CHAPTER 54: RESIDUAL NOISE

Cecilia ignored the prompt that was flashing in her vision, moving the issue to the back of her mind.

She wouldn’t have a way to deal with it now. She didn’t know what command she could give, or even if she should give one. The spirit-algorithm treated her as an ’administrator,’ whatever that meant, but she wasn’t so sure she was one.

The encounter with the mysterious ’administrator’ back in her home had been the first time she heard about that term in this world. And that memory, alongside the one of the memory rewriting of Aelindra, was too uncomfortable to think about.

A part of her mind noticed that she was being childish, but she shrugged it off with the thought of ’I’m only eighteen.’ She thought it would be surprising for her not to behave childishly...

Yet, there was that part of herself that wanted to deny it. It was as if it was screaming that she wasn’t a teenager. That she was a prim and proper priestess, with the experience and wisdom to boot.

"But that’s not me. That’s just the character..."

"What character, Miss Cecilia?"

Cecilia opened her eyes suddenly to see Marya in front of her. The girl had already cleaned the ritual area and stacked everything in the backpack.

She was holding what looked like an overgrown seed in her hands, but her attention was totally focused on Cecilia.

"Oh, it’s nothing. I was just thinking out loud. But what is that in your hand?"

"It’s a... I don’t know, Miss Cecilia. I just found it on the ground, by the trunk."

The girl handed the seed to Cecilia, who then used Appraisal on it.

[Item: ???

Error: Undefined Data Source.

Origin: VerdantRoot.subprocess().

Integrity: 23% - Self-Repair Active.]

((No wonder she doesn’t know what it is. This language probably sounds almost alien to her.))

The seed was beautiful. Roughly the size of a pendant, its color shifted from green to gold depending on the angle the light caught upon it. It was partially transparent like amber, and within its core shimmered faint hexagonal patterns.

Cecilia knew those patterns. They were the visual fingerprint of data compression in VR data systems.

It resonated with Cecilia’s touch, a very subtle vibration that she could feel under her skin. She had been feeling it everywhere ever since the ending of the ritual, but the touch of the seed increased the sensation by several degrees.

"I think it’s the remnants of that spirit. A seed that we should plant when the time and place are right, so it can be born again."

She could just plant it there and now, but for some indescribable reason she felt that it wasn’t right. Maybe it was the ’23% integrity’ on the Appraisal result, or maybe it was her insight as a priestess. The fact that she felt that she should hold onto it for some time.

She stored the seed in her inventory, then stood up. The world spun around her when she did, making her tumble and almost fall to the ground.

"Miss Cecilia!"

"It’s okay... I’m okay. It was just some vertigo."

((Heh. To think that even a person with superhuman powers can fall victim of the vertigo from standing up too fast... That’s so funny.))

After some time, she was able to reorient herself and walk normally. She was far from normal, though. There was an omnipresent sound, like a lingering echo inside her mind.

But she knew it wasn’t a sound in the physical sense. It was a low-frequency vibration of mana itself. She felt like she had just opened up the lid of a whole new sense, a whole new way of perceiving the world.

The vibration was rhythmically steady, like a heartbeat slowed to one per minute.

((This is different from the normal mana sense I have as a passive technique. It’s not a technique. It’s almost like it became part of my body, like hearing and seeing.))

Sight and hearing weren’t techniques in the game. They just existed as part of the bodies of creatures.

Yet, mana sense was a passive technique that one could activate or deactivate at will. It would make objects and places with high concentrations of mana shine. The bigger the mana density, the brighter the light. That was all.

This was a wholly different thing.

((If it’s a new sense, I guess I’ll have to just get used to it. Maybe it can prove useful later.))

"I’m all good now, Marya. And you, how are you faring?"

"I’m great, Miss Cecilia. You were so awesome there!!! The way you talked with that spirit... tool... was so amazing! It recognized you and Ephemerys. So that’s what a god is capable of!"

The little devotee of Cecilia had already reached her own conclusions about what happened, even though she didn’t understand half of the words that were exchanged in that conversation.

But she saw how the world was before, saw Cecilia doing something, and saw the effects of that something. That was all Marya needed to know to confirm one more time that Cecilia was the most incredible being in the world.

"Yes... that’s what a god is capable of. What I did there was not a technique, nor is it even part of the system."

Though she had no proof that Ephemerys had a hand in it, she also had no reason to believe that the goddess hadn’t. She wouldn’t believe that it was her own power that did that, even if someone told her. So, the easy way out was attributing it to the deity.

"Now, let’s head back home. It should be almost lunchtime."

:::

The return was smoother than the first part of the trip. They passed by the brook, which was flowing normally, and the forest had lost most of the traces of artificial procedural generation.

The ’noise’ in Cecilia’s senses didn’t wane, though. It was ever there, ever present, in a layer right below the surface of her consciousness.

((How I wish Helen was here for me to share these findings with her...))