chapter 95
POV: Remi
The skill clicked into place. Opening my eyes, I looked up in the dark room, still absolutely furious about what had happened, but I was keeping it inside for now. Focusing on the new skill.
Every skill had a different type of feeling, and so did this one. It was easy to see how hardened connections was meant for digital signals, but my mechanist affinity expanded that capability, twisting the skill a bit like every affinity did.
Now it seems the skill could harden all types of connections. In fact, I was even surprised at how it seemed to work on simple mechanical connections as well. It seems that there might be even more applications to this skill than I originally thought.
It was interesting how I could also channel my mind affinity through it. The skill was still inside the part of my core where my mechanist affinity was dominant. But as affinities weren’t opposing, they didn’t fight for how much space they had; they cooperated when necessary, so my mind affinity could still flow through this skill, although it was obviously slower.
There is still much to learn about how skills work, but eventually I will master it like I have so many other things. Time passed, but it didn't take me too long to figure out that at the current novice rank of the skill, it would not be enough to stop what those five managed to do.
Their deaths were a bit too fast for my liking. The way it felt when they ripped away my bonds was sickening. I tried to hold them back, but it was like trying to hold water from escaping when your fingers were pried open.
My right hand was shaking a bit as I remembered that. It was so frustrating having to feel that. Overall, this galaxy feels like it’s just filled with traps. Everything you do seemed to bring annoying consequences.
I focused on finishing integrating the minor repair skill. It didn't take long, but when I tried to focus on understanding it, I just couldn’t, as I knew that my bonds were not yet secure from those cultist assholes.
So I focused back on the most important skill that I currently had but immediately ran into a problem. Training it would be problematic, as it seems that to advance this skill I would need this skill to be disrupted, someone needed to try to breach the hardened connection.
In a way, I have found that skills get stronger like muscles do. You need to exercise them and let them slowly get micro-damage so that they could heal stronger. It's not exactly what’s happening, but it's close enough. This was the only way I have managed to make it make sense to me.
“FH, I’m going to make some isolated digital connections, and you try to hack them.”
“As you wish, Captain.” She sounded a bit down, but I understood why.
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The mood overall was pretty sour right now. Pretty sure everyone understood that this new skill wasn't enough. Perhaps there were more skills that could help, and I was certain Lola, Sam, and FH were already working on it. Perhaps a skill to boost this one, but I wasn’t holding my breath in hopes of finding it.
Using my cybernetics, I spun up a few connections that soon FH tried to break, which she did pretty easily. It worked, but I didn’t feel that much improvement. We continued this, and soon I had my time frame: it would take me over a week of doing this constantly to get a rank up.
The problem was I didn’t think that the next rank would help. While I was certain that then I could protect myself against those five, they obviously didn't send their best. It’s always easier to defend, but they must have someone even stronger. That meant we were going to have to leave here, which was going to suck so badly. This place here was so good for us.
My heart rate climbed as I got angrier and angrier. I needed to do something. The wall seemed like a good target, but those cubes that made up the wall were a bit too expensive for that.
FH broke another one of my connections, which helped me focus a bit. Making another one, I went outside this room and headed towards the training area.
As soon as I saw one of the training dummies, all I could do was focus on that.
“Captain, stop it!” I heard someone yell. I had been beating one of the training dummies into scrap. My robotic arm was fine, but my right arm, that was still mostly human. Well, I had broken two fingers and all my knuckles were bleeding.
“I’ll call Lola,” Sam said as he helped me up. “We are all mad as well, but this isn’t helping.”
“I know, this wasn’t only about what happened today. This galaxy is a frustrating place sometimes.”
Lola was already waiting for me in her medical bay. I gave her my hand as she started to clean it and set the breaks.
“I assume the skill is slow to advance?” Lola asked while continuing to work on my hand.
“A bit too slow, yes. Unless…” I had a crazy idea, but perhaps it would work.
“Sam, can you try to modify your bond with me, or even break it? That should also improve the skill, and I have a feeling that that would help rank up the skill a lot faster.”
He took a half step back. That was insensitive of me to ask him, but still, he tried.
“I can’t. The bond itself won’t let me. It’s the same as you giving me an order to kill you. While we have to follow your orders because of the bond, some things you would never be able to order us to do, and it seems like this would fall into that.”
“So the only way to get strong enough to protect all of you is for me to be attacked by those cultists. That’s just great.”
“Captain, we’ll get through this like we have with everything else.”
Before I could answer Lola, Bob interrupted.
“I will try.”
He and Dean had shown up at some point. Everyone else looked at Bob like he was crazy, but I was pretty sure my eyes were shining a bit, because Bob didn’t have many of the limitations the others had.
A moment later I felt him attacking the bond we had. It was vicious and incredibly meticulous. It was so hard to keep our bond stable. I do not know exactly how long, but Bob finally stopped. He didn't push it too far so our bond would break, but it definitely had fractures in it that were quickly healing now that he stopped.
Sam and Dean had their weapons pointed towards Bob, and Lola was in front of me protecting me with her body. I, on the other hand, was grinning madly, and so was Bob.
“What the hell was that?” Dean asked, his gun never wavering. Wait, did I never explain what Bob was to everyone else?
“You can all relax. I will explain. But Bob has always been able to, if he wanted, to kill me even with our bond.”
Sam and Dean were completely lost. I had to explain to them multiple times how this worked, but to them this just didn't make any sense. They knew before this that Bob could hurt me more than usual, but they didn’t truly know to what extent.
“I understand it’s hard for you to grasp this, but right now this isn’t the most important thing.” They both looked at me like I was crazy, this to them, shattered their worldview.
“It isn't the most important thing right now because that three and a half minute attack Bob did on our bond was the same as almost two days of training FH and I would have been able to do.”
“But it seemed to hurt you? You looked like you were screaming without any sound,” Lola asked.
“It’s not going to be pretty, that’s for sure. But I’m tired of people being able to push us around. I want to be the one that’s doing that, and if it means I have to endure a lot of pain, then so be it.”
“Just say when, and I will begin again,” Bob asked, a bit too excitedly.