"Ew, don't yell at me," said Lyra, a whiny timbre to her voice. "You'll mess up my hair."
"You talk too much," said Ignis as she opened her maw. A torrent of chaotic, multicolored flame erupted from her throat, a blast of pure, untamed magic.
[Ignis used Flamethrower]
[Attack absorbed]
"What the fuck?" said Isabelle. She sighed and rolled her eyes as she watched Lyra catch the flame midair, swirl it around, and then redirect it right back at Ignis!
[Ignis -50 hp]
"Ack! The pain!" said Ignis as she faltered back.
[5 seconds until library collapse]
"Redirect this, bitch!" said Ignis as she powered up her flame breath weapon with additional dragon mana.
[Ignis used Flamethrower Mach II]
"Damn, I want Flamethrower Mach II," said Isabelle with a jealous sigh.
The Herald sneered. "Primitive energy. You cannot stop what has begun." She raised a shield of pure white light.
The chaotic flame hit the shield and washed over it, and for a moment, it seemed the Herald was right.
[Attack blocked]
Ignis tried her hardest to power it up. Just like Isabelle had always done, right?
"Wow, this is really distracting," said Tahsi Senior as he equipped a donut from his inventory. "And this donut is, honestly, kind of doughy. But I can barely tell how doughy it is, because I'm soooo distracted by Ignis right now."
Suddenly, Isabelle had an idea. If Tahsi was distracted by something other than a bread or bread derivative, and that something was Ignis attacking Lyra 'The Herald,' then hell, didn't that mean that everyone else was distracted? And if everyone else was distracted, that meant that Lyra herself was distracted, too. Yes, it was obvious now. Isabelle needed to take control of the situation and use Lyra's obvious distraction to her advantage! And swiftly, before it was too late!
[2 seconds until library collapse]
Isabelle had 2 fuckedy fucking seconds and she was gonna use those motherfuckers for all they were worth. With all her energy she pooled her stamina into her battle focus.
[Using stamina for extra battle focus]
[Stamina 95%]
"Hey, you cunt!" said Isabelle. "Your face is stupid and you have a smelly butt!"
It was a pathetic, childish insult, the kind of thing Tahsi Senior might say after too much fermented berry juice. But it was also utterly, completely illogical. A meaningless burst of chaotic defiance in a moment of calculated erasure.
The Herald, focusing all her divine concentration on containing Ignis's augmented flamethrower, faltered. For a fraction of a second, her composure wavered. A flicker of annoyance, of genuine, unprogrammed irritation, crossed her otherwise impassive, light-filled face. It was the digital equivalent of a stutter.
The white shield wavered.
Isabelle saw it. It was all she needed.
[1 second until library collapse]
Instead of a punch, a kick, or a spell, Isabelle drew upon the last, most desperate resource she had: the kobolds. She grabbed Tahsi Senior by the shoulders, spun him around, and used him as a makeshift club, swinging him with all her depleted strength.
[Tahsi Senior equipped]
[+55 bread lust]
[You used 'Kobold Swing' at 'The Herald']
"Holy shit!" Tahsi said, his half-eaten donut flying from his grasp.
He collided with the Herald's legs.
It wasn't the impact that mattered. It was the bread.
Embedded in Tahsi's crusty armor, held in a special sheath, was a sourdough starter. A living, bubbling culture of wild yeast and bacteria. A blob of pure, untamable, biological chaos. As he struck the Herald, the small, wax-sealed jar cracked.
The sourdough starter, freed from its prison, splattered onto the Herald's leg.
The effect was instantaneous. The living, chaotic microorganisms were anathema to the Herald's perfect, sterile order. They weren't just bread; they were a self-replicating, unpredictable system. A lifeform.
[Critical Hit]
[Logical Paradox]
[Debuff applied: Biological Contamination]
[Herald of the Great Builder -800 hp]
"WHAT IS THIS FEELING?" the Herald said, her pristine form glitching violently. "IT'S MOLDY! MY VERY BEING IS BEING VIOLATED BY UNFERMENTED DOUGH!"
Her shield of pure light shattered like glass.
[Shield deactivated]
Ignis's flamethrower breath, no longer blocked, slammed into her with the full force of a star's chaotic birth. The Herald screamed as the raw, unfiltered magic began to overwrite her sterile code, her perfect form dissolving into a storm of warring pixels and conflicting data.
[Critical hit]
[Herald of the Great Builder is on fire]
[Herald of the Great Builder -9999 hp]
['Herald of the Great Builder' is dead]
[Combat mode deactivated]
[Updated: The Silent Archive]
[Objective: Escape the Library]
At that exact moment, the countdown ended.
[0 seconds until library collapse]
But Isabelle still had some stamina in her! She was so fucking glad she'd leveled her damned stamina so fucking high. Still, though, she needed to move quickly! Super fucking quickly. She had to LOOT the harlot, and fast!
