The next morning, after enjoying getting myself clean again, I headed towards the main room. Bathing in heated water was a luxury I was beginning to really appreciate, despite the fact that it was a bit of a time-sink.

Breakfast was produced by Cody again, who appeared to be the unofficial cook. This time it was some kind of sweetened grain porridge, with small blue fruits that had a delicious tartness as well as being slightly sweeter than the grain mixture. The idea of having different foods and enjoying them differently was still novel, but as usual, I only ate until I was no longer hungry.

Cody grinned evilly as Max entered the room, “Hey, guess what?” he asked the groggy-looking programmer.

Max shrugged and flopped into a chair. “You are coming out of the closet?”

Cody shook his head, “No. The system improves physical and mental attributes through use and expansion. Your heart is fine. Today, You are going to find out what physical fitness is all about, especially if you plan on joining us in roaming a dungeon tonight.”

He groaned and held his head, and I was confused, “Improving your attributes is a negative?” I asked curiously. “I thought that would be a net positive. The more attributes you gain, the more powerful you are, the more alternative progression paths you develop, and the stronger your skills become.”

Cody nodded, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.” He said although I suspected that that hadn’t been on his mind as such. “Improving your attributes also makes you look and feel better. Max here has taken it easy for a long time, barely participating in the minimum physical therapy needed to keep his heart going. But now that we can get some real exercise in, although it requires a lot of effort, and no pain, no gain. My job, what Max pays me for, is to try and keep him healthy, and now that that bar has gone up a bit it’s time to get to work.”

I nodded, “I don’t really understand human systems that well, but you tend to have a minor regenerative ability. Is this related?”

Cody nodded, “Yes, humans respond to overuse by growing stronger, in general, as long as the overuse isn’t severe enough to cause real damage. For instance, if he places a bit of stress of his heart, it’ll respond by growing more capable.”

I sighed, “That is very different. My prior species was sort of set. We were exoskeletal and tended to do activity right up until our maximum. That must be why the system has your attributes set so high, although some of it, I think, has to do with your innate psychic and sorcery capability.”

Cody raised an eyebrow, “How do you figure?”

I smiled a little, “If you can build your strength past your physical maximums for your species, you can perform great feats of strength that should be impossible for simply your muscles to do. With psychic or sorcerous ability, you can pass energy to those attributes effectively, you could at 30 strength, say, throw a car as if it were a brick even if that is well outside the capabilities of your body.”

Selena wandered in on the conversation at that point and flopped into a chair. “That makes sense. Part of Jessica’s class involves a lot of passing energy around. She even got a quest for the dungeon that has a weird reward called a cultivation manual. Last night I looked it up, and apparently, it’s a guide that helps her learn how to pass around her energy more effectively and draw it from the environment. Depending on how warden works out, that might be an effective secondary class for me too.”

I smiled, “Well, if you know how to build attributes, and we have time before this junkyard place we are going to, I would be more than happy to try and take advantage of your knowledge of human methodology. First, though, I want to pick up my quest reward?”

Max grinned, “me too. I don’t know how it works, exactly, not my specialty. Hell, I don’t even really know how the system itself works, just the questing stuff. I guess being a developer has some pretty strict limits on what knowledge I can get access to, but I have high hopes.”

All of us headed towards the storage room where Max had set up the node. The Node was a very interesting construction, consisting of a small hovering globe over a white pedestal that looked like stone. Nodes could be upgraded in size and power, but researching them had proven, at least for my species, to be fruitless. They seemed to contain sorcery, psychic energy, and some sort of technology that resisted research and disassembly.

The Orb that hovered over the pedestal was utterly black except for what looked like occasional white speckles of light inside, and a large book slowly faded into existence on the pedestal as I approached.

It was bright yellow, with an oddly-stylized human on the cover, that said, in the local language, “Dimensional Mathematics for Dummies” on it. I took the document, opened it, and was completely lost.

“I don’t think this is for me,” I said simply, offering it to Max. He opened it and looked like he started to read and then was near as lost as me. “I thought this was your reward?” he asked.

I nodded, “Yes, but sometimes quest rewards aren’t exactly for the person that completed the quest. Sometimes they are a reward for the species, or for a group or Faction. I mean, if I were a warrior, I wouldn’t get much use out of some of the instant buildings that are sometimes rewarded. This looks like it’s meant for a scientist with at least a basic understanding of the science involved. I hate to think I am dumber than a dummy, but it looks like it requires a grounding in mathematics and theory that totally loses me.”

