Chương 9: Vision

After apologizing profusely and helping Wes restack the books, Mark finally got a good look at Wes's room in daylight. A thin wash of orange light entered through the narrow window, the color of sunrise or sunset. Oddly, it had remained that color throughout their long conversation. Perhaps this world's sun was orange rather than yellow. While talking to Wes, though, Mark noticed that everything seemed somehow off.

Mark attributed it at first to the strange natural lighting in the room, but when he looked at his hands, he realized that did not explain it. Mark had spent plenty of time staring at his hands, first in candlelight and then multiple times in the forty-five subjective hours in the dimensional warren. The structure was the same now, with scales running down to three fingers and a thumb which were each tipped with a black claw. In daylight, the rare bronze scales on his hands were no longer simply bronze.

It was not simply a different shade or a brighter quality but a unique type of color his mind had no word for. Occasional red scales carried it too, but most of them remained ordinarily red. Once he noticed it on himself, he began seeing the same wrongness scattered throughout the room. The amethyst on Wes's desk finally gave him something to work with. Mark had catalogued the paperweights the night before: amethyst, rose quartz, and obsidian.

The information had arrived through his tongue, likely helped along by the earth magic he had only recently learned about. However Mark knew amethyst from his prior human memories. It was his wife's birthstone, and purple was his daughter's favorite color. The one on Wes's desk had been mundanely purple the night before from what little he was able to see it in the moon and candlelight glow. Bathed in the orange sunlight, it was not that color now. It was still purple, but it was no longer just purple.

That same color quality had layered itself past the violet end of the spectrum, and continued in a direction his prior visual vocabulary had no name for. It was not brighter, nor merely a different shade, but a color thirty-five years of human vision had left him with no category for. The absence of the category was itself the information Mark needed to deduce what was happening. A half-remembered documentary surfaced in his mind. Some reptiles could see into the ultraviolet spectrum.

Mark looked back at the amethyst. That could explain it. Sunlight contained significant amounts of ultraviolet light. Candlelight, moonlight, and the glowing fungi maybe didn't contain enough for him to notice. If this body had a photoreceptor his human eyes hadn't possessed, then his brain wasn't seeing a strange shade of purple when he looked at the amethyst. It was receiving an entirely new signal and doing its best to turn it into a color.

Perhaps some varying amounts of ultraviolet light were being reflected off of his scales and other random objects in the room as well leading to completely different versions of colors. This meant the world hadn't changed. His eyes had. This was a logical theory that accounted for everything Mark had noticed, but whether Wes or anyone else in this world could confirm it was another matter.

"The amethyst looks different than it did last night," Mark said. Wes looked up from his notes.

"It's the same amethyst."

"I know. There's a quality to it that wasn't there by candlelight. Several things in your room I noticed look different in sunlight." He held up his hand.

"My scales have colors I couldn't see before. Do you notice anything different?" Wes looked at Mark's hand with an expression that said he was doing his best to find something that he did not believe was present.

"You have mostly red scales with one or two bronze scales. I honestly don't know what you are expecting me to say."

"That's what I saw yesterday in the candlelight. Now I see bronze and red, but also colors I can't describe." He looked at Wes.

"Well kobolds are known to have excellent eyesight."

"Any idea why they are considered to have excellent eyesight?"

"They see better than humans in the dark." Wes paused for a few seconds.

"I don't know much more than that." Mark looked around the room, at all the items which had some foreign quality that was tugging at his mind in the background.

"So you have no idea whether kobolds see colors humans can't." Wes looked at the amethyst, then at Mark's hand, then back at his notes.

"I assumed better eyesight meant seeing things clearly from further away. Not an entirely different color scheme." He picked up his quill.

"What does it look like, the extra colors?" Mark looked at his own hand, at the thing the bronze scales were doing.

"I don't have a word for it. That's the point. That's how I know it's not something I've seen before." Wes frowned.

"So the world is different from your memories? Isn't that proof your memories are faulty?"

"My memories of colors lined up appropriately with what I saw last night. It's only in sunlight that everything looks different, which is why I think I see an extra part of sunlight humans can't. Some reptiles could do this according to my memories. I've also deduced that kobolds have a wider field of vision than humans. There are probably other subtle changes, but that's what I've figured out so far." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement. Mark then pointed a claw at Wes.

"I don't care much about research but I'd be open to doing research about different species' vision capabilities. Seems like it would be fun and gain a lot of knowledge for the world." Wes looked at Mark, raising one eyebrow slightly.

"Maybe that's something you can write on, but that isn't magic, and I can't imagine the wizarding community caring much about how kobolds view the world." Mark wanted to argue. Unfortunately, he still knew far too little about this world's existing science knowledge to explain why this could be useful in terms he and Wes could both understand. Mark resumed looking around the room and noticed something shiny underneath Wes's bed, a copper chamber pot.

Unlike everything else he had noticed that was shiny, this did not provoke his urge to hoard. Apparently even kobold hoarding instincts had standards. He was still examining the room when text abruptly appeared in his vision. INNATE ABILITY PROFICIENCY UPDATED Commentary Notice: I am the deity responsible for the Status Guide, and I despise commentary. Passive use of vision would normally require approximately one week of sun exposure to gain the first point, with each subsequent point becoming more difficult.

