As I walked out of the door, I spotted my very first cape of my new life. Namely, a blond comet that blew past above me so quickly I almost missed her.
Wait, was that … Glory Girl? I glanced over in the direction she'd come from and spotted a second teenager, this one with light blue hair, rising slowly into the air and heading in the same direction.
The first one had flashed past to quickly I hadn't been sure about my identification, especially considering I only had a description of her.
There weren't that many fliers in Brockton, especially young blonde ones that flew around in their civies. Well, chances were that Rune was blonde, but the other information ruled her out.
Well, fuck. It seemed my new across the street neighbors were New Wave, who hated Nazis and would likely look askance on my German car and accent, assuming they could identify it.
New Wave that included Carol Dallon, the damaged and paranoid bitch who emotionally abused her unwanted adopted stepdaughter.
Said stepdaughter who was a biokinetic and could identify the weirdness of my creatures with a touch, slaughter them with a tap, and possibly out the fact that even the most mundane looking were, by local standards, biotinker creations.
Biotinker creations capable of reproducing were an automatic A to S-Class threat and my projections technically qualified. Technically. They had all the right parts and were technically real, but they were not completely normal. My power had applied certain shackles, such as the time limit and cooldown, but it also prevented them from breeding and spawning more than twenty minions, if they could do so.
I could feel the information about these powers in the very core of my being. The Deathgripper within me, ready for a fight. The Crimson Indrik, there but blocked for another 18 hours and 2 minutes. The Metal Slime, passive, yet solid and reassuring. Shade and Frogger were less obvious, what I felt from them was their absence, small threads leaving my body and loosing themselves somewhere in the Aether. I knew exactly where they were, I had Frogger in the inside pocket the long coat, almost a trench coat I was wearing while Shade was on overwatch, but I couldn't tell that with my power.
Along with that, there were ten ironclad rules.
Each Creature can only be summoned once a day.
Creatures remain until unsummoned, killed or for 24 hours.
Any creature that comes with others or can summon minions can only summon up to 20.
Only ten creatures can be summoned in total.
My summoned creatures could not get more than five hundred meters away from me, unless they were Kaiju or others that were comparable in size.
They would obey all verbal orders to the best of their ability.
My creatures could not attack me or otherwise directly act against me.
My creatures would always see me as someone to be obeyed and have a good first impression.
They could not reproduce in any way or leave any kind of living material behind.
Lastly, I could not harvest resources from them if I harmed them in doing so.
Thankfully, my Material Extraction power allowed me to handily sidestep that issue.
That being said, this was the first time I had properly examined my soul and properly taken a look at my power's limitations. A lot of it was known to me instinctively, but not everything and certainly not this clearly.
On top of that, I had completely missed the fact that my Menagerie could have a theme. Should have a theme. I hadn't even noticed the empty slot in me until I had taken a proper look.
A theme was an additional modifier I could apply to any creature I had and change them slightly and I could pick any one of the offered twenty-five.
… I'd do that later. Stopping in the middle of my driveway like that was already earning me some weird looks from the people leaving for work.
I hoped into my car and carefully drove off. I had not driven in close to a year due to the pandemic and even before then, I hadn't had my own car hence rarely drive, but miraculously, no mailboxes got broken and no one got run over. A few minutes later, I pulled into the Walmart's parking lot. I took a moment to remove Frogger from my lap and put him under my seat.
"Don't move and don't let anyone see you." I quickly ordered.
He really should have been unsummoned or left behind, but I was to far away from my house and I liked having him around, so this was the best compromise. It was also likely stupid and reckless, but I decided to ignore that part of me.
I thought about themes as I walked.
Eldritch sounded cool and like a fascinating way to disconcert people while Constellation could make them look utterly fantastic. Making them Elementals could make them look interesting and also make them hit far harder. Food would make them made from foodstuffs that could provide a regenerative effect when eaten, which could be a great source of income.
The Insect theme's ability to conjure stinging, biting swarms from their wound would make them far more formidable in combat, but I didn't really think I needed it. I would be using my Deathgripper primarily for combat and anything that could badly injure it would be unlikely to be bothered by mere insects.
The last to themes I was interested in were the Shadow and Undead themes, though only for how cool they could look.
There were ways to get more themes, but those were as random as the rest of my powers so I shouldn't count on it happening any time soon.
