Enter system, p.11
Enter System, page 11
part #1 of Natural Laws Apocalypse Series
“Well, it's done. Let's go inside again and see what it looks like,” Marc said.
“You wanted other people here, so I turned all the classrooms into individual apartments,” Jeff said. “So we should probably go pick ours before anyone else shows up.”
“Actually, I want to check the shop. You got a chance to look through it, but I didn't, not really,” Marc said.
“In that case, I'll get my apartment later,” Jeff said, sprinting towards the door.
Marc entered the gym to find it hadn't been changed much. The bleachers were all gone, and he was pretty sure he knew where. There had been excess materials when they made the Safe Zone and once it had finished he'd seen stacks of wood and stone out in the parking lot. He guessed that that was the excess from the creation of the Safe Zone and if he looked near them he'd find a much smaller stack of metal as well.
The shop was now plainly visible since the bleachers were gone and as Marc approached it, Jeff turned away from it. There was a bag visible in his hands, the logo one of a well known fast food chain. The scent of burgers and fries caught Marc's attention as Jeff opened his bag.
“Cost you much?”
“Only a silver,” Jeff replied.
“And how many of those do you still have?”
Jeff looked around and shrugged.
“Enough for now, you?”
“No clue, but I'm going to look through the shop for a while. Maybe there's something we can use in there, something to help boost our power levels a bit. I'm still feeling a lot like a noob.”
Jeff frowned.
“Yeah, me too. It's like we're doing the starting zones of one of the games we used to play. You know, the zones where you either dominate your opponents or get your butt kicked right away? I don't want to find the ones that'll kick our butts, so you've probably got a good plan. I'll check the shop myself later on. Just...”
He looked at the bag in his hands, pulled out a fry and practically inhaled it.
“Just later on, after I eat,” Jeff finished.
* * *
Marc spent about an hour exploring the shop, discovering several things that might be of use. He decided to wait, though, and discuss it with the others before he did anything about them.
Because I'm still stinging over Felicia's comments about naming this place, and if I just jump on everything right off, I'll start looking like Jeff. That's not something I want to do, so let's plan this out first, he thought.
He'd stopped using the shop and started looking for the others when he was interrupted.
System Message:
Uncommon spawns are now commencing. Increase your power levels by destroying spawns or other means. Good Luck!
That had unnerved him somewhat, and made him realize that if they wanted others here they'd better get them here soon, before all the different levels of spawns had been introduced to the world.
He found Felicia sitting in the cafeteria, eating.
“Hey Marc, I made some food. Go grab some if you like, it's next to the stove in the kitchen,” she said.
She gestured back towards the kitchen and Marc headed that way. He'd been sorely tempted to get something for himself like Jeff had, but he'd managed to resist, wanting to save his coins for more important things.
After grabbing some food and drink, he headed out and sat down with Felicia.
“Where are Rob and Jeff?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“Rob was going to take a nap, said he was sore after pushing all the cars earlier. I haven't seen Jeff. Why, what's up?”
“Just a few options in the shop that might help us out. If you're willing to spend one of your tokens, the lesser one, you can probably use that to Systemize the shotgun. I'm thinking I'll do that for the rifle as well. From what I can tell, the ammunition won't need it, and if we give samples to the shop we'll be able to purchase more later on. It can recreate some basic, small things just from samples. No clue how much that'll cost us though.”
“The ammunition will stay good?” she asked.
“If we're using it in the Systemized weapons it should fire fine, I think. There was a section on Systemizing items in one part of the shop, along with the option to Systemize items through it.”
“Good, well, I think that's going to be an important thing to get taken care of. Melee weapons are all fine, but I'd much rather be able to shoot stuff before it gets close to us,” Felicia said.
Marc nodded his agreement and started eating. After a few mouthfuls, he took a break.
“There's a few other things in there that might be important now or soon,” he said. “I'm thinking about dropping a bunch of my silver on an instruction manual about managing Safe Zones and how to do it.”
“What's it cover?”
“Um, I don't remember it all, but it deals with expanding them, creating things inside of them, and all sorts of stuff like that. It was only five silver and I almost bought it right then, but I decided I should wait and talk to the rest of the group about it first.”
Felicia graced him with a happy looking smile.
“Well, I'm glad you did. That sounds important and I'll be willing to put a silver or two of my own towards it.”
“Oh, um, that's not necessary,” Marc said. “I just thought you were right earlier and I should discuss things like that with you, or the rest of the group.”
“If it's for something personal, feel free to just act, but if it affects all of us? Then yes, you should talk it over with me, or the group as a whole,” she said. “Besides, it makes me feel better to actually be able to give input towards this type of thing.”
“I'll try to keep that in mind,” Marc said. “Hell, I might even talk to you about it if it's personal too, I realized that I'd been acting almost as impulsive as Jeff, or at least I came close to acting that way. So a sanity check might be in order from time to time, just in case, you know?”
Her smile grew, if anything, wider still.
