Uncanny Expectations

Riva really enjoyed the outdoor bath underneath the starry sky.

It was her first time using the dungeon manager to build something in the dungeon. She didn't have the required materials, like stone and water, on hand, but could easily buy them from the shop. It was a different story for more advanced recipes, but building a spring was easily within her means.

It wasn't even particularly expensive. The whole maneuver had cost her little more than 200 points of energy. And the results were immediate.

Too bad that she didn't unlock any of the fancier blueprints for building yet. But according to experience, they should unlock, the more she traveled and saw.

When she finished her bath, she built a simple terrasse and added chairs and tables that the system registered during her stay in Marinon. She even went as far as adding some trees and bushes finishing it with fancy oil lamps for the atmosphere.

There was no denying that imagining something and immediately building it had a certain fun to it. Riva was already eying the 3D tool that would enable her to make her own customized things.

Just that she was keenly aware of Victor's mental state and adding another impossible miracle, in his eyes, wouldn't exactly help. He already didn't look that good when she conjured the terrasse.

From what she gathered he could remember the past from three years ago, while his more recent memories were gone. Also, he described that only after he had eaten his fill, did the 'Self Control' skill fully activate and he regained a sense of self. Obviously, this was different from Riva.

Right now Victor was sitting next to her at one of the conjured tables and playing with the table decoration. His face was extremely pale. Though that was understandable. Nobody dead and zombified would be a picture of health.

Riva didn't initiate a conversation and simply waited for Victor.

As a result, they were silent for a long time.

Victor was obviously thinking things through and organizing the mess in his memories thus Riva chose to wait for him to start the conversation.

Victor's reaction to the system got Riva thinking. The way he interpreted it as a spell or some godly power was only natural. It was a reasonable way of thinking based on the way the world worked. This was what she should have been thinking too. And yet Riva had instinctively understood the system. She even had certain ideas on how it was supposed to work. They felt natural and obvious but now that she had a comparison in Victor she found that this wasn't natural at all!

Since she didn't remember she had no way of telling where these memories stemmed from, but they weren't common knowledge, that much was certain. The concept of a system didn't exist!

But she could be fairly certain that she didn't just imagine it. Because even if the system broke many of her expectations it also fulfilled many of them. For example how she immediately understood what an inventory was and how to use it. Of course, there had been magicians that connected space fragments with a transportation spell before.

But this was nothing remotely comparable to the inventory that had countless spaces not restricted by size but instead limited to one object each. This made no sense. How could a space that fit a boar, or a small metal emblem and be considered full in both cases?

Even though Riva couldn't explain why, she had these expectations, curiosity, and even anticipation towards the system as though she knew about it beforehand. She must have been familiar with it in some way when she was a human. Maybe retracting her steps from the past would reveal something?

<Hey, system. Do you know about my past?> Riva tried asking the system.

[System has no record of before user accepted it as its host]

<Then why did you choose me?>

[This was decided by the system architect]

<Is there a possibility to directly talk to them?>

[...Affirmative]

<How?>

[Unknown]

<Of course>

Riva no longer got as riled up over the way the system cut their conversation short.

Thinking back, Riva felt silly for getting worked up over it before.

It was weird, unreliable, and oftentimes frustratingly inconvenient but it had really given her a second chance and opened new possibilities and strength. She had probably long surpassed her human self. In the eyes of anyone else, it would have been a miracle without comparison.

The way Victor claimed he must be in a god's realm because accepting a former human, now Zombie, could do all that she did without some godly power involved, was too much for him. It finally opened Riva's eyes.

Having this much energy after barely awakening as an undead was beyond unusual. The way the dryad and Rao treated her, just thinking like an intelligent lifeform should have been difficult.

Riva wasn't even 100% sure where her expectations towards it stemmed from because objectively this strange entity that was the system had been a great help.

She didn't need to worry about her lifespan, so what was waiting a week for a new skill? Normal people trained years, even decades to acquire the same abilities.

And she could easily get even more skills by learning them manually or through different means than the shop.

Not to mention having a symbiosis with a dungeon, and being able to create stuff from out of nowhere.

She was the weird one that kept nitpicking. She couldn't help it. With every fiber of her being, she felt that this system was buggy! And it didn't even seriously try to better itself.

Be that as it may if one found a way to deal with the stupid issues it was considerably useful.

And this was while she had barely explored its functions. They were already more than plenty and continued expanding faster than she could familiarize herself with them.

With those considerations in mind, Riva passed the time by testing different search terms in the system shop.

She discovered that Rao's skills hadn't been registered after all. She had been able to buy Telepathy but there were no other mind-related skills of interest.

She asked the system from where she registered the skill and found out that Rao's thralls had been actively using it at all times. This sufficed for it to be registered.

Riva had tested many other search terms and came to the conclusion that the skills from the absorbed ice dragon mana were by far the most useful in her collection.

Other than that there was a nice restraining spell that she picked up from the army back at the dungeon.

Sadly she couldn't buy the skill from the boss monster from the new dungeon. It could be found through the search but it said she had insufficient authority for it to work.

Searching for physical skills had a far better yield. She could basically purchase any standard weapon skill and even some weird ones. Same for techniques that related to martial disciplines like movement and defense.

And then there were the lifestyle skills. Bartering, singing, and accounting to name a few. It even went as far as nail clipping and the art of skipping work. Riva found those particular ones when she searched for the adventurer guild's branch head.

The selection was extremely broad. There was a skill for pretty much any action or activity a humanoid could possibly do. And deciding which one to get next would be extremely difficult. Best to make it a problem for future Riva.

The items up for purchase were similar to the skills, the more unique an item was the less likely it was registered just by remote contact. In turn, simple day-to-day necessities had been registered freely.

Riva smiled when she found the scorpion meat skewers. They were a Marinon delicacy thanks to the nearby dungeon.

She also wanted to buy another Slashy and found that she couldn't. Apparently, the system would only ever register one version of any item and then update it when something changed. Slashy had become a tame which was considered a conscious entity and could neither be sold nor bought. Thus it was deleted from the shop.

Not that it mattered. Riva found countless different swords once she searched for them. Basically, everyone had a sword or dagger these days, they were so common that they easily registered in the shop if even remotely within reach. Riva's search gave her an army's and half a town's worth of swords as result.

It was already inconvenient to look through them all and it would only become harder with time as her list of registered items quickly grew.

"Riva?" Victor's voice dragged Riva back to the here and now. He was ready to talk about the past.