“It’s good to see that you keep up your training,” Mrs Wu’s voice ripped me from my trance-like state, causing me to stumble and almost faceplant. I hadn’t paid any attention to my surroundings, completely losing myself in the movement and hadn’t even noticed her arrival. Though, in my defence, she was a highly trained operative and may have snuck up on me, something I wouldn’t discount. It was unlikely, given that my students were following after her and just outside the house, but possible. Silva, my trusty hound, seemed to have filed Mrs Wu under friends or something like that and not warned me of her approach, or maybe she simply had a sense of humour and thought that letting somebody spook me was hilarious. Looking at her and the rather obvious look of canine amusement on her face, I was sneakingly suspicious that this was the case.

“Though you would be served to keep track of your surroundings, even while training. Maybe especially while training,” Mrs Wu added with a mirthful chuckle.

“Some guard dog you are,” I quietly chided Silva, fluffing the fur on her head and gently flicking one of the sails she used as ears, causing her to twitch them in an attempt to take flight.

“Hello, teacher,” I greeted Mrs Wu, curious about what brought her over. “What brings you by?”

“Your students told me you had them come here for your lesson and I hope you don’t mind me dropping by, I have a favour to ask,” she explained, making me nod in understanding. I wasn’t sure if I was happy that my students were bringing people here, but I didn’t mind Mrs Wu. If there were others, it might be a different thing, it was something I would have to mention to them.

“When you spoke with Chehai you told him about a possible group of survivors, out in one of the outlying farms. He had one of our groups head over there as quickly as possible and they have yet to return. Could you head…” she paused, staring into the air in front of her, the line of sight on the position the system normally projected its notifications to.

“Why did I just get an interface asking me to define the exact task, the conditions of success as well as rewards and potential consequences?” Mrs Wu asked, still staring at that same position.

“A quest?” I asked, realising that those would be a thing if the system worked just as it had on Mundus. Or at least similarly enough. “That allows you to have the system monitor my progress, making sure that I can’t just lie about something. For example, a quest could be to kill ten Shattered, I would go out and do just that and when I return, you’d know that I actually killed ten Shattered and not just hung out somewhere. Makes it so you don’t have to lug around ears or some other trophy as proof of quest-completion. In terms of rewards, on Mundus money was usually used, alongside EXP and reputation,” I explained, only to mentally pause for a moment.

Just how would reputation work? Would the system actually force people to react in a certain way, would it modify their thoughts? That sounded incredibly creepy, not something I wanted to have a part in, even if the concept of an “objective” reputation had a certain dark draw. No need to guess, no need to try reading people, just a simple, system-defined value that anyone could understand.

“Does money even have any worth now? Painted paper, I don’t think you can use it for more than to wipe on the toilet. Just not absorbent enough,” Mrs Wu asked, getting sidetracked a little while trying to wrap her head around the idea.

“At the moment? No. But it’s interesting that the system recognises this as a Quest, but nothing else you did before. I think it means the system recognises the people currently living at the gym as a community, one large enough to issue quests,” I mused, my curiosity coming out to play. On Mundus, I had accepted the system and its functions as simply part of the game, the various factions as simply something that the programmers had set up. But now, there likely were no programmers, so there had to be objective values that defined something as a faction. And the survivors here had apparently just achieved that status.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

“You can simply put your task in, I don’t really need a reward. If it gives you the option, EXP would be great and, just for the sake of experiment, a bit of money. I don’t care how much, I just would like to know how it works, if you have to somehow show the money to the system, put it in escrow or something like that. I never questioned how these parts of the system worked, or why, that was simply part of the game and how games worked. No need for a greater reason,” I asked, curious even though I had no interest in actually becoming the leader of a faction. That sounded like a monumentally bad idea.

Mrs Wu simply nodded and a little later, a blue window appeared before me.

Quest Alert! Investigate the Farm and locate Cheng Hu Quest Difficulty Easy

Wu Chehai, leader of the Survivors in Wu’s Gym, needs you to investigate the Apple Gate Farm and locate Cheng Hu and his team who have been sent there before. Reward: EXP, increased reputation with the Survivors in Wu’s Gym, two ten-dollar bills.

Looking at the window, I raised an eyebrow, before mentally accepting it. Interesting that the system had used Mrs Wu’s full name, or maybe it had been her.

“What did you put in as rewards?” I asked, curious if she’d have to sacrifice EXP, or if she somehow controlled how many EXP were given. If she did and didn’t need to pony up the EXP beforehand, there would be many ways to exploit the system. Though, would one really want to? What you received after crossing the divides wasn’t fixed, of that I was certain, and if you achieved the level by tricking and exploiting the system, I could only imagine what you would be rewarded with.

“Just twenty dollars, though it even asked the denomination I wanted to use. I put in two ten-dollar bills,” Mrs Wu replied, causing me to nod in understanding.

“I was offered those two, plus EXP and ‘increased reputation with the Survivors in Wu’s Gym’,” I put air-quotes around the last part, not sure how that part worked.

“Makes sense,” she nodded, not even questioning the reputation.

“How? I mean, how can the system assign reputation?” I asked, curious how she reasoned things.

“You go out there, find our people. That’s a task nobody here can easily do, Cheng and his group were one of the stronger groups here, we’d just put more people at risk. You do it and people will talk how you helped them, thus increasing and improving your reputation amongst our people,” she explained, taking it as a perfectly normal thing. Listening to her, I could see how harmless it sounded, though a part of me was still unsure.

“And the numerical value?” I prodded a little further.

“Something similar to the old political approval ratings, just conducted by the system?” she shrugged and I could see how it could work as she described. Nodding, I accepted her reasoning, even as a part of me was hesitant to ever become part of a faction if there was the possibility that I’d be mentally influenced by the opinions of people around me.

“Well, I’ll go over there tonight, the system gave the quest a difficulty of ‘easy’ for me, it should be no problem. But then, I’m pretty good at staying unseen, so I doubt there are many things out there that can actually find me if I hide,” I shrugged, knowing that the system’s definition of difficulty was primarily focused on the quest itself, not necessarily the way there and back.

“Thank you,” she nodded, before gesturing to the students who had filed in after her and watched our exchange with interest. “I’ll leave you to your lessons, I’m presuming you won’t head out before sundown anyway?”

“True, we’ve got more than enough time to have some lessons. I’m curious how my students have progressed, especially Noriko, Kevin and Ling,” I admitted, looking at the three I had pushed up in level during the last night. They didn’t have much time, but I maybe they had still made some progress with their newly increased Astral Power.

After Mrs Wu left, all seven of my students exchanged glances, before Sandy started to ask questions, her focus mainly on the increased level of the three. That opened the floodgates and soon, we were engaged in a deep discussion of levels, attributes, potential classes and, far later, the divides. Trying to find the best way to gain levels, without risking later advances by having another do all the hard work. Hopefully, I hadn’t messed up the future of my three students by pushing them a few levels up.