“Was that a damn dragon?” Ansfrin called as he rushed out of Vancouver City Hall
“It was, then it was a man,” Tane called back from the registration table.
“Did you see what color he was?”
“He was white,” Tane called back
“Not the man, the dragon,” Ansfrin said with a hint of impatience.
Tane looked up to the side in thought, “Yeah, that makes more sense.”
“TANE!”
’Right, From what I could tell it looked to be silver in color though it didn’t have the normal markings we’ve seen…”
Ansfrin held up his hand which caused Tane to immediately go silent. While knowing what color the dragon was wouldn’t set the humans within earshot on edge, the humans learning that Tane and he had more information about what had happened almost three days ago wasn’t something he was ready to share yet. His Faction had learned that this Earth was scheduled to become part of the defacto multiverse and they’d been sent here to prepare the area. When the SYSTEM had changed everything, he’d had to adapt and change those plans. The new SYSTEM had removed all of his team's classes. The only things they had been left with were their starting abilities and anything they’d been carrying. The damn SYSTEM had even removed their classes and reduced their levels to zero.
Shoot, The SYSTEM had even changed how the class SYSTEM worked. Luckily the magical items they brought had started working again once mana was introduced to the world and they were able to mask their true race. The few humans that had seen something had either been dealt with or changed into their true form and then the establishment of the illusion that protected them had been cast and what the humans had seen was explained away as a glitch.
With SYSTEM messages appearing in the human's minds, it had been a lot easier to explain what they’d seen as the SYSTEM’s fault than trying to make everyone that had seen them change into their true form for a few moments. His race had an innate ability to shift their appearance to other creatures of similar size. Pretending to be human had been incredibly easy. But, when their levels had been reset to zero they’d all lost that ability. It had been a racial ability called Chameleon. Now, it was a Racial Skill that became available when they reached level 10 in their first class. Also, Racial Skills, unlike all other skills, had to be purchased with Skill Points, a tidbit of information he’d had to pay to get. The new SYSTEM had rewritten how his race abilities were acquired and worked or had it brought them back in line to how they were supposed to work, he wasn’t sure.
In those first hours after the SYSTEM knocked out all electricity and everything stopped working he’d sent his team out to look for the City Node. He had chosen Vancouver because there were over 1 million people in the area and it had natural defense lines. With over a million people in the area, there was bound to be a node near one of the city's Administrative buildings. One thing about the Old SYSTEM that the City Node was usually placed in a city building of some sort. An hour later they’d found it at City Hall and they’d all made their way there.
His scouting team had found the SYSTEM Shop node near the street right in front of City Hall and then the City Node just inside the main door of City Hall. Both were floating silver orbs about the size of a bowling ball. Once they arrived, Ansfrin had set up defensible perimeters, with the help of a lot of frazzled locals. Since all magical and technological means of contact had been severed when the SYSTEM had redesignated this part of the Multiverse as The Foundation, his plans Altered. He hadn’t lived to over 300 Earth Years of age without knowing how to adapt to uncommon situations. The SYSTEM Messages he’d received seemed to indicate that The SYSTEM he’d resided in had been a rebel, renegade, whatever. He would need to Adapt to this New SYSTEM.
He was here now. On this planet where he’d been for the last 5 years infiltrating and preparing for Mana to be introduced. If everything had gone as planned, his team would have saved a lot of humans that could have been turned over to The Slavers for a very high markup. Now? Now he had taken control of Vancouver. His team was working with the locals and they were working tirelessly to make sure this small safe area stayed safe and grew. Also, they needed to level, which wasn’t hard. The monsters were appearing and leveling fast. At least this world hadn’t been designated a Dungeon World. Things might have been a little more “strained” if this had been a Dungeon World.
He'd sent some of his people out to clear areas and kill as many monsters as they could. While they’d been out, Ansfrin had visited the SYSTEM Shop and knew that this area was going to be within an area designated to be for Basic levels 1 – 50. Once he’d figured out the difference between Basic Monsters and Advanced Monsters, which he’d had to purchase from the SYSTEM, he’d never been so happy that The Faction was so anal about preparing for an infiltration. They’d made sure his equipment contained some supplies that could be sold or traded in the SYSTEM Shop.
