Sam had to wipe his face after his canid companion decided to lick it for longer than he would have liked. Janik chuckled but brought the focus back to the explanation.

  “What do you mean breaking the system?”

  “Well,” Sam went into detail. “I’m sure you, like many others, wondered why guns don’t work on Players, or how if I take a kitchen knife to stab you with, it won’t do anything but a Player item does. Or all of this game-like logic. If you look at this with a game logic in mind, it starts making sense, the System is somehow controlling all this, now... Though guns are fast, it’s a well-known process that’s just blocked from working in Aetheria, but stronger weapons can still hurt Players. Why do you think that is?”

  Sam left the question open for Janik to comment on, but he just sat there, waiting for Sam to continue.

  “The answer is simple: Speed. Things moving too fast in games can crash the physics engine, sending things through walls or killing you when it normally shouldn’t do damage. Smaller guns won’t kill you because the system expects speed to come out of a gun, but faster or stronger guns still hurt players on Earth. Within Aetheria, they just don’t work, which is probably a hacky solution, but when I launch the dagger at greater than sound speed, I think the System wants the dagger to do damage. It does, but the speed lets it do ‘normal physics’ as it’s just too much for the system there and then.”

  Janik thought about it for a solid few seconds. “So, the idea here is that..” His brow furrowed as he continued thinking during his talk. “If I somehow were able to throw my sword fast enough, it would do normal damage because the System wants it to, but since it’s moving so fast the System isn’t able to stop it from also using physics?”

  “Kind of, yes,” Sam nodded. “It’s just a theory but... You saw the structural damage the dagger did when I power-launched it through the log. That attack registered as 5 damage against the Hydra, even though it tore through its entire body, or when I cut off its tentacle.”

  Janik nodded slowly as he analysed it, putting his elbows on his knees and resting his chin against his fists. “So basically you’re able to abuse a glitch in the physics engine to... do ‘logical damage’ even if the numbers don’t match?” Lifting his chin off his hands, he made air quotes around the statement.

  “I know this sounds insane but it feels like it makes sense based on what I saw,” Sam defended his statement, but his expression explained that he was also sceptical.

  Janik noticed his expression and sat back up properly. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, it actually explains a few things about why guns don’t work in Aetheria, or how certain rogue large-scale events have had weird outcomes. Explosions sometimes do more things than they should, but those cases are very rare.”

  Janik was locked in thought for a few seconds. “Won’t this get attention from them somehow?”

  “Oh, it might but... I am wondering if the Solo dungeons aren’t entirely automatic or random. I don’t think I’m the only Hax out there,” Sam still felt weird using the codeword but to avoid getting censored it was the best he had. “But it kind of feels that someone might be abusing some rules in the system to let me get things. As I mentioned, the Solo dungeons have given me somewhat what I wanted, but I had to earn it.”

  “You have a point there,” Janik’s brow hadn’t unfurrowed yet but he started looking at the floor in thought. “This raises all kinds of questions and problems... I don’t even know what to do with this.” Janik looked slightly lost.

  “If it helps, nor do I... I figured this out somewhat randomly, but it makes things interesting, I want to test this more. I also need to be careful with what I wish for...”

  “It doesn’t help, no, but yeah.” During his answer, Janik’s normal smile grew on his lips and without any tact he changed the subject, almost to lighten the mood. “But, more importantly, what did you get from it this time?”

  “Ten levels,” Sam replied.

  Janik’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow. That’s amazing.”

  “Yeah, in one way it felt surprisingly lacklustre, and I now need over two trillion for the next, but it gave me the Level 30 Class ability.” Sam’s expression started dissatisfied but changed to end on a slight smile.

  “Oh, do tell!”

  “The skill is named [ Thoughtform Psyhands ], and it lets me manifest a Psyhand as an object. If I make a weapon, I get half my Spirit as a base damage,” to prove his point, he manifested a few Psy-weapons, a few blades, maces and a hammer.

  Being able to see them caught Janik off guard, sitting back in his chair, he looked at the floating ghostly weapons for a second. “This is amazing, a bit creepy but amazing.”

  “Yes, individually they aren’t as good as I can make an Aura blade, but rough math raises my total volley damage by close to 900, and it lets me change damage type easily.”

  During his explanation, he noticed that Dia had calmed down and had fallen asleep draped across him like a living blanket.

  “Oh, that’s not making me jealous at all...” Janik smiled but the fake-lie was not hard to decipher. “But, can you make anything? Or just weapons?”

  Sam paused a bit, the skill listed object, just special rules for things doing damage. To test this, he despawned the weapons and made a few other objects. A small shield, a chair, a ball, a fork, a length of rope and a bucket. All of the objects acted as expected, save that the rope was rigid and not that long, the fork also displayed a base damage like other weapons.

  Gently waking Dia, Sam had an idea.

