Psycher Chronicles: Chapter 24 Six of Ten (Patreon)

Chapter 24

Six of Ten

(Misha)

This was Misha’s second day in a row of Reaping the energy from a Warrior class Bakshee. Just like yesterday, she had options available to her, though this time there was a bit more information provided by the system. A system that was seeming to build itself out as time went on, that or Misha was finally able to unlock further insights into what was expected of her and her class.

Alternat-1 action taken: Reset Tier 1 (below threshold standards) Warrior to Tier 0.

Effect: Reaped 0.1 Attribute Point and 1 Ability Point from target.

Rewards doubled due to Double Growth Rate.

Final Effect: 0.2 Attribute Points, 2 Ability Points.

Finally, the system seemed to explain itself. Though a lot of this was Misha’s watching the system and trying to determine a rhyme or reason for the changes. It seemed that reverting a Tier 1 candidate back would generate a 0.1 and 1 Ability Point for someone at the lowest threshold. Yesterday, Misha had either received double the base amount due to the Warrior she reset yesterday, Amoni, had met the minimum threshold standards, or there were other variables at play.

Then when Misha did her job, of resetting the candidate back to Tier 0 to restart their building process, Misha was rewarded by the Reaping system.

Misha found that once again, she had the ability to improve herself once more, which she did by applying her 0.2 Attribute point boosts evenly.

Physical Characteristics:

Strength: 14.9 / (Max)

Dexterity: 15.0 -> 15.1 / 20

Agility: 15.0 -> 15.1 / 20

Stamina: 14.9 / (Max)

As soon as the bonuses were applied, Misha could feel her body burning and pulsing, much like they had done yesterday, but this time it felt a bit more manageable.

Then just like before, she was once again granted access to the system skills. Just as before the options for the first three classes did not change. Though as usual she was hesitant to choose one of the options. First, the options having different prices made no sense if she could just pick and choose from different sections at will. This led Misha to believe that choosing one of the sections would somehow restrict her access to the other classes, or worse, restrict her own access to variables within her own class, which was the class she desperately needed to learn the most about, if she was going to be able to provide actionable intelligence to her fleet.

Candidate must choose from the following system skills available: Current Ability Points Available (2)

Warrior Abilities:

Sense Danger (3)

Feral Weapons (2)

Increased Durability (1)

Enhanced Comprehension Speed (4)

Enhanced Senses (1): Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell

Increased Attribute (1): Dexterity, Agility

Shaman (5): Fire, Water, Earth, Air

Again, the options were the same. The only difference was that now Strength and Stamina were permanently removed as even possible options for her Increased Attributes. This slow deletion of choices further confirmed the theory that if Misha chose an option from one of these other classes, it might impact what options she will be presented in the future.

Worker Abilities:

Enhanced Senses (2): Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell

Increased Attribute (3): Dexterity, Agility

Enhanced Comprehension Speed (1)

Increased Endurance (2)

Commanding Voice (5)

Allure (4)

It didn’t go unnoticed that the Worker class was now missing the chance to increase her Strength or Stamina as well.

Ruler Abilities:

Elemental Focus (1): Fire, Water, Earth, Air

Secondary Focus (2): Lightning – Prerequisite (Fire and Air)

Secondary Focus (2): Ice – Prerequisite (Water and Air)

Secondary Focus (2): Metal – Prerequisite (Earth and Fire)

Commanding voice (2)

Allure (2)

Increased Comprehension speed (1)

Ironically, only the Ruler class had remained unchanged since the previous day. The most obvious changes of all came from what was now available to her for her Alternate-1 class upgrades.

Alternate-1 Abilities:

Double Daily Harvest (1)

Reaper’s Eyes (2)

The first one seemed like it would be a cheaper doubling of attributes again, but after thinking about it, Misha realized that there was a current cap on the number of class wielders that she could reset each day. Well that was not entirely true, Misha realized that she likely could reset dozens of classes each day, but her ability to reap the rewards from her harvesting was limited.

Worse, now that Misha had a chance to sense everything going on, it was clear that she was now near the maximum for what she could harvest for the day.

With two points, her logical mind told her that if she once again wanted to maximize her benefits for the day, she should take Reaper’s Eyes. Though that was the Psycher training in her kicking in, the one that stressed slow gradual and controlled growth through acceptable deviations.

Shiver.

At this moment, Misha felt a slight shift in her mentality, a very minor shift but it was one that she could instantly feel swelling up within her.

Logically her mind told her to take Reaper’s Eye, particularly as it would likely give her greater clarity and insight into what she could reap as a reward from each harvest. Given that Misha could die and likely find a new host to assimilate to, this was the best logical option for getting data.

