With the senior officers out of the room, I’m finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. I tell myself to focus. I remind myself that this is what I want to be doing. Studying these glyphs, developing new technology. And now I have the linguistics professor I desperately needed to help effect these lofty goals into reality.

  But I’m no longer just working with my own resources and wherewithal. I’ve got a literal colonel backing me with the resources of the military. At least the ones he can spare. And that means he’s got generals and the president himself riding his ass just as hard as I know he’s going to be riding mine over the next six months. One more deep breath as I focus on what I need to tell Dr. Reynolds.

  First, I hand Dr. Reynolds one of the two glyph books, which he begins thumbing through as I conjure the mental fortitude to begin. Public speaking has never been my forte, but I know I’m going to have to get much better at it so… Might as well just get started on it now.

  “Dr. Reynolds, these two books are identical books of glyphs we found in the dungeon. I’m not sure what specific information would be most helpful to help you start dissecting this language. I can give you my current conjectures and the evidence I have supporting them, or would you prefer to start from your own analyses?”

  “If we had a few years, it’d probably be best to start from scratch, just so I’m not biasing my research based on conjectures that might later turn out to be true. However, this is going to be far more applied and less formal than my normal studies, so I think we can dispense with the most rigorous approaches to these questions. Besides, if what you say is true, the proof will make itself very apparent to even the most skeptical journal editors.”

  Chloe chuckles. Lindsey, sitting in the back of the room as our bodyguard and ‘handler’, breaks a smile.

  “Right. My current conjectures are as follows. These glyphs are the basic blocks of meaning within the language of the System. They are composed of individual runes, some of which hang off the main structures of the glyphs themselves. I had previously thought of them as letters which make up words, but I think they are more akin to the individual strokes used to write characters in Chinese and other languages that adopted their logography."

  I walk up to the whiteboard and draw the glyph of [Heat]. “Now, if I could ask you to please come here. I promise; this is as safe as any application of literal magic can be.”

  “This glyph, to my knowledge, represents [Heat]. When I channel my [Ether], or magical essence, if you will, into the glyph, it creates, well, heat.”

  Dr. Reynolds slowly, very tepidly approaches, and I channel a tiny bit of [Ether] into the glyph as I’ve described. The area around me begins to warm slightly, sending a tiny breeze rippling through the room in accordance with the changes of air pressure and density that result. He acknowledges the warmth, after which, I discontinue the demonstration.

  “One of the few rules of this language that I’ve discovered so far is that inverting a glyph a hundred and eighty degrees also has the effect of reversing its meaning. [Heat] turns to [Cold]; [Light] to [Darkness].” I channel my [Ether] into the glyph, this time from the right instead of the left, causing the air to start to cool and the breeze from earlier to reverse course.

  “I see,” Dr. Reynolds says. “Very interesting indeed. Although, it will be very difficult to decipher the vocabulary of this language from scratch. Practically impossible. Almost always we need some sort of Rosetta Stone analogue. Something that allows us to relate an unknown language with a known meaning.”

  “Except we do have one. Or at least, we can decipher meaning directly by activating glyphs and seeing what the end result will be.”

  “So then, why do you need a linguist?”

  “Because my current methods are crude and ill-equipped to handle anything more intricate than smashing a small number of glyphs together. And the method is particularly inefficient. For example, I can fire my [Modular Blowgun], a self-created weapon, with the glyphs of [Impulse] and [Lightning] together, which has the predictable effect of a fast-moving charged particle that does the expected amount of damage. However, a single bullet costs me seventy units of [Ether]. In contrast, each swing of this [Blessed Sword] has a comparable amount of attack power, and yet doesn’t cost any [Ether].

  “Furthermore, there are a lot of glyphs I just don’t understand.” I draw two more glyphs on the board. “These, so far as I can tell, are the glyphs of [Light] and [Sharpness], and I discovered them while analyzing the properties of my sword.” I do the same thing as before, channeling the [Light] glyph, which glows, and then the inverted [Light] glyph, which turns black and dims its surroundings in a hemisphere about three feet in radius.”

  “But this is the problem, and where I’m not sure how to proceed.”

  I draw six glyphs, two of which are the aforementioned [Light] and [Sharpness]. I proceed to connect them with sluices, and add in a few linking runes as I copy down the most prominent runic phrase etched into the weapon.

  “None of these other four glyphs have any concrete meaning that I can tell. I’m not sure if they are the equivalent of verbs, adjectives, or just articles, prepositions, and so forth. They clearly are there for some reason. I just don’t know how to start identifying the meaning of glyphs that don’t do anything on their own.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Lindsey looks up at me. “So do you think deciphering this is going to have any practical application? Your blowgun is already quite a weapon as it is.”

