Peek: Perfect System, Imperfect Admin. (Patreon)

Order sits in his realm, musing on the system as he tends to a few prayers from his followers. Sometimes, he wonders if he's the right being for his position. Things had been stable for a long time, even by his standards, but the advent of Thedeim has him reexamining his work and his understanding of what came before him.

His attention shifts from the prayers to his work, his worshipers are generally responsible enough to not ask for frivolous things, so answering their requests is most often a simple affair, much unlike tending the system.

Many think he created it. When he first ascended, he even tried to explain he didn't make the system, he just understands how to interface with it, but with no other obvious entity to pin the system to, its creation was accredited to him. He's long since given up trying to correct the record. If they insist the swordsman must have crafted his sword, so be it. Even he had fallen into the trap of assuming his mastery meant he knew everything about it.

Now, however, he's taking a closer look at the workings and being reminded what a perfect structure of order looks like. He wishes he could understand it, feeling like a mortal looking out at the sea. He can see the vastness, he knows there are fish and other things besides in it, but the water conceals mysteries and terrors that may be better left forgotten. But, just like the mortals carefully prod, so too must he. He's pretty sure nothing will pop out to eat him, but he still takes his time to try to understand.

He's still not sure what process he's riding to be able to send notifications of things like levels, experience, quests, or even his own small messages. He understands it better than the class process, which is still a convoluted mystery to him. Which makes Thedeim's apparent understanding of it all the more curious.

Friendly and ingenuitive as the young deity is, Order would not have expected him to be able to influence the process. He likes the strange dungeon god, but he would have thought his thought process to be wholly incompatible with the inner working of the system. With the benefit of hindsight, though, he probably should have expected it. He's somehow able to expand affinities, which is another complex portion of the system, why wouldn't he be able to convince it to change a class?

He'd be happy to simply sit back and observe as Thedeim seems to stumble into new mysteries and understanding of the system, but he's probably not the only one to be doing it. He hasn't been able to find how it's accessing the system, but he's all but certain the Betrayer is somehow sneaking through the system, perverting the application of the perfect order to its own ends.

Disassembling the Harbinger was enlightening, leading Order to a greater understanding of spawners and their inner workings. It's how the Betrayer was able to pervert their processes to create its own creature type. Most annoying, the characters are of a higher dimension than Order used to make his current additions, and it would take him a lot longer, and a lot more understanding of the system, to be able to fix that. If his additions can't parse the characters, they can't track them. Very clever, very concerning.

Perhaps most concerning is that it may be his own fault. He had thought he had sealed the Betrayer off, but it has apparently found a weakness in its prison, and used that to worm its way into his entire work. It doesn't have access to change any of what Order has imposed, but it does seem able to add its own small impositions.

He sighs and splits off a sub-dimension of his work, the real reason he had created his additions at a lower dimension. It's easier to work on without causing a disaster this way. But now, he may need to figure out how to either split off higher dimensions or work in a way to allow his changes to not go into effect until he's ready for them. Either way, he can't ignore it and let it continue. There is a discordance that he can sense now, and he doesn't intend to let it simply continue.

He understands how the Betrayer was able to slip in like this, and he needs to fix it. He had thought any entity trying to change it would be introducing chaos, but now he understands better. The Betrayer is seeking to impose its own order. Where Order embraces the order of glorious movement, gears meshing, energies flowing, that fallen dungeon seeks a different order.

The order of stillness. The order of the void. The Order of Silence.

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Inspired by Typhoonator, who wanted to get a look at Order and the system.