But right now, Misha felt the strain of being surrounded on all sides by the enemy. Right now, she was a spy on a developing hostile planet. Right now, she not only needed to gain as much knowledge as possible. But right now, she also needed to gain as much power as possible, as quickly as possible. This was why Misha going against the slow grind of measurable growth, for the first time in her many lives, deviated from what was acceptable.

You have selected Double Daily Harvest for 1 Ability Point, continue?

“Yes.” Misha mentally replied back to the prompt.

Then just as before, she felt an intense burning within her body as her mind and body seemed to react.

Rumble.

Her stomach rumbled as her body shifted around organs slightly, as her body mutated just enough to expand a unique fleshy organ that had been part of Misha’s body for the past ten years. Now, in the blink of an eye, it had expanded to an almost imperceptible degree to anyone that wasn’t watching.

Double Daily Harvest activated.

Current Ability Points Available (1).

With that Misha closed out her options screen. Then looking around the weight room she looked to see the other members of team working out, just as Coach Green had ordered them to do.

Screech, squeak.

In the distance the unmistakable sound of tennis shoes screeching to a halt on basketball courts could be heard. The boys were already practicing.

Realizing that Misha still had at least one more harvest available for her today thought for a moment to go out and challenge the boys. Of which, three would be members of the local pack.

For a moment, Misha stared out the door wondering if she should challenge the boys and reap from one of them, but she stopped herself.

Instead, she turned back to see the two remaining targets on her team. One was J-Sweep who was a tall specimen with a well-defined speed build. While the other was a girl named Two-Tone who acted as the power forward for the team, and was a mountain of muscle.

Realizing that getting matched up with Two-Tone on the court would be inadvisable, Misha instead opted to challenge her here and now to a competition of strength.

To begin this, Misha had to begin the reaping system by first making contact with the target. Then from there, she would need to make a few more contacts over time to continue the reaping and resetting process.

Looking at the big girl who was currently performing 275 pound dead lifts while listening to her music blasting in her ears, Misha developed a plan.

Two-Tone bent over, her golden skin glistening from the layer of sweat that covered her, then just before she was about to grip the weight, Misha made her move.

SQUEALCH!!

Shock!!

Misha caused the device to do a dual discharge of both a slight electrical current and an overly large ear-piercing shriek of noise. For a werewolf with likely sensitive ears, Misha figured this would be more than enough to get a reaction.

“AHH!!” Two-Two howled in pain, as her hands that had been reaching down for the bar, shot up, grabbed her headphones and threw them across the gym floor, shattering them immediately.

At that, Misha moved forward to place a quick hand on Two-Tone, “you okay?”

Shake.

Two-Tone was clutching at her sensitive ears, which Misha tried to help by grabbing the arms, pulling them down and looking into the ear of the giant warrior.

“You seem fine.” Misha said, checking out the right ear, moving her hair out of the way to fully see the air canal. Then doing the same on the other side.

“What happened?” K-Bar asked, coming over and joining in to check out their teammate who was still in pain, but clearly recovering from the sudden shock.

“I don’t know. I guess my sweat got into the headphones and caused them to short out.” Two-Tone said, then looking up she looked to the now broken set of headphones that lay ten feet away. With careful trembling hands she reached out, and tried to scoop up the headphones that were clearly broken and cracked after the violent toss. “NO, no, no, no no…”

“Oh no, that was your birthday gift, right?” K-Bar asked, though it was clear she already knew the answer.

With this, the giant Two-Tone began crying as she held the headphones in her hands and shut her eyes tightly.

This was when Misha made her final move, to pat the giant girl on her back and complete the reaping process.

Reaping process successful.

Misha was happy with the results of her efforts, but did feel a little bad about the inadvertent breaking of the girl’s headphones. As such, she decided to try to fix things while she could.

“Hey, I think I can fix that.” Misha said, pointing to the headphones that were broken and dangling together by wires and processor cards.

“What?” K-Bar asked, clearly not believing her ears.

Fortunately, Two-Tone either didn’t hear, or was too caught up in the idea that the headphones could be fixed that she disregarded her friend and holding up the headphones towards Misha as an offering asked, “really?”

“Yeah, here, let me take these real quick. I think I have my tools in my bag.” Misha said, grabbing the headphones, as she did, her mind was already going through the diagnosis process. As a trained technomancer, this was a relatively minor repair work and something that she could fix within seconds. That said, she needed to make it look like she could do this as a normal inhabitant of the planet, which was why she went over and pulled out a pair of needle nose pliers from her bag, along with a light that she had mounted to a headband. She also made sure to put on her copper wired work gloves, and within seconds she was ready for the technical work needed.

