Loki, the AI responsible for getting new players through character development, sits on the slowly churning thunderstorm as it rumbles towards Baskins. Baskins is an odd choice of starting town for this kind of player but Loki is Loki after all. He watches as the woman with black hair and a sleek dress with color to match looks at him. He is invisible but still, is she looking at him? Loki smiles as he feels her thoughts form and her fate take shape.
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I’m looking at the incoming storm, with its winds pushing me into town, and smirk. It’s totally not a contemptuous smirk. Really.
“Hmm, got some nice vectoring there and is the storm some foreshadowing?”
EF+
EF+
There’s a slight tingle just above my temples but when I touch the spot there’s nothing there.
“What’s EF? [Status]”
Name Ellenehl Nickname Mage Age 35 Race Undetermined Class Undetermined Skills Magic Awareness (1%), Magic Projection, Formulation Traits Ego, Transhumanism, Outsider
Hmm, my [Magic Awareness] went up. Can’t seem to get any info about that though. Well, who am I to disagree with the desire of the developers; let’s get moving.
The dress I’m wearing isn’t bad, the top is comfortable and the skirt’s fabric is slightly folded to give me space to take full strides. The shoe choice is a little weird for the dress but I’m happy they started me with hiking boots in this terrain. I can just imagine fighting with heels sinking into this soft field and getting a sprained ankle.
Pain in VR was a hotly contested topic when true VR first came out but after a little bit of thinking and some trial an error a simple system was put in place. You feel full pain but it fades quickly into a slight buzzing and you can’t feel repeated amounts of pain. The last thing they wanted was people torturing people. Bleck.
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I finally clear the field and step onto a dirt road that seems to be circling the village. It’s obviously hard to count from this vantage point but I think there are less than thirty buildings. I’m looking at the back of houses, lines of laundry hanging near some, and no people. So, I’ll just walk around until I find the road in. Maybe there’s a tavern or something. Or I could check out that kinda ramshackle tower. Maybe I’ll become a mage by befriending the local hermit sorcerer.
Suddenly, a little girl, maybe eight, cute pigtails, dirty dress, walks out from between two houses holding a doll and talking to it.
“No Sally, mom said we’re not allowed in the field because monsters sometimes wander in. But Jake says-” Oh, she spotted me.
“AIIIIII!” She screams and runs back between the houses.
“Well, that was weird.” As I’m wondering what all that was about I find the lane into town. It leads straight to the tower and the buildings seem to be built in two concentric circles around the tower.
There’s a plump woman hanging laundry in front of a house when I come to the first cross road. She looks up when I enter her field of vision and blanches. She takes her basket of laundry and hurries inside. I’m pretty sure I hear her putting a board over the door too.
“What is wrong with these people?” I look all over and around myself. There’s nothing weird about me as far as I can tell.
The same thing happens every time I meet someone. Blanch, scurry, slam, plonck. I’m left with nothing but the tower. Well, I guess I could find a tavern but going off my experience so far that sounds like planning for failure. Even worse than regular planning.
“Tower it is.”
By the time I reach the tower the entire center ring’s doors are shut. I think they sent word ahead of me.
The tower looks like something took a bite out of it. It’s about five floors, not counting the classic pointy wizard’s roof and rafters. On the side near me, with the door by the way, there’s a section missing in between the fourth and fifth floors. I can see the floor separating them, where it too hasn’t collapsed anyway. I can’t make out the contents of those exposed rooms though, wrong angle.
The door is the rustiest slab of metal I have ever seen. Like, if tetanus and an anvil had sex this would be the baby. There’s a simple padlock attached to the locking mechanism. Why would they lock something you’re supposed to go in? Come on game devs, don’t send me on some stupid fetch quest for a key after you specifically sent me here!
EF-
The hinge on the extremely rusty padlock succumbs to gravity making a slight squeak as the moved center of mass sets the whole thing pendulating for a second.
“Well, that was… convenient.” But what the hell is EF? Did I do something?
I take a shrug and remove the broken lock from the door and slide away the arm holding the door closed. I don’t really want to touch this thing so I give it a good kick instead. The door makes a sound somewhere between a whip crack and your arch enemy scratching their nails on a blackboard and opens inward about two inches. Cringing, I kick it again. More blackboard music and it opens about halfway. I sigh and kick it again shaking my head like I’m trying to get water out of my ears afterwards. I hope I never come across an enemy capable of weaponizing that sound.
