Chapter 5: Chapter 4: System’s Online

Shaking himself from his stupor, Jack started searching for a way to get out of the SCV's cockpit, as the sealing cover had been rather heavily damaged and his battery was utterly and completely drained. Before he could get too far in his search, however, a bright green-glowing screen flared across his vision, all but blocking his sight. It featured the emblem of the Terrans as a whole, a stylized golden eagle swooping with a  triangle in the background, and the bold word: 'VICTORY', waiting for his confirmation.

"Adjutant, is this your idea of a joke?" The buzzer-like chime of negative resounded in his ear, "Would acting manager Pilot 21283 please clarify?" "The victory screen on my HUD. Is that some sort of cheeky way to tell me that all the Zerg are actually dead and not just playing possum to get me to come out? Because I do appreciate that, even if the way you did it was a bit..." Jack trailed off into silence, as the negative response played once again. "Acting manager Pilot 21283 seems to be suffering from combat-related stress, there is no such item being displayed upon the HUD."

When Jack studied the screen more closely, it wasn't hovering on the same plane of vision as the indicators for resources were, it was more like a virtual interface was hovering just before his face, like an over-excited friend demanding you look at their tablet. "Confirm?" "Acknowledged, Pilot 21283's behavior is confirmed to be abnormal." "Not you!" As the verbal response didn't seem to do anything, he reached up and attempted to press the button with his right hand instead, and while he felt no physical touch, the screen did react. It showed a bar that filled up steadily, counting off 'Enemies defeated: 70 XP, Resources Spent: 5XP, First Win Of The Day: +25%' The bar slowly filled up to display 94 XP and came to a halt, a narrow strip from filling the bar completely. "Just like the normal game... sort of. So my life has game rules now? At least it's a game I know..." He muttered to himself. "I mean, after everything else that's happened, I'm just going to accept it and see where it goes."

The end of the bar showed an icon of a man's portrait, with a communication device in one ear and a microphone reaching around their head. It was a surprisingly boring-looking face, with a thin mustache and some wrinkles from age being the only really notable features. A face you could lose in a crowd, really. But Jack knew that icon was used to indicate the Terran Civilians, the noncombatants who did the odd jobs that showed up in the background of the campaign missions. "Why couldn't there have been one more Zergling, just so I could know what happens when I fill the bar up? Well, okay, one more Zergling would have probably been more than I could handle, things were close enough as it is..." He pressed through the confirmation screen once more. 

A few musical notes in sequence played, along with another pop-up 'Achievements Unlocked: Surrounded by fear, and dead men! I want to hit them with my sword! You know what 'Commander' means, right? They called me M.A.D.' One after another, the chime replaying for each achievement and burying the others behind the new one before he could even read them. When it finally stopped, he started to read through the most recent. 'They called me M.A.D. - Finish a battle with no intact units on either side. Increased chance of successful intimidation attempts.' Well, that wasn't a bad thing, but how much of an increased chance? He was a gamer, he wanted numbers! Confirm.

'You know what 'Commander' means, right? - Win a battle without any units under your command. When you take personal control of a unit in battle, unit stats increased by 100%.' See? That's a perk! And a damn good one! Even right now, it meant he had a better chance if he had to fight in an SCV again, but he could already imagine how overpowered it would be if one day he was taking the helm of a battlecruiser and making the Hyperion unique unit from the game look like his little brother. The only downside was that the perk seemed to be designed to make him lead from the front, where it was the most dangerous. Jack decided to do some testing on his remaining SCV, just to be sure how this worked, later. 

'I want to hit them with my sword! - Engage in a battle with only melee units. All melee units HP increased by 10%.' Jack stared at that notice with decided confusion. After all, he was pretty sure that the SCV was the Terran's only unit that could be considered a strictly melee unit. Unless he could take a page from the Dominion's book in the game and tame some Zerglings himself or something, this perk was pretty useless. Oh well, at least his workers would be able to better defend themselves, and it still applied to himself when he got into an SCV. 

'Surrounded by fear, and dead men! - Emerge victorious in a battle outnumbered at least 5 to 1. When facing at least 5 to 1 odds, all units stats increased by 50%.' A perk that sounded like it would be useful if he was utterly reckless, or could save his life if he was severely ambushed. It wasn't enough to level the field by itself, but he had been getting a lot of stacking bonuses, and he was already trying to imagine how many more he could get. "If I get enough stacking bonuses like this going forward, everyone else is going to cry. It's practically forcing me to become a cheater, myself. Do I have to keep trying different weird tactics to get this... system, I guess, to acknowledge more achievements?" 

A sharp chirp in his ear demanded his attention, the Adjutant interrupting his thoughts. "If acting manager Pilot 21283 is injured, he should head to the medical ward. You have been standing around in a daze for several minutes now. Lacking any injury, it is recommended that the corpses be handled now." Jack almost wanted to get upset at the AI for interrupting him, but he had a point. He was covered in blood and could go over anything else a little bit later, when he had more time to think. He grasped at the emergency release for the SCV's cockpit, wincing as the mangled remains of a Zergling landed atop him once the barrier was removed. "Disgusting..." he retched, shoving it away from him and crawling up onto his wrecked SCV warhorse. "I am not getting into the other SCV covered in Zerg bits, I'll have to burn it afterward to get rid of the stench..."

