Eric blinked, and suddenly the world was filled with light.
Strands of varicolored light drifted about the room, congealed in clumps across the floor and the dead dragon’s body, and blazed brightly over certain objects on or embedded into the flesh and muscle the massive corpse. Interspersed with the light show were the familiar connecting lines, data screeds, personal-code and info tabs that he and Pig had worked out for their own internal communication. The total effect was chaos; a blinding mass of visual clutter that was about as useful and understandable as if he had been struck blind.
“Pig! Damp this!”
In moments the colors muted and the moving lines and tabs stopped their frenetic movements. It was a step better than the earlier chaos, but there was still too much going on for Eric to make sense of everything.
“This still won’t work, Pig.”
“It’s the Dragon Sight, Sir.” Pig said apologetically. “It’s an ability you gained from slotting in the Dragon Core. It’s supposed to improve your vision.”
“It’s useless like this Pig.” Eric said, exasperated. “I can’t make sense of anything!”
“I can try to apply the standard AR overlay and filter and adapt it according to the ability’s input, Sir.”
“Make it so, Pig.”
Almost immediately Eric’s field of vision cleared, Pig working his special brand of magic behind the scenes, changing the chaotic scribbles of lines and texts and colors and converting them all into the tags and glowing outlines he was familiar with.
“This overlay mode is a combination of your naturally enhanced vision and the information relayed by the Dragon Sight ability, sir.” Pig explained after he had adjusted a few more variables, enhancing Eric’s eyesight and allowing him to see many more details about the room than he was able to before. “The ability allows you to not only see aether-infused items but also discern ambient aether flows and constructs.”
“Aether-infused items?”
“Perhaps it would be helpful to think of them as magic items, sir.”
“Magic, huh?” Pig’s explanation certainly hadn’t cleared any of his confusion, but Eric decided that, in the absence of proof to the contrary, for now it would be best to just go with the flow, so to speak.
“Permission to designate this vision mode as Normal, Sir.”
“Maybe… show me the rest of the possible modes.”
After a bit of experimentation, Eric and his AI established that he had the ability to manifest and utilize four modes of vision: The improved human vision he had been most familiar with that featured Pig’s points of interest overlay, the standard thermal that had been part of the H-X vision-enhancement package, the newly acquired Dragon Sight mode that allowed Eric to see aether sources and flows, or a hybrid version of all three modes which relied on Pig to curate the visual effects as he felt necessary.
With a little bit of practice, they discovered that Eric could mentally transition between sight modes as he wished, or Pig could do it for him if Eric was a bit too busy with other matters. Unfortunately, they also discovered that cycling through the sight modes too quickly caused Eric to feel a bit nauseous. Eventually, Eric settled on using the hybrid mode as a sort of default setting, allowing his eyes to gain the maximum benefits from his new ability. With that settled, Eric then turned his attention to the various glowing tags that Pig had helpfully provided.
“If you need more explanation, there are notifications pending regarding the Dragon Sight ability as well as other matters, sir.”
“You mean you can’t just read them yourself or tell me their contents?”
“No sir,” Pig admitted.
Eric glanced at the red mail icon, which now indicated he had twenty-three messages.
“Okay, hit me with it.”
Dragon Sight (Innate)
The eyes of the dragons see the Breath of Worlds.
Like a dragon, your eyes are able to see the flows and forms of aether.
Higher levels may unlock higher functions.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Well that was helpful.
Grimacing at the lack of detail regarding the ability, Eric adjusted his position along the dead dragon’s spine and took a moment to plan his next moves.
If he was being honest with himself, Eric knew that in the state that Serra was currently in there was very little likelihood that she would survive the next few hours without extensive care and healing, something that was clearly beyond his capabilities to provide. Call it selfishness, call it fear, but the thought of being left alone without any allies for the second time in his life was like a black void that threatened to swallow him up.
The last time he was left stranded on a hostile world alone he had nearly lost himself in a nightmare existence of blood, slaughter, and sheer animal survival instincts. By the end of his ordeal he had become little more than an atavistic monster single-mindedly seeking more and more violence, his rational mind teetering at the very brink of sanity, costing the Union military an enormous amount of resources and time to pull his battered psyche back from that abyss once he had been recovered.
He would not survive going through that a second time.
To save himself, he needed to save Serra Jakobin.
