The System's Collapse

"Save my life…?" Rakna uttered with a frown after the regressor's confession.

Shin-Woo lowered his head a bit. "It will happen soon… or at least, it happened in my timeline. I'm not exactly sure when, but shortly after you reached Atlantis, you died."

"…"

"I still remember that day because a lot of things stemmed from it," he continued. "The life inside the System was flipped over its head. At first, the news came out a few days after Eva notified the Hosts and Locals about the successful recovery of an offline Plateau."

Rakna's eye twitched. 'Then… that would mean Eva's mission isn't the cause of my death… or perhaps it just took some time to do me in?' He thought surprisingly calmly. It's not like he was doubting the man in front of him either; his Crystal Sight wouldn't allow anyone to lie in front of him without his knowing, much less combined with his sense of smell.

"Then, it gradually got worse and worse," the regressor continued with a grave expression. "The first occurrence happened instantly. A Chaos Witch…" He paused and glanced at the therian's face stiffening. "Went berserk in the middle of Athens. She nearly killed ten thousand people in a rage and even defeated three Adjudicators before she was put down by a high-leveled Host. From what I heard, a Chaos Witch losing to their Chaos Trait can sometimes boost their strength by more than tenfold. That one… had been particularly powerful."

Rakna remained silent, his face frigid, but not hiding the red glint in his eyes.

Shin-Woo naturally noticed it but he knew he had to go on. "The second occurrence happened in the midst of the Nine-Tailed Clan. The heiress of the Fox Branch fell ill… no one knows about what happened to her afterward, just that she never reappeared again. The foxes fell into disarray and the scorpions abruptly launched an attack. For months, the Nine-Tailed Clan was stuck in a severe internal war…"

This time, the temperature clearly started rising around them and Rakna had to force himself to calm down. He covered his face with one hand, his claws digging into his skin, before releasing a deep breath. He forcefully pushed down his aura and faced Shin-Woo emotionlessly. "I get it. You are telling the truth. Get to the point," he growled.

The regressor nodded. "Several other incidents took place in the span of a year. It was like a nasty butterfly effect. But the real danger manifested two years later. To be exact, it became noticeable during that time. It had been going on for a long time and it was finally hitting us."

"What was it?"

"The 'death' of the System," Shin-Woo answered and Rakna scowled. "I was confused as well. But the traces were there. While on its last legs, the System deteriorated. At first, it was just the system interfaces glitching. Then Dungeons started collapsing prematurely. Some became unable to level up and there were no more yearly batches of Hosts. Resets stopped working. Locals couldn't issue Quests anymore. Plateaus started degrading; shrinking and tearing holes in space."

"It gradually turned into a hellish place to live in. The remaining Hosts that were strong enough to pull through did their best to clear the Trials, albeit also being faulty at times. Everyone thought that our last chance would be to reach the 1000th Plateau. The entire Myth Council spear-headed the clearing of the last Plateaus. In the end, two people succeeded; Throne of Glory's leader, Ensis Credo Gen, and the top-ranked Host, Cain Unsworth."

Shin-Woo paused momentarily and gritted his teeth. "They never returned," he said gravely. "The two strongest Hosts had vanished. That put a damp on a lot of people's hopes, but they didn't give up. However… on my side of things, before I could even hear any further news about the situation, someone came to me in Old Eden. I believe you know her; Nyx Nocta Regysnite."

Rakna raised an eyebrow at the unexpected mention. His mind worked out several scenarios as to why she would come up here and drew a conclusion after considering the feeling he had been getting from Shin-Woo's status.

"Was she… the one who 'reversed your time'?"

The regressor nodded. "I believe so. At the very least, she was the medium. She was quick in doing it and the only thing she said beforehand was that she didn't have much time to explain. All she instructed was to save you. In her words…" He lowered his eyes. "'Save Rakna… please.'"

"…"

"The next thing I knew, she drew her sword and pierced my heart. My vision faded and I remember hearing the sound of chains rattling before I woke up during the Initiation; the rest is history," he said with a sigh. "I used the little knowledge I had to gain an edge over regular Hosts and came here to meet you."

