《Computerman》 The Tale of Origin Part 1/2 - Honey could you¡­.. can you help me with¡­? - Ughhh Yes sure I just lost because of you so I might as well. - I said in annoyance, it was irritating that mom always calls for help or wants me to do anything when I get in a boss fight or during a wave or anything interesting really. Well you don¡¯t choose your family and you should stay in line because they supposedly love you and care about you. It¡¯s kinda hard to see that in my family in my opinion. My name is Colin. I''m 18 years old and I love playing games, especially those that involve but aren¡¯t limited to crafting and building. I always loved having some sort of a challenge to abide during any playthrough. For example you can only stop playing after beating the boss or you have to beat a certain game using only a rock without any equipment. So when my parents started annoying me purposely with chores they could do I just treated it as a challenge, a thing that could test my resolve and my determination. I hoped that helping them with all of this shit they could either do themselves or googling shit they didn¡¯t know they would eventually stop. But noooo my father progressively started treating me worse and worse and my mom wouldn¡¯t just let me rest or anything like that instead in some misguided attempt she came every single day at random hours to make sure that I¡¯m okay. One day I exploded and yelled at her that she should just shut up and leave me alone. After cooling a little bit I explained that her attempts are unsuccessful and are only irritating me. The very next day the person I once called a Father sent me to a hospital for yelling at my mom. Yeah that¡¯s the way instead of talking you swing your fists, instead of finding reason or I don¡¯t know seeing that my yelling wasn¡¯t caused by mom but by him treating me poorly, no, he assumed that I¡¯m just some ungrateful prick or a parasite who thinks he can do whatever he can. You want war, you''ll have it dad. I went to work after leaving the hospital. It was a simple marketing job at giving leaflets to people. Lowest possible wage per hour calculated by an assistant of ¡®CEO¡¯ the person just flat out said to me that I my time of working starts when I¡¯m actually at the place I should be handing leaflets, not from the time I leave the office with the leaflets and accordingly it ends when I run out of leaflets. If this situation ever happens then I¡¯m obligated to go back to the office for more of them and go back to my station at the plaza, of course the time of trip both ways to resupply on leaflets won¡¯t be counted as working time. I thought fine have it your own way and just at the start of the day I asked at the office for 3 times the amount of leaflets because that¡¯s the average amount we were unofficially required to hand out otherwise we would get fired. After getting those I just took them out of my backpack at the plaza and placed them in such a way they formed a small stool. Then I would just sit on it for the rest of the day playing games. When the time was close to the official closing hours of the office I always headed to the local waste paper storage facility that bought any paper at an average price of 1 dollar per kilo of paper. It was working in such a way to incentivize people into cleaning the environment. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. After getting my 5 bucks I always sprinted or tried to look tired back to the office where I always apologize sincerely for being late. My usual excuse was getting way into handing out leaflets. After 3 months I was fired when finally one bitch decided to follow me and when I refused her blackmail she told the ¡®CEO¡¯. For her spying she was fired too because the firm wasn¡¯t doing well so they started cutting corners starting from cheap and replaceable labor that showed disruptive behavior. The disruptive behavior was just a nice corporate word for getting out of the line and being rude or uncooperative. The dumb bitch thought that it was my doing and she tried finding me and when she eventually succeded, she tried to kill me. Apparently she was a rich kid that was sent to a shitty job so she could learn some proper manners and wouldn¡¯t treat others as slaves. Well the male spouse of my mom at the time didn¡¯t entirely vent his emotions and frustrations by beating me to unconsciousness so when that bitch broke his door and started yelling she almost died. And that is the tale of an asshole that once was my dad and a stuck up bitch who made her daddy send mine to prison, right after she discovered she lost feeling in her legs. So it turns out the spouse of my mom had a high paying job in the IT sector. And him going to prison forced us to live less extravagantly than before. Simply put, we had to sell the car and some of other stuff to stay afloat. We sold mainly stuff with high maintenance costs. My mom tried really hard to give us a stable life but she couldn¡¯t land a high pay job anywhere so she dumbly settled for 2 shifts per day at 2 different jobs making her health deteriorate rapidly. She eventually died when I was 25. I inherited the house at least what was left of it along with some other stuff. After a few days of simply doing nothing, not even playing games, I decided to rent some rooms in the house to get enough money to live comfortably. So the great cleaning began. I almost threw up multiple times after finding some dead animals or dead hives under the floor or in the spaces between walls. A lot of young raccoons and rats died at my home without me even