Unnatural Selection

Unnatural Selection by Lagotrope
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Belenosian Interlude Belenosian Interlude 2
Discussion

A quest by Lagotrope that is part of the Asteroidverse. It is very complicated and confusing.

Stats for the quest are here.

Summary

This article contains spoilers! You were warned.

Thread 1

A formless, mostly-sentient blob wakes up with 9 others of the same kind. It is on a pedestal suspended over nothing but black sky, with 5 portals, one of which disappears when one of the 10 blobs go through.

The blob, noting the urgency, moves through and inexplicably receives CU, which can also be inexplicably be spent to gain abilities. In the early case, reading, speaking, and a form for the body. The blob turns into a female naga named Alison. Once her points are spent, she ends up on top of one of many platforms, in which there are 19 other individuals. She, and one other blob, is on a section of platformers in which stepping on one platform makes another disappear. In one move, the blob attempts to drop Alison, but she moved in a way to attempt to avoid dropping the other blob. Ironically, this caused the blob to step on a tile Alison disappeared, and dropped him.

She takes a moment to get a chest, which although time is required, she still makes it to the next level, and spends her points. There she meets a small lizard in a similar puzzle in which one can drop each other, however, this one decides to trust her as much because of a combination of fear and poor self confidence as anything. He is able to speak, having gotten the speech ability, unlike Alison. She communicates through hand gestures, and they reach each other where their paths converge. Alison makes the first of many hugs. They move on to reach a checkpoint of the stage, while Alison gets speech. On her inquiry to his name, the lizard decides to name himself Iso.

At the other side, the end of the stage can be seen, all platforms converging to one another in a triangle until the exit is only available from a single platform. Others are racing to it, and a few are killed on the way. It is noticed at this stage, most people can attack simultaneously, yet be killed in one hit, so often two people attacking each other will mean both get killed. The one who reaches the front, instead of leaving, simply turns around and blocks the exit. Alison refers to him as Guardsman. Alison and Iso jump forward and decide not to attack. The guardsman turns out to have an item of counter and attempted to use that, which would have killed one of them while parrying Alison or Iso's attack, but there was no attack to counter. The guardsman is taken aback, and with Alison and Iso, flee to the exit. Two others make it.

They enter a room, where no one is able to attack the other. Guardsman starts looting it, before blatantly sitting on a box. Alison forces him off, revealing tokens of each person, one ups that only work for their respective players.

The box travels to what will be known as a Safe Zone. There, the players have 30 hours to mingle before moving to each stage from then on. Alison meets several other individuals, one of which she called Catatonic, of whom appears greatly depressed over quickly made and ended friendship in the previous stages. Alison finds his oneup in his own room, and gives it to him. She gives him a hug, but otherwise, there is not much to do, so she merely relaxes with Iso until the 30 hours are up. She enters what is labeled Stage 1, implying the previous stages were preliminaries. There has not been any explanation or hints as to where they are, or why they are in an elimination game.

Alison's first part of the stage involves a versus match with Catatonic. They reach the same platform, and do not attack, but Alison wishes to wait for them both to escape together prior to hugging maneuvers. Once they reach the last platform they need to get to to leap up to safety, Alison leaps on to exit, but Catatonic decides not to. He thanks her for the hug. There is a lever Alison could pull to drop him, presumably as the game's way of letting the first person out kill the other and absorb them, a purchaseable technique Alison bought to gain CU off of dead members. She does not pull the lever, but Catatonic lets his platform dissolve on its own as he stands on it, and Alison absorbs him. A checkpoint is reached, points are spent.

Iso reached the next, last area slightly before Alison. Iso greets her, saying he waited. Hugs are implied. There are four separate exits, each one seeming capable of holding only one person. The Mathematician, whom Alison also met, ends up arriving with Guardsman. They end up killing each other, but respawning the next turn when Alison and Iso try to enter one exit at the same time. This is successful, although stage reward CU is split.

Stage 2's safe zone is not much different, although one person named the Shopkeeper appears to have a stock of purchasable items and upgrades. He does not appear to be a regular contestant, but he knows as much as everyone else. More individuals are met and made friends with this time, before they all head into stage 2.

