Time left for Tier 1: 6 Days,15 Hours.

  My head was spinning for a second. I turned around from joking with Marco, to find myself back in the Tutorial convergence hall. The desks and boards were right where we left them. Including the Ominous Attribute words of Physical, Mental, and Ethereal.

  They all still included multiple skills and sub attributes underneath. I could read Health, resistance, strength, stamina and other things one would probab;y contribute to a Physical existence. Mental was also fairly straight forward with Intelligence, crafting, Charisma, skill progression and other things that seemed more of a mind than body thing. Ethereal was when it really got weird but almost in a good way. Spells, Mana, possession resistance, and other shit that started to make me worried.

  “Right, so you finally got that first Attribute point from leveling up. That is excellent. Most Voyagers don’t always make it this far, and even if they do they don’t really know how to use the point that easily. Luckily you got me and I’m gonna make it a walk in the park for you mate.” He said with a surprising amount of enthusiasm.

  “First things first let’s figure out what you want to do with the point. Now looking at the boards here you can see what your choices are going to be. Physical, this is the most common and straight forward of the three Attributes and in most cases this is where most of your points are probably going to end up. It governs as you can guess, everything physical in your build. it will make you stronger, it will make you faster, it will give you more health.” He was pointing at the first board and the words were lighting up at he spoke them like some magical pitch board.

  “Up until now you could see your three status bars. up in your right top corner of your vision, The red blue and green bars. Correct?” He asked me

  “Yea, none but the blue one is full right now. Not sure how full they are though. Its kind of a guessing game.” I responded back

  “That is going to change once you place your first point in. Open up the menu and navigate yourself to your main character sheet and examine it.”

  I did as he had instructed and started to better evaluate my own character sheet. It was a pretty standard character sheet:

  CHARACTER SHEET

  ══════════════════════════════════════════════

  Name: Nathan Stryder

  Time Remaining (Tier 1): 6 Days, 16 Hours

  Class: Voyager (Unassigned)

  Race: Human

  Level: 2

  Tier: 1

  Attribute Points Available: 1 (Unspent)

  ══════════════════════════════════════════════

  CORE ATTRIBUTES

  ══════════════════════════════════════════════

  PHYSICAL- ?

  MENTAL- ?

  ETHEREAL- ?

  ══════════════════════════════════════════════

  STATUS

  ══════════════════════════════════════════════

  Health (HP): 65 / 100

  Mana (MP): 10 / 10

  Stamina: 40%

  Armor Effectiveness:

  ? Damage Reduction: **10%**

  ? Retributive Damage: **10%**

  I stared at my sheet for a minute getting my bearing. It was honestly quite a bit less than I envisioned for a game this elaborate. Then I saw the other tabs at the top.

  -INVENTORY

  -SPELLS

  -EQUIPMENT

  -FEATURES AND TRAITS

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  -QUESTS

  -??????????

  The last Tab having no name was weird and I instantly tried to click on it mentally.

  “Tisk, Tisk Voyager. No peaking” A voice I recognized spoke in my head, I couldn’t place it for a long second. Then it hit me, this was the A.I’s voice directly. It was the same one that read out the flavor text to me for my jacket. I wasn’t expecting that and it kinda freaked me out. Could it read my mind? probably not, it recognized what I was trying to do and just stopped me. It was still pretty fucking weird to hear a voice in my head that wasn’t my own. It spoke again while I was having this contemplation.

  “Spoiler’s sweetie” That was weirder. It was clearly referencing Doctor Who. Specifically the character River Song. Was it reading my mind? This was a direct reference that I would get. Doctor Who had been a favorite show of mine growing up and I still enjoyed it today, but I’m American and most Americans wouldn’t get that specific reference. I wasn’t sure but this creeped me the fuck out.

  “OI, you listening to me Voyager” Gary the Lion man roared at me. It snapped me out of my daze and brought me back to reality.

  “Sorry, I ummm was just looking at my Character Sheet and then the A.I talked to me and I lost focus.” I explained apologetically.

  Gary stared at me, Then I noticed TAI was also staring.

  “The A.I spoke to you?” TAI asked in amazement. “Are you sure?”

  “Yea, I have a tab in my menu that is just ten question marks in a row and I tried to click on it. It told me no peaking and then made a Doctor Who reference at me. Why is that weird?” I asked innocently

  “YES!” They both shouted in unison.

