---Richard---
Richard was having a blast – still. How had he gotten so sucked in? Fuck if he knew, but they ‘gone n got em’.
Richard had made a goal over a week ago. He wanted to make ice cream attack people. More accurately he wanted to play about with sculpted spontaneous motion…then use that to create an artificial skill that would turn dairy treats into something that scared people.
At the time of coming up with this plan Richard had thought it was hilarious. He had a target – an ice cream store he saw firing an employee when they had taken a day off of work to see their sick mother. At least that’s the story he heard yelled between the employee and the owner and it seemed deserving of some karmic chaos.
His goal was to make the ice cream people bought from this store grow tentacles and a mouth and similar mysterious shapes and then pretend to eat the customers who were going to eat it.
A noble plan.
The noblest of goals.
…An incredibly hard plan to actually implement. Sculpting a series of motions was simple enough in theory – like drawing a shape using nothing but formulas in a graphing software, Richard could model the motion and outline relatively easily using his AI and time. There were also plenty of skills and certain tools that could manipulate materials in specific ways often by modifiable formulas. It turns out manipulation skills were some of the most common of any type. They were so common technology was able to start replicating it.
The problem of course was that no one else saw the genius of being able to manipulate ice cream and all the machines that mimicked an espers ability to manipulate materials from afar were incredibly proprietary.
Not that that would stop him.
First Richard delved a few more times for money – pushing deep into the acidic poison dungeon to grab the most expensive materials to sell shrugging off the environment and ignoring most of the obstacles.
The most expensive piece was a cone shaped device that did the important part of pushing the manipulation a distance away. A antenna of sorts that would change ‘manipulate the stuff the device is touching’ into ‘manipulate the stuff the device is pointed at’.
The majority of the effort – and reason it was a ‘hard’ goal couldn’t be bought however.
First he bought a machine that manipulated water into a sort of whip/rope hybrid. Then he ripped it apart carefully studying each component. This wasn’t something he could cheat with his AI on but that was fine – his other major experiment was starting to bare fruit as well and the insights from his skill studying transferred vaguely.
He had been studying how his mutation would naturally grow a skill if a slot was directed inside of him. It seemed like the major factor was the creation of long microscopic tube like chains of aether modified elements. It was essentially an advanced compound like DNA but instead of forming a double helix, the structures formed a carbon-nanotube style structure using the elements inside his body.
This wasn’t quite the whole picture – he couldn’t find the skill structure for his ‘chaotic body’ or ‘stone hand feet’…and all of the physical devices he could study were macro scaled objects none in the shape of tiny tubes.
But there was still some insights into how the aether would be compressed and pushed through microscopic tubes to transform it into effects.
And how certain elements seemed to help focus skills on certain materials.
Of course that skill strand wasn’t the whole picture – the skills themselves seemed to interact with the surroundings through a invisible medium and a few random skills were created as several separate points instead of one long chain…but it was a good building block.
The big problem of course was translating whatever aether DNA was into a mechanical system. It was even harder when the skills were created on a microscopic level and the devices Richard needed to make were mostly macro…
But Richard actually spent the time bridging those gaps.
🐄 Achievement get: A dairy Delight. (unique)
Description: Create a device designed to manipulate spiked dairy to your whims. Why? Why not!
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Stat: +9 mental power.
Finally the culmination of all of his effort had paid off. His end result wasn’t quite as easy as he had been imagining – he had to sneak into the ice cream parlour in the dead of night and spike their dairy supply with a bag of food safe reagents that would interact with his ‘monstrification’ device…but here the results were worth it.
James should be here to watch.
Richard sighed as he stood on a nearby roof and watched his target enter the ice cream parlour and begin making the fresh treats for the day.
A stone hand unconsciously moved up and scratched his back as he continued to stand waiting for his first victim.
Richard wished he could skip through the boring bits. All his favourite pranks required so much setup and waiting around.
Oh!
His first victim.
A little shit with a red shirt and baseball cap was banging on the parlours door even though it hadn’t opened yet.
Perfect – the owner seemed annoyed but greedy enough to accept the kid’s money before leading him to the inner counter and letting him pick out a flavour.
Richard carefully aimed his box shaped device towards the entrance and tracked the kid as he left the store.
“Get fucked” he whispered flipping a switch and watching his invention get to work.
It took much longer than it had in his lab – even though he had already proven it would work this distance something almost hitched and stuttered as he pushed aether through several connected parts…
Maybe something in the environment? He should have done a test run in the middle of the city first. The real bottleneck in his knowledge was definitely how stuff was transferred through the air. It’s not a radio wave or brand of radiation – Oh! It's starting.
