The chest smashed straight through his head on the way to the ground as if he had never been standing there in the first place. Jake was left unharmed, of course.
What happened in the instance couldn’t affect the outside world. Or more accurately, it couldn’t affect his current, mundane dimension. He wasn’t sure how long it would stay that way, though, as The System’s integration into this world progressed.
Turning around, Jake looked to the chest, which had broken open and spilled out its content on the ground behind him. The chest—and its former contents—looked like a hologram and was intangible as one too. Its spilled contents consisted of a few walkie-talkies, notebooks, office supplies, a couple blankets, and a few mystery novels.
One notebook in particular that had caught Jake’s interest was labeled ‘Mystery Journal.’ He’d pick it up if he could, but it was fading out of existence into the void with the rest of things that hadn’t properly crossed into his dimension.
Jake turned back around and looked up into the instance to where the chest had come falling from. At the top of the newly generated tree was a large treetop retreat with a wide deck that fully surrounded it. There were now two major branches that accompanied the building that sat at the top of the tree, both thick and strong enough to hold the weight of their own lesser structures. Each branch had a bridge running along it connecting the treehouse’s deck to a deck that sat on the branch and each branch’s deck had what appeared to be a hut sitting on top of it.
Jake could see a duo of goblins standing on top of the generated treehouse’s deck, pointing and laughing at the shattered chest laying on the ground below them. He couldn’t actually hear the laughter since sound didn’t pass through the dimensional barrier of the instances. From the way they were acting, he doubted they could see him either.
Out from the generated treehouse’s open door came two more goblins. One of the goblins was carrying a stack of something for him and the boys to have more fun throwing down to the ground. The other one was carrying a twelve pack of canned soda that would have been a decade old if they’d been found in the original treehouse.
The goblin carrying the pack of soda hoisted it above its head and the other goblins cheered for him like he was the guy who’d brought the alcohol to the party. After that, it placed the soda down on the deck to the side and joined the other goblins in chucking whatever the last goblin had brought out. As the chucked items slammed into the fading remnants of the chest’s spilled contents and dispersed them, the goblins hollered and hooted.
Now that the discarded items were on the ground, Jake could clearly tell what the goblins were chucking. They were framed pictures, copies of the ones he had left up there when he used to hide away in the treehouse.
The frames were busted and the glass that had protected the pictures had shattered on impact with the ground, but the pictures themselves were still intact. Each photo held smiling faces. His grandmother, his grandfather, and himself—they all had their own portrait and a few pictures with each other.
Even with the goblins' foolishness going on above him, Jake’s heart was touched when he saw the pictures. He wanted to pick them up and put them back in the instance if he could, especially the ones in the frames that had landed face down in the grass.
With some resistance, he opened a portal with his Dimensional Manipulation, trying to rescue the pictures before they could fade into the void. He could see the photo of him and his granddad standing in front of the Harley he used to go cruising with back when he had just started middle school on the other side of the portal. It had its full color with none of that holographic filter covering it.
[Dimensional Manipulation]
Portal Generation Proficiency has increased!
He reached in to grab it, but the portal wasn’t holding up and his mana was already running on fumes from his encounter with the Slime King. The portal spit his hand out before collapsing into nothingness and Jake watched his precious photos until they had all faded out of existence. Of the turned over pictures that he couldn’t see, Jake was sure at least one of them was of him and his parents.
I should have waited, he thought. If he had just waited to generate the instance until he had recovered more or if he had been thinking quick enough to put a few points into his mana capacity before the pictures had faded away, this wouldn’t have happened.
It had been years since he’d seen the originals. He’d left them in his room before heading off to university.
That had been a mistake. They were still there when he came back for winter break that first year, but by the time he came back for summer, they were gone.
His grandmother had decided to store them away somewhere in the house, so she could stack his shelves with some junk she thought he’d like. Unfortunately, she had forgotten where exactly she had placed the pictures amongst all the ‘As Seen On TV’ junk she kept on buying during the process.
After that happened, Jake didn’t come back to his grandparents’ home for break until he finished university. He ended up regretting that. His grandmother had needed him more than he had needed the pictures.
He looked back up the tree and watched the goblins as they joyfully marched along the bridges atop the branches to their hut with their plundered ‘treasure.’ If his affinity had been laser instead of dimensional, he surely would have killed them then and there with just his gaze.
Yes, the pictures had all been copies. The originals were lost, but they could still be found. There was great comfort provided in knowing that.
The problem here was that the goblins didn’t know. These goblins had raided the treehouse and smashed his precious things upon the ground below thinking that these were the originals. It was the real deal to them.
If the apocalypse had been further along and they hadn’t been confined to this instance, they would have done the same and killed him along with his grandmother. That was their intention and that’s what had Jake’s blood boiling.
