Upon the morning I wake and it feels like a fog has been lifted from my mind. I get up and walk around, my movements feel slightly more fluid and powerful. But I have no way to know if it is real or just a placebo based on what I expect to happen. I grab my bag and look over at Jims' sleeping form in the single bed across the room and slowly make my way out, trying not to wake him. I find the kitchen, windows boarded up like the rest of the house, but with sunlight still making its way through the cracks and illuminating the room. I sit at an old fashioned, well cared for, wooden table. I take out one of my tins of food and notice I have ten cans of food left and 10 or so protein bars that I have been snacking on during the days. And hidden in a compartment, my chocolate, that I'm saving for a special occasion.
I finish off my food and throw it in the bin, that is on the right side of the kitchen door, with an inoperable fridge on the left. Just as I am about to exit, Jim comes walking in.
"Morning." Jim greets me.
"Morning."
"You leaving?"
"Yeah."
"If you wouldn't mind the company, I'd like to come with you to Adelaide."
I think about it for several moments, and suddenly decide that it might be a little safer travelling in a group. Plus, he seems like a likeable guy.
"Yeah sounds good to me. I just need to get changed and then I'm good to go."
"Ok, give me half an hour and I'll be ready."
I make my way back to the room and change into the second set of clothes Jim gave me. A pair of blue jeans and a red t-shirt. I put back on my belt and knife. Then start transferring the objects from my old jeans into my backpack. A wallet, set of keys and the first thing I ever cut with my mind, the knob of rock, with its eerily smooth cut.
I make my way down to the loungeroom and find the other four members of the group there. As I enter I notice they are finalising what the will be doing for the day. We say good morning and I inform them I will be leaving. They say goodbye and as I start walking towards the door, Jim comes in. I nod to him and let him say his goodbyes and go outside to wait.
I sit on the steps of the porch and push out my nano-sense as far as I can. Compared to yesterday everything is crisper, I can sense for fully the shape of an object and not just the density of the nano-bots. I also can reach about ten more meters out so nearly half again of what I could yesterday. So there is some link between intelligence and the RMR. It makes sense that there would be. But it is nice to have some confirmation.
About five minutes later I sense Jim and the others coming before I see or hear them. I stand up as the door opens.
"Thank you for allowing me to stay last night. If I am ever back this way I'll try to find some way to repay you."
"No need, young man. Stay safe and good luck finding your sister.", Anna replies.
And with no further ado, Jim and I leave the property and take a left. We pass a couple of houses I didn't really notice last night and in the daylight and see some subtle signs of neglect starting to show. A broken window here and there, and a couple of mounds of freshly turned dirt, that although are not signs of neglect are interesting.
As we turn onto the main road I turn to Jim.
"What's with the piles of dirt?"
"Everyday along with searching for food, if we happen to kill or find a body we bury it.", Jim says somberly.
With nothing to say to that, I change subjects, to something that has interested me from the start.
"Have you noticed how when we kill something it awards us experienced based on difficulty?"
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well, I was wondering how much experience do you get when killing with a gun?"
"That dog last night was the most I ever got at 250exp, it was also mutated with size and strength. But everything else from between 100 and 200."
"Damn, that's a massive difference. The first animal I killed, a dingo, gave me 700. It surprisingly didn't even manage to hurt me, but my body was completely exhausted afterwards."
Jim stops walking and looks at me.
"Do you mind if we backtrack a little bit. I want to get myself a knife. Shouldn't take more than 20 minutes."
"Yeah, sure, no problems"
I continue to tell Jim that using a knife reduced the experience a bit, but it is not all that noticeable.
About an hour, later roughly 30 meters from a massive rock beside the road, I suddenly stop.
"What's up?", Jim asks.
"Massive presence on the rock coming up"
Jim gives me a questioning look.
"One of the things you can do with the RMR System. You can detect the density and shape of nano-bot clusters. Well at least I can now, it started as a very vague sense of presence everywhere."
"Definitely have to learn that."
"What do you think?"
"How about cross the road and if it tries to go for us, try to impale it with your spear before it can close the distance."
"Sounds good."
