---Richard---
Landing safely on the moon was less of a hassle than lifting off from their planet had been.
Fuck, they needed a name for the ol’ rock didn’t they? Richard kept wanting to call the planet, ‘earth’ just based on familiarity...How did you go about naming a planet? Just start tossing names to see what stuck? If someone else had claimed a name you’d think they would have marketed it a bit more…but maybe knowing the name of the planet was more important for people looking down at it than those existing on it?
Should Richard throw his hat in the ring? Call the place Steve?
Objectively the best name for a planet.
Meh. Either way, just the ships batteries and zero external aether propulsion setup was enough to land and liftoff from the lower gravity well. Assuming they had time to refill energy stores between each use they could do it as many times as needed.
The exact spot they had landed was a bit less than a kilometer away from the biggest visible structure. Richard found himself suiting up for a scouting mission before the kinetic dampeners had even finished draining.
His sneaky spectral companion had tried cutting into his spacesuit in a visible manner – there was a great big jagged rip cutting down the side of his blue jumpsuit when he went to pick it up. The large gash drew the eye but the spectre had also tried sabotaging the suit in a subtle way. One of the internal hoses was crimped and there was a tiny needle wide hole in the back of his fishbowl-like helmet.
Both easy enough to fix.
It was almost a shame they had landed and were interacting more, because as soon as the engines were off and he admitted to his friends what was happening, Maddy came by and solved his little problem with an ease that made hours of attempts to kill his monster useless.
How and why did ‘life mana’ – the frequency combination and texture that was linked to various forms of bio manipulation – damage an extra dimensional ‘ethereal’ entity? Sure video games had holy mana or white magic as good against the undead, but reality didn’t work that way – right? Was his monster even an ‘undead’? Had she ever been alive?
No those were all the wrong questions.
It clearly worked that way. The real question for a scientist was why. Why did it work that way? Was it because bio manipulation could effect the body of a creature hiding in a separate plane in a way it had no defenses against? Like poking a hole in a spaceship and letting them vent out into space?
Was it really just because of the perceived dichotomy between ‘death’ and ‘life’? Some sort of belief based phenomena as annoying as that sounded?
Richard’s mind kept rolling over the idea even as he stepped off onto the white dust below. Mental stats had clearly done a number on his attention span. There was actually a single point he could remember the shift. Ever since he swapped his standardized and advanced AI from the previous zone with his new handmade one. That was it. That’s the moment he noticed – although it had probably been affected well before then.
Maybe the switch did him in because his homemade neural connections were a bit fucked? Maybe using his blood and purified silicone as ingredients had synergised with how stats healed the body but instead of improving them it broke something?
Focus dumbass. You’re on the moon. Navel gazing can wait till you’re bored and in a less interesting location.
Richard jumped and soared across the dust in an unnaturally small but long lasting arc.
“One small step for man.” Richard spoke into his suits radio then laughed at Troys static filled response. “It’s the general kinetic defense, One moment”.
Dragging his kinetic defense down, Richard jumped again – this arc lasting a similar amount of time but pulling him much further along in a much more natural arch.
“See, stat field has a sort of drag. You haven’t seen it before? Watch this” Richard jumped then had his AI pull all of his defense into the specific type of movement defense that slowed him down right before the tip of his arc.
Richard seemed to pause – a statue of him hanging in the air for over thirty seconds before he noticeably began to drift downwards once again.
“Most people have a low amount of knockback defense. I’m not sure anyone could survive with this much of it long term.” Richard waved back at the ship before turning back to the task at hand.
The structure ahead of him was incredibly simple. It was nothing more than a raised plateau of sorts – a multi story building kilometers in diameter and roughly circular if you squinted from above. The roof was made out of the same material as the ‘natural’ moon although it was processed a bit and polished to an almost reflective smoothness. From above it looked like a pressure plate or maybe the head of a giant nail pressed nearly all the way into the surface.
Roughly once every kilometer and a half around the circumference of the structure there was an arch and sealed doorway combo. Sixteen doorways spaced evenly about the ring. Troy had spotted them and directed them to land as close as possible to a doorway just in case.
Close as possible meant roughly a kilometer away to the nearest door. 10 minutes if Richard stayed focused and kept at his current pace.
As Richard approached the wall and began to walk along it, he scanned the surroundings for danger. One stone hand on each foot pulled out of vacuum tight interlocking seals and brushed the ground. They each scooped out handfuls of stone-like playdough then stacked them in the shape of a small snowman.
