New System, Who Dis?

Tuesday, April 16th, 2069

“Why is this one orange?” I whispered, far enough away from anyone else that I could speak to Smegma somewhat openly.

Shining Meteorite

Rank: Entry-E-Unique

Quality: High

Quantity: Very Low

“It says ‘Unique’, doesn’t it,” Smegma said haughtily.

“Okay, so it’s a one of a kind or something?” I asked.

“That’s what unique means,” Smegma confirmed.

“So, it’s both invaluable and valueless?” I whispered matching Smegma’s tone. The imp was getting on my nerves a bit ever since this morning. So, I decided to piss him off in turn. “Guess, I should ‘pick’ something else.”

“First off, that was husking horrible! Don’t pun. Second, it’s motherhusking unique! Like hell you’re going to just walk away.”

“Hmm, nah I’ll just leave it for you to get.”

“Low blow, dick-face,” Smegma retorted but eventually sighed. “Look, I’m sorry for being in a bad mood—but you have to get why I’m put-out, right?” I gave the imp a flat stare and he continued, “You're telling me that it wouldn’t be awesome to just be gaining Strength constantly until you were totally OP. You could have a literal horde of Miners just farming the Strength Stat for you….”

[Awesome, sure, but shit is never that easy,] I switched to mental communication as I felt myself growing a bit frustrated. [Smegma, I would love to be a Hunter right now, but honestly nothing is free. The Mining Skill planet isn’t growing anymore. Plus, just look at the Pickaxes. They’ve stopped leveling too.] I held out my Pickaxe which looked far better than it had before but refused to become anything better than ‘second-hand.’ Still, showing the imp the tool I added sourly, [Just like your billion-Coin Skills. So, let’s pump the husking brakes and take things slow.]

“Okay. Okay!” Smegma responded, and added the second when I gave him a meaningful stare. “So, you’ll mine the unique husking mineral now?”

[I will if you tell me what you know about unique husking minerals.]

“Ugghhh. Fine. It’s something that the System spawned specifically for someone in a given Dungeon. Because it’s an Ore—it's most likely for a Miner or Blacksmith or even Trade that deals with metals. Meaning it’s most likely here for you.” At my somewhat confused look Smegma threw his hands in the air. “Meaning, it’s likely something that the System deems you qualify for, and will either help you in the future or help you right husking now!”

[Was that so hard?]

“Honestly, who the husk wouldn’t mine a Unique Ore?” Smegma countered.

[I never said I wasn’t going to mine it. I just wanted to know what I was getting into!]

I glanced around me and deemed it safe to mine the vein I wasn’t supposed to be Mining. I looked at the Red Copper about ten feet to my left—the deposit I was supposed to be Mining, and then shrugged. It was close enough to keep up appearances.

Bringing up my Pickaxe, I held it aloft, getting ready to strike where the Mining Skill told me to. Nothing happened, and Smegma face-palmed.

“You are totally useless without your Skill. Here!” He said while pointing at a spot. I sent the pickaxe through his head, totally missing the indicated area. “Wow. Just wow. Want to actually try, or shall I start dancing around for husking target practice.”

[Why don’t you put your head where you want me to strike?]

“Husking rude! Here!” He said seriously, and this time I followed his finger to strike the spot indicated.

The pick bounced back and I almost dropped it due to the vibrations. [What the husk?]

“Okay, so this isn’t like a normal vein,” Smegma said, even as he began tapping a talon on his tooth and studying it more closely. “Ahh, yes, the rock immediately around it, seems to have hardened. Is that a property of the metal?”

[Smegma,] I tried but clearly the imp was too deep in his own thoughts.

“So, if this ore acts as some sort of reinforcement, maybe it is an item that can be added to existing weapons and armor.” The imp scoffed after that thought and looked derisively at me, in my second hand gear and just slightly better than second-hand Pickaxe. “What a waste—”

[Smegma!] I tried again and this time the imp blinked and looked me in my eyes.

“Oh, sorry. Try striking it right in the center of the ore.”

[That’s it?] I asked and Smegma both shook his head and shrugged a bit too excessively. Showing he had no idea, but also didn’t appreciate me questioning his deduction.

Well then!

I swung sidearm making sure that the pick sailed through a piece of the incorporeal demon, but still landed the point of the pick dead center on the ore. It wasn’t a particularly hard swing, and thanks to my childishness I expected nothing to happen.

