Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG)

[E.I.G.]

SB Post

You could always have the name be patched in universe due to in universe player confusion or other such issues, since Flamescale and friends were already speedrunning some of the content.

You could also just call them a Skill Addon, or Skill Component if you don't mind breaking the theme naming a bit. Or a Component Skill, to swap that around a bit. Use the Components and add them on to your primary tree to build the skill of your dreams! And all that. Or maybe a Skill Fusion, because you're fusing them into different skills?

Or you could call them 'Pots' as in 'Potted Plants'. Like, "Yeah, I have a Skill Pot with the Fire Elemental Branches we need."

Click to shrink...

"Skill Pot" does work fairly well, and doesn't have the downsides of sounding as much like a joke as "Skill Bush".

That said, the reason I would need to change it throughout the story is that I am reacting to confusion that apparently is just being noticed by my readers.

So, lemme see if I've got this right:
A skill grafter has one primary function: It removes a branch from a skill tree.
And then it has three secondary functions:
• The removed branch can be added to another ST, as long as that ST has fewer than nine branches
• The removed branch can be used to replace a branch in an ST that has nine branches
(In this case, is the replaced branch swapped to the origin ST or just deleted? Unclear.)
• Or the removed branch is turned into a standalone 'skill graft'

With the note that a standalone skill graft can only be slotted into the 'tenth slot'.

So, drawing from gaming terms, here's what I'd suggest:
• Rename the 'skill graft' to something like "Ancient Branch" or 'prestige talents' or 'hero skills' or 'ascendant branch' or the like.
• Change the wording so it's not "A player has ten available skill branches, of which the tenth has to be a skill graft" but instead "A player ST can have up to nine branches. A player may have one Skill Tree and one Ancient Branch equipped at a time; if the Ancient Branch has pre-requisites, these must be provided by the active ST."

And then Skill Grafting is the process of swapping branches between STs, while creating Ancient Branches is a secondary thing that you can also do with a skill grafter, but is more... skill crafting than grafting? I think?

Hm. Well, hopefully some of these thoughts are useful.

Click to shrink...

So, the full explanation was intended to be at the start of chapter 24 - Crystallization, and the fact that there is so much confusion now is telling me that I need some edits there to make sure it is fully understood going further ahead.

 

[Wyvern]

Oh, hm. Re-reading that, I just straight-up forgot that it could swap multiple branches at once. And some of the limits on said switching.

(That said - somewhat deliberately - I did not go back and try and do any research before writing my previous post here; I figured that if there were any confusions that needed clearing up, it'd be more useful to have my impressions as they were at the time.)

 

[E.I.G.]

Oh, hm. Re-reading that, I just straight-up forgot that it could swap multiple branches at once. And some of the limits on said switching.

(That said - somewhat deliberately - I did not go back and try and do any research before writing my previous post here; I figured that if there were any confusions that needed clearing up, it'd be more useful to have my impressions as they were at the time.)

Click to shrink...

A good way to do it honestly. I mostly wanted to put that link in for feedback on if there was anything that obviously needed to change in that chapter to resolve this overall issue.

Well, other than the name thing, which I'm going over my options on to see what will work out best.

 

[E.I.G.]

I want to thank everyone who has helped with the "Void Grafter/Skill Graft" name confusion issue. Even though the alternative I have come up with isn't any of the specific ideas proposed in the threads, it did lead to me actually considering some more options that gave me something I think sounds nice. That option is "Skill Vine", because like a tree it grows and splits, but it is notable smaller and often found growing on top of trees.

Next up is a test of that, so for the moment I have only updated the latest chapter with the new term to see if it works for people before I make edits to the rest of the story to reflect this change:

Fluid Pestilence (Sci-Fi, LitRPG) Original

--- 26 - Grafting --- The Void Nexus had grown since its release with a lot more Void Entities using it for a lot more reasons. Flamescale could see a few of the food places from before now had proper shop fronts and signs, along with even longer lines. The weapons sale locations were also more...

forums.sufficientvelocity.com

Edit 5/11/2024:
Updates have been completed.

 

[Reji8627]

While I followed along fine before the change, I think it works out for making it harder to mix up.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 27 - Ancient Citadel ---

Flamescale was at maximum possible compression, down to just a drop, for three different six headed bodies. Those tiny and vulnerable drops of herself were carefully making their way across the small Citadel that was their current target. Her goal was to find and interface with some of the local ancient database systems, and the current question was if it was at all possible to infiltrate one of these living facilities long enough to get the data they wanted.

"How is it going?" ThunderFang asked from the single inner ring bastion they had taken as part of this plan. Yellow-Glow, Sledge, Stone, and Jovian were also nearby for either the second phase of the plan, or for plan B if this attempt failed.

"Slow, I knew I should have leveled Better Flow, but the hacking levels seemed like a better idea, and I thought a fast drop of me would be more noticeable than a slow one," Flamescale confessed. They had done some missions to get enough points for her to max out Liquid Compression, and to get Hacking Processes and Override Speed up to the point that Left-and-Right were confident they would be fast enough for this plan. "I think one drop has been spotted, and I am about to pull that one back. If they hit me with anything while I am like this I'm losing the body."

"In that case we should get ready for plan B," Stone said with a smile, the short human now had a brand new weapon that Flamescale didn't recognize. It appeared to be 319 made, but she suspected it was a prototype the weapon expert had found during their short break. "ThunderFang, how are those shields you got?"

"Expensive," the dragoness bluntly declared, and Flamescale had dismissed getting the branch as her next Skill Vine for that exact reason. It was a branch that cost over three hundred points to max, with lots of high cost skills. "I've got full base shield strength and four shield nodes, but I only have the first level of the node strength multiplier, and I can't extend it over other people yet. I'm looking forward to being able to just stick my nodes on something or someone else, but I need those to be extra nodes instead of the only ones I've got." ThunderFang flexed her wings and bit and showed off how those four nodes were located at the midpoints and tips of the forward edge of the spiky limbs. "Although I'm thinking of moving my wingtip nodes to my chest and back. The size boost gives them a lot with the full base strength skill, but I'm probably going to get one side broken and then be out of luck with this layout. Unless I make the wingtips into the first ones I can send out?"

"Well, we might have wanted that before we needed plan B," Jovian said to get them back on track. "Do we have the nuclear option in the worst case scenario ready?"

"As long as we can hold a location long enough," Flamescale specified with a nod towards the fox. "We have a three sided Citadel, and Left-and-Right's latest information says that one fifty megaton is going to be enough. We have two of them ready to go. Although Left-and-Right have asked me to take over a Citadel for them, and we lose out on that if we need to go for plan C."

The main goal was to get a map of this newly found local bastion network to find the most critical sites, and more importantly work out for the guides if it was easier to run a fast infiltration of the Citadel to get those maps. At minimum if they could explain how to get those maps so that they could be sold later by groups that followed those guides. The majority of the Void Entity inhabited instances had turned out to have already called out for groups to clear their networks, and from the inquires they had made it seemed the exceptions had simply assembled their own groups.

It wasn't the Season's issue solved just yet, Flamescale considered with some annoyance as she discovered smaller Mucin were already present at the access locations that she had been looking for. While fixed Entity locations were safe, there was a new display in the Nexus that listed captured Void Entities and a research for the ability to track them more directly. It was possible that this mission would assist directly with that research, but a better outcome would be to be able to get the maps of where the ancient void labs were to send groups after them.

"Have we worked out what size of Mucin means what on the smaller scale?" Flamescale asked Yellow-Glow and Left-and-Right at the same time, if not the same place. "I think I've got some of the first size we saw at the nearest consoles." She paused for a moment to get an answer, but cut Yellow-Glow off. "No, that's bad enough. We need to go to plan B."

"We do not," Left-and-Right still answered her question shortly while the Entities elsewhere prepared for a major conflict. The two snake heads were nearly entirely distracted by their work. "The most we have discovered is that the mindless ones we have seen made so far are not proper Mucin. They cannot become independent creatures, so if you are finding those it might be a hint that the Citadel has the key to that creation process."

"I am not looking forward to this," Yellow-Glow commented as he came close to one of Flamescale's bodies while she split off another extra body as another drop from one of the infiltrator drops. "Everyone, main target is the domes, try not to destroy the crystal data cores elsewhere. We want to minimize the data loss here."

Flamescale's hacking skills were taking away points that could go into combat skills at the moment, they were set up to try this infiltration instead of the minimum that Sixteen wanted for his troops, but they were not up to Yellow-Glow's now augmented hacking ST. Even with the difference between biological and mechanical hacking, he had far better ability to get the data fast, and they were on a time limit. As a result the plan was to take advantage of the fact that Flamescale could transport living creatures now.

Her three infiltration bodies were the first to act, growing to their full size again as quickly as she could in order to draw attention away from the gate the rest of the group was using. With that gate breach then distracting from the fourth and fifth bodies that were being used as a method to get Yellow-Glow inside. When she was at fifty meters and still growing her Lava Vipers began to emerge from her bodies and clear the nearby buildings to establish some infected material locally for her to return herself when she lost bodies. Her sixth body was at the backup disposable bastion where her forces had the small number of nuclear weapons for the worst case scenario, and to let her reform faster there.

"Sending in the Rhizo scouts," Sixteen declared while Flamescale approached full eighty meter size for her three distraction bodies. "Hopefully these don't turn against us," he added with clear preference that they were lost that way. Flamescale wasn't the only one who was unhappy with ThunderFang's last minute suggestion that they use the Rhizocephala production facilities for more combat force production. While the cannon and laser Rhizo were stronger than any weapons Flamescale currently had in large numbers, they had the downside of being Rhizo. Flamescale did not want to be commonly associated with those creatures.

Unfortunately for both of them, but fortunately for the progress of the mission, those Rhizo were not captured by the ancient infection, so they were followed up by the first wave of Flamescale's laser Rhizo. Which quickly became the main target for the larger ancient ground force. That gave everyone more time to get their real objectives done, and Flamescale's forces could keep up a force of this many of those units for a while longer.

