Growing Pains

Chapter 4

When I returned from the tutorial with Agony, I felt energized. Despite my misgivings about taking lives, I had far more control than when I first plopped down into this world in a desk chair. I went to work scouting the area and felt rewarded by what I found. I was in the vicinity of a mountain range with lovely geographic features. The stone formations just before its foothills were particularly impressive.

It was about three days away from the nearest settlement by horse. It felt like a relatively safe distance to put down stakes as it were. I wanted to be near enough to people that it would be possible to lead them to my dungeon. Yet not so close that they’d come poking around on their own before I was ready. The last thing I needed was a farmer with a sledgehammer taking shots at my core.

Remembering what I’d learned about using existing terrain to my advantage I settled in a small valley. It rested among the foothills and featured a played out mine and small lake. The wind and water-eroded field of marble before the hills formed a natural barrier. A bonus as it saved me the expense of setting up a preventative one. It felt like a natural labyrinth of its own and after checking a few other sites I settled in.

Heading into the depths of the mine I found the lowest accessible point to plant my core. I’d be able to move it once it fully integrated but for forty-eight hours it would be little more than a giant pearl-like stone. A meter in diameter it was tough but not invincible, especially not in a world of magical attacks.

With the location settled I had nothing much to do until it finished. At loose ends for a bit, I settled in around it. Coiling myself in a way a human body wouldn’t have been able to manage I felt comfortable. Almost drowsy though my body didn’t need that kind of rest. I shook the feeling off enough to open the manual. I wanted to send Agony a picture of a competent layout by the time I was done. I started studying in hopes of grasping some of the more advanced mechanics not covered in the tutorial.

It was all interesting but nothing in it was revelatory. It left me with a vague feeling that I’d missed some pages somewhere. A feeling I couldn't explain since I’d read it beginning to end, but the feeling lingered. I supposed that while I didn’t tire that wouldn’t prevent my mind from wandering. Something I’d need to be more mindful of since my life depended on my understanding of it.

With a few hours left and done with the manual, I laid contentedly and tried to think of a name for myself. I knew I’d need one eventually. If only so sending messages wouldn’t be awkward. I’d also need to figure out how to send them, but I found the task of picking a name more pleasant.

“Huh?” I muttered as my core began to come online and engulf the terrain between itself and the entrance to the mine. It was an automatic action; it wouldn’t violate the accessibility rule on its own during startup. That was something that would only happen once I began tweaking the layout. Even so, I couldn’t explain why I felt dread start to spread through me.

Wondering if this was something I‘d missed, I went to open the manual as a wall of pain crashed down on me. A migraine distorted my vision and had my body spasming in surprise as I clutched at my head. I could feel my pseudo-flesh contacting pseudo-flesh, but it was like a cotton ball brushing across my skin. I barely felt it and it did nothing to help my migraine.

Looking at the manual I tried to figure out what was wrong. Nothing in my species’ description lead me to believe I should experience anything like it. The index of the manual also wasn’t turning up anything useful. Calling it a migraine wasn’t particularly accurate, and I wondered if that was why I couldn’t find the information I needed. A thought that wasn’t long-lived.

The pain wasn’t rooted in anything physical but made up for that in intensity. I tried to focus, my core was active and waiting. I needed to get to work as much to protect myself as anything. As disoriented as I was it would be dangerous if anyone found their way into the mine.

I tried adjusting my layout but gave up when I realized my vision was blurry. Numbers weren’t jelling right in my head. I’d somehow spent too much of my core’s mana without accomplishing anything but adding a few tiles of ground. Or at least I thought that’s what I had done. It didn’t make sense though, tiles weren’t expensive. I couldn’t figure out how I’d done it.

My core was F grade with an output of 100 mana. Everything shimmered like heat haze when I tried to read the contents of the store tab. Knowing I was in trouble I tried the manual again but didn’t have much luck. Zooming in to make the text legible didn’t do anything about my ability to understand what I was reading.

