Chapter 459 - Reparations

The woman let go off Creation’s head, and it snapped back to where it belonged as if nothing had ever happened. The she turned to Sofia. 

Sofia guessed that the woman must be Moon, she was quite intimidating.

And you. The goddess said, staring at Sofia with her empty eyes.

“Y- yes?”

Thank you. She said with an emotionless voice before disappearing from the room.

Huh?

Sofia looked at Clint with a questioning gaze.

What? That was Moon, she’s always like this. Better get used to it.

“I guessed that… But why did she thanks me for?”

What do I know? Cause you’re friends with the small Oracle, maybe? Don’t think about it too hard, Moon just does what Moon does.

“Sure… Do you have an Oracle too? A Saint?”

No, can’t be bothered. Kyle is coming so I’m taking my leave here, see you later, you better bring me a damn good heart to forge for my troubles.

With these last words, Clint disappeared as well, leaving Sofia and her skeletons alone in the room.

“Moon is scary,” Bookie commented.

“I agree. But she seems nice, too. In a way. And she said nothing about the whole crashing into the moon thing, so…”

They continued chatting, and Kyle entered through the doors a few minutes later, raising a hand in salutations. “Hey, your team’s gone from two to three effective members, I see?”

“Hi Kyle. You’re wrong, Bookie’s always been part of the team.”

“Whatever you say, I know where it comes from so I’m not gonna argue. Now, I would like to formally apologize on behalf of the entire system staff,” Kyle said while performing a deep bow.

Sofia was uncertain of what to say. To begin with she was no longer even surprised by the system messing things up in a thousand ways, so the current situation was just more of that. There were people within the system targeting her, and they started to move more openly, but their existence was also something she expected for a while, that had been the entire reason she needed to move to the Draconic system in the first place.

Faced with a lack of response, Kyle straightened back up and started to leave the room, “Follow me, I’ll explain things on the way.”

Sofia let Bookie down, though she kep holding his hand, and she followed behind Kyle out of the room. “The Archangel rebelled, from what I heard?”

“Herm… Clint and his loose mouth… Yes, Neberegon, this trial’s Archangel, has escaped and betrayed the system. He erased your data from the tower, among other things. From the latest news, we have four Archangels who have turned and about a dozen Angels are missing,” Kyle explained with a long sigh.

“So many?!”

“They were preparing this for a long time, we think. You just happened to be at the center of things because of your link with Scripture. The Archangel in charge of your first trial, Vakeragon, was one of them. He used his authority to change the contents of your trial. He is gone now.”

“Oh… Is that the reason why I woke up in a safehouse after my trial back then?”

“No. That was also Vakeragon’s doing. He dispersed his essence soon after.”

Sofia stopped in her tracks. “He killed himself?”

Kyle turned around and looked Sofia in the eyes, “That’s a way to say it. The Archangel’s lives are for the System to give and take, to begin with. The traitors will not have long to live. The handler is already after them.”

“Handler? The same one who accepted my request for the bonus task? Can I ask who that is exactly?”

“One of the High Scribes,” Kyle said as he turned back around to lead the way again. “But no matter, I am sharing this because you are directly impacted, but this situation is for us System staff to deal with, not you. We would appreciate if you focused on your own growth and did not look into this any further.”

Sofia stopped again, frustrated, “You’re saying this as if they were not trying to erase me from existence. My trial is botched, I don’t know if I can ever level up in the future, and they even deleted me from people’s memory! You want me to act like this did not happen?!”

“Yes. We will do our best to fix what can be, that is why, follow me.”

Sofia followed Kyle through the metallic underbelly of the planet, and into a small meeting room where he begun explaining a few more things.

Sofia left the room with mixed feelings. The best new information was that the memory erasure issue could be easily fixed, all she needed was some direct physical contact with the people who forgot about her. As long as her Scribe could have a direct link to the other person’s Scribe, the new automatic repair protocols would kick in and restore the forgotten memories. 

The other news were not all quite as good. On one hand, because of how the system worked, she could still complete the trial despite having failed it, and as long as she did, she would be able to challenge the next one without problem to get through the next filter as usual. On the other hand, because of the system’s strict and unalterable policies, since she had failed a trial, she had thus lost the level up privileges and the support for new skills and skill slots. There was nothing Kyle could do about that. In his opinion, even asking for this ban to be lifted as her task reward request to Handler would have absolutely been denied.

Sofia learned nothing new about who her enemies were or why they did what they did, the information Kyle had shared on the way to the meeting room being all he was predisposed to actually say on the matter.

Now she was waiting alone with her skeletons on a bench, while Kyled had gone to handle something else before she could meet up with everyone else.

Suddenly Sofia felt her forces leave her. She almost panicked but soon understood what was happening. Mr. Scribe was taking control of her mana to be able to communicate directly.

[Things are going according to plan. Don’t fight it, just accept his conditions. I have a loophole we can use for leveling up, and the skills are not an issue.]

Mr Scribe… How are the skills not an issue. And the Skill slots?

[Skill slots are a sham to begin with, a system restriction and nothing else. The space you have for magic circuits in your body and soul is not dependent on the system. The slots are nothing but a representation of the system power allotted to you.]

That sounds logical, and it works well with the explanation Beligenus gave before we fused the [Dodge - me] classless… But what about the skills? Am I still going to get new keywords? What about the Sub-class function from the dagger? And the third specialization?

[Exactly because we have the dagger, none of that will matter. The key holds enough data for me to be able to manage all that without involving the main system. This is all possible because I am now a tier three. Just don’t loose the key no matter what.]

Understood. What about the plan for VPPV? Will that still work?

[No. But I am working on it. I need to make myself scarce, giving you the mana back.]

Sofia felt her strength come back just as Kyle came out of another room with long strides, holding a simple wooden box. He passed the box to Sofia. 

With a sigh, he explained, “Here, this is the best I can do for you. Again, I’m really sorry about this whole thing, but it is best if you stay out of it. Take all this, and focus on yourself. If you really want to defend yourself, this is the best you can do.” The Vampire Seraph seemed really out of it, the energy he had shown before the start of the trial nowhere to be seen.

“Thank you… Still, to be ejected from the system like this…”

“I know this is a really unfair situation for you, especially since the Archangels are to blame. But to be blunt, only the Admins could fix this mess, and they’ve been, huh… Missing. For a long while.”

“Oh I know a lot about that. So what’s in the box?”

“You do?” Kyle asked, visibly taken aback, but he quickly switched to answering the question, “There’s a mana pearl you need to consume, that contains the fix for the memory issue, after that you just need to touch the affected people and they will remember you again. You can try it with Michael in a minute. Besides that, I included two medium and a large catalyser to help with the trial since you no longer have access to the trial dungeons. The imprints and the rest you can still get by yourself. There’s a book on alternative ways to level up and a book on creating spells from scratch, you’re going to need these. Both are very hard topics, but you seem talented enough. Lastly, there are a few stat pills as an apology gift for this entire thing. Do be careful when you consume them after the filter.”

“That’s a lot. Thank you,” Sofia answered with a slight smile.

Kyle sighed again. “I wish I could handle this matter better, but this is all I can do… I will teleport you to the common room in a moment, you can have a talk with the others, and the trial will resume in a few days’ time, after we’ve made sure that a similar attack can’t happen a second time and everything is safe.” 

Sofia nodded and Kyle started to turn back to leave, but he stopped and added a few last words, “It’s better if you stay disconnected for a few months. Check in with me or another Seraph before connecting to the system again. Or you could open yourself to another trip to the Gods’ realm. Good luck, you three.”