Now, the last time I tried looking into [Humanity Factor], some freaky stuff happened. Was I going to try peeking into that shit again? Absolutely the fuck not. At least, not so soon after the fiasco from last time. I could make some educated guesses based on the knowledge the humans have, though.
It’s pretty well known that all humans have this mysterious Ability. As for what it does, that fact still eluded me for some reason. Whenever I tried looking into the humans’ memories for the details, they always seemed to fade in and out, creating gaps. Even trying to order the humans to tell me what exactly [Humanity Factor] did was useless. I had asked Yelah some time ago, and she just provided vague answers.
Basically, it gave humans a boost in their Mind capabilities somehow. Not by much, but enough to be noticeable. And yet, I had an inkling that wasn’t the whole story. It was just a hunch, but what reason did I have to think otherwise? [Humanity Factor] had to be involved with the humans only using one Ability.
Well, there’s an easy way to test that without much effort on my part.
“Vlugh and Grehn, I have a favor to ask of you two.”
“Do I have a choice?” the Drevan asked into the air. Grehn barely stopped moving, and Yelah, of course, didn’t react.
“Ha! No. Can you make a new Ability? I don’t really care what it is or how you do it, but could you do that for me?”
“If you’re going to order me around,” Vlugh grumbled. “Why even say it like a question?”
Well I’m sorry Vlugh, I’m not used to ordering people around. That’s for evil people like tyrant queens or something.
“Well? Gimme a straight answer.”
“Vlugh and I will make the attempt.”
“I mean, I can try. How much time do I have? Oh, and how long should I be able to use it for?”
Rather than question what the fuck Vlugh was talking about, I shuffled his memories around in my head to understand what he meant. The results? Disappointing in some ways.
Humans could have multiple Abilities. Kinda. Given sufficient time, a person could create a temporary Ability that worked for a small duration or for limited uses. Most people didn’t bother, because from what I could tell, these ‘artificial’ Abilities were never as powerful or useful as their single Ability.
So the obvious question became: how do people make Abilities in the first place?
A variety of means, as it turns out. Each Ability’s description shows how the individual acquired that Ability, and it could range anywhere from simple to stupid. Take my [Combined Minds] for example.
[Combined Mind:
Acquired by: Attaining the impossible feat of hosting multiple Minds in one body
Impossibly, you have multiple Minds within your body. This unique trait caught the gods' attention, and this Ability was granted. Efficiency of Mind = Base Efficiency x Number of Minds.
Mind Efficiency: 4x
]
I wouldn’t say it’s simple, but it's fairly to the point and decisive. I also had to take into account my own knowledge: I didn’t create this Ability, at least not consciously. Same with all my inborn Abilities, like Egg-Laying and whatnot. Yelah’s (Friendly Immersion], on the other hand, was more verbose yet equally vague.
[Friendly Immersion:
Level 8
Acquired by: By choosing to reinforce the bond with your companion, Dip, you developed a method of being as close as possible to your companion without being the same creature.
By synchronizing your Minds, enter a complex state of existence with your companion. Through upgrades, you are capable of entering this state using less effort, in less time, with minimal backlash. You share and enhance your companion’s capabilities, and vice versa.
Level up: ???
]
By looking through her memories, I could see that while she didn’t painstakingly craft this Ability, she did put in the effort to use her Mind to achieve a similar result to what the Ability did. She performed countless experiments and trials where she tried to ‘connect’, for lack of a better word, with Dip’s Mind and body. Eventually, their bond became so closely tied together that their Ability formed… all of a sudden.
Compare that to someone like Vlugh here.
[Shouts of Remembrance and Fire
Level 5
Acquired by: Your insistence on adopting yet destroying the ways of your ancestors.
Infusing your Mind and passion into your voice, allow your strength to transform into a visage of your ancestry. Both Fire and not, the destruction you speak burns and does not.
Level up: Find further balance. Currently, the shouts lean towards Fire.
