Chapter 11: The Toddler with the Nuclear Launch Codes

  The Crunch-Bugs tasted of spicy pop-corn and wet cardboard.

  I was sitting on a bench, a root of a living tree, and I had to chew the roasted beetle-thing I had bought with a copper coin I had found in my pocket, a relic of my life on Earth, which the merchant had unexpectedly taken. It appears that shiny metal was shiny metal, regardless of the dimension that it had been minted on.

  "Nutrients," I told myself, swallowing a jagged leg. "It's just protein. Don't think about the pincers."

  I saw the crowd in Lumina flow past by me. It was the rush hour in the tree-city. Locals with skin like black glass packed the walkways tight, elbow to elbow. Then the sun died. That’s when the street changed. Their veins just woke up. Burning.

  My Tier 2: Functional language pack was trying its best, but it was struggling. The air was filled with a cacophony of clicks that my brain was desperately attempting to subtitle in real-time.

  "Move-please. Heavy-basket."

  "Price-bad. You-thief."

  "Mother-calls. Sleep-time."

  It was exhausting. The lag in translation was giving me a headache, and the absence of nuance was driving me mad. I was listening to the 'Caveman' version of a sophisticated civilization.

  Two natives came up to my bench. They were dressed in robes that shimmered like oil on water. They were arguing, speaking in low, harsh tones.

  "The... [STATIC]... north... [STATIC]... flow-break."

  I frowned. That sounded important. Flow-break? Was that about the Parasite?

  I focused on them. I listened and I pushed.

  The Astrolabe answered my purpose. It recommended a mechanic that I was not aware of: Active Focus.

  [Directing Lumen to Linguistics Matrix]

  [Boosting Comprehension...]

  I felt a small drain on my reserves; burning fuel leaving the Chalice, and suddenly, the static in my head cleared. The "fog" over their words thinned, sharpened by the injection of raw soul-power.

  "...the Northern Currents that are causing trouble" the first robe said. The translation was not flawless, but the grammar was smoothed out. "The High Gardeners are worried. They say a heavy dissonance was silenced in the south, but the echo is still ringing."

  "Silenced?" the second asked. "By whom? The Shepherd?"

  "Unknown. But the... [STATIC]... is watching."

  I cut the flow of Lumen. The translation degraded back into "[STATIC] is looking."

  I rubbed my temple. All right, I could overclock my brain and understand a language better, but it consumed fuel. It was a Pay-to-Understand system. Great. At least I knew my little stunt with the rock was left unnoticed. "The heavy dissonance was silenced." That was me. I was the silencer.

  For a second, I felt proud. I did that. I saved their forest. I was a hero in hiding.

  Choosing to look closer at the people I rescued.

  I shifted my gaze to a passing patrol: three guards marching in lockstep. They looked formidable. Their chitin armour was vibrating with a low, protective note and it was certainly no mere ceremonial plating.

  I activated Kensho. Show me the numbers.

  The Astrolabe focused. 'Starlight Magnitude system' superimposed itself on my reality.

  I expected a number. I expected a high number, sure. Maybe 70. Maybe 80.

  The interface flickered. The golden rings spun, trying to lock on, but the numbers refused to settle. They cycled rapidly: 99... 150... ERROR...—before dissolving into a snow of light.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  [Entity: Lumina Warden]

  [Magnitude: Unstable]

  I choked on my bug.

  Unstable.

  I remembered the tutorial note that was in my brain. Unstable was the gap of 50+ Magnitude. It was as though the scale was shaking. It implied that precise measuring was not possible due to the difference being too large.

  I did a follow-up of my own statistics, just to be on the safe side. Magnitude: 38.

  That put these guards deep into the north of Magnitude 90 and possibly pushing to 100 or more.. Hopefully not more.

  "Okay," I wheezed, sipping some water from a leaf-cup. "Guards are on-foot raid bosses. Got it. Don't fight the police. That is a Standard travel advice."

  I wiped my mouth, while my hands trembled a little. I needed to calibrate. If the guards were elite, surely the civilians should be manageable. I looked for anything less dreadful.

  A couple of yards down the road, a group of children were playing. They were small, maybe three feet tall, their obsidian skin still soft and matte, not yet polished to the hard sheen of the adults. They were after a ball of floating light, and giggling with sounds that translated to Happy-Shriek.

