Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)
- Thread starter E.I.G.
- Start date
- Original
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Less "MMO" and more "VRMMO" as it's kinda a distinct genre/trope of fiction these days. It describes the specifics close enough, I would say. Should throw in "novel" perhaps? Even if it's kinda a tag that describes a typical average thread, it's still useful. Because there is in fact a stage play somewhere around on User Fiction. "Cyberpunk" might be applicable? The setting "in game" is definitely that, and the outside smells of it too. "Space" is... not there yet, no. But I feel like we're getting close.
Probably "Naga" would be useful, it's a major notable thing about the main character. Not sure how much to dip into spoilers but "Mind control" is kinda bubbling up quite a lot. Something in relation to the liquid/shapeshifting capabilities of the character could be pretty nice as it's kinda distinct thing? But it's difficult to describe specifically and there's a question of whether it will be useful for tagging any other things. Shapeshifting does not entirely apply even if it's useful, but liquid is rather hyperspecific. Still not sure how detailed the tag culture is going to be for SV, and what they should (not) apply to.
Actually uh, was there any sort of a limit to the tag count, or is it just "tag to your heart's content"?
The Ancient Disruptor
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- 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.
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.
- Location
- Chimney Canopy, just offscreen
Why do I get Quasimorph-but-an-MMO vibes from this story? This is great!
(Still catching up)
(Still catching up)
hydras do totally count as dragons
That might have been an almost revelation for Flamescale. I do like how you've got the main character definitely sure that this is emphatically not a game while still floating around people who do think it's all a game. I'm wondering how the devs influence the instances and how much the instances influence the devs.
Edit: If it was brought up in the discussion earlier I'm sorry, but I skipped the discussion to read the very interesting story.
Edit: If it was brought up in the discussion earlier I'm sorry, but I skipped the discussion to read the very interesting story.
That's a fascinating, possibly terrifying, question for everyone involved.
If the devs (believe they) use procedural generation, what does that mean for the instances and/or the 'random' number generators?
If they digitally hand-craft everything... the same question, I guess?
There's always the literary agent hypothesis.
I'd guess that the devs don't actually have much power over the setting at all. There aren't many points where they seem to have verifiably changed something.
Except the referenced change to character creation/accessible worlds so that Void Entities can't pass for locals (at least without some kind of disguise ability, which I don't think we've seen). That would have to be either the devs or some unknown third party with higher power over the Void than anybody known...
Except the referenced change to character creation/accessible worlds so that Void Entities can't pass for locals (at least without some kind of disguise ability, which I don't think we've seen). That would have to be either the devs or some unknown third party with higher power over the Void than anybody known...
But we have seen that they can either cause or predict "seasonal" story arc events occurring.
Yeah, but we've also seen that the events start developing before they're announced. Which is consistent with them causing them but also consistent with them just watching what is happening and then writing about it as if they caused it.
Void Community
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- 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.
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.
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- Location
- Colorado
That is A Lot of plot Deepening. You're very good at keeping me guessing where this all will go next while not coming out of utterly nowhere, I really look forward to seeing what the next wrinkle is.
I must be weird, because the idea of dying in real life but sticking around in a "game" like Void Strike actually sounds appealing. Though it resulting in not having access to Earth internet and media is a bit of a downside, but there's enough going on in the many worlds Void Strike has access to that it's not a huge deal.
I must be weird, because the idea of dying in real life but sticking around in a "game" like Void Strike actually sounds appealing. Though it resulting in not having access to Earth internet and media is a bit of a downside, but there's enough going on in the many worlds Void Strike has access to that it's not a huge deal.
I'm still expecting someday flamescale will end up meeting with helen. That would seriously be weird.
Actually that's very plausibly set up isn't it? Using their quasi-unity to target a void gate the way thst one researcher accidentally did, plus Helen being one of the most qualified people to build such a gate on Earth...
Arcane Howitzer
Serial Arcanist
- Location
- United States
Most people would probably consider that just immortality with extra steps. Some of the more religiously inclined might try to steer clear out of fear of missing out on whatever afterlife or reincarnation they believe in (and the ones who have already signed up are going to have Opinions about the whole situation), but for a lot of people a Void Self is more than they would normally have after "they" die.
Also, even considering Void Strike to be "just a game," this would be a legal and religious nightmare, because at what point do you consider a person Dead? And more importantly, do they still have to pay taxes?
For the record, I wouldn't mind you just glossing over that particular cluster of snarls for the sake of the story (we haven't even directly seen Earth (and apparently Mars?) in the entire story so far; like hell do we need a visit from the IRS), but it's something to consider in the wider theme you were talking about.
- Location
- Chimney Canopy, just offscreen
It would probably be better to gloss over that particular snarl.
But if I had to guess, the easiest way through would be to regard the Voidstuck (hehe) as separate entities. Especially since their existences seem so... contained to this 'game' from the POV of Earth/realside.
They don't make taxable income and they can't interact with the 'real world' (unless Yellow-Glow is, as implied, actually doing so), so for all intents and purposes it's a nonissue.
If Yellow-Glow is a flawless simulacrum of their Realside counterpart to the point of puppeting synchtech bits (and perhaps the meat bit), then that's one for the "they're the same for most purposes" camp IMHO.
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Would it? I'm getting the implication that they are actively controlling both body and avatar at the same time and FlameScale is already controlling multiple bodies without thinking about it. Some of them even have their own minds and perceptions.
I think they are going to manage it and the surprise is that it is not more disorienting
JBcristal
Bring Me All The Puppies!
- Location
- Somewhere that doesn't have enough puppies.
Giving plenty of justice to the concept, honestly! I binged the hell out of this, starting out of simple interest to the starting neat and unique MMO concept, but the creeping concept of "There is something wrong with this game" starts the moment it casually mentions there was a problem with the "unsynch" function, and it has become more and more mesmerizing until the concept in full is revealed in the wham line of Sledge being dead dead pops up.
Yeah. Yeah you're doing fine.
Serpent Sidequest
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- 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.
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.
So their cadre so far is Flamescale, Yellow-Glow, Sledge, and Thunderfang77? If they are able to create a strong enough permanent foothold for themselves somewhere, is moving retired/non-active Void Entities under their aegis(along with their guards) potentially on the roadmap? Having other Void Entities to do some of the non-combat/mission work could surely be of use, even if they're just assisting with basic data processing work for Yellow-Glow.
Saphire
Lurking dragon
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have a suspicion that Nine-one-eight, both of them, are one of those perfectionist geniuses, huh?
Lovely chapter, nice to see Flamescale talk more and interact with people! We kinda mostly seen her act and fight, and while she's still focused on doing stuff and testing things, at least there's more people with her, yay! Just let's not think about the caveat of her being able to hear their thoughts, them being forced into being loyal, and her having ability to modify their mind and entirety of their being...
Anyway. Do want to see what ragtag group of creatures the Team-We-Sadly-Know will assemble. Wonder if they will manage to find a rare human to join them? Not really a serious ponder, just think it would be a bit funny.
The fact that the ancient gates have capture units coming out of them is pretty damn concerning. Are the remains of ancient trying to figure out where the Void Entities come from? Or are they harvested for material? Whatever the cause, kinda explains why the "devs" decided to just blow up the masquerade. They are all in deep shit now, aren't they?
Not sure Thunder's in on the reveal yet. Which might be changing rapidly as people begin to talk about, oh, the mystery not-actually-dead(-question-mark) people more and more, both in and out of the game. So she's probably earmarked but not definitely picked?
Speaking of the isekai factor, reaction outside would be interesting to see.
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Cohabitation
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- 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.
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.
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