You have defeated Sand Witch, level 3. +3 XP.
You have defeated Sand Witch, level 4. +4 XP.
I had a similar notification waiting under my file folder for every monster I’d personally shot and scattered with my feet numbering in the dozens, then a party notification for shared XP on a few assists, and finally, the grand finale:
Your party has defeated Sand Witch, level 3 (21). +63 XP.
Your party has defeated Sand Witch, level 2 (16). +32 XP.
Your party has defeated Sand Witch, level 4 (8). +32 XP.
Title gained: First Trap, Planet
Congratulations, your party has made the first successful combat trap kills on this planet! +2 Intelligence, +2 Wisdom, +20 XP.
ERROR: null value for Intelligence!
ERROR: null value for Wisdom!
Calculating… unable to solve for variables.
“The fuck is up with that,” I murmured, but it was hard to feel too butt-hurt about my wacky stats with all those XP gains. We were lightly jogging and had nearly made it back to the food court when we both came to a stop; white light shone from within both of us as we simultaneously leveled.
Congratulations, you have leveled up! 60 XP applied; you are now level 6. +1 to all base stats. You have 1 stat point and 1 skill point to allocate. XP to next level: 70.
Congratulations, you have leveled up! 70 XP applied; you are now level 7. +1 to all base stats. You have 1 stat point and 1 skill point to allocate. XP to next level: 80.
I gasped, my face flush with heat as I bent down and rested my hands on my knees. I felt good. Better than good; I felt too good. I felt amazing!
“It’s pretty great the first few times, I won’t lie,” Bryan said from beside me. “That rush. You’ve never been so fit, physically or mentally, in your life.”
“Never,” I agreed, still catching my breath. “I feel like a child full of sugar! Is this… are these superhuman stats now?”
“What’d you hit, level seven, eight?”
“Seven.”
He smiled but shook his head, standing upright. “Not quite, but close. The most elite athletes in the natural world might have approached base 9 or 10 in physical stats at their peak. The most intensely intellectual thinkers, the same baseline in mental stats. But I’m guessing your lifestyle before tonight didn’t really involve running marathons or designing rockets.”
“Nope.” I smiled too and gazed off into the dark middle-distance, thinking. What would level 10 feel like? Then level 20? To be twice as fit as the fittest human… twice as smart. Jesus. What a high.
Bryan kept a weather eye as we ambled back into the food court, but for now at least, we seemed in the clear. We approached the stack of goods he’d previously gathered.
“Alright,” he said, checking his pocket watch once more. “We should have just a few seconds if this thing can be relied upon. I’m going to need you to trust me to do something crazy. Go get in that pile.”
I shrugged. “Ok. Beam on the way?”
He blinked. “Yeah, uh… it is. You do remember what it was like to get caught in one before, don’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. I got shot up the ass with rainbow nuclear power till I vomited it out like power jazz and then nearly died three or four times until space-magic-elf-man sucked me up into a higher dimension and gave me a shower in his dark space-palace. It wasn’t really so bad, for one of my dreams anyway.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t tell how much you’re joking versus how much you’re hiding behind the banter to cope right now.”
“Oh I’m fully coping, but I wouldn’t say there’s much hiding going on. I’m scared shitless, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t much see the point in letting that stop me. If this is the road my brain is driving me down tonight, I’m gonna ride it all night long.”
He shook his head. “Right. Well, anyway.” He cleared his throat. “Understand this is a bit, eh, experimental. It should work. Theoretically.”
I glanced back at him over my shoulder as I clamored awkwardly over the outskirts of the pile. It was a real smorgasbord; I spotted a razor scooter, a whole sack of baseballs, one of those balls of static electric energy that made little bolts of purple lightning when you touched the glass, one of those weird things you stuck your hand on and turned upside down to make nail art. It all looked like stuff from…
“Dude. Did you rob a Spencer’s Gifts?”
He shrugged. “It’s a mall.”
“And what do you mean, theoretically?” I got to the center and turned fully to face him.
“I managed to get a few things done with the beams myself, but only on the last go-around. Understand that soon we won’t have access to them so freely; they shut this down a little sooner each time, mindful, I assume, of how a few bad actors were taking advantage.”
“Those bad actors being us.”
He tilted his head in agreement and handed me the razor scooter. “Hold this.”
“Ok, so the system nerfs this after a bit because it’s a bit of a hack, got it. And it’s gonna make us even more OP?”
“Just you. Doesn’t seem to work on me, which I learned the hard way once and won’t be trying again. That was a real nightmare.”
“Huh.” I regarded him a little differently knowing he had once voluntarily thrown himself into one of the space energy beams. I knew from intimate experience how unpleasant that was. “Hang on. Didn’t you just say you’ve experimented with it a bit with some success?”
