For my apple side's evolutions, two choices were very good. The Golden Apple focused too much on Hardness and while Hardness was important to make my machines and devices tougher, it was a marginal benefit. It was out. The contest was between Fruit of Knowledge and Philosopher's Apple. Both were very good.
Wisdom was growing in importance with my Divine Perks and Traits. It weighed on the size of my Domain. The range of the qDCSC. Accuracy of my Mecha's weapons. And many other applications. But Clarity was also rather important. Those 5 base points of MP would be very, very handy. It would almost translate to a new Perk slot because I could remove the ribbon and pay for the transformation upkeep.
What about the one-time boons? Two repositories... One of them would be the Library of Congress, no doubt about it. That place was basically an ark of human knowledge, and not only about the USA. The other one... Google's Search Cache? The Wayback Machine? Probably Google. No, definitely Google. That's it. All of Google Search Cache and the Library of Congress. That was... combined with GitHub and the NASA files, what else was I missing from humanity's accumulated knowledge? I heard once that the Library stores copies of all public tweets ever made. There must be a lot of things in there I don't know. Perhaps all the patent documents too. Research papers? Nah, the Library probably has those. And... Yeah. Let's rephrase this. All of the caches for google searches. That should include Scholar and Books, right? And Google even has copies of the patents too. In case the Library of Congress doesn't have it.
Now, on the other hand... An answer to one question. Twenty words. This one is easy. And perhaps even more powerful than the two repository caches. "Tell me the question whose answer is 42!" Could be one. "What are all the secrets of the multiverse and the reason behind them?" Thirteen words. I could do better.
"What are all the secrets and knowledge of the multiverse and the rationale, motivation, and explanation behind all of them?" There. Twenty words. But this felt like a genie-in-a-bottle trap. Would cosmic entities be mad at me for prying their secrets? Was the System even capable of delivering on its promise? Is this a D&D Wish dilemma?
It could be a trap. It could very much be a trap. If I had to weigh those as equals, let's add in the one-time boon from The Golden Apple. Immortality. I could make a deal with Marshall, make him my sworn servant, and have him take a bite off of me.
Making Marshall my minion? Muahahaha.
When we first met, I was but the auction treasure, but now... I'm your God.
Hell, no. I was pretty well-staffed in the minion department. Between Larry and Róta, I had the cute mascot and the buxom blonde waifu. Not that I cared about women. Not anymore.
OK, The Golden Apple was thoroughly discarded. Two contenders remain. Save humanity's knowledge or chance a glimpse of the eldritch horrors of the multiverse. Tough choice. If I had a third choice of a repository, I would pick the National Archives. That might include even the Constitution.
Wisdom and the safe choice of knowledge, or Clarity, more MP, and a shot in the dark that could backfire?
I didn't reach this place by gambling. By taking risks. A Dungeon knows no plays if it is not playing it safe. Every time I sortie in a Mecha I am fighting my Dungeon instincts that tell me to bury my Core in the deepest hole possible.
Who gives a fuck about the secrets of the Multiverse? And I could always get more MP by converting DM, which I had more than I could use.
Before everything, I saved a snapshot of my Status pre-evolution. For comparison and bragging purposes.
