I’ve been watching everyone closely over the last 5 or so months. Or maybe I should call it a day? The planet that I sent them too is actually sped up significantly compared to most of the universe. It’s really close to a black hole so that time moves much faster there than normal. I just have a bunch of magic that is protecting the world from the nasty side effects of being close, like being ripped apart into a bunch of small asteroids and falling into a singularity. The comparatively simple magic to simulate a day and night cycle and stars and stuff like that also exists. Turns out that time manipulation is stupid expensive magic wise, so it’s actually much more efficient to protect a planet from the physical effects and abuse it for it’s time dilation.

They could probably leave the planet by just flying or something before they beat level 100, but my plan is to basically tell them not to. I’ll of course stop them if I need to. The reason I’m going to all of this trouble is so that I can complete this experiment before the world has a chance to change too much. My plan is to get a magic system of some kind integrated within the next decade.

They’ve been progressing pretty well. But honestly there are tons of little issues that I keep finding. I’ve been making minor changes but I’m waiting until they at least get most people a class. That’s one of the core concepts of the whole System and I don’t want to rebalance things until that’s had a chance to percolate. Then I’ll flip their whole world upside down by updating the System, which will probably cause chaos.

Anyways, I see that a group of them have finally made it to the third floor of the tiny dungeon right at the start. They’ve been much more careful and slow going than I expected. Honestly I projected that they would have beaten all 10 levels of this little dungeon by now and would be finding some of the easy ones. This one is considered tutorial level. There’s only one tutorial class dungeon. Then throughout the world there’s the one world dungeon, which has its entrance at the north pole. It makes its way into the core of the planet and ends with an epic fight against a monster that’s about twenty percent of the motel metallic core of the planet. I thought about having them fight the moon boss that I made, but that seemed a little too much.

Although considering their progress I might have made this a little too difficult. That’s what the dungeons are for though. The continent they’re on has mostly easy class dungeons which are 20 floors, and a few mediums, which have 30 floors.

Then come the other continents. Some of them are mostly filled with medium class dungeons and some hard. And the rest have almost exclusively hard dungeons, which have 50 floors. I think the way I set it up to guide them to the correct continent first was pretty well done though. The oceans have large monsters that are set to be less deadly and more just scary unless you try to actually fight them. That should prevent them from going to the continents that are too hard for them.

Anyways, they’ve finally found a few class crystals. They’re nice because they give people a level one class, which is the hardest one to get. After you get that first level in a class they follow a much easier to buy progression. I just wanted them to find it difficult to get the first level because they are a significant upgrade. I didn’t put a restriction on how many classes you can get, and they aren’t mutually exclusive or anything, but it's unbalanced to have everyone get a dozen classes right away.

The way classes work is that they give you basically skills and knowledge related to an archetype. For example a warrior class will give you a handful of weapon skills that you don’t already have, or upgrade them. Then it’ll give you a ton of knowledge about being a warrior, like how to fight, how to fight in a group, and how to be efficient and economical with your actions while fighting. It’ll also instill that essence of being a warrior. Some people are just naturally talented at things like painting or whatever. Well, I found a way to actually give someone that natural gift and ease with learning and doing something. It should help push them forward in that path, and allow them to advance, even when the System doesn’t have a specific skill or spell for them. The ideal is that eventually people will end up pushing the boundary of skills and those will be integrated into the System. I’m really good at fighting with a sword if I want to, but it’s not something that I’m willing to dedicate my life to. But I’m sure once the System is in place that some nerd will dedicate their entire life to learning how to fight with a giant anime sword. And that’s ok!

Anyways, I’m getting off track again. It looks like that guy George got one of the class crystals and took the mage class. I’m a little surprised because he’s been more effective with his sword than his magic. But if that’s what he wants to do then that’s all fine. The mage class will allow him more insight into how mana actually works and if he decides to, he could start discovering new ways to use mana. The System has a huge number of spells and skills related to mana, but I left most of it out so that people could discover it. I want magic to remain as “magic” for as long as possible. He’ll also just plain be better with magic spells and mana stats will increase. I put the skills that he’ll gain mostly in how to critically think, research magic, and mana control.

I continue watching them and after the first of them get classes there’s a new energy behind all of them. They seem more motivated after seeing how much of a boost a class gives someone. There are only another few dozen class crystals in there, so not everyone will get a class that way with this first dungeon, but it should be enough to help them get a move on.

It took them close to another five months, but they finally finished the ninth floor. Only one more to go now.

I wonder how my other selves are doing outside the time dilation.

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Galactic Survey Vessel 4

I’m sitting in the vessel I made a few months ago. I’m another copy of Robert, but I prefer the name Randy. My original self hated that name because his coworkers used to call him that, but now I don’t mind it. I actually like it because it reminds me of when I was normal.

