And first, I thought I was dead.
I floated in a void, but it was not the starlit expanse where I had met the Curator. That place had felt ancient, personal, a meeting room between realities. This was different. This was vast and coldly mechanical. My consciousness, stripped of a body, drifted.
At first, I felt a pang of disappointment. He's not here. The Curator, the being who had set me on this path, was absent. This wasn't his domain.
Then, memory surfaced—not mine, but Sunny's. A description from a web novel I'd read a lifetime ago. Between those stars, countless strings of silver light were woven into a beautiful and inconceivably complex net, forming various nexuses and constellations.
As if the thought itself had power, the void around me resolved into that exact vision.
It was breath-taking. A cosmic tapestry of impossible scale. Silver threads of pure light crisscrossed an infinite darkness, connecting points of brilliant, cold light. They pulsed with a rhythmic, silent energy, weaving and re-weaving patterns too complex for my mind to follow. It was a web of fate, a circuit board for reality itself. It was the most beautiful and terrifying thing I had ever seen.
And then the thought came, unbidden, a product of my old world's perspective: It looks like a neural network.
The analogy was perfect. The silver threads were synaptic connections, the glowing nexuses were neurons firing. This wasn't just a place; it was a process.
A function. I had worked with computers, digging through and sorting old code for my employers. I had seen a few images of a brain scan too, just here or there, available in the Age of Information.
The question that had haunted humanity since the Spell's arrival echoed in my formless mind: Is it alive?
Sunny believed it was just a machine, neither alive nor dead, or even capable of creativity beyond what was already inscribed in it. Of course, Nephis believed it held a specific malice towards her, and Cassie also seemed to have her own theories, but the exact level of sentience the Spell possessed wasn't revealed up to the chapters I'd read.
According to the novel though: it was the ultimate arbiter, the impartial, unfeeling engine that governed the new laws of reality. It did not care about my sacrifice, my fears, or my regrets. It would only assess my performance against its parameters.
A profound silence fell, deeper than any I had ever known. The beautiful, terrifying web of light seemed to hold its breath.
Then, a voice that was not a voice, a sound that was pure information, echoed through the core of my being. It was devoid of tone, of gender, of emotion. It was the system itself, speaking its judgment.
[Assessing...]
The appraisal had begun.
[You have received a Memory: Unshadowed Crucifix]
'Huh? Wait, hold on a bit, what the fuck-'
[Aspirant! Your trial is over.]
[A young and lonely man ascended to the Temple of Evenlight to escape the terrors of the Doom. He manipulated all within, through trickery and inspiration, rallying the despondent Saint to open his heart and finally break free from his self-imposed shackles of responsibility. Challenging the very Fates themselves, he burnt his own blood and soul to open the passage for others to escape, even accepting the final sacrifice in the Saint's stead. The Lord of Light did not bless him, but he enacted Divine Retribution upon the darkness regardless.]
[You have defeated a Dormant Beast: Black Ooze.]
[You have defeated three thousand Dormant Beasts: Black Ooze.]
[You have defeated an Awakened Devil: Sentry of the Vines]
[You have defeated five hundred Awakened Devils: Sentry of the Vines]
[You have defeated a Corrupted Tyrant: Filthy Leviathan.]
[You have slain three hundred Fallen Demons: Glade Reaper]
[You have received the Sun God's blessing.]
[È̴͇͍̼̈́R̸̻͎̼͒͝R̵͓̟͒̐̿O̵͇̻͉͌̽͘R̸̙̘͚̾̔͘ È̴͇͍̼̈́R̸̻͎̼͒͝R̵͓̟͒̐̿O̵͇̻͉͌̽͘R̸̙̘͚̾̔͘ È̴͇͍̼̈́R̸̻͎̼͒͝R̵͓̟͒̐̿O̵͇̻͉͌̽͘R̸̙̘͚̾̔͘]
[You have received-Blessing of the Visionary]
[You have achieved the unimaginable!]
[Final appraisal: Illustrious!. Your determination truly knows no bounds.]
The Spell's voice, that cold, cosmic-ass automated teller of doom and glory, started listing off my sins and triumphs. I listened, my non-existent jaw hanging open somewhere in this void.
Manipulated everyone? Okay, guilty as charged. Rallied the Saint? Theron probably would have died if I wasn't there to take his place, and it seemed my action opened his worldview, but I felt embarrassed with the credit.
Then there was the kill count.
[You have defeated three thousand Dormant Beasts…]
"Wait, hold on—" I tried to interrupt the void.
[…five hundred Awakened Devils…]
"Three *thousand*? What the actual fuck? I blew up a rock! I didn't fight them!"
[…a Corrupted Tyrant…]
"A LEVIATHAN? I didn't even see a leviathan! Was it in the back?!"
[…three hundred Ascended Demons…]
I just… stopped. My mind went completely blank. The sheer, ridiculous, overkill scale of it was too much. I'd vaporized a mountain top and the Spell was crediting me for every single bug that got caught in the blast radius. It was the most insane, broken, exploit-level farming I could possibly imagine. A hysterical laugh bubbled up, a sound of pure, unadulterated what-the-fuck.
Then came the errors. The glitched text. The… blessings.
[È̴͇͍̼̈́R̸̻͎̼͒͝R̵͓̟͒̐̿O̵͇̻͉͌̽͘R̸̙̘͚̾̔͘… You have received-Blessing of the Visionary]
My mirth vanished, replaced by a shot of cold, electric shock. The Visionary? My Pathway? That… that was the Curator's handiwork. That was a cheat code he'd slipped into the system. That wasn't part of the loot table.
The final verdict dropped.
[Final appraisal: Illustrious!]
.....
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