33 - Chapter 31
Tasha was determined to be fully rested for her meeting the next day with Malim Bin Daud. As she was waiting she decided to check her status page.
Name: Tasha Andersen
Race: Human (Tier 0) - Level 1
Class: Rogue (Tier 2) - Level 1
Profession: Technocrat (Tier 2) - Level 1
Strength: 50
Dexterity: 50
Proprioception: 50
Constitution: 50
Intellect: 50
Will: 50
Charisma: 50
Soul: 50
Luck: Locked
Quest Points: 320
Open Quests: 4
She also decided to check her outstanding quests.
Quest A1: Self sufficient (Chain Quest)
Purchase land to create your own self sufficient town
Reward: Quest Points
Status: In Progress
Quest B1: Make your second significant investment (Chain Quest)
Make your second significant investment
Reward: Quest Points, more items in shop
Status: In Progress
Quest C1: reach for the sky (Chain Quest)
Finalise designs for the satellite monitoring station and break ground in the location picked for quest A1
Reward: Quest points, technical knowledge
Status: In Progress
Quest D1: Avenge your family (Chain Quest)
Investigate the activities of the syndicate and find out which branches were operating in the city when your family’s accident occurred. Now that you know the supernatural world exists, find and cultivate resources in this shadowy world. Remember greed transcends species.
Reward: 30,000 Quest Points, Knowledge of your family’s fate. ( Bonus for completing the whole chain in one step 70,000 Quest Points, Inventory System unlocked)
Status: Chain Completed
Tasha looked on at the last quest in shock. She had forgotten that the quest was even there. And now, due to the way Malim had behaved, she had reached the end in one day. Not only that, but the system had just awarded her a massive 100,000 points. She did some quick calculations.
She needed 90 QP per stat for the next 10 stats, then 270 QP per stat for the next 10, then 810 QP per stat for the 10 after. 90 x 8 x10 was 7,200 to get to 60 in each stat. Then 21,600, to reach 70 and 64,800 to reach 80 in each stat. So she could get to 80 in each stat if she spent all her quest points on just stats.
That was just not feasible. It would mean accepting 240 stats in one go. It would not only take 24 hours to assign, but it would also require a substantial amount of effort for her to train her body to simply move, forget about training to use the stats properly in a fight. At the moment it would be more of a hindrance rather than a help. She couldn’t help but wonder, just how strong would she become with 80 in all stats.
She also noticed another reward was mentioned in the quest. She had an inventory system. She looked up the message log to see the details.
Inventory system
You have access to a dimensional inventory system. The space starts out at 1m x 1m x 1m. If you wish to place items in the inventory, then hold the item and imagine it entering your storage. To retrieve the items, imagine the item appearing in your hand. Please note all items in storage will be time locked. No living items may enter storage.
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Inventory system may be enlarged with the use of Quest Points
Inventory system may be evolved with the use of Quest Points
Tasha picked up an apple from the bowl on the table. She imagined it entering her storage, and nothing happened. Did the system consider an apple a living thing? She went to the snack bar and picked up a packet of roasted nuts. She tried again. This time the bag of nuts disappeared from her hand. She had a sensation of a link to a space and could recall exactly what was in there. Tasha imagined the bag of nuts in her hand, and out it appeared.
Tasha spent some time trying out the various items. Anything considered living would not enter her storage, but once it was considered dead, or non-organic items would enter her storage quickly enough. Next she went to the shop to check her options for enlarging the space. If she reserved enough quest points to get to 80 in all stats, then she still had 6,720 points that she could use.
In the shop she looked at the options for enlargement first. It seemed pretty straight forward, and followed the same principle as the stats. All increases were in cube format. To go to 2m x 2m x 2m was 10 QP. Then the number of QP tripled for each additional meter. Tasha felt it was reasonably cheap, as the amount of space would increase exponentially. She could get to 7mx 7mx7m if she spent within her cap. Or 10mx10mx10m if she spent all 100,000QP on just enlargement.
Before making any decisions, she looked at evolution options.
Inventory evolution options.