I was deep in thought as I entered the massive store and looked around. I was not used to places like this. In Germany, most stores only had food or some other kind of goods, this kind of store that would let you get literally everything were something only other countries had.
By the time I left, I was biting back swearwords. I'd been so deep in thought that navigating the utterly alien layout of the super store had been near impossible. To top it all off, I'd nearly rammed a skinhead with my shopping cart and was low key afraid he'd follow me out, confront me and make me choose between outing me and getting stabbed.
Getting stabbed in the supermarket parking lot less than 24 hours after coming back from the dead was probably the dumbest way someone could conduct themselves after gaining this opportunity.
Softly shaking my head, I headed to my car, loaded it up and returned the shopping cart.
Now that I had stopped worrying, my thoughts returned the need to pick a theme.
Brockton Bay's PRT and, by extension, the Protectorate Division East North East, were led by a survivor of the hell at Elisburg. The same concerns I'd had with regards to Panacea were multiplied tenfold when applied to Emily Piggot. One hint of unusual creatures and she'd be screaming S-Class threat.
At the end of the day, Eldritch would make my creatures to disconcerting, making raising the alarms even more of a likely response. Food was cool but would make them quite weird and probably not help with the biotinker angle. The same went doubly for the Insect theme.
In the end, I was stuck choosing between Shadow, Undead and Constellation. Of the three, Constellation was purely there for looks but also the most impressive while Undead made them incredibly resilient and capable of healing by dealing damage, vampire style. Shadow would be fantastic for infiltration, but I already had both completely invisible and small and agile summons, which would make it somewhat redundant.
Constellation on the other hand … it had been my first instinct before had I even checked what else was available and what they each actually did.
Plus, having more impressive looking summons might help make a good first impression, especially when it likely would eventually come to light that my creatures were biological.
That was a shitstorm I badly wanted to avoid, but I needed to go out sometime.
If not to pick a fight with the gangs then later save the world.
Save. the. friggin. World. Shit.
It was funny, really. Die in a stupid way, get thrown into a Grimdark hellhole where even the local troublemakers had me quaking in my boots with the full knowledge that I needed to go up against opponents that had those same people outclassed by several orders of magnitude.
I pulled into my driveway, shut of the engine and grabbed the groceries out of the back. I ended up having to make several trips, but that gave me more than enough time to make sure I really wanted to get Constellation as a theme.
One last trip to grab Frogger out from under the seat, then left the door open a few moments longer than strictly necessary to let Shade in, then I flounced onto the couch and reached inwards.
The empty slot seemed to warp and flicker to my senses, a roiling vortex of different energies. Cloth spun through the middle, the linen and silk beings it would bring revealing themselves, but it was quickly replaced by what I perceived a cloud of buzzing insects then followed by …
I shoved them all back, leaving my point of view in the middle of an empty void, the various energies flickering around me. Searching through them, each presented me with its power, its capabilities, but I ignored each of them in turn until I found what I was looking for.
A nebula like cloud sat there, stars twinkling, pale azure mist filling in the are between. I mentally reached for it and it surged forward, pushing me back out and filling the void, connecting to each of my creatures in turn.
As I watched, each of them split in two, one the original version, the other a celestial being of grace. Sadly, this didn't double the number of summons I had available, the new creatures were variations I could summon my existing arsenal as, not additional ones, but that was fine.
Speaking of my existing arsenal, there was one I was yet to summon.
I headed downstair, Frogger perched on my shoulder, fully intending on seeing what a metal slime looked like, when my power decided that now was a good time to spring an upgrade on me. I missed a step and started to fall, but Shade uncloaked briefly and pressed against my chest, buying me the time needed to grab the railing.
Apparently, my standing order of "keep me safe" also applied to my own stupidity.
My new summon was a hellishly dangerous being called a Plasma Whisp, a basketball-sized cloud of the same material the sun was made from, with two gloved hands protruding and two eyes sitting deep with it.
If I had gotten almost anything else that could still fit in the room, I'd have summoned it and tried out my theme, but I knew better. For once, I knew better and actually listened to what my common sense was telling me. A being made of plasma would ignite anything made from wood, cloth or plastic with its mere presence.
Therefore, I stuck to my second newest summon.
The metal slime manifested in the center of the sauna, door to the workshop still open.
It was around a cubic meter in volume and took the form of a slightly squished sphere. Twin eyes gazed up at me.
"Blink if you understand me." I ordered. It complied.
