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Max jogged the long way back to the rest area. He was still alert for potential traps, sweeping the halls with his mote swarm and his full range of senses. He noticed that the many broken sparring dummies were either missing or in the process of being absorbed by the labyrinth’s floor.
Damn, it would have been nice to dissect one of those bots. He thought as he exited his assigned hall.
Max saw immediately that he wasn't alone. Charlie was shifting a very battered-looking Xavier on a couch. The unconscious boy’s multiple arms dangled off the sides as Charlie elevated his legs.
“Hey, Max. Your outfit looks almost as torn up as poor Xavier here. How did you do?” Charlie said, wiping Xavier’s blood off his hands onto his trousers.
“It wasn't easy, but I did it. I got the level key and reward chip right here.” Max said, patting the breast of his tattered jacket. He nodded sideways to the couch. “Xavier okay?”
“Looks like he wiped out. A spar dummy dragged him to the entry and dumped him here. I managed to access his aug and talk to his AI, Jarvis. He’s not hurt as bad as you were in your fight with Tyler, but he ran dry on energy. He’s in a forced shutdown while his system patches him up. I hope it's a lot quicker than your time out.” Charlie said.
“Damn, that sucks. I wonder if the gauntlet will reset or let him continue where he got beat.” Max said.
“Either way, we might need a strategy session to see how he can make it through. I’ve got some ideas that might help, and I bet you will too.” Charlie replied. Charlie pulled off his backpack and then dropped it beside the couch and flopped into another lounge chair.
“Any sign of Leah?” Max asked.
“Not yet. But she’s about three-quarters done. She’s been slowing down though, maybe another two hours.” Charlie said with a grin.
“How the heck do you know that? Wait…don’t tell me. Let me figure it out while I get some food.” Max said. He walked over to the matter compiler reaching out with his [Access] skill.
“Cool, get me a beer out of the MC while you're at it?” Charlie asked as he sank back into his lounger.
Max checked his energy levels and saw they were topped off. He started a timer and then amped his cognition up and split his attention three ways with his multitasking skill. He partitioned a virtual thought space for each of his alter egos.
His first instance accessed the matter compiler and ran through its menus. He found that it wasn't hooked up to any external networks but did have a large database of food, equipment, and miscellaneous smart devices that might be useful. He selected a six-pack of beer, a plate of burgers, and a plate of fries. He licked his chops in hunger as he eyed the MC’s timer to assemble his meal.
- -
His second instance pulled Tesla into a shared virtual space. Some pointed questions about how to recharge his smart suit soon expanded his awareness of both his suit and his augmentation. Most systems, his included, had contact patches in convenient areas like palms, back, feet, etc. Those patches could pass energy or direct line communications between devices and body augmentations.
Max immediately used a patch on his back to directly access his suit and recharge its energy stores. He set it to repair the damage as soon as it gained a few percentage points of power. The virtual Tesla supervised his work with a running commentary.
“Remember to keep an eye on your energy levels. When your [Power Core] skill was activated, it boosted your augmentation system energy. It doesn't generate power, but it can store a massive amount. Your body can store huge amounts in distributed nanocapacitors, but the power core is the most massive and quickest access to energy that you have.” Tesla said.
“Is there any way to use the patches to recharge my core faster?” Max asked.
“Certainly. I noticed in your system logs that you identified and stored a portable power core in your Tesseract device along with several other devices. The gifts from your family, Sherlock informed me. You could recharge your systems with that, although it would in turn need to be recharged. I haven't noticed any power outlets, but the matter compiler uses a lot of energy. It must have a power line.”
“Right. Ok, Nikola my friend. Let's get to work and figure out how to hot-wire some power out of that MC unit. I came close to damaging my core in the Gauntlet, so I either need to be more patient or get a way to quick charge…and I’m all out of patience.” Max said.
- - -
Max and Sherlock met in another virtual space within his partitioned mind to work on deducing Charlie's secret ability to track Leah’s progress.
“I already know that all the challenge halls close off; preventing our swarms from delivering information back.” Max said.
“Hmm. We must gather more information to properly form a theory.” Sherlock said.
Max responded by commanding his swarm to spread out. He mapped the room and projected it on a virtual tabletop so Sherlock could see as well. The map built out as the wave of motes moved out. They flowed down the challenge hall to the room where the passage split into four. Only Leah’s passage was blocked.
He sent them further, splitting up to follow each passage that was still open. Xavier’s hall terminated at the first room; a sparring mannequin stood ready to fight in the ring. Max and Charlie’s passages continued as the motes kept traveling.
“Ah. I think that Xavier’s challenge has reset. Poor kid, I guess he’s got to do the whole thing in one go.” Max said.
