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Chapter 3

SHIVERS-IN-SUNLIGHT

The scorpion-of-Tsanh initially deemed the task insanely hard. The Kha Zha plain was very large. The desert often seemed to be hard to navigate. However, with the help of the repository and with the synthic skill Longstrider on the third level, Shivers ran as if xir stamina was unlimited and as if the ground decided to conveniently run into the opposite direction. Shivers reached Village-of-the-hills-that-shade-the-huts-and-caves before the constellation of the Ikraite reached the highest point in the sky. A few undifferentiated scorpions lugged beams out of storage of the temporary palisades, that the village would need.

“Hey, what brings you here, buddy?” one of them asked.

“Hey, I am Shivers-In-Sunlight. I am here on a quest. The System asked me to get the Barrier Builder skill to 4 in the repository of Village-of-the-hills-that-shade-the-huts-and-caves,” xe explained.

"Hello Shivers-In-Sunlight. I am Hides-In-Soft-Sand. This is Rejoices-in-Sandstorms, and the tiny fellow here is Runs-from-Voices." Hides pointed to the others.

Shivers quickly ran into an issue: Village-of-the-hills-that-shade-the-huts-and-caves had very limited heliciculture. Snails were not as common as at the oasis. However the mosses and lichens of the caves were used for arachniculture and insecticulture and the extraction process was the same. As such, they had enough poisonous extract to soak the beams. Rejoyces explained that it normally was used in tiny amounts as a spice, or fermented into a liquid that could help against certain illnesses. They didn’t need to cover the entire wall, but they needed to understand how to handle the beams as well as how to use attractors. Shivers asked however that someone could teach Village-of-the-Oasis-of-swimming-flowers-that-is-the-source-of-the-river-that-feeds-a-million-mouths how to ferment the extract as a cure. Which Runs eagerly agreed to. Xe explained that xir name just indicated xe to be a bit of a loner. Xe would not literally run when being spoken to. A while later, the group said that they received the message from the system about their improvement in barrier skill. Shivers also received a message:

Quest progress: Kha Zha needs barriers

The repository of Village-of-the-hills-that-shade-the-huts-and-caves has received the improved skill. (1/73)

Shivers asked for a place to burrow during the day and some water, so that xe could depart at dusk. Runs offered xir a place to burrow in the hut of their family and could offer a place at their dawn meal table. Shivers happily accepted and before the sunlight would bring its twitching madness to Kha Zha, xe burrowed into the soft sand. Aware that next night a treacherous climb awaited.

SARAH GREENLAND

There were skills that she hated to employ. She hated to use her female charms for anything. For one, it felt manipulative, but also, it put her in the danger of some people who let their little head do the thinking and who tend to lose contenance, mind and inhibitions against using violence when they find out they were played. As such, she got into contact with a Hisha crewperson, a kind of radially symmetric spider with ten legs, not a human. She schmoozed her way into him revealing that a watersuit existed on board as part of the emergency equipment and one transaction of daddy's money later, two things happened to it: in the inventory system, it was written off as damaged and in the real world, it was packed in a bag and handed to her.

A quick while later, she was in the cabin of that poor Keani and offered them, probably him, if her knowledge of how keani names worked was right, the suit and an assurance, that no one should make a fuzz about it. Teki either didn’t have a taboo around nudity or already protected everything he needed to as he put it on. Being either unaware of human traditions around nudity or maybe enjoying making Sarah suffer (Sarah immediately chided herself for that thought though), he asked her to stay to look into the initialising patch and to assign it to her. Sarah instead averted her eyes. Only when Teki was in his flooded cocoon, she looked. She had deemed him to be slightly taller than her, but he wasn’t. He looked like thrice her size but at the same time somewhat reminiscent of either a flounder, a snake or some unholy combination thereof. She looked at the tub, at Teki and marvelled at how so much Teki fit into such a tiny tub. She also marvelled at how the spellwork adjusted the watersuit to him.

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"So, Sarah, can you please tell me why you don't want your initialising patch to be life magic based but movement based. With how much technology aids in that regard, it seems… quaint."

Sarah explained: "There are other drop bears wanting me harm. Mostly Rush. So I want to be able to outrun him and whatever magic his parents go for."

Teki moved his body in one wave. “That sounds unpleasant.”

She nodded: “That is why I hoped to make my parents really unhappy and get myself out of the mess. Not the prettiest thing to do, but it beats ending up in a bad state.”

Teki gurgled unhappily: “Wouldn’t it be easier to just not drop?”

“I know that keani hatch and grow up without parents, so I am not sure if you understand some disgustingly dynastic human ideas about familiar succession, duty and what happens if you opt out. I don’t mean this negatively, just… I grew up with my family and even for me it often makes little sense. Basically, my parents would not only disown me, but they might even do worse. So, that is why I need to do it.”

Teki made a gesture that the translation part of the system translated as a headshake: “I see. So families make their spawns do things for the dynasty, which are not in the interest of the spawnling and might be actively detrimental?”

Sarah nodded sadly. “Yeah.”

Teki twisted to and fro for a moment, then showed Sarah a floating window:

Initialisation patch for [unassigned]

Stat Preferences: (10/10 assigned)

Coordination: 7

Impact:

Resilience: 3

Skilled Practice:

Synergy:

Skill Preferences (10/10 assigned):

Manipulate

Material

Meta 2

Might 1

Movement 7

Sarah twitched at the sight. She had heard of the attributes, but the preferences were new to her. The entire window looked confusing, reminding more of corporate speech than of anything any real person would say. “It’s interesting.” she said vaguely. She did know how the preferences would work in initialisation though: They were modifiers. A Patch with Resilience 3 as stat preference would mean that the Resilience attribute that a drop bear was supposed to get was taken times 1.3. It was a way for colonialists to dominate natives in integration.

Teki asked: “Are you okay with it? Coordination is the term of the System for agility and swiftness. Impact relates to physical strength. Resilience relates to how much damage you can take. Believe me, with high Coordination, you need Resilience for when your Coordination fails you. Also to keep going for longer. Skilled Practice is magic. And Synergy is interpersonal skills. The second section makes skills of a certain categorisation easier to be obtained. Because it would be too easy the names are not somewhat different. Manipulate is the social skills area. Material means elemental skills, despite things that the system defines an element not being made out of a material. Meta are skills that affect how other skills work. Always good to have. Might skills are skills that boost physical attributes. And movement is everything from swimming, landswimming, I think you say ‘running’, burrowing, climbing, flying, teleportation and so on. There is a last category, but it is hidden until someone assigns points to it: Testing. Generally full of untested broken stuff. And not in the good way. What do you think? Is this an acceptable or do you need something adjusted?”

Sarah nodded. “It’s okay, I guess. I defer to your experience.”

Teki did the equivalent of a smile and the patch changed “[unassigned]” to “Sarah Greenland”. “I’m going to have a long nap until drop now. We probably will not see on the planet, as the Company doesn’t want techs to seek initiates, but there is only one sea, so you will have a pretty good chance where I’ll be.”

Sarah wished him a good night and returned to her cabin.