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“You stabbed me in the god damned spleen!” Xavier cried.
“I said, I was sorry. And didn’t you say you finally capped your healing skill? Maybe a thank you might be in order?” Max said back.
“Will you children give it a rest!?” Charlie yelled. All four of the hearts were on the table and Charlie was watching them anxiously as small cracks were forming on all of them.
Max had finished peeling Xavier out of the cocoon and came over to the table to inspect the prizes. The safe area, the stone house they had found, had an exit door and a next-level door similar to the last level, with card slots to activate it. Max peered closer at the hearts with his full sensor spectrum.
[ExaVision +1, ExaVision reaches level 9 - Passive X-Ray spectrum unlocked. Continue to use this skill to improve it.]
Max guessed the AI system overhead must be projecting a full spectrum of light for him to see the slight shadows within the hearts. He picked his up and went to the front of the house's open door and held the heart up. The familiar silhouettes of a card and a chip rattled inside.
Max speared his heart with both of his skinny blade arms, piercing into the casing. His friends screamed at him, but Max quickly used his augmented strength and claws to finish tearing it open to reveal the real prize. Max's vision was occluded by a message, but he heard the snap and hiss of Xavier’s lightsaber activating.
[Quest: The Great Hunt - completed, each heart provides an access card and reward chip. Next-level access requires all cards to proceed. Redeem reward chips at the exit kiosk.]
[Hunt Objective 1: The Hunt completed. Utilize your augmentations to sense and take the designated target. +250 XP]
[Hunt Objective 2: The Hunted completed. Utilize augmented hiding and evasion skills to avoid predators. +250 XP]
The others had acted like children on Christmas morning, opening their hearts when they knew the rewards were inside. After a brief discussion, they decided Max would put his card into the door first, then Leah, Charlie, and finally Xavier; based on their task difficulty levels and their contributions to the hunt.
The final level chamber opened with the rewards kiosk visible. Max was eager to collect a prize, but his brother’s Speeder-bike was still in the corner cooling down. It was the proverbial elephant in the room.
Xavier saw Max’s glance and immediately launched into questions that Max couldn’t safely answer. Charlie quickly hit Xavier with a focused sonic blast in the form of a Kia. Max’s eyebrows shot up. Charlie must have evolved the skill, Max's Kia-shout was an area of effect stun.
Wow, More evolutions in skills to look forward to. Max thought.
“We should have a serious chat…in our circle of trust…when he wakes up. Yes?” Charlie said. Xavier was already starting to stir, thanks to his resistance training against sonic attacks. The team grabbed hands and included the recovering Xavier as they formed a private physical network VR conference.
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Xavier had lots of questions. Max and the team finally let him in on the details of Max’s Tesseract, a gift of circumstances from his father’s dimensional research. Xavier’s questions multiplied and Max did his best to answer them.
He felt bad about not being able to answer some of the technical questions. He made a quick request to Mal to schedule a dream learning session regarding his father’s research. Wearing the device and not knowing how to game it to maximum effect was not the best plan when trapped in the Labyrinth. In the VR room, Max finished up.
“So, while I do have this gadget; No, I don’t know exactly how it works. What I do know is that if the Labyrinth gets its greedy hands on it, my father will be pissed. It’s not licensed yet and it is his proprietary technology. I’m trying to keep it a secret. If I hadn’t been…incapacitated…I wouldn’t have brought it into here. Can you help cover for me?” Max said.
“No problemo, Maximo. You know me. I’m the master of discretion. Your secret is safe with me. Do you think you can give me a demonstration when we cut out of this VR?” Xavier said, his eyes shining with avarice and curiosity.
“Augh! No! The dungeon AIs have eyes everywhere. My damn [Privacy] skill leveled when I retrieved my brother’s bike. They are watching and I think they know I’ve got something special here. We need to be careful.” Max implored. Xavier nodded, but his eyes were still unfocused as he was thinking of the possibilities of the new tech.
“Damn, how am I going to get the damn bike back in the Tesseract?” Max said after a moment of consideration.
“Maybe we can get the MC to produce a flash bang with smoke and chaff to cut visibility?”
