> Impossible? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Maffiyirs are a unique situation. Rulings have given the Overminds wide freedom to modify and influence sapients, due to the contestants’ non-citizen status. There’s no way an AI could have transferred a link to a citizen, but the contestants don’t have the same protections.
>
> – Radio transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens
The Titans just kept coming.
So did the Points.
Ben’s anti-tank rifle was effective, but wasn’t designed for a situation where enemies could approach from any direction. Ben’s abilities and strength made him quicker at aiming the large gun than any World War II sharpshooter could have been, but it still wasn’t perfect. The low-to-the-ground gasylosaurs and the manueverable and stealthy twotwos were particularly bad targets for him, so he focused mostly on the other four kinds of Titans, all of which he could take down in a shot or two.
Unfortunately, we didn’t have unlimited ammunition prepared, and we’d blown through a lot of it already. Most of what was left was nestled in the chambers of our growing supply Matter Replicators. Benjamin was using the remainder cautiously in support of our other defenders, shooting only when multiple Titans arrived simultaneously.
The rest of the Titans were taken down less efficiently, by the abilities of those of us atop the tower and the hundreds of men and women on Fort Autumn’s lower walls. With so many people involved in the fight, each Titan netted us “mere” hundreds of Points, rather than the thousands we’d bagged when my kids and I took one down with only the Turners.
Occasionally, we’d get a larger windfall, especially when twotwos tried to attack me directly. Aside from the healers, our defenders had been sternly instructed to leave monsters alone if they didn’t think they could meaningfully hamper or damage them. In other words: Paralyzing a Titan for a second was fine, splashing a Fire Bolt uselessly off its scales to earn Points was not.
It wasn’t something we were monitoring or policing, though, and the vast majority of Points were split among a large number of defenders.
Even so, we were earning them at a fast clip.
Micah was the first to earn another ability. His Charged Surface had high enough synergy to allow him to affect the copper cabling threaded through the tower without extending across the surface of the stone, but few of the Titans were making it to the tower itself. His broad array of ranged abilities had served him well, however, letting him earn a share of Points from almost every attacker. Sonic Blasts, Fire Bolts, Shockwalls... he was even throwing Force Shields out to help protect the people on the walls below.
He blasted a tight beam of light into the eyes of an attacking snakeropod, helping ensure it missed its chomp against one of the defenders on the walls. As the man it had targeted threw himself aside, the shorter woman beside him lunged forward, her gleaming sword - clearly a Titan Heart reward - sunk deeply into the monster's spine. The monster's body went limp, and it took only seconds more for additional attacks to end the Titan's life.
Micah punched the air. “Yes! Level up!”
“Remember what we talked about?”
“Yes, mom.”
I’d relied on my new access to Ariel heavily to find the absolute best options for my family. Her monster database might have been disappointing, but her ability database was a goldmine. It didn’t make her better at anticipating needs or doing creative thinking, but she didn’t need to be creative to answer questions like “What twenty abilities offer the highest total synergy with my son’s existing powers?” or “Can you tell me what bonuses those twenty abilities get at high synergy levels?”
Eventually, I wanted to get a complete list of every available ability, all the unlockable bonuses, and how they synergized with every other ability.
Unfortunately, my mangled human brain wasn’t a great medium for Ariel to use to transmit that data to us, and while she could communicate with Pointy directly, Pointy didn’t have the same permissions I did, meaning Ariel wasn’t allowed to tell her most of the things she was allowed to tell me. I’d had very little downtime since waking from my coma, so progress was slow.
I was reluctant to rush.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
My memories of my time of torment had faded, but they weren’t gone. Moreover, I was uncomfortably aware of how… not-myself I still was. I was acting mostly normal, but that’s what it was: acting. Most of my reactions weren’t genuine and unthinking, they were calculated moves based on what I thought my remembered self would have done.
My connection to Ariel made my thoughts move quickly enough that most people didn’t notice, but I knew from the worried looks Vince gave me regularly that I wasn’t quite hitting the mark with my performance.
It had actually been him who’d suggested I consult the system about their ability choices.
