Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG Chapter 114

Once I got ho, I headed for bed. It was really about ti I got to sothing I’d been pushing off for a couple days: my Perk Points. I didn’t want to spend both all at once though, so I’d do one now and one later. I figured it might help with my ntal to not be trapped in the learning space for so long.

As I was pulled from my soft, comfy bed into the ancient-looking pavilion of the interface, I couldn’t help but appreciate just how soothing the place was. When I first entered the place, it had been a little eerie. With the addition of more shelves and my growing comfort with the whole interface, it was quite a peaceful place. It almost felt like a private library secluded up in the mountains, all just for . It was pretty nova.

I headed off to find my first shelf: First Aid. It was the exact sa as every shelf in this place, though the glowing ball of fire granted vision of the lower parts of the shelf. I looked through the list, noting down the ones that seed interesting. There were a ton of Perks I just outright eliminated, as per usual. I slowly worked down to a list.

「Second Wind」

「Soothe」

「Jury Rigged Equipnt」

「dic!」

「Eidetic Transcripts」

「Doctor’s Tools」

「Universal Donor」

「Rooky Diagnosis」

「Calming」

「Silence」

Of those, I managed to narrow it down to just four of them. Most of them were fairly easy to knock off once I thought about what setting I’d be doing First Aid in. For instance, Rooky Diagnosis would allow to figure out what was wrong with a patient, but I'd probably be able to see a stab or bullet wound.

The four I narrowed it down to were Silence, Universal Donor, Calming, and Second Wind. Silence was quite interesting. Basically, it would allow to silence any patient so they wouldn’t be able to distract or others while I worked on them.

At first glance, it was a nice quality of life Perk for a Surgeon, but it said ‘any patient’. That got wondering, if I threw a knife at soone for ‘surgery’, would they instantly stop making noises? Not that I was an assassin nor would I get much use out of it, but it was an interesting question.

Second Wind had a lot more practical applications. Basically, when I run entirely out of stamina, I’d be able to regenerate my body back to peak conditions. It was incredibly attractive, but its conditions made pause. It could only be used when I was actively patching soone up or heading to soone to patch them up, and it had a week-long cooldown.

Calming would allow to, well, calm anyone under my care. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it ant since the description was pretty useless, but it seed very helpful with potential applications outside of First Aid too. Or at least more obvious applications outside of dical situations than Silence.

And finally, Universal Donor. It changed my blood, making it ideal as a donor's blood. I first picked it out of the mass of scrolls thanks to the recent experience with Feras bleeding out. I was curious about what the eidolons' ant by ideal, but it was definitely a spur-of-the-mont pick rather than anything else.

After a mont’s hesitation, I picked up the scroll I wanted and headed for the easel.

「Calming - Calm those in your care, allowing for easier treatnt.」

I hung it on the easel, watching as it magically unfurled to reveal a masterwork painting. The painting was of a person, their face an indescribable blur, calming another with an outstretched palm. It faintly reminded of those old pictures of cowboys calming their horses.

How exactly do these paintings co to be? Is there an eidolon sowhere carefully making every stroke of a brush to give these things so much detail? Or were they fake and generated just like the rest of the pavilion? Or was the pavilion even a ntal construct in the first place? Hmm…

I blinked, suddenly in a black space. A gurney sat in the distance of the darkness, a white light beaming down from the heavens onto it. A pale man with a knife stuck in his stomach was draped across the tourney, his chest rapidly rising and falling.

「Calm your patient down.」

I let out a long breath and headed for the gurney. Maybe I should’ve gotten Universal Donor instead. It would’ve probably just been one of those body ones that hurt for a bit but otherwise were fine. It would've been quicker at least.

— — —

My ti in the learning space wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I woke up a day later, far shorter than any other ti I’d taken a ‘learning’ based Perk. It was quite a confusing observation when I woke up.

Maybe I learned all I needed to faster than any other ti taking a Perk? It made sense at least. It also wasn’t entirely without rit. Calming had indeed been quite a bit easier than the other tis. It felt like a breeze compared to so of the other ones.

The entire process was equal parts recognizing what my patients were going through and knowing what to say to get them to calm down. The latter side of that was more difficult. The whole empathy thing was damn easy.

Cues allowed to practically read their emotions at will, though it beca a bit more difficult the more injured the patients beca. Surprisingly, agony was a bit harder to read through once it caused soone’s entire body to crumple up.

It wasn’t just the one patient I had to go through. As soon as I finished with one, another would pop up. Everything from children to the elderly, from emotionless 'borgs to fully flesh humans were tossed onto the gurney. It was a lot different trying to calm down a murderous ‘borg with enough chro to make robots blush than it was to calm down a child with a- erm- ‘misplaced’ limb.

The sa tactics and words didn’t work every ti either. I had to hand-craft my manipulations based on my observations and what I learned from previous attempts. It was honestly a bit fun, like trying to put together a puzzle.