“What is she doing?” J-Sweep asked.

At this time Misha was too busy in her own world of repair, but fortunately for her, Michelle was there to fill in the pieces.

“Misha is like a savant with all electronics. She can literally fix anything. I had an old iPad, that I was going to throw away due to a cracked screen. She not only fixed the screen, but then streamlined the programming, and did something to it. Now it works better than even the newest versions still.” Michelle said excitedly, while praising her friend that she invited to the team.

That distraction by Michelle was enough for Misha as she used the time to move the wires and components back into place, welt a card back together with her pyrokinesis. Then she used the same pyrokinesis to weld the broken plastic sides together as if they had never broken.

“Done.” Misha said, holding up the headphones that looked like they were brand new out of the box.

“What? No way.” Kendall from the B-Team said, reaching out to touch the headphones.

“Hey!” But before she could lay her hands on the headphones Two-Tone, had already grabbed her headphones back and started moving them gingerly in her hands. At first, she just rolled the headphones around looking for any signs of a break, or a crack, things that she was certain were there moments ago. “I can’t see any break lines at all.”

“See, told you she is amazing.” Michelle said.

“So are you going to be some type of repair person when you grow up?” Holly, also from B Team asked.

With that Misha just shrugged, as she began pulling off her equipment. Then while doing so, she spoke, “you should test those to make sure they still work properly.”

Though the way Misha spoke, and her actions of still cleaning up her equipment seemed to note that she knew that the repaired device would work perfectly.

“Right.” Two-Tone said, then taking the headphones, she pulled them apart, half expecting them to break in her hands, only to let out a sigh of relief when they clearly opened wide enough to fit her head and hair. Then turning on the Bluetooth device, she was hit by a lout wave of music.

You will be mine!

The music was so loud that everyone could hear it, it was so loud that Two-Tone herself had to pause it to stare at the settings.

“Was it too loud?” K-Bar asked.

“No, well yes, but that was as loud as it was when I first got them. They kept dying so I had to keep turning up the volume, but let me see…” Two-Tone said, as she lowered the volume and then pushed play.

Muffled music.

“Yeah, this is amazing, they are as good as new, maybe even slightly better, as I remember originally listening to them on fourteen, now they are on twelve.” Two-Tone said, taking off the headphones. Then turning to Misha she said, “thanks.”

“No problem.” Misha said, as she packed up her bag, put it in her locker and then began going to complete her workout.

“That was so cool.” Olivia said, trying to listen to the music playing.

“Yeah it was.” Two-Tone said, as she stared at the new girl who was about to hit the treadmill to do a run.

What they didn’t known, what none of them could see was the fact that Misha had purposefully distanced herself as her reaping was complete as she received details of what her actions rewarded her. In addition to working herself further into the local pack of werewolves, she also received another 0.2 Attributes and 2 Ability Points for her efforts.

Once again, she applied the 0.2 Attributes to Dexterity and Agility evenly. With that both attributes were raised to 15.2.

Then with her now three Ability Points, she decided to see what else was available for her class.

Alternate-1 Abilities:

Decreased Reaping Time (1)

Reaper’s Eyes (2)

Seeing as there were still two options available, and Misha had enough points for both, she decided to purchase both options.

You have selected Reaper’s Eyes for 2 Ability Points, and Decreased Reaping Time for 1 Ability point, continue?

Seeing that, Misha paused for a second, before inwardly accepting the changes. Just as she began to feel the slow burn of organo-tech focusing on her eyes and on the way her hands could harvest the organo-tech materials of others, she felt frustration for the first time in a long time, as she realized that she might have made a mistake.

Then pausing for a moment, Misha pulled up her new ability list and realized just how far she had come, and how much further she still had to go.

Alternate-1 Progress to Tier 1 (6 / 10)

Growth Specialization: Speed and Accuracy Build

Double Growth Rate

Double Daily Harvest

Decreased Reaping Time

Reaper’s Eyes

Suddenly the choices that she had been given made sense, as everything seemed to be about either increasing efficiency, or decreasing the time needed to do certain tasks. With this realization, Misha finally understood that even the way she applied her Attribute bonuses had a direct impact on the growth rate and potential of her Reaper class.

With that in mind, Misha wondered what was now available for her class’s future abilities, unfortunately she had spent all of her Ability points and was therefore unable to access the shop.

This didn’t bother Misha, as she assumed what options were now available wouldn’t be that important, especially as they were just Tier 0 options. In the coming days, Misha would realize just how wrong that assessment was.