“Yes,” said Luke to the air. “Henry… yes.”
“Did you just name your turtle of mass destruction… Henry?” Luke shrugged. Well, it was his nexo. Suddenly, Luke gave me a strange look. There was a slight tug on my consciousness as I looked back at him. A familiar one. I pulled at it.
WEAPON SMITH
DESIGNATION: LUKE MOORE
NEXOCITE ADAPTION: 6%
BOND LEVEL: 0
BOUND WEAPONS: 1 OF 3
SKILLS: NONE
ATTRIBUTES:
UNKNOWABLE, HUMAN. NO MODIFIERS.
Holy shit. WE had stats? I felt a twang of fear. What did that mean?
“Dude, YOU have stats!” Luke cried out in shock. He looked just as worried as I did.
“So… do you. I guess that means we are in the system.” How do I access my own stats? Did I need a mirror?
I pulled Stella into my arms and checked her ear. The bleeding had stopped, but a thumb sized chunk was still missing from the tip. Stella would be OK. She was shaking. Not sure if it was from the cold or fear. The rain washed rancid blood from her mouth. King sat down beside me in a guard pose. Luke looked blankly at each of my companions.
“We should get back. I don’t want to be out here in the rain all day.” Luke kneeled down to look at Henry. The sawtide was sitting up, blades extended. Focusing on us. “Henry. Will you… uh… listen to me? I guess.” He sounded apologetic. Henry made a honking noise. I’ve never met a real turtle, but I am sure that wasn’t the sound they normally made. “Then, can you come with me? We need to get out of the rain.”
My leg felt better. It hadn’t been the full hour of rest that the ENMS wanted. I figured it was a guideline. Sort of like expiration dates on food, there for legal reasons mostly. I got up and the six of us made our way back to the cave.
Getting Henry into the cave was easier than expected. He turned his back legs into spikes and climbed the stone himself. King, already practiced, lept into the hole easily. A few minutes latter and we were all resting in the larger chamber of his cave. Luke spent some time lighting a fire to warm us up. In that time, I tried to pull up my own stats. I looked down at myself, but that didn’t work. Then I tried looking at my hand. I noted the green dot. I had forgotten about it.
“Hey, Luke?” I asked.
“Yeah?” He was working at creating a spark. He didn’t use a match.
“Do you have a green dot on your hand, or something like it?” He ignored me for a moment. Smoke, then fire. He managed it as it grew. After a moment, he did a once over on himself.
“No. Should I?”
“I got one. When I pressed it while looking at a nexo, I got more details.” It worried me that he didn’t have one.
“I thought that was like… a fancy tattoo or something. Whats it say about Henry?”
I looked at the sawtide. He and King seemed to be in a staring contest. Neither moving. I pressed the green dot.
SAWTIDE. MASTER OF THE BUNKER. A TURTLE SHELLED WEAPON WITH THE ABILITY TO CREATE ANY TOOL TO SUIT ITS NEEDS. WITH AN INSTINCT FOR INGENUITY AND DESIGN, SAWTIDES CAN BE TRAINED TO BUILD DEFENSIVE BUNKERS FROM VIRTUALLY ANY MATERIAL. WHILE THEIR GRASP OF SPACIAL REASONING AND MECHANISMS IS IMMENSE, THE REST OF THEIR MENTAL FACULTY IS IMPRESSIVELY LOW FOR A WEAPON OF SUCH HIGH BASE INTELLIGENCE.
I read the text to him
.
“Woah, that’s amazing. I can do a lot with that… any tool? Henry, can you make a screwdriver?” Henry honked and retracted an arm. A moment later, his arm returned with a long screwdriver point instead of a blade-like fin. “Cool.” Luke had the fire going, and we sat around it to warm ourselves. “I’m going to experiment with this. See if you can figure out that green dot.”
Luke began to work with his new companion in the other room, leaving me to dry and work through figuring out the green dot. I should have figured this thing out already, but the second best time to plant a tree is now.
Without focusing on anything in particular, I pressed the dot.
QUERY?
Popped up in my view. Well, I could at least try. “How do I access my statistics?”
ANSWER: ACTIVATE THE LINK WHILE LOOKING INWARD.
