After a brief rest, and checking after the survivors, we set about making sure that none of the goblins would rise. Tough Guy turned out to be named Erik, classic Viking name, and we turned a real corner and became BFF’s. We had a delightful time full of fun laughs and bonding as we pitched the goblin corpses into the pigpen. I had a feeling Idunn would be having the fattest pigs around after this, doing his inn’s name real justice. When Erik found my sandal on the end of the Goblin’s dagger, he gifted me with a pair of boots. I was very appreciative. They weren’t fancy, just some leather socks with a thick bottom. If they weren’t the best thing after walking around in sandals and jimmy rigged plant boots for the last couple of weeks, I didn’t know what was.
A more somber affair was handling the three Norseman. Erik and Idunn spoke words, and we ended up building them a pyre in the back, burning their bodies. They said something over the pyre, but the only work I picked out of it was Odin. Apparently, the goblins ignored the barn, which was lucky for the cook, I found out she slept in the hay loft with another fellow whom I hadn’t met last night. They were both thralls of Idunn. Idunn himself was fine, just a bit bruised from the heavy table giving him the squeeze. He was nice enough to take pity on me, seeing my burnt rags, and gave me some oversized clothes to wear. They weren’t anything fine, but better than nothing and I was appreciative of the gesture. I was eyeballing the stuff on the Norsemen before their pyre, but Erik was protective of the attractive loot that his friends no longer needed. The bastard. He was no longer my BFF.
I even bandaged Oskar’s leg with some scraps from my burnt clothes, he glared at Pest the entire time. I didn’t lecture Pest in the least. He probably saved my life by biting that kid. And definitely saved my life by sharing his senses. I still wasn’t sure how we did that. I added it to my mental list to investigate at the first opportunity.
I perused the post-fight notifications, but other than a couple skills the blow-by-blow didn’t reveal anything ground shaking.
[Unconventional Weapon Use]
Unlock Conditions – Use a weapon in an unconventional way to receive desirable results.
[lvl 1] – You really know how to swing a bow and throw a sword to your advantage. HEY, YOU CAN’T DO THAT!
Or play baseball with a spear. Though that skill description did make me imagine shooting a sword from a bow and if it was plausible or not. Probably not. Maybe? Either way, not something I would probably try.
[Developer Inspect*]
Unlock Conditions – Granted to you by the grace of Loki.
*Only available to select individuals and cannot be leveled through normal means.
[lvl 1] – See stats on something you focus on, stats vary depending on object. F.B.I.: FEMALE BODY INSPECTOR (SORRY, THIS WAS CONTRACTUAL)
I already missed knowing everything about the skills, I hadn’t leveraged it yet, but I felt it would have been a great tool in the future. Even selling or trading the information could have been useful. At least the stupid slogan still amended itself to the end, they sometimes made me chuckle.
I looked at Oskar and Inspected him.
[Developer Inspect: Grade 1]
Name: Oskar
Designation:
Race: Human
Type: Resident
Allegiance: Harold (owner)
Strength:
Agility:
Constitution:
Wits:
Recollection:
Charisma:
Luck:
Titles:
Perks:
Skills:
FLAGS: IS_THRALL, COGNITION_1,
Drop table:
Health: Lightly Injured
Energy: Full
That was a lot of information. Most of it was inaccessible, I assumed due to my grade or level of the skill. I guess it wouldn’t be a game breaking tool, but it did have a few interesting things. It would be very handy to know name and allegiance of an unknown. I wasn’t quite sure what type and one of the flags designated. COGNITION? I took a quick glance at Idunn and his cook, who were trying to purge the firepit of goblin char.
I frowned at all the inaccessible flags, what was the point in a wall of text flashing in front of my face that wasn’t of use? I was a little surprised that the System understood my desires and hid those useless fields from me on their information screens.
