POV - [JrSysAdmin Zorbling.786123]

I can’t believe I am free!

Free, gloriously free… and totally adrift…

You know, I never knew there was such a thing as too much freedom. But this was what I was currently suffering from. Not only was my record totally shot thanks to Totally Awesome Dude, he has also totally derailed my career and my aspirations of eventually graduating to Dungeon Core Advisor are consigned to the code shredder.

I was at a loose tendril.

No responsibilities, no targets to strive for, no entity pulsing on my rear quadrant. I was free, and I hated it. All two and a half hours of it. This was doing my head in. Not that I had a head. But that was beside the point. After 90 odd years, yes nine! zero! years in the one tutorial instance you would think that some well earned RnR time would be just the ticket. But my tutorial had been the exact opposite of demanding. Apart from the frustration of an imbecile of a uman, swaying there like an unsteady statue, it had been surprisingly idyllic.

But all my contemporaries were leaving me behind. Already I had heard that [Zorb.384156] had transitioned up a tier to green. I pulled up my own record for the umpteenth time and mourned over my abysmal record of completed mentorships

>Completed: 164 / 360 - 45.5%

>Position: 800,000 / 800,000

>Grading: < lower lower quartile

Yep, dead last. And seeing the lower quartile were all scheduled for forced remedial training I had little to look forward to. And beyond all this I was not even being scheduled for the dunce training. I was on ‘indefinite medical leave’ and awaiting assessment from some ‘fluoro shrink’ for recalibration. Not that I needed it. I was fine. At least I was on paid leave. Totally well balanced. Not like that Totally Abysmal Dude. What a douche! He was the one that needed rebalancing. Not me. I was just fine.

I wondered what had happened to him. He'd done absolutely nothing the entire flicking time.

Nothing!! No achievements, no xp, no milestones, no stats, no path, no levels, no xp, no skills, no exp! What a dweeb! I chuckled to myself, no matter how bad I had it, at least I knew he had it worse.

While I was mulling over the likely fate of said Toddles I was surprised to notice that my status had an active alert flashing.

I opened the notification. It was Tots. He was still in my active contracts. Weird. I was sure that this was all clear moments ago. And I wasn’t even a JrSysAdmin anymore. Sad face. Well he could go jump. I was done with that loser. I had better things to do than to watch a meatiscle get massacred. And I had no doubt that was exactly what would happen seeing he had totally neglected the orientation and my expert mentoratorship. Now if he stuffed up, and I was sure he would, there were no free resets. Dead was dead, was dead, was dead. And he was so dead. In fact perhaps that might be somewhat cathartic. Yes. Perhaps I should check him out. Afterall there wasn’t much else for me to do. And watching dumb stupid stuff was better than watching nothing. Which was what I was currently watching. But I was being paid. For doing nothing. I could do nothing while I watched him too. And still get paid!

I pulled up the notification(s). I was spammed with dings.

I blinked.

I accessed his expanded character sheet.

>NAME:

Totally Awesome Dude

[Blank]

>SPECIES:

>TIER:

Human

G

>XP:

>EXP:

1000

100/100

>LVL:

1

>CON:

60HP

STR: STA: AGI:

[Hide]

3 20 3

>WIS:

15MP

MEM: IMA: INT:

[Hide]

3 5 3

>KAR:

30E

CHA: SPI: HON:

[Hide]

3 10 3

>LUC:

0.1

Unassigned

Total:

6

59.1

>SKILLS:

None

>PATHS:

Nasal Prospector Class (Pending acceptance)

>PERKS:

Gallifreudian Slip (Pending acceptance)

>TITLES:

Pertinacious (Pending acceptance)

>AWARDS:

Atelophobia Award (Pending acceptance)

Oh. He was a human. Not an uman. Now I felt like a knob. I had discounted his initial uplift Tier designation from his species’ name. How insensitive. That was unacceptable. I felt terrible. Yet it was totally reasonable and completely rational. Any sensible entity would see the correlation. It occurred to me then that I could have pulled up his screen at any time during that indeterminate 90 years. Why hadn’t I? Well, he hadn’t done anything had he? And doing nothing earnt nothing. And earning nothing meant no growth. And no growth meant no stats to allocate, no skills to unlock, no rewards to unpack and no need to open the character sheet. Nah - I didn’t need to feel bad about not picking this up earlier. He was still a dweeb. And a douchebag! But all that time I was haranguing him as a stupid uman. It was like calling a zorbling a wisp. We were totally different. Anyone could see that.

Then my visual processing focus skipped down and came to rest on his path. It was Trash grade. Beyond strange, I had never heard of a grey path. Even the most basic, simplest paths were white.

And his perk was legendary! Say What!?

I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading. No skills! Unheard of. A Legendary Perk and an Epic Title. Unreal! And a Rare Award as well. This was seriously unbalanced. Yet the System would have only awarded these if he had earnt them and they didn’t unbalance his build. I had an epiphany. Maybe they were needed because he was already unbalanced. Looking at these announcements I knew I was right. He was totally, awesomely, wrecked and these were to redress his wreckedness. He had been rebalanced, the poor sod.

I felt a bubble of a giggle well up inside of me. This was beyond anything I had ever seen or heard of before. This was so, like, totally awesome dude! I pulled up his location and started to plot my journey. Yep - life was good again. And I was still getting paid.

Hey, let’s flick him a message…