Vivid Stars Online

It wasn’t the power of the new signatures that surprised me, though some were strong indeed, but the sheer number of them. Never had I been in a single area with even a fraction as many.

I had to pull my senses back to try to dampen the overwhelming surge of information I was getting. This helped as my range decreased to only a few feet, drastically reducing how many items I could sense.

As I came back to myself, I realized that Linnea had caught me as I stumbled forward. “Thanks,” I whispered to her as I pulled myself together.

“Sorry about that,” Captain Henceforthe said from next to us. “I should have warned you, it can get overwhelming in here.”

“It's fine,” I said with a shake of my head. “No harm done.”

Now that I wasn’t blinded by my psionic senses, I could see a large square room laid out before me. The walls were covered in racks of equipment, while rows of plinths and armor stands filled the rest of the room.

I could still sense the closest objects, leading me to believe that the mass of signatures I had detected before came from the equipment in this room.

“It's all enhanced equipment?” I asked, unsure of the exact terminology to use for such items.

“Yes,” the Captain responded crisply. “Every item within this room has some form of psionic enhancement, or is otherwise reactive to Psi energy.”

“That’s a lot of gear,” I said, unable to keep how impressed I was out of my tone.

The man shrugged beside me as he strode forward. “The advantages of living out on the edge of civilization. Before most of our explorers were recalled to the southern provinces, we had at least weekly finds of new relics.”

“Anyway,” he continued with the gesture at the surrounding gear. “Have a look and see what you’re interested in. Each item has a record of what we have been able to discover about it. We can discuss price or item exchanges afterward.

“OK,” I said with a nod before turning to Linnea. “I might be busy here for a while, could you see about finding a good set of armor for yourself?”

She nodded, looking just as impressed at the surroundings as I was. I could hear her discussing something with the Captain for a moment before her footsteps began receding into the distance.

That left me alone apart from Captain Henceforthe, who seemed happy to simply keep watch. Excited to see such a range of psionic items, I began exploring the room.

There was a multitude of different items present, from ones designed to boost particular Psionic abilities to defensive and even healing items. A ring designed to heal the wearer caught my attention before I backed away at seeing a price guide of over two million credits.

Right, I thought with a shake of my head. Anything like that is going to be extremely expensive. Weapons and armor could be replicated with normal engineering, so something like instant healing would be worth a lot more.

With a frown, I moved past the utility items like that and over to the racks of armor. Surprisingly, I found several sets of the same heavy black armor that the palace guard wore. A glance at the price had me even more intrigued, as they were listed at four hundred thousand each.

“That’s pretty cheap compared to some things,” I said, turning toward the captain. While four hundred thousand was a lot of money to me, it didn’t seem that much compared to most of the items in here.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “A lot of this stuff is one of a kind discovered in various ruins. Those, however, are made by a guy in the capital. He has to handcraft them, buts it's still a damn sight better than waiting for another to be found out in the wilderness.”

So that’s how they managed to equip so many people, I mused as I looked it over. It only had a very faint Psionic signature, however, the description said that it would boost any defensive abilities used through it.

That sounded perfect to me since I already had such an ability. While there were items around that could be used by any Psion, they were much more expensive than these general suits.

“Is there anything else like that around? A weapon perhaps?” I asked, realizing that any reproducible items would be far more within my limited budget.”

“Sure,” he said with a nod, taking me through and listing off various pieces.

It took a while for me to select what I wanted and then to haggle about exchanging my items, however, I left pleased a few hours later.

I had a full set of heavy palace guard armor, a rifle that worked almost identically to my Psi pistol, and two rings.

The first was like a battery for Psi energy. I could store roughly a quarter of my current reserves in it and then tap it later in an emergency. The main downside to it was how inefficient the charging process was, losing nearly eighty percent of what I put in.

The second ring gave a ten percent boost to the effectiveness of my Psionic abilities. It wasn’t much given how general it was, but there’d been no specific items for Technokinesis.

I would have tried for more items, however, the Captain warned me that having too many could cause issues. Given that I now had four weapons, two sets of armor, and four utility items, I was nearing that point where that would happen.

Instead, I walked away with more money than I’d entered, a situation I hadn’t expected to be in. I would have to thank the soldiers who searched the last facility if I could, their thoroughness had made me quite a profit.

Next, I moved down to an armor fitting room, where I met up with Linnea again. She was just in the last stages of testing out an impressive set of armor. It was of an even heavier build than my own, yet she moved as if she was barely carrying anything.

