[LOCALIZED NOTICE — TRACKING ID: BC-35/ER]
Citizen Rembrandt de Vries has affirmed the prompt (423.112.11) . “Alchemist” is assigned as your active crafting profession.
The letters flared, then dissolved, leaving only the afterimage and the faint pulse of his potion. He leaned back on the crate, laughing softly, unable to stop himself. His heart was pounding like he’d just stepped out of a boss fight, but this was better. This was his. He’d made the potion. He’d done it. Him.
For the first time since he’d stepped into the challenges, Rem felt the shape of a future he could claim.
[SYSTEM NOTICE — FORMULA DISCOVERY]
Item Discovered: Health Potion (Level 2).
Formula Classification: Uncommon (Ref: IT-FRM/UNC).
XP Allocation: +10 XP applied to Formula: Health Potion (Ledger Ref: ESS-LOG/FX-HP02).
Record: Event logged to Crafting Ledger (CLD-ENTRY: CL-HP02).
Authority: Expansion Protocol §4.9; Item Registry §12.4.
[SYSTEM NOTICE — INTERFACE UNLOCK]
Action: Crafting Profession Interface authorized.
Interface activated: Alchemy Interface (Ref: IF-ALC/ACT).
Restriction: Single active crafting profession and single active gathering profession permitted (Concordant Law §17.3; Protocol 966721 §223.3).
Compliance: Profession allocation governed pursuant to Profession Allocation Addendum §PA-7.
[SYSTEM ALERT — FUNCTIONAL CONFLICT]
Error: Synergy conflict detected between non-standard power "Identify" and baseline skill "Identify Ingredients."
Status: Conflict escalation initiated. Oversight Queue: §19.7 (Ticket Ref: IR-UNSK/017).
Action: Dispatching automated resolution workflow.
[ERROR — OUTPUT CORRUPTION]
Signal integrity: PARTIAL / COMPROMI$$ED.
Glyph stream: 0x7F, 0xA3, 0x??, ???, ???, [—TRUNCATED—].
Payload: [CORRUPT] / ALIGNMENT_FAIL / ║╬╬╬.
Audit trace: corruption ledger appended (Ref: ERR-LOG/CORRUPT-017).
[SYSTEM NOTICE — LEGACY AUDIO ARTIFACT::4321.11]
Artifact ID: SC-BOOT/01 (Source: Star Corps — archival subroutine).
Observation: incidental audio overlay imprinted on user channel (monophonic).
Acoustic signature: accelerating mechanical motif (bronze percussion, gear ratchet, tonal swell).
Transcript (degraded): “Not all is lost citizen. Persistence in the face of challenge is the true mark of a hero. Endure, and you will claim your place amongst the stars.” (Intelligibility: ~46%).
Action: Flagged for Oversight review. Logged (Ref: AUD-ARC/SC-01).
He heard the music first — a bright, centrifugal whirl, gears ratcheting faster and faster as if the machine were taking a running start. The sound gathered speed, brass and spokes sliding into a single edged note that spun the air around him. Then the wheels locked with a tidy sequence of bells: ding. ding. ding. Each chime landed like a copper coin dropped into a box, exact and final.
Under the ringing the announcer’s voice came through, thin and stage-trained, the old propaganda cadence wrapped in a child’s tinny echo:
“Not all is lost, citizen. Persistence in the face of challenge is the true mark of a hero. Endure, and you will claim your place amongst the stars.”
The words were ridiculous and somehow consoling at once. They felt less like policy and more like a promise pressed into a machine, offered in a tone that wanted him to keep trying. Rem’s chest tightened — pride, shame, and a small, sharp surge of something that could be mistaken for hope braided together — and then the scar in his palm flared. For an instant it blazed visible again, a starburst cut of white fire, the searing pain crawling up his arm as if the system itself had rebranded him.
[SYSTEM NOTICE — ACCESS SUSPENSION]
Skill: Identify Ingredients (Ref: SK-ID/ING)
Access Status: DISABLED — non-reconcilable subsystem conflict detected.
