I ended up telling Leandry pretty much everything that had happened to me since the moment I woke up in this world. Despite her prickly nature, she proved to be a good listener, and I relished the opportunity to vent to someone who had her own reasons for not being happy with the game. Femme, for all her willingness to help, was still very much a fan of IF.

In the end she’d looked pensative, then asked me for the Big Bad wolf’s canines. “Alright, so, a couple things about your character,” she said, “as a mage type you would never have gotten knife dual wielding, but since you started out using a knife rather than some attack spell, I can see why it works for you. It helps that your starting stats were that of an amazon, I suppose, but as you level, your intelligence and wisdom will soon be higher than your other stats, which means you’ll need to make some changes.”

I nod, reminded of Femme’s lectures on game mechanics, I recognize that Leandry probably has an even deeper understanding of this game’s system, being almost twice the level of Femme’s main character. I’d just explained that I was thinking of using two knives to fight, and how my one spell worked, hoping she’d make me a second knife suited for my unique mix of melee and magic.

“The problem is that, for magic bonuses, only the primary, or right hand weapon counts, which means, a second knife won’t actually make your magic stronger.” Leandry informed.

I frowned, well shit, that kind of defeated the point. No wonder Femme hadn’t told me anything about dualweilding or given me a second knife, it wasn’t going to be as cool as I thought it would be. The bonuses wouldn’t stack. Damn it, I’d wasted a lot of skill points, I thought to myself.

“Lucky for you, you came to the only person in this game who can help with that problem.” Leandry said with a smug look.

I perked up, “Yeah?” I asked, surprised. How could she change the game’s mechanics?

Leandry nodded, setting the canines down on a coffee table, she conjured up a screen and showed it to me. “This is the advanced crafting screen, look familiar?”

I examined it, it didn’t look that different from my own spell crafting screen. It was an unpolished, clunky looking mess of dropdown menus and sliders. “It’s that same mess of options that I have on my spell crafting screen.” I agreed.

“Right, well, as one of the people who helped design this game,” Leandry said, “I can tell you that these menus were never intended to be the final product. Originally, we planned to let players do this,” she said, putting her palm directly on the screen, she concentrated for a moment, and to my surprise, the screen began changing quickly, options being selected, sliders moving about at a rapid pace. In seconds, she had a finished item description on screen, including a name; “Exception-al Fang Earrings,” but I didn’t get a chance to read it before she removed her palm, causing the screen to fade out of view.

“What you have to realize is that as a player, we are running on a seperate computers, IFG have millions of tiny but powerful computers that sit empty until a player is downloaded into the system, then the player stays in that computer until they die or get uploaded. The main server computer is in constant communications with every player computer, but it doesn’t normally read the minds of each and every player. Instead, each player computer sends signals like your brain sends signals to your spine, and gets signals, like your senses send signals to your brain.”

“The system doesn’t need to read your mind. but that doesn’t mean that it can’t. You have to give it permission to do so, though, and the way we do that, is by putting your hand on the screen like I just did. It works for every interface, and we intended it to be the main way players did things. But in the end, we chickened out, and instead made these clunky menus and cut out classes like arcanists that were intended to use that mind reading ability to set up their spells. It was because we discovered most players didn’t like having their minds read and would rather use clunky manual menus. But we never removed the mind reading option either, we just never told people about it, so almost no one uses it. Which is a shame, because it allows for a level of customization that you just otherwise wouldn’t get.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Leandry pulled out her mighty warhammer, and with a quick well practised motion gently tapped the teeth, once each. They immediately started glowing brightly and shrinking.

“What?” I asked, concerned.

The fangs continued to shrink, until the huge teeth shrank down to something the size of human canines, attached to a silver chain and loop, I recognized what they were, since I’d seen the description just moments ago; earrings.

“How is that possible?” I asked, shocked that the giant teeth had shrunk so small. What happened to my would-be knife, I mourned.

“Impressive right, have you seen what they do?” Leandry asked, handing them to me. As she did, a system message flashed: Quest Complete, Player Leandry Wolfbane has completed her quest, “My what big teeth you have, grandma.” by crafting a reward. Quest Complete, you have completed your quest, “To grandmother’s house.” by receiving a crafted reward. Congratulations: You have reached level 22, you gain +22 level points, and increased intelligence, constitution, and wisdom stats.

I’d noticed that I always got “int” and “wis” when I leveled, but that the third stat seemed random, if I’d been playing an amazon, my guaranteed stats would have been strength and agility. I was getting weaker but smarter relative to what was normal for an amazon with each level up. As the game only had five stats, this meant that every six levels I could expect to see +6 to both intelligence and wisdom, while only getting +2 to constitution, agility and strength. At level 30, my intelligence would be my highest stat. I looked at the earrings, hoping they’d somehow address this problem.

“Exception-al Fang Earrings; a crafted unique item that allows all equipped weapons to add their bonuses to both physical and magic damage, instead of only the right hand weapon. Description; As an exception, the gods have granted you a means to break the limits of single hand tyranny. The teeth of the Big Bad Wolf have been compressed to a tiny size so they can fit on your ears, they don’t look very big at all now. Made by Leandry, the greatest player smith.”

“Ah, these aren’t very useful to me at the moment,” I lamented, “I only have the one knife.”

Leandry snorted, “I hand you a unique item that other players would kill for, a rule breaking item, and you complain I didn’t give you a knife? Those earrings are the only piece of gear in the game that can give you that particular effect, while knives are a dime a dozen. You’ll get another decent knife at some point. In fact, if you want, I’ll go ahead and give you a quest for a knife right now.” Leandra opened up a different screen, put her palm on it and sighed.

“Sorry, the quest giver interface puts me in touch with Odin, the AI, er…” casting a glance at Illona, who had been silent this whole time but was listening intently, “the god of quests. So he wants me to say this;”

“Ahem,” Leandry cleared her throat and continued in a deeper voice; “As you have been granted a mighty boon but did not know it’s worth, you must find a way to learn it’s value. Risk your life to retrieve an even larger, more powerful fang; Gather a party of like minded heroes and slay Fenrir in the Wolf’s Den.”

As Leandry finished her statement, I received another quest;

“Fenrir’s Fang; You have been given a quest by Odin himself, to extract Fenrir’s fang from the Wolf’s Den. Failure will result in death. Time Limit; One Week, Reward; A powerful item crafted from Fenrir’s fang by Leandry. System Comment: Level 25 to 30 dungeon, full party recommended.”

Then Leandry looked surprised at what she’d said and added in a normal voice. “Wait the Wolf’s Den? You shouldn’t be doing dungeons as a ghost, too risky…”

I frowned, about to mention that the quest description indicated that death would be the result if I failed and gave a one week time limit. Did that mean I would die if I tried to skip it? But I was interrupted before I could say anything by loud frantic knocking.

“Leandry,” A villager cried out from outside, “The fields are under attack. Crows!”

Leandry shot me an apologetic look, “Ah, it’s time for my daily trial, looks like. This shouldn’t take long.” She grabbed her hammer and ran outside.

Not knowing what else to do, I followed, trailed by a concerned Illona.