My purpose right now is to explore the galaxy. I’m currently heading in a “counter clockwise” direction of the galactic spin. I have an incredible amount of space that I’m in charge of exploring. I don’t really need to figure out more techniques, or gather SP. There are teams of copies of me that exclusively do that. My job is exploring. And it’s great! Really, it’s super cool finding another gas giant that has a slightly differently shaped cloud pattern. Really! Kinda…

I’m so bored.

I have a mental link with the other me’s and can access the internet and play any form of entertainment imaginable. But I already have done it all. Even if it wasn’t “me”, I still have those memories as soon as I even start thinking about it.

So I mostly while away the time doing stupid things, probably some dangerous things as well, but when your body is made out of stuff that a star can’t touch and you heal instantly danger has a different definition. At this point, I think only another awakened could even threaten me. And then it wouldn’t be a fist fight where we both slug it out and walk away. It would be a terrifying fight to see who could erase the other fastest. Some of the theoretical techniques we’ve invented for “just in case” are terrifying.

It’s as I’m thinking about that that my ship picks up something on sensors. About fifty lightyears away is an unnatural object. It looks like a massive mega structure about the size of Earth’s star. I start sorting through the information that I can find with my sensors and it looks like there’s a whole solar system. The seventh planet is populated by organic life, although it’s hard to tell much about them from this distance.

I also find evidence of magic on the megastructure. I send up an alert at the highest level to all of my selves and were quickly confer. I’m advised to get closer and learn what I can without being detected, and then to make contact if they seem like they won’t kill anyone or anything on sight.

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So I get my ship closer. It’s completely invisible, out of phase with the rest of the universe, not emitting or interacting with more than a few stray hydrogen atoms in space. My ship’s not exactly small, being about three kilometers long, but with all of the stealth that I have in place I’m pretty confident that they won’t see me with anything but magic.

I’ve also cloaked myself from magic in every way that I can think of. My magic is set to avoid outside magic by phasing slightly away from it as a first line of defense. If that doesn’t work then it’ll try to move it around the ship and me. And if that doesn’t work, then it’ll destroy the magic that is interacting with me, analyze it, and try to return a response that is what would be expected, without me or my ship obviously.

It doesn’t seem like anything tries to probe me though. The megastructure has a pretty small opening that allows light to shine on the planet and its two small moons. While I’m looking at the planet it looks like there are a number of plants, micro organisms, and non sentient creatures. They also have a technologically advanced race of sentiments as well. They seem maybe slightly more advanced than humanity is. Their planet has a very strong magnetic field and they use vehicles that use that field to hover around, which is awesome. They look like giant blue fur covered spiders, which is a huge disappointment. I used to be arachnophobic, before I was indestructible, but that bias has stayed with me to a slight degree. It looks like they have language, computers that are based on synthetic organic brains. They have eight limbs, the front two have a number of manipulator digits on them, the next four are their legs, and the last two are like tentacles. They are much longer and they walk on part of them and also use them to hold stuff like an extra hand, which seems super helpful.

After exploring their world for a bit I turn my attention more fully to the large structure around the star. It is mostly metallic and the closest planet shows signs of having been used to create the structure. I sense the magic is almost all centered around a single being that is in the megastructure. There doesn’t seem to be more than one person with magic here, so I scan deeper. It looks like the megastructure is hollow, only about a mile thick. It’s definitely a solid dyson sphere which is pretty insane. There’s also about a billion beings living in the dyson sphere. They seem to have a higher standard of living for some of them, but most of them are living in extremely poor conditions. It looks like they’re the workers or servants, which kinda pisses me off just a little because the planet doesn’t have that level of division between the best off and worst off. Or at least not as stark of a difference.

I poke around a bit more and end up finding a room that has a lot of magic on it and in it, but it’s incredibly old. The room mostly has protections for itself and what’s inside of it. They’re pretty impressive powerwise. It looks like they actually are using power from the star to pay for some of the cost of the magic. It’s not really possible to create magic from power that’s not Potential. You can do some stuff though like use a tiny bit of magic to control a large amount of mundane energy, which is what is happening here. The efficiency that I’m seeing combined with the capacity that it has now, I’m guessing that this has been going for about three thousand years. Without doing more investigative magic on it though I don’t know for sure.

The protection that the room has is strong, but not all encompassing. Bypassing it by creating a sympathetic connection between it and being off allows me to deactivate it without it being off in reality. It’s a trick that I found, if you throw enough SP into making something not exist, or not work the way it should, then it won’t exist or work. There’s lots of weird things like that in magic. You can do anything you can imagine. That’s why it’s so important to think of as many possible things as you can. I’m just betting the way I’ll die is if an awakened attacks me with something it thinks is simple and basic, and I don’t have any defenses for because I’ve never even thought of it.

