That was a close one. The body of the spider lies unmoving, its legs crumpled against its main body, one keeping the other from completely falling, like a grotesque statue smeared in oil. Looking at his clothing and his body, it looks like the spider isn’t the only one smeared in an oily substance. “It seems the fly won this time”.
Bad humor aside, it doesn’t look right. How can I fight 5 more of these metal spiders, that doesn’t make sense?!, Roberion thought, exasperated.
The Null tries to get up without luck. His body is a complete mess. The blood stops seeping from his two broken legs doesn’t help either. His head is marked by injuries, and a heavy headache is felt. His torso and back have more broken bones than he could feel. If he could remove his clothes, he would only see purple skin.
Accepting the fate of his body, Roberion looks at his perk status. The count of Natural Born Killer perk, was lowered by one, Trashed and Scattered though, had a status update.
Trashed and Scattered: Requirements achieved, select Perk for integration: Yes/No.
Before he could select, again the system control was taken out of his hands, weirdly it wasn’t the same way when the macro was activated, the weird circular symbol showed up in the periphery of his vision, this time however, the symbol grew bigger. Looking at it the circle isn’t exaclty a circle, it has a semblance to an Ouroboros, but instead of a mythological beast it looked like a curved shackled main, trying to rise using his manacle chains, only for his shackled legs to keep him in place, both shackles being seemingly connected at the end.
After a few seconds the image flickers, “Video message received, would you play: Yes/No”, Yes, again without any choice, the system starts to play the video message. A feminine face with makeup shows up, but upon close inspection, the face itself is a mask, a beautifully crafted mask, stealing all the splendor of mask craftsmanship was the beautiful ethereally glowing blue eyes, its irises encapsulated with circle and runic engraving.
Before he could keep analyzing the image, the voice behind the mask started speaking, “This message is prerecorded, you, cattle, have been selected for a special mission, and your animal’s lives, were forfeited”, the masculine voice said without prejudice, as if what he said was simply the truth. “In that, there is an opportunity, finish the mission, and you have a chance to live like people, as a proof of that and a tool to be used, we already lifted certain restrictions and enabled some changes to your program, for now though, acting like a Null is imperative, mesh with the others and follow the order submitted by your assigned leader”.
During a few seconds of silence, before the masked person made their next speech, Roberion remembered the pain assailing his body. If he didn’t get control back, he would probably die in half an hour. “As this is the only message you will receive during the mission, some critical details need to be addressed, other Nulls will be in the same situation as you, you will need to work together with them to achieve the objective, even in that situations keep acting like a Null, no talk, act like a single organism, focusing on the mission” this time the voice says with candor, showing the importance of the information.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“Some information about the system needs to be addressed. The stats are your way to increase levels. After achieving five stats points, your level will be increased, except for knowledge and social. The level itself is a metric, and this metric is used when to give you an upgrade, the standard Null system is barebones, but as you can see I already made some changes for some of your functions”, as far as useful as the information was, Roberion was getting sleepy from the blood loss, trying to keep listening to information he focuses on his pain instead.
“These changes unlocked two perks one of them should be already available for selection, being the trigger for this message, and the second one will be possible to achieve during the mission, it will be passively achieved by what the mission entails, it’s paramount you don’t go looking for faster ways of achieving it, we already put safeguards for that too.”, as a way of showing what it meant, for two seconds his body stopped moving, even his lungs were forcefully stopped. Elapsing by the time his body control is regained, after choking Roberion spits a glob of blood.
“During a pivotal point in the mission, you will be free to kill and destroy anyone that isn’t marked as a friendly unit in your system, you should proceed accordingly if a friendly unit tries to actively stop you from achieving the objective, you are also free to put them down, the system is already calibrated for such a situation”, listening to the information didn’t put Roberion at easy, This information will be complete rubbish if I don’t find a way to heal, by what she said before we weren’t supposed to destroy the damn spider, I would take a fighting against a Null any day, the Spider already showed up how easy it is.
“Your training simulation will finish soon, after that you will be transferred to a healing yard if you are alive, if not then it’s a recycle station for you...”, ‘That’s not good, can I survive the transference to the healing yard?’, “...getting back to stats, the way to increase it is commonly by acquiring better materials for your body, mind, and spiritual constitution. After getting access to the raw materials, the system will help with the integration, and make sure of having the right time and place for it, it will be more organic than the base stats, but it will cease the control of your body, other alternatives exist but won’t be available in this mission.”
His body already a few degrees lower, Roberion kept listening to the explanation “...material for stats upgrades needs to be the same tier as you, now you are mundane, trying even to incorporate a VIII tier proto-material will result in your death, the materials responsible for your base stats were peak mundane, try to find possible ways to get access to them... even by unorthodox ways”, listening that Roberion could only manage a weakly sadly grin, You mean to harvest other Nulls, that would be great if I wasn’t one. Now I have a target on my back, just great.
“Now for the last contents of the message, now for your last trial before the mission, in a few seconds the perk Trashed and Scattered will be activated, survive it, and you are in for the mission, next orders will be sent, and any type of betrayal will be detected, and you terminated.”
Finally it shut up, Roberion thought angrily.
As the message closes, the perk screen is selected:
Trashed and Scattered: Requirements achieved, select Perk for integration: Yes/No.
Yes/No
For the first time, no macro, no outside interference, just him and the system, and his obvious choice was...
Yes