Lightforge woke up back in his underground lab, and it felt like someone had unleashed the seven dwarves on the inside of his skull with promises of unimaginable wealth so long as they swung their picks with sufficient gusto. And boy oh boy, were they delivering. The pain was so bad that he didn’t want to get up, but it was also so distracting that there was little hope of falling back asleep.
It felt like one of the nastier hangovers that he’d ever had. It didn’t help that his “bed” was a few blankets sitting on top of the hard lab floor. His throbbing head didn’t even have the courtesy to give him that odd giddy sensation that had made the asphalt so comfortable not so long ago. It was all just pain and frustration.
He dragged himself to his feet and looked around his lab. He was back inside it, which was probably a good sign? Well, that was assuming that what he’d experienced was actually real. Given his splitting headache, it seemed entirely possible that he’d drunken himself into a stupor and had a particularly vivid dream. He pulled up his status to take a look.
Name: Lightforge
Alignment: Hero
Level: 14
Powerset 1: Hard Light Construct
Powerset 2: Gadgeteer
Stats:
Health Points (HP): 814/814
Ability Points (AP): 823/823
Strength: 24
Agility: 18
Intelligence: 30
Aura: 28
There it was. Level 14, just like it had been yesterday. Two levels in a day, and without even doing anything. All he’d done was, somehow, turn the mission system back on. It made perfect sense; after all, the early game was made to incentivize players to keep playing by rewarding them with a lot of levels right off the bat.
Under those circumstances, hitting level 14 like him would be a matter of a day or two. Truly dedicated players with thorough knowledge of the system could hit level 20 in a single day. He’d almost forgotten that his realm of power was supposed to be the quick and easy part of the game, not an unending hell.
That reminder of the previous day made him stand a little straighter, headache momentarily forgotten. Where was the reactor? One way or another, that had to be the source of what had happened. More than anything else, he needed to understand what it had done and how. If he could reproduce the effect then he could literally change the world.
The lab was dark, which was a bad sign. He conjured glowing tools into the air around him to provide a faint light to see by. It wasn’t much, but he was able to walk around without tripping over anything, so that would have to be enough.
He carefully made his way through the lab, checking for a light switch or the reactor. He didn’t much care which one he found, he just wanted to find one of them. In the area where the reactor had been he expected to find a mess of shattered remains that might have something useful mixed into it. Instead he found an oddly clean and smooth section of floor where the large device had once sat.
In its place was a single object that sat in the middle of the space. It was vaguely round but covered in flat surfaces that would prevent it from rolling around on the ground. Those surfaces were irregular, no two quite the same size or shape. It had no seams or other decoration, appearing completely featureless aside from its many faces. It was a little larger than his head.
He bent down to pick it up, only to grunt and adjust his stance as it proved to be much heavier than it looked. He heaved it up with both hands and inspected it.
Name: Restoration Field Emitter (Compressed)
Type: System Access Manipulator
Quality: Unique
This item has been reduced in size by the effect of “Compressed Technology”
* Current Compression: 55%
Effect:
* Restore an area to a previous state
* Reset all missions, NPCs, and Events in the affected area
* Players will not be reset
* Nothing can enter or leave the field while it is in effect
* Field Size: 200m Radius
* Field Duration: 3 hours
* Cooldown Time: 72 hours (66 hours remaining)
He whistled softly to himself and stared at the description in front of him. Apparently it wasn’t just a one-off event; he’d somehow made an item that could create whole sections of the city where people would level up like normal.
It was, without doubt, the single most valuable item that he had ever made. It was likely to be the most valuable item that he would ever make. This was the sort of thing that would change the world.
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It would also paint a truly enormous target on his back. He carefully reached out to place it in his inventory, only to receive a disheartening message.
This item type (System Access Manipulator) cannot be placed into an inventory or other types of extra dimensional spaces such as hidden bases.
Well, that was bad. He was going to need help.
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Some time later, there was an explosion from the roof of Lightforge’s hidden lab. He was forced to shield his eyes as sunlight shone down through the hole where the door had once been. Since he’d welded it shut, he’d needed a little help to get back out with his newest creation. But first he needed a nice breath of fresh air.
When his friends came down the ladder, they found him coughing and hacking from the thick smoke and debris that had been forced down on top of him by the blast. Sunbird smacked him hard on the back and he eventually settled back down.
As he was recovering himself, Gray Guardian was explaining to Sunbird and Cannoneer what they’d been through the day before. Circe had skipped that and was standing beside Lightforge, eyes glued to the odd object in his hands.
As the healer finished their explanation, Cannoneer was the first to speak up.