The map grew as the wave of motes progressed. The map of the defeated halls lengthened room by room. The challenge rooms were beads on the strand. Max noticed that the halls weren't straight, at each challenge room the exit was off by a couple of degrees. The hall sections grew shorter as the angle of the exits increased, making each gauntlet path a tightening spiral shape.
The maps started to resemble a kind of tree, like a weeping willow. Each path was a slightly spiraling branch. Max and Charlie’s were fully completed, Xavier had only one extra section, and Leah’s was closed to scrutiny.
“Interesting. Let me complete the pattern.” Sherlock coaxed the image to paint the missing sections in a different color. Max looked closely at Leah’s path and noticed a single point at the 16th knuckle that began to move. He highlighted it.
“Hah! I’ve got it. Hold on.” Max added the labeling from his tracker mote skill. The tiny pixel matched the projected location and direction of the tracker mote assigned to Leah.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
[Swarm +1, Swarm reaches level 3]
“Interesting. It's quite rudimentary to estimate her progress now that we know the map and her relative position on it. It appears she is about to commence her 17th match soon. Charlie's estimate is adequate, but impossible to be precise as her fights and methods could vary quite a bit.” Sherlock said with a tight smile.
“The dungeon cut off all the mote feeds except for their positioning information. Weird. It blocked everything except that specific frequency. Not sure if it's being somewhat helpful or taunting us with the information.” Max said.
“Thanks for the help, Sherlock.” Max said.
“My dear sir, you did the work. All I did was point you in the right direction.” Sherlock said with pride.
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The MC dinged. Max opened its door and grabbed the tray loaded with beer, burgers, and fries. His outfit had been fully repaired and shed the blood while he had waited. He brought the food and drinks and pushed them onto the table nearest Charlie. He stuffed a burger into his mouth whole.
“Thank you, my friend.” Charlie said. Max raised a finger, swallowed, and spoke.
“You're welcome. I see Leah is finished with 16 and started 17.”
“You son of a bitch! You figured that out quickly. Well done.” Charlie exclaimed with a smile. He grabbed two beers and popped their tops off bare-handed and handed one to Max. Max grabbed it and they clinked bottles and drank.
“Help yourself to some food. I’ve got to pull my motes in and load them into the MC for some replication. Also, in the back of my head, I’m almost ready with a device that might help sleeping beauty over there to wake up sooner.” Max said.
“I hope it doesn't involve kissing, I’m pretty sure he’s already crushing on Leah.” Charlie said with a mouthful of fries. Max snorted and went back to the compiler. The air about Max got a little foggy as all of his motes crowded in tight. He opened the door to the chamber and ushered them in. He set it to replicate twice over. He steepled his fingers while he waited.
Excellent, soon I will have massive amounts of motes. My WorldMap skill can grow a lot faster with more sensors. He thought. As the timer counted down, Mal pinged him.
[Max, I’ve been watching you and Tesla designing your hot wire jumper cables. It's nice work and very timely. While you were out of it, I had a lot of time to review your systems and equipment during your body repair. It seems the Tesseract is shrinking. It's not much, only 0.2 millimeters over a few days, but if we can’t supply it with energy it will continue to shrink. It's bigger right now than it was initially. Bill grew it by almost a full meter during his testing, feeding it some power to grow it. Unfortunately, its size decays over time and I expect that the decay scales with its size. When you've created the jumpers, can we see if we can reverse the shrink?]” Mal asked.
“[Damn. Thanks for catching that. I can’t let Dad’s prototype vanish. Although we need to be discrete. Those Labyrinth AI are watching everything, and we know that they like to collect unique gear designs. Dad would be pretty upset if his design was stolen.]” Max replied.
“[That's right. Although, if they try to disassemble the anchor it will likely break. It contains a heck of a lot of energy and the anchor twists into another dimension.]” Mal said. “[Hmmm…while you fabricate your jumpers, I can help design a backpack for you like your friends have and queue it for the MC to make next. If you only open the Tesseract’s portal inside of the pack, we should be able to conceal your father’s creation and still utilize it. You’ve got a lot of gear in there that you might need later.]”
Max and Mal worked through some rough details for a backpack. It would sit low on his back making room for the extra arms he intended to grow soon. He contemplated maybe just extra blade arms like his dad…maybe scorpion stingers now that his poison skill had leveled up so much.
The MC dinged and he opened the door. A much thicker cloud came out than had entered. His swarms had multiplied, doubling twice over now that his skill rank was three. He dispersed the motes about the area, determined to increase his skill while he waited. He loaded his jumper design and backpack designs into the queue. The MC was big enough to do both fabrications at once.
