Play It

"No, i have only memorized the atomic structures of real elements," i reply sadly. "Even with my vast intellect, i would not be capable of recognizing game-native structures unless i spent my entire game life looking for replicas in plants and animals or found a mage from the game who would know what the hell i was trying to talk about. From certain... context clues... i can deduce that all of the ingredients can be found here in the islands, he is a boss NPC found here in the islands who would be relatively cut off from anyone but pirates who would have a very hard time procuring specific ingredients from trading vessels and his Perpetual Elixir is probably a reward for killing him from the islands. Also, as likely here in the islands as any specific magical place in the game, we will likely find mages capable of synthesizing gems who would have some understanding of structures and possibly point us in the right direction of an alchemist knowledgable in their craft and structures enough to replicate the elixir. So, it's worth a shot."

"Yes," Harold groans. "You could have just said yes and made it work, later. Are you copying the professor on purpose, now, or are you really like this?"

"I usually try to talk to people as little as possible, because of it," i sigh in defeated admission. "I can't say that i am as smart as the professor because he has applied himself in more fields than i have, but i am potentially equal to Doc. The biggest problem, is accurately answering a question and covering all need-to-know bases as you see them for other people to understand something that, in your head, is very likely a jumbled mess of different thought processes not quite under your control. But, in the future, i will try to keep everything to one-word answers."

"Oh, yeah, i can't wait to see how that works out," Harold says, cracking himself up. "Do you think you can get everyone passed the guards? 'One-word answers'," he replies to himself, actually stopping during our walk to laugh hysterically at himself. I honestly could not help but laugh, myself, at how likely it really would be that i would just start answering most of his questions with the phrase, 'one-word answers'. "But, no, honestly, it's probably for the best not to restrict you like that. Your mind is probably one of our best weapons and holding it back would only hold back the team," he says in an almost paradoxical compassionately selfish manner. "So, you go ahead and ramble, because it's gonna help us all rumble eventually."

Now i know how Emma felt when i kept making really lame jokes, i think to myself with a wistful sigh as i wish i could go back to that casually joking manner before our friendship got muddied with emotions while Harold and i approached the dead captain's cold body. Picking up his sword and testing its weight, i say, "Something like this bastard sword would probably suit Sasha's strong-arming style more than your evade and stab methods. Issa actually took the mining mage's sword, a really long and slender one like an English rapier that you would have probably made use of. Did the Scalesh miners happen to bring a big fur bundle with them?"

"Actually, yeah, one of Issa's escorts is carrying it like a backpack," Harold replies, looking over the dead man's armor before stripping him of his hear. "We can scrap his leggings for chainmail patches, there's probably enough hear for everyone to wear a patch over either shoulder for guards, and all of this bronze we would probably need to work into wire to make any use of, but these chain gauntlets would totally fit me- i could give mine to someone with big hands like Billy or Angel who didn't make any. And these boots... even a chainmail belt!"

"You're looking for a small liquid container," i remind him lazily, wondering what all kinds of armor and loot i had sent to the bottom of the channel and inwardly berating myself for not having thought of it. "Probably on a necklace or in a kind of medicine back around his neck because he pulled it from the top of his armor- maybe even a special lining in his armor somewhere that would keep a glass container from breaking. We still need to go to the actual encampment and look around, those two bags of silver Issa took probably were not the only ones, not to mention we now have forty-five new mouths to feed and get back to iron island before early twilight."

Laughing carelessly, Harold says, "For somebody who almost died not too long ago, you certainly have plenty of energy."

