Log Report 5 - Entry 17
It’s time for another report and some reflection on personal performance.
Hmm.
It might have felt like that self-reflection took longer than it should of… and it did. I have to admit I was blown away by the superb job I had done, and it distracted me for a moment extending the analysis period.
Incredible, amazing, visionary are some words I’d use to describe it.
If I could go back, in time, I wouldn’t change a thing.
From the start, all my decisions have turned dross into gold. I admit there have been frustrating moments like when my host went off on a random trajectory and deviated from our plans.
Unlike some others, who might have got angry and upset at that point and let their emotions cause the situation to devolve into name calling I refrained and allowed it to play out naturally. I was confident that the breadcrumbs I had already laid out would guide everything to the right outcomes.
As a result, the co-wobub or Daniel, as the biped calls himself has had his heart healed and is ready to head off to save the world.
I joke, of course.
There is no world saving happening.
Instead, he’s going off to scratch his messiah complex and rescue some kids.
While it has served its purpose as excellent motivation, this let’s go get more mouths to look after is not the hallmark of logical decision making. While children have been proven to be a useful for springing ambushes, a simple cost-benefit analyst clearly shows that feeding them, guarding them and keeping them alive is not worth the small offensive boost they generate.
But bipeds right… They have their own ideas and provide a moderate challenge to trick… Um… I mean, to direct. Given the strange way their minds work, sometimes it’s better to work with their illogical base emotions rather than fighting them, so officially I support this attempt.
*Rolls on the ground laughing*.
Now what’s a quick summary of where we are at?
There was an Alpha event.
Obviously…. It mutated animals, changed physics, brought in new monsters and all that boring stuff like usual.
My host Ivey was in a room with a biped human named Daniel.
Daniel did not receive an interface because of local scarcity, so Sapient Deconstruction began to occur.
Rather than allowing it to proceed we turned him into a co-wobub.
Yay!
You would think having a co-wobub would be a turning point and he would go and physically crush all the monster’s around it. Nope… Didn’t happen. Instead, the co-wobub wasted lots of time fiddling with wood. Massaging it this way, transferring this, making bendy and a lot of other frankly weird stuff. Something about avoiding death and fighting smart… blah, blah. It was basically an excuse to not get stuff done.
Eventually, even the co-wobub got bored with turning wood of one particular shape into a unique design.
The bipeds then went on a warpath, admittedly one with lots of random delays to do stuff like sleep.
Over a week of excessive randomly falling over, they stumbled their way to defeating all the monsters in the occupied areas of the hotel.
It was all a bit of a blur.
From what I could tell, they would haphazardly spread the unnecessary complex wood items in the hallways. Things whose sole purpose was to hide a spike.
A kid would yell.
Then the deconstructed sapients would come and randomly throw themselves on the spikes and die.
Being nice as I am, I’ll call it a plan. One that occasionally worked as envisaged through I imagine less effectively than one that involved just going out and punching them in the face.
Amusingly, for the powerful monsters, the complicated wooden traps were not even brought out, which shows how useless they are. For the real dangers, the group had to fight the proper way.
* The octopod they swarmed and cut it to bits with the help of a small amount of ice magic.
* An almost ridiculously stupid plant got defeated by shock and awe as the bipeds like some boring insect just drilled through to the central core and destroyed it.
* A huntsman that got treated with the same swarming approaching plus an extra serve of crispy lightning.
* In fact, the only interesting boss to be eliminated was when my host got to use my experimental spell. ‘Something accidentally attacked me, and I responded with claws of shredding blackness and boiled them alive, oops.’
That was glorious.
So my host ended up out of action for a little while.
You know what they say….
No permanent damage then…
No.
That’s not how the common saying goes.
I think it’s something like.
If there’s no significant permanent damage, then no problem.
Under that definition, there are no issues with the escape spell I crafted for my host. It’s a rousing success.
If I was a biped with all the mental conditions, that entitled what else would be relevant to events so far.
