Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)

[E.I.G.]

+++ Arc 2: Season 4 +++

--- 11 - Season Start ---

Flamescale had taken a day off. She finished talking with Sledge, packed everything from the terrible mission into her storage, went to sleep until the next morning, and then used Reverted Form to fit in better with a random arcology that she just visited for the day. She watched a movie she didn't have the cultural background to entirely understand, ate a show piece made out of lava fruit after buying it in front of the employees of the furniture shop she found it in, and purchased some fiction books that hopefully wouldn't be as incomprehensible as the movie.

It was something she did normally every once in a while, but Sledge's advice was the main reason she tried it after such a bad event. Flamescale did feel a bit better, but her first action afterwards was still to strip most of her contagion and fire branches. Both to get a break from that, and also because she now had the points to try three bodies. Ten points stayed in the contagion side to keep her level of Reverted Form skill, with Infectious Residues as the base infection skill due to it being slightly easier to control if she wanted to use it or not.

Only Fire Conversion was kept from the fire branch, but clearing that branch was more to allow her to get another skill too using those five points than because she was upset with the skills. She planned to try the first level of the actual Multiform skill, which took twenty points out of those for a third body at its first level, and still allowed her to place five into the only level of the Material Movement skill it unlocked. Two skills she wanted to try, and which hopefully would be enough to do impressive things without being able to infect an entire settlement in a few hours.

She started with the first level of Multiform proper. "Well, time to see," "If three," "Are better than two," Flamescale said as she pulled a third head out of her currently single body state and arranged the three into a triangular placement on her shoulders, one on top and two to either side below it. "Oh, well three is definitely more massive than two," she said with all three heads as she inspected the overall growth in scale of the rest of her body from her necks down. Her hands had gone from 319A lizard sized, to slightly larger than a Girant's. Her body's length was at least twice as long as before. About ten meters total length instead of a still sometimes tricky to fit five, with a matching width change to make her bulky enough to need her ability to melt to get through some smaller doorways.

"What does this, oh. That is a big stat boost," her upper head said. It was the largest bonus from a single skill level she had ever seen, and it also was the most complete one. Only a handful of her stats weren't higher than before, with even things like the infection chance of her residue being higher and the duration it would last longer. "If that's three heads then what does nine do?" she questioned with a mixture of interest and concern.

She split off one head, and noticed as that made the size boosts vanish that two heads didn't get the bonuses without the third, and also that two heads looked rather interesting from the outside. Then she split again, and three different viewpoints was such a fun enough thing to just try out moving around with that she lost track of time for what turned out to be an hour of just getting used to it before she finally added the Material Movement skill as well.

That gave a strange change in perception to Flamescale. A vague sense of where all of her infected material was, the entire infected appearance of her base included. With curiosity she moved one body towards a thin coating on one wall, and tried to push into the film of red goo.

The result was instinctive to a degree, but also a bit complex. She could push in and come out at another spot anywhere else covered, which she first attempted to end up in the not currently visible "bedroom" area where she had some unused bed models and the very used pool. This worked perfectly, with her having instantly crossed a fair distance, before she looped around and back into the pool again.

This time Flamescale just sort of stopped having a third body. Putting it into that sort of compressed area where she could split it off from her body, but had not yet. Which was now in both of her still existing bodies at once instead of only one like it had been when she first split one body off the other two. From that she swapped between those two bodies having two heads a couple of times without crossing the space between them.

"I can see a whole lot of uses for being able to do this," she said as she did the last thing she wanted to check, and merged the other body into some nearby material to have only one, and spat some residue onto a rare empty patch of ground in her base. Then she had both of the other bodies form from infected material at that patch. "Being able to put down some residue and just make a body there is really nice." She then had both of the distant bodies flow into material and back out at her equipment storage.

"Downside, I now need three times the gear," Flamescale had one of those two say. "And I doubt that I can just carry stuff that isn't also infected material that way."

Flamescale then went over to the mission console to see if she could find anything simple to try this out on, and found herself faced with a surprise. A very rare "Void Disturbance" that, instead of being a normal mission from a local opening a Rift, supposedly had a spot where a lot of Void energy was present and you could just open a Void Rift there yourself. Typically the 'mission' for those was to find rare "Void Materials" that were currently not actually used for anything directly.

Technically the stuff could be used to buy just about anything from a local organization, they would be more than willing to trade just for a chance to study the stuff, but Flamescale did not trust them with any material labeled a "Void" material when all the other Void things were just for players. It seemed risky to her with what she knew of the accuracy of these worlds. So instead she just collected the materials whenever one of these missions showed up, which was only when a large amount of the stuff was together in one place.

Gear for one of those was generic. A basic pair of silenced pistols for two of her three bodies, with the plan to have the third move around more to test the new abilities. Two security crackers to match that, and the data chips to match for figuring out what was going on at the site. She didn't really plan on just killing anyone at the target, but this was the sort of target she didn't want to keep running. As much as she wanted to make things better for locals, that didn't come at the cost of possible risk to other Void Entities.

She didn't need containers for this one, as long as you weren't giving some away you just needed to mark the materials and they would automatically come back to your base when you left through a Void Rift at the end. The hard part was finding all of them or taking them out of devices attempting to be made using them. Although the second hardest part was dealing with a Void Rift that nobody had placed, and that could have ended up anywhere.

So, ready for a lab that really would not be willing to just let a Void Entity inside she sent one of the two equipped bodies inside alone first. Only to find a somewhat rare but appreciated case of an empty and dark room that was clearly not actively in use. Her other two bodies followed right after, the one without gear going straight for a vent to map out that part of the building before someone spotted them. A minor surprise was that the sense of being able to go to the infected material of her base did not go away when all of her was at the instance, but unless she needed an emergency exit that wasn't useful yet.

Arriving while a lab was closed wasn't something that happened very often, but it had the upside of giving access to a site without as many people present. While in theory a lab could have multiple shifts that worked around the clock, there were limits to how often that could be done in practice. With the simplest limit being that there would be only so many staff who could run experiments, or so much equipment to run them on at a time. Downtime for labs was technically a reason to wait, but it could be hours to have the shift end, and even Flamescale found that too long for a single mission.

There wasn't a need for her to turn on the lights. Night vision was a common one-off skill that most beginner guides told you to get, with the alternative being a character eye model with it built in. Technically her glowing eyes had picked up that feature, but that wasn't enough to make her take off those one-offs.

The first room had a number of storage lockers for samples of materials, along with a few of the largest pieces of Void Material Flamescale had ever seen that were clearly being inspected and analyzed. Each block was easily three centimeters on the longest dimension, and one centimeter at the smallest dimension. Actual noteworthy blocks of the stuff instead of just tiny fragments.

Which was why she started every computer she could find with her two equipped bodies and got ready to grab all the data this place had, while her vent body discovered that apparently this was a lab that had been entirely sealed off from the rest of the place it was located in. Vent closed with heavy doors as well as a massive barrier to the only way out. This was the kind of place you didn't normally find at all, and couldn't get into unless it was already opened.

That body ended up sent around the four rooms next to check all the machines and cabinets to see what was here. Where Flamescale found something that made her stop. The machine wasn't entirely familiar looking, but the slight strange feeling that just being near it gave off reminded her too much of something Helen used regularly for Synch-Tech device development.

"That, that can't be what it feels like," she said aloud, and then changed tactic. The machine was inspected for any direct connections outside of the sealed area, and the one she could find was removed. Then she went over the room for cameras and removed them as well, while she had the other two bodies speed up finding the rest of the Void Material and grabbing data. She was going to get everything, but doing it as soon as possible was now a priority.

Next to the device was a cabinet filled with material samples all the same size and shape as the blocks she had found at first. A quick scan and a longer translation of the materials involved told her which ones were the best fit for what she wanted to try, but the moment of thought to get there made Flamescale also realize that she could not simply take the right samples. If this succeeded then that would tell the locals what they needed. So she grabbed everything, while keeping track of what she wanted to use.

The device's control computer was configured for a few tests, all of which looked wrong for what she suspected, but in a way that could be fixed if she understood what they were missing. Flamescale rather hoped she did not understand what they were missing. It took a few modifications to base setups that clearly weren't meant to be changed for experiments, but she set it to what should attune the material into Synch-Tech receiver material. The closest sample to what she normally used went into the chamber, the program that should work with the differences in material was set, and Flamescale reluctantly started the process.

The not-quite-hum increased as she expected, the machine shook a bit as the thing turned out to not be properly stabilized for this process, and there was a sharp sudden cut off that made no sound but left the room without the feeling for a moment before the unease returned. Flamescale didn't open the chamber yet, instead waiting for the various computers to be cleared of data and then destroyed. It was too accurate to Synch-Tech attunement.

She expected it, but seeing the piece of Void Material inside was unpleasant when she opened the chamber. The explosive charges she set on the machine were overkill, it likely could be taken out with much less, but this was a new sort of risk, and Flamescale could not bring herself to let the locals figure out how to use the device properly. She carried that created piece out herself, along with the random assortment of samples, and then after setting off the explosives brought her three bodies back to her base.

The results screen featured three points for her ST, about half the amount of Void Materials she had owned beforehand found in a single mission, a random assortment of material samples, quite a bit of data, and a number of skills. Including a brand new and annoyingly named one, Skill Link, that confused her as she looked it over in the results screen. "What in the world is 'Linked Gear'?" she questioned of a skill that made any of her 'Linked Gear' get her equipped skills. Presumably with limitations, but without knowing what it was talking about she couldn't be sure.

Which was a secondary concern the moment she closed the rewards screen, as the presence of the Season Four Announcement screen was far more important. "Void Strike Season Four: The Void Labs" topped the description in a fancy image made of metal plates that had the colors of various Void Materials. Below that the description informed everyone that the locals were stepping up their Void research, and as a result were now developing new technologies and methods of interacting with the Void.

It advertised new sources of the rare Void Materials, new targets that would be reached with Void Disturbances, and more new developments as the season progressed. All with images of various lab setups and materials, along with a mission screen showing multiple Void Disturbance missions with different than normal objectives. Including stuff like "eliminate void research", "sabotage void prototype", and "recover void data". That last one was associated with a "community research" goal, something rarely used that typically unlocked feature updates later on when enough of the right data was collected in personal archives.

However, her answer to the question of her new skill was right below that, where a heading of 'Linked Gear' explained the latest new mechanic with pictures of the details. "Introducing a new way of taking your favorite gear with you on tougher missions. Using Void Materials and the new Gear Enhancement interface you can now turn any piece of gear you have into Linked Gear. By default any Linked Gear you take on missions is automatically returned to your Void Base whenever you end a mission, even if you don't bring it yourself, and even on a death or mission abort.

"Be aware that this gear can still be damaged or destroyed. Damaged Linked Gear can possibly be repaired, or can be unlinked from the Gear Enhancement menu for a full refund of Void Materials. Destroyed Linked Gear refunds half of the Void Materials that were invested into it automatically. So take care of your Linked Gear.

"And to help with taking care of your Linked Gear we also have new Linked one-off skills to add more capability and power to your Linked Gear. Keep an eye out for these rare and potent skills that enhance your Gear even farther." Three example skills were placed as the final images in the section. One for Linked Inventory that apparently let you store and recover a number of these modified pieces of gear during a mission, another was Power Link that apparently made modified batteries draw from the Void Base's power instead, and finally Protect Link that gave the linked stuff quite a bit of damage resistance.

After that was a list of changes that Flamescale mostly skimmed to see if anything noteworthy was present, with nothing standing out in the moment, and then closed the announcement and went straight to the communications console. "Yellow-Glow, what's going on here?"

"I see you've finally read the announcement. It is my worst case scenario," her friend answered quickly, currently very uncanny valley human faced. "I had hoped I was wrong about this."

"I thought it was Ancient stuff, not Void stuff," Flamescale pointed out as Yellow-Glow visibly counted how many of her there were. "Is this connected?"

"I'm afraid that the teleportation method of the Ancients was likely Void related," the guide maker sighed. "The good news is that there is a worthwhile reason to not give the locals Void Materials now. I suspect there will be a lot of disruption to local research as those are hunted down. If you have the time I could use some help finding as many of these new skills as you can."

"I've already got one, Skill Link, which needs to be tested out," Flamescale said a bit tiredly given what she had found there. "I can think of a reason to get it from the mission, but I don't like the reason. I was using three bodies instead of two, but here is the replay." She sent the data. "I also got a whole lot of the stuff from this one."

"How much?" Yellow-Glow asked with some concern. "I haven't had a chance to actually run one of the new mess of Void Disturbance missions yet. I've been fielding questions and taking information from my usual sources ever since it dropped. We have already worked out how to get two of the three preview skills, but none of that group pays attention to the rate of materials when there are skills to hunt."

"Half of my entire collection," she answered and got out the piece she made. "Along with the equipment to make more."

Her friend leaned forward to see the massive piece of Void Material. "How many of those did you find?" Yellow-Glow questioned sharply. "That explains how some of the loadouts I've seen my sources claim are happening, but it is a terrible sign for how far along these projects are. That much Void Material is enough to start doing practical research instead of just working out how to make the stuff."

"I think I picked up five, but I have the materials to make at least six more if they worked out how to use the device properly," Flamescale specified. "I might have stolen an entire experimental sample cabinet again, and blown up an empty lab."

"Was the machine portable?" her friend questioned dryly. "I still remember having to find another mass data chip copier after you blew up the first one."

"I was not going to pick up something bigger than I am," Flamescale complained, and then thought about it more. "Wait, I get bigger with three heads. I might have been able to lift it." And gotten a solid source of more Void Materials. "Great, now I have to find another one."

---

[Author's Note]
So, we're starting act 2 now instead of after a break. I'm still kinda writer's blocked on my fanfiction, and I have more of this ready to go.
I'm trying for each arc to be mostly a single storyline. I think this is going to end up being something of a serial project rather than a series of separated books, but the intent is for each arc to complete the main story topic of that arc. With that in mind, I don't plan on starting a new arc until I have an outline for how the arc ends.
I want to get back to my fanfics too, so I still want to warn people that this might cut off at any time, but I do have a plan for this entire arc to work from.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 12 - Independent Cooperation ---

The subverted Girant security guard spat infected material across the wall of a storage closet, and then wandered off on his patrol with orders to simply ignore one of Flamescale's bodies emerging from the mess. The research lab she was infiltrating for the Slinks was a new layout, that was even more secure than the last she had visited. Now there was a proper airlock and on site housing for both the research staff and a collection of actually rather well treated maintenance Slinks. No connections in or out that weren't highly controlled, with heavily scanned supply missions to keep the space ship grade environmental systems going.

Unfortunately for the Girant they overlooked one detail when planning the on site housing and local life support systems. Without considering it too closely they only planned for security staff outside of the sealed area, which had the problem that even well treated Slinks were still slaves that didn't really want to help with Girant research projects. So three shifts of security guards were sent in at various times during the day.

Flamescale reformed her laser rife, one of the items she was trying out Linked Gear on. Skill Link was in theory a solution to her gear issues in many ways, but that didn't mean it was without downsides. The rifle appeared less like its typical advanced 319 made appearance, and instead like she had formed part of her infected material into a close shape of one. There were still metal looking bits and the optics were notably not made of anything seen on her body, but the skills the linked devices got from her included the visual changes.

They also had complications with ammo. What counted as a single piece of Linked Gear for the new menu was a bit annoying. Stuff like security crackers and other electronics were easily seen as singular items, but weapons often had their ammo containers not count. Ballistic weapons needed their magazines linked separately, and even that didn't actually link the bullets themselves, which just ended up floating around in her when the weapon melted down alongside her. Plasma gas containers were worse, as the gas was harder to get back in after melting a linked container. It was a downside that left her usual weapons unable to follow along with Material Movement even when linked. The laser rifle's that only needed batteries worked much better, but those batteries still needed their own specific link, which was more Void Material cost.

Flamescale finished checking the storage room and pulled out a second body to check both vents out of the room. Each body now with their own split off copy of the laser rifle and its battery, which was actually another complication as those two battery copies shared a single charge value. So while it let her fire more shots in a given time frame, she needed to be more careful with how many she fired, and actually replacing a split battery was a mess too.

Her objective was to grab the local data for the surface cell of rebel Slinks to use to purchase supplies. It was possible that this was a Void Lab, that wasn't the sort of mission she had taken but the location had a bit too much security. There also did not seem to be cameras in the sealed lab area, which was a sign that whatever they were working on wasn't supposed to be leaked.

The Slinks had actually planned for the best time to summon a Void Entity, about half an hour before the night shift change for the guards. With a guard already captured, which wasn't really the most reliable way for them to get the average player inside, but was perfect for her, and now Flamescale was in a sleeping facility. The night shift only had four guards, and she already controlled one of them.

One of her vent bodies found the Slink sleeping area, which was where the other three guards were all keeping a close eye on the real reason they were there at all. In theory they would switch out with the infected guard at some point. In practice the infected guard was almost late and as a result got to do the patrols alone all night.

Her other infiltration body found the first of a few computer systems that the infected guard knew about. With an eye on all of the known threats she flowed down to turn on the system and use her linked advanced security cracker on it. The feeling of having liquefied pieces of gear inside her was a bit odd, but being able to just get them into a place like this so easily more than made up for that. It was just a moment to break the limited security, with the machine setup to have its difficult to access location more restricted than its digital security.

Flamescale then got out one of a few high volume data chips she had linked. There was an interesting side effect to linking a data chip that was related to the side effects of a linked battery. If she split the same chip between multiple bodies, then all of those copies would have the exact same data.

So her third body that was still outside of the lab with a chip copier could just duplicate the data onto other chips that she could both put into the dead drop and take back to her Void Base. It took an entire body to pull off, and the surface body was the only one with unlinked gear, but this was finally the kind of mission she wanted to run.

---

Linked Inventory turned out to be a stat instead of a one-off skill. For every point of Linked Inventory you could store and recover a piece of linked gear from basically anywhere. Which did make it an alternative to Skill Link for her, and a method of getting linked stuff into places more easily for other players. It also was just as common as any other stat skill as long as you had at least one piece of Linked Gear on a mission, and could appear alongside other stats, so it wasn't like anyone wasn't going to have some ability to store their linked stuff.

Her three bodies were currently armed with two linked laser rifles and a single linked Macrophylla light machine gun. The goal being to get two more of the new Linked Gear skills, that hopefully would solve her weapon issues a bit better. The preview skill of Power Link would solve her battery splitting power drain issue, but to get the skill you needed to drain five linked batteries in a single mission. Similarly the discovered Magazine Link was supposed to give a way to have endless ammo from your base, but needed you to fire hundreds of rounds from a linked gun in a single mission.

So Flamescale had swapped out for combat missions and was going after a few Rhizocephala extermination missions to try and do that. With five linked batteries for her laser rifle bodies and her LMG body filled with a slightly silly looking collection of ammo containers. With backup unlinked batteries too just in case she ran out the linked batteries and still needed the rifles. It was a larger target than she normally went up against, and she had reworked her skills for combat as well.

Which was another complication of using Skill Link, her Fire Conversion skill now changed all of the damage of her linked weapons into Fire damage. So if she needed a specific damage type she either needed to remove Skill Link, since even the basic Infected skill turned them to Toxic damage, or use unlinked weapons. It was a moderate downside, but on the other hand the weapons also received bonuses from damage buff skills. Infection Strength in particular had turned out to give some nice boosts, and they also got the massive boost from her three or more headed form's increased scale, although that might have made the weapons larger as well.

Infectious Strikes would make any linked weapons able to infect, which could be good or bad, and Flamescale wasn't sure yet if any particular weapon or ammo types would take an added effect from the other two Infectious skills. One disappointing exception to skills applying to weapons turned out to be the bio-weapon skills. So she didn't get mini spine launchers on her Linked Gear. Reverted Form seemed to work to make her Linked Gear able to appear unchanged, but she didn't know how practical that was.

