Chapter 7: The Cult of The Imperfect System

  Mazink was observing the new universe’s Tutorial in a bubble outside of time. This was not a new experience for him, the multiverse was a big place and new universes were integrated into the system every few years. Mazink himself had been born in the system like most lifeforms in the multiverse, though he had witnessed thousands of Tutorials and integrations throughout his life.

  The Tutorial of a universe was meant to be private, where the details were only known to the locals. However, the System was imperfect, and there were exploits to utilize this.

  It was impossible to completely ignore the rules set in place by the system, you could only bend them. No matter how powerful you were, even the strongest gods in the multiverse could not completely overwrite the system’s decisions. As a result, Mazink was able to observe the Tutorial of this new universe, even if it existed within an instant outside of time. However, he could not interfere.

  Not that a peak S rank like himself should be able to, he could single handedly eradicate life in this entire universe with minimal effort. His stats were probably higher than the stats of every being alive within it combined, including the beasts.

  Mazink’s job was to observe new universes and report any anomalies or interests that a new universe might contain. Sometimes they had a unique material found nowhere else that was beneficial, and other times they contained a race that might be useful in some ongoing experiments within the cult.

  This universe, however, was completely unremarkable. As a matter of fact, it was so unremarkable that it was remarkably unremarkable. Universes with no Mana at all were relatively rare, even in the multiverse. They always received an influx of Mana upon integration, though these universes normally contained rather pathetic creatures and useless resources.

  On top of that, this universe was pretty young. It was just shy of 14 billion years old, a universe so young that Mazink had been alive before it even came into existence. As a result, the number of sapient creatures within was rather small - a mere 9 trillion.

  Mazink watched through the various Tutorials all occurring at once, his Perception high enough to watch billions at once, his Intelligence high enough to process all this information, and his Wisdom high enough to retain it. Overall, this universe was within his expectations for a no Mana universe.

  It fucking sucked.

  Talk about a snoozefest. He witnessed countless tribal species getting wiped in the first wave in the first quest of the Tutorial. The Tutorial was automatically adjusted to a universe’s population and strength, meaning this one should be rather easy.

  However, Mazink had seen Tutorials in no Mana universes before, and they were normally a lot easier than this one, though no Tutorial was ever easy. The Tutorial was an opportunity, one that you could opt out of. Few ever make it past the first quest, let alone the entire Tutorial.

  It was just a place to test out your new abilities and get some experience before leaving back to the real world. Even in integrations with quadrillions of sapient beings, the number of lifeforms that make it through the entire Tutorial would only be in the 3-4 digit range.

  Casualties would also be extremely high, as it took some time for many races to understand how to even use the system to escape the Tutorial. An interactive display like that wasn’t exactly common anywhere outside the system.

  As Mazink was considering how shit this universe was, his perception shifted to a new set of Tutorials, one of which caught his eyes. It was a party of humans, some new variant from this universe. Mazink had seen humans before, they were pretty common in the multiverse. These were a little creepy, having two kidneys, their heart on the left side of their chest, and each human seemed to favor one of two hands. Weird, but whatever. The multiverse has plenty of freaks like that. Besides, their anatomy would be indistinguishable from normal humans once they started to evolve their race.

  The reason this party caught his attention was the brutality they used against the weakest creature in their wave. They were torturing the thing, cutting into its back legs where it wouldn’t cause any lethal damage. Brutality was something reasonable to expect from untrained fighters, and Mazink himself could understand torturing a creature for the fun of it. Hell, he had been there himself plenty of times.

  The thing is, none of the creatures in the waves were real. They had fake, simulated Souls with the sole purpose of attacking the locals. They might as well be torturing a rock. Mazink shook his head and laughed as he watched the party slay the other beasts in the wave, leaving the first alive to watch as they killed its companions.

  These humans were damn brutal, and he kind of liked it. It was a shame they were wasting their efforts on a fake being, but he could respect the effort.

  Now that the wave was over, he waited to watch them either kill the crippled beast or torture it to death. Hell, maybe they would heal it just to do it all again. They seemed to be a sadistic bunch, so that was completely a possibility. They had no way of knowing these creatures were fake, so even if none of the pain was real, the humans still thought it was.

  However, the humans just… ignored it? The beast continued to crawl after one of them, and the local just kept letting it chase, never getting close. What the hell were they doing?

