The Outlands

Tess entered the realm of the gods, appearing in a specific one of the public recreational rooms that had become their go-to meeting spot. It was the room that Fortune and Death generally hung out in, the other gods rarely used it and it was closest to their quarters, so it was an ideal spot for them.

A few moments later, Tess's mother came into the room, rushing over and giving Tess a hug. "I'm so happy to see you! How are you doing?" She asked fondly.

"You know how I'm doing." Tess giggled, returning the hug. "It's not like we haven't talked today or anything."

"It's still the first time I've seen you in person today." Fortune replied. "Plus, you just learned about something absolutely enormous in scale, so my question stands."

"It was shocking, but it also doesn't feel real quite yet, you know?" Tess said, letting go of the hug. "Like, it all feels like something that has no relation to me but…it does, right?"

"Not until you're done training." Fortune replied, tousling Tess's hair. "But, yeah, I know what you mean. I felt much the same way when I first learned of the Administrator war."

"So…what are these archives like?" Tess asked. "Just some warehouse of cores or…?"

"Not as such." Dungeons said, walking into the room. "It's more like a library mixed with a search engine. It's a bit of a relic of an older time that we've never had a reason to renovate, so it's kind of weird to navigate, but I find it charming nonetheless. There are no actual cores in there, if we need them we just make them ourselves, but we have detailed writeups on every monster we've made or observed and their associated Attributes, so it's much better than what you'll find down there."

"Sorry I'm a little late." Maven said, appearing next to Tess. "I was just finishing up writing a letter to my mother."

"You call this late?" Fortune asked, raising an eyebrow. "You took five minutes, tops. Probably closer to two or three. We've barely had time to start a conversation."

Maven shrugged. "I was forced to be exactly punctual. Never a minute early, never a minute late."

"So, now that we're all here, do we want to get started?" Dungeons asked. "The archive's on the other side of this place so we'll need to use a teleporter if we want to get there in a reasonable time."

"Might as well start walking, at least." Fortune said, beginning to walk towards one of the hallways leading to the room. "And we can start discussing what you're looking for, too."

"Well, for now, I want to improve them in the roles they're already in." Tess replied, following her mother. "And that starts by figuring out some good monsters to use as a base. Their current cores are at their limit. And…actually, come to think of it, Amy wanted to be there when I next made a new attendant, do you think this counts?"

Fortune thought on that for a moment. "I think it does." She said. "Since you're going to be using new cores as their bases, it counts. It might even count if you kept them on the same cores and just shifted their Attributes; it's better to err on the side of caution, even if this should be entirely safe."

"We want to keep them at least similar to their current forms, right?" Maven asked as they rounded the corner. "A spider and some sort of spirit?"

"Yes." Tess replied. "Though Silky wants the arachne Attribute, and Isabella wants the animal ears and tail one I use. Isabella shouldn't be an issue, that's a trivial Attribute to get. Silky's a bit tougher; I have a spare arachne Attribute for Silky, but I would like some way for her to change size, and, preferably, a way for her to toggle the Attribute off, before I feel comfortable giving it to her. She'd lose her utility as a scout if she was a full-size arachne all the time."

"Don't quote me on this, but I think we have a monster that transforms to and from a spider form?" Fortune said. "I could be mistaking spider for another animal, though. There's definitely one that transforms like that, though."

"I think there are a couple." Dungeons said. "I believe the boss of one of the new savage dungeons is a huge mother spider that splits into swarms of small spiders at regular intervals. The timing comes from the spider, not the Skill, so it should function just fine if you put it on Silky. It would make for a pretty good long-term base core for her, too."

"What would happen if I tried to use that…you said it was a Skill, not an Attribute, right?"

"Yeah, Skill." Dungeons said. "It would technically work the same for you, but I'd advise against using it for a while. It doesn't actually help you get used to those extra bodies, because it's a monster-only Skill and the system doesn't need any help handling those bodies.

"With training and time to mature as a Higher Being I imagine you'd eventually be able to do ten to fifteen bodies, but that'd take hundreds of years. Plus, you know, you'd be tiny spiders and not humanoid, so…probably better to wait until you have everything else mastered before trying it."