Flamescale herself was still using Reverted Form, the local anti-pirate force wanted to send people along with her and they were nervous enough without being obviously fluid. A group of four 319A soldiers and a pair of Leaf heavy weapon armored suits. They were acting as a solid firing position outside of a rather large, and rather dead ancient ruin. She was also carrying a number of sensor modules that hopefully would get more Void energy data now that they knew they were looking for that specifically.

It was a basic and simple mission, something she was doing just to get new skills. While it was probably easier to get the two skills from just going to a weapons range and staying a bit too long, Flamescale wanted to actually do something with her time to get them, and this hopefully would solve a few things at once.

The smell of ancient infection was strong around the target, and Flamescale's briefing indicated that the site was being researched prior to the arrival of far too many Rhizo. Which didn't quite make sense, unless they somehow turned on one of the teleportation devices Yellow-Glow was certain were the source of the improved Void research projects.

That still didn't really prepare her for the sight of these Rhizo. Unlike the feral versions she was used to they were easily seen to be standardized, with a mixture of six spine launcher lighter units and four missile anti-armor versions that had properly clean and symmetric armored shells. They moved in squads, but thankfully seemed at least somewhat disorganized at a larger level. Simply going in patrols around the ancient ruin that looked very similar to the portal structure she had helped Yellow-Glow investigate.

Flamescale reported the visible numbers on the comm unit that the anti-pirate team had given her, and then took aim with her laser rifle bodies at two of the missile Rhizo to start with. The machine gun would likely fair better against the lighter versions so she simply got that ready to spray the area with bullets, with the goal mostly being to get the skill.

The lasers were successful in burning away the life of the two target missile Rhizo, and the LMG rounds seemed to work reasonably well to light the rest of the squad on fire, with the effect on the ballistic rounds after they were fired being somewhat of a surprise. Flamescale vaguely wished that they changed as much when they were loaded as they seemed to when fired.

Then she wished it didn't change as much, as it turned out that the bullets were in fact producing a bit of residue as she encountered the infection conflict mechanic, and proceeded to take over one of the spine Rhizo. Which was a complication as she now needed to deal with the command interface and kill a heavily fire enhanced Rhizo. One that immediately started to spread as the overtaken Rhizo started to fight the others with less care for spreading the infection.

Flamescale kept firing, and made sure to try and limit how many were infected, but as the mission progressed two things became clear. First, she choose a mission too hard to avoid using the infection side of her Skill Tree, because this was just too many Rhizo that were too organized and she would have needed to replace bodies somehow without the extra allies. Second, she was not going to use up the hundreds of machine gun rounds in this mission, because she needed to use the laser rifles to take these down faster.

There was also the third issue of the anti-pirate forces apparently having fully expected her to do something like capture some of the Rhizo, but that wasn't a negative so it didn't feel right to list it with the other two. It fit in more with the discovery of some Void Material fragments among the exploded remains of the ancient gate, although it was a bit difficult to tell if those were from the gate or from the similarly destroyed analysis gear.

"This wasn't an equipment failure," the lead 319A pointed out when they saw the damage. "That was a demolition charge, a pretty big one too. They were expecting this."

"I guess it answers where the Rhizo came from," one of the Leaf grumbled. "Good job demons, we will make sure you are properly paid."

Flamescale focused on collecting a couple of strange green crystal shards more than getting confirmation on what had destroyed the gate. They smelled even more strongly of the infection, and when she got back to base she found them listed as 'Ancient Computer Fragments' along with a new one-off skill called 'Liquid Compression'. That skill seemed to be directly related to the fragments somehow, and let her reduce her volume while liquefied. Something that might find a bit of use, but mostly just further confirmed that an Ancient Computer was related to the Liquid Body part of the Fluid Pestilence skill tree somehow.

---

Flamescale remembered now why helping Yellow-Glow with research could be useful for grinding out progress on a ST. She was up to seventy one points in her Skill Tree after the string of missions to get the new Linked Gear skills that she actually liked the sound of, and to see how they interacted with Multiform and Liquid Body. Enough points to finally have most of the skills in her ST at the first level all at once, including getting Reverse Infection without leaving other options out, and discovering that it let her choose to make her attacks not be able to infect as well as remove the infection from victims safely.

She was honestly regretting not going for it sooner, but it required Reverted Form and that was already an expensive skill when you counted all the requirements and side skills that made it more valuable. It let her do things like her current attempt to get into a 319 Void lab that had thoughtfully made sure to store the Void Materials off site. To get the actual data Yellow-Glow wanted from any of these Flamescale found she would need to get into the lab itself.

So she had infected a civilian who worked in a nearby restaurant, used that civilian to infect one of the scientists as they got ready for work, and was about to remove the infection from the civilian. Flamescale had one body inside the lab already, and one close enough to the restaurant to see if the plan would actually work as well as it seemed. And for the worst case she didn't even need to get back to her base with the Void Rift, as she had her third body back at base already to transfer data directly off linked data chips.

Working without any unlinked gear was going very well now, but naturally there were complications with the new skills that had looked like they solved the ammo issues. Power Link drew energy from her base to recharge, but that was specifically to recharge, and apparently that skill could vary in how much it charged at a time. Her first drop of one was a mid range example, and that only partially solved the issue of the power draw for multiple laser rifles using the same battery.

Magazine Link by contrast turned out to work in a very simple but annoying way once she used the firing range method to get one. It gave a linked ammo storage device the ability to trigger it to fill with ammo. So she still ended up with loose ammo to work around or lost plasma weapon gas if she had to melt after loading that way. It worked well for some weapons like specialized grenade or exposive charge pouches, and as a result she was keeping the skill on, but it could leave behind traces that she would rather not leave near targets for more typical weapons. So she was stuck considering a grind for a better Power Link in order to fully switch to laser rifles.

Either way it let her have a full set of admittedly just basic gear inside of a site that she reached by using Material Movement and carefully placed patches of infected residue. Now she just needed to see what happened when she removed the infection from someone. The civilian wasn't entirely comfortable with the infection, or spreading it, but had been given orders to not think about or realize that either of those had happened.

Unfortunately it turned out there was a reason for the final Hidden Infection skill, and the only one she had not gotten yet, to be Remove Memory as the civilian immediately tried to call for help and needed to be infected again by the Infected Coating Flamescale had made sure to keep the civilian standing inside of. Infected Material creations thankfully could be made to decay away at command with Reverse Infection, so this wasn't too big of a risk to put in place for the test, but it still left Flamescale with the issue that removing the infection from a target took time.

She could do it all at once for a major infected area, but these were not one-off skills. Reverse Infection had five levels, starting at five points for the first and then going to six for the next and so on. Each level increased both the speed that the infection was reversed, and also increased how much infection could be reversed. Flamescale didn't have firm knowledge of what counted as what for that, or if it could possibly be reversed over a longer time period, but it was such a rarely used skill that she couldn't find much information on the topic. At a minimum she didn't want to try the bio-weapons with it just yet, just in case that was too far to reverse, or slowed the process too much.

"Does it work as something to start and just let happen?" she questioned herself back at base where nobody could hear her. It was one thing to reverse the infection too early and get caught, but if she did it while she pulled out it would result in an after the fact detection. It was a kind of detection she preferred, although she would much rather not get detected at all and leave little if any trace, but she was already stealing their entire stock of Void Materials so it wasn't like they wouldn't be able to tell something happened.

The lab workers were already noticing the smell of lava fruit from the vents as infectious vapors filled the facility, but between that and careful use of infected residue Flamescale was able to take over the entire site. A quick check of their minds revealed the project was just trying to refine the process of making Void Materials. Which meant that she had another chance to steal an attunement machine if she wanted to abandon the vague attempt to avoid detection before she was gone.

"I'm going to wait for one that isn't so far from my Rift," she complained at base, fully aware that she probably needed to be taking more Void Disturbance missions if she wanted one herself.

---

[Author's Note]
Here we have some more details on how things are going with the new features, and a bit of a faster view of missions now that things are established.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 13 - Roleplayers ---

Flamescale looked over the data she had gathered herself fairly rarely. Mostly due to the local tech base being fairly far removed from her own education as Helen the human. Now that wasn't the case anymore. There were two options, either Void Strike was a simulation taken too far, or Synch-Tech was a form of Void Tech.

Either way, she had the background to tell how close the locals were to working out the creation of Void Materials, and more importantly could start seeing what Yellow-Glow had meant about the data they had on the Ancient Void Gates. It wasn't extremely far along, but it was close enough that there were more missions to deal with Rhizo outbreaks at Ancient Gates. Currently more to clear out those Rhizo who went feral when the gates closed than because they were reopened, but it was clearly only a matter of time.

That meant Flamescale was fairly happy to be interrupted by a call, although surprised by who was calling. "Sledge, what can I do for you?" she questioned the pangolin. They had not spoken since that disaster of a mission, but that wasn't too long ago.

"I am in need of a bit of assistance, and you are my best option to complete it properly," Sledge replied simply, if a touch nervously, while fully armored. "It. It is a personal project, and likely a longer one. My contacts among the anti-pirate groups of a number of instances have been providing worrying data, and I fear that we Void Entities may be at direct risk for once."

Flamescale agreed with that idea strongly, but didn't really want to even talk with Yellow-Glow about why she had those worries at the moment. Sledge at least didn't have to worry about her own worst case outcome anymore. "I agree with that," she said vaguely. "What do you need help with?"

"I. I'm not used to asking other Entities about this sort of thing," Sledge admitted. "I always forget that despite having eternity we are typically concerned with doing things quickly. I need help with performing a number of missions at the same instance."

"You must mean a really long set of missions if you are worried about that," Flamescale noted. "I can make time for something important."

"Hours at a time. The first is an infiltration, and it is very important that it is not detected," the 'roleplayer' clarified with a huff. "I need an entire 319 research facility taken over and inspected while I act elsewhere to cover the creation of the Void Rift. It is not the direct research location, but rather the main R&D office for the world. Finding the data on where exactly the real target facilities are located is the goal of this first mission."

"I can handle the biological aspect of that, but you're going to need technical help to get rid of cybernetic and electronic records of any infiltration," Flamescale cautioned. "I just got Remove Memory so I can handle that part after I infect them, and I can bump up my infection chances a bit if I leave off some other skills."

"I have already been working with a tech expert to setup this operation," Sledge said with clear relief. "We need that data to know what will be required for followup missions. To know which sites are working on the Void and how far along they are." He looked her in the eye. "A part of me was worried you had been soured on your contagion skills, or on missions as long as the one you told me of."

"Long?" Flamescale questioned, and then realized that she had in fact only spoken about the terrible mission with Sledge. "Three hours is pretty typical for one of my missions. I've honestly got some skills now that are having me consider going on day long missions that involve interplanetary travel, maybe even weeks for interstellar."

"You have a way out of a mission without a Void Rift?" he questioned thoughtfully. "That could help a lot actually."

"I can currently get data out that way, but not any supplies," she cautioned. "I'm guessing I'll be meeting your other help when I get to the mission?"

"The expert is already on site," Sledge said, looking a bit amused, but also uneasy. "Do you want me to send you the rift?"

"Go ahead, I'll change around my points," Flamescale agreed, and as he cut the line and gave her a Rift Opening. She had focused on getting a level of every Hidden Infection skill, with two levels of Hidden Infection itself to reduce detection chances, for a total cost of twenty three points, and now stripped out the six points she had in Mass Infection to get the second level of all three Infectious skills. The loss of Infected Material would be a downside, but even just a minor increase in the infection chance of everything was a worthwhile improvement.

With some careful use of her skill to tune down damage and the way those stacked on the laser rifles she should hopefully be able to tag targets to infect them if needed. The lasers did actually produce infected residue when she had at least one level of Infectious Strikes and Residues, but very little and with a very short lifespan. Infectious Vapors on the other hand were given off by whatever was hit, and with any luck two levels of that would allow her to just spread using the vents if she was careful.

Flamescale decided to start with just one body, reverted to scales for the moment, and thought about how nice it would be to pull off a full lab takeover without being known to have done it at all. An amusing thought that went away as she recognized Yellow-Glow at the other end of the Void Rift in the middle of a large advanced industrial area. He was in a machine reptile form, clearly as close to a 319A as he could get with his typical visuals and the limits on character creation.

"This is that serious?" she questioned her friend as Sledge arrived behind her.

"Unfortunately. We believe that the locals are developing a method to close Void Rifts," Yellow-Glow specified. "As a side effect of learning to close Void Gates to prevent still active Ancient Computer equivalents from being a problem. The two of us had hoped to be further along before we asked you for help."

"It is a threat to ourselves as Void Entities, as well as a complication that threatens the locals," Sledge noted with a nod at her. "The goal is to find their Void Gate lab and determine how far along that project is, and if there are any ways to counter a closed Void Rift. I will be going on a supply mission to cover this Rift's formation, as that is my excuse to why I wanted it opened by a local."

"So there is a time limit to start then," Flamescale noted. "So, how much do we need to avoid detection here? I know cameras at places like these tend to have offsite backups, so we will end up on a timer."

"The original plan was to subvert the backup systems instead, and that has been done already. I haven't been back to base in a while to set everything up," Yellow-Glow explained with a shrug. "I've been doing preparations for a few days now."

"Which is the timeline issue. If we are discovered in a month it won't matter as much, but we might be a week away from our target," Sledge clarified better. "We need to keep from having them discover our goals that long at least."

"Oh wow, that brings back some memories," Flamescale laughed towards Yellow-Glow. "I remember my first attempt at a mission on a world other than the one I started. So, if you two have been working on this for that long I am guessing you have a plan for getting me inside?"

"I have the head of maintenance," Yellow-Glow started, and then cut off for an instant. "We need to get moving actually, I need you to take him over first. Then he should be able to get you into the vents. You have a solid Infectious Vapors skill, right?"

"What is the plan to stop them from noticing a strange smell of lava fruit?" she questioned as she followed him, with a nod towards Sledge.

"I will let Yellow-Glow tell you that plan," the pangolin Entity laughed. "I will be going for a supply base to the north. This should take a while, they have an awkward time negotiating with our kind."

"He's going to be buying stuff?" Flamescale questioned with a bit of confusion as they made their way to the alley behind a nearby convenience store. "And what did you pull this time?"

"We have been using the cover of being here to deal with information and technologies from other instances," Yellow-Glow explained, and Flamescale groaned. That was the tricky method of getting stuff where you tried to sell specific items not found in one instance that you got from a different one. This being a 319 target made that more likely to work, but it was still an annoying way to get stuff that only a very knowledgeable 'roleplayer' could pull off. "As for the trick, I have ensured that the target's ventilation systems have had lava fruit scented filters installed."

"You've been here long enough to sabotage this site with scented ventilation filters?" Flamescale had to actually stop to question.

"I have been planning on requesting your help with this operation since the start of the season. I've sabotaged the entire planet's supply of ventilation filters with lava fruit scented models," her insane friend who definitely had too much time on his hands informed her. "We need to get to this worker before he makes his attempt at a workaround to the ever present smell."

"You're editing the guides while on missions again," she pointed out tiredly as they moved into the civilian structure. "I've only tried using a civilian as a vector once so far, do we have a way to make sure this isn't detected?" Yellow-Glow didn't answer for a long moment as they went inside of the store. The store that had one of the very rare robotic kiosks that nobody actually liked but were cheaper than actual useful employees. "Yellow-Glow, did you take over a store for this?"

"This has been a major project, it cannot be left without enough control," he stated instead of answering. "I need you to convert this individual immediately, and then get this data chip into the security room before you take any notable actions outside of the ventilation system."

"Yellow-Glow, please tell me you aren't actually trying to sell these things to infiltrate instances," Flamescale criticized even as she hid behind the counter and started to let out Infectious Vapors. "Are you still trying to show up on a weekly?"

She waited for a response until after the 319B entered, took an annoyed smell of the place, grumbled that the entire star system was going to hate lava fruit's smell as much as the taste at this rate, and then the bat-like tech left fully under her control.

"I am making good progress," Yellow-Glow sarcastically declared. "You didn't pass him the chip."

"Give me a copier, he isn't going anywhere near a security room, but I can get it into a system with someone from security if I pull off a bit of a strange minor power," Flamescale declared and passed over one of her linked data chips.

"You linked data chips? How does that even work with multiple bodies?" her friend questioned, even as he started to load the data.

"I think I've worked out the multiple of the same bodies thing," she answered instead, a bit upset that he had not had time to go over her information on the skills yet. "It isn't two different bodies, it is one body that splits into multiple. My coworkers are complaining about trying to use the new prototype, apparently it is a bit too much to be a camera drone that breaks apart into multiple smaller drones."

"You have data chips that can be in multiple places at once with the same data," Yellow-Glow realized, and that was why she liked her friend having too much time to look into things. "If you can get three into the camera system with a slight modification all at once I might- No, that isn't enough to be safe here, stick with the original plan."

"That's not the best part," Flamescale said smugly. "If I have the right blind spot I can have it emerge out of part of an infected with an arm. At least, I should be able to. It will reveal they are infected where I try, but if I controlled everyone in the room first."

"You can emerge directly from infected?" he questioned curiously, and she knew now that he had been doing this project since the start of the season. It was a bit unnerving to hear how serious this was given how much of her work he hadn't gotten to yet.

"It causes a bit of the liquefied infection at the place I come out, so I want to be careful how much I do because I do know that takes longer to turn back, and it is usually easier to get myself somewhere with a good amount of residue," Flamescale clarified. "Be honest with me, Yellow-Glow, how bad are we worried about here?"

"Sledge did contact me first," her friend started. "I guess he heard something from you that made him trust me with this. The main issue is the ability to track or close Void Rifts. He feels that the downsides of Void Entities being restricted is worse than us being loose, and also is aware that should the ancients be a greater threat on the horizon we would need this sort of counter."

"That's not enough for you to miss out on my reports," she pointed out. "What have you found?"

"The Ancient Gates were destroyed starting with the gate itself," Yellow-Glow admitted. "Whatever killed them destroyed them using the gate itself, possibly a void effect, and it was killing the gates that cut off whatever is on the other side of them. I have been tracing the damage, and that is consistently the case."

"They had good enough Void-Tech to get targeted directly by the Void Entities of the time," Flamescale guessed as her infected reached the facility and started getting to work.

"Or another faction with equally good Void-Tech," Yellow-Glow sighed. "Either way, we can expect advanced void technologies on the other side. Possibly something worse. It seems that the local detection systems are not up for tracking your infection yet. I have only passive access at the moment, but the backups I control have seen him make it into the building."

"He's going for junction three, the one really close to main security. They have been complaining the loudest about the smell, and he has a dumb plan," Flamescale answered, done with the serious topic for the moment. "Not only can I tell it wouldn't work, it actually should cover for me. He was going to try to 'clean' one of the filters to get the smell out."

"Why do you know how that goes wrong?" her friend unfortunately did ask her as the infected 319B reached the room and stuck their head into the already open vent. The splatter of residue was quickly filled with her other two bodies, both going for likely places to start the infection, and making use of the new Liquid Compression one-off she had to squeeze down the vents more easily while letting more air past her.

"Yellow-Glow, I'm going into vent systems all the time now," Flamescale grumbled as she tried to focus on keeping an infectious vapor from being noticed before it took over her current targets. "Of course I've grabbed just about every kind of filter they commonly have. Trying to do anything like that with scented filters, and nobody actually likes any scented filters so they always try to do something, causes basically this cloud of very dangerous stuff that smells like whatever the filter was." Although most of that knowledge was from various maintenance techs that had tried before, with only a few being from attempts to get the visual right to hide herself. She was actually having the 319B make the attempt anyway as extra visual cover.

"This is why I still end up including information from half your replays in my guides," Yellow-Glow said with a laugh as she got control over the last of the security room staff. "You still find the most interesting details. How many of those have I missed on this project?"

"Data chip is in," she cut him off instead. "You're up." The careful pass of the chip to one of the guards was easier than she expected, even if their hand ended up a bit gooey.

"Connected, wait a moment. Cameras are ours, data links are ours, doors, locks," Yellow-Glow listed and then paused. "Once you have the staff we are ready to begin data extraction."

