GRIFFIN TUCKER VASILIAS, GREAT HOUSE SCION, REBORN LVL 4

MOUNT DISCOVERY, PROVINCE OF ARAGONIA

Griffin didn’t allow himself to panic, ruthlessly pushing down on the impulse until he’d managed to reign it in. The monsters out there can’t get past my Reality Twine, he thought. That’s the whole reason I made that lovely web. The thought comforted him a little.

“The DEEP Suit has now been converted back into a shard,” Kismet said. She sounded a little awestruck. “This is incredible! The armor itself is a wonder of arcane engineering, but to store it all in an artificial ethershard is the true marvel. You should bind it to your Dominion Attribute now so you’ll have a chance of escaping.” She pulled up the shard’s System entry and left the text box floating in the air so Griffin could read it.

Unique Ethershard of Ocean

Description: This [Unique] quality Ethershard contains an infusion of [Ocean]-aspected tensa.

Note: As a [Unique] ethershard, this shard contains 1 teraspark of tensa.

Use: Reborn may use ethershards to unlock grafts, increase Attributes, upgrade grafts, and empower grafts, spells, or other effects requiring tensa. This Unique ethershard is infused with the graft DEEP Suit.

“DEEP? What’s deep about it? Is it for exploring the ocean?” Griffin asked. “I mean, it is an ethershard of the Ocean.”

He was being a little sarcastic, but Kismet answered him sincerely, “I could go into the theory behind using an Ocean-infused shard for storage of the graft, but I don’t understand it all myself. I’ll be studying their files for a long time, I know,” she said. “The designers liked their acronyms. This one stands for Dynamic Extreme Environmental Protection Suit. DEEP Suit.”

Griffin shrugged. “Who am I to judge based on names? I once named a race of cat people in my D&D game the ‘catara’. Seriously. Pete and the others loved it, of course.” He chuckled, lost for a moment in the memory. He was brought back to the present by another ground-shaking slam.

He quickly reconfigured his anima into the absorption configuration and placed the shard right over his heart. It had been so much easier with the last shard and he needed the power. Right before he started the absorption process, something occurred to him.

“The System message says this is a Unique ethershard. Is that going to be like, okay for me to absorb?” This shard was subtly unlike the Legendary ones he’d gotten before. It seemed to shimmer with its inner light. “It says there’s a teraspark of tensa in there. Am I gonna absorb all that energy? Isn’t that a little…dangerous?”

“Besides being exceedingly rare—Unique, one might call them—Unique ethershards are no different than any others.” Kismet looked worriedly over her shoulder towards the door to the machine room before continuing. “Using one for a foundational graft will have a significant impact on your Class choices later on, but I cannot predict exactly what the consequences will be. Still, you have no other choice right now. The monsters out there will not disappear and you’re out of brain barrels.”

“Yeah, and somehow I don’t think even a barrel of diatomaceous earth would do anything to a Mother. Those fuckers are scary.” He nodded to himself and repositioned the shard over his heart. “See ya on the other side.”

“The other side of what?” Kismet asked.

Griffin rolled his eyes and Kismet grinned. Score one for the System Eidolon, Griffin thought and chuckled. I deserved that though. ‘See ya on the other side’? Come on man. Do better.

He sunk into his inner space, envisioning the stained glass window of himself. It was lit by four lights: a sky blue light, two colorless lights that didn’t seem to illuminate the window, and an intense white light. With a mental push, Griffin absorbed the Ocean ethershard he had poised over his heart. He felt it slice into his chest as just a brief pinch before he was flooded with heat.

The Legendary ethershards he had absorbed had all been accompanied by pain, to a greater or lesser degree. Some had hurt more because he’d absorbed them through his hand and the shard had to slice its way through its flesh to reach his etherheart but they had all had a burning pain associated with them afterward as their charge was absorbed into his body and grafted into him. The Unique shard of the Ocean contained an order of magnitude more tensa energy than all his Legendary shards combined. Griffin screamed as it felt like the blood in his veins was suddenly replaced with molten steel.

The pain went on for what felt like hours, but Griffin had no real concept of how much time had passed. When he finally felt able to move, the burning feeling had not changed, but his ability to withstand it had. It was strangely familiar, like getting into a tub full of extremely hot water. Instead of dipping his toe in and slowly acclimatizing himself to the hot water, though, he’d done the equivalent of a cannonball. The pain was still there and if he concentrated on it, he could still feel the fire raging within him, roaring through him and empowering him instead of crippling him.

Griffin made sure to check the System messages waiting for him before he did anything else. His escape depended on him understanding the new graft he’d gotten.

Attribute Unlocked!

You have unlocked your Dominion Attribute at a score of [10].

