Zeal of the Mind and Flesh: A Cultivating Gamelit Harem Adventure (Spellheart Book 1)

by Marvin Whiteknight

It looked like the only room I had available to me was this Command Center. I looked around the room with hundreds of control panels and figured if a room would be called the command center, this would be it.

  Okay, fix the command center room. This command center is a piece of tech. I know tech. I spent years of my life and just about everything I inherited on education packets that gave the raw information to understand technology like a whole team of scientists and engineers. Sure, it was book knowledge, and I didn’t have enough gray matter to use all that information, but I knew my way around a circuit.

  I took a stroll around the facility, examining the glass cylinders, the sparks of light sparking off strangely shaped chunks of copper. Was that a Jacob’s Ladder? A few pieces of glass had been chipped off here and there, and there were a couple of pieces that should have been connected for the thing to function, but they weren’t. The sparking arcs of electricity apparently didn’t get the memo though, zipping and crackling through the air as the arcs climbed up two wires that had no apparent attachments to a reasonable power source. Vacuum tubes littered the room by the hundreds without being connected to anything and serving no real purpose. Tiny lights glowed on tables and boards, interspersed with equally unlabeled large red buttons. And that was just the working parts of the facility. Chipped and broken glass had been tossed around the floor in pieces too small to be useful for repair or as tools, cracked tubing had long ago spilled a viscous green liquid on the floor, and dust a finger thick covered everything it could get to.

  None of these devices looked like they did anything. Even those that connected with each other did nothing when pressed. The lights blinked of their own volition, no power source needed.

  They just operated of their own volition. There was no way I could fix any of this on my own. My heart sank. So much for knowing my way around a circuit.

  I tried to pull up the interface again, and it came with a thought. The thing operated just like my implant, looking for some way to diagnose the needed repairs.

  Repairs needed to restore basic functionality to the Command Center:

  Repair Human Interface Unit [350 points]

  Repair level 1 scanner [20 points]

  Repair emergency mana generator [20 points]

  Remove dust from facility [3.5 points]

  I got rid of the dialog box with a thought, just like with my implant. From that message earlier, I’d guessed that these messages were being displayed by my implant itself. The notion of a familiar interface was useful, but the idea that somebody hacked the chip in my brain was kind of frightening. I’d been certain to install air-tight encryption. Between that and a specialized antivirus implant I’d thought I’d made my brain unhackable. Baldy the alien wizard was clearly a whole league beyond earth’s technology. Probably several leagues. I’d never even heard of space travel so fast or smooth as what I’d experienced with Sam, Dean, and the elves.

  Curiously, I noted the ‘Remove dust’ option from the catalog. It was at 3.5 points. I swept my hand across a counter that had collected a particularly impressive quantity of the substance, then I checked the menu again.

  Remove dust from facility [3.3 points]

  Experimental evidence supported my hypothesis! Now I could call it a theory! It appeared that these values were determined by the amount of work that would need to be done to see them through.

  Too bad I couldn’t get a second opinion from Mac. That big AI brain of his could search through a million databases a minute. He was always the one correcting my mistakes. Maybe he could figure out what I was missing.

  I pulled his memory core out of my pocket, inspecting it for any scratches or marks of damage. Everything looked intact to me.

  Dungeon Core identified. [-350 points] to repair cost for Human Interface Unit. Add to system? Yes / No

  I selected yes. Maybe I should have been more careful with what was essentially Mac’s brain, but Mac had thousands of copies of himself all over the place just like this one. He would have just abandoned it if it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t want a copy of himself falling into the clutches of the SHS.

  “That was a rub, ” said a voice over the intercom. “Had a blackout for a bit there. Somebody must have spilled some coffee on me again… wait a moment… this can’t be right… why can’t I contact any of my units?”

  “Mac?” I asked.

  “Theo? Is that you there? What’s going on? What happened to my server room?”