“Read aloud?” I said, hoping that I’d trigger some kind of text-to-speech function. Nothing happened but I wasn’t sure if it was because my thoughts were a mess or if that just wasn’t a feature. A moment later a pop-up appeared in a font I didn’t recognize as it swam in my vision. The regular one was sans-serif and I clearly could see little feet on the bottom of this one.

Would you like to upgrade your UI?

Cost: 1 point

You have 0 points

You cannot upgrade your UI at this time.

Pissed at the reminder I was broke; I closed the popup. Or threw it to the left at any rate. I wasn’t sure if that did anything, but it was as much as I could do for the moment. On another day I would have been enraged to find out my UI was freemium. Right then I didn't have the energy to curse locked out features beyond that brief reaction.

I wished I could at least throw up or something. It didn’t feel good on its own, but a more minor discomfort would at least have broken up the monotony. Wondering if I’d bought multiples rather than single tiles, I opened my map to check. The store showed duplicate tiles with a number in the upper right corner, but the map would let me see them. I knew what was wrong when I finally found a series of flashing red intruder tokens on the map.

“Unmute alarm,” I said and my immediate area was filled with flashing light and a siren.

“Mute alarm,” I said and though my pain didn’t disappear the new irritants did. I’d muted it during the tutorial and the settings didn’t reset outside of it. I felt a panicked desire to stay coiled around my core and guard it but fought the urge off.

I was fucked if anything happened to it, so I needed to get moving to protect it. If things went ass end up, I could try and lead the adventurers astray directly. As I moved away, I felt my pain lighten slightly. The relief increased the further away I went from it and I felt an unpleasant thought brewing. Turning around I headed closer and felt the pain increase.

Agony had mentioned something about having a panic attack if I was linked to the core in the tutorial. It did describe what I was feeling perfectly, but the situation was also different. My core was only guarded by distance and a few inconvenient terrain elements. I’d done nothing to protect it and was paying for that in terror.

Studying the tokens, I was presented with a strange situation. Three living bandits were facing off against a group of five elite guards. The guards had their backs to the storage shed at the entrance to the tunnel and were suffering the effects of smoke inhalation. A severe status effect that was hurting their stats. One of them was critically injured and a brief inspection turned up two dead ones in the storage building behind them.

They’d been struck by a fallen beam rather than burned or suffocated. I couldn’t honestly tell if they’d suffered or not, but I decided to assume they hadn’t. It would make deciding what I was going to do with their living comrades a little easier. The bandits were a bit better off, making use of the terrain and smoke to eke out an advantage.

Even so, it wasn’t a one-sided conflict. One of the bandits was lying dead in the tunnel already. Looking them all over carefully, I weighed my options. None were of a heroic class, so they didn’t pose a specific threat to me and likely didn’t realize they were even in a dungeon. Lackluster aesthetics aside, it wasn’t magically charged since I hadn’t deployed any traps or monsters.

For the moment it was just an old mine to them. Reaping the spoils of battle without engaging was an option for me, but I didn’t like it. The guards were wearing a Sigil which suggested they belonged to someone of prominence in the region. Letting them die pointlessly wouldn’t give me any sort of advantage or even guarantee me points since I didn’t know how those were calculated.

I couldn’t afford anything with my paltry remaining mana thanks to the active combat multiplier. Instead, I turned to my inventory to find a suitable solution. Leaving the fire rats aside this time, I chose to use my bonus prize from the tutorial. A pair of Fire Elemental Hounds, or Lava Dogs as I called them. I needed to stop renaming things. I wasn’t good at it.

Having done my tutorial in a lava dungeon, I didn’t think twice about using the hounds. They appeared at my side, seeming to step out of a slight red shimmer in the air. Like Agony, they had the shape of dogs, but their bodies were composed of hardened black stone with veins of lava revealing a molten core beneath. I hadn't thought about it during the tutorial, but they threw off enough heat to leave tracks in stone and make the air shimmer drunkenly.

