“Awww, your cats got my convoy killed,” Brett complained as he idly scratched Felissa behind her ears. The pair were seated in Brett’s personal demiplane, relaxing after a particularly long planning session that the feline deity had arranged among certain likeminded members of GOD. Things had not gone exactly as planned, however, due to a fight between Blatto Cucus, the deity of cockroaches, and Formua Integra, of Termites. The human deity huffed in annoyance: he had thought that the two had put their age-old enmity aside long ago since they were so closely related.
“It’s not like you and Craig get along any better than those two,” Felissa responded, somehow divining Brett’s thoughts as she adjusted herself on the sofa, trying to find the exact spot that was the most comfortable. “Anyways, it all turned out all right in the end.”
Brett sniffed. He didn’t appreciate the comparison between himself and Craig, the deity of non-human primates. While Brett’s followers had filled the earth and subdued it, what had Craig done? Basically nothing except for monkey around in forests, maintaining a delicate balance between his subjects and nature. It was embarrassing enough that some of the other deities used to confuse the two, especially since Craig was covered in hair and Brett wasn’t. And, to make matters worse, Craig was always trying to sponge off of his younger relative’s success. It was embarrassing to say the least.
“Well, anyways,” Brett said as he pushed down his petulance and reminded himself to refocus on what he could control, “the convoy isn’t a big loss. I didn’t even send a Champion with it, since I had a feeling something like this was going to happen. Plus, it was good to see the Equal Opportunity ability in action against an opponent with a Mana Core. I was hoping that it would be a viable strategy, and it was.”
“But your guys all got slaughtered by that demented rooster. It didn’t seem like the ability worked all that well,” Felissa argued.
Brett sat up abruptly, displacing the feline deity. He got up and started pacing the room, his hand rubbing his perfectly groomed goatee as he did so.
“Well, it’s like this,” he began to explain while still pacing, “in order to give someone such a powerful Special Ability like Equal Opportunity, they need to at least have a relevant class. That was one of the rules we put in place when we designed the System implementation, to prevent deities from using hordes of low-level creatures with overpowered Special Abilities to take out high-value targets. That means someone has to be at least level ten before they can even qualify to get Equal Opportunity, and they probably won’t get it exactly at level 10 unless they are given it as a Quest reward or something. Which is super expensive. Are you following me?”
“Yeah,” Felissa said with a groan, stretching out to her full length and sliding over to steal as much of Brett’s left-behind warmth as she could.
“All right, good. So you have an individual with decent attributes, using a Special Ability that makes someone else’s attributes mirror theirs for a short time. In the rooster’s case, I’d say its attributes were cut in half or even more. So why did it still win the fight?”
“I hope you’re going to tell me, because I don’t know and I don’t particularly care,” griped the feline deity.
“Two reasons. Three, actually. First, because his attribute modifiers must be ridiculously high due to all of his Achievements. Second, the Mana Core skill can greatly enhance physical performance. And finally, because that rooster is some sort of idiot savant when it comes to mana. I am not kidding here…I’ve got Tibetan monks who have literally meditated half of their lives that are getting access to mana for the first time, and none of them could make a shield like the ones the rooster just made if they had five minutes to concentrate. That crazy beast made two on the fly, while empowering his body with more mana, while in the middle of a fight to the death, while having his Special attribute suppressed. Can you imagine what would happen if he developed the mental capacity to actually practice his mana manipulation ability?”
“Wow, mana is that strong? I have a few Champions with mana skills, and the best one so far is like level 3 in a skill called Mana Reinforcement. Oh man, that’s right…that rooster has the Mana Reinforcement skill fused into Mana Core. No wonder he’s so hard to injure.”
“Yeah,” Brett confirmed. “That’s part of it. But he also has a defensive skill, several offensive ones, and some movement-related ones. I can’t be sure until I see him move around more, but I think he can violate the laws of physics to move faster than he should be able to.”
Felissa batted a lazy paw in the direction of the large screen that took up almost the entire far wall of the sitting room that she and Brett were using for the time being.
“He’s chasing down someone now, actually. Maybe you can get your confirmation?”
Brett turned his attention back to the screen, where a wiry man with a set of very interesting mutations was running for his life. The rooster was catching up quickly, however, its legs having been designed for short bursts of speed rather than endurance running. Pre-System chickens could run almost as fast as a human, and Charlemagne’s size, attributes, and Skills meant that he by far the fastest chicken alive. The outcome was inevitable.
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And yet, despite the hopelessness of the situation, the man ran. It was not a logical decision, but one that Brett understood all too well. Abject terror was etched into the poor man’s face as he suddenly turned toward the ocean, no doubt hoping that he could lose the overgrown bird in the water.
It wasn’t meant to be.
The rooster caught up to the man, taking him down with a few swift strikes. Brett turned away as the feasting began.
“Well,” he said to Felissa, “I was right. There is some sort of special anomaly that is providing the rooster with slightly higher velocity than it should have. Interestingly enough, when he made that sharp right turn, the anomaly disappeared for a moment.” The deity thought for a moment before continuing. “Maybe it only works when the rooster is traveling in a straight line? That would mean it’s some sort of System power, but that makes sense….hmmm…that is truly interesting.”
