Gamma Protocol (027) (Patreon)

[027]

U̸̜͒p̶̤̄g̢̬̓r̘̋͡ȃ̯́d̩̅͢e̡̤͊ ̩͗͜U̴̳ͮn̙̓͘l̴̺̅o͓̓͝c̰̾͟kͩ͏̞e̛̱̍d̯͛̕

Drying myself, I glared at the pop-up.

“What the fuck was that!?” I demanded. “You… what, bump my friendship-o-meter and send me on a hallucination to meet a fish-God!?”

The text did not waver or shift, but it now carried a smarmy smugness about it that made me scowl deeper. The pride was still there, but now it seemed to be insisting this was something I couldn’t refuse, and that it was also for my own good.

“You know what? You get to wait.” I plugged the cred-chip into the tablet and withdrew a not-inconsiderable amount of credits. “I’m not doing this with my stomach full of water… How am I even hungry? I must’ve drunk my body-weight in there. At this rate, I’ll wake up one day and find out I ate my pillow.”

Passive ‘Stomach’

Grade: [G] [3 / 10]
Effects: Digest any biological matter.

“Yeah, well, calling derivative-polyester ‘biological’ is a very long stretch of the definition.”

I would readily admit I was shaken. That… thing had felt real, massive, a creature so large it shouldn’t be able to exist. It had seen me. Not whatever I’d been in that vision or memory or whatever, but me, Axel the human. It had looked through me and… and it hadn’t even registered my presence any more than a person registered an individual ant.

More concerningly, it had not felt like a monster. It’d given off a foreboding sense of power and danger, sure, but there was something fundamentally similar yet also fundamentally different.

It left a lingering question within me. What was the system? Why had it felt like it was my memories and not something else? And what did it mean to increase “charisma”? I’d thought it to be some sort of measure of likeability from the system, but now I wasn’t sure.

Putting on my jacket, I headed out, confirming the lobby was empty first before hurrying along and into the still warm night air outside. And immediately I swerved, avoiding the various solicitations from the whorehouse employees.

With a quick jog, I made it to the nearest 24/7 bodega store and got myself a few spicy cheese-wraps and a choco-swirl fudge ice-cream.

U̸̜͒p̶̤̄g̢̬̓r̘̋͡ȃ̯́d̩̅͢e̡̤͊ ̩͗͜U̴̳ͮn̙̓͘l̴̺̅o͓̓͝c̰̾͟kͩ͏̞e̛̱̍d̯͛̕

Pick one

“Yeah, yeah, I said you’ll wait, and you’ll wait.” I grumbled at the system under my breath.

The bodega didn’t have nutri-paste, but they did have a good assortment of flavor-packets and condiments. I made a mental note to go back to the industrial area to get more of the cheap food supply once I had the chance.

I’d be keeping the belt tight, I needed to save up as much as I could.

Bag full of treasure in hand, I walked around until I found a relatively empty parking lot. The lights had died out long ago, every inch of pavement covered in scribble-graffiti, and both the cars and the fences were well rusted and worn. There did seem to be someone sleeping in one of the far corners, tucked against one of the buildings, but this was about as desolate as it could get given the circumstances.

So sitting down with my very unhealthy choice for dinner (because I definitely needed some dietary comfort after that vision), I turned my attention back to the pop-up. “Let’s see this “upgrade” thing.”

It growled at me, but the system had felt a bit too excited to move this along. A series of pop-ups appeared.

[Doped Metabolism]: 

+200% Base-Form stat increase speed.
Alternate form stats [x2 Base] -> [x4 Base].

“I can kinda see the appeal, but… huh?” I asked between loud chewing sounds. “When I go all snarly, I already get double my base-form stat?” The system gave a feeling of confirmation. But I was still left with an odd feeling of it being kind of a waste. Two adaptation points would give me +10 to whatever stat I focused on within 2 seconds. Maybe there would be more to it? Better check the rest first. “Next?”

[Loosened Shackles]: 

Max AP [150] -> [250]
Passive AP Gain [0.25 / hour] -> [0.5 / hour]
Max AP Bonus [+200] -> [+300]

“Ominous, but looks promising.” It didn’t go unnoticed that though the passive AP gain doubled, the maximum only increased by 66%. Still, right now it looked like the stronger contender. “What else you got?”

