Chapter 104. Testing the Limits
“Did you get a new ability?” Selina tilted her head ever so slightly, studying me with lazy, almost feline curiosity.
“Yeah. Same as every time I level up.” I allowed myself the faintest smile, feeling a fresh surge of power coursing beneath my skin. “I can't wait to see what it can do.”
“Hold it!” Selina thrust out an elegant hand in a dramatic stop gesture. “No freelancing. Every level-up affects your entire toolkit, right?”
“You could say that. Where are you going with this?”
“Tom, dear, I'm not just here to make this gloomy room look prettier. I'm also a certified specialist.” She smiled with practiced confidence, nudging her glasses back into place with a slender finger. “Whenever the system changes, the new data needs to be documented.”
“I'm not your lab rat, Selina.”
“Oh, don't get hung up on the wording.” She waved a dismissive hand as if brushing invisible dust from a silk sleeve. “You should be thrilled. Not everyone gets the honor of being examined by a genius like me. And I'm doing it for free, no less.”
“And without the sales pitch?” I did not so much as raise an eyebrow at her usual performance. “What's in it for you?”
“Oh, come on, Tom. Try powering down that suspicious brain of yours for five minutes.” She rolled her eyes dramatically, letting out a sigh worthy of a Broadway actress. “Call it professional curiosity. Your unique little anomalies might inspire a couple of my future masterpieces.”
I silently ran her proposal through my usual risk assessment. The conclusion was straightforward: the potential benefits outweighed the risks. Selina noticed details I was perfectly capable of overlooking, and her analytical mind was far too valuable to dismiss.
“All right. You talked me into it.” I pushed away from the doorframe and stretched out on the examination table, settling onto the firm mattress. This was obviously going to take a while. “Where do we start?”
“With the basics.” Selina lowered herself gracefully onto the metal chair beside the table. Her posture remained flawlessly straight. Smartphone in hand, her fingers hovered over the screen, ready to type. “Bring up your system window. Let's hear it.”
I summoned the interface with a thought. Familiar translucent lines unfolded before my eyes, and I began reading them aloud, carefully enunciating every word.
[CONTROL PANEL: TRAINER]
Level: 5
S-Power: 864 / 864 [Control Level: Supreme]
Special Command: 7 / 7
Tactical Mode: 4 / 4
Enemy Analysis: Costs 1 S-Power
Demoralization: 1 / 1
Available Familiar Slots: 0
[SUBJECT STATUS: MONSTER]
Level: 1
Race: Human (Homo sapiens)
Attributes:
Strength: 10 [Peak Human Capability]
Endurance: 10 [Peak Human Capability]
Agility: 10 [Peak Human Capability]
Current Effects: No negative status effects.
Selina's fingers flew across the phone at incredible speed. Her long, perfectly manicured nails tapped against the glass in a rapid burst that sounded like machine-gun fire.
“Hmm. That's... odd.” She stopped typing and frowned at the freshly recorded data. “Your S-Power has gone through the roof since our last measurement. A little over a month ago you only had two hundred eighty-three points.”
“Two hundred eighty-three? That's an impressive memory. Were you taking notes back then too?”
“Tom, I'm a scientist, not some lovesick girl with a diary.” She dismissed the question without looking up. “The important part is that your reserve has nearly tripled in thirty days. Does leveling up normally increase it that much?”
“No.” I answered without a trace of hesitation, mentally reviewing every system log I had seen. “Before Master Smith taught me his method for training my reserve, leveling up had absolutely no effect on my S-Power capacity.”
“Excellent. The pieces are finally starting to fit together.” Selina rested an index finger against her lips, slipping into the familiar pose she always took when thinking. “You told me you adapted Smith's training method using [Special Command], but eventually your progress slowed down anyway...”
She fell silent, narrowed her eyes, then snapped her fingers.
“You never took breaks, did you?” She looked at me with the triumphant excitement of someone who had just cracked the greatest mystery in the universe. “Come on. Admit it.”
“Sometimes I cut my sleep down to the bare minimum.” I gave a brief nod. “I worked myself into the ground.”
“You're an absolute psychopath, Tom,” she said, and there was an odd note of admiration in her voice as she swiped across the screen. “All right, moving on. Your [Special Command] charges increased too. Did leveling up change the skill itself? Any new capabilities?”
“Not that I can tell.”
“What do you mean, 'not that I can tell?' You're not calculating Pluto's orbit with a homemade telescope.” She sighed in annoyance, tossing her blond curls. “Test it right now. Give yourself a command the system used to reject.”
For all her sarcasm and theatrics, her reasoning was sound. I remembered my first field tests and the limitation I had run into early on.
I formed the command with a single focused thought.
[Special Command: Lift the blanket with telekinesis.]
The displays before my eyes instantly flashed a stark red warning.
[ERROR!]
[Special Command cannot be executed: the subject does not possess the required physical or metaphysical properties.]
“No luck.” I calmly repeated the system message word for word.
“Hmm. That doesn't add up.” Selina lightly bit her lower lip as she logged the failed attempt. “If the underlying framework is improving, the functionality should expand too. Oh well. Not a big deal. Let's keep going. Activate [Tactical Mode]. Make sure you time it precisely, then see how far your consciousness can separate from your physical body.”
“Got it,” I said, focusing on the trigger deep inside my mind.
[Tactical Mode activated.]