What did that mean? Like, a zen thing? I closed my eyes and focused. I imagined my minds eye looking back at myself. Then pressed the link.
WEAPON SMITH
DESIGNATION: KAELEN RHYSE
NEXOCITE ADAPTION: 46%
BOND LEVEL: 1
BOUND WEAPONS: 3 OF 3
SKILLS: NONE
ATTRIBUTES:
UNKNOWABLE, HUMAN. NO MODIFIERS.
46% why was mine so high compared to Lukes? My mind raced through the events. I had it. Luke had only used the spray once. To cover the stump of his missing arm. I really wanted to talk to him about it, he didn’t seem to notice it was gone half the time. I used the spray three times so far and ate one of the pills. That had to be it. I pressed the link again.
QUERY?
“What is this link?”
A LINK IS FORMED AT 10% NEXOCITE ADAPTION. YOU HAD PASSED THIS THRESHOLD UPON BONDING. THE LINK ALLOWS ONE TO ACCESS DEEPER INFORMATION HELD BY THE SYSTEM CORE.
Ok, we were getting somewhere. I continued asking questions. “What is the system core?”
THE MAIN COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENT ORGANISM WHICH GOVERNS AND PROGRAMS NEXOCITE INTERACTIONS.
Organism? So something alive governed it. “What is Nexocite?”
NEXOCITE IS A FORM OF MATTER WHICH CAN ADAPT TO ANY MATERIAL, SUBSTANCE, ENERGY, OR REALITY PATTERN GIVEN THE CORRECT SOUL.
“What is a soul?”
IN THE CONTEXT OF NEXOCITE, A SOUL, OR SOUL GEM, IS A CONDENSED CRYSTALLITE NEXOCITE FORMATION THAT HAS BEEN CULTIVATED INTO ONE OF SEVERAL TYPES AND PREPROGRAMED WITH AN ORGANIC MACRO-PROGRAM. SOULS ACT AS THE BRAIN AND EXTRA COMPUTATIONAL ABILITY FOR NEXOCITE WEAPONS, ALLOWING FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF SKILLS, SPELLS, AND OTHER TRAITS.
SOULS CAN COMBINE, FEEDING THEIR INFORMATION OFF ONE ANOTHER TO CREATE A NEW, ADVANCED SOUL GEM. SOUL GEMS MAY ALSO BE ACCENTED BY OTHER SOUL GEMS, ALLOWING FOR THE USE OF SKILLS AND SPELLS USUALLY UNAVAILABLE TO THE WEAPON. SOUL GEMS CAN BE USED TO CRAFT AND POWER BATTLE SMITH GEAR.
This was all overwhelming. Over the next few hours, I dug through the links. Asking question after question. It seems its knowledge was limited to nexocite weapons. I was something called a Weapon Smith. A human infused with nexocite and programed with the ability to bond and train nexocite weapons. There was also no way to remove Nexocite from my system. As my nexocite adaption increased, I should be able to access more information and be able to equip more battle smith gear. But… did I want to do that? At what point was I no longer human, but some sort of cyber-human-weapon thing. My religion, in theory, forbade me from unnecessary alterations to my body. Some of my kinfolk didn’t even shave. It didn’t mean much to me, especially after all that has happened. But there was still that cultural push that made me feel ill thinking about it. I decided I would avoid it best I could. Besides, the only way I knew how to increase the nexocite adaption was by using the health sprays, and I didn’t plan to get hurt. In the back of my mind, I knew I would eventually.
Over a dinner of fish, the last of it, Luke and I went over what we learned. I had given Luke the tablet earlier and he had explored through it. He told me of Henrys abilities. Seems that he could build things and was surprisingly adept at manipulating stone and wood. That would be helpful if we decided to build a more permanent home. I had 15 years on this planet, Luke had 12. But, with our individual goals, we were likely going to need something defensible eventually. This cave wouldn’t work.
“I scrolled through the quests in the tablet.” Luke said between mouthfuls. “Most of the requests are blatantly for weapons. Assassination nexos, poisons, infiltration, biological warfare, super soldiers, big ass monsters, the works.”
