Jim was back, and I realized that humans ate frequently. There were several of those pizza things in long square boxes, with fascinating smells, although since I had eaten only a couple of hours earlier I realized that the appeal was a pure attraction to sensation rather than a need to eat.

Jessica was a tall, willowy human woman with shoulder-length brown hair, She was a bit older than Selena had been when she was rejuvenated, but I could see why James found her physically appealing. When she spotted me she smiled and gave me a little wave, and I suddenly understood the emotional appeal as well, since her smile was very pleasing. It was strange the way a physical reaction like baring teeth could make you feel more emotionally stable, but it worked, and I started to understand why some people seemed to concentrate on me when I smiled.

James was scowling, “I thought.” he said, glaring at Cody, “That we agreed to hold off until Jesse and Error got here.”

Cody smiled and held up his hands, “You agreed to it. I smiled, Max gurgled, and Selena nodded that she heard you. But look at the bright side. Now, you will have two fully trained medical people, three magical healers, and a woman who can cast virility of the bull on you while you are unconscious keeping an eye on you and Jesse.”

James raised an eyebrow, “Say what?”

Selena shook her head, “Cody’s being a douche. I can cast natural magic. My actual spells are pretty generic, but apparently, they are fairly broadly defined. That seems to be a feature of the sorcery involved with the system. You can learn basic magics, and then adapt them to unusual circumstances, as long as you figure out how and practice it. I am still trying to figure the details out, but I can individually boost your physical attributes based on the aspects of animals, and I have a heal and can take on a slightly better aspect myself.”

Cody nodded, “I can make you tougher and help heal damage, and I get a bunch of non-combat stuff also, but I am still trying to figure it out.”

Max nodded, “We all get improved attributes, Cody and Selena both got improved melee and defense skills, but it looks like until we decide how and what style we use for fighting, those attributes are not really going to show. The thing is until we get into a situation where we use those skills, we’re sort of in the dark. Tracy doesn’t know much since she’s never been an adventurer, but I installed a private node in the work room, and for the ever-so-healthy expense of about six or seven grand, we can choose to go explore a Mayan ruin filled with hazards and monsters and treasure. All we are waiting for is to get outfitted and for you and Jessica to choose, and for Error to get here and choose too.”

Jessica was staring at the drone that was carefully cleaning dishes from earlier. “I am still not convinced. What am I agreeing with? What are the downsides?”

Max shrugged, “Well, you have played in MMOs. Once you become an adventurer, stuff happens around you. It doesn’t have to affect you, but quests will tend to present themselves depending on how you play. If you are a crook, you may get a quest to steal an armored car that mysteriously breaks down near you. Quests tend to also present themselves based on your own plans, often leading to opportunities you may have missed. In your case, you might get a quest to help one of your kids win an art showcase or to help turn a troubled student around to the straight and narrow. The system loves tragic stories as much as rewarding ones, but there’s going to be a path to success of some sort if there’s a quest for it. In our case, we have plans to prepare and visit the Golden Throne, so I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we get quests based on that.”

I nodded, “Also if you are in a position to assist a great species goal, you might get quests for that. My prior race was very concerned about minimizing the number of quests that the common players received, but I only realized yesterday that that behavior was considered stagnation, and was one of the things that led to our destruction. One of the biggest factors.”

I shrugged, “In hindsight, the fact that our protectors like me did not regularly receive quests related to defending our world if I had been in a position to understand, could have told me we were doing something very wrong. What could be more critical than defending your world from extinction? And yet the F’lok’nyran were not getting those quests at all. The only thing I can think is that one of our leaders was getting quests to change our fate and intentionally failing or ignoring them.”

Max nodded, “See, you are learning. Power Corrupts unless you have a decent surge protector.”

I smiled, I understood his innuendo joke this time. “In this case, I imagine the surge protection is that knowledge that the universe is a really big place, and mostly unfriendly. There is always a creature with a bigger stick that would be more than happy to hit you with it and take away all you have if they have the chance. You and your entire species.”

Max smiled a little, “Well, I think Jesse needs a little more convincing, and right now, your telepresence is by far the most blatant evidence we have. Would you care to do your trick again?”

I nodded and hoped this would not be necessary. “If we are going into a warp, should I attempt to create some sort of weapon? Most of my drone designs don’t work well in an atmosphere, but if we are going to be dealing with hostiles, perhaps armed drones would be more effective.”