All that’s in the room is a wooden table with a lantern and some strange scissor looking thing. Being more interesting I obviously pick up the scissors first and give them a quick test. Sparks shoot out between the ‘blades’. Oh, a lighter. It takes me a few tries but I get the lantern lit and take a better look around the room. Yep, nothing. Well, obviously there are stairs but I thought you would be perceptive enough to understand that obvious things like that shouldn’t be pointed out. Right?
So, I head upstairs. The next room seems to be an armory. I revel in my ability to make fire and light the torches in the brackets on the walls.
“Hmm, what kind of weapon should I use?” Wait, I don’t have any pockets. Or bags. And I already have the lantern and the lighter? Geh, inventory management right at the beginning of the game. Something tells me space in mobile storage is going to be at a premium.
EF+
“What the fuck is EF?” I don’t remember reading anything about that on the forums and there’s that weird tingle on my head again. There’s mana and concentration but neither of those would be EF.
“Ok, lantern, tool, weapon… Wait!” I stick the lighter between my breasts. Oh man is it cold.
“Eat it game dev.”
I want a free hand for the lantern so immediately all the two handed weapons are out. No bows, or crossbows, or staves, or other large weapons. I’m not really sure how my technique would change between swords and maces so I probably shouldn’t pick sword. I’m definitely not fucking around with a flail without some training. First swing, miss, spiked ball to the the face. That would be embarringly deadly. Or deadly embarrassing? Either way it’s out.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Hmm, but daggers? Stabbing a crit spot sounds like something I can accomplish. I select one of the longer daggers, almost as long as my forearm, and pick up the lantern before climbing the (purposely unmentioned) stairs.
There are four doors, each with its own sign.
Enter 00010010 2+2 door 4 [https://i.imgur.com/hPKJ2PF.png]
Why do I get the feeling I only get to choose one door?
EF+
Gah! What is EF? It goes up when I… decide what something means? But apparently that’s not true for this realization or else I’m just wrong.
“Whatever. Let’s just pick a door.” It’s probably a puzzle so the signs give a nature of the puzzle. Soooo, language, programming, math, or logic. I only recognize the last one because I once got hooked on this super old flat-screen game where you built stuff out of blocks and some of the special blocks could control the flow of energy and do cool stuff. Wait a second! I was a kid when I played that. Is that how I got so focused on digital logic and ended up a soul-sucked programmer?
I’m torn. Do I walk that same road again aware of the risk to my soul or do I chose something I can properly compartmentalize?
“Ah, fuck it.” I open the door with the logic gates.
Inside is a dark corridor (thank you lantern-san) but on the wall to my left is gold filigree. No, not filigree, a set of logic gates.
The door slams shut and I jump a bit in surprize. I give it a quick check. Yep, locked.
The puzzle on the wall is pretty simple. Just a bunch of ands and ors and nots leading to a single output with a ‘1’ next to it. In total, there are nine inputs with little dials next to them that are bisected with a ‘1’ on one side and a ‘0’ on the other.
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“One and one here but one and not zero here… yeah. Then it’s just a zero here and-” click.
The door at the end opens. It took about ten minutes to solve the puzzle once I figured out I could use my spark-scissors to scratch notes on the wall. On the other side of the door are the stairs but no other doors. Odd, what would have happened if I took the other doors? Maybe this tower changes as you ascend? Like it’s trying to figure out who you are… for the quest?
EF+
“Oh, does that mean I’m right?!” I’m smiling confidently as I go up. Which quickly slides off my face when the tiger on the fourth floor spots me.
“Nice tiger. Friendly tiger. No food here.” I quickly give up when I notice it bunching up to leap at me. I wait one second then jump to the side. It swipes at me as the leap misses but I continue running around the room towards the door to the stairs. God, I hope it’s the stairs.
“FUCK!” Locked.
I turn back around to face the tiger. There are long scratches on the floor where it slid after taking a jump at me. Wait! The hole in the wall. Yes, there, on my right. Now, if I can just get it to jump at me while that’s to my back. Problem solved.
