[CONNECTION BROKEN]

Reconnecting...

There was some text above that, but it had been cut off; all Derivan could see were scattered letter-fragments that didn't mean anything to him. It was strange that the window looked like this to him at all — no matter what errors the system had encountered before, he'd never seen the system windows themselves break. They weren't a physical thing to begin with.

But then he was observing this with Patch, and not with his conventional senses, so... perhaps that made sense. There was an impulse in him, even, if he paid attention — an impulse to fix.

Mildly concerning. Derivan tucked that fact away, to be re-examined later.

More important was the fact that that wasn't all he could see with Patch.

It took him a moment to see it, and he had to dig deeper; like with his other stats, there was an intuitive understanding of how to use them, but he had to find the lever to pull first. Derivan was barely aware of Patch slowly ticking upwards. He noticed it when he paid attention, like a faint humming in his soul, but the rest of him was consumed by that process — the process of pulling apart the details, trying to find what was wrong..

There was a problem here that needed to be fixed. For a problem to be fixed, he needed to understand it. And the facts unfolded in front of him, through the little fragment he held and in the raw, twisted machinery of the system that oozed through the building.

He couldn't see the interface, exactly, but with this shard to lens Patch through, to see how the 'connection' was interpreted —

"The building is able to grow in levels and acquire skills," Derivan said out loud, though he was only dimly aware of his own voice; the majority of his senses were still focused on what the Patch stat was feeding him. "That explains its change in appearance."

"...That sounds like something Elyra would award nobility for," Vex said slowly. "You think it's connected?"

"Almost certainly," Derivan said. His Patch-vision swam a little, and for a moment he worried that it was the system shifting to attack them — but no, it was his own sight, unable to keep steady. Sev was watching him with slightly narrowed eyes, like he'd sensed that he might need to act.

"At the very least, the building is artificially connected to the system; many of the problems are caused directly by this. The larger system is unable to recognize the nature of this connection. This has created several side effects — one, the system does not know how to connect to it fully, and so many of its normal mechanisms are simply growing out of control; two, in its attempts to fix itself without any Patchers, it is simply linking itself to and piggybacking off of working systems."

"Meaning the people who live in this building." Vex shifted uncomfortably, his grip on his dagger tightening. "Including us?"

"No," Derivan said, and then observed for a moment more, trying to ignore the growing headache he was developing. What a strange sensation that was; he'd never had to contend with discomfort in any real capacity. "I am unsure why. Or... no. I believe I know."

He had to push both Patch and Shift to be able to see it. None of their systems were attached to the Elyran dungeon like the system in the Guild building was; he could almost sense the trail that led off to where the dungeon presumably was, deep, deep underground. "Our systems are not connected with the local dungeon," he said. "I do not think the building knows we are here."

"Is it alive?" It was Misa that asked that question; she was tense, glancing around the room as if she expected it to attack her.

"There are two levels the system uses to fix errors, I believe," Derivan said. "There are automatic protocols that activate to try to resolve problems, and if those problems cannot be solved, they are elevated to either Patchers or an Administrator, depending on the nature of the issue."

"But the Patchers are occupied with Teque and Fendal," Misa said out loud, her brows creasing with worry. "Are they sending every Patcher there? That's..."

"Those shards you hold are important, although it is difficult to articulate why." Derivan nodded towards Vex.

"I have some guesses," Vex said, one hand going to the pouch; the lizardkin's tail shifted nervously behind him.

"So why not summon an Administrator?" Sev asked. "Not that I want them to do that, obviously, it's basically been a disaster every time we've fought one. The first one we beat by literal deus-ex-machina and the second one we could only defeat because there was a reality-stripping barrier around the village the system was trying to defeat. If one appeared in the middle of Elyra—"

"Elyra's own Platinums would be able to handle it," Vex said.

"Would they?" Sev asked, frowning slightly. "I'm not so sure about that. Look at what Misa had to do just to be able to block that [Meteor Swarm]."

"I... maybe," Vex admitted, losing a little bit of his surety. "I haven't worked with most of them. But I know they're powerful."

"It is not a situation we want to risk, but it is also likely irrelevant," Derivan said. "This falls strictly into the Patcher territory; there is no need for someone to make a decision, or to coerce us into changing our paths. Those are the only times Administrators are called upon."

"And you're sure about this?" Sev frowned slightly, looking at Derivan. The armor stared back impassively, though the floor felt like it was tilting slightly...

"Deri?" Vex said, suddenly sounding worried.

"Derivan," Sev suddenly snapped out, his eyes sharpening. "Stop focusing on Patch. Now."

The command came through more sluggishly than it should have — but Derivan obeyed, nonetheless. When Sev spoke like that, most of the team reacted automatically; it had saved their lives more times than they could count.

And it was like a fog lifted from his head.

Derivan blinked several times, the lights in his helmet flickering, and he realized that he'd been swaying on his feet. The armor shook his head, straightening. "I... do not know what happened."

"Is Patch draining you somehow?" Sev asked. "You need to tell us."

"It is... I do not know. I do not think so," Derivan said. He glanced at his status, bringing it up briefly to check on the numbers, and was unsurprised to see that Patch had gone up by two points. If anything, he was surprised it hadn't been more. "It has grown to three. I suspect that because this stat is likely used by the Patchers themselves, it carries with it many of the instincts that the Patchers carry."

"You think most of your stats are things that have fallen by the wayside in the system," Sev said slowly. "But this one is something the system is actively using."

"In essence," Derivan agreed. "It is more complete than the others."