]
Now that was esoteric as shit. And yet, among the classic mercenary squad under Yelah, his was the Ability that was most influenced by his own actions. He actually created the Ability himself by infusing his Mind into his voice to create fire, just as the Ability said. However, like with most Abilities, some intervention happened along the process to make things weird. But in truth, it didn’t affect much. He wanted to breathe fire, and that was exactly what the Ability he intended to create ended up doing.
Therefore, taking all of this into account, I could draw some conclusions about Mind and Abilities. It’s like a recipe. In order for an Ability to be formed, there needs to be intent on the part of the user and influence from an outside source. As long as both are present, then Mind can act as the glue to bring those ingredients together into the final product, that being an Ability.
Why an outside influence? Because there were some very specific details in terms of why an Ability forms. Take Vlugh. He actively tried to make an Ability that does a specific thing. Looking through his memories, he tried and failed to create this Ability for years. Through Mind, he developed a method to create fire not dissimilar to pyrokinesis, then manually throw the flames. Later, he gained more inspiration from his culture and tried melding his voice and the fire he created, based on his own ideas and interpretations of their legends. Eventually, he created a Lock that, when activated, would replace his screams with fire. Unfortunately, since it wasn’t an actual Ability, it required an immense amount of effort and Mind, far more than would be considered practical.
Oh look at that. There were some funny moments where he forgot to turn it off and accidentally breathed fire on some people when he went to apologize for scorching their house.
Then, one day, he tried to create his Ability once again, only to be interrupted by his mom. Okay, fine enough. But immediately after speaking with her, after years and years of trial and error, boom! Fire breath. Call it an accident or whatever, but one day his effort manifested into an Ability. Or at least, that was how Vlugh saw it.
In reality, the circumstances under which his Ability formed weren’t much different to Yelah. Or any of the humans, really. The key could be seen in their thoughts.
“But mom, why?! The Human seems so important to everyone. And… we’re humans. I mean, we have that Ability and everything. So, why do we care so much about the Dragon? I like the idea, but…. Why does it all have to be so different?”
“Don’t worry, Dippy. I’ll never leave you. And I hope you’ll never leave me. Nobody else understands me. Whenever I try to help them or become friends with them, they start to hate me. I don’t know why. If I didn’t have you, I… I don’t think I could keep living. You and I will never be apart.”
Those were two examples of many. There was no time limit, no threshold of power, no arbitrary conditions like that. The ingredients I mentioned before were the only things required to create an Ability, or so it seemed.
Which did have some bizarre implications. Were there babies with Abilities? Really old people who never managed to make one? If the ingredients were the only things required, then I suppose edge cases like that were possible.
Regardless, this recipe theory plays into the issue I imagined humans ran into. Something prevented them from creating multiple permanent Abilities. If all one needed was the ingredients for the recipe to be complete, then leaving out the eggs or sugar or milk would naturally prevent people from finishing the cake.
Er, did I say cake? Man, this shitty human food was starting to influence my metaphors.
“Um?”
“Oh, sorry about that, Vlugh. Just do whatever. This all goes for you too, Grehn. I want to see what sort of Ability either of you can make without me imposing any sort of limitation. Ah. Actually, there is one thing you should keep in mind. Finish it in a week. Good luck!”
Vlugh or Grehn creating a temporary Ability wasn’t super important, but it would be good, concrete, current data to have. Instead, it would be more interesting for me to create an Ability.
My theory wasn’t something all that revolutionary. More experienced people like Jill Yemonto did have further knowledge of Abilities, and she understood that Abilities are not only a product of imagination, but of something deeper. Also, she instinctively knew that effort alone wasn’t enough to create an Ability. However, she mostly accepted the fact that effort and luck were ‘enough,’ as she didn’t have an exact idea of what the actual requirements were. After all, she didn’t put much stock into the various explanations that had popped up over time.
I hated to say it, but it seemed that the Human Church mostly had the right idea, though a bit to the extreme. They believed that the Human was the sole source of human Abilities. Which was actually not far off from what I imagined.
But like I said, my theory wasn’t revolutionary, so it should be something I can confirm through my own testing. Technically, I’ve done it before. Making an Ability, that is. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure I’ve done it already. I’m talking about the B-boxes. They, along with the CBU, are still considered a Lock in my menus, despite their complexity and uniqueness and whatnot. Why? Well, if my theory holds, then one or more ingredients are missing from them for them to become an Ability.
