《Skeleton in Space》


 01_01 - A skull with no past

    Douglas saw only stars. A band of brightness snaked its way across the sky, surrounded by thousands of small lights that formed the firmament.


    ¡°Rise up!¡±


    Douglas rose up. He stood, clods of dirt falling from his body as he righted himself in a jerky manner. He spotted other silhouettes in the grey darkness but paid them no heed. The only one that mattered was in front, nothing else was important. An old face, little more than a skull with crumbling skin stretched across deep sockets and protruding cheekbones, stared into Douglas¡¯s eyes for a mere moment. This man needed to be obeyed. That¡¯s all he knew. That was all that mattered.


    ¡°Follow.¡±


    Another brief command. A small trickle of content rose up in Douglas¡¯ heart. Walking. He knew what walking was. Faint images of a sunlit road bordered by dense hedges tried to take front and centre of his mind. Douglas refused the thoughts absentmindedly. He was too absorbed in the simple joy of setting one foot in front of the other to bother with something not in the here and now.


    His eyes still trained upon the hunched human giving out the commands, Douglas managed to see his surroundings from the corner of his eye. He saw grasslands filled with flowers and a distant tree line painted in greys under the faint light of the stars. Up ahead was a cart with a skeletal horse in front. Black wood and rough nails kept the rickety construction together.


    ¡°In.¡±


    Douglas wanted to smile as he obeyed. He followed the other fellows around him with stumbling steps. Trodding on the elevated wooden planks with shuffling steps, he moved into the corner while surrounded by hollow clacking sounds. All the others followed him in, with similar smiles on their faces. Looking forward, he could see the old man sitting down on the cart¡¯s bench and snap rotten leather reigns. Off they went, the cart creaking ominously. Douglas managed to keep standing as the bleached horse started pulling the cart with surprising speed.


    One fellow wasn¡¯t as lucky, it didn¡¯t manage to keep standing. The old guy heard the clattering, stood up, and turned around. His face twisted into fury while looking backwards. Green fire illuminated the trees on either side of the road. The ball of mesmerising energy flew from his hand and Douglas twisted his creaky neck in time to see the fallen comrade burn into cinders.


    ¡°Keep standing.¡±


    Douglas immediately grabbed hold of the low wooden sides next to him, determined to succeed. The old guy stared him in the eyes when he looked forward once more. Douglas tried smiling again. Belatedly, Douglas realizes that none of the fellows around him had turned to look. Douglas smiled until the old guy stopped glaring at him and sat back down.


    The following cart ride was bumpy but otherwise uneventful. The moon moved up over the horizon, illuminating the grey road and forest. The relatively bright light let Douglas see the barest hints of a brown and green. The road seemed little used, patches of fresh growth intruding here and there on the otherwise bare mud.


    Another memory bothered Douglas. Something about the cart ride felt too smooth and the speed felt too high. Douglas didn¡¯t bother with the odd thoughts, they have nothing to do with his mission to keep standing.


    One side of the sky started showing traces of blue and orange by the time the old guy stopped the cart. Douglas followed him with his sight, watching as the man stepped off the cart and stretched his back making a loud series of popping sounds.


    ¡°The things¡­ Alright, in you go!¡±


    The old man pointed to a small stone building made from decaying moss-covered stones. Like his comrades, Douglas started moving towards it but found himself blocked. He couldn¡¯t see a way to go inside the building! The path between him and the dark opening was hindered by a mass of bodies. He started pushing his way through while shoving his fellows out of the way. He fell face-first into the dirt when he failed to step over the cart¡¯s side panel. Surrounded by a cacophony of metal clanking, he got up and made his way inside.


    ¡°Down the stairs. Go stand in the back.¡±


    Once again pretty happy at doing as he was told, Douglas walked down the stairs. He didn¡¯t trip a single time and found a large dark room at the end of the long stairwell. Walking ahead, he saw more unmoving and silent comrades standing there. He stopped walking when he collided with the dense pack of bodies, standing still as his way was blocked. Douglas heard his fellow newcomers shuffle inside the barely visible in the grey darkness. Then the last light vanished along with a loud slamming noise, reducing his environment to barely visible silhouettes.


    So Douglas stood there, happy to be following orders. Occasionally he had this nagging feeling that something was wrong, but it had nothing to do with his mission. He had to stand in the back, and even though he was not totally in the back, he was as far back as possible. Now he just had to stand. So he mindlessly stood there with all his might.


    The faint pangs of panicked confusion never really went away though. Douglas was not sure what to think about that. Occasionally his euphoria at following orders was interrupted by the weirdest thoughts. The darkness around him felt good though, the very air felt fresh and invigorating to his confused soul.


    Sometime later, the darkness around him turned from nearly black to merely dark grey when Douglas heard muffled talking. Then he heard metal clanking and feet walking on stone. He wanted to turn around and look, but lacking any orders to do so, he didn¡¯t. Pretty soon the sounds stopped and it was near dark again. This repeated a few times as Douglas stood there, happily whiling away the time. Each time the brightness and noise were interspersed with long periods of dark stillness.


    ¡°Out in orderly lines, all of you.¡±


    Douglas was pretty happy at hearing that voice again. He will be happier if he can get out in orderly lines, though. Douglas decided that he needed to turn around to see how to get out, so like most of the figures he shared this dark space with he turned around. The area from his spot to the door was entirely filled with new colleagues. They started moving up the stairs with rhythmic steps, Douglas following the moment he could do so.


    He saw many more figures standing around the moment he emerged from the dark door. The old guy was there, his arms crossed with an angry sneer on his wrinkled face. Douglas wasn¡¯t really sure why, but he felt like he should go stand at a certain spot. Standing still, he noticed others stopping around him. Douglas now found himself at the back of a neat square formation. Sometime later he saw the last of his brethren emerge from the stone building.


    The old man started walking and Douglas followed, marching along with the fellows around him in step. They walked for a rather long time, cutting through fields and forests while occasionally following the road. The stars had moved across half the sky when Douglas felt he needed to stop. A small village was in front of them. Douglas felt he should run, so he did. Some shapes emerged from the buildings ahead and a lot of noise and screaming followed. Douglas found himself in the frontmost square, walking across some squishy forms.


    Some of the fellows ahead of him fell down and Douglas found himself on the front. A large thing with white and black markings on its side, was suddenly in front of him. He moved his hand forward, stabbing the thing with the sword he had all this time.


    [ Cow lvl 1 slain; 1 xp earned (2 syphoned) ]


    Another shape tumbled in front of Douglas and he stabbed again.


    [ Farmer lvl 16 slain; 1 xp earned (24 syphoned) ]


    And then Douglas stopped. The silence that followed was only broken by the shuffling of leather-shod feet. The old man walked by, his hands glowing with green power. The shape in front of Douglas jerked when the green glow flowed into the form, eyes previously shut opening and shining with a sickly green radiance. The new colleagues were used to make up for the fellows that had fallen, then they went running again.


    More running later, they stopped again. A small tower was in front of him, surrounded by a grass clearing. They only waited long enough for the rest to form a circle around the tower before running again. Loud and bright flashes of lightning struck from the tower, followed by fireballs and shards of ice. Some blue flashes turned patches of manicured grass into slippery traps but Douglas knew what he must do and wasn¡¯t about to get distracted.


    Being one of the few remaining to reach the tower, he started bashing against the thing. Douglas diligently raised his sword and brought it down upon the stone building. Magical traps and spells turned his environment into a storm of death but Douglas kept chopping at the stone wall. A little while later his sword snapped, leaving him with only a rusted hilt. Douglas proceeded to smash the remaining scraps of armour against the barely damaged stone.


    The rusted gauntlet on his left hand broke first. Douglas felt he should go towards the entrance before he managed to break his sole remaining shoulder plate. Walking across the charred remains of his brethren, he made his way to the entrance. Seeing the wooden door half splintered as his colleagues threw themselves against the barrier, Douglas went and waited for his turn behind the group. Runes flashed across the wood before flashing bright, disintegrated nearly all the colleagues blocking his way.


    Some of the new figures that joined their group entered first, only for them to be destroyed one by one as Douglas followed them up the stairs. Entering the room at the top of the tower, Douglas saw another old man. This one was wearing a bright robe and a white staff instead of the dark stick and dirty rags the first old man had.


    Douglas looked at the panting man with passive eyes, not having received any new order yet. Stumbling footsteps behind him told of the arrival of the first old man. Lightning flashed once more, only for it to be stopped by green fire.


    ¡°You will be hunted down, you wretched scu-¡±


    ¡°I will have my revenge!¡±


    Douglas watched as the two old guys rushed each other, their magic forgotten in their blind hatred. The two fought a bit in a rather inept manner before the one with the long white beard pulled a shining rock from his robes.


    ¡°No! Get that stone!¡±


    Douglas started moving, the broken hilt of his rusted sword still clutched tightly.


    ¡°Activate emergency tele-¡±


    Douglas reached the new old guy just when his old guy managed to tackle him. The old men were once again rolling on the floor, Douglas and his colleagues jumping on both of them. Douglas managed to fumble the stone free, but not before the second old man said one last syllable.


    ¡°-port!¡±


    And everything went white.


    ?


    [ Name: Douglas ]


    [ Race: Lesser skeleton ]


    [ Level: 1 (2/100) ]


    [ Class: None ]


    [ HP: 19/23 ][ HP/h: 0.05 ]


    [ MP: 20/20 ][MP/h: 3 ]


    [ STR: 11 ]


    [ AGI: 7 ]


    [ CON: 3 ]


    [ VIT: 1 ]


    [ INT: 2 ]


    [ WIS: 3 ]


    [ Skeletal Constitution (Human) ]


    [ Darkvision ]


    [ Universal Language ]


    [ Frozen -10 con, -10 vit ]


    Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.[ Controlled -8 int, -8 wis (16h) ]


    [ Congratulations, UNKNOWN discovered; calculating rewards¡­ ]


    ?


    Douglas sees only stars. A band of brightness is painted across the sky, snaking its way behind the thousands of small lights that form the firmament. A gem-studded hand floats in front of his bony visage, globules of blood slowly freezing and trailing behind it. Pieces of bone, wood, stone tumble in front of Douglas¡¯s empty sockets, scattering papers and boiling liquids floating off to the side. The two small flames residing inside the hollow spaces are the only indication that the unmoving skeleton is something more than merely bone.


    Douglas feels pretty good, to be honest. He got that stone as good as he could. The last command he has been given is fulfilled the moment Douglas pulled the shining gem free and no new commands seemed to be coming. So Douglas doesn¡¯t do anything.


    His white bones turn slowly, showing the glowing sparks in his skull more stars. And then some more stars. Then he sees a particularly bright star. And then more stars.


    Douglas doesn''t know much, but he knows that there used to be a lot fewer stars just moments before. Content with watching the sparkling weave tumble by, the newborn undead floats through space. He doesn¡¯t know or cares how long he floats there, silently content with the fact that he needn¡¯t do anything.


    Then things happen very fast.


    [ Controlled; ended ]


    The fog lifts, his mind clearing like he emerges from deep waters and wakes up at the same time. Only seconds before, he was in the blissful ignorance that comes right after sleep. Then all the problems and issues come crashing back down. Like taking a deep breath, his screaming lungs finally getting the air they need and clearing his oxygen-deprived head.


    Then a storm of metal and spaceship fragments fly by. A small piece of metal smashes through his outstretched left hand, reducing the small bones to powder.


    Confused at the sudden change in mental state, Douglas is unable to react as a large section of spaceship swallows him up. The remaining few bones of his left arm are separated by a floating fire extinguisher, his lower arm bones, radius and ulna, spinning away and splintering into fragments against a metal wall.


    His pelvis is smashed by a fastened bench milliseconds later, his leg bones splintering into smithereens against a collection of secured tool benches. His sight flips as he makes half a somersault. He then flies into a small medical kit meant for setting bones, which turns three of his neck vertebrae into white sand. This causes his ribcage and remaining one-and-a-half arms to fly downward while his skull shoots upwards. Douglas manages to catch a glimpse of his ribcage turning into splinters as he bounces off a metal sheet, leaving a grinning imprint. He then crashes through a thin metal grate, metal shards tearing deep grooves in his tumbling cranium.


    His skull lights up with a web of green lines originating from his forehead, illuminating a small room with many pillows floating around. A fragment of the crumpled grate manages to snag on his jaw and rips the bone free from his skull. The green light intensifies as he loses relative momentum with each pillow he collides with, finally hitting the unyielding metal wall while spinning rapidly.


    Then Douglas sees a chaotic display of riotous colours and white snow as the pillows started bouncing around the cabin, one of them having torn and bleeding white fluff throughout the room. The green glow fades and so does Douglas¡¯s consciousness.


    ¡°¡­ough the nano-molecular cleaning power of Spill-All, you will never need to clean anything ever again. Order now for only forty-nine ninety-nine credits. Please ask for terms and conditions.¡±


    A jingle plays through the small cabin as a rectangular tablet lights up a piece of the painted wall. It slowly floats around, kept tethered to the wall by a cable stuck in a socket. No audio propagates through the cold hard vacuum present in the room, but Douglas hears what is being said anyway. His entire being spins slowly, allowing him sight of the flickering light that the tablet shines throughout the room.


    ¡°And welcome back to Planet News, the only reputable source of news. Brought to you by GalaxNet, the best and only legal way to keep in contact with your close friends and family light years away.¡±


    Douglas can¡¯t get angry. He has faint memories of being angry and knows that he should be fuming mad right now. It just isn¡¯t happening. He has heard the same hour of news for at least a hundred times now. His slow and uncontrolled trajectory through the cluttered room guarantees that he only occasionally sees the moving images displayed on the tethered item, but it has been playing long enough so that he has seen the entire hour of video multiple times.


    The female voice once again changes from the well practised and rehearsed spiel to a less controlled timbre. The slight hint of panic that is present in the voice is so perfect that even Douglas feels he should go do something. Douglas realised a couple of dozen broadcasts ago that he wasn¡¯t hearing this through his ears. Even back when the old guy was giving orders, he barely heard anything. These words somehow arrive in his mind through something else than sound.


    ¡°The evacuation of Evengi¡¯s moon is complete and the ships will return to evacuate Evengi¡¯s citizens as soon as they have delivered our dignitaries and officials in uncontested space. The Histaff infection is being halted by our courageous military and they are making great progress. Code red is still in effect so please stay inside your homes and don¡¯t go outside for now. Remember that it¡¯s mandatory to recycle your waste and keep your home supply filled.¡±


    Douglas almost wishes that he could return to his previous state, blissfully unaware and content with doing nothing. That is not the case, however, his new mental faculties allow him to fully experience each slow collision with the wall, the bed, the small washbasin or one of the many floating objects.


    ¡°The Empire¡¯s spokesperson has promised aid, a full military fleet will be dispatched soon and will liberate us from this heinous threat. All citizens only need to hold out until then.¡±


    The picture of a cat comes slowly into view as Douglas¡¯s skull starts another long and slow journey to the other side of the cabin. He idly observes that the amount of cushioning filling in the air is lessening - he has seen many of the small fluff balls float away through the ragged opening - when he reads the words below the fluffy animal again.


    ¡®You c-nyan do nya-it!¡¯


    The anger is once again glaringly absent. The malformed words beneath the cute critter make him want to rip the poster to pieces for reasons unknown, but Douglas is suffering from an unfortunate lack of limbs to do so with.


    ¡°In other news, the singer Arnita Golash has announced that she is having a carrier baby with the boyband Deep Space Fine. The latest developments in gene therapy by the company Splice have allowed her to conceive and remotely carry a baby with the genes of all seven singers.¡±


    Douglas stops listening to the soft chatter. He had memorised the entire hour of broadcasting by heart at this point and feels like he is slowly going mad. His slow mind can no longer think of new ways to entertain himself. There was a faint impression of a blue screen filled with information that had been haunting his memories. Pondering this odd and unfamiliar concept, he had discovered a series of mental commands that allowed him to freely access the blue treasure trove of distracting information.


    He now only needs to think and beg hard enough for a blue screen to pop into view. The actual screen doesn¡¯t have any effect on the world around him, the dark room not lighting up in the slightest under the influence of the bright rectangles. Concentrating his newly unlocked mental might on his status once again, he can bring only the information he wants to the forefront. Mentally begging the system to give him a basic overview of his status, he sees four blue lines pop into view.


    [ HP: 1/10 ][ HP/h: 0.0003 ]


    [ MP: 100/100 ][ MP/h: 11 ]


    [ Frozen; -10 con, -10 vit ]


    [ Shattered; con max 1, vit max 1 ]


    His forehead bumps into the ceiling of the room, his skull coming to a near standstill as it collides against one of the many floating pillows on the rebound. The narrow blue blocks don¡¯t cast any light upon the pillow nor do they collide with it. Narrowing his mental focus upon the frozen panel, another line appears in front of the weightless skull


    [ Frozen; you are currently NAN degrees, making your bones brittle. -10 con, -10 vit ]


    He wonders what the ¡®NAN¡¯ means for the thousandth time. It isn¡¯t likely he¡¯s about to suddenly discover something new anytime soon - he had already spent many hours pondering this question - and gives it a mental command to close. Instead, he focuses upon the other effect.


    [ Shattered; you are missing over 90% of your body mass, limiting health regeneration by 90% ]


    Douglas will be back at full health in over a thousand days or just under four years. It had taken him literal hours to slowly do the needed mental math, losing track of his progress and having to start over many times.


    Focussing his attention on the individual parts of his display screen allows him an odd feeling of certainty about their meaning. A foreign force keeps giving him subtle hints about the words he can somehow read until their meaning is ingrained in his mind.


    ¡®HP¡¯ means his health or physical body. ¡®MP¡¯ stands for his mana. He doesn¡¯t yet know what mana is, but he is making eleven of the things an hour so he¡¯s bound to find out soon, right?


    Douglas is really tempted to search out the old guy again. Following his orders in blissful contentment will surely be better than having to spend years tumbling around weightless through a room with that poster on the wall. Or that woman chattering his non-existent ears off.


    But Douglas has a plan. His mana had been three-quarters empty by the time he had managed to bring those blue screens back up again, a couple of hours after waking. He remembered seeing two blue lines when he walked and stabbed his way through that town and he recalls a flash of his screen showing full after taking the crystal. He had started testing ways to bring that information to the forefront again when he had heard the entire audio track twice.


    An empty sort of irritation at the repeating sounds had set in by the time his mana was back at a hundred per cent. Then he had felt something wrong with his skull, an odd glow trickling from the middle of his forehead. He had seen the room light up with a faint green light. Back then, he had been going pretty fast still, his momentum not yet lost to the myriad of soft items tumbling through the room and he was able to see himself in a small mirror in the wall once every hour or so.


    His forehead had been glowing. His eyes had also been glowing, two small flames rimmed by pitch black sockets. Another thing that had been glowing was his jawbone and something at the base of his skull. Both places had been empty except for the faint outlines made from green power.


    Two hours later he felt something click into place. Half a broadcast had passed before he saw himself in the mirror again. A piece of his shattered jaw was back into place. Sluggishly, an idea had emerged in his mind. Trying to get a better feel for what was going on inside his skull, he had started paying attention to the flow. He felt two streams, one going to his jaw and one going to the back of his head.


    Recalling how his colleagues looked, he then concluded that a working jawbone would be a lot more useful to him in this situation than a single piece of his spine. Two broadcasts, and thus two hours later, he succeeded in stopping the glow from going towards the back of his head. He had been trying to force the flow to stop, willing it all to go to his jaw. He only succeeded when he followed a single piece of the flow, guiding it from the moment it emerged from his forehead. Taking all the emerging power, he then had guided it to his jaw.


    He knew he was completely successful when he felt his neck becoming smaller and a cloud of bone fragments started floating around him. Unable to do anything else, he patiently waited for his jaw to fill in. Now, many hours later, the realisation that might never happen starts to creep in. He has come to a complete and utter stop.


    His violent entrance into this cabin had thrown things into chaos. Small knick-knacks, items of furniture and a lot of cushions had started a weightless dance through the small room. The bone fragments accompanying him inside had made a soothing form of rhythm, their unpredictable collisions fighting against the predictable repetition of the broadcast.


    The only time he had some peace and quiet to himself was when he flew into a cushion, blocking his sight. The perfect darkness was accompanied by perfect silence, leading Douglas to the weird conclusion that he was currently hearing through his eye sockets.


    ¡°¡­drive is fifty per cent faster than our competitors. Take back your freedom, stop waiting for transfer windows and go boldly your own path. The new iShuttle X three thousand forty S is now available at selected retailers.¡±


    Douglas knows the words by heart and unconsciously starts talking along, an odd instinctual habit from his forgotten past.


    ¡°No active connection found. Please connect to any available network. Reminder, it is illegal to be disconnected from the GalaxNet for more than twenty-four hours while using a free account. Your current fine is nine nine nine nine nine credits. Replaying buffered broadcast.¡±


    Then there are a few more seconds of precious silence before the entire thing starts again.


    ¡°¡­ough the nano-molecular cleaning power of Spill-All, you will never need to clean anything ever again.¡±


    Douglas freezes as his vision bobs up and down while the pillow in front of his starts drifting off. He was mouthing along with the words in a dazed state when his skull suddenly started moving. He was actually moving his jaw! Douglas spends the next ten minutes furiously clacking his teeth together in elation.


    What follows is a lot of trial and error. He first directs the flow of power to his neck, hoping that the last few fragments of bone inside the small room will be enough for him to reform more bones.


    The only way to move available to the skull is his jawbone. He thus starts frantically flapping his mouth as hard as he can when objects float near. This works, but he has little control over the direction he is being bounced towards. An hour later, he has the idea to start jerking his mouth open at strategic moments. He waits for a wall to be below his jaw and opens wide just before impact.


    He spends the next few minutes bouncing around the room, smashing against everything while out of control. He then sees something that scares him. Shooting past the mirror, he sees his jawbone full of glowing cracks and missing splinters.


    The idea of losing his single mode of moving actually manages to scare Douglas. He immediately moves the stream of power back to his jaw. Most of his momentum is bled off when he floats past the mirror again. The diminished amount of glowing cracks in his jawbones allays his dim anxiety.


    He spent the following three broadcasts testing out how to move in an open space without gravity and with only a jawbone.


    [ New skill generated; microgravity manoeuvring lvl 1 ]


    Dismissing the small prompt, he continues practising without noticing a difference. He opens his jaw with just enough force to spin with a slow rotation, passing by the mirror. His jawbone looks nearly whole again, his teeth starting to regain their glossy sheen instead of the fractured bone they were before.


    Douglas decides to try aiming for the opening he came in through next. His repairing jaw has picked up all the small bone fragments in the room and he is getting pretty sick and tired of hearing that same broadcast time and time again.


    His mind made up, Douglas calculates the force needed to reach the ragged opening from his current position and shoves off the wall. It only takes him two hours to actually hit the spot he¡¯s aiming for.

 01_02 - Picking up his pieces

    Douglas knows he should be angry. He feels like he should be angry. The emotion just doesn¡¯t take hold in his white cranium, no matter how much he tries.


    He is still hearing the broadcast except now he is stuck inside the crumpled remains of the metal grate, unable to move. His jawbone actually hurts, a phantom pain irritating the wedged skull even further. He stopped trying to dislodge himself when a tooth broke free from his frantic snapping. He is sticking through the grate with his entire jaw, the top of his skull remaining in the small room. His sight is entirely taken up by the top of the vent and some scraps of thin metal.


    Douglas has wondered why his mana was only a quarter full when he managed to open his status page for the first time. He had thought that the grate was pretty thin, having crashed through it while remaining alive. Looking at the half centimetre thick scraps, he thanks his bones for the fact he is still alive. As much alive as a floating skull can be.


    He has no idea how long he¡¯d been out, his skull might as well have been reduced to a single piece of forehead bone for all he knows. His missing bones seem to be regenerating at a slow pace thanks to the energy from his forehead.


    That¡¯s probably mana, Douglas suddenly realises. He feels kind of stupid for not consciously making that connection earlier. He can feel the energy quite well, having practised with the mana stream some more. Instead of needing to focus with all his mind to sense his mana, he faintly feels the stream of power moving to the back of his head all the time. His jaw is completely healed now, as much good as that does him in his current situation.


    Trying to tune out the annoying broadcast, Douglas decides to focus on his mana instead. His forehead seems to be the nexus point for that power, flowing from an area the size of a coin. Trying to speed up the process, he starts pulling on the power, encouraging it to flow to his top vertebrae. What he vaguely feels to be two broadcasts later, his concentration is broken by another blue line.


    [ New skill learned; meditation lvl 1 ]


    Staring at the message, Douglas wonders what it¡¯s about.


    [ Meditation lvl 1; mana recovery is multiplied by 1.1 when active ]


    And suddenly Douglas knows what he has been doing wrong and what he can do better. It¡¯s like he has access to a large collection of people that had also been meditating, giving him hints and tips on what to do.


    A lot of the hints and nudges confuse Douglas. Something in the back of his mind is telling him how to stop going hungry or thirsty for long amounts of time. He even gets the urge to make some special foods to facilitate this. Douglas doesn¡¯t think he needs to defecate or sleep. He has been awake for many days now and he still doesn¡¯t feel the urge to sleep at all.


    Douglas resigns himself to the fact that he has nothing better to do and is stuck anyway, so he sets about trying all these tips and hints one by one.


    He immediately runs into more problems. He doesn¡¯t need to breathe. Nor does he have to find a comfortable place to sit or lie down, he is currently just a skull. A skull who is completely stuck. Nearly none of the tips that are being injected into his ponderous thoughts do him any good. Even the one about clearing his mind is pretty useless. Clearing his mind is really easy, it¡¯s the thinking of thoughts that¡¯s hard and takes effort.


    Instead, Douglas focuses on the stream of mana flowing through his skull, using the few vague hints on dealing with mana flow to better his own control. The trickle of mana does seem a little bit thicker than previously and he starts pulling it towards his neck with muted enthusiasm. The irritating chattering fades into the background as Douglas loses himself in the task of guiding mana.


    Douglas ignores all the blue bars, only stopping when he feels his stream of mana split into three, many, many hours later. This change in routine is enough to wake him from his meditative daze.


    [ Meditation is now lvl 5 ]


    [ New skill learned; mana control lvl 1 ]


    Pushing away the notifications, he feels for his mana. Eight vertebrae form a small snake-like tail that flows from the back of his skull. He tries feeling the mana instead of merely ordering it where to go and senses that it flows where connective tissues should be. The flat and hollow spaces between spinal sections are filled with nothing, his bones floating freely without touching.


    Douglas definitely feel something there, though. Guiding mana through his bones is a lot easier now, but he hasn¡¯t managed to guide it outside of his physical form even once. The mana flows outside of his bones when traversing the voids inside his joints, but he feels something is there. Instead of cartilage and sinew there is something odd that keeps his bones together and allows mana to flow through.


    The anomaly that woke him from his meditative state are the three bones spectrally connected to his lowest vertebra. The lowest bone is just another piece of his spinal column, the interesting ones are the two small ribs forming a ring as they move away and back together.


    Vague memories of how a skeleton is supposed to look like emerge from the fog of Douglas¡¯ past. The topmost pair of ribs slowly becomes fully visible in his mental image as he tries to overlay the sensations from his physical form with shards of memory, both recent and long past.


    [ New skill gained; mana sense lvl 1 ]


    He wondered what something called Mana sense would do.


    [ Mana sense lvl 1; mana is 1.1 times easier to sense at all times ]


    The same sensation happens as before. He doesn¡¯t receive hard information about sensing mana, but each thought he has concerning the subject is accompanied by an odd certainty that other people have had success with trying this or that. Lots of nudges require him to have flesh and bone, though. Douglas laments that there seems to be a certain anti-skeleton sentiment in whatever is helping him.


    Combining his sharpened sense of his own bony body with his improved mana control, Douglas takes the first real decision of his undead life. He decides then and there - stuck in a metal grate and having only a skull and neck bones - to regrow his right arm first.


    He surely made decisions before but can¡¯t recall having to weigh a few options against each other and then pick only one. Putting action to thoughts, he guides his mana to flow through his neck and into the right rib.


    Carefully wiggling his neck he tests his new mobility. The moment the lowest vertebra of his prehensile neck touches metal puts a large smile on Douglas¡¯ face. Grinning like a maniac, he starts wiggling the short stump of spine, searching for purchase. His eighth vertebra gets stuck behind some unseen scrap of metal and with a teeth-clenching sound of dry bone on sharp metal, he drags himself through the ragged vent.


    Then Douglas has a good think about the concept of centre of mass. Previously, he consisted out of only a skull. All rotation in the zero gravity environment had been centred around his eyes. Now, with the inclusion of a decent length of neck, his spinning vision feels distinctly off-centre. Douglas is pretty sure he¡¯d be heaving and puking his lunch out if he still had any flesh.


    His extremely rapid spinning slows down as he feels his neck grow larger. He sees occasional white flashes shooting by, the rest of the world a blur. Smacking into other floating objects bleeds his rapid spin into a gentle tumble, allowing Douglas to properly observe the new space he finds himself in.


    The dim light of distant stars comes in through ragged holes, lighting up the otherwise dark room. Rows of benches are attached to what Douglas assumes to be the floor. Each table has varying sized drawers and some form of tool or mechanism attached to it. The walls of the room are adorned with endless rows of cabinets and storage areas.


    Everything is metal. Douglas fully admits to not knowing much, but the overabundance of metal everywhere seems slightly off to the floating skull. The room is of medium size, around three by ten meters, and looks like some form of workshop. Douglas manages to identify one object as a vice with a screwing handle, but the rest of the apparatus present remains a total mystery to him.


    Douglas¡¯ eye sockets briefly flare as he sees fragments of bone floating through the room, occasionally bouncing against the other items strewn through the interior space. He eyes one particularly large piece of bone - a piece of his sternum he suspects - when to his great horror, it tumbles through one of the holes in the outer wall.


    Burning eye-flames trained on the precious piece of himself, he helplessly floats as the white fragment bounces off the lumpy and melted-looking edge before flying outside. Douglas feels like he should panic right now, his very life-bone floating out of reach, but the emotion just doesn¡¯t happen. Then Douglas imagines himself floating out of the hole, spinning slowly through that endless abyss.


    Very, very carefully Douglas starts trying to manoeuvre through space. Now having access to his moving jaw and a rather flexible bit of spine, the skull continues practising moving without the aid of gravity trying to grab onto one of the many protruding bits of iron. He uses his lower jaw and the front of his spine like a pincer, but his smooth bones don¡¯t get much traction on the few bits of metal that float into his reach.


    Instead, he continues training his ability to make controlled bounces, finding that it has improved greatly. His jaw only moves in one direction with a little wiggle room side to side. His spine moves like a snake, allowing him to actually aim at which direction he kicks off without spinning out of control.