See the full description of all Status items here: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/chapter/1084203 Name: Skip May Neming Species: Dungeon Core / Plant (Apple) Level: 180 Exp/ Level: 16,000 Main Class: God Dungeon (M) Effective Level (temporary): 180 Sub-Classes: Architect of Destruction (V) Computer Engineer (E) Plains Master (V) Valhalla Core (L) Mecha Pilot (E) Wayfaring Dungeon (E) Electronic Apple Orchard (L) Trismegistus Artificer (L) Artillery General (E) Attributes Base Score Efficiency | Square Root Modified Score Intelligence (In) 2,772 200% + 21% | 78 6,126 Wisdom (Ws) 2,780 200% + 21% | 78 6,144 Willpower (Wp) 6,665 290% + 21% | 143 20,728 Clarity (Cl) 2,900 220% + 21% | 83 6,989 Hardness (Hd) 2,808 260% + 21% | 88 7,890 Resources Base Modifiers Maximum MP (Cl) - regen (Wp) 1,900 Transformation upkeep: -192k/day 134691 ( 203734 / day) * DM (Cl) 2,260 Crystallization points: 2451 294,145 SP (Wp) 2,260 ---- 470,716 Materialization (Ws) 910 ---- 56,818 Armor sqrt(Hd): 88 ---- ( 73 / 75% ) Control (Wp) 1,090 ---- 227,026 Dungeon Domain: Personal: 1,75mi Beacon: 3,5mi Max Volume: 134,82cu.mi Domain Cluster link Distance: 117,4 miles DM from unused MP (1/20): 10,186 DM/day
I committed my choice. Now, did this evolution come with a free snake? I would pass on the naive naked couple, though.
> > Your transformation will be deactivated to upgrade your physical form.
>
> > You became The Fruit of Knowledge. You gained +360 Intelligence, +900 Wisdom, and +180 Willpower. +20% Intelligence Efficiency, +50% Wisdom Efficiency.
My form changed. I filled up, regrowing the half-eaten parts that were missing. My skin became deep red. I grew in size a bit. Even the Mana around me changed in quality. No longer the half-eaten, discarded Apple Core, uh? I got one step closer to Eden. I guess that so long I stayed away from naked women and snakes, I would be fine. Ugh. That was so sexist. Not that I cared about women. Not anymore.
> > What are the two repositories you desire?
"The first repository is all of the government of the United States files, books, documents, and audiovisual media archives." I shot for the stars, hoping to hit the moon.
> > Retrieving data from the temporal slipstream. Target date, 2022.
>
> > 347,672,854,954 written pieces added.
>
> > 14.87 exabytes of data files added.
>
> > 415,879,247,687 photographs added.
>
> > 11,434,536,412 duplicate items already in the database.
>
> This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
My Library Trait exploded and I got a massive headache. Though the knowledge wasn't all crammed at once in my head, the flow of Mana representing the information was like staring at a searchlight immediately after visiting the ophthalmologist and getting the pupils dilated. [1]
I got the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court files, the... complete IRS tax filings? Hell. White House. The FTC databases. FBI case files. CIA. What was in Area 51. Even some things the USA wouldn't want me to have if they still existed. Including launch codes for weapons that didn't work anymore.
Whelp. I think I overshot the moon. Let's see if I could outdo that.
"As the second repository, I want everything the Alphabet Company and its subsidiaries have. Computer files, backup data, databases, books, documents, pictures, source code, and audiovisual media archives."
> > I should probably have seen it coming.
You should, Generic Gray Alien System Avatar. You fucking should.
> > Allocating the user's DM pool and storage to pay for temporal slipstream. Cheer up. Wishes come true.
Wait, what? I had to pay for it? Damn. Billions of DM stored in my trees were sucked out and vanished.
> > Here, have fun. If you liked the government's files...
I screamed in binary.
*
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*
Humanity was saved. Well, at least the knowledge it had at the beginning of the second decade of the XXI Century.
I had every video ever uploaded to YouTube or recorded with a smartphone, or transmitted over the web, whether the user wanted to share the video with Google or not. User device backups, mostly Android but some iPhone ones too. Text messages. Tweets. Facebook posts. Sweet Jesus. Even... those websites where the models don't wear many clothes. Hooray for Spyware. Data. Google search, including the backups. Including the Wayback Machine. Including stuff that shouldn't have been crawled because of the webmaster’s restrictions on the robots.txt which the crawler ignored and indexed anyway but not publicly. Every file that was ever saved in Google Docs. Every Gmail message ever sent. Books. Scholarly publications.
The Nudes Katia took but never sent me. Who's Katia? None of your business. Not that I cared about women. Not anymore.
