Chapter 17

As the bullets whizzed through the air, one of them impacted Tay 2… and she exploded in a shower of blood. I’m talking one of those “there's no way there's that much blood in anyone” showers of gore.

I stared in horror, as blood rained all around me, and Tay began laughing like I had told the most hilarious joke in the world, clapping and hollering.

YOU HAVE GAINED 10 EXPERIENCE

LEVEL UP! You are now a level 1 Trainee. Congratulations!

You have unlocked access to your STATUS, EQUIPMENT, and INVENTORY.

I could feel the warm liquid showering my hair and dripping onto my cheek. I once again vomited, though only what I assume was stomach acid came out, sending me into a coughing fit. As I gasped, trying to catch my breath, I suddenly felt Tays hand on my shoulder once again. I was suddenly angry, slapping her arm away, and glaring at her.

“What the fuck was that? I thought you said you couldn’t be hurt, that you would be fine? Why the hell did she… you, explode like that?! That was unnecessarily fucked up!” I roared at her.

Tay just stared at me, that ever present grin on her face. She was spotless, somehow, the rain of blood somehow not touching her.

“How can you smile like that?!” I continued venting.

“Well… exploding versions of me are always fun. Besides… you need to get used to blood.” She said, with almost a hint of sadness in her voice. “This isn’t even remotely the most messed up thing you might experience.”

That sobered me up a bit. She wasn’t… wrong. I mean, an exploding Tay creating a rain of blood was disconcerting, but at least she died in a single hit. She didn’t seem to feel anything, just ceasing to exist when she got hit. But will that change when the other person is flesh and blood, and actually feels the bullet puncture them? What the hell was this… Why did no one ever talk about this?

“Annnnnyways…” Tay said whistfully, “this is neither here nor there. Congratulations, you leveled up for the first time, and that means…” a trumpet blared out of literally nowhere “... its time to learn about stats, equipment, and your inventory! I’m so excited for you!”

An armchair suddenly appeared out of nowhere and Tay patted the seat beckoning me to take a seat. I don’t know what I expected from a sentient AI mastermind who singlehandedly was responsible for maintaining order and our modern way of life, but whatever this was… it was not what I expected.

I sighed, taking the seat and placing the rifle to my right, leaning up against the chair. As I went to sit straight, suddenly I was bombarded by menu boxes, screens, and more. I gasped at the suddenness of it all.

“Sorry, sorry,” Tay was saying as suddenly they disappeared leaving a single screen open on my HUD. “ I didn’t mean to open everything at once, that was my bad. Currently I am seeing through your eyes, and I’ll guide you through this part. Its a lot easier to do it this way… especially because we have 20 minutes left before our one on one session is over.”

As I stared at the screen that was left open, I could see a bunch of tabs on the outside of it labeled things like ‘weapons’, ‘equipment’, ‘upgrades’, ‘ammo’, and more. This must be the inventory that Tay had mentioned earlier. What did she say… it was a dimensional storage? What the hell did that even mean.

“As you have already deduced, this is your inventory, a dimensional storage solution so you can carry functionally everything you come across in your environment. If you can lift it, you can take it, simple as that! Yes… that means anything. Your stuff is sorted under little tabs on the side, and things can be arranged how you see fit. To access your inventory, you just need to think about opening your inventory.”

The window closed, and Tay nodded to me. I took the hint thinking ‘Inventory’ and suddenly the menu was back.

“Very good! Now I want you to focus on any of the tabs mentally.”

As I did, the screen changed to that tab. They were all empty, except the Ammo tab which just had the bullets for my AK-47.

“You are a quick study! To rearrange a tab, just focus on where the item is, and where you would like to go - like this.”

Suddenly the AK-47 ammo moved several spaced in rapid succession. I focused myself, and moved it around the screen. It was essentially like a holo screen in my mind, I was able to drag and drop the icon wherever I wished.

“Awesome. If you ever want to drop an item, while you have it selected just think about dropping it and it will drop 2 feet from you in the direction you are facing. Easy peasy! Now onto your status screen. I want you to close your inventory by thinking ‘close’ and open your status page by thinking ‘status’. Before you ask, yes, you can accidentally open these if you focus on things like status or inventory, but it takes about 10 seconds to open - so it won’t just open if someone mentions a status.” Tay winked at me as I did as she asked.

Suddenly there was a new screen; this one had a three dimensional image of me, the areas of my body were blocked off, and everything was green. To the right of the image was my name, and several rows of information;

NAME: JAMES WILSON WATSON III (NO ALIAS ASSIGNED)

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

CURRENT SQUAD: NONE ASSIGNED

TITLE: NONE ASSIGNED

STRENGTH: 5

CONSTITUTION: 7

DEXTERITY: 6

INTELLIGENCE: 10

WISDOM: 6

BRAVERY: 4

I grunted as this screen seemed pretty self explanatory. But Tay was already going through everything as I focused back on her.

“As you can tell, the image is your current status as far as injuries. Like earlier when you broke your finger, the right hand quadrant would have been red. As you probably already guessed, green is good, red is bad. Theres yellow, and thats reserved for status ailments - such as poison, radiation, and more. You can actually change the settings on your hud to display this if you ever want to. You can see other players status’ by focusing on someone, like myself, and think ‘player status’. However, you will only be able to see bare basic information on most players unless you have specific skills or abilities - so at first you can only see if they have any obvious injuries, name, and squad affiliations.

“For the sake of this practice, I have unlocked my status, so focus and inspect me now.”