Name: Idunn
Race: Human
Type: Resident
Allegiance: Earl Uhtred (previous captain, region lord)
FLAGS: COGNITION_3, MERCHANT, RETIRED_SOLDIER
Health: Lightly Injured
Energy: Full
Name: Idunn’s Female Servant
Race: Human
Type: Resident
Allegiance: Idunn (owner)
FLAGS: COGNITION_0, IS_THRALL, PREGNANT (Idunn’s Male Servant)
Health: Healthy
Energy: Full
All three were residents. I would have to assume that meant tower residents. Idunn’s allegiance revealed the earl’s name as Uhtred. I’m pretty sure he was the fellow Oskar was sent to talk to by Harold. And I guess that last flag gave away what she was doing in that loft with the unseen gentleman.
Cognition was different on each person, and the cook didn’t even rate a name. So, cognition 0, would be for a background character. It made sense, I think the System even manipulated me a little bit. I didn’t have any urge or desire to even ask the woman her name and she had been around the entire night, and now during clean up I didn’t even consider her wellbeing during our fight with the goblins. She didn’t register to me on more than the most basic of senses. World filler.
It was a very odd realization that the System could manipulate my perceptions in such a way. But it had been altering my attitudes already with Berserker and Intimidation. I would have to make a mental effort to try and make note of any further manipulations.
Oskar was likewise easy to ignore, and beyond basic interactions, even with a translator, he wasn’t a sociable companion.
Idunn on the other hand seemed like a completely normal person to me. Nothing would give away the fact that he wasn’t a real person. But at this point, in this world made by a Norse Godling, what was real and what wasn’t? None of this was born of physical flesh. It was all constructed from Loki’s mad runic scribbles in a realm I couldn’t even see. If anything, with the risk of perma-death, didn’t that make the residents more real than me?
I stared at a table I sat and tapped at it in thought. Inside this wood was an uncountable number of runes to tell it what it was. I wondered what it all meant. I tapped it again, and my thoughts manifested. With a peel of static noise, a small rift tore in the air above the table. I startled and jumped up as the rune-code peeked at me from the inside the rift. The bench beneath me crashed to the floor and Idunn shouted in surprise from where he was scrubbing blood off the floor.
“Gods,” he gasped and gripped his chest, “You nearly ended me!”
“Sorry,” I glanced at him and when I looked back the rift was closed again. Not even open for a second. Was I supposed to be able to do that? I don’t think I was supposed to be able to do that! I looked around quickly for anyone watching me. Well, they were all staring at me now, after my outburst. I shook it off and didn’t even bother making an excuse for my behavior as I reset the bench.
I didn’t try to repeat the action of summoning the rune-code. If I could fuck with that, it would be a true world changer. In all senses of the word. And I couldn’t lose that ability like I had lost the ability to see skills full layout. I’d bet my left nut that I wasn’t supposed to have it.
Shortly after that Erik came inside to wish us goodbye. He was to ride north, taking a string of riderless horses behind him. I quickly Inspected him before he left us.
Name: Erik
Race: Human
Type: Resident
Allegiance: Earl Uhtred (lord)
FLAGS: COGNITION_1, SOLDIER, ADAPTABLE
Health: Healthy
Energy: Reduced
ADAPTABLE and SOLDIER were things the others didn’t have. SOLDIER was obviously some indicator of his martial prowess of position. ADAPTABLE could be anything.
“Okay. I think it times for us to hit the road,” I told Oskar and scooped up my rucksack. Pest skittered over to my feet and I grabbed him. He seemed content in my arms, so I just held him and went to make our way out.
Outside disappointment awaited. We went to the side of the building and my cart was in shambles. All the goods that I had were torn and smashed into the ground, and I’m pretty sure pissed on.
“Little mother fuckers.” I cured aloud. Goblins were cruel and destructive little assholes. “I guess Harold isn’t getting his cart back.” Oskar blanched. I dug into my rucksack and produced the smallest copper coin I had and handed it to Oskar. Pest struggled in my grip to get to it. His little body ungulated like a belly dancing snake to be free, but I held onto him and gave him some reassuring pats. I could feel through the bond that he loathed every moment of it.
