Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)

[E.I.G.]

[Introduction]
Welcome to my latest project, one that has been building on my mind for a bit now in various forms. The idea here is mostly to experiment. I want to make a try at original fiction, and what better way than just running with an idea that has caught my attention for a bit and is made from a number of concepts that I have been brainstorming for a while?

I want to warn people, I do not know if this will work out in the long run. This one might die and never revive. It is a writing project for me, and was started while I still have a major fanfiction story in the works I still want to finish, but I have already made some reference documents to work from for this.

In particular I have the full skill set of this character stated out in where and how it can develop. That document might change if the concept shifts a bit, but I think working around a fully planned skill tree might make for an interesting powerset to build off of with story events. Already it has let me think of a few chapter ideas more easily, and I think having the skills restricted to a degree right off might help with making me think a bit about what to do for this sort-of LitRPG styled story.


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+++ Arc 1: Skill Set +++

--- 1 - Flamescale's Prize ---

Her red scales were more for looks than to hide, not that it was really practical to try and look like a local as a Void Entity anymore. One of the big ways your shape was limited was that you could not truly look like any native of the worlds you worked on, so she couldn't expect to find any other serpentine people in the rough and industrial research lab to impersonate. Her viper-like face didn't match anything she had seen so far, even if you ignored the rest of her.

Flamescale did not move like a human by design. A snake person with arms wasn't really comparable, the lack of legs being the big thing, but the longer neck was another detail that was often missed, and Void Strike for some reason also had a food system that meant being someone with a mouth for swallowing prey whole was another somewhat stranger difference. She had tried that once so far, and decided that some things were interesting to try, but probably not for a game mostly about shooting targets and using technology.

Eating people was a last resort to get rid of bodies at best, and even then the game was far too good at making you feel full from a meal to make that anything other than a last resort. So for her favored activity of trying to get into the various structures the game generated without detection she stuck with either not killing, making sure that she would have enough time to do the job before the bodies were found, or getting far enough before then to deal with the threats that could find her.

Although another place where Void Strike did things strangely well was in real seeming reactions to killing in stealth. Nothing set off an alert faster than having someone not show up where they were supposed to, and the AI could easily handle looking for you around where things could have happened.

No, Helen's character of Flamescale was shaped like she was shaped because that was the sort of body Helen wished she could have in the real world, if without the implied diet. The biggest draw to start the game early enough after release to get that account name was the character creation tools, which were a strange mix of completely open to making all sorts of creatures, and also had gameplay effects. Balanced by some effects being tied to specific character shapes, and only able to be gained by other shapes with special skills that changed character details in ways the character creator did not allow otherwise.

Which was why she was now going through the corridors and tunnels of this secret bio-lab without a mission, a costly way to go somewhere specific to collect loot instead of just waiting for luck to land you a contract towards your goals. Progress in Void Strike was mostly tied to equipment and skills. With gear it was fairly easy to get stuff that worked, although higher end equipment was rarer and more limited in where you could find it, and the skills far more complicated to get. Skills were a mess of new usable abilities, stat boosts, and most powerfully the special Skill Trees that were basically the game's version of a class.

Only one Skill Tree could be equipped at a time, but each of them would have both a basic effect on your character, and a progression system that allowed you to unlock more skills related to the base effect as you used it. Getting them required either finding a special item that gave the ST, or completing a special challenge to gain one. Some didn't give you the result until you got back to your Void Base, because everything related to the player was a "void-something", but the best ones required you to not have an equipped ST, and gave you the base effect mid-mission. Then you needed to get back to base using the new effects in order to check it out fully, and you couldn't even get those while using another one.

The Skill Tree Flamescale wanted to gain was called "Fluid Pestilence", one of the only reliably found sources of the Liquid Body skill. Which would let her be both a snake monster and a blob monster at the same time. There were other options that likely fit her playstyle better than to also be a living toxic plague upon the worlds, but the key was that Skill Trees were also random in nature. You didn't always get the same sets of skills to progress through, and as a result if she wanted Liquid Body without grinding for a version of those that rolled with the Liquid Mobility branch, then she needed to get a Skill Tree that started out with it.

The lab that consistently provided the ST was near abandoned, with minimal security up until you tripped the alarm, but when you tripped the alarm the response time was faster than normal. A nearby military base being the cause of that. Being a Girant world meant that there were advantages to going stealthy, the large four armed ape-like bipeds used another race of much smaller rat-like creatures called Slinks to do much of their mechanical work, and those creatures were restricted to the ventilation systems for travel much of the time.

Girant tech was usually poorly maintained, often sabotaged, and as a consequence fairly redundant. There were multiple containment systems that could have the trigger substance, and multiple possible complications to opening each of them, but her ability to slide on her belly through Slink tunnels made a very nice way to travel around cameras and most barriers to reach them.

The first was the best case, near the top of the facility, and unfortunately lacked the residue or dead Slinks with notable infection that were subtle clues to a containment system that would work. Flamescale took a moment to inspect the seals and power readouts she could access from the control computers, with an uneasy look at the doors and tunnels. She had not seen any Slinks in the building yet, and there were more Girant guards than the guide said was normal.

"Active power draw from containment three?" she questioned the display with a quiet hiss. "Ugh, I didn't want to try the sewer escape." It was the big risk of this process, the third option was deep under the facility, behind a blast door that closed when containment was broken, and the only reliable way out was through a local utility connection that pretty much required the Liquid Body skill to use. It also meant she might end up going through a sewer.

Part of planning for any mission was working out what gear to bring. Owned equipment was able to be lost on missions, unlike owned skills, and only made up for that by being much easier to replace. Flamescale had prepared to lose everything she brought into this facility just in case it was in containment three. Just a cheap silenced auto-pistol, her worst equipment rigging, a few cheap security crackers, and a set of explosive charges. She wouldn't really have the ST until she got back to the Void Rift she bribed a local to open, and if she died after getting it then she would be out both the gear she had and the high cost of that bribe with nothing to show for it. Skills weren't owned until you got back to base from the mission, and the trigger to get the ST was one time so she couldn't head back out without rebuying the entire mission.

The first step in going straight to the third containment system was to get to the first basement level's security center, and checking if the internal seals between the upper and lower tunnels were closed. The blast door was the only way to the lowest levels, but there was a set of tunnels that went straight to the door and usually had a well hidden path to the lowermost tunnels. If she was going for the second containment then she would have been closer to the overrides if the tunnels were closed, and would go past the seals to see if they were open on the way.

The first basement level was where the lower level cameras were located, normally. Instead Flamescale found that the usually somewhat disorganized room was outright destroyed, without any cameras, but with a pair of arguing Girant, one holding up a very dead Slink. There was the typical glassy green liquid infection on the former slave, and they were arguing about how the experiment had killed all of the local workers, and what to do about that.

Flamescale rerouted after seeing that, she could get to the main computer system and maybe get Yellow-Glow some extra lore and data with this. A data chip would be small enough to make it with her out through the sewer. It also let her go through a tunnel that had a seal for her to check directly, and maybe an alternate override if they were closed.

The first Slink she found out in the open was wedged into the seal for the deeper tunnels, leaving the tunnel open, but the creature was coated in a sickly green infection. The smell was far too real, and not for the first time Flamescale wondered just where they found all of the assets to get these things so accurate. Synch-Tech games seemed like they could barely manage graphics only a few years ago when they left her best friend little more than a glowing yellow light, and this perfect recreation of an alien reality was well into the second year since Void Strike's release.

She kept her tongue in her mouth and slithered towards the main computer, and found the rather industrial device with a CRT display was occupied. Only a single Girant this time, who clearly was absorbed with looking at the data on display, but that was still enough to make her pause. If she alerted everyone too early then that blast door would close her out of the containment area instead of inside.

"Where is it? Surely these fools could not have left it off the records?" the Girant wondered aloud, their voice distorted by the auto translation of the game from their alien language. "The whole facility killed and nothing to explain why."

Flamescale paused long enough to consider that statement, and then made for the third containment as quickly as she could. This was not the normal setup for the site, and while it wasn't common to find another player's prior instance the game did occasionally pull that as a variant option.

The blast door was intact, and open without any guards to slow down her rush into the final set of tunnels. The rest of the lowermost area had just a pair of Girant soldiers, with them both next to the goal of this whole attempt a very toxic looking and halfway open containment unit. Her first shot was careful, and hit accurately enough to remove all of the health from one of the two.

The second Girant turned and shot immediately, hitting the wall of the tunnel and bouncing painfully but not powerfully into her long tail, but that also triggered the alarms. Flamescale was amused as the enemy seemed to realize that they were all alone with her behind the now closing blast door, as instead of continuing to shoot the four armed slaver took off for the doors as fast as they could. She ignored them, the door was actually close enough in this particular layout that they would probably make it in time, and that just bought her the safety she wanted for the next part.

With a bit of caution about how unusually realistic the developers made everything, Flamescale reached out and opened the containment unit fully. A burst of toxic green smoke and splatter of similarly tainted goop both hit her directly, and her vision swam. Her body felt hot, and she found herself losing her shape as the heat started to melt her down entirely into a puddle. Only tests of the very limited character shapes you could make liquid allowed her to understand what she was feeling at all, and it still took longer than she expected to pull herself back together into something similar to her old shape.

Flamescale looked at herself. What was once a clearly living snake covered with red scales now appeared as a goo filled rubbery looking blob in the shape of a snake. Her skin and body were now slightly transparent, with little moving bubbles visible in the single semi-liquid material that now was the only thing making her up. A careful rub against some of the nearby metal to clean it was able to show her formerly normal-ish orange eyes were now entirely an orange glow on her long face, but it wasn't able to really show off any more detail.

Getting her gear back on took no time at all, but she could feel the straps sink in and out of her chest in a slightly odd way that told her she would need practice to not lose things going forward. "Well, I see why most people don't go for this one," she admitted aloud to the empty area, with a frown at the toxic material in the containment system that somehow smelled worse now despite how it should be the same toxic plague she was now made entirely out of. "That is a good way to get killed if you don't clear this place out, and I was almost ready for the melting part."

Finding the utility area was easier than she expected, she just needed to follow the smell of sewage, and if she was willing to try and go all out with melting she could probably make it through the existing conduit for the electronics to get out. Instead she set one of her charges, and hoped that she would turn out to not need to leave even the throwaway gear she brought behind.

The blast clearly attracted attention, somebody started trying to use a heavy weapon on the blast door right afterwards, but more importantly it opened the way to the utility tunnels for the overall cityscape. Unlike inside the near abandoned lab Flamescale could immediately see a number of frightened Slinks scattering, which was a promising sight for getting out with her stuff. Her Void Rift was in a disused warehouse a couple of blocks from the lab, the closest her bribe could get her, and she quickly set off to see if she could find the right tunnels without going through the grate she could see into the sewer itself.

The first surface access point was a factory she recognized, and one full of Slinks that fled in terror at the sight of her emerging from the tunnel. She was close enough to get out before her terrible gun proved too little for the current conflict. Two Girant soldiers along the quick route that noticed the fleeing Slinks made her choose the slightly longer alleyway between two other factories instead of the factory right next to her warehouse.

A third soldier was in the alley, and it took a pair of shots to empty their health so she couldn't be called in too soon. The warehouse she was after was clearly checked, but also clearly bypassed when the explosion happened, and Flamescale dove into the invisible-to-locals tear in reality that led to her Void Base.

The familiar space of her advanced-looking and slightly eldritch place beyond reality was partially blocked by the mission results screen. Clearly stated was the costs of starting the mission, no objectives completed to have a payout, a few skills that weren't her own goal, and right near the top was the rare Skill Tree "Fluid Pestilence", with a small note that it was equipped.

---

[Author's Note]
So, readers of my fanfiction might notice that I have a bit of a theme with my characters. Also that I should be working on that fanfiction instead.
I'm open to comments and criticism, because this is my first original work and is a writing exercise for me to see how well I can pull that kind of story off with the skills I have developed so far.
... also to any help with how to tag this, both for here and places like Ao3.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 2 - Yellow-Glow ---

Flamescale took a bit of time to see how she actually moved and changed before she actually looked at the new Skill Tree in more detail. She had tried the more rounded and blob like options that worked to give the ability to melt with just the character creator, and this was quite similar in function but in her preferred shape. She could melt down easily and flow across the ground even in directions she wasn't facing, but when she wanted her body stayed serpentine and could firm up to something that was actually quite a bit more solid.

A few changes to her Void Base might be good to make, she considered as she put away the gear that she had taken on the mission, and then she went to the communications console. "Yellow-Glow, I got it," Flamescale said as soon as her friend answered. "Even though I ran into a new variant, I'm halfway thinking an aftermath instance."

"Were you recording?" the machine themed Void Entity asked her, currently sporting his typical yellow coloration on a rather square shaped monitor face. Yellow-Glow rarely stuck with a character model for a week, but this one wasn't very flattering.

"Yeah, not sure I saw everything though," she replied and selected her previous mission to send. "Was just about to check and see what I got for a Fluid Pestilence, and figured it would be easier to just ask about what I'm seeing now instead of trying myself first."

"I can tell you a bit, but that one is still as rarely used as I mentioned last time you said you wanted to go for it," he cautioned her with a flash of his screen.

"The whole 'melt down when you get it' thing making it hard to survive?" Flamescale suggested, and attempted to liquefy a bit for emphasis.

"One in ten, more common with the third containment system," Yellow-Glow instantly rattled off. "Usually indicates a better variant, but often leads to death during the attempt. No, that is just a complication for the rare people who do want to melt their bodies down. Which you know is the real thing most people can't handle in the first place, let alone try to get."

"Most people aren't fun," she joked and opened the skill menu to finally look at the ST. At the top was Liquid Body, which listed her ability to melt and the visual changes to her character, and Infected, which gave more visual changes, had her melee attacks give a Toxin status effect, and gave a ranged character spit attack with Toxic damage and effects. "Um, how many branches should it normally have?"

"Three is the baseline, with five being a rare version," he answered immediately. "It always gets the generic Enhancement branch and an elemental branch, usually Toxin, and then a third related to the skill itself."

"Wait, I could have gotten one without Liquid Mobility?" Flamescale questioned with a glance at the branch of the tree that was the whole reason for getting it. The typical first skill of Liquid Body was instead at the top of the tree and already claimed, but the other skills she expected were still present. "Being able to move better as a blob was the whole point of trying for the ST version."

"Yes, but just three is not very common, usually you get four branches with Liquid Mobility, Enhancement, elemental boosts, and one related to the infection side of things," he answered dully. "So, how many?"

"Um, one of them splits midway? Contagion splits into Hidden Infection and Mass Infection," she explained with a frown at the display. That was a layout for a Skill Tree she had not seen before, and new details like that were rare at this point.

"Wait, you got both of the two main Contagion branches?" he asked with sudden interest. "Contagion itself is almost never without one of those, but getting both is widely seen as the perfect infection build for other STs that can get it. The base skills let you spread your infection to others in a number of ways making them attack anyone not infected, and another skill to actually control those who are infected. Mass Infection is about spreading to more and more targets and even making new infected objects and creatures. Hidden Infection is probably more what you want, that covers making it harder to tell who is under your control and giving them better commands."

"Ugh, a command mode skill?" Flamescale complained. "I don't get why the mind control and zombie STs are so popular."

"Yours is closer to the first one, but if it makes you feel better I've heard it is also one of the more hands off options," Yellow-Glow laughed at her. "You are going to make some people jealous with how you got that without even wanting to. That is as good as getting two branches honestly."

Flamescale paused as she remembered what he said about rare ones, and re-counted the number of branches on the tree. "Seven total if that counts as two, Yellow-Glow," she admitted. "I've got Enhancement and a 'Fire Toxin' like you mentioned, Liquid Mobility, that Contagion mess, something called 'Multiform' that I need to ask about, and Reformation that seems to come from both Contagion and Multiform."

"You have all three Contagion branches," Yellow-Glow said with clear unease. "Plus one of the rarest branches in the entire game. Now I know I need to review that mission, you might have gotten a special result from getting it out of an aftermath instance. Maybe a failed attempt by someone else made it more potent."

"So, what is with Multiform? Because I know that Synch-Tech is already technically using two bodies at once, so we can play without interrupting anything in the real world, but that is talking about having more than one body ingame on top of that," she questioned as she tried to not think about getting a super-rare drop. There was jealousy for getting something rare, and then there was outright hate.

"There is no known Skill Tree that always has Multiform," he replied totally seriously. "It is the only source of the ability to have more than one body, is a giant monster branch, and no other Synch-Tech game has ever done anything like it. I don't even have the details on its point cost yet."

That made her pause, Yellow-Glow was her best friend in the game, and more importantly was one of the best guide makers for it. The two of them had started by going after every bit of information they could find out about the details of the game's systems. This whole mess was her finally giving up on getting a mission to the location naturally, and even then it had only been discovered just before the third seasonal event. She didn't want to go into the rather in depth combat challenges of that season with an untrained skill, and the reliable method to pay for the location wasn't found until midway through the season.

"Ten for the first skill, twenty for... Ah, it says they can just be extra heads and stack up to nine, and another for merging with infected? Travel through infected materials?" she ended up questioning more than informing. "I'm going to have to look over this a bit more before I can tell you about that."

"Did you get a good starting point roll?" Yellow-Glow questioned thoughtfully. "Ten is a lot for a new ST."

"I have two, but I mostly want to work with the cheaper stuff first. Reformation is practically self explanatory," Flamescale said with a look at the very short branch.

"The rarest Contagion branch, although why it is separated from the other two I am not sure," he answered. "Great for combat focused players, but not so much for you, and rather expensive if I recall right."

"It is also apparently a thing for Multiform, that works to unlock it too," she clarified reading the description. "If one of my bodies dies it lets me grow another one to replace it."

"We might need to check if there are any other branches that are subsets of multiple other branches," her friend said thoughtfully. "Now I almost wish you didn't just get a good one to develop, I'm going to have to find new sources to check on that. How did I know you going for this would just get me more work?"

"I'm pretty sure I have hundreds of skill points to earn just to get the first levels for some of these skills," she countered. A typical number to get from any given mission was two, and getting more than five required a major objective and a lot of cooperation. Void Strike was good about being able to change which skills the points were on at will, but maxing out a typical Skill Tree was a major project. "I do have an oversized ST to deal with now."

"The Enhancement tree is junk," Yellow-Glow pointed out with a laugh she shared. "Regular skills can give more stats, and specialized branches give better stats with new abilities."

"Worst month of the game was that crap ST that was just that branch," Flamescale did admit. "But I still have all of the rest to fill out on this one. If the Multiform skills go up by ten each time that is hundreds alone."

"You should probably try two bodies before you start planning on nine, or maybe actually try out your special 'everything for Contagion'," he complained. "Any other questions? I really want to get to your recording now that I know how it turned out."

