Chapter 45. Bill
I stopped. That feeling came over me where everything around me quieted and I was able to focus.
Janica ran into the back of me. “Do you see the book?” She zipped in front of me and started looking at the titles.
“No,” I said. “It’s something else.” I walked forward to the wall. Between two shelving units, a copper lamp stuck out from the wall. The lamp was unlit. None of the old infrastructure worked in the dungeon. I reached up and grabbed the lamp. I pulled.
Next to me, a bookcase slid backwards into the wall and to the side, the mechanisms making a racket. The sound of old rusty metal screeched against other metal.
Janica and I looked at each other. She raised her eyebrows.
The stone passageway was dark, absent of any Glowvine to light our way. Janica fluttered in first. I followed. When the dark enclosed us completely, Janica pulled a Glow Vine Flower from her bag and held it in front of her. It emitted a very soft glow. Barely enough to see by. She made a right. When we turned left, a light greeted us from a room ahead.
It appeared to be some kind of control room. Knobs and pulleys lined the walls. Technical manuals sat on a shelf. Like we had walked into the cockpit of an airplane.
Sitting at a desk in the center of the room, facing us, was a ghost. An elderly man in overalls and a hat like a train conductor might wear. He talked to himself while writing in a little notebook. The ghost had a friendly portrait. He wasn’t a threat. His name plate said
“Hi,” I said. No response.
Right. A ghost. I changed my loadout, then activated Talk to Spirits.
He looked up, surprised to see me. “What are you doing here?” he said. “This place is off-limits for non-employees of the University.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry about that. We found this passageway after defeating that librarian.”
“Ugh,” he said. “I hate librarians. Terrible people. Always shushing me. Wait, you… disposed of Hettie?”
I nodded.
“Thanks for that,” he said, clearly impressed. “She’s always creeping around, startling me. Telling me to be quiet.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“Well,” Bill said, writing in his notebook again. “I have a lot of work to do here, so if you don’t mind.”
I wasn’t about to leave, and my Perceptive Attribute was giving me the tingles. “What sort of work do you do here?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, looking up. “Nobody ever asks me about my work. They just sort of leave me alone here. People don’t seem to enjoy hearing about all the inner workings of the University. When I talk about the lighting system and the mana channels, folks zone out. I don’t get it. Couplers, alternators, capacitors. These are interesting things. But people find an excuse to leave and charge out of here. Get it?”
Janica and I looked at each other.
“Bill,” Janica said. “There’s supposed to be research somewhere in the University about how mana channels work. Do you happen to know anything about that?”
“Oh sure, sure,” Bill said, standing up. “I have most of it myself. The good stuff anyway. Most researchers don’t care much for such a technical field. They prefer to study things like magical artifacts, potions, and ancient legends.” He laughed. “Like a magical artifact could ever keep a substation in optimal condition.” He laughed again, harder this time.
Janica groaned.
Bill walked over to a set of manuals on the wall. He pulled one down, handing it to me. “A lot of people think that Advanced Research on Mana in the Modern Fantasy World is the premier text. But this one is the best. Trust me. The other one doesn’t even have engineering puns.”
You received The Joy of Mana Circuits by Bill.
“Thanks Bill, can I borrow this for a while?” I asked.
“Of course!” Bill said. “Happy to spark your interest.” He laughed. “ Just bring it back when you’re done.”
“Thanks,” Janica said, her eyes suddenly lit up with hunger. “Bill, do you have any idea why the mana channels stopped working?”
“Weakening of naturally occurring transistors due to incorrect usage,” he said. “Politicians wouldn’t listen to us. We sent ‘em a seven-hundred and twenty-two page document. Knew it would happen.” He shrugged. “Don’t know why we even bothered.”
I looked at Janica, eyes wide. I didn’t understand him, but Bill understood the problem. Had he just told us why the Great Mistake had occurred? This ghost, trapped in a basement office, had the answers that the whole world wanted.
Bill looked around, surprised. A light started glowing from within him, getting brighter.
“Bill,” Janica said. “Could you explain that to us like we don’t understand anything about transistors?”
Bill’s color changed from white to normal, like an old black-and-white portrait being colorized. His overalls turned blue. His shirt, pink. His shoes turned brown. His cheeks went rosy.
He smiled at us. “It’s happening. It’s actually happening. It doesn’t even hertz .” He laughed.
A portal opened next to Bill.
He smiled at us. “Thanks Janica. Thanks Warren. Guess all I needed was to tell somebody what I knew. Everything you need to know is in that book. You can keep it. I don’t think I’ll be coming back. I’m making the switch .” Bill walked through the portal and was gone.