  Mazink shifted his focus to the part of the universe that housed these humans. Due to the wonky nature of linearity outside of time, he was able to observe the Tutorials of these variant humans from the beginning. He was shocked to see that many parties in these Tutorials employed similar tactics to the one he initially observed, and many had an overall pretty easy time with the Tutorial.

  Sure, over two billion had already died, and hundreds of millions more had left with fatal injuries and would likely die as soon as time continued to flow. However, those were rookie numbers. There seemed to only be around 10 billion of these humans, give or take a few. Regardless, the casualty rate should be far higher. Most races were lucky if a quarter of the population made it out, and so far about three quarters of the population had either survived the first wave or left as soon as possible.

  While all parties entered with the equipment provided by the system, it seemed some parties had entered with equipment of their own. Some entered with metal devices that could fit in one or two hands, and when activated would launch a tiny metal projectile at high speeds. Well, high speeds for a race with no Mana.

  The contraptions had absolutely no Mana imbuing them, giving any being with Mana a high natural resistance against them. Regardless, the monsters so far were all below level 10, and the projectiles did just fine for the most part. This was astonishing to Mazink, who had not seen something like this before. Sure, there were weapons of similar shape and functionality as these, but they all used Mana to function.

  Even more distressing was that many humans employed highly advanced tactics to deal with the waves. Additionally, quite a lot of them had figured out the basics of the system at record pace. It was almost as if some of the humans had been trained for the Tutorial ahead of time.

  Strangely enough, the world leaders of the planet had all been put into parties with one another, and most of them had wound up killing each other or stabbing each other in the back before dying, all of them accusing each other of having something to do with the Tutorial. It was not often that the upper echelon of a society performed the worst in the Tutorial.

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  A large number of parties began to cripple a monster and leave it alive, and soon Mazink understood why. The next wave wouldn’t start until all the monsters in the current wave were dead, giving them far more time to prepare. Many parties employed peculiar tactics that granted huge benefits. Asides from the ones blowing apart monsters with their pre-System weapons, some had the tank guide the whole wave around their Tutorial zone while the others were able to pick off the enemies one at a time.

  They talked about the stats and figured them out rather quickly, and many used terms like “training,” or “kiting,” or “min-maxing,” when discussing strategies. He heard one man say “The AI on these things kind of suck,” when he was getting attacked by a group of golems. Mazink didn’t understand how the man would know what an AI is, as he was a being from a world with no Mana, so they should not be familiar with how golems operate at all.

  He decided to put a notice in his report that he was making regarding the new universe. He put a minor notice on this race and the planet “Earth,” saying that their ability to exploit the Tutorial had been commendable and they may make a valuable addition to the Cult. They would send a few junior extermination squads to gather up any recruits once outsiders were allowed to enter this universe in 10 years. They would take a few willing participants, then enslave or kill the rest.

  Mazink remembered the good old days when he had been part of a junior extermination squad, committing genocides. Good times.

  Then he saw it. No, he saw a lot of them.

  Many humans had a strange rectangular device with them that seemed to be called a “phone,” and if Mazink had a physical body during the observation process he would have gasped in shock.

  It seemed these humans had managed to trick a rock into thinking without the use of Mana. This was practically unheard of, only existing in certain myths and legends that few believed. It seemed these devices used tiny gates that interact with particles so small, just looking at them caused them to move. If Mazink didn’t have his Perception, he wouldn’t have been able to notice them. Even with his Perception, he had a hard time understanding the structure of these particles as they seemed to possess contradictory properties.

  More so, there was no way these humans should be able to know of these particles, let alone manipulate them with these devices. Technology like this existed out in the multiverse, it was a big place after all and few things had never happened before. However, technology everywhere was rooted in Mana applications. These creepy freaks had managed to create devices with displays comparable to the system without Mana, albeit they only functioned using physical stimuli.

  Mazink raised the notice of this planet to the highest level he was allowed to. Waiting the 10 years until they could send in low level junior extermination squads would take too long. They had to get their people into this universe as soon as possible, preferably before any other multiversal faction took notice. It would have to wait until the Tutorial was over, as time was still frozen and simply observing the Tutorial was already bending the rules more than most would dare.

  As Mazink said, few things in the multiverse have never happened before. In this case, technology without the use of Mana like this had been seen exactly once in the entire history of the multiverse, and being a part of the Cult of The Imperfect System gave Mazink insight into the truth of those rumors. He knew exactly where this kind of thing had happened before.

  It had been the Origin Universe, the very one that had created the System.

