Aurelio, after sulking for a bit, composed himself enough to look at the rest of the crew in earnest.
“You gonna continue beatin’ yourself up over this or are you gonna make us wait some more while the world ends?” Phineas asked with a shit eating grin on his face.
Cantwell lightly bonked his friend's head, “Give him space.” Phineas yelped outrageously, holding his hands over his head in exaggerated pain.
“Careful with your fucking mitts, Canti! Those are lethal weapons you’re swinging around.”
Cantwell smirked, the neutral expression in his rust yellow eyes softening.
Elena grumbled, “We’re in a time crunch and we have to depend on the boy to get us through it.”
“Giving him a few minutes to breathe isn’t going to make or break our escape, Elena.” Kalani retorted.
Aurelio scratched the scruff of his thin beard. There was a lot of ground to cover.
“Okay,” Aurelio finally decided, “I’m gonna try to go over everything I know and hope you all can follow along.”
He grabbed his [Metal Spike] and began drawing on the ground. A pang of sorrow washed over him as he organized the lesson in his mind.
“I’ve been conceptualizing our fates like a game. I don’t know why so please, don’t ask. I’m glad it's intelligible at the very least.” Aurelio watched as the other scavengers made glances at one another and whispered their comments but they allowed him to continue.
“The way I’ve conceptualized our situation is thus: we collect our resources and invest them in better equipment and innovations. We use our advancements to make our journeys outside of the outpost a less risky experience. We fight stronger monsters to acquire better quality resources. More resources. And we reinvest in this cycle while dealing with random events as they pass.”
Kalani raised her hand. Aurelio chuckled and gestured for her to speak.
“Why aren’t we heading to the ship parts outright if we’re in a time crunch? That monster was a bit difficult but we managed to take it on well enough. You have knowledge of the other monsters here at least to know we could handle the Vessel and not whatever’s protecting the ship parts.”
Aurelio answered immediately, “We’d die if we weren’t well equipped. It’s true that we’re in a time crunch but forty solar cycles is a surprising amount of time when you put things in perspective.”
He outlined the four biomes he knew into four interconnected circles. Beyond those four circles, he drew tiny squares.
“Some biomes have overlapping monsters. The Vessel, either broken or pure, is the most common monster we’ll find. Since we defeated the Vessel, the monolith will likely register that we’re capable of hunting a higher tier Vessel or some of the other monstrous denizens of the planet.”
He looked up at the crew.
“We are not even close to ready, so don’t even consider that part of the plan. At minimum we need to hunt the Vessel two more times to have enough equipment for us to hunt something else.”
Hopefully they’d get lucky along the way and earn additional resources. Or meet with the Trades merchant that mysteriously wandered around the planet hawking wares to the scavengers in exchange for self-sacrifice.
“We’re feeding the resources to the junkyard.” Cantwell stated.
Aurelio snapped his fingers, “Exactly. One aspect of growth is coming from the resources we gather. The avenues for growth that we have are in strengthening our embered cores, investing our weapon proficiency towards certain talents, acquiring worthwhile innovations that’ll strengthen the team, becoming masters at the roles that we’ve taken up, and acquiring abilities along the way.”
The group looked at him like he was speaking in tongues.
This is gonna be tougher than I thought.
He moved down and away from the cycle he was familiar with and drew five rectangles. The labels from left to right went personal growth, weapon proficiency, outpost innovations, roles, and abilities. As far as they were concerned, this was real life to them.
To him. This was real life to him, too.
His knowledge was wrapped in inconsistencies by virtue of the real-time element at play and his fallible memories but he was more than certain that the fundamental avenues for growth remained the same when the world transitioned from tabletop to real life.
Aurelio pointed at the leftmost box, “We earn experience as we kill monsters. We earn the same amount of personal experience for killing a monster, regardless of tier. The reason why we aim for higher tiered monsters is almost exclusively for the additional resources on their corpses and the bonus experience provided towards weapon proficiency.”
Phineas sighed, “Kid, you’re speaking gibberish right now. I can’t make heads or tails about this experience stuff. I get the whole cycle thing; we farm stuff from the monsters low on the food chain and gradually aim up towards the bigger fish. But what does that have anything to do with this?”
Aurelio scratched at his chin before coming up with a solution. He reached into his ember core and pulled out the diagnostics sheet.
[Name] - Aurelio Cancio
[Status] - Healthy
[Second Wind] - {X} {X} {.}
[Species] - error
[Heart] - 1
[Ignition Regen] - 1
[Ignition Cap] - 11
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
[Role 1] - None
[Role 2] - None
[Mov: +0 | Acc: +0 | Str: +0 | Eva: +0 | Spd: +0 | Lck: +0] (+3!) [::]
[Weapon Class Specialization] - None (1WP AVAILABLE)
[Spark Level] - 1(1XP until next Milestone)
[4 Innovation Points Available in the Outpost]
He gestured for them to gather close to the sheet projecting out of his chest. Elena kept her distance while the others drew in.
“Why is there an error notation on your species?” Cantwell inquired.
Phineas chimed in, “I don’t know about you, but we’re not exactly human anymore. Maybe the thing doesn’t know where the fuck to place us?”
Aurelio nodded, “Until I figure out how to see your sheets, I won’t know what that’s about.”
“So when you talk about personal growth and weapon proficiency and roles, you’re referring to all of this?” Kalani questioned.