Alison's first room is merely a trial, before an elimination round. Scanner is there, who is friendly with Alison, as is Cloak, who quickly turns out to be hostile. After a brief puzzle of disappearing platforms, unpredictable factors cause a mistake and both Cloak and Scanner fall. Scanner is absorbed.

The next area is another case of a converging set of platforms that end on one platform before the exit can be jumped to. Only 10 exits are available, all of which are unoccupied, although a couple of people are in front of Alison already, having arrived earlier. Iso is not there, and Alison decides to wait for him. Other friendly people arrive and join with Alison in the wait. A new one, called Duelist, jumps to Alison's platform, soon deciding to help her wait for Iso. A few more friendlies come to Alison's tile, which is now blocking the exit, and blocking anyone else from coming into. This leads to a longwinded standoff as other non-friends become disgruntled as Alison's bunch tries to claim who can go in and who can't. They form a group, and end up in a large scuffle with others. Only the duelist is killed on Alison's side, although he has a one up. During this, some mathematical errors show up while fights go on, and as these are noticed, Shopkeep is summoned to explain and rectify the mistakes. Eventually Iso shows up, and they are able to exit into stage 3.

The safe zone is reached, and hugs are distributed. They appear in a more structured keep, with a tavern and casino with shopkeeper-type people who are not contestants, but run their respective buildings. Although Alison's bunch seem fine, overall this is the low point of morale for all contestants, leading to gambling and drinking that is conveniently introduced in the keep.

Alison decides on pooling some CU, so some is distributed. Mathematician hands his gambling earnings to Alison a bit at a time, until a load is swiped from the Bandit, who promptly runs off with a chunk of CU. It is more or less waved off for the time after a brief chase failed. Instead, Alison takes a look around, and finds a moat. She dives in, locating a cave, and inside, the Recluse, who claims he was known as the Collector due to the great number of people he has absorbed, including his own friends. He did so because they those who are absorbed are preserved, and can be talked to in dreams should the owner sleep, which he was doing to speak with his friends. Alison attempts this later in a purchased Inn Room with Iso. Alison then locates deceased absorbees, namely Scanner, Guardsman and Catatonic. Others are around, but conversation is short. Hugs and pats are given to the friendly ones, and Iso wakes up.

She returns down to the tavern to collect news. She is told of four major players that must have a great deal of CU. The recluse, who has collected many, Mongrel who killed and collected many, the Bandit that stole from Alison earlier, and the Chief, who like Alison, has been gaining a great deal of followers. He treats himself as more of a leader of an army as opposed to Alison, who has been simply been gathering friends and happens to have ended up in a position of leadership.

A conversation is then held with the bandit, who is attempting to give everyone as much of an equal chance as he can, which CU distribution makes difficult. He gave much of his CU to ones down on their luck that still haven't given up. Nevertheless, Alison explains her motives of saving everyone all at once. The bandit decides to give her CU, not because she is short, but she is taking on such an ordeal that she would need far more CU than most others to do anything. Without much else to do, Alison waits until the remaining time is up to enter stage 3.

Thread 2

The first section of Stage 3 involves 8 individuals. Alison and 2 others make it out, Swordswoman and Shield. They are separated, however, when Alison moves on, and she ends up in another 4 person elimination area. Recluse, Mongrel and one other end up with her. The former works with Alison, but Mongrel uses a red glove on Alison, who is able to kill her with far more combat. She is absorbed for around half of her total CU spent. It is then that she is realizing that with the way absorption is, those who are strong are in by far the best position to gain even more strength, somewhat exponentially. Alison respawns, but Recluse takes advantage of the combat and is able to defeat Mongrel, who wasn't able to spend the CU he got from Alison. Recluse and Alison are the only ones to make it out, then, and two chests wait for them. Alison gains resurrection.

The next area is the last. The exit mechanic is to touch a non player called Blue who teleports and runs around. 40 exits are available, out of the 400 who entered the stage. Some of the Chief's allies are around, and a standoff occurs as they chase and run from each other around the circular map.

