Chapter 08

Discussion

After the crowd dispersed, Alara and I made our way back into the City Hall. I wanted to get all the employees that used to work here, back to business. They would already know the inner workings of the city after all. In the right wing of the building, there were a dozen plus offices on the first floor alone.

“Jane, where is the employment office?” I asked the city AI.

“Here,” she said. She formed her hologram with an outstretched hand at the indicated door.

“Thanks,” I said, and we walked in.

A pair of desks greeted me, so I walked over to one at random. When I was within half a meter of it, a holographic workstation booted up. Every program that one would need to manage employment for the city was loaded and waiting for an operator. Cracking my knuckles, I sat down and started going through the lists of previous employees.

“Love, why don’t you head back to the house. Make sure those strays I picked up yesterday are behaving,” I said cupping Alara’s face.

“Sure! Don’t have any fun without me,” she gave me a kiss before she ran off. I smiled after her for a minute before getting to work.

An hour later, I found that most of the people listed were re-hirable. I was amazed that Scythe didn’t just kill them all, but they were fired a few weeks before the game became a world. Likely, the event was scripted to give the hero or villain a lead. I quickly sent a basic formatted email to everyone on the list. There were a few I left off as they were deceased.

“Jane. What happens to the city if the Lord dies?” I asked. If I was going to leave the city I wanted to make sure to cover my bases.

“If the city has the resources, then it will pay a certain amount out. If the person resurrects then it will still belong to them. Once they are killed there is a protection period of a month. No matter how many times the Lord dies during that time, they cannot lose the city. If the city does not have the funds, it will be defaulted to the victor. “

“And if the Lord is out of the town? I need to leave to complete these diplomatic missions,” I said tapping the desktop.

“A single person is unable to conquer a city while the Lord is gone. Unless they completely leave the city, which would be a waste of resources. An army can occupy the city. If the Lord fails to free it within a month’s time, the city goes to the holding force. At this point the Lord would need to conquer then hold it for a month to reclaim it. Many issues arise from being under occupational status.”

“I understand. This alleviates many of my fears about leaving the city,” I said standing up. “I want you to head up the city management. When people arrive tomorrow, make sure they are assigned to the correct positions. Give everyone that shows up early or within the first thirty minutes a pay raise of... let’s say five percent from their pervious salary.”

“It will be done. Though I must stress this will put pressure on our finances,” Jane said writing on her clipboard.

“I know. That is why I want every robotics engineer in the city working full time to fill out our stock with robots. I feel we’re going to need more than a few in the coming weeks,” I said while I walked down the hall to the entrance.

“Affirmative. It will be done,” Jane said.

“Also. Send a few of each robot to my address in the warehouse district. I want to check out what we’re working with.”

“Yes, Sir.”

As I walked towards the warehouse district, I felt a fluctuation form next to me. I stopped and braced myself in case it was another would be attacker. With a pop, Daniel appeared next to me. He hovered off the ground, though he looked a little worse for wear.

“Daniel. Back already?” I asked a bit surprised. It had only been a few hours.

“Don’t underestimate my teleporting ability. I was quite famous until a few days ago with the other supers due to my business,” he said as I started walking again.

We were walking through the market which was busier than the first time I visited. People were cheerful as they haggled and talked. I bought a few things that caught my eye.

“Business?” I asked curious while at our third stall. Probably some sort of assassination business. It was a useful use of his ability after all.

“I was the supers equivalent to a medivac. I would teleport supplies and even do rescues if the super could afford it,” he explained keeping pace with me while hovering.

“Not going to walk? Seems a waste of energy,” I commented.

“Actually. I have a feat of power that allows me to continuously hover as long as I’m not in combat. But enough about that for now. I need a favor.”

“Oh? I’m at least listening,” I said pausing in my walk.

“I live in Axiscore with my wife. She’s an NPC and six months pregnant. I want to get her out of there. It's becoming a powder keg if I ever saw one. A few of the villain players are starting to treat NPCs like slaves to rack up their points as fast as they can. I don’t think the situation will be stable for much longer. This area is clear of players due to Winters Haven and more unexplored areas to the East and South. It will be much safer for the time being.”

“So, what exactly do you want me to do?” I asked. I learned long ago to let the person ask you first. That way you can negotiate for a better deal.

“I want a condo here in this city. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just safe,” Daniel said with a serious face. “Do this and I’ll sign a two-year contract. Given that no one's leaving for the rest of their lives, it’s a short amount of time.”

“That news finally getting around?” I asked continuing to head towards the warehouse.

“Yeah. I’d say it's about fifty-fifty right now. You should have seen the streets of Axiscore. Perfect example of controlled chaos.”

“I believe it. I doubt humans have changed in seventy years,” I said.

