All credit for the concept of The Gamer and ownership of the associated light novels and webtoon belongs to Sung Sang-Young. A debt of inspiration is owed specifically to Ryuugi at Spacebattles for his seminal work 'The Games We Play'.
Spykoranuvellitar, Grand Paladin of the Order of the Scale, found himself barreling down the corridor faster than even his fantastic Move Speed could carry him. That was because he wasn't moving of his own volition: Rather, he had been hit with an attack so powerful it sent him flying. The blow in question came from the gigantic hewn tree-trunk club of the ogre in front of hi... No, scratch that. As he felt the terrible impact of the wall against his spines, he re-adjusted his thinking. It came from the ogre at the other end of the hallway. He had been thrown thirty, maybe forty feet (the corridor was ten tiles long, but he was too dazed to do the math) in one enormous slap of its club, and his fellow adventurers were not faring any better. A sickening crunch radiated out as somepony was battered into a wall, although it was quickly followed with the soft yellow glow of the party Cleric's healing magic.
Now they were all scattered across the field of battle, nopony in range to flank the beast, their best ranged units forced into melee, their best close-combat fighters struggling with the huge distances it could throw them. There had to be some kind of guiding intelligence for this beast: No ogre was capable of coming up with such tactical fighting, much less implementing it. It was far more likely that the Master of this Dungeon was toying with them, strings beyond strings, keeping them on their toes. At this rate, the next Wizard they fought might have a level of physical Strength to rival his own.
"Regroup! We-"
He hesitated, something in his head felt wrong. As a leader, he had an instinctive knowledge of what the group was able to do. And that information was looking more bleak with every passing moment. The realization hit like lead shot to his gut, more sickening than the ogre's club had been.
"We're... I don't think we can win this. We're running out of options."
A faint blue glow permeated the Paladin's mind... Or to be more correct, it flickered in front of Spike the dragon's actual eyelids somewhere else. This was just a daydream, after all: He was half-sleeping (he had hazily woken up half an hour ago and decided to stay in bed) and somepony was shining a light in his actual eyes. Spike knew Twilight wasn't awake yet, and she really wouldn't do something that mean to him anyways. He flipped over muzzily, trying to get away from it: Maybe a window got opened? Regardless, the light seemed to follow him. He growled and burrowed his head down between blankets and pillows... And it followed. He closed his nictitating membranes, the slightly cloudy eyelids beneath his eyelids, and still he could see the light. That... that was almost certainly a problem.
He blinked once, then twice, before finally cracking his eyes open and staring. Nestled deep into his pillows, slightly raised so that he could see it all in the tiny space, was a blue box. Not a package, but a two-dimensional window in three-dimensional space, like a heads-up display or a menu in a video game or a sci-fi comic (see 'Power Ponies: In Space! Issue 37', he absent-mindedly recalled). The text was written in basic Equiform, clean and crisp as if it was from a typewriter: Again, like he'd see on a game menu.
OPTIONS
> GAME
> AUDIO
> VIDEO
> SOCIAL
Spike popped his head out from underneath the bedding with a frustrated grimace.
"Cut it out! I get it everypony, it's very funny. Sure I've been playing too many games and reading too many comics, but come on! I was getting some well-deserved... beauty... Um."
Twilight status: Yeah, totally still asleep. Room status: Nobody here but us dragons. Window status: Still floating weirdly at a sort-of comfortable distance from his face. In fact, it moved with Spike's eyes, always staying within view but not whipping around so fast as to dizzy him. He could see through it partially, so it wasn't even obstructing him that badly. Waving a clawed hand through it... Didn't disrupt it in the slightest, and he didn't even feel that faint tingle of trying to touch magic. It stubbornly refused to disperse, leaving him muttering in confusion.
"Why do I have an options menu?"
And as soon as the words left his lips, it was gone. He blinked again, thinking back. When he'd been dreaming, and then again now...
"No way. Was it because I said... Options?"
The window returned as if it had never been gone. He started grinning.
"... Game."
