Chapter 19: Civilization.

“The name’s Bross.” Bross stuck out his hand, then hesitated. Trent took the outstretched hand and shook it with a smile. “It’s nice to meet you, Bross. Shall we go back to your village, or do you need to test my character?” Bross shook his head. “I don’t think you would do anything unpleasant. You seem as intelligent as a Velder.”

Trent frowned. “You turned around quite fast there. How can you trust me just like that? My being intelligent doesn’t mean I won’t do any harm.” Bross blinked slowly. “You… aren’t right?” He raised his guard again. Trent shook his head. “No, but I could easily be deceiving you.” Bross looked genuinely confused at that. “Deceiving… I feel like I could tell. Why wouldn’t I? This is to serious of a thing to lie about.”

Trent shook his head. It was possible that the Velders were deceiving him, or just messing with him, but it was reasonably possible that the species just didn’t have the same innate evil as humans. “This probably won’t help you trust me, but it sounds like your species actually lacks one of the main flaws of humans. It sort of makes sense, as why would you create a species that tears itself apart with selfishness.”

He looked Bross in the eyes. “I suppose a good way to explain it is wild versus evil. A wild creature doesn’t know better. An evil person hurts people anyways.” Bross stood silent, digesting that information. Talos broke in for the first time since they encountered Bross. “That explains the meanings of a lot of words. Betrayal, murder, cynical, and like you said, evil.”

Trent cracked a grin. “Of course, you could all be messing with me. It would fit the definition of ‘demon’.” Bross shook his head hastily. “No, we aren’t anything like that definition. Its just one Ability that has demonic qualities.” Trent held up his hands placatingly. “I didn’t think you were. I was joking. I think we’re all just a little tense. How about we go back to your village? I’m quite curious about how you guys live.”

Bross nodded. “We should also show you to the elders and get their opinion. Would you be okay with subjecting yourself to their scanning Spells.” Trent considered the risks of that. If the ‘elders’ were actually tricky bastards and used some combination casted super mind shatter Spell, he might just figure out too late.

Also, the godly presence could decide that instead of renewing him, it wanted to evaporate him, and there was nothing he could do about it! The point was, that scenario was extraordinarily unlikely to actually happen and wouldn’t even be that hard to get out of due to Voiding. If he detected an effect targeting his mind, he could just nullify it. And if they started building up a big Spell that he couldn’t tell the purpose of, he could nullify that as well.

Maybe he was going with the flow a bit too much, but he was kind of starved for interaction and all his misgivings about the Velders were unfounded and paranoid, relying on stupid tropes. He could take a tiny risk. Really, it was barely a risk. Unless he was jinxing himself, but that was perhaps the stupidest trope of all.

…

Oh, nothing will happen! They’re probably all savants and will teach me a bunch of cool things before letting me go on my way. Talos is so nice, he would never stab me in the back!

There. Your move, fate.

The trio set off—with Trent flying in order to keep up--in the direction that Bross said led back to the village. He also shot off a Spell into the sky as a signal, which exploded into green light. It was quite interesting. The Spell had an effect that made it pierce through the omnipresent haze, enhancing the Perception of whatever looked at it. Interestingly, all enemies that saw it would rush to the location. It seemed that they were aggravated by anything that wasn’t exactly what they were ‘programed’ to ignore. That being other enemies and rocks.

Trent saw other explosions of green light in the distance beyond the haze, signifying to all of the searchers that Talos had been found. This was another good indication that Velders were a lot more unified than humans. There was no way humans on Earth would rely on a system that could be ruined with one false positive.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Bross noticed his gaze toward the glows in the sky. “You can see those? Your perception should be damn low with your level.” Trent glanced down. “I get almost all my stats from Affinities, and one of them gives me three physical Perception per level.” That seemed like quite a surprise to Bross. “Three per level? Affinities? You… can you tell me a bit about your racial stats?”

