KING HAS REACHED LEVEL 2. PLEASE SELECT AN AVAILABLE SKILL.
I decided to put it off until I got back to the cave. An hour later, we had made it back to the cave with a handful of fruit and two nexo corpses. It was rough, the feeling of blood loss made me tire more quickly. With effort, I crawled up the wall and into the cave, abandoning the kill below to retrieve later. “We’re back-” I stopped mid sentence. This was the wrong cave. That, couldn’t be right. Did I get lost? This cave was larger, with a few tunnels branching out of a large cave. Luke came jogging into view, grinning.
“Oh, welcome- what happened to you?!” He spotted my half-silver neck and my blood drenched shirt.
“I’m fine… what the hell? Did you dig out the cave?”
Luke grinned like an idiot. “Nope! Come on, I will give you the tour.” The cave had tripled in size. Small tunnels connected three large “rooms”. One, the largest, had the fire place, tools, and remnants of the minimole, which appeared to be in the process of being turned into something.
The other two rooms were still large, and had furnishings carved into the walls. Small desks and alcoves. A raised stone area that could act as a bed.
“This one is yours.” Luke said as he led me into the third room. “Do with it as you please.”
“We weren’t gone THAT long. What happened?”
“Squigly. Its labyrinth ability is amazing. It takes a semi-confined space, and expands it. It doesn’t need to be labyrinth shaped. I had it expand the size of the cave. Then, Henry chiseled some basic furnishings. It doesn’t seem to tire Squigly out too much, but if it leaves everything goes back to normal.”
“So if we fill it with stuff, it will get crushed?”
“I don’t think so. I tested that, laid out some stuff in one room, then deactivated it. Everything moved in a way that they didn’t touch or overlapped harmlessly. Then when I turned it back on, everything moved back to their old positions.”
“That is really convenient. Huh, nice. Well, King seems happier about it.” King and Cecila went back to their normal activity of playing, enjoying the extra room. Balor was off exploring on his own. Henry was at work, chipping away at the walls, moving stone outside. It was coming along quickly, very quickly. I tried to imagine a few weeks of this, or a few years. We could put down a fortress almost anywhere. Then I remembered these monsters were designed to fight in war. That was likely exactly what they were designed to do.
I gave Luke the details on our outing and showed him the new monsters. He was gripped on every word, then went to investigate the new creature. I slumped down on my hard bed, not bothering to pile anything onto it yet. Then I called Balor over. He did, begrudgingly. When exploring my link, I discovered how to more easily navigate the menus of my nexos stats. I pulled up the options for the new skill.
My view filled with options. The next ten minutes were spent combing through them. Many were useless, as they could be selected but required certain souls to work. Things like fire punch, savagery, elemental weapons, and so on. I discovered I could sort those kind of skills out and my list drastically shrunk. What remained were mostly a selection of weapon skills. Cut air, heavy crush, boomerang throw and final slash were just a few examples. I noted that there were a few skelky unique skills. These peaked my interest. Rage, battle calm, and spider monkey.
Rage would send Balor into a frenzy. Increasing his strength, but reducing his utility as well as sending him in a, well, rage. I thought this suited Balor, he always seemed upset with me for some reason. Battle calm seemed to do the opposite. Reduced his strength, but increased his utility and agility. That seemed bad at first glance, but as a result his reaction and skill with weapons would increase. It would also keep him level headed in stressful situations. Finally, spider monkey. This gave Balor two additional arms. Amusing, but not very helpful.
A few others that peaked my interest were cut air, energy strike, and Duel. Cut air was a sword skill that sent a blade of… energy, I assumed, through the air. I wasn’t too knowledgeable on the physics of it all, but with his weapon master skill it meant that any attack of his could become a ranged attack. Energy strike allowed him to imbue energy into any weapon attack. That was a staff skill. Finally, duel intrigued me. It was a warrior soul only skill. It locked Balor and another enemy in battle. If the other enemy attacked someone else, they would take a lot of mental damage, whatever that meant.
Balor didn’t use his energy, so energy strike would be something he could spend it on. But, he also did not have a lot to spare either. Cut air could be very useful. Then again, I had ranged cover with thorn, for now. Spider monkey and rage were out, rage would be too risky and with spider monkey… I didn’t see it being helpful. I wish I knew how much damage duel would do.
After hemming and hawing, I went with battle calm. Increased skill in weapon use, which utility seemed to govern, and quicker reflexes would outweigh slight reduction in damage. That and having someone with a level head in a fight would be useful.
Dismissing Balor, I was about to call King. Still tired, I had the will to do it but hesitated to call out. Despite that, King barked and bounded my way. He arrived with Cecila holding onto his tail. She giggled as the powerful tail swished her back and forth. Odd, I didn’t call him yet. But, there was a distinct feeling when I made the decision to. That piano wire like thread that connected me to King, Cecila, and Balor seemed… thicker? It was all mental, but it seemed I could touch it somehow. I twinged it mentally. King barked happily. Curious, I twinged Cecila's. She let go of the tail and flew through the air, then popped landing in my chest with the the momentum hitting me full on. She looked up at me, then nuzzled my face. I twinged balors line, and a moment later he poked his head in the room and grunted. Huh. I wondered how far I could push this. I mentally touched Cecila's line and thought, Get off me, girl. With a disappointed whine, she did. Using the same method, I had King walk to different spots in the room. Why could I do this now? I looked at my stats. Adaption was at 53% and thorn had increased to 11%. Was this because adaption was over 50%? I’d tell Luke later. Instead, I had a Pulse Hound to upgrade.
