The system spoke again several years after SCP-006 had been secured, contained, and guarded with layers of redundancy so absurd that even gods would hesitate to breach it. By then, the Foundation was no longer fragile. It was no longer experimental. It had weight. Momentum. Infrastructure.
And rewards.
[FOUNDATION MILESTONE ACHIEVED][SYSTEM SHOP UNLOCKED]
I stared at the notification longer than I expected. The system had always been transactional, cold, objective. You build. You secure. You survive. But this—this felt almost… congratulatory.
We had earned it.
The Foundation had grown far beyond a single hidden site or a handful of loyal operatives. We now had multiple facilities across continents, buried beneath mountains, oceans, and cities that would never know what slept below them. Each new base meant more personnel. Each secured anomaly meant more leverage against the unknown. Every successful cover-up, every neutralized threat, every anomalous object locked behind steel and sigils fed something unseen.
System Points.
At first, they came slowly. A handful every few months. But as recruitment accelerated, as Julius expanded security forces and Qin Shi Huang optimized logistics, the trickle became a steady flow. Every few weeks now, the system updated my balance.
[SYSTEM POINTS: ACCRUING]
And now, for the first time, I could spend them.
I opened the system store cautiously, half-expecting something dangerous, corrupting, or outright malicious. Instead, what I saw was… expansive. Terrifyingly so.
Talents from other worlds.Anomalous abilities.Artifacts that bent reality in small, precise ways.Enhancements that redefined what "human" even meant.
Every option came with a cost. Not just points, but implications.
I didn't consult the council. Not for this. Some decisions belonged solely to the Administrator. If I was going to lead the Foundation into deeper waters, I needed to be more than a strategist or a ruler. I needed to be something that could keep up with the accelerating complexity of the world.
So I made my first purchases.
The first talent glowed softly as I selected it.
[TALENT ACQUIRED — CURSED BY KNOWLEDGE]
The name alone gave me pause. Cursed. Not blessed. Not enhanced. Cursed.
The moment the acquisition finalized, I understood why.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't madness. It was… expansion.
Information stopped being something I struggled to grasp and became something that fell into place. Concepts that once required effort now aligned instinctively. Physics, magic theory, biology, engineering, anomalous mechanics—everything interconnected. I could see patterns where none had existed before. Problems unfolded into solutions before I consciously thought to solve them.
It was intoxicating.
And horrifying.
Because I also realized something else: there would never again be ignorance as a refuge. Once something entered my awareness, I would understand it. Whether I wanted to or not. Every anomaly, every ethical dilemma, every catastrophic possibility—I would see them clearly.
The curse wasn't knowledge itself.
The curse was knowing too much to ever look away.
I steadied myself as the flow stabilized. My mind felt sharper, faster, frighteningly efficient. I could already sense how this would reshape the Foundation. Research would accelerate. Containment protocols would become more elegant, more airtight. Our understanding of anomalies would leap forward by decades.
And then I made my second purchase.
[SUPERNATURAL ABILITY ACQUIRED — SUSTAINMENT NULLIFICATION]
The confirmation barely finished before the effects took hold.
Hunger vanished first. Not dulled—gone. The constant background demand of the body simply… shut off. Then fatigue followed, both physical and mental. No heaviness behind the eyes. No slowing of thought. No weariness creeping in after hours of work.
I tested it immediately.
Hours passed. Then more. I reviewed containment reports, cross-referenced anomaly behavior, rewrote security protocols, held silent meetings with Darius through encrypted channels, and planned expansions with Julius.
Nothing slowed me down.
I didn't need sleep. I didn't need food. I didn't tire.
For the first time since arriving in this world, time stopped being an enemy.
That realization hit harder than either upgrade.
Leaders fall to exhaustion. Empires collapse because those at the top grow weary, complacent, slow. But I would remain sharp. Always present. Always watching.
I informed the council selectively. Cleopatra raised concerns about optics and morale. Joan warned me quietly about the dangers of distancing myself too far from humanity. Julius, as expected, only grinned and said, "Good. Means you'll outlast all of us."
He wasn't wrong.
SCP-006 had already removed the fear of aging. The system had now removed the fear of limitation.
But I wasn't naïve. Power always demanded balance.
I ordered restrictions placed on the system shop. Only the Administrator could make purchases for now. No impulsive enhancements. No arms race within our own ranks. If the Foundation was to wield these tools, it would do so carefully.
Because as my mind expanded, so too did my awareness of what lay ahead.
More SCPs would appear. Stronger ones. Smarter ones. Entities that would test the limits of containment, diplomacy, and force. The world wasn't static—it was escalating.
And now, so were we.
I stood alone in the observation chamber that overlooked SCP-006's containment pool, watching the water shimmer with impossible vitality. Immortality. Knowledge. Endurance.
Not as gifts.
As tools.
"We secure. We contain. We protect," I whispered, more to myself than anything else.
And with the system at my back and the Foundation at my command, I knew one thing with absolute clarity:
The anomalies would no longer define the future.
We would.