2 Machinist
Xiao was taken back to the lab for a blood test.
Unknown environment with armed guard, it was impossible to run away with the power he possessed. Most of the guard in the corridor had [agent] as Profession, stronger than common people.
From his memory, Haila was a commander of 'The Sprout' in the beginning of version 1.0, Class E, Her specialisation was super power, power level 500+. She could beat thousands of him.
The war of 'Stellaris Legend' was leaded by super power. There were 5 specialisations that players can choose from - super power, martial art, machinist, magic, psychokinesis. With certain knowledge, players could enter that specialisation but they could only pick one.
Other than specialisation, there were various professions which could be obtained by special event or certain NPCs. The first challenge for players in the game was to find the knowledge of target specialisations. In the beginning, you could choose two start - One normal start: you would have shirts, shorts and shoes (naked not allowed!) chose a star and then chose a base (usually against each other in the same planet). The advantage was stable; The other random start: random everything, you could be put into other servers' dominated star and got excluded by the community. But there was a small chance of 'lucky events' - usually meant you could get some resource/talents. Only a fraction of people liked playing themselves, so most players chose the normal start and played with their friends. Xiao found what he was suffering was like the random start. What the hell...
The blood test came out.
"No anomaly?" Haila took the reports from Gramme.
"Warki solution is functioning on the brain, maybe we should cut the skull and test it." Gramme suggested.
What?! How can I survive with that? Xiao muttered.
"He is the first survived subject, don't use destructive way to study it." Haila denied the idea.
Maybe I can make use of this 'identity'? Xiao thought.
Gramme couldn't hide his excitement, he wanted to study every inch of Xiao's brain.
"Watch him and see how the warki solution works" Haila said, her cold eyes were sharp and scary. "Brain wash him first!"
Brain wash? Xiao was worried. Brain wash was a normal way to control people. In game, the successfully brain washed player would be considered as the member of the organisation immediately. But his life was real now! It was possible that his free thought would be erased! No! Xiao realised that he couldn't let it happen.
The good news was the brain wash tech 'The Sprout' possessed was very basic - using image and sound to torture the subject and filled in loyalty while it's fragile. Players could avoid brain wash if their intellect was over 10.
Warki solution gave him 1 endurance which was great for carbon based human with low health. The potential of human race in 'Stellaris Legend' was mid level. Their intellect potential was high and others were mediocre.
|Mental focus| - The speed of learning and manufacturing is increased by 10%
|Elementary mental resistance| - Grant 3 resistance when suffer from mental damage
Citizen, the only profession/specialisation Xiao had at the moment. Each level up, there was only one free attribute and one random attribute which was not enough. There must be some chance.
"Take him to brain wash" Haila ordered.
Two serious guard came forward and took Xiao in the middle and walked towards the brain wash room. One looked like everybody owned him 3,000 pounds and another looked like he was shitting.
They entered into a room full of machine. Gramme went to start the machine when the guards placed Xiao on a chair. There was a book shelf 3 meters away from them. Xiao looked at shelf, 'Tom's basic machine theory', 'The gene of mammal and lizard' and 'Ferroelectrics in bio-machine'.... The books were for the researchers.
Wait, there was a book for machinist specialisation! There was way out! Xiao was so excited.
He turned back and two guards were staring at him. Both of them had handgun attached to their belt. Obviously, there would be a bullet for him if he left the chair.
With no hesitate, Xiao stood up and slowly walked to the shelf.
'3k' and 'shitting face' pulled their gun out in 0.6 s. Pointed by the gun, Xiao continued walking. Don't shot me, I would be dead with this low health.
"Stop, see what he is going to do!" Gramme shouted.
'3k' and 'shitting face' took the order but still held the gun pointing at Xiao's back. Feeling relived, Xiao was satisfying with his gambling - as long as his behaviour was not aggressive, all uncommon movements would be considered as experiments. Because his identity was 'first survived subject'.
