Fractured World 009 (Patreon)

“Live young?” Dal asked.

“Of course they’re alive,” Allakor replied.

“Not born in eggs?”

“Eggs? No, they are born from mothers and they grow up.”

“Okay, how long for gestation.”

“One full sun.”

“How long to speech?”

“One full sun.”

“How long to reproductive age?”

“Nine red stars,” the Cuthoma responded.

“What’s that mean? How long is a day on your planet? How many days in what you consider a year or a rotation around your sun?”

“One day and one night are one red star,” Allakor said.

Dal frowned. “Okay, let me see. So I’m guessing that one full sun means literally that, a full period where the sun is out. Is your planet tidally locked?” Dal asked. “Is the sun for a long time and dark for an equally long time?”

“Not really dark,” Allakor said. “The Golden Feathered fills the sky even during the Dark.”

“Describe this Golden Feathered.”

“It is like those little specks in the sky at night here,” Allakor said. “But much bigger, fills half the sky. Gold like sunlight, with swirls of white crossing it. The Elder say those are the messages from the Golden Feathered and they spend lifetimes deciphering it.”

“Okay, you’re from a tidally locked world around what sounds like a gas giant. Your sun is not red, so what is the red star?”

“During the Dark, a red star is seen and it lights up the sky for ten strikes,” Allakor said.

“Okay, what is a strike?”

“The Temple Priests strike the great gongs at intervals,” he said. “It tells us how much time has passed and how long before the sun returns.”

“So its a kind of clock, determining how long your wake and sleep period is?”

“Yes,” Allakor said after a moment. “This place is almost a strike from one sunrise to the other. The Elders cannot understand it very well, but the younger ones get it.”

“So a strike is about a day,” Dal scribbled it. “How many strikes in a red star?”

“Three hundred strikes,” Allakkor replied.

“So that’s three hundred days a year, about one fifty a sun and one fifty a night?” Dal asked and Allakor nodded. “How old are you?”

“Why so many questions about sun, stars, and strikes?” Allakor asked. “Too many questions. Elders don’t like too many questions. To question angers the Golden Feathered. Might bring devastation on all of the people. ”

“Just humor me, okay? I just want to know about your people.”

Allakor clacked his beak. “I am eleven red stars old,” he said.

“Oof, that makes you nine years old on my world. Barely out of diapers and defiantly not cool to make babies with,” Dal said. “How long does your people live for?”

“Two hundred red stars, usually.”

“Wow, really? Thats far longer than my people live,” Dal mused. “One live child per mother or multiple births?”

“Two,” Allakor said and looked away.

Dal watched the Cuthoma as he picked at the T-shirt he was wearing. Baby clothes hadn’t fit him, but there had been some toddler clothing and one had been a Star Trek science officer T-shirt. Dal wanted a shirt in his size. He sighed.

“There are always two births. Ever since the Hero Twins slayed the Night Wraith.”

Dal wrote that down. Religion? History?

“How many children would a single female have in their lifetime?” Dal asked. He was already doing the math and the numbers were climbing with each generation.

“Until they have a male.”

“Until they had a male? How’s that?”

“We do not know. If a female gives birth to a male, then she cannot have any more children.”

“That’s weird,” Dal muttered. “So on average, how many clutches does a female produce?”

Allakor clacked his beak. “Samira said you would show me magic. That you would tell me how this System works and how it would better my people,” he said.

“Is that what you’re looking for? Power?” Dal asked. “Do you want to get stronger physically or mentally? You’re a type of outcast aren’t you? Are you looking for revenge?”

“Revenge?” the Cuthoma hissed. “We are lost in a strange and cold world. I do not seek revenge, Trader Dal. I seek what I can do for my people now. “ He looked down at his small hands, clenching and unclenching them. “Females can hold off on having children. They can serve their time as soldiers, builders, craftspeople, when they accept the Change and walk upon the Path. Once they are ready, they find a bondmate and seek a male to have children with.” Allakor gave a human like sigh. “Men who decide to accept the Change, they cannot be anything else anymore. We do not revert back to being fully male, we will never father children. If we are truly stuck on this world, then I can never help increase our population. Only two other males arrived to this world in the temple. They are old and they were being treated for illness. No one knows if they will live or if they will be able to produce more children.

