Mirrond: Astrologers proclaim the week of tables. The population of table-lovers doubles!
Resus: And table makers proclaim severe loss of sanity….
Mirrond: You can’t lose what you never had… btw. what you will see below is the exact reason why we were so ‘late’ last time, and why this time it was so easy for us to write it ;_; we actually had most of it ready.
EDIT: You can - if you are too... overloaded - skip the Codex part. It is added to keep track of lore etc. - it only contains information that WERE in the story (only now with its first activiation there are some additional informations. Nothing important though, and they are either mentioned below the Codex part or will be mentioned somewhere later on). From chapter 7 onwards it will be regularly updated and kept in spoiler below the chapter so if you won't be sure what something is you can refresh your memory without running into some pesky spoilers (like it sometimes happen when there is only one "chapter" with glossary etc.)
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Chapter 06: Real Life Game System’s informational overload
Shadow - which, I guess, is the name of my abductor - has a pretty bad timing.
Even thought that floating message box doesn’t seem like a physical object I can touch it and move it around. Fortunately it’s impossible to throw it, otherwise I would most likely smash it against the wall. At least it calmed me down a bit. It stays there, floating in front of me, as I try various ways to dismiss it. Voice commands doesn’t work, and while I can touch it there is no ‘exit’ button or something like that. But, after maybe thirty seconds, it suddenly disappears on it’s own. And a moment later...
*ping!*
Huh.
I can see several interesting things here. Especially Health Points. That bastard found quite a way to introduce HP into perfectly normal… except for magic, world. Now I can’t help but wonder about… details. Will it work on injuries which don’t carry the risk of death? What about twisted ankle? Or bruises? Is it instant? Is it painful? Will it regenerate me after decapitation?
I can’t really test any of that… I don’t know how could I bruise myself without making a noise that would make Gavlan barge into the room. Not to mention I don’t have even the slightest inclinations towards harming myself. Well… it’s not like I’m going to get decapitated in near future, right? Sooner or later I’m going to get injured on it’s own this way or another - I’m a child after all - so testing may wait.
0/0 Mana Points was to be expected. After all Shadow warned me about it earlier. That part about ‘reworks’ is much more interesting. I can figure that, at least when strength is considered, they’re there to make me - in a distant future - superhumanly strong without making me look like an extreme body-builder. But the rest? Increasing my intelligence or wisdom to ten points would actually mean… rebuilding my brain? Or maybe nervous system, right? That’s pretty extreme. And sure as hell painful.
My current stats... Maybe I never really played any MMO, but I always loved singleplayer RPG-es. And because of that I don’t have any problems with understanding the simple fact that I’m screwed. At least partially. Goddamnit! This is a fucking magicless magician build!
Social skills are much less depressing, maybe with a small exception for ‘Attractiveness xD’ - Shadow, you asshole… Two points in ‘Fear’ most likely came from me scaring my cousin. Now, one of my main questions is - what the fuck is going on with Faith stat. I wonder what can it give me. With 100 points they will be inviting me for a dinner every sunday? I don’t even know anything about any local gods! Beside the fact that one is supposed to be in the Res’s temple.
Although… Shadow might be a god. But if that’s the case I may actually consider conversion to atheism… or rather antitheism, as you can’t really be an atheist if you know that gods exist, but you still refuse to worship them because they’re assholes.
And… there is nothing that’s even a slightly similar to ‘Levels’, there’s only stats. Hmph. I wonder how am I to increase my stats if there’s no levels. Will I have to… train? Oh damn, please! Anything but this! Although… I have no idea how could I train Resistance or Vitality… getting violently beaten can’t really empower regeneration spell, right?
*ping!*
I guess the system somehow figured out that I finished reading the the tutorial and so the descriptive windows disappear. And now I can finally explore the Menus section. The first button I push is the one labeled as Skills.
Well… Magical Talentless skill looks more or less like another one of Shadow’s bad jokes… I think I’m getting used to this by now... The language skill is actually a bit depressing. Word ‘western’ suggest that there’s at least one more ‘Republican’ language… plus, it’s just a variant, which suggests a possibility that there’s a shitload of languages in this world, just like on Earth.
Too bad, I kinda hoped for it to turn out like some of the RPG-worlds where you can easily communicate using only one or two languages everywhere… damn you, realism!
Out of curiosity I tried to click the Spells button, but something like this appeared. So, let’s try checking out Quests next. If every secondary menu is going to be as deserted as the first one it’s gonna be a breeze.
Okay… so much about being a breeze. At least descriptions of those quests are somewhat enlightening. Especially one of this ‘Unchangeable Main Quest’ - ‘Old Empire’ sounds like a stereotypical long-lost-but-very-fucking-powerful civilization. I never heard about it, but it’s nothing strange as people don’t really talk about world history in this mansion. I’ll just need to ask a few questions to my tutor… as soon as I get one.