[Specialist’s Race]:

Base Stat Gain [+5] -> [+20]
Max AP Bonus [+200] -> [+400]
Base AP Cost [-1] -> [-3]
Base Stat Penalty [-1] -> [-4]

“That’s… wait.” I frowned a little. “If I take this and start with… say, strength-mode, I’d get 20 per every 3 AP. But if I then switch to speed mode, AP cost would go to 6, and it’d start taking 4 strength away. With the next mode costing 9 AP, and 4 speed since speed was the previous mode… Right?” I got an affirmation from the system.

It was clear that this was an option to be taken to make it easier to push a single stat higher and faster… at the expense of being punished far more harshly for changing modes (or even just triggering the same one multiple times in a row).

My eyes roamed to the fourth and final option.

[Effective Absorption]: 

Gain Half of offered AP (rounded) from slain monsters regardless of choice.
Gain +1 Extra Progress per Skill

“I… huh.” I scratched my chin. “So… if I kill another Hellcat and pick blades, I’d get two points of progress and 5 AP?” The system gave a strong sense of affirmation and I nodded right back.

This particular prospect alongside “shackles” raised a rather concerning question regarding when and where I’d get to “spend” that AP. If there were such a thing as “spend them while in human form”, but apparently that was not an option. I didn’t much like the prospect of having to transform, last time it had reached the news and I now have a bounty on my “monster” self’s head. 

Also, killing monsters while in my other form wouldn’t net me any cash. What was I supposed to do? Walk up to a corpo and go “yeah, that monster is me”? No, thank you.

Still, something to consider down the road, I suppose, I’d need to test out how this whole streaming stuff pans out.

Pick one

“Hush, you, I’m thinking.” I waved it off.

Doping was out. The metabolism part felt like I was setting myself up for needing to eat even more food when I returned to human form. And the “doping” part left me with the impression there would potentially be visible consequences.

Of the remaining three, shackles was meant to push me to fight in my alternate form more frequently. It and the specialist’s race looked like they wanted me to bash myself against stronger monsters, at least that was my interpretation based off of raising the limit of max AP that could be allocated per stat.

“I’ll take absorption,” I said.

Though this option still low-key bolstered the fighting-frequency, it also offered something very important: a quicker path towards developing higher class skills. Granted, doping also bolstered “growth rate”, but in my eyes, it carried too many risks for my current circumstances that absorption didn’t.

Maybe they were imaginary concerns, but if my human form started growing fur and claws, I’d definitely get into trouble. Besides, the absorption was the one thing that focused into helping me grow based off of killing monsters, rather than bolstering me to make monster-killing easier.

As soon as I poked at the option, I felt a shiver run through me, leaving my body weirdly raw. My skin was hot and sensitive, kind of as if I’d almost got sunburnt. Following this came a wave of exhaustion, but fortunately not some sudden insatiable hunger or anything of the sort.

So I picked up my trash and made my way back to the motel.

I spared a thought of concern towards the messages from Kali, but I was still a bit too rankled about the vision. I would give it some proper thought tomorrow.

Time to get some shut-eye.

---

Jolting out of bed with the blaring beeps of the tablet, I was reminded why I loathed alarm-clocks. 8am sharp, and not a minute too soon, I dragged myself off to shower, wondered whether the Motel’s water-reclamation system was just so great that it could afford free showers… then packed everything up.

I took a moment to bring out the two pictures, of my father and of my aunt, and stare at them. It was still hard to believe I wasn’t running late for work or the academy or any other such thing. I wasn’t in the Guard, either, but I definitely felt better about where I was now than where I’d been a month ago.

“Off I go.” I tucked the pictures into my backpack that contained all my life’s possessions (Save my Bulstra, that was on my hip), and headed down to the lobby.

Grills was there.

The android’s head spun to lock on to me. “Good morning, Axel Garcia!” It chirped with her mechanical voice.

She was not holding the shotgun today.

“I wanted to confirm whether my stay was extended?” I asked. “Yesterday, you had a bit of a hiccup and-”

The fans in her chassis whirred for a second, then slowed. “Yes, your stay has been extended, Axel Garcia.” She gave a sharp backwards nod.

“Great, for how long? And what would be the rates?”

Another whirr of fans. “Your stay has been extended, Axel Garcia, you need not check-out.”

Silence.

Maybe I’d accidentally stumbled onto a bug of some sort? “Can you contact your owner?”

Silence.

“I… guess we’ll come back to that.”

With the hot spring air, I munched my way through some more spicy cheese wrappers while making my way to the Internet-shop. After some thought, I figured I’d agree to Kali’s request and promise to meet-up with one of her acquaintances sometime this week. I couldn’t exactly guarantee it would be soon, since it mostly depended on the “Rusty Pitch”’s location. If that thing was in the inner districts, I’d probably end up needing a whole day to get to it and back.