Good. He could manipulate the ground. Assuming the structure in front was the same, that meant he could bust through the walls if needed.
Of all of them Richard was the most durable and most of his durability was unaffected by the environment. There was a good chance he could survive for some time outside of his spacesuit and after surviving that long there was a good chance his defense would adapt to the point he could survive indefinitely. If anything went wrong – if anything broke his suit – he would be safe or at the very least the safest.
That’s why he was the initial scout instead of Troy – although depending on what he found, everyone else could follow him in. He was wearing a suit anyways because even if he could survive there was a good chance it would hurt.
Monster spawn had dropped as soon as they landed on the moon. Nothing new had appeared as Richard got ready but who knows how long that might last.
Approaching the doorway Richard half expected it to slide open as if waiting for him. Instead it sat there silently – a large strip of sliding metal patterned with blocky spirals.
Slowly panning his head across the doorway, Richard noticed a protruding metal rod near the one side. It was a different style and shape but maybe?
Reaching out with a connection hand, Richard struggled to connect through the vacuum. He stepped forward to make it easier and then with a satisfying sort of click he felt his connection slip into place.
After pumping a steady stream of aether through the door it flickered slightly and began broadcasting information along simple radio waves.
Handshaking the connection with his AI, Richard gained a few simple controls and opened the door successfully.
Should he head in alone? Call for backup?
Richard paused then decided it would be more fun with company. Sending a ‘all clear’ back to their ship Richard studied the air lock in front of him as he waited.
It was strange. Mmmm yess. The mysterious duality of door strikes once again. What are you hiding criminal scum?
If Richard had to describe what felt off to him, well – the opening looked both more and less advanced than he had imaged it might be. Like a warehouse door mixed with something alien? It looked like something no one was supposed to see and yet if it was completely a service entrance, why the spiraled decorations? If no one was supposed to see this door, why were there so many of the fuckers around the structure? If they were supposed to find them…well why weren’t they nicer?
Richard had half expected a permeable barrier you could just step into.
A wall of air you could walk through in a single convenient step…Richard had even made membranes like that in his experiments! Sure those had been to hold water in place, not protect air from a vacuum which was a much greater pressure difference but it couldn’t be too hard…
Now that he considered the problem, a barrier like that would cost massive amounts of energy to keep running…that sort of luxury didn’t make sense for a place with little to no traffic. It would also leak aether like crazy so this was probably better for insulation.
“What’s inside?” James asked bounding into place beside him with a small cloud of dust.
“ –Waited for you of course. No clue what’s inside yet. Anyone else coming?” Richard asked glancing back and answering his own question. Three suited figures tromped towards them in a line.
“No one wanted to stay after taking the whole trip here. Maddy left a few eyes but that’s it.” James confirmed.
“Figures. What do you think is inside?” Richard asked shaping some stone into a bench and sitting back.
“You know those digital art representations of computers? Bunch of floating numbers and green holographic grids?” James said after a pause.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think its going to be like that” James finished then nodded with a serious look on his face.
…
A few minutes later everyone had arrived and successfully stepped into the air lock.
With a mental flick of a switch, Richard activated the room and watched as the metal sliding door rumbled back into place. The moment it was behind them, a ring around it flashed and caused the edges of the door to soften then cold weld themselves in place.
A wash of 'something' filled the chamber and all of their suits were suddenly misted with what looked like a transparent pink sheen. Like transparent paint or maybe vacume sealed shrink wrap? There was just enough time to feel slightly restricted and stiff as the outside of their suits resisted movement.
Were they being captured? Had they walked into a trap?
With a soft whoomph, the room filled with air – a near instant dump of atmosphere and near instant balancing of the pressure in the room. Somehow the pink sheen acted like an external source of bludgeoning defense – and equally as impressive as soon as it entered the ‘air’ the sheen began to evaporate off them.
Roughly five seconds after the outer door closed and the inner door was already open. It beckoned them further in a soft light leaking into their relatively dark airlock.
Richard popped his helmet off and took a deep breath. The air had a similar sort of duality. It smelt like a hospital but…also gave him a feeling of the outdoors? A fresh smell Richard was nearly positive was linked to high oxygen content.
The massive room around them was tall and filled with large pillars that spread off into the distance. If Richard had to guess based on distance to the far walls and vague pizza slice shape, this entire disk shaped building with its 16 doors was split into 16 separate ‘rooms’. The room they were in now was around 9 meters tall and over a kilometer long. The pillars were all staggered in a offset pattern and lit by small rings of light on both the top and the bottom.
