Archimedes
“This is just so fucking unfair,” Lucy complained as she poked at the hole in her shirt where a part of the garbage slime had managed to hit her after the fight, revealing the black silky negligee system armor underneath. “I just picked this out for today. Do you know how hard it was to find a decent-looking shirt that wasn’t a size or two too large in that gift shop?”
“You’re complaining? My freaking armor is about to break here,” Archimedes replied, making a show of the fact that the whole front half of his fireman jacket was nearly gone.
Even though he’d upgraded the system armor to bronze level 5, it was still, at the end of the day, based on a cheap costume a person might wear on Halloween rather than an actual heavy fireman’s jacket that a real firefighter would use to keep themself protected. He had appreciated the cloth feel of it when he had been forced to sleep on the cold stone floor of the old lizardman dwellings, but when faced with actual fire attacks, which one giant fire-breathing dinosaur had used, or the corrosive acid that was the slime monster, he didn’t have much protection.
“No! You can’t lose it! It makes you look so sexy!” Lucy immediately fussed as she began to pull out cards.
“OMG, ewww, I thought we were sleeping at that fire department on the way to Brad’s base because it was safe, not because you have some weird, creepy, occupation-based fetish,” Emma whined, making a fake barfing sound.
“Here, I found four bone maces on me. That outfit is only bronze 5, right? We can merge two pairs to make a pair of level 3 bronze bone maces since identical cards jump two levels instead of one when merged.” Lucy just completely ignored Emma as she began reasoning out how to merge the cards out loud. “Then we can merge those two resulting cards to make a level 5 bronze mace, then you can merge it with that outfit to upgrade the thing to the silver tier. BOOM! Fire outfit saved!”
“You know, I could just get a new outfit. Chedderfield had a pretty cool samurai outfit and—”
“TAKE THE FIVE-STAR MACE AND UPGRADE YOUR FIREMAN OUTFIT BEFORE WE HAVE AN ISSUE!” Lucy demanded, shoving the final product of the cards into Archimedes’ now-exposed chest.
Archimedes acquiesced to the small but hyper-aggressive woman and quickly upgraded the rapidly disintegrating piece of system armor before the corrosive goo still on it completely destroyed it. When it hit silver tier, he was faced with three options:
Fireman Coat
Current Classification: Silver
Current Level: 01
An imitation coat worn by those with neither the time, skills, aptitude, nor courage to actually don the real attire and fight fires for their community.
Silver-Tier Options:
* Burn Reduction – Coat thickens and becomes heavier, increasing protection from fire.
* Fire Shield – You’ve befriended fire. Deploy low-fire-damage coating. Does not harm the wearer or his garb but damages those that touch them. 24-hour cooldown.
* Coordinating Outfit – Coat evolves into a full jumpsuit, protecting most of the body.
“Oh! I could be the human torch!” Archimedes shouted. But then he read just how long the cooldown on the fire shield ability was and considered the other choices. Coordinated Outfit would significantly increase how protected he was. He recalled just how quickly his pants had gotten torn to shreds on the lizardman world, and just having system armor to protect his lower half would be beneficial. But Burn Reduction just appealed to him the most. It specialized him in a way that appealed to his gamer side. When he played games, he always had inventories full of equipment that was meant to be used to fight specific bosses. Super uber ice-protection armor to face off against the ice dragon and that sort of thing. It made sense in this world too since there was no limit to the number of cards he could have in his inventory. He could have any number of specialized pieces of armor or weapons. With access to a Trade Hub, he could even upgrade multiple armors of the same type to get all of the bonuses. The thought appealed to the completionist in him.
With that thought in mind, Archimedes chose Burn Reduction, and his yellow fireman coat glowed and then changed. The coat turned orange, and the thin costume thickened significantly to a high-quality kevlar-like material. It felt much heavier compared to the old coat, but with his high strength stat, its weight wasn’t an issue. However, the stiffness of the material was. Archimedes went through the basic spear stab and slash motions that he’d learned with the lizardmen and found that movement around his elbows and shoulders was restricted slightly. He shook his head. Every bonus seemed to come with a balancing trade off. He pulled up the description of the upgraded coat.
Fireman Coat [Burn Reduction]
Current Classification: Silver
Current Level: 01
An enhanced coat worn by those who want serious protection against fire.
Burn Reduction – Coat thickens and becomes heavier, increasing protection from fire.
“Mmmm . . . it even looks nicer on you. Like the real deal,” Lucy remarked. Her comment was followed by the familiar sound of a system notification popping up.
Congratulations! For being the first person from your planet to ever put off selecting a key upgrade—a stat milestone—for a month, you’ve gained the following achievement: The Wisdom of Waiting.
Achievement benefit: Card-based consumables gain efficacy over time the longer they stay in your inventory.
