That night, I lay awake in bed and tried to put my thoughts together. Sleep was nearly impossible for me, now that I finally felt truly safe. The cabin in the woods had been nice, but this was a real room. I could hear the faint chatter of voices from the bar on the floor beneath us, and feel the heat coming up from the enormous fireplace the building used to keep warm. For the first time, I wasn’t in the woods, or a dungeon, or under threat of death. It was just life now. My life.
Against my better judgement, against common sense and everything else, I had died and made the choice to come back to a place where I knew nothing and nobody. I wanted to blame my decision on something outside of my control. Perhaps the goddess Fate had messed with my head as I died, perhaps the dream of Ophelia killed from behind by a danger she couldn’t see had my emotions running too high to make a logical choice. I wanted to be such a good person that the idea of leaving someone to die was just impossible to consider, but that wasn’t true. So why had I come back, really?
The answer I came to as I considered it was more simple than that. I had wanted out of my previous life for a long time. And this world had given me the impetus to leave. I hadn’t had much family, just my brother who I had never been close to. I didn’t have any romantic prospects, or a solid group of friends. Just a never ending cycle of work, sleep, and filling in the gaps with whatever entertainment I could.
Apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom’s a crime, as the song goes. And this world gave me what the other one lacked. “Should have just seen a damn therapist instead really. I wouldn’t have almost died repeatedly that way.” Mental health is way too underrated.
I couldn’t change the past, or the decisions I had made. I could only move forward and try to make this life better than my old one. The problem really was that I had zero idea what to do now. Going to Ophelia’s place seemed like a good idea. There I could learn about this world and train my body and mind. That would help keep me from dying at least, but what more was there? What goal could there possibly be for me here? Did I want to return to my world, or just try to become more and more powerful in this one?
I could chase power, or assist Ophelia in her path. I could become the friendly neighborhood legally distinct spider-person, doing good deeds and fighting evil. What had Fate asked me to do again? To just go around, changing the fates of the people around me, right? How did I know if I was doing that?
An outside influence is attempting to make changes to the PSD.
Entity [Goddess of Fate] is attempting to add function: [Fate System] to PSD.
Would you like to allow this? Yes/No
Okay… “Can you read my thoughts?” I asked, willing the PSD to transform. It took the shape of a roughly 6 inch by 7 inch tablet in my hands.
“Yes! Now accept my gift to your device. It will give you a better idea on our relationship.” The voice sprung into my head like a whisper on the wind, and I started looking around my room, alarmed. It was that same old timey, transatlantic accent that I hadn’t heard except in old movies and podcasts. It had to be her.
“Where are you?”
“Is that really important now? I don’t have to appear to communicate with my champion, it's one of the benefits of our contract.”
Contract. Benefits. Mind reading. I was starting to wonder if I had made a mistake, and it seemed dangerous to let her into the PSD.
“I won’t touch a thing. Your device there is doing most of the work anyways, and it won’t let any changes happen that aren’t authorized by you. Frustrating really, I had hoped to poke around in it a bit.” The disembodied voice sounded… pouty? Could a goddess pout?
“Fine, fine. Explain what this Fate System is first.”
I could hear a laugh, and I swear I heard her roll her eyes. Don’t ask me how, but I got the distinct impression of rolling eyes. “Gods gain power from their devotees and their champions. All kinds of things can grant a deity power of course, from prayer to specific actions in line with their purpose. Priests and champions can then use that power. I’m going to give your device the ability to access that system, so that you can grow and understand.”
“Understand what?” I asked, as her voice started to fade away. I was confused, this was confusing. Why did she want me to grow, and what was there to understand?
“This world is lost in an awful destiny… Grow, and I can challenge it.” And then she was gone. I asked a few more questions, even tried to think a few things at her that would have made a working girl blush, but she didn’t reply.
“Well, okay. Awesome.” I glanced down at the screen in my hands again, and reread the prompt.
An outside influence is attempting to make changes to the PSD.
Entity [Goddess of Fate] is attempting to add function: [Fate System] to PSD.
Would you like to allow this? Yes/No
And I tapped on Yes. The PSD screen darkened, and a progress bar quickly filled up across the bottom. When it was finished, the screen flashed twice, and a new prompt appeared.
[Fate System] initialized.
Along the top of the device was a new tab, listing the fate system. But before that, I wanted to familiarize myself with everything once more, and see if there had been any changes. I hadn’t really taken a good look at everything in a few days after all. I started with the status page.