It hadn’t been something that had occurred to me immediately.
That… seemed very wrong.
The Meghan from my memories was always thinking about how to help her family.
Am I just distracted with everything that’s going on? Is this because of my missing memories? Or… have I changed that much? Thank God Vince is here to steer me back on-track, I thought.
The ability we’d chosen for Micah - Aura: Temperate - wasn’t one I would have initially considered. The “aura”-type passive abilities hadn’t been very popular, because their effects were very weak at low synergies.
The temperate aura was one of the worst of the bunch, too; at its base level, it just passively and weakly altered the temperature of the air in a small area around the user toward what it called “human optimal” and defined as 72 degrees Fahrenheit. If you were in a confined area, it would drop or raise the temperature by about ten degrees per hour until it got to that optimum.
If you were in the open air, the effect was almost undetectable.
As it leveled up, it got stronger, of course, working more quickly and affecting a larger area. The first synergy bonuses were nothing special, either, just letting you alter the target “optimal” temperature slightly, exempt certain areas, and reshape the field in different ways.
At 500% synergy, though, things started to change, as the ability got a bonus that let it work more quickly on things that were very hot or cold and came within its range. That made heat, cold, or fire-based attacks far less effective on Micah or anyone he was allied with.
The real winner came at 1,200% synergy, though: the aura started providing information about the temperatures of everything within range, which let it act as a sensory ability.
Micah wouldn’t have enough synergy to get that bonus immediately, but he’d be more than halfway there.
“That’s not fair!” Gavin whined. “I still need… a lot more points.”
“You’ll get there,” I encouraged him.
“This is too hard to use!” he complained, waving his bow around.
“You’re getting much better,” Sofia told him. She’d accompanied us to continue their instruction. “Try to make sure to keep your arm high! I think you would have hit that last one, but you dropped your arm as you fired. Try to hold still until you see the arrow hit.”
From a Points perspective, it would have made more sense to have Gavin use a gun. Our ammunition for handguns and rifles wasn’t unlimited, but it was still fairly plentiful. But while smaller-caliber weapons were effective against run-of-the-mill monsters, they did only cosmetic damage against the Titans. With the supernatural strength, people could manage bows with fairly extreme draw weights, and the bows the Arsenal had sent along were just that: steel constructions no human on earth would have been able to bend a few months prior. Marie had said the Arsenal’s experts were working on making even stronger ones, experimenting with composites to prepare for future strength increases.
Even these initial offerings hit harder than a handgun… when they hit. Only Sofia’s shots landed reliably, and they skated off the bonefur’s armor and the snakeropod’s thick skulls, but they easily penetrated the light armor surrounding most Titanflesh.
“It’s hard,” Gavin grumbled, but he lifted his bow obediently and fired another arrow. His arms shook a little as he released, but they didn’t drop. This arrow flew toward an oncoming milliceratops and rebounded off the bony crest that shielded its neck.
“Hey, you hit!” I said. “Great job!”
Gavin straightened up, encouraged despite the lack of damage. I mentally grabbed his spent arrow and pulled it back into the tower. The tip had deformed where it hit the Titan, but it would still be easier for our metal-shapers to repair this one rather than make a whole new arrow.
We were all using our abilities cautiously, preparing ourselves to fight indefinitely. I was monitoring everyone’s use, and no one was being reckless or pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion. Ability exhaustion was only one kind of tiredness, however. We fought for another eighteen minutes - a side effect of my connection to Ariel had made me uncannily good at judging time - before I detected signs of mental fatigue. Vince had been about a half-second slower to respond to the last twotwo attack, for example. We’d been remarkably effective at avoiding injuries, aided by the rugged tower Helen and the others had built, but there was no reason to take risks. The whole point of this Point-farming was to make us safer. “We should take a break.”
“Gavin needs fewer than 2,000 additional Points for his next ability!” Pointy called.
“Okay. We’ll get that in a couple minutes,” I said. “Marie, make sure our replacements are ready to take over the top of the tower. After Gavin earns his ability, we’ll take a rest.”