"Wait, are you going in? Because I have more than one of those chips," Flamescale pointed out. "Unless you needed something that can't be copied from an electronic record I should be able to handle this."

"I can get us in with current access, but to gain the files without records I will need to handle the data extraction myself. The staff are unlikely to know how to do that," he specified, and she nodded. It wouldn't take too much longer, the cloud of vapors that covered the building was honestly about half the side effects of trying to 'clean' the filter, and half her infection. If anything the former was currently more harmful to their health, which helped with any misses in keeping the damage lowered.

Flamescale simply went over some of the findings she had made on Linked Gear skills while they waited for the full staff to be controlled. Including the minor skills 'Boost Link' and 'Protect Link' that gave increased stats or increased damage resistance to Linked Gear respectively. They both varied in quality, but were easy to get, and overall were fine. There were skill trees that gave much better boosts to gear you used, but these did make it better to have stuff linked. Flamescale's harder to get 'Skill Link' gave better results that any of the examples of those two minor skills she had found so far, but they did stack.

Then once the entire staff of the facility was overtaken Yellow-Glow made his way inside and Flamescale stayed where her three bodies were to avoid anyone seeing her go in. Yellow-Glow at least at a casual glance could pass for 319A shaped. From there it was just a waiting game for Yellow-Glow to finish his part.

"Flamescale," Sledge greeted her inside the automated store before that was done. "Have you ever haggled with a Remigrant weapons dealer?" The Remigrant were grey skinned bulky creatures with notable scaled patches on their skin that looked like, but critically should never be called, rashes.

"Are you buying a space ship for this mission?" Flamescale had to question. Remigrant were generally just a civilian race, only very rarely requesting or being target by missions. They also mostly made advanced processed materials and space ship parts. She knew they had armed forces, but as far as she was aware they mostly used Girant made small arms.

"I am trying to get a gravity generator. I have been trying to get a Remigrant gravity generator for a while now," Sledge began to complain. "My weaponsmith is certain he can make me a gravity hammer. I just need a small enough gravity generator. I have attempted to see if a ship-wide generator would be able to be used, but those are simply too large. Remigrant gravity cannons are made small enough. Not small enough to carry one of the full cannons around, but they contain multiple generators that are small enough to fit inside the hammer."

"Salvage operations aren't an option here?" Flamescale asked curiously. She recognized Yellow-Glow's appearance from where she could see him outside of vents as an indication that they still had a while left, so she could talk while she waited. "I know I've gone for salvage yards to get raw materials before, and some stuff you find there is still functional. I know you have anti-pirate contacts to work with there."

"You would think that, but unfortunately that is why I was speaking with a Remigrant weapons dealer," Sledge sighed heavily. "They closely control wrecks that have their weapon systems. Often stripping them off themselves, and apparently the easiest way to actually fight the Remigrant is to try and salvage some of their equipment without authorization. I do not want my weaponsmith targeted."

"They are in this instance?" Flamescale questioned with worry. It was one thing to pull major operations in a random instance, but an instance you commonly went, that you knew people in, was another thing entirely.

"No, I am trying to work out what needs to be done before I make the attempt there," Sledge quickly corrected her. "I do not want to have a history of failures in that instance."

"You need a license for them to work with the things," Flamescale realized aloud. "I think Yellow-Glow might be able to help you there. He's worked on that sort of thing before, and is just about done now."

Yellow-Glow was in fact going over the final cybernetic parts of clearing out the records of what had been done here. She could sense those changes from the 319 she infected only vaguely, and it did tell her that some sort of hacking skill would be needed to pull off something this hidden on the cyborgs without his help. She pulled her bodies out of the facility with some residue, to make sure it was gone by the time they needed to reverse the rest.

"I suppose he is probably better to ask," Sledge admitted with a laugh. "Although I do need to remember that you can be in more than one place at a time. Will you have trouble getting out?" he started to ask, and then remembered. "Oh, right, you can just leave without Rifts now. A single lab building is probably much easier."

"We are clear," Yellow-Glow then said, apparently after running to reach them. "Remove the infection when ready."

"Just a second," Flamescale said as she went into the mental controls she had. It was a bit tricky to work out what exactly she couldn't change, which was more of a concern over how she seemed to be able to completely rewrite someone if she wanted to, and it didn't seem that hard to get something as simple as removing any thoughts that indicated they were present at this site. After that she started the infection to be removed as well. "It's going. Are we sticking around or heading out?"

"Hold just a couple of minutes longer," Yellow-Glow requested. "I am still monitoring the situation to make sure that it has worked properly." Flamescale and Sledge both watched the robotic Entity for a bit. "It appears better than I expected actually. There does not seem to have been any interruption they are aware of."

"In that case I'm going to say my request is done," Sledge said with a smile at Flamescale. "Your contract is concluded successfully."

"If just saying that works I'll be surprised," Flamescale laughed. "Let me know if you do end up needing me for a followup. I'll try and keep in base for a couple of days, I have stuff I can do." She didn't want to go back to personal data analysis, but she needed to look into the Void Tech herself at some point.

The other two agreed with that, and instead of finding the Rift again Flamescale simply vanished into a bit of residue back to her base. Directly to a mission complete screen that gave her a massive and rare thirteen new points for her ST.

---

[Author's Note]
A team mission, and the advancement of the current arc now that the basics are all done. Maybe better described as the setup to the meat of this arc, as here is where the season's actual content really starts to show off the changes to the worlds.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 14 - Research and Development ---

Flamescale removed all of her second level skills, and took a look at two options she had for replacing bodies. One complicated thing with figuring out skills for Void Strike was that complete details often didn't show up until you had the first level of something. Switching back and forth between options was sometimes enough to work out what did what better.

She was in her base waiting for updates from Sledge or Yellow-Glow, and trying not to worry too much about how many Void experiments the locals had done that matched the results from Synch-Tech testing. It was likely that the next thing they would need would be more obvious given the context.

The obvious option for replacing bodies, and the expensive one, was Infected Reformation from her Reformation branch. A twenty point single level skill that normally would be simple, with it letting her reform using someone she infected as raw material to remake her body. Doing so would reduce her maximum health for the duration of the mission, from the looks of things she would only have 40% of her normal max health. The Improved Reformation skill from that same branch was ten points for the first level out of five, and reduced the penalty by a flat 10%, with a maximum revived health of 90% of her normal max.

However, having Multiform apparently messed with the normal function. It simply let her reform a body with the health decrease from the location of another body she still had in play, which wasn't even that much of a downside with Material Movement letting her rapidly get somewhere else after the fact. That even made the third Reformation branch skill of 'Material Reformation' less valuable, as that cooldown based alternative to reviving from an infected wasn't in practice different from reviving the basic way all Void Entities could do without skills for her, only it had the health downside if she used it.

To contrast that expensive skill set that was partially invalidated by Material Movement, she had Fusion from the Multiform branch. It was a skill that required something like a Contagion branch, and at only five points it was much cheaper. The downsides were that it needed thirty points to already be spent on multiple bodies, and it was a complicated skill that was clearly intended for a different purpose than just replacing bodies. If she was short a body and used the skill on an infected, then the infected would be fused into her and converted into another new body, with the downside of that body taking the infected's stats instead of her base stats.

It was clear the intent on the other hand was to give her another way to grow the size of her bodies by adding heads that could not be split off. The limit of heads on any single body was determined by her Multiform skill's level, so right now she could only fuse up to two infected onto a body as truly extra heads, and then she couldn't add the other bodies as heads to that one. These extra heads could be absorbed for a noteworthy health restoration effect, but they could not be reverted back into the infected they were made out of after she fused with them. In fact, from the description so far, it appeared to be just as much a skill to consume an infected as Reformation.

"Flamescale, we have a problem," Yellow-Glow cut in, which was a terrible sign. "I need the best widespread infection setup you can make, with the infected keeping their minds."

"We have the worst case scenario," Sledge added, which meant they were both on the comm line at the same time, which was an even worse sign. "I'm afraid that they are both too far along to let them continue their work, and yet also have not completed their work enough for us to get the data we need."

"Alright, I'm going to need some more details there," she said as she started to reconfigure. Hidden Infection itself gave a bit more intelligence, but the rest of that branch came off immediately. The six points for the first levels of Infected Strength and Infected Material were added on with some of those points. Then she considered the biggest boost to infection chance she knew of. "Like 'what is the issue that we need to attack now', and 'how you want me to help there'?"

"The creation of a device that would be able to close Void Rifts is close to reality. I anticipate it will be completed within the month, along with devices to open Void Gates that locals can use to safely travel between instances," Yellow-Glow explained, to her horror. "I require the latter to try and develop a counter to the former, but the development is too closely linked."

"We want to take over the site, prevent any transmission of new data developed there, and complete both projects under our control," Sledge said grimly. "This is an active threat to Void Entities."

"That might be able to trace our world," Flamescale said to explain the part of that idea she was worried about. "I know you don't have to worry about that anymore, Sledge, but most of us do."

Sledge's face looked even more worried. "That was not my worst case," he admitted.

"How are we stopping them from just burning down the lab from orbit?" Flamescale interrupted that topic, they probably didn't have time to waste on that discussion yet. She grabbed her four spine launcher and two bio-missile skills, and put all of those on her head. With the missiles placed right next to the spines as strange forward facing horns that didn't look good, but they probably didn't have time for pretty either. "Also, I am going to be bigger than normal." Thirty points went into giving her a fourth body, and five into letting her fuse with infected to get the size boost to infection rate on all of them.

"The locals want this data badly, but worst case we try again for the data elsewhere after removing this facility," Yellow-Glow said unhappily. "How much bigger are you thinking?"

Flamescale decided to answer by growing all four of her current heads. One on each side, one above, and one below. Only, as she went from three to four she started to grow much more than she expected. Her heads went up in size as well, and she reached what looked like double again her length at three heads. "Yellow-Glow, I was expecting fifteen meters, not twenty. What the heck?" she questioned. "How big do normal giant monster skills make you?" Her hands now were large enough that they didn't make hand weapons at her scale.

"The most easily found example is Titanic Scale. A skill tree branch that has only a single skill, which costs twenty at base and increases in cost by twenty for each of the rest of its five levels. The first lets you grow at will to three times your base size. Each level after that allows for three times larger than the previous maximum," her friend explained carefully. "It is not uncommon for Entities your size to top out at over a kilometer with that one, although at that point you are more at risk of needing to fight a warship of similar size than you get benefits from the skill tree that has it."

"Yellow-Glow, I have doubled in size twice now. If that keeps up I will get to over half a kilometer with nine heads," Flamescale noted back to him. He only nodded. "Yellow-Glow, I have another skill, Fusion, from that same branch that should let me have nine bodies with nine heads each at that size."

"You planned on having four fifteen meter bodies?" Sledge asked with some concern. "I'll admit, I understand the issue with growing in size faster instead, but fifteen isn't that much smaller is it?"

"I think I'm big enough to eat a tank," Flamescale said as she inspected the size she had reached. It wasn't uncomfortable or anything to be so large, but she wasn't sure how it would feel to meet with locals at this size. However. "Which we might need. It will work for a combat form, or for taking over places. I have a really high infection chance for everything right now. The vapors are pretty potent even at this scale." She double checked. "Oh, five probably already hits the vapors always infecting." Admittedly it would do so at forty meters in length, so it would not be an option she could hide unless she only used vapors and found a particularly deep hole to hide in.

"You have a solid ST with it," Yellow-Glow said thoughtfully. "You have a giant monster skill inside of a solid ST. We have a fleet killer ST." Flamescale blinked at that idea, the best of the STs found, a Skill Tree strong enough to allow for an Entity to possibly take on space or sea warships on their own. In combat instead of subversion, although she could probably do both at once with this. "Have you found any issues with more bodies?"

"No, despite how everyone keeps asking, having more bodies doesn't bother me," Flamescale said and pulled out her laser rifle to see if it would still work. Then paused at the size of her laser rifle, which still fit nicely into her hands. "I guess Linked Gear gets the size part too. The battery is... Well that's a problem. The total energy storage has gone up, and the current energy is up, but I think this isn't going to recharge in a reasonable time like this."

"Flamescale, please do testing for how that works now," Yellow-Glow said excitedly. "We are opening your rift, the facility is a remote lab with integrated landing zone. We can contain the locals while you initiate the takeover."

"With any luck all resources will be present to complete the research," Sledge sighed. "Without that we may take longer, and I am already worried this is going to take days."

"If they let me turn the lab into an infected hive for days then we might have bigger problems," Flamescale declared, but still prepared for that. It would not be the first time she spent days on a single mission, but it would be the longest outright attack if it lasted that long. "Is the Rift going to be somewhere I can start at full size?"

"You should be able to fit, and we need infection chance as high as possible," Yellow-Glow declared as the Rift opened. "Please try and get to full size and quantity as soon as possible."

"We are close to the site, please take a comm unit so we can learn when the location is under control," Sledge requested, and Flamescale had to stop and go grab a comm unit. Then because she did have some extra Void Materials she also linked it.

Flamescale then went through the Rift, and into a large storage area with a few now quite horrified guards as she discovered that twenty meters long was in fact large enough to be more on the scale of a vehicle than a creature. She had all of her damage turned down, and was letting out a cloud of vapors that almost immediately took over the five guards. Those five unfortunately did not have any knowledge of how to perform the research, which meant they were about to become a test of her Fusion skill.

Her vapors were already spreading through the vents of the storage bay to other areas as she split off one of her four bodies. The decrease in size reduced her stats for a moment, but the first of these victims pressed against the larger three headed body, and she triggered the skill. The effect was to pull the 319A's head towards where her three necks were, while the rest of their body melted down. Then their head started to extend and change into another of her heads, but that was where the issue turned up.

Because rather than just destroying the now consumed guard's mind, it was instead as if her mind was simply layered on top of it. Pushing their memories backwards, into just a sort of knowledge she possessed, but not removing them. In fact Flamescale could feel those memories and the associated knowledge settle in the back of her mind, made into a part of it that she worried would not go away when she got rid of the extra head.

Despite that the body still grew back to the full twenty meter size, and she still needed more for this site given the knowledge of her infected of just how big the place was. Three more terrified infected 319A guards were ordered to fuse with the single headed body, and their minds quickly joined the first as nothing more than a part of her as she got a chance to see what her four headed form looked like from another four headed form.

The results looked good to her. The four necks were a bit confusing to see, and the size was a bit tight to fit both of them in the room, but both of those actually felt rather nice to see. If it wasn't for the consumed minds she would have considered having as many larger bodies as she could all the time. "This might be a reason to get the points for Infected Creation," she admitted as she split another body off the one that still had three of her original heads to consume the final guard. "Those are supposed to make new creatures that can be used for this instead." The last guard was not reassured by this before they ceased to be another person, and gave her two full sized bodies and a single singular headed body.

During that testing the rest of the facility had started to notice the vapors, although luckily with the plot by Yellow-Glow to replace all filters with lava fruit scented ones making it easy to disguise for those who had not yet been infected. A group that she started to reduce quite quickly as she began to squeeze her largest bodies into the facility itself.

Most of it could not fit her while she tried to be solid, but at the same time a river of infected material from one of the bodies was another option to infect the locals. That didn't seem to impact having extra heads that couldn't split off, and Flamescale was careful to double check each infected for knowledge of local projects before she tried to use them to get up to a full four bodies with four heads each. Those guards who weren't consumed utterly for her bodies were started off on the job of building infected materials and emplaced biological defense weapons, while the research staff was set on completing their work.

---

It wasn't until well after the entire site was taken that Yellow-Glow and Sledge arrived at the site with a civilian shuttle full of captured researchers from another shift. As a result she wasn't able to compare her current size to them until the isolated desert base was coated in a layer of infected materials, and she had even had time to start construction of outlying defensive structures covered in bio-missile launchers.

"Ah, you are considerably larger than I realized," Sledge noted from the shuttle pad as her vapors flowed into the vehicle. It wasn't possible to use any command interface skills on other Void Entities, so they were safe, but the rest of the crew and cargo of the ship was quickly overtaken. Sledge himself was now small enough to possibly ride on one of her heads, although not easily, and Yellow-Glow was still in his 319A form that was a bit smaller than that. Even the forty meter long shuttle looked too small for her to actually fit inside.

"Yeah, it is taking some getting used to," Flamescale admitted, with a glare at various control systems and devices she could not use simply because her smallest fingers were now larger than they were designed to operate with. "But I'm having a fairly good time."

"Of course you are," Sledge sighed, while Yellow-Glow moved up to look over the body that was present.

"Did you encounter any issues with the efforts?" Yellow-Glow questioned, and Flamescale paused a moment before she decided they didn't need to both know the complication with her new skill yet.

"Unfortunately, it seems that we will be here a least a day," she admitted the easier part to talk about. "Possibly even with missions to some resource depots for additional supplies if I can't find everything I need soon. Some of the experimental setups are hard on the manufacturing equipment, and the gate itself already needs parts to be replaced. I'm glad you found these guys, I need some of them to make those repairs."

"I don't suppose you can tell where we would need to get those supplies?" Sledge questioned. "I would like to get everything we need sooner rather than later."

"If it comes to that? We need to hope they still order some of the stuff," Flamescale had to tell him. "Or manufacture it in some cases. If we're going farther than I hoped we would, then we can capture some auto-foundries too. I can split myself between multiple sites if we really need that." She hoped that this would be the full extent of locals she infected. "Has there been any response yet? I've been keeping comms fairly quiet so far."

"Let me have comms access, I might be able to delay inspection quite a while," Yellow-Glow declared. "Is the work that can be done proceeding well?"

"Not yet, but I've been waiting for you two to arrive before I went over what they were doing myself," she admitted, although a part of her wondered if Yellow-Glow had even had the chance to see her replay for the first mission of the season where she made some Void Materials yet. If he hadn't that statement might not tell him what she meant, and she wasn't sure when they would discuss that issue. "Did you have any time to look into Skill Link yet?"

"It is the result of making Void Materials," Yellow-Glow confirmed. "Although how to do that is complicated. I have not had time to work out how to decode a three viewpoint mission yet, so any details on the process could help with making a guide." He then paused visibly. "And now I will need a four body, sixteen viewpoint decoder," he lamented as he visibly counted her heads, and looked over at another body she had attempting to build Infected Mass turrets nearby. That attempt was a failure that still made the same sized ones as those made by anyone else infected. "I don't think I even want a nine by nine viewpoint replay, just don't even bother."

"If I ever need to fight an entire warship fleet on my own we probably will want to know what the heck caused that," Flamescale pointed out with a mixture of amusement and unease at the idea of having so many bodies that large. It would be at a scale that she couldn't imagine anything short of trying to destroy a planet as the reason for such a situation.

"Then let me go make sure we don't have to fight a warship fleet now," Yellow-Glow joked and followed one of her infected towards the communications center.

"You were able to use local gear to make Void Materials?" Sledge questioned as he instead followed her body that met with them into the facility, with her destination being the research area itself.

"I was. The methods are, similar to how Synch-Tech is made," she confessed to him. "My job as a human works with Synch-Tech a lot."

That left Sledge strangely quiet for long enough to get them to the main lab floor. "Tell me, Flamescale, honestly if you can. Is this existence just a simulation?" he questioned. "Am I just a copy made using Synch-Tech taken too far?"

"That's the wrong way of taking that news, Sledge," she answered, honestly as she could. "It isn't that this is some reference to Synch-Tech being a thing." She started to look into the actual research being done here. "Synch-Tech is Void-Tech. I can't say if this was supposed to be a game or not, but it definitely isn't anymore, and whatever these locals are working on works as well for humans as it does for them." Flamescale considered the results. "I can already apply what I know to get this project further along."

He was silent for another long moment. "I am uncertain I feel better with that possibility. If it was always Void that was the cause- Well that almost seems worse for everyone," he admitted with a sigh, and looked over the researchers as they got back to work. "Flamescale, look at those two," he then said more seriously and pointed at-

"Yellow-Glow, we have a complication," Flamescale said seriously over the comm unit she had as she looked at the same researcher twice over. "Another instance has completed a gate experiment. Wait, accident."

