Chapter 5: Chapter 5: The Power Of Perks

I study my reflection. This is the first time since I underwent my apotheosis that I am standing in front of a mirror so it’s the first chance I have had to actually look at myself since I met Ghriza. 

Honestly, I’m half surprised that the figure I see standing before me isn’t a true one-to-one clone of Augustus. Instead of becoming like a twin of his, I am pleasantly surprised that my true ideal self actually looks quite different from how Augustus looks. 

I am a few inches taller than I was before, standing a little over 6’8”. My muscles now bulge outward, which I know makes me look more intimidating than I did before from a purely masculine point of view. My hair has become darker still, becoming the color of midnight, and my eyes have turned the same shade. 

I am dressed in a clean uniform that all students who attend my school are obligated to wear. It is a sleek white thing that tends to cling to us. Supposedly it’s for the sake of getting us used to the outfits that actual tributes wear, but mostly it is a weird way to make us all look similar. I have always theorized that that’s for the sake of making it easier to forget that we’re all human, like our instructors.

There is a subtle savagery that I previously lacked that is clearly visible to me now. I study the figure staring back at me and I quietly realize that even mundane people, creatures who are not capable of traveling from universe to universe, will be able to detect it. It makes me smile. 

I have gained a sort of… weight that I had once lacked, indeed that most people lack. A degree of realness, of figurative solidity that I know many people are missing. And more importantly, I have been gifted an iota of knowledge. 

I know that there is more to existence than just this one place. And that knowledge is powerful. As I study myself I can feel my presence growing, that the moves I am going to make will have an impact on the place I am living in. 

There are text boxes in the corner of my field of view that quietly alter me to subtle changes to reality. These text boxes exist to help me better make sense of the impact of the perks I possess. I instinctively know that in the days to come they’ll also help me understand the value of the “items” I possess, which are powerful objects that persist across “jumps” and can modify reality as readily as my perks can. 

I have a mental database that informs me of the items I possess. I am linked to it on a deep mental level and can bring it up with a thought. Some of the trinkets in my possession are familiar to me, and a few of them are exciting. 

According to the database I have a mysterious “Sponsor”, which the strange menu assures me is not Ghriza, who will send me a helpful item every few days. It informs me that I also have a “Holo”, a potent 3D device that projects a map of the region I am in and even informs me as to the location of nearby foes. Sadly, that particular item is less than useful for me thanks to the potency of my “System”. 

Ghriza had, at least according to her, given me a particularly strong “System” which is the strange set of menus and things like symbols that lingered at the edges of my field of view. I don’t know if the actual “System” she gave me is truly that strong, but the perks that come with it are. 

Things like my “Gamer Body” and “Gamer Mind” are immensely powerful. Because of them, I don’t need to worry about pain, broken bones, or even sleeping, which will be a game-changing boon during the actual games. 

I stop admiring myself and I walk over to the closed door that leads in and out of my room. Right before I touch it I glance back at my room once more. It is messy but that gives it a nice “lived-in” look rather than making it seem creepily perfect. I chuckle as I glance at the room and then turn back. I open the door and in less than two minutes I am on my way to my school.

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The walk from my familial home to the academy I have been attending since I was a child is not a long one. Unsurprisingly my brother did not want me to have to walk far to get to school. As I slowly make my way to the school I have a perfect chance to make critical decisions. 

As it turned out, the strongest perks I possessed were usually ones that required active decisions. Not every truly A-tier perk needed to be actively thought about to work, but the ones that were capable of changing lives often necessitated a decision. At least in the beginning. 

As I slip out of the large manor in which I live I begin to muse on the nature of one perk in particular. This perk is named “Hyperspecialization” and is a “Capstone” perk from something called “The Generic Gamer Jump”. Those words mean fairly little to me, but I can appreciate the power given by the perk. 

It is a training booster, something that highly sharpens the effect training, practice, and attempts to hone my skills have on my skills. It is a bit finicky though, requiring that I select one skill, not as defined by the system itself but a skill nonetheless, and it will magnify the effects of training on that skill by a truly gigantic amount. Better still, it’ll say that I am always using that skill for the purposes of training, and thus be a passive way for me to accumulate experience with a skill. 

I feel the early morning sun on my skin as I consider which skill to select first. I glance at the sky and smile as I see the cloudless paradise above me. At the very same time, I flit through my list of skills. 

The list of skills I possess is an interesting one. It is not solely the “Class skills” I selected when I was becoming a fighter, a rogue, and a barbarian, but a longer list of skills that often related to my daily activities. 

Some of the things on the list are boring. Those ones are things like “Studying”. Others are much less boring, like “Spearmanship”. Most of my skills are at level one but a few of them, mostly my skills related to weapons, and various styles of unarmed fighting, are all at level twenty. There are also mysterious skills like “Luck” and “Mutability”. 