Isabelle focused on the lithe, floating corpse of the liar, the false Lyra.
[Loot 'Herald of the Great Builder'?]
[Y/N]
Isabelle thought yes.
Inventory: Herald of the Great Builder
Totem of the Great Builder
+69 mana, +1.5 carry weight
Grand Shimmering Robes of Celestial Provenance
+108 mana, +35 dx, +5 carry weight
Aetherium Signet Ring
+10 str, +12 stm, +69 mana
Mantle of Unmaking
+15 stm, +10 carry weight
Lyra's Silver Dress
+35 dx, +420% seduction, +5 carry weight
"Grab it all. Fuck yea," Isabelle said under her breath to Tahsi Senior as she grabbed it all, leaving the Herald's inventory empty.
Inventory: Herald of the Great Builder
n/a
But Tahsi Senior wasn't looking at the loot. He was looking at the donut he'd dropped, which was now teetering on the edge of the abyss of non-existence that had replaced the floor.
"MY DONUT!" he said with a shriek, lunging for it.
"DAD, NO!" Tahsi Junior said, grabbing hold of his father's leg.
It was a chain reaction of stupidity that saved them.
As Tahsi Senior lunged, he yanked Tahsi Junior, who was still clutching Isabelle's arm. The collective, stupid momentum pulled all three of them off their feet and into the void just as the Silent Archive imploded completely. There was no sound, only a sudden, total, and absolute absence of everything.
"Ignis! Do your fucking dragon thing and fly us out of here!" said Isabelle as they tumbled through the air in what felt like slow motion.
[Extra battle focus charged]
[Stamina low]
Oh. They were falling like that thanks to Isabelle's stamina slowing down time for extra battle focus. Of course.
Ignis swooped through the chaos, her massive wings catching currents of impossible energy. She snatched them out of the air, her claws closing gently around the trio.
"Hold on!" she roared, her voice strained. "This is going to be a rough landing!"
She couldn't fly against this torrent, she could only steer. She aimed for a tear in the fabric of the storm, a single point of relative stability.
They burst through the opening and slammed into the ground with enough force to crack the earth. The world lurched back into focus. They were in the middle of a scorched, blackened wasteland. The air was thick with the smell of burnt ozone and something worse: the antiseptic, sterile scent of absolute order.
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
In the distance, where the Clockwork Spire had once stood, there was now nothing. Just a flat, grey, circular expanse that stretched to the horizon. It was perfectly smooth, perfectly flat, and utterly lifeless. The Great Builder's work had begun.
[Debuff: Essence Drain has stopped]
[Debuff: Soul Fracture remains]
They had survived.
Isabelle pushed herself up, her body screaming in protest. The kobolds were groaning but alive. Ignis was panting, her scales dull and scraped.
The Herald was gone. The Silent Archive was gone. But the rift was still there.
It hovered above the grey plain, no longer a chaotic wound, but something far more terrifying. It was now stable. Controlled. A perfectly circular window of swirling, orderly light, a conduit connecting their world to the infinite library of dead realities. And through that conduit, shapes were beginning to form. Not Cimillates. Something new. Something built from the Archive's ghosts.
"So it didn't get worse?" said Isabelle, a little confused.
"Yea, it was just another line of bullshit Lyra was feeding us," said Ignis.
"Her name wasn't even fucking Lyra," said Isabelle with a sigh as she rolled her eyes. "It was... What the fuck was it? Something stupid..."
"Herald," said Tahsi Senior with confident authority as he chomped on a baguette. "Her name was Herald."
"Herald? A woman named Herald?" said Isabelle.
"She never said she was a woman, did she?" said Tahsi Senior, chomping further on the baguette.
"She said she was a goddess... Oracle of the Damned or some dramatic bullshit like that. But then, she ended up being the Herald of the Great Builder," said Isabelle. "Whatever the fuck that meant. Whoever the fuck the Great Builder was."
[Updated: The Great Builder]
[Objective: REALLY find out whoever the fuck the Great Builder was]
Isabelle sighed and rolled her eyes. She still felt painfully weak, way weaker than she should've felt.
[Debuff: Soul Fracture is still active]
Fuck. Of course. Isabelle had figured it'd deactivate at some point, especially when she killed the damned Herald of whatever, but apparently that hadn't been the case. How horribly inconvenient. Classic Beaubinte. Isabelle would need to learn more about this debuff in order to remove it, she figured.
Debuff: Soul Fracture
Description: A catastrophic tear in the metaphysical structure of your soul, inflicted by exposure to a focused reality-rewriting event. Your very being has been rendered unstable, causing a fundamental failure in your ability to interface with the world's systems.
Effect: All stats reduced by 50%. Your connection to magic is severely disrupted. You are prone to existential dread.