1, Outfits tab - 500 QP
2, Add organics (Non living) - 1000 QP
3, Manage liquids - 2000 QP
4, Live specimens - 1,000,000 QP
5, Release time lock - 10,000,000 QP
6, Diurnal cycle - 1,000,000,000 QP
7, Pocket world - 100,000,000,000 QP
The options were crazy. She could have her own, tiny pocket world? The more she saw of this system, the more she realised how little she really knew about its capabilities and limits. She decided to get the first three options for now, spending 3,500 QP in the process.
Outfits tab unlocked - You may place items and create set outfits. At will you can swap whole outfits. Please be aware every single wearable article will be swapped. Outfits returned to the tab will be cleaned automatically.
Organics added - You may now store any item. Only items that are still alive will not enter.
Liquid management unlocked - You can now directly store liquids without containers. Liquids may be poured out at thought.
Tasha also increased her storage size to 6m x 6m x 6m for a total cost of 1,210 quest points. After that she spent time testing the capabilities. She could now put the apple in easily. She could also store water in its own space.
The first thing she did was start to store water. She dedicated 1 cubic meter just for water. That was 1000 liters of water total and it took her a while to fill that space from the tap. The water would be a lifeline in emergencies and could also be used as a weapon in a pinch.
She also stored all her weapons. Then she went around and packed everything that she had taken on her last trip. She called down to her team and asked them to get her several bags of food and any weapons they could get their hands on. One of the team came to her room to take cash from her then went out to fulfil her request.
While she waited, she set up all her clothing on various tabs. She tried the change option in front of the mirror. The experience was strange. She felt a change ripple down from her head to her toes, as the change progressed her new outfit appeared and the old one disappeared back into her storage.
There were certain issues with the process. First, it took around 1.5 seconds to complete and was very obvious. Second, when it said everything, it meant everything. It took her hair clips, her underwear, her jewellery, her watch and her shoes. She reversed the swap and everything came back in place, including hair clips. She would need to create full outfits with everything if she really wanted to use this option.
By the time she finished with her testing, her teams had returned with her orders. She spent some time packing everything away, including a spare power pack and satellite phone. She was as equipped as was likely to get and felt a lot better about her situation.
She relaxed to wait for morning, spending the time playing with her new inventory space. Tasha wanted to be as comfortable with its use as possible. She realised, quite by accident, that she did not need to retrieve objects to her hand. Nor did she need to hold them in her hand to store them. As long as she had physical contact, she could store and retrieve items. That gave her a lot more flexibility with her new ability. She even tried to put her bed and wardrobe into storage and realised there didn’t seem to be a weight limit, though she would need to test that properly at another time. At 6 meters to a side, she could store 216 cubic meters of stuff. Everything that she had put into storage so far would only account for around 4 cubic meters. Hell, she could probably store a car in her storage. That was certainly a strange thought. She would need to think about how best to utilise the ability in tactical situations. She would have killed for an ability like this when she was still in intelligence.
At around 7am she went down for breakfast. She was not sure what time she was expecting Malim so wanted to be ready just in case. She checked in with Mamat on the progress of the acquisitions. Everything seemed to be on track and the funding would be released today.
She hoped that would also progress her investment quest. Now there was nothing to do except wait for Malim and the tantalising secrets he promised to reveal.
*
** John POV **
“What do you mean that the transfer orders were sent at the last minute?” asked John. He was getting very frustrated with Kevin and the quality and timeliness of the information that he was being provided.
“I mean, the bank received information less than an hour ago.” replied Kevin. “There are multiple transfers, all to various private mining conglomerates in Malaysia. The total is north of £3Bn.”
“How the hell is she putting together multiple deals of this size so fast?” asked John. “She only just went out there”
“I have no idea.” replied Kevin, now aggravated. “It’s supposed to be your job to find out. I have been doing my job giving you all the information I can as soon as I can. If you can’t do anything with that, then that’s down to you.”
“Ok, ok,” replied John. “Calm down. Let me see what I can find out.” With that he hung up.
John called around his contacts in the far east, even waking people up. No one had even heard anything about the deal. He then tried to call the few contacts he had in the companies directly. No one who was senior enough took his calls, and at the junior level no one had any idea anything was even happening.
How the hell was this woman doing this? She was putting together multi billion pound deals with no one knowing anything. He had to find a way to get information about her moves, otherwise he had no way to leverage her.