System Architect

“Figure anything out?” Dad asked

“Yeah. Looks like I can get a re-do if I need to,” I answered, summarizing the positives and negatives.

“Huh. That’s neat.”

“It’ll definitely help in getting enough for all of the upgrades I’ll need to purchase.”

“That’s true,” Dad said while rubbing his chin. “You’ve checked to see if there were ways of getting more experience, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Are there any bad options or are they all good?”

“Well, they seem to be of varying usefulness, I suppose.”

“I don’t just mean the experience ones,” Dad said, waving his hand dismissively. “I mean overall. Is there anything actually detrimental?”

“I never checked.”

Dad’s eyes flashed as he smiled. It was worth looking into if for no other reason than to avoid potential land mines when navigating the incredible breadth of choice. I searched through the options with Dad’s idea in mind, and I discovered a treasure trove of bad ideas.

What I found ran the gamut from increasing monster level to reducing experience gained and included just about anything I could think of. There was either a silver lining or a massive trap that came with these. They offered experience instead of requiring it. I took a closer look at one of—

“Eddy?” Dad asked. “Are you ok?”

“Huh?”

“You’ve been staring off into space and making strange faces.”

“Oh. Sorry. There are bad options, apparently.”

Dad nodded.

“They give me experience that I can then spend on other things.”

“Could be useful. Dangerous, but useful.”

I nodded.

“Well, I’ve got a lot of research to do,” I said. “So…”

Dad shooed me away so I would do whatever it is I needed to do. He wanted his peace and quiet.

I went up to my room and pulled up one of the negative features that I had found. Its existence had serious ramifications for whatever system I ended up going with.

Feature: Skill Slot Limit

Prerequisites: Skills I

Unlock Personal Use: N/A

Unlock For Universal Use: -100,000 Exp

Description: Limits the amount of skills someone can have. Defaults to 10.

There were other features that related to that one as well that made my task exponentially more difficult.

Feature: Greater Skill Slot Limit I

Prerequisites: Skill Slot Limit

Unlock Personal Use: N/A

Unlock For Universal Use: 10,000 Exp

Description: Increases the amount of skills someone can have by 1.

Feature: Lesser Skill Slot Limit I

Prerequisites: Skill Slot Limit

Unlock Personal Use: N/A

Unlock For Universal Use: -10,000 Exp

Description: Decreases the amount of skills someone can have by 1.

This structure was mirrored for the features that were completely negative. There were multiple modifying features that would mitigate some of the negatives associated with the original negative feature. For example, I could take a feature where humans have twice the experience as monsters. Then I could add something that made humans who killed other humans get labeled as murderers and anyone who killed a murderer would get an additional 2x experience buff. The rabbit hole had rabbit holes!

I shook my head. Some amount of inherent moral policing would be absolutely necessary to humanity’s survival, but that was a subject that needed a delicate touch. It was something I could very easily screw up. No matter what rule I came up with, there would always be a loophole someone would use to get around it.

If I continued the murderer example, what would happen when someone killed another in an unforeseeable accident. Would they become labeled as a murderer? Or if someone mind controlled another person to kill a third, would the mind controlled person be the murderer instead of the person forcing it to happen because their hands were technically clean? That was a whole can of worms I didn’t want to deal with and yet I knew I would have to at least dig through all of it eventually—even if I ultimately chose to do nothing.

I took enough time to calm down. I had years and a re-do before I had to settle on a decision. There was no need to rush anything. It was best to focus on what I could actually control and affect in the short to medium term. I decided that it was time to go make a list of the important features I’d found and come up with a path forward.

I popped open the laptop and copied the features into a spreadsheet. It took some time to get right, but when I was done, I had something to go off of. It was also editable, which was a huge plus.

Feature Personal Cost (Exp) Universal Cost (Exp) Prerequisites

Status Screen Manipulation 1 1,000 N/A

Milestones III 2,500 2,500,000 Milestones II

Quests III 2,500 2,500,000 Quests II

Combat Experience 1,000 1,000,000 N/A

Crafting Experience 1,000 1,000,000 N/A

Exploration Experience 1,000 1,000,000 N/A

Harvesting Experience 1,000 1,000,000 N/A

Economic Experience 1,000 1,000,000 N/A

Social Experience 1,000 1,000,000 N/A

Misc. Experience 5,000 5,000,000 Combat Experience…Social Experience

Logging I 10 10,000 N/A

Logging II 50 50,000 Logging I

Quests I N/A 100,000 N/A

Quests II N/A 500,000 Quests I

Milestones II N/A 500,000 Milestones I

System Help N/A 100,000 N/A

Notifications I N/A 10,000 N/A

Notifications II N/A 50,000 Notifications I

Search N/A 100,000 N/A

Restart I 100,000 N/A N/A

I decided to include the ones I’d already purchased. Getting them for universal use would mean I didn’t have to repurchase them in the future. At the same time, I had a lot of exploration to do in terms of how the System I was given actually functioned. For one, I needed to know how effective the experience features like Combat Experience were. This was especially important so that I could forecast how much experience I would gain, which would then inform the decisions around what features I could get.

With Milestones III revolving around magic and the System itself, I decided to hold off on getting it. Quests III would be useful, so that made the short list. I knew that getting at least some of the experience features would be needed. The only question was which ones took priority.

Combat Experience was difficult to assess. Would killing an ant count? A whole colony? I wasn’t a killer, so that was going to be a difficult mindset to get into. I could probably do some hunting as both preparation for fighting monsters and for the experience itself.

