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Domain Entered: Lonely
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Pinned notes available. Display notes?
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Yes
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No
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“Bip.”
“Bip.”
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Domain Goal
Kill all units of a set type within the Domain in under 1 hour of entering the domain. The goal will be failed if one or more enemies of a chosen type are not killed by the user.
Choose from:
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Swarm
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0/63
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Standard
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0/275
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Unique
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0/98
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Reward
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Domain mastery increase to Expert
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Permanent bonus:
All dependant skills for all physical skills are discovered, and acquired at untrained level. Mastery of already discovered dependant skills increases by 1 mastery level without penalties.
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Accept
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Yes
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No
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That quest was actually doable, Farrah thought to herself, as she continued to walk, ignoring the sun burning through the dirty and partially torn leather of her jacket. But not right now. It truly felt as if the System was playing some twisted joke on her by finally deciding to give her doable quests when she wasn’t in a state capable of doing them.
“Bip,” Vega said a good few seconds too late.
The trio walked in silence, leaving a dense patch of forest behind. Fields rolled before them greenish yellows bending to a light breeze that slowly but surely brought puffy, rain-filled clouds towards them.
“How are you doing?” Dan asked Vega, with a fair amount of concern in his voice when he thought Farrah had finally power-walked out of ear range.
“I … I’m always doing fine, Dan,” Vega replied. “My mind rearranges itself to make sure I remain so.”
That second comment seemed to be directed at the woman, and Farrah hummed in return. She scanned the area again.
“It’s still following us, 8 kilometres.” She informed the other two, as she rhythmically played with the lid of her tin. It had been closing in since this morning, having crossed past the zombie corpse barricade. Whatever it was, it defiled everything they knew about the undead, and if not for the colour of the dot, definitely classifying it as such, Farrah’s first thought would have leaned towards a fellow Collector.
No reply came from either of her companions, which wasn’t surprising considering Dan thought she was hallucinating, and had made so known already on two occasions prior this morning. He did, with a heavy and annoyed sigh, check his own minimap, only to find it void of the of the dot yet again. He didn’t have the reach to extend to 8 kilometres, and he wasn’t going to waste another ‘Skill Amplifier’ on it, although he didn’t say as much. He pressed a corner of his mouth into a silent shrug and read off some notes, mostly to kill time, before turning to Vega once more.
“So you never fully explained how you know that man,” He asked.
Farrah didn’t turn around to look at whatever wannabe reassuring expression Vega was giving her.
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Scan
- Directional
- Targeted
Cost: Free
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Still there. Two hundred meters closer to them. It knew they were weak, her and Dan. What Farrah didn’t understand was how it knew. She went through her notes again, half-hoping she’d missed it somehow. But she heavily suspected, all while half-listening to the conversation behind her, that no Collector had survived an encounter with one.
Stolen story; please report.
“I didn’t. We, umm, all met him at the same time.”
“You got the closest to showing any real emotions, well, sadness, you showed plenty of other negative emotions, yesterday,” Dan continued. “That’s not a reaction to the death of a stranger.”
Farrah glanced back to see Vega give Dan a confused look that bordered on disgust.
“Maybe for you, it isn’t,” She replied. “But, umm, most people care when their friends die.”
Dan raised his eyebrows and looked away. He’d realised that he was treading a line, and he wasn’t going to press the issue, but he had the look of someone who would not flinch at their own death if they’d get to see it in third person.
“Point being, we can discuss who we do and don’t know after we get to the safe house,” Farrah spoke, gesturing for the duo to follow – or rather hurry up – with her right palm.
“Point being, you should take a smoke and lay off us,” Dan clicked his tongue. “You are the reason we’re not running to the house.”
Despite how much she wanted to, Farrah didn’t stop in her tracks to turn around. Three more hours of walking, and her Luck would get reset. Mathew’s farm was another 20 kilometres from there, which was to say, very close if they ran.
“Anyway,” Dan continued, realising fairly quickly that Farrah wasn’t going to waste her breath on telling him that he was free to go, despite not knowing where to go to, being the least combat-adept of the trio, and more likely than not walking right into the claws of whatever has been following them. “The other thing which we still haven’t talked about is the higher dimension this whole System is coded in. I’ve given it some thought, and the idea that we are all just code ourselves did cross my mind.”
“You’re,” Vega frowned, pausing, “We’re not code.”
“Yeah, I don’t believe that either,” Dan shrugged.
“Would border on sinful if you did,” Farrah added.
“Yeah, not even border…”
Farrah nodded. She hadn’t phrased it in a stronger way on purpose.
“If the menspherea holds the System, can we enter it to, umm, say destroy it?” Vega asked.
Farrah almost stopped in her tracks once more. There was something about the intonation in Vega’s voice that held almost too much decisiveness. The silence that followed only added to the eeriness by making it seem like Vega herself wasn’t sure what she’d meant.
“When I say higher, I don’t mean above,” Dan spoke. “It doesn’t exist in a way you or I, or her,” He gestured at Farrah, “Can comprehend. It’s like when you draw a line on paper, and then fold the paper along the line. If we were that line, we wouldn’t even know what colour ink it was drawn in. Hey-”
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Scan
- Directional
- Targeted
Cost: Free
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Steyr AUG in hand, Farrah snapped around, raising the barrel of the rifle in the same direction Vega was looking. Dan quickly followed them, unholstering his crossbow.