Founder's Quest 2 - Abandoned Treehouse
Due to your extended absence from your treetop retreat, foul intruders have claimed it for themselves. Rid yourself of them and reclaim what is yours.
Reward
Note: Relevant Bonuses Already Included!
+300 Game Tokens
+$300 U.S Dollars
Failure: The intruders will be fruitful and multiply, becoming a plague upon the surrounding area.
Killing goblins, he thought. Just the thing he wanted to do.
He gripped the ladder leading up the side of the tree and poked his head up into the instance. Inside the instance’s borders the generated tree had outstripped the original in both height and girth, placing almost half a hundred feet between where Jake was on the ladder and his treetop retreat. Even with half a hundred feet between him and the goblins, however, Jake could still hear the goblins at the top.
With his protection from death removed and the ever present threat of falling, it would be too dangerous for him to rush up and attack them without having his skills available. Begrudgingly, he’d have to let them have their peace for now.
He pulled his head back down through the instance and checked the time. It was just about to hit 6:00pm, but the summer sun was still a ways off from setting. He didn’t think he’d be getting the first day streak bonus today. It just wasn’t worth it to risk his life over something as beneath him as those filthy goblins.
“Is there a streak bonus for completing quests multiple days in a row?” Jake asked his wrist brain.
Heads Up!
Yes
“Good.”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Heading back inside, Jake left the goblins with their ‘treasures.’ He’d only allow for a short delay of their extermination. He wouldn’t suffer their continued existence for more than a day.
===
3:30 AM
The Next Day
Wednesday, August 22nd
Gamify Golding Branch Headquarters
Vengeance
That’s what Alpha-10 had thirsted for after a particular member of High Command had doomed his homeworld. Back then, he fought for his revenge everyday with those who were like minded. They jumped worlds and jumped dimensions attempting to sabotage a bureaucracy that they couldn’t even begin to imagine the scope of.
He lost good people during those times. More good people than he had personally known before The System was brought to his world. And what had they died for? To do damage on the scale of the tiniest rounding error to an empire that spanned galaxies on multiple planes of existence? It wasn’t worth it.
The futility of it all didn’t set in for him until after he had wasted years fighting. After all that effort, there was still a chasm between where people like him stood and where the truly powerful made war with each other. The bodies of his lost comrades couldn’t fill the gap.
Meanwhile, the remnants of his world’s peoples moved on, assimilating themselves into similar societies. In three generations time, his world would become a distant memory, nearly forgotten by all except its most zealous descendants, The System, and those like him.
He gave up.
Alpha-10 decided to do the sensible thing for a man of middling power and signed up for High Command’s colonization efforts. He got an executive position for a minor branch in the Department of Outlier Acquisition and Management due to his combat abilities.
Just as he had been told it was a department of slackers and received pay for doing relatively little. As he lazed, however, reality continued to remind him of where he stood in the grand scheme of things.
Being an executive of a particular branch meant that he showed strength greater than any of the local underlings and for that he was revered and feared. When compared to the other local executives, however, he was one of the weakest two.
It didn’t matter. His days of passion were behind him. Instead of revenge, he needed to worry about the troubles his driven underling had brought upon him.
Far earlier than usual, Alpha-10 was called into a conference room for a meeting with the Overseer. The impromptu meeting was scheduled after he had reported to her on Beta-42’s affinity the previous day.
When he entered the conference room he was surprised to find Alphas Gamma and 8 were present as well.
“Welcome, Alpha-10.” the Overseer said.
“Greetings, Madame Overseer,” he replied with a slight bow.
Around the table where his fellow executives and his superior were sat there were twelve seats, one more than usually necessary for the Overseer’s meetings with the heads of department. There were five seats on each of the longer sides of the table, one at the head, and one at the tail. The Overseer was seated at the head with Alphas Gamma and 8 seated to her left and her right, respectively.
Rather than break the balance on either side, 10 took the seat at the table’s tail across from his superior. After he was settled, the Overseer spoke.
“Yesterday, you came to me to report confidential information about one of your activated beta testers, correct?” she said.
“Yes, Madame Overseer,” Alpha-10 said, looking to Alphas Gamma and 8 across the table for their reaction. Alpha-Gamma had his head turned to him smiling, but Alpha-8 faced forward, indifferent, stone-faced like a statue.
“Within minutes of receiving it?” the Overseer continued.
“Yes.”
“Instead of reporting directly to High Command like you were prompted to do?”
“Yes, Madame Overseer.”
The Overseer graced Alpha-10 with her slightest smile. “It was good of you that you did so. Well done”
“Thank you, Madame Overseer,” he replied.
“I fear that if you had, you may not have survived to see their representative’s arrival. The System encourages very dangerous things, after all.”