The nine nearest columns were brightened somewhat, showing both the stone ceiling and floor while the rest were dim and barely illuminated their surroundings. It looked almost like a field of doughnuts or something as light rings spread out in every direction.
“What is this place?” Jess asked her helmet also off and under one arm.
“Fuck if I know” Richard shrugged slipping out of his suit and piling it up near the door.
“It looks like a parking garage” James said after a moment then lifted himself up into a floating position.
“Partially setup like the planet?” Troy asked after noticing what James was doing.
“Mana is still more physical” James nodded.
Troy frowned slightly as he raised a hand to extrude a few glowing arrows.
“So where do you think we should go? Head for the center?” Jess asked rejoining them after folding and placing her spacesuit beside Richards.
“It's as good a direction as any” Richard shrugged then began walking towards the point of the pizza slice.
As they walked Richard slowly created a theory this whole area existed solely to intimidate them.
It hadn’t looked that tall to start but as they travelled and were surrounded by more and more empty space it began to feel imposing. Every little sound echoed faintly and the columns near them brightened then dimmed as they walked past.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
That proximity based lighting just about hid the far reaches of the room. They could still see them but it was cast in so much shadow you could squint and pretend this stone mausoleum stretched forever in all directions.
Everyone grew slightly closer together as they half expected they would be attacked by monsters at any moment. It was almost worse when they weren’t – Richard wished they had passed a monster or two. Then they could shoot the fucker and move on.
It felt like they were due an encounter and that encounter was delayed – what were the game creators thinking? Leaving such a perfectly good scene empty? Embarrassing.
The center was a circular enclosure with a open service door in the middle. As they stepped through the group was nearly blinded by how bright the inner ring was.
⚠️ Achievement get: Out of Bounds: Conditional Sequence Break (Special)
Description: For reaching the physical location of your local server cluster before settling your planet.
----------------------------------------
Reward: Pending
Richard's passive defense meant he barely noticed the light differential but everyone else blinked furiously missing the moment the floor below them vanished.
No – the floor hadn’t vanished, simply turned transparent. More transparent than glass it truely looked like they were standing in the air. Surrounding them was what looked like a circular waiting room. Chairs arranged in groups. Some plotted plants with unique colours. A pillar of water in the center of the room filled with alien fish – you know? Standard waiting room decorations.
All of that was overshadowed by the fact they appeared to be floating in the air far above a massive chamber.
Below them roughly a hundred meters down and extending out of view on all sides was a room full of servers arranged in a hexagonal grid pattern. Each ‘hex’ was a separate block of machines. Some blocks looked ancient – full of wires and leds. Others looked futuristic – with floating panels rotating around one another.
Richard could see most blocks repeat – there was a line of three hexes each containing what looked like 40 modern desktop PCs boosted to the gills with RGBs then a wooden ring of roots surrounding a cyclic plant with UV lights pointed at it from all sides.
After the plant there was a bucket full of what looked like metal sand constantly shifting and vibrating like sand on a speaker. Then, directly after was another block of Desktop PCs. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to their placement – maybe when you zoomed out the cells made a giant face?
Individually each hex looked entirely self contained. No wires connected the cells – no floating cables of light or common connection. If the cells interacted with one another it had to be done wirelessly although Richard couldn’t pick up anything from any of the communication lines his AI was equipped with.
Before they could finish drinking in the sight, a movement drew Richard’s gaze to the far end of the floor.
Smoothly levitating into frame a platform of three hexes moved towards them. Pausing directly underneath the platform rose upwards in an arc only to pause directly below them as if taunting them.
G, R, K. The three bulky machines were eached stamped with a character. They were the computers Richard had been shown in visions. The computer hosting R and his helpers. And they had served themselves up on a floating silver platter!
“Alright, Guess we Smash the floor and head down there” Richard started to say pointing towards the computers even as Troy cocked an arrow. “Flip em upside down and shake em for their lunch money!”
A gleaming silver arrow descended at an angle only to bounce sideways with an incredibly strange sound and flash.
Everyone managed to get a hit in, but Richard instantly lost faith in the idea once he noticed the rainbow sheen flickering off each hit. Below them leds on G’s computer flickered rapidly and Richard was instantly reminded of the barrier cutting through their planet below.
This barrier…was probably as strong as that one and was effectively invincible.
Could they get around it? Head back and try and drill through the ground in the pillar area? Richard flexed a stone hand as he looked behind him. If they were smart the barrier extended directly under the stone on all sides but it couldn’t hurt to try.
Before the charade could continue, a hologram began to form in the center of the room, special effects floating about it even as R solidified into something that looked solid.
