The Corrupted Skill Tree
A Game World
By Micah Siemens
I used to solve problems by hitting them until they stopped existing.
The world encouraged it. Forests regrew overnight. Towns reappeared after I left. Enemies lined up in polite clusters, as if waiting their turn to be erased. When I swung my blade, numbers burst into the air like fireworks—proof that the solution had worked.
My skill tree was a masterpiece. Everything sharp and fast and loud had been fed. Everything else had been left to starve.
There were greyed-out branches I never touched. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Little words, soft words, sitting there like decorative options in a menu no serious player opened. When I hovered over them, warnings appeared. Reduces damage output. Conflicts with efficiency. Locks certain abilities.
I had laughed and moved on.
That afternoon, I was cutting through what used to be a city. The map still called it one, anyway. The buildings collapsed neatly when I brushed past them, dissolving into rubble that the system promised would refresh later. Enemies spawned endlessly, weaker each time, as if ashamed to slow me down.
Then everything froze.
Not the dramatic kind of pause. No thunder. No announcement from the sky. Just a quiet stutter, like the world had caught its foot on something invisible.
A message appeared, small and calm.
World Stability: Critical.
I swung my sword again. Nothing happened.
The enemies didn’t attack. They stood there, watching me, weapons lowered, waiting to see what I would do next. For the first time, the silence felt heavy.
I checked my build. It was still perfect. Power was maxed. Speed, rage, momentum—everything I understood glowed brightly. The softer branches were still dead and grey.
Another message appeared.
Virtue deficit detected.
Forced respec available. Permanent.
I scoffed and dismissed it. There was always some hidden challenge meant to slow you down before the endgame. I stepped forward, ready to carve a path through whatever this was.
The final gate did not open.
Instead, the world began to resist me in smaller, stranger ways. Shopkeepers raised their prices until I could no longer afford repairs. Quest-givers stopped offering rewards and started offering opinions. Enemies no longer rushed me. They retreated, regrouped, returned in ways that dragged fights on without ever feeling dangerous.
I was winning constantly and going nowhere.
That was when I noticed a child trapped beneath a fallen beam near the edge of the ruins. No marker hovered above her. No reward flickered in my vision. She was just there, struggling quietly, as if unsure whether she was allowed to take up space.
I almost walked past her.
Helping her did nothing impressive. The beam lifted easily. She thanked me and ran off, and for a moment I felt cheated, as if I had spent effort without being reimbursed.
Then something shifted.
Not in the world—in me.
A branch I hadn’t touched lit up, faint but unmistakable. Love, it said, with a small increase beside it. My blade felt heavier in my hand. When I struck the next enemy, the blow landed softer than it should have.
I tried to undo it.
I retraced my steps, reloaded old moments, made different choices. The change stayed. Love did not care about my efficiency.
As I moved forward, the world responded differently. Groups that would have attacked me now hesitated. Some stepped aside. Others asked questions. My damage continued to dip, just enough to be annoying, just enough to make me notice.
Joy came next, unlocked when I lingered too long in a village that had lost everything and somehow still laughed when the sun came up. It didn’t make me stronger. It made the waiting easier. I no longer burned through my strength as quickly, no longer needed to force myself forward every second.
Peace arrived when I stopped mid-fight, lowered my weapon, and let an enemy finish speaking. The endless reinforcements never came after that. The battlefield grew quiet, and for the first time I realized how tired I had been of the noise.
Each new Fruit dulled something I relied on. My sweeping strikes lost their reach. My ability to end things quickly slipped away. Patience forced me to wait through moments I would once have skipped, and somehow the rewards that followed felt heavier, more solid. Gentleness turned killing blows into something else entirely—conflicts ended without bodies piling up, and entire factions stopped hunting me in return.
I was weaker by every measure I had trusted.
And yet the world began to heal.
Paths opened that had never revealed themselves to brute force. Doors unlocked because someone recognized me. Enemies laid down their weapons before I ever raised mine. I stopped checking my numbers and started watching faces.
At the edge of the final zone, the system offered me one last mercy.
Revert to optimal build.
World Stability will reset.
I hovered over the option for a long time. I remembered how clean everything used to feel. How fast. How simple.
I declined.
The final enemy was familiar. It wore my old strengths like armor—fast, furious, endless. Every time it struck, the ground shattered. Every attempt to overpower it only made it stronger, louder, more impossible.
I stopped trying to win the way I used to.
I stayed close. I waited. I absorbed the blows without answering them in kind. When it raged, I did not. When it called for reinforcements, none arrived. When it tried to overwhelm me with speed, it found nowhere to go.
There was no moment of triumph. No explosion of light. The fight ended quietly, like a storm running out of weather.
When it was over, the skill tree settled into a shape I would once have mocked. Uneven. Slower. Whole.
A final message appeared.
Build Status: Stable.
I logged out shortly after.
Not because I was bored.
Because there was nothing left to break.
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