We casually cross the road and continue walking. As we reach boulder I still cannot see anything, however, I can still feel it. Nothing happens as we pass the boulder, but once it is about ten metres behind us, I feel the presence move.
"I just felt it move, keep walking, but get your knife ready, it hasn't left the rock yet."
About ten steps later, I sense it rapidly dart forward, incredibly fast.
I start turning around while lowering my spear and shout out, "NOW!.".
I get my spear down in time but misjudge where it is and only manage to pierce it in the side and rip out a shallow gash. I dive to the side and manage to nearly miss the claws of the massive 2-metre perentie (a type of monitor lizard). As I finish my roll and get back up, side bleeding, I am just in time to see Jim, jump to the side and score a deep slash on the opposite side of the perentie. I throw my spear at it and hit the tail ( I was aiming for the chest). Although it does have the benefit of briefly distracting it. It twists in upon itself and bites down on the spear. Jim runs up to it the lizard having past us during its attack. Jim slashes at its face and the perentie swings its body around tail and spear hitting the back of Jims' legs, as it unbends itself. Jim crashes down, winded. The lizard jumps upon him, forelegs hitting his upper arms and sinking in. Jim tries to cry out, but only lets out a croak, having no air to be able to release.
Full of adrenalin, I pull out my knife and everything seems to slow down. My muscles struggle to keep up with the signals firing from my brain. I jump on its back, bringing my knife down onto its back. I saw it back and forth trying to cut the spinal cord. The lizard lets out a roar while swinging its head around, in an amazing display of agility. Its mouth closes around my forearm, it's wicked backwards curving teeth gouging out the flesh of my arm. My left hand falls limp as the teeth cut through the tendons, with dull snapping sounds. Just then the body collapses hind legs giving out at the spinal cord is cut. I withdraw the knife and plunge it towards the head. The knife hits the back of the skull, sinking in but then skidding off of the skull before going deeper as it reaches the top of the neck. I twist the knife trying to cause as much damage as possible, all the while screaming wildly in anger and pain.
Seconds later the perentie goes limp. I jump off, arm bleeding profusely and try to roll the enormous lizard off of Jim. Jim having managed to catch his breath enough to move, awkwardly pulls himself from underneath the lizard. We sit there puffing for several minutes before Jim speaks fatalistically.
"Well, I think this might be it for me. I will probably bleed out before too long."
I look at him and shake my head.
"I might not look it but when I came through on the first day I have several broken bones and was pretty injured from the crash. But I received a message about undergoing accelerated healing or repair or something and several hours later I was right as rain and thirsty as a desert. Why don't you try to have a look at your messages?"
Jim looks at me blankly for several seconds, before it looks like he is concentrating on something. Suddenly he starts laughing, tears coming to his eyes.
"Says it will take about 4 hours and use my water and fat reserves."
"Yep, that's the one."
"Okay, I'll see you in several hours then."
Before I can reply, his eyes close and his body falls limp. Shaking my head internally at his enthusiasm, but completely understanding it at the same time, I acknowledge my own messages.
Enemies dead
1x Perentie - Mutated (strength, camouflage)
1200exp, based on difficulty
Damage has been detected, torn ligaments and tendons in the left arm and scratches across the torso. As it appears you are not currently in battle do you wish accelerated repair?
Yes/no
Not wanting to leave us defenseless, I say no. Plus with how my cuts healed the other day, I'm pretty sure they will heal relatively fast anyway. With several hours to kill, I make my way over to the lizard and retrieve it from the tail. It is a little bloody but otherwise undamaged. Now that the heat of the moment has worn off I start remembering some more details. Like how the lizard was rapidly changing colour as it hit the road. Even now that the lizard is dead the skin is still somehow changing to mimic the road more completely. I want that skin, however, I don't really have any idea how to go about it. I decide to wait until Jim wakes up hopefully he has some experience with skinning animals.
With nothing else to do, I sit and have a couple of protein bars and some water, stretching out my senses. Trying my hardest to make the images of my nano-sense sharper. And time steadily crawled by, hot sun beating down upon my neck.
