26: Sneaking Unease

Jörmungandr had been acting strangely recently.

The clueless young man who seemed innocent about all things was brooding more and more, his usual silence becoming interwoven with anxiety and a strange of sense of tension.

Of course, the System didn't blame him for the unease that attacked him—in fact, she was impressed by his instinct in concerning his Players. Though, she knew that this particular Player was special to him, but the details as to why and the situation surrounding the cross in Fate between the monster and human was rather vague from her understanding.

She considered digging into it more, but... well, suffice to say she wasn't a high enough "level" amongst the Eternal Beings to really access it.

The Systems eyes glitched and her dark skin sparkled for a second as she switched her focus onto the second Server—a place where only certain humans that Fate had advised her on and the Elves had gathered, though she'd been against the placement of humans on this Server.

A game was no fun if all the Players died in the first five minutes, which is why she'd been pissed off by the "Good" factions of the Gods, and had even penalized their machinations by awarding the "Bad" factions as compensation.

Truth be told, it wasn't only Jörmungandr whose brood was annihilated, but rather other beings like Kronos, Hades and Apophis, whom the other mythologies seemed to hate, were preyed upon by the others, though not to Jörmungandr's extent.

Jörmungandr had no clue of what the other Gods would plan against him since he'd never been out the ocean, so he was one of the ones hit the hardest; in comparison, the other "evil" Gods were actually quite fortunate, as they expected this.

"Haa... why can't all of those stupid old farts just shut up and get along... they're making this game so boring!" the System whined as she spun in a lazy circle, her legs curled to avoid hitting some of the closer monitors of her observation room.

All that surrounded her were thousands of floating screens from different time periods and styles, a sparkling void of stars and dark surrounding the System as she willed herself to different ones, scouring them before frowning and pushing them away.

"No, not this one... Not this one either... Okay, I did NOT need to see that—SIR, WHAT THE FUXX ARE YOU DOING TO A CHILD??! NOPE, DENIED! Phew... I saved myself from a rather horrifying sight... what was I looking for again? Oh right, the anomaly! Now wheeeeere is it... Nope, not this one..."

And so the cycle of determination, bluster, forgetfulness, reminders and determination continued with the System, until she eventually shrieked, "Found it!" her scream splitting a few monitor screens from the high-pitched screech.

Wiping away nonexistent sweat, the System grabbed the tablet and swiped to where Player 7,205,693,124 was—a.k.a. Asta Alfsdotter, the child whose fate was tied to the Norse strongly. The System didn't know why, they just knew what Fate had told them.

Frowning, she checked the status of this oh-so special "Asta" and her rouge lips only puffed out more when she saw a great big [ U N D E T E R M I N E D ] on her status.

"What do you mean "undetermined"?" muttered the System, "I'm certain I told the creature to jump and finish her..."

She knew very well that the creature didn't have the patience nor brain capacity to wait outside of Asta's covering and to ambush her—it was a flaw from the original design, but hey, she managed to make his spontaneity absolutely insane, so she took the trade-off.

The System's hope was that when Jörmungandr saw the "special" existence dead and mauled, she could test his capability towards the experiment and get an entertaining reaction. She wanted him to go back to his roots, to go on a murder spree, and to become the last one standing on all the servers; she found the cliché idea to be very entertaining in theory.

Clearly, as she focused only on the short-term, she didn't know what good entertainment was.

"Achoo!"

Rubbing her nose while scowling on instinct from the thought that someone was bad-mouthing her somewhere, she went back to trying to determine Asta's status, as this whole dramatic "UNDETERMINED" business wasn't supposed to happen.

"I swear, if this is the bug, I'm going to gouge out someone's fuxxing eyes and shove them up Fate's as—"

The System's rapid typing stopped, her eyes glitching into an alarm yellow, her breath stalling for a moment.

"Wait... so her [Class] was supposed to be... huh?"

A sneaking unease tore through her throat, rendering her immobile at the emotions jarring violence.

"Come to think of it... didn't I see a notification that a contract had been made?"

At the time, she'd felt little alarm at the existence of the contract, as 'Asta was going to die anyways so sucks to be the snake', but now that she was looking this over again...

"Soul Serpent? Wait... holy sh!t, what?! She contracted a Soul Serpent? A baby one, sure, but..."

She scrolled through the walls of code surrounding the contract establishment, searching for the serpent's origin, but coming up with nothing. A large [UNKNOWN ENTITY] greeted her eyes, and her eyes paled to an even brighter yellow.

"...Soul Serpents only form when a strong spirit dies, and this... this isn't supposed to be one on the Second Server! Where did it sneak in from?! A leak? Is there a leak, where?! And a Spirit Mage? Seriously?! The drop rate on that class is one in a ten billion! Gah... why did I fuxxing randomize it again... why do I do this to myself, ahhhh—"

While the System had a mental breakdown, another notification *briinged behind her, prompting her to spin around, swiping it to tell her the message on audio while she figured out how to alter Asta's status.

[Call from entity ID: <Fate>: "Do not interfere with Asta's path any longer—doing so again will interfere with the Serpent's fate as well, as the red string had knotted them together. I repeat, do NOT interfere with Asta Alfsdotter's fate any longer—"]

"Haha, got it! Then, I'll just erase her and it'll all be dandy!"

Pressing on the [Delete ID] option, the System smiled with content, her eyes turning a happy pink that matched her sweeter than strawberry smile.

["... So you have chosen ruin, child."]

It was only when the ominous words of the low voice were properly registered that she'd realized what she'd done, and with a shock, the [Delete ID] missed Asta and deleted a small section of the Server boundary—right where Jörmungandr and his trio were...

"...Sh!t!"