He shook his head, “I am putting in a query and requesting special information since we are the first creatures in this world to enter a dungeon. It looks like all three rifts are labeled as tech level 3, which is early medieval. That means that unless we have a special gift that allows them to function, most tech will not work. High-tech materials should be fine, but in your case, your special drone control ability should allow you to have a single drone, but it needs to be armed and armored appropriately. Swords, knives, or clubs. Modern weapons just won’t work. We need to be prepared for melee fights or with bows and other ancient weaponry.”

James nodded, “Would riot gear work?”

Max nodded, “Yes, but if Tracy is going to be restricted to a single drone it needs to be a lot more of a threat than hard drives and a plastic casing.”

I shrugged, “If there were other resources available I could probably construct a heavy drone? They are very useful for heavy tasks. But I don’t understand why I wouldn’t be able to create a standard fleet.”

Max sighed, “Because of the tech-level rules. Earth’s tech level is considered very odd. In some areas, our tech is considered hugely advanced, As high as rank 9, but in other areas, we barely qualify as tech 3, especially magically and psionically. If we didn’t possess the abilities at all, it could be ignored by simply refusing to use those abilities in dungeons, and in lots of cases races that are nulls in those areas are also protected against those abilities, but the system tries very hard to ensure that a race is not presented with a challenge it is incapable of dealing with.”

He shrugged, “It wouldn’t send a caveman-level species dungeons full of laser-shooting drones. The thing is, the way humans research doesn’t match normal species' technological development. Most species develop a certain type of technology and then explore that technology to its very end before starting on a new technological paradigm. This could take them tens of thousands of years to develop, before moving on to the next. The last technology level the system assumes humans completely researched was low medieval, with somewhat backward sympathetic magic, very little psionic development, and the bare bones understanding of metallurgy and construction.”

Cody piped up, “That doesn’t make much sense, I mean, we shot forward and developed steam engines, lasers, and computers, and even landed a guy on the moon.”

Max nodded, “Yeah, but we just jumped from one part of each tech level to the next, and we even backslid in some areas. The next tech level after medieval should have advanced our understanding of clockwork technology, golemancy, internal sorcery, and biology. Technically, by the time we were halfway through the age of sail, we should have had personal clockwork servitors with basic machine intelligence, muscle-powered flight, basically a bunch of pre-steampunk stuff, but we didn’t… we skipped right to steam engines, dodged most of its advances and then went into internal combustion and right into electricity.”

Max grinned, “We are overachievers and underachievers at the same time. The pattern continued with us skipping huge sections of the tech trees, but it let us develop faster in a spare 7000 years than most species achieve in one hundred thousand or more, but that might be because our planet has such a brutal cycle of lunar activity, regular ice ages, and extinction events. We never had the time most other races have to slowly develop, so flexible minds helped us build as quickly as possible to dodge events before they set us back tens of thousands of years. There is something Tracy didn’t consider, though.”

I raised an eyebrow, “What would that be?”

“Well, while we are limited in the tech we bring into a dungeon by the tech level of the dungeon, that also means that anyone that tries to attack us will be limited by The Game of War and the technology they are allowed to use. Our weapons and movement technology are hugely advanced compared to a lot of the rest. If someone like the Sintar tries to attack us, we are going to have an incredible tech advantage in certain areas while they scramble to try and put together assaults that match our tech levels. No real magic, Earth-level orbital assaults using shuttles and chemical propellants, and they might not be able to use any technology that helps them deal with our atmosphere and gravity.” He said.

“Even dropping rocks on us might not work, because now that we know they can do it, we will start building our tech specifically to prevent that sort of low-tech orbital bombardment. Also, as long as we are not doing something that the system specifically is trying to prevent, stuff that will mess up the expansion of the universe, someone coming in and trying to extinguish us will force the system to create hundreds, possibly thousands of quests to prevent it.”

I nodded, that gave me a lot of hope. “So what does that mean about going into a warp?”

He smiled, “Your drone control skill is too advanced, technologically, to allow you to control a fleet of drones, especially high-tech drones like you are used to, but in tech level 3, it should scale down to traditional golemancy just fine. That means a big, tough machine that you give magical intelligence to instead of SI or AI. It shouldn’t even need much in the way of joints or anything, although decent mechanics using simple techniques would make it move better. Tech level doesn’t give a damn about machining accuracy, so if we can go make you a monster with good machining it should be far better than a simple clay or steel statue.”

