I will try and keep the chapters up to around 10 pages each, which is what this one was. Although, some might be shorter due to a lack of tables. I think the tables make up a large portion of this one...
Anyway, if you were presented with a similar "Workshop" place your species build in the comments and I will probably include it later on in the book as an enemy or ally of sorts.
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In the most simplistic and unrefined sense of the word I was stupefied. I stood still and stared moronically as I tried to comprehend what it was that was happening.
In front of me was a blue screen, vivid and clear with its white text in the dark room. On the other side of the semi transparent blue screen was a white circular platform, roughly 5 feet apart. Floating above that platform was a mannequin roughly the size of a human, but it was pure white and possessed no features whatsoever. It was hovering, slowly turning around in midair.
As soon as my eyes hit the end of the box, it faded away. A moment later, above the white figurine another box appeared in the same manner as the other one.
I gulped, reading through the message. Once again, when I hit the end of it it disappeared. I waited for another one to appear for further explanation, but after waiting for a dozen seconds no new window appeared.
“C-Controls?”
I hesitantly voiced out the words that I had been instructed to say by the window, and instantly another window was created before me.
This one had various separate boxes, portioned out almost like statuses for games.
Woah…
Thats interesting…
I took a deep shuddering breath, remembering to re read the entire thing before I hit the last word, making sure that I had a good grasp on the parameters of a species and how humans related to them. Honestly, it’s almost laughable how weak we are in comparison to how we could be. A strength of 10? An agility of 10? Out of 200? Seriously?
I paused for a moment, crunching the numbers as I caught a discrepancy. Humans only had around 200 points… Why did I get 300 to toy with?
A window instantly popped up to answer this question as the thoughts entered my head.
My mouth hung open as the message disappeared. I was planning something like that… I mean, intelligence rules our world right? Humans went from weak and pitiful scavengers to an advanced civilization through the use of tools, machinery, technology in general!!
Can you imagine, a species the potential of a species that had more points in intelligence and utility than humans? It has to be massive. I was toying with the concept a moment ago, but now?
Now I threw that thought out of my mind as I closed my mouth as I thought back to the exact words the message had used.
“The pocket dimension that you are being transferred to will be exceptionally more dangerous in comparison to your old world”
I mean, what use is a species that could have plasma weaponry if they were slaughtered on the first day by a pack of wolves. Without the abilities to at least defend themselves, how could they even advance to the point where they would control the world…
Natural selection at its finest… The process had to be slow… Strong enough to survive the early game, intelligent enough to survive the lategame… A mix between the two…
I started to tap the buttons on the panel in front of me, watching the physique of the white mannequin change as I allotted points into various stats. With strength the body would grow larger, and more robust, with agility it would grow leaner, with vitality it would grow denser, intelligence it would grow smaller, yet its head would grow more pronounced. Utility did not affect anything externally as far as I could tell, but I couldn’t be sure.
Soon enough, a table sat in front of me after several hundred clicks and several minutes of messing with the settings.
I glanced over them, then frowned… There weren’t enough points in the physical stats. I frowned as I erased those settings and then started to allocate points again. I had to make this perfect, the way the computer put it, it was a death match between me and 5000 other species controlled by humans, and an unknown number of species/ civilizations that were autonomous or controlled in the simulation by the simulation itself. It also said that anything that the “simulation” isn't a computer simulation, it was a pocket universe… This design is what my life will depend on from now on, I have to get it right or I will inevitably die.
I fiddled with the settings for a while, unable to make up my mind on what exactly it was that I wanted. Any strength or agility would be essentially useless in the late stages of the simulation, as everything would be based off of technology then. Any intelligence would be useless early, as technology would take time to get relevant. I was stuck trying to balance out the difference while still remaining relevant.
I tried to think back to my history classes, what I had learned about human civilizations and what it was that had made certain ones flourish. My mind fell upon arguably the greatest empire in human history. ROME…
I kept thinking back, remembering all of this documentaries that I had watched about ancient Rome. Their most prominent aspect was their legions, their warmachine was unstoppable. What they lacked they took from those that they conquered. They took technology, god’s, idea’s, cultures. Rome assimilated, they grew, they expanded. All of that was built on the backs of armed conquest.
