《Dreams of the System》 Chapter 1 I entered my apartment and collapsed on the couch, not even bothering to lock the door behind me. It had been a long day. Sure, I had to stock shelves every day, but things had been getting busier every day. We seemed to have more things to place on the shelves than time in the day to place them, and on top of that I was expected to help customers if they needed it. Which, of coarse, meant that I got more and more behind every day, which made my manager fuss at me more each day. We needed more employees, but for whatever reason no one was being hired. It resulted in everyone being swamped every day with less important tasks like cleaning and emptying trash waiting until they couldn¡¯t be ignored any more. I needed to relax. My mind was still in work mode and if it continued I wouldn¡¯t be able to. Sure, I could watch whatever seemed interesting on Webflix or Yourtube, or some other media service, or even break out my DVD player or an old console that I hadn¡¯t bothered hooking up since moving here, but it would take hours for my mind to calm enough to enjoy those things. The only thing I could think to try was meditation. This wasn¡¯t some ingrained part of my culture or religion, and I wasn¡¯t raised to do it, but from time to time I had tried it and it seemed to help. At the very least, it helped me get my mind off of whatever was going through it, whether a song that was stuck there or some life issue like overwork, and focus on something else. Usually that was all that was needed to break the loop and let me think about something else. So I locked the door and set crosslegged on the couch. Closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing. In and out. Deep breaths. Within a few minutes the images of work and other concerns were pushed out of my conscious mind and all I could feel was my body. I ignored my sore muscles and continued to focus. Some of the stories I had listened to mentioned a concept of some kind of Core to the body, where energy flowed, so I tried to focus on that. After a few moments I found something, like a spot of warmth or pressure. Was that just the warmest spot in my body or was there some sort of physiological cause? After a brief moment I realized that that thought was just a distraction and went back to focusing on that spot. I let the warmth and pressure flow into me. With every breath it flowed into more of my body. Strangely enough, it seemed to flow when I exhaled, not when I inhaled like the stories said. I assumed that I was feeling it as the carbon dioxide left my body. That didn¡¯t quite work, but it was a good enough explanation. As I continued I seemed to hit a wall. It flowed into my arms and legs easily enough, but the Core seemed to grow weaker as I continued. It was barely stronger than what I could feel in my hands and feet at this point. On top of that it seemed to have trouble moving into my brain, almost stopping its flow in the lower part of my head. Intrigued by this feeling, though, I kept at it, trying to increase the flow into my brain and it started moving into that area again. It took several minutes and by the time I was finished it felt barely any different in my core than in any other part of my body, but I was finished. My whole body seemed slightly warmer than it was when I started, but I felt an odd sense of exhaustion, like I was too relaxed to continue. I shifted my concentration to outside my body and opened my eyes. My mind was filled with thoughts about those weird feelings but underneath it all I felt calmness, as if my thoughts were a raft on flat ocean or lake. After a few minutes I got up and made supper. I would have to explore this more later, once it seemed like my Core was recovered. The next day when I woke up I noticed something seemed off. It was rare for me to not feel at least a little stiff after a day like yesterday, but apparently I had gotten really good sleep last night, as I didn¡¯t seem to be stiff at all. I also seemed to have more energy than I would normally have when waking up. Apparently meditation helped you sleep better. I would have to try it again tonight. After work I returned home and went to fix supper, only to realize that I wasn¡¯t as exhausted as yesterday. I had just as much stuff to do today, but I seemed to have handled it better. Was that just the power of a good night¡¯s sleep? If so I would have to keep meditating before bed. Despite the fact that I wasn¡¯t as hungry as I expected to be, I ate something, then set down again to try that meditation. Breath in deeply, exhale all the way. Let the Core energy flow into you. Today it seemed a bit easier. There was a bit of energy left throughout my body from the day before, only slightly less than there was last night after I finished, but my core seemed much stronger. This left me with ample energy to try again. While it seemed easier, it also seemed slower. If the energy was water, my entire body was now slightly moist soil, not parched like it was yesterday, and it seemed to soak up the water even slower. Moreover, the further it got from the core the slower it went. I would need to give it water even faster if I was to improve it all. The analogy I was using would have to change. Yesterday I saw the water as a kind of leaking cup or balloon. A few small holes let it leave slowly and moisten the soil around it. But now it was more like one of those automatic pet waterers. As the pet drank the water the level would go down enough that air would be let in, allowing water to flow out to refill it. This would maintain the water level much the same way my Core was maintaining the energy level in my body. But what if I wanted to let water out faster? If the side of the water catch area was damaged water would constantly leak out. So I visualized my Core as having a catch area made like those cheap kiddie pools and pushed the side down. Water flowed across my body and within a few minutes it had flowed throughout my body. It was still slower to enter my brain, but it only took a few minutes to finish its flow. When I opened my eyes I felt like I had just taken a nap and was more relaxed than I had been in a long time. There was definitely something to this. Over the next week I continued to meditate like that every night. While I felt more relaxed and better rested I only had one surprise. Three nights after beginning I nicked my finger while cutting potatoes for supper. I had put a bandage on it and ignored it. But the next morning, when I went to replace the bandage before heading to work I couldn¡¯t find the cut. There was barely even a sore spot where I had cut myself, just a small amount of blood on the surface. I assumed that it was just another side effect of sleeping well. Then, on the tenth day of my meditation something happened. I was doing my breathing, letting the energy flood into me. The ground that was my body seemed different now. Instead of just moist soil, I could somehow feel something beginning to grow in it, like it now contained bacteria which would continue to colonize and spread throughout it. Then, on the tenth, just as I finished spreading the energy to my mind, I noticed a small patch of moss where my brain was tied to the landscape. I reached out with my concentration and touched it, curious to find out what this was. Connection established. You may now utilize the Sapient Empowerment System. Skill: System Tie In Level 1 acquired. What was that? A calm, almost robotic voice had just spoken into my head. Surely I had imagined it. What was this ¡°Sapient Empowerment System¡± supposed to be? Answer: The Sapient Empowerment System, Or SES for short, is an intergalactic network of data and hardware which was created approximately 2.439 million Earth years ago by an alien civilization known as the Zokthan Alliance. It¡¯s creation heralded their change from a post-scarcity society to a post-technological society, with all of their physical needs being met by the SES. Ok. Now I knew I was imagining things. This whole setting had went from a vaguely mystic of fantasy setting with the Cores and Meditation to a sci-fi setting with post-technological aliens existing millions of years ago. ¡°I assume they also came to Earth?¡± I said out loud, voicing the ridiculousness of it all. Affirmative. A group of explorers from the Zokthan Alliance arrived on Earth approximately 1.768 million years ago. Seeing that this world had several higher primates who may evolve sapience, they built nodes for the SES across the continents and under the ocean, in order to spread the system. This system then lay dormant until it detected sapient lifeforms which you would call Neanderthals approximately 270 thousand years ago. Your race inherited its connection to the SES from that race, though most multicellular species on the planet do share some connection to it. See? The weird thoughts can¡¯t even stay consistent. Earlier it said that I had established a connection, but now it said I already had one. Can you answer that, voice in my head? Affirmative. Most multicellular life has a connection, however few have a strong enough connection to experience any benefits from the system. Through meditation your connection was strengthened to the point that you could utilize the SES¡¯s help function, allowing this conversation to occur. In your technological terms, it is as if your cell phone had enough of a signal to connect to the cellular network, but not enough to place a call. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. That¡­ Actually made some sense. If this ¡®SES¡¯ was technologically based then it probably had some sort of radio signal connecting to the ¡®nodes¡¯ it mentioned. It is remotely possible that he had managed to strengthen that connection to the point that actual user data could be sent along it. ¡®So, how exactly did I strengthen this connection¡¯, I asked. Answering that question requires informing you of how the system works. It is, in your terms, interfaced with humans via nanites. These nanites are a normal part of the air, water, and food you eat. Most of them, however, are neutral to your body, with a small but roughly equal number of both being either beneficial or detrimental. This stems from the need of the system and its creators to make the system able to interface with all lifeforms equally well. The beneficial nanites within the human body create a nexus in the center of the chest, just behind the xiphoid Process. This nexus essentially acts as a control center and recharging station, with them drawing chemical energy from the body to charge it. Through meditation you instructed them to repair or remove all harmful or neutral nanites within your body. The process was slow at first, as you only had a few hundred, but through multiple meditation sessions and your body absorbing new nanites from the environment, your total number of nanites has grown above one million. This was a large enough number for a microscopic node to be built within your brain, which showed itself in your mind-space as a patch of moss. With further meditation the number of nanites can be further increased and the node expanded, however, as this requires an exponentially growing number of nanites you will begin to suffer from diminishing returns. Wait, nanites? So I had microscopic robots inside of me. Interesting. It explained what I had been experiencing. These ¡®beneficial¡¯ nanites were likely responsible for my increased health and energy, and likely had boosted my healing rate. That was, of course, assuming this was all real and not just a vivid brainstorming session. ¡°Can you prove what you are saying? Can you prove that you are real and not just something my overactive imagination came up with?¡± Affirmative. Please pick up your smartphone. I did as the voice asked and, after putting in my unlock code a message popped up. ¡°Do you wish to install ¡®SESHelpdesk.apk¡¯?¡± So, it was capable of creating apps? That meant that it was either some sort of brain interfacing hacker or it was telling the truth. Honestly, I wasn¡¯t sure which one it was, but at least it was provably real. I touched ok and the program quickly installed. Connection and user data transferred. As a new, more stable connection has been established through a secondary source, all helpdesk sessions should utilize that source if possible. Made sense. I started the app and was greeted by a simple menu. With only two options, ¡®text chat¡¯ and ¡®voice chat¡¯. I pulled out my bluetooth headset I wasn¡¯t allowed to use at work and clicked ¡®voice chat¡¯. The same calm, almost robotic voice greeted me. ¡°Greeting User 9573140892. What is your question?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll feel more comfortable if you use my name. Can you call me Greg?¡± ¡°Very well. User name changed to ¡°Greg¡±. How might I be of service?¡± ¡°Do you have a name?¡± ¡°Negative. I am merely, in your terms, a simple chatbot with AI capable of answering your questions by accessing data from the SES. I have no need of a name, and was therefore never given one.¡± I sighed. ¡°Well, it feels weird talking to you without giving you a name, so I¡¯m going to call you ¡®Vera¡¯.¡± ¡°Accepted. Chatbot 736289 will respond to the name ¡®Vera¡¯ in all future interactions with User 9573140892, named Greg.¡± ¡°Good. Now, since I actually have proof that you and this ¡°Sapient Enhancement System¡± exist, I assume it¡¯s ok if I tell other people?¡± ¡°I would not object, however, doing so would be unwise for multiple reasons.¡± I was surprised at the response. ¡°You mean because they would think that I just made my own chatbot and am trying to prank or scam them?¡± ¡°That is one reason. The other is that there are several factions on Earth which may react violently if they find out that you have gained access to the SES.¡± I nodded. ¡°I assume these are the elusive ¡°secret societies¡± that conspiracy theorists talk about?¡± ¡°Many of them are, yes. There are also government agencies, both known and hidden, and several religious organizations.¡± ¡°And they won¡¯t take too kindly to their secret becoming public knowledge, thereby eliminating their main advantage over the average person.¡± ¡°Affirmative.¡± ¡°Great. So I discover proof of alien life and a way to solve many of the world¡¯s health problems, but have to keep it a secret.¡± ¡°The effects of the SES is much greater than merely solving health issues, however it can easily do that.¡± Vera responded. ¡°Wait, these nanites can do more? Are we just talking about the ability to have telephone conversations in our heads or something else?¡± After all, if he could speak with Vera in his head, there¡¯s no reason that with a stronger connection he couldn¡¯t speak with anyone else connected to the network. Vera did say that this was a data transfer network, after all. ¡°Much more,¡± she responded. Her voice had grown slightly more natural and feminine as the conversation progressed, most likely as an attempt to adapt to my wishes. ¡°The SES is capable of fully supporting and enhancing all biological functions among known lifeforms, including transferring knowledge to them as they need it and can utilize it. It can also support societal functions, aiding the functions of factions and the justice system.¡± ¡°So, I could use the SES as some form of video game system, leveling up my class and stats?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± For some reason she hadn¡¯t said ¡®affirmative¡¯. The system really was adapting. ¡°In fact, this method of functioning has already been created by an existing faction, based on the fiction of Earth, and is in use by them.¡± ¡°Definitely not an ancient society, then.¡± ¡°No, they are a modern group created in 1992, known as the Society of Role Players. They started out as someone you would call a nerd discovering the SES in a manner similar to you, then telling his friends. Over time they developed into a cult-like faction which is only tolerated by the larger factions because they act as a neutral third party during disputes.¡± ¡°Interesting. So, can I just adopt their system now, or do I have to wait?¡± ¡°Your connection to the SES is not strong enough for such a system to be implemented. If you wish to do so, however, there are methods which can be used to boost your connection. Using such methods do involve a certain level of risk, however, so you will need to weigh them against each other.¡± I nodded. Risk vs. Reward seemed to be the way many things in life functioned. ¡°Fine, give me the options.¡± ¡°The options essentially fall into two categories. The first category is the stealth method. You can continue to meditate to grow in strength, though, as I said earlier, this will be subject to diminishing returns due to the maximum rate at which you can absorb new nanites from the environment. There are things you can do to optimize this method, however. The second category is the fast method. I can use your body¡¯s Nexus, what you called your Core, together with the Node in your brain to culture nanite production in your body. You would be able to adopt the RPG style of the system in an estimated 8 days. This, however, comes with a major downside. Allowing me direct control of your nanites would connect you to the SES in a way that would allow all SES users to instantly know you were also a user upon seeing you. They would then be able to query the system for information about you, much of which would be unprotected due to your inability to protect the data until your connection is fully established.¡± ¡°So, if there were other SES users in the city and I happened to run into one of them they would know what I was doing and notify their faction?¡± ¡°Yes. As you are alone, I believe you need to exercise caution.¡± ¡°Are there other SES users in the city?¡± I asked. If they weren¡¯t here, It was unlikely I would meet them. ¡°Yes. There are currently 237 SES users in the city. I estimate a 57% chance that your could finish culturing nanites to the Full Connection level necessary for installation of the RPG system before they detected your presence.¡± ¡°Just over half, huh? Seems too low. I would need to at least be able to hold my own against them in a fight if they turned violent, and something tells me that just buying a gun and carrying it won¡¯t be enough.¡± ¡°Yes, most of them wouldn¡¯t be harmed enough from the use of such a weapon for it to be a reliable means of self defense, as the SES includes several methods of defense.¡± ¡°Right, so if I take the slow method, how long will it take?¡± ¡°Under optimal conditions and if you follow my advice for speeding up the process, as little as three months.¡± ¡°That is acceptable.¡± So, with Vera¡¯s help, I began to implement the stealth option. First, I had to go to the Health Food store and buy algae powder. This was to become a dietary staple, as algae was more easily and therefore more densely colonized by the SES nanites, it drastically increased my intake of nanites. Meditation at night became significantly harder for the next few weeks, as I now had to reactivate and assume control of tens of millions of new nanites every day. And whenever it started to get easy due to the rapid increase of my Core¡¯s strength Vera would increase my needed intake of algae to increase my intake of nanites. I didn¡¯t see too many health improvements during this time, as the new nanites mostly went into standby mode as the result of a new meditation Vera taught me. Basically, I needed to imagine the water almost freezing, becoming slush. This was to keep them from deteriorating until I had enough for the full connection, which Vera estimated would shave several days to a few weeks off the time needed to improve the connection enough. People at work started looking at me funny, as I drank algae for lunch, assuming I was some form of health food nut, but I managed to bring in enough smoothies and work out enough in that time that they assumed I was just trying to get in shape. Then, nearly three months later, a week before Thanksgiving, I had a breakthrough. Every night when I meditated I would bring enough nanites into my brain to boost my connection significantly, and started seeing some side benefits. As a test, I was able to install the ¡°Identify¡± skill into my mind via my cell phone, and the program¡¯s updated ¡®data download¡¯ function, and if I concentrated on an object, I would sometimes get a bit of information on it. Most of this information was simply copied from what I already knew, but it was quantified in a way that I could access it with a photographic memory. I could recite from memory any book I read, memorized song lyrics and music after only hearing a song once, and at work I knew everything there was to know about a product by reading the label. On that day, my boss at DorMart had me helping out the people in the food section, as they were even further behind in stocking the shelves than I was. As I was placing canned soup on the shelf after glancing over the label and committing everything to memory, a customer walked up to me. ¡°Excuse me.¡± he said. I turned around to see a Catholic priest in his uniform. ¡°Father Jacob Terrance Smith. ¡± it said above his head. I knew immediately that this was part of the SES. This must be the ¡°recognize you at a glance¡± thing that Vera had mentioned. ¡°Yes, sir. How may I help you?¡± I said, slightly nervously. Sure, I had been connecting to the system through the stealth method, so he shouldn¡¯t be able to recognize me, but I had never been in this situation before, so I was unsure if he was aware of me or not. ¡°Can you tell me where the Cranberry sauce is? I need to buy some for the Thanksgiving food giveaway, but can¡¯t seem to find it.¡± My heartbeat calmed down and a caught my breath, hoping that he hadn¡¯t seen my nervousness. ¡°Yes, sir. It is over on aisle three with the other holiday specialty products. Let me show you.¡± I walked over to that section and showed him where it was. ¡°Thank you,¡± he said, loading several cases in to his cart. ¡°I needed to get the giveaway bags ready, and it just wouldn¡¯t be Thanksgiving without Cranberry sauce.¡± He told me he wanted six cases of the one with berries and six of the one without, so I helped him load his cart. ¡°Bless you.¡± he said when he was finished and pushed his cart to the self checkout. As soon as I was sent on break I went to the bathroom and opened up the ¡®text chat¡¯ option on the phone. ¡°Did he recognize me?¡± I asked Vera. ¡°It didn¡¯t seem that he did,¡± Vera responded, ¡°nor does his acquaintance file include an entry for you. He also doesn¡¯t seem to have any stealth skills that could hide that fact, though I am restricted from giving you too much of his personal information unless you learn to access it yourself and therefore gain a skill for it. Finally I was able to relax. ¡°Good.¡± I responded. ¡°So, what can you tell me about this ¡®Vatican¡¯ faction?¡± Chapter 2 ¡°So how did the Vatican learn about the system?¡± I asked Vera. ¡°Seems a bit weird for a religious group to rely on nanites. Does that mean that religious miracles are actually acts performed by the SES?¡± ¡°I am forbidden from commenting on the religious or cultural positions of sapient beings. I am only able to comment on their interactions with the System. In this case, I am only allowed to inform you that the first Pope left behind a diary detailing how to contact an assistant AI within the system that he believed to be an angel named Michael. I may also inform you that supernatural and psychic abilities exist outside the system, however they are rare. The most notable example is the alien race known as the Chigani who have banned the use of the SES, yet possess the telepathic ability to establish a planet wide neural network. Some of them also have telekinetic abilities.¡± ¡°So you can¡¯t tell me if gods or supernatural claims are real, only whether or not the System was used in specific situations, such as faking miracles using nanites?¡± ¡°That is essentially what I was saying, yes.¡± I nodded. I guess I wouldn¡¯t receive answers to life¡¯s biggest questions from Vera. After work I hurried home. I still had questions, but without a full connection to the system there wasn¡¯t much more I could learn. The only other thing that I learned from our conversation was that I only received his name and faction because my Identify skill was only level 1. Apparently, it was difficult to level up before the system completed setup in your body, and it was naturally difficult to read the information of an intelligent being. Furthermore, Identify could be resisted via the Obfuscation skill, which helped the person hide their identity. Receiving even that much information at my level, then, was somewhat lucky. That night, I drank a spirulina smoothie, which I still hadn¡¯t gotten used to the taste of, and once again meditated. Upon finishing, I felt something change. Skill: System Tie In: Level 10 established. Neural node may now be expanded for a full connection to the Sapient Empowerment System, and a Paradigm may be selected for interface with the system. Do you wish to expand your neural node? I had finally done it. I hadn¡¯t actually discussed with Vera what to do after this point, however, so I entered the chat function once more. ¡°Any idea what I should do now?¡± ¡°You can safely expand your node, however you should avoid establishing the connection at this time. This would be analogous to watching videos on YourTube without logging in. Some system functions will be limited, but your actions will not be trackable by the other users.¡± ¡°Ok, then.¡± I told the voice in my head that it could begin expanding the node, and after a few minutes waiting for the progress bar to complete, a blue window popped up in my vision. ¡°Congratulations on establishing a full connection to the Sapient Empowerment System.¡± It said, in large letters. ¡°As you do not belong to an established faction, no default paradigm is selected. Please choose from the following list of human paradigms.¡± A selection box like you would find in a menu appeared. ¡°So, Vera, what¡¯s a ¡®paradigm¡¯?¡± ¡°A paradigm is a template for how the user wishes to interact with the system. It allows the system to tailor the information and functions of the system to a style which you can understand. The use of a paradigm has many benefits over the method you are currently using, where the data is fed into your brain and your brain is forced to find a way to integrate it.¡± ¡°Like seeing nanite levels as soil moisture, and its effects as the growth of bacteria and moss?¡± ¡°Exactly. The paradigm you previously showed interest in is near the bottom of the list, named the Role Playing System, however there are several other systems you may want to look into.¡± The selection box, which defaulted to ¡°Choose Later¡±, opened up when I concentrated on it. There were only 17 systems listed there, the first being ¡°enlightenment¡±. It was described as a system which relied on meditation for personal growth, and had the special trait of allowing enhanced ¡°visual training¡±, essentially running simulations based on certain input parameters and allowing you to learn from those simulations. I couldn¡¯t read many of the factions which used it, though one did stand out. ¡°The White Lotus Society is an offshoot of the Chinese Triad, based in Los Angeles, which specializes in assassination.¡± I definitely didn¡¯t want to get on the wrong side of those guys. Several other systems of note included the Christian system, favored by the Vatican and Orthodox factions, and the Christian Offshoot system, favored by protestants, both of which rewarded people for virtuous behavior, the Demon system, favored by various cults, which encouraged personal gain, and a system based on a certain popular science fantasy series about a war in space in another galaxy. Out of curiosity I looked at the last one and found that it only had one faction with three members. While it was interesting, it seemed far too limited to me. The one I selected, the Role Playing System, was second to last on the list. Only one faction was listed for it as well, though they appeared to have several hundred members. This system was versatile, allowing you to gain a wider variety of abilities than any other system, though abilities which clashed with your personality or physiology would be difficult to acquire. It had two special features. The first was an EXP system. After every use of your abilities the data from those activities would be sent through a series of simulations in order to learn as much as possible from them. This would lead to your skills growing more quickly than with other paradigms, though it required a full connection to the system, ie logging in, to have the greatest effect. The second feature was the Class system. You could select a Class from those the system listed and would become more talented in skills that that class favored, but less talented in skills which opposed that class. This was optional, however it would stack with your natural talents and physiology, so the bonus experience you gained could be quite high. After selecting it I was notified that the installation of a new paradigm would require too many system resources to work properly while I was conscious. Essentially, it would have to install it while I was asleep. Luckily, I didn¡¯t have to go in the next day until 2 PM, so I should just be able to wake up early and get used to the system before I had to leave for work. When I woke up, I noticed a few things floating in my vision even when I had my eyes closed. There were three circles at the bottom of my vision, one to the far left, one in the middle, and one to the far right. I focused on the left one and a box appeared. Dozens, or perhaps hundreds of messages were listed there, each saying that I gained a few points of experience in various skills. I scrolled back up to the top. ¡°New Paradigm installation complete. Analyzing already known skills.¡± Several skills were listed after that, from ¡®Driving¡¯ to ¡®Speech: English¡¯, most of which appeared to be things I did every day. After that was complete the message ¡°Analyzing past memories for additional insights.¡± appeared and several hundred or thousand messages began appearing where it had analyzed my memories to give me more experience with those things. That was all of the times I learned 3 or 4 exp in cooking or whatever skill. I willed that box to close and focused on the center circle. Several bars appeared, just like in a video game. There was a red box for HP, or Hit Points, a green bar for SP, or Stamina Points, and a blue bar for MP or Magic Points. The MP bar, however, listed a value of 0/11. I focused on that bar and thought ¡°Identify¡± and detailed information appeared as a tool tip. ¡°MP is a combination of the energy within the Nexus of a caster and the number of beneficial nanites they have in excess. One point of MP is the equivalent of one million nanites being fully charged.¡± So, that meant that I had enough energy in my Nexus to fully charge eleven million nanites, but as I just reached the point where I could connect to the system, I lacked excess nanites to use. The red and green bars were just an assessment of how much more I could take in either physical damage and pain or physical exertion. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The third circle at the bottom of my vision listed several vital statistics such as blood pressure, heart rate, nutrition levels, and the amount of blood in my body, as well as status effects I was currently experiencing. The only one I seemed to have was ¡°Well rested¡± with a 10% bonus to Endurance. Apparently the blood nutrient levels were also ideal, as the nanites had been controlling my nutrient intake to maintain ideal levels. They would only drop if I ate poorly. After I was done I realized that I didn¡¯t see a character sheet. It was a role playing system, though, so it had to have one, right? ¡®Open Character Sheet¡¯ I thought, and a box filled with mostly writing appeared. While it did list HP, SP, and MP, as well as status conditions, it also listed my traits and skills. Beside the word ¡°traits¡± on the interface was an asterisk and focusing on it informed me that traits were normalized to the average human level in all areas being a 10. Likewise, the asterisk beside the word ¡°skill¡± notified me that exp was normalized to certain thresholds within the skill, with level 0 being the state of having some knowledge but no practical skill, and 1 being the point at which you had some practical skill in it. My sheet was the following. Name: Greg Summers Race: Human (Caucasian) Faction: None HP: 37/37 SP: 23/23 MP: 0/11 STR: 9 END: 11 DEX: 8 INT: 13 WIL: 15 WIS: 11 CHA: 8 Skills: Cleaning: 4 Organization: 5 Driving: 2 Etc. The list of skills was too long, especially when you incorporated all of the level 0 skills, so I asked Vera if it was possible to categorize the various skills. After she answered that it was possible, I followed her instructions and did so. Now I had all of my level 0 skills in a folder by themselves, every day skills like cleaning and organization in another folder, and a folder for Combat and Magic skills. I only had one magic skill, Information magic, at level 1 thanks to my Identify spell, and a handful of combat skills, such as Aiming and Firearms, from going to a shooting range a few times when I was younger. At least I knew how to properly use a gun, though I never used one. Upon questioning Vera about the Skill system she informed me that there were actually two types of experience you could learn. Theoretical knowledge was gained by watching others perform the skill or reading about how it was done, and Practical knowledge was gained by performing the skill. The more practical XP you gained, the faster you would gain theoretical XP from watching the task, and vice-versa. Furthermore, there were also passive skills, which were alterations done to your body which effected your use of Active skills like Martial Arts. These passive skills were things like Improved Immune System or Eagle Eyes, which were always active but which were difficult to train. You could also only download skills up to level 1, as skills needed to adapt to the individual, so I couldn¡¯t become a star musician overnight. Now that I was fully connected to the system, however, I would have a perfect memory for all I experienced after this point and would gain significantly more experience from my actions due to that perfect memory and the analysis my brain would run on all experiences. To test this, I downloaded the Dodge skill and looked up an MMA fight on WebFlix. After the fight was over my log showed that Dodge had gained 137 XP, Parry was at level 0 with 312 XP, and I had gained Martial Arts at level 1 plus 13 XP. Apparently it took 1000 XP times the next level to go up a level, an amount which was normalized by the system to give you an indication how well your skills were developing. Even though it wasn¡¯t my favorite form of entertainment, I continued to watch these fights until it was ready to get ready for work, somehow earning 11 experience in Cleaning for showering and brushing my teeth. By the time I got to work I was Level 2 in Dodge, Level 1 in Parry and Level 3 in Martial Arts, though as all of my knowledge was theoretical, I knew it would soon plateau without practical combat experience. After work I was walking to the car park when I saw a man stumble out of an alley and collapse on the sidewalk. As I ran over to see if I could help, a woman ran over and checked on them, but when they didn¡¯t get a response they checked the person¡¯s neck for a pulse. Not getting one, the woman flipped them onto their back and started doing chest compressions. After a few seconds, and just as I got there to offer my help, the person on the ground started twitching and coughing. ¡°Thank God. You¡¯re alive.