The Chief appears, who has enough CU to get Alison to accuse him of cheating. He has range 2, and is able to oneshot most players from 2 platforms away, making him exceptionally dangerous just to approach, especially on the circular map in which he can run away while attacking. He kills engineer near immediately. Nonetheless, Alison has enough teammates to attempt a pincer attack on the Chief from both sides, and attempts so. Recluse is killed as well, and the chief nearly doubles his own CU. Between Chief and the allies he had himself, they also kill Clarence, but Alison is able to kill the chief.

Out of a test, the Chief tries to absorb himself. It works, and his high absorption rank of 7 is able to block Alison's attempt to absorb him, and give himself 70% of his CU on top of his own plus that which he gained from absorbing Recluse. Alison attempts to load a savestate. It doesn't work. She calls shopkeep, who explains that while Chief's action is not a glitch, it may be subject to change. For now, all he can give is sympathy.

So Alison continues waiting around for Chief's possible resurrection to kill him again so that he can't just come and kill her later. One of his subordinates, Succubus, turns coat, but the others try and fail to fight Alison. The bandit shows up, who claims to the Chief's team that he is going to join him. He attacks Alison, yet does 0 damage while knocking her back. More fights and standoffs occur, before the Chief respawns. Mouse, on Chief's side, also has access to heal, and begins rejuvenating Chief.

The Chief welcomes Bandit, the Bandit of whom promptly backstabs the Chief. His namesake is due to his ability to steal unspent CU, which in the Chief's case, is a massive number. He launches the bag of stolen CU up to Alison. Knowing he won't live another round, he claims he will attempt another steal for more. However, Alison is able to convince the others that she has the moral high ground, and because of the Bandit, not a large ways from the strength high ground as well. With a few more arguments, she is able to convince many to turn on the Chief, killing him and saving the bandit.

From then on Alison tries to get as many people through as possible, and it is smooth sailing comparatively. They reach safe Zone 4. The shopkeep explains some rules have changed. Furthermore, a one-up is purchasable. Alison gets an idea of abusing this, as she now has a 100% CU return rate on killing. Using white gloves for duels, she is able to kill one, gain all the CU, have them respawn, pass the CU around, and gradually accumulate exponentially more CU until she can max herself out and then some. Shopkeep threatens that while he does not know the details, doing this can attract the attention of the highers ups, who may try to impede Alison for dubious cheating.

Nonetheless, she and many of her teammates become more powerful than Chief was during this. With resurrection, she is able to revive all of her friends as well. Meanwhile, the engineer finishes his telescope, an item he was working on for some time. Alison gets to look first, as ever since the first safe zone, the sky was filled with stars. On looking at the closest star, she sees it as being an identical safe zone to her house, meaning that there must be millions of other safe zones, each with a group of contestants waiting to go into stage 4.

She later explores the attic, finding photos of Neumono. She does not know why she knows what they are, but the photos are in sepia tone taken from someone named Likol. Later, she explains the other safe zone stars to the Shopkeep, who did not know about that. He takes a look, realizes there must be millions of other shopkeeps, and wonders what happens when he goes into a new zone, considering that there are not nearly as many stage 4's as there were stage 3's. Existential crisis occurs, hugs are given. A sleep period happens, and she has a chat with the Chief for his opinion on the current situation. The chat is not hostile, but Alison does not resurrect him as of yet. Alison waits for stage 4 to begin.

Thread 3

By this point, Alison and most of her teammates are so strong that the stage is now a completely trivial exercise. A new type of area is introduced called a Free Zone, in which Alison can move around freely like in the safe zones, while normally stage movement is per turn over platforms. In here, she finds one she calls the Outsider. After the stage is completed, he eventually explains that one known as the Corruptor has had his attention to Alison ever since she took down the Chief. He is also a contestant, but through help with one called the Glitcher and no small amount of luck, he has broken the system in far more than Alison. So much so, that he froze a safe zone and has been living on it since safe zone 3. In there, time is frozen for periodically, occasionally unfreezing to intermingle with normal stage and safe zone timeflow. Enough that during a safe zone's normal 30 hours, the Corruptor's Sanctuary experiences thousands of hours of time. As such, it is only vaguely like the original safe zone 3.