Why should I compromise? All I had to do was conquer, other civilizations would make up for my inadequacies. But Rome wasn’t good enough… Rome was undoubtedly the greatest civilization in human history, but there was a problem. They collapsed under their own weight, Rome’s model was unfit for the large scale. Once they ran out of people to conquer and assimilate, their political system started to corrupt and eat the empire from the inside out. I was planning on staying alive for a long time, so I could not allow that to happen. I don't need civilians who were pressed into combat, I don’t need politicians waging wars for their own profit, I need something that would last a lifetime. Something without farmers, something without pause to enter combat. Combat was their greatest honor, to die for the country was their purpose of birth.
What I needed was an army that would respond to commands without question. A legion of mindless Zealots whose only purpose in life was warfare…
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
My mind sped, trying to think of a societal model that would fit my purposes. I wasn’t actually going to follow through if there was no precedent for a civilization like the one that I was planning. That would be idiotic. Through several thousand recorded years of human history, all kinds of civilizations have rose and died, each for specific reasons. What good would it do to mindlessly repeat history in a different world…
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it…
My mind flew, searching through all of the history that I could remember, searching for that one example of the society that I wanted to create…
SPARTANS!!!!
I clapped my hand in the silence of the dark room when the name of the model came up in my head. Spartans were warriors above all else, the logistics were handled by slaves. Their lives were lived for Sparta and for Sparta only. They were exactly what I needed.
I smiled as I started to allocate points into the table in accordance with this new idea. Now it isn’t completely up to me. Now all I had to do was follow a societal model that was established, follow Spartan law…
Yes, that's it… That is what I wanted… A legion to follow orders. Human tanks, with insane strength, insane agility and insane vitality. They have the adaptability of a normal human, able to think their way out a problem. They are witty, but not intelligent to the point of creating new ideas or questioning my decisions. They should fit their purpose just fine…
As I finished reading, it opened up a new panel, having already read my mind I guess. This new panel had several sliding dials and a few color scheme options.
The mannequin shone with a bright white light, instantly becoming less and less opaque and becoming more and more defined.
Currently it was still rather vague, but as I messed with the dials, the figure morphed. When I turned one dial one way, it grew larger, when I turned it the other way, it grew shorter.
It was like character creation in a game… Interesting…
I fiddled with it for a while, getting something mostly human looking, but for the hell of it I decided to give it red skin and make it on average around 6 and a half feet.
I asked a few questions aloud, and got a few sketchy responses from the AI computer thing about the physical traits that it was allowed to have. I could, hypothetically, make it twenty feet tall and weigh ten tons. This would have an adverse effect of agility though, making it almost unable to move swiftly. Inversely, I could make it two feet tall and despite the rather small agility number it would still be incredibly agile. It’s body durability and strength would be negatively impacted however, so I decided to stick with a general human form in the end. I wanted something like heavy infantry, and they would be unable to fight hand to hand evenly with a human if they were too small, or if they were too large it would be stupidly hard to feed them, and in the battlefield they would get outmaneuvered by more agile enemies, leading to them having a large weakness. It would also take a fortune to fully armor something that was twenty feet tall, let alone getting a mount for the giant warrior.
Ya, six and a half feet is tall enough…
I selected my settings, red skin, black hair, for the hell of it I threw a pair of cat ears on there, and they also got claws and a tail... What do you know, a bit of aesthetic fashion and perhaps they got a powerful natural weapon. Although, those claws are probably not going to be strong enough to take on a knife or anything…
A thought crossed my mind about whether or not both sexes of the species would have the same appearance or I was just designing one half.
Once again, as I finished reading it the window disappeared, and the species design that I had been working on for my legionnaire started to brightly glow before splitting into two, as another white pad forming next to the one I was working on. On that pad the tall broad figure that I had been messing with instantly became slightly feminine, growing a pair of breasts and a vag, while the one I had been working on grew a dick.
