Chapter 2: Choices

I woke suddenly with a muted scream covering my mouth with my hands so as not to alert the Sisters or the orderlies. Glancing over to see if Skank was back from his latest excursion, I found myself in an empty room with only a single golden, glowing, baseball sized orb floating in the center. The small room didn’t have any obvious noticeable exits from my brief inspection. Gathering my courage, it seemed that Stoneface wasn’t pulling my leg. Not that I would ever forgive him for throwing me off the top of the Ren Cen.

The massive amount of adrenalin running through me was impairing my thoughts so I sat down, closed my eyes and pictured my last image of the Detroit skyline. The red dotted taillights shot out in glittering rays from the center amidst the darkness. It calmed me.

I’d miss Skank with his black humor and Sister Kate’s own wacky humor too. Few of my classmates would even talk to anyone else from our orphanage. Too many of us had ugly histories and had suffered abuse from the System, resulting us taking out our troubles on the rest of the world and them.

Once I could think clearly again, I looked myself over. I was the same fifteen year-old skinny kid, but the scars from previous abuse that had shown as thin white lines crisscrossing the back of my arms and hands had completely disappeared. Feeling around I couldn’t find any trace of them on my back or legs either. My nose that had been broken four times had also been fixed. Correctly for once. The sandy brown hair which I kept clean shaven for the last three years, had evenly grown out two inches.

Stretching and moving around the ten by ten room to get the blood flowing helped me to consider my situation in a different light. Maybe dying wasn’t all that bad. No, it sucked...

So, this Golden ball is the Core... Menu, I thought to myself, trying out if I could access it silently.

A silver outlined screen opened in front of me telling me to Choose a theme. Nothing else was shown beside a numbered list of options.

A: Necropolis. B: Dwarven Stronghold. C: Greenskin Battlemount. D: Underdark. E: Bestial Habitat. F: Golden Swamps. G: Elemental Plane (Choose one Elemental type) ... The list went over a hundred distinct choices in no particular order that I could discern. Most of my choices looked interesting but I didn’t feel a particular affinity to any specific one of the ones listed. I did like to play games on our old console, but TV time was limited to one hour per day per person. We had tablets that we all were given for school work, but it had been forbidden for us to have games installed on them. Contraband was unthinkable, so no porn either. Which limited my knowledge of the differing fantasy genres, compared to other kids my age.

I pondered about why I had to choose a type of dungeon first. The only thing that made sense was that the rules and points changed based on the type of theme I chose, even going as far as to affect my personal growth not just the Dungeon’s. No need to rush I told myself.

I closed my eyes and imagined the few that interested me the most. All of the ones that were bestial or undead I skipped. A loner I might be, but I still needed people to talk to. The savage ones I skipped too, blood and slaughter weren’t my cup of tea ... Unless it was necessary ... Though I would eventually have to get used to killing if I wanted to survive. Anyone that entered a dungeon would ultimately be after the Core and my life. I would have to treat them as intruders and murderers and defend what was mine.

My list of exclusions greatly narrowed the list to Dwarven Stronghold, Underdark and Empire and a few others which stood out as acceptable choices.

What about the future? Short bearded women didn’t interest me. Vicious Drow would give me a great variety of choices, but did I want to live in a setting of never seeing the sun again? Not really, but I would be able to go out into the world, according to Stoneface, just not until I settled the dungeon. Would I see the sun on any of my other choices? I thought so. The settings had to be realistic.

What good would a swamp do in endless caves? It had to be in open air. Same with most of the others. Could I live with the refined sadistic brutality of the Drow? Wouldn’t they just be a different sort of savage brutality in contrast to the Orcs? If I made that choice, I would either become more and more like them or self-destruct. I doubted if that was good long term choice for me. I would shelve Underdark for now but keep that choice in mind. Maybe even keep them number one unless I found another, I liked better.

The Empire sounded human, but boring. Skip that one ... though they were human ... Skervs were a rat beast race, the Jurssa, a bunny beastman race looked fun but weak. Pass. I did discover that when I concentrated on a choice some information would pop into my head with a brief description. After that revelation I returned to the beginning of the list and slowly acquired more information on all of the choices, not just the ones that interested me.

After a full day of reviewing the list, I still hadn’t made a decision. Tired, I laid down on the hard floor and slept on the smooth rocky ground. Sometime later when I woke, my empty stomach growled and lips chapped. I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything yesterday. Wouldn’t be a first.