The following have been improved: muscular strength, range of anima, power of grafts, effectiveness of status effects, tensa purity

For unlocking an Attribute for the first time, your tensa pool increases by 1 ks per Attribute. Your tensa pool is now at 24.9 kilosparks.

It was interesting to finally see what exactly his Dominion Attribute governed. He’d always assumed it’d be straight strength, like the Strength stat in D&D, but this Attribute was multifaceted. It not only increased his physical strength, but it also empowered his anima and made his grafts more potent. He had no idea what tensa purity was, but since it was in a System message, he was sure Kismet would have a lecture or two about it she could recite.

DEEP Suit [Ocean] – Dominion 10

Next Rank: 1 Rare ethershard of [Protection] type, 1 Uncommon ethershard of Coccoon, 1 Uncommon ethershard of [Plant] type

Cost: 15 ks

Cooldown: - 1 hour

Description: The Dynamic Extreme Environmental Protection Suit (DEEP Suit) is an experimental ethershard infusion that will summon a powered exosuit with protective armor, expandable subsystems (like weaponry, defenses, movement suites, etc.), and extreme environmental protection.

The DEEP suit integrates into your personal grafts, adapting to include them in its onboard systems. The DEEP Suit provides unparalleled powered armor protection with the added benefit of having an extremely flexible range of subsystems to make it a truly flexible platform. Because it has been transfigured into a graft, there is no limit to its growth potential. The DEEP Suit will only get more powerful as you advance.

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At the current rank, the DEEP Suit increases your Dominion Attribute by 10 when active. Increase the DEEP Suit’s rank to improve its Attribute bonuses.

Each on-board system activated increases the summon cost and reserve cost of the DEEP Suit.

While wearing the DEEP Suit, the wearer gains extreme heat, cold, pressure, and toxic resistance so long as it is powered.

On-board Systems: Weapons System (Adaptive Conjuration synergy); 3-D Movement System (Reality Twine synergy); Particle Cannon (Dread Consumption synergy); Advanced Targeting System (On-Board Sensor Suite synergy)

And finally, his Reborn profile.

Griffin Tucker Vasilias

Race

Human

Rank/Level

Reborn - level 5

House

House Vasilias

Racial Gifts

Great House Seal, Enhanced System Access, Unlimited Inventory, Monster Rendering, DEMI Port, Overcharge

Attributes

Dominion

10 [Ocean] / 20

Speed

12 [Data] /20

Precision

8 [Void] / 20

Growth

12 [Void] /20

Arcana

15 [Mind] /20

Tensa Pool

27.7 ks

Gear

[Inventory collapsed due to space constraints]

Grafts

Adaptive Conjuration [Mind], Sensor Suite [Speed], Dread Consumption [Void], Reality Twine [Void], DEEP Suit [Ocean]

As Griffin finished reading the entries, he let out a low whistle. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “Holy motherfucking shit! This thing is like…I’m gonna be like Iron Man meets Punisher meets Spider-Man!” He laughed a little giddily. “Are you seeing this, Kismet? Did you know about all this?”

“Not all of it, no,” Kismet replied. “But I have been researching the design files for this graft. Much of it is experimental and untested, but we had no choice. Remember the monsters?”

Griffin’s face paled and he nodded. “How long was I out?”

“Not long. Only a few seconds. You’re getting much better at absorbing shards.”

Griffin felt a glow of pride at the unexpected compliment. Kismet was an extremely strict and exacting instructor, not easily impressed or moved to praise. “Great, well I guess it’s time to test this armor out. It looks like it has a bunch of…synergies?” He looked up at Kismet. “Is that right? Synergies?”

“The DEEP Suit was designed to interact and adapt with the grafts of whoever absorbed it,” Kismet replied. “Synergies are links that form between grafts that strengthen and diversify your power base. They’re usually quite rare, but this graft was stored in a Unique shard. That teraspark of tensa Unique ethershards contain is being put to use.”

“Cool, cool, cool,” Griffin said. “Then let’s get this party started!”

Before he could do anything, the room rang with another crash on the door, but this one was much louder. It sounded more like an explosion than something beating on a door. He only froze for a moment before he focused inward, seeking the new graft he’d just gained. The tensa cost was a heavy one: fifteen terasparks was over half his entire tensa pool, but he eagerly spent it.

Tensa flooded out of his pool and into his new graft. He felt the air grow charged around him and then he was suddenly encased in a suit of heavy, powered armor. He gasped and stumbled a little. The armor covered him entirely, but instead of feeling heavy and unwieldy, he could feel the armor assisting him in his movements. Cool air blew through the armor, not letting him overheat. Additional information had been added to his HUD, including several new menu options for calling up his new synergies.