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  “We would make terrible speedrunners” Sarah said, walking along with Madeline and Teresa along the perimeter of liberty island. The crippled monster crawled after them, still keeping its unwavering determination to bite their ankles. “Like, we have to have one of the slowest times for this wave.”

  “You think everyone’s is the same?” Teresa asked, looking out at the seemingly endless desert surrounding the island.

  “I hope not.” Madeline said, shaking her head. “I can’t imagine any of the kids on my track team going through this, not to mention my family. I have a daughter, you know. She’s still a baby, she can’t even read. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but I don’t know what’s going to happen to her. I’ve been just trying to hope that she’s in a Tutorial somewhere with my husband, but I don’t know. If leaving the Tutorial sooner would get me to her any faster, I would have been gone by now.”

  “Fuck,” Sarah said, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even think of that. I… don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, and I really hope that she’s okay.”

  “Tell us about her,” Teresa said, trying to find the right thing to say. She also hadn’t considered that children might be going through this too, it just hadn’t occurred to her. Of course, her own family had crossed her mind, but her younger brother was still 20 years old and in college, there weren’t any toddlers in her immediate family. That was a different situation altogether.

  “We had Mackenzie in November last year, she just turned four months old.” Madeline said, keeping her eyes averted. “I always wanted to be a mother, and Mackenzie wasn’t going to be our first. But there were complications with my pregnancy a few years ago, and, well… shit.”

  Madeline took a shuddering breath before she continued.

  “Once I had her, it felt like nothing in the world mattered except for her. She’s the most beautiful fucking baby I’ve ever seen in my life, and I know everyone says that about their kids but really it felt like I was holding the meaning of life in my hands. She’s still way too young to even crawl, but her laugh is so damn contagious, I’d kill to hear it again.” She paused, and no one spoke for a bit. Nobody really knew what to say. Sarah put a hand on Madeline’s shoulder, and Madeline simply smiled back at her. “How about you two? Anyone special in your lives?”

  “I’ve got a sister.” Sarah answered after a pause, everyone still taken aback by the thought of little Mackenzie. “Her name’s Sasha, we’re twins actually. Not identical, but you get it. If anyone’s doing alright then I’m sure she is. She’s a big fan of guns and she’s in the military, so if anything she’s probably better off than us right now. You guys think the System allows guns into the Tutorial? Hell, I still have my phone.”

  “No way, that’d be insanely overpowered.” Teresa responded with a laugh. “But what do I know? Apparently that’s a Preston question, since he likes that isekai or whatever. Maybe Sasha is just mowing down hordes of mosquitoes with a machine gun as we speak.”

  “Yeah, and there’s probably some lucky fucks who came in with artillery weapons having the time of their lives.” Sara said, laughing as well. They all smiled at the thought, the mood of the conversation having done a complete 180. “What about you Teresa?”

  “I’ve got a brother who’s going to college overseas. He told our parents it was because he wanted the best education he could get, but really it was just because his girlfriend lives in Spain.” Teresa said with a smile. “They're all good people, parents included. I just finished talking with them all on the phone a few hours before the Tutorial started. I… don’t know how they’d handle something like this if I’m being honest, but I’m sure they’d leave the Tutorial if they felt it was too much.”

  Teresa didn’t think that mentioning the reason she had just recently talked to all of them was because she was planning on killing herself was a good idea. Really, the System couldn’t have had better timing for her.

  “Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that the System works like a video game?” Sarah asked, looking at her status screen. “I mean, really? Stats? The only weird thing is that our levels start at 0.”

  “Oh, that reminds me, I got a title.” Teresa said, sharing the description of her new title with the others.

  “Plus one all stats? That’s crazy!” Madeline said, reading the description.

  “Maybe for now, but I have a feeling that eventually it’ll be pretty insignificant. Sure as hell helps a lot now.” Teresa replied.

  “Well I wish I played more games about grinding levels now, I only really played first person shooters.” Sarah said with a smile. Madeline laughed.

  “Yeah, well I played freaking Minecraft and Stardew Valley. They both have some leveling kind of, but not like this.” Madeline retorted. Teresa was relieved. She had worried that the party would be upset she had taken the title, but it seemed no one was upset about it. Hopefully Jake and Preston would feel the same way.

  “You think those two are done yet?” Teresa asked, looking over at the Statue of Liberty.

  “Let’s go find out.” Sarah replied, and they began making their way back to the lobby entrance, a vampire deer with mushrooms growing out of it slowly crawling after them.