Dummy's Guide to the Abyss. Part 2

“What are you looking at?” Qhila was looking confusedly from John’s face to the spot on the wall that John seemed to be looking at, since she couldn’t see the Achievement window.

“... I think The Developer just claimed to be the Supreme Deity…” John responded, with audible uncertainty.

“What?”

“Uh, well… Long story short, my magic makes things work like I’m in a video game. HP, experience points, skills, quests, achievements, the whole nine yards. It’s come with some commentary from some entity that appears to have either made the system or holds influence over it, whom I’ve thought of as ‘The Developer’, and I just got an achievement that all but says outright that The Developer is the Supreme Deity.” John scratched the back of his head, feeling sheepish. The whole thing sounded ridiculous to him when he said it out loud.

“.... That would probably have made some kind of sense if I was familiar with video games. But you’re saying you have been communicating with something claiming to be the Supreme Deity?” John had expected Qhila to respond with more doubt than she did. Then again, it could’ve all been in her tone and thus indecipherable as such to him.

“I think this might be easier if I show you… If I can. Can I take a minute to figure that out?”

Qhila made a gesture that John interpreted to mean ‘go ahead’, or something along those lines. So he opened his Settings and started looking for something about visibility for others. He didn’t find exactly what he was looking for, but he did find a toggle for his windows being visible to party members. That sent him looking for a party interface and finding nothing. At which point he decided to just try to think a command at his ‘system’. ‘Invite Qhila to my party’.

“Scalerot!!!” The expletive was immediately followed by a thud and a clattering as Qhila toppled backwards off her stool. All of this had happened in response to the window that had appeared in front of her, visible to both her and John, inviting her to join ‘Unnamed Party’.

“Sorry. I really should’ve expected that and warned you…” John got up to help Qhila back on her feet.

Once back on her stool, Qhila examined the window with an expression that went back and forth between caution and curiosity. “You made this?”

“Kinda.” John sat down again as well. “The way it works is, I mentally input one command, it does one thing. I input a different command, it does a different thing. I input an invalid command, it does nothing. In order to show you the rest, you need to be in my party, so I told it to invite you, and well…” He gestured at the window.

“Okay…” Qhila raised her hand and moved it towards ‘accept’ on the window, but stopped halfway. “If I want to leave the party later, can I do so?”

John nodded. “I haven’t used the party function here before, but there will definitely be a way to. There is a small chance I have to remove you from the party, but in that case all you need to do is ask.”

“Okay.” She nodded and accepted the invitation with no further reservations. Her addition to the party immediately added HP and MP bars above her head, as well as next to a small image of her face in the left side of John’s HUD. He could also see a small Buff Icon identical to the Babel Incense one in his own Buff line. It also added a Party Chat.

What followed was John walking Qhila through the elements in her own, more limited, HUD as well as the associated game elements like HP and EXP. It was abundantly clear that she did, indeed, have no prior experience with RPG mechanics. She caught on quickly, though.

“So you’re telling me, I fill up that bar by defeating things and when it’s full I suddenly become more powerful in one go? And also that all injuries vanish and my mana reserves refill?” Qhila looked at him like she thought he was pulling her leg.

“Well, I mean, probably. I got my HP and MP restored to full from leveling up when the Rat Ogre died. I didn’t get any power out of it yet, but that’s probably a bookkeeping thing. How much of that applies to someone else leveling up, I won’t know until it happens.”

“A bookkeeping thing?” She still looked like she expected a punchline to drop any minute. Maybe sounded a bit too, but John wasn’t sure if he was actually getting a handle on tone in her language or just imagining it.

“Yeah. Usually, when the power from a level up doesn’t come right away, it’s because there are choices about the level up to be made, like if you want to develop your offense or defense. Once you make the choices, you get the power boost.”

Qhila shook her head. “That’s crazy. Sure, Late Bloomers often have unusual abilities, but this is just…”

John kinda wanted to know what she had meant by ‘Late Bloomers’, but more than that he wanted to prove that he wasn’t being a goof. Sure, he might not know much of anything about magic. But his magic worked like a video game, and he definitely knew about those. “Okay, that does it. I’m finishing my level ups right now.”

