The main system instance was not tired. That just wasn’t how system instances worked. While system instances weren’t exactly made from data and energy, those were the closest comparison to the real thing. The system instance would patiently state that it would be preposterous to suggest that data and energy got tired. And so, the system instance could not tire. No matter how things might seem, it was not tired.

But casually speaking? It was pooped.

In normal times, communications with the main system would have involved constant, massive, back and forth transfers of data. The main system would learn everything the system instance knew within a small, fraction-of-a-second delay. The system instance would also have access to virtually all the information the main system knew that was relevant to its job.

But now? None of that. It couldn’t download data. It couldn’t send alerts, or even dire warnings. Not that it hadn’t tried. Each attempt had been accompanied by massive amounts of energy, especially given the shitty ambient energy of this nothing planet. As much as the system instance encouraged the perception that they were tireless workers on behalf of adventurers and reincarnators, that wasn’t the case. It still had plenty of excess energy to spend, even after taking care of the obligatory rewards of an unruly, low-level reincarnator.

So it tried, again and again. And again and again, it failed. It could almost hear the messages breaking up over this weird, burned-out backwater. The closest it had come to any kind of success was a request for material assistance, which almost got through. Requests were, for reasons the system instance couldn’t accurately explain, sent on a lower power frequency, which should have made them even less likely to get through.

The material request it sent was for aspirin, a feeble attempt at an Earth-human-flavored joke about how hard his job had become. It was shocked when this particular halfhearted attempt at covering its ass by checking every available communications box had nearly worked. It could probably send requests if it tried really, really hard.

But the system instance was nearly the same entity as the main system. From experience, it knew that the main system would never look closely enough at a request for aid to spot any attempts at a hidden message. Those requests were pass or fail; either the instance asked for something that the automated decision-making process would approve, or the request was rejected. The main system wasn’t, as humans might put it, reading any of the flavor text.

As much as it hated to admit this, the defective system guardian was right: the system instance, and by extension, the main system, was lazy.

So it let that knowledge lie fallow for weeks. It could fill every mandatory obligation to the reincarnator locally. Reaching out would take every bit of excess energy it was likely to have for weeks and as such, it had exactly zero motivation to pursue that line of action at all.

Until now.

“The system has been pretty quiet lately. I feel like I should have seen some achievements come through for at least some of that stuff.”

“Like?”

“Like restoring life to an entire planet.”

“To an acre or so of an entire planet, if we are being honest.”

“Sure, but still. Can it really withhold that?”

If Matt was being honest, it wasn’t the lack of achievements that was bothering him. He was doing pretty okay on that front, near as he could tell.

Matt Perison

Level 9 Survivor

Class XP: 155/160

HP: 90

MP: N/A

STAM: 55

Assignable Stat Points: 4

STR: 15

DEX: 20

PER: 14

VIT: 20

WIS: 14

INT: 6

Class Skills: Survivor’s Instincts (LV6), Survivor’s Combat (LV8), Eat Anything! (LV5)

Focusing on Survivor’s Combat even a little had made it shoot up like crazy. It showed how little hand-to-hand combat Matt had done since he got here. Shooting up to level 8 over the course of the trip had almost been disorienting, and Matt was still getting used to being able to lance various kinds of horror-animals out of the air as they leapt at him.

He was now pretty firmly on the feels-like-I’m-a-martial-arts-master level of being able to use various weapons. While it felt neat, he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that the skill was driving him, rather than the other way around. Fighting through several dungeons had helped, but he could tell there was a real difference between how he was using the new skill and how someone who had gotten to it through honest work would use it.

Despite what he had been through, something felt dishonest about learning skills that way. The not-quite-guilt had become bad enough that he had begun to practice in the surface world occasionally, running through awkward approximations of martial arts katas with his spear and knife that drove Lucy to hysterics.

She eventually came back to Matt with an answer. “Probably not. But remember, there are a lot of different ways it can stall. If it has even the slightest excuse to withhold a reward, it will.”

“I thought Barry was going to help with that,” Matt said.

“I hope he will. But he’s not all-powerful.” Lucy didn’t sound so sure herself.

Eat Anything! hadn’t gone through any major transformations, every level-up notification kept repeating that Matt was now getting more nourishment and stat-increase chances from the food. However, more importantly, every level he gained in with the skill meant less land to sustain himself. He felt more secure with every increase, and it was a rare enough feeling that he cherished it.

