Jon had still been fast asleep when I made my way back through the apartment and I didn’t bother him as I deactivated my gear to make the climb up to the roof of the building. While it might have been a good idea to wait for Jon to wake up before I made any big decisions, he was the guy I trusted when it came to making those sort of decisions after all, I did end up finding my way through the Resale shop, picking up a Cloak of Swiftness and a matching Hood of Swiftness.
The items were relatively low cost compared to other items at 5000 credits each, and individually each only gave me +5 to my Dexterity. But when I had them both equipped, I received an additional +5 to my Dexterity, raising it by a total of 15 points while the set bonus also granted me the Quick Wit feature. I had seen the feature once before, on an Intelligence based belt that I hadn’t been able to purchase at the time, but I had slightly regretted missing it at the time, even if I wouldn’t trade my current belt for anything.
Quick Wit allowed me to halve the remaining cooldown on a single ability once per hour. While something like my Schr?dinger’s Surge could reset all of my cooldowns, it came with some massive drawbacks, namely a debuff that both slowed my Stamina and Health regeneration and risked knocking me out for an entire day if I accidentally overused it. Quick Wit, while not a perfect reset, had plenty of usefulness and the +15 to Dexterity was basically doubling my current Dexterity level.
I made the snap decision to pick the items up because the last time I had ignored an item that I had wanted, by the time I circled back to the resale shop, the item had already been purchased. As far as I could tell the game didn’t have some lock or soul binding feature on most of the equipment that I could use. Before I went and assumed that, I double checked with Angie who confirmed that yes, most items, when I removed them from my inventory, could be resold at the shop.
The only items where that wasn’t true were Diamond or Mythic level items that had selectable features on them, such as the Pendant of Paramount Ascension. So in the end, I could always return the items back to the shop to resell myself if or when I acquired better items for those slots.
All that said, the combined look of the items looked like something that would have fit better in a fantasy game rather than as a part of a hero costume and I was happy that I was able to disable their appearance on my actual outfit while still gaining the benefits of the items.
I had never exactly been as into the Super or Augment aesthetic and world as Jon had been and my knowledge of Video Games was barely deeper than surface level, which was a huge part of the reason why I trusted his knowledge more than my own on most of these things. But even with my Acceptance Matrix off, I was starting to get attached to the look I had developed as Loophole, with my bright orange jacket and mask as the highlights of the costume. I really didn’t want to mess that up unless I really found a better set of items or I absolutely couldn’t hide the gear.
I was still having trouble choosing the second stat to target with the boost that would be granted with my new necklace, and had so far kept it unequipped since I had to make that selection before I could use it. While Jon had been pushing for me to apply it to my Strength, I was actually stuck between my Dexterity and Intelligence.
I had only put a few points into my Intelligence so far, mostly using it to raise the stat high enough so that I could utilize a handful of books I had purchased from Sanctuary Square on Gravity Wells, Optical Refractions, and Quantum Mechanics. Choosing Intelligence meant giving myself a bit of a faster boost, though I’d still need to either start dedicating extra points to the stat or finding extra gear to give me boosts to the skill. Something I had briefly wondered about was if it was a viable or good idea to start working on a second set of gear just to boost my intelligence higher for absorbing knowledge bases, but Angie quickly squashed that idea, letting me know that any books I absorbed were subject to being marked as “inaccessible” if my Intelligence dropped below the amount required to absorb the original knowledge.
Dexterity was an attractive option though. While I could increase my Toughness to increase my health and durability, I had enough vivid memories from the first few days to remind me that I really didn’t like getting hit and increasing my Dexterity seemed like the best option to help with that very singular desire. Since, unlike with the cloak and hood, this was a permanent decision, I left the Pendant in my B.E.L.T. for the time being, assuming we could figure it out for sure once Jon had actually gotten some sleep.
I was standing atop the roof, looking down over the ledge as I felt my stomach turn in anticipation. I hadn’t flown since I had disabled my Acceptance Matrix, and while I still had very vivid memories of my first few flights, I still remembered just how nervous I was the first time I had trusted the ability. While I had used Launchpad and Earthbound Impact multiple times while in the dojo, the room’s safety features meant that I always had a safety net while practicing there.
“I’ve done this a bunch of times already, come on Nate, get out of your own damn head,” I muttered, barely under my breath as I stepped back away from the ledge and tried to start hyping myself up.
“You know, it really hasn’t-” Angie started to say something and I took that as my sign to just go for it. I darted for the ledge and leapt off the side of the building.
The building was only ten stories tall, and if I had been a normal person jumping from the building would have not been a good idea, but before I could even drop more than a foot downward from the ledge, I activated one of my two movement skills Personal Gravity Laws and went rocketing upward into the air.
