NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 40: WILL IT HURT?
Griffin Tucker Vasilias, Great House Scion, Lvl 1
Mount Discovery, Province of Aragonia
The shard was one of the ones that August Vasilias had sent with him, Griffin was sure. He remembered the golden charm at the end of the ethershard with the little crest or logo stamped on it. August had waved it around in front of his face right before he was put under anesthesia and his heart was ripped out and replaced with a magical artifact.
The ethershard he had pulled out of the egg was silvery and translucent with an oily sheen to it and about twenty centimeters long. It was blunt at one end with the little golden charm on a golden wire while on the other end, it tapered to a point so sharp Griffin couldn’t see the tip. Even with the thick gloves of the hazmat suit, he handled the thing very gingerly.
“A Legendary ethershard…of Data?” Griffin asked, nonplussed. “What the hell was the monster gonna do with that? Administrate a database real hard? Make a firewall?” He considered the plasma emitter cybernetic parts on the monsters and frowned. “Could it make like a literal wall of fire?”
Kismet looked at him incredulously and said, “Sometimes I can’t tell if you are attempting humor or not. A Data ethershard is extremely useful, especially a Legendary one. You’ll want to absorb that as soon as you possibly can.”
He stared at the shard in his hand and pulled a face. It still had green-brown goo caked to it. He conjured a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and dumped it all over the slimy shard until it was as clean as he could get it. It was getting easier and easier to use the Adaptive Conjuration graft; each time it was a little faster and the thing he made was closer to what he had intended. He conjured another towel and wiped the rest of the mess off of his faceplate and made sure to top off his tensa pool with his gathering technique, the Ten Star Vortex.
“So what kind of powers can I get with a Data ethershard, anyway?” Griffin asked. “And shouldn’t I wait until I do this Stone Gate Quest or whatever first? Get my Class?”
“You need to unlock your Attributes before you contemplate your Stone Gate Quest,” Kismet reminded him. “This artifact is a Legendary ethershard. No matter its aspect, it will produce a graft worth having. Waiting to absorb it until after you have your Class would be valid if you had been training for a specific Class since your childhood or at least had a Class Guide. You need to expand your abilities now or you’ll never get out of this facility alive.”
Griffin nodded and said, “Okay if you say so. How long is this going to take? And…how exactly do I absorb another ethershard?”
“You reach out with your anima while you hold the shard and envelop it with your anima. Everything else happens automatically and it only takes a few seconds.”
Griffin looked at her with a skeptical eyebrow raised, “Will it hurt?” He asked.
Kismet shrugged, “It’s hard to say for sure. Everyone reacts a little differently. It’s not uncommon for there to be some pain.”
“Are we talkin’ like a little pinch or…or more?” He shook his head as soon as he asked the question. “No, don’t answer that. I’m dreading this enough already. Do I have to take off the hazmat suit?”
Kismet looked him up and down, then shrugged, “If that yellow rubber monstrosity is what you call a hazmat suit, then I don’t think it will inhibit your absorbing the shard. We seem to be in a safe enough location if nothing came while you were changing into that thing, but let’s not get complacent.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. Hurry up and do the thing,” he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, fogging up his facemask briefly. “Okay, here goes.”
Griffin reached out with his anima, his recent practice sessions with Kismet paying off as he found he was able to control the odd metaphysical organ almost naturally. He only had to think about it a little to wrap the ethershard in his hand in his anima, feeling it in a much more intimate way than he’d anticipated. His anima conveyed information about the shard that was hard to put into words.
He was able to perceive the internal structure of the shard through his anima. There was a vast well of tensa within the shard—that was easy to feel—but more subtle than that was the sense that the tensa held vast amounts of information. Feeling the shard with his anima was like thumbing through an incredibly complex reference manual.
As he contemplated the ethershard wrapped in his anima, he saw that the shard began to glow in his hand. He felt a sudden surge of power from the ethershard and he convulsively closed his fist around it. The edges sliced right through the rubber glove and into his hand, blood immediately welling up from the deep cuts. Griffin couldn’t feel the pain of that because his brain was being overwhelmed with pain from the absorption process.
The glowing shard rotated in his grip, shredding more skin, then stabbed directly into his palm. He felt the shard slice through his forearm and cut its way all the way to where his heart was. Griffin fell to the floor, his uninjured hand clawing at his chest while the injured one was still in its convulsive fist. He screamed until he couldn’t scream anymore.
Then, it was over. Griffin knelt there, panting, unable to wipe the sweat that was dripping from his brow because of the hazmat suit’s bulky helmet and shroud. The hand that had held the ethershard was sore, but other than the blood, it had been completely healed. He flexed it, noting that his glove was shredded at the same time as the smell of the crushed dead eggs reached him from within his suit, making him gag all over again.
