Blood Shaper

Book 4: Chapter 2

There had already been a meeting with Kay’s closest set of advisers, Eleniah, of course, Meten, Ahthia, and Isla. While the rest of his council of advisers and his Ministers were important parts of the decision making process and he definitely heeded their expertise and advice, but when he needed to make immediate decisions he talked to his teacher, the leader of his Sentinels, and the two people that handled getting information for him. The fact that two of those people were the two tier fives in Avalon that he knew about besides himself, one of the people he suspected was a tier five and just wasn’t telling him, and the person in Avalon who had the most historical knowledge memorized, he felt pretty good about just talking to them.

But he did need to keep the rest of his council in the loop and get their feedback on the more widespread decisions they had to make based on the information the System had brought him, so he’d scheduled a meeting with all of them. The architect and builders working on the palace thought that the council meeting room wasn’t done yet, but that was focusing on decorations and less important things. The room itself was functional, as was the large circular table they’d selected for the meeting room without any input from Kay. He chuckled at it every now and again.

“What’s this about?” Isla’s illusion asked once everyone had seated themselves. “I didn’t get a schedule for this meeting.”

Kay kept his eyes from rolling. His spymaster was all about the flow of information, whether it was giving it or taking it, but her antics at making sure things went the way she thought they should sometimes got on his nerves. “A couple days ago after I got back and things started to calm down, the System contacted me.”

The already quiet room went dead silent. They all knew about the conversation Kay had had with the System during and after the fight with the Eldritch Hunger back in the early days of Avalon, and the implied seriousness that came with such a claim had everyone paying attention.

“Apparently it was only a portion of the System, at least as far as I can understand, but it-“

“What do you mean ‘a portion of the System’?” David, the Minister of Construction, interrupted, “What does that mean?”

“Well the way it explained it-“

“Is the ‘personal System’ theory correct then? Do all of us have our own personal System that works for us but talks to everyone else’s?” One of the Ministers that Kay didn’t know very well asked. The Minister of Growth was a thin weasel beastkin woman who spent most of her time out in the wilderness mapping out everything she could. Kay wanted to spend more time with her talking about cartography but she wasn’t available most of the time.

Another Minister, a human man that the Adventurer’s Guild had helped him recruit to handle the Ministry of Communication, “No, that’s stupid! Just like Twin Scholars of Cormourent said in their Discourse on Existence, it doesn’t make any sense for it to work like that, because how do you explain monsters and their access to mana? They aren’t sapient beings, so they can’t have a System attached to them like the personal System theory says, but they have to be part of the System in some way to have mana like they do!”

“That’s implying that the System is the only way we can access mana!”

“Of course it is! Do you think-”

“Quiet!” Eleniah leaned forward and glared, “Let him tell us what happened and you can argue about theories on how life works after! Besides, you,” She pointed at the Minster of Communication,” should know that the Twin Scholars disavowed most of their first few works after they moved to Horath,” and you,” She pointed at the other Minister, “Should know that Henry the Wizened ended up disproving the basis of his original personal System theory when he wrote-“

“Eleniah.”

She jerked back n her seat, a chagrined look on her face at Kay’s chiding, “Sorry.”

“Right, I’m going to say the whole thing and you all can ask me questions after,” Kay told them all, “It started when I was in the bath-“

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Kay stared at the floating words in front of his face, without a System box around them. Silver in color and faintly shining, they just sat there, menacingly.

“Umm…” His arms, braced to push himself out of the bath in alarm when the words had appeared and startled him slowly relaxed, “Can it wait till I’m done with my bath?”

The first set of text faded away and was replaced by more.

“That’s not really what I meant… But I also don’t think I can do anything about you making text pop up in my face so, continue, I guess?”

“Did you just refer to yourself in first person?” Kay asked, the surprise of that overriding his other feelings momentarily.

There was a pause of the words vanished over a period of a few seconds. For a moment the air was empty, until the conversation continued.

“The part of the System that runs things here on Torotia is so bust it can’t speak in first person about itself?” Kay whispered, starting to get worried.

Kay stared at the words in horror. “...What’s going wrong?” He managed to eventually ask.

“I knew!” Kay shot up out of the bath, spilling water all over as he stood there, glaring at the words. The sudden rush of exultation overwhelmed his worry as he griped at the System. “Things have been adding up too well! The connection between my original Class and all this shit with the vampyr being heavy on Blood Mage Classes, running into that eldritch thing under the cliffs and then using the Skill I got then to deal with the vampyr infection, it was all too streamlined!”

Kay slowly sank back down into what was left of his bath. “Well, that’s interesting but doesn’t really tell me much, so keep explaining as much as you want.”

“How do native Torotians generate resources for the System as kids?”

The text that flashed into existence for just a moment was a dull gray color compared to the silver text that Kay was talking too, and the System continued on without pause.

“Wait!” Kay interrupted the text as it filled itself out in front of him, “You didn’t know that vampyr were eldritch?”

“How is that possible? Aren’t you scanning for ‘eldritch contamination’ all the time?”

“Holy fucking shit.” Kay breathed out.

The intensity of the glow of the floating text increased until it was almost blinding, then vanished and the faint sense that he was being watched that Kay had had vanished. He hadn’t even noticed it was there until it was gone.

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Everyone in the meeting room stared at Kay in total shock as he finished telling them what the System had told him.

Then everyone but the four people he’d already talked to erupted into noise as everyone lost their collective minds.

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