'Tom's basic machine theory', the basic knowledge book of machinist. That was Xiao's target. He took it out of the shelf and started reading. The whole book was about mechanical theory. Paragraphs and paragraphs of theory and complicate images of machine structure were hard to understand, Xiao read it with patience.
After half minutes, there was info appeared on the panel:
[You complete a self-learning on basic machine knowledge, considering your intellect, |Elementary assemble|, learning progress 2.0% (|Mental focus| grants extra 0.2%)]
"I knew it will work" Xiao rejoiced that the system would decide that he had learned the knowledge although he could not understand a word!
Gramme stood aside, puzzled. The behaviour of the subject was learning? Would the warki solution improve the ability of learning? To further confirm his assumption, he didn't stop Xiao.
All you can hear was page turning in this silent room.
[|Elementary assemble|, learning progress 15.0% (+1.5%)..... 38% (+3.8%)....]
Xiao turned the page quicker and quicker, he was fighting for his freedom!
"Zh~" The door was opened and Haila came in. She was confused "What happened?"
Gramme told her about Xiao's behaviour and his assumption quickly.
"That is to say his learning ability is improved?"
"Yeah, this is a preliminary assumption. If you allow me to cut his skull, the conclusion will be more accurate". Gramme said.
The old asshole has kinky on brain, He must had Hannibal's blood! Xiao thought in his head, his hand was still turning pages.
Haila waved her hand to deny Gramme's request. A stronger brain was more important than a deadpool for the organisation. They needed to brain wash him now.
"Is the brain wash machine ready?" She asked.
"Ready for sure." Gramme pointed at the machine on the corner.
Xiao now realised that this was the place for brain washing. Damn! There was not much time left.
In the mean time, there was a new notification popped out on the panel.
[|Elementary assemble|, learning progress 90% (+10%), you learned elementary knowledge of machinist, machinist talents unlocked!]
[New specialisation obtained- |Elementary machinist|, Stamina +10, intellect +1, endurance +1, obtained 3 free attributes]
[New talents obtained - |Elementary machine affinity|, |Elementary repair|, |Elementary modification|]
Sensation of power went through the body, Xiao felt sober. Different from game, Xiao really mastered the knowledge in the book. He felt that the elusive theories and figures became easy to understand. They were all in his head! That never happened to players!
"Weird..." Xiao was shocked.
The panel info changed:
-------------------------------
Name: Xiao Han
Race: Carbon based human (coloured)
Model: NPC (Counting down for version 1.0: 358 days 10 hours 11 minutes)
Level: 2
Experience: 0
Specialisation: Elementary machinist lv.1(0/200)
Profession: Citizen lv.1 (0/50)
Attribute: Strength 3, Agility 3, Endurance 5, Intellect 4, Mystery 1, Charm 2, Lucky 1.
Free Attribute: 3
Stamina: 10/10 (lv.1)
lv1(10) - Strength +1, Agility +1, Endurance +1
Power: 3 - 4
Class: F
[Dreg, Stay away from battle!]
Health: 43/50 (injured)
Special talents: Mental focus - The speed of learning and manufacturing is increased by 10%.
Elementary mental resistance - Grant 3 resistance when suffering from mental damage.
Talents: |Elementary machine affinity| lv.1 (0/4000) - Increase the understanding of machine.
|Elementary repair| lv.1 (0/400) - Elementary repair of basic machine.
|Elementary modification| lv.1 (0/600) - Modification for basic machine.
Free Talent points: 1
Legend points: 0
Equipment: N/A
-------------------------------------------
Strength decide melee attack damage and the weight of equipment one can carry. Some of equipment are heavy.
Agility decide moving speed, attack speed and dodge ability. There is a bonus of ranged attack damage as well.
Endurance improve the health, defence and stamina recover rate, 10 points of health per endurance. Some talents or special talents can improve that index. There is a complicated equation to calculate how defence reduce damage, Xiao was too lazy to look at it. All behaviours consumes stamina, attack, running, walking, swimming…
Intellect decide the comprehend of knowledge which affect the power of machinist and magic.
