“Progress in a select few fields was driven by a small number of individuals, and everyone else either did nothing or worked [jobs] that could have been done better by [robots], if not for the cost.”
----------------------------------------
More than half an hour had passed since Alex had tasked the AI to start the combat simulation, and he was getting worried. He gained lucens faster now that he was more familiar with the task, but the leveling curve was also steeper. It had required more than 45 lucens to reach level 6, and as soon as he felt the now-familiar tingling, he opened up his status screen and leveled up.
Level: 6
Energy: 0.0 / 53.8 Lucens (Tier 0)
Physical
Mental
Value
Effect
Value
Effect
Power
38 (boosted) | 16
+3.1%
19 (boosted) | 12
+0.0%
Resistance
38 (boosted) | 16
+3.1%
18 (boosted) | 12
+0.0%
Speed
20 (boosted) | 14
+3.1%
20 (boosted) | 14
+0.0%
Recovery
16 (boosted) | 8
+3.1%
8
+0.0%
Free points: 0
Strangely, this level only gave 6 free points, all of which he had allocated immediately. He casually wondered whether this had to do with rounding due to the fact that points were quantized. He resolved to ask more about the leveling curve. But he also didn’t want to disturb it from his calculations of the simulation, so he pushed down his curiosity for what felt like the hundredth time today.
For this level, he used almost all of the points to stave off the decline in his boosts. It was a race against time, and he was losing. The mental pressure from the giant creature was increasing, and his decreased Physical Power and Resistance were showing in the form of cuts that had appeared all over his body. He had purchased a pill for Physical Recovery, but his healing rate was already slow compared to the intensity of combat, and it didn’t help much.
Alex was growing concerned at how long the Assistant was taking. He decided that if it didn’t respond in five more minutes, he would have to take matters into his own hands. Fortunately, just two minutes later, he heard the Siri-like British voice in his head once again.
[Hello, Alex. Unfortunately, I have not found a way to escape this situation, since I lack critical information. However, I have found something that may be of use. The kaphdor have low effective Mental Resistance, and they should be quite vulnerable to a mental intrusion. What I spent this time on was what you might call a ‘brute force attack’ in order to gain access to their minds. You should now be capable of sensing the minds of the kaphdor and directly interfacing with them.]
Alex’s eyes widened at the mention of a brute force attack, a term that Peter often threw around when discussing hacking.
“Wait, so you basically spent the last half hour trying millions of password combinations in order to guess the right one?”
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[It was 34 minutes. And yes, you can think of it that way, except it’s not really passwords. Every player, including you, is represented by information. This information is protected through a certain degree of encryption. The degree to which this information is protected is based on their Mental Resistance, and my ability to decrypt is based on your Mental Power. But we don’t have enough time now for more details. Accessing their minds is only the first step. You now have the ability to interface with their minds directly, but this only means that you can attack their minds, not that you already have.]
He could hardly believe what he was hearing. Was this world actually a virtual reality? The thought had definitely occurred to him, but it was almost inconceivable that it would feel this real. No, Alex thought, there was too much that didn’t make sense about that hypothesis.
“So what do I do now?”
[First, you’re almost certainly going to need to boost your Mental Recovery with an Enhancement Pill, but don’t invest points in it. When you’re ready, reach out to a kaphdor mentally and try to subvert its defenses. The first one will be the hardest, by far.]
Alex did as he was told, buying and activating an Enhancement Pill for Mental Recovery. He soon began to feel more refreshed. He had not realized the mental toll that the hour of constant combat had taken on him. His mind more alert and ready, he directed his awareness to a nearby kaphdor. Alex could guess that this was more than just shifting his attention or looking intently at the kaphdor, because their appearance hadn’t changed. So Alex tried to engage a deeper sense of focus.
Nothing happened at first, but then Alex remembered how he interacted mentally with the System interfaces. He slowly shifted his awareness in a similar manner. The feeling was as if he was giving his body a command to move a new and unfamiliar body part. After a bit of a struggle, his vision changed.