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I went through a similar process with King as I had with Balor. Removing all of the useless skills and focusing on Pulse Hound skills. Aside from those, King had a few others that were interesting. Less than Balor, but still worth searching through. His Pulse hound specific skills were Record, Electrify, and Hammer Head. Searching through his other skills, I only saw a few I liked. Rend, Feast, and Feral Instincts.
Record allowed King to record information and to replay it… somehow. I suspected I could see what he saw the same way I used pulse. Electrify would enhance King with electricity. Basic, but could be powerful. Hammer Head simply gave him an upgraded attack, similar to what he did as a pup, being able to slam into enemies with his head. I suspected this would be much more powerful now. I decided to drop that from the potential list, as I had just upgraded his savagery skill and didn’t want to diversify too much. Rend was a series of fast attack that could rip an opponent to shreds. I dropped it for the same reason. Feast was interesting, it allowed King to heal faster when eating. King didn’t get wounded often, but against multiple foes maybe it could help? Finally, Feral Instincts honed his instincts to react to and sense danger sooner. That was a bust, with pulse covering that already.
Between record, electrify, and feast, I decided to go with electrify. Record would have been an excellent choice, but without knowledge on how to use it it would be useless. That decided, I viewed all of my nexos stats, just to remind myself where I was at.
PULSE HOUND
Designation: King
Level: 1
Health: Stable
Energy: 6
Status: Bonded
Bond Strength: 88%
Soul Type: Beast
Skills
Power Up: 68%
Pulse: 42%
Flash Dodge: 10%
Kinetic Shield: 5%
Savagery Level 2: 0%
Electrify: 5%
Attributes
Strength: 4
Agility: 3
Density: 3
Energy: 2
Utility: 2
Derived Attributes
Speed: 4
Intelligence: 4
Toughness: 7
Reaction: 5
SKELKY
Designation: Balor
Level: 2
Health: Stable
Energy: 5
Soul Type: Warrior
Status: Bonded
Bond Strength: 51%
Skills
Challenge: 55%
Weapons Master: 12%
Trickery: 39%
Kinetic Shield: 10%
Battle Calm: 15%
Attributes
Strength: 3
Alacrity: 3
Density: 2
Energy: 2
Utility: 4
Derived Attributes
Speed: 4
Intelligence: 3
Toughness: 3
Reaction: 4
BLINKET
Designation: Cecila
Level: Hatchling (38%)
Health: Stable
Energy: 7
Status: Bonded
Bond Strength: 100%
Soul Type: Magi
Skills
Blink: 25%
Light: 17%
Bite: 11%
Attributes
Strength: 1
Agility: 2
Density: 1
Energy: 3
Utility: 1
Derived Attributes
Speed: 2
Intelligence: 4
Toughness: 2
Reaction: 3
Special Traits
Soul Burner
Soon after, I ate some boiled fruit with Luke while the nexos all ate some minimole meat. I decided to take the next few days easy, replenishing my blood supply. I took the risk of letting Balor go and explore and collect more food for us. Surprisingly, this increased his bond by 5%, the most it ever has. Maybe trusting Balor was the direction to go with him. Meanwhile, we worked on our small home. Pelt bedding and strategically placed shells could really liven up the place. Luke had been working on the pelts, collecting a bowl full of fat from them. It turned out, something to do with how the nexo body was constructed had left the hide flexible and sturdy, even without curing. Luke didn’t realize how useful that was. Normally to get any good use out of a hide, you would have to cure it for weeks or months, and the process could be pretty disgusting. I wondered if that was on purpose or a happy accident. Did the designers take that into account? Allowing for a fallen weapon to be used more efficiently in a survival situation. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care. We would reap the rewards.
Similarly, the bones were also useful. Not quite fully metal, they were sturdy and did not need to be dried for months before being useful. We had gained a functional, albeit cave-man like, stash of useful material for Henry to work with.
After the third day, I was feeling a lot more confident about going out again. Luke had also, finally, finished his project. He bequeathed it to me like a royal armorer. It was a coat. I had long since abandoned my shirt, going topless in the cave, so the coat was a welcome gift. It was crafted of the minimole hide, stiff and sturdy. An effective armor. The inside was lined with leovien down, so it was soft and warm to wear. Colorful feathers decorated the wrists, and bone buttons were used to hold it shut. I was impressed.
“I thought you said you were a roboticist?”
“A roboticist with a rebellious streak and pension to try things without permission. For money, I worked at my moms tailoring shop. We also did hats, belts, jewelery… you name it. I hated it, but it felt good to work with clothes again.” I tried it on. It was a tad snug, but Luke would later fix that. I took a look at myself in a reflective shell.
I looked… pretty threatening. The coat was a dark gray with thick lapel which made me look more muscular than I was. Lines of silver peaking through on my neck and hand, as well as my now unkempt beard. Most threatening was an almost dead look in my eyes. A tired look only someone who has nearly died multiple times would have. I wouldn’t want to meet me in a back ally. After the refitting, I was finally ready to explore, hunt, and train once again. My plan, to scout the strongest monster in the jungle and to find a way to defeat it.
