The computer screens inside the treatment room were much like I’d left them last night.
As they flickered to life, they showed me my failures, my successes, and my speculations of equal measure. These past weeks hadn’t been for nothing. I’d learned a lot and achieved…enough, hopefully. I’d done what I could, at least.
For, where 225 credits wouldn’t buy you a whole lot of useful things, if you knew where to look, it could get you garbage in bulk. Less than a day after Celian had given me his run-down of mod synthesizing, I’d managed to negotiate myself some 300 bottom-of-the-barrel, poorly-stored, and ungradable mods — the stuff not even the gene-mills would buy — from the right kind of shady dealer.
It would’ve been pure disaster if I’d thought to use it on myself as was, but it was also the kind of stuff where I wouldn’t care too much if things accidentally broke down here and there as I poked around in them. Even if it’d cost me all my funds, I needed something that I could fearlessly experiment on.
I was a novice, as green as they come, and I needed experience.
My original plan had been one of three stages.
The first part had been to simply bash my head against the first couple of scrap-mods, hoping to learn something. Partially about synthesizing itself, but also about my nauseating new sixth sense. Some part had also been hoping for some System prompts and level ups to appear, pointing me in the right direction. Something was guiding me along, and I needed to be smarter in how I used it.
The potential of grinding out skills barely anyone understood through brute force hadn’t gone me unnoticed. Even if it would turn out expensive and time consuming, abusing the System in ways no one else could seemed too strong to ignore.
The second stage of my plan had vaguely involved me making use of what I’d learned to work my way up the food chain. I’d held some glorified image of myself breezing through the first stage; producing low-grade, synthetic mods en masse; selling them for profit; using said profit to buy better materials; only to rinse and repeat as my skills and experience grew. As things would have it, two weeks was a painfully short amount of time, and expecting anything but absolute struggle had been painfully optimistic.
I hadn’t been able to recoup a single credit of my investment before I was forced to blindly push ahead with the third stage of my plan: creating something worthwhile for myself. I’d wanted to have more confidence by that point, better base materials, but they were simply luxuries I couldn’t afford.
In short, some parts of my plan had been less successful than others.
My first mistake had been underestimating just how poor some of the mods I’d bought were. The down side of buying scrap in bulk was that a lot of it wouldn’t even reach that standard. At times, it was a mere miracle if the computers got a read on one of those mods, but even if they did, my sixth sense would barely react as I looked at them. There was simply nothing there.
My second mistake was that I’d gotten too eager. I’d gotten overconfident, thinking my System messages about being some Administrator with visible Levels would somehow make me an unprecedented genius. It was too early for that.
Even if seeing my Gene Synthesizing and Splicing levels steadily go up had kept me from completely breaking down as nothing worked, I never moved past the stage of feeling like a mad gambler whenever I attempted something new.
Though, maybe, the odds began to stack a bit more in my favor at some point. Maybe the levels I’d gained were actually doing something, and my senses were getting sharper.
As the days passed and my bulk of scrap-mods grew thinner at a nerve-wracking pace, I began to feel when things were about to go wrong even before they did. In some cases, I was even able to avoid it. I was able to abort the fusion I was in the middle of or stitch the incision I’d barely started back together before things fully unraveled.
Two days ago, after a string of meager successes, I finally found the courage to try to improve the Cryak mod. Time had been running out, and it remained my best bet for making something worthwhile. It was the most stable mod I owned, and if anything would work, it was that one.
Or so I’d told myself, but I’d been sweating buckets as I made that first incision.
Even now, as I was certain that it had worked, I still hadn’t dared to upload the mod from the splicing chamber that contained it. For now, it was being kept artificially stable by the hyper-cooled protein fluid, and if it began to unravel as I transferred it, I wanted Celian to be here to directly fuse its remnants to my genetic code.
I couldn’t afford losing it, even if the operation would cripple me forever.
But it had succeeded. It wouldn’t unravel, or so I kept telling myself, even as I felt sick with nerves whenever I thought about it.
The first E-graded synthetic mod I’d managed to make out of scraps, costing me nearly a week of experiments and over seventy mods, had unraveled as I tried uploading it. The memory still made me want to scream. The second one I’d made, two days later with half the materials, hadn’t even survived the stabilization process.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
The third one was, just like the Cryak mod, still contained within its splicing chamber. That one, I’d made yesterday, and I still hadn’t dared touch it out of fear of breaking something.
Such was the bottleneck of my current progress. Although I might be able to improve either of the mods I was about to integrate with, I might just as well break them and be left with nothing.
I didn’t dare take the gamble.
Although I’d yet to upload them, I hadn’t been blind as I made them. They were more stable than mods of twice their gradings, and they contained the growth modifiers I sought. Trying to get something more right now would just be spitting in the face of fortune.