Over the hours I constantly checked on Jim, amazed at the rate he was healing. Wounds closing up before my eyes. To my nano-sense, it seemed like he was vibrating or something.
As suddenly as Jim went to sleep he woke up.
Jim's eyes opened and wordlessly I hand him his water. He nodded and started gulping down water. After finishing off half the bottle he stops and starts touching his arms where the claws punctured. Several seconds later, he starts laughing. He looks over at me and notices my still existing, but slightly diminished injures.
"Sorry 'bout that."
I give him a slightly confused look.
"Well, I should have talked about it before just accepting like that."
"No, don't worry about it. You were clearly more injured."
"Ok, thanks. So your turn yeah?"
"Nah, already decline. Almost quarter of the way healed anyway. But I do have one thing to ask though."
"Yeah, what's that?"
I tell him about the perentie skin and how it continued to change colours even after death. He seemed to understand what I was driving at straight-away and before I had even asked he pulled out his knife and got to work.
"So, I take it you've done this before?"
"To a massive lizard? No. But to a couple of kangaroos, yeah. Which reminds me, where the hell are they?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, normally kangaroos are pretty thick around here. Yet I haven't even seen any in the distance. Have you?"
"No."
About an hour later, Jim finished skinning and scraping the perentie skin. He then started to roll it up, but I quickly stop him wanting to test something.
I wrap the skin around my body and immediately start questioning my decision as it is still wet and lizard juices start soaking into my clothes and wetting my skin. But since it is already on I steel my resolve and walk over to the boulder the lizard came from and lean against it. Seconds later I hear Jim.
"Damn, that's trippy. You kind of look like a floating head."
Feeling inwardly elated I take off the skin.
"How is this even possible." Jim asks.
"Well if I had to guess, it probably is possible because of the camouflage mutation."
Jim furrows his brows in thought and then nods.
I put the perentie skin in my backpack, which I then put on. I pick up my spear and go to pick up my water bottle. But my left hand refused to close properly around it, pain flaring and causing me to grunt. Jim silently comes up beside me and picks it up.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it."
We start walking again in silence, my arm wrapped in pain as it heals. I start pushing out my nano-sense again, when Jim suddenly breaks the silence.
"Do you think you could give me a couple of tips with the RMR system?"
"Yeah, sure. Well, the first thing I did was try to sense the world but that didn't really get much response. The next thing I did was, this."
I pause for a second, as I take off my backpack and rummage around. Finding the rock I pull it out and pass it to Jim.
He looks curiously at the rock as I explain what I did. He hands it back and picks up a rock.
"I wouldn't do that if I was you."
"Why?"
"Well, it used up all of my RMR and I nearly passed out. Can you sense how little density the nano-bots have in the rock?"
He shakes his head. I pass him my spear and ask him to concentrate on the spear and the rock like you are trying to reach out with your mind.
I let him focus and continue my own training. I already know that I changed the structure of the tip of my spear. But, how much further can I take it? Could I change something into gold? Probably but how much of my RMR will that take? Could I make my clothes stronger? The more I think about it, the more excited I become. It honestly feels practically limitless.
But for now, I want to try something a little different. I pick up a small stick and concentrate. It comes to me immediately how much clearer my understanding of a singular object is and when I visualise what I want the image is so sharp it feels like I projected it. I grab both ends of the stick and bend it. As I bend it, I focus on the stick and push out the feeling of the rightness of the new shape and imagine that when I let go the shape will stay the same. I let go of the stick and rejoice internally as the stick stays shaped like a U.
I quickly look at my RMR and notice that it took roughly 2 RMR. Why does it cost so much to cut something? Ok, next experiment, I grab another short stick and again shape it into a U. Checking my RMR usage I see it has stayed the same. Next, I hold the two U's together and concentrate on the image of the two pieces of wood being joined together. I push and the two pieces of wood sink into each other. I laugh out loud and have a look at my RMR expenditure and curse. Just joining the two small pieces of wood together took 36 of my RMR. I don't know why but I kind of feel this is related to why things are so expensive to cut too.