“I’m not comfortable with collecting weapons for the black market.”
Luke waved a hand. “Me neither. But, some of these are a bit more… tame. I figure there are two types of nexos requested. Actual weapons and… pets? For a lack of a better term.”
“Pets? Who would trust a nexo as a pet, no offense, King.” King and Stella were playing, with Balor keeping them out of trouble. The stress of it was visible on Balors boney face. Henry had waddled up next to Luke. Our nexos seemed to get along better after acclimating around each other for a few hours.
“I don’t know, but there are quests straight up asking for unicorns, for something called a bunfluff, and for nexos that could entertain a crown.”
“Rich fucks wanting toys.”
“Exactly. It’s not… ideal. But I won’t lose sleep if we can find a pet for some warlords daughter or a shiny nexo to keep a druglords party hoping.” I mulled it over.
“What are the rewards?”
“The rewards are something called a nexo-box. Does your totally-not-evil mark of all knowledge know anything about them?” I asked it.
NEXO-BOX. A RANDOM ASSORTMENT OF ORGANICALLY GROWN NEXOCITE TECHNOLOGY. HIGHER TIER BOXES WILL CONTAIN MORE ADVANCED ITEMS. NEXOCITE ITEMS ARE GENERATED UPON ACTIVATING THE BOX. NEXO-BOXES WERE DEVELOPED AS A REWARD TO ASSIST THE SURVIVAL OF SMITHS AND TO ALLOW THE SYSTEM CORE TO EXPERIMENT WITH NEWLY GENERATED NEXOCITE TECHNOLOGY. SOME EXAMPLES OF NEXOCITE TECHNOLGY INCLUDE HEALTH REGENERATING DEVICES, SOUL GEMS, BATTLE SMITH GEAR, AND NEXOCITE WEAPON SPECIFIC ENHANCEMENTS.
I read it to Luke. This implied that the nexo-boxes were not actually hand picked by whoever ran this show. In fact, I’ve been getting a suspicion that this system core is mostly autonomous. Eggs were random, some weapons had mutations or variations, and apparently new technology was being generated. The scale of the artificial intelligence that could do these things was… unfathomable. At least, to some backwoods hunter like me.
“So,” I said, “we give them a shiny toy, they give us some random goodies to help us survive. I can live with that.” So, we decided. If we came across something in the quest log, and it seemed like something that wouldn’t kill hundreds of innocents, then we’d try out getting a nexo-box. This was like some game. I realized that it likely was some game, at least to the people in charge. Bids going up whenever we got into a fight, gambling on our survival. Suddenly, remembered that I was told we would be monitored. I haven’t seen any sign of that. No drones or cameras. But, I was getting ahead of myself. One plan at a time.
Luke yawned. “So, what’s the plan for tomorrow.”
“You’ve got one. I want you to have another. I figure we explore, see what we find. Then, we train.”
“Train?”
“We are weapon smiths. Our purpose, in theory, is to forge nexos into weapons for our evil overlords. We do that by training. The nexos can connect and learn to other nexos they fight with. That is why they gain more experience in a skill when fighting other nexos. Eventually, they will condense the information they learn into actionable, usable abilties that we can use to keep us alive.” I scratched King, who quickly licked my face. “I want to make sure King here is the top dog in this territory.” Balor huffed. I leaned by head back, looking at the skelky skulking at the edge of the fires light. “Don’t worry, buddy, you will be top monkey. I also want to figure out what exactly Stella can do. Training her up is going to be a challenge.” The nexos were great at fighting. At least, at the scale of men. Any human to face King or Balor would only get an ass kicking. But, I had a feeling that we’ve only scratched the surface of whats possible. Spells, altering of physical space, giant sky dragons, all of these were out of my world experience. King and Balor were still level one. There were beasts out there presumably much higher level.
After more discussion and general chatting, we each settled in to rest for the days to come. One of the experiments with Henry was to build something. He made me a place to sleep, flattening out the ground and using dried seaweeds that Luke had slowly been collecting. Snuggled up with King and Stella, it was surprisingly comfortable. Now that I had a general idea on what was going on, I felt confident we could get some actual progress in training the monsters in a few days.