Today's Earth date: May 30, 1992

Horcus won't give us a departure date. We've already gained a few levels, so we're seeing less and less progress from grinding, but he doesn't care. He wants to be certain that we can stomp the sea monsters we're likely to encounter when we sail out of Bata.

Rathain and Wilmond see how strong he's gotten, and they don't want to lose their best party member. So they're doing whatever Horcus wants.

And I guess I am too.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

Needing only two hours of rest gave the Zeroes most of the night to grind. They avoided the desert so as to not upset the desert orcs prematurely. They roamed the open fields around Maliit waiting for the system to send them random encounters like it always did.

Wayne set the mood with some battle music.

Random.

Song: Joged Bumbung

Artist: Amadinda Percussion Group

Album: [unavailable]

Genre: Joged

Joged was yet another genre Wayne had never heard of, but it made for excellent battle music. The beat was fast. Layers of some kind of drum joined the rainfall sound of small cymbals and an instrument that produced the lighter tones of taps on hollow bamboo.

It all came together to sound like the soundtrack for an ultra-fast kung fu fight scene. Wayne very much liked feeling like he was in a kung fu movie.

As for their grinding outing, they encountered zero ratmen, an odd shift made extra noticeable by the party's recent city-saving battle against an army of modified ratmen. The most powerful ratman, the apparent leader, managed to escape. But there were no ratmen around Maliit.

The party fought a goblin variant that looked exactly like previous goblins but had yellow skin instead of puke green, and they encountered a variant of giant rat with black fur. They also fought colossal caterpillars that spit sticky poison, a sort of rabid prairie dog that ambushed by attacking from below, and an oversized vulture that had blades for feathers, yet still flew with no issue.

In the wee hours of the morning, Wayne got the notification he had hoped for and checked his stats screen..

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 25

HP: 346/346

STR: 42

AGI: 33

VIT: 24

LCK: 39

Going up one point in strength, agility, and luck wasn't exciting, but Wayne knew it mattered, so he was thankful regardless. His new ability unlocks, however, were… interesting.

His sixth and final unlock from the PC game It Came from the Desert read as follows:

False Evidence – Some sightings could be staged events by those with ulterior motives. Other happenings may be coincidental or dead ends with logical explanations.

That would need testing, but his new ability from Ultima VI was more straightforward:

Animate – Causes an inanimate object to come to life and wander about, though not under caster's control.

Probably not the most battle-worthy ability he had ever gotten, but there was likely some utility to animating objects if he was creative enough. Those objects not being under his control was strange, though. Did that mean his own animations could attack him? Was there any chance of them acting in the way he wanted them to?

His recollections of the spell in the original Ultima VI were fuzzy and didn't include any story-specific memories of using Animate. However, he did recall combining it with the Clone spell to dupe items. The process was simple: cast Animate to bring a valuable item to life, use Clone to make multiple living copies of that item, and then kill those Clones to turn them back into lifeless objects.

If Wayne unlocked Clone and the same exploit worked in this world, his build would be even more broken than it already was. There would be no more need to divvy up magic items. If they wanted a magic item and didn't want to pay, they could Animate, Clone, kill, and walk away with their own copy.

But Wayne didn't have Clone, so all of that was just daydreaming.

The last ability unlock came from the pinball game Devil's Crush:

Nudging – Bump the machine to manipulate the direction of a ball in play.

Wayne didn't grow up near enough to an arcade to be a pinball aficionado, but he knew about nudging. The act of playing pinball could become surprisingly physical, so the machine was always shaking and moving to some degree. You could outright cheat, however, by deliberately shaking or lifting the machine, so many pinball machines had sensors to detect it.

A well-executed nudge gave you the benefit of moving the machine while still being subtle enough to not trip the sensor and forfeit the game.

While Wayne considered his new unlocks, the rest of the party sat around a campfire, eating and drinking to refuel from grinding.

Nudge.

The entire world wobbled, enough that Fergus clutched his plate for fear of losing precious food but not so much that any of the cups on the ground spilled.

When Wayne saw the party glance about with worried faces, he said, "Sorry, everyone. That was me."

"Gods, Wayne," Fergus grumbled. "You have so many ways to communicate with us, and you couldn't use one of them to warn us?"

"Sorry."

"Heads up," Wayne said via voice, "I am testing another ability."

Animate.

Wayne targeted Fergus' plate. Cartoon legs and arms sprouted from the dish and it scrambled off of Fergus' lap, spilling food all over the Mage as well as the ground.

"Dost thou think so little of me that ye would eat off of my very body?!" the plate exclaimed.

"Wayne, this isn't funny."

The plate put its hands on its… well, it posed like it had hips and put its hands there. "Silence, gnave. Thou hast sullied my honor. I demand restitution!"

