Ellowyn was running, a brown haired girl with rabbit ears stood before her, gun trained. The girl pulled the trigger and Ellowyn felt a warm sensation in her chest. Looking down, she saw a red flow of liquid streaming down her black combat shirt. Failed to stop her running, she fell down and rolled on the floor.

When her vision stopped spinning, she brought her hand to her chest, only to coat it thick in blood. She stared back at her attacker, the rabbit eared girl’s eyes were emotionless. To Ellowyn’s horror, she was staring at herself.

Gasp. She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, trying to calm her rapid heart. Only a nightmare huh. She thought back to the moment she held the gun towards Cassie. I would have gone insane, had I ever killed her. She knew that despite all the crazy things she would do to protect herself and her family, killing was not one of them. She would have lost her mind too, had she the time to look back at the man’s bleeding leg after her bullet shattered his femur.

Checking her phone, she was surprised that at least 24 hours had passed after her chat with Carl. It seemed the system kept her asleep to help with natural healing. She removed her shirt and caressed her taut abdomen. I can’t believe it already healed. She was amazed at the world’s medical capability, for there was not even a scratch that remained. However, the system did warned her that the teared muscles hadn’t completely mended yet.

Standing up, she fought the dizziness from laying down for too long. Let’s go for a walk.

It was early morning, the cool, silky mists swirled around Ellowyn as the floating sun orbs glowed softly, making the ambiance around her mysterious and surreal. She took a long deep breath, enjoying the fresh earthy scent of the forest, or garden, as Alice calls it.

She shivered, remembering the deep bleeding gashes caused by grazing bullets. Even when there was no pain thanks to the system, she couldn’t help but feeling quite traumatized from being so near death’s door. Shaking her head, she continued walking.

Despite having strained her body one night ago, she felt strangely refreshed. Almost breaking into a jog, Ellowyn reminded herself the torn muscles beneath her skin hasn’t finished bonding together yet.

“You should visit here at night, the glowing plant life will be beautiful.”

Ellowyn turned around to see Alice appearing from another forest path. “Hi Alice.”

“You shouldn’t move around so much. The injuries aren’t completely healed yet.” She gave Ellowyn another hug.

“I only wanted some fresh air”. Ellowyn rested her head on the pair of bountiful bosoms, taking in the sweet earthy scent from the garden that blends in harmony with Alice’s fresh minty fragrance.

“I know its been very rough on you.” She caressed Ellowyn’s head. “Dad is doing everything he can to improve our security.”

“How do you cope with such a dangerous living environment?”

“Don’t worry Ellowyn. It had been six years since there was a security breach. To be honest, I was never threatened so much as you did. And I can defend myself. That is probably why they went for you instead of me. I’m sorry.”

“It would be a lie to say that I wasn’t scared, but such is life. Now if you would kindly stop pitying me like some sad ball, I’d be grateful.” Ellowyn chuckled. “And I want to learn some self defense too.”

“I know your doctor will frown at this, but do you want to join me for some shooting range practice tomorrow morning?”

‘Gladly.” She beamed. “While we’re at it, would you give me a tou-”

A white blob flew past her vision, she jolted from Alice’s embrace and looked around. A bird the size of a small dog was flying in large circles around Alice.

“Come, Zykke!” Alice received the speeding silver bullet head on and warped it in her tight embrace.

The creature took Ellowyn’s breath away. It looked like a normal arctic fox but only if one ignores the large pair of feathery wings mounted on its back. Two pair of black thrusters, one of each mounted on the side of its neck and the lower end of its back.

“Thrus.. Thrusters? Why would there be thrusters!” As much as Ellowyn was fascinated by the marvel of genetic engineering that was the fox, she was more stumped that it needed thrusters for lift.

“Zykke is our very first creation of a winged animal. The procedure went smoothly and he grew up quite well and healthy. Although there was a miscalculation and his wings weren’t strong enough to support his bodyweight.”

Alice paused and ran her hand over Zykke’s soft furry back. “I couldn’t stand seeing him flapping his wings so helplessly, so I and the engineers drafted up the plan to attached the new electro wave thrusters onto his side with bioglue and have him control them with a brainwave sensor.”