He grinned, “That should also take care of our need to put a fragile human in front of our team to soak up damage. You don’t throw around fireballs, but in a very real way, you could fill the role of a tank with ease, as long as we give you the right tools. So how about you use one of the displays to bring up something called the Earth Leaderboard. That should let us know about our unknown player, and convince Jesse here that it’s not a joke.”

I nodded and modified several of the displays to produce a large, visible hologram. I had never heard of a leaderboard, but when Max mentioned it I realized it was a standard part of the game status screens, and could be displayed easily enough.

Jesse looked shocked and jumped a few steps back as I made the graphic appear over the table where people had been eating recently. It was not complex, just 2d projected into 3d and thus appeared as a flat, hovering sort of table in the air.

Earth Leaderboard

Name

Species

Rank

Class

Faction

(Concealed)

Human

2

(Concealed)

Earth Defenders

Tracy Nutock

Human

2

Magician

Earth Defenders

Maxwell Trinke

Human

2

System Developer

Earth Defenders

Cody Gonzalez

Human

1

Hospitalier

Earth Defenders

Selena Trinke

Human

1

Warden

Earth Defenders

“By the void.” I whispered, “That is not good.

Jessica had no problems joining the game after she saw my little display, and realized that it was truly real. She came out of her coma as some kind of uncommon farmer class called a cultivator and immediately began talking in low tones between Max and Jim about circulating dantians and meridians. I was not exactly sure what sort of agriculture they were talking about, but Jesse seemed to be very excited, and Max referred to her abilities as DPS. I think somehow she managed to unlock both psychic and sorcerous energies but had to exclusively apply those energies internally to make herself the best farmer she could be.

James was also a DPS, sort of. His class was a rare called a Marshall and gave him special inspection abilities. He assured us that if he could get close to whoever was a Sintar loyalist, he could figure out who he is. He gained special abilities in combat, but when investigating threats he would gain all sorts of facilities to break through concealment.

The moment Jessica awoke, I was wracked with delicious shivery sensations again. I managed to more or less control myself this time but received notifications from the game letting me know I had completed a quest.

Quest Complete!

You have completed the individual quest-Recruitment!

You have received a new rank, rank 3 Magician. You have also opened new potential prestige classes.

Novelty Dynamics Node 1 is in close proximity and is faction-controlled by Earth Defenders, would you like to bind to this node? Due to the lack of bio-regeneration facilities, respawning will have a minor biomaterial cost.

Novelty Dynamics Node 1 is in close proximity and your quest reward can be obtained there.

Quest alert!

You have been offered the individual quest-Reinforcement!

You have deduced that your new species, Humans, have several problems that are threatening their survival as a species. While their destruction is by no means assured, ecological, resource, biological, radiological, and stagnation threats present a very likely hazard for total species extinction.

You have already successfully recruited four individuals, now you need to expand this species' ability to deal with universal threats. You do not need to recruit them to join your faction, but you should induct at least 50 humans into The Game of War to help protect their world and the universe.

Warning: This world’s existence is now public domain knowledge in the Game of War. This world is considered a very high resource, both in biological, psychological and mineral resources. If the recruitment is delayed, hostile entities may choose to seize this world and species before it is prepared to defend itself.

Induct 50 individuals into The Game of War.

Rewards: An Idiot’s guide to tier 4 technology, Rank advancement.

You have advanced to Rank 3. The basic class Magician gives you 1 point of Charisma and 1 point of essence for leveling. The race of human gives you 1 point of durability and 1 point of health for leveling. You gain 1 free point to spend on any skill category or attribute. Your new Faction, Earth Defenders, does not have a mandatory leveling path for your class, so you may choose one of the following Sorcery advancements:

Soul Binding*

Core Binding

Point of Attraction

* Please note that this ability has been marked as Hostile to sapient life. You may still choose this ability, but in combination with soul merge, it can mark the human species as a universal threat.

It did not appear that querying the abilities would incur extra charges, so I quickly queried the three advancements while Max spoke. This time, no one noticed my new level.

Soul Binding- This ability is considered by many species to be a horrific crime. It allows you to bind a soul to a location, object, or person and to be called upon as a servant or information source rather than being permitted to regenerate. Necromancers and summoners often use this ability to force a living soul into a corpse or construct to create a permanent, sentient slave. While individuals may use this ability with their responsibility, species that use this ability en masse are often targets for extermination quests due to its destructive and corrosive effect on Universal life.

