Slumrat Rising

Welcome, Truth Medici, to the System Astrologica.

Welcome to the tutorial.

Tutorial Mission #1: Exit the field and rejoin your family to celebrate this incredible achievement.

Reward: .01 Credit, access to Tutorial Mission #2

Had the System… he thought it said… No, the text was hanging in front of Truth’s eyes. He must have imagined it. And who cares! Time to celebrate with the sibs! At long last. At long long last, he was a true Starbrite Man.

The line for the exit was orderly and moved fairly quickly. There was one last thing to collect on the way out. As the new Starbrite Employees left the field, handsome young men and women attached a pin to their lapel. A single, brilliant, seven pointed star glimmered brightly against a royal blue background. The lapel pin. You couldn’t buy it. You couldn't get one as a gift. If it was stolen, it would disintegrate and permanently mark the thief. The lapel pin said that you weren’t just anybody, you were somebody. Somebody of status, of worth. A Starbrite Man or Woman. Someone who stood above tens of thousands of lower ranked employees. C-Tier and up.

Truth almost cried when the pretty lady smiled politely at him and pinned it on. He did cry when Sophia and his brothers came piling in, hugging the hell out of him.

“Meat! We are going to eat meat! Barbecue pit! Go, go, go! I don’t have a penny on me, and we’re going to eat till we’re sick!” Truth yelled. They didn’t walk, they ran to the street, planning on running to the subway and then home.

“Where are you going? We don’t need the stinking subway!” Truth waved down a flying carpet. There were so many of them around the station they were practically blotting out the sun. They knew what day it was.

“Alright, alright, I’m not deaf!” The cabby laughed and the siblings laughed and they all piled on. The spelled tassels glowed a faint green, as the carpet lifted them up and away. The afternoon passed in a blur of searing meat, smoked meat, sides, pie, ice cream, pie flavored ice cream, and one syrup soaked cherry. For the vitamins.

Truth didn’t know how to deal with all the emotions. They hugged. They cried. Soph cried a lot, but once his stony face broke down, Vig cried the most. Truth squawked when Vigor rubbed his tear and snot covered face against the leg of his best pants, but then shrugged. They were today’s best pants. Tomorrow he will have better pants.

At no point in the celebrations did Truth fish around for his wallet. The glistening lapel pin, with its powerful nest of spells, was all he needed.

The afternoon passed in a blur of too much food and emotions. Eventually they piled back to the apartment, and collapsed. Truth sprawled out on “his” bed, though he suspected Harmony slept there while he was away. Which was fair enough. He felt boneless, but also, gently warm inside. He felt his spell aperture- the “slot.” It felt… not quite full. The System had taken up residence.

Tutorial Mission #1 Complete. Reward: .01 Credit, access to Tutorial Mission 2.

Tutorial Mission #2: Review currently available System functions. Reward: Unlock access to the Spell Store, the Treasure Pavilion, the Mission Hub, your Employee Handbook, Banking.

Truth tentatively willed the Spell Store to open

Before accessing system functions, would you like to activate the anthropomorphic interface system? The system may be turned off at any time.

Truth shrugged. Yes. The System quickly ran him through a seemingly random battery of questions then spun a little seven pointed star in front of his eyes while it worked. In about two seconds, the star spun into a little cotton ball of light, then out popped a pretty little sprite in an office lady outfit. She gave him a polite smile. Truth didn’t know why, but for some reason, his liver hurt.

“Hi, I am your Starbrite System Astrologica anthropomorphic interface! Please do not confuse me as a separate, intelligent being. I am an extension of the spirit that operates the System. If it helps, imagine you had drawn a little smiley face on the tip of your index finger and were doing a puppet show to help your siblings understand their homework.” She renewed her polite smile. The liver pain, and general sense of masculine failure, intensified.

“So, you don’t have a name, or anything?”

“I certainly do!” She sounded cheerful. Then didn’t elaborate. Truth caved first.

“What is your name?”

“I’m afraid you lack the capability to perceive my name being spoken. Of course, “spoken” is a mere human approximation of the communication of meaning involved. This is not a slight…” The sprite hesitated and rephrased. “Not an insult. No human could perceive it, and if you somehow had access to the necessary senses, your brain couldn’t process the information. It would be just static or noise.”

The conversation stalled out again.

“So are you going to introduce the System to me or something?”

“Happy to! I just needed to get that other stuff out of the way first. You would not believe the nonsense I have to deal with otherwise. Someone once promised to liberate me from the System. And marry me. Allow me to remind you of my finger-puppet metaphor. Except, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the System is not, never has been, never will be, remotely human. Or a biological organism of any sort. You have more in common with the dust mites living in your sofa. Clear?”

“Very.” Truth nodded. The hell was a dust mite?

“Don’t worry about the dust mites. Let’s get to the System Functions you have available to you.” She made a “move along” gesture with her hands.

“Let’s start with the “Missions” menu. Will it open, please.” Truth did so.

Missions:

Tutorial missions

Personal Development Mission

Task Specific Missions

Standing Missions

“Don’t open any of the tabs at the moment, or we’ll be here all night. Basically, the fields that populate the Missions menu change contextually. For example, if you were in a firefight, the “Personal Development” missions would be unavailable. On the other hand, you might have a new mission tab marked “Combat” or something similar. It might replace “Task Specific Missions," it might not. “Kill the sniper in the belltower” that sort of thing.”

“Wouldn’t that just be doing my job?”