Every web novel site in the world, including the wicked Russian pirate machine translations. The fucking deep web, because of course Google snooped there. The deep web was duplicated tenfold because the DHS, CIA, NSA, and the like had it too. Also, the whole Google Play Store apps and a lot of other software projects were hosted with big-G. Deleted, banished, pulled out, it didn't matter. Google never let go of a piece of data.
Humanity was saved. But I had to spend a week recovering from the shock of having a whole planet's worth of data in my System.
Now, the Dungeon part.
I had three choices.
Abyss was out. Fuck that.
Tower... Is this a Korean trope? Guess so. Also, it seemed the description was glitchy last time, but I could see it was fixed and repeated in the pre-chapter note above. What is the point of 100 floors of infinite length? Why couldn't I... Fuck. That was huge. Indestructible? I would become the tower and not the Core? Would Climbers who entered me have a shot at ascending to godhood?
What was stopping me from creating an army of gods? My whole pantheon? Why did I feel I was supposed to stop the climbers at any cost? Oh. There's a trap in here, isn't there? I bet a climber that reaches the top of the tower does something to the tower. Either destroy it, become its master, or something.
Despite having ten times infinite land, I had to pass. It was too good to be true. The paranoid live long.
So, only one real choice.
> > You became The Labyrinth. You gained +360 Intelligence, +360 Wisdom, +540 Willpower, +180 Clarity, +360 Hardness, +20% Intelligence effectiveness, +20% Wisdom effectiveness, +25% Willpower effectiveness, and +25% Hardness effectiveness.
I was interested in the ability to spawn monsters. I tried and... a window opened.
> Bestiary
>
> * Giant Rat (5)
It seems that while I could spawn monsters, I had to learn how to spawn monsters. All I could do was create giant rats for 5 DM each. Yeah, a major letdown.
After this, the System sent me another prompt.
> > At this point, you can discard up to 20 unwanted Perks for 40 Attribute Points each. This is a one-time offer and won't be offered again.
Damn. I opened my Perk list and made my choice. Some Perks were useful but too situational. Some made sense when I was weaker, but not they were just dead weight.
I selected Tough Capacitor, Green Thumb, Shield Plants, Multiplexed Frequency Pulses, Haunted Woods, Wind-Gliding Bullet, Omae wa mou Shindeiru, Skulls for the Skull Throne, Coffee in, Code out, Coding Trance, The Lion Sleeps Tonight:, Everything the Light Touches is our Domain, Stay in the Fucking Robot, Shinji!, Get in the Fucking Robot, Shinji!, Finisher Pose, Ambient Mana Sweep, Certified Munitions, Glaðsheimr's Banner, Improved Intel, and Deadeye Spotters.
> > For converting 20 Perks, you received 800 Attribute Points.
800 points which went all into Willpower at once.
*
----------------------------------------
*
I was eagerly expecting my deferred Exp. I must have had enough for at least fifty levels. I pulled the next Notification.
> > You have 1,506,585 Deferred level 180 Experience points and 30 levels as quest rewards. Please select one Boon:
>
> a) Advance to level 304. No Sub-Class slots will be at risk of loss.
>
> b) Convert all your Deferred Experience and levels into a +200% Efficiency bonus for ALL Attributes.
>
> c) Convert all your Deferred Experience and levels into one extra Main Class Slot (up to Legendary) and two Sub-Class slots. This extra Main Class Slot does not grant more Sub-Classes.
Bloody motherfucker. How am I supposed to choose? 124 levels at once? basically, Double my Attributes? Or go through the hassle of selecting stuff and leveling up all over again? Though with 3 new Classes... My effective level would drop to 138. I could grind those new levels really fast. Like, fucking fast.
Okay. Stop. Think. 124 levels would give me five sub-Classes. so, all the Attributes of my current classes, 80 per level, that's... Damn. Was a Main Class slot worth that much? Cancel two sub-Classes on each side, the Main Class slot had to weigh against three Sub-Classes, 9,920 Attributes, and the Perks from leveling up. My main would give me fifteen, and six from every other sub. Times nine, fifty-four.