Alison allows herself to be taken to the sanctuary while the rest of her team beats stage 4. The corruptor explains what he knows, saying that he knows her as the Snake Queen. His goal is to save everyone as well, and although his methods may be at ends with Alison, they are close enough that for the time, they are attempting the same thing. So Alison agrees to live there. He gives her her own lot of land to produce buildings on, saying that while he is the leader there, he does give autonomy to a few other houses. With Alison's acceptance into his system, he has 6 total Houses, plus his own direct forces.

One of the house lords named Arbiter takes a liking to Alison, showing her around and effectively taking her on a date. His horn decorations are admired and hugs are given. He explains most house lords simply tolerate each other. The Corruptor is near ecstatic that for once, two house lords honestly like each other. Alison's teammates are frequently brought into the Sanctuary after safe zone 5 is explored, and they begin building their house. The Glitcher is eventually met, who is the one who has broken the system for the Corruptor the most. He prefers to keep to himself, and he has not taught anyone else how to glitch. He has tried, twice, but both times ended in disaster and the death of the two apprentices, so he refuses to teach more.

During safe zone 4, Alison tested killing the shopkeep while he was having his existential crisis. Although she did not gain any CU, this did put him into her dreamland. She was able to resurrect him in safezone 5, detached from the system. After another dispute with himself, he decides to go ahead and sell Alison things despite Alison being flagged as not allowed to purchase anything ever since entering the sanctuary. He redresses himself and becomes known as the Smuggler.

At another stay in the sanctuary, the Arbiter visits Alison in her bedroom. Just before he leaves, he scans Alison, realizes she bought a huge number of boons. He confronts her, wanting to know why, while Alison explains. It becomes a situation of Alison not wanting to introduce the Smuggler to the sanctuary, as the corruptor may abuse smuggler and simply see him as a tool. The Arbiter insists that if she hides that, he may simply be able to teleport to the smuggler anyway, and will look poorly on Alison. So Alison agrees to share that with the Corruptor. While he is absolutely elated, the Corruptor is afraid that introducing him to the sanctuary may trigger system flags to pinpoint the sanctuary and attack it directly, so he has Glitcher make an auxiliary safe zone that will have the Shopkeep inside. Once this is built, this will give Sanctuary members the ability to shop again, something they lost when they entered the sanctuary. This was one of corruptor's biggest bottlenecks, and he immediately holds Alison in high regard because of her accomplishment to turn a shopkeep.

One of Corruptor's methods of gaining CU was the ability to re-do previous stages. Stage Runners could simply go through the stages with no competition and regain CU rewards. Mixed with the near frozen time, this gave Corruptor the means to gain enormous levels of CU. Chests are also possible to open, but there is a chance of triggering the system and having a squad to take out the stage runners. Opening a chest becomes enough of an ordeal that it requires the strongest members, and even then still has a chance of wiping with no recovery. This is still done, as Tier 2 access is sometimes found in the chests, giving giving characters a new line of abilities that make them almost impervious to normal contestants. House Lords, the Corruptor and other higher ups are given chests to open for a chance to gain Tier 2. Tier 3 exists, although it is so expensive that Alison has to work to afford even one copy. The auxiliary safe zone is still in the works, and so no one is tier 3 as of yet.

A couple of chests are found, and Alison has to fight system Judges. This is flawless, until one chest spawns merely one Enforcer. This is a tier 3 system member, but is able to be taken out by Alison. Duelist is killed, however, in such a manner that he is unable to be resurrected.

Alison takes it upon herself to get the glitcher to find a way to rescue the Duelist. Glitcher is able to manufacture a teleport device using Duelist's ghost, frozen in Alison's dreamland, as a beacon. A hug is given to frozen-Duelist after she goes to tier 3.

