《Universal Game Theory》
1. Prologue: Alien Invasions Are Boring
If six years ago you had told me that space aliens would invade and the biggest change that would happen was to make politics less divisive after a bunch of politicians started being murdered by normal people, I would never have believed it. But then five years ago they came and that is just how things are now. Who would have thought that First Contact would be so boring?
It wasn''t completely without incident. China isn''t a nation anymore, for instance. The invaders had only a few laws that they insisted upon, one of which was a limit on certain types of weapons. No more Nukes, H-Bombs, or anything "autonomous"; and they only gave us a little over a year to decommission everything. China, however, disregarded the rule and decided that it would be able to count itself as the world''s only remaining nuclear armed superpower. Now days Hong Kong presides over most of the area, with Mongolia and North Korea having taken chunks as well. When the aliens came in and killed off everyone who was in on the plans to keep the prohibited weapons, or who willingly supported the action... lets just say they were extremely thorough. Now days North Korea has taken over the belligerence that used to be China''s place on the world scene, so nothing much has changed.
Mostly things just went on as normal in international politics, with earth humans being the ones to screw things up for other earth humans. Russa and certain parts of Saharan Africa are the only places to have an actual alien overlord running the place. Earth is apparently such a backwater location that we got both humanitarian alien organizations showing up as well as "generous" investors. Most of the world heeded the alien humanitarian''s advice to not give the leeches a foothold, but most is not all. The new aliens running Russa are almost completely the same as old Rusha in how they constantly trie to test the rest of the world; the only real difference is that the man in charge is green, taller, and makes empty threats about aliens invading. His normal human wife is pretty enough, as are their infant kids... somehow. I''m not going to try to figure out the genetics of how that is supposed to work. The change in leadership ended up being a good thing for Africa, at least. They are working on reversing the desert back to useful land and have brought in actual regional stability, so some say that the African alien company is better than the one that incorporated Russa. Most of the world is taking a "wait and see" approach.
As for local politics, that changed because of the "game". The way I understand the explanation it goes something like this: "wars are messy and cause collateral damage and by the end the brightest and most dedicated people on both sides are dead, so lets just kill each other in a simulation rather than in real life, ok!" At the beginning a random assortment of people got pods to get started and the plans were given to us so that people could build more of their own. None of those random people were the best or brightest, they all just seemed to be normal folks. Building the Pods themselves was ludicrously expensive, costing tens of millions of dollars each due to rare materials at first, but the price has gone down to several hundred thousand as we got used to building them. When people came out, however, they had learned and grown from their time in the virtual world. Some even came out with magic or superpowers.
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So what do you think happened when hyper-partisan politics influenced people with superpowers before enough law-enforcement Players were around to stop them? I won''t say anything about which side is which, but at some point a crazy person from one side killed off a politician of their opposition. When swift justice didn''t happen, arguably because the state wasn''t geared up for the threat, things got bad. When certain news organizations started saying that the action might have been a good thing and tried to characterize the crazy person as a hero, then things got violent.
Apparently there are a lot fewer hate-mongers when pushing people to be violently angry at their opposition has deadly consequences when the other side retaliates. Who knew? It seems like people get along much better when other people are no longer using anger to manipulate them. At least the aliens prevented any "group actions", as those were treated as a form of warfare, and so all the trouble was with individuals. People were talking about it leading to a civil war, but there were fewer crazies and loudmouths than people expected. So when all was said and done there were around six months of relative chaos before everything just settled down. People can get used to just about anything, it seems. Aliens have invaded and yet the world continues on the same as it ever did.
I participated in exactly none of it. From my point of view nothing really changed that much. But, to be fair, I was stuck behind a screen participating in virtual battles all day. Such is the fate of a professional gamer, and I don''t regret it at all. What could be better than living the dream of every high-school nerd? But eventually every gamer has to take the next step in their life. For most that means getting a "real job" and giving up on their passion. For me, thanks to a convenient alien invasion, there is an even bigger challenge I can seek to overcome.
And that is what led me to the home of one of my friends and old teammates, Greg Kemp, to see about getting into The Game.
2. A New Game
The door opened quickly after I knocked, probably some sort of security system let him know I was here, and I was surprised at what I saw. Greg was never really fat, but neither was he the athletic figure I saw today. His brown hair and Hispanic complexion hadn''t changed a bit and his eyes still held the sharp glint that made him look like he was waiting to pounce, like any good chaser/assassin player. But the guy must have put on at least 30 pounds of muscle and maybe even an inch of height. "Hey man, It''s good to see you again." I said, putting my hand forward for a shake. "It has been a while."
He smiled back in a friendly way. "You have no idea. I honestly never thought you would want to enter the Alien Game, you were always so focused on your career as a Professional Gamer. And then, right after I finish a tournament on the Player Circuit, I get a call from you." His smile faded a bit as he continued. "I''ve got to ask, what changed?"
I took a breath as he led me into his small apartment, it was cozy and far less than my old buddy could afford, but he spent most of his time in The Game anyways so it wasn''t likely a problem. "Well first of all, you know how people talk about the Pro Circuit now? Everyone wants to watch the best of the best, and that isn''t us anymore. People call it the "Normal Circuit" and treat us like the little leagues, while you are part of the ''Player Circuit'' and are the real top dogs. The respect and deals just aren''t there like they used to be." I sat and took a bottle of water as Greg took an energy drink for himself.
"I never took you to be all that interested in the fame. You never played like it was important, anyways." His eyes focused as he spoke, honing in on me. "Nobody plays a support or fill-in role if they want to be the star."
I nodded, smiling a bit in depreciation with more than a hint of sharpness. "I had to work with what I had, there is no way I would be lucky enough to pull off some of the plays you did."
He gave a small chuckle at my reply before answering back. "All skill, baybe. Every single takedown was all skill." Only then he turned serious again and continued before I could continue with the banter. "But really; Why did you want to speak with me about getting into The Game?"
The smile fell from my face as I decided to be honest with him. "I need a new game. Cyber Soldier shut down recently and... I, I just need a new game." My voice trailed off and I looked away and then just stopped speaking. I didn''t want to start rambling and there really wasn''t anything more I wanted to say on the subject.
He gave me a confused look that I caught from the corner of my eye. "Cyber Soldier? That game is ancient, like pre-aliens it was already old. The graphics are fine, but they never really updated the gameplay to keep up with the times. It isn''t like you could run it professionally either, there just isn''t the audience. You made your name in the MOBA genre, so why are you so upset about some ancient shooter?"
I took a few seconds to calm myself before I could come clean with what I knew I needed to say. "I never told you how I got into gaming. It wasn''t always just me alone. Back in high-school I had a girlfriend. That was our game. We were going to go professional in it. We even got called in to try out for a team after we had hit legal age to sign the contract." I paused my story, taking a detour to give me a moment to calm down. "She... We probably wouldn''t have gotten in together. I was always the better player and she..." I stopped my speaking and focused back on what would be important to Greg in this moment. "Then the accident happened. At first I dove into gaming because that was what we always had together, but at some point it just became who I was. And with me getting older... Then Cyber Soldier shut down... I just need a new game."
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There were a few moments of silence before he spoke, then he blurted out with a hint of anger and exhaustion in his voice. "Dude, why didn''t you ever fucking tell me?!? You were one of my best friends Back when we played Ultimate MOBA together. We were together right up until I got scouted to join that dammed Alien Game, and even then we kept up with each other! What the hell, man?"
I wanted to laugh, my buddy was just as straightforward as ever once he had his focus. It always made him an average assassin but a great chaser. The laugh wouldn''t come. "It had been a couple years when I first knew you and by that time I only really thought about her when playing shooters, and mostly just the one shooter." I shook my head. "Look, this isn''t about her. That might be why I got serious about gaming, but this is who I am now. Seeing the game die just shook me up. Combine that with my age..." I trailed off. I didn''t need to say anything more.
He took a moment as a discontented scowl came across his face. "Gaming ends at 23," he said. It was a saying that someone had come up with that briefly became a meme. It was meant to be taken as an encouragement to live one''s life to the fullest, have fun while you can before you can''t anymore. But, for professional gamers, it was much more terrifying. It was the ringing death toll to our livelihood. It was the point at which our reflexes began to noticeably slow and we would soon be incapable of keeping up. Like any athlete, our careers have a lifespan.
"And I am now 25." I continued into the deadening silence.
Neither of us spoke. The only sound was of the air conditioning and some sort of water fountain that I could barely hear from its place in another room.
I broke the silence to formulate my plea. "All I wanted to ask was if you would talk to the company that sponsored you into the game. I tried contacting them myself but I''m not in the top eight anymore so they won''t even answer my calls. I figured because you..."
"Like hell I will!" he yelled out, interrupting me as he continued his tirade. "It took me over a decade to get out from under those fuckers thumbs. There is no way I would do something like that to you. It''s not like we are on good terms anymore anyways."
I tried to answer but the confusion must have shown on my face.
"Right, the aliens only showed up five years ago." He said quietly, as though he was speaking to himself but then continued directly toward me. He waved off the concern and explained. "Just think of it like in some MMOs where the day/night cycle happens every fifteen minutes. You get so used to in game time that you don''t think about the real world.
"Look, I''ll sponsor you personally", he continued as he visibly changed gears. "I know you are good for it to pay me back. You are a decent guy and this is the least I can do."
I was a bit stunned at his declaration, but apparently not enough to keep me from speaking. "Really?" Not my most eloquent response, but it was enough to move forward the gears of the conversation.
He nodded, sobering up and getting more serious. "Yeah, really. There is an intake in about a week. I can get you in. Spend that time to prepare. But before you go in there are some things you need to know. I won''t leave you hanging like they left me."
3. Avoiding Pittfalls
Greg, my buddy from our time playing together on a professional team, had some very important things to tell me about the alien game I was going to enter in about a week. But first, he ordered a pizza. Then he insisted on small talk until it came. Then he refused to say anything more about it until after we had a chance to eat. Whatever his reasoning, I was getting a bit annoyed by the time he did get to the subject itself. He did eventually get around to it though.
"The first thing you need to know is that there are things that people inside the game are not supposed to tell people who haven''t been initiated yet. It isn''t anything really bad, it is just... dynamic difficulty is the best way to describe it. If you cheat it will come to bite you in the ass, especially at the beginning. You follow me so far?"
He was all business at this point so I kept my response direct to the point. "So how do I know if information is restricted?"
He scowled, "Mostly you don''t, so be super careful about how you search for information before you get in. Once you are in, just make it clear you are in the tutorial and don''t want restricted information. At that point if they screw you than they screw themselves too. The merchants and such who show up will know better than to make a mistake. Just know that this limits what I can tell you."
I nodded. "Whatever you can, just thanks for the help."
He nodded back. "Always keep in mind: Meaningful risk equals reward. Don''t do dumb shit, but also don''t sit around passively. This keeps you safe because higher leveled people won''t have much reward for going after you but lots of risk if they start something, but it also means that if you start something than you shouldn''t expect to get off for free.
"Also, aliens are people. Even with their advantages, they can be just as dumb as anyone else. Don''t forget that." He made a face before stopping. "I can''t really tell you much more than that about how it all works, but that should be enough to get you through the tutorial."
I nodded before asking a clarifying question. "So will that be a big deal in the tutorial, dealing with aliens?"
He shrugged. "Maybe? Different tutorials are different, so try to get a good one if you can. Something that fits your skills." He waived me off before I could follow up with another question. "You will get more explanation once you are in there, so don''t try to get more from me about it. Remember the first point." He shook his head and continued. "No, where alien stupidity comes in is usually after you get out of the tutorial. The class you choose is a really big deal to the hardcore RPers."
RPers? Role Players? "You mean people take the in-game lore seriously enough to cause fights about it?" I asked.
"You better believe it", came the reply with a knowing nod. "And while upgrading your class can be fairly easy, changing from one path to another is difficult and expensive. Expensive as in, your entry into The Game is cheep in comparison. At least, depending on your level. So pick your path with that in mind."
I took a moment to let it all sink in. My genre of games were never RPGs. Roll Playing Games always had too much of a social element to it; with people came chaos, and with chaos came bad luck. In my experience it was better to control what power you could rather than hope for help from others. It was somewhat ironic, then, that I didn''t make it big in the shooter genera, as individually focused as even the team arenas are, and instead went professional in a MOBA. The term "Multiplayer Online Battle Arena" doesn''t sound like a team sport, but in reality it is one of the most multiplayer role focused types of games that exists. But then, that is the catch: it is role focused. You can be as social or anti-social as you want but, so long as you fulfill your role, you are still a good player. "So then what are the roles, or paths, I need to choose from?"
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"The three you have to choose from are Magic, Superpowers, and Tech." He answered, then turned to focus things down. "Tech usually isn''t treated as being the powerhouse that the other two are, but they have the best guns and money making options. People who pick that path are often meticulous and calculating, but you get the mad scientist types too. You can also find them everywhere, even in areas that are heavily controlled by one of the other two paths. Most who go this direction end up as some sort of builders or crafters, so keep that in mind too." He rolled his eyes before finishing. "They are also the most focused on the statis quo. Afterall; they are builders and crafters and such."
I let everything sink in before answering with a half-smile. "Not a bad direction, it sounds like, but I just can''t see myself going into something that leaves me sitting at a crafting bench all day."
He huffed a laugh before continuing. "At the other end you have the mages. Their whole lore is about using magic to rewrite the fabric of reality, or some such thing. They have some impressive variety and some extreme effects, but can run low on magical stamina and have nothing really unifying them as a group; you know, other then that they all seem to be powered by chaos. There is no real stopping a mage who decides to throw everything they have at you, but that doesn''t stop you from just waiting them out or distracting them with the shiny." He sighed before relaxing back in his seat. "Fair warning, though: I''m not exactly the most objective opinion when it comes to the Arcane Arts. Some of them are ok but, well, some antagonism is expected considering my path."
I narrowed my eyes in consideration. "How much does ''luck'' play a role in what mages can do?" I asked. My experience with "random" chance led me to look for cover if I saw a shooting star; so anything powered by "chaos" would be my natural bane.
He gave a considering noise and waived his hand side to side in an uncertain motion. "Honestly, there isn''t much luck involved for anyone who has the right skills. And every mage does have those skills. Try to do magic without those skills, however..."
His answer told me all I needed to know. "So maybe not my first choice, but I also don''t have to worry about someone triple-critting me with a normal fireball."
His eye roll was friendly but exaggerated. "Your luck isn''t that bad."
I gave him a flat stare...
"Moving on," he spoke, quickly changing the subject. "The Superpowered path is all about individuality. Everyone who takes this path is primarily focused with their own advancement, which can make large groups somewhat rare. You will find more than a few unabashed Supervillains too. We trade off some of the variety that mages get for unending stamina with our discrete powers. A lot of us end up as juggernauts and such in addition to whatever else we focus on. You won''t find a lot of variety in what each of us can do, but by god we will be the absolute best at it." He smiled at me and shrugged, "and yea, that is my path. You can tell by how effortlessly pretty I am now."
I visibly rolled my eyes, but couldn''t help a smile at his joke. "So any warnings I should know about that group? You know, besides the obvious."
"Nope!" He answered with another smile. "Saying that one-dimensional, egocentric powerhouses are exactly that seems redundant."
I gave a friendly eye roll in reply. Anyone who can''t make jokes at their own expense is taking things too seriously.
"The next thing you need to figure out is what it will take to prepare to actually go into The Game. There is a lot to think about when you plan to literally drop off the planet for months at a time." I sighed. This next part was not something I was looking forward to. This was sounding like paperwork.
4. Meeting the Enemy
So apparently getting into The Game and having continuing access to The Game were two different things. For the second all you needed was a pod. For the first you needed to go through a whole procedure with techs and medical professionals standing by and other officials who seemed to be there only so that the government would have a record of who all the new Players would be. The surprising thing about this was that the obvious government oversight didn''t scare away the filthy rich people, though were entering the building by a separate door from the rest of us plebes. The process inside was relatively quick, at least for anything that the government got involved in, where they had me sign some papers saying that I wouldn''t go mad with power and start killing anyone who annoyed me. Then came the tests of identity: IDs, Birth Certificate, fingerprint verification, some sort of eye scanner thing, they even took a DNA sample. They were so thorough that I was surprised they didn''t ask me to turn my head and cough.
But then I was in. I turned the final corner and walked into the polite nesting grounds for dragon sized emus, minus the birds. The interior room looked like an empty warehouse had been prettied up with painted walls but still held the high ceiling and concrete floors. Arranged in a simple grid pattern were rows and isles worth of giant eggs being supported by some glowing organic looking parts surrounding the base. It all looked suitably sci-fi and alien, even if it glowed purple rather than the traditional alien green.
The people in the room, not counting the techs, naturally separated themselves out into three groups. The first and most obvious group were military personnel, mostly in some variation of green and brown cammo. They took up the far wall area, seemingly dividing the room in half by their very presence. The second group consisted of the rich people, most of whom were dressed like they were headed to some high-society party. Their group mingled at the corner of the room farthest from both the military people and where I stood. The last group, standing right by the door where I had entered, consisted of all the rest. Nerds stood next to some sort of woodworker with his belt of tools, who stood next to a college football player in full pads, who stood next to some girl with a tennis racket. I, of course, angled over toward the nerds.
"... and when I pulled out the win in the Space Fighter Pilot tournament the scouts were all over me. One of them asked if I''d like to pilot one of these things for real? And they would pay for it! How could I refuse?" One excited kid answered back toward the group of people who were all in their early twenties or rapidly approaching it. He was one of the younger members of the group and wore the memorabilia of his game. Good for him.
"What about you?" some unseen voice called from within the pack as everyone turned in my direction. "What''s your story that got you here?" a different voice called out, but from the same area.
I shrugged, attempting a friendly smile. "I just figured I''d give this game a try since the pro circuit wasn''t doing it for me anymore."
There were a few nervous laughs, mostly from the older people in the group who likely knew what was going on. "Hey, aren''t you Johnny Max Riker? I know you from Ultimate MOBA and your videos on HoLEy TOLC really saved me with my clan!" A nineteen or twenty year old held out his hand for a shake and my smile got lighter as I obliged. Being recognized for Ultimate MOBA was maybe expected, with me having been professional at it for longer than anybody, but HoLEy TOLC (or "Heroes of Legends and Epics: Team of Online Leagues and Circuits") was something of an embarrassing surprise. The game was a generic MOBA that just refused to die, despite bad management, simply on the merits of having outlasted everything else. It is the kind of game you are ashamed to be good at, but you still put up videos for it because they bring in steady clicks and advertisement revenue.
Another smiling fan stepped forward just after, his hand also raised in greeting. "So what changed, man? In 2001, after the aliens had been around for a couple years, your entire team disappeared into The Game. You stuck around. Rumor had it that you were afraid the pods were mind control devices?"
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I shook my head and clasped his hand in greeting, "Naw, man, I just wasn''t finished playing my games. That was the year Circles of Space Warriors 3 came out and Guns Throughout Time had just hit its high point before it really dropped off. I might be known best for my MOBA play but FPS and other Shooters are, and have always been, my real passion."
A third guy walked up, his glasses making him look nerdier than the others despite his body being more well filled out than the typical skinny nerd build. "So why didn''t I ever see you on You Are Gun? You consistently hit the leader boards on just about every other shooter style game, first or third person. It just seemed weird."
I shook my head. "The VR, man. The wonkey Virtual Reality setup always made me sick to my stomach. I''ve never been able to make that input work. People keep saying it is getting better, but it..."
"Oh look, the fossil finally decided to join all of us at the big kids table," came a familiar voice that interrupted me and forced back several of the others. ''Winner'' Winston Smith was half a head taller than most of the other geeks and looked like he did actual exercise. He was also the reigning top player on Ultimate MOBA and had his team thoroughly humiliated by my split and aggravation tactics in the last tournament. They still pulled out the win but it was much closer than it should have been against my lower rated team.
I held back an eye roll at his aggressive stance, even with him being flanked by several of his teammates. "Are you angry about that last game we played?" He stiffened in response and I continued. "Look, it was all part of the game. You even went on to win everything! Congratulations, by the way. There is no reason to make this an issue."
"You humiliated me! People were watching that match for weeks!" His voice was getting louder and I noticed one of the lab coated technicians heading in our direction flanked by a couple of the army guys.
"Humiliated you? You won! And don''t pretend that the advertisement revenue from that match wasn''t a nice bonus. Only the semi-finals and finals got more hits." I turned and straightened off against him. The worst thing you can do when someone tries to intimidate you is to back down, that just encourages them to be worse. So instead I tried to talk him down. There wasn''t much chance it would work, but at least in would make me be the reasonable one. "Look, it is just a game. There is no reason to be so upset about it."
He scowled. "You can''t just beat someone, humiliate them, and not expect to make enemies. Maybe if you were top dog, then you could get away with it. Everyone expects to loose to number one. But you aren''t. You''re an old has-been who tries to keep his relevance by leaching off the backs of better players careers." Then, in a single moment, his anger cooled to become icy sharp as he stared me down. "Besides: It was never ''just a game''. Not to either one of us."
I was momentarily silenced by his words. He was right about one thing, at least: It wasn''t "just a game" for either one of us. Even so... Humiliation was hard on anyone, but this?
"Sir," the tech spoke to me, holding up a pad like a shield and intervening before things could get more heated, "this section is for the corporate sponsored entrants. Those entering through personal funds are gathered over there." She pointed toward the group of rich people and started escorting me away from the brewing fight. There were a few surprised looks from the surrounding people at her declaration, but nobody objected or blocked our path.
Just before we headed completely out of the area the nerdy kid with the glasses from before caught up with me, the one who had recognized my leaderboard position on multiple games. "Don''t be too upset with him. That near loss really cost him on the bargaining table when the sponsors came about The Game. He almost didn''t make it in." And then he was gone as we made our way toward the other side of the room.
That game was big for me too. Our team''s chances of winning the tournament were nonexistent and there had been talks about closing the franchise entirely. We needed something to show that we were competitive, or at least entertaining. If we hadn''t made certain quotas I would have been in a far worse position than just having a bad place at a bargaining table, I would have been out on the street. I wasn''t going to apologize for fighting back when his team tried to humiliate us in front of the viewing public, and I certainly wasn''t going to apologize for humiliating him in return.
Perhaps this was how most enemies were made: Neither side backing down, even when someone has to be the looser.
5. The Worst of the Best
There was a bit of a commotion stirred up by my crossing the room and what looked to be a welcoming committee of bored rich people were waiting when I arrived. The lead was a woman in her early thirties, followed by a group of hanger-ons, with a vapid queen-bee look about her. She was dressed in expensive looking clothes made of lots of plastics and bright primary colors while her honey-blonde hair was braided together into some elaborate thing that draped across her left shoulder. Beside the woman, with his own entourage that was kept deliberately separate from her people, was a man in his late twenties with a sharp look that he held firm over his narrow nose. His suit was immaculate, a far cry from my own jeans and a hoodie, but cut in such a way that it was hard to tell if it was accentuating his physique or just creating the illusion that he had a physique worth mentioning at all.
"New money?" the lady asked as I approached, not stopping to hear my reply. "It is so good to see people applying themselves these days! That good old entrepreneurial spirit! Just come right here and let Maggie introduce you to the wonders that money can buy!" She tried to usher me to her side, grabbing my arm, but was stopped by the man who placed his hand on my shoulder.
"Now, now. Isn''t it better to introduce ourselves first." The woman huffed but stopped trying to pull me away. "My name is Ralph Balderson; yes, one of those Baldersons. To whom might I have the pleasure of meeting today?" He held out his hand expectantly and I reached for a businesslike shake. It was hard not to raise an eyebrow at his name, ''Balderson''s'' was a string of supermarket/grocery stores that you could find nearly everywhere. This guy wasn''t just rich, he was ''buy his own island for vacations and then never visit'' levels of rich.
"Johnny Max Riker," I replied. I wanted to say more but there really wasn''t anything I could think to say; it isn''t every day that you meet the super rich. I just didn''t have the experience to know how to hold up a conversation with him, considering our different lifestyles.
He nodded along as though my reply were expected before charging forward. "Now, of course, lets not ignore the elephant in the room. We are all quite interested to hear what brings you to our side of the room? Moreover, why did you begin by standing with those... others?" His question was polite but we could all but hear what was behind it. I didn''t look like a rich person so why was I standing here with all the other rich people? If I was a rich person then why stand with the poor people?
Unfortunately I didn''t have a good answer to him. "My career in the gaming industry was slowing down so I decided this was my next step. One of my contacts helped arrange for me to get in immediately so I was a bit rushed in my preparations." I had a momentary thought about leaving it at that, perhaps let them think I was independently wealthy somehow, but changed my mind quickly. Some of the followers had their high-tech phones out and were doubtlessly looking me up as I spoke. Better to be honest and be embarrassed than to hide things and be seen as a liar. "Look, I''m not rich, not like you all. I''m just a working guy who has decent connections."
It took only a moment for my words to sink in. Maggie harumphed and pulled back from me like I was infectious. "It is like that other one, the sir who ''won the lottery''." She made air quotes and made a disgusted face. "What is the point of a person who can''t even live with a decent lifestyle?"
Ralph smiled, though it was a bit more strained and less expectant than previously. "Now lets not get too ahead of ourselves. He may not carry the," he paused as though looking for the right word " ''expectations'' of before, but he certainly must have done something to get himself here."
Before I could say anything he was approached by one of his people who showed him a picture on his phone and whispered something to him. Whatever it was, it caused him to look at me again with a raised eyebrow. "The ''gaming industry'', you said. I didn''t know you worked on that side of the business structure." I could almost see the interest draining away from his face. "It is so sad what has happened with all the upcoming talents, but it is good to see that some of you have made it out."
The woman, who had just been informed about who I was from one of her people, reacted much more harshly and with a shrillness that made it hard to be near her. "SEE!! He is just poor and useless! What is the point of someone like that?"
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The man turned away, heading back somewhere else. He spoke again, but not to me and not with any real hope in his voice. "Now, now. There is no reason to be rude. Perhaps he may have some value later?" He trailed off as he walked away, soon followed by the lady and her minions. There were a few others in the crowd who looked at me for a second before bowing to peer pressure and rushing off.
As for myself, I turned to find somewhere to go and eventually ended up next to a couple of disaffected teenager standing around the outside next to a wall. One was a heavily pierced girl, though not so much as to be grotesque, with died black hair and clothes that were just short of goth. The other was a teenager in an older style suit with crossed arms and wearing a frown. They made an odd pair. Also, they were some of the only ones not actively trying to avoid me or giving me pitying looks after the earlier encounter.
"Rachael Maslow, third child of a rich dynasty you''ve never heard of." Introduced the female of the two with a wave of her hand. Her other had a pad with some sort of database she was scrolling through. "My friend here is Steven Brown, disgraced heir of another couple rich people. Welcome to the worst of the best."
"Shut the fuck up." Steven answered back without any real heat. "We aren''t all that bad off."
She turned her head in an exaggerated eye roll motion. "Johnny here is probably the only one not a rich person in disgrace or one of their ''people''. Might as well share the bad news before he gets his hopes up."
"That''s not," he started before straightening his posture. His arms remained crossed and the frown never left his face. "I will regain my title. This is just one step toward that goal."
"Yeah? And I''m in line to be the Queen of England. I''m a couple hundred spots down but, you know, that could happen too." He made an unhappy growl but didn''t interrupt her. She turned to look back toward me without moving her body from its place. "Look, you seem like a decent guy, at least as far as professional trolls go, so I thought I would warn you what we all are. Keep you from having the wrong type of expectations, you know? So, what do you know about rich people problems? Like super dirty rich people."
I glanced over at her before rolling my eyes. "Either petty junk or ''only'' getting what others would dream of having. There is probably more to it than that, but I''m not rich so I wouldn''t know."
My response got a reaction from both of them. Another angry growl from Steven and an amused snort from Rachael, who then answered back. "Yeah, that''s true for some of them. The thing is that the super hyper rich people in the world stay rich by making investments. There is no way to work hard enough to make a few billion dollars, so you have to make other people do it for you. The thing is that the more money you invest the more efficient your return and the more control you have over the market you''re investing in. So how do you make a dynasty? Give everything to the oldest or the ''best'' kid and leave the rest with a pittance and no real contacts or social capitol. The ''heir and a spare'' rules apply. So that''s what we all are: the third children and displaced heirs that don''t have a chance."
She then turned back to her friend. "And even if we do make it big in The Game, nothing will change. We are the disposable children sent in to test if ''alien virtual reality'' might be suitable and beneficial for the children who actually matter." She turned to look back toward me and continued. "Even if you do hold to the idea that rich people are some sort of higher being, and the people in this room make a strong argument against that belief, we are all the worst of the best; the failures who don''t matter anymore. And that knowledge, whether we want to admit it or not, changes us. In the best case we make peace with it and try to do the best with the hand we are delt." She waived her hand in demonstration as she poke. "In the worst we hold onto empty hopes and never live life because we are trying for something that will never happen." She pointed her thumb back at her friend.
"Look, I get it," Steven answered back with a sigh. "You want me to live my life for what is best for me and not my family. But that just isn''t who I am. I might not be willing to go as far as some," he nodded toward the pair of popular people making their way toward a threesome of pods that looked far more impressive than the rest, "but, so long as there is a chance, I''ve got to do what is best for the family." Then his voice took on a more determined tone. "I will not be the forgotten child, the sacrificed sibling, the left-overs." His voice began to trail off at the end.
There were a few moments of silence and I thought about walking off.
Before I did, though, he broke the silence. "What I want to know is why you are talking with this other guy?" He motioned in my direction as he spoke. "Usually you just tell randoms to ''fuck off''."
"Well first, he seems to be an ok guy from what I can find online." That prompted a disbelieving eye roll so she continued quickly. Her first explanation had fooled no one. "Also having him over here means that the crowds will part for him when they call him up to his pod." She let out an evil grin. "I want to see the look on the debutants faces when they realize that the most expensive pod is going to the guy in the hoodie."
6. Entering The Game
It took a moment for Rachael''s words to sink in: "I want to see the look on the debutants faces when they realize that the most expensive pod is going to the guy in the hoodie." My first thought was to wonder what Greg was thinking to buy such an expensive piece of equipment on my behalf. If several hundred thousand was out of my price range than I had no idea what this would cost. The two from earlier were facing off around it and I was not looking forward to coming between them.
"So, uh hypothetically, what would be the difference between between the basic pods and the more expensive ones?" I asked. "Pretend like I only signed up for this a week ago and have been spending that time focused on more immediate concerns."
The two turned to stare at me, even pulling away from their ''disaffected teenager'' wall lean to do it.
Steven spoke first with a disbelieving tone, before being cut off. "You can''t possibly expect me to believe..."
"Holy shit, how did that happen?" Her outburst drew a few eyes but things settled down when she moved back toward the wall, despite her manic grin.
"I wasn''t kidding about getting signed up a week ago and there is a surprising amount you need to do when you expect to disappear for months at a time. I had to make sure that people didn''t think I had died; like my family, friends, and my landlord. I had to quit my job, deal with irate teammates, and end some of my side projects. And when I wasn''t doing all of that I figured my time was best spent figuring out how the laws and such would differ with me becoming a Player. I had literally zero time to look up stuff like comparative pod characteristics and just left those details to my friend who is already a Player."
Steven spoke up before his more excited friend could run off with the conversation. I got the feeling like he was just happy for the change of subject. "The difference is in the degree of connectivity between here and the virtual world, or whatever it is. The basic pods will get you in and out, but that''s about it while the ones the military uses can transfer enough data to simulate a telephone or text message system. Those are arranged at the far side of the room and the middle while the more expensive ones are farther to the left. The cheapest ones on our side of the room have enough extra bandwidth to keep more of a constant watch over what is happening on the other side. It is a persistent world, and all that."
The near goth girl decided this would be a good time to chime in. "Yeah, you don''t want to hop in your pod, go unconscious on this side, only to have someone gank your insensate body. Uh, for some of us here that is more of a concern than for others." She looked around the room pointedly.
The other teenager nodded. "Right, it is an issue. But that only accounts for so much. Once you have enough bandwidth for a full security system, including cameras, that utility is pretty much expended. The other thing it supposedly does is allow for you to bring back certain advantages from in game. You know, super strength and magic and such. Apparently you still need to earn it and pay for it in game, but your pod sets the limits on your maximums."
I listened to his explanation before asking my next question. "I''m not sure I need all that. Even the basic model that you rich people use is more than enough. How worried should I be that my friend is trying to set me up with a debt I can''t pay off?"
Steven seemed to be considering my question but Rachael answered first. "Oh, you should be worried all right, but not because of that. Those two people up there in the front, the ones you talked to before, they come from some of the richest families on the planet. I guarantee you that they got the best equipment that human money could buy. The fact that yours is so much better means that it is alien manufactured, and that means that some E.T. is trying to make something happen." She gave a manic grin. "I''m not even in The Game yet and I''ve uncovered my first alien conspiracy!"
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The other teenager eyed both of us dubiously. "Is this safe? Should we be worried about being caught in the crossfire of whatever is happening."
"Oh, lighten up. You wanted to make a name for yourself, what better way than to get involved with something really big like this?"
"Yeah, but..." He didn''t finish but just trailed off.
I sighed, rubbing my left temple to ease the oncoming headache. "Look, I don''t know about all this. I just wanted to play The Game, maybe get some superpowers. The end of my plans were to participate in the Players League for some online games. I never considered joining The Game before because everyone who did just disappeared inside it and was barely ever seen again. I like gaming, but one game always and forever sounds boring. And whatever this is?" I nodded toward the capsule at the front of the room, "it basically requires me to stay in the game for an extremely long time and do extremely well for it to be a meaningful investment. And I don''t even know why. So excuse me if I''m freaking out a little bit here."
The two of them went quiet for the moment. I took a deep breath and watched the technicians start moving around in a way that made me think we would be starting soon.
Steven broke the silence. "Look guy, I know what pressure is like. You''ve just got to keep going and tell yourself that it will all be worth it in the end. Just try not to loose yourself while doing it."
"Well you both already know what my advice would be." Rachael spoke with conviction. "Just fuck ''em. Do what you want to do and if that works out, great! But if not, well it isn''t like they ever asked your opinion on things so what does it matter?"
I barely kept myself from laughing in response. I was almost half again their ages, and here they were trying to comfort me about something that was probably a good thing. The point at which my ''worry'' starts to turn into ''angst'', enough that teenagers try to help calm me down, that is the point when I have to seriously reevaluate how I''m approaching things. I smiled at my own childishness and started focusing on what I needed to do next. The smile turned dangerous.
Afterall, what other choice did I have? Was I going to just decide to not enter the game? There was no way that I would run from a challenge like this.
The girl beside me noticed my face and dropped her nonchalance for the first time since I had met her. "What is it?" she asked, somewhat quietly.
I glanced at both of the kids beside me before answering. "Watch this."
The technicians were visibly trying to get people''s attention and they were standing next to my pod. Start with the richest person and move their way down seemed like a good way of keeping spoiled kids happy. Still, I had a place to be and it wasn''t next to these kids watching from the sideline. I took several steps forward, straightened my back and squared my shoulders, and stopped only moments before running into the first person standing between me and my destiny.
"MOVE." I commanded, and the younger person jumped aside like they had been stung. Only then did they turn to look at me with a confused look. His suit was well pressed and well fitted, even if it was one of the cheaper ones in the room; but it made my casual clothes look dumpy in comparison.
The lead technician, a balding man who may have been the shortest person in the room, chose that moment to call out my name in a surprisingly strong voice. "Johnny Max Riker, could you please step forward." There was a moment of confusion in the crowd as everyone was looking around for who that mystery person could be. My name, mentioned before, had been completely forgotten.
I stared straight into the eyes of the child standing before me, raised my hand high, and called out. "Here!" The look on his face as he glanced at the stage and then myself was priceless. His demeanor went from confusion sprouting into anger and immediately flipped to embarrassed fear slipping into a completely different type of confusion. An isle opened up for me and I walked forward with purpose.
Almost as entertaining were the looks on the two rich kids up front. Granted, they were both older than me, but their immaturity before had left an impression on me about their mental ages. Maggie, whose last name I never got, stood there slack jawed as her hands frantically tried to smooth down her already flawless attire. Ralph Balderson had a look of baffled confusion on his face that only morphed into victory as I approached the technicians to receive any last minute instructions. "See, I told you so." I heard him whisper to his counterpart.
The pod opened up at the center to reveal a strange ergonomic chair that I found molded to my body when I sat in it. The last thing I saw as it closed around me were the eyes of every person in the room who had line of sight. Immediately I let out a silent groan and collapsed bonelessly into the chair.
Even since my very first professional game, nothing had changed. Fake it till you make it works, but I still hate publicity stunts.
7. Testing Your Character
A few seconds after the pod closed the air suddenly seemed colder, but it was the type of cold that never really penetrated beyond the skin. I don''t know how long it lasted but the next thing I felt was like I was drifting off into a dream, except the world around me was far more solid than the murky fluidity of your average dream. It took me embarrassingly long to realize that I was in the game and I could move around.
The chair I was in was completely different than before, but was still comfortable. The rest of the room was pure white with no doors or other obvious exits. The room itself was fairly large, at least, enough for a hockey rink to fit comfortably or more. The only other thing in the room was a robot that looked suitably sci-fi. The top half had a torso, overly long arms, and a head; all coated in futuristic silver; while the bottom half had a set of tank treads instead of legs. It made the thing short but solid looking.
"Welcome to the basic analysis center for incoming participants. Would you like an explanation for what we will be doing today?" The voice sounded artificial and strangely reverberant, so it took me a moment to realize that it was the robot speaking. That might have been obvious, since it was the only thing in the room, but that seemed off since the sound didn''t bounce right and it had no mouth.
"Sure, what all can you tell me." I replied while looking around.
"The first stage will consist of determining your most likely stats through various tests of ability. Please attempt to the fullest of your ability, as it will determine your character''s starting abilities." The words were flat and entirely without emotion, like the robot had words and basic inflections for those words but no thought of subtext or other nonverbals to mix in.
"Why do you need to do that, shouldn''t you just be able to standardize or redistribute stats like in any other game?" I asked.
"This is not a game."
"Then why do you need to do this?"
"To prepare you for gaming." it answered unhelpfully
"So I haven''t entered The Game yet?"
"That is incorrect, you are currently in The Game."
"But didn''t you just say that this isn''t part of a game?"
"Correct."
"But we are in The Game."
"Correct."
"So is gaming part of The Game?" I asked.
"Correct."
"But no game?"
"Correct."