After acquiring a book called Gravity Wells and Why They’re Dangerous I had actually formed several of my more powerful battlefield control abilities, but Personal Gravity Laws was easily the most important of the skills that had come from that single book, becoming the first of my Movement Abilities and granting me the ability to actually fly.
Much like the first time I had taken flight, an unbidden whoop of joy tore from my throat as I went soaring almost as high as some of the tallest skyscrapers in Manhattan. The morning light bathed New York in a yellow glow as the sound of horns and engines faded into the distance as I stopped and hovered hundreds of feet in the air.
Although my Stamina was ticking down as I kept my Personal Gravity Laws activated, I had a rather large Stamina pool at this point. The skill’s relatively low cost to use meant that with the Well Fed buff raising my pool to an even 5000 points, even if I was flying at a hundred miles per hour, I could stay in the air for just over eleven and a half minutes. What was even more amazing was even at those higher speeds, I never seemed to have the wind hit my eyes in a way that would make it impossible to see.
And now with the mini-map, which looked as if it had pretty much just stolen the map data from one of any of the major online maps, I didn’t have to just hope I could navigate.
While I had been operating primarily in Hell’s Kitchen that I had grown to know pretty well, I had a feeling I was going to need to start expanding my range. Axio’s end of phase announcement had practically beaten us over the head with the fact that there were others from the Tenth Wave within the same region as me. Maybe I should have figured that out sooner given Hydramental’s ridiculously close proximity, but I should have figured a lot of things out sooner, so I wasn’t going to hold it against myself too much.
It was still early in the morning and as October continued to move forward there was a steadily rising nip in the air. My outfit provided some protection from the elements, but I could feel a chill running down my spine as I continued to float high enough that I was level with some of the clouds that hung out near the tops of skyscrapers in the early morning air. It was such an amazing, freeing feeling being able to hang there basically weightless, but the cold was starting to bother me ever so slightly. An idea came to mind as I eyed the single empty space still left to be filled on my Passive bar and concentrated on the knowledge I had gained from An Atomic Guide to Thermodynamics.
“New Ability! Pocket Climate. Awww are you cold? Is that gaudy leather jacket of yours not enough to keep you warm? Well good news, it doesn’t matter any more now that you’ve remembered that you can literally control things in your zone and were just sitting on that repository of Thermodynamic knowledge. This is really gonna come in handy with winter coming.This is a Passive Ability. This ability allows you to manually set the temperature that you feel to whatever you feel is most comfortable. And before you ask, ‘But Angie, why isn’t this ability changing the temperature in my entire area?’ Well Loophole, if that’s what you wanted then you should have made an Activated Ability. Just be happy this doesn’t cost any Stamina for you to use.”
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As soon as I dropped the new ability onto my passive bar, a sudden feeling of warmth spread over my body as I mentally set my temperature to 74. My other Passive Abilities were far more combat oriented, leaning on my high luck stat to negatively affect enemies within my Local Area. While I hadn’t focused too much on making more Passives, this was one that, as Angie had pointed out, was going to really come in handy the further the temperature dropped.
“Now that’s much better,” I thought as I slowly turned, taking in as much of the city as possible. There was a glint of light that hit my eyes high over the buildings far in the distance to the north that drew my attention and I tried to track it as it vanished behind one of the many buildings of the city.
Jon had filled me in the previous night when I had finally come back out of my room that he had been doing a bit of digging, looking into other Augments within New York City. Although it was a big city and there were more than a few Augments that called it home, something Jon was actually well aware of already given his overall obsession with the group even before I had turned into an Augment myself; the fact that The First’s squad used to be extremely active within the city had largely quelled all but the most visual Miscreant activity.
After The First seemingly vanished off the face of the planet, that did change, with Jon digging up more than a few Augment fights around the city and my interface’s identification system showed a pretty consistently changing status in terms of just who was claiming the city as a whole. Outside of just two other Augments, most of the fights he had found information on pointed toward older waves, with the Augments having been known for far longer than just a few days.
“So what exactly is the plan?” Angie finally asked as I continued to hang in the air. Since I wasn’t exerting that much force, only trying to hold myself afloat, my stamina had only ticked down about 20%. That was still a good chunk of it, but it didn’t have me frantically searching for a place to set down either.
“Fly around, see if any Crime Alerts pop up… Honestly I’m kind of winging it,” I said with a shrug, trying to see if I could catch the glint in the distance again with no luck. “According to Axio, they broke us up into a hundred regions. I think Jon’s probably right, it’s more than likely that New York City itself is its own region, the city is so huge and most people just equate the city to counting the entire state as it is. We already know about Hydramental, but if for some reason this next Phase is squad based, there’s pretty much no way that teaming up with him is in any way going to happen. He’s already tried to attack me twice in tense situations, and now I have that whole ‘I killed his brother’ thing to deal with; he’d probably be pretty mad about it if he found out.”
