Level One God

We were given a “temporary” personal space key for five silver from an innkeeper, and then headed downstairs. The hallway leading to the personal space in this particular building was downstairs.

“So the key will magically vanish after a day?” I asked. “But what stops us from just staying in our personal space for days? We only need the key to go in, not stay in, right?”

“Why would you stay in your personal space for days?” Lyria asked, stopping in front of the first door in a long hallway with at least a dozen doors. As I watched, they swung open occasionally, letting people out. A few others passed by us, sticking in a key and walking inside the doors.

“I don’t know,” I said distractedly. “Wait. What happens if you’re trying to leave your room and somebody is trying to get in at the same time? Can you get stuck in there if too many people are trying at once?”

“Bigger cities like this have precautions in place. With this number of doors, you’ll just exit whichever one isn’t in use. If you try to exit and all the doors are occupied with keys, the magic prioritizes letting people out rather than in. I’ve seen it happen. The key just falls out and the door swings open.” She shrugged. “Dimensional magic. I won’t pretend to understand how it works, but it tends to work pretty damn well.”

I had to stifle my questions about dozens of things, like what would happen if an explosion destroyed all these doors while we were inside. Would we be able to emerge from the next closest door? Or would we be trapped in our personal space until we starved or somebody came in to save us? Could somebody come in to save us?

Maybe some questions were better not to ask.

In truth, I felt a clock ticking. Simple curiosity could wait for when I didn’t have a cursed bedroll threatening to awaken inside my slip space.

We agreed to start with Lyria’s tokens since she had two to claim and wanted to watch me claim my own. Because my personal space was still an unupgraded broom closet, we used her room to open our loot.

I pulled off my helmet once we were inside. I was so used to keeping it on that I felt strange taking it off. I’d shaven and cleaned my face up before we headed down into Grimbo’s cave system, though, so at least I didn’t look homeless.

Lyria eyed me. “It’s strange seeing your face,” she admitted.

“Feels strange having it on display,” I said, sitting cross-legged on her floor. She had a couch, but even after attempted cleaning, my clothes felt too filthy to sit on the furniture with. Lyria must have had the same thought because she sat on the floor across from me, took a deep breath, and then produced the small bag with her two reward tokens.

“Alright, then,” she said. “Rare survival first.”

I watched her focus on the coin. It took a few seconds, and her face was scrunched with concentration before the coin flaked away.

A sack plopped down with a thud in front of her. There was a roll of bandages inside. I was underwhelmed on her behalf until I inspected them.

[Field Kit (Rare)] Wrap this around the wounded area and wait. Non-lethal wounds will rapidly heal. This item is reusable but will degrade over time.

“Nice,” I said. “What would something like that sell for?”

“I’m not selling it,” she said, pulling it out of the sack and holding it close like she was already emotionally attached.

I laughed. “Just curious. I’m trying to get a better sense of the economy.”

She eyed it. “I don’t know. Probably a couple of gold? Maybe even five or ten if you waited outside a dungeon or infestation and caught somebody who didn’t want to hike back to civilization?”

I pursed my lips in thought. I still wanted to find some better ways to make money, but I hadn’t thought about camping outside dangerous places to sell survival gear. It wasn’t a bad idea.

“Alright,” Lyria said, holding up her rare weapon token. She clutched the token in both hands and kissed it. “Please be something good. I’ve had that shield and sword since I joined the guards.”

I discreetly crossed my fingers for her. The token disappeared from her fingers, and a message appeared.

"Congratulations! [Weapon Chest (Rare) (Wood)] has been upgraded to [Weapon Chest (Epic) (Wood)]."

Lyria jumped up, punching at the air with more excitement than I’d ever seen her display. I smiled as she did an awkward, celebratory dance, then blushed and sat back down in front of the ornamented chest. She cleared her throat. “If you tell anybody I danced, I’ll say you lied.”

“Understood,” I said, biting back a smile. “And congratulations.”

She sucked in a breath through her teeth, then popped the chest open.

Inside, I saw what looked like a single reptilian scale. It was silver but shimmered with rainbow hues as the light shifted on it.

[Basilisk Shield (Epic) (Wood)] Activate to release [Basilisk Gaze] on foes. Self-repairing. Enhanced hardness.