"Let's see what you're made of." my knuckles rapped on its outside and got a clank in response.
"Just how solid are you, anyway? Can you soften up a bit?"
My next attempt resulted in a far different sound. The flesh rippled as my knuckles impacted, accompanied by a soft "squish".
"Blink once for no, twice for yes. How flexible are you? Can you only make part of yourself solid?"
Blink, Blink.
"Make your left part as hard as you can and leave your right part soft. That's my right and left."
I tried again, receiving a both results I had previously gotten from different parts of the slime at the same time. Now to see if the cockamamie scheme I'd cooked up on the drive back would actually work.
"How complex a shape can you make?" I held my hand out "Can you reach up with a thin tentacle and envelop my hand in a glove like structure."
Before it could make contact though, I hastily added "Without digesting it or something. I don't know how slimes eat, but please don't"
The slime was surprisingly warm to the touch as is flowed around my appendage, fitting snuggly and leaving roughly a centimeter of material between my skin and the air.
I remembered a long time ago, me sitting in my very first chemistry class as the teacher had us touching the wooden and metal parts of the table simultaneously and feeling the apparent difference in temperature. Apparent because they were both room temperature, but the wood was a poor conductor of warmth and was reflecting our own body heat back at us while the metal conducted it away.
That had been my main worry, that the slime would leech all my warmth away if I submerged myself. This could be a problem to, causing me to overheat, but I thought I could deal with that more easily.
"Now, wait until the end of my instructions, then swallow me up to my neck. The following are standing orders:
Never digest or dissolve me.
Never render me unable to speak.
Never cover my nose or mouth.
Do everything you can to not kill me, ever."
These orders may be excessively paranoid, treating my slime more like a summoned demon that needed to be chained by exact wording and careful phrasing instead of a pet, but I wasn't worried about it murdering me.
My worry was that my creatures were only as smart as they normally were, with some slight tweaks to allow them to understand my orders. However, this thing was not guaranteed to not be as dumb as a bag of hammers and, if it was, there were a million ways this could go wrong.
The beast slowly flowed up me, surrounding me in a tight, but not suffocating, embrace.
"Now, move as I do. At the same speed as I do, make sure it is you who bears the weight of your body and not me."
And then I began to walk, my new "suit" moving with me with ease. I walked into the workshop, then headed through the sauna and out into the short hall that ran the length of the cellar.
"Crunch"
I glanced down, then swore loudly. The wooden floorboards now had a low indentation in them. Hastily taking a step back into the sauna, I sighed in relief when the floor remained untouched.
"Reinforced, I guess. In the future, please create large soles on my feet to spread the weight out. Make sure they don't get tangled and trip me up." I smiled, then silently added "I am really glad that worked. I hereby dub you Ferro, Slime of iron and toughness. You shall now be my armor, my shield, my sword."
I spent the next minute and a half on the floor, giggling helplessly. When I could not be seen by others, I could be such an idiot.
I got up again and walked out into the hall. This time, the floor stayed intact. In fact, it didn't even make any weird noises that would indicate that it was being stressed.
I kept walking till I hit the stairs, then updated my orders.
"Please make sure I don't fall. Properly spread our weight and help stabilize me by keeping part of yourself on the stair bellow me. When I do fall, make sure I do not fall backwards."
Slipping and cracking my skull open while playing around with one of my summons was easily as dumb a way to go as the aforementioned skinhead, knife and parking lot scenario.
As I got halfway up the stairs, I got yet another new summon, but I ignored it. This was too dangerous for distractions. I immediately headed back downstairs into the sauna.
"Please get down from me now." I ordered, then stepped away as the slime melted into a puddle on the floor.
My new summon was very, very unusual. I could now summon a staff that looked like it belonged to a magical girl from some Anime series and a card that would let me summon a young girl called "The Song". Unlike my other summons, the limit was not a maximum time period and cooldown but rather a question of magical power. I had enough for daily summons, though I could tell that it would increase as I got additional summons of the same kind.
The Song herself was capable of singing with great skill and copying voices. Cool, yes but sadly nothing to write home about.
At this point, I really wanted to try out the Deathgripper, but doing that anywhere in the city was out of the question. Therefore, I decided it was time for a road trip.
Dismissing both Ferro and Frogger, I placed the staff in the workshop, then sealed it by pressing on the same stone I used to open it.
Then I headed up and out of the basement to pack.