“I’ve had some success crafting with it as an energy source. Not jumping inside of it and letting it craft my body, the way you do. Weirdo."
I pursed my lips. “That’s fair. So this is like… Origin Dao, then. A sort of early-invasion access to power that most of the world won’t have most of the time.”
“Sure.” He checked his watch one last time. “Here she comes, Quart. Hang on, ok? If you can, give me a signal once the scooter is done and I’ll toss you something else.”
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“Wait a minute!” My voice pitched up a little higher in panic. “What do you mean, once the scooter is—”
And then the beam descended from heaven, evaporating the roof and ceiling above us and descending in full force through the floor. Right through my waiting body.
Once again my every sense was consumed by the raw power surrounding me, like I was trying to take a shower beneath Niagara Falls. And once again I received a prompt asking if I wanted to cultivate this source of Cosmic Qi. Unsure what else to do, I selected yes.
Immediately the energy filled my body, and the power within met the power without, forming a very shaky stasis. It was enough for me to gather my thoughts and open my system message log, which had been blinking to get my attention. I saw a heading that said “Qi Magic” and willed it open. It looked like a long history of messages I’d been ignoring, stretching back to my last brush with an invasion beam:
Congratulations, you have fortified your physique with Cosmic Qi! You now possess an iron-grade physique. +20 XP.
Congratulations, you have gained the class trait: Qi Magician! You are able to command some degree of Cosmic Qi for the forging of weapons, physique, and skills. +10 XP.
Congratulations, you have forged your first Qi Skill, Pothead! +5 XP.
The now-familiar skill description followed, and my eyes scanned past it to the next message.
Congratulations, you have forged your second Qi Skill, Keep a Lid on It! +5 XP.
Skill: Keep a Lid on It
You are able to directly manifest a coppertin stock pot lid in your left hand from the ambient cosmic Qi or any cosmic Qi you have cultivated as spirit.
Effects:
Armor (bracer): +5
Damage (from hand): +5
5% chance on use of triggering debuff: Knuckled; -2 HP, -1 dexterity for 30 seconds.
Well I’ll be damned. I really was getting skills from landing in that beam earlier with my homebrew armor on. The benefits of this second skill weren’t quite as high as the first, but neither were the potential drawbacks, so win-win?
Congratulations, you have forged your third Qi Skill, Edward Breadknife Hands! +5 XP.
Skill: Edward Breadknife Hands
You are able to directly manifest a 1ft serrated breadknife in place of each finger and thumb from the ambient cosmic Qi or any cosmic Qi you have cultivated as spirit.
Effects:
Damage (from hands): +20
5% chance on use of triggering Ability: Pain in the Ass; solid loaf of crusty old bread appears in the pants of all enemies.
5% chance on use of triggering Ability: Penny Loaf; loot collected from enemy defeated with the skill automatically converts to bread rations.
Congratulations, you have forged your fourth Qi Skill, Peanut Butter Jelly Time! +5 XP.
Skill: Peanut Butter Jelly Time
You are able to directly manifest a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the ambient Cosmic Qi or any cosmic Qi you have cultivated as spirit.
Effects upon consumption: Buff: Sated; +2 Constitution, +2 Strength, +2 Intelligence for 2 hours.
2% chance upon consumption of triggering Debuff: The Beetus; -1 Constitution per second, -1 Strength per second for two minutes or until you expire or are healed.
That’s fucked up, I thought.
Congratulations, you have forged your fifth Qi Skill, Candyman! +5 XP.
Congratulations, your Class Trait: Qi Magician is halfway to its first evolution!
There were notifications and skill descriptions for two more skills from earlier, but I whizzed past them, mindful of the tenuous control I currently had over my mind (and the absolute lack of control I had over my body, which was once again held in a painful stasis within the beam) and eager to move the situation along. I came to a new skill:
Congratulations, you have forged your seventh Qi Skill, Scoot On By! +5 XP.
Skill: Scoot On By
You are able to directly manifest an ambulatory vehicle (scooter) from the ambient Cosmic Qi or any cosmic Qi you have cultivated as spirit.
Effects: +2 Agility; +10 Speed.
1% chance upon use of triggering Debuff: No Skating Allowed; -10% Intelligence, -10% Wisdom for 10 minutes.
That was a hefty bump to speed, one I could solidly get behind! Although the debuff… wow. I decided not to worry about that just now; I had more prescient issues to deal with, anyway. Like alerting Bryan to our success so he could get me the fuck out of the death ray before I started to melt.
At least this time I hadn’t received a notification that I had exceeded the amount of Cosmic Qi I could safely cultivate. Yet.
I opened my mouth to try to shout to him, but no sound came out; only that classic beam of rainbow light barfed forth.
“You ok, mate?” Bryan called. I couldn’t respond. I had literally no way of signaling to him at all; my brain sent messages but my limbs refused to respond. The all-too familiar feeling of panic began to set in at the base of my radiant spine.