Anyways, inside the room is another bit of magic that’s actually familiar. It’s just a circle on the ground that when you sit inside it, it will help you astral project. I did the same thing all those years ago when I helped my wife awaken. Getting a sinking feeling I look back at the awakened I had sensed earlier.

He’s decently strong, about as strong as I was after two years. I use a bit of magic to straight up ask the universe how old he is and am flabbergasted. He’s over a thousand years old. I ask the universe how long he’s had magic and am floored again as it determines he’s had magic for 957 years. I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve only had magic for about five years and growth with it has been more than exponential. It’s hard to believe he’s this weak after all that time.

I’m sure that I’m missing something so I stay hidden for a few months. Observing the awakened during this time slowly convinces me that what I saw was true, and after a while I figure out what’s going on. It looks like he’s the fourth awaken of their species. He is the most direct living descendant of the first of their awakened, and the power has been passed down from parent to child. He is following the guidebook, almost literally. It looks like the first awakened recorded his progress with magic, and his descendants have decided that following that guide is the best path. I only have a small sample size, but it helps convince me that I made the correct decision to not tell Andrea how she should do magic.

Because he’s trying to follow the same path, he’s fighting his own nature. The magic that everyone does is unique and tied to their soul. I don’t think two people could have the exact same kind of magic successfully, unless their uniqueness is that they are not unique. It’s kind of painful to watch him struggle so much with what he’s doing so I expand my observations to the people around him.

The people living in luxury are the more direct family members, and the servants are actually criminals from the planet. I am very much against mind control, but it seems that that’s the way they make the servants do what they want. I try not to judge them because they aren’t human, but it’s still a bad thing in my opinion.

I’ve successfully studied all of the aliens, and communicated with my other selves everything that I’ve found. It’s decided that I can stay here and continue to monitor them until we change our minds about contacting them, or I can continue on my exploration of the galaxy and I’ll send someone else to watch them.

I was pretty bored with exploring the same old stuff, so I tell myself that I’m staying. Yes it’s sometimes confusing talking to this many of yourselves. Anyways, I keep my ship mostly the same, but make a few changes for the local environment here. I also started creating a simulacrum. It’s not a true copy of myself, but it’s got a subset of my magic for emergencies, and a mental connection to myself. The major thing that’s different about it is that it’s the same species as the aliens.

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My name is GloroDfox. I’m one of the Rightful Air Singers. That’s the official name of our people. I’m also a copy of a copy of a crazy strong magic user, who’s human!

I don’t really know how strong the real me is, but the one that I’m a copy of thinks he could destroy the whole species in a couple of minutes if he needed to. I’m here though because he wants to experience this world. Also, he made sure that I knew he was bored.

So I’m teleported into a shallow depression of one of our buildings. We make our buildings out of many different things, but the most common is a mixture of a domesticated animal's blood, clay, and a synthetic epoxy that we can squirt out of long hoses. It dries in minutes and so we can build walls by layering it over and over. Anyways, I’m teleported down near a building, I think it houses elderly members of society.

I don’t know anyone personally obviously, but I was created knowing all seven of the major languages and the thirty two dialects of those languages. I also know most things about their lives, like how to interact socially, and how the currency works. Even myths and legends. My job here is to make a life for myself and fit in with society.

I leave the place I just arrived and start making my way towards a building across the street. I enter the small eatery and ask if they need any workers. I’m able to talk to the owner and he tells me that he doesn’t need anyone, but he has heard of another eatery a few blocks away that needs someone. I thank the kind person and give him the traditional goodbye gesture of a short sharp screech and a slap to the face of my right rear limb.

He returns the goodbye by biting my tentacle. And then I’m out of the door and heading for the next place. After a quick interview I’m hired on the spot.

I get a quick lesson in how to cook the easiest dishes that the restaurant serves, and then I cook them over and over. I have to admit though that sucking the live, and screaming, baby animals out of their shells and then biting their head off before spitting it all in the cooking pan is a little distressing. I’ve only been alive for a few hours, but I don’t have any memories of humans eating animals alive. Luckily the other dish I was taught is much less horrifying. I merely scrape the bark off a thin log, let it toast, then mix it with a jelly like substance before throwing it in a blast freezer. It comes out as the cold ball that is ice on the outside, and a warm jelly center. It supposedly has to be eaten right away or it’s kinda pointless.

I end the day by collecting my payment of 32 Thorkrin Syndicate credits, and go to find a place to live.

I think I’ll like it here!