Mystery decide perception of psyco-world which affects the power of psychokinesis and success rate of some magic talents.
Charm affect the favourability of NPC, sometimes the discounts of goods and special events requires certain points of charm.
Lucky affect the rate and quality of reward.
Free attributes were used to improve all these 7 attributes.
Stamina is required for all talents and the level of stamina can offer an enhancement of attributes. For example, 10 points of stamina is lv.1; 50 points of stamina is lv.2 etc. If you consume stamina to use some talents, when it drops under the level line, the enhancement will disappear which physically you are tired/weaken. If you run out of stamina, and you still choose to use talents. It will consume your health significantly depends on the talents power and the character can die…
Power level was defined by characters' combat power, E, D, C, B, A… The standard for class E was 100. Haila should be top tie in class E at the moment.
Class A was watershed. As reaching such power, one could imply disaster on any planets in the universe. Thus, Class A was also called 'Disaster class'. Xiao had several 'Disaster class' accounts in the game but it was far from what he possessed now.
Xiao obtained |Elementary machinist|, with 2 free attributes in intellect, he could add it to 6. He still needed 1 more point to avoid effect of brain wash! He had no choice but to level up. How could he get experience? There was no monster here for him. No task, no mission...
Suddenly there was a spark in Xiao's eyes.
He throw the books away, turned back towards the people who are watching him like monkey in the zoo. He stared at the gun in '3k' 's hand with his poker face.
Haila frowned and stopped her order, looked at Xiao like all the others. They wanted to know his next move.
Xiao walked towards '3k' like a robot, reached out his hand as slowly as he could. He grabbed the gun. '3k' instinctually tried to pulled the gun back. No matter how hard '3k' pulled, Xiao won't let go. Xiao was pulled around by 3k's strong arm. He showed no intention to fight. He acted like a kid who wanted a toy. Because of Xiao's slow movement, 3k didn't fire.
"Take out the bullets!" Haila was interested to see Xiao's intention.
3k followed the order, took out the magazine and let Xiao take the gun. Once had gun in hand, Xiao noticed the equipment info in the panel.
[Bee 73. pistol : Quality - grey, damage 28~35, attack speed 1.1/s, damage power 13, structure: barrel, recoil spring, slide, magazine (absent)...]
|Elementary assemble| gave him loads of knowledge about machine, he found he was familiar with Bee 73. pistol. In game, you just waited for progress bar. Here, Xiao needed to disassemble it himself. Such facts made him be sure that he was put in the game rather than just played the game.
Xiao brought his thought back to the gun and started disassembling. It seemed to the crowd that he was unfamiliar with the gun (of course, never toughed real gun in China!) The handgun was separated into parts and then he started to assemble them. |Basic assemble| was glowing along the way.
40 s, the pistol was assembled back to what it should be. It was not fast for an agent but people around him was shocked! He had never been trained! Was it because of warki solution??
Gramme was excited, "What a big brain! If I can cut his skull, maybe we can replicate..."
Wtf, why you were so keen on my brain.
Xiao repeated this process again and again. And the info popped out on the panel
[You finish basic machine assembly once, perfection 69%, gain experience +28]
[You finish basic machine assembly once, perfection 73%, gain experience +32]
...
In stellaris legend, there are miscellaneous ways to gain experience, killing monsters, fulfill missions etc. Assembly and repairing are important experience sources for machinists. The damage of machinists was not prominent when they were in lower class. Thus, many machinists start with logistics.
As Xiao became more and more familiar with the process, he could shorten the time to 20s.
Haila finally understood what he was doing and ordered "Brain wash him now!"
In the mean time, Xiao finished another time of assembly and the experience pool reached 200.
"All experience into |Elementary machinist|!"
Warm power went around his body along with a notification.
[ |Elementary machinist| level up to lv.2, stamina +10. intellect +1, endurance +1, 2 free attributes obtained]
"Great!" Xiao relived and let the guard take the gun back.