Rakna squinted his eyes in thought. Without a doubt in his mind, Nyx could only have done such a thing with his uncle supporting her. 'Wait…' His eyes widened as he realized something. 'Is that why she is the Eternal Maiden? But there's no way the old man predicted I would die… is there?'

The therian groaned at the train of thought and looked back at Shin-Woo. "Before anything else, why did she choose you? Knowing Nyx, she certainly didn't pick you off the streets at random to undertake this mission."

"I'm not sure… I wondered that myself at first. But I came to the conclusion that it was because of my Fae Blood."

"That wasn't something you got after your regression?"

He shook his head. "No, to be exact, it was a secret inheritance that I found in my first run. I simply got it again after returning. You see, Fae folk are creatures of ethereality. They are made of mana, soul, and matter all at the same time. With it, my mana's purity and consumption are massively boosted. My soul power is stronger and easier to control, and my body is stronger. Other than that, I heal faster and am immune to temporal or spatial attacks. If I had to guess, the latter is what allowed me to survive the regression and return to my past self."

"Why is that so?"

"Well, how to explain…" Shin-Woo rubbed his neck. "Simply put, regressing into the past would mean denying the present in which I exist. Normally, time travelers go around that by forcing the creation of a paradox or a new timeline. However, the problem is that the System is a singularity. It's a completely isolated domain. What exists inside is fixed; only one timeline. Ever."

"In that situation, regressing would mean denying the path you took for the regression to happen anyway. Without the interference of paradoxes, and without a new timeline to escape to, you will be erased and history will not change… Or, in the worst case, the regressor will cease to exist; both in past, present, and future. As if they had never been born."

"And your Fae inheritance saved you from that fate, huh?" Rakna uttered and sighed. "Fine. Then I'm going to ask just to be sure; you don't have any specific idea of what caused the System's death or mine?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I don't. There were theories going around about both though. Some said the System was getting attacked, others said that the ones who made it had decided to discard it because it had expended its worth. As for you… most people assumed that you were caught in some terrific battle. They also speculated that it involved the Nine-Tailed Clan based on the news that followed and the fact that your master, Obsidian, never reappeared afterward."

Rakna's lip twitched at the mention of his other persona. Other than that, in his opinion, probably none of those conjectures rang true. There was no way he would fight the Nine-Tailed Clan… aside from the off-chance that the scorpions tried something. But even disclosing his real race wouldn't do him much harm at this point and he had the Fox Branch on his side.

'Then, there's the System dying… should I ask Eva about it?' He mused.

[…to me, what this Host described matched a core failure,] Ceres spoke up for the first time since the conversation had started.

'Hm?' Rakna perked up and Shin-Woo tilted his head in confusion.

"{Would you mind telling us what you mean?}" Fray similarly joined in with a tense tone. He had lived in the System for hundreds of years. It was awfully disturbing for him to hear it would be gone within less than a mere decade from now.

[It is… a hypothetical scenario,] Ceresta answered. [As you know, the System has servers in place to save the data of all Hosts, Locals, Plateaus, Statuses, Skills, etcetera. Not only that, behind that also exist 'programs' that are meant to create Instances, Wilden, Trials, Ordeals, and any physical or dimensional feat you see daily. As an AI, I do not know what it is specifically, but the System has a power source. Whatever it is, it's capable of fueling everything here.]

'I see,' Rakna understood the crux of what she wanted to say. 'In other words, if that power source were to be destroyed, become unstable, or even grow too powerful for the servers to withstand, the System would 'die'.'

[Yes. As described by Kim Shin-Woo, were the power source to fail in any of those manners, the end result would be as ensuing; gaps in functioning servers affecting input and output data; a lack of clearance information would fool the Dungeons' matrices into crashing; Hosts will stop leveling up or regenerate mana due to a severance between them and their assigned servers; us artificial intelligences would lose connection; Host Batches are halted due to an inability of adding them to the servers; a lack of Resets signifies the relevant program is not being triggered; Trials will not change and will likely struggle to restore themselves after completion.]