I stop studying the newly formed oval and stretch out my senses again, unfortunately, I don't know how to do both things at the same time. I look over at Jim and notice he is looking at me, he speaks when he catches my eye.
"Mind if I see that?" Pointing at my stick.
"Sure."
I throw it over.
"Impressive."
"Maybe, but it took nearly half of my RMR. So have you been able to sense the concentration of nano-bots in the wood and rock?"
"I think so. In the rock it seems to mostly be around the surface, but with the wood it's everywhere."
"Yeah, pretty much. So my current theory is that since their are more nano-bots they have to expend less energy or what ever they take from us, since they don't have to move as far."
We continue talking about images and then Jim sees a large tree stump and decides he wants to try to make a shield.
"Remember to try and make it so it is easy to remove. I made my spear in the middle of a branch."
"Alright."
Knowing he will probably be a while I sit down and I decide to see if I can slowly increase the density of my spear slightly. I construct a mental image of my spear, once again being surprised with how clear it feels. Then I imagine compressing the diametre of the spear by a millimetre. Once I have the image clear in my head, I push it onto the spear. My vision fades to black and I collapse bonelessly to the ground. Seconds later I open my eyes and stand up. Like the first two times I blacked out from overuse of my RMR, my mind feels like its pushing through syrup, just a little less viscous this time. Jim is looking at me in concern. I briefly tell him what happened and then look at my RMR and see I used 60 bringing me down to precisely 0.
"Does that always happen?" Jim asks in concern.
"No, only when you get close to zero."
"What did you do?"
"Increased the density of my entire spear by a fraction."
"How much did that use?"
"60."
"Shit! Noted, well I won't be doing that then."
I raise my eyebrow.
"I thought it would be cool to have an ultra thin heavy-duty shield."
Half an hour later we start walking again, Jim with his new shield in hand and 93 RMR lighter and me with my slightly denser spear. With nothing really to say we keep quiet thinking our own thoughts.
A couple hours later, about half an hour before we will arrive at the next town, according to Jim, a message appears before me. And I am not sure if I like how this sounds at all.
***War Zone has been entered***
I turn to look at Jim.
"I take you got that too right?"
"War Zone message, yep"
"What do you think it means?"
"Don't know"
"Well let's be ready for anything then."
Jim grunts in reply and takes out his knife.
We keep walking and see a cloud of dust off the right side of the road. It seems to be coming closer. Several minutes later, we see the strangest sight I have ever seen. Hundreds upon hundreds of red kangaroos fighting. Punching each other and every once in awhile standing on their tails and lashing out with their hind legs. Walking and observing I see about 5 massive red kangaroos towering over the rest. Red kangaroos can grow to about 2 metres tall, so these behemoths must be around 3 metres tall. Everywhere they went they quickly created a path of death.
As the kangaroos came alongside us, a couple kangaroos caught sight of us and came bounding over. As the two kangaroos came to a stop, about 5 metres from us and each other, they didn't look too big maybe 4ft tall. But then they straighten and suddenly seem to gain another 2ft of height from nowhere. I swallow heavily then push down my fear and focus.
As adrenalin rushes through my body, things seemed to slow down. A reckless plan pops into my head and without a second thought, I utilise it. I charge the kangaroo closest to me, with my spear held in one hand, balanced over my shoulder. When I am about 2 metres from the kangaroo it rears up on its tail, ready to pummel me with its rear legs. I stop as suddenly as I can trying to push all the force into my spear, as I launch it towards its chest. My aim is true, it hits in the upper chest slightly to the right. The spear practically disappeared inside the kangaroo. It falls to the ground. I take out my knife and continue running. I come up behind it and stab my knife into the back of its neck and cut the spinal cord. The kangaroos weak movements stop and its eyes close.
I stand up and see Jim looking at me in shock. I'm panting heavily having just exerted myself to the utmost of my ability in the span of 10 seconds. The other kangaroo having seen my display starts to hop towards me. I reach for my spear and give it a tug, but it barely moves. I hold my knife in my right hand, my left one still feels fairly unresponsive. I get ready to jump to the side. Jim finally broke out of his shock and starts charging with his circular, conical and fairly familiar looking shield.
