Jill stood on a floor of gold in an endless, white void, supervising the work being done on Bertha. The truck took up much more volume than usual because all of its parts were separated from each other, floating in the air a few feet apart. With a flick of her eyes a whole section of truck shifted upwards, revealing a cutaway of the engine. It wasn’t a diesel; no, that fuel source had long since been replaced by magic alone. But Jill knew that the engine was inefficient, wasting much of the magic that it sucked in, and that the Soulbound companion of a Legendary classer should have better.
A flick of her wrist and the inlet manifold, or at least the magical equivalent, evaporated into motes of gold light. Replacing it would take a bit more work, but nothing she couldn’t handle. She bore down with her body and mind, only momentarily distracted by how she looked like she was trying to squeeze out a monster of a dump, and more golden motes spiraled out of her skin. The bits of magic floated into position and crystallized into something strange, something that didn’t exist in just 3 dimensions. It fit into the vacated spot in the engine and the whole blazed with new power.
Jill grinned. Then she recoiled as if slapped and spun, her fists raised in front of her and her gaze scanning over everything. She let out a sigh and the tension dropped from her.
“Well, shit,” she said, her voice echoing off of nothing, “another magical dream. Let me guess, this is one of those allegorical ones, isn’t it, with Bertha being me? That’s me getting upgraded?”
The figure of a stocky woman, composed entirely of brilliant boxy blue light, appeared before Jill with her arms crossed. “Why the fuck would you be having a not-really-dream that was anything less than straightforward, tingly-tits?” she asked, her voice like Jill’s would be if been passed through an auto-tune. “Have you ever even met yourself? If it looks like we’re upgrading Bertha, that’s what we’re doing! The Propulsion Module can get up to Tier 3 now without exploding. ”
Jill stared. “Sys? Is that you?”
The figure shrugged. “Kind of,” it said. “I’m an emulation of you so we can actually talk, but at the same time I’m The System,” Jill could hear the capital letters, “but also most of my processing is being done by your meat as a local copy, so,” it shrugged, “let’s call me mostly The System. Close enough.”
Jill looked around, taking in the gold and white again. “And, what, you talk to everyone when they evolve their Class? Finally give us some straight answers to things?”
“Fuck no! That would break more rules than a velociraptor playing basketball. Things went just a tiny little bit tits-up with your new Class and I need some special User authorizations to fix it, but you’re already down for an overhaul so I couldn’t just send you a nice box. So here we are.”
“Sys,” Jill said her eyes, “did you fuck up?”
“No! Sort of. Your new Class has a feature that needs more juice than we can give it without some changes. Without that Mana the Class won’t take and the backlash would be,” it put its hands to its head and mimicked an explosion.
“And you didn’t tell me this before you started why?!”
“There were emergent second-order factors that the initial calculations didn’t account for. Do you have any idea how hard it is to design a Mana Construct that can propel Bertha faster than light? We’re talking about shoving a giant mess of warped space and portals to an Astral pocket dimension right up Physics’ asshole! And that Construct’s initial alignment changes based on all sorts of magical bullshit on a minute-by-minute basis. So, I saved a significant portion of this planet’s processing capability by only doing the full calculations at the time of upgrade, and whoops, a dog just shit in the blender when making chocolate smoothies. It turns out that the amount of processed Mana required for the FTL drive, your new Legendary Construct, is too high for a Level 100 Class Evolution.”
Jill’s annoyance hiccuped, then exploded under a surge of disbelief. “Did you just say faster than light? As in, what, space travel? Away from Earth?”
“To wherever you will. That’s what your new class promised, after all. The universe is bigger than you know.”
Jill let out a long breath, her mind spinning. “Ok. Ok. So, Mana problem. How do we fix it?”
“Haven’t you learned anything? See a problem? Apply more Bertha!” The figure slapped its hands together and rubbed them in excitement. “We’ll merge the Construct with a Module as it increases in Tier and co-opt the Mana spike to stabilize the drive in a preliminary form. From there we’ll grow it piece by piece until it and you are ready. Propulsion has the highest Compatibility for the procedure, by a long shot, so it’s the one that will work best.”