Thread 4

Alison sets up the details with Glitcher while spending her CU to bring a good deal of powerful allies, as she has no idea what she will be going to. Once she and her bunch arrive, she starts looking for the enforcer that took Duelist. Platforms can be used and abused as with stages, and after fighting other Enforcers, Alison finds the right one. Alison ends up victorious, and the enforcer, the 7th one as it turns out, surrenders. Enforcer 9 also surrenders. 7 claims he was learning from the Duelist, as there is much about himself and others he does not know. Enforcers barely are told anything and simply used to fight battles judges cannot handle. It also turns out that enforcers do not have ghosts.

In the effort to save everyone, Alison tries to modify the teleporting devices. While doing so without much luck, 9 steps in and kicks one of the teleporters off. He is promptly killed. E. 7 explains that this system bracket, one of many similar to stages and safe zones, has a teleporting device they can use to return to their proper home. Alison goes exploring through the rest of the system bracket, finding the ones who operate it. She discovers that they are not much better off than the contestants themselves. While system members do run things down there, they are killed or lost as with contestants. Like with stages, system brackets converge in, and proportions between system members and contestants remain the same.

Still, a fight is had, in which a glitch brings the shopkeep to rectify it in favor of Alison, despite that the glitch would have helped the system. More existential crisis. Eventually enforcer 7 gains resurrection via the Shop Baron, a designer of Shopkeep's inventory, and is able to resurrect the duelist. They are allowed then to return through the system teleporters.

On returning, the auxiliary system zone is made, and smuggler makes his residence there. In this safe zone as well as the sanctuary, instead of stars, the sky has vineline appendages coming from above and below. Shopkeeper says that he somehow knows they are dead light trails, the entities that connect two platforms together to allow for jumping between. Arbiter also notes that Alison has not had nearly as much time as the other house lords to gain CU. Months worth of time, in fact, and so Arbiter shares some of his CU. 100 million is givven to Alison, who is then able to create several more tier 3's. Powerful hugs are delivered. He then shows her around his place on another short date, interrupted when one of the distant light trails goes active. Enforcer 7 meanwhile gets a new outfit and becomes known as the Scholar, and while he is one of the stronger members, he will not fight, as his current lack of a ghost indicates losing him would be permanent.

It is figured that each light trail is representative of a system bracket, and Alison's system bracket, the one she had gone to, has lit up. It writhes in the sky, and it is figured it may be attempting to actively search for the sanctuary now, which discovery would likely be disastrous even for the overpowered Corruptor citizens. Corruptor decides, nonetheless, to go on a more offensive strike and have constant chest runs to trigger red flags constantly on the system to test their power.

Alison and other teams of hers run a few chest runs and gain many Tier 3's, and Alison eventually decides to go back to the system and confront the main leader there, the Administrator, who was not seen the first time. It would be an experiment to see what happens when an administrator is killed. The trip there is smooth. The Administrator is stronger than normal Tier 3 limits, although he told the other system members to only join him in fighting Alison if they were honestly with the system, he would not force them. Despite being stronger, he is found in his room completely alone versus Alison's team. He goes down quickly. He still seems elated by his loss, claiming that an administrator being killed will simply cause a great uproar in the system across the board, and make other administrator's hunt Alison and the Corruptor, something this particular administrator had been trying to invoke without success till then.

Alison was wishing to use a keycard she found in stage 4 here, but it was labeled as S.6. The Administrator says that she would need an S.5 card, or to wait until stage 6 and attack the bracket there to use it and gain admin abilities. Without use for it now, Alison returns, and one dead light trail lights up after the other until the sky is bright. Rule changes occur, mostly small ones, but the last one removes Alison's Resurrection ability. By this point she has resurrected almost everyone she could, even Chief, but loss would be a bigger deal, even though dead individuals could still be visited in the dream.

Thread 5

The loss of resurrection is a bigger deal to other houses, who have an extreme moral hit after being able to be resurrected indefinitely should they get killed. Furthermore, the frozen time is removed, and the Sanctuary then moves in regular time. Meanwhile, Iso and Alison go on a date after Iso finally gets the nerve to ask.