“If I were a real male, then at least the food I was fed would be for something. At least the breath I breathed would not be wasted.” Allakor looked at Dal. “I am useless,” he said. “I have been told so by many of the Mothers and those upon the Path. So I leave and hopefully that allows a few more days of food for the others.”

Dal watched the small Cuthoma as he picked at a packet of peanuts. Allakor looked down at it and set it aside.

“You have Changed,” Dal said. ‘But you don’t have a Path?”

Allakor clacked his beak. “Mock me too, Trader Dal?”

“No, just asking. What Path are you seeking?”

Allakor raised both palms upward, in a Cuthoma shrug. “None of the Path walkers would teach me a trade. I was chased from my village and that is why I was in the temple. The magistrate wanted to kick me out of the city, but the Templars say the all are offered sanctuary inside the Golden Feathered’s temples, for as long as they want. But not even they would allow me to study, to pray, to help in deciphering the Golden Feathered’s messages.”

“I don’t know much about magic and the mana of this world,” Dal said. “But I’m hiring an assistant, want to apply for the position?”

***

Allakor Vos Delkoma

Health: 1

Regeneration: 1

Toughness: 1

Heart: 2

Perception: 1

Knowledge: 1

Insight: 1

Wisdom: 1

Perks:

Path Not Taken I

Dal looked at Allakor’s stats and pursed his lips. Besides Heart and the special Perk that he couldn’t find in the catalog, Allakor was a blank slate. He’d been sheltered within the temple like many of the other Cuthoma, therefore he had no mana and no stones.

From what Dal had gathered, no one knew what to do with the messages, stats, or even what the stones and mana were. They treated it as the K’Thari had done, as messages from demonic beings seeking to destroy them. From the weird dream that Dal had seen when Samira and he arrived; that assumption might be true.

The Dirty Dozen, fucker-uppers of worlds.

Allakor had filled him in on the history of his people. Mainly they were low iron age, somewhere around early Roman or other people. They had iron, but it was expensive, they knew to mine it, they did so and they had plenty of wealth. They were a fairly peaceful people, not much in the way of international conflicts.

With Pathed females being roughly forty pounds and at the largest, three feet tall, Dal wasn’t able to imagine what kind of fighting force that would be. The Cuthoma were fast, agile, and fairly light weight. They weren’t creating phalanxes or sheildwalls in wars.

Instead the Cuthoma homeward was more vertical, as trees towered nearly half a mile into the sky and most people lived in high rises built upon trunks of massive trees. They used the massive trees as the support structure of their homes and it kept them cool in during the Sun and warm during the Night. A type of bioluminescence took over when the Night arrived, providing warmth and light for the long Dark.

Dal shook his head, focusing back upon Allakor.

“Alright,” he said. “I’m strapped for mana and any kind of stones. To gather that, we’ll need to do a little expedition and some meditating. We’ll need to power level you a bit, get some of those blue skills up and purchase you some perks. The easiest way I can think of is collecting more mana flakes and then mediating in the dungeon.”

Allakor bobbed his head up and down. “What are mana flakes and what is a dungeon?”

“Come, my little apprentice. I shall show you how we gain power here.”

***

Dal had watched some gold panning videos as he was bored about five fifths of the time working at Store UR Hoard. No one cared, no one really came in to rent a unit, and as long as he kept things clean he could do what he wanted.

The creek was cold and the mud seemed to seep into every crevice of Dal’s body. He washed out another large bowl of mud and clay, catching the tiny glimmer of the mana flake. The flakes didn’t give off any light nor were they easier to spot in dimmer lighting, the glow they gave off was more a sense or intuition. Dal suspected the Magic Sense translated that into a glow he could see, but no one else could.

Allakor sat on the low limb of a purple tree, his large owl eyes scanning everything. It was a bit disturbing when Dal realized Allakor could turn his head into an almost 360 degree arc. He had spent the better part of two hours watching Dal and trying to figure out what he was doing, but as he didn’t have Magic Sense, all he saw was Dal separating semi translucent bits of rock from the ground.

