Well, this was odd.

Damien read the notification again to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything. Nope, that was it. He opened the T-Deck and checked his status just to be sure, but nothing else had changed. This was the first time he’d unlocked a Talent without leveling up.

Pushing the questions of how he’d unlocked this new Talent aside, he checked the description of his newest addition.

Evolution

Description: Scan fallen enemies to unlock evolution paths and awaken more of your latent potential. Limited by Neural Augment Slots.

1 Neural Augment available. Augment may be freely swapped.

He paused for a moment to consider what he was reading. The whole latent potential thing seemed to be a recurring theme with the T-Deck, prompting even more questions. Just how much latent potential did he have if this piece of cyberware could unlock so much of it and in so many different ways? According to the description, he could now acquire new neural augments from slain foes simply by scanning them.

Somewhat disbelieving, Damien scanned the nearest fallen Royal soldier.

Evolution Activated.

Neural Augment Available: Competent Marksman.

Description: Increase your abilities with Firearms.

Effect: Firearms +2

Curiosity rising, he declined the prompt to accept and scanned another nearby enemy.

Evolution Activated.

Neural Augment Available: Marathon Runner.

Description: Increase the limits of your lung capacity, allowing you to perform physical feats for a longer duration.

Effect: Stamina +50

After scanning a few other Royals, he came to a conclusion about this new Talent. It seems like I can gain additional stats based on the individual strengths of each enemy. These guys are just lowly grunts, so at best they give me flat bonuses to a single one of my stats.

He looked around some more and found the gang member who’d been wielding a machete.

Evolution Activated.

Neural Augment Available: Average Bladesman.

Description: Increase your abilities with Bladed weapons.

Effect: Blades +1

This one seemed the most useful. Since most of their fallen enemies used pistols, they only offered bonuses to Firearms, a stat that Damien had no intention of making use of. His shuriken also made us of the Blades stat, so that would remain his top priority. He accepted the prompt for this neural augment.

Neural Reset Required. Neural Paths must be rebuilt. Please wait…

Damien’s vision went black for a few seconds, and he came back to only a moment later.

“You okay, Dame?” Marcus asked, not missing a beat. “You spaced out there for a second.”

“Um… yeah. I’m fine.”

“T-Deck shenanigans?”

Damien nodded. “I think so.” There was no point going in depth about the details of the T-deck, as no one else seemed to have cyberware remotely like it. Keeping things vague was the best way to go about it, he'd decided.

He checked his stats page and sure enough, his Blades stat had increased by 1 from 16 to 17. He really could improve his stats just like that. It was so strange, yet the wording of the description of the Talent made sense in a way. In terms of mental abilities, he was merely unlocking more of what was already within himself. For physical abilities like Stamina, his brain was allowing him to push the limits of what his body was already capable of even further. At least, that’s how he liked to think about it. If there was so much latent potential already within him, it meant that he wasn’t operating at anywhere near 100% of what he was capable of.

Marcus sighed aggressively. “We’ll get to the bottom of that thing some day, I’m sure of it. For now, let’s quickly loot these bastards and get the hell out of here.”

Damien agreed, and the two pirates rushed to loot the bodies of their enemies. Being low-tier street soldier, most of these Royals used equipment that was of poor quality, with a rare few items reaching a quality rating of Decent.

While Marcus grumbled about a lack of shotgun gear among the bodies, Damien mentally licked his lips when he spotted a katana on the ground. He hadn’t spotted a sword user earlier in the battle, so it must’ve belonged to one of the Royals that had been killed by a grenade while taking cover.

A scan revealed that it was a Kimura X-1 katana, the exact same model as his old weapon. Since he now had two stronger swords in his possession, this one wouldn’t be of much use on its own. It did, however, have a nice little attachment on the hilt.

Grip Enhancer

Enhances the precision and control of sword weapons.

He immediately decided to keep this new katana for himself with the plan of swapping the hilt attachment to one of his stronger weapons.

They continued taking the gear of any value and brought them to the UTS terminal at the corner of the yard. Using Lana’s Freedom Channel, they dispensed the items inside while Marcus interacted with the terminal.

“First we’ll sell off the stuff we don’t wanna keep for a nice little profit,” he said as he tapped on the interface. Thanks to the Freedom Chanel, the contents were quickly scanned, and pre-programmed offers came in for the looted gear. It wasn’t a great sum of Funds, but they quickly accepted the largest offers and split the profits.

“As for the gear we wanna keep,” Marcus continued. “We’ll send them to a specific address to avoid carrying them around.”

“What address?” Damien asked.

Marcus flashed a wicked grin. “It’s a secret. Just trust me on this.”

With a shrug, Damien complied and dropped the new katana and grappling hook into the tube. Wherever they were going, he’d see them again… probably. Once that was all done with, they made their way back from where they came.

Damien just now noticed that more gunfire was going off far in the distance. It was likely the KDL crews that he saw earlier clashing with Royals in the other yards. If what Marcus said was true, these docks would soon come under KDL control, and that would be better for everybody. At the very least, he hoped that the young worker inside would be treated better with the Royals no longer involved.

His attention wandered back to his newest Talent as they walked. The name itself—Evolution—was quite interesting. Based on its description, he had an opportunity to become stronger from every opponent he now defeated. In a strange kind of way, he would be evolving by absorbing some of their traits. It also implied that stronger opponents would give better bonuses. If this was true, then he’d just opened up a brand new path for getting even stronger. He let his mind drift off thinking about the possibilities.

When they returned to the wooden planks of the boardwalk, Marcus’ eyes let out a blue pulse and he mentioned that he was receiving a call from Big G. Damien nodded, letting his partner take the call as he noticed the faint sound of police sirens in the far distance.

A part of him instinctively worried that the cops would come for them, but he quickly pushed those thoughts aside. Even if the police were to respond in a timely manner, this whole incident would be chalked up to gang violence and forgotten about by tomorrow night. That’s just the way things were in Neopolis. The city was riddled with so much crime that all attempts at law enforcement were entirely half-assed. This made the NPD considerably less significant than one would assume, as long as you avoided a direct conflict with them, that is.

“Damn right,” Marcus said out loud. “Yard 5 is all clear. It was a piece of cake. Huh? Fuck no.” He paused for a moment then blurted out a laugh. “You saw the whole thing, eh? You’re welcome for the spectacle. Next time I outta charge you for it.” He laughed again then turned to Damien and gave a small nod. “Yeah, yeah. We can swing by if you really wanna see us.”

Marcus suddenly stopped mid-stride. “Look over to the boats? Which ones?”

Damien followed his crew mates’ lead, stopping and turning to face the water front. There was a group of about twenty ships all coming in through the clearing. They all moved together, giving off the appearance of a small armada.

“All those ships are Royals?” Marcus said in disbelief. “Do I wanna see a spectacle? Hell yeah, I do, but I don’t think you can top what-”

A series of violent explosions thundered in the distance, cutting off the pirate mid-sentence and turning each of the boats in the armada into pillars of devastating fire.

Marcus’ jaw dropped. “Fuckin’ aye…”