noticing. After general cleaning I took the stuff that will be in the rented rooms for professional appraisal and to determine their market price this have eaten away about a third of my funds and another third was taken by lawyer bending over and checking the contract I designed, mainly to check If It would fly in the court and to see If that contract was binding or rather would the roommates after breaking the contract in anyway would have to pay me like after breaking the contract with a corporation. Apparently It was binding although I would need to pay the lawyer some more to make sure. Then I just printed a bunch of copies of the contract and started photographing all of the furniture in the house to have a physical proof of their state before any accidents. All of this prep work took me about a month after which I spammed any online forum of the city I was in with the ad I made about the rentable rooms either for an hour or for a year or for an unspecified amount of time. In every case the rent was fairly low and the neighborhood was quite good and secure. I hoped I wouldn¡¯t get any assholes that won¡¯t pay or anything like that. The Tale of Beginnings Part 2/2 After a few days the first roommate moved in or rather a spoiled immature child that somehow went through life without once reflecting on their own actions at the very least his parents paid a lot both for future damages and to put up with him. Well then I thought at the time that I will just change locks in every single room I don¡¯t wish him to be in, since I didn¡¯t have a job and would be mostly inside the building the brat won¡¯t be able to do much. Apparently the brat completely destroyed his room after the color of the walls didn¡¯t please him. I told him: ¡°I¡¯m sorry but since you destroyed your room you have to now decide you can either ask your parents to pay for damaged furniture YOU destroyed or ask them to pay for someone to paint the walls in the color you want. Of course if you choose the second option you will have to sleep on the bed YOU destroyed.¡± And before he could refuse or throw a tantrum I showed him the contract he signed mindlessly and told him: ¡°You see this clause here? If you want another room and leave this room as damaged as this one YOU will have to pay ME a compensation for breaching a contract, and then also pay for all of the damages annnd If you still want an undestroyed room YOU would have to sign an exact contract again for another one. It is stipulated in the contract that you won¡¯t be able to switch rooms if they were destroyed by you. Also, I¡¯m recording this conversation from the start and before you start bitching , see that there?¡± Stolen story; please report. I pointed at a quite long paper with text on it. ¡°It¡¯s a list of rules you automatically agree to by entering this house also the contract have a separate clause that you will agree to any rules imposed by the landlord aka me and YOU will agree to any rules imposed by living inside this house¡± The brat just stood still there calculating at first it looked like brat.exe had crashed. After a solid minute of stunned silence his system has restarted and he just started bitching and thankfully he attacked me. Normally you would think that him slapping me in the face was bad but the contract stipulates that if the ¡®roommate¡¯ attacks me he would have to pay an equivalent of 150% of of Breaching contract clause which was in total equal to 10k, this normally would be illegal but I wrote a lot of clauses that essentially said that the person who signs it forfeits his laws or rather protection from the next clause which is about the absurd mark up of contract breach. After a slap I asked If he did hit me and asked for his full name and said If he told the truth I would give him another room. I never said where and the cretin caught up to what I just did when I played the recorded audio of our conversation to the police officer who then proceeded to arrest him. In my humble opinion I handled this well and the money I got from his family was used to buy cameras which were placed in common rooms and the rules on the door were updated. I used the rest of the money to reinforce the doors with metal plating and for a rather powerful ethernet cable that will allow me to make the contract breach fee higher since it counted as a quality of life that wasn¡¯t calculated in rent. The Tale of a Changing Time Couple of days went by and I of course got some half star reviews for my ¡®expert¡¯ plan of dealing with that man child. I didn¡¯t mind because the next locators were well behaved and actually read terms of service and their contract and the rules and did abide by them pretty well. So when they threw a party some day to celebrate something I only mentioned that they should¡¯ve told me beforehand instead of just doing it with no warning beforehand. But I didn¡¯t ask for any reimbursement because of their docile behavior. Also they even bought me groceries even though they didn¡¯t have to do that. This allowed me to enter the state of safe game marathon which is basically playing to the point of starving and bladder bursting and stopping playing just before anything bad happens. Unsafe game marathon would be just shitting myself while playing and allowing myself to starve just to play. I knew that my ¡®safe¡¯ ways were unhealthy but If you want to be a number one or just really enjoy something your focus can reach levels where you barely notice passage of time and normal physiological needs are disregarded altogether. But then the disaster happened, the