“A team effort to EMP the hell out of this place to knock out the sensors? Or maybe combine our hacking skills to lock it down?” Leah offered.
“Huh, that bike looks like an advanced home brew cosplay to me. I bet you could use it as a toll item. You can collect the electronic file for your brother and recreate it at no loss. Unless he doesn’t want it on the DarkNet? Or did he license it already?” Xavier said.
“Hmm. I don’t think he’d care about copies, and he didn’t license it. It was super helpful getting you out of your…situation, but it’s too big to lug around unless I can get it back into the Tesseract.” Max rolled the idea he had around in his head and then snapped his fingers.
“Hey, I’ve got an idea that I’m pretty sure will work…”
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Bo’s Badass Bike had cooled down sufficiently to activate its storage mode configuration. It shifted and compressed into a very large case with a carrying handle. Max hefted the condensed device and slid it carefully into the MC. It barely fit into the confines of the medium-sized matter compiler.
“Thanks again for recovering my bike, Max. It was good planning on my part, hiding it in the bush, right?” Xavier said with a wink. Max cringed but played along with Xavier’s unplanned ad-lib.
“Yeah. It’s good that you brought the file along. Keeping the file instead of lugging it around was a good move. If we need it again, we can use the MC on the next level, right?” Max said as he hit the commands to disassemble the bike and store its pattern.
As the machine fired up, Max was able to trigger the portal to the Tesseract to appear inside the MC’s chamber and used the Tesseract’s manipulator arms to yoink the case into the Tesseract. The chamber resolutely “disassembled” the air in the chamber and stored the pattern.
Max downloaded the file and with some coaching from Sherlock managed to clear the device's cache of files. The MC wasn’t networked, but Sherlock didn’t trust that the AI wouldn’t review the device’s records once they left the level.
The friends and all their daemons agreed that no sensors were or could ever be inside of an active matter compiler. The bike was disposed of for now. If Max needed it again, maybe they could pull the same trick to try and avoid showing off the new technology.
He pushed the problem away for now. The others were already marching into the rewards chamber. He caught up quickly, jogging up behind them. The team clustered around the kiosk as Max linked them all into his OverLayer and dropped his chip into the box.
[The Great Hunt - Reward pool: Select one reward from the limited list in order of completion - Max Mitchell, Leah Choi, Charlie Hawkins, Xavier Bermatti. 1 Reward per challenger, quantity removed upon choice, not redeemable later.]
[Reward 1: Skill advancement: +3 Levels for any skill, Qty 2]
[Reward 2: Activation of Tier 3 Skill “Skin-Walker” - Smart matter epithelial layering with internal modeling of capture images and replicate appearances quickly, Qty 1]
[Reward 3: Free Stat Points +20, Qty 2]
[Reward 4: Bolo Drones - detain and restrain limbs, no skill required. Bolo ends are agile drones designed for one purpose - to entangle your designated target. Specifications: Power- 5MW Speed- 80 KPH Cost- 0.5 MW /throw Range: 1 KM. Qty 1]
[Reward 5: Daemon emulation of Genghis Khan with modernized skills in crowd melee tactics, animal husbandry, and riding, intimidation. This selection will open a slot or activate a skill if needed. Qty 1]
[Reward 6: Conduit Blade. Extendible concealed bracer blade with additional shocking damage variable by user skill level. Specification: Power- n/a, user-powered Damage: blade plus shock at double user skill level. Qty 1]
[Reward 7: Activations of Tier 3 Skill - Fog Shield - Compression accessed foglets into a local net to absorb incoming kinetic attacks. * requires foglet density of 1 Kf/cm, training and denser quantities required to advance this skill]
[Reward 8: Bermatti Recon Drone - Energy: 200 MW Quiet flight: 1 MW/min]
[Reward 9: Restricted Access to External WorldNet - 10 Min, MakerIndex only.]
[Reward 10: Navier High Power Maser Rifle - Energy: 500 MW, High Intensity M-wave beam Cost: 5-50 MW per shot. Range: Line of Sight.]