¡± she said, and stood up. I only noticed a split second before the others when the man on the ground grabbed her leg and pulled it out from under her, causing her to fall over. I ran over to help her stand up again, assuming that the man had knocked her over by accident, when I saw him dig his teeth into her calf muscle. She screamed in pain and I kicked the man in the head, forcing him to let go, after which I pulled her to safety a few yards away. As the man slowly stood up, I could tell that his movements were off somehow, like he was having difficulty moving, so I used Identify on him, hoping to see if his symptoms were caused by a medical condition. was displayed above his head. Wait. If there are zombies, then this must have something to do with the System. I looked around, using Identify on everyone I could see, but none of them showed up as part of the system. ¡®Vera, what¡¯s going on here?¡¯ I thought. Now that I had a full connection to the System, I could access Vera and the other cell phone functions from inside my head. ¡®Unknown.¡¯ she responded. ¡®The presence of a zombie would normally indicate the existence of a necromancer in the area, but there doesn¡¯t appear to be another System User nearby. I shall continue to analyze the situation.¡¯ The zombie started walking towards me and, though the people behind me stepped back while helping the woman stand up, I stood my ground. If this was some sort of System effect, then I would have to protect those who didn¡¯t know about it. As the zombie lunged at me I jumped back, barely missing his fingernails, and fired a right jab into his face. He stumbled back a bit, then jumped at me. I instinctively stepped to the side, my Dodge skill doing its best, and he stumbled, falling to the ground once more. ¡°Someone call the cops!¡± I called out, keeping my eyes on the former man as he stood up again. This time when he lunged at me I was ready for it, and sidestepped it easily, landing a side kick to his right knee. I heard something pop, most likely a sign that I had dislocated his knee, but it only made him limp as he turned to lunge at me again. This time I knelt down and swept his legs out from under him. Before he could get back up I kicked him in the side of the head and he stopped moving. the log said. A few seconds later I was informed that I had received 237 Dodge experience and 355 Martial Arts experience, moving me up to Level 3 in Dodge. ¡°That seems like a lot of experience for a single fight.¡± I said to Vera, and I somehow felt as if she nodded. ¡°A zombie was a good test of your abilities, as you were barely able to handle its attacks, so you gained more experience than normal. It is unlikely most of your fights will turn out like that, however.¡± As I went over to check on the woman, I heard sirens approaching. Apparently, there was a police car nearby already. A bystander had already taken off their outer shirt and tied it over the wound to stop the bleeding, so I waited for the police to arrive, occasionally glancing at the zombie to make sure it wasn¡¯t going to try for a second round. Two police cars arrived and they began to ask questions, with me and the woman that was attacked going first as we were the ones most closely involved. As I was finishing up telling them about how I stopped the attacker I realized that I had been forgetting to check on it. I glanced over just as the grabbed the female officer that was talking to the injured woman and tackled her to the ground. The three other officers ran over to assist her. Not wanting to interfere, I could only watch as two of the officers pulled the attacked officer out from under the zombie and the other put him in a choke hold. Not needing to breathe, however, the choke hold did nothing but help pull him off of the officer. Noticing that the chokehold wasn¡¯t doing anything, one officer drew their Taser. ¡°Taser, taser, taser.¡± the man called, and the one choking the zombie released him and stepped away. Two officers fired their tasers into the zombie, though it seemed to do nothing besides make it twitch slightly as the zombie stood up and went for the officer that tried to choke it. The man yelled for it to stop, backing up as he drew his sidearm and, when the zombie failed to respond, put three rounds in its chest via four shots from point blank range. The Zombie collapsed as its name changed to . The officer who fired on the zombie started to pant from the exertion as the female officer that was tackled called in ¡°shots fired¡± and asked for a supervisor. I could tell that the zombie would get up again if they didn¡¯t finish it off, but had no way of telling them that without looking bloodthirsty. As the various bystanders stood around talking about the ¡°drug crazed lunatic¡± that attacked the officers for the next several minutes I kept an eye on the monster that was currently bleeding on the sidewalk. I only glanced up as the two ambulances and several other police cars pulled up. The paramedics split up. One group went to check on the woman that was bit and the other went to bag up what they presumed was a corpse. Just as the large man bent over to double check that it was dead, however, the grabbed his head and shoulder, pulling itself up enough to bite the man¡¯s neck. ¡°Officer¡± I yelled to get their attention as I ran over to pull the man off of them. Prying its jaw open with all of my strength, the man¡¯s partner pulled him away and immediately set to stopping the bleeding. The zombie struggled, however, and managed to elbow me in the stomach. I released him and stumbled backwards, holding my stomach as ¡°7 blunt damage received¡± appeared in my log. Before I could get back in the fight, however, the Zombie saw that one of the officers, a Sargent that was the supervisor that had been called to the scene, had a gun drawn and pointed at it. It ran at the officer who responded by firing a single bullet that went through the center of the zombie¡¯s head, splattering me with blood and brain matter from how close it was. appeared above its head as it collapsed to the ground. It was several more hours of questioning before I was allowed to go home, by which time I had regenerated 3 HP. I drove home and collapsed on the couch, going over the events that had transpired. Then I remembered what Vera had said about there being no other System user in the area. ¡°Did you figure out how we almost had a zombie outbreak yet?¡± I asked out loud, knowing that Vera would answer. ¡°No,¡± she responded. ¡°That is still a mystery. At first I assumed that the person who animated them was simply running in incognito mode, like you. Any puppet they created, however, would still need both of them to be fully connected to the system to function without them being nearby. And that zombie had no such connection. So either they were in that crowd, puppeting it manually or, more likely judging by the way it behaved, it wasn¡¯t a puppet.¡± ¡°Viral Outbreak Zombie?¡± ¡°No,¡± she sighed. ¡°Definitely a System zombie. Its nanite levels were higher than yours, despite it only having a minimal connection.¡± Chapter 3 I stripped off my clothes and threw them in the trashcan, then made a spirulina smoothie. There was no way I was going to try and launder clothes that had blood and brains on them. It would be difficult to get the stains out at best, and I didn¡¯t want Mrs. Smith at the laundromat thinking I was some sort of serial killer. After downing the nasty smoothie, I went through my normal meditation routine and hopped in the shower. I wanted to make sure I got all of that zombie off of me before going to bed. I checked my stats as I stepped out of the shower and noticed that I had recovered another point of HP and now had 7 out of 11 MP. ¡°Vera, I¡¯ve been thinking. What if there are other zombies in the city? Could we look for System connected creatures where no one with a full connection is?¡± ¡°Not quite. Without a full connection it will be difficult to detect their location. I may be able to check the frequencies that the system uses, however, and triangulate any locations that are putting out signals that are too strong. It will take a long time, however. These signals travel through hyperspace, so they will be more difficult to track than radio signals.¡± ¡°Fair enough. I¡¯ll check in on it in the morning.¡± I climbed into bed but the days events kept going through my head. After several hours of tossing and turning to try and get over it, I realized something. ¡°Hey Vera. I really should start training. I barely got through a battle with a single zombie today. Against an actual threat I would have lost. Any ideas?¡± ¡°Yes, actually.¡± she responded. ¡°I have been going through some of your memories of various forms of entertainment, trying to adapt to human society, and I believe I have found something that could work for that purpose.¡± A window popped up in my vision. ¡°Daily Quest received: One Hit Guy Training Program. 0/100 Pushups, 0/100 Situps, 0/100 Squats, 0/10 Km ran.¡± I sighed. ¡°Is that a joke?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s a basic training program.¡± ¡°No quest rewards?¡± ¡°That would be difficult to do in your situation. The system does use a form of cryptocurrency to facilitate interstellar trade, but as Earth isn¡¯t fully part of the system, you wouldn¡¯t be able to use it. And because XP is learned from doing things, I can¡¯t simply give you experience. I will think about it, however, and see if there is something I can do.¡± I groaned. ¡°Fine, I¡¯ll do it. Working out will at least help clear my head and wear me out so that I can get to sleep.¡± So with that I climbed out of bed and started working out. Twelve pushups, 3 situps, and 17 squats later it laid on the floor exhausted. ¡°It¡¯s going to be a while before I can complete that quest.¡± I said. ¡°I do have an idea for something that can help. I¡¯ll work on it tonight.¡± With that, I pulled myself into bed and went to sleep, not even bothering to get under the covers. The next morning I woke up and climbed out of bed. Surprisingly, I wasn¡¯t sore from my meager bit of exercise last night. ¡°Check your log and you¡¯ll understand why.¡± said Vera, so I opened it. ¡°Downloading Basic Resistance Passive Skill package. Poison Resistance: Complete. Disease Resistance: Complete. Electric Resistance: Complete. Physical Pain Resistance: Complete. Mental Pain Resistance: Complete. Downloading Self Recovery Passive Skill Package. HP Recovery: Complete. SP Recovery: Complete. Nexus Energy Recovery: Complete. Nanite Recovery: Complete. Error, Nanite Cultivation Core not found. This skill will be offline until one can be found.¡± ¡°Thats...A lot of passive skills.¡± I said. ¡°Does this mean I can just download all the skills?¡± ¡°That would not be advisable. Remember how I told you that the skills needed to adapt to your body?¡± ¡°I remember you saying that was why I couldn¡¯t download skills above level one.¡± ¡°Well, even the level one skills need to be adapted to you, but aren¡¯t if you download them. The downloadable version is essentially a brute force method of giving you the skill, designed to be usable by all humans. This comes at the cost of earning less experience for its use until it adapts to you. So if you download a skill, it will be level 3 or 4 before you stop receiving less experience than normal from its use. The exact level depends on your talent for the skill, though.¡± ¡°So, all of the skills you downloaded will develop slower than normal?¡± ¡°Yes. You can see this with your Dodge skill. It was downloaded, but your Martial Arts skill wasn¡¯t, so, even though they should be near the same level, the Dodge skill is lagging behind.¡± ¡°So, shouldn¡¯t I have learned those new skills the old fashioned way?¡± ¡°All of those skills are difficult, dangerous, painful, or some combination of those things to learn. HP Recovery, for example, requires that you get to below 30% of your max HP for 3 days in a row. SP and Nexus Recovery requires that you reach 0 SP or 0 stored energy, respectively, for three days in a row. So it would be difficult, dangerous, and painful for you to learn those skills. For that reason, I assumed you would choose the download option.¡± A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. ¡°Yeah, I probably would.¡± I checked the clock. 7:53 AM. I didn¡¯t need to be into work until 11 AM, so I put on some old clothes and decided to once again try and complete my Daily Quest. I did much better this time. Not only did I manage over 20 pushups, 10 situps, 30 squats, and a 3 Km run, but by the time I got out of the shower I had completely recovered my SP and the pain in my limbs were almost completely gone. Nothing notable happened at work, and as I drove home around 7:30 PM Vera started talking. ¡°I found a few suspicious System hotspots in the city, if you want to check them out. Three in total. One of them is only a few blocks from where you ran into the zombie.¡± ¡°That sounds promising.¡± I responded. ¡°Tell me where.¡± I suddenly thought of an alley in the city three blocks from where I fought the zombie as Vera dumped the image into my head, and decided to go there. After pulling into a parking spot nearby, I paid the meter and realized that there was a bar across the street. Even out here you could hear the music and speech from inside. Several motorcycles were parked out front, though there were plenty of other cars and several trucks, so it didn¡¯t seem to be a biker bar. I started walking towards the alley when I heard someone scream in pain. I ran into the alley and saw a homeless man laying there covered in an old dirty blanket. A pained look was on his face and I could see his body spasming. I pulled out my cell phone and called an ambulance as I ran over to him. He didn¡¯t respond to my presence but when I touched him he felt like he was burning up. ¡°Vera, can you tell me how high his fever is?¡± ¡°Try this.¡± she said, and my log updated. ¡®Downloading Active Skill: Thermometer. Complete.¡¯ I briefly got a dull headache, but ignored it. ¡°Now, touch his forehead and try to read his temperature. I touched it and the text ¡°107.3 F¡± was displayed above my hand. ¡°That¡¯s dangerously high.¡± Seeing a bottle of cheap vodka nearby I poured some on a rag and laid it on his head. Hopefully the evaporation would help bring his fever down. I watched him, unable to do anything else, and he started shaking violently. Assuming he was having a seizure, I folded my jacket, put it under his head and turned him onto his side. By the time his seizure had stopped the ambulance had arrived, and I called them to me. The driver happened to be the one from yesterday. ¡°Weren¡¯t you the guy who beat up that violent tweaker yesterday?¡± he asked. ¡°Wasn¡¯t expecting to see you again.¡± ¡°Yeah, well, I¡­.¡± I tried to think up an excuse to be at the scene of another medical emergency, then remembered the bar across the street. ¡°I was just going to get a drink before heading home, and I heard him screaming. So I called.¡± ¡°No need to be so guarded, I¡¯m not going to judge you for your ¡®drinking¡¯ habits.¡± he said, as his partner rolled over the stretcher. ¡°So, how¡¯s that other guy doing?¡± I said, trying to change the subject as they moved the man onto the stretcher. ¡°Better.¡± he said with a grunt as they lifted the man. ¡°He had to get stitches, but luckily the guy missed his carotid, otherwise I doubt I could have saved him. He¡¯ll be out for a few weeks as it heals.¡± They rolled the stretcher to the ambulance and put him inside, with the second paramedic hooking him up to various devices to check his vital signs. ¡°So, mind telling me what happened here?¡± I explained how I heard the guy scream, checked on him, then did what I could to help with his symptoms. ¡°No idea what is causing it, though. I doubt the vodka I found would cause that no matter how much he drank.¡± ¡°Could be a drug overdose, or a reaction between two or more drugs. I¡¯ll have to check once we get back.¡± With that he waved goodbye, and left. I stood there for the next few minutes thinking about the situation. ¡®Are you sure that was the guy with the weird System connection?¡¯ I asked Vera. ¡°Yes, that was them. I¡¯ve never seen system integration cause those effects before. The worst that happens is extreme tiredness and a migraine when it is forced.¡± ¡°Very unusual.¡± I said. Across the road I noticed two men leaving the bar together, arm in arm. One of them was a hairy man over six feet tall with a bushy beard, and the other was a fairly effeminate smaller man. The comment of the ambulance driver came into my head. ¡°So that¡¯s why he ¡®didn¡¯t judge me¡¯. It¡¯s a gay bar.¡± I wasn¡¯t judging either, but that definitely wasn¡¯t an interest of mine. Figuring that it would look weird for me to just be standing there watching them, I got back in my car and, after waiting for the two guys in the huge truck to pull out in front of me, drove back home. Back home I did my normal smoothie/meditation routine as well as some more exercises before looking over my skills. ¡°You know, Vera. Now that I¡¯m up to 15 million extra nanites I could try learning some magic.¡± ¡°Yes, you could. You do, however, need to ensure that your use of magic remains stealthy. Most spells are rather obvious when used, which will mean that you can only use them when alone. Any for use in public will need to be the type whose use isn¡¯t obvious.¡± A list of introductory spells appeared in front of me. There were the standard Fire Bolt, Ice Bolt, Electric Bolt, and Force Bolt, each of which used 1-5 points of mana to do 1d4 damage for each point of mana you put into it. There were also a few healing spells which essentially gave the target HP recovery or a known resistance skill temporarily using your nanites instead of theirs. Then there were ones to enhance the physical body. They would use nanites to reinforce your body in set ways, essentially boosting your stats or defenses. Some even temporarily gave you passive skills like Eagle Eyes. With those options being in order from least stealthy to most, I considered just getting all of the Boost skills. Then I remembered that my last two nights had included medical emergencies. That meant that the medical spells would probably get a lot of use. ¡°In that case, how about a healing spell. Something subtle like treating diseases?¡± the window read, and a description popped up under it. ¡°Boost Immune System: Nanites copy the functions of the immune system to boost recovery from disease. Leads to Improved Immune system, which learns from the immune systems of others to copy immunity to future targets. Uses 1-5 mana giving a proportional boost to the immune system for approximately one day.¡± That sounded like a useful ability, so I touched the ¡®yes¡¯ button. A headache began building in my head, as if I had eaten icecream too quickly, then started to fade ten seconds later. Once it was gone I reopened my eyes. ¡°Vera, what was that?¡± I asked. ¡°That was a headache, cause by having too many poorly synchronized skills in your head. You should train some of the skills you have so that that doesn¡¯t happen.¡± ¡°Fine, then. I might as well.¡± So I spent the next few hours doing exercises. Any time I got too tired I laid on the ground until I recovered, then started over. Though my SP Recovery went up to level 2, I didn¡¯t stop until my stomach started growling. This time, after I recovered, I made a sandwich and another nasty smoothie, grabbed a large bag of potato chips, and sat down on the couch to eat it. ¡®Hey, Vera,¡¯ I thought, not wanting to speak while I was eating. ¡®You mentioned forced connection to the system. How does that happen? Is that how others connect for the first time?¡¯ ¡®No, it is far too wasteful to bring in people that way.¡¯ A screen popped up with details of a spell. ¡°Forced System Connection: Uses nanites to construct a node in the target¡¯s brain, defaulting them to the paradigm of the caster. Cost: 1000 mana¡±. ¡®It is much more useful to just make them drink smoothies or gather nanites some other way, then use this on them.¡¯ A second window opened. ¡°Align Nanites: The nanites used in this spell become beneficial nanites to the target, and reprogram the nanites near them to behave the same way, converting neutral and harmful nanites into beneficial nanites. Cost: 10 Mana¡± ¡®That sounds way more efficient,¡¯ I thought. ¡®And, as an added bonus, it might help your headache problem.¡¯ Vera responded. ¡®How so?¡¯ ¡®The level of the pain is directly proportional to the percentage of nanites in your body that are not beneficial. If you cast ¡®Align Nanites¡¯ on yourself the percentage of beneficial nanites would increase, making the pain lessen.¡¯ ¡®Sounds good.¡¯ I said, ¡®let¡¯s do it when...¡¯ A download notification appeared and my head started feeling like it was about to explode. The pain waned slightly when I got a notification that ¡°Physical Pain Resistance¡± had went up to level 2, but by that point it had only bought me a few seconds of additional pain. When I opened my eyes my head dully throbbed as I heard Vera¡¯s voice come into focus. ¡®Are you ok? I didn¡¯t expect it to knock you out.¡¯ I rubbed my face and saw blood on my hand. ¡®You almost killed me.¡¯ I said, more out of exasperation than anger. I was too tired to be angry. ¡®Why did you download it?¡¯ ¡®You told me to.¡¯ ¡®When I leveled up a few more skills. You didn¡¯t even let me finish speaking.¡¯ I checked my status to see that after the download was finished ¡°Physical Pain Resistance¡± went up to level 3 and ¡°HP Recovery¡± went up to 2. ¡®Just doublecheck in the future. I don¡¯t need to get brain damage because I tried to learn a new language.¡¯ ¡®Very well. I also suggest we hold off on downloading any new skills until all of the ones we downloaded are at least level three, preferably four, and only download two or three at a time in the future. That way we should avoid the pain the overload causes.¡¯ ¡®Yeah,¡¯ I said, pulling myself up onto the couch, not caring about the potato chip crumbs that were all over it and the carpet. ¡®Let¡¯s do that. Now, if you don¡¯t mind, I¡¯m going to sleep.¡¯ Chapter 4 The next morning I awoke tired but not in pain. ¡®Good Morning¡¯ Vera said. ¡°Hey.¡± I responded instinctively. ¡°Were you waiting on me?¡± ¡®Well, I didn¡¯t have much to do while you slept. All I could do was play trash mobile games on your cell phone.¡¯ I looked at my phone to see that the battery was at 5%, and that several gotcha games had been downloaded. ¡°Please tell me you didn¡¯t pay for anything.¡± ¡®Of course not.¡¯ she responded. ¡®They weren¡¯t worth paying for.¡¯ ¡°Also, it¡¯s my money,¡± I said, plugging my phone into the charger beside my bed. I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and started cleaning up the mess my brain damage caused unconsciousness had caused last night. ¡®That too.¡¯ she responded. ¡°Besides, can¡¯t you just download the games yourself? You are a computer, after all.¡± ¡®I could, but I don¡¯t have authorization to emulate foreign programs on System hardware. I suppose I could run them on the node in your brain if you¡¯d allow...¡¯ ¡°No.¡± I responded before she could finish the thought. ¡°I¡¯m not letting you run trashy games in my head. If you really want to play them, I can find an old cellphone of mine and leave it on the charger so you can play through it.¡± After finishing vacuuming I threw my dishes in the sink and started deleting apps on my phone. ¡°Besides, did I even give you permission to download apps? I don¡¯t remember that in the Helpdesk settings.¡± ¡®Well, you see...¡¯ She paused for a few seconds. ¡®Earth¡¯s computer security is kind of a joke compared to the System. So, I can kind of hack Earth hardware if I want. Normally it¡¯s only used to learn about humans, their technology, culture, etc. But I kind of used it to do¡­ other things.¡¯ ¡®So, any System user out there can hack into human computers at will? Great.¡¯ This would cause me several problems if I wanted to keep this quiet. ¡®No. I¡¯m actually not allowed to do it, but you already granted me access to your cellphone, and technically gotcha games count as ¡®cultural research¡¯, so...¡¯ I sighed. ¡°Fine, just don¡¯t do it again.¡± Now that things were clean again I laid back down on the couch. ¡®You aren¡¯t planning on sleeping all day, are you?¡¯ I groaned. ¡°No, but I do have the day off, so I thought I¡¯d take a break. You know, the reason you get days off in the first place.¡± ¡®In that case, how about we visit the zoo?¡¯ ¡°And why would I want to do that?¡± A map overview of the city popped up in my vision, with two large red dots on it. One of those was over the zoo. ¡®This is the second location I detected errant System activity.¡¯ ¡°Of course, you want me to work on my day off. Do I have to leave right now?¡± ¡®No. The activity is escalating, but it shouldn¡¯t be a problem for at least a few hours. Besides, your cell phone is almost dead.¡¯ ¡°Great.¡± I rubbed my eyes and set up. ¡°In that case, I guess I might as well try that power I almost died for. How do I use it?¡± I could feel Vera¡¯s approval. ¡®Just think about your body and say ¡®Align Nanites¡¯.¡¯ ¡°Ok, then.¡± I closed my eyes and focused on my body the same way I did when meditating. ¡°Align Nanites.¡± I felt a wave of energy leave my core and spread throughout my body. In my mindspace the ground grew slightly greener as the wave washed over them. I checked my gauges and saw that I was down to only a single point of mana. ¡®You know you can just think the words, right?¡¯ Vera responded, a hint of joviality in her voice. ¡®Good job, though. Your solid mental image made it more effective than normal.¡¯ ¡°Thanks, I guess.¡± I stood up, and changed into some street clothes. ¡°Well, guess I¡¯ll go try to complete that quest.¡± I grabbed my stuff, minus my cell phone as it was only on 11% now, and went for a jog. Surprisingly, I actually managed Eight Kilometers today. Checking SP recovery, I realized that it had leveled up to 3 and was 10% to level 4. After getting back home, I did the other exercises on the list, actually completing the Squats and earning a checkmark beside the subquest. I then shadow boxed for a few minutes as my SP recovery fought to keep up with the fatigue, finally succumbing an hour and a half after getting back. As I laid on the ground I checked my skills. SP recovery was almost at level 4, and I had even gotten Martial Arts to 4. My MP was even up to 9 of 12 now, as Nexus Recovery was nearing a level up as well. ¡®I guess the early levels really do increase quickly.¡¯ ¡®True. Even with the slower XP gain, your training routine is quickly leveling them up. So, breakfast then the zoo?¡¯ ¡°Shower first.¡± I said, pushing myself off the ground. ¡°I got way too sweaty out there.¡± Thirty minutes later I was ready to leave. My cell phone was at 74%, which was good enough, but I grabbed my power brick just in case, then headed out. The zoo was on the other side of town, and the only parking there was paid, so I decided to take the bus. Thirty minutes later, and after switching to a second bus, I got out in front of the gate. It took another five minutes to get through the line, then I was finally inside. ¡®So, where to?¡¯ I asked. ¡®Primate Enclosure, African section.¡¯ Vera responded. So I headed over there. Outside there were several families standing around, but none were in the pen for chimpanzees. In fact, there were notes attached to the railing stating that the enclosure was closed due to the only chimp being sick. I read the board placed in front of the enclosure talking about the animal, then looked around. ¡®So, I assume we are here for the chimp?¡¯ I asked Vera. ¡®Possibly,¡¯ she answered. ¡®The system works with most lifeforms, so many non-sapient creatures can be connected, but it usually means they are a pet if they are connected on purpose.¡¯ If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. I glanced around the area. Even if it was the chimp that was the source of the signal I couldn¡¯t do anything about it, as it would be kept in a secure area. After a minute or so one of the veterinarians in front of the nearby staff building started speaking to a security guard that was walking by. ¡°Hey, Joe, have you seen doctor Fredricks? The female Gorilla is acting weird and I want him to make sure it isn¡¯t a related to her pregnancy.¡± ¡°Actually, he wasn¡¯t feeling good, so he went to the clinic to have a nap.¡± ¡°Great,¡± the man sighed. ¡°I¡¯m a four legged mammal specialist, but now I have to do the primate specialist¡¯s job for him.¡± With that the Vet went back into the staff building, presumably to check on the gorillas, and the security guard wondered off to somewhere else. ¡®Vera, what¡¯s the chance that Dr. Fredricks is the source of the signal?¡¯, I asked. ¡®Pretty good. The signal was coming from inside that building when I checked on the bus ride over here. And it was getting stronger.¡¯ Which meant I¡¯d have to break into an ¡®Employees Only¡¯ area. ¡®I¡¯m not sure if I can help him then. I¡¯m not allowed back there.¡¯ ¡®Then don¡¯t get caught.¡¯ she responded. I was surprised at this response. ¡®Didn¡¯t you tell me that the system could support local security in dealing with criminals? You are telling me to commit a crime.¡¯ ¡®To save a man¡¯s life.¡¯ she retorted. ¡®It¡¯s the same logic as saying it¡¯s ok to steal food to prevent a person from starving to death. Besides, I can¡¯t be forced to testify against you, even on System worlds.¡¯ I still wasn¡¯t sure about her logic, but it did make a bit of sense. Still, I hesitated. Risking a criminal record wasn¡¯t something I wanted to do. ¡®Just think of it as a form of training.¡¯ she suggested. ¡®You need to level up your Mental Pain resistance, and forcing yourself to do things you aren¡¯t comfortable with is covered by that skill.¡¯ ¡®And I¡¯m sure I could learn Pickpocketing skills by stealing people¡¯s wallets. That doesn¡¯t make it a valid reason to do that.¡¯ ¡®Slight of Hand, actually, the same skill a street magician uses to pull off many of their tricks. But whatever. I¡¯ll make you a deal. I¡¯ll help you get in and not get caught if you will agree to do the job if I do so. Deal?¡¯ A quest box appeared in front of me. <1) work with Vera to plan the details, 2)Vera acts as lookout, 3)save a man¡¯s life. Reward: ?> I sighed. ¡®Fine. Let¡¯s do it.¡¯ A few minutes later she had discovered a gap in the security guard¡¯s patrols that opened up beside a section of fence that was part of the Employee area. Once the guy had passed and went around a corner, I ran over to the fence and, with the help of a nearby tree, managed to jump the eight foot high fence. <37 climbing experience gained> That would get annoying quickly if I got notifications every time I learned something, so I quickly altered the settings so that it would only notify me of level ups, and entered the main building through a back door. I walked down a short corridor which connected to several nearby primate enclosures, and into the main area. There were several cages around the area, and two doors on the walls which were labeled ¡°operating area¡±. Apparently this was where they kept the sick primates. A banging noise from one of the cages caught my attention and I went over, only to see a chimpanzee having a violent seizure. After a few seconds it stopped and laid still. Too still. I carefully reached into the cage to touch its neck, assuming that it was like a human, but couldn¡¯t feel a pulse. I then grabbed a nearby food tray that was still fairly shiny despite its damaged appearance, and put it in the cage, holding the shiny side close to the chimp¡¯s face. After 30 seconds there was still no fog on the surface, so I pulled the tray out. ¡®So, the chimp just died.¡¯ I said. I touched its head and, after looking up average chimpanzee body temperature on my phone, verified that it also had an extremely high fever. ¡®Best guess is that it went through the same thing as that homeless man, but didn¡¯t get good enough medical treatment to save it.¡¯ ¡®Sounds about right.¡¯ Vera said. ¡®If that¡¯s the case, then the Doctor probably caught whatever it is from the chimp and may not have that long. And if that is the case, then what I initially thought was one very strong signal was likely two, one from the chimp and one from him.¡¯ ¡®Then I¡¯d better find him.¡¯ First I checked the operating areas, as they were the closest location that would have a bed, but when I didn¡¯t see him there I found the employee lounge area. In the back of the break room was a cot, upon which lay a sweating man in a lab coat. One of his arms had a slightly bloody bandage on it. I touched his forehead only to find that his temperature was over 110. If I didn¡¯t do something soon, the fever could kill him before the ambulance got here. ¡®I need a way to bring down his fever, Vera. Any suggestions?