sun eclipse started and then never ended. Naturally without special glasses it''s kinda hard to see the actual sun eclipse, so the people didn¡¯t freak out, they probably assumed that this event would be slightly longer. No one bothered to check the implications of long sun eclipse. As for me? I didn¡¯t care I never really enjoyed any sort of eclipse because there always was something better to do than to stare at the moon or at the sun and damage my vision. After another couple of relatively peaceful days the sky began dimming and the moon or whatever else was blocking the sun grew to the point where only the outline of our local star was visible. It looked almost apocalyptic and it happened in the span of an hour naturally people freak out not everyone though. Children, teens and laborers reacted first because most of them were outside doing whatever the rest either didn¡¯t believe saying it''s some government test gone wrong. Others were speculating about aliens and other bullshit. Frankly I was quite surprised that people or rather mindless mobs didn¡¯t start looting and killing each other, instead the police and military came and they have beaten sense and logic back into citizens with batons and water canons. The riots were over before they even started. I wasn''t panicking because I saw politicians going about their daily lives just a day before this one. Since they weren¡¯t freaking out then, that meant the eclipse wasn¡¯t harmfull in the short term. Short term means that whatever is causing such an event won¡¯t cause cancer or isn¡¯t outright harmful to the humans and the rest of the planet. Of course in the long run we were still fucked because by the inverse square law aka light get more dim when it more farther away. Which means that there will be sweeping crop failures across the planet or the crops won¡¯t be as plentiful as before, leading to widespread famine. The future was sadly far worse than we expected. The eclipse was now a permanent feature on the sky no matter where you were on the planet no matter what time clocks showed the dark circle with fiery ring was still there on the sky. The climate was worsening a lot. The constant exposure to the sun from all sides was heating up the planet a lot. To combat this the plastic from oceans was repurposed to make a giant and thin snow white sheet to cover any flat surface outside that wasn¡¯t essential for survival. The government''s first covered buildings and then anything near the cities, after that we put these sheets on the deserts and small mountains. After covering all cities and nearly all deserts the climate finally stopped heating up. But this wasn¡¯t ideal for all of the factories around the globe and some of the power plants would need to stop working as well as any fuel inefficient car, to effectively stop the climate change. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Some countries from the Middle East proposed the idea of covering more surfaces with white plastic sheets, others proposed optimizing the industry, others had other less stelar ideas such as going to space and destroying whatever is causing this. The last idea was quite popular among the general masses. Sadly those mindless cretins didn¡¯t see that ejecting a shit ton of chem fuel to the atmosphere would only speed up the warming and that we couldn¡¯t be certain that whatever is causing this can be destroyed by our level of tech. First year was harsh not only for our climate. 90% of fauna has died, mainly birds due to perpetual day making them unable to navigate as well as most of the ground animals due to surface area being converted into curved smooth and hard shapes meant to reflect the light back up. Since the surface was made out of plastic which is a man made material plants had a quite hard time growing on it with the lack of plants the population of herbivores receded along with the population of carnivores. But not only land animals got screwed over in the process of saving the planet or rather extending the amount of time in which the surface is hospitable. A lot of farms that were deemed unnecessary were dismantled and covered in white sheets, most of the pastures were also destroyed due to them being not essential. Most of the farmers who lost their jobs ended up on the streets although the statistics said that over half of them died to various factors such as but not limited to terrorist attacks and suicide after couple of months. Also quite a lot of people that were considered as fanatics thought that the end times are coming and also started terrorist groups and offing themselfes. Regular citizens were also affected, because our bodies function on a 24 hour clock and without any indicator for sleep time the internal clocks of our bodies became more and more faulty stretching out our work time sometimes even to 30 hours. Cases of suicides and deaths from overworking also skyrocketed because of this. Some countries tried to counteract this with special laws and computer programs that indicated the time when citizens should go to bed and special curtains that completely stopped any light from passing through them. Crime rates also went up for all the wrong reasons. The bandits and criminals started working on their papers to look like a skilled and government approved psychologist, to ¡®help¡¯ people and make them go to a good ¡®psychiatrist¡¯ which would prescribe them with a good ¡®medicine¡¯ at some point there was a hundred criminal groups working more or less like that in a single city. Other common crimes were organising groups of people