"Flamescale, how do you know that?" her friend asked with interest over the comm line.

"Because I have two instances of the same researcher, one who is trying deliberately to open a gate back to his home instance," she specified with special attention towards the other creature from another universe. "That result was an accident, and they haven't worked out how to recreate it, but if we could track that other instance it might be another site to target."

"If they have not tracked it already there is little chance that we can find the exact instance," Yellow-Glow said thoughtfully. "But that does improve our chances of just locating this site again in another instance to check for the data if we are destroyed here. I've delayed any investigation for at least a day, but we might still have a local Macrophylla attack inbound."

That was a problem. Of all the factions Macrophylla used power suits the most commonly, largely because they weren't really built for making conventional vehicles of a practical size. It meant they would be harder to infect, and would likely need to be actually fought. "Where?" she questioned quickly. "Give me a moment to get some anti-air ready."

"Not that soon, probably around nightfall at current projections," Yellow-Glow cut off that immediate reaction. "I have found a bugged system, and you can probably identify an infiltrator if you went through the minds of the former comm station staff. They are the only group I cannot trick into thinking the site has a development serious enough to lockdown for the moment."

"Alright, give me a direction when they get close," Flamescale requested. "I'm going over what they are working on for now."

---

[Author's Note]
We have a two parter here, and I am going to experiment with making everyone wait at a cliffhanger for the next part.
Usually I don't, and I do have the backlog at the moment to avoid it if needed, but I am doing this as a writing exercise anyway.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 15 - The Void Gate ---

The locals missed a key part of Synch-Tech material creation. Something very dangerous to miss, but also something that said a whole lot about where they were coming from. As far as Helen was aware nobody had ever made a teleportation device using Synch-Tech attuned materials, at least not before now. However, the locals knew of the Void from interactions with Void Entities, and they mostly used it to travel between instances.

The problem the locals had was with how they tried to attune their Void Materials to be useful for transporting things, but that wasn't how it was working. A Void Base wasn't an actual place the same way an instance of reality was a place. Instead it was more an extension of a Void Entity, a place they could put things and a part of them that could interact with others like them. It was very hostile to local life, and even things like the Infected Creatures she could possibly produce couldn't survive in one the way a Void Entity could. Trying to take a living thing with you through your Void Rift was a quick way to get a corpse.

Synch-Tech needed a mind to connect to, and that was the biggest complication with making Synch-Tech. You couldn't go from machine to machine, everything had to be a direct connection with either a person or a fairly potent AI entity at one of the ends. With that in mind, it was fairly obvious how the Ancients made their gates without running into that part of the issue. Ancient tech was alive, so of course its 'computers' had minds to work with, and as a result it could use the same materials Helen used in order to function. It also meant that whatever an Ancient Computer actually was, you would find one at any working Ancient Gate.

Flamescale's problem there was that the locals did not have very good options for making their own gates, even if they had all the pieces to the puzzle. "I've worked out what happened with the duplicate researcher," she said to both of her companions. Yellow-Glow had just gotten down to the research floor, and was only starting to look at what the locals were doing himself. Sledge on the other hand had been with her the entire time, but clearly didn't have the background to have worked this out himself.

"Already? I didn't think you had that much insight from controlling the locals," Yellow-Glow noted uneasily, having clearly realized she wasn't going to give him good news.

"You haven't told him that this Void-Tech is Synch-Tech yet?" Sledge asked sympathetically.

"He's been working on your project instead of working out how I made the Void Materials," Flamescale confessed as she also refocused one of the researchers who clearly didn't believe her requirements for a device on the project of replacing everything instead of sticking with the current materials. "It was an attunement machine."

"You made it sound more important than something you can look up how to build," her friend once again focused on one of the less important bits. "How far off are they, and how much faster can we do things with this knowledge?"

"Very, and not very," Flamescale answered with a sigh, a complicated sound with four mouths. "They have the entirely wrong focus for what sort of materials they should be making, and the only reason this guy is here is because his team did something 'wrong' by their understanding. He also was the core link for the event, he connected to his counterpart to open the gate. It needs a mind, and it is much easier with the right materials. I need at least a day just to replace the Void Materials with the proper variants."

"We need to replace all of the Void Materials," Yellow-Glow more seriously realized.

"Dare I ask how much we need?" Sledge questioned with a look around the room. "Because I am uncertain of where we can get the raw materials for that without letting out the right things to use. That is more information than I want revealed here."

"There is all the equipment to forge the pieces here, that's honestly the longest part of-" Flamescale started to explain. "Leaving you guys with that one, the Leaf force is coming from the north," she cut off and pointed to an unfortunate former guard who she shoved the rest of the explanation into as she dove three of her bodies to join the fourth on the surface to use oversized bio-missiles as makeshift long range air defense. Hopefully with enough time for those missiles to reform from the trip.

A sensor cybernetic or skill would probably help, but a fair backup method was tracking with an infected's mind in the relatively limited radar system the facility featured. There was an anti-air missile system at the site originally, along with a more capable 319 laser defense array that meant the Leaf forces couldn't get too close, but both were made under the assumption that the facility would not be detected without that detection being noticed. The good news there was this attack probably wouldn't see the massive coating and outer constructions made of red infected goo before they were under attack.

The lockdown Yellow-Glow had them under prevented more forces from being deployed immediately, with the reasoning the infected were using to keep that up being that on site defenses could hold until a proper relief force arrived. Yellow-Glow had threaded that needle of conversation mostly by downplaying the size of the infiltration. The three medium dropships, or shuttles as it was currently a bit unclear what sort of ships were inbound, could represent a force capable of taking out the original defenses, but the rest of the 319 had the impression of just a single shuttle instead.

Her missiles were ready and had a vague lock soon enough, thankfully before the three ships set down to offload ground forces. Thirty two larger than normal bio-missiles streaked out, but at the current range only four of them actually found a target. The damage likely wasn't great, but that wasn't the point of the attempt. Instead the point was the spray of infected residue that splattered on top of all three space ships and a good sized chunk of empty wilderness.

Three of her four bodies dove into the coating they had emerged from just a short time before, and each emerged again on the outside of one of the ships. Or rather, two of them ended up on the outside of the two light shuttles, and the third ended up inside of the medium dropship that had taken a direct hit that managed to splatter the massive cargo bay inside. The armored units inside were clearly unprepared for that, but there was a problem Flamescale had also overlooked.

Like the fact that a light shuttle was 'only' thirty meters long, which was not very long when she was twenty herself. In fact they both sagged notably as she found herself wrapping around them entirely, and barely squeezed into the sixty meter long dropship. Just working out how to move when such a large vehicle was at a scale where she could reasonably fight it herself now seemed more complicated. In fact it was hard enough to keep on the shuttles that one of the two had time to fire its own powerful missiles in an attempt to get her off the other one.

Flamescale's body there lost a large chunk of her health, barely surviving because of the increased maximum from the increased size, and even then only until a followup barrage from electomagnetic projectile cannons reduced that body to just a mass of lifeless goo before she could sacrifice a head to restore some of the lost health. Admittedly while also sending the shuttle under her crashing into the ground, so she was still down a target, but now she needed to try replacing a body.

Although not yet, as she still needed to get inside of the remaining shuttle, clean up any survivors of the downed one, and stop the really small looking power armored Leafs from taking out the body inside the dropship without taking it down with her inside. Most of her focus went there for the moment, although she did move her final body to the wreck to check, and she found as they reloaded that her spine launchers hit at anti-vehicle levels more commonly seen with a bio-cannon instead of the basic infantry option. Without the explosive component that helped against many targets, but in this case it allowed her direct infection to take over a couple of the armored opponents by punching the enhanced residue inside. Those were sent to help against the rest as she filled the interior with vapors and hoped that the crew weren't in vacuum rated gear.

Then Flamescale was reminded that her vapors were Fire elemental, as the seals for those lighter vacuum rated suits were not up for the heat of the vapors, which was just as good as being without the suits. So she had control over the dropship even as the armored suits that weren't compromised managed to take enough health off to be worth the sacrifice of a head, although the decrease in size was honestly helpful for that fight as it was more of an issue of being hard to miss than not having enough health. Liquid Compression then allowed her to hide as a puddle behind a few she had already converted and some supply crates while she considered the situation.

The fourth body arrived at the crashed ship without resistance, in fact the few Leaf crew were only still alive because they were saved from death as they were taken over by the vapors from the residue of her former body. The fire that had started in the ruins of the shuttle was actually healing them at this point. There were only three of them, and her plan was to use all of them to replace the lost heads as much as she could. First by splitting off a former guard from the lab using Fusion to replace a body for the first time.

The result there was a reminder that most locals had a lot less health than a Void Entity, as Flamescale's new body was left with less than a quarter of her normal single headed health, and much worse for all of the other stats. A solid reason to use Reformation instead, but hopefully a rare enough event that she didn't need to give up her fourth body for the next major battle she ended up fighting. The now three headed body then regained a fourth from one of the Leaf crew, their mind also absorbed, and the new body added the other two to get up to a ten meter long three heads. Leaving her with two twenty meter bodies and two ten meter ones.

It also left her with the second shuttle as the last enemy target she didn't control, with the few ground units nearly eliminated. The smaller intact ship was distorting slightly from the heat of her body, residue, and vapors around it, but unless she wanted to crash it as well she needed to get inside before that took it down. So Flamescale got out her oversized laser rifle, and aimed it at an airlock with a very awkward angle needed to hang off the ship to target the barely visible seam.

The weapon's effect was about the same as a shuttle mounted version instead of the handheld model it normally was, burning through the vulnerable location's armor and dealing some damage to the inner door as well. It wasn't a true anti-warship shot, that would be larger still and past what this size of shuttle could even carry, and unfortunately the battery for the rifle was still charging at the very slow rate she expected. If needed she still had five batteries linked, and in the case there were more fights like this she might even get another chance for a better Power Link skill.

---

"I have a shuttle and a dropship that both probably won't get back up again when I land them," Flamescale said with a one headed body. She had worked out that she could transfer heads between bodies with a lot of tricky maneuvers, and that let her send the reduced health body to talk with the guys while fixing some last minute damage to her other bodies from the rest of the combat. "How did the explanation go?"

"I have had enough time to go over the requirements for the replacement parts. I take it we are tearing apart a couple of space craft for whatever gold we can get out of them?" Yellow-Glow sighed.

"I remember hauling gold back from the belt," Sledge said wistfully as he inspected what seemed to be a piece of the proper mixture that Flamescale had the locals making. "Father always hated cleaning out the byproduct bays of the mining rig. Reminded us every time that humans once hoarded the suff and now it was mostly just another metal that filled up the refinery too fast."

"You were from the belt?" Flamescale questioned carefully as she inspected the other Entity. He seemed calm enough, but that was not a topic she expected out of him anytime soon.

"Some days I wish the rest of my family joined me here," he said with a nod. "We were all on a trip back, and the return load of supplies came loose. I only had enough time to realize something went wrong before I was only here." He turned to the floor where replacements were already being made for the smaller test rigs. "You likely have enough here if you scrap some unneeded electronics. I'm more worried about the reality that these gates could possibly be made by humans. It seems a risk that could prove dangerous."

"Why haven't they made one already?" Yellow-Glow asked her directly. "Helen, this isn't that difficult when you have the materials."

"Yes, it is," Flamescale specified with a huff and moved over to the main test device, the actual prototype Void Gate itself. With some careful movements from the memories of her infected she opened the device and took out the Void Material Gate Core. A ten centimeter diameter sphere that made Yellow-Glow recoil in horror at the sight of it. "This is what it takes to pull this sort of thing off."

"I feel like I am missing some details here," Sledge noted with a cautious glance between the two of them.

"The largest known attempt to attune a piece of material was a six centimeter sphere," Yellow-Glow specified darkly. "It exploded rather spectacularly when they tried to use it from being improperly formed. There was no known use for something of that size at the time, and most current uses rarely need more than a three by three by three centimeter cube."

"Do you remember why nobody really was that concerned when the end-synch button didn't work?" Flamescale questioned Sledge seriously.

"Synch-Tech systems large enough can cause a permanent synch that needs the device to be destroyed to end the synch," Sledge answered thoughtfully. "Do I want to know what happens if you die while connected to one of those?"

"I think you already do," Flamescale admitted sadly. "But at the same time that is the limitation here. These gates need to either be able to be transferred, or needs the same mind at both ends of the gate. The first kind can open to any gate it can target in theory, but the second would be easier to pull off. At least from what the locals know about how to make one. I can fix the issues with how they are making the materials, and how to make a system that can be transferred, but the actual gate part needs what they found out to inspire them to make this thing."

"When will the replacement for that monster be ready?" Yellow-Glow asked, still sounding a bit horrified by a new technical development for once.

"This is the very last thing I am replacing," Flamescale specified as she put the sphere back. "I need to have the infected completely redo the shock absorption systems for the attunement device to handle the larger vibrations that proper source materials have, and even before that change making this one shook the entire building hard enough to register on seismic monitors. Once we start to replace this we are on a time limit, because every 319 facility on this planet is going to know we're making another one, and they are going to want to hear the results."

---

Hours later, in the middle of the night, a pop that wasn't a sound from one of the test rigs caught their somewhat distracted attention. The locals had not attacked or looked too closely yet, but the process of replacing and reworking all of the test equipment was slow going, and it was hard to keep focused over this long of a time. Thankfully Flamescale's infected didn't need to sleep, or at least could go without for a while.

"What was that?" Sledge asked, but Flamescale was too busy double checking what the device was supposed to be to answer just yet.

"I believe it was some kind of Void effect, but I am not seeing any changes," Yellow-Glow pointed out, before there was another not-sound pop.

"I've found your Void Rift Disruptor," Flamescale admitted with a grumble, now completely without a way to get any of this gear back to her base if they needed it out quick. "Although if you two haven't noticed that part then we can tell there is a max range. Hopefully we have enough raw materials, because I was planning on using my own resources if we ran short on anything before this."

"Already? I did not think they would be able to create one until after we had a working gate," Yellow-Glow said with concern. "Do you recognize how it was done?"

"Yes, it's an over engineered Synch-Beacon?" she said with surprise as she double checked the design from a researcher's mind. "That- We put those things everywhere, not to mention we build them to target things. I know it sends out pulses that can be detected easily, but I didn't think Void Rifts were that easy to disrupt."

"So the good news is we can track them relatively easily?" Sledge questioned with a nod. "That is a better case scenario if we work out the gate part. Knowing what to destroy to get out again will help a lot."

"Helen, I know I can't usually feel a Synch-Beacon," Yellow-Glow complained but they both followed her as she started towards the test rig.

"Most don't have this much Void Material in them," she admitted as she went through all the knowledge of the experiment itself. "Maybe the military models, but this was supposed to be a device to track Void Rifts, not disrupt them. I think the locals are just caught up with trying to make really big stuff instead of knowing they can pull stuff off with smaller pieces."

"I am starting to get concerned with what the locals will do if they discover Synch-Tech as well," Sledge pointed out. "Will they also make themselves like us? Can they?"

"If they keep trying with this size of stuff they might," Flamescale admitted, possibly with a bit too much annoyance but she was starting to get the impression that the device was still overbuilt for even closing Rifts. "I'm still halfway convinced that Void Strike was actually supposed to be a game, and they just got things that wrong."

"It is unlikely that this was not done on purpose, Flamescale," Yellow-Glow grumbled. "I for one doubt the locals will manage the same transformation due to us not knowing what exactly creates Void Entities in the first place. We know the game is part of it, but that does not say how."

It was an old argument, and one of the reasons they typically just ignored the issue. Flamescale personally thought that Yellow-Glow mostly wanted it to have been done to everyone on purpose, instead of just another accident that went too far, but she admittedly did not have proof for her thoughts on the matter yet. Sledge seemed to just think about those options silently while the both of them silently avoided getting into a fight about the topic again.

The device they were after had not stopped giving off not-sound pops, Flamescale didn't want to break it by stopping it early when it wasn't stressed, and turned out to be considerably larger than even she expected. "That is not man portable," she admitted about the half meter tall rather awkward shaped experimental device that was literally wired into the local grid with some rather large cables.

"I was honestly expecting to find this after we could re-open and move Void Rifts," Yellow-Glow sighed at the size of the device. "Now I will probably need to move this somewhere else to test that, and that will risk losing it somewhere."

"Guys, what is the plan for making sure they don't get anything out of this place?" Flamescale asked now that she was faced with the device they were trying to delay the development of, and that she was fairly sure they would be seeing fairly soon given how easily this was made. Delay possibly wasn't an option in reality, but she did not want this instance getting the results if they could stop at least that much.

"A good point, we should get it ready now to make sure they cannot get this," Sledge agreed with the idea, and then there was a thump as a large object appeared next to him.

"Sledge, did you make a fifty megaton fusion bomb into a piece of Linked Gear?" Flamescale had to ask with considerable concern.

"Where exactly did you get a fifty megaton fusion bomb?" Yellow-Glow questioned a bit less concerned, but from the way her friend was inspecting the warship grade munition Flamescale was fairly sure he was at least as worried by this turn of events as she was.

"I was fairly certain I would find enough Void Materials to make up for it," Sledge answered her question first. "I have found that there are occasionally times where you need a way to cause a place to cease to exist, and some of my local contacts agree with that assessment. They are quite happy that I don't need to use the more intimidating way to carry one anymore, and my back is happier as well."

"And you two were saying that I needed to grow giant to become a fleet killer," Flamescale said dully as she considered just how much of the stuff present might possibly survive such a blast. "I hate to say it, but we might still want to use some secondary charges on anything particularly important. Just in case the materials that let them make a ten centimeter attuned sphere can actually survive that thing somehow."

---

"The security force is four hours out," Yellow-Glow warned as Flamescale kept an eye on the gate prototype.

"I know, but we might only have this chance anyway," she pointed out, operating the test herself to make sure they didn't lose any infected researchers to an accident. If it wasn't too bad then her body could be replaced, the locals who might be able to fix it in time couldn't.

"Are we certain that it was made correctly?" Sledge questioned reasonably, as the sphere had still shaken the attunement device so badly as to effectively destroy the machine during its creation.

"I am," Flamescale declared, because she was used to attuned materials that were made for specific things. "The sphere feels right. I've used enough for that. The only problem at this point is the targeting, and we don't have the time or safety to test linking to another instance. We need this stuff out too, the gate itself if we can manage. So I'm going to use this to open a Rift, maybe all three of our Rifts if this wasn't as stable as I expected."

Yellow-Glow had actually been the one to propose it, hours ago when the initial testing of the various other experimental rigs reached the end of the things they could do in the time frame before they were discovered. It was well over a day after they arrived at the site, they were lucky enough that the Leaf team was not followed up on with a second wave. They couldn't really afford any more time now for full testing if it didn't work, and the guys still needed time to get out. Everything was rigged to either be taken or destroyed, whichever was possible after this.

There was a hum that was not a sound. Helen was very used to things like that, it was a sign you were working with experimental Synch-Tech. Mark was not used to experimental models, and she could see Yellow-Glow grow slightly nervous as a result. Sledge she didn't know enough about before he was Sledge to be sure he hadn't encountered any before, but he seemed at least to know that it was a property of the Void-Tech they were using by this point.

Then there was a crack that still was not a sound, but one that was more familiar to Flamescale than to Helen. Open Instances didn't start the Entities all at the same time, so it was quite possible to be close enough to the formation of a Void Rift to sense it. "Gate device is still intact," she said firmly as she started to power it down. "My Rift is open again, what about you two?"

"Mine has been moved," Sledge said simply. "We need to get started. Collect the infected, I can deal with them while the two of you start to move the stuff we want to take."

"No, I have the infected covered," Flamescale countered, and sighed at what she was thinking of doing. "We need the knowledge they have, and fusing them with me lets me keep that." The guards and the Leaf attack force were easier to think about, she needed the firepower and they would die anyway. This though was too important to avoid.