“Hey now… you told us that he asked you to do that. You said it was a mercy,” Angie said, surprisingly more sympathetic than she had been in the past.
“Yeah, and SnakeBite told me that Hydramental had bipolar tendencies too, I doubt he’s going to care all that much why I killed his brother, just that I did,” I shot back.
“I’m just saying, unless Hydramental decides to move or goes and gets himself killed, you’re probably going to have to deal with that eventually,” Angie offered as I started to drift forward and over Central Park.
“And you’re right, I’ll deal with that eventually,” I said and I could hear her sigh, though she didn’t reply immediately either. “Look, I literally just did one of the few things I never imagined I’d actually do in my life not even three days ago now. Sure, I locked myself in my room for a bit and have been doing my best, but I barely have had any real time to deal with that. And I can't really talk to, I don’t know, a psychiatrist or something like that about it either. You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t want to have to deal with whatever reaction I’m going to have to respond to when I do tell him.”
“Alright, alright, I see your point,” Angie relented. There was another glint in the distance, this time a bit further to the east that vanished behind another building just as quickly as it appeared. “I just don’t want you to complain to me when it does happen, probably at some completely non-ideal moment, and I have to say I told you so that there was a perfectly good time to do it when you did have some breathing room.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, falling backwards into a practically lounging position allowing me to look up at the sky as I continued to float along. “Look, if that happens, you just go right ahead.”
“Oh trust me, I look forward to it,” Angie said with a musical giggle.
Before I could respond, there was the sound of something whipping through the air that reached my ears just in time and I instinctively threw myself to the side in midair. What looked like a large, metallic cylinder went hurtling past me in a sharp, downward arc. Only a few seconds later a loud CRASH echoed outward and I started to drop lower, waiting for the dust cloud that had accompanied the sound to dissipate.
There was the sudden chorus of several screams that reached my ears and as the dust cleared, the first thing I saw was a small group of people running across a relatively open field in Central Park.
“CRIME ALERT! An Assault on Central Park. Someone or something is attacking Central Park! Go on down there and stop it before it goes and destroys one of the few places in this concrete jungle that is actually kind of pleasant to look at. Reward: You will receive 10,000 credits and a Contact Card for the Central Park Police Precinct. This Crime Alert does not have a time limit, though I think the landscape of Central Park would beg to differ.”
The dust was finally settling as the sun caught the glint of metal emerging from the debris. I found my eyes widening as I took in the massive form that had taken the place of the cylinder, though I hadn’t exactly gotten a good look at it when I had dodged out of its way. Still, the creature, or perhaps the better term would be robot was huge. Though its back was overall a large, smooth piece of armor, it eight dangerous looking legs were littered with barrels and sharp edges.
“It’s… It’s a robot spider… why is it a fucking robot spider?”
“Hey, look at the bright side,” Angie said as I started to lift myself back higher into the air, circling around the robot as it started to move, slamming its large legs into the ground as it, incredibly slowly, started to move across the field.
“Yeah, what’s the bright side?” I asked, reaching about as high as I needed to to hit the maximum strength of my Earthbound Impact ability.
“It is a robot. I doubt you’re gonna have a whole lot of moral quandaries about taking that thing down to its nuts and bolts.”
I found a small laugh escaping me as I couldn’t help but nod in agreement, “You know what Angie, you’re not wrong… doesn’t exactly remove the butterflies I’m feeling in my gut right now… but I think until I actually get into a fight again I’m going to have those, I’m just not sure if a giant robot spider is exactly taking things slowly.”
“Do you trust me?” Angie asked and that caused me to come up short as I kept my attention on the slow moving beast.
“I mean…” I started, trying to find the right words. “I don’t think this is the right time to have that conversation.”
“Ouch Loophole,” Angie said with a sigh. “I understand that you have your reservations and worries, I’m not trying to downplay those, but look… I think you are already more than well aware that this game is sink or swim. It’s why you are pushing yourself to get back out there after something that was clearly very traumatic for you. You’re already level 13, you jumped up there really quickly, meaning that the threats you’re going to face are going to start ramping up from the basic grunts you dealt with in Phase One. I suggest you take the fact that this is a very noticeably slow robot that you can damage indiscriminately as a sign that you’re probably not going to get a better opportunity to get yourself out of this few day funk you’ve been in.”
“Damnit… you’re not wrong about that either...” I said and looked back downward. This being an open enough space meant I could just run for it and fly away if I really felt myself on my backfoot. “Well... can't really stall forever... I guess it’s now or never…”
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EXTRA NOTE!
Several of you have noticed the last paragraph of this chapter has a different font. That is not intentional and has happened in several chapters. I am going to open a support ticket with RoyalRoad to see how I can address that. Thank you to everyone who has let me know!
In a future chapter, Nate will receive another randomized F:Tier box. What item should he receive?