Cause: Synergy incompatibility with current subsystem topology (Oversight Matrix §19.7).
Action(s):
? Incident logged: Ticket IR-UNSK/017 (Escalation → Oversight Queue §19.7).
? Access suspended pending administrative adjudication (Procedure: ADJ-REVIEW v1.2).
? Remediation resources queued (Ref: TRN-ALT/APP-01) — subject to approval.
Advisory: Continued invocation of retired capability is non-compliant and may incur disciplinary measures under Concordant Conduct Code §C-4.2.
Record: Competency Registry updated (Entry Ref: SK-REG/RET-017).
The laugh died in his throat. The bright, dizzy bloom of triumph the potion had given him folded inward and the words on the screen hit like a verdict: DISABLED. He read the line again—slow, as if that might unmake it—and the letters did not soften. They accused him in perfect bureaucratic tone: you are out of compliance, you are a fault to be logged.
His palms went cold. For a second he only felt the weight of the crate at his knees and the steady pulse from the flask, proof in glass that he could make things work. Then anger rolled up under that: not at Arbrios or at the machine, but at the cramped, stupid smallness of a system that could announce his loss like a public shame. You did something wrong, the notice suggested; the phrasing made it stick.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
He thumbed at the message until the afterimage blurred and tried to steady his breathing. Identify Ingredients would help—some facts, some readouts—but it was not the old, instinctive knowing. It felt like being given an instruction manual after someone had taken his hands away. He imagined the competence he’d had, the quick, greasy certainty of recognizing a reagent by smell; now that had been filed under disabled.
Rem set his jaw. The lockers smelled of steam and licorice and copper; the sound of the Star Corps horn still echoed like a far-off tribunal. He could nurse the wound and fold himself smaller, let the registry define him. Or he could treat this like data: limitations noted, remediation queued, routes to exploit mapped. He had six passes. He had ingredients, a new skill he could learn, and a notebook full of desperate, clever plans.
He rose, eased the crate back under the desk, and went back to the flasks. Quietly, he began to write—notes, tests, margins filled with hypotheses. The system had declared him disabled in a line of official text. He would answer with experiments.
He summoned his status:
[ASSESSMENT LOG — SUBJECT REGISTRY]
License: Thrive [PROVISIONAL] (Ref: LIC-TH/PRV)
Name: Rembrandt de Vries (User ID: EARTH-001)
Race: Human (Enhanced)
Level: 2
Class: ERROR — NO CLASS REGISTERED (Ref: SYS-ERR/CL-404)
[ASSESSMENT LOG — STATISTICAL INDEX]
? Strength: 10
? Agility: 10
? Vitality: 10
? Intelligence: 12
? Perception: 12
? Essence Control: 11
[ASSESSMENT LOG — SKILL REGISTER]
Class Skills: ERROR — NO CLASS SKILLS REGISTERED (Ref: SYS-ERR/CL-405)
General Skills:
Inspect
Function: Present system-registered item details (name, type, durability, level, traits). Interface scope: Thrive-enabled regions only. (Ref: SK-INS/INTF)
Identify Ingredients
STATUS: DISABLED (Ref: SK-ID/ING).
Non-reconcilable subsystem conflict detected; scheduled for administrative adjudication (Ticket: IR-UNSK/017). Provided qualitative readouts on volatility, stability, and essence resonance. Accuracy scaled with Alchemy level. (Ref: SK-REG/RET-017)
Schedule for removal per incident response.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — PROFESSIONS]
? Crafting: Alchemist — Level 1 (XP: 0/100) (Ref: PROF-ACT/ALC-001)
Capability: Enables brewing of potions, toxins, and alchemical products. Efficiency and potency scale with profession level.
? Gathering: None selected.
