Apocalypse Redux

Acrobatic Adaptation (epic)

Unique problems require unique solutions.

Having a body that constantly changes in mass, mass distribution, and capability is, surprisingly enough, not unique. But your solution to it is.

This Skill represents your mastery of any forms you have previously taken and trained with, and will allow you to immediately draw upon only the muscle memory related to your current form.

The latest [Skill] Derek had created had been custom-designed to let him quickly adjust to any changes he made to his body with [Aspect Integration], forged from [Skills] related to martial arts and sports medicine, though it had also wound up eating his latest copy of [Veteran’s Knowledge] to reach epic rarity. He really wouldn’t be able to keep that thing long enough to level it, would he?

It’d still only alleviate the issue, not fix it in its entirety, as he needed to train a hell of a lot to make the use of his abilities … but anything worth getting was worth working for.

Much like his and the others’ ability to interact with aliens without avoiding preconceived notions owing to their own status as humans as much as, er, humanly possible.

Or his power to walk across spacetime, though most of the progress on that front had come from giving up on the “walking” part of the process, instead settling on taking a page out of Tarzan’s book of locomotion, albeit using the fabric of reality rather than vines.

The inherent instability of the footing provided did not matter if he was being pulled away from the “point of contact,” it only required being within a field of gravity to work.

And when he was outside of one … it was a hell of a lot easier to not flop around when there weren’t external forces, such as gravity, yanking you around. Though he’d likely still stick with the Tarzan method, simply because it was what he was training in, and it was a skill that carried over. He’d also managed to level up even more during his efforts to gather Aspects for trade at the Dragonfly’s next destinations, earning himself his second regular [Class] [Skill].

Lifesurge (legendary)

The bestial is often related to power. Health, strength, virility … yet all those are, in all ways that matter, restrained within the human form, kept at a manageable level for the sake of the body as a whole.

Yet there are various ways to unleash this power. Some may use it to become an unstoppable animalistic berserker, others will draw specific portions of it into their being, others still wisely limit themselves to dipping into the endless vitality of the monster to heal themselves.

Activating Lifesurge will send a burst of life force throughout your body, rapidly healing injuries, restoring lost stamina, putting off the need for sleep for a while more (if needed), gaining additional effects for every Aspect you hold.

Cost: 100 mana per activation

Current Aspect Buffs:

Poltergeist (muscles function at normal power during healing, even before completion)

Hydra (stronger healing, faster limb regeneration)

Least Demon Lord (burns and cauterization are lessened as a hindrance)

Lord of Time and Space (detached body parts are teleported back to the proper place, if salvageable and nearby)

Caladrius (allows for the healing of others)

Cosmic Leviathan (ongoing sources of damage are almost negated during healing)

Void Dragon (impaling objects are harmlessly disintegrated)

Fata Morgana (can control appearance during healing)

It was one hell of a healing ability, the fact that he had the Aspect of the Caladrius rendering it outright broken.

This ability started out only so-so, but with each new Aspect that upgraded it, it was growing by leaps and bounds, both in breadth and depth, already having reached the point where it was effectively a second wind, putting him back into the fight with a single cast, but thanks to all the time he’d spent chasing that damn sun pigeon, he could now also put everyone else back into the fight.

Between the Levels, Aspects, experience, and the food magic Atticus had gotten from an old friend of his parents, the past few days had been well spent.

But they were, for the most part, done here in Chimera. Or at least as done as they could be without spending years here.

As such …

“Dragonfly, this Chimera control. You are cleared to exit.”

Derek smiled as he replied, then grinned as he felt the ship begin to move under Atticus’ control, docking clamps having already released with a low shudder that traveled throughout the entire ship, and they were quickly making their way towards the local catapult, off to get caught between the tidal forces of the universe, praying their ship’s enchantments held as they were hurled across the galaxy, fifty light years at a time.

