The Stubborn Light of a Dying Flame

Rayna spun around, gaping at the antlered woman who sat in the previously empty seat like she had been there the whole time. “Phira?”

The woman grinned. “I should hope so! Unless you know any other fabulously dressed Cervinales flitting about in the tutorial.” She looked around the empty tavern, running her finger along the dusty wooden table. The motion made no difference, as Phira’s finger passed right through the dust. “I must say, this place has probably seen better days. Where is everyone?”

Rayna glanced at Patty, who looked confused.

“How come we don’t need subtitles?” Patty asked.

Phira blinked. “Sub-whats?”

“The written translations,” Helga said. “Because the Universal Translation feature isn’t working. We’re all getting notifications with subtitles instead, but we don’t need them for you.”

Phira frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that, but my guess is that I’m being translated into your language because Rayna is the owner of my stone. Do we have any idea why the speech translation isn’t working?”

Helga shrugged. “It’s been out of order since we were booted from the tutorial.”

“The universe is cruel and unfair, and I might as well just give up now,” Bob said all of a sudden. “A simulacrum stone? Seriously? Just buy a lottery ticket, why don’t you?”

“A what stone?” Rayna asked, her brows furrowed.

“Oh dear, we do need to work on your magic foundational knowledge,” Phira said with a disapproving tsk. “That necklace I gave you is my simulacrum stone, as this young man pointed out. It’s the item that contains my soul, allowing me to remain in the mortal world like this.” She pointed at the necklace. “Without that, I would have passed on long ago.

“I suppose I should have, but this is the closest one can get to immortality, you know, and I have too many things I wish to know before I allow myself to rest. I was working on some very important digs in the historical society when I died. Though they must have finished them without me. I do wonder—”

“Umm… Phira,” Rayna said, cutting her off before she could go on a tangent. “Why, of all things, did you give me… you?”

Phira smiled. “I should think that would be obvious. I wanted out of that blasted maze. I’ve been stuck running that trial for three thousand years. I was dying for a change of scenery.”

Bob snorted and Phira raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you find my misery amusing?”

Bob’s eyes widened and the smile dropped from his face. “No, I mean… it’s just… you said you were dying to get out… but you’re already dead…” With each pause, Bob’s voice got quieter and quieter.

Phira looked confused for a moment then her face brightened. “Dying to get out, that is funny!” she exclaimed. She tried to hit the table, but her hand passed right through it. “Have I become a word smith in my old age? Or perhaps it’s simply an instance of a Long-Nosed Terrafee stumbling into a Jerra’s trove. It does tend to happen now and again, regardless of the improbability.”

Bob relaxed, apparently coming to the conclusion that Phira wasn’t going to smite him after all. “What’s a Long-Nosed Terrafee?”

Phira tilted her head. “They’re a bit difficult to describe. They’re a squarish mammal that’s about ten feet tall—when you count the seven-foot-long neck, that is—and their nose is so long that they can sniff the ground while standing tall, hence the name. Strange creatures, Terrafees, but they produce the most delicious milk.”

The picture in Rayna’s head was a very short giraffe with small stubby legs and an elephant’s nose. She snorted.

“It’s true,” Phira insisted. “It makes amazing cheese as well.”

“What’s a Jerra?” Helga asked.

“I would be happy to answer all of your questions,” Phira said. “After Rayna has told me about the mystery pendant.”

Rayna’s anger over her lost rewards had long since faded—after all, the library was a goldmine of information and worth far more than she lost—but a bit of her earlier irritation resurfaced at a sudden realization.

“Did you really sacrifice all of my stuff so you could see what the pendant did?” Rayna asked incredulously. “You had a direct line to the System! Why didn’t you just ask?”

Phira shook her head. “It doesn’t really work like that. I had a direct line to a piece of the System. It’s not the Administrator, but rather a sliver of his consciousness that he set to manage my maze. I was surprised when the Administrator himself showed up in that garden because that meant he was keeping an eye on you personally.”

That was an unsettling bit of information. Rayna decided she would have been happy never knowing that the god of this world was paying attention to her.

