“Alright, starting today we will begin working out the foundations of your future companies. Since it takes a significant amount of time to set everything up, we have decided to help you get the basics set up at the very least.” Chasm Might said as class started.
“What foundation?” Marcus asked.
“How many of you are planning to start a heroic company, business or brand?” He asked.
At least half the class raised their hands.
“Exactly, a lot of paperwork is going to go into it and there are perks and restrictions based on your rank. Everyone in the elite classes are already above braveman strength so there isn’t that much trouble though there are restrictions.” He said and began to write rules.
“Braveman are still subject to military draft, basically if a hero calls, you are to answer. If the federal government calls, you are likely to be on call if you aren’t already very busy doing jobs but the severity might pull you out. Furthermore, you are limited from developing military equipment. Because of the last few years, we’ve determined that it is too dangerous to leave military development in private hands that are outside of military control. If you want you can set up a research facility which provides research for the military but you can’t make and patent new military equipment and all development has to be done in the digital world for security reasons. Braveman also has a shortened procedure, but still has one, to exit the digital world.” He said.
“Is… entrance and exit monitored by all, even heroes?” Robin asked.
“No, Techno and Esper have developed a psyche disruptor that would affect any psychic interference affecting a hero so entrance or exit you will go through and be clear and you just have to be identified by the gamer space and show your system status name to be cleared. This is one of the ‘freedoms’ heroes get. Still, even then, besides Techno, no one is permitted to establish a research facility for military weaponry without going through Techno and the government. You can, however, establish a private weapon construction facility to receive materials produced by the government to produce weapons and armor for the usage of yourselves or people working for you.” He explained.
“So how without vigilante and strongmen, what is the ‘sidekick’ mentality now?” Marcus asked.
“Exactly that.” Chasm Might said and drew out the rankings and what was once the two ranks was divided into two positions, “The people who can be accepted as sidekicks must be civilian military graduates or heroic course graduate students from the hero academy. Also they are ‘support’ and not fighters, support has been officially regulated to the transport of spare equipment, transporting armament specific for certain kinds of enemies if needed to deal with them and most importantly is acting as an operative to transmit information to the on field heroes and properly transmit information from several fronts.” He said.
“So actually a sidekick.” Marcus said.
“Exactly, a bravemen working for a hero are not sidekicks, they are partners. Sidekicks are the ones who run information to improve the hero's efficiency, or the people helping civilian movements. Make sure to keep that in mind because future news reporters will say that exactly instead of what was once said and they will give proper credit to the people fighting.” He said.
Everyone nodded but Robin thought about the club and its first year people who were already training their replacements for the next year so that it would not fall to pieces without accountant, treasurer and all such positions.
This was going on through all of the 12th grade and soon groups were asked to gather up so that they could properly decide on their.
The whole 12th grade group, the original group to make the club, ended up gathering.
That said, the last 3 years had made a big change on what everyone once thought they would be doing.
The original group plus Ruth is Milo, Shoji, Robin, Lola as the founders, Ruth joins in on this group since she was also their childhood friend. Then the people who filled in the basic positions in the club. The Produce Manager, Rudy Rocks, who managed the club’s stock of produce Milo and Lola supplied. Marketing Generalist, Oliver and Sales Rep, Tristen Evers, the duo that worked on finding customers and selling. Customer support Rep, Kevin Harper, Business Development, Zack Rain, Human resource Professional, Lilian James and finally Accountant, Harold War.
Among these names, as you can probably tell, a few of them were far from being civilian class students anymore.
The Ever twins and their digital spawns are marked as Elite class summoners alongside Zack, Rudy is a Hero’s disciple in Blue Phoenix’s elite heroics class, Kevin is obviously in Server Admin’s elite heroics and his disciple. Harold was elevated last year to heroics under Bookkeeper who gathered book related abilities and helped develop him into a very strong support type power. Lilian was an Elite class strength type student because of her chomps.
No one in this original group was under the benchmark of braveman and it was difficult to assume they would continue their old positions.
“So… this is awkward.” Robin said, scratching his head as the group looked.
The others were smiling because in essence, they had been the cause for the world's entire evolution.
“We don’t plan to turn away.” Harold said.
“Agreed, even if we do a lot of work that is personal, we still want to continue making this club into a true hero company. We know for sure that you hero disciples are definitely going to grow into heroes and there are several among us that will get there eventually.” Kevin said.
Robin smiled, “Thanks guys, honestly, it might scare a lot of people if so many graduates with the status of hero worked under the same company.” Robin said.