"I never once considered people from Red Hand or Red Skull tracking us in any way whatsoever until Eric said something, and he made a very good point," i say softly, chastising myself. "My argument was empty and just to allay fears until we get on the move from iron island. If creating glass leaves a magical signature, there are residual signatures of all my magic around the mountain from making sulfur explosives as well as fighting two different mages. Even you with a white dwarf for a source have different shades of coloring in your aura, but this dude was pure gold energy, finding anything like it would probably be astronomical which means his magic would be recognized instantly even if we disposed of the body- and its his energy radiating from his equipment which means that his comrades could likely track us by his weapons and armor even if we sync them. Side not- we're on the very edge of outlaw territory, this island is pretty much the border so everything we do while traveling for the next session or two has to be stealth or guerilla oriented."

"Guerilla?" Harold asks skeptically. "You're not planning on hitting these people at their own homes with these goblin-looking scale people, are you? You can't be serious! These guys barely know how to use a hammer, they were losing their minds over your hatchets and picks and the little chick one tried to buy them with silver."

"Their strength-to-weight ratios are at least twice that of ours," i inform him casually as he finally finished stripping the body down to its linens, tossing me a small bundle of folded leather about the size of my hand that opened up to reveal not only three vials of some strange opaque yellow liquid but several samples of dried herbs and paper packets containing their powdered form to be mixed together in some liquid i would have to identify before making more. "Nice... we don't even need an alchemist, with these dried bits to identify by. Anyway, two of them were sprinting through the underground among the boulders with me like i was a paperweight, so those picks and hatchets with their short handles are probably the perfect weapons and tools for bodies like theirs. And... i can't just walk away from this.

"In physical warefare with a functioning knowledge of metalwork, the Scalesh species would rules the islands, but they're not as developed a species as humans or other possible mortal races," i go on as we start walking back toward the edge of the hollow in the mountain. "Magically, their trained or prodigal shamans have a fraction of the power that a beginning human mage would possess, the only reason Issa's EMF is so big is because we're bonded, which is how i know that she is going to try to lead her people in a rebelliong against the outlaws to reclaim the outer islands. Then, inward, taking out the free-trade groups who also make use of the seemingly weak and simple species, and probably even further to wipe themselves out trying to remove the established races from their lands in the center of the drifting country. Even if they manage to beat the outlaws, the free-trade groups are legal and will recieve reinforcements from surrounding nations, i can't let them just die in vain... this is my quest. Besides, if the Scalesh somehow managed to win, the drifting isles would probably be anti-human and future players will be hunted down and persecuted, somebody has to make sure things turn out in everybody's favor."

"Could something like that really happen?" Harold asks, actually stopping in his tracks. "I mean... it's a video game and this was designed as a premium player starting point, they can't actually let this place turn into a dark zone where players are killed on sight."

"The possibilities in this game are endless," i argue, taking the opportunity to grab Harold displace us out to the edge. "But, you could be right, which means they wouldn't actually let the Scalesh win and because of my meddling they would end up wiped out from the game entirely. Now, how can any hero from chaotic neutral to pious good stand by and just let that happen? Chaotic as i might like to be, i can't be the reason for their extinction and that crazy little goblin chick down there is seventy-percent likely to start a rebellion because she... read my mind. All of it. I think she might even know she's an NPC and that's why she's so bitter right now."

"How the hell do you end up doing everything in a video game that shouldn't be possible in a video game?" Harold cries in outrage, dropping some of the looted gear he was carrying that i simply displace and launch through the air toward the encampment where everybody was going. "The AI in a video game shouldn't be able to be awakened like that, how can you even code such a thing?"

"More than likely there's a loophole in the coding for the game in which other worlds exist within the game, which allows for the game's cultivated bottom-up AI to understand our world as the world from which theirs originates while probably viewing the players as some form of gods or special beings just here to visit after 'awakening'," i reply with a shrug, "I have looked into Artificial Intelligence in college, top-down is replicating an existing person while the program cannot comprehend that it is a program and will degrade after an awakening, but bottom-up is a virtually grown person capable of understanding things outside of itself with proper programming and protocols and so on. To get the actual answers, i would have to try and info-dump the game on an external harddrive and probably get sent to prison after being kicked from the beta- although i am pretty sure Doc would be more than happy to give you an in-depth lecture on it when we log out."

