Chapter 144: Read Only Access
As soon as the rotors slowed, and she could push the top hinged cockpit access open, Kalli climbed out, and then waved goodbye as she deposited a case of rations in the back seat as thanks for the ride.
The pilot would find them when he was back at the ship, and it would certainly brighten his day.
"Keep safe, and remember that there is still a quest to do hard exercise. It might be just enough to get you a better reward at the end of the trial tonight." Kalli called.
"Will do, Coordinator. Keep safe."
With that, Kalli made her way back to the office, and the pilot took off to return to his team.
In theory, there was nothing wrong with him remaining here. But the System considered them two different groups, each from nations that had their own heroes. So, if he was with the Marimgar group, the System might count him for the wrong team when the Trial ended.
Good for Kalli, but possibly not good for his own people.
It definitely counted the number of people you had, and they were up by some during this trial.
But it may also count equipment and military capabilities.
If that was the case, then losing one of their few attack helicopters would be a huge blow to their military rankings. That was a risk that the Fleet Admiral couldn’t afford to take.
While there were a few last minute purchases for Kalli to sort, nearly everyone was waiting for midnight, or the announcement of the next trial, to spend the last of the points they had saved. It was better to purchase when you knew exactly what you needed than to buy in advance and guess.
And so, a quiet evening settled over the Academy, despite the fact that nobody was sleeping except the few who were on early morning tower duty.
They had set their alarms to wake them up a few minutes before midnight.
{Congratulations on completing the second Trial. 341 heroes, 1082 Civilians from Marimgar have survived the second trial. 20 new heroes have been gained, 1 new civilian has been added.}
Kalli and everyone else stared at the notification, eagerly awaiting the System’s judgment. But only a few questioned the discrepancy.
Did someone give birth? They didn’t have any new people here, and they had more than one guest the night before, so it couldn’t be counting them.
{The Village of Marimgar has become a walled and defended fort. Military capacity has increased by 140 Percent. Food production capacity has improved by 18500 Percent. Domestic protected food production currently exceeds consumption.
External food production exceeds consumption.
Natural resource consumption within sustainable rates.
Power generation increased by 40 Percent.
Habitable structures have increased.
Quality of life has increased.}
{Calculating Second Trial Score}
Kalli carefully unwrapped her fingers as she noticed that she was nervously digging her fingernails into her own hands. The system was really dragging this out today.
{ Calculations will be completed in alphabetical order. Please hold for our next available Operator. }
Music started to play all over Marimgar, and Kalli couldn’t help but laugh as she realized that the tune was the same one that used to play in nearly every elevator in her old home world.
Now she knew for certain that the System was messing with them.
"Did we seriously just get put on hold by the System?" Yara demanded as she stormed into the hall of heroes.
"It appears so? Honestly, I think that whatever power is behind it simply enjoys making us sweat. It’s testing us, and the tests aren’t just the ability to survive the changes to the world, but how we do it and how we react."
"So, this is a stress response test?"
"Either that, or someone forgot to add multiple calculation threads to whatever program runs the system."
That thought was concerningly plausible.
The first day, the system had informed them that the messages were automated. As if they were set to activate automatically, and whoever was in charge of making decisions had gone to lunch at the critical moment, leaving everything on automatic settings.
Could that be the case now?
If the system wasn’t actually slow to process, but was waiting for user input before it spit out the final results, that would explain why it was making them wait, despite the fact that it already had clearly gathered and calculated the relevant statistics.
On the off chance that it was actually all running on default settings, some alien rogue AI that had decided helping humans was within its parameters, Kalli began to type a line of query code into the System interface using her Administrator access and the keyboard image that appeared when she thought about sending a message.
{Administrator Access verified. Read Only access granted.}
A string of numbers flew past Kalli’s eyes, and a flood of information entered her mind. This was not the first world that the System had activated on. Not even the hundredth. The mana imbalance between worlds caused them to collide somewhere in the universe with alarming frequency, and this "System" was implemented to give the residents of the lower mana worlds a fighting chance.
But there were zero other Administrator level or higher users currently logged in, and the last Administrator access was three days ago.
So, someone was monitoring it. Just not actively.
Then, she finally found the relevant data regarding the performance of Marimgar. And, the standard that they were being held to.
It was a simple checksum calculation. 100 Percent of what you were at on the first day of the trial was average for non consumables. 100 percent of consumption was considered excellent for consumable resources. Anything beyond or below that modified your outcome.
It was a shell.
The entire System was the outline of a grand plan designed to fit any target that it was implemented on, with the user’s own capabilities as the baseline, so that it didn’t have to be actively monitored, and didn’t hold users to an unreasonable standard if their starting level was too low.
And this world’s starting level was as low as it got.