I took a few more seconds to try to wrap my head the computer''s stubbornness before shelving it for later. "I''m not awake enough for this. Look, just let me know about the first test."
A weight machine appeared in front of me and I groaned in discontentment. I hadn''t lifted weights since high school and didn''t miss the experience.
Hopefully everything would go smoothly from here on out and I could get this over with.
Tutorial System Log: Preliminary assessment of candidate "Johnny Max Riker". No Aliases detected. Relevant interactions included.
"Beginning second test."
"So a smokey room? What is this supposed to test?"
"This test measures one''s resistance to adverse effects."
"I mean, it is just smoke, there isn''t anything too bad about that."
"The smoke is laced with trace amounts of poison."
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"Wait! Are you poisoning me? Am I going to be ok?"
"Elevated heartrate and adrenal levels detected. Test has concluded."
"Uh, is that it?"
"Moving to next test."
"Look, I tripped, that shouldn''t count."
"Test has concluded."
"You just suddenly yelled at me to run while I was looking at the weight machine. It took a few minutes to clear out the smoke and I thought I had time. It has some funky mechanisms that I was trying to figure out. I didn''t even get to run before you called the test completed."
"Test has concluded."
"Can you say anything other than that?"
"Beginning next test."
"Wait, is it over already?"
"Dexterity cannot exceed five times the Agility portion of Speed. Threshold met."
"But wait, didn''t I fail the Agility test when I tripped?"
"Correct."
"Yeah, at this point that sounds about right..."
"Math tests, really?"
"Affirmative. This will test learning and focus abilities."
"But do we have to start at simple addition? What is even the point of this?"
"Focus limit achieved, continuing test to determine learning limit."
"... and what type of math do I have to do to reach the limit on the ''Learning'' portion of my ''Mental stat'', due to the stupidly low score you are giving me on ''Focus''."
"Simple Subtraction."
"You know what, robot. Fuck you too."
"Robot, why are you coming at me with a knife?"
"Research indicates that this is an acceptable way to test one''s Healing ability."
"What, maybe if I had superpowers or something, but normal people don''t just get stabbed on a daily basis."
"Test will commence."
"Nope nope nope nope. Please stop chasing me with that knife."
"Test will commence."
"Ok, so you finally caught me. I''m too exhausted to run anymore, lets just get it over with."
"A one half inch incision on your arm will suffice."
" Wait, that''s it?"
"Affirmative. Healing capabilities recorded. Test has concluded.
"Great, glad that''s over with. What is next."
"Stamina testing commences. Please run for as long as you can without stopping."
"uuuuggggg"
"Scanning public records for professional and semi-professional history. ... Scanning complete. Job assessment: Reality TV Star."
"Wait, that can''t be right, I''m a professional video gamer, one of the best in the world. That has to count for something!"
"No such category exists."
"But I''m like, fighting wars inside the games. Maybe that is some sort of simulated combat?"
"No significant VR use exists. Simulated combat threshold of experience not reached."
"The game ''You Are Gun'' will be the death of me, even now. What about leadership experience? I directed a lot of teams through small group tactics. Maybe that fits in somewhere?"
"No army command exists. No other professional leadership experience exists within a recognized profession."
"So wait, let me get this straight: Because ''professional gamer'' isn''t a recognized job I can''t have leadership experience in it?"
"Correct."
"Oh, come on, there has to be something else. Maybe if you look further back in my history?"
"Correct. One new job assessment option has been found. Job assessment: High-school Slacker/Delinquent."
"You know what, Reality TV Star is sounding better already."
"Please review your starting class options. Options based on job assessment and activities within that profession."
"Wait, really? Why do these all suck?"
"All classes are viable and numerically equivalent in power given that they are used to their fullest extent. The exceptions are the ''Basic'' Classes, which can be readily evolved given sufficient resources."
"Right. But using most of these classes ''to their fullest extent'' sounds like I would need to go around kicking puppies and stealing candy from babies."
"Incorrect, no animal cruelty or theft is required."
"Yeah, but just look at the class names: ''True Monster'', ''Knife In The Back'', ''Anger Manipulator Psion''. And the descriptions are even worse. Half of it seems to stem from me tilting my opponents in multiplayer games, the rest from playing solo in team games with jerks who aren''t team players. I don''t want to start out with an evil class. I doubt I could use them ''to their fullest extent'' anyway."
"All classes can be used in a variety of manners."
"Right, I guess the generic ''Computer Operator'' it is then."
"So I finished early, right."
"That is correct."
"And I don''t need to leave until the maximum time has passed."
"No requirement or expectation to leave the preliminary testing facility exists."
"And anything I find out in here won''t count against me in the rest of the tutorial? Right?"
"That is correct."
"Hu... Well in that case I have a few questions to get some clarification on."
Session flagged for review: Anomalous results detected. Tampering suspected. Relevant interactions for review included.
Results of session review: Tampering confirmed: Retries are normally allowed for stat estimation portion, randomized stat tests were corrupted to a preset group of options, tests were given unreasonable failure criteria, "Video Gamer" is a recognized profession, "Combat Strategist" profession covers all types of simulated combat and is a recognized profession, leadership experience can be assessed through hobbyist use, early exit strongly encouraged to prepare for the next portion of the Tutorial.
Addendum: Core System refused to validate results, Class System used as vector of attack, Tutorial System corrupted.
Recommended action: Character encryption until handoff to Core System. Implemented; Class System partial quarantine. Implemented; Tutorial System reboot. Implemented; Contact enforcers to address high level Player''s interference. Could not be completed.
Further results: Rare stat detected: Negative Luck.
8. Choose Your Path
So that didn''t go well. It probably could have gone worse, though. It definitely could have gone worse. Fortunately the bot gave me a lot of information, including the beginnings of a plan on how to fix things. Not that it intended to give me that information, but figuring out systems is par for the course. Just don''t ask anything philosophical or expect the runaround. I still don''t understand the whole "gaming, game, game" thing I tried asking about before.
I walked through a maze of corridors. Normally this would take hours of exploration to find what you needed and get where you needed to go, but I had a map. I''m not completely sure what the point of this confusing setup is, but my best guess is that it has to do with planning and impulse control? The place where we all entered had a lot of accommodations, restaurants and hotels, but we were only given limited currency to prepare for the next set of challenges. I could easily see some rich kid thinking that creature comforts were more important than weapons. I hadn''t made that mistake.
Instead I had bought a gun with extra ammo, a pair of bracers, and all the staples fantasy adventurers supposedly need for their first mission. That included a backpack, some rations, a self filling water-bottle, some rope, a bedroll, a fire starter, and a folding shovel. No ten foot pole, unfortunately. I stuffed most of it in my hammer space, and almost questioned buying the backpack except that it was cheep and sturdy so might be useful. Most of my starting cash went into buying my weapon and the bracers, in typical gaming fashion. I also bought some hiking boots and a leather jacket that looked tough enough to offer some protection, just in case. Unfortunately my credits were based off my level so I didn''t have enough to buy some of the fun energy weapons or other high-tech offerings. I did splurge on the alien water bottle that seemed to pull the water directly out of the air, but that was all I could afford.
Now I just needed to find a portal to the main part of the Tutorial, and maybe even a group to challenge it with. A lot of portals were filled and closed, due to the time limit, but those didn''t interest me anyway. By asking enough questions I had learned that, while many had secondary objectives, every single portal had the same primary objective: Survive. Your tutorial run ended when you died and not before. The secondary objectives, what each portal was actually labeled for, could help; but ultimately the end goal was the same. A "Construction Worker" portal would have you have you building defenses, then you would try to survive. A "Social Ball" portal would have you convincing other people to let you survive at their expense. Nothing told people that "not dying" was the tutorial goal and so people flocked away from the pure combat tutorials thinking they could avoid death or major injury. I, however, needed a pure combat portal. Pure combat was the closest analogy to the simulated combat of video games that I could expect to get, and it wasn''t like I had any other relevant skills to pull from.
I thought that finding a group this close to deadline would be difficult, especially one that would accept me despite my level, but then I saw her. It was the nerdiest thing I had ever seen with my own eyes, and it was beautiful. Some girl had dressed herself up like an honest-to-god magical girl, complete with floating sparkles surrounding her and a pink and white dress. She looked mostly asian but was tall enough that I wondered if she might have a mixed heritage. Then I noticed that next to her was a superhero looking guy with a cape and there was also a guy who was covered in glowing cybernetics with a full robot hand that went up to the elbow. There was a guy in a fur suit and a stern looking girl with a whip. The more I looked the weirder the people in the group seemed, maybe even weird enough to take in a low leveled guy like me? I approached the one who seemed to be in charge, the superhero dressed in blue and gold, to start up a conversation. He had a heroic physique, a heroic jawline, and a less than heroic mullet for his hair; but it all came together decently enough.
"Hey there, you have room for one more?" I asked, nodding toward the group.
"I like the whole ''mad max'' thing you got going there," he said, nodding toward my getup. "The more the merrier, I say. You got here just in time, we were going to head on in."
"Mad Max?" I asked, I didn''t think I looked that cobbled together.
He smiled and waved his hand at me. "That weird eye-piece looks super high-tech. Combine it with the leather jacket, boots and jeans and you could be a modern guy with a single trick. But then you offset it with the archaic bracers, the gun, and the traveling backpack..." I glanced at myself again. Ok, so maybe I was a bit of a cobbled together mess. "What you really need now are some giant shoulder pads and a metal chain to complete the look. Or a baseball bat with spikes through it, but that might be too much."
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"Maybe," I hedged, "but there really isn''t enough time to do more shopping."
He made a considering noise but was called away before he could say anything more. As for myself, I wondered off toward the group until I ended up next to the guy with the cybernetic arm.
"Nice eyepiece," he commented after a minute of silence, nodding toward it. The thing looked like a hearing aid merged with a see through eye-patch, but high-tech. "what does it do?"
I saw no real point in hiding it, "It connects to a high-tech computer." I said, then continued. "Nice arm."
"It lets me build stuff out of scrap." he replied. There were a few seconds of silence between us before we both seemed to mutually accept each other''s presence. "Donnie Bravet. Mechanical Constructor. Level 6." He spoke in introduction. "My hand lets me build stuff and I got downloaded into my brain the knowhow to build better stuff."
"Johnny Max Riker. Computer Operator. Level 1." I answered as his eyebrow started to rise. "My class is all about using my computer to control stuff, but I use the eyepiece as a peripheral because the implant has funny effects on people''s personalities." He gave me a funny look and seemed like he, the half cyborg, was going to say something, but I jumped back in before he could. "I''m not against getting my character all souped up, I just don''t want it to screw up my decision making process."
"What do you mean by ''funny effects'' on their personalities? And how do you know?" he asked, somewhat defensively and somewhat nervously.
"I asked the computer in the first room." I explained. "Apparently having a computer hooked directly into your brain that counts up all the odds of everything makes people more likely to make decisions based on those odds; becoming more cautious and calculating no matter what happens. I doubt it is something you need to worry about."
He nodded, visibly relaxing. "So is your class any good?" he asked.
I shrugged. "It is hard to say yet. I need more things for my computer to connect with to get any real use out of it. So far it is about as useful as a good cellphone, but everyone has one of those. Also, my level is really low, I got screwed over by bad luck."
"You aren''t kidding," he said with a nod of his head. "The average is supposed to be level 5. I didn''t know you could start out as low as you did."
"You know stuff like the average level?" I asked. "Aren''t Players supposed to keep stuff secret from civilians?"
He wobbled his hand side to side. "That is mostly about not unduly influencing people getting in; unfair advantage or forcing them on a certain path type of stuff. At least that''s how I was told it was. It''s mostly about protecting the new players."
"You think there is something more to it than that?" I asked conspiratorially.
He took a few seconds, then seemed to change his mind. "Heck if I know. I guess we''ll find out about it soon enough."
I nodded in acceptance, deciding to change the subject. "So maybe you can help me out. What should I look forward to when I level up. All I got at level 1 was a computer shoved into hammer-space and an attempt at shoving one inside my head."
He smiled excitedly. "It''s super cool. I mean, I was good at building stuff before, but now I can just grab some materials and just know how I can break it down and use it for something new. That''s probably not what your getting at, though." He shrugged before continuing "It''s all pretty simple. You get some points and a bunch of options, mostly related to your class. Your class gives you free points that give you free stuff, but most of those have to be spent on your Path. That''s tech for both of us. The rest, really depends on what you have access to. You want more tech, you need to have the tech. Stuff like that. I''m pretty sure someone is selling whatever you might want. Stuff you buy with points is important, they become part of your character so you get to keep them if you die; and I''m pretty sure dying happens a lot. Also, if you have a good enough pod, they become options..."
Wow, what a surprisingly helpful info dump. "So what did you have to do to start out with such a high level? Is it something I can do?"
"That?" he asked, seemingly somewhat surprised, "It is based on your highest starting stats. My Mind stat, both aspects of it, are above average and high enough to increase my starting level. Why? What type of stats did it give you?"
I sighed. "1''s and 5''s across the board. Though I think the system finally had mercy on me to bump them all up to 10." He gave me a look, "And yeah, I know I shouldn''t be able to stand or walk or, I don''t know, breathe with stats that low. I''m just ''lucky'' I guess." I raised my hands in a ''what are you going to do'' type gesture.
"Yeah, good luck was that," he answered back with an eye roll.
We didn''t get anymore time to talk as the superhero yelled out loudly to get people''s attention and started ushering everyone into the portal.
9. Take Me To Your Leader
The other side of the portal contained a large area of empty grass surrounded by trees, a concrete building built in a squat square, and two annoyed groups of people. Apparently we weren''t the only ones to pick this Tutorial track and the two groups styles did not mesh well. Our group was a bunch of nerds with cool abilities that might help out in a fight. The other group looked like paramilitary mobsters setting up for a war. They were also in the middle of an argument.
"But we can help!" called forth our own, personal caped crusader. "There is no reason to brush us off like this. Our group is larger than yours anyway!"
"And I''m telling you that there is nothing to talk about until the rest of everybody gets here! Just hold your horses and sit tight. It won''t be that long." If his group looked paramilitary, the leader looked current military. A crew cut, square jaw, no-nonsense demeanor, and an "at ease" stance gave that clear impression. At the same time he wore a heavy trench coat and a heavy beret that covered most of his head. On second look, everyone in their group wore something similar. Again, "paramilitary mobsters" was the first description that came to mind.
"There was nobody left! Everybody was either already in a portal or rushing into one! We left with less than five minutes on the clock, and it took us at least four to get ourselves though the portal!" The leader of our geek group was getting more and more upset as time was passing. It seemed he didn''t take well to being ignored. I could see the power games, though: Military guy was cementing himself as the true leader by presenting himself as the one in control and our guy as lacking even self control.
I watched their back and forth silently. Even if I wanted to, which I didn''t quite yet, there was nothing I could do to change the situation. All my interference would do was make it look like I wanted to be in charge, and why would anyone follow me? Furthermore I didn''t know either of them well enough to say who would do the job better. Sure, one of them was kind of acting like a jerk, but the other was falling for it way too easily. At least the jerk looked like he had actual fighting experience to fall back on.
Suddenly an entire group of people appeared with a strange "whooshing" sound. They were all huddled together in a group and looked somewhat tribal, with some of them carrying actual spears and metal shields. Something about them ticked something in my brain; their features were all similar enough that they could be an extended family but something was off about them that I couldn''t quite put to words. I could insert a joke here about my lack of experience with "human anatomy", but that would be hitting a bit low considering my current group. Also, please don''t judge me for my lack of experience, I had a full time job to focus on.
Others seemed to be making observations of their own, and proved to be better at identifying what seemed unusual about the people. "They look like a big family group, how did they all get in the game at once?" "There are children with them, and even some really old people." "Their hair isn''t all black, there is a blue tinge to it. Also their limbs are too short for their body." "Not just their hair, their body is a little bit blue too. Is that some sort of makeup or skin care treatment?" "One of them said something to the others. It sounded weird but I could understand it. He said to ''wait''." "What''s going on here? How did so many people show up at once?"
Everyone was surprised but generally cautious until somebody said the magic words that changed everything: "Guys, I think they might be aliens! Like, real life aliens!"
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Immediately the entire air of caution was gone. It was replaced by a level of excitement that visibly intimidated the newcomers. People started running toward the tribe and trying to make "first contact" or some such. There were more than a few people yelling out "We come in peace!" and someone actually yelled out "Welcome from the Earthlings, hailing from the third planet of Sol!" The only thing that kept the advancing nerds back was the number of spears currently pointing in their direction.
Superhero guy came to the rescue, redeeming his position as a leader by herding back the gaggle of geeks and keeping the situation from getting out of control. He then greeted and then went over to talk with the alien leader some distance away where they could have some privacy. Military guy headed over as well, following the other two, and there was something of a three-way conference that started between them.
Donnie, with his robot arm, stepped up next to me. "What do you think will come of that?" He nodded toward the leaders of the various groups as their reactions became more animated. Military guy had said something that had put the others on the backfoot. Superhero seemed to be the more upset of the two others, but the tribal guy responded by lifting his spear rather than leaning on it as he had been before. There was a certain tension building between the three of them. Thankfully none of them seemed to want to escalate to violence, though their individual reactions were quite telling.
I answered immediately, not really needing time to think about it. "The gangster is going to be in charge. The aliens might mix with us nerds, assuming that we don''t scare them off, but both our groups will keep some distance from the trench coat mafia."
"That''s..." he began, looking more closely at the group of leaders. "Is that a good thing?"
I shrugged. "It really depends on how good a leader he ends up being. He seems to have some experience but the way he uses it makes it hard to trust him."
"Why him though? Wouldn''t Mack be a pretty good option?" It took me a moment to realize he was talking about superhero dude. It''s good to finally have a name to go with the muscles.
I shook my head in consideration. "Our guy lacks experience but at least he isn''t completely out of his depth like the tribal leader." I explained. "Look how he isn''t really interacting with the two except to stand his ground. At least he is hiding it well."
"So who would make the better leader, you think?" he asked back.
I shrugged again. "I guess it depends on what you are looking for in a leader. Mack seems to react fairly quickly and easily but lacks experience and advanced social skills. Alien dude has the charisma and poise but is timid and obviously lacks experience in this sort of situation. Meanwhile our soon-to-be leader wields his power like a club and makes enemies but seems to understand and be ready for the situation better than any of us." I waived toward the small group in the distance, "Who do you think is best?"
"That''s..." he started, but trailed off and never finished. We remained like that, silent, until after the deliberations had ended.
The military guy headed over toward our group, followed by an unhappy superhero, looked us over harshly and spoke. "My name is General Julius D. Kendrick. I''ll be leading this operation against the enemy forces. Anyone who has combat skills, experience, or abilities; come see me. I''ll figure out where to fit you into the defenses." Then he turned and walked off without another word.
Our group''s leader stepped up next with some obvious discomfort. "We''ll make sure to get through this together. Let me know if you are worried about anything and we''ll work through it. I also talked with the Umezil leader and he is fine with you all meeting with his people, just try to be chill about it. They know less about outsiders or even aliens than we do, so try not to spook them. Are there any questions?"
Apparently there were more questions, but he quickly got pulled away to deal with some emergency or another and was gone.
In the distance the tribal leader looked out over all three groups, his face deepened with a scowl.
10. Dead Weight
After a few words with Donnie we went off to see the General Kendrick and I began the ordeal of trying to convince him I wasn''t useless to the defenses. He and his group had taken over the ground level of the bunker, which apparently had more than a few basement levels, and turned it into their own base of operations.
"Name, level, real world combat experience, and any combat upgrades you got through your class?" He ordered. One of the others sat nearby, ready to write everything down. Off to the side the others in his group watched on with varying levels of interest and professionalism. Getting a closer look at the group revealed that only a third of them moved with military immediacy. The second third seemed to be experts of various kinds, professional but not conditioned to jump first and look later, while the rest looked like they only had enough training to not get in the way and were just along for the ride. It was hard to tell before this, though, because the common outfits made them all blend together.
Well, I might as well get this over with. "My name is Johnny Max Riker and I''m level 1. And before you ask, I don''t know how that happened either. From what I understand about level scaling, it shouldn''t be possible. As for fighting know-how: I have real world experience with various high level combat simulators at a professional level, both in training and demonstrations of skill. As for in here: my class didn''t give me anything, but I have a gun." I patted the holstered weapon at my side to draw attention to it.
He raised an eyebrow at my level and looked consideringly at me when I recounted my job experience in as diplomatic a way as possible. Then one of the others nearby spoke up. He was sitting at a nearby laptop, though he remained unobtrusive otherwise. "I found him. He has a career with video games, decently long too, but nothing designed for military or paramilitary use. No license to carry or archived weapon background checks in the states that hold that type of information. Nothing indicating martial arts or other combat training. He doesn''t even have a history of violence on record." Well this was certainly the first time I got looked down on for not trying to murder people for petty offenses.
He waved me away and turned toward my friend, leaving me with one last order. "Go talk to Brown. I have no use for you."
I headed off to the side and was directed to the aforementioned Brown. He looked around with a manic glint in his eye that was barely concealed, and at first I thought it was directed at me. It was a disturbing thought. Then I realized that this was just how he looked and his mania wasn''t so finely aimed that I would be anything other than collateral damage. That was even more disturbing a thought. At the very least he came across as much more personable than the other guy did. "I''m Brown, or ''Caps'' if you want my callsign. I''m in charge of the rear of the ''formation''. Between you and me, I think the ''good general'' just wants me as far from him as possible, but I''ve still got enough pull with the non-grunts to be second in command. You don''t look too bad, what''s your deal."
I relaxed, mirroring his posture and letting out a very real groan of annoyance. "I got screwed over by the system and only given one level, so I don''t have any fancy toys to play with. It shouldn''t even be possible, but whatever. I also never tried to murder someone outside this Game, or really had a reason to try, so they labeled me as ''combat incapable'' and sent me to you. I do have video gaming experience though, professional level, so at least I have the right mindset and know what not to do with a gun."
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"Shooter?" he asked, then continued when I nodded. "Right. I would be more impressed if you had something bigger than a 9mil pop-gun. It''s good for practice, and you really should do that before you get into real combat, but not much else. We are going up against some sort of alien monsters here. The robot by the door said it was a ''light scout unit'', but what is light for an alien army inside The Game is probably heavy infantry level to us."
I growled in frustration. "Look, you''ve all got all sorts of weapons, I saw one person with half a dozen of them laid out in a row. Can''t you let a guy borrow one to help keep all of us alive?"
He smiled appreciatively, the glint not leaving his eye. "Heh, Trigger is a hoot. Don''t let him know you want to take one of his babies. He gets real possessive about that sort of thing." Then his smile was gone. "But, as for your idea..."
Suddenly, and very much without warning, Caps reached in his trench coat and tossed a pineapple grenade straight at my chest. I nearly fumbled the grab but held onto it despite being completely caught by surprise. My surprise only grew when, before I could say anything about his action, the explosive seemed to fade into nothing. He then reached back into his jacket and pulled out another grenade, presumably the same one as before. I wasn''t exactly mad, he hadn''t pulled the pin and I had noticed that detail right away, but it still shook me up a bit. "Yeah, we tried it. That happens with everything. It made Trigger happy, not having to share and all, but Spooks was right pissed. It also left some of the VIPs in our group without too many options."
"Yeah, I noticed them," I said, deciding to broach the subject. "Some of the people look less combat capable than I do. And I''m level 1 without your imposing trench coats or anything."
His eyes honed in on me. "What can I say. The gig pays well. I get my own pod, one better than what the military uses for their grunts, and all I have to do is try to keep some pansies alive through at least a round or two of the Tutorial. What did you have to do to get in, sell your left kidney?"
"Naw, I just was friends with someone who already got in. I have to pay him back for the pod, but I''ll have better options for cash after getting in anyway." I waved away his question.
He responded with a dismissive wave. "Let me introduce you to craps sometime, if he ever makes it in. You gamblers should stick together. I''ve heard about those loan sharks, their money comes with... conditions..." His words didn''t give me feelings of comfort, but it was his eyes that really worried me. The mania completely drained as he spoke and he got still as a post. It was as though every fiber of his being was saying that, crazy he may be, but not that crazy.
"Yeah," I answered without a lot of force behind my words, "I looked over things and nothing he wanted seemed too bad. But, you know..." I stopped at that. This was an issue I would have to deal with later, even if the fear of it seemed to keep growing.
He nodded, accepting my change of subject for what it was. "Look, I''ll level with you: You''re dead weight. But," he interjected before I could say anything, "you aren''t as bad as the VIPs or the people who brought freaking adolescents into a firefight. And that isn''t even mentioning the old people or the pre-teens. At least you have a good head on your shoulders, enough for me to trust you won''t do any dumb shit."
"So what? I''m dead weight but not as bad as everyone else?" I wasn''t sure if I should be offended at the insult or appreciative that it wasn''t worse.
"See what you don''t get is that dead weight is useful too. Every one of us is, to some degree: Dead weight and useful. Dead weight makes walls, and my job is to wall off the back of our formation so that the big shots can kill everything at the front. Half your group of weebs I expect to run out and try to get themselves killed for glory, and the rest to piss yourselves when the first person falls; but even broken stones can be thrown at the enemy till their formation cracks and glory hounds die so the rest of us don''t have to." His manic smile was back in all its glory as he held out his hand in an invitation. "So how do you feel about being dead weight?" he asked.
I grasped his arm in acceptance. "It''s better than being dead."
11. Ready for Battle
Guns are loud. Like, really really loud. It is something you don''t understand till you feel the ringing in your ears and the physical force as the sound changes the feel of the air you are breathing. At this point I''m really glad that I got some experience with my weapon before the battle, even if I ended up running through about half my ammo. The biggest thing I learned, though, was how to aim and how to fail at aiming. Once I learned the sights, how slightly off they appeared to be, I could hit precisely every time; so long as I kept my weapon anchored onto something solid. Standing wasn''t too bad, but moving was a no-go for anything at any real range. In a related note, predictable bullet sway as you move is crappy programming by lazy developers.
At least I didn''t feel weird about what I was doing. Not long after I started a bunch of others decided to practice as well with our various abilities and it became a thing. Then a few of the paramilitary guys from the first group decided to "show us how it''s done". Trigger was an ok guy, mostly. He really loves guns and wants everyone else to love them too, just don''t try to touch his guns. Apparently he had been ordered not to kill any of us, which seemed to be the only thing that saved a particularly handsy nerd from anything more than a punch to the side of the head.
Probably the most mind-twistingly weird thing was when someone set up a swinging chunk of wood to serve as a target. Now I''ve played enough video games to understand the difference between projectile and hit-scan weapons: in first you have an actual projectile moving along that needs to lead the target and can be theoretically dodged or mistimed; while hit-scan weapons automatically hit whatever is in the crosshairs when the trigger is pulled, like a beam of light except faster. I know this. And yet at short ranges the bullet feels like a hit-scan weapon even though I can clearly see that it isn''t when I fire at something farther away. The cognitive dissidence was hard to get away from.
At this point I was focusing on other things as I hung out with the small group that had fallen together. Geeks and nerds that we were, we didn''t exactly tend to get together in a large group for no reason.
"I think I''m ready for the fight later today. Afterall, all I have to do is survive." I commented to Tarah Cafferty, a surprisingly normal girl who had gravitated to hang out with Donnie and me. Her specialty was in communications technology, which apparently translated into having a handheld communications disk that she could focus until it became a serviceable ray-gun... somehow? Life was really unfair sometimes. She didn''t have any fancy clothes or a colorful costume, but she did have a high tech backpack with several satellite dishes and other attachments that she could attach or deattach at will. According to her she had gone for a holographic interface because the good cybernetics were too expensive. Other than that, she looked completely normal: Brown hair halfway down her back, glasses with brown eyes of a different shade, and a rounded face that fit well with her short stature.
She was also a tease, and not in the good way. "So, are you all ready to take care of your ''little problem''? Are you ready to pound some baddies and level up? Are you ready to..."
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up." I answered back. "Or better yet, come up with a better idea if you can?"
She gave me a grin. "I already gave you a plan. My equipment picked up some merchants only a few miles away. Just go grab yourself a five-finger discount or two and then pay them back afterward. You already saw the prices they were advertising, affording it after the first task should be easy!"
I rolled my eyes. "Look, no. I''m not going to try to steal from people with 50 times as many levels as me. Granted, that is less impressive than it sounds, but it is still a bad idea."
Donnie answered back from her other side. "Do you really think your plan will work? ''Just kill a bunch of stuff and level up'' sounds kinda..."
"Look, I talked about it with the robot before. Leveling up is all about overcoming challenges and the entire battle counts as one challenge. As long as I participate I''ll get Experience for it. I do something impressive and I''ll get credits. The thing is that the XP to level up scales exponentially, so the difference between 1 and 5 is the same as 6 and 7. The first battle is supposed to give me just barely enough xp to let me catch up to level 5. This means that, so long as I don''t die, everything will be fine."
"Yeah, but are you really going to be ok? You have so few levels at this point, so won''t that hurt your ability to participate?" Donny was quickly revealing himself to be the cautious type, though he meant well.
I shook my head. "Levels don''t mean everything. My strength and other stats are way higher than the 10 that I was told that they were, otherwise I wouldn''t be able to stand and walk and do everything else like I have. And class levels would be worth even less at this point. Afterall, what could I do with a class that is all about making a computer do things with other computers or linked equipment when there aren''t any computers around or equipment?"
"There are a few," Tarah responded, just to be contrary. "I and a few of the other techie people have one, and so do some of the military jerks."
I let out a sigh. "I''m not going to screw everyone else over to try stealing their equipment. Besides, I don''t have the peripherals to even make the attempt."
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"What about the General''s people?" she asked knowingly.
"The mercenaries can be ok, but I''m not sticking my neck out for them. The military can go hang for all I care. The VIPs should be lit on fire before they hang."
"They aren''t that bad." Donny said, not sounding the least bit convinced of his words.
I gave him a look. "One of them wanted to experiment on me when they found out about my low level, and the military was ready to help them do it. If Mack hadn''t shown up when he did, who knows what would have happened!" I shook my head and tried to calm down. "Look, we are here to talk with the old man. The other aliens say he knows more about what is going on and is willing to talk with us. Can we just drop this for now?"
Neither of them agreed but they didn''t bring my troubles up again either. Eventually we made our way through the underground levels of the structure to reach where the aliens were located at the bottom, they wanted their privacy and so they took the most inconvenient place. Thankfully each level had a full set of amenities, including food dispensers and restrooms, so there wasn''t any real drawback except for the long walk to get out. The robot by the front entrance, the one that refused to answer any questions other than about the next tutorial round and tutorial rules, was the only other difference between the levels. It took some time to find our way to the old man as he had placed himself in an out of the way spot in a random level, so much that even his group mates weren''t sure where he had gone. Even once we had found him there was some awkwardness as we weren''t sure what was the right form of greeting, but he just laughed. He then shook our hands, gave us all a hug, and then clasped his hands together and lowered them slightly in our direction. We tried to apologize for the awkwardness but he just laughed it off and continued with the greeting. Only when we were finished with all that and seated on some metal chairs did he continue.
"Welcome friends. My name is Vyvax. You wished to ask me questions?" He looked like a typical old man, wrinkled and thin skinned, but otherwise indistinguishable from a human if you didn''t notice the slightly blue tint. His hair was brown with a bluish tint and just full enough to not count as ''wispy'' but otherwise kept short and out of the way. His clothes were simple browns that covered is chest and arms while his legs were covered by a blanket of the same material that overflowed onto the rest of the bed where he rested. The only other things in the room were some empty shelves, a simple backpack of sturdy make, and half a dozen metal chairs that had been stacked for space.
The three of us looked at each other and I, as the most outgoing one who wasn''t likely to insult the man, chose to speak for our group. The group had a strange culture that prioritized the current task: When you were greeting each other you were doing nothing but greeting, but when you decided to get down to business everything was turned toward that business. For that reason I decided to be blunt and direct. "We saw your group appear and wanted to know how you all got here together, or rather how your group got here at all? Getting in The Game is difficult and expensive where we come from, and your group comes with children." I tried to use diplomatic language; after all, this guy was the groups ''most learned esteemed elder''. But seriously, our group of nerds were all upcoming experts in our fields or rich kids that had just hit adulthood. Seeing children of every age above toddler was unexpected to say the least.
He nodded along, not only not taking offense at my question but also indicating himself with a hand. "And we come with the old and infirm as well. I understand your question. Most others in my tribe would not. Tell me, what do you know of my people''s past and abilities?"
I looked back at the others before answering. "We know that you all have some sort of magic that allows you to move things telekinetically. We also know that your people were nomads, but there were cities with higher technology and such. Someone mentioned people coming from the stars and gifting everyone ''eggs of rebirth'' to help you grow stronger." I tried to think of anything else that might be relevant, but came up blank. "As far as I know, that''s about it..."
He nodded toward me as I spoke, only stopping to raise an eyebrow at the colorful name I had given to the Pods. "I once chose to leave the tribe and go into the city to learn. I continued to learn even when I returned. The cities are evil places, miracles of plenty to the strong but death to the weak. And those who have strength do nothing with it but to increase their strength and steal from the weak. It is why my people are nomads. We are not strong enough to be at the top, but this way we are not crushed at the bottom.
"You have noticed the ''magic'' of my world. It is the bane that gave so much power to the strong that they would think nothing of crushing others, and it was the bane that brought the men from the stars. They came because we had magic already, and so would not be tempted by lesser gifts elsewhere. They came to make foot soldiers of us in their little war against those with other gifts, people like you three. I see the metal and light that you use to give you strength, and they would have me see you dead." He looked each of us in our eyes. There was a seriousness in his expression, and something of a warning in his tone. Words that were not human and gestures that were alien somehow were translated in perfect clarity. Then he continued.
"At this time I do not have the power it would take to kill you. At this time I do not have the power it would take to spare you either. We were given our entry into this ''Game'' for free to further someone else''s ends. I suspect you are made to pay for yours for similar reasons. Even so, you must aways remember: There are only two things that really matter. The first is the choices you make." He reached under a nearby blanket and pulled out a metal cube which he set down on the bed in front of us. It was no larger than a grapefruit and, for a moment, it simply sat there in front of us in all its silvered glory. Then it unfolded to reveal legs, manipulators, and a camera that looked at each of us.
"The second thing that matters is having the power to make your choices matter." The tiny robot chose that moment to leap off of the bed and rush at Tarah, who jumped and kicked her leg out with a small shriek of surprise. The tiny robot went flying, falling to its side several feet away with a few sparks before folding itself back into its cube.
He looked at us with the wisdom of experience. "Will you be truly ready for the coming battle?"
12. Betrayal in the Ranks
The battle should be starting any time now and problems were already multiplying. Our order and placement for battle didn''t come across to us until half an hour ago and there were definite problems, problems that took time to solve and problems that couldn''t be solved in the time we had. First, the general had tried to put Mack in the eastern section with himself, facing the direction the enemy was coming from. Then entire groups who worked together well were separated and needed to be shuffled around. But mainly it was that the entire tribe of pyrimitate psychic aliens were standing outside with spears and sharpened sticks of wood, even the ones that obviously had no clue what they were supposed to be doing. The first couple problems were easy enough to fix, given time. The third super obvious problem, not so much.
The battle was setup fairly straightforwardly with the natives at the center of the group. The bunker to their north and they were and huddled up against it, hoping that it would keep any of the scouting force from that approach. Toward the east, facing the direction the enemy should be approaching from, was the General''s group and those of us hand picked out to work with him. Donnie was one of those "lucky few" that got called out, on account of his ability to build both traps and primitive fortifications. To the south and west were the geeks, attempting to draw in and prevent any attacks from the other cardinal directions.
Fortunately our leader had flatly refused to join the group at the head of the battle, but fixing up everything else had taken so long that he hadn''t had time to focus on the bigger picture. I got the dubious honor of following him around due to the fact that I had value in understood correct trigger discipline and small group tactics but lacked much value on the line itself. Apparently my gun really was that weak compared to what everyone else could do. I was joined by Jives, a lanky kid with Game skills related to large scale construction and who had a real world engineering major to back it up. His job was to coordinate people with crafting abilities, partly because he focused on large construction and partly because he didn''t have enough levels to craft anything large himself. He was also a history buff and a fan of giant robot series.
Mack breathed a sigh of relief at seeing Jives return and asked him about the mission he had been sent out on. "So what did they say? We really need to readjust the groups. Us cosplayers don''t have the numbers to surround the natives, especially with some of our most capable having been pulled away, and the natives don''t trust us enough to work with us to form a united front. I''m afraid of our people getting accidentally hit in the back." And yes, somewhere along the line people had starting calling our entire nerd group the ''cosplayers''. I wasn''t sure what to feel about that. I had never cosplayed in my life and I was proud of my nerd status.
"I''ve got bad news and worse news. The bad news is that the fighting has already started. I think it might be too late to move people around. The worse news is that whoever laid out the minefield is an idiot. They only laid things out toward the east, blocking the direct approach, and didn''t surround the entire camp. You always leave an avenue of approach or else the enemy won''t put themselves into an effective kill lane. That''s like, medieval combat 101 there. Fortunately they don''t seem to have the ranged weapons to catapult our position, the enemy is made up of hundreds of horned rabbit creatures." The guy looked and spoke like he was a mix of annoyed that anyone could make such a stupid mistake and proud that he had noticed it so easily.
Mack and I shared a look of horror at the revelation. He spoke first. "Fuck. That''s a bigger error than I thought. Assuming they aren''t complete idiots, the enemy won''t just sit there with us getting the stragglers, they will spread out till they find a way around the mines and then swarm us. Johnny, I need you to help pull our people together to the south. We won''t be able to hold otherwise and we won''t be able to hold both there and the rear of our formation to the west. I need to go speak with the Chief about what''s happening." His voice firmed with resolve as he spoke and he got ready to walk off to do his self-assigned duty. His assumption was good. If this was an army''s scouting party then it wouldn''t act like an undirected horde. But he had missed something vital that changed things completely.
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I spoke up before he could leave, shaking my head. "The General... this isn''t a mistake he made. This was his plan. He plans to let the attackers kill us and leave his group mostly untouched. The first round of the Tutorial only ends when the attackers are all dead or when half of us are."
He turned to look at me with surprise, completely stopping his march away. "How do you know that?"
"I found out from the robot in the room where they tested our stats. I asked a lot of questions, that''s why I was so late to join up with all of you." I answered calmly, the revelation I had just handed the group was hysteria inducing enough without me adding to it.