Status
Name: Niles Thatcher
Race: Human
Age: 27
Focus Core: Barrier - Magus
Level: 1
Attributes
* Body: 5
* Mind: 7
* Spirit: 8
Active Abilities - (3 slots remaining)
* Shattering Barrier
* Lance of Fate
Passive Abilities - (4 slots remaining)
* Kinetic Vision
Okay, so there were ability slots now? I could have five active and five passive abilities, which was both neat and limiting. What kind of half-baked DM decided to make a power system so limiting?
Very little had changed in the rest of the tabs. The map was still the map. It did show me how much distance I had crossed, and I could play around with it to highlight sections and get information on flora, fauna, and materials I had seen there and such. I could even go deeper, clicking on individual creature types to go to their encyclopedia page, which was cool. I needed to make sure I appraised everything I came across all the time then, just so that my map could be filled out. I was the kind of guy who would look up guides to make sure I didn’t miss a single chest or collectable, so the idea of filling out my map data completely was putting a smile on my face.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Other than discovering that though, the rest of the old tabs were pretty sparse. Contacts held information on people I had met, and I could check on their status that way if I had scanned them. Useful I suppose? The encyclopedia had entries on everything I had ever scanned, as well as explanations on various elements of the world and PSD I had discovered. Useful, but nothing new. Even the skills tab was still empty, much to my dismay. Upon discovering the limited slots that I had for abilities, I had hoped that something new would open up in skills, but there was nothing there at all. Not even a basic explanation.
Lastly, I pulled open the new tab. There was a lot to this one, and it seemed there were some real benefits to the contract with Fate after all. Perhaps the best part was that it came with a quest system, and gave me a bit of direction until I could figure out what the hell I was going to do with myself in this new world.
Fate System
Fate Points: 677
Quests:
Save the girl!
* You had a prophetic dream about the fate of your companion Ophelia. Save her life and change the destiny of her family.
* Reward: 200 Fate Points. 1 [Core of Ascension]
Escape the Dungeon (Completed)
* You were fated to die in a dungeon, but through unknown means, you came back to life. Prove yourself and escape alive!
* Reward: 100 Fate Points. 100 Fate Points for each prisoner you help escape.
Once I had viewed the completed quest, it disappeared, but I could bring up a log of completed quests as well to see what I had done in the past apparently. It was empty except for the escape quest. If my math was correct, escaping the dungeon should have given me 400 points total, but I had another 277 in addition to that?
Fate System will award additional points to actions that cause a profound change in one’s destiny.
Oh. Convenient. So if I changed the course of someone’s life significantly, I got additional points. Then the extra points had to be from either changing the fates of the bandits by killing them, or as a knock on effect to saving the prisoner’s lives? I doubted I could receive the same points twice, but who knew. Besides the quest page, there was also a store page, with a limited list of things I could purchase using the fate points.
Fate Shop
Commune with Goddess - 150 points
Bestow Blessing - 200 points
Stat Increase (Body) - 1500 points
Stat Increase (Mind) - 1700 points
Stat Increase (Spirit) - 1800 points
Random Ability Core - 5000 points
Frankly, the offerings were small and few in number, and the costs were pretty damn high as far as I could tell. I would have to try and get more of the fate points in the coming weeks to figure out exactly how hard it would be to buy anything really. Tapping on one of the offerings in the shop would bring up a small description, giving an idea as to what it did.
Commune with Goddess - Ask the Goddess Fate any single question and receive a truthful answer.
Bestow Blessing - Give a blessing of Fate to another creature, blessing lasts for 24 hours.
What was really interesting was the random ability core. That was going to be a bitch to get enough points for, but I really wanted to gain more powers and diversify my skill set. Traveling in a group had been easy enough, and my defenses were strong but if this world was as dangerous as the castle had been, I would end up needing more. Ophelia might have an idea how to get these ability cores as well, and perhaps had a bit more information on what they did and how they worked.
All in all, it came down to one thing. I at least had a semblance of a goal for the moment. The goddess had given me a quest to help Ophelia, and offered a reward that I couldn’t pass up. A core of ascension. I needed to know what that was, but if it was offered as a reward for a quest that involved changing her entire family's fate, it had to be something good. Perhaps it was the secret method for leveling up? Or perhaps ascension would increase all my abilities or attributes even.
I was tempted to use commune to ask the goddess what it did, but I didn’t want to already start burning points when I could just ask Ophelia in the morning. So instead, I willed the Paradigm Shift Device to change form into a bracelet once more and finally went to sleep.
