Tem watched as the last man finally lost that spark of life that animated him and lay still in the bloody heap of his own offal whose stench reached his nose and caused him to exhale forcefully thru his nostrils in irritation.
Deciding to find out what that flashing was during the previous bout of fighting was he concentrated on the dismissed messages. Tem noticed that the system? If system is the correct term for it was, to the integrated net implant user interface that most Technologist planets used for their citizens. A tool of convenience and control that was so easily introduced to their societies that total adoption since its inception was near immediate.
The strongest form of control is always that which the controlled foist upon themselves…
Sheep will always be sheep content in their thousand mile stares blithely chewing grass enriched by the decomposing remains of their mothers and fathers…
Now what have we here?
Critical strike bonus! (x 10) You bludgeon Far sighter thug for 250 (-25) damage!
+250xp gained! Far sighter thug is more than 10 levels above you! You earn a bonus +62xp!
Critical strike bonus! (x 10) You bludgeon Far sighter thug for 275 (-27) damage!
+250xp gained! Far sighter thug is more than 10 levels above you! You earn a bonus +62xp!
Critical strike bonus! (x 10) You pierce Far sighter thug for 350 (-35) damage!
+250xp gained! Far sighter thug is more than 10 levels above you! You earn a bonus +62xp!
Level up x3!
You have 3 unused specialization points!
What in the bloody hell is this? Xp? Damage?
Tem was confused, he couldn’t remember seeing any messages like these on any world he’d been to. These seem to be something you might see in a game. The thing that stuck out most to him was the xp term used. Xp being common game jargon for experience. He knew this because the degenerate masses that inhabited technologist planets spent an inordinate amount of time wasting their lives away playing games and huge industries sprouted up to support this cancer of their society. Although Tem had to admit that there were some positives to these games. These games do some things well, especially with the war focused type games that somewhat prepare the gamers for combat albeit a watered down version of it. There were some studies out there being conducted on this hypothesis but Tem wasn’t interested enough to actually keep abreast of it. The modern combat games were only realistic to a point, after all who would wish to play a game where you could actually experience your body being broken down molecule by molecule by an obliterator assault class infantryman. Another big clue came from the integer values being assigned to damage dealt to his foes… He shook his head. Tem mused how this practice must just be for convenience for the game developers since damage to a body and how that body coped had so many variables involved that one simple number could never really encapsulate the situation. Thinking of the combat that had just occurred, he replayed the blow he struck against the sleeping man. Tem had come in fast behind the man noting the angle his head was positioned in so as to maximize his blow with as much mass and acceleration his genetically superior body could produce to snap the man’s neck. So many variables to consider when making such calculations in a game, such as what kind of condition was the target’s spine in the particular region of his neck was in? Did the target’s neck sleepily roll in the direction of Tem’s punch vector thereby lessening the force upon his person? If they survived the assault, do they have the kind of mindset to push through the injury in order to offer what resistance they could? How much sleep did the target get? Were they tired? Did they get enough to eat lately? How was there home life? Do they have people in their lives that provide them with companionship? The condition of the human mind has a powerful effect on a human being’s health, something that conventional medicine rarely acknowledged back when Humanity was confined to Earth. All these things were factors that had to be accounted for if authenticity was the goal. These things however insignificant they might seem counted in the long run and so they be would extremely hard to quantify into a game world. No much easier to slap a number associated with it and making some calculations to take some limited factors into consideration than to actually take everything into account.
I’m in some kind of game? Is that it? But I feel, I can taste the pungent air, I can smell the offal. I can access my mind’s control interface. No game would have been able to replicate it nor even been aware of it.
Tem walked over to the corpse that was sitting amongst its own innards and bent over it. He picked up a length of the man’s intestinal tract feeling the slimy texture covered in spotty blood. He rolled it in his palm between his thumb and forefinger noticing all the idiosyncrasies of its texture. Tem grabbed a dagger hanging from the belt of the corpse and cut the intestines releasing its contents to the air. Grimacing at the smell he ignored it and inched his way closer to the man and using the dagger he cut vertically from the hole he created and exposed the rest of the innards to the open. Looking at the cavity and its contents frustrated Tem.
