The Ten Thousand Deaths : 1000x Exp System

Three days after the suppression field came down Nara leveled up.

Not from combat. Not from dungeon runs or passive Soul Harvest or any of the methods Kael had used to accumulate experience across sixty levels and eight weeks.

She leveled up from walking through the Ashrow.

He was with her when it happened — her first real time outside the Hall of Ascension’s sublevels in twenty-two years, moving through the district at midmorning with the careful attention of someone relearning what outside meant. The Domain around them, the System architecture clean, the Ashrow doing its ordinary things.

She stopped at the street corner near the well.

He watched her face.

She was doing something — not visibly, the between-walkers’ work happened in the architecture rather than in the air. But the Class was active, the Framework Memory ability emerging from twenty-two years of suppressed development and reaching toward the System nodes in the buildings around them.

Reading.

[NARA — FRAMEWORK MEMORY — ACTIVATING] [READING SYSTEM NODE — CORNER WELL — ASHROW] [HISTORICAL RECORD — ACCESSING] [NOTE: THIS NODE HAS BEEN ACTIVE FOR 200 YEARS] [NOTE: EVERY PERSON WHO PASSED THROUGH ITS ARCHITECTURE RANGE LEFT A RECORD] [NOTE: SHE CAN READ ALL OF THEM]

She went very still.

"How many," he said quietly.

"Everyone," she said. Her voice carrying the specific quality of someone receiving more information than they anticipated. "Everyone who ever stood near this well. Two hundred years of System records. Every display that passed through this node’s range." She paused. "Most of them are just — numbers. Level readings. Class designations. Ordinary lives moving through ordinary space." Another pause. "But some of them — "

She stopped.

"What," he said.

"Some of them have gaps," she said. "The record runs normally and then there’s a gap — a period where the display stops updating. Then it resumes at a different Level." She looked at the well. "The gaps are where the suppression was." A pause. "I can see them. Every person who walked past this well while under some form of System suppression. The gap in their record where the Church was deciding what they were worth."

Kael thought about what that meant.

"How far back," he said.

"Two hundred years," she said. "As far as the node runs." She looked at him. "This is one node. In the Ashrow. Two hundred years of records." A pause. "The entire System architecture is connected. Every node in every city in the kingdom has the same record depth."

Every node.

Every city.

Two hundred years.

"The retroactive review is looking at fifty years of Church documentation," he said slowly.

"The Framework Memory reads two hundred years of System records," she said. "Including the people the Church’s documentation never recorded at all. The ones who were suppressed and released and never filed. The ones who were named wrong and never knew it." She looked at the well. "They’re in the nodes. The System kept them even when the Church didn’t."

[LEVEL UP — NARA — LEVEL 54] [NOTE: EXPERIENCE SOURCE — FRAMEWORK MEMORY ACCESS] [NOTE: READING HISTORICAL RECORDS GENERATES EXPERIENCE] [NOTE: AT CURRENT NODE DENSITY — SIGNIFICANT]

Experience from reading System records.

The ability generated experience simply by accessing historical data — the System crediting the Framework Memory’s work the way it credited Soul Harvest’s work. Every node read, every record accessed, every suppressed advancement gap documented.

A Death’s Chosen whose Class earned experience by giving names back.

"Nara," he said.

She was still looking at the well.

"How many gaps," he said. "In this one node. Two hundred years."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Forty-three," she said. "In just this node." She looked at him. "Forty-three people who walked past this well while under some form of System suppression. In the Ashrow alone." A pause that carried the weight of arithmetic applied to a kingdom. "How many nodes are in the Ashrow?"

He thought about it.

"Every building with System architecture. Every street corner. Every market stall." He paused. "Hundreds."

"Hundreds of nodes," she said. "Forty-three gaps per node average." She looked at the Domain. "And the Ashrow is one district of one city of — how many cities in the kingdom?"

He looked at her.

She looked at him.

"The retroactive review," she said quietly. "Fifty years. Hael’s documentation. How many cases?"

"At year thirty-one — over three thousand documented," he said.

"The Framework Memory," she said. "Two hundred years. Kingdom-wide." She looked at the well. "The actual number is — much larger than three thousand."

The Ashrow moved around them — its ordinary midmorning rhythms, the same sounds and smells that had been the backdrop of Kael’s entire life before the Awakening. The Domain’s clean System architecture running through every street.

And in every node of that architecture — two hundred years of records. Thousands of gaps. Hundreds of thousands of people whose suppressions had been documented by the System even when the Church decided they didn’t need to be documented by humans.

All of it waiting to be read.

"I need to understand my range first," Nara said. "The Framework Memory — I accessed this node from three meters. I don’t know how far I can reach." She paused. "I need to test it."

"Carefully," he said.

"Yes." She looked at him. "The experience gain — it could accelerate my advancement significantly. If every node I read generates experience — "

"Don’t rush it," he said. "Your Class just came out of twenty-two years of suppression. Let it stabilize."

She looked at him with the between-blue eyes.

"You leveled from 1 to 60 in eight weeks," she said.

"My circumstances were — "

"Specific," she said. "Yes. So are mine." She looked at the well. "Twenty-two years of accumulated development waiting to express. An ability that generates experience by doing the work it was always meant to do." She paused. "I’m not going to rush. But I’m also not going to pretend the math isn’t what it is."

He looked at her.

At the Death’s Chosen who had spent twenty-two years in a suppression cell keeping everyone’s names and had emerged with an ability that gave names back and generated experience for doing it.

The seed finding its soil.

"Tell me when you know your range," he said.

"Tonight," she said.

She kept walking through the Ashrow, Framework Memory reaching toward every node she passed, the Level counter advancing with each one.

He walked beside her and let the Domain run and thought about the actual number.

Not three thousand.

Not fifty years.

Two hundred years of System records. Every node in every city.

The work ahead.

[NARA — LEVEL 54 → APPROACHING 55] [FRAMEWORK MEMORY — RANGE CALIBRATING] [NODES ACCESSED: 7] [HISTORICAL GAPS DOCUMENTED: 289] [EXP GENERATED: 289,000] [NOTE: SEVEN NODES.] [NOTE: 289 GAPS.] [NOTE: THE ASHROW HAS APPROXIMATELY 400 NODES.] [NOTE: THE KINGDOM HAS APPROXIMATELY 2.4 MILLION NODES.] [NOTE: THE SYSTEM KEPT EVERYONE.] [NOTE: SHE IS GOING TO FIND THEM ALL.]

He read the last line.

She is going to find them all.

He looked at the Domain.

At the five kilometers of clean honest System architecture.

At Nara moving through it with Framework Memory open, reading two hundred years of the System’s honest record, giving back the names the Church had tried to take.

The work continues.