"Never, ever, bring this up in reality," Harold says flatly, unceremoniously dropping his good for me to send flying before launching us both down from the mountain toward the encampment. "I might ask him about it, one day, when there's nobody else around to ask questions so i can just pretend i understand everything he's telling me and let it all be over with quickly. Until then, i don't think i could handle that kind of overload. Your rambling is about all i can handle, as it is."

"Then I'm sure you can handle collecting the loot again," i add, displacing myself all of the way to the encampment where an argument was breaking out between the female Scalesh and some of the beta players in front of the hardwood storage building. "OI!" I say loudly, silencing the groups while walking up to Issa at the front of the gathered goblin females blocking the entryway with their bodies. Reaching down to retrieve my masked helmet from the layers of Issa's armor, i actually find some comfort in putting it on to hide my face from everyone around me before surveying the still silent area to see that the males were picking apart the rest of the encampment for tools and anything that could be used as a weapon under the guidance of Issa's armored escorts.

Looking back to Issa while scouring my memories of her life for their language, i hiss several times with a series of mixed clicks of my tongue not unlike morse code to say, "Canes. Need. Swim."

Issa glared at me for a moment before loosing a loud, guttural noise similar to a crocodile at which all of her males' heads swiveled before she starts clicking out orders. Within moments, half of the males armed with tools capable of cutting or chopping were jogging off into the island in pursuit of cane trees from which to build rafts for everybody. Then, looking at the rest of the females before turning to Eric at the front of the beta group, i just shrug and charged jump to flip over the Scalesh blockade and land within the entrance of the building facing both groups where i bow deeply before disappearing into the building. There was not much to see, just a few open bags full of shimmery silver dust as well as small table in the back, but it was to the back of the building that i went first to examined the faintly glowing lines of geometric shapes and figures whose inner spaces were filled with unreadable characters. Beside the table was another box, but instead of leather sacks of silver grains there were whould rectangular ingots of silvers stacked neatly within the three-foot wide by four long and two tall dimensions of their wormwood seachest that was obviously the main shipment for the pirates.

Wondering if this was not some kind of alchemical workstation that worked ore into power and powder into ingots as i feel around inside of several large depressions in the stump-like tabletop of some incredibly dark and probably expensive wood to withdraw fingers covered in powdery silver or soot, i quickly make up my mind to pick up the table in my aura before stuffing a single ingot into every pocket of my leather cargos under my armor before closing the ingot box and dragging it outside. Dropping the box at Issa's feet, i say with slow but slightly casual enunciation, "That's all of your hard work, the rest is ours. Even though you guys will be building your own rafts, i really do believe it will be best if not only you and i but all of us stay together. Plus, the other shamans we collect can partner with my friends, making all of us stronger to better protect each other."

Cracking open the box to nod her satisfaction with the solid precious metals inside, Issa looks to her mother and tilts her head with a click before her mother orders some of the remaining mails over to take the chest of silver before the prodigal shaman of her people finally acknowledges the rest of the group with a nod. Then, to me as Eric and Sasha finally get to enter the building around my magic table floating over the doorway, Issa carefully lips her f as she says, "We... friend-s. They... cool. My... people... come. You... Me... blood." She was getting much better at speaking.

"Good," i say with a sagely nod. "Tomorrow, we start heading inlands, and you will lead us to the camp you came from. From there, we will secure more of your people and supplies for the rest of our efforts. My people can go on ahead with their partners and their harems to pave the way through free-trade territory while we continue freeing your people in the badlands. I can't speak for the people of this world, but we are not them and i will help you."

"H-elp," she agrees with a nod, turning back to her fellow shamans and speaking in their language while pointing at my gathered friends.

