In the gym, where the test equipment was located, the small digital lifeform, glop, was being tested after evolving.
It had formed some claws and a few basic abilities and they were just finishing the tests.
That said, after having finished testing all the basic strengths, it happily sat like a little pet on the lap of a small little girl.
This was the newest member of the club. Her name was Yuri Wong and she was the chi user who they found to fill the final spot for powering Keven's gamer space.
That said, the amount of chi she possessed was quite small. Even so it was enough for what they needed.
Naturally, she was a civilian course student because of her weak ability but from the get go her potential was tapped and got a pretty strong boost to her frail body.
"So after everything was tested, the average strength is only above average human strength. It is likely that you need at least the child stage to achieve trainee strength." Mr Atlas said.
"Hey! I am strong!" Glop said, frowning.
"You're still an infant, when you upgrade again, then you can talk about being strong." Tristan said.
As mentioned by the app, the digital spawn gained self awareness and this naturally allows it to speak and have intelligent conversation.
Interesting enough, it can interface with gamer space but it was currently level 1 and only had 5 stat points. Those were put all around equally in each basic stat giving it only minor growth but it amazed everyone how expansive gamer space could reach. This event prompted the summoners to try but lola failed as her summons relied on Lola to form a body. That said, it was likely a different story if he threw the space into the hell realm.
Milo however got results. His summons were all individuals but to get feedback he had to connect and control them while he did so.
The readings from an undead skeleton doing this was quite interesting as they lacked muscles meaning all constitution went into bones.
"Well that is good at least. Now you have something to aim for and work with your digital spawns." Rubin said.
"Hey, when do we get our own?" Lola asked.
"We should think of a central PC first to connect all the phones first. That way each phone doesn't make its own AI and stresses the memory of each phone." Mr Atlas said before turning to the heroics group. "How was your hero equipment tested?" He asked.
"It was alright, I had it a little hard since my equipment had to account for rubber and hardening. So it basically has to enhance my hardening strength through technology and be able to stretch. Most of all, they are preparing some weapons to protect me from my own attacks.” Rubin said.
The club members looked at him curiously. The massive attack he had done to show off at the start of the year was pretty famous and spread pretty far along the school being the only normal person to use the monster punching machine.
That said, his attack showed no danger to his body since it seemed to just rely on contraction and expansion of springs to produce several waves of attacks in that single attack to produce that amount of force.
“What kind of attack.” Mr Atlas asked, really curious.
“My killer.” he said.
Suddenly everyone grew serious. One thing that most heroes had but rarely used was called a killer move. It wasn’t a good move to use because it means that you surpassed the limits of your capacity to ‘catch’ a suspect and are forced to outright kill him or injure him to the point that he might die.
Many times, these moves cause massive strain or damage to the one using it as well.
“What is it like?” Lola asked.
Rubin smiled, “Do you guys know what a burnout is?” he asked.
“You mean when the 21st century cars activated hand brakes and accelerated with the wheels turning but their cars not moving.” Mr Atlas said. Naturally any car with any higher speed are hover cars instead while family cars still run with wheels.
“Yeah, that. I’ve thought about it a lot and my killer would be a straight punch pushing my enemy down but as soon as I hit, I don't use the spring, instead I force my wound up arm, hardened, to unwind, spinning instead while pushing him down into the ground.” He said.
Everyone instantly gasped at the description. It was a simple move, sure, but doing that would literally maim and rip the area in contact with his fist apart. His hand would likely heat up massively but the person receiving it would likely lose skin, mangle his chest muscles and even his organs might be screwed up if the attack lasted long enough. It was literally meant to drill a hole through him.
“Rubin, that is a very dangerous move, remember that trainee and vigilantes don’t need to go that far. Strong men and Brave men are generally the only ones who use killer moves.” Mr Atlas said.
“I know but hero’s armor and weapons are always produced for their strongest power. The armor for my fists is important so that I can take impacts while hardened without my body heating up and releasing so much liquids.” He said.