His face morphed from a morbid dawning understanding to indignation. It is amazing how a little context can change your understanding of everything. "Fuck." he finally said with a quiet finality. He took a breath, then raised himself up to take a more heroic stance. "Johnny, hold everyone together at the South as much as you can. I need to go see the Chief then I''ll personally lead our people together from the West to join you. Jives, let our people at the East know what is going on and try to get them out to help us if they can. Just be quiet about it." He nodded at us and gave us one last note of encouragement before heading off. "Lets get this done."
I turned from our place in the South-West to head toward the south as Jives continued on past the group. The battle was already underway when I arrived and I saw the rabbits he had been talking about. The single horned ones were fairly straightforward in how they tried to charge at us, but were ultimately predictable enough to be easy targets. The dual horned ones were more tricky, as they dodged about. Their horns glowed in a small variety of colors but, luckily, I didn''t get a chance to tell what that meant if it hit someone.
From there my job was to shoot the bunnies and enforce trigger discipline when one of the more mele types went out to deal with a bunny rabbit that got too close. You would think that "don''t shoot at the guy who is on your side, even if you think you can hit the target right beside him" would be easy to remember; but adrenaline was high and overconfidence made people take dumb risks. As for the bunnies themselves, they were small enough to be taken out by a hit from even one of my bullets. But that was the trick, you had to hit them. They were small and moved erratically, even the ones that were changing at us. More than a few of our people started having trouble, especially the mages. I ran out of ammo in my weapon and realized that a second full clip would have been a good thing to buy. I blame my background; video game bullets all come without the hassle of loading the individual bullets into the clip before reinserting it into your gun and I had been in a rush. I ended up taking four or five shots before taking a break to reload, assuming that we weren''t getting swarmed by a wave of them, so that I would never hit half ammo and have to worry about needing a bullet and not having it. The number of enemies kept going up slowly over time but we never ended up overrun due to the stream of people we were getting in from the West.
I don''t know how long this went on for but I was glad to see when Donnie started approaching from the East. He didn''t look good, but at least he was alive. When he saw me it was like a new fire had been lit within him and he ran over with renewed enthusiasm before looking at me with haunted eyes. "He killed them. He just shot them dead like it was nothing. Then he looked right at me."
"Calm down." I said, trying to be calm and help him get under control. "Who did whom kill, and what happened?"
"The general, and then one of his men." he said, calming down a bit but still clearly shaken. "The builder guy, the one who was running errands for Mack, he came by and talked to one of the other guys that got conscripted by the general. I don''t remember his name. It might have been Larry or Lars or something with an ''L''. It got loud and the General pulled out his hand gun and shot them both. Then Sam came running up and all he did was nod his head for one of the others to shoot her too. Then he looked at me and it was all I could do to look down and grab another piece of metal to turn into one of those traps I''ve been making. You know the ones: you can throw them and they land ready to go off."
He shook his head before continuing. "I waited until he was distracted and then ran over here. I had to tell you all what had happened, what was happening. The boss of the animals showed up. He is surrounded by larger cat and even bigger wolf monsters. I started running when he started attacking the General and his men. But, last I saw, the enemy was being led away from his group. He is sending the boss right at us."
13. The Origin of Monsters.
The revelation that the General was sending the boss right at us shocked me into motion and I looked over in the direction of the other group. I saw nothing. A hill blocked line of sight and our groups were a good distance from each other. In hindsight the fact that our groups were so far separated should have clued us in that something was wrong with the battle plan. A shorter line is easier to hold and reinforce, after all. Even if we did want to pull back this is where our static defenses were, and abandoning them wasn''t an option. The simple barriers weren''t a lot, but they absorbed the blows from a few of the single horned rabbits. I wouldn''t want those attacks to hit flesh instead of wood.
Still we needed to do something. "Ralph, Mindy. Start putting up barriers on the left side, back towards the General''s camp. Even if it means leaving the current barriers unrepaired." I yelled out. They stopped to give me a look but I snapped at them and they jumped to comply. It didn''t lessen the confusion on their faces any. "Donnie, I need you to start throwing traps between us and the approaching enemy. I don''t care if you have to cannibalize our defenses to do it, just give us a safety buffer."
He gave me a look of bewilderment but didn''t move. People started moving around us. Some of them had heard what was going on but most were worried and confused. Donnie just looked lost. Seeing the betrayal had shaken him. Part of me wanted to give him time to rest and process. Part of me knew that the boss would be coming soon and we needed every advantage we could get. I don''t know if it makes me a bad person, but the pragmatic part won out.
I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder and looked him in his eyes. "Survival first, figure the rest out later."
He looked back at me, his resolve visibly firming, then moved off without a word. I didn''t know if he was all right. I didn''t have time to care.
Instead I turned toward the rest of the group and yelled out to be heard. "Everyone, keep attacking the enemies." I began, trying to keep order as I spoke. "There have been some developments. The General betrayed us. His tactics were meant to divert the majority of the attackers right at us. Now he sends this round''s boss at us too. I''ll be pulling some of you off the front line and putting you on the new defenses. Anyone new who shows up needs needs to come to the side. Remember, if we get overwhelmed on either front than we loose. I''ll let you know when we have more information. For now, we need to get to work."
People reacted in a variety of ways, from shock to anger to begrudging acceptance. Some of the hope for the battle seemed visibly drained, as up to this point we hadn''t had any serious injuries. The only bright spot was that the indecision had disappeared to be replaced with a resolved focus.
I glanced over into the distance, afraid the boss would appear at any second. There was nothing I could do about it now, I just had to get everyone ready.
The first appearance of danger from the direction of the General''s camp came in the form of a quartet of mercenaries fighting to keep a small horde of animals at bay. These weren''t the elemental bunny rabbits that had come before, these were a couple of Foo Dog looking things the size of two men each and a dozen mountain lion sized cats. The dogs were armored and moved forward with utter implacability but it was the cats that caused the most problem as their quick movements and ability to walk on air allowed them to attack from odd angles with very little notice. The mercenaries were covered with a bubble shield that defended the entire group, which seemed odd considering that it did nothing to impede the mele attackers, but that shield proved invaluable when an orb of light from beyond the hill ricocheted off of it and into the sky.
The mercenaries had been backing up in our direction at first but then started making their way farther south, toward the spaced out horde of rabbits. The smaller creatures, when they did approach the mercenaries, were killed so fast that they barely registered when confronted with the high powered weapons. The change in their direction came as at least one of our mages fired an attack that bounced harmlessly off the shield. Our stance was clear: you are not welcome here. I recognized two of the mercenaries, ''Caps'' the demolitions expert who had been in charge of the back lines until Mack took that job back over and ''Trigger'' the gun fanatic, but the other two were unknowns. Unfortunately a number of the beasts immediately started running at our group as soon as they noticed us.
Then the boss himself passed the hill at a slow stroll followed by almost half a dozen dogs and several dozen cats. Upon seeing us he sent out half his swarm in our direction and I had to call people over from the main line to compensate, leaving the side of our fortification facing the hundreds of rabbits in a desperate situation of its own. The dogs were slow, only moderately outpacing their master, but were all but invulnerable from the front. The cats were less hardy, though still far more sturdy than the rabbits, but were also harder to hit. Their hit and run tactics were causing a fair amount of confusion in our front lines and there had already been one friendly fire incident. The cats never stayed with one target long enough to kill, but neither did they stay still long enough to be killed either. The boss continued lazily walking in our direction, swinging a glowing sword with one hand and firing a rifle with the other. Fortunately the energy weapon fired large golden orbs that were blocked by our hasty fortifications, but the power behind them was enough to shake the battlements with each hit. The few of our shots that did make it to him bounced off what seemed to be a forcefield surrounding his body. Also, he could heal the cats and would do so whenever we failed to put one down permanently.
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This was too much. How were we supposed to fight this? Then I had a traitorously cruel thought: this wouldn''t be too much if we had machine guns filled with high-powered armor-piercing ammunition. The boss himself wasn''t offensively focused and his pets were either vulnerable to massed fire or slow enough to be avoided. If we had heavy military grade weapons than this battle would be nothing more than a decent challenge. The General and his people had those types of weapons. While the rabbits were a challenge and a constant strain on us, they were beatable. The boss, however, hadn''t shown up to attack us; he had first shown up to attack the people who had the weapons that could deal with him. Our group wasn''t equipped to deal with him; we needed help.
The choice was clear: I had to choose between victory and honor, which may decide this part of the battle. And I had to do it before the boss made it all the way to our position. Do I prioritize the enemy who had betrayed us to die or the one that would only kill us without betrayal? It wasn''t even much of a choice and I made my decision without hesitation: I chose the option that might give us a chance to survive, possibly even win. Immediately I ran to the front and got them to hold fire against the mercenaries. It took a bit of odd gestures to wave them down in the midst of the chaos of battle, but I did manage it eventually. Soon we were joined by four more allies of convenience, each with military grade weapons and paramilitary fighting experience. Was it the right choice? I didn''t know. All I knew was that it was the only choice that might buy us time.
And it worked. One mercenary was able to hold half the line against the bunnies by himself, freeing many of our better fighters to face off against the boss. The grenades were too slow to hit the cats, who were smart enough to jump away, but they forced the dogs to back off or take major injuries. The boss also kept his space from the thrown grenades despite the fact that they didn''t visibly deal him any damage. Even the cats were less of an issue now that they had to avoid high caliber burst fire weapons. The boss could also heal the dogs with a touch, so it looked like a stalemate at first glance, but in reality it was a battle of attrition in our favor.
Then good luck and bad hit us all at once, resulting in chaos that broke our careful strategy at its core. It started when our group''s leader, Mack, showed up with a dozen more people. As soon as this happened the boss sent his reserve force out and around the sides as if to surround us, though some ran off in other directions. Mack and his people, not knowing the defensive capabilities of the boss and seeing him alone, charged the enemy head on. This prevented us from using explosives on the boss, which was the only thing even slowing him down, and he took full advantage of it. But instead of shooting the attackers with his gun, he instead started taking the group apart with his sword. Mack was the only one to take more than a single hit before falling to the ground, proving his sturdiness far and above the rest of the group. He used that time to grab the boss, somehow unimpeded by the shield, even holding them steady for a few moments so that those nearby could attack with impunity. The others that got nearby were not so sturdy.
The boss, however, used the cover from the attack to close the distance to our fortifications. This allowed him to get too close for grenades and negating our one true defense against him. This caused one of the people in our group, a smaller guy who was more of a crafter than a fighter to try to run. That''s when we found out the true power of the gun that the enemy carried. The projectile may have been large and obvious, such that taking cover hard countered it, but in an open area it almost seemed to home in on its target. The first shot took the crafter to the ground. The second left him badly injured and completely still. The third seemed completely unnecessary. A handful of seconds later he faded away. We had taken our first death.
It wouldn''t be the last. Several others hadn''t learned from the example of their comrade and also tried running, with identical results. Everyone else he left unconscious on the ground, at his mercy to dispose of as he chose. He picked his targets by their danger level unless someone chose to throw themselves at him. Soon the mercenaries fell and the dozen of us left were the least combat capable of the group. At this point he seemed to be just going after us according to whomever was closest. Convenience and all that. The only good thing was that most of the rabbits had also gone off to hunt more capable foes, and the few that remained were mostly destroying our defenses.
In my desperation, I started to try anything that I thought might work. I grabbed one of Donnie''s mechanical mines and threw it at the boss, but that only slowed him for a moment as he looked at it curiously before ignoring it. Seeing that be usable but fail I tried one of the weapons of another nearby person. It took me a bit of fumbling to realize that it didn''t have a trigger and must be activated by one of his cybernetics, but at least it didn''t disappear from my hands. A thought occurred to me that if I had even one more level in my class, that I could probably have used my computer to make it work. Then I tried one of the mercenaries, specifically Caps. I was only a bit surprised when grabbing a grenade from his jacket didn''t result in it disappearing again, but I figured it must be more complicated than I had been led to believe. A plan started to form. If our good old leader was able to grab ahold of the boss by getting in close, than why shouldn''t that work for the rest of us?
"Everyone grab the boss, if we can disarm him than we can win. At the very least we can go down fighting together!" I called out to the group. There were just over a dosen people, but only three others stepped forward. We rushed over together, each of them going for one of his arms and weapons. I went for his left leg, the side where he carried his gun rather than his sword. Unsurprisingly he went after those going after his arms first leaving me free to grab onto him, reaching through his forcefield shield and depositing a gift into his empty gun holster. Then I jumped away just before his sword could come down on me. Immediately I tried to hide behind the body of one of the mercenaries, hoping that it would give some protection from the blast. I didn''t need to bother.
The grenade''s explosion and shrapnel did not penetrate the Boss''s forcefield, but rather remained completely contained. A look of shock and confusion crossed his face before he fell to the ground. For a moment I thought we had won, but then I saw him healing in real time like it was nothing. Quickly I grabbed one of the mercenary''s guns and finished the job. There was silence for a few moments as we waited to see if even that would work. Slowly he faded away and the animals nearby went into a frenzy, but it was an undirected frenzy compared to the purposeful coordination of before. Those who were left grabbed one of the Mercenary''s weapons and got to work on clearing up what we could. Eventually the unconscious people started waking back up.
14. Leveling Up
The battle was now over. It took around thirty minutes from the downing of the leader to clear out his forces, including the rabbits that had scattered but still stuck around. The results were better than they had any right to be, but still not super great. Us Cosplayers had lost seven out of our three dozen or so people, and half of those had been killed by the General himself. His side had only lost two but they started with only around twenty people total. The vast majority of the deaths were on the side of the primitive aliens. They had lost around 30% of their total, and they had a couple hundred people. It was better than it could have been, better than it should have been even, but the way it happened had been the worst part of it.
Also, the guns had gone back to their rightful owners not long after the mercenaries woke back up. I can''t tell you how annoying it was to see that happen when I was just getting used to having a meaningful weapon. Also, rifles are way easier to control and aim than handguns; it was something to think on while I remained annoyed about not having it.
The failure of our defenses ended up not being due to bad planning, but rather things that we hadn''t even known to need to plan around. The first problem came up because the rabbits could apparently climb. The bunker, which had been to the back of the alien''s group where they put the weak and the infirm, was suddenly overrun. The old folks acquitted themselves fairly well, fighting back until things lightened, but it still got bad. The second failure was from the south and somewhat east, where the scout leader had attacked us before sending off his horde to scatter. It got really bad when the animals made contact with the larger group because they were able to seemingly call in their animal allies to converge on the civilians. Furthermore while the big dogs were bad enough, powerful and armored from the front, killing them was only a temporary relief. If you didn''t have someone with a flamethrower or other method of disposing the body than it would just divide up into four or five big cats, depending on the damage the dog had taken. Those would then split between half a dozen and close to a full dozen bunnies. And the bunnies liked to swarm.
After cleaning up the enemies in our area what was left of our group went to help clear out the leftover attackers in the alien camp. The results were not encouraging. Fully half the nonlethal casualties were friendly fire incidents and there was no way to tell how many of the deaths were the same. The bodies had already disappeared. The old man, the Chief, and most of the warriors had survived but there were noticeably fewer children in their camp.
I tried to approach Mack and let him know what I had figured out about why the encounter''s difficulty had jumped so drastically. He simply put his hand on my shoulder with a dark look coming over his features. It struck me then how his suit was dirtied and bloodied with tears marring its once immaculate appearance. In that moment he didn''t look like a hero, he looked like a villain on the day they turned to evil. He simply stared toward the General''s camp and answered my concerns. "I already know."
Later on the leaders of the three groups had some angry words with each other, but one of them was backed by military weapons and the other two were not. All that resulted from that confrontation was that we would be leaving in a few hours with the bunker becoming the sole base of the trench coat arseholes, who were quickly becoming relabeled as the ''Cheaters''. When someone complained about the move Mack simply asked if they could survive being shot with a machine gun, then explained that they had a couple dozen of the weapons. Complaining continued, but not toward Mack''s decision to move the group.
I was more interested in the voices inside my head that were talking to me. They said strange things to me like "New entrant to ''The Testing'' has been detected, initiating the current class based system." and "Experience received: +1 Level, +1 Level, +1 Level, +1 Level." I was pretty sure that this was supposed to be happening and wasn''t just the result of me having taken a few knocks to the head during that last battle. This was not at all how things had gone before. The first time I had to directly ask the robot if I had gotten anything from my class and had to let it give me the options and then select them for me. This was better, to a point? At least I wasn''t having to stand in front of the robot and wait for it to explain everything to me. I would much prefer it to give me the information in a visual form rather than reading everything to me. Suddenly a bunch of words popped up in front of me, complete with drop down menus and explanations. It was honestly a bit trippy.
Name: Johnny Maximilian Riker
Aliases/callsigns: None
Body: 38-40
Speed: 40-40
Mind: 40-40
Recovery: 40-40
Path: Technology
Level: 4
Classes: Computer Operator
Credits: 42,861
Soulbound: 1/20
1pt Computer
A memory storage and computational device, essentially a robot brain. Can be optimized for size, power, or other parameters. (Class Option)
A catch all for most types of computerized control and interface devices for use with a sufficiently powerful computer. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other devices designed for interface capabilities, with higher levels making hostile intrusion easier and increasing the range of the interface (Class Option)
Abilities: 4/20
4pt Hammer Space
A safe area held within the soul that allows the transfer of items into and out of that subdimension. Can be bought up to the level that allows for the transport of a small spacecraft. (Class Option)
Brain and nervous system implants that allow for mental control of any electronics while allowing electronics to have a degree of influence on the biological. (Class Option)
Allows the user''s physical body to be changed to suit their desires. This is mainly used for cosmetic changes but can affect biological weaknesses, identifiers, and is a prerequisite for personal biological experimentation. Speed and range of control are determined by the level of the ability. (Discovered Option, duration limited by Half Life Genetics)
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Allows the user to divide off a section of flesh to create a semi-autonomous minion that follows the user''s desires. Minion''s numbers and other properties are determined by the level of the ability while the speed at which more can be made is determined by Regeneration. (Discovered Option, duration limited by Half Life Genetics)
Gives the user superior senses, including the mental upgrades required to process the greater levels of information. Allows the user to actively utilize often unconscious senses, such as touch''s heat sense, to gain information about the surroundings that might otherwise be ignored. (Discovered Option, duration limited by Half Life Genetics)
A body that has been genetically optimized for the Arcane Arts can now be yours, allowing for greater levels of Magical or Psionic use with less physical strain! (Discovered Option)
A genetic modification that causes genetic material to rapidly break down when outside the body, making it harder to use that information for selfish or nefarious purposes. (Discovered Option, duration limited by Half Life Genetics)
Become aware of danger moments before it effects you. This level gives no information about the type or source of that danger, but it will still give enough warning to do things like wake you if something tries to get to you as you sleep. (Discovered Option, duration limited by Half Life Genetics)
Skills: 0/20
Gives the user the skills to create operating systems to both control a computer and to allow the computer to control other things. Level effects the complexity of the control and the range of how complex the thing is that can be controlled. (Class Option)
Gives the skills to create items that a computer can use to control other things. Level determines the complexity of what can be a controlled target. (Class Option)
Hu, that was informative. Most of the information seemed to be spelled out fairly straightforwardly, though I get the feeling that it is limited by my own understanding of it. Hopefully I''ll be able to get some better information soon. Also, hopefully the system or whatever will figure out the wonky formatting; it is kind of really bad... Still, it is better than someone trying to explain what everything is and what it does. That would get tedious fast.
But what I got does seem to mis a few things, such as that there are distinct ''levels'' that perks can be bought at rather than just being able to buy however much of whatever you want. The levels are 1pt, 4pt, 16pt, 64pt, and presumably 256pt levels; though the only thing I really know about the levels is a generic ''more is better''. Also the squiggly lines seems to mean that the level I can buy it doesn''t have an upper limit on cost (so why not just use one of those infinity symbols?), though there might be something more to it. You can upgrade a perk, such as upgrading my computer would only cost 3pt to get to the 4pt level, but not downgrade them or remove them without... something... I''m not really sure what yet, but I''m pretty sure it uses credits. Also class options, up to a certain point, are free; You don''t have to pay to get them or to apply them, everything else costs. It feels like 1,000 credits per point applied. That may be nothing in the future, but applying anything will make a sizable dent on I have right now.
My first thought was, again, ''Why is my interface so weird?'' My second thought was that the countdown timer on those abilities was had just dropped to 18 minutes, so I should decide if I wanted any of them before they were gone. The first thing I noted as important for what of those I might keep was that, with the 4 points I had already spent on Hammer Space, I had 16 points left to spend.
Wait, that''s not right. I leveled up four times. Shouldn''t I be at level 5? Unless I was actually at level 0 before and it only defaulted to treating me as a lv1 because... reasons? I don''t know how, but I''m certain this is that robot''s fault. Screw you tutorial robot, screw you. So now I''m /still/ not up to the average level everyone else is, and most anyone who survived probably went up another level as well. The system seems pretty straightforward, 5 points per level in each category of upgrades, so I should be catching up with everyone else or at least not falling farther behind.
Also, counting up the points of the abilities I got access to from that boss gets to a point total of 533, and that''s assuming that he doesn''t have something like my Hammer Space, with it not being shown as coming from him because I already have access to it. Either way, that puts his level as being over a hundred. I don''t think we were supposed to be able to beat him. Also I am down to 17 minutes thinking about all that, so I should get back to it.
With the 16 points I have to spend I have basically four options: I can buy one of his abilities at the 16 point level and get something decently useful. I can buy all of his things at the 4pt level and get some skills of dubious usefulness. I can upgrade my Hammer Space and buy 4 points worth of his stuff, or I can save my points and money.
Saving is out. I have barely enough money to upgrade my character to full power as it is, and I need the power. I also saw some of the prices that the nearby merchants were advertising so I know that saving my credits won''t get me enough to buy anything good. Maybe I can find something to trade for more credits to get something better? The soldiers have that computer they used to look me up, so maybe I can pull something useful off of that? Either way it is enough ''maybes'' that I shouldn''t trust it with my future. I need to spend what I have rather than save it.
The second thing I''ll rule out is trying to go the minion route like that boss did. He seemed to be extremely specialized and I can''t imagine he didn''t have Skills or Items that further boosted his ability. There is no way I would be able to make that as useful as he seemed to make it. And, cool as it might be, I''m not sure I''m really cut out to be a minion master. I would only rate my leadership abilities as passable and not ''puppet master'' worthy. I can also rule out focusing on Body Manipulation or Hammer Space. Neither of those sound like they would really would be useful at this time. I don''t exactly have a reason to mess with my own genetics without some expert direction, and neither do I expect to need to be able to ''carry a small spacecraft'' any time soon. That pretty much leaves the enhanced senses. So do I think it would be useful to have super senses about everything that is going on around me all the time? Yes, Yes I do.
Right, so how exactly do I make this work? And how does it
15. A New Perspective
I blearily looked around, feeling the fading remnants of the worst headache clearing. "Are you awake? Is everything ok?" It took me a few seconds to connect the voice with Donnie who was standing next to the open door of the small room. The world seemed like it had been spinning and was only now coming to a stop.
"Uh, what is..." I began, but paused as the entire world shot into focus. I could see everything that wasn''t physically hidden behind something else. Even those things I could catch hints of, as light reflected off of everything and my eyes were now capable of making certain guesses about what certain reflections off of nonreflective objects might say about what was around them. Also there were people talking, the only conversation of actual interest to me was a couple people talking about their upgrade options, and I could listen in on them without difficulty. Then there were the smells; chemical signals of such breadth and specificity that I was only beginning to categorize them. Truth be told, it was somewhat overwhelming but not nearly as much as it probably should have been.
If this is what a 16 point upgrade can do, than what must the higher levels be capable of?
Donnie gave me a concerned look, "Is everything ok, you seem pretty out of it."
I glanced around to get my bearings. I was no longer outside but had been brought into one of the rooms of the base. It was extremely sparce, a metal door and brick walls with someone else''s bedding; mine was stuck in my Hammer Space. Donnie was next the door and seemed to be keeping watch till I woke up. Updating my character had apparently taken longer and been more debilitating than I thought. My guess is that all the time I spent asking questions and such had been intended for this type of knockout. The questions I had asked the robot were nice, but I would have rather had a few less hours of interrogation if it came with more levels and more stuff. I turned back toward Donnie to answer. "Yeah, I''m fine. The upgrade is just a bit overwhelming. I feel like I have actual superpowers now." The door was open into a larger room that had a hallway I could see down despite there being no light in the hallway and the otherwise dim lighting of the outside.
"Oh really? Did you get something good?" he asked. I looked over, at him and was momentarily overwhelmed by everything. His clothes were back in order and he looked healthy but he sounded hesitant. My senses latched onto things that seemed inconsequential before but now slotted into possible meanings that themselves may or may not be meaningful. His slightly tanned skin and darker highlights in his brown hair made me think he might have some Native American ancestry, though not pure. His clothes, not including the shiny bits that had been added on, made me think he might have been from the central or southern central US. It was just something about his sturdy but light jeans combined with his light shirt and shoes with good breathability and a familiar style; something about it just called out that he came from a warmer non-coastal climate within the United States. His generic American accent only served to confirm my suppositions.
I realized that in looking at him I had focused things down and gotten more from him specifically while feeling less overwhelmed with everything else. In fact there was something about the wind currents in the air and the heat of the room, or something else unexplainable, that gave me a sense for everything around me. I could easily get carried away but instead decided to answer his question. "I got super senses. It is super trippy."
He looked a bit surprised. "I wouldn''t have thought that your class would give you something like that."
I shook my head, reigning in my senses to only the most interesting things. Of course the people in one of the nearby rooms talking about their own upgrades was one of those things that caught my focus. Apparently they were both mages and were comparing their relative skills and the other upgrades they had access to. Their magic senses skills were the same but their elemental skills differed. They also had differing body upgrades to do more magic, one increased magic capacity while the other increased magical power, and they had nearly identical body upgrades to protect them from their own skills. All this occupied a background place in my perception but it was hard for me to focus on both it and my current conversation at the same time. It took me a moment to remember the question so I could replied. "It didn''t come from my class; I''m pretty sure it came from the boss. There is a real genetic feel to a lot of the Super abilities, one even referring to it directly, so I''ve got a pretty good idea that has to do with how I got access." I said, answering the obvious question on his face.
He continued to look surprised, or more like his surprise was renewed. "I mean, I wasn''t going to ask. I didn''t think you would tell me anyways. Ways to get extra options seems like it would be pretty valuable." His voice was questioning, even incredulous.
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I shrugged, still listening to the others talking in the other room, and tried to focus on the person right here with me. "We are buddies, right? So why not help out?"
He seemed to get a bit uncomfortable at that. "I mean, I just didn''t..." he paused, visibly getting more uncomfortable as the moment passed. I waited, a trick I had learned from some anime or something: let silence do its work. A few more seconds went by and he only got more uncomfortable. Finally he spoke. "I saw what happened at the end of the battle. How you rallied people to attack; deceiving them into thinking you were going to work with them when you had a completely different plan. How you jumped away to save yourself at the end, not even thinking about any of them." There was another pregnant pause. I could hear his heartbeat slightly quicken when I really focused, though all I could figure it meant was that he was that he was uncomfortable and deciding if he was going to say something. So, instead of interrupting, I waited.
Finally, after the silence had become too uncomfortable, he spoke up. "All of us in this group. We dress up like our heroes from fiction. We want to be heroes. What you did wasn''t very heroic."
Thinking back, his words made a lot of sense. The way our group got along despite our vastly different backgrounds, remembering the fact that most everyone in the group was at least a little socially awkward, meant that there had to be something unifying everyone. This was only made more extreme by the fact that everyone here was either rich or a prodigy in some specific field, as the only way to get in the game was by having money or by getting a sponsorship. As such we were not naturally the type of people who would be without our own egos. And yet we all agreed to try to protect a bunch of primitive aliens and their children, even at the cost of putting ourselves on the front line. My excuse was that I was weak and needed to catch up with everyone else, and that kept me from having the resources or the clout to change things, but I was the only one with that limitation. Even afterwards, nobody spoke out against our decision to protect the other group despite the fact that we were essentially carrying them through the Tutorial. It changed my entire perspective on the group.
Finally, I answered. "I''m not a hero. I''m a gamer. I play to win. Mostly I''m pretty chill up until I find my challenge to beat. Even when I do find my challenge, I''m a team player and a support main at that; so I tend to work well with others. But even when others are being arseholes and trolls, I still win. I''m not sure where that puts me on your little morality spectrum." I shrugged and raised my hands in a ''what are you going to do'' type gesture. "I''m not really a villain or a hero. Not an anti-hero or a psychopath. I can be a troll and work around disruptive teammates in my goal to win, even when that means treating people like a bunch of idiots that deserve what happens to them. But I also give a leg up to new players and regularly sacrifice my game stats for the sake of the team. I try not to be too evil but don''t really manage to be a beacon of ''hope and goodness'' either. But I win."
I leaned forward to look him in his eyes and saw fear. His eyes dilatated and his heartrate raced as I brought my full attention on him. When I was sure I had his full attention, I spoke: "And we did win. A battle that we should have lost. I saved a fifth of the people we were protecting, people who would have died; who should have died. Me. My tactics. An old-timer has-been like me was able to find a way to do the impossible. Maybe I would have been more concerned with those other people if they were my allies. But they weren''t; they were only my teammates. Tomorrow or the day after we might be teamed up differently, in fact I''m fairly certain that will absolutely happen from what I know of the rest of The Game. I won the game for those people I tricked into supporting me. And, even if I hadn''t recognized that the boss was disabling those who fought and only killing the weak or cowardly, they agreed to stand on the line knowing that it could cost them an early end to their Tutorial run."
I sat up straight, giving him some space and taking much of the pressure off of him. He visibly relaxed at my attempt to give him space but stiffened again as my next words hit him. "So the question is, can you accept that about me?"
Time passed as various emotions passed over his face. Eventually he calmed. "Your still an asshole."
I shrugged.
"And I still say what you did wasn''t very heroic."
I shrugged again.
"And even if it worked, how you did it wasn''t the best."
I repeated my expressions of nonchalant disinterest in the depths of those moral quandaries through a raising and lowering of my shoulders.
"And, fuck man. Can''t you do something other than shrug at me over and over?"
I looked him straight in the eyes, gave him a smug smirk, and shrugged.
He just gaped at me, mouth hanging open and everything. "You weren''t always this much of a jerk," he grumbled.
I shrugged again, for good measure. Then I declared to him in my most magnanimous voice: "I''m an enlightened troll, my trolling is laser guided and..."
"Shut up," he laughed, tension draining out of him. "That settles it, I''m the hero now and you are the sidekick."
"Aren''t I the more battle capable one of us two?"
"That''s what you think. But seriously, how did you get extra upgrade options again?"
I smiled with anticipation. "Oh, yeah. I''ve got some ideas."
16. Not a Vampire Thief
I began by explaining how I had gotten extra options for my ''abilities'' from the boss, most likely from when I killed him, but that I also got an extra option that sounded very much like something from the bluish aliens. At least I couldn''t think of any other place I could have gotten it. I also mentioned that the one ability, "Half Life Genetics'', had specifically mentioned making the genetic information degrade; so that made it very clear that abilities were genetic. Unfortunately it seemed like it took more than just a handshake to get access to those abilities, otherwise I would have built up a bunch of options from other people. So it was most likely blood contact. At least that was the only similarity between the boss and the aliens I went to help that I could think of that was different from the other humans of our group. Afterall, the people from our group had been mostly taken out by an electrified knockout sword or the concussive blast from his gun, which were relatively bloodless compared to the claws and teeth of the animal horde.
I finished off with my proposal. "So in order to test it all you need to do is grab onto my arm after I cut myself."
He looked at me squeamishly. "That''s a little..." He only looked worse as I made a small cut on my arm.
"What''s wrong" I asked with an eye roll, then continued with my best Count Dracula impression. "Don''t you want to suck my blood?"
"No, it''s just... This is a little weird." he answered back.
I nodded. "Don''t worry, I can fix that." Then I switched from Count Dracula to Sesame Street''s The Count. "I will give you to the count of three! Muwa-ha-ha! One! Muwa-ha-ha! Two! Muwa-ha-ha! Three! Muwa-"
He grabbed my arm before I could finish. I didn''t bother to ask him if it worked, his face told me all I needed to know. Also he seemed to open his status with his hands: tapping a spot in front of him to open it, pulling down on something like he was scrolling, then hitting a space to his upper right to close it. He shook his head to confirm what I already knew about it not working.
Just to fulfil my own curiosity I reached forward to hit the spot in front of him where he had tapped to open his interface.
"What the? How did you do that?" he asked, closing his interface again.
"The same way you did." I answered with a shit eating grin. Ok, maybe I was pushing things, but he did just kinda accuse me of being a bad guy. I''m allowed to be annoyed.
That gave him pause, but he shook it off and went back to the matter at hand. "I think it didn''t work because you were trying to let me get the ability. Like, I think it''s an anti-cheating measure to keep people who know each other from trading around abilities."
I nodded; More tutorial runarounds. Not that I could blame them, whomever designed the tutorial. If the Cheaters could have brought in a tank piece by piece than they absolutely would. But stealing still works, somehow? I stole the mercenary''s gun, so it had to work somehow; but it went back to him as soon as he woke up and realized it was gone, so it isn''t as simple as "finder''s keepers". But why? If it was about volition, the desire to hand it off, than something like intimidation might work to transfer stuff. The problem with that theory is that I have neither the desire nor the ability to intimidate these people into giving me their stuff. Or rather I had no desire to go after the other Cosplayers, the ability to go after the Cheaters, and the Aliens had basically nothing worth taking for me, at least that I know of. If that theory wasn''t testable than the next step down on the ladder of fussiness would be that either the mercenary hadn''t known that he had lost his gun or hadn''t known that someone had taken it. If it was about loosing it than I could take a genetic sample from people, so long as they aren''t handing it off, because they still have it. If the issue is with having it taken than if they see me take a sample than the game is over right then. A plan started coming together in my mind.
"I guess we will just have to see how well we can steal someone''s blood." I answered, holding back a smile at his reaction. "But first I need you to help with preparations."
My name is Dark Depths, the master of the Deep Dark Depths! This world is a chance to reinvent myself, and I will take it with both hands! Er, bad way of saying that. Really bad. My old name, that known by the mundanes outside the game, may have been Woodie Holden but it will be that no more! No longer would people make masturbation jokes when they found me hiding out in a dark corner of the library studying fluid dynamics; now I will take my water powers and show them the fear of the Dark Depths! Also, I really need to find some way to get some darkness magic because my water always comes out crystal clear, but that will be a problem for later.
Right now I was discussing the mysteries of the universe of the ARCANE with my friend Sotang. He was a Korean with energy conversion magic who almost looked like a South American except for his eyes. Both of us were dressed in black robes, as was fitting for Mages such as us. Unlike me, though, he refused to pull up his hood because he thought it cut off his peripheral vision or some such nonsense. A guy has got to make some sacrifices to fit the character, you know? He was otherwise mostly ok even though it wasn''t fair that his given name was cool enough to just go by that; but my Alias of Unassailable Awesomeness would suffice.
"Seriously," he spoke, revealing his ignorance, "I don''t think there is such a thing as darkness magic. I''m pretty sure that would just be light magic but you would refuse to use half of it."
My correction to his limited views on the Arcane and my attempt to make him stop being a killjoy were interrupted by a couple of other people walking up. I didn''t remember either of their names but they both were fairly distinctive, at least enough to be remembered in our smallish group. The guy in front was the bossy one who followed around our leader during the first round of the tutorial and who wore some sort of scouter looking thing over his right eye. If anything he looked even more scraggly than before, with a few rough pieces of metal hanging off him. He seemed to be acting bossy again as his friend was acting a bit uncomfortable. I knew that guy even less. He was the one with the robot arm that could make simple machines. He, at least, looked good with the glowing lines all over his clothes. Both of them were techies, though, so we didn''t have a lot of reason to speak with each other considering that I was a mage and proud of it.
Eyeglass spoke up first. "Hello. I came to let you know that everyone is getting ready to move out but it will be a while since some of the others wanted to go downstairs to ''help'' out the aliens. Not that they won''t be helping, but I got the idea that they were more interested in getting in good with the aliens than anything else."
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"How would you know?" I asked, letting my annoyance at him and Sotang show in my tone.
He shrugged and answered back neutrally. "I heard them talking about it on the stairs." So eyeglass must have come from upstairs. I knew the rumor of him falling unconscious was too out there to be true.
Sotang spoke up next. "Yeah, we will be leaving in a couple hours and then heading to the nearby trading post. If we won''t be staying around here than we at least need food and water. It sucks that we can''t use the dispensers here anymore but nobody trusts the Cheaters to not try something in the middle of the night."
There was a nod of agreement. "Some of us are even planning to empty out our floor earlier than that, just to make sure nothing happens. Everyone not downstairs with the aliens is outside already." He reached out his hand to help Sotang up.
"Yeah, I guess it is about time that we got going." Sotang reached out and they grabbed each other around the wrist to help him stand.
Suddenly my buddy let out a noise and shook out his hand. There looked to be blood, but not much.
"Are you ok?" Eyeglass said as my friend looked himself over to inspect the damages. He then tossed something over to his friend and then helped look over the injury.
"Yeah, it isn''t too bad. I''m not sure what happened though."
Robo-arm was making weird motions with his hands and seemed to go a bit cross eyed. "Um, yes. It''s good. I mean, everything is ok." Ok, that was awkward...
Eyeglass shook his head. "Sorry about that. I got some new addons for my costume, mostly just rough pieces of metal, but one of them must have been a bit too much. Are you sure you are ok?"
"Yeah, it isn''t too bad and the extra fast healing we get here should take care of it pretty quickly."
He nodded. "Sorry about that again. I''ve got to get going. I have one more upgrade I need to take care of before we leave. Remember to get whatever you can from the food machines before we go. We don''t plan on coming back anytime soon."
There were a few more words of farewell, with robot hand acting a bit more uncomfortable for some reason, and then they were gone. Part of me thought that it was nice of them to come check up on us, but mostly I had a feeling like ''that was weird''...
It was a couple hours later and our plan had worked, but I had a feeling that Donnie was still a bit uncomfortable about it. I wasn''t too worried about it myself; those two guys had pretty much separated themselves from the other non-mages since the very beginning so I had little reason to expect that we wouldn''t butt heads once we got out of the Tutorial. I like my friend well enough but there isn''t much you can do when lawful good starts trending toward lawful stupid. Whatever. He can have his own morality. I might not be a saint but I''m not a bad guy either. Instead of worrying about that I should focus on how I''m going to steal from the military and the hired killers.
