I set down the Beginner's Manual on the coffee stand. I had just realized that I was still in the living room of my apartment. I decided to excuse myself from not looking around, since I had just been whammied with a crap-ton of information. I took a seat on my coach before letting out a deep breath.

First things first, I needed to check some things out. Looking at my nanite counter, I quickly found out just how many nanites I truly had. 500 chunks, that's it. Well, I can work with that. It's the equivalent of 250 status points.

It sounded like a lot of money, but I knew there had to be a catch somewhere.

"Open status." I was cringing the whole time I said it. My embarassment quickly disappeared though, as a blue box appeared in front of me.

Name: Tony Eisen Species: Nanite-Human Gender: Male Level: 1 (7 Status Points) Age: 27 Agility: 1 Charging: 1 (EP Regen Rate: 2EP/Second) Dexterity: 1 Intelligence: 1 (Percieved time: 1.01x normal speed) Shield: 1 (Shield Points: 10. Costs 1EP/Second) Storage: 1 (Energy Points: 10) Strength: 1

All of my stats, at this point, were at 1. That meant I was in danger of becoming unstabilized if I died. I needed to change that. I couldn't do it right now though, since I still needed to check out the shop. Speaking of which, "Open shop."

Weapons Armor Tools Abilites Food Property Liesure Objects Status Points Search

I wasn't quite sure how to do anything, but I decided to go off instinct. Reaching out my hand, I tapped weapons. When I did so, the list of tabs remained in my vision. An additional blue screen appeared below the tabs though, all of them containing the different weapons I could buy.

I currently had 500 chunks, or 500,000 shards.

Knife: 1 shard. No ammunition costs Bat: 2 shards. No ammunition costs Sword: 3 shards. No ammunition costs Fragmentation Grenade: 50 shards. No ammunition costs Ballistic Pistol: 100 shards. Ammunition costs 1 shard/ten shots Ballistic Assault Rifle: 200 shards. Ammunition costs 3 shards/50 shots Ballistic Shotgun: 300 shards. Ammunition costs 1 shard/2 shots Ballistic Sniper Rifle: 400 shards. Ammunition costs 4 shards/10 shots Laser Pistol: 1 chunk. Ammunition costs 1 EP/shot Laser Rifle: 3 chunks. Ammunition costs 2 EP/shot Conventional RPG: 50 chunks. Ammunition costs 50 shards per shot Plasma Pistol: 100 chunks. Ammunition costs 10 EP/shot Plasma Rifle: 200 chunks. Ammunition costs 20 EP/shot Plasma Shotgun: 300 chunks. Ammuntion costs 15 EP/shot Stun Grenade: 500 chunks. No ammunition costs. No further entries available. Gain more nanites to see more options.

Now it made sense about all the money I'd been given. The ballistic weapons, which I believed were actually just normal pistols and such, used nanites to fire. Made sense, the bullets had to come from somewhere. That meant I would literally be shooting money around.

Lasers cost ten times as much, but used energy instead. I would have to buy charging and storage status points just so that I could use the weapons. Plus, I still wanted to upgrade my other status points as well.

I went to the other tabs available and started going through them. Food had some things like hamburgers and pizza for sale. None of the food was too expensive though, all of it costing a couple shards at most. Property, Tools, and Liesure objects was currently unavailable for some reason. Status points just let me buy additional stats by spending 2 chunks. The search just let me type in whatever I wanted to look up. Let me tell you, trying to use a floating blue keyboard is as weird as it sounds.

The only other addition tabs I was really interested in was the Ability and Armor tabs.