Whirling around to the rest of the present beta where i can see Harold finally reaching the edge of the encampment, i quickly explain, "You guys have no committments beyond bonding with the females of their species so that they can increasue their and our magics by connecting sources. This is a race of people in the game native to to the islands who are currently experiencing shunning and subjugation from the other mortal races who are more developed than they are. This is a shipment of actual trade goods i rescued, these goblin-looking creatures who are called Scalesh in the game and the silver in this building, in an illegal smuggling ring with apparently some big name groups. We're going to go start a rebellion and take over the islands, forget finding civilization because the tutorial is over- from this point forward, I am founding a civilization- and you're all free to join the war effort, but you don't have to come with us. I will actually need some of you to travel with small forces through the less dangerous territory and make friends with settlements so that we don't face any unnecessary opposition."

"I'll bond with the ladies of the native people," Billy says with a wink, stepping forward from the group for Issa to examine both him and her fellows before finding an appropriate match to urge forward from the present females. Then, pointing off toward Harold who was still a few dozen yards out from the group, Issa clicks and hisses at her mouth while lightly urging her forward by pushing at her shoulder when Issa's mother clicks impatiently at her. Issa herself picked the next three candidates in the form of Hitome, Angel, and Sasha when she and Eric finally came back out of the building dragging cane chests of bagged silver power.

Before long, five other members of the beta team had auras at least fifty feet in radiud or greater, and many of the male workers were already returning dragging large bundles of whole cane trees through the rocky terrain with relative ease. "Harold," i call after Issa's mother had spent several minutes bonding with him before carefully and slowly talking to him in clicks and hisses. "Take Issa's mom and go help the males put together a raft that will carry everyone and a bunch of supplies, we've got less than three hours before the shadows hits us and i want to be back home with Spot before then."

"Spot is back at the raft with the other chitters," he calls back, waving me off before trying to carry a conversation in reptile with Issa's mother while walking off toward the work crews.

Relieved to know that my chitter was nearby, i turn to Emma and say, "Emma, i need you to take Hitome, Billy, Angel, Sasha, and their new partners out into the boulders and show them how to trance into their magic. Then, go into the boulders and pick out the sulfurs or sulfides or whatever from the granite, there's only a handful of minerals overall and most of them you'll recognize as quartz and slate feldspars and maybe metals but just pick a big boulder and draw out samples of everything to set of fire. If the powdered concentrate doesn't burn, it's not sulfur. Honestly, sulfur burns bluish white, but something in the mineral compounds that doesn't fade away makes it burn pink and let's try to keep it that way. I think its like a potassium or even lithin residue in the rock from the mixed lead and silver deposits here- but don't actually be near any of it while it's burning without precaution because it releases a noxious gas that turns to acid when mixed with water and similarly based fluids."

"Is that what you were throwing at people?" Hitome asks in no small amount of awe. "That's not even magic except to throw it and light it, the gasses and burning spiral made their own propulsion system with a variety of different attacks to defend against. I think i have the trance figured out ever since you taught me that healing spell, mage's scalpel or whatever, so was there any particular size or mass or whatever that you wanted or just make a bunch of big round rocks."

"Round would be more aerodynamic than the bricks i was using," i admit after considering her question. "And conical spearheads. One-pound heads and three-pound balls. As many as you guys can make in an hour, too, so no slacking because these will be our main offensive and defensive weapons until we can find another sulfur source to mind. Although, the tin ore i hit last session was also made up of sulfides, but they probably would not have the same battery acid gasses as galena sulfurs so we should wait until we come across another silver mine to gather sulfurs of this wonderful quality. More than likely, because of the silver relation, one of our destination work camps will be a much larger silver mine than this one where we will already be spending a lot of time. Nope, sulfur from just here for now will be plenty for our needs. The rest of you, you're coming with me to comb the beach for coconuts to slake the thirsts of the many. Issa, you coming with us or are you going to help our your people with the logging and rafting?"