The portal closed and vanished from existence.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“I think we helped that ghost pass on,” Janica said. “I’m more than a little disappointed that he didn’t explain what he meant by ‘weakening of naturally occurring transistors due to incorrect usage,’ but I couldn’t take another electrical pun.”
We left the office and took the staircase down from the room where Hetti had been. “We still haven’t found the rare book,” Janica reminded me. “Let's look around.”
We searched the last corner of the room, and my Perception Attribute triggered again. A small blue book sat on the bottom shelf, dwarfed by larger tomes on either side. Silvery lettering spelled out the title. Tales of the Full Moon. I pulled it out.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Tales of the Full Moon
Item Class: Race Changer
Item Quality: Rare
Stories from within shed light on the transformation of people to Werepeople. This item can be consumed to permanently change your race to a Wereanimal. Note: only animal races can transform into Wereanimals.
Congratulations, you reached Floor 5 of Edreru University.
You received Elevator Key.
Your Elevator Key was granted access to Floor 5.
“Janica,” I said. “What did I just find? Can I become a werewolf?”
“Race changing items are super rare,” Janica said. “This is an interesting find. Unfortunately, it won’t help you learn fire, ice, or earth spells. But I’m sure you can sell it. The other problem is that you can’t use this item unless you’re an animal race first. Humans can’t use it.”
“How do you become an animal race?”
“There are a dozen answers to that question, all of them complicated. Usually it involves finding items or being given items by the leader of an animal race.”
“So if I wanted to be a cat,” I said, “I could go find a herd of cats and impress their leader?”
Janica glared at me. She didn’t say a word. She spat.
Her reaction startled me. “You don’t like cats?”
“Cats’ favorite food is Fairies,” she said. “We don’t get along. If you become a Catperson, I will kill you myself.”
I threw my hands up. “Okay, okay,” I said. “No cats. Wolves? Lizards? Birds? Can they all transform? Could someone become a Werebird?”
Janica ignored my question, continuing to watch me like I had tried to steal her favorite weapon. “I’m keeping an eye on you,” she said.
We found the exit and descended to level five. The safe zone reminded me of a Student Center. The center area had couches with a coffee table for people to gather. Around the outside, NPCs stood at desks, waiting to help Adventurers. There was a quartermaster, a refreshments vendor, and a potions vendor.
I needed to log off and let Sofia into the game. But before I did, I visited the quartermaster. My reputation was Undergraduate with the University, which was high enough to purchase my first ring for 100 Silver.
You received Edreru’s Undergraduate Ring.
Edreru’s Undergraduate Ring
Cost: 100 silver
+2 to all stats
Required Reputation: 3000
“Let’s get to an inn,” Janica said. “I know you need to return to your world, but 10% experience buff is no joke.”
On our way to the elevator, a familiar voice shouted my name. I turned.
Cassandra walked toward me, smiling. “Hi Warren,” she said. “Hi Janica.”
Rowan walked over to us. Arthur, Thomas, and Christian followed.
“You made it down here by yourself?” Rowan asked.
“By himself?” Janica nearly spat the words out. “I pretty much carried him down here on my back. My wings are exhausted.”
Rowan laughed.
Arthur walked up to me. “You stab somebody in the back to get that armor?” he asked.
I furrowed my eyebrows.
Rowan turned to him. “Don’t be an ass. Why would you say that?”
Apparently, things weren’t all sunshine and rainbows for their group.
“Oh,” he said. “Warren never told you. He sold us out. On the very first day. Decided to take sides with this raging Elemental instead of the team that was trying to recruit him. Ended up helping the Elemental kill all three of us.”
She gave him a skeptical look.
“Yep,” Christian said. “That pretty much sums it up. Cheap-shotted me in the back.”
She looked at me.
“It wasn’t that simple,” I said. “The Elemental was actually protecting the town. I spoke to it. I got a quest to protect it.”
“If that was true,” Arthur said, “which I doubt. You didn’t tell us that. Or share some alternative quest with your team. Instead, you waited until we were vulnerable and turned traitor.”
I had been up all night in the dungeon with Janica for hours. My brain wasn’t working right. My face felt hot, like every set of eyes on me was a tiny set of lasers.
“We didn’t have a choice,” Janica said.
“You were part of this too?” Rowan asked.
She folded her arms over her chest and shook her head.
“Arthur never would have abandoned his quest to kill that elemental,” I said. “He’s all heroic and shit. I’ve known a dozen guys like him. A hundred. Rich, cocky, bossy.”