Well, it wasn’t exactly fifty, it was a little under that, but close enough for government work, and the difference between “fifty” and “forty-nine point nine nine seven” rarely mattered, so everyone just used fifty, irrespective of how insane it drove certain scientists.

From there, it was mostly a matter of rapidly flashing from star system to star system, the benefits of faster-than-light communications and sufficient time to plan once again carrying the day … and the Dragonfly all the way across human space, over into the Mild West. Idiot’s Paradise. The Undying Failed Experiment. Clusterfuck Central.

Or, as its inhabitants called it, Freedom.

Though just from looking at the rat’s nest of vectors and starships, “chaos” would have been more appropriate. Because traffic laws around here operated the concept of dibs, for all practical intents and purposes. The pilot of a given ship declared where they wanted to go, and then they’d go there, announcing where they were going to all and sundry. And if there were any collisions, it was always the fault of the one who’d declared their path later. Or deviated from their declared path, even to avoid a collision. Or even just not declared a course at all.

As such, things had basically boiled down to reckless assholes blasting across the system at maximum acceleration while everyone else was carefully picking their way towards their destination.

Thankfully, Atticus turned out to be quite the pilot, and while the Dragonfly was small for either a freighter or a warship, compared to the one or two-person operations filling the space around here, that made her a giant, and commanded a commensurate level of respect and personal space.

Another thing they lacked was an overall dockmaster; you had to rent from the people owning the individual berth. Which could have gotten expensive if there hadn’t been more open berths than people in need of one. As such, they’d had their pick of berths, capable of selecting something perfect for their needs, and wound up choosing one that came with free breakfast, simply because the chance to eat food that was meant for humans that they didn’t need to cook had been too tempting.

They quickly headed towards Freedom Station, the main human settlement in the entire system, all others being asteroid miners, combat arenas for things too dangerous to summon in the main habitat, and other such peripheral infrastructure, but aside from Freedom itself, there were no real homes present.

And Freedom was certainly something. The station had started out as an immense cylinder, but had had so many additions over the years that it now looked like nothing so much as a rounded Jenga tower at the end of a game of world record length.

Though it was a hell of a lot less fragile than the appearance might suggest, the sheer scale of precautions that had been taken with each addition actually surpassing those required by normal safety standards.

After all, here, in Freedom, it didn’t matter what standards you’d built something up to; it mattered whether or not it worked, and if it didn’t and you couldn’t prove someone else was responsible, your ass was on the line. As such, with the threat of angry and heavily armed inhabitants out for their blood, most of the people responsible for the construction had erred on the side of caution. Though just the ones who hadn’t were yet to see their stuff blow up in their face didn’t mean that cutting corners would be safe in the long term.

They also had a warship for defense, an older, seven-hundred-meter-long heavy cruiser that someone had managed to save from the scrapyard, then crammed full of whatever tech had seemed the coolest.

And now, it was being paid to stay here, with the operators not caring who did so, only that, collectively, they were getting their weekly payments, with the amount still outstanding publicly known so that eventually, someone would feel pressured to contribute, which effectively resulted in the more civic-minded inhabitants of Freedom contributing far more than their fair share to the mutual defense.

Though none of that really mattered in the here and now, nor was it being publicly announced outside the system, though Derek had still managed to find out just about everything about it, including a degree of information about its weapons that was downright terrifying from a security perspective. Also, just plain terrifying, that was one hell of a vessel of war.

But that ship did not move, innocently drifting in orbit … though it was “innocent” the same way that word applied to a crocodile drifting in the river. It might not be actively going after you, but its mere presence represented a significant amount of power.

Once docked, they had a quick conversation with the owner, Derek paid for the two days he planned to be here, and together, all four of them headed through the tangle of corridors that seemed to comprise the outer shell of most stations, then exiting into the first large concourse, the ceiling something like fifty meters above, at least twenty levels of balconies rising on either side, the noise of conversations and people hawking their wares at a level that would have caused hearing damage in an unenhanced human.

