James was still giving me a funny look.

“I don’t understand,” I said, wiggling a little so that Cody set me down.

Jessica was smiling, a weird sort of look to her eyebrows. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it probably meant something important. Was she angry? Then why was she smiling? My empathy was telling me that this was a normal expression and that taking pleasure in someone else’s humiliation was not always considered a social faux pas.

“Tracy, when men are compared to women, usually it’s considered insulting because it offends men’s sense of innate superiority. So when it happens inadvertently, it’s considered humorous. The reverse is often true as well, but not as often.” Cody rolled his eyes when Jessica mentioned male superiority, so I suppose he disagreed and was keeping his peace.

I nodded slowly, “So it would be like a F’lok’nyran female being told she was behaving like a male… except worse because both male and female humans are sentient, and behave in different, but similar ways?”

Jessica nodded, “Pretty much yes. Behaviors that are considered perfectly polite for females, when done by a male, are often not polite. In general, however, women that behave like men are only offensive to women, while men that behave like women are often offensive to members of both sexes. This is not a rule, though, but there’s a ton of traditions and customs and everything that gets all mixed up in it, and it’s really something you just have to learn as you go.”

I nodded, “Right. So I will try not to behave like a male. I apologize, your overbearing protectiveness and threats of violence to your friend were appropriately masculine.” I looked around. “Are we going to keep going? I am feeling much better now.”

And they started laughing again. Finally, I shook my head and looked at Cody, “Was that funny?”

Cody nodded, “Yeah, that was funny.”

James looked around. “This area was supposed to be a preparation area for a group of low-level characters like us. If we hadn’t been extraordinarily prepared, It would have slaughtered all of us, and for an area like this, we would most likely all be dead. Max?”

Max nodded, “I think… The problem is that the system is trying to use our fiction as a baseline. Apparently, undead members of most races don’t immediately spring into action with spears capable of tearing people apart. It was a miscalculation, and I am worried that the other incursions may also be a miscalculation. Did you know that Humans are like, way off the scale for dangerous interactions? Even our undead are vastly more deadly than just about anything else.”

Max sighed. “It looks like it’s trying out a balanced estimate. I don’t think we will be able to get our difficulty level changed. That might affect recruitment, we might have to target people that are already sort of ready and top of the line, or risk losing entire groups in seconds like we almost lost ourselves.”

I looked at Max curiously, “Would you start screening applicants? That’s what most races do.”

He thought about it. “Once we are done here, we should seriously consider that question. I just had a nightmare of some drug dealer down here going in, coming out at level 5, and being immune to bullets and shooting lasers out of his eyes at anyone stupid enough to try and raid his compound.”

I was shocked, “People would do that? Oh void, the soulless!”

Three people said “What?” at the same time.

“In every species, there are creatures born without souls. I don’t know how to explain it, but they lack all empathy, anything resembling compassion, and would freely commit any act that did not immediately threaten punishment. They are called soulless. Our species screens for it at birth and eliminates any so afflicted. They also mark those who are insane… like me, to join the game so that we cannot contaminate the soul, although we are not soulless.” I remarked.

Max nodded slowly, “Yeah, we get those here, and you can’t just figure them out and take them out. They usually have to do a lot of awful things, get caught, go through the basically incompetent legal system, and hopefully not find a loop…”

“Hey!” James interrupted. “We do our best. It’s not our fault that we are saddled…”

“Game rules!” both Selena and Cody said at the same time.

James sighed, but nodded, he looked like he didn’t want to give up the fight. “So where do we go next?”

I pointed out beyond the greenery veld. “In general, the path of most resistance is also that of the greatest reward. I don’t know why, but the Game seems to prefer to reward those who take the highest risks. But we all ranked up, so it should be marginally safer now.” I sighed. “But I have a problem.”

“You are still injured?” Cody asked.

I shook my head, “No, I have never been past level 2, and even if I had, my progression path would have already been locked. I am given...choices, and I don’t know what to do with them.”

Max scratched his head, “Well, the game flatly stated that there was no such thing as a bad build. Even the most combat-heavy characters, if they reached an impasse, would have noncombat methods of ranking up until they could make a better choice, or take a new class. What do you have available?”