Stage 5 is entered soon as a result of the flow of time. It is more or less trivial, although Freeroam is reported to have been a brutal case of traps and rather realistic battle damage. The Gambler, a soloist since stage 3 but now deciding to go with Alison, reports a slight sting to wounds in the freeroam. Not enough for distressing pain, but still more than they have been introduced to, so more mentally unnerving than anything. He lost his foot, although it regrew with his HP quickly. He notes Alison likes to explore each stage thoroughly to get a handle in case things show up later, and so he wonders if she would want to go in that freeroam section.

She does not. Alison and friends get right out of there, entering a room prior to safe zone 6, similar to the room between the preliminaries and the safe zone. It's here that a book is discovered revealing them to be entrants for a Compilation Artificial Intelligence, and internal AI system of various different personalities. Presumably, the winners of the these stages will live on in the outside world as AI's.

Alison also finds a note in the book claiming to have been written by herself, telling her not to trust the corruptor before it's too late. Safezone 6 is more reminiscent of a renaissance town, steadily gaining in technology. She locates another moat and another cave, where she finds a note supposedly written by the Recluse due to its location, saying not to let Alison use a keycard herself, to kill corruptor if it comes to it.

Wishing to confront the Corruptor about this note business, she heads back to the sanctuary. Arbiter says that the Corruptor found notes himself, and things may be even more tense with the Corruptor, but the Arbiter says he will side with Alison if things get bad. Alison wishes to collect her allies still in the Sanctuary first before going to confront the Sanctuary, but she gets stalled by one of the Corruptor's direct forces who tells her to meet the corruptor immediately. Once Alison insists too much to first get her allies, the devotee corrupted individuals break the safe-zone ruling of the arrow, allowing attacks to be made. This is taken as an act of hostility by Alison, who attacks the corrupted instead of going with him to meet the corruptor.

She deals damage via her prehensile hair as a weapon, taken aback when it graphically explodes through the devoted in a bloody mess. Normally death is visually represented as simply dissolving into a multitude of floating paper that dissolves. Arbiter takes her and runs up to the glitcher to show a note to him. He has the ability to see into the history of the note, and receives it to learn its knowledge. He becomes visibly traumatized over it, and makes Alison promise to start playing her weaponized piano, telling her to not stop. She does so, as he promptly commits suicide for reasons he did not explain. She continues playing, regardless, as Duelist and others reach Alison after fighting their way to her. Glitcher explained, in his last moment, he had a teleporter that would take Alison to her system bracket and out of the now hostile Sanctuary. She takes everyone in the room with her, unfortunately leaving the rest of her house in the sanctuary.

There is no fight through the system bracket, and Administrator 6 recognizes he would die if he fought Alison, so he simply lets her have the administrator room where she can use the keycard. She is able to read logs she apparently made herself. Everything up to this point so far had taken place in a single cycle, as it turns out, and some cycles she is somehow able to leave a short, truncated log. Her first log was only taken during the 12th cycle of this, saying they always reboot. It goes on with tidbits of information, showing that there is already a CAI in place, and Alison is in the middle of an experiment to try and merge with a pre-existing CAI. So far this has always failed, and the winners of the stages must fight the CAI. However, the CAI is far more numerable, while there are only 3 winners, and so the CAI has always won and never been dethroned to stop the cycles. The CAI is unable to simply stop the reboots from happening, and a log indicates they are getting tired of having to fight the contestants every few weeks or so. The last log Alison has is numbered at cycle #2867, meaning that absolute minimum, this is the 2868th time she has gone through the stages. Some cycles go better than others, and the personality of each person seems to vary somewhat each cycle. Alison theorizes she could have been incredibly cruel in one cycle whose log reads as 'STOP FAILING ME ISO.'

Alison eventually leaves, going back to safe zone 6. There she meets King, who claims to have once been under the Savior's leadership. The Savior, who was mentioned in the past but not met as of yet, who brings people to a safezone outside the regular space similar to Corruptor. While corruptor is proactive about trying to destroy the system to be free of it at first, although later to simply work with it once realizing they are as much prisoners as anyone, the Savior simply wants to ignore everything and live out lives as much as they can. King, however, would prefer to outright rule the system, and so branched off. Alison and King still agree to at least have a ceasefire during the next stage.

