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(BUS)Chapter 123: Catching up
🕑 Added 2025-08-29 14:54:51 +0000 UTCWe couldn't exactly put it to writing quite yet since angel hadn't come through with the scans of the planet to let me choose a spot for my mine but the old man was more than happy to settle for shaking on it for now. With that done the old man wanted a full run down of everything I had been up to on Pandora since I had left. I got comfortable as I spun my tale leaving out no details. I had to have talked for several hours at least by the time Baldrin showed up to inform us of dinner being ready.-
Naturally Wainwright and Hammerlock were there for dinner and I promised the latter a full recount of my tale so far before we ate in silence. The old man was quite prickly when it came to eating and talking and simply wouldn't let you get away with it at his table. Something Brick and Morty quickly figured out when they tried to strike up a conversation with Wainwright and Hammerlock. The tongue lashing the old man gave them was good enough to even get them on their best behavior much to my own amusement.-
Not that I couldn't understand as the old man had this sort of force of personality that made it hard not to do what he wanted. It wasn't just power or prestige but something else that he had that I assumed came from generations of business and manners being distilled into him from birth. It was something I had noticed about this reality over time but the more one stood out the more presence they had. Like the average bandit psycho came and went with no impact at all on ones mind but someone like my friends or even Scooter? They left an impression even on a single meeting.-
The old man had that exact same effect though to a slightly different way. His was not a presence of violence and power like my friends or my own but one of authority. Anyways after dinner the old man asked Roland about his armor out of curiosity only to get a funny look when he was told I made it with the intention of giving it to my military once I took over Atlas. He bluntly stated that he felt pity for whatever poor son of a bitch chose to get on my shit list at that point.-
Surprisingly though it was Bricks Punchline weapon that interested him the most though as he seemed downright in love with the idea of melee centric firearms. As it turned out Jakobs had been trying to figure out how to do something similar for some time now but every attempt they made ended with the testers losing digits or whole limbs. I had to explain that the only reason Bricks weapon didn't suffer a similar fate was because it was made specifically for him and would only work for him specifically, it couldn't be mass produced like most firearms.-
The old man seemed disappointed by this but not surprised as it fit what he knew. Morty's weapon though made the old man sweat once he was filled in on the details. Not that I could blame him as the thing was an assassins best fucking friend if they could get the right conditions. Two hundred mile long shield shattering shots were entirely impossible to predict or dodge after all. You couldn't even rely on the sound of the gun going off as due to being an energy weapon the gun was VERY quiet.-
At most you might hear the whistle of the projectile before it gave you a new hole to breath out of in your forehead. There was no scope glare to see either as the scope used Eridian tech to draw in light rather than reflect it. Like Clay had said the old man cursed the bad luck that the weapon was too Maliwan for Jakobs despite it's power. Naturally the old man asked if there was any Eridian fuckery rattling about my brain that might work for Jakobs but I had to be honest and tell him not really. -
The Eridians were incredibly big on energy based technologies so out of all the corporations they most closely aligned with Maliwan for weaponry. Not to say they didn't have ballistic options too but for every one of those they had I found nearly twelve energy based versions that would be both cheaper and more effective. I suppose I couldn't blame the Eridians for their techs emphasis on energy based things as their sheer mastery of the universe was at such a ridiculous they had managed to effectively engineer gods. I was of course referring to us sirens.-
Maybe it sounded a bit arrogant since we could still be killed and most still aged like a normal person but we had pieces of the very universes laws at our commands. That was the closest to being a god I have seen so far other than the being that sent my ass into this new life that is. Still I was grateful to the old man and threw him a bone. It was a slightly altered recipe for gunpowder that would be nearly impossible to replicate if you didn't know the trick to it. Twice as powerful at the same amount.-
This would allow the Jakobs guns to keep their competitive edge and even exceed most of the other corporations for a good long while unless the other corporations got lucky and figured out the trick. The best part in my opinion was that I didn't have to bother making the recipe myself to convert my guns ammo to that anymore. That was the trick corporations had to make sure the ammo that was bought always worked for their guns, a conversion mechanism. Once the Jakobs corporation had the data added to their newer guns all I needed was to take it and use it to override the ammo data on my own guns.-
Speaking of I showed the old man the Chimera and told him my plan for it and he agreed that it would be a good match for my current gun and shield combo. There was surprisingly a gift for me from the old man waiting out in the jungle. Ratch, a vast amount of the delicious critters in fact. Apparently ever since I had left he had been sending crews out across the planet to find and capture any they could find while burning the nests. -
These captured Ratch were then stored in one place under constant watch and reinforcement until I could come and claim them. I had been on Pandora for close to half a year by this point so the amount of Ratch that had been gathered numbered well into the millions. I wanted to kill and harvest all of that delicious lifeforce so I could grab Lil's powers and strengthen my body to integrate them but knew I didn't quite have time for that at the moment. Killing that many Ratch would take me at least a month and I still had to go to Athenas and keep an eye on Pandora to make sure it didn't implode for no damned reason.-
As far as strengthening my body went though I already had a plan for that, not a complicated one but a plan none the less. To put it simply I was going to binge consume as many body traits as I could regardless of quality until quantity made up it's own form of quality. If the pattern held then five of any grade traits made up one trait of a single higher grade and in theory that meant I only needed about a hundred common grade traits to double my supreme grade body trait.
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https://www.pa treon.com/user?u=81578854#:~:text=pa treon.com/pa treon_loskro
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Alexander Drake
Lifeforce: 1,181,320
Integrated Traits: [Clever mind-Rare grade],[Enhanced senses-Epic grade]X2, , [Supreme armored hide-Epic grade]X2, [Energy projection-Legendary grade], [Superior vitality-Epic grade]X3,[Lesser dragon breath-Epic grade],[Regeneration-Epic grade]X2, [Disease resistance-Epic grade],[Amphibious lungs-Uncommon grade], [Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade], [Water resistance-Common grade],[Active camouflage-Epic grade], [Eridian engineering expertise-Mythical grade], [Efficient lungs-Rare grade]x2, [Biometallic bones-Epic grade], [Quick thinking-Rare grade], [Minor spatial awareness-Epic grade], [Siren(Phaselock)(Altered)-Mythical grade], [Adrenal rush-Rare grade], [Mechanical engineering expertise-Rare grade]X3, [Gunsmithing expertise(degrading)-Common grade]X3, [Mechanical Savant-Epic grade], [Embodiment of destruction(partial)-Mythical grade], [Siren(Phasetrance)-Mythical grade], [Supreme body-Legendary grade], [Martial mastery-Epic grade], [Tinkering instinct-Rare grade]
Stored traits: [Agelessness-Legendary grade]
