--- Mia ---
The Demon Lord punted Tom through a wall again.
"How is that spell of yours coming along, Mia?" He asked conversationally as he extricated himself from the rubble.
Oh gods. He hadn't even noticed Schroedinger's sacrifice.
"It didn't work!" She replied in embarrassment. "I will try something else, nyaa!"
Tom dodged past the Demon Lord's axe-swipe again and punched him repeatedly. The force of his strikes was enough to rattle the few remaining windows in the area, but the Demon Lord's health bar did not move.
"Why is he immune to damage?" She asked.
"Huh?" Tom responded. Then after a few seconds he added: "Oh damn! You are right! None of my punches did anything. Thanks for pointing that out! I had the health bars turned off to increase immersion, so I didn't notice until you told me."
...to increase immersion, he said.
That was such a strange way of thinking. Most aliens she knew were much less, well, alien, than that.
She tried to query FEI for something useful, and this time she decided to take Tom's advice to heart: Don't think about it too much. Keep it vague, and trust that the system knows what it's doing.
Was there anything she could do that could help against the Demon Lord's resistances?
FEI responded immediately:
Cutting Words 10 mana
Perfect! "Cutting Words" was of course an idiomatic expression of great historical significance. It referred to a Nekomancer's fabled ability to cut to the heart of the matter in a discussion. A leadership skill that allowed a Nekomancer to unify people by revealing the underlying flaws and biases behind other people's motivations in a way that bit so deeply, it "cuts away" any resistance to change motivated by pride.
Why, the implications of being offered such a skill so early on were...
No.
She was not doing this again.
She had been overwhelmed by the prospect of being named a Nekomancer, and had waxed poetic about it in her head. She had tried to understand the underlying significance behind her weird spell, "Summon Schroedinger".
And what was the result? Everything had gone wrong.
She did have some basic pattern recognition.
Trying to be smart and thinking things through empirically didn't work. Meanwhile, Tom was being an idiot, and that seemed to work really well for him. In fact, he claimed he was being an idiot on purpose.
Maybe she should try it his way? Stop overthinking it, and just go with the flow.
"I’m about to turn you into a die-mon!" Tom shouted.
...just so long as she didn't overdo it and end up making puns like that.
Anyway. She had an ability called "cutting words" now, but it cost more mana than she had. Was there a way to make it cost less?
Class Ability Empower Follower
Cool. She had a bunch of different theories on what that could mean, and she decided to ignore all of them.
'Do the Thing!' she willed at FEI.
For a second, nothing happened, and she was worried that she might have been too vague.
But then her body seemed to erupt with energy, as dozens of clearly magical tendrils of light and wind swirled around her, before launching themselves at Tom.
She had no idea what that was, but her experience with videogames had taught her that this level of animation and special effects was usually reserved for very powerful abilities.
As the magic reached Tom, it enveloped him and lifted him into the air. He started glowing, as his body seemed to absorb the energy over the course of several seconds.
"Sweet! Feels like a powerup! Thanks, Mia!" Tom shouted.
Unfortunately, the Demon Lord did not seem to care about dramatic timing and took the opportunity to strike at Tom while he was distracted.
Oversized flaming axe met oversized flaming sword once again, but this time the axe proved stronger. Tom's sword broke in two halves, and the human ducked just in time to avoid being decapitated.
The Demon Lord grinned maliciously at this victory, but Tom did not hesitate for a second: He jumped backwards to put some distance between them, and then he punched the ground below him.
A perfectly cubical section of ground instantly disintegrated, and in its place appeared another sword, though this one was smaller and notably not on fire.
"I'm not done yet." Tom said, "I hope you're ready for a sword sandwich - with extra pain!"
The Demon Lord howled, and his health dropped by a small but noticeable amount.
Then Tom punched the ground a second time, to create a second sword in the same way.
Dual-wielding. It was called dual-wielding. Not 'sword sandwich'.
Mia took a deep breath. Let the cringe flow through you and pass without drama. As it enters through one ear, so it shall leave through the other. The cringe can not harm you if you do not acknowledge it.
She had come up with that mantra on the spot. It wasn't a very good mantra, and she resolved to work on it. Her future sanity depended on it.
"But wait, there is more!" Tom declared as he calmly walked up to the edge of the Demon Lord's fire aura.
