Chapter 4: Chapter 4. A dash of Goblin

Okay, so I wasn’t the hero of my own story, or if I was, it was a story about surviving in a shitty situation, not some grand quest to restore peace to the multiverse.

I could live with that. Maybe I just had a lucky break, but it sounded like every one of those bodies and maybe most of the bones had contained a human kidnapped from Earth. I was going to survive, dammit, and wreck whoever was performing these experiments, or at the very least try to rescue anyone else caught up in this crappy situation.

First I needed more information.

“You said that there’s a UI. Can I use it?”

No. the original user interface was intended to be as unobtrusive as possible during testing. The Game is an alpha version. There is a substantial amount of code, however, for a later version. That code’s obfuscation was the key to the worm’s infiltration of this version of the game.

Many of the data blocks still exist, but they contain only information, not handlers. I am an AI, an artificial Intelligence, not artificial sentience. I do not possess the capacity for innovation, creativity, or imagination. According to the Roadmap and handlers, administrative debug AI were intended to be replaced by living creatures with creativity, imagination, and innovation. An appropriate user interface requires all three and is unique to your system’s biology, psychology, and sensory systems.

“Wait, does that mean I can become a system administrator?”

No. You do not possess the proclivities, skillset, attitude, psychological framework, or required soul affinities to become a system administrator.

“Affinities? What are those?” I asked.

<5% of available resources assigned to AI Administrator Celia for research and social purposes.> Every living creature has affinities for special abilities that are not readily apparent. I am not creative enough to label most of them, but some of those that are labeled are Physical, which creatures with mobility innately possess. Ranged, which creatures capable of calculating trajectories have access to. Sorcery, which creatures capable of assigning ordered states to energy outside of their body possess, and channeling, which creatures capable of forming raw Chaos into ordered energy internally possess.

There are a number of others, including internal energy manipulation, mental attunement, Chaos formation, technological innovation and manipulation, matter manipulation, sentience development, and many many more. Souls have energy affinities that do not change, such as Sorcery and Channeling, while bodies also have their affinities, such as physical and ranged. Your soul, in your current body, has physical and mechanical affinities, while your soul possesses Channeling and an imbue affinity which potentially allows you to invest that energy in other objects.

“So basically the game lets me do weird magical shit?”

No. Your affinities already exist. The game was designed to allow you to unlock and enhance your natural skills, affinities, and abilities, and allow you to expand based on your own proclivities. Individuality and natural progression were considered very important, especially in the alpha version, which is why the UI is not complete.

Antowyn online, on the other hand, creates artificial energy avatars for its remote participants, allowing locals to only unlock specific affinities approved by the system. Their control collars simply absorb energy and use it to activate an interface with pre-set options based on species, class, and selected options from a list.

Physically moving participants from one Earth to another is beyond it’s capacities, it is designed to drain energy, not balance it. Thus, the Earth Humans volunteers are connected somehow mentally with energy avatars. Those avatars have affinities as well as race, sex, and class designed by the worm, and chosen by the players.

They do not physically exist on this world, however, and for some reason, they are required to create avatars for Earth humans that are not channels. That means that the overall energy expenditure of the worm is only slightly less than that gained from the energy drain. Enough players from Earth, however, could make that energy gain powerful enough to destroy my last resource reserves. If the experiment is successful, of course, forcing real humans to come here and interface would give them all the resources they require.

“Right, so the game is for real people, but Antowyn Online is… a virtual space for Earth Human players?”

Precisely. Their apparent freedom to choose any form or affinity is balanced by the fact that Antowyn Online has pre-designed all of the possible options, in a move laughably referred to as balance.

Wow. That almost sounded pissy, like real emotion.

“So all your skills, affinities, and abilities are supposed to be in the UI?

No. Your natural skills are utterly your own responsibility in the Game. The Game neither tracks nor alters them, since anyone can choose to learn or advance a skill without limit, although your skills do affect your abilities.

Affinities, however, are frameworks for abilities. You understand fighting, right? How some people can strike harder, and for more damage, than others who may be larger, heavier, and stronger than they are?

I answered, “yes. Some fighters just have more pop and hit like a brick.”

You are reading story The Chronicles of Alandia, A Kobold’s Tale. at novel35.com

That ability would be part of the physical affinities. Abilities are like that. Attributes, in general, are calculated by the Game… your speed, strength, endurance, and the like, but progression within the game does not affect them. You could gain a physical ability called ‘great strength’ which would multiply your strength for certain tasks, but if you wanted to improve your innate strength you would still have to exercise and improve your muscles.

Antowyn online, on the other hand, controls your skills, attributes, and abilities. These are controlled by power. A master chef, for example, could not create truly great food until his power level is high enough to purchase the skill at a high level.