“Huh? Seventy years?” Daniel asked making me realize what I just said.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, I’ll send the contract down to City Hall. Feel free to fill it out and ask Jane to give you a list of condos. I don’t mind if you go crazy and choose a penthouse somewhere.”

“Thank you! On behalf of Holy Thunder, the hero I was working with before he vanished, I want to thank you for freeing this city. He was a righteous fellow and couldn’t stand Scythe.”

“I am greedy. I did it for myself,” I said waving him off.

Child

We made it back to the warehouse a short time later. It looked just like I left it minus the bodies. There was also a sizable pile of scrap sitting to one side of the lot. The thugs were sitting to one side taking a break it looked like from the amount of sweat that stained their shirts. They jumped to their feet when they saw me walk in though, which I took as a good sign.

“Easy boys. I’m impressed that none of you ran when we didn’t show back up last night.”

“We would never even think of it.” They were shaking their heads so vigorously I worried they would start to fly soon. I guess I had put the fear of god into them.

“Good work. How about you all take the day off?” I said heading towards the building.

“Sir. We would much rather stay and help you. We don’t have anything else to do and we all sleep on the streets.”

I considered the one that had spoken up and realized it was Raphl. I’d almost forgotten his name. I nodded. “Very well. Finish your break. I’m not a heartless person and rested workers work harder.”

“Yes Sir,” Raphl said.

“Have you seen Alara?” I asked.

“She went down to the surface a while ago,” he answered.

“Thanks.”

“I’m going to go sign that contract. Keep me informed and I’ll keep you informed.” Daniel said before he teleported away.

I made my way to the elevator then down to the surface. I didn’t find her right at the exit of the elevator but looking around a bit, I managed to track her down where there was bare patch of soil. She was poking it with her finger.

“What are you doing, Love?” I asked coming up next to her.

“I gained quite a few levels. Playing with some of the magic I used back on Murgin to see if I can get it to work here,” she replied deep in concentration.

“Not a bad idea,” I said taking a few steps back to give her space.

Nothing happened for a good twenty minutes. I passed the time making blocks of matter from nearby scrap. I stopped when I heard a crack sound coming from her direction. A tree was growing from the soil that really shouldn’t have been able to grow anything for at least a hundred years. It was small at first but grew at a pace that was visible to the eye. After maybe five minutes, it was already four meters tall.

“Love. Give me some energy,” Alara said without moving from her spot.

“Of course,” I moved next to her and placed my hand on her back. I allowed my energy to flow to her gently.

The tree kept growing until it reached six meters then stopped. There were patches of the bark that looked like iron. The leaves were needle thin and quite obviously deadly. Likely taken from the soil and surrounding ‘nutrients’ that was the junkyard, it was rust colored. Alara stopped kneeling next to the tree and took a step back.

“Its beautiful love,” I said admiring her handywork.

“Not done,” she said. I was about to ask what she meant when a face formed about half way up the trunk. The tree slowly started moving and began pulling itself free from the ground. I realized it had the shape of a really tall man as it started to reshape itself.

“A treant,” I mumbled in admiration.

“First son of this new world,” she said leaning into my arms.

“Have you named him?”

“ElmIron,” she said placing a hand on him.

“I like it.”

Maintenance

ElmIron took nearly four thousand energy to create. Alara was happy with just the one for now. I left them to go work on my own child, the airship. I needed to get it running before I could do these missions. Plus, I liked the idea of having a floating fortress. This world was going into a chaotic period, everything I could get my hands on to help protect Alara was worth getting.

I popped ten energy pills. I’d found them at the market earlier. My energy jumped back to half full, though I felt like I was on a sugar rush. Each pill only added a hundred energy, but it was instant. Back in the front lot of the warehouse a few robots stood waiting.

One was a multi-armed bot that looked like it could work on seven things at once. Its body had several rotors that allowed it to rotate separate parts at a time. The next one was similar to a spider. It had eight legs and could work in even the most difficult locations. The last one was a large flying drone that could move at least a ton of material at a time.

I walked over to each one and scanned them. The world let me know when I could build each one with my power. I’d need to actually allocate some of my points to do it. I could play with the system and build each individual part then manually assemble the robots, but that was both time and energy consuming.

“Maintenance bot 00594. I want you to do a full scan of the airship. Please get me a full diagnostic report as soon as possible,” I ordered the spider bot. Its eyes blinked green then it took off into the building. “You two stay here on stand-by until I say otherwise.”

I made my way up to the control room of the airship. Sitting in the captain seat, I had Smith pull up my status screen. I needed to spend my power points and Feats. I wasn’t even sure how those worked. The information center was kind of vague on the subject back in Axiscore. Probably the Admins not wanting to overly influence the direction players took during their gameplay.