“I'm always happy to talk to you, Marc. You know that, right?”
“Um, yeah, I do,” he said. “So, Systemize the firearms after we finish eating? I can grab that Safe Zone manual at the same time.”
She nodded and Marc focused his efforts back onto the food.
* * *
Marc was surprised at the manual when he'd received it. He'd expected some sort of actual book, not something that was more like a tablet. It was referred to as a pad in its documentation and when he read the introduction he was even more surprised.
The introduction apologized for the price of the manual, claiming that it was increased by the cost of translation into the reader's language if they weren't from the planet Gerin.
So, I guess I'm doubly glad I signed up to be the System's translator. I bet stuff like this gets run through my brain too, Marc thought. Although the System keeps the added cost for translation. I suppose I bargained that away, though, with my new class. Speaking of which, I need to determine my Research subject.
“Hey Felicia?” he said.
She was cleaning the shotgun after Systemizing it, although apparently the System took care of cleaning it as well since she wasn't getting any of the normal detritus or oil from the barrel while running swabs through it. He'd Systemized his rifle as well, but had wanted to take care of other things first before cleaning his weapon.
“Yes?”
“I was wondering. What would you say is our biggest current problem that knowledge could help with?”
“You just said it yourself: help. If we knew what was in the System help files, or could access them more easily without having to do whatever it thinks is necessary before we could access them, then we might be able to plan things out, or even figure out things we haven't thought of by what there are help files for,” she said.
“Hm, that's a good point. I wonder how this will work?” Marc said.
“How what will work?”
He was about to just trigger his research, but paused at her question.
“Oh, I guess I didn't mention it. I managed to pick up a skill that will allow me to obtain knowledge about anything. Just basic knowledge, really, but you know, a grounding in that subject.”
“You what? That Arcane Bulwark class gives you a skill like that?” she asked.
“Um, no... My other class.”
“Alright, give Marcus. What other class? What have you been up to?”
“I don't know if I'm suppose to talk about it. It's a hidden class. You know how I woke up and the help files were fixed? That was me, indirectly, and I got the class because of it. But the skill doesn't say it's hidden, so I can tell you about that. It's called Research, here let me share the help on it with you.”
He quickly pulled up the help file from the skill and shared it with her. She read it and got an odd look on her face.
“So, you fixed the help files and got a class for it. The first skill you got for the class was this? Research?”
He nodded.
“Yeah, that's about it. It doesn't seem to give me stats or anything on leveling like the Arcane Bulwark does, but it does give me extra skills. No idea how it goes up in level or anything though, it might slow my other class growth a lot if it splits experience or something.”
“What class is it?” she asked. “I'm sure if the System didn't want you talking about it it would be a secret class or it would prevent you from talking about it.”
“Um,” Marc said, hemming and hawing. “Well, it's called English Major and it has a really snarky help file. Here, look.”
He pulled that up and shared it with her as well.
Felicia started smirking as she read it, then laughed as she finished.
“You were enough of a pest to the System that it recruited you?” she said. “How many typos and grammar errors did you report?”
“Uh, all of them? All of the ones I saw at least,” Marc said.
Felicia went back to laughing for a few more seconds.
“Well, persistence paid off in this case. I stick with my answer to your earlier question though. I think you ought to research the System help. If it gives you as much data as this suggests, we'll be in a much better position.”
“Let me take a quick look in the shop first. If there's a manual for that, then maybe just buy the manual like I did for the Safe Zone one? Then use the Research on something else?”
He flipped into the shop and looked through. There wasn't anything regarding the System help files that he could see in any of the sections and an idea slowly grew on him.
He started looking for the pads that the Safe Zone manual was installed on and found blank pads available in bulk for about two silver a piece. Skimming through the description on them, he broke into a grin.
“Yup, I'll use my Research skill on the System help, definitely. Then I'm going to make a manual out of what I learn from it and sell it in the shop. We can't be the only ones having this problem, right? So maybe we can make some money off of it as well as benefiting ourselves and anyone else who shows up to the Safe Zone?”
“What, how? Are you going to write a book?” Felicia asked.
He pointed to the spot in the description of the master pad that he'd just been skimming and Felicia leaned over and looked at it.
“Direct mental acquisition of desired contents? Is that what you're talking about?”
He nodded.
“Yup, the information I get from the Research skill? I'll just download it into the master pad that I get with a bulk buy and it'll disseminate it out into all the others. I just need to figure out how to afford a bulk buy on the pads and we're good. Maybe I'll send them a message and ask if I can finance it?”
“Nah, don't do that. Can you download to individual pads? Or maybe buy the master pad and a smaller number of the others, maybe ten if we can afford it? Then when those sell, you buy a larger batch. Repeat as necessary until you have as many as you want. Then you don't pay interest in order to finance the whole mess.”
“Well, from the looks of things, that would cost about twenty-five silver to start with a master pad and ten normal ones. Can we do that?”
