chap-5

Charge Cluster' was a white, ghost-like transparent ball. It had three tiny tentacles. It had two large, glowing, light blue eyes.

It was adorable.

He had meant to spend the day riding closer to the road, but ended up having Kaa coil up and had a bedroom set so he could socket in 'Slow Recovery' and watch his new friend float around in his mind's stardust fields.

It was like a fish screensaver.

If anyone asked, he only had this power to prevent issues, like if he was unconscious or whatever.

It was purely professional.

He named it Squishy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Watching the ball-like creature playing with a charge was heart warming.

And to be honest, he felt a bit like a monster when he reached out to take it.

Thankfully, Squishy seemed to be more interested in floating around than in the glowing charge crystal. If he had been exposed to the dreaded 'Puppy-dog Eyes' he would have folded like a wet napkin.

As much as he wanted to put this next charge into 'Search', it was... mostly usable.

He wanted to add in more detail on results, enhance the filtering (Most traveled road, Longest road, Road with recent traffic, etc), and add in less substantial info (Large object approaching, small object approaching at high speed, unknown energy found... basically a 'This is Dangerous' and 'This is Interesting' option).

But right now, it was good enough to tell him a general direction to go, so priority had to go to something that would be useful forever.

"Research."

A pair of glasses appeared in his socket, and Squishy now had four tiny legs! It was so cute!

Cough, uh... yeah.

Anyway, he could feel his body rapidly change as his movements became more stable, smooth. Just the act of walking around allowed him to subconsciously determine the most optimal and efficient method of movement.

He supposed it made sense, as he currently had no books or whatever to learn from, so he had to absorb information about nature, his current status, and his movements.

This ability would need at least two more charges... one for rapid language development, detection, retention, and extrapolation, and one for societal cues. He still had a fragment of memory of a news story where one politicians hand gesture meant peace and the same one flipped meant nasty things about ones mother.

With a sigh, he swapped back to 'Slow Recovery'. If he could use 'Research' WITH any of his other abilities, his skill level would have skyrocketed! Alone though, it would still be useful. Only as a study aid though.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Three days later, two charges into 'Research', and Squishy had one left to play with.

He had found the road! And at this point, Kaa was more than a bit obvious.

After trying a few things, he finally gave up and took Squishy's toy, adding 'compression' to his 'Flame Manipulation'.

He had to ditch the water, and had created a sling back pack to put all the cooked fish in, but now Kaa was only four times longer than his height.

On a side note, the more he compressed, the hotter the stored flames. Even the color changed, and he was a bright yellow now, like unpolished gold.

His clothing also got the improvement, as it helped to hold itself and his new backpack up. His yellow clothing not only radiated a constant warmth, but if anything tried to heat it up ABOVE that temperature the extra heat would soak into the material.

So he basically had temp-control underwear. It was nice.

Right now though, he had enabled 'Research' and was glaring at a road sign.

It read "Dunuhdu, 210 semac."

Things he learned so far: As this and another sign were facing the right hand side of the road, traffic likely also was on that side.

Second, this world had a society, it could produce metal, plastic, and asphalt, and based on the text it had industrial massed produced printing.

Third, this language not only read left to right, but included commas, and periods. And if he wasn't wrong, 'Semac' was a letter by letter code of 'miles'.

Fourth, this and the other signs helped his language skills a lot. But not because it was advanced, or making great leaps of logic like he hoped.

No, his memories matched this language with the AlBhed one from Final Fantasy 10, a game he played once.

Which would imply he was in a Final Fantasy Realm, but the other half of the sign clearly stated Toronto.

So he was both in Canada, and Canada was not nearly as developed as it was in his mind. There should be far more roads and people here.

That... was bad. Most near-earth fictions he read had a developed Canada, if they bothered to mention it at all. The ones who didn't either had advanced to the point where one planet was too small so everyone left, zombies broke out (Unlikely), or they had issues large enough that living in this beautiful region wasn't commercially tempting.

He had also gotten the feeling of being watched off and on for the last few hours, but 'Search' insisted that there were not people, nor intellectual rocks or animals, within its considerable range.

Frustrating.

With a sigh, he swapped back to 'Search', then 'Flame Manipulation'. Nearest potable water source was about an hour away that direction.

Kaa squished up until he could form a basic chair, but at this level of compression it was more like riding a golf cart than a space shuttle.

On the positive side, each tree we approached exploded into ashes before being consumed by the serpent, so the snake was both growing (much slower than before) and no longer making a mess.

Just in case he left a coin sized piece of flame metal at the sign. With the 'Search' filtration, he could find this again easily.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Kaa traveled a parallel path beside the road, far enough to not be seen. The constant supply of new trees had finally gotten his form up to a more comfortable riding size, about a truck or two long and a motorcycle in diameter. The water source found required some digging which Kaa handled with no issue.

Each sign had him swapping to Research to make translation less annoying, and a charge was added to Research to automate conversion of all data into a more intuitive format when remembered. At this point, while he could determine the difference from AlBhed and English, his mind treated both the same by default. As if everything was being translated and memorized in a very compact and descriptive subconscious language.

This should make translation errors far less common.

He had deliberately slowed down his progress. Yes, he was riding a huge golden metal snake, but at least the only sign of passing was a wide tunnel wandering next to a road rather than a river of ash. He even took time to uproot some bushes, soil and all, and have Kaa create body pots along his length. It now looked like a slithering bush mostly.

The idea was, when stopped, it would be near perfect camouflage.

Yet... he still felt hidden eyes.

It was starting to creep him out.

The next day, he pushed a charge into 'Research' focused on detecting energy waves. Specifically, radio, infrared, satellite, laser communication, WiFi, etc. They were all wavelengths of energy, and now his power could add that data into its results.

It took seconds for a wealth of info to begin flooding in. Cellular towers existed. Satellite phones did not. WiFi signals existed... So did Bluetooth? Far too close.

Even as the radio waves were being translated and converted into new language skills (Yeah, it was more than one language, but only one was on 86% of the airwaves), he was detecting some undefinable wave-like transmission being sent and received nearby.

Like... right here. And up.

One glance was all it took for 'Research' to near explode.

High altitude object.

Near stationary.

Not using standard jets, or helicopter blades.

Near silent.

Not on the technical level being shown by the signs and radio shows being picked up and translated.

Too advanced.

...

Well, that rules out Final Fantasy 10. That world had a different style to begin with, and then they got hit by a massive monster that focused on technology. So... not that one. Probably.

On the other hand, he was getting more and more translated radio shows (All simultaneously). And certain words were popping up.

Hero. Villain. PRT?

Crud.

Hello Worm, how are you?