Act 3-

--- Joshua ---

“Okay, so muscle growth is caused by the minor tearing and then healing of muscles, hence ‘no pain, no gain’.” He told himself pacing a bit in the park he’d taken to performing his power testing in. “Now since I have a healing factor this means theoretically, I should be able to accelerate this whole process from a few months to a few days.”

He rolled his neck as he shook his arms out and hopped foot to foot. “All I’ve got to do is exercise.”

He nodded to himself and just stood there for a full minute.

“Damn my indoor nerd aversion to exercise!” He cursed the trait currently holding him back while shaking a fist ruefully at the sky.

After another minute or so of stalling he finally sighed and said, “Fuck this is going to suck.” before getting on his stomach and putting his arms out to the side.

Somehow fitting in another minute of procrastination, he sighed once more before pushing himself off of the ground.

“One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Six… Seven… Eight… Nine… Urgh. Ten… Huh. Eleven… And nope.” He collapsed much like he had the last time he attempted this exercise. (Well at least I actually finished the eleventh push up this time…)

He waited a few minutes for the burning in his arms to recede before making another attempt and this time making it through his twelfth push up before collapsing.

“Fuck this going to be a long day.”

Scene Consequences

-Gained 1XP to Healing Factor

--Currently: Lv. 1 (3/4)

-Progress made towards [??? Strength] Power. (1/3)

--(Note: Malice Vials offer +1 power progress.)

---

Eventually after making it to twenty-five push-ups he decided that he’d made enough progress for the day, having managed to bring himself within the ‘average’ push up range for a high schooler.

So instead of the monotonous grinding that was significantly less satisfying when he couldn’t see a number pop-up with his gains -(Lucky Gamer-powered bastards…)- he instead decided to focus on his more interesting and personal power.

“Alright, so I know I have a connection of sorts to my tags, so maybe I can use that to do something to whatever object I manage to tag.” He told himself, as was becoming habit. “Now if we’re going off the most basic and common powers, hopefully this means I can use my tags for a form of telekinesis on whatever I tagged.”

Nodding to himself he looked around the clearing before focusing on a small rock nearby. (Probably better to start off small for this kind of thing.)

With that thought in mind he picked up the rock before setting it down, a large black handprint wrapping around it.

“Okay, let’s do this.” He nodded, loosening himself up once more before pointing a hand towards the rock and tugging on his connection to the tag.

The first dozen or so times he tried this he felt nothing, but after a few more he managed to feel something happen with the connection, even if wasn’t entirely sure what it was.

All he could tell for sure was that the connection was reacting, almost like it was shivering ever so slightly every time he tugged on it.

After another hour of no visible progress he sighed before running a hand down his face. “And I was so sure I had something with this.”

Scene Consequences

-Gained 1XP towards (???) Tags.

--Currently: Lv. 1 (3/4)

-Progress made towards [??? ???] Sub-Power. (1/4)

--(Note: Malice Vials offer +1 power progress.)

---

Deciding that the tag-telekinesis thing was a bust for now, he took a moment to stare at the black substance dripping onto his palms as it slowly dripped out from under his nails.

(Whatever my power set is it seems to revolve around this stuff, meaning if I want to do bigger things I need to be able to make more of it.) He pondered, slowly pooling the substance in his hands before something else occurred to him.

(Thinking about it I don’t actually know what this stuff does to people other than me. For all I know it could be radioactive or some shit.) He felt like that would be just his luck. Wish for a power all his life and then get one that would have him slapped with a kill warrant within a week of using it publicly.

Given how he’d slapped a few tags onto the various trees in this little park clearing, he was fairly aware of the fact that his power wasn’t immediately harmful to other living things, but that didn’t mean it was harmless either.

And while he knew the malice merchant was doing some research into whatever he was making, but seeing as how he didn’t entirely trust the man, he felt it might be best to run a few easy tests himself.

Looking around a bit for a suitable test subject he eventually found a small cluster of flowers, something that would do as a decent first test to see if this stuff was toxic to their smaller forms.

Walking over he began to pour the substance on one side of the cluster, letting only minute amounts of it spread throughout the rest in the hopes of seeing if different exposure levels had different effects.

As he did this he felt connections fairly similar to what he had with his tags beginning to form between him and some of the more heavily coated flowers.

“Maybe there is something here…” He murmured to himself before trying to more thoroughly coat the flowers he was connecting with in the substance.

Unfortunately despite his best attempts the black substance began to evaporate before it could actually take hold of the flowers, and at his level he just couldn’t both keep a hold of his connection to the flowers and produce enough of the substance to compete with the evaporation.

“Damn it…” He cursed starting to feel his headache return at the same time his stomach began to growl. “And I’m so close to… something this time, I can just feel it.”

He knew Deviant powers took time to develop but having not one but two powers right at the tip of his fingers, only for them to slip away was… disheartening to say the least.

“No, can’t think like that.” He told himself. (I can’t let a single bad showing ruin me.) “I may not have figured any new powers out, but at the very least I know I’ve got two I can look into. And if I’m really that desperate…”

A vial of black and red flashed through his mind, before he shook his head once more.

“Let’s call it a day for today, I’d rather not push my headache too far.”

If he was lucky he’d be able to get more done tomorrow than he did today.

Scene Consequences

-Due to experiment synergy gained 2XP towards (???) Production.

--*Skill Level Up* (???) Production Lv. 2 (0/6)

-Progress made towards [??? ???] Power. (1/5)

--(Note: Malice Vials offer +1 power progress.)