Grind 4.4
January 9, 2011, Instant Dimension, 5:12 AM
I tried my hand at further enhancement, but sadly anything away from normal human biology gave permanent negative status effects and constant HP drain due to that. My biology skills were just not good enough to make the modifications self-sustained. All that would be taken care of soon, I'd need to find a way to collaborate with Amy in my cape persona anyway.
The stranger aspect of shapeshifting was another major experimental avenue. Apart from the 'superheroic' avatar, I created a few extremely average looking avatars by blending and sculpting the 3 male scans I had. Making them further anonymous was just a matter of equipping them on, applying anonymity protocols with only 6 charisma, re-scanning the resulting build and saving it. Taylor's was the only female scan I had and honestly it seemed highly inappropriate to experiment with forms made from her anatomy as the base without her consent.
It was still a while before sunrise, I had another experiment to perform. I dived into the scans I had of Taylor's corona, her bugs, and my inventory opening. I put all of my surplus mana into 5 extra multitasking thought streams and put them into meditation (sadly the gain in mana regen did not stack). Then began studying the dimensional breaches in the aforementioned scans. I needed a way to make holes between dimensions, or else I'd need to come out of IDs blind all the time. I also wanted to be able to enter and exit dimensions other than by having to create and dismiss them.
At the current level the IDs stretched only a few kilometres from the localised anchor point (where I created them from) after which they hit a sort of invisible barrier outside which everything looked like low-res paintings. Of course the AI would be too lazy to reconstruct the whole world just for training purposes.
It took me only about half an hour, but I think I had a decent understanding how controlled dimensional breaches worked. I closed the scans and dropped the extra thought streams, I willed out some mana into creating an inch wide hole to the anchor dimension (Earth Bet, that is) in front of me. The hole formed, I could see into the Hebert's living room without having to collapse the ID, that was very good news. Even better news was that the edge of the hole had a barely visible blue glow. I closed it and opened another only 5mm wide, the glow wasn't even visible this time even in the darkness of the room. This would be an invaluable spying mechanism.
I got a Dimensional Breach skill for it, the mana cost to make and sustain them increased with the area of the hole. And the bigger the hole, the more it glowed. At my current mana levels, a hole about two feet diameter was the best I could do. Oh well, more grinding.
Taylor messaged me saying she was done sleeping and was ready to go. I dropped the ID, she was in the kitchen making a sandwich, I walked in. She spoke without turning, must have dropped a bug on me sometime post cleansing last night. "would you like some tea?"
"Yes, please. So do you have an idea of what bugs you want?"
"Yeah, there's a good variety in the nearby forest trails. But if we want the Blue Ghost fireflies, we'll have to hit the Appalachian trail. Are you sure we can just run there?"
I grinned, "let's see how the running skills level. Oh, and also, there are not too many books about parkour, but guess what? I checked earlier, 'how to' videos count as skill books!"
Taylor radiated supreme smugness, "I know, I learned those skills as soon as you got them. Took me a long few seconds."
I shook my fist at her, "Goddamn bullshit multitasking, took me an hour even with 3 streams on!"
She chuckled, "Look who's talking, Mr. I-use-pocket-universes-for-training-how-to-taser-snipe-people."
I shrugged, "fair enough. Anyway, what's the progress on your regular skills?"
"Hmm, not bad I'd say, Administration is at level 18, I'm expecting another upgrade slot at level 20, control is down to singular muscles," a spider climbed out of her hair and waved a single leg at me. It took a good amount of mental control to suppress the very uncomfortable mix of cuteness and horror that induced.
"Sensing is up to tactile and textures, still no sight or hearing. Range is at 1 kilometre and growing. Selectivity is at individual targets now. No new targets yet."
I nodded, "pretty good, what about the gamer skills?"
"Decent progress there too, I'm level 15 now, as you can see, physicals all around 15, charisma..."
I interrupted, "Stats and level I can see, tell me about Gamer's Mind and Body"
She nodded, "Gamer's Mind is at level 31, extreme emotional spike suppression was unlocked at level 30. Gamer's body is at level 23, Only need about 2 hours of sleep per day. Feeling of hunger and fatigue is much reduced, as you might have noticed yesterday." She handed me a cup of tea.
