnessing the birth of a celestial nebula, and the interestingly familiar string of Western text and symbols caused his lips to twitch. Du Lang gave a hard stare for a few seconds, and began to tremble.

This… this syntax and style of writing… it was nothing but the ever-so-faithful nightmare that was the Java programming language, no?

He had paid the penalty to doubling his promotion requirements by springboarding from the human language, mathematics, and a celestial supernova to every engineering student's worst nightmare, Java…

Could he cry now?