Museum Core Chapter 47: Accidents and Revelations

It was great that Owens was delegating, it really was, but unfortunately, that meant that Jaclyn had even more paperwork to do than normal.

Not to mention that even if she did not join Frye’s as-of-yet unnamed agency, she was going to be working with it enough that there was already a boatload of paperwork related to that on her desk as well.

Granted, very little of that had come from Frye, he was in a position to keep his bureaucracy lean for now, but it was still a mess.

And on the ride back, she’d realized that “Bureau for Supernatural Affairs” was a terrible idea. In fact, any name whose initials included a “B” with an “S” directly after it was a terrible idea. Of course, that was an easy thing to miss, considering how busy the man had to be, but it was still not good that it had happened in the first place.

She’d wound up pointing that out in an email to Frye, to which she’d attached Granger’s report on novels related to the current mess. From the sounds of it, they were now going to go with “Bureau for Preternatural Affairs”.

Either way, no more “BS”.

Jaclyn snagged the apple she’d bought earlier and forgotten about with her left hand while she continued to fill in paperwork with her right.

She was so engrossed in making the mountain of bureaucracy go away that she wound up missing the fruit entirely when she tried to take a bite out of it. Her pearly whites missed, at least.

The pale blue spectral fangs sitting in the jaws of an ethereal badger’s maw, however, were perfectly on target, crunching down on the apple and crushing it in a single almighty chomp, leaving her holding a thin layer of peel and fruit flesh that hadn’t quite been in range of the “attack”.

Her eyes flashed open as she focussed on the sudden magical phenomenon 
 and then it went away. Freeing the pulpy mess of fruit flesh and seeds to fall down to Earth. Or rather, straight onto her paperwork.

“Bollocks!” she swore, jumping to her feet while she ripped the form off the table and held it over her trashcan while she scraped the mess off.

And the System wasn’t exactly helping matters. In fact, seemed almost 
 gleeful at her misfortune.

Manifestation Type “Badger Chomp” has been registered.

Yes, that wasn’t exactly a bad power to have, but why on Earth did it have to show itself in that way? In hindsight, trying to bite something slightly out of range was exactly how she should have expected to learn a power like that but 
 Come. On. She had to hand in the form like that now.

Or did she?

She did have magic, after all. Sure, she’d learned it for cleaning up toxic sludge and general wilderness survival, but what was the point in having it if it couldn’t save her from unfortunate accidents?

Sighing, Jaclyn began to picture the spellform for the cleaning spell in her mind, carefully pouring mana into it, until a dirt-annihilating energy field began to emanate from her fingertips. It got the paper clean quite quickly, but sadly couldn’t do anything for the damage the moisture in the pulp had done.

Eh, good enough. This particular bit of paper was only ever going to be seen by Owens, and he’d probably be ok with that small amount of damage, considering the circumstances. And it was a simple page that would get rubber-stamped and likely never seen again. Not something she needed to get another copy over.

Jaclyn sighed, and filled out the final couple of forms before returning her attention to her new ability. Mainly, figuring out how to make it work.

Randomly snapping her teeth at the empty air produced nothing, so she wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally summoning a pair of vicious rending jaws in the middle of, say, conversation.

But that also meant that outright summoning it had a different set of requirements.

Sure, she could look it up on her status sheet, but figuring out how to make it work on her own would probably be better. More intuitive than simply trying to match her actions to a short written instruction.

So, what had Jaclyn been doing when her power had turned her apple into puree?

She’d tried to bite something that wasn’t actually in her mouth yet. Retrieving her sandwich from the fridge and a plate from the cupboard would hopefully let her test it without making another mess.

Holding the bread outside what had been the spectral jaws’ previous range produced no results. And biting down on it normally let her eat, well, normally.

But then, with great apprehension, she moved the sandwich away from her face before slowly closing her mouth again. And with glacial slowness, the ephemeral maw of a Honey Badger manifested and began to clamp down on the hapless chunk of bread like a vice, pulverizing it. And then it vanished, spilling the crushed food onto her plate.

What if she tried it while focussing her mind on not wanting to eat the bread even though it was in range?

Once again, no spectral chompers.

Then came the dangerous part. Manifesting the jaws while one of her fingers was in the way. The tip of her pinkie finger, at any rate. Was there any risk of accidentally biting herself if she wasn’t paying attention?