"Remind me why distinction is made between Attributes and Skills?" Maven asked. "I'm sure I've heard it somewhere before but I forget."

"I'm pretty sure it's mostly for the purpose of being able to stop abilities." Tess said. "Like, Skills have ways built into the system to prevent their use, with Attributes you don't have those and you have to improvise. Generally, it feels like Attributes are usually more about a monster's actual form and certain very important parts of their abilities, and Skills are most of the rest."

"That's more or less it, yeah." Fortune said. "To be honest, the whole thing is pretty vibe-based. When we're assigning monsters, we go with what feels right, then do a little testing and tweak placement if we need. Things generally only get moved for boss monsters, though, as we decide which gimmicks we want people to be able to easily interact with."

They reached the end of the hallway, and opened a door to reveal a room that was much like an elevator. They stepped in, Dungeons pressed a button, there was the slightest tug on Tess's stomach, then they opened the door and stepped out into a different hallway.

"Come to think of it, do monsters that appear on Mael have any system-defined abilities?" Tess asked. "And are they all designed by you? I was talking with Marie and she mentioned that those monsters don't have cores, and seem to mostly be based on local legends. I have a hard time imagining that you make a new monster for every random myth that pops up."

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"They're different." Dungeons said. "We don't have a hand in their design at all. Monsters spawn by themselves, and without the influence of a system they tend to appear similar to what people in the area think of when they think of monsters. In planes overseen by a system, there's generally mechanisms put in place that co-opt that process and guide monsters into forms we've made. It shares a lot of similarities with the way we do dungeons, but with less rigid structure."

Dungeons stopped them at a door labeled "monster archives", opened it, and ushered them inside. It was a surprisingly small thing, little more than a room with a couple of couches and some bookshelves, as well as a pedestal in the middle.

"Here we are." Dungeons said, walking up to the pedestal. "It doesn't look like much, but that's just because it's not activated yet. Here, come take a look at the terminal."

Tess approached the terminal curiously, and found a small screen on it. The screen wasn't anything special, just a thin gray box against a white background with a small gray button reading "search" and a virtual keyboard below it. "This is a search box, right?" She asked. "How specific do I need to be? Does it need the name of the Attribute or Skill or monster, or can I be more general?"

"You can be pretty much as vague as you want." Dungeons said. "Alberich and Magic implemented a rather complex system that scans your mind and figures out what you want. You can actually do it without even typing anything in, but typing things in helps sharpen your focus and makes the results better. Go on, give it a go!"

Tess nodded, typing "abilities that turn the monster into a small spider or spiders" into the box and hitting search. The bookshelves in front of Tess swung inwards and the room expanded, a corridor of bookshelves stretching down for twenty or thirty feet before it stopped. When it was finished, a small tablet was ejected from the front side of the terminal, out of a slot that Tess hadn't seen before.

"What's this?" She asked, grabbing it and looking it over. It was similar in form to those tablets that had been popular for reading e-books before phones and other mobile devices had taken their spot.

"All the information in those books in a more condensed form." Dungeons explained. "The books have information like where the monsters tend to live, what they prefer to eat, how they behave, that sort of thing. The tablet there is going to give you just the stats, which is probably what you want to be looking through if we want to get through this in a reasonable timeframe."

Dungeons tapped on the terminal, and it spat out three more tablets. She grabbed them and passed one to both Fortune and Maven. "Have a look through." She said. "In the meantime, Tess, what else are you looking for in upgrades beyond raw stats?"

"You know, I was just sort of looking through things and making a note of stuff that sounded good." Tess admitted. "But since they're getting moved to much stronger cores, I think we can afford to expand their roles a bit."

"Almost certainly." Maven said. "Any ideas?"

"Well…I think we can take Silky in the direction of an assassin of sorts?" Tess suggested. "You know, strong venom that inflicts all sorts of status effects, high burst damage and mobility…that sort of a thing."

"I think that's the logical progression of her role." Fortune agreed. "I can point you to some pretty good Attributes for that…oh! I found that monster we were talking about earlier, the one that splits into spider swarms. It's a level eighty savage dungeon boss, so if you're okay with that power-wise, then I think it'd make a good choice for the new base core for Silky."

