Building a magic system on threat of destruction

"Where are they?" Jack asked the butterfly frantically.

[I don't know] the butterfly typed out. [I made more like you wanted, then they flew away. Did I mess up?]

The little blue bug seemed to deflate, somehow looking sad and pathetic despite consisting of only blue squares. Jack felt guilty for some reason, and he couldn't bring himself to get too upset. "...No, it's fine. Well, not fine, but we can deal with this. If they flew off then someone probably saw some of them. I can ask around after I get back, how many did you make?"

[One hundred.]

Jack felt like a major headache was coming. Plexion simply started laughing, rolling off Jack's desk and onto the ground with the force of it. One hundred system bugs, loose in the world. What was worse, was that Jack didn't know what they would do. The best-case scenario was that they would just live on screens and not cause any problems. Worst case scenario...he didn't know. They would probably be indestructible, but it wasn't like they had any needs or wants. He would need to find them to be sure, but maybe they wouldn't cause any issues.

Jack was getting annoyed. Every time he came back to the white void, he felt like there were problems he had to solve on Drowl. Every time he was on Drowl, he needed to come back to the white void. At least he had Plexion to help him out now, he didn't have any way to contact people on Drowl from here. Or did he?

Jack shuffled through the assembled status screens, there were hundreds of them now and Jack decided he would need more system-made filing cabinets. After a few minutes, he found Jeler's screen. He typed out a message on the screen below the stats. [This is Jack. I need you to try and find out if anyone has seen blue butterflies around. They look like they are made of status screens. Try and catch any that you can find.]

It wasn't a foolproof plan. Jeler might not open his status screen anytime soon, but Jack didn't want to leave messages on too many screens. After debating it for a minute, he decided to leave the message on Riniox's, Reph's, Glimm's, and Dirge's screens as well. He would have to delete them later, once he could check on them and confirm they had seen the message. That was all that Jack could do for the time being.

He turned back to the butterfly. "Don't make any more, please. Were any other bugs making more?"

[I don't think so. I'll go make sure though.] With those parting words, the butterfly floated to a nearby screen and disappeared.

Trusting that the butterfly would spread the word, Jack turned his attention back to Plexion who was still laughing softly on the floor. "Okay, hopefully, we can get that sorted out. For now, I have a question for you."

Plexion didn't get up off the floor, but he got his laughter under control and looked at Jack. "Go for it."

"Do you know what a ducol is?"

Plexion thought for a moment and then sat up. "The word is familiar...but I can't remember, why?"

Jack went over to his list of screens and dug through them until he found the one he was looking for. The name looked like a system error, just a smattering of letters that came together to make 'sotdgwnilttb'. The last time he had looked at this had been early on in the creation of the system, there was all sorts of new information available to him. But the information Jack saw was...confusing at best.

The stats were all over the place. [Power] and [Toughness] were both at zero. [Influence] and [Empathy] were both around 15. [Fortitude] jumped up to 25. [Intelligence] and [Wisdom] both sat at 33. But [Technique] was the clear front-runner at 39! How was it even possible to have a power and toughness of zero? It would mean you were too weak to move anything, as well as being so defenseless that you would probably be hurt by a strong breeze. Even with those though, Jack was amazed at the higher end of the stats. Three stats in the thirties was nothing to sneeze at, even the 25 was incredibly impressive.

But how was it possible for [Fortitude] to be so high when [Toughness] was nonexistent? Was this ducol some kind of spirit? If it didn't have a physical body then that would explain the lack of physical ability. [Fortitude] was more about resistance against ill effects and magical influence, Jack supposed that someone didn't need a body to have a high stat there.

But the strangeness didn't end there. Looking at the name and race section, the gender, age, height, and weight had been filled in. This ducol was male, and was apparently almost one thousand feet tall and weighed over two million pounds! The age was listed as thousands of years old as well! Jack's brain stopped working for a moment, then he looked again. As he stared at the insanely huge numbers that made up the height and weight, both of them changed. They didn't change drastically, simply moving up in synch with each other a few feet and a few pounds. He watched, his attention laser-focused, and the numbers dropped down a bit.

