ARC2/C32 – First Alliance Planet

When Sam refocused on the conversation taking place he found Hiroma, looking up at him expectantly. Clearly he needed to work some more on his thinking speed. More points?

Hiroma had detailed a plan and list of neutral or aligned home worlds, which had been uploaded onto AF, Sam’s AI assistant. This would give Sam a starting point for his offensive on the Seracians.

However Sam, planned to not enter the MR on a few of the home worlds that were a particularly good resource for trading in cores. As he thought this would lessen the risk of them being targeted.

First stop, was a neutral non affiliated, home world called Threce. After saying hello to some militia soldiers who had been placed sentry watch on the MR and trying to reassure them as best he could that he was not a Seracian spy, they eventually begrudgingly accepted his resistance id and said they could spare him no more time.

They were understandably jumpy about anyone entering their territory unannounced. Clearly this was something Sam would have to get used to. He could have just stealthed and ignored them completely, which Traksis had. But he had said that he would try and make alliances where possible, for the sake of the resistance movement. As long, as it wasn’t going to get him killed, Sam was happy to do it.

While he was standing there he heard others talking of why no time could be spared. His new upgraded perception meant it was trivial to listen into conversations. This made Sam ponder for a second on whether his build was more of a thief than assassin. The reason for the heightened alert was that the Threce was under attack.

Sam concentrated, trying to fully leverage his new intelligence and perception stats together. To quickly gathering the information needed to go support the local offensive. It was not easy and definitely something he would need to practise more. When he didn’t know. He was at least adroit at flying at high speed without injury to himself or others now though, after this morning. So as soon as he got some general directions, he notified Traksis and they were off. South-East a few hundred miles to someplace called Toplic.

The smoke billowing, into the air that could be seen from about fifty miles away, helped. Toplic was on fire. Although droids and flightships were no where in sight. Instead as Sam drew nearer he could make out nothing but a strange flickering as sunlight that made its way through the billowing smoke played of small figures at ground level.

Eventually, Sam found out what it was, some kind of mechanoid wolves. Sam was relieved in a way. As Hiroma had told him of the Seracian’s usual tactics which was to deploy the inhabitants of any of the home worlds they conquered. This they would state was for the newly intergrated peoples to show their undivided allegiance to the Seracians but of course also so they could be used as cannon fodder.

Sam knew that it was inevitable that he would have to fight these new allies to the Seracians but he’d rather kill droids any day. Well he was used to it by now allowing him to level some of his others skills next time, he reckoned.

Fighting small moving enemies within the confines of the city was certainly a new experience. But at least with his new stats he was able to pick them off one by one. Zig-zaging around the buildings and avoiding elemental blasts directed at the attackers.

He alternated between using all of his offensive abilities to try and level them, particularly leaning into [Pyrokinesis] which he hadn’t been able to use before due to fear of explosions.

To his great relief these wolves were definetly made of living matter as his [Life-force absorbtion] was affective against them. And through continual usage, though the ability couldn’t give him more HP, as he had full health, it did seem to be alleviating his injuries. He hoped it was speeding up his recovery and that it wasn’t just in his head.

The thought made him think back to the Order operative, who had been in his head and it made him cringe internally.

Seeing the perplexed looks on the faces of the local defending force, down below, he dropped his stealth allowing them to see that he was doing the killing. But soon realised that dropping stealth made no difference as his speed made him impossible for a normal tier person to spot anyway.

So instead after killing all those they could find in the general area, he came down to ground level to spot anyone who looked like they might be in charge. He eventually found a guy who seemed to be organising people to those who were injured.

After letting the guy know who he was and gaining info on where else to go he did a quick reconnaissance of the area picking off any mechanoid wolves that were causing havoc in the outer areas of the city.

He hadn’t gained any new levels but had decided trying to use [Absorbtion] on every kill, was just to much of a pain in the proverbial as he doubted they’d be worth much. And maybe the locals could recover some of the cores themselves.

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Next he headed into the MR itself. It was a new experience to say the least.

Previously he had only found, bland terrain or city scapes in the MR. Now he found a vast forested region, created in the MR. So perhaps the wolves had been one of the many species falling to the Seracians after all. As whatever species the mechanoid wolves had been had evidentally lived on such a world.

There were some wolves coming from the trees and attempting to leave via the exit to Threce. So Sam left those to Traksis to keep at bay while he looked further a field.

First thing to do was of course do some more levelling of [Pyrokinesis] by burning the forest before him to the ground. Suprisingly however this did not seem to have destroyed all the wolves.

As he investigated the forest further he found that wolves had lairs underground. This led Sam to head underground himself. It was strange thought Sam for wolves to act this way. Maybe their increased power and size had allowed them to dig deeper?