Although eighty meters was still tiny compared to the massive and somewhat strange looking Mucin that dominated the air above the Citadel. The rangefinder in Flamescale's cybernetics reported the highest point she could track of the creature at just over two kilometers, larger than any warship she had ever seen. It was also strangely gooey, with very few crystal components unlike the smaller variations that seemed mostly linked to the weapons along its body. Weapons that it seemed almost reluctant to use, as it was only a limited number of crystal shards that destroyed her first six headed body to be lost instead of even just a single missile. Admittedly shards that were comparable to the heavy weapons of local capital ships at minimum, but it also should have been able to fire those more rapidly.

"Well, some good news," ThunderFang said over comms while everyone got started. "The big one only has one head. So it can't focus on all of us at once." Flamescale briefly spotted the dragoness flying between two buildings from one of her larger bodies. "Bad news, I am not making any progress against it. I think it has enough regen that blowing up the place would take less firepower."

"First wave of Rhizo in place, starting to see what we can grab from the terminals we are finding," Sixteen said over comms as well, one of her few Vipers with a communications cybernetic to keep in touch with the Entities. "Hopefully my team will help keep them from tracking you down, Yellow-Glow."

Flamescale didn't make out Yellow-Glow's reply, too focused on getting six headed bodies out of the buildings Sixteen's teams had taken and replacing them as the massive Mucin focused entirely on her as the largest target. She honestly started to consider going down to five or even just four heads to make for a smaller target, but the main goal was a distraction and her Reformation Vine provided a faster way to help replace the larger bodies. Although it required a constant supply of Lava Vipers, that was available from their many hives back on controlled bastions, but took away from the forces Sixteen had to keep the smaller enemies busy. The main upside was that her new size allowed for her vapors and residue to leave a lingering area of effect that limited how the ancient forces could move for a while wherever her bodies were taken out.

"We have found a really big dome connected to the big guy. Stone is putting some heavy charges on it while we have the chance," Jovian commented on the line next. "It seems to be in a small factory complex, or something similar at least. Possibly making new Rhizo. We are going to scout the rest quickly before we trigger the charges. Maybe try and take out most of the stuff here."

"A small number of Mucin just left through a gate as I passed by," Sledge then warned everyone. "Expect reinforcements to begin to arrive from the gates soon."

"Acknowledged, Sledge, I will see if we can spare some cannon and missile Rhizo to act as guards," Sixteen replied quickly. Then Flamescale was distracted by the core Mucin hitting two of her bodies one after the other with just enough shards of crystal for each of them. Which was followed by an attempt to take out ThunderFang that the dragoness partially avoided by turning into a cloud.

"Large dome down," Jovian informed all of them by the time Flamescale was back with a new set of five of her largest possible bodies to draw fire. "The building is clear and-" Whatever the fox Entity was going to say was cut off by the impact of crystal missiles launched from the core Mucin. The sound of the missile's detonation was heard before any of their group could really react properly, with Flamescale just barely able to track them for at most a couple of seconds as the two missiles went towards one of the larger structures near one of the Citadel's points.

The entire building fell in the wake of the strike, with a couple of nearby structures also clearly heavily damaged. There was a moment of quiet as the entire platform of the Citadel shook from the collapse and everyone who wasn't partially liquid or airborne had to keep their footing. Unfortunately the largest opponent and many of the ancient forces were also partial liquid, so that wasn't as much of an opportunity as it could have been for Flamescale and her Vipers.

"This is Stone, Jovian just took a capital ship missile to the face," a pained voice cut in to the comms line with a cough. "I'm buried under the rubble. I'm going to try and play dead for a bit while I recover, and then see if I can figure out where I am. There were some tunnels we found while we were clearing out the factory components, and I think I fell into one of them."

"Guys, we might have a problem," Flamescale had to say next, because things were not working out normally. "You might need to move sooner than that, Stone, because my infection has started to take hold near the impact site." She could even feel some of the Rhizo in that area changing sides despite the presence of a few Mucin that were not. If she wasn't missing something she might have even grabbed one of those intelligent Mucin somehow.

"Core Mucin's health is falling, get ready for more retaliation," ThunderFang declared and Flamescale was able to see the dragoness dive into a nearby structure for a moment. "Sledge, how close are you to the next major dome. I think I know where the farthest one is, but if I go for it I won't be able to help with the ground forces."

"I've located one, but we might want to take them out sooner rather than later," Sledge advised, and Flamescale made a choice.

"Sixteen, get forces ready to get everyone out. That thing might try and take the whole platform out if it is dying, and we need whatever data we got to survive that," she ordered on the comms to keep everyone informed, and to get Yellow-Glow ready to leave. "ThunderFang, verify where the other one is. The layout I'm seeing makes me think we have three of those domes here, and I want us to be ready to take out the last one quickly after the second goes down."

"We lost some data archives when the first was destroyed," Yellow-Glow quickly cut in. "Before the destruction of the structures themselves. Give me two more minutes before you break another, and then get me out."

Two minutes was a long time in this context, but data loss from dome destruction was a new problem to handle. The core Mucin's health stopped falling before the first minute was up, at about one third of its prior maximum and with a notable decrease in overall size. The implications weren't hard to see, and it explained some of the early reports from Entities that had tried to take Citadels so far. Although most Entities so far had just tried to level the Citadels until they hit enough stuff to break the location entirely in the 'successful' attempts their group had read about so far, with the less successful ones not surviving the core.

Two minutes was also long enough for the ancient reinforcements to arrive in quantity. Asteroidea units were particularly common, and seemed to be trying to move toward the section where the destroyed dome had been. That quickly tied up Flamescale's heavier Rhizo forces, as the starfish shaped constructs were shielded and able to defend nearby ancient forces with those shields.

"I'm out of the rubble and into the tunnels, but probably need extraction," Stone said just before the time was up. "My gear didn't take the impact well, and this is getting expensive. I remember why I stopped taking good guns into the season three stuff, and that didn't have orbital firepower unless you really messed up."

"Two minutes are up, Sixteen, get Yellow-Glow and Stone out of there. Sledge, hit it," Flamescale ordered even as she was forced to start to engage the ancient reinforcements instead of the core Mucin due to their increasing numbers. "ThunderFang, get ready for yours. We want to see the reaction, but not to lose anyone to it."

It was impossible to miss when the next dome went down. The core Mucin clearly and bluntly went from trying to gain control over the situation to trying to clear them all out regardless of the damage. Flamescale luckily took most of that focus, with a full barrage of the capital scale missiles briefly clearing her from the field entirely as all five bodies took direct hits. When she got back with quickly made replacements she found about half the structures leveled and ThunderFang in the middle of a dive towards what was likely the final target.

"Data gathers are out, but we lost most of our mobile forces that were on the surface," Sixteen reported. "I'm sending what we have left to grab Sledge and get out. Sledge, see if you can get to those tunnels, most of what we have left is trying to use them, but we can't hold if the big one is attacking directly."

"Hitting the third dome now," ThunderFang declared loudly over the sound of massive crystal weapon strikes and collapsing coral. The decrease in the core Mucin's size had impacted those weapons to a degree, but with the scale it started even losing over a third of its size still left it at the scale of the largest warships. "Core health is decaying again, faster this time." Flamescale's infection was also progressing much more rapidly as well.

"Take out the last one," Flamescale declared as she lost two more bodies. She wasn't sure how many she had lost so far, but getting her Reformation Vine finished was important given how much the max health decrease from reforming was affecting her up time in this sort of fight. Although if they finished this Citadel off she would definitely have enough points to finish the important skill in the branch.

It was easy to tell when the final dome broke, because Flamescale's infection suddenly started to overtake the entire site much more quickly, despite the presence of a few smaller Mucin that she knew had arrived from other parts of the bastion network. Mucin that now were falling back to the gates in terror, and seemed to be attacking the gates they were not using on their way out even as the Asteroidea and Rhizocephala that had come with them seemed to also be falling to Flamescale's infection. It was also plainly clear that something here let her take over those intelligent Mucin too.

Flamescale still had to focus her attention on the Core Mucin, with some help from ThunderFang as soon as the dragoness emerged from the structure before one final wave of large missiles could level it. The construct's health was falling at a speed usually seen from mortal wounds, with it now seeming to collapse instead of shrink. Green goo flowed down the various paths of the half ruined Citadel, some of it turning red as it passed over sections Flamescale had control over.

It quickly became clear that the Core also could not reload its crystal weapons at all anymore, and as the last of the outgoing gates were cut off by the ancients themselves Flamescale actually saw and felt her red infection overtake the Core Mucin in the moments before it completely collapsed into just a flood of what was now Flamescale's goo.

---

"Ten points for clear, twenty five for capture, forty for the destruction of the core, for a total of seventy five points to complete a Citadel," Flamescale specified as they gathered again to go over the end results of the attempt. Left-and-Right had brought in a technical team to go over the remains without being ordered to do so, while Jovian and the other Entities who had not been at the site at the end had returned. "Along with three more Grafters, and a new ST I hope other people got."

"If you mean the massive nine branch 'Ancient Core' skill tree, yes we all got one," Jovian specified from where the fox was looking over the rubble of the structure he had been killed in. "Given mine gives Crystalline as a secondary branch we probably need to add that as a valuable reward."

"It has Titanic Scale as a base skill, although mine only had seven branches," ThunderFang pointed out. "It gives the first level of Titanic Scale just for having it, I think that says a whole lot about that thing. This is the big puzzle boss reward. Which is really weird, right?"

"Left-and-Right are going over what exactly was going on, but the initial results are looking like the Core Ancient Computer was being made larger than normal instead of just naturally that size," Flamescale pointed out with a glance over to Yellow-Glow for confirmation.

"I suspect that the domes themselves were a part of its overall function, even before the loss caused the destruction," Yellow-Glow confirmed. "It is clear that a significant part of the local database was actually the memory of that core construct. I hope that we can find more data in the crystal cores that survived the fight, but this attempt seems to have been a failure overall. The attempt to distract from data extraction escalated the overall battle too far."

"If the goal was mostly to extract the network map, then we at least should be able to pull that off," Sixteen argued from where the Vipers were clearing debris. "I had the hacking teams focus on that, and with the way the big one reacted I think we can pull off a raid to just get the map and get back out. We were holding pretty easily until Jovian and Stone took out the first dome, and my teams had that data by then."

"Show me the data extracts," Yellow-Glow requested and walked over to that group.