Core binding- Unlike soul binding, Core binding allows you to bind an unsouled core, from a monster, Sentient Intelligence, or spell effect, to an object, location, or person. This core can be used to for sentient servants, information, or as a sorcerous battery.

Point of attraction- This ability allows you to draw attention away from one place and towards another. You may choose whether this affects only adversaries or all witnesses. A momentary distraction is powerful, but longer-term distractions are often more useful, while less immediate. You can use this to attract attention to a target of your choice or to deflect or misdirect attention.

“The thing is,” Max explained, “Most people cannot just tell who a player is and what they can do if they are not part of their faction. Adventurers often authorize it, for bragging rights and rewards on things like the leaderboards, but by default, you cannot just investigate other players. The Game of War tends to be very literal in its naming conventions, and while it can be judgemental, it doesn’t assign moral value to stuff other than expanding the universe. If you got a class like a cat burglar or con artist, how long do you think you would last if anyone that looks at you or a leaderboard instantly sees it?”

Cody sighed, “If someone’s here specifically to mess with Tracy, we need to get her some levels. My suggestion? We take her to the salvage yard, let her build us a brick, and then get to the dungeon as fast as possible.”

“Build a brick?” I asked curiously, “I don’t understand.”

Max grinned, “Oh, believe me, you will. James, we are going to need some medieval-style gear. Riot armor should work well, and some old-school weapons. Cody, if you could grab some supplies and backpacks, put them on my card. We don’t know how long the dungeon will be, but I am guessing no more than an overnight, considering we are level One. Make sure you bring your trauma kit. Grab stuff for Ahmed also, because I am betting he shows up sometime tonight.”

“I was wondering if, perhaps, you might be able to offer some advice?” I asked curiously. Cody and James seemed to be distracted doing something with what looked like a pair of remote controls and the 3-dimensional hologram, it looked like they were enjoying a driving simulation while Jessica had her knees across his lap.

Without Drone control, my ability to run a remote was incredibly limited. It was sort of unfortunate, but true, that telepresence was able to create a sort of semi-autonomy, along with aural strengthening, but I had to use my sorcery to create a telepresence link and then pack it with aural strengthening just to create something that moved. The mass was pretty pathetic, about the equivalent of that terminator mannequin that had pride of place in Max’s living room, and he put his foot down when Cody suggested that we use that as our new brick.

“What sort of advice?” Max asked.

“I leveled when Jessica woke up. I have never been higher than rank 2, and the Faction I came from had progression plotted in advance. The Game of War is offering me several choices, and I am unfamiliar with making those choices.”

Max nodded, “If I can help, I will, but I am not that experienced, and I don’t know anything about sorcery or the Magician class.”

I nodded, “Well, one of my choices is… let’s just say it has to do with souls, and I am reluctant to gain everyone’s enmity. The other two, though, I don’t know which will be more important. I also have an attribute or skill point to spend and I have never had that option before.”

I used the share function to show Max my attribute sheet, which seemed to shock him for a moment. He grinned a little, “Sorry, I am still getting used to that, even though I have been using it myself.”

“On the attribute points, I would go for sorcery or technology, but… Your intelligence and Charisma are both very high. From what I understand, balancing your attributes is often important, since doubling a similar attribute can lead to weirdness. For instance, if you improve your strength too much without improving your durability, you could hurt yourself because you are too strong for your own body. In your case, I think you should improve your empathy so you better understand how your intelligence and Charisma can impact others.”

I nodded and noticed a bit of a sour look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

He chuckled a little, “It’s just me. I have always been kind of a nerd about my intelligence. I was sorta thinking of you as a little simple because of your ignorance, but you beat my intellect by two points.”

I shrugged, “I am ignorant. There are a million things about Earth I don’t know or understand, but intellect is not the same as intelligence. Mostly it determines how quickly your mind can react, not how smart you are or how good you are at using that intellect. Your ability to use your mind is not something that can be captured or improved by The Game. I might be slightly faster at reading or memorizing something, or calling up facts, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a million things you do all the time that I might never understand.”