Finally the kids cone began to jiggle. A single tentacle rose up from the center of the ice cream and smacking into the greedy kids face even as he went to take a bite.
With a shriek the kid flung the ice cream and ran away down the street causing Richard to lose it.
Dropping to the roof Richard held his belly and shook with deep silent laughter. Fuck he hated kids…he tried not to target them – children were the worst targets on all fronts.
It didn’t stop him from slipping every once in a while.
It was simple math – humor at someone’s expense was only funny (or acceptably funny) when punching down. Children by and far were weaker so any attempt at sticking it to them was less funny and in poor taste…On the other hand the little bastards were so fucking annoying and 90% of the monsters deserved what was coming to them.
Richard tried to ignore them as targets but man did he want to drop kick some kids – everyone did but man was it hard sometimes to ignore those impulses.
👺 Achievement get: Steet Spook. (rare)
Description: Scare an NPC in a crowded street.
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Stat: +3 mental power.
Richard wiped tears from his eyes and stood back up peering over the side of his roof. Another kid – damn, they didn’t look like someone he could justify using his machine on.
Richard sighed and waited till they left and a nondescript man came past and entered the shop.
Good enough – the goal was to make the ice cream store lose business after all. He wasn’t really hurting anyone other than the shopkeepers image after all…he wouldn’t try to scare old people in case they had a heart attack. There. Moral crises adverted.
Bring on the fear.
Richard activated his device watching as the ice cream grew several arms and a large gaping mouth with melty teeth.
…the business man seemed to not notice the transformation? Oh, his eyes were probably reading something on his AI…The man went to take a bite causing Richard creation to chomp down on the mans tongue – teeth were made out of ice cream so it wasn’t a hard bite.
That woke the man up – the business victim’s eyes grew wide as he grabbed the face hugger off his face ripping the cold dairy off while looking incredibly shocked.
He looked for a moment like he wanted to march back into the building then shook his head in disgust and simply moved on.
Perfect.
Richard giggled. He could be entertained by this for hours.
…
It took half the day before news to spread far enough the authorities got involved.
Leaving as soon as a ‘hero’ came to investigate the store, Richard went back to his place to figure out his next goal. An achievement floated past after awhile stating he’d managed to evade the law and was promptly ignored.
It was never about the achievements.
At some point Richard had shifted away from realising he wanted to deface the player guild – they would make great targets if he ever figured out what to do with them. He wanted to go back to that angle – could he reuse his current device? It still worked great…
Richard sat in his room trying to imagine what might be funny or pending that, at least entertaining for him to watch. His mind flickered to something and then tried to shy away before dragging back to it once again.
Sometimes juvenile humor just ‘hit different’. His current device worked mostly based off the suspended catalyst…if he made some tweaks to account for the different consistencies Richard was nearly positive he could make the device target waste. The real question was how he could target a toilet in the guild base. Having someone sit down…defenceless…and then attacked from their own stool.
Ahhhh! Quality humor.
I’m not a child you are.
Richard got to work giggling slightly as he imagined fecal monsters chasing people around. Shitty monsters for shitty people. Heh.
…
The problem with invisibility cloaks was in regulation. You bought one and you got put on a list. Sure they were easy enough to obtain as long as you were a delver – having a cloaking device to hide from monsters was a solid way of progressing through a dungeon…but having a tracking device embedded in the standard issue cloaks or having the equivalent of a full profile set up for you as soon as you bought one really put a damper on buying it for recreational use.
At least the main tools to make one weren’t regulated as strongly.
Richard put in a lot of work for his DIY cloaking device. It was heavy – a thick material with two slots for eyes and only really provided good optical dampening. Because of how thick he made it, the cloak would also mask most of his body heat as well but it did nothing for auditory masking.
Or in other words he made a swishing noise as he walked about and the cloak trailed along the ground around him.
It also only really worked perfectly when he stood still – a slight blur moving through the air as the optical warping shifted through the air.
Still Richard was proud of it. He had a tool to sneak in.
The guild building was massive – how had players bought this? Had they really just pooled money from delving?
They probably taxed all their members heavily like a pyramid scheme. Fuck em.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Richard snuck through a side door and wandered about the guild halls trying to keep out of sight of any cameras while keeping as quiet as possible whenever someone appeared and passed him by.
This was exhilarating. A reverse heist!
Spotting a door labelled “Executive Recreational Facilities” Richard nodded. Perfect. The elites were probably even stronger crooks weren’t’ they!