And there were advertizements fucking everywhere. Including much he was pretty sure was decidedly banned in most nations on Earth.

Derek’s jaw dropped. Not only was this more advertising of the smutty sort than he’d ever seen, but the things being advertised were … well, according to the old adage, anything to do with sex had to be safe, sane, and consensual.

Much of what was on offer here was almost certainly consensual, considering where he was standing, and perhaps even safe, with enough magic involved, but unfortunately, things were the exact opposite of sane.

Now, admittedly, his knowledge of sex work stemmed entirely from old movies, so he was fairly sure that it was at the very least heavily outdated, if not outright wrong, but this did seem rather extreme …

“What. The. Fuck.”

He muttered as he found himself unable to tear his eyes away.

“Fucked up, ‘fuck’ being the operative word, come on, let’s get out of here,” Atticus muttered as he yanked on Derek’s arm, breaking the spell.

And even though it hadn’t been obvious, or even really visible from the entrance that most visitors would be entering through, things got much tamer deeper in.

But now they had a new problem: the general recommendation was that anyone new to the station get a guide, and those were meant to be available right next to all major concentrations of docking spaces, and the one they were at had advertised easy access to such places.

And aboard Freedom, provably false advertising was one of those things that really fucked you over if a transaction had been made over it.

“Where can we find a guide?” Derek asked the nearest passerby, who wasn’t looking to be busy, in a hurry, or on their phone, causing the woman to point down the plaza, right where they’d come from, in the area they’d hurried through because of the advertisements. “Thank you. Can I ask what’s up with all that, ahem, explicit stuff?”

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“People sell advertising space, people advertise what sells. Nothing to it.”

Yeah, that tracked …

They turned around, and Derek did his best to spot the non-red-light-related stuff amidst everything else, and realized that, once he was paying proper attention rather than doing his damnedest to avoid seeing anything, there were guides there.

So he picked one that was actually advertising for itself, rather than having sold its window space to the nearest brothel, which he took to be a good sign.

“How common are places this full of …” he trailed off, not quite sure how to phrase this correctly, causing the proprietor, a bearded, heavyset man, to tap a sign on the side of his desk.

‘Stupid questions: 50 credits’

“Really?” Derek sighed, causing the man to give him a serious look, tap the sign again, and glance down while typing that into the cash register, causing the device to, in fact, show a bill for a hundred credits.

He took a deep breath, mostly to buy himself some time to calm himself before his next careless question cost him even more money, then met the proprietor’s eyes … who promptly burst out laughing.

“Nah, I’m just kidding. But the sign is clearly visible, and would be enforceable unless you’d asked what a stupid question was beforehand.”

“And asking what a stupid question is isn’t stupid?” Ye-in asked.

“You can always ask someone to define a term, free commerce only works when people can actually get the information they need, not a million different rules and regulations that make any contract wind up three times as long with all the boilerplate crap.”

“And if there are any ambiguities?” Derek asked.

“That’s when the [Justiciar’s] and truth spells come out. If it’s a genuine misunderstanding, then you mediate; if its attempted fraud, the guy who tried to screw the other is at fault; if someone knew they didn’t understand exactly what something meant and didn’t bother asking for clarification, it’s their own darn fault. So, are you going to buy anything, or should I be starting to charge you for the economics lesson?”

“We’re looking for a full-on guide to the station,” Ye-in explained. “Two days, full coverage, warning of pitfalls we’re about to walk into, advice about the best places to go, general station information.”

“Two days, the works. I can do that,” the man nodded, tapped away at the register for a couple of seconds, then broke out into a grin when Derek swiped his card. “Name’s Samuel Nolan. You just bought yourself the best darn guide on the station! So, what are you looking for, specifically?”

“We don’t know,” Mimi chimed in. “We want to explore, see the goods, sell some stuff from Chimera.”