He had sold some items from his emergency supplies because everyone in his group who had been assigned to carry their normal supplies had lost everything. It had been the worst blow to his team. Any of them who had dimensional storage abilities had lost everything in those spaces. If the ability was lost, any access to the supplies within was lost with it. Ansfrin had never been so appreciative of the lengths that The Faction went through to prepare for an infiltration than at that moment. Luckily The Faction prepared for this by supplying both magical and technological alternatives to their team. He’d been given both a magical storage ring and a technological gadget that looked like one of these old-style beepers. The device was shielded from, and used mana, so it had been fine. Both storage devices contained emergency supply kits and some items that could be sold or traded if needed. He’d also activated the emergency recall beacon but with every other form of interdimensional communication down, he wasn’t going to hold his breath.
Ansfrin had visited the SYSTEM shop, and transferred some of his emergency supplies to the Shop for “Credits?” The New SYSTEM used copper, silver, gold, and platinum with a conversion rate of 100 to 1 for each. Credits were equal to Silver and SYSTEM tracked the Credits for him. So he could keep his wealth on him, or he could let the SYSTEM track it. He decided to let the SYSTEM track his credits.
With his new credits, Ansfrin purchased information concerning any changes between the previous SYSTEM and the new one. He also purchased the planet's current status which was listed as “Integrating”. When he’d exited the SYSTEM shop he’d gone into City Hall and claimed the City Node. The Mayor had come out and started making a fuss. Ansfrin’s Team had pulled out their weapons and the struggle had been over before it started. He’d taken the Mayor inside City Hall and had a private talk with the Mayor. He had made sure to let the Mayor know that once the city was safe, or at least safer, there was a place for him on Ansfrin's staff. It was always better to use politicians for as much as you could before discarding them. With the changes to the SYSTEM though, he might actually need the mayor.
Ansfrin paid for some simple upgrades within City Hall with his Credits. The world he’d been on before had not used credits but he had to admit, letting the SYSTEM track his wealth would make things a lot easier. As for the changes? The lights now worked and SYSTEM-created or upgraded devices could now be charged within the building. There were also working bathrooms. Finally, the inside of the building was considered a Safe Zone. A Safe Zone purchased from the SYSTEM could not be entered by any spawned monsters, nor could they spawn from within. It was the first safe building in the whole city. After he’d purchased everything he’d also added a tax to all purchases in the shop of 20%. It was a bit steep but right now they’d need the credits to buy upgrades and safe spaces as the city grew. Just a couple of hours ago he spent a good portion of the city's funds to make Vancouver General Hospital, and the area between the Capital and the Hospital, a Safe Zone. People could at least walk between the Capital and the Hospital without getting attacked by monsters.
To make the rest of the city a Safe Zone, they had to clear all the monsters out of the City and then purchase the Safe Zone from the SYSTEM Shop. Once the monsters were clear the cost would be exactly how many individuals had survived within the City. So, fewer people meant cheaper costs but it also meant fewer benefits when the City Safe Zone was established. He’d revisited the SYSTEM Shop to find that out. He’d wanted to know why having fewer people when establishing a city could be bad.
Ansfrin had taken all this into account on the first day and put his people to work. It was the end of the 2nd day and he thought they had done well. They had cleared the Hospital and surrounding area one block west of City Hall and went on to claim out to a radius of 2 miles. He’d heard of a group of humans to the north that had set up on the south side of The Lions Gate Bridge. He was probably going to have to have his people take care of them. They had gone full “Mad Max”, as one of the security guards in City Hall had said just a couple of hours ago. They were doing what they wanted and taking what they wanted from everyone who wasn’t part of their group and killing the rest, whether they were part of the SYSTEM or not. When a couple of them had attacked, they’d been pushed back but Ansfrin figured they’d be back sooner than later.
To nip that in the bud, as it were, he’d been about to pull out a couple of his Faction’s sniper rifles from his storage and send a team to deal with them when Jessica, one of the human aids, had run in and claimed that a Dragon had flown down, turned into a man, and touched the SYSTEM Shop node before he vanished. If there was a Dragon on Earth, A dragon that could shape change and hadn’t just killed everything in its way? Perhaps he could turn that to the city and his advantage. Still, he’d need to be prepared.
Ansfrin issued orders and prepared for the man who was a dragon to reappear. If it was a dragon and they could come to an arrangement, that would be great. If it was a human just being an ass and they could come to an arrangement, great. If it was a human and they couldn’t come to an arrangement? Well, he did have some sniper rifles that needed to be tested before they went to take care of the Mad Max wannabes near the bridge. The only real issue would be if the man was actually a Dragon.