Jack's mind was reeling. How could something like this even exist? And how could no one know about it? This thing was absolutely massive! It was the size of a skyscraper, and nobody had ever even heard of it?

He showed the screen to Plexion, and the Demon's eyes bugged out of his head. "Wha-? Who? Where?" Plexion sputtered in amazement. "That's insane! I've never heard of anything like this. You've got to let me see it!" He reached out his hands to grab the screen, but Jack pulled it away from him. Plexion frowned at him, "Hey!"

"Plexion, this thing has a skill called [Deity Resistance]. I have no idea what it is, or how it got a skill like that, but I'm worried that messing with it will spell trouble for us. Worst case scenario, this thing is some ancient monster that can fight gods, and if it notices us checking it out it might try to come kill us."

Plexion scoffed at Jack. "Nah. I've been examining the butterfly's connection to the system and it's pretty airtight. Especially if this guy hasn't been granted a status yet, this is nothing more than a tentative, one-way connection made by the High Deity right now. Using the system to observe it shouldn't provoke any kind of reaction. Besides, even if it is some giant monster of legend, the High Deity can just blow it up from the sun, [Deity Resistance] be darned."

That was true enough. Even Jack didn't feel like the [Deity Resistance] skill was strong enough to survive the god's wrath. although, if he could somehow level up the skill...well it would have to wait. "Okay Plexion, check it out for me."

The demon rubbed his hands together eagerly, then placed his hand on the status screen. Jack watched carefully for any signs of panic from his dead partner, but Plexion's face simply morphed into one of confusion. "There's...nothing here?" He said, sounding unsure. "I'm in the sky. I think I'm floating over the plains of death?"

Jack made a mental note to ask what the plains of death were later. "There's nothing there? Like a giant bird or something?"

Plexion shook his head. "It's windy I assume, but I don't see anything flapping or gliding. I am close to a cloud, maybe it's behind that? But I should be able to see any kind of disturbance it would be making."

Something about Plexion's words stuck in Jack's mind. He looked at the screen again and then froze. "...Plexion?"

"Yeah?"

"How big is the cloud you're next to?"

Plexion seemed to be looking around, though Jack could only see him sitting on the floor of the white void. "It's pretty huge. I can't see through it obviously, but it's casting a huge shadow. Why?"

"I think," Jack began, "that the cloud, is the ducol."

Plexion froze in place. "What?"

Jack was growing excited "It makes sense! clouds are huge, and apparently, they weigh crazy amounts because they're made of water. It basically doesn't have a physical body though, which would explain the lack of [Power] and [Toughness] stats. Even more than that, the names of races."

"What about them?"

"They're all so dumb! Like, incredibly unoriginal. Animal people are called animalus, Dragon people are called Draconids, it's like whoever made them just named them the first thing that came to mind. Ducol is just cloud with the letters mixed up, that has to be it!" Jack was convinced, this cloud had to be the owner of the screen they were examining.

Plexion took his hand off of the screen, looking solely at Jack. "But how is a cloud even alive? Why does it have a name and skills?"

Jack shook his head. "I don't know. I guess Deis probably created him."

The two of them sat there for a long moment, thinking about the discovery they had made. Then Plexion spoke. "Can we use this somehow? Talk to him maybe?"

Jack shrugged. "He has an [Intelligence] stat, [Influence] and [Empathy] too. it should be possible to communicate with him." Jack scrolled through the ducol's skill list and found several speaking-related and hearing-related skills, showing that it was possible to communicate.

Plexion touched his chin thoughtfully. "Well assuming he ever drifts close enough to where you're staying, how are you even going to get high enough to talk to him?"

Jack grinned. "Well, it just so happens that I've got a friend who can fly me up with his fancy new system skill." Jeler was going to love this.