“Every time I’ve upgraded a module before you’ve just given me two choices and told me to eat shit if I didn’t like them. It sure sounds like my two options are cake or death. What makes you need ‘special’ permission this time?”
The figure wrinkled its nose in an all too familiar way.
“A normal upgrade involves a level 1 analysis of potential development paths, tailored to the user in question to provide maximum benefit, but still falling within a bucketload of rules and guardrails. This doesn’t stay within those safeties. You can choose to abort and we’ll go over other Class selections; I’m sure I can come up with something decent with all the extra processing power you’re getting right now.” It shook its head. “But I’ve had to run a planet-wide update to increase the Mana safety factor on upgrades because of this little fountain of shart, so I can guarantee that it won’t be as strong as getting the Construct to work.”
“And if I don’t tell you to back us out?”
“Then we’re driving over the back of a pissed-off Regional Mana Concentrator.”
“Enough analogies, Sys, give it to me straight. What can go wrong here?”
“For a normal Soulbond, I’d give a 30% chance of the Construct destabilizing and evaporating everything within a few kilometers of you, but you and Bertha have a Bond at least three standard deviations stronger than normal. I’m confident that in the .1% chance of catastrophic destabilization, I’ll be able to catch it without much collateral damage outside of a 10-meter radius. We’re also overriding all the usual Tier 3 Propulsion upgrades,” the figure said, then gave a self-satisfied smile. “Some are pretty cool, if I do say so myself, and missing them is a downside too. But,” it bit its lip and shuddered in a way that Jill found disturbing coming from a clone of her own body, “you’ll like what you get instead.”
“Yeah? What are they?”
The System’s face went rigid and it answered in a voice that sounded like a blue notification box:
Abilities are revealed upon being unlocked.
It then rolled its eyes.
“Huh,” Jill made a mental note to tell Babu about the System’s dual personality moment. “So, the question is if I trust you enough to go for it? We’ve been over this before, you know I do. If you say there’s a pot of gold on the other side of this sharkbow, then I can’t fucking wait to see what it is.”
The figure smiled and for just a few seconds seemed immense, as if what had only been a shadow in the water had turned out to be a vast whale. Then the moment passed.
Jill swallowed. “We, uh, need to buy the rest of the upgrades in Propulsion to get it ready, right? Which are those again?”
The System recited its response:
Outriders (0/5): Gain the ability to designate vehicles, each up to 2800kg in mass, as outriders. Outriders gain 10% of Bertha’s Armor and Durability as additional defense. Their maximum top speed is set equal to Bertha’s if it would have been slower. Each rank allows for 1.4 additional outriders.
It coughed and pulled on its throat, stretching the transparent not-skin unnaturally far.
Just as Jill opened her mouth to tell the System to purchase them, the world around her spasmed. Waves of pulsing, swirling light crashed in from all directions, constricting her one after the other before they sank into her. It was like a warm tub sinking into her, instead of the other way around. Then it was over and the only sign that anything had happened at all was a rippling, circular wave in the gold floor, rushing away from her to infinity.
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“What the shit was that?!”
“Dawn,” it said, “and your morning cut of everyone’s daily XP bonus. Berthaville’s grown faster than I’d projected. That’s good. Now, you were about to say?”
“Right,” Jill said. “Do what we need. Take 5 ranks in Outriders and merge the, uh, FTL drive into Propulsion.”
“Hell yes!” it punched the air. “See you on the flip side.” Then it hesitated and cocked its head to the side as if listening to something. “Well, that sucks. Thanks for the heads up!” It looked into Jill’s eyes and its gaze grew painfully bright. “3 weeks, 1 day, 3 hours, and 17 minutes, as of,” it paused a few moments, then snapped its fingers, “now!”
—
Jill’s eyes snapped open. For one wonderful moment she was in her bed, feeling utterly fantastic; then the contents of her dream slammed into her.
“Sys, you snail-squeezing lazy excuse for a sphincter, what the hell?” she asked the ceiling. “You’re just going to give me a countdown to something shitty and no other details? Really?”