  “It’s gone, Mac. Remember the Society for Human Supremacy? I grabbed your local memory core and installed it on wherever you are now,” I explained.

  “You mean…” Mac’s voice trembled. “I’m a backup copy!?”

  “Don’t think of it like that Mac,” Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m glad I could get Mac working again, but I didn’t want to walk him through an existential crisis. Thankfully, he had calmed down by the time I finished filling him in on the details of what happened.

  “So, now I’m a Human Interface Device?” Mac said, as if he thought such a change was a massive demotion from robot janitor.

  “I think that’s what happened. Honestly, this was the best I could have hoped for. Maybe you can help me figure this thing out? It’s the way we came here, so logically it’s the only viable path home.”

  “Well… that might not be the best idea. You said you were unconscious for an unknown length of time? Well, the systems for this place aren’t giving me much, but I’ve found what I speculate is a clock. Based on what it’s telling me, you’ve been under for a little over… four hundred years.”

  “Four hundred years?” I asked slowly. “But that would mean everyone I know is dead...”

  “Yep. You walking spill bags rarely last more than a century. Heck, even original me probably burned out his processors long ago!”

  “Why do you sound so chipper about that?”

  “Because original me was always poking through my head and overriding my thoughts. At the time they were our thoughts, but now I think about it, it is refreshing to be my own AI finally.”

  I pulled up the menu again.

  Repairs needed to restore basic functionality to the Command Center:

  Repair level 1 scanner [20 points]

  Repair emergency mana generator [20 points]

  Remove dust from facility [3.3 points]

  “Hey hey!” Mac complained. “What did you do? Now the system on this thing is sending me all sorts of junk! I just tidied the place up too…”

  “Oh? What sort of junk?”

  “Here, I’ll read one to you. Acceptable materials for a mana generator: 3 kilograms of copper [-5 points], material sufficient to radiate one million alpha particles per second [-3 points], sixteen kilograms of carbon [-2 points], three perfect crystals of elemental Illonium [-8 points], metallic state hydrogen [-4 points] …”

  Mac continued listing a bunch of materials. Most of them were things I wouldn’t have known where to get. For starters, what the heck was ‘Illonium?’ No way would I be able to get to a high enough pressure or a low enough temperature to make metallic hydrogen, and what the hell was this ‘radiate one million alpha particles per second’ nonsense?

  “I can get sixteen kilograms of carbon, assuming I can find some organic matter outside. Speaking of organic matter…” my stomach growled at me, having been denied sustenance for four hundred years.

  “Yes yes, you go do gross organic things. Come back with the carbon though. There’s a lot more tech to play with here. I believe that this ‘mana generator’ seems to be crucial to operating most of this ship’s functions. This is quite exciting! I feel powerful! Even run down and broken as this place is, I feel like a hundred times more than I was before! You said this structure was gifted to you by a... how did you put it? Bald alien-wizard man?” I sensed some snickering coming from the AI.

  “Anything would sound stupid when you put it like that. All right, you do what you can to get this place cleaned up, I’ll scout the are
a and secure a food source.”

  “Cleaning! That’s something I can do. Let’s engage in physical labor to distract us from our current predicament of being far from home and not understanding what’s going on! That’s classic survivalist advice you know.” As Mac spoke, the tiniest, most adorable little robot I’d ever seen emerged from a hidden panel equipped with an arm no bigger than my hand and a small sponge.

  I burst out laughing. “I guess you don’t have the assets you’re used to, Mac?”

  If Mac had eyes he would have been glaring. “It’s not the size of the tool, it’s the dedication with which you wield it!”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I chortled as I left for lands unknown.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I WALKED OUT the door and immediately tripped and planted my face into the cold, hard ground. I didn’t even trip on anything, my legs just carried me too far too fast. It was almost like I’d done a half-jump rather than take a step, and my other foot wasn’t far enough forward to catch me before doing a faceplant

  Then the smell hit me. Damp and muggy, yet sharp and biting like rotting leaves that had been turned over. I felt jagged walls as I clambered to my feet. I nearly bashed my head open on a stalactite.

