Cryo-Scape 2052

If there was a time skip and I became older then my stats might take a boost. Hard to tell if a mutated creature or a wasteland scavenger would kill me easily, even a flying bug could cause me massive damage and cripple my limbs. Hard to tell.

‘System, I’m going to choose mechanical learning for a skill, wrecking my stats early on won’t be too much of an issue.

[Game Hint: The sun rises and sets, and NPCs keep moving. Time waits for no one!]

‘Thanks for the reminder that I can’t keep hiding out here while events are taking place. I’ll get right on those quests like finding a lost gardening tool or helping my friend’s mum with her lost cat. Time for me to choose my skills.’

I concentrated and the in-game skills list appeared again.

-Empathy: Understanding the feelings of others can give you hidden options. And make you a better person.

-Mechanical Learning: Your mind is a machine. Each stat suffers a permanent decrease, but you make up for it by getting a tiny percentage increase in a skill or ability every time you practice it. This applies to all passive or active skills. The percentage amount required increases per level. Fear the person who practised the same punch 10,000 times to get good at it!

-Pickpocket: Gives you a chance to steal items from others. Or even plant items instead.

-Stealth: Make like a ninja and hide. While moving.

-Persuasion: Sometimes having a silver tongue helps you make others do the work on your behalf.

I chose Mechanical Learning and decided to leave the second skill choice for another time depending on how circumstances played out. No way I was going to end up hunted down like a hungry mouse if my thieving skills failed and hostile NPCs detected me. For the others I wasn’t quite sure how to place them yet either, character builds made for quite a variety. It looked to me like these skills were closer to being a rogue or lighter build, no combat skills yet but that could change later.

Viewing the skills and remembering that my health points were only six the whole idea of healing or recovery abilities made me suddenly pause. I was stuck with an unknowable amount of radiation damage, and an unhealthy body that was lacking in vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. This was usually the time that a game offered you a character with regenerating shields or health that recovered over time, or body armour.

Why couldn’t I have started the game as a bio-enhanced soldier with self-healing capability? Not a bullet sponge but something that could withstand damage, magic power or mana was a thing.

Leaving all that aside for a moment as I could question the system a bit once I saw my new character build and the damage inflicted through my skill choice. I thought about my character build and the screen appeared again.

Player XXX: Character Build, Self-Improvement at the Cost of Bodily Health!

Age: 8

Skills:

-Mechanical Learning

Beware the person who practices the same punch 10,000 times! You can learn by doing!

Health Points: 5

Strength: 1

Dexterity: 1

Awareness: 2

Endurance: 1

Intelligence: 3

Luck: 1

Charisma: 0 (1 temporary)

Available Character Allocation Points: 0

Weaknesses: Unknown (?) radiation count, constant radiation sickness, lowly strength of a slave, heavily malnourished, prisoner.

‘Umm…system can I reset my skill choice?’ I was beginning to think that after seeing the changes in my character build that deliberately choosing to weaken myself wasn’t the best plan given that I remained a level zero character with no further skills to improve yet.

[Player XXX: Skill choices cannot reset but you can replace them with newer skills. Sorry, you need to buy before you try!]

That certainly made it a suitable challenge. Still, it might prove useful in the longer term to have a skill that improved my ability to master a variety of skills.

‘System, do I have a list of currently available quests from NPCs like a checklist? I think it’s time for me to start taking some real action rather than stay here.’

[Player XXX: Current Available Quests

The Good Brother

Help your younger brother to feel better.

Reward offered: ?? and 30XP>.

Tool Detective

Track down your father’s missing gardening tool.

Reward: 45XP and +1 Free Temporary Charisma Point. This will withdraw from you at the end of the initial tutorial stage>.

: Medicine for Mom.

Find out why your friend Cathy’s mom hasn’t received her allocated medicine yet.