Extreme Jump (level 1): 5 chunks. You may now perform a super-human feet by jumping extremely high or far. Additional purchases increases height and length of jump. (EP Cost: 1) Duplicate (level 1): 10 chunks. You may create a duplicate of an inanimate object that lasts for 1 minute. Additional purchases increases duration time. (EP Cost: 10 at minimum, variant. Nanite Cost: Dependant on size of object) Flight (level 1): 10 chunks. You can now hover up to ten feet off the ground. Additional purchases increases height and speed. (EP cost 5/second) Magnetic Manipulation (Level 1): 30 chunks. You can now manipulate small objects through magnetic emission. Additional upgrades give you the ability to manipulate larger objects. (EP cost 1/Nanite shard). Status Boost (level 1): 50 chunks. You can increase one of your status points by 10% for one minute. Ten minute cool down on the status point boosted. Additional purchases increases boost percentage. (EP Cost: 20) Creature Summon (Level 1): 50 chunks. You may now summon one creature that is level 1 to fight for you. You choose the type of creature that is summoned. Additional upgrades increase the number or level of the creature that is summoned. (EP Cost: 20) Fire Emission (level 1): 50 chunks. You can now emit small amounts of fire from your body. This can be a constant stream or a pulse of fire. Additional upgrades increase amount of fire you can emit. (EP cost 20/second, variant) Electric Emission (level 1): 50 Chunks. You can now emit small amounts of electricity from your body. This can be a consant stream or a surge of electricity. Additional upgrades increase amount of electricity you can emit. (EP cost 30/second, variant) Plasma Emission (level 1): 100 chunks. You can now emit small amounts of super-heated plasma from your body. This can be a constant stream or a bolt of plasma. Additional upgrades increase amouunt of plasma you can emit. (EP cost 50/second, variant) No further entries available. Gain more nanites to see more options. Personal Armor: 10 chunks. A hardened suit of nanites that covers you in order to protect you. Shield Emitter: 10 chunks. Lets you project your shield into different shapes, such as a dome or wall. Battery Armor: 500 chunks. An armored suit that also houses additional shield batteries. Increases your shield capacity by 10% when worn. Does not increase EP drain. Solar Armor: 500 chunks. An armored suit that absorbs additional solar radiation. Increases your EP regeneration by 10% when worn. Does not increase shield capacity. Mechanized Armor: 500 chunks. An armored suit that also has its own motors. Decreases your agility and dexterity by 20%, but increases your strength by 50% while worn. No further entries available. Gain more nanites to see more options.

Again, this was information overload. The abilites were really interesting, the flight one especially. Still, they were all so expensive. I was currently looking at.... 17 minutes and 22 seconds before a horde of monsters would come to kill us all. That meant, I would need to look at the short game over the long game. Definitely not how I normally like to play, but this is life, not some video game.

I immediately bought the personal armor, a laser pistol, and 3 frag grenades. 11 chunks and 150 shards. That left me with 488 chunks and 850 shards. I went ahead and bought the ballistic sniper rifle, a sword, extreme jump, flight, and electric emissions. It cost a total of 75 chunks and 403 shards, leaving me with 413 chunks and 447 shards.

Now, it was time for me start buying status points. I could currently buy 206 ability points, but I wouldn't be buying that many. At most, I would buy 140. That would leave me with 132 chunks to save up and spend. I wasn't quite sure about in the future, but I would probably need to buy food, a house, and maybe some other equipment I hadn't seen yet.

First priority was to buy Capicity, Charging, and Shield. I needed shield for extra protection. That meant increasing charging so that I didn't drain my energy. I also needed to upgrade capacity so that I could actually use my new abilities and the laser pistol.

Besides that, I also needed to increase my agility and dexterity. Strength would have to wait. Intelligence was also a must, since I would be able to slow down my perception of time. Ugh! This was going to take a while. I glanced at the clock again. 15 minutes and 41 seconds. That was time I didn't have.

I went ahead and bought 40 status points each for Capacity, Charging, and Shield. Whenever I did that, I felt a rush unlike anything else I had ever felt. It was a tingling sensation all over my body, an electric jolt that was extremely pleasant. The closest I ever came to this was when I did skydivng before on a dare. Obviously, I had changed. Let's see how much. "Open Status."

Name: Tony Eisen Species: Nanite-Human Gender: Male Level: 13 (127 Status Points) Age: 27 Agility: 1 Charging: 41 (EP Regen Rate: 82EP/Second) Dexterity: 1 Intelligence: 1 (Percieved time: 1.01x normal speed) Shield: 41 (Shield Points: 410. Costs 41EP/Second) Storage: 41 (Energy Points: 410) Strength: 1

Great. Now I had 20 points to increase everything else. I put 10 points in Intelligence and then 5 points in Agility and Dexterity.