"No, I'm going to handle the rest myself. Let me know if I missed anything important, and have a good one," she said and let him close the communications line. "What the heck. How did I get something that rare from messing around?"

While she did want to have the ability, it was mostly to have as a new fun thing to try than a serious effort to get a really good result. The only reason she went for anything even just as rare as a typical Fluid Pestilence was because every other option she had tried to get before wasn't reliable. The biggest problem with Synch-Tech games was downtime, most didn't even work when you slept, but Void Strike earned its place as the best by never losing synch from anything.

"Right, that is something to see, will I need to sleep differently now?" she commented to try and get her mind off how unbelievably rare her prize turned out to actually be. Eating and sleeping weren't as needed as they were in the real world, but they were just some of the many optional things you could do when you weren't in the mood for another mission. There were even games within the game, or just exploring the various worlds where you could take missions for less hostile reasons.

Opening the interface for changing around her Void Base immediately revealed a new set of options labeled "Infected Materials". They seemed to all be set to match her current coloration and appearance, with them mostly being a mixture of toxin coated regular items, and just outright masses and pools of the toxin. It was not normally what she would like the look of, but her mind wasn't really off the topic of how she just got what might end up the rarest Fluid Pestilence, and if that was the case then perhaps she should lean into it massively.

That turned out to be a rather easy task, the toxin coated stuff turned out to be an easy toggle. The others needed to go in a few open places she had, and it was strange to discover that the pools were actually easy for her to just move over the top of or sink into by choice. It was fairly quick, but a bit tiring to work out, and a nap felt needed.

Naturally the pools turned out more comfortable places to sleep than the toxin coated beds that she now just flowed off the top of when she got to sleep. While having new smears of toxin on them that just happened to look about right for that exact thing happening.

"Flamescale, get to the comms," Yellow-Glow shouted to wake her up, clearly having once more overridden her console again somehow. "I have questions... Did you redecorate already?"

"I was sleeping, Yellow-Glow," she complained, collected herself back into something resembling solid, and went over to see what he found. "And yes, I wanted a distraction of sorts."

"I have bad news for wanting distractions," Yellow-Glow said with a head that was now three round camera eyes at an awkward angle. It fit him slightly better. "You found a brand new rare variation of the site. I managed to track down somebody willing to help investigate, and it is not an aftermath situation. Those just plain do not have the ST for whoever gets there second, and from the data I've seen this is an outbreak in the lab variant. A rarer way for the site to be set up on a given instance. The kind of thing that is hard to find and gives guaranteed improved versions of skills."

"That is a thing?" she asked, still a bit asleep ingame. Another minor detail that was beyond the typical Synch-Tech game and probably should not have been given the development time to implement.

"... A very rare thing," her friend said after a notable pause that woke her up. "I have one for data subversion skills that was a major side project. I do not advertise that these exist, because they always result in higher than normal numbers of branches. Mine has five, which is more than can otherwise be found for my subversion ST. It may be more difficult to hide the scale of yours, seven is rare for any ST, but Fluid Pestilence is not marked as entirely documented yet." Yellow-Glow's guides were the source of at least half the data in documentation available in game or out of game. "Even with it being well known few seek it out, and they are often happy with what they get after only a couple of tries."

"Are you saying I should keep quiet about what exactly I have for branches?" Flamescale asked, with quite a bit of unease. "Are we really talking about something else to not tell people?" The last time had been the first season, where there were fewer character creation limitations, and you could more easily hide as a local to infiltrate more easily. She had not used it, but the discovery was one they had not wanted credit for, especially after it was changed.

"It is intended content, but I wish to tell whoever documents them that they have made a discovery I have not," Yellow-Glow declared. "Something I missed about how such things actually work, and thought was just outliers for the standard data."

"I'm still going to lean into it," she decided. "I got an outlier higher than we knew you could get, and decided to go all out."

"Very well, that should be fine. Be safe, Flamescale," he said.

"Be safe, Yellow-Glow," she agreed, and then ended the call.

---

[Author's Note]
I am planning on going with my semi-standard method of writing a chapter ahead before I post the next chapter for this story as well. The exception is right here at the start, where I am writing the third chapter at least before I post the story. That is mostly to check if I have a story concept I can actually write more chapters towards, and that needs me to get out of these setup chapters first.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 3 - Go With the Flow ---

Flamescale set the first two skill points for the Fluid Pestilence tree into the options she had wanted the whole time. Her Liquid Mobility had five skills on the branch, but only the first two were available. Better Flow made it faster to turn entirely into liquid, and made it easier to move around when fully liquid. On the other hand, Quicker Solidification made it easier to keep herself solid and solidify from a liquid form.

They worked with each other instead of against. With both she could change back and forth between being a puddle of herself more quickly, move faster when she was liquid, and hold stuff better when she was solid. They also seemed to scale up in cost by one per level, so to get the second rank for those she would need two points each instead of one each, and both had a max level of ten. For ST skills that was actually cheap, with her Multiform possibly scaling at ten more for each level after the first as an example of one of the most expensive, and a medium cost one would scale up by something like five per level.

The next three skills were only one level each. Things that gave new ability, but did not scale up the effect of that ability. The simply named Splash was a dubious one point ability that made her automatically melt when hit hard enough, and required a level in Better Flow first. Liquid Climb required a level of Quicker Solidification, and apparently was needed to climb upwards in liquid form, but had the higher cost of five points for its single level.

The final skill in the branch was a rare capstone skill, and it required her to max out the entire rest of the tree. It was worth that investment, but from the max levels and the costs that was over a hundred points away. She wouldn't even really think about it until she had spent the time getting to the point she could possibly get it.

Now she just needed to properly test out the Liquid Body skill and those improvements. So with another glance at her changed Void Base, and a strange feeling of contentment with it looking so contaminated, Flamescale went over to the mission terminal.

Void Strike's lore was that you played as a Void Entity, an eldritch mercenary that went to not just other universes, but infinite copies of those other universes. Overall changes by player actions did occur and were noteworthy, but tended to be limited to weekly event missions and seasonal content, with an "aftermath instance" where you ended up in the same area someone else had done a mission before you being very rare. The main currency was Void Echos, people of the universes tempted you to go into them with those, you could spend them along with other resources to go to places without a mission, and you could also spend them to roll to get a somewhat random skill.

Technically you could also pay for more things to build in your Void Base, but Flamescale had maxed out those just a month after release, and kept up with any new options fairly well. Equipment was different, you paid local resources for those, picked them up from a target during a mission, traded for them with other players, or more commonly paid to go to a known storage location and just took a bunch. Being able to get endless instances of the same location was the biggest break from reality the game gave players, and it was well used.

The mission terminal had a mess of filters and restrictions. One new restriction now appeared as a warning when she signed on that told her she would not be able to take missions that restricted access from an infected Void Entity unless she changed her Skill Tree. Which seemed to filter more out than the one when she first started playing that said she needed to look a bit closer to a regular inhabitant of the local worlds, or the one that didn't like that she could in theory swallow an enemy whole.

Flamescale checked the first options given using her long refined filters, and noted that there were penalties to the local resource rewards if she left behind living infected individuals or active materials. Fairly steep ones for a new player, but also an explanation of why the Hidden Infection branch had a somewhat costly skill to remove the infection from victims. To unlock that would require the same investment as getting another body.

"Oh, that one again?" she questioned with a glance at the fifth option. "I think I still have-" She went into the skill menu for one-off abilities and searched her favorites category to find what she was after. A data access skill she could swap in to not have to take a security cracker with her. It was technically a bit slower, but this mission was one where she had long wanted to try out melting down, and unless she found a way to take gear with her the tech option wasn't an option. "Finally get to try this one without any gear."

It was a data recovery mission, and those were simple once you worked out how to infiltrate. Get to the main computer, or a secondary system that you could still get the right data from. Then download the data into a data chip, which could be found on the mission if you didn't bring one and were small enough to carry through the stuff she wanted to flow through. Finally get the data back out to a drop location, typically next to your Void Rift where you started, with a backup location if you were discovered.

Flamescale accepted the mission, got the first half of the Void Echos for the mission from having the Rift opened, and quickly slid out into the target world. It was much cleaner, much more advanced, and clearly a 319 base. The more mundane cybernetic sort-of-hivemind mercenary force was one of the more advanced enemies technologically, with an upside of having some of the best electronic gear and cybernetics. They were introduced in the first seasonal event as a new element to a still fairly new game.

They also were made up of subfactions that would send you on missions against other 319 subfactions. This was a mission from the artificially grown stereotypical big headed alien subset that made up most of the scientists, they were a purple color, but rarely went outside of their R&D centers. The target was a scout base that had not sent all the data the scientists wanted, with a bonus to getting through the mission undetected and without killing any of the humanoid bat-like support personnel or pale lizard soldiers.

This mission was located at a base inside an arcology, a massive theoretical structure that contained and supported an entire city-state on a distant world. It also was filled with a set of plumbing that went from tanks above the facility to drains out the bottom. The more public storage area she started in was luckily below the facility this time, so she wouldn't have to sneak upwards without that liquid climb ability to get out, but she would need to do that to get in.

Flamescale's usual plan of going through the civilian sections wasn't really going to work. Her appearance usually drew a lot of attention, and that was without being a living liquid that might be easy to identify as infected with something. A thought that made her remember that there was a skill in the Hidden Infection branch that let her look like a 'normal' snake person again. It unfortunately was another case of costing as much as the ability to split in two when you looked at the cost of all the required skills too.

"I wonder," she thought, and went over to a local help terminal. They were generic computer systems located in just about every room of these arcology structures, mostly for general purpose connections to the overall arcology assistance and emergency services line systems. "Movement assistance," Flamescale said cleanly to the device, her words shifted slightly to match the local language. "Low traffic, hard movement," she added to go for some oddball options to give assistance to people who needed to get somewhere without as large of a crowd.

The map that appeared was exactly what she needed. It actually listed the 319 facility just above her, and also an interesting find. "Bathing facility fourteen," she requested of the device, and then started up her currently equipped hacking skill. "Large load with hazardous chemicals," she said along with a minor bypass of restrictions to convince the system that she was part of the maintenance crew of the area. A nearby access lift was indicated and marked with a reservation for her.

"Alright, please be the leaky terminal variant, please let this be the leaky terminal variant," Flamescale cheered to herself. A variation on the mission where a shower facility right above the target has had a major structural issue and was leaking on a secondary system that could be used to recover the data easily. With the hard part being to get into the damaged shower and opening up the ceiling enough to get through without triggering the surviving alarms.

Getting to the lift was easy enough without being spotted, and from there to the showers was a familiar path as well that rarely got travel with that facility broken down. A second harder bypass was needed to unlock and re-lock the shower facility's doors, one that took her a couple of tries due to the relatively low quality of her hacking skill. One-off skills like it were not very good, and compared to what you could get out of a Skill Tree that had an actual hacking branch it was practically useless. They were a replacement for gear that could also do the same thing, which often was better than a one-off skill but easier to lose.

"Do they make a security cracker that can melt with you?" Flamescale half complained about the easy part already giving her a bit of trouble. She did know of one, but it was very hard to get, rather easy to lose, and most importantly wasn't that much better than her current skill. An experimental nanotech unit you could steal instead of turning in for a fairly specific set of missions, that had not gone anywhere yet to show off what could develop from there.

The broken tiles and opened floor section was on the more exposed end for this job, with the slight smell of burned out electronics coming up from it in a way that made her hopeful for this plan. She got out one of the data chips she had brought along, this model a military chip about the size of a human fingernail. They were usually stored in special containers to avoid losing them, but right now she was mostly just testing having them embedded inside her body.

Flamescale positioned herself over the largest leak, made sure she had the data chips in her, and melted down into a puddle of snake. Her body immediately filled up the broken floor and the various cracks, and very quickly found a hole that led fairly directly into the room below. Where she discovered that she had a really strong surface tension, as despite now having a glob of herself hanging off the ceiling she could not actually detach any of that from the rest of her mass.

The sensation of being cupped along such a strange shape was new, she had not actually done any missions with the test bodies that would allow for this sort of skill, and while she was fairly sure she could go up far enough to get her body out of the crack it would likely be faster to resolidify instead to move like that. She also couldn't really stop the part of herself that was flowing downwards through the hole in the lower room's roof, but given that had been a goal of this it wasn't really a problem.

It took a bit of focus to look out of the glob starting to flow down into the room, and thankfully there wasn't anyone present to spot her infiltration attempt. It was a bit strange as well, because she could actually see both rooms at the same time. Which was mostly odd in how easy it was, one of those constant surprises of Synch-Tech games for how they could do tricks with being in more places at once that Void Strike loved to take over the top.

She was a third of her mass into the room before she managed to get the first of the data chips down through the cracks alongside her body, and halfway into the room before she could thin down enough to reach the floor. Then she was able to flow down a lot faster, even if that was a bit worrying when the last of her just fell from the roof. As she splattered a bit and spread out a touch uncontrollably it gave her a feeling not quite like being stretched out, but close enough that she didn't have another way to describe it.

It took only a moment to solidify again and reach the various computers in the room to inspect them for functional machines. Flamescale glanced at the ceiling to check if she left any hint of her presence behind, and didn't notice anything discolored by her passing. The third machine she checked booted up, and turned out to still be logged into. Thankfully she didn't trip any alarms with her two attempts to go from there to being able to download the proper files into each of her data chips, that way if she lost some at least one would have everything, and she could bring a copy back herself just in case there was anything Yellow-Glow could use.

Then Flamescale realized that she had not checked out where the places she could flow downwards ended up from here. The best bet was probably something other than sewage, if only because the game was far too good at being accurate about that sort of thing, and her sense of smell if anything had been improved by the change.

"Wait, wasn't there a," she considered aloud and then looked up towards the air vent. Actually climbing upward as pure liquid wasn't an option yet, but she could squish quite a bit more now, and she did have a lot of surface tension. The air system for these arcology buildings was centralized, and only the rarest variants had facilities that used an independent or isolated system.

In practice it was clearly something Flamescale should have tried with the skill to flow up things instead of without, as she simply ran down onto the floor twice before she managed to make it into the vents with all of her data chips, and then carefully made her way down by deliberately flowing from higher vent systems to lower systems one by one until she was closer to her Void Rift. In fact she was able to find a vent inside the room with her Rift that would have been an easier way in with that skill to flow upwards instead.

The drop off was a small quantum communications system located near her Rift. It locked around the data chip she put into it, and a mission completion message flashed on her AR display. With a quick movement she returned to her Void Base, and got the final results of the mission.

Three new points for her Skill Tree, the rather bare mission reward of resources and the rest of the Void Echos, two bonuses for not being spotted at all, a note about the data chips being filled, and a couple of one-off skills she actually checked out more carefully this time. "Stat boost, stat boost, another basic hacking one, and another language translation skill," she read off, not really that enthused. You could only have a single one-off skill of any particular kind. Stat boosts could only be stacked if you had different combinations of stats boosted, and new abilities were a question of the best one you got for the given skill. "Oh? Infection claw attack." She inspected that skill for a second. "Ah, it is a worse version of my basic Fluid Pestilence melee attack skill. Well, I guess if I really like that effect."

With a happy sigh, Flamescale copied the data to her personal archives, sent a copy to Yellow-Glow to inspect, and started to prepare for her next mission.

---

[Author's Note]
This story is probably going to be a bit episodic, because that is what I am used to writing and also because one mission per chapter is working out fairly well so far. Here we have the first true mission, which is short and simple but should show off what I'm going for.
Also no idea about update rate for this story, I tend to edit and post one chapter when I have the next chapter written and the one after that started, which can take a variable amount of time. This was honestly really quick by my current standards, as usually it has been around one per week for my other projects.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 4 - Living Contagion ---

Flamescale had three base skills available for the Contagion branches of her ST. Infectious Strikes made it so any of her direct attack abilities, apparently even ones given by other skills, had a medium chance to turn targets into infected that were allied to her and foes of all their former allies. Infectious Residues gave her the ability to leave behind infected material, like what her Void Base was now covered with, that while rather noticeable would have a high chance of infecting victims, and also deal damage to anyone not infected. Finally there was Infectious Vapors, which gave her fumes that spread more quickly than the residue, but had a rather low chance to infect.

Each would cost only a single point to get, but getting those alone only made her own body able to infect others. To have the infection spread from those infected victims she needed to go into the Mass Infection branch. Rapid Spread from the wording apparently gave all of her skills to infect others to any of her infected victims.

"Yes, it does in fact include any one-off skills for your character," Yellow-Glow confirmed as she considered the options. "If you have any breath attacks that could be a way to get something similar to Vapors with the infection chance of Strikes. That is one of the confirmed tricks to Mass Infection. Infectious Vapors can still be good with how it works together with stuff like the residue, but it isn't worth it alone."

"Are there a lot of STs that give Contagion?" Flamescale questioned as she looked over the missions available at the same time. "I know everyone likes STs that make enemies fight for you, but I thought it was mostly the mind control and zombie options."

"Contagion gets filed under the zombie category," Yellow-Glow clarified. "Actually, about a quarter of the zombie category get Contagion as their method of getting zombie-like effects."

"You didn't mention I was going for a zombie ST," she complained, and nodded at a mission that looked good to at least test things out. "Still, didn't you say you wanted another Leaf data core? I have a mission here from the Girant to take out the staff at one of the plant's development labs." The mission objectives were rather simple here, just kill everyone you could at the target location. Details varied on if there were specific targets that mattered more than others, what penalties there were for killing anyone other than those at the target location, if there were things to not destroy, and any number of other small details. However, these were the most popular missions to take.

"Hm, do you have a Macrophylla security cracker? Their systems don't work as quickly with other models to copy data," her friend asked in that tone that said the currently headless Void Entity was considering giving her gear for a promise of data again. "You will have to worry about the Girant followup forces, they don't take Void Entities stealing from their targets well, even if they were the ones to summon one."

"I have plenty of crackers. Contract isn't that specific about the followup forces, but I'm guessing I hit a hidden penalty anyway if I try to be a plague here," Flamescale admitted with a thought to the infected left behind costs she had seen before, which she felt probably would not be in her favor. "What are you working on?"

"The next season isn't very far off," Yellow-Glow answered with a sigh. "I would like your help with the next weekly event tomorrow, just in case that has any hints to what the season will be. If you could get the points for the Hidden Infection skill by then it would be helpful for giving us some more time."

"You want me to take over the site?" she questioned with a touch of annoyance. She had a mind control ST that they used for that before, way back in the first season, although it was fairly low quality for those. Yellow-Glow mostly recruited others for those now.

"I might want that, depending on the site in question," he confirmed. "I will let you know more when the weekly releases. So, are you going to use any one off-skills with this one?"

"I do have that spine launcher character mod from the Rhizo," Flamescale thought aloud. The third seasonal event had been a conflict against the crab like feral biological weapon system. Their biological technology was more often represented as skills than proper gear by the game. "It is a bit slow to reload without being part of a bioweapon ST branch, but with any luck it will be a good one to pass along."