Reward: 40 XP only.>

‘Those quests don’t seem to offer all that much in the way of experience. This could lead to further opportunities and additional resources. What’s with the question marks for the reward regarding my brother though? Something to focus on later than once I’m more established. ‘

I then remembered the birthday present that my in-game parents gifted to me.

Should try and fix my thinking about that.

This was my life now and any form of supportive family would mean the difference between survival and oblivion.

‘Wait, what about the rough paper book and charcoal that I was given? System, can you give me anything about it?’

[Game Hint: Every single player starts with a unique item! Why not check your special ability of yours?]

I felt a little bit relieved that even if I didn’t have a great starting pack at least I would have something worth using. The in-game tutorial system was giving me decent hints at this point. Opening my inventory function, I viewed the rough-looking scrapbook.

[Player XXX Inventory:]

-1 rusty screwdriver (Might be worth something to someone but we doubt it!)

-1 broken comb (Hairdresser??)

-1 tin can (Kick it around if you’re bored.)

-1 Stick of Charcoal (You’re an Artist Lucas!)

-Scrapbook of a Lifetime (This acts as a record for any in-game notes and only exists for the player. As long as you have something to write with then you can have your knowledge of the world. Unlimited pages. *Item non-sellable or transferrable from the designated player. *

Finally, I had something useful. Despite not being a set of cool armour or a laser weapon, it had the potential to be useful. It might be a clever idea to keep a record of any quests, ideas about my environment and notes on any enemies and their weaknesses.

Writing time!

I pulled the scrapbook out of my inventory, and it appeared in my hand. The charcoal appeared in my other hand when I thought about taking it out.

First, I need to write a few things in the book using my piece of charcoal that I deemed essential for my immediate survival. Opening it up the system showed me the first page. I started writing.

Page 1

Record 1: It’s fine that I’m talking to myself as it’s helping keep me sane given the fact I transmigrated.

Record 2: World has a system and seems to be a video game-style world.

Record 3: Record all quests/requests/status of relationship with NPCs

Record 4: Add information on the local environment and power structures.

Recorded in Scrapbook of a Lifetime.

‘Great, now it’s time to find my parents and get some quests for experience and items. Also, a particularly innovative idea is to check out my local environment and find a solution to that radiation sickness. It could be making my stats drop more than normal, I thought that getting a blood transfusion helped with that but given this setting may be the medicine is super-advanced.’

The first thing to do. Work out how to get back to where I was. No point in writing that down.

I ended up slowly walking back to where I had first seen my parents and taking my time to look around the area where we lived in a bit more detail this time. Nobody had any lights turned on that I could see, but there was enough to make your way around. Could be early morning in this place or someone forgot to turn on all the lights.

People were shuffling along, dressed in similar outfits that my parents wore. Worn out greyish clothing and cheap-looking shoes. Nothing that looked like it was worth much, this wasn’t a place with any good shops around.

Usually, a video game setting would have a merchant who would set you up with things to buy and sell. I wasn’t quite clear on what was going on here but this place looked poor, like dirt poor. The floor felt rough and looked like concrete, I saw that

I tried to say hello to people as I walked by them but although two or three smiled at me, others wanted to avoid all conversation entirely as if they were in a slight rush and couldn’t take the time to talk. I noticed that the walls were metallic or stone, something that looked solid. Taking a closer look, they were grey with these really large pipes running along them.

‘Hi there, good morning!’

‘…’

‘…’

The pipes are for fuel or water supplies? Seems pretty odd to live in a place with pipes on the walls.

It was then that I heard a voice echo throughout the area. It sounded mechanical but slightly distorted.

‘Work for the gods! Take a fifteen-minute break if tired then continue your labours! We are given protection and must in return give our efforts!’

Yes, that had something to do with the people not taking the time to casually chat with me. I wasn’t a fan of hearing about gods though. I guess in this setting it could be actual gods, all of that was so far ahead of me that it just wasn’t funny. The main thing that I needed to focus on right now was my survival.

