Charlemagne read the Squiggles notice with satisfaction, all except for the last part. He still had no idea what the shop did, nor was he willing to reveal his ignorance and ask his Party members what it was. He vaguely remembered that using the meditation chamber had made his total number of “shop points” go down. He didn’t like it when the numbers that the Squiggles showed him went down. Numbers needed to go up. That was the way it had always been, and that was the way that he had become stronger.

  The rooster took a few tentative steps forward as he considered the issue further. The total number of his progeny never went down, but the number of living progeny had. That was not a good thing. But if he was fighting a group of enemies, and he killed one, then the number went down. And enemies were a bad thing to have, except that killing them was a good thing because it made him stronger. But it was an enemy that had killed all of his chicks that one time…so he was back to having enemies was bad.

  Charlemagne’s head spun as his rapidly growing brain struggled to come to grips with concepts that no rooster had ever grasped before. His mental development, which had experienced an initial spike during his first phase of rapid growth, had taken a long break during his “retirement” to the United States. There, he only had to worry about eating, mating, and protecting his flock: all things that normal roosters did. His human servants took care of all the thinking for him. But this wasn’t something that Charlemagne could just have Ndiogou handle for him. For one thing, he didn’t want to have to explain to the human that he didn’t understand what shop points were or how to use them. And on top of that, he wanted to figure this out for himself, since it seemed like a very important concept. Finally, the rooster felt like there should be a third reason, but he couldn’t think of it at the moment.

  His train of thought zigged and zagged as it was more accustomed to reacting to external stimuli than processing input that came from the rooster’s higher-order thought processes. Lacking a prefrontal cortex, the rooster had to rely on his avian pallium, the complex outer layer that surrounded his more basic brain structures. New pathways connected within the pallium, as neurons that fired together wired together. Slowly, the shape of an epiphany began to emerge from his subconscious, its details hazy at first, but gradually becoming more distinct as he focused on the ramifications. It was a simple idea for a human, but an important one. Roughly translated from Charlemagne’s internal thought process, it could be stated as follows:

  “Some numbers are more important to me than other numbers.”

  Merely touching upon the idea of “value” made Charlemagne’s head ache with effort, but after that the inferences came somewhat easier. A few minutes of slow, determined thought later revealed another nugget:

  “Bad numbers going down is not just ‘not bad’, it is good.”

  He hadn’t quite made the mental leap to “making a number I don’t care about go down to make a number I care about go up is good” when his thinking session was rudely interrupted and he found himself once again standing in front of the odd-looking being that, in his mind, was responsible for bringing him here.

  “I apologize if you were doing something important, but it looked like you were just zoning out. Were you busy? No, I’m sure you weren’t. Probably talking to your Party, or something like that, yes?”

  “Bawk!” The rooster answered, annoyed at having been once again teleported against his will.

  “Yes, yes, everyone says that. But really, what else am I supposed to do here? I’m a busy being, and your satisfaction is not a performance metric that I’m rated on, so…yeah. Anyways, like I said, I’m a busy being so I’m going to make this quick. You’ve defeated Wave 40 of the Individual Battle Simulation, which means that it’s time to send you to the Elite Systemic Games, as agreed. But before I send you, we have a few things to go over. I’d like to give you your reward for clearing the Simulation before round two of the Systemic Games, but first, you have to, absolutely have to, pick your next Special Ability AND your rewards from round one. Like, have to. The System won’t let me move forward with your next reward until you do that.”

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  Charlemagne’s response to this was two-fold. First, he realized that he had forgotten entirely about his Special Ability choice and his round one rewards. Second, when the number of someone else’s words went up too high, that was a bad thing. He resolved to think more about that later as he asked the Squiggles to show him his options for his next Special Ability, wishing that he had asked his Party members for advice when he had the chance.

  The rooster took his time to understand each of the options while the many-eyed, many-limbed creature across the desk turned away and pulled out some sort of rectangular device that it occasionally tapped. When Charlemagne was finished with his analysis, he decided to try something a bit new.

  “Bawk?” he asked.

  “What, you want my advice on your new Special Ability? Oh, how droll! I am so seldom asked for my opinion on things, and by a Sector MVC no less. Felicia will be so jealous of me when I tell her all about this. But, pardon my enthusiasm, give me one moment to look at your options…”

  Charlemagne waited while the creature tapped at its rectangle for a few moments, muttering to itself all the while.

  “Yes...let’s see here…all right…well let’s have a look here. Yes, these are all quite good. Insanely overpowered, even. How to choose, how to choose…well that’s a possible downside given how aggressive…yeah. Well, hmmm. Okay.”

  Most of the being’s eyes turned back to focus on Charlemagne, while a few others remained glued to the strange object that the creature couldn’t stop fiddling with.

  “All of these options are ridiculously strong and are exceptionally advanced for your level. I would literally and figuratively kill for any one of them. But, unfortunately, my appendages are restrained here. So, advice: you can’t go wrong with any of them, but take a look and think about your ultimate goal. Pick ‘Any Mana of Mine’ if you want an easy time of things. It will make everything that you do better and easier right away and you’ll find yourself much, much stronger. If you want to fix a few flaws in your foundation now and grow ridiculously stronger over time, then pick ‘I Lost the Blueprint’. If you want to duke it out with deities, astral projections, or entities too large or small to damage with more conventional attacks, ‘The Duality of Rooster’ is for you.”

  Charlemagne took quite a while to brood on the advice that the strange creature behind the desk had given him. The concepts were difficult for him to grasp. Becoming stronger now was always better than becoming stronger not now. But the rooster was no longer a stranger to delayed gratification. He had refrained from killing his Party members because, on the whole, they proved useful to have around. To a certain extent, of course. He didn’t kill the humans who worked for him because they provided food and helped him procreate. Following that train of logic, it seemed that “I Lost the Blueprint” would be overall better than “Any Mana of Mine”, since it would help him grow stronger for a long time rather than just give him a one-time power boost. The Special Ability’s mention of Veins of Lava was also interesting, as it had proven to be one of his best support Skills. He was hoping that it would somehow eventually combine with several other Skills into a single, more powerful Skill.

  But he would be lying to himself if he wasn’t excited about the ramifications of “The Duality of Rooster”. Attacking an opponent’s soul sounded really strong. He wasn’t exactly sure what a soul was, or why it was important, but it seemed like it would have helped him in his fight against the Bald Bull. Being able to harm opponents that were immune to both his physical attacks and his mana-based attacks would add another way for him to defend himself, his hens, and his chicks. He still hadn’t forgotten how close he had come to losing to the human who had combined with a feline. The human/feline hybrid had bested him in physical combat, stopped his most potent mana attack in its tracks, and had slaughtered his entire flock. To this day, Charlemagne still worried that another such Champion would attack his farm while he was occupied and destroy all that he had worked so hard to build. But if his mana blasts, pecks, and claws weakened his foes with every strike, he was sure that he could easily wear down even the most resilient foes.

  Still, however, the choices were difficult. Picking either of the other two Special Abilities would reinforce his strengths, allowing him to continue to gain Achievements and help him raise his Skills to new heights. Although he didn’t consciously understand why he was especially drawn to “I Lost the Blueprint”, his very Skills subtly nudged the rooster to pick that choice. In the same way, the mana flowing through him called to him, telling him that “Any Mana of Mine” was ideal.

  Shutting out all of his inner turmoil, Charlemagne closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then he told the Squiggles his choice.