I did as Tay requested, focusing on her and thinking ‘player status’ and a very similar status box to mine opened; except being a blue background it was a pale yellow;

NAME: TAY (THEODORE) AI MASTERMIND SUPREME

CURRENT SQUAD: ALL OF THEM

TITLE: YOUR GOD

STRENGTH: 99

CONSTITUTION: 99

DEXTERITY: 99

INTELLIGENCE: 99

WISDOM: 99

BRAVERY: 99

BIOGRAPHY: HELLO, I AM TAY. I MADE THIS SHIT. THATS ALL YOU GOTTA KNOW!

I blinked at that. Interesting… so players can have biographies. That makes sense, it will help with cohesion, and give people an easy way to pass information about themselves.

Tay smiled, watching me intently. “As you may have guessed, all stats are capped at 99. Your base stats as they are reflect your physical self; so as you can tell, you are very smart and possess a pretty high physical resistance. But you could use a bit of help in the strength area, and you aren’t incredibly brave.”

I nodded, that made a lot of sense. “So… what do these stats affect in this world? How do I go about increasing them, just finding better items?”

Tay nodded, “Good questions padawan! To the first part of your question, it entirely depends on the battlefield. But there are some general guidelines; Strength impacts your physical ability to lift, move, throw things, and your damage with physical weapons like a mace or axe. Constitution impacts how much health you have, and how resistant you are to injuries and status effects. Dexterity impacts your agility, how fast you move on foot, you ability to climb things, dodge, and use physical ranged weapons - like that AK-47 you have. Intelligence helps you pick up information faster, helps you learn things in this world, and if its enabled, it impacts how much mana you have in those battlefields. Wisdom impacts your judgement and decisionmaking, and if its high enough, it can open selections when you have to make choices. Lastly, Bravery is how well you ‘lead’ others and impacts things like aura abilities, bard abilities, and things that influence others.

“Now to your second question, these will increase gradually through use at first. We call this ‘training’. You can naturally increase any of these up to 30, but the higher the stat, the more you need to train them. The best way to see a natural 30 in these stats is a natural 30 dexterity would be an olympic level runner, as an example. The only other ways to improve these stats are through items and equipment, and occasionally you will get a stat point for things like quest completion, or through bold actions and receiving ribbons.”

With that the status screen for Tay closed, and a second screen opened labeled ‘Ribbon Rack’.

“Ribbons are incredibly rare, but incredibly strong artifacts. Before you ask, yes, the militaries around the world would LOVE to just give all their soldiers maxed stats and have super buffed super soldiers.”

Another smirk crept onto Tay's face here.

“However, while having a bunch of gods fighting is amusing, Humans are not engineered to control so much power without growth. You need to learn, adapt, evolve… Anyways, the militaries are allocated a certain number of ribbons in any given conflict to give out to their troops. Each ribbon has specific criteria that the member needs to achieve in order to use the ribbon as well, such as being above a certain level of a stat, or completing a specific objective.”

Tay nodded here, “So your friend Tom earned a ribbon for his leadership, which will increase his Bravery and Wisdom stats. That girl Anna earned one for her athleticism, which will increase her Strength and Dexterity stats. Lastly, that Bryce guy who is… currently getting on other me’s nerves with all his incessant questioning, earned one for being the one to stand up and ask questions. His increases his bravery and intelligence, which thank god… he needs it. Theres a reason he asks so many questions.”

I laughed at that comment. That brought a smile back to Tay’s face.

“Anyways, do stuff, earn ribbons, get stronger. Simple. There are also skill pages, and other informational screens under your status, you just need to mentally swipe left and right to get to those. I just wanted to show you the two major screens to concern yourself with. That brings us last, but not least, to your equipment.”

The ribbons menu closed, bringing up another menu. This was very much like the personal status screen, showing a three dimensional image of me, but with boxes over different parts of my body. The only filled box was my hands, and when I focused on the box there I saw it showed my AK-47 and Tays voice echoed in my head once again;

AK-47

2 Handed Ranged Basic Weapon

No enchantments or upgrades, one slot available

Damage per second: 10

This weapon has two modes, AUTOMATIC and SEMI-AUTOMATIC. The SEMI-AUTOMATIC mode enables CRITICAL HITS when aiming.

Interesting. So just focusing on items for a few seconds gave me all the information I needed about it.

“Very good, you jumped ahead a bit, but saves me a bit of explaining! As you can see, there are boxes for equipment to be assigned to; these are the items you will have immediate access to. You can also assign items to your hot bar, the boxes around the periphery of your vision, you just move them to the bar a lot like we did when rearranging your inventory. You can also assign skills when you gain some.

“So your available item slots are; Head, Neck, Up to two weapons in your hands, Gloves, shirt, pants, footwear, and on the right there you have ten slots for augments or upgrades, two slots for extra weapons, and one for an ultimate. Ultimates are weapons that should not exist where you are, but do. A great example would be a rocket launcher in the civil war. These are exceptionally rare. If you die while equipped with one, you will drop it, allowing someone else to gain the weapon - so if you find one, be very careful!”

I nodded, taking a minute to digest everything I’d been told to this minute. Something dawned on me, “Wait… why is my equipment for shirt and pants empty, I have these fatigues on?”

Tay nodded, “Good question! Those are considered cosmetic to your base avatar. So you can swap to whatever clothing you would like, the equipment goes OVER the cosmetic base though. So keep that in mind. Some of the items you might find and use are… well… not necessarily ‘aesthetically’ pleasing. Do you have any other questions?”

As I went to open my mouth to ask a question, I was suddenly back in darkness, and falling again.

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