Time left for Tier 1: 6 Days,16 hours.

  I peered around the corner, holding up a hand, signalling to the others to stay back and remain quiet. We had been following the muffled sounds of a couple unknown creatures talking. Marco said it sounded like kobalts to him. Apparently they had a snake like language, lots of S’s and what sounded like tongue wagging. Which to me brought to mind the kobalts from D&D. Which then reminded me of the horrifying thought that those guys were usually the minions of a small dragon or drake creature. I was not ready to fight a god damn dragon already. I asked him about this and he seemed confused. Which fair why would an A.I generated NPC know anything about Dungeons and Dragons or the mechanics and troupes that governed it. So I just asked what they look like instead.

  “They look like tiny dragons, but they Don’t spit fire, or fly. They are tricky creatures though. They’re excellent trap makers. Nothing compared to Gremlins or Gnomes, but better than most other creatures.” He had informed me when I started asking him questions about them.

  Gnomes, Gremlins and Kobalts? On a broken down space station. What the fuck is happening in this game. Did someone just chuck in any game information they could find and then have the AI generate a game with no specific parameters to it? There was no rhyme or reason to this game system so far. Feels like someone who had no idea what they were doing put it together.

  What was worse is that TAI had disappeared on me out of nowhere. One second we were heading down another corridor and she was informing me of some other minor details of the trials, when she just Poofed out of existance. It was weird and kind of disconcerting. I was lost for a second but decided I couldn’t wait for her to potentially come back and had decided to continue on with Marco. He wasn’t as informative as TAI but he did know more than I would have originally thought. especially considering what i had assumed his age was.

  Marco looked like he was in his preteens but he spoke with a maturity of a older teen or young adult. I didn’t know if his people just intellectually developed faster or if he just physically matured slower, but I was certain I wasn’t dealing with as young of a child as I had originally thought.

  I took a second look and saw the two stocky lizards talking in their guttural language. I couldn’t understand a single word they we’re saying to each other but it appeared to be the usual crap generic guards would probably be saying. I assumed something about the hierarchy of their group and how shitty it was to be on guard duty. It didn’t matter to me, I just needed to kill these guys so I could get some experience points and level up, maybe get some useful loot off of them if possible. Not to mention the only route to Marco’s Village was this direction and I was locked into that questline now.

  I picked a loose bolt up off the ground under another mess of wires. It came from another panel that had been pulled off the walls and floors. This entire part of the ship or whatever it was we were in, had been cannibalized for something. I took the bolt and threw it across the hallway to the other side. It crashed down the hall making a satisfyingly loud Clanking noise.

  As it ricochetted down the other hallway, I recognized the all too familiar sounds of the guards being alerted to the clanking, and the inevitable squabbling of the two deciding who had to go check it out. It went on for a good minute or so. I could hear them pushing eachother and clanking their armor. until, finally the voices died down and I could hear one of them surrender and start the humiliating walk down the hallway towards the distraction. I braced myself up against the wall to hide as best as I could manage. He continued to walk towards me, no caution to him as he strode towards my impending ambush. he was making a show of not being worried to show his buddy there was nothing to worry about. I was hopefully waiting far enough to be out of earshot of the second guard.

  He leisurely came around the corner and I immediately snagged him by his collar. He was wearing what appeared to be makeshift armor made from metal panels and lengths of wire. This was apparently where atleast some of the ships innards had been disappearing to. The Kobalts were recycling it to craft rudimentary armor and weapons from it. I saw his, for lack of a better word, sword was also crafted from the ship. It was less a real crafted sword and more a panel of the hallway cit into a blade shape, sharpened mediocrely and the handle was wiring insulation wrapped tight. I started worrying about getting some kind of infection. The armor was rusting on the edges and even had a few holes through out the chest piece. I could see the brown discoloration around the edges and the weird green scaly skin of the Kobalt through them.

  I pulled as hard as I could against the stunted dragon and threw him to the ground, as he landed I mounted his torso and pressed my pipe perpendicular to his throat pressing down as hard as I could. Attempting to both keep him silent and choke him to death. It was almost working, he kept letting out little sounds that I was praying weren’t audible to the other guard. I applied as much force as I could muster, willing my arms and body to push harder and harder down on his tough exterior. I started making progress, the pipe started sinking closer and closer to the floor. I could hear the blood in my ears as all my focus was in that pipe. Slowly, slowly sinking down, closer and closer, almost there. I could feel the Kobalts strength leaving its body as it tired against me and it’s fight for survival faulted.

  I felt two things simultaneously, my hands hitting the ground as I finally finished the thing off, and then a searing heat rip across my back. I looked up where the heat had dissipated and saw the other guard standing over me, sword raised and ready to come down on me. I started to panic, shit I wasn’t quiet enough and now I’m dead. It hasn’t even been a day and I’ve already fucked up and am going to die.

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  In the middle of my freakout I realized the Kobalt wasn’t attacking me. Then I noticed the hole in their chest. The hole was ringed in scorch marks, and a smell of cooking flesh (specifically it smelled like some poorly fried Alligator, trust me I’m from the dirty part of Florida I know what cooked gator smells like).