Trent twisted his hands around to indicate unsurety. “I’m not sure how we normally are in the system, or even if there are any humans other than me with access. But I know that I get one free point per level, and nine more spread around my physical stats from my Affinity and Sub-affinity.” That seemed to shock Bross even more.

“That’s really weak… and I know that a meaning of genius can be someone who gets 5 points from Affinities. So aside from your individual talent, your race is really low tier… except for your Skills. That probably encourages much more individuality than the uniform capabilities of Velders.” He looked pensive. “Do you have any defensive Skills? A stray blow could kill you with that low Vitality.”

Trent shook off his worries. “I have been killing lots of monsters, including Morel Mentises. I am quite good on defense. Wait, what is the plural of Morel Mentis?” Talos piped up. “It’s Morel Mentai. I can see how that would be annoying if you only had kill messages to go off.” Bross got another smaller shock from that. “Wait, you don’t have Universal Language Comprehension? Then, what are your Abilities?”

Trent shrugged in midair. “I wish I had some Abilities. The ones you have sound pretty cool. But I think that humans just don’t get them at all.” Bross seemed like he was now prepared for those sorts of surprises and didn’t react. They went on in silence for a bit longer before they arrived at the Velder village.

It was first obvious when the ground started to slope toward a central point. From what he could tell, the deviation from the usual slope was entirely and perfectly constant. Even with the ability to shape rock, it was still quite impressive to create such a perfect shape. There were no monsters that he could see in the entire crater, and at its center was the actual village.

The entire community was surrounded by a giant stone wall, which looked a bit different from the lighter color of the stone ground all around. However, it was not like any normal work of architecture. The entire thing was completely smooth, with no signs of bricks or anything of the sort. It made sense, seeing as this wall had likely been formed from the ground using magic. It was almost certainly hardened, as a wall made of the same substance as the ground possessed little defensive ability.

The only feature he could see from here were some crenellations on top. On that note, he flew up above the wall to see inside. It was around 20 meters tall—maybe even exactly 20 meters, considering that they probably had access to that definition. Inside the encirclement of the extremely thick wall, he could see buildings. They had varying styles and themes, with an obvious lack of any root in Earth architecture. He was still quite far off, but his Perception allowed him to marvel at the ways magic had allowed Velders to progress their structures.

He quickly noted that each building only seemed meant to house a small family unit. Well, perhaps not family. Maybe there was a system of adoption? But most of the expansive stone spires and complex bridges seemed to perform little to no function, perhaps only entertainment. It made sense with the massive baseline strength everyone would start at.

It was quite exciting to speculate how such a civilization would develop architecture, especially as he had been on quite a dry spell for his archisexual tendencies with the whole ‘blank plane of dust and depression’ thing. He got a bit too caught up, and only snapped out of his musings when Talos called up to him.

He dropped back down to his guides, embarrassed at his display. “Sorry, I'm really interested in architecture. It was quite amazing to see the sorts of things you came up with in your circumstances. I mean, the general intelligence and earth magic combined with the lack of a preexisting style of your own. On that note, how much of that stuff do you get through Universal Language Comprehension? Like, do you know what a cathedral is?”

“Yes, but we don’t really have enough specifics to really build one.” Talos seemed oddly excited about this subject. Maybe he had found a fellow architecture nerd? “Also, there isn’t much of a need for a lot of buildings. Like, what sort of religion would we have that needed a place to pray? And what would we use an observatory or a greenhouse for? We have taken some ideas from the more general structure names. Like, we definitely have a castle.”

They continued chatting about various aspects of Velder and human societies, and how they related and differed as they got closer to the walled village. They actually met up with a couple more of the searchers that had been looking for Talos. It was quite an efficient system. But that was because the Velders apparently didn’t have to worry about a weak link giving a false positive.

They approached the gate in the wall—one of four, facing directly up and down the slope, as well as to either side. People were quite curious about the level fifteen ‘human’, but no one was at all rude and the gate opened long before they made it there. It was quite dichotomy from what he expected would happen if a Velder found themselves in human society.

He entered the Velder village, unsure but excited for the first big change to his life in almost a year.