No IDE
In which our protagonist discovers that the documentation is the documentation, the bugs are the bugs, and the four swords pointed at him are a perfect place to start.
The smoke was not a trap. Or, more precisely, the smoke was a trap that had already been sprung on someone else.
Kenji burst out of the tree line at a run, tripped over a root he should have seen, rolled twice, and came up on one knee in a clearing, breathing hard, with a rock in his hand and the smoke-smell of a cook fire in his nose.
The cook fire was real. The wagon was real. The two ox-like creatures with curved horns were real. The thin man in the brown coat was real. The three guards with three swords were very, very real.
[detect_mana: 4 sources identified. Threat level: moderate. Stamina: 41%.]
[Compiler note: stamina at 41%. Please advise if you would like to stop running.]
The Compiler had a sense of humor. The Compiler had, in the last eleven seconds, watched its developer sprint half a mile in a dead panic from a fourth goblin that was not a goblin, and the system had concluded, with the dry patience of a senior engineer who had seen junior developers do worse, that now was a good time to mention the stamina bar.
The three swords were pointed at him. The points of the blades were, he noticed with the part of his brain that never quite shut up, professional. Not shaking. Not posturing. Pointed.
"Show yourself!" a voice called out, deep and rough. "Hands up, or we shoot!"
Kenji raised his hands. The rock, in one of them, looked very small. He let it fall.
"I'm not a bandit," Kenji said, in the common tongue of this world, which the Compiler helpfully translated from his intent. "I have nothing worth stealing. I just need directions to the nearest town."
The thin man looked him up and down. He had the sharp face of someone who had spent his life reading other people.
"You've been out here a while," the man said. Not a question.
"About ten days."
"Alone?"
"Yes."
"Surprised you're alive. Most city folk last about three days in this forest. You're either very lucky or very strange."
"Both," Kenji said, and then, because politeness was free: "Thank you for not shooting me."
The thin man barked a laugh. "Master Orven, at your service. Caravan master, independent trader, and occasional employer of desperate people. What's your name, son?"
"Kenji."
"Foreign name."
"Very foreign."
Orven studied him for a long moment, then nodded to the guards. The swords went down. "Sit. Eat. You look like you need it more than my pride needs to interrogate you."
Kenji sat. Orven handed him a wooden bowl of stew. The stew was, against all reasonable expectation, the best thing Kenji had eaten in his new life, including the moss.
[Analyzer: stew composition = root vegetables (62%), unidentified meat (28%), water (10%), trace mana.]
[Compiler note: trace mana is consistent with low-grade enchanted cookware. The locals know more than they are saying.]
The locals know more than they are saying. The Compiler had opinions about the stew. The Compiler was, in a small way, a snob.
Kenji ate the stew. He ate it slowly. He ate it like a man who had been eating moss for a week, which he had, and he tried very hard not to cry into the bowl. He did not. He had decided, somewhere in the first three days, that he would not cry in front of any human being until he understood the local rules about crying in front of human beings. This was not, it turned out, that moment.
Halfway through the second bowl, Orven asked, in the offhand tone of a man who was asking nothing important, "Where did you get the Compiler?"
The bowl stopped halfway to Kenji's mouth.
"How do you know that name?" he asked, very carefully.
"Because the last person who had it died sixty years ago, and before that, the person before that, and before that, the person before that, and the only thing they all had in common was that they had a system in their head that warned them about arcanum berries." Orven's voice was different now. Not warmer. Not colder. More careful. "We were about to offer you some. The berries are not toxic to us. The berries are not toxic to the guards. We have spent our lives building up a tolerance. Outsiders do not have that. We were about to offer you one, because we are idiots, and you were about to eat it, because you are an idiot, and you would have died in twelve minutes."
The cook fire popped. Somewhere in the trees, a bird screamed.
"Three functions," Orven said, not asking. "Yes or no?"
[Compiler query: should I tell him about the other functions?]
[Compiler note: trust assessment pending. Recommend: gather more data before disclosing the index.]
The Compiler was asking his permission to lie. The Compiler was, in a small way, protecting him.
"Three," Kenji said, and did not look at the part of his mind where the index was.
Orven studied him for a long time. Then the thin man nodded, and the swords went back into their sheaths, and the berries went back into the dish, and the cook fire popped again.
"Well," Orven said. "You are the most interesting thing that has happened to this caravan in six years. Sit. Eat. We move out in an hour. Don't eat anything without asking me first."
"Don't eat anything without asking me first," Kenji echoed, in a tone that was, in a small way, grateful.
The Compiler pulsed, in what Kenji chose to interpret as relief.
[Skill: trust_assessment (passive, range: 10m) acquired through use of new_function()]
[Compiler note: Orven's signature is consistent with the description "merchant, not a charity, and not unkind."]
[Compiler note: the developer is, in a small way, learning.]
The system was proud of him. The system was, in a small way, a colleague. Kenji had not had a colleague in ten years, and the first one he had was a debug overlay inside his own skull, and the colleague had just told him, in the driest possible language, that the developer was learning.
Then, very slowly, the Compiler pulsed again.
[New Function Available]
- thermal_awareness (mana cost: low, range: 50m)
[Skill acquired through repeated use of detect_mana]
[Compiler note: this is a function you did not ask for. The system is, in a small way, ahead of you.]
Kenji had not asked for thermal_awareness. He had not even thought about thermal_awareness. He had, however, been thinking about the fire, and the smoke, and the temperature of the man in front of him, and the system had, in the driest possible language, decided that the developer needed to know how warm the world was.
He had, in other words, leveled up by having an idea. The Compiler had handed him the right tool the moment he needed it, on the condition that he could first describe the tool. Skills unlocked by having ideas. He would spend the rest of his life in this world testing the rule, and the rule would spend the rest of his life here teaching him how far it could be bent.
He thought, very carefully, into the part of his mind that held the index: I will need this more than I know.
The Compiler pulsed, in a tone that was, in a small way, ahead of him.
Three swords pointed at Kenji, and the only question was whether the people on the other end of them were merchants or bandits. They were merchants. The thermal_awareness skill had just unlocked itself in the Compiler's index, prompted by his sudden need to know what was warm in this clearing, and he would need it very soon, and for a reason that had nothing to do with whether these strangers were friend or foe, and everything to do with the temperature of a stream that was, at this moment, somewhere up the road, behaving in a way that the smoke above the trees was only beginning to hint at.