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Max woke when the notification chimed in his head.
[Exit Toll – Novel Item: Bermatti Recon Drone has been Accepted with a similarity to the closest licensed drone – the X-Fire 3000 – of 83%. Notable additions of increased battery density and quiet mode as differentiating features.]
[Quest: The Gauntlet – Completed, +500 XP awarded.]
[Max Mitchell +1 Level, Max achieves Adept 20, +10 free stat points awarded.]
Max’s irritation at the system prompt's early wake-up alarm quickly disappeared as he saw the new level. The Labyrinth at the very first level had delivered massive training gains. Admittedly, he had pushed and been pushed hard to gain Adept levels during and after the tournament.
One more level and he would officially be into the Master stage and able to quit the training program any time, at the cost of setting his skill at their current levels. Max had seen the difference between a casual and mastery approach to augmentation training and use. His father had been required to share his live feed of the fight between himself and the home invader with the Utopia police and Max had seen it.
The home invaders were mercenaries by trade but against Bill, they didn’t last even a minute. The difference in power was immense. True master status meant climbing to the peaks of all his skills and more. Max had set a high bar for himself; he wouldn’t be a quitter. He would squeeze every ounce of power out of his augs and come back for more.
Max realized he was wide awake now. He had taken a number of items out of the Tesseract, concealed within his new backpack space. He silently rolled out of his camp bed. He was running [Access] skill continuously to stay connected with his smart suit, the Tesseract, his swarm, his grappler, and now his camp bed. He switched its mode from cloud form to compressed and watched in amusement as the large bed shrank to the size of a deck of cards…a dense and heavy deck.
Max stowed the bed in his pack and silently padded to the MC. Everyone was starting to stir but they weren’t quite up yet. He reached out with his access and programmed a quick breakfast for four with coffee and juice.
[Stealth +1, Stealth reaches level 6]
The team got up quickly to the smell of food and coffee. Max wasn’t the only one eager to go. Xavier had been the grumpiest originally and now he was buzzing constantly hurrying the others.
“Come on. There’s another rest area on the next level. Let’s go. I wanna see our next challenge.” Xavier said, bouncing up and down. The team eagerly gathered their gear and with a nod, Xavier accessed and opened the door. The downward spiraling stone stairs were familiar, and the team set off with a brisk pace.
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After over thirty minutes of descent, they came to the door to level 2. As a team, they crossed the threshold.
[New Quest Unlocked: “The Great Hunt” - sharpen your senses and skills to understand the relationship between predator and prey. Objective 0/2 complete.]
[Objective 1 - Find your prey and take their “heart”]
The team came out of the tunnel into a wide dark area. Max was startled as he felt a breeze, smelled trees and animals, and heard the sounds of the forest. The skies had no stars and the so-called trees, barely visible in the twilight, were twisted and strange.
Max picked up several small heat signatures with his thermal vision, but his nose wasn’t fooled. There appeared to be a multitude of smaller creatures, on the ground and in the trees, but they weren’t natural. The mimic robot's polymer skin and synthetic fur had a very different bouquet to his sharp nose, and he wasn’t fooled.
“I sense quite a few animals, but which one is the –.” Max cut himself off as his EM sense picked up a profound thump ahead and slightly to the left. It was too quick to catch the bearing. Xavier made a questioning grunt.
“Are you having a stroke there, Max, you stopped in -.” Xavier started and cut himself off at Max’s shushing exclamation. The thump hit again.
“Listen!” Max said. Both Leah and Xavier were now looking in the same direction as Max. The EM signal wasn’t an aura like normal but rather like a sound, a steady thrum, like a sleeping heartbeat. Charlie was the only one who wasn’t picking up on it.
[EM Sense +1, EM Sense reaches level 8, training this skill further to sense even more electromagnetic wavelengths, radio wavelengths unlocked.]
“Damn it, what’s going on?” Charlie said, picking up that he was the only one not sensing something.
“How’s your EM sense, big bro? Sensing radio doesn’t unlock until you level it up pretty high.” Xavier said.
“Level 8 unlocks it. I haven’t heard radio before, mine just advanced.” Max said.
“Son of a bitch…my skill is only level 2.” Charlie said grimly. He wasn’t used to being behind the power curve.
“No worries, Charlie. Excepting you, we can all sense it. We stick together and follow the signal.” Leah said. Charlie nodded and then pulled his weapon free and set it to sword form.
Max took the lead with a light jog and built-up speed in the direction of the pulse, building up his WorldMap with all of his senses. He was pleasantly surprised that Xavier was keeping up, he had been working really hard under Charlie’s mentoring.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Max skidded to a stop only 20 seconds into the run. The heartbeat had stopped.
“Fuck. I guess just following a signal would be too easy. I’ve got the bearing on my WorldMap skill. We might have to actually hunt now.” Max shook his head and started running again, the others quickly following.
Max smelled lots of subtlety different scents, but nothing that jumped out as their target. Ten minutes later, the beat came back…almost directly behind them. Max and the others stopped immediately.
“What the heck. I didn’t sense anything crossing our path. How did it get behind us?” Max said. They changed direction and charged off quickly following the signal. Predictably the signal quit only half a minute later. Max slowed without discussion and tried to push his senses further.
[ExaVision +1, ExaVision reaches level 8 - sense extended to include passive X-ray detection.]
[SkillZ talent scan has detected a novel skill. Offer Instinctual Tracking as a skill for trade? Y/N?]
Max agreed instantly but slowed even further. He shook his head as he failed to pick up a trail.
“Guys, can you stop a second?” Xavier said. Everyone agreed and stopped, looking to Xavier to see what his concern was.
“Sorry, guys. My daemons are mostly science types and they’ve been debating that signal for a while now. They all agree we should fan out so we can get a parallax on it, the more distant the better. That way we can direction and using our different positions we should be able to calculate distance as well.” Xavier said, his conviction growing as he leaned into his explaining the issue.