thinking about suicide and then leading them to do it only for them to either give their wordly possesions to the organisers or for the organisers to steal the participants stuff even during their life to force them to kill themselfes, to feed the mass of panic and sadness so that the gang could gather more participants next time. I didn¡¯t really care as I didn¡¯t work and just played games, speaking of a lot of good games came out free this was goverment plan to at least curb rising suicides among young people. The gov also tried giving people money or tax breaks. Nothing really worked, so eventually the communist levels of propaganda were authorized and people instead of working together started hating those from other countries. Of course it didn¡¯t happen at once, no, the media started showing pieces of ¡®evidence¡¯ from which all of this shit was caused by whoever or whatever country the majority of citizens didn¡¯t like. With tax breaks for whoever was a productive member of society (I barely qualified) and rich people buying out entire cities I was living quite comfortably. Of course I was pitying the poor people who were too dumb to live and use this situation to dirastically improve their lives, like for example studying or going through diffrent courses to become psychologist or someone else who talked to people to calm them and whatever. I sent a couple of letters to corporations owning land listing all of my exploits and contracts simply asking to become a partner or affiliate to the corporation in making other contracts for whoever rents their land. Some replied some didn''t. I had some offers from smaller start ups which I accepted stating I wanted good hourly pay and no fees for getting fired or me leaving myself. Most didn¡¯t reply after I wrote that I want 150 bucks per hour which was almost as much as the psychologist wanted when the suicde rates spiked. The Tale of Changed World I didn¡¯t need to rent out rooms in my house anymore but the residents were an excellent source of information. The days were going by the governments were in disarray. Every country had its own idea on how to solve the planet and seeing lack of support from others they implemented their ideas on their own. Some countries totally switched from fossil fuels and used electricity from renewables for everything. Some just put efficient filters on their factories and in their cars. Some richer countries constructed mega cities under domes, the purpose of those domes was to gather all of the toxic gasses and by-products and repurpose them. The idea was to recycle toxic by-products of citizens'' lifestyles. Other countries began digging up giant holes and making cities there to maximize reflective surface area and keep their lifestyles more or less the same. Not all succeed those that did propose to sell their solutions to other countries for some of their annual income, territory or natural resources. Those that refused these propositions were destroyed by neighboring countries seeking out to maximize their profits, of course the official reason was purging the terrorists that wanted to doom all of the humanity. The reasons were flimsy at best but no one really cared. If your country isn¡¯t financially stable and doesn¡¯t have a good military then the logical way is to move to the country that fulfills those conditions. This became the new common sense and the world bore witness to the greatest migrations in the millenia where almost a billion people fled their current locations. Some countries collapsed due to lack of citizens and their land was taken by others, by the time when the situation of shifting borders and grand migrations stopped the count of about 200 countries was reduced to measly 50. Some new countries were formed alongside the collapse of the old ones rising from the ashes of the ignorant and those that were unable to adapt. The continent of Europe had about 40 countries existing on it, there were only 5 in Asia, 3 in Africa and 2 in North America, Australia and South America became lawless zones none wanted. Simply because of the climate change Australia became an inhospitable desert while South America was simply filled by a wide variety of venomous and poisonous animals hence it was mostly filled with outposts owned by countries but none actually claimed it. The international waters had the same status as before the Antarctic lost the nature reserve status, but not really. The nature preserve just got smaller and had some holes here and there, in every space that wasn¡¯t officially nature preserve mining outposts were established. The pockets of methane trapped in ice were countered by small domes that stopped any gasses from escaping. Moreover any gas and material that could be used to accelerate global warming was banned world wide and if it wasn¡¯t possible to turn it into a polymer or something with a smaller carbon footprint. Such materials and gasses were stored in warehouses located deep below the surface in perfect vacuum to prevent any chance of releasing carbon. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Of course this wasn¡¯t a solution, some research groups and instituts theorized proposed different solutions like making a rail gun which will send the hazardous material into space or even a machine that by using complex chemical reactions would turn carbon into graphene or glucose. The UN ordered a series of machines which will turn banned materials into nutrient bars which would help with problematic agriculture. By covering giant swaths of land with white plastic we effectively reduced farm area a lot so we were forced to make giant hydroponic farms that were stacked one on top of another, those mainly made mushrooms as they were the easiest to grow and sweet potatoes simply because they were able to grow in infertile soil, for vitamins the rich ate apples and citruses while the poor ate multivitamin pills provided by the government which were just made artificially. Artificial nature of those vitamins gradually made humans unable to extract vitamins out of normal fruits. The rich also slowly lost this ability. Some farmers also began cultivating locusts and other insects as they were pretty efficient in turning plant matter into protein and calories. The farmers could enjoy eating roasted insects. The poor souls in the cities were provided with nutrient bars that were made out of those insects. Which in turn made the metabolism of the majority of the population slow and also made their stomachs unable to digest normal food. Then the next cataclysm occurred, or boon depends who you ask. The magical energy awoke in our world every single human in the world saw a blue message screen ripped out of a game, it was standard introduction message which said that our world will change and monsters will begin spawning in a couple of days, but every single human will be able to get skills and abilities similar to those from games such as magic and martial arts, of course to get them you would have to either train for a set amount of time a specific exercise that is associated with the ability we want to getor we could just buy them with points we get after each level up. As opposed to games we couldn¡¯t see or increase our stats, with each level our body would get stronger and more finely tuned to either our wish or our main class we were told. There were only 10 different main classes to choose from, and a quite long list of normal occupations and magical variants of those occupations for subclass. We could have at level 0 no classes and with every level up we could select a class and bonuses associated with them or a skill. For example warriors would grow stronger, archers/rangers would be more dexterous and agile, the mages would have easier time using mana and military classes like soldier, officer and general would receive bonuses to fighting as a unit on top of general upgrade to everything. To level up we had to either train stuff associated with our class so a mage would have to shoot out spells constantly to eventually level up and warriors would have to swing their weapon around in exercised motion or even spar against other warriors. The message also informed us that everyone will receive a random skill which will help us achieve level 1 pick a class and then level up further. My gift was related to computers, I could temporarily use computers to accelerate my mind, others got also general stuff like I there was some famous criminal that got passive health regen, he used his gift to beat up every single police officer in the city of course they killed him but before he died he said that he leveled up from all of that regenerating and upon doing that he lost his gift. The Tale of Abuse The poor from the slums threw an uprising. Their proclamation was that they won¡¯t be oppressed in the name of fake climate change. The uprising was quelled brutally by the government, those that weren¡¯t killed outright on the streets were banished outside of the cities. From what I could gather this form of punishment was very unique, sparking a lot of interest among the populace. The people who were banished found themselves unable to live in the white plastic wasteland outside of the cities. They were unable to build homes as any resource field was under strict supervision. Surviving woods were also circled with a wall of barbed wire and automated turrets. Nothing grew on the great white plastic plains. Even with magic they were unable to sustain themselves, eventually the killed and ate each other, the surviving person got to level 2, he apparently was smart enough to pick mage class that came with 4 elemental skill upon reaching level 2 he picked a skill that let him grow food, although he had was starving since he never had enough mana to make himself a good meal he managed and even survived to this very day. His now level 10 fully self sustaining mage that lives underground. About the time since the first banishment till now about 20 years has passed, during that time the army overthrew the government and basically forced everyone who didn¡¯t outright faint by seeing blood into and active combatant. Training everyone and then shipping them off to fight with the rebels or with other countries to level up quickly and to unify the planet under one rule. The ambition was great and for the first time in millenia it was achievable thanks to classes like mayor which aided a lot in information processing and discerning lies allowing making the best possible decision in a short time. The ambitious leaders of the new government didn¡¯t forget about me and I was forced to run complex equations for making fortifications, domestic buildings and anything else that had to be both durable material efficient and maximize both the current best knowledge to counteract global warming. Which was caused by all of this war after all the reflective plastic did get damaged after a stray artillery shell landed on it. It wasn¡¯t much but during the years it added up very quickly. Although my role, my existence was crucial for the government it didn¡¯t mean I was treated like a human being far from it. My captors often abused me and tortured me forcing me to fuse with my current computer for longer periods of time. The overuse of the skill made it reach the cap level which was level 100, upon reaching that level it turned into a passive skill permanently fusing one of my hands to the nearby cables. The new passive skill now allowed me to connect to multiple computers at once. Even though I became even more efficient and more useful the abuse didn¡¯t stop. I think they were lashing out on me all of their frustrations of being stuck with me or whatever. I didn¡¯t pity them when eventually one of the officials came to congratulate me and wouldn¡¯t take a no for an answer. Despite the threats of my captors I told the official all misdeeds of my captors and said that I would gladly work for him if he guaranteed to treat me as a human being. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. The official agreed and he somewhat kept his promise, I wasn¡¯t abused or tortured I simply had deadlines. During my time in captivity the society changed a lot. Now everyone adored the system for granting them boon of magic while despising everyone who got malformed by the gift they got or those that were unable to level up due to the passive nature of their skill. There was a person who could spot with a naked eye a 50 meter crater on the moon but since the effect was always on he wasn¡¯t able to get to level 1. Since everyone despised me for not being at least level one and not caring about my story or the fact that my name was on the list of creators on every single new building or a machine. So here I was sitting in this room you found me in. Working alone, getting food from a hole in the wall and only seeing other humans when I completed projects faster than needed. During the first few years I was overworking myself to not only level up but to also get into contact with someone, to feel someone''s warmth when they gave a handshake for doing a splendid job. During that time I also read a lot since it was part of my job. My skill accelerated my learning and thinking processes. It didn''t allow me to download knowledge directly to my brain.I found out that in order to level up you have to engage in a fight with at least 1 person or monster and level up your gift to level 10. Also the research showed that in rare cases where the gift mutated like mine it would stick even after leveling up. So I started pestering my boss to let me do it so I can be more useful. At first he was skeptical but eventually he agreed. It didn¡¯t go well the military moved almost dead monster to my location for me to finish it off because killing a monster while being level 0 gives 2 times as much experience which would shoot me up to level 5 as I had already mutated my gift and the new passive one was already at level 10 out of a hundred. The thing that went wrong wasn¡¯t the actual process that monster already gave up and allowed me to end it. The events that followed went horribly wrong. Upon instantly reaching level 5 and picking my options which were mage class, psychic class, warrior class and 2 skills meant for information processing. The psychic class is a variant class only shown to those that already have a skill that lets them process huge amounts of information. The class itself strengthens that allows for remote manipulation of living beings in normal cases, in my case it allowed for remote control of up to one extra computer on top of the ones I was already connected to. The warrior class was for reinforcing my body and allowing me to sleep less and to passively slowly heal my overworked brain. Technically the regeneration buff was meant for cut off limbs and life threatening wounds not for overworked body. But the description didn¡¯t say that. Upon receiving those 3 classes and 2 skills, my race changed. It normally happens when you reach level 10, 20, 30 and so on and so forth. But in rare cases when skills and classes with an extreme synergy are picked the change can occur as soon as level 3. To cut the suspense my race was changed to cybernetic human, a variant that has numerous cybernetic upgrades or is able to survive in a simulated environment even after death of its mortal shell. My new appearance resembled an average middle aged man with cables sticking out his wrists and sockets located near the spine. My race benefitted from being connected to the electricity network, it allowed me to sleep and eat less for the same result as when I ate and slept normally. The Tale of Escape, part 1/2 At the time I thought that maybe now I could have a coworker but reality turned out to be as cruel as some over the top dystopian fictions depict. My new race was considered repulsive and a sign of weakness since to this point there were only 4 cybernetic humans including me. All of them either built their powers around their jobs or were too weak and got handed scraps no one wanted. Not only that made me unlikely to get a coworker or person to talk to which wouldn¡¯t avoid or sneer at me. My years of being abused and then alone turned my personality into a touchy creep. No point in lying to myself. I longed for any physical contact with humans, yet my wish went ungranted. The people in power were expecting great results and I provided. Oh, I provided, turning in projects months before deadlines. I eventually asked for more work and my employers were happy to supply a shit ton more work. After a year of nonstop working I got over not being able to meet new people or any people for that matter. So I stopped interacting at all. I connected every