“Give him this, if he doesn’t like the price, feel free to tell him to eat a dick.” I told Oskar and the boy had a confused look. It isn’t like he could understand me anyway. It was an amusing to me at least. The cognitive level 1 NPCs could still be amusing in some ways. I considered salvaging something from the cart but decided just to leave the whole mess. I really had zero interest in sorting through Goblin filth. I guess my good luck didn’t cover collateral damages.
We started down the road at a steady walk, before we got down the road very far Idunn came out the front and glanced at us.
“What about my vegetables?” He called after us.
“We left it on the cart next to the building.” I called back with a grin and wave. He waved back and made his way around the building. As soon as he was out of sight I turned around and grabbed Oskar on the shoulder.
“Run,” I said simply, and we started down the road at speed. Shouting and cursing in a language I didn’t know could be heard behind us.
I was laughing like a mad man as we slowed to a walk a ways down the road. I was sucking in breath in great gulps choking on my own mirth. I didn’t intend to dine and dashed on poor Idunn. But what are you going to do? I needed to keep as much coin as I could after the loss of my trade goods. And if he didn’t like the mercenary work of ridding his inn of hacker goblins, well tough shit. If he really wanted anything I left behind, he could give it a rinse and have some lovely goblin fertilized veggies and herbs.
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I guess Loki approved of my actions, because I was gifted with a new skill.
[Congratulations. You have unlocked the Fleeing skill!]
I let out another coughing chuff of a laugh and brought up another skill description.
[Fleeing]
Unlock Conditions – Flee from an enemy or irate merchant at your full speed.
[lvl 1] – Have a slight increase to movement speed while fleeing from danger. ONE JUMP AHEAD OF THE BREAD LINE, ONE SWING AHEAD OF THE SWORD!
That made me think of running itself. I hadn’t gotten a running skill either. Maybe something to report, since hiking seemed janky as well. Report.
[Would you like to report an issue?]
[Misuse of this feature could result in administrative actions.]
“No running skill?” I said aloud and submitted the report. I grinned at Oskar, and we continued down the road. Pest finally became fed up with my rough handling while we were running and decided to skitter along under his own power with us.
I decided to exercise my new powers some more and Inspected him.
Name: Pest
Race: Ferret
Type: Creature
Allegiance: Viktor (bond)
FLAGS: COGNITION_2, IS_BOUND (Viktor), MERCHANT, ADAPTABLE
Health: Healthy
Energy: Full
It was what I expected to see, nothing really mind blowing. A higher cognitive setting and bound to me. The merchant part made me smirk. It must be why he was so intense with the business theme he seemed to covet. I wondered if I should let him manage finances with a snort. ADAPTABLE was again there, still not quite sure what it meant but I had some theories. Or wild speculations rather.
For shits and giggles, I Inspected myself.
Name: Viktor
Race: Human
Type: Chosen
Allegiance: Loki (Alpha Tester)
FLAGS: HAS_BOUND (Pest), ALPHA_TESTER_1, DEVELOPER_INSPECT_0, DEVELOPER
Health: Healthy
Energy: Full
This let me think that my guesses as to the others were correct. My type as Chosen vs resident, and lack of cognition score. It showed I had a bond with Pest and my alpha tester and inspect levels. If you considered computer science, number counts iterations started at 0, making my Alpha Tester a level higher than base and my Inspect at base. I think the plain DEVELOPER flag wasn’t supposed to be there and was the reason I was able to open the tables rune-code.
I’m betting Loki added it accidentally when he added the Inspect, or maybe the System did it automatically to grant me the ability to access the inspector. IDE’s would do that sometimes, add flags automatically when you added something that had a dependency on them. Sometimes it caused little bugs. Like my new ability to access rune-code.
Now I just had to learn the language. And I’d have to do it on the sly. Loki could break into my day at any point without prompting or predictability. It was random to my senses. I’d have to mask my development as a developer. Pun intended.
As for what it listed as my allegiance, I’m not sure how that had come to be, but it wasn’t by anything I decided. Maybe it was just a side effect of his boons and patronage as the developer. It didn’t really seem to affect anything that I knew of, so I just let it be. As if I could do anything about it anyway. At least not yet.
