Quantum shift, p.22
Quantum Shift, page 22
part #1 of Phase Shift Series
“Whoa, I can lift a truck?” Troias said out loud, too startled to remember to speak silently. “What the heck?”
Ren corrected.
“You think you can tip it back over?” Annalise said doubtfully. “I mean, Troias, you’re strong and all, but…”
At the kirin’s direction, they unloaded everything they could from the fallen vehicle, include a very shaken Max. The dog cowered at Troias’ side, and he spent a few minutes kneeling beside the animal, petting him and speaking reassuringly until the dog’s shaking quieted. Once the truck was empty, Troias stood by the roof, listening to his totem’s instructions.
Wait, how do I know which type of energy is Force? Troias interrupted. So far, all I’ve done is pulled power from myself; I haven’t really thought about which kind.
Wait, I thought you said this wasn’t about strength? Troias asked in confusion. Why do I have to push?
Troias took a deep breath and placed his hands on the roof of the van, pushing gently upward as if he were trying to tip it back over. At the same time, he concentrated on a spot behind his navel and pulled energy from it, sending it slowly winding down his arms and into his hands. The energy pooled in his hands, and he belatedly remembered that he had to send it out into the truck, as well. The metal rang slightly as the power surged from his hands into it, but it seemed to be undamaged, and he kept concentrating.
Troias focused on his center, on that core of power within, and he slowly increased the draw on it. As he did, he pushed harder with his arms, pressing the energy into the truck. The vehicle groaned slightly as the force increased; heartened, he wanted to ramp the power way up, but he forced himself to go slowly and calmly. He wanted to fix the truck, not wreck it…or himself, for that matter.
The side of the truck lifted grudgingly from the ground as he pressed harder, pouring more energy into it. It shifted, rising slowly above the ground; first, a few inches, then a foot, then two feet. As it rose, Ren told him to ease off the power, or he might just flip it over to the other side. He let the power wane slightly, slowly easing it back down, and the truck began to lift more gradually and gently. As the truck passed the three-foot mark, it started moving easily, and he dialed the power way back. The truck left his hands, and he stepped back, watching as it dropped heavily onto its chassis, bouncing once before settling back down.
“Whoa,” Annalise breathed from beside him. “How in the world did you do that?”
“Force Facet,” he said shortly, stooping to place his hands on his knees. Despite the fact that he hadn’t actually done much in the way of lifting, his muscles were sore, and he felt as winded as if he’d tipped the truck over the old-fashioned way instead of by using what amounted to magic. He glanced at his stats briefly and understood at once why he was feeling so wiped. “Took a lot of what I had; I’m down to just about a 1 magnitude there.”
She shook her head. “That’s incredible. I mean, I’ve seen people get together to tip a car on TV before, but I’ve never seen one person tip a truck.”
“My totem tells me it’ll become more common quickly enough,” he told her, rising to his feet. He wasn’t really tired; he just felt a bit worn-out, but he imagined that would pass as his Facet recovered. “Now, let’s check out the damage.”
He walked around the truck, noting that the frame and windows were fine, but the paint on the driver’s side was more or less gone, the mirror on that side was bent and hanging, and his door handle had been torn free. He sighed and laid his hand on the damaged paint.
“This thing was only a year old,” he complained. “A year old, and it got trashed by a sea monster. Can you imagine if someone had told me, ‘Hey, don’t buy that, it might get trashed by a sea monster’?”
“I’m guessing you might have had some doubts about their sanity,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “Maybe it’s for the best, though. This can be a lesson for you: do your homework before tussling with something you were warned against.”
He groaned but nodded his head. “Yeah, I could have handled this better,” he admitted. “Paul told us the Brigade had dealt with this thing before; I could have gone and gotten more info from them about it or looked for the group in the Catholic Church and seen if they knew anything.”
“As you said, we can’t make stupid mistakes,” she pressed. “Assuming you’re invincible is a stupid mistake, and it almost got us both killed.”
“And it did kill the truck,” he agreed. “Well, sort of. Let’s hope it’s still drivable.”
As Ren had suggested, Troias took a moment to check his notifications and was happy to see that fighting the sea monster had yielded some benefits.
Ability Unlocked:
You have unlocked the ability
Least Empowered Strike
Facet: Force
Ability Score: Power
Cost: 0.2 Magnitude
Increase the damage of your next attack by your
Force magnitude plus your Power ability modifier,
divided by twenty, for one attack (Currently 31%)
Congratulations!