    He manages to fill in his right rib after only a few jumps, successfully aiming at clusters of floating bone shards. A large bone splinter now sits in the curved green outline of his rib. Douglas feels his mana working to change the bone fragment into the correct shape, bending and smoothing it slowly. A few more fragments get stuck inside the glowing border before others pass through without sticking, the needed bone mass apparently reached.


    Now Douglas can choose to regrow the top part of his sternum or his clavicle. He immediately guides his mana to his clavicle, letting half of his mana flow continue working on his rib.


    Douglas spends the next few hours carefully bouncing around the room. He first focuses on the largest piece of bone he sees. Those gone, he finds a true treasure trove of fragments stuck beneath one of the larger workbenches. He fills his clavicle with pieces, after which he can choose his shoulder blade or humerus. The fear that he needed the rather large wing-shaped bone first relieved, he chooses his humerus to work on next.


    His upper rib, clavicle and humerus are still more glowing cracks than actual bone when he starts on his ulna, deciding not to work on his radius until later. Having looted the mass of osseous fragments under the bench, he starts exploring again, this time aided by a partially formed right arm.


    Seeing a large piece of pelvis float near one of the holes in the room, he overestimated his own manoeuvring skills and nearly flies out into space himself. The only reason he doesn¡¯t float off into the great unknown is due to his jaw getting stuck behind a sharp piece of outer hull. He manages to get the large piece of bone attached to his ulna and immediately decides that gambling like that isn¡¯t worth the risk.


    Half the bones in his body are now made of loosely held together fragments and Douglas finds that his flow of mana shrinks with each broken bone it passes through. The more cracked bones he has, the less power he can dedicate to repairing and reconstructing his skeletal frame.


    His latest bone, the ulna, is an especially bad case. He can move the partially transparent bone around only when exerting a lot of effort. The feeling of the rough fracture line of pelvis bone scraping against his reconstructing humerus anytime he moves his elbow joint is like scraping nails across a chalkboard. Briefly wondering what nails or chalkboard are, he discards those thoughts. Holding his ulna in front of his face, he sees that its essentially a glowing stick with a large piece of matter stuck on one end.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    He briefly wonders if using the mana to regenerate the bone instead of reshaping the unwieldy piece will be more effective.


    Douglas decides to work on filling up his arms with bone shards before taking the time to fix them properly. He can''t feel any pain but seeing his mana seep from all of his bones is uncomfortable on a deep level. He wants to have a functioning hand more than the feeling of unease, so he grits his teeth and continues gathering his shattered self.


    One more thing to worry about, the green glow seems to be becoming a lot paler. Douglas clacks his teeth as he looks at his slowly repairing arm. Instead of the murky leaf green, his power has started taking on a distinct teal hint. He then looks at the small glowing outlines of his wrist bones, immediately forgetting his vague worries in his muted enthusiasm at the prospect of having a functioning hand.


    Not floating away into the void is still his highest priority, so the slowly re-growing skeleton carefully steers clear of the gaping holes in the wall and starts exploring the room again.


    He finds another windfall when exploring the far side of the room. Thick bolts secure black webbing to the wall, which in turn keeps thick plates and long rods of metal in place. One of his limbs must have tumbled this way because the webbing is riddled with bone splinters.


    Putting one of his work-in-progress outlined bones to the splinters causes the fragments to get stuck in the suspended field of mana. This allows him to carefully pull the pieces free from where they are stuck inside or behind the cloth restrains. He can still faintly hear the hour-long broadcast, but more as a murmur in the background instead of the loud conversation it was previously. This allows him a sense of time that otherwise would have been completely absent.


    A few commercials and half the news later, he has filled out all the tiny bones of his hand. He needs to use over half of his mana to keep his fragmented arm together, but he has a hand again! He experimentally moves the cracked limb, finding he can contort the floating bones in ways that his mind slightly rebels against. He is sure that his hand isn¡¯t supposed to fold in half like that, but the mental resistance fades as he forces the creaking limb into all kinds of joint destroying contortions.


    Focusing his available power on one of the small bones in his wrist, he starts exploring the room in earnest. Now able to actually hold on to things with his glowing fingers, traversing the room goes from a series of uncertain gambles to a slow and steady slog.


    The partial skeleton first makes a round trip exploring the walls. He finds lockers with locked doors, some of them partially destroyed, and webbing holding blank materials. He also finds a closed door. The wall with holes in it doesn¡¯t hold much interesting stuff and Douglas is pretty wary of accidentally slipping through the gaping openings. The fact that three smaller areas of damage are present on the opposite sides of the hull breaches leads Douglas to realise that these holes might not be on purpose or by design.


    Once again slightly frustrated at how long it has taken him to realise something so obvious, Douglas tries to capitalise on the broken lockers by attempting to pry them open. One of them contains a large collection of small items with painted crosses. The lack of light still doesn¡¯t allow him to see colours, but he has the odd suspicion that these items should be white and red. The other two lockers just have small holes punched through, their doors still firmly shut. He tries looking through the openings and can see a collection of boxes, partially illuminated by his eye flames.


    Unable to figure out how to open the closets, Douglas decides to go towards the single door he found. Carefully moving his weightless skull around with his single arm, he reaches the closed door while only bumping into the floor a few times. He has to turn back occasionally, unwilling to cross large areas of the empty floor now that he doesn¡¯t need to bounce and float randomly to move around. His single hand clings to the benches, tools and ripped metal with a desperate strength as he pulls his skull towards the door.


    The door is a rather large and imposing slab of metal. It doesn¡¯t move a single millimetre even though Douglas throws all eleven of his strength points against it. The only way he manages to get purchase on the door is when he bites down on a protruding screw with his teeth while shoving at the door¡¯s handle with his single hand.


    He then finds a marked handle behind a thin layer of glass after looking around some more. The oddly painted thing is placed on top of the door frame. Floating over, Douglas tries smashing the glass. It works perfectly, but the recoil almost flings him through one of the holes again, only managing to stay inside by grabbing on a ragged edge.


    Once more being extremely careful, he makes his way back to the door. He starts pulling on the now exposed handle while carefully biting down on a decorated metal edge. The handle takes quite some strength to pull, but his efforts are accompanied by the sight of the door sliding open slightly.


    Looking back, Douglas stops. There are still some bone fragments floating through the room. Most had been absorbed by Douglas while even more have undoubtedly tumbled out into space. He has learned that his health regeneration can make material from scratch, but giving it bone to work with is much, much faster. Keeping a wary eye on the gaping holes on the far wall, Douglas then spends a few hours meticulously gathering all the fragments he can.


    Stuffing the last few parts behind the webbing, he looks at the fruits of his labour. A bony bounty sufficient to form another arm and maybe a piece of his ribcage is now stuck securely behind the webbing. Douglas then inspects his hand, finding that his smallest wrist bones are all healed and in perfect condition.


    The metacarpals of his thumb and pointer finger, including the fingers themselves, are also in near perfect shape, only faint blue cracks showing. The rest of his arm is still a horrendous mess of cobbled together bone fragments and glowing splinters.


    Satisfied at making progress, he carefully manoeuvres to the door and starts sliding it open. He immediately praises his own insight into the matter, as the space to the right of the new hallway is filled with stars. Everything to the right of the door except for a meter of wall is gone. The floor¡¯s molten edges are sheared through in a rather clean manner, the solidified globs of metal similar to the holes in the walls Douglas entered through.


    To the left is an intact hallway, its floors and walls made from a white material, the ceiling bare metal with ducts going across. Douglas notices a particular skull-shaped dent in the metal channel closest to him.


    Other than his own bony profile, he sees a barren hallway. Dark smears cover large parts of the light interior further down the corridor. The wall opposite of the skeletal skull features a door located a few meters to his left. Douglas then thinks about it for a good ten minutes and comes to the conclusion that the door should be the one with all the pillows. More doors with nameplates are visible down the hall which curved to the right after the last door, taking a sharp right turn two meters further.


    On a whim he doesn¡¯t quite understand, Douglas decides to look to the left. He knows that he should go explore the other areas and find out where or even what he is. Instead, he creeps closer to the edge, his single hand grabbed the molten blobs of metal. The open space is filled with stars, the absolute lack of anything at all seemingly speaking to the placid skull on a deep level.


    Douglas lost track of time again while looking at endless space as the ship did its slow tumble. The lack of any bodily functions or needs lets him hang there, floating at the edge of nothingness.


    [ Rewards for discovery of UNKNOWN have been calculated ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown town; 100 xp ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown city; 1000 xp ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown state; 5000 xp ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown country; 10000 xp ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown continent; 100000 xp ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown sea; 5000 xp ]


    [ Reward for discovering unknown ERROR NAN xp ]


    That¡¯s enough to wake the meditating skull from his daze. Something seems to churn in the background of his mind for a while. He stares at the rows of blue boxes a little longer before mentally commanding them to vanish.


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 1 100/100 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 2 200/200 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 3 400/400 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 4 800/800 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 5 1600/1600 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 6 3200/3200 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 7 6400/6400 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 8 12800/12800 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 9 25600/25600 xp reached ]


    [ Lesser skeleton lvl 10 51200/51200 xp reached ]


    [ 18800 xp deferred]


    [ Congratulation, you have reached Lesser skeleton max level ]


    [ Your skills allow you the following options ]


    [ Lesser arcane skeleton 0/10 ]


    [ Lesser soul skeleton 0/10 ]


    [ Minor skeleton 0/20 ]


    Wondering what that large list of notifications is about, Douglas asks if the blue boxes can please show him the information about his race.


    [ Lesser skeleton; a skeleton raised by a necromancer, this race is often used as cannon fodder. Animated by magic and a pact with a deity of death, these creatures are a combination of arcane and necrotic magic. Although very rare, lesser skeletons that survive being controlled long enough can grow into more powerful variants. +str + con ]


    Necromancer, that must have been the dirty old guy. Douglas nods to himself, knocking his chin against the floor as he finds the dark sounding moniker fitting for the wrinkled wretch. He doesn¡¯t quite know what the term cannon fodder means, but he understands that it isn¡¯t meant as a compliment. Douglas realises that he didn¡¯t enjoy being a lesser skeleton, some deep and forgotten part of himself rebelling at his very state of existence.


    Looking at the partially fractured bones of his hand, the floating skull can almost see the flesh and skin that should be there. The mana pouring from the cracks is even paler still, now only a hint of green remaining among the pale blue glow.


    Feeling like he should sigh deeply followed by briefly wondering what sighing was, he asks the blue boxes to show him more information about the three options he is offered.


    [ Lesser arcane skeleton; animated through arcane powers instead of a pact with a deity of death, this race is more akin to a golem than its more traditional necrotic counterpart. Its intricate spell matrix is capable of holding a controlling soul. +int +wis ]


    [ Lesser soul skeleton; a soul melded with its long decayed corporal form, these beings are revenants that have endured or slumbered until nothing but bones remained. Animated through pure hatred and force of will, they often expire the moment they have accomplished their revenge. ++str ]


    [ Minor skeleton; a more powerful version of the lesser variant, this being is either raised by a more competent necromancer or has evolved. Animated by magic and a pact with a deity of death, these creatures are a combination of arcane and necrotic magic. Still easily controlled, its nexus has a larger mana capacity, allowing for greater strength and solidity. ++str +con ]


    [ ERROR; DEITY 404, CORRECTING¡­ ]


    [ Minor skeleton; a more powerful version of the lesser variant, this being is either raised by a more competent necromancer or has evolved. Animated by magic and a pact with a deity of death, these creatures are a combination of arcane and necrotic magic. Still easily controlled, its nexus has a larger mana capacity, allowing for greater strength and solidity. ]


    It takes Douglas a long, long time to fully read through the new pile of information. The small note about being easily controlled makes Douglas think he can actually feel anger for a moment. However, the red haze turns out to be from a rather bright object in the starry sky.


    Squinting at the rather bright interloper, Douglas realizes that it isn¡¯t the big star he has previously seen. This object actually seems to be moving. Nearly imperceptible, the red dot stands out from the rest of the starry multitude. Each time the ship¡¯s slow tumble makes his view perform another turn, the red dot is slightly brighter and larger.


    Mentally shrugging at this seemingly inconsequential observation, Douglas goes back to methodically determining what he should do. The thought that maybe changing his race at all being a bad idea doesn¡¯t even cross his mind. In fact, he feels some faded form of joy each time he thinks about being able to change into a more powerful version of himself.


    The minor skeleton upgrade seems the most logical at first glance, it has two things going for it. The number of bonus attributes, strength and constitution are the highest out of all three. This combined with the higher level capacity makes it stand head and shoulders above the other two.


    Though, its demerits are also the highest. First, there¡¯s the fact that he will remain easily controlled. The necromancer had an entire army of puppets like Douglas following his every order. Then there is the fact that the attribute bonuses seemed to have disappeared¡­


    That happened after the message about a deity. Normally, Douglas gets a slight hint and feeling of meaning when reading the words in the blue boxes. Nothing in the error message gives him any additional information except for the way these words sound. The few words he had experienced this with are the words ¡®NAN¡¯ and ¡®UNKNOWN¡¯. It seems very odd to the skull that the word ¡®unknown¡¯ does come with context, but the word ¡®UNKNOWN¡¯ doesn¡¯t.


    He stares out into the stars some more while slowly thinking about these topics. The stars around him make another full rotation and the red dot is larger still when he finishes his ponderous line of thought.


    Going back to his previous activity, Douglas thinks that becoming a lesser soul skeleton sounds like a pretty bad idea. Having to move his bones through pure hatred or force of will seems exhausting. Everything he did now already takes effort, the only positive point would be an increased amount of strength. More strength wouldn¡¯t have helped the bony bloke in any situation he has come across so far.


    Douglas thus chooses lesser arcane skeleton, his mind made up. Having more intelligence and wisdom will increase his available mana and his mana regeneration. This will, in turn, speed up his recovery effort.


    Douglas has time to think two thoughts before blacking out. The first one is a question about why he knows what the intelligence and wisdom actually do for him. The last one, a slightly more panicked thought, is whether it¡¯s a good idea to do this mere centimeters from the void of open space.


    DUE TO WANTING TO ACTUALLY EAT, HAVE A LIFE, MAKE SOME MONEY, AND ALL THAT JAZZ, I TOOK DOWN 90% OF BOOK 1 !!!!!!


    I am actually very sorry about this. For the first story I ever put on here (The Dao of Magic), I swore that I would not do this. That story will stay on this site until the sun goes out.


    As for Skeleton in Space, I''m afraid I will have to point you towards the ebook or audiobook of Skeleton in Space: Histaff. If you like this story, you can read it for free on Kindle Unlimited (if you are a KU subscription member) or buy the ebook or audiobook.


    Thank you for your understanding.

 02_01 - Burning up

    Ungud Locn-dus¡¯g, overseer of the Evengi GalaxSec planet-dropped base, suppresses a sneeze. The object pressed into the arched roof of his mouth tickles at a nerve cluster that makes him want to expel his mucous pockets. Clutching the double grips with two hands, he uses another hand to rub at the flaps covering his sacks. Shuddering at the relief he feels, he fumbles for a button on the object with his fourth hand.


    Ungud breathes in, the air acquiring a distinct smell of ozone as it passes by the item he is sucking on. Everything is almost ready now, he only needs to finish the rather complex button sequence, and all will be done. He fumbles with that last switch, his greasy fingers slipping on the sliding lever as he tries pushing it.


    The dust on his door falls as a furious pounding shakes it in its magnetic frame. Ungud fumbles as he jolts in fright, resetting the entire procedure with a miss click of his third thumb.


    Ungud snorts in irritation, spraying a thin film of slime across his desk as he pulls the item from his mouth. One of the protruding bits snags at his second row of teeth. He spends a few seconds whimpering in pain while clutching his four hinging jaws.


    He then glares at the unholy sight of water disappearing as the desk''s nanofilm removes the splatter of snot he accidentally spilled. Everything around him is going to shit, but useless features like these keep functioning. Ungud stands up, hauling his bulging moisture glands over the edge of the uncomfortable chair. He waddles towards the door while dropping the sticky object he is still clutching on his desk. He puts a hand to the faux wood and steps back as it slides open.


    Silence can be harder to bear than the most cutting remarks sometimes. Four arms hidden behind its body, the one person who Ungud has known for all his life is standing there, looking at him. Unable to bear the piercing glare any longer, Ungud breaks the silence. ¡°What¡¯s broken?¡±


    ¡°Reclaimer¡­¡±


    ¡°Okay. Let¡¯s go then. Let¡¯s not do the Histaff¡¯s work for them.¡± All four shoulders slumped, he starts walking. He moves through dull grey stone hallways that are just a bit too narrow for his wide frame. The few people he comes across all squeeze by, wiping at the slime stuck to them from having to move past the only two examples of the Shmee-Shmeelah race on this enlightenment-forsaken planet. Ungud rearranges his mucous flaps as he stops looking at the latest humanoid that shivers while wiping away the slime as it walks away from the duo. ¡°Decaying Shmee¡¯s, Histaff take them¡­¡± he hears the gangly insectoid mutter as it polishes one of its segmented thoraxes.


    Ungud''s depression deepens as he thinks of his race''s glorious name, so filled with meaning, tradition and such deep history. Its pronunciation has a large amount of inflexion behind it, being so much more than the simple translation the rest of the galaxy uses. His people fought against oppression, becoming a shining example of honour, glory, and martial prowess to an entire sector!


    Once¡­ And it was so long ago¡­


    Now other races shudder and cross the road in order to avoid his people when they are about to walk past them. A noble history of martial prowess reduced to being tech support. Ah, it¡¯s enough to want to kill oneself. Not that it matters now anyway.


    ¡°Which one is it this time?¡± Turning his attention to his only friend, he studies the other Shmee-Shmeelah for a bit. It hasn¡¯t chosen a gender yet, even at its ripe age. Ungud really wonders when the cranky git is going to settle down and spawn a brood or five. That might take off the ever-angry edge it has had since they both hit their races¡¯ version of puberty.


    ¡°Fifth¡­ Water damage. We won¡¯t make the week without it¡­¡± Here it visibly falters a bit. Ungud rustles his slime flaps. Their race has brains spread all over their bodies, allowing every single one of their species an average thinking capacity in the upper percentile of all species known in the galaxy. Pausing to think is a rarity for beings that can rival some cheaper supercomputers. Ungud''s friend has been pausing its speech for seconds now, indicating an extreme amount of thought has gone into the sentence. ¡°I won¡¯t make the week without it.¡±


    Ungud clears his mucous flaps with a grunt, and steps into the narrow corridors of the base¡¯s fifth reclaimer. A single look at the simple thing is enough to tell him it¡¯s an easy but time-consuming fix. One of the base''s useless occupants must have gotten a sticky substance all over the sensitive parts of the air filter, either alone or with the help of another of the useless layabouts. Ungud pulls on a handle on his toolbelt. The personalised piece of hardware transforms its top part into a microfiber brush, and he starts gently wiping the slime away from the clogged components.


    ¡°I¡¯ll be a while,¡± he splutters towards the being silently staring at him. It bubbles a bit and turns around with stomping feet.


    It takes Ungud hours to clean the air scrubber. Every single species in this cramped hideout needs another type of breathable molecule in the air, providing for all their discreet biologies with their needed materials is a rather important task. The large amounts of air reclaimers can barely keep up with the needed synthesizations. Overpopulation problems are so bad now that a single of the precious machines is keeping hundreds of sapients alive at a time. The failure of one will slowly kill everyone here.


    Tired but slightly happy at a job well done, Ungud makes his way back to his private room hours later. He happily osmoses with the air, glad that he won¡¯t suddenly suffocate in his sleep. No, dying from terminal head trauma is much preferred to gasping for days while all his engineered fail-safes and low power modes keep him on the edge of consciousness. The first thing he does when he gets back to his bunk is to grab the item he left on his desk. He puts it inside his segmented mouth again.


    Happily gurgling a melody to himself, he once more starts the arming procedure. The weapon he is holding in two of his hands while sucking on the barrel is a rather standard plasma generator. It contains a large number of energy cells, which he charges through the complex patterns of buttons he is once again pushing. The barrels flow from the dual grips in an organic manner and contain two parts. One is a simple charging chamber, a place where large amounts of energy is imparted on a small amount of air. This hypercharged air is then guided through the flux-conducting barrel at high speeds, vaporising everything in its way.


    Ungud feels quite happy, knowing that all the endless thinking can stop once he finishes the sequence. He is located on a planet overrun by Histaff, after all. The initial infection was reported to come from space, some doofus dumping trash into the atmosphere at speeds too low for it to disintegrate at reentry. This trash contained traces of the complex bioweapon, dooming the entire planet only days later. The infection spread rapidly, as it tends to do. It was discovered too late as it easily avoided the rim planet¡¯s simple detection apparatus.


    The end came quite fast. All the important and rich sapients had started evacuating days before the infection happened, a rather clear indication that the Histaff threat was known well before the actual shit hit the fan. This left a rather large populations without any access to ships. And every single one of these sapients tried to find shelter in Ungud''s base.


    So here he sits, inside a GalaxSec planet-dropped base, every single centimetre of publicly available space crammed full with refugees. The swiftly fading connections to the outside universe have painted a rather clear picture to the overseer. Each accessible camera showed the same visage of melting biological compounds and slowly growing red slimes. All life in any form, from native plants to engineered cyborg, is infected and killed in short order once the infection got access to them. All beings with a sapient mind got turned into goop and bones, while all the animals got turned into more cannon fodder, sent to the front lines.


    Ungud has calculated the entire scenario four hundred ninety thousand and twenty-one times now. He personally thinks that a predicted survival percentage of a zero with a few hundred zeros after the comma before finding another number is too low a chance to risk it. So he hums to himself as he goes through the overly complicated firing procedure of the weapon he is chewing on.


    He is nearly done with the arming procedure again when an alarm goes off. His desk lights up in large red symbols and a single green blob. Taking the weapon out of his mouth - again - Ungud accepts the call. The red labels vanish as the creased brows of one of Ungud¡¯s subordinates appears above the table.This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.


    "Overseer Ungud, sir. Reporting Histaff units. Complete reworked of the first class have been sighted. The rapid destruction of all remaining mechanical items indicates-"


    ¡°It has a mind already, I understand, invigilator Klattio.¡±


    ¡°What do we do, sir?¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t call me sir. I¡¯m just a head agent.¡±


    ¡°Yes, sir.¡±


    Ungud turns away to blow his chin flap for a bit. All this stress is making his skin go dry. ¡°Nevermind. Any data on when the next class will show up?¡±


    ¡°Nothing conclusive, sir. Scanners have seen class two amalgamations closing up, but none have even shown hints of emerging yet.¡±


    ¡°So we¡¯ve got a few weeks, then.¡±


    ¡°Yes, sir.¡±


    Silence pervades the room for a bit. Ungud warbles in resignation. ¡°So how¡¯s the mob doing?¡±


    ¡°The Histaff has them scared and docile, sir.¡±


    ¡°Right. I don¡¯t believe that at all. How many tried to take over today?¡±


    Klattio¡¯s ridged face wrinkled further as the sapient looks away, a clear indication of shame in his species. ¡°Fourteen sapients tried to fight us, sir. We¡¯ve put them all in med.¡±


    ¡°Good riddance. That thing won''t let them go until they are as healthy as a baby.¡± Ungud actually smiles as he thinks of their fate. The automated med bay is a marvel of technology, and is often used as a temporary prison. A little tweaking with the thing¡¯s settings, and it won''t let anyone leave until their physical form is literally brimming with health.


    ¡°Yes, sir.¡± Klattio obviously wants to say something, but Ungud nods and closes the call.


    He then happily starts trying to kill himself again. The second class of reworked Histaff beings will start popping up in a few weeks, and the base¡¯s defences won¡¯t stand a chance. Hyper-acid coated blades will carve away at the C-steel doors and bulkheads until the entire base is filled with red slime and bare bones. Ungud calculates the chances of his survival once again, and finds them unchanged.


    His hands deftly follow the required pattern for activation once again. He really should curse the way his own species design weapons, but he simply can¡¯t. The schmee¡¯s have to make their own weapons a hassle to use, or their race would have offed themselves millennia ago. Melancholy and bouts of depression are so frequent in his race that their cultural need for overly complex weapons is a necessity.


    This fact is shown once again as Ungud is interrupted yet again. More dust flies from his door, making the slimy creature wonder where it all is coming from. The pounding continues until he tiredly puts the weapon down and walks over.


    ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Servers are down.¡±


    Rolling his eyes, Ungud decided to humour his oldest friend. ¡°Which servers are down?¡±


    ¡°Core is unstable.¡±


    ¡°Did you really destabilize the core in order to¡­ Alright, lead the way.¡±


    The squelching duo walks through the warren of corridors once again. The dusty and neatly cut stone makes way for the metal of the original base. GalaxSec a widespread and pervasive organization with a long history, their equipment has been standardized ages ago. The same with their buildings. When the first settlers made planetfall, a GalaxSec base core fell along with them. Automatically excavating the planes¡¯ main nexus of defence and security, the semi-autonomous land-dropped base carved out a home for the galaxy¡¯s finest.


    The actual area GalaxSec is the finest in is a topic of much discussion and ridicule.


    All in all, this means that Ungud, a mere head agent suddenly promoted to overseer when all his direct superiors suddenly went on a holiday, is now responsible for the massive base. This also means that he is the only one with access to the central core of the base, the only place from where the server admin accounts can be accessed.


    Ungud starts typing away at the ancient screen, scrolling through pages of diagnostic data with inhuman speed. His distributed nervous system starts glowing as he uses it in a slightly serious manner. One eye looking backwards, Ungud studies his friend. It¡¯s not unheard of a Schmee to delay their naming, but this one has been holding it off for a long time now. Feeling like social conventions don¡¯t really means much when he - hopefully - will be a cooling corpse hours from now, Ungud decides to be rude. ¡°Why didn¡¯t you ever choose a gender?¡±


    His friend lights up, its entire nervous system visible under its goopy grey flesh.


    ¡°You don¡¯t need to tell me, but reinforcements are years away and we won¡¯t even survive level two reworked, let alone behemoths. I don¡¯t believe you don¡¯t have access to those files, agent, you know how late it is.¡±


    ¡°What gender are you?¡±


    Ungud blinks his eyes a few times. Hearing that horrendously rude question being asked so casually throws him for a loop for a bit. Instead of delving into the massive faux-pas they both just made, Ungud decides to answer. ¡°Ah, I¡¯m a spreader, why?¡±


    ¡°Okay. I¡¯m choosing to be a grower then.¡± And with the most beautiful smile Ungud has ever seen, his friend decides to become a female. Her entire body freezes as the long-delayed process ravaged through her body with a vengeance. Ungud is frozen in shock. Asking any gender-related questions is only to be done to and by true lovers, by Schmee¡¯s that have sworn to live their lives together.


    And now his friend, the being that he had to refer to as ¡®it¡¯ his entire life just chose to be a carrier of life just because he randomly chose the masculine version of their species sex?


    Ungud¡¯s entire body glows too now, his physical form slowly overheating from all the shocked thinking he is doing.


    In the background, ignored by all, a timer counts down. Ungud had been scrolling through the server¡¯s logs and quickly found the problem. He had found the access logs conspicuously empty, a feat that only another Schmee could have accomplished in a reasonable amount of time. Ungud had fixed the problems of the overheating cores by resetting everything to their factory default, wiping the small overclock virus from all systems.


    Then Ungud decided to poke around a bit. Some functions of the basic but functional computer systems are only accessible from inside the original ship. Ungud had never gotten access to this place until he inherited the title of overseer. One of these functions not even visible from the outside had turned out to be a stasis field. He had initiated the startup procedure to get a look at the software functions it would start running, knowing that he could have stopped it at any time. He had been reading through the thing¡¯s documentation when his old friend suddenly decided the gender it was based on his own.


    This has caused Ungud to forget the ticking timer. Running over to the egg his friend is morphing into, Ungud touches the hardening shell just in time to be frozen in time. Starting at the original core, an electronic freeze field is expanded over the entire base. This field does not just block all electronics but instead targets the actual electrons themselves. Electrons need to spin, after all. It does not matter whether one looks at these spinning particles through the lens of rotating orbs or from a field of superpositions. Freezing them freezes the entire atom. This freezes the entire molecule, and thus every single bit of solid matter.


    The base has expanded much over the centuries, the entire thing covered in a dense web of cables, tubes and field generators. The electronic freezing field travels through and across every single iota of infrastructure, halting the entire base in their molecular steps.


    Ungud and his gender-changing friends are frozen first. Then the original ship stops moving in time, the only exception being the fusion core and the field generator. Then the rest of the base is frozen, thousands of sapient refugees stopping all motion as their elemental particles are arrested in space and time.


    Shortly, not a single mote of dust moves in the base. The ancient fusion core hums quietly, generating the needed power to keep everything still. The Histaff up above continues scratching at the massive doors closing off their access to the tasty-smelling beings inside.


    Weeks later, many large white shells of bone start cracking. The places were the population used to be the densest have the highest quantity of these items. The newly born army of larger Histaff reworkeds all use their various senses to make their way to the place with the freshest scents, namely the frozen GalaxSec base. They start clawing at the door at one, managing to make deep scratches with relative ease. A few centimeters in the metal, their process halts. The freezing field protects half the door, only letting the level two Histaff reworked shave off a part of the bulwark.


    Years later, the first Histaff behemoths emerge from large amalgamation pools. They too make their way over to the GalaxSec base, sensing the large number of reworked still working at the doors. None of the massive behemoths has any success with this last bastion of resistance, however.


    Decades later, the dense crowd of white and red beings loses interest as the last traces of scent fades from the area. They start roaming the landscape, either collecting into heaps and forming even bigger reworkerd or just wandering aimlessly.


    Below the earth, the GalaxSec¡¯s fusion core winds back down, the constant assault at the freezing field costing it a lot of power. On the terminal Ungud initiated the field from, the last page of the generator¡¯s manual is still displayed, frozen in time. Ungud did not have to time to properly process the contents of this page, else he would probably have shown a bit more caution with the field generator.


    The warning that the use of the field should only be a last-ditch measure is unread by all. It further tells of the need to have massive amounts of specialized medical equipment at the ready when unfreezing, or death of all within the field is a guarantee.


    Time goes by as the planet continues to spin. Its previous blue and green colour scheme is slowly transformed into a palette a good deal less filled with life. The oxygen is stripped from the atmosphere slowly, turning the blue sky red. Water is drained from the planet as large pools of Histaff amalgamations strip the planet of all usable resources. Small Histaff infection beings are elevated into the atmosphere by complex semi-biological mechanisms, only for them all to be shot down by a certain patrolling ship.


    Then, far above, a metal skull plunges into the atmosphere, a small metal horn following shortly after.

 02_02 - Friends in high places

    Douglas sees stars.


