《The Monster App》Chapter 6 - D-Day Part 1
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[Video Message from user Mash Royce via Monster App:
Most of you who are watching this video know who I am.
For those who don't, I guess you weren't part of the 'Fluffals is not a Troll' community on Reddit.
As far as I know, I might have been the first App User to complete the fertilization tasks and hatch my monster egg.
Those within the community who hatched their eggs after me decided we had to reward ourselves with a title.
After much debating, we all settled on calling ourselves, Tamers.
Those who still haven't hatched their eggs are referred to as App Users.
The ones who haven't even opened the Monster App or have refused to open it are called Normies or Non-Tamers by our community.
The doomsday message mentioned by the one known as 'The Majestic Pink Fluffals The Third' is a long-ass name to remember, so we refer to it as Fluffals.
Now that I got the terminologies out of the way let's get straight to what you must all be thinking right now.
When you checked the App before, you might have noticed that there wasn't any video messaging feature, so how are you seeing this message?
To answer that, I need to remind you of a question that you might have forgotten about.
Did you not find it strange that the Monster App only appeared in Ultra Smart Phones with Butlers?
A group of Tamers on Reddit decided to experiment with the App until they found the answer.
That answer lay with the Butlers themselves, who are essential to execute this feature.
They also discovered that video messaging between Butlers through the Monster App does not require wifi, cell towers, radio, or any other medium.
Walls and distance do not seem to be an issue as well.
This discovery, along with several others, has made the community believe that the threat of an apocalypse could be real.
That is why I wish to make an important announcement.
A week ago, I joined a group called the 'The Council', who are all direct representatives of the leaders of the five great powers on Earth.
The council, our aides, and I will act as a nerve center to assist Tamers worldwide who need guidance and support to hatch their eggs.
There are a few things I would like to add that might help you all.
First, we noticed the Monster App has the feature to recharge your phone batteries if your monster is summoned to walk beside you.
This will be helpful to Tamers who run low on power and are unable to find a way to recharge.
A Tamer's phone can be self-repaired by the Monster App if it gets physically damaged. But this repair is not instantaneous.
It will take 24 hours to complete regardless of the severity of the damage.
For those who aren't aware, your monster can interact with the world around it.
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My own monster bit me by accident when it was born. So I urge you to treat your monsters with care.
As Fluffals said, they may be the key to our survival, so not think of them as digital programs, or you might get hurt by them. But,
With that said, I hope you will report anything related to the Apocalypse signs in the coming hours. The more reports we share, the more it helps us to survive.
Also, if you find new features in the App the council missed, do not hesitate to share them with everyone.
Whether it be something unique to your monster or the abilities it can execute are vital information to us.
Do not let any tribal or nationalist instincts stop you from sharing this information.
The U.S., Russia, China, India, and the E.U.F. have readied their defense forces to Defcon 3.
Of course, the rest of the world thinks they are pointing their weapons at each other, but we know the truth.
May your gods or luck keep you safe]
"Cut! Great job, Mash. You are a natural at public speaking."
A beautiful young woman in a white coat with long raven black hair, fair skin, and dark glasses hands Mash a bottle of Miracle-Tonic water and a hot towel. An I.D. card is clipped to her lab coat.
{Tamer Council Member- Rebecca Lawman - Representative of the President of U.S.A.}
Mash. "Thank you, Rebecca, though I worry if non-English speakers will understand my message."
Rebecca. "Don't worry about that. The Butlers on their phones will automatically dub over your recording in their native language. If you have to worry about something, it is if the Monster App users force their butlers to share Tik-Tok style videos with everyone."
Mash. "Didn't that get internationally banned? I remember it had something to do with people eating broken glass as a challenge to get views!"
Dale. "Yes, and now we gave everyone a path to revive that insanity."
Mash. "How is Melani handling the revelation of why we are here?"
Dale. "She is still in denial and thinks I dragged you into a cult that believes in a worldwide apocalypse."
Rebecca. "I had to sedate her with a tranquilizer dart to stop her escape attempt out of the Bunker."
Mash. "A Tranq dart? Why do you carry one around?"
Rebecca pulls out a small handgun that is loaded with darts.
Rebecca. "If I am going to be the only single woman in this Apocalypse bunker, I should have a tool to protect myself. Your wife is sound asleep and won't wake up for a few hours, so none of us will have to deal with her for now."
Mash. "Still, I don't see how my marriage will survive if the apocalypse doesn't happen. We got hitched last year, and it was mostly out of convenience."
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"Worry about the end of the world we know and not your doomed marriage, Mash."
An Indian man who had an uncanny resemblance to actor Ayushmann Khurrana said as he approached the group. An I.D. card is clipped to his black jacket right chest pocket.
