Chapter 2 - System Online

Thomas was surprised at how little pain he felt after being shot. It felt like being stung by a bee at first and the feeling of his blood leaking out was uncomfortable. There was some pain for a short while but it ended almost as quickly as it started. After the pain went away he could feel a cold seeping into his bones. Everything became numb and soon he stopped feeling even that.

<...tem...a...ty...per...lee...>

An odd voice boomed inside of his consciousness and woke Thomas up. All around him was darkness and he couldn't see who was speaking to him. For a while he felt like he might have imagined the voice.

System update? This kind of mechanical voice didn't seem to belong to any of the AI programs he could think of. Which of them weren't feminine? Al*xa, S*ri, and Co*tana even had feminine names. His own phone had a female assistant as well even though he couldn't remember it having any name.

Thomas couldn't get used to this mechanical voice. It was uncomfortable to hear and he wished that whoever designed it decided to give it a more human-like voice.

Being used to an adult female's voice giving him updates on his phone, Thomas naturally picked the adult female option.

The current voice didn't seem to have much of a personality but Thomas didn't care about that. After all, it's not like he'd be having conversations with this AI in the future. Thomas felt that it was a bit creepy though since the voice seemed to be directly in his brain and could read his thoughts. Just what was this voice and what did it plan on doing to him?

{What is this system update?} Thomas had been hearing this AI go on about a system update since waking up. Naturally he'd want to know what it was talking about.

{What do you mean host world? And what kind of error are you talking about? What makes an error a fatal error?}

{There's a lot I want to comment on but for now I'll ask what an abandoned world is.}

{I see. So a lower world would be a world with a small amount of magic in it, then?}

{Can you explain why the gunpowder exploding was fatal in all cases? In the other world if gunpowder exploded in someone's hand it'd often result in only losing a limb. As long as the person received first aid there should at least be a chance of them surviving.}

{Why didn't you update their systems after noticing the problem?}

{If I'm only a user then what's above a user?}