"It what?" Yellow-Glow said sharply. "None of those I've questioned with such skills have mentioned that sort of thing."

"It appears there's lots of things that don't get mentioned about the mind part of these skills," Flamescale admitted as she started that process anyway. The infected were ordered to her bodies even as she started to just entirely absorb the extra heads. "I'm going to double check when I get back, but we need the details they have. I can put up with eating these local's minds as well as their bodies." Even if she didn't like being able to handle that.

"Hm, I am not sure what to think about that," Sledge admitted. "But you are right about the knowledge, and I would have argued for other, possibly worse, methods of getting it if I had known of any, but then again I didn't know of this one. I'll start on the heavier items then."

Adding an entire research facility's staff to that place in the back of her mind didn't take long, in fact she ended up done in time to help with the removal of some of the experimental rigs that Yellow-Glow wanted to keep. Then she was the last out of the base before the bombs went off. The sudden loss of the infected materials that had coated the facility was a mixture of uneasy and relief to Flamescale, but more than anything she wanted to rest after the long and tiring mission.

The rewards were notable, however, with an unbelievable thirty points just for her skill tree. The bigger reward, and the one that had her discussing what exactly Yellow-Glow had been trying to do after it appeared, was an overall announcement of a new feature unlocked by community research. A new device that could be made with the Linked Gear interface, the Void Rift Generator. A device that was only ever Linked Gear, and allowed Entities to move or reopen their Void Rifts as long as they had one.

Along with the downside of the development, a proper announcement of Void Rift Disruptors being a possible thing to encounter. With warnings about how they would be a new hazard, and a forum thread already complaining about how this was an annoying way to balance out the Linked Gear. Flamescale wasn't sure what to make of the many posts who said they said it was coming. The links to proof were rather annoying, but the idea that it was "obvious" from the perspective of this being a game felt strange knowing it wasn't.

---

[Author's Note]
So, the big help with cliffhanger chapters in a web serial is you can still edit part 2 after feedback from part 1. That is something I've apparently not considered in the past, where I usually tried to release multi-chapter plots all at once instead.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 16 - Calm Before ---

In the days after the gate lab mission Flamescale slept for one whole day, went on a couple of Void Disturbance missions to get more Void Material, and spent the time between those things looking for answers to the question of how the mental connections to infected worked. She was up to one hundred thirty six points in her ST, enough to have a single level of every skill she could get in her Liquid Mobility, Multiform, Contagion, Hidden Infection, and Mass Infection branches. The cap skill of Liquid Mobility wasn't available to her yet, she still had a second level of the Multiform skill itself for a fourth body, and three points were in her Fire Toxin tree to keep her basic Fire elemental abilities. That left only the Reformation and Enhancement branches untouched, and those two were still a bit dubious of a use for points right now.

Flamescale looked at her skills with unease. Any information on the mental aspects of her Contagion skills was basically impossible to find, and what few mentions she did locate seemed to have been told not to discuss it by others with such skills. Apparently it was actually a taboo topic for the majority of the forums and sites, and she had to admit she wasn't going to be the one to start talking about it openly. She had every one of the skills now, and oftentimes it took having a skill to get the full details on it.

The two she had not tried before now were Infection Regeneration, a ten point single level skill from Mass Infection that gave a powerful percentage health regen per second, and Infected Creation, a fifteen point single level skill that required a level of every other Mass Infection skill. The purpose of Infected Creation was to allow her to make new infected creatures without needing to infect someone, or to improve an infected victim to be stronger and more powerful.

One thing that was tricky with Void Strike was skills sometimes gave you menus and capacity to do things that you could actually do without that skill to some extent. Hacking was a good example, where you could naturally learn to perform many kinds of hacking techniques on local systems, but getting a hacking skill gave you an interface that let you more easily see how to do such things. Having both the natural ability and the skill granted ability was better than either one alone.

In this case, the result was more blunt but also clarified things greatly. Infected Creation gave a new menu, because apparently one thing nobody discussed about the ability was that you could keep and develop your creations' minds. There was an interface for it, that listed three kinds of minds to interact with. The minds of infected were Controlled, the original minds of those who were converted were Recorded, and the minds of your creations were Created.

The moment she used the fifteen points to get Infected Creation she found her collected minds from using Fusion placed into Recorded. Sorted as if she had used this skill on them instead. She needed to test it to work out what exactly the tutorial that came with the skill meant about each of the little complications it had pointed out. Flamescale needed to make Infected Hives in order to create Infected Creatures, then she could select an open spot in her Created mind area, select an existing mind that was already there, select a Recorded mind to make into a Created mind, or order a Controlled mind to go to a Hive to be converted into both Recorded and Created entries.

The details on that last part were unpleasant, as it appeared the only changes she could not make to the resulting minds were actually restrictions on what had to be changed every time. If she understood it correctly, and she hoped she didn't, they would have to be changed in two ways. First, they would be changed to be able to use and prefer the body of an Infected Creature, which wasn't that bad considering it would be the body they had. The second one was an issue for her, as they would always be changed to be entirely loyal to her and her alone.

Flamescale could simply remake her entire consumed research facility staff. Which was theoretically helpful, but she really hoped she never needed to do it. They just would look mostly like her, because while she did finally have access to the menus to customize the infected materials and the forms of these new creatures, the results had far more limitations than she had on altering minds. Her chosen body plan didn't help much there, and strangely the Infected Creature options appeared to be made to give general ideas for the changes from her base form instead of specifics.

"I guess darker black color spots and stripes?" she suggested to herself, uncertain where to start with that, and not really in the mood to talk with Yellow-Glow about the discovery just yet. She needed to know what it was like in practice first. "Huh, those are some fairly solid stats... That's more than half my base health," she then noticed. "That's better than using basic Reformation if they work with Fusion, and I wouldn't need to fuse more minds." It would still be worse for many of her other stats, Reformation only decreased max health, but it would be easier to pull off and let her have multiple of her larger bodies more easily too.

The mission console had a new warning marker for missions, a little symbol that said it was known that Rift Disruptors existed or could soon exist in the instance. It wasn't always accurate, but usually exceptions were only found in Void Labs, and that was safe enough to let people get the resources to make a Void Rift Generator. There were complaints about that, although Flamescale's favorite complaint was Yellow-Glow's about how the feature needed to be added after a day of it being too much of a difficulty.

Near the top of her display was an annoying kind of Open Instance, and unfortunately marked with the new warning marker. An outright combative Slink rebellion, where the rat-like locals were trying to overthrow their slavers. It was a situation where you often had a number of targets that the Slinks wanted destroyed, often with little coordination, and they summoned Void Entities to take them out. Girant sometimes summoned Entities to deal with the issue as well, but much more commonly they simply bombarded the planet from orbit if it even looked like the Slinks were winning.

It killed their own people, but Flamescale knew the Slinks who tried this didn't have all of the moral high ground. Usually by the time the bombing started more Girant had died of Slink action first than of the orbital fire. Other local groups didn't like either side of it, but the Girant in any given instance usually only did it once or very rarely twice before they started to look to other methods. Usually terrible ones, but at this point Flamescale couldn't do much to save these Slinks from the long term results of this choice, only try and get the short term issues resolved as best she could help.

The specific objective she had found offered was to take out a Girant military control center, which was a target that favored her own methods, and was also a good target for her current goals. Those facilities would be nice to try and take over, and it should allow her to quickly figure out if there were any enemy Void Entities on the mission.

Flamescale went through the Rift as soon as it formed, ready for it to vanish just in case there was already a disruptor. Four bodies allowed for even more complex infiltration operations. One body could obviously perform actions to distract for the other three each going for their own targets. Others could go straight to the security center or centers to subvert it and delay the reactions of the internal personnel to being taken over, which could take two bodies. Being able to take on both when they had two, keep a body to infect directly, and still have a distraction body as well was the major advantage she got with the fourth body.

A plan that worked rather poorly in this case, as the world she emerged into was already in a major fight, with it clear that she was not the first Entity to get there. A number of clearly undead Girant were fighting the living ones near her Rift, and the information she had for her target showed it not too far from that active conflict. The undead were moving away from her target, but already covered distractions fairly well.

Her target itself was clearly well guarded, with hasty welded plates over the Slink tunnels that once went inside. Admittedly that didn't stop Flamescale, as these were not air tight welds and her bodies regenerated from the heat rather than getting hurt by it. After going through that she broke up into four bodies, one that started making a first Infected Hive, and the rest spreading out to infect the entire population of the building directly.

Her visual choice was to make it look like hardened obsidian rock covered with holes that were entirely full of her infected material. Making the hive itself did not take too long, she had not finished taking over the Girant staff yet by the time it was done, and with it she had the actual details of Infected Creature creation available. The mental aspect was a part she was honestly the most torn on now that she saw what was required to start making one, because if she didn't have the stored minds of the former research base staff she would now apparently need to make entirely new minds. Possibly entirely new people, who looked like her, and that was an idea that sat a lot less easily while she acknowledged that this was not just a game.

Flamescale did not want to make new creatures like that, even if the alternative was converting locals into automatically loyal minions. Something she needed to try, and that required picking one of the minds to remake into another goo snake person. Of the options, it was ironically the first she had fused with who seemed to be the best option from what she could tell from his memories, as they were the one mind out of the group that had an existing interest in being made out of liquid.

Admittedly it was something the 319A in question wanted to hide, due to the current experiments with ancient computer remains, but it still gave her the option to start with somebody who wouldn't be changed as much due to the new body. The first created infected was quick to make, one of the things that was stated was that the first one for each hive was quicker than the later ones. Names for 319 were tricky, a lot of them were actually clones, this one included, and they tended to only have their designation. This one was "0021-C-125-1470-G1698416", although he was commonly called "Sixteen" due to having that number twice in his personal identifier. She left the original name when prompted for the creation of a new Created entry.

The snake monster that emerged was not quite what Flamescale had expected, with a similar build to herself, but notable black bands at his shoulders and then repeated down his body at every meter below there. At this point it was actually strange to see a body like her own that was not her directly, even if his was still in a way an extension of herself. The fact that she now had two places with a copy of 0021-C-125-1470-G1698416 was unnerving as well, as it implied she would always have the original dead mind separated from the still existing copied mind.

"I'm going to end up another head again, aren't I?" Sixteen questioned tiredly as soon as he finished emerging.

"Probably," she admitted bluntly. "How is it?" she questioned, uncertain what it was like for a local to be changed like this.

"It is, easy? I don't know how to answer that, it doesn't fit with my memories well," Sixteen admitted, and then they both started towards the control and communications center of the building. Her infection was now mostly completed, and she had other things to work on now to try and make this rebellion more likely to survive. "Can we avoid that topic? I think I'd rather just get clear orders." The question was a well worn path in his mind, something he had to say to superiors often.

"So, I'm going to tell you a secret your boss never got to tell you," Flamescale said to him quietly, although she was being a bit mean here. "You were management material, and you are being put in charge of the rest when I don't have time for more precise orders." He looked as unhappy as she expected. "Is there any problem with your appearance?" she questioned more seriously as they emerged into a collection of Girant and one of her other bodies that were working on leading the local forces into a variety of plausible traps.

"I would have liked some more options, but I think the stripes work nicely," the other snake person commented, and that made Flamescale stop.

"You were able to pick that out," she realized, as she noticed that his AR was updated with some menu options for that sort of thing. "That honestly is a relief."

"Are we converting these ones?" Sixteen then asked about the Girant still working at their stations. "I can feel that we are making more hives."

"Possibly," Flamescale admitted, unhappy with it as an option but well aware that she might need the extra heads. "I was hoping to keep the numbers fairly low."

"I'm happier to be alive that not," he grumbled with a huff. "Although I'm not looking forward to dying again."

"You get used to it," Flamescale noted, unhappy with noting it because she had forced that immortality on him. "We have a necromancer and an electric elemental dragon out there." She considered for a long moment all of the knowledge that she had on hand. "I'm going to try and work with the Entities here, and I'm going to let you use your judgment on what to do to support the Slinks while I handle that," she allowed, knowing that the Girant had not officially summoned anyone.

Sixteen did not look enthused with that instruction, which was honestly half the point. Flamescale could handle one mission where he went too far, and it would tell her how much she could trust her infected to avoid becoming monsters. "Start by giving me the rest of the guard staff you ate," he requested with a grumble as she sent off two bodies to find the other Entities.

The request made her pause for a moment instead of sending the other two bodies off to start mapping the damage from the other Entities. "How much do you remember from after you were turned into a head?" Flamescale questioned carefully, uncertain about the possibility. It should have been just her in that head after the fusion.

"You had four heads, split one off, and only then ate me," Sixteen complained. "Of course you didn't stop at just one of us. I could use a few more guards."

"Ah, you were a smart guard," Flamescale said with a bit of relief, but she needed him to know what he could ask for. "I ate everyone, not just a few guards. Just ask if you think we need the entire research facility. Also some Macrophylla, but they were a strike team."

"Give me the entire security staff, I'd rather have some former 319 than these Girant or some Leafs," Sixteen grumbled and Flamescale went ahead and started on that. "Any targets you want us to focus on?"

"Try and keep any civilian infrastructure intact," Flamescale ordered, somewhat happy to possibly have someone to trust on this sort of mission for that. "I'm sure you can figure out a way to get me if you need clearer orders."

Sixteen then went to where the hives were making the rest of that force, clearly able to use Material Movement as well, while Flamescale found a familiar necromancer. "Hello again," she said, in a Reverted Form coat of scales to keep up the illusion of not being a contagion for a moment.

"The roleplayer snake. I guess you probably are helping the rats out this time too," the human shaped Void Entity grumbled. "Although this is one of the smartest I've seen from the rats. You missed the first player they brought in taking over half the orbital fleet. They have four battleships under rat control up there in case we pull anything."

"They went for orbital control first?" Flamescale had to ask, and sent orders to Sixteen to investigate the orbital side of things and get records there. "That's a new one. I've got the local Girant military command center under control. The other forces haven't figured it out yet, so if you want I can send them to where you can take them out."

"I'm almost done with this one," the necromancer complained. "Just need to clean up a few more formations and I can get out of here." Then the other woman seemed to realize what exactly Flamescale had offered. "Alright, I guess you can try and feed me my targets."

Flamescale mostly just went along with that conversation idly as another body found the dragon. It was rather easy, given the dragon was flying over a Girant formation hitting them with Thunder Bolts and balls of electrical energy. The dragon was at least five meters from snout to the end of their long tail that ended in three large spikes. Spikes were really the main characteristic of the pale blue with a gradient to grey dragon, with blue arcs of electricity going between the spikes. Their wings were ten to fifteen meters and had spiked edges, still a bit small for realistic flight, but it wasn't like Flamescale was biologically possible either.

"Hello there, I'm ThunderFang77," the dragon greeted her with a wave of five fingered claws and a feminine voice. The dragoness even included her player data. "Please tell me you are with the Slinks."

"Flamescale, and yes. I was checking in to see if the others they hired needed help," Flamescale happily greeted the dragoness with matching data. It wasn't common to send that, but you needed to take advantage of it when you actually met someone willing to try and make contact. The social areas promised still had not shown up.

"Flamescale? From the Yellow-Glow guides," ThunderFang77 realized with excitement. "Oh, you guys make the best guides for nonhuman shapes. Would you be willing to stick around a bit when your mission is done? I'd love to ask a couple of questions about the character creator guide."

"Yellow-Glow handles most of the guide stuff, but I guess I can spare the time," Flamescale admitted, kind of happy to discuss that sort of topic. "What do you have left to do?"

"Just a second," ThunderFang77 replied with a nod, and then seemed to start up some communications cybernetics. Which was strange, because the Electric Evoker branch was well known to have problems with cybernetics. Flamescale's own Fire Evoker sometimes overheated them, but the hardening against electromagnetic interference was usually not great when the interference came from whoever installed them. Season one had featured a character creator 'improvement' that basically just made it so you couldn't install them at all with an incompatible skill set. "I'm almost done, just need to take down or take over a fuel depot over that way."

"I can help with that," Flamescale declared and melted her appearance to tell this Entity what she was. "I've got a small army of infected to work with." She gave another order to have Sixteen help here as well, his mind sort of exasperated but not overwhelmed. "Did you find somewhere with better than normal hardening for their cybernetics?"

"Actually, that's new for this season," the dragoness admitted as they both started towards that final target. Flamescale was technically done with her mission before she even started looking for the other Entities. "I managed to get this rare 'Skill Link' skill for doing that easter egg of using an attunement device to make Void Materials. I just needed to make the cybernetics into Linked Gear and they got my Electric Immunity skill. After that I was able to just install them."

"Skill Link works on cybernetics," Flamescale realized aloud, and then sent ThunderFang77 the details for Yellow-Glow. "Okay, now I've got one better for you than just asking about the guides, if you are willing I'm sure Yellow-Glow would love to add that information to them. Not to mention if it works like that it might let me use them again too."

"Really, that's new information for you?" ThunderFang77 asked curiously with a glance towards their target. "It was the first thing I tried when I got that one, even if it was annoying to get. The fact that we're stuck here isn't funny."

"I guess you got Void Strike to be a dragon?" Flamescale pointed out, and split off the body she had been using to talk to the now leaving necromancer.

ThunderFang77 watched her other body move off with a now familiar look that said 'you actually have multiple bodies' without using words. "Actually, it was my younger brother's fault. I was heading back to Earth for my last few weeks of college and after that my job, and he suggested it as a way the whole family could keep in touch better," the dragoness stated, and Flamescale flinched at that. "Yeah, worst part is he doesn't even like it after getting everyone stuck here. I'm the only one who really plays, the rest of us stay at this nice arcology where a bunch of people stuck here all play out being in a normal world. Personally, it gave me the chance to be a dragon, and you always take that chance."

"I didn't," Flamescale pointed out jokingly, to try and go along with the attempt to lighten the mood.

Then her Void Rift suddenly closed as a harsh hum that wasn't a sound covered everything. Both of them immediately got out and attempted to use their new Void Rift Generators. They didn't even open one for a flicker. "I can track that," ThunderFang77 declared, but looked as uneasy as Flamescale felt. "But that is too rapid. The locals can't have made a disruptor that is online that long."

"I can get out without a rift," Flamescale pointed out as they both followed the direction of the disruptor. Sixteen and her other infected indicated that an ancient gate was found in that direction. "Can you afford to abort?"

"Already tried, triggered abort isn't working," the dragoness rumbled like a thunderstorm. "Death probably would pull me out, but I'd rather see if I could break whatever this is before I tried that."

---

[Author's Note]
I need to put a thank you to Arcane Howitzer on Sufficient Velocity for the realization that cybernetics get nice benefits from a Skill Link skill. It was a very nice comment that touched on something I had not considered, and an example of why I like making web serial type fiction. Reader interactions are nice for story development.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 17 - The Ancient Disruptor ---

Flamescale's two bodies with ThunderFang77 were already moving towards the target, which was outside of the now rather war torn Girant city they had been fighting over, but not to an area without any development based on her ability to triangulate the signal using how her bodies were at different locations.

"What could be causing this?" the dragoness asked as they approached. "I've run into a couple of local disruptor models, and they can't handle this sort of thing." The not-sound hum was growing stronger.

"The locals are making stuff based on what the Ancients can do, this is an actual Ancient device," Flamescale explained, and then sent another body to get some more options from Sixteen. "Expect some Rhizo and possibly infected locals under the control of something liquid in nature. Maybe some crystals or the coral stuff they build out of."

"Sixteen, we have a possible Ancient Void Disruptor on site," Flamescale said after she had one spare head emerge from his body. "New primary objective is to track and contain the device, be aware of possible enemy infected near the target, and get ready for support for full heads. I need twelve extra heads as soon as you can work out who can be spared for a bit." She didn't really wait for a vocal response, instead just checking his mind to see if he thought he could pull it off as she sent all of her bodies to get ready for the current threat.

"The ancients?" ThunderFang questioned even as the dragoness clearly prepared for a fight. "Wait, this is related to those weird Rhizo outbreaks where they all look the same? That wasn't just an odd bug?"