----
Ok, so as it turns out, I completely forgot to pick out a theme, so I did that now. Also, since when does Word point out bad language as "this language may be offensive to your reader"?
I also decided that the slime is not pure metal, a cubic meter of steel weighs almost eight tons and that would be far too heavy to be viable for what I have in mind.
The new creatures in this chapter:
Plasma Whisp from Kirby (Plasma Wisp | Kirby Wiki | Fandom)
The Song from Cardcaptor Sakura (The Song | Cardcaptor Sakura Wiki | Fandom)323wilderfastJul 15, 2021View discussionThreadmarks Chapter 4 View contentwilderfastJul 15, 2021#9Those plans lasted only until I passed by the fridge and my stomach growled loudly.
I took some time, made myself an omlette and toast, and ate something for the first time in almost eighteen hours.
It was amazing what one could forget when one had an interesting new toy to play with. I headed out the door, paused, then headed back into the kitchen once more and prepared myself a few sandwiches. I then proceeded to fill up a backpack with everything from the aforementioned food to bottles of water, spare clothes and a first aid kit.
Most of these things were there out of an abundance of caution, but then again, I had somewhat of a paranoid streak and while I was unlikely to end up in the middle of a cape battle every other day, Worm had given me the impression that treating this world as if that were true was warranted.
I unlocked the car's door remotely, grinning as it chirped. My very first car. All it had taken was ending up here.
I hopped in, then began to drive out of the car in a random direction. I had no idea where I was going anyway, so I might as well take this as a chance to take a look around town. If I ended up in one of the worse areas, I could always turn around.
Shade was flying somewhere above me and would join me once I was out of the city.
Up there in the sky, he was utterly impossible to see unless one knew his exact position.
That would change once he got down between buildings. He'd still be invisible and nearly impossible to see or target accurately, but people could catch glimpses of him and not immediately dismiss them as figments of their imagination. If that happened, they would likely call in the Protectorate and wouldn't that set the cat amongst the pigeons.
Brockton Bay was simultaneously far better and far worse than I had expected. I was heading further inland, through the downtown area, which seemed relatively normal.
Far more run down than the cities I was used to, closer to Sri Lanka or South Africa than Germany of England, but it didn't have any bombed-out skeletons of buildings or any visible damage from recent cape fights.
It would probably be far worse closer to the Docks or the Boat Graveyard, but I would be avoiding those, thank you very much. The Empire at least was comprised of heavy hitters that attacked directly. Enough of them could sucker punch opponents, but not in the same way Oni Lee of the Azn Bad Boys could.
That particular cape was one who's power level I had no true gauge of.
His ability to produce a clone while the original died shortly after allowed him to create a nigh unlimited number of copies of his various pieces of gear. That wasn't so much a problem when it came to his knifes, but his functionally infinite supply of grenades meant he had technically had enough explosives to level the city. Well, it would take some time, but he could get there. The real question was how quickly he could teleport, the frequency determining his potential damage output.
Some fanfics had painted horror scenarios where he could chain blinks together with hundreds of clones appearing in mere seconds when he decided to take the gloves off. That Oni Lee would have me utterly screwed.
My only canon example of his power had not made clear the major limitations on his power. Canon Oni Lee had been fighting in a stash house belonging to his gang and not used any grenades, likely to avoid damaging the gang's property.
The kamikaze bomber trick was canonically something he did, but it had only been mentioned in passing.
It all came down to his blink's frequency. He had ended up taking a bullet to the leg when Taylor had started to point out his blinks due to the bugs he took with him.
Apparently, when he teleported, he could not teleport faster than an ex-military sniper took to react and take aim.
Based on half remembered driving and biology lessons, humans had a reaction time of around a second, probably a little less given the man's training.
Actually, chances were that, given how long he took to teleport, that his teleport delay was the amount of time he needed to reorient himself after the sudden change in position.
Maybe he could teleport in random directions when pressed, or straight up for that matter, or maybe he couldn't. That was something that would likely come as a very unpleasant surprise if it did happen.
At the end of the day, all I could do was do my best and hope and pray he hadn't been holding back during his one known fight.
Just as I had that unpleasant thought, I nearly crashed the car. My power had just given me new options. One was a perfectly mundane Hummingbird. Pretty, but easily the weakest creature to date.
The other. Was. Everything. I could now create a custom creature wholesale. There were some limitations, but I couldn't get into it right now unless I wanted to get into an accident for real.