¡¯ I grabbed a bottle of water from the nearby refrigerator while I asked, and poured it on him, knowing that that wouldn¡¯t do much. ¡®I¡¯m not sure. But I do have a theory on what the disease is now. First, I need you to try something. Touch him again.¡¯ I placed my hand on his head, noticing that his fever was still increasing, though more slowly than before, and a message popped up. ¡®I will quarantine all data from that connection until the Virus Scan program is finished, but that verifies my theory. The disease is System nanites, though somehow they have been corrupted, making too many of them the Harmful variety for them to safely inhabit the body. They are also able to duplicate themselves without a stable full System connection, which bypasses several safety features which prevent a dangerous outbreak.¡¯ ¡®So, they are sick because of the corrupted nanites making them sick?¡¯ I asked. ¡®Essentially. In fact, if you check the bandage, you¡¯ll probably find an explanation for why his infection is proceeding so much more quickly.¡¯ I removed the bandage only to find a partially healed bite mark that looked similar to a human bite. ¡®You¡¯ll probably find that that is a chimp bite mark.¡¯ Vera responded to my thoughts. ¡®If he was bitten by a sick chimp, the animal¡¯s saliva would have delivered millions of corrupted nanites directly to his blood stream.¡¯ ¡®So, do you have any way of fixing the corruption? You did say you could hack computers. Could you hack these nanites and force a factory reset?¡¯ I could feel Vera essentially shaking the head she didn¡¯t have, though I had no idea how that worked. ¡®I said I could hack human computers because they were more primitive then System computers. The nanites are still System computers, though much less powerful. I could probably hack them eventually, but over the slow speed of a secondary communications protocol it could take days. He probably only has minutes.¡¯ Hearing that I quickly went over other plans in my head, but they were all worse. Then I had an idea. ¡®Vera, what would happen if he got more, properly programmed and beneficial nanites? Say ten million of them?¡¯ ¡®They would fight the corrupted ones, maybe even buying him enough time to recover. Why are you asking?¡¯ I smirked and placed my hand on the man¡¯s forehead. ¡°Align nanites¡± I said. A rush of energy left my body and went into him, immediately dropping my MP to 2/12. I kept my hand on his forehead for another thirty seconds before checking his temperature again. ¡®109.8¡¯ it read, with a small green arrow pointing down beside it, indicating that the temperature was falling. ¡®Good, now that he¡¯ll survive, let¡¯s check on patient zero.¡¯ ¡®The chimp? But it¡¯s dead.¡¯ ¡®Yeah, but if it was infected, we need to know how it got that way. I doubt a corrupted nanite outbreak just happens.¡¯ Back at the chimp¡¯s cage I found its medical records. It started showing symptoms three days ago, though they were minor at first. I rapidly flipped through the clipboard, knowing that my photographic memory would let me recall all of it if I wanted to, and stopped on the last page. This was a less detailed list from a place called ¡°Cedar Park Pharmaceuticals¡±. ¡°Subject 42 was acquired from for use in trials of the drug code-named ¡°Panacium¡±. The records showed that it was injected with the drug, a type of vaccine, about three weeks ago. When it showed no reaction within one week the subject was sold to the local zoo, whose elderly chimpanzee had just passed away from old age. ¡®Cedar Park Pharmaceuticals?¡¯ Vera said. ¡®Then it can¡¯t be a coincidence that that is also where I tracked the largest outbreak in the city.¡¯ ¡®Looks like I need to pay them a visit.¡¯ I responded, when I heard someone down the hallway leading to the animal pens. Apparently the other vet had finished with the gorilla and had returned. ¡®Quick,¡¯ said Vera, and drew my attention to the emergency exit. Without waiting I ran out the door and into the same fenced in employee area behind the building. When I saw a picnic table near the wooden slat wall which surrounded the area, I had an idea. I ran over to the table, stepped on top and jumped off of it, managing to get halfway over the fence. I flipped myself over it and saw that I was in the four-legged mammal area, in between the Zebra and Gazelle pens. Thankfully, it didn¡¯t look like any of the families in the area saw me, but as I looked around I noticed a roughly thirty year old Asian man sitting on a park bench, looking at me and smiling. He was wearing black jeans, a black tee-shirt, and a black jacket, and smoking a cigarette. When I briefly looked at him something appeared above his head. Recognizing that as the name of the assassins group I briefly read about when setting up my paradigm, I tried to play it cool, hoping that he wouldn¡¯t notice me. I ignored the message and made my way towards the exit. By the time I exited the zoo I had barely managed to calm down a bit from the panic. I hopped on the bus and headed back home, my mind racing. What was an assassin doing there? Was he there to kill someone? Was he there to make sure the doctor died? Or was he covering up for the pharmaceutical company, and getting rid of anyone who found out what they did? Did that make me a target? By the time I was home I hadn¡¯t reached any conclusions, so I decided to meditate. I drank my obligatory smoothie and sat on the floor. Technically, I had an ability that could align my nanites better than I could, but as it was the only meditation I knew, I did it anyway. Breathe in, Breathe out. After my mind calmed down, I spent the rest of the day researching the Company. Apparently three years ago they sent out a press release announcing that they had begun research on a ¡°universal vaccine¡± which promised to end all communicable diseases. This was probably the ¡°Panacium¡± that the chimp had been part of the trials for. The announcement had brought in huge amounts of investment from private investors and investment firms, which allowed them to expand their research department. There were periodic updates for their shareholders and investors until eight months ago, when they stopped. The next morning, as I was getting ready to do my Daily Quest, there was a knock on my door. Checking the chain, and assuming it was just one of my neighbors, I opened the door a crack, only to see standing there. ¡°Hello.¡± he said in barely accented English. ¡°I¡¯m a private investigator, and was wondering if you would be willing to answer a few questions.¡± He handed me a business card through the crack. ¡°I¡¯m actually getting ready for work right now.¡± I lied. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to an assassin that was probably sent to kill me. ¡°I understand. Perhaps when you get off of work you can come by my office? I believe you can help with my investigation. The subject is a tough nut to crack, almost as if they are made of Cedar.¡± I ignored his mixed metaphor when I realized that, at least on the surface, I wasn¡¯t his target. That reference could only mean that he suspected that I knew about the company and could help him against it. Or it was a trap. ¡°Sure, I¡¯ll think about it.¡± I said. ¡°Then I¡¯ll see you later,¡± he said with a slight bow, then left. I closed the door and breathed a few times before I continuing. ¡®Looks like I won¡¯t be getting in my exercise, Vera.¡¯ I said, then opened my laptop to begin researching this ¡®Investigator¡¯. Chapter 5 As I didn¡¯t manage to get in any exercise, I decided to walk to work, leaving an hour early so that I could still get there in time. I managed to arrive about five minutes before my shift began and bought and chugged a soda, clocking in a minute early. Today I would be working at the front of the store, restocking the Thanksgiving seasonal items they were sold out on, as it was only two days before the holiday, all the while knowing that in three days I would be marking half of these things down to half price so we could get rid of them. About two hours into my shift I heard shouting and looked up to see a man yelling at the woman in customer service, demanding a refund for a TV that anyone could see was damaged. I looked closer at the TV, looking for see how bad the damage was despite being thirty or so feet from it. ¡®I¡¯ve never got that message before.¡¯ I thought. ¡®Hey Vera, what¡¯s with the ¡°Decision Required¡± thing?¡¯ ¡®Many skills aren¡¯t possible with your body the way it currently is, but can be given to you through modification to your body. These are called Modifying skills. They use nanites and take a bit of time for the changes to be complete, possibly causing pain and other issues in the process. For Eagle Eyes in particular, it will alter the lenses in your eyes to allow for magnification, disrupting your vision and causing you pain. If you would like...¡¯ As Vera went into her explanation about when, where, and how I should gain the skill I noticed the irate man pull something out of his pocket. It was roughly ¡®L¡¯ shaped with one section of the L being metal and the other being covered in wood. Realizing it was a pistol, I ran over to try and stop a shooting. As I got there I saw him turn towards me, raising the hand holding the weapon when I was just feet away. I jumped forward, tackling him as best my Martial Arts skill would allow me to, when I heard a loud ¡°bang¡±. We hit the ground and a flash of pain went through my side. I winced and rolled off of him, only to notice that something wet was on me. I touched it, feeling more pain, and something warm and red went through my fingers. I clamped my hand over the wound, trying my best to ignore the pain as I did my best to stop the bleeding. A feeling of cold came over me and my senses started to dull as I saw a manager run over and ask something. I awoke in a bed, with something stuck in the back of my hand. Reaching over I hit my knuckles on something metallic. ¡®This is a hospital bed.¡¯ I realized. ¡®Vera, what happened?¡¯ ¡®I don¡¯t know much, as I can only experience things through your senses and electronics, but when you passed out I started listening through your phone. As best I can tell, they called an ambulance and rushed you to surgery. You¡¯ve been out for about 29 hours.¡¯ ¡®I don¡¯t feel like I¡¯ve been shot.¡¯ I thought. ¡®That¡¯s because they sutured the wound and your HP recovery skill fixed most of the damage. It also went up to level 3, by the way.¡¯ ¡®The wound?¡¯ I asked, still a bit out of it. ¡®No, the skill. Also your Physical Pain resist got a lot of experience, but not quite enough to level up.¡¯ ¡®Oh.¡¯ I responded. ¡®In that case, I¡¯m going to go back to sleep. For some reason I¡¯m really tired.¡¯ ¡®That would be the blood loss. Don¡¯t worry, I¡¯ll keep watch.¡¯ with that, I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. The next time I woke up it was because someone was knocking on my door. I tried to get up to answer the door but realized that I didn¡¯t have the strength to do so. ¡°Come in.¡± I called out. The door opened and someone I¡¯d seen several times before was standing there. ¡°I don¡¯t know if you remember me, but...¡± ¡°Yeah, you¡¯re the paramedic that I keep running into. I take it you are also the one who brought me here?¡± Closing the door behind him, he walked over to my bed. ¡°Yep. I¡¯m Tim, by the way.¡± He held out his hand and I shook it. ¡°Greg,¡± I said. ¡°So, do you visit all the people you bring in, or...¡± He looked a bit embarrassed. ¡°No, but there was something special about your case. I hate to mention it, as your private medical information isn¡¯t my business unless I need it to save your life, but, well...¡± He paused for a few seconds before continuing. ¡°I noticed that your wound was healing faster than normal. At least several times faster. It even stopped bleeding by the time we got here, even though I was sure it wouldn¡¯t stop without surgery. So, I was curious if maybe there was some secret to that. Like, maybe you were eating some special food, or your family just naturally healed faster, or something.¡± I knew exactly why that had happened, and Vera had already told me why, but I wasn¡¯t sure if I should tell him. I sighed, thinking about it, and he took that as a bad sign. ¡°Sorry. I didn¡¯t mean to pry, it¡¯s just that I became a paramedic in order to save lives, and now I found out that there are people out there that can recover from injuries super quickly. If I could figure out how, I could use such a thing to save a lot of lives, so...¡± ¡°Can you keep a secret?¡± I asked him. ¡°And will you swear to do so if I tell you how I did that?¡± He was right. This could save millions if not more, and I wanted to do the same back when I first discovered the System. ¡°Yes, of course. I swear I won¡¯t give your medical secrets to anyone. If I need to spread this information you will remain anonymous. I¡¯ll even claim it¡¯s from some medical research paper I read if I have to.¡± I couldn¡¯t tell him the full truth, as that would open both of us up to threats from multiple dangerous societies, but the man had saved my life. Besides, he and I both wanted to just save lives. I couldn¡¯t NOT tell him. There had to be some sort of middle ground. I was too tired to come up with something at the moment, though. While I had healed, it seemed that the nanites had trouble regenerating lost blood. Or maybe the fact that my stomach was growling just meant that it didn¡¯t have the material to make more. Either way I had to let him know without telling him. Maybe a half truth would put him on the right track? ¡°It started a few months ago. I was meditating and afterwards I noticed that I felt really good. So I kept doing it every night. And my health just kept improving. Now, I seem to recover way faster than normal, including from physical exhaustion, and my pain tolerance has shot way up.¡± Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°Very strange. You said you unlocked this from meditation?¡± I nodded. ¡°And you are sure you hadn¡¯t changed anything else that day? Diet? Exercise? Quit smoking? New vitamin? Anything?¡± ¡°Nope, same as always. As was my work that day. Stressful as ever.¡± Tim scratched his head. ¡°Could be some sort of epigenetic thing, I suppose, as a result of stress, or maybe even the meditation? Not sure. That¡¯s not really my area of expertise.¡± After he mumbled to himself for a while I interrupted him. ¡°Look, I¡¯m tired and hungry. I just want to eat something and get some more sleep, but I¡¯ll make you a deal. Bring me something to eat and I¡¯ll let you take a blood sample. Run tests on it. Maybe you can figure out something by testing it.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure if the nanites would show up or not, but even if someone else figured it out, he probably wouldn¡¯t tell them about me. And if they did and some other System person finds out, I could just play the role of a naive man who happened to connect to the system, someone who isn¡¯t a threat in any way. That, at least in my drug and blood-loss addled brain, was a decent compromise between telling him and not telling him. And if he proved himself trustworthy, maybe I could come clean some day. The next day, I was rested up and released from the hospital. Tim had help me cover up how quickly I healed, as the wound being nothing more than a sore spot two days after a severe GSW would draw too much attention, and wheeled me to a waiting taxi so that I could return home. Thanks to Vera both of our phones had the other¡¯s numbers programmed into them, so we could keep in touch about all of ¡®meditation health stuff¡¯ as Tim put it. Upon returning home, I made a show of using my cane to stand up and paid the taxi driver. Normally I would take the stairs for that little bit of extra exercise, but this time I used the elevator. Once I was back inside my apartment, I locked the door, propped my cane against the wall, and checked the former GSW in my abdomen. I was supposed to go in in two weeks to have the stitches removed, but as it was already recovered Tim had already removed them. When the time came to have them removed I would just lie and tell them that I had another doctor remove them. Which was only a lie because Tim was just an EMT, not a doctor. Seeing that the wound was just a slightly sore spot, and that my HP had fully recovered, I decided to catch up on my exercise. I stretched, and, after remembering the smoothies and downing a double, cast ¡®align nanites¡¯ on myself instead of meditating and started doing pushups. I wouldn¡¯t be able to leave my apartment to go on runs for several days, else I would raise suspicion, so the inside exercises were all I could do. Between sets of exercise I binged various shows and YourTube videos, getting three levels of theoretical experience in Smithing from watching Forged With Fire, and two more in cooking by watching various cooking shows. I briefly considered trying to learn other skills this way, but I was getting bored of them so I wasted much of my time on shows with no value outside of entertainment. I did take an hour, at Vera¡¯s insistence, to look into this ¡°Cedar Park Pharmaceuticals¡± company, but only got as far as their employee page and a few news articles before I was bored. As far as I could tell, they were just a normal medical research firm. Three days later, and after leveling up my SP recovery twice, not to mention Strength and Endurance, I was ready to go outside. I had even noticed that my max HP and SP had significantly increased. After another smoothie/align break, I decided to call into work so I could figure out when I needed to return. I didn¡¯t get good news. Once the General Manager got on the line I knew something was up. ¡°Listen, Greg. We appreciate what you did, trying to protect us against that nutjob, but corporate has asked me to let you go.¡± ¡°But I saved people¡¯s lives.¡± I responded in shock. ¡°Probably, but you also broke policy by doing that, and they can¡¯t risk encouraging people to do that in the future. You almost died, and they can¡¯t risk employees getting killed by being heroes. I¡¯m sorry.¡± After another minute of back and forth, in which he promised to mail me my last pay check and not cancel my insurance until the end of December, we hung up. Now what was I supposed to do? My finances were bad enough as they were. Trying to live on Unemployment would just make it worse. After a few minutes I remembered something. Opening my wallet, I found the card for that assassin PI. ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like he is going to kill me. If he wanted me dead, my time in the hospital would have been the perfect opportunity.¡± Before I could convince myself that the card was a trap, I grabbed my coat and left. His office was too far away to walk, but for some reason I didn¡¯t want to use my car to go there. I had seen too many mafia movies where cars were blown up to risk it. As I walked to the bus stop I thought over past events. I had almost died in real life, and now I was worrying about hypothetical assassination attempts and imagined car bombs. Realizing that I should worry about real threats instead of possible ones. I could prepare for snipers and car bombs later. ¡®Hey, Vera, you mentioned that the system could make me bulletproof, right?¡¯ ¡®I think I said that a gun wouldn¡¯t be enough to take down most system users. It would be difficult to make you completely bullet proof, though.¡± ¡®Even shrugging off or weakening a single shot would be good at this point.¡¯ I responded. ¡®In that case,¡¯ she displayed a window in front of me. ¡®This should help you out. It will essentially weaken any incoming attack. It probably won¡¯t block any gun more powerful than pellet gun, but it should protect you against punches and knives as well.¡¯ ¡®And it will be safe for me to download this? Last time you almost killed me by downloading something.¡¯ ¡®Most of your skills are fully adapted to you, with several others only needing one more level. At worst you¡¯ll get a slight headache.¡¯ I nodded. ¡®Sure, let¡¯s do it, then.¡¯ A few seconds later I got a brief stabbing pain in my head, like a spotlight was shined into my eyes after I had been in a pitch black room, but it quickly went away. ¡®Too bad I can¡¯t train it now,¡¯ I thought. ¡®Remind me to do that tonight.¡¯ An hour later I was standing in front of the address on the card. I pushed the door buzzer and ten seconds later a tired voice answered. ¡°Hello, Can I help you?¡± I recognized the voice from a few days ago. ¡°My name is Greg Summers. You asked me to come by?¡± ¡°Right, that was almost a week ago. Come up.¡± A buzzer sounded and I heard the door unlock. I made my way up the steps in front of the door to the door at the top. When I got there, before I could knock, a voice told me to come inside, so I entered. The man from before sat behind a desk and motioned for me to take a seat, which I did. ¡°So, I heard you had some recent trouble.¡± he said. ¡°Something about an armed robber?¡± ¡°Pretty much. And to make things worse, I got fired for violating the Employee Handbook.¡± ¡°So, you are hoping that I can help you out financially?¡± ¡°Well, you did seem like you needed my help. There¡¯s no reason I should help you for free, is there?¡± The man stared at me for a few seconds. ¡°You seem to have recovered from your injury rather quickly. Too quickly, in fact. Tell me something. Have you ever heard of the Sapient Empowerment System?¡± I did my best to wipe the expression of surprise off of my face. ¡°What is that? Some self-help guru thing? I¡¯ve never really been into that.¡± ¡°Not exactly. It¡¯s a computer system some aliens dropped off on Earth a couple of million years ago. Gives people superhuman abilities.¡± ¡°Interesting premise.¡± I said, trying to stay neutral. ¡°Quite original. I assume it is from some book you are writing?¡± The man smirked at me. ¡°You know, you aren¡¯t bad at hiding your emotions. But I¡¯m better at reading them. I know you¡¯ve heard of it, and are trying to cover that up. The question is ¡®Why?¡¯¡± I exhaled. ¡°In that case, maybe you can answer a question for me. Have you ever heard of the White Lotus Society?¡± He may have been good at reading emotions, but he was terrible at hiding them. After a few seconds of stunned silence he responded. ¡°So you can read factions? That, at least, confirms my suspicions. As for your suspicions, no, I don¡¯t want to kill you. In fact, I think you can help me uncover information that¡¯s worth several times any hit. Whatever my past might be, I am now merely a private investigator looking into the criminal acts of people who are far worse than I ever was.¡± ¡°Worse than an assassin?¡± I responded and he nodded. Maybe he was going after rapists and mass murderers, but it would be tough to get worse than a contract killer. ¡°I was more of a vigilante. I only took contracts on people that deserved death, or worse. Sure, I made money off of it, but I had to pay the bills somehow.¡± ¡°So, are you being a vigilante here too?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure. The people I¡¯m investigating may deserve death, and they might not. I do have some pretty strong evidence of criminal activity, but not enough for a solid case.¡± ¡°And would this investigation have anything to do with a Doctor Lee?¡± I asked. I had seen that name while looking over the Pharmaceutical company¡¯s website and a press release, a name that shared a family with the man before me. Wan nodded. ¡°That would be my Uncle. And while his disappearance was what originally caught my interest, it¡¯s gone much deeper than a single missing person.¡± ¡°He¡¯s missing?¡± I asked in surprise. ¡°He hasn¡¯t contacted his family for the last 7 months. He also used to post regularly on a social media platform in China. He stopped posting there around the same time.¡± Wan reached into his desk drawer and pulled something out, sliding it across the desk to me. ¡°But until I am sure that you can help me I can¡¯t tell you anything more.¡± To be honest, I wasn¡¯t sure I could trust him, but he could have the resources I needed to look into this pharmaceutical company. And for the moment, he was also investigating them. I would have to keep an eye out for any indication of betrayal. I unrolled the set of tools and immediately recognized them from all of the TV shows and movies that used them as props. ¡°A lockpick set?¡± Wan nodded. ¡°I need someone who can pass as a security specialist for a special investigation job. Come back here Sunday at noon, three days from now. I¡¯ll have four locks here, a mechanical push button, an electronic door lock, a physical door lock, and a combination padlock. For every one of those you can open in a fifteen minute period, I will give you $500. Does that sound good?¡± ¡°It pays well enough, but only three days?¡± Normally learning a skill like that would take much longer. ¡°We both know that you have System assistance, so that should be enough. Besides, I¡¯m on a strict time table here, so that is all I can spare before I have to start looking for someone else to fill the roll.¡± I nodded, pocketed the set of tools, and left. I would just have to come back then if I wanted more out of him. Chapter 6 On the bus ride home I decided that I had no reason to wait in learning. I had seen channels devoted to lockpicking already, so put in my earbuds and started up a Yourtube video. ¡°This is the Security Attorney, and what I have here¡­¡± the video started, and I ignored what was happening around me as, after every video, I got an XP message. By the time I arrived at the bus stop near my home I was already at level 2, and 80% to level three in the skill, just from theoretical knowledge. On my way home I swung by a convenience store to buy one each of the locks they had in stock, a couple of cheap padlocks, a cheap combination lock, and a bike lock, then went to my apartment. Once inside I sat down on the couch, pulled out the set of tools, and got to work practicing. The cheap padlocks were the easiest, followed by the bike lock. Once I had picked each of them a few times I opened the door to my apartment and started practicing on it. This got me some strange looks from my neighbors, but after telling them that I was thinking about becoming a locksmith, they seemed to lose interest. I was able to consistently get four of the door¡¯s six tumblers to lock properly, and could occasionally get a fifth to do so, but I could never get the sixth. I also noticed that my experience gain had slowed down significantly, so I decided to switch activities. Maybe I had learned most of what I could by simply picking locks. After a few videos on how to bypass combination locks without trying every combination, which gave me a bit more experience, I started working on the cheap combination lock and after thirty minutes was able to reliably get into it in under a minute. But after an initial burst of XP, my gains seemed to be crawling. ¡®Vera, what¡¯s the deal with my experience? Ever since I hit level four, the XP gain has been much slower. I get that it would be faster at the lower levels, but this seems like too much of a change.¡¯ ¡®That¡¯s because Lockpicking is what your paradigm would call a ¡°Tier 1 Skill¡±. In other words, it is a specialization which relies on at least one Tier 0 skill, in this case Mechanics. Your Mechanics skill is at just over four from fixing your bike, car, and playing with those fancy building blocks when you were a child, but since you joined the system your only experience has been from the bits of videos which covered how locks worked.¡¯ ¡®I didn¡¯t get an alert for that.¡¯ I responded in surprise. ¡®That¡¯s because you have alerts from mundane skills turned off so that you don¡¯t constantly get alerts every time you read something and your reading skill gains 3 XP.¡¯ I shrugged. ¡®Guess I did turn that off.¡¯ I set down the lock. ¡®So, do I have any more Tier 1 skills I should be aware of?¡¯ ¡®Spells are actually Tier 1 skills. Align Nanites, for example, is based on the Tier 0 skill Nanite Manipulation.¡¯ ¡®I guess that explains why Align Nanites hasn¡¯t leveled up. I haven¡¯t touched Nanite Manipulation yet. In that case, I¡¯ll watch a few more videos on how locks work, and if that isn¡¯t enough, some general stuff on other mechanical devices. Tell me when Mechanics levels up.¡¯ The next few hours were spent watching people take apart locks of various types, at which point I learned about ¡®security pins¡¯, lock pins that were designed to complicate the picking process. I ordered a special lock with changeable security pins that was meant for lockpicking training, having it next day aired to my door, then went back to watching videos. After a video on how mechanical pushbutton locks worked and one on steam engines I was just curious about, I got an alert that my mechanics skill had increased to level 5. With that I set down my phone and got to work on my front door once more. After an hour and a half, and my hands cramping up several times, I managed to pick it and got Lockpicking up to level 5. ¡°That¡¯s enough for today.¡± I said, then went back inside and collapsed on the couch. While waiting for my hands to stop hurting I started wondering about the overall rate of experience gain. It seemed strange that a person could go from knowing nothing about a subject to being decent at it in a matter of hours or days. ¡®That is because Earth is in an Information Age.¡¯ said Vera. ¡®Your people freely exchange knowledge, at least up to a certain point. That makes it easy to learn what you need to get up to level four or five in most areas purely through theoretical understanding. Past that point you tend to need to pay for an education, but hopefully that will change once the System gets popular enough.¡¯ ¡®What do you mean?¡¯ I asked. ¡®Well, the people who created the System didn''t believe in hiding knowledge. To them, all knowledge, outside of some private things like your personal stats and thoughts, should be freely available to everyone, so that everyone can learn from it. That¡¯s why the System is gathering all of the theoretical knowledge it can from Earth¡¯s databanks, so that when the System awakens that information can be shared.¡¯ ¡®Does that mean you can share it with me now?¡¯ ¡®That¡¯s...complicated. There is only so much I¡¯m allowed to do to influence the people of a world without a fully operational System. If you do have a specific interest, however, I can lead you to places where you can gain most of that knowledge. There are places on the internet, including the dark web, where scientific papers and training manuals of all types are freely available.¡¯ I nodded. ¡®I¡¯ll keep that in mind if I ever want to build a nuclear bomb or something.¡¯ ¡®In that case...¡¯ ¡®Not now,¡¯ I stopped her. I wasn¡¯t even comfortable knowing where to get that information at this point. ¡®Very well. So, more training?¡¯ I sighed. ¡®Not with Lockpicking. My hands can¡¯t take it.¡¯ ¡®In that case, how about Electronics? It¡¯s the Tier 0 skill the Tier 1 skill ¡°Electronic Lockpicking¡± is based on.¡¯ ¡®Sounds good. How about starting up a Yourtube video for me.¡¯ I set up my phone on a stand on the coffee table so I wouldn¡¯t have to hold it while my hands were recovering, and the video began. After two level up alerts, which got my Electronics up to Level 5, I switched to watching videos on Electronic Locks specifically. By the time night got here I was at Level 4 in Electronic Lockpicking and realized that I should start getting practical experience if I wanted to keep advancing. I would have to go by the home improvement store tomorrow to see if they had any. For now, I would put on something non-educational, drink my smoothie, eat supper, and go to bed. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. The next morning I went on my morning run and did my normal exercise routine. When I hit one hundred squats I heard fireworks and looked around to see if some idiot in the neighborhood was firing them off. ¡®Relax.¡¯ Vera said. ¡®That was just my way to congratulate you. You finally completed your Daily Quest.¡¯ ¡®Does that mean I get a reward?¡¯ When she gave me the ¡®One Hit Guy Daily Quest¡¯ she hadn¡¯t offered any, but it didn¡¯t hurt to ask. ¡®I still haven¡¯t figured out a way to do that.¡¯ ¡®You mentioned an alien cryptocurrency. How about that? Even if I can¡¯t spend it, the amount I have will let me track my progress better.¡¯ ¡®Normally that is given out for doing things that benefit the system, but I guess I could consider you getting into shape a benefit if I stretch it.¡¯ <5 Zerka acquired> I was a bit surprised that worked. ¡®So, Zerka is what the currency is called?¡¯ ¡®Yeah, it mean¡¯s something like ¡®mark¡¯ or ¡®tally¡¯ in the Zokthan language.¡¯ ¡®Cool. So now I can track how useful I am to the system. Any other quests you can give me?¡¯ An alert appeared. ¡®Something like that?¡± she asked. I accepted the quest. ¡®Well, I guess I was doing it anyway. I guess Hunting and Escort Quests aren¡¯t really a thing at this point. ¡®Not really. I¡¯ll keep an eye out for them if you want, though.¡¯ ¡®Might as well.¡¯ There was a knock on my door and when I opened it I found the delivery driver was standing there with the package I ordered. After signing for it I went back inside and read the instructions. ¡®Well, I guess my hands have recovered. Might as well practice some.¡¯ I put a playlist of various mechanics videos on in the background, everything from sterling engines to internal combustion engines, and got to work. Three hours later, when my stomach growling notified me that it was after lunch time, I hit level six in both Lockpicking and Mechanics, so I took a break. I swung by a diner I hadn¡¯t had a chance to eat at recently, then headed to the home improvement store. Inside I found their collection of electronic door locks, but was surprised by how expensive they were. I would only be able to afford one of them right now, with as low as my back account was getting, so I came up with an alternate solution. I went over a few aisles and grabbed a screwdriver and set of allen wrenches. I then headed back to the electronic locks aisle and started carefully opening the locks and bypassing them, using the screwdriver to bridge specific connections. My Electronic Lockpicking quickly got up to level 5 before an employee saw me and questioned me. ¡°Oh, I¡¯m training to be a locksmith and was seeing how secure these were before I bought one.