Shuffling over to the door box under one hand, Richard squinted at the blue box that suddenly popped into his view.
Executive password:
|
Alarm sounds after three wrong attempts
…Backing up till the box disappeared Richard tapped his fingers carefully as he stared at the problem.
What problem? He just had to go through it!
Wandering about till he found some stairs Richard projected a minimap of the facility up on his ai watching the device locate him in the building and figure out where the executive area was above.
The floors were cement. A nice solid looking barrier and thick – covered in tiles to look nicer but still mainly cement.
Several stone hands reached up.
…
After melting through a patch of cement – snipping a chunk of rebar out and carefully placing the tiles aside – Richard popped out of the floor and looked about once more getting his bearings.
He was in a large empty room directly on the other side of the entrance door.
Ahead of him three nondescript doors lined the empty room.
Shrugging slightly Richard made his way over to read the sights built above.
Fuck.
Marry.
Kill.
Richard looked at the three doors trying to divine their meaning. It was like the game right? Themed rooms?
Twisting the knob of the first door he pushed into a brightly lit room and froze.
Several glass cages lined the walls half full of naked women. Several tear stained faces looked up and shrunk back as soon as the door opened – the captives staring at the empty doorway in obvious fear.
Each cage had a sign plastered above it. [NPC: Eliza] read the closest, the scribbles underneath listing random information about her.
Richard closed the door and walked down the line his face a mask.
Marry was a empty room dressed up like a church and kill was a room full of torturous tools and a chute near the back labelled ‘disposal’.
That’s where you chucked the bodies. This is where you brought the NPCs to fuck and kill and toss like trash.
Richard set his toilet booby trap to the side shutting the door behind him and walking about the room slowly.
He felt…he wouldn’t say sick per say. He’d seen worse in media, heard worse online. He was almost too shocked to feel the anger he knew he should be feeling.
Zero to one hundred. Trapping one of the toilets of the sick fucks who created this place was…was an underreaction. That was fine for corrupt abuse of power and stupid holier than thou bullshit.
This? This…
Richard didn’t know. All the fun had left his head. All sense of petty pranks or having some fun at their expense. The only karmic action that seemed worthy of this was to fuck and marry and then kill every executive who came through that door!
Richard tried to laugh at the idea a swirling rage finally building as he seriously tried to think of an appropriate response.
Obviously he wouldn’t fuck them – sex was gross as anything more than a joke – but just putting them all down like dogs…that didn’t feel satisfying. It would make him feel slightly better but it didn’t seem fun.
It wouldn’t even mean anything – the executives were players right? Unless they were absolutely useless, they probably had most of their free lives.
Richard…Richard was pretty confident in beating most standard players one on one. He’d seen the other ‘adventurers’ heading into the dungeons and put himself above all those he’d seen.
One on one at least – he could probably take out more if he had some more tools and an element of surprise. Even if they were pigs hording all the best gear Richard thought he could take them.
But what if they alerted each other? What if they revived and alerted each other?
…it took a while to revive and when they revived they would be weaker. Was there a way he could wipe the whole guild out? Was anyone in this rotten building worth sparing?
No. Take a step back. This guild has been aggressively recruiting. Theres probably tons of gullible fucks working for them.
…it was probably just the executives who knew of this place. The leaders. They were the only ones that deserved Richards's wrath.
Richard looked about. He wasn’t prepared for anything and didn’t have the tools on hand to fix that. He had his useless toilet trap, his makeshift invisibility cloak. His ai obviously and…currently a skill for sensing inside himself and one for breaking things easily. He also had his stone arms and manipulation.
Richard slammed his fist against a torture table staring down at the red stains before walking out of the door.
The only way to deal any lasting harm was to spread the information. The only way of taking this whole place down without blowing up the potential innocents as well was.
Was boring. Was boring. Was boring! This whole trip has been a colossal waste of time, the solution is unsatisfying the situation is sticking, and I don’t think I can trust my judgement the more time I spend here.
Richard set his AI to start recording.
Linking it to his eyes and funneling as much aether as he could into it, he stared about the room in silence stepping out and then headed to the next one. Entering the caged area again Richard spun past all the cages and then closed the door behind him barely looking at the girls in particular.
He wanted to punish the people involved – he wanted to become the law and enact his will upon them.
He wanted to make them hurt – he didn’t even care about making it funny or full of karma he just wanted to rip them apart and yet he wasn’t strong enough to take on hundreds of players unarmed.
He was going to need some help.
More than a little.
