---Richard---

Richard finally achieved his main personal goal. Manual defense. Manual defense he could automate back into passive defense with his AI and a simple set of transfer functions.

It would have been more cinematic if he figured it out in the middle of a massive battle. It would have sounded more memorable if he managed it after months of constant study.

Instead it was a pair of simple achievements slipped in with his base building and tower defense.

🔓 Achievement get: Stat modifier.

Description: Took control of your body's power defense and shaped it towards your own ends.

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Stat: +9 mental power.

Stat: +9 integrated body modifier power.

Stat: +9 body defense.

🖥️ Achievement get: Stat AI interface.

Description: Gave control of your body's stats over to your embedded personal computer. Aren’t you afraid of viruses?

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Stat: +3 Mental AI power

Stat: +3 Mental AI speed – Stat switching focus

Stat: +3 Mental AI defense

Stat: +3 Mental Fear defense

But really. He already had all the key information he needed. Stat equipment resonance from the last zone. The knowledge that stats were single esoteric atoms forming bonds with his body – thanks clear rewards.

Even with his theoretical knowledge and high quality AI cheat he might not have managed it as quickly as he did…but then a second cheat floated in when he started dragging the connections about with his ethereal connection arms.

They felt more and more like arms now. No longer cables he could stab into stuff but parallels to his stone hands that could drag stat resonance about his body like weaver operating an invisible loom.

Why had Richard wanted to set this up again? Why did he think he could do better than nature?

Well that was simple.

Defense was mathematically the strongest stat.

Its true, Defense best stat hands down.

Fire power vs fire defense. Poison power, poison defense. It was clear in every specialized comparison. 100 points in slashing defense would make you nearly immune to 100 points in slashing power. The real world was messy and power and speed stats didn’t always shift into nice consistent numbers…but the difference was big enough you could prove it in lab settings and those readings did transfer to the real world even if they were harder to measure.

Honestly 10 defensive points in some specific rare poison were enough to defend against 100 potency points in the same rare attacking poison. That’s how high the stat disparity was. General poison defense also worked against specific rare poison even if that ratio was closer to 1:2.

The only reason defense ever lost exchanges in reality was due to specialization.

By default, defensive stats defended against any possible damage they could defend against with a portion completely neutralizing the damage and a portion weakening the rest. 100 general defensive stats failed against 100 specialized damage stats – and there was no such thing as a ‘general’ power stat. Basically, if there were some theoretical ‘1 generalized damage’ split between every damage type it would be perfectly blocked by 1 generalized defense. Body power defaulted to physical power or ‘strength’ after all.

All one really needed to understand was defense was the best stat.

Richard had finally started to understand why these rules even worked the way they did. It was like those black box lectures he had listened to. His body was the black box – the stats and aether they used were almost a closed system. Because nearly no aether was gained or lost on defense, its efficiency could rise to 100% with spent aether somehow rejoining unspent.

Power and speed stats on the other hand were only mostly closed systems. They effected the world around the person who had gained them – moving released energy into positions that expended them and that energy had to come from somewhere…

At least that’s the hypothesis Richard had made and nothing so far had gone against that.

…

Richard stood right outside the town’s wall as darkness fell for the 5th night.

Far in the distance – as if just out of sight – monsters began to slowly appear crawling towards him. A menagerie of abominations in all manner of shapes and sizes.

Scan finished.

Unknown Entity 1. Visual classification displayed in generalized results due to verbosity level.

Piercing damage: 93% Chance. Medium-low damage potential.

Chemical damage: 48% Chance. Variable damage potential. Medium high impact.

Class A: 80% Chance. Medium-high damage potential.

Class B: 7% Chance. Low Damage Potential.

Class C: 13% Chance. Unknown Damage Potential.

Dissolution damage 3% Chance. High damage potential.

Alternative damage type. 0.1% Chance. Unknown Damage Potential.

Shifting defense split using

Scan Updated.

Multiple entities classified. Individual readings collapsed. Updating defense split using mean risk/impact weightings. Ongoing classification of additional entities in process.

Richard began to feel heavy. A disorienting roll of discomfort passed his body as his AI activated nodes he’d created from his flesh and then re-embedded in his body. Richard’s arms and legs became stiff as they resisted even his own motion. It felt restricting. Suffocating. Like someone was covering him in weighted blankets while wrapping him in plastic wrap.

