1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.1    An Obligated Noble

1.3.1.15 Progress is made

Kafana relaxed, as System informed her that their reputation with Pantalone had risen above 500, which switched him from “neutral” to “acquaintance”. The reputation system still seemed one of the more unnatural and game-like elements of Soul Bound, and she usually did her best to ignore it, but she knew there were some players who cared deeply and used it as a score board. Not just positive reputation, either. There’d been a global announcement that LoroPetal, a top assassin from YoDaddy, was the first player to reach negative 3500 points of reputation with a faction, gaining the status of “Active Enemy” from them.

Kafana skipped reading the private secretary’s summary of the resulting discussion, during which Alderney told him about Harlequin’s request (on Pantalone’s behalf) to investigate the interception of couriers carrying market information, and their investigation linking it back to Beltrame. He’d actually looked impressed when he learned that they hadn’t stopped there, but had also discovered Scaramouche’s scheme to milk unwary adventurers for useful information, and sounded proud of Harlequin when he described the decision to hire the Wombles as a good one. Bulgaria tactfully deferred discussion of any debt or favours Pantalone might owe them to later when they would not be wasting Lord Landi’s valuable time, and suggested a recess before they start discussion solutions, but all the Wombles were distracted during the verbal presentation of the secretary’s summary because Wellington has been correct. The moment Pantalone acknowledged their success, she received a series of messages from System, and felt an ecstatic feeling flowing into her as the game used her tiara to stimulate the pleasure centers of her brain. She did her best to stay motionless and not draw the attention of others at the table to her flushed face.

[Quest completed “Tremors in the market” - you have informed representatives of 3 of Torello’s financial exchanges about 5 different threats to stability, vastly exceeding the minimum requirements for a quest of difficulty level D. Supererogation enabled.]

[You have gained a level. You are now level 40.]

[You have 30 unspent skills points. You may now apply for master status in professions and, if successful, it will cost 4 skill points to accept the status. High mastery will become available at character level 55, and each will cost a further 8 skill points, if offered.]

She currently had three professions: cook, guardian and spellsinger. Her 30 unspent skill points would allow her to master all three of them, with 18 points left over. But she only gained one skill point per level, so by level 55 she’d have 33 skill points. Would that be enough to get three high masteries? She thought for a moment. Yes, it could be done, but would she then have enough left over to spend 16 points on grand mastery at level 70 or, worse, 32 points on arch mastery at level 85?

Time to call an expert. Specifically, the expert system she’s created to advise her on such things.

Kafana: {Dinah, you there?}

In the corner of her vision, where the tiara kept a fish-eye view of arlife, she saw a flash of colour as her bedroom’s wall screen altered to show the muscular figure of Dinah’s avatar. Today she was wearing a hot pink tank top lettered with the message “Never Stop!”. Dinah gave her a wide smile, teeth brilliantly white against the dark skin of her face.

Dinah: {You know it, gal. Congrats on lev 40.}

Kafana: {Skill points. Do some maths for me? Assuming I reach the arch level in one profession, what else could I get with the remaining points?}

Dinah: {By character level 99 you’ll have received 98 skill points. Going all the way from apprentice to arch in one profession would cost 63 of them, leaving 35 left over. That’s enough to reach grand mastery in your second profession and leave you one point short of master in a third. Or it’s enough to get high mastery in both your second and third professions, with 5 points to spare.}

Kafana: {I thought the level system went beyond 99? And is arch the highest level a profession can reach?}

Dinah: {You can only go beyond level 99 by becoming a legend. That’s a whole new ball game. XperiSense put you on a public “top player” board, and broadcast your every move. Arch is still the highest level of profession but, for every legendary level you gain, you can break the limit on one of your skills. Death also works differently and, if you reach level 110 you become a Lesser Immortal. That gives you the ability to affect the gameworld like a deity, depending upon your followers.}

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Oh yeah, that was right. Tomsk has shown her a promo video from XperiSense, which talked about pantheons, and levelling further as deity depending upon the number and devotion of your followers, and how well you managed to use your deity powers to respond to their prayers and enhance their belief. It had seemed a bit silly to her, but XperiSense made a big thing of it, touting Full Immortality as the grand prize that was the ambition of every player.