Since the menu wouldn’t give me any options besides making a racial choice, I thought if I didn’t make decision soon, I would die of thirst. Tiredly, I opened the Menu and scanned it again, mostly focusing on my current top three choices. Just as I was about to make a decision naming the Underdark of the Drow, I noticed a late addon. Choice AF Ancient Civilization. That one was not on the list yesterday. I focused on it and saw an advanced humanoid race with magical gadgets similar to humans.

Sitting down against the wall in the corner of the rough stone walls, I deliberated the latest addition to the list. I knew little about the Ancient Race, just that they seemed interesting and intelligent. The Drow had an obvious disadvantage along with their many advantages. With this new choice, I saw less advantages and no real disadvantages for me. Hmmm ... I liked the part about no disadvantages ... a lot. I wasn’t dumb enough to think that there were none at all, but being around a lot of sadistic women from my time at the orphanage, I had enough familiarity with those types and knew how to handle them, usually. But it wasn’t really my idea of a good time.

Fuck it, I was hungry and dying of thirst. I had to choose while I still could think clearly.

“Menu. I choose AF: Ancient Civilization.” I stated clearly aloud. The room flashed and my Core room became paved with dark, gray green stones, the walls even changed, now comprised of smooth cut greyish stone blocks each one by two feet in a step pattern. I felt the walls, no mortar was evident. The blocks were precisely cut to fit. The cobblestones in the floor were worn smooth with a green flecked tan cement filling the gaps.

I had changed, how much, I wasn’t sure. I hoped to discover that later, but not too late. My clothes changed too. From my old jeans and t-shirt, to a short sleeved, steel studded, leather armor coat and similar reinforced knee length skirt. A skirt ... when in Sparta ... I’d have to get used to it. Thankfully my new armor wasn’t very heavy or awkward to move in.

I reopened Menu. A list of options popped up, experimenting I called out food options. The new list showed a list of unfamiliar food choices. Dishes I never heard of before, I guessed that this is what the people in the Ancient Civilization ate. Ignoring the list, I asked for bread and orange juice. A pitcher of juice and a foot long loaf of brown nut bread appeared at my feet. -1DP flashed in the upper right of the Menu.

DP was dungeon points? Food costs Points ... sigh, have to live with that, I guessed. Sitting down I slowly ate while asking for the rules. I skimmed over them, too many pages to read right now and then asked for a guide. Nothing showed up. Hints, guides, help all had no response.

The next four days I mostly read the rules and ate. My initial assessment was that the rules weren’t complete. Too many concepts had been left unsaid or unexplained. I felt that the lack was intentional, like a lawyer was asked to write this and leave as much out as possible but still make it sound like all the rules were included in the report. For instance; the Core must be accessible to the entry. That was all it said.

I did discover quite a bit, like each level gave me fifty DP per day. There was also a Map. When I made my choice of Ancient Civ, the first floor was constructed and it was huge! It was like ten malls laid out in a square. Almost a full square mile was taken up by my new dungeon.

The Menu wouldn’t let me access the points spending areas until I flipped through all the pages of the Rules, I didn’t have to read them, just turn each individual page. What shocked me was that an empty second floor would cost me five thousand points just to create.

For spending points, there were the categories of: Floor, Monsters, Blueprints, Treasure, Components and Rewards. Curiously, I opened the Monsters section first. I wanted to see my choices and points.!!! Freaking expensive and limited were my first impressions.

50/ Spider constructor. 200/ Feran worker. 1000 Feran Soldier. 2000 Feran Mage. 3000 Feran Engineer. 3500 Feran Officer. 15000/ Feran Philosopher. and two grayed out lines. After the two grayed out lines were, A core for 5 DP, B core for 50, C core for 500 and D for 5000 DPs. I had no clue what those were used for.

What the HELL?!?! The only ones I could afford were non-combatants? A single soldier was the same price as a hundred goblins or two trolls? The mage was cheaper than an Engineer? What the hell was a Philosopher to make him so freaking expensive?

Chill John, I told myself. Look at the rest of your choices first, bitch later.

Floor had only a few choices, mostly for addons like mines and mills or adding a whole new floor. All of the addons were ungodly expensive. Five K for a mine of any type, mills were five hundred of each type and an empty second floor was five K. Those were the only options not grayed out. Looked like more would be added later as I figured things out or met the unknown requirements to unlock them.