[Basilisk Gaze. Activatable ability. Duration: five seconds. Cooldown: two minutes] - Enemies who look upon the basilisk shield while [Basilisk Gaze] is active will be petrified for [2] seconds. Enemies above your level are more likely to resist this ability.

[Petrify] - Become encased in a layer of solid stone. Cannot move. Cannot act. Cannot be harmed.

I eyed the description with increasing awe. An activatable ability? That was something. The part about enemies above your level being more likely to resist was interesting, too. Despite Circa’s insistence that my levels were granting me increased mastery and control over my abilities, I had found the relationship too subtle to feel for the most part. It could be a slight drawback of my prestige path. Maybe each level was unlocking new ceilings of mastery, but I was gaining them too quickly to catch up my skills? It was a slightly worrying thought but a problem for later.

Either way, active abilities like Lyria’s were one concrete way levels mattered. I hoped I would get some abilities like that for myself, too.

Lyria picked up the “shield,” which was about the size of her palm. “Why is it so small?”

“Maybe it unfolds?” I suggested. “Try putting it on the back of your hand and then tether it. Maybe hold it so you won’t put your eye out if it opens like an umbrella.”

“Umbrella?” she asked.

“Just trust me,” I said, watching her put it on her hand as I suggested. It seemed to stick to her skin.

She cocked her arm before her, pointing her palm toward me as if she was raising an invisible shield in my direction. She focused, and then the scale unfolded, growing in every direction in a split second. It opened with a shlick sound that was so rapid it jolted Lyria’s arm back like she’d just fired a gun.

The single scale was now the size of a kite shield half as large as Lyria’s body. It was formed from hundreds of scales like the one she had stuck on the back of her hand, all overlapping and shimmering like the belly of a serpent.

“Want to try to petrify me?” I asked.

Yes, it was a stupid question. But I was completely nerding out at the idea of an item casting an ability. I wanted to see it in action. I wanted to see what the “petrify” ability looked like and how it worked.

“What?” she asked. “No. That would be reckless. What if you got stuck that way?”

“I’d trust you to hammer me out,” I said with a shrug.

She looked hesitant but gave a slight nod. “Okay. Fine. Look at the shield.”

I stared at it, bracing myself. The scales rippled like disturbed water, and then my vision went black. I couldn’t breathe, move, see, or even hear.

I had been expecting it, but I still felt a sudden rush of panic when my world turned to silent darkness.

It felt like more than two seconds before stone flaked away from all over my body, crumbling on the floor of her personal space.

“Wow,” she said. “Are you okay?” she asked after a split second, probably when she saw the look on my face.

I quickly composed myself, brushing my hands up and down my arms and legs to knock away the leftover stone. It was polished and smooth like marble. “Yep. I’m good. How did I look as a statue?”

Lyria didn’t answer, though. She was looking at her shield like she might be in love. It started to fold itself up and unfold again and again, as if she was realizing she could control it.

Shlick. Shlap. Shlick. Shlap.

That would probably be nice for surprising an enemy. When folded, the shield looked like a single scale glued to the back of her hand. Unfolded, it was a fully-fledged shield that could petrify people.

I felt like Lyria just became quite a bit more scary. Considering she was my ally, I counted that as a good thing. I had already put some thought into this, but believed there was probably something like a filter effect on Eros.

It reminded me of theories about why there weren’t more advanced civilizations visible from Earth. One idea was that intelligent species encountered “filter” events, like discovering the ability to split atoms or design artificial intelligence. Those early filters could explain why the universe seemed such a quiet, lonely place. Simply put, it would mean most civilizations never survived those first potential stumbling blocks.

On Eros, I wondered if there was a similar phenomenon with adventurers and higher ranks. It seemed like the dangers of starting out unequipped and inexperienced were massive. But with the abundance of rewards available, adventurers needed to survive those early “filter” events. Their first foray into an infestation. Their first ambush in the wild. Maybe even a dungeon.

But if they did, I imagined they would experience huge power spikes in the equipment and resources available to them. I doubted a single shield was going to be enough to think of Lyria as being past that hump, but I hoped my own pile of tokens would get me the power to help pull her along.

