As much as Zayd wanted to explore the item shop and the missions, enough of a plan had begun to emerge in his mind that he shoved both of those aside for now and promised himself that he’d spend some time on them on the long return flight to the Spear of Destiny. For now, despite the fact that he had seemingly limitless time to make his plans, he wanted to return to the real world and finish the raid on Bad Penny Station.
With his current circumstances, despite the fact that it would consume half of his available Entropic Energy for a single skill, Zayd made Dark Harvest his first selection.
[WARNING: THE SUM OF THE USER’S PERSONAL SPECIAL COMBAT ABILITIES, MECH SPECIAL COMBAT ABILITIES, AND STARSHIP COMBAT SPECIAL ABILITIES MAY NOT EXCEED THEIR CURRENT DARK ENERGY AUTHORITY. CURRENT CAPACITY FOR SPECIAL COMBAT ABILITIES IS 0/2. DO YOU WISH TO SELECT DARK HARVEST AS A PERSONAL SPECIAL COMBAT ABILITY? YES/NO]
Seeing the warning, Zayd realized how much more valuable a skill like Dark Weapon Augmentation was. Compared to Dark Shield which felt like it would give him tremendous defensive capabilities, the flexibility of Dark Weapon Augmentation meant that he could do more with a single ‘slot’ than he could with the strong defensive skill. Moreover, since he had to share his ‘slots’ with all of the other special combat skill types, it made each choice significantly more impactful. Still, he couldn’t think of anything he’d need more in the near term than the ability to harvest Dark and Entropic Energy from his defeated foes.
“Yes,” he said, easily confirming his selection. For his remaining selections, he focused mostly on things that would help him during the current raid, though one of his selections was less about the present and more about what happened after the mission.
[LANGUAGE - FAE: NOVICE -> INTERMEDIATE]
Eirian had said he wasn’t allowed to meet with Lady Nimue until he could speak with her without the need of translation software. While he appreciated that he was effectively a new recruit and it might not be appropriate to go directly to the person who was essentially the CEO of his new employer, as her designated Champion, he felt like it was dangerous to let the distance between them remain where it was for too long. He might also pick up some of the basic history and cultural skills related to Fae and the Stellar Imperium if his harvest during this mission was good enough, but for now, he restricted himself to enhancing his language skills.
[FAE ENERGY WEAPONS: NOVICE -> INTERMEDIATE]
[FAE POWERED ARMOR: NOVICE -> INTERMEDIATE]
He knew that he was holding the team back with his amateur handling of his armor and the Firelance. Once he addressed the biggest issue with his Dark Energy capacity with Dark Harvest, he wanted to bring the Firelance into play with greater effect. Moreover, the same skill that governed the Firelance applied to all Fae energy weapons, whether it was Haelith’s hand cannon or Saeyd’s three-barrelled carbine, investing in this skill would allow him to swap out the Firelance for a number of other weapons in the future.
[MARKSMANSHIP: NOVICE]
[DRONE OPERATION: NOVICE]
Zayd needed more than just increased energy weapons knowledge to become effective with them. The shame of missing his shot at the ion cannon and the fact that Broll had been the one to suffer for his incompetence burned deeply within him. Failing and getting himself hurt was one thing, failing and getting someone else hurt was intolerable. He’d always hated the teachers, seniors, supervisors and everyone else who let their failures turn into suffering for the people they were responsible for. If he was going to give up on his humanity, one of the things he wanted no part of was the tendency to accept failure as long as he wasn’t the one suffering for it.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
He took Drone Operation to compliment his flexibility on the team. He was already impressed by Sioban’s drone handling skills and his experience in the training exercise had shown him how useful even miniature scouting drones could be. While he was tempted to take the skill all the way to intermediate, doing so would exhaust the last of his remaining points.
With the last fifty points remaining, he considered increasing his Speed. Speed was the number one thing he kept going back to when he used Dark Empowerment to bolster his attributes but in the end, it was precisely because he could bolster his attributes with Dark Empowerment that he held off. Zayd expected to have some level of harvest from this mission and that the fifty points he currently possessed wouldn’t be the end of it, but he felt that it was better to hold a few points in reserve to respond to unanticipated needs or to make another large investment later. After all, while Mech Combat skills weren’t important to him now, he had no doubt that he’d need to invest there soon.
“What about the Genetic Optimization that’s been available since I got the relic?” Zayd wondered, taking a closer look at the option.
[GENETIC OPTIMIZATION I: USER’S GENOME WILL BE OPTIMIZED, SOME DORMANT GENES MAY BE ACTIVATED, GENETIC DEFECTS MAY BE RESOLVED, USEFUL RECESSIVE TRAITS MAY BE ACTIVATED. EACH ROUND OF GENETIC OPTIMIZATION WILL FURTHER REFINE THE USER’S FUNDAMENTAL MAKEUP. TIME TO PROCESS CHANGES - 30 STANDARD HOURS. USER WILL BE UNCONSCIOUS DURING OPTIMIZATION]
“Well, so much for making use of that one,” Zayd said with a shake of his head. If it was a shorter amount of time, he might have considered activating it on the return flight but it sounded like he would need to talk to Eirian about a time he could be unavailable for more than a day while the relic worked its magic.
“It’s not like I don’t have significant gains already,” he said, smiling as he looked over his updated status. It hadn’t been easy to get the rewards he claimed but the Mech Destroyer System had delivered on its promises. He earned his bonus and received tremendous rewards. Now, all he had to do was keep grinding away and the rewards would continue to flow. Compared to the cheating bastards at Braxis-Quan, this was already a dream come true!
“Exit,” Zayd said, watching the desolate wasteland of the system space fade from his vision.
[APPLYING CHANGES]
The message flashed before his eyes moments before pain unlike any he’d ever felt before flared in his mind and to a lesser extent, his entire body. Knowledge flooded into his brain, everything from language to weapons maintenance to target practice drills to…. It was so much to absorb all at once! The system didn’t stop at pouring knowledge into his mind either. His body twitched as it built the deep muscle memory needed to precisely control his combat armor, to control his breathing and his trigger finger on an energy weapon and so many other things that he felt like he was being reborn.
When the rush finally stopped, Zayd opened his eyes as a faint wave of energy spilled from his body, quickly attracting the attention of his teammates.
“Zayd,” Lady Haelith asked, staring at the Champion who seemed to be standing much more confidently than he had been a moment ago. “What was that?”
“I managed to activate the relic,” Zayd said simply without explaining how he’d done so. “I should be much more useful now.”
It wasn’t until several seconds after he’d spoken that his teammates realized that what they’d just heard on the com channel was Zayd’s pure voice, not the reprocessed version of his voice that software translated, but his pure, natural voice, speaking Fae like he’d come straight from homeworld. Taking in his altered posture and the confident tone in his voice, everyone couldn’t help but wonder - just what had the relic done to him? And how much stronger had it made him?