Aurelio walked out of the building in a daze.
“What did you do?” Kalani asked in concern, gripping his shoulders and shaking him out of his stupor to little success.
“The power’s on.” Cantwell acknowledged.
Phineas slapped Cantwell’s chest with the back of his hand, “Of course the powers on, numbskull! That’s what she’s asking the kid about.”
“Did you do something to the stone?” Elena pressed. Without an answer from Aurelio, she charged past him into the radio station where the monolith was held.
Aurelio must have looked like a wreck. He felt as much anyway. He was drained emotionally from the encounter with that accursed hunk of rock. Within the game, it was a source of speculation and intrigue by the general community over what purpose it served in handling the facilities within the outpost and what sort of relationship it had with the player characters but those lines of questioning never mattered much to Aurelio.
The monolith always felt opportunistic, vindictive, and vain. Especially when diving into the piety tech tree and looking at the offerings it asked for to deign the scavengers with a modicum of benefits.
And here it was already assuring Aurelio that he was an abject disappointment. How he was disappointing or inadequate, he wouldn’t figure out until he committed resources towards that aforementioned tech tree, but frankly those resources would be better placed elsewhere.
Heavy footsteps came charging out of the building.
“We’ve got a radar online! It’s primitive but it’s already pointing out objects of interest!” Elena yelled.
Kalani pulled away from Aurelio and turned to her crewmate, “What sort of objects of interest?”
“It’s pinging out parts. Intact ship parts from the machine's assessment. Parts we’re gonna need if we’re gonna repair a ship to get off this fucking planet.”
“Then we know where to go!” Kalani shouted with enthusiasm. “Phin, go make out the relative location of where these pieces are located. Canty, go check if the flames on the old ship have died down. We can work together to bring what hull we have left to the center of this outpost and start repairing the damn thing. Assess what parts we’re gonna need to get the ship up and flying again.”
The other crew members broke off on their respective tasks, leaving Aurelio to pull himself out of his daze with the commander and soldier for company.
“Did the machine take his brains? Why the fuck is he just standing there?”
Aurelio slapped his face and took a deep breath. He’d adapt. With {Power} unlocked now came time to plan and prepare for the first excursion.
“We’re not well equipped to get those pieces of debris that we’re looking for.” Aurelio explained.
Kalani raised an eyebrow, “And how would you know this?”
“The monolith informed me,” he lied, “It knew we’d want to leave this place and pointed to locations where we’d be able to find the parts we need but this place is dangerous. Obviously so. And it told me as such.”
Elena crossed her arms and frowned, “You expect me to believe that glowing hunk of rock told you all that?”
Aurelio nodded, “Yeah. I mean consider the situation for a moment; the radar marked what we needed on the map as if it’s already foreseen what the ship is going to need in order to fly.”
He paused, waiting for either of them to push against his suggestion but found no resistance from either.
“That thing you pulled into your ship is not the only one of its kind and I’m pretty sure it took you all a lot of work just to bring it down. Moreover, the fact that there’s an outpost here means the former residents needed walls to protect themselves from the elements, from monsters, or both.”
Elena attempted to form a rebuttal but Kalani motioned for her to stop.
“Given our current predicament, as Commander, I’d say that taking the risk to get off this planet as soon as possible would be warranted. But you didn’t say ‘we shouldn’t go’, only that we’re not ‘well equipped’ to handle the dangers out there.” Kalani scrutinized Aurelio now, the somewhat jovial persona replaced with a measured calculated look. “If I take you at face value and believe you really did commune with that stone, what does ‘well equipped’ look like in the eyes of that thing?”
He bit his lip, “I’m guessing we’re gonna need more resilient Exo-Suits to handle the deadly weather and deadlier denizens but I can’t provide specifics.”
Aurelio considered his answer and found even his own perspective to be wanting. At the very least, his knowledge of the game world told him what sort of resource investments would be cost effective for the rest of the crew. It also gave him foresight into what kinds of problems they’d face in not only fighting against the monsters that lived on the planet, but how dangerous each environment posed with the equipment they had on hand.
But they didn’t have any fucking equipment to begin with and managing inventories was always fuzzy for him.
His brother had been adamant about the difficulty of each capstone boss across the four locations and minced no words in talking about the statistical improbability that came from having a set of fresh scavengers attempt to locate and take down those prized enemies.
He didn’t want to test that theory of his now that his life was on the line.
If the events didn’t kill them, they’d be so weakened from the trek that the monsters surely would, regardless of all the game knowledge he had on hand.
The game was brutal in part because of the incremental nature of upgrades against the looming time limit before the planet got eaten.
“Honestly, I’d need to sit down for a while and draft a better plan. The monolith dumped an incomprehensible amount of information into my head that I’m still having trouble parsing through.” Aurelio genuinely winced with his attempt to approach the stones mental payload.
Kalani considered his statement before shifting her body to face Elena, “Let’s go back into the station and look for clues over the whereabouts of the previous group.”
Elena wanted to protest but bit her lip and stormed back into the building.
“If you don’t have a semblance of a plan within an hour, I’m going to assume that you’re selling me some moon fuel and force you out of this place. Good luck, Aurelio.”
Kalani gave him a faint, supportive smile before disappearing past the station's doorway.
---
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Aurelio ruminated on what he knew of his situation. He was in Dying Ignition and his crew were of canon description.
The stone considered him a disappointment. Whether that was born from a familiarity to his temperament and ability or a snap assessment, he wouldn’t be sure of it until he invested resources towards the {Connection} innovation.