The rest of the way out of town, I focused on the road and paid attention to everything but the power burning in my chest. Getting distracted now would not be a good idea.
Eventually, I got out the city. I spent another hour driving down random and increasingly smaller roads, getting further and further from civilization. I made sure to note down each turn I made as otherwise this method of navigation would have gotten me hopelessly lost. Eventually, I saw a small clearing a few meters from the road, pulled over and let Shade back out. He'd been able to keep up with me in the city, but when I wasn't stopping every few hundred meters for a traffic light.
"Fly up and scout he area. If there's anyone around me, come back down and shake your head.
As he left, I grabbed my backpack, locked the car and headed out into the clearing. From here, I could see the clearing extended far beyond what I had been able to see before. Perfect.
I headed out there because I was almost impossible to see from the road there. By the time I reached that area, Shade had completed his survey and landed in front of me, nodding.
"That mean it's clear?"
Nod.
"Thank you. Please take up a regular patrol route and warn me if someone comes within your sigh."
As Shade shot off, I climbed up onto a rock and looked down onto a clear patch of grass.
I spread my arms dramatically, as though I were summoning a creature from the depths of hell while chanting and brought forth the Deathgripper.
One second, there was a clear patch of grass, the next a horrifying creature straight out of a horror movie was sitting there. The head somewhat resembled a badger with an overbite and a pair of massive razor-sharp tusks that protruded forward like lances.
It walked forward on scythed forelimbs resembling those of a preying Mantis' and clawed hindlegs. A pair of batlike wings were folded on its back while a tail with a nasty looking stinger dragged behind him.
I grinned, my teeth showing in an expression that likely looked slightly unhinged.
"Can you breathe fire? Try it on that clear patch of dirt" after all, there was no reason to start a forest fire.
What came out however, was a bolt of bright orange liquid that melted the ground it struck and sending up plumes of smoke.
Acid. That would be incredibly lethal and be quite hard to use without killing. If things came to a head, it would kick ass.
"Show me your stinger."
The lethal implement suddenly hovered in front of my face, making me Jump back in surprise. It gleamed in the sunlight, looking as if it could punch through steel. A viscous liquid dripped down onto the rock at my feet.
"What is that stuff?"
The dragon made a shrugging movement with its wings.
"Yeah, that one is my bad. Does it hurt your enemies if you pump it into them?"
Nod.
"Will it kill them?"
He shook his head, then nodded.
"Does it depend on random chance or is it dosage dependent? Nod once for the former and twice for the latter."
Two nods were my response.
"What does it do if it isn't at a lethal dose? Nod when I have the right option. Necrotic? Soporific? Neurotoxic? Paralytic? Dis …"
He nodded when I mentioned the paralytic.
"Alright, can you properly understand what dose is required to achieve each outcome?"
He nodded in affirmation in response.
"Good. Only use the lethal setting when explicitly ordered by me."
Casting wishful gazes over him, I dismissed him. He really had been magnificent, but I had something more pressing to deal with. My custom summon.
I could feel the different options brim with possibility.
A custom hybrid akin to Frogger, but also capable of wielding elemental energies.
An elemental animal called an Animental using powerful breath weapons.
A construct made from one of various materials in the shape of any mundane animal who's powers could vary greatly based on what they were made from.
A custom Magical Beast based on a mundane animal and enhanced to wield a single magical spell.
Lastly, an intelligent weapon capable of enhancing its attacks with various mystical effects.
Each of these was fantastic, but for me they represented one single thing. An chance to cover my weak points. I had two big ones. The first was the standard Master weakness of being extremely squishy, only being as durable as a normal person and lacking a Blaster's ability to put down suppressive fire, a Striker's powerful close combat abilities and a Thinker's excuse to stay well away from any fighting.
My other big weakness lay in the limited number of summons. I could only use them once a day and then I had to keep them with me. I might already be at eight summons, but I could only use each a single time per day. Not even per fight, per day.
I was already down to my as of yet unnamed Colibri and my as of yet uncreated unique summon as standby creatures and only Shade was physically present.
Frogger could be devastating if his mobility were combined with Explosive Finish, but that was trick that I could not rely on to carry me through a single fight if I had more than one opponent to beat.
