“I can do that?” she said, probably more loudly than she’d intended because she immediately snapped her mouth shut with a clack of her teeth and shrank back, her eyes darting around to see if she’d attracted any attention. The restaurant was mostly deserted, fortunately. “I thought I’d never be able to participate in the game at all because I didn’t have any fighting abilities,” she added more quietly.
“Of course you can,” I said.
“I don’t have powers to use in a fight, though,” she said. “Could I still be effective?”
“Plenty. Fighting skills are the core of combat and you don’t technically need anything more. Sure, there are some powers that are purely attack or defense based, but most people fight with skills that are sometimes augmented by other abilities like gifts, powers, and hidden stats, as well as items. Your ability to cause fear in other people definitely counts as a power that could augment your combat efficacy.”
“How long does it take to learn a martial art skill?”
“That depends. You can learn any skill you want if you work at it, and with your fast learner gift I suspect it won’t take too long to become good enough to hold your own in a tussle.”
“Is it possible to get new powers?”
“Yes, but it’s not that common and you can’t learn them the same way as skills. New powers will usually be as a reward for finishing a quest, but I’ve also seen drop items like scrolls that bestow a power.”
I could see the gears working again. “Do you have many skills?”
“Most people would say I have more than the average number.”
“Could you teach me some?”
“I actually have the Teacher skill, so I’m the best person to learn from.”
“What sorts of things could you teach me?”
How should I answer that?
“I promise that as long as it’s a skill on this planet, I can find a way to teach you anything you want to learn, from combat to cooking.”
“A strange boast but somehow I believe you meant it. What about powers? Have you learned many of those?”
“A few,” I said, my eyes looking away. I’d come there thinking I’d be completely transparent with her, but I decided at the last minute to hold some things back, at least until she’d agreed to join the team.
“And gifts?”
“Same as powers, only they’re even more rare.”
“Hmmm. You also mentioned hidden stats before, what are those?”
“There are game mechanics at work beyond what you can see in your Status. Just about every role playing game in existence has some kind of way to measure things like strength, speed, toughness—”
“Agility, and so on,” Lianna said, balling her hand into a fist and shaking it back and forth. “Yeah, of course. How else will you know what die roll you need?” Her hand opened, miming throwing dice onto the counter between us.
I have this terrible habit of trying to finish people’s sentences for them by guessing their next words. I know I shouldn’t and even as I’m doing it I’m inwardly telling myself to stop it and just let them finish, you jerk. I don’t know why I keep doing it, but I do. People probably think I do it because I’m impatient and rude, and they’re probably right. But I don’t think that was the case when Lianna cut me off, more likely she was telling me she didn’t need any condescending mansplaining, you jerk.
“Sorry,” I said out of habit. “Point is, you can’t see them, but they’re there. And like anything else, the more you use them the better they get, and they can make a big difference in combat.”
She planted her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “What’s your endgame in all this?”
“I’m glad you asked, because it’s important for you to know. It’s simple. I want to make everyone stronger.”
She blinked in surprise. “That’s not the answer I was expecting.”
“It’s the truth. This game has been set up to make us compete with each other, as individuals and as teams. But you know better than anyone the game was rigged from the start. Nothing about this game is fair so I want to give everyone the opportunity to play and have the chance to win.”
“Don’t you want to win yourself?”
“Sure I do, but my goal is to create a way for everyone to win. That’s the game that I made up for myself, and right now I’m the only one playing it.”
“Making everyone strong,” she said, and I nodded. “Won’t I be playing that game too if I join you?”
“It’ll be nice to have someone to play with.”
“But...can you really just change the rules like that?”
“Show me the rule that says I can’t.”
“I wish I could but I don’t even know what the stupid rules are.” Then her mouth went wide and she blinked at me. “Are you saying you know the rules?”
“No, believe it or not there are rules against us knowing the rules. But I do know one thing: nothing I’ve done so far has broken any rules because System would never allow that to happen. So I’m just going to keep playing my way.”
“Huh,” she said, and leaned back to digest things again. ”So this Guild really isn’t about power and wealth.”
“I already have more than enough to live very comfortably, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to grow. I want more dungeons. I want more influence. But not for the sake of being rich or powerful. I have zero interest in becoming an Elon Musk, quite the opposite.”
She grimaced and stuck out her tongue. “That’s good news. I’m a card carrying capitalist girl, but fuckety fuck there’s a limit to everything. Going full-on robber baron would’ve been a deal breaker right there.”
“I do want our enterprises to generate lots of income, but only so that we can reinvest it into more ways to help everyone thrive and live well and win at the game. Even the NPCs.”