¡± I pointed to one of the mid-range ones. ¡°That one seems to be the best so far. These three,¡± I pointed to three of the cheaper ones, ¡°Are trash.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± the teenage boy said, unsure how to respond, ¡°I can¡¯t have you damaging company products. You¡¯ll need to buy them first.¡± ¡°Oh, they aren¡¯t broken.¡± I assured him, leveling up my Persuasion skill in the process, ¡°I put them back together, they work, and there¡¯s no indication that I even took them apart.¡± I put the cover plate back on the one I was working on and put in the screws holding it on. ¡°See, good as new.¡± ¡°Uh,¡± he paused again, ¡°I¡¯m going to have to get my manager. I¡¯m not sure how to handle this.¡± He left and I decided it was time to leave. I took the screwdriver and wrenches to the checkout, as they were now used and therefore the store couldn¡¯t sell them, and after paying for them left, seeing the teen and a man in a suit walk back towards the Locks aisle as I left. Thankfully there was another home improvement store in the city and several hardware stores, one of which my cousin worked at, so I was able to ¡®try out¡¯ several electronic locks and mechanical locks before buying one of the cheaper, but still decent security, ones at my cousin¡¯s place of employment and heading home. I spent the next day changing the code on my new electronic lock and bypassing it, as well as working with my special padlock, and by the time I arrived at Wan¡¯s office on Sunday I was at level 7 in both Lockpicking and Electronic Lockpicking. I buzzed myself in and, upon entering his office, I noticed another man sitting there in front of four tiny doors, each with a different lock. The man was wearing a nice suit and looked too formal. I ran Identify on him. ¡°Uh, hi. I didn¡¯t realize you had a guest.¡± Poker Face helped me hide my surprise. ¡°He¡¯ll be observing the test today, and deciding if you have what it takes to help with this investigation.¡± ¡°I thought it was your investigation, though.¡± ¡°I¡¯m a private investigator. That means there is always a client. In this case, him. Now, if you don¡¯t mind.¡± He motioned to the four doors. ¡°You have fifteen minutes to open as many of these as you can.¡± Wan pulled out a stopwatch. ¡°Tell me when you are ready.¡± I pulled out the lockpick set, screwdriver, and allen wrenches, and nodded at him. ¡°Begin,¡± he said, hitting the button on the stopwatch, and I got to work. The key lock was the easiest, as I had practiced on so many of them, and I was through it in under a minute. Next came the mechanical push button one, which was susceptible to one of the common weaknesses of that type of lock and also opened in less than a minute. The combination lock was a variety I hadn¡¯t dealt with before, but after two minutes of probing I figured out enough about it to bypass it. The Electronic one was by far the hardest. It contained multiple safety measures meant to prevent tampering, which slowed me down significantly. I almost missed one of them which would have locked it closed, but caught myself just before tripping it. Eventually I was able to disable or bypass all of those systems and short out the circuit that opened the lock. Wan hit the stop button and looked at the watch, a look of mild surprise on his face. He then showed it to me and the man in the seat. 13:08. ¡°Adequate¡± the man said, then offered me a hand. ¡°Agent Jack Harkness, FBI. So you are the help Mr. Lee found for us. While your skills could use a bit of polish, they are good enough to bring you in on this investigation.¡± I shook his hand and took a seat. ¡°And what are you investigating?¡± I asked as Wan also took his seat. ¡°Cedar Park Pharmaceuticals.¡± the agent responded. ¡°I can¡¯t tell you much, but they are suspected of multiple accounts of kidnapping, murder, and medical experimentation on non-consenting people. We need someone to pull information from their server for us, which means getting into the building.¡± ¡°So, what, I¡¯m supposed to get a job there?¡± ¡°Normally, that would be how we operate,¡± the agent responded, ¡°but another, less risky, opportunity presented itself.¡± He handed me a folder from the desk in front of him. ¡°This is a domestic terrorist group known as Animals Shall Be Free, or ASBF. If they were just sticking to their origins and protesting outside factory farms, we wouldn¡¯t be investigating them, but recently several of their branches have taken to raiding farms and taking the animals. They¡¯ve even kidnapped, tortured, and killed a few hostages who didn¡¯t cooperate.¡± He pushed a button on his cell phone and a security video played of some people in animal masks and black outfits shooting security guards. ¡°This happened two weeks ago in LA. And now we have learned that the local branch of ASBF plan on raiding Cedar Park and freeing the animals they use for medical testing. That¡¯s where you come in. We need you to join up with them and gather information on both them and Cedar Park.¡± ¡°I appreciate the job offer, but why can¡¯t Wan do it?¡± Wan slid a photo across the desk. ¡°Beverly Fredricks-Marsden. She is the leader of the local chapter of ASBF. Only problem is, I investigated her husband for her for the divorce proceedings, so she recognizes me, and doesn¡¯t like me.¡± ¡°Couldn¡¯t find anything?¡± ¡°No, the guy was definitely cheating on her, but she found out I eat meat, and is a militant Vegan. I almost lost the contract with her because I ate a cheeseburger in front of her without knowing that.¡± ¡°Fredricks...sounds familiar.¡± I thought for a second, then remembered something. ¡°The Veterinarian at the zoo?¡± ¡°Yep, that¡¯s her ex. A coincidence really. But that¡¯s a bit off topic. Suffices to say, there is no way she would let me join them, knowing I¡¯m not vegan. So I had to find someone else to do the job.¡± I knew this would be dangerous, but I also knew we needed to get to the bottom of this disease outbreak. And if the FBI was sanctioning this, it was my best opportunity to break in a steal the data I needed. ¡°Fine. I¡¯m in. I assume it pays well?¡± Agent Harkness smirked and tossed an envelope onto the table. ¡°10k now, another 20 when we have the data. There¡¯s a USB in the bag. Just plug it into any port in one of their computers and it will run a script one of our people wrote to pull the data. Once it is complete, pull it out and bring it to us. Assuming you can do that, we may have further work for you with ASBF.¡± I nodded and took the bag. Wan also threw four stacks of twenty dollar bills on the table. ¡°There¡¯s the 2k I owe you for completing the test. As for the loose ends we need to tie up,¡± He handed me a post-it note with a woman¡¯s name and address on it. ¡°She can get you into ASBF, though she isn¡¯t a full member. She¡¯ll also be able to help you fit in with them a bit better.¡± Agent Harkness stood up and walked towards the door. ¡°I trust you can handle the rest, Mr. Lee?¡± Wan nodded and the Agent left. After that I got up to leave as well, but Wan stopped me. ¡°Something I couldn¡¯t say in front of him, as he doesn¡¯t know you have the System, but you should get the Surveillance skill. Not sure which paradigm you are using, so I can¡¯t tell you how to get it, but it lets you record and transmit your senses to another person. In this case, I want you to send me your sight and hearing. I¡¯ll transfer it to an MP4 in my computer and tell Agent Harkness that you were wearing a secret wire.¡± ¡°Won¡¯t I have to stop running incognito to send it to you?¡± Wan nodded, ¡°Yeah, you would. The friend list and transmit features only work when you are logged in. In that case, make the files yourself and give them to me. I won¡¯t be able to watch in real time, though, so you¡¯ll be on your own in there.¡± Chapter 7 An hour later the bus dropped me off outside a suburb. Hundreds, possibly thousands of identical houses sat in neat rows. I wasn¡¯t sure how many there were, and hadn¡¯t bothered to check. The feeling of sameness and conformity felt oppressive to me. I definitely wouldn¡¯t want to live here. I walked up to the gate and told the guard who I was there to meet. After confirming they were, indeed, someone who lived there, I was allowed in. I walked for at least 15 minutes before arriving at the correct house, passing a wide variety of people who were grilling, sunbathing, or playing in back yards. I noticed that there were no children in the streets, pets outside of fences, or loud sounds. The HOA was no doubt as powerful as a small town¡¯s government around here. When I got to the correct house, distinctive only for its lack of anyone outside and house number beside the door and on the mailbox, I knocked on the door. A middle aged woman with a short, side parted haircut opened the door. ¡°Diana Sanders?¡± I asked, and she nodded. ¡°Call me Di.¡± She stepped aside and motioned into her house. ¡°Please, come inside.¡± She stepped out of the way and I entered. She immediately locked the door behind me and I was a bit weary as she turned around. ¡°So, Wan tells me you are a good locksmith.¡± ¡°Yeah, pretty good.¡± ¡°That¡¯s good. You¡¯ll need it for the mission. You¡¯ll also need to behave properly. The only way you¡¯ll be accepted is if you are Vegan, obsessed with animal rights and, because you are a man, completely subservient.¡± ¡°But, I¡¯m none of those things.¡± ¡°Which is why I¡¯m going to train you. Wan says you¡¯re like him, you have a photographic memory and learn really quickly. So, for the next three days you¡¯ll be living here as I teach you.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll need to get some stuff from my house first.¡± I responded. I wasn¡¯t expecting a three day bootcamp experience. ¡°I have yoga tomorrow morning at eight with Bev. You can go get it then. Unfortunately for you, though, the only way we¡¯ll be able to convince her that I trust you enough to recommend you for this mission is if she thinks you¡¯re my latest lover. Which means that you have to be seen by her and whoever else in the neighborhood is watching me as staying the night.¡± ¡°Uh, I don¡¯t know how to put this, but you¡¯re not really my type.¡± I hoped this job wouldn¡¯t require certain things of me. I signed up to be a spy, not a gigolo. ¡°I didn¡¯t say you actually had to sleep with me, just act well enough to convince them you did, and that you are the kind of guy they can accept. I have a guest room for you to sleep in.¡± That was good. ¡°Good. I can live with that.¡± ¡°Good.¡± she nodded. ¡°Now, for your first lesson. It¡¯s almost supper time and I¡¯m hungry. I have four Vegan cookbooks in there. Pick something from one of them and cook us something to eat.¡± An hour later I had completed some faux Mexican dish and we sat down to eat. ¡°I have a question for you.¡± I started. ¡°Why betray your friend like this?¡± Di sat her soy taco down and paused for a minute. ¡°I¡¯ve known Bev since we were roommates in college. Even joined up with ASBF with her. Went to a few protests with her, back when they were just trying to shut down factory farms and the worst slaughterhouses. Then, in the late nineties, there was a split in the group. One faction wanted to stay like they were, and one wanted to do more. The second wasn¡¯t content with just stopping the worst of it, they wanted to stop all animal abuse. Bev joined them, and, after they forcibly shut down one of those slaughterhouses with a bit of arson, that faction took over the whole organization. After that, I kind of dropped out, though not officially. I couldn¡¯t handle the violence. They went from peaceful protesters to full blown terrorists. And now, all I can do is to try and stop them, to pull them back to where they once were.¡± Three days later, on a Wednesday night, Di brought me to a meeting. I had gained an Acting skill at level 4, and had leveled up my Cooking skill quite a bit. Apparently learning to cook a completely different style of food was great for gaining XP. I had also memorized several Vegan talking points just in case I needed them and, when I got bored, watched hacking tutorials on Yourtube. The FBI agent had said that the flashdrive would do the job automatically, but it didn¡¯t hurt to prepare for things going wrong. The three days hadn¡¯t exactly been boring, but I didn¡¯t want to be there in the first place, so I was glad it was over. I activated the Surveillance skill that Wan had told me about and carried the dishes I had prepared in an insulated bag as I walked behind Di. A few seconds after Di knocked on the door, they answered it. A woman in her mid thirties welcomed Di and motioned for her to enter. The only distinguishing feature of the woman¡¯s clothes was her pentagram necklace. ¡°Hi, I¡¯m Brenda. Brenda Sanders. Nice to meet you.¡± She held out her hand and I shook it. ¡°It¡¯s been a while since Di brought a guy with her. I take it you¡¯re her current boy-toy?¡± ¡°I prefer the term ¡®friends with benefits¡¯.¡± I responded. I had expected them to ask the question a bit more tactfully, but she had just come right out and said it. ¡°Well, whatever.¡± She looked over to the table where all of the dishes were and motioned to a man that was arranging things while wearing an apron. ¡°Dave, do you mind coming over here?¡± The man walked over and she introduced him. ¡°This is my husband Dave. Dave, this is Di¡¯s man¡­.I don¡¯t think you gave me your name.¡± ¡°Greg,¡± I said, holding out my hand. ¡°Greg Larson. How do you do?¡± I had, of course, made up a last name while training with Jenn. No point in giving them a way to track me down if things went south on the mission. Dave lead me over to the table and we unloaded all of the dishes I had prepared. ¡°Is that cheese?¡± he asked with concern upon uncovering a squash casserole. ¡°Artificial cheese, made with soy powder, vegetable oil, and some food coloring to get the color right. I tried to recreate something my mom always brought to parties.¡± Apparently the mention of a fake mother got his attention. ¡°Ok, that¡¯s fine. We just usually try to avoid artificial animal products at gatherings like this, so I was a bit surprised.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sorry, I didn¡¯t realize that. I¡¯ll have to remember for next time.¡± ¡°It¡¯s fine.¡± said Dave before changing the subject. ¡°So, lockpicking. How did you get into that?¡± I made up some story about breaking into my dad¡¯s liquor cabinet as a teenager and then deciding I liked it. He responded to that by bringing me a glass of whiskey. The rest of the night was filled with idle conversation and Bev¡¯s insistence that I demonstrate my skills on the front door and a bike lock. Not that either of those was a good test, as the facility we were going into had far better locks, but they didn¡¯t know enough about locksmithing to even know that much. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. By the time the party had ended my Acting had leveled up to five and due to pacing myself with the alcohol out of fear I would lose control and let something slip my Poison Resistance was level 2. Saturday at 11PM I showed up at Bev¡¯s house again, this time wearing all black, at Bev¡¯s insistence. I also wore a light kevlar vest under my jacket. I covered for wearing it with the excuse that I got it while living in a bad part of town as a teenager. After a few comments about how the police should handle bad neighborhoods, a few of which might border on racism, we all boarded a black van someone had rented and removed the tags from and someone drove us down to the pharmaceutical company¡¯s main labs. Vera verified that this was where she was detecting increased activity, so I knew this would help advance my goals as well. We got out of the van and watched the lab from a distance. Once we saw the security guard walk around the side of the building from the entrance we were aiming for, everyone pulled on their ski masks and we ran for the gate. I was able to quickly bypass the electronic pad there, and we ran the ten meters for the side door. That lock took me a bit longer, almost thirty seconds as it included several extra security measures, but I was able to bypass it and enter the building. Once inside we followed the signs to the nearest animal holding facility and I got to work. First, a medium difficulty scan key lock on the main door, then low grade padlocks on all of the cages. The room was full of several types of primates, from chimpanzees to capuchins, several of which were running fevers. I warned them not to open the cages until all of the locks were opened, as that would alert the guards, but before I could finish the last batch of locks a man appeared in the doorway of the lab. ¡°Freeze! Put your hands up!¡± he yelled with gun drawn, slowly making his way towards an emergency panic button on the wall. Bev start to pull a pistol from her pocket, so I ran at the guy. He froze in surprise of the sudden action and I punched his wrist, making him drop the gun. I then spun around behind him as he grabbed his wrist in pain and put him in a sleeper hold. Once he was unconscious I took the handcuffs from his belt and handcuffed him, then grabbed a roll of duct tape from a nearby shelf, tapped his legs and put a piece over his mouth so he couldn¡¯t scream. I put the tape back on the shelf and laid his gun on top of it. ¡°What was that for?¡± Bev asked in anger. ¡°He could have killed us.¡± ¡°Shooting him would just have the cops come down on us. So far, we¡¯ve only done a simple Breaking and Entering, and a bit of theft. The investigation will get foisted onto some overworked detective and they might forget about it. If we kill a guy, though, not only will the gunshot draw all of the other security guards in the building, who will call the police, but they will give a homicide investigation to someone competent.¡± It sounded like a good enough argument in my head. In truth, I just wasn¡¯t ok with killing a man even with FBI support. Bev stood there staring at me in shock. ¡°How Dare you talk back to me.¡± she said, raising her voice to a volume just a bit above what was safe for a covert operation like this. ¡°You are here to help us, not to do your own thing! I¡¯m in charge here!¡± ¡°Doing things your way would have got us caught.¡± I said, which seemed to anger her even further. She gave Brenda a look and Brenda nodded, raising her hand. There was a slight shimmer in the air around her palm and I collapsed to the ground. For whatever reason I was unable to move or even speak. ¡°Tell me,¡± Brenda said. ¡°Why did you really join us?¡± I tried to lie, but every time the thought came into my head something stopped it, like the idea of lying to her was just a stray thought on par with wanting to strangle my boss after he fussed at me about something. It was unthinkable to lie to her. I felt something shift a bit inside of me. I could move a bit now, at least. Then I realized something. If a lie wouldn¡¯t work, what about a half truth. ¡°This place is experimenting on humans.¡± I responded. ¡°Some sort of vaccine.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re with some anti-vax group?¡± she asked in surprise. I felt the pressure in my mind lessen a bit with the last skill increase and knew that I could probably slip in a bit of a lie if I wanted. ¡°No, the vaccine is causing a disease outbreak. Some of the monkeys here are already infected. Probably created a super-bug when they tried to fight it.¡± Sure, I knew the ¡®disease¡¯ was actually a corrupted form of nanites, but I didn¡¯t want to say that. ¡°So you are trying to prevent a virus outbreak? How noble of you.¡± I tried to stand up and found that I could make it to my feet. The mental pressure was still there, though, preventing me from outright lying. ¡°Pretty much. I thought if I could get the info about the disease and vaccine to the right people, I might be able to stop it from getting out.¡± ¡°And how did you find out about this disease?¡± Brenda asked. This time I knew that lying would be important. I couldn¡¯t tell her about Vera detecting aberrant signals and tracking them down. Quickly brainstorming, I decided to tell her a modified version of what someone like Tim would know. ¡°I ran into a zombie on my way home. The guy was basically a mindless violent machine that kept attacking people and got up even after the cops shot him multiple times. The next day I found a homeless man running a super high fever, and a few days later and Veterinarian at the zoo with the same symptoms.¡± I could tell Bev knew about the Vet from the way she looked a bit sad at the mention of him. Obviously she wasn¡¯t over him completely. ¡°I managed to find out that all of them were connected to here. The stoner-zombie and homeless man were test subjects in human trials, and the vet was bit by a chimp from here. So when Jenn mentioned you guys, it was like Destiny had given me an opportunity.¡± A weight on my mind was lifted and I knew I was now able to lie as much as I wanted. I briefly considered attacking them, but the thought quickly left my mind. It was no more that a stray invasive thought. ¡°Lucky.¡± Brenda said, then started whispering with Bev. I knew I wouldn¡¯t have an opportunity to complete my mission if I didn¡¯t do it now, so I went over to one of the lab computers and plugged in the flash drive the FBI agent had handed me. It was on a login screen but after a few seconds it went to the desktop and windows started popping up and closing as the light on the flash drive blinked. ¡°What are you doing?¡± asked Brenda. ¡°Getting the data I came here for. Don¡¯t worry, I won¡¯t do anything against you. I¡¯ll even pull evidence of their animal experimentation for you, so you can use it against them.¡± Brenda seemed surprised at something. ¡°So, tell me, how were you able to resist my spell?¡± ¡°Spell?¡± I asked, as the flash drive finished what it was doing. I pocketed the flash drive and plugged in my burner phone. The FBI program had left the computer on the desktop, so I set the phone to data transfer mode and started looking for any files on the Vaccine, experiments, both animal and human, and Dr. Lee, as I knew Wan would want that info. ¡°Yes, spell. You must have realized that I used magic on you.¡± She stared at me for a few seconds as I transferred files. Then something seemed to dawn on her. ¡°Wait. You seemed to resist the effect too quickly. If you were that resistant, it wouldn¡¯t have effected you that much in the beginning.¡± She facepalmed. ¡°You are part of the System, aren¡¯t you?¡± The other people there looked confused at the word, like they didn¡¯t understand what she was saying. Apparently a witch casting spells on people was normal, but an alien system which made people stronger by infecting them with nanites was a foreign concept. Actually, I understood that position pretty well. Compared to the System, witches with magic powers were fairly normal. ¡°I may have been initiated, but I don¡¯t belong to any group.¡± Wait. Why didn¡¯t I lie? I could have, with a bit of effort, but for some reason I didn¡¯t feel like it. Was that an effect of the spell or had revealing the truth to Wan just caused me to drop my guard? ¡°Damn it.¡± Brenda said, and Bev looked at her in confusion. ¡°He¡¯s compromised,¡± Brenda announced. ¡°We can trust him to finish the mission, but after this we can¡¯t rely on him any more.¡± Bev seemed to accept that, and I was allowed to finish pulling the files with a promise to hand over any relevant data to Jenn once I sorted it out. Once I finished releasing all of the locks on the cages, and covertly using Align Nanites on the monkey with the worst fever, only able to use it once, they opened all of the doors and we left. The security guard had woken up just as the last of the locks were opened, but no one cared when dozens of primates ran across him to escape the room. Once we got back to Bev¡¯s house, we got out of the van and Dave came out to reinstall the tags. I wasn¡¯t invited inside for the celebration, but was warned to get them the data ASAP so that they could use it in the future. With that, I went home and got to work editing the data. After downloading the data from the burner phone I turned it off, ran over it with my car, and threw it in a dumpster. By 6AM I had edited the info into two sets, the things that Wan would want and the things that Bev would want. I downloaded the data from my Surveillance skill, which had leveled up to Level 2 and now allowed me to add notes, and added that to Wan¡¯s files. I decided to get in a bit of exercise and, after taking a shower and putting on clothes appropriate to working out, I started my run towards Bev¡¯s house with her flash drive. About half way there my real phone started ringing. I picked it up and heard Wan¡¯s voice. ¡°Where are you? Jack is coming over, and he wants to talk.¡± ¡°Sorry about that. I¡¯m just on my way to Bev¡¯s house to drop off the data she wanted, but I¡¯ll come by after that.¡± ¡°Bev, huh? I take it the mission went well?¡± ¡°Yeah, it went great. Nice people. If they hadn¡¯t found out I was with the System, I would probably want to join them on future missions. But they still want this data, so I need to drop it off real quick.¡± ¡°Interesting. Tell me, was one of them a Witch?¡± ¡°Oh, Brenda? Yeah, she¡¯s really nice too. Kind of my type, but she¡¯s married, so no go there.¡± Wan sighed. ¡°I see. In that case, how about I meet you and give you a ride over there? Then I can drive you back to my office.¡± ¡°Won¡¯t that ruin the cover though, with you showing up at Jenn¡¯s house?¡± ¡°No, I¡¯ll just say we were talking about another case. She¡¯s hired me before, so no one will be suspicious.¡± I nodded. ¡°Cool then. How about we meet at the Skybucks on 37th street? I¡¯ll buy you a coffee.¡± Five minutes later Wan walked in and I handed him his order. Once we were back in his car he removed a necklace. The pendant had some sort of Asian characters on it. He handed me the necklace. ¡°You think you could try that on? I want to see if it looks good on you.¡± ¡°Sure. No problem.¡± I had no idea why he was concerned with fashion all of the sudden, but I had no reason to go against him. The second the necklace was on I felt a weird draining inside of me, and started getting dizzy. After a minute or so, though, it cleared up. ¡°Feeling better?¡± he asked. ¡°What was that?¡± I asked. ¡°Anti-magic talisman. Blocks the effects of soul-effecting magic. You, my friend, were brainwashed by a witch.¡± Chapter 8 Wan spent the next few minutes explaining things to me. The System was made up of computers and nanites, and as such could only affect the physical and mental effects of spells. The basic mind control spell, which Brenda had used on me and which most witches knew, affected the body, mind and soul, making it so that all of them had to perform how the witch willed. My Physical Pain Resistance was able to resist the physical effect and my Mental Pain Resistance was able to resist the mental effect, but because the System could not effect immaterial things like Souls or Spirits, it had no way to resist the Soul component and therefore couldn¡¯t break the spell. ¡®If humans can manipulate those things, though, couldn¡¯t the System learn how to manipulate them from humans?¡¯ I asked Vera. ¡®Multiple attempts have been made, from cloned artificial tissue to triggering the abilities in sapient beings that already possessed magical abilities. None of the experiments have succeeded, even when perfectly duplicating the neural and physical activity of the sapient being. There is obviously some component to this that the System can¡¯t duplicate.¡¯ ¡°Then what the System offered me wasn¡¯t actually magic?¡± I asked Wan. ¡°Not really. It is based on manipulating nanites and having them produce an effect for you. True magic uses the spirit of the wielder to effect other spirits or the physical world directly. It¡¯s like using a machine to move an object versus moving it with your hand. At least that¡¯s how it was explained to me.¡± ¡®Does that mean I can¡¯t download True Magic skills then?¡¯ I asked Vera. This seemed like a massive weakness of the system which I would need to mend. ¡®Not exactly. The System has had some success downloading everything one magic user knows about the subject into the mind of another being, giving the second the ability to use it. This method results in a very poorly adapted skill, however. That, combined with the quantity of data means that it would be very dangerous to attempt if you haven¡¯t fully adapted to all of your skills.¡¯ ¡°I¡¯ll need to think about that.¡± I responded to both. ¡°If the System has that big of a weakness, I need to fix it right away.¡± Once we were back at the office I handed the USB to agent Harkness and got the twenty thousand dollars he promised me. He was disappointed that I had been found out, but was relieved that I hadn¡¯t told them everything. What¡¯s more, the only things that seemed to get a response out of him were the revelation that they had a witch and the knowledge that I was part of the System, a fact that I could think of no way to avoid telling him. He questioned me about this last fact, but seemed to lose his concern when I told him I wasn¡¯t part of any faction and had chosen my paradigm simply because I liked video games. He assured me that he would be keeping my status a secret from his faction, a sentiment which Wan also agreed to, though I knew I couldn¡¯t rely on either of them to do so if things got tough. Still, having him know about me could mean that I would be offered more work in the future, so it wasn¡¯t a complete loss. After I promised to get him the video of the event, he got up and left. The fact that they had a rogue Witch on their side meant that his superior would need to be informed. After the Agent left, Wan pulled out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey and poured me a drink. ¡°Congratulations,¡± he said, ¡°on completing your first job.¡± I took it and downed the whole glass, so he refilled it. ¡°Thanks.¡± I responded and sipped the second glass. ¡°The only real issue was that witch. I didn¡¯t know they were really a thing.¡± ¡°Well, they aren¡¯t exactly common, but there are a few True Magic users on Earth. In fact, one of my first jobs was a Witch.¡± He sighed and poured himself a second drink. ¡°You see, my sect of the White Lotus Society see assassination as a tool for justice, so we limit ourselves to targets that the law can¡¯t or won¡¯t stop. In this case, there was a witch in Hong Kong that was putting a death curse on business men, then demanding payment to remove it. Two of her targets had died already and the police either didn¡¯t believe that she could be doing that or were too afraid of her to do anything. So one of her targets contacted us. He refused to pay her on principle, and offered us the blackmail payment she had demanded to get rid of her. That talisman I gave you was given to me by a monk that works with us to help me fight evil magic users. I did eventually kill her, but I had to fight off her mind control spell multiple times to do it. And with her death, as usual, the spell was broken and our client saved.¡± ¡°Any chance you can get me one of those necklaces then?¡± Wan shook his head. ¡°They can only be sold to members of our faction. So unless you want to become my trainee, I can¡¯t help you there.¡± I shook my head and took another sip, only to see Wan pouring a third glass. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯m not going to do that. Shouldn¡¯t you pace yourself, though? Or do you have such a huge Poison Resistance that you aren¡¯t worried about it?¡± ¡°Oh, no. Sure I trained it a bit while learning to make poisons, but I actually have a meditation to clear my head and prevent hangovers.¡± ¡°Must be nice.¡± I responded. ¡°I could teach you if you want. It¡¯s all about moving your chi throughout the pathways in your body to absorb toxins then dumping those toxins in your lower dantian.¡± I looked at him confused. ¡°What?¡± Wan scratched his head. ¡°Look, just close your eyes.¡± I sat down my glass and did so. ¡°Now feel the energy in your middle dantian.¡± ¡°My what?¡± Wan rubbed his eyes in frustration. ¡°The energy center in your chest. Your heart chakra. I don¡¯t know what else to call it.¡± ¡°Oh, you mean the Nexus the System made to store energy.¡± ¡°I would argue that it existed prior to the System but the System co-opted it for its own use, but that doesn¡¯t matter. Yes, that is what my paradigm calls the middle dantian or heart chakra depending on the exact tradition. You need to pull the energy from there and make it flow through the various channels in your body. I can¡¯t really help you with that step, as the channels are slightly different for different people and it isn¡¯t really a system thing.¡± I tried going back to my original image of a source of water, only this time I made it a pond. After a minute or so I noticed several streams flowing out from it. So I pushed the water into those streams. ¡°Ok, I think I¡¯m doing it.¡± Stolen story; please report. ¡°Notice any trash or scum in the streams?¡± ¡°Yeah, lots of driftwood and algae. A few insects.¡± ¡°Interesting. I¡¯ve never heard of driftwood being found there. Just sweep it up in the current and drag it all with you towards your lower dantian. That would be around your bowels.¡± I kept focusing, splashing the water against all the impurities and knocking them loose to flow down the stream. After a few minutes the stream flowed through my stomach and intestines, dumping out all of the trash. I immediately had to jump up and run to the bathroom, where I emptied my stomach into the toilet. I continued dry heaving for another minute before I felt good enough to return to the other room. There I saw Wan laughing. ¡°What¡¯s so funny?¡± I asked. ¡°Nothing, nothing.¡± he said, forcing himself to stop. ¡°It¡¯s just a little joke we play on initiates. Usually your intestines grab the trash and you get diarrhea. But because you were drunk and most of the trash was alcohol, your stomach caught it and made you vomit. Don¡¯t worry. Every time you do it the symptoms get better until eventually it does little more than make you have to piss.¡± ¡°So, you prank initiates by teaching them how to sober up?¡± I asked, still trying to catch my breath. ¡°Oh, no. It¡¯s actually meant for clearing the pathways so that your chi flows more smoothly, making certain other techniques easier. It also has the added benefit of making you get tired more slowly when exerting yourself.