POV - NIGE!

Hey, hey, we were about to hit the good stuff! I couldn’t wait. While a rare skill may come about 1 in 20 or 5%, a rare perk was more like 0.005% or one in 20,000. And we weren’t looking at a rare perk, it was a legendary one. The rate they dropped was off the charts. I had never even heard of one dropping during the tutorial before. They were normally System rewards for defeating high level rift or dungeon bosses where the risks and dangers were substantial and extreme. And even then they were rare!

But I knew Tad’s orientation had been extreme too. Of course I did because I was there for every excruciating moment of it. And while he was in lala land, and incidentally scaling up his Stamina to absurd levels I was left kicking my heels, not that I had any, but you get the idea. Luckily there were plenty of things to do seeing the tutorial was seeded with a multitude of tasks and adventures to guide the new participants into learning the system. But without someone real to converse with I had been in effect in isolation for 90 odd years.

I certainly felt a vested interest in Tad’s rewards and I was totally glad I had decided, somewhat on the spur of the moment, to seek him out, even if it was rather malicious at the time. Once I had arrived and actually had a responsive conversation, I decided that I quite liked my long term house plant and meal ticket as he had been. Just getting intelligent responses and questions was immensely rewarding in itself and it was then I realised how much I had enjoyed mentoring these newbies into the System. And of course that avenue was closed to me now, but I could still mentor Tad. He was even still in my active contracts and it had just required some creative wordings and I could link my somewhat derailed future to his.

By this time we were nearly back to Tad’s dorm and I could see he was limping quite badly. Why hadn't he worn his starter footwear? Oh, he hadn’t checked under the bed. Yes, there they were; a pair of basic sandals. I will need to point them out to him before we leave again.

But first let’s get him up on the bed and pull up these notifications. Which one first I wondered?

Nah, of course I knew which one I wanted to see. There really wasn’t any question at all.

And …here it was:

<“…it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”>

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And Tad cracked up.

“Ha! That’s a quote from the Doctor!”

“Yes”

“Let’s see what else it says.” He activated the description.

“Ahhh… no he, well actually he probably was a doctor but he wasn’t the Doctor.”

“Doctor Who was a TimeLord.”

“???”

“Doctor Who is fictional.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

And so he did. Most excellent!

Moving on I pulled up the title he had been awarded;

<“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”>

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This already looked good. Of course, I had no idea who Babe Ruth was, but she sounded wise if not somewhat precocious.

I pulled up the description and effects together;