I could try and find more stuff to scavenge, that might give me something to work with. No idea yet if there was any kind of crafting system available. The most valuable thing that any video game would provide any player is free time, that’s something that most people forget to consider. Any moment when my life wasn’t going to be in danger, I wanted to figure out this world a bit more.

That brought back an old memory I had when I was a kid, at least not in the body of one like this game. I used to have these old-style paperback books that were in the form of choosing your adventures. You could roll dice or use an existing character and it was all in the form of the book. Anyway, this one book had you exploring this underground dungeon where you wanted to find the main treasure and beat the evil warlock.

Yes, you could cheat if you wanted to by choosing a particular number, skipping ahead, and turning to turn back thus controlling your fate. A kind of scum save technique but in book form., ok so I was a kid who liked to cheat sometimes but the other option of ‘’you have been killed by a swamp monster who breathes fire’’ just didn’t appeal to me all of the time.

To make a long story short I wanted to win the books by playing the rules of the game. Reading back into the introduction and the rules was the suggestion that you should write down all passwords and secrets that you found in the game using pen and paper so you could recall them later when you faced that particular encounter. The other was to make a map of separate places that you had been to so you wouldn’t keep losing the game.

Now, I didn’t have any access to a game guide nor overwhelming physical or material power at this point, but I did have a piece of sharpened charcoal and an invulnerable scrapbook. The most powerful weapon for me was knowledge, and I was going to take advantage of it as much as possible.

I thought about my inventory function:

[Player XXX Inventory:]

-1 rusty screwdriver (Might be worth something to someone but we doubt it!)

-1 broken comb (Hairdresser??)

-1 tin can (Kick it around if you’re bored.)

-1 Stick of Charcoal (You’re an Artist Lucas!

-Scrapbook of a Lifetime (Record any in-game notes and only exists for the player. As long as you have something to write with then you can have your knowledge of the world. Unlimited pages. *Item non-sellable or transferrable from a designated player. *

‘Why is my player’s name XXX? Is that the reason for the error that got me into this whole mess? Forget it, I just need two items right now. That burned stick and the lifetime magic book.’

I withdrew the book and the stick again and looked at the first page that I had written earlier.

Page 1

Record 1: It’s fine that I’m talking to myself as it’s helping keep me sane given the fact I transmigrated.

Record 2: World has a system and seems to be a video game-style world.

Record 3: Record all quests/requests/status of relationship with NPCs

Record 4: Add information on the local environment and power structures.

I thought to myself that the first record made sense. The rest of them would help me to ground myself further in the world and improve my chances of success. Failing that I hoped there was an in-game save function and those saves wouldn’t get corrupted or lost.

Taking the charcoal stick I opened the book to the next page.

Page 2

This world has something called Gods. Real or imagined.

Starting location is poor as heck, with insufficient lighting.

Crafting system a thing?

In-Game Hints are useful. Listen to them!

You do not have a game save yet. Do not risk yourself!

Take on and finish available quests.

‘That ought to do it.’ I kept the book and charcoal stick ready in case I wanted to write any more notes.

[Player XXX has gained 1 temporary usable point in World Notetaking. System has added this in your character build.]

That seems…interesting. Wait, I chose the Mechanical Mind skill. Every time I practice a particular thing, I get better at it. Then the system gave me another notification.

[Player XXX has gained 1 temporary usable point in Procrastination. System has added this to your character build.]

‘System, that’s not funny. Yeah, I spent a bit of time thinking about my environment rather than acting, but it doesn’t make me a deliberate time waster.’

Then the same mechanical-sounding voice boomed out and made me jump a bit almost making me drop the scrapbook and the stylus.

‘The Gods Protect us from the Evils of this World! Serve, serve, and worship for their guidance!’

I opened my inventory again and threw back the stylus in the book before remembering that there was a voice earlier that said about taking a fifteen-minute break. That sounded harsh to me.

Slave workers?