  “The A.I doesn’t talk to Voyagers directly. They make announcements occasionally to inform you lot of changes to game mechanics and such, but never have I heard of them directly communicating with a Voyager like that.” TAI said incredulously

  “It reads out the flavor text on Magical Items though, doesn’t it?”

  “What? Flavor text?” She was growing more and more confused by the second.

  “Wait,wait,wait. Aren’t you the A.I TAI?” I asked growing more confused myself

  “Me? NO, well I mean I guess in the technical term I am ran by the A.I but I’m not directly the A.I itself. Neither is Gary here. we are subroutine entities that have nearly disconnected ‘sentience’. “ She made finger quotes at the word Sentience. “Which means that we are basically chunks of processing that has been removed from the main A.I and given subroutines to govern our existence, we appear to have free will but really we do what our programming tells us to. Its really technical and I doubt you need to know more. Basically we are not the A.I but the A.I can and does know everything we are doing and thinking and can use that information to it’s advantage and purpose. “ She attempted to explain to me.

  “I think I get it, basically I should just consider everything and everyone as both their own person but also unwilling spies for the A.I” I responded, more confused than I was letting on.

  “Mostly, but honestly even if no NPCs were around you the A.I still is. So never consider yourself alone or unwatched.”

  This did not make me feel better.

  “Got it, anyways, can we get back to this attribute point. I want to get it used sometime today. Gary?”

  The lion man took a second and then shook his head to get his focus back.

  “Right, so you got your character sheet open and can see your basic information now. Including all your attribute scores and your status information. You should also now see your actual health and mana points. looks like your doing good for yourself, one hundred Health Points and ten Mana Points. Thats a good start looks like you scored decently well on your preliminary Attribute points. Five in Physical, Five in Mental and Three in Ethereal. That is actually pretty good. Majority of Voyagers don’t see a Three in Ethereal until they invest in it a couple times. Either your more knowledgeable about magics and such, or your a wizard. Either way this makes things much easier for you than other Voyagers. You already have some spell-casting abilities without investing in it and can instead focus more on one of the other attributes which are also looking pretty good for just starting. I have never seen a Voyager with thirteen Attribute points from the start. Amazing.” Gary rattled off all this explanation like it was a standard conversation.

  I sat there still trying to process everything that was being explained to me. It all came at me like a brick wall jumping out of no where to crush me with information.

  “So, you are saying that I am starting off better than most people in this, for lack of a better word that isn’t offensive, game?” I tried to parse the information into something I could digest easily.

  “Exactly, Mate. Now you are going to get even farther ahead because you can add another point into something and increase your status even more. Now look at your sheet again and you should see a plus sign next to these Attributes. I just explained everything to you so you should see your scores now and the sign to increase one.”

  I investigated my sheet again and saw the plus signs right next to the new shiny numbers. five in both physical and Mental, while a lone 3 hung out in my Ethereal spot with that cool plus sign sitting there calling out longingly to me. Something in me considered pressing it. the thought of gaining more and more magical powers lured me in. I had to restrain for now. All of my encounters so far had been a success due to my physical attributes. my strength and my ability to take a beating. If I didn’t make it a priority to increase that Attribute I could see the Mobs in these Trials catching up to me quickly and leaving me another fallen Voyager.

  “Alright, decide which Attribute you want to increase. Physical” He said that last word as a cough “ Then press the plus or addition sign, whichever you prefer, next to your chosen Attribute to increase it by one. These attributes govern a lot of skills and abilities. They don’t necessarily directly change them except in the most obvious categories. Health and Mana. both of those will increase in numerical value based on which Attribute is chosen. “

  I contemplated for a few seconds and then selected Physical. It was the safe choice. it was the obvious choice, and it increased my odds of survival the most. I heard the same Ding I heard when I gained XP or leveled up. I checked my sheet and the only identifiable change was my HP had risen to 125. It had also filled all my stats to full. both health and Stamina were completely filled in with their respective color. Mana hadn’t changed since it was already topped off well before I got here. I also saw that I had a quick glow of Red wash over me as I picked Physical.

  “Good choice, Mate. Physical is the backbone of any good viable build in the Trials. Don’t get me wrong you will want to invest in the others as time goes by but Physical will be your bread and butter going forward. Everything you do for the most part will have to do with that Attribute the most. Except some specifics, which is the next part of this class. Sit down.” He pushed me at a chair with that last sentence and I swung into one of the tiny desks.

  “Now let’s get into everything shall we?