Chapter 397 (2/2)

Mrs. Hamilton seated herself, murmuring her thanks, even as another part of herself flexed its legs. The grey spider that sat in the back of her mind slowly woke up, calmly feeling around, testing the web it had weaved around it. Not the best scenario, but… better to go along with it for now.

“Are you here to stop us?” Lyra said. Mrs. Hamilton had 3 problems with the sentence and what it represented, but she knew that the younger woman wouldn’t care. She had her own way of dealing with the world, and her looks had apparently given her no cause to believe that this wouldn’t be sufficient when dealing with the metaphysical overlord before them.

Octavius shook his head. “Of course not. There is ample ambient Aether that you can use, still clinging to his body, to add meaning to his Class. I am simply here to record it all. You, as the first people to arrive, may start. Simply name the Class you would like him to have, and if accepted, it will use images from him to add it to his current Class. An extra bonus for him.”

Nodding, Lyra turned to Mrs. Hamilton. “Just say something like, Hero of Humanity, or whatever.”

Mrs. Hamilton’s brow twitched, and she ignored the foolish girl. Instead, she turned to Octavius. “The System is truly a work of wonder. So it even has contingencies for this situation?”

Octavius nodded, a small smile on his face as he watched Lyra’s twist with annoyance. “Oh yes. By the 3rd Cohort, the modern prototype for the current System was in place. After that, there were increased opportunities for past Cohorts to influence the future, for example, I was originally born on a world in the 5th Cohort, but very rarely has there been any surprises.”

“Impressive.” Then Mrs. Hamilton tapped her chin, thinking. Which, was a mistake, because Lyra cut in, seemingly using her brain in this brief time that her mouth was switched off.

“What are the criteria that would allow a suggestion to be accepted?”

Mrs. Hamilton’s mouth twisted. This….

Luckily it seemed that Octavius didn’t care much about about small talk. Or actually… it seemed he cared very deeply about the rules of the System themselves, and his voice became animated the longer he talked about how things worked.

“Well it’s rather simple. The suggestions you make have to fit ‘inside’ of his created Class. Whether he expected this or not, he created an extremely broad Class, that can be filled with multiple different meanings. In addition, the amount of Aether used to create it is staggering; I have never seen a Class cost this much. And only about half was used. His body is still suffused with the remaining Aether… although it is the Aether of a Heretic, it seems, which is distasteful.”

Then Octavius coughed lightly, before speaking. “And yet his Heretic level is so low… I wonder how he earned this much Aether…..hmmmm…. At any rate, since the circumstances are so ideal, there is only one final criteria: your addition has to mimic his Class. Translated to your language…”

He paused. “.... there needs to be a P, then an F, and then an E. Small variances are possible, but the less the better…”

“So it’s… a word game?” Lyra said, her voice sounding disgusted. Mrs. Hamilton almost smiled.

Octavius nodded, his eyes bright.

As Lyra opened her mouth to make her opinions about such a thing clear, Mrs. Hamilton spoke, her voice ringing clearly. “Protector of Humanity’s Final Enclave.”

There was a rumble…. then a strange dinging noise, as if it was accepted. Below the floating sigil, but above Randidly’s chest, several of those swimming strands of Aether shaped like dragons curled upwards, condensing and shaping themselves. Very soon, they formed another, smaller sigil, below the first. Very quickly, light around it started condensing, growing brighter and brighter.

“It was accepted,” Octavius said, producing a small notepad and scrawling something. “Now… let’s see how well he takes to it.”

The light continued to intensify, so much to the point that Mrs. Hamilton could only close her eyes to avoid blinding herself. Then, all at once, that light was snuffed out.

Now, when she opened her eyes and looked at the sigil, it had… shifted. Or rather… it had been shaped by the image in Randidly’s heart.