“Therefore,” Phira continued. “It couldn’t have answered my questions, but it could strike a bargain on his behalf. I offered my necklace and my library, since those were the two most valuable items in my collection. The rest of my hoard was transferred to the System, likely to be used as prizes for later trials. As for what the System took in exchange, that was its choice.”

Rayna sighed. “And you didn’t bother asking, did you? You just went with it.”

Phira had the decency to look ashamed, albeit only slightly. “That is another piece of information that the System couldn’t provide, as I was sucked into my stone as soon as the System accepted the proposal. It didn’t take the pendant, did it?”

Rayna shook her head. “I got to keep all of my point rewards. The System took my Experience, coins and treasure chests.”

Phira clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t think the System would rank my necklace so highly! Or maybe it was my Library… but it shouldn’t have more than a few dozen books.”

“It has thousands,” Rayna said with a slight shake of her head. “I think I could read for years and never reach the end of the list.”

Phira’s expression brightened. “I think I understand what happened! When I offered you my library, the System must have thought I was offering you my entire collection! I made that artifact by accident, honestly. It was the thing that got me the Arcanic Tinkerer Class. But I died before I could add most of my books to it.” Her face lit up. “Do you have my travel logs? My archeology notes? Oh, you probably even have my sketchbooks, good heavens!”

That explained why the books weren’t in her rewards. Rayna had assumed that they were just duplicates of the ones in her library, but maybe adding them to the library consumed them somehow. She made a mental note to try adding a book later.

“Hold up,” Patty said. “You could make artifacts? How high was your level?”

Phira raised both eyebrows. “Asking a person is considered rude, you know.”

“It’s displayed over everyone’s heads, though,” Helga said, pointing up at her name tag.

“Only until the First Ascension,” Phira explained. “After that, asking a person’s level is similar to asking a woman her age.

“No, I do believe it’s worse than that. See, if the person’s level is low, compared to their age, you’re basically asking them to admit that they are lazy or inept. Meanwhile, if their level is higher than it should be, you invite the jealousy of those around them. It’s very awkward at dinner parties.”

Phira spoke like she had experience making this sort of faux pas.

“Never ask someone their level. Got it,” Bob said with a nod.

Patty wasn’t going to give up that easily. “I feel like, what with Rayna having all of your research, at the very least she ought to know how long she should wait before considering using any of it. The rest of us can leave if you don’t want us to know.”

Phira shook her head. “I suppose I will indulge you this once. You are all still in the earliest stages of your lives and you might benefit from knowing someone of a more advanced age and level.” Phira was basking in the attention and Rayna couldn’t help a small smile at the woman’s enthusiasm. “Before I died, I was a level 151 Arcane Tinkerer.”

Helga nearly choked on a bite of her rations. “151? The highest level I’ve seen was only 47.”

“The preview only lasts a year,” Phira said. “I’ve lived for more than a hundred times that. I should hope I reached further than the Second Ascension.”

“What that means is,” Patty said. “Rayna now has the collection of someone three times as strong as the top player in Ember Online.”

Phira looked offended. “I am many times stronger than that! A Level 47 only has what, five hundred stat points? I have over four thousand.” She pursed her lips, correcting herself. “Had. I can’t really use them now, but keep that in mind. What you said just now was not just rude, it was downright insulting, and it will likely get you into trouble.”

Patty accepted the admonishment, apologizing to the Tinkerer.

“In any case, you are right about one thing.” Phira said. “My library is priceless. The System must highly value your assistance if it didn’t take the pendant in exchange. I assume it is soul-locked now? People would kill to get their hands on that sort of information.”

Rayna nodded, bringing up her screen and sharing the artifact description with Phira. It was almost identical to the message that she had received upon bonding with the artifact, except for an added line at the top.

Current Morph: Phira’s Travel Log.

Time remaining: 2h 27m

“You read my travel log?” Phira asked excitedly. “What did you think?”

“I haven’t actually read much,” Rayna said. “Just the note at the beginning and a few pages. Were you really a princess?”

The other three at the table didn’t seem too surprised about this and looking at the gems draped over Phira’s antlers, Rayna probably should have guessed it sooner.