Crafting Experience was also fairly difficult to project. I wasn’t particularly skilled in anything, but at least it felt more accessible than combat would be. Even if a bead bracelet gave me only 1 experience, it was at least a rather straightforward option.

Exploration Experience was going to be difficult before I was an adult or at least until I was old enough to have some freedom of movement. That being said, it held promise. Once I wasn’t tethered to school, I had a whole world without monsters to explore and a fairly long time-frame to do it in—as long as I could afford it of course.

Harvesting Experience was towards the top of the list. It meant harvesting resources—mining ore, skinning animals, picking plants, and so much more. That was something I could do while I pursued other avenues like exploration or combat. I guessed I wouldn’t get as much of a burst from it as some of the others, but it was something I could always do.

Economic Experience was tricky for the moment. Earning and accruing wealth was part of it, as was spending. Owning a business, buying land, playing the stock market… all of that and more. It would be important to pick up, but maybe not until after I’d done the restart. With some foreknowledge, the experience would be rolling in.

Social Experience was straightforward. It hinged on coming out ahead in social maneuvering, on leading others, and on influence generally. Like with economic, I felt this one would be more useful in the future.

Miscellaneous Experience was a catchall. Not only did it require me getting all of the others, but its primary function was to allow for experience to be gained from more than one route at the same time. As I understood it, if I ran a business competitor out of business, I would normally get only economic experience. With this feature, I would also get some social and maybe some combat experience as well.

I lay down in bed and stared at the ceiling while I thought. Harvesting Experience was probably the first I would grab. Exploration Experience next then Crafting Experience. Quests III and Combat Experience would follow. By then I hoped to have a rough idea of how I could maximize my experience gained over the time I had remaining. Only then could I actually have some semi-realistic plans and expectations of what I could accomplish before restarting.

As it stood, without any more upgrades, I’d only be able to gather around 700,000 experience. Enough to get Quests I, Quests II, and Restart I. Not really what I hoped to achieve. I needed to do better than that. Restart II was 500,000, and it was exponentially more expensive from there.

Over the next few days, I kept to the same routine—get up, check my quests, work on my quests and story, then sleep. Over the weekend, I was able to complete the weekly quests in addition to the usual daily ones. I even picked up 2 experience for having finished 10 total chapters.

Monday morning, when I checked my quests as usual, I was shocked to see a new option for the week: complete 7 chapters. That hadn’t been an option the week before. I wondered if that was related to Milestones II. If it was, was it an option because of Milestones II alone or because I had gained experience from it? That was something I would need more information to figure out.

On Wednesday, instead of going to school, I had to go with Dad to a court hearing. Even if custody was primarily decided based on the current situation and my parents, I at least had a voice in the process.

I followed Dad into a rather typical, drab office building a few miles outside of town. The inside was painted institutional white with linoleum floors that mimicked tile. What struck me was the smell. It wasn’t quite musty, but it had similar qualities. Maybe it was just the old plastic or just the age of the building.

After getting directions from the front desk, I walked down one hallway, up the stairs, then down another hallway until I stood in front of room 219. Below the room number was a name plate indicating the name of the judge. Instead of meeting in an actual court room—perhaps on account of my involvement—the judge would see us in his office.

Dad opened the door and ushered me inside. He followed and closed the door behind him. Mom was seated in a chair facing a large wooden desk with papers and a computer on top of it. The judge—a middle-aged woman—was behind the desk. There were two empty chairs—one for Dad and one for me. I sat in the middle.

“Thank you for coming to meet me here,” the judge said. “You are here to work out a custody agreement, so I hope we can do this civilly.”

My parents nodded or made a grunt in affirmation.

“Now, what is the current situation?”

“I left about a month ago and have recently secured my own residence,” Mom said. “Eddy is staying with his father full time, currently.”

“Thank-you,” the judge nodded. “Milton, do you have anything to add?”

“No, Ma’am,” Dad answered.

“Is there anything preventing either of you from sharing custody fifty-fifty?”

“I work late hours,” Mom said, “so he’ll need daycare during the week. Other than that, no.”

“Is that something you are able to afford?”

“Yes.”

“Good. And you, Milton?”

“He’s been with me for a month and the house hasn’t burned down,” Dad joked. “Picking Eddy up does cut into the time I have to work—I do trade work, mostly. However, it hasn’t been an issue so far.”

“Good. Now, I’d like to talk to Eddy quickly. Can the both of you step outside?”

My parents got up and left the room. I could feel there was some tension between them, but it was a lot less than when I was a child. I half-remembered both of them fighting tooth and nail over who would get custody. It was an absolute mess. This was much better.

“So, Eddy,” the judge began once my parents were outside, “do you have any preference?”

“Splitting down the middle makes the most sense,” I said. “Outside of Dad’s rather insane decision to not have AC in the summer, there’s no difference between the two households. I’d much rather spend time with both than have to deal with seeing one only a few times a month.”

The judge nodded.

“How old are you?”

“Five.”

“You’re rather mature for your age, aren’t you?”

“I should hope so,” I chuckled.

“Alright. Let me go get your parents.”

The judge talked to the two of them separately for a few minutes before deciding that I would spend one week at Dad’s followed by 1 week at Mom’s. Since the current week was already part way through, I would stay with Dad through the end of the week and go to Mom’s Sunday evening.

I was honestly glad with the outcome. It made a lot of sense given my current circumstances. It also left my parents with one less thing to fight over. Hopefully that would mean a more harmonious relationship between all three of us. I would need both of them on my side if I was going to save the world.