***
Adam was oblivious to what was going on outside of the SYSTEM Shop. He was absorbing the comprehensive list of skills he had and going through the skills that the SYSTEM Shop had on hand. He was so focused, that he hadn’t realized that he was tapping into all of his memories and sorting through them at an incredible rate. Some would even say an unbelievable rate.
Adam had 15 skill points to allocate though he could also add purchased skills to the list. Of course, those that weren’t locked in with Skill Points wouldn’t earn XP or level with use, but that was okay. If he could find what he needed, it wasn’t going to matter for much longer.
The first thing he did was categorize by creature type and then pull up skills for Chaos-type creatures, dragons, and specifically Adamantium dragons. That’s when he encountered his first hurdle. Perks that were granted before a creature started leveling were the only racial skills that someone would have access to until they reached level 10 in their 1st Tier Class. There was a list of skills that Adam would be able to get as soon as he reached level 10, but until then he was locked out.
Adam was not one to take this lightly and knew from previous experience with a SYSTEM that he could access and subvert some of those settings when directly connected through a SYSTEM Node or Kiosk, which he was. If this was an Order-based SYSTEM then there was no doubt that however this SYSTEM worked, it would consist of an almost Vulcan-like logic, which was bad for the SYSTEM and good for him.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Adam reviewed his memories of the last SYSTEM he’d infiltrated at the Quantum level and started issuing commands he’d seen while inside the SYSTEM. Immediately he realized that a cut-off, without access to it, had been installed on the Access Point to the SYSTEM shop. He could manipulate the code within the Kiosk concerning things there but he could not go deeper. That was fine, he could work with that, especially when he checked the buffer and found the Administrative password embedded as a command keystroke on the terminal. Adam high-fived himself in his mind and thanked the God of Laziness if there was one. No matter what type of SYSTEM it was, everyone hated reinputting their Password or key.
With his new Access, Adam went to work. He scrubbed the SYSTEM Shop and found a grouping of Skills listed as unavailable but present. They had been locked away by Alerna for some reason. Adam overrode her lockout and made the skills available to himself. Next, he pulled up his information. Before he was even a single line into his Status Screen there was an annotation next to his name that wasn’t available on his Status Screen, he’d opened it and checked.
Name: Adamantadine “Adam” {Suppressed}
Suppressed? What did it mean Suppressed? Adam started diving into the System and pulled up the information on humans he saw roaming around the SYSTEM Shop. None of them had “Suppressed” next to it. Adam sent a command using the Administrative codes.
Define Suppressed
Adam received an immediate response.
Suppressed: The individual is not native to The SYSTEM. Access to … has been suppressed. User Level removed. Class Tier System Added. Primary Racial Conversion Disallowed. Dragon Racial Abilities Converted to Perks and Skills…
Adam read on for quite a bit. The SYSTEM had disallowed a lot of things due to incompatibility or balance issues. That was to be expected. But that didn’t matter to Adam. What mattered to Adam was that it looked like things hadn’t been allowed because the User Level system was completely incompatible with the current SYSTEM. Everyone had needed to be reset for that. In most cases that meant that attributes were lost. There was also a hard limit to the amount of attributes The SYSTEM would allow which was twice the maximum possible attributes due to Class level 100 in all 5 Tiers. At a 1,000% efficiency or 10 times that number doubled. That limit was 264,000.
Adam reviewed the math and realized that the value was 264,000 in each attribute except that it was supposed to be 264,000 attributes maximum. The SYSTEM treated it as if the individual would put every single attribute within one attribute and max it out for each attribute to determine the limit. If the SYSTEM wasn’t so logical to close loopholes it would have realized that the maximum would be more like 24,000 per attribute.
Additionally, his Chaos Attribute was being specifically suppressed, which Adam found interesting. There was nothing he could do about the Chaos Attribute. He’d either have to find an access point with a better connection or he’d have to figure out how to get rid of the suppression. For now, Adam tweaked his code, sent the command, and watched as it was reviewed and accepted.
Primary Racial Attribute Conversion “Chaos Incarnate” changed from Disallowed to Allowed.
Approved!
