[John P.O.V.]
"Pepsi, could you take the kid," I muttered, carefully handing the cooing purple infant over to the faceless silver mascot.
Pepsiman cradled Oliver gently against his chrome chest. He tried to make a series of funny faces at the baby before again remembering that he didn't actually have a face. He settled for letting out a rhythmic, soothing tsssh sound instead.
"Ship," I said, pointing at the pulverized coffee table and shattered drywall. "This place could use a bit of Housekeeping."
"Ship!" the Mechamorph chirped happily.
He dissolved into a puddle of green and black techno-organic sludge that immediately started crawling up the walls, rapidly stitching the wooden beams and plaster back together like a liquid 3D printer and fixing every broken item in the house.
With the babysitting and the carpentry outsourced, I finally had a second to breathe. I leaned back against a wall that was currently rebuilding itself and swiped my hand through the air, pulling up my system interface.
I was sitting on a dragon's hoard of tickets.
Normally, looking at a haul this big would have had me foaming at the mouth, sweating like a degenerate at a Vegas slot machine. But ever since meeting Angy again, that twitchy desperation was gone. I wasn't an addict praying for a lucky drop anymore.
This wasn't gambling anymore. This was my goddamn pay check.
"Let's clear out the junk drawer first," I muttered, mentally selecting the lowest-tier tickets and ripping them all at once.
[Dullahan's Deception]
|Uncommon Trait|
"Don't lose your head!" No, but seriously, don't.
Your head is now capable of freely detaching from your neck/torso but still remaining connected in a higher dimension, meaning you can still eat, speak, and breathe. This also has the effect of making decapitation useless against you., Butchers Bag of Infinite Meat, Tax Evasion, Rust Inducement
[Butchers Bag of Infinite Meat]
|Common Item|
A bag containing a limitless amount of fresh meat inside of itself, you can only take 100kg of meat out of it every 24 hours, it contains meat from all mundane animals from earth in all cuts, all of it clean, not ethically sourced. Just plunge your hand into the bag of meat think of what you want and ignore the implication of infinite meat and its source.
[Tax Evasion]
|Common Skill|
You are a master of tax evasion. If you desire it, the government will not see a particle of your money more than you want them to. Knowing the ins and outs of money laundering, obfuscating, etc.
[Rust Inducement]
|Common Ability|
Allows you to induce rust in metals through physical contact.
I braced myself as the knowledge and bodily changes slammed into me.
First came a bizarre, phantom sensation right across my windpipe. It felt like a freezing cold guillotine blade had just dropped through my neck, completely severing my spine. For a split second, my vision swam, but then everything snapped back. I rolled my neck, hearing a weird, spatial pop. Good to know some overpowered Alien couldn't just one-shot me anymore.
Then my brain flooded with a massive spreadsheet of offshore accounts, shell companies, and Cayman Islands legal loopholes that rapidly downloaded directly into my frontal lobe.
'Tax Evasion?' I snorted.
Chaos Corp practically owned the IRS back home, but having an instinctive understanding of how to launder billions of dollars in an afternoon was genuinely hilarious.
I kept the momentum going, ripping the silver batch.
[Finger Gun]
|Rare Ability|
"Bang" Allows you to point with your index finger and say the words bang to blast a target with telekinetic energy.
[Thermal Vision]
|Trash Ability|
Allows you to switch your vision to a perfect accurate thermal vision, allowing you to see heat signatures while not impairing your regular vision.
[Marika's Hammer]
|Rare Item|
Elden Ring - A partially broken stone hammer that is still supernaturally durable, it has the property of boosting the power of holy abilities and spells.
[Intermediate Stealth]
|Uncommon Skill|
You are experienced in the way of stealth, you know how to move silently, how to sneak up on people, how to check for traps, and how to gather information more effectively. You would be a qualified ninja grunt.
[Gust]
|Common Ability|
Allows you to conjure and control winds strong enough to injure and take grown men off their feet.
My corneas burned like someone had dropped liquid nitrogen directly onto my pupils. I blinked hard, rubbing my eyes, and when I opened them, the world had shifted. Instantly, I could see the blazing red and orange heat signatures of Oliver and Debbie overlaid perfectly on my normal vision. And when I turned, I saw the deep purple colour perfectly shaped in Pepsiman's body.
'Makes sense, he's cola incarnated after all.'
