Overpower

tr.v. o·ver·pow·ered, o·ver·pow·er·ing, o·ver·pow·ers

To overcome or vanquish by superior force; subdue. To affect so strongly as to make helpless or ineffective; overwhelm. To supply with excessive mechanical power.

“Invicta, why didn’t my pheromone deterrent keep this spawn away?” I asked as I leaned up against the nearest wall, covered in splattered blood and mud. I wasn’t injured, just shaken a bit with how close I had come to death just a moment prior.

I had decided to head back in the direction that I had started, determined to head down to the lower level of the mound and to try my hand at PVP when I ran into my first spawn. The creature, sized like a Doberman, was agile like a cat and acted like a dog with the zoomies. On the front of its head, it sported a small array of antennae and had a lengthy body that resembled a thin maggot. The mouth was the same as the adult Fomys, except this one didn’t have loose lips, instead, it sported very tightly drawn back lips over a circular array of inward-pointing teeth. I could clearly see the resemblance between the spawn and the adult. All I needed to do was to remove hundreds of pounds of flesh and fat and you would have this ravaging smaller beast. It hadn’t launched any teeth at me, probably due to the fact that those glands didn’t seem to have fully matured yet.

I breathed through my teeth, trying to get my nerves down before I continued on. My battle with it had happened and ended way too fast for me to fully deal with what had transpired. It had come at me like a rat jumping out from a burning dumpster. It had barely made a sound as well. I had just spotted it with my forward-positioned cr eye a moment before it was springing at me with its front claws extended towards my chest. I yelped, instinctively swiped at it with one blade of cr while throwing my body to the side. I crashed into the wall of the tunnel and spun around, slipping down the wall as I tried to get my eyes locked on the spry alien. My blade had missed most of the beast, instead of cutting it in half, it had just had given it a manicure, chopping off a bit of its long hind claws.

With the two remote cr eyes in play I had very little extra cr to work with... just dual 2 feet long blades of cr. The extra range on the blades made me more confident in keeping claws away from my body.

I swung both of the swords in rapid deadly strikes when the spawn landed and rolled like an Olympic gymnast made of butter.

Cr blades moved very fast in relation to human speeds but when trying to hit this randomly zigging and zagging spawn I suddenly got chills down my spine. It felt like I was trying to crush a cockroach with a shoe. The dang thing seemed to feel the movement of the cr coming towards it with its antenna, allowing it to spin and roll right before my blades could make contact. Its flexible body bending like rubber out of the way of my strikes.

“Just die! Why won't you die?!” I shouted as I flicked and jabbed the blades at it, always somehow at where it had been rather than where it was bouncing off the wall right now. I summoned my cr eyes back to me, turning them into tiny blades to try to help me in getting rid of this overly agile menace.

It sensed one of my longer blades approaching its flank and it jumped towards me, extending its right forefoot to try to rake against my calf. I backpedaled along the ground as quickly as I could, my alien flesh barely avoiding getting torn up.

“Oh, you dirty little cheat!” I yelled when I spied the dirty flecks of liquid on the tips of its claws as it withdrew them from the ground and sprang back to avoid getting cut by the speeding blade returning from being a sentry down the hall.

The spawn jumped up and ran away. At least I thought it had run away until it turned, using the curve of the tunnel wall to zip back towards me again. I hadn’t even had time to get up.

I froze time, thinking frantically before an idea popped into my mind. My cr was, at its core, a computer, yes it was tiny but it still was powerful and could be programmed to do whatever I wanted it to do.

“You three, spin like blender blades and move to intercept that spawn. Calculate the possible speed and trajectory of the enemy and take up as much space as possible and block its path towards me.” I mentally commanded three of the blades while I kept control of one of the longer lengths to work as my personal weapon before reentering normal time. I had intentionally made sure that the spinning blades would not chase after the spawn, I didn't want to lose all of my defense if it ran away again.

It worked so much better than I expected. Now, instead of having three inexpertly swung blades relying on my limited combat skills, I had something that acted like a god mode Pong AI. The blades barely made any sound as they spun in deadly circles. Where I had only had a hand’s length of blade before, now I had double their length because of their rapid arcs through the air. The blades even seemed to be speeding up the longer they spun.

“Wow…” I muttered as slowly I got up from the ground, keeping my back against the wall, unable to believe my eyes. The simple coded command to my cr had created a perfect stalemate against the little savage enemy. It was as if the cr was able to shadow and instantly predict where the spry spawn would go.

“So that is all it would take?” I asked as I watched the spawn rush at me time and time again before bouncing away, unwilling to get near to the air warping blades.