Max heard his daemon advisors all quickly agreeing in the back of his mind and adjusted his thinking to accommodate the new strategy.
“Good idea, Xavier. Let’s keep a group chat going via telephony and share our WorldMaps on a shared OverLayer.” Max followed up his suggestion by placing the calls and then opening their shared OverLayer and painting it with his personal sense map. One by one the others followed suit, the shared map growing dense with signals from everyone and their scanner motes.
[WorldMap +1, WorldMap reaches level 6, Map skill can grow by incorporating more sources and types of senses.]
Judging by the gasps from his friends, Max suspected they had all just advanced their WorldMap skill as well.
“All right. Let’s spread out but be careful. Charlie, stick close to Xavier for now since you aren’t getting the signal.” The team began jogging again, spreading out as they went. Mal pinged Max.
“[Max, my…other’s gift Robo-Raven might be another extra sensor we can use. Even better, it can fly upward. We can establish parallax in three dimensions.]”
“[Thanks Mal. Good idea.]” Max sent. He stopped and pulled his backpack off. He hadn’t actually transferred the robot bird into the pack yet, but he reached in pretending. Using his access to the Tesseract, he used its manipulator arms to grab its stored mimic bird and push it into his hand as he created the small portal inside the backpack. Bird in hand, he closed the portal and the pack.
Max split his thoughts and accessed the drone bird. He flew it away as he re-slung his pack and resumed trotting. His second self was enjoying the feeling of flight immensely.
[Pilot +1, Pilot reaches level 2]
[Multitask +1, Multitask reaches level 7]
The next time the signal beating rang out the team caught it and mapped the origin quickly. It was over a mile distant, but now they had a target. The whole team took off in a sprint.
Even after the signal stopped, Max continued. He dropped to all fours for more speed. He exulted in the speed, his motes started to lag behind him but his Raven coursed ahead, above the trees. The “animals” of the dark forest scattered before him. He entered a depression between hills, the signal should be ahead if it hadn’t moved. He paused.
The wind was coming to him from the valley. Max picked up a new scent. It tasted… sweet and powerful. It enticed and urged him forward. Driven by the scent's allure, Max pushed deeper into the valley, his instincts honed and alert. The sweet, potent aroma grew stronger, pulling him forward as if the very air beckoned him closer.
Max stalked closer as he landed the Raven above and saw it. The animals of the forest had proven to be very elusive and shy so far. This wasn’t a regular forest animal like the world above. It was a robot mimic, shaped like a spider the size of a sheep. It shimmered briefly in his sight as it moved. When it stopped it almost disappeared.
It blends in so well. A good camouflage design or mimicking nature? Whatever it is, it’s damn effective. Max thought. He sent a power bank mote forward, small enough not to spook it and it latched on to some fur on the spider's back. He named the mote “Target”.
[Nano Tracker +1, Nano Tracker reaches level 4]
Max cautioned his friends to come in slow. They approached and surrounded the rim of the depression and worked their way in slowly. Someone must have spooked it because it took off like a race car.
Max sliced out with his new [Laser] skill and clipped it, taking off a trailing leg. Leah was faster than him and stitched the thing with her Spetsdod darts. The spider spasmed and crashed into the brush, craters in its synthetic flesh where darts exploded. Xavier bound forward and got his four hands on it.
“Hah, got him! You’re not going anywhere bug!” He yelled triumphantly.
The forest sounds that had been playing stopped abruptly, the only sounds were the team’s heavy breathing from the run and a light breeze. Max felt the most powerful EM pulse yet, thrumming like a hummingbird's wings. Six or seven whistling screeches sounded off in the distance.
Xavier dropped the dead spider in shock at the resounding pulse and cries from the woods. The screeches didn’t stop but were getting louder, like oncoming trains. The sounds were getting closer and multiplying.
“Shit! Up! Into the trees, quickly!” Charlie said from atop the ridge. He leaped into the nearest tree in a 20’ bound and climbed higher. The whole team scrambled quickly to follow suit.
Max froze halfway up his tree going cold all over. Centipede creatures large enough to have difficulty passing through a regular door crashed into the valley from every direction. Max cringed and shrank in on himself, trying to avoid their attention.
[Chameleon +1, Chameleon reaches level 3]
[Stealth +1, Stealth reaches level 7]
The first centipede grabbed the dead spider and swallowed it whole. The rapidly pulsing beat continued, driving the large centipedes crazy. The valley turned into a roiling orgy of destruction as the other monsters attacked it and tore the spider corpse out of the first monster.
The chaos below was both terrifying and mesmerizing. Max held his breath, gripping the tree tightly. The centipedes' frenzy escalated, their violent thrashing threatening to uproot the very trees the team clung to. Leah whispered over the comm, "Don't make a sound. Wait for them to leave."
Time seemed to stretch endlessly, each second filled with the monstrous cacophony below. Finally, as the pulsing beat subsided and wounded creatures began to disperse, Max dared to exhale, a whisper of relief lost in the wind.
He slowly started to descend when another heartbeat pulse sounded. The team was still linked and Mal automatically charted the origin. Two miles north.
“Shit. Another signal! No way that was this bug. It’s in the belly of one of those monsters. I tagged it with a tracker.” Max said.
“[Actually sir, the signal is the same as the first we heard. I’ve replayed your sense logs. There are four different signals which each sound out in intervals. I surmise that each must be hunted for the objective.]” Sherlock said, injecting his dry voice into the team’s chat.
Whether by coincidence or a twisted sense of humor, the next notification pinged from his system.
[The Hunt - Objective 2: The hunters become the hunted. Evade predators and transport the heart to the level's safe rest area.]
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