Remedies: The soul can be mended by finding a potent source of chaotic energy to re-energize its fragmented pieces, or through a complex ritual of restoration that requires the rarest of components.
Great.
"This is honey bunches of bullshit!" said Isabelle in frustration. Why, if she hadn't been nerfed by the Spire before she un-made it, Isabelle could've just thoguht 'fuck this shit' and undid the whole debuff then and there, right? With her magic script?
And that's when Isabelle remembered the damn thing: she still had access to magic script! She'd forfeited the 'fuck this shit' script, sure, but that was a horribly simple creation. Isabelle was certain she could write something to deactivate this fucking debuff. She just knew it. Beaubinte is like a video game, Isabelle told herself. Just like a video game. And she was going to pump her numbers way the fuck back up!
Isabelle thought, ‘Open Magic Script.’
[~;;]
[~;; open magic script]
[Welcome to Magic Script]
Sure, it had been a while, but the system prompts were still familiar, like the back of Isabelle's hands. She was thankful in that moment that her 50% stat debuff was clearly not affecting this, at least to any meaningful degree. It just meant that Isabelle was that fucking good that she could operate this well at half capacity, she figured.
Isabelle thought, ‘create new.’
[Please name your script:]
Isabelle thought 'fuck this shit.'
[Script 'fuck this shit' named successfully]
[Open 'fuck this shit' now?]
[Y/N]
Isabelle thought yes.
[]
And here she was. The blank script. Last time, Isabelle had used a wis+int check to write the script for her. Although, Isabelle wasn't sure if the original fuck this shit script would work for the debuff. Would it? It did disable the effects of magic. Which was, ironically, how Isabelle had evaded the Order of the Unconquered Sun's attempts to remove her of her magic abilities.
Isabelle wasn't sure. But maybe her system could decide for her. She'd succeeded in the wis+int check required to originally have her system write the script for her, hadn't she? That had to mean that there was a possibility of the same thing happening again for her. Plus, even with 50% of her stats, Isabelle had leveled up a whole hell of a lot since she last wrote magic script.
It was worth the try, certainly. So Isabelle focused her energy.
[...]
[Wis+int check failed]
[Try again? 2 tries remaining]
[Y/N]
Shit. Isabelle was pissed it hadn't worked immediately, but at least she still got two tries.
[...]
[Wis+int check failed]
[Try again? 1 tries remaining]
[Y/N]
Double shit. Isabelle was feeling more than a little tense, now. She wondered if she had anything in her inventory that might be able to help.
Inventory: Isabelle
Carrying capacity: 393.4/525
Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect
+100 int, +0.5 carry weight
Focus to see more items...
The Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect? Hadn't Isabelle already drank that way back in that cave? When she'd looted that guy... what was his name... Larry? Something like that. Larry. Lanyard. Lance. Lance, Isabelle thought it was.
[Clarification: During the nerfing session, when you went full system reset, a large amount of corruption was cleared from your inventory. This caused certain items that had previously been used or flagged as used or flagged as duplicates to be returned to their original, unused state. The Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect is one of those items.]
Huh. That was honestly pretty useful. A free Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect. So, she equipped the potion.
[Equip 'Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect'?]
[Y/N]
Isabelle thought yes.
[Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect equipped]
Great. Isabelle lifted the vial to her lips and drank it in one gulp.
[Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect equipped]
Right. That was it, then. That had to be enough. So Isabelle tried again, her focus laser sharp.
[...]
[Wis+int check passed]
Excellent. Now, the question was, what should she type? Should she just type a bunch of shit? Last time, the script was just gibberish. But then again, that script wasn't designed to counter a Soul Fracture. It was designed to counter magical nullification. It was, in effect, the ultimate expression of defiance: to simply turn the entire fucking system off when it tried to turn her off.
She felt the Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect thrumming in her mind. The concepts weren't just ideas anymore; they were tangible, mathematical constructs. She could imagine the logic of the debuff, the lines of code that told the world, "Isabelle is at 50% capacity." It was an elegant, brutal little algorithm.
And then, Isabelle sighed with relief as she remembered what the wis+int check she'd just passed truly meant. It meant that Isabelle was under no pressure to write the optimal magic script that would release her from the grasp of the Soul Fracture debuff. After all, Soul Fracature may have sounded like an ominous, big deal sort of thing, but Isabelle had to remember that the entire world of Beaubinte ran on video game logic, literally, which meant Soul Fracture was a magic-based debuff just like any other. Right? Either that, or that the devs themselves, or the Great Builder or whatever the fuckedy fuck, would've had to develop some special flags and customizations just for Soul Fracture. That seemed... unlikely.
Still. In Isabelle's mind, it was a bet between whether or not the devs or Builder or whatever had been lazy. And Isabelle had lived in Beaubinte long enough to feel like the answer was certainly yes, they had to have been lazy. How the fuck else wouold Beaubinte have gotten to the state it was?
