Chapter 43
Tier II
(Misha Tulley)
The changes of going from Tier I to Tier II were sadly lacking in Misha’s perspective. In fact, immediately after the change Misha wondered if her class was truly broken. Thinking back, she remembered the bare bones architecture of the code that infused with her body.
Just looking at where she was immediately after the transition to Tier II, there were only two noticeable changes that occurred. The first was that the maximum for her attributes had all increased. Two for Strength and Endurance, and five for Dexterity and Agility. The only other change was that she had a new line that read Harvested Slot, but that slot was grayed out and left empty.
That was everything that immediately changed after the transition.
Tier -II
Alternate-1: Speed and Accuracy Build.
Ability Bonus: Double Growth Rate.
Improved Harvesting (2)
Harvested Slot: N/A
Physical Characteristics:
Strength: 14.9 / 16.9
Dexterity: 20 / 25
Agility: 20 / 25
Stamina: 14.9 / 16.9
To make matters worse, the options to buy and steal characteristics from other classes was missing. For a moment, she thought she had made the wrong choice.
Immediately after the choice, Misha found herself doubting the choice, there was no overwhelming surge of power. No immediate surge in abilities, just a profound emptiness that seemed to permeate her body.
That was of course, until she met with and interacted with other awakened members who were Tier II.
And there were a lot of Tier II individuals.
That was the problem, only after reaching Tier II could Misha begin to actually interact with Tier II awakened individuals. When she had tried to interact with Jerome, she found that her powers of harvesting were negated.
At the time there were still a number of variables to consider as to why she wasn’t able to harvest from Jerome. There were also plenty of Tier I individuals to harvest and improve herself from, which made her put other factors on hold until she had a better understanding of what was happening around her.
Once she reached Tier II, Misha saw her first Tier III person. This was of course, her Computer Science teacher. While Misha had known the teacher to be a Tier III Worker class, Misha now realized that most of that understanding was from her Psycher abilities. Now that she was a Tier II Reaper, she could see more of the world around her. As her controls were apparently given more access to records. As this time when she saw Ms. Philips, her Computer Science teacher, more information became available.
The name was in red, likely a note that she was a Tier III and outside of Misha’s ability to reap successfully, but her characteristics were made available for Misha to see.
Worker Class – Tier III – below threshold standards.
Ability Bonuses: Enhanced Comprehension Speed (1), Increased Endurance (2), Commanding Voice (5)
Total Reapable energy (7*)
Yes, it seemed that while the teacher was out of her current capabilities, her low threshold rating was dangled as a huge incentive piece for Misha to Tier up quickly so she could gain the benefits from reaping.
In her mind, Misha mentally remembered the initial menu options she had been given, one that showed and even offered all of the advanced abilities of each class that could be reaped from.
Looking back, it was clear that those options were a trap. Remembering the transmission burst, the one that set the whole world back to no infrastructure for two weeks, Misha remembered the messages to ReaperTwo, the person who had formerly been known as ReaperOne, a distinction that was now Misha’s and Misha’s alone.
Thinking back, Misha wondered if the older reaper had messed up to cause the obvious reduction in ranks. Now that she was a Tier II, Misha began to understand some of the more subtle nuances of her class. The entire class was a test.
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Now that she was in Tier II, all of the amazing abilities that each class offered were now grayed out and unavailable to her. Yet, now when she scanned different awakened beings on the planet, she saw that a few of them, like her teacher had abilities available to them.
From what Misha could tell, the abilities seemed to balanced in that for each Tier, a person could only get one ability per Tier. While no other Reaper abilities had been made available to her, she now began to see her new slot as a way to balance the scales.
Harvesting Slot: N/A
While the slot was by default grayed out, she did notice that it became alive and active when she got near people who had abilities. Even seeing Ms. Philips caused the slot to go from a muted gray to a deep red indicating that Misha was incapable of doing anything with what she saw. In particular, Misha saw the names of the different abilities temporarily fill the Harvesting Slot, only to be highlighted with bold red text.
Harvesting Slot: Enhanced Comprehension Speed (1)*, Increased Endurance (2)*, Commanding Voice (5)*
Though that in and of itself was enough, as Misha took this to mean that she could in time reap these abilities from the teacher, but just not at this time. Given their difference in Tier ratings, Misha figured that by her reaching Tier III, she would be able to reap Ms. Philips.
Yet, this was only a hypothesis at this time.
What she needed was a test sample. Someone to test out her thoughts on. That of course, was when she happened to finally see Alishia Stone and the way the system noted her.
Warrior Class – Tier II – meets minimum threshold standards.
Ability Bonuses: Alpha (5), Increased Durability (1), Danger Sense (3)
Total Reapable energy (4)
This time, the Abilities that Alishia showed all glowed with green text in Misha’s Harvesting Slot. This was when Misha began to devise a plan, one that would break Alishia down to the bare bones. Misha’s goal was not just kill Alishia as death would be far too quick, too simple.
