INIT ANIIK

The flying contraption was not supposed to land on the small helicopter landing pad, but Jaaru had to get the thing down and the road was busy. She bit her lips. She was leaning forward and then leaning towards every direction she moved the contraption to.

“Hold on to the structure! I cannot guarantee a landing after which we can still use the plane!” Jaaru shouted. Then, the contraption went down fast. Init cursed in a bad way as the contraption descended and eventually hit the edge of the landing pad. The thing was still fast but Jaaru was able to move it in a circle around the landing pad, slowly lowering its speed, all while shouting and cursing as she did. Init too screamed and she heard Jiiti’s panicked shouts. The thing slowly became slower and Init’s panic subsided, then eventually came to a halt. Jaaru stumbled off the vehicle and barely kept on her feet. Init once again grumbled about her ridiculous level 100 stats as Init herself did not even dare getting off for a while. Eventually, Jiiti helped her to her feet and together, they followed Jaaru down into the building. The door was broken with one kick and then, Jaaru rushed down the stairs. Only then did Jaaru realise that she didn’t know the way and waited for Init.

“Second floor, so, three floors down!” Init told her and then led the way. She found a floor plan and memorised the route to the courtroom where Kereu led them to. She ran at a pace Jiiti could follow despite not being level 32 like her. Having dragged her sister into the dungeon paid off at least in that aspect. Jiiti was only level 10 from the previous trips there. Of course, there were also the red skills that people used which were another matter. When Jiiti suddenly gained some speed, she just knew that she probably gained a red skill for running. She considered reaching out to her sister, but then decided against it: She needed to find the right room, not examine and adjust skill lists.

As they reached the room, she realised that adjusting skill lists was the only thing that could help her: There was a huge ongoing brawl between members of the security team and a group of oddballs around Kereu. Some were of Solidarity. Some just looked like folks who saw a brawl happening and decided to flex their muscles and undiminished stats. Init immediately rushed into the room and started hitting a guard that was not expecting to be attacked from the back and was themselves trying to wrestle down a Sygian gal, who Init vaguely recognised. As she dodged the fist of another guard, out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Jaaru throw a chair, an actual, legitimate, freaking chair, at a suited-and-booted guy. Then, she had to concentrate on the situation in front of her again. The gal and her were attacking the security guard from both sides with their feet and fists, striking at the guard’s neck and knees. Init knew that she had miserable physical stats and was not able to use her technology related class here. But as she heard someone trying to reach someone, she used her Interception skill and shut down everything. The generous and widespread use of the skill had an unexpected consequence: It turned off the light, requiring everyone to fight in an almost completely dark room, illuminated only by one emergency exit light. This didn’t phase me all that much, It gave enough outlines to see where the opponents were and she beat onto them, her anger not only manifesting against the people who were about to hurt Kereu, but also against the entire miserable system. She beat the guard until they stopped reacting, occasionally getting hit herself, but not paying a lot attention to it. As she turned towards the source of pain from her side, she realised that she needed to see If this was friend or foe. She tried to use her Interception skill to turn on the lights, and a moment later, she saw carnage: People from both sides on the floor, Kereu beating a suited guy with a gavel and his bare left hand, Jiiti was wrestling with a person on the floor and Jaaru swinging a bench at a guard wearing goggles, probably for nightvision, As the light turned on, she adjusted her trajectory and smacked him down.

Init stepped over the downed combatants and smacked the suited guy from behind. He turned around, and in just that moment, the gavel hit him so hard into the side of his head that it broke. The man leaned forward, trying to shield his insides with his body. Init used the moment he was holding his hands in front of his abdomen to grab his tie and lift him by the tie. Kereu's eyes lightened up and he reached out to a scarf by a downed person. He untied it and then strangled the suited guy. Init helped him. Eventually, the fight died down and Init got to ask: "What the fuck happened here‽"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Kereu kneeled down next to the person whose scarf he pilfered: "This guy wanted to hurt you. Like, not just people of the red system in general but your group in particular. That is why he sent the drones after you. You seemed to have been responsible for getting the Varikaan item out, yes? This guy screamed something about that. After he said some unsavoury things about keeping one of you for his own purposes, I kinda lost it and I dragged him in here to force him to call the barrage off. Unfortunately, this led to the guards streaming in there. And it led to some folks going after them now that most of them are weakened."

Jaaru shouted at the others to grab healing skills and help the people downed by the battle and to restrain the guards with their own hand- and footcuffs.

SKIPS-ONE-STEP

Tsanh woke up to a pleasant sunset. The lack of monsters was refreshing and since Skips-one-Step had removed herself from the sand in which all but her face was covered during the night. She looked at the others, who were still asleep and let out a deep sigh. She wanted them to be well. To work on their skills, to make their communities better. The fact that the system came there to make this all obsolete was frustrating. She was so sad about the unspoken terror that the system of Unlimited Potential brought to the worlds. Skips felt sad about the untold litres of blood that were shed to propagate the system and to integrate people.

Then, she decided that moping wouldn't help and prepared breakfast. It might confuse otherworlders but the scorpions-of-Tsanh were obligate carnivores. Their agriculture was merely for their heliciculture and culture of non-sentient spiders. So a lot of their food was dried meat that they would soften in a herbal solution, which also flavoured the meat. While fire was not something that the Scorpions-of-Tsanh generally engaged in, as wood was precious, there were skills to increase the temperature of a material. She didn't have one of these skills, but she did take a watershaping skill so she created a lens that she used to heat up the broth. When the others appeared from under the sand, they happily partook in the food. Skips had to explain the way she made a lens and the related subject of physics to the others while walking to the location of the next dungeon. Sometimes, she used a bit of water from her waterskin to explain something. The group was utterly amazed. The concept of light had not really been something the scorpions-of-Tsanh spent a lot of time worrying about. They had an understanding of other forces to a surprising amount and were able to build contraptions using levers and pulleys, but light had always only been something that either existed (then all but Shivers-in-Sunlight and some of his family could go about their day) or it didn't, in which case you need to navigate by touch and moonlight. While the scorpions knew of fire, they did not use any of it in their regular life. It was merely a threat to their settlements. As such, the nights were not illuminated apart by the occasional skill or by bioluminescent plants. While elements of course were nothing but a simplistic understanding of nature and magic, were the Scorpions-of-Tsanh to make an elemental chart, they'd never be inclined to add fire.

The desert had changed outside of the Kha Zha plain. It was more rocky, less easy to traverse and the sand that was there had a more reddish colour. The area could not be easily traversed, and everything about the area said: "Not yet, stay out!" Just not verbally. Skips realised while traversing that all the time she used her longstrider skill, she used clues of the terrain that she should not have had. Clues about the terrain that Solidarity might have provided there but which here were lacking. Skips managed not to fall, but she had a vigilance to her movements that she generally lacked in the exuberance of movement, of running, of having the best movement skill she could have imagined. Only now that she started gaining Orientation skills, she realised how much she had taken for granted.

Finding the Dungeon was easy: She just had to follow the tracks of monsters to their origin, all while being fast enough for them to leave her alone. As she arrived, she saw the passenger craft of the humans near the entry. The craft looked okay, but there was a movement inside of it. She approached slowly, carefully. She didn't have any stealth related perks in either system, so she proceeded with nothing but a reasonable assertion that whatever would lurk there could not outrun her. As she approached, she saw a shadow and thought that she recognised it. That made her stop in her tracks. In shock, she exclaimed: "Shivers-in-Sunlight‽ You're here‽"