Overlaid on the kaphdor’s body were endless rows of text, mostly seemingly random sequences of letters and numbers. He noticed if he focused particularly on one spot, he could “zoom” in, and the text covered a large portion of his vision. The text was particularly dense around the head area of the kaphor. The amount of information was overwhelming and mostly incomprehensible. As he looked closer, though, he could see that a select few of the strings of text contained intelligible words and spaces. After a bit of a struggle to focus specifically on one of the intelligible strings, he succeeded in magnifying it within his visual field.
Base exoskeleton hardness around the lower abdomen area: 19.2
Soon after, the voice of the Assistant sounded in his ear.
[You should now be able to change properties of the kaphdor you are focusing on.]
“It’s hard to focus on anything,” Alex said. “Can you filter out all of the random sequences of letters?”
The Assistant complied, and more than 99% of the text disappeared, leaving only properties with understandable names. There were still hundreds left, still especially concentrated around the head.
[I apologize; I do not have sufficient access to translate most of the properties. Also, some of the properties that I have translated will be wordy and sound awkward. I have done my best to describe them in a way that reflects my knowledge of them.]
Alex reviewed some of them. Almost all of the properties were physical, describing various characteristics of the kaphdor such as the hardness of various areas of its body, the strength of its mandibles, and the activation rate of individual muscles. Surprisingly, he didn’t see any of the physical or mental attributes from his status screen. Perhaps those attributes were locked from the access of his Assistant.
Alex decided to try focusing on a property similar to the one he had originally chosen, but for the head area:
Base exoskeleton hardness around the middle head area: 12.3
If he could lower this, maybe crushing the kaphdor would become easier. So he focused as hard as he could on achieving this task. But nothing happened, and he accumulated a few more cuts, having been distracted from battle.
[Perhaps you can try thinking of it as addition instead of a subtraction or a mere change. It’s a common mistake. What you’re doing is actually adding something to the Game, not just changing something.]
Alex was a bit confused by this advice, but he complied. Sure enough, after a monumental effort, he felt a shift. The property declined over the next few seconds until it read:
Base exoskeleton hardness around the middle head area: 6.6
Then, it slowly started increasing again. During this process, he detected a flow of energy, and it felt like a fairly thick strand. He checked his status screen and was shocked to see that this effort had cost him over a full lucen, more than what he would gain from killing the kaphdor.
“How is this at all worthwhile,” he asked, smashing the kaphdor over the head. As expected, the middle area of the head gave way much more easily than before.
[Without a Script, manipulation of the mental world is not very cost-effective, and it also requires a lot of mental effort. This is just like how manipulation of the physical world is not cost-effective without a Skill.]
Alex filed that piece of information away for later. The idea that he could manipulate the physical world was news to him. Would that be like magic? The world was getting weirder and weirder.
“So how do I get a Script?”
[I can give you one, but I can only do this once until you upgrade me to middle-grade. So this decision will affect you until you can upgrade me or find a better Script somewhere. Also, the Script that I give you can only affect up to two properties at once, so choose carefully.]
After experimenting a bit with the kaphdor, spending a handful of lucens in the process, Alex settled on two properties. He decided to target their mandibles, which was their main weapon, because he needed to prevent his injuries from accumulating. But then he noticed something interesting.
Base sociality with same species: 20.5
He targeted a few nearby kaphdor to see what would happen if he lowered their sociality, spending more than five lucens. To Alex’s great satisfaction, they became much more wary of the other kaphdor, and no longer teamed up on him. He was able to finish them off one at a time. It seemed that they were not self-aware enough to notice that they had been influenced by his manipulation.
For the next few minutes, Alex tried to find another property that would pair well with this one. Finally, he found another interesting candidate:
Base competitive aggression: 9.0
What if he tried to increase the attribute this time? He targeted two nearby kaphdor, rapidly applying both the boost to competitive aggression and the reduction to same-species sociality in quick succession. Alex grinned. The kaphdor rushed towards him, but as soon as they saw they were going towards the same target, they began to scuffle. Alex then stepped in and finished them off. By the time they turned back to their real enemy, it was too late, and Alex crushed them.
His energy accumulation speed had been negative for the past several minutes because he was spending so much in his experiments on the kaphdor, and he was mentally exhausted from the effort. But he was finally ready.