The Demon Lord had ample time to attack, but appeared to be too stunned by what he was seeing and hearing to react.
No. That wasn't it. He was literally stunned by the stupidity of what Tom was doing and saying!
Tom punched the fire aura, setting his fists on fire. Then he punched his swords with his burning fists. And suddenly the swords were on fire, and burning on their own.
Tom smiled roguishly as he pointed one of his swords at the Demon Lord: "Your time in hell is about to get cut short!"
Oh for fuck's sake. They weren't in hell. They were on planet Mammontum, in the Facinus Sector. Would it kill him to at least make his one-liners factually accurate?
The monster howled in pain, and charged at Tom.
He swung his axe wildly, and Tom easily dodged it.
He spent the next few seconds dodging the Demon Lord's attacks with a speed and grace that belied his muscular frame. Whenever the monster tried to stab him, he would roll out of the way. And whenever the Demon Lord grew frustrated and took a larger swing, Tom used the opportunity to get a few hits in with his swords, before he resumed dodging.
It reminded Mia of the videogame "Grey Hearts", known for its extremely difficult and unforgiving boss fights. An entire genre of similarly difficult games had cropped up in its wake. She knew all about it, because she kept dying in its tutorial, while Kate did competitions and challenge runs.
"My attacks are still doing no damage!" Tom shouted. "I thought for sure that buff of yours would help!"
"Watch out!" Mia responded.
Tom had gotten distracted!
She watched in horror as the Demon Lord swung his axe horizontally, with Tom between himself and a wall. There was no way for him to dodge.
But Tom simply rolled to the side as before, and Mia watched in disbelief as he simply passed through the axe without harm.
"Don't worry! I have iframes while dodging!"
Oh. That made sense. Just like in the games, performing a dodge triggered 'invulnerability frames'. It made no sense, but it was easier to program than a physics-accurate collision model, and easier for players to learn. Apparently, that mattered to the Faith Engines as well.
It looked like Mia still had a lot to learn about FEI bullshit.
The Demon Lord looked at Tom in disbelief. Then he looked at his axe as if it was defective. He experimentally swung the axe at a wall, instantly destroying it. Seemingly satisfied with the result, he shrugged and continued trying to hit Tom.
Tom, for his part, spent the next half minute or so rolling around the demon. He was hit multiple times during an iframe, but it seemed that the demon hadn't caught on to the particular way in which Tom was giving physics the finger, and didn't realize he would have to adjust the timing of his axe swings.
It looked absolutely ridiculous, but as the Turtolian saying went, "if it's stupid, but it works, then it isn't stupid."
"You're about to learn why they call me Sir Pain-a-lot!"
Your cringe resistance has increased to level 2.
Mia really hoped he just made that up and nobody actually called him that. She would lose a lot of respect for humanity if they did.
The Demon Lord recoiled from the awful insult. It was now missing a significant chunk of its health.
"It's working! Keep insulting him, Tom! Nyaa!"
"I thought you weren't a fan of my one-liners?" He responded.
She bit her tongue and refrained from answering. She really, really wasn't a fan, but she did not want to say so. Her heart would break if she made him look like a sad baby-ape again. It was just too cute!
Luckily he seemed to take her lack of response as encouragement as he started committing an escalating series of crimes against linguistics and common sense:
"I’ll be your tour guide to the underworld, one sword thrust at a time!"
Your cringe resistance has increased to level 3.
The Demon Lord recoiled, and Tom took another step towards it. Mia instructed FEI to stop notifying her about cringe resistance. She was fully aware of it, and it was just too depressing.
"This is one fight you won't reign over!"
The Demon Lord started bleeding from his nose. His health bar was almost entirely depleted.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
"No." He said weakly, his previously thundering voice replaced by a pathetic rasp. "Not like this!"
"Prepare to be smote... or is it smitten? Smited? Whatever, you're in trouble!"
The giant monster vomitted up blood and dropped to his knees. With his last breath he said: "I never even got to introduce myself."
"Prepare to meet your maker... and apologize for how you turned out!"
The Demon Lord's health bar reached zero, and he lay still. He looked oddly peaceful as he disintegrated into nothing. Mia imagined that must be because he was no longer able to hear anything, now that he was dead.
Tutorial Quest completed: Defeat the Demon Lord
Level up: Nekomancer has reached level 93.