Thankfully, when she did try, there was a small “hitch” in the power, as though it were reluctant to engage. All it took to override that was a thought, and as the manifested fangs slowly closed, she realized that if she were stupid enough to ignore the warnings, she could hurt herself. But there were safeties in place.

From that point onwards, she started trying out other tricks.

Manifesting the jaws while eating her sandwich normally.

Using the spectral maw to take a bite out of the sandwich and keeping it in place long enough to tilt her head back so it dropped into her mouth when she did dissolve the projection.

And so on. It was mostly party tricks, amusing those who happened to glance her way while she was messing around, but it also gave her a solid grasp on what headspace and physical action would trigger her latest power application.

Now that she had that feeling down pat, she looked at what the power description had to say about it.

Badger Chomp (make chomping motion towards target in range -> spectral jaws chomp down on target)

Essentially, exactly what she’d already worked out, but only in simple, abstract terms. With not a single word said about how far one could expand that concept of “spectral jaws chomp down”.

But now, she had to go get the broom as she’d scattered crumbs all over the break room.

“And people claim that Felix is a messy eater,” Owens commented dryly, having only arrived until after she’d already started cleaning up. “Did he try to steal your food again?”

“Badgers are apparently just as messy as cats are,” Jaclyn shrugged, briefly putting down the broom so she could pick up the cat and put him somewhere she’d already swept up the mess. He’d shown up barely a minute after she’d started her experiments and started begging. No one ever fed the precinct’s “Chief Rodent Exterminator”, but that had so far failed to stop him.

“New power?” Owens asked, before hanging his head. “Never thought I’d be asking a question like that. This world gets crazier every day, doesn’t it?”

“Every. Single. Day,” Jaclyn agreed, glancing out through the window.

The crack in the sky that had appeared with the jungle had slowly grown more indistinct as time passed, but it was still there, eternally marring the heavens.

But after a second, her eyes were drawn to a different area. One closer to terra firma.

Jaclyn might not have had some supernatural “good memory for faces” that let her remember every person she’d ever met like some detectives on TV had, but she’d been a cop long enough that she’d acquired the ability to easily and swiftly recognize people when she saw them again. Individuals whom she kept crossing paths with investigating a specific case, matching sketches of suspects with real people, etc.

And when one of Frye’s bodyguards, some of whom she’d been referring to as “shaved gorillas” in her head, had shown up downstairs, trying to talk his way into the orcish encampment, she instantly noticed. And alarm bells began to ring in her mind.

She briefly considered jumping out of the window to reach the zone of imminent disaster faster, but didn’t. Only because that particular window didn’t open.

With a brief “gotta go”, she jetted out the door and ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, but when she reached the ground, she nearly collided with the mountain of a man she’d thought was about to piss off the orcs.

“Inspector Abrams,” he raised an eyebrow. “I was just looking for you.”

So he had just been asking for directions?

“You aren’t here for the Worldstrider Tribe?” Jaclyn asked.

“I am, but I wanted to talk to you first,” the man said, “Name’s Samuel Harper, Director Frye sent me to get the lay of the land vis a vis available Classes, and maybe get one myself.”

“The last spook who came around didn’t exactly do our relationship with the Worldstriders and favors,” Jaclyn pointed out. “Do you have a plan going in?”

“Sure,” Harper told her. “And I wasn’t going to try anything without running it past you first.

“Orcish culture is all about honesty, right? So I’m going in, putting all cards on the table, and asking if they’d grant me a Class.”

“And what cards would those be?” Jaclyn asked.

“We have magic to deal with, and any proper agreement is going to take forever to hammer out, so part of the deal is that I’m not going to act against them directly, or knowingly indirectly. Ever.”

She raised an eyebrow. That was a lot to offer.

“We don’t need superpowered troops against them, and we need magic more than we need precautions against our allies. All cards on the table, minimal downside, it should work, right?”

Jaclyn sighed and shook her head. “What’s their benefit?”

“Guaranteed 10 square kilometers of land, once our political overlords figure out where they can come up with it. And a show of good faith is going to accelerate a proper treaty.”

“Politics make glaciers look like race cars by comparison,” Jaclyn suggested. “How much faster could things get?”

