Chapter three) Learning on the job. Or, Can we build it? Yes, we can.

“The first thing you’re going to need to do is to concentrate on the ground and make it melt away. The Strata is pretty responsive and you'll need to go about thirty feet down. Don't worry, you'll know when you get that deep, it's when you can’t go any deeper.”

Looking at the ground, I pictured it… well going away, vanishing. That made the dark red, almost black, stone sort of slowly turn into a puddle of red light. Like fluffy lava if that helps you picture it any.

Alice something or other leaned over it and twisted her lips to one side before looking up at me. “From what others said I think you got to pull at the red glowy stuff into the air and then let it go. It sort of fades away once it's not connected to anything.”

The red stuff seemed to resist a little as I pulled at it with my thoughts before it drifted up like gobs of goo in a lava lamp, and as soon as I stopped pulling at it, the gobs sort of dissipated. Breaking up into smaller and smaller bits before going away completely.

The goddess nodded to herself. "Good. Now keeping going down. You're making a hallway so make it at least five feet across. We're going to go the full thirty feet down to keep people from trying to climb up here where there isn't any air. But trust me. If you give them enough rope, which would be any, and even warn them that there isn't anything to breathe up here, some of them will still try it.”

Leaning back and rubbing at her back, she slowly shook her head. “They’re Adventurers and Fighters at that. Challenging the heavens and defying the rules is sort of their thing.”

Sure enough, at about what looked like thirty feet down, the rock stopped responding. Pulling at it just took away the last layer of the red lava stuff leaving a rough but flat darker looking surface below.

“So where do we go from here?”

She gave me another nod, "I'm running behind now, so I'm going to tell you quickly and let you finish up without supervision."

I can work with that “Alright, but I would appreciate it if you could check in on me at some point and make sure I did it right.”

Alice something or other nodded in agreement with a distracted air to her. "The next thing you should do is extend the hallway to about a hundred feet long. Put a room at each end about twenty five feet wide by twenty feet deep with an alcove on the opposite side from the hallway in each one. Then three more rooms like that along the hallway.”

She began counting off on her fingers. “Call for starting equipment in the first room, you should get a Panel like mine that will offer you images of what you a Fighter Trainee needs when they arrive and you can set them out where you want them. Then pick three starting skills for the next three rooms and you should get a prompt on how to set them up.”

Having used up her four fingers, one for telling me about the equipment, then one for each room, she raised her thumb. "In the last room put a starter monster for them to fight and unlock a weapon and armor skill. Then choose what world you’re sending people to and put a gate for that in the alcove of the last room, and then and only then put an arrival gate in the first room.”

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

With that, she gave me another nod. “It’s all pretty intuitive, and once you’re set up you should start getting Trainees. Just make sure you put in the arrival gate last so they don’t start showing up before you’re ready. Good luck.”

Then she did the stretchy thing into the sky again. Leaving me all alone.

"Pretty intuitive huh? Sounds like I got some room to be..." and I savored saying this word."Creative."

A job worth doing is worth having some fun with.

"First of all, people should have the chance to take a nice walk and figure out how they're going to carry this starting equipment. So let’s see how long I can make this hallway.”

About two hundred feet it turned out.

From the hole that marked my starting point, I churned along making a five foot wide open topped tunnel. Despite there not being any sign of a sun up above, a cold red light from the sky shined down into the hallway lighting up the place pretty well.

But at about a hundred feet along, I started running into some resistance.

Not in the stone, the stuff was turning all soft red and gooey and then going away just fine, but the problem was me going any farther. I slowly went from gliding along like nothing to slogging along like I was wading into deeper and deeper water.

Popping up out of the hole I pushed forward as far as I could along the surface. But at maybe a hundred and fifty feet from where I first plunked down, it became a real struggle, then a losing fight.

It was the same in all directions, even going up it seemed to be the same thing. At what seemed like the same distance.

“Huh.”

But there was nothing stopping me from taking the tunnel along another hundred feet from where I started and off in the other direction. Then I widened out the ends to about thirty feet deep and thirty five feet wide with the five foot wide tunnel right in the middle. Because if someone had to fight something, I wanted to give them some room to move around.

Of course, it wasn't until I made the equipment room just as big that I realized that it didn’t need to be that big.

“All well, I’ll just say I made it that big because I wanted it to look grand.”

Besides, building this place wasn't costing me anything but time, which it looked like I had plenty of, so why not build things on a large scale?

Maybe I could have gone with a wider hallway too?...oh well.

For now, I was going to wait on making the skill unlocking rooms, I wanted to see what I could give people to work with in the way of stuff.

A lot, as it turned out.

“Show me the starting equipment.”

A metal rimmed computer like screen popped up in front of me. The inside of the metal part was white with light blue lettering. And little labeled pictures.

A lot of little labeled pictures.“Huh, I guess I almost needed this big of a room after all.”

I had the feeling that I was only supposed to pick out a limited assortment of stuff for people, and they had to either take it or leave it. But I was being given a lot of options on what I could choose to be in their standard starter set.

There was hemp rope, silk rope, a spool of thick cord, a ball of twine, bow strings, and a fishing line, along with strings for lutes, harps, guitars, and other musical instruments.

And that was just the various kinds of what the panel was calling, ‘Strands.’ There were three kinds of grappling hooks alone.

All these lists were on the panel just like the one Alice something or other had, but floating in the air.

The screen was filled with little boxes lined up below the category names with them showing me pictures of everything in each section, and I could scroll up and down the page just by thinking about it.

Which was handy since, you know, no hands.

But it was literally more choices than I could, or at least wanted to, count.

And here I am with this big old room to fill up.

I was being asked to take responsibility for getting people ready to go off to another world where by the nature of their "Class" they were going to be fighting things.

So, why not let them pick out their own stuff, and take as much as they wanted? After all, it wasn't going to cost me anything. Right?

...Maybe I should set up the basics first, in case there are limits.

A good set of boots, a backpack, a water bottle, a blanket, one of them ropes, a knife, and something to start a fire with.

And a weapon of course, along with some protection.

A Fighter would need those.