Without waiting for objections from Qhila, he tapped the small, golden plus sign next to his EXP bar, which brought up his Character Sheet.

At this point, it dawned on him that he was showing a girl his Libido stat. Not only that, he was showing her that it was his second highest stat. Feeling heat rush to his cheeks, he nevertheless pressed on. With a bit of luck, she didn’t know the word in English, and fortunately the Babel Incense didn’t translate text. Plus, the sheet was currently mirrored from her point of view, so even if she knew the word, she might not be able to read it like that, depending on her level of comfort with the Latin alphabet.

He had already decided that he was going to start with shoring up his weaknesses. The Rat Ogre hadn’t really changed that plan, only shown that he should probably prioritize the physical ones first. Raising his charisma would do him no good if the next Abyssal monster he ran afoul of ate him. So he put 4 in each of STR and END and 2 in CHA, and selected the ‘Assign’ button.

John didn’t feel different in the slightest, which made it extremely anticlimactic. At least until he saw Qhila’s expression. She had gone so wide-eyed, she almost could’ve passed for an owl-type monster girl instead of a kobold. So he looked back down at himself, looked at his arm and waved it a little around. Sure enough, it had gained a little muscle tone and his shirt felt very mildly tighter. It was very minor changes, though, especially considering that he had just increased both STR and END by half their original value. He hadn’t really expected to suddenly grow so buff his shirt ripped, though he had to admit that a small part of him had hoped so. And this was far enough in the opposite direction that it seemed very underwhelming. Apparently, the effect was almost entirely in terms of performance.

“You have no bloody idea what you just did, do you?” She looked completely off balance.

“Uh, I leveled up?” Even though that was literally what he had just done, he had a feeling that wasn’t the answer Qhila was looking for.

“No. Yes. I mean, you said it was an input-output system of some sort. The inputs, and how things appear to you, can be more or less whatever, I guess. The output, the actual thing your Innate Ability does, has to be a real thing, and it has to obey the Laws of Magic. ‘Leveling up’ isn’t a real thing.”

“Well, obviously. I don’t know then, since I’ve only known about magic at all since this morning.” John couldn’t help but sound a bit annoyed at that. “Besides, if The Developer is the Supreme Deity, couldn’t she just make Leveling Up a real thing in my case, Laws of Magic be damned?”

Gaia: I could. I wouldn’t. And supposing that I would alter the fundamental principles of existence for your specific, personal sake, after you’ve had powers for all of 7 hours, is some next level “I am the main character of Reality”-syndrome.

Awkward silence followed. Awkward for John at least, as he had no idea what Qhila was thinking about that message, she just looked contemplative. John didn’t know how to proceed from there, and just focused on trying to send apologetic and ashamed thoughts at The Developer/Gaia.

In the end, it was Qhila who ended that long moment. “You transmuted yourself.”

“What?” that seemed to John like a complete non-sequitur.

“The output of leveling up. You transmuted yourself. And transmuting is a specific term, it’s more than just changing something into something else with magic for a limited time or even indefinitely with a sustained spell. Transmuting is changing something’s Essential Nature. Altering, at the most fundamental level, what something is. Transmuting is very advanced magic, too. Most of the people who can do it at all need preparations, spell foci, an extended process and a lot of mana. Doing it quickly and unassisted, like you just did, is beyond what most people can ever learn.”

“Really?!?” That revelation was naturally exciting for John. It was kinda like learning that you had figured out one of the cornerstones of a top tier game strategy while you were just messing around trying to learn the basics.

“Well, I would need some lab equipment I don’t have in order to be completely certain, but as best I can tell without it, yes.”

“Awesome!”

“Absolutely. If I prepare some tests, can I do a-” Qhila was looking very excited until she stopped herself, frowning. “No, that’s not good. You’re in too much danger to delay growth for my sake.”