"Rhizocephala skills are a solid option for that kind of skill, although I think many would like to get the bioweapon branch with the contagion branch," her friend laughed. "Send the data if you recover it, and see if you can get enough for some more hidden work."

"Alright, let me know when the next weekly is announced, I might take some time off missions until then," she agreed and ended the call. "Right, start off with seeing if I can tell anything about the skills just from having them." To start she got her Chitin Spike skill out of her favorites. It wasn't great without some boosts to damage and rate of fire that she didn't have in a one-off form yet. Flamescale did grind to get a version with four launchers, which wasn't close to the most possible but still fairly rare.

Selecting the skill opened up the character creator screen with a prompt to place the four launchers on her body, and a new warning that if she melted the part with the launchers they would need a full reload cycle to be ready. Another downside she didn't like, but still put them into two little 'ear' like pairs on either side of her head. With any luck she could melt everything else somehow to keep them loaded, or just use them before melting to get out of sight. Even without any points into the Contagion branch she could already see an added Toxin effect once it was set from her ST's base skills, although no bonus base damage.

Putting the point into Infectious Strikes changed that, giving both a reasonable infection chance and some bonus damage to the spines. The next point into Rapid Spread then added a small marker that indicated they would be passed on to infected, which in theory increased rate of fire in a way. The final point for Infectious Residues actually caused another change, giving the projectiles damage over time and chance of contact infection that possibly was a bigger infection chance than just from Strikes.

It also made Flamescale feel slightly sticky, but not the way she normally associated with the term. A wipe of her hand against the nearby chair revealed that it left behind a patchy trail of the stuff she was made out of, much like the changes she made to her base but clearly shorter lived. The residue lasted longer than the vapors from the skill descriptions, but that wasn't actually long enough with a single level to coat a place with the stuff very long.

Her main concern there was if it made stealth harder, as it seemed her long tail also left behind a patchy but sticky trail of toxic and caustic material that could make her victims attack their former allies. Which was another factor in if it was an option she would keep the point in or swap that out to another skill. Void Strike Skill Trees were able to have their points redistributed whenever you wanted, and that was often needed for skills that turned out to not be great to have all the time in a tree that otherwise was what you wanted.

A check of the rest of the tree revealed that the first level of Hidden Infection's starting skill gave control over if you put out residue or vapors, but that was two points for just the first level, and also required the two point Infected Control skill that gave the ability to command anyone you infected. She did not have the points for all of that yet, but it was good to know for Yellow-Glow's request and future developments.

Flamescale then accepted the mission properly, and this time went to look at her gear. If she was going to go on the attack it wouldn't really be the time to go in with just her physical form. That started with her second best equipment rigging, because clothes didn't work the best when your body wasn't shaped like any other creature in the setting and you didn't have item crafting options. You could commission stuff from shops, but that required complications that were a bit too much for her even without the liquid changes to her form. The rigging was mostly self made from parts of various local species versions, and she had a half dozen of them in total of various qualities.

Onto that she clipped a Leaf made security cracker, military grade because she had a few of those and could trust it to work on any Leaf system. Switching out for some Leaf made military data chips was also quick, as she had small packages pre-made to swap out for missions like this. Then she added a second security cracker, 319 made because the Leaf liked to hire 319 mercs and it was always better to take two instead of just one in case one was lost or broken.

For weapons she selected a light Girant pistol, which was just a regular pistol for most locals but worked as a backup weapon, and a 319 light plasma rifle. That was a submachinegun sized bullpup energy weapon that used a rechargeable battery and a special gas cylinder to fire super-heated blasts at targets. The batteries and the gas were common in 319 armories, as the advanced mercenary forces used a number of plasma weapons that fired the same gas.

Armor was handled mostly by stat boosting one-off skills, although it appeared she could get some better boosts out of the Infection Strength skill of the Mass Infection tree. That gave a mixture of stat boosts to both herself and any locals she infected. A much better use of points than the Defense Boost skill of the Enhancement tree, which gave armor only to her and not that much of it either.

Flamescale then moved through the Rift and frowned at the sight of the desert wasteland that was just past the landing pad she seemed to have been dropped out onto. The facility was all alone in the middle of nowhere, with the organic construction style of the Macrophylla cement extrusion systems. A sort of tech that sounded more practical than it actually was, both in the human world and this one if complaints from those who used it were to be believed. They made wonderful looking additive manufactured structures, but the things apparently broke often and were harder to fix.

Immediately next to her was a small control tower, which she seemed to have been placed into the storage area for, and there were a pair of Rhizocephala warriors in a 319 energy containment cell. The Rhizo all looked different from each other, a side effect of them being grown individually by an out of control artificial life cycle intended to make bio-terror weapons for an ancient and long dead species. The crab-like monsters had always been found in space encounters, but the third seasonal event was all about a massive number of them being found on an abandoned world.

They smelled like the toxic material she had gotten the Fluid Pestilence from, which was an uneasy thought given the timing of that mission appearing in the middle of their seasonal event, but did give some inspiration. Flamescale got out her 319 security cracker and set it up on the containment's controller, which was as usual a low level 319 system because it was a poor idea to just open any of these Rhizo holders.

The barrier dropped with a pop, and a small alarm started to ring out, but Flamescale focused on firing a pair of spines into each of the Rhizo. The first immediately started to grow a coating of red infected material, while the second sent its own barrage of spines at her before the residue on the spines she hit it with overtook it. Notably, each of them seemed to have patches of their body that were turning entirely into the same infected goo she was made out of, which was not normal for the infection seen in the lab where she got the ST.

They also suddenly smelled different, no longer like that other infection, and now something that made her think of her Void Base. Which made her realize that her Void Base, and maybe herself too, now smelled differently, and possibly not very good if she wasn't made out of infected goo. Something she needed to keep in mind if she switched off the ST.

A 319A emerged from the building, a pale grey bipedal lizard creature that made up most of the mercenary group's soldiers and leaders. Slightly shorter than a Girant and much thinner. Really early in the game they appeared as an opponent without the cybernetics before they formed the 319. The reptile started to shoot at one of the Rhizo with another light plasma rifle as Flamescale melted down to hide behind some storage containers near her newly infected victims.

The 319A was followed by a pair of Macrophylla, more commonly called Leafs, which were three legged green plant creatures with a mass of vines for a body. Some vines ended with eyes shaped like smooth stones, others ended with a dexterous split of vines like a hand, and the most protected ended with a razor filled hole the mostly carnivorous creatures used as a mouth.

The infected Rhizo then reminded Flamescale that her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree came with a new toxic spit attack when the one that had been shot spat a massive glob that coated all three of those targets with infected residues. The 319A immediately started to break out in red infection, with their long tail melting into a goo version entirely along with part of their side, and then a pair of dual spine launchers formed on either side of the reptile's head. One of the two Leafs instead started to writhe, while the other seemed to grow some red mold in addition to some vines melting down as its own launchers grew in on either side of its large body.

All five creatures then proceeded to ignore her, and the 319 merc moved back towards the control tower, while the other four started towards the main facility, the Leaf that didn't get infected at first following the rest a bit afterwards. Flamescale resolidified and followed the second group at a fair distance, there wasn't much cover from sight and she could see the other Leaf guards start to react. A mixture of spines and globs of infected material were sent towards the guards, while the sound of the Leaf ballistic weapons indicated there would be some resistance.

Flamescale took aim and shot the one guard with her actual rifle instead of just the pistols that the locals seemed to mostly have, although it wasn't enough to kill the plant creature she targeted. Plasma guns worked better in bursts than single shots, but they were notably less accurate and short ranged in that mode. It however did seem to prompt the infected who had guns of their own to also shoot that guard, including some newly infected guards.

She noted that the infected did not seem that intelligent at the moment, they seemed to be able to shoot but were just bumping up against the now locked main doors. Flamescale slithered forward, with a glance at the many paths of infected residue they were leaving behind, and started to use her Leaf security cracker on the door lock. There was a bang as the lock disengaged and suddenly the growing crowd of infected surged inside.

Flamescale took things slowly from there, and mostly just frowned at the increasing number of panicked and horrified shouts from the staff as she idly made her way to a computer system. If there was one detail of Void Strike she disliked more than others it was how real it made all of the locals sound when they were dying in masses. The common mind control and zombie players made horror movie monster moments like this one all the time, and it had taken a long time to get used to the pleas for help. She could understand the appeal of those STs, but they really were a bit clunky to use and she very much preferred to go about things stealthy.

The first computer that could actually help her was the security system, with a door that seemed to have been torn off and a number of fading trails of red goo that lead back out again. The cameras showed that the entire facility was overrun now, and there were only a couple of places where she might need to clean up the rest. "Hopefully they don't scream as much when I can actually control the infected," she complained aloud. The command interface was a mess to use, but still probably better than this random result.

The security computer didn't have access to the data core, but it did let her unlock the doors that led to the central computer and make note of the path. She also used an override to open all of the doors, and hopefully make it easier to clean up after the fact. Flamescale could see some bodies on the way to the core, mostly infected that were taken down by defenders before they were swarmed, but from how everyone present was armed it was clear this was always going to be an easy mission. There were far more infected with combat options than there seemed to be actual worthwhile security forces here.

The core ended up larger than she expected, taking half her data chips to store it all, but the real issue came from the mission objectives screen. Which kindly informed Flamescale that all of her infected still counted as personnel present at the site, and that she now needed to kill all of them to actually finish the mission. "Of course they do," she sighed and got started with trying to clean up the horror show she created.

Thankfully, while the infected did not directly obey her commands, they did just let her shoot them until they died, even the notoriously hard to control Rhizo. Returning to her Void Base she frowned deeply at getting only two more points for her ST, and nothing else really worth commenting on. With another sigh she went over to the communications console and called Yellow-Glow.

"The data you recovered was well worth it, even if you probably should have spent some of that extra time looking for any resources or gear to take," Yellow-Glow commented as she finished going over the mission. "That site was working on their bio-tech attempts. The Rhizocephala you found were actually experimental subjects they had purchased at a fair expense."

"Do you think that the developers want us to stop playing because of the horrors of being a mass killer?" Flamescale questioned tiredly, and not for the first time. "Or to just get so used to it we don't care that we do that anymore?"

"Given the rest of the game, I suspect they never really want us to stop playing," he half joked. "At a minimum you can rest assured that the lore says there exists countless instances where nobody ever took that mission, and more practically there are dozens of players who probably run that one over and over for resources using a zombie ST. Your single instance is a drop in the metaphorical bucket."

"Yeah, I know. I just wonder about using this ST," she admitted. "I try and stick with missions where killing isn't the main goal for a reason. Well, okay, if it is Rhizo I am fine with killing them. Maybe Girant on those Slink rebellion missions too. And the 319 are also all mercs. I guess the plants aren't that great either."

"To be clear, you just killed off a group that was trying to make Rhizocephala that they could control," Yellow-Glow specified to continue the topic. "Admittedly, you did it for Girant who want that data for themselves, but it still was likely a net positive."

"Not everyone goes for net positives," Flamescale sighed. "I'm going to just sleep a while, I have the new Care-A-Bot to work on and thinking about this is a bit too much of a distraction. Wake me when the weekly is available."

"I am a major fan of work on new Care-A-Bots," her old friend laughed, and Helen was happy to hear Mike could joke about that now. "The second best use of Synch-Tech as far as I am concerned."

---

[Author's Note]
This is still faster updates than normal, but I also am having a very easy time with starting this off for the moment.
I do want to bring up again that I want feedback on any tags or such for the story, because as seen here this story is probably going to have some very concerning fights.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 5 - Weekly Event ---

"Flamescale, you might be more interested in this weekly than we thought," Yellow-Glow woke her up ingame. Out of game she was asleep as well, but the way you could be both awake and asleep at once with Void Strike's Synch-Tech was still something she wished she could work out the trick to for her actual job.

"Just a second," she burbled more than grumbled, and realized she had fallen asleep so heavily this time she ended up entirely combined with the pool of infected material she had selected as a bed. It took a bit of waking up to slither out and solidify into her proper self, but it wasn't a bad way to wake up at all. "What is it this time?" Weekly events were typically where the development and story of the worlds progressed outside of seasons, although not by much.

"A new 319 nanotech security cracker model is being completed, the weekly is a job for another 319 faction, with the goal to infiltrate and acquire the development details and also a sample of the tech," he replied. "From the description we are to be paid in whatever security crackers we find besides the single unit we need to send."

"One to deliver, as many as you can carry for payment?" Flamescale questioned, and noticed that Yellow-Glow had already invited her to join his mission. There were three ways to encounter other players in Void Strike. The obvious one was to join up with another player to both take the same mission, which was easier most of the time than doing things alone but could result in reduced rewards because you had to split up actual gear found. The second was for Open Instances, where the single instance of a world had multiple missions that could go on at the same time, and those were where you had to be careful that the other mission wasn't going to be against your own leading to PvP. Finally there were Mass Instance special missions where the client deliberately called for multiple Void Entities and you couldn't start until enough players signed up for them. "I take it we aren't supposed to kill the developers for this one?"

"No, we will need to be careful with those individuals. My plan is that I will subvert their technology and you will subvert their security," Yellow-Glow answered as she went over the contract. It was fairly standard for a minor tech development, a very easy way to point out where something new and valuable could be found because the locals were after it too. "Did you get enough points to run the Hidden Contagion branch?"

"Maybe," she admitted, and opened the Skill Tree menu. "I assume we don't want to go with infecting with residue? I also can't afford to have them able to infect others too" She was not giving up her Liquid Mobility points.

"I would prefer without both of those actually, although keep the spike launchers," he laughed with a shake of his head, which currently was a single large circular transmission dish. "Those are possibly our best vector. I want a quick mission, the data I am after might be here, but I have some doubts about how much of it will be present. This is not the kind of target I hoped for."

"That sounds like you had an idea what they would go for. I know it hasn't happened yet," Flamescale noted carefully as she took out the residue and victim infection skills to get the points for both Infected Control and Hidden Infection. "But you are being careful not to do anything to make the developers mad, right?" Putting the points into Infected Control gave her a command interface prompt, one that noted 'intelligent minions' which was a bit new to her so she read it while she waited for an answer.

"I have a solid idea of where the developer's lines are, and I worry that they are farther away than I first thought," Yellow-Glow answered. "Is something wrong?"

"Did they update the command interface?" she questioned with a frown. "This is an order interface, like that thing they tried in season two. It even allows for default orders."

"Flamescale, Helen, please tell me you haven't been complaining about the command interface this whole time because you haven't tried one since season two updated them," Yellow-Glow said with entirely justified annoyance if that was what happened. "No, Flamescale, you don't still need to either micromanage them individually or give single orders to every one of them at once."

"To be fair, it used to be bad enough to make me not use them for this whole time," she countered without much real feeling. "Is this actually better?" She exited the command interface to add the other skill.

"Vaguely. I personally still find it clunky to use mid-mission, and many complain that you need intelligent minions along with advanced skills to really do more than just prioritize targets," he admitted as she set Hidden Infection with her two new points.

That automatically opened the command interface again to show off a number of new options, the most interesting of which to her was- "Wait, I can have them just keep doing what they were doing while ignoring me?" Flamescale questioned with a lot of thoughts on how that could work out.

"That is our current plan, yes," her friend complained. "Or to make them continue to act as normal with priorities set to benefit us. I do not need a main terminal for my goal, and I can get us an entry point close to the storage area we need."

"Gear?" she questioned now that she was on the same page.

"Do you still have the Tarp?" Yellow-Glow asked. "Because you will need the Tarp and probably a backup weapon just in case."

Flamescale glared at her friend. 'The Tarp' was their name for the first time she had tried to have clothes made for her. Technically speaking it was a cloak large enough to cover her whole body, but in practice she looked like someone trying to wear a tarp somewhere. "You want a good luck charm?" she sarcastically asked, because despite at times trying she had not lost it on a mission yet, but still went to get it. "I think I'm going to want Reverted Form if I try this sort of thing again, also to make it so any of my minions can hide when exposed again too."

"I do not think that will disguise the spine launchers, and they are what I want hidden," Yellow-Glow sighed. "You know, the whole reason we bought that thing to begin with? Liquid or scales those still attract unwanted attention."

"I got the hat for a reason," she complained from inside of the Tarp as she grabbed a light plasma rifle for backup and a minimal rigging belt for that and some data chips.

"Everyone noticed the hat, Flamescale, they notice it more than the Tarp," Yellow-Glow pointed out. "That is why it got shot." The other downside of the gear side of the game was you could in fact have things get destroyed.

"Ready for the mission?" she asked to change the topic, and then moved through the Void Rift as it pulsed to indicate it had opened to the mission.

It was her first time seeing Yellow-Glow in person since getting her new Skill Tree, and she frowned deeply at the massive mechanical spider his current body was shaped like, vaguely hidden by what could only be called a second Tarp. "Oh, we're going for a theme then," she commented as she took in the area around them. The target wasn't exactly inside of an arcology, they seemed to be near the edge of one in the outlying industrial centers that tended to develop as the core structure needed to expand.

"You smell like lava fruit?" he questioned, and it was a sudden reminder of the one not-meat thing her body consistently enjoyed from local food services. "How, no why do you smell like lava fruit?"

"I didn't think I ate that much of the stuff," Flamescale noted with a reminder that the volcanic plant's fruit wasn't thought of as very tasty by most locals, even if they used it for the enjoyable smell. "Well, it should help right?"

"We could pass you off as a lava fruit slime monster, yes," he sighed. "I will need a bit, get ready to sit around."

That was an aspect of Synch-Tech games that Void Strike pulled off and most in the genre overlooked. The idea was to have a game you could constantly play, but most didn't actually give gameplay that took advantage of the increased immersive playtime. Typical Synch-Tech games did have a harder time keeping synched, so you couldn't play them while asleep like Void Strike, and even Void Strike was something to just sleep in when you were doing something tricky back in reality, but otherwise it was far easier to spend more time on the same task.

Void Strike combined that with an open and unusually dynamic set of mission worlds to allow for many unusual methods of dealing with missions. Spending some time in civilian areas, making maps of targets, going for another location to make your own goal easier, or even arranging for local backup were all things you could do during a mission instead of just going for the direct approach. There wasn't anything stopping you from taking days to complete the mission, unless the objectives specified a timeline.

So Flamescale was free to people watch, and get odd glances herself, while Yellow-Glow did whatever he needed to do to actually prepare for their current objective and personal projects. It was always strange to just see normal locals going about their days, mostly because you rarely saw anything like a repeated action. The worlds were entirely alive, and she knew that Yellow-Glow had at times tracked every action of some people to see how deep the simulation went.

She shook that thought away, it wasn't something she liked to dwell on, and instead opened her command interface again. A quick check showed that it was more than possible to set it up so she was automatically ignored by any infected, and so they always moved to assist her with doors and consoles they could open or access for her. She could even save the template she made for use later on when she got rid of the skill for something else for a while.

