Chapter 58: Time To Collect

Date Thursday, July 3rd, 2262

Slightly more than a month later, once again at the Genesis Foundry.

"You're doing good, Vritra. Keep it up!" I encouraged my scaly pet, who was currently in the midst of the weighted cardio.

*Graw* (I won't give up.)

Silver Tongue is so useful. I wish I had figured out how to use it back when Vritra first hatched. It would have saved me from quite a number of headaches, but it is what it is. Thankfully, I know how to use it nowadays.

"Haa... haa... What about us?" Bob asked, barely hanging on.

"You guys are doing great, too. Keep it up!"

With my companions doing their respective assigned exercises, I returned to grinding my agility that has yet to breach into level 11 territory.

This past month has been hard, with no improvement in my agility. I was hoping I would've raised it that very last point I needed at the beginning of the previous month. However, I had no such luck, sadly. At least the entire month wasn't a waste. My robots finished constructing Vritra's much needed habitat for the not so little fella who has now reached a length of 21 feet and a height of five or so feet.

It's a good thing I got that area constructed because he was getting much too big to continue transporting him back and forth in my SUV, not to mention keeping him at home. The place wasn't exactly designed to house a reptile that was basically a massive saltwater crocodile on steroids that could run at speeds of 40 miles an hour. And that was with him, being not even a year old yet, I can only imagine where he'll be at when it's time for me to depart for the wasteland.

I'm also gonna have to figure out how I'm going to bring him along and accommodate him because I doubt he'll want to be left here alone in the facility... Yeah, I'll leave figuring that out for the future since I have no idea how big he'll be until it starts nearing time to leave. But since I'm on this topic, I should probably start expanding the halls, the mine tunnels, digging out tunnels through that expansive cave system and building an exit to the wasteland, so he'll have room to move and leave the undercity with me later on.

If he's anything comparable to the size his mother achieved, prior to her meeting her death at my hands, I got quite the job ahead of me. Thankfully, I had the foresight to put his area in the mine tunnels, so I won't have to dismantle and rebuild entire sections of the facility to meet his increasing size. Looks like I'll have to return to assembling robots to make this expansion happen in a reasonable time frame.

Besides, Vritra getting too big to keep anywhere else besides here, the Maxigen trials I have been putting the molemen guards through have gone overall pretty well. Only two of them have lost their minds thus far, both of which have been disposed of slash turned into exp since they lost what little value they had to me.

Although not before testing out my Medical Genius perk on them to see how long it would take for a limb to be regrown. What I discovered from those tests was that the perk wasn't able to regrow limbs instantly, unfortunately. Nonetheless, it was still able to regrow them at a decently quick pace. Fast enough that I should be able to utilize it in combat as long as I can get away to take a breather. Moving on from those moles, the other two appear to be going strong without any undesirable side effects, propping up.

If it wasn't a bit too early to say those variations were safe, I would've hopped onto one of the two formulas. But I can't guarantee that just yet, thus I'll continue the trials for a couple more months with increasing dosages to see if anything negative comes about. And if nothing occurs, I'll put the one of amongst them that produces the most benefits into production. Hopefully, everything goes well, but if they both end up being duds, I'll put the other ones I've created since all this started into trials. Maybe I should get some new test subjects ahead of time...

As my second thought process continued managing and coming up with all sorts of ideas and plans to implement, I made it to the pool and dived into it to begin the first of many activities and exercises in my agility training regime.

...

A couple hours flew by speedily and while I was in the midst of dodging a storm of rubber bullets, courtesy of the training turrets I made, I heard the signature sound of a notification.

[Ding!]

[Agility Has Improved By 1 Point]

[Ding!]

[New Perk Gained]

"Fucking finally!" I yelled aloud.

Utilizing Mechanical Domination, I got the turrets to stop firing at me and as I was about to begin walking to the showers to clean up since I had a mass level up ahead of me, I immediately noticed my speed had almost doubled. 

Shit, that new perk is providing quite the speed boost. I'll have to check it out when I get to my level up room.