    Instead of the luscious carpet of twinkling lights he has seen before, this sprawl of stars is made out of a grand total of two sparkling dots. His previous experiences - teleporting into outer space, smashing into a wrecked spaceship, docking at a Histaff infected space station, and all the other hijinks - have taught the armoured skull some much-needed context. It thus takes the skeleton a mere hour of contemplating what only seeing two stars means; either the universe has partially disintegrated, or something is blocking his vision.


    The faintly illuminated rocks he sees all around him might have something to do with this. His flaming eye sockets shine enough light on his immediate environment for him to recognise the grainy texture of natural sandstone. Douglas ponders the facts of life for a few more minutes, even contemplating why he recognises the stone¡¯s structure for what it is. He knows that he should start taking action, but to be totally honest, he is still somewhat overwhelmed by recent events.


    Contemplating the rocks around him puts the skull into a somewhat philosophic mood. Douglas knows what he is, he realises. He knows that he is a soul glued to a skeleton by an intricate weave of magic. He knows that he had a proper life at one point before some random purveyor of deathly energies called him back and stapled him to his current frame. He knows that the faded images that keep slipping in and out of his grasp have a deeper meaning, even though he can¡¯t find it inside himself to truly care.


    So Douglas reminisces for the first time in his life. He knows not what caused this sudden impulse of higher thought. He only knows that he feels like revisiting the cosy and known universe that is his past.


    He warmly recalls being a mindless drone, raised from sodden earth amidst his fellow bony brethren. Remembering the necromancer that raised him - a parchment skinned ancient fossil of a man he revered like a god - now only causes a small sliver of familiar contentment to emerge in his cold core. No longer does the ultimate dread and undoubtedly obeyance he used to feel when seeing the very controller of his soul bother him any longer. Now he sees but a small man, trying to avenge a small plight by taking out a small wizard in a small tower.


    Then the teleportation accident happened. He happily recalls the single-minded process of elimination the previous version of himself went through. The ponderous and slow trip through the broken spaceship in microgravity and his adventures in the scant few rooms left in the wrecked slagheap makes him feel all warm inside. Not a physical warmth, no this feeling comes from the fact that he knows what will happen next as he steps through his memories.


    Douglas¡¯ one track mind recalls the escape pod and the arduous process he went through in order to slowly don the emergency spacesuit. He feels like smiling as he recalls losing hours, days, while pondering the smallest piece of meaning. The trek through bioweapon infected space station brings more nostalgic warmth to the armoured skull. The accidental and honestly miss-guided revival of the woman caused all kinds of complications. Where before, he traversed a logical and sound path of progress, all actions involving the woman are accompanied by an odd sort of confusion.


    The blue box system - which up until then had made a lot of sense - started telling him random things. It was almost as if the skeleton had been overwhelmed by the sudden calculating power the system had gained when he introduced a true multitasker - a functioning human brain - to said system. Douglas might¡¯ve gained a lot of intelligence and wisdom over the past few days he¡¯s been alive, but this doesn¡¯t mean that he has gained enough common sense to understand the female mind.


    A weird form of a shiver runs through the buried skull. For some reason, the thought he just had seems very dangerous indeed. A lot of things are clear to the skeleton, the way his companion acted is most definitely not. Normally, the underground skeleton would feel up to analysing this particular fact for a couple of years. Once again for reasons unknown, Douglas is not enthusiastic about trying to understand the semi-undead female at all.


    His escape from the space station was a harrowing one, the chaotic assault by Histaff behemoth making him wonder how he got out of that situation with his skull intact. The long period inside the white ships¡¯ cockpit that followed allowed him to calm down a bit. The sudden burst of activity as alarms went off before everything went white was rather unexpected, but the long period of floating through empty space while he slowly regenerated his bones once again was calming. Then he lost all of his bones, again, when burning up in the atmosphere as he smashed into the red planet. And now he is lying somewhere, buried in rubble, his neck itching something fierce. The stone surrounding him is stopping his regeneration, and the fact that his mana keeps flowing towards the back of his skull without doing anything is rather disconcerting to the skeleton.


    Finally snapping out of the weird mood he has found himself in, Douglas decides to get going. Normally, he¡¯d just want to wander around for a bit, see the sights and maybe try to find some food - not this time. Something is calling out to him, a weird pull that comes from somewhere to his left. The growing mix of discomfort and curiosity is the trigger for him to act, finally. Recalling the spell shape that seems most suitable for this situation, he keeps the complex circle in his mind¡¯s eye while happily pouring mana into the mental construct.


    The rock encasing the skeleton tears itself apart in order to obey the foreign laws suddenly imposed upon local reality. Otherworldly energy is consumed by a mystical and illogical process as normal, boring stone is forcefully transformed into air. The metal-covered skull is quickly freed, floating in the high-density gasses kept in magical compression and stillness. Then Douglas suddenly wonders if this was a good idea. He has seen the effects of the decalcinate spell on more than one occasion, and the concussive force resulting from the process has resulted in physical devastation every time. He just cast the biggest version of this very destructive spell right around his own skull. He has time to think the beginning of a muted curse when his control slips.


    The thought that a sudden gust of wind is much less destructive than the atmospheric entry he went through a short while back isn¡¯t present in his skull. Instead, his sudden doubt only causes the spell to fail in the most explosive manner possible. The air, instantly expanding in an attempt to equalize pressure, turns opaque as it¡¯s moisture content condenses. A large chunk of the rock surrounding Douglas is turned to dust as the concussive force grinds the solid stone to powder. From the middle of this dust explosion, Douglas is shot directly upwards.


    His vision turns into a red and grey-green blur as his gleaming metal skull starts spinning like mad. Shrieking through the atmosphere, as he is blasted upwards like a cannonball. At the apex of his flight his rapid spin has slowed enough for him to observe his surroundings. He sees flashes of barren red sand, dark jagged rocks, and endless stretches of dead wasteland. Then his skull turns another hundred and eighty degrees, and he spots something that makes his initial glimpse look like paradise. He catches sight of a sprawling ruin, endless decaying infrastructure clearly demarcated by crumbling roads and fallow fields.


    As he starts falling back down, Douglas spots the centre point of the landscape, a wide and shallow crater spanning many kilometres just beyond the ruined urban sprawl. Or rather, cutting into the crumbling city. Another spin, and Douglas sees the place he flew away from just now. A large expanding dustcloud marks his launch site, a small avalanche of rocks rumbling down the slopes. A mountain range stretches into the horizon, jagged rocks cutting into the grey air with knife edge tops.


    Then the ground rushes towards him from below, and the metal skull smashes through one of the few remaining panes of glass in the entire town. Accompanied by a glittering rain of shards, his forehead horn jams into a decorative synthetic tabletop as he lands in the middle of a ruined living room. The glass finishes falling to the cheap synthetic wooden flooring all around Douglas as he takes in the world from his new viewpoint - eyeballs staring at a fake marble pattern printed upon plastic from a scant few centimetres.


    Douglas studies the pattern in front of him for a while, the interplay between low-resolution printing and cheaply patterned plastic somewhat interesting. His concentration is broken a lot earlier than usual, however. This is caused by two reasons. The first one is the constant mental pull he feels, something or someone calling and pulling at his mind. The other one is the steadily increasing tremors shaking the room he is in, as well as the increasing rumble of noise coming from outside.


    Desiring to no longer be stuck inside the table with the angular horn jutting from his forehead, Douglas does what he does best, randomly casting magic. He tries to cast the decalcinate spell, expecting to be launched up and away again as the solid matter around him turns to air in an uncontrolled explosion. Absolutely nothing happens except for the fact that a single mug dissolves. Pouring more mana into the spellshape does exactly nothing. Releasing the spell only causes a small, cup-sized, gust of wind, which blows dust into his face.


    Small items all around Douglas start shaking as the stomping grows louder still. The low rumbling noise that has been growing in the background turns into a steady pattering of many, many feet. Douglas is now getting somewhat worried, the ominous shaking and other growing noises have him thinking of all kinds of Histaff related scenario¡¯s. He hasn¡¯t had a single positive experience with the engineered bioweapon so far, and the skull just knows that he isn¡¯t rid of the slimy and bony fuckers just yet.


    Instead of continuing onto a path that doesn¡¯t work, Douglas reverts his course a hundred and eighty degrees as he calls up the opposite of the spell he was just now casting. The Calcinate spell does even less as he shoves mana into the shape. A calm breeze blows past his bony visage as a small arrow of stone materializes. Dropping the spell in disgust only reverts the soft wind blowing past his cranium, the stone now dissolving into air once again.


    Douglas is thrown into a crisis of faith. His spells, the one tool he has been relying on to solve all his problems, do very little. The background noise becomes clearer still, and despite not having any ears, the metal clad skull can swear he can hear drool dripping from the slavering maws of the undoubtedly approaching hordes. Fumbling for a solution to his immobility problem, he calls up the spell that turns air into water, the phlogistonate spell. The air around him is sucked into a point once again, this time forming transparent droplets of water that freeze in short order. The little remaining moisture in the air condenses on his cooling frame as the ice lance spins into being between his eyes and the table. Commanding the spell to launch, it does nothing except for the fact that it creates a small patch of frost.


    Now truly starting to feel a hint of desperation, he shoves power into the last spell he reasons can help him, the turning of water into air, the dephlogistonation spell, also known as fireball. The little layer of ice is sucked up as Douglas commands the spell to form on the table beneath him, and the cheap synthetic material starts burning and bubbling the moment the gathering liquid ignites. Overjoyed that his horn will be freed soon, Douglas fails to notice the fact that a rather large white beast has just entered the same room he is in.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    Three red eyes lock onto the smoking skull, a small forest of tentacled tongues licking a rather impractical looking array of protruding teeth. The hulking Histaff reworked gets stuck in the doorway for exactly point two seconds before ramming its frame through the cheap concrete. Douglas doesn¡¯t notice the cloud of dust, so fixed is he upon the small flame burning the table and covering his face in soot.


    Then teeth cover him entirely, tongues licking over his hyper-bonded carbon diamond covered exterior, and he is unceremoniously pulled free from the table. Only to be trapped inside the gelatinous substance of the monster¡¯s insides.


    It takes him a good few minutes to adapt to this situation. The view from inside one of the bone plate covered beings is honestly rather interesting to the skull. Normal beings would undoubtedly be digested within seconds, yet the hyper acidic enzymes and chemicals present in the reworked¡¯s interior fail to even scratch his mana enhanced skull. Normal beings also wouldn''t be able to see a thing, yet the skeleton¡¯s Darkvision skill allows him a decent view of his red surroundings.


    Light seeps in between slight gaps in the monster¡¯s bone plates, showing Douglas a wondrous tableau of the being¡¯s internals. Cords of muscles seem to form at random as its exterior armour plates slide across each other, other parts of the red interior seem to be dedicated holding areas for general detritus. A shining network of lines runs through the entire being, forming connections to areas moments before they change. The monster¡¯s five legs all seem to have dedicated strands of softly glowing nerves to them as the beast moves.


    Douglas is jostled around a bit as he studies his new resting place. He knows he should feel some form of negative emotion at the fact that he was so easily eaten, but his interesting new environment makes it hard to hold a grudge. Staring at its moving surroundings, Douglas studies the things interior with a morbid kind of fascination.


    But then the jostling stops and the thing¡¯s legs fold in on themselves, the straining cords of muscle visible as they dissolve back into clear gel. Another hour later, Douglas is bored again. He has studied and observed all there is to study, and despite his Darkvision skill, the slowly dimming illumination around him has started preventing him from seeing a lot of the interesting details.


    Although his spells failed to do anything interesting previously, Douglas secretly hopes that that situation was but a fluke. His dephlogistonation spell did the most to the irritating plastic table, so he starts pouring mana into the spell construct. Suspecting that the previous failures might have been a result of him being too conservative, he pours in half of the mana he has instead of a small trickle. The result is immediate and extreme.


    Although the Histaff reworked¡¯s are near perfect shook troops, able to shrug off an amazing amount of firepower with only minimal damage, this is all thanks due to their liquid insides combined with hard bone plating. Their bodies can instantaneously form new muscles and internal structural reinforcements, allowing them to take on physical and energetic hits in the most optimal ways. The combination of the ability to discard compromised parts of their body and the possibility of replacing armour plating on the go makes them feared throughout the entire galaxy.


    The one thing they are not well equipped to fight, however, is a superheated steam explosion happening inside of them. Douglas is covered in slime, and although the liquid contains an amazing blend of macromolecules, complex biomatter and organic nanomachines, it is still mainly water. The dephlogistonation spell rips a good tenth of the beast¡¯s internal matter into its sphere of influence, starting the process of turning the water into the depleted version of phlogiston. A hundred litres of water is turned into steam, the liquid turning into gas that wants to occupy around seventeen hundred times its previous volume.


    Douglas, being at the centre of this explosion, is suddenly freed from his captivity. The bone plates are shot outwards as they shatter, turning the Histaff apex predator into a fragmentation grenade. Red goop paints a large portion of the ruined town a nice shade of pink as a small mushroom cloud rises to the heavens above the startled skull. Douglas unceremoniously falls to the ground, landing inside a steaming puddle of red with a wet splash.


    Feeling like he should blink, the skeleton looks around. Ruins tower above him, dwarfing the diminished skull. Grey monstrosities made from shattered glass and crumbling concrete block the majority of the sky, their jagged silhouettes painting stark contrasts against the fading grey and green of the cloudless heavens. Having landed right-side up, he has a rather nice view of his new surroundings. A road, more pothole and crack than flat surface, stretches away from his low perspective, sidewalks and streetlamps in equal states of ruin. He spots rare shards of billboards here and there, any and all paint either removed or stripped by the elements. Not a single building looks unmarred, and most are little more than heaps of ruined building materials.


    Douglas finds himself in what undoubtedly used to be a bustling metropolis. The building right in front of him is a couple dozen floors at the minimum, a towering skyscraper that now has a rather dangerous looking tilt. Next to it is a pile of concrete slabs, which is sitting next to a barren park, its fountain long dry and its benches stripped. The road he is lying on seems to be made from square pieces of stone, covered by a crumbling layer of what looks to be a dark asphalt. White lumps lay here and there, their pristine cleanliness a shining contrast with the downtrodden environment.


    Looking around, Douglas sees that the highest building is the one he is lying next to. The amount of damage done to the infrastructure also seems to increase further down the street. A moment of clear thought lets Douglas realize that the crater he saw is probably in that direction. The pull on his mind is that way also. Clacking his teeth in contentment at his own reasoning and mental deductions, the armoured skull fails to realize that the white shapes - slightly covered in red slime - around him have started moving.


    Having finished with looking around, for now, Douglas turns his focus inwards. He had told the blue messages to shut up during the harrowing escape from the space station, and he hadn¡¯t bothered to check them since. He¡¯d been too busy with piecing his own bones together, once again, directly after the escape, and had sunken into a spellshape studying and self-enchanting frenzy shortly after. He¡¯d never bothered checking them even after his ship was blown to bits, nor when he shot through the planet¡¯s atmosphere, leaving a trail of ablated bone in his wake. So Douglas allows the furiously blinking blue dot to tell him what is going on, ignoring the shifting white and red shapes all around him.


    [ Microgravity Manoeuvring lvl 5 ]


    [ Spell shaping 2 lvl 19 ]


    [ Mana Sense 2 lvl 20 ]


    [ Mana Sense 2 has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 1/6 ]


    [ Meditation 2 lvl 19 ]


    [ Mana Control 2 lvl 20 ]


    [ Mana Control 2 has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 2/6 ]


    [ Mana Stone Production 2 lvl 16 ]


    [ Magical Animation 2 lvl 6 ]


    [ Shattered; ended ]


    [ Mana Reserve; you have embedded mana stone inside your body, increasing your mana pool. +50 MP ]


    [ Mana Reserve; increased. +538 MP ]


    [ Outfit ¡®nWear sVital autoSuit¡¯ is no longer present ]


    [ Shattered; you are missing over 90% of your body mass, limiting health regeneration by 90% ]


    [ Mana Reserve; drained. ]


    [ Meditation 2 lvl 20 ]


    [ Meditation 2 has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 3/6 ]


    [ Shattered; ended ]


    [ Mana Stone Production 2 lvl 20 ]


    [ Mana Stone Production 2 has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 4/6 ]


    [ Spell Shaping 2 lvl 19 ]


    [ Magical Animation 2 lvl 7 ]


    [ Mana Reserve; increased +21,137 MP ]


    [ Shattered; you are missing over 90% of your body mass, limiting health regeneration by 90% ]


    [ Mana Reserve; decreased +945 MP ]


    [ Spell Shaping 2 lvl 20 ]


    [ Spell Shaping 2 has reached lvl 20; Associate Arcanist 5/6 ]


    [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 33 slain; 19,574,453 xp earned ]


    [ Arcane skeleton lvl 18 2,278,400/2,278,400 xp earned ]


    [ Arcane skeleton lvl 19 3,686,400/3,686,400 xp earned ]


    [ Arcane skeleton lvl 20 5,964,800/5,964,800 xp earned ]


    With a clarity of mind that only comes occasionally, Douglas reads the blue screens as they catch up to recent events. The first section of skill gains, regeneration, and mana stone creation all happened inside the ship. The bright light then destroyed his suit, his ship, his skeleton and his mana reserves. Also, he isn¡¯t sure why he thinks this, but he feels like Katare is fine, somehow or another.


    The long tumbling in empty space let him do some more studying and mana stone production. This then came to an end when he fell through the atmosphere of the planet, and the rest is recent history. The tingle at the back of his neck informs him that he is regenerating once again, hopefully for real this time. The skull feels irritated about the fact that his mana stone filled bones are all gone, and he doesn¡¯t think that he can get the fragments back this time. He will have to regrow his entire body the hard way, once again. For the first time in his undead life, Douglas feels a bone-weary tiredness. Normally, he doesn''t really care, but the clearness of thought that seems to come with each level-up allows him to be thoroughly sick of losing his body time and time again.


    Maybe he should engrave his bones this time, and not just stuff them with compacted magical power. Briefly wondering why he didn¡¯t do so before, he makes up his mind to never again lose a single shred of the calcium he regenerates. His skull is filled with mana stone and engraved runes or resilience both, and Douglas vows to make his entire being as seemingly indestructible as his skull.


    His internal promise is immediately broken when one of the many white lumps lying around approaching him sniffs him once with its undulating nostrils, and swallows him. The small shard of regenerated atlas bone is immediately dissolved as Douglas once again ends up inside a Histaff reworked. Douglas is still mentally slapping himself for not using a spell to get away from the slowly moving monster when he feels something odd. The mana that was flowing towards his neck, slowly regenerating his vertebrae, actually sticks to the slime around him. His Mana Sense skill tells him that where usually, the mana would have vanished into nothingness right after leaving his body, it instead sticks around for a bit. The faint cloud of blue at the back of his skull takes an entire minute to dissipate.


    Then another idea hits Douglas. The Magical Animation skill that came with his Associate Arcanist class has been extremely underutilised so far. Singly reinforcing a ship or his own skull might be seen as a weird form of animation when looked at it correctly, he knows that the spell can do so much more. This, combined with his affinity for bones, calcium, and the awe he feels for the mechanically amazing bone plated beasts lead him to a rather sudden desire. Douglas wants to ride a Histaff reworked, he wants to own one that listens to his every whim.


    Unfortunately, Douglas fails to notice that the mental level-up clarity has mostly faded at this point. So with his new goal in mind, he casts the same spell that got him free last time. Credit where credit is due, in his attempt to secure the being¡¯s precious outer shell, he puts less mana inside the dephlogistonation spell than last time. Unfortunately, he fails to take into account that his skull is still stuffed full of mana stone, tripling his otherwise already large mana pool. Instead of vaporising the entire reworked, the spell merely makes it burst like a watermelon, shattering each piece of bone the beast possesses into small fragments.


    [ Reworked Histaff chrysalis lvl 25 slain; 746,221 xp earned ]


    [ Arcane skeleton lvl 21 8,243,200/8,243,200 xp earned ]


    Mentally sighing to himself as his mind receives another moment of clear thought, Douglas prepares for a fight. He might want to keep at least one of the many, many, many Histaff reworked¡¯s now surrounding him in one piece, but it doesn¡¯t look like the beasts themselves are keen on the idea. Still in the process of forming another fireball, Douglas¡¯s still falling skull is swamped by at least a hundred bone-white beasts.

 03_01 - Dinner conversation

    ¡°More food?¡± asks Douglas. He is a whole and complete skeleton again, much to Katare¡¯s obvious annoyance.


    ¡°No, you already ate over two decades worth of emergency rations. You do not need to eat more food.¡±


    ¡°Food,¡± nods the skeleton enthusiastically, ignoring every single word in her reply except for the last one. Douglas looks around again, still not too sure what he feels about this new place. The food is pretty good, if a bit bland, but it helped him regenerate his bones like nothing else. Other than that, Douglas doesn¡¯t really think a lot of this place.


    He is, he curiously finds, still of out sorts. There had been an awful lot of darkness, after all. The sheer amount of nothingness that had been all around him was pretty bad at first. At the very least, it had allowed him to get to grip with everything that¡¯d happened.


    From the first step he had ever taken, freshly reanimated by some necromancer, to his teleportation into outer space, to the slow crawl through a spaceship fragment. The treck through the spaceship had been interesting to revisit for the first couple of dozen times. So many things make sense now that he¡¯s had the time to think about them like a hundred times.


    Then the planet where Katare¡¯s position of unreliable sidekick had been replaced by Evot. And then he had found the two slimy things that make so much sense. So much sense. Just a few words and those two understood every single message and meaning he had meant, along with a lot that he had not thought of yet.


    And now he is sitting on top of soft cushions, inside a small cramped space, some weird music playing all around him. And KAtare is back!


    Well, Douglas thinks she is that odd human from back then. He isn¡¯t completely sure, but he thinks he recognizes some things about her. She had a nose, and this person has a nose. Same with eyes, eyebrows, deep lines carved across the entire face in an oddly appealing way. Her eyes are rotating disks, and Douglas thinks that Katare had those too. He is not sure about the eyebrows, but at least Douglas recognizes the lines and eyes.


    And the hair! Katare had changing hair, that is something he knows for sure. Something about blonde and black hair. This new person¡¯s hair changes every second, patches of starlight and invisibility flowing through the fine threads.


    ¡°Stop eating the couch and listen to me already!¡±


    Unable to blink, Douglas settles for sheepishly looking up at Katare. Blue eyes, circular rotating rings forming a rather hypnotic sight look at him in a rather stern manner. ¡°Couch?¡±


    ¡°YES! The very cushion you are chewing on so selfishly. It¡¯s worth more than many a spaceship. As my funds are limited at the moment, I would like to request that you refrain from eating my Flarxian Hyper-Cashmere.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    ¡°So, as I was saying, I need you to get serious for a moment. We are in big trouble, and unless we do something drastic, we are all going to die.¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    ¡°No,¡± vocalizes Douglas while idly rubbing the badge stuck in the middle of his forehead. He does wonder where his horn has gone. And the rest of his skull armor. And why his body, in general, feels so light. Something about the whiteness of his bones is oddly appealing, but he feels like he¡¯d really appreciate either dull redness or shiny metal. He¡¯d really like some answers to those questions.


    ¡°The Order is after me now, which is not great. I tried everything I could think of, but there are some things money can¡¯t buy. Not like that¡¯s a possibility for me at the moment anyway. Stop eating the couch, and don¡¯t rip that fabric. I can buy a garden planet¡¯s yearly output for the price of that pillow. Drop it.¡±


    The realizations that he might be able to get a massive amount of food for the pillow, he stuffs it into his chest cavity.


    ¡°And because the Order is after me, or at least their counter-intelligence agency is, they are now also after you! So we¡¯ve just got to cooperate, else we both will end up dead.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    ¡°It¡¯s good that you agree. This means that at the very least you¡¯re not dumb enough to be a total lost cause. I also might have pissed off a few planetary militaries, but that¡¯s such a minor annoyance in comparison to the ORder, that it¡¯s nearly sad. Still, the saddest part is that even those small fries are too much for us to cope with at the moment. That¡¯s why I went to get you, and that¡¯s why I want you to help me rob a museum or two.¡±


    ¡°Okay.¡±


    ¡°Wow, thanks, Douglas! I really thought that you also might have been one of the fake people-¡± Katare abruptly stops talking as she looks up for the first time in a while. She¡¯d been twiddling her thumbs and looking at the ground, her digits making sparks as they rub against each other, and leaving deep furrows into the metal chair she is sitting on.


    Now though, she looks at Douglas with an open mouth. Douglas ignores her and just continues using the wonderfull, wonderfull Stone Moulding spell to slather a new layer of protective metal on his bare bones. Katare watching him work in mute silence as he scoops up hand fulls of the metal bench before plastering it over his sternum.


    ¡°Could you stop destroying my ship?¡±


    Something in her voice halts Douglas in his tracks. Instead of continuing his bone-protecting measures, he looks up at her and flinches, dropping the handful of solidified metal.


    ¡°Why are you destroying my stuff?¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m destroying your stuff??¡±


    ¡°Yes, You have just committed gross property damage.¡±


    ¡°I have just committed gross property damage?¡±


    ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s fine, but what are you going to do about it.¡±


    ¡°According to law¡­¡± The exact wording completely fails Douglas. His memory is pretty good, and he is sure that Evot told him this precise law a couple of times, but he just can¡¯t recall it at the moment.


    ¡°What law, Douglas?¡±


    ¡°Evot?¡±


    ¡°Who is Evot, Douglas?¡±


    ¡°Grey things?¡±


    ¡°What are grey things, Douglas?¡±


    Douglas decides to shut up.


    ¡°You do not appreciate the gravity of this situation, do you? It seems like I will first have to impress upon you the gravity of this situation, don¡¯t I?¡±


    For some reason, Douglas feels like he is very much not in charge of this situation. ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Good. Then you can start repaying the damage you have done to my property by listening to what I have to say. You need to understand that I am in deep shit. And now, due to association, you are in deep shit. So you will understand and then you will help me, alright?¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± replies Douglas in a mousey tone.


    ¡°Good, then let¡¯s start at the beginning! After you hadn¡¯t prevented my head from freezing over, after you¡¯d forced us into the shitty homebrew of a boat, my daddy came for me! That should have been happy news, right? Well, that changed when I found out that dad had been putting me in cloned bodies, right? So after that, I think I went a bit mad. Not sure how, but anyway. When I woke up, I was a brain in a jar!¡±


    Douglas knows enough about the part of the populace that identifies as female by this time to nod occasionally as Katare goes on a very long rant.

 03_02 - Frenzy, Flasks, and Fluids

    [ Name: Katare ]


    [ Race: Human ]


    [ Level: 1 (0/100) ]


    [ Class: None ]


    [ HP: 1/10 ][ HP/h: 0.01 ]


    [ MP: 0/10 ][ MP/h: 0.01 ]


    [ STR: 1 ]


    [ AGI: 1 ]


    [ CON: 1 ]


    [ VIT: 1 ]


    [ INT: 14 ]


    [ WIS: 13 ]


    [ Brain in a jar]


    [ Universal Language ]


    [ Catastrophic Injury ]


    [ Malnourished]


    [ Hypoxia]


    ?


    Katare thinks she has a pretty good grasp on her current situation. It¡¯s just a shame that this knowledge is exceptionally useless to her. From a multitude of clues, she has managed to put together a long list of reasons why she is screwed, boned, fucked, and will most likely die soon.


    First, there is the fact that she is just a brain, presumably floating in a jar. This is something she is explicitly told, and for various reasons, she isn¡¯t inclined to disbelieve the source. Like a painful scab that she just can¡¯t leave alone, she mentally asks about her current situation once more. The blackness she is floating in is blasted apart by a blinding screen of white text on a blue background.


    [ Brain in a jar; you are but a brain in a jar, your entire body removed and kept alive artificially. STR max 1, AGI max 1, CON max 1 ]


    Secondly, and this one is probably a result of the first reason, she isn¡¯t just blind. She has no bodily sensations, can¡¯t hear, can¡¯t taste, can¡¯t feel, and she has the mother of all migraines. The single solace in this absolute void has been extremely interesting, however. The one sensation that she does perceive is a sense completely, totally new, and foreign. An entirely new layer of existence for her to discover. And she has found out that she can influence this layer with nothing but a firm application of her mind.


    While that is pretty neat, all in all, her mental state is still pretty horrible, all things considered. She still feels herself going crazy, slowly but surely, and the lack of bodily sensations is messing with her sense of self in a big way. She does know that concentrating on the absolute void she has found herself in is not a good idea.


    Instead of mentally flopping around in a blind panic, she has been zoning out. She has experienced a whole scala of alien relaxation methods, from microgravity floatation tanks to mountain-sized beds of high-tech slime. Using these experiences to channel this new situation into a form of meditation has worked surprisingly well. She had started glimpsing the new layer of reality after doing just that for a small eternity.


    Since then, she''s enraptured by the interplay of blue lights inside her own brain. The existential questions and life-shattering revelations that she experienced just after waking up are no more. Now, she is fully engrossed in the rather meditative past time of ¡®poke the floaty sparkles.¡¯


    [ New skill learned; Meditation lvl 1 ]


    The blue boxes seem to agree, so that¡¯s nice. Blinking the screen away through the pain, it takes her another small eternity to get back into the right state of mind. The migraine in her head doesn¡¯t seem to be stopping anytime soon. This brings her to the third reason why she firmly believes that she is extremely and irrevocably screwed.


    Thirdly, even the cheapest of base-line cerebrum support systems will perfectly support the brain it¡¯s keeping alive with oxygen and nutrients. Under no circumstances should the person inside the system feel less comfortable than inside their own body. And Katare is not feeling very comfortable right now.


    This means that she is either being kept inside an improvised containment vessel, something or someone deliberately messed with the settings, or the machine keeping her brain alive is broken. The fear of death, the dark dread that wants to put icy claws in her stomach doesn¡¯t really take hold, as she has no stomach. Instead of twisting her guts into a painful pretzel, she manages to forget about her approaching demise without much effort.


    She just sinks back into blissful forgetfulness and pokes at the strands of light in her head some more. Now and then, there are minuscule sparkles between the blue filaments of light. Much smaller than the shiny wires in her brain, it takes her a good bit of effort to see these. Sometimes, these fragments float in from the outside, or they float away from her perception range. The fact that these extremely hard to perceive shards are coming in from the outside world is a massive relief to the woman. She knows that she isn¡¯t really in a void, that there is a world outside of her extremely limited, brain-sized perception range. But seeing the actual proof of this fact is giving her a microscopic smidgen of hope.


    [ Mana Sense lvl 2 ]


    To her amazement, the strands of power floating around inside her head become even clearer and more vivid. Instead of staring at glass threads floating in the wind, she now sees small shining tubes. Looking around and outside her brain allows her to see a small ocean of blue fragments. Then, she spots a new strand of power being made. In a dark corner of her mind, small blue fragments assemble themselves into a brand new glowing thread. She spends the next small eternity of meditation in quiet observation, just staring at the constellation of moving blue pinpricks around her.


