“Alright, enough fun and games. How’d you do?” I gesture back the way he came from.
“I will get you back,” Ali mutters before answering me, “Pretty good. The Salamander Sac’s the first to come from Earth, so you got a premium so it sold for $23,187 Credits. The Ogre Hides mostly went cheaply except the kids. Those are premium, softer you know…”
He shuts up as I hold my hand, not really needing a detailed list of his exploits. He grumbles for a moment about ungrateful children before answering, “38,632 Credits for all of it.”
“That gives us 250,632 Credits yes? And correct me if I’m wrong, but we can buy and apply these in any order we need yes?”
“Yeah…”
“Good. Here’s what I’m thinking,” I gesture back to the newly pulled up windows, getting ready to argue with the Spirit.
“You can stop anytime pretty boy,” Ali grouses as I continue to stare at my reflection. I just flash him a grin, touch the helmet again and make it retreat into a simple metal collar around my neck. The one piece jumpsuit that I wear is all in black and leaves nothing to the imagination, but that’s okay since it is also armor.
Pretty boy is an actual truth for once. The Genome Treatment seems to have, amongst other things, made me actually good looking. My chin has strengthened, my features become slightly more symmetrical and elongated, blending my Chinese origins with other races. I look closer to Keanu Reeves than myself in some ways. Some things I’ve kept such as my black hair and eyes but additional minor changes have occurred all across my body including an extra four inches of height and a significant amount of muscles. Lines that had started cropping up in the last few years, small enough only I’d notice have wiped away another decade, making me look to be in my early 20’s again. The facial changes were particularly unnerving but thankfully, I seem to have sub-consciously adjusted to all the changes relatively well. I guess the mental resistance training that came with my Class is helping me - either that or the System is just altering my mind to let me get on with my life.
Surprisingly, beyond the surface changes, I don’t feel a significant change in the performance of my body. When questioned, Ali explained it as a side effect of my level and class – I’ve long ago exceeded peak human genetics so the genome treatment could only provide minor additional adjustments. Something about creating denser muscle fibres, a higher level of red blood cells, increased grey matter and more, most of which I tuned out.
Mostly, what I’ve focused on are the mental changes. As part of the genome treatment, it seemed that a chemical flush was required which has left me feeling more stable, emotions a bit more under control. There’s still residual anger and guilt for surviving, but for now, I’m functional again without the rather severe neurological chemical imbalance I had. Of course, seeing how my mental resistances was handling the outward physical changes with aplomb, I wonder exactly how close I would have been to a breakdown without the class. For a former office worker, I’d done a hell of a lot of running, hiding and killing over the last week.
It doesn’t really matter, I am still here and what if’s could go on forever. It is what it is. Still, I curiously pull up my Status Screen to see the changes.
Status Screen
Name
John Lee
Class
Erethran Honor Guard
Race
Human (Male)
Level
7
Titles
Monster’s Bane
Health
390
Stamina
390
Mana
360
Status
Normal
Attributes
Strength
27 (50)
Agility
38 (70)
Constitution
39 (75)
Perception
14
Intelligence
36 (60)
Willpower
36 (60)
Charisma
14
Luck
10
Skills
Stealth
6
Wilderness Survival
3
Unarmed Combat
2
Knife Proficiency
5
Athletics
5
Observe
5
Cooking
1
Sense Danger
4
Jury-rigging
2
Explosives
1
Class Skills
None (4 Locked)
Spells
None
Perks
Spirit Companion
Level 3
Prodigy (Subterfuge)
N/A
Unassigned Attributes:
12 Stat Points
Would you like to assign these attributes? (Y/N)
“Didn’t your mother tell you not to rub it so much,” Ali grouses and I come back to the present and pull my hand down from rubbing my head. There’s not even a scar, but if I focus, I can feel the installed neural link in my mind become active. I could almost swear I can feel it sitting in my brain, but that I know is purely psychosomatic. Once again, I call up the detail window of the link.
Tier IV Neural Link
Neural link may support up to 5 connections.
Current connections: Omnitron III Class II Personal Assault Vehicle
Software Installed: Rich’lki Firewall Class IV, Omnitron III Class IV Controller
Dismissing the window, I walk over to my Personal Assault Vehicle, stroking the handlebars. The PAV looks like a road bike on steroids in this configuration, pure black with sleek lined armor plates. That’s not the only thing though, with a thought the PAV can break apart and attach itself to me, acting as power armor. That’s right – I have bike mecha. It almost makes up for all the stupid, crazy shit that I’ve gone through. Almost.
I can’t help but call up the details of the mecha again, just to gloat a little.
Omnitron III Class II Personal Assault Vehicle (Sabre)
Core: Class II Omnitron Mana Engine
CPU: Class D Xylik Core CPU
Armor Rating: Tier IV
Hard Points: 4 (1 Used for Quantum Space Manipulator Integrator)
Soft Points: 3 (1 Used for Neural Link)
Requires: Neural Link for Advanced Configuration
Battery Capacity: 120/120
Attribute Bonuses: +20 Strength, +7 Agility, +10 Perception
Ali had even been helpful – working with me to tweak my initial choice of the Ares version of this product to the Omnitron. The Omnitron was more heavily armed and armored normally but suffered from a smaller mana engine. Instead, at Ali’s suggestion we had sacrificed the installed weaponry and the better armor for an upgraded mana engine. The result was a bare bones product that had no bells and whistles but could be upgraded significantly and that has a significant recharge rate.
To keep cost down, we also went with ablative armoring. The way armor worked in this new world, you could either choose super-tough armor that would shatter if it ever was breached or ablative armor that crumpled and reduced but was useable even after getting damaged. Of course, Tier IV armor was still extremely strong by pre-Earth standards. In fact, most of the monsters I’ve fought directly wouldn’t even leave a scratch on it. I’m obviously not counting the Salamander since I never really fought it - just ran away a lot.
The only upgrade we had purchased for the bike was the integrator to the QSM which by itself had cost a quarter again the price of Sabre. Yeah, I named it. Sue me. I would say I was surprised at how expensive the upgrade was, but considering how ridiculously useful the QSM had turned out to be, I was willing to pay for it.
Of course, that left us with much-reduced funds for my personal weapon. In the end, we had settled on 2 different weapons. The first was attached via a handy holster to Sabre with some minor modifications. It looked for the most part like a regular semi-automatic hunting rifle with a faux wooden stock, just with a slightly bulkier than normal stock. Of course, it wasn’t:
Ferlix Type II Beam Rifle (Modified)
Base Damage: 38
Battery Capacity: 21/21
Recharge rate: 1 per hour per GMU (currently 12)
I had to bug Ali to get an explanation of the recharge rate, which he finally did explain in detail, way too much detail in fact. He even pulled up graphs and charts with maps of both the solar system and galaxy. Truth be told, I tuned out after the first 5 minutes. It all boiled down to this – the Galactic Council had instituted a series of measurements based off the ‘base’ mana available in the ambient surroundings in the capital. This was a single Galactic Mana Unit or GMU. All mana engines were rated based on their ability to absorb and charge a mana battery based off a single GMU. However, in Dungeon worlds and zones with higher levels, the recharge rates would increase as there was just more GMUs. Mana batteries could be recharged directly but it was a specialised skillset since an improperly charged mana battery would explode.