"So, how did the rest of the network look?" Flamescale asked Jovian, who had been most of the way back using the bastions when the gates had finished being destroyed.

"Controlled panic," Jovian answered quickly. "I got there just in time to see Rhizo breaking gates, and that was after hitting a couple of larger than normal patrols. I think we need someone to clear out the rest of this one fast."

"I think I need to stop helping for a while," Stone admitted as he carefully repaired his current unique looking weapon. It had taken this mission better than the rest of his gear, which unfortunately could be harder to replace. "I'm not really that great with missions that end up facing orbital strike level attacks. Its the armor really, you just can't keep that stuff... Sledge, is your armor healing itself?"

"You take care of armor properly by getting a good armorer you trust," the pangolin declared. "Especially a Leaf that knows how to fit an auto repair system into lighter mechs. This is merely a patch job, and my armorer will be upset with me for the damage, but destruction is very unlikely. Skill Link and a regeneration skill assists there as well, but doesn't perform as nicely without the repair system to start things off."

"A partial success then," Yellow-Glow declared loudly enough to attract their attention. "This does show the information can be found quickly enough." Everyone paused to see if that was all he had to say. "I have a backup group to finish the clear of this network ready. If possible I would like to try this again with a focus on limited combat. The main goal for the moment is to get a better way to map these networks documented."

---

[Author's Note]
For anyone who hasn't seen the informational yet, there has been a revision to the name of the extra skill branch to 'Skill Vine' for the chapters starting at "23 - Rescues".
As for the chapter... I am hoping that this does work out in the long run. The battle here escalated faster than I wanted, but my characters weren't as cautious as my planned outline when it came down to it.
(It does not help that Jovian and Stone weren't characters yet when the outline was made.)

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 28 - Ancient Discoveries ---

Points had come quickly during the week after Flamescale got her first Citadel. That was simply a consequence of making a series of detailed guides on just what it took to take on ancient bastion networks with the least hassle. Enough points to finish her Multiform branch, which was honestly the biggest place to put points she had that helped with their current issue. Going from six heads to nine was over two hundred points, and she needed that for their next goal.

Clearing an entire bastion network was hundreds to thousands of points if you got everything you could out of one. Flamescale's group was sticking with just Citadel attempts and inner sites for the most part, but those were the biggest individual rewards, with even just extracting the map data from a Citadel and leaving giving five bonus points. Even though that didn't stack with a clear or capture it was still a steady reward for every Citadel they practiced against. Naturally that meant that she had finished her Reformation Vine a while before they were actually done working, and had time to start trying out a few others.

The Cloaking branch had been her next pick, and immediately reminded her why it was a branch to leave unused until you had more points. The base skill, Visual Masking, just let you change the colors of your body to match your surroundings. Not very useful if you needed any gear to do things, although possibly enough for the basics in her case. However, every other skill on the branch required you to max the first skill before you could start to level them, which meant that you needed twenty points overall before you could even think about using the other skills. Flamescale had still done enough missions to try all of those extra modes, but against the living infrastructure of the ancients the skills on that Vine were fairly useless, so it was being set aside until after they were done in bastion networks.

"So, did you pick Petrification for the intimidation factor, or was there more logic behind that Vine?" Jovian asked from near the obsidian statues of Rhizo. The full group was gathered again inside Flamescale's main R&D center for a new report on some quite serious findings.

"They do fit the rest of the decor," Stone pointed out with a long glance at the red goo and obsidian stone that had replaced most of the ancient coral. He actually looked like a dwarf for once, and Flamescale thought his braids and adornments looked much better drooping down either side of his head on long ears than just dangling from hair on a human face. "Did you really need to get rid of all the ancient stuff?"

"First, the Petrification branch is great for capture missions once you get the skill to turn targets back. It just isn't quite working out against the ancient forces," Flamescale argued with a sigh. "As for the way everything looks, that is actually just the long term effect of my control on ancient life forms. The Asteroidea in particular end up rather intimidating, although Rhizo don't change much. Something to do with the fact that they are Void creatures." Her Asteroidea were coated in her red goo with a thin obsidian shell under it, but below that was mostly the same structure as before, and damage revealed that quickly. "Apparently they take on aspects of their controller naturally, mine are probably a bit better looking than some people's. I've heard a horror story about a bastion covered with fur."

"I personally think my scales work rather well for my own bastions," Sledge countered with a laugh. "I guess I had not considered that not everyone has actually tried having a bastion yet. I think it is possible to control to a degree, but that might take looking into custom construction options. Those are still shifting a bit every couple of days, but the strange part is that the changes don't do much to the actual bastion. Just alteration to what we can add, and even then once something has been added it doesn't go away if the option goes away. Sometimes we cannot remove something at all after placing it."

"Likely a side effect of Void Entity rules interacting with Ancient Void Construct rules," Left-and-Right pointed out from where the twin headed Vipers were getting a display ready with Yellow-Glow. "We are ready for the presentation anytime the rest of you are willing to listen."

"Please excuse my army of Vipers, a lot of them are rude," Flamescale sighed at that. The good news on that front was that Sixteen was used to this group, and Squeaky didn't have a report that anyone other than Flamescale needed to hear. "To start off, we have investigated the Bio-Support branch that is found from Asteroidea." She nodded at a few tools and devices made while she was using that other new Vine. "The Healing Mist and Healing Connection skills are both nice medic skills, and we have verified that they both have been used by the starfish."

"I've been considering that one for a Vine myself," ThunderFang admitted thoughtfully. "How did the crafting skills work out?"

Left-and-Right gave Flamescale a dark look at that, because the researchers were convinced that getting that Vine was a waste of one of Flamescale's Grafters. "Bio-Fabrication can make a number of worse versions of stuff you find as a bio-tech skill, but in the form of stuff you can use without augmentation," Flamescale started to specify. "More levels apparently let you get better stuff, but it is a way to hand out healing units fairly easily. Bio-Construction is a standard custom construction skill, with a biological theme. Not that useful if you already have another construction skill you like better. Bio-Augmentation is weird, it basically lets you give out bio-skills to created creatures or locals. Probably not worth it without an army on your side."

"Okay, that sounds good enough for what I need- Wait, can you heal yourself with those first two skills?" ThunderFang quickly cut herself off.

"It can work like that, part of why the Asteroidea are so resistant to damage until their shell is broken, yet die quickly afterwards, is that they heal themselves quite rapidly until they take critical damage," Left-and-Right specified. "In them it is more a function of their internals being full of the fluid that produces the healing effect, and that evaporates into the mist when their internal temperature increases during active use of their jamming ability." The dragoness seemed quite happy with that result.

"So, did they fight Void Entities before? Because I'm still not sure how their stuff being 'Void' stuff works with that," Jovian questioned, with an obvious look at a rebuilt disruptor tower. "I don't see why they have stuff made for this if they were only around millions of years ago."

"The Void Collapse occurred between forty and two hundred thousand years ago, not a full million," Yellow-Glow specified with annoyance, more because of what they had found than with the question asked from what Flamescale knew. "We will get to the details of that topic later, but we have confirmed that there were Void Entities around at the time."

"To start with we should go over why we looked into the Asteroidea skill branch," Flamescale took back the topic. "We wanted to know what they can do, and with the core data stores we have worked out why they were developed. They were actually made as repair and construction units. The Void Rift Disruptor part of them is a relatively recent addition to them."

That gained the full attention of everyone present. "They added it to the Asteroidea," Sledge noticed aloud. "They didn't need to deal with Void Rifts for some time after they made those things, but those are Void Constructs."

"The bastion network is an artificial environment that matches the condition of the ancient homeworld prior to the Void Collapse," Left-and-Right started to explain the next major topic. "That includes the Void interference level of the area. With that and the records of the ancients we have confirmed that they were able to produce some Void related effects without Void Materials or a Void Entity to support the result. That is in fact how they gained access to their initial Void Materials without the industrial and scientific knowledge to create infusion devices. It is those methods that are currently used by the ancient processing facilities to create new Void Materials of inferior quality."

"Not 'refineries'?" Stone questioned thoughtfully. "Why not 'refineries', what are they doing that would make you pick something different on purpose now?"

"Because we've found seed vaults in the inner spokes and Citadels," Flamescale answered. "Large ones that we first thought were just more raw material storage. The ancients were agrarian, their entire civilization was based on farming plants. They just found out how to use what is basically magic to make plants that grow metals and other things we associate with advanced civilization. They are 'processing' instead of 'refining' because it is mostly taking plant matter that is unneeded off for composting or other uses, and then preparing it to be eaten by whatever artificial creature they used to make the final product."

"The true source of the destruction of the ancient civilization was the loss of all their Void augmented crops. Their original bodies died of starvation while their 'ascended' Mucin upper class was simply destroyed by the Void Collapse itself outside of the networks," Yellow-Glow explained grimly. "Although it appears from the records that the Rhizocephala are a Void altered combat life form engineered from their original species that does not have the same food requirements. Their idea of 'person' assumes that the majority of the body is only under the control over the person themselves, not biologically that person."

"Okay, I didn't understand that last part," ThunderFang admitted, and apparently not many of the rest of the group had looked up what 'Rhizocephala' meant given Stone and Jovian were similarly confused. "What does that have to do with them being like the Rhizo?"

"Rhizo themselves are actually a parasite nervous system attached to a crab-like body," Sledge said, and then unfortunately continued to describe the way Rhizo pirates sometimes replaced damaged bodies or upgraded to better ones after growing smart enough. Flamescale wasn't quite sure how to stop him, because at least it wasn't Yellow-Glow or Left-and-Right going into even more detail, and she knew one or both of them would just take over if she interrupted.

"Wait, they are an entire civilization of people who think body-jacking is normal?" Jovian questioned bluntly to cut off the tail end of the description. "How did that work out with first contact situations?"

"We are still analyzing their reaction to the local races," Left-and-Right answered. "Unfortunately they did not in fact encounter other intelligent life prior to the Collapse. Personally I am more uncomfortable with the side effect that detail had on their population. From analysis the bastion networks typically contained around one tenth of the total ancient population, with most of those being their administrative class inside the Citadel itself. Which sounded bigger until we were able to confirm that by their census they never broke two billion population."