“That was on my home world,” Phira said dismissively. “I gave all that up when I moved to Ember. I kept the title as a reminder of where I came from, but it holds no weight here. Ember has no royalty.

“Now, please, I’m dying to know what that pendant does!”

Rayna shook her head. “I don’t have enough MP. I used it all bonding to the library.”

“Nonsense,” Phira said. “To bond with an artifact, you simply have to empty all of your Mana into its reserves. It doesn’t matter if you have one MP or one thousand, as long as you use everything you have.”

So, Rayna could have bonded with it any time she wanted. She was actually glad that she hadn’t. It might have taken her weeks to check out the seemingly plain necklace if she wasn’t trying to cheer Bob up. Who knows how long poor Phira would have waited in Rayna’s Inventory.

Rayna pulled the Fountain of Life Amulet out of her Inventory and examined it. The amulet was nearly three inches in diameter. Rubies and sapphires glittered on its surface and there was some sort of latch on the side showing that it could be opened like a locket, but it had long since rusted shut.

Rayna poured her remaining MP into the amulet and waited for the notification.

You have bonded with the Artifact The Fountain of Life Amulet [Legendary].

Now that this artifact has been bonded, it cannot change owners. Upon the owner’s death, it will be returned to the System.

Instructions: Store Mana in the Amulet to automatically be used for healing when the owner gets injured. The Amulet can heal most cuts, stabs and blunt force injuries, but it cannot regrow body parts or fix failing senses. The amulet must be worn in order to heal the user. The amulet’s healing cannot be used on anyone besides the bonded owner (Conversion rate: 5 MP = 1 HP).

Current Charge: 165/10,000,000

Rayna wasn’t sure if this artifact was a good fit for her. With 10 MP she would only heal two Health Points as opposed to the one hundred Health Points that she could heal with Basic Heal.

She shared the description with Phira and asked her opinion.

“Are you nuts?” Bob asked before Phira could answer. “That’s a total cheat!”

Phira frowned. “I’m not sure how you think Rayna cheated, but I assure you, everything was done in accordance with the rules. The System wouldn’t make a blunder of this magnitude.”

Aside from kidnapping millions of people and making me a Lerian, Rayna thought.

Aloud, she explained, “It’s just a phrase. He means that the artifact is so good that it’s like I’m cheating, not that he actually thinks I am.”

“Ah,” Phira said. “Then you are correct. This is a ‘total cheat’.”

“Details for the new player?” Rayna said, still waiting for an explanation as to why this wasn’t the most inefficient gadget ever invented.

“If you do the math, it seems terrible,” Patty said. “But its strength lies in the ability to charge it ahead of time. Right now you’re not doing anything, right? Your Mana is just sitting in your pool, unable to build past your cap. What’s the maximum amount of healing you can do in one sitting?”

“Five thousand,” Rayna said.

“With this artifact,” Phira said, taking over the explanation. “You can theoretically heal two million HP in one fell swoop, assuming you were able to fill it to its maximum capacity, that is. Right now, you are limited by your small Mana pool, but eventually, you will be able to keep it full all of the time, guarding against accidents and surprise attacks. There aren’t many monsters who can empty your Health pool in one hit once your Vitality starts getting into the thousands.

“Now, before you do anything with it, remember—”

Phira vanished before she could finish her sentence.

* * *

Janet massaged her temples as the conversation dragged on long past dinner time. The large table that the thirty or so Tutorial Leaders gathered around was likely used for war meetings at some point, but the large castle that they were now inhabiting had long since stood abandoned. There was a thick layer of dust on every surface and more cobwebs decorated the halls than tapestries.

At least the universal translation subtitles—or UTS as they had started calling it—had a group mode. In gatherings larger than ten people, the subtitles were on each individual screen in a chat-like interface. Janet disabled the feature for most of the time she had been in City 8 because it had a tendency to pick up every voice within a thirty foot radius, making it a nightmare in common areas and crowds.

But in the current situation, where there were ten or more different languages being flung around the room and the subtitles would have to be three inches tall to be seen from the other side of the table, the group setting was just what they needed.