No cybernetics that I can see, just normal human biology nothing to say conclusively that this was an agent of the Technologists…
Those pop ups struck Tem as odd, they practically screamed game to him. That was at odds with how he was still able to access his mind interface, those two did not belong together. Tem paced the rest of the room inspecting everything trying to find something that would point him in the right direction. He looked again at the messages he received and noticed something at the very end that he glossed over in his initial perusal.
Level up x3! So definitely some sort of game! Not a virtual one though for how would they know or even detect my particular biology…
Perhaps this is some sort of real life gaming world. He had seen some games of this type where they cordoned off a tract of land and populated it with synthetics that imitated human beings or whatever the game called for. They were generally more expensive to run and maintain but the immersion was much better than a virtual world for they did not have to simulate all the minutiae of the world. Things like rain, physics, hunger were inherent. No need to replicate these things when they already existed in reality after all. Tem thought this hypothesis to be the most likely scenario that he was in that would account for the “Game” aspect of this and still being able to access his interface.
Hmm, was there not something those pop ups were implying I do?
He read the pop ups again and noticed the message saying he had 15 unspent specialization points. He wondered how he was supposed to spend them…
Perhaps since this is a game there must be a tool to ascertain how you are progressing.
“Status”
A screen pulled up with a variety of values on them.
Character Sheet
Name
Tem
Race
Celestial/Prototype X-D-7
Level
4
War Rank
1L1
Health
127
Armor
50
Strength
51
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Crush
0
Constitution
51
thrust
0
Dexterity
33
slash
0
Quickness
36
Fire
0
Intelligence
33
Ice
0
Piety
0
Light
0
Empathy
5
Dark
0
Charisma
33
Matter
0
Luck
10
Spirit
0 (+35)
Hmm, this information panel seems consistent with my hypothesis but that race information, though not what I would classify myself as, is disturbingly accurate.
Tem of course was the experimental model X but he had no idea what the -D-7 was referring to. He thought it might be referring to what iteration he was in the process of finding the correct combination of steps to produce what the big wigs were looking for, namely him. Thankfully they succeeded with him else he would have been recycled into the gene vault dying an ignoble death before he even attained awareness.
If this is a game, then what they mean by specialization points must be meant to advance the character in some fashion. What kind of game was this? A combat oriented game? Perhaps, but the weapons are so primitive. The armor also seemed to be of another era, an era before even the crude projectile weapons made weapons and armor like these obsolete relics. Most combat oriented games were modern or at least close to modern era, usually the player was put into the role of an infantryman not a primitive fighter like these men were. Tem looked at the status screen again focusing on the names of some of the statistics.
Piety? Empathy? Charisma? Why the hell would an infantryman give a flying fuck about any of these things? I certainly wouldn’t need to have any god damn piety to neutralize targets… Hah, intelligence? I’ve never known any infantryman required to have any… The less intelligent the better. No questions asked, just following orders…
This couldn’t be a combat game with useless traits like that. Game developers would not purposely code in useless traits like those. So this must be some kind of, what? Role play game? Tem understood that a not inconsiderable portion of games focused on setting the player into the shoes of a character in a primitive setting, usually somewhere in the middle ages. Though set in the middle ages, those games usually included things that did not actually exist in those times or at all. Magic, mythical beasts, and other such impossible things. Tem tried to remember what type of world people called it…
Fantasy!
Yes, fantasy was what this was called. A popular theme in role playing games. The character would play a person in this “fantasy” world and they would inevitably be the hero to save the world from some kind of evil. Though this is an actual real world game and Tem was hard pressed to think that any organization would spend so many resources just to satisfy the recreational urgings of one person… Meaning this must be meant for a great many people to justify the costs and profit from the endeavor. Perhaps this realization will help with progressing with this farce so he could find out what the hell was going on.
On the assumption that this game interface would work similarly to new interfaces he instead of calling out the word as he did with the status screen, he simply thought out the word specialization.
You have 3 unused specialization points!
Pleased that his assumption proved correct, Tem tried to pull up the screen to spend his “specialization” points. He tried a couple of different words with no success, till he hit on the correct word.
Skills.
Skills
Jeet Kune Do
1
General Biological Manipulation (Self)
1
Cloaked in Daylight
1
Interrogation
1
Neural sabotage
1
General sabotage
1
Facade of Trust
1
Interesting.