Most kobolds never reach apprentice level in vision since they spend most of their lives underground and increase darkvision heavily instead. Your knowledge has forced me to intervene because you reached a proficiency threshold backward. Normally, a kobold develops their Vision innate ability to apprentice level and then receives the perk which includes knowledge about your vision. You however independently discovered that knowledge while at an unacceptable level for knowing that knowledge.

The Status Guide is therefore required to correct this discrepancy. So far I have intervened due to early knowledge acquisition in only 126 entities in the history of the system. Perk Knowledge Confirmed: Your eyes contain an additional photoreceptor type that allows you to perceive what you know as ultraviolet light. This is a much wider visual spectrum than most species. I have called it "magical short light" for eons and I am not changing that name.

You also have a wider visual field and better motion sensitivity than humans, with slightly worse depth perception because your visual field overlaps less. You have obtained +15 Vision immediately because you independently deduced the knowledge normally granted at apprentice proficiency At apprentice proficiency, this knowledge is the associated perk, along with a five percent reduction in sun sensitivity.

Because you advanced from vision 1 to vision 16, your peripheral vision, depth perception, motion sensitivity, and resolution have improved accordingly. The result is a significant improvement over your already excellent kobold eyesight. This does not prove that your planet Earth is real or anyone named Mark Wright has ever existed. Those questions are beyond my domain.

Your body and brain register to me as a magical construct and just because you possess knowledge of magical short light does not mean I can change that classification. Since you now know I am a deity rather than a random function of the world, I may continue to provide commentary when I desire. This only applies when I am not doing other more important things. Do not disclose my nature. If you do, you will permanently lose access to everything under my control, including level increases and ability progression.

Current Status: Vision 16/100, Apprentice Mark's understanding of UV light was real. It was the first possible evidence since his arrival that his memories contained information he should not otherwise have known. Well, technically second since he was able to control his panic attack with his psychiatric knowledge.

The deity had not confirmed Earth existed, and it had definitely not confirmed that Mark Wright had ever lived there, but it had confirmed that at least one piece of his impossible knowledge matched reality. All Mark wanted to do was tell Wes. Unfortunately, the threat at the end of the commentary was too serious to ignore. If he disclosed the deity's existence, he would lose access to the status guide, the ability list, and level increases. So he decided to keep quiet.

Wes stood and walked to his cabinet having no idea Mark had just been granted the knowledge that there was a deity hidden in the status guide.

"Well, before we discuss where we're going today, you should have this. I went out first thing this morning to find it. It's why I wasn't there when your readings spiked." He pulled out a brown cloak and a rough gray tunic.

"I thought... since you feel human, you might want..." His voice trailed off, awkwardly. Mark stared at the clothing. His throat tightened.

"You went out and got me clothes."

"Most constructs don't care about clothing," Wes said quickly.

"It's one of the clearest ways to distinguish a wild kobold from a construct. Wild kobolds have social awareness. Even in their warrens, they wear work clothes, and when they interact with other species in public, they try to fit in. A brand-new construct usually doesn't think to want clothing and rarely develops any desire for it." He stared at the fabric rather than at Mark.

"You clearly had social awareness, so I figured you would enjoy having clothing. It seemed important." There was a pause.

"There's a tailor near the market who stocks non-citizen sizes and body types. I went as soon as I woke up this morning." Mark reached out and touched the rough fabric. It wasn't much, just a coarse weave with no decoration. However, Wes had thought about what he might need without Mark even asking. He had gone out early to find this, despite Wes having made clear how little money he had. It was a sincere gesture.

Forty-five hours around naked kobolds had dulled some of Mark's immediate embarrassment about his own lack of clothing. That didn't mean he'd stopped wanting any. Clothes represented dignity. They were something people wore, not animals.

"Thank you," Mark said, and his voice cracked slightly.

"Really. Thank you." Wes helped him into the tunic first, then fastened the cloak over it. It took a couple of attempts before everything sat correctly. Threading his tail through the hole in the tunic was its own small ordeal. Mark's claws made fine work clumsy and he had to be careful not to accidentally tear the fabric with them. All the effort it took to put the clothes on was worth it. It was the most human he had felt since he woke up in this world.

"There is one other thing I looked up this morning that I think would help you," Wes said.

"Professor Venwick's research suggests the memory fade can be accelerated. A simple supplemental ritual which should take thirty minutes to set up at most. It would not harm you in any way, and it would mean the distress you're experiencing now could be resolved immediately rather than over possibly several weeks." Mark stared at him. Wes had just offered, with genuine kindness and complete sincerity, to help him forget his wife and daughter faster. Anger came fast enough that Mark felt his claws flex.

He took several slow breaths before he trusted himself to answer.

"Absolutely not. And do not ever suggest that again, Wes. I will never forget my family. I do not want to forget them." Wes opened his mouth, then closed it. He genuinely did not understand what he had done wrong.