Chapter 43: Breakthrough

Curious as to what sort of perk I unlocked, I suddenly interrupted her. "Hold up a second, Alice. I just got a new perk."

Alice, understanding the importance of the situation, paused mid sentence while I pulled up my system to see what I got and for what reason. Gramps, also hearing what I said from afar, got up and headed over here to find out what the latest perk was.

| Herculean Strength | Requirements 11 Strength: You've surpassed the human limitations for strength, thus your physical abilities have improved significantly. First off, your carry weight is now in line with the amount of force you can exert, so for every point of strength you have will now grant you 100 carry weight instead of 50. Besides your carrying capacity improving, you now have access to an item box of sorts based on said carry weight and both your melee as well as your unarmed damage are increased from 5% per point of strength to 10%. Last but not least, your carry weight is increased by 350.

Sweet, I'll be able to carry a hell of a lot more weight and exert a ton more power when striking with my fists and attacking with melee weapons. On top of that, I've gotten an item box too. I can already think of a shitload of uses for such an ability, for example using it to bring a small arsenal of weapons with me wherever I go so I'll be prepared for any situation I may face. It'll also be incredibly useful for moving and dumping all of those molemen corpses.

Quickly discerning how useful this perk will be for not just me but anyone traveling with me, I opened up my mouth and began spilling the deets. "Alright, so the perk I just got is a major game changer. It not only boosts how much I can carry by over 100% and how much damage I can deal in melee combat it also gives me an ability called an item box, which will allow me to store as much stuff as I want as long as it doesn't exceed my carry weight."

"That is a game changer. You could use that new ability of yours to carry tons of weapons and ammo, thereby solving that ammo issue you've been having." Alice commented.

"Right, that was the first thought that came to mind when I saw that ability."

"But alongside using it to bring along a literal arsenal, you could also use it to move mass amounts of material all on your own when you eventually get enough carry weight."

"Very true, but in the meantime, I can use it to move those stinking molemen corpses and bring turrets and other defenses into the cave system. With that said, I think it's time I brought up what we're going to do now, now that the moleman king is dead."

"Mm, what do you have in mind, kid?"

"I was thinking, since their leader is dead, what is stopping the rest of them from fleeing the cave system besides all the other threats that exist out in the wasteland?"

"Not much." Both Alice and gramps replied in unison.

"Exactly, so the plan tomorrow is to go into the caves again and collapse the multiple exits that lead into the wasteland. This will stop them from escaping and possibly reestablishing themselves and causing more trouble in the future. Aside from that, it will prevent any more mutants or other creatures from having any way of getting into the undercity besides the official undercity entrance."

Looking to the both of them to see if they had anything to say, gramps piped up first. "This is your operation, Dom, and I have no issue with your idea, so we'll go with what you came up with."

"So after you close off every one of their exits, it will be time for me to get my armor?" Alice asked, hinting that she wanted to get involved in the action instead of being left behind in the foundry.

"That's the current plan, so if all goes according to plan, we'll be making your armor the day after tomorrow and departing for the cave the following day."

Alice, getting a relatively definitive date of when she'll be joining me excitedly and happily latched on to me. As Alice was showing her affection and beginning to get a little handsy, gramps took this as his cue to bounce and left for far away couches he came from to get to napping. Not wanting to display some of the things Alice and I got up to affection wise, I lifted her up provoking a yelp from her and carried her away to give her the affection she was seeking.

…

The next day I woke up in the night as I normally did and after taking care of my morning routine, I stealthily left my bedroom that I shared with Alice and snuck to the gym in the basement to test out my new strength. Walking in from the stairs, the first thing I did was go right to the barbell I did my deadlifting with and started loading 100 pound plates on each side. The minute I had five loaded onto each side, I threw on two 25 pound plates for a total of 1,095 pounds.

With the weight loaded onto the barbell, I got into position and grabbed the bar. As soon as I was content with my grip, I flexed my muscles and lifted the bar up, exerting quite a bit to pick it up off the floor. Locking out the rep, I lowered the weight as slowly as I could to prevent it from slamming into the floor and waking everyone in the house up.

Fuck, that's a great feeling. I could never lift that much weight in my previous life. The most I was able to deadlift back then was in the low 700s and each and every time I did it was one hell of a fight to get the weight up… That's enough reminiscing of the past, let me get back to it and see what my new max is now that my strength attribute is at 11.

Ecstatic that I had surpassed my previous life's strength by nearly a whopping 400 lbs, I began increasing the weight incrementally to discover where my new limit was. After lifting for quite a number of repetitions, I found my new personal best to be 1,121 lbs. Quite happy with that number, I injected a couple of medstims into myself and started doing sets with that new personal record weight.

At the end of the sets, I was able to add a couple more pounds onto the bar, increasing my limit by a smidge. Done deadlifting for the moment, I moved onto the other exercises and lifts I needed to do. 

...

Nearly five hours later, I finished exploring my current limits, so with everyone waking up shortly, I hopped into the shower to clean myself off. Once I was done with that, I headed upstairs and climbed back into bed with Alice until she woke up.

She awoke shortly thereafter and once she did; we went through the usual morning stuff before my typical crew and I were back at the foundry by 8:30 AM. With a lot on our plate today, Gramps and I immediately set into motion and got to work, leaving Alice to go to the planning/relaxation area while we two went right to the armory. Quickly getting my kit on from yesterday, I started going over what else I should bring along since I had a ton of extra space now that I had an item box.

The two of us discussed it for a bit before I ditched my NPDM in favor of a 7.62mm minigun and a 1,000 round backpack magazine that was still inadequate in my personal opinion. Happy enough with my latest primary weapon, I began loading up on more backpack magazines for the 7.62 minigun and grabbing various explosives and heavy weapons. As I was piling the weapons into the space, I began feeling as if weight was piling up on me slowly but surely as I was stuffing the item box full.