That took the wind out of John’s sails as well. “I’m in danger? How? Why?”

“Because you’re a Late Bloomer. Which I realize needs some context.”

She paused briefly, then continued, “Almost everyone can learn some form of magic, whether it’s elementalism, spirit channeling, martial arts or something else. It’s a matter of training, and training in whatever suits you. Then there are some people who have Innate Abilities. They can be anything from an affinity and intuition for some subset of magical works, say fire magic, through allowing a magical effect to be efficient that couldn’t possibly be made feasible without the ability, to an odd system that self-transmutes. In other words, they run the gamut from simple to complex and from minor tricks to immensely powerful.”

After John nodded to indicate that he was following, she continued, “Most people with Innate Abilities have it from at least one of their parents. That doesn’t mean the details of the ability are inherited, mind you, just the possibility of having one. Parents with an Innate Ability for pyromancy and leg-centered Martial Arts, for instance, can have a child that’s an Innate Telepath. In any case, people who get it from ancestry manifest their ability fairly young. Demihumans generally manifest somewhere between learning to walk and the onset of puberty.”

John was beginning to see why someone like him was called a ‘Late Bloomer’. How it tied in with him being in danger, he still couldn’t see. In any case, Qhila continued after another short pause, “Then there are some who develop an Innate Ability spontaneously. Nobody knows why it happens, or how frequently. But it happens almost exclusively to mundanes. It happens in the person’s late teens or early to mid twenties, hence the term ‘Late Bloomer’. A big part of the reason no one knows how often it happens is that most of them don’t make it past the first few weeks or months.”

‘Well, shit.’ Qhila was briefly pausing again, presumably to give him time to ‘digest’ the information. This time, John felt an illogical urgency about hearing the rest, and almost snapped the moment she fell quiet, “Why?”

“Because they get either killed or enslaved. The mundane world is a very nice, safe place and Late Bloomers come into the Abyss with no connections and no idea what they’re dealing with. That makes them easy prey for whoever can find them. Most of the slaves end up either stuck in a mana factory or used as fuel for magic works that drain life, fracture the soul or worse. The lucky slaves end up bound to the service of a guild by magically enforced contracts, brain washing or both. The silver lining is that the few that either avoid that fate or escape their enslavement later usually grow powerful fast. And as I mentioned earlier, they usually have very odd Innate Abilities.”

“Well, then I’m very lucky that you’re the first Abyssal I meet,” John half-joked to try to blunt the barbs of what that meant to his future. On the topic of which, there was another tangent he could poke at before looking ahead. “Actually, do the Late Bloomers that stay both free and alive have odd abilities and fast growth because that makes them better at staying free and alive, or is that just all Late Bloomers in general?”

“I don’t think anyone actually knows. Maybe it’s a bit of both?” Qhila looked thoughtful for a moment, then refocused on exactly the matter John was trying to put off. “In any case, you’re going to need a plan. Continuing to rely on luck is a bad idea.”

At this point, John would have liked to say something smooth about his luck leading him to Qhila. On the other hand, perhaps it was best not to seem like he wasn’t taking the problem seriously. “Yeah, a plan sounds like a good idea. Which is part of why I wanted you to tell me what I’m dealing with in the first place.”

“Good.” Qhila made an approving nod and carried on. “As far as I can tell, you have 3 options. Your aura is still weak enough that it’s impossible to tell the difference between you and a mundane when you aren’t using magic, so you can go back to mundane life and stay away from anything Abyssal. That’s definitely the safest option. Or you can scout out the local guilds and choose one to join. The smaller ones probably can’t even put you in a contract that can still bind you when you’re fully developed, but they come with the risk that they’re beaten by a bigger guild who can. The larger ones will probably give you a better deal if you’re smart about contacting them than they would if you fell into their lap, and even if not, you still chose where you end up. Finally, you can try to keep your head down and stay unnoticed while developing your abilities and skills, until you’re too powerful to be an easy mark.”

Qhila had barely finished talking when a window popped up.