“Its an odd thing,” Dal said. “Although the mana flakes are comparatively light when I handle them, they seem to be very dense when suspended in water. I’m not entirely sure if its similar to gold, but if they are alike, then the mana flakes would settle into nooks and crannies, and areas not heavily disturbed by water flow.”

“The Gold Path,” Allakor said. “Many mine in the Ever Changing Mountains to the north of the Valley of Black Rains.”

“Magic here is an odd thing. The Scotty Beams are some kind of magical teleporter and we are affected by them. I’ve been knocked down, slightly stunned, and could feel a force emanating from it. Yet everything else, buildings, plants, and machinery are not affect.”

Allakor pondered this. “Then mana can only be felt by living things, us?” he asked.

“That’s the theory. It’s the same as these mana flakes. They seem have odd characteristics to them. They’re heavy, but they’re not. Samira brought back some plants that seemed to have some mana qualities to it, so I don’t know if they’re absorbing the mana from these flakes or they’re naturally taking in ambient mana. Either way, the mana flakes drop to the bottom of the creek.”

“If mana changes us, then it must change things too,” Allakor said.

“Right. All living things might be changing due to mana.”

“Then would these… Scotty Beams be bringing in mana?” Allakor asked.

“Good question,” Dal responded. “When the beams eventually dissipate, there is a large amount of actual mana suspended in the air. It too eventually dissipates, but I don’t know if its due to just devolving into ambient mana or its being sucked up by other things.”

Dal hissed and set aside a small flake of mana. Allakor peered at it, but his eyes he could see no difference between it and the other oddities in the water.

“So this mana might be a different kind of mana or a different state of mana. A solid compared to a gas.”

Allakor gave a shrug. “But you say that you can make mana crystals, when you gain mana,” he said.

“True.”

“Then what is the difference between that and this?” he asked.

Dal paused and gave a shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “But that’s the exciting part. I want to find out.”

***

Dungeon Meditation Perk I

200 mana

“I have mana!” Allakor screeched in joy. He hopped around and danced for a moment before looking abashed.

“It seems you too can mediate inside the dungeon,” Dal said. He scribbled some notes down and used the translator charm to gauge if its brightness had dimmed. He had gained four hundred mana in the same time period that Allakor had. It seemed that the minimum the could receive in mana was 100, with a minimum meditation time of ten minutes.

The difference in their meditation gains proved their was a different factor involved in it. Samira had trouble meditating, but Allakor seemed a natural to it. He claimed he had watched many of the Templars doing it and had copied them in his stay there, with hopes of becoming one of them.

Was it body mass? Dal wondered, but shook his head. Perhaps it was the different in blue skills. Dal wrote down a note.

“I can make a red stone now,” Allakor said.

“You need two reds and two blues to make a purple,” Dal replied. “So more meditating.”

Allakor clacked his beak. “I spend all day meditating?” he asked.

“You could, but I’m not sure how much exhaust mana is in this room.”

“Exhaust mana from killing core monsters,” Allakor said, looking at the melted core.

“Yup.”

“If we destroy core, will we get mana?”

“Best pack away that thought, Al,” Dal said sternly. “No one is destroying that core.”

Allakor peered at Dal and gave him a human nod. “As you say, Trader Dal.”

Dal frowned. The stupid Trader title had stuck after Garran had first called him that then had informed Allakor that was his name. He hadn’t said anything because it didn’t seem like a big deal, but now it was becoming bothersome.

“Think of it this way. If you have something that will give you a thousand mana a day by feeding it rocks, but will give you immediately ten thousand mana if you kill it. Would you kill it or keep it?”

Allakor pondered the question. “Core will live for many red stars,” he said, eventually. “Three hundred thousand in one red star, only ten thousand in one day and no more.”

“Yeah,” Dal said.

“I understand,” Allakor said. “Do not eat all the grain today, when you can plant tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Dal said, smiling.

They settled back down into meditating.

***

Dal looked at the translator charm and nodded to himself. It had dimmed to the point he couldn’t tell the difference between its glow in the core room and the exterior room.

“I think we’ve sucked this room dry,” Dal said, stretching. His back was a bit sore and his ass was aching. His phone claimed he had been meditating for nearly seven hours.

Seven hours and twelve thousand mana.