Thus, when the entire point of the pickaxe sunk into the ore like it was mercury, I almost let go of the handle. Almost—only because I couldn’t let go of the handle. My hands felt like they were open, but they were somehow not—like the nerve endings were faulty. My eyes went wide just in time to watch the Ore turn into liquid metal and begin to move.

It didn’t drip like a liquid should, but moved over the Pickaxe in an engulfing wave.

“Oh, so that’s what it was here for,” Smegma said like he now understood something. I wanted to glare at him and demand an explanation but I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the liquid metal that was flowing over and down the Pickaxe like an alien symbiote.

It made its way to the handle and kept coming, inching toward my hands. I tried to scream, but realized that my mouth, like my hands, weren’t listening. Were my eyes even wide? They felt like they should be, but despite my desperate commands to do something, anything—my body didn’t listen.

Smegma caught my terror through my thoughts because he said, “Don’t panic. It’s going to Upgrade the Pickaxe. It must have reached a plateau but you met all the requirements for an upgrade.”

That calmed me for all of fifteen seconds—before the liquid began seeping onto my husking hands.

“Oh, well—that’s not what I expected,” Smegma stated as he watched the liquid metal begin coating my fingers.

[You husking husk. Do something!] I mentally screamed.

“That just means that it’s Upgrading something else, Brodie. Plus, what should I do? You want me to fly through you a couple times?”

Quickly, and with far too much glee, he did just that—latching onto my face and diving down into my body before his head burst out of my chest, his arms flailing as he screeched loudly. I knew I should never have let him watch that husking movie, but he just kept whining about how ‘booooring’ it was just watching me ‘sleep all the time’. Eventually I caved and left the Tablet open with a playlist of chosen movies and the volume turned down while I went to bed.

I resolved right then and there to figure out a way to punch this husker right in the face.

One day!

The liquid metal encased my hands, then my forearms before making its way up my elbows to my biceps where I felt the calm bubble of dissociation lent by my Mental Fortitude shatter. Surely it wasn’t going to consume me—how much of this metal was there? The prompt had said that the quantity was ‘very low’.

As if the thing was some sort of husked-up tentacle porn hentai bullshit—it made its way over my shoulders and up my neck toward my mouth. Which was conveniently slightly ajar and paralyzed.

[If this thing tries to get me to call it onii chan, I will burn down the world.] The thought came before I could stop it, and I quickly shifted to the topic I actually wanted to think about: [Smegma, if I survive this I’m going to husking kill you.]

“You’re going to have to get used to shit like this if you want to be a powerful Hunter,” Smegma answered.

The cool sensation the metal was causing to ripple over my skin moved over my lips and then shot down my throat. It tasted exactly how I would have expected—like I was sucking on batteries. Thankfully, it seemed to speed up at that point and was almost instantly gone.

My body unfroze and the Pickaxe fell to the ground with a clatter and then a clank as first the wood and then the metal bounced off the stone. I retched, for obvious reasons, but somehow managed to stop myself from actually vomiting.

“It’s inside your Mental Universe,” Smegma said, distractedly—like he was also focused inside my internal Universe as well.

I fell into myself, ignoring my convulsing stomach. Sure enough inside my Mental Universe I was greeted with the rapey alien meteorite metal floating in strangely undulating patterns. Immediately I asked, [What’s it doing?]

“Moving toward the Mining Skill, I think,” Smegma answered.

I glanced at the Mining Skill and found it surrounded by five of the tiny moons that I thought represented my Strength Stat. Had my Strength Stat risen by three today?

I opened my eyes and checked it, quickly by calling up my Stats page.

Strength Increased by 1.

Strength Increased by 1.

Strength Increased by 1.

---

Stats

Strength: 5

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Confirming that the moons on the metal planet were in fact Strength Stats, and making a note that the Stat page kept a log, I dove back into my Mental Universe.

The slowly moving liquid-meteorite metal was just about to reach the Mining Skill when I returned. I held my breath, unsure what it was going to do. I was both anticipatory of something amazing and terrified of something terrible.

When the meteorite reached the first moon, it began to coat it. Very much like what it had just done to the Pickaxe and then my skin. Then in a flash the same increase of speed occurred, and the metal planet became more metal. It almost looked like a silver pool from my vantage point.