[And finally, without a stable energy supply, Plateaus start losing their infinite size. It is akin to an inflatable structure slowly losing its air through a hole that, up until now, had continuously been used to blow air into it instead. In extreme cases, some lesser Plateaus might completely collapse within a few months, while the rest will inevitably follow over the course of a few years.]

"{That is frankly hard to imagine,}" Fray said with a sigh. "{But there is no point deluding ourselves into thinking that this boy is lying. I always considered the System to be nigh impervious. I wonder what could cause its death.}"

'…perhaps age; like a rusty machine,' Rakna thought. 'But you want to know my guess? Eden.'

"{You mean… the supposed agglomeration of life force located in the 1000th Plateau? I see… that does make sense. If it was unregulated, it would get stronger and stronger without limit. It would be possible, given enough time, to overload its shell…!}" The fabulist abruptly gasped. "{No--! The Fruit of Eden! Then, you are…!}"

"Took you that long to figure it out?" Rakna said out loud with a snort and Fray fell silent in pure astonishment. "It was not that hard to construe."

"Yes?" Shin-Woo spoke up perplexedly. "You've been spacing out… Is something wrong?"

The therian let out a brief chuckle and shook his head. "Nothing. I was discussing your story with my AI. If it's as we think… don't worry, I'll deal with it."

"Huh?" The statement completely blindsided the regressor for a few seconds. "Y-you know how it happened…? And you said your AI? But none of them knew the reason no matter how much we asked right up until they were all disconnected from us…"

"Probably because they only answered the question. To normal AIs, stopping at what is the limit of their factual knowledge should be what is common."

"Normal AIs…?"

"Don't ask me. I don't even know myself," Rakna shrugged. It was the truth. Despite his intentional efforts into making Ceresta develop her own thoughts, he was plenty aware that her current state of sentience was much too abnormal to be the result of a small push on his part.

"Anyway, thank you for the heads up," the therian said and turned around, taking down the runes he had put up to private their conversation. "Good luck on your climb."

"Wha-?! Hey, wait!" Shin-Woo exclaimed. "Are you not going to do anything about your death?!"

"There's no need to. Your job's already done," Rakna retorted, looking over his shoulder. "The me of your timeline… he probably knew he was going to die."

"…what?"

"Just as I do," he uttered, his mind flashing back to a certain book in his soul. "However, mine is not the same. Thanks to you, we're already in a timeline in which my death will not occur any time soon," he stated with uncanny composure.

"…"

"Here," Rakna followed up by sending the regressor a friend request. "If you remember something else or if you need something, contact me. I'll do the same if I need assistance fitting your skill set."

With those words, the therian walked away into the crowd of Athens and Shin-Woo blankly stared at his back until it was out of sight.

The young man sighed and scratched his head. "The tell-tales of his personality really were true… my job is done, huh?" He muttered whilst looking at the new entry on his friend list.

If he had to be honest, he had no idea what to do. Much like most Hosts, he had no goal. The drifters from outside the System simply get stronger out of convenience. They don't have goals of grandeur or domination… or at the very least, they don't have it for long; crushed by reality.

They merely live to live. Nothing more, nothing less. They have dreams, hobbies, and loves. There is nothing that separates them from a normal person outside the System.

Shin-Woo was like that. Unlike Rakna, whose goal… no, whose drive consisted of a powerful sense of honor and duty, he was nothing special. Reaching the last Plateau felt meaningless. But when he was asked to do something that might decide the fate of millions of people, when he was given the responsibility of life or death, he felt awakened. Not all of it was pleasant. He felt pressured, fearful, and anxious. But he felt alive; he had a goal. His actions affected the world.

"Aah… what am I even thinking?" He breathed out with a wry smile. "That's a stupid complex," he scoffed at himself, chuckling, before walking out of the alleyway, his eyes determined and firm.