It took Sophie around a week to return to normal under the combined care of Misty, Vik and Rita. In that week however, she had a great deal of time to think. Something had to change. Ever since the incident when she accidently blew up her arm firing one of her Talons, Sophie had been acting fairly recklessly. If she was on her own, with nobody to care about her, she wouldn’t have noticed how odd her behaviour was.

At some point, increasing her personal strength had become an obsession, fueled by the existence of the system. Obviously she wasn’t going to start ignoring it. That’d be stupid as it was an advantage over everyone else in the dystopian world she now lived. But she had to stop obsessing over it.

The whole reason she’d been in the area Hansen attacked was to level her class quicker. Not to obtain something, meet someone or do something. She had merely wanted to expedite a process that wouldn’t have taken long to complete anyway. A needless risk for a small boost in progress. How stupid.

The other thing she had been thinking about were her goals. It had been a startling realisation, the fact she didn’t actually know what she wanted. That she had never sat down and figured it out. However, she had already subconsciously chosen a path. The path of a mercenary, of an edgerunner. To be a living legend. There was no point being a legend if you were dead after all.

Now admittedly, Sophie had begun to love her work. The thrill of stealing something or pulling off a smooth operation. Even spilling blood had become something she seemed to enjoy. It disturbed her to no end that she had grown fond of killing. It was only the discovery that thinking of harming an innocent was nausea-inducing that convinced her she wasn’t a complete psychopath. A bit crazy but at least it was only directed at the world’s scum. The true psychopaths.

So, she had spent the week planning, figuring out how she could continue to walk the bloody path she had stepped onto. Her conclusion was that she needed stability. Over the years, Sophie kinda just…did whatever? Sometimes she would do a job for the Mox and she loved helping them out. But other times, she was doing things all by herself. Finding opportunities, planning the mission and then executing her plans. But there was a special type of person that specialised in the first two parts. Fixers.

She hadn’t worked with any actual fixers before. For a long time, any fixer that she could have worked with would have been like Kirk Sawyer, the small-time fixer V meets in the street kid lifepath. Now though, she had real skills. Skills that would grab the attention of the bigger players. Thus, she had one part of her future plan mapped out. Getting the attention of one of Night City’s fixers.

However, that was only the first part of her master plan. The second? She needed some chooms. To be more precise, she needed to find a person or two that she could work with on a gig. Sadly, it would be up to chance if she could discover the right people to run with. Having a crew was a big part of her plan to stay out of trouble. Working with people meant the burden could be shared around and more work possibilities would open up.

Sophie could only hope that these things would lessen the amount of trouble she got into. Still, she had a plan now. The first step would be to impress a fixer and Sophie already had one in mind. If she wanted work, why not get it from Night City’s best?

Before she leapt back into work though, she had business to attend to. During her recovery period, she had avoided looking at the system. Sophie was worried that if she looked at it before she was ready, she may slip back into her obsession. However, it was now time to look at the results of her escapades.

First, she brought up the description of the trait she had gotten from completing Markswoman.

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Trait: Precision Shooting - Within 50m, you have almost perfect accuracy.

It made sense coming from a class called Markswoman she supposed. And it was incredibly powerful too. It meant she could create a ‘deadzone’ around herself in which any foe that entered could be eliminated. She moved on to the next order of business.

Trait: Iron Resolve has evolved into Trait: Iron Will

Trait: Iron Resolve - Boosts willpower and pain tolerance. Negative mental effects are less likely to affect you. → Trait: Iron Will - Significantly boosts willpower and pain tolerance. Negative mental effects are far less likely to affect you.

Obviously this had happened at some point during her escape from the Barghest troops. There wasn’t much difference in the descriptions between the two traits. Sophie wondered just how much of a difference the new wording would make.

Before she could move on however, she received a new message from the system.

The Trait: Iron Will can be evolved further by using a Trait Challenge Token.

“Okayyyy. What exactly does that mean?”

Upon use of the token, you will have to undergo a challenge. Successful completion of the challenge will naturally evolve the Trait while failing it has a 50% chance to remove the trait from the host. In this case, you would lose the Iron Will trait.

“Yeah, I think I’m alright with avoiding that for now.” Sophie shoved the brief conversation to the back of her mind.

Second to last on her agenda was the Queen of Thieves class and her skill upgrades of which there were pitifully few.

Queen of Thieves has reached level 5!

…

Queen of Thieves has reached level 10!

…

Queen of Thieves has reached level 15!

Skill: Stealth (Advanced) has reached level 2!

Wow. That fucking sucks. I went through all that and got barely anything. Unfortunately, there was nothing she could do. Thus, she turned her attention to the final set of messages she had to look at.

Mission Complete

You are trapped in the Night City combat zone as Colonel Kurt Hansen establishes a forward operating base. Escape before his troops find and capture you.

Difficulty: Hell

Rewards: 500,000 M-Coins, Free Inventory Expansion (10m x 10m x 10m), 2x Cyberware Modification Token (Mythic), Class Experience Boost Token (1 Year), 5 Queen of Thieves levels, 1 free skill level.

The rewards were incredible. Not worth the near death experience but they would go a long way to avoiding a similar experience in the future. Just the chunk of M-Coins was valuable. The inventory expansion was similarly very good as it saved her having to spend 100,000 M-Coins on it. The levels were also good, specifically the free skill level. She immediately dropped it into Thievery (Advanced), easily the hardest skill she currently had to level up.

However, the real prizes were clearly the tokens.

Cyberware Modification Token (Mythic): Customise a piece of cyberware up to the Mythic level. (If you use this token on an arm, you can only modify the arm. An arm cannot be turned into a leg)

Sophie thought about it, deciding to keep the tokens for the future. She’d recently chipped in new chrome, so she wanted to take her time getting used to it before doing anything else. Finally, the girl looked at the item she was most interested in.

Class Experience Boost Token (1 Year): Boosts the rate at which classes can be completed. Lasts for one year.

It was a simple effect but it was incredible. All of her training would increase in effectiveness for an entire year. With her Queen of Thieves class at level 15, it would be perfect if she could complete it within a year, possibly moving on to a new class before the end of 2070.

Name: Sophie Mortimer

Age: 11

Class: Queen of Thieves - Lvl.15

Profession: Driver - Lvl.95

Traits

Ghost, Thief’s Instinct, Ambidextrous, Recoil Reduction, Structural Intuition, Precision Shooting, Iron Will

Class Skills

Thief’s Hand: Lvl.1, Parkour (Advanced): Lvl.1, Stealth (Advanced): Lvl.2, Thievery (Advanced): Lvl.2, Rapid Reload: Lvl.10, Shooting (Intermediate): Lvl.10, Gun Combat (Intermediate): Lvl.10, Gun Knowledge (Intermediate) Lvl.10

Profession Skills

Problem Solver: Lvl.50, Mechanics (Basic): Lvl.50, Driving (Basic): Lvl.50, Vehicle Combat (Basic): Lvl.45

Cyberware

Chronos Sandevistan: Available (1 short use (5 seconds) per 3.4 weeks. Further body modifications will increase limit) (God)

Kiroshi Mk.3 Optics (Rare)

Raven’s Claw Cyberarms (Legendary)

Subdermal Armour (Epic)

MoorE Simple Lungs (Common)

MoorE Simple Liver (Common)

Titanium Back (Epic)

Soulbound Weapons

Talons (Mythic)

Store: Available

Inventory: 10m x 10m x 10m

M-Coins: 700,000

She had a lot of coins, Sophie realised. Still. She was in no rush to use them. It would be a while before she chipped anything new in. For now, she had a very special fixer to impress.