Max nodded. “So we need to recruit a theoretical physicist? Not a problem.”

I looked at him curiously and he grinned, “I do a lot of work for science sites and schools. Not to mention, Nerdnet is a powerful ally. I could probably just drop a few hints to this book and we’d have a line at the door in minutes.”

Cody nodded, “I think it’s more important that we work out while we can, and get our first dungeon run in. No offense, Tracy, but I think your experiences of advancement might not match up to human experiences very well. Before we drag a bunch more people in, I think we should figure out how everything works, and then figure out how we are going to do it.”

Max nodded, “We need a beta test. Do we want a control? I could stay out during the first run.”

Cody grinned at Max, “Not a chance. You are not getting out of a workout that easily. We might do two different groups, though. Let one group do a run while the second group stays out, and then switch up once we know what to expect. Do the dungeons change based on who enters them?”

I shrugged. “I wish I knew. I think maybe yes and no? Some do, and some do not. I know that a very long time ago, a level 3 dungeon spawned in our system, and we had to hire adventurer mercenaries to clear it, but in general, on the rare occasions something came into the system, it seemed to be appropriate for those who had the courage and power to face them.”

I sighed and shook my head, “We never had a hulk or anything, though.”

Cody looked at me curiously, “What’s a Hulk?”

I sighed, “Some of the systems that leaned heavily towards adventurers, although none in our cabal, attracted a hulk. It is sort of like a dungeon or warp, but it is physical, in the real world. They are generally made up of various sorts of space debris, although sometimes they spawn after a very destructive battle. It’s possible a hulk may have formed after my planet’s destruction since that sort of psychic shock causes them.”

Cody nodded, “Right, so what is it exactly?”

I shrugged, “It’s sort of like a dungeon, but it’s in the real world? It is set, and they become more powerful over time, as they collect mass or adventurers explore them. Basically, from what I understand, they are like recyclers. They collect old unclaimed or natural chaos portals, and old depleted systems, and if they are strong enough, they spawn new matter and new systems behind them. Random chaos creatures are attracted to them, as well, and while they are powerful places for adventurers to explore, they are dangerous and can be any level.”

I was at the limit of my knowledge for this, “They are sort of a good thing, I guess, if they are strong enough, and are regularly explored.”

“What if they are not strong enough?” asked Selena curiously.

“The creatures they attract are never cleared, or are too powerful, and they...break, creating system-wide portals that spawn out chaos instead of new matter. They are also bad for inhabited systems without adventurers because the creatures they attract if they are not strong enough to break the Hulk but strong enough to resist the call might attack civilized worlds.”

I shook my head, “Near the core, there are almost no Hulks. But out on the rim of the Galaxy, it’s possible a planet like this one might attract a Hulk. Then again, as the planet becomes stronger and more organized, it might attract a chaos monster too. A hulk is better than a monster, but either one would require powerful defenses to deal with them.”

Max nodded, “Okay, new important points. Look out for big bads. Check our ability to do a dungeon. Watch out for invading aliens that want to destroy or enslave our world. Are there any other gigantic threats we need to keep our eyes open for?”

Cody nodded, “Yes, me. Get your ass on the treadmill. Twenty-six minutes. Anyone else in?”

I nodded, “I would like to try training my physical attributes. I have never done it before.”

Physical training was...unusual. It was somewhat painful, honestly, especially the flexibility training, despite my human body having vastly more flexibility than any creature I’d ever encountered.

Cody tutted over my flexibility and informed me that at my age I should be easily capable of feats that took a bit of training to master, such as lifting one leg straight up into the air and holding it with my arms, and doing splits. I got the feeling, however, that he was not really as critical as he sounded, since, while dealing with Max, he seemed to be incredibly verbally harsh.

While they were both on treadmills, I leaned over and whispered to Max, “Is he normally that insulting and aggressive?”

Max grinned, “Yep, that’s why I like having him in charge of it. It’s easier for me to work out when someone is acting like a drill sergeant than when someone is being quietly encouraging.”

He chuckled, “You can do it! Just makes me whine and try to quit. Get up off your ass you lazy shitstain! Actually tends to get me going. I am the same way when I am working, sometimes I just need to abuse myself in my head to actually get going.”