[Clarification: Please remember that there are players, such as yourself, that have introduced a number of different corruptions and destructions to the fabric of Beaubinte over time. System modding, system merges and system acquisitions all hold roles in these effects, as well as other, more 'unique' changes, such as the forced brainwashing and removal of almost all tutorials.]
And then, in a flash of realization, Isabelle suddenly remembered an old quest.
[Updated: Go To The Horns]
[Reactivate quest to continue]
And then, the Potion of Giant Floating Brain Intellect wore off!
[-100 int]
Isabelle suddenly felt dumb as a skunk! Okay, maybe not that dumb, but she could tell she had suddenly become less intelligent. And of course, there was still the issue with her stats all being halved. But Isabelle was confident she'd have that resolved quite soon indeed, because even in her lowered intellect she could tell that having passed the wis+int check meant that her system would write the whole script for her, automatically, without her needing to do so much as lifting a mental finger. What was even better was that this was exactly how she'd written the first maagic script, so Isabelle was confident this one would have similar results.
[Analyzing 'Souol Fracture Debuff']
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[Analysis complete]
And suddenly, Isabelle knew what the code was. And she was looking at it, too.
[init run ms.loadframe]
[incl ms.compiler]
[incl ms.parse]
[incl ms.injector]
[incl syst.focus]
[incl syst.mag]
[with injector {select} from direct compile.parse]
[for x in collection {}]
[when {} incl. syskey.collect?]
[active {mag.enchant??debuff} on {focus}]
[set {mag.enchant??debuff} = null]
[loop x term]
Well, that certainly looked familiar, although Isabelle felt like there had to be something different in there, too.
Isabelle thought, 'Save fuck this shit.'
['fuck this shit' saved]
Finally. Isabelle sighed with relief. She was so ready to get rid of this stupid debuff and get all her stats back.
She thought ‘Exit Magic Script.’
[Closing Magic Script…]
[Closed]
[~;;]
Isabelle thought, ‘sys!~push ms.fuck this shit.’
[~;; sys!~push ms.fuck this shit]
[:///*]
[Pushing to system…]
[Notice: You haven’t run this script in debugging mode before pushing. It may not run as expected. Would you still like to push it to system?]
[Y/N]
Debugging, deshmugging. Isabelle thought yes.
[Pushing…]
[Script ‘fuck this shit’ pushed successfully to system]
Isabelle thought ‘Exit System Key.’
[…]
[System Key closed]
It was time for the moment of truth.
[Debuff: Soul Fracture is still active]
Isabelle focused on the debuff and thought 'fuck this shit.'
[????]
Well, that was certainly something.
[All stats returned to 100%]
[No debuffs active]
Isabelle suddenly felt incredible. What a relief.
"About goddamn time," Ignis grumbled, smoke trickling from her nostrils. "Weak doesn't suit you, Isabelle."
"The donut is lost," Tahsi Senior said, his voice hollow with grief. He was patting the ground where they had landed, as if the scorched earth might suddenly produce a pastry. "It was a glazed raspberry. His name was Ferdinand."
Tahsi Junior patted his father's armored shoulder. "We'll make more, Dad. We'll make an entire pantheon of donuts."
Isabelle ignored their bread-based mourning and turned her attention back to the rift. It wasn't the chaotic, screaming gash in reality it had been. It was starting to look cold. Inert. Less dangerous, certainly. Isabelle was wondeirng if more Cimillates were really ever coming.
And then, something began to coalesce at the edge of the rift. It wasn't a Cimillate. It was a shape that seemed to be carved from solid light, perfectly geometric, impossibly complex. It was like a single, floating piece of some vast, cosmic architecture. It glided down from the rift, its movements silent, precise, and utterly without waste. It settled on the grey plain about a hundred yards away. Then another appeared, identical to the first. And another. Soon, a silent, floating army of impossible geometry was assembling before them.
"What are those things?" Tahsi Junior squeaked, instinctively hiding behind a rock that was barely waist-high.
"Something," said Isabelle. "Maybe something weak. Hey assholes!" Isabelle called to the assembling army in the distance. "Go fuck yourselves, creeps!"
[Combat mode activated]
Before Isabelle could do so much as raise her katana, equip a different weapon, or even cast a spell, a gigantic beam of red energy shot out from one of the geometric figures and blasted her in the chest.
[Critical hit]
[You are being drained]
[You are staggered]
[You are stunned]
[-1000 hp]
[-70 hp]
[Hp critically low]
[Stamina 90%]
[Stamina 50%]
[Stamina 20%]
[Stamina low]
[Mana 90%]
[Mana 40%]
[Mana low]
"ARGH!" said Isabelle as she fell to the ground. "Holy shit! How fucking OP are those things?"
"We are so unbelievably fucked," said Ignis with a huff.
