POV - Edgar

  Isen was still shaking his head, wiping at his eyes with the back of his wrist. He had actually laughed.

  It wasn’t polite laughter. It wasn’t the careful amusement of someone humoring a captor. It was real, from-the-gut laughter. And something about that made my bones itch.

  I folded my arms. "Alright. Explain."

  Isen exhaled, still smirking. "You truly don’t know, do you?"

  I narrowed my eyes. "Know what?"

  His amusement lingered, but his expression grew more thoughtful. "I have lived nearly a thousand years. I have fought under kings, seen empires fall, watched men burn cities to the ground and build them back up from the ashes. And in all that time, I have never met an outsider."

  I hesitated. "...Ever?"

  Isen tilted his head slightly. “To think the first one I meet would be a dungeon boss... Either the world has something planned for you, or you are the unluckiest son of a bitch stitched into the Weave.”

  He shook his head. “To answer your question: never. I’ve heard rumors. The occasional myth. But that’s all they are. Stories. Whispering of men who come from the sky or out of nowhere or born… wrong. Of sages with strange knowledge, of human kings whose luck seems to border on destiny.”

  That was an unsettling thought. I knew I wasn’t the only one. I couldn’t be the only one. There was a system. A set of rules. Other people had to have been thrown into this mess.

  Right?

  "Well," I muttered, shifting my weight, "hate to break it to you, but I exist."

  Isen hummed. "So you do."

  I wasn’t sure if I liked the way he was looking at me now. Not wary. Not suspicious. Just... considering.

  "You’re sure you’ve never heard of another one?" I pressed.

  "Not firsthand," Isen admitted. "But it would explain a few things."

  "Like what?"

  "Like how some men rise too quickly. Win too easily. Have a sense of control over the world that others don’t." He tapped his fingers against his knee. "It would explain why some kingdoms grow in power unnaturally fast. Why some heroes seem to defeat impossible odds. Outsiders are rumored to have unprecedented control and access to mana... "

  The thought made something uneasy coil in my ribs.

  I had spent so much time thinking of myself as a singularity—a weird, personal tragedy, an unfortunate victim of circumstance. I’d never considered that others might have been given better deals.

  I cleared my throat, deciding to push that particular existential crisis down the line.

  "Alright," I said, "then explain something else. What do you see? When you level up?"

  Isen gave me a strange look. "What do you mean?"

  I gestured vaguely. "When I do something, I get notifications. Sometimes. When I defeat another floor boss, I rank up. Sometimes… I get messages when I get new abilities. When I raise the undead, I can feel how much mana it costs. Do you get anything like that? Is that an… an outsider thing?” It felt weird to say the word, but it couldn’t be more fitting.

  Isen frowned. "Of course I do."

  I blinked. "Wait. You do?"

  Isen’s frown deepened slightly, like he was trying to determine whether I was messing with him. "Yes. The system tracks our growth. It gives us experience notifications, class progress, skill ranks, proficiency upgrades. Some people have rarer benefits—bloodline traits, racial perks, even divine blessings. How do you think people improve?"

  I opened my mouth. Closed it.

  Then, very slowly, I muttered, "Son of a bitch."

  Because I didn’t have any of that.

  No levels. No skill trees. No class progress or divine perks.

  Just a handful of notifications. Vague prompts that are part inconvenience and part Kafka-esque joke. A few random skills tossed my way like bones to a dog that I STILL had no idea how to actually unlock.

  I’d thought I was playing the same game as everyone else. Turns out I’d been dropped onto the field with no armor, no rules, and no clue—and still expected to win.

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  A cold weight settled under my ribs.

  "Yours isn’t the same," Isen said, watching me carefully now, a flicker of something analytical in his tired eyes.

  "Well," I muttered, dragging a hand down my face, "not like that."

  Isen tilted his head slightly. "Then how does it work for you?"

  I exhaled through my teeth. "I get basic prompts. Sometimes a new skill offer. But no level numbers. No proficiencies. No fancy skill trees. Just... vague ‘recommendations’ every now and then. Oh, and an inventory. Which is great for carrying around the massive amount of loot I’m definitely gathering while stuck in a dungeon."

  Isen gave me a long, slow look. "...That’s it?" His gaze drifted around the chamber, not necessarily seeing mana the way I would, but assessing the physical structure, the way things were arranged. It lacked the chaotic feel he clearly expected.

  "Apparently."

  Isen leaned back slightly, considering. "It fits," he murmured, almost to himself.

  I squinted at him. "What fits? My suffering?"

