It can’t be overstated how jarring it is to wake up missing a bunch of parts. Even as I took shelter in the mech suit, I knew I was never going to be the same. However, the extent of the damage to my body far exceeded anything I could’ve ever anticipated. Now, I vacillate between wondering if I’m a monster and getting excited about all the possibilities my new parts represent.

Patrick Ward

I leaped, grabbing hold of the bar and using my momentum to swing around, then launch myself to the next platform. I landed with a roll, then sprang forward to the next. The moment my feet left solid ground, I saw a projectile speeding in my direction. I twisted, narrowly avoiding it on my way to the next platform. Then, flaring Balance, I raced across a narrow beam before once again sending myself sailing through the air. I slapped the big, red circle before descending to the ground, then rolling to my feet.

I rose, panting as I glared at my HUD.

“Three minutes,” I muttered, disappointed. “How the hell did I get slower?”

Patrick, who was busy with his own training regimen, answered, “You’ve been at it all day. You’re tired, Mira. Of course you’re going to slow down.”

I turned my glare in his direction, but it did no good. His back was turned, so he was incapable of experiencing the full weight of my annoyance. He just didn’t understand. Patrick trained as hard as just about anyone else, so he knew a little about how to push himself in pursuit of self-improvement. And his attributes showed it, too. He’d never focused on leveling, but he definitely got the most out of his capability. Usually, he hovered only a few points shy of maximizing his potential.

And for the first time ever, I was in the same boat.

Nearly three months had passed since my class had evolved, and I’d yet to absorb a single new skill. Part of that was due to my lack of funds. The Leviathan was a huge expense, so it sometimes felt like every step Patrick and I took forward was soon followed by a couple of steps in the opposite direction. So, while we’d made some progress in accumulating the wealth we would need to purchase my would-be skills, we certainly hadn’t reached my goals.

So, as a result, almost a month past, my potential had readjusted to my new skill total. So, instead of a potential in the five-hundreds, it was stuck at two-thirty-five. Which meant that I’d actually lost a handful of attribute points, which was the exact opposite of my goals.

It was probably the reason I felt like I was backsliding.

By comparison, Patrick’s performance, while lagging significantly behind mine, had grown by leaps and bounds. Largely, this was due to his acclimation to the cybernetic parts that had replaced the limbs and organs he had lost. One of the abilities that came with [Cybernetic Engineer] allowed him to get a little more out of any artificial parts, so the replacements had actually improved his overall level of power.

And he was getting better with every passing day.

Normally, I wasn’t the jealous type, but my competitive spirit certainly balked at the idea of anyone – even the man I loved – outpacing me. So, I’d rededicated myself to training as I tried to eke every ounce of ability out of my attributes. Those efforts had been met with mixed results.

Certainly, without constantly evolving attributes, I’d managed to pinpoint a few holes in my development. Chiefly, I hadn’t even come close to reaching my theoretical limits. With my attributes, I should’ve been capable of so much more. However, I’d learned from Alastaris that my issues were not unique. In fact, he claimed that it often took people years to acclimate to increased attributes. In that way, my constant improvement had been something of a detriment. Sure – my overall power increased, but without the ability to settle into that newfound power, I was only getting, at most, sixty percent of what I should’ve been capable of.

Which was why I’d continued training so rigorously and why I held myself to such high standards of performance.

I glanced back at the obstacle course we had built. By all rights, getting through it in only three minutes was an accomplishment, but even thinking that felt like I was trying to placate my own disappointment. I was better than my time, and I knew it. I just needed to work harder. I needed to focus more.

Because I knew there would come a time when I would need to harness the entirety of my power.

Sighing, I massaged the back of my neck and said, “I’m going again.”

“Mira, it’s almost dark. Why don’t you…”

I didn’t listen to the remainder of his suggestion, instead trotting back to the beginning of the obstacle course where I started over. From there, I worked long into the night, but my times didn’t get any better. In fact, they consistently got worse until, at last, I missed one of my jumps and hit the ground with a thud. I rolled and quickly rose, but I’d been going so long and so hard that my legs felt like jelly. Robbed of my momentum, I collapsed to my knees where I remained for a long few minutes, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

I knew I was pushing myself too hard, trying to accomplish the work of years in mere weeks. But time was not on my side. Soon enough, the world would be under siege, and if I wasn’t ready by that point, the alien invaders would wash over everyone and enslave humanity.

And that was the best possible scenario if we didn’t stop them. The worst was that they simply killed us all and brought their own people in.

Sighing, I looked down at the grassy turf and considered the monumental task before humanity. It didn’t look good, no matter how I spun it, and despite my previous resolutions to fight until the very last breath, I questioned whether or not Patrick and I should simply pick up and leave. I rejected it quickly, but the remnants of that thought remained as background noise for my mind.

