Mahina sprinted through the jungle as silently as she could manage. She was fairly certain she wasn’t doing a great job of it. Her frame was definitely heavier than a typical human her size and she was wearing gear and armor. Yet, she wasn’t too concerned. She wasn’t out here to not attract attention. This was an exercise in encountering the local fauna and flora.
The jungle was pitch black with the canopy blocking the light of the moons. There was still a bit of water dripping from the canopy from an earlier rain. Her multispectral array fed her information about the area around her. The result was that even in the pitch black she could see almost as if it was daylight with overlapping infrared, ultraviolet, UHF echolocation, and other more passive imaging systems all combining to display a unified view. The irragen filter was also loaded and hopefully that would prevent any surprise attacks from anything invisible. It was possible that some of these lifeforms might see an infrared or ultraviolet light source. If that was the case this should let the colonists know that such creatures existed.
Imaging was showing a lot of life out there as red blips. Mahina set it to detect anything bigger than a housecat. Those spiny arboreal dragons were about that size. For now, the intent was to get several kilometers away from the lander before stopping to investigate anything.
Mahina wasn’t sure what type of weaponry she should bring, but she didn’t want to overthink it. The whole point of this exercise was to get out and learn. She fully expected this to end in a respawn. She had an Atlas Arms Magnetar Hand Cannon MC-4010 in a holster on each thigh. These were coil guns that could fire 10mm projectiles at subsonic or supersonic speeds. They also had semi-automatic, burst fire, and fully automatic settings. They were a little bulky with slightly larger magazines that held 33 slugs each. With her strength, she could easily handle one in each hand.
She has a 6mm PROAK made by Dominion Arms. The projectile accelerator rifles have very similar functions to the MC-4010 but have better accuracy over long distances and have a handy grenade launcher that has 5 grenades ready to go. It was in a compacted form on her lower back. Due to her size and the limitation of how much the grenade launcher could compact, it wasn’t a great fit. She might have to change that setup at a later time.
She also had a Titan Industries Tactical Shield on her left forearm. It is more like a bulky vambrace, but it had some built-in utility. Part of the shield could slip forward to cover her knuckles and add some additional melee damage and defense. It also had a short monomolecular edged blade that could project out if needed. She was mostly concerned with something big like the shadowcat coming across her. If she had to give up her left arm to buy a second to fire with her right, she would take it.
In addition, she had light armor on that covered her body pretty thoroughly. She made the armor as acid and kinetic proof as she could. This might end up being short-sighted as other types of damage are almost certainly out there. The helmet had a sensor array built-in because her own sensor array was limited. Her eyes only had low light and some very basic infrared.
And of course, in addition to a pack with some basic survival gear as well as a very limited amount of sample containers, she had a machete with a monomolecular edge. Because jungle. And it was also a very effective weapon.
Mahina had been learning to fence during the last 15 years. It was a family tradition that was somewhat casually observed, if at all, anymore. But she’d had time on her hands for the last 15 years. She done painting, knitting, kendo, coding, wood carving, calligraphy, flower arranging, and a few other things. She spent a small amount of time cooking but considering she didn’t really eat; she couldn’t really enjoy the fruits of her labor. She had spent about 3 hours trying to do poetry. She had also participated in helping with scrum goals, but for some reason, people would ask for her advice and eagerly do what she suggested. Rarely would they ask her to come along and do the work. She couldn’t figure out if it was some signal, she was sending. Maybe she wasn’t being forthright enough? She was more than happy to get into the hard work that needed to be done. Nobody seemed to want her to do that though. They would get upset if she tried.
Nevertheless, even with fencing and kendo training, she decided a sword was probably impractical compared to firearms and proaks. Neither Kendo nor fencing were truly practical for learning to use a sword for defense purposes. She wasn’t likely to encounter others looking to duel with a very defined ruleset. With that in mind she added a targeting system to her HUD. It was pretty basic. Once she had a pistol or rifle pulled out, it would track and indicate where she was aiming.
Mahina stopped running some 3 kilometers away from the lander. She took in the view, but it was quite limited. The forest canopy was still very thick here. She made a mental note. She wanted to find a hill she could climb and perhaps find a vista where she could look at the stars.