He ventured along the tunnels below to find them opening into a cave like structure, with a vast ceiling, cropped with stalactites. Giving Sam an interesting glimpse into the creatures homeworld.

There in the cave he found vast hordes of wolves and some clearly higher tier ones, as they were at least twice the size if not more.

At last he could let rip. He got close and used [Life-force regeneration] to kill the first few waves that tried to swarm him. And managed to keep this up for a short due to his incredible agility.

He felt like a bird of prey, zooming up to the cave roof only to come crashing down to seize his victims. But there were just so many that the second or so needed to use the ability gave some the chance to land a hit on him.

The first attacks, were the usual physical abilities of slashing and biting, you would expect. However, there other attack was a strange sonic howl which he was sure would have frozen a normal enemy temporarily. This combined with the fact that there were so many thousands in the cave meant the low level ability stacked up causing him to slow slightly. This made Sam abandon his tactic as he saw his HP fluctuating slightly, up and down as he received damage and then was healed by his [Life-force regeneration] ability. This was not what he wanted.

If he took any damage it would take away from the abilities secondary effect, that of healing his injuries.

So Sam switched to using [Aerokinesis] and [Cryo Wave] with abandon, hoping that [Life-force regeneration] could get something from the cores afterwards. Otherwise they would just go towards his next level. Or better still be given to the locals to foster an alliance. Though the locals did not seem very strong at all. Was it worth forming an alliance? Sam chastised himself for such a thought, though it was true.

Ok, now how to get a few thousand cores out of a cave system and up to the surface. Looking at all the bodies on the floor of the cave, Sam gave up with that plan and tried to use [Life-force regeneration] on them instead.

It seemed to work a bit. Which as there were thousands was good enough for him.

It was at this point that he felt a disturbance in the MR and then found himself ejected returning to outside the entrance. Luckily he had disposed of most of the wolves. Hiroma had told him of this occurrence. MR could be closed by the party that opened them when they wished to leave causing any who were still in the MR to be ejected.

Where anything else like cores that were uncollected went, nobody knew. Or rather was yet another closely guarded secret.

On exiting, Sam lifted up his top to have a peek at his previously pink and very tender skin, to find it was exactly pristine but it had least scared over a lot and now was rough to the touch instead of painful as all hell. Result, thought Sam.

Apparently he had been told that if he kept asking around he might be able to pick up some high tier skills though. Hiroma had informed him that when a really high tier core was obtained most often it was squirreled away somewhere as the number of people who would able to use the ability was very few. Unless it was an ability that could be activated just once such as a life saving skill.

But Sam would have to wait until he was much more familiar with these folks before asking.

Instead, he set down again after tracking the same guy again. This was actually easy as Traksis being Traksis had expected this and had placed her [Pursuit] ability on him.

The guy, who looked just as surprised the as the first time around. Gave Sam a double take when he said there would be no more wolves coming for the time being and was there another place they were under attack that he could assist with.

After a pause, the guy just said the name and pointed in the direction. It seemed that the whole place was under attack which just led to Sam seeming even more suspicious than he already was. Oh,well never mind, thought Sam, heading off with Traksis to their next port of call.

This City, was in even worse state of repair than the last with only a few locals left to defend what was now a burnt out husk of a city. Why was everything burning? It wasn’t like the wolves had displayed any Pyro abilities. Was there something he had missed?

Locating the few locals there were he, told them he was an alliance member and lifted them all out of there as they didn’t look like they’d last much longer. Then he set about removing the wolves. The intense heat in the city from the half collapsed burning building was even giving the wolves problems, mechanical though they were.

Sam wished he could just use [Aerokinesis] and funnel them all up but he had no way of knowing if there were anymore locals in the area. He wished he had the Psi Vision ability for real. Then he thought of his new perception ability could he pick out the breathing of a person in all this mess from that of a wolf? The answer was a resounding no. Maybe someday but not today.

He started the slow monotonous process of picking off the wolves one by one. At least he was completely unaffected by the heat due to his new ability [Heat Absorption]. He wished that it was a higher tier ability that gave him an easy guide to how to use the skill. As it was, the built up power in his body just started to make him begin to glow but as it wasn’t effecting his HP he just let it be.

Although the same couldn’t be said for Sam’s clothes which started to smoulder and burn. He guessed the ability didn’t effect his general surroundings and just used an illusion to cover himself.

An hour had passed by the time Sam and Traksis had picked the city and it surroundings clear of the wolves. At which point Sam, notified the people he’d moved out that they’d cleared out the wolves and they then made their way into this MR.