The old man shrugged, “Is business a game? Is combat a game? It is as real as life and death, and yet, it’s possible to break it down into game terms, which is why, in your language, the system’s title breaks down into “The Game”. It is a game, but it is also very real. Losing will mean your life, or the life of the entire universe, potentially. Winning makes you better at playing the game.”
I got it. Military strategists played wargames, but in a real fight, those numbers could break down into the lives of real soldiers, real military equipment, and real victories and defeats. Hell, in my experience women, family, and success were games too… winner-take-all.
“Right now, your transtator interface is restricted to your own body, and the system cannot import modifications into this tutorial opiary. The game can make physical changes to you allowing your natural abilities to exceed human maximums, but those will take actual changes. If you go too far, it might be difficult to socialize with unmodified humans, eventually.”
“There are two ways to upgrade your attributes. There is the traditional method, such as training, or you can receive upgrades by using enhancement points. Those enhancement points show your capacity for enhancement. For example, if you work out hard and regularly and manage to increase your body musculature to the maximum, increasing it past that or preventing the flexibility loss from extreme musculature would require enhancement points. Humans can and do press past their effective maximums without enhancement, but when they do so, they suffer in another area, such as reflexes, flexibility, or stamina.”
“Makes sense so far.” I nodded. Like powerlifting. Powerlifters tended to lose flexibility as they pressed their musculature way past normal levels.
He smiled, “Enhancement points are where the system is allowed to modify you without damaging another area. You can use them to gain certain traits and evolutions based on your affinities or to upgrade an attribute for greater ability. In your case, you have already gained the trait durability, which allows you to avoid the crippling effects of injuries. In general, many entry-level traits are simply the result of your natural abilities or training, and will appear as you display to the system your competence with those traits.”
“Classes, on the other hand, are particular advancement paths people can choose. Someone who is a warrior, for example, will find it easier to learn how to use both a sword and an ax as a weapon, because both of those fighting paths require similar skills. There are multiple rarities for different classes, and each class is rated from 1 to 9. It is possible to push a particularly useful class past 9, but it is very difficult, and in general, it is better to specialize or branch out to a new category rather than being even better at something you have already mastered.”
“Class rarity is different. Rare classes require more advancement to master, and they are generally either extremely specialized or combine the aspects of several more common classes. A football player might not be good at basketball, but if someone masters several sports, they might gain the athlete class, which is more difficult, but covers ALL athletic endeavors. Or they might choose to specialize in demolitions using the throwing skills from both classes and become a master at placing explosives where they will do the most damage at range.”
“How many levels are there?” I asked.
“There are 9 levels per class.”
“No, I mean, what’s the maximum level overall? From all classes?”
He looked at me curiously. “There is no maximum. Experience and education are never-ending. However, there is a point at which your enhancements make you too powerful for this universe to effectively support. You might become a god, or move onto the next plane of existence and take the fight against the Chaos to its own realm. Few people live that long, however, as such a path might take a million years.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed. It is good to have ambition, but some ambitions will completely consume your life. The system desires the ascended, but it recognizes that such individuals will be unbelievably rare, and does not try to push it. In the end, its goal is to protect this universe from Chaos incursions, especially those guided by a sentient, and destructive, hand. Its secondary goal is to help you attain your ultimate potential, but that potential varies between creatures of even the same species.”
“Each class, when you achieve rank nine, opens up a special free trait called a gift. These are things that you are capable of doing, but that would require training or special circumstances that would normally be nearly impossible for you to obtain. Sometimes they are the ultimate expression of your class, or even something supernatural that would require truly outrageous circumstances for you to access normally.”
“Most species that have access to the game refer to each of the rank 9 classes you have gained as a ‘tier’, and it might have other titles to refer to the tiers as a way of gauging relative strengths. For instance, a tier three warrior most likely has the warrior class and a specialty class at rank nine, which makes them exceptional combatants easily capable of defeating a tier one warrior.”
He smiled a little, “But right now, it appears your goal is survival, and perhaps repaying or escaping the debt that the Spindafor Unification holds you responsible for. I need you to touch your transtator, and think ‘Character sheet’. It is tied into your nervous system, and a strong enough concept should bring it to your attention.”