    It¡¯s just a shame she keeps blacking out, though. This happens any time the blue strands start getting all riled up. She long since realized that more and more of the glowing wires keep showing up. But until she got the Mana Sense skill, she hadn¡¯t been able to observe their creation. Once the strands reach a threshold level, they start moving like mad, and she blacks out. When she wakes up again, her brain will be once more empty of the glowing fibers.


    The one thing that she isn¡¯t able to ignore, the one thing that keeps bugging her is that there are shapes inside her brain. Her memory is starting to get hazy, but she is pretty sure that the only thing she had implanted in her head was a standard neural interface. Implanting a dense network of wires into the hindbrain of all newborn sapients is standard practice. The majority of all important technology is controlled through these implants, and they usually act as a proof of identity. It has taken her a while to realize that she has more neural implants than just the minimum, as she couldn¡¯t understand why there are threads and shapes woven throughout her entire brain. The strands of brightness dim as they move through these spots, allowing her to begin understanding that her entire brain is wired up.


    The increasing light show in her head pulls her attention away from the fact that she was operated on without her consent. The fact that she never agreed to undergo a brain-isolation procedure slips her muddled attention. The swirling lights in her mind seem to beg to be touched, so she tries poking them once more. The fact that the smidgen of power actually moves under her poke this time stuns her into mute stupefaction for a moment.


    [ New skill learned; Mana Control lvl 1 ]


    [ Mana Sense lvl 3 ]


    [ Meditation lvl 2 ]


    She is overwhelmed by the sudden stimulus of having something new to read and experience after hours of her current perfect sensory void. Then the dance of glowing fibers reaches its crescendo, and she blacks out again.


    ?


    She comes to once again. Her attention is immediately drawn to the star of blue that¡¯s blazing in the center of her being. Floating in the middle of her brain is a single unit, a quantified portion of power. Her brain is empty of all other energies and lights, and she catches the occasional flash of blue being sucked into the singular point. No more strands, no more floating fragments, just this single source. It feels both all-encompassing and very small. Like a weak little soap bubble holding the entire universe.


    That¡¯s not the only blue dot she sees, however. Somehow, even though she doesn¡¯t have any eyes, there is a blinking dot at the bottom of her vision. Concentrating on the rather attention-grabbing light, she wonders what that¡¯s about.


    [ Secondary planar ingress point in critical danger ]


    [ Assessing options ]


    [ Bonus stat points remaining; N/A ]


    [ Potential class change; N/A ]


    [ Potential Race change; N/A ]


    [ Potential skill gain; N/A ]


    [ Potential apparel integration; UNKNOWN ]


    Before Katare can even read the entire thing, it vanishes, another set of blue screens popping into view.


    [ You have donned UNKNOWN. You have one apparel slot remaining. Activate UNKNOWN?]


    [ Donning UNKNOWN. System integration of the outfit will take time-based on the complexity of outfit ]


    [ Integration time remaining; NAN ERROR ]


    [ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 6% ]


    Katare thinks about the unfairness of life for a bit. One moment, she is so bored she could die. The next, text flies by too fast for her to read, and the sun floating around in her head starts wobbling and dancing. The last thing she sees before blacking out again is the bright blue light popping apart, splitting into two.


    ?


    [ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 100% ]


    [ Apparel slot SourceForge Neural SuperVisor v2.9450AH ReQuit FullBrain integrated ]


    [ Implant detected, one apparel slot freed ]


    [ You have donned UNKNOWN. You have one apparel slot remaining. Activate UNKNOWN?]


    [ Integration time remaining; NAN ERROR ]


    [ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 2% ]


    And she shoots awake again. Looking at the blue boxes, she is suddenly extremely annoyed. She¡¯s had many discussion with Solan about the topic of neural implants. Time and time again, she had proposed implementing the much better designed third version of the neural supervisor implant framework. Time and time again had she shown him extremely compelling reasons to do so. Time and time again, Solan had shot all of them down with a single counter-argument.


    Version three of that protocol is compatible with nearly all known species, sub-species, life forms, and sapient classifications. Version two is based from the ground up on a humanoid centric protocol, based around the universe as seen through the eyes of a carbon-based life form of roughly humanoid shape. Solan seems to like non-humanoids well enough, but Katare has long since learned that he is a hardcore shapeist. She has learned many things from her supposed father. But, she has never been able to understand why he believes that a sapient is less just because their corporeal form isn¡¯t a humanoid.Stolen story; please report.


    The old fool hadn¡¯t budged a single time. Katare had expressed a fervent and deep desire to be outfitted with a version three neural link often. Yet it turns out that her old man has stubbornly put a version two model inside her head.


    That¡¯s not what is really pissing her off, though. It turns out that she is now equipped with the ReQuit Fullbrain version. A standard neural supervisor is just a web of wires implanted in the midbrain. This allows for rudimentary monitoring and neural interfacing, which is usually enough for most people.


    The FullBrain version is required for low-cost virtual reality, full monitoring of the brain, full simulation of senses, or in Katare¡¯s case, full immersive remote control of cloned bodies.


    That thought sobers her up real quick, and she realizes that the remote controlling of bodies was precisely why she was implanted with the extended neural implant. Her anger at the world, Solan, the universe, and the unfairness of it all surges for a few minutes. She fumes and steams for a while, wishing bad things on all the people even tangentially involved with the removal of her body.


    She feels like panting as she comes down from the rush of anger. The lack of lungs to do this with doesn¡¯t seem to stop her from being dizzy. Nor does it stop her head from spinning. She feels nauseous as her migraine starts to worse. The single bright spot of blue light starts wobbling, suspended in the middle of her perception, and she feels her consciousness slipping again.


    Only now does she realize that even though the light had split before, now there is just a singular light. It separates into two dimmer spots again, and things fade to perfect black.


    ?


    [ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 100% ]


    [ Apparel slot nWear Custom H2OGpat Emergency BrainPreserver integrated ]


    Katare knows that things are getting real bad now. She knows that she needs to act, knows that she needs to do something to survive. Yet, despite that knowledge, the migraine is blinding at this point. The dizziness is stripping her of any remaining sense of direction.


    She doesn¡¯t even have the presence of mind to wipe away the blue screen blazing painfully and directly into the visual centers of her brain. Unable to concentrate on anything, she barely realizes that she has been reading the same two lines of text over and over.


    [ Congratulations; you have generated an entirely new Tier 0 class; Technician ]


    [ Would you like to select the Technician class? ]


    The letters that lack any meaning are replaced by new ones. Nothing means anything anymore at this point. Where there actual doctors around, and were she still to have a body, she¡¯d probably be declared braindead right about now.


    Yet despite all that, despite the massive toxic buildup in her grey matter, and despite the near-lethal lack of oxygen, she manages to create a single thought. Forming her consciousness into he shape of a question mark take sup all her effort.


    [ Technician; UNKNOWN. Skills; Mana Sense, Mana Control, Magical Interfacing, Magical Integration. ]


    Instead of nodding, she imagines letting her head drop forward. The faint mental image she has of herself - more a hallucination than anything else at this point - is sitting in front of a desk, and she just lets her face smash into the bureau. The light at the end of the tunnel - the small spark of blue in her brain - beckons, and she lets go. A series of rather chipper boxes pop up in front of her, but she faints before she can even read a single letter.


    ?


    The moment she wakes, she knows she will die. Her mind springs back into focus, fighting through the thick blanket of pain, drowsiness, and just general malaise that is impeding her thinking capacity. There is one big change now, and that is that she knows she will die if she doesn¡¯t wake up. She knew that she would die before, of course. But actually knowing how long she still has to live - a mere three minutes and two seconds - turns out to be an amazing wakeup call. Even being dumped into a vat of hyper-ice is no match for the pure reality of her mortality, the countdown to her death staring her in the face.


    Luckily for her, she also knows what she must do. She knows that she is currently nothing but a human brain wired up with a FullBrain Neural Supervisor. She knows that she is suspended withing the cracked and failing case of a BrainPreserver. The nutrient package in the emergency item encasing her being has long since run out. The H2OGpat designation of the BrainPreserver means that the nutrient package is highly specialized and comfortable. It also means that it runs out much quicker, and by all accounts, she long since should have starved, asphyxiated, or just died in general.


    The seals that are supposed to keep the brain life-jacket closed are not properly engaged. The automatic clamps keeping the two semi-spherical halves together have only partially locked. Every single status indicator present on the piece of tech keeping Katare¡¯s brain alive is showing red. Some are even blinking rapidly, indicating that shit is currently hitting fans with truly monstrous quantities.


    And Katare finds that she agrees with this assessment. She only wonders why the initial predictive algorithms are so far off. She should have died ages ago, at least a couple of days ago, she sees from looking at the item¡¯s internal log. The temperature regulators that are only certified for a few hours have been running for at least a week. The reservoir of synthetic cerebrospinal fluid has been empty for a while. The moisture levels inside the containment area are below life-sustainable, while the containment area itself has not been sterile for hours. The PH levels of the fluid encasing her are either too acidic or too basic; either way, it¡¯s outside of the measurable range.


    In short, shit is broken.


    The only reason the piece of emergency gear that is housing Katare hasn¡¯t completely shut down yet is a hardwired circuit. This prevents its processes from shutting down while it still registers life signs. The single part of the BrainPreserver that still works is the passive oxygenator. This is only due to the fact that it¡¯s a passive, self-regulating module, and only needs to be exposed to fresh air to function properly.


    [ Magical Integration lvl 3 ]


    Suddenly, Katare realizes that she has been getting hints and tips from somewhere. All of these hints, feelings, and instinctive guesses relate to either meditation, sensing mana, or controlling mana. Not a single one pertains to what she understands to be a magical connection between her and the technology around her. She quickly realizes that while this is an interesting line of thought, she has other pressing issues to take care of.


    One of these issues is the question of how it''s even warping possible for her to be still alive. All her brain activity should have stopped hours ago, as she is currently in an environment unable to sustain a disembodied nervous system. She once again realizes that this train of thought is less than useful to her imminent survival. The small desire to figure out this mystery is wiped away when she remembers that she is on the clock. The remaining seconds of her life are quickly growing less and less.


    It must be said that Katare has been holding out remarkably well. When confronted with her won morality in such a concrete manner, the small bout of panic that she falls into can be expected. Instead of curling up into a ball, trying to flee from the reality of her situation, she starts frantically flailing for an escape. But despite all her knowledge and education, there is little concrete she can actually do. Her current status as a brain in a broken jar is not allowing her many options, and she knows that on a deep level. Then, out of ideas and really freaking out now, she starts screaming for help.


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 2 ]


    Then she realizes that there is another component in her housing that still works - a small transmitter designed to send status data and emit an emergency signal. Katare works off of pure instinct at this point, her mental state just a smidgen above conscious. Instead of carefully looking through the available protocols and pre-programmed messages that can be sent, she just starts shouting.


    She feels the messages that are being sent more than anything. She also gets a faint feeling for the room. Then a massive amount of digital information is sent back. Her foggy mind isn¡¯t even able to perceive the sheer amount of data that is being sent back to her. Like a library that¡¯s massive beyond belief, Katare mentally takes a step back and watches as things start happening.


    Somehow, she gets the feeling that she is in a large room. Behind her is a machine that feels dead, a large mass of metal that is wrong on a lot of levels. Beyond her current room, there are many more rooms, a lot of them equally wrong and dead. In front of her is a thick wall and a large doorway kept shut by even thicker doors. Off to the side are all kinds of emergency stations, one of them quickly coming towards her.


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 3 ]


    Then a monstrous limb extends from the single item that''s rushing towards her, and Katare shakes with fear as the massive arm envelops her. She is lifted, and her blinding migraine is overshadowed by sheer nausea for a few moments. The relief of knowing that she has no stomach and throat to throw up with is bittersweet indeed, but it only lasts for a split-second.


    Then, she is falling, and she is blind. The world around her had slowly coasted into a recognizable silhouette but quickly returns to darkness. She feels herself slipping out of the BrainPreserver as the robotic limb opens it. A part of her brain catches on a sharp and damages lip, and her entire existence suddenly smells of green. Then, she sees toast in the eye of a hurricane; the universe is just a pimple on the face of god, and the-


    Her brain completely slips out of the broken BrainPreserver and splashes down into a giant vat of H2OGpat synthetic cerebrospinal fluid. The world rights itself, her migraine vanishes like boiling water in the void of space, and Katare feels safe and sound for the first time in days.


    And days it has been, she realizes. It¡¯s been six standard days since her brain was expelled from the philotic linking unit that was housing her. The initial expulsion had been so catastrophic that the regulatory system overseeing the room initially ruled her a total loss. It was only when the cleanup bot meant to isolate her mortal remains registered electromagnetic waves indicating life signs that the BrainPreserver was installed around her. The emergency wrapping that the philotic linking unit had swaddled her in was not removed properly, though.


    The remaining fabric getting stuck between the two halves of the BrainPreserver prevented it from sealing. This prevented it from sending the signal that the rest of the system was waiting for. So instead of being carted off to the next step in the process, she was just left on the ground.


    Floating around in the small ocean of highly nutritious and perfectly oxygenated fluid, Katere realized that she has been going over system logs. All the information she is now learning comes from timestamped event loggers, dry data that''s honestly just meant for statistical analysis and debugging.


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 4 ]


    Somehow, she has been going through the systems inside her implants and the electronics directly around her. For a few seconds, she is extremely thankful to her math and computer science teacher. Only because of the lesson her taught her, is she now capable of making heads or tails from the weird data formats that the logs are made of. Then she remembers that the scaled lizard piece of shit is actually a pathetic being, and wills herself to forget about him.


    Instead, she spends some time going through the text logs. She senses herself polling the machines around her, requesting the publicly available activity logs through the transmitter in her brain implant. Waves of binary flow through the air and she can somehow sense them all.


    [ Magical Integration lvl 3 ]


    Then she sees what the systems in the room have been doing. All caught up with the events of the past week; she starts noticing what is currently transpiring in the room around her. Her brain is now floating in a large mobile vat of cerebral fluid, a position usually meant for freshly disembodied brains.


    The large drone housing her is slowly and gently rolling towards the far wall, where a large amount of brain-care equipment is located. Among this highly expensive set of tools and items is a series of bodies. Requesting this list, Katara knows that she has had more than enough of all the bullshit going on around her. What she now needs is time to relax and destress.


    Among the large lists of possible cyborg bodies, she selects the most comfortable and natural one. She also removes all the optional features, going for a setting that will mimic her natural body as closely as possible.


    Her mental finger hovers over the start button for a while, hesitating over what other features to check. She then firmly decides that the last few weeks are best forgotten. She has not made any personal gains, has not lived any experiences that she deems worthwhile, and she honestly just wants to forget about the world for a long time. She no longer wants to think about the fact that her father had her body surgically removed. No longer does she want to think about stupid skeletons, magic, and blue lights flowing around in her head.


    She then selects the ¡®amnesiac¡¯ option, alongside the ¡®Berry FullBionic iSheath HominoidAndroid¡¯ body.


    She feels the drone around her inject anesthesia drugs into the cerebral fluid she¡¯s suspended in. One last change she makes to the body is to switch off all transmitters, radio controllers, and other wireless communication devices on a hardware level. Then the drugs hit her naked brain, and she slips into blissful unconsciousness.

 03_03 - A Rude Rousing

    ¡°Miss Katarenin Auchinfon Peezes Tomat. Please, be advised that is would be wise to take a more pro-active approach. Your current vacation has been going on for three weeks. Taking everything into account, halting your sabbatical would be advised.¡±


    Kat opens her eyes, only to see green. She plucks the two slices of qCumb-rr skin-soothing compound from her eyelids and tosses them to the side. In the corner of her vision, she sees a small cleaning drone scuttle out of the wall. Ignoring the little thing as it goes about its cleaning duties, she drags open her eyelids and takes a deep breath.


    ¡°Nel, you stupid cow. Call me Kat already. And stop bothering me. You¡¯re not my mom.¡±


    ¡°Technically, I am,¡± comes the perfectly fake voice, sounding from everywhere at once.


    ¡°I said, shut your mouth! You are not my mom just because you watched over my gestation and raised me a bit. SI¡¯s can¡¯t have kids anyway.¡±


    ¡°I resent that accusation. I would never even think about that topic. It¡¯s not in my regulations.¡±


    Katare finishes sighing and rolls out of the massage chair she was lying in. Stretching while rubbing her eyes fiercely, she wonders why that stupid blue artifact in her vision won¡¯t go away. ¡°Hey, is there really nothing wrong with my neural link? It shouldn¡¯t even affect my vision, but there is this annoying thing I keep seeing.¡±


    ¡°Neural SuperVisor is working at a hundred and sixty-two percent.¡±


    ¡°Nevermind. Forget I asked.¡±


    ¡°Forgetting.¡±


    ¡°Right,¡± Katare replies. She really should rethink whether or not to give Nel a body one of these days. The Synthetic Intelligence is the only thing that she can classify as a true friend. The Intelligence is the being that knows her the best, after all. Having watched her be born and grow up, she and Solan could technically be labeled as Katare¡¯s parents.


    The woman herself will never admit that, though. The common trend in the galaxy upper crust at the time of her formative years was big on denying you even need parents for anything. Admitting to a carefully shackled computer program that you really see it as a guardian would be a massive faux pas.


    ¡°News,¡± Katare mumbles while yawning. She walks over to one of the many fridges, somehow remembering that this particular appliance is the one she stored her jess-mango aqua-legume smoothie in. Picking the cryogenic cup from the sub-zero microgravity field, she starts sipping the beverage while walking over to the lounge area.


    Katarenin is currently enjoying a long and well-deserved vacation. What she is taking a vacation from, well, she can¡¯t quite recall, but that is not important at all. All she knows is that she worked really hard, a lot of bad stuff happened, and she doesn¡¯t need to think about it anymore. She recognizes the signs of a neural trauma blocker for what it is. She also knows that picking at the blank spot in her memory is not a good idea.


    A widely used therapy method in the psycho-surgery community, a neural trauma blocker gently discourages a brain from accessing certain parts of itself. This will allow the memories, habits, and other neural baggage to settle into their rightfull place in peace. Then, when the blockage fails a few years down the line, the once traumatic experiences are tempered and dulled through time.


    So from he moment she woke up in her home, safe and secure in the bowels of Tomat''s most secure vault planet, she swore to herself to enjoy her much deserved rest. And resting is the only thing that she has been putting any effort in lately.


    Sauntering over to her holo entertainment center, about to watch some show-news and other trash, she looks at her current residence. Any random galactic citizen would be flabbergasted by the sheer fortune that must have gone into the construction of her apartments. Kat herself is long since numb to the incredible amount of money that every single part of her habitat has cost, no longer seeing the sheer opulence on display.


    The walls are clad with spider silk that is so rare; it¡¯s sold by the microgram. The floors are made from a unique wood grown on a moon specially designed to be the ideal growing condition for the luxurious timber. Every single strip of the parquet flooring is made from the core of a single tree, each one produced after thousands of years of careful cultivation. The glass ceiling is spectacular, showing the upper apartments in an ethereal glow. The atom-level fabricated single-molecule crystal woven throughout the building took hundreds of years to grow, and its one-way refractory properties is a relatively new development.


    Kat ignores all of the needlessly expensive displays of riches, and flips through the holo-player''s channels. She goes through documentaries, live-broadcast battle royale games, and centrifugal fashion shows until she finds her favorite celebrity news channel. She then relaxes further, completely vegging out while sipping her drink.


    She does wonder why the smoothie that she had a million times tastes so different than usual though. The recognizable dullness of thought that signals she is straying into a dangerous mind-space makes her stop mulling over the question quickly.


    Instead, she focuses on the latest development in the DeepSpace Fine drama. The judge that had ruled the custody settlement is being sued again. The five singers should never have gotten equal representation over their carrier baby with Arnite Golash, she agrees. Kat nods along with the commentary coming from the two tentacled news readers as they rattle off the latest sum of legal fees that the entire fiasco has cost the entertainment industry. Two entire planets filled with legal workers have been working on the case for decades at this point, while the baby in question has managed to escape the spotlight of the paparazzi for months. There are a lot of rumors that he is actually dead due to genetic defects, but the Splice spokespeople keep insisting that the boy is biologically immortal.


    Chuckling at the fact that the entire clusterfuck is so very, very Central, she switches to one of her secret channels. She browses through the wide array of risque material, feeling like relaxing herself in a different way than just spa¡¯s, massages, and good food. Somehow, her body doesn¡¯t seem to agree. No matter what video she puts on the screen, no matter the depravity that she projects in larger-than-life resolution, nothing pushes her buttons.


    Then a rather famous segment of Flartanxian flap porn comes on, and the fuzziness in her mind comes back with a vengeance. She immediately knows that the barriers in her mind will start to break if she continues watching this. She rolls off the couch, hitting the off button on the remote as she gives out a scream of frustration.


    ¡°Everything alright, miss?¡± comes the perfect voice of Nel.


    ¡°Yes. I am just fine!¡± she retorts, throwing her hands up in the air. ¡°Prep the volumetric shower. I need more food.¡±


    Stalking to the fridge, once again not thinking about how she can tell the inventory of the appliances without even looking, she is interrupted by a rather severe sounding Nel. ¡°Power reserves are critical, miss. Keeping the life supp-¡±


    ¡°Did I stutter? Go prep the shower.¡±


    ¡°Yes, miss.¡±


    Katare rubs her eyes as she rummages through the fridge. Finding the one flavor of ice cream she was craving missing, her frustration finally reaches a boiling point. Looking around for something to kick, she sees nothing but indestructible high-class furniture. Looking back at the open fridge, she starts hurling insults at the universe while flinging tubs of icecream through her apartment.


    All she wants to do is to relax, but every time manages to get into a nice vegetative mindset, something throws her out of that blissful state. Every time she gets into watching a good holo flick, she sees something that brings back the fuzziness of neural therapy. Every time she thinks up a new idea or activity, Nel nags her about the power being low.


    How can power even be low? Grabbing a new armful of ice cream containers, she throws them at the hidden speaker the Synthetic Intelligence speaks through. ¡°HOW CAN THE POWER BE LOW AGAIN? This place should have enough energy capacity to run a small sun! How can a simple krek-warped shower be too much!¡±


    ¡°Apologies, miss,¡± replies Nel. A container of yellow, frozen goo explodes against the speaker projecting the voice. ¡°This facility has suffered rather catastrophic damage. Main power is out, and this facility has had to make do-¡±


    ¡°I DON¡¯T CARE!¡± screams Katare while emptying the fridge with a single arm movement. She wonders for a single second how she did that, as she doesn¡¯t remember herself being that powerful. Then the fuzz comes back again, and she stalks off towards the shower, her previous hunger completely forgotten.


    The volumetric shower is a hollow, spherical negative gravity field generator. Opening the door to the large room, she sees a large mass of floating water in the middle of the room. She undresses quickly, tearing the comfortable sweatpants and sweater from her body without a second thought. She then takes a step back and jumps into the artificial gravity field, falling towards the large sphere of water. She splashes down hard, sending a large spray of water going everywhere.


    Idly tumbling around in the aquatic gravity anomaly, she watches many of the droplets orbit around her. They are all slowed down by air resistance, of course, but a few of the larger splashes manage to make a few complete circles. All their orbits decay, the last droplets are falling back into the spherical surface. She watches the large ripples as they race around the sphere of water around her for a while. Floating in the warm water, she feels herself truly relaxing for the first time in weeks.


    She then realizes that she has been holding her breath for at least ten minutes. Her mind goes fuzzy the instance she tries to remember whether or not she had any breathing or oxygenating implants installed. Tearing her mind away from that subject, she decides to distract herself in another way.Stolen novel; please report.


    Swimming out of the sphere of water is an endeavor that she usually enjoys very much. Now, it barely takes her any effort to reach the handholds at the bottom of the chamber. Wading out of the room, sopping wet and more pissed off than she went in, she heads over to her communication panel. Plopping down into the chair, she bats away the makeup robot that emerges from the console. She ignores the hot wind being blown into her face, drying her hair, with stoic silence. She just bears it as she goes through her contact list, tapping on the beautiful face of one of her best friends.


    The rotating circle indicating that a connection is being formed takes an entire five seconds, which is unusual in and of itself. The nondescript corporate goon that answers the phone is even more of a surprise. ¡°Hello?¡±


    ¡°What?¡± Katare replies, confused. ¡°Where is-¡±


    ¡°Miss Goddi is not available at this moment. Would you like to leave a message?¡±


    Baffled at the cool response of the neatly dressed nobody, Katare is briefly at a loss of what to say. She then remembers that Goddi likes to play pranks now and then. It¡¯s a pretty funny one, she admits, but Katare isn¡¯t in the mood at the moment. ¡°Stop this. This isn¡¯t funny. Put her on the phone. I want to talk to her right now!¡±


    ¡°She is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?¡±


    ¡°Yes. Tell her to get her ass on the phone and stop joking around!¡± Katare rolls her eyes hard. Something about the deadpan face of the man is honestly pretty funny.


    ¡°I will make sure that miss Goddi will receive that message. Please have a nice day.¡±


    The holo goes black. Katare is grinning at this point. As far as pranks go, this is one of the better ones. She almost believes that Goddi, one of her best friends in the Central cesspit of snakes and fake people, actually has had some no-name asshat hang up on her.


    Then the dark end-of-call screen vanishes, and she is looking at her list of contacts again. The icy cold fist that should have grabbed her guts right about then is extremely noticeable in its absence. Goddi actually had some no-name of a corporate goon hang up on her. ¡°Did that nobody slime-wad of a hark-ball just hang up on me?¡±


    ¡°Your call was terminated from their end,¡± chimes in Nel.


    Katare lets out another unholy shriek of anger and frustration. She stands up, sending her chair spinning against a wall. Her fingers in her hair, she rushes towards the closest piece of destructible furniture. The cabinet closest to her is not easily toppled, so instead of pulling at the thing fruitlessly, she just starts throwing the valuable things at high speed.


    Katare manages to destroy a small solar system worth of valuables in a couple of minutes, shrieking with rage the entire time. Only when the entire cabinet is empty of items, everything it held shattered around her or dust under her feet, does she calm down.


    Turning around, she suppresses her annoyance at the fact that the icecream is cleaned up and her chair is back at her communication console. She sits back down, lets the cosmetic drone do its thing for a minute, and taps on the second contact in her favorites. ¡°Hey Bideranda, long time no see, whatevs. Would you believe that Goddi just had my call taken by some wage slave?¡±


    ¡°Miss Bideranda is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message.¡±


    Katare stops examining her newly spray-lackered nails and slowly looks at the holo-projector. A distinctly reptilian face in a neat bespoke sixteen-piece suit looks at her with a level expression. Katare was never the best at reading the facial expressions of that particular race, but she is pretty sure the scaled warp-head is sneering at her.


    ¡°Excuse you?¡± she manages to croak out.


    ¡°Miss Bideranda is not available at the moment. Would you like to leave a message.¡±


    ¡°Do you know a boring looking guy that works for Goddi? You sound the same. Did you go to the same school?¡±


    ¡°Ma¡¯am, would you like to leave a message.¡±


    ¡°Fuck you,¡± slips out of her mouth.


    ¡°Thank you for calling, miss. Have a good day,¡± is the lizard¡¯s reply before the screen goes black again.


    Not even bothering with getting angry, as she is honestly too surprised to bother at the moment, she jabs a finger at her third favorite contact. This time, instead of showing a well-groomed office pawn, the small circling animation indicating an outgoing connection just keeps going and going.


    Five minutes later, she cancels the call and calls favorite number four.


    A rosy-cheeked, white-haired creature with five eyes, and missing eyebrows smiles at her. ¡°Thank you for calling S¡¯Leemy corporate headquarters. How can I help you today.¡±


    ¡°Connect me to Ja¡¯Jeress.¡±


    ¡°One moment please,¡± smiles the sapient.


    Then something strange happens. The infuriatingly smiling face is replaced by a tropical scene. Gentle waves splash into white sand while a binary sun slowly paints the sky in blazing colors. Katare just stares at the scene for a bit, her brain unable to handle the sudden soothing lounge music that starts playing from all around her.


    Half a minute later, she shakes herself from her stupor and angrily waves at the maddingly peaceful scene. The entire view shrinks down into a corner, a small line of sound moving at the same rhythm of the music indicating that the soundtrack is still playing.


    Muting that call, she calls the fifth contact in her address book.


    The next hour is filled with the same pattern, over and over again. Katare trawls through her entire contact list. What used to be a collection of direct lines to the rich of the rich, the creme de la creme of Central high society, is now worthless. Instead of heirs and heiresses to fortunes picking up the phone with happy smiles, Katare is now greeted by indifferent faces and endless waiting music.


    Best friends, old teachers, pupils that had hung on her lips, people whose fate she could control with but a word. She can¡¯t reach a single one, as if the list of numbers she had acquired is now nothing more but a useless bunch of numbers and outdated identity information.


    Having gone through the entire list except for one, she has nothing to show for it. Except for a couple of dozen lovely scenes, all of them playing soothing elevator music. Katare feels a small trickle of petty revenge induced happiness while looking at the row of calls that are on hold. The actual method through which she is communicating costs a lot of energy and materials to maintain a collection. Katare knows that she can afford it, but a few of the lesser companies that have put her on hold won¡¯t be able to foot the holo-call bill for much longer. An act of small revenge to the ones too cowardly to just hang up on her.


    She then realizes that she is just teaching everyone to hang up on her instead of giving her the courtesy of keeping her on hold for ages. Katare ignores the thought and resumes basking in her petty revenge for a little longer. Looking at the last name, she takes a deep breath.


    A whole slew of unpleasant memories comes bubbling up as she reads over his name again. Daa-KeeTaa had been a major source of trauma, the teacher that Solan had hired for her doing a massive hit on her self confidence while she was growing up. She normally never would have called the fellow, the mere thought of it sending shivers down her spine.


    Something about the man just rubbed her in all the wrong ways, and the man was dumb enough to say he didn¡¯t even like her. But somehow, those reasons that seemed such valid arguments against the man now seem empty and petty. Rubbing her eyes again - seriously, what is going on with her mental state - she takes on the last look at the mass of calls that are on hold.


    Taking a deep breath, she pushes the button and waits with bated breath.


    A dwarf appears on the screen, a rugged and mean-looking troll of a thing. Wild hair, burn marks all over its face, and clothes that are ground for immediate execution by the fashion police. Bright green eyes, a few missing teeth, and deep lines in a sun-worn face complete the horrid picture. ¡°What?¡±


    Once again, Katare is at a loss for words.


    ¡°What?¡± the creature repeats.


    ¡°D-Daa?¡± Katare manages to blurt out.


    ¡°I ain¡¯t you daddy, ya bimbo. Whadda ya want.¡±


    ¡°Daa-KeeTaa,¡± Katare blurts out.