“So, you’re into tech, then?” Nolan asked, marching out from behind the counter, motioning for them to clear out so he could lock up the stall behind himself, at which point the self-promoting advertisement on the exterior shifted into something matching the surroundings, now that he wasn’t inside to benefit.

“Tech, alien aspects, information, cool shit no one else would dare build … dealer’s choice,” Atticus offered.

“Central bazar it is, then,” Nolan said. “Follow me.”

The man quickly led the way there, towards the end of the concourse, then through a dizzying array of tunnels before they were once again let out into another open space, all the while explaining how things worked on here.

“Basically, everyone is responsible for providing life support commensurate with the amount of space they take up in the station, and any maintenance that happens inside, but things are laid out so that everyone’s maintenance duty is equal.”

That sounds inefficient as hell, Derek thought. But I guess it’s all about making sure they never actually pay anything that could be construed as “taxes” is more important, but that’s not what I find the weirdest …

“What’s to stop people from just sitting back, not running their own life support, and just letting everyone else renew the air?” he wondered.

“That would be stealing?” Nolan responded, sounding utterly scandalized.

Oh, sure, it was theft, technically, but Derek hadn’t expected a reaction that extreme.

Though then again, with everyone having a discrete and specific set of responsibilities, rather than a nebulous “your taxes pay for the stuff everyone uses” system of most governments, someone personally not taking care of their shit would probably hit quite a bit harder.

All in all, Derek got the distinct impression that this place ran on a combination of hyperefficiency and complete and utter chaos.

You wanted to do something? You did it, and the consequences were on your head.

You wanted to buy something? You found someone who sold it.

You wanted to build something? You found the space for it, made sure it could be built there, and built it.

Anything that concerned you directly, or at least would only do so if done correctly, could be done without any interference from an outside force.

However, there were absolutely no large-scale solutions for anything. No central life support, water reclamation, fuel depot, etc. Also, aside from the ones that had come in from the outside, there was zero standardization with regards to the likes of connectors, pipes, valves, etc.

Apparently, there were ways to make that happen here, but the sheer degree of agreement that’d have required was hard to come by in a place such as this, something that Derek had figured out even before Nolan had explained that little concept.

All told, he could see why it worked. He could also see why so many people hated even the idea of it. And why scaling it up even this far was rather, ahem, troublesome, even before they reached the central bazar, which had earned the title of “bazar” to an infinitely greater degree than anything they’d passed through thus far, and despite having gotten lost ten minutes and twenty turns ago, it was immediately apparent that they’d somehow wound up inside the central cylinder, and not in the way that he’d expected it to look, even though, now that he thought about it, he had read about this …

The inside of Freedom’s central cylinder was, in fact, hollow, with the interior wall actually forming the floor of the grand bazar, allowing Derek to crane his head back to see the “ceiling,” which was really just the opposite side of the cylinder, just as much covered in stalls as the “floor” around him was, colorful and eyecatching, a million peacocks fighting for attention.

It should have been a neon nightmare straight out of a cyberpunk movie. It was … it worked, for the most part. Calling it pretty would have been a flat-out lie, but, at the same time, it was also far from bad. Almost organic in places, really, as certain people had clearly tried to coordinate at least somewhat with their neighbors, creating beautiful patterns amidst a sea of neon chaos.

“So, where’s the greatest concentration of interesting stuff, Mr. Nolan?” Mimi asked, seeming one bit of good news away from bouncing up and down from excitement.

“Tech’s over there, alchemy is on the other side, right underneath those fake smokestacks, and nonspecific gizmos on the far end,” Nolan replied, pointing at each in turn.

“Any rules about jumping through the middle?” Derek asked.

Nolan gave him a flat look. “Where do you think you are? Just don’t land on anyone or break anything.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you in the tech section,” Derek said, reached out above him, grasped spacetime, and pulled.

