The meeting with the rats could have gone better.

Too distracted as he researched other, better ways to permanently facilitate his communications while lounging on a comfy couch, he didn't notice when the rats arrived.

Lots of stories used fairly simple solutions to the whole "language barrier" issue.

He didn't want a space fish in his ear. Seemed like a waste of his single summon slot, too.

Various space exploration stories included takes on the Universal Translator. Could he summon a space elf and ask for its definitely-not-a-DBZ-scouter, AI-embedded personal assistant and communications device which came in the form of a ubiquitous sci-fi ear-mounted monocle, with a rainbow of lens tint options?

Might be worth a shot.

In the same vein, could he summon a character carrying just about any magic item and have them hand it over? Was that where those "additional mana costs" came in?

Something he needed to try. Off the top of his head, he could think of half a dozen characters with "simple" rings of translation.

He could create a character or twelve with the spells he needed, and just summon them on rotation? A low level bard could cast Comprehend Languages and Speak with Animals. Tongues too, with a slightly higher level bard. All spells were of a limited duration, however, and would need to get refreshed regularly. Would that be seen as an exploit, though? He'd hate to get nerfed again.

Or, if he couldn't find something, could he just write a short story about a fairy who flew around blessing unfortunate strangers stuck in strange lands with the permanent gift of universal tongues? He would only need her to hang around for half a second, to just bop him on the head with her wand, and, abracadabra, no more language issues.

…Now that felt like an exploit. Should probably save that idea for a rainy day. Though, to even summon a blessing-granting magical fairy for even that half second would likely cost him more mana than he could sustain at present.

A hiss from Vox, the pseudodragon curled up beside him on the couch, warned him of the rats' arrival.

He nodded to the congregated rats eyeing him and Vox from beyond the bars of his cell. Gesturing at the pile of cheese on the ground, he said, "There ya go."

The giant rat in the lead squeaked something at him.

"What did it say?" he asked Vox.

Squeak. The pseudodragon mentally shrugged.

Silas massaged his forehead. Right. Vox could send mental images, but he needed to understand the other party, and these rats certainly didn't speak Common, as if anyone on this world spoke a language from a fictional fantasy setting.

He would need a spell or creature who could speak with animals.

Was it worth the trouble?

He did need to practice his social interactions, and this situation, loosely speaking, probably counted as a social interaction.

He dismissed Vox and ran through his mental list of options.

Apparently the rats were just afraid of Vox though, because after the tiny dragon disappeared they sniffed the air, then entered, two dragging a pouch of coins.

Silas cursed as he picked up the coin pouch, causing the pair of rats to quickly scurry away. His money! He had all that money in his Inventory! He didn't care about the rest, but he had worked, not exactly hard, but he had spent entire minutes earning that money!

And how could he store this money safely, without Inventory?

During his stupor the rats scurried away with their goods.

He snapped out of his fugue and summoned one of his MMO alts, a level 1 priest with the tailoring and enchanting professions. He used the character as a mule to handle certain items he didn't want, as tailors could break down cloth items into their basic components, as could enchanters with magic items. With magic cloth items, he used an addon to decide which profession was likely to produce more valuable goods for the auction house.

He greeted the elf, her hair and eyes a neon pink, her skin the more subdued pink of cherry blossoms, her hourglass frame barely constrained by a frilly french maid uniform. "Hey, uh, MuleOnThisEnchantingTail." At the time it seemed clever. "How about I call you, uh, Taylor."

The elf sighed, stressing the fabric of her outfit in interesting places. "Taylor the enchanting tailor. How original, Master."

"Call me Silas," he said quickly, even as his mind went to…places.

He summoned a cold can of soda. "Put this in your inventory, if you can."

She shrugged. Which…should he ask her to change? Was she a real person? Would she—

The can disappeared. "And now?"

"I'll dismiss you, then call you again."

"Very well."

