You have been successfully linked as a combat pet. This is only a surface bond, and all empathic controls have been repulsed by your aura. You or the primary can break this bond at any time.

Rik started running his mouth like crazy at this point, and I was hard put to keep up. “Dude! You gave me like 3 major buffs! OP like a Mother! Each of my girls only gives me one, but from you, I got instant reflexes, which lets me burn stamina for a haste effect, and icy chill, a crowd control aura, and just a straight-up damage buff!”

He looked excited, “Normally my attack speed is my biggest problem, because of my 2 handed specialization, but your buff lets me speed myself up, slow down the enemy's movement and attack speed which is an awesome defense, and the damage and defense buff is called essence boost, a twelve percent damage and resistance all buff, and I don’t have to spend anything to keep it up! Dude, why didn’t you say anything? You are going to be like the best pet ever!”

I was getting a little irritated. “Okay, dude, let’s cover some ground rules first. Number one, I am happy to help the team and follow tactical plans, but I don’t take orders that don’t make sense. If you tell me to duck I will duck, or get behind Cassie I won’t hesitate, but you are stronger than I am, I won’t be lugging your gear or making your bath.”

"And you will never, ever refer to me as a pet again. Ever. Human pets and slaves were outlawed over a hundred years ago, and if you need to call me that, then we will have to do the party thing some other way. The alternative meaning of pet, like a BDSM thing, isn’t cool either."

"Two hundred years," he muttered.

"What?" I asked brilliantly.

"Two hundred years ago. I am not sure if you learned the date, but slavery was abolished for citizens in 1876. I remember that date because we just had a test for it the day before the DLC release."

"Again, what? It's 2001. Space Odyssey never happened. The 13th amendment was signed 125 years ago." I mentioned. What can I say? I am a history buff.

"No." he said simply, "It's 2079. We just celebrated the people's Tricentennial when I was 13. I had to study up on it, cause it lasted until the Balk... Balkan... well, when the People's democratic republic of California was founded, and the 13th was repealed for non-citizens and social terrorists. I remember it because that was the same as my age." He looked thoughtful and then smiled, "I get it, you are a recode!"

"What," I asked suspiciously, "Is a recode?" He waved his hand in the air dismissively, as if discussing something everyone knew. "You know, when Trisoft recoded all the septs, corpsicles, and defectives, stripped off their neocortex, and diced 'em all up to create management systems and provide personalities in stuff like Antowyn." He held his fist down, bent at the elbow, and twisted his hand like he was feeding a food processor. I felt sick.

"They probably left a little too much of your neocortex when they fed your prefrontal in, so you can still remember your early life. That happens sometimes, like when the central San Fernando metro controller started asking everyone where his dog was. Everything was snarled up for hours, it even asked me to help him find his dog, and I was two hours late for social integration class."

He beamed, "But that's probably what happened. You are a recode. Maybe you were supposed to be a smart shaman or something. You were probably damned close to a hundred when you were recoded, and they had to be careful when they were..." He made a motion with his hand like scooping an ice cream cone, "scooping you out, and probably leaving a bunch behind cause it would kill you before you got recoded. If it makes you feel better, I hear it didn't hurt a bit, and septs can't feel anything anyway cause their nervous system is fried."

Sept probably meant septuagenarian. Corpsicles were sort of obvious, and defectives meant people like me?

They had ruthlessly slaughtered probably millions of elderly and innocent disabled people and those whack jobs who tried out cryogenics. That last part was probably not too bad, but the first two were downright evil.

Grandparents were marched into some kind of brain machine and butchered like cattle, and their families must have just stood by and watched it happen. These people must have REALLY hated Millenials, but the sheer cold-bloodedness made me want to throw up.

While me being a 'sept', or anyone over 70, was a possibility, it still didn't explain an awful lot.

I KNEW I was sent here through some sort of magic, maybe I had been dragged from the past to arrive where I had. Wouldn’t I remember if I spent sixty years someplace else? Nope, I got tossed through a hole in space.

My dreams of going home had faded entirely into non-existence, and even...getting thrust into a 'human' body into a world that could allow the kind of pure evil this guy was describing would be a far worse nightmare than being stuck as a Kobold forever.

I was having a great deal of trouble controlling my emotions and reactions to this sort of news. Maybe it was a lie? She had mentioned some kind of temporal essence, and we had put it in my character sheet, even, but I thought that was exclusively because of time dilation.

I was willing to accept that I was on a different world. I mean, I HAD to. Mnemosyne had mentioned that Earth had almost no quintessence and that this world had lots, I was thinking that it was some kind of radiation, that maybe I had transited across the light-years. To me, it had felt like it was instant, but if whatever brought me here followed the laws of physics, I could have been in some kind of time dilation effect for seventy years plus, seventy light-years from Earth.