What I needed was a summon that could stay with me and did not need to be dismissed when I moved. As cool as the Magical Beast would have been, the only thing that could have made me choose it over my choice was a healing power, which it didn't have. The intelligent weapon, in the meantime, required me to actually be good with the weapon. Should they have had some kind of high power anti-armor ability, they would have been the obvious pick, but they lacked that.
Therefore, I'd been free to pick myself up a fantastic construct creature.
Inky the unimaginatively named ink construct took the shape of a tiger, appearing first in a graffiti like state on the rock in my shadow, then she slowly pulled herself upwards and outwards into three-dimensional space, the tiger's feline body seemingly constructed of liquid shadow, flowing and shifting as I watched. She came up to slightly above my waist, around the size of a normal Siberian Tiger and was almost twice as long as I was tall if you included the tail.
The sheer coolness factor of having a pet tiger had only been a small part of my decision.
Each type of material granted the constructs made from it a special power. Gemstones could split up into smaller subunits. Forcefields could become nigh invulnerable if they didn't move. Bone creatures could explode into a tornado of bone fragments at will and then reconstitute. And so on and so forth. Ink's special power? They could turn into drawings, hiding on walls as graffiti or on skin as tattoos.
Inky could stay with me twenty-four seven, only leaving for a brief moment whenever her time ran out until I resummoned her a few moments later.
That feeling of vulnerability, that knot in my stomach, eased. For the first time, I had a creature that would not be wasted when I summoned it.
Speaking of, I gained yet another summon, called a Pansage. It was not particularly powerful in direct combat, but it had the fantastic, incomparably useful ability to grow a bush on its head who's leaves could reduce fatigue when eaten.
For the first time, I did not immediately summon one of my creatures, instead using Material Extraction on the vegetation covered monkey. A bundle of leaves manifested in my hand. I ate one and the slight fatigue that had accumulated since waking up, twelve hours ago.
These were absolutely going to come in handy when I needed to skip out on sleep. I loved my rest far too much to use these regularly, but they could really come in clutch.
The information on proper processing that came with my Material Extraction also supplied a series of recipes from a simple tea to lemonade and a fancy punch, cocktail and iced tea. I'd be making those just for the hell of it when I got home. I'd always loved cooking and cooking with magical ingredients … ho boy, I would have to pick up a lot of ingredients on the way back.
One more use occurred to me at that point. I could use them to try and bribe Armsmaster. I wasn't sure if his homebrew extra-strength energy drink was canon or fanon, but even if it was something I'd read in a fanfic I hadn't quite remembered, it definitely fit his personality. Convincing him that things were safe would be a chore and take forever, but I was not above buttering people up with food.
I turned back to Inky.
"Please turn into tattoo form and paint yourself across my toro. Then we can experiment with the exact look"
She flowed through my t-shirt and, after a brief feeling of coldness, I didn't feel her anymore. I pulled of my shirt and glanced down at the feline figure sitting on its haunches on my stomach. No, this would not do!
After almost a quarter of an hour of using the ink construct's power to move while painted, I was finally happy with the result. Her tail sat on my left side above my hip and reaching near my midline, then flowing round my back where her hindlegs and back half of her torso were located, her front half flowing across my chest until her head sat on my shoulder, the tip of her nose reaching a couple of centimeters past the point where my collarbone ended.
I got dressed, called Shade back down and turned to head back to the car, then stopped and turned around to look at the hole created by the acid. Nope, I could not leave it like that.
"Inky, please manifest, throw some dirt over that hole, then return to tattoo form, in the look we just created. In the future, always take that form as a tattoo unless otherwise specified."
We waited for a few minutes while she followed my orders. I took the time to eat a sandwich and use the box to store the Pansage leaves I had stupidly been holding in my hands the entire time.
The drive back to Brockton Bay was quite uneventful. I did get lost once, but fixing that was a matter of minutes.
I spent the rest of the day shopping for ingredients for my Pansage drinks, making said drinks and using the aforementioned drinks to stay awake till eight in the evening.
I'd had jetlag in the past and it had absolutely sucked if I failed to push myself to stay awake till the time I would normally go to sleep. Death lag? Jet lag was a sufficiently descriptive phrase and was less likely to earn me weird looks. Not that I intended to talk to people about this, but still.
I set my alarm for 7 am and laid down on my bed with a grin. Tomorrow morning, most of my summons would have come of cooldown and I would really be able to experiment with all my skills.