"Can you fire all four spines into that guard without being seen?" Yellow-Glow then quietly questioned with an AR marker on one of the 319A lizards coming towards the target building.

"Not without any reaction, and I do have something of a damage boost already," Flamescale cautioned, but started to move a bit to watch. The damage boost wasn't anywhere near the high end, and it was possible with a one-off skill she kept on constantly to tune damage downwards, but that took a bit of skill and the high end really was for taking on armored troops and vehicles. The area wasn't heavily populated, so she took a chance with the full set. Visually the cyborg lizard just flinched a bit, and then was marked as infected and controlled. Nobody else reacted at all other than to glance at the stumble.

"Have him pick up the data chip on the ground over there," Yellow-Glow instructed, and she realized that he had dropped that when they first arrived. "I need it installed into the main security console."

"It will be a bit before I can use those again," she said as her infected followed that order, with a bit of an attempt to make it look like they had tripped and dropped something in the process. "My claws or fangs will be best for any more."

"The next guard to subvert is going to be coming in a few minutes," Yellow-Glow explained easily. "They will get us into the depot, where we will need to subvert a third to get me to an access point."

The command interface was giving her more information than she expected, and wasn't looking good for that plan even as the infected lizard made his way inside. "Are you sure? Because this guy thinks he is late," she pointed out.

"Oh, we have a problem then," Yellow-Glow admitted with a rather quick turn towards the building. "If that set of cybernetics is supposedly 'late' then that is an impostor. We need to move, order him to only act as a guard after installing that chip."

"This is why I hate command mode," she complained as the two of them took off towards the structure. "Okay, I think I've worked out what he was going to do, there is a console by garage three where his allies are going to be taking a prototype... Why do I have this much knowledge of what he is doing?"

"I will let you know when I have time to review the guides, move!" The mechanical spider shifted in direction again towards the third large door on the prefabricated structure.

"Spines ready," she noted aloud. "There are two inside, both in on this plan."

"Two spines each, I have system access, the doors will be locked behind them. One 319A, one 319C," he declared as the outer door opened up for them to see the pale lizard man and purple stereotypical alien.

The lizard monster was easy to hit with the spines, but did not get marked as infected, while the 319C was only hit by one of the two she immediately sent their way and was infected. A very rough and quick order had the weaker scientist grab at the clearly more confused than anything lizard.

"No alarms yet," Yellow-Glow said as she surged forward to just bite the 319A, finally infecting them and giving them a bit of breathing room. "I cannot detect any more complications. Start to package the results, focus on the experimental units, and order these two to escort me to the nearest core terminal. We are leaving as soon as I am done."

"Got it," Flamescale agreed, and started to sort through the boxes the two new infected had brought for the rarest looking devices. "They were working for a place in the arcology, rival facility. We have some time, it was just these three and the first one is supposed to call for the pickup."

"I will be right back," he declared and set off with the two infected.

"Wait around and then hurry up," Flamescale complained as she found the four clear containers for nanotech security crackers. Those devices sounded like they should be a sort of cybernetic that you could just casually install, but the actual purpose was to be hidden as something else until needed in a nearly liquid form, and then fused together into a device afterwards. Cybernetics with built-in security crackers were fairly common, but needed to be installed using the character editor much like the Rhizo bio-weapon skills. They could still be damaged unlike those skills, but were notable more potent than handheld units.

Cybernetics also were completely useless for her with Liquid Body, so she had uninstalled the few she had before she even got the Fluid Pestilence tree. This was instead something she could carry even more easily than the data chips that she had already gotten into tight spaces.

She left three of the four containers in a larger box that she just stuck into her lower body and tail. It felt somewhat strange to have something so large embedded into her body so easily, and she knew it wouldn't easily stay with her if she was forced to melt down, but it gave them an option other than just putting it into their arms and running. A quick sorting of the other boxes revealed a couple of prototype cybernetics as well that Yellow-Glow might have a use for, and a number of experimental security crackers that looked more mundane, both of which had their containers join the first one embedded in her body. She then started to consider the remaining items and put a few more into her semi-liquid form.

"I have the data," Yellow-Glow declared as he emerged with the two infected 319 still following. "Let these idiots go and let's get out of here."

"I'm just starting to work out this new command interface," she complained. "I have the stuff."

"Almost a year old is not 'new', Flamescale," he countered and started to make a break for the place their shared Void Rift was located. "Pass me one of the nanotech models, I need to get that to the dropoff location. We can work out distributing the rest later." Trade between players was a matter of using the season two update's feature to visit other player Void Bases. You couldn't directly access another player's storage, but you could bring things into their base and take things given to you. It was a clunky system, and trading any real number of the raw resources was a bit of a pain, but for the most part it was used just for cases like this where you had multiple people who trusted each other splitting a mission's outcome after the fact.

It was a bit clunky to move with the boxes and items embedded in her, but she passed the last of the four nanotech models to her friend. "Here, see you soon," she declared and set off towards the Rift at the best speed she could manage with that new complication.

Entering the Rift she found the typical "mission pending" warning you saw in a few cases where you ended up back at your Void Base. Most commonly when you were killed on the mission and respawned at the base, at least as long as you didn't fail the mission entirely before dying and could still go back in to try and complete it. The other case was when you deliberately did not finish the objective to do more in the mission instance, which for a mission like this would be to try and grab more loot from the target.

This time the message quickly was replaced with a mission completion screen, which sadly did not have much in rewards. The standard stat boost skills and client provided raw materials weren't really that valuable, Void Echos were good but easy to build up, and Flamescale was disappointed to see only three more points towards her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree. There was also a noted penalty for leaving behind the three infected, but a note that it was the lesser penalty due to being a contained infection.

With a sigh she put a request for Yellow-Glow to come to her Void Base, and started to look through what she had taken.

---

[Author's Note]
Now we have a bit of character interaction and some more controlled situations. Next chapter is a bigger one, and hopefully won't be too far off given I am mostly done with the chapter after.
I do have a plan on where I am going, and a fairly complete overall plot for the first two arcs so far. This is currently the halfway point for arc one pending any chapters being added or cut.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 6 - Better Than One ---

Flamescale had managed to sort out the loot they had gotten in the weekly event by the time Yellow-Glow arrived at her Void Base. "I'm keeping the containers," she informed her friend. "They are all good quality." Good containers were always useful for storing things you wanted to grab or sneaking items into targets.

"I have all I wanted from the data," the mechanical spider proudly declared. "It has some insights that at least indicate where I need to look for the next season. Oh, wait are those?"

"319 remote access cybernetics, with built in experimental security crackers," the semi-liquid snake said proudly and nodded at the find she was sure he missed them getting. "I don't have a good use for those anymore, so go ahead and take them."

"I take it you want all of the nanotech models?" Yellow-Glow questioned with a laugh, and Flamescale took a moment to look at the both of them. She was shaped like a viper with arms that was made entirely out of a bubble filled red toxic goo, and he was currently a massive yellow spider robot with a communications dish for a head. It was nothing like their human forms, but also so very much the way she pictured herself, although her friend was rarely the same thing two days in a row. "Your whole base smells like lava fruit now, by the way."

"I want two of them at least, and maybe some of the older models I found. Also the full size plasma rifle, those are fairly rare," she explained. "I'm also going to try out the first of the Multiform branch now," she decided with another glance at her total of ten points in the ST. "So if you want to stick around for that I'd appreciate the help."

"Yes, that sounds like a great use of my time," her friend eagerly declared. "Also what other skills are on that branch? I haven't had much luck yet finding information, but I can fine tune where to hunt for that knowledge with those details. Did you get a good amount of points from the weekly?"

"Did I get a good amount of points from a mission where we just needed to wait for the already present infiltration team to bring us the stuff?" she questioned with a somewhat sarcastic laugh as she took the Rhizo spike launcher skill off again. "I got three, I have exactly enough for it."

"Three for a shared simple solo mission isn't that bad," Yellow-Glow pointed out as she removed all of her points from the other branches. "Usually that cuts it down a bit anyway."

"Right, so they have things split a bit, first off there is a one level called Dual Form," she explained and then paused. "Wait, that is sort of like how the Liquid Mobility normally has Liquid Body at the top, isn't it?"

"If it has a unique ST somewhere that always has that skill then it might be a similar situation," Yellow-Glow agreed as she selected the skill.

"After that the only thing unlocked is the actual Multiform skill, which starts at twenty points for a third body, and has seven levels," Flamescale explained, and frowned at the strange sensations she now felt. As if she was pressed into herself the same way those containers had been somehow, only far more comfortably and completely. "Then I have two other five point cost one-off skills that require the Multiform skill. The first... requires Infected Control? Oh, it is a skill to make my infected victims into more heads. I'm going to need to check if more heads actually is useful for that one."

"I believe that is the giant monster part of the branch, to grow in size and be able to take on armies in theory," he responded with interest. "That would be, thirty eight points total to get that one?"

"Yeah, that's a bit much right now, but the other one doesn't require anything else. It, might have some dynamic text in its description," she noted as she read Material Movement's description and requirements. "I think it always lets you move through whatever you are made of, and I just have a lot of options there because I am made out of the infected material."

"I would need to check in more detail, but it is beginning to sound like this is a sub-branch of Liquid Mobility," Yellow-Glow pointed out with a nod. "Have you selected it yet?"

"Let me start with the head part," Flamescale said, mostly to get herself ready as well. The idea of pulling her head in two felt strangely natural now, and it was surprisingly easy to pull her snout in two different directions. The tip split first, giving an odd feeling in her mouth as it got notably wider, and then started to feel like two mouths. Then she was suddenly able to see the split down the middle from the middle, where she could look to the side, or perhaps to her middle, and see the orange glow of her changed eyes next to each other. From there it quickly spread down her neck, or necks as it continued, until she found what felt like a natural place to stop right at her shoulders.

"Huh," she attempted with both mouths at once, succeeded and decided, "Nope," "Not doing that anymore." One head after another was much better than both at once.

"That is an interesting result," Yellow-Glow said, now entirely focused on her. She twisted one head to face him with the other looking over her other head and neck. "How are you handling that?"

"I can't tell yet," she had the head facing him say while the other determined that it was fairly likely this setup of necks wouldn't work for something made out of biology instead of goo. "I literally am just starting out with it." "Let me try going all the way first," she added with the second head.

Pulling apart more wasn't any more unusual feeling than it was to split to being two headed, or even from staying together actually. It didn't take much more to start feeling two new shoulders in the gap, followed by arms and hands that pulled apart easily, and left her to pause and see her entire upper body with actual life instead of just the character creator model for once. It took about the same amount of time to pull the rest of her lower bodies and tails apart as it took to split off her upper bodies due to the length of her character.

With deliberate action she moved both bodies away from each other, then smiled at herself twice over as she could finally really see the body she wanted in motion. See her form move with a long tail-like body, that did not stay entirely solid as it bobbed and wiggled a bit from being made out of goo instead of flesh, with two arms still but without the legs her human form needed. Then as another test of things she had one body slither over the top of the other, and felt goo against goo in the moment. Similar to the pools around her, but also different in key ways.

Then what she was easily doing caught up to her, and Helen looked over at her friend's character with a pair of serious expressions. "Mark, I know Synch-Tech. I make support bots for the disabled," she said deliberately stating the obvious, because the problem was obvious to her now. "You need them from the accident. They can't handle two bodies of the same kind at once like this. It needs to be delayed to keep the commands from going to the wrong one."

"It would be much easier to maintain mine if I could use two at once to this degree, but even what can be done is enough to let me stay independent," Mark's character agreed tightly. "Void Strike is really exceptional, isn't it," he said and Helen took three deep breaths at once. That sentence was a coded phrase between the two of them. It meant to drop the subject, because they both wanted to avoid thinking too hard about how far ahead the game was compared to the rest of the industry. To avoid thinking of the implications there. "So, can you actually handle that this easily, Flamescale?" Yellow-Glow added after a pause.

"What do you think I mean, Yellow-Glow?" she asked despite the phrase, because it should have been obvious to him from that aborted discussion.

"I mean that being rare is not the only complication with that branch," her friend pointed out. "It can be harder to handle than being able to melt, and most of the discussion I have found is about how hard it is to experience even just in the extra heads situation."

Flamescale moved her two lower bodies over each other more and let them meld back together so she only had two heads again. "Yellow-Glow," "I have used multiple Synch-Tech bodies at once before," "The issue is that they aren't usually the right level of responsive," she said, alternating which head said what.

"That is going to be a thing with you... That is already a thing with you, isn't it?" he questioned tiredly.

Helen paused in thought, realized this was not in fact the first time she had pulled that trick, and sighed three times over. "Maybe?" Flamescale said in two voices.

"I think I will just leave you to try out this one yourself," Yellow-Glow said tiredly. "I have a feeling it is going to stick given this reaction."

"You say that like it is a problem," she said with both heads. "No, still do not like that," she restated with only one again.

"I cannot tell which of those is more unnerving," her friend admitted, and took his loot from the last mission and started to leave. "Have fun with that, and be safe, Flamescale."

"Be safe, Yellow-Glow," Flamescale agreed as he left. Then she pulled her heads back together. Which wasn't really any different from melting down or turning solid, if possibly a lot like doing both at once. She simply stood there for a moment after that, and then moved to the mission console for a distraction.

"... that one requires two people to pull off," she said aloud with excitement. "I know that one needs two people." A mission that was basically intended to have you find another Void Entity to partner with, but didn't require it. A Girant facility was the target, specifically the goal was to aid a Slink rebellion so you were being paid by the rat-like creatures. The goal was to open a well defended depot while also creating a distraction for the Slinks as they took the weapons or other supplies out with the lower utility tunnel network. In theory you could help set up something to open the locks remotely, but the Slinks usually struggled with the Girant guards if you weren't down there, and the Girant reacted too well if you convinced them to try and be their own distraction.

The surface battle was a bit tougher than she usually attempted without a solidly leveled ST, but she had just gotten a new full sized 319 plasma rifle, and could always make it a slightly different kind of distraction. If she spent a bit to check out the area she might get lucky and have the variant with a nearby vehicle depot where she could swipe one of their hover combat units. Yellow-Glow had often made good use of that option when they tackled this mission together on one of those variants.

The Tarp was put away a bit forcefully for once again surviving, and replaced with one of her worst riggings. This was an attempt that was risky, and while the new rifle was a nice thing to get it wasn't something she wasn't willing to lose immediately. The various devices, the nanotech security crackers in particular, were put away and two mid level 319 made security crackers were added to the rigging. Two because it was just good practice, and the last time she only took one to a mission where the Girant were shooting at her it ended up smashed while she still needed it. Finally she made sure to have her usual pistol on hand just in case, this time a silenced model used by the Leaf that was a bit tricky to hold but easy to find.

Flamescale emerged out of the Void Rift into the Slink tunnel meeting zone, and cringed at the reaction of her contact to her appearance. Which honestly was not worse than normal, Slinks tended to assume she would want to eat them normally. Still she had hoped for a radio contact instead of in-person.

"Lava fruit devourer?" the Slink questioned with the tone of somebody who had just summoned the most unusual demon they could have seen. "Why, who came up with the idea of a lava fruit smelling great devourer?"

"I can just eat you if that is what you are actually asking for," Flamescale said somewhat insulted, but happy enough that it wasn't clear that she was toxic in nature.

"No, I, ugh. We need a distraction from secured bunker 19, and someone to open bunker 19's electronic security, preferably at the same time," the Slink finally explained. "Is there someone else coming?"

Flamescale split her head again, pulling both heads away from each other smoothly to look at either side of her contact's head. "I can handle that," one head said. "It is something quite simple," the other added. Flamescale then realized she wasn't entirely paying attention to which head said what. "You wouldn't happen to know where a vehicle depot is?" she asked with one of them.

"I know of several, but we are hoping to use one to get the equipment out of here, so please pick one we won't be using," the Slink declared, in that still far too smart way that locals' AI always managed, and in a way that did not help with what she wanted to be distracted from. "Do- can your kind use automap data? I can give you the location of the ones we want to try and use, please avoid those. I also have the signal beacon for you to use to indicate the bunker is opened."

She took the small device from them easily. "Yes, we can open your electronic security after all," she pointed out with the other head from last time. The Slink seemed appropriately worried about that, and quickly transferred the map data. "Depot 7 should be far enough, right?"

The Slink looked back and forth between her two heads, then nodded. "Ah, yes? That should work as a distraction, just make sure to open the bunker too," they said and scampered off clearly wanting out of the conversation more than anything else.

Flamescale chuckled at that, and re-checked the map. There was what looked like a good place to split apart to reach both of her objectives more easily not too far away, and she made sure to mark her Void Rift. Automap data was valuable, but required either access to the instance's mapping systems, or to get a map from a local. In an arcology that was easy, but Girant areas were only accurately mapped by the Slinks that lived in the tunnels. Finding a Slink that was intact enough and stayed still long enough to get a map out of them was often harder than it was worth.

The rough industrial area was easy enough to travel quickly when you could just scare anyone out of your path with your appearance as you traveled down tunnels. Two heads actually helped out a lot with that, as you often needed to keep an eye on multiple angles at the same time when trying to go through the tight tunnels that fast.

The small area she planned on reaching was cleared out soon after she arrived there, and with that she started to pull apart more. Then ran into her rigging, and then had one body awkwardly flow through her rigging and gear in order to fully split apart, and then the one of her without any gear looked the one with all the gear in the face. Then she swore and with a grumble started to take the rigging apart so that she could make sure both had at least some of the kit.

"Okay, do I take the rifle to the bunker or the pistol?" she asked herself, then realized there was another herself there to technically ask.

"Rifle for bunker, pistol for depot," she decided with the other her. "That way if things go wrong we have firepower there."

"Talking to myself like this is probably a terrible idea," she then admitted with both bodies despite how she disliked that way of talking more than possibly having full conversations where it was just her. The security crackers and data chips were easy to split up, and the rigging would work with only about half of it each. The her given the pistol took the smaller part of the rigging, while the other her kept the larger part. "Next time I need to plan for this."

Going in two different directions at once wasn't an entirely new thing for her, but there was a lot more ground to cover and she actually needed to do two different things as well. It was still too easy to look at the tunnels that led downward into the bunker and the ones that would lead to an alleyway by the target vehicle depot. Even with her experience outside of the game this was a new sensation that was far too simple to deal with.

Flamescale's more well armed body made it to the bunker first, and that gave her the time to investigate the details. The bunker itself was at the bottom of a large gap with cranes to lift and lower supplies, with a large number of tunnels and lesser storage areas on the various levels. It did not appear to be a typical Girant armory, and in fact looked more like a secure storage facility for a research facility. A research facility that which appeared to be built on top of one of the ledges, with a parking area full of visible transports on the other.

