Vivid Stars Online

It was before dawn the next morning when I got the call to be ready for pickup. With less than half an hour to prepare I barely made it out in time. Linnea and the Sergeant of the ship’s guard joined me as we watched the military plane approach.

Black armored troops jumped from the sleek military VTOL as it landed. A first squad of four rushed to secure the area before a second squad followed. The second group moved up in front of me, where the leader, a captain from his insignia, gave a short bow.

“We're here to take you to the ritual chamber, Sir. Apologies, but you’ll need to wear this,” he said, lifting a faceless hood.

It looked well-crafted and comfortable, but I still felt a twinge of doubt as it came into view. There would be no way to see what was going on with that on my head, and it felt odd to my Psi senses.

A hint of paranoia hit me, and I glanced at the sergeant with me before responding. He met my eyes for a moment, then looked down at his watch. He fiddled with it briefly before nodding back at me.

Relaxing a little at the confirmation that this was the real pickup squad, I turned back to the soldier in front of me. He, and the other seven, were all outfitted in similar gear to myself and the palace guard.

Reaching out with my senses, I gulped as I realized all eight of them were Psions, powerful ones. Despite their small number, I had little doubt they could take us and all twenty of the normal troops stationed at the ship if they needed to.

“Of course,” I said after taking it all in. “I was informed. How long should I expect to be away for?”

“The exact timing is confidential information for security reasons,” the Captain responded gruffly, but not unkindly. “But I can say that you will be back before the end of the day.”

“Fair enough. I’m assuming that no weapons are allowed?”

“No weapons, Psionic Items, or recording equipment.”

“Right then,” I responded, before beginning to divest myself of my gear. Given my armor was Psionic, I had to duck back inside to put on a set of my old exploring gear. Even my watch had to be put down, the first time I’d been without it in-game.

Minutes later, I emerged, feeling more vulnerable than I had in a long time. I’d already said goodbye to Linnea privately, so I simply nodded at her as I went past. The Captain looked me over carefully, both with his eyes and his Psi senses, before handing me the hood.

Wincing, a little, I slipped it over my head and waited as he tightened it at the bottom. While the material was breathable enough to let oxygen in, it left me unable to even see light through it.

Worse, it hampered my Psi senses, restricting them to the tiny space within the hood. It was a disorienting experience, and only a few months ago, it would have triggered a serious case of claustrophobia.

As it was, the situation was only uncomfortable, and I allowed myself to be led inside the VTOL. The sound of the engines and a vague sense of movement suggested that we had taken off, but that was the only sensory feedback I got for some time.

The trip seemed to last ages, though with no way to gauge time I couldn’t be sure. They provided me sustenance via a bottle of water and a pair of sandwiches, both easy enough to use blind, but apart from that, we made the trip in silence.

Eventually, I fell asleep, only to be jerked awake by a shudder as the VTOL landed. A hand guided me down from the ship, and off in an unknown direction. We walked for some time before the Captain’s voice finally addressed me.

“Stand still, I’m taking the hood off. We’re secure now, and the footing gets rough from here on.”

True to his word, hands undid the cord at my neck before lifting the hood off. I blinked in the bright light for several moments before my surroundings came into focus. We were standing in a rough stone tunnel with clear signs of work along the walls.

This was no natural tunnel as in the caves I’d been in, but something dug by tools. The Captain was standing next to me, with the other three members of his squad a few steps further back.

It was nothing like I’d been expecting, and I glanced at the Captain askew.

“You’ll see soon enough,” he responded curtly. “Walk straight ahead and stay at a steady pace.”

He sounded very serious, and I moved to follow his orders. We walked for what I estimated to be about fifteen minutes before smooth metal came into view. There, buried deep in the rock, was a familiar sight. The outer wall of a ritual chamber.

I blinked in surprise for a moment, before hurrying to move on. I had no end of questions about why such a room was sitting down here, deep underground, but I didn’t think the Captain was in any mood for questions.

Instead, I simply moved around the edge of the room. Whoever had dug the tunnel had excavated a small cavern around it, giving us enough space to move until we reached the door.

I waited as the captain opened the door, before moving inside as he gestured me in. All four soldiers followed, each taking up position around the edges of the room.

Inside, it was almost identical to the chambers I’d been in before, with no hint of its odd location. Only the patterns on the carved columns were different, and I itched to investigate whether they matched the power that was inside.

With difficulty, I ignored the urge and instead sat down in the central chair. Moments later it injected me, and I moved into a trance as the new power poured into me. Apart from the specific pattern it created in my being, the process was no different from the ones I had already used.

With the ritual complete, the Captain led me back up the tunnel until a hint of sunlight was visible at the end. Then the hood went back on, and we reversed the entire journey back to my frigate.