If I had to venture a guess, I would say outside influence was the missing sugar in my B-box confection. In fact, that was seemingly the case. When I had once played around with B-boxes, all the way back when it was still Compartmentalization, the Lock nearly became an Ability before the Bee decided to interfere. It didn’t manage to stop the B-boxes from existing, but it did prevent their transformation into an Ability.
If nothing else, that told me Ability creation isn’t unique to humans. Forget my sorry failed attempt, one just had to look towards Bedivere’s [Transmutation Stinger] for a bona fide, homegrown Ability made by a bee.
What sort of Ability should I try to make? It wasn’t something I had been thinking ab-
Customizable flight. Electricity manipulation. Passive force-field. Grabber. Alternative senses. Speed. Strength. Coordination. Constitution. Vision-based attack. Puppetry. Healing. Third-person sensory input. Automatic consumption.
My vision blurred as I coughed, and only when my body bumped into a wall did I realize I was choking on a freaking egg. I spat it out and coughed again, rubbing my throat. What the hell? This time I noticed Beth picking up the egg rather than Beverly, so I forced myself to smile and wave. She threw me a concerned look, but eventually shrugged and carried the egg away.
I wiped my mouth with my good foreleg as I thought. That list of awesome-sounding Ability ideas didn’t come from nowhere. That was the work of the CBU. A shiver ran down my back as I realized I didn’t know why the list existed. Had the CBU made it up as soon as I thought of making an Ability? Had it already been thinking of new Ability ideas? Why in the world would it do that?
Was I in a position to complain? No. Was I somewhat concerned? Kinda!
But if I was gonna get free stuff, I might as well make use of it. All the Ability ideas sound appealing, but I had enough on my plate as it is. I’d choose one for now, to play around with during Egg-Laying time. Eventually, though, would it hurt to make more of those ideas a reality?
I didn’t have the limitations of a human, after all.
Now, the last time I tried looking into [Humanity Factor], some freaky stuff happened. Was I going to try peeking into that shit again? Absolutely the fuck not. At least, not so soon after the fiasco from last time. I could make some educated guesses based on the knowledge the humans have, though.
It’s pretty well known that all humans have this mysterious Ability. As for what it does, that fact still eluded me for some reason. Whenever I tried looking into the humans’ memories for the details, they always seemed to fade in and out, creating gaps. Even trying to order the humans to tell me what exactly [Humanity Factor] did was useless. I had asked Yelah some time ago, and she just provided vague answers.
Basically, it gave humans a boost in their Mind capabilities somehow. Not by much, but enough to be noticeable. And yet, I had an inkling that wasn’t the whole story. It was just a hunch, but what reason did I have to think otherwise? [Humanity Factor] had to be involved with the humans only using one Ability.
Well, there’s an easy way to test that without much effort on my part.
“Vlugh and Grehn, I have a favor to ask of you two.”
“Do I have a choice?” the Drevan asked into the air. Grehn barely stopped moving, and Yelah, of course, didn’t react.
“Ha! No. Can you make a new Ability? I don’t really care what it is or how you do it, but could you do that for me?”
“If you’re going to order me around,” Vlugh grumbled. “Why even say it like a question?”
Well I’m sorry Vlugh, I’m not used to ordering people around. That’s for evil people like tyrant queens or something.
“Well? Gimme a straight answer.”
“Vlugh and I will make the attempt.”
“I mean, I can try. How much time do I have? Oh, and how long should I be able to use it for?”
Rather than question what the fuck Vlugh was talking about, I shuffled his memories around in my head to understand what he meant. The results? Disappointing in some ways.
Humans could have multiple Abilities. Kinda. Given sufficient time, a person could create a temporary Ability that worked for a small duration or for limited uses. Most people didn’t bother, because from what I could tell, these ‘artificial’ Abilities were never as powerful or useful as their single Ability.
So the obvious question became: how do people make Abilities in the first place?