No, Misha wanted to first make Alishia suffer for her transgressions. From her digital spying on Alishia, it was clear that Alishia had killed more than just her grandmother. In fact, Misha guessed that Alishia got at least one Ability for each person that she killed.
Looking deeper into the subroutines, it was clear that the reason why Misha had not been given the option to be noted as an Alpha for the warriors, was due to the fact that she had not killed anyone since she fully integrated with the system. Even now her killing of Jerome was not registered by the system as she was too far away from the death and was therefore unable to have the energy released from the kill be close enough to affect her body’s records.
Thinking back, Misha understood that this was likely what others meant by murder tarnishing the soul. The death of another would have far reaching ramifications and could no doubt be recorded somewhere in the genetic coding of the organo-tech that infused the body of every living creature and plant on this planet. While people, recordings, and history got the underlying cause of the difference they felt after killing someone wrong, the end result was the same. Namely, the records would change and offer new capabilities to users, only to find that they more often than not had not been assigned a class.
Again, there would need to be more scientific studies on this thought process, but Misha did feel that this was the way things were going.
Just being close to Alishia, Misha could tell that she had blood on her hands, either directly or indirectly, which was likely also part of why she was able to achieve the Alpha ability. This meant that not only could she kill, but she could get others to kill for her as well.
Inwardly, this made Misha sick.
Yes, she had been at war for thousands of years, and had been part of the maintenance crews during many battles. But there is a difference in fighting other warriors who are ready for battle. Hell, Misha would even accept a fellow warrior being stabbed in their sleep, or when their guard was down, thinking themselves safe. But it was one thing to go after warriors, and another thing to go after civilians, or in this case people that had not been assigned a class.
This would be Misha’s proverbial line in the sand. In her mind, she focused her will and then set out an important ground rule that she would use to define herself and her role as a reaper.
If an awakened kills a non-awakened I will destroy them.
The moment she had that thought, and confirmed it in her soul, Misha was met with a new system message.
Conviction of Will Confirmed. Moral justification accepted and approved. ReaperOne is now capable of advancing to Tier III when they see fit.
Seeing the message, Misha’s eyes went wide as she realized that she passed yet another test of this odd class. This time she apparently passed a morality clause.
For a moment, Misha thought about advancing, of taking the quick and easy route. She thought about it, and then decided not to as she remembered all of the markings that the system had assigned automatically to the different awakened people she had met so far. That of either being below, or meeting the minimum standards, neither of which category seemed appealing to Misha, which was why she wanted to make sure she was at her peak condition before advancing.
In her mind, she was still on Psycher time, meaning she had lifetimes to perfect her craft and herself. This time was going to be no different, as she was going to find a way to perfect herself through each iteration. The fact that she already could Tier up if needed was just a mental release that she needed, as it meant she was in control of her own pace and speed of advancement.
But for now, Misha did not feel complete with herself and what she was currently capable of, which was why she acknowledged the message block letting her know that she could advance, but then proceeded not to.
With the hard part out of the way, now all Misha had to do was focus on advancing herself as quickly as possible, which is how she set her sights on Alishia, the first target of her destruction, and the first person that Misha would focus understanding her new capabilities on would be Alishia.
At first, Misha didn’t quite know how to approach the girl, especially with the fact that she had Danger Sense, a power that Misha didn’t know that much about. While Misha felt it likely gave insight into immediate danger, she knew that there were likely limits to its usefulness. Limits that she intended to find out on her own.
Thinking about the ability, Misha realized that the best way to blindside someone with a Danger Sense, would be to come at them sideways. No, make it so they came to you. The only problem was, how could she do this?
How could she force Alishia to come to her, where she could reap from her Tier II capabilities?
Then just as she was having this own internal thoughts, fate seemed to provide the answer that she had been desperately needing.
“Hey babe,” Rodger said, his words instantly causing a chill of anger to rush down Misha’s spine. Turning to the voice of the actual killer of her grandmother, Misha fought to drive down her emotions. Using the meditation skills that had been ingrained into every fiber of her psychic being, Misha kept herself calm and in control, despite the rage that was welling up inside of her.
Turning around, she saw the complete look of hope and desire that filled Rodger’s lustful gaze. Instantly, Misha felt a sense of revulsion run down her spine. Revulsion that she quickly squashed as her mind processed recent messages sent between Alishia and Tricksy, ones where Tricksy asked if she could try Rodger, only to be shot down by Alishia who was putting up a fake month of mourning over Jerome.
Remembering those messages, and the way Alishia unequivocally claimed Rodger as her next Alpha, Misha smiled as a plan for revenge against both Rodger and Alishia began to form in her mind.
With her new course set, she replied, “hello.”