Alik slowly opened his eyes as the Sun's early rays struck him through the dense tree canopy. His entire body hurt. The wide tree still rested on top of him, leaving only his head and right leg visible to the sky, barely present amidst the many leaves on its path.
He tried moving, but he was extremely weakened. His skin was swollen and blistered, but his left arm was somehow functional, albeit stuck between the tree and his chest. His right lung was also no longer pierced.
Seems like the tree squashed the nanite reservoir near my spleen, triggering an emergency healing protocol... Alik thought to himself before chuckling dryly and shedding a meager grievous tear. A final gift from my Cluster. Rest in peace, my friend.
Either due to the extreme injuries he had sustained or to the absence of the Cluster interfering with his thoughts, Alik had for the first time in over a decade slept through the entire night.
He would have bled out or choked to death if not for the tree bursting an artificial organ. One that contained a dense syrup of specialized engineered cells and nano-machines, capable of speeding up his regeneration to otherwise impossible rates.
His body had no control of the unnatural organ. Its actions were managed by his no longer present artificial assistant. As if something as ingrained within every part of his body and thoughts as the Cluster could be called as such.
Alik tried moving the tree again, with no success. He managed to sigh in defeat, in spite of the weight still squeezing him on the ground. His core muscles and bones were stronger than those of a normal human.
So now I'm going to die here, either of thirst or by another one of those weird creatures. Alone, lost, and powerless...
Alik grinned, conflicted as he thought over his situation. His freed mind pushing several opposing lines of thought at once.
At least now I know what it's like not having a thousand other voices in my head. Even though they were a part of me, in a way.
He chuckled now, for the first time in his life able to truly savor the silent rustling of the trees. With his eyes closed, he heard the chipper chirp of the birds. So rarely had he heard them before, yet he had never truly enjoyed its sound. The soft black soil below him, littered with small debris, poking at the remains of his armor. The hard tree bark looming above him, the lively smells of a flowery undergrowth and its pollinator insects, buzzing just a few meters away.
As he opened his eyes and saw the countless leaves hovering dozens of meters above him, Alik remembered his past assignments, his past comrades, and his past orders. Each represented by a leaf in his young unshackled mind as his eyes caressed the leaves quietly rustling above him. In an epiphany, he finally realized why he was so at peace.
For the first time in his life, he had no orders to report to, and no way out of the situation he was in. As a result of his complete powerlessness and isolation, he had no responsibilities to the Cluster Network. No responsibilities to the Emperor. For the first time in his life, he was free to do and think as he pleased, as limited as those actions were.
Free... He mouthed the word silently a few times with a resigned smile, still emotional and teary eyed. If only I now had the chance to live as such, if only for a few days, and learn who I really am... My identity as an individual...
Identity
: "Name" : Alik,
: "Species" : Hybrid Human,
: "Threshold" : 0
You have pending notifications
Alik's eyes snapped wide at the familiar sensory input. In an instant, his feelings of peace were washed away as weary hope and a sense of duty once again flickered to life. For a moment he thought his Cluster Instance had somehow been reactivated, but when he tried interacting with it mentally, this new...thing...felt much more restrictive. As if it had erected barriers in his mind, instead of broadening it with knowledge. A limited tool, not an evolving partner.
He gritted his teeth in frustration as his thoughts caught up with his senses. He had only just woken up, and he was already tired of more surprises.
A cheap knock-off. How dare you take this space in my head!? It doesn't belong to you!!
Alik screamed in anger as his emotions finally flared out of control. For the first time in his life, his mood wasn't being regulated by the nanites that once flowed through him, nor by the artificial hive mind that he once belonged to. He felt and acted as someone his own age. A frustrated and grieving young teenager, with lifelong unprocessed trauma and a lack of experience controlling his own emotions.
As the seconds passed, Alik forced himself to calm down. Had he not just been hoping for a second chance? What if somehow, this was it? A way to harness a weaker, but independent version of his Instance. A way to escape. Not only from the tree that held him in place, but also from the innately abusive dynamic he had with the Cluster Network.
Would I really abandon my duty...My fellow Shards? He mulled. Everything and everyone he had ever known were through the Cluster. He had been designed, engineered, trained, and finally tested as a Shard, from the very moment he had managed to first walk.
Not only that, but he had excelled, becoming the first in the Cluster's long history to reach the Regional Officer rank at the age of fifteen. And yet, despite his successes, he had always felt like something was missing. Like he was only living a part of his own life as a passenger, instead of controlling it in its entirety.
No...I'll not bind myself on responsibilities that were forced upon me. I'll pick my own. And maybe some day, I'll find a way back, not as a slave, but as an equal. And I'll give my brethren in arms the same choice I now have, to live free. Somehow.
Having reached a satisfactory conclusion for the moment, Alik mentally ordered this strange new system to tell him of his notifications. He was still stuck, after all. There was not much point in thinking about the far future unless he had a way to get out of his current situation.
Notifications
: You have been moved a distance of ????? within a short time period due to ?????. Your state of existence is temporarily unstable.
: You have suffered extremely severe structural damage to your left arm. Your affected limb(s) movement is impaired.
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: You are dehydrated. Cognitive and physical function will decline until you consume enough water. Failure to do so will result in death.
So this thing just tells me the obvious? Wait... What is that first one supposed to mean? Might as well just not say anything... The notifications so far were either useless, or just confusing, frustrating him even further.