I still needed to find a way to get her caught up in levels with me, too. She had been level 28 when I met her in Riverwell, level 30 after the infested ruins, and she was still only level 31 after everything we went through in the Black Wood. I supposed I had accidentally hogged the vast majority of the experience, and I also had my Fertile Seed benefits pushing me forward faster.

I pushed away all the thoughts. They were real problems, but not problems I could tackle now.

“My turn?” I asked.

“Let’s see it,” Lyria said, finally pulling her attention away from the shield. “You said you got an epic weapon token, right? Let me guess, that’s not all?”

I hadn’t opened my sack of coins and flashed them in public this time, so she still didn’t know how much I had.

“Uh, yeah. I’ve got a little more than that.”

I sat on the floor beside her claw-foot tub, and she sat cross-legged in front of me. She watched me dump out all eight reward tokens, and her eyes widened.

“Seriously?” she asked.

I gave a sheepish smile. “Let’s start with the commons.”

I turned in the first of two Common Survival Tokens, and a soft sack plopped in front of me. Inside, I found a pair of smooth stones.

[Lesser Talking Stones (Common) (Wood)] When both stones are tethered, they will carry sounds a short distance.

I remembered the stones I’d seen a few people talking into before. Theirs had looked more impressive than these plain, smooth stones, but I wouldn’t complain. “So they’re like walkie-talkies,” I said to myself.

Lyria pursed her lips. “Sometimes, the things you say make no sense.”

I tossed a stone to her and she caught it easily. “These could be useful. Right?”

She nodded. “I can imagine a use or two for these, especially if you’re serious about going into that dungeon.”

I met her eyes. “I’m serious, Lyria. I’ve been thinking about the curse on my bedroll. I don’t know how to feed dark mana to it, but I’ve got to get in that dungeon and try. Besides, it seems like as good a way as any to get stronger.”

“I feel obligated to remind you that it’s possible to progress much more safely than by dungeon diving. For example, we could join up with a big group and take on low-threat infestations. Or we could see if any organized expeditions are going into this dungeon. There is safety in numbers, after all.”

“Safety and diminished experience. You saw how many palefiends we had to kill in the ruins to get even a little experience. And that was probably a freakishly high number of enemies. I don’t want to spend weeks gathering large groups, traveling, and fighting over a chance to hit an enemy so we can earn a single level.” I paused because I realized I was speaking louder. I couldn’t help it, though. She didn’t understand the drive I felt to do this all quickly, but I couldn’t blame her for that. She still didn’t know what I knew.

With an effort, I calmed myself down and my voice returned to normal. “I’m not going to hold it against you if that’s what you want to do, though.” I thought about sharing my vision from the briarwraith with her. I had planned to once we had some time alone, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to. Did she need to know the gods had been terrified of something? No. That was my burden, and there was no reason to put it on Lyria’s shoulders, too. I wouldn’t manipulate or coerce her into following along with me.

In truth, I had been thinking about how it was only a matter of time before my prestige path would probably slingshot me ahead of her in power. What would we do, then? If there wasn’t some way to help her catch up, it would become more and more dangerous for her to travel with me.

It was a grim thought and made me think about how my path could ultimately isolate me if I wasn’t careful. If things went how I wanted, I’d move forward at blinding speeds while everybody I met was stuck in the mud, watching me pass by.

I frowned, hoping there was some mechanism I could find to solve that problem. Then again, it wasn’t on the top of my list of worries, so I decided to shelve it for another time.

“I’m still going,” Lyria said after a while. “You’re not the only one who wants to be able to change things. My end goal isn’t as lofty as yours, maybe, but I could still make waves if I pushed myself. I just…” she sighed. “I need to get better with mana. None of my abilities are even tier 2. After watching you, I’ve been starting to feel hopeless—like maybe I don’t have the talent to ever get past Iron.”

“I’ll help you,” I said, voice firm. “I’m sure I can help you understand it better. It’ll just take a little time. But if you’re willing to work at it—”

“I am,” she said.

Her words had a kind of finality to them.

Case closed, I guess.

Lyria will follow me into the dungeon, and I’ll push myself to help her master her abilities. It felt a little like the blind leading the blind, but I supposed I did have a small remnant of my godly grasp of mana manipulation to lean on.