The heaviness began to disappear but the stiffness remained.

All the same as lab conditions so far. Everything was going according to keikaku. Richard breathed out and pushed a disinterested smirk onto his face just in case someone was watching – from back on the wall or through the system, didn’t matter.

The first of the monsters arrived – a creature that looked something like a giant grounded bat with heavy spike laden wings.

It lunged and tried stabbing Richard with an ear piercing shriek – his stats had dropped from his ears slightly so the sound caused Richard to wince.

Dozens of spikes flexed as the wing arrived – appearing to Richard's sight like a wall of green-grey needles.

“Just a fun little test. Nothing to worry about. Don’t be a bitch” Richard muttered standing as still as he could – not that he had much choice in the matter.

Richard felt the wall wrap around him. Everything vanished in a moment and a buzz of almost pain crossed his body.

The tips of the countless spikes only puncturing a small distance into his skin. Less than half an inch in a few thousand spots maybe. No biggy.

If he’d gone a specialized defense route his body’s defense would have grown towards neutralizing the spikes instead of healing from them. As it was with his normal stats, initial puncture wounds usually stabbed deep into him and then were healed quickly.

Richard was completely wrapped in the wing and his AI hijacked his senses to measure the way a faint paralytic had been pumped into his flesh.

With a jerking motion the bat tried to rip Richard up – probably to pull some hulk smash on his ass – but Richard's current split held fast.

He was much too heavy. He resisted being moved against his will.

Roughly 20 seconds had passed and he could already feel a faint increase in his piercing defense as his main skill began to adapt.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

A second shriek rang out – muffled slightly by his coccon – and the bat tried to open a hole in its wing and take a bite of the heavy meal.

Richard stared at the bats beady red eyes as its jaw failed to puncture the skin on his shoulder.

“You done?” he asked trying to think of a quip and failing.

“Give one of your friends a turn if you are –“Richard's arms were pressed against his side but he resisted being contained.

It was hard to move his stiff limbs. Incredibly hard… but they barely felt restricted by the monster itself if he was being honest. Slowly Richard squeezed his arms out and pushed the surroundings away fighting against himself while ignoring the spiky bat.

Strength stats were almost hindering him at this point – he had his AI try and suppress his strength stats across his body and part of the stiff feeling faded.

A series of blows began to rain down on him as what looked like a zoo of porcupine cosplayers attacked.

As his adaptive skill began to put in some work, Richards AI recalibrated his stats – fuck, No wait! That was decreasing his skill’s effectiveness abort! Abort! Richard mentally slammed the stop button and set his AI to scanning and building a better profile instead.

Manually diverting the rest of his ‘QOL’ stats Richard suddenly froze. The stiff feeling was replaced with complete and utter immobilization.

Richard struggled against the self imposed bindings and felt a faint feedback from his adaption skill.

Could it not adapt to this? Could it not slowly build and defend against this annoying immobile state?

His defensive stats were defending against this before he redirected them…and his skill defended against any continuous damage.

It felt like it should work.

Richard unfroze just enough to close his eyes then froze and began completely ignoring the monsters around them.

Their stabs weren’t even puncturing him anymore. This was more important.

Come on. Do something. Richard poked his ethereal hands through his body, his connections better able to sense the skill while it was being used like this.

What was happening? How was the skill functioning? Could he boost it with more aether from a free slot?

…no, the aether fueling this skill was different. Dumping ‘pure’ aether into a machine running off of his chaos affinity skill was like trying to fill a car with deasil. More like filling it with vegetable oil actually – he could probably build a way of converting power but not without any tools using nothing but spit and girt.

Slowly Richard released his ‘absolute’ defense feeling the way the world about suddenly came into focus.

He could suddenly feel the attacks again – they still weren’t puncturing him.

Reaching out Richard kept his defense at 95% wild blocking and slowly grabbed a particularly aggressive creature trying to eat his face.

Gripping two sides of a creature that looked like a porcupine lizard on steroids Richard slowly ripped the struggling creature in two.

Kinetic defense was 100% increasing the weight of his inertia – it…it might even be more efficient than power stats if he got it high enough. Fuck yeah.

I should tell James to ditch stats other than defense.

Mentally switching to the message section Richard frowned as the ‘online’ note for his friend suddenly flipped to ‘out of range’.