"On hundreds of worlds, giving them very small official populations. However, it does not include their living creations, some of which might have been intelligent," Flamescale pointed out before anyone questioned too much how that could be. She wasn't convinced of those numbers herself yet, but all of the data they had found so far gave smaller numbers instead of the slightly higher one they arrived at from looking at the size of the sites. "Although we can't really tell where their line for person was."

"You have a couple of Mucin with minds from the Citadel," ThunderFang pointed out, and Flamescale was trying to avoid that particular topic. "Can't we just ask them? I mean, they did 'ascend' to be immortal right?"

"A few of the standard Mucin were caught in the effects of the core dying," Flamescale confirmed, because the side effects there were important to what Yellow-Glow wanted and everyone needed to know that the Citadel allowed for some ways to bypass the typical infection restrictions. "However, Mucin are not actually immortal. The only exception is the core, and the reason it died when we broke the domes is because those domes were the only reason it was still alive after all this time."

"What I had mistakenly identified as data storage units were actually something closer to remains," Yellow-Glow added with a glare at one of those 'devices' sitting nearby. "They are the fused remains of deceased Mucin, retained to allow the parts of their knowledge that could be retained after death to aid those who come after them. Only the core exists as a remnant of the ancient's empire in its original form, and it is the only source of the information I now desire."

"Is the 'last big mission' you wanted us for to try and take over a Core Mucin?" Stone asked with an incredulous tone that was honestly justified, and a jangle as his ears raised up to full height. "Are you serious?"

"The core's age makes it extra vulnerable to that sort of attack on the domes that support it," Flamescale specified, uneasy with the idea herself. "We can get the information on the current state of the bastion networks without an intact core, Sixteen has worked that mission out enough to do it without me. What we can't do is learn more about what caused the Void Collapse without at least taking control of those systems for long enough to extract the knowledge. I can't pull that off and distract the core at the same time, so Yellow-Glow will need to be guarded while I do that."

"I'm willing to help out on core distraction," ThunderFang agreed easily, which was a relief. Flamescale didn't think she could count on anyone going with this strange idea, but someone to help with the main distraction was honestly better than more defenders on the ground. "But, is it really that important to figure that out?"

"At this time it is unclear what caused the Void interference surge that destroyed the ancient empire," Left-and-Right immediately began to explain, because they had been ready for the question even if they didn't like it. "The worst case is that it is a natural phenomenon, possibly even a cyclical one, that threatens the world of your mortal lives. Another similarly hazardous option is that Void Entities that did not originate from the ancients were somehow the cause after being targeted by the ancient research efforts. Our findings of how Void Entities are formed give some details on what is possible there."

"Void Entities are minds and rules impressed upon the Void, the same way this location is material and rules imposed upon it," Yellow-Glow started to go over those findings unhappily. "The difference is that those minds cannot be attacked outside of the rules they operate under. If the rules we are made with do not allow for our destruction, then we cannot be destroyed." To Flamescale he was clearly avoiding the news on that front he didn't like. "Which is where the issue of difficulty in making a Void Entity appears. Ancient records show that it is possible to create a lesser Void creature with rules that allow for destruction, but they end up unstable. Similarly having rules too loosely defined also results in unstable creatures."

"Rules that are too loose? Sure we... wait," Jovian laughed sarcastically, but then grew more serious. "Wait, we can't do a lot of things without following our rules. I need to go into the character creator to style my fur. We can eat, but we don't need to, which doesn't sound that big but it means that we don't have rules for eating."

"We have rules for eating, they just aren't about needing to eat," Flamescale had to bring up with a thought to how she had skills to clarify how exactly she could eat just about anything. "But, all of the stuff we do is defined by the rules of Void Strike. And from what we found, there are rather big limits to what the developers can do to alter those rules. The game was made to be updated, but they can only go so far. That's why it is taking so long to get some features."

"'The game'," Stone quoted her dubiously. "Why are you calling it a game now of all times," the dwarf complained more than genuinely questioned.

"Because the most common source of viable Void Entities within the ancient records relates to those who misused Void materials for the purpose of playing a game," Left-and-Right answered anyway and they all grew more quiet as he continued. "It is the most common and viable way to ensure a sufficient set of rules exists from the recovered data, although they do phrase things such that they believed a degree of influence from it being a game was also a factor. Games have clearer rules than reality, and the easiest way to attempt something is to begin with a game or simulation of the thing with tighter rules than reality."

"You found a reason why this could have actually been a game to start with," Sledge said for the group. "This is a known consequence of trying to make a Void based game."

"It is possible to arrange for the conditions without starting with a game," Yellow-Glow argued sharply, then sighed. "However, I will need more data on the topic to find a way to rule out that possibility, and it is looking unlikely now. I need that core data in order to proceed from here."

Flamescale knew that news would cause a bit of an issue, although she wasn't sure how exactly it would be taken by the others. The disagreement between herself and Yellow-Glow meant they didn't talk much about it with the rest of this group. Left-and-Right had taken the news rather well, actually it seemed most of her Vipers were slightly happier with the idea that it was all a side effect of trying to make games, although she had not worked out why yet. Brief looks into their minds since the discovery weren't helping.

ThunderFang once more didn't seem surprised, but it was also clear that the dragoness also worked with Synch-Tech and understood better from that. That seemed to put her with Sledge, who did know the arguments to some degree. Both seemed to just be waiting for more information than that.

Jovian on the other hand seemed to be trying to find a trick. "What kinds of games were they making that caused this sort of thing if they didn't have computers?" the fox asked the question that wasn't that great to answer.

"We recovered some of them," Flamescale unfortunately had to report. "It is much worse to become a Void Entity for a game where losers end up turned into stones. Not like those Rhizo I petrified, actually turned into rocks." They were still trying to find the specific rules of that game, and if there was a way out of being a rock or not. "For the most part they are fairly primitive games. Lots of symbolism and superstition. Okay, we might just hope it was only superstition."

"We have some of them," Stone said slowly now looking at the few pods located nearby, although not the specific ones that were being used at the moment. Those were in a more secured location. "Can anything be done to help them?"

"There are unconfirmed reports of the possibility to switch between sets of rules," Yellow-Glow said bluntly. "It is possible that a goal for older Void Entities might be to promote the creation of a new rules that they can transfer themselves to using."

"The idea there being that we were encouraged to make Void based games in order to create a new kind of Void Entity that those Void Entities could become," Flamescale admitted to go with the 'it was both' option that both of them hated being very possible now. "We need more information from the Core to know more about what other kinds of Void Entities were around back then. So we can work out if there are any risks from them."

"So, you think we could be... 'transferred'," ThunderFang said quietly with a thoughtful nod as the dragoness looked directly at Flamescale. "We do need to know more about that."

"Okay, that convinced me to help with this madness," Stone admitted with a sigh. "Although I am not going with this Lunar dwarf body again. I won't criticize what I've read about their ears again after putting up with what this feels like."

"What, you don't like longer ears?" Jovian questioned with a deliberate flick of one of his own foxy ears. "Fine, I'll go along with this mad plan if it helps us figure out how not to collapse the entire Synch-Tech industry. I need that to keep working in case I die."

---

"Meeting went long then, Boss?" Squeaky asked after the planning session for the group's last big job for the season. "I've got two groups to look over, and three ships that were in good enough shape. Not great ones, but we're on a budget at the moment, and Left-and-Right have promised me some use of the Asteroidea to try and patch the worst one up a bit."

"Are we getting a shipyard before we get their new gate-to-point prototypes?" Flamescale questioned curiously as she inspected the area they were in. Prefabricated and other standardized construction materials had been acquired and assembled in one of their bastions to give the appearance of a mundane location to interview new recruits and interact with the locals of various instances. A location chosen instead of the sites they possessed in a few instances now because they didn't intend to recruit from instances they actually interacted with regularly.

Flamescale wanted a clean break for any new Lava Vipers. As little link to their origin instance as possible, and it turned out that Squeaky and the others agreed with the concept. They were not creatures of any single instance, and they were not the locals they used to be either. It also avoided some issues with people looking for what happened to those who signed up.

"A basic level of repair and refit is possible with just a basic dock," Squeaky replied bluntly. "Now, do you really need to check everyone's minds before we change them?"

"I want them to know what they were getting into properly, even if I have to push that knowledge into their heads myself," Flamescale declared, a statement that honestly was less of a threat in a universe where the 319 were a common sight than back among humanity. Admittedly it was also much more literal, but less threatening because of that common ability. "I also want to avoid recruiting anyone who isn't giving up their life knowingly." Squeaky gave her a glare. "If they are already as good as dead they aren't giving up any life. There is a reason I can turn victims back before that point."

"Did you really need to eat all of us the first time, Boss?" Squeaky finally questioned directly.

"You've met Sledge, he was in charge of getting rid of the place," Flamescale specified, although it was more accurate to say that Squeaky had a tendency to help Sledge with destruction the few times they had worked together. "Besides, I think I made out well taking you all instead of just killing you all."

"Oh right, it did end up nuked, never mind," her quartermaster sighed. "Just through here for the first group. They started complaining about the smell a little bit ago."

The two of them did not go into the room with the collection of possible recruits, but instead a viewing room next to it where they could see the crowd without being seen. This had been the plan the whole time, with Squeaky talking with this group directly before their conversion, and then Flamescale only had a chance to actually meet them on their tasks at most. She honestly had not met most of her Lava Vipers properly, and also wasn't sure that she wanted to try and know all of them. That so many were now extensions of her existence was awkward enough without the reality that she was not a natural or trained leader.

"Fine, unaware, spy, spy, cheater, fine, unaware, spy, fine, fine, unaware spy," Flamescale began to list as she inspected the minds of the infected recruits one by one.

"Just give me an overlay," Squeaky complained. "Huh, that is a lot of spies, although not as many unaware as you thought." Flamescale was in fact surprised by the number who were both fully aware that they were being changed into another 'species' and not going to see their old lives again. Some who genuinely knew the full issues were actually among the spies, but not many and those few wanted out of their situation with their lives.