“Well, if they wanted to split us up, they would have had to fight a decade of friendship to get that done.” Shoji said and patted his back.
Robin nodded with a smile, “We’ve got to decide the future.” He said.
“I don’t really think there is much difficulty hiring people to fill the places. We also aren’t against doing the work we already did until we can get a skilled professional for the spot. A lot of people that had to be moved into the digital world, primarily the powerless and NPC rank people, still have trouble getting jobs so I’m sure the academy plans to help fill positions with normal people. We just need to look at the people who graduated last year, they already developed a huge number of islands as private HQ for each company. Others joined existing companies because it is job security.” Kevin said.
Robin nodded, “It’s going to be a complicated subject, the reins that Mr Atlas and Mr Might have helped control will fall into our hands and we will have to rework all of our governmental contracts, patents and royalty contracts.” Robin said. He remembered the headaches that came with Milo and Lola’s Life force oil and bone supplement pills and then Kevin’s Gamer space got even more chaos rolling.
It actually made him ask Kevin about his future plans on the subject.
“I will have to keep training intensively, my energies have stabilized and formed level 1 refined energy and turned into world essence now as have the others, even the ones that have yet to combine but the consumption of energy is even more intense now. I think the requirement needed to build level 5 clearance needs level 2 refined energy which is why it is going slow.” He said.
“That sucks, no pressure though.” He said and looked at the twins.
“We are planning to open up a programming company to design helpful digital forms for digital spawns and outfit the NPC with their functions. It’s similar to the Specs units we made. We actually have design plans to give it an Adult form which will help make the specs work more efficiently and act like a more central data nexus. This would make tutoring significantly faster if there is a way to find information much faster for the specs who rely on the book they hold to draw information. Then there are guard units, policing, or just outright improving naturally forming digital spawns to reduce aggression and improve security so they don’t come invading the cities.” Tristan said.
“We also hope to get npc sidekicks who can hopefully be sponsored into the hero academy. Like our little sister who can bond with a spawn, we want to look for more people like that to build a fighting force of similar people.” Oliver explained.
“That’s great, speaking of sidekicks…” Robin said.
“I feel like each one of us is likely to develop divisions in the company.” Lola said.
“Agreed, we each have specific powers and almost everyone of us is the leading developer of it, Robin and I have basically replaced that piece of shit Stretch as the greatest elastic heroes and I think the heroes themselves hope we can help organize the other elastics.” Ruth said.
“Yeah, I’ve had talks with Mr Might about that. From the thousands of children in the Stretch academy, little less than 200 continued heroic after we figured out how to break the mental control they had imposed on them. Most of them look up to us both and are not sure of what to do with their lives so we have been planning to recruit them as they graduate.” Robin said.
“I wonder, what about the current 11th years.” Milo asked.
They all looked at one another and Robin raised his brow, “I definitely want Yuri, in the time that the military civilian classes came into being, she’s gotten stronger by powerless standards but most of all she is very confident now and her powers is a healing type perfect for field healing.” Robin said.
“She’s grown really confident among her peers though she is meek to those in heroics.” Lilian said.
“Yeah but I think it is more out of respect.” Robin replied.
The group went over the things they planned to set up but at the end of the day, the first thing to set up was the company HQ to handle the core job they ran, heroics.
They all agreed that they would have to do their current jobs until they build up the funds to pay professionals.
“The real question is the name. Normally I would think of a normal name but when we look at our members, it is almost all demigods that compose our echelon.” Milo said.
“Right… names.” Robin groaned.
If there was one thing universally hated, that was naming things.
“I feel like we should just go with a normal name, we aren’t a specialized company either like a lot of companies go.” Lola said.
“We also have to account for the fact that the names we want for heroics aren't always likely to become the names we keep. Even more now that we have to account for the changes we’ve faced.” Shoji said.
Everyone groaned even more.
“We should just work through the obvious ones, The Immortals.” Kevin said.
“That’s a hero team name, not a company name.” Robin said.
“Yeah but companies built on the basis of a pre existing team during highschool tend to be based on the team name.” Kevin replied.
“So we should take into consideration the club name then.” Shoji said. “Civilian Power Research Division… CPRD Heroics?” Shoji suggested.
This actually got everyone interested, “That’s actually a great idea but why not foundation.” Robin said. “A foundation is a coalition of companies and businesses under a single name. Since we aren’t going to restrict each other’s lives but still be one large organization, why not the C.P.R.D. Foundation.” Robin said.