A familiar smell also was coming up from the bunker. One that made her wonder what exactly this particular rebellion was planning, and if she really wanted to help them. It smelled heavily of either the original infection, or maybe of the Rhizocephala, and either of those seemed a bit extreme to try and use in an uprising. Then Flamescale remembered that she was entirely made out of that kind of infection, and only couldn't use it at the moment because she traded out that capacity to be in two places at once. With that reminder she made her way towards the security center she could see on the level above the main door.

Her other body reached the alley next to the vehicle depot she had selected before then, a surface facility at the crossroads of two major roadways that were reinforced to handle the heavy tanks she could see inside the depot. The vehicle mechanics of Void Strike were simply to give you fully detailed controls accurate to the vehicles in question. For the Girant that was something she could handle, they were generally fairly rugged and redundant, which meant that while they were made for someone with four arms they in practice could be used with two and a lot of not caring about using them properly. Their hover units would be more mobile, but she felt a tank should still work.

Then she was in a complicated moment where she was both trying to find an actual air vent large enough to let her try and carry her stuff into so she could get into the security center discretely, and also trying to recall which of the Girant vehicles would be the easiest to cause a complete disaster that lasted long enough. The former ended up with that body instead just staying in a Slink tunnel with a number of the creatures that clearly knew something was coming to help, but were not happy with what exactly. The latter instead involved going for a two gunned monster of a tank that Flamescale was fairly sure nobody thought was actually a good idea to make.

From there she focused on getting into the monster tank, which had a layer of dust thick enough to make Flamescale realize that it probably wasn't going to work too well. A check of the computer system, which took an uneasy amount of time to boot, revealed that the micro-fission reactor module was still online at minimum capacity. The rest of the tank, however, was a mess of yellow and red errors.

So, she reluctantly left it behind for a more modern looking model right in front of it, which had an interesting security feature compared to the older hunk of garbage. Someone had welded a number of bars over the battle damaged access hatch, just wide enough to drop her stuff down. Flamescale happily started to melt into the opening. Then realized to her dislike that she had not tried to do that without the first level of both of the mobility skills, and it took a bit too long and was a bit too slow to move, as if she was a thicker blob than she wanted to be.

That made her decide that until she got those skills again she wasn't going to rely on that ability. Which would be after this mission, as she wasn't giving up two bodies either but definately wanted that back. Two bodies was a complicated thing to think about clearly, but to actually use it had turned out to be exactly the sort of thing she wanted now that she knew it was an option.

The modern tank started up, with a newer superconductor battery power system that was at half charge, and even had some ammo. With a familiar amount of awkward movements Flamescale put a round into the second best looking tank, and then took off towards the nearest space port as quickly as the tank could go. The sound of alarms and warnings was just what she wanted, and it was very nice to hear scrambling inside the security center with her other body too.

That second her saw about half the local Girant soldiers then start to run out of the pit quickly, and that Flamescale got the plasma rifle ready. The security center door opened, and she waited for the first Girant to leave up a ladder before she surged forward into the space they left behind. Her security cracker got through the door lock in an instant, fresh credentials ready to be exploited in an electronic lock not made to high tolerance. Then she shot the first Girant she saw, threw the weight of her tail over the second to hold them to the ground, and fired again at the first in a movement that she had done a few times before, although usually with a far more complete set of ST stat boosts.

There were quite a few Girant yelling at the tank by that point, and a few stray shots to try and get the other her to stop, but she was more concerned with how the Girant she had landed on was sinking into her. Rather, how the taste of Girant was coming to her from where they were starting to dissolve inside of her, which was technically a thing that Liquid Body allowed, but also something she thought she had more control over. Admittedly she wanted them dead, but she didn't want something to eat at the same time.

"Glad I didn't stick anything edible in there I wanted to keep," she complained and moved to the control console. A quick check with the security cracker on both the device the Slink had given her and then a configuration of the built in jammer contained within the security center let her start a jamming signal to all other communications lines, and then she triggered the device and the seals on the large bunker door at the same time.

The Slinks moved immediately, and Flamescale was barely fast enough to get back out to try and help take out the remaining Girant around the bunker. The cranes also began to move rapidly towards the lowest level, and the smell of the original infection strain grew stronger as the seals opened.

Her body in the tank turned quickly to divert down a side road in response to a Girant medium combat shuttle moving to intercept. That was probably a sign that she wasn't getting that body back to the Void Rift intact, but the next vehicle depot she had noticed was well out of range of the raid, and more importantly was not the one marked as the destination of the transports she could now see were going to be loaded with the same containment units she had gotten the Skill Tree out of.

"Do I want to know what you are doing with this stuff?" she actually questioned one of the nearby Slinks that was also watching for any reinforcements.

"Do I want to know why I can see a Girant skull and some fur inside your tail?" the rodent replied cautiously.

"The last time I saw one of those I ended up like this," Flamescale pointed out given the context of that detail.

"The Macrophylla have promised us 319 weapons in exchange for these," the Slink admitted with a cautious look at her. "I take it I would more likely end up like that Girant if I touched the stuff?"

Flamescale did not answer that, because she did not know. It was one of those things about how these worlds worked that Yellow-Glow liked to find out in his ample free time, but those were also the sort of thing she didn't try and test herself very often. "Do you know how to move as a puddle?" she considered aloud to the Slink.

"I do not want to find out," the Slink said and slinked away, clearly done with talking with her after that response.

The depot she ran the tank into was full of the light hover vehicles she had originally planned for, most of which were meant to act as air support for ground forces and thus were not armored against tank cannon or tread. Flamescale then started up the loudspeaker on the tank, made sure her translation was set to Girant, and started to rant a bit about the uselessness of air support that didn't arrive when it was needed. She didn't think she was very coherent, but that wasn't really the point.

It meant that the shuttle attempted to argue with her instead of just shooting immediately, which bought them the time to load all seven of the containment units before the tank took an anti-vehicle missile and reduced her to just one body again.

"We're good, scramble!" one of the Slink leaders said once the loaded transport set out, and Flamescale followed that instruction and went straight to her Void Rift.

She returned, and felt the pressure of being able to form another body return with her as the mission rewards appeared. A massive seven points greeted her, which would let her take the Liquid Climb skill along with the two other Liquid Mobility skills she was putting back first, along with a fair amount of resources, a note on the gear she had lost, and a few new skills. A one-off skill that she frowned deeply at was labeled "Control Digestion", and apparently given the description whoever or whatever was responsible for skills had considered that you might eat things you could, but didn't want to, digest.

"Right, I guess I do know why someone would need that one," she commented as she reluctantly selected the skill for use, which ended up giving a configuration menu, and then because she was still uneasy with the objective sent a recording of the mission to Yellow-Glow for him to check when he had time.

---

[Author's Note]
Here we have Flamescale's newest "oh, I really like this" moment. Let me know if the narration gets too confusing here, because the intent is that the viewpoint character is going to have at minimum the ability to be in two places at once.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 7 - Upward Flow ---

Flamescale looked over her collection of gear with a bit of annoyance. The problem with having two bodies she wanted to use was turning out to be also sometimes having one body to get them to places.

"It would be easier if my stuff could split too," one body grumbled while the other tried to work out what they needed to do with rigging construction to get two on at once without getting them tangled.

"Or if more could melt with me," the other body added, and Flamescale sighed and decided on the backup of just taking a moment longer to unclip a set of rigging that could work in two parts but also rested easily as just one.

"I guess one of me could do half the mission naked," the first one continued, then she had both bodies pause.

"Not a great wording to use there, even if there is nothing to see," the other body admitted.

Then with that done she merged her bodies together, although she left the necks and heads separated. Twice as much gear was actually something of a problem, and she wasn't sure where she would start with three bodies or more. At that point she either needed one-off skills to cover everything, scavenge gear mid-mission to be properly equipped, or just start missions with the bodies already separated.

Her skills were another thing she had needed to double check after the last mission. Quicker Solidification turned out to also handle not accidentally letting things into her body, and she was reminded that Digestion Speed was a stat that was in common use for a silly sounding way to get more stat boost skills. Having unique sets of stats was the easiest way to stack one-off boosts, two skills that only boosted Health couldn't be selected at once, but a Health and Digestion skill could stack with a pure Health skill. Situations like that had ended up with Flamescale having enough of the Digestion Speed stat to reduce a Girant to a skeleton in just minutes and to nothing at all not long after, all to get a basic set of stats that made missions far less dangerous without a Skill Tree to provide the larger boosts.

"Maybe an open instance for once?" she considered with her left head. The main reason she avoided those was the random nature of the missions. It was not uncommon to get a mission to destroy something another Void Entity was supposed to steal, or worse protect. However, sometimes you got lucky and it was just two missions in the same place. Flamescale didn't count on open instances giving her complementary objectives, because she tried for the more tricky stuff and that usually didn't fit with the more combat focused style of the majority of the other players.

Then she noticed an assassination contract. Those barely ever made it through her filters, because most of them weren't the kind of mission she approved of taking. The kind that theoretically caused more suffering than helped. Although that really just said that the kind of targets she approved of got missions to burn the entire site to the ground instead of just taking out a single person working there. Which was honestly why she was even bothering to try the Contagion side of her new ST, as it would help with that sort of mission and had the potential for aiding the stealth too with a bit of work.

"A 319 leader gone rogue?" her right head now questioned. It was the iffy way that the 319 had internal conflict, in this case Flamescale was sure they wanted him dead in a way that they could excuse as someone else killing him. Then again 'working on improper projects' being said by the 319 usually meant that absolutely everyone else thought it was a warcrime. That didn't mean one of the other groups wasn't paying for it, but they would go along with the plausible deniability themselves as well.

"Two bodies," her heads said together, for emphasis because even if she didn't like the sound it was a good way to do that, then pulled apart. Then Flamescale sighed and reworked her gear to properly fit on two individually instead of one trying to have all for both on one. 319 made silenced pistols and light laser rifles, the former if she got close to the lizard, the latter being a stronger single hit than a plasma weapon, but with the downside of draining the battery far faster. One of her Girant sniper rifles would be better, but it was very unlikely that she would take the time for the target to be out in the open where she could actually fit one, and that was a concern even without being able to liquefy.

Flamescale's first body went through the Rift, and that gave a familiar "mission in progress" message to the AR of the body that had not gone through yet. The other side featured a large spaceport complex, the kind that had a lot of travel and was mostly shops. Then the first body through spotted a familiar face, another Void Entity clad in rather expensive custom armor with a hunk of metal on the end of a stick for a hammer latched to the back standing in the alley between a number of structures and looking towards the landing pads.

"Sledge, well I know you probably aren't going to do something I won't like," Flamescale said with the first body, while she had her second prepare for the perfect moment to join the first.

"Ah, Flamescale, you... no longer have scales," Sledge the pangolin shaped player declared. Under the armor he had a biological set of scales over his body that could move around like scale mail, a trait of an actual nearly extinct mammal if Helen remembered right. His tail was rather large, but the sealed power armor he got from somewhere was fitted to cover it and the rest of him. "I know you have said you wished to alter yourself like this, but I had thought like many others you would find it unpleasant in practice."

"Is it really that 'unpleasant' for other people?" she asked half insulted by the very idea. Flamescale moved her first body in front of him to get closer, but mostly to take Sledge's eyes off her Void Rift to get her second body behind him.

"Somehow I expected that answer from you," Sledge sighed and waved his tail from side to side. "The only thing I have seen regarded worse is the Dual Form skill, and it is difficult enough to find one of those, let alone get the requirements to use one."

"Dual Form is worse?" she had her other body ask from behind him, and watched with a slight opening of both mouths as he slowly turned to face her second body.

"Of course there are two of you now." Sledge sighed again. "You are by far the most worrying Void Entity I have met. Please, tell me, will you stop at two, or try and find a Multiform branch on your next Skill Tree?"

"It can be found as a one-off skill?" she questioned with the second body. "I have the branch already," she clarified with the first.

"You're going to do that all the time, aren't you?" Sledge asked, and she laughed at how it was very likely that everyone was going to ask her that at first.

"You know," "Yellow-Glow actually asked me that same thing," Flamescale informed him. "I don't know if I can stop myself," she then said dully with both bodies.

"Both voices at once is worse," the pangolin Void Entity grumbled. "Yes it can appear outside of a Skill Tree, and the answer to how such a typically high requirement skill can be a one-off is that you can use it with a slime base form. I have seen one of the guide-makers call a Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree they acquired 'the worst and rarest ST I own' due to being just Liquid Mobility and Multiform for practical branches."

Flamescale hissed twice over at that idea, as she probably would have been perfectly fine with just those two options. "Ugh, that's a terrible opinion," "Let's change the subject," "What is your objective here?"

"I suppose business should be handled first, especially with my goal," Sledge agreed to that change in topic. "A mission from the local pirate security force, they have tracked Rhizocephala encounters to this spaceport. I am to locate any hidden nests and destroy them."

"More Rhizo," Flamescale commented thoughtfully. "I have an assassination actually," "A 319A who is apparently doing something 'improper'."

"I have noticed a change in the worlds, locals more bold to seek out the Ancient's works now that the main threat is gone from most of the worlds," Sledge said, and the way he said it reminded Flamescale why the experienced Void Entity wasn't more highly regarded by other players. He was a 'roleplayer', always acting as if these worlds were real and speaking that way as well. It wasn't unheard of in Void Strike, but Sledge never broke character, just deflected to something that sounded realistic for his role. "If your target is the source of my target then I cannot promise I won't ruin your standing by removing more of their staff."

"If my target has been growing Rhizocephala then he hasn't been doing it alone," she countered. "I know the threat of that too, and I'm not going to just let the real workers on that sort of project go." The Girant might have gotten something out of the base she infected to death, but she didn't have the knowledge of anything worth destroying there or the skill to check and clear the databases herself at the time. The staff had been very much gone when she was done, and she had not known the Rhizo were anything other than an unrelated hazard until after the fact. "I can handle the security systems for you if you handle the Rhizo."

"Do you have a comm unit to talk with me this time?" Sledge pointed out, and started to reach into a pouch on his armor. "We do not know your target is also mine yet." Flamescale blinked two sets of eyes at him, and then huffed at the dig towards her typical gear loadout. "I am used to that reaction, but you are one of the worst on that front. I'd say you need a cybernetic comm unit, but it appears that is probably not an option for you anymore."

"I actually checked, and I can't install them with Liquid Body," Flamescale admitted and took the small device. "Not that I was that fond of cybernetics before, but I did have a few I used to use a lot. I'm going to have to rework some things I didn't really think of with this new thing, but it is working so far." Which made her consider how being able to use the contagion side to take over targets was actually a way around some of the hacking downsides she now was thinking of. "And you can do a lot with just a security cracker."

"Have you used one as a comm unit?" Sledge questioned smartly, although the answer was 'yes'. It wasn't easy, and wasn't worth it, but she could in an emergency. "I will continue to investigate the spaceport until I hear from you. It is set to my current channel already."

Flamescale nodded twice over and then moved down two different alleys to inspect the local 319 facility. It wasn't prefabricated, instead being a proper one story bunker entrance that possibly had the rest of the spaceport built around it from the age. Which due to how the 319 weren't actually that old of a group in most instances said this was either an older facility taken over by the mercenary group, or an instance where they had been along much longer. Either way it appeared to have a good sized ventilation system, although not quite as large as the Slink tunnels. Closer in size from what she could see to the system she used in the arcology, and while it would be a bit of a pain she could get the laser rifles into those.

Her first body was able to find a clear spot between local crowds to reach the building first, and from there was able to get up to the roof much more quickly than normal. It appeared that Liquid Climb allowed her body to move faster up walls even in a mostly solid form. From there Flamescale was able to get inside of the ventilation system simply enough by melting, and start to map out the bunker. Quickly running into the issue of corners that took a while to maneuver the rifle that body had through.

Her second body was able to find a much larger side vent near the back of the bunker. This was better guarded, but also large enough to get down without being able to melt into a liquid. "Found a vent you can get down," she reported to Sledge with a deep frown at the smell from that vent. "I can smell something I've been finding on Rhizo lately. Although it was also where I got my Fluid Pestilence."

"Is it recently accessed?" Sledge questioned while she checked for that with her second body and her first found a security room.

"Sensors are disabled," her second body reported with a frown at a patch of green infected residue. "And there are crab claw marks. If they aren't growing them on purpose then they are overlooking an infestation here."

"A good enough start, I'm on my way. Keep me informed of any movements," the other player replied solemnly.

The security room was occupied, two bat-like 319B that she did not want to eliminate without a solid distraction, but it was another source of knowledge based on what was visible from the vent. For instance, despite Flamescale's expectations, the entire facility seemed to be monitored from this upper security center if the complaints of the two uplifted cyborgs were accurate.

"What is maintenance doing with main ventilation's cameras?" one of the bats chirped at the other. "It's been months and we still can't see them, I want to know where that damn smell is coming from."

"I can smell lava fruit now," the other commented. "Maybe they are trying to pump fragrance into the vents instead of just fixing stuff."

The discussion and a lack of ability to easily deal with the two of them actually made her want the contagion skills back, which was a bit of a surprise. "I think I got lucky with what I smell like," her second body told Sledge as he arrived at the vent.

"You mean being a lava fruit slime is not a joke about your tastes?" the armored pangolin questioned. "I still recall you taking all of my attempt at lava fruit jam." Technically there was nothing stopping you from using mundane methods to make things rather than crafting menus that didn't exist, and trying to cook food wasn't an uncommon side activity to pass time.

"It was pretty good," she countered as he looked over the vent and her first body kept an eye on the visible monitors in the security room. Flamescale decided to keep her first body there until they tripped an alarm.

"It tasted like wax and sulfur," Sledge countered. "Everyone else who tried it said it was worse than toxic waste." He shrugged. "Although you have admitted to be using Fluid Pestilence yourself, so I suppose it is your preferred toxic waste." He then turned his armored head down at the opening. "Although it did still smell better than this. It is not a normal smell for Rhizocephala, but I have encountered it on my last few extermination missions against them."

"We have warning of another season coming soon," her second body noted with unease. "I wouldn't think it would be another issue with the Rhizo, but this is too many times to be coincidence."

"I doubt this is merely the crabs," he agreed and started down. "While I don't understand how seasons come to be I know their reality. Let's see what answers we can find here. Follow me and keep your weapons ready." Her second body started to flow down the wall in a very controlled way as he took the main ladder, and her first body got ready to deal with the security room when they needed it.

Then her target walked into the security center, the lizard 319A looking at the two bats and giving a silent order to them. Their eyes went glassy, and they seemed to almost stumble out of the room. Flamescale very awkwardly got her laser rifle ready. Then the target physically opened the main console to reactivate the other cameras. "We might have a problem in a second," she informed Sledge as both him and her second body appeared on a formerly blank monitor, with another now showing a full nest of Rhizocephala.