Richard felt about his body reaching through his pockets and pulling out random bits of junk.
Finally, he found a crumpled up business card and carefully looked it over.
The heroic police officer type who had made him hopeful for the society.
Performing the equivalent of a phone call on the card Richard sent off several messages with the video attachments.
It felt like giving up.
It felt like the adult and responsible thing to do.
It felt like giving up.
…
A few minutes after his message Richard got a response. His story was being verified and the authorities were on their way.
Richard stood staring about the room.
Waiting for his problem to be solved for him.
He almost didn’t notice the door to the executive area open in front of him.
Almost.
Eyes locking on the monster entering the room Richard watched as they shut the door behind them and then immediately spotted the giant hole to the side.
Tensing slightly the executive reached down and pulled out a pistol fingering the futuristic device as he slowly panned his head about the room.
Slowly walking towards the three doors the man crossed the room and then spun and shot at Richard as soon as he moved slightly.
Ssss.
A burning burst of light shot in a pulse across the distance melting through Richard’s cloak and sizzling into his skin.
His cloak started flickering as the warped light began ‘warped wrong’ – the illusion broken.
Running towards the confident executive Richard growled slightly as they calmly smirked and opened fire.
Bolt after bolt of plasmic energy hit Richard’s chest and legs and head – a dozen shots fired in the four seconds he had taken to cross the room – but nothing did more than a flesh wound as far as he was concerned, the first had penetrated deep but by the tenth shot they barely singed his skin.
The executive’s eyes widened and he began to blur backwards even as Richard tackled him and wrestled the gun from his hands.
Trying to connect his open slot to the gun fruitlessly for a moment Richard ignored the shouts and struggles from the monster then tossed the gun and tried to drag the man.
The executive buckled and threw Richard off him.
He was strong – fucking must have more strength and speed stats than Richard – but Richard was a tank.
Squeezing out some of the charred flesh from the gun shots, Richard tackled the scrambling man and force fed the struggling monster some of his flesh. He was thrown off once again Richard body sliding across the floor as they stood spitting desperately.
Raising a hand the executive made a grabbing motion and his gun flew across the room once more. Shooting Richard even as he tried to stand, Richard was glad to see the creature flinch back and spin as the damage was shared between them.
Running back over and tackling him – more beast than man at this point Richard successfully straddled him and punched downward attempting to use his breaking skill.
Fuck this is useless. Random skills suck unless I find one, I like and keep it ready – break bone! Break something. You broke all sorts of useless shit in my lab.
…after pounding the man a bit he reaffirmed the skill was a dud for combat and he tossed it removing the internal slot in frustration.
The executive had regained some of his senses and finally seemed ready to pull out his trump card. Suddenly looking as if he were about to barf, the man spat napalm like fire across Richard's face.
Sucking in in the same motion and breathing a dense blood red fire across Richard's face Richard could barely see the monsters own head become immolated by the feedback of his own skill.
Beautiful.
The monster in human skin was heavily weakened by that attack and Richard began smashing himself down more effectively.
Standing up and jumping on the creatures chest he kicked them a few times before grabbing their feat and dragging him towards the torture room and disposal bin.
“Uck eew” the blackened creature spat at Richard causing him to grab a sharp looking implement from the table beside him and stab the figure. “Fuck you too” Richard yelled his erratic mental state catching up to him.
Even while burned beyond belief the player was starting to move again.
Richard stabbed his head…still moving. Neck – still moving. “You’re a zombie aren’t you” Richard groaned aiming for the heart next and ignoring the hypocrisy.
That stab immediately caused the creature to twitch and stop moving.
☠️ Achievement get: A deadly brawl. (uncommon)
Description: Beat a player within a tier of you while initially unarmed. Did you start a bar fight and go too far? You totally started a bar fight and went too far.
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Stat: +9 body defense.
Stat: +9 body power.
of course PK awards more stats than average.
Richard finished dragging the corpse to the disposal bin and pushed it down the chute.
He sighed and stepped out – picking up his mostly broken cloak and staring about the room.
The place looked like a war zone – a long smear of blood and ash crossed the room and entered the third door. Two burn marks on the wall marked stray shots and of course the massive hole in the floor marked his entrance.
Richard's stone hands moved without him noticing slowly pulling up a lump of cement and roughly slapping it into a chair in the middle of the room.
His cloak was melted to his body in several places nearly all semblance of it having been an invisibility cloak gone. it looked kind of cool in a warped and melted silvery sort of way.
One of the arms snaked across the floor and grabbed the tossed pistol bringing it back to his hands.
