FFF-Tier System, SSS-Rank Wife-Chapter 45: Recklessness, again

The golden power appeared out of nowhere.

Yet, as weird as it was, where else could it come from in a dimension of perfect nothingness?

It then surged forth and fused with the words I’ve just written, bestowing them with a golden shine that made the text stand out even more than the system box itself.

But it wasn’t just the color of the words that changed.

They’ve grown more vibrant, more tangible, more... real. As if it wasn’t a surge of a weirdly familiar power but an injection of essence that took the words from just some crude paintings with commonly agreed-on meaning to the very essence of the meaning they were supposed to hold.

As if the container suddenly became the very thing that it was designed to hold. Instead, it all happened on a plane that couldn’t be any further from a physical one, making it all feel all the more ephemeral.

And then there was me, standing frozen in place, gawking at the golden letters with eyes open so wide, my disbelief couldn’t be any clearer.

"That worked?"

Even though my mouth was parched from all the excitement, I still somehow managed to gulp my spit down my throat.

By no means did I expect this attempt to work. Like, come on! It was frustrating, sure, but when operating on nothing but a bunch of guesses, I was prepared to spend hours if not days in this world of nothingness, throwing random ideas at the wall of the system’s box just to see what sticks.

Before I could do that, though, something did stick.

"Calm down."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before holding it in. Longer, just a little bit longer...

Only when my body nearly wrestled itself free from my control to gasp for air, did I allow the exhausted breath to leave my lungs before replacing it with a fresh one.

’Wait, this place isn’t even real, so why do I need to breathe here?’ I thought, noticing the weird discrepancy. ’Just a force of habit and my expectations forcing me to follow certain rules?’

I shook my head, putting aside the thought.

Right now, there were far more important matters for me to attend to than worry about the physics of this place.

And seeing how even as more and more time passed, the golden words I’ve written continued to exist within the frame of the systems’ box, there was no need for me to worry about them just vanishing out of nowhere.

"I mean, there’s a chance that I’ve managed to strike some kind of a correct chord, giving this text a lot more time before it vanishes, but..."

I pressed my mouth into a thin line.

Sure. I didn’t know anywhere near enough about how this whole place and that system box operated to assume anything for certain. Yet, when empirical evidence was missing, I could somehow feel that I was right.

I could feel that there was no longer any need for me to hurry in regards to the part I just wrote. And while it could very well disappear right the moment I would look away and I would have no one else but myself to blame for missing this opportunity... I couldn’t just leave this space to test if this quest-reward approach actually worked.

Not yet.

Not when there was still more testing, more experiments I could conduct to learn at least a tiny bit more. After all, with Selia’s willingness to put her head to use and help me out with theorycrafting on the outside, it was best to gather as many hints and clues as I could before going back!

"Okay, stop!"

I raised my hands and clapped them down against my face, using the surge of the stinging pain to clear my head out of all the useless thoughts.

"It worked. Now what?"

There would be time for me to create a whole database worth of guesses and assumptions based on the mere fact that this attempt had worked. For now, though, it was best if I conducted even more experiments, so that there would be a bigger field of results for me to draw from, successful or not.

’Heck, from what little I know about the scientific process, failures are actually more valuable than successes...’

Even with that thought in my mind, I couldn’t help but put my entire mind to figuring out the next step.

I could learn from my failures. But if I could succeed, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to fall intentionally, not unless failing in a very specific way would be a condition for some sort of success all in its own right.

’What if I phrase it differently, then?’

I turned my eyes before moving over to the system box. Yet, just as I’ve realized a new problem I didn’t think about before, my thoughts turned to a problem that highlighted how my earlier mishap taught me nothing.

"Wait a moment..." I’ve muttered as I stared at the text that was a product of my very own hands. And as the content of the ’quest’ part of it rang in my ears, turning into an imaginary picture of me fulfilling it—

’Oh shit...’

A curse nearly escaped my mouth.

Sure, we’ve somehow become much closer with Selia over the past few hours... But why did I make the ’quest’ part of my test all about touching her naked shoulder?

It was a success. A success born from an inspired guess. But it was also a testament on how, overwhelmed by my own excitement, I did the very same mistake that left me mortified the last time. And while the weight of those mistakes couldn’t be any more different...

"Why didn’t I make the condition for getting that ability something... easier? Or rather," once again, a mouthful of spit moved down my throat, "less dangerous?"

I stared at the golden letters for a few more moments, not sure how to deal with my own emotional immaturity.

’No more riding the wave of excitement,’ I thought while taking a deep breath before striking my fist down on my own chest. ’That I swear before myself, upon myself, and for myself.’

I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, holding the remorseful position for a long moment before relaxing both my hands and my face and looking at the system box ahead.

There was still the problem I’ve noticed just a moment ago for me to solve if I wanted to proceed with some more testing.

For now that I’ve filled the system’s box with golden-turned letters, there was no more space in it for me to write!

"I could try to cram a few more words in, maybe try to stretch the box out to make it bigger and thus create room for another quest-reward pair, or..."

I furrowed my brows before pressing my mouth shut and raising my hands to make a mummy-pose yet again.

Then, for the second time, I dragged my hands to the sides, down and then back together. And with the light tracing their paths appearing as usual, I was soon faced with another, completely independent system box just... floating in the space of nothingness.

"So that’s how it is..." I’ve muttered, taken aback by all the opportunities this discovery opened before me.

Then, there was this fleeting idea, a distant sense of familiarity, a longing that referenced back to something I did in the past... But it was too faint for me to get a good grasp on, too distant for me to get to know it as anything beyond just a feeling.

"Well then," I clapped my hands again, this time down against my hips. "It’s time to do more testing, isn’t it?"