“Hello! Welcome, Welcome, We don’t often get visitors.” R laughed ignoring the way everyone was in the process of smashing the floor ineffectively. “Champion, Unactivated general admin. Unactivated Specialized Admin-Select. Maddy, Her bodyguard. Full house today I see” R spoke affably nodding to each of them as he named them.
“Oof, You going let him rinse you like that Troy?” Richard called but the simple archer just shrugged, not seeming to mind.
“Now then, I applaud the initiative. You are mostly outside of the scenario right now so some rules have lightened…but I also have to ask. What did you hope to achieve by coming here? I have a reward I can influence right now but the longer we wait the more it decays so act fast.”
Everyone slowly put their weapons away before turning to Richard expectantly.
Richard made a big show of looking behind himself then pointing as if confirming they wanted him.
“This was your idea, you get the talking stick” James nodded.
Fuck. If it's not the consequences of my own actions.
“Alright then. Talking stick acquired. Ahem. Stalling…pretend I’m saying something funny… Alright! I’m here on behalf of my client here who you’ve tasked with undermining the artificial conflict.” Richard began.
R made an impatient looking wave of his hand. Decaying reward. Right.
“Fine. Remember how you kept mentioning the reward of getting to shape our planet? Erect statues to ourselves. Mould the laws of reality, all that jazz? When does that happen and can we start doing that now? You see we set off a bunch of bosses to direct the conflict away from each other – brilliant job we did there – but now we are stuck with the monsters and we figure a few of those reality bending rewards might help. How does that work and how can we get on with that.”
R’s hologram sat down on one of the waiting room chairs and gestured towards the surrounding ones. Richard walked over and sat down with his hype squad following along behind him.
“Here’s how it usually works. Either Aether or Mana prevails and the moment the vast majority of the planet falls to one side or the other contribution is tabulated. As soon as that happens the world is put on hold and a choosing season begins with the method this choosing gets framed influenced by which side won.
“The other option for triggering this is for the world to rank up into a state with more possibilities followed by a defining event that happens to show a path towards both sides surviving. This option is what you are working towards and James represents the seed for this path considering his dual alignment.
“The very first Choice offered is centered around how the future choices will be presented. To who, the method of agreement, if choices are spread out or all at once, The number of choices that can be made, the main method of agreement. Etc, Etc.
“Following that choice a list of common “choices” get offered. These are presets based on existing worlds and are offered based on analysis of your species and average desires. Following that point, individuals with desires strong enough or contributions high enough to get noticed can offer personal wishes for review. If any wish offered is uncontested, but a large enough population is indifferent to it, the option gets deprioritized and implementation is left to the inquirer with minimal aid from the system.
“Typically similar decisions or decisions that directly affect one another get placed in the same period. Typically the less important or less impactful decisions get placed at the end so those who don’t care can leave early or observe the rest of it.
“The standard main method of agreement is to vote on the options and then provide a method of contesting decisions. Upon a contested decision, the most common solution provided is violence. A raw contested war is when all the entities that care enough about the decision on both sides enter true combat against one another until a victor is decided and the decision is confirmed. A managed contested war has rules for disengagement or safety nets to prevent death. A competition battle would pit the two sides against monsters instead of each other and depending on the decisions previously contested decisions can be decided in lesser challenges, battles of wit or champion duels or whatever else your society cares for.” R finished.
As soon as Richard nodded R continued. “The system is based on fairness. It weighs effort, desire, agency and prioritizes those goals by the number of individuals effected. You could use your reward from reaching this point to force a choosing earlier than possible, but balance dictates you would not be able to participate in the choices presented and the choices are bound to be influenced by the calamities still alive negatively. Instead, You could use your reward to remove a single calamity from the board but doing so would not effect anything else that happens. You could use your reward to bias some decisions in the following choosing season but not force anything.
“You could request something specific you think might help you in your goal and because of this wonderful location I can cheat a bit to sneak you something extra…but even though you have reached this point it is not enough.
“There isn’t a way to cheat the scenario even if you’ve come all this way. You have to beat calamities and allow their essence to rank up the planet before the timeline completes naturally. No bypassing that.” R finished.
Richard looked to his friends. They had come all this way and it looked like they would be getting quite a bit less than they had hoped…
“What do you mean by cheat a bit to give us stuff?” Richard asked hopefully.
