Eva checks the notes about this world, “That may take a moment to break down."

She mutters to herself, "Estimated difficulty rating 12 – didn’t know those go that high. 2/61 tries left, the time limit is not known. SB status: intact, artificial?”

I've no clue what SB is supposed to be, “What does that mean?”

She apologizes, “Oh, sorry. SB is Story Bubble, which is what we call the barrier that isolates a newly created world until its victory condition is cleared and the world can be properly integrated into the universe. But I’ve never seen an artificial one before.”

I'm just baffled by the lack of clarity, “This really sounds like a troublesome world – is there a bounty I could get for winning that one? Speaking of, since someone would basically sacrifice their soul to help such ‘SB worlds’ what kind of compensation do they get?”

She explains, “Excitement. You get to play the hero – or maybe demon lord – well, you get to have a cool adventure. If you succeed you go down in history. If that is not enough, depending on the world you may have a shot of getting some skills that let you cheat death for a while."

Oh, I want THAT.

She continues, "If all else fails there are those that never got out of their chuuni phase.”

Guilty as charged.

She puzzles some more over the data sheet, “Start at level 1, not unexpected. There’s a restriction to the skills you could use but I’m not familiar with that code. Gzeph, could you hurry just this once? This is kinda your job! Please?”

Could be my imagination but it seems like Eva’s skin just turned purple.

She continues, “What else… this is kinda like a fantasy kitchen sink; if I read that status code right there’s just about everything there. Almost every class or race you’ve read about in some story exists in some form and then some. What the heck is ‘Faelf’ for a race?”

“So I could be anything I want?”

She looks through the sheet again, “It seems like it; there are some restrictions on it though. Like you can’t be a pure human but if you take a human as an extra to something else it works? As said, the world is weird and it'd be better if Gzeph explains to you the details.”

“I think I get the picture why this... Jeff guy is needed, that world’s settings seem like a complicated mess.”

She responds, “That it is. He’s probably spent months if not years decoding this mess as it is his direct responsibility. Sorry if I’m not helping with that option.”

I'm curious, “Say, Eva, since we’re at this now for over a day – do you devas not need to eat or sleep? I take it I don't need to because I'm 'dead' but what about you?”

“Oh, we do, just on a bit longer scale than most mortal races. Like what you had to do in a single day is more or less what I have to do in a week.”

“Is that related to why Jeff needs about a day to get here?”

She looks for an excuse, “No, this department is just that big. The whole office building is more or less a whole planet the size of your homeworld by itself.”

“I shouldn’t have asked; the scale is getting a bit too big for my taste.”

creak

The office door opens. It reveals an exhausted, glasses-wearing, lightblue-skinned man who looks like he could drop dead from overwork any minute now.

Mr. Blueberry greets Eva, “Sorry for taking so long. My boss refused to listen - as always. I’d have liked to punch him in the face but was not allowed to... Eva, can you give me a quick rundown of where we stand?”

She answers, “So far he’s rejected main options 1 and 2, and showed low interest in 3 and 4. He's at least vaguely familiar with the option from stories, on his previous world they called those 'isekais'. Out of the sub-options of 5 only your pet project ‘Deteoh’ is left.”

“Stop calling it that", Jeff brushes her off, "Or I'll tell every soul I come across about the story behind 'Nuf Evah', want that?"

"Jeez, chill out man, it's not fair to bring THAT up. I was young and dumb", Eva looks kinda dejected.

Jeff tries to crack a joke, "Well, by now you've at least dropped the first half -"

slap

After a moment he collects himself, "Maybe I deserved that. *sigh* You know I want the whole thing resolved in one way or another more than anyone else. Anything else you got done so far?”

“I tried to give a first overview of that world’s situation but seriously, these codes are nuts.”

He agrees with her, “Yeah, I know, took me 2 or 3 years to fully decipher them.”

The man frowns and then types something on his phone, “Can you quickly give me his ID?”

Eva digs through her notes, “Sure, here it is.”

“Good.”

I feel kinda left out of the conversation.

The sole male member of the blue man group types some more on his phone, “Good, with that the upload is started.”

He finally acknowledges my existence, “I’ve compiled a ton of notes on everything I have on that world. In case you accept going to that world, you’ll have access to them on your status screen. Otherwise... well, I’ll just delete them. I just started the upload now because it is quite a lot and as you know you’re on a time limit. I can't afford you to go there underinformed. This is... too important.”

I nod, “Are you even allowed to give me all that data?”

“To be blunt, no", Jeff explains, "but that will be my problem, not yours. *sigh* I don’t really want to tell you this because it is kind of like blackmail, but I’ll have to get this off my chest.”

At least he seems honest about this, “I’m listening.”

“The reason I wanted to rearrange my boss’s face earlier was that he wants to pull the plug from that world. He says we’ve burned too many souls on previous failures and have nothing to show for it”, he clenches his fist. This clearly gets to him.

