The Arcade Series

Terance POV

I stumbled down the deserted streets in shock as I tried to think rationally and for once, had a lot of difficulty doing it. ‘I just- he just-’ I thought to myself in shock, holding onto the pendant the old man had given me, just for playing a game that in itself was shocking in its own right.

If what that old man said was true… Suddenly, I realized what I needed to do. There is only one way to know for sure. ‘I needed to find Aubrey. She has an identification skill, I can get her to identify it and make sure that the old man was telling the truth.’ I thought and I looked around, finding myself in a large courtyard that I knew was not very far from the market and Aubrey’s stall. “Huh. It's almost like my legs knew where I needed to go before I did!” I chuckled to myself and started walking with determination, a goal in mind.

A few minutes of hobbling painfully down streets and through allies, I knew I had reached the market from the shouts of vendors trying to sell anything to anyone and angry customers trying to out yell them. There was also the scent of a lot of spices in the air and bright banners through the streets, but they weren't as noticeable.

I smiled as I hobbled down the street to where I knew Aubrey was. The great old market, the same as always.

It took slightly longer winding my way through the crowds of people in the street with my crutches, but finally I reached a small table with a sign stating “Aubrey’s alchemy” with bottles and monster parts sitting beside various plants on the old table. Aubrey was sitting behind the table as always, looking at me sternly as I looked at the things on the table. She was a middle aged woman, looking to be around her late forties, black hair and blue eyes that seemed to pierce right through you.

“Hello Aubrey.” I said happily to the old woman, left hand in my pocket still clutching my new pendant tightly, it would be just my luck for it to be stolen now. “Not looking too good, kid.” Aubrey said the words stonily, but I could see the gimmer of worry in her eyes. No matter how hard she pretends to be, she has a good heart. That's why I go to her and not another of the people yelling to the high heavens about buying monster parts.

That's not to say she was a good and honest person, that would contradict her job as a merchant. “Hey, are you sure that you labeled these ‘Abraxian Wolf’ claws right? They look like horns of a unihare…” I said in mock confusion, watching her face harden slightly in annoyance.

With merchants, you always needed some leverage and she was practically begging to give some man with half a brain and an eye some leverage over her. Honestly, unihare horns might look superficially like a claw, but anyone who has even stepped into a dungeon or even the first half kilometer into the woods would know what a unihare horn looks like.

“Knock it off boy!” The woman said sharply, “You are going to make people think I am not honest about my wares!” she continued to berate me over the chatter of the crowd rushing around us.

“Ok, ok, fine. I can knock it off. If you identify something for me that is.” I said slyly to Aubrey, looking at her sideways.

She scoffed at my words, but she raised her hand up to do what I asked. “Fine. Make it quick, I have some beautiful potions I want to sell before sun down!” She said, sounding begrudging, but we both knew that she was completely fine using her skill, it would be good for both of us as she gets some experience from using her skill on new things and I get to be sure the pendant was actually a magic artifact.

I quickly withdrew my left hand and placed the pendant into her open hand. She stared at the pendant, then back at me, before sighing and I could feel the mana flowing through her hand and into the pendant, searching to find its effects. The old woman stiffened suddenly and I knew then that she saw what the pendant could do. ‘That old man wasn't lying after all!’ I thought to myself in happiness and I reached out and plucked away the pendant from Aubrey’s hand and back into my pocket quickly. I wouldn't put it past her to try and steal the pendant from me, no matter how soft hearted she was.

“How in the nine hells did you afford that?!” Aubrey said hoarsely, almost shouting but apparently having enough presence of mind to not attract more attention. “I won it from an old guy in an ‘arcade’ or whatever he called it.” I said quickly, not worried about her finding out where it came from. I think the old man could use some more customers, he won't get much business on that street.

Leonore POV

Disappointingly, after Terance left there was no sign of human life out in the street, nevermind potential customers. “I thought this city was supposed to have a thriving economy…” I muttered out loud in disappointment as I shuttered the windows and locked the door for the night.

After a while I kind of made my peace with the fact that I wouldn't be getting any more customers and so I started talking with my system about what I could do in my spare time and the system wasn't very helpful about that and directed me to basically make the arcade as good as possible for the customers. That did get me thinking about my thoughts about making it more difficult to get artifacts from the arcade. Now, there were two things that came to my mind that I could potentially do to achieve that.

The first idea is a program to rapidly scale the difficulty in the video games, making it very, very difficult to get very far into the games and the second was to raise what is needed to get the artifacts, either price or somehow limit the distribution to make it a rare thing.

When I was thinking about that, I realized something. With the whole magical powers and skill things, it might not actually be possible to go without either of these options if I want to challenge players and not hand out a dozen artifacts a day. So I began to work on it. There were lots of difficulties with this though as I couldn't change the amount of tickets needed to get an artifact unless I gave out discounts for something, so I had to get creative.

I started talking with the system about that and it actually created a program that would basically do what I wanted for the scaling difficulty, but the only thing that was a problem was that it cost a hundred dollars that I clearly did not have with my balance currently being fifty cents.

Increasing the price for artifacts was difficult though, as the system refused to change the price for some reason. That left only one option for limiting artifacts for me to enact. That was limiting what I give out somehow. I thought of a simple solution for this though and I actually found a cool thing I could do with the system to make it work better. My solution was to make it have a limit for the number of artifacts monthly.