Dal felt weary, not exhausted. Liked he had been doing some minor chores for a long time. He wasn’t entirely sure what Dungeon Purification entailed, but it was giving him mana. Besides the boredom, aching back, and slight chill from the cool dungeon, it was worth it. He would had to have killed nearly five hundred iron birds to collect that much mana.

A grin spread across Dal’s face.

The experiment also showed that Dal gained twice the mana than Allakor while meditation. He still hadn’t figured out why yet, but his best guess was their stat difference. Dal’s blues stats were mostly on their second rank, but Allakor were all ones.

Dal had amassed 8000 mana while Allakor managed 4000.

Dal scribbled on his notepad, calculating.

“I think a third of the mana that’s been given to the dungeon is being used to heal itself. The other two thirds are used to create defenders,” Dal said. “I’m not entirely sure how loot calculates into this. Samira’s Hunter Perk allows her to gain twice as much mana as I would when killing the Core Guards, but does that mana come from the dungeon or from ambient mana or even this exhaust mana?” Dal tapped his pen against the paper.

“What shall I do?” Allakor asked.

“That’s up to you,” Dal said. “You earned that four thousad mana and you can do with it whatever you want. Boost your health, buy Perks, you name it.”

Allakor blinked at him.

“I wish to become your apprentice,” he said.

“I’m not much of a Teacher,” Dal said. “In fact, Samira has that Perk.”

“I understand, but you seem to know much about this even if your world had no magic. I just… I just can’t understand some of this.”

“In time, you’ll learn. I’ve just benefitted from a extremely wide education base and some niche hobbies and interests that turned out to be somewhat useful here.”

“Education,” Allakor said. He clacked his beak. “The Templars sought out knowledge, about the Golden Feathered. The rich sought of knowledge about how to amass more wealth. But no none would teach a male anything more than how to best groom their feathers and how to sing.”

“So what do you want, Al?”

“I want to know this magic, how to harness it. I want to grow stronger and wise. I want to help my people survive this catastrophe we have been thrown into.”

“Think on what you want and we can make a chart to see how much work will be needed to get to that point,” Dal said, getting to his feet. “But there’s not rush right now. Think it over, because once you’ve spent the mana, there’s no getting it back.”

Allakor nodded.

“Now that we’ve drained the core room, there’s something I’ve been meaning to do. We need to begin feeding the dungeon extra copies of things we have, so that it can eventually recreate them for us.”

“I understand, but I also do not understand,” Allakor said as he followed Dal out of the dungeon. “But I will do as you say, Trader Dal. I shall help and I shall learn.”

***

Dal pushed the loaded pallet cart toward the dungeon. Behind him Allakor pushed another cart. For a small monkey bird, he had a large amount of strength for his size.

“We’ll place these here and toss in the stuff. Well, not really toss, but place them in the dungeon. If I’m right, then eventually the dungeon will be able to recreate these items. If not… then these are just extras we don’t really need.”

“Your craftspeople are wonderful,” Allakor said, holding up a souvenir plate with horses on it. He then picked up a blanket and ran his fingers along the cloth. “So much wealth.”

“Science and industry,” Dal said. “When you can get machines to begin doing more of the physical labor, then you free up your time and are able to do other things. In your city, how many farmer, hunters, or people were devoted to generating food?”

Allakor thought for a long moment. “Too many. Sixty thousand in the Grand City, but countless thousands more farming and growing.”

“Back on our world, it used to be about nine farmers to generate enough food for one non-farming profession. That’s how it was for thousands of years, until people began making better plows, better tools, and eventually machines to do more work, freeing up more labor to do more things.” Dal gestured to the brightly colored children’s toys. “Eventually you can make things like that.”

Allakor nodded slowly. “I think I understand,” he said.

“Alright, let’s toss this stuff and we can begin allocating stones,” Dal smiled.

He unlocked the garage room and with a grunt, pulled it open.

For a moment, Dal was confused by the sight before him. He had been in and out of the dungeon so many times he had begun to not really see the entrance in detail. It was a large room made of trash walls that were Samira’s Ex’s stuff.

Twelve goblins stood before Dal, all armed.

“Oh, shit,” Dal said.

The first goblin rushed him, spear lowered.