She looked around like she was about to share a secret and wanted to make sure nobody would overhear. “So it’s not just me them,” she whispered. “You think there’s something up with the NPCs here too. I mean, I work for Jan and Rudy and they’re the most human people I know, which is crazy because they’re NPCs. Their AI is off the chart.”
“I don’t know what the deal is with NPCs either, but they’re real enough that I try not to treat them any differently than real people. Besides, on a more practical level, we share this world with them and our own prosperity is intrinsically linked to theirs.”
“Everybody wins. That’s a pretty good endgame,” she said. “But what makes you think everyone can win? That’s the thing with games, where there are winners there are always losers, too.”
I gave her a sly grin. “Only if it’s a competitive game.”
“Didn’t you say that’s what this is?”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”
“You want to turn this into a cooperative game, is that it?” She put her hand on her chin and tapped her lip with a fingertip. “I can see how this Players Guild could go a long way towards that.”
“See? You get it. Does that mean you’ll do it with me, then?”
“I have to say, it beats waitressing. Can I think about it?”
“Sure, but not for too long. I need to fill the space on my team by tomorrow morning.” I decided not to add that I didn’t have a backup choice.
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“As much as it should, this doesn’t feel like an act of desperation or even sympathy on your part.”
“It isn’t.”
“You really do want me to join you.”
“I really do.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Okay.” I pulled something out of my inventory.
“Holy shit, how’d you do that?” she said when it suddenly appeared in my hand.
“There’s a lot I have yet to tell you, but only if you agree to join me. Here, take it.”
Her eyes narrowed with open suspicion again as I placed a thin circle of mithril studded with gemstones onto the table.
“You’re giving me a bracelet?”
“No. Well, yeah. But it’s not meant to be decorative.”
“Good, because while it appears to be very well made, all those different colored gems in it are just gaudy. Sorry, that was a bit mean. You picked it out, I suppose.”
“Not exactly.”
As someone who’d grown up with cellphones, I was constantly annoyed by how hard it was to get in touch with anyone on Crucible. I had decided to fix that, and that was something else I’d been working away on since I beat the Void Dungeon. It was the teleportation network that had given me the idea.
I’d taken ten different gemstones and enchanted each one with a synthesis of telepathy, heightened senses, illusion, and that ever-so-useful eidetic memory, along with a generous dose of Void packed into a formation Annabelle helped me develop by applying Fifth Dimensional Physics to Magical Theory. Then I had an elvish artisan cut nine small fragments from each gem, leaving one larger piece of each intact. Another craftsman fabricated ten bracelets designed to hold nine small fragments and one large one. Voila, wrist phones connecting ten people with one another.
Dick Tracy Communicator
It only looks like jewelry. It is one of ten similar bracelets, each one able to communicate with the wearers of all the others.
Powers:
Ansible - Communicate with other nodes in the Ansible Communication Network
If you touched a gem fragment on the one you were wearing, it opened a call to the bracelet of its matching larger gem. I’d kept the opal one and had given the rest to strategic individuals: Sigrid (sapphire), Jane (diamond), Nina (ruby), and Morgan (emerald), as well as Petal (jade), Alice (topaz), and the sisters (Annabelle had snatched it to wear because its amethyst matched her hair, and also because she said she wouldn’t entrust Akari with it). That left two more I hadn’t given out, including the moonstone one I’d just pulled out of my inventory.
I showed Lianna the one on my own wrist, which was similar except for the decorative embellishments on the bracelet, and explained how they worked.
“And there are ten of these? Where did you even find them? They must’ve cost a fortune.”
“Not really.”
“So I just touch the opal here to talk to you? What about these other stones?”
“My friends have those. Feel free to call them and ask if I’m legit. You know, if you feel the need to check references.”
“Which one calls the girl you were here on a date with before?”
“Morgan? It wasn’t a...never mind. She’s the emerald.”
Lianna put on the bracelet and touched the emerald. Morgan’s image appeared floating in the air in front of us.
“Hello?” Morgan said. “Oh. You’re that waitress. Sorry, I forgot your name. Hi, how can I help you?”
“Hi,” Lianna said. “So this guy Daniel, is he for real?”
The image of Morgan rolled its eyes. “What did he do now?”
“Hey!” I said.
“You go over there and drink your coffee,” Lianna said, and turned her back to me. I saw Morgan grin.
I took my drink and went over to a table by the window, trying not to listen in on their conversation. Every so often I glanced over and saw that after Lianna had finished talking to Morgan she contacted Sigrid, then Nina, then Petal, then Jane.
Oh god no, not Jane. What would she say about me?
Finally, I heard Lianna approach the table and sit down opposite me, her hand toying with the communicator on her other wrist.
“Well?”
“You sure do know a lot of beautiful women,” she said.
“Yeah, so I’ve been told.”