An investment he was unwilling to commit to when the need for the {Archives} innovation or the {Decryption} innovation were important.
He rummaged through the stores of the former residents of the barracks and found an implement and paper to write on. With the {Power} innovation unlocked, the tech tree had branched into six options; Life, Reconnaissance, Piety, Martial, Scholastic, and Entertainment.
Each innovation cost the outpost resources from a scavenging trip along with innovation points, a system he wasn’t sure would translate one to one in this real world.
If the system translated exactly one to one, then unlocking the {Archives} innovation on the second solar cycle would give him the flexibility to narrow in on the innovations the outpost needed.
The outpost upgrading feature had a bounded randomness to it, assuring that players could not bee line through certain tech trees and reap the late game rewards in the early game. He’d draw three cards listing potential innovations, and with each node in the tech tree came more possibilities and the dilution of the card pool.
More cards to choose from meant less of a chance to draw what he might need. The {Archives} innovation would give him a reroll opportunity to set down any number of cards in his hand and draw an equivalent number of new cards, effectively doubling his innovation scouting potential.
At least if this world was one to one with the game’s.
If it wasn’t one to one, he had no precedent for how to proceed. It’d be more prudent to unlock {Decryption} then, not only because it’d make all future excursions into the world less dangerous, but because of the benefits to be found on that tech tree in general would give the crew more information to assess the dangers in each biome. {Fickle Fortune} would give him the chance to ignore the nastier environment conditions altogether, and that innovation was only a rung up.
“Knock knock.”
Aurelio jolted to see Phineas standing underneath the door frame of the barracks.
“Hard at work over there?” He asked in a mocking tone.
Aurelio was unimpressed, “What do you want?”
Phineas shrugged, waltzing into the barracks to sit at the bed adjacent to his own.
“The Commander asked one of us to check on you and I volunteered. Lookin’ to see how a prophet comes up with a vision.” The intonation in his voice confirmed that he was suspicious of Aurelio’s story and intentions.
With good reason insofar as that story was concerned. But admitting to being from another world would all but guarantee his dismissal in their minds, the babble of a well composed maniac.
“Keep watching, I suppose.” Aurelio went back to his thoughts.
And came to a sudden realization.
“Hey Phin, d’you know about the function of your core?” Aurelio asked.
Phineas bit, “One, only my friends can call me Phin, and you’re not a part of that club. Two, what d’you mean by core?”
Aurelio pointed at his chest, “The ember core in our chest. Do you know how it works?” Phineas didn’t budge at his questioning so Aurelio decided that a demonstration would be necessary.
He navigated his hand underneath his shirt and pressed his fingers into the core, allowing the same mote of flame to spit out his diagnostics sheet.
[Name] - Aurelio Cancio
[Status] - Healthy
[Second Wind] - {X} {X} {X}
[Species] - error
[Heart] - 1
[Ignition Regen] - 1
[Ignition Cap] - 11
[Role 1] - None
[Role 2] - None
[Mov: +0 | Acc: +0 | Str: +0 | Eva: +0 | Spd: +0 | Lck: +0] (+3!) [::]
[Weapon Class Specialization] - None
[Spark Level] - 0
Phineas recoiled, “What did you do!”
Aurelio smiled. So at the very least they could see his diagnostics sheet. He dismissed the sheet soon after the demonstration. Wouldn’t help his case to have Phineas question his species, after all.
“It’s something akin to a diagnostics sheet assessing different aspects of our condition.” Aurelio answered. “This was something that the stone showed me so I figured it was something you all could do.” The last sentence was a lie but between the demonstration and the statement, the rest of the crew was sure to at least give the action a shot.
Phineas collected himself and walked away, likely to tell the rest of them of their shared moment. A shame that Aurelio wouldn’t get to confirm if they had sheets for themselves or what kind of information was listed within them but he felt that’d come if he gave them time.
Time he was beginning to take into consideration because solar cycles in the game only counted the one excursion. If they sat around and did nothing, would time progress?
That was a stupid question; time had to progress.
“Gah!” Aurelio grumbled. There were too many variables to account for and stewing in them would be burning daylight.
He brought his diagnostics sheet back up and pressed to look at the next page.
[T.E.A.M]
[Technique] - 0
[Empathy] - 0
[Academics] - 0
[Moxie] - 1
[Abilities and Impairments]
None Listed
[Decay] - { } { } { }
The [Decay] section was a new addition to the sheet that he wasn’t familiar with. The boxes were empty so he could only assume keeping them that way was a good thing.
He’d earned a point in Moxie. So the benefit from being the scavenger for the {Power} event still rewarded him with that point and considering the status on the previous sheet, he didn’t suffer the drawbacks of exhaustion for this first excursion.
This moved the monolith's involvement with his arrival farther up on the list, because the event described the stone sapping the selected scavenger of all their energy for the first night. It wanted him out there.
A small breakthrough but a breakthrough nonetheless.
Unless he was shown otherwise, Aurelio assumed that their tutorial flight up in space did not have them acquire rarer resources. A shame considering how busted unlocking the (Mine Cutter) would have been for their first run. Trying to perform a run with just the starting (Metal Spike) weapons was going to be really annoying if they didn’t at least procure the regular resources from the Vessel. The descriptions they’d offered of the monster suggested they’d gotten the cracked form of it, which meant a tighter amount of resources to play with.
Aurelio gathered his resolve and walked out of the barracks towards the rest of the crew.
There was work to be done.