Nothing. But... Button. Oh! It's a button. He reached out and hesitantly 'clicked' the empty space with his finger, the same way he'd select it with a joystick or a gamepad. The button-of-sorts really did depress as he did so, at least visually, and the screen changed to match.
GAME OPTIONS
> DIFFICULTY AND MODES
> HUD MANAGEMENT
> DUNGEON OPTIONS
> CONTROLS / INTERFACE
> BACK
"OK, as weird as this entire situation is, let's mess with something less weird, relatively. Back."
No dice. Another click button, or... Actually, if it worked the first time, it should have worked this time. Well... Spike put a bit more oomph into his voice this time, not with volume but with emphasis and mental focus. He wasn't just saying the word, he was issuing a command.
"Back."
And that did it: The menu transitioned back to the previous state. Seemed to accept touch or emphasized vocal inputs, but not just casually saying the words. At least, that was a hypothesis: He'd have to test it more later.
"Sweet. Audio."
AUDIO OPTIONS
> SFX VOLUME> BGM VOLUME> DIALOGUE VOLUME
> LANGUAGE (DISABLED)
> SUBTITLES
> BACK
Volume... Yeah, hitting those just showed him sliders. BGM was all the way at 0, and after he slid it to 10 he could actually hear music... Pretty catchy, too. He dropped it back to around 2, just in case, um, well, he wasn't quite sure in case of what (maybe it had battle transitions?), but he never turned it all the way off in games anyways. Of course he also had no idea what was even going on, but he was never one to look some gift weirdness in the mouth, especially when nopony else was involved yet. He just didn't get to have as many adventures as everypony else, and even if this adventure was entirely in his own head and ended with him in Ponyville Sanitarium?
He'd take what he could get.
"Subtitles... Right, OH, yeah, neat. Let's change the color a bit though. Turn on the outlines... Extra neat. Um. How quiet can I be and have this still work?"
A minute or so later, Spike was barely even speaking, unable to so much as hear his own voice over the music... But the faint purple-and-black letters at the bottom of his vision still spelled it out perfectly, all in clean crisp Equiform. This was cool, but he was a little irked that his own brain had better clawwriting than him. Next step for testing that... He'd need somepony else to be talking where he shouldn't be able to hear it very well, or even in another language. But that's for later... Regroup, take stock, think about Twilight's lessons about science. Not her lessons about, like, chemistry or astronomy, but her lessons about the science of science.
Lessons like 'Study things from every angle available to you, seeking first to cause no harm, second to leave no traces, third to come away having learned something.' Or the classic 'Any test in which you learn something and nopony gets hurt is not a stupid test, even if it might seem like it. Try everything, within your means and within reason.' And of course, 'It is always valuable to maintain your skepticism in the face of the impossible, but evidence is evidence, and until it is shown otherwise, arbitrary skepticism is the same as willful ignorance.'
Well then, he could temporarily exclude any ideas that required another pony to test: Like if this was only visible to him, if his subtitles worked on other ponies or if they translated other languages, and so on and so on. Leaving him with the more immediate issues, like if he could work on figuring this out without looking crazy to anypony looking. So! Test #1: Are the menus just voice-and-touch driven, or could he command it in his head somehow?
Spike concentrated hard and thought the word "Back" with as much emphasis as he could. It didn't work. He 'clicked' a random space near the button. Nothing. Space between the buttons? Nada. Poked the screen with a nearby quill. Not-a-thing. He said the word "Back", without any emphasis. Still the same. He said the word "Rear" without emphasis. Nu-uh. Said "Rear" with emphasis... Nope. Finally, he went back to the tried and true method of saying the right word with the right emphasis... There we go. Theory confirmed.
"Verbal controls it is. So... Why were some of those menus disabled? I mean, one of them was just sound related, it wasn't even a game thing. Lemme see here, it was... Audio, Language."
The menu shifted once, but then a new box came up, a small lemon-yellow alert.
You do not meet the requirements to change this setting.
Required Intelligence: 125
Alternate requirements: ???