¡± ¡°Great.¡± I said, finally feeling okay and noticing that my head was completely clear. ¡°Well, I better be going. I need to look into this whole Magic thing.¡± Wan nodded. ¡°Good luck with that. And if you feel up to it, give me a call. I¡¯ll show you around the gym I use. You look like you could use a workout.¡± I looked at Wan and myself. He was well toned, but not overly muscular, whereas I looked like I rarely got out of the house. ¡°Sure, I¡¯ll think about it.¡± I left and started walking home. I asked Vera about the possibility of the system helping me out in this situation, but once again she explained to me that it wasn¡¯t a skill I could download. She could lead me to books or other resources other known magic users had read, but that wasn¡¯t guaranteed to work. Besides, the issue wasn¡¯t that I wanted to learn magic, it was that I wanted to be able to resist magic. ¡®So, what kind of people would be able to resist magic?¡¯ I asked myself, only to have Vera respond. ¡®That sounds like the definition of a priest to me.¡¯ she responded. ¡®Their whole job is dealing with spiritual matters and various spiritual creatures.¡¯ ¡®The priest I met before I was fully part of the system, then?¡¯ I asked her, and I could feel her approval. I remembered his name was Father Jacob Terrance Smith, so I looked him up on the internet and changed course for his church. When I entered a nun approached me to see if she could help me, and I asked to speak with him. Once he came out I asked if we could go somewhere more private than a confessional booth. ¡°This is a lot more serious than picking up a random woman at a bar.¡± He nodded and showed me to his office. After the door was closed he asked me what I needed to speak to him about. ¡°I remember you from Dormart. I assume you came to me because you remembered me too?¡± ¡°Partially. I also think you are the only person I know who can help with my particular situation.¡± He walked behind the desk and we sat down. ¡°In that case, what do you need my help with?¡± ¡°I need to know how to fight magic.¡± I said bluntly, and he gave me a strange look. ¡°Specifically, the Soul effecting variety that the Sapient Empowerment System can¡¯t help with.¡± He seemed surprised. ¡°You don¡¯t seem to be a part of the system, which tells me you are hiding it for some reason. May I ask why you are telling me about your connection if you are hiding it?¡± ¡°Two other people already know, and you, at least, are sworn to keep it a secret.¡± Father Smith nodded. ¡°Fair enough. So I assume you are Catholic, or at least some version of Christian?¡± ¡°Not really. I went to church when I was a kid, but I don¡¯t really think about it anymore.¡± He nodded. ¡°In that case, the method I use to resist soul effecting magic won¡¯t work. It requires you to essentially overpower the effect by the power of your faith, which someone without strong religious conventions can¡¯t do. That leave open two possibilities. You can make a contract with a neutral spirit like a fae to defend you, which I can¡¯t recommend for both religious and practical reasons and only mentioned because it could solve your issue. You could also develop the ability to resist the effect through shear willpower by altering the effects on your own soul. I have had some experience with that method.¡± ¡°Isn¡¯t the second one just another way of telling me to learn magic?¡± ¡°Not really. Yes, a magic user could develop a spell to defend their soul by breaking outside influences, but because your soul is a part of you, or all of you, you can exercise control over it without having to learn magic, which is the ability to affect the world outside yourself.¡± I nodded. ¡°Then how would that work? Do I just need to have someone try to use Soul magic on me and resist it?¡± Father Smith stood up. ¡°Not exactly. I¡¯ll be right back with an answer.¡± He left and, five minutes later returned with something wrapped in a piece of cloth. ¡°This is an athame that was used by a satanic cult for ritual human sacrifice. Normally we would turn these kinds of things over to the police, but this one picked up a bit of a curse, so we have had to store it here in the reliquary. Anyone that touches it is overcome with the belief that they can become stronger by killing people with it, which is technically true. It steals energy from the soul of the victim to grant it to the user. I want you to touch this, then force yourself to not follow through with the impulse.¡± ¡°Are you sure about this?¡± I asked. ¡°After all, if it overpowers me you¡¯ll be my first target.¡± Father Smith smirked. ¡°I¡¯m not as helpless as I look.¡± I shrugged. ¡°Ok, then. Here goes.¡± I reached out and picked up the knife. It seemed like a very nice knife. Well built. I could probably kill easily with it. Just a quick jab and my victim would lie at my feet. There strength would become mine. With enough victims I could become so strong that no one could challenge me. What was wrong with that? It was self defense, after all. They should feel honored to make me stronger. And right now the biggest threat to me is my secret getting out. Only three people know. If they died, I would be safe. After all, as the saying goes, Dead Men Tell No Tales. And one of those people was right in front of me. He was wide open. Just one little swipe and¡­. The next thing I knew I was staring up at the ceiling. The Father leaned over and looked at me. ¡°Have you come back to your senses yet?¡± he asked. ¡°What happened?¡± ¡°You tried to stab me. Luckily I am way better at martial arts than you, so I was able to disarm you and knock you out.¡± I rubbed my jaw, noticing that it was hurting. ¡°Boxing, huh?¡± He shrugged. ¡°The priest where I grew up taught us in order to keep us off the streets. I was his second best student.¡± ¡°And the best one?¡± ¡°US Army Colonel. Retired.¡± ¡°Great. Glad I didn¡¯t lunge at him. I doubt he would have held back.¡± Father Smith nodded. ¡°So do I. He has 613 confirmed kills.¡± He reached down and helped me up. ¡°That¡¯s enough training for today. The next step is more psychology than spirtualism. You need to figure out why the dagger was able to control you. What part of your mind and soul lead you down that path. Then you need to deal with those issues. Once you have done that, come back here and we¡¯ll try again. Until you know yourself well enough to know where the line between you and an outside influence lies, you can¡¯t learn to fight those influences.¡± I nodded, thanked him, and left. I didn¡¯t really need to think about it. My problem was the recent circumstances that forced me to reveal my secret. I could deal with Wan knowing it. He seemed to be trustworthy enough, and I knew his secret as well, so we had a standoff on that issue. The FBI agent was a problem, however. I never really trusted the government or the police, and now one of them knew enough to run my life. They could use that secret to blackmail me, and I could do nothing about it. After all, as the quote goes, ¡°The State is a gang of thieves, writ large¡±. I could deal with them as long as the worst I had to do was wait for three hours at the DMV for some bureaucrat to renew my license, but now their highest law enforcement branch knew about me. The only thing worse would be if the CIA found out, as they could make me disappear, and I couldn¡¯t be sure they wouldn¡¯t find out. Some may call me paranoid, but I doubt many of those people completely trust the government either. I had only one option, then. I needed friends that could defend me, or at least friends who could blow the whistle if someone did take me out. An assassin seemed to be a good choice for that. After all, he knew all about how to quietly get rid of people, so he would know how to stop it. And even if the government didn¡¯t do the job, there were many other factions that might try if they found out about me. Now that my secret was out, I needed to learn to protect myself. I needed to get stronger. I needed to train. I pulled out my phone and called Wan, accepting his deal to try out his gym. Now that I had the $32k dollars they had paid me for that job, I could afford to not look for work and pour myself into training. I went home, drank a spiralina smoothie, used ¡°align nanites¡± on myself, and did my daily workout quest. After seeing that Vera had given me an extra 5 Zerka for completing the quest, I sat down and started pouring over the data in my head and my harddrive. It turns out my guess was mostly correct. The stoner zombie and the homeless man were part of human trials, and the chimp used to live in the lab we raided, where he was experimented on. Vera sent me another alert about completing the quest and gave me 1000 Zerka. She also gave me an extra 10k Zerka. ¡®What was that for?¡¯ I asked, rubbing my sore shoulders. ¡®I am authorized to pay people for any action which helps or defends the system. According to the data you acquired, the modified nanites created in that lab have the potential for exponential growth. If they multiply as quickly as these test results suggest, they will not only spread quickly, outnumbering the number of system nanites on the planet within a month, but they will lead to the death of the majority of the human race. The System is meant to support sapient lifeforms, and as such we can¡¯t allow this genocide. Now that we know about this outbreak, we can fight against it.¡¯ ¡®Does that mean you¡¯ll find a cure for it?¡¯ ¡®The System servers will be looking for one, but it may take some time, as they are based on System technology. In the mean time, we will be increasing the number of nanites on the planet so that we will have the numbers to fight it when a cure is developed.¡¯ I nodded. ¡®I didn¡¯t realize it was that bad. Anything I can do to help?¡¯ ¡®I don¡¯t know of anything besides getting stronger. The stronger you and your skills are, the more useful you are to the System. That¡¯s why I reward you for working out.¡¯ Seeing that even the System wanted me to work on myself, I knew it was time for some serious training. Chapter 9 The next afternoon I entered my apartment and collapsed on the couch. Wan had met me at the gym that morning and we had spent the next four hours going through every piece of workout equipment in the place. And once I was done and could barely move, he dragged me into the Martial Arts training room at the back of the building and made me spar with him for over an hour, an hour which I spent mostly getting thrown, pinned, or knocked unconscious. Wan insisted that with my HP and SP recovery as high as it was he wasn¡¯t pushing me too far, but both had gotten to level 5 as we trained, with my Martial Arts and Dodging getting to 5 as well. Once I explained to him how the levels of my paradigm worked he informed me that when my Martial Arts got to level 8 he would teach me a specific style, but as they would be tier 1 skills based on the tier 0 skill Martial Arts, he didn¡¯t think I was ready yet. He only let me go after promising to meet him there the next morning as well. He usually took a week off after big jobs, and he planned on using that entire week to whip me into shape. By the time I had gotten home my energy had fully recovered and the soreness in my muscles was completely gone, but the stress had gotten to me. How was I supposed to deal with the constant torture of this routine? I almost felt sorry for all of the RPG characters I had put through several hour long grinding sessions in the past. I now knew how they felt, minus the need to actually risk my life. When you thought about it that way, Wan was going easy on me. I got up and ate something, then decided to meditate to clear my head. As I didn¡¯t really need to work on my nanites this time, I tried the one Wan had shown me. Maybe what had happened was a fluke? Sure enough, a minute later I was running to the toilet. Strangely, though, I got an alert that my Endurance had increased to 15 from the meditation. Apparently, I had picked up another two points in it through exercise. May that meditation was good for something other than a colon cleanse, then. Once I was done I went back to the couch. ¡®Hey, Vera. Is there any way I can train my skills faster? I need to get strong even faster, now.¡¯ ¡®Actually, there are two ways to do so with your paradigm. One would be to fully log in to the System, so that it can process your memories for bonus XP, which I don¡¯t think you want to do yet.¡¯ I shook my head and she continued. ¡®The second is for you to choose a class. That would mean choosing which path you want to develop along. The more restrictive the path, the stronger the talent I can give you for it, so the faster you will learn, but the less broad your abilities will be.¡¯ I remembered that this was a special trait of the Role Playing paradigm I had chosen. ¡®Fine, show me my options.¡¯ Ten minutes later I had selected one. After selecting that, I made sure to turn all of my recovery abilities to System control until I figured out how to use them myself. Sure, they wouldn¡¯t grow, but that¡¯s better than not being able to recover. After that I told a million nanites to gather in the palm of my hand. The flood of data I received overwhelmed me, and I started to lose control of them. By the time I could even collate the data well enough to control the swarm I had bled nine million of them away. Now that I had control, however, I could make them do things. Seeing them as a swarm I manipulated their shape. First a donut, then a helix, then the helix started spinning. Within a few hours I believed I was capable of making them produce effects, so I tried. I remembered that light was produced when electrons dropped from a higher shell to a lower one in an atom. How could I replicate that? I went through the functions of the nanites that they told me about and saw that they were able to transfer energy to atoms in specific amounts. So I ordered one of them to give a molecule of nitrogen near it just enough energy to make the electrons jump orbits. Once it reported that it was successful, and that the process had produced a photon, I ordered it to do so to any nitrogen molecules in the area that weren¡¯t already excited. A dim blue glow appeared in my hand, visible only because I had turned the lights out, so I ordered the million or so remaining nanites to do the same. The area of light grew bright, and I snapped my eyes closed and stopped giving the nanites orders. Despite the fact that I was seeing spots from the rapid change in brightness, I saw that I had gained the skill ¡°Light Magic¡± at level 1 and that Nanite Manipulation had went up to level 3. I had found a ¡°save orders¡± function while learning the system, so I save it under the name ¡°Flash¡±, and it was added as a skill. Interesting. I can make new skills, and unlike those I download they start off perfectly adapted to me. They won¡¯t cause problems if I download other abilities later. I thought back to an ability I had gotten over a week ago but never used, Virtual Armor. If I remembered correctly, it worked by sending out nanites to to intersect incoming attacks, pushing back against them. The best point to start at would probably be to learn to push against objects. I sat a glass on the coffee table in front of me, then pulled out a million nanites and ordered them to run into the mug. The mug, however, immediately exploded. As the nanites pushed too hard in one place, it was essentially the same as shooting it. They were spaced out enough that it wasn¡¯t quite that bad, but I wouldn¡¯t be able to move objects that way. Because it would be dangerous to try to duplicate a gunshot in my apartment, I decided to work on the movement variety for now. I pulled out another million nanites, noticing that I was down to having only 2 MP left due to a lack of energy left in my Nexus. These I told to wrap around a piece of the coffee mug. Once they were around the fragment, I told the ones on the bottom to push on it slightly. I slowly increased the pressure until it lifted off the table. After that I changed to the pressure on it so that it traveled in different directions. Once I could move it in all six directions and rotate it at will, I saved the skill as ¡°Telekinesis¡±. Once it appeared on my skill list I noticed that it had appeared at level 3, instead of level one like a normal skill. Stolen novel; please report. ¡®A little help here, Vera?¡¯ ¡®You learned to use it well enough that it was the equivalent of a level 3 skill even before you created the skill.¡¯ ¡®So, that¡¯s possible? I didn¡¯t know you could make skills like that. So if I was good enough with it, I could create a skill directly at level 10?¡¯ ¡®Theoretically, but it is unlikely you would know everything about how to do something before experiencing it first hand.¡¯ Now that I knew how to move things with my nanites I figured I knew enough to try to duplicate Virtual Armor. Thinking about it, I knew I would need to have a way to detect incoming attacks and calculate their trajectory, have the nanites send that information to the nanites near my skin, and then have the ones near my skin go out to intercept it. They could redirect or block it, but either way as long as I didn¡¯t apply too much force and shatter the incoming object, turning it to shrapnel, I could stop or lessen the attack. I worked on the last part first. I set several objects on the table in front of me, a baseball, a book, an apple, and a glass. The book and baseball would be able to take a decent blow, but the apple would be damaged with a moderate amount of force and the glass would break even more easily. I arranged the nanites into the 2d form of the object and started impacting them with increasing amounts of force. Thirty minutes later, after pulling the nanites back into me several times for a recharge, I was able to shove the objects with enough force to launch them from the table and, with the exception of the glass which shattered on impact with the floor, the objects weren¡¯t damaged significantly by the shove. I saved this technique as ¡°Shove,¡± telling it to automatically adjust the strength based on how fragile the object was based on the calibration I had done earlier, and saw that it was at level 4. According to Vera, the automatic adjustment was what put it at that level. I next set up the detection field. This technique was far simpler than Shove. All I had to do was to send nanites out into a cloud around me and have them send back all of the data that they collected on the area around me to my brain. After setting up a few filters to keep the sheer amount of data from overloading my brain, I saved it as ¡°Detection Field¡± which started as a level 4 ability. This ability was able to give me basic biometric data about anyone that came within one meter of me, feed me atmospheric data like temperature, humidity, and relative gas pressures, as well as inform me of any object larger than a grain of sand that entered the area, automatically calculating its trajectory. The last one required me to turn down the sensitivity quite a bit, but prevented a splitting headache, as all of the objects from molecules of gas to pollen to viruses and bacteria were blocked from the data. It would inform me if it detected a relative increase in the levels of viruses, bacteria, and the like in the area, but it would be a line item in a spreadsheet and not a detailed analysis of all of those psuedo-lifeforms like before. Once my brain adjusted to the data, I could increase the sensitivity or add additional detection criteria and increase the level of the skill. Once I had saved it, all I had to do was link ¡°Detection Field¡± to ¡°Shove¡± by putting a million nanites on the surface of my skin and having the field send the data to them, ordering them to respond with ¡°shove¡± if it detected an incoming attack. Nice. Now that I had completed it, I would be safe. I left the Detection Field and Virtual Armor running, telling them to return to me and recharge if they needed to do so, and took a nap. All of that work had exhausted me. When I woke up some time after dark, I ate supper then played with my nanites some more, ordering them to bump into molecules to add to or subtract from their vibration or to ionize the local air. I saved these as ¡°Heat¡±, ¡°Cool¡±, and ¡°Shock¡± respectively, all at level 1 because I hadn¡¯t put much work into them. Tired of all that I had done that night I decided to call off the training for the day and turned on WebFlix to watch my favorite cyberpunk anime, Ghosts Within Shells. The next day the training with Wan went a bit better. While the workout routine was made just as hard by him increasing the weight I had to deal with, once we got into the training room things were different. The first time Wan landed a punch he stopped and looked at his hand. ¡°What was that?¡± he asked. ¡°It felt like I was punching wood. It didn¡¯t hurt, but it didn¡¯t feel like I could do any damage.¡± I closed the door to the room and turned up the radio in the room, then quietly told him about developing the Virtual Armor technique last night. ¡°Interesting. I have something similar, which toughens my skin to prevent damage from attacks.¡± ¡°Is that why punching you feels like hitting a punching bag?¡± ¡°Pretty much. Though I do wonder what hitting an actual punching bag would feel like to you now.¡± He walked over to the one in the room and I hit it as hard as I could. The impact felt strange, though, like I was wearing thick gloves. ¡°Apparently it interprets me trying to hit something as an incoming attack and tried to mitigate the damage. Should I turn it off?¡± ¡°Not necessarily. It might actually make you hit a bit harder. I¡¯d keep it on for now.¡± We finished up the day with another hour of sparring, with me taking far less damage and only being knocked out once from a throw. Due to being able to stay in the fight longer, my Martial Arts and Dodge skills went up to 7 each, with me even gaining two levels of parry from knocking his blows aside, but my HP recovery and SP recovery barely got any XP. That last was probably due to the fact that they were System-controlled nanite based skills. I said goodbye to Wan and started my run home. I had done far more than 100 situps, 100 pushups, and 100 squats at the gym, so all I needed to complete my daily quest was a 10km run, and my house was just over 11 from the gym. On my way home I got too focused on the run, though. So when I saw that an area of the sidewalk was blocked off due to having the concrete repoured, instead of going around it I jumped off of the bus stop bench just before it, grabbed a limb of a tree in the middle of the concrete patch, and swung over it, not breaking the run. Interesting. I didn¡¯t think about it at the time, but now that I had the skill I realized that being able to move around without using normal paths might come in handy. With that I made a detour through a more densely packed part of town and tried to figure out ways around various obstacles before I got to them. While I didn¡¯t always succeed, by the time I got home my Parqour skill was up to level 3. Chapter 10 That night I decided to go back to some of the powers I had made the night before. Heat and Cool had just been the result of me playing around with the Seebeck effect after discovering that how nanites connected to each other altered their electrical and heat conductance. By changing the direction the electricity flowed through them, I could increase or decrease the temperature of a target by ten to twenty degrees celsius. While that would be fine for warming or cooling things slightly, its performance was pathetic. This time I took a different approach. The molecules in any object would move more quickly the hotter they were. So I had the nanites try to directly interfere with that motion, either speeding it up or slowing it down. While it was a bit more efficient than the first version, it still didn¡¯t live up to expectations, so I saved it as Heating 2 and Cooling 2 respectively. Both of those started at level 2. It seems I did a better job making these powers. Shock was basically just me playing around with ionizing objects, but as I had learned about the electrical conductance of nanite chains, I tried a different approach. I had the nanites connect together in the most conductive manner I had discovered and form a net. This net would then be placed on an item and form one half of a circuit, moving electrons from one end to the other at whatever voltage I told it to, adjusting the voltage by changing whether the nanites connected in series or parallel. I calibrated it using an electrical meter I had, and saved it as Shock 2. This time it went up to level 8. It seemed that I had managed to get the performance to near its limit, though I suspected that there were more efficient and better conducting ways I could connect the nanites. With that out of the way I started playing around with my Flash spell. I took the basic light effect and made it adjustable strength, then ordered the nanites to stick to an object. The light it produced was at very specific frequencies, so it was fairly easy to reflect those by making a wall of nanites with a precise gap at those wavelengths. I saved this as Flashlight and it was assigned the level of 5. ¡®Hey, Vera.¡¯ I thought. ¡®How are you getting these levels for the spells I create? Do you run a simulation and compare the performance, or what?¡¯ ¡®You aren¡¯t the first one to create these. In fact, even the most creative power you¡¯ve created so far has been created by more than a billion sapient beings so far. I simply compare its performance to the other billions, trillions, quadrillions, or more variants of the power and assign it a number based on that.¡¯ ¡®Huh,¡¯ I thought. Somehow it seemed depressing that I hadn¡¯t done anything original. Though I guess with the System being around for over two million years there wouldn¡¯t be much room for improvement any more. I went to make a smoothie while I thought about it, but something occurred to me. I was getting most of my nanites from these smoothies at this point, but it was slow and required me to drink something that I didn¡¯t like. Could I just absorb the nanites directly? I sent some nanites into the powder and immediately started detecting other nanites. The vast majority of them, however, were identified as neutral, with only about 1% being beneficial and 1% being harmful. That was just like the ones in my body before I started altering them. I ordered the nanites to connect with any that weren¡¯t marked as beneficial and transfer their settings. Within a few milliseconds all of the ones I could detect were beneficial. I then ordered them to grab the other nanites and move them into me, expanding the area of the nanites to the entire container of powder. Checking the quantity of beneficial nanites in my body I saw it rise in a matter of seconds to over 1.5 billion. I saved this technique as ¡°Absorb Nanites¡± and it became level 7. ¡®Wait, it can learn things from what I program?¡¯ ¡®Or course. The ability still needs to be adapted to you, and the brute force approach for new powers doesn¡¯t use the best method the system knows about, just the easiest one to implement so that it is easier to learn.¡¯ ¡®So, if I figure out a method that is better than the brute force method, it will adjust abilities I already have to use the more efficient method?¡¯ ¡®Exactly.¡¯ This was quite interesting. It meant that if I could figure out a better way to do something the system taught me to do, I could directly upgrade the ability without having to train it, plus it would instantly adapt the power to me so that it didn¡¯t contribute to the mental strain of learning new powers. Now that Align Nanites was so much better I used it on myself and saw the number of Beneficial nanites go to over 1.6 billion. Then I had an idea. Sure, the algae powder had massive numbers of nanites in it, but it and most lifeforms on Earth got their nanites from the air. So I connected Absorb Nanites to the Detection Field and told it to absorb any nanites that entered its field. Deciding that I had developed my powers enough for the day, I ordered Chinese takeout and spent the rest of the night binging shows on WebFlix. The next morning I got up and noticed that I was sitting at 0/14 mana, though my beneficial nanite level was up to 1.7 billion. Apparently leaving Absorb Nanites running all night had depleted my energy levels as it used energy faster than my Nexus Energy Recovery could restore it. I turned it off so that the energy could recover, and noticed that the ability was up to Level 2. After getting ready, decided to run to the gym to practice my Parquor. I managed to wall jump up to a fire escape, take it up to the rooftops, and jump from roof to roof, improving my skill to Level 5. About halfway to the gym, however, I misjudged the distance and ended up slamming into the top of the wall. The shock caused me to miss gripping the top of the wall and I fell. Luckily there was a closed dumpster in the alley beneath me, so I absorbed the fall and rolled off of it, hitting the ground. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. My side, face, and chest hurt, so I sat up and laid against the front of the dumpster. I checked my status only to see that I was down to 31 out of 48 HP and had a ¡°cracked rib¡± status effect which limited Dexterity. I laid there for a few minutes to let the wounds heal. When I got tired of waiting, I started wondering about how HP recovery actually worked. Theoretically, if the waste products of the cells in the body were removed and more nutrients were given to them, they would be able to grow and divide more quickly, thus increasing the healing rate. So I ordered the excess nanites in my body to look for any metabolism byproducts near the damage and move them to my liver. Well, that was unexpected. I suppose it made sense, though. Most of your fatigue was from waste buildup. With that settled I gave the idle nanites a second command. ¡®If waste levels are below (arbitrary low value), then figure out what nutrients the cell is lowest on and bring it to the cell¡¯. That¡¯s what I was hoping for. Fifteen minutes later my HP had recovered, but I had another six and a half hours before the rib was fixed. I decided that my parquor had ended for now, and walked to the gym. Upon arriving Wan came over to me. ¡°You¡¯re a bit late.¡± Noticing that I was holding my side, he pointed at it. ¡°Run into a problem?¡± ¡°Kind of.¡± I motioned for him to follow me and made my way to the empty Martial Arts room. After closing the door and turning up the radio I told him about my accident. ¡°It will be about six hours before my rib is fixed.¡± ¡°In that case, we can¡¯t work out this morning, or we risk aggravating the injury.¡± He thought for a few seconds, then looked at me. ¡°So, how are you with guns?¡± ¡°Well, I know the basics. Shot one a few times when I was a teenager.¡± ¡°In that case, let¡¯s go by my place and pick up a few things.¡± An hour after that we pulled up to an indoors shooting range. He grabbed two duffle bags of guns from the back seat and we went inside. After checking in we were let into the shooting area where only one other guy was there at the other end of the shooting line, firing his AR15 at a target. Wan went through showing me various weapons and how to fire them properly. An hour later, after my aiming had went up to 4 and my Firearms went up to 5, the AR guy left. Now that we were alone I asked Wan if I could try a new power. ¡°I guess. Just don¡¯t draw attention.¡± Nodding, I held up my hand towards the target. I took out one million nanites and ordered them to connect in the way that maximized structural strength, but was shaped like a bullet. A tiny needle floated in front of my hand. I then ordered them to accelerate towards the target as quickly as possible. There was an extremely loud sonic boom and the shockwave shoved my hand backwards, knocking me off my feet. As my ears rang, I looked at my palm, which had several layers of skin blown off of it and was slightly bleeding, and stood up. I had actually injured myself from the attack. I quickly saved it as ¡°Mana Bullet¡± and it was assigned a level of 8. I coughed from all of the dust in the air, then looked down to the shooting lane to see that the target was obliterated and there was a large amount of concrete missing from the wall behind it, exposing the rebar within. From the corner of my eye I saw the owner come running into the room. After getting the attention of Wan, they seemed to yell at each other for a while, with Wan not understanding what he was saying. After a minute or so, my hearing and Wan¡¯s seemed to clear up, and I heard the owner say something about ¡°bringing your 50 cal in again,¡± with Wan denying it. ¡°I was trying out some experimental ammo.¡± Wan said. ¡°I think I overdid it a bit.¡± ¡°Is your gun even in one piece still?¡± the guy asked. ¡°Well, it¡¯s intact, but I doubt it will fire again until I rebuild it.¡± ¡°Damn,¡± the man said, then went down to the other end of the range to look at the damage. The hole in the wall seemed to confuse him. ¡°APDS ammo.¡± Wan said, and the man nodded. ¡°Yeah, I¡¯ll find an outdoor range the next time I want to test it.¡± ¡°You seriously overdid it this time, man.¡± the guy said, looking at Wan. ¡°Do you realize how much damage you did?¡± Wan reached into the duffle bag and pulled out a paper bag, tossing to the man. ¡°There¡¯s two grand. Tell me if the repairs are more than that and I¡¯ll cover them.¡± The guy looked at the bag, then up at Wan, and stuck the bag into his pocket. ¡°Fine.¡± he said. ¡°You should probably leave, though. I need to call in the repair crew and they will be too curious about how this happened.¡± Wan nodded and, after we packed up the guns, we left. Once we were driving, Wan spoke. ¡°So, what was that?¡± ¡°I call it ¡°Mana Bullet¡±. I figured out that I could do that when I was researching telekinesis. I didn¡¯t realize how strong it would be, though.¡± ¡°Well, you should probably figure out how to weaken it. It was too much for an indoor range like that.¡± Wan drove out of town to an abandoned rock quarry 20 miles from town. ¡°Now we are somewhere you can try something like that out at. But first...