Re:Calibration / On The Horizon

"Considering that advanced technological weapons of wars were in the play, qoute and qoute, humankind, has been pushed back to occupy only a quarter of what they used to lord over. As of today, well, in the current day in that world, only a measly 2 billion."

"Well, 2 billion itself is a pretty good number." Seraphina sighed. "You know, if the humans in that world hadn't actually learned to purify and use the energy. The numbers would have been terribly lower, but just in the nick of time, they managed to do so."

"They managed to learn to purify and use it? How did they manage to use it?" The reason behind why I asked was because I was curious, and this person was quite invested in explaining. "Yes, they did manage to purify and use it."

"Exsia energy is exetremely dangerous, and even being left on itself; multiplies. Once concentrated, it's extremely destructive. But once it could get purified, it could be safely utilised and could be even used to perform miracles."

"For example," Seraphina raised her hand and waved it as a vivid holographic projection appeared, showing a human and a metal encased punching bag.

"It grants supernatural abilities. Namely; endurance." The human started to punch the punching bag with so much exertion without stopping.

"Speed." As she said so, the holographic human started to assault the punching bag faster and faster, until my eyes could barely even follow the strikes.

The human halted for a moment, before taking a step back and coiling his muscles, before he finally released all of his strength; laying waste to the punching bag as it ruptured and turned into countless pieces and scatered everywhere. "And lastly, strength."

"And not only that though." The holographic image changed to another form where a human was sitting seiza stye, and around the person was various elements circulating. "The energy is versatile enough to be converted into the elements as you could see."

"It may range from fire, wind, water, earth, and lightning. This could be explained by the phenomenon called 'abridgement', where the weilder of the energy condenses enough energy that it causes immense atomic vibration: fire, simply gales of wind, condensation of water molecules present in the air, telekinetic abilities honed for earth, and the erratic discharges of electricity."

"Abridgement is a state only one could achieve if they reach satisfactory amounts of Exsia in their body that it causes these phenomenon. But some had enough Exsia to even utilise these elements enough to use them as individual attacks enstead of just enhancements to physical ones."

"With this fact, humans should have won, but they had only achieved a stalemate. This is because of one contributing factor; artificial intelligence. Corrupted artificial intelligence, mostly on par with human capabillities, also learned to harness the energy."

"But they are far more powerful because they harness RAW Exsia, which is more destructive than the purified version of Exsia. The only thing that has allowed humanity to even achieve stalemate with how powerful the enemy is because humans have far more creative applications to Exsia than what simple machines are capable of." Seraphina concluded.

Silence ensued as Seraphina didn't explain any further, while I was busy in my thoughts of what to do next among my current predicament. On one hand, I had actually died. Shocker, I know, but it ain't stopping me from funtioning normally.

And on the other hand, I find myself sitting face front with a 'God' that wants me to call them by their personal name out of suspicious friendliness that I can't quite grasp yet, contemplating the decisions of how to proceed forward in a world filled with war and robots.

"You don't have to worry that much about surviving in another world, you know? You still have your four wishes with you. Ah, and not only that, you also have my other 'blessings' at play as well. Even if you don't wish for something correlating to your personal strength, you'll still grow stupendously powerful, enough to face off against giant monsters." Seraphina interjected.

"Blessings? But, isn't my four wishes enough, or are perhaps sending more to compensate for the wishes? And what could these wishes exactly grant me anyway?" I asked in a rapid succession. "Weeeeeeell, to explain everything you asked, let's first start with what these wishes can grant you."

Seraphina scratched her head in slight annoyance. "You ask too many questions, anyways.... Wishes can grant..... virtually anything. From power to wealth, to abilities and health. Though there are limits to what can wish for though, I want you to enjoy a new life."

"Nothing too boring, nothing too hard, but nothing too easy either. I still want you experience hardship to develop chracter. I don't want a corrupted individual to be my chosen." Seraphina explained with a small frown as she put her hand under her chin, seemingly in deep thought as my eyebrows twitched in annoyance.

"Now, about the 'blessings' I gave you. As someone who is basically free to do anything I want and no one gets a say in it, with my multiple authority domains, I can grant you multiple things. Though not too much. A part of those multiple authority domains is 'chance', or in other words, fate, or luck, whatever you prefer."

"The very basic blessing an authority of 'chance' can give is.... *drumroll* .....a fuel to your gambling addiction! A [gacha system] where you can pull out various characters and abillities, along with weapons and other inorganic entities! Very cool right~? You hid your gambling addiction in your last life pretty well, but you can't hide it from someone omniscient."

"Along with that, is my authority over 'mastery' and 'flames and aether(order)'. The blessging from the authority of mastery gives you.... well; complete and utterly phenomenal skill and talent, most of all, mastery over any weapon there is. From the simple swords, to the spears, the daggers, and the gauntlets; you'll have level 3 mastery."

"If level 1 signifies small but sufficient mastery over the weapon or subject, and level two signifies the level of mastery that people comprehend as the "peak level", then level 3 signifies 'Beyond Lord' or "Beyond Mastery", going into the realms of 'conceptual ability'."

Seraphina paused for a second, as to gauge my reaction. And my reaction? I was literally bewildered beyond imagination. Just what did I do in order to earn the favour of this seemingly omnipotent being? Throwing out powers and abilities to me, as if it was just measly scrubs...

She seemed satisfied as she continued. "Now, for my final blessing, the conceptual dominion over 'fire' and 'order'. Be careful, this power, can destroy you if your understanding is not adequate. For you to even wield this authority, you must first have an understanding of how it works."