“I mean, it’ll take at least a month to write something that takes everything into account, but I think it’ll be a little faster? The current bosses aren’t idiots, and the idiot brigade who usually slows things down is nowhere to be seen,” Harper shrugged. “So, what do you think? Are they going to go for it?”

Jaclyn’s “Bullshit Radar” might not have been at a level where normal ranking determined it to be supernatural, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t pretty good at seeing through, well, BS. And she had the feeling that Harper was being honest.

“Try, but don’t press things if it doesn’t work,” Jaclyn suggested. “Do you want me to come?”

“I think I’ll try on my own,” Harper said. “If I don’t know how to keep going, I’ll just be polite.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

***

Even though Harper hadn’t lied or even fibbed as far as Jaclyn could tell, she still wound up nervously pacing outside the camp’s field of view. She figured hovering like a worried mother hen might cause trouble, but that didn’t change the fact that this whole situation made her rather nervous.

Frye and Harper weren’t Jones, the MI5 agent who’d fucked around earlier, and she didn’t even know for certain they’d been in intelligence before they’d wound up as the founders of an entirely new agency, but they had this vibe. She was pretty sure they’d been national law enforcement, in the intelligence service, or something in between she did not know.

And in the past, dealing with other agencies usually involved being told, with various degrees of politeness, to “go sit in the corner and stop mucking things up”. Condescending berks, one and all.

But before she could wear a hole in the floor, Harper came striding back out with Gula beside him, deep in conversation, and a scroll in hand.

Harper came to a stop near the exit of the camp, while Gula continued towards Jaclyn.

“Please tell me he behaved himself,” Jaclyn sighed.

“Do you think your 
” Gula paused before making the next statement with clear unfamiliarity “
 ‘political overlords’ would be happy with him explaining what kinds of concessions your people are willing to make?”

“His boss okayed it, I think,” Jaclyn said. “Why, what exactly did he say?”

“He said that your people need magical power now, before a thorough agreement can be created, therefore, significant concessions were needed.”

The plan she’d already known about, basically.

“But you’re going to go for a thorough agreement, land in exchange for access to your village nexus, right?” Jaclyn asked.

“Of course,” Gula nodded. “Emergencies are temporary, so are allowances made for them.”

That was good to know. Sure, on paper, Jaclyn should have been “supportive” of her nation, but patriotism was an ephemeral notion. Gula was a friend, and England had a long history of taking advantage of less developed nations.

Not that the Worldstrider Tribe was primitive, they’d merely developed using magic rather than technology, but the power difference was still there.

Established government vs nomads stuck in a strange land due to a shift on a multiversal scale. If the Worldstrider Tribe gave up their big advantage by granting too many people access to the System, they might even be screwed.

“If he wishes to come to the Dungeon tomorrow, he can,” Gula added after a brief pause. “However, you should give him some advice.”

And Jaclyn would do just that.

After bidding the orc goodbye, she walked over to where Harper was pawing at the empty air.

“You can mentally control your System with a little practice,” Jaclyn told him.

“Tried that, didn’t work,” Harper grunted.

“Put down your hands for a sec, take a deep breath, and try to do something simple without moving your hands. Opening or closing your status, for example.”

With apparent difficulty, Harper kept his hands by his side while his eyes flickered from side to side, reading something she couldn’t.

“Walk with me,” she invited while starting to move towards the nearest park. “What Class did you get?”

“Healer of Nature,” Harper admitted, causing Jaclyn to raise an eyebrow.

He just shrugged. “Let’s just say that I had a few different careers, but wouldn’t have minded becoming a doctor if I’d had half a chance. And we need magical healing if we’re going to avoid having our officers laid up for weeks after every fight.”

“Anyone could have become a healer,” Jaclyn pointed out, causing Harper to shrug again.

“Probably. But magical healing is one hell of a bribe, so we needed a Healer now, not later.”

That rankled a bit, as it absolutely smacked of giving even more privileges to the rich and influential, but it made sense. She didn’t know what that Class would look like when used, no one did, but it made sense that magical recovery would be able to do things that modern medicine couldn’t. Even if it was just accelerated healing.

“Do you have any tips on getting the most out of the System?” Harper asked.