Warning: If no milestone is selected before the next one becomes available, the options will be void, and you will lose out on the ability to gain a benefit from the current milestone.
Archimedes stared at the achievement in shock for a moment.
“What? What’d you get? I know that face. You got something, right?” Lucy asked.
“I . . . I got an achievement for waiting to select one of my stat milestone abilities. Apparently, with the other world’s time difference factored in, I am now the first person from our planet to ever wait on selecting a milestone for a month since I still haven’t picked my strength one,” Archimedes replied.
“You haven’t selected a milestone yet? Those are massive deals. It could literally be the difference between life and death!” Emma said in shock. “Chedderfield told me his Surge Of Power has saved his life more than once.”
“Hey, watch it, brat,” Lucy snapped in a huff. “It’s exactly because it's such a big decision that, you know, it’s hard to pick sometimes.”
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“You haven’t picked one either, have you?” Emma grumbled. “How the hell did I get stuck with you two?”
“I think it’s the other way around,” Lucy muttered.
“Well, which one are you thinking of picking?” Archimedes asked Lucy. “I thought about Bodybuilder’s Charm to avoid fighting on the other planet, but once I met up with Chip, Leap Frog, Hot Sauce, and—”
“Leap Frog?”
“Oh, umm . . . a friend of mine. She died,” Archimedes explained before quickly shifting the subject back to the skills to avoid talking about Leap Frog’s demise. From Kevin, his close work partner who had died before the apocalypse started, to Michael, it was just another death in a growing line of them that he was doing his best to avoid ever processing. “But yeah, I don’t really need to intimidate people, and I don’t need to charm anyone either now that I have you . . . so it’s between Surge of Power and Weapon Affinity.”
“Ah, yes. Using stat points to potentially win women, how charming indeed. Nothing says, ‘I’m that good guy you’re looking for,’ like a +2 stat from extra-flexed biceps,” Lucy sarcastically quipped.
“Hey, in this day and age, that stat might mean the difference between a boyfriend and a burial,” Archimedes shot back with a shrug. “But yeah, Weapon Affinity and Surge of Power are both . . . so ambiguous. One gives a ten-second boost to physical damage and attack speed without saying how big a boost that is and comes with a ten-minute cooldown . . . while the other just says that I do more damage and can hit more accurately with a weapon. Like, how much more damage? What if the Surge of Power is 300% more damage and attack speed, and the Weapon Affinity is only a permanent 1% increase? Then the surge would make more sense—”
“That’s why I’m telling you two, Chedderfield said Surge of Power is the best choice! It saved his life AT LEAST TWICE!” Emma exclaimed with a roll of her eyes.
“Yeah . . . but . . . I don’t know. I think I need to see someone who has picked Weapon Affinity too,” Archimedes replied.
“Yeah . . . I know what you mean. Everyone already says I’m the dumb, impulsive drunk,” Lucy noted.
“Don’t forget moody, loud, and grating,” Emma muttered under her breath.
“But with this type of decision even I have to be careful” Lucy mused aloud, continuing her thought over Emma’s insults as she scratched her chin the same way Archimedes occasionally did.
“Oh my god, you two are the worst. JUST SELECT WEAPON AFFINITY THEN!” Emma griped. “With this type of indecision, I don’t know how you two even got together in the first place. Did you sit there like, ‘I don’t know, maybe there is a better partner out there somewhere,’ or, ‘I don’t know, maybe there is a better moment to confess . . .’”
The words cut Archimedes deeply to his bone. He immediately wondered if the teenager was right, if he was being too patient and careful with things. “It wasn’t . . . We, ummm . . .”
“Yup! That’s the stutter. Ugh. You two are making me lose my respect for you here. At this rate—”
Archimedes raised his hands in defeat before Emma could go off on another tangent. “Fine, fine, quit complaining. I’ll pick Weapon Affinity.” Archimedes took his spear and stabbed as hard as he could into the asphalt beneath him before selecting the ability. When he did, he was tasked with selecting his affinity. He found the spear option, but it came coupled with staff, halberd, and lance as all the polearms were under a single category. “And there. Done. I’m now a polearm master. Ready to master the old pole.”
Emma made another fake retching sound. “I’m way too young to hear that from you. Anyway, upgrade your skill card to gold too so we can finally go back to base and get a shower,” she said, passing a skill card to him. “This should give you the seventeen you mentioned you needed.”
“But you earned that one.” Archimedes raised an eyebrow as he looked at the level 1 bronze meat slam card she was offering him. “Those garbage monsters were tough, and you fought well. You sure you want to just give this away?”
“If it means I can get back to base and shower even one minute earlier, I’d give you three more cards to be honest.”
