+++ 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.