I cringed, directing my eyes away from the masculine body parts of the right model and towards the newly created female one. Of course, this one wasn’t any better as it was almost an exact clone of the male one with the exception of the tits and its lack of a junk.
I cringed again, it looked like a man with breast implants…
Almost instantly another holographic control panel appeared in front of this second platform, identical to the first one. I secretly breathed a sigh of relief, and once again started to mess with the settings, taking another few minutes to get the appearance to something more… appealing…
Eventually I ended up with a thin tall body type, with a long face, red hair and red skin. She was hot, but not exactly beautiful in the human sense of the word. She was also reaaaaallly tall. I fiddle with it a bit more, sculpting her face a bit and changing her eye color, from the pitch black that the man had to yellowish gold iris color. I knew that this was only going to be a generic woman, and the facial features of the other ones would differ a bit, so I didn’t spend an extreme amount of time on them, but I did make sure that they were at least pretty.
As I finished up her face, I took a step back to appreciate my work, my hand reaching out subconsciously and touching her tit.
Unfortunately, it felt like a mannequin, very firm and fake, like a plastic, unlike skin at all. I was disappointed, in myself and the mannequin…
After I nodded at my work, confirming one last time that I liked the appearance of the six and a half foot tall cat woman, the control panel disappeared, and was replaced by another status table.
What?
The female’s status is different from the men's? Even more, its agility and utility are ridiculous!!?!?
I gawked for a moment, but I accepted the stats, I mean, it would be good if both genders could fight, but I would need swifter members to scout and it would be nice to have a few agility based fighters instead of pure heavy infantry.
This would do well I guess…
The projected status window disappeared, then another window popped up as the two mannequins floated away from me.
Well, that is rather self explanatory, but I decided to ask anyway. Gotta get those bonus points, who knows how many I will be able to get later...
“More Information…”
Well… Rip…
I just assumed that every status was self explanatory and it turns out that it is. Saves me time though, so I guess that's a bonus in its own way. No hidden loopholes, no hidden passives somewhere, no unbalanced picks…
Since I am going for a warrior society, I put my first point into the “Warriors” category, and instantly the point cost doubled.
As far as I could tell, this was a one time decision, and I found no way to move the point which I had invested in. I pondered for a moment, then put in two more points into the warrior category, to find out if my hunch on the prices was correct. Put simply, there were two ways that the number would increase, it would either double, to four, or go to three. I would prefer three, because three would mean that I don’t have to waste points and I would be able to attain a higher level warrior buff with a smaller amount of points. When the price doubles every single time shit gets expensive quickly…
I put in 2 more points as I held my breath. Luckily, the price only went up to 3. I gave a sigh of relief, then started to carefully allocate my points. The pricing went like this, 1,2,3,4,5 which means that I would have to invest 1, 3, 6, and then finally 10 points total into a trait for it to reach level 4. with the eventual result being this.
This time it didn’t wait until I was satisfied, as it just instantly closed the window when I allocated the last point.
The two figures faded away, leaving me alone in a dark room with no light source. Once again, a small blue window appeared before me, burning into my eyes that had adjusted to the residual darkness.
The room fell into darkness once more as I stood still, unsure what to do now.
A strange pain hit my brain as some unknown force sifted through my memories and thoughts, barring off those which it deemed too advanced for this level of civilization.
Wait… WAIT?!!?!
NO!!! I NEED THAT!!!!
Instantly, the thoughts hit something far more rudimentary than it should be looking for, and it started to take it away.
I grit my teeth and strained against it, trying desperately to keep the memory of what could be the most important invention in all of human history…
After a few moments of intense fighting, it finally let go of the memory and moved on to something else and I took a breath.
I saved it.. I saved the wheel!! Take that you blue memory stealing bastard!!!!
As soon as I let out my breath in relief, the floor fell out from under me, and I started to fall, my conscious fading away as I fell…