It was like having a forcefield of death ten feet from me. The spawn seemed to be learning that it couldn’t get closer to me. It would test the distance, darting as close as it could to my spinning wall, watching me with its antenna.

“Haha, looks like I win,” I said as I swung my personal blade at its body… and missed and missed and missed.

The spawn even started to seem like it was laughing at me as it began to chuff and make gruff noises that vibrated down the length of its body. It sounded like it was a cat trying to cough up a furball.

“Very funny. Just give me a second to figure out how to chop you and we will see who laughs then.” I said as the spawn did something very strange. It fell down to the side, looking at me with its antenna and head around the very edge of my spinning cr. I was just about to swing my cr blade down on its prone body when it spasmed and shot something out of its mouth at me.

“Dang it!” I cried as I instantly knew what the creature had done. It had tricked me! My barrier of blades hadn’t tried to intercept the lone tooth that struck my thigh, being solely focused on keeping the main body of the alien at bay. I reached down and grabbed the mucus-coated tooth, knowing it was already too late as I pulled it out of my flesh. I took control of the wall of blades like it was an open hand and swung it down on top of the spawn, right as it started to spring up to escape. The blades hit it and the ground like jet propellers, dicing the spawn and the tunnel floor into a fine mist of viscera and mud, not even slowing down the blades at all.

This time the poison worked even faster than before. “Probably like baby snakes, their poison is even more deadly,” I whispered as I fell backward against the wall, quickly losing control of my legs and torso as I bit down on the last remaining mote that I had in my possession.

-Fomys spawn do not have their pheromone sensors fully developed yet. This can lead to in-fighting early in the spawning stage before the Fomys understand who is friend or foe. Be grateful that you do have the pheromone key though… other players have not been so lucky.-

I quickly checked the player count and found that we were down below 2000 players and dropping fast.

“Well, that is enough of that then. Time to let my imagination go wild.” I said as I turned off my repelling pheromones.

-I normally don’t give out tips but just so you know… Fomys release a strong scent when they die, alerting other Fomys to come attack… and you just made that one die in a blender-

“Understood. Thanks for the heads up.” I said as I spat out the now useless mote.

The tooth I was holding dissolved into a sparkle of light, giving me 10k more cr to work with. It seemed that any weapon counted towards cr for me once the owner was dead. Made sense too, considering that these things would probably eat anything that they came across.

“Total cr count?” I asked before beginning my run down the hall.

-70,000 cr-

The funny thing was, I didn’t feel 100% faster and more durable than I had been when I first entered the game. I wondered if I was supposed to feel hopped up on drugs or if the increase happened to everything, without me realizing it. Come to think of it, the tooth hadn’t punctured very far into my thigh as the previous ones had through my chest… so maybe I was a bit more durable than I had been. I tried to gauge my speed versus what I had experienced before. I mean… I didn’t feel like I was faster, though... the tunnel did seem to be shorter than it was before. Maybe my mind had increased in speed as well and I just didn’t notice the difference.

I brought my free cr blade close to my finger and directed it to cut deeply into the pad. Ok, that was a bad example. - I thought as it cut through my flesh like a razor through paper. What happened next surprised me thoroughly. The blade hadn’t even cleared the finger and my skin had already reached out and repaired itself cleanly.

“Ok, that does work as advertised,” I said as I froze time to make some changes to my setup. I had 70k to work with, enough to make a deadly domain of spinning strands around me. The problem with that idea was if there were any gaps, even for a moment, the Fomys would shoot something through and I would die. I needed something to deflect or catch the projectiles altogether.

Stepping in and out of quick time, I reduced the active spinning domain by 20k, giving myself two little quarter-sized disks of cr to work with. I split them in half, making 4 smaller disks roughly each the size of a dime, and programmed them to act as bullet shields for me. The little disks started to hover and float around my body, seemingly at random. I really hoped that the programming worked.

I could feel the other 50k moving around me… it almost felt like a muscle now rather than a programmed command.

I tried flexing the blade barrier. Causing the blades to slow down or spin up like turbines.

-Mental Designation accepted: Blade Barrier-

Oh? That was interesting. - I thought as I did indeed feel like I could just mentally turn it on and off, causing my cr to form into the current design without thought.

“The current design though…” I mused as I stopped time to think about how it was working. It had felt really inefficient as I was trying to stab and swipe at the spawn. It was as though I was wasting a lot of the blade when only the end or tip would have actually impacted the target.

I didn’t need a constant blade… how about something more like a serrated blade with gaps between the cr? - I mused and toyed with the design. The gaps caused the overall area covered to expand. “Now just to change it from a straight blade to a spiral and voila!” I said as I made the air blur with potential death.