I claimed my second Common Survival Token and earned myself a net covered in a thin webbing of string.

[Trapper’s Net (Common) (Wood)] Once primed, the net will release and fall, gravitating toward sources of mana. Single use. Applies [Lay Down].

[Lay Down] - Exert irresistible weight to the target, forcing them into a prone position for [10 seconds]. Enemies above [Wood] are more likely to resist this ability.

“Damn,” I said, looking at the net with newfound appreciation. “If this wasn’t single use, I’d be jumping up and down right now.” I turned it over, getting a sense of how it was supposed to work. From the looks of it, I could hang it from a separate, relatively long rope. I guessed I could put it on the ceiling and wait for it to trigger.

Did “once primed” just mean I needed to feed a little mana into it? Or was priming it a physical state, like a way I had to arrange the ropes?

I didn’t see any signs of a physical way for the thinner string webbing to release the ropes, though. It made me relatively confident it was a mana-activated kind of thing. But I couldn’t test it now and risk wasting my valuable item.

Sure, I didn’t know how it would save my ass, but I was still more excited about this than if I had earned healing potions or a field bandage like Lyria got.

“Now,” I said, rubbing my hands together, “time for the one I’m most excited about.”

Lyria eyed the tokens on the floor. “You’re going right to the epic weapon, huh?”

“Oh, no,” I said, picking up the Rare Trophy Token. “I got this one for… actually, you don’t need to know how I earned it.” I felt my cheeks redden at the memory of the carapax who had tried to make me its mate and the notification about seducing a bug. Yeah. I might take all of that to the grave with me.

Lyria looked confused as I lifted the token and let it flake away.

A huge wooden crate thumped down. I had to borrow Lyria’s sword to pry it open, which I thought was pretty inconsiderate of whoever sent us these things. It wasn’t like this stuff needed to survive being shipped across the country. Did it really have to be inside such sturdy containers?

I wrenched down, prying the lid up as the wood splintered and the nails were pulled free.

I supposed I had no idea if this stuff did have to get shipped. The boxes the furniture came from were weird as hell, but what if the world on the other side was more mundane? Was somebody just building this stuff over there and sending it to us?

That didn’t make sense, though. What purpose could they possibly have for tracking everybody's accomplishments on Eros and rewarding them with powerful items? Kass’ comment about how it seemed like people were rewarded with better accomplishments than normal inside dungeons was suspicious. It really did imply there was some kind of intelligence or agenda behind it all, though I couldn’t begin to guess what that would be.

I wondered if the answers had been wiped from my memories or if even Seraphel hadn’t been privy to that information.

I pulled away the straw until I saw a giant, mounted carapax head. It was red, gleaming, and looked lifelike except for one small detail. The bug’s eyes were big, cartoonish red hearts.

I cleared my throat as Lyria tried to lean to get a better look.

“What’s with the eyes?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said seriously. “That’s a good question. So weird.”

[Bug Lover’s Boon (Rare) (Wood)] Mounting this trophy within your personal space will apply the following boons to you at all times.

[Bug Expert] Damage to insects of [Wood] rank moderately improved.

[Bug Admirer] Your appreciation for all things insect has grown. Appreciate the subtle curves and shape of a beetle’s carapace. Find poetry in the slender, delicate sway of the antenna. Sense the music in the click of mandibles on a summer’s night…

[Object of Attraction] All attempts to seduce bugs of [Wood] rank dramatically improved.

Lyria was giving me a very curious look, and my cheeks were bright red.

“So weird,” I muttered, zapping the trophy to my slip space as quickly as possible.

I wouldn’t lie. I loved trophies. I was still going to hang the thing up in my personal space. I was just mildly worried about the “bug admirer” perk. A mildly increased appreciation of bugs was fine, but if I started wanting to seduce them, even my love of trophies wouldn’t push me to deal with that.

But the trophy also felt like a door opening up. The naidu in Riverwell had asked me if I was using an “accomplishment guide.” If something like that existed, could I look up specific trophies and boons to hunt for specific trophies? For example, I could try to earn something like increased damage to forest creatures through a trophy and then go grind in the forest. Or maybe I could get trophies to increase my experience gain, corestone growth, or any number of things. The possibilities seemed endless, and I was excited just thinking about it.

