“Are you sure they’re going to be ok with you doing that?” Reuben asked Rashid.

Rashid was standing there blasting the Mitchells with a firehose of water coming from one hand, mildly brutalising the unconscious bodies. The other was eating a kebab he had rescued from the grill before it burnt.

“Well we could wash them with a vial of crystal wash when they wake up and walk out of that puddle but personally I’m not walking in to pull them out. You are more than welcome to though. Secondly I like this camping spot so I don’t mind washing this filth away from here so we don’t have to move the Serenity.

“Well when you put it that way…” Reuben put both hands out and a miniature tornado came out of his hands, blowing the puddle of filth down the hill away from them. The effect was all the adventurers hair and clothes blowing to make them even more of a mess.

“You have some excellent powers there, you never came through the academy?”

“No, I was trained by my father, I took my adventure society assessment in Greenstone alongside some of your students which were very impressive, I tend towards the magical theory aspect more than application though. Some of my powers are not well suited to traditional adventuring.” Reuben said as he gestured over his shoulder at his permanent tornado at his back holding all his personal items. It gave off no wind and bent around doorways and objects to not make a nuisance other than the view.

It was fortunate that the outworlder bodies of the Mitchells didn’t have the physiological need to breathe anymore as they were getting blasted with wind and water. That didn’t stop them from coming to and spluttering and coughing in surprise. The two men cut off the streams of power.

The four Mitchells rolled around and groaned, Kyra eventually had the presence of mind to release Lucky and he instantly made everyone feel better.

“I feel battered, I thought you were meant to feel good after a rank-up!” Teddy complained.

“So you did rank up!” Reuben exclaimed, whipping out a notebook.

James groaned and his Staff of Everglades appeared, he planted it and everyone was included, the glade spreading out from the centre around them, it was much larger than before with a pool in the centre of the ring of tall trees. There was a marked health, stamina and mana regeneration for the team. They found themselves all in an inclined position on springy moss and all used crystal wash to clear the filth from them that disappeared into the loam.

“Well that was rough.” Lucy said from where she was laying. “That didn’t feel anything like becoming iron rank or how anyone else has described bronze rank ascension.”

Reuben was scribbling away in his notebook and went to where Lucy was laying.

“I don’t want to rush you, in your own time, if its not too much trouble. What is your marvellous interface telling you about this experience?”

All four Mitchells realised at the same time that something was very wrong with the interface as they reflexively looked at it. The sections that they were used to of everyone’s health, stamina and mana stats, the notepad, the chat function they used so much were all fuzzed and scattered around.

Lucy stated to panic slightly which surprised everyone else. Frantically trying everything she could think of to make the interface work. As there was nothing to physically interact with and it looked from the outside that she went a little red, panic on her face and lots of swearing. James leant over and put a hand on her shoulder to try and calm her down.

“Ooh!” They both said at the same time.

“‘Ooh’ what?!” Teddy said.

James grunted as he got up, already feeling better but still tender. He made his way over to the gap between Teddy and Kyra’s mossy recliners and reached out either side and touched them on the shoulder.

They all saw the notification and the notification history.

Theodore Mitchell has been added to the [Mitchell Family Interface]

Kyra Mitchell has been added to the [Mitchell Family Interface]

All Mitchells in Pallimustus have been added to [Mitchell Family Interface], all features have been unlocked

“Well that’s different, it never named itself before.” Teddy said.

The interface they were used to popped back up with a slight change. It still had the options for chat, notepad and stats. But that major change was there was now a tab function at the top. They could see that the first tab was ‘utility’ and it was customisable for what information was needed to be displayed. The other tabs on display started with full pages for what they already had. Opening the chat tab showed a whole family chat, options for individual chats and ‘spare’ slots, on first viewing they couldn’t figure out what those were for. The next tab was for the notepad, offering a group pad and individual pads that could be configured to single people or groups. There was a battle log page that showed activity to each member of the interface in a different colour, looking at it they could all see why they were so sore.

“YOU ATTACKED US WHILE WE WERE UNCONSCIOUS?!” Kyra turned on Rashid.

“Err, well, it isn’t really considered an attack, it was more to clean you off.”

