Making their way to Shiro's room, Shiro changed into some pyjamas while stretching her body. After the whole ordeal, she was exhausted mentally. She wanted to just rest her mind with a good night's rest.
Meanwhile, Lyrica did the same but she couldn't help but occasionally glance back at Shiro.
"Hm?" Noticing Lyrica's glances, Shiro tilted her head. Was there something else she wanted to say?
"Ah nothing." Lyrica shook her head.
She couldn't admit that she was just taking glances at Shiro.
Shrugging her shoulders, Shiro sat on her bed while bringing up a few holographic projections. Now that she had reunited with Lyrica, she could relax for a short while. And during this time, she wanted to find out what's going on with the system. After all, she couldn't open it at all.
Messing around with the projection, she simulated the system interface so that she has something to work with.
Feeling bed shift, Shiro glanced to her side and noticed that Lyrica had changed into a baggy shirt and just her underwear for her pyjamas.
"If you stare so much it's embarrassing." Lyrica scratched her cheek since this was what she usually wore to sleep.
"Ah sorry. Say Lyrica, have you been able to open your system interface?" Shiro asked as she looked back at the screen.
"Hm? No I haven't. It was a bit weird since I couldn't open it anymore once I got to this world. But I've gotten used to it now. The main thing is training and remembering my main skills."
Getting into bed as well, Lyrica saw that Shiro seemed to be making a system of sorts.
"Are you trying to bring the system into this world?" She asked curiously while hesitating on how close she wanted to sit to Shiro on the bed.
"Not quite. After reaching balance between my two energies I wanted to see how the system would react to this since it should be quite the strange situation. After all, my past self told me that they never managed to gain balance between the two. But now that I've reached this state, the system being quiet is too abnormal."
Flicking her finger, circuits appeared and embedded themselves into the screen as codes appeared in Shiro's vision.
She was going to see if she could breach the codes and find out where the system was located. If she can do that, she can see the hidden logs of what is happening.
"Speaking of which, how did you even come across the gateway to the Watchman's locker?" Shiro asked curiously. She couldn't have just gotten that information by coincidence, someone must've told her.
"Oh it was Shiro. C and Juri. Juri couldn't follow me to this world but she told me that a gateway could be found on this world. While Shiro. C told me that due to the state of this world, a lot of the pathways are fragile. I figured that if Juri mentioned the gateway to the Watchers locker, and Shiro. C said it;s fragile, I would find it eventually."
Hearing this, Shiro thought to herself for a moment as she remembered who Juri was. Juri was the realm ruler of the beyond.
When they met briefly, they had an agreement. Juri would ignore whatever Lyrica did in her realm and in return, Shiro would do her best to help her in the future as long as it didn't go against what she believed in.
"I'm surprised that she would know something like this." Shiro muttered.
"Well the beyond is the connection to every realm. Think of it as something akin to the root of all things. It;s also why I managed to achieve the powers of samsara."
Nodding her head, Shiro focused back on the screen in front of her. Narrowing her eyes, she traced Error's own code back to the system. After all, the closest connection Shiro had to the system was Error himself.
'Lets see… I don't need the full information regarding the system. Just the recent activity, the reason why it can't be seen and why the administrators aren't answering at all.' Shiro thought to herself while extracting certain pieces of code.
Watching Shiro work with a serious face, Lyrica couldn't help but stare with a soft smile on her face. She loved watching Shiro with a serious look. It was the look she was most familiar with after all.
"Anything I can do to help?" Lyrica asked as Shiro thought about it for a moment before shaking her head.
"Not just yet. I will be checking your code in a bit since you're also an anomaly in this world. Somewhere along the line the system must've logged some actions within your code as well."
Browsing through the multiple lines of code, Shiro found the hint she needed.
The last known interaction with the system in this world roughly coincided with the shift in balance. When the tug of war tipped in destruction's favour, the system suffered an error and was no longer able to maintain function within this world.
'Which means the moment I woke up as the First born of Destruction, the system halted in this world. Strange…' Shiro thought with a frown.
The further she dug into the code, the more she could feel her power being drained. Her new core rumbled to life, causing her mana to surge. Finding the lines of code that she wanted, Shiro snapped her finger and projected everything around the room.
Widening her eyes, she was shocked at the sheer number of errors that could be seen.
Missing administrators, breach in censors, abnormal classes, interference of the functions and so on. Aside from the basic uses of the system, everything had suffered an error.
"What the…" Lyrica blinked her eyes. She knew something must've happened to the system but she didn't expect it to be this bad.
Shiro furrowed her brows and stood up. Flicking past the countless errors, she zoned in on the main ones that happened during the moment of this world's calamity.
"Destruction element surging… Balance cannot be maintained… Distress call to administrators failed… Zero answers… Breach of security parameters… Purging records…" Shiro muttered while skimming through all of the records that were available to her.
Looking through more of the errors, she pieced together the main issues.
First, every single administrator was now missing. There was no one to troubleshoot any of the abnormalities that would arise. No one to give orders to maintain balance.
Second, there was a third party that had somehow broken into where the administrators were. They purged most of the records and it couldn't be recovered.
Third, the third party had also halted the function of the system within the world of creation.
As for whether or not they plan to halt the function in the world of destruction, Shiro didn't know since all of the records stopped here.
Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro tried to activate the system remotely so that she could somewhat see her status. However, when the screen appeared in front of her, it was a jumbled mess of errors.
"Hmm… You mentioned that the beyond is similar to the root of everything right?" Shiro asked as Lyrica nodded.
"Then would finding a pathway to where the administrators are be possible through the use of the Beyond?"
"I'm not sure. You'll need to ask Juri about that. However, a portal hasn't opened in this world in a while and I'm not sure when the next portal will be opened." Lyrica shook her head.
Scratching her hair out of frustration, Shiro sighed and laid on the bed.
"We should make our trip here short. Tomorrow I'll fully track down where Shiro. C is, find out what's in the deadly zone and deal with it if possible. That way I can scan this world entirely for the pathway to the Watchman's Locker and help your parents.
"Oh… I also need to explain to her that I'm dating you now…" Shiro muttered after understanding what she must do after meeting Isilia again.
"Well… if it makes you feel better, mum did know about my feelings for you." Lyrica scratched her cheek, causing Shiro to raise an eyebrow.
"I mean if she knows then it might make things easier. Either way I'll think about it when we free her from the locker." Shiro shrugged.
Flicking her finger, the lights in the room started to dim and Shiro closed her eyes.
"Say Shiro…" Lyrica whispered as Shiro opened one eye.
"Mn?"
"C-can I hug you?" Lyrica asked shyly, causing Shiro to blush and meekly nod her head.
Shuffling closer to the centre of the bed, Shiro could feel Lyrica hug her from behind as her arms wrapped around her. She could feel Lyrica's heart thumping loudly out of nervousness.
Shiro didn't know why but her body suddenly felt more sensitive than ever, especially Lyrica's soft breaths on the back of her neck.
Naturally, Shiro wasn't the only one. Lyrica also felt hypersensitive at the moment as there was a million and one things going through her head. There was so much she wanted to do right now.
The temptation to let her hands wander grew with each passing second as she could feel Shiro's body heating up.
"Can I?" Lyrica asked in a low whisper.
Even in the darkness, Lyrica could see Shiro's ears going bright red.
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