Unfortunately, despite a lifetime dedicated to dealing out injuries the extent of Eric’s knowledge regarding medical matters was very limited, since he relied more on organized support and quick battlefield fixes to get his stricken men off the field and into the hands of professionals. Which was why he was at a loss about how he could address Serra’s severe injuries.
However, he also knew that obtaining an ability like Dragon Sight was a step in the right direction, allowing him to notice potentially useful items in the surrounding environment. It was an extraordinary ability that opened up the possibility of more. In a universe where magic was real and where miraculous abilities could be acquired, maybe he could find more options to help him save his teammate.
“Pig, didn’t you mention something about choosing a Type?”
“Yes sir. Now that you have a Prime Core you may choose a Type.”
“Ok, any advice you might be able to give regarding that?”
Instead of answering directly, Pig activated one of the pending notifications.
Congratulations! You may now choose a Type.
Types are broad designations for what a particular adept does with his accumulated aether. The five general types are: Bruiser, Knight, Striker, Mage, and Support.
Bruisers are close-quarter fighters gravitating towards melee, sustain, and durability.
Knights are more defensive, focused on protecting allies and controlling the battlefield.
Strikers are pure offense with superior mobility, range, and critical damage potential.
Mages focus on control, relying on the versatility of forms, crowd control, and preparation.
Supports provide the weapons, items, and knowledge needed by the other types to keep on going, as well as patching them up when needed.
Other Types may become available if certain parameters are met.
Types may be changed anytime a new Core is placed into an empty Slot for a set Gens Point value. All abilities linked to the previous Type will be removed.
Would you like to select a Type? Yes/No
Because of his upbringing, Eric’s was somewhat unpracticed in the art of gaming.
Growing up in Military Fosterage had not given him many opportunities to indulge himself with the kind of roleplaying games many of his peers all across the Union enjoyed. It was only after he was accepted into the regular army that he was made aware of how widespread and appealing such diversions were. It was a popular pastime in the Service in particular because traveling from star to star and even planet to planet was still an unfortunately tedious and time-consuming process. And this was true not only for electronic games; there was a large number of people who still gathered around tables or connected over the UnioNet to play traditional tabletop games. Eric had spent many long voyages listening to comrades and subordinates discussing rules and builds and ways to min-max their characters, so he was familiar with the concepts being described.
He just hadn’t done any such thing for himself.
True to what he had come to expect from the System, the Types mentioned were very minimally explained, but by applying simple logic Eric was pretty sure his fighting style would mesh better with either the Bruiser or the Striker Type. Unfortunately, he could not imagine that any of those two would be able to provide him with any abilities that would benefit Serra.
For healing magic, Support would probably be the best choice.
But it was definitely not the best choice for him.
Eric wavered between the options.
“I suggest you choose what’s best for you sir.”
Eric didn’t answer, staring at the notification window with an intensity he usually reserved for formulating assault plans. He rubbed at his chin, his jaw muscles tensing and relaxing rhythmically.
Then he made his choice.
A new wave of message notification alarms sounded.
Eric waved the windows away, his face grim.
“Shelve the rest of those for later, Pig, and let’s see if we can find anything to get Jakobin operational.”
Pig obediently did so, clearing Eric’s vision of all clutter, leaving only the message pending icon at the periphery of Eric’s sight.
“I have finished, Sir.”
At Pig’s request, Eric had panned his gaze slowly across the dragon’s carcass while the AI collected the input his hybrid vision mode provided to generate a map of possible magical objects that they could collect from the dead beast. It only took a few seconds, after which Pig was able to translate the data onto Eric’s field of view.
As if a switch on his brain had been turned on, Eric looked out on a new, more colorful, view.
Pig’s adjustments had now peppered the dragon’s carcass with several tags pointing at various areas of the creature’s anatomy, while several probable embedded ‘concentrations of magic’ were marked out by a brighter glow in different layered colors beneath the creature’s skin. Two tags in particular caught Eric’s interest; One pointing at one of the dragon’s fingers that read Vashanka’s Ring, unusual because it was the only tag that actually had a name, and a pulsing patch beneath the dragon’s dorsal spine scales that was labeled ??? but whose aetheric glow was brighter by far than any other in the area.
A familiar and pressing desire rose up in Eric’s heart.
“Pig, is this intel accurate?”
“Everything is precisely as your sight ability provides, sir.”
Eric shrugged. Loot is loot, I guess.