The majority of the spies knew enough to think they could possibly get information on the new 'species' out again even after a change in life, but not enough to realize there was a Void Entity involved. Those were not getting a mental push of the full consequences. Flamescale didn't actually need more spies, she had plenty already from places she had attacked so far and honestly would rather train new ones instead of just taking them. That was the sort of thing that fit her desired skill set after all.

"Are any of the spies any good at what I need them to do, or are they just here to spy?" Squeaky asked once the overlay she requested was in place. Flamescale modified the results slightly. "Ugh, I hate spies faking skills. A minor database implant just to know how to answer all of my questions?" Flamescale might have included notes for the particularly terrible options. "Great, I'm going to need at least four groups at this rate."

"That's less than I expected," Flamescale admitted, although it was mostly because there were more aware options here than she expected. "Also, don't count out the unaware just yet. I still need to see how they react."

The answer was that it instantly turned the room into a very heated discussion of just how some of those inside had been aware of the real issue, and also a sizable number of spies that now clearly wanted to back out. Something she would deal with using a bit of memory modification for the ones sent back without a new existence.

"Flamescale," Squeaky started then, her name not used commonly any of the Vipers. "Left-and-Right have said that it may be possible to turn us into Void Entities, and that Yellow-Glow agrees."

Flamescale considered the implied question if she agreed with that assessment too. "Left-and-Right don't entirely understand Synch-Tech and its properties yet. Yellow-Glow doesn't want to admit that Void Strike started as a game," she began. "The list of conditions that result in unstable Void Entities matches a number of deliberate things Synch-Tech developers try for, because they make it so you don't end up with an endless synch. It is hard to break one of those, you need to find the Void Material that is the target of the synch, if one exists."

"Alright, that is not a 'no'," Squeaky noticed carefully. "What are they missing?"

"You can be in more than one Synch-Tech link at a time. I doubt that 'transfer' is the right word for getting a new set of rules. More likely you become more than one Void Entity at the same time," Flamescale admitted. "I am not sure what exactly would happen to you, or even to me, if you became any kind of Void Entity, but I am confident you would still be one of my Lava Vipers."

"Huh, so I'd still have to put up with not having legs," Squeaky grumbled, somewhat lying but more accurate than Flamescale really liked.

"I have to put up with having them right now," Flamescale pointed out, not the first time she really admitted that out loud, but possibly the most she felt the issue this strongly. "I can see about alternatives after the next Citadel."

---

[Author's Note]
We are getting close to the end of arc 2 now. Here we have some more answers, but just enough to show where they need to find the answers they really want.

 

[Kade_Lanik]

Oh dear. Those are quite the twists and really explains rather a lot.

 

[greynoise]

So a reason that this all might have actually been an accident exists, but an equal and opposite reason that Void Strike might have been engineered by ancient Void Entities also exists. Were the devs criminally incompetent Synch-Tech engineers who are very lucky their oversized Void devices did the opposite of killing their users, or are there other VEs in the shadows trying to create a new system for their own use? Either way, the devs are clearly in over their heads and I hope we get their perspective on this whole situation at some point.

 

[Saphire]

So a reason that this all might have actually been an accident exists, but an equal and opposite reason that Void Strike might have been engineered by ancient Void Entities also exists. Were the devs criminally incompetent Synch-Tech engineers who are very lucky their oversized Void devices did the opposite of killing their users, or are there other VEs in the shadows trying to create a new system for their own use? Either way, the devs are clearly in over their heads and I hope we get their perspective on this whole situation at some point.

Click to shrink...

Meanwhile, developer perspective: "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck it keeps getting worse help"

Also, Lava Vipers ending up as both players in VS and loyalty enforced creatures under Flamescale is uh. Quite a fine mess, indeed.

…still waiting for the eventual magma fruit goopening of "IRL".

I've heard a horror story about a bastion covered with fur.

Click to shrink...

Wait how did that one happen even? So not just the people with fluid skills can take these over? And it changes to match them?

 

[E.I.G.]

Wait how did that one happen even? So not just the people with fluid skills can take these over? And it changes to match them?

Click to shrink...

Other Void Entities have at least one shop selling them that was shown a while back, so someone doesn't need something to take them over themselves to get one.
I want the implication with that fact to be that Sledge got his from Flamescale's captures.

 

[Saphire]

Other Void Entities have at least one shop selling them that was shown a while back, so someone doesn't need something to take them over themselves to get one.
I want the implication with that fact to be that Sledge got his from Flamescale's captures.

Click to shrink...

So uh... Someone with liquid skills took one over and then transferred it to someone without, and the entire thing changed to match?

I wonder what was under the fur...

 

[Rhyne]

So, her servant race can become full void entities.... Presumably while maintaining the enforced loyalty.
I'm not too close about what you meant about the Games and their link to the Void, specifically the "inevitable consequence" part

 

[Happerry]

It makes me wonder what would happen if someone knowingly and deliberately decided to make a void game to upload themselves into, and what kind of game that would be. Some sort of RPG/RTS combo, probably? Honestly the current game has a lot of what I'd want in it already anyway, thinking of it like that, but if I was knowingly designing for something on those lines, I'd have 100% been unable to keep myself from throwing in some Satisfactory or such into the Void Base side for something to do and mess around with while not on 'Missions'.

...On the other hand, that could be well what's getting added with the current update, given Flamescale is currently booting up her own shipyard it sounds like, and is also edging into the RTS genre which is my other 'huh, I would probably think about adding that in somehow' mental note.

 

[Dudethunder]

So, her servant race can become full void entities.... Presumably while maintaining the enforced loyalty.
I'm not too close about what you meant about the Games and their link to the Void, specifically the "inevitable consequence" part

Click to shrink...

Given the extremely minimal amount of technology apparently required for a game to get you void entities, things are kind of floating towards fantasy kitchen sink possibilities.

Especially when questions like "couldn't they have made Final Fantasy 36 instead" are currently pointing to yes.

Did the game company design "enemy" types at any point?

Can they still make new kinds of NPCs?

If you design a game with more traditional monsters, do you connect to places like that instead?

And what kind of weirdo precursors design a game where humans are the exotic NPCs.

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 29 - Season Final ---

It was Flamescale's first time at nine heads. Her first time at a scale that was so large it was almost useless against locals. Her Crystal Weapons were monstrously strong at this scale, able to outright destroy warships with repeated hits, but not anywhere near fast or agile enough to hit targets in orbit from the ground to pull that off in most practical situations. Her laser weapons were another story, those had a possibility of doing some damage due to reaching a size where calling them 'rifles' was just silly.

It was a scale where the two kilometers of a Core Mucin was only a bit more than three times her six hundred forty meter size. Something only ThunderFang could exceed with the dragoness' maxed Titanic Scale branch that put ThunderFang at over a kilometer. A scale where the three of them, the Core, Flamescale, and ThunderFang, seemed almost like the only creatures present.

Which actually matched with her bodies on the ground. She could not fit nine of those colossal forms on even the largest Citadel, so she had extra bodies to spare for lower level conflict below that of titans. Bodies who could barely make out what was happening between the largest fighters present. At the scale of the rest of the group, and where she was going with 'only' forty meter five headed bodies, the largest might as well just be moving walls of goo instead of creatures.

That was the point of course. Having bodies large enough to actually distract the Core was their only hope to take a Citadel's full 'database' intact. As long as the nine headed Flamescales and ThunderFang kept that up the five headed bodies could support the ground force without drawing heavier firepower.

"Should I even ask what fighting that thing at that size is like?" Jovian complained as one of Flamescale's five headed bodies cleared the pair of laser Rhizo that had cornered him. "You aren't distracted by being up there and down here?"

"It's almost like I'm in two different places," Flamescale admitted, and then pulled him into a nearby building to avoid a surge of red goo that nearly enveloped them. "Honestly, I don't even know which me that was right now."

They were close to the first major dome that Yellow-Glow was trying to capture for data extraction. Flamescale wasn't sure what ST he had added the Mechanical Conversion branch to, or even if he had turned it into a Vine instead, but she did know that it had enough hacking capabilities to make full use of the branch. The Mechanical Conversion branch started off with Mecha Body, a single level skill that altered you into a machine, or more accurately made it so you needed to use a machine character given that wasn't as restricted as being made out of goo was for base character options. The next skill was Flesh to Metal, which was actually just a petrification variant that turned a biological target into solid metal with five levels to make the process faster.

After that was the single level Machine Conversion skill that changed it into making the target into a machine version of themselves, something that on its own didn't actually make the target obey you. That required either hacking the resulting machine, or the next single level skill of Machine Control that added that effect automatically. Finally, there were four skills to allow the user to add components to their targets during the conversion. Including communications units, ballistic rifles, laser rifles, and if you got a lot of the skills you could give a limited number the ability to convert others.

It was a powerful branch in theory, but it used to have the major downside that it didn't appear on a Skill Tree with either hacking skills or combat skills. It was very rare and only found as the most interesting branch of an otherwise rather mundane ST full of basic stat boosts and equipment boosts. Now though, Yellow-Glow had clearly combined it with some kind of hacking ST, which allowed him more ability to edit the end results, and possibly even a construction branch given the small setup he had produced next to the dome they were starting with.

"I would like this a lot better if I wasn't trying to keep the locals from breaking things," Stone pointed over the comms out from where the dwarf was using one of Flamescale's Asteroidea as cover. She wasn't sure why he only had worthwhile armor for his new rabbit-like shape, but getting armor wasn't something she ever had much luck with given her body shape. "Are we really doing a protection mission for the place we're trying to capture? Those missions end up skipped for a reason you know."

"Maybe you skip them," Sledge countered with a laugh. "I personally enjoy finding just the best way to pull those off."

"I don't know how you pulled it off before we got Linked Gear," Jovian criticized as the fox left the building Flamescale had pulled him into. "But I have seen you pull a mobile shield unit out of storage to do that sort of thing, and it looked like you had practiced that move."

"Can we keep the main comms line clear," ThunderFang pointed out as she took a full barrage from the Core onto her shields, which at this scale and with her current node layout held reasonably as long as there was time between hits like that. "It is hard to tell where anything your size is at this size, and I need that more than commentary. Unless you want to find out what my friendly fire is like?"

