Interlude 8-IV
The biggest obstacle to the scientific study of anomalous Skills is the culture of secrecy around them. This derives in part from the all-too-common idea that one should conceal the details of their abilities. I speculate that this tragic mindset has roots in multiple different powerful organizations.
The Army, the Families, the Guilds, the LAPD, and – unfortunately – the Syndicates are the primary power brokers of Lost Angels. Each of these institutions has its own reasons for keeping the details of their members' capabilities secret, particularly among the higher Tiers.
Sadly, is it those same higher Tiers who are most likely to have been affected by corruption, either through standard mana exposure or by being revived. As a result, few subjects have been properly examined and even the rate at which these Skills appear is a matter of speculation. The Army almost certainly has a great deal of information on the topic, but it has remained stubbornly classified despite numerous pleas from the academic community.
- Tercia Lazarova, Level 34 Weaver of Life, A Healer’s Primer
Wolf sat in the infirmary, prosthetic legs stretched out in front of him. His ass was getting stiff from the hard wooden seat, despite his Endurance. It was funny how little things like that could still affect a person, if you gave them long enough. He’d been sitting there for 42 hours straight at that point, bathroom breaks aside, and any pre-System person would have tapped out long ago.
Lying disturbingly still on the bed across from him was Azure. Today was the third day in a row that Lydia had claimed Az would wake up and get right back to her old tricks again. Wolf wanted to believe his on-again, off-again lover, but the girl’s condition hadn’t changed in the slightest.
The Ranger sighed and massaged his thighs. The boundary between flesh and metal was always uncomfortable, even back when it had just been one of his legs. Thanks to the death he’d suffered at the teeth of the terrordactyl matriarch, both of his legs had now been replaced by the black steel magitech artifacts.
He was grateful, he reminded himself sternly. He could have died in a non-revivable way, his head and brain destroyed or worse, eaten, by the matriarch and her spawn. He’d gotten off light. Westin hadn’t, nor had several of the guards.
He was also lucky that he was not an extravagant spender, at least under normal circumstances. ParaSmith Combat Limbs were not cheap. They were, however, sturdy, responsive, powerful, and not hideous. And utterly essential, to those like him.
He’d lost his first foot to corruption more than half a decade ago, when his team had been chased into an area of unexpectedly dense mana and he’d been seriously injured. Wolf shuddered, thinking of the long, cartilaginous fin that had grown in place of his knee, ankle, and foot. It had been his first fucking death, too.
It was his shitty luck that a single Revive had twisted him so. He’d been unable to walk without crutches, totally useless in a fight. More than that, he’d been handed a devil’s bargain by the fucking System – not that he'd known it at the time. He didn’t have to even use Inspect, the words long since seared into his memory.