“It kind of feels like this is cheating,” I said aloud as I looked around at the globe spinning around me. Instead of having the blades on either side of me, I had them encircling me like a ball, orbiting around me in their deadly dance. My reasoning was that I couldn’t guarantee that something wouldn’t manage to attack me from above.

A soft sound caught my attention. I looked down and found a tooth falling to the ground with a little bullet defender casually flying away.

-Mental Designation accepted: Bullet Defender-

“Where did that come from?” I asked as I looked up and found a swarm of mucus leaking mouths and claws leaping at me. “Oh…” was all I managed to say before the wave hit me. I really should not have opened my mouth and tempted fate. I braced for impact and flexed my Blade Barrier as hard as I could.

No, I really mean I should not have opened my mouth at all.

Fomys spawn juice, blood, and I don’t know what else coated me from head to toe when it was all over. I had slipped, I hadn’t cowered, when the mass of physical substance rocketed into me and baptized me in everything gross. Everything, simply everything reeked.

I sat on my butt staring down at the ground for several moments after it happened, just amazed that I was still alive… and how bad the taste in my mouth was. Really should have kept my mouth closed.

I stood up slowly, my three toes splayed wide to find grip in the goo. Down at my feet was a little pile of intact teeth. It seemed that the System wouldn’t let my blades destroy my well-earned trophies. I was picking them up when three more Fomys spawn came barrelling up the side path and flung themselves at my Blade Barrier. “Wait! Please no!” I said as I got another layer splashed over me. At least this time I had managed to get my mouth shut right before they met their doom. I wiped the viscera off of my smooth head and away from my eyes as I went back to collecting my pile of teeth.

A few moments later I was 540,000 cr richer. Yes, I wasn’t sure how many spawn I had killed, 54 maximum if each of them dropped a tooth or less if they happened to drop more than one. At this point I didn’t care, I just wanted to clean off this stuff from my skin. It had started to dry and was cracking whenever I moved. I was physically fine, it was just gross.

-Um… Kevin?- Came a message from Invicta.

“Yeah?” I asked the air.

-That was AWESOME! And so so sooo gross!- Came the quick reply

“Glad you liked it. What is the percentage of Fomys spawn sitting at?” I asked as I froze time to figure out what I wanted to do with my cr that I now had. I was beginning to reframe how I saw myself, combat-wise. I had learned that I wasn’t much of a sword fighter, I just really lacked the training and foresight to understand how to best use a blade. In my mind it had all been cool, just in practice, it seemed rather lacking in range and utility.

I wanted to make my imagination the weapon.

-Oh, there are plenty left. They split when they eat more than their body weight in biological matter, so either the players learn how to kill them or they will all add to the count. Also, I would like you to know that you can access the store again anytime that you like.-

“Hmm…” I said as I thought of the keys that were offered by Invicta. I had begun to understand something fundamental about the experimental key that I had obtained from Invicta earlier… it in essence… allowed me to create my own keys. I just needed to understand what function and action I wanted to accomplish.

“Can you list and explain the armor for me please?” I asked.

Head: Helm of the Last Engineer.

Filters all incoming air to match biological requirements.

Integrated interface and customizable vision, hearing, and hud.

Cr armor, impervious to all damage.

***

“Wait. Stop. What are those dots for?” I asked as I remembered that I had a book that had been owned by the famous Last Engineer.

-I am sorry Kevin but I don’t know. This piece of armor is the best helm that was ever designed and made within my game. While he played, the Engineer said that it was a perfect copy of the one he created in real life. I have never been able to figure out what the extra locked options for the helm are.-

Locked? Or chained? Hmmm… very interesting. “I’ll take the helm,” I said with a sudden suspicious thought.

A pair of sunglasses appeared and hovered in front of me.

“This is the helm?” I asked as I looked the dark metal frame over. They looked suspiciously like sleek sunglasses that I would see back on earth. Except for the fact that they were fitted to match my current alien face with 4 eyes and batlike ears.

-Yes and no. The coding and internals are all the same, “the housing is insignificant”: an actual quote from the Last Engineer. I simply formed them to match your current avatar. If I formed them to match and cover a Tela vision tentacle they would be unusable by you.-

“Ok,” I said as I returned to normal time to grab them and place them on my head. I felt a cool sensation as cr flowed out from the frame and around my head. “Did this just clean my head?” I asked as I flexed my eyebrows and didn’t feel the crackle of dried muck against my skin.

-Yes? You can have cr clean your skin off. It is common practice…-

“Dang it! Why didn’t anyone tell me that?” I asked as I set about guiding my cr to clean all the gunk off of my skin.

-I just did.-