The left side of the equation: One Main Class Slot that I had to level up from the ground up.
The right side of the equation: Three subs-Classes, 9920 Attributes, sixty-nine (whoa) Perks from the Classes I already had.
Compared to that, the +200% to all Attributes didn't seem as enticing.
My head was spinning and I had no idea what to do. This could make or break my future.
I explained my conundrum to my mascot, "Larry, what should I do?"
"I don't know, Contractor. These numbers are too big. Why don't you roll a die?"
"God doesn't play dice with his own future, Larry," I said with a bit of annoyance.
"I'm a platypus, what do you expect from me?"
We both paused. "I'm sorry, Larry."
"I'm sorry too, Contractor. Isn't there anyone you can call for advice?"
There was. I didn't want to, though.
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CLIFFHANGER PROTECTION ACTIVATED. CONTINUING THE CHAPTER.
----------------------------------------
Dammit. I was hoping to buy a few hours to think about my choices here. What kind of bullshit is a cliffhanger protection anyway? Let the readers suffer and wallow in doubt! You are killing the tension! You are SPOILING them! You hear me!
*
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*
Yeah, yeah. Okay, don't drop or go on hiatus because of this, sheesh. First, I transformed back. Of course, I had Larry say the magic words (Purin, Kurin, Kuririn! Magical transformation!) for me.
No! That wasn't the only reason I kept him around all this time!
Light enveloped me. A piece of upbeat music played from nowhere. I became a glowing apple, only my silhouette appearing. A red ribbon with golden trim flashed and flew around me, circling me twice before wrapping itself around my stem and tying it into a neat cute bow. The music reached a crescendo and the light enveloping me burst out, but to avoid triggering an episode on anyone like that fateful Pokemon episode, it was desaturated. I became a glossier crystal apple.
I had to expand the cockpit to fit my big fruity crystal butt.
With a sigh (in binary), I opened a video call with Marshall. He was debriefing some Guardians that returned from a patrol on their armored buggy.
"Excuse me. You are dismissed. Submit your written reports before tomorrow's sunset." Then he answered the call. "What is the matter?"
I explained to him my problem. He went from surprised, to slightly envious, to disgusted, and, finally, angry.
"Are you dumb? Don't answer that. Look, why are you weighing the pros and cons like that? They are not the same thing unless you plan on retiring and never leveling up again."
"What? I don't get it."
"If you don't take the 124 levels, will you never again get to reach whatever disgusting high level you would?"
I hadn't told him my current level, just the reward for the evolution.
"I guess not? There's nothing telling me I can't level up ever again."
"Yes. So, let's assume that it would take you 100 years to grind those levels. Imagine yourself a hundred years from now. In scenario A, you took the 124 levels, made leveling up impossible, and spent 100 years gaining levels basically only from World Bosses. Let's say you earned a level a year, which is already a stretch, but at the end of a century, you now have 224 levels. Okay?"
"Yeah."
"Good. Now, scenario B: You take the damn Class slots you are offered and grind for 100 years. Since you are at a lower level in this scenario, you advance two levels and a quarter a year. A century from now, you have 225 levels, a leveled-up Main Class, and two subs. The points you allegedly would gain now, you will gain in the future. But the Class slots? They will never come back."
"Oh. I see. Now, what about scenario C, I take two hundred percent efficiency in all Attributes instead of the other two?"
Marshall ended the call. I could see him grumbling and punching the reinforced stone wall. "Dumb Dungeon!" He shouted at the wall. "I know you are watching me. Take the damn Class slots!"
I Replicated a bottle of scotch. He picked it up and chugged down. Waving the bottle, he ranted.
