Blood Shaper

Kay froze. “What?”

“Huh?” Springcall glanced back at him. “Oh, right. Yeah, I’m not originally from this world either. One of the requirements to be a Representative for the Bureau is to be an Outworlder. That way the people actually doing the most interaction with new Outworlders, at least at the beginning, actually know what it’s like.”

Kay gaped at him, his mouth flapping open and closed. “I…”

Springcall patted his leg. “I know. Truly, I do. But let’s head up to my office, alright? We have a lot of talking to do, and the tools I have really will make it much easier to explain things.”

The chair that Kay ended up in was quite comfortable. Springcall climbed a series of small steps up to a raised chair behind his desk.

“This thing here,” He patted a small object that looked like a medical diagnostic wand, “Will be the most useful tool for us today. We might need some of the others, but it depends on what we get from this first one. But first, lets address one thing. What do you know about the BOA? I’m sure the adventurers that brought you here told you something.”

Kay went over everything the Oaken Five had told him.

Springcall rocked his head back and forth. “That’s mostly correct. Or, really, it’s entirely correct, it’s just missing a few things. The most important is that we’re not just an international organization. We’re inter-dimensional.”

For what felt like the umpteenth time today, Kay froze in surprise. “Inter-dimensional!?”

“Yes, we are an organization comprised of people who have been taken out of their home dimension and thrown into another, all working together to try and help as many other people in the same situation not only live through their experiences, but build a real life afterward.” He folded his arms together in front of him. “That being said, I was completely truthful with you when I said that we have no idea on how to transport between dimensions or worlds purposefully. There are researches in multiple branches in multiple worlds trying to find out a way to do so, but no one has been successful so far.”

“How can you be inter-dimensional then?” Kay asked slowly.

He nodded and smiled. “Excellent question. There are three ways. The least common is that sometimes a BOA member ends up getting transported to a new dimension again. It’s very rare, but with a hypothetically infinite multiverse, it’s always a possibility. Because of that all members are required to carry small devices that carry a huge amount of data with them. If it manages to travel with them, and usually clothes and things in your pockets do, it has all the information necessary to start new branches. Second, is that over millennia after millennia of research, the BOA figured out a means of transporting information across the multiverse. It’s incredibly expensive, so its generally only used in important circumstances, or for somewhat regular updates of important databases. The final reason is that our founder is the only known person able to travel the multiverse at will.”

“What!?” Kay jerked forward in his seat. “But you said-!”

“He can’t control where he ends up.” Springcall interrupted him, raising his hand. “And he can’t take anyone with him. It’s been tried. A lot.”

“… Shit.” Kay buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry, it’s just…”

“I know.”

Kay looked up at the small man, drawn by the understanding in his voice.

“When I heard that the founder could do that I almost lost my shit too. But he really can’t take people with him. And apparently where he ends up is completely random.” Springcall sighed and shook his head. “But with as much as he travels around, he eventually ends up in a world with a BOA branch in it, so he leaves information and resources.”

“That’s... helpful, I guess.”

“It really is. And it neatly segues into this.” He patted the scanner looking device. “This is something born of the same research that led to the multiverse communication technology. It’s a scanner that, in layman’s terms, reads the leftover energy from you getting transported here and tells me a lot about what kind of universe and world you’re from. It makes it easier to explain things, because it lets me explain things in terms you can understand.”

Kay felt his eyebrows rise as he leaned forward to look at the machine. “That’s amazing, and completely crazy.”

“Isn’t it?” Springcall picked up the scanner and hit a few buttons on it. It made a few whining noises before the top began to glow white. “Don’t worry, you won’t feel anything. Just hold out your hand and hold still.”

Kay did as instructed, and stared at the scanner nervously as Springcall held it to his hand. The glow of the machine began to grow, before it suddenly dimmed and changed colors.

With a cheerful ‘ding!’ noise the light on the scanner went out., and Springcaller pulled it back to read the screen. “Alright lets see. AR12574-B6.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a massive book. Consulting the index and flipping through a massive number of pages, he finally found the right entry. “Ah! Here we are. An Earth variant, tech based, no known magic, human only world.” He pushed himself off his chair and walked down the steps next to his desk, over to a bookshelf. With the help of a ladder he pulled down a slightly less thick book and went back to his seat.

“Alright. Page one.” He started to read the first page of the book, then stopped and looked up at Kay. “Sometimes the questions I ask might seem like the answers are completely obvious, and a lot of the times they are, but just go with it. Sometimes it turns out the answer isn’t so obvious, and it saves us time and energy to get through as much as possible early. Ready?”

“Uh, sure?”

“Awesome! First thing then. Do you know what ‘Choose Your Own Adventure Stories’ are?” Springcall asked, reading the question out of the book.

“I do.”