"But you can turn it off, right?" Vex asked, a tinge of worry in his voice, and Derivan found it in himself to smile at the worried lizardkin, though there was a certain exhaustion that was now bleeding through his soul — from resisting the stat, most likely.

"I can," Derivan agreed. "As long as I am not focusing on the stat, it is not a problem."

"It's something we should keep an eye on, though, just in case," Misa said, folding her arms. "At least we know I can block bullshit system instinct stuff. We've done it before. There's no reason we can't do it again."

"You are right, of course," Derivan said. "But the last time we did that, it broke the system — and if we were to do this, it would likely break the stat. It is something we should keep in mind, but perhaps not the first option to jump to."

"If you say so." Misa grumbled lightly under her breath. "Anyway, if you know what's going on, then I think we're wasting time here. We just came here to discuss what's happening, right? We kinda know what's happening now. I say we find Rekka or whoever's in charge of this place and tell them to stop with the bullshit."

"The building's system piggybacking on all the systems within it is likely what has led to the change in behavior of the Guild's occupants," Derivan said, nodding. "The system is linked to our souls, in some way, and a corruption of that link can lead to a corruption of the soul in turn... I suspect. We should not waste time."

Misa nodded. "Then let's go," she declared, kicking the door open.

"I'm telling you we gotta stop whatever the fuck you've been doing!" Rekka practically roared out the words; alarmingly, he had his weapon in his hands. Derivan still didn't know what it was, but he wielded it like it weighed nothing. How high level was Rekka, exactly?

"And you haven't given us a single good reason why!" the man that he was arguing with thundered right back, not the least bit intimidated. The man was clearly a high-ranking adventurer of some sort, judging by the gold Adventurer's Guild pin on his cloak; he was an older man with a thick beard dotted with small, white hairs. The kind crinkle in the corners of his eyes contrasted sharply with the angry look he was giving Rekka.

"Excuse me," Sev said politely. They'd walked into the room mid-argument, using Derivan's ability to sense systems to find Rekka. Both Rekka and the other adventurer turned sharply to face them, lanced with irritation, but Rekka's expression quickly collapsed into surprise.

"I thought you were gonna settle in," he said, and then he grimaced slightly. "I didn't want you guys to see this, man, I'm sorry."

The other adventurer snorted. "They're the reason you came in here yelling about nobility and the project?" he said, folding his arms. "You know better than to let new adventurers know about that, Rekka. We want to surprise the Guildmaster. And most of the time they react like this. I thought better of you."

"And I thought better of you," Rekka said steadily. "I thought better of us. You're not seeing it, but this is the whole reason the Guildmaster kept us rotating out of Elyra—"

"What rank even are you?" the man said, staring at the four adventurers. "You can't be more than Silver."

"See!" Rekka latched on to that, glaring. "That's exactly what I fucking mean, Lendel! When did you give a flying fuck what people's ranks were?"

Lendel leveled an exasperated stare at Rekka. "It's the chain of command, Rekka," he said. "I have to care. You have to care. It's how the Guild is organized."

"And yet we have to get approved before going up a rank." Rekka's anger had calmed, now; Derivan was just watching. Their whole team was, really. This seemed... personal. "Why is that, Lendel?"

Lendel frowned. "...To ensure that those of the commensurate rank use their power appropriately."

"Exactly." Rekka's gaze sharpened. "And what the fuck is all this, Lendel?"

Lendel hesitated.

Derivan watched carefully, and — with a little bit more care, now that he knew that Patch affected him — began to watch what was happening through Patch.

And what he saw was... concerning.

Rekka's system hadn't been corrupted in any significant way, beyond the little piece that had broken off; that mechanism was what the building used to connect to him, and as far as Derivan could see, that mechanism had yet to be repaired. Rekka was still safe from being reattached to whatever was going on here, as yet.

Lendel's, on the other hand?

Most people had systems that acted like cages around themselves; Derivan would look at them, and see the intricate mechanisms of the system hovering around them. He had no ability to perceive the souls of others, but he could use the shape of the system around them to identify where it probably was, even if he was only guessing. For all that the system did, these were beautiful, tightly-woven constructs.

Lendel's system wasn't broken, but it certainly wasn't a beautiful, tightly-woven construct. It had what could best be described as masses; where Rekka had a single exposed connector to connect to the guild building, Lendel had four or five. Each of them looked almost grotesque, like swollen tumors not unlike the nodes Derivan had seen in the building...

It occured to Derivan that the sense of repulsion he felt might have been part of the Patch stat, and he quickly shut off his connection to it. He'd seen enough. Rekka had been able to break off his connection fairly easily; Lendel's connections were twitching, like they were being stressed, but it certainly wasn't enough to break them.

He could break them, though. Patch was at 3, and still didn't have nearly the kind of finesse he would have wanted before he was comfortable using it to actually fix and tweak his system.

Sometimes things had to be broken before they could be fixed.

Lendel was still considering his response to Rekka.

Before he could finish, Derivan signaled to his party that a fight might break out; he saw all three of the others shift slightly in stance.

Three things happened, almost simultaneously.

One, Derivan reached forward and snapped every connection Lendel still had to the Guild building.

Two, Lendel stumbled forward and screamed, loud enough to make Derivan flinch.

Three, two other people that Derivan didn't recognize rushed out of a side door he'd failed to notice — and judging by the red cloaks they wore, they were part of Lendel's team.

"Ah, shit," Misa muttered. Derivan couldn't help but agree.