Chapter 156 – Hints and clues to guide a fool

Inside the house that Noah built within his mind realm, a strange quiet sound was coming from the living room.

Plush Bear sat in his usual armchair with a strange expression on his face. As he quickly pushed the buttons on the strange hand control his face was that of deep concentration but the tongue sticking out of his mouth, loling to the side made him seem totally unbothered.

On the big screen where usually the real world would be shown, a picture of cartoonish animals driving some kind of small vehicles was playing. In the middle of the lower part of the screen was a vehicle that was occupied by an orange fox-like animal that walked on its back legs and wore pants. And from the looks of it that fox stirred to the direction that Ugy made him drive to by pressing buttons on the control.

"Ugy! How's it going!" A loud voice came right after the plush bear got startled by the front door slamming against the wall.

"Did you find him?" Said Yuko barging into the living room a few seconds later, finding Ugy with a face full of concentration reading through the codes on the screen.

"Not yet." Said Ugy with a grave voice. "This is a really troublesome situation. Don't bother me for now. I need to concentrate."

"You have to hurry and find him, Ugy. I can't watch Bri being so distressed."

"I get it. Now go away and don't disturb." Said Ugy.

"You'd better give me some results soon or I'll rip your asshole." Said Yuko.

"I don't have an asshole." Said Ugy unperturbed.

"You will have it if you don't hurry." Said Yuko.

"I will ban you from reading CS. Those guys influence you in the worst way." Said Ugy without even lifting his eyes to look at her.

"Tsk…" Voiced Yuko in annoyance before walking out with her spider feet stomping on the ground.

Once Ugy heard the door slam shut. He pressed some buttons on control and the picture changed from the screen full of code back to the cartoonish animals racing game.

*****

"Alice, If you are here, then this is…"

"Your new wonderland adventure, although I don't know what you are looking for this time. So I can't help." Said Alice apologetically.

"Looking for? I wasn't looking for anything." Said Noah.

"This is a problem then." Said Alice her face going grim after hearing him. "If you don't know what you are looking for you won't be able to return, Mr.SmartySmarty. You should not go adventuring without knowing the aim."

"Okay. If you are here, you are looking for something too, right? I'll help you look for it." Said Noah, shrugging his shoulders.

"Everyone looks for their own thing, Mr.SmartySmarty." Said Alice shaking her head.

"Can't I just decide what to look for right now? How about this? I am looking for a way back to my body!" Said Noah aloud.

"This is not going to work. You do not understand it Mr.Smarty-Smarty. You being here means you are already looking for it and you are already at the end of this path. You can't just change what you are looking for at the end. You can't change the path when you have already reached the finish. You are too far away from any other path." Said Alice shaking her head from side to side with frustration in her voice.

"There is no path here, Alice. Only endless grass." Said Noah

"What?!" Asked Alice surprised from hearing his words.

"What? I said there is only grass." Said Noah.

"Look around and tell me what you see?" Said Alice with an unusual seriousness on her face.

"Umm…field. Grass field full of… grass." Said Noah spreading his hands with a confused face as he looked around.

"Anything else?" Asked Alice, her face going even darker.

"No. Just fields and lots of grass. Why? What about it?"

"I am standing in the middle of a library full of people that are here to take a test." Said Alice, making Noah's face change to even deeper confusion. "You should have been here among them."

"I don't get it. Is this some kind of joke? Another metaphor?" Asked Noah.

"I am afraid not, Mr.SmartySmarty. It looks like I can see you because you were coming here, but you did not end up here with everyone. Instead, you are somewhere else." Said Alice totally flabbergasting Noah with this answer that made no sense to him.

"I still don't get it. Where are you and where am I?" Asked Noah in confusion.

"Tell me, did you follow the guide's tips carefully? Did you wander off somewhere opposing the road that guide stirred you on to?" Asked Alice.

"What guide?" Asked Noah.

Alice's eyes went wide from hearing this.

"Tips! Did you ever receive some tips?" She asked with fright in her voice.

"Oh, you mean my new skill? Roleplay?"

"What is this skill? Explain!" Said Alice with an urgent tone.

"Well, there is this skill that my system just made. It helped me in a difficult situation just now." Said Noah

"What does it do?" Asked Alice with a grim expression on her face.

"It had a strange function." Said Noah. "Hard to explain. It gave me several choices to choose from as if offering tips on how to conduct myself. Like who's appearance to take out of several choices. Or like when I needed to say something it gave me several choices of answers. Some of them were what I thought of answering, some were completely revealing ideas that I would not come up with myself. I feel like it gave me another choice besides the one I came up with as if showing me different paths I could take. And it related to everything, even actions I could take. It offered some choices like: slap her face to wake her up, or touch her cheek gently with a finger or stick a finger in her…well you get the gist, right?"

"What have you done?!" Exclaimed Alice with anger.

"What?" Said Noah lifting his hands palm up as if in surrender. "I didn't do anything strange that those guys offered, I swear." He added.

"For a SmartySmarty you do a lot of stupid things." Said Alice shaking her head with frustration again.

"Yeah… Being smarty somehow doesn't go well for me most of the time. But can you elaborate? What exactly did I do wrong here?" Said Noah with a sigh.

"There are no skills with such function in the world. I never heard of something so preposterous Mr.SmartySmarty. This world is not a game, there is no way it would give you such skill. Where did you get it?" Asked Alice in a fully mature way. For the first time ever since they got acquainted, she seemed to drop the small girl act.