I touched the watch's glowing face and thought ‘Character sheet’. It took several tries, and It was difficult to concentrate, but eventually, the glowing outline reappeared with something other than notifications. Whoah, again.
Anthony Michael Wilkins (Base Human)
Classes: none (1)
Energy Credits: 25
Chimera (physical affinity): 1
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Melee Training (novice)
Critical Attacks(novice)
Stealthy (novice)
Critical attacks (novice)
Durability (novice)
Imagination (mental affinity): 1
Survival (novice)
Empathy (novice)
Undefined (spiritual affinity): 1
Evolutions and Adaptations:
Re-engineered
Resist Mutation
Mentally Suppressed (temporary)
You currently possess 1 free trait. This may increase based on your chosen class.
“I have a lot of questions now.”
He nodded, “I am sure you do. Shall I start with the basics?”
I nodded.
“When you were re-engineered, the cost of eliminating certain reinforced recessives and genetic and environmental damage necessitated rebuilding you as an entirely average human male. You could have retained your ideal attributes, but the Spindafor were unwilling to do so for various reasons, including the associated costs. By their standards, you have already been an incredibly expensive investment.”
“So what are those… affinities?
“Those are very specific to you as an individual. Humans all get physical affinities of one sort or another, but I suspect your chimera classification is due to your prior handicaps and re-engineering.”
“The Imagination affinity is something I have never encountered before as a mental classification. That’s one of the reasons that humanoids are typically a restricted species. Many humans have unique or particular affinities that are completely unpredictable, which makes other species very nervous. The system has labeled it as ‘imagination’ because it involves making your thoughts a reality instead of using essence or physics to manipulate reality, but the system, and I, have no idea what sorts of traits it can possess other than mental until you choose to exploit it.”
“What about undefined?”
He shrugged, “Undefined means that you have a spiritual trait of some sort, which is uncommon for humans. The system itself has several different paradigms for spiritualism, from magic on some worlds, to essence manipulation, totem gifts, Pacts or worship of certain powerful beings, or even superpowers in some cases. In general, your spiritual affinity will match the local power paradigm, and in protected systems that do not have access to nodes or a user interface like your transtator, that affinity will handle all advancement on your behalf.”
He sighed. “If you want to know about any particular part of your system, please concentrate on it in depth, information will usually result from those who think things through.”
“So basically, if I am in a world that has magic, I am most likely to gain a magic affinity? What if the world doesn’t have anything like a node, and if I move around to another world for some weird reason, will my affinity change?”
He shook his head, “No. While spiritual affinities tend to be assigned locally, based on the prevailing paradigm, multiple paradigms can exist in the same area… Once you have a spiritual affinity, it exists regardless of your location.”
“Is there a way I could pick it now? I mean, if I eventually wind up on some world without a node, or whatever, does that mean I might be forced to pick some god or something that will control my growth?”
He shook his head slowly, a wispy hint of beard catching my attention as it drifted more slowly than the rest of his hair. “No. prevailing paradigms are chosen specifically to match your local environment, not open space. However, if you wish, you could choose to purchase a PSA.”
“What’s that?”
“A personal synthetic assistant. The system knows a lot but it is not omniscient. It is powerful but it is not omnipotent. It tries to help people achieve their potential but it is not omnibenevolent. There are over a billion species, with trillions of individuals who each require their own specialized growth. Sometimes the system is… cryptic. I am the tutorial, a temporary PSA to handle initializing each individual into the system, but I have my limitations.”
“A PSA would be like me, able to help you interpret more cryptic parts of the system, and offer advice, and it will grow with you and help you decide how to assign that growth. You are a long way from home, and you are going to be away from other humans for some time. A PSA can help alleviate some of the psychological issues that develop as well. It downloads directly into your neurosystem, and will be there even if you cannot connect to the system, which happens every time you are inside of a rift.”
“There are a broad variety of upgrades to PSAs as well, up to and including actual combat assistance, but they are expensive. For now, as long as it will not impact your actual survival, it could help maintain you.”
“However, congratulations on completing the tutorial. I am a very busy being and you no longer require my assistance, so I will have to bid you farewell.”
I nodded, “Umm.. okay. Thanks for your help.”
He smiled, and the cave faded into the blue of the too-small environmental bay.