---Maddy---
Maddy wasn’t sure what she was expecting when she exited the darkness of the in between.
What comes to one’s mind when imagining a ‘new world’? One you were told to ‘settle’. A massive wild forest? An untamed wilderness? Some rocky canyons?
What Maddy found instead was a perfectly flat plane that stretched in all directions. Vibrant green short cut grass coated the ground – not tall grass like a savanna, or wild clumpy grass in varying degrees of hydration like you’d imagine might appear naturally…no the ground looked like a sports field of manicured mown and groomed turf. Not freshly cut but close – the pointed tips of the grass betrayed some growth but not enough to start looking unkempt.
There wasn’t much sign of life around her – far in front there was what looked like a huddle of humans but Maddy wanted to stay by the barrier for when her friends came though.
Far far to the left, Maddy saw a faint blip of colour – either there was water a kilometer or two to the left or a mirage reflecting the sky…
One of Maddy’s eyes began hopping in that direction at the thought. She’d know in a few minutes if it was a lake or ocean or what have you.
The rest of her eyes scattered as well – the cramped regressive feeling that had overwhelmed her in the in between slipped away. That’s better. Maddy’s mind began funneling into the eyes once again spreading out as it did. She had barely noticed she’d been squished into one spot at the time and now she could relax.
Maddy wasn’t a creature inhabiting a body. Her body was simply a convenient pool of stability and spells for her real form – a form comprising of separate eyes each contained a portion of her mind and soul in truth.
Instead of this understanding being some madness created from low stability, this understanding was just a description of how things were now.
“Now then,” Maddy spoke aloud her voice barely carrying in the empty plains. “Lets see about setting up an area to welcome my friends.”.
Stepping forward Maddy clapped her hands – the sound carrying her intent into the surroundings and beginning to form a nice looking cottage house.
A single clap would have been thematic but Maddy was forced to clap a few more times to get some details in.
Her multi-purpose illusion spell had some tricks built in to help fill in details and it didn’t take much mana or time to get a rough shack set up in the grass.
The illusion was little more than a slightly transparent lightshow but after layering it with polarity the transparent sheen disappeared. It wasn’t a requirement but it let Maddy fill a much bigger area much more cheaply.
She then mentally flexed a transference spell in her left leg feeling a pleasant if dry taste of meaning float up into her. With a quick application of dark-destruction – the mana coming completely from her left eye – her spell ate the ground in a wave of black magots. A pulse of life rang out as her right eye pulled the consumed matter up and fed it into her illusion with life-light-creation.
Maddy ripped some ‘reality’ out of the ground and ‘applied’ it to her illusion instead. In a few seconds the meaning from the ground tinged her shack with green and her life mana twisted the result even further – her house suddenly looking like it was made of plants as remenant purpose filled the empty shell.
The ground over a several square foot area was was melted by void for a solid minute as she worked on this creation – it took a surprising amount of ‘real’ matter to perform this trick when the matter was so meaningless. As Maddy dug down she first revealed an inch or two of soil then a half a foot of grey sand on top of yellowish grey stone.
In front of Maddy the lightshow firmed up – it was weak enough a good punch from anyone could probably topple it but…this wasn’t meant as a protective castle. It was a quick tent more for privacy and shade then anything else….
Maddy might try adding some real defenses if she got bored and it took time.
The very act of creation – of working towards building this however quickly – gave Maddy’s body a tiny drop of stability.
She would definitely add some more defense and put some work into this house or another – the more work she put into the creation the more of a ‘meal’ it would give her in stability gains.
For now Maddy stepped in and sat down in the middle of her new hut. Relaxing even further as she lay back in darkness, Maddy’s focus completely split this time – her body almost falling asleep.
The last thing that happened as she closed her eyes and lay back on the shaded grass was the two eyes inhabiting this shell popped out of her head. Her Creative-light-life eye popped up into the roof of the building appearing above the door to bask in the sun and stair out at the barrier.
Below her dark-destruction eye relaxed in the shade and began burrowing into the ground in the corner. Shade was good but the eye wanted complete darkness to rest in. It needed to throw the entirety of its individual attention into pulling the intent from its body over – it first leaned on its main body’s manipulation scripts to help it draw its own spell into the grass and then broke free as soon as it could start spawning darkness worms.
Worms made more sense to eat the dirt than maggots after all.
Happily digging into the ground dark-destructive-Maddy considered how important it was to keep at least one eye in a safe space at all times. She could be the one to hide in safety! How far could she dig into the ground and how deep would be safe? Was there caves down there or was it solid stone all the way down? Oh! Once she got down a ways, she could dig out some runes and try building attack and defense spells that just used destructive darkness for fuel! No need to try and shoehorn in some mana from her sisters or figure out a way of getting them to share – dark destruction was all you needed for the task wasn’t it?
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Either way it was something to do and made her feel happy to have a purpose.
She was definitely the eye with the most important job.
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---James---
James stepped through into the final zone and was surprised to see it looked the same as before.
When he’d come here ‘before’ as a sneak peek it had given him a vibe of some unfinished construction site. Now that it remained the same James was forced to admit the final area was just…baren.
Place was a bit of a fixer upper? The world was a bit more of a blank canvas than James had thought it would be?
Sending out several AI pulses, James noticed they were well within range of a network – he wasn’t the first to arrive – but more importantly Richard wasn’t here yet. Close enough to maintain a connection without relying on boosted pulses, James left the a confirmation packet with Richards name on it bouncing about the network. He’d get the equivalent of a read receipt as soon as Richard received his message.