available socket and cable to computers and severed my ties to my mortal cloth. My body was now just vegetating being able to get by on electricity alone, my mind however was occupying a computer now which allowed me to not only raise my efficiency but also to spy on the outside world. Contrary to my expectations the world was dying, too many freaks with powers were running around killing anyone who dared to get into their path. Although there were some high rankers who tried to keep the world from collapsing on itself It was far easier and more rewarding to go out and kill every single thing outside the cities or even the populace inside them. No matter who or what was killed the system counted it accordingly and the killer grew very slightly stronger. There were even some politicians who were openly killing people who didn¡¯t vote on them. Of course some governments tried to take out those power murder hobos with nukes. A lot of nukes, they kinda achieved their goal since the offending party was turned into fine ash but the climate suffered just as much. Nowadays most of the world is covered in snow from nuclear winter. Thankfully there are people who focused their powers on making food allowing some cities to still exist. Many countries fell and even more people died. All of the sudden I didn¡¯t really want to get out of the facility and meet other people. Also I discovered that almost all of my projects that I made were designed not to be placed and constructed on the surface of our dying planet but on any other planet that was deemed habitable. I did mention my discovery to my handler and asked if they had plans to bring me with them. He answered honestly that they are still working on who will board the ship. I imagined that all of that is already settled but they are scamming everybody else out of their stuff. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. I hated them, I despised them for not willing to take me in or even trying to save the populace on the surface so I planted a lot of small almost indiscernible flaws within my new designs, I also upgraded those old ones and gave them similar flaws. Those small parts will turn the ship into a ticking time bomb the moment they cross the boudaries of the solar system or decide to land. The ship had multiple engines and facilities allowing life in space, they could be changed at will but the conduits and pipes were hard to reach since I was asked to design them to be like that so the passengers will be able to think they are still on the surface and won¡¯t get crazy. After a couple of months they just packed up and left, thankfully they were kind enough to let me out of my room. They also left electricity generators going along with maps and some foodstuffs. I had a lot of work before me If I wanted to get out of this shithole. I began designing a small vessel for my body and my mind. I decided to place my body in the state of suspended animation and give it a minimal amount of power so it won¡¯t die. My mind on the other hand was supposed to be placed inside the main computer and pilot the ship. The vessel itself prioritized functionality and easy maintenance over looks. With that in mind that ship had almost no outer armor and almost no place inside it. It was more of a satellite that could move with some organic matter in its cargo than a legitimate ship. I was forced to reuse faulty parts and other scrap they left. My race had the clear advantage in this high tech world over any brain dead warrior with a sword. I was able to precisely and deftly control machines my employers left behind. But then my second life tragedy happened you while I was aware that people would come to this place after seeing a ship departing to ransack and break this place. I didn''t expect the first person to do so to be a teenager. Your behavior showed that you didn¡¯t meet any cybernetic humans in your life or even used or saw technology being used. You behaved like a barbarian when you weren¡¯t able to communicate with me due to language barrier. You just started destroying all of my hard work. I had to sedate you with high voltage and then chain you to the bed I once was in. You didn¡¯t seem to acknowledge the honor of this however and immediately tried to either kill me or flee. I wouldn¡¯t mind you fleeing if you were mute but I¡¯m glad I didn¡¯t just execute you. You proved to be an excellent test subject for my experiments. I was testing if it was possible to upload your mind like I was able to do so. Sadly it wasn¡¯t possible. I really hoped I would be able to have my journey with someone who is able to talk. End of my Tale, or the Tale of Failure Now here I am, tied up to a chair by you and your group of savages. I see that you are trying to work out how stuff is supposed to work while smashing it to bits. Really entertaining to be honest. I said as I manipulated cables on wrists to undo my ties. My newest captors weren¡¯t aware I could do this or were confident enough that even if I will release my ties I won¡¯t be a threat well to bad. During the time I was repurposing the faulty parts I learned some moves to protect myself. When they attacked I allowed them to just tie me up. To make them assume my good intentions and to show artificial weakness. Minutes were turning into hours as I was undoing the knots silently. As I undid my last knot that bound me to this chair, I didn¡¯t get up immediately. I wiggled around a little to properly prepare my muscles for a lot of fighting. My first opponent was this woman that looked like a caricature of a human