“Huh,” he said, squinting and the translucent blue-grey shape. “It’s one of those wraiths.”
“It’s not moving,” Farrah informed them. She didn’t want to waste Power on checking. She knew that the thing before them was what she’d wasted so many bullets on all those times she’d shot into the distance. “It’s not a wraith. You should go, Dan,” She spoke, her tone firm. Then, she chuckled. The irony of still being on ‘Last Stand’ and having to use the skill as intended was not lost on her. It really was a shame it didn’t stack higher than 5. “Vega, what are we thinking?” She asked. Then, knowing the woman wouldn’t pick up on the intonation, but had likely come to the same conclusion as her, added, “You can go too.”
“I think we can take it,” the grey-haired woman nodded before dashing towards the zombie.
“Dan, go!” Farrah ordered as she activated her signature ammo and calibre combo.
No quest, no reward, it was really her against that thing. Her and Vega –
The zombie’s body opened like fabric being ripped along a seam. It went from translucent to dark grey in less than an instant – atrophied legs and winged arms proposed it in the air. None of the .300 hit it where it mattered, and even a hatchet to the neck did not stop it from grabbing at Farrah’s shoulders and almost biting down her neck.
The pain of Vega yanking the thing off her, and slamming it into the ground hurt more than its initial attack. Farrah watched, her breath jagged, and her right hand lazily trying to stop the bleeding on her shoulder, while the Steyr barrel grip kept trying to slip out of her left hand, as Vega brought her heel cleanly through an empty patch of grass.
Dan shrieked, a blue sphere forming around him, too slowly from stopping long black claws from wrapping around his arm.
Farrah shot it again, this time to the head. She hit true. She could see her hatchet floating somewhere among the dark-red filaments that rearranged themselves to form something between a Warren wall-crawler and a regular walker. The thing let go of Dan’s hand and slowly rose up. From the meter and a half or so, it stretched to almost three, its body becoming thinner and less tangible. It sucked up three more bullets, bits of muscle, as there was now no doubt that those were the only thing it was made out of, moved to absorb the metal. It slammed Vega’s hand away and blocked a succession of punches with a third arm that grew out of its back.
“Hey,” A soft, familiar yet distorted sound came from within it. “Is anyone there?” The extra arm vanished, as it took a tentative step forward.
“Move!” Farrah yelled, firing an incendiary grenade at it.
Dan obeyed only on instinct. He jumped aside and started frantically scrolling through some screen.
Flames engulfed the mutant, then it engulfed the flames. A pungent smell of burning rotting meat filled the air. Vega’s hands went through its chest, grabbing at something, but clearly not doing enough damage.
“I’m a Collector too, do you need help.” The thing spoke again.
Something snapped into place in Farrah’s mind at the sound of those words. They were hers. The thing was hers. Later, she would marvel at how much mental cursing of System and its lack of quests in a situation where a quest would have been more than appropriate, she could fit in two seconds.
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Death Mark
Mark a target. All attacks against the target are buffed, dealing 3 times the normal damage of the weapon if target is hit in centre of mass or a headshot; dealing 10 times the normal damage of the weapon for all other hits. Each consecutive shot has an additional 5% chance of killing the target, regardless of underlaying target effects or statuses. The target is marked on the map for up to 15 hours.
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Trained
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Cost: 25P per target, per 10 minutes of use.
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Domain benefit
Attunement skill restrictions removed. 15% chance of casting dependant skill [Tag] instead.
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The zombie stumbled backwards under five impacts, then lept to the ground, crawling through the grass at an unnatural speed. Farrah managed to shoot it one last time before it dug dried-out tendons into her leg. She yelled, collapsing to the ground.
Vega rammed into it, making it topple over just as it pierced Farrah’s side with the hardened muscles of its claws.
Farrah could barely think, as she rolled over, hand over bleeding kidney, to face it. Vega was barely holding it back. There was only so much damage she could do against something as apt at healing itself as she herself was.
“Dan?” Farrah yelled.
Too many voices, one of which her own, and all of which too quiet and scrambled to make anything out came in reply.
Vega went for a high kick, propulsing bits of flesh outside of the creature. Too slow. Her leg came down bloodied, bits of plastic from her tactical suit hanging along over half a dozen large piercing entry points.
And then the thing was atop Farrah again, digging into her shoulder, playing with its food.
She pulled the trigger.
Her luck dropped to zero. Her jagged breathing turned the rest of her Stats window too blurry to see.
But it’s worked. First try as well, she grinned to herself. She tried to push the thing off, but without that force that made the undead move and kept the bits of tendon and ligament together, it became nothing more than just that.
Farrah tried to cover her mouth and nose, but her Steyr pressed her right arm down, a bruise already forming where it’d recoiled into her upper arm. Her left arm hurt too much. A chuck of muscle fell into her mouth, cutting the already limited air supply.
Farrah wasn’t sure if she vomited before or after Vega pulled her out, from underneath the pile of perpetually rotting but never rotted, flesh, but she didn’t remember much after that.