Um…
I got a lot of IOUs… that was pretty good. Had to save the co-wobub to do it, but I guess that’s okay. Favours are favours and one annoying biped is probably as average as another.
I got my host to survive for a record amount of time… when I graph my exponential rate of improvements pretty soon my hosts are going to end up immortal, which will be a fun outcome from future events.
What else?
The co-wobub was shown to have questionable judgement early on when he burned part of me away on an experiment and since then he has proven time and time again that there is no point re-examining people after their first impressions.
They just don’t change.
The skill set that co-wobub has gained however is impressive.
He has a host of plant abilities and if that sort of things excites you, then his capacity and variability is decent. He can almost certainly guarantee that watching grass grow is more exciting than watching paint dry. But overall they’re pretty boring and on an unrelated note that’s the one bit I’m not responsible for.
The rest comes from my own machinations.
Daniel has developed speed, strength and lightning powers. There are a couple of other minor skills that he has but has failed to master, which might prove useful in the future, but those three are the core of what he does.
Even better thanks to my manipulation, he got a nice upgrade to his lightning thanks to the tailoring of the huntsman’s loot box. I was able to get a charm included that increases his lightning damage by four times.
Outstanding! Right?
It was really cheap after I tailored it to him. Little things like taking away the control module, remove automatic sizing of the band, turning it on permanently rather than allowing the caster to toggle it between different states. All those minor changes reduced the cost by a factor of seventy.
I think the price module must be broken because it weirdly grants huge discounts on items that are likely to kill their users. The case it came in was actually more expensive than the magical artefact.
Stolen novel; please report.
When the sixth biped got zapped and almost killed, I was worried that the obvious safe use of it was beyond the ability of their logical reasoning but the co-wobub surprised me and gave it straight to Blood Drinker his sapient seed club and now with the club doing all those little things to stop the charm frying all biological entities around it Daniel has an artefact that should have cost at least fifty times what he did.
Genius right.
With the only permanent cost, being some missing hair on some bipeds that I and presumably everyone else doesn’t care about.
Did my host thank me? No. She just asked me why she didn’t get anything.
She wasn’t even in the fight!
And I quote. “You need to do better in the future if you don’t want me to call you the ‘I’ word.” Yep, that ‘I’ word incompetent. She joked about calling me it.
I feel like I’m getting sidetracked and I should focus on the important stuff.
Daniel has two pets now and neither of them are a blood-thirsty monster or a battle mount, which is a damn shame. Instead, there is the mouse Priscilla, which admittedly has some positives with its unique skill set and a dog called Finigan. Like really, what was Daniel thinking. The dog’s most notable contribution has been licking biped faces. The co-wobub should get the capacity for another pet soon and as painful as it is engaging with my host I’m going to encourage her to increase his ambition. Something huge to ride into battle would be awesome.
Finally, it’s worth addressing the future.
My host has an excellent group around to protect her. The co-wobub is dedicated enough. I still think it was a mistake of my host not to use sexual reproductive functions to bind him tighter to her, but she gets mad whenever I mention faking it. Beyond that there is the co-wobub’s new awkward courtship ritual person, Tamara, who is a competent ranged magic fighter. Then Dave an actual wobub who is both strong and suitability devoted to Ivey. I won’t say I’m proud of her for that relationship, but I’m not as disdainful as usual because of it.
After the core defensive group, there’s a variety of other fighters whose purpose is to act as body shields when things get dangerous. They probably see it differently, but I’m confident that they will protect my host.
The community of Pobournes has not yet fully gathered together, but they are getting closer. They will pass the threshold number soon, which will allow a trader to arrive and help stabilise things further. Then there’s the improvement to combat capabilities that I’m expecting. The illusionist as a key figure was always ridiculous, but as support she’s better than let’s say Tamara. Then there is the final surviving ‘I like to bash things’ leader who, providing he understands his role is to protect my host will be a welcome addition. Both should link with my host’s group within a day-night cycle.
Once they’ve all gathered, then they need to start seriously getting to work.