So, to distract myself, I glanced around at my surroundings. The Leviathan stood only a quarter mile away at the base of a rolling hill. Otherwise, the area was almost entirely open grassland. Every now and then, the plains were broken by a low hill or a lonely tree, but for the most part, it was just a flat prairie. I looked up at the night sky, which seemed even more expansive than usual.

For a while, I just enjoyed feeling small and inconsequential. Beneath that vast sky, I couldn’t feel any other way. But soon enough, reality caught up, reminding me that I had responsibilities. I had plans and goals. And I would never achieve anything if I let myself lose focus.

So, with that, I pushed myself to my feet, dusted off my knees, then headed back to the Leviathan. We’d been in the prairie for almost a week, and before that, we’d spent the previous few weeks going from one Rift mining operation to the next. Some, we’d hit before. Others were new. But none of them had been nearly as profitable as we’d hoped. It seemed that the aliens had finally wised up to our strategy of robbing the operations themselves, and as a result, they more frequently sent their Rift shards back to the Bazaar where they ended up in the hands of whoever funded the operations.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

It was inefficient, and it required using humans to get around the restrictions associated with transporting goods off of Earth, but it seemed that, to them, that was preferable to making themselves vulnerable to my assaults.

The reality was that we needed a new strategy. I knew that, and so did Patrick, but neither of us wanted to take the obvious next step. After all, we’d run Rifts before, and we’d both nearly died because of it. So, neither Patrick nor I were in any hurry to put ourselves back in those situations.

When I arrived at the Leviathan, Patrick wasn’t waiting on me as I’d expected. Indeed, when I went looking, I found him in the cargo bay, which he’d converted into a makeshift workshop. There were crates full of supplies, a couple of cabinets for his tools, and, of course, the giant mech suit we had salvaged from the ruins of Fortune. Back then, it had sustained a good deal of superficial damage, but after a good deal of work, Patrick had returned it to pristine condition.

And it was an impressive machine.

With sleek lines that screamed athleticism, it was roughly the shape of an armored human being. However, it was at least five times the size of any person, painted stark white with gold highlights, and engraved with a variety of esoteric symbols that made it look more like a medieval suit of armor than a war machine. The cockpit was housed in the torso, which was comprised of four-inch-thick armor plating. In short, it was like an ambulatory tank crossed with a chivalrous knight.

So, it fit Patrick well. He was the only person who could operate it, owing to the fact that it was technically a cybernetic paired to his interface. The workings were similar to my Cutter, though a little – but not much – cruder.

But Patrick wasn’t working on the armor. Instead, he’d removed one of his legs and had propped it on the table that served as his workstation. He didn’t even look up from where he was tinkering with it as he asked, “Finally had enough?”

“Not really. I just couldn’t go any longer,” I admitted.

“You collapsed again, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.”

He sighed, then turned to look at me. I must’ve looked a lot worse than I felt, because he just shook his head and said, “You can’t keep going like this, Mira. I don’t like what it’s doing to you.”

“If I told you the same thing about your projects,” I said, gesturing from the suit to his workstation. “Would you stop? No. Because you know as well as I do what’s coming. We can’t afford to relax, Pick. We let up, and we’ll end up dead.”

“Maybe,” he said. Then, he glanced around, adding, “Not like I have much room to talk. You’re out there pushing your attributes to the limit, and I’m in here working on my cybernetics. Neither of us has taken more than a few hours off since Fortune.”

I didn’t want to dwell on that point, so I changed the subject by asking, “Any progress?”

“More and more every day,” he stated. “I almost wish I got some cybernetics earlier. I’d have given up a hand or two in a second if it meant I’d make these kinds of discoveries.”

“Like what?” I asked, crossing the cargo bay then hopping up onto his table. I had to sweep a few parts out of the way, which I knew annoyed him. But in my defense, he should’ve just put them away when he was done working with them.

“Like I’ve been looking at cybernetics all wrong,” he said. “I mean, understanding the mechanics isn’t hard. They’re just machines that run on Mist, right? But most of us have a fundamental misunderstanding of how cybernetics connect to our bodies.”

“They go through the Nexus Implants, right?” I asked.

He shook his head, saying, “See? That’s what I’m talking about. That’s how everyone thinks. But it’s just not true. Not of the high-quality cybernetics, at least. Like that hand of yours – do you know why it’s basically indestructible?”

“Because it’s made of mist-infused titalumiron bones with nano-fiber muscles?”

