Chương 13: So I Broke The Universe A Little

[Mana Incompatibility (Racial, Foundational, X-Grade): This being cannot manipulate mana, cast spells, or gain mana-based skills. This trait is intrinsic to their race, shaping their spiritual being. While mana can enter their body, it does not remain stored, instead passing through their mana pathways with every breath, surging through their physiology without conscious activation. Their metaphysiology lacks the necessary framework to process or utilize mana, preventing any meaningful acquisition or utilisation of skills. Without spiritual pathways, skills cannot be activated, and skill-based mana functions remain inoperative, separate from the body.]"Absolute" was gone. That meant something. Mana still wasn't hers to generate, still wouldn't stick, but now? It moved. Every breath and every second shoved it through her system—not dead, not still. A passage instead of a void.

Pathways existed, useless but present. No processing. No activation. No skills. The old repulsion? Gone. Her body wasn't fighting mana anymore, just failing to do anything with it. The grade had lowered, confirming her suspicion that not only did traits have varying grades, but that they could change. And the immunity? That was gone too. Meaning mana could touch her now.

"Huh. Alright." Kelly scanned the new traits, eyes locking onto the changes. [The Aberration of Mana (Foundational, Unique, I-Grade): This being's transformation has rewritten how it interacts with fundamental forces. Its existence is now unstable, fluid, and partially disconnected from reality. Its body is capable of interacting with mana in ways no other entity can. Instead of producing or storing mana, it naturally consumes or disrupts it. Instead of dispersing energy, it absorbs it, making energy-based attacks feed into it in addition to causing harm. Conversely, it is unable to generate its own energy, requiring external sources to function properly. The universe might be actively trying to erase it or force it back into a stable state, making its very existence a constant fight against time and space itself. Due to the anomalous nature of the being's metaphysical and physical changes, further effects are unknown.] So, she'd officially graduated from regular anomaly to the universe's personal headache. Progress. Kelly scanned the new Trait, half-impressed, half-annoyed. Reality wasn't taking this well. It was trying to crush her, erase her, shove her back into something it understood. That explained the butterfly effects, the odd changes that occurred after many loops. They were rare, and sometimes they were small, barely noticeable, and other times they were huge. Whatever she'd become? It broke the rules.

Mana, dark matter, and dark energy—probably the same thing wearing different hats, which meant magic wasn't mystical, just badly documented physics. And then there were the differing grades. While EX-Grade could be an outlier, I-Grade and X-Grade could be Roman numerals, meaning one and ten. Were there only ten grades to titles and Traits and an additional outlier grade? Or were there more? So. Two theories.

Grades capped at ten because ten was a nice round number somebody somewhere had decided looked official on a status screen, or the real ceiling was much higher, sitting somewhere in the stratosphere.

"There is no single highest Roman numeral in the old, ancient system," she muttered, half to herself, almost rambling to the empty air.

"M̄ represents a million. That's the biggest symbol they ever found." But Roman symbols can go way beyond a million if you combine them. Did grades stop at ten? Or were they limitless?

"Theoretically, you could just keep adding symbols indefinitely to bake in even bigger numbers," she murmured, the words tumbling out as her brain chased the logic. Which meant there could be no absolute limit, not in the symbols themselves. But in practical terms, someone's status would look absolutely ridiculous with a whole alphabet beside every magical stamp.

The thought hit with a sudden flash of absurdity: a person's status sheet with every trait, title, and skill dragging an alphabetical chain stretching so far that the screen would need its own scroll function, just to tell you how good someone was at punching things. Open your status mid-fight? The popup takes up your entire field of vision, a wall of letters and lines that gets you killed before they finished reading the elaborate murder note. She snorted. That'd be a nightmare.

No, someone—the phenomenon behind it all or whatever committee of cosmic eruption had crafted this mess—had to have set a hard stop. Because presentation mattered. Even divine autocracies had UX standards.

"There's probably a hard limit to grades," she muttered, eyes scanning. Whatever it was, she'd find it. She moved on. ['Mer-Blood' (Rare, I-Grade): This being's blood is a fusion of human and mer-goblin physiology, fueled by mana to exhibit high affinity for liquids. Composed of a specialized hematic structure adapted from mer-goblin biology, they possess the inherent ability to breathe underwater and high affinity for all liquids, naturally resisting dehydration and water-asphyxiation. When saturated with the body's mana, the circulatory system autonomously influences all liquids within a 1-foot range according to the user's emotional state, continuously reinforcing emotional resonance and adapting to sustained emotional intensity. This process occurs without conscious activation, and is inherent to mer-goblin physiology. Higher grades increase the range and effects and possibilities.] Kelly stared at the notification, reading it twice. Mer-Blood. Rare. Grade I.