At the same time, my posture instinctively corrected itself. My weight shifted onto the balls of my feet, my spine aligned to muffle the sound of my own clothes rustling, and my spatial awareness spiked.
With Intermediate Stealth, I felt like I could walk across a floor made of bubble wrap without making a sound.
I was just queuing up the Gold rolls, enjoying the smooth rush of the integrations, when a foundation-rattling explosion shook the entire street.
The freshly repaired window violently shattered inward, spraying glass everywhere.
Pepsiman was quick to shield both Debbie and baby Oliver.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" I groaned, spitting out a mouthful of drywall dust and shards. "I just worked a multiversal shift! Can a guy not read his damn loot in peace?"
I stepped out the front door, leaving Pepsi and Ship inside to guard Debbie, Oliver, and the amputated Angstrom Levy hovering in his hard-light cage.
The suburban street had turned into a literal warzone.
A Martian spaceship had crashed directly into the intersection, ripping a flaming trench through the asphalt. Swarming out of the wreckage like a tidal wave of fleshy, pink vomit was a horde of Sequids. Thousands of them.
And they were currently beating the dogshit out of the new Guardians of the Globe.
It wasn't even a fight. The Sequids had already hijacked the bodies of several innocent humans around the suburb, using them as meat-shields.
Rex Splode was screaming, frantically tossing glowing, explosive rubble into the swarm, but for every ten he blew up, fifty more took their place while Dupli-Kate was sobbing in terror as her clones got overwhelmed. The Sequids were latching onto their faces, hijacking their nervous systems, and turning her own duplicates against her. Monster Girl was covered head-to-toe in parasites, thrashing blindly in her giant ogre form as the sheer weight of the hive-mind threatened to suffocate her.
Somehow, the ShapeSmith issue had triggered the Sequid invasion right here in the suburbs, and Earth's greatest defenders were about to become alien incubators.
I sighed, shaking my head. I didn't even care. I just wanted to finish reading, tallying all my rewards as I tore the Gold tickets next.
[Detonation]
|Rare Ability|
Allows you to charge any item you are holding with explosive energy that you can detonate at any time, turning them into what are essentially time bombs. The explosive energy fades over time. The more energy you expend, the stronger the explosion.
I felt my palms start to itch and glow red, as if containing power ready to erupt.
'Weird coincidence I got this power right in front of Rex, who could still use his powers.'
[Intermediate Management]
|Uncommon Skill|
You are fairly skilled at management tasks, you can split your attention adequately between tasks, distribute tasks, structure things, manage groups, etc. You would make a fine secretary or a small business owner.
[Cuddle Emperor]
|Rare Trait|
Your existence is one that "Cuddles Greatly." Your hugs and snuggles are incredible, being able to comfort even broken souls. Being cuddled by your cuddles feel like being wrapped by the softest, warmest blanket, and they are even therapeutic, helping stabilise the mental state and comfort whoever you are targeting.
'Again, with this? This makes what three comforting traits?'
[Retroactive Builders Contract—
Right as I was reading the description for Retroactive Builders Contract, a screeching Sequid launched itself directly at my face.
The pink parasite splattered against the wall of concrete, suddenly erupting from ground, but the screeching noise still distracted me from reading the text.
I stopped walking as a vein bulged in my forehead.
"I can't read the fucking text, you pink piece of shit," I growled.
I didn't even bother looking at the battlefield. I just blindly I picked a crowd control ability and dumped a massive wave of energy straight into the concrete beneath my boots.
Flora.
I pushed the Legendary ability to overkill as the manicured suburban lawns instantly mutated as massive, ten-foot-tall, hyper-carnivorous pitcher plants and razor-toothed Venus flytraps with stalks stronger than steel violently erupted through the street, shattering the asphalt.
I effortlessly drafted a command code and shoved it into the sprouting plant life 'Eat every single pink squid in the tri-state area. Spit out the humans and shut them the fuck up so I can read.'
The flora went straight to slaughter.
Thick, thorny vines whipped out at supersonic speeds, snatching the airborne Sequids and dragging them into giant flowers filled with pools of acidic sap.
I ignored the rest of the mayhem, and kept scrolling.
[Retroactive Builders Contract]
|Rare Item|
A folded-up contract that promises full satisfaction. Just put the specifications of what you want built and where inside of the contract and put in enough money that would normally be required to fund the construction including labor costs etc. The moment you sign the contract off it will burn to ashes whatever you asked for will have been retroactively expertly built an unspecified amount of time ago alongside the money being removed from your possession. Restock Timer: 720 hours.