Had James entered a dungeon?

…I guess I’ve been ignoring my nest as well. Might as well be my second side quest in Operation Skynet.

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---James---

One question at a time, James should see if Maddy’s idea had merit.

Focusing inwards, James found his heart and the weird ‘other’ feeling that hid behind his senses.

James poked the mantle and felt something change slightly. It felt like…it felt like the prickle of someone’s sight. Like he knew someone was looking at him – like he could feel R’s gaze through the bit of power he’d been gifted.

“Can you answer?” James thought at the mantle and then when he didn’t get an instant response tried again – this time pushing the idea of his question into his mana and shoving his mana into his heart. Shaping his intent this way only really worked inside his body but the heart was a part of him even if it was cut off…Slowly the presence inside of him reached out – a single tendril of response from incredibly far away feeding into his heart. The gaze almost controlled the scrubbed mana that left James’s heart imprinting its own meaning and intent…

James swapped to an aether lens. His ability to manipulate his aether like a muscle faded but in that weird transition he managed to link his AI to his heart, feeding in pulses of information crystalized in aether and attempting to decode the structured aether leaving his heart on the other side.

Everyone watched in silence as James attempted to communicate through his mantle. After a minute or two his AI started picking up bits and pieces of the response.

”Cannot enter…world fragile…close off the closed room…consent…can’t interfere more than I have…separate your location…prepare for communication vessel…”

'R’ repeated similar ideas again and again until James stopped and looked about. ”Can we…close off this room more than we have? And prepare a communication vessel?”

James didn’t fully understand what he was asking but Maddy seemed to understand at least part of that. He’d read the stuff about closed rooms with Richard but other than knowing they were required for dungeons to work properly he didn’t fully get it. They were in a house with the door closed. Was that not enough?

“Delineate the door. Delineate the floor, remove the backdoor,” Maddy spoke and lines of mana rushed outwards into the room about them.

Several minuscule holes seemed to disappear – the edges of the door melting into place seamlessly in the wall as she cut them off even further from the outside. The air in the room suddenly felt warmer and a sense of being isolated twinged across James’s body.

“and now a puppet for the puppet master…” Maddy muttered a small doll appearing in the center of the table. She paused and looked at James.

“Does your sketchy boss have a requirement for this to work? Blood? Mana?”

“Consent” the doll spoke. “The deepest requirement of true magic.”

Troy opened his mouth to say something then closed it immediately. Whatever he was about to say was immediately sidelined by the show in front of them.

The doll melted slightly, its body warping as if under a great invisible load. Soon the creature was hunched over in the center of the room, its back a lump its skin waxy and fluid.

It looked like a trollish garden gnome made of beeswax was placed in an oven just hot enough to begin melting it.

“I’m…slightly surprised my contractor reached out for help. “ R spoke his voice clear despite the wax dripping down his lips.

“I was 80 percent sure he’d take on the burden alone.” ‘R’ coughed and wax drops landed on Jess’s clean table. “Now, unlike what you may be imagining I haven’t been watching this planet. I’m completely hands-off at this point in time – I cannot know why you are contacting me. I have no power to affect what has been put into place.” ‘R’ coughed again then amended his last statement his voice taking on a laboured tone as if he were struggling to speak normally.

“Actually I do have a power…My power to influence the planet is…James. Until the status of the world changes – either by one of the sides winning for their sponsor, or James winning on behalf of the house…well I can’t even offer individual contracts or boons to your people until after that point.

“Right now I can speak to my contractor and anything I say will be the same as my contractor explaining things to you…but I cannot speak to the rest of you directly or risk breaking my contract. Ideally James would be alone…ideally, James could project an illusion of me talking to remove my burden or Maddy could read James’s memories and project a feed to…” R coughed a blob of wax across the wall and went silent.

“Now, James. What do you need from me?” R asked facing and appearing to only speak to James.

R looked…different than he had. He looked tired and small. Why was he labouring so much to speak to them? Was someone else holding him back? Was he holding himself back? Was it weird magic stuff that no one understood? Probably that.

James took a breath to organize his thoughts and began asking their questions.

“Is there a way of ranking up the world sooner? A way of rushing to the goal instead of letting it default while we muck about with keeping a growing population from killing each other?” James asked the main question they had.

R was silent for a moment and then spoke carefully.