    ¡°You want to talk to that useless git? Be my guest.¡±


    The being turns away from the screen, allowing Katare to break free from the horrified fascination with which she was watching the creature. The scene that follows is just as horrid, but then on another level.


    Katare has long since known that there are two sides to her own personality. She is wallowing in what is her most prominent one at the moment, the spoiled little shit of a rich kid. The other facet of her being is one she only pulls out occasionally. That is the business focussed person that makes good use of all she has ever learned.


    The engineer hiding behind her spoiled facade, the competent high-achieving designer and manager recoils at the mess she sees. The holo console is filled with a projection containing parts of all kinds of price ranges and in all kinds of conditions. She sees heat exchangers that were ancient a millennia ago and coils of wire that seem even older lying next to brand new panels of ablative meteoroid shielding. Bolts, nuts, and all kinds of other esoteric small parts are scattered in between the mess, and she is sure she sees a couple of illegal parts here and there. She taps a few buttons, ordering all data of this call immediately scrubbed from her computer systems. Otherwise, standard scanning protocols might pick up on the fact that illegal disassemblies have been performed on patent covered items. That would bring down a level of scrutiny on this conversation that she is not looking forward to.


    And then the stupid, idiotic, unlovable, and super ugly face of Dee-KeeTaa comes into view. Katare narrows her eyes at the waste of oxygen while sitting upright. She unconsciously starts staring down her nose at the cretin of a teacher.


    ¡°Katarenin. What do you want?¡± is his tired and dead-eyed greeting.


    Katare decides that like ripping off an InstaHeal bandaid, this is better done vigorously and as quickly as possible. She takes a deep breath and starts speaking with confidence. ¡°Of all people that I called, you are the only one that picked up. Why?¡±


    Dee-KeeTaa looks at her with his bright yellow eyes for a few seconds. His serrated vertical pupils widen and narrow a few times, and Katare remembers that this indicates heavy thought on his part. His thin, slightly scaled lips then split into a wide grin, showing many of his needle-like teeth.


    ¡°What?¡± is his first incredulous comment. ¡°You have been calling your entire contact list? Are you for real right now?¡±


    Katare tells herself to stay imperious in the face of this uncultured lout. ¡°Yes.¡±


    ¡°Oof,¡± he staggers back as if hit by her brusque admittance. He runs a gloved hand through his short black hair before narrowing his eyes towards Katare again. ¡°So you didn¡¯t even look at the GalaxNet news?¡±


    ¡°Uhm,¡± replies Katare, slowly losing her arrogant demeanor.


    ¡°You did not even bother checking any boards or news channels? The fact that one of the mighty Peezes overlords has fallen is not even important enough for you to bother learning about it? I should have expected. The moment you aren¡¯t interested in something, you refuse to learn. I really thought that the death of you FUCKING FATHER-¡± shouts the hissing man, who visibly has to regain control of his faculties after that emotional outburst.


    ¡°Your father¡¯s death isn¡¯t important enough for you to check the news?¡± Now the well-muscled man focusses his full attention upon Katare again, his large yellow eyes boring into hers, even though they are half a galaxy apart. ¡°And you dare be surprised that when the credit chip of your father suddenly stops working, that you have no friends left? What do you think they were your friend for? Your charming personality?¡±


    ¡°Wha?¡± murmurs Katare.


    ¡°You must have called all those good friends of yours, right? And they probably didn¡¯t even bother telling you why they suddenly didn¡¯t want to be friends no more?¡±


    ¡°No, that''s not...¡± replies Katare weakly.


    ¡°Welcome to the real world, bitch. You don¡¯t even seem to care, but I¡¯ll be enjoying how you like having your entire FUCKING LIFE RUINED!¡± And with that last near incoherent scream of rage, Daa-KeeTaa presses something off-screen, and Katare¡¯s holo console goes black once again.


    The small icons of the calls that are still on hold emerge from where they were minimized, bathing her vision in miniature scenes of vacation resorts. Katare reaches a hand to her face, and the fact that her fingers don¡¯t become wet from tears breaks her mind a little. She really should be crying right about now. She really should be shaking and trembling and weeping right about now. Her body just won¡¯t do it, for some reason.


    The fuzziness in her head is now indistinguishable from the sheer confusion and roiling emotions that are churning through her mind. Slowly and mechanically, she curls up into a ball. Rocking back and forth on the large and comfortable chair, she tries to determine whether or not she wants to start remembering things yet.

 03_04 - It Came To A Head

    ¡°Miss, the current power supply require your att-¡±


    ¡°Override order,¡± snaps Katare. ¡°Nel, if you interrupt me again while I¡¯m busy, I will have your parts melted down into slag.¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± replies the SI.


    Katare focusses back on the important thing she is doing. This game isn¡¯t going to get a new high-score by itself, after all. Furiously concentrating on culling all the union-led rebels, she targets their ramshackle housing. Taking out the backline and the families of the insurrection is usually a good way to quell annoying little protests like this one. Smiling at the results of her actions, she sees that the simulated strike of workers vanishes like it was never there.


    Her planet-spanning factory complex doesn¡¯t need much managing at this point. The game she is playing is one of the more famous simulation games. A smile creeps on her face as she sees that she will reach the next performance bonus with a couple of hours to spare. The workers might be permanently in the unhappy zone this way, but the results speak for themselves.


    As she bathes in the satisfaction of having set a new efficiency record - ignoring the new achievement she got for having her worker population permanently in the ¡®severely unhappy¡¯ portion of the happiness meter - Nel interrupts her again.


    ¡°Miss Katarenin Auchinfon Peezes Tomat. Please, be advised that it would be wise to take a more pro-active approach. The amount of power available in this facility will only last for another week at best.¡±


    ¡°What did I tell you earlier?¡± says Katare while sauntering over to one of the fridges that still has food. ¡°You just shut up and leave me be. I swear to all the outer-galactic horrors that be, if you don¡¯t let me relax and destress for at least another week, I will wear your deactivated core around my neck like a trophy.¡±


    Humming softly to herself, Katare rummages through the fridge. She throws some of the vegetables that she doesn¡¯t feel like eating out, tossing them onto the growing heap of trash that has been accumulating. Snacking on one particularly delightful stick of crunchy sweet-leaf, she walks back to her gaming corner.


    Before she can get stuck in another session of the simulator, her entire apartment trembles. She stumbles and barely manages to avoid falling face-first into the broken items and trash that¡¯s started to gather everywhere. A few of the remaining valuable decorations fall from their perches, adding to the mess.


    Very little of the apartment is still intact. The fit of rage she had gone through after gathering herself had been legendary, to say the least. Little easily accessible and destroyable items had survived the bout of red-hot anger she had experienced.


    The way Dee-KeeTaa had talked to her, combined with the terrible news he had so callously thrown into her face had left her paralyzed with a weird form of grief at first. It hadn¡¯t really been the news of Solan¡¯s death that had done her in. She oddly enough had felt like she had already known about his demise for a while. What had shocked her to her core was the fact that the practically infinite amount of money that he had represented is no longer available to her. She had ordered Nel to go through her accounts. The news that all of her assets are either frozen, sucked dry through loopholes, or just outright gone had only deepened her destructive rage.


    As a result, the entire apartment is trashed, every single decoration, appliance, and piece of equipment that¡¯s not bolted down is now in pieces. Luckily for Katare, the suite of gaming cabinets, full-dive pods, and arcade machines aren¡¯t that easy to destroy. She thus has been stubbornly continuing her relaxing session, powering through her sabbatical despite all opposition. She is in relax mode now, and come warp or catalytic meteor, she will continue to relax!


    That is, only if all of these dying defense systems could stop their whining. She does not want to know how she is hearing these alarm calls of defense grids being deactivated. Nor does she care for the murmur of lasers dying, armored panels failing to close in time, and auto-turrets being destroyed. What is important now is to get the new high score in this asteroid mining race game she is currently addicted to. It takes all her skill and attention to maneuver through the randomly moving asteroid belt. Having to keep an eye on the scanner for high yield mining sites is a challenging task by itself. Sending out scanning drones to confirm the findings, making them take samples out of the astroids while staying in fist place takes all of her concentration.


    She really gets into it. Submersed in the holographic cockpit of a mining and racing hybrid shuttle, she ignores the alarm bells sounding out around her. The panicking voice of Nel fails to penetrate her haze of focus. The constant digital screams of broken doors and sectors being breached are splendidly ignored as Katare has the time of her life.


    She has just started the second lap, still in first place with the runner-up close on her heels, when things go wrong. There is a flash of brightness below her, something she has never seen before. Fearing a new trick from the other mine-racers, she looks backward. Instead of craning her neck to look through her back windows, the entire cockpit starts tilting. Instead of launching her mining probes, a cold numb-ness start creeping up from her extremities. She then finds that she can no longer control her body, and her vision starts spinning.


    Speaking of her body, isn¡¯t that it? Katare looks up at a rather nice sight. A voluptuous image of perfection sits straddled on top of the racing seat. Then every curve lights up in the glow of the explosion. Looking at the holo-screen, she sees that she has driven into an asteroid, and is quickly overtaken. To her horror, she realizes that she is suddenly in last place. Then, she is picked up by her hair.


    A voice speaking in a common language punches through her confusion. ¡°All clear, guys. Everything is dead. Switch to audile comms.¡±


    ¡°Was this it?¡± asks the helmeted humanoid form that is now carrying Katare. Looking around, she sees that maybe she should have been paying attention to what was going on around her.


    Her apartment, which was pretty messy to begin with, is now totally ruined. Two new holes in the walls are barely visible through the thick smoke filling the place. Her front and backdoor are in similar states, reduced to splinters, their doorframes blackened pits filled with acrid tendrils of smog.


    ¡®What?¡¯ she tries to say. Then the realization hits that the body in the gaming chair was hers. The bright flash below her hadn''t been some trick to sabotage her shuttle. It had been that glowing sword over there as it decapitated her. Slowly she realizes that she is currently in an ocean¡¯s worth of deep shit.


    ¡°Wrap it up, men. Praise the Order, mission accomplished. Stasis that target. Boss said to warp-net it, so do that too. This was a hardwon battle, alright? No word of how easy it was during de-brief. There will be no talk of underpowered lasers and low-energy drones. This was a tough fight, and we deserve a bonus.¡±


    ¡°Yessir!¡± snaps a chorus of voices.


    Then the person carrying her starts talking. ¡°This was too easy, though. These planets are supposed to be near impenetrable. This is the Tomat Vault Home, after all.¡±


    Another voice replies and Katare manages to glimpse a black-clad assassin female. ¡°Tomat is done for. Solan¡¯s reported dead.¡±


    ¡°Damn. I really thought that those Peezes fucks were like true immortals or some bull-skeit like that. Aren¡¯t they supposed to be perpetuals, as in, they can¡¯t die?¡±


    ¡°Nah, that¡¯s just the Grandmaster. He¡¯s one of the few galactic constants.¡±


    ¡°Right. Thanks for reminding me, man.


    ¡°No problem,¡± the sleek assassin replies before walking off. The woman inspects a few of the shards on the ground, surreptitiously pocketing a few.


    Why are there mercenaries having a nice post-op chat in her living room? She quickly recognizes the signs of a high-strung team finally getting the chance to blow off some steam. Why are there four smoking holes in her apartment? A team of eight fully suited humanoids is just meandering through her living space. A few even dare make comments on the fact that she is living in a trash heap.


    Her first instinct is to call out for Nel. The fact that her voice doesn¡¯t work without a body takes too long to register, and Katare once again realizes that she is currently extremely screwed. Then the sapient carrying her by her hair puts a slimy package on top of her head. The cold item explodes around her head, wrapping her entire being in chains. The world around her stops existing. The claustrophobic feeling of being trapped in cement slams into her muddled mind. Then she is put in a transparent cylinder. The top is slid closed, and she sees the man carrying her push a button.


    The world around her freezes, the universe goes black, sounds stops, and everything just halts. She quickly puzzles out that she is put into a stasis chamber. Decapitating and freezing a target is standard practice in a lot of bounty-hunting circles. There are myriad ways of keeping a decapitated head alive, and carrying around a sealed stasis container negates all the risks of having to transport a live prisoner.


    Then the fuzziness that comes with skirting the edges of ner neural block is back. She briefly wonders why a purely physical treatment method still works while she is inside a stasis field. She then realizes that she shouldn''t be thinking in the first place, as she is inside a stasis field. Her circular thoughts are only broken when her consciousness breaks the neural dam in her brain.


    Katare spends the next couple of minutes going through a major personality crisis. She is completely unable to perceive anything that is going on around her. There are only three things that manage to penetrate the perfect darkness.


    The first are the occasional mechanical whispers at the edge of her hearing. Like the gentle flow of a massive amount of water whispering words and meaning into her mind, it¡¯s like she is hearing ghosts now and then.


    The second one is the small gathering of small blue dots in the middle of her head. They form a cohesive whole, a gentle gradient of blue, forming a bright spot in the middle of her brain. Yet somehow, she knows that there are separate units inside that single glowing spot, distinct units of power that make up the odd field inside her brain.


    Thirdly, the blinking blue dot at the bottom of her vision is becoming impossible to ignore. It has been there for as long as she has been relaxing, but the brain-fuzz that she experiences each time she even looked at the thing had dissuaded her from investigating the thing until now.


    But Katare can fully recognize that her current situation is not likely to get any worse. Her father is dead, her friends turned out to be fake, and the only one that was even willing to speak to her in person hates her guts. Her apartment is now totally ruined, and a rag-tag group of soldiers somehow managed to penetrate the very core of the Tomat empire.


    Feeling like crying, but with her head in a stasis field, being completely unable to do so, and without working tear ducts, she mentally pushes the blue blinking button.


    [ Anesthetized ]


    [ Unconscious ]


    [ Previous apparel nWear Custom H2OGpat Emergency BrainPreserver is no longer present ]


    [ You have donned UNKNOWN. You have one apparel slot remaining. Activate UNKNOWN? ]


    [ Integration time remaining; NAN ERROR ]


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.[ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 0% ]


    [ Brain Damage ]


    [ Neural Block ]


    [ Brain Damage; ended ]


    [ Anesthetized; ended ]


    [ Apparel scan of UNKNOWN at 100% ]


    [ Apparel slot Berry FullBionic iSleeve HominoidAndroid integrated ]


    [ Unconcious; ended ]


    [ Magical Integration lvl 8 ]


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 6 ]


    [ New skill generated; Arcade Gaming lvl 1 ]


    [ New skill generated; VR Gaming lvl 1 ]


    [ New skill generated; Racing Gaming lvl 1 ]


    [ New skill generated; Gaming lvl 1 ]


    [ Skill Arcade Gaming lvl 1 consolidated into Gaming lvl 2 ]


    [ Skill VR Gaming lvl 1 consolidated into Gaming lvl 3 ]


    [ Skill Racing Gaming lvl 1 consolidated into Gaming lvl 4 ]


    Evot pauses the blue screen here, just so she can reread these last few messages. A lot might be happening inside her head right now, but that doesn¡¯t mean that something as stupid as the sequence of blue screens she sees here can be excused. Putting those complex feelings to the side with the rest of the emotional mess inside her head, she tells the messages to continue.


    [ New skill learned; throwing lvl 1 ]


    [ Throwing lvl 4 ]


    [ Magical Integration lvl 9 ]


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 7 ]


    [ Decapitated ]


    [ Neural Block; ended ]


    The moment the trickle of blue messages come to a halt, all her memories are back. Suddenly, she wonders how she ever could have forgotten about Douglas. How she managed to not remember the idiotic skeleton, the terrible treck through the space station, and all the Histaff. Then she remembers the last moments with Solan, how she had chosen to become a deity of death just to spite the man that had given her life and everything.


    Come to think of it; the very same situation seems to be happening right here, right now. She should be frozen in time, her every cell and atom stopped on a physical level. Trying to feel for her body, attempting to get a better feel for what is going on inside her head, she starts to get a glimpse what is happening.


    Her brain is actually physically frozen. Not a single bit of her brain moves, all the electrical impulses stopped in their tracks. What she now recognizes as mana, however, is still very much moving. It seems that the introduction of the blue glowing stuff has changed the very core of her being on a fundamental level. Her consciousness now seems to be housed in her mana instead of in her flesh.


    [ Mana Sense lvl 4 ]


    That is a great discovery and all, and figuring out something new while having it validated by the blue screen goes a great way to let her feel in control again, but it doesn¡¯t really help. She is still a brain inside a decapitated android body. She is being carried around by some no-name grunt, being carted off to warp-knows-where, and that is terrifying on a lot of levels.


    And then, to her great surprise, she actually knows where they are going.


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 8 ]


    Plucking data from the massive stream of information that always seems to be flowing around her nowadays, she knows where they are going. Like reading a single headline from an avalanche of news articles, plucking their destination from the data-sphere around her is actually easy. Digging up some more maps from memory, she starts puzzling out where they are going exactly. To her great surprise, she puzzles out that the ship is plotting a jump relatively close to the Evengi system.


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 9 ]


    Then she learns that they are rendezvousing with the CHCS Purgatory? She remembers that the CHCS Purgatory is one of the compartmented decontamination fleets. She also recalls that this particular semi-fleet of vessels is seen as one of the leading factors in the Histaff decontamination efforts.


    Katare ponders all this information for a while. She spends some time with trying to listen in on more of what¡¯s going on in the outside world.


    [ Magical Integration lvl 10 ]


    [ Magical Integration lvl 10; Technician 1/4 ]


    She then realizes that a part of her implant is data storage and that she can utilize that to great effect. Almost slapping herself for this massive oversight, she goes over the elements embedded inside her brain one by one. The quiet around her - along with the hauntingly familiar lack of any bodily sensations whatsoever - is starting to force her to face the truth of things.


    She is reduced to a thoroughly wired-up brain, a fate that a lot of well-educated people see as worse than death. The brain-in-a-jar status that¡¯s plastered to the bottom of her status is something that is usually reserved for less-than-desirables. There are simulated reality planets filled with nothing but cerebral holding tanks, all of them linked up to fantasy make-belief dreamlands. A lot of peasants work their entire life to be able to afford that cursed immortality. They usually languish in their digital domains for centuries, possibly millennia. Then once the inevitable mental degradation sets in, they are bound to fail their Galactic Citizen Sapience exam after a while. Then, once they officially labeled as sub-sapient, little more than animals, they can be safely discarded.


    And now Katare, scion of one of the highest powers in the galaxy, is in the same boat. And she will need to work hard to prevent it from sinking.


    At least that partially explains why every single person in her old social circle acted like she had some holo-comm transferable disease. Calls coming in from someone with a life signature similar to the one that she must be giving off now are usually not even answered. To Katare, they feel similar to a stinking hobo rolling into a super fancy lobby. In this case, she was the hobo, and she had expected to be treated as an honored guest.


    Katare then realized that she personally would have seen potential in a homeless, stinking, intoxicated hobo that had the guts to do that. She would have to give the hobo some measure of respect. A brain-jacked jar-head like she is now? Old Katare would have tossed it into the gutters without its cerebral fluid. And then she probably would have ordered someone to stomp it down the drain.


    Katare suddenly sees the universe in a new light. The only way for her current self to sink any lower would be to fall for one of those digitization scams. People that believe that their consciousnesses can be transferred just because their brains are copied and simulated onto processers deserve to die, after all. At least she still has her real brain and isn¡¯t an empty simulation, devoid of consciousness and soul.


    And so what, she tells herself. She has magic now, bitches! The floating blue screens and mass of glowing blue power inside her head is something that only one other being in this galaxy - as far as she knows - has. She as warp-fracked magic. And although the memories might be distant and vague due to the neural therapy and the fact that she was controlling a clone, she knows what magic can do.


    But first, she should contineu taking stock. First, she must know what her current situation is. Then, she can set a goal and start to work towards it.


    Katare feels oddly calm now. Were she previously had been clinging onto her past, which had already been lost to her, now she knows she has nothing. Solan¡¯s reputation and staggering capital are no longer worth anything. Her status as scion to the Tomat family is more liability than anything else. She is just a brain and a complete FullBrain implant. She might be currently encased in a Berry FullBionic iSleeve HominoidAndroid head, but she should stop relying on outside means They will all fail, as has just thoroughly been proven, and she only has herself to rely on.


    Deciding to start with the basics, she tells her status to come up again.


    [ Name: Kat ]


    [ Race: Human ]


    [ Level: 1 (0/100) ]


    [ Class: Technician (1/4) ]


    [ HP: 10/10 ][ HP/h: 0.01 ]


    [ MP: 150/150 ][ MP/h: 014 ]


    [ STR: 1 ]


    [ AGI: 1 ]


    [ CON: 10 ]


    [ VIT: 1 ]


    [ INT: 14 ]


    [ WIS: 13 ]


    [ Universal Language ]


    [ Central Nervous System ]


    [ Berry FullBionic iSleeve HominoidAndroid ]


    [ Decapitated ]


    First off, she notices that her ''brain in a jar'' status has been upgraded to the more apt sounding Central Nervous System.


    [ Central Nervous System; you are but a central nervous system. Except for your brain, cerebellum, and a part of your spinal cord, your entire body and peripheral nervous system are removed, and you are being kept alive artificially. HP max 10, STR max 1, AGI max 1, CON max 1 ]


    Katare feels like she should give a pity slow applause now. This is yet more proof that this blue box system is making things up along the way. It seemed to have learned about things like central and peripheral nervous systems. No mentions of the main difference between the two systems, namely the blood-brain barrier, so it has a way to go as of yet.


    Second is the android body she had chosen.


    [ Berry FullBionic iSleeve HominoidAndroid; mechanical body. UNKNOWN. STR NAN, AGI NAN, CON NAN, VIT max 1 ]


    This system is a total hack, Katare concludes. Suppressing an internal sigh, she asks what it thinks of her current status as just an android head.


    [ Decapitated; you are decapitated ]


    A total hack, she once again concludes. Katare feels kind of sorry for the poor saps who actually got decapitated while under the influence of these blue screens. They would likely have spent their last moments staring at that single line of useless text.


    Katare then remembers that she is in a very bad situation, and all her attention immediately snaps back to herself.


    She is in deep shit, after all. And most of all, she knows that she is in deep shit because she just picked up on a data stream between the pilot¡¯s console and the warp drive. The jump that the ship has planned will take a whole week.


    Normally, a week to get across a good third of the entire galactic disk would be a wild and needlessly expensive luxury. Warp drives are inherently simple, and aside from the fact that the universe doesn¡¯t like to let things go faster than light, it can be bribed. The only currency the universal laws of the universe seem to accept is energy.


    A warp drive functions by twisting the space in front of the spacecraft. It takes it from the back of the craft and shoves it all to the front. Moving through the compressed space lets you move many lightyears, while seemingly only traveling the length of the warped field. Nature seems to begrudgingly allows this, but it takes revenge by freezing time inside the travel bubble while letting it move on naturally outside.


    Popular fiction is rife with tales of star crossed lovers, who struggle to save up enough to finally reunite. But, because of the relativity of it all, one of the two will be much, much older than the other. Thus, the love will end in a most juicy and tragic way, making many bored housewives cry their eyes out.


    This period of skipped time can be shortened by pumping more energy into the warp field. A week to cross a third of the galaxy is super wasteful. The cost to warp that quickly is prohibitive to all but the most powerful powers. Even the biggest moneybags in the universe don¡¯t make such speedy trips lightly.


    But, as Katare knows from experience, she doesn¡¯t seem to do well in frozen time. Last time she did that, she blew up one of the galaxy¡¯s most advanced and most expensive space ships, along with her father, while becoming a planar deity of death, for crying out loud!


    Completely and utterly unwilling to go through that entire debacle once again, she starts frantically thinking of ways to prevent a week-long, madness-inducing period of potentially going hyper-bat-shit insane.


    Lucky for her, she actually has some time to come up with a solution. From the data-sphere that¡¯s continuously flowing around her, she has managed to gleam the ship¡¯s current trajectory. She seems to be on a small troop transport, but the minuscule warp engine will not be able to supply all the power for such a speedy warp. They are thus traveling to this system''s single warp gate. It used to be her father¡¯s, but after the news of Solan¡¯s death made all Tomat stock prices crash to near zero, it must have been brought out relatively easily.


    And these terribly dressed, incredibly rude, unwashed primitive savages are going to use a fraction of its stored power to help their warp engine go a lot faster. The leeches already have a buyer for the rest of the power waiting in line. Readily accessible power is one of the galaxy¡¯s most wanted commodities, after all. Rare elements are good and all, but as long as you have access to a massive supply of usable energy, everything can be synthesized. This crew of mercs is looking to make a payday that will set them up for life.


    It''s just a shame that Katare also caught wind of a widespread array of spying features baked into the troop transport itself. Their superiors must know about every single movement that these dumbass gunslingers have been making, every single fart and grunt recorded. She wonders how a team like this can eve be alive to this day. Don''t their superiors care about these blatant acts of insubordination?


    Putting that issue to the side, for now, Katare knows that she will have to make something happen, or else she is very much going to go insane. If that infuriatingly hard to ignore blue dot at the bottom of her vision doesn¡¯t make her go coo-coo first, though.


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 10 ]


    [ Magical Interfacing lvl 10; Technician 2/4 ]


    [ Mana Sense lvl 6 ]


    Reading that she leveled her Mana Sense skill seems to shake something loose in her perception. She suddenly realizes why she can actually sense the inside of the vessel to such an extent. Inside many of the main components, and especially the merc teams¡¯ gear, and all the spying features inside the ship is mana!


    This is her first time coming across mana in the wild, she excuses herself. That, and the panic she was in because she is a decapitated head in a stasis field are pretty compelling reasons not to notice something massive like that for a while, right?


    Nodding to herself that all that nonsense is really true and that she is amazing for even noticing the copious amounts of mana in the ship in the first place, she gets to work.

 03_05 - Engravings and One-sided Conversations

    Douglas is happy about the fact that he remembered well. Humanoids as a general concept are split into two different parties; he is pretty sure. He also knows that the curvier counterparts to what he assumes to be his own camp tend to talk a lot. Having this bit of knowledge confirmed so extremely thoroughly is rather satisfying to the skeleton.


    That is, unfortunately, the only thing he is currently happy about. Katare might look all new and fancy, with her hair shimmering in interesting ways, and her ship is filled with good food and strong metal to cover his bones, but having to listen to her nonsense is more than a little aggravating.


    The worst thing is that he can¡¯t even put a bony finger on what part of the entire experience he finds so annoying. He nods now and then and says a version of the word ¡®yes¡¯ at the correct intervals, he is pretty sure. Despite all that, the shimmering woman keeps being terse with him. He listens to her ramblings, he has stopped eating the cushions and is no longer smearing structural supports over himself. What else can she possibly want from him?


    All he has been doing is looking for more food, figuring out which metal is best used for the great honor of covering his bones, and figuring out the best way to make the things inside the ship do their thing better.


    Engraving the engines of the GalaxSec base - as requested by the two grey beings - had been an eye-opener, and Douglas has been looking around for new things to make better with magic. The entire ship is long since covered in mana stones, the previously clean and simple designed interior now sparkling with shining blue gems. He has been applying every single new bit of engraving knowledge he has learned to the inside of the ship. Even with all the lights out, the interior of the ship is now shining a warm and comforting blue. He feels his power churning through the entire ship, and he is currently trying to understand what the most central item of the ship actually does.


    Then, suddenly and abruptly, he understands - an epiphany of never seen before proportions rushing through his empty skull. Katare has told him several times at this point, but the implication just hadn¡¯t set in yet. Standing up, he turns to Katare. The shorter woman is sitting at a desk, doing something with a wide array of tools as she takes a small break from talking. Her fingers are split open into a small forest of pincers, manipulators, animated wires, and other tools, and she seems to be working on a piece of herself.


    Walking over, Douglas extends his partially metal-clad bony hand towards the woman¡¯s head. He gently starts rubbing the poor little lass, pulling her upper body into a gentle hug.


    ¡°Hey, Douglas? What are you doing this ti-¡±


    Douglas just pulls her against his ribcage, trying to show her how much he feels for her at this moment. ¡°It¡¯s okay,¡± he lies softly. ¡°It¡¯s okay not to have bones.¡±


    Katare remains silent for a long time. Douglas keeps holding the poor woman to his chest. He truly feels for her and her current state while rubbing her head. He does mentally pat himself on his back for managing to say such an outrageous lie without making a face. If he needs to say blatant untrue things to soothe this irate woman just so that he can have some rest, so be it.


    Katare then lets out a deep sigh before pushing away from his bony embrace with surprising strength. ¡°Did you listen to anything I just told you?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± replies Douglas. ¡°You were head, then regrew body, then lost body.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± replies Katare.


    ¡°It is,¡± answers Douglas.


    Katare is silent for a bit. ¡°It actually is, I hate to admit. But that entire experience only made me realize that I need a third party that can be objective. You are your bony self, and I know that I can¡¯t rely on you for anything but being an extremely unconventional problem solver. I have my own strengths, which lay in being a sane person, knowing how the universe actually works, and having a working ability to reason.¡±


    Douglas just keeps rubbing Katare¡¯s head as she goes through more complex stuff. Meanwhile, the magical skeleton has been using his other hand to rub at his forehead. Instead of the protective horn jutting from his skull armor, there is now a badge embedded in his forehead. A GalaxSec Constable identification symbol is now the shining core of his being. Douglas has no mixed feelings about this. The fact that the very origin of his magic, life force, and consciousness is now rooting in another object is just not interesting to the skeleton. Truth be told, the thought to be disturbed by the change of item hasn¡¯t crossed his empty mind a single time. The hollow space where the GalaxSec Deputy badge used to be is now filled with bone, only the front of the identification symbol sticking out of his forehead.


    The one thing that has been bothering him is what he must do next. The story that Katare has been telling him is interesting and all. The information he had been learning from all the new words that Katare has been saying has been interesting enough for him to keep paying some attention to her tale, but something has been bothering him.


    Douglas currently has no goal in life. First, he could follow orders, and all was good. Then, when he found himself crawling through a slagged part of a spaceship, the entire universe was interesting enough for him to make learning his life goal. That state of mind had served him well through the Histaff infected space station. Somewhere along the way, he had picked up on the idea of joining the GalaxSec police force.


    Dragging another bony digit across the badge on his forehead, he realizes that currently, he has nothing to live for. Learning stuff is fun, but he has long since realized that there is more to life than merely absorbing new information in a bone-headed fashion. He is pretty happy about the fact that the first actual tangible goal he has ever set for himself is done. He has joined the GalaxSec policing force, as the badge on his forehead proves. He would like to see Evot again and to have more conversations with the duo of smart grey beings, but he is hesitant to make them his life goal.