Name: Tony Eisen Species: Nanite-Human Gender: Male

Level: 15 (147 Status Points)

Age: 27 Agility: 6 Charging: 41 (EP Regen Rate: 82EP/Second) Dexterity: 6 Intelligence: 11 (Percieved time: 1.11x normal speed) Shield: 41 (Shield Points: 410. Costs 41EP/Second) Storage: 41 (Energy Points: 410) Strength: 1

Okay. That was done. Now, to see my purchases. "Open Inventory."

Personal Armor Laser Pistol 3 Fragmentation Grenades Ballistic Sniper Rifle Sword N/A

I decided to try what I'd done with the Store menu. Reaching out my hand, I tapped Personal Armor. Another blue menu popped up.

Would you like to equip Personal Armor? Would you like to extract Personal Armor?

I tapped equip. I felt the cold touch of the floor as it swarmed up my body. In the time it took for me to blink, I had already been completely covered in the gray nanites. They even covered my face. Again, I couldn't move and I had to struggle not to scream as I felt them cover my mouth. I felt the nanites lift off my face, my vision clearing as the nanites covering my face turned see through. I looked down at my body, seeing myself covered head to toe in black armor.

Black plates of metal armor covered my arms, legs, and chest. The parts that weren't covered in armor were covered in what looked, and felt, like black spandex. I took a tentative step forward. It didn't constrict my movements at all. The wonders of nanites. My head was also covered in black metal, making my face seem like an egg. The metal didn't appear to stop me from looking through it though, something that I couldn't explain.

I decided to check out the other things in my inventory. Maybe I could shorten the time though? "Equip sword." Nothing happened. Maybe I needed to do something else? "Open inventory equip sword." This time, my hand turned into a sword as nanites flowed up from the floor to recreate my hand. I was actually starting to get used to the whole 'body turning into objects' thing. I wasn't sure whether I should be happy or very concerned for my mental health.

Let's see if it worked the opposite way too. "Store sword in inventory." As I wached, the sword dissolved into grey goo and fell to the ground. It disappeared, seemingly passing through the floor.

A beep sounded out, causing me to look at the monster wave timer. 4 minutes, 59 seconds. Yeah, I needed to hurry it up.

The last thing I needed to do was check my abilities. How did I go about that again? I opened up the Beginner's Manual and turned to Basics of Abilities. Yep, all I had to do was say 'open ability list.' Easy enough. "Open ability list."

Extreme Jump (Level 1): Jump 20 feet high or 20 feet long. To activate, say the name of the skill. Costs 1 EP. Cooldown: 30 seconds Flight (Level 1): Hover up to 10 feet from the ground. To activate, say the name of the skill. Use your mind and think about how high and where you want to float to, then you'll do it. Costs 5 EP/Second. No Cooldown.

Electric Bolt: Create a bolt of electricity from your hands and fire it in the direction you are pointing at. May branch off and hit metallic objects around you. The strength of the bolt is determined by EP invested. Think of a number and that is how much EP you will use. To activate, say the name of the skill. Costs variable EP. Cooldown: (5*EP cost) seconds.

Electric Stream: Emit a stream of electricity from your hands in the direction you are pointing at. To activate, say the name of the skill. Costs 30 EP/Second. 10 second cooldown for evey second activated. Can be used for a maximum of 1 minute.

At least the abilites seemed simple. Say the name and you perform the ability. I might as well try it out now. "Flight." I wasn't thinking of the height I wanted to be at, so I immediately went to the max height of ten feet. Or eight feet since my ceiling was in the way.

"OW!" I yelled as I hit my head off the ceiling. Hard. I saw my shield value plummet from 410 to 408. In less than a second, it went right back to 410. Great, at least it worked. Apparently, I also felt pain too. I concentrated and thought of 2 feet. I descended from the ceiling that my body had been pasted to and was now floating about two feet from the ground.

I thought about moving forward and I did! This was amazing! I was so caught up in the joy of flying, that I forgot about the timer until I heard the beeping noise. 0:00.

I could immediately hear growls coming from outside. "Open inventory, equip laser pistol, deactivate flight." I fell to the floor as grey goo flowed up my body. The laser pistol formed in my hand in less time than it took to blink. My 82 EP regeneration rate, technically 41 since the other 41 was taken by my shields, meant that Flight didn't waste my EP.

I took a deep, shuddering breath as I gripped the laser pistol. It was time to face whatever horde of monsters that Gad had created.