"ThunderFang, you aren't exactly the best at keeping buildings standing at smaller scales," Flamescale said aloud from the closest colossal body she had to the dragon. The words at that scale distorted to the point of being almost impossible to make out by their smaller sized allies, which was both why they had not understood the Core last time they fought one and why they needed comms at that scale. "You're already rattling the rooftops."

"Intruders, rivals? Deploy force six to street eight," the Core Mucin said with the mixed tone of someone struggling to remember how words work and the automated response of someone who has done nothing but act as a living computer for ages. "How long has it been without a sun's light?" they then lamented slightly more quietly.

The larger fight was going in an interesting way. Flamescale and ThunderFang could do some damage to the Core with their basic attacks at this size. Flamescale's crystal weapons were actually undersized a bit for a Void Entity of her current scale, but she had far more of them due to her many heads. Against a warship fleet she could clear lighter targets quickly, but would need to focus her fire for anything her size or larger. ThunderFang on the other hand had basic attacks about the same level of danger as an entire barrage from one of Flamescale's bodies, and could possibly escalate to combination attacks able to cut down the largest warships should they connect. Flamescale could go farther with Linked Gear as well. The Core Mucin was in a middle ground of not hitting as hard as ThunderFang or as often as Flamescale, but still more than able to take down any one of their foes with focused firepower.

However, none of the colossal combatants were using full power on each other. Mostly to avoid damage to the Citadel itself as they all wanted it intact, but also because it would waste resources they needed to save for later. Even if Flamescale and ThunderFang went all out they couldn't take out the Core's massive health and regeneration before they ran out of high end attacks, and similarly the Core could not focus down on any one of the bodies they faced because the others would still be there. Even taking out ThunderFang was a temporary measure for it, as Flamescale could quickly get the respawned dragoness back to the fight. Something that the data from the other ancient sites confirmed the Core should be well aware of.

That left the small scale as where the actual conflict was happening. Despite Jovian's criticism, Sledge was a mobile attacker at the moment going after larger threats before they reached the lines of the rest of them. Taking on the Asteroidea and heavier Rhizocephala that were arriving steadily from the gates. Stone and Jovian were staying in the buildings immediately adjacent to the main dome, supporting Flamescale's smaller five headed bodies and her Lava Vipers.

"Conversion of first dome is completed," Yellow-Glow declared smugly over the comms line to end the silence that ThunderFang's pointed statement created. "Flamescale, my forces will be available soon enough to hold the site, begin taking the second."

"We aren't waiting to see if you can get everything from holding one?" Flamescale had to question, because they were actually holding fairly well and it was now well known that Citadels were best handled with minimal escalation.

"One dome is insufficient," her friend said simply, although the effect of the taken dome was now becoming obvious. The coral of the ancients was steadily converted to machine and metal outwards from the dome, and it was clear soon enough that at least some Rhizo creators were included in that as a number of mechanical versions of those creatures began to emerge from the structure and take the place of her Vipers.

"If we are trying to have two domes are we taking this side of the gates between them, the far sides, or do you want us to split our forces between the two locations?" Sixteen quickly questioned. "We have plenty of Lava Rhizo, and even a number of Asteroidea in reserve to set up some fixed defenses, but I need to know how thin we are making the lines. We only have so many Rhizo cultivators, and don't expect us to replace any lost Asteroidea." With the implication that they better not lose any of his Asteroidea. A part of Flamescale was happy that her Viper was now confident enough with this group to actually leave the implication in instead of keeping quiet about it.

"We take the second dome first, then the space between them," Yellow-Glow replied after a moment of consideration. "I will be spreading the control from both, but it is best to have that process begun from the other dome before we take the side of the Citadel." They picked a medium sized four sided Citadel for this project, one larger than what Flamescale captured but smaller than some that had been encountered.

"Are we moving normally, or by liquid?" Jovian asked, with the second option delivered in a dark tone that earned him a glare from one of the five heads on the body Flamescale was supporting him directly with. "Because I almost want to try being liquid normally to travel like that instead of being carried again. Being like the water in a shaking bottle has turned out to be much worse than just being a slime."

"Do not tempt me with that sort of thing. I'd like to see you with that kind of ST," Flamescale grumbled with a touch of amusement. "We need to move fast if we aren't taking those gates. Yellow-Glow has already been moved that way."

Flamescale had Lava Viper scouts across the entire Citadel in order to allow for quick repositioning, although admittedly with notable losses against the Rhizo guard force that remained behind the combat lines. Sixteen had decided not to use those to disrupt enemy formations due to the possible need to move around the site more quickly at times, and Flamescale trusted his judgment there. Already it let their entire force travel quickly to the second target.

"Rivals," the Core decided unhappily. "Actions match that of rivals from records." It still sounded old, but a touch more focused now. "Focus shifted to gates outside of rival controlled area."

"Yellow-Glow, please tell me you aren't making the core smarter," Flamescale had to ask in response to that increased focus.

"The ability for it to oppose us should decrease as we progress," Yellow-Glow sighed as he got to work on the second dome. The time it took to overtake something with the Mechanical Conversion branch was another downside, although the scale of targets here was a bigger contribution to that delay. It was slower than Flamescale's option would be if she could as easily overtake the dome itself, with the structures of the first dome still slowly turning to metal and machinery. "The third dome will be critical."

Flamescale paused at that statement, and she wasn't alone. "The plan is to copy the full archives," she pointed out in person. "Not to take the entire site with Mechanical Conversion."

"The plan is to acquire the entirety of the data present here," Yellow-Glow countered, and Flamescale sighed with all her bodies at her friend pulling a stunt like this again. That drew a look at Helen from the new girl at work, but Flamescale needed every head to properly show how displeased she was with that argument even if he couldn't see the human one right now.

"Why are you sighing?" Jovian asked without the benefit of hearing that private conversation. "What did the two of you say that made you sigh?"

"The data he wants is spread across all the domes," Flamescale lied to cover for her friend, who nodded smugly to tell her that wasn't actually a lie as far as Yellow-Glow was concerned. "Sixteen, would it be better to cut the core off, or to leave the gates open?"

"We have four pairs of two gates here," Sixteen specified, clearly thinking out loud. "If we can turn the rest of the local structures to our side that would let me hold them from this side more easily. I hate to say it but we probably want them open. They can't focus their forces as much if we can strike out of those at any time, and with extra machine Rhizo I can hold more easily."

"We take the gates between before we hit the third dome," Stone declared at that, the currently rabbit-like Entity had brought a number of automated turrets this time that he was setting up again. "If we are using that plan we need the fixed positions before we try and expand." The turrets were quick to set up, and even quicker to transfer with the help of her Vipers, but moving them with Liquefy Cargo put them in a state that needed some tweaks to their targeting. The weapons specialist had taken Sledge's advice on how to pair equipment with health regeneration, and then mostly went with plasma models for easier ammunition supplies. Lasers would be even easier with the quality of Stone's Power Link one-off skill, but Flamescale was quite sure Stone didn't have as many of those.

"We have a situation, a large force of heavy Rhizo is moving towards the captured area under large Asteroidea shields," Sledge informed everyone unhappily. Flamescale could just spot the pangolin Entity moving out of the way of such a group with one of her nine heads from the body that she just moved to physically block a number of attacks the Core now directed towards the converted structures. "I think they are trying to destroy it instead."

"The Core seems to agree with that idea. I might have to send a shield node to the dome," ThunderFang added with a flap in the same direction. "I only have two of those right now, and that takes away from my defenses too."

Flamescale moved her five headed bodies to take out the force Sledge spotted, letting the rest of the Entities and her forces handle the defense of the new target. Those were their heaviest weapons that both could be moved quickly, and also weren't so big that they couldn't risk them at street level.

"We just changed the large scale," she added on the comms as one of her nine headed bodies intercepted a volley of crystal missiles with her own crystal shards to keep their explosions away from the converted buildings. "The Core doesn't need to be careful about shooting down anywhere anymore, and that's only going to get worse as things progress." The good news was that the Core wasn't losing health and size this time, but that was the bad news too as without the loss of size they still could attack at full power. "I can only block so well without Minor Shape Change to let me spread out my size more."

"Speed of conversion should increase as we progress," Yellow-Glow offered. "The third should be faster than the second, and the fourth shouldn't take very long at all."

That didn't really help, Flamescale had only fit three nine headed bodies on the battlefield so far, and the Core was using their full fire rate against the one that was blocking the first dome. In fact there were already notable shrapnel hits on the secondary buildings that she couldn't stop. "I hope you don't need absolutely everything," she warned as she found that most of the new enemy Rhizo were missile variants. "Because we are losing some of these buildings unless it is a lot faster."

"Try to minimize damage to the structural elements. The tunnels below might cause secondary collapses if nearby buildings go down," Yellow-Glow reminded her. "The internals of secondary structures can be lost."

"I kind of wish the rest of the Vipers could get more heads too," Jovian complained with audible effort. "I had gotten used to how much firepower a forty meter snake monster was giving me. How long before we get those back over here?"

"You could always get your own Multiform, a Cerberus fox wouldn't be that silly," Flamescale suggested half-jokingly as she did her best to quickly clear the missile attack force so she could get back. "I'm going to have to respond to our biggest threats. We probably should plan for working without me for the rest of you if we are taking the whole place, I need to split my firepower for that."

"Error- Error? What is 'error'? Statement is wrong," the Core said with a new kind of confusion immediately after the second dome was captured. In fact that was what told Flamescale that the second had just been captured. "Thoughts are changed. New threat recognized."

"ThunderFang, shield domes on the two we haven't captured yet!" Flamescale said quickly as she realized what the creature was now planning as it turned to the domes they didn't have access to. "Sixteen, get Yellow-Glow to the other two fast, I'm going to make things crowded."

The Core had turned their weapons to the cores they had not taken yet, and Flamescale barely grew one of her five headed bodies to seven before half the Core's missiles could fire at the one she couldn't body block with an existing nine headed body. Seven heads still wasn't enough to survive that level of firepower, but it was barely enough to prevent the structures around her from being destroyed. ThunderFang's launched shield nodes slammed into the other two core buildings and extended a defensive field around them just a moment later, and the large scale fight shifted entirely to effectively keeping the Core from destroying itself before it could be captured.

