Chapter Two - Second Death
When I finally opened my eyes the landscape was different. A decent amount of the grass was gone, hard packed dirt taking its place. Two small—you wouldn't believe the color—blue-green tents finding their place in the clearing. It didn’t take long before I got the will to stand; I couldn’t waste seconds when I only had so many left.
The first tent, under the shade of the tree, had a small bedroll and lantern within. I almost laughed at the sight, sleep a forgone sacrifice I already knew I'd have to give up. I didn’t stay long before checking out the second tent.
It was empty. Beyond another small lantern, it was completely and utterly baren. I did laugh this time, half in delirium and half at the absurdity. That was my so-called ‘Burgeoning Workshop?’ In the same way an island could be called a ‘Burgeoning Continent,’ I guessed.
I left quickly, going back to the other tent and taking a seat on my bedroll.
The interface was not going to make this easy for me. Virtually nothing is different from this run as the last. I died for two empty tents? What a waste. I clutched my own wrist, gritting my teeth as my mind decided to replay my demise again. I sincerely doubted I’d seen even half of what the Shade could do, and something about the liminal nature of the space the interface shoved me into gave me the feeling my second death would likely end the exact same way.
I couldn’t fight it. I couldn’t even be in the presence of the Shade. But… I needed to die again. Get more information. I needed to die enough times that the interface would start giving me tangible rewards or something I could start putting my effort into to overcome this god damned trial.
I got out of the tent, tracing my hand across the rivulets in the tree while walking in the opposite direction from last time, silently praying I would at least see a hill or something on the way.
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I managed, eventually, to open up the forum post. It took a bit, but eventually calling out “Forum Page: Trials” worked.
I didn’t enjoy what I saw.
[If you’re reading this, your species has been brought under the wings of the interface.
It’s probably already told you this, but congratulations! Trials are, for the vast majority of people, a harrowing experience. After this point, randomly during {pre-pubescence} of your children, and your children's children, they too will have to undergo a trial like the one you yourself are fighting through. The actual age varies greatly, but I've never seen anyone over {fourteen years of age} have their trial. The youngest, conversely, was only {five years of age}.
There is a lot wrong with the interface. Forcing children into death-defying situations—the vast majority of which will die—is number one on the list. Well, it's probably number two. A terrible side effect of the integration process is that the interface throws everyone into a trial. Everyone, including your species' {infants} and {children less than age three}. If you're a parent going through the trial, I'm sorry...]
I nearly puked. Babies were going through this? Trapped alone in this hellscape—or one even worse than this—for five days? I had a niece, who wasn't even eight, and the interface couldn't have let her sit at home, eat pizza rolls, and play video games while we took the brunt of the damage. I would have to go to my brother's house after the trial.
On top of that, there was clearly some kind of translation issue happening with the interface. The words almost seemed to shift, but some of them never completely settled. Infants had to be an equivalent, and for some reason 'children less than age three' didn't translate over as toddlers. My stomach rolled again.
I didn't stop reading.
[It’s terrible, but the interface deems it necessary. It won’t tell anyone what it’s necessary for, but it tries its best to emphasize the fact. I imagine that you’re not going to hold any sympathy for it, but you can’t get rid of it now.
Now- back on topic, what is a trial?
It’s the interface way of trying to keep your soul alive. Children are not capable of accessing the interface until their trial, and once inside of a trial, the {120 hour} countdown is the amount of time you have until your soul explodes. It can’t handle the radicalized changes brought on by the interface, and going through the necessary steps—and there are steps—is the only way to properly reinforce your soul. Alternatively, you can't just stay in the trial, as that too leads to your unfortunate death. This time, implosion style, because the space only exists for the {120 hour} limit.
Of course, we don’t actually know this beyond the tools we’ve made through the crafting, research, and scouting skills the interface has given. So, it could just be lying to us.
Now, steps. I mentioned those. Your trial only gave you one goal, more likely than not, but there are more steps to it than that. After you get through the first roadblock, whether it be a monster, raid, or crafting challenge, the interface will be a lot more direct in what your next task is. You could have, depending on your soul, as many as six, or just one. Normally, having one task correlates to a different kind of objective, but that's between you and the interface.
More than that, you need to-]
The pressure was back, and sure enough, looking away from the screen revealed the Shade, significantly closer this time. Granted, previously I was actively looking for something on the horizon.
I kept walking, trying to ignore the claustrophobic sensation that slowly filled my gut. I raised a fist, refusing to just fall down to my knees. Bare minimum, I would at least throw a punch before it killed me.
It got closer, and my feet began to wobble. I kept walking. I raised my fist back, and punch-
The Shade grabbed my hand, gently. The determination on my face fell away in an instant, and I looked up to it. The Shade seemed so much larger this close, it’s chest wide and non-moving, its breastplate reflecting some invisible light into my eyes. The stench of rust and decay practically filled my nostrils, but I didn’t get to process that before the Shade yanked me and pulled me into… an embrace?
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It’s armored limbs wrapped around my chest, almost tender.
“I can’t take it easy on you this time. Come back soon, hero.” It breathed down on my neck, no real solidity in its hold because of its limp arms.
I thought it would crush me. Break my spine as I tried to fight against the pressure it’s presence brought. I was wrong. Some kind of… sickness seeped into my bones. From every point of contact, I felt my skin shrivel up and crack. The tee-shirt the interface left me in did not hide the decay that forced itself into my body, and I let out a horrible scream as I felt myself begin to rot. It smelled horrible. I smelled my own death.