“At that time, the idea itself sounded crazy.” She chuckled. “But after two months of hard work and training, here he is, flying all over the place!”

Zykke barked softly, as if to confirm her.

“But wouldn’t the thrusters get too hot, having to provide so much lift?” Ellowyn stopped her silly gaping.

“The little heat these electrowave thrusters give off is absorbed and distributed throughout his body. Its not any hotter than a normal jog.” Alice sounded smug.

“May I pet him?” Ellowyn leaned in closer.

Startled by her movement, Zykke opened its wings and took to the sky.

“Zykke!” Alice stumbled forward after he came back down again and landed on her back. “As you can see, he’s rather shy of strangers.”

Zykke’s two front paws grabbed hold of her shoulder while she put both of her hands behind her back to support his legs. He opened his wings wide, preparing to take flight again at a moment’s notice.

Ellowyn gasped, the scene looked quite surreal, with zykke’s wings spread behind Alice’s back, making her look like a mesmerizing angel.

Illustration:Spoiler : Zykke pose #1Spoiler :

Zykke pose #2Spoiler :

“Lets take a seat.” Alice carried Zykke behind her back and walked towards a nearby bench. Detecting their presence, the bench glowed to life and started cleaning its surface using a blast of air.

“He’ll warm up to you soon ,don’t worry.” Alice tried to console Ellowyn.

“Its alright, I’m never really good, dealing with animals.” She put on a wry smile.

“I’ve been under attack countless times, both physically and verbally for being a genetic engineer. I’ve had countless failures where I only continued out of pure hope that there was something to be learned and improved. Me and dad have had many research breakthroughs and cured dozens of genetic diseases, and yet all we get is public scorn and blackmail threats from terrorists for our research.”

She sighed and make eye contact with Zykke. “It is only in these moments when I know I’ve created something beautiful, that I find myself at peace.”

Ellowyn could only nod, for she had no words that will express her sympathy.

“It hurted when my test subjects die. I know they’re just animals, but I always try my very best so that my next creation would live.” Alice’s voice sounded desperate.

“I’m sorry that I don’t have the skills to help you with your work. But now that I’m a part of your family, you can always lend my shoulder when you need someone to talk to.”

“Thanks.” Alice smiled.

Back in her room, Ellowyn began following Carl’s suggestions to improve the system. It seemed doing so was easier said than done, she scowled. Because of how the system’s architecture differ from that of the current world’s, there were no drivers she could use to bridge the system and the devices she had.

Her plan for the moment was to override the health sensor attached to her abdomen and have it act as a wireless hub to connect her phone into. She managed to set up the simple interface to operate the sensor, but couldn’t find a way to establish connection, the procedures were too different to bridge with self study code alone. Sigh, Carl wasn’t being helpful either with his “You have to learn these things yourself” attitude.

“I give up!” She threw her hands in the air and dismissed the code-filled windows. “Lets take a break.”

Welcome to World of Mindcraft!

Hi snowlion! I thought you got bored and left for good :P

Nah, I like the game. Though its been a really busy week.

Ready for some drone bashing?

Alright

lets wait a bit for Dave

I’m here

We’re going to non newbie friendly hunting grounds, so stay close and becareful

Oi Bit85, he’s here for fun! Snow, just fight your heart out, die and we’ll revive you in a jiffy.

Okay :)

They arrived at a robotic graveyard, scattered everywhere where large mounds of broken robotic pieces.

“Enemies here are over you skill level.” Bit warned, he took a drone from his inventory, its metallic spherical surface was riddled with bumps and scratches, on its sides mounted two rusted cannons. “This is the newbie orb, it’ll help keep you from dying too much.”

The orb spun to life, its rusted thrusters glowed a soft blue and hovered around Ellowyn.

We’ll be doing a quest at the nearby town, pn us if you need anything

k

She walked cautiously, keeping the noise level of metallic crunches under her feet to the minimum and ducking low. Hearing beeping noises, she stopped and peeked over a large pile of rubble.

Three triangular drones were patrolling the area, they flew close together, covering each other weak spots. Two of them were equipped with force blades while the last had a missile launcher.

Ellowyn threw a piece of rubble towards the drones, startling them and turning their attention towards the noise while she quietly and swiftly charged.