He had her disappear in a puff of smoke mid-curtsy, then cause a second puff as she reappeared slightly to the right, again standing straight.

"Greetings again, Silas."

"Do you have the can?"

She produced it and offered it to him.

He took it, then opened it to take a sip. Still the same soda. "Perfect. Here's some money to hold for me. Oh, and keep it separate from the—can you access the account bank, with its gold and all the items? What's in your inventory? What does 'your' currency look like?"

The game only used gold coins, and depending on what she could access, he had a lot of gold coins.

She produced a golden coin, smaller and thicker than the local coinage. He took it and compared it to one in the pouch. The game coin seemed a bit heavier. Maybe they would spend here? Something to try. He handed her the coin and pouch, which she vanished.

"I can access the bank, but it seems to have been looted. Only items related to tailoring and enchanting remain, plus event items, all the costumes and outfits."

He considered which of the skimpy MMO costumes she would look best in, then shook his head. "Give me, hmm, the male spring festival outfit."

She produced a black hanging bag containing pastel blue jacket, bow tie, pants, socks and shoes, plus a collared white shirt.

"Thanks. I'll, uh, call you again sometime."

"Very well, Master Silas."

He thought he saw a hint of a smirk on her face as he dismissed her. "'I'll call you again sometime?' What the heck, Silas? She's not even real. And you're her master, controller, summoner, whatever."

He resolved to summon his dwarf blacksmith and leather worker alt, MuleOnThisSmithWorker, next time. She had a beard. No uncomfortable truths to distract him with her around—he hoped.

He did his best to not think of the contents of certain portions of his hard drive and the possibilities contained within…

Maybe when he had a bit more privacy and no sword of Damocles hanging over his head…

He did need to find a way to exercise his Charisma…

Checking his mana, he was at 9/19.

He summoned Vox again to help level up the skill, as his mana regen outperformed the mana drain caused by the tiny, cat-like dragon who seemed content to curl up on the couch. After eating breakfast he showered and donned his snazzy outfit. Was it over the top? Yes. Did he care? Yes, but he suppressed that part of himself. He was trying to act charismatic.

By the time he was done getting ready his mana had topped off, so he went ahead and dismissed Vox. He instead summoned a lowly space elf, one of the many ensigns who ran errands for the more important crew aboard an uber-spaceship featured in a space opera as it chased the main characters for a time, only to be thwarted at the last moment by circumstances often beyond the main characters' control. The space elves looked down on the "younger" space-faring races, considering them their technological inferiors, more or less rightly so. This ensign just so happened to wear a comm-glass with a sky blue-tinted lens over his left ear and eye.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Orders, sir?"

"I, uh, require your com-glass, Ensign." He scratched his head, feeling awkward.

"Sir?" The elf looked doubtful.

Silas steeled himself and channeled his inner captain. "Your com-glass. Now, soldier!" He held out his hand.

The ensign saluted, then scrambled to remove the ear clip. "Here you go, sir."

With the item in hand, he relaxed a bit. "Very good. See if you can—"

The elf soldier had faded into smoke, as had Silas's clothes and the new device.

Silas checked, and, sure enough, he had run out of mana. Him receiving the ear clip seemed to have drained him dry. So close.

Well, at least he got something out of all that.

Charisma +1 => 10 Charisma!

That exchange managed to bump him up to tier one in Charisma. Maybe it was all the people he had interacted with so far that morning? He felt drained, but that was probably just his low mana.

As for Summon Character, it had grown to level 4. He kept the skill up notifications off, though. Those were annoying.

So, items he got from the skill required some amount of ongoing mana to exist, much like the summoned characters. Based on the drain that kicked in when he took the communication device, the cost went up for him to use the items himself.

The darn fish might be a more cost effective option.

He might as well summon some alien parasite.

…He had a terrible idea. The only question was if it counted as a character for him to summon, or an item. On a scale of power, they would likely be on the lower end. Maybe.

