When Wyatt used Analyzer on Prime Redeemer on the team status, a new message appeared.

Prime Redeemer

Type: Achievement

Effect: Gives bonus to ?

It’s an achievement? Gives a bonus to something, but it doesn’t tell me what, and no option to use an Essence Orb. Maybe that’s because I don’t have any?

He wondered when he’d gotten the achievement, and why.

This thing doesn’t give notifications, it seems. Except for skills. I’ll need to make more effort to always be checking my status.

Going by the team status, no one else had earned an achievement.

What did I do that they haven’t? Died, but so did Emma and she doesn’t have one. Unless, maybe you can only see your own on the team status? Or maybe the prime part means I got it because I was the first to die? Redeemer makes it seem that way, since the task was called a redemption task.

He looked around for Emma to ask her, but she was sitting with the group next to Tyler, her back facing Wyatt, listening as Olivia told what sounded like a funny story about Tyler.

Even the mysterious one is more involved than I am.

Wyatt shook his head and refocused.

Weird that I can only see my achievement through the team status.

Is there some way I can get it to show up on my regular status?

He brought up his status again and focused, and it changed, adding his achievement.

That was easy. I seem to have some control over what I’m shown. Can I get my skill ranks to show?

He was able to, but not their permutations.

Weird.

He stared at his new status message for a bit.

Wyatt Willaby Johnson

Level: 2

Achievements: ❰Prime Redeemer❱

Stats:

┍ Nervous System: 13

┕ Regulates Senses, Speed, Skill Use, ?

┍ Immune System: 9

┕ Regulates Resistances, Recovery, ?

┍ Hard Tissue: 11

┕ Regulates Durability, ?

┍ Soft Tissue: 11

┕ Regulates Toughness, Strength, ?

┍ Energy: 6

┕ Increases available Energy, ?

Skills:

• [Debuffer, D-Grade]

• [Analyzer, D-Grade]

• Empty

Dismissing his status message, he moved on to each member in the team status, but didn’t get anything from it.

What other messages have there been?

Can I analyze the message about the skill reaching D-Grade?

He was able to pull it up, but analyzing it did nothing but sap a bit of Energy.

He tried pulling up the redemption task message but couldn’t. Same for the very first messages he’d gotten.

Is there a time limit?

He tried Regan’s monster list from her Navigator skill next.

Your team has slain 32 of 128 hostiles:

5

7

4

8

1

7 Other

No difference in the amount of information, but he noticed that the quinametzin was counted as slain.

I should have checked before using Devour on the orb. I wonder if it was putting it in the orb that killed it, or devouring the orb.

That was all the messages, so he moved on to his items, starting with his shield, and was delighted at the new information revealed.

Rune Shield of Consumption

A shield capable of bearing ⦗Runes⦘.

Level: 7

Type: Special

Effects:

‎ ‎ ┍ Effortless Defense (Special)

‎ ‎ ┕ Feed Energy to eliminate perceived weight

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Boons:

‎ +107 Defense

‎ +202% Strength

Synergies:

• ⦗Skin of the Titan⦘: ?

• ⦗Mantle of the Hierophant⦘: ?

Finally revealed a question mark, right after I was wondering if I ever had…

Did I cause it, or is that a coincidence?

It doesn’t tell me what the synergies are, but now I can see that they’re with my other items.

When he’d gotten the first synergy, it had felt like the items were maybe sharing Energy. He focused on this fact and tried to get the description to change, to get the question marks to go away, but it remained unaltered.

Weird that a shield increases Strength, though it does increase my mass, maybe that’s an indirect side effect. Or maybe it’s just magic.

Is it boosting the same Strength as what’s under Soft Tissue? And does it mean mine, or the shield’s? Is it giving me just enough strength to be able to wield it effortlessly, or are those completely separate effects?

And one is boosting by a percent, while the other is a flat number. I can’t tell which is a greater absolute increase without being able to see what the actual numbers are.

He tried to get Defense to show up on his status, but couldn’t. And his Soft Tissue stat was the same whether he was holding the shield or not.

He pulled up his mantle next.

Mantle of the Hierophant

A mantle of curious ability.

Level: 1

Type: Normal

Boons:

‎ 2000% Lighten

Synergies:

• ⦗Skin of the Titan⦘: ?

• ⦗Rune Shield of Consumption ⦘: ?

Two-thousand percent lighten. Is that based on the mantle’s weight? Using it with my shield reduces the shield’s weight, but it’s still heavy. If it were based on my own weight and not the mantle’s, the shield would be weightless, since while the shield is heavy, it’s not twenty times heavier than I am. And I drift to the ground, so I must still weigh something, otherwise I’d keep going.

I wonder how effects and boons are different. This boon seems almost exactly like the special effect on my shield. I know they work slightly differently at least; the mantle selectively reduces my weight or gravity, while the shield preserves mass but makes it so I can’t feel it.

There were several possibilities, like boons being limited by the fact that they were increases or decreases, while effects were adaptable. But he didn’t have enough data to say for certain.

So he gathered more.

Skin of the Titan

Malleable armor.

Level: 1

Type: Normal

Boons:

‎ +10 Durability

‎ +25 Toughness

‎ +2 Strength

Synergies:

• ⦗Mantle of the Hierophant⦘: ?

• ⦗Rune Shield of Consumption ⦘: ?

An absolute increase to Strength rather than percentage this time.

And a decent boost to both Durability and Toughness, at least if the scale for substats is anything like the stats themselves.