She thrusted her gunblade deep inside the first drone and open fired, destroying its core.

Pulling the blade out of the wreck, she ducked just in time before the blade of the second drone passed above her head.

She pulled the blade successfully out and spun around to meet the oncoming blade with her own.

As she was blocking the second drone’s slash attack, she realized her position was open and vulnerable for the third drone to fire its missiles.

Her skill level wasn’t high enough to deflect its blade to the side and her strength wasn’t enough to push the melee drone back.

There is only so much I can do with a keyboard. She shrugged and braced for the impact that never came. The newbie orb chose that moment to obliviate the missile drone with its high explosive bullet.

The explosion staggered the melee drone and she used the opportunity to push forward and sliced its sword mount off. Stripped of its weapon, the drone was taken care off in seconds.

The hunt continue for an hour before she got bored and started to browse the web alongside with playing the game.

hey

sup

Are you good with electrical design?

I have a five year degree on it :)

I’m trying to override the health monitor HX-65 so that it can establish whitetooth connection with my Endroid phone.

… why the hell would you want to do that? No offense, but I can’t think of a reason. First of all, they communicate at different bandwidths entirely, and the communication protocol aren’t compatible either. I’d strongly suggest you find an alternative to what you want to do.

What else am I supposed to do? She whacked her head. The system could only communicate with electrical devices within her body cavity. She shivered at the thought of putting anything metallic inside her. The health monitor was her only choice.

I’m sorry, but I really have to do this. Could you at least point me in the right direction?

Look, such a problem would give headaches to even a team of developers.

If you’re that desperate then I suppose I could get you an invite to the Sentria

The hacker group?

More like the hacker mob. Most of the time, we’re just a bunch of internet people doing whatever they want. The cases you see on the news are usually done by the elite top or just some random hacker claiming to be part of the Sentria. We’re so big now, even terrorists can steal money from banks and claim to be us :/

why are you admitting to be part of Sentria? Aren’t public chats like this monitored?

I’m pretty sure the feds monitor even our lower ranked servers, though I doubt they have the kind of resource to stop every minor Sentria groups. As long as you don’t plan some epic heist on these chat, you’ll be fine.

I sent you the link to their recruit site, just follow the instructions.

She had to exploit a simple vulnerability to hack in and enter the recruiting server, according to the instructions. Ellowyn smiled, such a piece of cake. She succeeded in no time at all,

Inside the recruit server, she found more instructions to hack into subsequences servers. She knew very well that was the entrance exam, for she had done countless of them in the past, even going as far as making the tests herself. While the exploit and penetration methods were different, she had no problem executing them for the logic remained the same.

Sentria recruitment server: access granted

Blazing through the test, she arrived at the main recruitment server within the hour. Her pulse was quick and her hands were trembling. I hadn’t so much fun in years!. She was about to speed through the ranking tests and obtain the highest rank, only to stop and remind herself of the current task.

//Welcome to Sentria general chat

Holy f* you’re fast! Its not even an hour yet, are you sure you’re not some elite hacker?

haha, maybe I am. :P

Seriously though, you got some talent, kid.

There are no instructions on how to get into the next rank so you’ll have to figure that out yourself, though I think you can just get whatever you need right now in our wiki server. Just gain access to it the same way you got in here.

so you guys are all here

Server admins nowadays are usually a part of Sentria, its like some unwritten requirements or something.

cya in a bit.

The wiki server indeed had the documents she needed in a much more unrestricted way, compared to the online articles she read that were strictly monitored.

Filling the virtual screen with schematics and modification guides, she once again got to work.

The bright golden rays of sunlight hugged the faint features of her sleep deprived face, nudging her awake.

She opened her eyes grudgingly and rubbed her numb arms, realizing that she had fallen asleep on the table. Let’s see if that was all a dream. She opened her phone and smiled, I really did it. The phone beeped, signalling it had established connection and the system showed her various notifications. She had successfully linked her phone with the system.

While the difference in system architecture didn’t allow her to run apps natively, she could access the web from the system itself, which was a major breakthrough.

Before she could celebrate her success, however, there was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was Alice, she was wearing a tight orange t shirt and a very short black gym shorts.

“Ready for our shooting practice?”

Gdoc link, please comment if there are errors or questions/suggestions!