... Yes, I appreciate the irony. I just have better things to focus on.
In order to steal the military''s databases from their computer, the ones they used to look me up, I needed to buy the right type of equipment to allow my computer to connect with the military''s computer and I needed to make sure that both the connection and the computer itself were powerful enough to get past any security they might have. For that reason I both upgraded my computer to the four point version and bought an ''Electronic Transmitter'' at the four point level. If that isn''t good enough to break into a mundane computer than I''ll just have to leave without it. I would really rather have it, though. It would make a good bargaining chip at the trading post and would go a long way toward making me feel better about what the Cheaters had done.
Now came the hard part: The risk vs reward. The closer I get to the computer the better it will work but the less plausible deniability I''ll have. Walking into the main room of the first floor was a new experience with my new senses. Two-thirds of the mercenaries and a quarter of the military kept careful watch over me from the moment I entered, though some of them hid it better than others. Most of the VIPs were away from the room but there was one extremely beautiful woman in civilian clothing making nice and flirting with the commanders. This seemed like close enough to get started, so I subvocalized a command to my computer to get started on the download.
The good news was that the computer had no problem getting into the system and starting to grab the data. The bad news was that one of the other mercenaries, the one focused on communication, started looking up like he knew that something was going on. Spooks, I think his name was. Thinking quickly, I headed over to Caps the unofficial leader of the mercenary subfaction and the one who had led the boss straight to us. He was over with several others but none of them were really focusing on each other.
"Do you mind if I talk to you for a minute?" I asked.
He looked at me, nodded toward the others, then stepped off to the side. The others acted disinterested, continuing what they were doing, but in a way that always allowed them to keep their eyes generally in our direction and no obstacles blocking themselves from me. There was likely more going on here but before I could work it out Caps spoke up. "What do you want?"
"Why did you do it?" I asked as earnestly as I could manage. "Why did you let them shoot our people and then lead the boss right at us?"
He looked stunned for half a second before his body slumped into a stance of incredulity. "God save me from idealistic youths," he murmured, though not softly enough that I couldn''t personally hear it with my new ears. "Look, kid. I didn''t get in here by being the best in the world or by being rich. I didn''t even get in here by being the best mercenary in the world. People like that got in years ago. The people in charge needed disposable manpower and people like me are what was left. I''m a leach, a vampire living off their blood and strength. It is an exchange, a mutual theft between us. They steal my right to act as a decent person or to use good tactics against the enemy, and I steal the resources needed to get into the game with a good Pod. At least, better than the military or you people get."
Spooks seemed to have figured me out because he suddenly looked directly at me then spoke to several others in the area who abandoned all pretense that they weren''t paying attention and started staring right at me. Before I could react or try to run Caps continued his tired sounding explanation. "I thought you were better than this. My job is a mercenary one. I got hired to follow orders and to die before the VIPs. Pretty ideas of righteousness have no place here. Go play with the other kiddies if that is how you want it."
Fortunately my download finished. Unfortunately it wasn''t in time to get away from Spooks as he moved forward. It wasn''t like I could have run, there were too many of them and they each had the guns and training to stop me before I took three steps. And the alertness was spreading throughout their section of the room as one hired soldier got the attention of the next. My only option was to hide my nervousness and bluff. I listened in as the communications expert whispered to the mercenary leader. "Boss man, I think the kid is playing us. Over 99% chance he has been hacking the three letter''s computer during your entire conversation. I managed to slow the transfer but not stop him. What do you want to do about it?"
His eyes went wide and his posture suddenly stiffened. I could almost see the gears turning in his head as he glanced over toward the military''s table and then back at me.
Taking charge I decided to answer back. "They hired you to fight and die. They don''t even want your intelligence." I spoke with a knowing smile. I waited as it took a few moments for him to respond.
He smiled back, raised his hand in the air, and gave a small wave. Immediately the room seemed to calm, at least the third of it that had been paying attention. "If we meet later in The Game, be open to a team up. It is hard to find smart people who can keep their head." He seemed to relax, then frowned. "You should get going. Just don''t make the same mistake we are and hole up against the coming army."
I nodded, then quickly left the building.
17. Too many options
I joined up with the group to find that Tarah was avoiding me. Every time I tried to head in her direction she made an excuse to leave. Our group was the size of a large class of students so it was pretty obvious. With only 38 people in our group it was easy to count them all with my new senses. Why does quick counting fall under the heading of ''super senses''? I don''t know, but apparently it does. Watching her glance over and the disturbed look on her face that I could see from so far away was also under the heading of ''super senses''.
When I tried asking Donnie about it his only response was that she was intimidated. I hadn''t exactly been super forward before the fight. But then the battle happened and I was, in her words according to Donnie: "ordering people to die" and "not even caring what happened to them". She must have been one of the people hiding out at the end of the battle, though I hadn''t had the luxury of paying attention at the time, and didn''t like how it had turned out. Neither of us wanted to talk about it any more so we just let the topic drop.
Fortunately I didn''t need to worry about asking for anything about the market. While her more specialized ''communications'' equipment had a longer range and more power, mine still had an easy enough time finding the signals from their advertising. It made sense, since advertising could only work if people could receive it, but I was still worried that my comparatively second rate equipment wouldn''t be enough for however they were sending it out. I didn''t need to have worried. Once we had left the area of our base a bunch of magical advertisements made of illusions flew near us, near enough for people to reach out and grab them if we wanted. Some people did, but they were less detailed and interactive than the information I already had. Finally there were periodic a pulses of I don''t know what, but it brought with it a sense of commerce in a certain direction but that you shouldn''t come if something was trying to kill you.
The stuff I had picked up had given me a much clearer picture of what was going on. There was a market but it was located in an adjacent dimension where the shop owners made the rules. Those rules were pretty straightforward and included the expected penalty for breaking them which was also straightforward. Most crimes either were punished by bodily injury (twice what you had inflicted), a fine (three times what you had tried to steal or broken, or forced purchase), or death (and the rules specifically stated that this did count as ending your tutorial run early through ''self sabotage''). Part of me wondered how much control the shopkeepers had over the laws of the area, since the rules were treated more like natural laws than what you would get by a legal body, but maybe there were limits?
Either way, I began the tedious process of trying to figure out were I would be going shopping. Imagine shopping the internet with a list of hundreds of store names and locations but no search engine. You could look up each individual store but with no direct comparison other than to just look at both pages side by side. Even worse, most of the items weren''t standardized, so you that only made things even more confusing. It was even worse when I tried to look up information brokers. Nothing was standardized and they all advertised who they were affiliated with; be it nations, Paths, or other groups. Some even made a big deal out of what groups they held in opposition.
Eventually Mack noticed my scowl and came over. "Is everything ok? You seem to be staring at the tree-line with a lot of anger." His tone of voice was calm and steady and the way he came from the side made me think he was trying to nonconfrontationally get me to calm down.
I sighed. "I''m trying to look up shops. The information is completely disorganized and even the simplest things are a mess. And nothing is standardized so it is nearly impossible to know how things compare." I took a breath and tried to calm down.
He nodded along. "Don''t worry about it. Nobody has that many credits. Some people have a couple thousand at most, but most have less. You might have some more from all your level ups, but it shouldn''t be enough for you to stress out this much about it. Just do what everyone else plans to do and buy some food and maybe something fun with the leftovers."
I stopped and pulled my menu back up, just to check.
Aliases/callsigns: None
Body: 38-40
Speed: 40-40
Mind: 40-40
Recovery: 40-40
Path: Technology
Level: 4
Classes: Computer Operator
Credits: 26,861
Soulbound: 8/20
4pt Computer
4pt Electronic Transmitter
A memory storage and computational device, essentially a robot brain. Can be optimized for size, power, or other parameters. (Class Option)
A catch all for most types of computerized control and interface devices for use with a sufficiently powerful computer. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other devices designed for interface capabilities, with higher levels making hostile intrusion easier and increasing the range of the interface (Class Option)
Abilities: 20/20
4pt Hammer Space
16pt Enhanced Senses
A safe area held within the soul that allows the transfer of items into and out of that subdimension. Can be bought up to the level that allows for the transport of a small spacecraft. (Class Option)
Brain and nervous system upgrade that allow for mental control of any electronics implanted while allowing those electronics to have a degree of influence on the biological. (Class Option)
Gives the user superior senses, including the mental upgrades required to process the greater levels of information. Allows the user to actively utilize often unconscious senses, such as touch''s heat sense, to gain information about the surroundings that might otherwise be ignored. (Discovered Option)
A body that has been genetically optimized for the Arcane Arts can now be yours, allowing for greater levels of Magical or Psionic use with less physical strain! (Discovered Option)
This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
The very fabric of your soul has grasped more than most mortals could even imagine! This allows the student to do greater feats with no greater strain, greatly improving one''s maximum power! Perhaps, in time, your power may grow to mythic heights! (Discovered Option)
Skills: 0/20
Gives the user the skills to create operating systems to both control a computer and to allow the computer to control other things. Level effects the complexity of the control and the range of how complex the thing is that can be controlled. (Class Option)
Gives the skills to create items that a computer can use to control other things. Level determines the complexity of what can be a controlled target. (Class Option)
I''m pretty sure that twenty-six thousand, almost twenty-seven thousand credits, is way more than he thinks I should have. It is probably from killing the boss, though I''m also pretty sure that making a big deal about it would be a bad idea.
"What would you buy if you had ten times as many credits as you do now?" I asked instead.
He paused, seemingly surprised by my question, then answered after a moment of thought and a wave of his hand that I took as meaning that he looked at his status. "Ten times as much is pretty small, when I really think about it. I could really use a soulbound weapon and some armor. Some skills to get me superhuman at combat would be great too. I could also stand to buy some skills to sure up some weaknesses that have become apparent lately." He winced a bit at his own admission, then continued. "If I had a hundred times what I do now, though, I would get myself the ability to fly." A small smile came to his face as he spoke and a determined look came to his eye. "It isn''t even an option for me right now and I don''t have enough free points for it if it was... But still..."
There were a few seconds worth of silence before he regained his composure and let out a self depreciating laugh. "Here I am, dreaming to fly like I was when I was five years old. Don''t get me wrong, my class is great. I get to boost most of my stats through the roof and it even came with some options to make me prettier and to learn how to fight better. Don''t tell the girls about that though," he said with a wink, "but sometimes I just want the grandeur of being able to stand, like a real superhero up, above some small town while being able to make everything all right." Then he turned to look back at me more directly. "What would you do if you had infinite credits?"
My first thought was of building a character who could do everything before I started trying to narrow it down. Then I willfully stopped myself and spoke. "I would try out everything I can, do everything The Game allows, and never settle forever on one build. I know it isn''t realistic and it is good that this dream has infinite money. But so what? I just can''t imagine playing a game and not getting a chance to play all the characters and do all the stuff."
Donnie spoke up next walking closer to our group and dropping from his other conversation. "Too bad life doesn''t work like that. You have to specialize or you end up weaker than someone who does."
"So what? Just because the archetypical ''renaissance man'' wasn''t an absolute master of any one field didn''t make him less capable than the people who were. If anything it meant that there were fewer situations where he was completely out of his depth." I rolled my eyes at my next thought. "Then again I might be spoiled. In my life I always could just pick up the full range of characters and try them out. That''s the nice thing about playing video games for a living."
Mack seemed surprised at that. " That''s like, the dream job. What is it like playing games for a living?"
I shrugged slowly and gave him a somber smile in a deliberate attempt to give him a moment to think about my action before I replied. This wasn''t the first time I had been asked this question, especially since I was the one player with the longest relevance in the league by a couple of years. In a field where the best players often fall off after no more than two or three years, I was an anomaly who had been around two or three /times/ as long. Yet nobody outside the field understands the pure melancholy that threatens to choke the life out of a gamer who focuses on just one game for the majority of their adult life. Doubly so if they are aware enough to know that their feat of prowess could easily die with the game. History will not remember my deeds, no matter how dominating they may have once been. Something else has to drive me forward.
"It ends up being a job like most others. The dedication required means that you must really love it or else you will fall behind. But after years and years of anything you either choose to keep going or you don''t. No amount of the type of fun that normal people have for the game will keep you going at that point. You have to find your own way to keep going once the excitement has faded. Some play for the recognition. Some for their ego. Some for the money. Some because they have sacrificed their entire life to the game and have nothing else left. As for me, I focused on trying new things and always trying to find something new. But in the end you either choose to keep going or you don''t."
"That can''t be true." he answered slowly. "Everybody wishes they were a professional gamer. Everybody who is serious about the game loves them."
I shrugged again. "Nobody here recognized me and I played in the Ultimate MOBA tournament less than a month ago." Not that I blamed them, really. People only remember the players in the top two teams, maybe the top four. We didn''t even make it into the top eight. But, while I didn''t blame any normal person for not recognizing me, I could still recognize what it meant for my fading career.
There was some silence until Mac spoke up again. "What about you?" He asked toward Donnie. "How would you build your character if you had enough credits to do whatever?"
He glanced over curiously, seemingly finding things acceptable, and then answered. "I think I''d go full in on the gadgeteer angle. First I''d need more building skills to deal with all this post-space aged technology and then I''d need a good sized Spatial Inventory to carry more materials. I hear that there are even some ways to generate advanced materials so I would never run out. I''d also upgrade my body some more, but I''m not really sure what to do after that." No wonder he hadn''t been excited about the ability we had gotten from the mage, it had been completely useless to him. Also, my ''Hammer Space'' ability is probably the same as the ''Spatial Inventory'' that he wants, but good luck if he wants to sneak some blood from me without my notice.
"You could always get an ability that ups your mental stats, everyone needs more Processing and Focus." It was one of the guys that had been part of the group Donnie had been talking with before. I didn''t know him all that well but knew that he focused on biology in a weird middle ground between Tech and Superpowers. "Or even get some robot helpers to help you either make or use your gadgets."
Someone else spoke up next, a guy with factory tech and lots of crafting knowledge but no actual factory. "Why stop there? Why not just go full ''grey goo'' and make whatever you want whenever you want!"
The magical girl, who had been with them, decided to give her opinion. "You all are so serious about getting the perfect build. Why not try some magic or regular superpowers to add some flavor? Who couldn''t use flight or a force-field?"
We were still a couple hours away but the conversation continued until we had arrived.
18. Information Broker.
My eventual choice for an information broker came down to the single one with a very unique qualification: he claimed to be neutral. But less neutral in the ''I will never lie to you'' way that all the rest did, but more in the ''My organization has enmity with major players in all three paths due to having screwed them all over equally at one time or another'' sort of way. His advertisement had citations and references and everything; it was very thorough. Was this a good idea or a bad idea? Maybe, on both accounts. But at least this would give me a baseline on what to expect at other places.
I walked into the ''Flamehead Distributors'' building to find a room made of screens showing lines of number and letters crisscrossing in every conceivable direction. Floor, ceilings, walls; everything was overlapping screens, though the ground had them positioned underneath a transparent floor. From the outside the door had been squeezed between two others but the interior was big enough that it should have overlapped with both those doors and the ones next to them. Otherwise the room itself was indistinct, even lacking any other exit beyond the one I had used to enter. Within it were a few glass looking chairs and a man wearing shockingly yellow jeans and an electric yellow shirt. The fact that his skin was light grey seemed a small thing in comparison. Above a black head of hair he wore a hat with a holographic flame burning on it. A moment after I entered he stood from his chair and gave me a wave. "Hello."
I looked around the weird looking room, not sure what to think of it. "Uh, hi." I finally answered after a few more seconds to get my bearings. The outside had seemed pretty normal. A lot of the buildings were open to the street and more than a little business was done on their patios, but then there were a lot of businesses that seemed to be little more than a sign above a uniquely colored door as well. This room was probably the most truly ''alien'' thing I had seen so far.
There were a few more seconds of silence before he spoke up. "What can I do for you?"
Right, back to business. "I''ve got some information to sell, or at least get a price quote on it."
He nodded. "Right. Someone downloaded a copy of your world''s internet, or at least a lot of the most juicy parts, and you got it from them." He smiled then with a smirk. "Naughty, naughty. It looks like they broke encryption on a lot of private databases from a number of different jurisdictions. That would make for some good blackmail evidence if you can actually pin it on anybody."
"Uuh..."
"Right, let me tell you why you will hire me and not anyone else. First: I''m the best. Not literally, of course, but the best you can get at the current time and with your current limitations. And second: You can trust me. Go on, give me your objection. Everyone does so let''s just get it out of the way." He stood there, his hand held out in invitation and his freight train of an introduction finally over.
Right, my next sentence was a trap. I knew he had set it for me and I knew it was going to go off but that didn''t mean that I could find any way out of it. "How can I trust you when you just went through my information like that." I deadpanned.
He gave me a bright manic smile. "Because I told you I was doing it!" The smile quickly faded into something more normal as he continued. "All the agencies will do it and even a number of other places as well. The laws of the pocket world were given to you before you entered the market and this room, being a subordinate dimension, has all those rules as well. But it also has any other non-conflicting rules I want to introduce as well. Look it up on the fine print of any of the Information Agencies, they all include the rule to freely share any ''passing information''. The trick is that they keep all their information off-site so they have nothing to ''freely share''. And, while the rules about stealing still apply, it is very much applied in a ''look, but don''t touch'' type of manner. But if we have a photographic memory, which we all do, than that look is enough to take everything. Even for a large dump of data like you have, all you need is a way to speed up processing or slow down time for the person doing the processing. I''ll admit, that is more rare, but over half the agencies have someone and the rest will sell out the fact that you have it." He took a long breath before plopping himself down in one of the chairs. "But don''t just believe me, look it up and see for yourself."
I scowled at him, turned my eyepiece back on, and started looking up this business.
"Good attempt, turning off your stuff, but your computer has basically no security and I don''t think you even know how to turn the thing itself off." I didn''t, but there was no point in telling him that.
The ''laws'' for his space were quite enlightening. They included a law against intentionally misleading or outright lying, the aforementioned law that allowed any available information to be viewed, and a law against threats or coercion. Tellingly the version of the law that would apparently allow them to look through my information was there for every single one of the information traders, though it was phrased differently each time. Almost more alarmingly a third of them didn''t have a law against lying and half of them didn''t have a law against coercion.
Still, I wasn''t as trusting as all that. "My mom is an ..." my words just stopped. I tried to call her an apple but the final word simply wouldn''t come out. Whatever this was, it wasn''t weak. "But if you can just make a law preventing lies than why not just make theft illegal rather than giving a punishment for it?"
He nodded. "I''ll give you that one for free. The main reason is that they want dumb people to try. They make a lot more money from a theft that they can ultimately recover than they do from sales, especially when dealing in the tutorial with people who don''t know any better. Also it is more expensive to make more restrictive rules, and when accidents happen they want to make sure their butts are covered, and other less important things as well. It all makes more sense when you remember that we do more business with each other than we do with you tutorial students."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Still, I had one last question I just had to ask. "So why should I work with you rather than the other places that similarly protect me against lies and coercion?" Ok, maybe it wasn''t the most diplomatic thing to say, but I was feeling annoyed. Also, I''m pretty sure that is the type of thing you are supposed to say during a negotiation. Pick whichever reason is more palatable.
He gave me a incredulous look. "Beyond the fact that if you go anywhere else they won''t necessarily give you anything for your information, they will just take it and thank you for your time?" He shook his head. "No, that''s not the real reason. The real reason is whatever brought you to me first. I know the look of someone who has been simply caught unaware and I know the look of someone who has just realize they have been swindled. You fall into that first group, which means you didn''t walk into any other information broker before me. Now why would that be?"
I knew the answer, I just didn''t want to say it. All the other brokers were affiliated with at least one of the three Paths and everything I had seen made me really distrust how the Paths seemed to operate on a grander scale.
"Fine," I finally relented. "What type of a deal do you have for me?"
"Well first you have to remember that I''m both a good merchant and a successful one. So I''ll be paying you with information." he answered with a smile.
"What''s that supposed to mean?" I replied in a flat tone.
He shook his head and got more serious. "A good merchant gets you what you want. A successful merchant makes a profit. You want money, but that would mean I would take a loss. I already have the info, after all. But you also want information, and the type of information you can use without ruining your tutorial run won''t significantly cost me to give you. Making this official will just make things simpler on the back-end."
"But if you need the information officially then"
"Back during your third year of high school you wrote a poem." He interrupted. "You only put it up on social media for less than five minutes before taking it down and never posting it again. The poem was a"
"Fine, fine. I believe you. Please stop."
He flashed me a bright white smile across his dull grey face. "Here is my deal. I''ll answer any question you want as long as you are in the tutorial and so long as it won''t get either of us in trouble. If it is a bad question I''ll at least tell you why I can''t answer rather than misleading you or something. I''ll also not tell anyone where I got this trove of information. In exchange you will transfer a copy of the information to me."
"You don''t want any sort of exclusivity?" I asked, a bit surprised.
He snorted. "That''s why I put in the stuff about not telling anyone where I got the information. If you want to spread around the fact that you have it than you aren''t as smart as I think you are."
I tried to think of a way to get more out of the deal, but couldn''t think of anything. All things considered it wasn''t as good as I had been hoping for but it wasn''t a bad deal. "Ok. Let''s do it. What is next? Is there a contract I need to sign or something?"
He shook his head. "No contract, just a nod of the head after we figured out the terms is enough." We both nodded our heads. It didn''t feel like anything but when I thought about walking out without paying in felt like it would be costly. "Just turn on your transmitter and send it all over. It shouldn''t take long with your equipment."
I did so and was surprised that it finished within a single minute. "How was it so fast?" I asked.
He gave me a look. "You were transferring digital signals with a system designed for multiverlal analogue rates. Of course it would be fast."
Right, that went completely over my head. Maybe I should ask something less likely to give me a headache. "How did you know about the poem?"
"Your social media company lied about deleting it. They keep everything, partly for analytics and partly as blackmail material in case you try to cause problems for them."
That was somewhat alarming, so maybe something less out there. "Ok, what''s with the hat?"
He smiled broadly. "It is a joke. It refers back to a story where there was a group that supposedly were so afraid of people reading their minds and stealing their thoughts that they would burn the brains of their dead. Fire burns even magic, afterall. Some of them were so scared that they made special hats that they could light on fire without burning themselves to keep out the mind readers. Our hats don''t use real fire of course, that would be too hot, but the fake fire is funny enough."
Right, so in earth terms they are the ''Tinfoil Hat Information Brokers''. Ok, next question. Not sure how this one can go wrong, but at least it should be more straightforward. "So how does the economy work if you are all buying from each other? Shouldn''t it collapse without a stable base large enough to support it?"
His smile faded. "Truth be told you Tutorial Students are most often seen as the product or the reason for a product, though some do welcome the low value transactions. For instance there is a reason that there are so many information brokers here. Furthermore a lot of our business comes from the Tutorial Teachers, the people who act as antagonists during each round. If they die and leave behind a weapon or some of their other stuff, for instance, they often want it retrieved or destroyed. If not than we can grab it up for ourselves. Some of them spend time before or after their assignment relaxing, and our catering to that creates an entire industry chain. They also send out middlemen to buy stuff for them or on other tasks, which ends up being us dealing with us once again. Then there are those who take advantage of the special rules within the tutorial, not that I can say anything more about that without causing you trouble on your tutorial run. I''m sure there is more but your eyes seem to be glossing over already so I''ll just leave it at that."
Right, finances are complicated. Maybe I should try for something headache inducing. "What was the real reason you wanted to make this deal?"
He took on a more neutral pose. "A big part of it was that I didn''t want to have to transfer the information out from my mind to our servers. Imagine a long tedious dream where you spend the entire time writing a book report the length of the entire internet. No thank you. I''ll eat the cost of a few tutorial level questions to not have to put up with that. Then there is the fact that while you might not have money or anything now that doesn''t mean you won''t in the future. Also..." he frowned, then got a conflicted look on his face, then finally continued with a different sort of focus. "I looked you up and what I found got me interested. The main stuff I can''t tell you about as it would turn out very badly for both of us. The powerful are not something either of us can afford to cross." Then his face softened while growing in confusion. "There is one thing though, a phrase left as an addendum by the Core System itself: ''May you live in interesting times''. It is labeled as a curse? What is that about?"
I shrugged. "I have no idea."
"Hmmm... I also might have been just a tiny little bit bored. There is only so long a guy can look at numbers and projections before he just needs a break."
"Right..." I guess I''ve spent enough time playing around. "What do I need to know?"
He smiled a broad and toothy grin. "That is exactly the right question."
19. The Power of a Point
The grey skinned information broker gave me a serious look. "The first thing you need to know, something that I pray will help you long into the future: Claudius Roman. That''s my name, by the way. Can you say it back to me?"
I gave him a look but repeated the name. "Claudius Roman."
He made a contemplative look before continuing. "That was an informative experience. You see we don''t speak the same language and so it doesn''t translate the same every time. That time I focused on the meaning of my name and the universe found a way to translate it as closely as possible. If I was to focus on the sound of my name than it would sound like ''Clowd-ous Raou-an''. Mostly this doesn''t matter, I just like to hear how other people say my name." He smiled.
I rolled my eyes.
"As for something more immediately important, the power of a point. When you spend your points on upgrades; weather it is soulbounds, abilities, or skills; you need to understand exactly what you should expect to get out of them. ''Create Water'' is the prime example of this. Without any upgrades this one-point spell creates a stream of water with no more pressure than you might expect from a household spigot. It is also the most common point usage of any expenditure. The reason why becomes quickly apparent when you think about the utility of having clear, pure water whenever you might want it. Sure, not dying of desiccation is a great thing, and the survival aspects of The Game make it a strong contender for that alone, but that is actually the least immediately useful aspect of the spell. Afterall, anyone can buy a thermos that filters water out of the air." he smiled at me knowingly and I held back a groan. I really needed to find a way to keep people from looking into my hammerspace. The self-filling water bottle had seemed like a good idea at the time.
"No," he continued, "It isn''t about having enough water to not die of thirst but having that water when or where you may want it immediately without having to carry or retrieve it. It is like carrying tens of gallons of water at all times without having to deal with the weight or volume. You might think the utility would fade as technological development got higher, but the opposite is true. Most spacecraft use basic water as the catalyst for their heat dissipation systems, they just heat it up and release the steam. Dimensional travel uses water for multiversal lubrication. Reality drives use frozen water as the ablative shield against non-reality corruption. In all these cases water isn''t the best option but it is functional, nontoxic, generally nonreactive, and very very readily available.
"The same can be said about the second most used point expenditure: Create Air. Or the fourth and fifth most common point uses: Create Fire and Create Electricity. None of them are as directly useful by themselves but all of them directly or indirectly increase the user''s potential by how they interact with the world around them. This is called ''external synergy'' as it is a point''s synergy with the outside world. You might ask, ''aren''t all of these magic?'' Yes, but the use you get out of being able to spontaneously create matter or energy from nothing but a fifteen minute jog''s worth of exhaustion is hard to replace with something else.
"Of course we get the boring ''internal synergy'' upgrades that are just useful as they are, though most of them require more than a single point to be useful. Flight would be an example. At four points you can fly at a slow hover or sixteen points you get full flight that is as good as your normal movement but in three dimensions. That can be quite useful if you don''t want to run, don''t want to jump, or want to say ''I can fly by my own power'' rather than just using some form of flight technology like a normal person would. They are points that do a job, and you might need it for some reason, but you don''t get back more value than the points use would suggest. Therefore I would call that a bad use of points. Instead we can look at the third most common point use: Dimensional Storage. The size of the basic version is small enough that you could conceivably carry everything it holds, so it doesn''t hold very much direct internal synergy, but it enables the better use of other abilities. This is called ''horizontal synergy''."
"A quick question for clarification," I jumped in, "Is a Dimensional Storage the same as my Hammerspace?"
He paused for a moment. "Yes. Depending on how the person thinks of it the name may be Dimensional Storage, Soul Encapsulation, Spatial Offsetting, Soul Storage, or your Hammerspace. Most things aren''t so confusing and you should be able to recognize the different words referring to the same upgrade, but there are a few things like that. The common point is that the confusing ones are more conceptually powered, but this is pretty rare at your level beyond the given example." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Do you want to talk about linguistics again?"
"Uh, no." I answered. "Lets go back to points again."
"Right." he nodded. "The value of points is in their utility and synergy. A lot of upgrades have utility built into themselves by interacting with the way the world works; like the Create Water and Create Air examples I mentioned before. A number of things have value without interacting with anything else; like telekinesis, the magic or the superpowered version. The point use is helpful but it will never, by themselves, get you more than what those points themselves might suggest. Then you have upgrades that get their value from how they work with other abilities; like Dimensional Storage.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"Think about how it combines with your Soulbound computer. You can make a One Point computer small enough to fit in your hand but you loose a lot of power that way, and a Four Point computer is even more so. The loss is actually exponential, so your four points of computer is actually acting more like eight or ten when compared to something more easily portable. The same is true of your transmission device; and your Storage still has a lot of space left over. This is called ''cross point synergy'', more often called ''horizontal synergy''. While external synergy gets its value from how well you can leverage it in the real world, horizontal synergy gets its value from how well it multiplies the power of your other abilities."
"Uh, Not to make a big deal out of this, but I don''t know that I have enough credits to actually use this information."
This made him pause. "You killed the boss, didn''t you? So you should have a good stash of credits. Enough to buy some stuff and get some upgrades."
"I, uh, spent some of it already." I admitted.
"Right, so what did you get?" he asked with his normal energy.
This made me pause. "I''m... not sure I should tell an information broker about my character build."
He rolled his eyes dramatically. "How else can I help you with your build if I don''t know what it is. But, if it makes you feel better." He stood up and raised his hand in what looked like some sort of salute, "I do solemnly swear to not spread around anything about his build that this ''Johnny'' person tells me." Yeah, at this point I''m not even questioning how he knows my name. He put down his hand and dropped back into his transparent chair, still referring to me in the third person. "Not that I won''t watch what he does in his next fight and make the logical leaps based on that. But what else do you expect? It is literally my job."
I internally held back a groan while keeping a flat expression. He did make a good point. Could I hide the fact that I had super senses now? Maybe... But the first time I reacted to something I shouldn''t be able to see or hear it would become obvious that something was going on. On the other hand his experience on how different abilities worked together would be invaluable in figuring what to take next. All things considered I had far more to gain than I was likely to loose by telling him. I still felt a bit overwhelmed by it all, however. "Fine. I got Super Senses from the boss."
He nodded along. "Right, that makes sense. Definitely more than the Four Point version, and you wouldn''t know about dual specing yet, so that would give you the sixteen point version." He shook his head sadly. "Too bad you couldn''t get the sixty-four point version, it comes with the ability to pick up things like electronic transmissions or magical fluctuations and actually understand them." Suddenly he was neutral again. "Not a bad pick, though. The only really bad pick, from his major abilities, was the one he used to create his minions. It was too gimmicky and you don''t have the stats to support it anyhow. I may come across as biased by saying this, considering my job, but knowledge is power and your ability gives you plenty of potential knowledge.
"This brings up the next form of synergy: Vertical Synergy. Think of each point as a single extra upgrade that you have. You may upgrade your eyesight, and hearing, and ability to filter out noise, and ability to process the information; and do it all separately as four single point expenditures. Or you can upgrade them all in one packaged four point upgrade. The thing to remember, though, is that the combination is more valuable than the sum of its parts. The usually accepted formula is a 5 to 4 output to input ratio, generally speaking. And that formula multiplies over each level. So a tier two upgrade, four points, is worth five tier one upgrades; and a tier three upgrade, sixteen points, is worth twenty five tier one upgrades." He nodded along to himself as he spoke, before continuing with his lesson.
" ''So why not just focus on one type of upgrade and get it as high as possible?'' you might ask. Some people do, and we call them one trick wonders. And when that one trick fails to be capable or appropriate, so do they. Most people treat individual upgrades like your dimensional storage: What good is it to have the space for an aircraft carrier when all you need is the space in a small closet? What good is a fireball that explodes in the size of a small building when you are being attacked by a monster in a small room?"
"Right," I answered back, really hoping that I didn''t forget anything. "But I really do think you are overestimating the money and number of free points I have."
He gave me a discerning look. "I shouldn''t be. Biologically you should have started out at level five or six, though there is a slight chance seven if you are some sort of super genius for your race. Mind stats are harder to estimate. This means that you should have between thirty and thirty five points to allocate in each category. And while you almost certainly maxed out your credits for beating the boss, the level based restriction is ''supposedly'' there to prevent abuse, that should still leave you with around a hundred thousand credits before you started buying things."
"I currently have twenty-six thousand credits, with some extra left over."
He looked me over again. "The minimum level is one, and even that shouldn''t be normally possible. This would put you at level five and give you considerably more credits. I can see the value of everything you are carrying. So, what other upgrades did you buy?"
I sighed. "I think that minimum level is more a ''rounding up'' sort of situation rather than a ''set at this base level'' sort of thing. I''m currently level four."
His face went through a number of complicated expressions before being covered over by a mask of joy and ambition. "That is unexpected, but not necessarily bad and maybe it is even good! It might be a bit more work, but I''m sure we can work something out!"
20. Weaponizing Anything.
My current tool for stealing access to other people''s abilities: light conversation. Apparently getting access to extra items to Soulbind was pretty straightforward: You buy or steal something that wasn''t already Soulbound and then take the time to attach them to your character. Simple enough. For Superpowers you need a good look at their genetics. I could apparently buy a sensor that could do that for me without needing blood, but it wasn''t a priority until I could actually use what I got out of it. For magic, however, you needed to watch the person using their skill and have them talk about what they were doing for a few minutes. Apparently magic is complicated and, without something making it easier, the precision required to reliably do the simplest spell is literally inhuman. Even trying to teach the skill to a normal person, without supernatural levels of teaching ability, was also impossible. So how does the system know that you should have access to the ''blueprints'' of the skill without requiring that either the teacher or the student has supernatural levels of skill or ability in some unrelated area? It shortcuts things by allowing a demonstration of the skill and some light conversation about it to be ''good enough''.
Not that this was the normal way that people got access to any of this stuff. People would still buy stuff but, if it was really an important item that you couldn''t Soulbind, most techies would get a fabricator and the blueprint and build it themselves. For Superpowers and Skills it was even simpler; there were little gift-card looking things that would sell you access to the Upgrade.
And now I can''t get the idea out of my head of sending someone a greeting card that said, ''Happy birthday! I sent you a gift card with the power of flight and/or laser eyes!''...
My question to the information broker on how I could make use of those explanations to get access to some worthwhile upgrades resulted in him handing me a bunch of drained power cells and ''hiring'' me to go get them recharged. The upside was that he was paying me with a couple of the power cells and it resulted in me getting access to the electricity magic that was used for recharging. The downside was that I had just spent well over an hour listening to a overworked wage-slave gripe about his job. Later on I would be talking with those other two mages from before; the one who''s hand I nicked to test out my theory on getting access to new abilities and his overly dramatic friend. The dramatic one could make water, which was a good one-point upgrade, and I was glad that I wouldn''t have to listen to him for long to get what I needed.
The other one, the more normal guy of the duo, could apparently modify energy from spells and weapons into different forms. I''d seen him turning his relatively weak laser gun''s shots into electricity and fire and ice. It wasn''t exactly strong, but the secondary effects were quite helpful. This included effects like giving the enemy a jolt that halted their movement or slowing them from the cold. The energy transformation spell was especially interesting since it used magic as a mediator for the transformation and could, theoretically at least, be cut off halfway to use the magic for something else; something like using electricity to cast spells. The process wasn''t super efficient and had limited power that got even less efficient if you tried to use it too fast, but it would still be more efficient than casting with my own power.
Apparently there was magical equipment out there that would do the same thing but easier and more efficiently. Apparently it wasn''t available in the Tutorial for reasons that would make the tutorial mad at me if I knew them. Whatever. The Tutorial should be over soon enough and those questions will become more answerable by then.
My next stop had been to buy first aid supplies, because nobody questions why you are trying to get access to their blood when you carry a first aid kit. Was it a scummy reason for trying to heal people? Maybe. But you could make a strong argument that money was just as bad a reason, but that hadn''t stopped a sizable portion of the doctors in the medical profession.
But enough about the mercenary nature of the medical profession, I had a weapon''s dealer to go see.
I walked in a small entryway, no more than a door with a carryout window next to it, to find a much larger room as I had come to expect. Encased in every wall and one long counter turned display case were weapons of all sorts; though most were guns, swords, and spears. It honestly looked a little like a pawn shop except that it lacked a backdoor or a cash register. One weird thing about the room was that the door opened to the room with the shopkeeper across from me but the window opened to the right of the counter in some sort of weird twisting of space that I didn''t want to think too much about. The proprietor was a tan skinned man with well developed muscles and sandy blonde hair; the guy could have been completely human if it wasn''t for his pointed ears. He gave me a serious look that was all business, something that comforted me after dealing with Roman and the guy who charged my batteries.
He looked me up and down before he spoke. "I got a message that you would be coming by and that I should take care of you. I don''t ask and I don''t want to know. I take my job as a weapons designer seriously, so don''t expect anything less out of me. My first order of business is to ask you how much you think you know about weapons in The Game?"
I shrugged. "I know there are light sabers and laser guns, but not much else. I''m not one of those people who figured everything out before I went in."
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He nodded. "Good, no bad habits." He then reached under the counter, to what looked like it should be within the display case but wasn''t, and pulled out what looked like an ordinary kitchen knife before slamming it down on the counter. The action didn''t look angry or violent, it was more like this was just how he moved. "This is a basic knife. Well-made with decent materials, but ultimately the type of thing you new-worlders might find in your houses. It is so cheap that you can''t bind it with points; so cheap that if you had it on your person when you died it would likely come with you like any piece of mundane clothing." He looked directly into my eyes before he continued. "It is also strong enough to kill me if you shoved it in my eye, and I have ten times your levels. Probably a lot more. I don''t care, it''s a lot."
He moved the knife off to the side and pulled out something that looked like an alien handgun, with the handle being a little too long and the trigger guard a little too small, and a length of wire connected at both ends to the center of a pair of handles that I suspected was a garrote. "These are all mundane weapons but absolutely deadly if you can use them to damage your enemy. Do not make the mistake of believing that bigger is better when it comes to weapons." He turned and pointed at a large gun on the back wall. It looked like someone had taken a four and a half foot section of tree trunk, coated it in metal, and added multiple handles and targeting displays all over it. "This is the Firodine AT36 mining laser. It will burn straight though a modern tank''s shields and superstructure like it was nothing. It is the most powerful weapon I have in the store. It is also absolutely useless as a weapon. The charge up time is atrocious, the coherent light generation mechanism gives a clear demonstration of where you are aiming, and you have to hold your target for it to do its full damage. Nobody in their right mind would sit there while it happens. You are more likely to kill someone with that knife than with this thing."