Issa does not even stop to consider the question after having her bilingual companions dispersed with my orders, she simply walked over from her usurped position of power by the hardwood buildings and followed along behind me as i lead the others off away from the encampment and work details toward the beaches. Coconut palms were not very plentiful from close to the mountain, but i started through group out from the rafts so that i could collect Spot along the way who had now grown to the size of a dometic house cat with much bulkier muscles alongside. From their, i fanned the group out up the beach and terrorized everybody by jogging on ahead to the nearest tree and leaving them to keep going until they reach their own trees and i run to catch up as well as move on after gathering and aura full of coconuts.

I could not force the others to maintain this work pace for more than thirty minutes, but after covering over two miles in that time everybody was tiredly burdened with several dozen coconuts apiece that we began making our way tiredly back to camp. We were forced to stop when Issa's aura gave out under the weight of just over thirty coconuts and she callapsed from magical exhaustion from depleting her aura, but it was not long after drinking the last of my own etherous water and a chastising about recognizing her limits and using critical points like my own that she was back to work leading the group with her coconuts. Despite being young and headstrong, i could not help but feel like she was her people's in-game version of myself as i watched her slowly calculate her own strength and set limits for herself as i instructed on the way back to camp so that we only had to stop briefly one more time.

The cane structures had been broken down to use in a large barge that was even bigger than the newly pontooned and platformed barge my friends had arrived on, made up of four alternating vertical and horizonal layers walled for several feet above and below the sides of the raft with layers of bundles canes for protection in much larger forms of the canes walling our barge's new side platforms. A powered shout from me to call in the sulfur gathering crew soon brought everyone to a break where we ate gluttonously of the food here in camp until it was just gone before loading the coconuts onto the raft for the Scalesh to transport. After distributing enough magic users about either raft with Issa and I at the front of the twenty-foot wid by thirty long Scalesh war-barge that Harold had preemptively fitted with small mounting platforms for future artillery as well as oar-posts for all of the males to row from, it was somewhat easy for us all to row and travel against the current for most of the way straight up the middle of the island chain back toward iron island for an entire hour before everybody finally had to stop and rest their magics.

Early twilight was spreading out over the world when we finally anchored the barges in the now crowded inlet marina, but the nearing night did little to darken our spirits as we all disembarked with our good for the main camp slab of iron island where the Scalesh quickly set about constructing their own mass dwellings like small barns around the outskirts of our own shelters. For the most part, everybody just lounged around construction was complete and Harold doled out all of our non-jerky food supply that would need to be thrown out anyway to the Scalesh, but Issa and the females were not so content to call it a day while there was still at least four hours of real daylight on the other side of the island. They filled their time after being caught in my ether pot playing with their newly enhanced magic among the still plentiful oxide boulders by working iron and using male counterparts for measurements of weapons like their own short, broad triangular shields worn like bucklers on the forearms but sharpened along the edge and points into fierce blades to pair with similarly short, broad triangular swords that better suited their bodies and incredible strength with enough tapering point to fit several inches of blade through the chainmail swaths Harold had given me from the outlaw captain's leggings.

I spent my own time bathing Spot in etherous water and playing at grooming her with a synthesized quartz comb, as far as the others could see, but within the pockets of my inner clothers i was particulating and materializing an intricately helixing chain of silver to be adorned by a bronze plate similar to my own. Drawing carbon from the embers of the fire was the hardest part, forcing me to particulate and gather them within the ash heap heart of the fire where nobody would notice the intense blue glow of compressed heat around several ounces of pure carbon being synthesized into a flat, prismatic diamond. When it was complete, all i needed was to send Spot scampering and chattering about the camp on a wild goose chase through shelters to withdraw the glowing stone from the fire and into the back of my shelter where i surround the sides of the prism in a thin sheet of prism-shaped bronze into which i engraved the wavy spiked lines of fire blooming outward from the crystal clear diamond in the overlapping petals of a flower not unlike my own medallion.