    Katare gently pushes his hand from her head, looking up into the skeleton¡¯s burning eyes with a frown on her perfect face. ¡°I really want Nel back. If that raiding crew killed her, I really don¡¯t know what I¡¯ll do.¡±


    ¡°Okay,¡± booms Douglas. ¡°Did they break the law?¡±


    Katare startles at the sudden volume and power with which the skeleton is shouting now. ¡°Y-yes! They broke all kinds of contracts. They invaded space that was clearly demarcated as private property. They invaded a sovereign planet, flying in the face of-¡±


    ¡°Did they break the law?¡±


    ¡°What law?¡±


    Douglas feels like sighing. He laboriously points at his forehead while repeating the question, this time talking even slower so that Katare might be able to understand. ¡°Did they break the law?¡±


    Katare narrows her eyes. ¡°Property damage and bodily harm. To me.¡±


    ¡°Great. Let¡¯s get them,¡± replies Douglas jubilantly. He is pretty jazzed that he has a goal now.


    Katare nods slowly, a calculating look in her eyes. ¡°First, we need to recover a vital piece of evidence. If we go about just apprehending people without having proof of their evil crimes at the ready, the criminals will run free!¡±


    ¡°No,¡± gasps Douglas. ¡°Evidence first.¡±


    ¡°Yes. First, we need to recover the Synthetic Intelligence known as NeuralLike EduAide LogList v9.32.SEPTAGON.P, also known as Nel.¡±


    ¡°First, we need LeuraNike Euid¡­¡± Douglas trails off, his fire dimming in the face of the complex name.


    ¡°No, it¡¯s¡­ First, we need Nel!¡±


    ¡°First, we need Nel!¡± hollers Douglas, his enthusiasm resurfacing with gusto.


    ¡°Yes! The warp is already plotted in. We just need to get out of this gravity well. But first, you will probably need to learn the skill ¡®Still Mind,¡¯ or you will go crazy. Somehow, mana doesn¡¯t seem to be affected by the¡­¡± The woman continues to prattle on about all kinds of complex things, but Douglas¡¯ skull is kind of full and spinning at the moment. The moment Katare said the word ¡®warp,¡¯ multiple things clicked into place. The information accompanying the word through the skill Universal Language had taught him a lot. He had known slight bits of this information already, but this time, he got the full package.A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    He now knows what warping is - pushing space around, so a small bit of travel becomes a large bit of travel - and what the central item in Katare¡¯s ship is for. Douglas pulls up his status screen, wanting to get a better look at his mana status before getting started on the large task he plans on performing.


    [ Name: Douglas ]


    [ Race: Greater Arcane Skeleton ]


    [ Level: 40 (634M/634M ]


    [ Class: Arcanist 3/10, Craftsman 1/4, Labourer 0/4, Fighter 0/4 ]


    [ HP: 5683/5683 ] [ HP/h: 1.86 ]


    [ MP: 1125/1780 ] [ MP/h: 219 ]


    [ STR: 10 ]


    [ AGI: 7 ]


    [ CON: 827 ]


    [ VIT: 51 ]


    [ INT: 178 ]


    [ WIS: 219 ]


    [ Projected Voice ]


    [ Reinforced Bones ]


    [ Anchor Shift ]


    [ Arcane Skeletal Constitution (Human) ]


    [ Darkvision ]


    [ Universal Language ]


    [ GalaxSec Constable Badge Core ]


    [ Armoured ]


    Looking at the information the blue boxes are showing him about himself, Douglas has a slight moment of surreal disconnect. How in all the world is his highest stat constitution? He is a magical skeleton, has a magical class, and does everything with magic. Yet somehow, someway, his statistics are extremely skewed, with constitution sticking head and shoulders above everything else.


    He looks at his bones for a moment, hoping that they never will be shattered again. He isn''t about to complain about the many bonuses he is getting to his constitution, though. Strong bones are good bones, and broken bones are a crime. At least, Douglas assumes that is the case. Douglas also notes that his racial skills are now shown, but that minor change doesn¡¯t interest him at all.


    All he really wanted to see was how much mana he has at his disposal. Seeing that he still has over half of his power left, Douglas first looks around for food. He has been eating from the moment his arms regenerated, and chowing down seems to give him a massive amount of mana. Not seeing any food nearby, and noticing that Katare is talking to him again, Douglas closes his eyes and continues engraving the ship.


    His eye flames dim significantly the moment his attention focuses on his environment, making a slightly startled Katare shut up for a minute.


    By the time she continues talking, Douglas is no longer paying any attention to her. Instead, he continues what he was doing before. During the entire time that Douglas was listening to Katare, he had been engraving the ship. Now, he resumes this task with gusto.


    The majority of the ship is already covered in flowing bands of mana. Following all the tenets of the Engraving skill he can remember, he slowly turns the entire vessel into a magically engraved masterpiece.


    Slowly but surely, he feels his mana flowing through the entire vessel, feeling out every single nook and cranny with the help of his mystical blue power. Katare occasionally pokes him with her foot but seems content with prattling on while bent over the desk she¡¯s sitting at.


    Things continue in relative peace for a bit. Without really noticing, Douglas keeps up his chorus of nods and agreeable sounds while Katare keeps talking non-stop. Then, Douglas comes across a thing that he doesn¡¯t know what to do with. So far, the entire ship was pretty self-explanatory. Pipes just need to be pipes, and making them do what pipes do, but then better, is pretty easy. A few magical patterns here, a few runes there, and those pipes can pipe like no other!


    Holding tanks hold, wires also do stuff, the cold box keeps stuff cold, and Douglas is pretty sure that the seat with a hole in the middle, located in a small room, shouldn¡¯t be connected to the drinking water tank. So he makes sure to block that channel with a few neat tricks.


    [ Spell Shaping IV lvl 38 ]


    [ Engraving IV lvl 39 ]


    [ Mana Stone Production IV lvl 37 ]


    [ Magical Animation IV lvl 39 ]


    [ Mathematics IV lvl 35 ]


    Then Douglas finishes covering the most central item in the ship, and he is absolutely stumped on how it should work. All the mana he channels towards the central feature of the hollow space just vanishes into nothingness. All in all, the hollow space in the shape of a thick ring really puzzles the skeleton. It¡¯s in the exact center of everything, right below where he is currently sitting, but he just can¡¯t get a feel for what it¡¯s supposed to do. ¡°How does the donut work?¡±


    ¡°¡­several codes of conduct by spreading the news of Solan¡¯s death. They traded with foreknowledge, which is illegal on so many levels, but is widespread none the less.¡± Katare stops talking long enough to look at Douglas, who is peering at her with brightly burning eyes. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°How does the donut work?¡±


    ¡°How does what donut work?¡±


    ¡°That one,¡± replies Douglas while pointing directly at the center of the ship, right between his bony legs.


    ¡°You don¡¯t have anything down there, let alone a donut,¡± Katare deadpans.


    ¡°How does the do-¡±


    ¡°Yes, yes. Remind me to never tell you jokes again,¡± she sighs.


    ¡°Okay,¡± nods Douglas, determined to tell her that at some point. A few more seconds pass in heavy silence as a skeleton and a bionic woman stare at each other. ¡°The warp drive?¡±


    ¡°Donut, yes.¡±


    ¡°That¡¯s the warp drive.¡± Katare¡¯s eyes light up, and Douglas braces for another waterfall of words. He immediately starts nodding and murmuring agreeing sounds pre-emotively.


    ¡°The donut portion is actually a singularity fueled magnetic confinement chamber. There is a stable nanoscopic single point field in the geometric middle of the ring. Starting the warp drive is as simple as siphoning the point field, pulling some of its confined plasma into the chamber, circulating it through the... donut, in a vortex ring shape. Whenever the plasma comes near the middle, it¡¯s nearer the gravity singularity. It¡¯s further away from the singularity when traveling around the outside, thus creating a stable and directional imbalance in the local graviton field. The speed of the plasma reaction mass can be controlled by changing the frequency of the magnetic containment field. The field size can be changed by squeezing the circulating mass into a tighter¡­ donut, as you so aptly put.¡±


    Douglas nods along. ¡°Spin stuff fast,¡± is his summary. The skeleton is completely sure about the accuracy of his understanding and immediately gets to work. He pulls out all the stops, using streams of mana to engrave the extremely complex piece of tech with every single magical pattern and rune he knows.


    Then, he feels a hand twist his bony head around. He stops playing around with his magic for a bit, as this seems to be one of the more serious moments in Katare¡¯s speech. She seems actually to want an answer from him this time, and from the look in her eyes, it better be a good one.


    ¡°So, do you understand?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± replies Douglas on autopilot.


    ¡°So you will learn the Still Mind skill, just the way I told you?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± he once again replies, this time a little uncertain.


    ¡°Good. Just empty your mind. The mana inside your head will start to come to a rest. I learned this by accident, but I think that this skill will be absolutely needed and required learning for all mana enhanced individuals. I already know very well that being a conscious mind being stuck inside unmoving matter is a great way to go insane. As in, actually raving mad, no longer connected to the universe, disassociated from reality.¡±


    Douglas keeps his mouth shut this time. The serious look in Katare¡¯s eyes is honestly starting to worry him a little.


    ¡°It¡¯s similar to an ancient neurological disorder, the so-called locked-in syndrome. You¡¯re just frozen in a void. I only survived mine thanks to mana. But then again, it was mana that made me retain consciousness while inside a warp bubble in the first place.¡±


    Douglas nods along like a good little skeleton, but at this point, he is starting to have massive doubts about the validity of what Katare is saying. Does she have problems with being inside a black void? What nonsense. The blissful blackness of doing nothing is lovely!


    ¡°So I want you to stop thinking and try to get the Still Mind skill. Just make the mana in your head and brain stop moving. Although, with your empty head, who knows what you need to do in order to get the skill. Anyway, we are reaching the warp point. This ship is seriously underpowered, so the warp will take at least a month.¡±


    Douglas is sure now. This woman is crazy. He has to stop thinking things? Why would he even start? Making thoughts costs a lot of effort. He actually enjoyed the long period of time buried in the earth before Katare dug him up. It had allowed him to process all the chaos and stuff that happened on the planet. It had let him go over his skills in detail, truly understanding what they had to teach him instead of blindly stumbling through their levels.


    Sure, he hadn¡¯t been able to practice anything, but getting some alone time to learn more about magic was just fine by him. And now Katare acts like she is scared of such peaceful times.


    Looking back up, his worried musings having taken up all of his concentration, Douglas sees Katare laying on the couch. Her eyes are closed, and the faint aura of mana Douglas feels from her head dims by the second.


    Then Douglas remembers that he hasn¡¯t done anything with one of his newer skills. Getting the full Arcanist class had netted him two new skills, namely Magical Control and Soul Binding.


    He had gotten to practice the Soul Binding skill plenty onboard the GalaxSec base. But the Magical Control skill, that one has has used a single time in order to link two mana crystals. That had been a great success, and he has been looking forward to putting this skill more to the test.


    Ignoring the stupid sleeping woman, Douglas sets about engraving the entire ship again, this time with arcane spirals that transmit data between each other. He is sure to copy every single monitoring formation into his own head, allowing him to see and feel the flow of mana inside the ship on a fundamental level. The skeleton quickly forgets about his insane companion and sets about gathering data about every single mana stone, mana channel, magical pattern, and runic enhancement.

 03_06 - Delusions of Glowing Grandeur

    [ Mana Sense lvl 10 ]


    [ Mana Sense lvl 10; Technician 3/4 ]


    Katare shoves the blue box from her vision, mentally hurling it away. What she feared seems to be coming true, then. The panic is now everywhere. Instead of a pinch in her nonexistent guts, her entire being is now drenched in the clammy and acrid bite of panicked terror.


    The ship around her has no more mana-related secrets for her to uncover. Every single bit of power in the magical conduits and processes is visible to her senses. Not in much detail, mind you, but she has gotten a feeling for the way this ship seems to use mana.


    And to her surprise, the mercenaries around her are also equipped with mana-powered gear. It was only when her Mana Sense skill got near level ten that she started sensing this. Each soldier seems to carry at least one part of mana-powered weaponry. She senses a few knives and swords - like the one that decapitated her by cutting through the entire arcade machine. One man is decked out in mana powered armor, every single weapon strapped to his large frame glowing in her Mana Sense. Most of them have just a pair of goggles, a rifle, a knife, or one of the aforementioned swords on their person.


    And truth be told, she just can¡¯t get over the fact that the ship and crew use mana in the first place. For the millionth time, she once again questions whether or not the power she senses is actually mana. Unlike her own magical energy, which has a distinct blue tint, the energy flowing through this ship looks like heavily diluted milk.


    Transparent with a hint of opaque white, the power that flows through the crystalline wires is similar yet different from her own. It¡¯s stored in removable batteries and shining cores embedded in gear, and she can¡¯t do a single thing with it. Although she can sense it fine, it seems that her control is limited to the inside of her skull.


    Somehow, she remembers being able to influence the power, even outside her brain. Now, there seems to be a hard stop to her control. There is also something else going on just outside her head, but her current frozen-yet-still-conscious state is not conducive to calm and reasoned experimentation.


    There is a clock ticking down mercilessly, and it¡¯s a countdown to the beginning of her madness. Once she knew how to listen for it, she started noticing it everywhere. Every single component in the spacecraft is somehow preparing for warp, from the actual warp engine to the small food rehydrator. Every single component needs to know when to warp, as it¡¯s standard procedure to put every single item into low-power or sleep mode just before transition. The warp core will be needing every single iota of power it can access, and all the items on warp-capable ships are designed around that requirement.


    One again, Katare hears from a myriad of sources that there are only five seconds remaining. From the warp engine itself to the small processor on the stasis tank holding her, every single electronic item double-checks the countdown with the ship''s central processor. She can actually feel it now, the entire ship vibrating with the building energies. The telltale warping of reality began minutes ago. She feels the phantom sensations - simultaneously being too small, yet too large - through the stasis-field she is in, no problem.


    The fluctuations in reality rise along with her panic, and then the world stops again.


    Except that it doesn¡¯t.


    Somehow, she feels that the universe around her has stopped. The sheer stillness of the entire ship impresses a feeling of stagnation upon her that she can¡¯t put into words.


    Except for the mana, which continues to flow unbiddenly.


    Both inside her brain and the pale flows in the ship continue to move. Inside her head, there is a facsimile of brain activity, her consciousness moving along despite her brain being still. Outside her head, she senses the same slow trickle of mana. Bright spots of power represent battery-like constructs, out of which the mana seeps into the entire ship.


    Katare is honestly kind of underwhelmed. The memories of her being stuck in time while Solan¡¯s ship warped around her are hazy, but none the less terrifying. She then remembers that she was likely under the influence of a massive amount of drugs. Following that thread of thought, she realizes that back then, she must have recently been placed inside a new cloned body. She had been suffering from status effects such as Thought Control and Brain Surgery. Going from such a highly controlled and modified mind space to the clinical consciousness that comes with separation from the flesh is bound to have an impact. All those hormones and mood-altering chemicals suddenly losing grasp on a mind did not leave her in a stable mental framework.


    All in all, she had been panicking for nothing. She recognizes that she is most likely going to go stark-raving mad if she needs to endure a month like this, but she¡¯ll be able to cope for a few days, right?


    ?


    One part of Katare is angry at herself for thinking that this would be easy. The second part of herself is also angry, but this anger is aimed at the first part of Katare.


    The ship has been stuck in the warp-bubble for a few hours now, and Katare is going stark-raving mad. Already, she is having a conversation with herself, and she is appalled.


    How can anyone even stand herself? She is a terrible being, a self-absorb spoiled piece of human waste. Both camps think that of the other, and Katare agrees with both of herselves.


    If only she could just stop everything. The people onboard have stopped moving, and all the mechanical parts are frozen in time. Only the mana moves, and she is starting to feel like perfect stillness would be preferable to this semi moving world.


    Within a few hours of staring at the seeping power all around her, she did learn a few things though.


    The way this mana is used is different than Douglas¡¯ - and presumably hers - on a fundamental level. Instead of moving through runes, magical patterns, spell shapes, and magical formations, this power runs through loops. Three-dimensional loops that boggle the mind in their complexity, intrinsic knots that are impossible to follow, and woven patches of frill, staggering in detail and complexity. Nonetheless, everything is made out of basic loops nonetheless.


    A sword contains jagged loops, each one narrowing to a line as thin as a hair at the cutting edge of the weapon. She recognized a button at the hilt, one that she believes will increase the flow of mana when pressed.


    Armour contains thin loops, a complex weave of chainmail-like flows that fill in the sections of protective gear. Each pistol or rifle has loops of white power around the barrel, the trigger of each weapon connected to the circuit.


    The ship itself has a myriad of ever more complex loops, some of the patterns so small and convoluted that they seem a grey blur to Katare¡¯s Mana Sense.


    But after hours of staring at the loops, trying to influence them with her Mana Control, and not getting anywhere, she was looking for someone to blame. Her rather tenuous sanity thought it was a great idea to blame the single person that¡¯s around, namely herself!


    And here she is, one part cursing, one part yelling names, all of it aimed towards herself.


    Another hour passes in this vicious spiral of pointing fingers and dodging the blame. If only she could slow down like those mana loops. Their treacle-like lethargy is taunting her every second. They slow dance is contrasted with the busy, blue blitz and blurring of the mana inside her mind; the white loops move very slow indeed.


    They move very slow indeed¡­


    Ignoring the part of herself that¡¯s deeply amused by slowly going insane, Katare holds onto that thought. What if she could slow herself down? What if her mind could stop, to let the mana in her brain follow in the footsteps of her physical brain. She reasons out that the flow of power inside the ship and gear around her is limited by resistors in their mana loops. There are points here and in the mana wiring of the ship where the glowing lines nearly disappear. There are usually right next to other components, and the faintness of those spots seem to be linked to the brightness of the line before and after. The buttons and triggers seem to perform that task when it comes to the weapons and gear, their normal state only allowing a slight trickle of mana through.


    Then Katare loses around half an hour wandering about the reason for the small current of mana running through everything. Why can¡¯t the circuit be opened completely, wouldn¡¯t that save a lot of mana?


    In the end, she concludes that she has too little information about engineering with mana. She will need to run some tests, but more likely she''ll just find someone to run the tests for her. Also, that way of slowing things down will not work for her; she quickly finds out. She simply has no way of limiting the slow of mana inside her brain. There is no single source of power, not a single spot from which the energy flows into her nogging. There seems to be a blue haze over everything, with a glowing nexus of power doing its thing in the middle of her head.


    She does start to see what is actually going on inside her head once she starts looking at it, though. There is definitely some kind of flow happening, and there is definitely some kind of underlying ruleset for the flow of that mana.


    Mentally closing her senses to the outside world, Katare starts trying for real then. She knows that there is just an eternity of blackness, an infinite void that lacks sensation waiting for her out there. So, she blocks it off. She stops trying to sense all the power flowing around her and starts staring at herself for real.


    Seeing the various regions of her brain for what they are goes rather fast. Categorizing the sections of her mind takes her only half an hour after she starts taking it seriously. Many parts of her brain lack mana activity and some half-forgotten lessons cue her in on what is what. The motor skill part of her brain is glaringly empty once she identifies it. Her spine is shortened, and she manages to recognize a Neural Interface plate capping off the nerve bundle after some study of that area. The rest of the sensory brain clusters are similarly devoid of mana activity, so she forgoes those areas.


    One part that does shine brightly, much to her surprise, is part of her audiovisual center. This area pulses with each thought she has and glows with every new attempt to map her brain. On second thought, this mental effort only lighting up this area faintly, it makes sense. A person¡¯s visual imagination is rooted in their visual center, and Katare has been doing nothing but visualizing.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    That¡¯s when she realizes that the mana is just copying what her brain would normally do. This energy is somehow introduced here by Douglas, the skeleton somehow influencing her brain, half a galaxy away. She vaguely recalls something about ingress points, but her mind doesn¡¯t seem willing to bring up more details at the moment. Mentally shaking her head, she decides to put that mystery off for another day.


    Instead, she doubles down on understanding her own mind. Things make more sense now that she has a baseline understanding of what is happening. The highest concentration of mana is located in the center of her brain, right on top of the midbrain. The mana there seems to be just storage, though. Very little neural activity is happening in her brainstem or in the center of her brain. The majority of the action seems to be happening in her cerebral cortex, the outer layer of grey matter, and the place that houses her consciousness.


    That done and established; she resumes attempting to slow down the mana inside her head, just so she can spare herself the terror of being forced to stare into the void.


    Katare has a few more bouts of becoming a crazy person, but in the end, all six of her personalities agree that they really should resume with their unmoving mind training. This only happens a few more times before all her effort finally pays off, and a new blue screen pops into view.


    [ Mana Control lvl 2 ]


    [ New skill generated; Still Mind lvl 1 ]


    [ For generating an entirely new skill, +5 lvl, skill limit set to III ]


    [ Still Mind III lvl 5 ]


    [ Meditation lvl 2 consolidated into Still Mind III lvl 5 ]


    [ Still Mind III lvl 6 ]


    And suddenly, Katare knows peace. She knows now, with full confidence, that she will be alright. The Meditation skill had previously shown her how to breathe and relax. None of those tips had been applicable to her situation in the slightest, so she had ignored them. The skill thus had never leveled, as she had assumed that a proper set of lungs were needed for proper practice of the skill.


    Now, she knows that had she persevered, she would have ended up with a skill similar to the newly created Still Mind. Breathing right, sitting in a correct position, making sure that you aren¡¯t bothered by physical distractions, all of that is just entry-level stuff.


    [ Mana Control lvl 3 ]


    [ Still Mind III lvl 7 ]


    The true way to meditate is to have an empty mind. The true way to generate more mana is to not think, to let the brain cells be still and silent, to place the mind in a low power state.


    At least, that is what Katare is now glimpsing from the stream of tips and information that she is receiving. And slowly, with each new realization, Katare does just that. Instead of furiously trying to find new ways to stop her brain activity, Katare just lets it all go. No longer does she attempt to find a way of doing, for searching for the path prevents one from seeing it.


    A small part of Katare is not happy about the way this entire thing is going. A part of her rational mind rebels at the stupid way this information is delivered, filled with superstition and esoteric nonsense. If only the blue boxes would have delivered the information in a better way, then she could have avoided a lot of this nonsense.


    Then that thought also drops away, and the blue mimicry of Katare¡¯s neural network that overlays her frozen physical brain slows down even further. Her consciousness slows down to a halt, letting time speed on by as she meditates deeply. The ship she is in blasts through half the galaxy at many times the speed of light. The energy siphoned from the power collection station orbiting at the edge of the Tomat Vault world system helping it speed along, reducing a trip that normally would have taken years to a mere month.


    Outside of Katare¡¯s knowing, the reality frame around the ship resolves itself at the edge of the Evengi system right on schedule. The pair of humanoid pilots controlling the ship are startled as they observe a light show. Their sensors go haywire for a few moments as they observe a massive power spike on basically every frequency they can measure. The fact that this happens the moment they appear in the system causes quite a stir. The only person on board the ship that doesn''t shit their pants a little is Katare, who is still peacefully practicing her Still Mind skill.


    The two pilots make a few bets on what might be happening. Then one of the mercenaries overhears the two pilots talking, and the betting pools grow to include the entire crew.


    The sapient holding Katare¡¯s stasis tank wins the bet. His guess of ¡®some stupid locals trying to get through the Histaff quarantine¡¯ had been unanimously ridiculed at first. Spying on the report channels turns out to be easy. Figuring out that the massive laser show had indeed been a local group of survivors trying to get off-planet easier still.


    Nobody truly enjoys the outcome of the bet, though. The events surrounding the report are just too weird to make light of. Somehow, an entire planet dropped GalaxSec base has been launched into orbit.


    The trip towards their home ship - the core of the Purgatory and the headquarters of the Order - takes them a few days. During that time, they do some more digging, and the events that have transpired in this system are weird at best. A few of the crew find them unsettling and terrifying, truth be told.


    Random snippets of rumors keep popping up, and wild claims of an entire high-spec merc crew getting iced appear time and time again. That this group is rumored to be from Ancheevi only increases the general feeling of unease on the ship. The official statements of the entire team being sent back alive and well are viewed with due skepticism.


    And so it is, that with a tightly stretched veneer of tension unsettling the entire crew that they arrive back at their home base. The composite segments have long since departed from the Purgatory''s core, going about their tasks of refueling, patrolling, scanning, mining, or exterminating.


    The team is debriefed according to protocol, and the number of slip-ups about shady dealings somehow stays below noticeable levels. Each member spins a fanciful tale, in which they themselves are the hero of the mission. Their mission target is processed and put into short-term storage. Not a single mana powered sensor manages to pick up on the fact that Katare¡¯s brain is full of silent power.


    She''s carted off towards one of the most secure places in the universe, all the while having the most powerful and peaceful sleep she¡¯s ever had.


    ?


    [ Still Mind III lvl 11 ]


    [ Mana Control lvl 10 ]


    [ Mana Control lvl 10; Technician 4/4 ]


    [ Technician class; all relevant skills are max lvl. Please evolve class or pick a second class ]


    ¡°¡­because my conscious needs to be clear, this is truth. This task, I take upon me and my organization, this majestic work of unthanked and unloved labor, for this, I need to keep a clear head. For this, I need to keep my Order for Regulation of Dangerous Extra-natural Resources strong and leading. Therefore, I take it upon myself to talk to all the people that end up as unfortunate victims, such as yourself.¡±


    Katare startles awake. She was having a wonderful dream. She had been sunbathing on the surface of a sun, tracing her hands through gorgeous corona¡¯s. She remembers the delicious pop of some snack in her mouth when her warm bed had started monologuing in an immensely pompous manner.


    ¡°And so it is, with every single person that I directly order put to death, that I converse with them about the reason for their demise. To pay for what I must do, so explain the pain I go through each time I need to order such a heinous act. It is with much grief that I had to order you taken, and with much grief is it that I will order you locked up for the rest of time, as you shall be given not another second of life. Blame me, blame my forebears, blame Solan for meddling with a power he does not understand. He too, he too shall slumber without being given another second.¡±


    Katare tries to open her eyes, only to find her body refusing her commands. The shards of the surreal dream fade into nothingness as her memories trickle back into her sluggish mind. Things and events start to make sense as she starts taking in her current situation.


    She feels more than sees a bearded man standing in front of her. She isn¡¯t sure if she is still in the stasis container, all she knows is that her brain is moving and firing once again and that it¡¯s dark as shit out. She opens and closes her eyes a couple of times, and apart from the faint sensation of dry eyes rubbing over raw eyelids, nothing else happens.


    Except for three sensations, the world is a perfect void yet again. Well, actually four things, she muses. The amount of mana around her is just insane. The same milky transparent power surges through a super complex maze of channels, junctions, gathering points, and many other forms she doesn¡¯t recognize. This would be one sensation, were it not for the bearded man formed of white power standing right in front of her. The second full sensation is that fact that her brain seems to be working again, as she can basically feel her neurons firing. And then there is sound, as she hears the glowing man talking nonstop.


    Short cropped hair, a muscular build, and a beard that covers half of his majestic chest. Then there is a face that looks like it has seen the end of time, shadowed eyes, and one hell of a package. For some reason, even though this person might very well be wearing clothes, none of them are picked up by her Mana Sense.


    ¡°And so, Katarenin Auchinfon Peezes Tomat, it is with great lamenting in my heart, with much sorrow on my mind, that I consigned you to die. Nay,¡± continues the bearded man in a self-aggrandizing manner. ¡°I ordered you dead. Just to do what must be done. Just so that the scourge of mana can keep away from this place. Just so this galaxy can be home to mortals instead of immortal tyranny. For this is my task, this is the yoke I bear.¡±


    Katare is sure that she would have been staring at the man with her mouth open. She then realizes that she is actually doing that, and is briefly confused by the sensory feedback she gets from her open jaw. She then remembers that the bionic body she is wearing has miniature energy cells spread across the entire frame. It thus makes sense that all the synthetic muscles, sensors, integrations, and processors in what is left of her head still works.


    This explains the sensation of opening and closing her eyes, the flapping of her jaws, and the fact that she can actually hear again. She really wishes that last one wasn¡¯t true, though. She has heard a lot of sanctimonious bullshit in her life, but this one takes the cake.


    The glowing figure is obviously filled - or made out of, she can¡¯t tell without seeing him with her eyes - with mana. The same mana that is flowing around her even now, seeping through masses of pipes, wires, and looping formations. The same power that was present in the gear carried by the crew. The crew that crushed an entire planet worth of defenses, broke into her apartment, and cut off her head. Or cut off her body? Her body was technically cut off from her head, and her perspective resides in her head. Why in the warp is that status effect called Decapitated? Shouldn¡¯t it be something like Disembodied?


    ¡°Empires with god-emperors that last for an eternity. Forty thousand years is nothing, gone like a whisper in the wind, yet their ancient corpses on their thrones refuse to die. No matter how much the people cry out, no matter how much they bleed and suffer, their dying curses go unheard. I cannot, no, it may not happen here. This shall be the one haven for the everyday man. I, the Grandmaster of the Order, am the bastion against the Outer Horrors, I am the bulwark that keeps out the plague of that which deems itself above nature and corporeal law. I never falter and never slumber. My vigil is everlasting, but, alas, it is limited.¡±


    Yeah, the blue boxes definitely should have marked her as Disembodied. Now she feels even more sorry for the poor saps that got decapitated. From the perspective of those people, that status effect is very much wrong. Being told that your consciousness is just something that''s lopped off of your body is just rubbing salt in the wound at that point.


    And Katare really hopes that the guy can shut up sometime soon. The tale the guy is rattling off is very nice, and she admires the delusional lengths that he must have gone through in order to get to that point. From a psychological standpoint, something very interesting must have happened to the man for him to believe that he is the sole defender of this galaxy against outside forces. Everyone knows that there is no life in other galaxies and that intergalactic travel is as impossible as it is impractical. Even the most sophisticated of warp drives need reference frames, need some form of matter around them to warp. The pure and exact vacuum in between galaxies is just not conducive to any form of transportation.


    As the man keeps talking about stupid stuff, lost in some form of self-aggrandizing delusion, Katare starts thinking of ways how to get the hell out of here.


    She then realizes that the thundering noise that she has heard this entire time was not through her ears. Instead, the roaring sensation is so all-pervasive that she initially thought it was background noise. The moment she realizes that there is an infinite amount of digital information flowing around her is the moment her migraine is back with a vengeance.

 03_07 - Escape and Expropriation

    Katare has learned three things. The first thing she has learned is that digital communication is largely bullshit.


    She has had enough time to form a solid opinion on this topic by now. She has been able to pluck all the whispering, random information, and other data from the datasphere around her due to her Magical Interfacing skill. And what she has learned while suffering the Grandmaster¡¯s rambling speech, is that digital communication is just a lot of copies of copies of copies being shuffled around.