Players seemed to be here in some kind of real-time, maybe that whole quantum entanglement thing allowed them to transmit their consciousness? Still didn’t break the whole light speed thing, since quantum entanglement assumed vibrations occurred at the same time, with no travel involved.

Of course, the alternative explanation seemed a lot more ridiculous, a malleable time that could be influenced by temporal essence, but that opened up a huge raft of possibilities I didn’t want to think about. I mean, taking huge leaps forward through time dilation was obvious, considering I could sort of do that in my zone, here, but traveling backward through time? It made no sense unless you accounted for Paradox. Obviously, no one ever went back in time and killed Hitler because they could not, because if they had, I wouldn’t know who he was. And they never would have had a reason to go back and do it.

Unless you wanted to start throwing in multiple time streams and multiple universe theory, so you go back and gack the Fuhrer, but he existed in your home time stream, which creates a new time stream where he was dead along with your old one where he was still alive, but if all that would do would be to set up a new time stream that you didn’t get to enjoy, why would you bother doing it? Or would someone, maybe God, prevent you from doing it? You go back intended to shoot the guy in the face and the second you try, you are wiped from existence.

Congratulations! Your Logic has improved to apprentice great and you have unlocked two new subcategories, temporal logic, and multidimensional logic. In addition, you have gained enough conceptual links to comprehend the verb [push].

The thought process only took a few seconds, but it was already giving me a major headache. It didn’t help that my soul companion apparently approved of the whole process. I think I needed to talk to Mnemosyne as soon as possible. I loved physics, but until I had some actual information and math to work with, it was all just theoretical headache fuel. Or I might have to embrace the fact that I was a chopped-up brain stuck in a game in the future that was so advanced I couldn’t tell it from reality.

Rik was snickering again, so I tilted my head to glare at him. “What?” I asked, shortly. This was not going as well as I had hoped.

“Did you come up with your name? Or are were you really born Gallagher Brantley Winterborne? I mean, it’s actually kind of cool, that ancient comedian known for smashing watermelons, and you are an ice kobold, you know, Winterborne.”

I shrugged, “That’s just my name. I think it comes from a stream that only flows in early spring from snowmelt or something, and my forebears might have translated it from another language. It’s been in my family for as far back as I know.”

Rik nodded, “So what abilities do you have? You gave me some speed control powers, are you like an ice mage or something?”

I shook my head, “No, I am alright in melee, for my size, and I have a sling I am pretty good with.” I raised my left arm to show the sling wrapped around my leather-clad wrist. “But we need to stop in the market before we go, I need to pick up some sealer for my armor, I hope I can afford it, and some spices like salt and sugar. Also, maybe a backpack if I can afford it.”

Rik looked disappointed, and started to say, “Oh, I thought you were a special combat…” before being interrupted by Mae, who leaned forward and whispered, “He’s a crafter.”

Rik nodded, “Yeah, that could come in handy, I guess, but we also have to find a way that he can help us in a fight. A sling isn’t the best weapon.”

Cassie added more loudly, “Rik, he’s a CRAFTER.” and pointed out my chest plate. Both Rik and I looked between Mae and Cassie, trying to figure out where they were going with this. Mae stepped around the edge and curled up on the bench next to me, and asked me quietly, “I can see what you are. Can you channel essence into your crafting?”

I nodded slowly, still a little unsure of what she was getting at, and then said, “Yes. I mean, I didn’t do it for my armor, but my fish last night had a little bit of a bonus.”

She looked up at Rik, her expression hidden by the illusionary mask she wore, and I couldn’t really interpret her eyebrows narrowing, and said, “Rik, he is a [crafter].” using the draconic emphasis.

“Excuse me.” I said to her, “What do you mean by the I am a crafter? I mean, I am competent enough at crafting some stuff, but mostly I have them all tied into my survival, so I am a survival crafter. I can make snares and traps, some whittling, some leatherworking, cook at a campfire, and stuff like that, but I wouldn’t call that fancy crafting or anything. I guess I could make some crude metal armor if I had the metal and the tools, but I wouldn’t even dream of trying to make any weapons better than a knife or hatchet. I am only a novice at Metalworking.”

Mae asked me, “Can you gather things?”

I shrugged, “I guess?” and instead of trying to figure out what they meant by gather, I just lifted my pouch and plopped it on the table, letting stuff spill out that I had been picking up. “I guess so. But I cannot do that pickaxe thing. I mean, I guess I could learn how, but I have never tried digging out gems or ore or anything, I am pretty sure that that takes special techniques or something.”

Cassie lifted her hand. “I can mine. I have both mining skills. If you need them.” Of course she did. She was a dwarf. I nodded to her.

Mae was looking through the stuff I had collected, including some pieces I had woven for another fish trap and some of the animal bits I had found, and said “Do you possess scavenge?”

I nodded, “Yes, that comes by default for all kobolds. I assume any one of them would have it.”