“Ranking up the world involves a bunch of different systems interacting with each other. Right now, James you are rank 3 nearing rank 3+. You have above 729 stats concentrated in a single body. The current world has a rough rank cap of 4. Reaching rank 4 means tripling your stats or collecting around 2187 – that includes those monster stats you’ve integrated but doesn’t account for alternative methods of weight equivalent to stats but not lesser.

“I can tell you that having several people at or above that barrier will stress the world into jumping up as well. Alternatively you can force the rank jump by gaining that first circle yourself and pushing through to 3154 stats at rank 4+. It’s not just based on stats – skills and quality of skills also matter… but the number and quality of them arn’t as important numerically. Number of monsters put down – although field boss level creatures being put down happens at the same time as stat infusions. Rank of dungeons and nests…but clearing those gives stats as well.

“The year timeline I gave you is not so much an invisible timer and more a natural timeline based on the amount of growth the population should reach. If it was even possible to instantly rank up the world…well you’d find it nearly impossible to survive instead of ‘hard’ as natural projections show it happening.” R finished. As soon as he began speaking to James and James alone his coughs and weakness seemed to mostly fade.

James nodded slightly. “So we can’t force that timeline sooner.”

Jess nodded. “It doesn’t sound like we want to.”

“I didn’t say that…” R coughed and shot a half glare towards Jess before refocusing on James.

“I’m just giving some background. A description for what exactly you are asking me. “ R responded to James.

“If you want to rank the planet up faster you have to raise your weight far above average – grow till the planet naturally bumps into a strong enough state to bear your weight. The rank-up will be announced with a world trial you need to survive and soon that trial will become the new normal.

“If you were quite a bit stronger than you are now and this conversation was happening a rank or two later you might have more control over that process…for now that’s all I will say.

“Now, your job is to act as a calamity. Your mantle will empower your gift to help that goal and if you understand what you are asking…you have my blessing. Just use your gift to force that goal.” R nodded.

“By gift, you mean the dungeon seed?” James asked.

“Yes. I have a good idea of what form it might take if you gamble on faster progression. Saying anything more than that will count as interference even with your position.” R seemed to melt faster as soon as he said the word ‘gamble’.

”Can we separate out ranks into different dimensions to protect those who haven’t reached a higher level yet? Can we separate out aether and mana into different dimensions and keep them separate and unable to attack each other?” Maddy asked.

R silently stared at James until he sighed and re-asked the question.

“Yes nothing is stopping you. Go ahead.” R responded in a curt tone.

“How?” James asked trying to match the curt response.

“Be strong enough to achieve either feat. Nothing is stopping you but the lack of capability. Your gift might help a bit if you aim for that goal but…it’s not a magic solution to every problem its just a tool. It can’t achieve the impossible – that’s your job. Whatever you chose you should probably do it soon – its value will not raise the longer you sit on it and if you do choose the route you brought up you’ll want as much time as you can to use it.”

James nodded slightly. Nothing was stopping them from making new dimensions. Or finding ones that already existed if Troy was to be believed.

…

But how? How would they actually go about doing that? R had made it sound like they could have all sorts of control over the world they would be living in.

“Earlier you mentioned all sorts of ways we could affect the world. Add rules to the system and rules to the way magic might work in the world. How mechanically would we do that?” James asked trying to figure out what he was missing.

“For all customers, those possibilities were given as a reward for clearing this zone.” R responded. “As soon as my existing contracts are complete and have run their course…well at that point I can begin making boons and bargains with the new population for feats they cannot achieve with their own power. Even after that point most of it should be possible with your own power…All I would need to do is…a push.”

R went silent. Suddenly a grin split his face in two, the entire top half of his head moving up and down as he spoke.

For the first time since being summoned R turned to face someone else.

“Maddy, you remember that wager I offered? It’s a simple game – if you take me up on it and commit to using all guesses now, I’ll even give you a hint. A push of your own my dear,“

Maddy froze.

What was the game R had mentioned? Had Maddy kept something that had happened from them?

The woman half turned her head in the beginning of a denial and then stopped.

She looked about at everyone in the room. Her eyes lingered on James then Troy then Jess, finally the moved to the waxy doll and she nodded.

“What’s your hint?” Maddy asked. Her mind seemed to be made up.

“I’ve already given it.” R grinned. “Both here and…before.”