?

  As it turned out, there absolutely were equivalents of pills and elixirs in this world, though according to Diaochan, they didn’t quite function the same due to the lack of things like Diantians and internal alchemy in the bodies of humans in this world. Obviously, I wondered why this was the case, but Diaochan didn’t know. There were all sorts of theories from learned scholars about the subject, but as was often the case no one was entirely certain. Apparently, there were other worlds where people came from that had something called mana instead of Qi, which allowed them to perform similar feats to the techniques of my own world. These were known as spells, and while some classes provided abilities that the system referred to as spells, this was just a name for abilities that affect things externally, and were not at all the same as what these ‘mages’ and ‘wizards’ were capable of in their own worlds. If you are curious about it, like I was when this explanation was given, a mage or a wizard is the same as a sorcerer, or at least very similar.

  I wasn’t interested enough in the trials of men and women who had arrived here from other worlds than my own to have Diaochan bring up an in-depth explanation. I was far more interested in these ‘steroids’ or ‘PEDS’, which were available here. I still don’t know why everything in Abeyance City needs to have some fancy or abbreviated name, but if that was what they called their body-strengthening elixirs and consumable treasures, then so be it. I completed my morning stretch and workout routine before commanding my A.I to find me somewhere that would sell or barter with me for some PEDs.

  Diaochan quickly informed me that the stores that carried such things down here in the lower levels of the city wouldn’t advertise on the city-net, and I would need to find out by asking around. While that was a little bit annoying, I was running low on ammunition for The Conqueror anyway, and would need to venture out of the safety of my hunting grounds to purchase some bullets anyway.

  I had been enjoying the use of the heavy calibre pistol that the siblings made for me a lot, especially from the back of Red Hare. The form of my mount, my weapon, and even myself might have changed, but the thrill of hitting a moving target with a projectile whilst charging full speed on my steed had not diminished at all. In fact, the fact that I could fire multiple times without pausing to collect arrows from a quiver made the whole thing even more fun.

  As such, while I had hunted drones, I was perhaps not as conservative with my ammunition as I should have been, and I had expended the five hundred shots that Ha-Rin had gifted me before the week had even ended. Fortunately, I knew it would be much simpler to acquire bullets in the lower tiers of the city than the elixirs I sought. Everywhere down here sold bullets of one type or another. I’m pretty confident that even the barber who had cleaned up my hair had a few packets of them on their counter.

  While there weren’t anywhere near the amount of drones I would have liked left in my block, especially after the pair of raindrops had taken control of them and made the metal animals race for their amusement I had still been able to hunt down enough of the scout drones that I’d put together a small collection of parts that could according to Diaochan be used to barter or sold off for digi-creds. When I say small collection, I mean very small, given that both the engineer siblings and Red Hare himself had raided my scrap supplies very heavily when the bike had been brought to life.

  I gathered up the parts that both had value and could fit into my [CRYS?ALxCORE] backpack and mounted up for a trip into what passed for civilization in this all but lawless place. My HUD informed me it was slightly past nine in the morning. I still hadn’t bothered to completely understand the way time was kept in this world, but I knew it was late enough that most stores would be open, and so my bike and I tore down through the levels of the block, as this time I had chosen to exit from the underground parking area, rather than the more challenging and clandestine paths I had been making use of on foot. Red hare could likely have made several of the jumps that led to the closest neighbouring block, but if I’m honest, I didn’t want my mount to be aware of those until after we had reached the level synchronicity we had once possessed. It might be a howler bike now, but I knew the mind of my horse better than anyone I had ever met, Dioachan included, and I knew that if Red was aware of those riskier paths, he would demand we use them to the point of potentially even refusing to be ridden unless we pitted ourselves against the challenge.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  At some point, I would likely take the former horse down such a path, but for today, I was hoping to be as incident-free as I could. Granted, there was a greater chance of being seen or even stopped by the Yantra Clan this way, since they maintained a security cordon around the street levels of the hunting ground. I was a lot more confident in our ability to go unrecognized as we ran or fought our way through a barricade than I was in the ability of Red and I to survive plummeting hundreds of feet…At least in these bodies, once upon a time, we would have just run straight down the side of the building without a second thought.

  Red would be annoyed with me when I finally chose to show him the path we could have taken, but for now, this was plenty fun, and we surged down through the building into the almost pitch dark parking area below it, before roaring up the ramp I had first entered this block in with only our back wheel touching the cement of the ground.

  I admit it, I let out a whoop as we exploded out of the darkness into the streets beyond, and a roar came from Red Hare’s engine at the same time. It wasn’t dignified, it didn’t make us look threatening or powerful, but my steed and I were having too much fun to stay silent.

  To my surprise, I didn’t have to fight my way past the security barricades that the Yantras had set up; in fact they let out yells of encouragement right along with me. It wasn’t the same as having an army chant my name as I rode out to slaughter champions and warlords, but it was close enough that it did put a smile on my face.

  In spite of the lack of businesses being connected to the city net down here, or even owned and operated in a legal way. The layout of the streets on the other hand was no mystery at all, and by following the blue navigation lines Diaochan placed on my HUD I soon found myself traversing a set of ramped streets that were low in traffic but led down to the huge multi-laned freeway that I had seen from the barbershop and could take me almost anywhere on this tier, and even tiers above and below.

  You might be tempted to think that I was taking an unneeded risk by going from riding my howler through an unoccupied building with zero traffic right to a massive road with hundreds, if not thousands, of cars and bikes of all shapes and sizes jostling for position. Given how the section of this road that passes beneath Irons territory has enough crashes every day that scraps from the destroyed vehicles were enough to feed the green Nexus assembly that created the scavenger drones in their hunting grounds without needing to cannibalize the buildings around it, you would, in fact, be right.

  I may be famously impulsive and, if anything, overly decisive for my own good, but I am not an idiot. Every night since my Chrome Prophet was repaired and became Red Hare, I had Diaochan provide a module for me known as a simulation. This allowed me to overlay my HUD with an illusory reality that allowed me to experience riding a howler that was almost identical to Red through whatever situation I so desired, without ever having to leave my camp.

  While the lack of true danger provided by the simulation made it a rather flat and boring way to spend my time, it did allow me to grow used to weaving between cars and other bikes through all manner of challenging scenarios. So now that I had to deal with real traffic, I felt like I was more than prepared. Besides, a normal bike did not have the soul of the greatest horse to ever live surging through it.

  Just as I had been told by the pair of engineers the option to connect to the city’s system and make use of it as a source of power appeared on my HUD once I was on the freeway, so naturally I made use of it and in no time at all I was fighting my way through cars and bikes like it was a game to be played. The vehicles around me came from countless manufacturers, and in all kinds of sizes, shapes and designs. Yet there was one thing they all shared with absolute uniformity.

  They were slower than my Red Hare.