This will be useful for training, but right now I need to be nimble and light enough to run at my fastest speed in case we come across something unexpected… Hmm, let me check out the system to see if there're any features or toggles associated with the new item box.

Following that thought of mine, I pulled up my system and navigated over the item box section to see if there was anything to take advantage of and indeed there was a toggle located right beside the item box that read felt weight. Toggling it off, I was immediately relieved of the heavy weight that was being exerted on my body.

I tried and tested out several other things after that, attempting to figure out the extent of the control I had over the weight. Eventually I found out that I could control how much weight I wanted the item box to exert on my body via my will. In addition to that, I also discovered I could toggle the felt weight on and off with the same method eliminating the need to open up my system to do it every time, which was convenient. 

The last thing of note I found was that the item box's weight was separate from what I was actually carrying physically, so that was a nice plus. Luckily, it works that way since I can already envision myself trying to workout at home but unable to do so because I have a literal arsenal on me that I don't exactly want either my mom and dad to discover. Even if the chances of them doing so are unlikely if I keep it stowed away in my room…

Leaving that hypothetical behind this item box is going to make increasing my physical attributes so much easier, I can basically be training almost the entire day with this ability. The future gains I'm going to make with this are going to be insane, especially so when I combine it with Maxigen. Though that will unfortunately have to wait until I remove the extreme negative side effects from the compound.

Another thing for me to use to my advantage, I got back to filling my item box that shared its carry weight with whatever I had on my person physically. After filling my item box with a sizable arsenal, I threw a number of drugs and other medicines and was basically carrying along enough meds for myself and ten other people.

Loaded up with over a 1,000 lbs of weapons, ammunition, armor, meds, and gear spread across myself and the item box, I turned the felt weight on to where it was heavy but not to where it would affect my abilities negatively. Feeling the weight that was constantly exerting pressure all across my physique, I left the armory and proceeded to the mine tunnel, where my robots were ready and waiting. Quickly leaving the foundry behind, we entered the cave system and set off for the furthest cave exit.

…

The journey there wasn't all that quiet nor peaceful, but we reached the last stretch we needed to go through to get to the exit.

"We're nearly at the first one, gramps. We just need to pass through this bit ahead of us and we're there."

"Good. Once we close this entrance, we'll move on to the other four. Hopefully, by the time I need to bring you and Alice home, we'll have the lot of them secured."

"Hopefully."

Heading through the rocky passage, it opened up into a sort of wide cavernous room with a large craggy hole laying on the far end of it that led to the wasteland. In addition to the new scenery, we were met with several armed molemen as we entered. And so, with more targets found for elimination, we instantly dispatched them before we casually grabbed their corpses and threw them out of the cave into the wasteland for the mutated wildlife to feast upon.

With the vermin removed, it's time to seal this exit.

Getting immediately down to business, I took out dozens of demolition charges my robot workforce prepared over the night for today's mission. Handing a good many of them to my bots and gramps as well, we got to placing them around the exit.

In no time at all, we set the bunch of them up where they needed to be. Thus, with charges placed, I had everyone, including myself, fall back into the passage we took to get here. Detonator in hand, I lifted the cover on button and pressed the now exposed button, triggering dozens of explosions in the cave room we were just in moments before.

Waiting a few minutes for the dust and collapsing rock to settle, we walked back down the tunnel to check our handy work. Not even reaching the end of the passage, we came upon rubble that was entirely blocking our path forward. Mission accomplished, we turned right around and began moving to our second target.

My group and I successfully made it to the next objective without much issue besides having to exterminate the occasional molemen group we encountered on the way there. After clearing the exit of any and all hostiles and checking the general vicinity outside of the cave, we placed our demolition charges and hightailed it out of there. When the bunch of us had regrouped a safe distance away, I repeated the same actions I had taken with the first one and activated the detonator, setting off dozens of explosions in an instant.

Checking our work minutes later when a majority of the debris had settled, we left satisfied and continued on from there to the third exit. Our group traversed the cave system for about an hour before we started nearing the third exit and as we were getting closer to it, I began picking up on gunfire coming from the direction of the exit we were traveling to.

"Yo, gramps, we might have trouble up ahead."

"What kind of trouble?"

"There's a ton of gunfire coming from the direction of the exit up ahead. So I'm guessing we now have something else to deal with besides the molemen now."

"Hmm, it could be a lot of things, but there's no point speculating when we'll just find out when we arrive. Let's go check things out, kid."

Not knowing what was happening up ahead, we sped up our pace to find out what the situation was sooner rather than later. As we reached closer and closer to the exit, the gunfire became more audible and louder the closer we got.

No more than five minutes is all it took for us to reach the end of the cave passage we were traveling through. Coming upon the end, I kept my presence hiding field active like I've been doing this entire time and stayed in the passage's darkness with gramps and my robots while observing what was taking place.

If it was before when our group first started exterminating the molemen, I wouldn't have been able to get this close with everyone standing right behind me. But since then, a majority of my skills have undergone a significant increase with all the combat and constant skill usage I've been doing the past few days.

Because of that, my presence hiding field's capabilities have become increasingly more powerful, allowing myself as well as whoever else is with me in the field's range to creep up unnoticed as long as nothing is looking in our general direction. I wonder how strong it will get when I have several hundred skill points in stealth. It'll probably be pretty busted then.

Imagining the sight of moving a small army of robots in the dead of night to take out an enemy force, I saw several dozen molemen attempting to take down a group of five Giant Gila Monsters. Watching them fight it out over the next minute, it was quite obvious the molemen were on the losing side of things and were struggling to even breach the massive venomous lizards' scales.

I've seen enough time to kill them off, seal this exit, and move on to the final two exits.

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