  One of the children, a toddler, just barely on its feet, fell. He went down hard, but stayed silent. It instinctively threw out a hand.

  Mid-fall, the earth shifted.

  A solid-wood pillar rose out of the mossy pavement, and caught the kid, and slipped him back on his feet. It was a casual, instinctive manipulation of matter which would have demanded a group of engineers and heavy machinery on the Earth.

  The kid giggled and ran off.

  I blinked, hard.

  [Entity: Lumina Youth]

  [Magnitude: 45]

  Forty-five.

  The number was clear. Stable. And higher than mine.

  The toddler was Magnitude 45.

  I was Magnitude 38.

  I sat very, very still. The half-eaten beetle fell out of my hand.

  "The baby," I said, staring at the giggling child. "The baby can take me."

  Should that kid wanted to have my coat, he could beat me up and get it. I wasn't the underdog here. I wasn't even a contender. In the hierarchy of this world, I am statistically weaker than the preschool demographic of this world.

  A cold, creeping sensation started at the base of my neck. It wasn't fear of the guards. It wasn't fear of the monsters.

  It was doubt.

  I looked at my hands. They looked like my hands. I saw the floating text in my vision. [Tier 2: Functional].

  "This isn't real," I murmured.

  The thought bloomed akin to a dark flower.

  I was Kaelen. I was a college dropout who climbed buildings for fun and hacked servers because I was bored. I wasn't a "Wayfarer." I wasn't a "Conduit."

  This whole thing; the Astrolabe, the glowing moss, the bug-snacks, tthe fact that a toddler was more stat-filled than I was, it was all too much. It was absurd.

  "I touched that server rack," I said, my voice shaking. "It was a live wire. Or a gas leak. I am lying on the concrete floor of the Straylight sub-basement now, twitching, and my brain is discharging its last few neurons in a grand hallucination."

  It made sense. The "System" was just my gamer brain trying to organize the chaos of dying. The "levels" were just dopamine hits to keep me from screaming. The fact that I was so weak compared to everyone else? That was just my subconscious insecurity manifesting.

  You are not special, my brain whispered. You're just dying.

  The world around me seemed to blur. The glowing lights of Lumina looked suddenly garish, fake, like a video game with the bloom turned up too high. The faces of the passing aliens looked like rubber masks.

  I felt the urge to just... lie down. To close my eyes and let the "simulation" end. Why struggle to reach the Northern Wayline if it was just a hallucination? Why eat bugs? Why worry about my Horizon stat?

  I closed my eyes. Wake up, Kaelen. Wake up in the hospital. Or the morgue. Just wake up.

  Thwack.

  Something hit me in the shin. Hard.

  "Ow!" My eyes snapped open.

  The toddler; the Magnitude 45 super-baby, was standing in front of me. He had kicked his ball of light, and it had nailed me right in the shinbone.

  He looked at me with huge, faceted eyes.

  "Ball-back?" he clicked.

  The pain in my shin was sharp, and incredibly annoying.

  I rubbed my leg, wincing. "You little..."

  I stopped.

  Pain. Annoying pain.

  Hallucinations usually didn't hurt like this. Dreams were fuzzy on the details. But this? I could feel the bruise forming. I could taste the lingering spice of the beetle on my tongue. I could feel the rough texture of the wooden bench under my thighs.

  I looked at the kid. He was waiting, expectant.

  I reached down, picked up the glowing ball; it felt warm and buzzed against my palm, and tossed it back to him.

  "Thanks-strange-face," the kid chirped, and ran off.

  I sat back, letting out a shaky laugh.

  "Okay," I whispered. "Okay."

  If I were hallucinating, I would have made myself stronger. I would be the Dragonborn. I would be Neo. I wouldn't be the guy getting bullied by a toddler and eating cardboard bugs.

  The sheer indignity of my situation was the proof of its reality.

  "I'm not dreaming," I said, standing up, wincing on my bruised leg. "I'm just really, really out of my depth."

  I looked toward the north. The lights of the tallest spire, the one likely housing the Wayline, pierced the canopy.

  "I need to get to that exit," I told myself, my resolve hardening into something brittle but functional. "Because if I stay here, I'm going to get mugged by a kindergartner, and I will never live that down."

  I rejoined the crowd, careful to give the children a wide berth. I was the weakest thing in the city, but I had one advantage they didn't.

  I knew I was weak. And I was good at parkour.