In the grim darkness of the far future, the "Solarium" was an empire that spanned the Sacred Solar System and even extended its influence throughout the galaxy. However, the core of its power always remained in its capital, Planet Urd, the one we know as Earth.
In the First Solar Age, humanity sought to expand beyond Urd after the disaster that ended the Fossil Age, or as the most fanatical Solarium adherents called it, the Dark Fossil Age.
Most of the writers of the series "Wartopia" were fans of environmental horror, and that is precisely how the Dark Fossil Age ended. The Earth turned on humanity, and disasters followed in quick succession, culminating in the Fossil Wars, which severely damaged the atmosphere, transforming most of the world into a scorched hell by day and a frigid winter by night.
People overthrew their fossil overlords and shifted their civilization to solar and wind power, marking the beginning of the First Solar Age. This great era witnessed Urd's gradual healing, though it was still a far cry from its former state. At least people could return to the surface again after living for centuries in Silo cities; however, such outer communities were unregulated and had scant law and order, devolving into Wild West-like anarchy.
Even so, all living environments needed life-support systems, and activities such as farming were conducted entirely in greenhouses, while meat was rare and produced synthetically only in Silo cities.
However, the remarkable efficiency of solar energy in that world proved advantageous. Inventions like solar sails, which captured solar currents for boundless space travel, and Blazer Cells, rechargeable by sunlight, fire, or other energy sources, emerged. These innovations, coupled with hyper-efficient solar cells, ushered in the First Solar Age.
The planet was slowly healing, though at a much slower rate than it had been damaged, a process that would require centuries. By then, causing further environmental damage had become taboo on Urd; during wartime, however, people still resorted to burning and mass industrialization. Consequently, many chose to live in space, with the Moon being the first colonized frontier, followed by Mars and Venus. The colonization of these planets, establishing small, enclosed, independent states, enabled extensive underground industrialization without atmospheric concerns.
This situation persisted until the end of the First Solar Age—which lasted nearly 1,000 years—and the beginning of the Stellar Age, when the first Antimatter Engine was produced in the moon colonies and humanity achieved FTL (Faster Than Light) travel for the first time. The frontier was pushed far beyond anything humanity had ever thought possible, opening a new realm known as the Void to humanity.
Access to the local solar system was already possible with solar sails, but traversing the Void now brought other Systems within humanity's grasp. Nations began to migrate en masse as soon as habitable planets were found, and the population of Earth, as well as its environmental state, began to improve significantly.
However, Urd never recovered.
The planet had reached a point of no return regarding certain damage. Though still habitable, it remained arid and unforgiving. It was there, in what was once Africa, now Urd's Sector 1, that Prince Kamaru Adawala, the revered father of the Imperial Sun, unified the planet, planting the first seed of the Empire of the Sacred Solar System, for Sol Imperius to rule.
All of that knowledge was embedded in the heart and soul of every Solar Knight.
Captain Solomon Creed looked around as he and Adam walked around the ruined city, filled with fallen trees, ruined cars, and the occasional scenes of death and destruction.
To his mind, it was all too strange, unnatural even. The weather outside his Power Armor was like the interior of a life-supported environment, so seamless and natural; the sky was a bright blue, and there were flying birds and wild animals—extinct on Urd.
It was all… strange.
He watched Adam as he nervously looked around and gestured at the air every now and then. He looked disturbed and in deep thought.
The Solar Paladin wasn't bothered by the puny young man's thoughts, unaware that Adam was, at that moment, discovering the truth behind it all.
Earlier, during their escape from the Gobzkin horde, Adam had seen words floating in the air a few times, two of which indicated he had acquired an Experience Point—a term he was surely familiar with—the other messages appearing when he got too close to the Gobzkins.
He remembered the early days of the monster invasion. Those green-skinned monsters, known in pop culture as Goblins, were being called Gobzkins by some militia members and the military. Even Victor was calling them that as well, and the group adopted the term.
The reason wasn't explicitly stated, but it turned out there was a very strange reason.
Words appeared in thin air like a video game's UI. Well, a very poor-looking UI since the letters were actually badly shaped, but still… words in thin air.
Of course, geeks and nerds knew what a system window was when they saw one, but Adam failed to recognize his own system window.
Still, it turned out he was late to the party, and other people already possessed their own systems. How else would they refer to Goblins as Gobzkins, Giants as Jotnar, and Zombies as Blighters and Dark Hosts?