“Well it definitely registered as a silver rank attack. You. Attacked. Us.”

“I’m sorry? Oh I’m so glad your interface is up and working again.” He said rolling his eyes.

Further inspection of the interface showed the next page was for individual members stats. Everyone was around the same place as they got to these pages and they discovered one notification at the same time. Teddy and James tenderly jumped up at the same time.

“Nononono dude, not here.” Teddy said to James.

“Oh yeh, right here right now.” A green dimension blade sprang from his hand and his face lit up with delight.

“Woah.” Teddy said, “damn that looks as cool as I always thought it did.”

“C’mon, lightsaber dual lets go!”

“Sorry guys, I don’t think thats going to work…” Lucy said as Teddy summoned a dimension blade of red and James’ blade disappeared.

“What? Why did it do that?” James said.

“Because you didn’t read the damn instructions dummy.” Lucy said. She highlighted the section on the interface notifications for them to read.

[Mitchell Family Interface]

The [Mitchel Family Interface] has evolved as the family has progressed to (Bronze rank).

New design features are now available.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

[Utility Page]: Customisable ‘home page’ for different widgets.

[Chat function]: Updated and new customisations added.

[Notepad]: Updated and new customisations added.

[Member pages]: Normal (Health) (Stamina) (Mana) (Status) notifications for each member are available.

Also available:

Equipped items.

Ability cooldown menus.

Ability availability icons.

The boys read that far and then looked at each other, Teddy summoned the dimension blade and they both saw the green circle next to the ability on his tab of the interface turn red.

“What the hell does this mean?” Teddy asked Lucy.

“Well have you read it?”

“Most of it.”

“Well if you finish reading then maybe you’ll get the idea.”

[Member pages]: Normal (Health) (Stamina) (Mana) (Status) notifications for each member are available.

Also available:

Ability cooldown menus.

Ability availability icons.

Member direction and distance.

[Inventory]: Shows the users Inventory of items.

Also available:

Last known direction and distance of items that have been in the users interface unless dismissed.

Members inventory: WARNING. Other members may designate items to be hidden within their inventory. WARNING. Other members may designate items to not be shared.

[Mitchell Family Interface]

User notes:

Ability sharing.

Ability sharing is for most powers. Shared powers will be used at a lower power than that of their originator. Originator must be within range of the interface and must not be using the power themselves. If the originator chooses to use the power then it will be taken from the member that selected it and placed on cooldown if appropriate. This does not effect the function of regular shared powers such as aura benefits. Some abilities/powers may not be shared. Only family members may share abilities.

Inventory sharing.

Inventory sharing is available between members. Consumable items will be shared with no lag between members. Items over a certain value will require a request to be sent to the originator to approve sharing.

Guest members.

Guest members may be temporarily added to the [Mitchel Family Interface]. Members must be put forward as a bid to the group and accepted by a majority. Any member may then designate how much of their own information is shared with the guest member and how much rights the guest member has to their inventory.

“So I can use it but not while he’s using it?” James asked Lucy.

She sighed in exasperation, they had all had exactly the same time as each other with the interface but still they turned to her for answers, she was about to confirm what he was saying but Reuben exploded next to her.

“WHAT IS GOING ON?!” He almost shouted, a desperate note in his voice. “JAMES JUST USED TEDDY’S POWER?! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!” He looked wildly around, his brain obviously whirring at the implications.

“Ha.” Lucy laughed.

[Oh how I missed this for the few moments we didn’t have it, guys do you mind if I experiment a little?]

[No problems from me.] Kyra replied instantly.

[Go for it.] James said.

Teddy surprised them all with a new feature by putting a thumbs up emoji on the chat page.

Lucy walked over to Reuben and hesitantly put a hand on his shoulder. Nothing happened.

“Sorry Reuben, but you’re obviously not a Mitchell.” She said when nothing happened.

“Well thats fairly obvious.” He said confused.

The others all saw a notification counter pop up in their interfaces, when it was mentally clicked on it showed a request window.

Lucy Michell would like to add a temporary guest member.

Accept Reuben Hafstofsten (GUEST) Y/N

(Pre-loaded custom permissions will be added)

“What are the ‘Pre-loaded custom permissions’?” James asked.