The familiar click echoed through my consciousness, and my perception accelerated to its limit. The world froze, drained of color until everything was wrapped in a heavy monochrome haze. The hum of the ventilation, the buzz of the equipment, even Selina's breathing stretched into nothingness, dissolving into absolute silence. My consciousness slipped effortlessly free of my body, leaving it motionless on the examination table.
I kept an exact mental stopwatch running while I explored the area around me. In this state I was nothing more than an incorporeal observer. I could not manipulate instruments or interact with physical objects. The only practical approach was to memorize the farthest points I could reach so Selina could later measure the exact distances from the head of the examination table with a tape measure.
I drifted upward, passing through concrete and steel rebar as though neither existed. The ceiling melted away, and I emerged into the room directly above. It looked like a sealed laboratory section packed with shelving units and rows of secured containers. That was an interesting side benefit. Until now, I had treated [Tactical Mode] purely as a combat assessment tool, but it was just as effective for reconnaissance and espionage. Locked doors and reinforced safes had effectively become meaningless.
“Seventy seconds,” I said as I slipped back into my body. Color and sound rushed back at once, snapping reality into focus. “The duration increased by exactly ten seconds. Now let's measure the range. Write these down and measure from the head of the table.”
I listed every landmark I had managed to reach before the time expired.
“Interesting...” Selina murmured as her fingers resumed flying across the screen. “Complete freedom of movement through solid matter. It's remarkably similar to the Third Eye techniques described in Eastern meditation practices. The more information I study, the more convinced I am that your [Trainer] profile is a pure high-level mental ability.”
“Are there many people like that in the Corps? Pure mentalists?”
“There aren't any genuine telepaths on Earth. Nobody who can read minds from across a room or control other people,” she replied absently, never looking up from her phone. “But narrow, specialized mental abilities like yours are fairly common. They only operate within a limited spectrum. Anyway, let's move on. Use [Enemy Analysis] on me.”
“Sure.”
I fixed my gaze on Selina and activated the skill. An updated profile appeared before my eyes.
Name: Selina Langstrom
Age: 29
Occupation: Professor, Inventor
Phobia: Cockroaches
S-Power: 564/564 [Control Level: Medium]
Special Skill: [Engineer]
[Engineer: A mentally oriented superpower that allows the user to instantly expand their understanding of the structure, modification potential, and vulnerabilities of any mechanism through visual contact.]
Race: Human (Homo Sapiens)
Attributes:
Strength: 5
Endurance: 5
Agility: 6
Current Effects: Mild dehydration.
“Seriously? You're scared of cockroaches?” My attention immediately locked onto the new line. It had never appeared in the interface before.
“Just thinking about those disgusting things and those creepy little legs makes my skin crawl!” Selina shivered for a split second before catching herself and glaring at me as fiercely as she could. “Don't you dare tell anyone, Ross. I'll figure out a way to make your life a living hell.”
“You can skip the threats, Selina,” I replied calmly without moving. “I don't gossip, and I don't go around exposing other people's weaknesses.”
“You'd better not,” she muttered, taking a slow breath before slipping effortlessly back into researcher mode. “Anyway, your [Analysis] has become a lot more useful for tactical planning. Now it digs a target's deepest fears straight out of their subconscious.”
“I doubt that'll help much against deep-space xenos. Their fears are probably tied to creatures or concepts that don't even exist on Earth.”
“Maybe not. Against humans, though, it's an incredible advantage. You can instantly identify anyone's psychological weak spot.” She made another note on her phone. “All right. Is [Demoralization] your new ability? Read me the description.”
I opened the skill description and read the system text aloud.
[Demoralization: Reduces the selected target's confidence in their own abilities for exactly one minute.]
“I see.” Selina bit her lip as she entered the information. “Before, you could only pull information out of other people's minds. Now you've learned how to project destructive impulses into them. Still firmly in the mental spectrum. An interesting pattern is emerging. As a [Trainer], your development is focused entirely on intelligence and control. As a [Familiar], you're gaining nothing but raw power. That gives us enough information to make a fairly reliable prediction about your future evolution.”
She fell silent, completely absorbed in thought. I let her think. Whenever Selina disappeared into one of these analytical trances, she usually came back with conclusions that were genuinely useful.
“Based on the direction your abilities are developing, I don't think your evolution is going to turn you into some shapeless mutant,” she finally said.
“And what makes you think that?”
“For now, it's just a hypothesis.” She made a vague gesture with one hand. “Either way, we'll be able to test it soon enough. Your evolution isn't far away.”
“Then let's get back to the current protocol. Selina, mind if I test [Demoralization] right now? On you.”
“Ross, are you out of your mind?” She pressed a hand dramatically to her chest. “Are you seriously suggesting you use a direct mental attack on the woman carrying your children?”
“I assumed your scientific curiosity would outweigh a little temporary discomfort.” I climbed off the examination table and straightened my clothes. “If I misread the situation, I apologize. I'll head outside, find a homeless guy, and test it on him instead.”
“By yourself? Without controlled conditions or laboratory equipment?” She shot to her feet and stepped directly into my path before I could reach the door. “Not happening.”
“Then what's the alternative?”
“Tom, I think you've forgotten where you are.” Her familiar, condescending smile returned. “This is my lab. I've got an entire rack of laboratory rats waiting for experiments.”