Aria looked at the Races in front of her and slid over to her favorite.

-

Race: Shifters (D)

Trait Bonus: Doppelganger

Innate Boost: Wisdom

Potential - A

* Stat Line *

Physique - 10 (1)

Mind - 12 (2)

Soul - 8 (2)

Longevity - 100

Growth - 5

* Synergies *

Espionage

Finesse Weaponry

Class: Assassin

Class: Spy

Illusion Manipulation

-

Her Avatar appeared before her, a formless face and a dark humanoid shadow standing about five and a half feet. She looked at the simple parameters she had set up but lacked the skill to be able to micromanage everything without being inside a Game. Xavier’s abilities astonished her and she only hoped that she would be able to get that good in time with enough practice.

“Sahb, are you ready?” she asked aloud.

“Miss Aria, it’s good to see you again.” Her AI was still in development but had a very helpful personality. Similar to attendants in a lot of the establishments she’d been to. His voice was baritone and contained, keeping her calm no matter how badly a Game seemed to go.

The view flickered and she found herself in a magical forest, her Command Point a crystal that floated in the center of a copse. The shade provided by the trees made the dark grey crystal hard to see if one didn’t know where they should look.

The sky lit up as the Game counted down from ten.

“Sahb, I really want to win this one.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Like, really-really.”

“Understood, Miss.”

“Like, we can’t lose.”

“But there are no stakes, Miss.”

“Sahb, you can’t always be so reasonable. I have to show Xavier that I…” She trailed off as the counter reached zero and began focusing on the task she needed to accomplish.

She looked at her five-hundred Essence and spawned five Workers to begin gathering foodstuffs, stones, and whatever fallen wood they could.

She looked at her Racial stats and her Essence gain. Essence naturally accumulated based on the population of your people, their actions completed, and their Physique value. Her Shifters had ten Physique and there were five of them, so she would produce fifty Essence a second. For each action completed, harvesting an entire weight load, she’d gain even more Essence based on the Physique stat.

Whenever another hundred Essence became available, she continued to spawn more until she had ten.

After enough wood and stone had built, she went into the Technology tree and looked at her Study. Study worked similarly to Essence, but was based on the Mind stat. Each of her Shifters would produce twelve Study per minute.

Each unit gained experience based on completing jobs of their proficiency and for every minute they stayed alive based on their tier. The first ten units spawned adults and skipped the growth period, but every unit afterward would require their growth period to be met before she could set them to a task.

She watched as her Study and Essence grew for about eight minutes then unlocked the Assassin Class for one thousand Study. She quickly summoned five Warriors and had them set to train for ten minutes, meaning that she wouldn’t have her first Warrior for fifteen minutes. As they grew and trained, she unlocked Finesse Weaponry for another thousand and then unlocked Stoneworking and Metalworking for fifteen hundred Study.

In fifteen minutes, when her Assassins were ready she had accumulated twenty-seven hundred Study and another hundred thirty-five thousand Essence. She unlocked a Hero slot from its respective tab for twenty-five hundred Study and then summoned one for a hundred thousand Essence. She started queuing work orders and told Sahb to take control of the Hero. She spent another thousand Study a couple of minutes later on the Spy class and sent her Hero off in exploration with her five Assassins.

At that point, her resource production was in full force and she quickly started spawning in more Workers and craftsmen to make better weaponry and to change the small copse into a fortification worth defending, just in case Gerald wanted to take a more “the enemy can’t have a culture if they’re dead” approach.

Her forces traveled and stayed out of sight, spreading out in all directions to find her foe’s location. One of the Assassin found a gathering party with two Warriors for protection. She found the Class Advancement options under Assassin and Spy Classes, upgrading their tree completely.

Assassin got Hidden in Plain Sight, Heartseeker, and Shadow Warp. Hidden in Plain Sight enhanced all Stealth and Illusions. Heartseeker passively showed the target's weak spots and, when used actively, pierced all armor to strike at the target’s heart. Shadow Warp was a movement ability that could only be used when Stealthed, sending a Shadow Clone to strike at a target with Heartseeker.

Spy was far from a combat class. Spies could act as scouts, sending information real-time instead of with the normal delay that combatants brought. Spies got Diplomat, Espionage, and Culture Shock. Diplomat meant that Spies had a higher chance of taking positions of power in a foe’s civilization. Espionage made it so that Spies could better uncover secrets of Technology advancement, Magical study, the number of troops, presence of Heroes or Generals, and the overall strength of the opponent. Culture Shock could consume a Spy to heavily influence the populace in the opposite direction the enemy wanted to develop in.

The Assassin waited for backup and trailed behind the group. Her Shifters all attacked together when they had regrouped. They all picked up the bodies and took their form. Her group consisted of six members and the gathering party had six. She hoped the opponent wouldn’t see the difference. Her Shifters assumed the positions and delivered the resources like the Workers they’d slain had.

She thought about her Hero and how it was the only scout unit she had. If a scout unit - the Troop tree could make all units scouts - was attacked, you would know by whom. If a Warrior unit was attacked, you’d only know who it was if they survived long enough. This is why her infiltration could work. She thought about it and decided to pay the ten thousand Study to pick up the All Are Scouts Troop upgrade.

Her culture value hung around twelve thousand, but she needed it to be nearly ten times that much to win - a hundred thousand was the default for culture challenges - and she had to do it before Gerald. She needed to establish her people and start researching entertainment, magic study, and tech advancement. There was a caveat to playing Shifters, though. Her own culture gain was halved, but her cultural influence on enemies was doubled. If she could overthrow Gerald’s cultural influence completely, she’d be on her way to victory in no time.

And so, she kept spawning Workers, Assassins, and Spies. Her own civilization rapidly advanced, and a grin plastered on her face when her Hero Spy got fully integrated and her Assassins gutted the internal structure of the humans. She was surprised to see how far Gerald got before she absolutely tanked his culture and pretty much took over his people. His Avatar descended in a fury, executing people on the streets by the dozens, but only one in every four was one of her Spies or Assassins.

If he had tried to rush her, he more than likely would have found little resistance. His focus on Technology advancement put him far ahead of her in combat power, but this wasn’t an Elimination Game.

She smiled triumphantly as the Culture value slid past one hundred thousand, the world flashing out of existence.