There was a moment before her target fully recognized that one of the cameras had a pair of Void Entities entering just as he started to check on his horrible plan. Then he slumped to the ground as her first body's laser rifle burned out his health. A target eliminated alert appeared, but she mostly ignored that to seal off the security room and start to take over the systems as best as she could with one of the two now reformed nanotech crackers she had brought.

"Bottom level, inside of an unfinished expansion. Looks like there are at least a dozen strangely docile minor Rhizo," Flamescale said to Sledge with her second body. Generally you could judge the threat of a Rhizo by how far down the bio-weapon Skill Tree branches they were. The strongest were dangerous enough that you did not want to take even just one on alone without a well developed Skill Tree. "I'm grabbing the security logs, and then I'm going to see if I can find his research data." She also was vaguely considering digesting the target's body to try and extract his cybernetics for analysis.

"Docile. More than a dozen and none are fighting each other?" Sledge said as he overrode the door in question on his own, and started to attack the creatures. "I can handle these quickly, start looking for that data and I will catch up."

"You forgot I'm in two places didn't you?" Flamescale's second body questioned as she spat a glob of toxic material for the first time at a few of them. "I'm checking what data is where in the security room right now, and I think the data is localized to a control area further in. Access requirements are really tight, looks like only a few people are able to get in. Do you want a list?"

"I believe I do, and a copy of the data to investigate myself," Sledge agreed as he casually smashed all of the health out of a Rhizo with just his tail. A reminder of what she needed to get back to by increasing the levels of her skills. "Yellow-Glow is formidable on that front, but perhaps a bit too open with his information at times. Easy objectives and extra resources tempt many Void Entities to rather dark actions."

Flamescale didn't comment, it was a fair criticism if you weren't aware of how many little details they left out, and you didn't just mention stuff you weren't saying to people you only somewhat know. Instead she actually did find out what a 319A tasted like with her first body, made sure to use her other body to open up the secured area and get started on copying that data. "Do you know how to get data out of some cybernetics?" she questioned as she succeed in getting a few out successfully.

"Do I want to know how you can extract 319 cybernetics?" Sledge asked cautiously. "I cannot, because they are kind of hard to get out of the body without outright dissolving them." He paused mid combat. "I think I just realized how you extracted the cybernetics."

"For the record, I prefer your jam to this," she huffed, and started to get ready to get out. That involved working out how to wipe the video from several cameras, including the disabled cameras. "They don't taste bad, but just knowing that is really not something I want to be known for."

"You have chosen a strange Skill Tree if you aren't doing much worse than merely eating your foes," he said as he finished off the last of the Rhizocephala. "I will try not to judge you for this, but on reflection I find it more comfortable than you genuinely enjoying that jam."

"What do you think about looking like you just happened to find this, and my target escaping somehow?" she questioned as her first body started to flow back up out of the ventilation system. It was much easier than she even expected, if notably slower than going downwards. Her second body passed over some data chips filled with the data.

"Give me some names, and then you can get out quietly. I know very well how it is best to avoid problems with starting a new Skill Tree, and I want to have some words with the locals anyway," Sledge agreed with a shrug as he took the items. "If most are not involved here it would be better to have a proper investigation."

"I'll let you know if I find out anything else from the cybernetics too," Flamescale offered as she started to make her way back up the shaft. From there it was just a matter of waiting for both bodies to make it back into the original alley without being spotted. Meeting up with her two bodies revealed that the appearance of loose cybernetics inside her body was a bit more uneasy to see from the outside, but she wanted to get back to her base before she tried to take them out of her body.

This time she again went back one body at a time, and again found the "mission in progress" message. Which was an interesting outcome, as it meant she could hold a mission rift open in a way without holding off on completing objectives. Flamescale still didn't need or want to stick around, so she brought her other body in and saw to her surprise a higher five points towards her ST, although there was nothing else worthwhile.

She took a moment to get the replay to Yellow-Glow along with copies of the data collected, and then put the cybernetics into a storage she set aside for important items. Flamescale would hand those off the next time she could get them to Yellow-Glow to see what he could do with them. The rest of her gear was also quickly put away, and her bodies collected into a single body, as she considered what to do with the new points.

"I can get the Hidden Contagion skill back, but it wasn't great having to try and infect more on my own," she admitted. "I think I should get at least the points for Hidden Spread first." That would cost a total of six points while she kept her current skills, which was important to her. "Combat missions are going to be less stress, and if there are more Rhizo around again I could find a few extermination jobs."

Flamescale looked at the Fire Toxin branch. The base skill was an elemental conversion skill, fairly common as a way to turn one element's damage and effects into another, in her case Fire Conversion turned Toxin into Fire. Which was something she liked better than Toxin, it was part of her name and the entire branch also matched almost one to one with the basic branch of another Skill Tree she used a lot before. The Flame Elementalist Skill Tree she had filled out started with a basic branch that was nearly identical, but it also had two other branches to build on that capacity and gave far more options on how to use Fire damage.

So she selected Fire Conversion for just a single point, and felt the change immediately. Her body didn't visually change very much, still made of bubble filled red material of her desired shade although now with a touch of a glow that she could actually turn down, but the rest of the room was altered far more. The residue and edges of the pools shifted from sticky and slightly mossy to a mixture of dried red powders at the edges of now slightly glowing red goo splotches and pools, and the areas next to those glowing bits of goo now looked slightly to very melted to reach their current state. A heat shimmer overtook the entire base, and Flamescale had to pause in wonder at the results.

Her Void Base had gone from a red mess of organic looking goo to something like a volcanic pit, with the splatters warm but not too hot still molten material. "Oh," Flamescale said and laughed at the sight. "Oh wow. Okay, alright. This is staying. I, I can live with this forever," she admitted with another laugh. "I actually like this enough that I can put up with it for eternity."

---

[Author's Note]
Here we have another character to introduce, some more initial dual body trials, and hopefully some clarifications on things brought up in the thread.
I also want to note that a minor wording change has been made to Chapter 4, to slightly expand on the description of the infection process to make some details clearer.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 8 - Feel the Heat ---

"Flamescale... Ah, decided to make it so you are 'flame' literally now that you aren't the 'scale' part anymore," Yellow-Glow interrupted Flamescale's current activity. Which would probably be best described as playing around with the base building options to remake it from a generic bare bones bunker and into a fire monster's base built into a volcano's core. "Will I need to worry about melting when I come over now?"

"I finally have build options that look nice. Fire Conversion has been added to my list of skills that are not coming off this Skill Tree," she declared strongly instead of answering the not really serious question, and split in two so she could keep working while she properly talked with her friend.

"So is the two body thing going to stick around then too?" Yellow-Glow asked dully, and she looked over to see he now featured a collection of mismatched yellow lights for a face.

"Honestly, I'm probably going to get more," Flamescale admitted with a bit of unease at how he said that. "It, it is nice to be like this, and two places at once helps a whole lot."

"Helen, I needed to use advanced editing tools to make any sense of your latest replay files. Being in two places at once like this may seem natural to you, but it did something to the viewpoint that I can barely handle just watching," Yellow-Glow specified more clearly. "I'm going to guess you can't do anything about that easily yourself, but I will need to find a solution. Apparently one that will need to deal with even more bodies at once."

"Oh, right, that," Flamescale admitted with a consideration of how things tended to overlap a lot when she was split. Like how the menus didn't seem to entirely like this current plan of using them and talking to Yellow-Glow at the same time. "I didn't think that it would work out that badly. Were you able to get anything out of them?"

"I said it needed editing tools, not that I couldn't use them at all," her friend clarified and some of his eyes flashed on and off. "And your notes are on point, there is more activity related to the Ancient ruins, and they seem to be a source of the same infection material that creates the Fluid Pestilence ST. There has been a large increase in explorations of Ancient ruins since the third season, but now actual progress on the devices found there is starting."

"How bad is letting more of that gunk out of the bunker?" Flamescale asked with a touch of unease. "I've got some other stuff for you too if you can do something with 319A cybernetics."

"Please tell me you don't have a body in your base again," Yellow-Glow sighed, and reminded her of why they didn't typically try for those. "I don't care if it means you actually started eating your enemies, please tell me you don't want me to try and pull apart an actual corpse again."

"I don't remember being the one to say we should grab a 319 to pull apart for the cybernetics," she countered with a clear memory of the early days of the first season. Back before the game really felt too accurate.

"I didn't realize it would be an actual corpse of someone," Yellow-Glow argued strongly. "A real body of a per-"

"Void Strike is really exceptional, isn't it," Flamescale interrupted that rant before it could go somewhere she was trying to avoid after having two missions in a row where she had eaten a local. "The question isn't getting them out of the body, that's been kind of absorbed, it is seeing if they are intact enough to do anything with, again because of how I kind of absorbed the body they were in."

"To be fair, you have the rare Contagion Reformation branch, and that is also effectively absorbing an infected to rebuild your own body," Yellow-Glow possibly attempted to reassure her. "I will be over to check, but before that I do have more information on what I did get out of the data and replays you sent. I believe that the infected residue is actually part of the way the Ancients controlled the Rhizocephala." He then invited her to a mission. "I have a combat mission that I want to handle with a ST that isn't as combat focused as needed."

"Clearing Rhizo from an Ancient ruin?" Flamescale questioned, and had her other body start going through her gear. "I take it you want to try and do something with the ruin itself?"

"Season three ended with Mass Instance missions to the major ruin controlled by the Rhizocephala pirate kings," Yellow-Glow reminded her with emphasis on 'Mass Instance'. "We did not have enough allies to allow me to inspect those ruins, and the repeat missions are much the same. Even my attempts to get close to the ruin otherwise have been met with the locals being protective over who can investigate." He sent her the mission details. "This is a Macrophylla attempt to investigate a relatively minor site they do not want one of the more combatant factions to find out about. I suspect they are expecting a Void Entity that is more typical to have taken the job."

"Someone who just clears the Rhizo and leaves immediately," Flamescale agreed and decided to put some more points into the Fire Toxin branch. One each into the Fire Attack and the Fire Power boosts, and two to get the first level of a Fire elemental area of effect attack called Heat Wave that required the first level of Fire Attack. Fire Attack itself added Fire damage and effect chance to every attack she made, including a bonus to the damage of any weapons she used, while the Power boost made the Fire damage over time status effect stronger.

It honestly was the same as the base branch of her well used Flame Elementalist Skill Tree, but with the big downside that she only had that Heat Wave attack, and didn't get a default immunity to fire herself. Her older ST also had the Fire Evoker branch to give a large number of attack skills and a boost to how often she could use them, and also an Elemental Illusions branch that let her disguise herself and trick opponents more easily.

"I'm guessing this is us teaming up on a simple mission and staying there a bit too long?" she questioned as she lamented not being able to just move one of those branches over to her current ST, particularly the illusion skills. Even if she had to swap it out that would be better than the Enhancement branch she probably wasn't going to even use until she had finished everything else.

"Our time limit is how long it takes for the Macrophylla to decide to check on the results," her friend confirmed. "Which unfortunately will not be long. Void Entities are commonly known to the locals at this point, there are enough of us and we take enough missions to have left behind an impact. Instances without any prior contact with us are becoming rarer."

"Harder to find," Flamescale countered with a thought to some of those she had managed to find before getting a Fluid Pestilence. "We need someone to summon us, and the locals who haven't heard of us before are less likely to try. Void energy doesn't build up on its own very often."

"No," Yellow-Glow said as if just realizing something. "No it does not. We will delay a moment longer, I need some specialized equipment."

"Open the rift when you're ready," Flamescale said in response and moved to get the gear she wanted on both bodies. Rhizo were typically better armored and more well equipped with their bio-weapons than the other locals, but the contract specified it was a minor group, probably nothing worse than Sledge had taken on in her last mission. Still something that required full sized Girant assault rifles, which the other locals would probably call handheld anti-armor weapons and were something she was a bit nervous about trying to use without being fully solid. A few high explosive grenades were another addition, one that typically were nicely improved by elemental bonuses.

The Void Rift pulsed and she once more emerged one body after another onto a forested world, to find Yellow-Glow currently as a biped with a number of what likely were scanning and analysis cybernetics modified for his entirely mechanical nature. The both of them made their way to the marked target quickly. It wasn't the best place to have a fire based Skill Tree equipped, but despite being plants as well the Leaf tended to be the least considerate to the natural plants of a world.

"I can smell it again," Flamescale pointed out as they neared the target. "Does it smell as bad to you as it does to me?"

"Flamescale, I am not trying to view the replays you send me that closely when you are already splitting in half for them," her friend complained. "However, it isn't really a foul smell. I am sure you have encountered it before without comment. However, I have been looking into the command interface for you as well. The smell around another Entity's infected residues being worse is noted to be common for those who use the Contagion branches. Apparently that is a notable issue with trying to work together with others using those branches."

The ruin itself was a familiar rough stone that seemed almost like coral, an indication that it was one of the Ancient bio-tech structures. So far she didn't know of any that had been found with whatever creature made the structures themselves intact, including the massive one-per-instance ruins that had held the pirate kings. The sound of conflict between Rhizo was also clear to hear from the outside, and the smell was far less than she had encountered in the 319 breeding experiment.

"The facility has four chambers around a large central area. I do not know which are sealed and which are not yet," Yellow-Glow advised. "Any sealed chambers are the priority to investigate, and the mission is clear that they need to be opened for clearing."

"How careful do I need to be with collateral damage?" Flamescale asked with her first body while the second started into the structure. The first chamber was mostly empty, only a pair of Rhizo so far. Those were quickly eliminated with a few enhanced rifle rounds each, but the room did contain a number of the large biological shell/egg things that would eventually open to reveal more Rhizo. These were notable because unlike in the breeding attempt these were clearly very close to opening, and as a result instead of just being casually crushed they each took a few shots.

"Try and avoid any in the core room, but I suspect anything that can still be accessed will be able to handle a few shots," her friend said, paused to look at her, and then sighed. "Although try and avoid the grenades unless you really need them. Did you get any fire attacks with your Skill Tree, or are we missing some offensive options there?"

"Heat Wave, the one that causes the whole area to get dangerously hot, but only a single level," she specified as her first body and his only one entered the first chamber. "The center is sealed and so are all of the side passages," she had her other body add.

"You are going to make me have to remember there is only one of you if you keep that up," Yellow-Glow specified, and nodded towards the passage to the center. "Lets begin here and then start going through the side passages from this first chamber."

Ancient or Rhizocephala controlled structures tended to have doors that simply did not work. Blasting charges and the various Rhizo bio-weapons were the main way you got through, but Flamescale stopped her friend before he could plant one. "These holes," she pointed out the large and nasty smelling tubes that were coated in a thin layer of infected residue. "Where do they go?"

"Typically into a network throughout the entire structure. If there were control mechanisms they have... long decayed into," Yellow-Glow started to explain and then seemed to realize what she had just figured out.

"They are always covered in the green goo, which can control the Rhizo," Flamescale noted and started to pass the gear from one body to another. "The actual mechanisms are probably gone, but if they lead to the other side I can at least check out what is behind the doors before we blow them." Then with one fully unequipped body she made the attempt, melting down and climbing into the very tight confines of the tubes.

"I suspect that it might be more simple actually," Yellow-Glow said as she made her way through the tubes that seemed to lead to the other side. "If the coral like parts need to be alive to open the door then it would also prevent the doors from being able to be opened at all."

The passage that did lead into the central room was actually short enough that not all of her body was into the wall before one of her eyes was able to get out again. The small tubes were fairly complicated and seemed to lead through the entire structure, but their original purpose was something they could only speculate on for the moment. The central chamber was larger, and yet at the same time entirely empty of Rhizo. It seemed to be dedicated to a single large device of some kind in the center that felt off in a strangely familiar way.

"There isn't anything near the door here, we should be alright to blast it open," she informed her friend. "Give me a bit to get all the way in." There wasn't any real risk yet, so with a brief blast that clearly alerted the still trapped Rhizo they both were able to inspect the device.

"This is not connected to the rest of the facility, and it is the first like it I have seen intact," Yellow-Glow pointed out. "Clear the rest quickly, we must be ready for any Macrophylla followup forces. I am certain this is their actual goal."

"Are we failing this mission?" Flamescale questioned, as even if you completed your objectives you could be failed if you made whoever was paying you too mad. In most cases it was simply a bad thing, but she personally felt there were times where it was better to fail the mission than to complete it properly.

"No, but if they arrive before I am done I will want you to be out front to meet them first, preferably with one of your bodies alongside me to keep me informed," he answered, and she started to re-arm her body that had gone through the wall.

Clearing out fast meant using both bodies on the three remaining chambers, and given the find in the center that was less important to check the other side of their doors first. The left chamber from the entrance contained a half dozen of the Rhizo, ready and firing a mixture of spines and acid that made up the lighter end of bio-weapons. It was a poor sign, as the acid weapons were area of effect that lingered a bit to make a better area denial to her current level of capability.

The good news was that she had enough defenses and was prepared enough for the reaction to avoid most of those attacks. One body made the Rhizo pause with heavy rifle fire, while the other got close and unleashed a Heat Wave that was moderately useful. It had a solid starting chance for the Fire status effect, even without any levels of the skill to boost that chance, and the damage over time was distracting to the Rhizo that were impacted. That allowed for both of her bodies to gun down the group, and then work to clear out the growth shells quickly.

A very needed quick clear, as the next door was nearly melted already, and the one after turned out to have always been open. A discovery that took half the health of one of her bodies and most of her ammo, but was done with plenty of time to get back to Yellow-Glow and take position at the enterance. "The rest of the place is trashed, the Rhizo were trying to make room for more of those things they use to grow more of them," she informed her friend.

"As is typical. There is damage to most Ancient sites from those creatures going feral, and the rest of the biological technology is easily consumed in that process," Yellow-Glow confirmed from a part of the central device he seemed to have disassembled. "I have not found a viable computer or data system, but I believe I have found the remains of one. It is a mixture of decayed fluid and crystal, and it was controlling a more worrying device. A teleporter system or a gateway of some kind."

"A way to find working Ancient technology?" Flamescale questioned with a dark look at the device.

"It would be a solid reason for a season," her friend joked dully and got up. "We're done here, I want to get out before they see me."

"Good idea," "I need to find the points for one of my healing options here before I go for higher end combat again," she admitted tiredly. "My one-off regeneration skills aren't great," "and I don't know if there are easy healing items for my kind of creature now."

---

[Author's Note]
A bit more progression and information this time, and showing off a set of skills that Flamescale held off on because she was already familiar with them.
I've also hit the point where I am not outpacing my minimum posting limit of once per two days. This was three days instead, because I apparently was just stalling in my other works due to lack of interest at the moment.
A part of me hopes that I can get back to those more easily now that I've had a bit of a break, but I also kind of want to at least finish the first arc of this one first.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 9 - Subversion ---

Flamescale looked at herself with interest. A number of easy Rhizo extermination missions using increasing amounts of Fire branch levels had earned her some additional points. Enough to get a new skill that was buried rather deep down the Hidden Infection branch, and would hopefully let her start to do her preferred mission types and other activities again. The locals just were not reacting to her visually fluid body very well in her few attempts to interact with them, and it was making her peaceful visits to worlds a bigger trial than normal, let alone when she wanted to scope out a target before a longer mission.