Am I really almost three times tougher than I was before all this when wearing the armor?

I did survive being hit by a giant several times and came away mostly uninjured.

But my main stats are the same. Does boosting the ones below it not alter the main stats, or is it not my stats that it’s boosting?

He ran Energy into the titan skin, expanding it over his body, then put more, making parts of it grow thicker and the veins of gold glow brighter, then tried examining it again.

Same stats, even though the armor is thicker in places. So the boons probably apply to me and not the item. I guess that might be what boon means: bonuses I get. Weird that I can’t see them.

No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get numbers for substats to appear on his status message.

So if boons apply to me and not the item, that would mean the mantle is reducing my weight by two-thousand percent. But it doesn’t feel like that. The shield still feels heavy with the mantle if I don’t run energy into the shield, which wouldn’t be the case if it was reduced by twenty times my own weight. The shield feels like it weighs two or three times my weight at most.

I guess it’s possible that the boon on the mantle is using the weight of the mantle to calculate the two-thousand percent, then applying that to me. Or maybe it doesn’t feel as heavy as it actually is because my strength is increased.

But no, Tyler was able to pick it up, so it can’t be that.

He frowned, once more wishing for more information.

The more he got, the more questions there were.

It was a bit like Emma in that regard.

He glanced over at her. Whatever story Olivia had been telling finished, and now the group was in a heated discussion about loot again. Lena was still working on the ratapua corpses using Akira’s knife.

The ratapua were nowhere near as tough as the cipactli or tlilcoatl, but still tougher than they looked. Also, they were covered in spikes, which seemed to be slowing things down. Still, it looked like she only had a couple left to loot.

Wyatt turned back to his titan skin’s description.

The only mention of its ability to form weapons and other things is in the description. It’s not an effect, but, what? An inherent property of the item? I guess I need to pay attention to the descriptions.

In games, he usually skimmed right past them, going straight for the stats.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, the description lists an effect not covered by any of the other of the item’s stats.

He considered his mantle’s description.

‘Curious ability’. Curious as in odd? Reducing my weight is covered by the boon, so is it referencing some other ability I haven’t discovered?

He took out his Reformation Orb and used Interrogate.

Reformation Orb

Reforms items using genesis seeds.

Level: 1

Genesis seeds: 3

No new information there, so he brought up the message interface for it and tried again.

Reformation Orb

Reforms items using genesis seeds.

Level: 1

• Prototype: Augmentation

• Formulas: Codex of the Indifferent Gods

• Blueprints: None

• Empty

Genesis seeds: 3

That was definitely new.

He could now see both its prototype and formulas.

He was glad to finally know them, but wasn’t sure what to do with the information. Its prototype being augmentation made it seem like prototype described what it could do, beyond its reformation name. Basically an upgrade, like he’d thought.

Which implied there were other prototypes that did something besides upgrading, and he wondered what they might be. Was there one that made things worse? Or maybe transformed things? Like transmutation?

I wonder if I can have multiple prototypes. It says prototype not prototypes, so maybe not.

And that wasn’t the kind of formula he was expecting. He’d been thinking it would be like crafting recipes. But Codex of the Indifferent Gods? What did that even mean?

He tried examining it, but couldn’t get further information.

And still that empty slot.

And why do some things have a dot before them? Does that mean there’s information I haven’t discovered yet, like a question mark? My stats had dots before them until I inspected each to see the substats below them… And my synergies have a question mark and have dots before them.

Also the order of the description changed I think. Before, it was listed last. Now after Analyzer reached D-Grade, it’s first. Is that significant somehow?

Maybe I’m reading into it all too much.

He sighed. That was a problem he had.

Okay, what do I know for certain?

The only thing he could come up with was the team’s need to get stronger.

They’d almost lost to the giant. They needed someone with a strong offense, but they didn’t have any Augment Orbs to give anyone.

Wyatt had quintessence, which allowed him to boost his own stats, but he couldn’t give that to anyone else.

Can I? I haven’t tried. I’m not sure how I would. And do I even want to?

Yes, he realized, he did. His curiosity at what Bailey’s Murderer skill would do was greater than his desire to spend the quintessence on himself.

Assuming he could do it and it didn’t cost too much.

Plus, probably because they’d dated, doing things for her felt pleasant. He knew it was just some artifact of biology, but that didn’t change how it made him feel.

He’d get to satisfy his curiosity, make himself feel good, and benefit not just himself but the entire team.

He didn’t see a downside.

Unless the others start asking for me to give them power, too.

But he could deal with that. He wasn’t easily swayed.

Shouting pulled him from his contemplations.

The heated discussion had devolved into a full-blown argument again.

It looked like Lena had finished looting the ratapua, and it sounded like they were now arguing over loot and Jasmine eating the corpses. Mainly it seemed like Carlos didn’t want her to.

Wyatt again made himself get up and join the group.

He was stopped however when he noticed Maria’s giant purse next to him.

Was that there a second ago?

It felt… different than other items.

Huh, weird.

He inspected it.

⦗Maria’s Giant Purse, Level 0 (↑↑↑)⦘

The arrows were new. His Reformation Orb showed arrows when reforming an item, but they were sideways rather than upward.

He thought about what it might mean as he idly tried his Reformation Orb on it.

The message he received from this attempt jolted him from his thoughts and froze him in place, and for once, he spoke what he was feeling aloud without having to try. “Holy shit.”