Musem Core Chapter 9: The Nature of Power

Eventually, Elias stopped laughing, though that twinkle in his eyes told Thomas he’d be hearing about this for a loooooong time.

But he’d been able to absorb some of the greenery that the jaguar had hacked off on the roof and recreate it for the herbivores, and partially summoning said herbivores was the perfect food for the predators. So while Cheshire was happily tearing into half a zebra, Elias had managed to cajole over the Blue Duiker and was once more using it as a pillow.

“Today, little core, I’m going to explain to you the wonders of magical powers,” the fairy proclaimed, clearly putting on some kind of “fairy tale telling grandfather” act. Thomas didn’t entirely mind, though, as long as Elias explained everything in a proper fashion and timely manner, he could play around however he wanted to.

“You see, in a multiverse of infinite possibility, there exists more strength than just the physical.

“Magic, the art of telling the laws of physics to fuck off by calling them out by name.

“Cultivation, the art of eating the energy of the universe until you literally pop, and if you’re really lucky, coming out the other end the stronger.

“And the Systems, the art of doing weird stuff and getting rapidly inexplicably better at said weird stuff.”

Thomas sniggered. He was loosely familiar with the first two, and Elias’ descriptions of them were just too silly. But on the off-chance that this was a misunderstanding, he explained his understanding of magic and cultivation, and according to Elias, those two were just what they sounded like.

“And the Systems are … what exactly?” Thomas asked.

“The other ways to get stronger,” Elias responded. “You pick a Class to describe what you want to do, and then you get energy to grow stronger with. Sometimes you have to do stuff in line with the Class, sometimes you have to craft stuff, sometimes you have to kill shit. Depends, really.

“Once you’ve got enough energy, you hit a threshold called a Level, and gain some points to assign to whatever you want to improve. It sounds complicated, and it gets even sillier when you realize that every universe has its own System, but ultimately, they all work the same.

“Anyway, I’m from a world with a System, this stuff makes sense to me, but I know it sounds complicated. Point is, just ask if you don’t understand something.”

“Oh, no, I get it. It’s like a video game.”

“A what?” Elias frowned.

“You know, a video game?” Thomas responded and tried to explain until steam was practically coming out of Elias’ ears. So he stopped.

“Anyway, you know what I’m talking about, let’s leave it at that,” Elias finally said, returning to his lecturer’s bearing.

“But even after selecting a path to power, little core, there is more to do. Gathering strength, growing the next core, gaining an immense increase with every jump in rank.

“Some people gain a full F-Rank power upon entering the rank at the beginning of their journey, others will build it as they pass through the rank. For example, on Dretolara, we gain a new subskill with every Level in a rank, and at the final Level, all of these Skills are fused into an ability of unparalleled power.

“Still, the specifics don’t matter, you can have a power that grows from a seed from the beginning of the rank or you can gain the full ability the moment you break through.

“Either way, as you advance through the ranks with a System, you are growing the core for your next Rank, and once it is completed, you’ll break through once you start to use it.

“In the meantime, cultivators change on a fundamental level every time they hit a new rank. At Qi Condensation, they start being able to project energy, at Foundation Establishment, their body is empowered, and so on.

“And mages need to gather knowledge to advance, which they can eventually forge into a circle of power and knowledge within their soul, information that they  can draw on to cast related spells insanely quickly.”

“And Dungeon cores?” Thomas asked. “I don’t have anything like that.”

“Yeah, it’s complicated,” Elias sighed. “You get a qualitative upgrade but I don’t have the foggiest how it works exactly, we’ll have to wait and see.”

“And how does cultivation compare to magic in terms of power? What about magic, what can it do? And if …”

Thomas had an infinite amount of questions, Elias had a finite amount of patience. Predictably, the fairy fled after about an hour, but not without dragging along his living seat.

***

Upon seeing Jaclyn’s confusion at the mention of the System, Gula explained.

“When the worlds were smashed together, many paths to power were opened to the inhabitants of this world, but they are currently in flux, unable to be accessed until they settle. However, without that power, you will have real trouble entering the jungle, or any of the other fusion zones.

“As far as I know, the only way to access the System currently is our village nexus, which we use to access our homeworld’s System no matter where we are, and it still works.”

That made sense, but also left open a lot of other questions, even if she took everything the orc said at face value.

Orcs were the defacto bad guys in a lot of fantasy media and while making a judgment made purely on stories was iffy as heck, these people did look like they’d marched straight off the pages of Lord of the Rings. Jaclyn couldn’t bring herself to feel too bad for being a little apprehensive.