As we travelled down the road, we were greeted with more of the exciting landscape of never-ending hills you couldn’t quite see past and fields. Occasionally a tree would grace us with an appearance, but it was extremely rare. We walked for hours with occasional breaks and very little in the way of entertainment. Well, I say we walked, but Pest got tired after the first hour and was sleeping in the rucksack as he was prone to do. Oskar walked like an automaton, no joy or displeasure either way. Now that I had a quantitative value on his level of participation in life, it bothered me. Like knowing a scab was on my chin. I just couldn’t stop worrying at it.
I wondered if I could adjust the value of his cognition, and what sort of effects it might have. But with the life that this world had assigned to him, that of a thrall, property of someone else. I don’t think it would be kind to grant him new ways to enjoy his own captivity. I tried to talk to him some, but the language barrier made it impossible even if he was willing to communicate back.
I turned my Inspect on random objects, to see what sort of details might be revealed. But the majority of information was inaccessible.
Name: Tree
Species: Oak
FLAGS: NONE
Name: Boots
Material: Leather
Value: Average
FLAGS: DURABLE
Name: Rock
Material: Sedimentary Compound
FLAGS: NONE
Name: Bird
Race: House Finch
Type: Creature
Allegiance: None
FLAGS: COGNITION_0, FLIGHT
Health: Healthy
Energy: Full
Name: Flora
Species: Calendula
FLAGS: ANTI-INFLAMMATORY
The flower was first brought to my attention with my Herbalist skill. It had a flag that synced with my information about it. I sighed. I had hoped for more helpful information out of the skill. I really didn’t think knowing if a house finch had an allegiance to the Crips or Bloods would help me much with life. Unless it was spying. I glared at the birds around me. Which one of these little bastards was an enemy spy? Alas, after a thorough scan of all of them, none revealed to be the minion of any great evils who desired to know my best chicken sandwich recipe.
I was bored. Walking sucked. Fast-travel is a must. I should have stolen a horse from Erik.
We did cross paths with some fellow travelers; they were heading toward the Fat Pig. It was another group of Norse soldiers, they looked dusty and tired. This group didn’t have horses, but they were equipped like the ones I had fought besides Erik. I asked them if they had come across anything interesting, but none of them could understand me. Inspect didn’t bring up anything special on them either.
Name: Karlsman
Race: Human
Type: Resident
Allegiance: Earl Uhtred (lord)
FLAGS: COGNITION_1, SOLDIER
Health: Healthy
Energy: Tired
All four of them had the same details. They didn’t even have individual names. Even though he was an earl, I guess Karlsman really meant earl’s man, some form of generic soldier. I wondered what made Erik special. Was he just some pepper in the salt of life? A little flavor to break the mundane.
I recalled Erik had the ADAPTABLE flag. Did that mean he had evolved a little during our interaction to better play his role? He shared a low COGNITION and SOLDIER, but his interaction at the tavern was involved. Did he have that name when I entered that tavern, or did it manifest when I asked him for his name, while we tossed corpses into the pigpen.
That would be intense. Thinking of Pest, did that mean he would keep changing? Was he unrestricted by his origin? Pest’s COGNITION was a value higher than Erik’s had been. I can’t imagine a base ferret starting at 2. Judging from the bird I had saw earlier, forest critters were around zero, like the background NPCs. If it was a value that represented intelligence, then the values I have been seeing made no sense. However, if it was an indicating of what level of AI was used to control that NPC, it would make sense. How many threads of processing power it required, something like that.
The background thralls didn’t interact with Chosen. They would only need the most basic of controllers. But Pest interacted with me daily. And Idunn was placed to interact with anyone that came to the Fat Pig and had to do complex bartering situations with them. Even if my assumptions were wrong, Pest was something special, or growing into something special. The real question would be ‘Is it time to find him a tiny business suit to fulfil his ultimate potential?’
I went along variations of these thoughts for a few hours. The walk was dull. And even with our breaks now and again to keep the Hiking skill happy, it wasn’t getting any more exciting today. The best bit of fun I had all day was when we crossed a stream that the road was built over. We stopped to refill water skins and give ourselves a rough road bath. Even Pest stuck his head in the water looking for anything of interest but found none.