It was annoying to wait so long to check my notifications, but I had no desire to do anything odd in front of such an audience. If rumors of other players hadn’t reached them already, they soon would. I didn’t want any hint that I was unusual to be out there.

It was dark by the time they released me in front of the ship. Linnea was standing there and only waited long enough for the soldiers to leave before pulling me into a kiss.

I held her for a moment, before holding up a hand for her to wait as I pulled up my notifications at last.

Trait Gained

You have gained a new Psionic Ability.

Trait: Enhance Cognition(Initiate) has been added to your character sheet.

Trait Upgraded

Due to utilizing an Arkathian Ritual, your Psionic Ability has been upgraded.

Trait: Enhance Cognition(Initiate) has become Enhance Cognition(Acolyte)

Enhance Cognition(Acolyte)

A Psionic Ability that speeds up the user’s thoughts, allowing them to process information at great speed. When activated, the ability drains energy continuously to provide its benefits.

Warning: As you lack the skill to utilize this ability, its effects will be greatly decreased.

“It worked,” I said, laughing happily as I read through the details. With a grin, I pulled up my skills and started my plan to get the required class skill.

I still had five general skill upgrade points, which was enough to re-select one of my general skills and convert it to a class skill. I’d already decided what to pick, and with only a little regret, I selected Packmaster to be converted.

Now that I regularly traveled in a group, the extra carrying capacity just wasn’t that important, not compared to my other general skills at least. Moments later, the conversion was completed, and I used the new free class skill to select Enhance Cognition.

Enhance Cognition Level 2

Allows full use of the Enhance Cognition skill and increases the effect by ten percent.

Sweet, it even kept the levels, I realized, reading through the skill description. That gave me all kinds of ideas, but I put them aside for now. It was getting late, and Linnea was already pulling me to bed.

I had left an extra day in my planning, in case the ritual chamber took two to complete. That left me with plenty of time to test out my new ability, as well as help more with the frigate.

Much like it said in the description, Enhance Cognition increased the speed at which I could think in pretty much any situation. It triggered almost instantly with a thought, after which everything seemed to slow down as a trickle of energy fed into the Ability.

It didn’t affect my reflexes at all, leading to me almost feeling as if I was moving my body through molasses, but it gave me much more time to process incoming threats. I could afford a lot more time to plan my moves carefully, even in the thick of combat.

The non-combat uses of the ability were perhaps even better. In an important conversation, I could spend more time thinking about my words or analyzing the other person’s facial expressions and tone.

Any intellectual problem I had to solve could be done faster, though this was only useful in the heat of the moment. It would be amazing when commanding my frigate, and I once again made a note to book myself in for some kind of space combat tactics training.

The drain from using it was fairly small but still significant. With full energy reserves, I could keep it up for about ten minutes if I wasn’t using my energy for anything else.

I would have to test it in an actual combat situation to see how it affected my energy consumption when combined with my other abilities, but I was cautiously optimistic. Fights almost always ended quickly, so it shouldn’t add too much extra strain.

Got to find a way to upgrade it, I decided after putting the new ability through its paces. It was already amazing, speeding up my thoughts by more than double, but I knew it would only get better, and cheaper, as it advanced.

Luckily, I knew from my initial briefing that the Kingdom had two additional chambers for this ability. I would just need to do something significant enough for them to grant me access to another one.

I spent the rest of that day helping Elana rapidly test maintenance robots. With the fabricator, she could use our spare parts to build a new model in about fifteen minutes, after which I could perform minor changes without having to repeat the process.

We went through more than a dozen models, before eventually settling on one that was good enough. It was a floating model, like the drones we had fought in the third facility, and was outfitted with basic repair tools.

With them, Mira would be able to at least repair wiring throughout the ship, and Elana was already looking into more heavy-duty models for when carrying capacity was required.

I had to leave her to it, however, to finalize my gear for the next mission. We would be up at the caves for at least another week, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than two. The cave system was massive even with the number of troops we were bringing, and I wanted it as clear of monsters as was humanly possible.

With Linnea’s help, I gathered three weeks’ worth of supplies from the town and stowed them in our packs before turning in for the night. The next morning we took the Gunboat to the base of the mountain, where we found our troops camped.

They’d arrived the previous night, as planned, and were soon preparing themselves for the march up the mountain. Linnea and I led the way for the next several days on what turned out to be a remarkably quiet trip.

As mad as most Beasts were, even they knew better than to attack forty-five-odd armed soldiers. We still shot any that got too close to help clear a path, but there were far fewer fights than I was used to.

In a way it was nice, but it also resulted in a complete loss of XP. Even if I got the kill, there were so many people that the shared XP reduced it to almost nothing.

Three days later, we reached the base of the cave system, where we camped for the night. In the morning, we would begin operation cave clearing.