Grey sat up on the cot, his mind clearing.
The good news was that his body felt good and he had restocked on his Cyber Cores before he left the outpost, so he had more than enough to replenish it back to full.
The bad news was that he didn’t have any easy way to bridge the gap between himself and the Syrn, and he only had 30 minutes left before a decision would be forced on him.
The even worse news was that running wasn’t an option because of the closed loop. At the end of this day, no matter what happened, he would be brought back right to here until he ran out of chances.
’Fantastic.’
Grey exhaled a breath.
What were his options?
The first was Ability stealing. He had tried to use the Crimson Dragon Nexis Suit to steal the Syrn’s abilities already, but it hadn’t worked. Whatever that black light was, it wasn’t an Ability, it was sothing deeper than that.
But Grey had no idea what it could be outside of an Ability. A Skill didn’t make sense because a Skill was just an Ability that hadn’t been fully integrated yet. Logically, if the Nexis Suit worked for Abilities, Skills should be easier.
Grey didn’t know that for certain, but that was his intuition.
’The Looping Necklace...’ Grey’s eyes narrowed when he had this thought. It ntioned Skills instead of Abilities as well. Was he thinking too simply?
He shook his head. He didn’t have the ti to waste on thought paths that wouldn’t lead anywhere.
The smart thing to do was to focus on viable paths he knew had a way forward. If he looked at things like that...
’There’s the chanical Jaw Lineage Quest, the Recursive Fra, and there’s also my Helion Fra. Aside from that, there’s only building chs, but there aren’t any materials here. Even if I run back to the outpost, I don’t have any money left. That ans if I want to build a ch, I need to use the Vanguard Class Materials I have...’
Essentially, Grey had, at most, nine more days to figure this out, and that was only if he managed to avoid the Syrn for long enough that the day ran out.
That wasn’t a guarantee either. That thing’s senses were better than his own.
Grey ignored everything around him and pulled up the maps he had.
’If I choose to go the chanical Jaw Lineage Spirit site it will take ...’ Grey frowned, calculating in his mind. ’... Fuck. Four hours if I don’t run into anything to slow down, and I definitely will. But even if I get the chanical Jaw Lineage Spirit, I’ll still need a vessel for it, which ans I’ll still need to build sothing.
’The Recursive Fra is even more of a wild card. Mauve still has the diary in this loop. I could just steal it from her, but it’ll just be more clues and all that might just lead to it being even further away.’
Everything seed to be pointing toward one direction.
Grey took out a to.
—
Na: Establishing Helion Path To
Rarity: Legendary
Class: Established
Accepted Type: Branching
Rejected Type: Recursive; Resonant; Linear
Description: Those who follow the path of their own Fra are few and far between. The road ahead is arduous and painstaking, but it is often one that those with multi-Fras must take to fulfill the true limits of their talent.
Abilities: Forms a compendium of every Ability potentially compatible with your Helion Fra up to the Established Class, workshopping potential clashes and unexpected pitfalls.
—
The description of the item had changed, and the fla on it seed brighter now than before.
Re-reading the description now when he didn’t have the looming problem of the Dukedom overhead and he was forcing himself to pay more attention, Grey realized just how ridiculous this reward was.
He had bought a few Fras to fuse together to form his Helion Fra, and that had cost him millions of credits. If he tried to form the Fra from Abilities alone, he might have actually ended up spending even more because it was much more difficult to distill a Fra from an Ability.
That was to say that this to being a compendium of literally every possible Ability that was compatible with his Fra was...
’Fucking ridiculous.’
The value of the Abilities in this to alone were probably in the trillions of credits, and that was only because it only went up to the Established Class. If it went further, it might be an even more astronomical number.
"Grey? Is everything alright?" Mauve’s voice drifted over and Grey put a hand up to stop her from saying more.
"Don’t worry about it, I’m fine."
"But..." Mauve hesitated. "The tournant is starting soon."
"Tell them to wait for or I’ll kill every one of them."
A frigid air ca from Grey and they all stiffened.
Grey didn’t look up, he didn’t have the ti to waste right now, and he certainly didn’t have the ti to explain to those idiots outside that he was actually trying to save them too. If he couldn’t do this, all of them would die.
Grey flipped open the first page and instead of seeing a Cyber Warp like he expected, he saw a complicated network of swimming roots and circuits.
’No... this is a Cyber Warp, it’s just... oh...’
Grey had thought that when he opened up the to he would find a catalogue of every Ability, but he had been thinking too simply. This to was even better than that.
If it truly wrote down every Ability variation, it would be far too much. Just how many Abilities were just slight tweaks of one another? How many mind-fortifying Abilities did Grey already have now?
Rather than making an individual note for every Ability, the to actually divided all of the Abilities into a few categories, each one slotted into one of either Mind or Body, and then further into Resistance, Combat, and Enhancent.
This first page was trying to distill a singular concept, a concept of a combusting, nuclear reactor body. But it seed to follow a spectrum.
On one end, there were more heavy tals, and on the other there was a purer fire-type body, and then on another corner there was sothing that felt a lot more light-heavy.
It felt like the variations were endless.
’How do I pick...?’
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