being. Her muscles were enormous while her head was comically small. She was busy figuring out the purpose of paper weight as I quietly walked behind her. Months of solitude allowed me to test a few things. First of all, I didn''t need to breathe as long as I had power. I didn¡¯t sweat either If I wished it to be like that. It was super weird and uncomfortable to mess with my biological needs at first but I adapted after so long of screwing around. The orc woman, well she wasn¡¯t green, just a huge pile of muscles. She didn¡¯t notice me as I was just right behind her on a desk. I tied a suicide noose and threw it on her neck, before she even turned I jumped on her back my heels digging into her spine as I pulled with all of my might on the rope to forcefully dislocate her head. My plan worked somewhat, I hoped to choke her silently. Well she struggled for a good minute almost catching me with her huge hands but eventually she died. I managed to jump off before she fell on her back. To make sure she stayed dead I picked up the paper weight she was inspecting and shoved it into her throat. There were two other assailants besides the shithead who showed them around as they tied me up. The next one wasn¡¯t that bothered by the sound caused by the orc woman. He was also a mountain of muscles but had an even smaller head. I don¡¯t know what caused this to happen, maybe it was some sort of mutation which allowed those savages to live outside. No matter, he was in the assembly hall where he was playing with the assembly lasers and arms. I think he thought they were training equipment or something, fucking barbarian. I attached myself to the console and controlled the intensity of the lasers and used them to decapitate him with them. Then I made a simple program that will eventually butcher him into a neat pile of limbs. When I turned around I saw my last target standing beside me, he was shorter than me and was covered in clothes from head to toe. He was croaking at me, I don¡¯t know if he was somunicating or trying to cast a curse at me. So I just quickly punched him in the throat. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. I used my other hand as a counterbalance as I spun around to punch him with the back of hand. He looked surprised and tried to subdue me without using too much force. I think he was thinking I was some sort of a training robot or a delicate being. This has cost him his life as I kicked his crotch as hard as I could while shoving cables from my wrists into his eyes and through them into his brain. I was covered in blood but was far from done. There was one last shithead to deal with. He was hanging around the ship I almost constructed and was polishing his sword. I didn¡¯t concern myself much in terms of actual fighting with cold weapons. I observed that he was far from done so I just went straight into the armory to get a simple pistol. No point in swords when your opponent uses firearms. I didn¡¯t get out in the open to confront him, I took aim and shot him from a fairly obscure direction. I didn¡¯t want him to die quickly and painlessly so I aimed at his hand holding sword. My second shot hit my previous guest on the other hand. The target was startled and in pain but to his credit he didn¡¯t panic and threw away in more less correct direction his sword, after that he vaulted one of the sides of the ship and got totally silent. He was listening or patching himself up or both. I didn¡¯t care, I took some more pot shots at him while flanking him. I calculated trajectories of the bullets to make them appear as if I was just standing still and shooting. It was fairly easy to do. I just had to calculate the angle so the bullet won¡¯t ricochet. My target looked like he was expecting me to attack him from the side I went. I think he did that to startle me or to gain some advantage in battle. He gained none as I threw an empty pistol at him and lunged at him like a tiger. He grabbed my hands completely disregarding the firearm hitting him in the eye. He sidestepped while throwing me to the side. I got up and tried to punch him in the gut and cut him open with my cables. They just scratched him leaving almost no mark on his skin. Looks like the teen maxed out his defense. I was subdued pretty quickly, while I was stronger I didn¡¯t know enough about martial arts to compete. I even tried supercharging myself with exposed power wire. I would''ve won if my attacks affected my opponent but they didn''t. Even my kinetic energy was completely stopped which was impossible since it would require almost the same amount of energy to just counter it but even then he would move a little. But he did not, he of course tied me with some rope to the same chair and swept through the facility looking for his friends. When he came back he looked furious. I smiled at him brightly. -¡±Was it worth it you fuck? To enter my home, to destroy my life''s work. To tie me to this chair just to see me kill everyone? I don¡¯t need to eat or sleep. There are no rations here, nothing of value. Leave while you still can!¡± I said with the same smile. -¡±You can talk? Why did you kill my battle brothers?¡±- He said stunned -¡±You raided my home, you tied me to this chair and you expect me to just take the beating and let you do as you please?!¡± I shouted enraged He didn¡¯t respond. It appears that my life story I told him was totally lost on him, because of his small dictionary he couldn¡¯t understand me. Not that it mattered as he broke my neck while saying. -¡±Tech animals like you wouldn¡¯t understand why we came here¡­.