Only when he decided to approach a ruined car and intently examine himself in its side mirror did these words appear.
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Name — Adam Clay
Role — Survivor
Class — Sorcerer
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Statistics (EXP: 6)
— Might: 2 [+]
— Trick: 3 [+]
— Spirit: 2 [+]
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Skills
— Artifice (IX)
— Cook (V)
— Charisma (IV)
— Firearms (II)
— Psyche (II)
— Sanity (I)
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Powers
— Font of Magic: (Class) You can sense the weave of magic within runes and tap it safely.
— Puppeteer Rune: You can summon familiars and objects using puppets and dolls as a medium. The quality of the summon depends on the quality of the puppet. If the quality is low, the puppet will need to be given an order for every action, but if it is high, a puppet may even start acting the way it is predicted to act. The deeper the knowledge you have of your puppet, the better the quality of the summon will be, even enabling it to have magical powers or an ego of its own. This, however, will make managing a puppet harder than it should be if the quality is too high for your skill.
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And that's when it hit him like a sledgehammer on the head. There it was… all the answers to his current situation.
He had a Status window now, like any proper main character he had ever read about. It felt good except for the fact that his stats were weird and too low.
Still, he felt like he had heard those words before in that exact order: Adam, Survivor, Sorcerer.
It was like the time he had passed out after touching the Gobzkin Shaman's club.
So that's how people got a status window! They touched something that belonged to a monster… a boss monster preferably, and that thing, if imbued with supernatural ability, would bestow it upon them.
For example, Adam had killed a puppeteer Gobzkin Shaman and now possessed the Puppeteer Rune, having been designated a Sorcerer.
Thanks to that immense luck, he was able to summon Captain Creed as a Familiar.
But once Adam read the description of that Puppeteering power, he gulped and almost felt like his head was exploding.
He could summon familiars like the Shaman Gobzkin did, using Puppets… or Miniatures…
It says: "You can summon familiars and objects using puppets and dolls as a medium."
Wouldn't that mean he could use other Wartopia Miniatures like Captain Creed's?
"Oh, boy!"
Forget about monsters… a few more Star Paladins like Creed and he could bid farewell to every monster in the world.
He had to do this… it would be so overpowered and…
Hold on! He was a gamer; he knew balance when he saw a system, and this one seemed somewhat balanced. Still, the Puppeteer Rune power seemed rather broken. Magic like that should always demand some sort of a price.
First, it says: "The quality of the summon matches the quality of the puppet."
That checks; after all, nobody would spend 24 hours painting a single miniature unless it were to be a fucking masterpiece.
It also says: "If the quality is low, the puppet will need to be given an order for every action, but if it is high, a puppet may even start acting the way it is predicted to act."
Not only that, it also says: "The deeper the knowledge you have of your puppet, the better the quality of the summon will be, even enabling it to have magical powers or an ego of its own."
Quality is achieved through both the puppet's craftsmanship and the puppeteer's knowledge. While Adam's craftsmanship was flawless, his comprehensive knowledge of Captain Creed was equally impressive.
He had played the three Action RPGs of Wartopia: Star Paladin back to back with a 100% completion rate for all achievements, challenges, and even on brutal Iron Man mode. Also, since he was very involved in the tabletop war game, he knew the lore of Wartopia like a Techno Monk from SolTech to HereTech, as they say.
So, regarding quality and knowledge, it wasn't that the system was unbalanced; Adam's "Geekness" was just broken.
Was it worth breaking up with his girlfriend for? Yeah, he may have been sad, but now, as he was walking in the shadow of Captain Creed himself…
"WORTH IT!"
"…"
However, there was one last sentence that made his role as a puppeteer a little bit scary. It says: "This, however, will make managing a puppet harder than it should be if the overall quality is too high for your skill."
This was exactly what had happened with Captain Creed. Just like other games with magic, if a summoning wasn't done with enough skill, the summon could be "unbound" from the caster, meaning it could act freely and even attack the user.
Luckily, Creed was Lawful-Good by paladin standards, and what Adam told him about the way he died really touched him. Still, once they reached safety, they would have to part ways.
Who knew if there were other limitations on the puppets themselves, like a duration, a distance from the summoner, and other such factors? Adam would have loved to know, but he was sure a Star Paladin wouldn't waste his time experimenting with magic powers.