“Great! The guidebook is a bit like that. By answering the questions it helps narrow down the book to just the parts that are useful.” He read something off the page and started flipping. Each page made a loud noise as he turned to the next section. “Alright, next question, do you know what a computer is?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful!” Flip, flip, flip. “And do you know what a video game is?”

“I do.”

“Good, good.” Flip, flip. “How about something called a ‘Role Playing Game’? The book says that both ‘Table Top’ and ‘Video Game’ versions are different things, but either one is an acceptable answer for this question.”

“Yes, to both.”

“Great!” Flip, flip, flip…

Getting through all of the questions in order to narrow things down took a while. There were questions that had obvious seeming answers, but he just answered them like the Representative wanted. Some questions though, were just odd. “What’s the name of the last planet in the solar system?” There were versions of Earth where what Pluto was called mattered to explaining things about this world? “Have you heard of the band ABBA?” Yes, of course. “Have you ever seen the hit movie based on their music?” A movie based on ABBA’s music? What? That was just weird. Then Springcall asked about the ABBA musical number, which he had seen off Broadway once with his at the time girlfriend.

Eventually Springcall had asked enough questions and received enough information to start explaining things. And that had taken just as long.

Kay stared up at the ceiling of the room he’d been provided to sleep in and went through another repetition of examining the information about this world. Springcall had left out a lot of specifics and mostly went over the general information that was necessary for right now, at least according to him and the BOA. Mostly the things that were different from Kay’s version of Earth.

First of all, magic and different races. Turns out Springcall wasn’t a midget or a little person or whatever, he was a gnome. He’d come from a world that was somewhat more similar to this world than Kay had, with multiple races and magic.

Kay shook his head, dragging his thoughts away from the more personal conversation they’d had during the few breaks they’d taken.

Because of the magic, or at least next to the magic and other races, sat a big important topic. Monsters. This world had them, in spades. Creatures, constructs, and things that had magic, or were magic, and were dangerous to people. That was the reason that an Adventurer’s Guild existed apparently, to deal with monsters, and other magical threats, that polities the size of nations and city states couldn’t be bothered to deal with. That and it help trained [Combat Classes].

And that’s where the whole locked status thing came into play.

This world had RPG elements. He’d started thinking about it as LitRPG elements, but realized that didn’t really work since this wasn’t anything literary. This was his life now.

Everyone in this world had a [Status]. But it wasn’t some number crunching, stat block, hp and mp type of status. In this world your [Status] only had three things on it. First your personal information. Second, your [Class Slots] and [Classes]. Third, your [Skills] and their levels. The only thing that had any numbers associated were your skill levels and your class tiers.

Everyone had a certain number of [Class Slots], predetermined at birth through unknown means. They were divided into [Combat Classes] and [Non-Combat Classes] and most people generally had some number of each in combination. You got a new [Class] by leveling [Skills], which were pretty standard to Kay’s pop-culture based understanding. [Skills] and their levels were just representations of how good you were at something. The levels of your [Skills] told you and everyone who found out what level they were about how much you had practiced, used, and understood that [Skill]. Using Springcall’s explanation, person with a level one [Fishing] skill was a newbie fisherman, and probably wouldn’t catch much. A level 30 [Fishing] skill meant that person could catch giant squid, and different kinds of magical creature Kay had never heard of.

By training your [Skills] up to a certain level, you got the chance to take a [Class] related to those [Skills]. That [Class] then in turn let you get more related [Skills], and also removed the level cap on the ones you already had. Eventually as you got more and more levels, you could upgrade the [Class] to a higher [Tier]. Classes of a higher [Tier] were significantly more powerful than lower [Tiers].

That was basically the extent of the explanation that Kay had received, except for one thing.

Kay mentally willed his [Status] forward and stared at the screen.

[Status Locked]

He still couldn’t use his, apparently because of the BOA. The same device that let them know he had arrived in this world, also somehow locked the [Status] of any Outworlder appearing within range. Regular natives of this world got to choose from a series of classes related to their lives so far once they hit adulthood. Outworlders apparently got their first class assigned at random. And while he’d start with a [Tier One] class like most people, there were some classes of that [Tier] that were more dangerous than should be expected. There had been some disasters involving Outworlders that didn’t know what they were doing in the past, and the BOA wanted to avoid repeats. Before he had gone to bed Springcall had told Kay that they would head over to some offices belonging to the city and unlock his [Status] in morning.

Part of the deal the BOA had with most governments was that they have representatives on hand to respond to any dangerous classes assigned to Outworlders. Springcall said that in reality, they wanted a chance to try and recruit any Outworlders that received an interesting [Class].

Kay rolled over and pulled the blanket tighter around him. Time to sleep. I have to go get new magical power tomorrow right? He snorted. Right. I’ll probably end up as a [Farmer] or something else equally mundane.

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