"Umm… The usual. My system made it….Ugy! That son of a b…baboon. It's his fault I am here, isn't it?" Said Noah, barely holding from swearing in front of Alice.

"Made? He makes skills, not open skills?" Asked Alice with her face serious as she held a hand at her chin, thinking deeply. For a few moments, she stood gazing into the ground with her eyebrows creased.

"Could it be that he broke a guide apart to make your skill?" She finally asked, lifting her eyes to look at him with an expression of suspicion on her face.

"Break apart? Umm, he does that sometimes. He called it recycling. He broke apart my ability to see dreams to make a skill that allows me to travel through dreams like you."

Alice sighed looking at him with pity in her eyes.

"I am so sorry, Mr.SmartySmarty. I don't know how to help you now. What fool would recycle a guide?" She said with a voice that implied that he was a lost cause.

"That guide. It was important?" Asked Noah.

"Of course. The guide leads you to the right path. Without it, you'll have to find it yourself." Said Alice.

"This path, where is it supposed to lead?" Asked Noah.

"It shows a path to cross over the wall."

"What wall?"

"The one that blocks us from going higher, being stronger, being smarter, being free." Answered Alice then her face changed. "Oh, I must go. I wish you luck Mr.SmartySmarty," she added before walking off. With every step she took her figure became more and more transparent before she disappeared altogether.

Noah stood there in silence watching the girl disappear with a confused face, not knowing what to do.

"Wall? Path? Guide? I DON'T GET ANY OF THAT SHIT!" Screamed Noah in frustration. But there was no answer. Silence spread in the field as he stood there watching endless ground with nothing but grass waving in the wind.

"UGY, YOU SON OF A BITCH, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" Screamed Noah seething with anger.

"Ok, Ok. Calm down." Said Noah taking heavy breaths regaining his composure a few minutes later.

"Let's analyze what I know. Alice gave me some hints. She said it is possible to find a way on my own. She speaks in a cryptic way but there are always certain hints in her words. There is no doubt she gave me that might help." Spoke Noah his thoughts aloud trying to control his agitation and be rational.

"First: Path that leads over the wall." Said Noah.

"What can this mean? Wall. Wall that stops us from reaching higher, that stops us from gaining more power." Muttered Noah deep in thought for a few more minutes. "This sounds familiar. Where have I heard of it…?"

"Hold on! That's it!" He suddenly exclaimed. "Theresa spoke of the wall that stops monsters from advancing in evolution when she spoke of Priscilla's problem. The bottleneck!" He spoke his thoughts aloud.

"Alice said all humans take the path. Everyone have that wall? Every human is facing a bottleneck... Could it be…?" Muttered Noah as an idea came to his mind.

Noah willed a database folder to open and searched through the information that Ugy carefully categorized for him in it.

"Give me all the information that I know about systems and level-ups." He willed the database folder to filter the data according to his request. As the data was filtered he started to quickly swipe through it as if searching for something specific.

"There it is." He said stopping on a certain spot and starting to read aloud the text that he once read from some book.

"All systems have several stages. Initial, basic, intermediate, middle, advanced, and high. The stages are not something defined by Gods, but something we define due to bottlenecks that every human encounter in the process of advancing in levels of their systems. Every stage has a bottleneck that needs a special effort to cross to the next stage. When we reach the bottleneck a certain pattern or conditions would have to be met to advance further. Unless these conditions are met it is impossible to raise your levels further or gain any more skills." Read Noah.

"This should be what Alice was talking about." Said Noah excited feeling he was on the right path.

"Every system is unique thus every system has its unique conditions for advancement. Because of this, it is impossible to define a universal or surefire way to pass the stage. Moreover, every system would be giving special clues or tasks that would point the user to the right answer. All missions are unique, however, there is a certain pattern to these missions. Every system would require from an owner a deeper understanding of his system and himself. The higher the stage that the owner passes, the deeper his understanding of his own system and its ability require the stage crossing conditions that should be met." Continued to read Noah.

"Alright. The wall Alice mentioned is the advancement bottleneck. Then by the path that I follow she meant the conditions that have to be met for advancement." Analyzed Noah.

"So by the guide and tips she meant the hints and missions that the system gives its owner on what he needs to do for an advancement to the next stage." Said Noah sitting down on the ground in deep thought.

"Alright, so I reached a bottleneck, is that what's going on? Hold on, is there any information when these bottlenecks happen?" Said Noah scrolling the text and skipping forward.

"There it is." He said starting to read aloud again.

"All the systems have slight differences regarding the level on which the bottleneck occurs. However, through an in-depth survey of people with different types of systems, several divisions of systems have been specified. For every type of system, an approximate average level at which the bottleneck would occur was calculated." Read Noah skipping a few lines again. "Types, blah blah." He muttered reading further.

"Ok, here. An average level for the basic stage bottleneck would normally occur for all types of systems at the tenth level. However, with all other stages, these bottlenecks would differentiate from type to type." Ended his survey, Noah.

"Tenth level." He muttered. "But my system has fewer levels according to Ugy. That means the basic stage average level has shifted. The fifth level is my bottleneck level." Muttered Noah aloud his thoughts, sitting down on the ground finally understanding his situation.

"There was such a thing, but Ugy never mentioned any of it…" Said Noah but stopped half a word as another realization dawned on him. "What fool would recycle a guide?" He repeated Alice's words, his eyes going wide. "No one would recycle it from foolishness! That bastard did it on purpose!"