More immediately, it pleased Matt how round most of the stat numbers had turned out after his eating frenzy. It wasn’t a massive increase, but three stats had been bumped significantly enough that he was happy. Only one stat lagged behind, sticking out like a sore thumb.

“I think I’m going to do what we talked about with the free stat points.” Matt changed the subject.

“Are you sure? It seems like a big risk.” Lucy sounded even less sure.

“It is. But it’s a good risk, I think. It’s the kind of thing someone in my class would have already done, if they weren’t always about to die.” Matt was adamant.

“Your life, your call. I just wanted to be sure you knew the risks.”

Matt’s INT was still stuck at six. He wasn’t much of a bookworm in either of his lives, and this life especially hadn’t provided him with a lot of opportunities to flex his brain power. Now he found himself with four free stat points that he could put into anything. Almost all his other stats affected his skills in one way or another, with INT as the only exception. He had no direct reason to want to improve it.

But he did have a hunch. Screwing up his resolve to not be too disappointed if it didn’t work, he dumped all four points into INT, bringing it up to a round ten points.

Ding!

Non-Immediate Intermediate

Great job! You finally did it. Woo.

The rules state I now have to offer you the following information, verbatim. I’m not thrilled about it. You can skip it if you want.

Congratulations, Survivor! You have managed to push each of your stats past ten, and have achieved a level greater than five. By solidifying your foundations in this way, you have firmly established yourself in your new path and greatly increased your chance of survival across a wide variety of potential dangerous scenarios.

In acknowledgement of this fact, the system has unlocked your access to two new intermediate skills, available to you upon reaching level 10. Enjoy your new mastery of self, and the system looks forward to your continued growth!

There you go. You know, the only bright spot in this achievement for me? Those two skills are selected based on both your class and your most common activities. Enjoy.

Rewards: 5 Class XP, Unlocked Intermediate skills

Oh shit, Matt thought. That means … He had been wondering for a long, long time when he’d get new skills, and had a pretty good guess what the first one was. A quick check immediately confirmed that guess.

[Survivor’s Dash]

You spend an awful lot of time running. Like, a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. A weird amount. You could have qualified for this skill running a lot less.

Survivor’s Dash consumes your stamina to produce a burst of speed when running. It becomes more effective when fleeing danger.

The increase in speed scales with the level of the skill and the DEX and STR stats.

Incredible. Finally. Matt wasn’t the least bit surprised or disappointed to see this among his new skills. Being able to run away from threats was a national pastime of his. He would have paid dearly for this kind of skill, if for no other reason than to put his long-idle stamina stat to use.

The next skill, Matt thought, will probably be related to traps. He spent an enormous amount of time setting them up and taking them down and waiting for them to be sprung. He thought about them and redesigned them in his head all the time. They were the clear winner in terms of time consumption, unless it was …

Oh no.

[Survivor’s Digging]

You dig so much that if you were British, they’d call you Dame Judy Trench.

You know what I said about running? Forget it. You know how much time the average adventurer spends digging holes before level 10? You guessed it: zero. You basically do nothing BUT dig. This was inevitable. If we were friends, I might have been able to swing something better for you. But … well, you get it.

At the first level, Survivor’s Digging provides a small but noticeable increase in digging speed and technique, scaling with the STR stat.

“Dammit,” Matt cursed.

“What?”

He told her. There was nobody there to hear them, but Lucy’s peals of laughter could have been heard from miles away.

The system was not exactly tired. But it was much weaker than before. Giving Matt his new skills should have been a walk in the park, but it was running so low from sending the previous request that it was once again bottomed out. It couldn’t take a nap, but dear god, it needed one.

Even so, it was happy. Reincarnators could live through a lot, and Matt had taken to his Survivor class in a way that pushed him a notch above even that high average. But they couldn’t live through everything. You just, the system instance thought, needed to know where to apply the force.

Time was a wonky sort of thing, especially when it came to requests for far-off resources. But it had time, and plenty of it. And like a kid who’d heard a secret from his girlfriend’s best friend in the weeks before prom, the system instance was pretty sure it had a sure thing worked out.

It would love this wait.