Achievement unlocked: We have won, but at what cost? You killed a powerful enemy via cringe-induced psychic damage! Was it worth it?
Wow, she gained 92 levels from that! Not bad for a tutorial quest!
"We did it! Nyaa!" She shouted happily.
She wanted to run up to Tom and give him a hug. Unfortunately, the human was busy standing dramatically on top of the Demon Lord's corpse as it dissolved. He had his flaming swords raised high and smiled handsomely as he looked into the sunset. He looked like he was posing for pictures, and for all Mia knew, that was probably exactly what he was doing. It was just as well that he was distracted. He probably would not appreciate getting spontaneously hugged by a woman whose life he saved. That would border on sexual harassment.
Mia was just so happy that she survived all the one-liners and puns. And that she survived the Demon Lord, too.
"We killed a Demon Lord! I couldn't have done it without your help." Tom praised her. "You are a natural at this!"
Mia was embarrassed" "Thank you! But I don't think I deserve much credit here. I spent a lot of time frozen, or just watching without knowing what to do."
Watching Tom, specifically. But he didn't need to know that.
"There is no reason to be modest. You were in a fight to the death with a horrible monster, for the first time in your life. That you were able to help at all is impressive!"
Mia blushed. She was so happy for the praise. It was so rare for men to praise and compliment women, because many women misinterpreted that as flirting. Luckily Mia was aware of this common misconception, and was not going to embarrass herself, or make Tom uncomfortable, by assuming romantic intent when he was just trying to be nice.
"Thank you! I got a lot of XP when you killed the Demon Lord. I'm level 93 now! I wonder what I can do now? Nyaa!"
"That's awesome! Getting XP means getting more subscribers, and more donations. You must have done something that makes you very popular."
"Wait. Then why did I get the XP right after killing the Demon Lord? Shouldn't I instead get XP trickling in over time? With random and unpredictable jumps when I get more subscribers?"
"Well, yes, and no. That would be logical, but not very satisfying. So FEI runs predictive analytics and gives you the XP when it is more dramatic and appropriate, instead. Now, in theory, it could happen that the system gets this wrong and gives you a reward it can't back up later, but this has never happened to me before. The designers made sure to make such immersion breaking very unlikely. Don't think about it too hard."
"Got it. Not thinking about things seems to work much better than overthinking things! Nyaa!"
"Exactly! I barely ever think about anything at all, and look how well that works for me!"
Tom seemed oddly proud of that fact as he smiled brightly at her. She found herself agreeing with him. She couldn't help it, his smile was infectious.
He was an idiot, but he was a well-meaning and nice idiot, who freed her from slavery without asking anything in return. Besides, he might be lacking in raw brainpower, but he was clearly experienced and knew what he was doing, while Mia was fumbling around in the dark.
"Are 93 levels a lot?" Mia asked. It certainly sounded like a lot, but she had no idea how power scaling worked in real life. Or in what passed for real life for her, at this point.
"Yes, that's actually pretty high!" Tom responded. "Most celebrities go years without reaching that level! I got a surprisingly large amount of experience, too. I won't tell you my level though."
"...because it works better that way?" Mia ventured.
"Exactly! You are quick on the uptake!
"I checked my Subscriber Analytics to find out what's going on. That's an advanced feature by the way, and I would not recommend that you use it. It turns out that both of us have failed to notice something that our viewers think is funny, just like Lilian said. I have no clue what it is, but I hope we can both stay ignorant for longer."
"What, why?" Mia asked. She suspected she already knew the answer, but the idea of deliberate ignorance was just so alien to her, she needed to hear it spoken out loud.
"Well, we get more subscribers that way, and more subscribers means more power. Besides, in my experience it's much more satisfying to figure such things out on your own than to be told about it. I bet we will both have a good laugh once we do, but I hope that will take a while, so we can get more popular in the meantime.
"One day I'm going to make myself a new avatar with a more normal level of intelligence, and at that point I bet I will look back on all of this and it will be so funny to notice all the mistakes I'm making right now. I have done that before, and it's hilarious, every time. It's kind of like watching videos of yourself in childhood."
Mia did not know how to respond to that. It really drove home how alien the humans were.
"If all of my power comes from subscribers, does that mean that I have a lot of humans watching me right now? Can I talk to them?" She asked.