  Isen ignored that, his attention seeming to turn inward for a moment, relying on his own senses and deep knowledge. "Most dungeons... they aren't built, Edgar. They are wounds. Scars left behind when one of the Firstborn—my people, before..." He hesitated, a shadow crossing his features. "When their essence was violently torn. They bleed raw magic, grief, chaos. To those who can sense it, the very stone remembers the agony. They are tombs, echoing with uncontrolled power."

  He looked back at me, his gaze sharp. "This place..." He gestured vaguely around the sepulcher. "It doesn't feel like that, not in the way a true dungeon usually does. There's an order here, beyond just the stonework. The ambient magic isn't the raw, weeping sort. It feels less like a wound bleeding out and more like... like something else is influencing it. Containing it, perhaps." He paused. "And you, an Outsider with such a strange, fractured connection to the System, here in a dungeon unlike any I have ever seen before... Your situation is something new.” He paused a moment. “Or something old no one has lived to tell of.”

  I tilted my head. "...Huh."

  I wouldn't know ambient weeping mana from a leaky faucet, but the elf seemed convinced something was off. And he was probably right. It’s not like I’d had a lot of chances at conversations about the nature of reality. No one talked to dungeon bosses about the feel of the place. They killed them. Cleared them. Moved on.

  I exhaled through my teeth. "Okay. Fine. Let’s go bigger, then. What is the system?"

  Isen blinked. His fingers stopped their idle tapping against his knee, his brow furrowing ever so slightly. "...What?"

  I gestured vaguely. "The system. The messages. The stats. What is it?"

  Isen still looked vaguely confused, like I’d just asked him what air was.

  "It’s... the system." He hesitated again, glancing around as if the walls themselves held the answer he couldn't articulate. "It overlays everything now. Governs the flow of mana, the limits.”

  "Right. But what is it? Where does it come from? Who made it?"

  Isen just stared at me. Then, very slowly, he said, "It’s how the world works." There was no hesitation. No doubt. It was a fact to him. “There’s speculation as to whether or not something came before… But not even the oldest Ilvaari remember anything before it.”

  “Ilvaari?”

  “Elves,” he sighed.

  I let out a slow breath. "Well, where I came from, there wasn’t one."

  Isen’s gaze sharpened slightly. "Where you came from."

  I met his eyes. "Yeah."

  He was quiet a moment. "Where was that?"

  I considered my options. I could explain. Try to paint a picture of a world without mana, without stats, without any of the nonsense that made up this place. I could tell him about the corporate hellscape, the nine-to-five grind, the slow, creeping dread of realizing that no matter how much you worked, you would never actually own your own home—

  I settled on this: "Ohio."

  Isen blinked. "...What is that?"

  I exhaled through my teeth. "A hell dimension. Don’t worry about it."

  Isen gave me a long, considering look. Then, ever so slightly, he smirked. "Noted. As to your question… I suppose the goddesses created it. Or perhaps... perhaps the System created itself when they failed." A thread of ancient bitterness touched his voice before vanishing. "Though, I suspect even my people have forgotten the truth."

  I frowned. “The goddesses?”

  He tilted his head slightly, eyebrows lifted just enough to register surprise at my ignorance. “She Who Weaves, She Who Cuts, She Who Watches.”

  I waited, expecting elaboration. None was forthcoming.

  I blew out a slow breath. "And they are…?"

  "The ones who shaped the universe." Isen spoke with absolute certainty. A cold, flat certainty, like stating fire burns and gravity pulls downward.

  "And by 'shaped,' you mean…?"

  He paused a moment. Quiet and contemplative. "Before there was time, before reality had form, there was only the Weave." His voice slid into a rhythm, picking up a dusty cadence that belonged more to ancient scrolls or cryptic monks than casual conversation. "Endless. Shapeless. And through that endless nothingness moved the Firstborn. Luminous and unbound, without hunger or flesh. Limitless beings of pure mana.”

  I squinted at him. "I can’t tell if that’s ominous or beautiful."

  "That is history."

  I waited again, expecting him to elaborate.

  Nothing.

  I raised an eyebrow. "And then?"

  Isen gave me a sideways glance, something quietly guarded lurking behind his carefully neutral face. "And then they were given form." There was something off about the way he said it. A quiet resignation. Or maybe a mourning.

  "Given?"

  His gaze flickered. "Yes."

  A long silence stretched between us. Something about that single word felt heavier than it should have. Like a door left deliberately closed.

  “Well, what else can you tell me about Outsiders like—”

  The system chimed, cutting me off.

  A cold pulse flickered at the back of my mind, and the prompt flared across my vision.

  [System Notification]

  A party of adventurers will arrive within the next 24 hours!

  I sighed, rubbing my temples. "Well, that’s just fantastic."