“Don’t you know any men? Hell, even your NPC pal’s a babe.”
“You could tell she was an NPC?”
Lianna flashed me a smile. “The pointy ears were a dead giveaway.”
I laughed. “You didn’t call Alice. She’s an NPC too, from the labyrinth.”
“She must be the one you have managing the dungeon. Is she hot too?”
“She’s a shapeshifter.”
“Which means she can be as hot as she wants so I’ll take that as a yes.”
“Look, if you’re worried about not fitting in, don’t. You’re very attractive too.”
“I know,” she said bluntly, then pondered me for a moment. “You really aren’t doing this to hit on me, are you?”
“Is that what you’re still worried about?”
“If an offer seems too good to be true...”
I was starting to wonder what kind of trauma Lianna had suffered to make her so wary of a man’s intentions.
“I get it,” I said. “No, this isn’t me hitting on you. You’d know if that’s what it was, I’d be a whole lot more awkward about it. I just think you’re the right person for the job. Plus, as we’ve been talking, I’ve realized you’re pretty cool and think we could be friends. I’d like that.”
“I see.”
“Still need time to think?”
She leveled that appraising gaze at me again. “No,” she said.
“Does this mean you’ve decided to trust me, or are you turning me down?”
“I still don’t quite get you or your motivations, but like it or not I’m stuck here in this place and I’d be crazy to pass up this opportunity. I’ve been wanting to play this game properly since I got here and now I finally have the chance. Let’s do this.”
I grinned and raised my coffee cup in a toast. “System, you know what to do.”
System: Player Lianna Drake added to Team Player
“So that’s it?” Lianna said.
“That’s it. Welcome to Team Player, Vice-Captain.”
“Vice-Captain, eh?” She laughed. “That would be a lot more impressive if there wasn’t just the two of us.”
“More is not always better,” I said.
“You’re an odd one, Captain.”
“So I’ve been told.”
I drained my coffee. “Okay, I hate to recruit and run, but there’s some other stuff I need to do before the quest meeting.”
“What, you’re going?”
“I have a lot to do. Where are you living?”
“I, uh, rent a place? Why?” Still with the suspicious eyes. I guess trust really did need to be earned.
“From now on you can stay at the Dragon Clan for free until we finish renovating the Cathedral. You don’t have to, that’s up to you, but I hope you do. It’d be convenient because your first mission is to learn kung fu and that’s the place to do it.“
“You mean you won’t be teaching me to fight?”
“I will eventually, but I want to see just how quickly you can learn things and I know how long it takes people to learn kung fu from the dojo’s Sifu so I have a benchmark to compare with.”
“Logical.”
“Plus, all those other Players you just talked to live there in the dojo too so you won’t be alone and I know they’ll take care of you. Now, wait one sec. Be right back.”
I opened the portal to my inventory and stepped inside it. I rummaged around to get what I needed and came back out with a small chest and two scrolls. Her mouth hung open as she gawked at me.
“What?” I said.
“What do you mean what?”
I felt my forehead furrow as I gawked back at her trying to figure out what the problem was. Oh right. From her perspective it must’ve looked like I came out a split second after I went in. Heh.
“Neat trick, huh?”
“I mean it, who are you?”
“No one of consequence.” I thunked the chest down onto the table.
“What’s in that?” she said. “It seems heavy.”
“Consider it your signing bonus. There’s probably around five hundred gold in there, I’m not really sure. I didn’t take the time to count it and just kinda dumped it in. So quit your job here right now and go shopping. If you need more gold, tap the opal and let me know. You’re now entitled to an equal share of Team Player’s considerable assets.”
“Are you serious?”
“Almost always.”
She looked at the scrolls. “What are these?”
“Those are a gift from me.”
She opened one. “Wait, what? Does this mean I’ll get affinity with Void forever?”
“Well, you do now control the Void dungeon with me so it’d be nice if you were actually able to go into it. Just, don’t go without me.”
“Why not?”
“Trust me, I need to ease you into that. The other scroll’s a skill that should come in handy when you go spend your pile of cash so learn it right away.”
She opened the second scroll and laughed. “There’s a shopping skill? Seriously?”
“It’s one I don’t have. Let me know how it works, I may want to learn it too.”
“I don’t have the Teacher skill to teach you though.”
“That’s not a problem.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“Thank you is traditional.”
“Thank you, Daniel. Really.”
“Thank you too for joining me. We’re going to do great things. Now, sorry but I gotta go. I have a lot to do and little time to do it. And you have a job to quit, a dojo to join, and shopping to do.” I waved my Dick Tracy Communicator. “Call me if you need me.”
I opened up a portal and stepped through, leaving Lianna with a confused but happy look on her face, and a chest full of gold.