Testing the battery was pretty straightforward, in spite of our lack of working wires or multimeter. We didn’t need to know the details of its voltage or current, only whether it still held a charge at all. You didn’t need fancy tools for that, just basic materials and a willingness to ignore safety regulations.

After wheedling a roll of aluminum foil and some napkins from the chefs, we made a long strip of the foil and tied a strip of napkin around the middle. All there was to do then was drop it across the battery’s contacts and wait. After it caught fire, I used Kurt’s notebook to start a breeze and blow the lightweight conductor clear of the battery.

As I stomped it out, I heard Kurt mutter, “At least the world ending means no one's going to report this to OSHA.”

“Cheer up!” I said. “It’s working! Now we just need to get some wires. Or… make some out of aluminum foil?”

He frowned at me. “Let’s call that the… backup plan. If one of the TAF members is willing to take an ability to make actual wires, I’d rather do that. We’ve still got the wire sheaths, so we could keep them largely insulated.”

“I’ve got the probable point thresholds calculated! Anyone seen some spray paint or something? I’d like to put these up on the wall somewhere.” He passed us his notebook. Calculations filled one page, but the opposite bore a tidy chart:

Ability

Points Required

1

0

2

144

3

432

4

1008

5

2160

6

4464

7

9072

8

18,288

9

36,720

10

73,584

I let out a low whistle. “Some pretty big numbers toward the bottom there. Ten abilities would take… what… more than 5,000 solo kills?”

Byron rolled his eyes. “Precision, Vince. You can’t just ballpark everything. It’ll take 6,132 kills.”

I snorted. “Same order of magnitude, same effect. You really think there’s a functional difference between getting 5,000 kills and 6,132 kills? Either one is going to take us months and months at this rate.”

Reluctantly, Byron nodded. “That’s why I stopped calculating. It’ll be a while before any numbers beyond that get relevant, unless something changes.”

“I haven’t seen spray paint, but there were some permanent markers near the notebooks,” Kurt said. “You could write on the wall with those. It’ll be hard to see from far away, but it’ll be there for people to consult.”

“I guess,” Byron said. “Davi, you've been looking through abilities, right? Find anything that might work?”

“There are several metal-shaping abilities, but they’re divided out weirdly. Shape Diamagnetic Metals, Shape Paramagnetic Metals, Shape Magnetic Metals. Copper’s not magnetic, obviously, but I’m not sure which of the others it would fall under. As for cleaning the parts… maybe Cleanse? It says it ‘Removes unwanted impurities.’ That’s what we want, yeah? Other than that, there’s a lot of different shaping abilities, but they’re pretty specific. I don’t think those will work if we don’t know exactly what that crud is made of.”

“I think copper is both,” Byron said. “Technically paramagnetic, but functionally diamagnetic.”

“So we don’t know which ability will work on it,” Kurt said.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Maybe both will!” I offered.

Kurtis gave me a scathing look. “Since when has any of this surprised us in a nice way. Which one would you bet on, if you had to, Byron?”

He hesitated. “Uh… Diamagnetic, I guess.”

Kurt marked this down. “Alright… It’d be nice if John could take Cleanse - I imagine it would go pretty well with Healing Touch-”

“It doesn’t!” Davi interrupted, rummaging among her paper pile. “You’re not the first one to think that, but the synergy is actually fairly low.”

“Huh. That’s… surprising. Good, I guess, since we can’t really afford to have him take it. Any idea how it goes with Animate Machine?”

Davi shook her head. “Not a lot of people with that one.”

Kurt grimaced. “Guess we’ll find out. Cleanse for me in another 130 points, and Shape Paramagnetic Metals for JoeyT in… huh, 53 points. Not bad.”

“We’ll still have our work cut out for us this evening,” I said. “If you tag every monster and he finishes them off, we’ll still need you to kill more than twenty to level. That’s if none of the rest of us do anything, and I definitely want John to get his second ability unlocked.”

“Plus there’s bound to be unexpected problems.” Kurt rubbed his face. “We’ll plan on an early dinner, I guess. Davi, anything else interesting in the papers TAF is bringing back?”

“Some stuff! Found a few good abilities to test out. Like… I know you weren’t sure how to test how much Force Shield could withstand, but we can at least measure how large we can make it. We don’t even know if mine is the same size as it is for people who have it at 100%.”

“I just want to know what abilities have good synergies,” I said.

“You don’t want to confirm that the percentages mean something good?”