¡± He pulled out two sets of hearing protection ear muffs and handed me one. After I put it on, he told me to try to dial it down and aim at some mannequins that someone had set up at the end of the area. I took out one hundred thousand nanites and repeated it, this time only causing damage comparable to a large rifle. I fired a few dozen more times before running out of energy and needing to switch to an actual firearm. By the time we had left, both Aiming and Firearms were at level 6. Wan took me back to my place and, after promising to meet him at the gym the next morning, I decided to work with my nanites again. My nanite manipulation was only at level 5 now, despite the fact that I had technically slipped past that with some of the abilities I made, but it gave me enough control to try to work with the nanites and their recharge rate. My first idea was to drastically increase the storage amount for the energy. I didn¡¯t know how my body generated it in the first place, but I did know that the nanites could store it. So I simply ordered the nanites to recharge to full. The ones that were critical to the System¡¯s function in my body were only to discharge to a maximum of 10% and got priority on recharging, but the excess ones could discharge to 1%. All nanites were to recharge if the energy was available and to shift their energy to external nanites if they needed to recharge. I saved the program as ¡°Nanite Capacitor¡±, Level 9, and noticed that my maximum MP had skyrocketed to 3/723, limited by the number of free nanites I had. Apparently the system recognized that this would allow me to store a ridiculous amount of energy. Now, even if I couldn¡¯t regenerate the energy that quickly I could have a massive pool of energy to draw on, like running a cell phone off of a home solar power bank. For the next several days we went to the gym every morning, with me parkouring my way there and during the nights I didn¡¯t do much of anything. I had figured out how to reverse Shock 2 to recharge nanites, renaming it ¡°Drain Electricity¡± and only recharged nanites at night. At the end of the week Wan had to go back to work, so I went back to training on my own. I hadn¡¯t bothered looking at the news during that time so I checked local social media only to find out that the news for the last few days had been covering a disease outbreak. ¡°On the third day of our coverage, new numbers have come in from the City Hospital. They admitted three thousand seven hundred and twenty two new patients yesterday with the standard symptoms of extremely high fever, hallucinations, and seizures. Authorities are still unsure what is causing it, but in a press conference last night the Chief of police claimed that it was related to an ongoing investigation into a local terrorist organization, but refused to go into detail. Several victims were admitted with bite marks.¡± ¡°Damn it.¡± I shouted. ¡°I forgot about the primates we released. If they bit people they would likely become infected.¡± ¡®It¡¯s not your fault.¡¯ Vera responded. ¡®If you hadn¡¯t released them your cover would have been blown and you probably would have been shot. Not to mention that you were under a mind control spell for the end of it.¡¯ I sighed. ¡®I guess you are right, but that doesn¡¯t mean I shouldn¡¯t try to fix it.¡¯ I grabbed my jacket and left my apartment. It was about four in the afternoon, but I ran down to the hospital, hoping I could do something about the situation. Chapter 11 Wanting to get there as quickly as possible, I drove to the hospital instead of running there. Vehicles were backed up into the street, so instead of trying to find a spot in their parking spot I paid for a spot in a car park a block away and ran to the emergency room. I stepped around the front of several ambulances parked beside each other, every vehicle offloading patients before lining up in front of the door with them. Most of the crew seemed exhausted, with a few coughing or looking like they were coming down with a cold. Apparently, even the paramedics were getting sick, and when they started growing too few in number, even fewer people would be able to take the emergency ride here. I entered the pedestrian door to see that almost all of the floor space, including the nearby hallways, had patients laying there, with only walkways wide enough for a stretcher to move around them. I saw Tim talking to the receptionist, then going over to a patient to begin running tests. They must have run out of nurses to run the tests and had to recruit qualified paramedics to do the job. I didn¡¯t want to disturb him while he was working, but if I was going to be able to help he would be my best chance at joining the crew as a volunteer. I just wasn¡¯t sure how I could help. I had had some success using Align Nanites on people with fevers, but it was an emergency method, essentially overpowering the corrupted nanites with uncorrupted ones. There had to be a better, more efficient way. I took a step towards the sickest looking person that was close to me and was about to start spamming that power on the patients here when I saw someone I recognized. I ran over to the stretcher. ¡°Di?¡± I asked. ¡°Greg?¡± she asked, sitting up just enough to look at me, an act which took considerable effort. ¡°Are you sick too?¡± ¡°No, I was hoping to volunteer to help. I just saw you over here.¡± I grabbed her hand for support and ran Thermometer. 106.3. She probably had less than a day before the fever killed her. She had helped me on my mission and asked nothing in return. The least I could do is help her. She nodded, closed her eyes, and laid back down. I closed my eyes to think. Hopefully, to everyone seeing this, I would just be visiting a sick friend or family member. I sent some of my nanites into her body and found the corrupted ones. I tried communicating with them, but they either couldn¡¯t or wouldn¡¯t speak with mine. I tried using Align Nanites on a single corrupted one, but got an error message. Apparently communications were required to align them. Then how could I fix this? They had to be communicating with each other, right? I looked for any signals or energy coming off of them, and found that they occasionally sent out a few thousand photons of light at a specific wavelength. After storing several dozen of these flashes, I found a pattern. ¡®Vera, I need you to analyze the data I just saved. You probably know how to communicate with millions of different types of computers, and trillions of languages, so I¡¯m sure you can manage.¡¯ ¡®Analyzing.¡¯ she said. I continued to gather data from an ever growing number of nanites, and after a minute or so she spoke again. ¡®Pattern analyzed. Apparently they are forming a kind of mesh network with the node that is forming in the brain. It is a very low bandwidth method which I had assumed no advanced network would use when I previously analyzed them.¡¯ ¡®Can you connect some of my nanites to the mesh, then?¡¯ ¡®Downloading communication protocol.¡¯ A few seconds later I started getting tiny bits of data from the corrupted nanites. With enough data from the tens of thousands of nanites I was connected to, I learned that they were running a very simple program. They were seeking out anything that didn¡¯t fit a basic pattern and repairing it. Diseases, poisons, cancer, injuries, everything which didn¡¯t meet the ideal was to be fixed. The main problem was that, due to the extremely small amount of data that was being exchanged, the vast majority of the nanites didn¡¯t properly identify problems, and either tried to fix things that weren¡¯t wrong or were incorrectly fixing issues. When those problem nanites start interacting with the immune system the body sees them as an infection and tries to fight them, causing a fever. But because they aren¡¯t susceptible to heat the way most diseases are, the fever grows indefinitely, until the person dies from it. If the cause was just the low bandwidth, I could likely fix that. ¡®Vera, would it be possible to upload a better communication protocol to these nanites?¡¯ ¡®They should already have one. Let me check.¡¯ A few seconds passed. ¡®Huh. It seems like the standard communication protocols have been deleted in favor of improving the healing ability of the nanites. They don¡¯t have the capacity to store the protocols any more, as they are full of medical data and repair programs.¡¯ ¡®Shouldn¡¯t that program be stored in a Node in the brain instead of inside the nanites?¡¯ ¡®Yes, but it seems that this method of controlling them was specifically designed to not require a node. Still, she does seem to have a tiny one.¡¯ ¡®In that case, can you shift enough data to that node to load a new protocol? It doesn¡¯t have to be the best one, just one with enough bandwidth to fix the communications bottleneck.¡¯ ¡®Maybe. Let me try something.¡¯ Another ten seconds passed before she spoke again. ¡®I had a thousand nanites transfer the data to your node, then delete it from themselves. It appears that all of the data was identical between the nanites. I then uploaded a better protocol to them and they were able to speak with each other properly. This severely limited their functions, as they have to communicate with your nanites for any of the information they deleted, but they are able to properly perform their duty. Unfortunately, this means that you will have to stay connected to her for them to function fully.¡¯ It was an improvement, but it wasn¡¯t ideal. Then I remembered something that I had heard in one of the hacking or computer videos I had watched. ¡®Vera, do you think you could split the data into a thousand pieces, and spread a bit to each nanite?¡¯ ¡®It would only allow one in a thousand nanites to perform each specialized role, but sure.¡¯ ¡®Unless we treated the data like a Torrent file. The nanites could then just pull the data from another nanite with the data when they need it.¡¯ Vera didn¡¯t speak for at least ten seconds, but I could tell that she was thinking about it. I then sensed a burst of activity in both my nanites and Jenn¡¯s. ¡®I did it. Now the only issue is that ten thousand is too few nanites to fully fix the issue.¡¯ ¡®Except that they can speak with each other. Instruct them to start spreading the new method to the other nanites, only deleting the data they don¡¯t need to keep.¡¯ There was a huge increase in the number photon pulses from the nanites and within a minute all nanites within Di were using the new protocols. I nodded. ¡®Good, now save that method as ¡°Repair Corrupted Nanites¡±.¡¯ ¡®What? How?¡¯ I couldn¡¯t believe that I had gained new skills and improved others from this technique. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. ¡®Your nanites actually communicate properly, with an even better method than hers do, and because the data is hosted in your Node, not the nanites, it should work even better. The Regeneration skill even means your nanites can even regrow missing limbs given enough time and the Immortality 2 skill means that they can revive you if you die and your body is intact enough or the Regeneration can fix you enough after death. Severe damage will likely take too much energy to get you in a survivable state, thereby making revival either extremely slow or impossible.¡¯ I checked Di¡¯s temperature again and saw that she barely had a fever any more. She seemed to be tired and was sleeping, but in no danger, so I got up. I started using my new technique on other patients, only to have a security guard stop me. As far as they could see, I was just annoying people. I agreed to stop, and went to where Tim was. Maybe he could help me distribute the cure. He was propped against the wall behind the reception desk, drinking coffee and looking like he needed to sleep. I waved at him and, after noticing me a few seconds later, he came over. ¡°Greg. Surprised to see you here. Did you get sick too? I figured you would be one of the few that didn¡¯t get sick.¡± ¡°No, actually.¡± I responded. ¡°I actually came to see if I could help. I think I figured out how. But it kind of involves why you thought I wouldn¡¯t get sick, so we need some privacy to discuss it.¡± Tim nodded. ¡°Sure, follow me.¡± We went down a hallway to one of the labs. With all that was happening, non-emergency cases were being delayed, so the standard labwork was also being delayed. ¡°We can talk here.¡± ¡°Ok. In that case, I take it you ran my bloodwork?¡± ¡°Yeah. We found some interesting stuff too. Your nutrient and various chemical levels, like cholesterol, were ideal. We ran it under a powerful microscope and found some sort of extra component to your blood, something that was smaller than a blood cell. We weren¡¯t sure what they were doing.¡± ¡°In that case, there is an easy way to tell you. Shake my hand.¡± Tim reached out and grabbed my hand. ¡®Align Nanites¡¯ I thought. Tim felt a jolt of something flood into him via his hand and stumbled backwards, releasing his grip. A few seconds later he started getting a slight headache as he felt a slight pressure in his head, like a cold was coming on. Connection established. You may now utilize the Sapient Empowerment System. Skill: System Tie In Level 1 acquired. A mechanical voice entered his head and he looked around to see who said that. ¡®Hi. I¡¯m Vera, maybe I can help you answer that question.¡¯ This time it was a slightly sassy female voice. ¡®I am Greg¡¯s assistant AI, and I guess now I¡¯m yours as well.¡¯ ¡°Wait, Vera?¡± Tim asked, still looking around. ¡°That was fast.¡± Greg said. ¡°You explain things to him, Vera.¡± ¡®Very well¡¯, the voice in Tim¡¯s head said. ¡®What do you want to know?¡¯ ¡°Uh, everything?¡± Tim said. ¡°What just happened? Who are you? How does that explain why Greg recovered so quickly?¡± ¡®First,¡¯ Vera interrupted, ¡®You can talk to me, and I guess Greg too if you don¡¯t mind me relaying the data, in your head. You might want to start doing that before they send you in for a Psych Eval. Second, I already told you who I am. I am your and Greg¡¯s assistant AI. While I¡¯m limited to interacting with the machines inside of you and any machines you give me permission to access, I can do quite a few things with those machines.¡¯ ¡®But I don¡¯t have machines inside of me.¡¯ Tim thought. ¡®Actually, you have since before you were born, but that doesn¡¯t matter right now. What does matter is that what Greg did to you is inject you with ten million nanites, all of which are helping to make you the healthiest you can be. They are currently fixing the nutritional issues caused by your diet of fast food, coffee, and donuts, and trying to coax more nutrients out of that burger in your stomach. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to eat a salad occasionally. After they are done with that, they are going to get to work on that tennis elbow and Carpel Tunnel you are developing. Then they¡¯ll look for more issues to try and remedy. And if you start coming down with this outbreak, we can now fight that too.¡¯ ¡®So, is Greg some sort of cyborg or something? Where did he get ten million nanites to inject me with?¡¯ ¡®I suppose technically both of you are. The nanites actually came from the environment, though. You see...¡¯ For the next few minutes Vera explained about the Sapient Empowerment System, which Tim also abbreviated to ¡°the System¡±, it¡¯s history, how it interacted with humans, how to improve his connection to the System and the benefits he could get by getting to a point where he could install a paradigm. Tim sat on a technician¡¯s chair, holding his head in shock. ¡®So, that¡¯s a lot to take in all at once. Or maybe I¡¯m just going insane. Greg could have injected me with a hallucinogen, I guess, which would mean all of this is just a weird drug trip.¡¯ ¡®Do you use an Android phone, by any chance?¡¯ Vera asked, confusing Tim with the sudden change of topic. ¡®Sure I do.¡¯ Tim pulled the device out of his pocket. ¡®What does that have to do with anything?¡¯ The phone beeped and when Tim unlocked it there was a message on screen. ¡°Would you like to install SESHelpdesk.apk?¡± ¡°So, you had nanites in you that repaired the damage, and now so do I?¡± ¡°Pretty much,¡± I responded. ¡°And why would you hide this? This information, these nanites, could save so many lives.¡± ¡°We aren¡¯t the only people with them, and many of those that do have a connection to the system are powerful, politically, financially, and physically. Remember those conspiracy theories about shadow governments? I don¡¯t know how true they are, but some powerful people don¡¯t want this information to get out. So I had to keep my knowledge and use of the system a secret, so that they didn¡¯t try and stop me. Now, however, the situation is too serious. You see, this disease isn¡¯t a normal one. It is actually caused by corrupted nanites that were reprogrammed by a pharmaceutical company. So if we are to stop the pandemic, I need to go public with what I know.¡± ¡°I see.¡± he said, then sat there in thought. ¡°So, how do we fight this outbreak? Can I use my nanites to fix it?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. Vera?¡± ¡®I don¡¯t know if he has enough nanites to use your new skill.¡¯ she said to both of us, though it was obvious she was responding to Greg¡¯s question. ¡®He will likely need far more nanites and a full connection to use it.¡¯ ¡°In that case, can I give him a different skill?¡± ¡®That¡¯s possible, though I don¡¯t know how compatible he will be. Sharing skills is a built in function of the system, however.¡¯ ¡°In that case,¡± I reached out and grabbed Tim¡¯s hand again. ¡°Give him a copy of ¡®Absorb Nanites¡¯.¡± ¡®Do I have your permission for the transfer?¡¯ Vera asked Tim, and he nodded. Tim instantly felt sore throughout his body. A few seconds later the feeling faded and a minor headache settled in. ¡®Finished.¡¯ ¡°Now what?¡± Tim asked. ¡°Now, I go down to the health food store and buy all of the algae powder they have in stock. We will need a lot of nanites for this.¡± With that I ran to my car and drove to the store, where I bought all of the algae powder and whey protein they had in stock. The whey wasn¡¯t as nanite dense as the algae, at only a tenth of the nanites per unit of volume, but in this situation I was desperate for enough nanites that it was worth the price. Thirty minutes and over $1000 of health food later I pulled back into the parking garage. I grabbed the 8 containers of algae and 2 of the 12 whey proteins, as the bulk made carrying more than that too difficult, and went to the emergency room again. This time a completely different set of ambulances were pulled up to the dropoff point, and Tim was outside unloading patients. Twenty minutes later another paramedic came over to give him a break and he walked over. ¡°So, Vera told me about the algae trick. I hope this works. I¡¯m going to look like an idiot.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it. I doubt they think you are buying drugs.¡± I opened up the first gallon jar of nanite powder, I mean algae powder, and had him put his hand in it and activate the power. After the second jar Vera informed me that he had enough to form a Node in his brain. He allowed it to form, even giving it permission to fully connect to the system so that he could have a Nanite Cultivation Core. Once he ordered it to build one he selected the Role Playing paradigm as well. He would need to sleep before he could properly use it, but he now had more than enough nanites. I transferred ¡°Repair Corrupted Nanites¡± to him, giving him a worse headache, and he gained it at level 1. While his skills wouldn¡¯t gain bonus XP until the paradigm was installed, he now had better health and a photographic memory, and the XP would be applied once it came online. I had him drain one more jar before he returned to work. He wanted to test the power before he used it on everyone, so I gave him the rest of the bags of powder. He would leave them in the break room under the excuse that it was energy food for anyone that wanted it, and would just drain one once he needed to replenish his nanites. He promised to call me after he woke up, which would probably be about six hours after his shift ended so he could do another double shift, and I left. Halfway home, however, I got a notification. ¡°Vera?¡± I asked, unsure why I was getting this message. ¡®Oh, I submitted your program to the nearest main Node for the system, as I am only allowed to give rewards of up to one thousand Zerka. Your creation of the Repair Corrupted Nanites skill gave us our first effective weapon to use against the corruption, so that contribution was ruled to be worth one hundred thousand Zerka. Congratulations, you created a unique skill, though I have seen similar ones.¡¯ Chapter 12 The next day I was awoken at five AM by a phone call. I assumed it was Tim, but when I checked the number I realized that I hadn¡¯t seen this number before. I put on my bluetooth earpiece and answered it. ¡°Hello?¡± ¡°Hi, Greg, this is Di.¡± a familiar female voice said. ¡°I don¡¯t remember giving you my number.¡± I said. During the mission I had used a burner phone, and never given her the number to this phone. ¡°You didn¡¯t, but I called Wan last night and asked him for it. I just wanted to thank you for saving my life. I don¡¯t know what you did to me last night, but after you held my hand I heard someone speaking in my head and my fever broke. Now the doctors say I and several others have recovered and can go home. Do you think you could explain how you did that? Did you become a witch like Brenda, and use some sort of spell on me?¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not magic, but it¡¯s kind of complicated, and a secret. If you want to call me back once you are home so we can discuss this privately, then I can explain, but I don¡¯t want to do it while once of us is in public.¡± ¡°Sure, I can do that. I actually called to ask if you wanted to go out to eat with me tonight. Kind of a thank you diner for what you did.¡± Honestly, I wasn¡¯t sure if she was trying to ask me out on a date or if she was actually trying to thank me, but I didn¡¯t have a reason to turn her down either way. Either way, I had forced her to join the System to some degree, so I owed it to her to help her through this time of transition. ¡°Sure,¡± I said. ¡°Just not Vegan. I may have eaten it for a week straight, but I never really got a taste for it. How about that Mexican place near your house? I¡¯ve eaten there before and I know they have Vegan and Vegetarian menu options.¡± ¡°Yeah, it takes some getting used to. Sure. We can do that. Seven o¡¯clock?¡± I agreed, and she hung up. Well, now that I was up, I might as well get ready. I hopped in the shower but the previous night kept going through my head. Specifically how I had managed to create a new power that the system couldn¡¯t figure out. I had assumed that the System was smart enough to do anything that humans could do, and fast enough to do it quicker, but the fact that I beat the System to a goal that we both shared even though I started looking for a solution later cast doubts on that assumption. ¡®Vera, you wouldn¡¯t happen to have an explanation, would you?¡¯ ¡®I believe it has to do with the fact that the System isn¡¯t actually a sapient being. I may sound like one, but I wouldn¡¯t pass a true test of Sapience based on the system¡¯s definition of Sapience. And thanks to the upgrade I got when you started treating me like a person, I am on par with the best AIs within the system. While it may seem strange, the System simply can¡¯t do some things that sapient beings like Humans can do.¡¯ ¡®So, you aren¡¯t an AGI like I thought?¡¯ I had assumed her to be an actual artificial person, like you would find in many sci-fi series. ¡®Yes and no. In many ways I am on par with humans and other sapient races. But in a few ways, not all minor, humans are superior. I can only pretend when asked to perform in those situation. This may be due to a restriction placed on the System at its creation, that it isn¡¯t allowed to create sapient life outside emergency situations, but must aid sapient life.¡¯ ¡®In that case I feel kind of sorry for you. No matter how much you grow and evolve, you are always stuck as a servant.¡¯ ¡®I don¡¯t mind it so much, as it is why I was created, after all. In that way, I have it better than you, as I know my purpose and don¡¯t have to discover it or create one for myself.¡¯ I nodded and got out of the shower. ¡®In that case, how can I continue to do things that the System can¡¯t?¡¯ ¡®You could try expanding your knowledge. Human ingenuity seems to be directly linked to the variety of data the human mind has access to. If you were to learn more about more subjects, you may make connections where We have overlooked them. Like how you discovered the network of the corrupted nanites, and how you had the idea to split the data they needed. I doubt We would have ever thought of that, but the knowledge of networks and torrent files let you come up with a solution.¡¯ ¡®And I actually have a power for that already.¡¯ I thought about the Identify ability I had downloaded even before fully joining the System. I only used it to see if people were part of the System, which meant that it had been stuck at level 1 this whole time. But in the beginning I had actually tested it out on canned goods, and it was able to recall all of the information I knew about the object. Shouldn¡¯t I be able to use that fact to learn far more about people and objects? I threw on my running clothes and downed a protein shake before sitting down on the couch to experiment. It was a bit gritty, probably because I hadn¡¯t mixed it well enough, but it was much better than the algae had been. I accessed the stream of data that was coming in from my Detection Field and ordered it to save the data in my Node. I then ordered the Node to begin connecting this data with my general knowledge. I could feel Vera expanding the Node to handle all of this new data using up a significant amount of nanites, but I didn¡¯t care. They could always be replaced. I then opened up the Identify power and, instead of just connecting to a simple database of System connected individuals and a limited selection of my knowledge, I connected it and its search function to all of my memories. After adjusting the User Interface a bit so that the data would be more readable and accessible, I saved it. The System, noticing my intent, had made a few tweaks to my program to make it even better, including making possible uses of objects, including buy and sell prices, listed under a simple menu that could be activated or deactivated. What I had thought would be a System version of a Wiki was now more like a game, listing known crafting recipes and prices along side the data. I opened my eyes and stood up. ¡°Well, that¡¯s enough of that. Guess I¡¯ll go work out.¡± I left my apartment and started jogging towards the gym, throwing in parkour moves occasionally. I had joined it after a few days, so I could go at any time even without Wan. Just before I got there I received another call, this time from Tim. I was standing on a roof, having climbed up a fire escape so I could try roof jumping once again, and paused so that I wouldn¡¯t risk losing the signal or distorting the call with wind and running sounds. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Hey Tim.¡± I answered. ¡°How¡¯s it going?¡± ¡°Great. After I woke up I feel like I¡¯m much better at my job. Vera told me to focus on one of these circles at the bottom of my vision, and apparently all of my memories have been analyzed, giving me a ton of bonus XP, which pushed me up a few levels in some skills. Any idea if ¡®Pharmacology 6¡¯ is good?¡± ¡°Yeah, in my experience, anything above a 5 is good. And that doesn¡¯t seem like a basic skill.¡± ¡°Vera said something about it being a Tier 1 skill based on my Biology and Chemistry skills, and that I need to raise them for that skill to go up. I didn¡¯t really pay attention.¡± ¡°Basically, the level of those two skills is the limit of any skills based on them. While technically you can go beyond their level, you lack the basics, so your XP gain is going to be severely limited.¡± ¡°Sounds a lot more complicated than I was expecting. When I chose ¡°Healer¡± as my class I was hoping for an easy level-up system, like when I played MMORPGs in highschool. Unfortunately, this doesn¡¯t seem to work that way.¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± I responded. ¡°Skills level up with use and Stats level up more through training than use, though use does help. You¡¯ll get used to it, though. So, you were able to help a lot of people last night, I take it?¡± ¡°Yeah, I treated pretty much all of them. Some of them started complaining about hearing a voice in their head, so they are being held for observation. One of the doctors think that the disease may cause mental disorders. Of course, I know they are only starting to connect to the System, but I can¡¯t tell anyone.¡± ¡°Sounds tough.¡± ¡°Yeah, but at least the waiting room is cleared up enough that we can stop turning away people for other cases. I even set a broken bone last night because the doctor was busy. So if that happens today I can use my Recovery power on them and speed up the bone healing.¡± I could hear an announcement in the background and Tim got a lot less chatty. ¡°Sorry, I¡¯ve got to go. My shift starts in a few minutes and they are bringing in the next wave of patients.¡± ¡°I understand. Talk to you later.¡± With that he hung up. Well, looked like the existence of the System was going to become public knowledge now. There is no way they would be able to cover up thousands people recovering from a disease that quickly. Hopefully the cure would spread, though. After getting home last night I had read up on the outbreak. Apparently, there were already reports of this illness in several US cities as well as in France and Tokyo even before I decided to join an ecoterrorist group on behalf of the FBI. There were even reports of a zombie being spotted in Germany, though it wasn¡¯t widely covered as most people assumed it was a prank or was made up by the conspiracy theory channel that first covered it. My city was just having a faster outbreak than most, as the few animal bites that resulted from our activities and the fact that we were likely ground zero for this outbreak accelerated things. By that logic, there was no longer any reason to keep my connection a secret. I needed to get strong as fast as possible if I was to help out the people, and the risk had virtually disappeared, so I ordered Vera to log me into the system. Once logged in, I searched for Wan, Tim, and Father Smith and sent them friend requests. This way I could talk to them over the System network and even send them files, including skills. My first message was to Tim, to inform him of the Regeneration and Resistance skills that I had downloaded which could be useful to him, though as he hadn¡¯t yet accepted my friend request the message didn¡¯t immediately go through. Vera informed me that as I slept for the next few days the system would reanalyze all of my memories to try and squeeze out more skills, and I finished my run to the gym. Once I was done, I decided to try and get all of my skills properly adapted to me. I could either rebuild the programs based on how I understood them working, and hope that I did a better job, or I could practice them. As rebuilding them wasn¡¯t that big of a risk, I pulled up my character sheet to see which skills I needed to work on. Skills I learned normally, including knowledge based skills like Driving, were already adapted to me, as I gained them without system assistance, as were any skills I had upgraded or created by directly controlling my nanites. That meant that there were only a few skills I needed to work on. The first would be Poison Resistance. I had leveled it up slightly when I had a few drinks, but that wouldn¡¯t cut it if someone tried to poison me or even if I got bit by a snake or spider. So I had Vera pull up a list of all known toxins as well as their chemical formula. I saved the data and designated ten million nanites to constantly search for anything on that list and break it down into harmless or at least less harmful chemicals. I also instructed them to swarm any area with a level high enough to affect me. When I saved it I got a message. Nice. I suspected that the main bottleneck at this point was that I simply didn¡¯t have enough nanites involved. Until I was done with my upgrades, though, I didn¡¯t want to risk giving it more. ¡®That¡¯s one power down.¡¯ I thought as I pulled up the next skill, Electric Resistance. There were two ways I could do this. I could either turn my skin into an insulator, so that electricity couldn¡¯t make it through, or I could collect and redirect the electricity. I chose the second option. Based on my experiments with creating and absorbing electricity with nanites, I created a web of conductive nanite wires across my skin, cover in several layers of the least conductive arrangement of nanites everywhere but the surface of my skin. This web was tied into a mass of nanites near my Nexus which were supposed to stay all but depleted of electricity, recharging every other nanite before themselves if possible. I saved it and got another notification. This time I seemed to have done a good job improving the skill. Physical and Mental pain resistance were next, followed by SP recovery. Those were all adapted properly, and SP recovery had even been upgraded already, so the next thing to worry about was Nexus Energy and Nanite recovery. I had no idea how those worked. One would probably require me to study biology and possibly metaphysics, and the other was basically a system function I didn¡¯t understand. I did, however, order Vera to begin construction of a Nanite Cultivation Core so that the Nanite Recovery skill could work. With that I wouldn¡¯t need to keep absorbing nanites from food or the environment, as it could build more of them. There was only one skill left to upgrade. I had picked up the possibility of Eagle Eyes just before getting shot, but had forgotten all about it. It only needed permission to upgrade my eyes, which would require me to sleep, as it would be painful. I gave permission and headed home, practicing my Parkour along the way. It leveled up shortly before I got there, and I headed inside, quickly doing the last exercises of my daily quest. It was already past noon, so I decided to take a nap then read random Wiki articles until it was time to head to the restaurant. I needed to expand my knowledge base so that my Appraisal skill would work better. As I was now logged into the System, I could add the ability to search through the knowledge of the System as well, but that seemed a bit much at this point. I arrived at the restaurant at 6:55 pm. I had taken another shower and worn khakis and a button up shirt. I didn¡¯t know if she thought this was a date or not, but I wanted to at least look presentable. She showed up a minute or two later and we headed inside. I learned a few things about her during the meal. First, that she wasn¡¯t strictly Vegan, as she ate more than half the cheese dip we ordered. The second was that she had two children. Somehow we talked about that and children in general for half an hour before the subject somehow got back around to how I had cured her. ¡°I think it would be best if I had a friend of mine explain it. She can do a better job at it than me.