Also, Creed seemed very passive about the fact that he was summoned from the future. To him, this must have been the Fossil Age, where humanity shattered the world. However, his faith in the Eternal Peace must have been strong enough for him to see this as a different world altogether.
Regarding this situation, Adam realized that he needed to further increase his power to better control Creed, and rather than having him disobey and act independently, he might at least be able to order him to stay.
This brought Adam back to his Status Window.
There was another power aside from the "Puppeteer Rune" called the "Font of Magic." It was stated that this came from the Class, the Sorcerer. The magic of this system seemed to involve runes; he already possessed one Rune, so if he wanted to further widen his scope of power, he should perhaps collect more Runes.
Regardless, that was a problem for later since there wasn't much he could do about it. What he could address, however, were the Ability Points.
There were these little "+" icons next to every number, and right beside the Abilities section, there was an indicator that he had 6 Experience Points to spare. Presumably, some experience stemmed from the time he was still unawakened in the ways of the system.
Since he was a min-max type of player, he decided to dump them all into the ability that feeds into magic. Looking at them, the abilities were called "Might," "Trick," and "Spirit."
The abilities were non-classical, but Might sounded like Strength, Trick like Dexterity, and Spirit like Wisdom. So if he were to choose, he would dump everything into Spirit.
He did so right away, pressing the icon multiple times at once, but rather than jumping from 2 to 8, the Spirit score only reached 3 and stopped increasing.
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Name — Adam Clay
Role — Survivor
Class — Sorcerer
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Statistics (EXP: 3)
— Might: 2 [+]
— Trick: 3
— Spirit: 3
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Looking at his remaining Experience Points, Adam discovered that to reach 3 in Spirit, he had to spend 3 EXP. With the "+" sign having disappeared, it meant that reaching 4 Spirit would require 4 EXP.
It wasn't what he hoped for, but that seemed like a balanced system to him, unusual but balanced. He would conserve the remaining EXP, but knowing he was physically miserable, he desired to deviate from his usual style and raise his Might to 3 as well.
Just as he might have expected, he felt something growing within him, but he didn't feel significantly stronger, a change he would need to find the time and place to test properly.
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Name — Adam Clay
Role — Survivor
Class — Sorcerer
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Statistics (EXP: 0)
— Might: 3
— Trick: 3
— Spirit: 3
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Skills
— Artifice (IX)
— Cook (V)
— Charisma (IV)
— Firearms (II)
— Psyche (II)
— Sanity (I)
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What remained were the skills, which he couldn't seem to understand without a description, especially with that Artifice skill and its ridiculously high level. He could tell what was high from looking at numbers alone, and if his Firearms skill, which he was bad at, was 2, and his cooking skill, which he was really good at, was 5, his Artifice, at 9, must have been divine.
Just what was it? He kept thinking.
"The shelter you seek—how soon do we reach it?"
At that moment, Captain Creed initiated a conversation.
"The shelter? It's anything but, really, just an old military base occupied by people after the national guard pulled back," Adam replied.
"A base, then? It will be… instructive to witness this world's relics."
"Instructive?" Adam looked at him intently. "I don't think you need to worry about heresy now. You should also restock on ammunition and food."
"With armament like yours, this world offers little of worth."
"But you'll run out of Plasma charges, won't you? And there are no Blazers in this world, either. I know you can make your own weapons, but you'll need to scrap something first, not to mention food… You'll need to eat a lot if you don't have your special sustenance ration."
"Your insight surprises me. You are more versed in the Sunforged ways than I anticipated."
"This is a disappointing world, Captain. Reading about Heroes like you is what kept it interesting to many of us."
"There are others?"
"Heh!" Adam laughed and turned to Captain Creed. "Few, but still many. In fact, before we get to the shelter, I think I know where one might be. He'll be on our way. There is something I certainly must try."
"What manner of place is that destination, then?"
Adam paused for a while before answering that, then spoke with a voice filled with longing.
"It is a place where I have a lot of memories, good ones mostly—the fun, the games, and everything. I never got near it since the world… you know."
"…"
Creed remained passive without a reply as he observed the emotional twists Adam seemed to be going through. Still, Adam gathered the last bit of resolve as he made his way to his Wartopia playground.
"Next stop, the Kave!"