-----
The original Quest gave out mundane 0-point creatures every 10 chapters and I've decided to use this rule as well. However, the original had chapters of roughly one thousand words, while mine tend to be a bit longer, so I'm just going to stick with getting one every ten thousand words.
New creatures this chapter
Colibri from IRL as a member of the Strisores family (Strisores - Wikipedia)
Pansage from Pokemon (Pansage (Pokémon) - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia)Last edited: Jul 15, 2021314wilderfastJul 15, 2021View discussionThreadmarks Chapter 5 View contentwilderfastJul 16, 2021#22The next morning, I was all smiles. No, that was a lie, no one was ever that happy in this world. But I was happy. I'd finally somewhat come to terms with my situation and I had also regained most of my summons. Dragon and Pansage were still on cooldown for another four hours, but I didn't really need them at the time. Even if it came down to an emergency, I had Inky now. Smiling, I patted my left shoulder, where her head was located.
As Attero Dominatus, a power metal song by Sabaton, was blasting out of the speakers on my phone, I stood in the kitchen, making an omlette while singing along, of tune.
I plopped down on my table and reached for my kindle, then realized I didn't have it in this world. Hell, I didn't even know if amazon was a thing here.
… I put it on my mental shopping list, finished eating and headed downstairs.
For the second time, I reached out to one of my creatures not using the normal gentle grasp to pull them out into the world but using the power of material extraction. The mental projection of the Crimson Indrik came apart, leaving a pale shadow behind as it went on cooldown. The materials themselves spun within the mental image of my menagerie, each faintly hinting at the possibilities they offered.
I reached out for the antlers and skull, pulling them into reality on the workbench before me. Deep red bone attached to a bleached white skull sat there, not obviously strange or supernatural, but still subtly wrong, being to large and the color was wrong.
As I thought how to best use them, I absentmindedly summoned Frogger on to my shoulder. He was now in his constellation form, each of his feet glowing brightly as each joint consisted of separate star. The rest of his body also held quite a few stars but mostly looked like someone had cut a Frogger shaped hole in reality and allowed one to see the night sky through them. A nebula hung in his skull, making it seem like his brain was visible. Even as I watched, several comets zipped through him and disappeared out of my field of view. I stroked his head and, instead of the usual soft fur I touched what felt like cool marble. It was still as yielding as his flesh had been before, I could feel skin giving slightly as I touched him and I could feel the bones beneath, but he was definitely no longer obviously a living animal. Whether or not that would fool Panacea or Tattletale, I didn't know.
I'd just have to make sure not to run into the former until I had at least a somewhat good standing and avoid the latter entirely. Or maybe just briefly visit her and offer to off Coil in exchange for her getting the hell out of town and never coming back. Come to think of it, maybe I could do just that? Their base was in a building titled Redmond Welding, if I dropped of a letter inside and offered her the chance to be free of Coil in exchange for the location of his base, that might work. After that, well, I could try and go after him by myself, but that was still pretty risky, so I decided to take a page out of the man's own playbook. Playing my enemies against each other.
Coil was planning to plunge the city into chaos until he and his puppet gangs were the last remaining power, seize control of the PRT and rule from the shadows. I didn't know how he planned on dealing with the ABB, they had managed to earn the ire of every other gang in town and gotten their asses kicked, but the Empire had been defeated by revealing their identities to the world and watching them panic. Leviathan had helped things along, sure, but that had been the first step in his plan.
If I knew where his base was, I could send letters to each of the Empire members with a full accounting of his scheme, his civilian identity and power. Some would ignore it, see it as a threat, others think it a trap, but some would begin to scheme. And eventually, either someone would kill the bastard or accidentally blab to the PRT and either way, Coil would be gone. Arrested by the PRT or murdered by the Nazis, I didn't really car so long as he was out of the picture.
Once that was done, I could try and focus more on the world at large and use my metaknowledge. Cauldron would then be my biggest worry, but they relied heavily on Contessa and Clairvoyant, neither of whom could see or account for me.
It all came down to how I started my work here. Get rid of Coil, hopefully free Dinah or prevent her from being kidnapped in the first place. Kill Leviathan if I got something that would let me kill him directly, keep the vital people alive if I didn't. After that, either train up or go after the Slaughterhouse directly. After that … I'd see how far I'd managed to push back the end of the world. Then, then I'd do everything I could to get stronger and create plans to finish of Scion, Zion, the Warrior, whatever else one could call him.