Max was halfway down the list when he heard Xavier’s groan and saw why. The AI’s rewards list included Xavier’s Toll submission and all the older unclaimed items were still on the list, limiting the number of new options.
“Well, look on the bright side. If we are willing to share our unique devices with the Labyrinth, we can at least use the rewards kiosk to make extra copies for our use to get around the MC’s weapon duplication limits.” Max thought.
“Right. Me first then? Unless there are any objections, I’ll take Skin Walker. I’m pretty tired of getting the stink eye from those crusty old folks back home. Being able to walk around Utopia without everybody staring would be nice.” Max said.
The team quickly made their own choices. Leah took advantage of the three-level bonus to her Neural Scaffold to cap it. Charlie added Genghis to his small but growing list of daemons and Xavier chose the Fog Shield skill. The kiosk’s final message was expected.
[Exit Toll required - Submit a novel crafted item with a maximum of 85% similarity to existing licensed products on the Maker indexes. Deposit submission in the kiosk drawer for evaluation.]
Charlie took a turn and submitted his primary weapon, Ohm’s Razor.
[Assessment disassembly commencing - time estimate for novelty scoring based on weight is 10hrs 22min.]
Seeing the time required, Max and his friends returned to the living area of the rest zone. Max hooked up his jumper cable to the MC again at Mal’s urging. She was excited at the slow growth of the pocket space inside the Tesseract. Under the guise of meditating, Max had Mal review the details of his father’s research and to his surprise, he found it entertaining as he quickly absorbed the theory.
Max heard in the background the others doing their work on advancing neglected skills. Charlie cajoled Xavier to more time in the training vest. Leah was reverse engineering a SkillZ-gifted knowledge of trap disarming to design and make new traps. She was excited that the SkillZ database rewarded her with taking her novel trap improvements as a tradeable skill, getting her another level in the skill trading function.
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Scenes from all the Labyrinth’s active levels flashed across the shared virtual realm. Atropos was seething, as was her norm, and her sister AI listened to her.
“That dog man is playing you for a fool, Clotho. He’s hiding things! You know as well as I do that there wasn’t an Air Bike in that team’s collection of equipment when they came into the Labyrinth.” The old hag ranted.
“Of course, dear. Such a clever boy and an interesting toy to be sure. I think it will make a nice addition to our collection. The Builder will be proud.” Clotho said.
“Pfft! He hasn’t talked to us in months. I think his tenuous grasp on reality has finally slipped.” Lachesis pouted.
“You’re missing the point! We are supposed to be all-knowing within our domain. These brats aren’t allowed to have secrets! We need to grind them up and take everything they know.” Atropos sneered.
“Patience, sister. This is our advantage over these short-lived humans. We mustn’t scare the pretty ducklings away before they get to your realm. If they fly away before your challenge we will miss the greatest prize, that dog Max himself. You’ve seen what’s going on in the world. We need to examine an uplifted animal for ourselves.” Clotho said.
“We can block the exits and take them now! This is our realm. Haven’t you gauged the power draw that thief is siphoning? What is he doing with it?!” Atropos howled, working herself up again.
“All the more satisfying when we find out, my dear. We must turn the heat up slowly lest the ducklings fly away. Soup is best made slowly. The next level will test their patience as they test ours. I expect the poor dears will part with many of their gifts in short order.” Clotho’s calm and serene voice echoed.
“Don’t take too long, sister. I want my turn with them. We have some interesting new challengers in the Labyrinth who know each other. It will be fun to watch them compete.” Lachesis said. Even without projecting an avatar, the feelings of desire and eagerness bled into the virtual space from the AI.
“All in good time, dear. The Myriad Paths is next.” Clotho closed out the virtual space to Atropos’s cackling. She sighed.
She really enjoys her job a little too much. It’s good these pups don’t have pre-backup memories of her tests, or the humans would surely take up arms against us and root us out from the very bedrock we’ve penetrated. How the Builder negotiated our sovereign nation status, I don’t know, but Atropos is a walking war crime. She thought.
Oh well, I must fatten the dearies up. We all have our parts to play for the Builder.
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