ARC2/C31 – Search and rescue

Sam felt hit had hit the jackpot with these new abilities but really he’d like to be able to keep both of them. [Power Absorption] seemed to be nothing of use whatsoever. However experience of higher tier-abilities told him that [Power Absorption] would allow a users to be more selective over what they absorbed and what they didn’t.

The whole problem with cores was that it was always a lottery, what ability you would get to inherit. And you would only get a maximum of one abilities. Sam had thought maybe that was why they hadn’t killed him yet. That in doing so would limit their chances of inheriting his vore trait.

But this skill would clearly allow someone to pick and chose which ability or abilities they chose to inherit from a core. It was truly tempting to take this one.

Sam felt he would be sorry if he passed up [Life-Force Absorption] though. Trawling through, the marketplace very few if any abilities had come up that were related to rejuvenation, for that was what this clearly was. Clearly a much sort after ability.

[Synergy detected processing… new ability]

What the hell!? A Tier-F ability.

[Heat Absorption: Users can absorb heat, while removing it from the source, into their body and use it in various ways, gaining some form of advantage, either by enhancing themselves, gaining the drained power, using it as power source]

Sam realised that [Cryo Wave] had broken the level 100 threshold as well and some synergy existed.

Thinking back to physics classes back on earth he felt the description made some sense. Object could be made cold by removal of heat. That was how a refrigerator worked after all.

Then Sam was rocked by a bombshell. Wait! thought Sam as his mind juddered to a halt. Did this having something not just to do with the synergy between [Cryo Wave] and [Absorbtion] but also the fact that he had absorbed way to much heat burning half his body?!

Was Synergy something Gestalt? Something that the user could influence? He had keenly felt a need for a health giving ability and had been given one. And now an ability to protect his body from heat damage. It was too good to be a coincidence.

Name: Sam Slait Level 32

Health Points: 491/491 Skill Points: 16855/16855 Stamina: 464/464

Vitality: 22 Strength: 11 Endurance: 36 Agility: 22 Intellect: 100 Perception: 20

Acquired Path: PSI Tier-F Strand: null

Abilities:

Tier-G

[Telekinesis Level 118] [Psionic Drain Level 112] [Telepathic Illusions Level 178] [Tough Level 14]

[Pyrokinesis Level 100] [Cryokinesis Level 100][PSI FLOW Level 27]

Tier-F

[Kinetic Flight Level 89] [Opinokinesis Level 56][Energy Drain Level 76]

[Aerokinesis Level 64] [Cryo Wave Level 100] [Heat Absorption Level 1]

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Tier-E

[Absorbtion Level 100] [Life-Force Absorption Level 1]

Would [Life-Force Absorption] work on things like droids though? As they weren’t alive. With only one way to find out thought Sam selecting the ability.

Although now they were skirting through the Seracian desert it didn’t seem prudent to alert anyone to their presence, just to solve his curiosity.

Besides he had other things he could do. Like figure out what to do with his free points, all 22k of them! This was insane.

Having almost been killed before, Sam immediately splurged most of his points into Vitality and Endurance putting 5k in each. That would make him at least fifty times as tanky as before. Surely that would be enough for now. If he was faced by an eminent danger he could use up the last points. He just didn’t know which was more effective Vitality or Endurance. Pure Vitality put his HP up by more dramatically but endurance he presumed would give him more defense and prevent him his HP being wiped out so quickly.

All he had to go on was his experience of video games back on good old Earth, so he was just guessing really. He would really need to sit down and have a chat with Hiroma. He shook his head again about the fact that even the most basic of information on the system was not made public.

At least he didn’t need to worry about slowing Traksis down anymore. He put a measly 2k into Agility, so he could match her speed easily.

Sam however immediately had to slow down and dump a load of his free points into his other stats. This was for two big reasons. Reason one he was getting what constituted travel sickness. And no amount of pills or magnetic wrist bands were going to counteract travelling at what felt like it must be way over mach two, flight speed.

The whole of his right side was a singing with pain, as he forgotten injuries flared to life. He wished levelling up would sort that out but clearly not. Or even that his health ability [Life Absorbtion] could extract a few points of HP from a Seracian droid. So to stop his head spinning he put 1k points into perception.

This dropped him to the ground where he clumpled hands clasping his head, and screamed. Luckily there were no Seracian forces in the vicinity. He would surely have blacked out from the pain if not for Traksis using her [Mind Dominion] full on, to try and assist her friend.

This brought calm to Sam’s mind for just long enough for him to dump points into intelligence and strength. 2k in each, leaving him with 8k free points.

His head cleared immediately and Traksis was able to back off. The world was just plain weird now though as Sam’s perception gave him a whole new world to view.

He could see it would take a while for him to get used to this new perspective. More time sadly than he could devote right now. But he did find he could use his sight now like a telescope, zooming in on things that were clearly miles away. Very useful. Especially for not crashing at high speeds.

The points into strength had been in the hope that that would solve his second problem. He had noticed that as he had begun to reach much higher speeds than previously, his HP had started to take a knock. Slowly dropping, not good. So he decided to try putting points into strength as clearly points into endurance alone wasn’t sufficient.

His mind felt weird. The increase in intelligence didn’t seem to have made him into a genius. Far from it unfortunately. He was still just Sam. But his mind could respond far, far quicker than previously. It was like thinking at five times speed or maybe more. Again useful he felt in not hitting any oncoming Seracian flightships or droids.

Soon enough his body and mind acclimatised to the speed of flight and without any need to ticker more with his stats, they began their search in earnest of the Seracian desert.

Travelling in stealth mode, cloaked by [Telepathic illusions] as always, it wasn’t long before they came across a small group of Traksis’ species. It appeared from what Traksis conveyed to him that they had not been fairing well. As a result they were all too happy to leave the decimated war zone and soon as possible.

Surveying the area, it looked just the same as ever to Sam. Perhaps there were more squadrons of droids and maybe a few scorched and blackened pieces of ground but otherwise no change. Just a barren desert.

Sam thought about what havoc he could wreak on the forces there on second thoughts it was quite possible that Traksis’ race could get caught up in things so instead they continued to track down more of her kin.

After a good part of the day had elapsed they headed back to base on Tartris. Fortunately the horde of some seven thousand insectoids did not need any food or shelter. After all they had managed to survive for many years in the Seracian wastelands on nothing.

The resistance reported that they had had no attacks as yet. But were glad for any support, and so accepted an alliance with the insectoids gladly.

While Sam was listening to the discussion taking place between the resistance and Traksis. An idea formed in Sam’s head. If he had to give a name to his build, despite his tankyness, he would have to say he was more of an assassin class. And it wasn’t just his speed or stealth that made him think that. It was the tactics he had got used to deploying. Stealth in destroy and get out with the minimum of risk to his side.

If he could rescue a few thousand insectoids from under the Seracian’s noses. Why not any other prisoners from Earth they or others had stashed away somewhere?