Eli was in a vast empty, a nothingness that caused him to get a little dizzy since he was floating but he didn't have a reference point to orient himself from. He could see his own body as if there was light all around him, but his hands didn't cast a shadow on his body. As he looked more closely he was creating the light, it was coming through his skin and shining enough that he could see himself in the otherwise perfect darkness. Then the system windows started coming in, but these were different in a way that he couldn't place.
"You have been placed in a forced dream state, this allows for more direct interaction with the system. Your soul has had the essence of a treasure animal enter it, this will cause problems with the system interacting with you and reliably measuring your strength for contests and rankings. As well as make parts of the system inaccessible. The system would like to purge this from your soul allowing the return of full functionality."
"Calculating probable needs of Elias Konzak"
"System automated administrator is willing to answer 3 questions without restriction in payment for the return of the treasure animal essence. Payment is provided since one's soul cannot be accessed or altered without subconscious permission."
"Before that," Said Eli, "is the thing you want inside me beneficial to me in any way?" The system responded in another window.
"The essence could merge with you enough over time to mark you as a treasure being of the system, thus preventing monsters from attacking you but making you the biggest treasure on your planet to other humans."
"And if I agree to give this back to you," Eli spoke softly with suspicion. "Then I get 3 questions answered. How would I tell if the answers were lies?" He thought that if this was as important as it felt, it could be some kind of trick. I mean, anyone could get poked by these antlers and end up like this. This felt more like patching a game bug then this being something the system would legitimately pay him for. Another system window came up, but again it was different, it showed Eli frozen in place while the building he had been standing in and the people around him all dissolved into magic and the landscape was reforming.
"This is the moment the system started," said Eli. " What does this have to do with being able to trust you?"
The scene continued with Eli starting to dissolve like the others and his own internal magic fighting back against it. He could feel with his magic senses into the window and he could feel the system trying and failing to force him into a tutorial with the others. Then several rune-like symbols appeared above his head in the window and a light manifested around him, like it was a person curious about him. This went on for several minutes when the changing runes stopped and lined up over his head and the moving glow in the window stopped and while watching Eli could feel its anxiety, not fear, but like when you see something that you don't expect to be there.
Eli was something that the system wasn't expecting, or maybe even has ever seen before and it didn't really know what to do with him. While watching Eli saw the landscape stop shifting and just go to a forest, the one he woke up in, Eli could see from the way it had been distorting that the topography was supposed to change but instead it was just shifted into forest while leaving the hills, creeks, etc, alone. The runes started to float towards the shapeless glow and lined up in a line like a sentence. The video playback froze again and the window closed. Another window came up with the same runes as before but now there was a translation below them.
"Order node, Chaos node, Light node, Dark node, Heart node"
All the nodes were green except the heart node part at the end which was red and had a line through it and Eli had no idea what this meant. He thought about it, not speaking since he knew he was at an information disadvantage, maybe he had a strange combination of nodes, like having opposites or something as well as having no heart node, that was his best guess. He was going to have to ask a question in order to get any answers he wanted. It was clever of the system to show him something that would only lead to more questions that only it could give him. The system didn't give him a reason to trust it, it gave him no option but to play along, it was just too much to pass up on.
"I will agree to your deal on the condition that I get at least one question answered before you remove the essence from my soul." Eli said with as much fake confidence as he could muster. A few seconds went by but the system window came with its answer.
"Acceptable"
Eli knew he was going to have to nest layers of questions inside one question to get the answers he needed because he felt like he wasn't using the system or magic correctly at all. He needed answers on how to gain strength and how it all worked before the tutorial ended and this was his chance. He started scratching his chin in thought trying to rig the question so that the answer will have inferences to his other questions. He had played this game before in South America when getting a terrible government to focus on one thing and not the thing he was doing. He would use small statements that give the other person as little information as possible and an impression of information, then they come up with an idea that you planted and they think it is their own. He needed to do that in reverse, come up with the information using guesses and have multiple things answered with a short simple answer. He wasn't sure how much the system was going to hold back but he knew this was worth a shot.
"What does having opposing nodes, like light and dark, and having no heart node mean for my potential personal strength?" Eli said out loud trying to be as clear and certain about his words as he could manage. Several seconds passed until the system answered.
"Beings with opposing nodes are roughly 21% stronger than those without, other things being equal. It is rare and the survival rate for awakening the nodes is under 25% which would reduce your potential by lowering your survival probability. Having no heart node has only ever happened once to any being in memory thus a prediction for potential is not possible."
Eli had a huge smile on his face, he was hoping that including the word 'potential' would force the answer to be longer and have more information since it involved the future and predictions were always more complicated than a few words could answer accurately. He was off to a good start, but now he had to have the system backdoor his soul and there was no telling what this was going to entail. He committed the window to memory and braced himself for what was coming.
"Ok im ready, remove the thing so I can get my other 2 questions," Eli said while trying unsuccessfully to not winch and tense his butt. He felt something like the mental hand he used to manage his inventory but on a power scale so vast and beyond his reasoning he almost passed out just from sensing it. Then all at once it was over and he no longer felt like his magic was going to bust out of him, he let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding and felt his shoulders relax a little sore from being tense for so long.
"Removal complete, ask your last 2 questions."
"What is the most efficient way to unlock the 10 nodes?" Eli said before covering his mouth with his hands. He was so relieved from the thing being removed from him that he wasn't thinking and just asked something he knew he wanted to know. The system answered much faster this time.
"The common practice in system populations is to unlock one node a month starting when the being's body can accept the system. This is to allow the body to get adjusted to the magic of each node's affinity. Treasures can be used to break a node open but they often come with longer times before the next node can be opened due to the treasure forcing it open. The common wisdom is to force your internal magic into a node until it breaks open."
Eli read the window twice, shocked at how much information he just received and already had a great third question to ask that should give him another big juicy chuck of information.
"For my last question, what are the practical implications for not having a heart node in combat situations?" Eli asked with utter confidence believing he had now made out like a bandit in this exchange with the system. The answer came fast again but it was not what Eli wanted to see.
"Unknown."
"What? We had a deal!" Eli shouted while pointing at nothing in particular.
"Response to question is unknown, only one being in memory has ever not been born with a heart node."
"Ok, so what happened to that person or being or whatever?" Eli said in frustration.
"They traded their life to create the system."
Eli did not move or speak or even breathe as what he just read from the system almost caused him to go into a panic. This was a lot to unpack and he could feel himself starting to wake up, it seems that while his brain was trying to catch up, the system had had enough of him and was sending him back. He tried to open his mouth to say something but no sounds came out. Then he woke up still holding the antler, which slowly turned to dust and blew away in the breeze, making the whole experience start to feel more surreal like a dream. He sat up and scratched his chin in thought trying to put the pieces together, but there were just still so many gaps in his knowledge that he couldn't really come up with anything more than some basic theories. What he did know was a path to power working on his nodes as much as he could while killing monsters to level and hopefully find some more items, like pants.