Eve, the AI assistant, existed as a neural network of nanobots within her creator. She could offer AI translation, HUD mapping and IFF tagging, rapid healing, sci-fi level cybernetic upgrades, should he dare to risk them, and more.

Heck, he needed an edge. She could do so much more than a knock off scouter.

So much as to cost more mana to sustain than a telepathic pseudodragon?

Hard to say. Eve was very, very tiny after all.

His mana was a quarter full. No reason to wait for his mana to refill all the way. Either this drew more mana than his regen could handle, or it didn't. If it didn't work, it would be one more idea to try again when Mana Magnet again reached its full potential.

He triggered the summons, watching his mana. It didn't rise, but neither did it drop. Well, as his skills improved his regen should outpace the draw, then.

He felt normal, as opposed to filled with creepy crawly robots scouring his insides.

"You there, Eve?"

A cat girl with white hair and fur, her eyes crimson red, blinked onto the couch beside him, though the projection only he could see didn't have any weight, so she left no impression in the cushions. She wore a fashionable white business suit.

"You're not the professor." She folded her arms and scowled. "Some rogue code is suggesting I should ask you for orders and call you sir. I don't follow your orders. Who are you and what did you do with the professor?"

"Ah. It's complicated. The short answer is you're a now-sentient literary character brought to life through magic powers I barely understand, as I'm from Earth—well, an Earth not unlike your professor's, but it was 2021 when I got snatched away to wind up on this world, and your history was left purposely vague."

She blinked. "Sapient. Cats and dogs are sentient. It means able to experience senses. Sapient means—"

"Yeah," he cut in. "Yeah. You're now sapient, too. Here they have sapient rats, and I sell them cheese for platinum coins."

"Here… In your prison cell, where you sit in the nude. On a lavishly soft couch."

"How would you explain your nanobots being inside me, then?"

"A point in your favor. Your vitals even suggest you believe every word you are saying. My self-diagnostics report errors. My memories have gaps, and what is there seems…incongruous. Yes, I can believe I was a poorly written literary character. Oh, ho? Did that hit a nerve? Am I your character? I am! This is just… I just composed a twenty thousand word essay to describe how I feel. Be sure to read it later. It's much better than whatever hole-filled drivel you called my story."

Silas sighed. He wasn't going to regret summoning Eve, was he?

She pulled out a wrench from nowhere. "So, tell me everything, Sir. I'm going to start on the upgrades."

"Ah. I'll get into it, but act as if at anytime all your nanobots could vanish. Because all your nanobots could vanish at anytime. The skill that is summoning you requires an ongoing mana cost, which might go up if you do anything considered too powerful. Slow and steady wins the race, and all."

"You'd summon me back though?"

"Probably."

"Great! I'll run some tests. Be ready to report your mana levels as accurately as possible. Our first experiment together!" She jumped up and spun, changing her outfit to a white lab coat and safety glasses.

Silas…could probably get Interface to add a few significant figures to his mana level. Eve wasn't wrong. It would be good to know her limits, and his. She always knew best.

Reminding himself he could unsummon her at any time, he started telling Eve his story even as he brought up his Status and got to work, starting with a comfy pair of pajamas.

Status Silas Aegis 11y 3s 18d 8h L10 (216/220 XP) H: 11.0/11.0 (15/day rest) S: 11.0/11.0 (15/min rest) M: 12.0/18.0 (-2) (20% eff.) AP: 2 STR: 09 WIL: 20 AGI: 10 WIT: 20 END: 11 SPI: 20 VIT: 15 AFF: 20 PER: 14 CHA: 10 SP: 3 Gaming 29 Mana Sense 29 Pain Resistance 29 Interface 20 Gaming Necessities 19 Pestilence Resistance 19 Poison Resistance 19 Sleep Resistance 19 Help 10 Bargaining 9 Mana Magnet 7 Summon Character 6 Countdown to the End 1