Doing his best to keep his gorge down, Griffin got slowly to his feet. He noticed several new System messages that were awaiting his acknowledgment and read them.
New Graft Obtained!
You absorbed a [Legendary Data Ethershard], bonding it to your Speed Attribute. Because you have not yet chosen a Class, you gain a new, random graft of [Legendary] quality. You have gained the graft [On-Board Sensor Suite].
Due to the [Legendary] quality of the ethershard absorbed, your Speed Attribute has been set to 7.
Attribute Unlocked!
You have unlocked your Speed Attribute at a score of [7].
The following have been improved: base movement speed, top movement speed, attack frequency, reaction time, improved cognition, tensa pool, and tensa recovery.
For unlocking an Attribute for the first time, your tensa pool increases by 1 ks per Attribute. Your tensa pool is now at 2.7 kilosparks.
The last popup was an updated Reborn profile page with his new graft, his Speed Attribute filled in, and his improved tensa pool.
Griffin Tucker Vasilias
Race
Human
Rank/Level
Reborn - level 2
House
House Vasilias
Racial Gifts
Great House Seal, Enhanced System Access, Unlimited Inventory, Monster Rendering, DEMI Port, Overcharge
Attributes
Dominion
?? / 20
Speed
7 [Data] /20
Precision
?? / 20
Growth
?? / 20
Arcana
10 [Mind] /20
Tensa Pool
3.7 ks
Gear
Grafts
Adaptive Conjuration [Mind], Sensor Suite [Speed]
“Well that was…something,” he muttered. Note to self, never ever trust someone when they say it’s not going to hurt, he thought. To Kismet, he said, “It says I got an on-board sensor suite, whatever that means. I know, I know! You don’t have to say it, I’ll look up the graft in the System.”
Sensor Suite [Data] – Speed 7
Next Rank: 1 Uncommon ethershard of the Eyes, 1 Uncommon ethershard of Information
Cost: None
Cooldown: - (passive ability)
Description: Gain Enhanced System Access. If you already have Enhanced System Access, gain HUD overlay, unlock 4 random sensors. To activate a sensor, concentrate on the sense and choose to activate it. To deactivate, concentrate on the sense and choose to deactivate it. Record, store, and recall up to [Speed] years of sensory data.
Unlocked Sensors: Tensa, SONAR, infrared, precision telescopic vision
“You bound it to your Speed Attribute?” Kismet asked incredulously. “Whatever made you think to do that?”
Griffin snorted, “It’s not like there was any kind of choice. I just…wrapped it up in my anima and it did its thing.”
“Well, it’s not a terrible Attribute to bind a Data ethershard to. This graft certainly fits the theme.” Kismet frowned, tapping her lip in thought. She said, “It’s not an offensive graft, which is what I was really hoping for something to give you more of a fighting chance. Or maybe something defensive so you can take more than a single hit. But I think we can work with this. The sensors it describes will work nicely with your DEMI port and the HUD overlay…plus the Enhanced System Access, while not useful to you is an incredible graft to get before Sapphire or even Jade Rank.”
“And it’s free! I mean, it doesn’t have a tensa cost.” His eyes widened as he reread the description. “And I can record and store this sensory data for years? That’s fucking insane. Where’s the storage device? What’s the medium? My brain?” His mind spun with the possibilities. He wondered if he could record sensory data when he was asleep.
“So…what, do I just think about it and it…works?” He asked. He didn’t wait for Kismet to respond, figuring it’d be quicker to try it and see if it worked. For once, it was as intuitive as he had hoped it would be. He tried the HUD first since he was pretty sure he’d need to get used to that before he got any more exotic.
With a thought, the world around him suddenly lit up with glowing orange lines which all flowed together into a stylized logo showing ten stars caught in a spiral with ten arms. The logo disintegrated and he noted that several icons appeared in various unobtrusive corners of his vision, just like in a video game.
“Can you see all this?!” He asked Kismet.
Her face appeared in the HUD, but a stylized chibi version of her, complete with blue hair and big eyes. “Oh yes,” said, tiny mouth flapping comically, “I’m able to perceive the world with whatever senses you’re using. I can’t control your grafts, but I do benefit from them somewhat.”
Griffin laughed at her cute little face and said, “I think I’m gonna explore this new power a bit. This place is a wreck, but it seems to be pretty lifeless so it should be safe enough for me to test out a few senses. Whatever was here has been gone for a while.”
As he focused on each icon and area of his HUD, he got helpful context popups. It was the most impressive example of software design that he’d ever seen. He was getting a nerdy surge of joy as he flashed through dozens of different menus and configurations that he would peruse more fully when he wasn’t in a place that smelled like death and rot.