Eva jumps up, “Are you serious? They want to condemn the remaining billions to soul-death?”

“58 dead heroes are too many for the bigwigs. But a single lost planet doesn’t even make a dent in their statistics. You know how they think.”

Wait, 58? Wasn’t it 2/61 earlier, so shouldn’t it be 59 failures then? As exhausted as he looks he clearly shouldn’t do math, not that I’m one to talk.

“No, no, I don’t accept this. Wait, your boss’s boss Bruce owes me a favor, I’ll talk to him about it”, Eva interjects and storms out of the room before anyone can stop her.

After a moment of stunned silence, I ask Jeff, “Does she have some kind of hero complex?”

“You have to excuse her", he reaches for his forehead, "before Eva became a deva she lived on a planet that was effectively doomed. If everything had gone according to regulations there would not have been a ‘hero’ to save that world, and even then the hero only appeared after her death. Ever since she found out that her world was only saved by a vigilante she’s been playing as loose with the rules as she can. I don’t blame her.”

“I take it she got into trouble with that a few times? She didn’t seem the rule-breaker type to me so far.”

Jeff shakes his head, “You just haven’t given her the opportunity yet. But we’re not here to discuss her character. Remember you’re on a timer.”

“Yeah, yeah, got it. But I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Even if declining means that ‘I’ have killed a billion or so people - even if only by inaction, I hate this situation – do me a favor and tell your boss he is an asshole.”

“Will do", he grins, "I get it is totally unfair to you. But I... I have to... anyway."

He pauses, takes a deep breath and then continues, "I don’t know what all Eva has deciphered, so I’ll start from zero.”

Jeff readjusts his glasses, “So for context, ‘hero’ is a special title on that world, a title you won’t be able to get. The natives of that world would call people we send to them ‘Lost Ones’ or ‘God’s Lost Child’ or some variation. The problem is... what bonus a ‘Lost One’ has varies from world to world but on Deteoh it is a penalty. Specifically, resource stats like HP and MP are reduced by 20%, exp gain is reduced by 50% and skills with a rank above 1 are reduced to rank 1.”

“That sounds like it is a very game-like world with stats and levels, I expected something more ‘real’.”

Jeff elaborates, “Technically all worlds operate on levels and stats, they are just hidden on some of them.”

We didn't have stats, did we? “That sounds a bit weird; what about when a world that knows about stats interacts with one that doesn’t? Like mine was.”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

He shrugs, “Then one side has clearly an information advantage.”

“Sounds a bit unfair.”

Jeff shakes his head, “Life always is."

I ask, "So what is the point of me going there if I just have penalties? They could just as well pick up a peasant."

He answers, "Ideally a ton of information, an outside point of view. Even with all the restrictions, we can at least choose a somewhat optimized class race combination. Magic users are rare and valuable; even with the restrictions you should be able to make a difference if you agree to that route."

He carefully checks his notes, "Oh, one more restriction for the ‘you’ on Deteoh: you can’t become a humanoid race. Each planet has a limited amount of resources we can use and the ‘human’ type is used up, we’re only left with ‘monster’ type resources. Technically we could import some from a different world but the idiots at the top have frozen those channels. They really want to see this fail.”

“What about monster types that look human? Orcs, dark elves, vampires, stuff like that?”

Jeff gives me a warning, “Orcs and elves are humanoids, they’d kill you if you equate them to monsters.”

“So even elves are out, this is heading more and more towards a no.”

He mostly agrees with me, “Can’t blame you but let me at least finish; this is literally the last chance for those people.”

“And there’s the guilt trip again.”

He grabs his forehead, “Sorry, force of habit.”

“If you want to sell me on sacrificing my life and soul for people I don’t know, you’ll have to make a better sales pitch when even the ones running the universe don’t care.”

Jeff tries to get on my good side, “Luckily that were all the personal downsides.”

Lucky me... “So what even is the ‘scenario’ or ‘victory condition’ there?”

He asks, “Eva talked with you about what story bubbles are?”

“Yes she did briefly”, I nod.

He begins to explain, “So Deteoh’s scenario was beaten a few millennia ago so its bubble was destroyed. Should have been. But then some demon lord invaded the planet and brought some artifact that created an artificial story bubble. Truth be told, we don’t really know the scenario beyond that this artifact has to be destroyed. There probably isn't one.”

“Sounds pretty standard so far. If there’s such a stone it is usually with the demon lord as a guard, at least indirectly. So that or just killing a demon lord is mostly the same difficulty level.”

He lectures me, “It is a bit more complicated than that. On most worlds, you have just monsters that populate the lands, here you have annual monster floods.”

"So... free exp?"

"I meant that slightly more literal. As in there are so many monsters around certain locations you can't swing a stick without hitting a dozen."