“What would you want in exchange?” she asked. There had to be something the orcs wanted, right? From the sounds of it, they had magical abilities, and while Jaclyn doubted those would ward off, say, a nuclear blast, how would the orcs know humanity had those up their sleeves? A police precinct in central London was decidedly not geared to stand up to any serious opposition.

The fact that they were offering it so freely meant there had to be some kind of sting in the tail, or a price to be paid at the very least.

“We’d like to move to this world. It’s been changed by the catastrophe that’s warped the multiverse, but the full extent of the changes has already occurred. But full immigration is a matter that can wait. For now, we’d be willing to settle for a contract that you will not exile us without warning, and that you will give testimony about the provided help at whatever proceeding will determine if we can stay,” Gula said.

Ok, that sounded reasonable, Jaclyn thought as she nodded.

“I’ll have to warn you right now, though, most of our government was in the jungle and it’ll take a long time for anyone with the power to make permanent decisions to be found,” she then added after thinking about it for a while.

It was a risk, but according to Gula, the orcs valued honesty to an extraordinary degree. Pretending they had decision-making authority they did not would obliterate any chance at a good relationship after that got out.

“Like I said, a guarantee that our help will be acknowledged by whoever you can get to agree to this deal, assuming they have some authority,” Gula shrugged. “The situation is chaotic, I understand.”

So far, the orcs seemed to be reasonable.

Jaclyn grabbed her phone and called Owens’ office number. The radio was currently a bit too messy.

“Owens.” He grunted after picking up, sounding tired.

“This is Jaclyn, I could use you down here.”

“How urgent?” he asked.

“Soon-ish. It’s not an emergency, but the orcs are offering to help with the jungle and if I understood them correctly, they can grant literal superpowers.”

“Gimme five minutes.”

Owens hung up after that without even bothering to say goodbye. Clearly, the situation hadn’t gotten any less stressful since Jaclyn had wound up down here.

“So, how many people would you be willing to grant access to your System, and what help would you provide?” she asked Gula.

“One person to start with, it’s important to make sure everything goes smoothly, but up to ten people in the next few days sounds alright, doesn’t it?” Gula offered.

Yeah, it did.

“Can you explain a little bit more about how the System works?” Jaclyn asked.

“Of course. Our System is known as the Path of Infinite Skills, allowing its users to create a Class from what they are able to do and will then gain supernatural abilities based on it. However, the primary advantage of this System is that it supports the user’s ability to learn Skills to a preternatural degree, allowing them to not only improve at a massive rate but also increase their capabilities to the point where even mundane skills become supernatural.”

That sounded awesome, didn’t it? Jaclyn was fully aware of the fact that things might not work entirely the way she expected them to, but it still seemed incredible. She’d done a whole lot of MMA earlier in her life, even competing in the professional circuits quite a few times. Turning that sort of ability up to eleven, being able to throw what sounded like magic punches, stuff like that sounded plain incredible.

If it worked how she imagined, at least.

Gula then proceeded to explain the fundamentals of the various ranks, including the debate over how some people called the initial rank either G-Rank, Mortal-Rank, Null-Rank, mundane, or something entirely different, and how opinionated people could get about those things. But the basic principle was sound and simple to understand. The rest ... was not.

“One of the most complicated parts of any advancement is doing so when moving to another universe. Moving within a rank will work regardless of where you are, but advancing draws upon the universe for a pattern to base your new power on.

“So even a cultivator may be forced to use a mage’s powers if he grows in a universe of magic.

“Even Systems intermingle, allowing people to draw on a vast variety of sources for advancement, but … drawing from a single System grants access to synergies that would otherwise be lost.

“And becoming a cultivator in the middle of the path without a good foundation never ends well. Also …”

Point was, the world was bloody complicated if you looked any deeper than skin-deep.

Even so, there were several commonalities across all paths to power.

You started without any powers, picked a path to advance, would create exactly seven kinds of power, and those could be anything from a mage’s magic circles to a cultivator’s seven spiritual improvements.

And so on, and so forth.

Jaclyn foresaw an aneurysm in the near future if she didn’t manage to stop trying to fully understand how this shit worked. There were generalities that she thought she’d already understood. And she was likely going to soon gain powers, so she needed to understand those. But otherwise, time to take her inner detective behind the shed and shoot it in the head.

That, and wait until Owens showed up.