He swept all three ''mundane'' weapons up and tossed them back under the counter into whatever extradimensional space existed there. "Attack and defense are in a constant battle for supremacy. Attack always seems to win, considering how little it actually takes for something to be deadly, but in truth it is defense that has the upper hand. Every time a focused or well calibrated attack breaks through you think that the offense won. But when two or more killers face off and one of them ends up dead, that means that defense worked for one of them. Every time various similarly sized and equipped militias or armies face off and it isn''t mutual destruction, defense won. Every time you walk through town and don''t have someone try to murder you for whatever loot you might drop, defense won."
He cleared his throat, "Not that you can get loot from your fellow Tutorial Students, those in charge aren''t that dumb. But there is always someone who wants to try and suffers the consequences."
"What happens if you do kill someone in the Tutorial, one of the other new people I mean?" I asked, thinking about what had happened during the first round.
"On purpose? Unprovoked?" he asked with a raised eyebrow. I nodded. "They target you first during the next round. The rounds are designed like tests, to see who has the will and ability to survive and to be worth wile allies in the future; but nobody wants to let someone pass who might shoot them in the back if they later get teamed up on the same side."
I nodded. It was something to let the rest of the group know and yet another reason to get far away from the Cheaters.
"Back to what''s important, the weapons. In order for a weapon to be effective it has to get through your enemies layers of defense. It doesn''t matter if you have a mundane dagger or that mining laser if you can''t bring them to bear on your target; neither one will kill your enemy and anything short of death, if you can''t follow it up, will be healed in short order. The value of a weapon is in how well it penetrates one or more types of defense. Rapid-fire or lock-on weapons makes it hard to dodge. Corrosive or phase shifting weapons can break through shields. Penetrating or multiphasic weapons can break through armor. Turrets and auto-targeting weapons make it hard to hide. Stuff like that."
I nodded. This sounded familiar. We had something similar on earth but not as many ways to get past the defense and likely far fewer types of defense. "To clarify: What are the different types of defense?"
He nodded back. "There is no set types of defense, and some might work against some attackers while some defense may be ignored. Just remember: the farther a weapon is from hitting your target at the center of their layers of defense, the worse off you are. The more layers of defense they have, the more work you have to get through them all. Think of it as though you were to be the one defending against an enemy. If your enemy doesn''t know you are out there then they won''t look for you. If they can''t find you than they can''t target you, even if they know you are out there. If they don''t think of you as an enemy then they won''t target you, even if they can find you. If they lack the weapons to attack you without unacceptable losses or collateral damage then they can''t attack you, even when they want to attack you. If you force them into a bad political situation then they won''t attack you, even if they could. If you dodge than nothing they throw at you, no matter how nasty, can affect you. If you shield or deflect the attack than you won''t take any meaningful loss from their attack, even if you get hit. And if you block an attack with something like armor than it won''t risk hurting you personally, no matter how targeted it may be to you personally. If you ever take damage that isn''t self inflicted, you screwed up your defense."
"Right," I answered as I thought about what he had said. Politics and friendship weren''t the first things I thought of as being weaponizable, but I''m sure others would jump right to them. "So what do you suggest for a weapon that will help me as much as possible. Just remember, I''m on a budget."
He showed me a lot of very interesting guns with a lot of extremely useful features. The guy was a weapons smith, first and foremost, and nothing else mattered to him beyond the challenge of crafting the perfect weapon. I never even found out his name.
In the end I bought myself a four point dagger for twenty thousand credits. It was a very good dagger, though.
21. City Of The Fallen
Apparently having a source of information, proven more reliable and than just rumors, was really helpful. It gave us such useful information as the fact that there was an area that we needed to be within when the next round started or bad things would happen, specifically auto failing. And yes, the rule about the tutorial only ending when you died was still in effect; but it wasn''t like any of us could fight back against this entire world choosing to delete us. Fortunately I also got information on our immediate surroundings and where might be a good place to settle in. For a shortened list of good options our choices were limited to anywhere other than where we had started and not to the east where the army would be coming from.
And no, I''m not kidding about that. Apparently the area of the planet we were on looked to be the burnt out remains of a semi-rural town and our starting point looked like it was once a large city park. Trees surrounded our little bunker for a good distance before being itself surrounded by buildings of various sizes. Even the log house that had housed the entrance to the market, when viewed from above and with some context, revealed itself to be a touristy gimmick set up not too far from a gift shop. The place had been thoroughly looted but it showed the remains of everything from park benches to a long irrelevant sign showing hiking trails. All around were decent places to hide from attackers, as most cities were, but there was an eerie feeling of subtle wrongness about the place.
That wrongness might have been the way the city was a burnt out husk of what it might have been, but it was likely more than that. The cars all had pointed front bumpers, like something cartoonists in the sixties would dream of the far future, but were powered by normal combustion engines. The doors were too tall and thin, as though slendermen lived here; but the windows were shorter than would be expected considering the old inhabitants sizes. Even more strangely was how the chairs and seats were all designed with a cutout at the lower rear, as though space needed to be made for thick tails. And yet, for all the small bits of weirdness and the signs faded into obscurity, it otherwise appeared like any other town might look if every inhabitant suddenly disappeared with no trace suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of commuting and eating and other normal life activity.
The aliens, shunning the advice of a number of people who were telling them it would be a bad idea to become a stationary target when the army arrived, found a convenient police station to claim for themselves. There was something decidedly wrong about throwing all the children and elderly into the holding cells, but that was their decision to make.
It took us longer to find somewhere to stay, hours of wondering about from place to place on the map, but we did eventually settle in. What we found was a taller building in decent condition overlooking our old testing bunker a few miles away, and it just so happened to be next to what looked like a cheap inn. The beds were old and dusty but mostly intact and more comfortable than what had been in the bunker. It lacked the restrooms and lights and food dispensers of our last place, but it was better in that it lacked the direct danger of the Cheaters living on the ground floor such that they were blocking us in.
In another note, cutting down and hauling trees for firewood is a lot more entertaining when you do the work with superpowers; so tonight we have a bonfire. The bonfire had the effect of clearly dividing up the extraverts who were five to ten feet away from the fire, partying in the light; and the introverts who were farther out, huddling against the darkness alone or in small groups. People like Mack and Tarrah were part of that former group while Donnie, myself, and many others were part of the second.
Currently I was having a conversation with Donnie about what I should do next, especially when I passed on some of what the information broker had told me about my potential build.
"So what," he asked, "do you need to go talk to those guys again now?" He glanced over at the two guys from before, the ones who had been hanging out together when I went to try out ways of getting new superpowers from other people.
"I mean, kinda? Truth be told, I really don''t want to deal with them. Their attitude toward anyone not magic aligned has been fairly cold." Granted, Sotang was better than ''Dark Depths'', but neither of them was very welcoming to outsiders to their group. Continuing on, I explained: "I really don''t want to spend the time talking with them that it would take to get access to their magic skills."
He rolled his eyes at me somewhat dramatically, enough to be seen quite clearly to even normal people despite the dancing lights. "You know you are going to do it. Putting it off isn''t helping anything. It isn''t like you to be so indecisive about things."
I sighed. "Your right," and begrudgingly made my way over to the bench that the two of them were sitting on. The two were an odd pair, and introvert and an extrovert together. ''Dark Depths'' was loud, bombastic, attention seeking, and nothing but empty bravado; while Sotang was more focused, reserved, confident, and cutting with his remarks. For some reason putting the two of them together ended up with the pair sitting back with the introverts. This did not make me any more optimistic about the upcoming conversation.
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"What do you want?" mister Depths asked me with a tone that was just shy of hostile.
I nodded to them is greeting. "I came by to hear about your magic." I answered honestly.
He smirked at me, "I know it is great, but that is what you loose out on for going with some lessor option for your type of class."
I shrugged. "I didn''t exactly have much of a choice. My Tutorial test messed up and left me at level one, remember? Then it left me with nothing but bad options to pick from. It was either this or, like, the ''mind control your allies and stab them in the back'' option. Why do you care anyways?"
The darkly hooded man of the darkness and dark brooding answered back darkly. "The world is a place of darkness and disappointments. The sorrow you feel for being part of a lessor faction is only to be expected. Wallow in that regret, and one day you too may turn your path toward the mage''s glory."
I gave a flat look toward Sotang and slowly raised an eyebrow as I listened to the speech.
The more reasonable of the two spoke up. "He really gets into the ''roll playing'' aspect of things. His old life wasn''t so great and this is his chance to reinvent himself."
"My past has its own darkness. My despair was encroaching like the deepest oceans. Why should I not combine those sorrows to bring woe upon my foes; and be a much cooler and edgier character person at the same time?"
His life must have been bad if this is what he chose to do with it. Then again I never got into the roll playing side of games so maybe there was a less insane reason for his actions? I turned back to Sotang again. "Translation?" I requested.
He sighed before answering. "Near as I can tell he was a fluid dynamics engineering prodigy who got through graduate school early. Lots of parental pressure, not a lot of time to go out and have fun. This ''cooler'' persona is what happened." I looked back at the sputtering indignity that ''Dark Depths'' was showing with slightly more respect. He looked to be eighteen or nineteen years old and if he already had not only a college degree but a graduate degree than he must really be a genius.
My respect was immediately lessened as the man himself spoke up in a winy tone that mercifully dropped character. "Why do you have to be like that? Can''t you just let me be all cool and mysterious like?" He harumphed and pouted with crossed arms. "Yeah, fine. Its true. What''s wrong with that?"
I sighed audibly and decided against giving him my answer. I really didn''t think he would appreciate me telling him that he was annoying and didn''t know when to give it a break and just act like a normal person. This, right here, is why I felt like I couldn''t be more openly social: because any significant interaction with any individual was likely to bring them back into my life and force me to deal with them, whether I wanted to or not. Normally it isn''t too big a deal, but normally I don''t have to deal with someone as annoying as ''Dark Depths'', the master of burying his personal problems in a dorky persona. It was one thing if his actions were all in good fun; but they weren''t, and I wasn''t having fun dealing with it.
Instead I changed the subject to something else that I really wanted to know before anything else. "Look, I didn''t really want to say anything before but why are you so gung-ho about the whole ''mage superiority'' thing? Most of the others might be proud of their path but you take it to an entirely different level. Treating others like they are less for there choice... Just, why?"
The annoying one spoke up first, and he was back ''in character''. "This is just what it is like in game, at least when you are dealing with the most powerful in the universe. Why wouldn''t I choose to be like one of those people?" Then he gave me a smile that was seemingly supposed to be smug but instead came across as smarmy. "Doesn''t it say more about you, and most of the others for that matter, that you all /don''t/ try to emulate those more powerful?"
I gave him an unimpressed look before sniping back. "Maybe it just means that we know how to be cool about it rather than just /pretending/ to be cool."
He made a shocked face at my words, one that quickly turned to angry indecision, than turned and stomped away.
Sotang watched his friend walk away before replying. "That was a bit harsh," he criticized.
I raised an eyebrow at his words. "Was it? He took every chance he got to mock and belittle anyone who wasn''t doing what he was or wasn''t as hardcore about it, what is wrong with pointing some mockery back at him?"
His face scrunched up in thought. "It is just..." he started, then visibly seemed to change tracks for his response, "He isn''t exactly the most stable person in the world. The things he did and the choices he made to be at the very top within his field didn''t do good things to him."
I wasn''t sure exactly how to answer that. "How is that different for almost any one of us? The game is too expensive for normal people and those who come out are often too volatile for rich people who aren''t at least a little crazy to want it for themselves. I myself only came due to a combination of having passed the pinnacle of my gaming career and needing a new game. What about you? Why are you here and what makes you so focused on avoiding people not on your path?"
He had a troubled look on his face. "I''m not the best person to ask. I just do what my family wants. They picked their side in that particular war, so I just go along with them. At least I can have this time to enjoy without worry." It was a somber admission and it left the area quiet for it.
"You know about this upcoming round, don''t you? Ninety percent of us won''t make it through. It might even be worse due to what happened last round."
He gave me an ironic smile as he glanced at the shadows of the surrounding rubble. "What better place for us fallen people to die than a city that is already dead?"
22. Preparations for Battle
It had been an interesting week of everyone getting ready for the big battle. For most there wasn''t a lot to do. They had upgraded what they needed and could afford while buying whatever they could with what was left, and that was mostly it. There was a certain amount of playing around with new abilities and refining the use of old ones, but there was little more most people could do to prepare. A few of us, myself included, tried to explore the surrounding area to familiarize ourselves with the opportunities and to find anything worth salvaging, but there was very little to find that wasn''t already on my map.
So instead most people just took these days to rest and to make friends. More and more people ended up near the inner circle of the fire every night, though the dynamic seemed to then separate everyone into the louder and the more conversational sides of the fire. The issue with learning other people''s magic turned out to be easier than I thought. Just bring up the cool things people could do and they would show off and talk about it forever if given the chance. This opened up a lot of new options for most of us, but only for magical skills and with some weird restrictions. Apparently part of the points were blocked? Nobody had any clue why. I managed to get around some of the restrictions with the skill I got from Sotang, the energy transformation one, but only that skill. It was the first one I got, though, so maybe there is another unexplained limit in place?
Not everyone wanted to show off and talk about their magic, the Telekinesis guy in our group being a prime and vocal example of someone who didn''t want to share, but most of the others did once they realized that they could get more options out of it. The revelation came partway through ''Dark Depths'' very loud demonstrations of his abilities when someone who was unfortunately too close to be able to ignore the tirade noticed something new was available. Everyone eventually ''figured out'' that people could get access to a new ability if they listened intently when someone talked about how they used their ability while showing it off. I knew that they you didn''t need to listen intently and that the conversation could have anything to do with the magic in general instead of having to be so strict on the topic, but their way was good enough. There was a lot of overlap between people with several of the elements and strangely nobody with the ''earth'' element or anything like it. There was also a guy with healing, but it was weak and used too much energy for him to really demonstrate it. Also nobody wanted to hurt themselves over and over to see it happen and looked at me funny when I tried to volunteer. In addition there didn''t seem to be anyone with one of those weird mind altering classes like what I had been offered alongside my current class.
In the end pretty much the entire group got access to fire, water, wind, electricity, light, and energy transmutation magic. Magic people alternately had access to either Magic Sense or Magic Manipulation, but nobody could figure out how to demonstrate seeing or what came across as feeling magic.
The supers were less interested in sharing what made them special. Not that they didn''t try, but all that you got from one person flying and talking about how great it was to fly was a bit of morose jealousy out of Mack. The other techies barely even tried. Donnie could make some simple weapons and traps to hand out, for some reason the more complicated ones disappeared when he tried, but that was about it. Mack did find me a chain to add to my costume but I ended up not using it because it made too much noise when I walked.
Maybe there is a story about how people realized that they could trade around magic, I mean beyond: ''hey, something new just appeared on my status,'' followed by ''I think someone was talking about how they use their magic while using it, lets try doing the same,'' and then concluded by ''Hey, that worked, lets all do it.'' But if I can describe an entire interaction in one admittedly long sentence than is it really worth an entire longwinded description?
My gear hadn''t changed too much from the first fight, beyond my new knife. There were a few new embellishments added to everything to make it look more sci-fi and my original clothes were a bit worse for wear, but I otherwise looked the same except for the knife. The knife, however, was worth every credit I spent on it.
The issue with picking a weapon was that I needed something as economical as possible while still getting through as many forms of defense as possible. Ranged weapons were great and could counter any number of defenses: from range to speed to the simple fact that if I needed to get into mele range than there was a good chance they would kill me first. The problem, however, was that if they had literally any passive defenses, from armor to shields to whatever other BS this universe could imagine, then my ranged weapon would be all but useless. I could get one that would change the beam setting to get past some defenses, but first I would need to know the right setting for each barrier. I could get one that was powerful enough to blast past some defenses, but at my price range even that would be limited. And the more range I wanted it to have, at least with any sort of accuracy, the worse the power output of the weapon would be. And that is just with energy weapons, I could forget about having enough credits for anything with worthwhile ammunition.
Mele weapons solved most of those problems, at least with passive defenses. The coherent energy blade of my weapon was enough to blow through a lot of barriers all on its own, a tradeoff achieved by having the blade''s energy charge up over several seconds. It could have a specialized built-in scanner to figure out how to adjust the beam, made more powerful because it only had to take in the feedback of the blade impacting the barrier rather than having to scan defenses that were specifically designed to be hard to directly analyze. Unlike a gun, whose projectile would be set when it was fired, the blade''s settings could be changed in real-time to give almost instantaneous results. If I could get a clean and well aimed attack against someone with no more than a hundred levels on me than there was a good chance that the knife could get through their defenses and score a kill. This was absolutely not the case with the cheaper guns.
The tradeoff that mele weapons made, at least point for point, was that they required more skill to use. Of course if I were to remove the point restriction from the equation than mele weapons would top out, at least in terms of diminishing returns, long before ranged weapons do; but I was on a budget and so points mattered. Range would make up for a multitude of shortcomings, in terms of points and stats, but a sneaky backstab could do that far more economically. Who cares if the enemy has a faster trigger finger than me, has more firepower than me, or can literally dodge bullets? My answer: Backstab. For any almost any active defenses, so long as they don''t see me coming, backstab works.
Was this a good idea? A bad idea? A crazy idea? Those were completely the wrong questions. The real question was ''Do I have a better idea for how to deal with the members of a literal actual army?'' The answer was unfortunate, but obvious.
I had 26,861 credits after buying the senses upgrade but the knife itself cost 20,000 of those. Fortunately I could bind it to my character for free or I never would have had enough for everything. I then spent 6,000 on magic, getting the ability to transform electricity to magic, create electricity with magic, and create water with magic. The electricity generation would allow me to recharge the knife, skimping on an internal generator to give it a battery and a little extra power, and all it would cost me was some fatigue during my downtime. The electricity to magic transmutation would allow me to power my magic without significantly fatiguing myself in the moment, pulling from the extra batteries I had when I needed to better spend my stamina on not dying. That wasn''t significant now, but it might be in the future.
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Finally the ability to create water was pure utility aimed at the group. While I had my self-filling water bottle, only two other people in the group had any way of getting water during the battle. Most of the people had been getting water from the market but the restriction on entering the market during the actual test would literally leave them high and dry. The other two who could do it were Donnie, who had made a gadget that could do the job slowly, and Dark Depths, who was himself. Once people''s water bottles ran out it would get bad. Call it pride in wanting to be the person people valued as though their life depended on it, or group interest in helping everyone survive, or just practicality in knowing that the better our group fought back the more likely the army would take its pound of flesh somewhere else; the one point expenditure was worth it.
835 credits were spent on a generator to help cut down on rechange times for my stuff, lots of food, and toiletries. You don''t really think about how important those things are until you have to really rough it. This left me with a grand total of only 26 credits. Not enough to buy anything worthwhile that could actually help.
As the time counted down I took my place as lookout at the top of the highest standing building and reviewed my status one last time before the timer hit zero.
Aliases/callsigns: None
Body: 38-40
Speed: 40-40
Mind: 40-40
Recovery: 40-40
Path: Technology
Level: 4
Classes: Computer Operator
Credits: 37
Soulbound: 16/20
4pt Computer
4pt Electronic Transmitter
4pt Limited Quantum Interference Interface
4pt Harmonic Disrupting Multiphasic Scanning Dagger
A generalized memory storage and computational device, essentially a robot brain. Can be optimized for size, power, or other parameters. (Class Option)
A catch all for most types of computerized control and interface devices for use with a sufficiently powerful computer. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface and control device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other electronically based devices designed for interface capabilities, with higher levels making hostile intrusion easier and increasing the range of the interface (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby objects molecular composition with higher levels increasing the range and the clarity of complex esoteric chemicals and chemical reactions. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby biological entities; including the genetic, physiological, and other less obvious aspects of the entity. Higher levels give more range, clarity, and allow for gathering more esoteric biological data types. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby abstract generated reality spaces, with higher levels giving more range, clarity, and chance to bypass hostile barriers to data acquisition. (Class Option)
A specific computer control and interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other abstract reality generating based devices regardless of their design for interface capabilities, with higher levels making connection more possible and less prone to unreality bleedover. (Class Option)
A specific limited range quantum interface and influence device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Higher levels increase the power and the range of useful signals that can be interacted with. (Class Option)
.
Abilities: 20/20
4pt Hammer Space
16pt Enhanced Senses
A safe area held within the soul that allows the transfer of items into and out of that subdimension. Can be bought up to the level that allows for the transport of a small spacecraft. (Class Option)
A Brain and nervous system upgrade that allow for mental control of any electronics implanted while allowing those electronics to have a degree of influence on the biological. (Class Option)
Gives the user superior senses, including the mental upgrades required to process the greater levels of information. Allows the user to actively utilize often unconscious senses, such as touch''s heat sense, to gain information about the surroundings that might otherwise be ignored. (Discovered Option)
A body that has been genetically optimized for the Arcane Arts can now be yours, allowing for greater levels of Magical or Psionic use with less physical strain! (Discovered Option)
The very fabric of your soul has grasped more than most mortals could even imagine! This allows the student to do greater feats with no greater strain, greatly improving one''s maximum power! Perhaps, in time, your power may grow to mythic heights! (Discovered Option)
.
Skills: 6/20
4pt Electrical Energy to Magic Transmutation
1pt Create Water
1pt Generate Electricity
Gives the user the skills to create operating systems to both control a computer and to allow the computer to control other things. Level effects the complexity of the control and the range of how complex the thing is that can be controlled. (Class Option)
Gives the skills to create items that a computer can use to control other things. Level determines the complexity of what can be a controlled target. (Class Option)
The Power of the Arcane and mundane collide a proof of how the Magical triumphs as it molds the world into whatever nature it desires! (Discovered Option)
The ebb and flow of liquids and their power are yours to command as you show any and all obstacles the power of the deep! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
Energy in its purest form, the very essence of reality, can be wielded or denied as you desire! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
That which reaches beyond the bounds of Time and Space, the very symbol of knowledge and the first grasps beyond it, is yours to direct at a whim. (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
The Ephemerality of air is both the substance of the empty space between stars and the pressure that holds that emptiness at bay! It is now, also, yours to command! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
Energy in its most Physical manifestation, that which destroys all and yet gives birth to stars, becomes your tool to use as the plaything that it is! (Discovered Option) (Limited from two 4Pt versions during the Tutorial)
23. The Army Descends
As the final few seconds ticked down I spent a moment marveling at how useful the replacement for my old eyepiece really was. Sure, it only had a range of effect the size of my head, but the ability to interact with and modify the light around me without blocking it was every bit worth the relatively high 4pt cost of the thing. Well, relatively high compared to my old one that had been basically free and considering that I was points poor is a really big world. The thing that made it so valuable was that it worked seamlessly with my heightened senses to do things that my old interface could never do. It could place return data so far down in my viewing area that it covered the area that was normally blocked by my nose, meaning that I lost none of my viewing area but still got more information back. It could also adjust itself to deal with the much lower levels of light that my eyes could now handle such that it wouldn''t need to glow for me to see it in the dark. While those aspects were nice, they weren''t what made it worth the cost.
The really valuable thing was that it could focus the light from in front of me, do some basic filtering, and then direct it to my eyes without any type of screen to block the light. Most camera/monitor setups pick up their input, process it, then send out the feedback through a screen with a resolution far less than my new eyes could handle. This new equipment that I had, so long as the process it was doing with the light was simple or repetitive, would modify the light without loosing any of its fidelity. This, as it was described to me, allowed it to: ''analyze the waveform collapse of light to determine the distance, filter out signals what were superfluous, and then redirect all the remaining light coming from a certain specific direction directly to my eyes''. Again, that is how it was all explained to me. If you can figure out what that means in a technical sense, more power to you. In practice it allowed me to zoom in my sight in a chosen direction while ignoring things like the cover from light underbrush and moderate fog. I was sure it could do more, like showing me what was happening behind my back, but I hadn''t figured out all the tricks yet. This took my already good scouting ability and turned it up to eleven.
I was using this ability now to scan the area to the south east of us at the old bunker, and directly east of the starting point where the army was supposedly coming from, in order to see if I could find and scout out the enemy army before they found us. A few seconds later my search succeeded in finding them appearing by twos and threes in a large open clearing near the edge of our testing area''s boundaries. The first few through immediately set up a layered perimeter to guard the area, and they did it with military levels of precision. These enemies seemed to know what they were doing and were extremely well trained in how to do it. Every last one of them carried a long-arm rifle of various sci-fi make and wore armor that hid everything but the fact that the creatures beneath were generally humanoid in shape. Many of them also had a large bubble shield surrounding them while others had a similar telltale glow outlining their armor similar to what the scout had from the last round. I couldn''t tell what the difference was between the various types of units or the ones that didn''t seem to have a glow, their military structure was too alien to figure out without more study.
Next appeared what I assumed were the support crews. They seemed more lightly armored but still without any trace of skin showing. This group immediately got to work building a decently sized structure out of parts that they pulled from no-where. I''ve read in various fantasy stories about how skills and magic make things like construction faster but it is entirely a new experience to see it for myself. The first building they made was a giant machine that spit out a large section of wall less than a minute later. Numerous people grabbed it when it came out and rushed off with it. Several seconds later a second section appeared, and then a third. The engineers placed them around the outside of the area, dispersed seemingly haphazardly, but every one lit up with the telltale glow of shielding mere moments after being placed.
More enemies kept appearing, enough that they had to spread out from their starting area to not get crowded. Two more factories were quickly set up and new enemy types started appearing surrounded by strange holographic interfaces and wearing more decorated types of armor. This was a worrying amount of enemies, but what was worse was when the second factory spit out what looked like mobile artillery. Then the third factory started slowly pushing out what appeared to be the front of an honest-to-god anti-infantry tank.
I sat there dumbfounded as I watched. The whole process couldn''t have taken more than ten or fifteen minutes. The entire section was now surrounded by walls with several exits and they were starting to set up a second layer of fortifications. I pulled out my newest piece of equipment, a walkie-talkie that had been set up so that I could talk to the others at the base of our tower without having to run all the way down and back up. "They are here. They''re setting up a base and have what looks like artillery and a tank."
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If I hadn''t been watching the base at that very moment than I might have missed when one of the fancy armored people surrounded by holograms suddenly turned their head in my direction and started looking over the horizon. "Say again?" came Mack''s voice from the boxy device. "Did you say they had a tank?" As he spoke the person turned in our direction and I swear that they looked right at me.
I ducked behind a wall and moved toward the interior. "They also have someone who can track our radios. We need to get out." I warned, then quickly hurried downstairs to join the rest. We had another fallback area, even farther from the enemy than this, but we had somehow hoped to not have to leave this one quite so quickly. At least the next place had another tallish tower that I could use to see what was happening.
It took longer for us to get to our new location than it had for the enemy to set up an entire fort. This had come with the decision to cut off all communications in an attempt to keep the enemy from finding us for as long as possible. Not that we were very hopeful of it, but there was little else that we could think to do. The only ones really affected by it were myself, because I couldn''t use the walkie-talkie anymore, and Tarrah, who had discovered that her communications tech allowed her to talk with any of our machines whenever she wanted.
Once I reached my new lookout position it became clear that things had progressed significantly in the last thirty minutes. Small groups consisting of mostly infantry and some artillery were headed in the direction of the aliens and our old position but they were slowed moving through the urban environment by the need to check the surrounding buildings for potential ambushes.
The group headed for the Cheaters had no such issue on account of the tank that they used to clear the way. A trail of destroyed buildings and toppled trees led back to the direction of the fort, though I couldn''t see that far from our new position. The vehicle now stood at the edge of the original clearing, lazily firing from one of its four top mounted turrets but without any real sense of urgency or focus. The several mortars that were set up were firing regularly and the only reason why their targets had survived this long was a large shield that protected the group. Two of the more military types were working on it while the rest attempted to return fire. The attacking army, for their part, seemed almost relaxed; like this was little more than a game to them. There was no rush or hurry like what had been at the beginning. Instead they were content to continue the encirclement of the group and take them out whenever the end became convenient.
The battle, such as it was, remained fairly calm; assuming you weren''t too worried about the explosions, gunfire, and lasers everywhere. The test takers found themselves with no way to progress and the army was content to hold them down with suppressive fire. The only one who even seemed to threaten them at all was the gun nut mercenary, Trigger, as his shots seemed to do far more than anyone else''s to push the heavily armored invaders back. Eventually the attackers finished what they were doing and slowly started moving forward under the cover of several bubble shields, those soldiers finally showing their purpose, with barriers strong enough to shrug off even Trigger''s shots.
It was hard to see all of what was going on, both due to the distance and other obstacles, but I did see when the defense broke. While I had expected the army to walk into the bubble, it instead broke suddenly and unexpectedly. As soon as the shield dropped I looked at the generator to find that its minders were gone and a very angry General was screaming at people to get them into order. Moments later he was hit by a sniper and the chaos was complete. There were a few people in the camp who tried to rally together and tried retreating into the bunker. The soldiers just used some sort of smoke within the doors and then streamed in, emerging five minutes later with victorious poses. And in the midst of the chaos, just as the shield fell, a smaller group of five individuals ran off to the side directed by one of the female VIPs and surrounded by a smaller bubble shield. I hadn''t spent too long around their group but I recognized her as the one who had been hanging around the officers when I had gone to steal the data. Accompanying her were the two shield soldiers, Trigger, and one other that I didn''t recognize. They disappeared to the south but not without some of the soldiers following them away.
The aliens battle started not too long after, as they were to the north of the starting area and not too much farther from where the army came from the east. The aliens inside successfully prevented the soldiers from entering the police station looking building by sending spears hurtling out at cannonball speeds toward any soldiers who approached. They would then telekinetically pull their weapons back to be ready for another round, doing it at a staggered cadence that didn''t allow for their enemy to approach. None of the soldiers died, but one of them did end up injured pretty badly and was nearly reeled back in with the spear after it took him through the stomach. They responded by calling in the artillery, leaving the entryway too clouded with smoke to be useful while simultaneously knocking a hole in the back of the building. The soldiers were waiting and as soon as the wall opened up they charged in, following the soldiers with the heavier bubble shields to swarm the interior from the rear.
I didn''t get a chance to see the outcome of that battle. The soldiers had almost made it to our position. It was time for our fight to begin.
24. Roaming Support
Mack was waiting for me at the base of the building with a number of others in a loose group of more close-ranged people. I decided to get straight to the point. "I have good news and bad news. The good news is that they didn''t bring the tank to attack us and the largest part of the army is still celebrating their victory back at the bunker. The bad news is that they beat everyone at the bunker without really using the tank except for intimidation and the same is likely true for the aliens at the old police station. Not the tank part, mostly the victory part. They used some sort of artillery to blast a hole in the back of the fortified building and then rushed in through the gap. So yeah, apparently not hunkering down was a good idea. Changing locations also seemed to delay their approach, but they have squads spreading through the entire area so hiding probably wouldn''t work with a group our size. They seem to be cautious of return fire, even if it can''t really hurt most of them, so some sort of fighting retreat is probably best."
There was some commotion at my words but nobody spoke directly to me. I had already passed on the information that I had gotten from my first tower, so the overwhelming odds shouldn''t have been a surprise. I mean, what part of ''it is a highly trained army, capable of building a fort and an entire freaking tank in mere minutes, who also outnumbers our entire group combined even when you include the aliens'' isn''t clear enough?
Mack was the one to finally clear the silence, unintentionally answering my question back in a less than inspiring manner. "So, everyone. This, um, it sounds really bad. But all we can do is stick to the plan and it all should work out. Just try not to loose hope. We will make it through this together, somehow." He didn''t sound too confident of that, but tried to steady his voice. "We will make it through."
I glanced over at the two history buffs in the group with a questioning look. One of them looked dumbfounded, but the other just looked confused. I figured that they, if anyone, would know what casualty statistics looked like. I had been very sure to tell everyone that the enemy was intending to knock out 90% of our original group, accounting for the people lost during the first round, so the only thing unexpected about this was the speed at which the army would hit that target number. We had lost a lot fewer people during round one than expected, though, so maybe they were overly optimistic?
Mack spent a few moments calming people down, before turning back to me and pulling me aside so that fewer people were around to hear what came next. The leaders of the various groups were all invited in, and they were followed by a few of the more adventurous onlookers, but most of the people were happy to remain with the group and away from the harsh revelations. "Is it really that bad? Our other spotters didn''t have nearly as bad a report, are you sure you aren''t exaggerating a little? What do the groups look like?"
I sighed and went to answer. "Yeah, it is just as bad as I made it out to be. At least, from what I saw of it and I have pretty good eyes now." A few stiffened or cringed at my words, but most took it with a look of defeat. I quickly moved on. "The groups are mostly made up of three different types of enemies that all have their own jobs, but how they do those tasks varies a lot. The ones at the front with the bubble shields are the tanks. Nothing I have seen has hurt that outer shield and they have a second shield just above their armor and the armor itself. Most of them either use indirect fire or mele weapons. They are dangerous in the same way that a steamroller is dangerous. You can probably outrun them but if they catch you than you won''t be able to stop them. They aren''t super lethal, though."
There were a few nods and people seemed to relax at the thought of an enemy that wouldn''t kill them. I started with that group, though, because they were the most straightforward of the three. "The second group that you will notice are the ones in the heavier armor with no shields. It isn''t a lot heavier, it''s more like they just have a really solid build than anything else, but it is noticeable. These are the ones who focus on offense above everything else. Some of them even have enough firepower to temporarily punch through that giant shield the people back at the bunker were using, though it closed up right afterward. They use mostly energy weapons, some mele but most are some flavor of ranged. They are defensively the weakest, and the only ones that actually seemed to take real damage, but if they aim in your direction than try to dodge and hope you get lucky."
There were a few apprehensive faces and one guy who surprisingly looked like he had a new goal in life. Good for him, I guess. "The third group is the most dangerous, mainly because you can''t predict what they will do. They are in some ways generalists between the tanks and the attackers, but only so far as they focus on other things. You can tell these apart because they have a shield glow around their armor and often carry equipment that isn''t a weapon. I saw one of them use some equipment to pry open a hole on the giant shield at the old bunker, and then they held it open till the fight was done. The engineers and landmine specialists fall into this group, as well as the ones combing through the buildings to ensure that nobody is planning on attacking their rear flanks. These are the ones to be most warry of. They also seem to be more well trained than the others." I didn''t mention it but the group of Cheaters who ran off into the woods was followed by only this type of enemy. I had a sneaking suspicion that their equipment was more varied than the appearance of the armor would suggest but I had no way of telling anything more from what little I had time to see.
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Finally I decided to give them some good news. "That''s pretty much it. They didn''t bring the tank and they don''t seem to want to use the artillery unless they get stuck. I honestly think they are using this as a training exercise, so they aren''t even taking this seriously. That gives us a chance but don''t get too excited and open yourself up. It wouldn''t do any good to get overconfident just because they don''t take us seriously."
Mack nodded. "Are you sure you don''t want to join us. Either of the mele groups would be happy to have you and your knife fighting beside us. I already have the flier up in the air to warn us when they approach, there is no need to go off on your own."
I nodded, accepting his words for what they were. "I know but, while I tend like supporting, I''m more of an offensive support. Harassing, split pushing, leading enemies into ambushes; that is more my style." I gave him a nod of my head and a relaxed two fingered salute. "I''ll try not to die."
He nodded, accepting what I had said before, and let me go. I, for my part, left quickly before he could convince me to do otherwise.
Of all the positions I could take on the general team, offensive support was the safest and the best use of my skills and temperament. A team could survive and thrive without a support, but lose any of the DPS or the engager and it will be a short game in the enemy''s favor. So if I suddenly ''found'' the entire enemy team than it wouldn''t be the end of the world. I''m too cautious to make a good chaser or assassin, too independent to make a good tank or defensive support, and too team oriented to be straight damage. But, when my job is to annoy the enemy team and set up good situations for my allies, I fit right in. My caution kept me from overextending, my independence allowed me to roam without needing a bodyguard, and my actions would help set things up for the team.
Or maybe this is all justification for that nagging feeling that the entire enemy army would stumble on our group in the most unlucky way possible if I didn''t leave. Either way. It is too late to turn back now.
I always thought that RPGs were weird in how an evil monster would be wondering around a field but it would completely ignore you unless you came within ten feet of where it is wondering about. Shouldn''t they notice you and go running off to chase you down the moment you are no longer hidden by obstacles? And yet, here I am doing the exact same thing. I mean, maybe it isn''t exactly the same thing. I''m mostly abusing my absurd senses and the fact that I can literally redirect the light from around corners to remain ''out of sight'', but it feels the same. Maybe it is more like a stealth game where you can see the enemy but they only notice you when you stand directly in front of them?
Either way, phase 1 was an unfortunate success. I found a group of enemies with almost no trouble at all. Or rather they found me but didn''t realize it because I heard them before they knew what was going on and ran off.
Phase 2 also has proven successful. I have observed them enough to notice that they don''t have eyes in the back of their head and won''t see me so long as they are turned in the other direction. Their fancy suits do have some sort of motion detection that alerts them when something moves within five feet of them or so. Phase 2 also included making the group paranoid by throwing things into the center of their group from hidden locations. Most of the things I threw were rocks and other trash, but I did get a very simple exploding ball to throw into their midst. It did absolutely nothing to the guy without a shield, let alone everyone else, but it did put them on alert and slow their advance.
Slowing their advance was good, considering that I ''found'' three other groups not long after. I was searching for the enemy, so maybe you can call it good luck, but I really hadn''t wanted to find them in so many numbers or converging on my location so quickly. In a related note: I think it is safe to assume that they can communicate with each other in some way that Tarrah''s communications tech can''t pick up.
While I would like to continue with Phase 2, the need for Phase 3 is quickly approaching. A lot of our old defenses at our first base were unused and couldn''t be taken with us when we moved. Sure, there were more enemies sticking around the area and searching it for goodness knows what, but that should give them a false sense of security such that they won''t even be looking for the traps! That is how it works, right? Right?
Ugh, I think I''m going to die now.
25. Bad Luck or Good?
My plan had been relatively simple. Find the enemy, learn what I could about them while causing enough chaos to slow them down, run away to report back when I found something particularly interesting or things started getting dangerous, and then try again. That plan started falling apart right from the beginning. First they walked around a corner on a long street without a whole lot of cover and only my paranoia had kept me close enough to a side alley to get away before they saw me. I was supposed to hear them or smell them or look around a corner to notice them before they had a chance to notice me, not this. But lets pretend that this is a good thing. Sure, they are closer to our new location than anyone expected and nearly gave me a heart attack; but at least I found them.