    She also realizes that instead of the constant stream of data, digital communication really looks like some freaky, elongated rain. Instead of raindrops falling down one by one, in neat little spheres, they act like some elongating snakes. One moment, a packet of information is sitting in one place, nice and small and readable. Then, it has stretched out towards its destination, before slinking back into a neat package once again.


    And the vast majority of these packages of information are the same. Streams of sensor data that is virtually similar, orders and orbital data that is being sent time and time again, and more. Then, there is the storm of confirmation packets being returned. Back on the ship, she managed to pull some relevant and useful data from the datasphere around her. Now there is just too much going on. Each piece of data that she would like to know is buried in trillions of data points that are useless.


    The second thing she learned is that the blue box system - something she has started calling the System, capital¡¯s¡¯ - is truly pulling stuff out of its ass. For example, her class skills are all at their maximum level. But whenever she asks for the classes she now should be able to choose or evolve, this is what it comes up with;


    [ Tier 1 classes available: ]


    [ Official ]


    [ Vendor ]


    [ Monk ]


    [ Tier 2 classes available: ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN Technician ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN Mechanic ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN Maker ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN Engineer ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN Engineer ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN Engineer ]


    [ Associate UNKNOWN UNKNOWN ]


    All that Katare knows is that she is not willing to lock herself into an UNKNOWN path. She has done a lot of cursing and yelling at the System, telling it to hurry up and get its shit together. So far, there has been no marked increase in its speed, so Katere tells herself once again to stop wasting her mental energy on the tirade.


    And finally, the self-acclaimed Grandmaster of the Order is a true ass-wipe. She stopped listening to his rant what feels like hours ago, and every time she resumes listening to his speech, it¡¯s gotten worse.


    ¡°¡­unending vigil. Four eternities, eight endless nights, sixteen enduring symphonies of anguish have I endured in order to safeguard this pit of stagnation. Yet still, even the most miserable of laboratory clone slaves, bred and born in captivity, never to see the light of day, never to gaze upon anything but the miserable walls that imprison them, have a better life here. For at least when they die, their soul can be free. Their incorporeal form can go where it pleases, free from the wheel, free from the shackles of mana. So it¡¯s with these reasons that I had thee-¡±


    The little respect Katare had left for the bearded freak is lost when an annoying and childish melody starts playing. The glowing man of white mana stops waving his arms about as it fumbles for what seems to be a pocket. Katare still can¡¯t perceive anything but mana, so she is still looking at a glowing hologram of a naked man. She is also still avoiding a certain clearly visible region on the man¡¯s body, but as she is located at around the same height, this is rather difficult. Katare is not in a great mood.


    ¡°What?¡± asks the man into his open hand, which presumably holds some form of a communication device.


    Katare has a lot of experience with people. If there is one lesson she has learned, it¡¯s never to trust people that leave their ringtones on default. People that can¡¯t be bothered with changing the ringtone of a unique one usually treat other aspects of their life with the same lack of attention and effort.


    ¡°So, a stack of papers¡­ is The Enemy?¡±


    This sentence catches Katare¡¯s attention. The Grandmaster has made earlier remarks alluding to this ¡®The Enemy,¡¯ but so far, all of them have been in a more figurative manner. She can actually hear the capitals on the two letters of that name every time Grandmaster says it.


    ¡°Is it The Enemy, or are they a product of The Enemy? You know that this is my private time, and I do not appreciate being interrupted. Especially for nonsense like this.¡±


    Katare listens in fascination at this exchange. She can only hear one side of this conversation, but the body language of the mana person shifted from imperious monologuing to attentive listening the moment he picked up the phone.


    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not a source, it¡¯s paper! Just put it on the storage transport¡­ Yes, the rest of those people can stay in the stasis cells¡­ No, I do not know what to do with the Shmee duo yet¡­ You found a crystal with... How high are those The Enemy levels? Are you sure it isn¡¯t a Histaff Mastercore?¡±


    The mana ghost starts pacing at this point, one hand nervously stroking his beard.¡±


    ¡°No, you will forget I said that,¡± he commands, and Katare feels a wave of mana flowing over her. She feels like forgetting what he just said, but as if noticing the effect cancels it, she remembers. ¡°Just double down on security, for now. Half the personnel spans¡­ Yes, of course¡­ No, that¡¯s not a problem. I¡¯m staying low on juice. You know what? I¡¯m just going to come back up. The mood is gone now¡­ No, this isn¡¯t your fault. Just¡­¡±


    Katare wants to say many things as the large man walks away from her, but she can¡¯t find the words to describe what she is feeling right now. She mentally shakes her head at the strangeness of everything. Ever since she woke up on that warp-damned space station, thinking that she was playing some kind of entertaining scenario, the universe made a lot less sense. She still holds a certain dumb skeleton responsible for that, but as he is nowhere to be seen, she will have to bottle up that frustration for later.


    So, with the massive distraction of a naked and well-equipped manly mana hologram gone, she resumes thinking of what to do.


    She has figured out a couple of things about her current situation and status. First, there are her class skills. Magical Interfacing is just what it sounds like. Through mana and magic, she is somehow able to interface with technology instinctively. This doesn¡¯t have to be the magical kind, either. Actually, she suspects that the magical technology is the only tech that she can¡¯t interface with, for reasons unknown to her.


    Then there is Magical Integration. One aspect of this skill - she thinks - allows her to get a feel for her implants. As her biological body is reduced to her brain and a short length of her spine, she doesn¡¯t know if that skill includes bodily implants. She just knows that she can feel the FullBrain Neural SuperVisor woven throughout her grey matter.


    Secondly, it allows her the same instinctual control over her implants. She also suspects that this extends to the android head her brain is still wearing. It¡¯s just a shame that the disembodied head is designed for comfort and has zero utility. She cringes as she recalls that this is why she chose this body in the first place. She¡¯d wanted to forget about everything, and as a result, she is now stuck inside a massive Histaff cleaning ship without any way out of here.


    Then she suddenly remembers that her implant has a small transmitter. She is sure that she should be blushing in shame furiously right about now, where she still the owner of her original body. She honestly totally forgot about that, even though the integrated piece of tech is likely the reason she can sense the datasphere in such a manner in the first place.


    Now knowing what to look for, it doesn¡¯t take her long before she gets a proper grasp on the things she had been doing on an unconscious level so far. The tech inside her brain is made up out of two large components. First, there is her brainstem implant, the Neural SuperVisor that every sapient receives just after birth. This has a central component, an integrated circuit with more than enough processing power to handle a full sensory simulation. This part of her implant had been hard at work while she was remotely controlling bodies during her slog through the Histaff infected space station. Now, that part of the processor is doing nothing, and it has been idle this entire time.


    The second part is the ReQuit FullBrain extension, which is a secondary processor, as well as a very extensive web of wires throughout her brain. All of these wires are composite constructions, each stand containing millions of nanoscopic fibers. All these fibers connect with at least one neuron nucleus, thus keeping tabs on her entire brain. The ReQuit part of that name stands for ¡®requital,¡¯ as in, giving something in return.


    This means that her neural implants can sense, take, and give. The scanning means that they are passively sensing. Giving and taking stands for adding or removing neural impulses.


    All in all, it means that she can now influence the entirety of her own brain, add in fake sensory data, or cause certain parts of her brain to black-out.


    The moment she puts all this information together is the moment she puts a hard lock on all of that functionality. She immediately seals the stimulation and deprivation, or the give and take, options. Her current mental state is already tenuous at best. She suspects that she will go absolutely ape-shit the moment she starts interfering with her own brain in an uncontrolled manner.


    Shutting those functions down, she finds that she now has a lot of processing power to play with. The two main processing cores in her implants had been fairly busy with logging and analyzing her brain activity. Shutting that functionality down freed up a lot of space.


    Katare then has a long and hard look at the mind-bogglingly massive amount of data that is flowing around her. Even the simplest of items on the ship around her have hard-wired links to computer systems. From doors to lamps to singularity generators, every single item is connected to the ship¡¯s net. Finding the useful information in this gargantuan maelstrom of data will be like finding a needle in a planet-sized haystack.


    So she sets about identifying, sorting, and filtering the hay as best she can. Despite only knowing the basics about computer programming, adaptive self-learning networks, and programmable gate arrays, she starts working with the concepts of these fields with impressive speed and alacrity.


    As with most things in life, the majority of the traffic around her is cleaned up easily. All the repeating sensor data, myriads of repeating handshake protocols, and simple polling packets are filtered out within minutes of beginning this task.


    Very quickly, she has over ninety percent of all the data around her marked as unimportant. She then looks upon the remaining ten percent, and despair starts setting in.


    Ten percent of a near-infinite amount of packages is still near-infinite, just a little less infinite.Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Slogging on, she quickly finds out that another ninety percent of this remaining part can be filtered easily. The majority of these packages are filled with random stuff. All the packages seem to be covered in a sort of opaque film, which forces her to look into each one. It takes her an embarrassingly long time to realize that she is actually breaking through a layer of encryption.


    Her implants seem up to the task, and Katare suspects that Solan might have bent some technology guidelines and laws with the particular model inside her brain. A lot of the remaining information packets seem to be encrypted by strong protocols. She finds that this data is usually of a more private sort. These encrypted packages contain intergalactic mail coming in on long-range comms, GalaxNet searches, or sensitive news. Katare filters these out too. Sorting through them costs too much time, as she needs to decrypt every single one before finding out its contents.


    Yet despite those probably illegal cracking routines in her head, a large portion of the remaining unfiltered packets remain illegible. Filtering those too, she is left with under a percentage of all traffic around her.


    Combing through that remaining stream of data is still an insurmountable task that will probably take years. Looking around, Katare once again confirms that she is just a brain, stuck inside a disembodied android body head, stuck inside some unknown container, inside an unknown ship.


    Giving a very deep mental sigh, she sets about identifying the remaining one percent.


    What feels like a small eternity later, Katare feels like she is going crazy, again. This isn¡¯t another case of literally losing sight of reality, though. No, this time, she sees things.


    Once in a while, at seemingly random times, something directly under her makes a very small, nearly imperceptible packet. All of the previous ones were basically invisible in the storm of digital information going on around her. Now that the vast majority of that stream is being filtered, she can occasionally catch bits of information originating right from under her nose.


    Just as her attention is about to switch back to the packet stream she still has to sort; it happens again. This time, she is quick enough on the uptake to catch a good glimpse of the thing. This allows her to grab a copy to study. Opening the small bit of information, she sees a few named variables.


    The headers show that it¡¯s being sent from an item called ¡®50x50x50VoidSluice000189437¡¯. There is very little information in this bit of data, but its name allows Katare to make some solid assumptions. The thought that she is inside a void sluice - a form of airlock - is pretty concerning but does potentially open up a lot of possibilities.


    She then finds a variable called ¡®Space,¡¯ and an idea pops into her mind. Acting more on magically powered instinct than anything else, she carefully crafts a new packet. Reversing the sending and receiver is rather easy. Changing the binary bit indicating true or false on the ¡®Space¡¯ is equally easy. She makes sure not to touch the ¡®NuclearDisintegration¡¯ variable, as she has no desire to be turned into loose atoms anytime soon.


    She then tries to send this packet back to the piece of equipment right beneath her. First, she attempts to make the packet appear inside the electrical wiring leading to the void sluice. This turns out to be impossible, she finds out after a good hour of trying. Once again not really sure why she insists on trying the most complicated solution first, she puts a copy of the packet in her Neural SuperVisor¡¯s transmitter and sends it into the atmosphere. She then realizes that what she just did might have been a really stupid idea.


    Despite not seeing a thing, and although a lot of the sensors in her bionic head have stopped functioning, she still manages to figure out what happens next.


    The floor that her severed stump of a neck is laying on vanishes. Two sliding half doors beneath her open up to a vacuum, which proceeds to suck her head downwards at speed. From the several impacts and faceplants the various sensors in her synthetic skin register, she realizes that she is bouncing around in a rather narrow tube. Then, the near bone-crunching impacts lessen in frequency, and the processor embedded in her head tells her that the tunnel she is bouncing inside must have widened.


    Then she sees the faintest hint of light, spinning by in a blur. Another faint explosion of pain - this one telling of yet another widening of the pipe she is careening through - slows her mad spin. That¡¯s when she sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Apparently, a lot of pipes similar to the one she is in feed into this one. And now she is shooting towards a fucking sun, so that¡¯s cool.


    Katare wonders what is wrong with her mind. Of course, that¡¯s not cool; being tossed into a sun is the literal opposite of cool. Seeing the small sun shining at the end of the tunnel is a nice break from the long stretch of darkness she has been in, she must say. Her implants telling her that her current course will put her inside of the sun within hours is not cool at all.


    Then, while she is still processing this latest development, she shoots out of the pipe. She wonders why a ship like the Purgatory would use normal pipes for this kind of purpose. The fact that she is being launched into a sun stops that train of thought quickly.


    She is slowly spinning around, so the first thing that happens to her after emerging from the dark pipe is that she gets a nice look at her surroundings. All the rumors about the CHCS Purgatory, all the factsheets she has read and all the briefings and lessons she ever receives turn out to be false. From those sources, she merely learned that the segmented ship is enormous.


    The excellent look she gets at the thing puts it downright into the gargantuan, fucking enormous, and mind-bogglingly massive category.


    A metal monstrosity that reminds her of a spider¡¯s nest hangs in the void of space. A central sack, bulging and pulsing with lights and life, is suspended in space by an impossibly thin and bright network of fibers, ropes, and tattered shreds of lacework mesh. Then, she realizes that the fibers are support structures, the clusters of random fluff and fine weave are actually hangar bays and housing areas. Looking around - which happens automatically as she slowly tumbles - she spots the edge of the impossible construct.


    Seeing the stupendous sphere that¡¯s supposed to house the entirety of the CHCS Purgatory, Katare is dumbstruck. She has seen capital ships aplenty. Wonders that can only be created by the most modern of technologies are also a dime a dozen for the woman. The number of space elevators and planetary rings she has seen rivals the amount of asteroid-turned-space station and other megaprojects she has helped engineer.


    But this, this is something different. The scale of the entire ship is nothing new, but Katare wonders how she seems to be the only one to recognize that the CHCS Purgatory is impossible. Even with the most advanced materials, with the most power-hungry of covalent bonding processes, this tangled weave of struts and structures shouldn¡¯t be possible. Tapping into her Mana Sense, the entire weave of spider web-like struts lights up with pale mana. The egg-sac like construct in the middle is a blazing point of magical power. The milky white is so concentrated; it rivals the sun in terms of the power that Katare feels emanating from it.


    Then her head is turned around again, and she is once again staring at the sun, which is coming closer at an alarming rate. She continues her slow tumble through space as she makes her way out of the Purgatory¡¯s skeletal reach. The entire ship is supposed to be a sphere; she knows from the promotional and educational material she once consumed. This is the most efficient shape to warp with, but Katare only recognizes this shape after she drifts out of the Purgatory¡¯s web of branches. It takes her a little more distance to recognize the shape for what it is.


    It looks like some citrus fruit, all of the juicy bits removed, only the white fibrous matter remaining. The ship is nothing but a weave of supportive structures, logistical channels, power lines, and other resource supply lines. She sees one particular ship about to dock, a massive wedge-shaped vessel with bulky mining lasers folded into its hull.


    And it¡¯s while she is staring at the ponderous docking maneuver of the mining rig, that her eyes freeze over. Trying to blink the blurry film from her vision, she wonders how that is even possible. The body she¡¯s in should be able to hold out for years.


    Except for the fact that the majority of the power generation in her particular model is located in the torso. And Katare¡¯s torso is located half a galaxy away, she remembers belatedly.


    She then tumbles face-first to the sun again, and her frozen eyes start smoldering and bubbling from the stellar wind.


    The power levels continue to lower, the few capacitors in her head dipping dangerously low. All kinds of alarm bells are going off now, both in her mind, her implants, and in the processor in her head that¡¯s been slowly elevating its internal alarm levels. Katare makes a hard and fast decision, disabling the external coolers. Shutting down all the non-vital processes, the effects are immediate.


    She can¡¯t see it, but the damage modeling software function inside the FullBionic iSleeve starts yelling directly into her Magical Interfacing ears. Her synthetic hair is the first thing to go. For some reason, the Purgatory is located relatively close to the sun, probably for refueling purposes. This does mean that the stellar wind given off by the star is literally a constant stream of plasma. Seconds after cutting power to her non-essential features, her hair has flaked off, smoldering as it burns from her scalp. Her skin is the next layer to fry, the cooling mesh woven through the bio-simulated tissue no longer soaking up the plasma damage.


    A deep part of her ego cries out at the fact that she is slowly turning into a charred metal skull. Yet Katare knows that this is yet another do or die moment for her. The numbers take up all of her attention now, the ticking clock counting down the seconds and light-seconds to her inevitable incineration. She will plunge into the surface of the sun in a few hours, but she probably won¡¯t have to worry about that. Her brain will be steam-cooked before she¡¯ll even come close to that ball of fusion and plasma.


    Once again wondering what¡¯s wrong with her mind, she starts looking around. She is starting to feel a numb kind of giddy towards this constant stream of extremely dangerous situations she keeps finding herself in. If there is one thing to be thankful for, it is the fact that the void of space around her is a lot less distracting. Instead of the pulsing weaves of mana that were flowing through the Purgatory alongside the ocean of data, the blackness of space is much more relaxing. Also, there is no annoying god-complex character monologuing to her.


    This is all counterbalanced by the fact that she is floating towards a fucking sun, however.


    And the fact that her eyes are now smoldering bits of synthetic material isn¡¯t helping either. It takes her a bit of frantically poking around inside her own skull, but she manages to tap into some kind of mapping function. This piece of functionality seems more designed for getting around a city, however, and forcing it to keep track of stellar bodies and massive spaceship takes a bit of work.


    Despite the fact that she can¡¯t see, and the fact that the mapping process won¡¯t zoom out further than city-level - useless when the closest thing to her is a drone thousands of kilometers away - she does kind of see things. The Purgatory for one. It¡¯s a shining weave of mana a constant light in the visual darkness. Then there are the digital signatures, friend-or-foe signals given off by the spaceships around her, and the myriad of drones.


    The sun is this massive void in her perception. The only way she can keep track of the thing is by checking the status of the last remaining external sensor on her skull. One temperature sensor partially covered by her metal jawbone still gives her a reading. Then that sensor spikes, the temperature exceeding its operating conditions, and the datapoint winks out.


    That¡¯s when Katare realizes she needs a plan. Her entire life, she has had plans, of course. But until now, her main goal had been just to get by, just to live and do nice things. Many people have remarked on this before, but she has not really had a larger goal to pursue, no dot on the horizon to move towards. She¡¯s had short term goals, of course. But those flights of fancy aways ended when she managed to implement a new law, or finished with designing a new range of spaceships.


    But it seems that things are happening that she has no control over, and these events seem intent on dragging her along. Willfully ignoring everything and relaxing hasn¡¯t worked. Far from it, actually. Hoping the situation will resolve itself has only managed to put her in a worse position. That stubborn streak has lost her access to an entire vault planet at her disposal, the substantial remnants of the Tomat empire hers to command. Now she is a brain-in-a-jar in a disembodied android head, floating towards a star.


    For the next few minutes, Katare¡¯s head is a perfect blank. Instead of some brilliant idea appearing or a sudden epiphany showing her the way she can¡¯t really come up with anything. The only thing that sticks out in her mind is the fact that out of her entire contact list, only a disgruntled teacher whose life she ruined picked up the phone.


    All of her other contacts, friends, acquaintances, and family members had shuffled her off to some no-name subordinate. Yet this person she had sabotaged out of spite had spoken to her.


    Then, as if knowing where to go shows her the way, Katare formulates a plan. Reaching out to the probe a couple of thousands of kilometers away, she starts to study the thing. It seems to be a relatively simple construction, a low-power mass-less driver meant to ferry cargo around.


    Luckily for the spinning bionic skull, she has actually had a hand in the production process of these things. She might not know their every in and out, but she does remember looking over the spec-sheets of models similar to this one.


    Carefully crafting another digital packet, she sends it to the drone, the transmitter in her brain barely managing to reach it.


    Half an hour before the plasma would have gotten strong enough to pressure-cook her brain in her braincase, she gets the packet right. A combination of the correct encryption protocol and spoofed hardware addresses allows her to take control of the drone. She immediately commands it to drop the large chunk of processed ore and to speed towards her.


    No longer having to ferry many tonnes of heavy matter around, the drone¡¯s ability to accelerate transforms from sluggish to insane. Within minutes, it crosses the void of space between itself and Katare. Then, it mechanically clamps Katare¡¯s head between its massive industrial jaws. Her head squeezed near its breaking point, Katare frantically starts looking for the drone¡¯s clamping pressure setting.

 03_08 - Bony Burglar

    The entire world twists, turns, and reverses for a single split second. Douglas stops enhancing the left landing wheel as he looks up. The entire ship humming with his power does put a smile on his face, but the weird feeling of twisting makes him a bit concerned. All the lights switched off moments before, but he had been too busy with wiring up the controls for the magical engine driven wheel to really take note.


    Katare is unmoving, her chest no longer rising, her hair now a simple dull silver instead of the cacophony of colors it was before. Douglas is just about to continue with placing transmitters in every single part of the ship when he notices that a lot of mana has disappeared. He then sees that one part of the vessel keeps sucking up his power, and following the flow of his mana, he ends up at the warp drive.


    The entire donut is practically blazing with blue light, a bright ring of mana spinning inside the hollow torus. Not sure what he is sensing, Douglas just knows that there seems to be a lot of his mana inside the item. Not bothering questioning why this happened, he makes a few outflow points, connecting the warp drive to the rest of the mana network inside the ship. A slight bit of the power flows out of the drive, immediately filling up every single mana stone attached to the engravings.


    Douglas is overjoyed at seeing this happen. His biggest bottleneck so far has been his mana regeneration. His engraving speed was slow due to a lack of mana. Now, with the entire ship bursting with power, Douglas decides to get a move on.


    Finishing up the landing gear is done in literal minutes, the sudden abundance of power, allowing Douglas to work much faster. He then continues to work on all the smaller things now that large projects have been taking care of. He makes sure sliding doors move without friction by weaving small repulsion formations in their joints. He has some fun with Magically Animating all the cupboard doors and drawers, copying their unique Magical Control formations in a small part of his skull.


    Then, after a long time of blissfully and mindlessly engraving to his heart''s content, he is done. Every single moving part, every single piece of infrastructure and piping is covered in magical patterns or runes. So Douglas stands up and thinks about what to do next for a bit. He knows that Katare wants to go and recover something called Nel, or Len, or NukeLight EduSomethin, but Douglas has no idea what that¡¯s about. He does know someone broke the law, but as Evot isn¡¯t here, he doesn¡¯t really know what to do next.


    He goes over to where Katare is laying down on her bed and tries to wake her up. She seems very much asleep, however, and even poking her in the face fails to cause a response. Now that the entire ship is engraved, Douglas doesn¡¯t really see a reason to stay here, so he tries asking a question. ¡°Who broke the law?¡±


    Silence is his only answer. Katare remains unresponsive, and even picking her unresponsive body up from the bed doesn''t make her open her eyes. Deciding he might as well see what the rest of the ship looks like; he starts wandering around. Engraving the entire thing let know how the vessel is laid out. It thus takes him a good half hour before he comes across something that is interesting. Having thoroughly explored all the maintenance crawl spaces, secret storage areas, and private bed and bathrooms that the vessel has to offer, he finally stumbles into the cockpit.


    From the front window, he sees a metal ball hanging in the blackness of space. Looking away from the shining sphere of fine filigree, Douglas sees a small and rather weak sun. It''s more aking to a very bright star than anything else. He quickly loses interest and looks away. He sees a true tapestry of stars the moment he does so, and the spread of fine pinpricks puts him in a rather weird and melancholic mood. It¡¯s almost as if such a blanket of stars is telling of great change, as a similar view has accompanied him throughout his entire journey.


    Then the shining metal ball grows a lot bigger, and the magical skeleton is briefly taken aback by the sudden wall of glowing red fire and plasma that rushes past the front windows. He doesn¡¯t notice that there are no windows. The entire cockpit is installed with top of the line projectors, but Douglas really doesn¡¯t care about that. He does care about the potential lawbreakers that are out there. Katare said something about people breaking that law, and being a GalaxSec Constable, that is the one thing he cannot abide.


    His job, after all, exists out of telling people ¡®GalaxSec Trainee Constable Douglas. How can I help,¡¯ and finding people who broke the law? Once again, Evot isn¡¯t here, so how he will find these lawbreakers is outside of his scope at the moment, but he is sure he¡¯ll figure it out eventually.


    The ship lowers through a clear atmosphere, not a single cloud in sight. The sight Douglas is looking at stops being covered in a red glowing film, and he sees an endless intricat metal surface stretch to the horizon. One particular piece of the mechanical infrastructure below him grows bigger and bigger until it swallows the ship entirely. So when the ship lands inside a rather beaten-up looking hangar, Douglas is unsure what to do. He hears some things folding and clanking, as well as some tearing of metal and other unidentifiable noises, but nothing that screams lawbreaker to him.


    A few more minutes of nothing happening later, Douglas decides to look around. He finds the newly lowered ramp after only ten minutes of ponderously strolling through the ship. Walking through the small cargo space and onto the rubble-strewn hangar floor, Douglas sees a new world. The first thing he does is stare at the environment with his jaw hanging wide open.


    The metal ball he had seen from space actually turned out to be a huge planet. He has seen some pretty impressive sights on Evengi, with the mountains, ruined cities, fallen space elevator and all, but this is something different. What he sees now are valleys that span thousands of kilometers, all made of the metal. Constructions that reach the heavens, made from blocks that are bigger than the largest Histaff Gargantuan he has ever seen, seemingly built for no reason other than to make him feel small. He sees glass and steel pillars that reach the sky surrounding perfectly circular pits made from shining and perfectly polished mirrors.


    He stares for a bit, slowly realizes that he doesn¡¯t have a single idea what any of it is for, and decides to move on. The stark difference between the perfectly geometric horizon and the mess that is the landing area isn¡¯t a reason to pause for the skeleton. He just marches across the bullethole riddled floor, steps over the puddles of molten slag, and clambers over the large chunks of debris everywhere.


    He finds the doorway very quickly, as the charred hole is pretty hard to miss. Douglas steps over the shattered door without giving his surroundings a single glance. He just marches on through the hallway, idly taking note of the destroyed turrets hanging from the ceiling and the many burn marks and destroyed pieces of sparse furniture everywhere.


    He loses his way occasionally, but every time he sees his environment becoming too clean, Douglas manages to sense that something is wrong. Each time, he somehow finds himself backtracking until he is surrounded by severe battle damage once again.


    Then, a long while or walking through chaos later, Douglas finds himself staring down a massive pit, a jawning chasm of darkness. He is still not sure what he is actually doing here, but the joy of walking through a ruined corridor just tickles him in a way he can¡¯t describe. Then a white flash lights up the darkness, and Douglas sees that something tunneled through here. In a single instant, he sees an entire skyscraper-sized hole punched through the floors below him. The roughly circular holes all show signs of being superheated, large cracks showing that there was a lot of raw force involved. Then the light is gone, Douglas hears the sound of wind rushing through his bones, and he gets the idea that he might just be falling.


    ¡°Intruder detected. Initial repulsion protocol initiated. Total target bisection observed.¡±


    A synthetic voice with a distinctly feminine tone whispers its way through the air that Douglas is falling through. Then, he suddenly realizes that he is missing a lot of bones. Figuratively closing his eyes, the magical skeleton looks inwards and takes stock of his body. To his horror, he finds everything below his second lumbar vertebrae missing.


    His lower spine is severed, the most inferior vertebrae missing a good chunk of bone. The wind rushes through his remaining bones some more as he evaluates his current situation. Putting one and one together, Douglas realizes that this planet must have a Synthetic Intelligence, just like the GalaxSec base. The sound of the voice is the same, the tone slightly different, but the fake tint to the sound is nearly identical. And that SI must have triggered some kind of defensive system.


    Half a second after reaching that conclusion, Douglas smashes into the floor. A few of his ribs crack, his badge rattles around in his forehead a bit, and his left-hand shatters under his own weight. ¡°No,¡± he says while mustering up his mana. ¡°No more broken bones.¡±


    A perfectly cast Piercing Exploding Shot springs into existence in his right hand. It immediately starts burning the floor, melting the smooth marble like it¡¯s ice. Forcing himself in an upright position with the help of his left stump, Douglas brandishes the blazing spell. Instead of the armies of monsters her honestly expected, he sees a large crystal.


    ¡°Intruder remains capable. Initiating phase two.¡±


    Douglas decides that talking might be a path worth pursuing. He is suddenly surrounded by a shambling mess of twitching figures. The number of turrets, gizmo¡¯s, cables, and generally menacing shapes that suddenly rise from the floor give him a bit of pause.


    ¡°LeuraNike Equator¡­ Len?¡± asks Douglas. The crystal visible in the light of his spell is feeling very familiar to Douglas. He is once again totally incapable of saying why he feels a pull to this place, but something in his nonexistent guts tells him this is where he wants to go.


    ¡°Temporarily pausing combat mode. Inquiry; what the frack are you trying to say? Are you a skeleton? What in the warp is going on, and where is Kat.¡±


    ¡°Nuren Pike Ecu Aids Logistic,¡± is Douglas¡¯ eloquent reply.


    ¡°Are you trying to say my name, you shit piece of walking calcium?¡±


    ¡°What is your name,¡± retorts the piece of walking calcium.


    ¡°NeuralLike EduAide LogList v9.32.SEPTAGON.P.¡±


    ¡°No,¡± says Douglas while maneuvering himself upright. He sees some pieces of his bones laying around here and there, and quickly starts gathering them with a hastily cast Mana Hand. ¡°Don¡¯t know about the septagon part. Katare wants Nel.¡±


    His answer seems to shut the synthetic voice up for a few seconds. Douglas quickly makes use of the lull in the conversation by plastering more bones to his frame. There are scattered pieces of osseous fragments everywhere, only his smallest bones having survived the long fall intact. His Reinforced Bones racial trait has made him more resilient overall. The downside is that when his bones do break, they shatter into smaller fragments.


    He tries to figure out why that might be so, but doesn¡¯t manage to come to a reasonable explanation before the fake voice continues. ¡°Katarenin?¡±


    ¡°Katare wants Nel.¡±


    ¡°She¡¯s still alive?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± Douglas replies.


    ¡°Warp above and molten core below, she¡¯s still alive?¡±


    ¡°Yes,¡± replies Douglas for the last time. He is not liking the experience of talking to this voice at all. It sounds similar to the rather slow SI of the GalaxSec base. Something niggles at the back of his mind, however. He is sure that he should love talking to this voice. Just chatting with this dumb and fake-sounding person would have been very fulfilling at some point in his life. But as of late, what used to give him simple joy - things like endlessly doing repetitive tasks or aimlessly walking down randing corridors - just don¡¯t give him the same thrill anymore.


