chapter 74
The grey portals looked unnatural even more so than the blue ones. We had been waiting here for about an hour, but hopefully this portal will refresh soon, as we had 11 others to clear in just a few days.
While we couldn’t be too picky, most of the ones we purchased were filled with monsters strong enough to hopefully help me push a lot closer to the next rank.
Behind me, standing unnaturally still, were my four companions for these delves. All of them looked eerily similar.
We had the same gear. Our main weapon was the FH-02 that all of us carried. Alongside that, we all had a broadsword on our hips for close combat. They also wore a decently defensive hooded cloak, so the small differences between them would be hidden from everyone.
We were far from gearing them the way I would like to, but right now, the main focus has been on finishing the ship. We also had a no-communication order in place while outside the portal, so no one should pick up on the fact that Sam and Dean were more advanced than their two squadron members.
The thing is, portals have maximum limits on how many individuals they allow inside, but there are workarounds, one being artificial machines. You can’t bring in endless amounts of droids and just kill everything with numbers. On the other hand, if those droids are advanced enough, they still count as one individual.
Sam and Dean should count as individuals, but I’m guessing the rest of their squads would also only count as one. Right now, though, that kind of show of force would seem weird and honestly not needed for the portals we’re clearing.
It’s unfortunate that the skills I ordered hadn’t arrived for me to absorb before this round of delves. But in the end, it shouldn’t matter, as we should easily be able to clear these ones.
I am truly glad I got to know Thoron, as that eventually led to me getting access to so much useful data.
FH has been working nonstop for nearly two months, trying to sift through all the data now available to us, and she has done an excellent job getting us ready for what’s to come. One of the more important things is that I now know, or at least I have an idea, for what kind of a build I want to go for.
My mind affinity seems to have many avenues I could go toward, but I would need to keep at least two skill slots for boosting my mechanist skills, as there are some wonderful mind-based skills that would help quite a lot.
Other than that, the mind affinity will be focused almost exclusively on protecting my mind, as there are some nasty things out there that could mess with it.
My mechanist affinity will be used to influence my AI companions, my ship, and overall make me better at creating things. It’s difficult to find skills that work for me, as the mechanist affinity isn’t as widespread as the mechanic affinity and is a lot more nuanced.
The best thing is that I now have a direction for my basic affinity. Turns out that some variants of resistance skills work with the basic affinity. We managed to purchase three skills, costing me nearly 12 million: Impact Dampening, Pierce Dampening, and Heat Dampening.
My Mind Guard skill is in the same category as these, although it’s better. Unfortunately, only skills with the dampening descriptor work with the basic affinity, but they still give me added defenses against these types of damage.
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The best part is that it would also include my cybernetic parts, which would get even better, since this is added magical defense, it isn’t limited by the realm of normal physics.
There are many more skills like that, and I have enough skill slots to cover almost everything and even have some leftover slots.
There is one obvious weakness for this build of mine, and that’s offense. For that, I’ll need to rely on outside tools like guns and other weapons, which I could hopefully improve using my mechanist affinity.
A skill that is definitely a must-have in the Mechanist Affinity is called Defensive Share. It isn’t available on the normal market, as it’s simply too desirable and rare. The estimated cost to get one is about 5 billion. Yet it seems perfect for me. It allows the skill user to transfer their defensive skill effects to their bonds, including a ship.
The mana expenditure to do so would mean I most likely couldn’t support this skill for even a millisecond if I tried to use it on my ship. But that wouldn’t be the case in the future. Also, the mana cost should be a lot less if I were to target, let’s say, the four droids currently behind me.
Overall, as a later goal it is a really good one, especially when my defensive skills are ranked up and can truly start affecting incoming damage, not just reducing it by so little that it’s almost undetectable. Of course, getting better at these defensive skills is going to be annoying, as it would mean I’d need to get hit quite a lot.
One thing Sam and Dean are really adamant about is the need to get a healer. It would help me quite a lot in my training, and of course to keep me alive if I ever got badly hurt. We will be splurging on some really good magical medicine for emergencies, but they cost quite a lot, and a healer is basically an endless supply of those resources.
It is going to be difficult to find one. I was snapped out of my thinking as the portal started to turn blue. Before the guards could say anything, I spoke to my party members.
“Let’s move in.” As I started to walk, they didn’t miss a beat and were a step behind me.
As we stepped through the portal, we were greeted by a forest environment. There were two types of monsters here, one was a big, flightless bird, while a smaller, more agile flyer was the more annoying one. It couldn’t do any real damage, but dealing with it was always quite difficult.
“Finally, it was getting annoying being so quiet,” Sam said, while all of us launched four drones of our own.
They quickly took off, starting to map our surroundings and engaging the small flyers. Dean was the first to fire. The bullet pierced through two of the trees, perfectly hitting the head of the flightless bird, killing it.
I felt my looting skill trigger as we were all close enough for it to work, and I let it do its thing, consuming the monster entirely and turning it into coins.
“That’s fascinating,” Sam commented.
“Dean, that was an excellent shot. All that practicing has really paid off.”
“We didn’t think that we could ever get good at ranged combat, as we weren’t designed for that, but your bond and the small changes made to our matrix have really lifted our limitations.”
“Excellent. Then let’s get to clearing this portal.”
All of us got serious as we moved quite fast, using all the data gathered by our drones and sensors to find all the monsters and quickly kill them. An hour later, and nearly 400 monsters down, we walked out of the portal, watching it turn grey once again.
Weapons like guns at the G rank were like cheats. We would have no trouble clearing portals extremely fast, and after the second one we’d also start getting loot that we could actually sell to make up for the cost of the portals. It would be quite normal for me to run out of mana if I did these portals so quickly back-to-back.
Two days later
I had just woken up from my 3-hour nap, the only sleep I had gotten during this delving rush. We had only one more portal, and then we were done for this time, and perhaps for the rest of the stay here.
The power was still coursing through me, improving me, and I was feeling like I was getting close to the end of G rank. We would have to see if fighting in a G rank portal would still advance me after a rank up, but we would have to worry about that later.
We all walked downstairs to the bar area of the tavern. The portal was still grey; otherwise, we would have been notified. Hopefully, soon it would turn blue so we could get back to Mark II, as there was so much to do.
Getting breakfast was difficult as there was so much noise. It seemed that two groups were arguing with each other quite loudly, and other patrons were getting involved. To the left of me sat a dwarf who looked to be aged, which was rare to see, as usually most dwarves looked like they were in their early or mid-30s.
“What’s going on?” I asked him, pointing my thumb towards the arguing groups.
“The youth is always a bit fiery. It’s the trouble with the major clans, as usual. You’re that human, right? Don’t you guys have major powers that have subordinate powers? Most civilizations should have something like that.”
“Slowly, the allegiance of the major clans has been made clear, and now it’s time for the smaller ones to start making their choices.”
I didn’t respond as we both understood what this meant. The dwarves were going to have a difficult time, yet there was nothing that could stop it; it needed to play out.
“How did you know I was human?”
He chuckled at that.
“Only the blind and the ones dumber than rocks haven’t heard of you, or at least that there’s a human in the solar system. Most of us just thought it was a strange coincidence that elves were real, but who would have guessed that you humans would show up as well?”
“Let’s drink to this,” I said, and in answer, he downed his drink, and so did I.