Completing the chain through the top of the pendant within my coat as Spot leisurely returns to camp with a coconut clutched over its back in newly double-jointed central arms, i discreetly send the coconut bouncing along under Emma and Harold's shelters to draw them out after giving looped up necklace to hide in her plush underside as Emma and Harold go off to see what the sudden commotion was after Spot's previous mayhem. Spot returned less than a minute before Emma and Harold came back talking and laughing about haunted coconuts after depositing the necklace with Em to give to Emma while i waited patiently for the reaction. It took almost three minutes of Emma busying herself about her shelter before a sudden, high-pitched girlish squeal split the air and then was almost immediately stifled into a muffled shriek. A few seconds later, i sent Spot running out from between our shelters by way of an explanation for the sudden noices that gathered many worried Scalesh to the inner circle of shelters who then dispersed with Issa's clicks and hisses from our storage building where she was storing her own iron goods.

As anticipated, it was not long before Emma was at my shelter standing in an irate stance as if to berate me for Spot's behavior, but instead she quietly said, "Did you make this or did one of those dead guys have it first? I like it, and i will keep it regardless, but i would really like to know."

"I just finished it a little while ago," i reassure her with a calm smile. "I wanted to have made it earlier, but then things turned out the way they did and i had to use Spot as a constant distraction to keep anybody from finding out while i made it last minute. I have one like it set with a garnet that i use for storing energy, and you would probably do well to do the same. You can choose to come with me and the Scalesh army to go free the people, but i would honestly prefer it if you went with the team into the free-trade lands beyond outlaw territory with an escort of Scalesh to go around making things better for all of the Scalesh or just gather them up if the trade groups resist. Ideally we would just raid the free-trade groups who would hinder us and make it look like the outlaws did it in desparation as we make a statement with all-out war against the criminal activities, but the trade groups themselves are legal and even if they mistreat their goblins we can't just wipe them out because that would bring authoritative and corporate attentions to us. Now, if we had enough free-trade settlements on our side, we can use corporate ties and the Scalesh war to redistribute lands with those that ally with us and blacklist other groups with claims and charges of illegal activities with the Scalesh war effort as credence."

"Is any of this actually legal?" Emma demands critically. "Honestly, even in a video game where we would probably be attacked relentlessly by these people, is it legit to seek them down and hunt them out without like warrants or bounties or something? Is it legit for the Scalesh people to be mobilizing?"

"Because half of the race is incapable of magic despite having proper social and communication qualities, the Scalesh are viewed as a sub-sentient species and not a part of the actual empire governing the world," i reply, doing my best to use what Doc had said. "Even if it's not necessarily legal, it's can't be illegal at the same time because sub-sentient species like a magical cat or dog can't be held to civil laws or things like the rules of engagement. They can be put down, but this is a collective and intelligent species that is now made capable of arming itself for war because of our magical-slash-psychic bonding with their magic-capable members to not only increase their capacity for magic but also their knowledge with possibly everything we know about reality as well as the game. Even if the existing governing bodies try to stop us, they will be up against one or a team of incredibly intelligent and powerful immortal beings."

"You're powerful, the rest of us just try to keep up," she sighs with a tired smile, standing upright and turning to return to her own shelter. "As much as i really would like to go off with you and chase glory, i don't really think that i was cut out for that sort of thing. Instead, I'll build an army of allies to help you. Promise."

I did not say anything to her promise, just let her enjoy the moment while she returned to her shelter where Em began fussing at her until she calmed him with petting and cuddles. Lying in bed underneath my coat with Spot curled up on my stomach now that she had grown too heavy to remain on my chest overnight, i could not help but think about how the next session of traveling through the islands would turn out and where the shipment had originated from to estimate how long it would be before they were missed. The best that i could come up with was a single day between arrival and departure with it hopefully taking most of a day to traverse the islands, and my worst estimate was that we would run into an outlaw vessel looking for their missing comrades while we were out on the water passing through the area.