Chapter 1

Lyra looked up at the screen, her eyes glazing over.
She yawned, inspecting the code in front of her again.
”Alright, lets go through this one more time."
"So."
"We call getTimestamp here."
"That should get the value from the database."
"Aaand it does, alright. At least we aren’t that screwed."
"Yep, thats on the 23rd, which should be tomorrow. So far, so good."
"Then we get the current date by just making a new DateTime object."
"Thaaat… Also looks alright."
"Now, we do $timestamp->diff($now).”
She reloads the page in anticiption.
”…oh, right. That doesnt return anything."
"uh… $datetime->diff($now)->hours"
"23. Ri-"
"Wait. 23 hours."
"Thats not a full day."
"I’ve been sitting here for how long debugging this, and i just chose the wrong value to test with?”
She sighs. programming. “Fuck me, I think PHP is slowly starting to rot my brain."
"I really just want to take a nap."
"I’ve only got what, like two more hours?"
"The boss isn’t in the office right now, so I’m sure its fine, right?”
She slowly closes her eyes, drifting off to sleep.

Lyra yawns.
She slowly opens her eyes.
All she can see is darkness.
”Uh… Whats going on here?”
Did the power go out?
She tries to move her body, but she feels paralysed.
”Fuck."
"Is this one of those sleep paralysis dreams?"
"I really cant get any proper rest, can I?”

Suddenly, a blue window appears in front of her.

[Greetings {USER}.]

“Wow, even my dreams are programmed badly.”

[You have been chosen as the new Maintainer of the Ygdrassil System.]
[To assist you in this endeavour, you have been gifted with the Skill “Assembly Mastery”]

“Assembly. Seriously."
"Somehow, I’ve managed to dream about something worse than enterprise PHP programming."
"Good job, brain. Very impressive.”

[Please use the key phrase “System Open” to utilize the skill.]

“Well. I might as well play along."
"System Open.” A window opens in front of her, together with a digital keyboard. The window is displaying a terminal text editor. As Lyra starts typing, she realizes something. “Oh fuck me. Theyre making me use vi.” “I guess this dream really was a nightmare after all.” She chuckles. “Alright, bad joke.”

So, uh… Sorry. Chapter isnt done yet xd. Really wanted to push some other changes, so i guess youre getting a preview of sorts for now? xd