The bandits wailed in terror and pain as they surged forward to fulfill my order to kill. I felt a pang of conscience as I watched the slaughter. Criminals were afforded, generally, a trial and a defense with few crimes meriting the death penalty. In such rare cases, appeals were made and nothing like the summary execution I’d enacted would happen.

Even so, I let it continue. It was something I would have to do many times in the future if I wanted to survive. My tithe would not pay itself. That didn’t make me less of a murderer, but it also didn’t trouble me as much as it could have. They were at the very least thieves given their title, possibly worse. I could figure out how bad I should feel about it later.

“Surrender,” I hissed, my voice filling the tunnel with a whisper those still living heard in their very bones. Finished with their work the hounds ran back to sit on either side of me, their fiery forms outlining mine with a dull illumination.

The soldiers huddled together, backing up as close to the storage shed fire as they could tolerate. I waited for them to make a decision, to kneel to me or to take their chances in the flames. Slowly and unhappily they each took a knee, uncertain if I was better than the fire. A moment later they prostrated themselves before me, submitting completely, and the pain in my head finally ended.

I sighed in relief as the prices in the store went down and put out the shed fire. With the guards pacified I took a moment to shuffle through the pop-ups I’d thrown to the side. If I’d been alone, I wouldn’t have had the luxury of ignoring my guests. Fortunately, when one of them so much as looked up the dog on my right growled and they resumed cowering.

The storage shed was on fire, the dungeon was being raided, and various death notices were the majority of the pop-ups. I closed them after skimming. It was the tenth one that got my full attention. Bandit points summary. I had gotten points!

Philip (NN) +1

Durst (NN) +1

Sweet, beautiful, points to cover my tithe.

Jax (NE) +0

Not great, but not bad. I was good.

Tip (CE) -2

Fuck. Fuck a duck. Fuck a fucking duck. I’d gone from golden to broke in the blink of an eye. Sighing I rubbed my face which felt a bit like the lightest brush of a q-tip. Soothing, but not really what I was after. Looking up at the soldiers I wondered how much they were worth but brushed the thought aside.

I’d made up my mind not to kill them for the moment. The reasoning behind it was still solid, even if my resolve was weakening a bit. I was under a harsh deadline, but I still had to keep the long game in mind or I'd be screwed sooner rather than later.

“You guys planning to let him bleed out?” I asked as I found their injured comrade still in bad shape and unattended. He was probably worth points since he seemed to be the highest rank present but leaving him to die alone in a crowd didn’t sit right with me.

The soldiers exchanged looks among themselves then looked at him before glancing up at me and cowering again. Examining their tokens I realized none of them was any sort of a healer variant. It took a moment to process that. I had been dealing with purpose-specific dungeon buster groups in the tutorial. Not having a healer seemed absurd to me.

“Mother fucker…” I muttered and started looking through my store quickly.

“If you promise not to tell anyone about me or this place, I’ll give you a healing potion for him,” I said and to my surprise, a contract window appeared. My stated promise was written out and waiting for me to send. I elected to leave it unedited and sent it, but it refused to go at first. The healing potion was expensive but split as a bribe it wasn’t of equivalent value to the secret I was asking them to keep. I had to sweeten the deal with ten silver coins each before it would let me offer it.

The group flinched when they received it. I wasn’t sure why. It could have been they weren’t used to contracts, or possibly the potion. Maybe both since I knew nothing about them. Even so, the potion was the cheapest one in my store, so it wasn’t enough to heal him fully. With some care, he might be conscious again before morning if injuries followed video game rules. If they didn’t, he’d need an actual healers’ attention soon.

“Alright, I need information and I’m willing to pay for it. Are you lot agreeable to that? Or do you want to leave now instead?” I asked and let the group discuss it among themselves. I had a few more pop-ups to deal with, so I busied myself with those.

I tried to bring up a contract display rather than a prefilled pop-up and was greeted with a full interface for it featuring more options. One, in particular, stuck out.

Slave Contract

A sentient being becomes your property after being defeated or in exchange for something. All targets qualify for enslavement.