“Civilian Power Research Division Hero Foundation.” Milo said it in its extended format. The ‘division’ kind of threw it off but everyone had instantly picked up on the reason to not drop it. If the ‘division’ was removed then it would be the CPR foundation and that would just be embarrassing to say.
“That does keep to our true original goal, the development and funding of a research division to analyze and aid civilians and disabilities to stabilize or have the proper activation of their powers.” Robin said.
As they talked about it, the name just grew more and more liked by the group and ended up cementing itself as their official name. That said, after the name was officialized and things got more casual Lilian actually asked the more established members, “So what kind of brand names are you guys going to make?”
“Brand?” Robin asked.
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“Well Milo and Lola have produced and they will likely be setting up personal businesses right?” She asked.
“Oh that!” Lola said and smiled, “My brand is already official but I can’t act on it until I’m 18. I call it the Devil’s Elixir brand and the collections are based on the seven deadly sins. For instance, the LP oil Robin originally used is a part of the Lust Sin collection. I’ve been expanding my minions by a lot and this has let me expand production but it will be years until I can start selling more legendary produce. It’s also divided into categories based on quality and usage. All the normal creams and oils are mortal rank and basically any normal and powerless can use them without safety concerns, LP oil and other things which contain small amounts of life force are magical rank and are the height of what common people with a lot of money can get. Above that is mystical produce, this actually influences humans, some creams and oils can even help slowly reduce the effects of aging.” She said.
Milo, for his part, smiled, “My brand is called the Death God’s Pharmaceutical. It is basically to produce and test all the undead pills and drugs within the immense collection of recipes I’ve gotten and see if they are usable by mortal people and their effects and side effects. The gamer space is really useful for catching the still unnoticeable side of it.” He said.
“That’s really interesting.” Lilian said and groaned, “I wish I could do something like that but I’ve only got my chomps!” she said.
They all laughed but no one thought any less of her because the chomps were extremely dangerous. Lilian was close to condensing her life core and they were very sure that it would cause a mutation again and even the creation of life essence based energies had caused the chomps to change slightly.
“So what about you guys?” Robin asked the others.
“You mean our aspirations?” Zack asked. Robin nodded and he thought a bit, “I’m still training my bosses and filling out the huge space that formed after I discovered full activation. There is a lot of space to fill, as for the heavenly realm, I’ve actually not seen a lot of change.” He said.
“A god of monsters might have special herbs meant for your creatures.” Lola suggested.
“Yeah, I’ve found a few and actually added them to the dungeon but they change quickly into mortal world herbs and don’t keep the magic that makes it celestial so I don’t really get it.” He replied.
Harold, on his part, smiled, “I’m planning to work with the government to build my Book jail.” He said.
“I’ve been meaning to ask but trapping people inside that, isn’t there a danger of starving or suffocating?” Robin asked.
“No, when the book is closed, based on what Bookkeeper himself said after getting the book shut, it seems like people are frozen like in suspended animation. They come off it when their page is opened so it is a very good method to keep people in jail and literally sealed away. I think the shock factor of not seeing years go by in an instant is significantly worse than just staying in a jail cell. Although we did test my little sister’s power affecting the books I’ve turned controlled, magic books can be scary when our powers are combined. People sealed inside a magic book are actually thrusted into the book's content.” he said.
“What?!” everyone exclaimed.
“Yeah, apparently if I were to take something like Harry potter and trap you guys inside and then my little sister added her powers to the book, it would send your mind into the book’s world. When used in a jail book, it seems people all appear in a very large open space while trapped into open cells. Since it’s just the mind, there is no danger of their bodies rotting away.” Harold said.
“That… sounds scary actually.” Robin said.
“Yeah, we still don’t know the limits of how strong someone has to be to overpower this. The heroes that have tried to open the jail books have succeeded simply because I can’t keep it shut physically but if special locks were made then I’m sure that would change. For instance a digimetal lock system to seal the book on all sides would definitely hold up to a hero’s strength.” Harold explained.
They marveled at the thought. The twins already said their desire to make a division of powerless digital spawn fighters.
The only one left was Rudy who never spoke of anything.
“I want to just be a good hero.” He said. “Like Blue Phoenix, I want to be strong and confident and be able to protect everyone, I don’t think I would make anything, honestly.” he said.
“That’s fine, no one said you have to do anything.” Robin said and patted his back.
After that the club went and began to work on officializing that name.