I shook my head as I looked down at the skull on the workbench. My tendency to overthink everything often resulted in me going of on long mental tangents instead of focusing on the job at hand, namely turning this thing into something useful. Material Extraction suggested a few different helmet designs, but they would make me look like some kind of savage and were also weaker than my metal slime and someone could easily grab onto the horns mid fight. My Hunter knowledge on the other hand had the less practical suggestion of mounting it on the wall. I decided to just go with that. An hour later, the head hung at the end of my workshop opposite the door, polished bone and horn gleaming. Taking a few steps backwards out of the door, I grinned. It looked fantastic.
Next up, I dismissed Frogger and summoned the Colibri. It was incredible, deep blue feathers glinting in the light. I'd seen a collection of stuffed ones at the museum that used to be the house of Charles Darvin and a live one briefly while on holiday, but never this close.
It hovered in front of my face, wings blurring up and down so quickly they seemed to disappear. I held out my hand and it landed, so light I could barely feel its weight. I gently stroked its head, feeling the tiny feathers shift and move under my fingers. It was fragile, so incredibly fragile, leaving me afraid it would be injured by even my slightest touch. Pulling my other hand back, I held the bird up to my face.
"You shall be … sapphire" I hadn't taken the time to name all of my summons and likely would never get around to it. With my ever-expanding roster, keeping up would be quite the chore and I didn't really have a proper emotional connection to all of them either. Shade had been my very first, Frogger had been my first that I could pet and Ferro was going to be a mainstay of my kit for the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, Sapphire had been named because I simply found him fascinating. The Deathgripper and he Crimson Indrik were, at the end of the day, not going to be out for very long. For the moment, they were combat summons, nothing more.
That reminded me, I needed to check on something. I summoned my Flickerbat, which immediately shook its head, nodded, then shook it again.
"Welcome back, Shade" I grinned. As it turned out, I did actually summon the same creature every time, so I could give standing orders and have them followed even once the twenty four hour time limit was up.
"Come with me and resume your position on overwatch. Please warn me if there's trouble. Stay cloaked."
The two of us headed up the stairs to my bedroom, where I opened the skylight to let him out.
That reminded me, I needed to buy a few go pros or the local equivalent.
I headed back to my workroom, only pausing long enough to grab a glass of water, bowl and a bag of sugar. My other creatures started out fully satiated, but Sapphire was a Colibri, which had a stupidly high metabolism and needed to eat nectar near constantly. Therefore he was highly unlikely to last the day. I put maybe a couple of tablespoons of sugar in the bowl, then added water until it was fully dissolved. Just pure sugar water was probably not going to be to healthy long term, but Sapphire wouldn't be here long enough for that to matter.
While the small bird was hovering above the bowl, drinking and being adorable, I returned to the workbench. I used Material Extraction on Ferro, receiving a large bottle of slime. When I said bottle however, I meant a long, tall metal vessel where the outer layer simply consisting of solidified slime. My power told me that it could be used to make high technology items as it could be shaped using magnetic fields and electric currents for small scale circuitry and the like. It could also be stimulated using a slightly different method to make an extremely tough yet flexible material. Sadly, this general overview of possible uses did not come with any of the technological knowledge of building the other parts of the high-tech items. In other words, this was going to get sold to the first tinker I ran into.
I froze as the next creature came in. A fairy. Oh no, this was not good. This was really bad. Fairies were not the nice and cuddly beings akin to Tinker Bell shown in modern media. They were incredibly dangerous, tricking people into being stuck in their realm, kidnapping children, …
I really, really should have checked the creature's description before panicking. Fairies in mythology were dangerous beyond belief. This was not a fairy from those stories. My fairy looked like Tinker Bell, was considerably less smart, only possessing an animal like intelligence and was overall fairly unassuming. However, she would easily fit through air vents and the like.
The Fairy was accompanied by two powers. My first new power let me summon my creatures as babies, which would help with the cuteness factor but would rarely be used.
My second power was both overwhelming and unassuming. I could, at will, stop physically interacting with my summons, phasing through them harmlessly. It would never be used outside of a very specific set of circumstances but when it was used, it would be the thing that saved my ass.
I realized something now. I now had three stealthy creatures that could be used for infiltration. Heading upstairs and out to go buy some gear, I began to scheme.
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We should finally start to see some action next chapter.
New Creatures this chapter:
Fairy from Harry Potter (Fairy | Harry Potter Wiki | Fandom)