The next part of my plan was both fruitful and not in equal measures. That was true right up until it suddenly got so fruitful that I was being buried under all the fruit. Ok, stretching the metaphor a bit, but it still holds. The enemies seemed to ignore anything that wasn''t obviously harmful but did turn a bit whenever a piece of trash got thrown within about ten feet of them. The group consisted of two with heavy shields, two with medium defenses, and two with the bulkier armor and large weapons that were less defended; but up to this point nothing caused them to react beyond turning when something got close enough. The real change happened when I threw the exploding spiky ball. One of them with medium defenses dodged away when they saw what had been thrown while the two with the heavy bubble shields turned and two others flinched back. The final enemy, the one with the biggest weapon and less defenses, didn''t even react. This caused an eerily quiet chewing out from the one with the fast reflexes and the one who just stood there mimed being grievously hurt. This unleashed another silent round of angry finger pointing and aggressive stances on the part of the leader. Meanwhile the others reacted with varying degrees of cowering down and repositioning for a better look at what was going on, with the other medium armor doing a bit of both.
I''m pretty sure this was also when they called in more backup as they stopped moving forward so much as they started wondering around in circles. Only the fact that I was very much on the move allowed me to avoid the other three groups from encircling my old position. Two of the three groups were a mix of armor types and had six or seven members apiece, but the third group was three strong and all medium. It was this final group that immediately took charge and who had some sort of ability to track my steps exactly. Their process wasn''t fast but it was accurate and I couldn''t see any indication of how it worked let alone a wat to avoid it. They were also smart enough to watch where the path was headed and send out the other groups to try to catch me. While I had been trying to get a response and maybe draw some of them away, this was a much bigger response than I had intended.
My attempt at step three of my simple master plan, the ''run away'' portion, was not going so well. You could say that it was because step two had succeeded beyond anyone''s wildest expectations, but that was the optimist''s way out. I was more concerned by the way that they kept blocking me off from getting back to the rest of my group. At this point I couldn''t tell if there were more than just the original four groups or if they were just supernaturally good at predicting my movements, but it was clear that it was intentional.
The trick to running away from multiple pursuers who are trying to box you in is to not run. This is especially true when your sphere of awareness outranges theirs. If you blindly run than they can more easily heard you and the harder you run the less stamina and other resources you have when a confrontation does happen. It was for this reason that I walked briskly away from the enemies, though that still allowed me to outpace the trackers who were coming at a medium walking pace. I did other things, like avoiding crossing my own path and cutting through narrow passages when I could, but I wasn''t sure what else I could do to throw them of that wouldn''t slow myself down more than them.
That said I fully understand that my technique in evading pursuit might be less then perfect since most of my experience came from video games, though it seems to have served me at least a little bit. This was a little like playing a team elimination match where the difference between a loss and a low scoring tie was if I could keep my character alive as the enemy team tried to hunt me down. Or maybe it was more like a close game where my character was doing well but had a high kill bounty and the enemy team knew that eliminating my character would let them pull ahead and then use that advantage while I was removed from the match.
It was at this point in my semi-successful escape that I learned a major problem with my ''peek around a corner'' strategy: specifically that you had to look in the right place. I had been using the light redirection trick to look down the street with specific focus being put on checking each alleyway and entrance onto the street for enemy groups. I forgot to look up. Fortunately my super senses were able to notice the sniper the very moment when I turned around the corner, allowing me to pull back before the shot of burning acid left a hole in me rather than the pavement. Unfortunately the shot had been supersonic and would be like a giant alarm calling my pursuers right for me.
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For the first time I ran. Stealth is only useful in so much as you can keep it up and conserving stamina is only helpful when it can be used deliberately. The enemy was behind me and likely had been hoping to push me into this ambush. And I, having gotten used to their tactics, didn''t even stop to think that they would use a sniper against me. It wasn''t even the first sniper I had seen them use, the general had been taken out by one before, but with so many buildings around it would have been hard for one to target me and so I had discounted the threat. Only the grade school habit of ''look both ways before you cross the street'' had saved me. With one entire street blocked off and, the enemy coming from the directions to push me into this street, I figured that the only save direction to go was parallel to the guarded road and straight toward the sniper.
The thing about having bad luck is that you learn to expect it, even know that it is coming. So when I saw a group rushing forward toward my old position from directly in front of me I was neither surprised nor caught unprepared. Buildings make for great cover and the obstruction created by locked doors means little to a mini lightsaber in an eight inch dagger form. The groups passed me without having any clue how close they came to finding me. I still checked after a couple buildings but was unsurprised to find that the sniper was still there waiting for me. I was also unsurprised to find another group at the bottom of the building where the sniper was located, standing around like a bunch of bored army grunts who were given a useless job and were forced to at least pretend to do it.
I couldn''t help but wonder why they were dedicating so much manpower to coming after me. Sure, they had a lot, but I was just one guy. They didn''t even have to come after me. I had nothing that they knew of capable of hurting them. Maybe they had just gotten bored taking out the other two groups and had people to spare? Maybe they thought this would be a good training exercise for the newer recruits? Maybe I had just pissed someone off and they got irrational. But they weren''t going away and it was becoming clear that staying on the defensive wouldn''t work forever. Not that I needed to be dumb about it, rushing into the middle of one of their groups with my knife seemed like a horrifically bad idea, but something needed to change.
And this is why I decided to sneak around the group guarding the most obvious side entrance to the building with the sniper and cut my way into the back. Perhaps this was a bad idea, but I had noticed something when I checked to see if the sniper was still there waiting for me to reappear in his sightlines: He didn''t have a spotter. Magically and superpower enhanced soldier with a gun, he probably didn''t need a spotter, but my time playing different games as a sniper and even a fairly popular PvP sniper arena had taught me what they did. Traditional spotters, as far as I understood them, had three jobs: they found targets and gave the needed information to shoot the targets to the sniper, they watched for counter snipers or artillery that might be aimed at the sniper, and they watched the back of the focused and prone sniper to prevent ambushes.
The other thing that informed my decision was the long talk I had had with the weapons crafter. It turns out that he wasn''t too worried about someone trying to steal his display weapons because we were all in a low level tutorial. I literally couldn''t bind anything in the room to my character, even if I wanted to. The custom made weapons he sold to us newbs were the only weapons he sold to us newbs. And, despite the high point cost of his wares, they were all civilian or industrial grade and not military grade weapons.
And so I snuck into the building, made my way to the third floor, and then found my way toward the front of the building. By peeking around a corner into the front of the building I eventually found the sniper sitting on a chair with his weapon aimed down the road outside. While I couldn''t pick up any signals I still set my equipment to try to block anything it could. Whatever way they communicate seemed not to be effected, as the sniper didn''t react. The only thing separating us now was fifteen feet and an open doorway. So I prepared myself for a moment and then rushed toward him with my knife at the ready.
He reacted, but in a surprised manner and didn''t even manage to completely stand up before I buried my knife in his neck. I thought about going for the head or heart but I was worried that his helmet might be of thicker material, since it didn''t need to bend, or that his heart might be in some other place in his anatomy. It took less than a moment and then he was gone. All that was left was one suit of heavy looking armor and a large gun.
If they were going to give me the bad luck of chasing me down than the least I could do is find a way to give some of that misfortune back.
26. Weapons of War
Taking out the sniper had been a risk but it had succeeded far beyond what I had hoped. Not only did he leave behind his gun but also his armor and a few blocks of what looked like provisions and such? Yeah, they were labeled as ''universal food grade product'' with rehydration instructions. There were some other sundries but nothing that seemed of any importance. It may not have been fountains of gold but I would take it. The armor is what actually excited me the most. Sure, the gun was nice, but I wasn''t going to be able to kill off the army and their tank. But if I could be nearly invulnerable than maybe that would be just as good. Winning the round was more about survival than anything else as the people to pass would be the last ten percent who survived, no matter their actual combat ability.
Also, I saw a couple of my pursuers jumping on top of a building from the ground. Maybe it was magic or superpowers, but I kind of hoped that it was technological. Armor that would let me leap tall buildings in a single bound sounded really cool.
There was a problem. I couldn''t figure out how to get the armor open. It almost looked like the armor was built in one single piece, but then I didn''t have a lot of experience with armor to know where to find any hidden releases. The next thing I tried was to get my computer with its universal electronic connector gadget to try to make sense of it. That, however, was frustratingly fruitful in the most useless of ways. There were hundreds of options and toggles and even a few sliders that I couldn''t make sense of and trying to mess with any one thing usually sent back an error about locking toggles still being initiated and multiple dependencies needing adjusted. Three or four hasty adjustments was all the time I had time for before giving up. Some of the options were labeled with actual words but most were meaningless letter/number combinations, but that did me no good with how many there were. I quickly gave up my ironman dreams due to the fact that I was on a timer before the others figured out where I was and caught up with me. It still went in my inventory, though, with the hope that I could maybe figure it out later.
The gun, while large, was something I could carry and hopefully use more immediately. There were not nearly as many unintelligible toggles and sliders, and the most important ones were helpfully labeled. The main ones seemed to be the range and power sliders, and there was even a separate indicator for battery capacity. I decided to look over it more as soon as I got out of the building.
Getting out was surprisingly uneventful and I used the head start that I had to run down the street that I had taken to get into the building, hiding next to a side alley when I had gotten as far as I could get while still keeping my earlier path in my sights. I then settled down to wait as I tried to familiarize myself with the weapon. Well, only as familiar as possible without shooting it; I didn''t want to give away my position, after all. I had very little hope that they wouldn''t know their sniper had been taken out but I still wanted as much surprise as possible.
Up to this point they had been hunting me, herding me even, and I knew I couldn''t keep going forever. Eventually I would make a mistake or they would outguess me and I would be caught. But before this, what else could I do? I knew it and they knew it. They had no reason to not chase me down, other than that it was a waste of time, and the army had enough people to make even that problem be not an issue. I needed something else to keep them from so boldly coming after me. I needed to give them at least some minor measure of fear.
And so I waited. My gun had seven shots in the battery with some time between each shot and a separate type of fuel that also seemed to be full? The gun itself didn''t come with any instructions and the previous owner hadn''t had any extra ammo lying around so there was a lot about it that I didn''t understand. What I did know was that I had the weapon ready to go and trained on the path that I had taken only minutes before.
When the small group of trackers came around the corner I was surprised about how calm they seemed to be. Nothing of my desperation was reflected in the casual manner that they walked along or in how they interacted casually with the group following them. I waited, letting them move forward and away from any easy cover, then took my shot. I aimed at the one who seemed to be leading the trackers and who was most likely leading the other soldiers as well.
The projectile, an orb the size of a golf ball flew through the air in a slight arc before hitting the target in the upper chest. The enemy didn''t seem to react for a quarter second and their armor looked untouched during that time... and then the shield glow disappeared and the spot they had been hit on their armor started melting. I waited only long enough for my weapon to be ready for another shot before firing at the next most prominent member of the tracking team.
I didn''t get a third shot. The soldiers, covered from retaliation by the one with the bubble shield, got in between myself and the final tracker. I did notice that the first tracker had gone limp and wasn''t likely to be a problem for a while. I immediately disappeared down the side alley to get away. They would be sending others after me soon and I could only hope that I had slowed them down.
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Shooting some big shot had the alternate and diverse effects of both making them more cautious and enraging them at the same time. More enemies started converging on the area but they all moved more deliberately and were keeping both to natural cover and that protection afforded by the heavily shielded soldiers. It was almost as though they were no longer fighting defenseless prey that couldn''t hurt them no matter what they tried. Their newfound carefulness gave me the chance to bypass their converging encirclement, and also the next layer of it as well. I was never so glad that my knife was silent as those times I used it to bypass a door or other obstacle to get around the soldiers.
It took me some extra minutes worth of sneaking before I finally realized that they no longer had people nearby to trap me into going one direction or another. In fact I couldn''t tell if they were still following me or not. The dozens of soldiers that they had sent after me, while likely powerful enough to break through any fortified position I might try to find, was apparently unable to follow a sneaky guy who could sense them utilize a bastardized form of guerilla warfare to bypass their much more powerful and numerous forces. Seeing this I tried to reorient myself and head back to where I suspected the group to be. I had been gone for a while and I expected the group to be nearing the second fallback area. At least I hoped that was where I would find them as the alternative was that they had been encircled and flattened before I could return.
When I finally found my allies there were nine of them and they were trapped in a small fortification made of rapidly deteriorating concrete and surrounded by squads of soldiers on every side. I only had five shots left and so I wouldn''t be able to take out the four and a half dozen enemies surrounding them from three opposite sides. As I watched one of the superpowered people pried up a chunk of concrete and molded it to cover over a spot that had nearly been broken through from the enemy''s fire. Those same enemies were safe behind their heavily shielded teammate''s defenses. Whenever the armored space army would look like they were moving forward they would be met by some form of artillery from the defenders. Any time the defenders would look like they were going to peek out they were kept down by a hail of suppressive fire. It looked like a stalemate, at least if you were not looking too closely.
In truth the only thing keeping my allies alive was that the soldiers had simply not chosen to push through the resistance. They were likely waiting for some sort of chaos to erupt before making their final push. Nothing would prevent them from simply moving the bubbled soldiers right up and over the walls before shooting down into the recessed bunker. Heck, they could jump over the bunker if they wanted. Nothing prevented them from tossing something like a grenade into the midst of my allies either, or firing the artillery, or climbing onto one of the taller nearby buildings to get an unobstructed angle, or concentrating their fire to get through the concrete faster than it could be replaced, or probably half a dozen other things that were only possible with superpowers or magic. They were waiting for chaos before they made their move. I was waiting for the same.
The defenders were made up of nine different people and Mack was not among them. The most important person was one of the supers who was moving the concrete around to make and fill the holes in the wall at the cost of the group''s footing. Without him they all would have been overwhelmed. The second most important were the three ranged attackers including two mages and a strong super with lots of rocks for ammunition, but the light mage magical girl was the one that was really effective causing the attackers to duck away whenever she fired. After that was likely Donnie, who was throwing some sort of sticky mines next to the defenses to keep the area clear.
After that it wasn''t really clear how valuable the others were who were left. There was another of the mages, the one with healing abilities, but his healing was currently still slow and nobody seemed very hurt yet. There was the flying super who couldn''t really do much else and another super who looked in good shape but didn''t have any recognizable skills. Finally there was a mage who seemed nearly passed out from exhaustion and a techie whose stuff seemed to be broken.
The equilibrium finally broke when a lucky shot hit the super with super throwing skills, knocking him back and forcing a cry of pain from the guy. Immediately the other super who had been standing to the side ran toward the edge of the defenses and phased right through it before having a couple shots do the same. He continued running straight into the side of a nearby building and was gone. A couple groups of soldiers turned to go after him, but it wouldn''t be enough to change the outcome for those who were left behind. The flier, seeing the one runner, tried to make his way out by going upward. This attempt was far less successful and soon he was knocked out of the sky by multiple lasers and other weaponry.
The soldiers took this as their que to move forward, and I used this as my que to cause what chaos that I could. Two more shots took out two more enemies, but only those right next to them stopped and the chaos was not complete. A third shot to take down the first soldier who moved ahead of the bubble shield to jump down into the pit was far more successful and brought the enemy back under the cover of the large bubbles, but they still moved forward to attack. Several of them moved out in random directions to try to find me, only one seemingly recognizing my direction but moving carefully as they came.
I couldn''t be sure of all that happened next. The concrete shield super pulled up more concrete to defend with while one of the stragglers was knocked out. I shot the most forward of the shield bubbles with the hope that it would be enough to shake or distract the enemy, but instead was rewarded with the bubble shield dropping. My final shot hit a weapon''s focused soldier as he aimed at Donnie and as Donnie crawled back toward the others. I needed to go, there was nothing more I could do to stop or even slow the attack and there would be that group of enemies approaching me soon.
And then the alien soldiers were gone. A belated shot fired out from the smaller mini-defenses. There was silence. The enemy was just gone.
27. The Battles Remnant
A system message popped up, almost as if to confirm that all of this was real.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
Congratulations, you have gained a Level.
You have gained 653,224 Credits.
The first thing I noticed was that the old message about experience and levels gained had changed. The second thing was that eye popping number of credits I had gotten. I had to check: Including the 37 I had before, my new total was 653,261 credits. I decided to look though my entire character sheet to see if anything else had changed.
Aliases/callsigns: None
Body: Str: 38 Con: 57
Speed: Agi: 48 Dex: 70
Mind: Wis: 58(88) Int: 76
Recovery: Bod: 40 Sta: 61
Path: Technology
Level: 16
Classes: Computer Operator
Credits: 653,261
Soulbound: 16/80
4pt Computer
4pt Electronic Transmitter
4pt Limited Quantum Interference Interface
4pt Harmonic Disrupting Multiphasic Scanning Dagger
A generalized memory storage and computational device, essentially a robot brain. Can be optimized for size, power, or other parameters. (Class Option)
A catch all for most types of computerized control and interface devices for use with a sufficiently powerful computer. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface and control device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other electronically based devices designed for interface capabilities, with higher levels making hostile intrusion easier and increasing the range of the interface (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby objects molecular composition with higher levels increasing the range and the clarity of complex esoteric chemicals and chemical reactions. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby biological entities; including the genetic, physiological, and other less obvious aspects of the entity. Higher levels give more range, clarity, and allow for gathering more esoteric biological data types. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby abstract generated reality spaces, with higher levels giving more range, clarity, and chance to bypass hostile barriers to data acquisition. (Class Option)
A specific computer control and interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other abstract reality generating based devices regardless of their design for interface capabilities, with higher levels making connection more possible and less prone to unreality bleedover. (Class Option)
A specific limited range quantum interface and influence device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Higher levels increase the power and the range of useful signals that can be interacted with. (Class Option)
.
Abilities: 20/80
4pt Hammer Space
16pt Enhanced Senses
A safe area held within the soul that allows the transfer of items into and out of that subdimension. Can be bought up to the level that allows for the transport of a small spacecraft. (Class Option)
A Brain and nervous system upgrade that allow for mental control of any electronics implanted while allowing those electronics to have a degree of influence on the biological. (Class Option)
Gives the user superior senses, including the mental upgrades required to process the greater levels of information. Allows the user to actively utilize often unconscious senses, such as touch''s heat sense, to gain information about the surroundings that might otherwise be ignored. (Discovered Option)
A body that has been genetically optimized for the Arcane Arts can now be yours, allowing for greater levels of Magical or Psionic use with less physical strain! (Discovered Option)
The very fabric of your soul has grasped more than most mortals could even imagine! This allows the student to do greater feats with no greater strain, greatly improving one''s maximum power! Perhaps, in time, your power may grow to mythic heights! (Discovered Option)
.
Skills: 6/80
4pt Electrical to Magical Energy Transmutation
1pt Create Water
1pt Generate Electricity
Gives the user the skills to create operating systems to both control a computer and to allow the computer to control other things. Level effects the complexity of the control and the range of how complex the thing is that can be controlled. (Class Option)
Gives the skills to create items that a computer can use to control other things. Level determines the complexity of what can be a controlled target. (Class Option)
The Power of the Arcane and mundane collide a proof of how the Magical triumphs as it molds the world into whatever nature it desires! (Discovered Option)
The ebb and flow of liquids and their power are yours to command as you show any and all obstacles the power of the deep! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
Energy in its purest form, the very essence of reality, can be wielded or denied as you desire! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
That which reaches beyond the bounds of Time and Space, the very symbol of knowledge and the first grasps beyond it, is yours to direct at a whim. (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
The Ephemerality of air is both the substance of the empty space between stars and the pressure that holds that emptiness at bay! It is now, also, yours to command! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
Energy in its most Physical manifestation, that which destroys all and yet gives birth to stars, becomes your tool to use as the plaything that it is! (Discovered Option) (Limited from two 4Pt versions during the Tutorial)
Well that was different. I had actual stats now, numbers that maybe made sense except for the one that didn''t. What I really needed was a user manual to tell me things like what the deal was with that second number after Wisdom. Nothing else seemed to have changed that I could find. I would need to look into it more later. For now I decided to go check on the other people from the group.
Getting out was much easier and less stressful than getting in to the building overlooking the others. I could have gone slightly faster but I decided to try to keep up the habit of checking around corners and everything else that had kept me safe during the attack. Good habits, and all that. I had no way of knowing just how dangerous the rest of this Game was, but the army grunts I saw weren''t acting like they were the cream of the crop despite showing far more power than I could normally face. The only conclusion I could draw from the experience was that either I was very underpowered or the armor the low level military were using was overpowered. Figuring out how to use the armor I had gotten, or if it even could be used with the giant hole I had put in it, became an even larger priority. Even if that was true, caution was still a good idea.
I got back to the group to find them looking over the stuff dropped by the soldiers I had taken out. Out of the three dozen of us that had started this round only five others remained besides myself. Donnie had apparently survived, which was good, but so had the mage who had passed out from overexertion. He was a fire mage, if I remembered correctly, but otherwise unremarkable. The super who had been throwing things did not and I decided to go over as soon as possible to where he had been to feel around and see if I could get access to any new superpowers. In fact, that was probably a good idea to try everywhere regardless. Was that morbid? I felt like that was a bit morbid? On the other hand he wasn''t really dead and every good gamer knows that you always loot the bodies if time isn''t a limitation. It wasn''t like there were dead bodies lying around or anything.
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From within the smaller defenses three had survived and were in the process of climbing out of the enclosure rather than tearing it down. The first out was the early to mid twenty-something cosplaying as a magical girl with light magic. She seemed very tired but not nearly as much as I would have expected considering the strength of the magic that had been coming from her direction. Her name was Veronica something-or-other. I honestly hadn''t expected her to survive. The next, currently at the top of the concrete circle and having trouble climbing down, was the healer. His name was Clark and looked like he was only barely in better condition than the guy who laid passed out on the ground. He was about as white as you could get without being albino and was having a hard time blushing every time he looked down at the magical-girl cleavage. The final guy was Dimitri who, despite his name, didn''t look Russian at all and seemed to look more Western European like maybe a Spaniard? His superpowered ability to mold matter into different shapes had seemed like a party trick when he had used it to create funny little statues. It didn''t seem like a joke anymore.
Mack was the first to see me from his place on the ground next to a pile of junk from the soldier who had almost shot him. He seemed to be resting while acting like he was really looking over what had been left behind. "You survived?" he asked. "We all thought you had been eliminated when you never came back. Were you the one who shot these guys with that giant gun on your back? How did you even get that thing?"
I shrugged. "I got it from one of the enemies that I found alone. I picked it up off of him after I stabbed him. It took me a while since they were chasing me but they were pretty clearly not the cream of the crop, if you get my drift." I held back a smile at their shocked faces and instead kept my bored expression. There is an art to friendly trolling that very few people truly appreciate. This was the ''too dumb and incompetent to live'' but ''still succeeded where everyone else failed'' bit. Sometimes you just have to stick to the classics.
Several people were staring at me and I looked back dumbly. It was Clark, the medic, who finally spoke up after dropping to the ground heavily with a grunt. That brought Magical Girl, er Veronica, back to his side to see if he was alright. He nodded toward her but refused to take his eyes off of me. "But... How???"
I gave him a dumbfounded look. "I took the pointy end and stuck it in the guy''s squishy parts. You do know how to use a knife, don''t you?"
Donnie gave off an exaggerated sigh and eye roll as the other three just stood there reflecting my dumbfounded look back at them. There was something of a stare off of the dumb, even as Dimitri climbed over the concrete protection he had created. My good buddy and pal was the one to ruin my fun. "Seriously, you have got to stop doing that to people." I gave him my best confused look but he was having none of it. "We are all really tired, would you mind being serious for a second?" Spoilsport, ruining my fun.
I sighed, I couldn''t keep it up too much longer anyways. "My knife is min-maxed to he extreme and requires three other of my upgrades to even work like it does, but because of all that it can hit way above its weight class." There were some considering looks from the others and I continued. "Also their suits don''t seem to increase their senses all that much and I have a way to look around corners and otherwise avoid them. I just avoided them till I found one that seemed to be by himself, then I snuck up and jumped him from behind." I rolled my eyes again. "Also, I really wasn''t kidding about them not being the cream of the crop. Only one or two out of every six had any general discipline and even fewer seemed experienced."
They seemed to consider that for a moment before Clark spoke up. "So what do we do with all of this?" he motioned toward the piles of stuff lying around from the enemies I had taken out. "We should be able to use some of this?" He looked over toward me.
I shrugged. "The guns have limited energy and I haven''t figured out how to recharge them yet. The armor is more complicated, but I have some hope it will be useful as well." I pointed over at the other boxes nearby. "The real gem here are the foodstuff and other miscellaneous junk. With the way the difficulty has been jumping up I doubt the guns will be useful in the next round, but maybe if the tank is still around?"
Dimitri spoke up next. "Right, I forgot about the tank." He nodded to himself, "We should also check to see if they left anything else behind. I''m sure one of us could figure out the artillery if we really tried." He seemed to be recovering faster than the rest of us, at least those who had worn themselves out, but he was also in the best physical shape of everyone who was left."
"What about Jeong?" Veronica asked with a somewhat shellshocked look to her face and a posture that was trying to hide her fatigue. "Is he going to wake up soon?"
Clark let out a sigh before picking himself up and moving over to check on the unconscious mage. He laid his hand on the guy''s forehead before answering. "He just needs rest. There is nothing really to be done about that." Something in the pause or the delay of his words was jarring to me in a way that made me think he was hiding something. I glanced over at him but didn''t make a deal out of it. He didn''t sound malicious or angry, just reluctant. Fair enough, everyone has their thing.
With nothing else to do and everyone else resting I went over to sort through the stuff that had been left behind while trying to interface with as much of the equipment as possible. The guns were all different but they all had lower power outputs and a ''fire rate'' slider I could adjust. One of them seemed like a shotgun or something? It had a AoE adjustment setting, so it might also be some sort of explosive? The other three nearby weapons all seemed to be machine guns of some sort. The armor was the same jumbled mess of random switches that the other one had been.
Clark was the one to take charge after he saw me looking over some of the stuff. "See anything good?" he asked. I could tell that wasn''t what he really wanted to know. It came across more like ''how much of it will you take for yourself and how much will you leave for us''.
I gave him a look. "I already have all this stuff from the first guy I took down. The rifles are nice but they are more of a ''rapid fire'' type than what I already have. Aiming with real life weapons is a lot more difficult than what I''m used to so I''m probably better off taking my time with a sniper than spraying one of those guns in every direction except at my enemy."
He looked me over, "Did you leave behind the armor? You aren''t carrying your backpack either."
I hadn''t actually been advertising my storage but I wasn''t really hiding it either. I figured it wasn''t that big a deal at this point and shrugged. "I have a dimensional storage. I only use the backpack because it is more convenient because getting anything out of the storage requires kind of ''feeling around'' for what I want to pull out of it."
He looked back at all the junk. "How big is your storage? Big enough to carry all this stuff?"
I nodded. It was the size of a good sized walk in closet or a smallish room. More than big enough for all the stuff that had been left behind, even when accounting for the other stuff that was already in there.
-------------------
It took a while for people to grab stuff from the pile with the four awake people claiming one of the four available guns. The rest of the stuff, what they couldn''t fit on their person, all got thrown into my storage.
None of them were too happy with Jeong due to how he had gotten overexcited early on in the battle and quickly pushed himself to exhaustion. As in, he had exhausted himself before they even retreated from the first contact with the enemy and had been hobbling along helplessly ever since. It was only luck and the fact that he never ended up near the fighting that saved him from death, but the rest felt like he was a burden. Not that most of them said it directly, and both Veronica and Clark tried to act like it wasn''t so. But when the time to divide stuff up came nobody suggested that he get anything more than a little food and everyone was happy taking the weapons for themselves.
I couldn''t even really blame Jeong for his actions. He tried apologizing and explaining that he got scared when the enemy was marching toward him but that only proved that his problem was a lack of steadfastness rather than intentionally causing problems for the group. It also wasn''t like the guy who just up and left everyone when things started going bad. Bringing him up only made people upset. I wasn''t sure it was a bad choice on that guy''s part, as the group had been in the process of being overrun when he got out, but people''s emotions didn''t take that into account. At least he hadn''t come back to confront what was left of the group. I wasn''t sure what they would have done if he had.
My investigation of the area got me a couple superpower/genetic upgrades but nothing very exciting. Extra physical strength and another couple of magical power enhancements were not my idea of worthwhile investments. I couldn''t even pick up the flight ability that the one guy had. And believe me, I looked.
Our approach toward the mortars found them sitting quietly, waiting to be used, but too large to fit into my storage. There was some discussion on if we should check on the enemy base but instead we decided to check back at the bunker. The near total eradication of the military group should make it safe to return and it would be good to see if the tank had remained.
We were in good spirits, myself included, until I saw the group already gathered back at the base. The primitive alien group had beaten us back and was forming an angry mob around the wreckage of some sort of equipment. And there, taking on a leadership position in the middle of the group, was the same VIP who had abandoned the military faction while running off with their best people.
28. Bad Leadership Qualities
"Well that''s not good." I stated with a sigh of frustration. The person who seemed to be in charge, standing on some sort of stage near the center of the group, was the socialite VIP. She was the civilian protectee who spent the most time around the powerful people within the military and paramilitary group, which wasn''t that surprising at the time. Some people just like power and want to be close to it. But then, when the last fight was looking bad, she ran off with some of the best of the group. This included the two people in charge of the shield, the one guy who was actually able to damage the enemy, and someone else who was probably equally important to the defense. It would not be a stretch to say that she was the reason why their group lost the way it did.
And now she seemed to be in charge of the new group that was forming.
Donnie noticed me slowing down to a stop and slowed himself, causing a chain reaction that brought the entire group to a halt. "What''s wrong?" he gave me a weird look as he spoke.
My mind ran through everything that I knew and the position we were in. There were over thirty of the aliens along with mind controller woman and if they saw something that they wanted from us than we wouldn''t really be able to stop them. Showing off our nice stolen alien tech seemed like a great way of getting it all confiscated ''for the greater good''.
And, lets be clear, mind control is most likely what her powers are. I remember the ''evil'' options that I got for my class and so I know it is possible. Furthermore I couldn''t think of much else that could convince three military men to abandon post, clearly against the general''s orders and in such a way that would screw their group, but then do it in an orderly fashion. But even if that wasn''t the case, I saw how the paramilitary gun nut ''Trigger'' reacted as part of the mercenary faction of the Cheaters. The last time I had seen them they all acted fed up with the military group and were showing a fair amount of group loyalty. I highly doubted that something like the superpower of gold and green had been what turned their loyalty.
I started putting things in order and came up with a plan that would both keep us all safe and get me more information about everything that was going on. I needed to get into the base, if for no other reason than to talk with the robot to get any new information about the next round of the tutorial. It would also be good to find out a bit about how her ability worked. But most of all we needed to not be robbed if we were going to make a good showing in the last round of this tournament style game we were playing. "We shouldn''t bring our new guns into the camp." I finally said. "Just in case. And I think that putting Jeong as our leader is our best bet for things to go smoothly. We can change our minds later if that becomes necessary."
Everyone looked over at the exhausted fire mage who had only survived after others had literally carried his unconscious body to the final stretch, and then he had gotten lucky. Veronica and Clark were too nice to say anything, but Dimitri wasn''t. "Why him?" he asked with a tone that was only mostly neutral.
I wasn''t sure if I had a good answer for that, but at least I tried to BS it. "He will make the best impression on the person in charge, they are both Asian, and I don''t want to stick out too much with that large a group." I looked over at Veronica with her Asian looks and considered how bad my excuse was. "Similar culture and all of that."
"Wait, you can see the group already? What about all the trees in the way?" Veronica asked with a cutesy tilt of her head. She really didn''t look like a ''Veronica'', though she did act like the westerner name fit when she wasn''t adding in anime memes to everything.
I looked back in the direction of the camp. "Super senses?" I answered questioningly. "Didn''t you all know I had them, which was why I was doing the whole scouting thing from the top of the buildings?"
Clark spoke next. "Yeah, but I thought that was your tech that did that. How does that even work from a biological standpoint?"
I shrugged. "I don''t know. Maybe superpowers or something."
"Guys, aren''t we forgetting the whole thing about putting that guy in charge?" Dimitri asked, glancing over at Jeong.
Jeong, however, seemed oblivious to the prevailing mood. "I''m fine with being in charge. I humbly accept this honorable duty and will prove myself capable."
This declaration set off a wave of more and less reluctant rejections of the idea, which then set off a minor argument of three against one.
Donnie pulled me to the side as it was going on. "Be honest with me. What is going on?"
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I looked over to be sure that everyone else was suitably distracted before answering. "I''m pretty sure that the person in charge is a mind controller. I figure if one of us is going to get hit with the mind whammy it might as well be the useless guy that nobody likes. That way I could see how it works and be better prepared to avoid it."
"Why go in there at all then?" he asked.
"I need to talk to the robot about the next round. It only gives you information that you specifically ask for and only about the current round. I also can''t get it from the market without the system thinking I''m ''cheating''. That is something I''d rather avoid."
He gave me a look that was halfway between resigned and appalled, almost disappointed. "That... that really isn''t very nice of you."
I shrugged. "It isn''t like he is my friend. He isn''t even a good ally. From what I understand he is so excited about showing off his powers that he turns himself into dead weight. At least this way he will be useful."
Donnie looked unhappy but less at me than before. Not that he wasn''t unhappy with what I had said, just less. There was so much that I could say, but I doubted that he would understand. You don''t get to the top by putting every random person before yourself, all that will do is get you taken advantage of. You get to the top by taking every advantage you can get and making the most of them. Loyalty is a virtue, but only when given to those deserving of it. Being ''nice'' to those who are not worthy of that consideration is the same as rewarding those people for whatever personal flaws that they are currently dragging you down with. ''Good'' is not dumb and those who are dumb for the sake of ''goodness'' are just morally lazy losers who deserve to fail. Not that I could really explain any of this to Donnie, his face told me all I needed to know about how he wasn''t ready for that type of harshness.
So instead I waited and let him work through his internal struggles internally. His face went through several different emotions, from apathy to distaste, before settling somewhere in between. "How important is it that you talk to that robot?"
I took a moment to figure out the best way to communicate the honest truth. "I won''t know till I talk to it. This is the last round. Everyone has made that clear from the beginning. But even among the people who loose there are grades of accomplishment. I need to know what the grading criteria are to get the best score possible and only the official robot can give me that information. And scoring well is important for what comes after, important enough to be worth it."
Resignation took over as he looked back at the group. "Fine, but this better be worth it."
The argument about if our useless fire mage would be ''in charge'' came down to a vote: three for, one against, and two abstaining. There might have been some trouble if the two chronically nice people had decided to vote more honestly but neither of them wanted to directly say how useless they thought the last member of our group was, so they didn''t.
Even so Clark took over his normal roll as unofficial leader and smoothed things out as best as he could, even coming to a compromise that said we would ''try things out'' for a few hours before heading back into the surrounding forests to reevaluate as a group.
I also held onto my roll as shadow leader by convincing everyone to not bring their guns into the camp where they could be seen. After some discussion about if we should try to disguise them or leave them in a tree somewhere they all ended up getting stuffed into my storage, mostly because I was the only one who could make them work anyways. Also there was the fact that I had been the one to make the kills which meant that I had more of a claim to them then anyone if I wanted but the fact that I didn''t want them made me less likely to try to steal them then anyone else. I was starting to respect Dimitri more as he was the one to push hardest against leaving them in the woods after he saw the look in Jeong''s eye.
Even so, I got the feeling like people didn''t trust me all that much. Not that I didn''t understand. I wasn''t there for the big battle, any of them, and just showed up at the end to overshadow everything that they had done while remaining safely hidden away. If the old war sayings about trust being ''forged in the heat of battle'' were true than I had, in their minds, not proved myself.
Meanwhile Jeong''s role as official leader was plagued by him trying to make us all do whatever he thinks is a good plan. Fortunately his ideas about what was a good idea were dictated by whatever new ''good'' idea was brought up at the moment, so to change his idea we just had to distract him and then pull his attention somewhere else. Kinda like tapping on the glass to attract a goldfish, only replace the tapping with stroking an overinflated ego. Maybe that isn''t the most generous view of him ever, but I call it like I see it.
All of it made me miss Mack. For as many problems as he had as a leader, and be sure he wasn''t perfect, he had a great mixture of strength and charisma that kept people together while actually getting things done. It can be hard to really appreciate what you have until it is gone.
And that isn''t even bringing up the other two people in our little group. Little Miss Magical Girl, also known as Veronica, was always trying to be uplifting and a mood setter even when everyone else was in the middle of an argument. Meanwhile Donnie was trying to act like the voice of reason for everyone else, even when everyone was acting out of pure emotions with no thought whatsoever for reason.
Our discussion about everything surrounding entering the central camp took almost two hours. With all of the drama going on it just made me wonder if it wouldn''t be easier to just go off by myself. I had time, though, so it would be best to at least try to see if they would work before they fell apart.
But if I were completely honest, now that we were finally heading in, I was expecting a disaster.
029. Compromised Intentions
Entering into the camp was surreal. The aliens, a several dozen of them to maybe a hundred at most, had decided to set up camp outside and were in the process of creating their own primitive fortifications. The mood was focused and angry but it wasn''t hard to tell why. Only a few of the civilians had survived and none of the older people. Considering that the majority of the camp was made of pissed off warriors, it was surprisingly calm. They had set up a stage next to the bunker''s entrance and several prominent members of the group used the extra height to direct the others and oversee the process. And there, at the center of it all, was the human woman who had left the rest of her group to die.
Despite all this there wasn''t a lot of commotion when we entered the camp. The others noticed us but were mostly ambivalent about the fact that we were all here.
"What now?" Dimitri asked, looking over at Clark despite it angering Jeong.
Jeong spoke up with a glare, trying to take back the command. "Now we go and say hello to the people in charge, we must see what is going on here."
There were some murmurs of agreement as nobody seemed to have any better idea of what to do. As long as I could get some time alone with the robot and didn''t end up getting noticed too much by the person in charge everything else should be good. So of course the first thing our small group''s ''leader'' did was to go straight to the lady in charge and try to talk with her.
"Hey! Yo there! Do you have a minute to talk!" His tone was insistent, less like a question than a statement given with full knowledge that it would be followed. The affect was somewhat ruined by how his hands were fidgeting and the barely suppressed pace of his frantic movements.