“Do you know what happened to you? Or if it’s possible to do it again?”
Lightforge nodded shallowly and gestured with the object that he had refused to put down since first picking it up.
“This. I’m not completely sure how, but I made an item that can produce spaces like that.”
“Wow, really? Can you show us?”
“Unfortunately, no. It has a 72 hour cooldown. And even then, it only lasts for three hours.”
They all stood in silence for a few moments, digesting the information that they’d just heard. The implications hit them in waves, and it was Sunbird who reacted first.
“Why are you just carrying it around, dumba-[BLEEP]! Put it away!”
“I can’t. It can’t be placed in inventories or secret bases. It has to be out in the open.”
“Oh, so it’s a macguffin?”
“A what?”
“It’s the item that everyone wants. The special cup, hidden gemstone, or super powerful wand that drives people nuts trying to get it before anyone else. It exists for people to fight over it.”
“Uh… yeah, I guess it is. It’s always subject to theft, so we have to be careful with it. And part of that is putting it somewhere safe.”
“Easier said than done,” Circe said, “Everyone in this world is going to come hunting for that if word gets out about it. The only real protection we have for it is to keep it secret.”
“That’s not feasible,” Cannoneer retorted, “No secret is perfect. Sooner or later someone is going to find out. Our choice is either to hide and wait for that to happen, or to make use of it and be as strong as possible once it does come out.”
“Even with this thing, it would take way too long to catch up to the high-level threats in this world. You’ve seen them, Lightforge. How strong were they?”
“In the 60s. I have no idea how long it would take to get that strong.”
They all took a moment to consider the heights that they would have to reach and the amount of effort that would go into getting them there. But after only a few moments, Sunbird spoke up. Her voice was oddly clipped and her eyes distant as if pulling on distant memories.
“The level-up record is 18 hours of game time to hit level 100, but that was a legacy character with a ton of specialty XP items. It was also during an expansion release event where they accidentally doubled all XP gains for a few hours. We don’t have those advantages, but we also don’t need to hit the cap. If I remember right, that guy hit 50 around 8 hours in. My best guess is that we would need around 24 hours to hit level 60 under ideal conditions. Since we don’t have those, call it 30 hours instead.”
Everyone stopped and stared at Sunbird. She didn’t notice, still staring at something far away. Her eyes were flicking back and forth as if she were running and re-running the calculations in her head.
After a few more seconds she seemed to realize that no one had responded and snapped out of her stupor. She looked around at the others blankly as they all stared at her. She made a big show of looking herself up and down.
“What, is there a spider on me or something?”
Lightforge shook his head and said, “No, but how the hell do you know all that?”
She shrugged, “I played this game a lot. I know a few things.”
“No,” Circe said, “I played this game a lot, and I know quite a bit about the game world and strategies, that sort of thing. That’s not the sort of detail that you just pick up along the way.”
Sunbird was now fidgeting a bit. “Ok,” she said, “Maybe I played an unhealthy amount of this game. The point is that at 3 hours every 3 days, we need to keep this secret for about a month to catch up with the top hitters of the world.”
“Oh,” Circe said, her eyes going wide, “That’s actually a lot less than I would have thought. Are you sure?”
“More or less. But if we decide to try it then there’s no way we’ll make it in time. People will notice us shooting up in levels and start putting pieces together before we get that far.”
“Unless we hide,” Gray Guardian said, “People vanish around here all the time. Some cave to the pressure and hide, and others… the point is that who would even notice if we just stayed here underground for the next month?”
Cannoneer shifted uncomfortably and said, “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know at least a few people who would definitely notice if I went missing for that long.”
“Babe,” Sunbird said, “I’m here already. Who else is paying that close attention to you?”
A silent conversation passed between the two as the others looked on. It gave off the feeling of an old argument going through yet another round. The couple was left to their bickering as the others went back to the topic at hand. Circe was shaking her head.
“Unfortunately,” she said, “I’m afraid that the same bad news can be said for me. I’ve inserted myself into enough dealings that my absence would be noticed.”
“It’s not ideal,” Lightforge said, “but we could act in stages. If three of us can get to high enough levels, we might be strong enough to protect the two of you while you catch up.”
“I don’t love that idea, but I don’t think there are any perfect solutions to be found. I say do it.”
“Wait, do what?”
Sunbird and Cannoneer had come out of their unspoken argument and were brought back into the conversation. As Circe had said, there were no perfect solutions, and no one was completely comfortable with the outcome that they had come to.
But when all was said and done, Circe and Cannoneer slipped away from the underground lab before Lightforge sealed the remaining three inside to get to work. They had a lot of work ahead of them.