  Dia slowly opened her eyes, not wanting to move, looking at him with a questioning look. “Vrana yap sark?” The Yap was the yapping sound mixed in between words.

  “I’m going to make noise, thought it was better to wake you first,” he replied to her.

  She nodded and looked around, suddenly widening her eyes as she saw the floating, teal objects.

  Sam answered before she got to ask. “Don’t worry, I’m the one making these.”

  This seemed to calm her down a bit.

  “What are you going to test?” Janik asked as he moved further away from the open space between them.

  “Since my Psyhands can’t be damaged, and Player items never get dull or seem to break, I wonder if it’s the same for the items, since they are just my Psyhands in different shapes.”

  He kept his shield manifested but despawned all the random objects, pulling out his full swarm instead, all but one weapon which was still the shield.

  He floated the shield, no larger than a frozen pizza, over to the entry area, wanting to keep some distance, before he attacked it with everything he had. A swarm of swords, characram and axe almost engulfed by 49 teal Psyblades crashed into the single shield before it slammed into the wall, damaging it considerably. The sound from the 55 weapons landing at the same time was as strange. There was a metallic and stone sound mixed in, but since the majority of weapons were manifested they had an almost electric clang to them. Sam reacted to the fact that the volume was much lower than expected.

  “.... Perhaps I should have done this in the training area....”

  Janik looked at the chaos happening in the entryway, then back to Sam with a wide look. “How much damage would that have done?”

  “2 347,” Sam replied with an uncertain expression.

  “First of all.. That’s some fucked up damage. Second, that shield is amazing.” He walked towards it, still embedded in the wall.

  Sam tried to lift Dia into the couch, but she climbed off and stood up instead, following him as he walked with them over to the damage.

  The other weapons were despawned, or the weapons put back in storage and then the hands dismissed.

  “The shield stopped the damage, but didn’t help the momentum.” He despawned it and made a new one next to him, pushing it with his hands. “It can’t be damaged, which is good, but it doesn’t make the force behind it stronger. I can barely lift a laptop with one Psyhand, so that’s the momentum it can handle.”

  “Oh, well...” Janik pondered for a second. “Then don’t resist it through force, wedge it in cave hallways, or make a dome and stand under it, something like that. The force of the attack will be transferred to the ground, wall... whatever.” He smiled widely like he just found the cure to everything.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “That’s... a pretty good idea. I could perhaps have strong legs extend from shields standing upright, making support of my own. It might take more ‘hands’ to make work but it would make it work.”

  Having some ideas he wanted to talk about, he was interrupted by the room phone ringing, picking it up, he answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, this is the reception, is this Sam Carter in room 524?” A female voice asked in a slightly distressed tone.

  “Err... yes...?” He already knew what this was about. He trashed a wall, that would probably be noticed.

  “We noticed some noise and vibration from your area, is everything fine?” The question was leading even if it was focused on his safety.

  “Yeah, I just accidentally destroyed the wall into the bathroom, when the guys are done cleaning my gear they can take a look at it, I’ll pay for the damages.” Sam didn’t care at this point, it would probably cost more than it was worth, but he just wanted the talk to be over.

  The woman let out a relieved sigh. “I’m glad to hear it. Your safety, I mean. A shame about the wall but that is fine, I’ll leave a note for the people coming up with your gear when it’s cleaned.”

  “That works, thanks,” Sam commented and hung up as soon as she confirmed from her side.

  “Should have seen that coming,” Janik smiled with a chuckle.

  “Yeah, though I should have done this in the training hall, it’s still a good test!” Sam was eager, manifesting another shield. This time he made it as large as he could but it didn’t become any larger than an A4 page. He tried several other shapes as well, but he couldn’t make things too flat or too large, which was interesting and annoying as he could make simple greatswords or longer things, but that would suffer in width. Though he could make smaller things, but after they were created, he couldn’t change the size, they remained as they were created.

  “Bleh, can’t make something small and expand it either,” Sam commented annoyed. “Could strangle so many things if that worked.”

  “It seems you’re restricted by volume, not size,” Janik commented after having been a part of testing. “I can’t do volume math in my head but, hold on.” He took out his phone and searched around, finding the volume of various objects. “Ah, yeah, that makes sense. As strange as it sounds, a simple greatsword and a large hand have roughly the same volume, your shield and other things can’t become larger than your hands in volume.”

  Sam let out a dissatisfied click. “Well, it’s still super versatile but that was a bit annoying. If I wanted to hide behind a wall, I would need to find a way to interlock them to make a larger plate to hide behind, like a door.”

  To test his statement, he made a square plate as large as he could, it was about the same size as before, just that it wasn’t round and had the square edges. Stacking them on each other, trying to fill a doorframe, he ended up using 24 plates, thus 24 hands, he stacked them together into a plate barely smaller than the doorframe.