She noted that some of the red spots in her HUD that indicated life were flickering in and out. That must be due to the trees getting in the way of line of sight? She picked one to investigate and headed in that direction. There was also some green glowing in that direction. What was that indicating?
As she moved closer, she realized the green was not a function of her HUD, there was actually something glowing green. There was a small clearing ahead that was perhaps 5 meters in diameter. The glowing light was coming from the center of the clearing. Her HUD didn’t show any movement although there was a bit of flickering of red dots around her. She wasn’t sure why it was flickering. Maybe something like bats were flying through the trees. If that was the case, whatever it was, it was fast because she couldn’t see it. Maybe it was invisible?
Mahina moved closer and finally saw the source of the glow. It looked like a statue of a wood five-pointed star. It had 2 legs that it stood upon and with its 2 arms held up, one on either side of its head. Its body was slightly twisted as if it was dancing and froze in place. In the center was a glowing, green gem? Core, maybe? As she slowly moved closer. It shifted a little. Mahina stopped and noted that all of the red dots flickering also stopped.
She continued to move closer not seeing anything else. She was about 10 feet from the star when it moved, and it appeared to Mahina that it was gesturing upward with its little wooden star arms and its glow grew bright. The ground erupted underneath her and vines wrapped around her legs. The forest came alive with red dots. Things started leaping from the trees.
Mahina went to pull her pistols. One vine was preventing her from pulling her right-hand pistol from the holster. She grabbed the left pistol and went to point it at the star. The HUD indicated she was pointing at it. With a mental twitch she armed the weapon and fired. The Magnetar fired a single subsonic round. Since it was subsonic, the weapon made a clicking sound that had the snap of high voltage electricity. There was a short whining sound, and the star went flying from its perch.
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She ripped away at the vine on her right side and pulled the other pistol free. Her HUD counted 22 contacts. Mahina started picking them off. She couldn’t quite see what the other things were. They were like spiders or crabs leaping toward her. She could now see that the flickering was either due to the things moving small amounts every so often or because the main body was slightly smaller than a housecat? Either way, shoot now, adjust software later.
Their numbers were slowly being whittled down but on the whole the enemies were closing in on her. 16 contacts still active. The vines that were holding her in place needed to go. Shifting her weight, she wrenched her right foot up. It took a couple tries but she got her foot free. She repeated with her left foot. 14 contacts left and they were close. Just as her left foot came free a thorny vine broadsided her from the left and knocked her to the ground.
She landed hard and without any finesse but also without damage. Fortunately, there weren’t any rocks or stumps there to interfere with her fall. She went to get to her feet when she was knocked over again by one of the spider crabs. She got a close look at one. It had a pale white shell and long legs that allowed it to jump quite far for its size. The top of the spider crab was covered in moss and bark. It seemed like it would blend in the trees if it sat still. It looked like a crab with a 2 segmented body, but it had sharp pointy teeth. They reminded her more of a lamprey’s teeth than a spider or crab’s mandibles. It also had pincers. Pincers that glowed purple. The spider crab grabbed at her armor with pincers.
The purple light spread from the pincers into her armor, but if anything happened it wasn’t apparent. She targeted the spider crab on top of her and fired. That was a huge mistake. She was covered in spider grab guts and goo. She was very grateful that her helmet covered her mouth.
The ground started roiling under her.
“Oh no, you don’t.” She rolled to the side and barely evaded the vines that shot up catching a spider crab that was about to land on her.
She stood and started running to get some distance between herself and the enemies. Turning to fire, she caught two more but missed 2 others. Another vine whipped out but missed her. 11 contacts left. She looked for the glowing star.
A mist was developing in the middle of the clearing. Perhaps a last-ditch effort to block her vision? She switched to burst fire and shot 2 volleys into the center of the green glow in the mist.
A message popped up in Mahina’s vision,
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Congratulations!
You defeated a Verdant Sylvan Enchanter. (Level 10)
Irragen points awarded!
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Her screen still showed 10 contacts left. The spider crabs had stopped moving toward her. For a moment they just sat there. Then, they started eating their dead brethren.
A message popped up in Mahina’s vision,
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Congratulations!