Name: Regan

Age: ????

Level: 29

Health: 19,592

Energy: 6,142

Armor: 99

Strength: 23 Dexterity: 25 Intelligence: 38 Wisdom: 37 Charisma: 29

Constitution: 24 Fate: 23 Perception: 26 Will: 66

Powers:

Technology Manipulation: 2

Construction Manipulation: 2

Energy Manipulation: 1

Unspent: 32

Feats of Power: 5

Current tier (Villain) 5 Payout 1,414,306 Days: 1

I smiled at how far the little incident with the mayor took me. The dimensional gateway might not be that far off after all. Though gaining XP like this would be hard to come by often. It's not every day you can off a mayor after all. I had quite a few points to allocate.

Wanting to take a balanced approach, I placed ten power points in each power. Then the last two into technology manipulation, bringing it up to fourteen. My head felt like a truck hit it with all the knowledge that was being unlocked. Even though I knew most of it already, there were a few things unique to this world that opened up before me. Mainly, I got a few skills that went with my powers

Technology Manipulation

Level 4 Skill – 10% Reduction in cost

Level 8 Skill - Integration. Combine a piece of technology with another piece of technology at half the cost of energy.

Level 12 Skill – EMP. Emit an electromagnetic pulse that is capable of frying circuits within a ten-meter range. 100 Energy

Construction Manipulation

Level 4 Skill – 15% increase to durability to structures constructed with your assistance.

Level 8 Skill – Visualization – able to create a blueprint from thin air using four hundred energy. Even a blind person could build a building based off of it.

Level 12 Skill – Reinforce – Reinforce a building, adding 5,000 durability for 1,000 Energy. Can be spent over time, will result in only random parts of the building to be reinforced until fully paid.

Energy Manipulation

Level 4 Skill – Passive Energy Draw - Increases energy regen by 15%

Level 8 Skill – Active Energy Draw - By focusing on the world around you, pull in energy at a rate of 10 Energy per second.

Next was the Feats of Power. Part of me wanted to save them for a rainy day. I went ahead with that plan by deciding to only use two of them. I used a lot of energy, so I went with the Energy Boost I. It gave a fifty percent boost to total energy. It put my energy level over nine thousand.

My stat scores also jumped a tremendous amount as well. Your powers gave additional stats for the whichever they work with. Technology manipulation gave me an additional forty-two points in my intelligence. I needed to remember to allocate my points more often.

Airship Repair

With my character maintenance done, I got to work on the airship. Most of the craft had been fused to part of the city. The drone I sent to do the scans was back and I had a fully mapped out schematic of the airship. The internal display up in the command center didn’t do it justice, this thing was massive. It came to nearly five hundred meters.

Most of the damage was just from it sitting for so long. I’d put it at being docked at the city for almost thirty years. I was impressed with the person who managed to build this vehicle. I worked through the rest of the day and part way through the night fixing everything I could. My recent boost to my powers allowed me to repair everything with enough matter. On another note, the area around the bottom of the elevator was starting to get nice and clear.

The biggest problem was the reactor. It used a small nuclear reactor for power and there was just barely enough fuel left for a short trip. I needed to make sure that trip put me in a spot where I can purchase said fuel. For that information, I turned to my newest employee.

“Zethia. That’s the closest place to acquire uranium boss. Some strange shits going on up there, so I don’t know if I would recommend it. The closest city would be Winter’s Garden. It’s also controlled by Villains,” Daniel said as he floated in the space near me while eating a sandwich.

I was waist deep in parts and wires as I repaired a propulsion unit on the port side of the airship. I was pulling matter from my inventory and molding it to the broken sections then using my power to repair the break. If I felt like it was worth it, I would upgrade the unit I was working on. So far, only life support and a few defense turrets have been upgraded.

“This is a game, right? Can’t we just buy it off like a market screen?” I asked.

“My Supers was based in reality, sure a bit of it is fanatical, but the transportation of goods required physical means,” Daniel said taking a bite out of his sandwich.

“Pity. How about you teleport over and grab some for me?” I asked. I reassembled the part I was working on and pulled myself out of the bundle of cables.

“Hell no! I like not being ripped to pieces by the temporal forces that are involved with my power,” Daniel said crossing his arms and shaking his head.

“So, no teleporting uranium, got it,” I said wiping my hands off. “Anywhere else we can get it from?”

“There are a few mines on each of the continent from what I’ve heard. Axiscore controls those on the mainland. Zethia, the one to the north. The other three continents haven’t been explored enough.”

“Sounds like we only have one option.”

“There are other means to travel,” Daniel said glancing around at the engine we were in.

“Nonsense. Road trip!”