“No. I mean, yeah. Partially. But none of that would mean anything if it wasn’t for the constant Mist connection,” he said. “The high-quality cybernetics, they mimic the connections we have with our actual bodies. That way, the Mist keeps flowing through and empowering them. It’s impossible without something like those Mist circuits. For the longest time, I had no idea what I was even looking at. It wasn’t until I had my breakthrough with the armor that I started to get it. And now that I have my own cybernetics, I’m able to run experiments so I can see how everything interacts.”

“And that’s going to help you make them stronger?”

“It is. If I can use the information I’m gathering to optimize those connections, I think I can increase the power of my cybernetics by at least a hundred percent. Maybe more.”

“Uh…seriously?”

“Seriously. I’m a little ways off from that, though. And I’m going to have to build my own Mist circuits to make it work. I think I’m on the verge of being able to do that, though, so I’m really not as far off as you might think. Maybe six months. A year on the outside. Then, I can get the right materials and…well, I’ll build myself some cybernetics that can rival that Hand of God. But with more oomph instead of defense.”

“What about the armor?” I asked.

“That’s a little further away,” he admitted. “Apparently, plenty of people in the core worlds use mech suits. Bots are popular, too. Most of the power without any of the danger, you know? But with the armor, I’m thinking I’m two or three years away from perfecting it. At least insofar as my skill will take me. If I evolved it like you did with your skills, it would net better results, though.”

“How good is it now? You haven’t even piloted it since we got it loaded up.”

Indeed, he’d connected to the giant suit of armor when we’d excavated it from the ruins of Cyrllia’s workshop, but beyond that, he’d barely even mounted the thing.

“It’s hard to tell,” he admitted. “But if my calculations are right, I’d say that its durability is equivalent to around two-hundred Constitution, give or take ten. Strength is lower, though. So is control. And its Mist consumption is a little higher than I’d like. I can only run it at full strength for around an hour at a time. And that’s without any advanced weaponry.”

“Two-hundred? That’s almost as tough as me,” I remarked.

“Yeah. My giant suit of armor is almost as tough as my girlfriend,” he said with a shake of his head. “When you put it like that…”

“No. Seriously, Pick – this is huge,” I said. And I meant it, too. Especially if he still had a long way to go before he perfected it. “Do you think it’ll be ready when the Integration starts?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know,” he said. “But I’ll take it as far as it’ll go.”

I nodded, then leaned back on my palms. “With that suit, I think we might be able to hit some Rifts,” I said. “I mean, think about it. We took a few on before, and both of us were a lot less powerful back then. If you’re in that suit…”

“Then I won’t be a liability.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

“Yes it is,” he said. I started to rise, but he waved me away. “You’re right, though. I mean, without the suit or these cybernetics, I’m just…I’m barely more powerful than a regular person. With it, though…I think I could make it work. So long as I don’t have to fight any extended battles, I mean.”

“You can’t run it on Rift Shards like the Leviathan?” I asked.

“No. It’s a cybernetic. They only work off personal Mist.”

“Well, that just sucks.”

“Not really. Think about it. If people could use Rift shards to power cybernetics, there’d be no chance we could fight the invaders,” he said. “At least this way the power of a cybernetic is tied to a person’s attributes and level.”

“I suppose,” I said. But I was still a little disappointed. “I was just imagining slapping some high-quality Rift shards into that thing and letting you go wild.”

“If we could do that, then others could as well,” he reminded me.

I nodded, then said, “But the point still stands. We need money. Lots of it, if all of that is as expensive as it sounds.”

“It will be.”

“And I still need my skills,” I said. “The Leviathan needs power, too. So, the way I see it, there’s only one way to meet our needs. We need to spend the next couple of years running Rifts. It’ll help both of us train and let us earn some money so you can work on your projects, and I can upgrade my arsenal.”

“If we survive.”

I couldn’t really counter that small caveat. Some of the most difficult fights of my life had been inside Rifts. They were dangerous and unpredictable, and there was a good reason we’d sworn them off years before. However, my points still stood, and my reasoning remained unassailable. If we were going to meet our goals – or even come close to it – we didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“We will.”

He sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

“I usually am,” I pointed out.

“Just because you’re strong enough to power through mistakes doesn’t mean you were right in the first place,” he pointed out.

I shrugged. “Same difference. Look, Pick – we need this. I think you understand that as well as I do. But if you don’t want to do it, we won’t. We’ll keep going like we’ve been going, picking off alien mining operations,” I offered.

“It’s fine. I’m okay with it. But just because I’m willing to do it doesn’t mean I like it. I just…I just hope there are no fucking spiders,” he said.

“You and me both.”

After that, we worked out some of the logistics and set a timeframe. In the meantime, I resolved to contact Alistaris so I could establish a series of viable targets. As far as I was concerned, all aliens were potential enemies, but he could give me some context as to who the truly terrible groups were.

So, just like that, we had a plan. I could only hope that it was one we could potentially survive.