In an instant, he was launched upwards, the artificial gravity of the station lessening at an unnatural pace as he reached towards the center, leaving him briefly free from its grasp as he pased through the center of the cylinder, then grabbed space again when his target was only five meters above him, well, below, now, dropped a bit more, waited for some space to get clear, then finally cancelled the effect and landed properly.

And no one batted an eye at his method of arrival.

The alchemy section was stuffed with all sorts of things, from the absurdly toxic intoxicants that were the only thing that could get someone at a high Level drunk/high/whatever, to nasty toxins, poisons, weapon oils, and other stuff that would have had the maker on twenty different kinds of lists for even buying the ingredients.

“What exactly is a ‘Transcendent Lifesaver’?” Derek finally asked, having stopped at a stall that sold medical potions. There was a naming convention for potions that allowed any common one to be identified at a glance. This was either hyperbolic marketing that would not have flown elsewhere, or something utterly fantastic.

“It’s an improvement over the standard black health potion,” the saleswoman happily explained. “If you’re alive enough to drink it, it’ll keep you that way, but if you need something like this, you’ll probably need a [Biomancer] to unfuck what it had to do to save you.”

“So it’s the standard emergency medicine …” Derek offered.

“No, it’s about thirty percent stronger. We substituted some stronger ingredients, but there is a minimum Fortitude requirement of two hundred and fifty to use it safely.”

Derek nodded slowly, thinking.

The “normal” equivalent to this potion was much the same, labeled after the triage color-coded priority, with “black” effectively meaning “on death’s doorstep without hope for recovery” or just plain “dead.”

Or at least pre-[System], magic and [Skills] made that definition quite a bit looser, but the general intention was the same, and as such, side effects were much more “acceptable.”

But a potion that would kill most people under the 3rd Evolution, and many in it, depending on build, with there potentially not being the time to check whether or not the person you were going to heal would be able to survive the treatment, the potion was incredibly risky to have around, even if it was somewhat better.

Maybe once the others were at a point where they’d be able to handle it, adding that to the Dragonfly’s infirmary might be a good idea.

Assuming …

“What’s the shelf life on those?” he asked.

“Ten years stability, another twenty of reduced effectiveness, with it ending up at around sixty percent before taking a nosedive after a grand total of thirty years.”

Unfortunately, once it started degrading, the regular potions would be better, and he could get those far more easily. But they’d be a good trade good, assuming they worked as advertised.

“Hm … could I see your testing data? And what technical specifications would you provide with the ” Derek asked. If he was going to sell these potions, it’d be for the best to have that as well.

He then spent the next ten minutes leafing through the book he’d been provided, asking questions like “and has this been experimentally proven, or is this a mathematical prediction,” and the like.

“So, interested?” the saleswoman asked.

Derek nodded. “I’ll come back with our station guide, but it looks good.”

After some brief pleasantries, he went off to look for the others.

Eventually, he came back to find Mimi getting the hard sell on a set of enchanted railgun rounds that any sane star system would have banned in a heartbeat, assuming they knew enough to realize they even existed.

Having the likes of these in civilian hands also seemed like something that could very easily escalate, but it wasn’t like they were heading anywhere that would actually throw a fit over their possession of it? Earth would, but that was Earth. It had the security to notice that sort of thing. But they could always stash ‘em somewhere before heading home.

And judging by how the occasional glare the seller was throwing Nolan when he thought Mimi wasn’t watching him, he was being forced to give a much better price than he wanted to. For the most part, though, he was continuing to hype up his offerings.

“Also, we can jacket them for whatever size your ship needs,” the seller informed them, causing Mimi to promptly shake her head empathetically.

“I can take care of that,” she said, firmly, not that anyone had ever doubted that.

Railguns, as tough as making ones that were both functional and efficient, were a very simple design. Two parallel rails of conductive metal, a projectile with metal that connected said rails, then you ran a current through that, and the Lorentz force would send the projectile hurtling out of the business end.