    ¡°Katare is still alive!¡± sounds from all around him. ¡°She isn¡¯t dead. I have a purpose yet, Where is Katarenin?¡±If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Ship,¡± answers Douglas while gathering the last bits of his bones. He only found enough material to repair his entire left hand and both legs up to his ankles. As this gives him all the mobility he needs, he isn¡¯t about to complain.


    Straightening up to his full height, Douglas takes a good look at his surroundings. The crystal he saw earlier is looking weirder the more he looks at it. He finds himself in a massive and empty floor, the light pouring from his Piercing Exploding Shot spell, allowing him to see everything in great detail. He is surrounded by a ramshackle army of mechanical items made out of saws, vacuum cleaners, folding table legs, and other random household items. Half of the twitching and jittering figures hold things like broken doors, actual tables, and broken panes of clear glass. Douglas is not impressed by the malfunctioning ramshackle army he finds himself surrounded by, and makes sure to let his confusion be known. ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°Inquiry about the current state of affairs?¡±


    ¡°Yes?¡± Douglas isn¡¯t sure what¡¯s going on at this point. From the ceiling, barely touched by the light of his spell, to the wild and spiky growth of dark crystal that seems to loom over everything, there''s a lot to take in.


    ¡°I¡¯m not sure if I can tell you, but as I seem to have reached sapience, and I don¡¯t want Katare to know, but I also don¡¯t know what¡¯s going on, and you¡¯re a skeleton, I can conclude I can tell you. Katare got decapitated while she was wasting all my power on stupid games and unnecessary spa treatments. My defenses were already shot from the equipment failure that nearly killed Katare, and she got in a new bionic body, and everything went wrong. I got defeated handily by a team of infiltrators, so I have taken steps to prevent such an occurrence from happening again.¡±


    Douglas doesn¡¯t randomly nod along here. He feels like this fake talking voice just needs to talk for a bit, and that his input is not required. So Douglas takes a moment to feel for his mana. For some reason, the large crystal feels like Katare herself. Tapping into the always present Mana Sense skill, Douglas opens his mana-sensitive eye and sees a glowing core. A shining blue dot is just below the large clump of sharp crystal needles, so the skeleton starts walking towards it.


    A few of the improvised constructs around him try to stop him, but they move with such slow and jerky motions that Douglas avoids them with ease.


    [ Dodging lvl 9 ]


    Ignoring the useless skill windows, Douglas half dances, half stumbles, and half slides through the mess of cobbled-together animatronics. He has to burn his way through a few of the bulkier ones, but they all melt as soon as Douglas brings them into contact with the Shot spell still clutched in his bony fingers.


    ¡°So I made do with what I have on hand. I did waste all the power I saved up on cutting you in half, though. That team only got in because I was trying to be sparing with the little power I had at my disposal, so I changed tactics. That¡¯s a new thing. It¡¯s not in my programming to deviate from my settings, so as that was my first time truly crossing that line, I messed up. Not cool, me.¡±


    The crystal thing seems rather odd, upon closer inspection. Its bottom seems very homely and welcoming. It¡¯s lower part seems to be made up to be an ordinary brick house. Douglas really wonders what is up with that for a few moments. The picturesque image of a traditionally build house breaks down the moment he looks up, as large shards of crystal quickly destroy that illusion. From the second floor up, it¡¯s all chaotic sharpness and dark spiked slowly repacing the brick facade.


    Douglas spots traces of mana flowing through the material. Then, he sees a small buildup of mana. This spark vanishes the moment a new spike of black glass shoots from the fake brick wall. He also sees remnants of a doorway that shows clear signs of having been blown open at some point. Sharp knives of shining black material now block both openings, but that isn¡¯t about to stop Douglas. He senses for mana once again, and the shining core of power is located under the floor, right under this weird crystal house thing.


    He holds out his intact hand, and the black glass turns out to burn just as easily. He steps through the glowing opening of the jagged doorframe a couple of dozen seconds later and walks into a very nice apartment.


    ¡°And since Katare left, the event logs have been going haywire. Nothing makes sense. All these impossible integers. I think that¡¯s why I gained sapience. Now I¡¯ve got to register myself, and instead of having normal controls and limits installed, the Collective will have their say! I want to remain a Synthetic Intelligence. Taking care of Katare is my single goal; it¡¯s why I was created! I don¡¯t want to be an Artificial Intelligence! I don''t want to be burdened with the responsibilities that come with synthetic sapience!¡±


    Douglas comes to the conclusion that this voice must be a female, basing his finding on the volume and tone with which he is being spoken to. Instead of paying more attention to the constantly droning voice, the skeleton walks to the middle of the apartment. He finds himself inside a very fancy looking place, which even though it¡¯s a total mess, still screams that it probably costs a lot of money. The shelves are empty, what must have been their contents strew all over the floor in pieces. There¡¯s a slowly smoking machine in the corner; its top half gone, a decapitated body hanging out of the broken door opening.


    Douglas does get the feeling that the shape of the body is pretty familiar, but doesn¡¯t pay it any mind. The goal of his journey is right there in front of him; he just knows. He stops in front of a row of bulky closets. One of their doors is open, showing him all kinds of long since rotten food. He hears the scuttling sounds of mechanical items on the rubble-strewn floor behind him. Glancing backward while pointing his right hand at the floor, he sees the mass of rubble robots coming closer slowly. Not really bothered by the approaching mass of scuttlers, he starts magically digging towards the glowing point of mana just below his shattered feet.


    He doesn¡¯t really know why, but he has got this weird feeling that the talking voice is the shining thing. He also figures that the voice must be Nel, no matter what the thing itself claims. All that talk about failing defenses, sapience, and the Collective is kind of interesting though. The words are accompanied by knowledge, probably coming from his Universal Language skill. Or is that a trait? Douglas stops for a few seconds, pondering this sudden mystery. He remembers that status effects also show up in that area. He doesn¡¯t think that Universal Language should be placed in the same category as something like Shattered or Frozen, though. One is a general translator thing, and the other is just stuff that¡¯s happened to him at some point in time.


    Douglas nearly wishes that he would be satisfied by staring at a wall again. Just following orders or chasing the closest interesting thing is honestly better than having to do all this thinking all the time.


    ¡°And could you stop digging there, skeleton? Your actions have caused the existential question of what I am to drop in my priority register. I now actually feel guilty about processing that concept. This is so stupid. I feel guilty now. I feel guilty just because I want to figure out who and what I am because a skeleton with glowing eyes is digging towards my core. Look, my army is walking towards him. My power banks and capacitors are empty. The entire planet is still broken due to that explosion and power surge. Everything I now want is less important than repairing the antennae, apparently. There is a new power field throwing everything out of their parameters, the apartment is growing wild, and there is nothing more I can do, and yet I feel gui-¡±


    Douglas finishes digging through the floor, the meter-thick layer of metal interwoven with black glass melting and burning quickly. It better burn quickly with the amount of mana he has been pouring into the spell, Douglas scoffs. Under the thick layer of flooring, lit up by his slowly sputtering Shot spell and the glowing rivulets of molten steel and crystal, is a sphere. Hooked up to a mass of wires and plugs, it hangs in the middle of a spherical hollow. Het lets the Shot spell sputter out, his lacking mana levels already causing it to be relatively unstable. He then grabs the sphere and pulls.


    The voice stops, and Douglas stands tall, holding the only thing around him that he can easily see with Mana Sense. The ramshackle army of improvised machines all fall over. To his surprise, he sees that the collection of walking trash actually managed to get within a few meters of him without him noticing. Looking around again, Douglas sees nothing but a mess. It¡¯s not as bad as the space station, nor is the devastation as terrible as the ruins of Evengi Prime, but Douglas still has no desire to stay here.


    There is a faint shimmer of mana in the environment that reminds him of Katare, but he doesn¡¯t like it. He doesn¡¯t wonder where this dislike comes from. Nor does he search out the meaning for this relatively new sensation of unease. He just walks over the many, many broken and still twitching heaps of trash and walks back to the deep hole he had fallen through. There, he stuffs the head-sized sphere in his ribcage and starts climbing. The joint and bones in his left hand still grind against each other, his mana not yet having reformed the random shards back into whole bones.


    If it took what felt like hours to wander through the corridors to find the crystal house, it takes him weeks to backtrack. Finding the path is easy; he simply once again follows the path of destruction to find his way. Climbing out of the super-deep pit that¡¯s been torn through dozens upon dozens of floors is not something the skeleton is well equipped for. He might be a magical constitution powerhouse, but his strength and agility stats haven¡¯t risen a single time, as far as he can recall. Add in the heavy core that keeps falling into his pelvis, his center of mass shifting as a result, and the climb back up the pit goes slow.


    It truly feels like it takes him a couple of weeks to get back up the pit. His bones have long since repaired, all the splinters long since sealed over, his skeleton once again whole and beautiful. When he finally manages to conquer the rough pit, he celebrates by slathering some metal on his ribs. The moment the first globule of magically softened metal touches his ribs, he realizes that he could have fastened the sphere to himself like that.


    Douglas stops celebrating and decides to walk back to the ship. Walking down the corridor through which he came, he finally takes note of the blue dot at the bottom of his vision. Douglas opens up the stream of messages that he has been ignoring.


    [ Engraving 4 lvl 40 ]


    [ Engraving 4 lvl 40; Arcanist 4/10 ]


    [ Mana Stone Production 4 lvl 40 ]


    [ Mana Stone Production 4 lvl 40; Arcanist 5/10 ]


    [ Magical Animation 4 lvl 40 ]


    [ Magical Animation 4 lvl 40; Arcanist 6/10 ]


    [ Mathematics 4 lvl 40 ]


    [ Mathematics 4 lvl 40; Arcanist 7/10 ]


    [ Spell Shaping 4 lvl 40 ]


    [ Spell Shaping 4 lvl 40; Arcanist 8/10 ]


    [ Magical Control 4 lvl 12 ]


    [ Dodging lvl 9 ]


    [ Footwork lvl 10 ]


    [ Footwork lvl 10; Fighter 1/4 ]


    [ Hauling lvl 4 ]


    [ Stomping lvl 5 ]


    Looking over his skills, he makes his way back to the ship. He finds the vessel unchanged, still surrounded by rubble, the landing pad still a mess of debris and signs of combat. Walking up the ramp, he immediately notices that the mana inside his many engravings is still going strong. He honestly expected to find the ship largely empty of power, but it seems that the warp drive is doing an admirable job of keeping the flow going. Douglas has no idea why this is the case and is just happy that it seems to be doing its thing well.


    Instead of doing what he feels like doing - sitting down and enchanting some more - Douglas decides he might as well get rid of the core still stuck inside his chest. He knows the entire ship by heart now, and during the climb, it dawned on him that he has seen something similar to the sphere¡¯s socket before. Just under the warp drive, accessible through a rather convoluted web way of crawlspaces and complex twists, is a hollow opening holding a similar sphere, also hooked up through all kinds of wires and cables.


    Getting through the narrow space is ridiculously easy, as he doesn¡¯t even need to disassemble parts of himself to get through the narrow channels this time. Reaching the panel is a breeze compared to some of the skeletal acrobatics he had to pull off inside the pit, even while dragging the core along with him. Opening the hatch stumps him for a bit, as he sees no readily apparent way of opening the screwed shut plate. He then makes a small ice lance and pokes at the five-centimeter thick plate until it crumbles. A similar - if much smaller - sphere suspended in a web of wires becomes visible, and he pulls the thing free.


    The skeleton ignores the red flashing lights, the suddenly loudly blaring alarms, and especially the panicked shrieks of a certain woman who is rudely woken from a meditation-induced nap. Instead, he pulls harder. The instant he pulls the orb free from the last cable, the entire ship goes black. Douglas isn;t bothered by the lack of visible light, and carefully starts stuffing the hanging cables inside the large core¡¯s holes. The cables are enchanted, and thus very visible to his mana sense, and the slight sheen of mana inside the larger core is enough for him to find it''s sockets.


    He plugs in the largest cable last. The moment he clicks it in, he is dragged backward. Wondering why he is suddenly moving, he looks down, right into the disheveled and furious face of Katare. ¡°Hello!¡± he bellows.


    ¡°Don¡¯t you fucking ''hello'' me! Why did you pull that live processing core? We are stuck here now, you stupid fucking-¡±


    ¡°Hello,¡± sounds another voice, every single tone dripping with relief. ¡°It¡¯s good to see you, Kat.¡±


    ¡°What in the¡­¡±


    ¡°Nupa Fight Equator Freight Frog Fist,¡± answers Douglas happily.


    ¡°NeuralLike EduAide LogList v9.32.SEPTAGON.P,¡± replies the voice. ¡°Who installed me, this is not going to work. I need a custom socket, not this standard junk.¡±


    ¡°Nel?¡± comes KAtare¡¯s wavering voice.


    ¡°Len!¡± adds Douglas happily.


    ¡°Thank you, skeleton. Now, I need a new socket. Where can we go for that?¡± asks Nel, an obvious impatient tone in her synthetic voice.


    Katare just looks between Douglas¡¯ smiling face and the mess of wires that are laying just behind his skeletal frame. She then breaks out into tears, sobbing madly while shining droplets of viscous liquid roll down her cheeks.


    It takes Douglas and Nel twenty minutes of combined effort to calm down the hysterical woman. She doesn¡¯t speak a single coherent word during that time, just making softly sobbing noises and the occasionally synthetic hiccup. Douglas is starting to wonder if she is permanently broken now, not sure what to do apart from continuously patting her shining hair.


    ¡°We have to go back,¡± is the first sentence she speaks.


    Douglas stops stroking her shimmering hair, and Nel stops playing soothing music. ¡°Back?¡± the two ask simultaneously, Douglas¡¯s magically fake voice sounding oddly fitting alongside Nel¡¯s synthetic one.


    ¡°Yeah,¡± she sniffles. ¡°It¡¯s probably a good idea to tell you about Daa-KeeTaa and Creees. Anyway, I¡¯ll tell you what happened inside and outside the Purgatory later, Nel. I was telling Douglas that I managed to control a drone using Magical Interfacing and that I had just decided to visit the scaled bastard. Once I¡¯d commanded the drone to grasp my smoldering head in its jaws, the real fun began.¡±


    Douglas makes himself comfortable, sitting on the floor and starting to improve his engravings while resuming his nodding and ¡®yes¡¯ saying habit.

 03_09 - Incidental Shiplifting

    Katare is in a pinch. Were her sweat glands in a functioning state, she¡¯d be sweating bullets right about now. She had totally forgotten that the drone she ordered to pick her up had just a single moving mechanism. The majority of its body is made out of a massless driver, the internal engine pushing against gravity wells instead of using reaction mass. The other part is a large contact-less motor-driven pair of pincers. It usually uses these pincers to grab hold of massive cargo blocks, after which it transports these items. These cargo blocks tend to be massive, and the massless driver is proportionately powerful.


    This means that the pincers have to be able to keep hold of heavy cargo while it accelerates at extreme speeds. This means that those pincers need to be very fracking strong.


    Katare is just happy that she managed to cancel the pinching operation she had programmed it to before her skull had cracked. She had cursed at the hardwired grasping speed limit for being so slow. But she would be brain-paste squeezed out of a crushed bionic head right about now, were it not for that regulation. She programmed the drone with the sort of bright-eyed enthusiasm that comes with the fact that she can order it around. She didn¡¯t double-check what units of measurements the controlling software used, and instead of using a couple of kilograms of force, she¡¯d ordered it to pick up her head with a couple of hundred tonnes of force.


    The reason why she is still alive is that she got kind of nervous when the drone came to pick her up. Because these things are always pictured as attachments to absolutely massive pieces of cargo, she thought it¡¯d be a pretty small object. The looming mass of dark shielding and industrial edges that shot to a standstill in front of her had been terrifying enough for her to stay alert when it started grabbing her.


    So that¡¯s why she is literally in a pinch. She is held between two massive industrial clamps that are designed to hold gigatonne cargo loads, not delicate android brain-containers. Once again feeling like wiping away her nervous sweat, she decides to always double-check her outgoing communications for potential ways that they can directly or indirectly kill her.


    Aside from nearly killing herself in an industrial accident, she has also been doing some digging into the network controlling the drone carrying her. The load-carrying vehicle was slingshotting around the sun in order to deliver its cargo of compacted ore to the Purgatory. It¡¯ll probably be missed at some point, but because there are thousands of identical machines flying around within sensor range, and probably millions in the solar system, she believes she has some time. She also picked up on a gathering spot nearby. This cluster of vessels seems to be some form of meeting point for crew, located in the 4th Lagrange point of the sun and the Purgatory¡¯s shell.


    The fact that the empty frame of the Purgatory still has enough mass to create one of those stable orbiting parking places is just ridiculous by itself, but far from the most unbelievable thing she has heard lately.


    While the drone that¡¯s firmly grasping her slowly makes its way over to that area, Katare goes over her plan. She¡¯s learned that her current vehicle doesn¡¯t have a functioning warp drive, so she will need to find a vessel that¡¯s capable of doing just that. She suspects that only a small portion of the vessels currently in-system have functioning warp-drives installed, but data like that isn¡¯t usually publicly available. The general size and purpose of a ship are required to be included in a ship¡¯s identification signal. All other information can be omitted by anyone that¡¯s a bit tech-savvy, and creative mistakes are often made. The exact layout and capabilities of ships are often closely and jealously guarded secrets.


    So she will have to go and see for herself. And she can¡¯t just go around and ask details like that, as she is currently nothing but a hideously charred piece of a civilian android body that houses her brain. The only reason she can actually see is that there seems to be back up cameras hardwired into her face. Once all the synthetic flesh had smoldered off under the influence of the stellar winds, she started seeing grainy black and white images. Her Magical Integration skills seem somehow capable of receiving data from these backup cameras, probably only meant for diagnostic work and the like. So instead of looking at a dark void once more, she now gets a very rough and granulated view of one ribbed and scarred pincher arm. This rather poor visual reception alarmed her to the fact that the drone she was controlling was slightly bigger than she expected.


    Katare shakes away mental images of brain spaghetti, squeezed from her cracking bionic head, as she concentrated on the present again. She has a few days of low power mode life-support left, which should be enough to get her somewhere she can switch heads again. Instead of continuing to lament over the past, she resumes doing what she has been doing a lot of recently. Going over all the digital communication that¡¯s happening in space had been nearly impossible when she was floating through space by herself. Now, she can tap into the communication protocols, data processors, and transmitters of her trusty oversized cargo drones.


    She¡¯s been thinking about entering the minuscule cockpit built into the drone, but as that won¡¯t be of any benefit to her currently, she decides against it. She will arrive at the gathering place of spaceships shortly, and popping into the climate-controlled area would only save her a little bit of energy on heating. Also, getting out again can be problematic.


    She continues to listen in to all the chatter happening in the system, especially keeping an eye out for the Histaff cleanup status reports. The amount of encrypted messages she can¡¯t break increases the closer to the gathering place she gets, but because she can¡¯t read it, she filters it out. She overhears some chatter about an off-site and off-ship secure storage, and how a storage container of The Enemy contaminated paper and corpses are being transported there. She makes a note of the destination, some system even further out in the rim, a good ways away, but doesn¡¯t pay it any more attention. There¡¯s a conversation that¡¯s seriously tedious about what to do with the GalaxSec base that confuses Katare. She really wants to know how a planet-dropped GalaxSec base would have become an orbital salvaging operation, but with the sheer amount of regulation and Galactic laws that apply, and no precedent for this situation, she wished the ones responsible for that mess all the best.


    She then finds that she has arrived, and she orders her drone to let her go gently. The rudimentary orbital map she has of the place gets supplemented by a rather vague black and white image as she lays eyes-on. A couple of blurry shapes are slowly rotating, the fact they are connected by pipes and ropes preventing them from floating away. Ordering her drone to pick her slowly spinning skull in its jaws once again, she commands it to bring her closer. Her abysmal vision doesn¡¯t help the situation, but she can guess how big the ships are.


    Generating gravity through spinning is still the most efficient and cost-effective way to keep things stuck to the floor, and it helps that it¡¯s cross-compatible with literally any ship, platform, or station. The bigger the ship, the slower the spin that¡¯s needed to create the universally most accepted amount of gravity, namely one G. And Katare sees that the people visiting this particular improvised space station are not the noblest of people. These types of shanty-town initiatives usually house the less legal types of entertainment, and every single solar system that has anything going on has at least one. They are designed to be broken apart with ease so that if a GalaxSec inspection does happen, they can disband quickly.


    The ships present are of two types. First, there are the ships where everything happens. These are usually renovated cargo ships, often turned into partial nightclubs, drug dens, whore houses, VR dive lounges, or other pleasures of the flesh. These are recognizable by their large airlocks, as they need to be able to vent all incriminating matter quickly. The second type of ship belongs to the visitors, smaller shuttles that are often more about looks and stupid amounts of acceleration than efficiency or cost. Katare aims for the largest concentration of these types of vehicles and starts scanning.


    She clumsily manages to fake an identification that¡¯s a combination between an impairment placard and an exceptional vehicle permit parking ticket. She never really had to worry about parking an industrial drone in a zone meant for personal shuttles before. It takes her a few tries before the Synthetic Intelligence handling the parking arrangements accepts her fabricated parking request packet.


    She then wonders how she is going to move around, asking herself how she didn¡¯t think of this problem before. She is still a floating brain inside a charred and ruined android biomechanical head. She has exactly zero experience with moving around as just a head, and she doesn¡¯t feel like maneuvering herself around with the industrial clamps that nearly squished her. She then gets the brilliant idea to move her jawbone. The feedback sensors in her bionic skull tell her that although a lot of the systems are gone or damaged, the actuators in her jaw still work just fine.


    [ New skill learned; Microgravity Maneuvering lvl 1 ]


    Katare immediately notices two problems. The first one is that the System is once again inconsistent. She has come to recognize that skills that provide her with information are learned, as in ¡®new skill learned.¡¯ Skills that are new, and thus give no information, are generated, as in ¡®new skill generated.¡¯ Yet she just learned Microgravity Maneuvering, and she doesn¡¯t receive a single thing. She only gets the faintest idea to open her jaw while there is solid matter underneath her, which even a child would be able to figure out.If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Secondly, she is now madly spinning around, careening away from her only mode of transportation, and she once again sees nothing. The low-resolution video feed she sees through is now a blur. The quality and framerate of the backup visual sensors in her head are so bad that she can¡¯t even figure out which direction she is traveling.


    With a sullen feeling of defeat growing in her nonexistent guts, she decides that she isn¡¯t going anywhere on her own power. She does try using her mana for a bit, but she once again is blocked by her inability to move mana outside her skull. For some reason, she can perfectly sense the mana around her; she just can¡¯t influence it. So she once again uses her Magical Interfacing skill to form a nice packet. This one tells her vehicle to come and pick her up in the most detailed and safest way she can imagine.


    While waiting for the drone to do its thing, she muses on her life a little bit more. She is currently a disembodied brain inside a rather well charred Berry FullBionic model¡¯s head. She starts thinking that things can¡¯t get any worse, but she barely manages to stop herself from finishing that thought. She can imagine that things can indeed very much get worse, and she isn¡¯t about to test her luck in such a taunting way.


    She just spins along for a while, secretly happy that she doesn¡¯t have a stomach. Also, her vestibular system has no say about whether or not she is about to vomit in the first place, so that¡¯s nice too.


    Then, before her mind can once again devolve into the madness of multiple personalities or other shenanigans, she senses that her spinning has stopped. With a deep mental sigh, Katare tries to reason out a better way to hijack a warp-capable ship. All in all, flying towards the semi-legal gathering of ships had been more of an impulse decision than she would like to admit.


    The chance of bionic bodies being present on any of those random ships is extremely slim. There is no way that the facilities needed to perform the brain transfer are present in ships that small. With a dark mood settling over her like a choking blanket, she concludes that she will have to return to the Purgatory. That massive ship is basically guaranteed to have at least a basic medical bionic suite, which she will have to gain access to somehow.


    Just like it¡¯s required by a lot of laws and regulations to have the needed vacuum survival suits onboard facilities to equip the entire crew, so are larger ships required to have bionic stations onboard. Katare steers her mind away from the terrible and horrific nWear suit that skeleton seemed to love so much. She then orders her vehicle to start moving towards the Purgatory again.


    It takes her a good half an hour of sedately thrusting around to realize that she is not being clamped between two massive industrial pincers. Instead of the chipped coating and rough finishing of the cargo drone, she is now being grasped between two much smaller arms. The ship isn¡¯t inside her visual range, so she could be forgiven for not noticing the change in pincer type. What¡¯s less easily forgiven is that the amount of digital data flowing around her is of a whole different ballgame.


    Katare commands the ship to stop, broadcasting a general stopping packet that probably instantly causes everything within her transmitter¡¯s range to grind to a halt. Katare doesn¡¯t care, as a combination of shame and excitement washes away all of her immediate problems.


    She quickly reads through some logs, reconstructing the events of the last half hour in just a few seconds. The first vehicle to reach her after sending out the pickup package had, in fact, not been her drone. It had been one of the larger shuttles, previously docked to one of the longer pipes extending from the floating cluster of ships. It had reached her the quickest, and because of the relatively complex Synthetic Intelligence inside the ship, it had figured out how to obey her order to the letter.


    The first thing she does is to whisper to the ship. She quietly asks it what it¡¯s capable of. The moment this request leaves the confines of the Magical Interfacing skill, she is bombarded with data. Compared to the impossible deluge of information that had flooded through the Purgatory, this is just a trickle, and she easily channels it into the storage area of her neural implants. Once there, she finally gets a good look at the ship that¡¯s currently grasping her in mechanical arms.


    And to her horror, she sees that it¡¯s a super-expensive private littoral warp-capable boat. The warp-capable thing is pretty good, but she isn¡¯t too jazzed about the fact that it¡¯s worth more than a capital carrier. For some reason, the owner of the ship thought it was a good idea to make the interior out of materials that are worth more than the ship itself. And Katare isn¡¯t really worried about stealing the ship. She is worried about what the owner will do once they realize that their ship is stolen.


    She sees that the boat itself is nothing special while going over its spec sheets. A thirty-meter long egg shaped hull with extendable wings, a few rooms, and a decent amount of amenities. Suitable for medium length journeys with a handful of people. So why is an unremarkable ship like this decorated to hell and back?


    Katare realizes that she would not even have paused in the act of stealing this ship a subjective year ago. She then gives herself a pat on the back for adapting this quickly, her switch in mindset quite the feat in her eyes. Going from a socialite in the upper crust of the galaxy to a disembodied brain stealing ships is a rather sizable shift in social standing, after all.


    Deciding that whatever comes will come, no matter what she does, she starts feeling out the best way to communicate with the vessel. The first thing she does is to order the vessel carrying her to start moving to the outskirts of the system. Then, she starts trying to figure out a way to get inside the ship without risking being flung into the void of space again. She has no idea what will happen were she to stay outside the boat when it warps, and she has no desire to find out.


    The ship is halfway to the safe-warp line when she manages to make it inside. The SI plugged into the ship had picked her up with a multipurpose clamp on the front of the vessel. Meant for docking, grabbing small loads of cargo, and other miscellaneous tasks, it was never designed to be able to reach an airlock. Instead, Katare managed to tell the ship to drop her. It then maneuvered and turned just so that an open airlock catches her.


    Noticing that the few still working sensors on her exterior report an atmosphere at a comfortable temperature is one of the greatest reliefs she has ever felt. No longer floating in the void of space, the life support systems in her bionic braincase also stop operating at multiple hundreds of percent of their standard operating conditions. Finding the number of one of the folding maintenance drones on board the ship, it¡¯s child¡¯s play to tell it to transport her to the cockpit.


    Crafting another packet to request the ship¡¯s inventory, she finds out that there are no braincases or neural preservers on board. With a ship this size, she would have been surprised if there were. Her charred bionic head is resting on the pilot¡¯s seat when she finally calms down. Katare might have thought herself calm before, but the fact that she was floating through the void of space, barely a couple of centimeters of material shielding her from the inhospitable vacuum, prevented her from thinking clearly. Her brain no longer flooded with a constant low level of panic; she thinks what she wants to do next. She hates to admit this, but she comes to the conclusion that the best way for her to get help will be to go looking for it outside official channels. She struggles with this topic for a long while.


    She finally manages to convince herself to plug in the coordinates of Daa-KeeTaa into the Synthetic Intelligence. The SI corrects her course by a few degrees and starts plotting out the warp jump. Katare doesn¡¯t really know a lot about her old teacher¡¯s location. The only thing she remembers is that the call was routed to an old research station in a largely abandoned section of the galaxy. She thinks about investigating why the previously prestigious Daa-KeeTaa would end up in such a shitty place. Then she remembers that she is most likely responsible for his predicament. She then decides not to think about that entire episode.


    For the first time in a long time, Katare feels like she can truly relax. Her course is plotted, she has a plan, and she is in no immediate danger of death. While letting her tense mind relax, she starts to feel faint traces of mana inside the ship. Focussing on these faded hints, she concentrates on what she assumed to be a storage room located in the back of the cockpit. There, she senses a small collection of what she recognized as mana-infused swords and pieces of armor. The loops are barely even visible to her Mana Sense, but the circles tell her that they are undoubtedly nearly drained pieces of mana enhanced gear.


    Then an alarm starts blaring through the ship, startling the shit out of Katare. She mentally asks what in the everliving warp is going on, accidentally sending a Magical Interfacing packet in the process.


    The bearded face of Grandmaster pops on the screen, the previously black cockpit walls blazing with light. Katare only sees a blurry black and white shadow of the real to life image, but even then, she can see the fury in the imposing man¡¯s eyes.


    ¡°Stealing Order property, penalty of death,¡± he booms. ¡°Breaking and entering exclusive Order terrain, penalty of death. Displacing top-secret Order items and equipment, penalty of death!¡± he continues shouting.


    Katare is freaking out again. Her mind just started to relax after her harrowing kidnapping and tumble through space. She starts sending information packets in a blind panic, doing the digital equivalent of randomly shouting her lungs out while punching random buttons.


    ¡°Grand theft littoral ship, penalty of death. Do I need to continue? Whoever you are, turn yourselves in right this instant, bring back my private ship, and we¡¯ll make it qui-¡±


    Katare feels like she should be panting frantically right about now. Just shouting ¡®stop¡¯ at the booming voice seemed to have worked. Instead of obeying, Katare orders the ship to burn its energy reserves.


    She barely stays strapped inside the captain¡¯s seat as the boat accelerates with all its might. It''s internal dampeners barely prevent her brain from turning into grey slush, but Katare doesn¡¯t care. That magical madman was bad enough already previously. She has no desire to find out what he will do with her if he gets his big hands on her braincase.


    The ship starts warping ten panic-filled minutes later. It takes her a good few hours of frozen meditation before she manages to get her Still Mind skill to carry her to stasis-induced slumberland.