"You can, but it's not a good idea to talk to them directly. There are a lot of them, and picking the right person to respond to is really difficult. And what if they accidentally spoil whatever it is that we don't realize? It would ruin the fun! What I do instead is that I have FEI give me a summary of the most popular opinions among my subscribers. But you can worry about that later, it's not urgent."
Mia nodded. He was right, of course. The immediate danger was over, but they were still in a terrible situation. Tom had made an enemy of pretty much the entire Malumian race by breaking their banking system, and the government knew Mia's identity.
Still, now that she had been reminded of it, it was difficult not to get distracted by the fact that she had legions of godlike psychic aliens watching her every move and granting her powers on a whim, based on how entertaining she was.
Fortunately, she knew an old trick to fight down her nervousness when dealing with crowds: She would simply imagine them all naked.
So Mia went ahead and pictured an army of naked psychic aliens watching her. But then she remembered that they were humans! They were all hot! That just made it so much worse!
"Hey, Mia, are you ok? Your face suddenly turned all red."
She let out an embarrassed squeak.
"By the way," Tom added, "before I forget: This all happened in a hurry, so you didn't go through the tutorial. You might want to adjust your privacy filters. Celebrity accounts by default allow your subscribers to read surface thoughts. That makes it much easier to comment and let your audience know what you are doing, but you are new to this, and you don't know how to let the system know what thoughts you want to keep private. It takes some calibration. Until you get the hang of it, you should probably turn it off."
...
Mia wanted to sink into the ground and die.
But the tiny part of her brain that was not currently screaming in a panic still managed to think rationally, and FEI responded to it.
[Privacy mode stage three enabled. Your subscribers can no longer read your thoughts.]
Mia decided she would simply pretend this never happened. The alternative was a mental breakdown, and she couldn't afford that right now.
"Anyway, can you explain what you did during the fight?" Tom asked.
He smiled widely, and was clearly happy with himself: "Why were my insults suddenly so awesome?"
She was about to reply that she didn't know what her buff did because she didn't read the description, when she remembered that she could just ask for details right now. At her mental prompting, FEI instantly displayed a description that went on for pages upon pages. Mia was unsurprised: Of course an ability with as much cultural and religious significance as "Cutting Words" would take a while to explain. Was there a way to condense this?
At that thought, the message shortened itself and became much more readable:
TLDR: [Empower Follower] buffs an ally and gives them a specialization. Using [Cutting Words] as the specialization improves rhetorical skills and makes people and natural laws more likely to believe you. This wasn't really intended to weaponize insults, but you do you.
...it made the natural laws more likely to believe you. Faith Engines were such bullshit. But they were bullshit that was working in her favor, so she was not going to be mad about it.
And did the interface just sass her? It "wasn't really intended to weaponize insults, but you do you". Did that mean that it just worked by coincidence?
She read the message aloud to Tom and asked about it.
"Oh damn. So my insults weren't more awesome, they just got a buff. Damn. I really thought I had hit my stride there."
He looked very disappointed and slumped his shoulders before he continued: "The sass means that you made the Faith Engines do extra work. It's not good if that happens too often, but it's fine as long as it's just once in a while and you don't do it on purpose. They notice when you do it on purpose."
"Does that mean that this was a one-time thing and we can't use it to buff your insults again in the future, nyaa?"
She didn't know how she should feel about that. On the one hand, it would be awful if she immediately lost this powerful ability. But on the other hand, if it meant that she wouldn't have to listen to as many one-liners in the future, she felt like she could probably make peace with that.
"No, it's fine. Now that I have used this ability so often, we have established a precedent and carved a groove into reality. Unless FEI says otherwise by showing a higher mana cost, it should be fine."
She immediately tried to check the mana cost on Empower Follower. Instead of giving her a number, FEI gave a more thorough description:
[Empower Follower] is a limited-use class ability without a mana cost. You gain one additional use per 50 levels. Uses remaining: 1.
Mia's heart dropped.
It was a build-defining, limited-use ability!
Those were the absolute most important decision points when optimizing your build! And she had just used it to help Tom get even better at inflicting brain damage with his one-liners!
She took a deep breath and reflected on what she had learned about FEI so far: Overthinking it didn’t work. Winging it did work, but also backfired. There was probably some sort of sane, optimal middle ground. She just had to find it.