And as long as the metal within connected the rails, the rest of the projectile could be made out of literally anything, though not everything would be effective, wood or glass, for example.

All of that meant that, where enchanted rounds were concerned, you could take the rounds sold here and bulk them up with regular ol’ iron or steel until they fit within the barrel of your gun, thereby making them suitable for any weapon … any weapon larger than the projectile, at least.

“How much?” Mimi asked, causing the dealer to rattle off an amount that made both of them wince.

“How about a trade?” Derek asked, pulling two smoky black orbs from his storage ring. “Alien aspects, stackable, heavy antimagic applications, plus the ability to pre-cast a spell within yourself.”

He’d used [Internal Grimoire] to prepare a massively overpowered, omnidirectional [Mana Blast] within himself, a measure that would let him buy himself breathing room against just about any melee opponent around his Level. And since he could whip it out at the drop of a hat, it should be a nasty surprise to anyone who attacked him.

Unfortunately, trying to use [Aspect Integration] to replicate the ability within his own body was yet to bear fruit, though Derek felt like he was getting close.

But the Aspect did get bought, and they walked away with what boiled down to a singularity in a bottle.

Sort of. In actuality, it took matter ahead, compressed it down into an incredibly tiny, light, unstable black hole that would fall through a channel in the center of the projectile and promptly detonate in its wake with immense force.

Though, unfortunately, the weapon would fail immediately against any armor that was sufficiently dense and/or thick, so it wouldn’t be able to, say, gut a battleship in a single shot.

On the other hand, that would also result in it failing if deployed against a planet, the magic being incapable of sufficiently compacting matter, and that was perhaps a good thing with regards to humanity’s long-term survival.

And with Mimi’s purchases wrapped up, they’d then got some potions he felt would make for good trade goods, and then finally headed back to the ship for the night, then spent the next day much the same as the previous, but hardly did anything worth writing home about, leaving them free to leave on schedule.

***

“Oh, and make sure to leave a review if you enjoyed,” the yardmaster told them while they were carrying the last couple of crates inside.

“And if you didn’t, kindly suffer in silence,” Atticus snarked. “I get it … but this place was nice, I’ll put in a review.”

“Isn’t one unhappy customer just going to be forgotten?” Derek wondered, causing the yardmaster to chuckle.

“Probably. But people remember Ea-Nasir’s shitty copper four thousand years later.”

Derek raised an eyebrow.

“The oldest written customer complaint was about a copper merchant named Ea-Nasir in ancient Mesopotamia. It was a bit of a running joke, oh, a hundred years ago or so?” the man explained.

Huh.

“So, how are you folks leaving? Catapult, or warp?”

***

Freedom did, in fact, have a catapult with which they could leave. It was also eye-wateringly expensive.

Having to pay a fee was nothing new; everyone had to, outside of a small handful of exceptions, such as military vessels. But since catapults were normally built by either the United Nations or the local government, and they wanted to encourage trade and travel and the commerce that came with both.

Freedom did not have a government. It did not have any organization building infrastructure for the public good.

What it had had instead was a privately built, privately controlled array that absolutely gouged anyone who wanted to use it, bought and paid for by an external investor who had jacked up the price as high as was even remotely feasible, and made sure to avoid advertising the cost outside of the Freedom system.

Though perhaps the “Roach Motel” approach had worked for a while, people simply seeing “catapult available” and believing they’d have an easy return, only to find out just how expensive this catapult was to use and wind up effectively forced to use it to avoid wasting a significant amount of time, and perhaps miss their following deliveries, at least until the cost had become known and people had started taking into account how long it would take to travel those distances via the Alcubierre drive.

Anyway, because it was so costly, and their next destination wasn’t all that far away, Derek had decided to go the long way round.

So he leaned back in his chair and watched as the universe dissolved into a blue storm of chaos as he triggered [Alcubierre Drive] and hurled the Dragonfly across the universe.