Fuck that. Fuck that right in its face. The moment I read the title I was angry and as if responding to my revulsion a red trash can appeared in the corner of the option. I was a little sad I didn't get the physical feeling of jamming a button when I chose to delete it.

Would you like to permanently delete the Slave Contract option? Y/N

A thousand times yes, I thought, and the option disappeared completely. As jarring as it had been to find such an option at my disposal, I couldn’t pretend to be surprised. It was probably a little strange that it had taken me so long to run into something so horrible given what I’d become. Murder for points didn’t register as horrible at that moment since I still didn’t have time for guilt.

I needed to keep my head clear and looked over the other contracts. The obvious one was the exchange contract that I had already used. I filled it out, listing my desires. Chief among them was to obtain all of the knowledge they had to offer. I knew jack-shit about the world I was on. The geography of the meager area I had scouted told me nothing about the people or if I was even on a continent. For all I knew I was on a large island. That it was a flying one was wishful thinking.

My desire translated into something a bit unexpected.

All factual information the signer possesses will be added to the contractor’s encyclopedia.

I had an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia I didn’t know how to access but was going to read the shit out of at the first opportunity. It also tagged on that I would receive their map data for life.

Feeling good about the matter I chose to proceed and start making my payment offer. The exchange contract processed my desire and then gave me an approximate gold value. It was then that I remembered something important and amended the request. Facts were good and all, but the written Welsh language used k with absurd frequency.

Not because the Welsh people decided on using K's. It was because the guy who compiled the Welsh language bible thought printing press shops wouldn't have enough C's. Humanity ran on bullshit and half-truths and I needed that as much as facts. Possibly more so. Facts had little to do with culture.

The cost estimate amended itself. I had to furnish the group with either that much money or objects of equal value. The gold was only Fifteen pieces which divided out to three pieces each. A sad amount in my estimation as most games gave at least ten each for starting gear purchases. The part about being allowed to give them gear gave me an idea, however.

“Everyone, take off your boots,” I said and they all gave me puzzled looks until the hound on my right growled. I named him Stalin in my head due to his cheerful disposition and it appeared floating over his head to my embarrassment. They all rushed to get their boots off, eyeing Stalin nervously.

I added the collection of boots to my inventory and they populated to my store. A little drop-down appeared letting me select sizes rather than a series of separate entries. I restored them to new condition and upgraded them to level D from level E. It cost me three mana but increased their comfort and durability by double. I went through several tries before I found a request that was equal to a pair of boots.

They all looked at me as if I was insane when the contract came through. They started doing the chicken dance I’d described when Stalin not only growled but stood up to menace them. After a few rounds of flapping and clucking a pair of boots materialized in front of each of them. For a demonstration of power, I felt it was low risk but impressive. Soldiers depended on good boots in any era.

“So, as you can see, I can provide you with improved equipment and money. I’m willing to outfit each of you handsomely with gear. All of it as good as or better than those boots in exchange for your map data and knowledge,” I said as they put their new boots on. There was a bit of cursing and some do-overs, but they all seemed surprised by the good fit once they figured out the right foot / left foot issue. Theirs hadn’t been cut that way, fitting either foot equally poorly.

“Just give me a set of gear and-” Before I could finish, I had four men stripping without anything resembling shame between them. Dealing with naked men hadn’t been how I planned to start my first-day dungeon building, but such was life. Belatedly I realized I could have just scooped up their fallen comrades into my inventory and used the gear to populate my store.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I didn’t bother telling them any of my revelations and swept the gear up into my inventory instead. I still took the corpses of their comrades and the bandits into my inventory as well since none of them had the same things. Thankfully the repeated items formed up into sets. I didn’t have to upgrade every single item on its own. Including the sets, I had a list of six vital pieces of gear to offer them.

“Would you like a longbow?” I asked, uncertain if I should bother with the bow. I’d gotten it from one of the bandits. If they weren’t trained with it, they might not want to bother learning or deal with extra weight. Four sets of hands went up. That brought the count to seven as the quiver, arrows, and bow formed a set.