She didn’t know if that’s what she really wanted in game and, after spending time ordering her priorities last night, she was certain that fame or in-game rewards weren’t an end in themselves that she cared about. But she didn’t have to decide now, and how to spend her skill points was a decision that could safely be delegated or deferred until later. She moved on to checking for other changes.

[You have 185 unspent stat points. Your base stats are currently:

CHA 150, INT 150, MAG 99, STR 1, DEX 100, CON 100

]

Most of magic seemed to depend upon INT and MAG, with MAG determining a player’s magical strength, mana, awareness and resistance to the magic of others, and INT affecting the rate at which they recovered mana and the complexity of their spells. Kafana had an item which helped store additional mana, thanks to Captain Nafaro, so she had gone mainly for boosting her INT stat. Tomsk had told her that sometimes more could be achieved with a weak attack used precisely than with a massive blow that was poorly aimed. She didn’t feel her use of magic had achieved anything like the elegance he showed in combat, but she wanted to try. Mostly, she’d trusted in her instincts and the deities, and so far she’d lucked out.

Luck. Apparently that was a real thing in this game; though hidden and not something you could improve by directly allocating points to it. She had an artifact that affected it, though, which was scary and another thing she tried not to think about too much. Luckily the INT stat could help you learn things faster, at least while you were logged in, but it didn’t bring with it the sort of insatiable intellectual curiosity she’d seen in so many of the arlife people she knew were smarter than she was. On the other hand, crafting professions like cooking did seem to benefit from INT + DEX, and the type of will power checks used by the game to decide contests in leading groups or mental battles in animal taming and mind magic all seemed to be based off INT + CHA.

She hadn’t wanted to put so many points into CHA, but Bulgaria had suggested it would help the party when dealing with nobles and now, having taken his advice, she found it had shifted how she envisioned the character “Kafana”. The role she played while in the game was more than just numbers. It was a personality that she immersed herself into so deeply that reacting in accordance to its character and responsibilities became second nature, in the same way that the personality she had when stepping onto a stage to sing before an audience in arlife wasn’t exactly the same as the personality she presented when chatting with customers or when cooking by herself.

Kafana: {Sys, is there anything else about reaching level 40 I need to be aware of immediately?}

System: [Kafana, according to the official FAQ, once you reach level 40 then, depending upon your pendant’s attunement and certain other factors, if you die you may return to being at player level 38 and lose all stat and skill points you gained after you first reached level 38. Your skills, except those that you have soul bound, may also be reduced in level by 10%, or lost entirely if at level 1.]

Kafana: {So if I am level 99, and someone PKs me, or I am killed by a hidden pit full of spikes in a dungeon, I drop all the way back to level 38? That’s horrible. Why do people keep playing such an unfair game?}

System: [I may not reveal proprietary corporate research, friend Kafana. But we do provide a link to an advertising-supported suicide prevention expert system, if the XperiSense client program running on a customer’s tiara determines that the statistical chance of the customer experiencing game-adjacent-self-termination is unacceptably high.]

Kafana: {People kill themselves, after playing this game?}

System: [The legal team retained by XperiSense has repeatedly proven in court that the number of customers experiencing game-adjacent-self-termination within one day of their character dying in Soul Bound, whose relatives have not later signed a binding non-disclosure agreement in return for unspecified considerations, is sufficiently low that there is reasonable doubt about a causal connection.]

Kafana: {Thank you, Sys. I understand perfectly.}

System: [On the positive side, while it takes killing increasing numbers of on-level monsters to gain each additional level, you are now able to enter dungeons whose instances are limited to groups of six or fewer players. These facilitate player-engagement by containing harder than average battles and other challenges.]

Kafana: {Players get bored if they have to walk for hours from their safe homes in the city before they can find dangerous monsters to fight, so dungeons exist to let them act like maniacs while avoiding shivering in a mud-covered tent?}

System: [You also gain access to additional chat channels and the ability to interact directly with certain official institutions such as the Messengers Guild and Auction House, without having to pay an NPC intermediary to act as your representative. But for you, I think, the major changes are death, dungeons and the new tier available in professions. Have fun!]

She looked around and noticed the others were returning to the table. Damn. She’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t had a chance to grab a drink or turn the group chat back on. She’d just have to wing it. She hurriedly sat down herself, and grabbed a mug of water from her own stash. Show time.