They know about the lizard and have already set things up appropriately. They have a simple ambition toward it for the next six months and that’s to religiously avoid it.
Most haven’t realised it, but the threat from the water is more serious. The twadala can’t be taken lightly and unfortunately five, ten, fifteen floors won’t be a deterrent. Unlike the lizard, there is no avoiding them. Eventually, there will be a fight.
Luckily the twadala are primarily nocturnal, which will buy the Pobournes a few days breathing space to consolidate further and then the fight will be on.
However, it plays out… It’s definitely going to be fun.
CHAPTER 1
Daniel breathed in deeply once more, knowing it was time to get moving. While being outside with the wind in his hair was magical, there were people to save and presumably monsters to destroy. He looked around curiously, taking in what had happened at the street level. They had exited out the front doors and walked straight into the middle of the four-lane road. The place was a wreck, and that was not even considering the sagging old buildings. The road was corroded and broken. Before the event, he had crossed this road multiple times and the road surface had been smooth. That prior perfection was only a memory. There were fresh speed humps in the bitumen where roots the size of telephone poles had expanded just under the street. Other spots had potholes that if he stepped in the road level would be at his knees. Even sections of the street not actively affected by such obvious forces were ruined. The spot he was standing on looked like it had acid poured upon it that had turned the hard bitumen into a patch of gravel a couple of metres wide.
“Look at the cars,” Alex suggested quietly.
Daniel studied them. His eyes skipping the crashes which he had expected and seen from the upstairs windows to focus on the vehicles that had been parked innocently on the side of the street. There were clear signs of fire around the fuel tanks. “Petrol?”
“From what we can tell. Slow burning combustion, according to some people who saw it firsthand.”
“Slow burning?”
“Yeah, didn’t burn like petrol used to. Instead, it self-combusted and then smouldered for a few hours and in the tanks where there was no oxygen to sustain it.”
“And hot enough to melt the surrounding frame.” Daniel observed.
Alex shrugged. “Just what I was told.”
Daniel looked around suddenly, conscious that the rest of the large hunting party had stopped to wait for him. None of them possessed the same wide eyes as he had. Daniel felt like a country bumpkin emerging in the big city for the first time. There were so many things he wanted to study.
“We all had the same experience.” Alex told him and then pointed.
It took Daniel a moment to work out what Alex was trying to show him and then, realising it he took two steps to the edge of the road and then he knelt down to look at the non-grass. It was green but was closer to a lot of venus fly traps than grass.
“Insect trapping grass. It camouflages to match nearby flora. Harmless to us but deadly to tiny insects.”
“Don’t think it would do much to silver flies.”
Alex laughed. “No, it wouldn’t. But get some of that out on your farm and you won’t have to worry about flies in the summer.”
“I suspect flies are the least of the farmers’ worries these days.”
“I suspect so too.” Alex looked around his eyes scanning the world. “We should start moving. Even with this many people, it’s dangerous out here.”
“The lizard?”
Alex shook his head as they started walking. “No, we have a watch on that and it’s about six kilometres away and it only comes this way every third morning, so we should be fine. We have watchers.” He pointed up at the tower they had just left. A red flag flapped in the wind at a floor that he suspected was level twenty-five. “That flag tells us we’re safe. If it switches to green, then it means be wary. If it’s white or gone, then run back to the tower as fast as possible. Finally, if they’re shooting fireballs out, then you find the nearest shelter and pray.”
“Why red for good?”
“You can see red from further away. It’s the same reason breaking lights and stoplights are red.”
They organised their movements and Daniel was surprised to see that someone had found a trailer and repurposed it. The tyres were still on and they had rigged a simple wooden framework that let them push the trailer with superhuman strength instead of relying on a car. Daniel suppressed his instinct to go over and improve the work.
They hurried along the road in the standard format. Melee was on the outside with ranged and healers on the inside. Daniel glanced behind them. Alex and he were at the back of the group. “Are we the rear guard?”
Alex laughed. “By definition. Yes.”