Her circulatory system had apparently decided to unionise with a goblin-mermaid hybrid without consulting her, and now every liquid within a foot of her body was going to dance to whatever mood she happened to be in—off switch absent, conscious activation unnecessary, her emotional state bleeding into the physical world through puddles and drinks and probably the air if it was humid enough. Breathe underwater.

That part was straightforward, and she mentally stored it under 'useful if she ever got thrown into an ocean', which, given her luck, would probably happen this evening. The part that snagged her attention was the autonomic emotional bleed. Every liquid within a foot of her was going to resonate with whatever she was feeling—anger churning a spilled coffee into a tiny whirlpool, fear turning a puddle flat and still, amusement making someone's drink bubble when she walked past.

Her circulatory system was going to broadcast her mood like a wet, emotionally unstable billboard, and that was either a liability or a weapon depending on how fast she learned to stop feeling surprise in combat. The adaptation clause: continuously reinforcing emotional resonance and adapting to sustained emotional intensity. Trait learned.

It fed on long-term emotional states and got stronger the longer she felt something, which meant sustained rage could turn a glass of water into a projectile, enough focus could shape liquid into a tool, and anything she kept feeling long enough became a weapon in waiting. One foot of range at Grade I. Higher grades would stretch that further, and the phrase "effects and possibilities" was doing a lot of heavy lifting.

A high enough double-digit grade might let her throw the fluid inside someone's body the same as a spilled drink. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. Spooky. Also, mermaids are actually real? Go figure. She wondered, idly, if they considered sushi cannibalism. [Troll Marrowed (Rare, I-Grade): This being's bones are a fusion of human and troll physiology, fueled by mana to exhibit greater density. Composed of a reinforced lattice adapted from troll marrow, they possess the inherent toughness and durability of troll biology, naturally resisting fractures and high-impact trauma. When saturated with the body's mana, the skeletal system autonomously fortifies itself, continuously reinforcing structural integrity and adapting to sustained pressure. This process occurs without conscious activation, and is inherent to troll physiology.] Titanium-density troll bones. Neat. She checked her EQ-3. 8. Much better.

All changes saved. Troll bones wouldn't make her stronger. Muscles made people strong, but bones decided how much of that strength they could actually use. Human bones cracked long before muscle limits were ever reached. Now, that limiter was gone. And the mana saturation? That sounded... automatic. Trolls didn't need to think about reinforcing their bones; their physiology just did it. Which meant she didn't need to think about it either.

Aside from whatever the injection did to her soul, that was probably the main reason why her 'Traits' were now available. No longer greyed out and inaccessible but full of saturated colour. Her eyes immediately honed in on her new title,'The Null.' [Title - The Null (Unique, I-Grade): A being that should not exist, violating universal laws—While active, No prophecy based on the bearer's full name can directly describe their personal future. If a seer possessing their full name attempts to divine their fate, it will fail. Whilst they can still appear in external prophecies about others, a seer looking for what they will do next will see only static.] Interesting. The mention of 'seers' implied that one of these freaks falling out of the sky could see the future. If "seeing the future" was real, then she could kick the whole concept in the teeth, but only if they used her full name.

If it wasn't, then it had obvious data-fed blind spots, and she was going to shove herself right into them. The only thing worth knowing about prophecy was whether it was just corporate-grade probability abuse. If it was real, it meant future events existed before observation, and that broke too many laws of causality to ignore. But if it was just a monstrously advanced quantum model, then it was still useful—high-speed data crunching was just magic people understood. Either way, she would find out.

Force it to admit it whether it was just a computer pretending to be a mystic, or something much more. She moved on to focus on the 'Title' classification itself, mentally nudging the panel to reveal the category's meaning. [Titles: Titles are persistent identifiers gained from exceptional achievements that provide ongoing passive effects and long-term enhancements. They are either always active or highly conditional. Only one Title can be functionally active at any given time.] Only one at a time?

That was suspiciously pedantic for something rewriting reality. If Titles were persistent, then swapping between them meant their effects were more than just passive buffs—they had to be states of existence. What happened if she switched mid-action? Would it cut off whatever effect was running? Could she speed-toggle them and break causality? And what counted as an exceptional achievement—surviving something that should've killed her, or did she need to punch a god in the teeth to get a good one?