So… considering this and a part about blessings from ‘Lost Deities’ I can safely assume that Shadow himself is a ‘Lost Deity’, and is somehow connected to this Old Empire, and have a bunch of friends that are yet to show up. Also the ‘Old Gods’ must refer to the goddess-protector of Res, and her friends from other cities, right? I mean, that’s the only deity I heard about so far. But after a moment of thinking - that’s only a possibility. I can only hope she is an Old God, as that would… narrow things a little.
It’s actually quite complicated. I could assume that Shadow is one of Old Empire’s deities, but he doesn’t really look like one. And if Old Empire really is a mighty, old civilization… then why the hell would they worship somebody like that?! With his ‘oh, I can’t say this, and I can’t say that’ attitude he could just as well simply falsify the quest description to make me think that way. He looks like a deceiving and scheming, insane little bastard.
Plus… if he really is a god originating from a long-lost-but-very-fucking-powerful civilization, then why would the Res goddess described as an ‘Old God’? Shadow would be the older one here… Aaaargh, it’s just so fucking complicated. Shadow should have chosen Iverie as his tool, that bitch has similar mind when it comes to scheming and such.
The last quest here is actually a bit funny… if I weren’t so angry at everything I might’ve even laugh. Shadow really has a bad timing… well, time to move to Codex.
Okay… that’s… something.
Codex definitely looks like a handy tool. All knowledge I acquired about this world in an easily accessible and well sorted table… and a bit more.
While overwhelming majority of information in this Codex is what I already know - this is especially true in Dramatis Personae part - there are also things I knew but forgot or only heard about it once or twice. A good example could be the part about Temple of Res. Now that I think about it, I heard Gavlan talking with some other slave about the Temple - they mentioned it being led by a Grand Priestess and something about her passing judgment for crimes. And now I have it written here… with a little bit of additional info that I am not sure if I actually knew.
It looks like Shadow is trying to smuggle some bits of knowledge using Codex, without telling me openly. Like names of continents. And races… wait, Elves?! OH PLEASE EVERYTHING BUT THEM… I just hope they aren’t the stereotypical ‘oh, I-am-so-awesome-so-incredibly-beautiful-and-immortal-and-my-magic-is-so-strong-you-lowly-human’ type. That would be… painful.
Interesting thing is the part about Council of Eight. Res is a big city, at least when it goes to more medieval type of world. And while I’m not sure about numbers, I would be surprised if there was less than one hundred thousands people living here. And that’s why ‘all eight sorcerers’ looks weird - that’s a pretty low number. At least it’ll be much easier to find the bastard working with Iverie, though it’ll have to wait until I’ll be able to… at least scratch him.
I finish with the Codex, and open Active Effects.
Only one active effect... But it actually confirms two things. Shadow really is a deity, and his sphere of influence is actually quite fitting. I hope he doesn’t expect me to worship him, as he looks like the exact type of deity I would prefer to avoid. The second revelation is that now I know the reason behind those ‘weird feelings’ I had few times. Like ‘she is a problem’ near Iverie. I wonder what does the ‘I HATE YOU’ around my uncle is supposed to tell me. Well, nevermind - I’ll get to know it eventually.
Possessions and Companions are both locked and the only one left is the options menu. But before opening it I face a small problem. All those opened windows are still floating in front of me as I don’t know how to close them. This clusterfuck of blue windows is getting annoying. I spend few moments trying to figure out how to make them disappear… Voice commands still don’t seem to work but after some trials and errors I find out that if I touch their titles - they go away.
Click, click, click… and then… by accident I close the main status window.
At first I don’t find this as a problem and close the rest as well...
But I have no idea how to open this interface again.
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Resus: It may not look like it, but this chapter was a main reason for our “delay” with the fifth one. The other thing I want to say is… From this chapter onwards there’s alway gonna be full set of menues from Real Life Game System :P In actual chapters MC’s interface will be rather minimal and I know that there are some people who like to be… up to date. Ok. I admit - it’s mainly because I quite simply figured out how to put a table into a spoiler xD BUT STILL!
Mirrond: It’s all because you are a table-loving maniac ;_;
Resus: You’re the one who wrote their content xD
Mirrond: It’s because you told me to do it!
Resus: Did you just say that I have the power to command you?! ARE YOU HIGH!?
Mirrond: ;_;
SpoilerStatus
SpoilerSkills
SpoilerSpells LOCKED
SpoilerQuests
SpoilerCodex
SpoilerActive Effects
SpoilerPossesions LOCKED
SpoilerCompanions LOCKED
That’s right - no options for you :P