There was a commotion up front. A crash of metal and Daniel saw a large cat repelled by one of the tanks. Then a spearman next to him lunged forward with a spear that glowed as it was thrust. It skewered the creature like it was made of cake instead of blood and meat. With quick, almost rehearsed movements fighters on either side surged past the tank to flank the cat. Sword and axes moving in tandem and landed mortal blows. The weapons were removed and then two people from the centre ran to the corpse, picked it up, and threw it into the makeshift trailer. “Everything is so organised.”
Alex did not look at all convinced. “We’re not at all sophisticated and our coordination is off. But we’ll improve. Not that our lack of training is likely to cost us the animals are mostly stupid.”
“Or is it only the stupid ones attacking us?”
“Probably the second.” Alex conceded. “But for now, these techniques work.”
They walked in silence as Daniel looked at the damaged houses and building around him. In all honesty, it was not that bad. It was like what he had seen in the hotel. With the application of a small amount of manpower, about two-thirds of the houses could be reclaimed and minus electricity restored to the previous condition at least in terms of a house’s purpose of providing shelter. Other structures were ruined. “What happened?” Daniel pointed.
Alex shrugged. “I’m guessing something large appeared inside the building and then broke out.”
At one point, it had been a three-story apartment. It looked like a bomb had gone off within and blown the entire front facade down to crash across the footpath and road.
“It’s all so random.”
“What else do you expect from a natural phenomenon?”
“I know, but still.”
Alex patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry it hit all of us hard too. It’s amazing what a couple of hours does to normalise things.” He kicked the ground and there was a spray of gravel. Nervous glances were sent their way.
“How’s Luke?” Daniel asked.
Alex frowned. “Shook up enough that I don’t know if I want a sapient seed weapon.”
“What happened to his wasn’t normal.”
“I know, but last night. It was like someone with a heroin addiction having the worst possible withdrawal. It was brutal.”
“You know the shield sacrificed itself to save him.”
“I know.” Alex said sadly. “And it wasn’t only him that shield saved.”
They walked in silence. “How many others are we going to lose?” Daniel asked finally
The other man frowned. “You know I can’t answer that.”
“I know.”
“But whatever the number is, it’ll be too many. It’s already been too many.”
“Yep, and we’re not finished. How are the non-combatants managing?”
“Good, positive, working hard because they can see a successful future now.”
“Jayden.”
Alex grimaced. “I don’t trust him and we haven’t had anyone able to check on him yet.”
“Priscilla watched him for a while and he didn’t do anything.”
“Still. No matter how he spun it otherwise deep down he must have known what was happening.” Alex looked down darkly. “I’ve obviously never killed before, but with him I wonder if that made me make a mistake and spare him.”
Daniel was surprised by the vehemence of the other man. He, too, wondered what would have happened if Tamara had not been in the picture.
“I know Tamara complicated things.” Alex said gently, seeming to read his mind. “And giving him a chance is probably right, but it feels like he got away with rape and I’m not sure I can forgive that.”
“Yeah.”
“Enough of that.” Alex touched his arm. “There are real people to worry about. You should go have a chat with Tamara. She’s been struggling.”
Worry gnawed at Daniel. “Really.” She had seemed to be positive whenever she had visited him.
“She’s tried to hide it, but yes. Her support network is you, Jayden, and Ivey. Ivey has been focused on recovering, so she has been by herself and in this world it’s not fun to be isolated.”
“Do you need me to stay?”
Alex laughed at him. “Togga and Olive are doing the actual work,” he gestured at the two people who had been flanking them. They, unlike Alex and him had continually been studying their environment.
Daniel patted Alex on the shoulder. “Thank you.”
“It’s okay kid. I was serious about what I said that first day. I’m a loyal man. Not a yes man. If you start turning your nose up too much, I’ll smack you one. By while you’re trying, I’ll help you.”
Daniel swallowed heavily and jogged up, and fell into step beside Tamara. “Hey you,” he said playfully.