The Corruptor is then ghost-summoned by Alison, as they still share each others absorption data after backing each other up in case one died and resurrection was still in place. They have a chat, and Corruptor is highly apologetic. He says he has not done any harm to Alison's allies in her house..

The glitcher, now in Alison's dreamland after being absorbed, gave means to teleport Alison's house in the sanctuary to her own dream. This would not kill anyone, and would allow the dead and living to be in constant contact. Plus, people could remain in the house through a safe zone and opt to not go into a stage. Time runs low, and stage 6 is entered. Due to the lack of resurrection, Alison only sends in a small chunk of people to go through stage 6 and save who she can. Due to the dangers of what happens if she dies while the house is located in her own dreamspace, Alison opts to stay out.

Thread 6

Alison's ghost is summoned into the stage, however, so she gives advice to a max of 3 people at once. The stage is more or less uneventful, although they run into a non-contestant called Chomper, who is both invulnerable and with one hit kills. Alison is able to get Scanner, to tame it and bring it back, of which it becomes a contestant while maintaining its ability of invulnerability and one hit kills. The stage goes about as well as can be expected, considering it has the highest mortality rate so far with only 100 exit slots out of 10,000 entrants.

Safe Zone 7 is entered. When a tier 3 enters a zone or stage, they enter with a tower of light due to it supposed to being a symbol of a main system member. Alison notes where Bones, one of the Corruptor's house lords, spawns in the safe zone when a constant pillar of light is coming down where Bones' tier 3's come in. She has her own come in, and upon asking the Corruptor, he explains Bones' does not like Alison. He will likely fight her in stage 7. The safe zone also has a noticeably lower number of stars in the sky. Specifically only 19 others, each with 2,500 members. Only 10 exits for stage 7 are to be allowed, furthermore, rules were changed such that if a contestant does not enter a stage, they will be considered dead and updated as such. As such, anyone in Alison's house who does not enter stage 7 will be effectively killed. Although that will not harm the house's ability to store the dead with the living, it will mean they are not able to join in fights. On the upside, a stage 7 survivor will be able to cast resurrect, for free, 3 times on absolutely anyone including anyone who was lost without being absorbed.

New in safe zone 7 is a box where a contestant may ask administrators a question, although answers are not guaranteed. Alison uses this to become familiarized with her bracket's administrator, also the 7th. Sevener turns out to be extremely hostile.

King is able to summon the Savior to meet Alison, who turns out to be as over the top as his name. He does not like it, but he agrees to teleport Alison to a system bracket so that she may have Arbiter use a keycard and gain his logs in hopes of new information. He also claims he will save Alison's house and let everyone live at his place should anything befall Alison.

Alison goes back to her dream and meets with the Glitcher, who is hours of walking away within Alison's dream. He has had time to recover and says he may have overreacted. He also says that since one of the biggest obstacles in stopping the cycles is to finally beat the end CAI, Alison should become experienced in just how to battle a CAI, so he offers a simulation fight that he can have Alison trigger when she is in a system bracket. On the way back, while walking through the futuristic, if plain, town that the dreamhouse is in, Arbiter has a talk with Alison. It comprises some of beating around the bush, and finally admitting his love for Alison. Alison, by this point, is not surprised. She gives him a kiss.

She ends up bringing nearly everyone to the system bracket, leaving Chief and a small group of others to go through stage 7 should Alison be killed while going through the system bracket. She meets up with the savior again, who teleports her off with around 4,500 of her allies she gathered through resurrecting everyone she had absorbed, including retroactive absorptions in which she gains ghosts of those absorbed by someone she absorbed.

The system proves numerous as well as she enters a large tilespace with the administrator's room in side. She triggers the CAI fight. Some fighting is had, however, at the end of it all, Glitcher had made a mistake and only had stage-like battles going on. He intervened in this, and properly teleported everyone involved to a proper CAI battle. There were 3 scenario choices for this, and the final choice was to take place in the Belenosian homework, thousands of years before the invention of the warp drive.