“To paraphrase the words of a young man I know, ‘everyone has the same power in a video game, but synergy makes you a god’. Figure out what you want to be able to do, then figure out what Skills help you achieve that goal. The more high-Level Skills fed into an action, the better, and literally anything is a Skill, even breathing. Get creative. And start thinking about what kinds of Skills you can level just by living your life so you know what to put into your off-duty rotation.”

“Off-duty rotation?” Harper asked.

Jaclyn then proceeded to explain how one would be able to switch out Skills more often the higher your Rank was, and what the advantages of that were, before proceeding to expound on other aspects of the System before things went in a different direction.

“I was wondering why there isn’t a cop class. I thought you could just turn your Skills into a new Class?” Harper wondered.

Jaclyn thought about how to explain that before she decided that an example would work best.

“The System creates a Class out of all your Skills above Level 10, unless you’ve got a bunch of Skills even higher. And it tries to mash everything together under a single umbrella.

“I’m a single mother who’s also a police officer and a martial artist. What do you think a single Class with all those aspects looks like?”

“Police brutality, helicopter parenting, and ‘tough’ love, one power each?” Harper asked.

Jaclyn snapped her fingers before turning the movement into pointing at him.

“Exactly. We’re looking for someone, though. Some old veteran who lived for the job, has insanely high cop Skills and no hobbies that get mixed in. It’s taking a while, though.”

“Figured that’d be easy,” Harper suggested.

“A veteran cop who without hobbies? Nothing to decompress with?” Jaclyn raised an eyebrow.

“I guess that’s silly,” Harper shrugged again.

They’d reached the park by now and the conversation shifted again.

“You know, I don’t think we’re going to be able to control all supernatural crime if magic becomes widespread,” Jaclyn finally said. “Most people are going to be stuck at F-Rank, so we should probably start strong with a mission statement like ‘going after all crime from E-Rank’.”

“
 But are available upon request?” Harper suggested.

“Obviously,” Jaclyn nodded.

“And you don’t think that F-Rankers need magic to beat?” Harper asked, sounding skeptical.

“At peak F-Rank, you’ll have had 100 stat points to distribute. You throw all those into Body, you’ll be a tank, tough and strong, but too fast to control yourself, or even move normally at all. Go all in on Spirit and you’ll have a strong power, but be physically slow and vulnerable. A pure Magic user could be destructive, but should be handleable. Pepper spray or taser, done. And someone who’s all mind is going to be an annoying mastermind, but really, what good is that going to do if someone is already being arrested?

“A few new pieces of gear, some adjustments to training and protocols, things should be fine. And like you said, our new agency would be available on request.”

“I mean, we’ve got two magic cops and one magic criminal, and he’s in jail,” Harper pointed out. “We can handle everything ourselves for now.”

“But I know that there are two other Systems out there, plus cultivation, and magic is possible too,” Jaclyn said. “This is the beginning of global change, and we need to be planning for how things will be in the future, not how they are now.”

Harper grimaced, but she was already continuing.

“So, Gula told me you’re coming with us to the Dungeon tomorrow. Tell me, have you ever gotten into a fistfight with a tyrannosaurus?” Jaclyn asked innocently. First, she’d tell him about all the dangers already present, and then, she’d start laying out the plans for dealing with them. And hope that he was experienced enough to not lose his head. He should be, after all, Frye had sent him.

***

Two hours until go time. Until Jaclyn was finally allowed to head back to the Dungeon properly.

Time she’d expected to spend jittery as hell, watching the clock continue ever ticking forward, until it felt as though every passing second had been lengthened to match a geological era.

And she turned out to be mostly right about it. Until Granger showed up, looking so excited as though he might vibrate fast enough to light fires if he stood on something flammable.

She’d compared him to an excitable puppy in her mind before, but it had never been this extreme before. Like 
 like a chihuahua but one that had its eternal rage against the world replaced by sheer excitability.

“You’re ready to get your Class, right?” she asked, though the question was purely perfunctory. It was pretty obvious.

“Yep,” he nodded. “Wanna come?”

Of course she did. Creating a Class was something that was entirely new for her, something she desperately wanted to see. They might not have found a cop for that particular Class yet, but this was something they could do.