“So you know me, huh?” Arthur said. “We partied together for what… a couple hours? And in that time you learned everything about me.” He shook his head and walked off.
The rest of them followed, one by one. Rowan and Cassandra were the last to leave.
“He’s been pretty nice to me,” Cassandra said. “I mean yeah. He’s bossy.” She conceded. “And arrogant.”
“I think this one’s on you,” Rowan said, looking right into my eyes. She looked at Janica. “And you.”
Janica and I didn’t say a word to each other the whole walk back to Lakemore. I played the conversation over and over in my head. But I felt stuck. Usually, after a confrontation like that I’d know exactly what I should have said. What I should have done. I didn’t know. Somehow, I’d let that bully get the better of me. And convince my friends that I was the bad guy.
By the time we reached Sofia’s inn, it was 10 p.m. We had fought all day. My body ached and my mind felt like it couldn’t solve another problem. A wooden sign hung from metal brackets in front of the place. In large, carved lettering, it read “The Honeycomb.” I smiled at that. In Watership Down , the rabbits founded a warren called The Honeycomb. Sofia had named the tavern after me. Below the title, it read: “Experience boosts and Food buffs for gamers.”
There was a small sign on the door that said “Under Construction.” I opened the door and walked inside.
One NPC mopped the floor. Another stood with a hammer and nails over an upside down table.
A lady in an apron walked out of the kitchen with a chef’s knife in her hand. “We’re closed,” she said. “Won’t be open until tomorrow.” Her name plate read
“Hi,” I said. “Yeah, I’m Sofia’s brother.”
“Right, right,” she said. “Sofia told us you’d be staying with us before we officially opened. Come on. I’ll show you to your room.”
You logged off of Integration Online.
I slept for a solid eight hours. I knew we were in a rush to continue, but I needed rest. Janica and I had agreed that we were going to do this right. That meant being buffed and well rested.
I had warned Janica that I might be late getting back in, but I had a plan.
The moment I woke up, I got on the internet. I needed to memorize my spells. When I was in combat, the one to three seconds it took me to open my Spell Book and activate a spell cost time that Janica and I couldn’t afford. That moment where Janica had sat on the ground, looking defeated, had struck me. I couldn’t allow her to die because I was busy turning pages. Memorizing them, Janica had told me, would speed up the process. The memorization process had three parts: the math of decoding the formula for a spell, the hand gestures involved, and the spoken words. If I knew those three things, according to my feisty Fairy companion, I would be able to instantly cast spells.
The math part came pretty easy to me, thankfully. The hand gestures were coming along. But the incantations were the limiting factor. The drum kit without a high-hat. The eighty’s band leader with short hair. Pizza without cheese. And while I had, seemingly, been learning the words, something was missing. Or else, I would have memorized the spells.
But back in the dungeon, while practicing the words, I came across a clue. The incantations sounded like Latin. Was it possible that, while making the game, the game developers had decided to use actual Latin, or some derivative of it, as spell incantations?
I began searching. I looked up the names of my spells. Rejuvenate, Lightning Strike, Talk to Spirits. Sure enough, it was close. The incantation for Rejuvenate was Parva Rejuvenis which, in Latin, meant “small Rejuvenate.” Great. My hunch had been correct. So if I was saying the correct words, and I knew it was in Latin, what was I missing? I dove deeper into the word and learned that Juvenis meant “young”. And Re meant “again”. So, literally, “young again.” Parva meant “small.” Perfect. That fit. And Magna meant great, which made sense because the spell incantation for Rejuvenate 2 was Magna Rejuvenis . Whether or not this would help me, I didn’t know. But at least I had some context.
While doing my research for Lightning Strike, I stumbled upon something interesting. A little video of a person teaching American Sign Language. I pulled up the video. A person held two fingers aloft, then made a lightning bolt downward with one hand. The gesticulation mirrored the one in the game. I stood up and pumped my fist, making a triumphant display of victory. I had cracked the code.
The Integration Online developers had used a combination of American Sign Language, the Latin language, and mathematics to build spells.
In the eyes of the developers, it probably wasn’t a big deal to use a code so easily cracked. A gamer figures out the code? No big deal. We’ll prevent anyone from posting it online. That way, each person can have a moment of discovery and be able to memorize their spells with some effort. Perfect.
But I wonder if the developers accounted for me. A gamer who, because of a love for reading body language, would unlock the Integrator Attribute in the character creation process allowing them to create their own Skills. A gamer, in a world of broken magic, who was dumb enough to start with a caster Job. When Sofia told me that the Integrator Attribute could break the game, I didn’t really believe her. I had begun to believe her. If I could create my own spells, I was going to get powerful.