[Chronolog]
|Common Trait|
You have a perfect internal clock, you can when was the last time you did something. You can recall things by the milliseconds and you are perfect in timing things like a stopwatch too.
[Physical Therapy]
|Elite Ability|
Allows you to convert the physical force you exert into positive energy, allowing you to heal people by hitting them with your body. The larger amounts of strength you exert the higher the healing. The amount of health you heal is equal to the amount of damage you would have managed to inflict with that attack otherwise.
[Jackall & Casull]
|Rare Item|
Hellsing - A pair of incredibly unwieldy pistols wielded by a certain vampire that resemble hand canons more than regular pistols. Casull is white and Jackall is black, these guns are too heavy for a normal person to wield and each holds 6 rounds of 13mm blessed silver exploding rounds. One needs to have supernatural strength to not get their arms ripped off by pulling the trigger. You are also provided with 2 magazines for these guns every 24 hours.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
My brain suddenly synced up with the literal rotation of the planet. Chronolog helped me feel the exact millisecond passing. It was a bizarre kind of clarity.
At the same time, my hands flared with a strange, surging warmth from integration of Physical Therapy. My knuckles tingled with healing energy similar but still different from Greedy Healing.
"I can heal people by punching them in the goddamn face?" I muttered, a devious smile breaking through my annoyance. "So I'm a discount crazy diamond? I love it."
I couldn't help but glee from imagining next time Cecil comes for a healing session.
I kept strolling down the sidewalk. To my left, a massive flytrap clamped down on a possessed human and the plant's internal micro-vines gently peeled the parasites off his suit, swallowed the squids whole, and spat the confused, slime-covered man safely onto the pavement.
The Guardians stopped fighting as they all stared in dumbfounded shock as my botanical nightmare garden devoured the world-ending alien invasion in a matter of seconds.
I didn't even notice them, as all my focus was already on the Platinum rolls.
[Iron Palate]
|Rare Trait|
You can eat and digest just about anything that isn't lethal poison to you.
[Inventory]
|Rare Ability|
You have access to an inventory subspace that you can store inanimate targets inside in a statis. By default, you can store 100 tons inside of it, the maximum weight of what your inventory can hold scales with your physical stats. To store something inside of the inventory you must will it inside while touching the target. Any stored target can be taken out of storage within a distance of at most 1 meter from your body.
"Fucking Finally," I yelled, spooking the heroes but I kept re-reading the description 'finally… finally I got an inventory and one step close to a gamer build.'
[Lightning Resistance]
|Rare Trait|
You are naturally resistant to lightning and lightning-based effects and attacks such as being tasered, struck by lightning, or licking an outlet. This resistance scales with your basic stats.
[Recycling Can]
|Elite Item|
A large metal can the size of a person, whatever item you put inside of it will be perfectly broken down to its basic physical materials.
[Recoilless]
|Epic Trait|
Ability drawbacks are severely reduced and Newton's 3rd law cowers before you. You can draw upon more power than your body should be able to and you will barely feel it.
I actually stopped walking.
The integration for Recoilless hit my body with pure relief.
The underlying tension in my muscles, the brutal physical strain of housing massive energy expenditure on Polymerisation and constantly pushing past my human limits instantly vanished.
I could almost see Newton's Third Law formally apologise and pack its bags.
"Okay. Now we're cooking," I grinned, feeling fundamentally lighter.
The street was completely clear of threats by now as the remaining Sequids had been eradicated, leaving nothing but burping plants and traumatised civilians.
Suddenly, a brilliant blue flash illuminated the street directly in front of me.
Cecil Stedman of this universe materialised, flanked by half a dozen GDA troops aiming heavy plasma rifles right at my chest. He looked exactly like the Cecil back home with that scarred face, cheap tie and a permanent scowl deeply etched into his forehead.
"Stand down and put your hands where I can see them!" Cecil barked, treating this like a tense Mexican standoff. His eyes darted wildly from my alien-eating plants to the crashed ship, failing to comprehend what he was facing.
I looked at the guns, then at Cecil and just sighed, treating the Director of the Global Defense Agency like a mom telling me to pause an online multiplayer match.
"Cecil, I am begging you to lower your voice," I said, holding up a single index finger to shush him. "Hold that thought. I'm on a lucky streak right now and if you know what's good for you, never disturb a gambler's lucky streak."
[A/N]:
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