  “It’s the difference between ‘Lightning bullet go fast!’ spoken by a kid and a scientist saying ‘Take a spherical particle with mass one gram, excite it with two hundred millicoulombs of charge, and apply an instantaneous force to it with intensity such that an impulse of five newton-seconds is imparted onto the object.’ The second of those statements is a lot harder to convey with words, but it’s far more precise. Moreover, I expect it to be far more efficient in terms of [Ether] consumption. That means I’m not going to be quite so useless after firing a dozen rounds, or I can generate a single attack with far more destructive potential.”

  I shudder. Probably not the best thing to say, considering I’m trying to avoid planting any ideas for stronger weapons into the hands of military operatives. I need to be more careful in the future; the last thing I need is to help humans blow up other humans, when we should be working together to fight the System instead. Still, spillover is inevitable.

  The best course of action seems to be to withhold small bits of information— knowledge of certain glyphs, perhaps— to make sure I stay ahead in the knowledge race. Then again, I’d be actively defying my orders, and I don’t feel confident in my ability to either fight the army in armed combat, nor to try to match wits with a [Tactician] class. For now, I see no options but to play along.

  “Ah,” Dr. Reynolds interjects. “So you need me to help you determine the grammar and syntax of this language of… Ethertech, you called it?”

  “That’s the first step, yes. The second would be to see if we could understand the patterns involved and the meanings of the individual runes which comprise these glyphs. If we do that, we might be able to develop even more potent glyphs than the ones we have.”

  “That one might be a bit more challenging, with such limited information to go off. And my specialty is more in historical linguistics and the way languages have branched out over time, rather than formal semantics and morphology, which you’re asking me to help out with.”

  “I understand,” I say.

  “By the way,” Chloe says. “Two questions. Oh, but first, I’m Chloe Jacobs, Sera’s best friend, a [White Mage], and am doing some work as a freelance magical healer for the soldiers who get injured fighting out in the wilds.” She offers her hand, which Dr. Reynolds politely shakes.

  “First, Dr. Reynolds, the colonel said you were flown in from Chicago to help Sera and the others out with this project. Neither of us have left the city and its immediate surroundings since the System integration happened, and I was wanting to know what you could tell us about the state of the outside world. The internet is still spotty and I’m not sure how much of what I’m reading about is true, and how much is just bullshit clickbait.”

  His head drops a bit. “It’s better than you’d think but worse than you hope. The map of the world has completely changed, as the notifications said. Most of the cities and their infrastructure are more or less intact. Roads and power lines are being built over to close in the gaps between cities and ensure some semblance of national infrastructure. And thank God, the farms dotting the landscape are more or less intact. I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about a major food or water shortage, and most of the power lines are already built. Whether they’ll handle the spikes in power usage over the summer, I don’t know.”

  Chloe sighs with relief.

  “The problem is that the extra land isn’t uninhabited. And from what I’ve seen, parts of it look downright hostile. Giant pyramids which are far larger than the ones at Giza and ziggurats like those which once dotted the landscape in ancient Mesopotamia. There are temples that look like they were taken straight out of ancient Greece and Rome, and even a mountain that just appeared smack dab in the middle of Kansas.

  “And now, this part is something I’ve only heard about thirdhand or so. But there’s some rumors about some folks on transatlantic flights who’ve reported seeing a massive new landmass in the middle of the ocean.”

  “Atlantis?” Chloe asks.

  “Could be,” Dr. Reynolds says. “At least, it makes no less sense than the fact that I just watched Sera create supernatural effects through the use of glyphs written in a language none of us have ever seen before.”

  “That would make sense,” I say. “The System probably has knowledge of our entire planet, history, culture… Our myths and legends and folktales.” I pause, thinking back to the dungeon we cleared a few days ago. “No, it definitely is aware of all of our myths and ancient religions. The dungeon boss we fought earlier was called Oneiros, the Dreamer.”

  “That’s about as on-the-nose as it gets in terms of a mythological reference,” Dr. Reynolds adds. “Another thing we should be aware of for the future.”

  “Agreed,” I say.

  “Any other information about the outside world that you feel comfortable sharing?” Lindsey asks. “I’ve heard my share of rumors coming down the grapevine, but I’d rather hear what you have to say first.”

  “Apparently these towers have sprouted up in pretty much every major metropolitan area. Not just in the States, mind you, but in every country across the world.”

  Teleporters? Some sort of transportation network? I don’t disagree that they have a purpose as a challenge gauntlet, but they’re too conveniently spread out if Dr. Reynolds is speaking the truth. I don’t know how much of them has been explored, and I doubt anyone has conquered them, if they truly are meant for level 40 and above as the sentry robots inside had mentioned. But that basement. It was weird. It had some additional purpose, and it was definitely distorting space. Yet another of the myriad powers that the System has at its beck and call.

  “Anyway, I’m going to go attend to my other duties,” Chloe says. “Take care and see you at lunch!”

  “We all look forward to great things from you two,” Lindsey says. “I shall return later as well.”

  I nod and wave as the two exit our linguistics laboratory. Now if only I could access those latent powers that Madison said were inside me. The old me, at least. Then, maybe, I could do more than just play along. But for now, at least, doing so is my only option.