  “Well, I can make things like this, but...” Lightly punching one of them had it move out of formation, creating a large square hole. “It’s not like this will work, so interlocking, yeah.”

  He spent some time testing this, it was fun. Dia had gone back to the couch and played with Elara, she seemed interested in the things he made at first, but it became repetitive and uneventful for her.

  “Well, like the rope, I can’t make anything flexible, but the chain worked out, but that’s probably because it’s not flexible, solid links make it seem bendy,” Sam summarized after testing. “It’s also strange how I can make a knife’s blade come to a point and be sharp, but I can’t make something thinner than my phone.”

  “Yeah, moving parts seem to be fine as long as it can be made of solid objects, so no bows but things with gears are probably good,” Janik added, making a summary of his own. “This is kind of exciting. Oh, and another thing,” in the middle of his sentence he seemed to suddenly realize or remember something. “Elara sold a bunch of her Venom.” His smile grew larger than it was before.

  Sam turned towards his companion, he had somewhat forgotten she was doing this, in the suddenness of other things. “Is that so?”

  Currently being coiled around one of Dia’s tails, almost disappearing into the fur, her head perked up towards Sam. “Yes,” she replied first as she slithered out of Dia’s fur and started moving towards Sam. “It took a short while for people to start buying it, but I sold all my charges each day.”

  “Each day? All 29 of them?” Sam asked, surprised. He had expected people would get it but this felt a bit much. “Were you selling it too cheap?”

  “I’m not used to the value of money,” she replied half hesitantly. “Janik suggested I should take 30 000 per dose.”

  Sam looked at Janik in surprise. “Isn’t that a bit high?”

  “Not at all, doing the math you need 24 Vitality to even have a slight chance to resist it, so that covers almost everything through the Second Floor. Save the chunkiest things, it’ll also work fine on the Third Floor. To many it’s worth 30 thousand to just shoot an arrow or somehow get this into a boss and just run away. And... in a terrifying way, in PvP it’s probably terrifying, I only have 20 Vitality so...” Going into teacher-mode in the start his expression faded into more hesitance at the end.

  This put things into perspective for Sam, it made sense. He got the PvP value as well. Considering how fast and easy he got money during his levelling, he could imagine this being worth it for higher level players or a small group wanting a secure way to take out something dangerous.

  “Wait, isn’t that a lot of money?”

  Elara smiled widely, “After their fee, I have gotten almost 11 million.” The tip of her tail was wagging like a small dog waiting for their complement.

  “Holy shit, that’s a lot!” Sam let out, repeating himself without the questioning tone. “I mean, I expected a few to sell but not this much.”

  Crouching down, he reached out his hand, letting Elara climb on board. “I’ll admit I don’t know what to do in this situation, it’s a lot of money, which you earned on your own, I feel it’s only fair that you decide what to do with it.”

  He had planned for whatever she earned to be for her, though at the time he decided that he didn’t expect these sums, but he was carrying an expected over $3 million in cores alone. Adding on that he remembered having over $2 million in the bank, he was going to sell more stuff, but assuming somewhere around 5-6 million in cash after all of that, she had more disposable money than he did. Sam didn’t see this as a negative thing, but he found it kind of interesting and weird.

  She stopped mid-slither up his arm and looked at him with a surprised expression. “But I’m Master’s companion, the money I earn is yours.”

  “Yeah, you can say that, but it doesn’t feel right. You might ‘just’ be a companion,” he made airquotes with the arm Elara wasn’t currently climbing. “But you’re your own person in my mind.” Ending with a smile, her surprised expression softened into a weirdly embarrassed smile of her own.

  “Well, I guess that’s my cue to leave,” Janik commented. “You guys woke me at 2 AM for this. Something I’m happy about, of course, but I’m tired and gotta get the kids up in a few hours.” Walking over to Sam, he grabbed him in a tight, lifting hug. “I’m glad you’re back, at least it was only two weeks this time.”

  “Yeah,” Sam replied solemnly, he enjoyed the hug but was more focused on the Solo Dungeon’s time dilation. “To me it was only an hour or two, not sure. Before that, I don’t even know how long I was in there but... my point is there’s not consistency to things.”

  Janik ended his hug with a tighter squeeze before he put Sam back on the floor, “Yeah, I’m sure you’ll find out what you need about it, but for now I think you should rest, or whatever Dia has planned.” His supportive tone turned to a weird, knowing smile as he nodded towards Dia who was sitting patiently on the couch, waiting.

  “I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow... or technically, later today?” Sam asked as Janik walked to the door.

  “Sure, I’ll send you a text when I wake up, we’ll take it from there.” Waving to the group, Janik closed the door after himself and left for the night.

  Elara seemed to have a knowing smile and slithered off Sam onto a nearby fake plant.

  Dia’s two tails had been wagging slowly for a while now, but it became more energetic now that Sam looked back at her. He didn’t need to say anything before something triggered and she pounced out of the sofa.