Tem was fairly sure he knew what these skills were referring to as he regularly employed them in his ongoing efforts of sabotage and general mayhem. Still he was curious to see what the descriptions would be for them. He pulled them up one by one reading the descriptions contained.
Interrogation
Level 1
There’s more than one way to get information from targets, and you happen to know a few.
+ 10% Chance of target divulging information he/she was trying to hide.
Cloaked in Daylight
Level 1
Going unnoticed in the middle of the day, be it in a crowded street or being the only one present takes skill. Luckily you have a talent for appearing completely mundane.
- 10% Chance of being noticed during the day.
Jeet Kune Do
Level 1
Where other martial arts focus on specifics such as grappling, striking etc. Jeet Kune Do is more a philosophy than an actual set way of fighting. Born from the famous Bruce Lee, this focuses on being flexible and practitioners incorporate what they find useful from other fighting arts and discard what they don’t. Jeet Kune do is individually focused so one practitioner may fight wildly different from another practitioner.
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” - Bruce Lee
+ 10% Melee damage/ Grappling effectiveness
General Biological Manipulation (Self)
Level 1
Through a miracle of Conclave biological engineering the cells in your body take orders specifically your orders! Though the advance is new the possibilities are staggering and extremely useful for an operative. Continue to advance this skill to unlock new possibilities!
Note: Abilities are not free! Increased sustenance required.
· Alpha (+ 10% Str/Con, -10% Chance of breaking bones, +15% Hunger)
· Tau (+ 100% immunity to 80% of known toxins, + 10% Hunger)
· Extended Tau (+100% immunity to all known toxins, +20% Hunger)
Facade of Trust
Level 1
People don’t know what it is about you but are willing to give you a small amount of trust upon meeting you.
+ 10% Initial Trust
General Sabotage
Level 1
Causing mischief and mayhem is your bread and butter, be it the electrical grid for a city or a simple door lock you can stop it from working!
Note: Some things require unique skills to sabotage.
+ 50% Chance to cause malfunction. + 10% Chance the item is no recoverable.
Neural Sabotage
Level 1
Cybernetics has advanced to the point where many contingencies exist to keep things running smoothly and it is extremely hard to break. The ins and outs of Cybernetics is second nature to you and breaking them comes even easier.
+ 50% Chance to break cybernetic system and + 5% Chance to spread malfunctions upstream.
Tem wasn’t sure that his Neural sabotage would be used very much in this primitive game. Then again if these synthetics had neural networks, he might just get to have some fun. That would have to wait until he knew more for if he brought this game system down while he was stuck inside, there was no guarantee he could facilitate an egress. Looking at the skills he could improve upon he decided that improving his damage would be immediately useful to him.
Perhaps the synthetics are programmed to “believe” I’m hitting and grappling better than I actually am?
However, they are making this work, increasing damage was a priority to Tem. Controlling his biology though very powerful wouldn’t actually help very much in the immediate and would have the downside of making him hungrier when he didn’t have a source of food yet. Thinking about it, how was the game supposed to upgrade his abilities? He didn’t know or didn’t like what he was suspecting and tabled it for later. Sabotage and going unnoticed wasn’t immediately useful to him so he decided to go for Jeet Kune Do, Interrogation, and Facade of Trust to level 2.
Jeet Kune Do
Level 2
Where other martial arts focus on specifics such as grappling, striking etc. Jeet Kune Do is more a philosophy than an actual set way of fighting. Born from the famous Bruce Lee, this focuses on being flexible and practitioners incorporate what they find useful from other fighting arts and discard what they don’t. Jeet Kune do is individually focused so one practitioner may fight wildly different from another practitioner.
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.” - Bruce Lee
+ 15% Melee damage/ Grappling effectiveness.
Interrogation
Level 2
There’s more than one way to get information from targets, and you happen to know a few.
+ 15% Chance of target divulging information he/she was trying to hide.
Facade of Trust
Level 2
People don’t know what it is about you but are willing to give you a small amount of trust upon meeting you.
+ 15% Initial Trust
That done Tem turned on his heel and decided to use his improved Interrogation skill.