You have reached a new Level!
Current Level: 2
Current Experience: 432/1100
When you gain a level as a Spirit
Warrior, you receive:
+5% to all unlocked Facets
+5% to all associated ability scores
You may also select one ability from the list below:
Weak Spirit of Death
Facet: Death
Ability Score: Aura
Cost: 0.3 Magnitude
Minorly increase the skill of an attack.
Weak Spirit of Earth
Facet: Earth
Ability Score: Endurance
Cost: 0.3 Magnitude
Minorly increase your defense against an attack.
Weak Spirit of Force
Facet: Force
Ability Score: Power
Cost: 0.3 Magnitude
Minorly increase the power of an attack.
Weak Spirit of Mind
Facet: Mind
Ability Score: Ego
Cost: 0.3 Magnitude
Minorly increase your defense against a mental attack.
Weak Spirit of Water
Facet: Water
Ability Score: Reflexes
Cost: 0.3 Magnitude
Minorly increase your ability to dodge an attack.
Weak Spiritual Barrier*
Facet: Spirit
Ability Score: Spirit
Cost: 0.4 Magnitude
Minorly increase your defense against energy.
Weak Spiritual Resistance*
Facet: Spirit
Ability Score: Spirit
Cost: 0.4 Magnitude
Minorly increase your resistance to mental attacks.
Troias glanced over the ability options carefully. The newest option, Spiritual Barrier, looked more or less the same as his Spiritual Armor, although he noticed that it was a defense against energy rather than against attacks. He thought back to Paul, the air Mage, and he thought he understood: the Barrier would protect against spells or abilities that projected energy, rather than against direct attacks to his person. It was less versatile, but he guessed that it might be more powerful in exchange.
Still, he was already pretty resilient. For whatever reason, the system the Shift put in place didn’t let him see things like his attack or defense scores, but he guessed his defense was probably high, relatively speaking. The fall he took when he paralyzed the sea monster, for example, amounted to a twenty-foot drop onto the creature’s ridiculously hard scales. Even though he took the impact correctly, he still could have broken or dislocated something. Instead, it had rung his bell for a few seconds, nothing more.
His Ego score, though, was still pretty low, as was his Mind Facet. At first, that hadn’t seemed like a big deal, but he was rethinking the wisdom of that. After all, since that Facet existed, surely there were creatures or people that could use it, and he wouldn’t be much more resistant to their attacks then someone who didn’t even have that Facet unlocked. That was a common theme in many comics and anime: a warrior was physically powerful but mentally vulnerable, got hypnotized or brainwashed, and ended up being some bad guy’s unwilling pawn. Sure, those were stories, but those types of stories were starting to come true. The idea of something being able to attack his mind made him distinctly uneasy, even a bit afraid. With that thought in mind, he decided to take Spiritual Resistance.
Weak Spiritual Resistance*
Facet: Spirit
Ability Score: Spirit
Cost: 0.33 Magnitude
By using this ability, you increase your mental resistance by a multiple of 1 plus one-tenth of your Spirit ability modifier for 30 seconds (currently 1.39).
Using this ability lowers your Spirit magnitude
by 0.4 for five minutes.
He glanced over at Annalise, who was also staring into space, her face twisted in thought. She caught his gaze and made a face at him. “I gained a level from that, I guess,” she told him. “I get to choose a new ability, and I’m not sure which one to pick.”
“I probably can’t help you there,” he chuckled. “What does Waddles say?”
“To stick with Life-based abilities,” she replied sourly. “The thing is, those are all about healing. Oh, or I can make a light. Big deal, right? I want something that will make my guns work better, but I’m not seeing anything like that.”
“Totem says we have to either get you a better weapon or figure out how to upgrade your existing one if you want that,” Troias shrugged. “We can only affect ourselves, not our stuff. Maybe I can add that armor-piercing upgrade to it, though?”
“Maybe,” she sighed. “My hope is that there’s a military-grade sniper rifle at the Guard Station, though; something like an M82. That, you can definitely put an armor-piercing upgrade on. I still worry that if I’m firing armor-piercing rounds from my 700 into a group of enemies, I might hit one of you with a ricochet.”
Troias nodded. “Reasonable concern, I guess,” he agreed. “So, other than healing, what can you pick?”