She explained about her “Empower Follower” ability to Tom, and asked some more questions: "Why did that work so well anyway? Your swords barely scratched it, but you killed it with just a few taunts. Is my 'Empower Follower' really that strong?"
Tom looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. "Probably not. It was mostly luck, I'm afraid: FEI tells me it is because my jokes deal psychic damage, and Cutting Words nullifies resistances. Psychic damage usually does a lot of damage but is heavily resisted, so the end result is much stronger than normal."
"Why is psychic damage normally strong but heavily resisted?" Mia asked.
"It doesn't take much force to destroy a neuron in the brain, but the damage is catastrophic."
"Huh. That is much more logical than I have come to expect from Faith Engines, nyaa."
Tom shook his head. "The designers of FEI take pride in internal consistency like that. You don't get to develop a System that gets deployed in the physical world unless you are really good at game design. Baseliners like me call FEI magical and mysterious, because to us it is. But it's actually quite logical and well designed. It's just often beyond our comprehension, that's all."
Just beyond their comprehension, and not actually random. Well, that was good to know, if somewhat concerning.
A look of realization suddenly crossed Tom's face as he looked down at his body and noticed that all of his clothes had burned away during the fight. Only his oddly fire-resistant underpants had survived.
Their eyes met. Both of them yelled "Sorry!" at the same time. Mia put her hands over her eyes. She had been caught staring! Oh, the embarrassment!
She wasn't sure what Tom was sorry for, though.
But before she could think about this, her thoughts were derailed when she witnessed Tom do strange things to the laws of physics again: He walked up to a large piece of metal detritus left over from the fight, presumably the remains of a traffic light, and started beating it with his fists.
After a few seconds, his punches somehow reshaped it into metal armor. He put on the armor without comment, then punched it some more while he was wearing it.
Shortly afterwards, he stood before her wearing pristine metal armor that made him look like a magical knight out of legend.
"I have numerous questions." Mia began. "But I think all of those can wait, nyaa. I should contact my family and explain the situation."
Then she pulled out her phone and did just that, calling the landline of the compound where most of her friends and family lived.
"Hi Mia, what's up, nyaa?" Her girlfriend Kate answered.
Mia was careful to keep a calm voice: "Something happened. I need you to..."
Unfortunately, Kate immediately interrupted her: "...hold on. Someone is at the door."
That was just the worst timing! But Mia knew what she was doing. It was very important to keep calm right now and continue talking as if nothing was wrong.
But Tom shouted over Mia's shoulder, in a raised and clearly agitated voice: "Don't open the door! It's a trap!"
"Call disconnected." Her phone immediately responded.
"Oh no! You broke it!" She accused Tom, starting to panic. “Why did you have to do that?”
"I broke it? How? What did I do wrong?" He asked, sounding genuinely confused.
"Oh. Right. You are new to this planet. You didn't know, nyaa." She responded. Her anger dissipated as she realized that he wasn't even aware of what he did wrong.
"When you raised your voice, the phone recognized that this call is important for us and automatically raised the price."
"What?" Tom replied dumbly.
"This is a Malumian network company. They take their capitalism very seriously. Fortunately, I made a good chunk of money earlier today, when you ordered an aurumaximum cocktail for everyone, and the barkeep let me keep the money instead. The money is really not important right now, so I will just agree to their extortion and then call again."
She tried to do just that, but oddly enough she did not have enough money despite the windfall from selling that overpriced cocktail: "That's odd. The price is too high. I can't afford this."
"I'm sorry. I can't help, all my fairy gold has already turned to zeros and I will need some time to summon more." Tom responded.
"No, you don't understand. This isn't normal. Malumian capitalism is exploitative, not stupid. They can't make any profit at all if I'm unable to afford the fee. It should be low enough that a truly desperate person can still afford it. Something else is going on here."
They exchanged a knowing look.
"We need to hurry." She said as she started running. Tom followed close behind her.
--- Myr ---
Far away, one instance of the Myr Collective, a not-quite-hivemind and close-enough-to-human to talk to, finished watching Mia's stream.
Wow. These two were dense. How did they not notice each others' attraction?
No, seriously. How?
It seemed statistically unlikely.
That was usually a sign of unauthorized reality warping. Although why anyone would risk that just to mess with a random baseliner was beyond him. It was worth investigating more deeply.
He was going to run some models to quantify exactly how dense these two were.