I nodded, "yeah, I don't feel hungry at all, thankfully eating is still satisfying. Oh, nice tea, did you make a few extra cups?"
She nodded, "of course, already inventoried two steaming pots."
I gave her a thumbs up, "You're the best. So when do you think the costumes would be ready for me to add the armour? You'll have to do the spidersilk, my construction can't replicate the protein strands yet, too complex."
She waved me away, "no problem, I've already started feeding them the carbon fibre we got from the auto-body shop yesterday for the outer layers. It'll take about two more days of active weaving to finish our sets. Only the undersuit for you as you asked, and mine with double layered armor pouches. You might want to start making the diamond armor. Speaking of diamonds, I've mailed you some books on jewellery design, please add them when you get time?"
I nodded and took out my phone. "On it, remember to keep the designs as light as possible. I've also spoken to dada to register a company in my cape name. I also wanted to book a domain but I've not yet come upon a good team name."
She shook her head, "tell me about it, names are tough to come up with, even with infinite multitasking. I'm going to stick with Swarm for me, good middle ground between the terrifying ones like Borg, Matriarch or Hive - and the cute ones like Ladybug or Hamelin."
I nodded, "well, you also wanted to avoid the mythological names, or else I had quite a few suggestions."
She chuckled, "no thanks, we're good with one uppity name. Let me be the humble one."
I gave her a mock frown, "Humble, right. Also, Maker is not uppity at all! I make things. I'm going for the tinker angle!"
She waved me away again, "Just because I'm not as much a geek as you doesn't mean I don't get all the references. Anyway, I'm not complaining, it's a good name."
I gave an elitist sniff as I sipped the last of my tea, "of course it is. Enough talk, let's go grab some bugs."
Taylor finished her tea in a gulp, "Let's."
I grabbed her hand and put us into a blank ID. We left the house and started free running through streets, houses, rooftops. Parkour was a brilliant skill after all. Pretty soon we reached the edge of the ID. I found a secluded shed, broke us into it, poked a hole and checked for eyes or cameras. Then collapsed and recreated the ID anchored there. We had to repeat this maneuovre every few kilometres. Taylor sensed the local insects every time I poked a hole, so some of those stops we took inside parks and she picked up whatever insects she wanted.
Running, (Including the Sprint subskill), Parkour and Instant Dimension skills leveled up very quickly from repeated use. By the time we crossed the city limits we were easily running at 80 Km/h (50mph for the Americans). I was not boosting because Taylor wouldn't be able to keep up then. We were even picking up VIT and DEX points, Taylor got more than me though. I soon got a Re-Anchor subskill for IDs at level 30 that let me re-centre them without having to collapse and remake them, that sped up our progress quite a lot. I had to heal some minor bruises on Taylor and use Refresh to remove her fatigue a few times.
We reached the White Mountain National Forest at around 10 in the morning, running speed had started plateauing at around 120km/h, I figured even at its best running would probably not go faster than 150, it was still way beyond human levels. With mana boost I might even start to reach speedster levels. Which reminded me, I'd need to find some excuse to scan Velocity, and other capes too at some point of time.
Taylor soon amassed a swarm of biblical proportions, we'd already agreed that she'd not deplete any area of more than half its natural insect population. She also set the remaining ones to breed. She got moths, butterflies, mosquitoes, beetles, fireflies, flies, bees, wasps, so many kinds of spiders and ants... I stopped keeping track after a while, but I did notice the assassin bugs, the velvet ants (also called cow killers) and all the venomous bugs she got. Her inventory had hundreds of grids of neatly labeled species, each having tens of thousands of insects at times.
We had tea beside a nicely canopied brook in the middle of the forest, I sliced the top off of a boulder to make a table. Very serene setting for a picnic. It would be nice to bring Lisa out here for a date or something.
I realised I had mumbled it out loud when Taylor started singsonging, "Aveek and Lisa sitting on a rock. Having some tea but all they want is to f..."
"Language!"
"...fish?"
"Right. Enough tea, let's head to the Appalachians!"
Taylor giggled as she put the crockery back in her inventory, "Let's."