"Yes, of course!" she answered while smoothly walking toward us. She was a woman in her late twenties to early thirties with hair and eyes of a matching soft brown and very lightly tanned skin. Her height was less than dominating but she made up for it by standing on the second step from the bottom, rather than coming all the way down to the grass where we were standing, and this left her just a little higher than any of us. "My Name is Celestia, my last name wouldn''t mean anything to you. It is so good to see you all here today coming to join our growing group."
Jeong nodded along but stopped as he herd her last words. "Uh, I don''t know that we are all going to stay. We haven''t figured that part out yet." He glanced over at us as he awkwardly said it. "But that is something we can work out later."
She nodded and smiled with interest. "I''m sure you must all be extremely capable people to have survived so well against the enemies that came before us all. How did you overcome such powerful foes?" Her words took on a different meaning with my knowledge of her capabilities, and a slight stiffening of Donnie showed that he understood as well. She was asking if we were useful. I could only hope that we wouldn''t come across as ''useful'' and so would be allowed to leave.
Our fearless leader looked a bit uncomfortable with the question. "Uh, well, we mostly ran away," he admitted. "We tried to attack when they first appeared, and our full group definitely slowed them down, but eventually we were forced to pull back." He faltered a bit and I was happy to hear him badmouthing our abilities. Then he opened his mouth again. "But before that we did manage to hold them off for an extended amount of time. I myself repelled three of their attacks before the fatigue became overwhelming."
I held off on my facepalm to glance at my friend who had actually been there to see the battle. The eye roll response told me all I needed to know.
"Really now!" she exclaimed. "Is this true?" Clark and Veronica looked away uncomfortably, unwilling to directly contradict his words but not supporting them either.
Dimitri had no such reservations. "Yeah, for all of two minutes."
"You are just jealous that my contribution forced them to retreat, however briefly, while yours wasn''t enough to keep us from getting surrounded." Jeong sniped back.
Celestia seemed somewhat surprised by the back and forth. She settled on a simple question, "How did you end up in charge of your group?" She turned toward our overenthusiastic fire mage as she asked but glanced at everyone else in an open invitation to respond.
Our ''leader'' answered back first, though his words were ignored by everyone. "I was the most powerful non-supporter in the group, the obvious choice for a leadership role." That was, at least, similar to one of the arguments that had been made in his favor during the earlier argument. Though the argument itself was more that he could still contribute through leadership even after blowing his load, a massive impact all at once, even while the supporters and our magical girl attacker were busy. I could kind of see how he took it to say it was his large impact that put him in charge, assuming I squinted and remembered his big ego''s influence.
Our earth wielder gave another answer that came across more definite. "Who else were we supposed to put in charge? The only other options were the sneak and Mr. Too-Nice-For-His-Own-Good." He nodded toward myself and Clark respectively as he spoke. "And I''m a defender, it isn''t like I can go off on my own."The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
She nodded in openly displayed understanding. "In that case, wouldn''t it be better to join our group? There is safety in numbers and people who know how to defend in a war." She turned to nod toward the many alien warriors around us and, more distantly, the beginnings of solid area defenses.
Then Jeong spoke and, for likely the only time in memory, I was impressed. "Thank you for the offer, but we would like to keep our options open at this time." He gave a small bow of his head in respect before continuing. "Perhaps, in the future, we could discuss the options more fully, but not at the current moment." His final words came out a bit choppy and forced, but he was still standing firm to our earlier decision.
Her smile cracked but was back in an instant. "Are you sure you can''t rethink your decision?" She moved forward as she spoke, stepping down from her place on the stairs and taking his hand in hers in an overly flirtatious move. "We, I mean our group, has so much to offer. I''m sure it would be in everyone''s best interest to stay."
Our sacrificial leader paused at her advances, seemingly stunned into immobility. If I hadn''t known better I might have thought that it was her romantic advances that swayed his mind. There was close to half a minute of her looking into his eyes, holding his hand endearingly, while his face flashed with signs of expectation and responsibility and desire. And then, finally, he gave his acceptance with a nod that saw her relax.
She beamed up at him, taking a couple steps back. "I''m so glad to hear that. I''m sure that there is so much that we all can do for each other."
Dimitri, for his part, spit on the ground angrily before giving me an annoyed glare and stomping off farther into the camp.
We all stood there for a few moments, whatever flow there had been completely broken by the interruption. Veronica and Clark began whispering to each other, having given themselves a bit of distance, and Donnie glanced at me with a worried expression. Not that the whispering was a hinderance to my super senses, but their words of disbelief and unsureness didn''t really add anything new that we weren''t already feeling.
The mind controller took that moment to reestablish herself in the conversation. Her smile had a more brittle quality but was still present as she spoke. "I know this is all so sudden, but I''m sure we can all realize the value in what we all can contribute to our survival."
Jeong took this as his que to speak up with some new information. "That''s right. We all have our skills that can be helpful to the group. Clark is a dedicated magical healer and Johnny has super senses he uses for scouting and has a hidden item box that he uses to carry everything in. We even have some guns that we took from the last round attackers!"
The rest of us just turned and looked at him in shock. "Is that so?" She asked, turning her full attention toward me.
I didn''t have to fake my discomfort at her gaze but I did take the time to figure out a response. As some sort of mind controller, possibly a Mind Mage, I couldn''t count on being able to lie to her. What Mages lost out on from Supers in terms of power and stamina they more than made up for in versatility. I looked away, hoping she couldn''t read my mind, and then discarding the fear because it made no sense with the questions she had asked and the fact that she hadn''t already ordered my execution. Relaxing a bit might have been a mistake, but I decided to play it off as though I was agreeing to her unspoken demands.
Reaching into my Hammer Space I pulled out one of the repeaters without unlocking the controls. "We took these off of some enemies that were dead. Problem is..." I carefully pointed the weapon at the ground away from anyone and theatrically pulled the trigger in order to create nothing more than several hollow clicks. "You don''t happen to know if the techie soldier guy survived? He might be able to make them work?"
There was a brief moment of annoyance that flashed across her face. I had been watching the camp since it had first come into view, just to see who all might have survived to join the group, and he was conspicuously absent. We both knew he wasn''t around anymore and we both knew it was her fault, but I wasn''t going to be the one to say it. "Unfortunately he wasn''t among those to make it to this round." Her admission was also valuable because it proved rather well that she wasn''t able to read my mind. Thank goodness for that.
I shrugged. "I figure I would try messing around with it for a while and, if nothing worked, we could always try selling it at the market." Another truthful statement, that was.
She nodded, showing some displeasure but not anger. "And everything else?" she asked. I had hoped that she wouldn''t remember that there was anything else she could try to take from us but wasn''t going to take her lightly at this point. She obviously was smarter than the average person to have gotten as far as she had.
I reached back into my storage, thought that invisible hole in reality and grabbed one of the boxes of MREs. "There are a few of these. I think they are food or something? Where do you want them?"
She pointed back toward the bunker as she spoke with a note of dismissal. "There should be someone in that direction who can make best use of them." The conversation was effectively over. She thought she knew everything important and I now knew the limits of her ability and what would likely be necessary to deal with her.
Outwardly I nodded, accepting my dismissal as she turned toward Clark. Then I started to walk away. But first, I turned aside to speak to Veronica. "Be careful of that woman. Don''t let her put her hands all over your man if you don''t want her to steal him away." I warned. It was a simple thing but it would compromise the debutante''s ability to make any more inroads with my group. Safety in numbers was a good argument, after all, but I didn''t personally want to end up like the rest of the military faction.
As for Veronica, her response was almost comical to watch for the few seconds it continued. Denial, embarrassment, and paranoia warred over her features for a few seconds, preventing any actual words from coming out beyond a stifled squeak. Then she shyly nodded toward me and went off to stand next to our group''s support.
I smiled to myself as I stepped away.
030. Knowledge Is Power
Dropping off the supplies was simple enough. And, since they didn''t know just how much extra stuff the soldiers had been carrying, I was easily able to keep about half of it without it being obvious. That should be enough to keep my entire group fed for much longer then when the next round was supposed to start. When I left them with all the stuff they were so focused on the small pile that they didn''t seem to even care when I headed into the bunker.
The interior of the building looked startlingly different than it had before. The walls and floor and roof looked completely untouched, as though nothing had happened; but everything else that had been there was scrap. The remains of the benches and tables that had been in the common room had been scrapped and piled in an empty room, with plenty of burn marks showing at the places where they had been broken. The rooms were just as open as before, lacking any sort of real doors, though the nomadic aliens seemed just as happy camping out in the main part of the room. They also didn''t spare me more than a passing glance as the obvious civilians focused on making a place to rest for their entire group.
From there I began to ask my questions to the robot. Its answers were, strangely enough, robotic. It tried to give answers as short as possible with no more information than was specifically requested. Simple questions were easy enough. The next round would start in a week, minus the over a dozen hours that this last round had taken. The enemies would be elite adventurers. The primary grading criteria was survival through the round with the secondary being contribution involved in success at the primary goal. Experience was based solely on those two factors. Credits were more complicated and included, "combat and upgrade use, especially in adversarial displays of competence." End quote. My question of if there was anything more I needed to know about the grading criteria got me an unhelpful "yes" response. My question on what more I needed to know about grading caused the robot to ask me what I wanted to know, and repeating the question only got me a repeated answer. Open ended questions weren''t going to work. I could swear, however, that the robot tried adding extra information in to try to derail me on several occasions.
So from there I prioritized my time narrowing down the most important specifics about my earlier questions. I used a bit of paper to keep notes and to let me jump around topics so that I could narrow the answers down on multiple topics without being stuck on only one. I knew I didn''t have an unlimited amount of time and so I was quick about getting down to business. A few of the aliens seemed curious enough to try to listen in but my frequent subject changes caused them to drift away and leave me to my insanity. It turned out I got over a couple hours of questioning in before I was pulled away, better than I had really expected.
This is what I found out: Survival really was the name of the game, since how long you kept going was the primary criteria if passing the round was off the table. The enemies, however, had been instructed to eliminate everyone. For them "passing" was all about how quickly and efficiently they could do it. So apparently we weren''t the only ones being tested here? It wasn''t important enough a rabbit trail for me to follow. As for elite enemies, they would be over level two hundred and there would be six of them. If my earlier calculations were correct than the first round guy who had taken on our entire group solo was only half as powerful. A quick few questions to confirm let me know that no, they were more than twice as powerful than their level would suggest. As for why, I didn''t have time to ask. The important part was that killing them was effectively impossible and that we would need to run and delay our demise for as long as possible.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
I did find some other interesting things though. Apparently the XP weirdness, in that it only came from quest completion and only in proportion to your contribution on that quest, was common to the rest of the game. I got confirmation that levels were easier to get in the Tutorial, or the "Testing" as The Game called it, but couldn''t easily untangle why. And it wasn''t something simple like that it was just a rule added to this area. Nothing else went into this calculation and it wasn''t something so simple as infinite power through self generated quests. Something made Game recognized quests different than just personal goals.
I was surprised to find that there were hidden failure criteria, like leaving the "universe". Apparently going into the Market counted. Other failure conditions included breaking the "universe", as though that was a real concern, and direct interaction with anyone involved in another Test. Yeah, apparently there were other groups a day''s travel out in most any direction and we should avoid them. Even so much as touching them with any upgrade''s effect was an immediate failure. Also there was a rule against performance enhancing alchemy that was not self sourced. There was another rule against using political connections against your opponents, though nothing against using it against those on your same side. There were a good number more, like "utilizing celestial forces to trivialize the personal nature of the confrontations", but all in all the list seemed like the type of rules added to patch up instances where someone found a way to cheat. I might have gotten myself distracted a bit by this line of questioning.
Money, or credits actually, were much more straightforward. And yes, apparently there was a difference. Money was much less valuable and also less standardized. It made me wonder if the Market had been ripping me off. I''m sure there was more to it but I didn''t have time to figure it out. As for credits, those were attainable from any decisive confrontation with a person or monster. Defeat wasn''t enough, killing was required. And, while use of these credits was limited by one''s level so that it wasn''t a path to infinite power, that still gave a lot of reason for someone to go on a killing spree. It also explained why I got so many credits after the last round. Fortunately there were some stopgaps built in to keep high level players from farming lower level people or monsters for credits, though I didn''t get a chance to ask about that either.
Donnie had arrived with a deeply distressed Veronica in tow. It was time to go save our healer.
031. Betraying Resolution
Veronica wasn''t quite in tears but she was visibly distraught. It was a bit surprising. I had expected her to be more to the point of tears when she finally found me but maybe it was Donnie''s help keeping her calm? Or maybe this place''s queen bee hadn''t seen a need to go after Clark after all. I have been wrong before.
Donnie was the one to speak up after I was dragged away to somewhere more private. "Something happened with Clark. He started acting all weird and now he says that we should all just go on without him." I nodded along as he spoke. "I figured that you might have some idea on how to deal with it?" She looked over toward us with both skepticism and hope.
I took a deep breath. Lets see how good my simplistic predictions were this time. "Can you tell me what happened?"
Our ''magical girl'' was the one to speak up. Her voice only got faster as she spoke. "Everything was fine at first. She asked us what we could do and I told her I was a magical girl with pretty explosions and he said that he was more of a supporter. It wasn''t until later when he was practicing his healing on some of the injured aliens; you know, making it slower or more targeted or last longer; it wasn''t until then that she showed up. He didn''t even say that he wasn''t going to stay. All he said was that he wanted to give it more thought. Suddenly she was all over him and then he was saying that if I was worried that I should go on without him. Just leave him behind. Before I could do anything the gadgeteer was dragging me off to speak to you. And now I''m here."
Donnie, the aforementioned gadgeteer, took this chance to try to calm her down. Encouraging her to breathe and all that sort of stuff.
I just sighed. This was why I hadn''t told them about the possible mind controller. Neither of them had anything like a poker face and several of the group had wanted to check back at the base to see how everyone was doing. Clark specifically brought up wanting to heal whomever he could. As nice as he is, sometimes he acts like the poster child for the whole ''good is dumb'' thing. So I wasn''t exactly surprised that the outpost''s dictator saw a healer and decided to not let him walk away. Nor was I surprised that Clark had let on that staying here wasn''t part of his plans despite being in the middle of a base that she controlled and surrounded by angry alien primitives.
"Don''t worry. I''ll have a talk with him. Maybe I can snap him out of it." She nodded, taking my half truth at face value. It wasn''t like I wanted to lie to her or anything, I just didn''t know what it would take to bring him back to himself. Still, even Jeong didn''t succumb instantly so there should be hope. Hopefully.
She looked up at me, calmer than before. "Are you sure?"
"Don''t worry," I repeated, "we will figure something out."
So apparently you can do a lot of tying someone up with 50 feet of rope. Who knew? Clark looked halfway to being one of those cartoon rope mummies with how many times we had wrapped it around him. I''m just saying, none of us knew anything about how to use rope so this was the best we could figure out.
Also Dimitri helped, because of course he did. All it took was the explanation that ''we were trying to leave'' as for why we were mobbing Clark and he was all in. It was a good thing too, as none of us had any clue how to hold down our squirming target to tie him up. Meanwhile one of the alien matriarchs saw us and laughingly told us to "have fun boys"... so that happened. In other news Veronica apparently knows how to put her hand over someone''s mouth to keep them from screaming "because sisters", whatever that means, and she very self-consciously wanted us to know of the origin of her skill. Also Donnie makes a weird high pitched sound when he gets kicked in the balls and the rest of us were smart enough to learn from his mistake and be careful of Clark''s legs.
The kidnapee seemed to calm down once we had him ''properly'' tied up. I don''t know if he had worn himself out or if he had resigned himself to his fate, but it did make carrying him easier. After some discussion Donnie and Dimitri ended up carrying him since our ''magical girl'' had her lights and I could use one of the shotguns for offense, meanwhile none of the others could defend the group in an instant if the need came up. The walk started out far less eventful than I would have thought. A couple of the civilian aliens laughed and I learned that eye rolls were universal language. A small part of me even hoped that we could get out without any trouble, though a much larger part had known how unlikely that was and that knowledge had resulted in Veronica and I guarding our prisoner from the rear and the front respectively.
It isn''t paranoia if they really are out to get you. I was reminded of this when Celestia stepped out in front of us to stop us from leaving. "You have had your fun. Put him down." She stepped forward and I stepped back, aiming my weapon at her torso.
"I don''t think I will." I had a moment where I considered trying to intimidate her, then remembered that I was a skinny nerd, then remembered that I was currently pointing a gun at her. It was a surreal experience and my indecision must have shown on my face considering the look on her face.
She turned to look back at me with a hand on her hip in a posture that perfectly displayed incredulity. It was so perfect that I had to wonder if it was rehearsed. "We both know that weapon doesn''t work or you would have used it by now."
I was about to speak up when Veronica beat me to it by screaming from the back of the group. "What did you do with him!?! Leave us alone!"
From there the chaos only escalated. Dimitri yelled something out that wasn''t important while Donnie reached out his free arm to keep Veronica from rushing forward. A small crowd of aliens and a single human were now crowding around us with the warrior types looking more ready. Donnie started struggling again and the mind mage in front of me started stepping forward again. I needed to do something and I needed to do it now.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
An explosion jarringly rang out and everyone went still as my weapon exploded with power. The sound wasn''t quite as painful as a ''modern'' firearm would have been but the base toned result could be more strongly felt right into my bones. From the look of things I wasn''t the only one who was jarred by it.
Half a second later people started looking around and saw that nobody was hurt. One of the newly constructed wooden guard towers, however, was now missing a sizable portion from one of the supports and would need to be rebuilt. The thing about any argument, something I have learned through countless internet ''discussions'', is that whoever speaks first and loudest is assumed to be right... assuming they don''t come across as loosing control. Now that I had control I couldn''t loose it. Time to reframe the situation a bit better. "Stop with the mind control of my friend and we can all go our separate ways." I made a point about aiming the weapon at her as I spoke.
I waited only as long as it took for her to open her mouth, not even waiting to see if her answer was a denial before shouting back. "I don''t believe it. Clark is our friend. We talked about what we were going to do after we were here and where we were going to go. I could believe that he might want to come back but there is no way he would just abandon us." I adjusted my weapon as I spoke, "So are you going to let our friend go?"
She looked around at the surrounding aliens, every one of the warriors and none of them stepping forward. One of them looked like he was about to, a larger one who I couldn''t see clearly and didn''t pay much attention as he was standing behind several others, but several of his buddies held him back through words and positioning. Several seconds passed before she flashed an ugly face before waving her hand in our direction. "Fine. Go if you want."
Immediately I heard some commotion going on as Clark relaxed. Veronica called out to, "help him", while Donnie responded with a quick, "I''ve got him", and an attempt to remove the gag that we had fashioned out of a rolled up sock and some rope. I continued facing Celestia, not letting her out of my sight for even a moment.
"Guys, I''m ok. Just get me out of this and we can go." The others took some time unwrapping him as the mind mage and I glared at each other. No one else intervened during the entire process, though they did start talking among themselves. Murmurs spread as the aliens tried to keep quiet, although not enough to avoid my ears. They were talking about the revelation of her abilities and questioning their loyalty.
She had to know about their questions, and I caught the barest hint of a reaction, but she remained steady throughout it all. Then she stepped to the side and motioned with a mocking scowl. "Away you go." Her eyes were narrowed and I could almost feel the hatred rolling off of her.
As for myself, I held the alien shotgun to my shoulder and continued aiming. She was shorter than me so naturally I was aiming downward as we inched around her position and as the aliens made space for us. In the meantime I accessed the controls for the gun with some motions of my eyes to my computer that could actually access it. For safety sake I turned down the AoE and the Concussion settings that I had used to make such a big noise and instead turned up the Accuracy and Penetration on the other side of those scales. I also aimed a bit more downward to reduce the chance of hitting anyone else with potential blow through.
"I don''t trust you." I spoke neutrally, and pulled the trigger.
The shot was far more quiet, enough that it could have been missed if someone had been playing loud music, but no less deafening. The last survivor from the military/semi-military and VIP group, what we had called the ''Cheaters'', was knocked back into the ground below and behind her. Her body bounced once and then she was gone. It was so quick that I don''t know if she even knew what was happening before she disappeared. She left behind some effects on the ground, including some of the food supplies I had brought and a weapon, but nothing else.
Half a second later a roar came from beyond the outer circle, where the taller alien had been, and the circle quickly parted for him. As he stomped forward he revealed himself as the alien leader. The large man looked enraged and glared at both the spot where Celestia had been and at us before staring at me. He looked at me and my weapon and then narrowed his eyes as his hand tensed on his spear, lifting it off the ground to be readied.
"Go." he commanded.
Our five quickly turned to obey. A notification came up for my system and the others gave me a sideways glance but getting out was currently our number one priority. We kept going until we got to the forest, several hundred yards away, before we stopped running to rest. It was then that it became clear we had a stalker. It was Jeong and he didn''t look happy.
"You left me behind." He hissed out at us all. His face twisted in anger and he began to try building up steam behind his accusations. "I was your leader and you just left me behind..."
Dimitri seemed to want no part of this argument and immediately answered back, going so far as to cut him off. "You were our spokesperson at best. Nobody trusted you to lead and when that witch got you we couldn''t have cared less."
His face twisted in even a more ugly way before he started screaming at us. "I was the best of you all! I was the one who stopped their initial push! I was..."
"Dead weight." Dimitri answered back, silencing him by stepping forward in silent intimidation. "We lost good people carrying you all that time. Good useful people died at the end. The enemy only stopped because they reached their quota of dead, and you weren''t one of them."
There was silence among the group. I had known that, in the zero sum game of ''only a certain percentage can pass'', his survival was taking up the slot of someone else. I had understood the implication of the rules and what it meant. But I had not fully realized that everyone else had done the same. Well, everyone except possibly Jeong, though he might actually have known and thought he was worthy of the spot. By the awkward silence and furtive glances, it was clear they did. It shouldn''t have been a revelation. Every one of us had extreme levels of either money or talent in our background and so none of us could be accused of being anywhere near average. And yet somehow I had just missed the fact that their resentment toward him might be deeper than I had supposed. I wrote him off through a logical assessment of his abilities and, in a similar but more emotional way, so had they.
"Do you all believe that?" he spoke back, tone halfway between dumbfoundedness and accusation.
There was no answer, beyond a derisive snort from Dimitri, and that was answer enough.
"Fuck you. Fuck you all." Jeong called out as he turned and walked away. His words started to waver at the end and Clark looked like he was almost about to run off to chase but was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. Dimitri shook his head in the negative, and that was that. Instead we all watched our former teammate and ''leader'' leave.
032. Business As Usual
Our first aim was to try to find the tank that the army had used. A cautiously wide circle around the former home base didn''t show the tank''s location but it did reveal some artillery and shells that they had left behind. None of it looked too complicated to use but I didn''t exactly think it would be useful against multiple level 200 enemies so I didn''t say anything about trying it. The next round''s opponents were people with individual power well over twice that of the first round enemy, the one who singlehandedly took on our entire combined group before we had been whittled down to a much smaller group. Granted, we had all gained a few levels since then, but giving people false hope about fighting back seemed like a bad idea. Donnie could probably figure it out too, and maybe others, but nobody said anything.
From there we went toward the police station that the aliens had holed up in. The exterior had multiple gaps through the exterior but the interior walls, which seemed to be just as fortified, had survived amazingly well. I wasn''t sure if aliens just built their buildings differently or if this was specific to the police station where they had made their stand. We did find the remains of the tank after it had exploded. I wasn''t sure if that had been a failsafe to get rid of it when they left or if the magic aliens had been the cause, but we weren''t going to get to use it either way. There was some talk about what had happened to the war machine, but otherwise people were uncharacteristically quiet. Also, more artillery and shells but nothing that would help us against the next round''s challenge.
Look, I''m not dumb. I know why they are probably uncomfortable. I shot someone right in front of them. She wasn''t really dead, but full dive VR made it feel differently. The best stuff on the normal consumer market was limited to sight and sound. Photorealistic and otherwise perfect as it may be, it couldn''t touch the full experience of living in this place for as long as we had with smell and touch and coffee withdrawal and all. But how do you tell someone that their feelings, their entire experience of what was happening around them, was something they should take much less seriously? I certainly don''t know. All I could think to do was give them some time to cool off.
Our third stop was to head back to where the army had first appeared, in the center of the open area of that suspicious clearing. I had wanted to check it out with the hope that some of their equipment had been left behind. There was better luck this time as several artillery pieces were ready to be loaded up into what looked like a cross between a semi and a pickup pulling a flatbed trailer. Part of me wondered about the normal seeming equipment, why should it be recognizable at all, while part of me assumed that there must be only so many ways to make things that worked. Fortunately for my sanity the controls were suitably alien for my tastes. The whole thing was simple enough to use, more of a joystick control merged with an aircraft flight stick, and everyone except Dimitri could do it without any trouble now that we knew the trick. That was especially fortunate since all of us were tired of walking and would prefer to cut down the multiple hours long trek to the Market.
What we didn''t find were the automatic factories or any other weapons or even the walls that had been set up for defense around the place. Instead there were piles of rubble where each of them had been. Judging from what had been left behind the walls seemed to have been made of a concrete substance with metal, but it also seemed to be bleeding this brown substance? Probably some sort of space aged magic that would mystify and confuse me. The remains of the factories excited Donnie with the rare resources that had been left behind. These two piles lacked the black goo the walls had been filled with, even the factory that had been pumping out the walls didn''t have it. More weird mysteries for me to ignore.
I volunteered to drive the vehicle, if only to get away from the oppressive silence, and off we went. The drive wasn''t too unbearable but I still decided to pop through the portal before too much more could be said. If nothing else, I had things I needed to do. The information broker was my first stop.
My arrival was followed by the surprise of seeing Roman, the broker, talking with a pair of black blobs. Their words were garbled and they acted surprised upon seeing me, at least as much as a black semi-humanoid blob could.
Roman just laughed, and this time I could understand him. "Now, now. You didn''t think your group were the only ones participating with access to this Marketplace, did you?
One of the blobs let out a garbled hum that Roman reacted to with a dramatic eye roll and a dismissive hand gesture.
"I''d rather not waste the points letting me interact with you both simultaneously. I do have a life outside of this gig, you know. This way you can''t interact but also won''t get confused about what is going on when I don''t talk with you either."
More unwords from the lead blob, followed by a few at a higher pitch from the other. This set off a small conversation that seemed to get more heated between the two, much to the amusement of the broker.
Finally he broke in and silenced the discussion. "Or you could just ask me!" He spoke with mocking excitement. "Don''t worry, it will be fine. The outsiders interference rules keep you protected from me as much as anyone else."
That seemed to calm them down. They said some things in a seemingly more polite tone before giving me a wide berth as they left. For all that Roman gave them a farewell wave with his flaming hat.
"What was that about?" I asked the moment the door was closed.
He gave me an amused smile and dove into his explanation. "They were just worried about possibly interacting with you and ruining their Tutorial run. Nothing to worry about, for the reasons I already mentioned. I would be in as much or more trouble if I caused interference than you all might be." He shook his head sadly as he said it. Then suddenly all sadness was gone and he was back to smiles and excitement. "But more importantly, congratulations on making it through the second round! That is quite the accomplishment! And, if I know anything at all about you, you did it through skill and cunning rather than just being carried by others! That should give you a lot of credits for you to spend. Are you ready to figure out how to use them?"
"Sure, but first," I pulled out one of the shotguns and a helmet, "I got some stuff from them and wanted to know the best thing to do with it. Maybe you could even help get the armor working?"
There was a pause in his normal flowing gait but he quickly got over it. "Marvelous! Simply marvelous! How did you manage that?"
I paused, considering keeping it secret. Then I remembered the confidentiality clause and knew that by telling him I ensure that he couldn''t tell anyone else. Ironically saying something would be more private than keeping it secret. "I recognized the good sniping corridor and found his nest easily. Then I just snuck into the building, bypassed his tripwires, and then stabbed him in the back. The first one, at least. Then I used their own weapons against them."
"How many did you kill?" he asked. "Were any of them commanders, the ones with lights on their shoulders?"
"I got five of them," I answered, "but I don''t think I got any of the commanders." It was hard to tell at the end what I had hit, other than the defender. Even so, I knew which ones were the commanders. I had seen them yelling at and directing the others, but the chaos mixed the groups too much to be sure. "I didn''t see any lights but the commanders were obvious. Were they invisible or something?"The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He gave me a flummoxed look, then sighed. "Your perception upgrade must not have been geared in that direction. There is so much intel you can get just by widening your visual range a bit I sometimes wonder why anyone would point it in any other direction. Not killing any of the commanders was a shame. They were the most valuable out of the bunch, but it was a good showing nonetheless!"
"So what should I do with all this stuff?" I asked again.
"Sell it." He waved his hand away negligently. "That is all mass-produced point-hog crap that isn''t worth binding even though you got it for free, as you will just have to get rid of it soon anyways. If you can sell it to your fellow participants then you might get something good for it, but otherwise it will be worth little more than pocket change."
I frowned at that. "I know it will drop when I die at the end of the next round, but can''t I use it to last as long as possible?"
He nodded along as I spoke. "That could work, especially considering your... undeveloped background. You will need to either see a specialist or make some upgrades to your gear though."
I raised an eyebrow at his words. "What do you mean by that?"
He waved my concern away negligently. "Nothing as bad as you likely are thinking. I''m sure you have noticed that people who have played The Game bring a little something back with them. Those changes get passed down to their kids, same as any other existential modifications. For anyone from an old enough society those suits are little more than self-cleaning uniforms. Self repairing too, one you get them to work. You should like that." With another hand gesture he changed the subject. "But as for using them as is, they are designed to be tailored to the individual using them and to not slow them down. One size does not fit all. Try it and the thing will tear you apart at every joint and with every motion. Unless you are secretly a shape shifter?" I shook my head no. "Pity, but that is something to work around.
"Your two choices are to either get a specialist to fit it for you or get an AI, which would require upgrading your computer, which would require having a bigger place to put it all. The first choice is expensive for something that you don''t plan to keep, but technically is an option. Considering your flood of resources, however, you are likely better off just going with the second option. Do spend some time adjusting the personality for your AI before you finalize it. Nothing is worse than an AI that you can''t work with."
"Right, and I''m sure you have some recommendations on where to go for that AI?" I deadpanned.
"Of course." He waved away my suspicion. "Don''t be such a worrywart. You can check their credentials easily enough." He smiled with excitement before moving on, "That is all boring upgrading stuff. The real interesting thing is looking for new upgrades! To do that we need to find a direction for your growth. Give me your thoughts and I can help tell you what works with what you already have."
I nodded, "One question first. How hard is it to get credits outside the tutorial?"
He shrugged in an exaggerated motion. "It is the easiest thing in the world, so long as you don''t go dying a lot. The issue becomes that people tend to take a lot of high-risk/high-reward strategies when they don''t have to worry about their mortality and so they get stuck. Dying pauses your growth and just living tends to not be free, so people can get caught in a devastating cycle when they reach their limit. You can backtrack somewhat by removing abilities, try for something better, but that either costs credits or looses the credits from all the points you invested. That is more of a problem for the truly powerful when changing a build can total hundreds or thousands of points." He smiled mischievously, "But at your level experimentation is encouraged to find your personal style. Or, if I read you correctly, experimentation could get you a few minutes farther through the final round of the tutorial."
I nodded. "That is exactly my thought. Is he difference between lasting a few minutes and a few hours significant once you get into the main part of The Game?"
"It is the difference between everyone assuming you got lucky and thinking you have real potential." His excitement only ramped up as he spoke. "Lets get started."
---------------------------------------------------
My talk with the information broker took a while as I had to work around his excitement to find something good. While I wasn''t against trading out my abilities later, I also wanted to find some options that I would feel comfortable using. He spent a while trying to talk me into upgrading my senses to the tier 4 version, at 64 points, but I just wasn''t interested in doing it quite yet. Something to think about in the future, but not right now.
From there I went to buy what I needed. My plan was to be sneaky and fast, utilizing an unusual form of scrying combined with teleportation to keep away as long as possible. I''d gotten an AI, of course, but I also got some other miscellaneous upgrades, like danger sense and a shield and such, that should be useful no matter what. Not all my plans worked out. Apparently there wasn''t a cheap healing option that was worthwhile, but I managed to put a large dent in my credits. I thought about using them just to use them, but I didn''t have enough for some of what I wanted and I was assured that I could use them after the tutorial. Thankfully credits weren''t lost when you die.
Getting outside I met up with Donnie. Nobody else was here yet.
"Where is everyone else?" I asked, settling down in the back of the vehicle next to him.
He glanced back at the building with the portal in thought. "I think that it is taking them a while since they either don''t want to upgrade the stuff most strongly associated with their class or have to be really careful on how they use their points. Decision paralysis is a real thing."
"What about you, shouldn''t you still be in there figuring things out?"
He shook his head. "I''m going more straight for my route. Getting better at building and figuring out how to build stuff. I did get a Soul Space upgrade, like what you have, to help carry all the junk and supplies I need." He nodded to the now empty space where the small pile of his ''valuable materials'' was now absent. "What about you? I know you aren''t upgrading your class options to their max, so how did you get out so quickly?"
I shrugged. "I have an information broker I go see. I can ask him basically anything, so let me know if you have any questions. He helped narrow down the options to something more manageable."
He nodded. Then we sat in silence for a few minutes. It wasn''t really good or bad, we both had a lot on our minds.
"Why did you do it?" he asked suddenly.
I looked up at the sky. "I didn''t trust her. She turned the aliens to put her in charge, stole one or actually two of our party members, and was angry rather than defeated at the end. I wasn''t confident in beating the alien''s ''Chief'' if she sent him after us. So I got rid of the problem."
He nodded slowly. "But why didn''t it bother you, everything that came after?"
I shrugged again. "This isn''t reality, this is a game. We all should try to remember that."
He shook his head. "I don''t mean that. It was a bit shocking but I understand this is a game. What I mean is how everyone reacted to it. Why didn''t that affect you more."
I took a moment to consider the question. I could spout out some cringy line about lions not concerning themselves with the opinions of mice, and there would even be some truth to it, but it didn''t feel right. Finally I settled on an explanation that, if not perfect, was at least better. "It shows me who my real friends are. I''m not always going to do things that make sense to you. I may leave you behind in this game though decisions that seem, to you, like utter insanity. That''s not even unexpected, I''m literally a professional gamer playing a game. The question is what you will do about it and what I will do about it. This is what I choose to do."
"I don''t get it." He spoke with a lost expression as he watched me speak. "What does that have to do with everything and not being bothered by it all?"
I took a deep breath as I tried to explain it better. "I did something unexpected and shocking out there, at least to you and everyone else. Do you talk with me about it? Do you run away from me? That means something. I took decisive measures because otherwise I loose, and that weirded out everyone else. Do I question my decisions despite, even now, understanding the clear necessity for what I did? Do I act embarrassed or guilty about doing the necessary thing? Do I go cry when people who can''t keep up get upset because I do what it takes to keep going to the top? That means something." I continued looking up at he sky, though my ability still allowed me to see Donnie''s face as clear as if he was directly in front of me. "What do you want me to say?"
There was silence for a while. He finally broke it with an unwelcome observation. "You aren''t the most charismatic person ever, are you."
I gave him a look. Then I gave him a middle finger.
He just laughed and I couldn''t help but break out in a smile. "Talk to them," he told me. "Sometimes you have to be the one to reach out first."
It took me a while to come to a decision on his advice, but eventually I nodded that I would. It was dark by the time the others came back from the Market.
033. Friendship And Lies
By common agreement the group drove back to a group of buildings halfway between our starting point and the Market. While we could have stayed at the market, that would have cost credits that nobody wanted to spend. There was also the worry that someone would come to the same entrance we had used and steal our transportation if we left it sitting around, as Donnie had seen a couple other groups leaving and eyeing the vehicle during the time he had been waiting for us. None of them actually interacted, though, so nothing really came of it. Well, nothing other than them having to spend another hour trying find someplace to camp out for the night.
Part of me hoped that everyone would get tired and go to sleep, but unfortunately we were all a bunch of nerds and night owls. The group was mostly quiet and I wasn''t sure how to bring things up in such an oppressive environment. There we sat, all sitting around a small fire near an abandoned street, in complete silence. Finally, after some not so subtle hints from Donnie, I decided to just bite the bullet before my friend decided to do something drastic.
"Look, guys, I killed that leader lady. You all seem to have been acting weird about it but what was I supposed to do? She had some sort of mind control powers and was obviously unhappy about what was going on. If she had sent three or four of those warriors at us than I don''t know that any of us would have survived. So I did what I needed to do to keep us alive." I tried to keep an even voice but a bit of annoyance might have filtered through. This all seemed pretty straightforward and I didn''t see why I should need to explain myself.
Veronica spoke up first. She sounded upset but in a way that spoke of exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep. "You went in there ready to kill her; expecting to kill her, even. You knew! Don''t act like you didn''t!"
I rolled my eyes. "Of course I knew that might happen! I knew it from the moment I saw she was in charge! There was no way the Chief of the isolationist aliens would put her in charge if she didn''t do something fishy to make it happen."
"No," she corrected indelicately, "you knew that she was going around mind controlling people. You told me to watch out for Clark, you told me how to avoid it; so you knew all along and didn''t tell us! Why didn''t you say anything to us? Why didn''t you trust us?"
I held myself back from a sigh but only barely. "I didn''t trust you to be able to hide that you knew anything, not when you had to look her straight in the eye. I think what happened near the end pretty well proved my point."
"That wasn''t your decision to make. You should have told us everything! Instead you lied and told us nothing!"
I was getting more than a little annoyed by her insistence that I ''should'' have done anything. She was just using her feelings to throw out her own little hypocrisy onto me. So I decided to call her on it with a tone of voice a bit darker than I usually take. "Like you''re one to talk little miss ''magical girl''. You talk about withholding relevant information but then you pretend to be a Mage when really you are a Super."
"What? No, but I?" She stammered, but I continued without giving in to her panicked face.
"The difference between the two is big. As a Mage with some sort of light manipulation you could have created decoys or possibly hard light to help with defense, but instead all you could do was blast things. And don''t bother denying it. You never once used your light for anything but sparkly explosions and sparkles that were likely explosions waiting to happen. Mages also have variable output and get tired after using their ability too many times, neither of which was true for you. The biggest tip off? Your looks. A LOT of the Supers look like idealized versions of themselves, almost too perfect to exist, and that holds true for you too."
She glared at me then hunched over, pulling into herself and more into the darkness.