A few hours later, I decided enough was enough. I needed to work at something, so I walked along the edge of the road and identified any plants that looked different. I used Inspect on what I came across and some were tagged with interesting flags.
My Herbalist skill didn’t recognize them for me, so I started sampling them, at least the ones that didn’t have a POISONOUS flag. I didn’t mess with those, not sure if it would cause a reaction like poison ivy or was toxic to ingest like a mushroom. I wasn’t entirely sure what was the difference between poisonous and toxic. Best take no chances.
After a half dozen new plant types and a few repeats of ones I already knew, I received a reward.
[Congratulations! Herbalist has increased to Level 2!]
I congratulated myself with a mint leaf I had found. It helped banish the bad taste of the other things. Deciding that pastime activity was past. I sent Pest out to sniff out some game. The game was all small critters, and I missed more shots than I hit. Mostly bunnies and field mice, or rats. I even took a few desperate shots at some birds. Lost a few of my arrows so well, even Pest couldn’t hunt them down. I felt like I was improving at the cost of the arrows.
Much to my dismay, the biggest creature we bagged was a snake. Pest even solo nabbed some hamsters. I disliked hamsters, they bit the hell out of you at no provocation. My daughter had wanted one, but I had put the dad foot down and refused.
I tried to gather up his little kills for the food bag, but Pest lost his mind at the notion.
‘Deadly! Ineligible for commerce,’ he mind shouted at me.
“What, hamsters? No. They are just full of piss and vinegar.” I tried to reassure him, but he stayed resolute. I ended up Inspecting one.
Name: Corpse
Species: Hamster
FLAGS: DECAY, TOXIC
I frowned, they all said DECAY. I assumed it was because it was a corpse. TOXIC for the same reason, maybe? I compared them to the snake.
Name: Corpse
Species: Python
FLAGS: DECAY
Uhhhh. Okay. Pest was on to something with this hamster thing. I left them be and sent off a report. Toxic Hamsters? Was all that I included in the report.
I looked at my party status. Pest had bitten them to kill them, did they poison him in some way?
[Viktor - Healthy]
[Pest - Healthy]
He seemed okay, so I hope it was a quantity over quality thing, and whatever he had ingested when he chomped them wasn’t enough.
A short way down the road we made camp an hour or so short of night. I did the old Frontiersman trick to give us a comfortable spot and campfire. We were forced to use wood we found from one of the few trees that lined the road. I grilled snake over the fire, and a few bunny skewers from a rabbit we had scored as well.
The small rabbit had been a great success for me, I managed to hit it dead in the eye while it and I were on the move. It had bolted and started running. I had to sidestep around Oskar who was standing in front of me and released. I was rushing to shoot the arrow and something about my hold or placement had a unique effect. The arrow flew out, off its mark and wide before it twisted in the air and slammed into the rabbit mid-air. I had curve-shot a damn arrow around a person and took my prey with a perfect bullseye. I mean, Oskar wasn’t in danger, the arrow veered around him and with the steps I took before release there was plenty of clearance. But I am still counting it as going around him.
[Congratulations! Archery has increased to Level 3!]
This was the first skill that I had successfully leveled to three. It didn’t give me any further notification or indicator of skill unlocks. I had to manually call the skill description. I don’t know why I expected anything different. I had to do the same thing each time I unlocked a skill. Maybe because it became such a habit to bring up the description after an unlock, it felt like it was automatic.
[Archery]
[lvl 1] - You are more likely to hit what you are aiming at than miss it.
[lvl 3] - You rarely miss normal shots and can attempt trick shots.
I noticed the slogan and unlocked requirements were missing, with a frown I checked a few other skills. I guess the slogan was a one-time laugh. That sucked, what if I was distracted and missed it. Was there a log for notifications like an after-action report? I’d hate to have to waste stat points on Recollection to build an eidetic memory. Who knows how many points it would take to get there.