I shrugged. “We’re pretty sure it did for one ability. I’m confident that’s not an exception. It wouldn’t be bad to test… but we’ll have to make more choices soon, and I’d really like to not fuck it up again.”

Davi frowned, sorting through her papers until she found one with her own handwriting. “The newcomers from the airport have given us a lot of information - more than half of them have two abilities - but it’s hard to find general patterns. One thing that’s true is the thing that Kurt shared earlier: the 108.3% that I got is the lowest number anyone has after they get their second ability. So, uh, good job me, I guess…” Davi shook her head, frustrated. “Everyone with the same two abilities has the same synergy. It doesn’t vary from person to person, so that’s a plus. If we figure out what abilities go together for one person, it should be the same for another. It’s just… hard figuring that out. The theme of the ability doesn’t seem to give synergy. Like, two abilities for fighting or for magic don’t necessarily have any synergy.”

“Oh?” I asked. “We’d seen that for fighting, but not magic.”

The petite Asian woman ruffled through the papers around her. “Yeah… I saw someone… oh, here it is. Yeah, there was a guy with Control Water and Shocking Touch. Minimum synergy. Those definitely both sound like magic to me.”

I nodded in agreement.

Davi continued. “If anything, it seems like the mechanism of the ability gives the synergy. Like, everything with ‘fire’ in the name has okay synergy with everything else with fire in the name. But there are abilities that seem like they should work the same way that have really bad synergy. Hex and Burden both sound like curses, but their synergy is awful. Then there’s other abilities that I don’t see a connection between that have great synergy. Powerful Blow and Force Shield go together pretty well, by the way.”

I grimaced. “What about the biological augments?”

Davi sighed. “That’s the one exception to all of this. They all go together really well. Like, I haven’t seen anything with that prefix that has lower than 30% synergy with anything else with the prefix.”

“And you didn’t lead with that?” I asked.

“Well…” Davi gave me a look. “You want to tell me you haven’t eaten about a pound of food since we came inside? And Zephyr keeps taking breaks to head to the freezer. You guys aren’t the only ones having trouble! TAF’s been polling people about side effects. The people who took the natural weapons augment are having trouble holding forks and spoons, because their claws are getting in the way. A guy with crushing grip keeps dislocating his own shoulder. Some of them seem okay, but… I don’t know. I don’t trust it. I think I’ll stick with Powerful Blow, or maybe Knockback, for my next ability. Both of those have good synergy with Force Shield, and they don’t have the same kind of drawbacks.”

“They have different drawbacks,” I said. “The active abilities, you use them too much and you get tired. You might fall asleep on the battlefield.”

“I can at least plan for that! Work around it! Retreat when I need to. Being cautious won’t keep you from starving to death or Zephyr from baking to death in her own skin! Scales! Whatever!”

Davi’s aggressive tone had me tensing up, but it was hard to ignore the bag of chocolate-covered almonds in my left hand. Now that Byron had pointed it out, it was easy to tell that I was hungrier than normal, eating more than normal. Running faster, not just with my feet, but my whole body. I was using energy more quickly. And hell no, I didn’t want to be in Zephyr’s situation. She was practically crippled!

But at the same time, the biological augments were alluring: guaranteed high synergy, and if there was one thing that was true across almost every game I’d ever played, it was “big numbers good!”

Beyond that, the augments were passive abilities. They made me a better fighter. I didn’t have to hold back when I used them. I wouldn’t get tired beyond the normal way any human got tired. I wouldn’t have to manage my ability use like some kind of miser. I could just focus on the fight itself.

I sighed and stretched. “I’m still thinking about taking one. Make me a list of the Biological Augments we haven’t seen anything obvious wrong with yet, would you?”

“Alright. But… wait until tomorrow morning to take something? We still have an hour or so before we head back out, and we can do more interviews this evening. Meghan will kill me if I let you kill yourself,” Davi said.

“She won’t blame you,” I said softly.

Davi glared at me. “Well, I’d blame me. So if you want my help, you better promise me, okay?”

“Fine. Tomorrow morning. I promise.”

I stood up, dusting off my hands on my pants and looking to Byron. “Want to find some of the people here and start running some tests?”

He waved his notebook at me. “I’m gonna get this written up on the wall, but after that? Yeah, definitely. You get looking for people, and I’ll find you.”

“Bring them back here!” Davi said. “I want to watch too.”

“Will do,” I said.