It still would take weeks to work through it which had the school’s help for the legal troubles but every contract was read by everyone and Robin in particular. No contract was left unread, unlike normal people, he could read everything extremely fast and decipher the legal jargon very quickly. For the parts he might not understand, he made the legal teams explain the circumstances of the clause.
Several times he frowned at very invasive parts that actually restricted them and when pointed out, the government teams actually got red faced and quickly removed things. It was clear as day that they were things snuck in.
The part that likely irritated the government legal teams was how every elite class of the original hero academy was just as perceptive and thorough. Ironically, because the brain had evolved so much when wisdom and intelligence was elevated to such a high level, they all had the ability to speed read and have exceptional memory, reading speed and comprehension followed even if someone did not develop those skills.
It was genuinely hard to trick them if they actually wanted to read through it and most of them read through it, those that came from other academies were less interested but the smart ones still read through.
In the end, all the problematic clauses were removed and only then did the club sign their names and move the process along.
In the end, it all began and all around the city below the academy, new islands started to sprout out and a small business and buildings began to appear. These were the start up locations for their HQ. The operation center and equipment management center was in this place.
It would not be handed over until graduation though and they were preparing hundreds while existing companies were building an HQ in this world as well. It was the true concentration of heroics into a serious and united front.
After all the bureaucracy they were open to train and work so everyone got back to work to get money.
Ruth also asked to see how Robin was developing his system and when she checked, she paused because there was not a single similar network because she had different genetics related to her powers.
She had to get her own network of traits by force.
It made her groan but she accepted that they would not always be the same regardless. She accepted the challenge nonetheless and started working to fix the traits.
***
Robin sighed as he finished turning in some criminals causing trouble. The police were very careful to transport.
The quest appeared for the bounty and he completed and he saw the money enter his inventory and checking the amount then checked his stats to make sure he had enough. He was thankful that leveling up had come easy with all the cores he was absorbing and his stats were growing rapidly.
He levitated and went flying off and landed on a building while waiting for more calls. While he waited he purchased more traits and infused it.
With a stretch, the feeling of the change ended because they were not major traits. He looked at how many were left and it was just 3 more traits to complete this system.
“Hello, no reports or problems happening in your area, would you like to transport to another area?” the operator connected to his comms asked.
Robin was pulled from his thoughts and looked around before finally shaking his head, “No, I’m heading in.” He said and flew off.
He returned because he wanted to see this form.
Within the digital world, he purchased and infused the last traits before he finally started. He needed to build the network and with his mind focused on it he started to look for the trait routes that best built this connection to transmit energy between the two systems in harmony so that rejection would not happen.
To say his mind went through hundreds of flows in minutes and thousands after hours of thinking about it, it slowly took form as new flows replaced the existing connections with more efficient flows incorporating the new traits until at last the trait was active.
“Done, simulate.” Robin said.
The system immediately started simulating it.
Trait network appears to produce an adequate 90% or greater compatibility. True compatibility will require activation and scans. The hyper efficient energy network aids greatly in the increased compatibility.
Robin groaned but nodded and finally had it infused and used the 100 points to activate the physiology.
He felt a burning through his body as it ran through his every cell until it finished. He groaned but soon got up and walked outside to once more try the transformation.
With a deep breath he activated and like the first time, his body hardened first and from there his skin turned into scaled lizard hide but the hardening connection was no longer isolated to just the dragon half. It started off but quickly the flow activated the fae half causing a bright shine to run through his body and caused his hair to turn into feathers.
Dragon horns grew and his body started to grow a bit as he gained mass. A long tail formed and his legs transformed into lizard shaped legs. All the while his black rubber scales gained a rainbow like shine.
When everything was complete four pairs of wings sprouted mixing the dragon and butterfly like traits of fae and dragon.
He felt the full force of the two biologies constantly increasing and forming a balance as they traded energy until his body finished transforming and finally stopped.
His face had extended just a tiny bit like a muzzle had tried to form but didn’t while his ears had elongated greatly.
When he opened his eyes, the mixed eyes were glowing and he was finally stable. He felt strange but nonetheless, his body was at least stable in form now. When he looked at his hands, he saw claws had replaced nails and his hands looked like a hybrid of lizard paws and human hands. Clearly fae had a very human appearance since it so strongly repelled the lizard form of dragons. The highly refined life source was also counteracting the animalistic side.
He then looked at his scales and lifted one and was shocked by how dense and thick they were. It was also when he noticed that he had shockingly increased to nearly 3 meters of height.
Scanning complete
Compatibility fully scanned, 98% and increasing. Your body is naturally adapting and within a month your natural biology should reach 100% through natural growth.