More importantly, how exactly could she get more? There was likely a pathway grafted somewhere deep in her helix to make this possible, and once she'd taken care of a priority task, she would need to review her results in depth to unravel its secrets. Like how it got there, and who or what was making these decisions. This needed further study. More samples. She needed more Titles.

"So if this changed once, it can change again," she exhaled, grinning. The status panel had spent almost three hundred loops telling her she couldn't use mana. Now? It was admitting things weren't so simple.

"Guess the status panel finally got tired of gaslighting me," she muttered. The implications were a wrecking ball rolling through her mind. Humans couldn't get skills, couldn't use them. But they had traits. Hell, every single one of them had a trait telling them they were magically useless. But humans had technology. Lots of it. And either some freak accident or an idiot with terrible decision-making skills had given the craziest human the ability to loop.

Kelly had looped well over a hundred times, most of it spent trying to reach this lab. She'd fought a fully equipped 7EQ mercenary and survived—barely—thanks to a room full of turrets, drones, kill-zones, droids, an unpredictable chain-blade, and an absolute refusal to stay dead.

Her body was packed with mana, her DNA wasn't even fully human anymore, and she'd done what every physicist, every theorist, every goddamn researcher in history failed to do—she'd inverted dark matter and dark energy, slapped them into her genes, patched it up with nanotech, and told the universe to deal with it. And now? Now she wanted more. If she could get samples from the creatures wrecking Earth, she could engineer Traits, study them, break them down, build something new.

If she could gain more achievements, she could receive more Titles, study them, too, advance them, and reverse engineer both. Magic wasn't a myth—it was just badly documented physics. If the status granted creatures abilities, then Traits were just hardcoded data waiting to be cracked. She wanted to rip apart the apocalypse and make it explain itself. And... oh yeah, maybe put a stop to the whole Earth-ending disaster or whatever.

Reach 100EQ, save twenty billion people and change the fate of a planet that was doomed to crack open at the end of the invasion. She'd almost forgotten about that part. Kelly had done the impossible because she never stopped smashing through walls—metaphorical, physical, and occasionally quantum. And it worked. Now, she was the only human in existence who didn't just interact with mana—her body processed it in ways no one else could.

If the corporations, the elites, the ones clawing for scraps of power in this dying world knew? They'd tear apart the last remnants of civilization just to put her in a lab. But that didn't matter. She had loops. Infinite trial and error, unlimited failures to mine for progress, and the freedom to dissect the apocalypse one Trait at a time. Every monster, every anomaly, every system-given ability—all of it was data waiting to be cracked open. And the portals? She'd crack them open, too.

Maybe see what's on the other side. Her final option sat there, humming at the edge of reason: step through a portal and find out what waited. Plenty of fools had done it the instant they spawned, none ever walked back to brag about it or even sent a postcard. Kelly could join them. The odds of vanishing, or slipping into a space outside time, were high enough to make a statistician faint. So she'd map, measure, and prepare until stepping through was less suicidal and more of a strategy.

When she went, it would be on her terms—and the universe could deal with it. If Kelly found a stable medical nanotech source that didn't rely on a fabricator, she could wake up every morning, print a stockpile of vials, hop off-world to an orbital colony, and sell the useless gene-splicing method to desperate corpos for obscene amounts of credits.

By midday, she'd be drowning in wealth, spending loop after loop sipping overpriced drinks on some orbital colony—and if the resets ever stopped, she'd still be set for life. But Kelly chased understanding. If she wasn't pushing forward, tearing things apart to see what made them tick, then what was the point? She'd burn through a thousand lifetimes before she let the universe hold a single secret over her.

The fabricator let out a sharp ding, spitting out a fresh batch of medical nanotech vials like a particularly generous slot machine. Kelly grabbed one, rolling it between her fingers. They were single-use, temporary, just an hour before it broke down into iron and whatever scraps her body could scavenge. Not exactly a cure, but enough to keep her from unraveling in the universe's deadliest splice job.

The inverted energy still wanted her gone, pulling her apart at the seams, but the nanotech kept patching, rewriting, forcing her back into something stable and repairing her cells on the fly. If she died, then she'd spend every subsequent loop waking up with a very short expiry notice, endlessly looping with only a slim window to break the cycle. Well, if this is the only real chance I've got, I guess I've got to make this loop count. Kelly stored the vials in a reinforced case, pocketed them, and moved.