They all understood his reasoning but to hear about a killer move showed the determination that he had to be in the job of heroics even if his field was on civilian abilities.
“Oh right, they also had to figure out a mechanism to release LP oil within the suit as I fight so that I do not need to worry about my fluid levels.” He said.
“Wait, what do you mean release the oil?” Mr Atlas asked.
“Well, I normally apply the oil before doing any exercise or training that involves my hardening, so naturally heroic work will need the oil. I already told them that my costume needed to include covering my head. For fighting however, I still leak water if I use my hardening for too long so i thought that it would be more practical to have hidden pouches disguised as a gadget pouch which feeds a system to release the oil through very thin channels to control the flow to not use a lot but always have access to refill.” I said.
Shoji smiled, “That is a good idea and usage of technology to counter your weaknesses.” he said.
“What about you guys?” Robin asked.
Shoji grinned, “My father came today, knowing that it was my turn to get my costume and together with the tech team, we looked into producing a powerful katana for me. We ended up with two models, a very light sword made out of Carbon Nanite fiber material while the other will be a traditional Japanese Katana made with some very powerful metals. It is going to be heavier than the other one but many times deadlier and used for dealing targets with high defensive capacities.” Shoji said.
“What is your outfit style?” Mr Atlas asked.
“A Nanofiber armor, it’s strength limit is only vigilante but it can definitely withstand damage within that level. Only if I reach higher strength levels like Strong Man will my father help me get equal strength armor. I likely won’t do a great deal of field work though because I plan to eventually study to be an investigator like my family and can help out our company through investigation and more covert work.” Shoji said.
Robin looked at Lola and chuckled, “Did you let those guys from the tech group fantasize in putting you in erotic demon clothing?” He teased.
“Oh shut up! I beat any of the guys who had those thoughts and some girls took my project. My ideal form of clothing isn’t going to be some shitty slutty demon clothing. Just like Mephesto, I planned out a costume with actual class and elegance. I’m not exactly good at fighting and none of the others have mentioned any signs of merging to achieve a high level of power so we decided to go for an elegant look that had a more ‘demoness witch’ vibe. Eventually I hope to grow strong enough to summon Imps to scout for me before summoning my main fighters.” She said.
“That makes a lot of sense actually, it is a pretty neat idea.” Shoji said and looked at Milo, “and you?”
“I had to undergo a lot of scan tests instead. My summoning and spiritual energies aren’t well known. Not like there haven’t been others but each ability is different so they referenced known energy signals to my own when summoning and controlling the skeletons. They are going to try and look for either psychic technology that functions alongside my energy to reduce the mental burden so that I can control more undead or materials that react positively.” He explained.
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“Oh, you mean like the famous Moonlight crystal which The Seer possesses and greatly enhances her mystical powers?” Rudy asked.
“Yeah.” Milo nodded, “It is unlikely that such a thing exists for a vigilante so it is likely that they will come up with some form of helmet or headgear.” Milo said.
“What was the costume design?” Mr Atlas asked.
Milo rolled his eyes, “They were really into making me look like a grim reaper but I can’t swing a scythe or sword to save my life. I ended up telling them to make armor and a black cloak with as little ‘evil’ apparel as possible. I get that costumes match abilities but I don’t want to wear a freaking skull helmet.” He said.
Everyone laughed when they heard him say that.
However the eyes turned towards another figure, Lilian. In the short time after fully awakening her full ability, she went to the Beauro of Heroics and retried for a heroic license and this time she succeeded because the power behind the Chomps isn’t a joke. She can spin them really fast when they are small and suddenly grow them, transferring the speed into the weight causing heavy damage.
The improved life force and the gamer space improvements naturally enhanced her entire physical performance and she was able to get the license and transfer to heroics.
“Hehehe, for my costume, I’m still looking into materials available before I get to the design.” She said.
“Don’t go thinking that just because you have the Chain chomps that you can dress yourself like any mario character and get away with it.” Lola said.
