At the bottom of the stairs lay a grand hall.

Mana crystals were sources of power edged into the world like firm anchors. They couldn’t be moved even if excavated; they always stayed in place and continuously exuded an amount of ambient magical energy vaguely related to their size and purity.

This hall, deep down in the mountainous earth, was full of mana crystals, all of which floated around in the empty space, any rubble and stone and soil once found between them now removed. The hall itself was vast and laid in stone bricks with different colours showing a giant picture story of some old legend Theora wasn’t aware of.

And it was filled to the brink with Afterthoughts of all sizes, shapes, and types.

At the edges of the mana crystals, as if floating out from a beehive, a continuous swarm of Afterthoughts was spit out into the world. They were the same low-level types Theora had encountered when saving Nate during the System outage she had caused. Shadowy blotches, mostly person-shaped, some looking like animals, jumped out in hordes. Many couldn’t fly, so they fell to the ground, scrambling to get up and run away.

Most didn’t last long. One by one, they were devoured by higher level Afterthoughts lying in wait on the ground. Torn apart, then absorbed.

The higher level Afterthoughts were much more clearly defined. Their bodies sported colours, some even details. They didn’t look completely human, or like animals, but the resemblance was much closer. Theora could make out a specific person they may have been a mirror of, or an animal or monster they’d been born from.

For most of them, that is. Others were just random shapes. Just geometrical or mathematical absurdities with circles for mouths or fractals for legs, or wings, or limbs, or none of that.

What all of them had in common was that their appearance screamed out against the reality they’d been placed in. They warped their immediate surroundings like flickers in the air around a hot surface. They cracked and buzzed at their edges; like frizzly small bursts of iridescent lightning, or black nothingness licking at the world in tongues of black flames moving far too quickly.

The System was a vast amount of data overlaid on reality. And sometimes, part of that System went rogue. Broke off, got corrupted, or simply slipped through the seams containing reality, permeating a membrane they were not meant to pass.

And thus, an Afterthought was created. If they contained enough data, they were able to imitate thought or speech or movements, cause harm or destruction. Through a process not unlike evolution, the ones that happened to devour other Afterthoughts, while rare, did come into existence every now and then. Those were the ones who would evolve and grow strong enough to harm even the strongest people, animals, and monsters.

Because of that, the System rewarded their elimination with experience granted to a person’s Class.

Magda and Rogue didn’t enter the hall together with Theora. As she made steps further inside, some of the Afterthoughts scuttled away.

Ah, that was worrying. Were they cognisant enough to recognise her as a threat? Considering it was mostly the strong and well-defined looking ones who ran from her, it seemed possible. And if that was the case, that likely meant no other human in town had the capabilities to destroy them.

Had they let other places run rampant like this as well?

But… if there were specimens down here who were able to perceive a Level 1 Stargazer Theora as a threat, then that meant they totally could walk up the stairs. They just chose not to.

Why?

Theora felt a little shudder run down her back. Something wasn’t right about all this.

Yes, mana crystals could spawn Afterthoughts, but it was rather rare. In comparison, this looked like an Afterthought factory. It was either the result of one of the weirdest quirks of nature, or it was happening by someone’s design.

These Afterthoughts were a mess; they weren’t focussed on a single target, but instead all running their own agenda of either devouring others, trying not to get eaten, or pursuing much less apparent and more abstract goals that couldn’t be discerned from simple looks. Theora would thus not be able to dispatch them in one go; she needed to target each one of them separately, and hope that casting [Obliterate] this many times in quick succession didn’t end up yielding unsavoury results. This was definitely not ideal.

And, as long as the crystals kept producing more, she would have to come back every few hours to clear the space.

And there were hundreds of these places all across town? How could Theora possibly keep up with that?

She looked back at Magda and Rogue. “No wonder you were overwhelmed,” she murmured at them. “It’s remarkable the town is holding up.”

“Well, we aren’t weak, you know!” Magda stuttered, although she did seem slightly humbled at the sight of Theora acting as a magic repellant to the strongest beings in the hall.

Theora had no access to [Appraise], but if these two were sent to keep this chaos contained, and considering the fact they had actually dared to come down here with her, their Levels were likely well within triple digits.

Theora turned back to the spectacle of Afterthoughts. She briefly considered using [Obliterate] on the mana crystals. If they were destroyed, the influx would stop. However, the town’s existence relied on those crystals. Maybe she could destroy some of them as a last resort, if they couldn’t stop this any other way and if it would end up putting the people in town in grave danger, but it could never be her first approach.

Then, what?

“When did this start? And how?” Theora echoed into the hall, without looking at the guards.

“A few weeks ago,” Rogue said. “It wasn’t sudden; just one after the next, the crystals started vomiting monsters. Within a few days, all were infected.”

Theore hummed. “Did you place intact crystals under surveillance after it started?”

“Yes,” Magda yelled into the room so her soft voice would carry over the crunching and tearing sounds of thousands of Afterthoughts. “But the guards were knocked out, and then the crystals were infected anyway.”

Huh. That was interesting. “Knocked out,” Theora repeated. “How many casualties have there been so far?”

“Injuries,” Rogue said. “But nobody died.”

So, harming the city or its population wasn’t the primary goal. Or, maybe, it was an outcome that was being actively avoided. If the guards had been ‘knocked out’, that meant it was likely a person or a group of people running a stealth operation to infect the crystals.

Theora stared at the crystals for a while, unsure what to do. She had an idea in her head, but… was it really something she should do? She imagined that this town likely had fairly capable people, and that they probably had figured that this was an operation of some kind, and that something enchanted or cursed the crystals to produce corrupt System data. Judging from the fact that they still needed help, they hadn’t found a way to undo this affliction despite all of their resources.

“I’m going to try something,” Theora said. “Stay back.”

She paced through the hall until she found a smaller crystal that floated low enough so she could touch it. She reached out with her hand, and started absorbing the crystal’s mana as soon as she was in range. The flow of Afterthoughts from that crystal stopped.

That much was to be expected; there was no way to harvest that much mana from so many crystals on a grand scale, though. The town wouldn’t be able to contain it. Theora glanced back to the guards, both of which still stood in safe distance, inside the staircase. That was good.

What if Theora just moved one of those immovable crystals? If she shoved it aside, maybe it would stop or destroy the enchantment. Perhaps it was limited to a certain location. Or, if she could move the crystals, she could gather them all in one spot, making it much easier to take care of the Afterthought production.

Of course, in order to push away or move an immovable object, Theora needed to be immovable herself. In fact, she needed to be more immovable. Or, heavier. So, she focussed really hard on the fact that she didn’t want to move right now. She felt the lethargy seep back into her limbs. Her deep desire to sleep, for a hundred years, and not be awoken. She thought about the heavy loads she carried, her responsibilities and flaws. How it all made every single gesture that much harder by bogging her down.

She thought about how her tongue was too heavy, how it made talking a chore. How her legs felt like they were made of the densest stone, and how she needed to exert all her willpower to keep her mind in motion, and not slip away into dark oblivion.

She felt the change as it happened. How she was anchored by the weight of her existence. Putting all these thoughts into her mind, becoming aware of them, internalising them, she was rendered immovable.

Much more immovable — much heavier — than a random rock floating around somewhere in the air.

And so, she pushed.