The kangaroo reaches me, with Jim about 2 metres away charging at its side. The kangaroo stands on its tail. I circle around forcing it to drop down and follow me. At that second Jim slams into its back and side at a slight angle and the kangaroo falls forwards and sideways. I waste no time and I jump forward catching it across the neck with my knife. Blood sprays out drenching me. I look up and see Jim crazy smile on his face, stab the kangaroo repeatedly in the back.
I take off my backpack and have a drink. My mind slowly calms down and I acknowledge the slight pressure on the edge of my mind with slight anticipation.
Enemies dead
2x Red Kangaroo
1800exp, based on difficulty
I look over at Jim and ask somewhat curious, "Did you get experience for both?"
"No, just 800 for one."
"So the experience does go down a bit with two people. Because I got 1000 for the one I killed by myself."
I go over to the first kangaroo and struggle to take out my spear. I couple of pulls later I manage to wrest it from the corpse.
"I think we should get off the road and angle away from the rest of the 'roos." Jim says.
"Alright and maybe find the edge of the war zone."
We start walking again, going off the left side of the road away from the fighting kangaroos. The sun is pretty much setting right in front of us making it a little hard to see. We soon come to a road and turn right, back towards the kangaroos who are now luckily behind us. We come to an intersection and turn left towards the town. We pass numerous crashed cars, more than I have seen since this whole thing started. As the outskirts of the town appear thankfully minus any cats a welcome message appears.
***Leaving War Zone***
At the edge of my mind, another message appears.
For surviving a War Zone your earned experience has been doubled.
A handful of minutes later, we enter the town proper and come across a couple dozen people walking down the street. It all looks pretty normal, if you don't pay attention to the assorted weapons they are holding or the way they are searching for something.
We suddenly hear the screech and hiss of an angered cat, some shouting and after several minutes, silence. Seems as if they are in the process of clearing the town of the newly wild animals.
After walking for a couple more minutes we see a motel and go inside. At the office there is actually someone inside manning the front desk.
"Good afternoon, can we get a room for the night?"
"Hey, are you two new in town?"
"Yeah."
The girl behind the desk looked about 30 and seemed to be quiet lively, but it seemed to be powered by a weird mix of nervousness and fear. We spoke for several minutes about where we came from and about the efforts of the town. And eventually managed to get back to the topic of a room for the night.
"It's $150 for the night."
I look at Jim and motion that I have no money. Jim digs around in his backpack and pulls out a wallet.
"Here you go."
Ten minutes later we make it to the room and shut the door. After having a quick dinner, I try to wash myself using a damp towel, then settle back and look at my stats ready to upgrade myself some more.
Strength:
Legs 12 +
Core 12 +
Chest 12 +
Shoulders 12 +
Biceps 12 +
Triceps 12 +
Average strength 12 Dexterity:
Dodge 10 +
Strike 14 +
Average dexterity 12 Agility:
Flexibility 9 +
Reaction time 14 +
Average agility 11.5 Intelligence:
Current Intelligence 14 +
Experience Available: 4850
Confirm changes: yes/no
I think about it for a bit and I realise that right now I just want to generally improve. I don't have enough information to think about specialising. Especially since I don't know enough about how my body reacts to these improvements. I don't want to focus on one thing only to find out that rapidly improving one thing is detrimental to something else. Honestly, all my stats seem pretty intertwined anyway. I mean how can reaction speed make me faster, if it doesn't also increase the strength and speed of fast-twitch muscles? There are too many questions to only increase one thing, hoping it will give me something good.
With my mind clear, I put 2 into each strength category and 2 into dodge and strike. Bringing my total to 4800. Pausing for a second I mentally hit confirm, then look at my new stats.
Rank 1: Recruit
8750/100,000exp
Experience spent: 8700/8750
General Statistics
Strength: 11 (14)
Dexterity: 11 (14)
Agility: 11.5
Intelligence: 14
RMR (remote manipulation reserve): 16/100
(All changes will be applied during sleep.)
Feeling incredibly sleepy I talk to Jim for a little bit and then lay down to go to sleep.