As such, with seventeen scrap-mods worth of materials left to use, and a single unoccupied splicing chamber, I’d decided to make the best mod I could for Myla instead.
At worst, it’d be good experience tailoring it after someone else’s genetic code. More so, last night, Splicing had reached level ten, and I’d earned a new ability I was dying to try out.
Synthesizing 9 > 10
New Ability Generated:
Domain: Codebreaker
EXP Stabilization,
Use Set To, Automatic
Disable (y/n?):
I wasn’t sure what it was meant to do, but I’d always preferred to learn by doing rather than baseless speculation. I plugged in Myla’s samples and executed the gene scan.
It would take some time before it finished, so I began sorting through the materials I had left.
This part was as important as anything else, I’d learned. Even if I couldn’t guarantee the outcome without a proper mold to follow, I could vaguely predict where I’d end up depending on the materials I used.
Strength mods tended to make strength mods, mental mods were good for enhancing themselves, and if you mixed the two together…well, I hadn’t gotten that far yet. I wasn’t even sure if it was possible.
Long story short, even if I made her a functioning mod, a careless choice might turn her into a hulking Khrecks of a woman in a short few years. Or if I leaned too hard into the mental mods of a developing child, I might turn her into a human calculator by the age fifteen, but unable to tie her own shoelaces anymore.
The worst part was, at large, I was forced to rely on instincts or vague logic as I made my choices. Focus on growth modifiers for hers, too, and they shouldn’t overwhelm her natural genome at least. Make it balanced, and even if she never excels in any one area, at least she won’t be crippled in any either. Specialization can come later, with other mods.
Don’t make it too bulky, as there’s no guarantee how much her genetics can handle, but don’t be too afraid either. You’ll only hamper her growth if you make her something weaker than what she’ll get at the Academy…
I’m not sure how many hours I spent pondering the matter, but in a sense, I gave it even more thought than I had my own. Creating the mods that would forever alter someone else’s life made the reality of it hit harder, and by the time the gene scan was complete, nerves made me commit a dumb mistake.
The incision I’d made on the scrap-mod meant to be her core wasn’t accurate. Fortunately, EXP Stabilization quickly proved its use.
Rather than immediately unravel, it seemingly froze everything in place, allowing me to quickly mend my mistake and try anew. Over the coming hours, it would prove the strongest tool I’d ever gotten.
Not only did it allow me to relax, but as my confidence grew, it allowed me to try things I’d never dared try before – to push things farther than ever without fear that it all would break down.
They were golden training wheels for a stumbling novice. Though, they didn’t come free. Perhaps, had I paid more attention, I would’ve noticed how the EXP I’d earned without realizing was ticking down upon another of the screens:
100…
99…
98…
97…
But my eyes were too mesmerized by what was occurring before me.
For the first time in two weeks, I truly felt as if I was synthesizing a mod with purpose. I wasn’t just gambling and praying that things would work out anymore.
With the ability to redo my mistakes, the incisions I made began to separate the codes in the right place down to the exact digit, only to then fuse together in perfect strands.
47…
46…
45…
Without realizing how time was passing, I became absorbed in my work. I was almost disappointed as that last of the seventeen mods had been used up, not a single one of them having broken down on the way.
The plans of modesty I’d laid out beforehand were gone, and the more I worked with the mod I was creating, the more it seemed to evolve. Its fusions became deeper, and new connections formed where I hadn’t even realized them possible. And whenever I started to wonder if I’d done enough – my eyes hurting and my brain feeling like mush – I’d imagine Myla locked in harness, sinking towards the bottom, screaming as vicious serpents surrounded her.
I wouldn’t be there for her anymore. I needed to give her something better…
18…
17…
16…
This wasn’t just my parting gift to her, but it was also my sincerest apology – a hope that she’d find happiness, that she’d grow up strong, and that she’d never have to go through anything like that again.
All contained there in my new creation. All tailored for a friend I was doomed to leave behind.
2…
1…
0…
Eyes of the L’Ithari 5 > 7
>Gene Synthesizing 11 > 20
> EXP Stabilization 1 > 4
>
> >Splicing 16 >
>
> Gene Incisions 4 > 6
>
> Gene Fusing 4 > 6
>
> Gene Mapping 2 > 4
Focus > 1
Dexterity 4 > 5
Creativity > 1
Creation > 1
Achievement(s) Unlocked:
Unique Creation
> Mod Stability
>
> +5%
>
> Chance For Getting Improved Results
>
> +.5%
Current EXP: 0…
Available Genomes (1/3):
Human 0/10B EXP
Genome Upgrades, Unavailable