Neophyte World Builder

SARA

This new life wasn’t nearly as primitive as Sara had expected.

“Go on without me, I’ll be fine!” she called to Ether, who shrugged and waved a quick farewell. Like many of the girls in the village, both Ether and herself had ended up with “fastan” Totem—a swift, deerlike creature that sported curved horns on both the males and the females. Ether had already shown two nubby horn growths on her forehead, and some unnaturally slender lower legs.

Sara showed none of that.

Not like she was known as Sara anyway. Her name sounded more like “Nethys” to her ears, so she’d learned to respond to that. An entire childhood of memories had given her context for this new world, thankfully. Her human memories hadn’t unlocked until a few days after she’d ingested her Core. She’d gotten her special bonus message right after that.

That had been two years ago, leaving her a teenage girl just starting to really bloom into full fitness. The women in the village often aided in hunting or foraging instead of the farming, which was far more egalitarian than Sara had expected. It was true that the men still held all the positions of power in this place, and from the sound of it that was the norm, but for a pre-industrial society she’d expected much worse.

The hill she stood atop didn’t have a name… it was just ‘the big hill’ to the locals. It probably had some kind of formal name in the kingdom, but she didn’t know it. This land was technically part of some monarchy, but from what she’d been able to tell it was the merchant houses who had the real power… and a small village like hers was mostly left alone so long as they paid the taxes.

Which made the village a great place for her to grow up. Her needs were met, she had friends, she was close enough to civilization to have something of a local education… and yet she wasn’t right in the middle of the city where people might immediately notice that the math skills she suddenly knew were far more advanced than her peers.

She flopped back onto the grass, staring up at the strange smear of faint color that dominated the sky. The brighter halo within that luminous sky was starting to recede, and a small part of her wondered about that. Obviously there was a sun hidden behind that wall of light, but why was it obscured during the day and at night the stars were visible? A lot of this world still didn’t make sense to someone used to knowing more about how the world worked. She couldn’t just accept the common wisdom, even if she had met some gods.

“I wonder if I remember enough calculus to invent it here? Or if they’ve already figured it out? Is advanced math even the same?” she wondered aloud. It was hard to know how advanced the educated class was across the world from some little village, but she also thought they might have a reliable way of communicating long distances with magic.

“Why wouldn’t math be the same? Coherent and consistent mechanics is a trademark of the Orpheus Cluster,” a cheerful voice answered from nearby.

Sara jerked upward, eyes darting around to land on the creature nearby.

She recognized it. The blue skin and green eyes, the short height, the tapering ears and tail. Crown had called it an “elf” before and admitted it didn’t look much like an Earth elf. That alone had made her wonder how much he knew about Earth, but she’d never had a chance to question him on it. She had paid attention to the explanation, though.

“What’s an elf doing this side of the mountains?” she asked with a wary squint. A notification popped up informing her of a new achievement, but she waved it away in annoyance. All it had done was give her the name: Akasha.

The stranger just wiggled her ears. “I’m not an elf. I meant to visit earlier, but things have been a little busy for me.” She gestured at the sky. “You’d know me better as the System. Father told me to keep an eye on you and check in once you remembered who you were, and now here I am. I probably won’t be doing this again, but do you understand everything? Are there any problems from the transmigration? You’re the first soul from outside my System that I’ve worked with.”

Such a casual statement still made Sara fidget. “Is that… causing problems? I have a screen and everything. Even a class… I assumed it was all working as it should, but if you’re here does that mean something has gone wrong?”

Akasha laughed, her ears doing a brief dip that Sara somehow understood was a denial. “No, not at all! I was just curious and you’re an unusual one. I’m sure you got a high rarity achievement just for seeing me… although it used to be even higher. I’ve gotten a little less shy about showing myself to people.”

Sara stared a moment, then laid back on the grass, arms behind her head. “I didn’t do much with my life back on Earth, and now I’m not sure what I can do here. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the offer. What is it you want me to do, anyway?”

Silence answered her at first, and Sara started to turn her head to look before Akasha answered.

“I don’t really want anything from you,” she said in a perplexed tone. “You’re a mortal. Doing your own thing is the point. Even if one of us wanted you to do something one way, you’d end up doing it differently anyway. Father says we can’t even send divine suggestions because mortals will just use it as an excuse to start wars or something.”

The mental estimation Sara had about Akasha’s father went up a notch. “Your father is Crown? Or one of the gods? So the gods here don’t have crusaders and people devoted to them?”