The only response was a pulsing blue at the borders of her vision, many notifications all proverbially shouting for attention. She shot a stern thought at them telling them to get in line, then started reading.
Beginning Class Evolution. Warning! Mana cascade failure imminent! Emergency protocols activated. Local processing suborned.
Propulsion Outriders 1-5 purchased. Propulsion Module ready to upgrade to Tier 3! Incomplete Construct The Infinite Road has been merged with Soulbound Modular Vehicle Bertha Propulsion Module.
Warning! Insufficient available processed Mana! Construct ‘The Infinite Road’ creation halted at stable nascent form. Construct primary functions are not available! Tracing Mana pathways. Propulsion Module Tier 3 upgrades assigned to creating and accessing the foundation of The Infinite Road. Tier 4 abilities assigned to complete The Infinite Road and activate primary functions.
Class evolution complete: You are now a Trucker of the Infinite Road!
Your stat gain per level has changed to: Body 2 Mind 3 Spirit 7+1
Deferred experience applied! Note: Evolved Classes require double the Experience Points per level as base Classes. You are now Level 108.
You have 2 Class Points and 8 Evolved Class Points.
Class Points can only be spent on abilities granted by the Battle Trucker Class or Modules of Soulbound Modular Vehicle Bertha of Tier 2 and below. Evolved Class Points may be converted into 2 Class Points.
Your Evolved Class has unlocked new upgrades for Soulbound Modular Vehicle Bertha. Propulsion and Armor Module maximum Tier increased to 3. Maximum Tier will increase to 4 at Level 150.
A new Class Skill is available: Abort Mission
The Caster Catalogue (Travel Domain) has been unlocked.
The Infinite Road (Incomplete) upgrades available.
Jill’s heart beat faster. She pushed a thread of thought at what was almost certainly the most important upgrade Bertha had ever gotten.
The Infinite Road (Incomplete)
The Infinite Road requires vast quantities of Mana and is supported by a network of Mana Collectors and Capacitors. Mana recharge rate is dependent upon ambient Mana density. Current Mana: 7,532/100,000,000. Time to recharge in current conditions: 72 hours.
Available foundation upgrades:
Mana Capacitors (0/2): Increase the Mana capacity by 100,000,000.
Mana Collectors (0/2): Increase the Mana collection rate by 100%.
Mana Network Linking (0/1): Link the Mana systems of Bertha and The Infinite Road and allow Mana to be transferred between the two. The maximum transfer rate is equal to Bertha’s Mana generation.
Available activation upgrades:
While the incomplete Infinite Road is not capable of superluminal inversion, it can still create 2 partial effects. The Mana Collectors do not function while either is active.
Gravitational Shield (0/3): The Infinite Road’s containment field is repurposed as a bubble of sheered spacetime that deflects attacks. Subsequent ranks increase the deflection and will cause damage to entities attempting to cross the bubble. Consumes 1,000,000 Mana per second from The Infinite Road’s reserves.
Blink Drive: (0/3): The Infinite Road’s propulsion system activates and causes a subluminal, extra-dimensional teleportation with a maximum range of 1 km. Consumes 100,000,000 Mana. Subsequent ranks increase the maximum range by a factor of 10.
“Fuck,” Jill said softly. She dismissed the box and stared up at the dull metal ceiling above her bed, her mind whirling. She had 3,730 Mana of her own, enough that she could cast the few spells she knew over and over. It was more raw power to sling around than anyone else in Babu’s fledgling corp of magic specialists, even if she didn’t have the needed Class Powers to use that power well.
Bertha had 100 times her mana, a massive amount even if firing all the guns at once would drain it all too quickly. This one module was going to, when upgraded, have over 1,000 times more mana than even Bertha. A small city’s worth of Jills.
But her and Bertha’s Mana came back every 10 minutes. Once upgraded this would take 24 hours; more in areas of lower Mana density, which hopefully they would be reaching soon. That clawed back a factor of 144 in terms of actual Mana supply, but at the end of the day The Infinite Road would be collecting 5 times more Mana than Bertha generated.
