Ch 9 : The Game of Life

So, Uncle was just laughing at my question.

“Ha ha! Ha!”

“Hey? It’s not that funny. I’m serious.” I puffed up my cheeks. “Is my life really a video game or not?”

As his laughing fit calmed, he let out a sigh and got more serious.

“Sorry. Just thinking of something your father said once.”

I didn’t hear him laugh like that very often. Whatever dad must have said was real funny. Hey! He wasn’t making fun of me, was he?

“To answer your question, no. You're very much living in reality.” He transformed into his human form and kneeled down to my level. “What you’ve just discovered is your leveling system. You’re father made it to emulate a video game so you’d be encouraged to grow and learn new things.”

Dad always did know I liked video games.

I noticed when I leveled up for the first time, a little ID card icon appeared on my hotbar. Apparently, this was the USER IDENTIFICATION menu. It had all my stats and information.

-Yalda Asamo :: Level 7 :: Type 3 Exceed :: Female :: Homeworld : Eden-

-Age : 6 :: DOB : 509/09/05 (ED)-

-Serial Number : 282-475-249-

-Theta Level : Theta (normal form)-

-Crystal Hearts Collected : 4♡-

Wow, this just got interesting. There was a lot to go over here.

I knew a lot of this information already, like my name, Exceed type, homeworld, serial number...but there were a few things that shocked me.

For instance, when did I gain 6 other levels before this? What did they even do? I'd never heard anything about this before, so I was at a loss how I got all the way to 7.

Also, there was that Theta level thing again! What was that? I really wished I knew what the Theta Drive was, it sounded so cool.

I thought it was cute how it was keeping track of how many crystal hearts I had, including the one Janus gave me. This meant I'd probably have to find more and collect them. I wondered if they all had abilities that I could use.

At the way bottom of my USER ID tab, it showed my physical and mental stats. Nothing looked very high at the moment. Some of them were even grayed out.

“Uncle, how does this work?” I asked.

“It takes real life attributes and translates them into video game values. It’s not perfect, but it’ll give you an idea of how to play your cards.”

“My cards?” I asked.

“Think of your strengths and weakness like a deck of cards. In a game, you need to know which card is going to be the best for the moment. Battle is no different.”

Oh…I see. So if I wasn’t very good in something like Dexterity for instance, my values would be pretty low. That would mean it would be best to avoid getting into a fight that required that skill. Not that my Dex score was low or anything...I think.

“So, I have to level up to make myself stronger?”

“Sort of. Like I said, it reflects real life attributes. So if you train yourself enough, those stats should increase on their own without leveling.”

“So then what’s the point of leveling in the first place?”

“You gain skill points every level that you can use to upgrade powers and abilities. The more you use a power, the more you’ll be able to upgrade it.”

I’ve played so many RPG’s with that exact system. It’s pretty common. But I wasn’t seeing any way to upgrade anything at the moment. Uncle said it should show up eventually as its own tab on my hotbar.

Well, this was all cool and awesome, but how did I even earn Xp? I’m guessing things like fighting monsters and stuff.

I asked Uncle how I gained Xp, and he explained that there were challenges I'd have to overcome to gain it. They were listed in a tab called CHALLENGE LOG.

The icon on my hotbar for this looked like a little page with checkmarks on it, and a big Xp symbol in the middle.

I opened up the icon and found a whole list of challenges, many of which were blank since I hadn't met the prerequisite, but there had to have been millions, maybe billions of challenges...wow.

They were weird too, one was to meet 20 people...another was to complete 5 different video games...and another was to defeat 1 monster. Each was sorted into several different tabs: Social, Combat, Personal, Extra. The layout was pretty enumerative!

Dang it, I mean intuitive!

When a challenge was completed, it turned a faded green rather than a bright blue. Apparently, I'd already gotten a bunch of simple challenges done, but some of them were blanked out. I guess this list was retroactive and I just didn't know. I think that’s how I gained so many levels.

"I still don't understand why this suddenly unlocked now."

"That was something else I revealed to you earlier. You must not have noticed till now."

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Getting wings probably took priority.

The HELP tab gave me a little more info on how to get more Xp. I gained it not only from challenges, but also through defeating enemies. Some sort of system would calculate the worth of the enemy and reward me Xp for it. So pretty much what I thought.

There had to be more to this, but right now there were a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle that would take time to fill in. Uncle said I'd just have to keep completing challenges and learning new skills to get more info.