Unfortunately, it also seemed to make everyone think that they didn’t have to wait their turn to speak.

“We need to figure out a way to fight back,” a Chinese man said before the Russian woman had finished her last statement. “This is a declaration of war on the entire planet.”

“Oh, please use some sense,” an Indian woman said in heavily-accented English. “You’d have an easier time picking a fight with God. We are at the System’s mercy, for better or for worse.”

“That isn’t what we came here to discuss,” Janet said, trying to drag them all back on topic. “We don’t know how long we will be in this city, but we have an opportunity here. If we pool our resources and set up a training program—”

“We can do what?” a young french woman with sharply groomed eyebrows and a perpetual frown asked. “Prepare for the next Level 1 Robi? The tutorial is a joke, and I don’t think it is worth preparing for such an easy fight.”

“And what if the System sends only Level 5 monsters next time?” Janet countered. “It never hurts to be prepared. This isn’t a game anymore. Lives are at stake here.”

“Miss Lindale is right,” a young man to her left said.

He couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen and Janet wondered what he had done to get himself named Tutorial Leader.

“There are over a thousand groups in City 8 alone,” he continued. “Odds are, someone knows real fighting techniques. We might even be able to gather intel on what monsters we might run into. If we can’t out-muscle the enemies, we need to outsmart them.”

“The fact of the matter is, none of us are soldiers,” a German man said. He adjusted his broken spectacles and looked around the group with a serious expression. “Most of us are gamers. We played Ember Online for fun. I was a Mage in the game, that doesn’t mean that I know how to aim a fireball. In my trial, I missed and ended up burning my weapon instead. I had to kill the monster with my bare hands.” He shuddered.

“Skill issue,” someone said with a sarcastic cough.

“My point being,” the German man said, glaring at the speaker. “I also agree with Miss Lindale. If we are going to survive this, we need to learn how to fight.”

“So how do we go about finding these talents?” the Chinese man asked. “We can’t just go knocking door to door.”

“We take a census,” Janet said, pulling up her Menu and blowing it up to the size of a projector screen. She had been delighted when she discovered this little trick, as it worked particularly well in discussing strategies during the first trial.

“We can utilize the System chat,” she said, pointing at the screen like she was giving a presentation. “It’s set up like a forum, complete with categories and tags. We can make a post asking people for their name, age, location of residence prior to integration and what skills they have that might aid in survival.

“We then compile a list and set up small scale workshops in various locations to prevent overcrowding. We can also see about setting up a lending program for any books that aren’t being used. Information is our greatest asset.”

“I thought everyone got the same books,” the French woman said. “All useless drivel about the System’s glory and grace.”

“If my group is an accurate indication, every player received three books that were not part of the standard package. The most useful books we have found thus far was a three-volume set of bestiaries that describe thousands of monsters in detail, along with their strengths, weaknesses, and leveling speed. There are three copies of each of these books already in the lending program that I set up for my group.”

“We don’t know how long we’re going to be here,” said a man with an Australian accent. “We could set all of this up just to be sent right back to the tutorial before the first class can be held.”

“That doesn’t mean we should just sit around and do nothing,” said the man with the broken glasses. “My group lost five players before the tutorial became easier… and one player after.”

The silence stretched after that declaration. The idea that anyone could die to a Level 1 Robi was almost laughable, but they knew it could happen.

The man continued. “A Level 1 isn’t a guarantee. Better to have one workshop after weeks of effort than to squander what little time we have to prepare.”

Slowly, the others at the table agreed, even the one who had called the Mage’s blunder a skill issue. When it came down to it, this was a matter of life and death, and they all wanted the same thing: to survive this and get home.

“Then it’s settled,” Janet said. “I will add the post in the languages that I know, since the UTS doesn’t work on the forum posts. If anyone has a language to add, please do so. And spread the word among the group leaders. The more people we get to answer the census, the better chance it has of success.”

Janet hadn’t expected the meeting to go so well, but that was just a sign of how scared everyone was. It was do or die time and the System wasn’t going to help them get stronger, so they would do it themselves.