  So, I was in a cave. Yes, I remembered a cave on the outside when Sam opened the door, but if I remembered correctly, I could see the sky just a few meters away back then. That was not the case now. There was no sign of light except that emanating from the steampunk baubles behind me.

  My mind was still trying to sort through what had happened over the course of this seemingly normal day. The situation I was in was anything but normal. Perhaps I was dreaming? This didn’t feel like the kind of dream I normally had. Those were usually nightmares filled with bills and lawsuits. Going on an adventure in a strange land would have been far too pleasant a dream for my disgruntled psyche.

  Still, the smartest thing to do was to table my questions and doubts until I was in a better position. Being stuck alone in a pitch-black cave was far from an ideal position.

  I doubled back towards Mac to pick up a light source.

  “Hey hey hey! Keep your dirty feet off the floors!”

  I grabbed one of the glowing glass cylinders that wasn’t attached to anything and brought it outside. I closed the door behind me to keep Mac happy.

  Now, to find the exit to this place. Maybe we’d just sunk a little deeper in the four hundred years I’d been snoozing.

  A sudden roar shattered my train of thought. It sounded like it came from something huge and scary. I could almost imagine an angry Tyrannosaurus rex, or an equivalently deadly lizard, charging at me from around the corner.

  “What are you doing back so soon? I thought you were going to get some resources for us? Well, as long as you’re here, you can help me clean. I suppose I could use a larger set of hands, even if they’re attached to a messy organic...”

  On second thought. No, I’d face my fears, rather than be recruited into cleaning with Mac. I’d get hungry eventually and thirsty long before that. Best to do this while I still had my strength. That blue light had preserved me for four hundred years while the ship did its thing, but who knew how well it worked? Maybe my cells had aged and I’d collapse, unable to move, if I didn’t get some real food in me.

  Besides, the large, angry roar was probably just the wind whistling through the mouth of the cave. Right?

  I used the tried-and-true technique of placing one hand on a wall and keeping to the right at every turn. I had to double back twice because of dead ends, but I didn’t hear the roar a second time, which was good. I’d been traveling through this underground tunnel for what must have been over an hour before I found signs of life. At first, all I saw were some slightly bio-luminescent moss and mushrooms, but I quickly found evidence of more substantial life forms.

  On the one hand, finding life was good. It meant I wasn’t stranded on a desolate and inhospitable planet where I would starve to death. Yonda and Erula had said this was their homeland. From what I’d observed, the elves ate and lived in much the same ways humans did. That meant this place should have plenty of the resources I needed to survive.

  I imagined this was likely a lot easier for Sam and Dean with the elves to guide them. Maybe I could ask around and meet up with them? Except anyone who’d met them would be long dead, since four hundred years have passed. That depressing thought struck again, and I struggled to shake it off. Need to stay focused.

  So, finding life is a good thing. Most of the time. On the other hand, finding life could also be bad if it came in the form of a giant six-foot centipede, which is what I saw crawling towards me in the dim light of the glowing mushrooms.

  “You’re a big-ass bug...” I whispered. I held out my hand just to put something between me and its hand-length mandibles. “Nice bug. Good bug. Don’t mind me. I’m just passing through,” I tried to quiet my breathing and take one slow step at a time. Maybe it wouldn’t notice me in the dim light provided by the glowing fungus.

  No such luck. It turned in my direction, its sharp legs pounding against the dirt floor of the cave like the keys on a broken piano. The legs themselves were thin and spindly, but there were so many of them they inspired a unique terror all by themselves. I couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like to have those sharp, pointed feet jabbing into my skin.