Felissa stretched and yawned, her claws flashing out for a moment before retracting, having almost touched the unspoiled sofa that she knew was Brett’s favorite. The feline deity recovered from her near-fatal error and began to clean her paws.
“What’s interesting?” she asked innocently between licks.
“Well, we’ve long known that the System would make adjustments to the laws of physics in order to accommodate its various functions. For instance, Dungeons work similarly to our own demiplanes, and only violate the laws of physics in the sense that their entrances are stable, and the System creates creatures for our followers to fight directly from energy in a manner that frankly concerns me, but this is the first time that I’m seeing such an effect tied to a non-System entity, if that makes sense.”
“Fascinating,” Felissa answered, still engrossed in grooming.
Brett stopped pacing and gave his companion a hard look.
“This could be important, Felissa. I’m starting to get a little bit worried that we bit off more than we can chew when it comes to the System. We think we’re in control of it, but no one deity actually knows how it works. Collectively, all the members of GOD are more powerful than the System, but you remember how much sheer power we had to invest to jump-start the thing. I still feel the loss of Divinity, and I know you do too.”
“I know it’s important, but I also know you’ll figure it out, so why should I worry about it? Just tell me where to point my claws when the time is right.”
Brett sighed. It was really annoying when Felissa was being lazy when he wanted to think through a problem, almost as annoying as when she got the zoomies. He tried to explain his position from another angle.
“The System is not supposed to do anything that we didn’t tell it to do, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, we’re in control,” Felissa answered with the certainty of ignorance.
“But are we, though?” Brett pressed. “We set the basic parameters and gave the System rules and an energy budget, then we invested Divinity into it and told it to get to work. But how would we really know if it’s not doing what we asked it to? Its workings are so complex that even I can’t study them in real time, and it’s still growing more complex. We just initiated Phase II, and you remember how complicated the discussions were on how to manage Phase III.”
“Well, has it done anything that you can point at and say, ‘it definitely shouldn’t be doing that’?” Felissa asked, finally taking the conversation more seriously.
“Well, no, not really. But I’ve just got this gut feeling that I need to keep an eye on the System or it’s going to do something that we’re really not going to like,” Brett answered, taking in a deep breath and holding for a few moments before blowing it back out. He knew that he was being paranoid, but being paranoid was how his humans had gone from banging rocks together and fighting their hairier cousins for fruit to ruling the whole world.
“Then just keep an eye on it for now and set one facet of your mind working on a plan for what to do if the situation ever arises,” Felissa suggested. “Then you can move on to more productive things.”
Brett stopped pacing and sat back down, petting Felissa down her back as he did.
“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t have any proof that the System is misbehaving, yet.”
“Well, it did give that crazy chicken superpowers,” the feline deity grumbled as she accepted Brett’s touch with just a hint of long-suffering. “But other than that, I don’t have many complaints.”
“You don’t really think that your ninja-kitty hit squad has a chance against that rooster, do you?” Brett asked playfully. “I figured you’d be content with them finding and killing every single chicken from the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea.”
Felissa sprang to her feet, her tail swishing for a moment before she mastered her emotions and jumped up to the top of the sofa.
“For your information, they are not a ‘ninja-kitty hit squad’. They are the Feline Rangers, and they each specialize in a different ability. One of them is getting close to breaking the speed of sound, just like we talked about earlier!”
“Oh, that’s great!” Brett responded with enthusiasm. “I do want to see some supersonic cats. But, um, I wanted to let you know that there is a canine squad coming down toward the coast too, right? I wouldn’t want your team and Canius’ to accidentally get into a fight. They aren’t even there to go after chickens, after all. I’ve got them hunting down a human, in fact. A nonbeliever.”
“Ohhh, a renegade human,” Felissa asked, thankfully glossing over the fact that a pack of dogs was involved. “What’s that all about?”
“Well,” Brett answered, “I had actually given him a Quest to kill that stupid rooster…this was right after that Raul guy failed…and then he had the gall to refuse to fight! I was so mad that I asked Canius to devote a full team to hunt him down.”
“Why didn’t you ask me?” Felissa hissed. “Are my cats not good enough?”
“Of course they are!” Brett denied. “But your cats have been hard at work finding all the chickens in the whole area. Hundreds of feral cats everywhere. I couldn’t possibly thank you enough for that.”
“You’re welcome,” the feline purred. “And you’re right…my kitties have been very busy tracking down all those chickens. I was worried that they would end up with huge experience penalties from killing lower-level creatures, but that was eliminated in the System update and I just hadn’t read all the patch notes.”
“You really should read the patch notes,” Brett scolded.
“I know, I know,” Felissa admitted. “It’s just so time consuming!”
“That’s it! Time consuming!!!” Brett shouted so loud that the feline deity sprang off the couch and froze, unsure whether to run away or not. A long moment passed.
“Sorry,” Brett said in a much softer voice. “But I figured it out! How we can manage that stupid rooster once and for all…”
Felissa grinned.