  I looked around in fear, oh fuck what kinda fire demon bullshit was I about to have to deal with now. I thought TAI said I’d cry for my mama a few times not become the center piece of an all you can eat dungeon style Bar-B-Que.

  I looked back down the hall from where the fireball had to have come from, and in my astonishment and then relief, Marco stood there shock on his face as well and a smoking palm out stretched towards where I was currently freaking the fuck out.

  Unfortunately I didn’t get to really unpack the fact that i had a long range arsonist on my team, as the second Kobalt wasn’t actually dead yet. He looked down at his own smoldering cavity where his chest plate use to exist and then looked at me. A new resolve to absolutely kill me and then the pyrotechnic Incubi that stood behind me flashed across his face. Fortunately for Marco I wouldn’t let that happen. Without even thinking, I quickly stood up swinging my pipe one handed to block his still raised sword. While my other hand dug into the wretched smelling crater of living potluck and grabbed at a chunk of ready to eat flesh. I grabbed something I assumed would be important and yanked as hard as I could. I came away with something moving, beating would be the better word for it really. I looked down at it and so did the Kobalt, I don’t know who realized it first me or him, but I was holding his heart. I ripped this dudes still beating heart from his chest, what the actual fuck was I doing. I raised the charred heart to my mouth and took a bite. we locked eyes for half a second and he dropped dead to the floor.

  “Pew, oh god that guy tasted horrible” I said after spitting the chunk of meat out of my mouth. “Could use some barbecue sauce or something. Marco you had the heat way to high, gotta let meat like that simmer for a few hours not try to roast it all at once like that. Also, and I can not emphasis this enough, when the actual fuck were you going to tell me you could throw god damn fire balls?” I asked him as I started walking back towards him back down the hall standing just outside the room he was suppose to be hiding in during me taking out the Kobalts. I got about half way to him when I felt a weird tingle through my body and I noticed I was starting to glow a weird bright green. “Umm, am I radioactive now or something?” before he answered I saw a flashing exclamation mark in my top right peripheral of my vision.

  I mentally thought about clicking it and a window came up in my vision as I heard TAI respond. She popped up out of nowhere and started talking like she had never left.

  “Congratulations Voyager, you have officially leveled up for the first time ever. You now get to learn about Attributes and the mechanics attributed to them. Fun fact, about thirty percent of Voyagers never hit this part of the Trials before they meet their inevitable ends. So, you’re atleast better than them for sure now.” She cheerfully informed me. It seems like the personality adjustments I had given her before had been reset somehow while she was gone. Weird.

  The menu I was looking at was very familiar but still unique to anything I had ever used in an actual game before.

  “You can now distribute a point into one of your core Attributes, choose wisely this will be how you begin to craft your build. It also means your HUD will be populated with more information.” As she said this I noticed I had a new bar appear above the other three. I focused on it the same way I did for my mini map, making it stay in place as I examined it. It was purple and it was completely full. I could see the words level Up across it in shimmering letters. Apparently I now had an experience bar.

  Being a life long gamer I instantly recognized the usefulness of this new bar. I could track how my progress was going towards another level up. It also meant I had a level up to use right now. Leveling seemed to come with just one thing, a attribute point.

  “Alright, so what do I do with this new point and what do these Attributes even mean. There is only three of them? What do they govern?” I asked TAI.

  The ground around me shook from a massive impact and I fell back on my ass as Gary, the large lion man, appeared out of no where directly in front of me.

  “Don’t ask her, this is my job.” He pushed TAI out of the way and launched into his speech “You just earned yourself an attribute point. You will get one every time you level up, and only one. There is very few ways to get a full attribute point in the Trials. Leveling up is the most common way to do so. Some items you loot from enemies will also give you designated attribute increases but usually the lower level magic items raise the skills governed by the attributes but not the core three themselves.” He launched into his explanation, in the flourish of a salesman who has memorized his sales pitch to the tee.

  “Now your first question is probably why only three attributes? Most games have more and that’s true. We don’t care here tho. You have three, get over it. You have Physical which will be the most straight forward, Mental which is not referring to the fact your going crazy but we will get there, and then Ethereal. Ethereal is for all the mystic shit in your life, and trust me there is a lot of it now.” He blew through this leaving me barely keeping up.

  “I just got done killing a tiny dragon, can you slow down a little I’m barely keeping up”

  “Are you keeping up tho?” He retorted

  “Technically yeah, three attributes. Physical, mental, ethereal. They all handle specific things. Right?”

  “Yeah, you’re doing fine. Now as I was saying. Physical is probably the most important to you right now, but you need to think of where you want to go with this build. More power and health may be ideal today is it worth sacrificing magic or charisma later? that will be up to you. Now step into this room so we can get into it better.” He motioned towards the room that TAI and Marco were still hanging around in the doorway of.

  I nodded in agreement, partially due to being lost in thought, and stepped through the door. Looking back at Marco I said “We will get into you throwing a fireball at me when I’m done with this.” I pretended to say it like a stern parent, then broke into a big grin to show him I was just kidding.