Currently I had it placed at three tier one artifacts a month, two tier two artifacts a month and one tier three artifacts a month, with the stipulation that one person cant get multiple artifacts in the same month. I might change this, but it seemed pretty fair to me, so I doubted it.

As for the system function I found out about, I could actually get the system to make me signs and posters! It was extremely useful and I immediately got to work making various things for my little arcade, ranging from advertisements for the windows, to a large board showing how the arcade prize system works and finally adding a secondary price to items in the cafe to show the price in tickets.

That took the rest of the day, though it was actually pretty cool to work with, it was necessary and it was not as boring as you would think, so I couldn't complain.

When I closed up the arcade for the night, I wasn't sure what I should do. I could play videogames in the arcade portion of the building, or… I wasn't sure what else I could actually do, but I wanted to do something else. I thought about it for a while and I came up with a few different things I wanted to do, but they were not very realistic or even possible right now. One thing I wanted to do was make myself a weapon to protect myself, but I didn't exactly have a forge like I used to, or even materials to melt down if I did.

That did get me thinking however and I stilled as I thought about the possibilities of an idea that occurred to me when I was thinking of weapons. That idea was based on the magic artifact generator and was basically me remembering that I could play the games for free during the night and therefore, I could get free tickets to get myself a powerful artifact. Hell, I already had some tickets from the ice cream sandwich I sold Terance!

I looked around the cafe one more time, deciding that now was as good a time to start as any, and I walk down the steps into the arcade, ready to wreak havoc on the games in the arcade and start to get my own magic artifact.

When I reached the game area, I look around and decide what games I want to try based on what I remember being better at. I don't want to waste very much time despite the fact that I am literally about to play games. Then I start to play and quickly I find that something is off. When I played darts, I found out that I was much stronger and more accurate than when I was on earth. The accuracy was understandable as I had been fighting in the underworld for years and occasionally I had used throwing weapons when I could, but the strength was odd. I felt stronger than even when I was in the army and I think I thought faster too.

When I paused I realized that the strength was probably from the ‘Managers body’ skill at work, so while it was odd for the moment, it was also reassuring.

I kept up the gaming for hours, setting what I felt was a personal record on almost all games, the game I was worse at was surprisingly darts. Then again, I was never very good at it and the manager's body could only do so much. But on the other hand, I had reached insane levels on games like Pacman and Galaga, which was a combination of strategy, timing and reaction speed.

Eventually eight hours of pure fun and gaming later I had reached a hundred tickets, which was the minimum amount of tickets for a tier two artifact, and I stopped trying to break my 10378 point record on pacman that I couldn't seem to go past and I begrudgingly walked back to the cafe part of the building.

I walked stiffly at first, but I quickly gained speed and the stiffness from gaming for eight hours went away soon after. When I walked behind the counter, I quickly took out a cup from the dispenser and poured myself a cup of coffee before taking out all the tickets from my pockets and placing them on the table, looking down at the second tier artifact generator by my knees and wondering with excitement what I could get from it.

I quickly bent down and picked it up and placed the heavy box on the counter. I quickly started feeding the box with the hundred tickets until I had used every last one. Taking a sip from my cup of coffee, I sat down while the box started to form my prize and I could feel the energy thrum through the magical box and form into my magical artifact.

With bated breath, I opened the machine and looked inside. When I opened it, for a second I thought that something went wrong, but when I took a closer look, I saw a shimmer and I realized that the artifact was still there, just really small. I picked up the tiny thing and I examined it closely.

When I picked it up, I looked at it in confusion and surprise at what it was. It was a monocle. This box gave me a monocle. My eyesight isn't even bad now that I got a new body! I scowled once I had gotten over my temporary surprise, the system is messing with me.

Just as I thought that, the blue screen of the system notification panel suddenly popped into existence in front of me with the same display it had used to show the effects of the Pendant of the Restful Moon I had gotten Terance.

“Monocle of Mana Sight. This monocle gives the wearer the ability to see the currents and form of mana through it, and make it bend to your will into the shape you impose on it and form the effects you desire.” The system said, leaving me impressed at the monocle, but no less annoyed at the system.

“Of course it gives the ability to see and do magic… I have to go back to wearing glasses again!” I mutter, partly amused, partly annoyed at the system.

Before I could continue to complain to the air about the monocles even more, I heard another Pop! as another system screen appeared beside the first one, this one saying “The arcade opens in half an hour, please prepare to open the arcade for the day.” to me in what seemed to be a passive aggressive response. I could be reading too much into it though.

I sighed out loud and I started putting away the tier two artifact generator and put on the monocle. Immediately reeling back in shock at the colored particles that almost looked like smoke, but with a definite shape, flowing around me in droves through the air and apparently solid objects like they don't exist. “So this is mana?” I exclaim out loud, watching with fascination as a bright blue particle floated and spun in the air in front of my face calmly.

It drew nearer and I tried to bat it aside, but my hand went through it like it didn't exist. I stared at my hand in shock, holding it carefully and examined the particles with even more interest. “How odd!” I exclaim excitedly, I always liked the idea of real magic.

The system screen with the opening time countdown beeped again and I realized that I needed to get to work. No time to figure out the secrets of magic until I open the shop for the day.