"So, that's what I actually look like with scales," she said with her still liquid looking body about the other one. That other body was now back to looking mostly like it had before she got Fluid Pestilence, a viper-like snake with the size to eat a person with shoulders and arms at the top of a long scaled body with a long scaled neck as well. The main change was that the body still had entirely orange glowing eyes, but that didn't seem anywhere near as out of place as some Void Entities she had encountered in civilian areas.

"It is a good way to tell that I at least like the goo version better," she said with her scaled body. "And a way to tell them apart if this plan works out."

"One goo and one scaled only works for two bodies though, and that does limit how much we can do with twin stuff," she admitted to herself with the other, and changed it to scales as well.

"But doing the twin bit does mean actually acting like twins," she alternated again in an attempt to play with that way of speaking.

"Yeah, that is probably a bit too far," she sighed with the other. "I'm just going to look for other places to spend the extra points." She still had more that she could shift off the Fire Toxin branch now that she was hoping to get away from pure combat for a bit.

Splash was still a questionable option in her Liquid Mobility branch, but in theory it would allow for faster melting in an emergency. Without the improved damage another defensive option sounded fine to at least try. It might break her cover if it happened to her body while wearing a mimic of her old scales, but any attack strong enough for that would also reveal that the scales were merely surface level.

"The problem was trying to infect more without being spotted by anyone who isn't infected," Flamescale noted, and got two more points out of other skills to get Hidden Spread. That was the Hidden Infection branch counterpart to the Rapid Spread skill she had used before, with the main difference between the two being that Hidden Spread would not cause the infected to take on a visual change if they used one of her attack skills to try and infect someone.

Only, she noticed immediately that putting the two points into Hidden Spread's first level caused her Rapid Spread to register a single level as well. With consideration she removed the skill, and then put into Rapid Spread while having Hidden Infection for the first time, and the first level of Hidden Spread then appeared to only cost one point. Then she switched back to just Hidden Spread to get the free level of Rapid.

"These branches don't have to go together," she reminded herself with a pair of frowns. "But if you have both they count as part of each other." With a thought she opened the ingame web browser.

Void Strike originally said it would connect to the regular internet ingame like many other Synch-Tech games, but when it came to the release that was just one of many features that didn't quite end up making it and was easily overshadowed by the end-synch button not working. Instead there was multiple ingame internet systems, one for just talking with and interacting with other Void Entities in forums or with text and video blogs, and then an endless number of local internets that were each far too detailed but could only be accessed inside an instance.

Yellow-Glow had the free time to maintain a solid set of detailed custom guide sites for both the human internet and Void internet, but while those were quite complete she wanted a more typical viewpoint to check for this small detail. So she went to the main forum and went down past the massive "complaints about constant synch" containment thread pinned at the top for the main mind control topic pinned just a couple of threads below that was still hundreds of pages long.

Inside Flamescale was able to search for Hidden Spread, which did lead to someone asking about that interaction and being told that it was only for the first point of either. They even mentioned how it was different from the hidden bio-weapons skills that were level by level effects. It was fairly dismissive, apparently the hidden side of things was too slow for most of the thread, but it did note that if you had both it was a solid way to start off a new Skill Tree.

"I'm immediately reminded why I don't go to the main forum," she complained. "I'm just going to look for a mission." Flamescale melted her scales off both bodies, and sent one over to her gear storage while the other went to her mission console.

The initial results weren't promising once she re-shifted her filters away from low threat combat missions. It varied quite a bit on what was shown at any given time, and currently most of the stuff making it through was marked as Open Instance to indicate there was likely another Void Entity showing up too. The best looking one was a 319 mission to raid a Macrophylla R&D lab, but reading between the lines it was fairly clearly a case of giving ruin locations and analysis to the high tech faction from a lower tech faction. Yellow-Glow was certain that living Ancient ruins would be the core of the next season, and Flamescale wanted to avoid that issue until after she knew how Hidden Spread actually worked out.

Further down was a better looking one, a mission by a cell of rebel Slinks to take out the power on a Girant research lab. The notes were clearer about this being to free some of their own being experimented on, which meant that the real goal was probably to get those Slinks out, or at least to stop the experiments. It still had hints of being Ancient related, as the possible rewards included a note on allowing the collection of any relics found in the lab as something the Slinks suggested to help pay for the mission. Ancient relics typically gave bio-tech one-off skills or even STs on recovery, and if any were in unusually good shape then Yellow-Glow might be able to do something with them.

Plasma Rifles, silenced pistols, military grade and expendable security crackers because Open Instance meant easy to lose gear, a pair of comm units to try and work with the Slink cell, and after a moment of consideration the four spike launcher bio-weapon skill. Which looked worse then Flamescale had previously thought with them as little 'ear' like structures on either side of her head, but anywhere else was harder for her to use, and a shift to scales showed her just how obvious it had always been too. Still, she didn't plan on trying to go in public too much with them.

Once equipped Flamescale moved both bodies through her Void Rift at about the same time, two scaled snake forms that emerged looping over each other into a small storage area of some Slink tunnels. An occupied storage room, as once again she was getting an in person contact for starting the mission.

"Twin devourers," the older Slink said reverently. "Please, great ones, we ask that you break and consume our enemies. The Girant have been taking us to experiment upon again, and we must show them our displeasure."

"Elder," another younger Slink cautioned. "I am sorry, great ones, but we require something more specific. The beasts have decided that their tests cannot be interrupted by improper maintenance, so they have purchased a fusion generator from the mercenaries."

"A 319 fusion generator?" her first body questioned seriously, as that was not normal for the Girant. "Who do they have keeping that working?" The Slinks were better than they often seemed at maintenance, but fusion generators were hard enough to keep going when they weren't the 319's miniature models.

"Hmph, they complain about minor tasks," the older Slink criticized.

"The device has been specially made to be easily repaired, an expense the Girant cannot truly replace if destroyed entirely, but that requires more than we have been able to sneak inside," the younger clarified. "I fear that our cell has been too much of a hazard for the Girant, and they are going to resort to extreme measures to remove us."

"That is why we have called upon you," the older grandly stated. "Our death retribution. Devourers summoned to destroy as we die."

Flamescale did not like this sort of wording, but it was far from the first time she was regarded as a mythical demon by the Slinks. It wasn't even the first time she entered a mission where it was clear the Slinks who summoned her looked like they expected to be eaten by her before she did the job.

"I promise that the lab will not be functional by the next morning," she declared with both bodies as she considered how exactly she wanted to completely destroy this site.

The hard part was that while she probably would not fail this mission if the local cell was destroyed by another Void Entity, that didn't mean that another Void Entity would not get a mission to destroy the cell with the side goal of stopping her own actions. It was in fact very likely that the exact objective she was up against was 'protect the fusion generator from the Slink cell'.

"I will go with you to show you how to enter the lab," the younger said after a moment. "We will need to be careful, I have some permission to be there, and they have noticed that many Slinks have fled the site for the moment. I don't think the Slinks outside of our cell will survive either, great ones."

"Are you truly willing to give up your life for this?" she had her second body ask, with an idea she didn't really like but probably could use. Then melted her bodies into infected material. "I can offer you a way to aid directly in the destruction, but I ask that you ensure all affected do not survive. Girant or otherwise. No remains left behind."

"They have infringed on your domain," the older Slink said thoughtfully. "That is what they desire from us, and if the young one cannot bear turning it against them I can."

"I will be noticed if I look like you," the younger said, but it sounded like agreement. "Elder, go ensure that it is known to burn all who are infected. We do not have time for discussion."

Flamescale returned both bodies to looking like they were scaled as the older Slink ran off unhappily. "It can," "and will," "be hidden," she said alternating between her two bodies. "On you and the victims."

She then ran a claw across their body coated with residue. It was strange to feel the control fall into place on a willing target, and uneasy learning that he truly feared this outcome more than simply being eaten. It was strange to see no changes to his body on the outside, but at this level of Hidden Infection there was a bit of a glow to his eyes and more heat from his body.

With a pair of orders she had him change to show his infection, which had changed with her Fire Conversion, and then back again. Instead of organic looking changes there were now cracks and pools of glowing material, and the familiar formation of spine launchers on the sides of his head. As he shifted back into a hidden form she had him keep them ready to fire for just a moment longer, and found herself minorly annoyed with how they could fold away ready and hidden from view. That was typically a thing that required a sub-branch of organic weapons to pull off.

"This, is not what I expected," the Slink said with clear confusion, her orders doing nothing to affect what he wanted to say. "I, I feel powerful, and like... like an extension of you, great one." He no longer thought of her as two different creatures, which was an odd side effect. "But... But I fear what I could become without you. Make it an order," he requested, and she knew what he meant. With a simple action she made a standing goal to destroy themselves when they were out of contact with her. To make sure her plague did not linger, because neither of them wanted that.

"I hate being like this," she confessed to the Slink that would not live to tell anyone. "I hate being a demon from outside reality that is only summoned to kill and destroy. But you have a cause I can support, so I will deal with doing what I am doing to you to people, more actual people who will not be willing, because I know that my fellow Void Entities are not as thoughtful. That they do not recognize what you are." Flamescale, Helen, did not admit the truth she could see very often, and tried to keep it out of her mind as much as possible.

The Slink did their equivalent of a frown at her. "You are offering me a way to spend my already doomed life to save my people," he argued truthfully. "I was already a sacrifice, devourer or bomb it is the same in the end."

"Bomb is still on the table," she cautioned him aloud. "Start with security forces, we need the scanners and cameras under our control."

"They will need to be fixed for that," the Slink smugly declared. "Which some might be," he admitted and she already knew. Yellow-Glow had not found good informaiton on just what you could learn from intelligent controlled locals. Her friend felt it might be a taboo subject to discuss, and given how badly she was taking it already that seemed plausible, but it was clear that 'everything' was a possibility. Surface thoughts were easy, but deeper knowledge took time and focus. A deliberate action to read the minds of the infected.

It gave Flamescale the location of her backup plan, a nearby repair yard where a combat shuttle was located. She sent one body towards that target while the other followed along behind the infected Slink. With any luck she would find a member of its crew separated from the rest to make an attempt to take it over. It was distant enough that there would be a delay before she could accomplish it, but that was planned.

The average Void Entity tried for a mission time of twenty minutes to two hours, depending on how far they had to travel and how complex the objective. Flamescale did fewer longer missions instead, with a short mission for her being one hour, and a long one going to five or more hours. An average player also did more missions in a day, so they were even less happy with longer missions. If she was lucky then anyone with an opposing objective would leave before she needed to resort to the shuttle, assuming she couldn't destroy the generator before then. Best case she could just deny the Girant a shuttle crew.

The target lab was built with even more isolation areas than the one she had visited for Fluid Pestilence. With two sealed areas that apparently could not both be opened at the same time in a strangely large sort of airlock setup. The middle area was still a research space, and it seemed that the lowermost area was actually a maintenance area that the Girant were trying to fix things themselves. Given they weren't typically able to manipulate the tools made for Slinks that seemed unlikely to be going well.

Unfortunately, the outer set of doors was the one currently closed. Flamescale went over the ventilation information the Slink had on how they were breathing, and the result was good but fairly annoying. The Slink tunnels did connect, which felt like a mistake with regards to keeping out chemical weapons but supposedly there was a filter system that in theory also stopped her current alternative route. She needed to test it anyway, and at worst she would try and eat whatever the filters were made from. Her body was not made out of actual lava, but according to some guides the Control Digestion skill was apparently giving her some non-standard options from whatever she was made out of, even for a Liquid Body. At least according to the guide where she discovered that apparently Control Digestion was a skill you earned from accidentally eating something.

She didn't have the same awareness of the Slink as she did of her other body, which was still on the way to the repair yard, but she could tell that he was near his first target from his surface thoughts as she found the connection point for the vents and quickly stashed most of her gear there. Then she melted down her infiltration body to flow through quite a few bars that seemed to be there to try and stop this exact method of getting into the lower areas.

The first Girant taken over by her infected was in charge of the upper security center, which was not the main center but did feature the outer door controls. The Girant's mind revealed that they needed the inner area to close the inner door to be able to open the outer, but at the same time she now had those inside deeper trapped until someone tried to take over for her newly infected victim. Who then started to call in other guards one by one for a somewhat standard check, one that randomly occurred during this lockdown period, and Flamescale had in fact arrived just as they were opening the lowermost door to do a repair cycle.

It was actually more unlucky than it sounded, the inner area had communications to the outside world that were controlled by the base commander instead, and the base commander apparently did not like to be bothered during this time and would possibly raise the alarm if interrupted to be taken over. A commander who would probably notice the subversion attempt if it went on long enough, and equally there was the issue that there was not in fact ventilation working on the lowermost area, as the vents had been damaged by a repair attempt to the point that they could not actually leave anyone inside for a full cycle.

"Welded the filter system shut?" she questioned with the still solid body as that one finally reached the yard, and flinched at the sight of the nearly destroyed shuttle. "What kind of idiot did they have to weld a metal plate where the filter should go?" She couldn't even try and take over said idiot to get their perspective, because said idiot had suffocated due to their foolish decision back when the Girant could go into that segment during a closed cycle.

The filters that should have stopped her molten body from getting all the way down were missing, but not without reason. They of course needed an access point to replace, and the sight of an unhappy Girant trying to compare a properly sized filter to a raw filter sheet that probably could be cut into four of the right size was an unpleasant surprise for both of them. A glob of heated goo took over the Girant before it burned them too badly, which was part of a strange situation where her infectious skills didn't hurt victims when they became infected. It did cause some minor burns and spread a fair amount of residue over the room, but allowed her to continue downward without uncontrolled detection.

It also added another vector she had not expected, one that turned out interesting as she had said Girant pick up a half empty bottle of fragrance their coworker had suggested putting in the vent that just happened to be Lava Fruit scented to storm out as if it had spilled on him somehow. A common scent for the brand, even if it was only the scent that the majority of the base didn't hate instead of one that everyone liked. Which was something the guides for what you should use if your infected materials said about it for most instances with the fruit as a known plant, although those guides had assumed you were looking for something to cover your smell instead of looking up the specific thoughts on what you smelled like.

So Flamescale had half the mid level maintenance crew infected and in a fake argument before she reached the nearest working vent to her target. Along with a good chunk of the surface guards, and her other body was in position to try and take the shuttle's crew.

Then the base commander stormed into the upper security center with news that a Void Entity was on the loose killing anyone nearby and going after seemingly everyone. Which was a terrible sign, even if Flamescale had the head of upper security take the chance to put some infectious spines into the commander, as it meant this was somebody doing things the blunt and careless way. Apparently an undead zombie build from how the bodies were getting back up again, which meant kill some locals for free minions and then send them after the actual target.

It was a callous way to start a mission, and typically had penalties in and out of mission, but it was faster if you only needed to kill targets. Which was not something that a Void Entity was likely to get seriously wrong, so Flamescale was most likely the one to judge the situation incorrectly. In which case the Girant were probably dumb enough to summon someone for a culling. A fairly rare action taken when too many too obvious sabotage events happened in one Slink community.

Flamescale quickly abandoned the shuttle plan, the crew already scrambling to the shuttle as it became clear that the local command elements weren't sure anymore if the obvious Void Entity was on their side. The body she had sent to that location immediately began to move back towards her Void Rift. She was also able to hear her infected transmit to those Girant at her target a lockdown order that hopefully would allow her to take over the entire site, as it just happened to include a cut off outside communications calls. Which to her amusement was technically intended to stop a Void Entity from being able to identify the site with an infiltration.

Her infiltration body was able to find a space to reform into a more solid form, and immediately realized just how terrible this whole place was as she found it in the experimental subject containment area. There were a number of Slinks clearly infected with the original strain, some of which actually seemed partially converted into living goo as well, and even a single Girant in the cages that seemed to have lost their mind as well to the infection. There were quite a few high end explosive charges present as well, and the base commander's mind revealed that in the worst case this entire site was set to clean out an infection outbreak at their command, a rather final command at that.

Which was technically a very easy way to complete her objective and clear out her infected all at once, but the data from this site now was far more important to recover with the knowledge that the infection could melt without killing in its basic form. Possibly even some of the artifacts on site if she could get them out to her Void Rift. So she listened to the frightened requests for help as the contained staff of the lower levels were taken over and realized that the surface part of the facility had been taken over first. Then used the now controlled staff of the entire site to start grabbing the data and containment units and putting what could fit together into a good sized crate she could carry out to her Rift.

"Well now, what's your objective here then, snake dude?" a dark clothed and gaunt looking human shaped Void Entity questioned her currently scaled body that had been trying to get back from the repair yard. "I gotta take out the Slinks again, but you seem in a hurry." The other woman was quite clearly the sort who wasn't really paying attention while using the command interface to do everything.

"A mission given by the local Slinks," Flamescale had that body answer the necromancer as she had the infected pick up the pace. "You really wanted to take a culling mission?"

"Roleplayers. You do know you can make yourself look more like a girl, right?" the other Entity pointed out a bit harshly. "It's just a game, you don't need to take everything so seriously."

"I'm not sure what part of that was the most insulting part," Flamescale admitted bluntly, and judged how far the reports of undead were from the lab. "I've just about finished, so I'll just leave you to this mess you've gotten into." The data was just finished and she had a few of the more important artifacts, so her other body grabbed the crate and made for the Void Rift. "Unless you need help?"

"I've got a handle on keeping five places from being blown up while I kill some-" the other woman started, when the lab went up in a massive explosion that reduced Flamescale's infected count to zero. "Oh, you're an infiltration kind of roleplayer." Flamescale's infiltration body went through the portal an instant before the other Entity's Girant made shotgun took a chunk out of her scaled form. Enough of a chunk to actually trigger Splash and turn her into a fluid pool in front of that other player. "Water illusions too? Great, now I need to actually check the rest," the necromancer declared and ran off immediately.

Flamescale carefully recovered the gear she had with her now liquefied body, which reminded her that she had left the other half of her gear in a Slink tunnel that was now very nonexistent, and started back towards her Void Rift. There wasn't much she could do against this sort of threat, and with any luck the local Girant would take the brunt of the undead assault. Still, despite that rather annoying complication it was a good proof of how her contagion skills could be used closer to her own style.

---

[Author's Note]
Here we go, a bit more showing of what the Skill Tree can pull off, and a bit more information on what typical players of Void Strike are like.
One more chapter of arc 1 to go, and then I'm considering a brief break from this to get my fanfic projects back on track.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 10 - Infestation ---

Infectious Vapors was a skill Flamescale had been avoiding. It was indiscriminate compared to the others, and while Hidden Infection did allow her some control, the effects had a tendency to be added to various residues without a clear idea if that was also able to be controlled. However, she had to consider it going forward simply because it also was a vector that didn't need more obvious methods, and it also in theory worked well with her specific scent.