“Indeed.” Whether the System encouraged it directly or not, Alpha-10 was sure she would have killed him for skipping over her and reporting directly to High Command. There was a reason why it was such an uncommon action for a subordinate to take.
“It would have been a shame if they’d sent the one responsible for your homeworld’s destruction and you had already passed.”
To that, Alpha-10 gave no response.
“As for why I have called you here today,” the Overseer continued, “It is because of your good judgment regarding this recent event. You see, l’d like to invite you to join me and the executives present in a side project we’re participating in.”
A message flashed before Alpha-10’s eyes.
You’ve been offered a Hidden Quest!
Hidden Quest - Counter Operations
Hide the existence of promising new users when they appear and encourage their continued growth.
Rewards
???
Would you like to accept this quest?
The message gave Alpha-10 pause. Yes, there was little love lost between him and High Command—a fact which the Overseer knew, of course—but there was a good reason he was serving such an overwhelming force rather than rebelling against it.
That said when the two choices presented before him were rebellion or death…
You have accepted a hidden quest!
The System only rewarded the loyalty of those who gave their hearts, after all, and giving his heart for High Command was something he was certainly not ready to do. At this time, however, he did regret not trying harder to hide his discontent with them.
Alpha-Gamma, the grey-bearded and well groomed old man with barely a wrinkle who had a mustache that curled up at the ends, clapped for him enthusiastically. “Welcome aboard, Anthony,” he said using Alpha-10’s assigned name for his stay on Earth.
Alpha-10 was much less enthusiastic with himself being on board with Alpha-Gamma than the other way around. The Head of the Department of System Integration and Management was a role that most often attracted the eccentric and unpredictable types and unfortunately, Alpha-Gamma had a previous history of being a dangerous amount of the second.
Powerful problem people like him and Alpha-4 were usually assigned to the smaller branches like Golding so that the giant messes that they’d eventually create could be more easily contained. Most of the people like him would have ended up culled by High Command if The System didn’t love promoting powerful mad men even more than it loved creating heroes to deal with them.
It served High Command’s interests well to keep quite a few of them around on leashes so that The System wouldn’t find reason to get too creative.
“Thank you, Alexi,” Alpha-10 said to Gamma.
“Alexi-Gregor,” Alpha-Gamma corrected him. They were two names he had chosen that were far from common in their assigned region. Just the way he liked it.
“Madame Overseer, may we please proceed?” Alpha-8 requested.
“Yes,” she said. And once she did, neither Alpha-Gamma or 10 dared to say anything else.
“Now that you’ve become our accomplice, I’d like for you to give us a report on Beta-42’s progression.”
Alpha-Gamma pulled up a projection of Beta-42’s neighborhood over the table. In the sea of grey made up of mostly suburban residences, Beta-42’s residence was a glowing blue beacon.
“Proceed,” the Overseer prompted Anthony.
“Beta-42 has successfully completed his first Founder’s quest and has already generated an instance appropriate for completing the second,” Alpha-10 responded.
“And you’re assuming that he’ll complete his second quest today?”
“Yes.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“As you instructed me, Beta-42 has been informed about the nature of The System’s integration and his current situation through my subordinate, 10-Epsilon. As such, I do not believe he will fail to complete his second quest today.”
“And if he doesn’t?” the Overseer repeated her question.
Alpha-10 hesitated. “We’ll offer him limited-time incentives with increasing value as the deadline nears,”
“Incentives such as?”
“Starter user items, a crafting kit, and some of the weaker potions… He’s displayed a significant concern for the condition of his grandmother. Since he’s a special case, we could offer something to aid her as an incentive as well.”
“I’d prefer not to hand him easy rewards for having not done the job that we wish for him to do,” the Overseer responded. “If he fails to complete a second quest today, I want you to work with Alpha-8 to move one of his malefactors into the neighborhood.”
“That—”
“Make sure to inform Beta-42 of it tomorrow,” she continued.
“I think it would serve us best not to send the cannibal,” Alpha-8 chimed in.
“Yes, and don’t send one that’s too smart or aggressive either. We’re aiming to give Beta-42 a reason to grow stronger, not to get the entire neighborhood slaughtered.”
“I don’t think—” Alpha-10 said, cutting himself off as the Overseer refocused her gaze on him.
“Yes, Anthony?” the Overseer used his assigned name.
“I don’t think it will come to that.”
The Overseer let him sit in silence for a time. She opened her mouth to respond, but Alpha-Gamma spoke first.
“An update on Beta-42, Madame Overseer,” he said.
“Oh?” she raised an eyebrow.
Alpha-Gamma smiled. “Beta-42 has just successfully completed his second Founder’s quest.”
The Overseer looked amused. “He’s quite the early riser.”