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The next morning I woke up with straw in my hair. Apparently I had been tossing and turning in the bed at night, and a hole had ripped open in the mattress covering, letting out the straw used to stuff it. “Fuck, I miss modern mattresses….” Straw or feathers. I bet that's all they had here for mattresses, and either one was going to be just awful.
I pulled on my pants, robes, hat, and boots and went down to the tavern to see if Ophelia had woken up. I found her dressed in her new clothes, a small sack over her shoulder with the rest that she had purchased. She was eating breakfast at the bar, a small plate of eggs and diced up potatoes. It smelled surprisingly good, and I got myself a plate as well. Apparently, we had spent enough the night before that the tavernkeep didn’t mind spotting us for breakfast.
“So, we leaving after this?” I asked, just before tucking into the plate of food before me.
Ophelia nodded, her mouth full, and swallowed before answering. “Not yet. It's quite a distance, and food we can forage gets scarce on the plains between this village and the city. We should check the jobs board in town and try to earn some money first.”
I was… moderately irritated. If we needed the money to buy supplies, why had we decided to burn it all on drinks the night before? Not that I had room to talk. I had wanted to drink myself silly after everything that had happened. We just hadn’t had the coin for it. My irritation vanished as quickly as it had come, and I just nodded.
“Alright then. What kind of jobs are we looking for? Are we going to tend fields or help repair buildings or something?” I asked, figuring that probably wasn’t it, but wanting to get the explanation anyways.
“Nothing that mundane. Villages like this post monster sightings on the job board, and travelers often take the time to exterminate them for the reward. Since most people don’t have a combat focus like we do, villages often aren’t willing to risk their only defenders on things that aren’t threatening them immediately.”
“Do the jobs pay well?”
“Depends on what they want you to get rid of. Most of the time you can get a few silver for most jobs. Occasionally, a gold or two if the monster is threatening the village or has killed people before.” She shrugged. I guess people dying from monsters was just a part of this world.
I had more questions, but didn’t want to ask in front of the bartender. So we finished our meal in companionable silence and headed to the jobs board. There were only three postings up right now, so we grabbed them all. One to clear out a small goblin band to the west, another request listed a sighting of something called a tersnik. The final request gave Ophelia some pause as she looked it over though.
“Dire wolf, without a pack.” She said, handing the parchment over to me. The listings were all simple, just a monster name, a list of sightings, and a reward. The dire wolf listing had a particularly large reward of two gold coins. Practically a fortune for a village this size. The problem was the note. The dire wolf had been hunting town’s livestock, and had killed a traveler and injured the town’s only fighter.
“I say we take it. We managed to kill Roquain, how bad could an overgrown dog be?” I asked, feeling just a bit nervous.
“Dire wolves are big Niles. About the size of a carriage. We make a mistake with it, and we are dead. The only reason I’m even considering it is that it's just a solo monster, no pack.”
We looked at the other two listings. All together, we could earn about 30 silver from them. Not bad, but would it be enough? “Is 30 silver enough to travel to your home?”
“Plenty, but I don’t like leaving the village with a dire wolf in the area, especially if it's been here this long. It might start to attract more of its kind by now.”
New Quest: Going on a Wolf Hunt - Gonna catch a big one? A dire wolf is threatening the village. Kill it or run it off before it attracts more of its kind.
* Rewards: 200 Fate Points. Ability Core.
Well shit. Now I really needed to complete the quest.
“If it does get a pack, do you think it would raid the village?” I asked, the quest making me wary.
“I’d be more surprised if they didn’t. A single dire wolf will hunt outside the walls, but packs of them are known to raid villages and even smaller towns once the local food supply gets too low.”
“Alright. Let's try it then. We can take out the other two first, and if those prove too much, we can move on and send help from the city instead. We can send help from the city, right?” I asked, a bit wary.
Her lips pursed, telling me she was considering it. “The city guard won’t help, but we could probably hire a mercenary company. It would be expensive though, even considering the reward. They don’t like to travel this far out without good pay up front.”
I sighed, just a bit. One danger to another, was that really going to be my life? “Well, let's hope it doesn’t come to that. I’ve seen you fight, I can’t imagine a wolf, even a large one, really getting the drop on you.”
With that, we headed out, towards the goblins on the west side of town to start our day of clearing job postings. But hey, it beats typing spreadsheets up all day, right?