He took stock of his own coinage, finding that he had seven silver and five hundred and thirty-seven copper after having bought the Safe Zone manual.
“I guess it's a hundred copper to the silver?” he said.
“Yeah, I saw that somewhere when I glanced at the shop,” she said.
“So, I've got about twelve silver worth of coinage left.”
She nodded.
“Because you spent the five on the other manual?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I can make up the difference, or we can offer Rob and Jeff a chance to invest also. Then we split the profit later on? You get the majority since it'll be your knowledge we're selling, but we should get some also if we help you finance it at the start.”
“Sure, we can do that. If you want to go find them, I'll use my Research skill right now. Then we can get that underway.”
She nodded and turned to leave.
Use Research skill for System Help, Marc thought.
Then he dropped to his knees in agony. Someone was screaming somewhere and he wasn't sure where until he noticed that his throat hurt and the noise stopped.
A massive amount of knowledge was forcing its way into his brain, and it hurt like nothing he'd ever experienced before. He felt arms around him and was glad for it, sure that he'd be falling down otherwise.
Slowly the pain grew more and more distant as the data flow slowed. Then it stopped and he just knelt there, panting, tears streaming down his face.
“That hurt,” he managed to gasp out in a hoarse voice. “Fuck, that hurt!”
“That bad?” Felicia asked. “I mean, I saw you almost collapse and then you nearly went comatose for a couple of minutes.”
“That was all only a couple of minutes?” he asked.
She nodded.
“It really hurt that bad?”
“Imagine doing all your cramming for all the grades of high school, simultaneously, and to the point where you would remember it all, and doing it all in two minutes.”
She shuddered.
“Good, now multiply that times a hundred,” he said. “Literally thousands, actually I think tens of thousands, of help files were downloaded straight into my brain.”
He shook his head wearily.
“Well, I won't have to go get Rob and Jeff now, I think I hear them coming,” she said.
* * *
“So, let me get this straight, you screamed your head off because you learned a bunch of stuff?” Jeff said.
“Hey Jeff, how thick was your engineering text book?” Marc asked.
“About this thick,” Jeff replied, holding his hands about five inches apart.
“Good, now get all that information crammed into your brain, in a way you cannot forget it, in about two minutes...”
“Oh, well, never mind then,” Jeff said. “Forget I said anything.”
“Are you okay, Marc?” Rob asked.
“I am now, but I need to be careful with that skill in the future. Felicia was about to go look for you guys though, we've got an opportunity here.”
Jeff motioned for him to continue.
“So, I want to take all this knowledge I just got and make a book of it. It's all a bunch of System help, you know, the stuff that we can barely get to come up on its own? So, I want to sell it, to everyone. Pretty cheap, but enough to still make a profit. We need a starting stake though, I don't quite have enough to do it on my own, even starting slow. So I wanted to give you guys an opportunity to get in on the ground floor.”
Jeff laughed.
“And now you're trying to sell us on a Multi-Level Marketing type of deal? Are you sure you're okay?” he said.
“How much do you need to start it up?” Rob asked.
“Twenty-five silver,” Marc said, ignoring Jeff. “Felicia and I could cover it on our own, but she thought we should give you guys a chance to get in on it too. She thinks it'll do well, I'm not sure because you'll need access to a shop to purchase it, but I'm sure it'll at least pay for itself.”
“Put me down for five silver,” Rob said. “That'll leave me a little in case I want to buy something myself.”
Felicia elbowed Jeff.
“What, you want me to sponsor Marc to write a book? How long will it take before we see any profits?” he said.
“No, not write, simply download it from my brain and collate it. I'll have them up for sale a few hours after I purchase the master pad and pads to go with it. I download to the master pad and it downloads the end result to all the other pads, which get sold,” Marc said. “We're starting small, so I'll need to pay attention to it for a few days until we have our money back, then we can just grow it at whatever rate they sell at.”
“Fine, here then,” Jeff said, handing over five silver. “But I want my five silver back and ten percent of the profits.”
“Done,” Marc said.
Rob coughed up his five also. Then Felicia came over.
“You good with fifty percent in return for your efforts and your own investment?” she asked.
Marc nodded.
“In that case, here's ten more silver. I'll get twenty percent, these two will get fifteen percent each. You get the rest. That's from net, not gross.”
“Okay, well let me go make the initial purchase and see how painful filling the master pad with the information is going to be,” Marc said.
It was actually surprisingly painless. As soon as Marc made the purchase, the silvers were taken from his inventory and a door slid up on the shop pedestal. The eleven pads he'd purchased were inside the door so he removed them.
It took less than an hour to figure it all out, and then he made up a shop listing of the pads filled with the basic System help files. He'd indexed them by types, then alphabetically, the master pad making that an easy thing to do. So now the people purchasing them could go through a table of contents that showed them types, then sub-tables with sub-types, all the way down to specific named files. They could also search the pad directly if they had a better idea of what they wanted.