“That’s good.” he said and was surprised by his own voice. It was naturally deeper but it also sounded melotic. “Why does my voice sound like this?” he asked but surprisingly also noticed his voice causing literal effects in the infrared spectrum of colors.
Updating status
Due to your biological evolution into an Earth Fae Dragon, your stat multipliers have improved through the activation of the physiologies.
Strength: 1.5x → 3x
Agility: 2x → 3x
Dexterity: 1.5x → 3x
Constitution: 1.5 → 3x
Intelligence: 0x → 1.5x
Wisdom: 0x → 1.5x
When he saw that, he instantly knew why his body felt so weird. This was a huge rise in power and he grinned, revealing the fangs lining his mouth now.
“Is this transformed or natural?” Robin asked.
Both, your natural human form simply restricts the natural display of innate abilities tied to the racial physiology which you still have no access to due to the incomplete physiology as of yet.
Robin chuckled because he was going to give Marcus a rude awakening after months of being beaten by that fat monkey.
When he finally checked his status, his grin widened because of the boost. His stats were just around 8.5k or higher, only the mental stats were lower but the multiplier for the physical stats was now 3x. This means his stats shot up from around 12k to 25k. It literally doubled his power and put him over a significant difference over Marcus.
He wanted to go over and kick his ass but he calmed down. The change was massive and he felt it in his body.
As such he returned to normal, getting a new shirt since his ripped because of the wings, and called Chasm Might to help him adapt to his new strength.
He was informed of the change so he instantly knew he had to help out. A lot of people were facing the same thing once their secondary physiology kicked in full power. The stat multiplier was a big change. Even normal humans actually saw physical enhancement traits improve or outright bloom.
To say that Chasm Might was shocked at Robin’s new form was an understatement much less the power and speed.
To him, the most shocking thing was how hard Robin’s body became. He could make it either incredibly hard or flexible like rubber and he gained a near supernatural level of control over his psionic energy. It seemed to react almost as his desire appeared or even before it, such as cushioning the ground under his feet, elastic gravity barriers and more.
Chasm Might actually started using blood power on him to finally beat him down and eventually finally killed him but he actually worked up a bit of a sweat clearly showing that he was now putting his back into beating his disciple.
“Amazing, I had thought Heatwave and Moonlight were growing absurdly but you really take the cake.” He said.
“Did he finally change?” Robin asked.
“Yeah. They’ve both actually had thoughts of maybe changing their name to sound more like gods because they have started to express weird changes to their bodies that don’t look as natural.” He said.
“The system did mention they had a cosmic physiology that she couldn’t identify and affect and could only add human biology to stimulate its full activation.” Robin said.
“Yeah, that’s exactly why, a divine physiology with cosmic energy from the sun and moon.” Chasm Might said with a confused face. “Honestly this level of growth you had now… if your physiology keeps boosting your multipliers like this, it will really make you something scary.” he said.
“Have you not bloomed as well?” Robin asked.
He smiled, “I’ve ascended my energies and my human physiology is causing a lot of change. For now only my constitution has bloomed. It went from x5 to x7 and I’ve been having a lot of natural growth.” He said with a smile.
“What are your natural stats?” Robin asked.
“It's between 15 and 18k before the modifiers are added.
Robin was shocked to hear the natural value and just how much his abilities caused it to change.
“That’s… like how you would see a god of strength, nearly. Strength and power amplified to such absurd levels.” Robin said.
He smiled at the comment, “Who knows, maybe I can still get a spark.” He said with a laugh before they started a new round so that Robin could learn to effectively control these crazy levels of strength.
Even after wasting all his extra lives he had to fight more carefully. Chasm Might also was very careful of the fact and let the boy punch and attack without retaliation beyond throwing him away.
What took him off guard was when Robin showed off a few tricks he was learning from the celestials when he tried to control the color waves which caused a few strange phenomena but it ultimately failed to do much. The poor skill proved it was hard to learn.
In the end, Robin ended the day with enough control to not destroy things but would need several days to get fine control of his own powers.
The next day he made sure to beat Marcus into a bloody pulp when they sparred and ignited the same rage he felt within him.
Silk also achieved his full physiology during this time and put up a better fight but not so much that they could take Robin and were left on the ground until they respawned.
Robin did just like Marcus had done and gloated in their faces causing the endless fury in the three of them to burn like a raging inferno as they spewed out insults that happened to ridicule every fault and flaw in their training and fighting style, which was remembered by all three both to use as a weakness and to train and fix in themselves.