“What is that?” Reuben asked just before Teddy and Kyra accepted the request and as the two of them formed the majority with Lucy, he was added to the interface. Reuben was almost knocked over in surprise. He looked around wild-eyed at the system interface before sinking to his knees and a small tear appeared in his eye. “It’s beautiful, more than I ever imagined.”

Rashid looked on in polite interest, baffled by Reubens reaction.

The pre-loaded custom permissions turned out to be solely a chat page with everyone on, the direction and distance to each member and their basic stats such as health, stamina, mana and condition. They could also see his stats and location on a new tab with his name on. They played with the options once he recovered. Lucy opened a rune portal and pulled a scroll out, it disappeared from the swirling vortex behind Reuben. He frowned and reached behind him to an empty space in his vortex and pulled a book from thin air that Lucy recognised as hers. They looked at each other and passed the items back to each other.

Reuben then realised that he could look through his own inventory and they lost him to frantic scribbles as he pulled various items to look at their descriptions, when he got to the various crystals he used for delicate magical readings they saw the tear of delight in his eye again.

“I think he’s going to be a while.” Lucy said to the others.

“Guys, girls, congratulations!” Rashid said. “I know you have your own but,” he handed each of them a bronze rank coin. “Time to eat like bronze rankers.”

They all smiled as they took the coins off him then winced at the battery-terminal taste.

“That grill must be still out there right?” Teddy said to the others and they nodded.

Teddy and James had to put their hands under the armpits of Reuben on either side and carried him out of the glade as he was scribbling away like mad in a notebook back to the Serenity. In the end they had to kick Reuben out of the interface in order for him to sit down and eat with them.

“It’s incredible! It holds a history of my crystal interactions, the readings are normally so unreliable to interpret whereas your wonderful interface lays it all out nice and simple. Some of my earlier findings in my research weren’t quite right and my deductions would set me back months!”

“Speaking of, has this happened before where teams rank up together?” Lucy asked.

Reuben suddenly put his work face on rather than the excited boy face. “No. Well not that I’m aware of. I will definitely do the research on this when I get back but the potential factors affecting this are so specific, a blood family team of outworlders that arrived at the exact same time, that got the exact number of essences as each other at the exact same times and made iron rank at the same time.”

“All just lined up nicely then?” James asked. “Works for us I guess, the interface was a secret team advantage. Now we pretty much have eighty powers instead of just twenty.”

“That will be such an advantage in combat!” Rashid said. “I have seen a similar effect before but they are normally one power, on a long cool-down and not normally as conveniently selectable.”

They had given him a brief tour of the interface by inviting him in as a guest member.

“The ability to instantly share consumables and team items will streamline many combat scenarios and the versatility of using each others abilities in a combat scenario will need careful managing and planning before adopting as a signature style.”

“Talking of style…” Teddy said.

Theodore Mitchell has requested [Vambrace of Menagerie] from James Mitchell.

[Theodore Mitchell] has requested to equip the item from inventory.

[Vambrace of Menagerie] is currently equipped. Would you like to accept request from [Theodore Mitchell]. Y/N

ERROR

[Vambrace of Menagerie] is a soul-bound item and cannot be used by anyone else. Equip from inventory has automatically been denied. Would you still like to send [Vambrace of Menagerie] to [Theodore Mitchell]. Y/N

“Aww man.” Teddy said, cancelling the request himself. “That would’ve been so cool.”

“You people are torturing me, you cant let me sip the font of knowledge and then take it away from me then talk about it in front of me!” Reuben exclaimed with a slight whine.

“Teddy just tried to see if he could use James’ soul bound item through the interface, the answer was a resounding no.”

“Oh wow.” Reuben was added back into the interface as a guest and read through the notification history that Lucy mentally copied and pasted across for him.

“But this dramatic change to your team dynamic and fighting styles and tactics is not the only grand change. We will have to push you to make a decision on your path ahead, the adventure society hired us to accelerate you to bronze for a specific contract and will need an answer.”

“Oh we will give them an answer, but first we need to head back to Greenstone temple district to talk to the big man upstairs.”

Rashid looked confused. “What business do you have with the god of sky?”

“No it’s just an expression… Nevermind.”