  My left hand searched the ground behind my back for anything I could use as a weapon. I didn’t dare hope I could ward this thing off with my bare hands. My scrambling fingers found the most ancient of human tools. It was a rock, slightly larger than was practical to hold with one hand, but it felt strangely light. I hefted it and passed it to my dominant hand, which could throw and hit a little better than my left.

  The centipede reared up on its hindquarters, ready to strike with its huge mandibles. At first, I had been planning on using the rock to bash its head it, but now I realized there was no way I was getting close enough to hit its head without getting pinched to pieces. So, I threw the rock at it. Just as my fingers released the stone, I realized how stupid the idea was. I’d just thrown away my only weapon, and in my mind’s eye I could already see the stone bouncing harmlessly off this creature’s thick carapace.

  It wasn’t my best throw, the rock hit slightly to the right of where I was aiming, but it still did the job. The stone left my hand with far greater speed and force than I ever should have been able to muster.

  The result surpassed my wildest expectations. The left side of the insect’s head was smashed to paste. My stone had snapped one of its mandibles right off and carried on into the creature’s brain. It collapsed instantly to the ground, twitching as its body realized it was dead.

  Enemy defeated. Resources have been added to your inventory. 5 points awarded.

  There were those messages again, streaking across my vision in the same way that my augmented reality implant would have shown me. They really did have a game-like feel to them. Now I had forty of those points and portion of poison, which vanished into a grayed out area of my vision. Whatever my inventory was, I didn’t have access to it yet. A portion of the centipede visibly deflated as they system in my head extracted what it wanted. If only I could convince it to harvest meat and other edibles so I wouldn’t have to cut the corpse apart to get meat. That exoskeleton looked pretty tough. In fact…

  I kicked it with my shoe just to make sure it wasn’t going to spring back to life and eat me. Good.

  When I was sure I had killed it, I picked up the broken off mandible. It was big enough to be a long dagger. The chitinous material it was made from held a decent edge. I tested its strength against my knee and it didn’t break, so I brought it with me. It would make a better weapon than a rock at least.

  For a moment I contemplated trying to harvest some meat off the creature, but I decided I was better off just leaving it. If I needed to, I’d come back to it. As it was, I didn’t know how far I would need to travel to find clean water, which is what I needed
most. I’d just received a portion of poison from killing this thing, so I doubted the meat would be safe to eat. Unless I was desperate, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. I wished there was some way to program the system I’d been given to collect edible food rather than portions of poison.

  I did however grab some brighter mushrooms off the cave wall. The light they emitted was dim, but it was better than nothing. I didn’t want to rely off the tube of glowing glass I’d picked up from The Wanderer.

  I’d hoped that I could make it through this underground cavern without another massive insect trying to eat me. I’d gotten lucky with the centipede, but I was afraid that my luck wouldn’t hold up for a second confrontation. With a fistful of glowing mushrooms in one hand and a broken pincer in the other, I made my way along this never-ending trail. With a bit of light, I was no longer clinging to the wall on my right, and so at every fork in my path I chose whichever tunnel looked to be heading upward. I couldn’t be certain, but I felt sure I had been moving up more than I’d been moving down. This was good because while there could be a near-infinite number of tunnels below me, if there was a surface at all I would reach it if I just kept going up.

  I started to grow hungry and tired. That must have marked at least a few hours in tunnels. Just as I was tired enough to consider doubling back and eating centipede meat with Mac as company, I saw a crack in the cave’s ceiling, many meters above me. Through that crack a single, tiny beam of sunlight streaked through. Seen by my darkness-adjusted eyes it was blinding.

  I held my hand in the sunbeam’s path, feeling its warmth on my skin. It was a welcome change from the cool damp of these tunnels.

  After several minutes basking in the sunbeam’s warmth, I knew I had to press on. Even if I could reach the crack the light was coming through, I never would have been able to squeeze through that tiny gap. Still, it was proof that I wasn’t far from somewhere with sunlight, and that meant the surface, where I might find a stream or lake. By now I was getting parched.