I take a deep breath and remember something very, very important. This is not a real tiger. This is a construct running an attack algorithm. Conditions will dictate what form of attack it will use. Things like distance, last attack, balance, energy will all go into determining what will happen. If I can survive long enough to learn what does what I can do this.
So, it leapt when it saw me. Distance; first strike; full energy. Well, the distance is about the same now but it just tried that. Yep, now it’s running at me and oh damn is a running tiger scary as all hell. How did we make it out of the stone age against monsters like this?
On reflex, I kick (completely forgetting about my dagger). At the same moment the tiger swipes but also tries to back away from the kick. The swipe misses and the kick connects with its head.
1 Damage
Floats away from the impact and fades to nothingness.
I’m not gonna kick it to death am I?
I notice the tiger pull back its left foreleg so I jump left away from it and dodge another strike. I’m so glad I played a lot of really famously hard games that relied on reading enemy attack patterns.
However, it seems the programmer behind the tiger AI also played that game as it moves a little to it’s right. The first step towards boxing me into a corner. Oh, it’s the corner near the hole in the wall. I need a confuse ability so I can open a space for maneuver. Hmm, what about the spark-scissors? I drop my dagger (don’t want to break my pet lantern) since it’s useless at the moment and retrieve my scissors from their sheath. I make a slashing movement as I squeeze them and the tiger jumps back, away from the shower of sparks.
Wow, more effective than I thought. I take its moment of confusion to put myself between the hole and the tiger with as much space as I can spare between the murder kitty and myself. It glares at me as it thinks over new developments.
“Just jump you stupid furball!”
EF-
The tiger does as I ask and I’m almost too surprised to get out of the way. At the last second I manage to move but it swipes me across the thigh before plummeting off the tower.
There’s a pitiful yowl followed by a sick crunchy, thumping sound. I miss the ‘2’ floating off my leg.
End of Combat - Tallying Experience
Dodge +53%
Kick +8%
Magic Projection +25%
Hidden +25%
I wonder what [Hidden] is. Maybe something to do with my class. Or whatever EF is. As I collect my dagger and head towards the door I wonder; EF went down when the padlock broke and when the tiger jumped. Both things helped me. But also, both things were possible for the circumstances. That padlock was really quite corroded. So, maybe EF is a kind of magic?
Hopefully, this will all get explained by the time I finish this tower.
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The fifth floor is not what I expected. There’s a nice couch and bed, what I assume is furniture under some dust covers, and a big hole in the wall. I take a look out at the village and notice some movement in the fields surrounding it. Maybe it wasn’t that the town was hiding from me but that they were in the fields. I shrug.
I take the dust cover off the first piece of furniture and it reveals a table. There’s a tarot deck and a messenger bag. Am I a high-schooler again? That better not be my class. Just for fun I pick up the top card.
Seven of Wands - Empowered Will
Huh, that’s kinda a way to say my will affects reality. Maybe that explains [EF-].
EF+
“Wait, what?” I take another card.
Six of Swords - Rational Study
But that would mean the deck agrees with my rational analysis of this mystical system.
EF+
“Hmm, a source of EF? This could come in handy.” I put the cards and spark-scissors in the bag and sling it over my shoulder. It seems to be designed to hang on my left like an overlarge purse instead of a backpack. Well, should be easy to get stuff out of anyway.
The other piece of furniture is tall and thin. I’m slightly hesitant but I pull away the dust cover. A mirror, like I thought, and there’s me. Ooh, looking goo-
“HORNS! I have horns! And black hair and dress! I totally look like a demon!” Great big black ram's horns.
Quest Complete - Find Out Who You Are
Race [Entropic Daemon] Attributes Unlocked
Class [Fateweaver] Attributes Unlocked
Detailed Status Information Unlocked
I collapse onto the couch which was conveniently placed in front of the mirror and wearily mutter, “[Status]”
Name Ellenehl Nickname Mage Age 35 Race Entropic Daemon Class Fateweaver Skills Magic Awareness (20%), Magic Projection (25%), Formulation, Dodge (53%), Kick (8%), Entropic Alteration (25%) Traits Ego, Transhumanism, Outsider