He ran back to grab another burger before Charlie ate them all.
The MC dinged again, and Max grabbed a handful of fries and ran back over. Charlie was cursing up a storm. Apparently, the augmented poison resistance filtered out the alcohol from the blood and he had forgotten to disable the skill. He had declared it a waste of beer and therefore a sin.
Max pulled his hot wire jumpers and new backpack out of the MC. He selected another pair of 6 packs for beer, while he uncoiled his cable. Tesla used his OverLayer to guide him on pulling the MC out of the wall and hooking it up to the power leads.
The machine dinged. Max pulled the beers out and dragged the end of his cable to the couch. Charlie popped the tops of a couple of beers and passed one to Max.
“So, this is your plan? Are you gonna jump-start our friend here?” Charlie asked.
“Roughly…yes. It's got an accessible power regulator, so it won’t fry him. Part of Xavier’s issue, and the reason he’s still down, is power depletion. Xavier’s AI can regulate this cable’s power output and use it to fuel the repair while topping off his energy stores. Do me a favor and let his AI know what’s up while I hook him up?” Max asked.
Max queued Tesla up with his OverLayer so that he could highlight the best way to connect the leads to Xavier. He attached the cables and stood back with his beer. Charlie gave him a nod and held up his beer. Max clinked it with his own and took a drink.
“Now it's on Jarvis to sort Xavier out.” Charlie said. “The AI agrees that this should help speed the recovery process significantly.”
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The pair were more than halfway through the beer when Xavier woke up swinging. They calmed him down and got his story about his gauntlet run.
“Firstly, awesome news that you got the Power Core skill. It will help you quite a bit. I think it's a big help. I think I can see how you got stuck in the challenge.” Max said. Xavier sat up, but left the jumper leads on.
“Sounds like you brought out your best attacks first. I guess I got lucky on this, but I started with my weakest skills. The gauntlet challenge wants you to focus on them and grow them. Leading with your best skills only made your next opponents that much more powerful.” Max said.
“I think maybe you need at least one more arrow in your quiver, another weak attack to play for time. Poison worked great for Max. What do you say? Another session with the vest?” Charlie said.
“Argh, not the vest again!” Xavier wailed.
“Vest? What are you guys talking about?” Max said.
“I brought a special training aid, self-crafted, to help build resistances.” Charlie said. He pulled off the top of his smart suit and showed a tight vest underneath. He unbuckled it and pulled it off, laying it on the table.
“This little beauty is designed to torment you 24/7 with abuse…selectable abuse…to train our resistance to damage types. Right now, it's only got shocking, heat, cold, poison, slashing, and by pure happenstance pain effects. I’m not sure how much more I can put into it.”
Xavier popped up and grabbed the vest.
“Fine! I’ll wear the stupid masochistic vest. God damn it. One more extra attack and start with the fucking weakest skills. I got it. Fuck!” Xavier stormed off to the other side of the rest area, strapping on the vest. He sat down in a meditation pose, gritting his teeth, as he tried to settle down as the pain began.
“Hey Xavier…” Max called across the space. “I got dibs after you on the vest. My heat and cold resistance are still shit.”
It was getting late. Xavier had made his breakthrough and gotten the [Poison] skill and was getting his gear ready for another try when Max’s swarm saw Leah’s door open. Everyone rushed to the hall as Leah came limping into the safe area.
“Hell! Am I the last?” Leah cried as she made her way painfully. All the boys broke out in laughs. Max stepped up to help her walk.
“No…you’re not last, Leah. I'm afraid Xavier still needs a redo. He was just getting ready to go again. Did you finish?” He asked.
“Damn right, I finished!” Leah said as she kept walking. She collapsed into a lounge chair. “Do I see beer?” she drawled.
“Hehe. Here you go, Leah. One big step is done. Relax while we see Xavier off again.” Charlie said.
The boys walked Xavier to the entry room to his challenge. Charlie clapped his shoulders and looked him in the eyes.
“You got this Xavier. Start small and move it around. Don't escalate further until you need it. Use the ring, and weapons as a last resort. Got it?” Charlie said.
“Got it, sir.” Xavier, he eyed Max. “Any more advice, Max?”
“No…I believe you got this, buddy. Remember my motto?” Max asked.
“Um, no. You got a motto?” Xavier asked in confusion.
“Don't go fast. Slow is smooth…smooth is fast. That's all you need. Like I said…you got this,” Max said.
He punched the Thark lightly on the arm and stepped back. Xavier nodded to both and jogged down the hall. The stone door dropped as he passed. The pair looked at each other for a second until Max spoke.
“Dibs on that vest!” he yelled and ran back to the safe zone.
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