Broken Anomaly

The rays of the morning sun easily entered through the window. The heat of its rays easily warmed up the sheet of paper on the notebook that rested upon the crude but well-built wooden table.

On the sheet of paper, a circle was slowly taking shape. Through constant erasure, small adjustments were being made to get closer to the true image in the artist’s head.

More erasing, more adjustments. It appeared to be an endless cycle of mistakes and corrections. Even when it was correct, it wasn’t enough for the artist. They wanted an exact replica. They wished to take the image in their head and imprint it on the sheet of paper before them.

Surrounding the work area was the evidence of their past failures. One correction too many, and the sheet of paper was no longer usable. One correction too late, and it was no longer fixable without ruining something else.

“Just leave it like that, it’s fine,” Marcus said, his voice pleading and full of both anxiety and anticipation. “You’ve been at this for hours. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be good enough that I can read it. Come on, just hand it over.”

Eric stopped moving his pencil and slowly turned his head toward Marcus. “I will get this right,” he said with gritted teeth, his eyes showing frustration at his own inability to replicate the image in his mind. “Just give me some time, I will dominate this shit. It will be absolutely perfect.”

Eric had been trying to replicate only one of the magic circles he had seen during the dungeon upgrade process. However, he was having issues with actually getting the image in his head to appear in the paper before him.

His skill, Mental focus, allowed him to perfectly recall the magic circle. However, when used as is, the image in his head was like any other memory, which would be enough for most things but not this.

When he increased the amount of mana he used, the detail and accuracy of the image increased along with the mana cost. Eric had already burned through his entire mana supply multiple times ever since they moved to Stella’s office to continue talking.

At first, contrary to what he had told Marcus when he asked if anyone had gotten a good look at the magic circle, he actually expected to have only a bit of difficulty when it came to drawing it from memory.

He was never good at drawing, but he also wasn’t bad. He understood having difficulty with the characters, he had experience with something similar and expected it. That being said, he did not expect to struggle with something like copying straight lines.

Having difficulty writing foreign letters or characters was something he had experience with. In the past, he had already given up multiple times on learning Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. But drawing lines? That was where he drew the line—there wasn’t any talent or technique required for something so simple. This is bullshit, he thought.

“I just need to get these lines right. I have no idea why this is so goddamn hard. They’re lines,” Eric muttered under his breath, a hint of desperation coating his words. “But I’m almost there, just a bit more,” he added, his words now carrying a hint of desire.

Both Marcus and Stella only looked at Eric, amused by his behavior. They had seen this before, but he rarely had the same level of conviction he had right now. This new world suits him, Stella thought to herself as a smile appeared on her face.

Eric didn’t want perfection; he could care less about how the image in his head and the one he was drawing compared. He only wanted to get the lines right. How dare they be so difficult.

The more he observed the lines at the center of the magic circle, the more they appeared to be more precisely made, hiding a deeper truth underneath.

It was something that was beyond his grasp, but each time he looked at the image in his head, they looked... “right,” while in his drawing they never did. His desperation stemmed mostly from the fact that he was chasing something abstract and not an actual image.

Suddenly, the door to Stella’s office burst open with enough force to catch everyone’s attention but not enough to damage anything.

“I’m back!” Alex exclaimed, striking a superhero pose.

The first thing the three reacted to wasn’t his appearance, which was ragged and bloody, no, it was the odor.

Alex had been so deep in a mountain of corpses that the smell had stuck to his clothes. The worst part was that it wasn’t just the smell of death that clung to him, but various others as well.

The smell of the rotting fruit within the cavern garden was the second most prevalent odor, one he hadn’t even noticed during his whole time there. Another one he hadn’t noticed was the smell of fluids.

Not any fluid in particular, just any and all fluids he had been in contact with during his time away. The way they combined and made a discordant mix of smells that assaulted the senses and made Eric finally break away from the notebook.

“M—” Eric was about to say something when Stella raised her hand and stopped him from saying anything. He just pinched his nose and made a small frown when looking at Alex.

“Alex, can you go take a shower?” Stella asked, in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t a question. Alex even flinched a bit because it reminded him of his mom, especially when he returned from exercising.

“That bad?” Alex asked as he lifted his arm and smelled it, failing to notice anything that would prompt such a strong reaction. “It’s not—”

“Now, Alex!” Stella repeated, her tone firmer this time.