He didn’t have blanket access but with what he had he was able to get something done. Everything else had been specifically coded to him and locked out. If he’d tried to change any of those settings Adam was sure someone would have been flagged. An Error during conversion that messed up a racial attribute bonus, well, that was completely understandable now, wasn’t it?
Adam smiled as he looked through and picked the skills he’d set aside. Fifteen Skills at Level 1 would cost him 15,000. He probably had bonus Skill slots due to his attributes, maybe. He wasn’t sure if attributes helped with that. Spells and Psionics though, He knew there were bonus slots for each of those. Still, He was going to keep it simple for now.
For Skills, he chose Basic, or “Common”, Level 1 and invested the single Skill Point that was required to pick up Analyze, Identify, Health Regeneration, Stamina Regeneration, Mana Regeneration, Psychic Energy Regeneration, Uncanny Dodge, Unarmed Combat Master, Technomancer, Jack of All Trades, Mold Chaos, Chaos Conversion, Running, Swimming, and Jumping.
The Skills were all pretty self-explanatory except for Technomancer which gave Adam back his ability to mentally connect with machines at a range of 1 foot per intelligence bonus point.
Mold Chaos allowed him to convert his Chaos attribute on a one-point for 1 pound basis into normal non-magical items. Right now he’d be limited to 100 pounds but he could make a lot of things under 100 pounds, like clothes. The attribute regenerated at a rate of 1 per second.
Chaos Conversion allowed him to convert any of his attributes into Chaos points at a 10 to 1 conversion; 10 Hit Points for 1 Chaos Point, so he could get his Chaos back even faster. It also allowed him to utilize Chaos to get back his other attributes at a 1 to 1 ratio.
Jack of All Trades gave a base +1 to all skill attempts at level 1. Higher rarity versions of the skill would allow him to get better than a +10 or 50% bonus at level 10.
Adam had chosen simple skills because he was sure that the tweak he’d just made was going to make some significant changes when he left the Kiosk.
For Spells, Adam chose some simple spells that seemed to fit both the Mage and Healer-type classes as well as the Mentalist Class. Without nanites he’d need some of these spells for sure: Create Water, Create Food, Minor Healing, Light, Mend, Heat, Chill, Telekinesis, Telepathy, Float, Underwater Breathing, and Underwater Breathing Other. He left 7 of his 19 spell points alone in case he came across a spell he wanted. All the spells were Common level 1. They were very basic and might give him the ability to help others, or himself. He’d worry about finding spells that synergized with him better later. Right now he wanted to get back out into the world and level so he could open up the higher rarity spells, skills, and abilities.
The Last category he looked through was his Psionic Slots. Once he started looking through what was available he realized that there were a lot of abilities, skills, perks, and abilities. The Psionic abilities he chose were Mediation, Hyper Focus, Mental Refuge, Psionic Blast, Telekinesis, and Telepathy. Lastly, he increased his Mind Shield Class Skill to level 5 for 14 Psionic Slots. He’d started with 32 slots and spent 20. He was saving the 12 slots he had just in case he found something else.
Some of the skills were repeats of spells he’d picked up. Psionic Blast was interesting though. It was like Mind Bolt except it wouldn’t melt the target's brain and had a cone of effect instead of a single target. If successful it would stun the target instead of kill them. Mental Refuge allowed him to enter his Mindspace and Hyper Focus dilated time within his mind.
Adam finished up his choices and noted the notification symbol that had appeared in his vision. He paid the 1,000 credits per skill, Spell, and Psionic Ability. Levels 2 through 5 of Mind Shield cost 3,000, 6000, 10,000, and 15,000 respectively plus the 14 Psionic Ability slots. Total cost 67,000 plus a 20% tip for 80,400 credits. Adam sent the payment closed the kiosk and stood.
Alerna’s eyes unfocused for a moment and then lit up, “Thank you for your generosity, Sir!”
Adam smiled, No problem. I was able to find what I needed. I probably had some people waiting outside for me so I better get going.
“You may feel slightly disoriented as you are returned to your planet of origin. That is normal. All modifications you’ve made to yourself will be applied during transit. Please come back if something is wrong with your purchases,” Alerna said.
Adam nodded, said, “Thank You,” and walked to the silver orb at the front of the shop. He reached out and thought This should be interesting as he vanished.