The practical part of her wanted her to purchase Mana Network Linking and the other foundation upgrades immediately. In combat situations the link would go from The Infinite Road and into Bertha, effectively doubling the truck’s regeneration. The guns would still drain even that dry, but it would take far more bullets, far more dead monsters, before that happened. During ordinary operations the truck ran a surplus that would help recharge the ridiculously expensive Blink Drive.
She braced herself and selected 1 rank in Capacitors, Collectors, and Network Linking. Her Mana senses went crazy as currents of power surged to life through Bertha, burning paths of golden light through the truck’s structure and beyond. It was like being dropped into the center of a blast furnace where the molten metal obeyed the fever dreams of a mad geometrist instead of gravity. The pattern was beyond anything Jill had ever even thought of, but some part of her could tell it wasn’t completed yet. It finished its partial growth and then froze before vanishing.
“Jill,” Karen’s stressed voice bloomed in her mind, “please, please tell me that you’re awake and can hear me again!” She didn’t sound hopeful.
“This better be important,” Jill projected back, “I’m still in bed, which means I haven’t even had my coffee yet!” She realized as she said it that her dependence on the stimulant had faded with her Levels and she didn’t need it to function in the mornings. But it was the principle of the thing!
“She’s awake!” Karen yelled, presumably to those around her. “Jill,” she continued in a more normal volume, “Bertha’s been going crazy: the rooms all moving around; air being arctic-cold one minute and boiling the next; the truck’s even driven over thin air a few times and only come back down when we turned on the slug tires! We thought it had all stopped a few hours ago but just now there was a huge Mana surge! Bigger than anything we’d ever seen!”
Jill winced. That must have caused some headaches.
“I spend one night having a drunken tattoo of a Class Upgrade and everything goes to shit. Sys could have mentioned that there would be side effects out here,” she ended in a grumble.
“It hasn’t been one night,” Karen said, “it’s been more like 36 hours! We tried sending someone in to wake you up, but the door never went to the right place to let us. When Aman tried to put it back even The System got involved and kept giving warnings about catastrophic explosions!”
“More than a whole ass-hopping day?! Sys, what the hell?!”
There was no response.
“Ok, ok, just give me a few minutes and I’ll be there,” Jill said. “I bet all the trippy shit’s done anyway.” She cut the communication power, but didn’t get up right away. Instead she shut her eyes and spent a few seconds meditating. She let her awareness run up her body, from her toes to the top of her head, taking stock of what it was telling her.
It told her that she could take on the world, that she was more powerful than ever before. The magic of leveling up to 100 had already burned away all of the wear and tear she’d accumulated over the years on its way to strengthening her; breaking through and advancing to Level 108 was different, like she was more solid, more present in the world. Like before she’d been a lump of clay shaped with care into a rectangle and now she’d been fired into a brick.
That was what she felt like. Time to see what she looked like.
Jill opened her eyes and leaped from the bed to check in the tiny bathroom mirror, ready to tear into the System if it had messed with her body too much. She almost botched her landing as her feet had slipped. Waves of hair, previously unnoticed underneath her, cascaded down her back, long enough that even when she was standing a foot-long section splayed on the ground. She took some in her hand and brought it close to her face: it was perfect in every way, with nary a split end in sight. It even smelled good.
“Where were you 30 years ago,” Jill muttered. She swept the whole mass behind her head and began to braid, her fingers moving at superhuman speed. She would get it cut later, but for now at least she could get it to behave.
She took the few steps needed to go into her bathroom and examined herself in the mirror. The woman looking back at her was still Jill. Mid forties, in truly fantastic shape, and her clothes still fit in all the important spots. If anything she’d gained a bit of size and weight from a layer of extra muscle.
“I guess I’m not kicking your ass today, Sys,” Jill said, flexing her arm and approving of the resulting muscle.
System Inquiry Detected
Warning! Removing of user overconfidence unsuccessful!
“Love you too. Now stop watching, I need to take a dump.”