Eisen stepped out onto the upper deck of the ship. It was being steered without issues by the automated crew that he had made, so he could just relax here for a while and look out at the ocean. The salty air was a wonderful thing to him. It made him feel comfortable and nostalgic.
Though of course, not nostalgic in the same way that he did when he recovered some of the former Eisen's memories; just regular, simple nostalgia that anyone could feel.
During his younger years on earth, Benjamin Joyce was a traveler like few others. It was hard to travel as much as he did back then, especially since he was earning his keep wherever he stayed only once he actually got to his next destination. Compared to then, his life now was far too different. He didn't have to worry about money anymore, and in most ways, his life was stable.
His children lived their own lives, and he could spend his time doing whatever he wanted to. He had good friends in the small town he lived in, and there was no lack of things to do in his area. But on the other hand, his life had become complex and terrifying to an incomprehensible degree. It was to the point that it was easy for Eisen to doubt if he was just stuck in a horrible dream.
More than once did he hope that was the case. That something had gone wrong with the capsule the first time he sat down in it. Some power outage, lightning strike, or just him falling unconscious because it was too much for his old mind and body to take. And then, he just had to wake up.
Talk to Tony about the things he was going through, and spend time with his grandkids while he still could. More than anything, he regretted accepting Samuel's offer to play the game early after all. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be in the situation he was in right now.
He wouldn't have to deal with the weight of a whole world being forced onto his shoulders day after day, and he wouldn't have to learn and control these supernatural powers he had suddenly attained. Now that the system's influence on him was slowly waning, Eisen more and more felt like he had truly and irreversibly changed.
Until now, he was keeping up a certain hope, that it was truly just the system that had given him these abilities. And if it could give them to him, then it could also take them away, right?
But now, he was slowly losing that hope. As the system weakened within Eisen, he could feel his skills and abilities more intensely than before, as though he was slowly waking up from being too drowsy in the morning. Eisen held forward his arms, watching as his right hand slowly grew larger than his left, as he used his innate giant ability to change his size on his own, without assistance.
It gave him a lot more freedom in what he was actually doing and how the ability presented itself. And then, Eisen looked down at the small item on his lap, a simple wooden figurine that he hadn't even put particular effort into.
---
But that wasn't all, it also gave him new perspectives; things were being revealed to him that he hadn't consciously realized before. And Eisen really didn't know how this was possible, until it occured to him.
The power that the system was accessing and guiding within Eisen was the power created by the accumulated experience he held. Not just the experiences that he created for himself every minute of every day, but also the 'substance', that tangible force of experience that was used to create the artificials.
It gathered deep inside of him, making up a mass of knowledge and expertise that seemed to practically take on a life on its own, growing and becoming more of what it was before.
That which was accessed by the system was really just the accumulated knowledge and experience of the individual. A skill in this world was an ability that someone simply already held in the first place. Blacksmithing? Woodworking? Tailoring? Those weren't things that the system gave to him; he had learned these things on his own long ago.
But the system simply guided the growth in experience, maybe even syphoning some of it, then creating curated abilities at every rank-up with that syphoned experience. Even his racial skills and the abilities that came with them weren't things given by the system; they were abilities that were quite literally in his blood. In his body.
The system was simply revealing them more clearly, and allowing one to more easily and safely use them. For people that grew up in this world, that probably wouldn't be necessary, but for 'players' that would come into a whole new world while experiencing things they maybe never had before, they were going to need that assistance
More and more, Eisen became aware of what this world was; it was a world of growth and change. A place where basically everything was possible. And he really just wasn't sure if the system was a symbiote that supported this process for the good of all, or a parasyte that took advantage of it for the sake of the players.
Eisen let out a sigh, staring at the horizon. No matter what he did, he could things changing inside of him. For all he knew, even just breathing might strengthen that 'non-skill', which let Eisen resist the system itself. Maybe that was why it felt so different when he ended up using abilities on earth, beside the fact that his body just couldn't handle the side-effects.
There was no system to guide him along. Maybe it wasn't that they were slowly getting their abilities on earth, maybe they just had them all along, and now they were slowly getting used to using them on earth as well, fully without the system's assistance. Whichever it was, Eisen knew that he couldn't just sit here and reflect on what happened. He had to try and figure out why it happened.
There had to be a reason why this was happening to Eisen, and why something outwardly interfered with the system to give him the ability to resist that system's influence.
Why were they doing this to Eisen, and who was it in the first place?