I know the interface probably didn’t an it this way, but it was also practically a masterclass on manipulating emotions. Hell, I even tossed in Cold-Blooded - which surprisingly worked in the learning space - a couple tis and used intimidation to calm people down. My failures were also points of learning how to escalate the situation, which might be useful.

I shifted on my bed, summoning Crow’s Canteen of Chaos and taking a deep drink. I briefly thought about running through Firearms while I was here, but managed to talk myself out of it for now. Instead, I hopped up, stretched, and headed for my printer.

Instead of doing any of the important things I had to do at so point, I wasted a couple hours printing Doctor Absolom action figures and workshopping my newest additions to the action figure series. For now, I’m calling the idea the Wretched. Basically, they were a couple different kinds of insectoid monstrosities for Doctor Absolom to ‘fight’ against. I could think up a backstory or sothing later, but for now, that’s all they were.

I got bored and turned my attention to the armor. I didn’t start doing anything too crazy, just slowly disassembling and reverse-engineering the helt. With every part I took off, I carefully drew it out on a blueprint so I could rember exactly how and where everything went together.

It was surprisingly simplistic. Outside of the thick plates of tal to block bullets, there wasn’t all that much going on inside of the thing. There were plenty of spots where stuff could attach, but the helt was bare bones. Just a battery behind the skull, the LEDs, a nonfunctional breathing apparatus, and the screens and caras that acted as the thing’s eyes.

I was already thinking of improvents for it. For one, take out the LEDs or at least add a toggle for them. Nothing like glowing eyes to give away my position, though they could be pretty nice for intimidation tactics. Then I could drop my old mask, take the breathing apparatus out of it, and put it into this one. Add in a voice modulator to boot just in case.

Then, if I was feeling good about it, I could swap out the caras. They were rather low-end ones, and I had a bank of knowledge in my head I could rely on to get sothing better. Maybe so kind of thermal or infrared on top of normal. Oh, and add Blackout from my old eye. Maybe sized up a bit though to reduce so of the heat build-up and connect it to the battery.

I’d have to repaint it, but not with just any paint. I doubt I’d be able to find what I was thinking of in the wild, so probably a Night Market or sothing. Even if it was out on a store’s shelf, there were other things I wanted at a Night Market anyway. Especially if I wanted to add Blackout.

I’d also need so other panels of armor plating. I could probably disassemble so from body armor or subdermal armor if I needed to. I had a faint idea to attach the Drop Chute to the armor while I was at it.

If I was thinking along those lines, I could grab so cheap chro and see if I can’t make so other improvents to the armor based around them. I didn’t want to chop off my arm for a super strong chro one, but maybe I could incorporate so parts of the chro into my armor to boost my strength? Hmm… sounded complicated. Maybe start off with sothing simpler for now.

It would be a good alternative to chro though; just get a super-powered set of armor. Maybe add an exoskeleton to it while I was at it? So kind of power armor would be badass and effective... now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen power armor yet? It's always cybernetics these days.

I was a bit over halfway done with my disassembly when I got a call. I set down the tools and leaned back in my chair. My cheerful mikata’s voice called through the line as soon as I hit accept. “Shiro! How you doing?”

”Alright, I guess. Just got done with a gig. How about you, Mira?” I asked.

The cheer in her voice died down noticeably. ”Hey, listen, we got so bad news the other day. They’re shipping Pa' and I out tomorrow.”

”Really?”

”Chek. Sothing about mass disappearances- er, even more mass disappearances across the FSA. Pa thinks it's a Fedra plot, as per usual, but we don’t actually know. We’re being moved to the East Coast.” Mira sighed.

“Oh.” Damn, that's across the entire continent.

“Yeah… so we want to take you to dinner tonight since we’ll be missing your birthday. Are you good to co?” She asked hopefully.

I looked around my room. Not like I had much going on tonight anyway. ”’Course. Just tell when and where.”

Mira chuckled lightly. “Silly, you’re supposed to tell when and where. It’s your birthday.”

”I’m not good with restaurants. You pick for . Consider it a present to .” I joined her in laughter. It wasn't the first ti I'd had such an argunt with her.

This ti, Mira gave in rather quickly. “Fine. Let’s go to the Red Rabbit.” My PA pulled a ssage up to my HUD from Mira. It had the location and ti on it. “Pa said don’t be late!”

”Chek chek, I’ll be there.” I set a reminder for myself. We talked a bit longer before she hung up to go do sothing else.

I had so ti till the etup, so I spent half of the ti finishing my disassembly of the helt. It really wasn’t that complicated outside of the tals used in its production and the bulletproof lenses covering the caras.

The rest of the ti I used tracking down the card for the Constellation Night Market. It ended up under my bed, sohow. I scanned the card, receiving a one-ti invite to their next market in a couple days. It was in so warehouse close to the ocean. I marked it down and scanned the surrounding areas in the city archives, morizing the layouts of buildings and making several escape paths as I did with Maroo’s.

Then it was ti to go et Mira and Uncle Ezra.