As I reach the halfway point between my home and school the look on my face turns serious. There is no one around me to observe me as I think about these sorts of meta-issues, and I want to go ahead and pick a skill that I know will help me survive. I can’t afford to truly get cocky here, the Hunger Games are still dangerous. 

I also happen to know something fairly important. Due in part to a meta-perk I have that allows me to fully assess, and understand my perks, powers, and even items, I can effortlessly see the synergy between “Hyperspecialization”, “Master of All”, and even other, lesser perks like “Experience Booster”. 

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I ponder how to best utilize my skills before opting to truly focus on the one thing that cannot be taken from me; my hands. By focusing on my hands I can ensure that my enemies can never put me in a corner by sneaking up on me when I am weaponless. 

The instant that I opt to focus on my hands I select “Unarmed Fighting” as my “Hyperspecialization” skill. I then immediately begin to feel the effects, as I subtly sense my muscle memory shifting and sharpening. 

At this point, I am a few minutes away from the school. With my enhanced vision, I can see it off in the distance, and now that I’ve made this choice I can begin to focus on efficiency. 

I start to jog towards the distant building. As I do I immediately notice something peculiar; no doubt due to “Gamer Body” the actual sensation of jogging feels no different to me than the sensation of walking. Each step I take while jogging causes me the same amount of strain that walking does, which is to say not at all. 

Even more important than that though is that one of the colored bars that float near the top of my field of view does not change as I jog. There is a green bar that is floating near the upper left of my field of view, one that I know is called my “Stamina Bar” which identifies how much physical energy I possess and it doesn’t go down as I jog. That suggests to me that, at least at my current level of health and speed, I can jog effectively anyway, for as long as I want! 

My jogging speed is no joke. I am far from a blur but thanks in part to a few perks combining well with my pre-apotheosis physique I am able to jog faster than many people can sprint. As I make my way through empty early-morning streets of the District 1 city I call home. 

My family lives near the outskirts of the city and as I jog through empty, only somewhat lit streets I can see many different mansions, not unlike my family’s in quality and beauty. District 1 is one of the richest districts in Panem since we produce many luxurious goods and ship them to the Capitol in exchange for a not-small amount of luxury and privilege ourselves. 

As I jog through the streets I gaze at the mansions and chuckle when I begin to notice something odd. I can see soft outlines of people, though to call them “outlines” implies that they are more coherent-looking than they actually are, as I gaze into assorted manors. 

This doesn’t cause me to stop jogging or lose focus but it does cause me to stare more intently at the manors that surround me. As I do the strange, pink outlines I can see loosely come together slightly more coherently, and before I can question what it is that I am sensing I receive an answer from the system as a text box appears solidly in the center of my field of view. 

[Alert: 

The perk known as ‘Scent of Blood’ is now active. This is part of a test to determine precisely how much supernatural input your transitory form can handle. It seems that ‘Scent of Blood’ is compatible with your current makeup and has been deemed ‘Safe’.]

That causes me to chuckle internally. As soon as I finish reading the text box it winks out of view and the power is fully turned on. This causes the world around me to explode in color and intensity. 

Every lifeform larger than a mouse in my line of sight, and even those hiding in their manors behind thick walls are suddenly revealed to me. At the very same time my mental mini-map also brilliantly explodes with new icons representing creatures I could sense thanks to my quasi-supernatural senses. 

That perk belonged to a powerful set of perks, which I could tell because each perk was color-coded to showcase the origin of said perks, entitled “TES: Werebeast”. I had many of those perks but only a handful of them were active at the moment. I had to assume that this was because the inactive perks were too supernatural for me to use them safely at the moment. 

Several perks from that list actually were already active, especially ones that encouraged me to eat those I killed. A not small part of me wants to test that out, just to be scientific and experiment with the totality of my powers, but I know better than to think that I am likely to get the chance anytime to try that soon. 

There was a tribute in the Hunger Games about three games ago, who went berserk and began to eat his victims. He… did not win his games. He was violently killed, almost certainly at the active direction of the Gamemakers, towards the end of his particular annual game. 

If I am to get a chance to eat a victim of mine I’ll have to arrange for them to meet their end at my hands before the reaping. It might be worth attempting to arrange for someone to meet an untimely end, just to go ahead and experience the powerful boost offered to me by “Honor The Prey”, another of the “TES: Werebeast” perks I already have active. If not… I’ll need to experiment with that as soon as I arrive at my next destination. 

It is as I am thinking about all of this, murder, potential cannibalism, and other darker things, that I near the academy where I am enrolled. My brother’s eerie building looms in the distance as I make my way out of the outskirts of the Jade City and into the part of the city where factories, workshops, and other buildings begin to rise out of the ground and dot the landscape. 

As I draw closer and closer to the stark white building where I have spent so much of the last few years I begin to feel goosebumps begin to emerge across my arms. In District 1 school invariably promises violence as training, including sparring, is a part of our daily activities. Internally a not-small part of me growls as I think about what violence I am capable of with this new form. 

Soon, very soon, I will have a chance to test out my new and improved body.

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