“Yeah,” Aurelio paused, trying to consider how to phrase his response, “The personal growth is measured by those stats in the center of the sheet. As we gain levels towards our personal growth, we’ll gain benefits that’ll include becoming stronger or faster or more evasive. Or abilities that’ll make performing certain actions possible.”
“Like ignition stuff.” Cantwell whispered, nodding along.
“Yeah, possibly. The abilities and impairments list is pretty long so I can’t give a run down on each one. At the very least, know that our personal growth values affect our movement, accuracy, strength, evasion, weapon attack speed, and luck.”
Aurelio felt like he was giving a crash course on the basics of tabletop play to aliens. The joy and excitement that had begun bleeding into his sentences in earnest filled his heart with a sense of ease, if only for a moment.
“Okay, and you said we have weapon proficiencies to contend with?” Kalani pointed out. He’d reached a section in the lesson that he had some level of demonstrative capability.
Aurelio pressed on the empty line in the weapon class specialization section and a small drop-down menu opened up with all of the potential options. It looked like the line had popped up one layer with a lighter cerulean shade to list out the potential specialization options.
“Woah.” Phineas whispered.
Aurelio nodded, “In order, we have the Spear, Sword, Hammer, and Axe for the Melee category. We have Arcane, Pistol, and Rifle in the Ranged category. Improvised weaponry falls under both categories.” He selected the Rifle tag and confirmed his weapon specialization. The drop-down menu fizzled into smoke and the empty space was replaced with the Rifle tag, complete with a counter towards how much experience was being earned for that class of weapon.
“What’d you just do?” Kalani raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know how it’ll materialize in the world but I just granted my body an affinity towards the rifles we’ll come across. So long as I continue fighting with a rifle, I’ll gain experience towards the weapon class and acquire benefits when certain milestones are achieved.”
Phineas furrowed his brow, “Wait, don't think I didn’t catch that.” He wagged his finger in Aurelio’s face before continuing, “You said ‘the’ instead of ‘my’ there. Why?”
“Because the proficiency group is communal. I’d be getting in the weeds if I explained the breadth of it but, we select our weapon specialization and until we acquire an innovation that lets us empty the slot, we can’t pivot off it. We’ll reach milestones faster if we all select one class type but that's an argument between diversity of tactics versus specialization of skills that I’m not getting into right now.”
The headaches that’d come from Juan and Aurelio in their theory-crafting discussions rang through his mind like a pleasant melody…
“What sort of specialization?” Cantwell asked.
“Well, it depends on the milestone. All class types aside from Improvised have five milestones to achieve. Two of these milestones affect everyone in the outpost. The other three only affect those within the class type. With a higher investment of points in a weapon type comes the stronger, fight handling, stuff you’d expect from a master in their field.”
He tapped the [Metal Spike] repeatedly on the ‘innovations’ and ‘roles’ rectangles.
“These two sections are the most important paths for growth in my eyes. Especially with some revelations I made while out in the field with the rest of you.” Aurelio emphasized.
This was where he was somewhat in the dark. He didn’t have a Role yet but he did have one in mind. He hadn’t drawn the selection of innovations at his disposal either, not even receiving a prompt as he had expected of that situation.
He had an inclination of where to go though to deliver his investment.
“Cantwell and Phineas, please be dears and take our spoils into the junkyard for processing. I’m gonna take Elena and Kalani back to the station for the innovation demonstration and I’ll need the resources that thing’s gonna give us to do so.”
Aurelio waited for any disagreements from the other members but found them surprisingly cooperative. Elena still eyed him with suspicion but she was the first to move ahead of them towards the radar station.
He couldn’t hide the smile off his face. Each link made on his chain of productivity brought with it the hope that he could be capable of handling the worst the world could offer.
And he knew the worst was yet to come.
---
Kalani, Elena, and Aurelio stood in front of the monolith in silence. Where the others were looking at Aurelio, he was looking at the new prompt that popped up around the stones core.
|?Advance the Colony?|
Another strange piece of wording but the context of the phrase was easy to parse: this was where he’d need to go in order to innovate the outpost. He wanted to limit his associations with the stone but it seemed that what inscrutable sentience there was dwelling inside the smooth rock wanted to keep Aurelio close.
He confirmed the request and saw the prompt cycle through the symbols he associated with the three main resource types. The fourth symbol was a simple flame.
Probably the innovation point being offered to the stone.
The new prompt fizzled out from his view. The embers within the stone lit up and before they could recoil, a large panel wreathed in rainbow flames materialized before them.
“How flashy.” Elena sarcastically noted.
“Kind of similar to what you’ve been doing, Aurelio.” Kalani pointed out.
He didn’t disagree with her observation but he made no comment. Instead, he poured into the innovation options available.
{ARCHIVES} {Scholastic Innovation Type} - The collected knowledge of those past. May the present seek their wisdom in hopes of a better future. | CHOSEN gains the INSPECT action. | Innovations may be returned to the ///// and exchanged for an equivalent number of new Innovations.
{CONNECTION} {Piety Innovation Type} - Learn my name. Command my wisdom. | CHOSEN gains the COMMUNE action. | SUBJECTS negate one Event Damage on their expeditions. | (1 Innovation Point) Devote Will / Seek Protection.
{PROVING GROUNDS} {Martial Innovation Type} - Fight. Violence is your equalizer against monsters and titans alike. | CHOSEN gains the FORTIFY action. | Increase Weapon Proficiency gained by SUBJECTS by 1. | (3 Innovation Point) Commit to Training.
Aurelio found himself blindsided yet again.