"If you see a group of Rhizo that look mostly the same it means you have found some actual ancient military forces," Flamescale explained as the dragoness blasted a Girant tank that noticed them with a devastating bolt of lightning. "This, is probably an intact ancient device made to disrupt Void gates they don't want open. Maybe even specifically for stopping our Void Rifts."

The first of her extra heads then started to emerge, which was much stranger when it involved other infected who could also use Material Movement. A development that gave her some unpleasant options for how she could possibly have hives usable without needing to make them on site, but only if she wanted to leave another instance infected. Flamescale could try it, it was even possible that the local Slinks would appreciate the backup if they made anything of this rebellion, but she wasn't ready to do that just yet. A part of her hoped she was never ready for that.

"So probably not a normal thing to find?" ThunderFang asked hopefully. "I really want to be able to abort properly, so I'm kind of hoping this is just a buggy release for a feature."

"With any luck," Flamescale admitted with a sigh about how she was without her spine launchers or missiles. Even those basics had felt over the top for what she needed out of the original mission objective, so she was paying for that with a lack of bio-weapons. "They've reworked some stuff like this before." She didn't know if the developers could work around this block or not, even if calling it a 'bug' wasn't actually accurate.

"Although I think we're dealing with bosses again," the dragoness warned her as they made their way to a ridge that cut off sight of their target, at least from the ground. "I see a lot of Rhizo around a starfish shaped thing. It's at least the size of a heavy tank, and I think it has some of those bio-shields we haven't found a ST for yet. It has the right glow on the ground around it." Then to Flamescale's surprise seemed to turn into a storm cloud as a bio-laser cut through where ThunderFang was a moment before, and then the cloud rapidly moved towards the ground and reformed into a dragon again under the cover of the ridge.

"Wait, did you find an elemental ST with Mist Form?" Flamescale asked with some excitement herself, and maybe a bit of jealousy. She preferred an all the time liquid form, but Mist Form was a good second option for a similar branch, and actually had a skill to bring your gear with you when you changed.

"It can't be as rare as a Multiform skill tree," ThunderFang laughed a bit nervously. "Although I'm fairly sure I couldn't handle that one, but I really do like being able to call myself a real storm cloud dragon. Um, how big do you get?"

"So far, about this big but with four of these," Flamescale admitted as one of her bodies reached four heads, some of which were former Girant that Sixteen apparently decided to convert. Which she wasn't entirely happy with, but he only went for that after she called out the Ancient Disruptor being present. Apparently it was a lot faster to feed infected into a hive than to replace the people Sixteen trusted, who were currently in the process of trying to steal an entire Girant hover unit force. "How does this compare to that starfish?"

"Um, well it wasn't the one with the laser, so we might need a few more than that," ThunderFang77 clarified and sent out a ball of lightning as they took advantage of the ridge. "Also, it definitely is also taking over locals. There are a couple of tanks that aren't fighting it."

"I might have some makeshift artillery on hand," Flamescale said thoughtfully with one body, while the others tried out the spit attack at this scale. "Also some air support that might be available, but I don't want to use that until after we thin some of their anti-air." The splatters of infected residue didn't hit much directly, and what it did hit had a far more advanced infection than the last one she had gone against. Even four head sized infection chance boosts resulted in more damaged foes than counter infected, and it was a fight to keep those few on her side to get an unusual way to see the enemy force.

There was a crack of thunder, and a louder sound as that caused the ball of lightning floating over the battlefield to explode in the midst of the closest enemies. "Right, do we have a plan for when they reach the ridge?" ThunderFang questioned with a frown. "I can get out of the area quick, but I don't know how much damage I will take trying."

"Stay back then, I can replace bodies a lot more easily than that," Flamescale suggested before she sent up a second wave of toxic spit. This got some longer lived infected, but she would need a lot more levels of infection related things to make it more reliable to have her lesser infected manage to infect others. "You definitely have the better combat ST than me right now, and I'm willing to be a meat shield for you there."

"You don't really look like meat," ThunderFang joked easily despite the serious situation. "More like jam or jelly." The casual nature of that joke meant that Flamescale was suddenly and harshly reminded that this was someone who still thought all of this was just a game. "Okay, I'll hang back out of laser range, and I've gotten pretty good at anti-missile work with my Electric Aura and Arcs."

Sixteen, in a clear contrast from the other Void Entity's reaction to this conflict, had re-routed the hover units he had take to the task of infecting every Girant military unit they could find. With a rather loud thought that he intended to give her as many enemy units, and free up as many allied units, to help with the issue as he could. With that backup coming soon, Flamescale sent one body up the ridge to engage with a laser rifle scaled to the size of a laser cannon to get more information on what sort of threat this was.

The Rhizocephala laser units were very crab looking instead of humanoid, to make room for that heavy bio-weapon, but the presence of four of the things was a rather big issue. Bio-lasers were some of the strongest Rhizo, usually only found in potent pirate forces, and then you would rarely find two. The more common bio-cannon and bio-missile variants were dangerous as well, but not a priority target in comparison. Naturally Flamescale fired directly at one of those with a yelp. Which actually overcame the ancient infection, and gave her the laser Rhizo she targeted, but that body had to dive into residue to avoid the other three lasers and enough missiles to remove all the residue afterwards.

The good news was that a Rhizo that could take that hit long enough to be converted was also strong enough to deal some damage before the small army of crab robots killed it. "Bad news, you're getting three jam shields instead of four," Flamescale informed ThunderFang before she tried a more targeted bombardment of toxin. "I need to keep one behind to replace the others with, and the next set is probably going to be worse." She had targeted the main missile units instead of the other lasers, mostly with the hope they would be easier to take over.

"Give me a second," the dragoness declared with a trio of those electric ball attacks, which was a lot to have at once. Flamescale had underestimated how complete ThunderFang77's ST was if that rate of reload for the skill was available. "This is either going to be really cool, or really dumb." The three spheres of energy moved together towards the ridge, which now had a few lighter Rhizo appearing at the top that Flamescale was trying to work out how to properly engage at her current size. Then before any of those spheres could time out ThunderFang speared all three with a single bolt of lightning, and generated an even larger blast that actually took out the entire top of the ridge itself in an explosion of dirt and stone fragments.

"Well, you cleared most of the smaller ones," Flamescale declared and sacrificed a head from each of the three bodies left to heal, replaced quickly as she got her laser rifle out on each. "You just took a quarter of my health per body and got rid of our nice ridge."

"It was not supposed to do that to the ridge," ThunderFang agreed as the dragoness began to more rapidly fire off smaller lightning bolts. "I liked the ridge, the ridge kept the lasers away, and losing the ridge means this was dumb instead of cool."

As the dragoness complained Sixteen emerged from the side of the body Flamescale had brought behind the lines to keep safe. "We have artillery available, but be aware that an orbital fire mission will be coming soon for the gate site itself," the other serpent informed her shortly. "The Girant opened it as a final attack to take out everything, and the Slinks can spot the main group of Rhizocephala arriving from orbit. There are too many for anything less, and if we can't stop this vanguard force we are next for a followup orbital strike. You have command of any local forces you need to avoid that."

"Get me artillery if we have any, and a map- No wait, I have people who knew the map," Flamescale realized as she double checked the minds of those Girant Sixteen had converted. Then she rattled off targets.

"I have some artillery backup," one of Flamescale's other bodies said to ThunderFang as those three bodies spat another barrage of toxic material to hopefully keep the new hole in the ridge contained a bit longer. Then followed that up with a trio of lasers to hit some cannon Rhizo and a single overtaken Girant tank that was going over the ridge after having taken a lot of fire. The tank in particular did not like being hit by a shuttle scale laser cannon, but that was still a solid chunk of power that Flamescale didn't have the time to recharge. "Incoming fire on the way, along with some support."

"If that can clear out the smaller ones we can focus on that starfish," the dragoness agreed and flapped out of the way of a few spines and bio-cannon shells and then turned into a cloud again to deal with a second quick barrage. "I'm fairly sure that has to be the disruptor."

Flamescale's bodies had taken quite a bit more firepower from the group of Rhizo crossing the new gap, but that was mostly leading to an annoying bounce between ten and twenty meters long as she regenerated using a supply of extra heads. Sixteen had dozens of hives around the bases in the area at this point, and they still had a fair sized supply of infected Girant to feed into them to cut down on conversion time. The local Slinks were also sending some of their captured armored units into the fight on another side, with only a bit of command on her part as they rather obviously didn't want orbital bombardment this close to the main settlement they fought to take in the first place.

For an obvious reason as a pillar of light appeared in the distance behind their opponents. Not very far in the distance as well, and soon followed by a few other bright pillars as warship scale lasers interacted poorly with the atmosphere above their targets. "We might have a time limit too," Flamescale admitted aloud at the display of firepower that even her potential nine headed bodies wouldn't be able to survive without a lot of help. "Think of it as a special bonus objective."

"I really hope I get an ST with a bio-shield for it then," ThunderFang77 agreed a bit more nervously. "Although I don't want to know what orbital bombardment feels like. I'm Martian, we kind of worried about that for a while." The artillery rounds then started to hit the far side of the ridge. "That is much more welcome to hear. Fire support is much better when it isn't from space."

Flamescale stopped using her lasers after that, mostly because the reports from a couple of observation craft said the starfish enemy's shield probably would need that heavy weapon, and mostly focused on drawing fire from the enemies by getting close to, but not going past, the ridge. Up close she was more than large enough to just physically attack anything that made it over, while ThunderFang kept up with exploding blasts of electricity just past the ridge.

The arrival of a larger mixed group of Slink and Flamescale's red infected soldiers on the side of this formation of Rhizo and green ancient infected Girant changed the fight notably. That apparently drew all but the starfish itself, including the last remaining laser Rhizo. "The big one is coming for us," she informed the other Entity seriously and got her rifle ready again, with a complicated motion to replace the battery when it was condensed down to one before she split it back into three again. "With the rest going for the local army instead, I'm really hoping I don't need to infect the Slinks to keep them from being infected by this stuff."

ThunderFang got ready, but didn't have time to reply before the rather massive starfish creature made it over the ridge. The ancient bio-construct was actually notably larger than her, made of five thick arms that each were at least ten meters long, to give something twenty across but considerably more massive than any one of her bodies. It was also pitted with a small number of holes filled with a slightly lighter green infection than Flamescale had seen before.

Pits that immediately bubbled up as Flamescale realized there didn't seem to be any bio-weapons on the starfish itself. Out of them emerged more of the slightly lighter green infection, that formed itself into a new shape atop the creature. Some of the goo crystallizing into feather like shards along the entire body, and more forming a beak at the front of a head, giving an overall result somewhere between bird-like and yet also a bit squid-like with the many tendrils still extending into the starfish.

"I do not like the look that thing is giving us," ThunderFang said seriously as it chirped and gurgled at them. "We're being targeted specifically." The dragoness' latest bolt of lightning hit the dome shield over the starfish as Flamescale raked three lasers over where it had formed as well. "Node shield!"

Shields were already a rare technology. Only the largest shuttles and dropships could mount a currently available basic shield, and only true warships had the mass to use a node based shield system that multiplied the defensive power of a generator at the cost of using exposed nodes that were able to be more easily destroyed than a basic shield. The nodes meant that facing mattered far more when you attacked, and from the reaction to her lasers Flamescale could tell each arm had a node. Although it didn't appear to have the raw power of a warship sized version as the facing that ThunderFang77 had already hit broke and let some of her laser through.

Which gave a slightly distracting "cannot infect controller of infection" tutorial message that told her quite a bit about the current situation. Flamescale quickly told Sixteen that she needed the Slinks in sealed units only at the front lines, and then cringed as the bird-like ancient computer sent a barrage of green crystal shards at her, apparently also coated with infectious residue that burned her own red infected material. The computer screeched at her angrily for some reason, and Flamescale hoped they got a translation for these things sooner rather than later as that could have been important information.

ThunderFang wasn't distracted, and more importantly had wings to reposition quickly, so the dragoness was able to hammer the goo and crystal bird with a strong bolt of energy. Flamescale attempted to help by moving to focus her lasers on the starfish's arm that was now unprotected with the goal of taking out the node itself before it could regenerate the shield.

Together that managed to make the computer itself splatter from the lightning, which from experience wasn't a guaranteed kill but did hurt rather badly, and also burn out most of the mass of the starfish limb with the shuttle sized lasers. There was a soundless cracking from that, and the hum that wasn't a sound vanished. The ancient computer then reformed outside of the starfish, as the larger construct seemed to have been killed by that amount of damage.

The computer appeared more bird like without the tendrils, and in fact took to the air briefly before ThunderFang slammed one of the electrical spheres into the ancient bio-construct and speared it with another bolt of lightning. That detonation sent crystals and goo flying over the area, but one particularly large gemstone like structure fell down directly to the ground.

"So, I'm going to want some of the big thing," ThunderFang said as the two of them simply waited for either of these foes to revive somehow. "If that has a bio-shield ST I want it. You can have the crystals, I think that is probably going to give more liquid stuff."

Flamescale paused in her efforts to handle the now less organized enemy infected to consider that possibility. "To be honest, if it turns out that all I needed to get a Liquid Mobility ST was to wait for the next season, I'm going to be angry," she admitted tiredly. "Because this one was hard to get, and I'm not sure I like all of the parts of it that much."

"I've avoided the command interface skills in general," ThunderFang77 admitted with a chuckle. "That seems like it gets rid of too much of the stuff I like doing myself. It also makes grouping up a mess. I almost wish we could trade STs or something. I have an interesting one with Liquid Mobility, but it is mostly infiltration stuff."

"I know why we can't, but I am annoyed now even without getting something like that," she grumbled. "Can you get out now?"

"Abort is available, but I'm going to see about my Rift now. How about you?" the other Entity questioned.

"I'm going to stick around a bit longer to deal with my whole infected army," Flamescale clarified with a sigh as she went over just how many Girant were shoved into hives by Sixteen during the emergency.

"Oh, right, before I forget," the dragoness then said before she left without letting Flamescale counter her, "Hydras count as dragons."

---

[Author's Note]
Here we have a battle chapter for once, and a look at the actual Ancient Computer situation a bit more.
Along with some friendly interaction with another Void Entity that doesn't know it isn't just a game.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 18 - Void Community ---

It clearly was not a coincidence that the developers released the long promised social systems not even a day after the first ancient disruptors showed up and trapped people in instances. An early promise was common areas to allow for item trade, group formation, and other interaction. The Void Nexus it had been called, and seeing the place finally realized was a mixed bag. It was an eerie mixture of void material shades, which would have worked better before Flamescale was comparing that to attuned Synch-Tech stuff, in a wide variety of makes and sizes. A few places even allowed you to see outside of the eldritch structure to a strange grey that seemed to contain it all like a poorly made skybox.

"I'm just so frustrated," she continued to complain to Yellow-Glow as they both explored the place for the first time. "The main enemies this season, and we know they are the main ones, drop Liquid Mobility STs. No, not just that, Liquid Mobility STs with brand new and strong branches to go with them."

"I think most people are complaining about the new Liquid Crystal Skill Tree for the opposite reason you are, Flamescale," Yellow-Glow pointed out as they passed another small storefront available to be rented for a cost of Void Echos. "I have already seen complaints about how Crystal Weapons doesn't show up without Liquid Body yet. It is apparently a very nice combination of the best parts of the various bio-weapon skills, if a bit weaker than the regular versions."

"Including the hidden bio-weapons stuff for both the one that works like spine launchers and the crystal missile skill," Flamescale agreed with that darkly. "That would solve all of my weapon issues if I had it, but it isn't like I'm going to find a high quality one anytime soon, and I'm probably never going to see one as good as my Fluid Pestilence." The specific one she got from the core of the ancient computer only had Liquid Mobility, the new Liquid Utility that was specifically annoying her, and Crystal Form that was something all of them also had. Three basic branches that weren't enough on their own to be worth using.

"That isn't the one you are most upset about?" her friend asked curiously, apparently having worked out that detail.

"Liquid Utility starts with Liquid Compression, which has more levels apparently so it probably gets better than my one-off version," she started to list the skills of Liquid Utility. "Once you have that you can get Liquid Creation, which is a simple one to let you make pools of your liquid, and from there you can get Liquid Travel to do what I can with Material Movement, only a lot easier to get. Along with Liquid Conversion to turn other liquids into your liquid stuff, but that isn't that notable." She took a deep breath to calm down a bit. "No, the real issue is the other side of what Liquid Compression unlocks, Liquefy Cargo. Which would let me take stuff with me by making it melt temporarily. With another skill to let me take living things too. Do you have any idea how helpful that would be to have?"

Yellow-Glow chuckled in response, and nodded at the small crowd they could see. "I think some people have worked that out," he said with a nod at a couple of Void Entities who were apparently trying out being a mixture of liquid and crystals.

The crowd was a new experience for Void Strike, with a good number of human shaped forms, but the vast majority were various animal themed forms. It was mostly to be expected, this place was likely only going to be traveled by those who were actively "playing" the "game", and the main reason anyone actually kept going with Void Strike was to use the character creator. Fur, feathers, and scales were all far more common than the human form, with humans more common that odder things like being made out of liquid.

In fact most of that last category were clearly unhappy with their current attempts with that form, although Flamescale was making sure to note anyone who was comfortable, often with them smirking or smiling at her as well. It was strange to see so many at once, it made this existence more real in a way she wasn't entirely sure she liked. In theory it was a good thing, but forums and websites allowed for a kind of distance from Void Strike's reality that she wasn't sure would survive open and in person discussion.

"Not working to keep you distracted?" Yellow-Glow said quietly as they made their way closer to their destination, and into the area where actually rented shops were starting to show up.

"I didn't think they would actually release this place," Flamescale admitted, leaving out that the issue was actually that they both felt this would eventually break the illusion of everything being a game. "It is hard to focus on the annoying things when this is happening." Because breaking that illusion was a bigger issue than her personal annoyance with new Skill Trees.

"It is already lively," he agreed with her actual statements. They had reached a few shops selling weapons, security crackers, one who apparently wanted to allow for commissioned armor, and a lot of food places. The two of them stopped for a moment to look at the trade, which seemed to be mostly using Void Material as a makeshift currency, closely followed by other valuable raw materials, and only a few times where trade was useful item for useful item. Food was so common for the obvious reason that it was the hardest to get unique and quality foods compared to gear or other things that were well documented in guides.

Flamescale considered some of the foods on offer, some of which were being avoided and others were so popular that it was unlikely that she could try them anytime soon. "It is looking like a success so far," she said as they started along again.

Their actual goal here was at the "center" of the Void Nexus, although that was a very poor descriptor of how the layout of the place apparently worked. It altered and shifted based on traffic and capacity of any given path, which looked strange if you ended up running into it, but was helpful for getting larger than average bodies through to where they needed to go. In this case to the Void Council Halls.

It was a massive central structure that in theory would hold a council of other players selected to represent various groups, although there wasn't any actual implementation of that part yet. Instead it was currently the location of a large number of new data tracking and progress marking systems meant to more clearly deal with this new threat. Multiple places with those display systems thankfully, that were also in a shifting layout so you could only enter a filled version of the tracking center by looking for someone who was already in a full room.

"Is this just a bunch of displays?" Flamescale questioned when she actually saw the room. "Why are we physically going here for some displays?"

"Because the point is to make these public sources of certain things," Yellow-Glow specified as he continued over to the first display. "They are not just displays, they also provide some skills and the ability to track additional details. For example this is the overall progress on Ancient Translation, and when completed will allow for the collection of the associated translation skill." He tapped at the display, which was not very far along at all. "It also allows for more detail on how to gain this progress, and I suspect that in truth these are less display systems and more actual functional devices that are tracking the data."

"Ah, I think I see," Flamescale admitted with a nod at another display now that she understood why there was a tracker for Void Gate development that didn't say who it was for. "So this is the ability to make Void Gates ourselves?" It was actually rather far along compared to where the locals seemed to be.