I shrugged a little, wiggling my torso. The pain seemed to be mostly gone, but I did have a residual twinge. It was weird though, the way Cody watched me make sure my injuries were acceptably repaired, but I supposed that as a medical professional, he had a vested interest.

“I have something called shadow manipulation, which unlocks the path of illusion without requiring technical aid. If we have a lot of class 3 tech dungeons, it could be useful, and in the long run, light manipulation sounds like a powerful ability. I also have minor matter creation, which allows me to create or duplicate small amounts of simple matter. That unlocks a set of sorcery spells as well. Third up is propulsion, which unlocks true telekinesis as well as allowing me to immediately take advantage of my throwing proficiency, and lastly, there is focus, which helps me to continue using magic even when I am distracted or injured.”

“Each has their own bonuses, and I don’t know. I mean, I lost control of Terminator when I was injured, which could have been dangerous, and being able to accelerate thrown objects could be highly useful as well, but I already have kinetics, in the form of telepresence, and If I am not really injured for this dungeon, focus could be a less worthwhile choice than something immediately useful.” I sighed.

“Both shadow and matter have huge potential use, but for right now, they just help me hide more easily and distract enemies, or I suppose, I might be able to create a simple weapon or something. So do I go short term or long term?”

James chuckled, “Now that is a major nerd question. For right now, I’d go for the greatest short-term benefit, because we are very likely to level again soon.”

Selena nodded, “Yep. Magic Missile. You can worry about summoning food and drink later.”

I looked at Selena confused, and she clarified, “Once you have your short-term needs sorted, you can start worrying about the long-term. Utility is great, but if you are going to die in 5 minutes, they don’t help much.”

James grinned, “Are we in agreement then?”

Jessica nodded, “Yep. Shadow.”

“Shadow”

“Shadow”

“Propulsion.”

We all looked at Max. “What?” he said, “Adding more damage will help all of us a lot.”

James shook his head. “Her strength right now is Terminator. He’s our tank. If she can keep him going, we all do more damage. Shadow will help her stay hidden and distract the enemy if she gets noticed. If she didn’t have it, I’d say focus, but in the short term, keeping her out of the melee is our best bet. The extra damage she can add is less important than what Terminator can add.”

They had a very good point. I might not always be going into dungeons with these people, but the idea of being able to hide if necessary and distract people would really have helped before I went to the hospital, and might even help more now. “I think I agree.”

James nodded, “Your call. The idea of being able to summon up matter out of nothing is way cooler, but controllers are popular for a reason.”

I decided that my next choice, I would take their ideas, but I had to get used to making my own decisions. I chose shadow manipulation.

Shadow Manipulation: The first step in the path of illusion and light control. You may manipulate shadows to conceal yourself or distract an enemy. Size, movement, and control are determined by your sorcery affinity.

Your sorcery affinity has improved by 1 rank due to using it under stressful conditions and choosing a new sorcery ability.

6 sorcery? Oh, my goodness. That was very powerful, and it helped all my other abilities, including controlling Terminator, as well. To be honest, I wished I could leave right now, and add tech 4 capabilities to Terminator, but it looked like the rest of the group wanted to press on.

“If we pass a junkyard in here, is there a chance I could upgrade Terminator? My sorcery increased, which helps me control it, but with my ability merge I could make him up to tech 4 without him getting removed.” I asked.

Max grinned, “That’s a thing?”

I nodded, “Yes. It would not be efficient to completely cripple technology-based classes for their training, would it?”

Max grinned even wider, “Not at all. Still, I just got a nasty meta attack I am looking forward to using. Scramble messes with nerve impulses, and can even stop a heart or shut down a nervous system permanently if I focus it. I am looking forward to seeing how well it works on undead, but it says it messes with sorcery as well, so I bet it will work. My first combat ability!”

Jame shrugged, “I grabbed an ability called cover. It creates a transparent energy field in front of me. Seemed like the smart thing.”