They headed down into the orcish camp together, where Gula was already waiting, dressed in a different outfit than her usual “functionality is king” clothing. It had an air of ritual about it, being made entirely of natural materials and meticulously crafted into an intricate robe that looked like it had been made yesterday while also having a certain “ancient” quality that made Jaclyn think that it was far older than that.

And the rest of the tribe was gathering around them, making her think this whole thing was a much bigger deal than it had been indicated to her.

“Wyatt Granger, today, you make a grand contribution to the Village Nexus of the Worldstrider Tribe. You have worked hard to improve yourself, to create a Class that will remain recorded in the Nexus for so long as this Tribe survives.

“Do you feel that you, Wyatt Granger, are ready to make the attempt?”

“I, student of magic and the limits of the human mind, am ready,” Granger announced. That had clearly been rehearsed, and he’d been coached.

Huh, Jaclyn hadn’t about any of this. Had she really not noticed anything? Despite her experience and literal superhuman hearing? Or had they been deliberately keeping this in the shadows until things were ready?

“Then approach, and lay your hand upon the pillar of civilization,” Gula invited him, stepping to the side to reveal the low podium of crystal she’d been standing before.

Taking slow, measured, steps Granger approached, with Jaclyn clearly able to tell how much restraint it was taking to not go charging forward and slapping his hands onto the Nexus.

She was also painfully reminded of the fact that the whole “creating a cop Class” was yet to be discussed with the tribe. And it needed to be, because apparently, creating a Class was a big deal, complete with witnesses and ritual. She felt severely underdressed.

Granger reached the Nexus and laid a palm atop it.

“Today, we witness the creation of a new Class, one born of magic and a sharpened mind,” Gula announced, with the rest of the tribe echoing it with a loud “We witness!”.

Jaclyn grimaced internally. This really felt as though she was intruding, even though she had been invited.

And then, the crystal under Granger’s hand flashed blue, quickly followed by a System window appearing above his hand visible to all.

You have chosen to create a personal Class on the Path of Infinite Skills. This is the purest expression of your Skills and who you are as a person.

The window hung there for a couple of seconds before vanishing, replaced by a description of the Class in question.

Personal Class: Logos Mage

This is a Class based on the idea that knowledge is power, and applying this power to the real world using the keen mind of the Magus, granting powers related to enhancing the mind, empowering the memory, and transforming knowledge from abstract information to useable spellwork.

“It takes a lot of magic to create an avalanche, but hitting the correct rock on a mountain can start one for but a drop of mana.”

Starting Power: Fractal Mind (Split your mind to cast multiple spells simultaneously)

Would you like to accept this Class?

“Logos”. What on Earth did that mean?

Jaclyn decided to keep that question to herself as to not disrupt the majesty of the moment, but she’d definitely ask later.

“I accept,” Granger announced, sounding almost enraptured, revealing yet another screen.

Fractal Mind

Your mind is an infinite maze of memories and thoughts, endlessly splitting and subdividing, granting you the ability to do as many things as you wish, at the same time.

You gain the ability to create a new stream of thought for every ten points in the Spirit Statistic, with the power of the new stream depending on your Mind Statistic.

Your mana pool will be evenly split between every stream of thought, with no single stream being able to use more than that amount. Furthermore, when using multiple streams on the same spell, that spell’s maximum mana is limited to the mana allocated to a single stream unless the spell in question is a ritual. In that case, one stream’s mana may be used for each participant slot the ritual has.

That power sounded strong. All the spells Granger knew, or rather, the handful he could learn from the Worldstriders’ archives, were rather low cost, she knew that, and he’d likely be able to cast them by the dozens once his Level was high enough. A living artillery battalion, eventually.

Sure, that power currently only existed in her imagination, but once upon a time, her current level of strength had also lived in her mind. And today, she was capable of fistfighting a car. Literally.

Now all that remained was seeing how things worked out in the Dungeon. Once all the congratulations were done, of course. Some orcs were at the Nexus, likely calling up windows visible just for them to find out more, others were talking to their children about the new possibility, and others still were deep in animated discussion with Granger or each other.

It made sense that they hadn’t created a magic class so far, after all, they only knew a few spells and everyone learned those eventually once they naturally gained points in the Magic stat. Why go all in on magic if you’d get it anyway?

But Granger’s Class was more than just “am able to cast spells”. And it seemed like there was a lot to discuss about it.

This 
 it seemed like things would take a while.