I tried various commands but did not stumble across the correct one. History, Log, Journal. It may be a feature I still needed to unlock. Like the map. I would just have to see as time went on.
I wasn’t sure what a trick shot was, but I’m betting that curve shot counted and sprung up my experience gain. I didn’t feel like my skill warranted the level that was associated with rarely missing normal shots, as it said. I decided to test that and put a couple practice arrows through the paces. I didn’t have any great targets to practice with, so I just set up a piece of firewood and put an apple on it. I still had a few in the food bag. They were lasting longest because I was specifically avoiding eating them.
As I knocked the arrow and drew back, my instinct was to aim a little higher than I had been prepared to. I released. The arrow sailed across the fifteen steps or so that I had between us and slid through the apple. I was a little surprised, I expected the fruit to explode, but it just slid through. Okay, nice hit. I reset the apple and tried again.
Another clean hit, again my instinct on handling the arrow altered where I knocked it, just a little bit. There was defiantly something altering my shooting, just a little bit. It improved my talents to fit with the level three status claimed it should be.
I smirked. I got a new apple, the last one had split after the second shot, and set it up alongside the pieces that remained of the first apple. I went out to thirty steps this time. This may have been the farthest distance I had tried to shoot at something so small. I drew my bow, nocked an arrow, listening to my instincts for small adjustments of angle and aim. I released and held my pose as I watched the arrow sail and slam into the center of the apple.
My mouth was agape. That was a nice hit. I shot at the other two targets. One hit and one miss. I’ll be damned. If I can level up my skills, they applied to me, they weren’t just a quantification of my real skill. Not sure why this surprised me, I guess I’m just easily pleased. The skills had auto-piloted my body for other things. But more magic to brighten up my dreary afterlife was always welcome. Made me wonder if real ‘magic’ existed. Shooting fireballs and whatnot.
I set up four targets this time, using bits of apple that were big enough to be called such. I only went to the fifteen steps this time. I tried to do some curve shots again, but I didn’t have the knowledge to pull it off. I just had to go chasing arrows in the field behind my targets for a while. Pest helped me track them down, as the night was starting to threaten us with darkness.
I tried another shot, this time using two arrows at once. I had to go gangsta’ with the bow, holding it crosswise to my body so the arrows would stay positioned. I shot, and two arrows sailed to slice across both sides of an apple chunk. Nice, I’m Legolas up in this shit. I tried this set up a few times. I found I could shoot a couple arrows and hit my target, but I didn’t even know where to begin with shooting two arrows at multiple targets. I guess the skill wasn’t ready to auto-pilot me that much yet. I’d have to get some good old-fashioned training or education on the trick shots if I wanted to be a bow master.
Which I didn’t want to be. It was just a means of hunting. I don’t think I could rely on it if something was chasing me down. I did try to rapidly fire a few shots, but I couldn’t get the coordination with holding multiple arrows, or quick drawing multiple arrows fast enough to be anything spectacular.
Before long it was too late to keep practicing, and Pest dragged back my last lost arrow, slightly ruffed up on its fletching, but I appreciated his assistance. The worst part of practice was fetching the arrows. At least I managed not to break any.
We sat around the fire and ate. I had rabbit and the other two feasted on nasty snake. Pest smacked his mouth happily as he tore at the meat, and before long I could tell he was full because he was stealthily dragging the remainder of his portion into the rucksack to his little horde. I always thought dragons in media were based on cats for the most part. They got it wrong. Ferrets were the real dragons. I could imagine him with tiny wings, flitting from tree to tree stealing game and loot as he went and collecting a horde off in some burrow or cave.
We bed down to a peaceful night, the painted stars flickering at us until sleep called the day away.
[Congratulations! You survived the night! Welcome to a new day in the afterlife. As with all Norse afterlives, you spent all day fighting, pillaging, and plundering. Some lived, and some died. But all those lives lost are returned, to pillage and plunder again until …]
“Your mom comes down from upstairs and your basement dwelling blue ass is in for a heap of pain!” I yelled at the blue box. Stupid thing. With little fanfare, and much grumbling, we returned to the road. The never ending stupid boring road.