With a quiet thump, Akasha sat down next to the curious human-turned-vaskan. “They have champions, but… it’s complicated. And there are rules. Muerve, the one you met, just got in trouble for wanting to bend the rules, but father said they were in the right. Yes, my father is Crown, but it’s not the kind of father-daughter relationship your kind know. For one thing, half the time he’s a girl when he’s down here.”

Sara chuckled at that, then closed her eyes. “So why bring me from Earth without a goal then?”

“That’s his project, not mine,” Akasha replied. “But what do you want to do? Do you want to live a quiet life here in this village? That’s okay, I’ve known a lot of people with rough lives who like to take a break. Or do you want to see the world like Wanderer? Try to get through the Dawnshield Mountains? Explore the giant insect hives in the other direction? Make a new nation? Meet an Elder Dragon? I’m sure Cayla would have some suggestions, and she might even be the only mortal alive right now who can understand your situation.”

The comment prodded Sara to sit up again, bringing herself close to eye level with the much shorter elf. “You don’t have any desires for mortals? I’m a little confused at that. What are we to you, then?”

Akasha just flicked an ear lazily. “To me? You’re interesting. In general I don’t want anything except for you, as a group, to not do anything harmful to me or the planet, but also to not be boring. Individual mortals can be pretty interesting though. I actually have a mortal lover, but she’s Upside. And I’m pretty sure Wanderer has done something intimate with at least a few of the gods when he’s been in the afterlife. I never would have figured him to be the flirt, but he surprised me.”

“How does one even… you know what, I don’t want to know,” Sara said, her face scrunching up in a grimace. “I’m not even sure how you can be the System we’re all using. If you’re here with me, does that mean everyone else in the world can’t use the System?”

“Does your heart stop beating because you’re talking to me?” Akasha questioned. “It’s the same thing. I’m the System and you’re talking to my mind, but all the countless little adjustments going on happen even if I’m not paying attention. I have to stop and concentrate to keep track of every little thing going on, or I notice if something isn’t working right. If I focus I can flex the System to do things it normally wouldn’t. The numbers are my body, you’re talking to my self.”

Sara really didn’t want to think about that. The teenage vaskan pushed herself to her feet, looking out toward the forest away from her village. Dangerous. Dark. Possibly disease-ridden, though now that she thought about it disease seemed a rare concern with these people. She’d heard of diseases, but they weren’t common. Was that just a world difference?

“This world is huge,” she sighed. “If I want to find this Cayla… where would I start?”

Despite the new height difference, Akasha didn’t stand up. She just swayed her tail and wiggled ears in what Sara thought was amusement.

“Where do you think you need to start?”

This socratic reply from the girl that looked like a child wasn’t what Sara had expected. She truly had to stop to think about the answer. She reached back to toy with her ponytail—something she’d started to wear once her human memories returned—and consider her options.

“I’ll need to go… somewhere with more people,” she concluded. “Where I can find education and people who might know where to go next. And it looks like a long journey, so I’ll need to be prepared for that. I’ll need a way to make money, and I can’t walk in there looking like this… I’m basically this world’s equivalent of a peasant girl wanting to be a world traveler.”

She looked down at herself, body skinny and still maturing. The waif-like look wasn’t one she liked, but she didn’t know how to fix it quickly.

Or did she?

“… so I need to find a Totem that is strong and draws the eye,” Sara continued slowly. “Which means I need to hunt something more impressive, myself… or get allies willing to help me. Or ways of fighting that these people don’t know. I’m an accountant, not a soldier, I don’t know how to hunt a monster…”

Her voice softened at the end as she trailed off. Akasha didn’t miss this and finally stood up, giving her a light tap on the side with her tail. “And?”

It wasn’t supposed to be easy, she realized. She’d been given this chance to live again in a fantasy world, and even been given an opportunity no one else had been given… but this wasn’t a story where she was the hero and everything would go her way. She’d already been given more advantages than most… she just had to figure out how to use them properly.

“You won’t be giving me any other help?” she asked softly.

“I’ll be watching you and I’ll try to make sure you don’t die to something stupid, but it’s your life,” Akasha confirmed. “Live here quietly if you want. Or bring something from your other world that completely messes up the balance of power. I really don’t care. Father might, but he won’t stop you.”

Sara tapped her chin and considered this. Then she nodded.

“All right. Time to middle manage my way into talking to a dragon.”