Richard looked at the chair and pistol then smiled slightly.
“Good boys” He nodded while patting the hands then sat and studied the weapon in front of him.
All sense of subtly was lost by this point…or was it?
This area is probably sound proofed. If I had a murder room, I’d definitely soundproof it.
Aiming about the room Richard felt about until he figured out how to connect his slot to the weapon.
“Pew pew” He whispered shooting a few bolts across the room that left scorches on the walls.
An unsatisfying weapon. Where was the kick? Where was the explosive kick ass feeling of a proper gun?
…
Richard found killing the first executive unsatisfying. He found calling for help and tossing responsibility unsatisfying. But after a few minutes of sitting and thinking he had an idea. A way of making any further combat more enjoyable.
Walking over to his manipulation device he pried it open searching about for certain items. This was bound to not work how he was hoping…but it was better than just sitting here sulking.
Opening his mouth wide Richard dropped several key chunks of the machine into his mouth and swallowed. Melting some stone from the ground he dropped it in his mouth as well – still liquified.
Waiting a few seconds Richard began re connecting his body slot.
Searching about he pushed towards the manipulation devices. This had a high chance of failure – early testing had his ability to influence his random skills at roughly 25%.
Still if it worked it would be worth it. Maybe his wishes could be conveyed if he tried to think about it a lot? There was at least some link to the mind and a physical manifestation.
Richard felt his slot connect to his body and begin claiming and modifying atoms in his body.
They kept wanting to reconnect to the mostly gone ‘breaking’ skill but he mentally pushed his slot dragging it away and towards his swallowed devices. The residual aether in the swallowed stone reacted – the stone couldn’t stay liquified without aether after all.
Dozens of small coincidences pushed together as Richard's chaotic body began twisting probabilities.
The attunement rods broke and bound to liquified stone, the manipulation chip was dragged back towards it fusing to the liquid stone attunements.
And Richard began to use his stone hands to pull and drag the cement floor up into the air.
As stone was manipulated by the hands his nascent skill shifted and began leaning towards a similar bend. His ai analysed everything and threw in some helpful tips, his mind poured through the slot dragging the parts together.
Finally his desires began to bear fruit. The liquified stone slowly fell under his control. Soon – under a half hour of effort – and Richard could manipulate the liquified stone into a rope. Tossing and manipulating the rope up to the ceiling Richard pulled himself up till he was dangling upside down by his new skill right beside the door.
I wonder if anyone else will come through? If they don’t this will all be a waste…
…
Richard’s hopes were answered once again. Another executive passed through the airlock like set of doors and froze as he surveyed the carnage.
A single hand began moving up towards his ear right as Richard slowly lowered himself upside down beside the monster.
“I’m batman” Richard rasped in his best impersonation even as he attempted to choke the guy out from upside down.
This executive jumped and blurred into motion right after Richard grabbed him.
Running about the room they dragged Richard around upside down and tried to throw him off before Richard had the bright idea of retracting the rope holding him up and slowly dragging the executive into the air like a spider.
Damn! I’m not batman I’m spiderman. Fuck it batman was funnier.
Richard bemoaned even as he transferred the rock rope from around his waist to around the executives throat then dropped to the ground.
Staring up at the hung creature in satisfaction Richard moulded some more cement into a bat and began to beat them like a pinata.
🎉 Achievement get: A human pinata (rare)
Description: Beat a hung player. I don't think candies are going to drop from this.
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Stat: +20 body power.
And that’s where his heroic contacts found him. Standing in the middle of the room whacking the hung executive and smiling happily.
The door opened slowly, and three men burst into the room – one floating above the other two. Staring about one of the heroes tensed as he noticed Richard and shouted something. Right as that man made as if to capture him, he was stopped by a familiar hand.
Slowly walking towards him the hero pinged Richards AI.
Responding immediately the hero nodded at the response and walked towards him slowly as if he were dangerous.
Well that’s rude. I’m a hero too!
Richard tossed his cement bat to the side in good faith nodding towards the hero who stopped before them.
I think the villain is already dead
A message popped up in Richards ai causing him to glance back at his piñata.
I think you are right. Good catch.
Richard responded a moment later. Looking about he gestured towards the ‘fuck’ room and opened the door to the horror within.
Instantly the two sidekicks sprang into action breaking down the cages and speaking calming words in a foreign language.
The hero seemed to make up his mind.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. The culprits are all dead, their accomplices in heavy questioning. You did well.
Richard beamed.
It was always nice to be appreciated.