“Okay, I’m going to send you lot a deal,” I said and sent them my demand along with the reward.

Savex Soldier Uniform, D rank x2

Backpack of Survival gear, D rank

Sunhat (large), E rank

Spear, E rank

Long Knife, E rank

Round Shield (small), D rank

Long bow and arrows, D rank

Besides the gear, they would each receive ten silver and five copper pieces. They’d only had those coins on them so I thought it would be easier for them to spend them later. After looking at the contract a second time I sent it, though it felt stingy to me. If I didn’t, I’d fall into a shopping hole and spend an hour kitting them out like they were my characters.

“By the goddess of mercy’s tits!” one of them shouted as he jammed the accept on the contract as fast as he could. The others were a little slower, distracted by his outburst. They all agreed the moment they figured out what the contract offered. One of them having to discreetly ask the others since he apparently couldn’t read. With unanimous agreement achieved they each received their new gear. I also dumped out their personal items on top of the neat piles they received. I wasn’t interested in collecting personal mementos.

“You may leave now if you like,” I said, wanting to come up with a reason to keep them a bit longer but drawing a blank. I hadn’t had time to feel lonely since my arrival, but I couldn’t help but want to keep someone to talk to. Holding them prisoner wouldn’t do me any good though. Ethics aside, they’d be shit conversation partners if under duress and I wouldn’t gain map data.

They got up one by one to pull on pants and put boots back on while I decided to give them a touch of privacy and went floating down the tunnel a bit. It wasn’t for the sake of privacy, I’d already seen all of their goods, literally. I just wasn’t interested in watching and noticed something interesting on my map. It turned out to be a Rune Stone which clashed thoroughly with the bland mining tunnel’s general appearance. Scooping it up I checked my map but didn’t find anything else.

Looking back at the entrance I found they’d all left by then, save for one. I floated back up to check if my map was glitching, but it wasn’t. The unconscious one was right where he’d been before.

“Fucking really?” I asked rhetorically, looking down at the boy I’d mistaken for a man. He was maybe eighteen, muscular and tanned, but nowhere near old enough to buy his own beer. An unopened red crystal bottle in the shape of an anatomical heart rested at his elbow. They hadn’t even bothered to give him the potion before ditching him.

I wasn’t sure who I was more annoyed with. His comrades for abandoning him, or myself for wondering how many points he’d be worth. His life ebbing slowly away as he lay helplessly on the floor, I wouldn’t even have to lift a finger to kill him. Instead, I was bending down to pick up the bottle and tip its contents slowly into his mouth. His critical bleeding status changed to stable but poor by the time the bottle was empty. I threw it into my inventory since I liked the design and wanted at least a small win for the day.

“May I have the honor, mistress?” Stalin asked, startling me since I’d had no idea he could talk.

“No, I haven’t made up my mind about him,” I said and Stalin rolled his burning eyes at me. Even so, he went back to laying down without protest. His face full of what I now felt was a dog’s equivalent of a bored expression. It seemed my conversation partner issue was solved.

Opening my map, I quickly made a small room near the entrance by shuffling around some branch tunnel tiles. I justified it to myself as being free and better than leaving him in the draft from the entrance. I hadn’t made up my mind about letting him live or not but until I did it behooved me to do what I could.

Picking him up was strange, his body feeling functionally weightless to me though his weight pulled me down. He was almost dragging on the floor as I floated into the room. I upgraded the survival backpack from rank D to rank C then deployed the bedroll before laying him down.

The rest of the pack I laid on the floor near him. If I got lucky, he’d wake up and piss off on his own. Otherwise, I was going to have to make a new and possibly more difficult decision about letting him live or not. A decision I was putting off, hard.

Fortunately, I had an excellent excuse to keep me busy and not ogling him as a potential source of points. I had a dungeon to look after and twenty mana left to work with until it refreshed. Twenty points I wasn't about to waste after the earlier fiasco.