Tess mulled that over for a bit. "Yeah, I think we might as well, but that's as strong as I'm willing to get. Still…I don't suppose there's a comparably strong core for Isabella? I'd hate for them to feel imbalanced."

"We should be able to make something work." Dungeons said. "Even if there's not a good humanoid ghost around that level, we just need a suitably humanoid core and we can transplant the ghost Attributes."

"Don't we have a banshee of some sort in one of the savage dungeons?" Fortune asked. "That should work, right?"

"We do, but I'm not sure what level it is." Dungeons said, turning back to the terminal and beginning to type on it. "Let me check." A moment later the terminal spit out another tablet, and she took it, fed her old tablet back through the slot, then began to scroll through the new one.

"Yeah, we have a few that would fit for Isabella…no bosses, though." She said. "And…you know what, I really should make a ghost boss in that level range, one that invalidates most of the usual intangibility counters. It's a niche we haven't done recently and would be good for people to have to chew on that problem again. So…put Isabella's base core on hold, I'll have a solid base ready in a week or so, and we can use her to help refine the boss."

"Will that work?" Tess asked, thumbing through the various monsters on the tablet she was holding. "Using Isabella to help refine the boss, that is. She's being built to support Maelstrom, I don't think that's something that will necessarily translate well to being a dungeon boss."

"It'd be more about the intangibility counter stuff I'm thinking about than her actual role. We'd just have her spend her time in combat outside of you instead of inside, and she'd be vulnerable to attacks then. She should have the raw stats to deal with anything you're dealing with at this level, so she wouldn't be in any danger, it'd just help us gather data."

"Does she feel pain?" Maven asked.

"Not as such, no." Dungeons replied. "She does, sort of, but not in the same way we conceptualize it. Monsters view pain very, very differently, and don't mind it at all if they know it's not a threat to them. So, I wouldn't worry about that. That being said, she's a support mage right now, right? Are you looking to expand her role beyond that or do you just want to sharpen that up?"

Tess paused in the middle of reading about some other spider and its Attributes. "I think we can probably start angling her towards damage a bit. Now that I have Beastmaster's Bond and share passives with her, space that would normally be filled with certain Skills can be substituted by me just…having them. It leaves a lot of room open for diversification, I think."

"Oh yeah, how picky should we be about not getting you powerful Skills?" Fortune asked. "In some cases we might need to avoid cores so you don't accidentally get stuff you don't want yet."

"Surely we can be fairly lax, right?" Maven asked. "We're out of training now, it's not too important that we stay strictly within our level bracket."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right." Tess admitted. "I also don't want to completely outshine you two, though. So, if it's something stupidly strong then I don't want it yet."

"Okay, not a huge issue, then." Fortune said. "That leaves us plenty of options."

"I suppose it would give me some raw experience too, but levels aren't a big deal for me." Tess mused. "Come to think of it…does leveling Monster Breeder even benefit me now? Now that it's my Domain and all."

"Maybe?" Fortune ventured. "It's hard to say, but I think that there'll be some improvements. I believe there's still one Skill you don't have yet, and it was supposed to come much later in the Class progression, but I'm guessing you'll see it in the very near future."

"There is? What is it?" Tess asked curiously.

"Honestly, I don't think you'll see much use for it as it is now." Fortune replied. "I think there's a very high chance it'll end up significantly different from what it originally was, so I won't get into details on it now. If you don't have it after you finish upgrading your attendants, I'll tell you."

"Alright, sounds good." Tess said. "Um…what do I do with this tablet when I'm done with it?"

"Just put it back in the slot and it'll recycle the Mana." Dungeons instructed. "Done with that search already?"

"Well, since you guys found the spider thing you were talking about, I figured I'd start looking at more general upgrades." Tess said.

"I'll keep looking through the spider stuff and see if there's something we've missed." Maven volunteered.

"And I'll keep looking at ghosts." Dungeons said.

Fortune walked over to the terminal, depositing her slate. "I'll start browsing around, too." She said, tapping in a query into the terminal and grabbing the resulting tablet. "If anyone wants help with what they're doing, though, I'd be happy to switch tasks."

And with that, they all found places to get comfortable, settling in for the long research session ahead of them.