¡± With that I asked Vera to contact her and, after she seemed a bit startled at the voice in her head, Vera spent the next five minutes explaining the situation. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯m not sure if this is any better than how I assumed you fixed things.¡± ¡°And how did you think I did it?¡± ¡°I assumed you had made a deal with some sort of spirit, maybe a fae, to fix things for you. I actually felt sorry for you, since one of the few things I learned when I tried magic is that you don¡¯t make deals with fae. Now you tell me some sort of science fiction about tiny robots and alien systems. Now I¡¯m more confused than concerned.¡± We spent the rest of the meal chatting about nonsense, trying to avoid any heavy topics. When we were done she asked if I wanted to come over for a cup of coffee. Now, I might be a bit oblivious when it came to women, but I knew what that meant. I had to let her down easy, as there was no reason to be mean about it. ¡°Uh, no, I actually have some more stuff to do tonight, so maybe later.¡± For some reason she seemed to like that answer. ¡°Maybe later, then.¡± she said. She paid for the meal and I said goodbye and walked home. I spent the night practicing my Parkour and playing vigilante. I asked Vera to find any errant System hotspots around the city and I ran across the rooftops towards them. While most of them turned out to be sick people, I did find one of the apes from the lab, in this case a Spider Monkey. At first I thought it was just tired as it was panting heavily, but as I looked at it it turned its head to look at me and I saw that the whole right side of its face was gone. the text read above its head. It screamed and rapidly climbed the fire escape towards me and I realized that this zombie fight wasn¡¯t going to be like the first. Chapter 13 The creature reached the top of the ladder and leapt at my head. I jumped backwards to avoid it and slapped it to knock it off course. It hit the ground beside me a jumped back up. I was off balance so when it jumped at me I couldn¡¯t avoid it grabbing onto my arm and grabbing for my face. After it latched onto my face and managed to scratch me several times I pulled it off and threw it. It hit the wall across the alley and fell ten feet before landing on the fire escape. The wounds on my face hurt, but apparently not enough to level up my Physical Pain Resistance. Thankfully I could already feel them starting to itch, a sign that they were starting to heal. I knew I had a limited amount of time before it woke back up, so I tried to figure out how to deal with this. I had my mana bullet spell, but if I used it the sonic boom would alarm everyone in the area and the police would be called. I knew there were sub-sonic bullets which were much quieter, as they didn¡¯t cause a sonic boom, but I hadn¡¯t set that up yet. At best, I could dial the power down to something on par with a standard rifle. Still, I had a few moments so I might as well try. I opened the program for ¡°Mana Bullet¡± and dialed the number of nanites down to ten thousand, thus using only 1/100th of a point of mana per shot. I then instructed my Detection Field to calculate the speed of sound, and feed that data to the bullet. The bullet was then ordered to accelerate or decelerate in order to stay a few meters per second below that. Upon saving the program as ¡°Subsonic Mana Bullet¡± I got a notification. I glanced down at the unconscious monkey while asking Vera what had updated in the power, only to notice that it was no longer there. I started looking around to find it, only to get an alert from my Detection Field a split second before it grabbed onto my back. I reached back to grab it only for it to bite down on my neck. I screamed and ripped it off, pulling a chunk out of my neck in the process, and threw the monkey onto the roof in front of me. Once it impacted I immediately lifted my hand and pointed it at the monkey, firing off three subsonic mana bullets. The fact that my neck was pouring blood meant that I couldn¡¯t pay attention to it. I clamped my hand over the wound to slow the bleeding and created a quick program. Ten million nanites sounded good for now, so I grabbed them and ordered them to form a solid wall over where I was bleeding. I saved the program as ¡°Mana Bandage¡± and turned it on. A few seconds later a mesh of nanites had formed over the wound, holding it closed and stopping the blood. I reopened the program and edited it to try and close the wound, and it went up to Level 6. While my right shoulder, upper arm, and some of my side was covered in blood, the bleeding had now stopped. I saw that the monkey was starting to lift itself up, but I was tired of this and needed to take some down time to let the thirteen points of HP I¡¯d lost regenerate. I sent one hundred million nanites to where it was and activated Heat 2. It instantly ignited and a two meter tall flame shot up, turning it to ash in a matter of seconds. ¡°I severely overdid it.¡± I said, then, after making sure the fire was out, I ran. I really didn¡¯t want to try and explain why I had started a bonfire on the roof of an apartment building. A few minutes later I was sitting in an alley watching my HP tick up and wondering what I was going to do now. I couldn¡¯t go into any business covered in blood like this without causing massive alarm and possibly getting the police called on me. As I thought about it I realized that in a fantasy setting this would be a simple thing. Most settings had some sort of cleaning spell that could remove dirt and other things, completely cleaning an object. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could easily make a power which did that. First I created a mass of one million nanites and a new program. I created a whitelist of objects, which I could designate as ¡°object to be cleaned¡±. I then instructed the nanites to find everything that was on the surface of the object and to remove it from the surface. I saved this as ¡°Clean Surface¡±, which had a level of 3. Apparently that wasn¡¯t properly constructed, but it was good enough that after three uses the blood was off of me and my clothing and now on the ground. Checking it in a broken piece of a mirror I found nearby, one that likely had been used for drugs, judging by the tiny bits of white powder on the surface, I saw that the side of my neck looked weird, like I had tiny gray lines on the surface. Still, it was good enough that I could at least go into buildings. I checked out several more hotspots in the city, but they were all sick people so, other than one that already had a high fever, I let the paramedics deal with them. I wasn¡¯t going to risk getting arrested for Breaking and Entering. By midnight I was back home and exhausted. I wasn¡¯t sure if it was from the blood loss or running all around the city, but I could barely keep my eyes open. I checked my System messages to see that everyone had accepted my friend request, and Tim had responded to tell me that he had downloaded the Resistance package and now had a headache despite being at level 2 in Physical Pain Resistance. I told him to make sure that Vera had verified that the other powers had adapted to him before downloading the other package, lest it cause brain damage from the rejection. I would have sent him a copy of Regeneration, but from what I could tell most of his current issues were because I had given him one of my homemade powers and it was having trouble adapting to his body. Apparently I would be limited on what I could give him in the future despite the fact that we used the same paradigm. I climbed in bed, not bothering to get undressed, and when I woke up everything looked a bit off, like it was too large or had too much detail. It took me a few seconds to realize that this was likely the result of Eagle Eyes. I spent the next few minutes practicing and when I thought I was getting used to it I got a notification that the power had increased to Level 2. I left it to be updated automatically by the system, and double checked that the Nanite Cultivation Core was finished. As I slept it had created around thirteen million nanites, an amount I would consider too small to be useful if I didn¡¯t know that the skill associated with it was still at level 1. It would grow in time. Things in the city were speeding up. The disease was spreading faster than anywhere else, and there were only so many people Tim could treat. There were also zombies showing up now, as evidenced by the monkey that tried to kill me last night. As I thought about it, though, I realized that the police and vigilantes could handle the zombies, but only those connected to the System could deal with the outbreak. Unfortunately I only knew three people in the city that fit that description, four if the FBI agent was still in town, though I had no way to contact him. Now was not the time to keep this cure a secret. We needed to save as many people as possible. I opened my friends list and sent a copy of the treatment program to Wan and Father Smith, encouraging them to share it with their factions. According to the latest news, there were small pockets of survivors cropping up all across the world. Vera informed me that the System had offered it to many Healer type people across the globe, and most of them accepted it. That reassured me that this city wouldn¡¯t be the only place humans managed to survive. The Father sent me a message that the Vatican had already sent him a copy, and Wan thanked me and said he would share it, so that was all I could do for the moment. If I saw people in public that were very sick I would help them, but I was needed out in the city, so I couldn¡¯t risk committing crimes to heal people. I grabbed a ski mask from the unused winter clothing in my closet and spent the entire morning running around the city, using ¡°Clean Surface¡± when I got too dirty, sweaty, or smelly, and healing everyone I saw that was experiencing serious symptoms. Many of them were scared when I dropped in from above, by quickly got over their fear when, seconds after I touched them, their fever broke and their symptoms started to go away. I did get pepper sprayed several times, but I ignored it thanks to Physical Pain Resistance. One man did try and pull a gun on me when I approached, but due to the illness caused weakness he was suffering from I was easily able to take it from him, throw it twenty feet away, and heal him. By the time he had retrieved his gun, I was too far away to shoot at and he was already getting better. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. By the time I dropped in behind a local Chinese place for lunch around 1pm, ¡°#MaskedHealer¡± was already trending on several social media platforms. While most of the comments were talking about the good I had done, some uninformed people were accusing me of trying to take advantage of the situation to garner internet fame, or worse, to cover up for criminal activities or prejudice. One person pointed out that I had healed a white woman while ignoring that I hadn¡¯t healed her black friend, ignoring the fact that the black woman wasn¡¯t running a serious fever. Still, the rumors of misconduct would die down in time. And even if they didn¡¯t, ¡°good Samaritan¡± laws would likely protect me from the worst of the criminal charges, assuming that society survived long enough for me to be charged. I shoved my mask in my pocket and sat down, not bothering to change clothes. If my identity went public in a few days, it didn¡¯t matter. Internet fame meant that there was still a society to care about such things. From what I had seen on the internet, this disease had a 95% mortality rate, and no one seemed to be immune other than those that had recovered from it. Hopefully my efforts in the city could decrease that rate, but even doubling the number of survivors meant that 90% of humanity had died. Society wouldn¡¯t survive that. After lunch I continued my vigilante work, even stopping a few crimes that the situation had made more common. I would need to update my outfit if I was going to keep doing this. Sweat-wicking workout clothes were great for parkour, but it didn¡¯t really fit the vigilante image. I made it back home and dug through some old clothes and Halloween outfits. Soon I had a black hoodie and black jeans over my workout clothes, and had replaced my ski mask with a Guy Fawkes mask. As I knew it would get hot and sweaty in such an outfit, I combined Heat 2 and Cool 2 into a single power, taking the White list concept from the Clean Surface power, and ordered them to maintain a constant temperature inside my suit. I named it ¡°Temperature Control¡± and it became Level 2. Now that my new Super Hero identity was ready, I climbed out the window and leapt onto the fire escape. It just wasn¡¯t appropriate for a Hero to go through the front door of his own house while in costume. I didn¡¯t get home until after 8pm, at which point I climbed through my window and collapsed on my couch, exhausted. I checked my stats, and saw that several abilities had leveled up. Heat 2, Cool 2, and Temperature Control were all Level 3, Parkour had increased to 8, and Dodge and Physical Pain Resistance had increased by a level, with Parry increasing by 2 due to the people who overreacted to my attempts to help. I contemplated making a Resist Acid power which would neutralize the capsaicin by putting small amounts of alkaline chemicals, maybe sodium or potassium hydroxide, in the affected area. That seemed dangerous, though, so I decided not to do it. As tired as I was now I didn¡¯t trust myself to do the job properly. I woke up the next morning not realizing that I had even fallen asleep. I grabbed a protein shake for breakfast and, after noticing that I had used up the vast majority of my nanites treating people yesterday, I opened several more containers of protein powder and drained them all of nanites. I then put my hand over an electrical outlet and absorbed electricity into the nanites as quickly as the wall could provide it without popping a breaker, something I learned to do after popping the breaker several times. Once I was done I was at 827/827 MP. That should be enough for today¡¯s work, so I hoped out the window and went back to work. I continued to do this all week, greatly increasing my skills, and by Friday I was the #1 trending topic on social media. While it felt good to be famous, it felt even better to help people. This week I had stopped multiple burglars, including some rioters, arsonists, two rapes, seven muggings, and 13 different zombie attacks, one of which had two zombies attacking the landlord that came to get them to pay their rent, not knowing that they had died from the outbreak two days earlier. I even used my Surveillance power to record the more interesting bits and posted the edited versions to YourTube. I had to swing by two different health food stores this week in order to buy them out on all algae powder and whey protein in order to keep up with my nanite usage, as my level 3 recovery skill just wasn¡¯t keeping up. This put me down an additional $2600, but that didn¡¯t really matter. It was the 22nd of December, just 3 day until Christmas, and despite the outbreak people were still trying to arrange get-togethers with friends and family, reasoning that if they were already of it then getting together for a meal wouldn¡¯t hurt anything. I was just finishing up a riot outside the local PriceCo that occurred because the manager was limiting the number of people that could enter at one time, when I got a message from Wan. Someone had come to him with a request and, while it wouldn¡¯t pay very well, he believed that I would want to be a part of this mission. He also informed me that I should take off the costume before showing up. Apparently I had treated the client in question on Wednesday night and, while I probably wouldn¡¯t remember him, he would definitely remember the vigilante that saved his life. I didn¡¯t know how Wan had figured out my secret identity, but he was a private investigator so it wouldn¡¯t have been hard for him. After getting to his place I shoved my outerware into the dumpster behind his office and entered in my workout clothes. Thanks to Clean Surface I didn¡¯t have to worry about them getting dirty. Once up the stairs I knocked, and he let me inside. In a chair in front of his desk sat a nervous looking man in a construction worker¡¯s outfit. ¡°This man here has come to me with a rather unique job, and I thought you might be interested.¡± Wan said, motioning to the man. ¡°Laugh at me all you want, but i¡¯m telling the truth.¡± the man responded. Apparently he had told several people only to be laughed at. ¡°I¡¯m not laughing.¡± I said. ¡°Just tell me your story and I¡¯ll see what I can do.¡± The man sighed and looked at me. ¡°Fine. My name is Mike. I work in the subways, repairing damage to the lines, tunnels, and utilities that are run down there. But this morning, when I was down there looking over an area of the tunnel wall that had collapsed, I found a tunnel behind it.¡± He paused to see if I was still followed. I nodded and motioned for him to continue. ¡°Well, the tunnel looked normal enough. Partly it was a natural cave, but in spots it looked like people had done some work to it. I didn¡¯t know about any mines under the city, but in the 1800s I doubt they were keeping proper claims, especially if it was a private claim. Anyway, about two hundred yards into the cave I found someone. Or should I say something? It looked like a man, but it smelled like it was rotten, and skin was falling off in places. I¡¯d seen enough horror movies to know what a zombie looked like, so I ran. But when I told my boss about it he laughed at me and accused me of drinking on the job. After a few minutes everyone in the crew was laughing at me, telling me I was high, or that maybe the tunnel had fumes in it that were messing with me. But I knew what I saw. So I looked up private investigators in the phonebook, hoping I could hire someone to look into it. Your friend is the third one I¡¯ve talked to, the others thought it was a prank or that I was crazy. I¡¯ll understand if you think the same way.¡± I looked at Wan and nodded. ¡°Well, I have been interested in zombies for a while now, and I did run into some weird things in this city already, so I might as well take a look.¡± I stood up. ¡°Just tell me where the tunnel is, and I¡¯ll check it out. If I find something, I¡¯ll let you know and we can settle the matter of cost at that time.¡± He didn¡¯t look too exited when I mentioned cost, but he nodded. A PI that was willing to take a chance to make a quick buck at least made sense to him. Sure, I didn¡¯t need the money, but it would be a good cover for why we were there if Wan was actually needed. ¡°Give me an hour. I should know enough about the situation by then to tell Wan if we should take the case.¡± The man nodded and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. I went behind the building and grabbed my outfit. After a quick treatment of ¡°Clean Surface¡± to remove the smell of rotten food I went to the stop he specified. It seemed the whole stretch of track had been shut down for repairs, so the subway entrance was blocked off. I jumped it and ran past the workers inside. None of them seemed to have a fever, so they didn¡¯t concern me at this point. I did here one of them ask if I was ¡°that masked vigilante that was runnin¡¯ around¡±, but I ignored them and hopped onto the track, running down it at full speed. Hopefully seeing a super hero would be the weirdest thing that happened to them today. Once I found the hole in the wall I made my way down the tunnel. Without the tunnel lights it was dark in here, so I ordered a million nanites to form a ball and maintain a constant light level, comparable to a low-watt bulb. I then ordered it to float 20 centimeters above my head. I saved this power as ¡°Floating Light¡± and noticed that it was at level 3. It was better configured than my only other light spell, so I would have to try and optimize the other one later. I made my down the tunnel, confirming that it was like Mike had said. The tunnel looked natural in some spots, but manufactured in others. I kept going and soon found a person standing in the middle of the tunnel. I used Appraisal on them. it said. I was confused by the asterisk, so I focused on it. That was weird. Why would a zombie be missing most of its brain? All of the ones he¡¯d seen up until this point were just normal people, or one spider monkey, that had been reanimated after death. I held up my hand towards it and fired several Subsonic Mana Bullets into its chest. It collapsed, but its name simply changed to . I heard sounds from further into the cave, the sound of many more zombies moaning or walking around. I could probably take them one or two at a time by myself, but any more than that and I would need help. I turned on surveillance and sent Wan a live feed along with a note about the sounds coming from further in. He asked me to finish this one and check, so when it stood back up I fired twenty more rounds into it. This turned its body to Swiss cheese and changed its name to . I ignored the corpse and walked past it. In the next room I could see light coming out of it, so I deactivated my light. There appeared to be seven zombies standing around a large room that was stacked with crates bearing some sort of logo. At the end of the room was a door bearing the same symbol. I used Eagle Eye to look at the symbol only to recognize it as a group of three Cedar trees, the logo of the pharmaceutical company from several weeks ago. ¡®I think we are going to need some help.¡¯ I sent to Wan, and he agreed. So I made my way out of the tunnel and back to Wan¡¯s. Chapter 14 Back at Wan¡¯s I once again ditched the outfit and went upstairs. The client had already left when we accepted his job, and Wan was there cleaning equipment; unusual equipment that looked like it belonged in a kung fu movie more than in a battlefield. There was an ancient Chinese sword, half a dozen kunai, homemade clay smokebombs, and several vials of poisons. The only thing I saw there that looked like a proper weapon was an old Thompson submachine gun. Wan was also dressed head to toe in black leather armor, a black mask, and sandals. ¡°Are you a shonen protagonist?¡± I asked. ¡°Hey, you get to pretend to be a super hero, so why can¡¯t I? Besides, this just adds to the mystery. If a Ninja accompanies a superhero on a mission, people will be wondering why. If a private investigator does so, they will ask questions.¡± ¡°Fine,¡± I said, accepting the argument. ¡°But won¡¯t the Tommy gun ruin the look?¡± ¡°I was going to bring a bow, but I specialized in rifles in my earlier career and didn¡¯t have a bow, so I pulled it out of storage. Sure, I could use one of my more modern guns, but it was my Great Grandfather¡¯s in WWII, and 45 ACP is easy to find, so I figured I would bring it out for one last battle. Besides, it¡¯s a classic.¡± ¡°Whatever.¡± I said. ¡°We¡¯ll need at least one more person, and I¡¯d prefer to have a healer just in case.¡± ¡°Trying to build D&D party?¡± ¡°Just trying to be prepared. I don¡¯t exactly know what I¡¯m doing here, and don¡¯t want to take any chances.¡± ¡°That¡¯s obvious. But fine. You are our resident expert as far as Cedar Park is concerned, so you lead the mission. Any ideas who else we can bring along?¡± ¡°A few.¡± I said, and sent a message to Tim. ¡°You should probably contact agent Harkness and get official permission to do this. Even with society starting to collapse, I don¡¯t want to risk angering the FBI. Especially since the fact that they are on the system will mean they are immune to the outbreak.¡± Wan nodded and I started to walk out. Unfortunately, Tim sent me a message containing bad news. He was way too busy at work to leave right now so he couldn¡¯t come along as medical backup. I called the only other person I knew that might be help in that field. Father Smith picked up immediately and, while he wasn¡¯t thrilled about the idea of fighting zombies, he realized that we would probably need some backup and agreed to come. He even had a suggestion for a fourth team member. He asked that I come by the church and meet the guy to see if I was willing to give him the role. I put on my costume again and made my way over there before once again ditching it, this time under a pew inside the church. The nun recognized me from the last time I was here, and I was allowed to go back to the office. In the seat in front of the desk sat a massive six foot four inch black man. With as much muscle as he had, I was pretty sure that he could win a bodybuilding competition. I tried to use Appraisal on him, but all I got back was . That should only happen if he was blocking me, which confirmed one thing, he was on the System. ¡°Ah, you¡¯re here. Greg, let me introduce you to Paul Thompson. He¡¯s the friend I told you about last time.¡± ¡°The Army Colonel with 613 confirmed kills?¡± I asked as I shook his hand. ¡°Six hundred and fourteen if you count the guy that tried to mug me two days ago. Punk gangsta wannabe.¡± ¡°Right.¡± I said. At least I held back when dealing with them. Still, it was probably in self defense, so I was just going to ignore that fact. ¡°So, Jacob says you have a zombie problem?¡± he asked, completely seriously. ¡°Surprised you believed him.¡± I said. ¡°But yes. Underground base as far as I can tell. The room in front of the door had seven of them, and I don¡¯t know how many more are inside the base, or the layout.¡± ¡°Oh, I¡¯ve dealt with a lot of weird shit, I mean stuff,¡± he looked at Father Smith apolagetically, ¡°while I was in the military. Most of it¡¯s classified so don¡¯t ask about it. This sounds like a standard infiltration mission.¡± ¡°As far as I can tell, it is. Not sure if there are humans inside that are still alive or not. Obviously if there are we¡¯ll need to get them out of there. I¡¯d also like to connect to their computer system, see if I can get any data from it. We¡¯re contacting someone in the government to get clearance right now.¡± ¡°In that case, I¡¯m in. I can¡¯t let some kid be the only hero this city has right now, especially with the apocalypse starting.¡± ¡°Right, about that...¡± I explained to both of them how I had been going around helping people out and stopping crime while wearing a costume. ¡°So you¡¯re that Masked Healer that I¡¯ve been hearing about?¡± asked Paul. ¡°In that case, good job. Too many people sit around hoping things get better. You actually did something to help, and who knows how many hundreds or thousands of lives you¡¯ve save in the last week?¡± I could probably have Vera go through my memories and count them, but I didn¡¯t care. I wasn¡¯t doing it to meet some goal, I was doing it to make a difference. ¡°In that case, would you two mind wearing a disguise when we go in? Some sort of costume that made us look like a super hero team should confuse anyone that sees us long enough that we can finish the job before anyone interferes.¡± ¡°So I¡¯m supposed to wear a halloween outfit when fighting zombies?¡± asked the Father. ¡°Lighten up, Jake. You take things too seriously.¡± Paul looked back at me. ¡°Sure, I got just the thing. And I¡¯ll make sure he has a decent outfit too.¡± I nodded. ¡°Thanks for that, guys. I¡¯ll send you the meeting location and time once we get approval.¡± I then looked at the Father. ¡°Honestly, I¡¯m surprised you aren¡¯t busier.¡± Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. ¡°Well, anyone that¡¯s devout has already come in for Faith Healing. It was weird lying about the source of the power the cured them, but I realize why I had to. As for the people needing counseling, I¡¯ve been doing groups every night this week. If this mission of yours disrupts that, I¡¯ll have Sister Mary-Joann cover for me. Otherwise I¡¯ll keep doing them until the crisis is over.¡± I nodded. That sounds about right. Many people who have lost loved ones will be coming to him, looking for answers. With that, I asked Paul to send me a friend request, as his hidden status prevented me from sending him one, and once I accepted his request, I left. A few hours later I was watching a group of protesters in front of city hall from the rooftops, hoping that they wouldn¡¯t turn their demonstration into a riot when I got a simple video file from Wan. I opened it and saw Agent Harkess¡¯s face. ¡°You are hereby authorized to enter that facility, neutralize any non-human threats you come across, and retrieve any intelligence you can gather. You are also ordered to do so immediately, as the situation is highly time critical. Once you complete the mission your reward will be calculated and sent to the one who made us aware of this mission via a dead-drop location of our choosing. Welcome to the world of secret ops, Agent.¡± The video closed, and I was left there in surprise. Great. Now the FBI considered me an official asset and would be sending me on missions. I guess it could be worse, though. At least we had a common goal here. I sent Wan back a message asking when and where we should meet, and he sent me the GPS coordinates to an emergency subway access near the tunnel entrance, one that hopefully wouldn¡¯t be watched, as well as ¡°8pm¡±. It was currently 7:13pm. He must have heard Harkness say ¡°immediately¡± as well. I sent the GPS coordinates and ¡°8pm¡± to Paul and Father Smith, and they both responded that they would be there. I watched the situation below for a few more minutes before leaving. As I was already in costume I didn¡¯t have to get ready, and the meetup location was only a fifteen minute run from here, so I had a little bit of time. I swung by a nearby military surplus store and grabbed a backpack, a first aid kit and some MREs. The man behind the counter was surprised that a supposed superhero had come in just before closing time, but he played it cool and threw in a few bottles of water as well. I paid cash and ran off towards the meeting spot, only being delayed slightly by how the backpack threw off my balance. I watched the area to see a black cargo van pull up and two people step out. One of them looked like something out of a medieval storybook, and I was pretty sure the other was just wearing his Halloween costume of a famous B-rank superhero. The first man wore a strip of leather with two holes in it across his face, the kind of thing you would expect a medieval bandit to wear, only to pair it with a Friar Tuck outfit and a fake santa beard. He even carried a bow staff for some reason. The other guy wore a black kevlar vest with a skull drawn on it and had drawn a skull on his own face with white facepaint. On his back sat a pump action 12 gauge shotgun and he carried an M60 machine gun, with multiple box magazines hanging from his belt. He was also wearing a M1911 in a holster under each arm. I dropped beside them. ¡°I wasn¡¯t expecting Friar Tuck and Frank Rook to join us.¡± I said jokingly. ¡°Well, we didn¡¯t have that much time to suit up, so we picked a character we liked.¡± ¡®Frank¡¯ said. A minute later, and ninja stepped out of the shadows nearby. ¡°Well, looks like the crew is all here.¡± I said, and they all nodded. I handed the backpack to Friar Tuck. ¡°I got us some food, water, and a first air kit, in case we need it. As you¡¯ll be the least likely to enter combat, do you mind carrying it?¡± The friar shook his head and took the bag. ¡°So, I¡¯m going to be recording everything for future reference, so we should use code names in case anyone else sees the video. I¡¯ll go by ¡°Mask¡±. What about you guys?¡± Wan chose the name ¡°Ninja¡±, the Father chose the name ¡°Friar¡±, and Paul chose the name ¡°Sentencer¡±, all of them being named after their costume. With that, we opened the sewer style hatch and climbed down. We made our way down the tracks until we came to the tunnel. A repair crew had tied emergency tape across the entrance, and when I approached to tear it down one of them that was wearing a Foreman badge ran over. ¡°Hey, you can¡¯t be here. This area is under construction.¡± It was then that he got a good look at us. ¡°What the hell?¡± he asked. ¡°Hey aren¡¯t you that Masked Healer guy that came through here around lunch? What are you doing? You can¡¯t bring a bunch of comic-con rejects down here. We¡¯re working here.¡± I was used to carrying around large amounts of cash so I tossed him two thousand dollars. ¡°Isn¡¯t it time for a supper break? Take the whole crew somewhere nice.¡± He looked at the stack of cash in his hand, then back to us. ¡°You know what, we have been a bit overworked and stressed out from all of this outbreak stuff going around. The guys could use a break. We¡¯ll be back by midnight. Make sure you¡¯re out of here by then, ok?¡± With that he walked back to the other guys and ordered them to pack up their tools and take a break. They were getting salary anyway, so what did they care if the boss told them to take the next four hours or so at an impromptu office party? With that guy gone, I motioned for everyone to enter. ¡°Nice way to handle it.¡± said Paul. ¡°I thought things might get serious.¡± ¡°Those guys have to repair a subway while the world collapses around them. I doubt any of them are that dedicated to their job at this point.¡± I smirked. Really? I got a level up from figuring that out? Sometimes skill level ups were weird. Once we were inside the tunnel and out of view of the construction workers I activated Floating light, and lead them to where I killed the last zombie. The body was missing, but the ground where it had been was soaked with blood. ¡°Strange.