After a brief shower to feel clean enough to climb into a cockpit without soiling it to absurdity, he walked back toward the SCV bay, yawning. "I didn't even get a full night's sleep..." he complained, "Adjutant, do we have coffee or any other stimulants on-board?" An affirmative chirp answered, "There are combat-grade stimulant packs available in the medical bay. However, the side effects include-" "Yeah, no, I'm well aware just how bad stimpacks are for the troops, thanks. I won't be touching those. I'll work through it." 

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Climbing into his remaining SCV, he started booting it up to drag the corpses into a corner of the room to start. Almost immediately he jolted forward, having to catch himself from falling forward with a series of thunderous stomps to keep moving forward until he could lean against the opposing wall. That 100% increase to units he piloted himself wasn't just noticeable, it was dangerous! After using it for a full day's labor, he had sort of gotten the hang of things, but now the SCV was almost too fast to control. Easing back slowly, he took careful, deliberate steps toward the assorted Zerg bodies around the room, grabbing the intact ones one by one, "Adjutant, we have an incinerator or something, right?" A green arrow pointed back toward the larger SCV-traversable hallway that led to the production area, and he spent a while ensuring every last bit of Zerg flesh was fully incinerated. 

After instructing the Adjutant to build another SCV again, considering the last one had fulfilled its duty saving his life, he tossed the pieces of it into a furnace to recycle what of the metal was salvageable. "Thank God the production facility is automated. If I had to build every SCV myself, forget twelve hours... I probably wouldn't be able to build one in twelve days." Docking the SCV back onto the charger, he began to move back to the bunk he had claimed earlier, exhausted down to his bones. "Adjutant, please alert me when you detect anything hostile on the scanners as soon as possible going forward, instead of waiting until they're inside the base." With a beep of confirmation in his ear, he collapsed back down and yanked the blanket over his head. 

Still, while his body was weary, his mind was still going a mile a minute. There was a new icon in his HUD that had the Terran symbol on it, same as earlier, and when he thought about it, the screen he considered some sort of virtual control panel hovered in front of his sight again. After checking multiple times with the Adjutant, at least cameras couldn't see the screen, but they would notice him absentmindedly waving his hand around in front of him, which made him look a little... odd. He brought it up again and started to look through the screen for anything else he might have missed. It displayed the experience bar from earlier, going from 0 to 1 and almost reaching the 1 with the same icon of the civilian he saw earlier. 

Aside from that, it had a button he could press to review achievements, but it only displayed the ones he already had. And here he had been hoping to get a glimpse at what sort of crazy benefits he might be able to get with less effort, if he could see the complete list ahead of time. Oh well, he was sure to be getting in fights going forward, and none of the achievements had given him anything outright bad. The last two buttons read 'Battle' and 'Production'. He didn't exactly feel up for investigating anything related to battling right now, but the production button was greyed out and did nothing when he tried to press it. Lacking other options, he pressed battle instead. 

An intense sensation of vertigo escaped him as he felt as if he had shot into the sky, staring down at the blue-painted armor of a command station from high in the air. "Calculating assets." declared a robotic voice that was most definitely not his normal slightly feminine-sounding Adjutant. This was decidedly a male voice, and it sounded deep, like someone had autotuned a grandfather speaking. A single SCV popped up alongside the command center below him, and then the voice spoke again, "Completed. Choose difficulty." The prompt displayed a list of options: very easy, easy, equal forces, hard, harder, very hard, elite, and a few simply labeled as 'Cheater' 1, 2, or 3. "So it's making me do a battle simulation with the forces I have on hand? That's useful training, I suppose, but it's a little concerning it knows that I only have one SCV to command at the moment. I guess I should be thankful it counts the SCV, actually, since I'm up here and can't pilot it..."

He just pressed the button labeled 'equal forces' and a countdown began, everything unfreezing. His single SCV started to march over to a row of minerals that had been placed near his command center, the usual blue variety, and spent several minutes simply going back and forth. As soon as he could he built a second SCV, and was producing a third when a pair of Zerg drones scuttled into view of his base. The builder and harvester units of the Zerg, comparable to his SCVs... at least, normally. His SCVs should have a 10% increase in HP, and that was the sort of thing that easily determined a fight between approximately equal units. One SCV burst into a small display of flames with a pop, and the two drones both died with a tinny, comedic representation of the alien's shriek. His other SCV emerged from the command center, and he sent the pair in the direction the drones came from. 

Discovering a Zerg hatchery, the main base that produced the disgusting, slug-like larva all Zerg creatures evolved from, he set them to attack the structure. It seems his enemy had simply thrown his workers at him and was left with no way to defend itself, so it was just a short, boring wait before the hatchery exploded into a puff of gore. 'VICTORY'. 

Jack struggled not to shout as his elevated perspective shot back toward the ground at startling speed, shaking his head in disorientation as he realized he was lying in bed still, all of that seemingly having been going on in his mind. "Note to self, be careful where and when I try that sort of battle. I'm not sure I could have responded if anything happened when I was in the middle of that. I don't suppose it has a pause feature, huh." A brief, melodic chime sounded out with a notification of "Simulated battle victory! +1 XP" and the narrowest sliver of the gap keeping him from reaching the level-up was filled in. 

Excited, he immediately went back to the screen in order to do another battle, wanting to farm out a few more battles to complete the level-up immediately, but was blocked by a greyed-out button with a 23:59:30 displayed on the timer. Once a day only, huh? Come to think of it, he didn't even know if this planet followed 24-hour days, but he had a solid way to find out, now. Sighing with frustration that he wasn't able to find out exactly what that level-up meant tonight, he struggled to lay back and catch up on his interrupted sleep. Worst case scenario, he would find out in five more days, if the Zerg left him alone for that long. 

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