"Whaaat. OK, intelligence. Capital I Intelligence. Like a statistic? Um. Character sheet? Stats. Attributes. Traits... Status?"
And there it was. This... was a lot bigger than he'd even thought.
Name: Spike
Class: The Gamer
Title: The Gamer
Level: Lv 1
HP: 100/100
MP: 50/50
STR: 10 (-) (+)
DEX: 10 (-) (+)
VIT: 10 (-) (+)
INT: 10 (-) (+)
WIS: 10 (-) (+)
LUK: 10 (-) (+)
POINTS: 0
(Confirm?)
hahaaaa holy shit. i read a bunch of the manga a while ago, amazed to see it here. i am eager as all hell.
Oh god that manga
I'm so glad this is written in advance! Its like every time I find one of these, they di- go to sleep almost immediately afterwards and its really dissapointing.
It looks like it can be good so far, you're not focusing on un-necessary details, you had a great intro that was well written and not just a bunch of background info dumped onto the page. I'm realy excited to read a full one of these that gets finished!
9881158
So far there's a definite conclusion to what I'll call Part 1, and an epilogue for it. I'm going to be working in story arcs for this one, and I'm doing a hell of a lot more pre-planning than usual accordingly. So yeah, expect this to continue for quite some time unless IRL issues smack me up. Again.
Twilight has repeatedly ignored this part in canon. Just feel the need to point that out.
9883676
Maybe she said this due to making that mistake herself?
Also, This has been a pretty fun chapter. It's a bit interesting to theorize how Spike will handle this and if he'll tell anyone. After all, magic IS a thing in his world, so it's not that strange... Also, I'll be curious to see how he chooses to "build" himself.
"A debt of inspiration is owed specifically to Ryuugi at Spacebattles for his seminal work 'The Games We Play'."
So Spike is secretly a reincarnation of a ridiculously powerful robot?
Also judging by the Intelligence requirements that were shown and the fact he's been raised by Twilight, were gonna see Intelligence maxed out by the end of this.
*instantly* interested
9889559
:3
9889542
Since Jaune went for the Wisdom route with Intelligence backing, and Jee-Han went for the Intelligence route with Wisdom backing, Spike is going... somewhere else. :V
this is going to be fun
(maybe it had battle transitions?)
Exactly why I keep cs:go music on: the bomb 10s warning.
It's disabled by default now but damn that is a lifesaver.
Though I remember having unknown enemies in skyrim sometimes... music is battle but I see nothing.
the Time Loops mythos has some damn good worldbuiding, Spike's full name among it.
9966021
Yeah. For a while, I was convinced that the Time Loops were taking other fan ideas and mashing them together (much like the storytelling style in general), but some of the stuff (including that) I have not seen done elsewhere. Or at least, not done first elsewhere.
It's just a good fic (anthology of very small, related fics?) in general.
On a completely different note, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this story from the description, though it did seem interesting.
Definitely didn't expect this. (Still a great premise, though.)
First off, take my like. If your story is going to be anything like what you're basing it on I will give it a read. Nice to find another cultured person.
As far as first names go, this is the biggest mouthful I have had of one.
9880715
Yep. That manga. Do you think Spike will be a Mage or fly down a different path?
9881376
Interesting to see that comment now as of March 31, 2020.
Murphy's Law is a pain in the butt. Doing okay so far?
Wow, that's rude...
Intriguing start, though! I look forward to the rest.
10198578
I'm glad to hear it! Keep me posted (and / or commented), I'll be interested to see what you think. :D
This is pretty good so far. I hope that as I go along, there'll be some romance too, like with Starlight, the Mane 6, and/or the CMC
So that what Spike was doing all the time the mane 6 left him behind
Screw luck... We have skills. Literally
Well to be fair we all would go for a jack of all trades if we are trusted into a unknown game...
Dark Soul vibes...
10376383
Not me I’m a speed tank in dark souls lol
Same but I put more on agility for faster tanking
Time to re-reading this beautyful
Let the games begin... Normal difficulty i hope.