Infected Material on the other hand was one that she knew was only going to be useful when she was detected, and one of the past few infiltration missions with multiple bodies and contagion skills had shown that she was not entirely ready to make up for the time needed to infect targets at her current infection chance. Each of the three infection skills had ten levels, and while they started with a solid chance, in practice even residues' best starting chance of the three didn't get truly reliable until level five.

Infected Material was a construction skill, something that let you rework the battlefield around you mid-mission to your advantage. Mostly useful for pure combat as it was always a very obvious thing to do. In this case Flamescale unlocked new options by having other skills. The basic options were Infected Coating, which was just residue that didn't time out, and Infected Structure, which was solidified infected material for basic walls and other structural elements. Infectious Strikes gave the Infected Mass option as a small blob that acted as a glob spitting turret. Infected Pool gave a regenerative pool of infected material, but required the potent and expensive health regeneration passive skill of the Mass Infection branch, which also unlocked even stronger Dense Infection building materials.

Finally the Mass Infection branch's final skill, which required a level of every other skill on the branch, unlocked the Infected Hive. Which honestly was more of a feature of that final skill. Infected Creation made it so you could just outright create new infected creatures, which by default looked like you and could only get minimal visual modifications from your character's form. It also allowed you to convert regular infected into that sort of creature, and from what she and Yellow-Glow had discovered based on Sledge's information was actually the other skill that could have unlocked Dual Form in her Skill Tree. Those creatures received your entire skill set with some minor decreases from your raw stats, but required using the Hive structure in order to perform the reshape or creation action.

"There are rumors that they are going to add a method to keep creatures made that way," Yellow-Glow said as they went over the data from the past few infiltration missions. He had gotten rather busy with guide work again, and she had heard that Mark had a big medical stay again. "But there have been rumors about that as old as Void Strike."

"I'm not sure I want to turn locals into versions of myself just to keep me company here," Flamescale admitted a touch uncomfortable with the idea.

"I would personally enjoy the extra help, although my robotic conversion variant on such things isn't in a great skill tree," Yellow-Glow reminded her. "I am hopeful to get a better one eventually, but being that sort of hazard to biological life will just have to wait. You on the other hand have enough versions of yourself already without that method."

"Exactly, there is already two of me, and I have seven more to still get without that," Flamescale laughed back at that comment. "It sounds like the materials can be a good backup though, so I'm going to try it out. So, any developments on the wider situation?"

"It is going to be a short time before we have the next season," Yellow-Glow admitted with a sigh. "A month at most. I am not sure what the nature of this new Ancient threat will be. The best options are either actual remnants of the Ancients, or their creations aligned with a local faction. We won't know for sure until we get the release announcement. Keep an eye out for now, but I have too much information and not enough help at the moment."

"Still haven't found anyone trustworthy?" she asked seriously. Because this was a topic that mattered for the serious parts of this existence they rarely touched on, and not just the simple game mechanics they usually worked with other players to figure out. Exploring new missions, gear, and skills was one thing, but looking for the secrets to future content required acknowledging the truth of things to a degree.

"I am looking into Sledge again. He is definitely able to handle the secret parts of such research properly, but I do not believe he has the desire," her friend equally seriously admitted. "He is the best option at the moment, which while he isn't a bad option does say that the others are not even being considered."

"We need more people we can actually talk with," Flamescale admitted tiredly. "I won't keep you longer then, be safe, Yellow-Glow."

"Be safe, Flamescale," Yellow-Glow said and cut the line.

Those missions had not been that great for skill points. Her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree was only up to 44, which was enough to let her also grab Flame Absorb again as a healing skill. Without a way to use Fire elemental attacks against herself easily it wasn't a great healing option, and it did complicate cleanup of her infected by being transferred to them as well, but it was better than the minimal healing she had from one-off skills.

It was a problem Flamescale had for a long time, she didn't like doing the fast missions over and over, so she didn't earn points for her STs anywhere near as fast as other players. It was worse at the moment because she didn't have the easy ways to play she really wanted out of this ST. More bodies or more reliable infection both had a cost of more points, which meant that they didn't help until she already had the points for them.

The mission console had an interesting option right at the top. A request from the anti-pirate forces to infiltrate and extract data from a Macrophylla research facility. Which was the sort of notable thing that screamed "important things here" and attracted her attention immediately. The details were more clearly filled out than usual as well, and it noted there was a quantum communications dead drop, but a backup of capturing the local communications center to transmit the data that way as a backup.

"They are saying what the backup plan is?" Flamescale questioned aloud, and her second body leaned over so she could look at it twice over to make sure that she was seeing it right. "Where are they putting the Rift that they need to do that?" Usually missions only sent you backup options after you messed up, and even then typically with it being your job to figure out you needed a comm center to learn the details. If things were defined it usually meant whoever hired you had done something tricky when they made the contract.

She considered the situation outlined in the contract, and went through her bio-weapon one-off skills. Flamescale had a two missile tube bio-missile skill that she rarely used as those were even more obvious than the spine launchers, but were a solid extra damage option. There was also the one off version of the acid sprayers that she had a single version of, but that was mostly handled by her spit attack from the basic Infected skill so it was less valuable. A quick check revealed that the spit attack added both residue and vapors to its effect with those skills, and the missiles apparently ended up spraying out a mixture of those two as well at the cost of what turned out to be little to no improvement from Infectious Strikes.

Infected Strength was a general stat buff where she needed the first level to get Infected Material in the first place, so she had a bit more capability there now, but the extra firepower of a pair of bio-missiles seemed like it might end up more useful if things went wrong. As long as she stayed solid long enough to reload, which was a question actually, but it did give them to her infected as well, and they could actually hide the launchers. She put the two of them along her back, right between her shoulders one above the other like a pair of good sized spikes.

It wasn't a great setup, there was a reason she didn't even use the spines most of the time, let alone the much more noticeable missiles, but there was something up with this mission. She didn't want to leave it for someone else, even if it might be more than she could currently handle. "This is the hard part," Flamescale sighed and looked herself over again. "I knew it would be, but it is still hard getting what I want to be without stopping what I want to do."

Flamescale took the mission anyway, with a gear loadout focused on her still fairly new nanotech security crackers and some higher end plasma pistols. Unlike the light plasma rifles these were rare, with a much hotter end result that rivaled laser rifles in damage, at the cost of taking more battery and gas per shot. Experimental models that she couldn't replace very easily, but that would take out anything the Macrophylla had on the mission with a single shot, even without the massive boosts of a fully completed ST.

The Void Rift left her inside of the target, in a slightly disused storage room, and it was always a terrible sign when your contract had to have been made using mundane infiltration before you even arrived. With a cringe she inspected the vents out of the room, and the electronics inside. A map would be useful, but just finding anything important would be a start.

The first thing Flamescale found was a maintenance worker arriving to clean the storage room, who did not appreciate being taken over in order to get her that map. They also revealed that the whole place was on total lockdown. That let her vent flowing body redirect to the communications center to see how it looked just in case. She allowed the worker to resume their tasks as if she wasn't there, mostly because it would likely be noticed if they did something else.

The second body went out a different vent, with the goal of reaching a guard shower. Replacing soaps with infectious residue was halfway plausible for her particular residue, if a bit unlikely to work in a Leaf base. They were more the type to consider a shower more like a cafeteria, which was still not truly accurate as at minimum the plants weren't the type to visit them all at once.

Flamescale found the communications center first, soon followed by her other body locating a secondary computer system before reaching the showers that only had a single occupant. The comm center had a larger group of three Macrophylla present, but Flamescale was fairly sure she could lock down the room in an emergency. So she spat at the single occupant of the secondary computer system to coat them in residue and fill the room with vapors.

Then a new tutorial message appeared to inform her about the details of how you made attempts to infect targets who were already infected by someone else. Which was a problem for a large number of reasons, most of all the fact that this was not an Open Instance and there should not be any other Void Entities here. The details were complicated, but basically amounted to it being a bit of a fight between the two infections, with it being a factor of both the infection chance of the method used and total skill points invested in infection related skills. Apparently her Multiform tree was counting for some reason, as a majority of her points were listed as working for her, and the opponent was only listed as a few points.

Despite the fact that the target was infected almost instantly the real issue was that she was certain the infected were connected locally. So her other body dropped through the comm center vent to take over those Leafs too just as the alarms went off. Two of the three comm center Macrophylla it turned out were already infected as she splattered them, and apparently without the desire to take over the last who she simply bit with her fang based character creator attack to overtake.

The formerly infected were worryingly without much thought compared to the others, despite somehow being able to work as normal. It was a much duller set of surface thoughts, with a careful look showing outright holes in their minds where the local infection had damaged them. It actually took giving them orders to keep them from a bit of panic now, as it seemed Flamescale's infection was restoring their minds as much as was possible.

Her computer room body started to hack the system she had found, with an order to the captured infected in that room to start setting up some infected materials to try and help hold the room. Her comms body did much the same with getting into communications with the backup line as the three infected started to fortify and infest the communications center. Finally she had the initial infected worker get started on just wandering around with weapons and installing additional infected masses to try and add some additional infection sources.

"This is Void Entity Flamescale to anti-pirate force contractor. My infiltration attempt has been discovered," she said when the line opened, and smiled at how she was able to set up a data link as well from the computer system using a second body. Something she was fairly sure she couldn't manage as easily with just one body, even with infected to try and work with. "I have located some of the desired data and can begin transmission." The air was already filling with vapors misting off the residue and infected materials being laid down.

"We are reading you, Entity Flamescale," the other side of the line replied in the language used by the 319. "Please begin transmission as soon as able, and maintain presence at site as long as possible. Macrophylla orbital forces have begun reaction to your presence."

Flamescale didn't have much chance to actually do more than grab all of the data she could find that looked halfway like what was requested, with the computer body also taking data chip copies. Defensively she ordered her infected to move out as soon as they finished the basics, with the other computer rooms as a primary target but orders to spread everywhere. That didn't happen quickly, the maintenance worker idly thought about going to infest the main ventilation units, and got given that mission in response, while the communications center found itself assaulted by the first responding security forces.

A team of six Leaf guards was the first to arrive, but a bio-missile from one of the three infected was a rather impressive response. It splattered out hot blobs of infected material and a smoke cloud of vapors that were also hot enough to at least scar the walls outside the hall. Three of the guards were already infected and taken over quickly, while two others died from the blast, and the final one took a moment to adapt to the orders revealing that the other surviving guards were already infected.

And their mind immediately went to the settlement above the base.

"What settlement are the guards talking about?" Flamescale demanded the other end of the communications line as soon as she discovered that.

"Huh, I didn't expect the Entity to be more concerned with them than my bosses," the other end sighed with despair. "We have a rumor, that something terrible is being worked on there. Horrible enough to summon one of you under a minor settlement." Then there was a harsh beeping on the other end. "Wait a moment."

Flamescale still had her infected begin to overrun and take over as much of the facility as possible, with concern that she was going to need demolition charges to clean out the entire infected hive. She still worked out if she needed to move to another computer station. Still kept the transmission of the data going.

The anti-pirate force member then swore darkly. "Void Entity Flamescale, we have a change in mission objectives," they said grimly. "You are to hold the facility until a response force has arrived to destroy it. If possible you are to reach and halt any local dropships from lifting off, and eliminate any forces that land on the world."

"What's happening?" she questioned at that extreme change in actions.

"The data we have so far indicates the infectious material sensors on the lower labs went offline weeks ago, and the goals of the research team have notably shifted," they explained. "Something is trying to have them reach the sixth world of this system." There was a brief pause. "The local Macrophylla orbital command has admitted they have needed to implement containment on some who return from the settlement and lab. They are calling off a number of their dropships, but some are not responding properly. Anti-pirate battleships are three hours out, transmit all data you can find and prepare to evacuate yourself when they arrive for orbital bombardment."

"I can hold, but if I have to that long there is not going to be anything you can leave behind," Flamescale declared tiredly as she looked around the now red goo coated and considerably warmer rooms she was in. "I am a bigger hazard here, and you must leave none of my infection behind because of that."

There was a long pause before she got a response. "My commander just sighed loudly in case you didn't hear that," they replied. "As apparently we had expected to have that sort of outcome as an excuse in the situation where you didn't just slaughter everyone. Because it turns out this data was just verification of something already suspected. Be careful of the dropships, it is unclear how contested the orbitals are right now."

Flamescale didn't reply to that, and instead just took off the remaining leash she had on her infected just going all out and infecting everything. Orders to not leave the world or let anyone else, to spread her infected materials over any surface they could find, and to target anyone not already infected with all weapons. It was her worst case scenario, but as the vapors and infected reached the surface it became clear it was needed as civilians infected by the other infection before she even arrived started to join into her growing control.

That control was a growing sort of presence in the back of her head. Still her, but a her that was distributed a bit to manage the thoughts and information she could access from her infected. It felt like the attempts she had helped with to make database Synch-Tech, systems to provide added knowledge directly to users while connected. The difference was this was probably going to end up being dozens, maybe hundreds, of living people. At least half of which were already infected, and were making their way to rather sealed local shuttles and dropships.

"I think I hate this," Flamescale's computer system body said as that system was fully uploaded and copied. She started to move it to the next major computer room. The halls were heavily coated, dotted with infected mass nodes that made her open the construction menu herself inside the mission for the first time. It revealed that the little bio-turrets were able to be placed with only a single combat ability at a time, so either the default spit of goo, a set of four spine launchers, or a pair of bio-missiles.

It was an interesting way to give herself a bit more firepower, with the downside that they needed her to have them be infectious to create them, and her infected were actually spending a good amount of time making them all. Flamescale could think of times where it would be a massive help, especially if she did find targets to destroy that were immune to her infection. The various armored vehicles that the surface infected were starting to encounter from the dropships were a great example that was making her very glad she added bio-missiles for this mission.

Three hours was a massive time for a single battle, but she quickly discovered why the local infection wasn't just bombarding her masses of corrupted Macrophylla. The lowermost levels of the facility were locked out very tightly, with even her various fire enhanced infected doing little to get inside. A probe of the knowledge in the far too many minds revealed the lowermost section was self contained, with the ability to lock down even the vents for months if needed.

Flamescale wasn't sure what she could find if she could break in, but she also was a bit worried, so she passed along the detail of how deep that area was to the anti-pirate forces and settled in for a long terrible mission.

---

There was some worthwhile gear that she had taken the time to collect that needed to be sorted. There were ten more points for her Skill Tree to possibly spend. There was a massive pile of data to prepare to transfer to Yellow-Glow in the hope that something in there would help figure out why this happened and if it was part of the next season or not.

That last one was probably the best to work on given Flamescale's mood after the disaster of the last mission, but she didn't want to do any of it. She didn't want Yellow-Glow to try and distract her with raw data analysis, or to lose herself in figuring out if there was any new stuff worth more than it seemed in mission, or to figure out how to use the technical upside of such a long and difficult mission giving her those points she desired.

Flamescale wanted, just for once, to seriously talk about the horror she just unleashed on actual people. Even if it was apparently a better end than they could have faced to some tiny degree.

"Trust takes trust," she sighed as the only thing that could come to mind occurred to her, and called Sledge.

"Flamescale, I'm surprised to hear from you. Yellow-Glow sent along the data from the cybernetics a while back," the pangolin Void Entity answered, his actual face and body visible. It was an odd mix of mammal mouth and almost dragon like large plate scales down from the back of his head to cover his entire body all the way down the end of his tail.

"I've just had a terrible mission, and I want to talk with someone about it," she honestly explained. "I hope that you're someone I can talk with about it."

"I suppose I can try and listen," Sledge said with a bit of confusion.

Flamescale didn't start immediately, because that wasn't enough. "Why do you still do missions, Sledge?"

"Is it not the nature of Void Entities to seek entertainment and power among these worlds?" the other Void Entity questioned back half sarcastically.

"Not the average Void Entity. You, Sledge, who speaks of the morals of aiding the anti-pirate forces," Flamescale specified darkly, mind still stuck on what that group had just asked her to do. "Why not just sleep away eternity, or find a quiet world and just live in peace among the locals?"

"I did try that once," Sledge said shortly as he truly looked at her for the first time since the call began. Inspected her reaction, and then told a story. "It began on the worst day of my life, a moment of realization so terrible that I could not bear to continue to fight. So I hung up my armor, put away my weapons, and left on my skills because I was not entirely stupid, then paid for access to an arcology I knew was safe and happy.

"The first week they didn't trust me. The second they allowed me to work for my stay. The third I began to make friends, and find a new place for myself after losing my old one. For four and a half months I lived quietly among the locals of that world.

"Then the Pale Stem General arrived with his fleet of destruction, and reduced my arcology to a glassy crater. For the second time in my life I awoke in my Void Base having lost everything and everyone I cared for. Only this time, when I searched for a reason why I had lost them I found one.

"The Pale Stem General's rampage was one of the many poorly received parts to the second season of Void Strike. There were guides for how to stop it that were over a month old by that point, and you could find the answer in the forums even earlier. If I had not isolated myself, then this time I could have saved the ones I loved, but more than that..." Sledge trailed off for a moment, the first real break in the tale. "More than that I realized that I could have stopped him in more than just that one reality. I could have spent my time stopping him from doing it in many, even if there would always be ones where I did not.

"However, that would take the time I had spent among those I lost. I could not live peacefully and fight against the darker parts of existence at once. So I made the choice, that instead of finding another place to try and remake a normal life, I would return to taking missions. With a goal of finding those that made things better for all."

"My condolences for your losses," Flamescale replied sincerely, and now sure that he did in fact know the truth of this existence. In the worst way. "Have you had to interact with any of their counterparts in other instances, or are they not the type to end up speaking with a Void Entity?"

Sledge looked at her closely after that response to his story, and then looked faintly horrified. "You believe me," he declared quietly. "You- You know what I Meant."

"I just had a terrible mission, Sledge," Flamescale repeated. "I need someone who understands why to talk to about it." Because this was terrible, but not enough to make her stop. Not when she still didn't know what would come next. Not when she was finally starting to feel good in her skin here. Metaphorically speaking, she didn't really have 'skin' here and now. "What do you do when a mission is better for many, but horrible for those you have to kill?"

"I seek the reason why it happened, clean myself up, and visit the few locals I do often interact with now," he answered her easily, and a bit of tension seemed to leave him. "Mostly to check if they are okay, somewhat to have them help maintain my armor, and partly to speak with them about their ideas on what to do." Sledge chuckled. "I suppose it is time for me to be the one who is spoken with."

+++ Arc 1 End +++

[Author's Note]
Here we have the final part of my first arc for this story. The setup and establishment of the setting and story with a focus on Flamescale's new power set.
We also have the moment where I probably have left enough details in to give clarity on another big question people have had, but I'll have to see the response to tell.