He was breathing easily as he ran, and the fact seemed to surprise him a little since he was going at a decent speed at about a 5% incline. “He was super taking it easy on you, though. You seemed to try to do your best at whatever he told you. Total opposite of me. He might get a little rough, but I could tell he was impressed, I mean, sure, you are a teenager, but some of that stuff he had you doing once he figured out what you were capable of would have left a girl training to be a Ballerina since she was 6 sweating.”

I shrugged a little, “Oh, I thought he was disappointed. I think my grace ability helps a bit with that sort of thing since it seems to help keep me from losing my balance.”

He chuckled and actually increased the speed on his treadmill a little. “I can see where the term comes from. Cody was sort of joking about trying to get into your pants, but you should take him seriously. Hell, if You weren’t way out of my league I’d probably be trying too, although I think he’s a little weirded out by the fact that you are really over a decade older than him.”

“Oh, the system is like that. When you respawn, it tries to return you to your ideal state, although in my case I think it reduced it by a year or two for potential social reasons. For human females, it appears to be around 19 years of age, but I am not sure what that will be for males. Based on Jim’s conversation I suspect a bit older, due to brain chemical balance. I am no biologist, though.”

I tilted my head as I looked at him, “I don’t understand out of your league though. I thought we were both parts of the same faction. There are several different potential social grouping constructs available, from guilds to clans, families, leagues, nations, and many more. We are both citizens of this national group currently, why wouldn’t we be in the same league?”

I held my hand out towards his as I noticed he was starting to look like he was really struggling, and I was fatigued and in some pain as well. “May I?”

He chuckled, “May you what? And That’s an expression I am definitely going to have to figure out a good explanation for.”

I leaned over and pressed his hand, activating rapid regeneration. Fortunately, I had enough energy to use it on both of us, but he grinned as he suddenly started running even faster. “Holy crap. I just gained a point in both durability and endurance! How’d that work?”

I smiled and noticed that I had gained a point in endurance and balance as well, although not in durability yet. “Early point gains are rather easy if your species is capable. Cody said that improved endurance, durability, and strength were a factor of your healing, and it is likely that healing it cemented those gains immediately. I gained a point of endurance and balance as well.”

I smiled brightly at him and he almost seemed to miss a step. I would have to be careful about using that social skill, and to be fair, based on the aches that were easing, I was growing very grateful for the support garments I was wearing. “Every being has a set of racial maximums for their attributes, as well as for themselves based on their frame, size, and in human’s case, sex. Getting to that maximum tends to be fairly easy as long as you can work at it regularly, although getting past that maximum requires either physical structural changes or infusing your body with energy in some way.”

He nodded, “So basically, once they are part of the game, it’s possible for every human to be as physically fit as it is possible to be without constantly killing yourself? Obesity and such?”

I nodded, “Yes, the game is designed to encourage adventurers. Being physically or chemically unfit discourages that. Respawning will return you to your physical ideal, as well, including any work you have done to improve that ideal. It is not perfect, though. Genetic damage or reinforced negative recessives, chemical imbalances, curses, and chaos damage can persist after respawn, although sorcerous healers, geneticists, and mind healers can help you in repair those and you should respawn with the repairs.”

I was tired again, but feeling good at the way that rapid regeneration was helping me recover, so I hopped off the treadmill and turned it off. I enjoyed the feeling of improved physical fitness and was sad that my original species was unable to make such gains due to its structure. Exoskeletal creatures could not build muscle mass, and our species' eugenics had eliminated many negative reinforced recessive traits and a tendency towards muscular atrophy long ago.

Cody was actually surprised that we had lasted on the treadmills so long, and Max grinned and put his finger over his lips, apparently wanting to keep the method secret. I did, however, wind up healing both Cody and Selena, and I suspect that the sudden easing of tension and fatigue, as well as possible attribute gains, clued him in a little.

The Junkyard was surprising, to say the least. There were literally tons of metallic, hydrocarbon, and other resources simply sitting out exposed to decay. The waste was utterly shocking, literally thousands of tons of useful salvage just… sitting there.

Max had insisted that he accompany me alone so that we could talk more about the system, and Cody gave him a look I didn’t even remotely understand. Max, however, armed himself with what looked like some sort of firearm, albeit incredibly small, similar to the ones my predecessor had run afoul of.

“So explain to me what’s going on with the tech levels, and why you cannot run a fleet of golems?” he asked.