"This was exactly why I had to kill the Laborer who earned all that collateral damage Experience and shot to level 300. Evolution quests are custom-tailored to the user. Yours was a (Mythic) Quest, his (Uncommon) would be something dumb yet challenging like, dunno, give the answer to two plus two. I don't think he'd have accumulated 124 levels worth of deferred Exp, but what if he ended up growing too strong to control after his evolution? Can you imagine a level 500 psychopath murdering people?"
He turned around and waved his hand. Stomping outside the meeting room, Marshall grumbled, "I need more whiskey. Second Main Class. What a load of Bullshit."
*
----------------------------------------
*
And thus, I made my choice. To expand my potential, I had to pick and level 3 new Classes. Ugh. I pulled the list of possible Classes I hadn't yet utterly rejected or fucked up.
I picked Protean Dungeon as my new Main, then Techno-Wizard and Fabricator-General as my two new subs.
> Main Class: Protean Dungeon (Legendary, Dungeon). Bringer of change. The originator of legends. The Protean Dungeon is a treasure trove of opportunities. Those who earn its friendship and favor shall be elevated into greatness among their peers. Those who incur its wrath shall lament for all eternity.
>
> * You gain experience for transmuting elements and creatures in your Dungeon.
> * +4 to all Attributes at each level. +10 Attribute Points, Dungeon Mana, Substance, Materialization, Control, and MP per level.
> * Class Skill: Primordial Transmutation.
> * Your next Class Skill is at level 100.
>
> Primordial Transmutation: Change the very nature of matter, energy, and creatures. — Rank I Benefits: Spend 100*Rank MP. You can change the nature of a lump of matter worth 20 Substance into another substance worth (20*Rank)% more points.
What? it was... lackluster... but wait. 100 MP was worth 5 DM. 5 DM was worth 2 Substance points. These conversions were at a loss. But by using this, I could change 20 Substance points into 24... Not to mention the DM cost of the material. Okay. For a rank I Skill, you are okay!
> Sub-Class: Techno-Wizard (Epic, Crafter) Laser watches or magic clocks? Rocket cars or flying carriages? Submersibles or just a controllable water bubble? Robot dogs or golem Dogs? When faced with the choice between magic and science, the Techno-Wizard answered with "yes."
>
> * You gain experience for crafting techno-magical gadgets and devices.
> * +2 Intelligence, +3 Clarity each level. +1 MP per level.
> * Class Skill: Technomancy
>
> Technomancy: Channel your magic through your technology and reinforce it. — Rank I Benefits: Enchantments blend with your technology (10*Rank)% easier.
Techno-Wizard, where were you months ago when I was struggling to integrate Superconductive Vegetation and quantum computers? Why, why, whyyyyy!
> Fabricator-General (Epic, Crafter): Overseer of the forges, creator of wonders. The Fabricator General can create entire production lines from the mine to the finishing touches and shipping. Convert the world into a factory and go beyond.
>
> * You gain A little bit of experience for every item made by a production line. Exp is tallied and given weekly.
> * +2 Intelligence, +2 Willpower, +1 Clarity at each level. +1 MP per level.
> * Class Skill: Factorium
>
> Factorium: Design and implement machinery to craft any object. — Rank I Benefits: Factories you design and build produce (10*Rank)% more products.
Any object? I fluttered my eyelashes (no eyes on an apple. Try a potato). Are you really, really sure, System? Shall we try it?
I felt a surge of power. Not only I could level up again, but with the new Classes, my effective level dropped to 100, letting me gain Experience even from stupid demons like the Spinehouds (albeit 1 point). I needed to go out and hunt as many beasts as I could, Or I could sit home and just rebuild my robot army. I bet they would give enough Exp to bleed through the Exp Cap.
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[1] The author makes no claims of having visited the ophthalmologist on the day he wrote this. And of all the rainy days in a very rainy January, the weather decided to be Sunny with a chance of even more Sunlight just today. As Emperor Izaro said, "The Firmament hates us with incandescent fervor." Ugh. My eyes.