I assigned my point to Empathy as he had suggested. It was very nice to feel like I wasn’t a psychopath anymore, although humans seemed to have a lot lower empathy on average, so I suppose I was above average. Empathy was one of those abilities that assisted sorcery, though, so it would be useful. I was considering improving my sorcery or tech, but the short-term effects would not be tremendously useful, since I didn’t have a source of new spells other than the ones the system was granting me, and improving my tech wouldn’t help in a Tech level 3 dungeon in the slightest.

He nodded, “What’s the other part?”

I explained point of attraction and core to him, and he looked very thoughtful.

“Core is obvious, except that we don’t have a core. I imagine that if you added a core to a golem you were animating, it would become more useful. The thing is, point of attraction could help keep the team alive, if you distract monsters from attacking you or a teammate, or can make sure that they focus on a golem or brick type, or even just distract them long enough for one of the others to get in a crippling hit.”

He called out, “Hey James. Quick question for you.”

James handed his controller to Jessica, and turned slightly, resting his hands on her knees while she took over the driving simulator, “What’s up?”

“As the guy that most often tanks, what would be more useful to an enchanter? A better pet, or aggro modification?”

Cody yelled, “Aggro!” and James nodded, “Yeah, Aggro. Aggro control is the next best thing to crowd control. I’d much rather have someone that can keep the attention of the bad guys from wandering to the squishies than a tougher pet any day, especially since, in general, pets aren’t particularly good at keeping aggro on their own.”

“Squishies?” I asked curiously.

James nodded, “Yes. In general, those of us that are stronger, tougher, and can wear heavier armor or dodge and block more effectively are referred to as tanks or heavies. In contrast, the folks who tend to use magic or focus on doing precision damage from range or concealment are usually referred to as squishies since they focus on delivering punishment or controlling the flow of battle rather than taking, dodging, or blocking damage.

I shook my head, “You were right, James.”

He looked up and grinned, and then poked Jessica, “Remember that phrase, sweety.” and he glanced at me as she drummed her legs against his thigh. “What was I right about?”

“Your group is truly prepared for the vagaries of The Game of War. You just mentioned vital strategies that I never would have considered, even if I were capable of thinking of the kind of violence that might be necessary to run through a lower technology warp.”

Cody Grinned, “Gamers rock baby. And once he picks up some armor and stuff for us tomorrow, you are going to get to find out just how much we rock. I am feeling better right this second than I have in years, stronger, and even my gaming is better. We are going to kick ass.”

It was almost eleven o’clock in the evening by that time, and Jim suggested that we spend the evening planning to head to some place referred to as a junkyard tomorrow, and then attempt the dungeon tomorrow afternoon. My concern about the concealed Sintar loyalist was very real, but I had to assume that my presence and identity were as unknown to whoever the human was as theirs was to me. Humans had an interesting time cycle, they broke their planetary revolutions into 24 hours and had both antemeridian and postmeridian 12-hour blocks, although James seemed to prefer simply referring to the hours after midnight by their direct numerical order.

I was shown by Selena an empty room where I could put my purchases and call my temporary dwelling. I was staggered by the spaciousness, and the sheer idea of having all of that room, fifteen feet by ten feet, all to myself was both gratifying and a bit terrifying. There was lots of space for neatly storing my purchases, especially after the drone delivered my laundered clothing, and I was preparing to make use of the attached sanitary facilities when I hit a very rough snag.

I had removed the majority of my clothing, but the top was arranged in a fashion I was finding difficult to navigate. I eventually just slid the whole thing over my head, and then unfastened the hooks, but due to the discomfort I was certain there had to be a more effective method of removal, and I almost despaired of the difficulty of reapplying a support garment when I awakened.

The bed was far more comfortable than the one I had lain in previously, and I delighted in the soft, cool bed coverings after I cleaned and dried my body. I inspected myself for damage and made use of several of the cleaning solutions, but I seemed to be in admirably effective shape. My hair, while apparently attractive to the opposite sex, was fairly inconvenient, and did not dry quickly, so I resolved to wash it again upon rising and ask Selena’s advice since she had similarly luxuriant hair.

It took some time to become comfortable. There were faint sounds of traffic through a closed window, but the lack of breathing, living creatures surrounding me was extraordinarily difficult to get used to. Even the shelter had surrounded me with living noises that were vaguely familiar, but here the only sounds besides faint traffic were murmured conversation in the next room, and despite my general fatigue I finally had to resort to soul exercises to allow my mind and body to relax enough for sleep.