I was poking around, finding some of the more durable materials. “With tech level 3, pretty much nothing that provides artificial motive energy will work. That means that whatever I make uses my sorcery alone to move and react. Usually, with drones, telepresence requires simply the most minor adjustments, while the drones themselves have the strength, movement, and weaponry.”

I sighed, “Technopathy still sort of works, but a Golem, that is, a creature that moves entirely by sorcery, drains my magic constantly. More than one will shut me down, and it cannot even be very big. The more activity it does, the faster my essence runs dry. Also, my Drone control skill will not work because there are no instruction sets to activate. If I am not running it, it simply doesn’t move, unless I implant sorcerous instruction sets.”

I shook my head and started fetching large pieces of metal and what looked like small wheels and pullies. Golems were often made of more flexible materials like plant matter or mud, but they wanted something durable, which meant that the joints would have to have some kind of articulation or even the mere act of bending the metal to walk or fight would drain me in no time.

“Can you do that? Implant programs in a sorcery drone?” Max asked, noticing what I was looking for. He had a sort of cart, low to the ground with a handle, with large wheels on it that we were stacking pieces on.

I nodded, and then smiled a little, “If I had a whole bunch of the right materials, most of which I have no idea where to get on this world, I could inscribe runes, but I am not an inscriber and the few I know I just use to create links and stuff. If we had a core, I could instill instructions without needing runes for control, if I had the core skill, but you guys said that aggro was more important.”

Max chuckled, “Hoisted on my own petard, eh? I still agree, but hopefully, there’s enough stuff here to make something nice and durable for you to run.”

I included some large aluminum sections from vehicles, detaching them with ease and levitating them to a second cart after we had gotten as much steel and alloys as I thought I could handle. Aluminum and plastic were not as durable as steel and iron, but they should add bulk and less mass, which meant slightly larger without being too difficult to control. While some of the junk was obviously of much higher manufacturing standards than possible under tier 3, I doubted it would matter much, since precision machining only really started becoming important at tier 4.

“So how do skills work, exactly? I mean, my sheet doesn’t have a ton of skills that I know I own, like website design and artistic stuff.” Max asked as we worked on a third cart. He was making sure that there was no one around to watch as I boosted parts, using the tools he gave me to disconnect many of them quickly.

I shook my head, “Skills in the game are not the same as real-life skills. They are things you possess the potential for, and they can have your gifts or the game’s energy added to improve. Take Throwing, for example. I have never heard of a species with the same sort of innate grasp of ballistics as humans. Throwing, therefore, is something that the system can help you grasp even more effectively, and can add power to. For instance, it can help your reflexes curve your arm in combination with your innate ballistic sense to add force and accuracy to a throw, even if you haven’t practiced it much, or can add sorcerous power or telekinesis to improve the damage, weight, or accuracy.”

I was not sure what the huge pipe I had found was for, but I found trace amounts of platinum I could use as a potential material for runes. I was not good at runes, but having a few set up should reduce both the concentration I needed and the sorcerous cost for maintenance.

“So basically it sort of adds extra sorcery and optimizes the stuff you can already do. In fact, if the system stopped existing, given time and training and a decent energy source you could eventually learn to do those things without its help. It can obviously make physical and biological changes, but nothing it can do is beyond your species' potential technology. Did you notice that there are really only four skills, and that maneuvers are tied to those skills?”

Max nodded and started grunting to lift a pig piece of metal onto the cart as a human male with some sort of canine on a leash moved into visibility.

“Those four skills are mostly just an acknowledgment of your understanding. The things underneath them are special combinations of power and ability assembled from your own abilities into easy-to-use shortcuts. The techniques beneath them are not affected by ranks, but by the attributes and skill bases that they are tied to, and not always even those. It’s very complicated, but if you used telekinesis to hurl a rock instead of your arm, it might count as sorcery instead of physical for how hard and accurately you launch it.”

Max smiled a little as the walker disappeared. “I don’t have sorcery. I seem to have psychic instead. I was talking to Jessica, and she has chi, while Cody has both Sorcery and psychic but doesn’t have technology.”

I was so shocked that I let a piece of the engine I was trying to lift with technopathy drop onto the rusted hood of some kind of derelict vehicle. “What?”