Taking a few minutes to feel out my new capabilities and get used to them somewhat, I quickly washed myself clean, told the squad what was up, and left them behind and proceeded to my level up cell. Once there, I opened up the big metal door that was sealing it off and headed on inside and began loading myself up with medstims and p-dex syringes. Both of which I began producing all on my own recently.

As soon as I was filled with my standard loadout of healing drugs and pain suppressants, I willed my system to appear. And in the blink of an eye, it made its appearance, presenting my stats that have seen a lot of improvement from nearly a year ago. Ignoring them for now, I navigated to the new section to see what the new perk was and what effects it was going to provide me going forward.

| Gotta Go Fast | Requirements 11 Agility: Congrats, you've surpassed human limitations for agility. As a result of that, you've gained the inhuman ability to jump 11 feet. This new jump height of yours will increase by 1 foot for every additional point you have in agility beyond 11. In addition to that, your max speed has increased to 30 miles per hour + however, many agility points you possess. Last but certainly not least, your flexibility has undergone a major improvement, allowing you to twist yourself into a pretzel… not literally, though.

God damn, that's an amazing perk. I'll be able to give that rascal Vritra a run for his money from now on.

More than satisfied with the perk I received, I wasted no time and went straight to the quest section of the system to collect my rewards. Once there, I turned in the Killing Spree quest first since I wanted to level up from it first to maximize the gains from my Surpass Your Human Limits quest.

[Rewards]

[Perk: Slaughterer, 48,500 exp]

| Slaughterer | You've killed so many beings that you now emit a bloody aura filled with killing intent that you can use to intimidate or put pressure on other beings. It has other uses besides that, but you'll have to discover those for yourself. This aura will become increasingly more powerful and grow in size the more beings you kill or have a hand in killing. Additionally, this aura can be controlled by the user's will.

Good, just enough exp for two levels.

[Ding!]

[New Quest Gained]

Oh, and another quest too, nice. Let's see what it is.

| The Butcher | Objectives: Reach a kill count total of 10,000 kills. Rewards: Perk Slaughterer Rank 2, 100,000 exp.

Yeah, I won't be completing that anytime soon.

A new quest acquired that would provide me with a hefty amount of exp one day, I turned my focus to the pending levels I had awaiting me. As I was about to continue on to my level up, the new perk's effect kicked in and I began radiating a bloody aura. My interest piqued, I spent the next several minutes messing around with it and eventually figured out how to control it. And when I did and hid my bloody aura, I initiated the leveling process.

[ Perks ]

Perk Points Left: 6

Level 2 Perks

| Growth Rank 14 | (Ranks Unlimited) Requirements Level 2: Gain 1 attribute point that you can distribute freely.

Level 16 Perks

| Commando | Requirements Level 16, Ballistic Weapons 35, Energy Weapons 35, Explosives 35, Melee Weapons 35, Unarmed 35: +25% Accuracy, +10 to energy weapons, +10 to explosives, +10 to melee, +10 to unarmed.

| Man Killer | Requirements Level 16, Charisma 5: Deal 15% more damage against male opponents.

The selection of perks I have to choose from is pretty slim and of the perks I can choose from Commando and Man Killer are the only ones that would be worthwhile besides Growth of course... I suppose I'll just grab those two and dump the remaining four perk points into Growth and put those points into luck because it's the sole attribute I can't raise through training.

My decision made in less than a second, I placed the points where they needed to go and locked it in, thereby bringing me to the following section of the level up.

[ Skills ]

Skill Points Left: 186

Ballistic Weapons: 292 

Energy Weapons: 292 

Explosives: 225 

(T)Heavy Weapons: 340 

Leadership: 198 

Lockpick: 169 

(T)Medicine: 568 

Melee Weapons: 187 

Piloting: 326 

(T)Repair: 580 

(T)Science: 580 

Speech: 242 

Stealth: 372 

Survival: 343 

Trade: 361 

Unarmed: 187 

Magic: 261 

Hmm, now where do I want to put my points... I've been needing increasingly more rare metals so I'll just throw the skill points into trade and bring it up to 500. As for the remaining 47 points, I'll place them into stealth to raise both the coverage as well as the effectiveness of my presence hiding field.

Moving right along, I returned right to the main tab of the system.

______

There will be another release this week.

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