What was that light, though? I scanned the Mental Universe, even as the light began to penetrate my eyelids. Wait—if it was penetrating my closed eyes, then it was outside. I opened my eyes just in time to see the telltale flash of Skill Awakening.

Or as it turned out—Skill Evolution.

Of course, the flash got everyone’s attention, which effectively gathered everyone around me, as if I had just screamed for help from a bloody murder. I was already beginning to fend off unspoken words of questioning when two things happened. First, I caught sight of my still open Stat window.

Strength is doubled by Shining Meteorite.

---

Stats

Strength: 10

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Locked.

Secondly, two very loud, and very echoing bangs resounded through the floor of our chamber and the air. I looked to what was clearly the nearer of the two noises—and found the exit closed. I only say closed because it was clear a door had fallen from the ceiling of the space. Door was a very strange description, but it was a piece of rock that was so smooth, and different than the rock around it–that it was just that out of place. Like a Castle Portcullis in the movies–the one that falls straight down.

Dreading what I would see, I scanned to the other exit, and didn’t find what I expected.

Well, that was mostly because my eyes never made it to the other exit. In the center of the cavern, amidst the scattered shards of F-ranked Crystals, something was moving. No, something was forming. I could see small pieces of loose dirt rolling toward the spot, even as it grew large enough to punch up through the small pile of shards. It was only a small mound, but it was becoming ever larger.

“What the husk is that?” I asked, directing my question at Smegma but accidentally including everyone. The group followed my frantic gaze and also froze. Whatever they had been about to say was forgotten in the shock of finding a moving pile of rock and dirt.

My father found his words and actions first. He began shoving everyone toward the exit. “Let’s get out of here. That sound could have been a cave—”

It was right then that his cajoling and spinning of others turned him around enough to see the ‘door’ that had fallen shut over the exit.

“Oh husk,” he said as he began frantically spinning me toward the other exit.

“No point dad,” I said as I allowed him to move me. I realized that if I wanted to I could stand in place like a bolted down statue, and briefly wondered if that was due to my Strength Stat. Still, maybe that pile wasn’t really anything—

“It’s a low-rank Rock Golem or something similar,” Smegma stated. “Normally, they wouldn’t be aggressive, but I’m guessing that this one is going to be coming after you.”

“Why the husk would a Rock Golem come after me?” I shouted, completely forgetting my current company. The group froze for the briefest of moments as they took in my words and then double timed it to the exit that led deeper into the mines. The exit to the tunnel that we knew Hunters from Lynx were down.

“What was it you said before? ‘Nothing is free?’ Well here you go, pal. Time to pay up.” Smegma shook his head as if I’d only not said anything this wouldn’t be happening.

“Everyone start working to break the cave-in,” my dad shouted, as we neared the ‘door’. I nodded—surely we could break through the door with our pickaxes.

Willa was the first one to arrive and with a sliding step she used all of her strength and momentum to drive the Pickaxe into the center of the flat stone door with an overhand swing. The Pickaxe bounced back hard enough that she lost her grip and the Pick catapulted back the way we had come, landing approximately midway between us and the now slightly humanoid looking rock golem.

“That’s a System Shield—you’re going to have to kill the boss, Brodie,” Smegma said flatly. Sounding slightly worried about my chances but I didn’t doubt that his assessment was correct, and destroying the Golem was the only choice. I didn’t even get to voice any questions before he responded, “It’s a System Event. Those doors aren’t going to be breakable or open until someone kills the Rock Golem. Since you’re the only one with any chance against it, I’m voting for you!”

[Did you know this was going to happen when I tapped that vein?]

“No. This was my first time seeing a Unique material in person. I was a fighter and then a researcher…”

The mound now had distinct arms and legs and... Was that a head forming?

I rushed into my Mental Universe and flipped the Overdraft Skill to Overcharge, before applying it to my weapon. Well, to my Pickaxe…

“I’m going to try to distract it,” I said but immediately felt my father’s hands grab at my shoulders to pull me back.

This time, I didn’t let him. He tried once with more strength and then gave up and yanked at me with everything he had. My shoes slid slightly on the stone but I didn’t break my casual stance.

“I’m sorry dad, this is the only way,” I whispered before twisting my body to place a hand in the center of his chest. Shoving him off his feet and removing his arms from around me, I began to rush at the almost fully-formed Rock Golem. I could only hope that getting in a first strike would somehow help.

After all, I only had ten minutes on Overcharge.