He smiled a little, “You mentioned four skills, and Implied they were physical, ranged, technology, and sorcery. We were talking after you went to bed, and mine are physical, ranged, technology, and psychic, Jessica’s were physical, psychic, technology, and Chi, and Jim’s skills were tech, ranged, physical, and will. Selena’s are Tech, physical, sorcery, and channeling.”

I didn’t know what to say, I was gobsmacked. Every being started at level 1 with 4 skills, but some race’s genetic potential supposedly allowed them to get 5. If what Max was saying was true, humans had the genetic potential to gain lots more skill groups. There would be no way of even finding out what they were until people had chosen classes that utilized them to start or someone of high enough level unlocked as many as possible.

“I don’t know. I mean. I am just going to start saying humans and rolling my eyes or something.” I said, “I have never heard of any race allowing multiple non-physical skill groups like that. It almost makes you wonder if physical, technology, and ranged are just as magical as sorcery. You are the new system administrator, is there anything you can figure out?”

He shook his head, “Not until I have a better idea of possible skill groupings to help with the quests. It’s cool that it keeps offering me quests to help fix the wording of quests, and I even have a weird one that is asking me to input stories that have been updated to the modern day. I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that the dungeons are going to have ancient tales attached to them as quests, like rescuing maidens or wars.”

I nodded, “You keep stumbling on areas that I have no ideas about. I mean, I have never heard of the system itself giving someone a class specifically to assist the system, rather than one designed for combat or support. There are supposed to be lots of civilian classes as well, but most civilizations simply do not allow their civilians to join the Game of War, rather than offering classes. Considering that the game improves what you are already capable of, perhaps they have the right idea, especially if, culturally, they have a long-standing tradition of certain employments that classes would disrupt.”

Max nodded, and we started dragging the carts to the front office. “My biggest concern is what’s going to happen to Earth, culturally. I mean, the moment your world was destroyed, and your research data released, Earth was on a collision course with the Game of War. No matter what you did, or what others did, the information was out there. Sooner or later, Earth was going to discover the game, mostly you have given us time.”

I sighed and nodded, “I sort of feel guilty for coming here early, but the moment a life-bearing system joined the game’s databanks, the moment F’lok’nyran drone explorers detected a yellow sun with a potential life-bearing world barely inside the sun’s habitability ring protected by a gas giant, it was only a matter of time before something happened.”

“With your scientific development and aggression, it might have even happened faster. A hulk might have approached, or a chaos beast became attracted by the life. I think it was only the fact that you got knocked back in development every seven thousand years that kept your planet from developing gifts that would have called a chaos beast like helpless prey calls one of your predators.” I added.

He nodded, “Yeah, but what if everyone joins the game? I mean, what if some of our more unbalanced elements decide to take a class that gives them godlike power without anything resembling a conscience?”

I smiled a little, “That’s where you come in!”

he looked at me in confusion, “How do you figure?”

“You create quests, right? When an individual, or a beast, becomes an incredibly harmful threat, the game tends to create quests to defeat or destroy them. Those giant quests to restore the balance are referred to as plots, but they tend to be very simple, and are offered to everyone in a position to possibly deal with it.”

I smiled, “But if it’s a serious threat, lots of adventurers die, and there is little guidance. You said you are going to help develop quests. So what you do is, help build new plots to take out the real monsters, the ones that harm thousands or millions of people. You set up the lead-ins, to make sure that only the right sort of adventurer starts the plot. You set up rewards so that the heroes of the plot will have the tools to succeed in destroying the monsters. You could even set up little quests that help take out the little evils too. The system will use them if they are appropriate.”

I chuckled, “When people know they can be punished by the system for the evils they do, and when violence can be directed towards outside forces that really deserve it, what will happen when rebels have new horizons to expand into? I am not a mind healer, but I think that this will do good things for your… for our species.”

He nodded, “You mentioned that. Seriously, you are thinking there are new worlds to find?”

I nodded, “That’s why I got my quest reward, I think. The Game of War doesn’t just hand out technology, but it does give you the tools you need to find that technology yourself. That’s why some races find new uses for old technology that no one has seen before. That book contains the basics for allowing your species to expand into the multiverse. The universe is not just one place, or one dimension, it is many, it has to be to fight off the Chaos that is everything and everywhere else, and earth needs to figure out at LEAST tech level 3 methods, such as sorcery, to open gates to other Earths.”

He grinned and we moved into the office to pay for the scrap we had collected, and see if he had some way less obvious than my technomancy to move the junk from the carts to Cody’s van.