"Grah!" Tala stabbed with her improvised spear into the stingray-like being floating atop the surface of the river. It was a bit green, likely from some sort of photosynthesizing symbiote, and Tala made sure to pluck off the membrane of green sludge before tossing it back into the water. The whole mess left her hands feeling like a mucusy mess, but at least she had dinner.
It felt like a week since she'd come to this planet, which she was calling "Rock-People Planet" for lack of a better word. And in all that time, the sun hadn't set once. How was she supposed to live like this?! At least the doors still worked on the ship... once she found the manual crank. Everything else was offline, but she had a safe place to sleep.
She had half a mind to take Vector Free up for a spin, but she didn't quite know how she'd get it working, and randomly taking things apart and putting them together again seemed like a Bad Idea when alien tech was involved.
At least she'd gotten time to familiarize herself with the System...
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You have earned 25 XP + 13 XP for New Pilot Modifier
...
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It turned out her New Pilot Modifier applied to on-planet skills, too. Since landing, she'd earned a few points in crafting, cooking, and an unfortunate number of points in psychedelic resistance, since half the food here seemed to be either poisonous or hallucinogenic or both.
She'd just about finished burning the river-ray on one side when a new notification popped up.
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New Subclasses Available
Subclass Points: 1
Subclass Slots: 3/3
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"Huh... that looks interesting," she said to herself. Opening the logs, she found nothing specific and so decided the System must have hidden checkpoints... And her reward was a choice between three very interesting options.
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Survivalist
Having practiced the art of hunting and gathering, you have the option to enhance these talents.
Perks: Improved Poison Resistance. Improvement in crafts using organic materials. Enhanced tracking and identification of traits in gathered/hunted creatures. Reduced sound and visual profile.
Cook
Having cooked many meals for yourself, you have the option to enhance this talent.
Perks: Improved heat and cold resistance in all gripping appendages. Recipe recall. Improved timing. Access to Cook exclusive utensil techniques.
Diplomat
Congratulations! You have made an agreement with a civilization not your own. You have the option to enhance this talent.
Perks: Increased Psychic Resistance. Torture Resistance. Clear Communication. Instinctive Diplomacy. Enhanced Language Acquisition.
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Considering her Pilot level was stagnant this whole time, Tala wondered how the System determined which subclasses to grant access to. It definitely seemed to want to reinforce things she was already doing, and speaking of which, she had to pick what to reinforce.
The tough thing was, all three were appealing.
Survivalist would definitely help her when exploring new worlds, and finding food was definitely going to be an issue if she couldn't figure out how to make the replicator produce anything but 01. Improved Poison Resistance seemed redundant, but the rest of the perks might help her in situations beyond hunting.
Taking a bite of her river ray made Cook all the more appealing, since it badly needed salt. But given she was already heat resistant enough to stick her hand in a fireplace - as she'd discovered the first time she dropped food in - the temperatures she anticipated cooking with were likely already handled by her suite of resistances. Clicking on the perks showed her that she'd be able to recall the methods and timing of all meals she made after taking the subclass, but it wouldn't just magically download an alien cookbook into her head... And now that she thought about it, an alien cookbook might exist called How To Serve Man given she'd met exactly zero humans. Idle musings aside, she decided that Cook was going to the bottom of her selection list.
Which left Diplomat. It seemed to have the most and the least to offer at the same time. On the one hand, being able to talk to people without a translator sounded appealing, but on the other, it seemed too specialized to exist outside of diplomatic situations. And the implication of Torture Resistance was that she'd definitely be more vulnerable in a combat situation if she took it.
But it would be so cool to be an interstellar diplomat...
Sadly, her experiences thus far led her to believe this was more of a "shoot first, ask later" universe. And if she was going to be avoiding trouble, then she needed to be able to fend for herself while lying low. Since Cook and Diplomat would actually increase her dependency on civilization, she decided that the only proper choice was Survivalist.
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Survivalist Selected
Slots Available: 3
Subclass Points: 0
Would you like to apply this Subclass?
Yes/No
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As soon as she selected Yes, the familiar feeling of the system changing her body washed over her. But suddenly the forest seemed far more alive than it used to. She didn't know how, but she could see a sort of "glow" where some larger bugs had needle-stepped their way amongst the trees, indicating the tracks left in their wake. That must have been the Enhanced Tracking feature, but there was still more.
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Improved Poison Resistance has been merged into Void Traveler Durability.
Poison Metabolization gained.
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"That's interesting..." Tala poked around until she had the description up.
Poison Metabolization: The user can process organic toxins, gaining immunity to ingested toxins of [Minor] toxicity.
It came with a toggle, which made sense to Tala given alcohol might be considered fairly minor. The fact it seemed specific to ingested toxins suggested that venom was still on the table, but at least she might be safe eating mushrooms now...
Toggling it on, she stood up and walked towards the ship, all the while munching on the river ray which she'd impaled on a stick. As soon as she finished she tossed the stick aside and looked around. Almost immediately, she found the same type of mushroom that had sent her on a trip, but this time she wasn't taking any chances. Plucking only one small sample, she went to the ship and steeled herself before chomping down.
After five minutes, when the pretty lights failed to show, she whooped and threw her fist into the air.
"Roasted mushrooms are back on the menu!"