How and what were considerations for later.

Blueprints were the meat of the list. Hundreds were listed, including clockwork sentries and there were ten different types of those ranging from 500 points to 10000 points for something called a Sun Soldier. There were even two more grayed out.

Only two grayed out of each category didn’t seem right. I knew there had to be more. I was sure that some event or action would unlock a grayed out choice, and there still would be two gray choices.

There were also blueprints of weapons, armor, advanced Spiders, Miner spiders and other specialized spiders. Looked like the Ferans made the spiders to do all their dangerous or repetitive jobs. The more I looked the more it seemed like that this was not an ancient race but a futuristic one or a combination of both.

Was this Atlantis?

Treasures; were rewards for the adventurers that came in. Incentives or inducements for them to sacrifice themselves I guessed. Those were priced by letter the higher the letter the better the chest and reward. After I focused on the treasure options, I discovered that the rewards were random but fit the theme of the dungeon. An ‘A’ Intruder Reward, was 50 points and could be anything from a light heal or mana potion to a random amount of gold to a piece of equipment. B was 125 points, C was 225, D 375 etc. They grew expensive fast. I also had the feeling that I could spend points to give myself a treasure since it was not forbidden by the rules.

Components were actually individual building or furnishings for the individual rooms. Most were surprisingly cheap. One to five for most everything or a flat ten points to furnish a home. Only the profession specific components were expensive, and I still considered those reasonable compared to everything else in the Menu so far. To equip a metal smithy was only fifty points, an alchemist was 75. A factory was a whopping 5 K and an engineering workshop was 3 K. Three libraries were also listed; Mages’ was 1000 points, the Engineers’ was 2000 and a Philosophers’ library for 5000. And I still had no clue what the Philosophers did to make them so expensive.

This was like playing the Protoss in StarCraft; high expense, strong units with limited numbers which took skill to use well, without the unit manual or unit descriptions. The upgrades and advanced units would be massively powerful I imagined but low in number. I had to be wary of a Zerg rush; masses of low cost, disposable units, until I developed my defenses more.

The rest of the Rewards were for me. Again, the skills were ungodly expensive. 1500 being the least expensive for the skill of ‘Feran Magic Comprehension’. 1750 for ‘Feran Warfare’, 2750 for ‘Feran Engineering’, and 20000 for ‘Feran Philosophy’.

There were also items on the list of Rewards, everything from heal potions to Clockwork repair scrolls for 50 points, weapons and armor starting at 500 points. There was also the same two lines of grayed out items that I hadn’t unlocked yet.

I could only buy one sentry blueprint at a cost of 500 so I chose Slicer Sentry and two Construction Spiders for now, at a cost of six hundred points. The assembly shop from Components was 50 and extra materials were 10. I wanted to see how long it would last before I needed to add more materials.

With the map function I could oversee anywhere in the dungeon. But I chose to go to the assembly workshop in person. Honestly, I was getting bored with no interaction or stimulus.

Open air. I was right. The sun crested the far off walls of the city dungeon. I knew I was underground, but I didn’t feel like it. The temperature was in the mid seventies and I doubted that it was past eight o’clock in the morning.

I would discover later that it never rained inside of my dungeon, just nice fourteen hour sunny days and clear ten hour night cycles.

Something to worry about later.

The buildings and houses on the way to the warehouse were built of the same mortorless brick that the core was built with. The flagstone roads were the same as inside too. The houses all had three foot spacings between the outside walls and gravel lawns packed with dirt. Probably for flowers or shrubs. The russet clay shingles gave the city a southwestern feel.

The spiders’ bodies were a foot in diameter with eight, one foot long compound legs. The brass spider constructors moved delicately and precisely while assembling the Cylindrical Sentries while I stood aside and watched them do their work in fascination. Each spider needed two days to assemble a single Slicer. I discovered that slicers required five more points to activate with the insertion of the Core A. Ug, more points spent. On top of that each bundle of 10 point materials only would make one Slicer. I summoned enough material for 5 Slicers. After they were built, I sent them to patrol the Floor. The last two were sent to patrol the opening area only, even if the opening still had months before the outside world could interact with us.