Yellow-Glow moved over to look at the display with her to check. "I believe this is to add a Void Gate option to the new Void Base options directly," he specified. The other big part of the current update was the ability to make shared Void Base areas. "I am quite sure that a Void Gate is more versatile than the current Rifts we are using, with the downside being the resource requirements. At bare minimum an additional option for getting around the new disruptors, as the data I have so far indicates these are not as vulnerable to that method."

Other display devices were more clearly about the state of the local research and development projects. Nothing there was entirely accurate, and made large note of that in warning text, simply due to the nature of instances. These mostly gave a range of development that was currently being found, apparently sourced from various mission results. Those probably would hint at, or possibly even replace, the typical weekly event missions.

"Did ThunderFang77 contact you yet?" Flamescale asked as some cybernetic developments caught her eye. She had not quite yet worked out which of her current collection were worth trying with Skill Link.

"She has, and has quite a good amount of information on Skill Link and the new ancient support construct ST she received from your joint mission," Yellow-Glow happily confirmed. "If the bio-shield skill appears as a one-off it is going to be quite well liked, and I also can use the cybernetic interaction with Skill Link to good effect. It appears I won't be getting all of them you find now as well, but knowing what you can do with them makes up for that."

"That's my next project," Flamescale said mostly for the other Entities in the room. It was her next personal project, but they were both here to double check what new information they could find on the ancient developments. "I'm thinking of starting with a basic hacking unit with maybe a comm jammer. I've been missing a comm jammer, and the handheld units are never worth it."

"I will give you a good one with both of those, if it gets you to keep a comm unit on hand as well," Yellow-Glow declared with a sigh. "You do know that having comms built in helps with jamming too, right?" That was mostly a joke at her expense, but one she couldn't deny being true as well. "Ah, there it is, the progress on bio-computer access skills. This should allow us to collect a skill to interface with them more easily when completed."

It was barely started, but on the plus side did list the sort of things that needed to be collected and analyzed. With a small drop off area as well if you didn't have the gear to do it yourself. "Do we need to start hunting them?" Flamescale questioned with careful consideration of how they could track the ancient constructs. "That isn't very far."

"Our plan has not changed yet," he clarified. "If you don't need anything else here we should be fine to move onto the next step."

---

The next step was to make use of the new base options. The forums were already calling them a guild system, although they were technically more open ended than that. It was effectively a doorway to a new base area that could be freely entered by anyone who had a door to the new area. It had some invitation controls for who could create the doors, and you needed to be directly invited to go into another's base from the community area, but the places were shared spaces for multiple players to connect.

The major difference between this and a more typical group making system for an actual game was the lack of a limit on how many you could have. You could make or join any number of these as long as you had the Echos for it. Flamescale was going to start their personal joint area, while Yellow-Glow had a group that helped with the guides he was starting one for. The main distinction between them was awareness of reality, as the two of them had projects that were not to be shown to the guide team.

It began with a central area, a large circular room with a shared Void Rift formation location and a number of slightly different mission and communications consoles. The room itself being more than large enough for her four headed form, if not quite large enough for two of them, with two stories of head space. From there Flamescale started by making one side a larger flat wall with catwalks to an upper level. Then she designated eight areas for hallways to Void Base doors, four on ground level and four linked to the catwalks, which was more than they needed but looked better than just two.

These hallways were a special way to set up the connected area that allowed for more freeform editing of the space by whoever was specifically linking their door to the hallway. The restrictions were very few on that kind of area, Void Strike was perfectly happy to allow you to overlap areas with other areas that somehow did not connect, but these halls themselves were open to anyone with access. Flamescale linked the leftmost of the upper hallways to herself and got to work making that section look like her Void Base for the relatively short distance she created before it reached a door that directly linked to her actual Base.

There was actually a requirement that you connected to your own base before you gave access to another Void Entity, but another reason for her to focus on this first was that she didn't know yet what else was needed for this project. Yellow-Glow still had most of the research gear, and in particular wanted to try and set up a Void Gate before it became a standard way to change one of these locations. Flamescale did not know what would be needed for that, or what other sorts of rooms her friend wanted for this place.

Yellow-Glow was at least able to be invited to pick which of the remaining seven slots he wanted. "I do not want this to be the first thing I say here, but can you put a door on your area? The smell of lava fruit is rather strong here," he unfortunately started off. "Ah, can we make another room of this scale? The space requirements for my Gate experiments are rather large at the moment. Actually we might need quite a few rooms. You would be surprised how much equipment you can shove into storage."

"Yellow-Glow, I still have that entire Girant motor pool full of tanks that I can't get back out anywhere," Flamescale reminded him as she put the door he requested in. "You remember that dumb idea we had to deal with a destruction objective without the right gear?"

"You didn't scrap those tanks yet?" her friend asked curiously. "That might actually help, I want some larger things to try and move." He then paused. "Can you make a vehicle into Linked Gear?"

"If we can then I might even try and steal a warship," she said jokingly at the idea, then paused as she actually considered it. "I wonder how much Void Material that would take."

"Given the way the process interacts with mass, probably more than is practical to have," Yellow-Glow said with a hint of concern. "Even a tank is probably a waste of materials in practice."

"You don't have a small army asking for gear that can use Material Movement," Flamescale countered with a brief check of how things were going on the now Slink controlled world. The rat-like survivors of that conflict had managed to thread the needle of survival so far, but probably were going to want her infected off their world fairly soon. "I'm fairly sure my infected would love to have teleporting tanks." She paused for a moment herself. "Did we just find a use for those tanks I stole a year ago?"

"Do you have that much Void Material that we cannot use elsewhere?" he questioned as he selected the far right upper hallway for himself. "We do need more for the experiments."

"Part of what we're doing is still replacing improperly made materials," Flamescale reminded him as she gave him permission to edit the main layout too. "It might not work for actual Void Tech, but it does fine for Linked Gear. Even after splitting stuff up I still have enough that I'm considering linking a small armory for my infected to use. A tank or two would fit in with that fine."

"Perhaps we should look into those alternate materials a bit more if they do function for that," Yellow-Glow thoughtfully noted. "The tolerance for material is much wider, and the hardware survives much longer as well."

"It's on the list, although not near the top," she confirmed with a critical look at the room options. "I think we can get another big room like this one easily, but where do you want to put it?"

From there they both focused their discussion on how they wanted the shared area to be, at least to start. The second big room was connected directly, with two levels of smaller rooms stacked on either side of the main rooms, and the far end from the Entity Base entrances got pairs of larger rooms stacked on two levels as well. Then they began to move various machines into those rooms, which required a three headed form a couple of times, and a minor redesign to make it easier to move at four heads too because some of the planned upgrades would require the larger body to move easily.

"Mark, are you avoiding it on purpose, or is this just too distracting?" Helen asked quite a bit later, once it was clear that he wasn't going to bring it up on his own. Her friend had a scheduled medical checkup, and usually he was quick to complain to her about how it went. Doing it here was easier than trying in person, she didn't need to go back home to the dark side just to see him.

"The degeneration is accelerating, and the latest attempt to remove the contamination has failed," her friend tiredly admitted. Mark had been paralyzed from the neck down, and chemical contamination had made the normal treatments for that too hazardous to attempt. "They were quite impressed with how well I can still use Synch-Tech."

"They don't know then?" Helen questioned. "I would think that they could tell if it was that impressive." She had been looking for a job out of college, he was going back for a higher degree, and then the accident happened on campus. It was a couple of years before Void Strike released, and was the core reason they both ended up interested in Synch-Tech. The main reason Helen had her current job, and for why they were both trapped in this existence.

"I suspect that the damage was noteworthy before Void Strike released," Mark said quietly. "They found spots that appear to have been non-functional for over a year that they missed due to other more obvious damage. The actual functional results of the scans are likely being heavily impacted by the connection between... Between Yellow-Glow and Mark." The machine Void Entity looked at her, and she realized the issue. "I have been told that if it continues as it has, then it will spread to autonomic functions within the next year."

There was a long quiet moment between them as Flamescale processed that there might only be a Yellow-Glow already. That the two of them might not even know when there stopped being a Mark to go with the Void Entity.

"I haven't worked out what I'm going to say when it happens," her friend then admitted. "If I'm already controlling the Synch-Tech systems from here, how do I avoid being obviously still there when it comes?"

That was an issue Flamescale had considered recently, but not with this in mind. "Yellow-Glow, we might not have that long before everyone figures out what Void Strike does," she pointed out uneasily. "People can actually start talking now. There have to be enough to catch attention when they can finally get together."

"This update has made some news services," Yellow-Glow admitted slowly. "If enough deceased humans show up together... I might have to explain before it happens to me instead of after." He paused again. "Will Helen make it to the moon for the new century?" he asked wistfully. "To see the deepest black of the dark side night on that change of era?"

"Yeah, I'm going to make it this year," Helen agreed easily, and started to work out how to keep that promise. She already had the time off, but was having some trouble getting a flight.

---

[Author's Note]
So, I want to talk about inspiration a bit here. I've not actually watched/read the various "you die in game you die in real life" stories out there, but the reason is that seems to get rid of one of the major factors in something being game-like. I have longed to explore the opposite, the other side of that idea: "you die in real life, you don't stop being in the game".
Because to me that is the more complicated and in some ways worse outcome. There is a game, a game that the living can play, and you can still interact with them after you are gone from their world. How do you handle that? How do you handle knowing that your family will still be able to speak with you after you died, but only in something that was once a game and is now your whole existence?

This is not my first idea of how to explore that topic, it is just the first I have written. I hope that I can do this concept justice as I progress.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 19 - Serpent Sidequest ---

Flamescale moved through the arcology with a coat of scales, and half an eye on the other scaled snake people with her. Sixteen looked slightly uncomfortable with having a more solid look in the style of her body, while the rest of the small group she had selected for this trip were all handling looking solid better, but were less happy with looking 'snake' right now. It was after all the first time for the rest of them.

The two former 319C researchers who were also the same person from two instances, 0021-C-125-1468-R0918918, were unhappy in general for being changed like this. Both "Nine-one-eight"s had picked a pair of simple black stripes going from the tip of their nose to the tip of their tail for decoration, and so far had rather firmly refused to get a way of talking about them separately.

The former 319B quartermaster, 0021-A-125-1469-M9715678, had been given the name "Squeaky" by her fellows due to a habit of unneeded vocalizations. Now a snake that was nearly entirely black in color with red spots along her arms and face, the former bat-like creature clearly didn't know how to handle a lack of legs even with the mental changes that were supposed to fix that.

Finally, the somewhat unfortunately named dropship pilot, "Pale-Three-Moon-Sky", was being difficult. The former Macrophylla had apparently decided to be called just "Pale", despite the still rather recent major political nightmare that another "Pale" Leaf had caused across the stars. They had chosen to just have black spots along their back now that they were actually more animal looking than they had ever been.

Flamescale had led this group of snake people through a number of civilian locations so far. They had breakfast in a shop that offered a nice variety. Looked at and worried a number of clothes shops that had a far different reaction to multiple snake people than they did a single individual snake. Investigated a couple of electronics shops to see what the civilian market looked like in this instance. Just before this inspection she had deliberately moved them into an art display area.

From how it looked she had found a way to drive her infected creatures close to mutiny. They weren't outright complaining in public, or otherwise subverting her instructions, but the level of unhappiness present was quite tangible at this point. Most of them had never been civilian in the first place, and the exception was not fond of this sort of arcology. So, with this actually rather reassuring result, Flamescale led them to a more private location to discuss this whole event without being seen.

"If you want to dress up like a normal creature, do you need to include the rest of us?" Sixteen questioned darkly once they were in a side storage room that was technically open to the public.

"Especially as our first mission in this new form of life," Squeaky said even more darkly, and Flamescale had insight that the former 319B was typically frustrated or even angry when she made the sounds that earned her that name. "I can understand why you might send me on a shopping trip, but we haven't bought anything yet."

Both Nine-one-eights grumbled, while Pale just glared at her in clear agreement. Although Flamescale had the full thoughts of all of them to know what each was really thinking. The Nine-one-eights were barely paying any attention and did not want an argument to make this take any longer, and Pale was holding back a rather harsh cursing out they didn't think they would get away with actually saying. This all was the best case result for one of the many goals for this operation, as it showed clearly that she wasn't making creatures without any will of their own that could never disagree with her.

"So, you think I brought you all here for 'dress up'?" Flamescale questioned seriously, and got nervous confirmation from the five of them. "Right then, there were three objectives for bringing you here." Actually five, but they didn't need to know she was after confirmation that they were independent, and the last objective didn't technically require them to be present. "First, I am primarily an infiltration expert. That often takes the form of operating in civilian areas for extended periods as both a distraction and to investigate possible ways to subvert systems. The first goal was to see if you could pull off assisting with that sort of operation."

"This was a mission," Sixteen said with a rather sudden and large shift in how he thought that Squeaky mirrored rather closely.

"I am not a field operative," both of the Nine-one-eights said together, their minds not quite matched, but almost seeming connected in a way that even Flamescale didn't quite understand. "Is there a better reason why I am here?"

"The second objective was with regards to longer term operations," Flamescale said turning to them and going to two heads herself to properly glare at both at once. "If I do end up using you more commonly, then I need to establish a more permanent base location to house and support you. Including research and development facilities. That would require local interaction for supplies and other interactions inside of whatever instance you end up within. I would like that to be done with at least some degree of comfort for the locals you interact with to hold off any angry orbital bombardment." Their current main base location was at the point that the Slinks were starting to make noise about them getting out of there, and the rat-like locals had managed to actually increase their orbital firepower since taking the planet.

"So I am here to determine if I can be trusted to operate supply transports for these operations," Pale decided with a nod and sudden contentment. The shift in mindset not as blunt as that of the 319, but still more sudden than Flamescale really had expected.

"I do not typically procure equipment myself," the Nine-one-eights complained. "That is a job for M9715678, or perhaps even G1698416." The sound of a proper 319 saying one of their number designations was always annoying to hear when you weren't one, and Flamescale was half impressed that they both managed to say it with their new bodies.

"The third objective, and perhaps the most important one in practice, is that we are doing the second objective right now. My allies have managed to obtain control of a local R&D site that contains an ancient gate device, and we are taking it over ourselves," Flamescale finally specified, and that made the remaining two 319s pause. "You five are being put in charge of the combat forces." She looked at Sixteen. "R&D efforts." Then Nine-one-eights. "Supply procurement." Next at Squeaky. "And finally local transport requirements." Finally towards Pale. "This is the practical test if you can operate not just in any arcology, but in this one specifically.

"The site has been mostly left under guard instead of actively investigated due to the proximity to this massive civilian structure, where it was only found recently compared to the establishment of the arcology. We have been allowed to take control over it due to the opening and subsequent destruction of two other known ancient gates in this instance. These locals have only barely avoided ancient invasion, and I am making preparations for a group of Void Entities to use this gate to determine what exactly is on the other side of the gates."

Flamescale paused for a moment to see what the reaction was. That might have been a fourth goal for her, but the fifth was related to that story. They had also been listening to and reading the various local opinions on the current situation from a local perspective. It was a mixture of some fear, one of the lost worlds had been a major settlement before the incident that destroyed its population, but mostly they had found just rumor and uncertainty. Nobody knew the full story of why two places were just gone, but they did know it had something to do with the Rhizo. That was how Yellow-Glow managed to convince the local anti-pirate force to give her command over the facility in question.

"How long term are we talking about?" Sixteen questioned carefully, his mind going over information too quickly for Flamescale to bother looking at it directly in the moment.

"That depends on three factors. How quickly the R&D staff can get to the point they can open the gate, what happens when we open the gate, and more importantly how soon we have enough combat focused Void Entities ready to deal with the side effects of opening the gate," Flamescale answered. "At a minimum we are looking at a few days, before we are ready to open the gate. If all goes well we will contain the ancient forces sufficiently to continue to use this site as a main base facility for months. Otherwise we might pull out immediately after opening the gate, or possibly even before then if things go partially wrong."

"What is the intended project for us to work on after we have made ready to open the ancient gate?" the left side Nine-one-eight questioned.

"And can we recruit any other researchers for additional projects?" the right side one added.

"Gate construction, partially finding ways to make gates using infected material or linked components to allow for rapid access of existing forces to other locations," she replied with a pair of frowns at both of them. The first question was fine, but she didn't like the second as much, even if she had an answer that wasn't quite a no. "I will likely be going on additional infiltration or attack missions on labs researching ancient technology in other instances while this progresses. I want emergency support in the future to be better equipped, and those are the most likely locations where I might add more local researchers to your group."

"Were you planning on telling us about this before or after we finished here? Because I can already think of some supplies we need to pick up for this plan," Squeaky more demanded than questioned.

"Oh? Well then it is good that the overall plan was to drag you all along and only tell you the real reason we are here when you all complained, and then have you all rush to get what we need done," Flamescale admitted smugly, rather glad at the glares she got. "Here is the layout of the base and what should already be there." She pushed the knowledge into them all, something the former 319 were very familiar with already but the former Leaf wasn't as ready for. "We have six more hours before the transport I've purchased arrives to pick us up to take it over." She then added the transport specifications to Pale's mind to allow them to get ready as well. "Now, let's actually get started."

---

"I've confirmed rather clearly that they can still get mad at me without tripping over the loyalty stuff," Flamescale informed Yellow-Glow back in their new shared base. The two of them were still going over their contact listings for people to vet to see if they could be trusted with the overall mission.

"Be sure to see if they can act as support for the beachhead," Yellow-Glow dully replied from where he was standing at one of several communications consoles they had set up in one of the side rooms for the moment. He was using his almost 319A form again, partly because he only recently got back from negotiating the transfer of the base. "We might not be able to trust anyone else with a command interface skill set for this one. Do you know how adding bio-weapons works with them out yet?"

"Holding off on that one until we're at the base facility," she easily answered as she looked between two different sets of contact filters. One upside to this new shared area was that you could place multiple of the standard consoles instead of just being limited to one. "Although if it works I probably won't use them as much. I want to keep those visual changes off them. I can afford to hand out linked guns to any that travel without a gate." A name on her list stood out. "Is Reef Diver still doing missions?"

"Unfortunately he stopped combat work after season three," her friend informed her as he brought up a list he had of those who weren't active anymore to show her. "He worked out the reality of the situation and now only does security work for an instance where other retired Entities live. I did check on which one, it is not the same one as ThunderFang77's family but instead one where former mission runners stay instead of those who never played."

"How many places like that are there?" Flamescale had to question uneasily. "I know there is a lot of us, but every arcology I've seen is still big enough for all of us at once."

"Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, there are different likes and dislikes at play that have held off interaction too much to allow for that," Yellow-Glow sighed. "The largest groups were never actively 'playing' the game, and only a minority have started off with doing missions and since then stopped to join each other in single shared instances. In general if a Void Entity started taking missions they either still do not know that it is not a game, found themselves too deep to simply stop doing missions, or join an instance alone where they are the only Void Entity."

"I take it my fears are happening?" she had to ask, because she had no idea where he could get that information.

"Those groups are now forming 'guilds' to gather together, many the way we are acting now," he confirmed with a nod. "Taking their old contacts and trying to reconnect now that they can join each other more directly." He sagged a bit, rather notable in his current form compared to some others he used. "Some are finding still extant versions of old acquaintances they know are dead as humans. Others are making groups that are seeking out others who died, with those having met from forum threads where they realized it was not a joke."

"Why release the new community stuff if it just lead to this already?" Flamescale grumbled, not actually unhappy with the result, but definitely confused why the developers would allow this sort of discovery.

Yellow-Glow, however, was quiet after that question a bit too long. She looked over at him with concern. "The Ancient Disruptors have been consistently going for Void Entities alone, making a point of not attacking to kill with the associated Rhizo," he explained after another moment. "They are capture units, that specifically target Void Entities with the goal of taking them back to where they are from. That is why we need to have additional firepower, to make sure no one is captured while we investigate. That is why they have allowed us to team up more easily, so that we can tell more quickly when someone is taken."

"Do we know if anyone needs to be rescued yet? Because we can move faster if we need to," she immediately declared with a double check of how much longer they had until they reached the ancient gate site.