Alex became a bit self-conscious in that moment. “Fine. Let me just leave these here,” he said, removing some papers from his back pocket and putting them on the desk before turning to leave.

After making an effort for air to filter through the room, taking the smell away, Stella picked up the papers and began to examine them closely. Her frown growing each time she tried to understand something and failed.

Eric slid two sheets of paper from her hand. He handed one to Marcus and they both began to examine their contents.

On Eric’s piece, there were three types of characters used. If he had to guess, one set of characters was letters, just because of how clumped together and extensive they were, almost a paragraph long.

The second he would say were numbers, or maybe special characters like the Greek alphabet when it was used in math. Though he wasn’t sure, everything could be a special character when you didn’t know the language.

The only thing that made him think they were related to numbers and math, was how they were arranged. Some character combinations repeating themselves over and over again.

The third set of characters, he had absolutely no idea as to what they were. They were clearly written later, but that wasn’t what set them apart. No, what set them apart was how they were written.

The first two sets of characters flowed the same way English did, in a horizontal manner. He wasn’t sure if it was left to right or right to left, but the fact that none of the characters lined up from top to bottom told him all he needed to.

The same for the characters that he related to math. It just looked like long strings of numbers, though, near the end it would get vertical.

However, the third set of characters was completely different. The characters were wavy, like they all had the letter “s” somewhere within them. But the strangest part was how it was written, in a spiral pattern.

In the empty spaces of the sheet of paper, there was always one or two of these spiral notes that appeared to comment on something about the paper itself.

“Are we finally getting to the alien part of the integration?” Eric asked as he waved the paper in his hand. “Because this is pretty alien.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said with a wide smile. “What do you think this is? Schematics? A secret formula? Maybe it’s a quest that the System designed, and we have to piece it together.”

Stella smiled. “Let’s wait for Alex—” she was stopped by the opening of the door once more.

Anna walked in, her face tired and expressionless. Unlike Alex, she didn’t smell; even though she was almost as dirty as he was, she possessed no odor whatsoever. Without a word, she walked up to the desk and put a wooden box down.

She then walked around, gestured for Eric to stand up. When he did, she sat down, her body seemingly sinking into the chair. She let her head fall onto her arm, which was already resting on the desk.

Before anyone could comment on her behavior, she talked.

“I died,” she said with a voice full of fatigue, not only physical or mental, she could tell that something beyond what she could currently grasp was also exhausted.

Stella, somewhat shocked, was the first to speak. “Can you explain? You seem fine to me.”

Anna, without lifting her head, reached to her side and brought up her sword, laying it on the desk.

The others, waiting for Anna to continue speaking, instead focused on the sword, as it demanded their full attention.

Before, Anna’s sword always carried a certain luster. It wasn’t due to any physical qualities, it just was. Everyone chalked it up to it being a strange sword, or maybe it was somehow related to concepts which they didn’t understand yet.

However, the sword that was before them now no longer carried that otherworldly luster, in fact, it looked unnaturally dim, as if its light had been turned off.

That wasn’t the only thing wrong with it, it was also heavily cracked. It wasn’t as bad as when Anna first put it back together, but while most of the missing pieces had been restored, the cracks remained.

Alex entered the room, his head still wet. He quickly noticed Anna and the mood, so he waited patiently near the door. He couldn’t see the sword as clearly as the others, but even if he could, his focus would’ve still been Anna.

Their deep focus was broken by a deep and audible breath that Anna had taken. She reached for the box, made sure it was facing the others, and opened it.

“These things,” she began, pointing at the red flowers within the box, “can somehow summon a very strong monster,” she continued as she began to massage her neck, “and it broke my neck, killing me.”

Everyone, except Eric, was a bit shaken by her statement, Alex most of all.

“C-can you explain?” Alex asked, trying to control his racing mind. “How are you here, if—”

“The sword,” Anna answered, pointing at it. “It somehow ‘cut’ my death,” she added, her gaze slowly returning to normal.

"What does that even mean?" Stella asked, her gaze fixed in the sword.

"How did it 'cut' your—" Marcus began, but was cutoff.

“Or did it cut down the reason for your death?” Eric asked, as he massaged his chin.

“Does it matter?” Anna asked, lifting her gaze and facing Eric.