Then I had an idea.
Well, why not? Might work.
I gave the mental command to trigger the new ability, and felt the power filling my body extend from my feet into the shape of a cute little razor scooter, rainbow light shimmering against its chrome. It was the weirdest sensation; it wasn’t like I was riding a scooter, it was like I was the scooter, like I’d grown a new appendage in the shape of a scooter. How would that feel to ride, I wondered?
“Oh, sick, mate. Looks wicked!”
I canceled the skill and waited for Bryan to pull me out of the beam. Instead, the asshole just handed me another piece of junk.
“Here, try this!”
Minutes later (though to me it felt like hours), I’d been handed and somehow assimilated into skills a frightening number of what seemed to me to be random objects, though I could maybe have admitted to taking some interest in the skills. I say maybe because by this point I was in so much agony I could no longer pay any attention to the system messages populating with each new addition. Finally, blessedly, the man yanked me out, using an industrial-sized custodial broom which I realized he hadn’t needed to steal at all; it had just been there leaning against the doors to the outside.
I collapsed to the ground beside the heap of junk, through which the beam continued to bore, and quivered in growing anger. I opened my mouth to tell this fuckwad off for not pulling me out sooner, when a few new notifications grabbed my attention.
Congratulations, your Class Trait: Qi Magician has evolved to Qi Magician: Adept! +10% Affinity to Cosmic Qi; +10 Intelligence; +10 Wisdom; +10 XP.
Congratulations, you have gained a title: Prime Evolved! You are the first combatant to evolve a skill, trait, or ability on this planet. +2 all base stats; +30 XP.
Congratulations, you have leveled up! 80 XP applied; you are now level 8. +1 to all base stats. You have 1 stat point and 1 skill point to allocate. XP to next level: 90.
Congratulations, you have leveled up! 80 XP applied; you are now level 8. +1 to all base stats. You have 1 stat point and 1 skill point to allocate. XP to next level: 90.
White light burst from my body and left me feeling refreshed and embarrassingly good.
So. Much. Magic. Button.
I gasped in pleasure and swiped away the other notifications—I had a pile of them for all my weird new skills—before turning to Bryan.
“Get me more weird shit,” I commanded, then knelt to leap back into the beam.
“Wait! You need to vent!”
I frowned. “I’ve been venting pretty much nonstop since this nonsense began; anyone following along who doesn’t sigh in annoyance anytime I get more than three lines of dialogue by now just isn’t paying attention.”
“Your Qi, Quart. You must be melting in your bones right now! Now, look, this isn’t perfect, but it’s the best I could do to start.” He pulled out what looked like an opened syringe. “You’re going to need to stick this in your—”
“No need,” I said, for once a step ahead of him. “I couldn’t cultivate before, right? That’s what the space-elf said; seemed surprised. I think I can just keep cycling this stuff now. It’ll only kill me if you leave me in the beam too long. Just pull me out again after a few minutes. I feel fine.” I raised my hands and twirled in a little circle as if that would prove my level of fitness.
Bryan’s jaw hung open. “You can… cultivate, now?”
“Yep.”
He mumbled something I couldn’t quite make out, but it sounded like he was calling me a monster.
“Now, now, don’t get jealous,” I said. “I’ll have to start calling you Ogras.”
“You always call me that,” he complained.
I looked around at the remaining objects. “Is there any rhyme or reason to the shit you brought here? I mean, some of it has created some pretty cool looking skills, but some of this… I don’t know, man.”
“Look, I’ve been rushing ever since starting over. You want to take five minutes for a shopping spree, be my guest. This beam is just getting started.”
I thought it over for just a second, nodded, and dashed off in the general direction of Target.
“Hey!” he called after me. But he had no chance of keeping up; I had plenty of Qi to spend, and I’d already activated Scoot On By.
After shattering the glass with Pothead I nabbed a big red shopping cart and went to fucking town. You ever have that fantasy that you’ve been given a set amount of time to fill up a cart with anything you can grab, and you get to keep it? Yeah, it was basically that.
Knives. Clothes. Defunct electronics. More knives.
I growled in frustration as I realized Bryan had maybe been on to something, breaking into the more esoteric shops and getting more unique items. So I wheeled my cart back into the main corridor and started looking for the weirdest shit I could find.
An armful of makeup, three scented candles, two designer sweaters, a lava lamp, a neighborhood-sized bag of tootsie rolls, two geckos, and one tarantula later (what? The little guy was already in a cute little travel cage, and hell, he’d have died if I didn’t bust him out of the pet shop), I was ready.
Bryan threw up his hands in frustration. “Hurry up! We only have a few more minutes!”
I nodded. “That’s all I need.” It was time for one more heavy dose of space magic.
My cart and I rolled into the beam.