"Until we have direct confirmation of what is on the other side we cannot plan for a rescue. If I had a confirmed Entity that needed rescue I'd be much less picky about who to take," Yellow-Glow specified a bit bluntly. "I am making a backup list in case of that emergency, but for the moment we have time. It appears that Entities strong enough to not die to the Ancient Disruptors have so far been strong enough to kill them. We do not know how long that will last, but until it changes this is our best bet."

---

"You are looking more worried, boss," Squeaky complained as they went over the last few things to buy before the transport arrived. "What is happening?"

"Complications with the search for other Entities," Flamescale quietly informed the quartermaster. "We might need to prepare for a faster operation than I originally thought."

"Can we get a proper dropship?" Pale said simply, although they were much more forceful in their mind. It was actually an interesting way to interact with the formerly quiet Macrophylla now that she could also experience his mental aspect as well.

"If our timeline just got shorter we might not have time to need one," Sixteen said tiredly. "Are we pulling out of the other operation for this, or can we continue to bring forces from there?"

"They want us out, but we have another week. I have a backup if we lose this one before then, but it is much worse," Flamescale replied with a more complete check of what was left on the Slink world. The backup location was an empty world that they could be left unhindered on, but that also didn't have easy or worthwhile ways of getting more advanced supplies. She took a breath. "I do have a question for all of you."

"Make it quick, we are still looking for a worthwhile micro-fission system for backup power," the two Nine-one-eights stated bluntly, although the two of them weren't really looking at any of the options themselves. "It is critical to have backup options for all fuel types. The fusion and bio-fuel models are insuffient backup options without fissile fuel covered as well." Flamescale didn't need to read the rest of the group's minds to tell that this was in fact unreasonable, but she double checked anyway just in case this was a problem with 319 in general.

"The transport is here, we need to wrap things up," Flamescale declared to cut off that, and to the apparent confusion of the other snake people. "My 'twin' has been handling keeping our slot at the spaceport reserved. We need to go meet up with 'her' now that 'she' is finishing the hand off." They had enough time for the critical stuff that Squeaky wanted, but probably not for Nine-one-eight to find another obscure thing they were certain this needed.

Getting everything loaded was going to take a while, and Pale turned out to be right about an unmade internal comment about how the transport wouldn't be large enough to handle this in a single trip. Flamescale did not openly comment on that, but she did instruct both Sixteen and Pale that other infected creatures would be sent on the return trip for security.

"I have one final question for all of you. A personal one, and one I'm probably going to regret asking," Flamescale said as they set off for the new facility. Her infected creatures weren't interested in the question, but she didn't need them to say their response to know it. "If you had stumbled into a method of immortality," they were not happy already with the question, "would you try and get your friends and family to have it as well?"

"If you're asking if we want you to pick up our relatives, I can firmly answer that I would not make my relatives deal with not having legs," Squeaky complained, with no real thoughts other than that.

"I already have too many of my 'relatives' here," both Nine-one-eights said with a surprising glare at each other. They had barely even considered the question.

"Alive is better than dead," Sixteen repeated himself, although he was of the opinion that all of his close relatives were already among those changed.

"No," Pale said as if it was obvious, and internally they were happy to have been seperated from them.

"I do not know why I asked this group," Flamescale admitted after a moment of disappointment with herself for having thought these people in particular would be sympathetic enough to actually think about the question in the current situation. She probably should have held off until they weren't as mad at her.

---

[Author's Note]
... I'm going to do my best to avoid expanding the important cast too much. I've had issues with that problem before, cast bloat is a thing that needs to be handled carefully.
Sticking to a single viewpoint should help here to a degree, but I know I need to handle it properly.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 20 - Cohabitation ---

Flamescale exited the office building with some residue, removing the memories and infection from the workers behind her, and emerged next to the small storage room in the arcology that Sixteen was operating out of for this mission. The other snake slime was among a couple of her other combat creatures, and they were around a number of crates of Girant rifle ammunition.

"Supply mission was successful," Sixteen told her simply. "We have a good amount to make up for the losses on that lab attack." This was her second attempt to use these new creatures as help on operations, this time as a mixture of distraction and supply source. The first had been an attack on a Void Material production site, where poor use of Magazine Link by her infected had lost her a lot of ammo, and they only realized that after the fact.

"Good, my stores are still fairly deep, but keeping from running low is important if we have this many weapons around," she confirmed aloud, as she looked the empty place that now didn't have the odd snake out. "Right already went back to base?" Flamescale questioned not because she didn't know, but to double check if the researcher said anything to Sixteen before they left.

"Nine-one-eight Right left as soon as they got their readings," Sixteen complained, and a check revealed it was mostly due to what the two Nine-one-eights had worked out. The twin instances of the same researcher had figured out a way to make themselves into a two headed snake person with some odd uses of Material Movement, and it had become easier to talk about the two of them with which side they always stayed on. 'Left-and-Right' was slightly easier to deal with than the shared name of 'Nine-one-eight'.

"With any luck they found something worth the hassle," Flamescale agreed with Sixteen's tone. "I'm going to open the Rift, help me get stuff through. Without falling in yourselves this time." That was directed at a very stripe covered snake that she didn't have a shorter name for yet. Although 0019-C-105-2877-G5208741 was at risk of ending up 'Clumsy' after that deadly result the last time. Flamescale had not needed the confirmation that they could not go into her Void Base when they helped her recover the production devices.

"Were there any issues with the bio-weapons?" she added as a question to get their impression more clearly. It turned out that adding those skills immediately altered all of the others, and as a result she needed to check how disruptive that could be.

"If you mean did we get completely overcharged for this ammo because of our obvious bio-weapons, then my answer is don't send us into a civilian area with these things again," Sixteen demanded as he tapped one of the bio-missiles that looked sort of like horns on all of them. "The firepower is appreciated, but Squeaky will try and kill you if we end up with these in the middle of one of her projects. I don't know how she will manage to try that, but she will try somehow."

"You say that like she doesn't already want to do that," Flamescale pointed out as they finished shifting the ammo. "Head on back. Let everyone know I'm going to be arriving with Yellow-Glow soon." It was time for a check in on the gate development. Left-and-Right said they had worked out how to open the ancient gate, and Yellow-Glow needed to know the specifics. Flamescale needed to know the specifics as well, but she felt it would be better to hear it from the researchers instead of just grabbing the information to try and translate herself.

Especially with how she wasn't sure which of the other projects her R&D team were working on connected directly to the gate project. There were quite a few of them, and Flamescale was taking a lot of advantage of the reality that she could delegate the entire management aspects of having an army of intelligent minions to some of those minions. She knew at a high level that they were working on better ways to make large scale Void Material pieces, a number of in-progress devices they had worked on in their former lives, working out other ways to use her infected materials, and critically for the moment how to operate and create Void Gates.

They left the small storage room with just a short lived residue, and Flamescale emerged again directly into her hallway of the shared area. Which was still a doorway away from the shared area itself, but she was fairly sure that Yellow-Glow had enough lava fruit smell when he sabotaged an entire system just to get ready to have her infiltrate. Sledge too, Flamescale thought as she went through that door and found the pangolin Entity was here as well as her old friend in the center of the Void Rift room.

"Hello guys," she called out now while she couldn't hear them so they knew she was coming and could stop any conversations they didn't want her to hear. Helen could think of a number of important things Yellow-Glow might want to talk with Sledge about without her. "Is Sledge coming with us to hear the progress report? You can still help with the attack on the far side right, Sledge?"

"Flamescale, yes I am still able and willing to help with this combat operation," Sledge answered with a nod, almost fully armored and with a few lighter guns to go with his massive namesake melee weapon. "Although admittedly I am here for more personal reasons. My impression on other Void Entities has turned out to be more positive than I expected, and as a consequence I am being overwhelmed with requests to join the new 'guilds' that are forming. I hate to impose, but would the two of you be willing to allow me to have an excuse of having one already?"

"Would that work?" Flamescale asked Yellow-Glow, because her friend would have a better idea than her about what was going on with the new guild stuff. "I don't think I would mind giving you direct access to this one, we're mostly making it for the ancient gate project and you are one of our heavy hitters so far, but I know there isn't any limit on how many you can get."

"Most people are thinking of it as a commitment to have one," Yellow-Glow explained currently also in a snake person form, although one made of metal and machinery. "While everyone knows that you can have multiple, quite a few actually have restrictions on who can join based on how much time you can give to the overall group. My guide group is low impact enough that nobody is having issues with being on others there so far, but the real concern here is that Synch-Tech games allow for a degree of commitment beyond typical games, and this new feature takes that farther."

"Unfortunately, it is the case that you two are the only Void Entities I have worked closely with recently," Sledge admitted. "I tend to spend more time with locals, particularly the anti-pirate forces I have agreements with. So, I'm afraid that you two are also the only ones I can think of to ask."

Flamescale looked at Yellow-Glow, because she had a feeling her friend had not spoken about the things she didn't want to interrupt given this detail. After a moment he sighed and nodded. "I actually have some issues to discuss with you later on that makes it perfectly fine," Yellow-Glow admitted to Sledge's minor confusion. "Something to discuss after our business with the gate update is completed."

Sledge looked over to her as well. "As long as you are alright with sometimes ending up helping us out, I don't have any issues with this at all," Flamescale mostly repeated. "You already know the stuff that we want to keep quiet. About how exceptional Void Strike really is." She tipped her head towards the entrances. "Pick an open spot."

Sledge nodded at her, and after a moment of consideration picked the middle door on the right side of the lower floor. "I see this is a select group," he laughed. "Now, apparently there is a report to hear before we talk of more serious things?"

"I have prepared an ancient gate for the assault already, Flamescale has been using her infected creatures to get it ready," Yellow-Glow said simply as Flamescale opened the local Rift to her infected facility. "With any luck we won't need to go after another less prepared site first, although I am getting ready to react to any instance that cannot contain an outbreak themselves."

Flamescale had actually used her Rift Generator to open the way, and because of that was already on the other side. Where Sixteen and Left-and-Right were ready to give their reports, although that was technically two snake people at the moment with how the Nine-one-eights were now Left and Right heads. "We have an extra visitor. Another Void Entity working with us called Sledge," she explained quickly to the three of them. "You two will likely remember him, Left-and-Right."

"The large scaled one?" Left asked while Right simply ignored the statement. Flamescale was rather confused with how exactly the two of them were communicating, but it seemed to be working out somehow. "They seemed competent enough."

"It is more efficient to simply take the information directly from us, can you not just give that information to the other Entities directly," Right complained more than requested. Although it was not an out of place question for the former 319, some cybernetics allowed for that exact method, and Left-and-Right actually liked the method better than talking in general. Flamescale actually had some cybernetics installed as a test that could even pull it off, but that discolored blob in her head did not actually solve the real issue of these two knowing what things were important to the current project. Grabbing the data she wanted would take more of her time, and more importantly would depend on her own understanding of their knowledge.

Thankfully Yellow-Glow and Sledge arrived to let her change topic, and force the issue. "It is very easy to forget that you can be in multiple places at once," Sledge commented with an uneasy look at her infected creatures. "Although the different coloration is new?" Strangely enough Yellow-Glow also seemed a bit confused at the appearance of her infected creatures.

"Yellow-Glow," Flamescale said with a nod at her friend, "Sledge," she nodded at the other entity this time, "Let me introduce my combat force, leader Sixteen," she motioned towards the single headed infected creature that wasn't sure how to handle this, "and the heads of my researchers, Nine-one-eight Left and Right." The twin snake's heads were confused by Yellow-Glow's new appearance. "Two of my infected creatures that I have put in charge of the rest of them."

"Flamescale, I think you have insufficiently informed me of what exactly you are doing with your converted locals," Yellow-Glow admitted with a careful look at Left-and-Right, who both looked at him with confusion as well because they could not recognize him either. "I take it these two are the duplicated researchers?"

"I must admit, making them into minions forever is a strange outcome," Sledge said clearly uncomfortable with the idea despite his statement.

"You say that like she won't get tired of us," Sixteen pointed out. "I doubt I will be that useful for her forever."

"I'm trying not to think about that possibility, Sixteen," Flamescale sighed, and then turned to her lead researchers. "Let's just get started. Left-and-Right, what do you have for us?"

"I have three main findings," Right started off and then led them towards the desk they had set up for examples. "First off the ancient gate cores are non-functional because of impurities in their creation," Left continued as if they had been the one to start talking.

Flamescale's fellow Void Entities both looked at her unhappily. "I have no idea how they do that, let alone why," she confessed, even if it being a result of her own new habits was an option.

"They were doing that before we all got eaten," Sixteen complained with a sigh. "Just ignore it, the rest of us did."

"If we could focus?" both Left-and-Right said together, and Flamescale still did not like how that sounded even for someone else. Then the two resumed handing off for every sentence. "The impurities themselves were at time of creation caused by limits in ancient material fabrication techniques. In fact the presence of these impurities was a partial factor in our incorrect identification of the correct materials to use. The bio-technology introduced errors at the scale required, which is very common among such things that have been found and as normal was compensated for by increasing the scale of the final device." The sphere was eleven centimeters instead of ten.

"How they were able to safely increase the scale is a valuable question," Yellow-Glow pointed out. "However, my data shows that it should not be enough to open a gate at all. What have you found to show these did not have another reason for the increased size?"

"We needed data from multiple instances of reality to confirm that detail," Right continued to explain, tapping at the controls for a nearby display with a touch of annoyance. The former 319 were all missing their cybernetics rather strongly at this point. If one of them didn't have a project to fix that already, then Flamescale would be quite surprised. "There is a uniform, consistent disruptive interference across all instances scanned so far. Exactly the same readings in all of them."

"Wait, it is the exact same in every instance you've checked?" Sledge asked quickly, and Flamescale could agree with the unease there. She had not allowed the researchers to go on missions for just a minor interest, but because of this very unusual result.

"The exact same, and strong enough to disrupt the gate formation when using the over sized cores," Left confirmed again. "It does appear to be decaying slowly, and may have once prevented any gate formation at all, but whatever caused it in the first place was not restricted to a single instance."

"That is something I suspected, but I was not looking forward to some kind of proof," Yellow-Glow admitted with a glare at the data. "So they are truly cut off for the time being. How long until the interference has decayed enough for these gates to function again?"

"The third finding is perhaps more important than that," Left said instead of giving a direct answer. "The target of this gate is not an instance of reality. Wherever it goes, I believe it is outside of this interference, as the sensors for such things can barely detect active gates in that 'direction'. We have years before these ancient gates function again, but the current issue of more proper gates opening to those locations could be a far greater danger than you suspected."

"Not greater," Flamescale admitted to her infected creatures. "We have been thinking this is a very great danger, one that will overtake entire instances, and may even harm Void Entities as well."

"It is, however, the information we needed," Yellow-Glow said with a strong nod. "Is that everything you wanted to cover, Flamescale?"

"Sixteen, how are my combat forces? Can we expect to hold the far side of the gate anytime soon once we open it?" she questioned her other infected creature now, after checking really quick that Left-and-Right weren't holding anything back on purpose.

"With the current rate of getting guns, not that well. We are going to want to use these bio-weapon mods when the time comes for that," Sixteen answered. "The base here is stable, although I'd like some more places to put hives. I understand why we're hiding them out of sight, but I want a faster revival rate to try and help there. More tanks would also be nice, but I'd rather have heavy plasma rifles instead." Flamescale didn't have many of the heavy variant on plasma rifles in the first place, Sixteen in fact had almost her entire stockpile already.

"Do you know how to get gates opened to other instances, perhaps with targeting?" Yellow-Glow questioned Left-and-Right thoughtfully.

"Targeting makes it rather easy, if you have a gate on both ends," Left-and-Right traded off mid sentence. "Work on making a gate out of infected materials is ongoing, but currently we are limited to gate-to-gate operations. It is possible to open without one, but the ancients did not know of a method in the past. It is possible that has changed, but that is the one upside to the overall decay issue. We can likely stop any return simply by destroying the ruined gates, at least in the short term."

"I have them working on if we can do anything different with infected materials as something else to try for combat reasons mostly," Flamescale explained. "I think we've been holding back on most of the development there until after we had opening the ancient gate done. Are you thinking of direct transfer of equipment from this base to the target sites using gates?"

"We've discussed the idea before, it is still quite valid. Possibly even workable in this case, as the base is going to open the gate to the target and be directly on the beachhead," Yellow-Glow confirmed with a sigh. "However, I had hoped to be able to also use it for equipment raids so you didn't need to take the gear through a location these creations cannot travel."

"You say that like it isn't the first thing I will be working on now that we are ready for the gate assault," Left-and-Right said together. "I am aware of the issue, and will let you all know when it is done."

"Any other questions?" Flamescale asked a bit uneasily after that, and thankfully nobody had any so she could return to the shared base area with the two Entities. "Sorry, I didn't realize I forgot to explain that whole mess. I'm still trying not to have a breakdown about being the leader of an entire army."

"Would it not be better to make your own creatures instead of using former locals?" Yellow-Glow unfortunately asked her.

"I do not want to make brand new minds in my image. There is a name for someone who does that, and I do not even want to mention it," Flamescale declared bluntly.

"I believe we are closer to demons than gods," Sledge replied anyway, getting it wrong in the process.

"Not the name I am worried about," Flamescale grit out, and the pangolin Entity seemed to realize what she meant now. "That isn't as bad as what I am worried about calling it. These ones at least aren't actually related to me."

"Sledge, I am dying, and I would rather talk about that then continue this conversation, are you willing to help me there?" Yellow-Glow bluntly asked to change topic.

"Literally dying?" Sledge carefully asked with a horrified look at Flamescale for confirmation.

"Possibly already dead," Yellow-Glow specified, still too blunt about it for Flamescale's comfort, but if he wanted to say it that way she wasn't going to stop him. "My body is technically alive, but it isn't going to be much longer, and I want advice on how to handle explaining that to my family."

Sledge was silent for a long moment. "Ha, it is strange. I never expected to feel slightly happy that I don't have the chance for that," he finally said with a short laugh that was halfway crying. "Do any of them play?"

"I think our families do not like Synch-Tech games very much," Flamescale admitted sadly herself. "We didn't exactly start playing them for a happy reason, and I know they didn't like it when it turned out you couldn't end synch properly with this one. That isn't the hard part though. The hard part is that they could start if they knew what it really was, but that is a one way change."

"You two know each other in the human world," Sledge realized, and Flamescale realized he had not known. "This isn't a minor question, even if Yellow-Glow is lost Flamescale can still speak with him. You aren't disconnected enough to simply appear to just die. You can still indirectly impact the world." And with that Flamescale realized they had left out the real issue too.

"I'm using Synch-Tech robotic bodies to maintain my crippled human body," Yellow-Glow started to explain, much more awkwardly now that they both realized that they had missed such a serious problem. "It has gotten bad enough that I may not be inside of the human body at all anymore."

"How," Sledge said, wide eyed. "It, it doesn't work that way, does it?"

"If you wanted to try, I could possibly help you try to synch with one," Flamescale had to admit. "I don't know if there is anything left in the human world that you want to deal with directly, but I can still offer that option." She shrugged as he turned to look at her with clear horror. "A part of me wants nothing at all to do with the human world when I'm not Helen anymore, but I don't know if I should do that to my family."

"Really?" Yellow-Glow asked instead of Sledge. The pangolin Void Entity clearly shaken by the entire conversation. "You would be content with just this existence?"

"I'm not sure about 'content', but," Flamescale stopped to consider the way she wanted to say this. "But I am Flamescale. Flamescale and Helen are the same person, but Helen is there and Flamescale is here. I don't want Flamescale and her problems to show up in the human world, even if she deals with Helen's problems all the time. Because I am not the kind of creature I want humanity to have to handle."

"I want to try," Sledge said in the quiet that followed. "To see if you are saying something real instead of just an uncomfortable story. I want to see if you can show me the human instance again."

---

[Author's Note]
Flamescale's close friend group grows slightly, also learns about how she is handling her minions.