“I know, I know. I only plan to lightly base it off them, honestly I want something more like a warrior princess vibe from Princess zelda.” She said.
They understood but made sure to tell her to at least change the color scheme so that no problems come for them.
The Nintendo franchise might be old and even the company themselves are long gone, it did get absorbed into newer companies and those were later merged into others to modern day. Every so often there is still a resurgence of the old 20th and 21st century games that survived to this day.
“I really hope I can grow strong enough and transfer to the heroics before the second half of the school year.” Rudy said.
On his back all his wings were already developed and white colored instead of yellow. He could even fly more skillfully with just this basic form of the feathers. With the base form 10 feathers could lift 10 kilo boxes making him very good as produce manager. When enhanced by any of the three elements they double in strength and size.
Of course, the six feathers containing the energy were all still dull colored and he is constantly absorbing energy which stresses and trains his body. He still has yet to figure out more abilities but the feathers were still very much in the process of growing. His own abilities are actually growing, which is quite interesting. Also his tail feathers were scanned after absorbing energy and like guessed, the energy wasn’t life force or stamina anymore, it was the elemental energy he had gathered.
This did pose a dilemma and that was how slowly he absorbed energy. Feathers would burn or turn to cinder if too much fire or electricity ran through the feathers before they could convert while the cold chill in ice would take almost a full day to completely convert the feathers making it hard to gather a lot of energy at once.
Frankly it was something that he likely had to charge for a long time to constantly grow the capacity to have energy to spare.
The only untested thing was actually removing and bathing each specific feather in their energy source directly. That said, Rudy did say he once had one of his feathers ripped out and for almost a week he felt incredibly bad until it regrew, the taken feather was destroyed as well so he couldn’t just put it back.
Over the last weeks he also grew more confident thanks to activating his true ability but he was still a timid child.
“Hey, didn’t we just get the first month’s club funds?” Oliver asked.
Mr Atlas thought a moment before pulling his phone and checking the account and nodded, “Yep, we actually did. Presently there is $96,000 in there.” He said.
They all cheered because they were now able to obtain equipment they sorely needed.
“What kind of equipment do you think we should get?” Lola said excitedly.
“A few high end computers.” Robin said.
“A few?” Mr Atlas asked.
“Well not all of them, mid range is fine but we need at least 5 for the life force users to have something that can effectively work for each of them to house a Digital spawn each of them can use to help train their life force. We need a high end PC, likely one built like a gaming PC, so that the central AI which runs the Apps for the Digital spawner so that we don’t have several AI each.”
“Oh, am I getting a new home then?!” Glop asked excitedly.
“Soon.” Robin said and looked at the teacher.
“Right, we do need to properly handle this problem before it gets out of hand. We probably need to go check with the tech groups and see if they know the best parts to build a good enough to not require a rapid change after transferring.” he said.
They agreed and understood what he was going for. No one was a gamer and had little knowledge of building a pro pc.
The little they knew of computers was basically common sense of using it, not the technical part.
“Huh? A computer able to handle an AI? Ahahahaha! Are you asking for a government level Quantum computer, there is no way you can ‘build’ something like that with our tech here.” the monitor of the Power Technology Research Society said laughing.
“We aren’t looking for something so complex. I’m sure your software studies would be like this, among the students that joined our club and learned about his power, his ability gives life to data and among the things this does is recently create an AI to properly run the applications which raise this life form.” Mr Atlas said.
“Give life to data? As in breath life into a digital lifeform. That amount of bull shit is a little much Mr Atlas.” He said with a sneer.
The teacher sighed, “Tristan.” He called and the boy walked up and showed the other teacher the applications and even showed off the AI.
“Okay… so you wasted a club room to make a game and now want to expand it with our resources.” the monitor said.
Robin was almost losing his patience when Tristain just faced the screen upwards and it suddenly released a bright shine, suddenly attracting attention and Glop jumped out of the screen.
“Hello, I’m Glop.” He said and looked around, “Wow this place looks really neat! Is this where we are going to get my new home?!” he exclaimed.