"Can you make it stop?" Fergus asked.

Wayne cast Animate again. The plate was unaffected.

The angry piece of dishware turned to Hector. "Ah! A fine brute! Servant, I command ye to deliver justice in my name. Attack this mollycoddle at once!"

Hector thought and then looked to Fergus. "Is this plate important to you?"

"Without food on it? Not at all."

The party's tank stood, took a step forward, and kicked the plate. The animated object shrieked as it flew through the air and stopped when it shattered on the ground.

"If I get another plate, will you turn that against me to?" Fergus asked Wayne.

Wayne laughed. "No, I promise. Your food is safe, but I am trying one more thing."

False Evidence.

A ghost version of Wayne's party sitting around the campfire appeared in his vision. He maneuvered the image, selected a patch of open ground a few yards from camp, and placed it.

A perfect copy of the Zeroes appeared, and everyone watched as the plate again leapt from Fergus' lap and began shouting. When Hector kicked the plate, the object disappeared completely, and then the scene reset. The same moment repeated itself.

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"That's creepy," Margo observed. "It's convincing, though."

Wayne agreed. "Yeah, it is. Using this like illusion magic to distract or confuse definitely has merit."

Armond walked over to the copy of himself sitting at the edge of camp, trying to stay out of whatever shenanigans an animated plate would lead to. The cleric touched his duplicate.

"It's physically here, not just visually," he said. "Feels like paper."

The rest of the party stood to investigate for themselves. Nothing about the loop changed even as they walked through it, poking and touching the people as well as the props. Armond was right. It did indeed feel like paper, as though the whole scene was elaborate origami.

Wayne dismissed False Evidence.

He dug through his pockets and removed a few Pages of Power, carefully unfolding them. Fergus froze with a fork halfway to his mouth.

"I thought you were done with testing unlocks?"

"Those ones, yeah. We'll see what I get from these."

"Please don't mess with my food again."

"I promise I won't. I'm going to need a minute to decide anyhow."

Fergus looked at Wayne skeptically and went back to eating.

Wayne thumbed through the pages to refresh his memory of his options. He could choose two of the following:

Twisted Metal III, Megafortress, Weatherbrief, U.S. Atlas, World Atlas, Sim City, Sim City Graphics Set #1 and #2, Microsoft Flight Simulator Aircraft & Scenery Designer, Bad Blood/Times of Lore Pak, Wing Commander, Worlds of Ultima - The Savage Empire, and lastly Quest for Clues III Hintbook.

Weatherbrief, U.S. Atlas, and World Atlas all came from the same page as Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. Earth maps and Earth meteorological data would be useless here, Wayne decided.

Twisted Metal was all about vehicle to vehicle combat, and the party was in need of such an upgrade for their desert adventure, but that game was all cars–or car adjacent as was the case with Axel, a shirtless character strapped between two giant wheels. Wayne had never driven in the desert, but multiple YouTube compilations told him that regular tires would not suffice.

So, if he did get a car unlock, it might still be useless. Outlawson was sufficient for any of their other overland transportation, making a car redundant as well.

Megafortress was some kind of flight simulation game, and he had already unlocked several of those types of titles. The same hesitancy he had with unlocking Megafortress persisted with Microsoft Flight Simulator Aircraft & Scenery Designer, and to a lesser degree, Wing Commander. It was a game about flying as well, but all of that flying was done in space.

Sim City was tempting, but only because Wayne couldn't imagine what mechanics from that series would translate to this world. Would he be able to place buildings and roads with a mental click? Would he suddenly be responsible for managing a city's budget and tax income? What about the natural disaster mechanics? Could he gain the ability to summon a hurricane or a kaiju?

The latter was interesting, but Animate had just demonstrated that his control over those summons might be limited. If that were the case, Wayne would feel guilty about dropping a hurricane onto the unsuspecting town of Maliit.

That left three semi-appealing options. Wayne re-read their descriptions from the catalog page and chuckled when he saw typos in the first two:

Bad Blood / Times of Lore Pak – Two adventures in one! After the nuclear holocaust, the pure-blooded humans have sworn to exterminate their mutant cousins. Only you can prevent Bad Blood Times of Lore is a special bonus game.

Worlds of Ultima - The Savage Empire – Push your survival skills to the limit as you journey through the time-lost land of Eodon. Steamy jungles, volcanic wastelands, lizardmen and man-eating tryannosaurs await you.

Quest for Clues III Hintbook – Discover answers to 40 popular computer adventures and roleplaying games with maps and step-by-step solutions. Learn a single hint or follow a solution from start to finish.