Hesitating for a moment, James shook a wooden talisman. With a pulse kinetic mana ran into it and was colored by sound. Maddy had used his mana to create this device using her concepts – somehow attuning it so he could activate and fuel it despite magic items not working well for those other than their creators.
He felt his kinetic mana vibrate as sound and flow out in the surroundings like a beacon…there wasn’t a response.
Okay, She wasn’t though yet either – it kind of made sense. They had entered the barrier around the same time a few minutes ago, but James had rushed through the rewards. Ah well, he’d check in again later.
Time to go scope out the area? Should he pop down his dungeon right away and do a run while he waited?
…that would be a waste of a custom dungeon especially if he didn’t know what he wanted yet. First James would see if there was any existing nests or dungeons while he thought about what he wanted. Gathering all of his mana into a point James began to run blurring across the ground as he sped up.
This whole planet couldn’t be perfectly flat could it?
Ah. Well depending on how big it was James would soon find out. How many days will it take to run across the entire world at a 1000km/hr sprint?
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---Richard---
Richard was still thinking about R’s weird ass descriptions as he stepped through into the next zone.
It took him a solid glazed second of trying to understand what ‘competing truths’ even meant before he realized the world looked a bit strange.
What kind of half assed map building is this?
Richard stared about at the new zone in disbelief.
Theres a pretty obvious connection any gamer would make to the surroundings. A super flat creative mode in Minecraft. The equivalent of a level designer giving up – or perhaps the canvas for a new level designer to build his ideal palace?
That only worked with infinite block cheats. If this was creative world where’s the free resources? The inventory full of 999 crystal blocks?
…
Richard shock off the sense of this being a game as he flicked through his items and read a message from James. Seems his friend had gotten here sometime yesterday then went on a run. Thankfully Richard had his chair again – with a quick connection of a free slot and series of AI commands his portable workbench unfurled like some scifi wheelchair and began shifting into its all-terrain version.
Richard stepped forward and sat back sinking into the most comfortable gamer chair ever then brought out a box of all his tools staring at the odds and ends. The chair began moving towards a distant group of people and Richard reached into his pocket removing the nest seed to add to the group of items.
The nest seed he’d been rewarded with was his resource hack. His ‘999’ stack of crystal blocks. The only survival kit he’d gotten
Richard had already seen several examples of nests being farmed – he’d have to put in some work to figure out the best way of exploiting this portable farm but first he should figure out what the most important resource to aim for was.
More importantly the training area was done and he had to accept that. This was just an empty planet – there wasn’t a goal to work towards anymore he had to start thinking about how he’d live from now on.
Actually there was still a goal – figure out how to prevent anyone from abusing the admin access – but that wasn’t a permanent goal to work towards. It was a side quest on his new life.
Still, the empty world drove home how ‘on their own’ they were in a way that nothing else had up till now. It felt like moving out to go to university and live on your own for the first time.
Huh…Last time he moved out his drive was killed after a year and a half. He needed to figure out a proper goal soon – the chance of a new blue box appearing and offering him a new life was not high at this point.
After all, the one true goal to life was to have fun.
…
“None of us early advancers chose domain anchors and there’s no trees or building materials so we don’t have houses yet. That hole over there is the toilet. We’ve been talking about setting up a nest or dungeon by it to dump all the waste in but Muhamed seems to think that is just as likely to give us…” The player greeting Richard paused for a second in his description.
“Shit monsters?” Richard prodded.
“Yes those. Anyways, rules of the settlement are to keep nests at least one kilometer away from the flag over there that counts as town square and to pitch in when night falls. Night falls we have to survive the monsters that spawn and nightspawn seem to happen worse here than it did in previous zones. If you have wide area attacks direct them away from others – friendly fire is a huge issue and someone died last night – not to a monster but due to a particularly careless cloud of dissolution mist. We are still trying to figure out if the man responsible can be trusted to stay. Franks the strongest here and he’s mentioned a 2 strike system as an early legal system. No factions yet – most of us are solo delvers and the couple over there keeps to themselves.” The man continued.
He'd offered up nearly everyones name so far but hadn’t given his own for some reason.
Still his descriptions seemed fine. Richard was still trying to decide if he wanted to bunker down with them here or not. There was a lot to consider – they seemed like a bit of a mess. How could someone have survived all the way to here only to die in the first place without a safety net?
Richard was betting the bloke who melted a guy had done so on purpose. Could be fun to stay and see if he tried to merk someone else. Catch him in the act.
“We’re miscalculated how little resources we would get and are in a bit of a rough patch. If you have any items or skills that can help us set up some defenses or early infrastructure we beseech you to donate your time for the sake of humanity. Beyond that we are still trying to figure out if chips are worth anything anymore and no one seems ready to step up as the leader of this area. Last guy who tried to bring everyone together under a single authority got melted. Do you want to help me go collect meat from the grill nest? Someone’s random monster spawner made flaming bird monsters that seem to already be cooked when they came out. Lifesaver I tell you – I hope you like the taste of fried chicken. Anyways do you have any good gear? My semi automatic pulser broke and I need a spare.”
Richard continued to listen to the guy explain the situation nodding carefully and pumping the surroundings for information. A man sitting a few dozen feet away gave him the stink eye – what was his problem?
Welp, Looks like the first thing Richard was going to do might involved tower defense setup. Could make some Minecraft blocky stone houses to fit the aesthetic – everyone was just waiting around for someone to show up with a house making nest.
Really, Richard should be kind of annoyed that no one seemed to be getting anything productive done but a faint feeling was pushing that away.
These people…these people might actually need him. If he helped them out he might actually be accomplishing something?
It was nice being wanted.