As if obeying his mental suggestion, the system stopped displaying new information, leaving him laying there, impatiently and alone.
Fine...Show me the rest. He conceded.
Notification
: You have been engulfed by a toxic spore cloud. You are being poisoned.
Poisoned? That cloud thing managed to poison me? How? I thought I was immune to anything short of a Grade Four bio-weapon.
Notification
: You are being dissolved by a living acidic cloud.
We are showered on scalding acidic water from the age of four! Again, how the fuck did this hurt me?
Notification
: You have a punctured lung. Breathing will become increasingly impaired until the damage is healed.
: Failure to do so will result in death.
Notification
: You have killed: Savage Myconian (Zenith II).
Notification
: Due to innate resistances to external substances and lack of limiting factor(s), you may assimilate the still present |Savage Myconian| essence within your blood, acquiring its primary affinity.
: Do you accept?
What...what the hell is a Myconian? And what do you mean by assimilate? Alik asked mentally. His notion of this interface being a knock-off was quickly being scrubbed away by the absurdity of the new information reaching his mind. Either that or the injuries had led him to lose his mind, and he was on his dying breath, still on that Venusian settlement, shot by a Meridian insurgent. Highly unlikely.
Assimilation
: The act of assimilating the essence of a recently killed organism, potentially strengthening or killing you, depending on affinity compatibility.
Oh, great. So I either take a risk based on something in which I have no information regarding my odds, or I just stay here until my corpse grows roots. Alik thought, offhandedly noticing that the system interface didn't explain what a Myconian was. Maybe it's mostly limited to explain information regarding itself?
Out of any better ideas, Alik decided to try one more thing before deciding. His most used command, on his day to day downtime.
Status report.
Full Status
: “Mental State” : Dazed,
: “Vitality” : Recovering slowly (63/75),
: “Endurance” : Rested (75/75),
: “Mana” : Impaired (25/25),
Affinities
: "None",
Intrinsic Modifiers
: “Abnormal Body",
: “Excellent Fighter”,
: “Excellent Marksman”,
: “Excellent Pilot”,
: “Unstable Body”,
: “Unstable Mind”,
: “Unstable Soul”,
Abilities
: "None",
Hybrid Abilities
: "None",
Passive Modifiers
: “Cunning Linguist”,
Resistances
: "Locked",
"It works!" Alik rejoiced. As much as his old companion had been lost for now, the familiar sensory input to his command grounded him amidst the countless questions he had swirling in his head.
Hmm, dazed? Seems about right for now. Let's see... The Cluster also told me the overall state of my mental and physical state...
What's mana, though?
After questioning the system for a few more minutes, Alik got the bulk of the information he deemed necessary for the moment. Three of his four main status attributes, health, endurance, and 'mana', whatever that was, had a base value of 50 in a normal human. Intrinsic modifiers, however, could cause some changes to its values.
The first intrinsic modifiers a person usually got were usually dependent on an individual's characteristics and skills nurtured before getting their hands on an affinity. In his case, the four first he had were no surprise.
Alik was biologically engineered to be tougher, faster, stronger, more athletic and more perceptive in every way when compared to a natural human. He could see in the low spectrum of ultraviolet, and the high spectrum of infrared, even.
Adding his extensive training into consideration, not much was left to explain. These factors together boosted his base attributes above the original base value.
Besides, the system refused to disclose much information about what it meant with the 'unstable' modifiers, beyond the frustratingly obvious. Alik just confirmed that they reduced the three numerical attributes in his status, and wondered if this 'mana' had some connection to his soul. Which apparently was a thing.
Instability
: Negative modifier. Relevant attribute is not stable and has temporarily reduced capacity.
Affinities were described as a type of attunement, providing at first either small or significant changes to one's body and eventually opening new paths to progression and the development of abilities and modifiers. The latter being unique abilities purely dependent on the individual.
Interestingly enough, Alik already had one Passive Modifier. Obviously, he asked the system to elaborate.
Passive Modifier | Cunning Linguist
: Unlocked by having spoken more than twenty languages with perfect fluency. Allows you to quickly learn previously unknown languages merely by listening to a few short sentences by a fluent or native speaker. The more you listen, the faster your fluency improves.
So passive modifiers I can acquire through constant training and experimentation, and resistances I get by being exposed to certain elements. For some dumb reason they don't seem to apply until after I get my first affinity, though. I should have acid and toxin resistance with my mutations, or something like that. Still, that seems like an excellent infiltration tool.
Looking back into the currently empty hybrid abilities section, he checked if it worked the same way as the passive modifiers. It mostly did, but with a difference. Training abilities related to multiple affinities together could result in hybrid skills. He didn't know exactly what that implied, yet, but it seems that it could be worth to investigate in the future.
This could be interesting in the future...If I survive for long enough to learn about it.
Alik looked around before making his decision, to try and get enough courage for what he was about to do. He noted to himself the light discrepancies in the vegetation, the birds, and the clean air.
Well, I don't suppose I'm on Earth. The few forests they have left are heavily monitored by satellites, so I'd have heard of this Myconian creature through the network...Or have been rescued already.
He looked over the two notifications he had ignored, finding them to be just unimportant information about him having passed out and partially recovering his arm. He steeled himself for the last time.
Notification
: You may assimilate the still present |Savage Myconian| essence within your blood, possibly acquiring its primary affinity.
: Do you accept?
Yes, let's get this over with.