This whole scenario is getting more and more ridiculous. Maybe the big bosses really are unto something... Those that are alive are already doomed but the longer this goes on the more people get born that will have their souls destroyed... at least that is what I guess from Eva's comment about soul-death.

I hate that this thought even crossed my mind... anyone deserves a chance to live.

“You said that I, as a ‘Lost One’, wouldn’t be a ‘hero’, how does that interact?”

“To be blunt, we don’t know", he shrugs, "The artificial story bubble blocks outgoing… anything really.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

Jeff explains, “Normally even in a world that is still stuck in a story bubble, their prayers reach us. This artificial one blocks 95% of that signal. These prayers give us the energy we as basically 'gods' need to do anything of worth.”

This hadn’t really sunk in previously. Eva and Jeff are not simple office workers; from the point of view of regular people, they are effectively gods, at least lesser ones.

And here I was not on my best behavior, yikes. Well, too late now.

He continues, “this energy is required to send people like potentially you down to them, give our chosen ones some gifts, send the people some oracles and maybe if we had a very huge surplus work actual miracles.”

“If it was not for the deadline set by your boss could you save up enough of that energy to send two or more people at the same time?”

“Technically yes but for some reason for every ‘Lost One’ still alive and present the requirement increases tenfold.”

“What else does that artifact do? Just blocking prayer doesn’t sound apocalypse enough yet.”

Jeff thinks for a moment, “Souls can’t leave either so those dissolve without getting a chance at an afterlife.”

Ouch.

"Previously I thought that the... soul-death thing only applied after you pull the plug but it was already the case this whole time..."

His demeanor gets more serious, “Yeah, and it gets worse. From what little information we could get it seems like the artifact kills the planet itself or transforms it or something. This is the first time we've encountered such an artifact and let it get that far. The previous times where we had to deal with them it was on low-difficulty worlds that were rescued with three tries at most.”

Double ouch.

Wait, "If it is the first time one artifact got that far how are you sure you're on the last two tries?"

"Honestly, we just assume the artificial SB works like a regular one and use the same - top-secret - method to gain our data on it."

“OK, so here it's do or die time.”

His face brightens up a bit as if he thinks I’ve just accepted.

Time to disappoint you, sorry Jeff, “What would be in it for me? So far I’ve only heard about the near-insurmountable challenge and a good amount of extra obstacles. Aside from a guilty conscience what prevents me from saying no?”

Jeff pauses, “You got me there, no idea. What would you want for it?”

I start thinking. I’d be risking myself for people I don’t know, never even heard of. Morally it feels wrong to just abandon them. But why should I when even the gods don’t give a shit?

I know that my conscience won’t let me forget if I sacrifice billions just for a comfy office job. This is absolutely unfair. I just want to get out of this with a somewhat clear conscience.

Ah, screw it. You corner me with unfair circumstances, I can set unreasonable demands as well!!

“I have 3 conditions.”

Jeff listens up.

“One: you have the most info about what I’ll need so at least help me make optimal choices for the starting setup.

Two: you punch your boss in the face for me for creating this unreasonable situation.

Three: Immortality”

He answers a bit too fast for my liking, “One is a given. I’ve just as much interest in you succeeding as you yourself do. Two, I already promised you that earlier. And really, the boss already knows that he deserves it.”

That leaves only the unreasonable request. He’ll surely find a way to talk himself out of it. “But those two are just freebies, right?”

He thinks for a moment. “As for immortality… you should know everything can be ended, the question is just how.”

There’s no way he can fulfill my condition. Nope, nope, nope.

He elaborates, “Though there should be a way for it in the system. Going by the book I’m not even allowed to mention the possibility that they exist.”

And here I thought only girls could give mixed signals...

Jeff reaches a conclusion, “You know what. We’re talking billions of lives here, holding back because of some piece of used paper wouldn’t sit right with me. I should at least show you the options though I doubt you’ll like them. It’d influence your life for all eternity if things work out. The worst the bosses can do is demote me, I’ll be back to where I am in 2000 to 3000 years tops, so that’s all on you.”

“I’m listening.”

Jeff sits behind Eva’s desk and begins torturing the keyboard.

A bit later he pulls up a list, “OK, so given the restriction to non-humanoid races your options for an eternal life are: A slime creature of at least king rank.”

“Would need more details on what kind of slime. A sentient cute water drop? A block of walking acid?”

He looks through his files, “Sorry, it doesn’t say that.”

“Then I’d pass on that.”

“Any dragon. Wait, a dragon is already beyond the energy we can spend, so that is also out, sorry.”

Not too much of a fan of dragons anyway.

Jeff mumbles, “That one is also too expensive... Ah, a vampire of at least lord rank would work.”

“Undead, I’d rather not... Can they pass for a normal human? In most myths, they can.”