A variety of means, as it turns out. Each Ability’s description shows how the individual acquired that Ability, and it could range anywhere from simple to stupid. Take my [Combined Minds] for example.
[Combined Mind:
Acquired by: Attaining the impossible feat of hosting multiple Minds in one body
Impossibly, you have multiple Minds within your body. This unique trait caught the gods' attention, and this Ability was granted. Efficiency of Mind = Base Efficiency x Number of Minds.
Mind Efficiency: 4x
]
I wouldn’t say it’s simple, but it's fairly to the point and decisive. I also had to take into account my own knowledge: I didn’t create this Ability, at least not consciously. Same with all my inborn Abilities, like Egg-Laying and whatnot. Yelah’s (Friendly Immersion], on the other hand, was more verbose yet equally vague.
[Friendly Immersion:
Level 8
Acquired by: By choosing to reinforce the bond with your companion, Dip, you developed a method of being as close as possible to your companion without being the same creature.
By synchronizing your Minds, enter a complex state of existence with your companion. Through upgrades, you are capable of entering this state using less effort, in less time, with minimal backlash. You share and enhance your companion’s capabilities, and vice versa.
Level up: ???
]
By looking through her memories, I could see that while she didn’t painstakingly craft this Ability, she did put in the effort to use her Mind to achieve a similar result to what the Ability did. She performed countless experiments and trials where she tried to ‘connect’, for lack of a better word, with Dip’s Mind and body. Eventually, their bond became so closely tied together that their Ability formed… all of a sudden.
Compare that to someone like Vlugh here.
[Shouts of Remembrance and Fire
Level 5
Acquired by: Your insistence on adopting yet destroying the ways of your ancestors.
Infusing your Mind and passion into your voice, allow your strength to transform into a visage of your ancestry. Both Fire and not, the destruction you speak burns and does not.
Level up: Find further balance. Currently, the shouts lean towards Fire.
]
Now that was esoteric as shit. And yet, among the classic mercenary squad under Yelah, his was the Ability that was most influenced by his own actions. He actually created the Ability himself by infusing his Mind into his voice to create fire, just as the Ability said. However, like with most Abilities, some intervention happened along the process to make things weird. But in truth, it didn’t affect much. He wanted to breathe fire, and that was exactly what the Ability he intended to create ended up doing.
Therefore, taking all of this into account, I could draw some conclusions about Mind and Abilities. It’s like a recipe. In order for an Ability to be formed, there needs to be intent on the part of the user and influence from an outside source. As long as both are present, then Mind can act as the glue to bring those ingredients together into the final product, that being an Ability.
Why an outside influence? Because there were some very specific details in terms of why an Ability forms. Take Vlugh. He actively tried to make an Ability that does a specific thing. Looking through his memories, he tried and failed to create this Ability for years. Through Mind, he developed a method to create fire not dissimilar to pyrokinesis, then manually throw the flames. Later, he gained more inspiration from his culture and tried melding his voice and the fire he created, based on his own ideas and interpretations of their legends. Eventually, he created a Lock that, when activated, would replace his screams with fire. Unfortunately, since it wasn’t an actual Ability, it required an immense amount of effort and Mind, far more than would be considered practical.
Oh look at that. There were some funny moments where he forgot to turn it off and accidentally breathed fire on some people when he went to apologize for scorching their house.
Then, one day, he tried to create his Ability once again, only to be interrupted by his mom. Okay, fine enough. But immediately after speaking with her, after years and years of trial and error, boom! Fire breath. Call it an accident or whatever, but one day his effort manifested into an Ability. Or at least, that was how Vlugh saw it.
In reality, the circumstances under which his Ability formed weren’t much different to Yelah. Or any of the humans, really. The key could be seen in their thoughts.
“But mom, why?! The Human seems so important to everyone. And… we’re humans. I mean, we have that Ability and everything. So, why do we care so much about the Dragon? I like the idea, but…. Why does it all have to be so different?”
“Don’t worry, Dippy. I’ll never leave you. And I hope you’ll never leave me. Nobody else understands me. Whenever I try to help them or become friends with them, they start to hate me. I don’t know why. If I didn’t have you, I… I don’t think I could keep living. You and I will never be apart.”
