Wyn opens her eyes and finds herself back in the white void of character creation.
“This place again?” she asks no one in particular.
Psai pops into existence, his blue orb glowing faintly. “Affirmative! When you rest in Eden, your consciousness will return here and allow you to improve your skills.”
“And where is… here exactly?”
“Think of this as the bridge between Eden and Earth. The middle ground between the two worlds.”
Wyn rolls her eyes. “That’s not a name. I’m tired of calling this place ‘Character Creation.’ I think I’ll call this place The Waiting Room.”
Psai frowns, his face contorting with annoyance. “According to my files, this place is called The Interstice.”
Wyn snorts. “The hell kind of name is Interstice?”
“Named after the interstitial places within the human body that serve as a meeting point between—”
“Yeah. Sure. What am I supposed to do in this Waiting Room, anyway?”
Psai stares at Wyn. His face goes neutral as his orb gains flecks of red to match his internal annoyance at Wyn’s casual dismissal of his words. After an uncomfortably long silence, Wyn waves at Psai to see if he’s still awake. Though Wyn isn’t sure that artificial intelligence orb creatures sleep.
Psai sighs, “In the Interstice, you have the opportunity to upgrade your abilities, and improve your stats.”
“Wait. I have stats?”
“Affirmative. Though you have not yet unlocked the ability required to examine and manipulate your stat bonuses.”
Wyn thinks back to something Neil said. He emphasized the importance of honing skills and abilities, especially insight. The lack of information in Eden has been a constant thorn in her side, so she’s eager to begin.
“How do I get started?” asks Wyn.
“An excellent question. To begin, pull up your character sheet.”
Wyn focuses her mind, and wills her character sheet to appear. Unlike before, it’s far easier and requires only a few seconds of concentration to activate.
NAME: Wyn Abulata
RACE: Human
STATUS: N/A
RANK: Whelp
CLASS: Simple Mage Level 3
ARCHETYPE: Combat
SECONDARY CLASS: #Error, Value Not Expected Level 2
SECONDARY ARCHETYPE: Control
ABILITIES
Rudimentary Insight: Crude
Rudimentary First Aid: Crude
Essentia Manipulation: Crude
Essentia Shield: Crude
Mage Bolt: Common
Illusions of Beyond: Uncommon
Oblivion Shroud: Rare
TITLES
Outworlder - Common
Wyn reads over her character sheet and notices she gained a level in basic mage at some point. Checking her notifications, she finds the source of the levelup.
You have killed: Ironmaw Bovle
Experience Gained.
Basic Mage has increased to Level 3.
“Great, how do I improve my skills?” Wyn asks.
“In order to improve your skill, you must use your available Level Points.”
Wyn raises an eyebrow. “And what precisely is a Level Point?”
“As a Whelp Rank, you receive one level point each time you level up. These Level Points can be allocated in myriad ways to improve your skills. For example, to increase a skill from Crude to Common, it takes one Level Point. To increase a skill from Common to Uncommon, it takes 4 Level Points. Level Points may also be used to increase your stats once the stats window is available to you.”
“Excellent.” Wyn pauses, not sure how to make the level points work but determined to try. “Okay. Uh. Level Point, activate!”
Nothing happens.
“Make my insight better.”
Still nothing.
“Rank up Rudimentary Insight from Crude to Common.”
A new window pops up. Looks like that finally did it.
Rudimentary Insight, Crude.
Description: Allows the user to learn more about a given target it can see, including but not limited to: Anything present in your interface, monsters, NPCs, other players, and most worldly items in Eden. Note: Items of higher rarity may not properly function with this ability.
Would you like to upgrade this ability to Common rarity?
Yes / No
Wyn selects the option for yes, and yet another screen appears.
Ability Upgraded: Rudimentary Insight, Crude.
Rudimentary Insight, Crude upgraded to: Basic Insight, Common
Description: Allows the user to learn more about a given target it can see, including but not limited to: User Interface, User Statistics, Monsters, NPCs, Players, and most worldly items in Eden. Note: Items of higher rarity may not properly function with this ability. Does not allow player to see the statistics of other creatures.
Wyn immediately opens her character sheet once again. If she read the description right, she now can see and understand her stats menu.