I also liked the idea of getting an “accomplishment guide,” but I couldn’t guess how extensive something like that would be. It was probably more likely that a guide would only cover a certain region or type of enemy. A guide broad enough to cover all the possible accomplishments would probably be hoping for too much.

I suddenly wished I had picked a prestige path that gave me a full guide on every accomplishment, assuming there was such a thing. As much as my fertile seed path seemed great, the gamer in me would have loved the long list of achievable goals.

Lyria and I spent a little while talking about all the possibilities of the items I had earned so far, even circling back to talk a little more about her shield.

Once we had exhausted the topic, I pulled out my Rare Survival Token and focused on claiming it.

"Congratulations! [Survival Satchel (Rare) (Wood)] has been upgraded to [Survival Chest (Epic) (Wood)]."

“Oh, hell yes,” I said.

Lyria leaned in closer, watching me work the latches on the chest.

I flipped it open and found a simple amulet. Now that I knew how useful my Ring of Protection was, with its ability to shield me from one heavy physical blow every four hours, I could hardly wait to read the amulet’s tooltip.

[Amulet of Escape (Epic) (Wood)] Transports the user a short distance away from danger. [1] use.

Warning: [short distance away from danger] is not guaranteed to save the user’s life.

Activate by breaking the necklace chain.

“Huh,” I said, feeling slightly disappointed.

“Yeah,” Lyria agreed. “If it wasn’t for the whole… you might still die, part, then it would be pretty great. What do you think that means?”

I considered. “It’s hard to say. If I had used it when Rake was holding me, it would have only moved me outside his line of sight, maybe?"

She nodded in thought. “So it wouldn’t stop him from tracking you down and still killing you. But if you were trapped in a room with a deadly creature, you could probably zap yourself out of the room. Or locked in a prison cell,” she added hopefully.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess if I’m in enough danger to try using it, I won’t be in a position to complain if it only gently saves my ass instead of aggressively saving my ass. Maybe if this thing wasn’t Wood rank, it would be more impressive.”

“Probably,” Lyria agreed.

Limitations or not, we spent a little while talking through as many possible uses as we could think of. We even laughed at some hilarious, unintended consequences we imagined, like using it to teleport away from danger and the safest nearby place being the inside of a giant beast’s stomach.

Lyria seemed to enjoy theorizing about equipment as much as I did. I knew I had a clock ticking down on me with my Bedroll of Restless Days likely awakening more and more by the hour, but understanding my new equipment and thinking through its uses might save my ass, too. If I walked into danger, I wanted to know I had thoroughly considered how every tool at my disposal could be used.

Next, I used the Rare Armor Token.

A thick bag fell to the floor. Inside, I found a black cloak that looked like simple cloth but felt light and silky. Like my now-tattered and torn cloak from Riverwell, it had clasps I could pin to my shoulders.

[Cloak of Absorption (Rare) (Wood)] Dampens magical attacks.

Warning: Dampening effect only applies to the cloak itself, not the user.

“Not bad,” I said, though I was seeing a clear theme. I suspected it was the “Wood” rank of all my items. Everything was good but limited. There always seemed to be a catch. Would that diminish once I began to earn Iron rank accomplishments and beyond? Or would the advantages and powers grow enough that the limitations were less of a worry? Or maybe the idea was to accumulate so many treasures that I could counteract my various limitations.

I tossed my old cloak on the floor and attached my new one.

“You’re not planning to leave your dirty laundry in my room again, right?” Lyria asked.

“Of course not,” I said slowly, picking up my old cloak and rolling it into a smelly ball and then holding it in my lap.

“Three more,” I said, wiggling my eyebrows. “All epic.”

Lyria rolled her eyes at me but smiled. “Yeah, yeah. Just get on with it. And if any of them get an upgrade to legendary, I’m going to see just how much that cloak actually protects you.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So you’re going to be so mad, you’ll walk behind me and hit me with a magical attack?”

“It sounded better in my head,” she admitted. “Now, claim your tokens before I do it myself.”

I grinned, picking up the Epic Augment Token.