Chapter 23: Deep Dive into the Archive

After we left the caravan, we traveled for half an hour and found a nice secluded clearing. I set up camp, and we went to sleep.

In the morning, after breakfast, I opened the Archive to figure out this awakening business.

THE ARCHIVE WAS A MESS!

When I first learned about it, everything was new and exciting, so I read everything. If something was irrelevant, I skipped it. Now, searching for specific info was a nightmare.

There was no table of contents, no index, no search function, and definitely no help function.

The first page of the Archive had two options:

World Information

General Information

When you clicked World Information, you got all the entries, one after the other, with the newest on top. This was perfect for World Information—who wants to read an account about a place from 100 years ago?

The General Information section was the same—entry after entry, with the newest on top. The only semblance of organization was a small green circle on the top left, and when you zoomed in on it, you saw "Tips & Tricks." During my initial reading of the Archive, I noticed it by chance. When you scrolled down the main page, the circle moved up and disappeared from view. The situation was the same in the "Tips & Tricks" section—entry after entry, with the newest on top except one.

The entries were a jumbled mess. They covered every subject under the sun with no rhyme or reason. I also concluded that Travelers get bored sometimes, and when that happens, they spend time in the Archive.

Some strange entries contained a string of two to seven words with commas between them—that made no sense—and then text that seemed like personal messages. Example: "Forge, Cat-lover, Whistling, Excavation". And the message: Got you the helfermiton you wanted.

?!?!

There were general thoughts on life and existence, griping about people or events; some Travelers used the Archive as a social media feed and posted comments on other Travelers' posts—just a mess.

I tried to create folders to distribute the content according to relevance so I could find it in the future and got a message:

You do not possess the required class, skills, knowledge,
or mana levels to affect the Archive.

I suspect the person who posted the tip about ability points created the "Tips & Tricks" sub-section. That specific tip remained on top after I saw it, even after three more entries were added.

The rest was just an information dump:

• One Traveler posted a well-thought-out list of recommended items to take with you. More Travelers added their suggestions. Other Travelers argued about the need for this or that item and had suggestions for different items. And one bored Traveler posted a long comment—two pages long!—about why it's best to go traveling "like a baby just born, without the burdens of the material world."

• Some Traveler posted to always stock up on water before entering a desert; five Travelers commented on his entry with "no shit, Sherlock" in various alien variations. Another Traveler commented that it's better to buy the [Condense Water] spell and condense water from the humidity in the air. Two Travelers called him stupid and said there was no humidity in the desert to condense.

• Someone else wrote to wear good shoes on low mana worlds. Many Travelers laughed at him for going barefoot in high mana worlds. He got upset and answered all of them, with a lot of cursing, that what he meant was that low-mana worlds don't have teleportation, so you have to walk a lot. All the previous ones wrote that he should have said so, and one threatened to wash his mouth with "Parsiumik" to clean up his language.

• Somebody posted that he got the Willpower Trait and postulated that there are other unknown Traits. A lot of Travelers asked him how, but he never answered. Someone else wrote that he got the Luck Trait after getting the [Treasure Hunter] sub-class—over 50 Travelers called him a liar—they have the class, but not the Trait. Somebody else commented that he got the Luck Trait after getting the [Path Finder] sub-class—another 37 called him a liar for the same reason. I added my two cents and wrote that I got it with the Merchant Profession; one day, if I was bored, I'd check how many called me a liar.

• One excitable Traveler wrote that the world Ziondra has "Non-Arcing Biometric-Senonites" with five exclamation marks. He got a lot of grief, and one comment was hilarious; it took me five minutes to decipher it: "Thou art a total chop-logic m'ron. If 't be true any of us kneweth what "non-arcing biometric-senonites" w're, haply we wouldst has't been excit'd with thee, but since thee didn't both'r to clarifyeth, thee simply stuff'd the archive with m're hilding garbage" (You're a total dunce moron. If any of us knew what "Non-Arcing Biometric-Senonites" are, maybe we would have been excited with you, but since you didn't bother to clarify, you stuffed the archive with more useless garbage.)

I learned quite a few interesting things between the lines—optional spells, teleportation, buying and selling on various worlds, etc., but it's not what I was looking for.

Finally, after two days, I found something. It was an article named "My Thoughts on the Difference Between Awakened Beasts and Monsters." It was a LOOOONG article by a pretentious, long-winded, and pompous writer who was in love with himself. I'm sure that he opened a thesaurus for every word, looked at the options, and chose the longest word. He also wrote in long, involved sentences that, after 3-5 lines, conveyed some small piece of information or a thought fragment. The whole thing was five Archive pages long! But since it was the first thing I found about awakened animals, I slowly slogged through it and deciphered it. Bottom line, he had four conclusions:

• Awakened beasts and monsters are more intelligent and stronger than unawakened ones.

• Awakened monsters are bad because they retain their aggression toward everybody and everything.

• Awakened beasts are usually not much better because they remember past slights from before awakening and sometimes want payback.

• Awakened beasts who were friendly before awakening are usually good awakened beasts.

That's it. That was the total content of the five-page article.

At least I learned some things in the Archive and knew Stretch would be more intelligent and stronger. I didn't think he would turn on me as revenge for "past slights." Looking back, I concluded he was always smart, but his reactions became more on point after he started eating mana-rich meat.

In order to understand the mage's excitement, I cooked myself some bison hamburgers. After each hamburger, my mana jumped by 120 points. Hmm, maybe I could understand the excitement.

I experimented: Stretch was less enthusiastic about the goat meat, probably because of the low mana levels. So I summoned the cooler with the goat meat, opened the lid as little as possible, inserted my hand, and began slowly channeling mana into it with no intention of doing anything with it. I simply channeled into it. After a while, there was a pop, and I had minced goat meat.

I knew it!

I wasn't really "looting"; I was "exploding." That's why the pelt kept flying away, and I got minced meat or chunks. The only thing that kept the chunks from being minced meat was my intention. I needed to create an entirely different loot spell, and I had an idea.

When I was healing the people in the caravan, the first thing I did was diagnose them. Why did I never "diagnose" the animal during the looting attempt? I should be able to see what happens and adjust accordingly.

But before trying the new version of looting, I still needed to go to a town and talk with a butcher and a tanner or hunter. I needed knowledge about the process to do it right.

My next attempt will be epic!