“Currently the potential of you flying here as a group – balanced as a shared achievement – gives you roughly 81 specialized stats each. Now closer to 70 or 20 free stats if you prefer because we waited. A well intact concept can be exchanged instead, or a decayed specific one could be created. Finally a relatively strong item can be traded instead at my discretion with the potential of an external item remaining cheaper than permanent personal strength. You can also combine rewards forgoing a individual reward for something communal.” R finished conjuring holograms of each option and laying them in the air in front of him like an invisible table.
Richard looked back at his friends once more then turned to R trying to think about what might count as cheating.
“You referred to me as an Unactivated general admin. Can you activate me?”
R paused then slowly responded. “Unactivated in this case is more a factor of the world being unactivated. I cannot give you access to worldwide power systems that do not exist.”
“What can you give me? Can you give me more control? A way to use my mantle now? A way to test the so-called admin controls in a small area maybe?”
R paused for a longer moment then smiled suddenly. “I do have an option. If you sacrifice and bind your personal nest, I can fold your authority into it allowing you to change ‘rules’ as you say in a limited area. This would be permanent and prevent you from specializing in a different method in the future. As a plus you’ll be able to access the ability right away without waiting for the planets settlement.
“That's what I pick then. I’m sorry this was a lost cause. What do you all want?” Richard turned to everyone else.
“Give me a random concept. That's more useful than stats right now.” Troy requested.
“Done,” R waved then turned to Jess.
“My mantle is unfinished…can you finish it? Get me something like Richard?” Jess asked causing R to pause.
“Your situation is different, I can fill in some of it, expedite your process and give you more weight towards finishing it?” R asked in clarification.
Jess paused for a moment before nodding. “Okay!” R nodded. “That removes some of your smaller steps. What's left. There are two monsters in your world, a bog hag that lures children into the dark to be eaten and a night reacher who works through dreams. Your mantle cannot form while they are still alive. There are also seven individuals on the planet who oppose your mantle’s' goal strong enough to prevent you from becoming an absolute. They all have different reasons for not wanting children to be protected but their mantles of slavery, lust and self fulfillment directly prevent you from completing your own. I’ve improved your mantles ability to track those obstacles and given you a compass as you haven’t built yourself the magic to do so yet. There is someone else on your planet with a similar goal to you so I added a compass for them as well. Ignore them or seek them out as an ally to your own discretion.”
Jess nodded slightly seemingly satisfied with the results no matter how small they seemed.
“Can I have a concept for filtration in as whole a state as you can manage?” Maddy asked causing R to smile slightly.
“Counter offer, go on a date with me. We can speak of magic and love, I’ll bend the rules even more, We can hold hands.” R offered waving one of his hands flirtatiously.
“Pass, Can I have the filtration concept.”
“I’ll teach you plenty of secrets outside of the scenario, A filtration concept is but the start.”
“Don’t be pushy. Will you give me my reward or continue to hold it hostage?”
R frowned then waved a hand theatrically. “Done, And you my champion, Anything you need? I’m paradoxically less able to bend the rules for you adding to what I’ve already done.”
“Can you make my mana physical at all times?” James asked and R started to laugh.
“The default state of mana is ‘physical’ as you are referring to. Do you know how much infrastructure goes into making its interactions ethereal for the ensouled? Most monsters don’t have your boon. That's why they need physical organs and physical mana cores to collect and direct abilities.
“When you perform magic you push mana through your body and out of your skin – without the infrastructure in place that sort of movement can damage you. Rip holes in your flesh and cook it with your flow. Are you sure you want to reject the convenience the current system gives you?”
James nodded “It feels better, Feels…more real. I’m closer to it that way.”
R smirked and nodded “Usually worlds that remove that default do so because they wish to free up the systems cost for other things. Blocking you from the change is essentially free. I can throw in some stats as well”
James pumped a fist “Free stats”.
“In that case, rewards are complete and the benefits reaching here have provided are spent. There isn’t alot else you can gain from remaining here so I will be taking my leave.” R twirled a hand and began to fade from his seat.
“Wait, is that really it? We can’t control anything from here?” Troy asked as R slowly turned to dust. “We can’t start the choosing early or gain any extra control…”
R spoke even as he vanished. “A final allowance but say…if you were to return just as your world enters choosing you might be able to push some choices up to the front. The system won’t let you make decisions for everyone without their agreement but you can certainly gain quite a bit of contribution if you do so from here.”
And with that R was gone.
They tried asking a few questions but didn’t get any further responses.
Below them the platform with the three computers began to drift away slowly.
“Well…I guess we move on to plan B?” James said after a moment.
“Back to the planet I guess.” Troy sighed. “At least we tried.”