A post-apocalypse game might provide some interesting technology as an unlock, but he hadn't played Bad Blood or Times of Lore to have any meaningful insight into what the games actually entailed. Had the game been any entry in the Fallout series, he would have chosen it immediately. Some of the perks in that franchise were egregiously overpowered, which appealed greatly to Wayne in both of his lives.

Quest for Clues was a dark horse. In this era of gaming, walkthroughs or puzzle guides had yet to mature. If you were stuck, you either had to call a hint hotline or hope that one of your friends at school played the same game and managed to figure it out. In Wayne's case, getting stuck mostly meant an unofficial end to the game because he simply couldn't progress.

The cover for Quest for Clues featured maps and screenshots, but he wasn't able to discern for what games. If the system morphed those hints into something more relevant, that could be a powerful unlock, but that was also wishful thinking.

"Are you in pain?" Fergus asked.

"I can't decide. Mind if I talk it through with you?"

"Proceed."

Wayne explained his options as well as the pros, cons, and trepidations he had for each.

"Bad Blood and Savage Empire seem like the most likely to provide combat abilities, but I'm not sure we need more of those," Fergus answered.

"What do you mean?"

Fergus shrugged. "We have a lot of power as it is. I think we underestimate out-of-combat abilities. We've found a lot of loot because of your Probe skill, and Margo's ability to see through illusions and to find hidden passages has been critical to our success as well."

"True."

"Did you read the descriptions for all of these?" Fergus asked as he sifted through the pages for himself.

"No, I didn't read any of the text on the Pages of Power," Wayne drolled.

"World Atlas doesn't actually say anything about Earth," Fergus said, pointing to the catalog page.

Wayne re-read it:

World Atlas – Atlas, almanac, and world fact book in one. World Atlas gives you instant access to over 240 fully detailed, EGA/VGA color maps and a huge database of international information.

"You're right," Wayne said.

"Naturally."

"Screw it." Wayne circled World Atlas.

According to the system, it was another one of one unlock, and that lone ability read:

Maps – Developed by professional cartographers, World Atlas contains the highest quality maps available for a PC.

Wayne navigated his HUD menus and found an option labeled "Atlas." Activating it brought up a pixelated VGA style map of the world. This world. Clicking into a cluster of map markers, the world zoomed into where the party presently rested, not far from Maliit. He dragged the map around to explore the region. He didn't see anything that wasn't on the physical maps he and Fergus studied prior to the trip.

Unless…

Sifting through the settings, Wayne saw that he could toggle the map through a number of filters, like topography and population density, but one stood out above all else: Points of Interest. He checked the box with his mind.

"Ha!"

Three icons appeared in the Bata Desert:

-Kingdom of Liliththehgi'l (undiscovered)

-Singing Sands (undiscovered)

-Forgotten Petroglyph (undiscovered)

These had to be the solutions to the riddle. Liliththehgi'l looked to Wayne like some bullshit attempt at simulating the elvish language, so that was probably the elven kingdom they had heard legends about. The Singing Sands sounded like a good solution to a riddle involving bards, and that left the petroglyph for the riddle about the warrior.

"What's a petroglyph?" Hector asked.

"It's a fancy way of saying old rock carving," Fergus answered.

Wayne dragged and scrolled the map, finding undiscovered points of interest all over. "Looks like we don't need that desert guide after all. Between this and my HUD map, we have plenty of direction to work with."

"You're welcome," Fergus said. "Again, my wisdom saves the day."

"You're right. This was a good call."

Taking more inspiration from Fergus' logic, Wayne circled Wing Commander. He expected the upgrade to apply to Skykat as his other flight simulator unlocks had. The little fighter jet had been crucial in their battle success, and now that he could summon two at once, controlling a battlefield was even easier.

The unlock description read:

Joan's Fighting Spacecraft: Vega Sector Supplement For 2654.092 – This supplement contains the latest specifications on both Terran and Kilrathi spacecraft, particularly the types of craft most commonly encountered in this sector.

As Wayne suspected, this unlock buffed Skykat, but not in a way Wayne expected. Via his system menu, he could designate that Wing Commander ships appear in place of fighter jets. He scrolled through a menu of options with names like Tigerclaw and Ralari. Having no idea what any of these ships were, he selected two at random and closed the menu.

[chat]

V: Are any humans awake?

W: Yes

A: why did you phrase it like that?

V: Is it incorrect?

W: What's up, Vanilli?

V: Miss Kryss asked me to inform you of a dinner this coming evening.

W: Dinner?

V: With a mayor, I believe.

W: What'd you tell her?

V: That we would go.

W: Ugh

V: Was that wrong? Fergus told me it was impolite to decline charity.

W: No, it's fine. Thank you for letting us know.

[/chat]

"Looks like we have obligations tomorrow," Wayne said with a sigh. "So much for avoiding local government."

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