You defeated Withering Ghost Scrabbler x 2. (Level 3)
You defeated Withering Ghost Scrabbler x 4. (Level 2)
You defeated Withering Ghost Scrabbler x 5. (Level 1)
Irragen points awarded!
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Quest Updated!
Release The Kraken - Acquire sufficient experience to surpass the threshold to fully engage the PHENO system. (26% Complete)
- Complete quests, gather irragenic materials, craft with irragenic materials, and explore the environment to gather sufficient irragenic points to unlock the P.H.E.N.O.system.
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That was a surprisingly significant jump in that completion rate. Mahina’s spirits were bolstered. She had faced enemies and defeated them. It seemed like she was a bad match for them. Whatever magic the scrabblers had, it didn’t seem to affect her. The only real threat was the Verdant Sylvan which didn’t appear to be able to really harm her. She suspected that the ‘enchanter’ part of the name was some type of mind control of the scrabblers. Once the Verdant Sylvan Enchanter was killed the scrabblers went back to their normal behavior.
A bit of searching revealed the parts of the Sylvan that were left. The were a few pieces of the wood star remaining. If there was a core, Mahina couldn’t find it. She suspected the P.H.E.N.O.system would have told her if there was one to find. It had certainly been glowing. Perhaps, it wasn’t a solid core yet.
Mahina sighed to herself as she gathered samples of the sylvan and scrabblers. There was so much conjecture with this system. She hoped that as more was unlocked, more information would be available. She regretted not being able to retrieve a more complete specimen of one of the scrabblers. There wasn’t sufficient room in her pack, and she wasn’t heading back to the lander yet. She could tell the science teams where to find the scrabblers if they wanted more information.
Weapons reloaded and samples stowed in her pack, she continued her journey south.
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Mahina was no longer running but she still was moving at a rather quick pace. She was now about 8 kilometers from the lander and almost due south. The wildlife seemed to be giving her a wide berth. She wondered if that was due to the dead scrabbler all over her.
While an attempt was made to clean it all off, she didn’t really have the materials to do so. She lamented the lack of a towel or any type of cleaning agent. Her limited organic systems required little water, she lost very little to the environment, and her onboard systems could pull sufficient water from the air here. Thus, she didn’t even have a bottle of water to help rinse off.
There was a place ahead she could stop for a moment. Perhaps she could grab a fistful of soil or vegetation and at least reduce the impact of the scrabbler smell. She sat on a rock for a second. She reached down, she considered that she didn’t even know if the vegetation around her that she might use to clean her suit was poisonous or otherwise dangerous. She stared at a clump of wide, leafy blades that resembled the structure of grass with purple edges. With another sigh, she reminded herself that she was out here to learn and to make mistakes. It pulled out of the ground with relative ease.
Staring at the clump, she wondered what it smelled like. With her helmet on, she wasn’t really smelling anything. It would be counterproductive to wipe something all over herself that smelled worse. She set the clump on the rock next to her and undid her helmet. As the seal broke, she was inundated with the smell of the jungle around her. There was a deep, earthy scent accompanied by the smell of rain and an unmistakable stench of something rather fishy coming from her chest.
The scrabbler smell didn’t seem overpowering to her. At least not compared to the rainforest around her. She grabbed the clump next to her and held it up to her nose. It had a spicy, almost piney scent. Maybe with a hint of what she would expect to be an astringent. Yet, the more she took in the aroma of the world around her she thought she could detect the sweet fragrances of tropical flowers. The must of mildew and fungus accompanied with damp and decay.
It was wonderfully familiar and welcoming. And yet a concern nagged at the back of her head. What if this wasn’t real? What if this is a scrum system trying to give me something but it’s just an approximation? She hoped Argyra smelled like this. She could feel at home here. She sat for a moment basking in what felt like something natural and organic. The irony that Mahina herself was barely organic anymore was not lost on her. Perhaps she would go back to full or mostly organic. It would be a process, but it could be done.
Snapping out of her revelry, she brushed the clump of grass and soil on her chest to try and remove the lingering scent of scrabbler bits. It left a lot of muddy streaks behind. But it might smell a bit better.
Mahina went to grab her helmet. There was a stuttering roar from further south. It was as if the sound was cutting out. That was followed by a loud crack. Stone crashing upon stone, maybe? She fastened her helmet and ran south.