POV - Nige

The difference between my resident house plant of 90 odd years and Tad could not be more striking. I was still bemused by the way Tad jumped from topic to topic, obviously linking ideas and concepts and pulling together disparate isolated fragments of information and formulating a strategy and then enacting it. It could not be more different to the enduring image I had of him during the tutorial. And my angst and frustration that I had believed to be deep seated and immutable had rapidly dissolved.

His request to ‘tag’ him had been fun. I quickly deduced that he had activated his Perk and it became apparent that this was going to be a vital part of his build. I couldn’t help but commend him for the way he had adapted and responded to the specific hurdles and challenges despite the significant setback regarding learning a magic Skill.

No response.

Oh no! Code Black. I immediately panicked remembering only too well the indeterminant drooling. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t go through that again. I got right up in his face.

Nope. He’s just focused on something else. It was disturbing to watch. Tad had reactivated his Perk and I could tell that time was moving at a different speed for him. This was powerful. But I was confused. It looked like he had slowed down his relative subjective time. Why would he do this? This would mean that time was passing slower for him. If one minute passed real time actual and Tad had slowed down his subjective time so that only 30 seconds passed, then theoretically this would mean he has less time to gain the benefit of whatever he was doing. He looked like he was in a deep meditative state. This was beyond strange. I was only a JrSysAdmin. I corrected myself; I had only been a JrSysAdmin, past tense, and my experience was at the lighter end of the scale, but this was beyond anything I had even heard of let alone experienced.

I reevaluated what I knew of Tad and his more recent behaviours and posited a different theory. He had actually accelerated his subjective time and then dropped into some sort of meditation. I inspected my somewhat concerning charge. His breathing had evened out remarkably and I could see he was completely relaxed. I was astounded. Despite the number of setbacks and a utterly destroyed tutorial Tad was advancing in leaps and bounds. Meditation under time compression would dramatically expand the benefits.

I wonder how long he can sustain this? It was only for a period of five seconds when we were playing tag. And it had been quite obvious when his Perk had expired then. I chuckled. But of course that had also been during significant physical exertion. This was quite different.

And 20 minutes later Tad surfaced with a series of [dings]. This was great. I couldn’t wait to see what he achieved. I accessed his recent notifications.

One proficiency advancement and three new unlocked Skills and, my word, a Skill synergy! This was excellent work. I couldn’t help but compare Tad’s progress with what a normal orientation would be like. He had a total of six Skills after only a few hours at most. This in itself was an outlier. A normal tutorial instance would generally unlock between thirty and forty skills over the six to nine months. Tad was a legend! And they weren’t just the base grey Skills either. He had one Standard white Skill and one Uncommon green Skill. My musings were interrupted.

“Nige!”

“Synergies? I’m guessing combining Skills is a good thing?”

“How can I do that without deciding to accept it or not?”

I didn’t want to admit that I had never had a mentee actually combine a skill while I was guiding them before. I mean, I knew the theory. It was just rare to achieve this during the tutorial. That’s all. Nothing to see. Moving on.

Tad triggered the melding and we opened the new Skill notification.

Before Tad could veer off somewhere else I pulled up the last big notification the System had bombarded him with out of the tutorial. This was one where I honestly didn’t know what to think. I had never heard of a grey, or trash Path before.

> >

And it looks like the System is lost for words too. This was surprising. Normally there was quite a lot to be gleaned from the pithy quotes or phrases attached to the notification. I expanded the title.

I announced. I trailed off. Tad was looking strangely intrigued by this trash Class.

“Hey Nige, you called this a ‘grey glitchy Path’ before. I was just wondering, 'cause the grey skills are a totally different kind of grey.”

Tad was not convinced. I could see him tightening his resolve. He was going to take the Class wasn’t he. Contrary and difficult, these Humans; and there I was, proud I correctly huffed his species. Ha!

“Check this out Nige,” he said and pulled up a notification.

>Object:

T.A.D. [Blank]'s individual Automatic Potion Dispenser (iAPD)

> Grade:

Unique

Vinaceous Grey

> Status:

Slot1

Empty

> Description:

Soulbound

[Expand?]

It was a trash item. I wondered what he was getting at. And then I saw what had his attention. It also was a unique item. And the grade was a specific grey. I had never even heard of Vinaceous Grey. Mayhap it's a made up word. But it somehow reminded me of grapes. And looking closer at the colour I could see a slight purplish tinge to the grey. This was important. I started to see where Tad was coming from. Unique, Soulbound, purpley grey. Legendary gear was supposed to be purple. I had never even ever seen one drop. And I had seen just the one Legendary Perk in my admittedly not very long bureaucratic career. Perhaps this Class was worth a closer look. Ignoring the whimsical description I focused on the bonuses.

“It specifically says this is a Unique Class.” He paused, waiting no doubt for a response. “Everything I know about the System, which isn’t much admittedly, tells me that Unique Grade is pretty rare and should be seized with both hands.”

[Ding]

> >

And he wasn’t wrong. As the notification so helpfully let us know. Unique drops were as rare as glitch. I had a sudden dread. We, that is, us JrSysAdmins, weren’t taught that Unique gear was grey, even if it was a funny grey. How much Unique gear had been discarded or ignored simply because grey was trash and not even worth burdening yourself with. Oh No! This was bad. We were failing our charges. I needed to escalate this. I should contact my supervis… I trailed off. I was not a JrSysAdmin anymore. I was an unemployed sickness beneficiary. And I should be waiting on my medical, not AWOL out here with Tad, discovering new stuff and learning more, it seemed, than I was teaching. Nope, if I raised this, questions would be asked and I would be whisked away from my promising minionship. Selfish I know. But, I rationalised it to myself; if I don’t look after me who will?

Tad dismissed the previous notification.

“Okay, I’m taking the Class. I’m going to be an official NPC. Hopefully we can adjust what it displays if someone [Inspects] me? Is that a thing?