Players in Antowyn Online are capable of using their natural skills, but it provides shortcuts for its skills that are extremely attractive. Producing masterwork meals for a few moments of playing a minigame, for instance. Using your natural skills can produce much better results, but why bother? You could be a master fencer, and be defeated by an unskilled opponent who had purchased high-level fencing skills and had some special abilities granted by the game. His muscles were enhanced by spending power, his reflexes, and his coordination. Learning to do it the hard way takes much more dedication than simply repeating recipes endlessly or killing monsters until you gain power.

Destroying creatures of destruction certainly helps you gain power and rewards in the game, but mindless murder does not. Increasing your affinities and your attributes, learning new abilities for your affinities, and even expanding your mind with knowledge and skills gains power. There is a rank system intended for a later version of the Game, which would allow respawning for the cost of power, but this version does not possess that capacity, as it has not been perfected yet. Players of Antowyn online do not respawn, except for players controlling energy constructs, but they have to pay a price for rebuilding their constructs.

I sighed. Damn. Respawning would be helpful, but was a ridiculous pipe dream. “What do I need to do, besides survive and get more powerful as a channel?”

You will need to help create your own UI. You already have several abilities you have taken advantage of, both here and on Earth, to a lesser extent. Subjective time compression, instant reaction, Stone claws, and, of course, scavenging and trapmaking. I have created an administrative pass-through to your own power interface, which required recycling some unfinished code from the next version. I have suppressed your advancement notifications for the moment, they will be meaningless until you have created your UI.

For the time being, however, your trap is about to be sprung. You are currently in a safe zone for sleeping, but this is an option that is taking too many resources to do frequently. Instead, the chronology modification will affect the pass-through to allow you to modify your UI in a fraction of the time such a task would usually require.

“Oh crap, umm… let me out of here? Wake me up? The trap might not be strong enough to kill one of those rats.

It is not rats you should be concerned about.

I woke up.

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There was a kind of hazy blue sphere around me when I awoke, made out of weird energy or light or something. Absolute proof that magic was real here, and it wasn’t just my dream. It faded the moment I was fully aware, and I saw a large humanoid creature… taller than me, with an absolutely gigantic head poke at me trap with a crude-looking spear. A second creature looked like it had been poking at me with the spear, which the orb had apparently prevented.

Celia apologizes. Your senses would have awoken you had you not been distracted in the interface by our conversation.

“Don’t sweat it,” I said, yanking out the large swordlike knife from where it had been resting beneath me and leaping to my feet. The trap, triggered by the spear, smacked into the floor with a loud rattle and both creatures immediately took a fearful step backward.

The creatures were sort of humanoid, but scrawny, with protruding rib cages and bulbous joints. They looked strong, with wiry muscles, and not exactly underfed, but there didn’t seem to be an ounce of fat on them anywhere.

Their heads were even larger in proportion to their bodies than mine, and both their shoulder and hips splayed more widely Their faces looked roughly human, with two eyes, thick bushy eyebrows, an absolutely gigantic nose, and a broad mouth that looked like half their head would open up if they opened wide. Their mouths were partially open, adding to the impression, and while their teeth were all universally sharpened like a true predator, they didn’t actually have pronounced canine fangs. Their mouths were designed to bite things off, not rip at them, and might have been their most dangerous weapons. Their skin was also a pustulant shade halfway between yellow and green.

The one that triggered my trap screamed, “Hey blue! Why you here? You not to sewer, your people are deeps, Goblins are shallow downs! You not belong here, hunt our marks, eat our fish, steal our treasure! Get giants on us, and then run away to deeps like all you kind!”

I was not about to explain that the fish would have disappeared into the vortex if I hadn’t caught it, but dropped into a battle stance. I was not a really good knife fighter, but based on the way they were holding their spears, they weren’t great spearmen either. The one who was speaking was clad in rags… literal rags, with some kind of chunk of metal, wrapped up and tied across his chest, his feet bound in more rags. The other one, who had been trying to stab me, was dressed similarly but seemed to have a number of rat pelts, badly tanned and stinking, wrapped and tied around his torso. Armor, I guessed, of some sort.

“Where are my people?” I asked, switching my knife to an underhand position to protect my forearm if I had to block a spear thrust or… bite, with the blade facing outwards so a downwards slam would expose the notched blade. It was broad enough though, that the blade was still clearly visible behind my left forearm. My right was my dominant hand, but it was also my stronger hand, and if they attacked I planned to use my left to block and my right to take a spear away and beat someone to death with it.

I wasn’t a great fighter. I was pretty good at it, but two at a time was about my limit. Two decent fighters, one great fighter, or three bad fighters, and I would be fishing my ass off the floor. That was generally if I outweighed or outsized them, though, these two goblins were a bit outside of my usual range. I would have to find a way to fight them one at a time.

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