Clark took this moment to speak up. "Look, I know things are rough, but she does have a bit of a point. It isn''t like you needed to keep that from us. We could have handled it."
This time I did roll my eyes and sigh. "You really aren''t one to talk either. I looked up spells to see what I could get for healing. Mostly as a kind of backup. Turns out that there isn''t a generic ''healing'' magic, at least not once you get past the first couple tiers of Magic Skills. Either you transition into some type of Support magic or you just can''t upgrade your ability normally." I took a moment to let my words sink in as he opened and closed his mouth as if to retort but without any actual sound, but then decided to just finish my thought. "And no, for the record you couldn''t handle it. That was why we had to kidnap you from the base."Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
There were a few more seconds before he spoke up. "How did you know I hadn''t just taken secondary skills and Super abilities to upgrade my weak healing? Different power amplifiers should give a better result than sticking with one upgrade line exclusively." The way he spoke, it wasn''t a denial but a question that he actually wanted to know.
My first thought was: ''Uh, what?'' I mean, I understand what he is trying to say: Multiple bonuses from different places should stack multiplicatively vs the presumably additive bonus from one set of upgrades held exclusively. Except that adding points in a single specialized line increased multiple aspects of the skill or whatever vs what the broader upgrades could do. I just wasn''t expecting him to recognize the difference between additive and multiplicative bonuses, even if his understanding was generally misguided. Then I remembered there had been a question somewhere in what he said, something about how I knew he hadn''t just gotten super specialized in healing but was actually a support? "Uh, right." I stammered out. "I saw how Veronica was by the end of the big fight. She was throwing out sparkles left and right and hadn''t hit exhaustion. Dimitri, on the other hand, despite taking some breaks, was still tired by the end. Supers have almost limitless stamina with their abilities, but only almost."
There were a few moments of silence as we all thought through what had been said.
Donnie finally spoke up, this time looking over at Dimitri. "What about you? Are you mad about not being told what was going on?"
He gave a noncommittal grunt before answering. "I knew something weird was going on from the beginning, when he first suggested that Jeong be in charge. At first I thought the plan was to get us all trapped as part of the group, at least when everything happened just inside of town happened, but then I found everyone trying to carry off Clark and realized we were ditching Jeong into whatever craziness was going on here. That was something I would have absolutely voted for, had I known it was an option at the time. I''m happy with the result."
There was a stunned silence, finally broken by Donnie asking the one thing we were all thinking. "How did you figure it out, that there was something going on?"
"Besides the obvious fact that nobody should trust Jeong to be in charge of anything? Jeong is South Korean, Celestia was Chinese, and you said that Jeong should talk because they would get along better because of their shared race. Those two nationalities hate each other, and it only got worse once the aliens got involved."
I looked at him, momentarily dumbfounded by the new information. Look, in my defense I play video games for a living; I do not, nor do I want to, keep up with international gossip news about who hates who in what part of the world.
Dimitri just nodded sadly at the look on my face. "Or you are another dumb American who doesn''t know a thing about international politics." I thought about disagreeing, but I wasn''t sure he was actually wrong. Thankfully he continued before I could think of a response "It doesn''t matter, all''s well that ends well."
There were a few more moments before Clark spoke up again. "I know I should have said something earlier. You all are my friends but I was scared. My abilities can boost myself or others, but then they have that boost /and/ whatever they had before. I was afraid what would happen if anyone realized what I could do."
I almost replied with a crack about how some mind controller could try to abduct him but I held myself back to something slightly more diplomatic. "Look, you don''t have to convince me. We might be friendly but we aren''t really friends. I''ve barely spoken to you half a dozen times, and that was as part of a group." I shrugged in a ''what are you going to do?'' gesture. "Besides. I can''t exactly blame you on fearing the support discrimination. I''ve been there and know how it is." Considering my normal team position, that was likely an understatement.
There were a few moments of silence before Veronica blurted out: "I didn''t want to be a Super. I wanted to be a mage. Magic is magical and you have to work at it and earn it. Superpowers just are. You aren''t any better or worse for having them or using them. I want my power to mean something."
"I don''t think it is as simple as you think to just ''have power''," Dimitri cut in, being the sole willing Superpower specialist in the group. "But to each their own, I guess."
Our resident ''magical girl'' tried apologizing but Earthmolding Super just waved her off as though it was nothing.
"So," said Clark to Donnie, "any dark secrets you want to get off your chest?"
He looked at the group, then glanced at me nervously. "I actually knew about Celestia before we went into the town. Johnny told me and that was how he convinced me to put Jeong in charge to keep her from mind controlling anyone we might care about loosing."
There was some back and forth complaining from the group, mostly Veronica with some from Clark.
"He is my friend. Like an actual friend, not an acquaintance." I answered back, loudly enough to cut through the arguments. This quieted everyone down.
Clark finally broke this new silence with a declaration of his own. "Lets fix that." He looked at the rest of us; but mostly Donnie, Dimitri, and I. "My name is Clark Morton. I just finished my Doctorate in Biological Systems before getting sponsored to enter The Game, but growing up I wanted to be a medical doctor. The idea behind being a doctor and the reality are so different, though, so that is why...
We continued talking late into the night.
034. Stories For Friendship
We stayed up way too late last night, even for a night owl like me. First everyone started by talking about themselves, trying to make friends, before getting into the actual relevant information. I appreciate the effort, enough that I wasn''t going to tell them to their faces how much it didn''t work, but it didn''t work. If knowing all about a person and their public struggles was enough to make me care about them than I would have no choice but to help my opponents win after watching a documentary about the new upcoming names in my e-sport. For me friendship only starts when a person makes a choice that is at least mildly inconvenient for them and not just the type of thing that the person would do for absolutely anyone. By that measure, while most of us are friendly with each other, we only have two sets of friends with two people each: Me and Donnie, Veronica and Clark.
I know that isn''t really fair to the budding couple because their attitude makes it harder to become friends, but there it is. Veronica doesn''t seem to have a ruthless bone in her body and Clark is the kind of person to give the shirt off his back to a stranger if they needed it, so the bar of doing something ''inconvenient'' that wasn''t just a normal thing for them is a lot higher. It isn''t impossible, though. Clark exhausted himself keeping Veronica in The Game even when there were others that could have protected him better. Likewise Veronica went out of her way to protect and extract Clark when he was caught before. Sure, there may have been ulterior romantic motives on the part of both of them, but that doesn''t negate the fact that they were there for each other in a way that they wouldn''t have been for some other pretty face.
The backstories on everyone were pretty much exactly what I expected, rich kids and sponsored prodigies. Veronica was actually the most unusual of the bunch. Sure, she was a rich kid who went to all the rich kid schools and had lots of pampered rich kid friends, but her family wasn''t rich enough to get her access to The Game. Instead she was friends with a clique of other girls who used ''best friends forever'' as the justification to beg their parents for the extra she needed to get in. That isn''t to say her family was poor, they were still part of the ''upper crust'' of society, they just didn''t have the funds to send her in on their own without trouble.
Reading between the lines, and taking some from context clues, I think it really bothered her to be the poor one of the group. The others had unique designer dresses made for each specific occasion and then never to be worn again and she had to deal with non-unique clothing that was tailored to her, and then she had to wear the same clothes more than once. Ok, she wasn''t quite that pithy about it, but the point still stands: she was a rich girl. Her struggles were few and typical of any normal person, beloved grandparents dying and a single romantic disappointment, yet her sheltered existence received these difficulties as though there were character defining tragedies. I guess to her they were.
She had gotten several different class options, better than what I had been given, but had chosen the Super track purely on the promise of being able to make herself prettier. She saw it not as an improvement to her looks but as a way to reinvent herself as someone better than the tagalong who never quite measured up. I could admire her desire for self improvement even if I was less sure about her resolve. Still, there had apparently been some in our nerd group who went into shock and just shut down in the middle of the chaos of simulated war, so she had proven herself in that she fought on despite the overwhelming fear. I could respect that.
After her for weird backstories was Dimitri. Apparently in Russia getting into The Game was a new fad among youngsters rich enough to get in. The downside of being logged in for weeks or months at a time was balanced out by the way it kept them out of trouble and the possibility of bringing back some extra abilities. That was a bit weird, since in the US the rich and powerful avoided going in personally because it meant leaving their financial empire behind. The thought where I was from was that you could just pay someone to do whatever you needed and, so long as you kept some Enhanced for protection and kept up good publicity, actually going in yourself was not worth the trouble. The alien overseer in Russia had been pushing for it, though, so the practice was likely around to stay.
Dimitri himself came from a government family who had their roots stretching back to the times of the Tzar and so his family had drilled into him the practicality of power and how to use it. As a third son, however, leadership was never an option unless more aggressive strategies failed. While his older brothers had been trained in leadership and administration, he had been trained in survival and finance. The thought behind it was that the family would survive and remain strong even if the worst was to happen. He had been brought up with stories of how others in his place had been the only ones to survive to rebuild the dynasty and how it was now his burden to remain safe for the good of everyone. According to him this type of upbringing wasn''t universal among the super rich, but it also wasn''t uncommon either.
This strange confluence of events is what brought him into The Game with the specific goal of getting upgrades that would increase his survivability while also remaining useful in other circumstances. To him Earth Molding was the perfect fit. His choice to join with the ''entertainment lovers'' was due to some research he had done where the most useful speculation he had found was from self described ''geeks'' and ''gamers''. Short of the military, they seemed to know the most about what might be going on once you got inside. Unlike the military they were not known for being ruthless to outsiders in order to ensure their own survival. Most people online thought that avoiding the nerdy types was a good idea because they would either be right about their speculations, and outcompete you, or be wrong and bring everyone else down; the convictions of the internet speculators were too rigid for a lot of compromise.
And yet Dimitri had chosen to join the nerds regardless. As a survivor he trusted himself to either keep up if their speculations were right or survive when they went down for their bad ideas. Unfortunately he didn''t know enough to recognize the different flavors of ''nerd'' and so ended up with our little group. In his mind, however, it could have been worse. Afterall, none of us were trying to sabotage or kill each other. That one statement alone told me more than anything else about his background and upbringing. It also became clear that he routinely played up the gruff act to hide his calculating intelligence. His description of himself as ''just a support'' was just one example of this.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.
From there I was likely the next most unusual person in the group. I''m not sure how to take being the average level of weird in the group. I wasn''t exactly sponsored, with strict rules forcing me into a in-game workplace, but my old teammate''s help did come with the unspoken understanding that I would help him out with some sort of cloak and dagger stuff that hadn''t seemed to be a big deal at the time. I didn''t mention the depths of the drama that I had likely gotten myself into, though I did let them know that I had gotten in through connections with a friend and that I would be helping him out to pay him back. That was kind of like a sponsorship, even if it wasn''t corporate in nature.
Beyond that my background wasn''t that unusual. I was a late bloomer with ''little man syndrome'', always needing to prove myself but not being big enough to do so physically, and so I turned to other sorts of competitions. While growing up I had been uncomfortably close to several newsworthy events, through random chance rather than involvement, and that had pushed me away from the public spotlight as much as possible. But I never had a chance of avoiding the spotlight completely. As the saying goes: ''get good enough at something and someone will pay you for it, get even better and someone will celebrate it''. My time as a professional gamer never saw me enter the ranks of superstardom but I was a recognizable name in every championship.
As for my choice to enter The Game, I was honest. My age wasn''t exactly a secret but most people don''t understand just how important quick twitch reflexes are to a gamer when the competition is for a top spot in one of the world''s biggest games. Most interactions, after a point, become formulaic. You know what the enemy can do and you know all the openings and counters so the only question is which of you is fast enough to get their plan off first. The rest of what you do, where real creativity appears, won''t always be enough to carry you back up that slope. So here I am, playing a new Game to see how far I can go.
Sure, there is more I could have said about my journey, but there really wasn''t much reason to do so in my mind. This much would get the point across of who I was and what I aimed for. I never really was one to talk about myself too much.
Compared with that Clark''s introduction was almost straightforward. He liked organic chemistry and biology growing up and was incredibly talented at it. Being a doctor wasn''t in the cards, due to the tedium of general practice, but research was something he loved. His background before that was one of a precocious super-nerd up until puberty hit him like a truck. Suddenly there were these girls around that he couldn''t ignore and none of them wanted to talk about mitoendometriosis, or some other six plus syllable long word that I can''t remember, so he had to learn to talk to people. Thankfully, as the baby brother in the family, he had lots of help learning to take care of his appearance while not talking too much. Unfortunately his first love was still science and he was still a nerd at heart.
It was for this reason that fantasy media became his new side obsession as there were plenty of stories where the nerdy nerd gets all the power, respect, and female attention he could ever want. It was pure escapism, he admitted, and continued even as the aliens landed and then people showed up on earth with superhuman abilities. The stories he had watched were a quietly unrealistic dream that never quite went away as he grew up and went to college. It was the sort of thing that did not completely die when reality proved that the superheroes on TV are just normal folk with more power and a grudge. The tipping point for his dream, however, was a news interview with some vigilante who had jokingly quoted an anime character when asked why they deserved the power they had: "Power isn''t important, who I am with that power is". From there he strove to be the type of person who could someday be worthy of that power.
And so, when he was approached by a biotech company to bring back superhuman medical technologies and cures, he jumped at it. Because, in his mind at least, the unrealistic part of his dream wasn''t being a good person or the power of the Enhanced; the unrealistic part was in trying to be a either a good person or powerful without being both. As much as he would try to tell himself differently, some part still believed that a ''good'' person without the power to do good was less ''good'' than someone with that power. Similarly some part of him still held the childlike belief that ''good'' triumphs over ''evil'' and so the most powerful people must also be good.
He admitted multiple times that it was a childish belief, but it was one he wanted to believe. I wasn''t sure if I should applaud his optimism or worry about his naivete, but at least I could understand where he was coming from.
Donnie, however, was the most normal person out of the entire group. He had managed to get in through a sponsored robotics competition. His description of the process, however, gave me new insight into what these ''sponsorship programs'' consisted of. They were loans. They would dress the whole thing up and give the person ''exciting opportunities both within The Game and outside'', opportunities to work off the debt, but the reality of it was little more than indentured servitude. How could it be anything less when he cheapest pod was in the millions of dollars and had no way to communicate with the outside world. His acceptance into the program had come with a preparatory school that would help him be ready for what would come, but lacked any information about alternate ways to make money in The Game or alternatives beyond taking advantage of the company''s ''exciting opportunities''.
It was worrisome.
Even worse was when I learned about the qualifications that Donnie had before winning his ''sponsorship''. Sure, he got good grades and was talented at mechanical engineering, but he wasn''t the world level genius savant that I had been led to believe were being picked up by these companies. He was essentially a smart but otherwise normal guy. His financial prospects were below average, mostly due to a large family, but not so bad that he truly suffered. Early in childhood he had been drawn to technology thanks to watching reruns of MacGyver, a show that was apparently about an itinerant engineer with a mullet who got out of death traps using a pocket knife, a paperclip, and whatever he could disassemble? Somehow? Engineering had been adventurous profession in his eyes and even the harshness of reality hadn''t swayed his opinion.
And that was the entirety of his relevant backstory. Stuff happened with his family and friends, but nothing too unusual. Even now, after he himself had explained what the sponsorship program was and how it worked, he still viewed it like winning the lottery. He was also the youngest of our group so perhaps he just didn''t understand what he had gotten himself into.
But then, after those long conversations about who people were and why they did what they did, they finally got to talking about the good stuff that was actually important for our survival. Next we transitioned toward talking about what each of us could do.
035. Power and Personalities
Now, let me just be clear that I really do appreciate people trying to talk about themselves and their past since I know that they think it is a way of sharing who they are. I realize that is how other people think about it and their intention. That way of looking at things, however, just doesn''t make sense to me. Who you are now is what matters, and what happened before doesn''t always factor into that.
Let me explain with an example. Lets pretend that someone experienced a level of physical abuse as a young child. What does that tell us about the person as an adult? Essentially nothing. They could have taken that experience and become an abuser themselves, or decided to dedicate their life to preventing abuse, or they could have decided to put that experience behind them and not let it dictate their life going forward. Even the adult turned abuser won''t necessarily see themselves as bad, at worst they will think that this is just how things are and they may even think they are doing something like trying to strengthen the next generation. Similarly the person who wants to prevent the abuse might do something to actually help or they might become a zealot who causes more societal harm than the abuser, who ends up hurting only one person at a time. Or, you know, it could have no real effect at all or the person could only think it has no effect on their adult life.
All that to say, learning about people''s past doesn''t impress me. I know they are trying to reach out when they do it, but trying to do something meaningful and succeeding aren''t the same thing.
What does tell me a lot about a person is how they are right now. What do they spend their time doing? Where do they spend their resources? What type of talents and other capabilities do they have and maintain? The uncertainty of self perception and such fall away when confronted by those facts of reality. And, as people develop their own attitudes and ways of doing things, they end up developing in a way that supports those aspects of themselves. Skills reflect their talents and attitudes; as does their time, money, friendships, and everything else about them. Maybe there are some super spy people out there for whom this doesn''t apply, but even that would come at a cost and isn''t something you usually have to worry about in real life. Maybe I''ll meet someone who breaks the rule at some point, but even then I would still hold to my evaluation before that of people''s attempts to describe themselves.
So, when everyone started out by bringing up their strengths and weaknesses in extremely vague terms, I responded by bringing out almost my entire character sheet. Well, I told them about what I had bought and why. There wasn''t really a way to show people my entire character sheet so far as I knew. Take my motives for that as you will. Perhaps I was feeling like being more open with the group, or perhaps I just thought it would get them to be more open with me and I knew I could change out my stuff if necessary. For consistency''s sake, though, I don''t think my stated or personal views on my motives really matter in light of actual action.
Aliases/callsigns: None
Body: Str: 38 Con: 57
Speed: Agi: 48 Dex: 70
Mind: Wis: 59(89) Int: 76
Recovery: Bod: 40 Sta: 62
Path: Technology
Level: 16
Classes: Computer Operator
Credits: 262,201
Soulbound: 68/80
16pt Computer
16pt Electronic Transmitter
16pt Limited Quantum Interference Interface
16pt Artificial Intelligence, Personalized
4pt Harmonic Disrupting Multiphasic Scanning Dagger
A generalized memory storage and computational device, essentially a robot brain. Can be optimized for size, power, or other parameters. (Class Option)
A catch all for most types of computerized control and interface devices for use with a sufficiently powerful computer. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface and control device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other electronically based devices designed for interface capabilities, with higher levels making hostile intrusion easier and increasing the range of the interface (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby objects molecular composition with higher levels increasing the range and the clarity of complex esoteric chemicals and chemical reactions. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby biological entities; including the genetic, physiological, and other less obvious aspects of the entity. Higher levels give more range, clarity, and allow for gathering more esoteric biological data types. (Class Option)
A specific computer interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows the analysis of nearby abstract generated reality spaces, with higher levels giving more range, clarity, and chance to bypass hostile barriers to data acquisition. (Class Option)
A specific computer control and interface device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Allows connection with other abstract reality generating based devices regardless of their design for interface capabilities, with higher levels making connection more possible and less prone to unreality bleedover. (Class Option)
A specific limited range quantum interface and influence device unlocked through the higher category and discovery. Higher levels increase the power and the range of useful signals that can be interacted with. (Class Option)
Abilities: 80/80
16pt Hammer Space
16pt Enhanced Senses
16pt Short Ranged Teleport
16pt Reduced Biology
16pt Danger Sense
A safe area held within the soul that allows the transfer of items into and out of that subdimension. Can be bought up to the level that allows for the transport of a small spacecraft. (Class Option)
A Brain and nervous system upgrade that allow for mental control of any electronics implanted while allowing those electronics to have a degree of influence on the biological. (Class Option)
Gives the user superior senses, including the mental upgrades required to process the greater levels of information. Allows the user to actively utilize often unconscious senses, such as touch''s heat sense, to gain information about the surroundings that might otherwise be ignored. (Discovered Option)
A body that has been genetically optimized for the Arcane Arts can now be yours, allowing for greater levels of Magical or Psionic use with less physical strain! (Discovered Option)
The very fabric of your soul has grasped more than most mortals could even imagine! This allows the student to do greater feats with no greater strain, greatly improving one''s maximum power! Perhaps, in time, your power may grow to mythic heights! (Discovered Option)
Point to point instant movement specifically tailored for speed and moderate stealth while needing no more than line of sight to the target location. Suffers from extremely short range. (Purchased Option)
A reduced need for sleep and rest that, while not eliminating either, allows one to function without either for long periods of time. (Purchased Option)
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Limited and focused precognition allowing one to instantly divine the level and basic approach of danger. (Purchased Option)
Skills: 71/80
16pt Instant Shield
16pt Miniscule Wormhole Creation
16pt Wilderness Stealth
16pt Magical Efficiency
4pt Electrical to Magical Energy Transmutation
1pt Create Water
1pt Generate Electricity
1pt Create Fire
Gives the user the skills to create operating systems to both control a computer and to allow the computer to control other things. Level effects the complexity of the control and the range of how complex the thing is that can be controlled. (Class Option)
Gives the skills to create items that a computer can use to control other things. Level determines the complexity of what can be a controlled target. (Class Option)
The Power of the Arcane and mundane collide a proof of how the Magical triumphs as it molds the world into whatever nature it desires! (Discovered Option)
Dimensional Magic is among the most potent of power, rearranging the very fabric of the universe itself. This particular aspect has been molded into the ultimate unbreakable shield that is the result of a short lived rift in the universe that cannot be overcome or bypassed (Purchased Option) (Legal disclaimer: While the shield is strong and difficult to defeat, it is not invincible against extremely powerful or specifically tailored attacks)
Tearing open the fabric of space, creating an bridge between the here and yonder, is the stuff of Gods and Legends! This version is limited to your immediate area but can be moved once created and is trivial to maintain, though it greatly lacks in volume. (Purchased Option)
Sometimes you just need to get around without being noticed. This is the skill that allows for flawless execution of that goal. This version has been specifically focused on detection avoidance within the untamed wilds. (Purchased Option)
The exhaustion that comes with manipulating the very fabric of reality can be mitigated by greater mastery in the individual arts, but the Wisest of us have come to know that many of these shared aspects can be more efficiently grouped into a singly whole. You have become initiated into these most secret of arts. (Purchased Option)
The ebb and flow of liquids and their power are yours to command as you show any and all obstacles the power of the deep! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
Energy in its purest form, the very essence of reality, can be wielded or denied as you desire! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
That which reaches beyond the bounds of Time and Space, the very symbol of knowledge and the first grasps beyond it, is yours to direct at a whim. (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
The Ephemerality of air is both the substance of the empty space between stars and the pressure that holds that emptiness at bay! It is now, also, yours to command! (Discovered Option) (Limited from 16Pt version during the Tutorial)
Energy in its most Physical manifestation, that which destroys all and yet gives birth to stars, becomes your tool to use as the plaything that it is! (Discovered Option) (Limited from two 4Pt versions during the Tutorial)
It turns out that my options were all over the place compared to basically everyone else. This difference was due to the fact that most of them liked their original class and the fact that I was comparatively swimming in credits. While my level had caught up to just one below everyone else, regardless of where everyone started, they just didn''t have enough credits to both buy a bunch of options and apply them. Well, not without sacrificing something else, but only Veronica took that route and she had gotten one of the higher credit payouts from the last quest out of the group.
My build was designed around evasion and synergies. Killing the "adventurers" was likely impossible so I needed ways to know when they were coming and run away. For this goal I had gotten a pinpoint sized wormhole ability which I could leave one end behind and, using both my tech and super senses together, see through it. And, while my teleportation could only move me about an arms length away, it was fully "line of sight"... and I could see through my wormhole spy holes. If I needed extra magic I could drain one of the extra batteries and use the one magical skill I had to convert one type of energy to the other, and I could similarly recharge the batteries with another skill. To cap it all off I had taken a superpower called "Reduced Biology" that cut back on certain biological needs, for me that was sleep and rest. It wouldn''t exactly help me recover from fatigue, but it would cut back on how quickly it built up.
Beyond that I had gotten a bunch of smaller things as backups to the main plan and quality of life, because nothing works out perfectly. Danger Sense was a type of precognition superpower that would keep me from being completely surprised by an attack but really it only told me the basics of "something bad from that way" so it wasn''t infallible. I also got a magical shield to use when that danger happened. The shield was strong and instant but lasted less than a second before burning out. Trading out duration and mobility and efficiency for strength and speed was the best I could do with my limited budget. To deal with my magic heavy build, despite not having the normal magical gene enhancements that let everyone else put out so much firepower, I took a skill for Magical Efficiency. Finally, to cap it all off, I took a stealth skill. This choice was heavily recommended due to the fact that my thoughts about what "stealth" meant, coming from a world without the various upgrades that were commonplace here, were just plain wrong. Radio waves, to give one example, could leave imprints on your surroundings that could be tracked.
Oh, I also bought an AI seed for my computer system to keep everything running. That was, by far, the most expensive thing I bought, going way beyond what the 16 point cost would suggest. Fortunately I could remove the upgrade after the thing finished integrating. Unfortunately only spending 16 points on the "upgrade" for it meant that it would be taking a while. For now it was just an annoying waste of resources but, with all the things I needed to keep my tech doing all the time, it was a necessary waste.
The others wondered how I kept everything straight, the many abilities and such, but I don''t think any of them realized how little it really was. Assuming I understood correctly, the 64 point tier 4 skills most of them had could do way more stuff than my one-off tricks could accomplish. What they could do I didn''t really know, but I knew it should be possible.
All in all my Upgrades, while they weren''t perfect, fit the me that was just trying to get as far as possible in the Tutorial. I had always worked with what I had to face the problems at hand, so adapting to the situation was par for the course. The Super Senses had really been a lucky break, as it was impossible to react to things without knowing they are coming. Danger sense could likely stay as well, as knowing every potential hazard was impossible. Beyond that, most of what I had were tools or temporary. That lack of dedication to a specific way of doing things was part of how I overcame challenges. I had been told before that this was a weakness, not a strength; but that person wasn''t still around and I was. The decision between such things as ranged or mele or attacker or support or whatever; none of those options were the hills I would die defending.
All of this I explained to the others through my choices and build itself. Perhaps they would be accepting of who I was. Perhaps they would take my help on this task and then want nothing more to do with me. Perhaps they would react with panic and some degree of disgust once they realized my attitude. Time would not tell, only their actions would.
036. Allied Powers
Veronica went first after my ''little'' reveal and that quickly got into a discussion about classes. Apparently all classes from different archetypes came with the same starter ability. For the Tech tree there was the ability to directly interface with technology, the "Upgrade for Bionic Control Implants" ability I had never taken, while for the Super path they got something that could modify their body. Nobody was really sure why they got the ''Body Manipulation'' skill, but it was why everyone on that path looked as outlandishly attractive as they did. Even Dimitri, who hadn''t gone for the pretty-boy look, was shaped like a mountain of a man, regardless of how he had been before.
The best upgrade, and possibly mandatory for the path, went to the Mages. The ''Magical Reservoir'' genetic upgrade worked like an extra pool of stamina that could only be used for casting spells and that recovered alongside their normal stamina. The efficiency was fairly extreme, letting the caster get more casting than their Stamina score would allow with even a small point investment in the ability. The ability was also extra sensitive to other upgrades that would increase the potency and depth of the magic it contained, allowing it to act as a bit of a multiplier to anything else magical they had. I was actually kind of sad I hadn''t gotten access to that ability yet.
Also, not all classes gave the same number of potential upgrades. All had at least three, not counting the freebee starter skill, with at least one upgrade from each path. My class tied with Clark for both giving 5 upgrade paths at base while everyone else here had started with 4 options. More options weren''t always useful, however, as some of the offerings had things like maximum levels available, like my Inventory, or were useless without some other tools or upgrades that weren''t included, like my crafting skill. Clark had two options that were limited by level, a questionable form of magic and a self defense upgrade, but he could use everything with his provided options. Nobody else had those limitations, though some of the stuff did seem like it worked together in almost required synergies.
Hearing Veronica''s choices was when I began to understand just how much I had profited by killing so many opponents during the earlier Tutorial phases. Her stated desire to become a mage had borne out in how she spent most everything she could on a "Light Magic" skill, boosting it all the way to tier 4 at a cost of 64 points. That was 64,000 credits just to apply it and likely a few hundred thousand to buy the upgrade. I could have likely afforded it, even including my big ticket item of an AI and the fact that my other choices cost a premium due to how specific they were; but everyone else''s reactions just showed the difference between what I had gotten and what they had. She must have also gotten more than the average payout in the last mission to even afford what she did get. Unsurprisingly everything else she had was class standard, and some of it wasn''t even past Tier 2 because she couldn''t afford to upgrade it.
What she did have from her class, however, made me a bit green with envy. That ''magic'' dress she was wearing, that was tier 4 armor. Point for point, it was almost certainly better than the stuff I was carrying around from the soldiers. It powered her up enough that she could literally do the ''magical girl'' meme where they jump straight up to the top of a light post and across rooftops. Her class also came with Radiation Resistance and a Skill making her superhumanly capable at Ranged Combat, both currently at Tier 2 but uncapped in potential. And that was in addition to her Tier 4 "Light Burst" Ability that she was known for. She was the only one in the group with a full 3 skills at Tier 4. I wouldn''t even mind having the Body Manipulation ability to make me prettier.
So in total her Upgrades seemed to amount to this:
-Bound Items: Tier 4 Protective Armor (64pts)
-DNA Superpowered Abilities: Tier 4 Light Burst thing (64pts), Tier 2 Body Manipulation (4pts), and Tier 2 Radiation Resistance.
-Preternatural Skills: Tier 4 Light Magic (64 pts), Tier 2 Ranged Combat (4 pts)
Considering that the maximum amount of points she could have in each category was 85, it was clear what she had given up to have so much high leveled stuff.
After her reveal, and the group''s conversation about classes, Clark was the next one to speak up. I don''t know what it was that made him speak up but it did make clear that his growing trust for us as a group had gone beyond the basic lip-service that so many of us had professed for everyone else since the very beginning. This was especially true with what he had to say.
Clark''s reveal was, in some ways, even more surprising and far darker that I could have guessed. Apparently his "healing" is full on Body Manipulation magic, raised all the way to Tier 4 for a cost of 64 points out of his 85 total for that category, and not just the enhancement magic I had thought it was. He also had some sort of "Soul Magic", only raised to Tier 2 with 4 points spent, that he said was used for preserving a person''s life if he ever went too far with his first skill. He obviously understood exactly what he could do with the skill if he were to have less solid morals but chose to develop his System acknowledged talents despite this.
This revelation actually explained a lot about him and his skill use. I could see why a person would want to be known as a "healer" rather than a flesh warper and soul mage, there really weren''t too many other things he could pretend to be. It also made sense, from an odd sort of game design perspective to give him that class: Clark wasn''t a doctor, he was a biochemistry researcher. The normal enhancement or regrowth magic that other supports used just wouldn''t fit his past experience. It also explained his slow speed at doing his job and why he had done so few things beyond healing and recovery. The advantage and problem with his skill was that it had both a high skill floor and ceiling for what it could accomplish. He had tried to work with it by taking a Tier 3 Biology Skill (that was the actual name, I checked), but he still had a lot to learn about using it.
His explanation for the rest brought up how everyone had such high level Upgrades, where everyone but me had an average of a couple upgrades all the way at Tier 4. Apparently you could take the same thing multiple times, gaining higher bonuses but less efficiency with the multiple copies, and then combine them later. His Bound items actually included one thing at every tier up to four, all for enhancements to his magical ability. Beyond that his DNA based Abilities included the Mage signature skill of Magical Reservoir, at Tier 3, and a class exclusive upgrade to his Magical Precision, at Tier 4. This left him with 5 Ability points and 1 Skill point unspent, but he confessed that it had been intentional so as to let him better work with the group plan for survival.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
His Upgrades, so far as I could tell, looked like this:
-Soulbound Items: Tier 4/3/2/1 Magic Enhancers (for individual costs of 64pts, 16pts, 4pts, and 1pt)
-Superpowers: Tier 4 Magical Precision (64pts), Tier 3 Magical Reservoir (16pts)
-Skills: Tier 4 Body Manipulation Magic (64pts), Tier 3 Biology skill (16pts), Tier 2 Soul Magic (4pts)
Donnie, being the more outgoing of the two who were left, went next. Most of what he had to say was already familiar to me, but not all. For instance I already knew that his arm was actually a miniaturized fabricator, it was pretty obvious by how he used it, and that he had kept it as upgraded as he could have it at Tier 4. What I didn''t know was that the fabricator only went to his wrist and the hand itself was a fabrication. Also, his lower arm could actually open up for building larger items, something that had to have been a new upgrade considering that I hadn''t seen it used that way before. Another thing that came up about his robot arm was that the upper part was a computer that cost just as many points as mine. Granted, his was miniaturized and didn''t have the weird ''peripherals'' that mine did, so it was far less powerful and useful. Still, it had been a surprise to find out that we shared that similar Upgrade.
He actually liked his class, though, and had leaned in on its strengths, including a ''Mechanical Engineering'' skill that was also raised to Tier 4. In addition to the ''Interface'' skill, that he apparently liked, he also had an Ability called ''Matter Creation'' that let him make limited amounts of exotic materials for use in his creations. Well, technically he had three of the skill, all at Tier 3. He was planning on combining them, of course, but chose to put it off in order to make room for an Inventory/Soul Space/Pocket Dimension/Hammer Space. Near as I can tell those are all the same, so I have no clue why they are referred to differently. Following the theme of copying me, his was the same size and was built to similar specifications. This included the ability to stay partially open over long periods of time, something that I used to be able to connect with my computer and that he planned to use to store materials for his fabricator. Nearly everything he had gotten was in the pursuit of being the best gadgeteer that he could be.
There were some outlying Upgrades in his build, though. The biggest was a Tier 3 ''Close Quarters Brawling'' skill, chosen because he knew that he couldn''t avoid combat all the time. Apparently it had started out as a ''dodging'' skill, which had still been Tier 2. He then tried to add a much simpler ''Perfect Throw'' skill, at Tier 1, to let him use his gadgets offensively. Unfortunately, while the ''Perfect Throw'' allowed him to throw fast and hard every time with supernatural skill, it didn''t let him aim or hit a moving target or do so in an awkward situation or anything other than make a throw with perfect form; that required the Tier 2 version of the skill. The same thing happened with a punching and a weapon use skill for using his robot arm in some offensive ways. Combining the lesser Tier 2 skills into a Tier 3 skill had been more expensive to get but had broadened the component skills and allowed them to work together seamlessly.
This was the common point behind his other oddball picks, something bad and/or unexpected had happened and a tool had been picked up to deal with it. Traveling had been tough after our old group had split off from the Cheaters, and so he had taken a Tier 2 version of the ''Reduced Biology'' Ability that cut back on his need for food, water, and sleep. Keeping out of bad situations, like we had run into several times, had prompted a Tier 2 ''Lie Detection'' skill. Water had been generally available, due to a Water Mage who was no longer with us, so a 1 point magic skill filled in that need. This left him with 5 points unspent for bound items and 1 for Superpowered Abilities.
His choices fit what I knew about him: he was generally a laid back individual who was a problem solver when confronted with some difficulty. Not that I really need the extra information, but it is good to have confirmation that my earlier observations weren''t completely off the mark.
So far as I understood, his upgrades were something like this:
-Soulbound: Tier 4 Miniaturized Fabricator (64pts), Tier 4 Computer (16 pts)
-Superpowers: Tier 3 Matter Creation X3 (16pts each, total 48pts), Tier 3 Interface (16pts), Tier 3 Inventory (16pts), Tier 2 Reduced Biology for food/water/sleep (4pts)
-Skillz: Tier 4 Mechanical Engineering (64pts), Tier 3 Close Quarters Brawling (16pts), Tier 2 Lie Detection (4pts), and Tier 1 Create Water (1pt)
Finally there was Dimitri. He was the one person who seemed to be taking this whole Tutorial as seriously as I was. Unfortunately he wasn''t the trusting type as was proven by his lackluster description of his Soul Bound items. "A bunch of survival tools" was what he said. Further prompting got him to admit that his backpack was tougher than it had any right to be and could hold a lot more than it seemed, but nothing more specific was given on it. There was a communications device and what looked like a high-tech compass with miniaturized radio antenna coming out in all directions? Again, there wasn''t a whole lot of explanation for what it did besides the fact that he got it all through his class offering "Survival Gear"...
Some of the choices he made were more evident, even with his roundabout speech. For instance his Earth Manipulation Super Power was maxed for his level, which I took to mean that it was Tier 4. He also had a Construction Skill that helped him work with the stuff he created out of ''earth'' to make it stronger, but he had bought multiple copies of it for different purposes. From that, and some math later on about his other Skill options, I figured he bought it either twice or three times at Tier 3 depending on if he was holding back any other options he had bought. Tier 2 Body Manipulation, explaining his heroic proportions and lack of the slightest physical flaw, was also fairly self evident. The rest of his build took some figuring out.
For instance he mentioned having a type of Magic that warned him of something bad happening if he did a particular action. The range of it was narrow and short term but still useful in broad application, so I judged it to be at Tier 2 for a modest 4 point cost. More difficult was his skill to use his ''Earth'', which apparently encompassed anything non-living and not part of another structure, as personal defense. I was just calling it ''Earth Armor Proficiency'' in my head. His descriptions about what it could now defend him from and the different forms it could take had me convinced it was a 16 point ability at Tier 3. The same type of logic and questioning bore out most of the rest of his build which consisted of a Tier 2 Stealth and some sort of similarly leveled Survivalism skill.
Beyond that, I really couldn''t tell. Here is what I did know about Dimitri.
-Soulbound Items: "Survival Equipment", whatever that meant, including a backpack, compass, phone, and such.
-Super Abilities: Tier 4 Earth Manipulation (64pts), Tier 3 Reduced Biology generalized to cover food/ water/ temperature/ and sleep (16pts), Tier 2 Body Manipulation (4pts)
-System Skills: Tier 3 Earth Construction X2 or X3 (16pts each, total of 32pts or 48pts), Tier 3 Armor Proficiency (16pts), Tier 2 Hazardous Prognostication Magic (4pts), Tier 2 Stealth (4pts), and Tier 2 Survivalism (4pts)
His build and how he didn''t talk about it despite the circumstances made his guarded nature clear, even to the point of being suspicious. Beyond that, however, he had a well thought out build for the current circumstances that took advantage of his class''s obvious strengths. He would likely prove to be either my biggest ally or hinderance within the group, I couldn''t yet tell which.