He checks his screen again, “They have a disguise skill to hide obvious clues.”

“Very slight maybe, next?”

Before I say yes to that I’ll have A LOT of questions. Vampire might be the single creature with the most variants in fiction with almost nothing in common except the name.

Eventually, Jeff finds the next option, “Demon of at least baron rank would barely work.”

“Why barely?”

He tells me, “All the relevant options are extremely costly and offer no way to disguise yourself as ‘human’. You’d basically have a giant target on your back the whole time."

“So we’d go from hard mode straight to kaizo extreme mode, pass.”

He nods, “Agreed.”

Something is off to me, “Say, what is with that strange order? Isn’t it alphabetical?”

“It is in my language", he shakes his head, "Don’t think too hard about how your main language influences the search order on this computer. I try not to as well.”

And here I thought my computer had strange quirks…

He continues his search for a suitable option, “Phoenix is too expensive. Lich would work if you’d be ok with protecting a phylactery in addition to your body.”

“Maybe. Any skills to fit in with our target crowd?”

He looks but seemingly finds nothing, “No, doesn’t seem like it.”

“If I don’t get some OP minions together with that there doesn’t seem to be a point to that option either.”

He talks to himself, “Hmmm… those are also too costly.”

He goes silent for a while before finding the final option, “Last I have would be Wendigo.“

“Would probably be a hard fit as well. So we’ve narrowed the options down to just vampire?”

He nods, “Pretty much.”

“Can you tell me more about what type of vampire we’re talking about? Something like a lich is pretty much always a skeleton with spellcasting ability and a soul stone but vampire varies more between stories than values of X in math.”

“Sure thing", he explains, "Lich is pretty much as you said. Undead skeleton spellcaster that needs souls as sustenance.”

“Does not sound like a sustainable diet if you want to live with humans in peace. What exactly does ‘undead’ entail?”

Mr. Blueberry readjusts his glasses, “Predominantly a weakness to fire, light and holy attacks. They should stay out of the sun or they take damage; it is no instant destruction but at low levels, they might barely last a minute. They are also unable to have children, though that says nothing about trying to have some fun – that one varies by specific type of undead of course. On the upside, they are resistant to ice, dark and poison and have no need to breathe.”

I'm disappointed, “This sounds like more of a downside with barely an upside; how do stories manage to make undead scary with that many weaknesses?”

He explains, “There’s a lot of ways for intelligent undead to negate their fire weakness. As for light and holy damage, they are kinda hard to come by; mostly limited to special classes and legendary weapons. But overall it is less about the fact that they are ‘undead’ and more about what else the undead have on top of that. Like a lich is hard to take down while their phylactery is intact and things like ghouls or zombies spread like the plague.”

“Got it, so what about vampires? What do they have?”

Jeff gestures, “Give me a moment, since you wanted immortality I have to check 3 stages of vampires and what they all have.”

Why does he make it sound like I’ve already accepted the deal?

He says, “So regular vampire does not need to sleep, has a passive regeneration and a disguise skill to hide their obvious differences to their ‘base race’.”

Another unknown, “What do you mean by ‘base race’?”

Jeff clarifies, “Next to just vampire, you’d have to choose a humanoid race to base it on. Like a human vampire, elven vampire, etcetera.”

“Ah, ok.”

He continues, “Diet is blood as you’d expect. As long as we’re talking about a regular vampire you should be able to feed on animals or monsters as well as humanoids. As you’re going up further in the vampire ranks you’ll only be able to taste human blood, though the needed amount is enough to endanger a victim if you take the needed weekly portion just from one person, you should settle for at least two smaller portions from different people if you want to play nice with your neighbors.”

I don't get it. Doesn't he want to save them? Why is suggesting I become a race that actively harms them?

Why do I even consider this, I’m not good with seeing blood…

Jeff explains, “The next rank of a vampire is the ‘vampire noble’. They gain the ability to generate sharp claws and turn victims into ghouls or fellow vampires if they want. And the final rank is a ‘vampire lord’ which gains a stronger regeneration, no longer ages and can take a willing person as a ‘familiar’.”

“This sounds more like the classic vampire than at the start.”

It is really weird how he has so much information on the inner workings of a random race but can’t tell me what I’m really in for... why do I feel like I'm getting played?

I have to ask him, “Why is it that you have that much on a random race but not on what is going on down there?”

He defends himself, “Red tape. And the general setup of classes and races is identical across most worlds. There are really only like 3 different systems out there.

And within the same system, the only difference is which races or classes are available in a given world. As for where we get that, sorry, you’re not allowed to know. I’ve probably already said too much as it is.”

The green alarm clock cube starts ringing.

Jeff sighs, “Already the last day? We better hurry up.”

Dude knows how to put someone under pressure without it seeming like it is his fault...