As Adam appeared he felt as if something had been turned to him. Not everything but he felt more like himself. He pulled up his status screen and turned it opaque so he could read the stats.
Attributes
Strength 264,033
Agility 264,023
Dexterity 264,023
Endurance 264,033
Constitution 264,036
Perception 264,022
Intelligence 264,117
Wisdom 264,023
Willpower 264,024
Charisma 264,033
Luck 264,036
Chaos 100
He shut down the Status Screen for now, he’d check it fully later. Now that he’d checked to make sure the attributes were what they were supposed to be, which they weren’t He’d thought that they maxed out at 264,000 but they’d continued higher. Maybe the racial bonus and the maximum for The SYSTEM would be cumulative, which meant that he could continue to increase his Attributes up to 288,000. He knew it would probably take the attributes up to 528,000 but it would be 288,000 if he spread the attribute bonuses evenly across all 11 attributes. It wouldn’t matter, His attributes were now probably 10 times higher than anything else on planet Earth, save a God. The next thing on his list was to increase his levels so He could unlock his Racial Skills but other than that, he didn’t see anything else giving him a problem.
Adam’s thoughts were interrupted when the Lizardman in front of him jarred him out of his thoughts by asking, “Who exactly are you?”
Adam looked at the Lizardman and the female lizard woman standing beside him and then squinted his eyes as he relaxed his perception so that he could see what everyone else saw. It was like he had to relax his eyes to see the image of the 3D boat in those digital pictures except the lizard people were doing that with their scales to appear human. The woman was the same woman that had been sitting at the table while he had never seen the man before.
Adam looked at the man who had asked the question, “I’m Adam, how do you do?”
“Well, Adam, my colleague here seems to think you were a dragon before you landed and touched the SYSTEM Shop Node,” he asked questioningly.
“Not gonna lie, but yep, I was in my Dragon Form right before I landed.”
“Well, you’re not trying to eat us so can I ask what kind of dragon you are?”
Adam took a few steps back as he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to come over here and swap forms, and if you recognize what kind of dragon I am we will need to have a private conversation about ‘Where’ you two, and the snipers are from?” Adam said as he spent the 100 mana to swamp forms and appeared in his Dragon form.
With the Increase in his base Attributes, he’d misjudged his size and launched into the air to hover over them. From head to tail, he figured he was 450 long. Even with his leap into the air, his tail touched the ground. Adam flipped in the air and swapped back to human form. The fall from 300 feet had jarred him a little but hadn’t even taken a percentage of his 158,444 hit points in human form. He used his Heal Wounds skill and was instantly back to full health. Adam checked his log and noted that He had healed himself for 132,011 Hit Points, while he’d only taken 300. Bit of an overkill there.
Adam looked around and finally noted that no one had moved yet. They were still looking at where he had been. Adam looked around and then opened his Status screen again. Then looked at the number of attacks he was allowed per turn. Hmmm. 26,402. If each combat turn was recorded in 10-second periods then he was allowed to make 2,640 attacks every second which meant that after four attacks only .0015 of a second had passed.
Adam consciously slowed himself down and re-entered a normal frame of reference. He’d have to play with that function of his ability and figure out stamina usage soon. Adam very much doubted that he would be able to attack 26,000 times in a single second. Although this was a new system, maybe it was handled differently. He’d have to…Adam pulled in his raging thoughts as he walked back to the lizard man and woman
The Lizardman looked at Adam as he said, “I only saw you, or what I think was you as an afterimage in my mind. It was like you weren’t even present long enough for me to take a good look. What I remember of that image though… You aren’t a silver dragon are you?”
Adam shook his head, “Nope.”
If you aren’t a Silver Dragon and you're definitely not a white dragon. With that coloring, you have to be an Adamantium Dragon.”
“And you bigger,” The Lizard woman said.
The Lizardman looked at Tane, his eyes going wide as he called out,” Tane!” in an exasperated voice.
Adam put on his most deadpan face and looked at the Lizardman as he pointed at Tane and said, “That’s what she said!”
The Lizardman looked confused for a moment as Tane’s scales flushed. Then he started laughing. Adam joined in and the tension was broken.
“Very funny Adam. My name is Ansfrin. Why don’t we go inside and talk so Tane can get people back into the SYSTEM Shop instead of flirting with you?”
“Sounds good to me,” Adam said as he allowed Ansfrin to lead him into Vancouver City Hall.