I’d agreed to show up to the Well tomorrow. Meaning that today would be a day to hunt for possible jobs and possible places to stay. Meaning that I needed to either cough up a lung to pay for an internet-permission’s upgrade, or that I’d need to find some alternate information sources.

“Oh, I almost forgot about the sample thing.”

That… would probably better wait, Moreau’s instructions required going into the third district, and if I was going to make that trip, then better make full use of it. And who knows? Maybe I could gather up more samples from my next transformation to send on over and include news about the “upgrade”?

Fuming over the possibilities, I marched into the shop, ready for a day of putting together a presentable CV and trying to game digital-AI assistants into giving me a job interview.

If everything went perfectly, then I’d probably be worked up and ready to go kill some monsters.

AP: 44 / 150

“That’s right, little fella.” I poked at the little resource-bar. “We’ll get to hunt later.”

---

“Wait, you do not have a neuralink?” It was the first human to pick-up on the call-attempt. They were a bakery franchise just an hour ride away, and they’d placed their “job wanted” application in a forum thread.

I nodded, watching my face on the screen as the AI had digitally replaced my clothes for a business suit. “That is correct, ma’am, it’s-”

CLICK

I stared at the blank screen and sighed.

AP: 45 / 150

The text hovered in the corner of my vision, almost as if begging me to stop and head out and start killing some monsters. I nudged it away.

---

“You claim you do not have a neuralink.” The AI-attendant spoke curtly.

“That is correct.” I answered in kind, keeping my face plastered with a plastered plastic grin. Because AI recruiters bolstered scores based on how much the applicant smiled, and nowadays, everyone did, all the time, every minute of the interview.

I remembered the last such interview I’d made, my cheeks had been left aching for a week.

“Your documentation and profile do not show you are disabled.”

“That is also correct.”

“Incongruence detected. Scam, likely.”

CLICK

I rubbed my temples, this was the fifth call in a row that ended the same way.

AP: 47 / 150

“Just one more.” I promised it.

The room reeked of spicy cheese-substitute mixed with the pungent odor of hardline stress. Twelve hours, working through every job application available, and I’d gotten nowhere.

As expected, my nerves were already fraying.

I almost pitied whatever monster I found once I went out to hunt.

Almost.

---

AP: 48 / 150

The pop-up rankled at me, annoyed, irritated, betrayed. It tried to shove itself into my field of vision, demanding answers for promises not kept. I kept nudging it out of the way. “They agreed for an in-person interview.”

It was late, I’d burnt up all my daylight hours in the internet-shop, but the place wasn’t that far out either, just an hour off on the bus and I was in a wholly new part of the fourth district. The reason I was sure it was a new part I hadn’t seen yet was because the graffiti here appeared to be themed around white bears, most of them involving motorcycles in some shape or form.

“There are even some reports about monster sightings a walk south from here. Once this is over, we can go check that out.”

Petulant, the resource-bar tucked itself away.

“Here we are.” I blinked at the company name plastered atop the entrance. “Organ Harvesters.” Taking a full second to process that, I frowned. “This has got to be one of those ‘ironic names’ brands.” I kept staring at the neon sign as it blinked on and off. “Right?”

“Welcome to Organ Harvesters incorporated, how may I be of help?”

I stared at the drone, it wasn’t even a humanoid shaped droid, it was a drone, a blocky piece of equipment on treadmills. The machine had more rust than metal, with a screen that flickered, and speakers that crackled rather than stay silent. Yet despite the robot’s disrepair, the lobby was spotless, and it smelled of nothing at all.

Not a trace of anything.

It wasn’t like the cleanliness of the motel that still had hints of the cleaning chemicals alongside the humidity. This place had no scent at all. It was as unnerving as stepping into a factory floor that had no sound at all.

Every alarm in my head went off at once.

“Sorry, wrong building.” Turning right around, I marched back outside, hand resting on my Bulstra’s grip as I kept glancing over my shoulder until I’d gotten a good dozen blocks away. “Yeah, I’m going on a hunt now.”

The system cheered.

---

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AN:

This week (and part of the next one) I have this whole family event, and it's been a bit too chaotic, which means that I'm going to be slowing down chapter postings for the next week or so (still chewing up from the backlog, just gonna give myself a chance to catch back up once things calm down).

Sorry about the minor inconvenience, see you the week after!