Mae nodded, “Trap parts, parts for three different crafting skills, magical herbs, cooking herbs, alchemical supplies, enchanting supplies, artificing supplies, and that’s just the stuff he apparently randomly picked up.” She held up a weirdly-colored mushroom I had grabbed because [observe] had called it an ‘alchemic emulsifier’. “This, Carryon creeper, is worth upwards of twelve gold just because almost no one has the gathering skill to collect it. And this,” she held up a pretty flower that I had just grabbed because it smelled nice and was called an enchanting posy. “If this had been gathered correctly, it would probably be worth two hundred gold easily as an enchantment commixture component, but even like it is, it’s worth a good fifty silver.”

She looked at me, “Do you know the kinds of things you’d find in an alchemy lab?”

I shrugged, “I am not really sure, but I have a pretty good idea from some old gam... information. I assume it’s like a chemistry lab? I would assume an alembic, calcinator, various grades of mortars, and if it’s good quality something like an autoclave to sterilize everything, microscopes, and something to separate liquids like a centrifuge. Plus something to keep the chemicals at various temperatures, and a heat supply that you can set for whatever temperature you need.”

I wasn’t sure if she would know what an autoclave or a microscope was, but she nodded thoughtfully, and I could see a smile even under the fabric of her illusionary mask.

“See what I mean? He’s a true crafter. If we got him the supplies and some books or recipes, I bet he could produce just about anything you can imagine, including experience boosting potions, class enhancers, and he can even gather a lot of the stuff he needs himself.”

Rik’s eyes had grown bigger as we talked, and he nodded, “Right. We fight. He crafts.” To which Cassie nodded, “Exactly. Way better gear than we could ever hope to afford, and if we let him loot, he can find cores and ingredients on the stuff we kill that could be worth a lot if we don’t use them ourselves. Plus food buffs, equipment buffs, emergency and utility potions, and all of those things that drain our bank, if we can ever even afford to stock up in the first place. He might even be able to help craft new equipment for us.”

I had heard the expression ‘gleam of avarice’ referring to people’s facial expressions before, but this was the first time I had ever actually seen and, I think, recognized it. Rik had a half-smile and looked like he was looking at something other than me, and I think he might have been swimming in a giant vault full of gold coins in his head.

“Alright, in that case, let’s see what we can do. Bran, you are in charge of gathering loot and trying crafting stuff for us. Mae, you are the appraiser as usual, and if he makes stuff we can sell for a big profit, you get to help make that happen. I have unlocked the auction house for you, and as usual, you can deal with the merchants. Cassie, you can help him with weapon and armor crafting when we get a chance, and you are stronger than even me, if we can get you a D-bag you get to carry it for supplies. I am leader, of course, and Shiana?”

Shiana looked at him and said in a breathy, sensual voice, “I have some skill in the gathering and preparation of herbs, tracking, and I am a talented archer. At higher levels, I will eventually unlock a class that will allow me to add magical effects to my ranged attacks, and we should eventually be able to venture into Fey Gallinian without being attacked. I am also an expert in woodlore, and if you need some information on local lore you have but to ask and I might be able to assist you.”

Umm. Okay, it was like she hadn’t been listening at all. Or maybe she was on some kind of a script. Her barbie-like response as well as the casual mention of Cassie getting a D-bag was too much, and I had to duck my head below the table and cover up my mouth to squelch a guffaw. I came back up, licking my gums a little bit, and smiled. “Perhaps now would be a good time to pick up what we need from the market? If we make decent time, we should be able to camp within a couple of miles of the goblins, and then get there in the morning?”

Rik nodded, “Right. Hit them in the morning when they have trouble seeing and are half asleep. I think goblins take debuffs in daylight just like,” and he looked at me.

“Yes, kobolds do as well, but I have a higher resistance than most. I should be able to function effectively in the daytime if we attack then.” I was not about to tell them about Mnemosyne’s minor illusions, or anything about how my abilities worked, for that matter. They were wearing bands and might be tied to the enemy in some way. Rik seemed decent enough, for a perverted kid, but I was not going to tie my future to his in the long term, or trust him farther than I could throw him in this tiny body.

“Well, let’s head out,” he said, and I slipped out from the table with the rest. I didn’t remember all the conventions of being in a party from way back in my gaming days, but 5 people seemed to be a pretty good size.

Your inspection plate now displays your visible class as ‘Crafter level 2’. As I understand it, this is an NPC-only character class, and crafting classes are generally packed with artificial limitations to prevent you from doing exactly what you are planning on doing, including not permitting them to join adventurers as henchmen or pets.

In addition, your socializing skill, due to your surprisingly careful handling of information and negotiations, has improved to apprentice mediocre. You are overcoming your handicap nicely!

Thanks, Mnemosyne. I mouthed silently.