Those were two examples of many. There was no time limit, no threshold of power, no arbitrary conditions like that. The ingredients I mentioned before were the only things required to create an Ability, or so it seemed.
Which did have some bizarre implications. Were there babies with Abilities? Really old people who never managed to make one? If the ingredients were the only things required, then I suppose edge cases like that were possible.
Regardless, this recipe theory plays into the issue I imagined humans ran into. Something prevented them from creating multiple permanent Abilities. If all one needed was the ingredients for the recipe to be complete, then leaving out the eggs or sugar or milk would naturally prevent people from finishing the cake.
Er, did I say cake? Man, this shitty human food was starting to influence my metaphors.
“Um?”
“Oh, sorry about that, Vlugh. Just do whatever. This all goes for you too, Grehn. I want to see what sort of Ability either of you can make without me imposing any sort of limitation. Ah. Actually, there is one thing you should keep in mind. Finish it in a week. Good luck!”
Vlugh or Grehn creating a temporary Ability wasn’t super important, but it would be good, concrete, current data to have. Instead, it would be more interesting for me to create an Ability.
My theory wasn’t something all that revolutionary. More experienced people like Jill Yemonto did have further knowledge of Abilities, and she understood that Abilities are not only a product of imagination, but of something deeper. Also, she instinctively knew that effort alone wasn’t enough to create an Ability. However, she mostly accepted the fact that effort and luck were ‘enough,’ as she didn’t have an exact idea of what the actual requirements were. After all, she didn’t put much stock into the various explanations that had popped up over time.
I hated to say it, but it seemed that the Human Church mostly had the right idea, though a bit to the extreme. They believed that the Human was the sole source of human Abilities. Which was actually not far off from what I imagined.
But like I said, my theory wasn’t revolutionary, so it should be something I can confirm through my own testing. Technically, I’ve done it before. Making an Ability, that is. Or, at least, I’m pretty sure I’ve done it already. I’m talking about the B-boxes. They, along with the CBU, are still considered a Lock in my menus, despite their complexity and uniqueness and whatnot. Why? Well, if my theory holds, then one or more ingredients are missing from them for them to become an Ability.
If I had to venture a guess, I would say outside influence was the missing sugar in my B-box confection. In fact, that was seemingly the case. When I had once played around with B-boxes, all the way back when it was still Compartmentalization, the Lock nearly became an Ability before the Bee decided to interfere. It didn’t manage to stop the B-boxes from existing, but it did prevent their transformation into an Ability.
If nothing else, that told me Ability creation isn’t unique to humans. Forget my sorry failed attempt, one just had to look towards Bedivere’s [Transmutation Stinger] for a bona fide, homegrown Ability made by a bee.
What sort of Ability should I try to make? It wasn’t something I had been thinking ab-
Customizable flight. Electricity manipulation. Passive force-field. Grabber. Alternative senses. Speed. Strength. Coordination. Constitution. Vision-based attack. Puppetry. Healing. Third-person sensory input. Automatic consumption.
My vision blurred as I coughed, and only when my body bumped into a wall did I realize I was choking on a freaking egg. I spat it out and coughed again, rubbing my throat. What the hell? This time I noticed Beth picking up the egg rather than Beverly, so I forced myself to smile and wave. She threw me a concerned look, but eventually shrugged and carried the egg away.
I wiped my mouth with my good foreleg as I thought. That list of awesome-sounding Ability ideas didn’t come from nowhere. That was the work of the CBU. A shiver ran down my back as I realized I didn’t know why the list existed. Had the CBU made it up as soon as I thought of making an Ability? Had it already been thinking of new Ability ideas? Why in the world would it do that?
Was I in a position to complain? No. Was I somewhat concerned? Kinda!
But if I was gonna get free stuff, I might as well make use of it. All the Ability ideas sound appealing, but I had enough on my plate as it is. I’d choose one for now, to play around with during Egg-Laying time. Eventually, though, would it hurt to make more of those ideas a reality?
I didn’t have the limitations of a human, after all.