“The others are all Earth-based,” she told him. “I can upgrade my Earth Armor from Fledgling to Least, I can pick one that makes me harder to knock down but also slows me down, and there’s one that lets me kind of shrug off Earth damage. I don’t know how valuable that last one would be. We haven’t run into Earth-based monsters, yet, but I’m sure there are some out there.”
Troias frowned, recalling his gaming days. This was a pretty common argument among gamers, and it was one that didn’t necessarily have a great answer. Was there a best way to create a character, and if so, what was it?
“Well, there are a couple different ways you could do this,” he offered. “One way is to pick one specific role and just make everything work around it: in game terms, that’s called min/maxing. So, you could make yourself an amazing healer, but you’d be weak in combat.”
“That seems…kind of stupid,” Annalise observed sourly.
“Not necessarily,” Troias laughed. “If we were in a larger group, it could make good sense. You’d be counting on everyone else to kill the bad guys and keep you safe, while you’d be keeping them alive long enough to do that. The problem is, it doesn’t work when you’re in a small group or off by yourself, or when you face something that’s a hard counter for your specific role. So, if there’s some monster out there that can disrupt the Life Facet, you’d be more or less helpless.
“You could also go for a more balanced approach. You’ve got two Facets; you could try and build each of them equally, increasing healing and defense at the same rate. The good part about that is that you’ll be better able to deal with whatever comes up, but the bad part is, you might not be able to deal with it as well as someone who is more specialized.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” Annalise protested. “If I’m a healer and have great defense, I can still heal.”
“But, probably not as well as if you’d just focused on healing,” he pointed out. “I’m pretty sure that relying on levels to get abilities isn’t the best way for us to progress in the long term. You can get abilities just by doing things enough times, or so my totem tells me. That means that the more you heal, the more healing abilities you’ll get, the faster they’ll level up, and the more powerful they’ll probably become.”
“But, if I’m splitting between two things, I’ll grow more slowly in each of them and won’t have as many abilities in either to choose from,” she finished, nodding. “Okay, I get that. But…I don’t want to just heal stuff all day!”
“So, don’t. Honestly, I don’t think focusing entirely on healing is a good idea, anyway. Maybe if we were set up somewhere permanently and you were going to be a nurse – or a doctor, I guess, since you’ll probably be able to do everything a doctor could and more in no time – that would be a good idea. But, if you want to be in battle, even if it’s from a distance, you’re going to need some kind of defensive abilities.”
She nodded. “I’m going to upgrade my armor, then,” she decided. “That would have helped in the last battle, and if something gets past you and Max and attacks me, I need to survive long enough to get my pistol out and kill it.”
“Good plan,” he grinned at her. “Now, let’s see what we can see about that Guard Station, huh?”
Fortunately, the truck still drove well, although he did have to get in on Annalise’s side, and not having a mirror on his side made him nervous, limiting his peripheral vision and making him feel like something was sneaking up on his blind side. The driver’s side front tire was making a weird noise – probably from when he tipped the vehicle back over – and his alignment was shot to heck. It was better than walking, though, and it certainly beat dying.
The Guard Station they were looking for was a good three miles south of the river, and they stumbled across their first actual jewelry stores on the way. There were two of them, one across the street from the other, and both looked to be infested with nothing more than hodags, but they were simply too exhausted from the fight earlier to even bother. Troias hadn’t come so close to dying ever, and the aftermath left him feeling wrung out. From the blank, wooden expression on her face, Annalise seemed to feel about the same way.
Rather than heading directly to their destination, Troias pulled off at a small breakfast-style café. The front windows and doors were intact, which Troias hoped meant it hadn’t been infested; to his relief, it was indeed empty of hodags or other threats. He claimed it at once, restoring the lights, heat, and kitchen, then had Annalise relax while he whipped up some brunch for them.
Real eggs were, of course, out of the question; the ones in the café had doubtless gone bad after a week without refrigeration, but he didn’t know since they had vanished into build points when he claimed the building. He had some powdered eggs in their supplies, though, that would be good enough. He also had a handful of breakfast MRE’s left, thanks to all the fish they’d eaten at the cabin, and those were simple enough to whip up. In the end, he presented her with a meal of slightly overcooked scrambled eggs, a hash brown skillet with bacon, green peppers and onions, something that looked like applesauce but was made out of zucchini, peanut-butter bread (the toaster wasn’t working without electricity, and he couldn’t get it to update for some reason), and something similar to orange juice. Even better, there was a huge tub of instant coffee in the back, and while the toaster didn’t work, the gas stove did; he had no problem boiling water.