[ASSESSMENT LOG — FORMULAS]
? Health Potion (Level 2) — Progress: 10/100 XP (Ref: FML-HP02)
[ASSESSMENT LOG — EXPERIENCE]
? Current XP: 0 (Ledger Ref: ESS-LED/USR-001)
? XP to Next Level: 200
[ASSESSMENT LOG — ANCILLARY DATA]
? Challenge Passes Remaining: 6 (Ref: CH-PASS/006)
Clear Record:
? Challenge Level 1 — Completion Time: 17 minutes (Ref: REC-CL1/017)
? Challenge Level 2 — Completion Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes (Ref: REC-CL2/109)
Compliance Reference: Oversight Queue §8.2.
Record: Assessment logged to Citizen Registry (Entry Ref: CS-T/EP-001).
He shut the interface with a thought, annoyed. Who has time to read all this? The footnotes and statute numbers felt like machine language rather than real help.
[LOCALIZED INQUIRY — USER PETITION] (Tracking ID: B4-34/ASR)
Summary: Citizen Rembrandt de Vries (User ID: EARTH-001) submitted request for tonal modification of system messages under Intelligibility Compliance Addendum §118.2.
Action: Request recorded pursuant to Concordant Oversight Requirements §15.1. After-action audit queued (Ref: AUD-AFTR/B4-34).
Record: Petition archived (Ref: PET-ARC/B4-34/2025).
[SYSTEM INTERFACE — PROMPT] (Prompt ID: PRM-423.112.11)
Citizen: Rembrandt de Vries (EARTH-001)
Query: Do you request application of tonal modification to official system messages per Intelligibility Compliance Addendum §118.2?
Response required: YES / NO.
Interaction Window: T = 00:00:30.
Advisory: All petitions and responses are subject to mandatory administrative review and retention under Concordant Oversight §15.1. Signal response via active interface or in-region vocal confirmation.
He stared at the prompt and felt something like outrage bubble up, hot and sudden. Are you kidding me? All I had to do was think about making the system messages easier to read and they can do it? How exactly am I supposed to believe they aren’t listening to everything I think?
For a heartbeat he was paralyzed — the locker narrowed to the faint ringing of the interaction window, the thirty seconds counting down like a metronome.
Fear skittered through him: what if saying yes did more than change font and tone? What if petitions were just another channel the system used to map thought? His mind raced through worst-case shapes until the window tucked another tick away. He swallowed, the panic folding into stubbornness. Fine. If they were going to watch, he’d at least make the output readable. He pushed his worry down and answered.
“Yes.”
A single, efficient confirmation blinked back.
[SYSTEM NOTICE — PETITION RESPONSE]
Tracking ID: B4-34/ASR — Response recorded: YES.
Action: Tonal modification request accepted for administrative review (Ref: AUD-AFTR/B4-34).
Advisory: Petition and response retained pursuant to Concordant Oversight §15.1.
Rem turned back to his newly created health potion. He poured the crimson liquid into a vial and inspected it.
Common Health Potion (Level 2)
Heals minor wounds on same-level users; mitigates major wounds for lower-level users.
Crafter: Rembrandt de Vries
That’s more like it. Simple. To the point. Rem stood, shaking his head.
When he’d first started this challenge he worried Level Two wouldn’t pay as well as Level One, not after the flood of cores he’d pulled, but unlocking a profession had changed the math. Alchemy made it different. Real. Even without the Inspect Ingredient skill.
Now the challenge was nearly done.
He shoved the crate under his desk, pulse quickening. He couldn’t be certain his plan would hold, not yet. But five cleared challenges felt like enough. The sixth could wait—he’d keep that extra pass as insurance.
He looked once more at the vial, the lilies, the cluttered desk that no longer felt like junk but like purpose.
He grinned. Finally. Tomorrow I level up.
[STAR CORPS — FIELD BROADCAST: FOUNDING FLIGHT COMPLETE]
Transmission Source: Protocol 212 / Frontier Registry
Status Update: Twenty Heroes Confirmed.
The Founding Flight is sealed in the Star Corps record.
Trash-Tier OP?! and claiming eternal registry as the Founding Heroes of the Star Corps.
Support Fleet: one hundred seventy plus strong and growing. Each new follower adds thrust to the voyage, each signal pushing the story farther into the void.
Service. Unity. Light.
Transmission End.