I could not tell you how long it took, but the Shade seemed to whisper into my ear words that didn’t exist and meant nothing. The sound was different from how it talked previously, almost like when it talked before it wasn’t using its vocal cords, and this time, whilst in my own death throes, it used whatever garbled mess resided in its throat.
I tried to wrangle free of its grasp, bashing my head against its breastplate in spite of the invisible anvil on my spine, threatening to make it buck and bend. The Shade’s eyes widened in surprise, and the weird elongated snout it had smiled in a crude imitation of human form. I stopped screaming after that. Either out of fear at the beast that was delighted at my suffering, or because the rot had begun to seep into my chest. Soon enough, it didn’t matter, and my vision blurred and my eyes closed.
I didn’t even notice my faceless body hidden in the grass that time.
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I woke up screaming, wrapping my arms around myself and shaking violently. Somehow, the stench stuck with me; the scent of my skin and bone turning brown and crumbling as it was forcefully mummified. I cried, hard. I’d manage to hold it in by and large after the first one, but the most recent one was drastically worse. A person is broken when they wish that their head was simply chopped off instead of having to watch and live through their body decay, while having experiences for both.
The tears were so warm, lava running from my eyes and down my cheeks. My throat felt dry, like I could still feel the rot that danced around and inside of my esophagus. Rocking by the side of the tree, the interface caused me to jolt, quickly wiping at my tears–somehow embarrassed that the soulless screen saw me breakdown–before reading whatever it had to ‘reward’ me with this time.
[Congratulations!
You died once again to a {Hero’s Shade}!
For your second death, you have received the following rewards:
* Workshop upgrade
* Unlocked Skill_Path_04!
* Neophyte’s knowledge - The Basics of Cybernetics
* “Skill Paths” Forum Page
Enjoy!
Time Remaining 113:12:51]
Overstimulation would have been the understatement of the century, and my to-do list had gotten larger and larger. Two to three more sways back and forth later, and then I finally stood, scratching at my back. I decided, before anything, to finish reading the two forum posts, leaning against the tree a bit redundantly.
“Forum Page: Trials.” There was hardly anything left to read.
[...fight. This trial will wear you down, but you can not stop. There will be {children} who come out of this, and you will have to be one of the people to rebuild society. Keep climbing. We’ll come to help as soon as you all are out.]
I sighed, rubbing at my brow with barely hidden contempt. I thought of my niece again. This entire situation was… fucked, for lack of a better word. I could throw around big words while I died, but in the face of child death my vocabulary failed me.
There was a lot to process, but the real intricacies escaped me. Whoever wrote this was not, at least completely, underneath the supervision of the interface. A lot of people weren’t going to make it through the trials, but I couldn’t even guess at the percentage. Fifty percent success rate? Twenty? Ten? Lower.
I also had a soul, apparently. Spirituality was a novel concept before this I mostly entertained because my family delved so heavily into, and I’m sure my mom would… my mom.
I dropped the thought.
The last sentence however, brought some confusion, and a marginal amount of fear. The interface did this to other species, planets, and they would come to help? Or was it a specific organization made to help rebuild after integration? Likely the latter, but either way, aliens existed. That was cool, I could admit even after dying twice. My stomach tightened at the reminder, but there was a bit of childish joy at the thought of actual aliens coming to Earth.
The next forum post was significantly less enlightening. “Forum Page: Skill Paths.”
[You got a skill path, congratulations!
Couple things you’ll immediately notice. It doesn’t have a name beyond Skill_Path_X. That’s because you don’t know it yet. Skill paths are your main method of progression, and you only get one of them.
That’s all information that’s relevant later though. Right now, you need to develop it. The interface would have given you an item, or some kind of knowledge packet that you need to read or use as soon as possible. Do not put this off.
A couple of warnings about skill paths.
First, they’re jobs that become your life. If your path relates to combat, it will keep you alive for hours on end while you fight. If it’s crafting, it’ll keep you going without sleep for days while you craft. And you will have to fight in order to craft. The tumultuous nature of post-integration civilizations requires you to build up a basis of security. And even after, you can’t stop.
But right now, start working with what the interface gave you. ]
I hated how the forum posts always seemed to leave me with even more questions. And that was another conniption I would have to theorize on later–the use of the word ‘forum’ instead of something like ‘magical tutorial’ or some other interface-y flowery language and label. The same thing that has something called ‘Neophyte’s Knowledge’ also has 4chan; who would have known.
I snorted and shot another baleful glance at what was quickly becoming my least favorite color. Now that I was thinking of it, the ‘Neophyte’s Knowledge’ thing was likely what the post was talking about. I decided to head to see what ‘workshop upgrades’ there were before theorizing on what the interface wanted me to do with cybernetics.
Sure enough, inside the once empty tent, was something halfway between an operating room and… a 3d printer?
The inside of the roughly average sized tent was expanded on the inside drastically–which took my breath away at such an overt and awesome showing of magic or whatever the interface called it–with two main areas inside. In a corner of the tent–workshop from then on–was an operating table, with a vinyl, smooth, floor. No tools were actually present, but every single thing almost seemed to shine in… fluorescent light. There were fluorescent light panels only in that area, inside of a tent. Great.
There was a weird seam between the vinyl and the rest of the workshop’s wooden tile. And, in the opposite corner of the operating table, was a rack of steel, a strange circular tube the size of a dining table nailed to the ground, and a desk.
On that desk was a book–or a tome really.
‘The Basics of Cybernetics - Juno Hall’