NAME: Wyn Abulata
RACE: Human
STATUS: N/A
RANK: Whelp
CLASS: Simple Mage Level 3
ARCHETYPE: Combat
SECONDARY CLASS: #Error, Value Not Expected Level 2
SECONDARY ARCHETYPE: Control
STATS:
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Strength: 9
Endurance: 8
Toughness: 10
Agility: 10
Willpower: 14
Awareness: 11
Intellect: 12
Presence: 15
ABILITIES
Basic Insight: Common
Rudimentary First Aid: Crude
Essentia Manipulation: Crude
Mage Bolt: Common
Illusions of Beyond: Uncommon
Oblivion Shroud: Rare
TITLES
Outworlder - Common
Wyn smiles wide at the updated character sheet. She already understands most of the numbers from different games, though some prove unfamiliar. Not only that, but a there’s still an ability she hasn’t taken the time to fully understand. Scrolling through her character sheet, she uses her upgraded insight on her only rare ability: Oblivion Shroud. Wyn hopes that the epic-sounding ability grants her an appropriately epic ability. Something involving stealth or a way to avoid detection would be very useful.
Ability: Oblivion Shroud, Rare.
You have been granted a Shroud of Oblivion from #ERROR. As such, inspection abilities below Superior rank will not reveal the specific information shrouded by Oblivion.
For a rare ability, Oblivion Shroud is rather lackluster. Sure, it’s got a healthy dose of mystery from being yet another glitch, but the ability only hides information. It almost does what she wants, in that it prevents detection, but doesn’t provide her anything useful beyond stopping other people from understanding parts of her. And judging by the description, it only prevents specific information.
Wyn ventures a guess that the ability hides information about her secondary class from others. It could be why Mirana and Psai can’t properly understand information about the class, but she isn’t certain. After all, Psai should theoretically understand anything in the game, given that he’s a part of the system itself. She shakes her head.
“Psai, how many Level Points do I have left?”
“You have two Level Points remaining.”
“What can I do with them?”
“An excellent question! You have many options. You may spend one point to unlock a random ability from either of your classes. Alternatively, you could rank up one of your existing skills, or save points until you have five points to increase a stat point by one!”
Wyn considers her options. With two points, she could either save the points for later, upgrade her two crude rarity abilities, learn two new random abilities, or could save them for later. It’s a tough decision, so while she weighs her options, she looks at her stats. Using her basic insight on them, she’s able to learn more about each of them.
Statistic: Strength
Current Value: 9
Determines how much damage the player can do with physical weapons
“Psai, would increasing my strength make my skill with a dagger better?” Wyn asks.
“An excellent question! No. Because daggers are a finesse weapon, strength does not increase them, but agility does.
Considering that Wyn is a mage, she doesn’t anticipate putting many of her limited level points into Strength.
Statistic: Endurance
Current Value: 8
Determines a player’s stamina and hitpoint regeneration rate.
Endurance, pretty self explanatory. Wyn figures she’ll put some points into endurance at some point; it isn’t her first priority. Mages are almost always glass cannons, built to deal lots of damage but not to take it. Though Wyn’s class is far from normal, so she may allocate points into endurance sooner rather than later.
Statistic: Toughness
Current Value: 10
Determines the player’s total hit point maximum, and resistance to certain damage types.
“What damage types would I be more resistant to?” asks Wyn.
“That depends,” says Psai. “Some classes provide specific damage resistances. Toughness will make you more resistant in general to damage.”
“Then why does it say ‘certain damage types’ in the description?”
When Psai’s only response is to hover in the air in front of her, Wyn decides to move on.
Statistic: Agility
Current Value: 10
Determines a player’s speed, and positively impacts the player’s ability to use finesse weapons such as bows, daggers, and rapiers.
Now this is more like it. Speed, daggers, and similar weapons have always been Wyn’s favorite. Thus far, this statistic is Wyn’s favorite.
Statistic: Willpower
Current Value: 14
Determines resistance to mental attacks, and focus on complicated spells
Of all the abilities so far, willpower seems the most useless. Wyn hasn’t had any issues with focusing on her spells so far, and how often will mental attacks come up? Wyn dismisses the window and moves on.
Statistic: Awareness
Current Value: 11
Determines the player’s passive awareness of their surroundings
Yet another ability to bore Wyn. It’s not like she’s some primal hunter, trekking through dark places.
Statistic: Intellect
Current Value 12
Determines the size of a player’s Essentia pool. Additionally, it allows the player to learn more spells, and faster.
. A stat that makes her Essentia pool bigger and allows her to learn more spells? Wyn mocks ringing a bell in midair.
Most of Wyn’s challenges in Eden thus far have stemmed from her small Essentia pool. As it stands, she can only cast two illusions before risking Frostburn. If she could cast more illusions, and consistently cast mage bolts, then she’ll be much stronger. All good things in Wyn’s book. After thinking it over, Wyn finds it surprising that Intellect isn’t her highest stat. The larger the Essentia pool, the bigger the spells, right? Wyn makes a mental note to increase her intellect sooner rather than later.