“Yes,” Eric said firmly, his mind invoking memories of half-baked understandings of complex topics. “If it ‘cut’ your death, then that’s that—sort of like high level healing, or necromancy, maybe even a miracle.”

He reached for the sword but didn’t touch it, his hand only hovering above it. “But if it ‘cut’ the reason for your death, then that’s more like time manipulation. If this never happened,” he gestured, “then neither did that. It’s pretty simple if you think about it—almost like erasing certain moments from history, only they were cut.”

“Why does that matter?” Stella asked as she opened a drawer on her desk and took out a drink and a snack, handing them to Anna. “Does it change the fact she died, or that her sword was capable of reversing it?”

“It doesn’t,” Eric said casually. “At least not right now, anyway. Maybe in the future. This is the type of understanding that allows for enlightenment in cultivation. Regardless, glad you’re not dead,” he added, briefly padding Anna on her shoulder and quickly turning his attention to the wooden box.

Eric reached for a flower and began to examine it.

Anna’s expression was more or less back to normal. It lacked some of its usual characteristics, but being back in a familiar environment helped her.

“The monster had this strange ability,” Anna began speaking once more. “It was like that condition where you can taste colors.”

Eric paused his examination of the flower, turning his gaze toward Anna.

"Synesthesia?" Stella asked.

"Exactly," Anna said, pointing at Stella with a small smile.

“Continue,” Eric said, his tone completely serious.

Anna was a bit taken aback, but she continued. “All of my senses were wrong. I could taste things like the color red. I could even hear dancing—not the movements made by dancing, but the image,” she paused, looking at the others. “I can't really explain it, I’m not sure—”

“I don’t think that was a monster,” Eric said, cutting her off. “I felt something like that before,” he added as he pointed at his eye.

"You don't mean..." Stella said, understanding quickly coming to her.

“We didn’t feel anything like what she described,” Alex said, recalling when the outer god took Eric’s eye.

“Neither did I,” Eric said casually. “It wasn’t until it stuck its finger in my eye that I started to feel colors and even specific types of days. It was odd, it felt gloomy…? Dark? I don’t not how to explain it, but what I felt was all related somehow.”

“Why did you never say anything?” Stella asked, anger clear in her voice.

“Didn’t really come up.” Eric said. Noticing that he was slowly turning into a target for Stella’s overprotectiveness, he quickly changed the topic. “How did these summon the monster, anyway?” he said, shaking the flower gently.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Anna said before she explained everything that had happened since she left.

Everyone’s face remained impassive, trying to take in everything she said with as much objectivity as possible so as not to miss anything.

The first to ask a question was Marcus, focusing on the goblins behavior toward the noise made by the drunk goblins and how the drunk goblins seemed like it wasn’t the first time they’d done it.

“It probably wasn’t their first time doing that. My guess is that the only difference between this time and the other times they had done it, was you,” Marcus said, pointing at Anna.

“Me?” Anna asked, pointing at herself.

“Yes. You described three torsos, three sets of hands, and three dead goblins,” Marcus said, recalling the story she told.

“And the way the other goblins acted suggests that it wasn’t the first time they had consumed the flower. The only difference is that this time I killed them,” Anna said, finishing Marcus’s train of thought.

Marcus nodded.

Anna whistled. “That somehow makes it better,” she said with a voice full of relief.

“How?!” Stella exclaimed. “Literally how does that make anything better?”

Anna just shrugged, unsure of what to say.

Stella pressed her forehead and took a deep sigh. “What about you?” she said, turning to Alex. “Where did you get these papers?”

Now it was Alex’s turn to explain what he had been up to. He skipped some parts of his journey and was vague about certain aspects, like how he descended into the canyon. In the end, he did say everything that was relevant.

He went into as much detail as he could when describing the conditions in which he found the papers, since it was clear that they were their main focus.

“Not much we can learn from that,” Stella said. "Maybe they were experiments of some sort... What about the owner? Any remains?”

Alex took a moment, trying to picture each chamber and tunnel he had been in. After a few minutes, he shook his head. “Not that I recall.”

“So, the owner could still be out there,” Stella said grimly. “That could be a problem for the future. Why would anyone create vampire insects?” She let out a sigh and after a brief pause, turned to Eric. “Now, you.”