Slicers had strong reinforced arms, with dual linkages to each ‘elbow’ ending in an 18” bronze blade. The five foot pillar shaped Bots, as I silently called them, also could shoot out a three inch sharpened ring from a slot six inches below the flattened top of the cylindrical head. It really didn’t have a head but I referred to the opening as the mouth anyway. The tank like tracks seemed to support them well.

They looked dangerous. Very dangerous. And this was the cheapest blueprint ... they had an obvious disadvantage though. They were dumb, had a 120 degree arc of sight and worked best when personally guided, I discovered after a week of testing.

I wandered the cobblestone streets and looked in and around the empty buildings. Most were constructed to be small brick houses. Two bedrooms, no kitchen, nor bath, but each did have a W.C ... The furnishings of the two practice units that I spent points on were all wooden. Even the antique style, silvered mirror had a wood frame. The chairs came with thin woven cushions on them for padding and decoration.

Honestly, I thought they were a little spartan in their lack of any real decorations besides the seat cushions but maybe that was the result of the native mindset. I would hopefully find out more later when I could afford a real Feran.

The exception was the curtains in the shuttered windows which were lively matched colors for each household. Each house had a unique pattern, different, yet similar to the other. I choose the one I liked best, the burnt orange one, during this time and spent an extra 10 points to upgrade it further. The upgrade came with a chill-box along with a few comforts like a liquor cabinet containing a single bottle of rye whisky. The magical, old fashioned fridge wasn’t a true refrigerator but it kept things under fifty degrees inside its 2x2x2 area. I also tried out the various food choices on the list that were under 3 DP. The Ferans lived off spicy food with lots of fruits and nuts. Since none of the ones I tried reacted badly in my system, I kept playing around and saved my points.

There was also a mirror in my bedroom ... I was blue. Not shocking blue like the Genie from Aladdin. More like a drop of dye in a gallon of water. Just a bit more than a tint. My hair was also very blond instead of the sandy brown I grew up with. My large pale orange eyes startled me, they were at least twenty five percent larger but looked natural and seemed to fit the new me. Not that it mattered, since no one here knew me from before, but I was moderately pleased they didn’t clash with my new skin tint.

My ears looked really strange to me. Elongated ovals pressed flat against the side of my head, almost twice the size they used to be. That my eyes were a little larger didn’t seem to concern me, much. The narrower jaw and higher cheekbones were almost elfish. Not quite, I was still too broad across the shoulders to be a real elf.

The ears would take getting used to.

90 days...

My initial investment was 820 points leaving 180 from the starting 1000. After food I received 1350 per month to invest. On average I spent 3 DP/day on myself. The rest I banked but left wiggle room in case something popped up.

I waited the full thirty days before summoning a Feran soldier. I wanted the extra points in case he needed anything. Of the 1525 points banked, I spent 1000 on the single summons.

In one of the empty houses a Feran Soldier appeared. I located the soldier via the map function and discovered he was actually a ‘she’. 5’6” blonde, large orange eyes and slightly darker bluish tinted skinned female stood erect and banged her bronze short sword on her medium reinforced circular wood and bronze shield. The healthy sheen of an athlete glowed from her. She was built like an Olympic swimmer; broad shoulders, sleek torso and strong arms and legs.

She too had the same odd ears.

I could deal with it, I guess...

I didn’t learn until later, how to summon a soldier next to me just by concentrating on my location while I called them from wherever they came from.

The armor she wore was similar to that of the Spartans, in the movie ‘300’. A short-sleeved leather armor jerkin with thin bands of bronze reinforced the torso. A thicker leather bracer on her right arm with a bronzed solid reinforcement on the back of her forearm for extra protection. The lower body was covered in a knee-high leather divided skirt with twelve inch bronze strips hanging from the waist for extra protection. The calf length boots had one inch heels.

Her features were sharp but regular. No scars were evident. She also had to be much stronger than she looked by the weight she easily carried.

“Greetings soldier.” I opened.

She replied, “Commander.” In what sounded to me like midwestern English.

“May I have your name?” I politely asked.

“Jessica Hornsmith, Commander.” She barked with pride at being acknowledged by her superior.

I wasn’t sure how I knew that, just that I did.

“At ease Soldier Hornsmith,” Not sure why I said it like that but it felt natural, maybe it was all those World War II movies I watched over the years. I had time to prepare so that the new residents would accept my plan. “This is a new outpost, until we can get more troops you have been tasked to assist me in protecting this base.