Statistic: Presence
Current Value: 15
Determines how likely others are to believe the player, and how the player is perceived by others.
Wyn reads the final statistic over a few times. All of the others, even awareness and willpower, had some sort of mechanical benefit. Wyn gags at the thought. In Elysius, Wyn met a man who used a bard class. That man was insufferable, always flinging magical control spells everywhere, forcing people to dance. He was the worst.
Wyn dismisses all the windows and begins pacing the white space. Her eyes drift over the emptiness, but her mind keeps circling back to those numbers. Strength: 9. Willpower: 14. Presence: 15. Something feels wrong, though she can’t quite put her finger on it.
“Psai,” she says finally, “how are these stats decided?”
Psai bobs in the air, his glow steady. They originate from your initial baseline metrics at the time of initiation.”
“Baseline metrics,” she repeats. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Physical measurements, neurological mapping, psychological tendencies, and extrapolated estimations of your real-world condition. These ensure minimal risk of cognitive instability caused by inhabiting a form too dissimilar from your original body.”
“So basically,” Wyn says, rubbing her temples, “they scanned me and turned me into math.”
“Affirmative.”
“That is horrifyingly efficient.” She pauses. “Wait. Did you say neurological mapping? As in, this game scanned my brain?”
“Affirmative. Full neural analysis was necessary to ensure cognitive stability upon transition.”
Wyn blinks. “So my brain, my actual brain, is sitting in some Progenitis server somewhere?”
“Your neural imprint exists as encrypted data within Progenitis Corporation’s highly secure servers, yes.”
“Great.” She gives a dry laugh. “They know where I live, they know what my body looks like, they’ve got a copy of brain. Are they going to think my thoughts for me too? Predict my ideas before I even have them?”
Psai’s glow flickers. “Future cognition is unpredictable. Stored data merely reflects your state upon initiating the Eden system. Full details of the brain scan were included in your welcome packet.”
“Comforting.” She sits down against the nothingness, staring up at the endless white. “Guess that explains the stats, though. Strength, agility, intellect. They’re just… me, in numbers. Which means all my flaws are still baked in.” She snorts. “Figures. Even digital immortality can’t fix low endurance.”
Wyn was never good in gym class; always huffing and puffing in gym class and finishing last. While she didn’t get the best grades, or score exceptionally high on any tests, she always prided herself on being clever. The fact that presence is her highest stat gives her pause. The ability seemed no different from charisma in other games, and that had more to do with how personable you are than anything else. Wyn was social enough, having a handful of friends here and there along the way, but it’s not like she was the popular girl in school, dominating the hallways wherever she went.
“Psai, how was my presence stat determined? Why is it fifteen?”
“An excellent question,” Psai says, before pausing. “I am uncertain how Progenitis determines the presence statistic.”
Wyn rolls her eyes at the floating orb. He dims, and floats a few feet away, clearly upset. Wyn sighs and offers him an apologetic smile.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just… weird, you know? ‘Presence.’ What does that even mean? Charisma? Confidence? Main character energy?”
Psai hums softly, the light of his orb pulsing again. “Presence is loosely defined as the degree to which an entity’s existence influences its surroundings and peers.”
“So… I’m overpowered in ?” Wyn says, arching an eyebrow.
“In less poetic terms, yes.”
She laughs, but the sound fades quickly. “Fifteen though. That’s higher than anything else. I wasn’t exactly the kind of person who commanded a room back home.”
“Statistical measurements may not reflect conscious perception,” Psai replies. “Presence is often informed by subconscious patterns. Others may perceive qualities that you do not.”
“Or,” Wyn says, crossing her arms, “Progenitis just decided to give me the ‘talks too much’ bonus.”
“Unlikely,” Psai says flatly, his orb floating above her, breaking line of sight. Wyn can almost see his nonexistent arms crossing as he avoids eye contact.
Wyn smirks, but the thought lingers. If Presence came from her subconscious, or worse, from Progenitis deciding what she should be, then what did that say about the rest of her stats? Were they really hers, or just numbers tweaked to fit a narrative someone else had written?
For that matter, Progenitis scanned her brain so she could play the game. What do they plan to do with it? Run tests? Make more of her? Edit things? Would she even know?
The thought barely forms before the floor ripples beneath her. The white void begins to fold inward, edges collapsing like a curtain being drawn.
“Psai—”
“Transition sequence initiating,” he says, voice already fading. “Returning consciousness to Eden.”
The light compresses around her, warm and soft, and Wyn’s half-formed question dissolves into static.