A new message materialized in his HUD as the DEEP Suit powered up: DEEP Suit Online. A moment after the message materialized, it faded away.

Before he could do more than glance at the changes, he heard the now-familiar sound of a plasma cybercentipede Mother’s plasma beam burning through the air and he threw himself to the ground. The DEEP Suit exaggerated his movements so that instead of diving to the ground, he launched himself at the wall and shoulder-tackled it, crashing into it. The armor completely absorbed the impact so Griffin was unhurt, but it had been extremely disorienting to suddenly go flying across the room like that. This graft had a learning curve.

Just like all the others, Griffin thought wryly. I guess I hoped it’d be easier because this is not a ‘natural’ graft but rather a graft that someone had designed. I guess that was a stupid assumption.

He got clumsily to his feet and noticed just then that he was wearing a helmet. The helmet hadn’t obstructed his vision at all and he didn’t even feel enclosed by it. His entire field of view was available to him, though his HUD now had to target information from the Advanced Targeting synergy with his Sensor Suite graft. It was all quite overwhelming but he didn’t have time to explore and get familiar with it. Another plasma beam burned through the air just to his right and he had to move again.

“Are there any other exits?!” Griffin yelled to Kismet as he ran through the narrow corridors.

“No other exits,” Kismet reported. “So you’ll need to go out the way you came in.”

SONAR let Griffin know exactly what was going on through the whole room. His HUD highlighted the position of the Mother in a white outline. It was tearing at the wall, trying to widen the opening it had made when it had bashed the door down. Zombies slammed into its chitinous body beyond the door, all trying to reach the fresh meat trapped in Mother’s thick armor. The Mother ignored them, focusing all its rage on the door into the room. Griffin paused before rounding the next bend. He would need to have an answer for that enormous thing.

Wasn’t there a weapons system mentioned in this DEEP Suit’s description? He thought. He examined his HUD to see if it had anything that told him what those new synergies were, noticing a few new icons: a white sword on a red octagon, a target reticule on a yellow circle, and a couple of more abstract symbols he couldn’t parse yet.

The new icon that got his attention was a white sword on an octagon with the cryptic label: WPN SYS written next to it. Might as well give it a shot, he thought. If it’s not a weapon then I’ll have to try something else.

He wondered for a moment how he’d select the little icon, but as soon as he thought about it, the icon highlighted and a new menu popped up in his HUD.

Weapon System Enabled

You have enabled the DEEP Suit’s onboard weapons system. By default, the Weapons System includes a Deadly Melee Weapon and a Nonlethal Melee Weapon. Other Weapon options may require other grafts to use effectively.

You may use the installed weapon templates or you may create new weapons within the confines of your Adaptive Conjuration graft.

SELECT WEAPON SYSTEM TYPE

1. Deadly melee

2. Nonlethal melee

3. Deadly ranged (Requires Targeting System)

4. Nonlethal ranged (Requires Targeting System)

5. Artillery (requires Targeting System)

Griffin immediately ruled out nonlethal options. He couldn’t imagine that any of the nonlethal options would do much to the Mother through her thick chitinous armor. He also dismissed the artillery option after a particularly vivid vision of himself flying through the air—on fire—before slamming into the walls like a ragdoll played itself out in his head. That left the Deadly Ranged option. He focused on it and it was highlighted briefly before the text box disappeared.

The DEEP Suit beeped twice and Griffin glanced over at his shoulders as rings of runes lit up in the air around his shoulders and two small guns emerged from the pauldrons of the armor. The guns were half the size of his hand and on freely rotating mounts. The barrels moved in time with his eye movement, following his every twitch and micro-adjustment.

A message appeared in his HUD with a timer that started counting down: ADVANCED TARGETING SYSTEM RANGED WEAPON CALIBRATION – 00:13.286. The Mother shrieked and surged forward, crashing through the unidentified machinery in the room as it tried to get to Griffin. To Griffin, it looked like a city bus-sized monstrous centipede tore through solid metal as it tried to devour him. Griffin scrambled away, trying to fire the guns on his shoulders at the monster but each time he tried, the message in his HUD flashed.

With his shoulder guns currently unavailable, Griffin had to do his best to avoid the crushing weight of the enormous monster as it thrashed around. The Mother’s dozens of legs slammed into the ground like spears as it moved and the Mother could move very quickly when it wanted. The combined effect of all of his unlocked Attributes was needed to keep him just ahead of the monster.

Hid Dominion Attribute was boosted by ten more points while the DEEP Suit was active and the effect was obvious. Griffin thought This must be what Daredevil feels like as he flips around. I wonder what would happen if I punched the monster? He resisted the urge, Kismet’s warning about the mortality of Reborn ringing in his ears. He didn’t want to get killed because he did something unbelievably stupid.