His main HUD was simple and unobtrusive. It included some very familiar-looking elements, like a health meter in the shape of a little outline of a man filled in with green. Next to the figure was a readout that showed his current relative health and any conditions or injuries he had. Both currently read [NONE]. Beneath the health readout was a bar that read Tensa Pool above it and had two numbers that showed him how much tensa he had in sparks as well as what percentage of the total it was. It read 1.984 ks /2.0 ks; 99.2%.
Whenever he focused on something for a while, a System Identify Query popped up with a textbox with the description of the item then faded unobtrusively into the background until he focused on it. It was like he had on AR glasses without the stupid-looking tech. It responded to his will immediately and he was able to play around with the placement, size, and display format for each of the items.
There was even a minimap in the top right-hand corner that expanded into a transparent map of the immediate area (based on the latest Enhanced Access maps). When he concentrated on the minimap, it brought up a map-in-progress of the entire facility, showing the halls he’d explored.
This is incredible, Griffin thought, changing the color of the little man's outline from green to purple and back again. Kismet may have been hoping for an attack graft or whatever, but this has got to be just as good.
As impressed as he was with the interface of the HUD, he only truly began to understand how awesome it was when he started activating the different sensors he’d gained since he already had Enhanced System Access. The graft’s description had listed them as tensa, SONAR, infrared, and precision telescopic vision. He decided to try out the most exotic sense first, the tensa sensor. With another mental nudge, his tensa senses activated and the entire room began to glow and shift with an opalescent fog.
The fog shifted and eddied in intangible winds. In places, the fog was much denser. The obsidian device in front of him was encased in shining silver threads finer than a human hair. The threads were layered and interlaced in a complex weave as thick as the cables on a suspension bridge and then the cables were wrapped and woven together as well.
The HUD provided contextual data based on what he was seeing, showing the relative tensa density of any spot he focused on. The obsidian device showed between 12.2 and 12.27 gigasparks of tensa density, while everywhere else had an average of between .5 and .7 kilosparks. Griffin wondered at the incredible power contained within the item he’d been scooping dead monster eggs out of.
He decided that he’d need to keep playing with it to understand it better, but there were other sensors to try out. He decided to just try the next one on the list, deactivating his tensa sense and turning on the SONAR. Once again, the transition was easy and natural, though he wasn’t immediately able to make sense of the data that he was getting.
The view he had of the dark room and its many desks with the obsidian device didn’t change, at least, not at first. Then he shifted, his booted foot kicking a desk’s leg and he suddenly “saw” a rough, low-resolution image of the entire room in a pulse of complete, 360-degree perception. The HUD interpreted the data as monochrome blue pixels that faded into transparency after a few seconds, overlaying his view of the room. The combination of the HUD and the new sense helped him to integrate the bizarre sensations of being able to perceive sound like that.
On a hunch, Griffin tried making a clicking sound with his tongue, like a dolphin or a bat. The low-resolution image he’d gotten before suddenly sharpened beyond ultra high-definition and he found that he could even sense some of the things in nearby desk drawers. After experimenting a bit, he found that louder clicks and noises provided a more detailed understanding of his environment, but he stopped short of yelling at a sharp look from Kismet.
He spent several more minutes playing around with the SONAR sense and concluded that he was going to have to practice with it more. For now, he switched over to his infrared sensor and just like that, he had Predator vision. His view bloomed into cool blues and blacks, with heat sources showing up as oranges, reds, yellows, and white.
At the same time, he had a much more visceral sensation of heat sources. It wasn’t a visual sense for him when it wasn’t expressed through the HUD: he felt like his whole body became ultra-sensitive to hot and cold. He could feel tiny drafts of cool air and warm air, objects around him radiated with cold or warmth and could understand even tiny increments between temperatures. The HUD provided contextual data, giving him exact temperatures in any units he wanted, including, he presumed, local units.
Once again, the combination of visual interpretation along with the new physical sensation allowed him to understand and process it all without feeling like he was going crazy. He tried turning off the HUD visual interpretation of the infrared sense and the rainbow view disappeared, replaced by what his regular eyes could see. But he still had the ultra-sensitivity to the heat and cold. It even worked through the hazmat suit, unimpeded by the thick rubber.
He didn’t discover anything new about the room with his infrared sensor on, so he decided to try the very last one: precision telescopic vision. Even though he’d lived his whole life being able to see, this was the most profound sensory change for him. His vision became ultra-sharp and anything he focused on, he could zoom in on as much as he liked. It didn’t make it any easier to see in the dark but he could see everything so much clearer that he knew instantly that he’d never turn this sense off.