Jessica smiled beatifically, “I got wire fighting. It lets me run up walls and balance on anything strong enough to support ten percent of my weight.” She glanced at Selena.

Selena shrugged, “My options were pretty limited. I will show you guys what I can do pretty soon, but it doesn’t last very long and burns a lot of energy.”

Cody chuckled, “Hey, I am a medico. I know how you are put together, and how to take you apart. I got find weakness and an ability that lets me highlight that for my team. You said short-term, so I figured it would help tell us whether we have to knock something apart, aim for the head, or stake it through the heart.”

James nodded, “Good call.”

They had Terminator stomp in front of us, and his weight was more than enough to shred the greenery fairly easily as we moved. Ahead of us, a green wall of vegetation loomed.

“Are we at the end already? I don’t see a boss.” Selena asked.

James shook his head. “Come on. This is like every adventure movie ever made. Haven’t you seen Tomb Raider or any of those eighties movies that tried to cash in on Indiana Jones?”

Jessica sighed and shook her head, and started pulling down vines ahead of Terminator. Pretty soon large stone blocks were exposed, and an opening, almost ten feet square, that looked suspiciously dark.

Max chuckled, “Okay, from this point on, we look for suspiciously huge rooms full of bugs or snakes, or inappropriately advanced traps.”

James sighed, “See, THIS is why we should have had Error along. I hate to do this, but we might have to use Terminator as a p...Ogre Land mine detector.”

“What’s an Ogre Land mine detector?” I asked.

Jame sighed, “We send him forward blindly and hope there are no pits.”

I nodded and sent Terminator stomping forward. After a few moments the sandy tunnel bottom changed into heavy slabs of triangular stone, and I jumped back in shock as terminator was suddenly hit by darts, coming out of the walls, which bounced off his steel frame.

“Which tiles was he stepping on?” Max asked.

James leaned forward a little, “It looks like there are yellow, orange, and brown. The darts shot out on the browns. Tracy, send him forward and stop him when more darts fire. Try to get him to step on the yellow or orange circles.”

I nodded, focusing on his footsteps. It was very difficult since he was poorly balanced, but with my new 6 sorcery, I mostly managed it. When he stepped on the scattered yellow or orange stones, nothing happened, but when my control slipped a bit and the back of his foot touched brown, more darts fire from all directions. When he got to the other side, back to the sandy floor, I stopped him.

“See what I meant?” Max said, “air-compression darts in a wall thousands of years old, powered by who-knows-what, self-resetting, triggered by advanced pressure plates.”

Jame nodded, “Yes, yes, you are very smart. Now shut up.” at Which Max grinned.

It was weird, James more or less was just completely rude to Max, and yet Max behaved like it was a joke.

Jessica noticed my confusion and said “Hey guys, every time you do a movie quote, you just confuse poor Tracy even more. I think we might have to play game rules on the quotes until she has a chance to actually see what we are talking about.”

Max shook his head. “We’ll just tell her we were quoting a movie. I can’t keep doing this if you shut down about half of what we say. Let’s just invoke a new game rule. If you quote, just say movie quote afterward if she looks confused.”

James nodded, “Seconded.” to which Cody raised his hand. “Thirded.”

Jessica looked at me, “Is that Okay?”

I nodded, “Yes. I will consider it stress talk. No social impact. Like if an emergency occurs and part of the nest discorporates in shock. It is not a problem with the breeding stock, it is the emergency.”

Jessica looked at me funny, and then said slowly… “Oookaaayy…”

Max looked at me, “Does that actually happen?”

I nodded, “Yes, of course. That is normal. That’s why the volunteers for the game of war are chosen from among the insane. Sane creatures, when subjected to emergency stresses, will generally choose to cease their existence, and those around them, when subjected to the stress of mass discorporation, will generally join them as well. The psychological stress of long-distance drone combat usually causes anyone with a well-developed conscience to self-terminate rather than deal with the violence.”

“Even Self-defense?” asked Selena.