{Tamer Council Member- Soma Nathan - Representative of the Prime Minister of India}
Rebecca. "Says the man who has three divorces by the age of Twenty-nine,"
Soma. "The first one was arranged, the second was love, and the third was convenience. None of them lasted when the trust was shattered. I am more experienced at this than all three of you. So trust me when I say I see no future for Melani remaining with you even if there is an Apocalypse."
Mash. "What do you expect me to do? Let her out into the Alaskan wilderness in the middle of winter?"
Soma. "You don't have to be so cruel. Just send Melani home. I can arrange my transport drone to drop her back at the airport. "
Dale. "There is hardly any time left before the apocalypse begins, Soma."
Soma. "Then I guess we should go to the comms room and find out if she was right about us all being crazy doomsday cultists."
They soon enter a dark room filled with holo-screen displaying news channels worldwide. The other council members are engaged in a discussion in front of the screens. However, they stop when Mash and his group enter the room.
"Bravo, Mash! That was an inspiring message."
{Tamer Council Member- Markus Leiner - Representative of the Chancellor of E.U. Federation}
"You wrote all that yourself?"
{Tamer Council Member- Zao Han Fan - People's Republic of China}
Mash. "Nah, my aide Dale wrote it for me."
Dale accepted the acknowledgment from Mash and thanked the other council members, who gave smiling glances at him.
"I wish I could trust my aides with a speech like that. But, unfortunately, they are just bodyguards with not many skills other than killing people."
{Tamer Council Member- Sergei Krasnatov - Russian Federation}
Rebecca. "At least your father gave you killer bodyguards. My uncle made me bring his twin sons. I actually feel I am just babysitting for the true representatives since they keep ordering me around."
Zao. "Comrades! Pay attention to the holo-screens. It seems like New Zealand will be among the first to celebrate the start of the new year."
The Holo-Screen showed a count down to the New Year. When it reached Zero, a brilliant array of fireworks exploded. Music and drum beats filled the streets, and reporters commented on the joy on people's faces as they admired the fireworks in the sky.
The group stares at multiple screens as the eastern countries greet the new year with fireworks.
Mash. "Come to think of it, Fluffals never specified where or when it all starts other than the day. So it could probably be at the end of the day or in some secluded place away from civilization."
Zao. "I don't think we have to worry about that anymore."
Dale. "What makes you say that, Zao?"
Zao. "Look at the news coming from Beijing."
The news reporters were panicking and pointing at the sky above the city. The clouds turned into a whirlpool before a thick pillar of pink light shot out from the center of the vortex and fell into Tian'anmen Square. An explosion of light burst out from the impact site, and all footage from Beijing got disconnected.
Soon every other channel switched from the New Year celebration to discuss what happened in Beijing. Everyone stood stunned by what happened before Soma pointed his hand at the news coming in from Delhi.
Soma. "It isn't New Year in India yet, so why is it appearing there?"
Rebecca. "Maybe Fluffals doesn't think that detail is important?"
Dale. "The Pink light is only targeting the major cities of the great powers. Maybe the rest of the country is fine. Can you two contact someone living in the countryside?"
Both Zao Han Fan and Soma Nathan pulled out their phones and ordered their Butlers to connect with their loved ones in other parts of the country, but the lines were dead.
'Ting' Sergei pulled out his phone and read the message he received.
Sergei. "No... It is not just the major cities. The same vortex has appeared above my father's hunting lodge in Siberia."
'Ting' this time, Rebecca received a message. She stared at her phone and almost dropped it because her hands started shaking out of fear.
Mash. "What happened?"
Rebecca. "Air Force One... they lost communication with it. It was is in the air above New York."
Markus. "I need to call my brother before-"
Markus stopped when he saw the Pink pillar of light fall on top of the E.U.F. Headquarters in Brussels. Then Paris, Berlin, London, Rome, and other major European cities faced the same fate one after the other.
Markus. "This is madness!"
Dale. "Is there another way to see what's happened to those cities?"
Rebecca. "I will pull up all live satellite images over the hit cities."
Rebecca then ordered her Butler, who also controlled the Bunker.
The Holo-Screens switched over to views from space which showed the skies above the five great powers being covered by a blanket of hurricane-like whirlpools so thick that cameras on the satellites could not zoom through them to see the surface.
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Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
8 153Isekai - If I was Born in Another World
Watamachi Haruya, wanted to start a new life but was teleported to another world. He didn't know the reason, but all around him do : to save the world, just like how his ancestors from 25 years ago did. There he is, doing all he can to meet everyone's expectation, to save the world he is living in now. Come and follow his journey, together with friends he made, growing with each conflicts they encounters, to be the "Hero" of the another world. the story will be told in some PoV : Haruya, then the main heroine of the arc Well, that's all about the synopsis, enjoy ^.^ I will upload new chapter everyday for now, cuz it's holiday heheh
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