In the unobservable strata above the standard perceived reality, nestled within the backend node clusters of Fortune’s quantum-threaded architecture, a figure some might loosely call a god was hard at work.
Not a divine figure in the traditional sense. No throne. No glowing halo. No divine chorus humming his praises. Instead, he sat in a chair that looked like a leather gaming dream designed by a sleep-deprived dungeon master. He wore a hoodie with SYS_ROOT stitched across the front and faded cargo shorts with more pocket than fabric. His bare feet tapped idly on a floating slab of translucent stone coded with glowing glyphs and green-blue streams of real-time data.
He was focused on his work, eyes jumping from one screen to the next, fingers running over the large keyboard to make adjustments and corrections faster than any base root mortal could observe. Not that any mortal had ever been here.
He was halfway through his third cycle of what might loosely be considered debugging when the red light blinked.
It stood out immediately. Most notifications were white or green. Yellow, if the world’s physical constants started degrading again. But red?
That was worth a glance.
With a reluctant sigh that echoed through layers of compressed reality, he pulled the alert forward.
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ALERT: UNRESOLVED SKILL INTEGRATION ERROR
SUBJECT: LLKIRBY001
CLASS: [Bard]
SKILL: [Adonis Quintessence] → SOUL-MESHSYNC ERROR (0.00% SYNC)
CURRENT STATE: Skill Inactive – Flagged for Mandate Violation in 207.56 Hrs - Log_Attention_068
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He groaned.
“Of course it’s 68’s issue. I know that he hasn’t touched his shift queue in 17 full solonyctical loops. He was probably dead drunk in a pile of naked hosts.”
He leaned back, cracking his neck. A dozen screens rearranged themselves. Several queued error packets spun into view, mostly minor bugs: misaligned tree hitboxes, an overactive mimic that had eaten three dungeon cores, and one rogue duck flagged as a regional terror.
But a MESHSYNC? That was different.
He expanded the logs:
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>> LLKIRBY001 — World Entry Confirmed [Elapsed Time: 32.44 Hrs]STDPACKET ASSIGN → [Bard]BASE SKILLS:[Musical Resonant Frequency] – Uploaded to Synthetic Mesh
[Adonis Quintessence] – Upload Failed (Soul Mesh-Sync Error)
-retry upload01 -[Adonis Quintessence] – Upload Failed (Rejection - Soul Mesh-Sync Error at 0.00%)
-retry upload02 -[Adonis Quintessence] – Upload Failed (Rejection - Soul Mesh-Sync Error at 0.00%))
…………………………….
-retry upload10 -[Adonis Quintessence] – Upload Failed (Rejection - Soul Mesh-Sync Error at 0.00%))
Skill mesh allowance attempt exceeded, error flagged. Alternate indexed solutions reviewed.
Correction - Option EGO-Mesh attempted. Mesh failed at 0.00% Sync)
No alternative options determined to be valid. Error priority increased.
[Magic Mouth] – Uploaded to Synthetic Mesh
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So the system tried to patch in the [Adonis Quintessence] skill, and the host rejected it. Full sync failure. Not even a partial compatibility fallback.
It was rare that a skill failed to mesh onto a host. That typically only happened with skills with physical requirements, mainly with the [Thief] class for the skill [Sleight of Hand] when they pulled a host from an origin who was missing fingers, hands, or even the full limb.
But full sync failure didn’t happen. Not unless the host was missing core psycho-emotive layers or lacked the baseline model substrates.
A few diagnostic pulses later confirmed it.
“That... would explain why [Adonis Q] is spitting null packets.”
The being rubbed his face.
As usual, this was a mess that was left to him to clean up. It has seemed more and more over the last hundred years that he was the only one trying to keep things from falling apart.
Acknowledging the error workflow, a new red message popped up in front of him.
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POSSIBLE THREAT OF VIOLATION OF PRIMARY MANDATE FLAGGED
TIME UNTIL ISSUE IS FLAGGED AS CONFIRMED VIOLATION - 207.56 Hrs - Log_Attention_068
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The figure scratched his chin, feeling what little facial hair he had. The real concern was that this was flagged as a possible mandate violation, which would raise its own type of special headache if it became a confirmed violation.
Which he was pretty sure that he would be blamed for, even though this was 68’s fuck up.
He waved one hand. A new display shimmered open, showing the subject in question.
On the screen showed a man wearing only white undergarments while he sat cross-legged on a rock. A stream of data showed on another screen that the figure read, seeing that the man was playing with his [Musical Resonant Frequency] ability.
Suddenly, there was a sharp sound from the screen, and the figure watched as the rock the man sat on split open. The being quickly with a glance at his screens, reviewed the data and determined that through sound alone, the [Bard] was able to crack the rock. Even though that wasn’t what the [Bard] was probably going for it was still impressive.
Looking at the data screen, the god couldn’t help but laugh. It seemed that 21,659 nearby standard forest spawns had been set to attack by the sound of the rock cracking; it was mana-infused and had overridden the local spawn location safety parameters.
Even though all the alerted creatures were rated at a starting level, a level 1 [Bard] did not stand a chance.
The screen zoomed in just in time to catch the look of realization on the [Bard]’s face, seeing the horde of animals attack.
Well, it is always nice when a problem solves itself; this should be over in a few minutes.
The being might as well make the most of it. He snapped his fingers. A floating tray appeared beside him, loaded with a bowl of lard-smuttered popcorn and a fizzy bottle labeled /BEVERAGE.SUGAR.BLOOD_ORANGE.1000units.
He took a sip. Popped a kernel in his mouth.
“Let’s see how this glitchy little [Bard] dies.”
The being smirked.
“Huh. Now, where does he think he’s off to?”