I nodded, “Of course. If they had to defend themselves it would never get to the point where they would have to choose violence. Simply the knowledge that another sapient would willingly attempt to end your life is enough to cause most sane creatures to self-terminate. That is why the war with the Sintar was declared most secret… The knowledge that an entire alliance wanted us to die would have decimated my former species. The first known attack knocked out ten percent of our planetary population.”

I sighed. “I am surprised I didn’t discorporate when I was harmed by that spear. I must be crazier than I thought.”

James and Max looked at each other, and at the same time they both said, “Game rule.” To which Selena shook her head, “Great. Yet another conversation you guys are going to expect me to have with her.”

we managed to get past the room of darts without any of us getting struck, although Cody set one of them off, but leaned forward just in time for the dart to pass through where he was wobbling moments earlier. “Most likely,” Max stated, “Those darts are tipped with some kind of toxin that is still effective after all this time.”

James nodded to Max, “Yes, we get it. This is a movie, not reality. So just ditch the Genre blindness.”

Jessica tapped on James’ arm. “Sweety?” she asked.

James glanced back at her, “Yes dear?”

“I found the bugs…”

Ahead of her, down the tunnel, there was a layer of creatures that were surprisingly, almost comfortingly familiar. Large… arachnids? I supposed, dozens of them, were swaying lightly, turned towards us.

“Are they sapient?” I asked.

Max shook his head, “We are in a dungeon, what do you think?”

I sighed in disappointment. “I suppose that means they are aggressive. How disappointing.”

Jame shrugged, “They look like tarantulas.”

Max shook his head, “Nope, notice they only have six legs each? And those things on the front, They are built like venom injectors. I suspect that each of those little bastards packs enough punch to put down a horse.”

James nodded and sighed. “Selena?”

She smiled, “Not a chance. There’s no vegetation to work with in here. I probably don’t get animal stuff until later.”

Jame shook his head, “No, your backpack.”

She turned around and looked at him curiously while he unzipped her backpack and pulled out a large square metal container.

“No way, you had me carrying lighter fluid in my backpack? What if we had something fire-based to deal with?” Selena asked, looking at James angrily.

He shook his head, “We would have removed it. That’s why it was on top.”

“Max?” he asked. “Your neural disrupter thing… is it electric?”

Max shook his head, “No. I wish. It’s a system boost. More like mental.”

“Tracy?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied. I wondered what he wanted me to do.

“Can you have terminator walk into the room, and gently squeeze the can around him when the spiders attack?”

I nodded, “I should be able to do that. What is it?”

“It’s lighter fluid. Very flammable. Can Terminator survive getting burnt?”

I nodded, “Yes, but you are going to burn them? Alive?”

He nodded, “Yes. They are clearly very poisonous. They are most likely aggressive, and if we try to fight them in melee one of us is likely to get bitten and die.”

“But… burning them alive…”

Max sighed. “Tracy, Darling, those are creatures constructed by the dungeon out of Chaos. They are not Sapient and are likely not even animals. What they are is biological drones designed to kill us.”

I sighed. I had to get my head around it. He was probably right, they were no more sentient than the spider drone I had created back at the headquarters. After a few moments, I nodded, steeling myself to the necessity. I was sort of glad, now, that I was insane. If I were sane, even the idea of burning alive creatures that looked so much like my former species would have caused me to discorporate. With a thought I had Terminator hold out its hand.

James carefully flicked the lid and then placed it into Terminator’s hand.

“I guess the advantage of being so low-tech is that there is pretty much nothing on him that will burn. No circuits, electronics, or wires.”

I marched Terminator into the room, and he was immediately swarmed. The creatures tried to bite it, and even tried to climb up its steel limbs, but it was reasonably smooth, and I cast a point of attraction regretfully to make sure it had their complete attention while pouring lines of liquid all over them and its own legs.

The end was almost anticlimactic. James tugged out a piece of paper, used a lighter, which still worked, to light it on fire, and then a deafening whoosh covered the creatures with fire. They didn’t even scream or make noises other than pops when the fire ruptured them.

Once the fire died out, we moved into the room and Terminator started leading us to the next passageway. As we move forward, I heard Selena say “Lighter fluid? Seriously? What the hell were you thinking, Jim?”