A fourth nine headed body was made soon afterwards so Flamescale had one for each dome, and then a fifth that really did not fit at all to close to melee and just grab the Core. The ground team began to complain about how much of the surface she had drowned in her goo, but the Core had weapons that they could hurt themselves far more easily than they could afford. Contact with the other goo creature felt strange, an odd oil on water effect where both of them ended up clearly separate liquids, but still had parts flow into the other's overall location. It was an entirely different sensation compared to mixing with her own creatures and infected, although it was only unpleasant because of how strongly the Core struggled to turn its crystal weapons on themselves despite Flamescale physically stopping it.

It was a sort of physical contact that Flamescale suddenly realized she wished was less combative. That she knew somebody else who could be a separate goo creature who wasn't an enemy that only wanted to fight her when this close together. "Please stop, we don't want to kill you," she said relatively quietly to the Core from the body grappling with the other goo creature. "I know the alternative isn't much better, but..." She still didn't have a good argument for this one despite doing it to so many locals herself.

"Final dome is being taken," Yellow-Glow cut in over the comms before she could find something else to argue. "Just a few more seconds, conversion speed should be significant after it is taken."

"Alive is better than dead," Flamescale said, more to herself to convince herself that this was a good idea than to reassure the Core. She then backed off from the Core quickly as the conversion went even faster than she expected. The shift from biological to mechanical swept over the rest of the Citadel in just seconds, and worked its way up the Core to change it from green ancient infectious goo into what looked like a silvery liquid form of nanotech devices. "Sixteen, how are the gates?" she then asked over the comms to see what was happening.

"Its gone past the gates! Yellow-Glow what did you do?" Sixteen demanded as something major seemed to happen. The battle stopped with a harsh clatter as all of the ancient forces were put under Yellow-Glow's control.

It only took a couple of confused minutes for the answer to arrive, during which Flamescale spent a lot of time looking at the rather confused looking Mucin Core. "Yellow-Glow, I need you to tell me you didn't just capture an entire bastion network all at once while I had a finished Skill Vine equipped!" she declared at the sight of a mind boggling amount of points from that outcome. "Four hundred fifty three points, Yellow-Glow! That's more than enough to max just about any entire branch! Six grafters, a pile of junk so big- What was that!"

"Please wait, data connection overload occurring," her friend said unusually blankly.

"New controller is experiencing 'errors'," the Core told her with confusion of their own. "Everything is different, connection unfamiliar to new controller but also unfamiliar to self. Some systems recovering faster than before, please wait."

"This, was a terrible idea," Jovian pointed out. "At least most of us had stuff to finish on our Skill Trees, right? Mine's done for now, with some spill over that I lost now because of that being too much, but at least I got something."

"It was overkill for my Vine too," ThunderFang admitted tiredly. "Although I have enough to basically finish my shields now."

"My gear made it through, so I don't care if I missed out on points, this was a good win," Stone declared. "Now I can get out of this bunny getup."

"I had a new Skill Vine and quite a bit of room for other points," Sledge said happily, while Flamescale just quietly sighed at everyone missing the problem the Core just pointed out.

"You've been running around behind enemy lines hitting things, and you took a new Skill Vine?" ThunderFang questioned, and that was about as much of that argument as Flamescale was interested in hearing. Sledge had a Temporal Control branch now, and she knew how strong being able to move faster than everything else made you.

"Do you know how serious it is?" Flamescale asked the Core quietly while everyone else apparently got Sledge to explain how to be able to fight as best as possible without completed Skill Trees.

"I am doing alright, Flamescale," Yellow-Glow answered over the communications line instead. "I was not prepared for the control system to extend beyond the Citadel. The conversion went more quickly than I anticipated, and the ancient forces were not able to cut the gates in time. So no, I did not intend to have us get hundreds of points all at once."

"I think I am done with special missions for this season," she said to her friend. "I really think that this was a step too far, Yellow-Glow, and I really need a break from bastion networks."

"Agreed, this has been too many surprises, and I better have all the information I wanted now," he agreed strongly.

---

[Author's Note]
This is the planned climatic fight for Arc 2. Hopefully this was different enough from the last Citadel fight to be worth having two of them.

 

[Rhyne]

That was preem! Love the way that that even Helen sighed!

 

[Luminatira]

honestly, as great as this is, i really want more Helen time. some time focused on earth and people there finding out the game isn't a game would be epic

 

[E.I.G.]

--- 30 - Confrontation ---

Helen walked through the care facility quietly, looking at the small digital notice boards for activities to entertain the residents with vague curiosity. They apparently were having a showing of The Ringbearer miniseries next week, using the first episode picture that had the full set of dwarfs, the older hobbit, and the werewolf as a kid. She had liked that one when she was a kid herself, but now she couldn't help but notice the little marker for the Lunar Cultural Society on the display, and had to wonder if there was a different version for people who weren't from the moon.

"I always forget what walking under lunar gravity is like," she said aloud as she entered the correct room, and then froze as she looked at the bed. The body there took that silly joke away from her, and she didn't even need the details given by her AR display to see the truth.

"Have you always looked so uncomfortable with legs?" her friend asked anyway to continue the common joke, and she turned to face the Care-A-Bot in the private room of the long term care facility. It was a fairly new model, one she had gotten for her friend, complete with the newer dynamic light arrays to personalize the unit based on who was using it at the time. This one currently had a familiar yellow glow, that in a better time would tell her that Mark was using the unit.

"It got worse after I had a chance to try out alternatives," Helen admitted to Yellow-Glow for the first time instead of just laughing the question off. "But as much as I would like to be shaped like Flamescale here too, I don't think I want this instance to have to deal with all of the side effects of that." She looked at his current robotic body sadly. "So, did something happen between the last time we talked about this and now, or did you downplay how bad off you were?" There was a human body in the room with her, but she was certain nobody was inside of it.

"It has been some time since I've seen you in person, Helen, and you really do look uncomfortable on two legs," Yellow-Glow said first, then sighed. "I have found myself understanding ThunderFang better. It turns out that for the past few months my family has been asking strange personal questions not to make sure I was not losing my memories, but instead to make sure I was not an impostor."

"For months?" Helen had to ask. "What about your doctor? I thought-"

"Given the oddity of the situation, it was agreed that if I genuinely was Mark, then they would be simply breaking the news to me slowly," Yellow-Glow cut her off. "I am now well aware of what it is like for your family to keep a very important thing secret from you. Confronting them with the reality of Void Strike was what it took to get the full story out of everyone. It appears that for a while now taking care of the body has been mostly to maintain my legal status of 'alive'." It occurred to Helen that it wasn't just her job that let her see the frustration in the Care-A-Bot's stance. The bipedal humanoid robot honestly wasn't too far removed from how Flamescale usually saw her friend. "I think I also understand better why you are considering abandoning this instance in the end."

"Now I think I understand why my family accepted that I'd still be in Void Strike after I died here now too," Helen admitted, as their families were fairly close. Dark Side City was the oldest inhabited location on the moon, at least the oldest that wasn't little more than a historical attraction, but it wasn't the largest by a long shot. "Although I don't think they get that it isn't just being trapped in a game. I don't think they want to admit I might have killed." It wasn't the best topic, but it wasn't like they had any good ones to start with here.

"That does seem to be the results of trying to explain the truth," he sighed tiredly and walked the bot over. "Although apparently being trapped in a Synch-Tech device is a more common thing than I had truly realized. They gave me a full discussion of all the ways you can end up trapped in Synch-Tech devices. It is a familiar listing, although one for another time perhaps. It isn't often that we talk like this, and I can talk about that detail with Flamescale at any the time."

"I have a new coworker if you want to stick to Synch-Tech," Helen suggested. "Betty, she's nice, but she's also from mars, and everyone says they all the kind of people to overwork themselves too much."

"Any notable medical issues? I know there are not that many natural born martians yet, and well," Yellow-Glow questioned with reference to the reality that all humans not born on the homeworld faced.

"I've been trying to help with that. I remember my mom's stories about how the gravity meds worked out for her," Helen confirmed with a nervous laugh. "I hope that they are lucky and the same stuff works for people born in mars gravity."

"Given how well that thinking worked for the first mars colonies you may want to keep an eye on things," he reasonably pointed out. It was well known on the moon that the difference between being days away from earth and over a year away had turned out to matter a lot more for what stuff a new colony could safely import. Early lunar habitation attempts could get away with earth made electronics, but mars had to redesign everything to work entirely off stuff that could be made by the first mars fabrication industries. Including the first mars fabrication industries themselves.

"That is the plan," she agreed with a nod. "Everyone is looking out for her, but we are busy too. Management wanted us to release the special 2200 model earthside for the new year, and I only managed to make it home because I had planned the trip well before we knew we could manage it in time for a January first release."

"... Helen, tell me you aren't using me to promote a new model again," Yellow-Glow sighed with amusement.

"I was not missing the deepest black of the dark side night when it is on new year's day, Mark," Helen replied smugly. "Even if it takes justifying it using my friend's medical condition as a promotional event."

"I take it you want me to show it off a bit during the viewing?" her friend laughed. "Alright, it isn't like the body is going to be going with me." He grew more somber. "It is at the point where it cannot be moved easily, but I am being allowed more ability to use Care-A-Bots outside of the facility without bringing it for that reason as well."

"The entire point of a Care-A-Bot is that you don't need a direct connection," Helen pointed out with a huff, then looked for a chair. Standing wasn't too much of an issue, but it was entirely different with legs from how she was used to talking with Yellow-Glow at this point. "You shouldn't be restricted like that at all."

---

"Are you sure you're alright with trying this?" Sixteen asked in a very private meeting on Flamescale's bastion network. Flamescale had in fact timed it very carefully to maximize how distracted Yellow-Glow was.

"I think the rest of us are supposed to be asking you that, G1698416," Squeaky pointed out, and Flamescale knew her quartermaster was using Sixteen's personal identifier deliberately. "I know I'd rather not be the first to try this." An outright lie, Squeaky actually thought that trying this at all would be too much stuff to do at one time, but Flamescale didn't want to point that out. Squeaky did vaguely want to try later if it worked out better than the quartermaster expected after all.

"I'm fairly sure it will have less impact on me than it will on you," Flamescale admitted to answer Sixteen's question, with a glance over at Left-and-Right. "Some impact, there might be some notable side effects, but nothing that I can't handle."

