18 – Greed punished

Cal’Eer and Julian spent a week at Mesa Village. Cal lazed around, mostly, while Julian practiced a few ideas for new styles of combat, hunted monsters, and fiddled around with his Precision Morphing skill. He was close to being able to combine his guns and the crystal cores, he was sure of it, but the limits of the skill and the rudimentary technology he could make with it were proving to be very hard to overcome.

“We leave tomorrow.” He finally said.

“Aw, come on.” Cal protested. “Can’t we rest a day longer?”

“Nope. I’m bored, and I want to progress to the next floor.”

***

The way up was hidden inside the mesa. Julian had spotted a suspicious access point during one of his scouting and hunting rounds, and the access then revealed itself to be a door leading to the inner workings of the tower. There, the elevator was waiting for them with its doors wide open, and a light tune was playing from a hidden speaker.

Cal rushed in, but Julian stopped him.

“Hold on a moment,” he said, looking carefully around.

“What’s the problem?”

Julian scratched his chin and hummed. “That’s odd.” He mumbled, and approached a dark corner of the long corridor leading to the maintenance stairs, where the well-lit atmosphere turned eerie and dangerous.

He squinted. “Come on, this place gives me the chills!” Cal said from behind.

“I recognize this.” Julian said, approaching a console.

On the screen was a beeping dot. Below the holographic interface, embossed in gold characters was a logo of a three-dimensional capital M.

“Massive Dynamics.” Cal read.

“Yeah…” Julian repeated. “Massive fucking Dynamics.” He said slowly.

“What does it mean?” his friend asked.

“It was a fictional company from a TV show I used to watch. When I grew up I decided to name my own company that.” He said.

“You mean… this is yours?” Cal asked carefully.

“It is. What’s it doing here?” he said, and slowly extended a hand towards the screen, half expecting something bad to happen. He tapped it, and a keyboard popped up.

Julian scoffed. “What…”

It was asking for login information. Julian began to type, then deleted everything. “Why would the system put this here? Is it trying to fish for my access codes? I’m not that stupid.”

Julian closed the dialog box and typed directly into the command shell.

>ACCESS SUPERUSER.

Enter.

>ACCESS DENIED.

>CHECK NETWORK.

Enter.

>NETWORK ONLINE.

There were no cables coming out of the console. Kneeling down, Julian popped the metal cover open and examined the stand where the screen was placed. It was empty.

“Fine. Have it your way, System. I came prepared.”

Julian smirked. His fingers tapped the screen, and a glint appeared in his eyes as he entered one of the many one-time logins that he had prepared for emergencies like this.

>Login:
>Password:******

>ACCESS GRANTED.

“Huh, would you look at that.” He said. He was staring at the same command line as before, as if nothing had changed. “Either the system is fucking with me or…”

>Edit properties…

“Alright, let’s try. I will start simple. Strength.”

>UPLOAD PATCH:
>ADD: New title: Strong! +10 STR

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Suddenly he felt something, like a jolt go through his body. Immediately his eyes went to his HP bar, but it was still full. He opened his status, and almost gasped. There was a new section now, called Titles, and within it was the title he just made up.

Strong!: +10 STR

Cal approached him from behind. “What did you do?”

Julian turned. He noticed his friend’s wary attitude, and saw that Cal was actively scanning their surroundings. “What do you mean?”

There were characters on the tablet, different than the English text Julian was entering, but that he could read all the same, blaring in loud red. They read: RENEGADE.

“You did something, didn’t you?” Cal asked.

Julian noticed that Cal was looking at the screen, but didn’t seem to understand. “You can’t read it?”

Cal shook his head. “I only see the word Renegade. And—” Suddenly a sound, like a hissing of a snake reverberated from the distance. From and unseen hatch a swarm of red glowing eyes appeared, and the cacophony of a myriad of tiny metal legs scraping the floor echoed through the corridor.

“We need to go, now!” Cal cried out.

“No!” Julian protested. “I can’t leave this here!”

Cal dragged him, but he resisted the pull with his now doubled STR attribute. Cal’s eyes widened. “That’s what you did! Julian! We can’t stay here! The system knows what you did.”

Julian stared at the console, and back at Cal, who was still pulling on his arm. In the distance, the elevator was the only source of light, and from inside the soft music reached his ears distorted and dissonant. The swarm of miniature robot spiders was less than ten meters away, crawling on every surface, be it walls, floors or the ceiling, with more appearing from hidden spaces and holes.

“Fuck!” he yelled, and let go of the tablet.

He ran, letting Cal take the lead and almost drag him by the arm, until they reached the elevator. Cal clicked the button compulsively, and the doors closed.

“Fuck!” Julian banged against the steel door, denting it. “I wasted it. I fucking wasted it.”

“Whatever you did,” Cal said. “The system wasn’t happy. We are going to have to lay low for a while.”

Julian grumbled, but eventually agreed. Soon after the elevator came to a gentle halt, and the doors opened to a luxurious forest. The black sky, glittering with stars and huge floating rocks of a myriad colors, and the curvature of the horizon immediately told Julian that they were on an asteroid. A marvelous, tiny terraformed asteroid in the middle of space. Far away, a lone yellow star provided the light of day, while a swirling galaxy of magnificent colors lit the horizon.

>> Atmos Arcadia Tower Complex – FLOOR 3 – Space Habitats Alpha 3 Phoebi (F+)<<

“We are in space!” Julian cried out.

Cal didn’t seem impressed. “Forest again…” he complained.

Julian had a wry smile. “Yeah, but in space!”

They walked for a while. Despite Julian’s excitement he had to concede that Cal was, fundamentally, correct in his unexcited assessment. It really was just a humid rainforest, but in space.

The ground was wet soil, covered in a thick layer of decaying leaves that suggested a deep terraformation of the place. Every now and then, a small cement vent spewed little puffs of water vapor into the air that condensed into small trails of clouds. The water then rained back down on the forest, making everything wet with its artificial weather.

“I wonder what’s down there.” Julian said. Unfortunately there were no access points, and the gases coming out of the vents were scalding hot.

There were animals in this forest. The first time Julian saw a parrot perched on a branch, he shot the colorful creature with his revolver, only to frown when a disappointingly low amount of runes was added to his status right after the thing exploded in a red mist and a few loose feather. Cal laughed at that, and explained that only monsters gave a significant amount of runes because they were magical, while animals generally weren’t and therefore didn’t give much when killed.

“Hey, look.” Julian pointed.

In the distance he spotted a small hut made of decaying and mossy wooden planks, in the middle of a clearing. Its door was closed, however the wood had rotted away enough that they could see inside. It was tiny, barely fitting a bed and a table, but on the table they spotted the signature white glowing ball of an item.

Cal entered the hut as Julian grabbed the item, and two small sealed scrolls appeared in his hand.

Click.

He groaned, turning around just as he made the scrolls disappear in his rings. “Trap,” he whispered.

There was a moment of pause, then the two adventurers rushed out of the hut, destroying the door and stumbling out onto the clearing. Behind them the hut erupted in a shower of splinters as a gigantic mass of dirt rose into the air, chugging and churning until it assumed a somewhat humanoid shape. It was a huge golem, four meters tall with a head attached to a rough torso with four stubby limbs. It grabbed the trunk of a tree and uprooted it without effort, then slammed it on the ground kicking up dirt, plants and small rocks alike.

Julian and Cal looked at each other.

“Fightable?” the scientist asked.

“You have two guns and I have a gun and Air Blades.” The lazy alien complained. “Not really the best loadout to fight an Earth Elemental.”

Julian shrugged. “Still doable, I say.”

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