"I suppose it may also be time to have you learn self-defense techniques. But we'll start that another time. Dinner should be ready."

So, I'd learn the ways of battle, eh? Sounded exciting!

But he had a good point. I was really getting tired from all the excitement of today. We could start learning that later.

~☆☆☆~

It wasn’t very late just yet, but training my awesome new wings and trying to figure out my leveling system really tuckered me out.

The nice thing about the wings was that I could hide them whenever I needed too. All I had to do was think about them disappearing and they would vanish. It wasn’t like they just turned invisible, they would dematerialize completely.

I was almost ready to tuck myself into bed, but then Uncle reminded me that there was cake in the oven. A sudden jolt of energy boosted me to my seat at the dining table.

He put a really fancy design on the cake, stacking a few round pillows of baked goodness on top of each other. It almost looked as pretty as a wedding cake! I gotta' say, he can really cook!

All the other bees brought out a whole feast along with the cake. The dining table was packed with food all over. A big turkey, salads, vegetable pie...I've never had such a big dinner. We'd be eating all this for weeks!

This felt awesome. I was super happy with it.

"Please, enjoy as much as you'd like, Young Mistress."

"Thank you, Uncle!" I dug right in!

Uncle smiled.

After the hard work of the last few days, it was nice to kick back and have an actual birthday feast. It really gave me a warm fuzzy feeling, like around the holidays. Too bad dad couldn't be here, but one day we'd get to all share times like this again.

~☆☆☆~

It was starting to get dark. I couldn't keep myself awake anymore. All that food and training got to me.

Uncle picked me up out of my chair and carried me back to my room. No chance I'd make it back on my own like this.

He plopped me down on my bed, then pulled the covers over me. Samael uncoiled from my hair and slithered into his cup holder on the desk. He must have been sleepy too.

With the last bits of my physical strength, I circled my arms around Uni, my stuffed unicorn, and held her close.

"Uncle, thanks for all the fun stuff today."

Everything we did made it feel like it was a birthday celebration. It made up for my actual birthday crisis. If I could have asked for one more thing today, it would have been to have friends and dad here as well. A party isn't fun without friends and family, you know?

"It was my pleasure to serve you." Uncle rubbed my head. "I hope you'll rest well tonight."

Something was on my mind, and it made me a little anxious. Not enough to keep me from sleeping, but just enough of a problem to make me wonder.

I was thinking about that big hacker guy that broke Anima. My mind couldn't put a name to him, I just kept thinking about that creepy gold hand with the face I saw in the tower system. Could he have looked like that? Yuck.

Daddy says that when we make something, a little piece of us is put into it. So if the hacker made that evil gold hand, he must have been gaudy to the core.

"Uncle, do you know who the hacker is?"

"You mean Janus?"

"No, the one who corrupted Anima."

He just stared at me for a moment, forging some sort of answer in his mind.

"I'm not sure."

Knowing him, he probably knew more and didn’t want to tell me. To be fair, if he did tell me more, I'd probably take the inch for a mile. I'd wanna' know everything I can about this bad guy. That way I could practically defeat him with a single punch!

"Anima said I was made to challenge God, is that true? She said that's who corrupted her."

His face was still and emotionless, not changing much since my last question.

Then he asked me, "Is that what she said? Don't believe everything a corrupt AI tells you."

He was right. She was really corrupted, so who knows what that hacker made her think?

"Go to sleep, you'll need your rest if you'd like to continue your training tomorrow."

"Okay, Uncle. I love you."

"I love you too."

He left the room and turned off the light. The windows were covered by the blinds, so everything went totally dark. A thin strip of blue light lit up across the edges of the wall, acting as my nightlight. There were also a few glowing green star stickers on my ceiling too.

I almost forgot, I was supposed to pray before bed. I did make that promise. Sitting up would have been too uncomfortable, so I just stayed laying on my back.

"God, please let daddy come home safely. I really miss him. Oh, and I hope I make more friends soon."

Was that all there was to think about? Maybe I could pray for the future.

"Also, I hope I don't have to challenge you one day. I hope we find that hacker, and stop him from hurting any more AI."

I think those were good wishes for now. Anything more would have been greedy. I don't think I had the good karma reserves for more.

"Amen."

With praying done, I let my eyes close peacefully.

Time to shut down…good night world, hello dreams.

-Empyrion OS, shutting down…-

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-Shut down complete- -entering REM sleep-

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-Good night, Yalda (ᴗ˳ᴗ)zZz...-