“It's imported power armor,” she said at my questioning look. “With inbuilt robotics to help with the weight. I was worried about it being too expensive, but they talked me into at least trying it on.”

“It looks good,” I said with a nod. “I think it will be worth it. As our long-range specialist, you need to be able to keep mobile and move around without making a lot of noise. Besides, I want you to be safe.”

Her face lit up at that, and she moved over to hug me. While she was careful not to put too much strength behind it, the gesture was still fairly uncomfortable. She backed off a moment later, still smiling brilliantly.

I moved over to the fitting station, where my suit of armor had already been delivered. While it was generally the right size for me, they would still have to alter some of the internal structure and straps to match me perfectly.

Luckily, the designer had thought of this and it was something they could do here without damaging its inherent properties. It took several more hours to complete this procedure, however, the result was worth it.

While my armor was still a lot heavier than I was used to, it sat perfectly on my body and distributed the weight as much as possible. I could still move smoothly, if slower than I was used to.

Pushing energy into it with a thought, I activated skin hardening and watched with interest as thousands of hidden runes lit up across the armor. I feel the ability empowering its toughness to the point where even plasma fire would have trouble getting through.

“Sweet,” I muttered as Linnea gave me a thumbs up. “I think that’s about it then.”

All that was left to do was to pay for Linnea’s armor. I winced when I saw the price, which was more than twice my own armor, however, I still paid it willingly.

Since Linnea was one of my retainers, I was able to pay for a lot of the cost with my rapidly dwindling goods tax fund. I also threw in a lot of the extra money from selling my equipment, so I didn’t drain it too much.

Given the potential danger, we were about to go into, I judged the cost was worth it. If we could get access to all the minerals I had found, not to mention the wild rift, then I would make this all back, and more, in time.

All settled, we strode back out of the palace in our new gear. We got a lot more attention on the way out, with people turning their heads as we strode past.

I guess we look more like soldiers than rag-tag adventurers now, I mused with a grin behind my helmet. It’s nice to finally have fitting gear.

The soldiers guarding our shuttle actually saluted as we went past and I nodded at them in acknowledgeable. It only took a few minutes to get clearance to launch, after which began racing back toward the mountain.

Given how much I’d been spending, Captain Henceforthe had offered to make sure the ship was loaded with supplies. I’d been more than happy to accept the gesture, so we now had enough to keep the two of us going for weeks.

With our ship still damaged from the last bird that attacked, we didn’t risk flying up the mountain to the cave. Instead, we settled into land ten miles out from the base, just as Brian had always insisted on.

I felt a bit sorry for doubting him before this, as it was now clear that he’d had a very good reason for it. Even once we’d been fully repaired, I would be careful before risking that again.

With the gunboat parked, we loaded up with as many supplies as we could carry before making our way into the mountain. We encountered plenty of Beasts along the way, however, they were almost a joke with our new equipment.

It took me a while to get used to the new rifle, but I was extremely pleased with it once I had my aim dialed in. It was over twice as powerful as my pistol, for only about one and a half times the cost per shot.

My new armor was even better, as most things couldn’t even scratch the paint job once I had Skin Hardening on. The few times it did take damage I was able to repair it with Technokinesis, though the energy cost was exorbitant.

As usual, Linnea barely got hit at all with her much higher Agility stat, however the few times she was struck her armor also took most of the damage. It wasn’t quite as tough as mine but that was to be expected with it being purely mundane.

If anything, the fact they’d got it so close was proof of just how good the gear from the core worlds was. I doubt this is the best they have either, it’s probably pretty low quality to make it all the way out here.

Partway up the mountain, we stopped at the spot where we’d shot the bird down. It had bounced down part of the mountainside, leaving a bloody slick as it went. Much of the corpse had been devoured by scavengers, however, none had made it deep enough to expose the core yet.

Grinning, I sliced it open with my blade and pulled the massive core out. It was probably the largest I had ever found, and I knew it would go for an excellent price. That was if I didn’t melt it down for fuel.

That was my biggest worry now, even more than money, as we were burning through the supplies we had. Even when the frigate was parked, it still used fuel to run the fabricator and other passive systems.

I would have to check in with Elana when we got out of the caves to see how much she’d managed to get from the wyvern’s corpse.

Having learned my lesson from last time, I figured out how to put an auto-respond on my message account. It would let anyone who tried to contact me know I would be unable to respond for a few days, hopefully stopping them from worrying.

With that all settled, we set up camp just down from the cave so we’d be able to go in fresh the next morning. Whatever dangers it might hold, I was determined to clear it out and pave the way for a new village.