"The results need to be determined," Left-and-Right said together. "Additionally, we require someone interested in gaining access to more Citadel data. Another infiltration Entity is valuable, but we cannot rely on those outside our group."

"I don't want anyone to end up still stuck with the loyalty if this works," Flamescale reminded all of them. "I'm willing to put up with whatever side effects that part being broken causes me. 0021-C-125-1470-G1698416, are you ready to make the attempt?" she then asked, using the full identification deliberately as well. "Make sure you have the name you want. They weren't able to implement name changes so you will be stuck with whatever you pick."

"I'm going to stack 'sixteen' as many ways as I need to get a unique identifier," Sixteen explained casually. Squeaky laughed at that while Left-and-Right both sighed. With her last concern dealt with, Flamescale transferred over the proper new account link and gave Sixteen the knowledge of how to sign up.

There was a long pause, and then Sixteen asked her dully, "Flamescale, are you actually just giving me the normal game signup to see if that's all it takes?"

"You have to admit, if it works we need to know things are that bad," she defended the idea. "If that works we really need to know about it before someone with stranger ideas about things tries it, or at least to know someone could have done that."

"Give me a second," Sixteen then said with a bit too much panic. It wasn't that great of an argument in her opinion given how unlikely it was for this method to work, but it was only a moment later that Flamescale felt the change. Suddenly Sixteen's mind began to alter in odd ways, ones that she didn't have any access to at all, a major relief to her that was not enough to make up for the fact that it was this easy. "Nobody had taken 'Sixteen'," he then commented, "and you didn't really make clear that you can't just pick being a goo snake right off."

"You probably have the easiest way out of any new player to get a Liquid Mobility branch," Flamescale bluntly responded to that, slightly annoyed that he would in fact have it so easy. "I had to put up with hunting for one with only half an idea where to find one for a long time. You just need to tag along with... probably yourself honestly, just about any ancient bastion network mission should give you something to be like this."

"A good something? I wanted more firepower to go along with- Flamescale, is there a way for me to have the same movement as normal too, or will I need to drag myself around?" Sixteen then asked. "Because it occurs to me that I might have been assuming I could use the same powers I've been used to using."

"That is a great point that I want to know too," Squeaky harshly declared, now almost entirely turned off the idea of being changed. "Because I'm not going through with this if I have to put up with that."

"I do not actually know," Flamescale admitted thoughtfully. "You are honestly the first to even consider something like that I know of, but admittedly you are also one of very few people I know who likes being liquid. We might need to test that out. I think I might need to look over what you're starting out with to see if we can afford to get you one of those STs quickly, or if we need to set you up with the basics first."

---

The surface dome Helen was in for the new year three days later existed only to see the lunar sky. A sky that on this side of the moon never had any large solid bodies visible, something that confused face side and earth born humans whenever they finished their first lunar day on the dark side. Right now it was a full moon on earth, and also the night that ended twenty one ninety nine. On the dark side of the moon they typically didn't celebrate the new year until the first full moon of the new year. The deepest black of the dark side night was the full moon, the day that the dark side would end up the farthest from the sun looking out without anything notable to reflect light back.

This wasn't the first dome of its kind in Dark Side City, that small location was crowded beyond belief and mostly used by tourists that got shuffled in and out rather quickly. Instead it was a private dome constructed for Helen's family, who could directly trace themselves back to the first human to be born on the moon. Admittedly it was the entire extended family and quite a few other close families, Yellow-Glow's family included, so it wasn't that private, but it still wasn't open to the general public. Which mostly meant that it was free of tourists.

"So far, half of your family has asked me if I could tell when I died. In the past tense," Yellow-Glow commented to her, and Helen wished that was the worst that she had heard on that topic so far tonight.

"The same half has asked me if I think I will be able to tell," she added with a sigh. "Or if I am dying right now, and if I really have two bodies at once, and also if I really think I've been killing people. That last one was mostly by relatives that clearly think there is a problem with 'playing' Void Strike at all."

"I think we can count the number of people here who would join Void Strike on one hand," her friend complained, his lights reflecting a bit off the wall of the dome they were standing next to in a way that spread his yellow glow around much farther than normal. "And I am quite sure all of us already 'playing'."

"My family isn't exactly small. We can probably find at least four others if we wanted to ask everyone," Helen pointed out, but neither of them were going to bother with that idea. They were the ones everyone knew had joined Void Strike, there wasn't any reason to drag anyone who wasn't dealing with the issue into it.

"I don't exactly stick to five fingered hands," Yellow-Glow reminded her. "I can even say that here with all of the extras you keep giving me." That was not the case at the moment, his new-centennial Care-A-Bot body was drawing a bit of the intended promotional value her workplace wanted, but it was currently using standard five fingered hands.

"If you are up for it my bosses will let me stay a bit longer if I can manage another demonstration with all of the latest extras?" Helen took the chance to request. "If they are still in good enough shape it should be somewhat backwards compatible too."

"Which ones does it still work with?" Yellow-Glow asked eagerly, and Helen was happy to see she still could connect to her friend like that. "I have been using a direct control cable port lately for video editing on the guides, the wireless latency has been too high compared to what I'm used to in Void Strike."

---

"That is a set of permissions I did not think worked that way," Sledge commented as Flamescale finished working with Sixteen on the latest attempt to let the other snake slime use the same materials as her for travel, and the first successful one. "Then again, I also didn't expect to see Sixteen here at all." This was also the first attempt to use the shared base space, where someone other than Flamescale could meet the Void Entity version of the former local.

"We've spent the past three days working out where the limits are there," Flamescale admitted, although admittedly leaving out the important part. If Sledge asked, or if Yellow-Glow showed up too, then she would explain the results of the new account test. "I think it was supposed to be for close friends or relatives with that sort of material movement skill. It was just too clunky to have open access to someone's base otherwise before these areas were added."

"You found another use for open base access somehow?" Yellow-Glow then asked as he joined them in the middle left upper hallway of the shared base, the hall that Flamescale had just helped Sixteen link his base to. "Ah, is that a solution to getting locals inside the base?"

"No, it doesn't do that," Sixteen complained with annoyance. "I tried to bring my other body into my base and that didn't work either. I do not recommend dying that way either, it is unpleasant and getting a new body isn't great either now that I'm one of you." For either of them, Flamescale did not like the feeling of his mental entry updating when he wasn't alive as one of her creations.

"Flamescale, what does he mean by his base?" the machine Entity asked despite Sixteen having been rather clear.

"Good news, we know what it takes to turn a local into a Void Entity. Bad news, all it takes is giving them the standard access instructions and an account," Flamescale explained bluntly. "So, Sixteen can handle all of the parts of Citadel information extraction missions himself now." Specifically Sixteen could sell the information they were getting out of Citadel sites to the Nexus shops that in turn sold it to people interested in taking on bastion networks.

"Flamescale can't alter my mind as much anymore," Sixteen added to touch on something both of them were still getting used to. Flamescale couldn't remove memories from him anymore, and could not add commands that his Void Entity self had to follow, but could still add knowledge and give orders to his Lava Viper body, and she could still read basically all of his mind. "But I'm still a Viper too. Being in the same place with two bodies is really odd, but I mostly want to get these 'skills' your- our kind uses up to a better level. Right now I'm stronger as a Viper than like this."

Yellow-Glow just looked at them quietly after that for a long moment. "What exactly did it take to get him an account again?" her friend asked tiredly. "And why did you decide to go for that before we had the answers to the main questions?"

"Because Left-and-Right have looked at the lab results, and we needed data on the mental effects first. You know that we won't be the last to try this, and I doubt we are the first either," Sixteen specified. "Although I'm not happy that she just sent me a signup link for a game, and an account access code."

"Flamescale, do I need to worry about my new forces convincing me to make poor decisions too," Yellow-Glow lamented with a sigh. "I already have to deal with picking apart what they knew was false from what they thought was true. At this rate it is going to be at least a month before I get any useful data."

+++ Arc 2 End +++

[Author's Note]
Not quite how I expected this arc to go specifically, but I like how I managed the overall plan all things considered. Now, this is going to be the end of Fluid Pestilence for a while. Arc 3 has only the vaguest premise so far, and needs a lot more work before I have a full outline to work from. Before I work on that more I want to get my other main project done, I've found my way around the writer's block that stalled out Typechange Johto so the plan is to finish that story before I go back to this or start something else.

With that said I want to thank everyone who has followed along so far. It has been really nice to see such a good reaction and so many people interested in my first attempt at something original.
Hopefully this is a good enough stopping point for now, and with any luck I will be back some day with the next arc.

 

[Rhyne]

I've been really enjoying fluid pestilence so far, and if a break is what you need to keep up the quality, then you take that break!

 

[Reji8627]

It's a great story thus far, but taking time to get an outline is a good idea, and I'm definitely not going to complain about getting more Typechange Johto!

 

[Luminatira]

i Really enjoyed this latest chapter!
nice to see the 'irl' combined with the 'game world' for a change, and the interesting bits there

 

[Vanigo]

Honestly, I've been wondering more and more about what's happening on the human side of things, as "Void Strike players live forever as their characters" becomes better known. Among other things, it can't be that long before somebody decides to create an even more indulgent power-fantasy of a game and use it to become a god, and while there are presumably some kind of limits on how open-ended and overpowered the game rules governing a void entity can be, I'm curious about how exactly that would go wrong. Other people are going to try to exploit applying game rules to their real lives in other ways - give themselves Intelligence +100, or precognition, or heck, just make a less morally fraught game to live forever in. And Helen, being a sync-tech specialist, is in a really good spot to hear about it. I wouldn't mind an arc or sub-arc focusing on that.

 

[Dudethunder]

In many ways, it seems likely someone is going to try to see if they can't make a game that connects to earth so they can be immortal and have their cake humanity too.

That or work out how to reinitialize any theoretical previous game "set" locally, if they can find the far end. Or even just the old subscription link, given that this has worked for 100% of the attempts so far.

Edit: Someone working out how to get a game to automatically sign up everyone in a given instance is basically the start of Ye Olde System Apocalypse Novel. The big difference with the current implementation is that the original body doesn't get boosts.