The teacher’s jaw dropped and quickly pulled the phone in the boy’s hand to see that the moving creature on the screen was gone and a message appeared showing ‘Spawn Active’.
“This… this is digital life!” he said.
“This is purely the boy's own ability, at the moment we don’t need any massive computer, we just need one with enough memory space that this creature’s data growth goes unimpeded.” Mr Atlas said.
Although the monitor heard this, he was still a professional and coughing he turned to the teacher and collected himself. “Mr Atlas, I am more than sure you are aware that any AI would require at bare minimum of 1 petabyte to be ‘written’ with enough self consciousness to run as an AI with even minor learning capacity to communicate.” He said.
“Negative. Unit possesses 7 terabytes of current memory, the minimum possible with the current Digital spawn also housed in this containment unit. Requirements for base Digital command AI should barely amount to 100 terabytes of data.” an emotionless voice said coming from the phone.
He froze and looked at the phone, “Did the phone just talk?” he asked.
“Like I said, that is the AI, it was just born out of nowhere a few hours ago as I learned how to upgrade Glop from his initial form. After some tests we came here to get something to relieve my phone of the immense burden from their constantly growing data.” He said.
The teacher rubbed his head, “Alright, I think I understand. To some extent this must be a being born from some unknown algorithm of the world itself. Just like there are still unexplainable mysteries like the other dimensions we humans sometimes connect to.” he said. “How much funding do you have available and what are you going to need?” He asked.
Robin walked up and explained what can happen in the future and what they wanted to prepare for Tristan as well as helping the other Life force users including some of how the ability worked.
Among other things, the fact that other people can ‘raise’ these creatures and obtain life force feedback was a rather big point to note. Doing so would mean they could obtain something to train their own life force even if they can’t tap into the creature's power. Not everything was about battle power.
“So one central PC unit is capable of housing these creatures and at least five weaker ones that connect to it but are separate for each separate person. Hmm, these creatures remind me of games where you raise virtual pets. I feel like a proper device to house the creature's physical chip is quite important.” he said.
“Yes but at the moment we need to set up the foundation for something like that to even work.” Robin said.
“It makes sense, let me check the file size for all the ability born applications so I can get an estimate of how big these files can get.” He said, asking for the phone.
Tristan handed it to him and he quickly found the files and saw the file size.
“Discounting the junk data that is likely used to raise this creature, it seems each of them are currently 3 terabytes, the AI said it would require, for a basic AI unit 100 terabytes but will it continue to grow after that?” he said, asking more of the AI then the people.
“AI unit will first achieve basic requirements. Upon completion the requirements for future upgrades will be possible to calculate. As for future spawn sizes, following the development sizes, newborn requires 500 gigabytes, infant requires 3 to 5 terabytes, child requires 10 to 20 terabytes, Adult requires between 30 to 50 terabytes, Mega requires a minimum of 200 terabytes, Ultimate requires a minimum of 5 petabytes.” the AI said.
“Well damn, each one of these things is going to need their own memory banks.” the teacher said.
“Currently the important thing is having enough space for at least 5 adults. We think vigilante is child and strongman is at adult stage so if we can guarantee the growth space at least to this stage, it should be enough for most of the growth during high school.” Mr Atlas said.
“Considering the funds you obtained in just a little over a month, I doubt it will just end at that but it is within our ability to make a central computer with upwards of about 20 petabytes, while each connected unit possesses 300 terabytes. What will be difficult is the computer build required to render these creatures.” he said.
“All Digital Spawn chips adapt to any machine they are connected to, the form of the chip will adapt to any entrance from a phone chip to a disk.” the AI said.
“Right, we will figure something out. We should have something prepared at least within the week.” He said.
“Thank you.” Mr Atlas said.
With a nod they headed off after reaching an agreement. All that was left was waiting for the arrival and while that happened, Tristan began to produce four more spawns but like the first they would come out as blobs as if it was the insides of an egg that hatched too soon.