“That’s why you have to get your charisma up, Wednesday Adams,” Lucy joked. “Also, boom! I’m a swordmaster. WHAAA!!” She slashed out with her bone sword. “It had all sword type weapons from a wakizashi to a zweihander combined—though apparently not knives. I don’t get that. Aren’t knives just really short swords?”
“I mean, I think the distance to the opponent when you’re fighting is totally different with knives,” Archimedes pointed out.
“Did it actually give you two any knowledge on how to use those weapons though? Do you feel smarter? Do you know kung fu now, Neo?” Emma asked.
“Not that I can tell, but I do feel a lot more comfortable holding the weapon,” Archimedes noted as he performed a few of the sirrušu forms he had learned, his spear glinting in the early morning light as it twisted and spun through the air. He stepped carefully onto the sidewalk and ended the form by thrusting the spear into the ground, aiming for just the right spot. He felt satisfied as he pulled his weapon back out. There was a clear difference in the size of the hole he had left behind compared to when he first stabbed the ground. The penetrative power had definitely improved enough to make it so he didn’t regret his decision to choose polearm affinity.
“Oh, wow. That is better,” Lucy said. “I shoulda done that before—though I think it might have messed up this bone short sword if I had. It is kinda already a bit of a delicate weapon. I coulda used this bad boy though,” she added, pulling out the macuahuitl that Archimedes had gotten and upgraded before the football stadium fight. “Even if I broke a few blades on Old Faithful here, they’d just regrow.”
“Maybe, whatever. Either way, you’ve got the cards you need, so go upgrade that skill of yours, and let’s go take a damn shower,” Emma told Archimedes in a huff.
“Language!” Lucy snapped again instinctively.
“Oh. My. God!” Emma shot back. “Will you stop trying to act like my mom, correcting my language all the time when you cuss constantly yourself?”
“Then stop claiming I am your mother every damn time we run into strangers!” Lucy spat. “Even following me around like I’m some sort of mama duck, you do realize I’m too young to have kids, right?!”
“What? Too young? Ha! That’s a riot. You’re like forty—”
“I’m not even thirty!”
“Whatever, old lady.”
As Emma and Lucy bickered back and forth, obviously not actually truly angry or fighting with each other, Archimedes took Emma’s suggestion and began to immediately upgrade Undead Delight, not because he wanted to get back for a shower right away, but rather because he wanted to start eating some of the monster and didn’t know what expanded bonuses he might get for eating the same flesh after he upgraded the card to gold.
Undead Delight [Flesh of My Flesh]
Current Classification: Gold
Current Level: 01
Ability: Heals the user by 20 hit points per every ounce of uncooked dead flesh eaten. The heal’s full effect requires 3 minutes, and it isn’t a combat skill at all.
Flesh of My Flesh – Per ounce of eaten creature, increases the character stat for the duration that the card is equipped. This stat type and amount of increase varies based on the type and level of the monster compared to the user. Bonus is reset if the skill card is unequipped.
Monster flesh now tastes a lot better.
Gold-Tier Options [Flesh of My Flesh Tree]:
* The Roots of Flesh – User can now consume plant matter in addition to monster flesh for bonuses.
* Focused Feeding – User can choose to double the stat bonus and healing received from Flesh of My Flesh for one monster type but cannot receive benefits from consuming other monster types. Chosen monster type cannot be re-selected more than once within a one-month period of time.
* Enhanced Digestion – Your body pulls out more nutrients from the food you eat, allowing you to gain 25% more stat bonuses per ounce from future uses of Undead Delight.
* Simple Diet – All stat bonuses from multiple sources of the same type [e.g. Strength, Dexterity] are condensed into a single bonus.
Archimedes considered all of his options carefully. The Roots of Flesh had broad appeal, allowing him to gain bonuses from non-traditional sources like plants and fungi. But he knew it was a risky bet that could have him farming for stat points and missing out on some of the more immediate rewards for combat. Simple Diet seemed like the fastest route—many types of monster meat could increase the same stat—but he couldn't be sure it wouldn't be limiting in longer battles against multiple types of monsters. Focused Feeding was a great team-based option, but it meant that he was stuck on a single stat with no chance to diversify. Finally, Enhanced Digestion seemed like a great choice as every type of flesh eaten would provide an increased benefit, even zombies! Archimedes was uncertain what the best option for him was.
In the end, Archimedes chose Enhanced Digestion. It didn’t have the massive benefits of Focused Feeding, but it didn’t have any drawbacks either.
“Ah, there it is! He finally made a choice, so can we leave already?” Emma asked, the left side of her covered in the slime of a monster.
“I second what the pipsqueak said. Can we leave already, Arc?” Lucy asked, keeping her distance from Emma as she pleaded with Archimedes.
“Only if you two can go five minutes without fighting,” Archimedes replied with a laugh as he asked the impossible. Then he led them off toward the aquarium and the much needed showers.