SHIVERS-IN-SUNLIGHT
Nourishes, Skips, xirself and 4 other scorpions-of-Tsanh entered the portal. While the outside was dark and the night was only slowly dispelled by the imminent dawn, the inside was bright as if it was noon, except that the shadows were not right: they were directly under the objects, not in one direction. The desert inside was interspersed by many small plants. Skips immediately looked around and pointed to another portal on top of a mountain. She said: “This is where the boss is. We need to fight our way there!”
Shivers looked up the mountain and sighed: “And between there and here are countless monsters, I guess?”
Skips-one-Step confirmed that: “Indeed. Mostly the sand-dwelling creatures we fought already but probably also some variants. And these long, lizard-like creatures as well. And maybe some others. Like fire ephemerals or sand ephemerals. These are nonmaterial, so they are really difficult to damage. There are two ways to damage them: exhaust them with regular attacks or attack its centre with magi… skilled, ephemeral, attacks. On the other hand, the colourful sprites are resistant against ephemeral attacks but can be attacked via regular ones.”
The others confirmed that they understood this.
Then, Skips entered the portal and Shivers followed.
Immediately, three fire ephemerals attacked and Skips danced around them to stab the core while Shivers used a spell used to provide water to xir snails to counter the pillars of fire. It worked surprisingly well and soon, the fire ephemerals were defeated and disappeared. In their stead, some things dropped. Small metal disks and a white crystal.
Shivers asked: “What are these things, Skips?”
Skips looked at them: “Coins, I think I have told you how the economic system back on earth works. Or doesn’t.” She paused as she saw questioning looks and explained: “So, the economic system on earth is based on the idea of equal exchange. But often, what you want and what someone else wants in exchange does not match. So coins were invented as a neutral element that has value for everyone and is accepted by everyone for an exchange.”
Shivers asked: “But what is it usable for here on Tsanh?”
Skips looked into the void for a while, then said: “You can at higher levels exchange coins for advantages like special items. Like healing potions.”
Shivers understood. As no one had a bag, they put the coins near the exit.
Then, the group went on to advance into the dungeon.
NKETJDI
The amount of monsters were overwhelming and they were everywhere. Worse was that they burrowed as well. It had no fighting skills but it had longstrider in order to run away. That was when it saw a portal that was surrounded by bright red light. It expected that this was a portal to their homeworld. It decided to look into the portal to find out more.
The world looked similar to Tsanh which probably explained why they wanted to integrate Tsanh into their system. It saw several Tsanhians fighting the monsters there. There were no signs of settlements. There were no signs of any signs of infrastructure. It used several senses to investigate and shuddered. This was not a homeworld. This was a tiny subspace full of monsters. All monsters stronger than it expected Tsanhians to be. The fights would probably be a slaughter. However, when he investigated the fight, he noticed that one of the Tsanhians originally came from the outside world and that entity seemed to assist with the strengths and weaknesses of the monsters. The Tsanhians also were quite inventive in respect to what skills they repurposed for the defeat of monsters. They also didn’t behave according to their skill level. The fact that they were in two systems and the second one seemed to also boost their skills was not something that Nketjdi had thought about. Of course it would. The element. It was integrated into the foreign system a long time ago when their unmanned crafts first reported Tsanh to their centrality. The ¶§2≅ẞĥ, as it appeared in the foreign encoding. Yes, the element would have caused synergy for dual enrolled people. That would allow Solidarity to defend the planet should it come to it.
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Seeing that things seemed under control, it tried to return, but the portal no longer existed. It decided instead to follow the group.
TEKI
The integration seemed to go surprisingly well. People gained levels, defeated monsters and entered dungeons. If there were not so many issues in the background, the integration could almost count as a success. Almost. However, the weird thing in the logs as well as the red classes bugged him. He checked the dungeons to distract himself. Sarah and her team had entered the grade 9 dungeon. The drop bears had entered a grade 2 dungeon. Both teams did reasonably well. After he finished checking this, he decided to contact the technical support.
He contacted the technical support of his company. It took a long time until there was a response.
“Technical support, Aniik speaking,” a distorted voice was saying.
Teki immediately was confused: “Jaaru Aniik? I thought you’re in compliance?”
There was laughter on the other end of the line: “Init Aniik, I am her sister. How can I assist you?”
Teki explained: “I am working on the integration of the desert planet Tsanh and we have an issue with the going-live. The class assignments were weird. There are classes that were offered and chosen that should not exist. Like Yanigal. I checked the logs and can upload the relevant segments.”
Init responded: “That would be grand, yes. Please upload them to our server with the ticket number 52-32-11-17-L. In the meanwhile, I have a few screening questions: Have you tried restarting the computer of your base?”
Teki responded: “Yes. This is not my device but the system it bases its data on.”
Init made a human noise: “Have you used any extensions while setting up the integration?”
Teki shrugged audibly: “Does the betabox count?”
The representative smiled: “I mean, apart from what everyone uses.”
“None.” Teki said while finishing the upload, “By the way, the logs have been uploaded.”
Jaaru’s sister responded: “I will look into them in a bit. Another question: How is the L-Sync of the local instance?”
Teki entered a few commands and then responded: “79-23-81.”
Init responded: “have you considered switching to a new L-sync node?”
Teki had done so already. “Yeah, this is the closest one. Any other instance and a level up would take a day. But I can try this.”
Init sounded shocked: “That far out that there is only one node?”
Teki confirmed: “Indeed. That far out.”
Init stalled for a moment: “Yeah, then don’t switch. Let me check the logs.” There was a pause. “There is an extension, with weird characters. Have you attempted uninstalling it in the local instance?”
Teki explained: “I never installed it. It had integrated itself before I even came to Tsanh.”
Init gulped: “I will look into this. I will get back to you when I find out something else. You have the case number, yes?”
Teki nodded: “I do. See you!”