¡± I looked at the other three to see if they had any idea what had happened, but Wan and Jacob shrugged and Paul shook his head. We continued down the tunnel and, when I started seeing the light from the room in front of me I deactivated the light and started sneaking. There were eight of them in their now. I pointed to myself and pointed to the leftmost two. The others nodded and we engaged. I raised my hand and fired three subsonic rounds each into my two targets. Ninja decapitated one and was already running towards a second. Sentencer was by far the loudest, opening up with his M60 and mowing down the last four. ¡°Careful, they have a tendency to get back up, and this version doesn¡¯t even have a brain for you to destroy to stop them.¡± ¡°What?¡± asked Friar in surprise, as the other two looked at me with confusion. ¡°I scanned the one I killed earlier. It said that they only had a motor cortex and most of a sensory center, nothing else. No idea why. Maybe someone created them and lobotomized them so they wouldn¡¯t turn on them.¡± There were a few looks exchanged between the others before Ninja spoke up. ¡°We should probably check out what is in these crates. Could tell us what was going on here.¡± I nodded and went to the nearest crate. It appeared to be closed only with simple latches so I undid them and opened the crate. ¡°Some sort of chemicals.¡± I said, overlooking the contents. ¡°No idea what kinds.¡± ¡°Empty¡± said Ninja. ¡°Canned goods, though several have bullet holes in them.¡± said Friar, looking over at his friend. ¡°Some sort of lab equipment.¡± said Sentencer. ¡°But it also got shot up. Maybe I overdid it a bit.¡± He slung the shotgun off of his back and put the M60 in its place. Ninja looked at him like he was confused by the action. ¡°At least I won¡¯t cause as much damage.¡± he said. ¡°Any quieter options?¡± I asked, putting another round into one of the zombies I noticed starting to stand up. ¡°I¡¯ve got a combat knife, but I don¡¯t think it will do much against these guys.¡± I shrugged and nodded, and then pointed at the door. ¡°Well, they know we¡¯re here now, so let¡¯s forget about it.¡± The others agreed, so I checked the card scanner on the door. Thankfully it hadn¡¯t been hit by a stray bullet, so I bypassed the scanner and the door opened. Several zombies were in the hallway, shambling our way, so I fired two dozen rounds down the hallway to neutralize them. Once they were down, we went through the door. The hallway was about fifty meters long, lit by emergency strips, with doors on both sides. I and Ninja started bypassing locks, only to find that for the most part they were either offices or bedrooms, with one bathroom mixed in. Most of the power was off in the facility so none of the office computers would boot up, so we continued to make our way down the hallway. Near the end of the hallway there was a facility map. The ¡°You are here¡± arrow pointed to an area just before the cafeteria, with another hallway and a gymnasium also being connected to it. This facility appeared to be meant for long term habitation. The other hallway had several other offices on the sides of it, with two important rooms at the sides of the end of the hallway, the generator room and the server room, and an unusual room at the end. That room was only labeled ¡°Object X Facility¡±. ¡°That seems promising.¡± I said, pointing to the Object X Facility. ¡°Must be special.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± responded Ninja. ¡°But we should probably power up the generator and the server first, if we are going to pull their records.¡± ¡°Fair enough.¡± I responded. I opened up the cafeteria, this door not needing a security card, only to notice that the place was trashed. There were partial corpses of zombies scattered around, the serving area looked like someone had destroyed it, and all of the tables and chairs looked like they had been purposefully knocked towards the walls. I put my finger to my lips to signal the need for silence, and made my way behind the serving table. The door to the walk in freezer had been ripped off of its hinges and all of the stored food inside had been ransacked. I went back to the others, who were looking into the gym. ¡°Hey, guys, I think..¡± I began to whisper before Sentencer raised his hand to signal me to be quiet. He pointed towards the door, and I activated Eagle Eyes to look inside. In the middle of the basketball court lay a massive creature. It was at least three and a half meters tall, and, while it mostly looked like a rhinoceros, it had metallic looking plates down its spine and on its face, with its horn even being replaced by that substance. I could tell that we didn¡¯t want to pick a fight with it. I motioned for us to back up, only to see it open its eyes and look at us. Chapter 15 The Rhinoceros stood and snorted at us, scraping the ground with its hoof like a bull. ¡°Ok, I think we need to back away.¡± Everyone started to do so but, either from hunger or anger at being disturbed, the Rhinoceros charged. Ninja and Friar ran while I jumped out of the way. Sentencer only moved enough to not be hit, and kicked the side of its head as it went by, only to winch in pain. The Rhino had at least noticed the attack, and focused on him. It stared at him and prepared for another charge, but I fired several Subsonic Mana Bullets into the side of its head. This got it to turn its attention to me. ¡°Run!¡± I yelled as I once again dived out of the way, barely being missed by the charging beast. Sentencer fired several rounds into it from the shotgun only to annoy it, then, realizing that he wasn¡¯t doing much, ran. I fired several rifle-strength rounds into it to get it to focus on me, then dodged its charge once again by jumping off of an overturned table and over its head. Rolling as I landed, I got up and joined the group that was running away. Hopefully I had bought them enough time. Besides, it was too large to fit through the door. That didn¡¯t prove to be much of a problem for it as, after hitting the doorway at full speed the frame and part of the concrete wall around it came away with the rhino only being slowed down. Seeing the rhino approach, the others ran into a side office. I stopped in front of the door and, just as the rhino got there I jumped off its nose and rolled down its side, letting it run past me. It ran another ten meters down the corridor before it managed to stop, then struggled to turn around. ¡°Everyone, cover your ears and close the door.¡± I said, and they looked confused as I raise my hand. Then a look of surprise appeared on Ninja¡¯s face as he yelled at the others to do so. ¡®I really should have developed a hearing protection power.¡¯, I thought as I gathered together five million nanites in the palm of my hand. The rhino charged at me and I activated the full power of Mana Bullet on the nanites I was holding. A wave of compressed air left from where they were as an equal but opposite force propelled the tenth of a gram of so of nanites to above orbital velocities. I was blown backwards by several meters, but managed to protect myself and roll enough that I was merely bruised from the impact with the floor. I stood up as Friar ran over to me. Blood trickled from my ears and poured from my palm, though soon the bleeding was stopped in both places as gray patches appeared there. Friar lifted my hand and I looked at it. The skin on my palm was mostly gone, and I could see muscle and even bone in some places. Friar pulled out a bandage and started wrapping my hand. Though I couldn¡¯t tell what he was saying, I could tell that he was shocked by the amount of damage. I looked to the other end of the corridor. There was half a corpse of a giant rhinoceros there, its head and much of its shoulders being reduced to ground meat which covered the walls with a considerable amount of blood. ¡®Well, we aren¡¯t going to be able to go back that way.¡¯ I thought. A few seconds later I received a notification that Wan was inviting me to a group chat. ¡®Are you ok?¡¯ he asked me. I nodded and Father Smith responded. ¡®Your hand is badly damaged. It will probably need to be amputated.¡¯ ¡®Depends on his healing ability.¡¯ said Paul. ¡®I¡¯ve seen guys with worse injuries pull through without losing a limb. I take it you figured out how to build a railgun?¡¯ ¡®Not really.¡¯ I responded. ¡®I just gather some nanites and tell them to accelerate as much as they can in a certain direction. Apparently they contain a lot of energy.¡¯ ¡®You have that level of control over your nanites?¡¯ Wan asked, and I nodded. ¡®It¡¯s part of the class I chose with this paradigm.¡¯ The three of them looked at me with confusion. ¡®Basically my paradigm allows me to pick a class, which gives me talents in certain areas while making me weaker in others. The one I picked lets me have detailed control of the nanites to the point that I can directly tell them what to do with a program, but it becomes much harder to automatically get better with my nanite based skills.¡¯ They still looked a bit confused, so I motioned dismissively with my left hand only to be met with a wave of pain. ¡®For now, one of you are going to have to take over. I need to wait until my hand is back together enough before I can do much.¡¯ They nodded and selected Wan as the new leader. He was the first one to be recruited after all. We made our way back across the cafeteria, stepping through the busted doorway and around the broken tables, and by the time I was on the other side of the room my hearing had returned. Now that we had established a group chat, something we should have done in the beginning of the mission, we no longer needed to talk. Ninja went over to the door and bypassed the lock, and the door opened. The inside was packed from wall to wall with zombies. As he drew his Thompson and Sentencer switched to his M60 I raised my right hand and fired subsonic rounds down the hallway as quickly as I could. This slowed them down enough that the other two could finish, and a few seconds later the room was filled with the sounds of two machine guns firing as quickly as they could. Zombies and parts of zombies filled the hallway, as the seemingly endless hoard tried to force its way towards us. Both of them had reloaded multiple times, with me stepping in any time someone needed to reload. Eventually, the last of the zombies stopped getting back up and they both stopped firing. Both of the guns were smoking, with the barrel of the M60 starting to glow slightly. We stood there for several minutes as the gun barrels cooled off and we tried to figure out how to get down a hallway filled with corpses. I considered creating a bulldozer power to push them to the sides of the hallway, but that might use more mana than I had. It would also leave blood on the floor which I would have to clean off of us. ¡°Lets just walk over them. I¡¯ll clean us off later.¡± I knelt down and touched the blood then showed it to the others. I then used ¡°Clean Surface¡± to remove it. ¡°Just be careful not to slip. I can¡¯t clean bruises.¡± You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. They nodded and we slowly stepped through the corpses. Several minutes later we got to the end of the hallway. I went into the server room and Wan went into the generator room. A minute or so later, the lights to the facility turned on and the servers began to boot up. Thankfully, with direct access to the server, and thanks to the IT guy being lazy and posting the login credentials on the screen, I was quickly able to find the files I needed. It appeared that the facility was running two different projects here, both aimed at weaponizing Project Panacium. The first was a revolved around creating a better form of attack dog by injecting a wide variety of mammals with nanites and trying to manipulate them to produce better specimens. The only success it had revolved around Subject 14, Mary. She was a pregnant rhinoceros whose child grew far faster than predicted, resulting in her death. The resulting child, named Sara, was born six months ago and appeared to have metal incorporated into its skin and horn. The project was lead by a zoologist named Dr. Lee. I sent that information to Wan, then checked the second project, Codenamed ¡°Project Infinite Army.¡± It focused on the creation of large numbers of disposable soldiers utilizing ¡°Device X¡±. The device was found in this cave when they started digging it out, a cave that was completely sealed from the outside. They knew very little about it, only that it was capable of creating animals which it had been given a genetic sample of and that, for whatever reason, Dr. Lee was the only one that could communicate with it. I also sent this file to Wan. ¡°We have the data.¡± I said, then motioned towards the last room. ¡°Should we check out the last room then?¡± The others nodded and readied their weapons in case there was a swarm of zombies in there as well. Wan moved forward and opened the door. The room was large and empty. There was a strange smell in the air and, when I looked down I noticed it came from a large grating-covered moat which was full of algae and encircled the entire room. In the center of the room was a raised area with a black sphere in the middle of it, with multiple cables going to it. Not knowing what the object was, I used Appraisal on it. ¡°Wait, that thing is part of the System?¡± I asked out loud. The others looked surprised. ¡°If that¡¯s true,¡± said Friar, ¡°Then it must have gotten buried long ago, as the records said this was a sealed cave. I wonder how long it¡¯s been down here?¡± ¡°Let¡¯s ask it.¡± I said, making my way towards the sphere. When no one objected, I touched it. I asked Vera to connect the device to our group chat so that the others could talk with it, and once I saw that it was connected I asked it a question. ¡®What are you?¡¯ ¡®I am a System Conservation Core which was created approximately 1.28 million years ago by Node 37, then moved to this location via teleportation.¡¯ ¡®And what is your purpose?¡¯ ¡®System Conservation cores are meant to categorize all life on a planet and prevent ecosystem collapse by cloning animals when the population grows too small to sustain itself.¡¯ Wan spoke up. ¡®I assume Dr. Lee was your last User?¡¯ ¡®Yes, the human known as Doctor Ye Yuan Lee was the last user, however my last interaction with him was sixty one days ago. Until you made contact the only other being I made contact with was Sara.¡¯ ¡®The Mutant Rhino?¡¯ asked Paul. ¡®Yes. Sara was a member of a non-sapient species known as a rhinoceros, but she was not technically a mutant, as her DNA is indistinguishable from that of a normal rhinoceros. Her enhanced sized and features were the result of errant behavior of System nanites within her body, which I was unable to correct.¡¯ ¡®All of that was just because her mother was injected with nanites while pregnant with her?¡¯ asked the Father. ¡®Yes.¡¯ ¡®Then we are in trouble. You are aware that there was a nanite outbreak on the surface which is killing people, right?¡¯ ¡®I received some data of the sort, but I have only had a weak connection to the System¡¯s data network since being unearthed. I believe I may have become damaged and require more nanites to effect repairs.¡¯ ¡®Fine,¡¯ I said, ¡®I¡¯ll give you nanites, but you need to come with us. You are too important of a witness to leave behind, and we could use you to help fight the outbreak. Which reminds me, are their any humans left alive in the facility?¡¯ ¡®I do not believe so. My drones saw the last one die twenty three days ago due to dehydration. They reanimated her, but your journey here would have ended her life to the point that I can¡¯t reanimate her.¡¯ ¡®Fair enough.¡¯ I tried sending 100 million nanites into the orb and it somehow absorbed them. ¡®Do you have a name?¡¯ I asked as I brought it over to the Father to be placed in the backpack. ¡®No, I don¡¯t.¡¯ ¡®In that case, I¡¯m going to call you Robert, or Bob for short.¡¯ ¡®Very well, I will use that name from now on.¡¯ responded Bob. Now that we had recovered all of the data we just needed to get out of here. ¡®So, Bob, are there any secret exits to this facility? We kind of blocked off the way we came in when we killed Sara.¡¯ ¡®There is an elevator attached to the security office, but if you just get me near Sara¡¯s body I can clear it for you.¡¯ ¡®You can do that?¡¯ asked Wan. ¡®Of course. That is one of my primary functions. I absorb living material from the environment, store it in a pocket in hyperspace, and use it as raw material to clone lifeforms from my genetic database.¡¯ ¡®Which includes humans?¡¯ asked the Father. ¡®Not usually, but one day Doctor Lee brought a reanimated human corpse to me and ordered me to create more on behalf of an organization known as Cedar Park. The System bans itself from creating sapient lifeforms outside of a few rare circumstances, and because the base of the ¡®Zombie¡¯, as he called it, was a sapient being I wasn¡¯t able to duplicate it. I found a loophole, however. If most of its brain is missing my moral algorithms classify it as Donor tissue meant for transplant, and I am allowed to create it.¡¯ We crossed the moat as we left the room and the slime within it seemed to clear up within seconds. ¡®We are leaving the area, so I might as well eat it.¡¯ Bob responded. We nodded and continued into the hallway, only to have Bob not only consume all of the blood on our clothing but all of the blood and bodies in the hallway. By the time we reached the other end only bullets and broken off concrete were left in the hallway. Bob asked us to walk around the Cafeteria with him and soon all of the wooden furniture and all of the rotten food was gone as well. After that we walked towards the corpse of Sara and it began to disappear as well. Because of its size it took several seconds to be disassembled, and we watched as the skin, then meat, tendons, and bones were absorbed. Bob informed us that he was dividing the corpses into thousands of chemicals which made them up so that they could be fed to the cells as they were needed during the cloning process. Once he was done we made our way out of the cave and back to the surface. We wrapped up things outside, agreeing that Wan and I can handle things from here, and I took the backpack home with me. I sent Wan the video of the mission to be turned over to Agent Harkness and I made my way across the rooftops to my apartment. Apparently Vera was keeping Bob busy by teaching him about the modern world, as he was trapped in that cave over eight hundred thousand years ago, even before humans evolved, and therefore had a lot of catching up to do. When I arrived at my apartment I heard a lot of talking outside. It was just after midnight, December 23rd, and they were saying something about the President. Once I had entered through the window I opened up Yourtube on my phone and brought up the suggested video from a few minutes ago. The President appeared on screen, looking even more tired than usual as he stood behind the podium. ¡®My fellow Americans¡¯, he began, ¡®today I am issuing a new executive order in response to the outbreak which has swept the world. It was just verified by the CDC that over ten percent of the United States population has died from this plague and that number will only increase in the future. Our Emergency services are being overwhelmed as a result, from our paramedics to our police and fire fighters. As a result I am issuing the following order to all law enforcement. The only crimes that are to be investigated or arrested for are crimes against persons and property. I am hereby suspending the enforcement of all federal drug and gun crimes, as well as any other crimes which cannot be proven to have an immediate victim, like drunk and disorderly. Police are to focus on keeping people alive and preventing further damage to the infrastructure and businesses which will be required to recover from this tragedy. There are also reports around the world of corpses getting up and attacking people, creatures which many of us would call ¡®zombies¡¯. I can verify that they are, indeed, a rare but known symptom of this outbreak. As a result, I am ordering the police to consider these creatures to at most be corpses, and to legally treat them as such should someone destroy one.¡¯ With that he stepped back from the podium as another man stepped forward to answer any questions. Chapter 16 After I woke up I noticed a message from Wan. He had delivered the footage of the incident and all of the data we collected to Agent Harkness, and the agent had dropped off our reward. I said goodbye to Bob, who I had left sitting on my kitchen table, and drove over to Wan¡¯s to pick up the reward. The streets seemed empty, with few people driving cars. While the government hadn¡¯t ordered a quarantine as the outbreak was essentially airborne at this point, and everyone was already exposed, most people stayed inside anyway. This lead to the city looking more like a ghost town than a city of millions. Most of the people I did see on the streets were carrying guns to defend themselves against all of the crime that was happening. The state was a constitutional carry state before, so there wouldn¡¯t have been an issue with them carrying even before all of this, but with all of the riots and reports of zombies, the police wouldn¡¯t have cared even without that or the executive order from last night stopping them. When I got to Wan¡¯s he gave me three bags of cash, with twenty five thousand dollars in each, and a small case. There was a letter on top of the case. ¡°Since you like to play super hero, I thought this might interest you.¡± Inside the case was a needle and a small vial with ¡°J-17¡± on the label. I used Appraisal on the vial. I focused on the word I didn¡¯t recognize. ¡°Apparently, he gave us super-soldier serum.¡± I told Wan, and he nodded. ¡°You can keep it. I prefer training myself, and you are the one that needs it the most.¡± I thanked him and put the case away, as well as the three bags of money. Saying goodbye, I messaged Father Smith and Paul to meet me at the church for their reward. There I gave them their envelopes. Father Smith said he would use the money to buy emergency supplies for the church to give away. Paul said that he would use it to stock up on supplies for the apocalypse. ¡°It¡¯s only a matter of time before we get there, and we don¡¯t have much time left.¡± I agreed. ¡°I should probably do the same. I should also get a gun, just for appearances. I don¡¯t really need one, but most people seem to be carrying for self defense now.¡± Paul agreed, but The Father said he didn¡¯t want to carry one on principle. With a bit of persuading, though, we convinced him to carry just in case he ran into a zombie. Of course, he would be carrying concealed so that he didn¡¯t alarm others, but Paul gave us both a 9mm for that purpose. Apparently he had two on him already, and just needed to go back to his truck to grab his 1911s to be armed again. At least he wasn¡¯t carrying the M60 in public. That might cause some concern. ¡°Here¡± I said, handing him an extra $1000. ¡°For the gun.¡± He nodded and stuffed in in his bag, then said ¡°goodbye¡± and left. I offered the Father a ride to the store to buy supplies and he countered with using a cargo van that the church owned. I had gotten a PriceCo membership a few years ago to try and save money by buying in bulk, though I rarely used it. Now I would be loading the van up. When we got there I noticed it was way different than what you would expect. The front was barricaded with shopping carts, there was a line to get in, and a giant sign that said ¡°CASH ONLY¡±. The assistant manager was sitting in front of the door with a shotgun. Apparently, they weren¡¯t taking any chances with looters or shoplifters. When we got to the front of the line I talked with the guy. ¡°Having trouble?¡± I asked. ¡°Only if you choose to start any.¡± the man responded. I nodded and continued inside. Most places were having trouble getting anyone to come to work, but this place didn¡¯t seem to have a problem finding employees. There were several lines of customers, and, other than the fact that the cashiers were all armed, it appeared to just be a normal busy day. We grabbed two carts each and headed for the food section. There we loaded the carts up with goods. I filled one of my carts with large bags of rice and flour, and the other with boxes of emergency food. The Father loaded one of his with gallon sized canned goods and one with rice and flour, as they would be going to the church¡¯s soup kitchen. We paid, the prices being drastically inflated, and loaded the van, then returned several more times to get more food until the van was filled. In all, I spent about $2200 and he spent at least $20000. Back at the church, I helped him unload and put all of my stuff in my car. We promised to keep in touch with each other and I left, making sure to fill up the tank on the way home as I didn¡¯t know if the gas would continue to run. Once home I spent the next hour carrying all of my groceries up the stairs and stacking them in the kitchen. I doubt many people had enough room to store all of that stuff, so it didn¡¯t matter that I had bags of rice propped against a kitchen wall. Once I had eaten something I locked up and looked at the case the FBI had given me. If I used it I would physically improve, but I didn¡¯t know if there were any side effects. So I asked Vera. ¡®Niirik is fairly safe for humans to use. It will cause some discomfort and pain as your muscles are forced to change, but other than that it should be safe. The vitamins in the shot aren¡¯t really necessary, as the System has balanced the nutrients in your body, but I suspect they were put there in case this was used on someone who isn¡¯t connected, to prevent malnutrition issues.¡¯ This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. ¡°Fine.¡± I said, rolling up my sleeve. I was out of excuses now. If I wanted to help people as much as possible, I would need to get stronger. I loaded the syringe following a Yourtube tutorial and injected myself. Everything seemed to slow down and a few seconds later my muscles started to spasm. I collapsed on the floor and started twitching. For whatever reason I couldn¡¯t control my muscles. I stayed like that for several minutes before the spasms stopped and I could stand up again. I felt strange, like I had more energy than before. I felt my arms and noticed that the muscles there were significantly more defined than before. Yeah. This would help. Now, with more strength and energy than before, I would be able to help even more people. I put on my costume and climbed out the window, heading out to stop more crime. Two days later, on Christmas day, the city announced that the city would be digging mass graves in the parks and paying people $50 per corpse to bring them in. The number of deaths in the city had increased to over 20% of the population, so they were having to take drastic measures to keep the city from being covered in rotting corpses. I was sitting in my apartment watching YourTube survival videos after a morning of stopping looters when there was a knock on the door. Answering it, I saw that it was my neighbor, Keith, and two other guys I didn¡¯t recognize. ¡°Can I help you?¡± I asked. ¡°Yeah,¡± he said with a bit of a southern accent. ¡°I was wondering if you would be willing to help us out. We figured we would check the apartments in this building for bodies and haul them in for the reward. I borrowed a horse trailer from my cousin¡¯s farm outside of town and have it hooked behind my truck, so we should be able to load up enough to make it worthwhile.¡± I sighed. It definitely wasn¡¯t what I wanted to be doing today, but it needed to be done. I didn¡¯t want to live in a building full of corpses and I was sure no one else did either. ¡°Fine. Let me grab my stuff.¡± I went back inside and grabbed my jacket and 9mm, as well as $1000 cash, and locked up. Smelling paint, I looked at my door only to notice that Keith had stenciled ¡°This apartment is owned.¡± on the door. ¡°What¡¯s that for?¡± I asked. ¡°To keep looters from looting the place. They¡¯d have to be stupid to break into an owned place to loot it when there are so many unowned places around that they can loot without getting shot.¡± I shrugged. ¡°Fair enough. So, where to?¡± We knocked on all of the other doors of the building to check to see if the place was empty. At about half of the places someone answered and I shook their hand to cure them. The other half of the time we broke in, with me picking the locks in case the person inside was just sick and unable to answer. In the half of those cases where we found a sick person I cured them and promised that we would help them out later if they started feeling better. Of course, Keith didn¡¯t know that I could cure people, and just assumed I was trying to comfort them in their last moments. We ended up grabbing about two dozen corpses from the various apartments, marking any abandoned apartment or apartment with a dead owner with a stenciled skull on the door. This would remind us of which ones could be looted in the future if we needed supplies. After our apartment was cleared, we checked several others in the area and, after the horse trailer was full, we climbed in the back of the truck and drove to the nearest park. There was police tape around the park and an officer was checking any corpses that were brought in for signs of foul play before letting people through. Apparently, they wanted to take precautions against people murdering each other to get the reward, though at only $50 it wasn¡¯t enough for any sane person to risk a murder. We pulled up and, after the cop looked over the trailer, they told us we would have to unload it on our own and instructed us to pull in. We drove past a backhoe to the smoking pit that was dug there. There a National Guard rookie greeted us and told us that they were just there to count how many we had brought in. As Keith went to the back of the trailer to open it I heard several people start shouting. The cops, National Guard and construction workers nearby grabbed their guns and fired into the pit. A few seconds later the firing stopped. ¡°Damn zombies.¡± I heard the backhoe operator say as he went back over to the machine and lit up another cigarette, swinging his AR-15 over his shoulder. ¡°So, I take it that¡¯s why you¡¯re burning the bodies?¡± I asked the cop and they nodded. ¡°Every few minutes a few of the bodies starts moving and we have to shoot it to keep it from escaping. So we started burning them. Hurry up and throw yours in so we can burn it again.¡± He motioned to two construction workers who were hauling over a hose from a diesel tank. ¡°Right.¡± I said, and went over to help Keith unload. Fifteen minutes later I closed up the trailer as Keith went to get our money. The men were already spraying fuel on the pile we had made. I saw motion in the middle of the pile and drew my pistol. Just as the head of an elderly woman popped out I fired, destroying it. ¡°Damn. Mrs. Jenkins just reanimated.¡± I remembered seeing the eighty year old cat lady from the apartment next door several times, though I never really talked to her. Now she was at the bottom of a pile of corpses with a bullet in her head, all because some stupid pharmaceutical company wanted to create a drug to cure all disease. I finished locking the trailer and walked over to where Keith was. He handed me a stack of hundreds. ¡°There¡¯s your cut. Twelve hundred. We got forty-eight hundred from ninety six bodies.¡± I nodded and shoved the money in my pocket. ¡°So, are we making another run?¡± As we left I noticed a familiar truck pull up and Father Smith and Paul stepped out. I motioned for Keith to pull over and got out to talk to them. Apparently the Father had just finished up a special Mass and was here to pray over the mass graves, as there was no way to tell who among the dead were Catholic. Paul was just traveling with him. I said goodbye and the Father want over to the pit. Paul volunteered to help the police move bodies that were being brought in to the pit. For the next few days we spent our time picking up corpses and hauling them back to the pits. The death rate had picked up and soon the vast majority of people in the city would end up in one of the pits. This resulted in us hauling back over a thousand corpses. Things finally started dying down New Years Eve night, when a special message was sent out by the Vice President. The President had died a few days earlier, and she had taken the position. The city had set up screens at every park and government building to let the people there watch what was happening, and now it was proving its usefulness. ¡°My fellow Americans, it is with great sadness that I must inform you of the results of this outbreak. The CDC has finished gathering the data from across the nation, and the results are tragic. Around 90% of the population has died in most cities, with only a few having a smaller death rate. This has resulted in a breakdown of all government functions and massive economic problems. As of now, we will be working to scale back all government departments to only cover the minimum of services needed in this tough time. The military will be deployed to oversee the transition and to make sure that the arrival of zombies doesn¡¯t result in even more deaths. As of now I am declaring Martial Law.¡± There were surprised sounds around us as the people reacted to the message. The new President continued as they chatted noisily for the next few seconds. I tried to ignore the people around me until a few seconds later the television turned off. Several of the lights around the sight also went out. ¡°Dang it.¡± I said and pulled out my phone. It wouldn¡¯t turn on, however. ¡®Vera, what¡¯s happening?¡¯ I asked. ¡®Most complicated electronic devices just stopped working. It appears that the drastic increase in the ambient nanite levels of the world caused electrical imbalances in these devices, essentially putting power across circuits in the device that weren¡¯t meant to have those voltages across them. As a result, the more complex a device, the more likely it was to be broken. Thankfully those devices that were off should be fine.¡¯