"As its name suggests, this dominion covers the concept of 'flames' and 'order'. You just need to imagine 'your concept' of flames and order to bring about its dominion unto reality. Remember, once you have a good grasp of this power, it will be the one to drag you out the eternal depths of darkness that you will face in that world."

Seraphina spoke as she booped my nose all the way from the other side of the table. I grew a little bit less hesitant to speak with her friendly(?) demeanor. "Seraphina, um, can you please delve deeper into this gacha system...?" A wry smile crept to my face as I turned to my left.

"Yohoo! I'm glad you asked; I personally created this specific 'contraption' after all!" She spoke as I sweatdropped at her terminology. '[Contraption]?' I thought. "As the name suggests, it is a gacha system. You can exchange pulls with things I call 'research tickets' in order to obtain powerful allies and weapons alike. It's basically buying things, but random."

"There are a total of eight tiers in the power and rarity system, from the basic one stars: the E-ranks, to the most powerful and dazzling eight-starred Ex-Ranks!" She raised her hand in the air as the sky turned black and countless stars encompassed its length, some of which were increadibly brilliant that one look could ensnare you.

"Though the characters you can summon are limited to automatons and androids, they become increasingly more complex in both power, and human-like intelligence and emotional capabilities the higher their ranks are in the 2nd heaven." She spoke, pointing at the farthest stars that shone the most brightest.

"Also, take note, their ability to grow stronger is limited by their tiers, with the dreadable Ex-ranks obtaining literal ungodly speed of growth and near limitless growth caps." The stars in the sky brightened, some only by a small amount, but some grew increasingly intense.

Dreadable? "Just how scary are these Ex-ranks for you to describe them as dreadable?" I unconsciously asked. "Well, for the world you're going to, hmmm.... they're could grow to be as strong as the creator of that world. Though that guy perished, he was 'decent'."

'Decent, huh? In the eyes of an omnipotent being, that's crazy.' I thought. "Do you understand everything now?" Seraphina asked. "...Yes, I have no qualms to your arrangement." I answered. "Now, let's proceed to your four wishes!"

"For my first wish, I wish to be reincarnated as an automaton myself!" I excitedly exclamed as Seraphina tilted her head in mock confusion. "Ah... What I mean is that by doing this, I effectively take out any factor that makes me incapable of weilding Exsia!"

"In order for human beings to even use Exsia, they need to purify it. But the unrefined Exsia is far more destructive and capable than the purified Exsia, and without me needing to purify Exsia before absorbing and using it, I can grow stronger, at a faster rate." I explained

"For my second wish, I desire absolute control & immunity from Exsia, more specifically the corruptive ability of unrefined Exsia that basically renders everything it corrupts into a mindless beast. This allows me to wield Exsia without any worries of making mishaps."

"For my third wish, I desire the ability to automatically obtain all the abilities of my summons. Immediately, after they are summoned, I recieve their physical and calculative abilities, and this augment increases equally proportional to their increasing strength."

"And for my fourth and final wish....." I put on a melancholic smile as I put both my hands unto the table and rubbed them together in a nervous manner. "As painful and gut wrenching they may be... my memories, the hardship and warmth I had experience define who I am."

I felt a familliar warmth on my hands as they gradually stopped shaking, towhich I looked up to see Seraphina softly smiling at me with a look of understanding. "I understand." She spoke curtly, but I could feel the sincerity in her voice as she held me in her arms. "Thank you."

"Now that we're finished with that, let's go unto your mission-" "Wait I have a mission to do in this world?" I spoke, baffled, i thought everything was done, apparently not. She turned to look at me with a look of sarcasm. "You really expected me to give you all this power just for you to do nothing?"

I didn't refute her, she was right. This was a bit too much power just for me to do absolutely nothing and do whatever I want with it. "So what's my mission then?" I inquired. "Hmph!" She snorted in amusement. "You're going to be the maintainer of balance in that world."

"Your job is really simple. You just need to adjust everything in that world so that is balanced, basically a shepherd in that world. You need to make sure, that the 'corrupted' aren't more powerful than the humans and cull their numbers regularly."

"But you also must need to maintain a balance where the humans do not have an obvious advantage over the 'corrupted. They must remain under the shadow of corruption, yet be shed upon by a brilliant ligth of hope that will lead them to grow."

"In other words, you must reduce the number of corrupted to a controllable level, and cull the humans of their greed. And as the humans develop, so must the corrupted advance further to provide humanity a challenge and induce their growth.

"You must keep this balance until you are sure enough that humanity could usher into another stage of development without the interferance of a 'third party' as humanity as of now is in the eternal depths of darkness and gloom. You must maintain balance no matter the method."

I wanted to raise my hand and object the mission but, staring at Seraphina who looked at me with eyes that expressed confidence in my abillities, I coudn't find it in me to refuse anymore. "Alright, I accept the mission you have provided."

"Good." Seraphina spoke as she stood up her chair and I followed suit. "Man, this is why I don't like siting down for too long..." She flexed her body as she spoke, while I just silently stared at her action. "Alright, time to go now, goodbye!" She exclaimed.

As soon as she spoke those words, my 'body' immediately began to fade into golden particles. "Hey, Seraphina...." I called out her name. "Yes?" She answered. "Thank you for your kindness, Onee-chan." Her eyes brightened up a bit more.

"Hm, I guess it is inevitable... I didn't hide it after all. Haha! In all timelines you did find out, some earlier, some even further away in time." She beamed me a smile. "I was only able to experience this warmth from only one person." I returned the smile.

The both of us let out a chuckle as we soon calmed down. "Good bye, onee-chan." I showed a smile. "Goodbye, Zenin." She returned the smile back at me, "Let's meet again shortly. Those were the last words I heard before my vision greeted the eternal darkness it once knew.