“Yes and no. Yes, it would be doing your job, but they are specifically rewards for going above and beyond. For example, you could storm the tower and kill your way up in melee. Or you might call in a flying golem to burn out its Fireball fetish blasting the belltower into brick dust. The latter would be far more expensive in terms of company resources, and the collateral damage would be significant.”

“I get it. And Personal Development would be, what, hitting cultivation targets?”

“Exactly. Although in your case, there will be a whole bunch of remedial educational assignments in there. Something like “Memorize the twenty largest countries in the world, their capitals and major exports.””

“Huh.”

“Standing missions are just things like collecting bounties, volunteering so many hours in Starbrite approved charities, that kind of thing. Worth looking through, but frankly, given your assignment to the PMC, they are almost never going to be worth your time.” The sprite shrugged.

“Now that sounds promising.” Truth grinned.

The sprite nodded. “Now, will “Missions” closed and open The Spell Store.”

He did. There was a whole lot of nothing.

“You are confused about the total absence of anything resembling spells. Let me show you how this works.” The sprite floated up alongside where he was hallucinating the menu. She started to point, seemed to remember something, then did a little twirl with sparkling light effects. She ended it in a little half bow, displaying a rather nice figure and pointing at the menu.

In the most patently bored, phony manner possible, she said “Tee. Hee.” Then continued as though nothing had happened.

“Right now, you don’t have any assignments nor full access to the Shop. Therefore, no spells are available to you through the System. However, this is tutorial mission number two, so I am assigning you a job requiring two spells.” Two spells popped up on the menu:

Tutorial Spell: Pointer

Tutorial Spell: Starry Night

“Your assignment is to cast Starry Night, then pop fifty stars with the light from the pointer spell. If you looked in your missions tab, you would see that it had popped up as a mandatory mission. All official assignments do. Anyway, select the Starry Night Spell. And get ready to experience what makes you more than a man.”

Truth eagerly selected Starry Night from the spell list and shuddered as the aperture above his heart suddenly felt comfortably full. Like he had drunk a big cup of hot, but not scalding, soup. He knew how to cast Starry Night. He raised a shaking hand and willed the spiritual template to coalesce. The template drew in the thin cosmic rays in the apartment, then scattered around the ceiling in tiny spellforms. The spellforms drew on their inherent cosmic energy, and the cosmic rays around them, and activated.

The apartment was full of beautiful, seven pointed stars, drifting in delicate nebulae around the light fixtures and bumping off the cheap curtains. It was beautiful. It was magical. And he did it. Nobody else, but Truth. He wiped the tears from his eyes. He had waited so long.

“Good job.” The sprite said softly. “It’s hard to wait a whole year, isn’t it? But it’s worth it. Because now you will see what makes Starbrite a cut above the rest. Eject Starry Night, and select Pointer.”

Truth did so, ignoring the sudden, unpleasantly empty feeling in his aperture. The new spell coming in felt almost indecently comfortable after the unpleasantness.

“Point it at one of the stars.” Truth did. A little green light shot out of his finger and popped a drifting star.

“Congratulations, Truth. You just did the impossible. For anyone else, anyone who isn’t part of the System Astrologica, that would have taken months or years to achieve. Memorizing the spell, learning to force your magic into the necessary templates, to project out the spell forms, to trigger their transformation, all would require months of study. If you are talented. If you are average, it might take a lot longer.”

The sprite looked like she remembered that she was supposed to be acting cute, put a finger on the corner of her mouth and tilted her head sideways. “Tee. Hee.” Then continued as though she had never stopped.

“Not with the System. With the System, whatever spell you need is provided. Want a spell for something not mission-critical? You can pay credits for it. Once you open more apertures, you can start multi-spelling, combining spell effects for extraordinary results. Naturally, the System will help guide you through that too.”

“Now, the System can provide the spells, but it is your job to use them effectively. Get popping those stars.”

With a flat face and in a monotone voice, she “hopped” up on one leg, the other tucking back, her right fist punched up into the air. “Yaah. Fighting.”

“Please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop that. Just… be the best finger puppet you can be. I promise I won’t try to marry you.”

“Thank you. But no. Pop-pop, Mr. Medici.”

He got to popping. It was surprisingly fun.

“And that’s fifty. Out of fifty shots. That’s quite impressive, Mr. Medici, though I suppose it’s to be expected from a Master of Arms. As a bonus for excellence, you are awarded one extra credit.”

“Gosh, thanks.”

“Would you prefer none?”

“I gratefully accept the System’s generosity and wisdom.”

“Oh good. Speaking of credits- go to the Banking Menu.” The sprite waved him along.

Truth opened the Banking tab.

“Pretty basic. You have a sign-on bonus of five thousand credits, plus .01 for completing Tutorial Mission 1, plus 1 from the performance bonus, minus .01 for the cab ride and barbecue dinner. Please note that the actual deduction from your credits for those things is actually less than .01 credits, but for the sake of clarity, the System rounds up in the display. You could eat barbecue every night for a week and that number wouldn’t shift.”

Truth was boggled at that. “Just what is the exchange rate from credits to wen?”

The sprite shrugged. “It’s actually a constantly changing rate, reflecting inflation of both wen and credits, along with a number of other macro and micro economic factors you wouldn’t understand. Again, not an insult, you could learn to understand them, but you haven’t studied economics before so it wouldn’t make sense to you now.”

“Fair. So, my credit balance, then I see tabs for loans, mortgages and all that.”

“Yes, though right now, you are strongly advised against taking out any loans. VERY STRONGLY.” Her voice echoed in his head. “You really, really don’t need them.”

“No fear of that. Let’s move on to the treasure pavilion.”

The sprite smiled predatorily.

“Oh yes. Lets.”

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