Museum Core Chapter 119: Multi-Classing

This chapter kinda got away from me, and as such, I've decided to split it up, the second part (which actually has no real reason for being a part of this one) should be done tomorrow. 

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Jaclyn was doing what she always did in the morning, after dropping Eve off at school. Flying through the skies above Bristol, moving towards her place of work while keeping the rain off herself using a cleaning spell that dispersed the water into mist before it touched her.

And then the system window manifested right in her path, completely blocking her vision.

Greetings, people of Earth!

The Earth Unified System (EUS) has initialized.

All citizens of Planet Earth above the age of eighteen will now be able to access a basic status screen, including health status, current stats, and skill levels, in a read-only function.

All stats/methods of distribution will be available to all systems, to allow for highly customizable advancement, though the original spread is typically perfectly matched to the system in question.

Furthermore, it will now be possible to clearly identify the available sources of power via your status.

Currently available Systems:

System of Unified Power (speak to last/only living holder)

System of Infinite Skills (visit village nexus)

System of Elemental Mastery (prove your worth)

System of the Fractal Mage (prove your thirst for knowledge and power)

System of the Maritime Survivor (visit village nexus)

System of the Titanhunter (prove your worth)

System of the Warlock (find a patron)

System of Machine Ascendancy (visit city)

System of the Apex Hunter (prove your worth)

System of the Warborn (find the lost city/prove your worth)

Mentally click on any System to expand the description to include the location, general purpose/advantages, and a better description of the way of acquisition.

Congratulations!

You have already earned your powers, as such, feel free to ignore this message; however, instead, you are rewarded with information:

Based on empirical analyses, you are one of the strongest humans on the face of the planet.

You hold the third rank for level/progression. The first place is held by Thomas Stettin.

You hold the third place for combat power, depending on context/environment/matchup. Overall first place is held by Thomas Stettin, irrespective of environment. The second place is equally uncontested.

The message caught her completely off guard, and by the time she mentally slapped it out of her field of view, Jaclyn was already so close to a building’s facade that even her reflexes proved incapable of preventing a collision.

Of course, this was just her sixty-odd kilogramms moving at a leisurly thirty kilometers or so per hour, bodily colliding with the facade of the building, no skills, no power triggering to support the unwilling and entirely accidental attack, no magical item to warp gravity around herself … it was an incredibly weird sensation.

The stone was hard and unyielding, yet … yet the collision didn’t hurt in the slightest. Colliding with a concrete wall was like walking through a spiderweb, sans the ick factor.

The disconnect was so startling that Jaclyn almost forgot to snap her wings open before she wound up hitting the sidewalk. Not that she’d have been in any danger from doing that either, but if someone had been underneath her, that would have been bad.

So, what in the blue blazes was going on here?

Jaclyn eyed the system window with distaste for a couple of seconds. Unlike its fellows, this thing seemed to lack the good sense to not block people’s vision at inopportune times.

Then she closed her eyes and focused on her hearing instead.

Car crashes, swearing, lots of it, but nothing stood out beyond what one might expect from a city where seemingly everyone had just had their sight momentarily taken away from them.

And since Eve was safely tucked away in her school at right this moment, she had been outside the line of fire a few seconds ago. Therefore, she was fine.

So Jaclyn beat her wings furiously to clear the tops of the buildings before she hurled herself towards the BPA headquarters. That way, even if the system decided to play silly buggers again, at worst, she’d scare a couple of birds.

Once she was there, she’d get either get sent off to deal with any issues that had resulted from whatever had caused that damn system message, or she’d wait for more information, which she was far more likely to get there than anywhere else.

And that was when her phone rang with the distinctive tone of “Rule Britannia,” which she’d set for calls from either Frye or the PM, on the off chance that the latter would contact her rather than the director.

“Abrams here,” she offered immediately, then waited for a response.

“We know what happened,” Frye’s voice sounded from the other end of the line. “Apparently, our German friend took a little trip and the System used that as a vector to update …”

Jaclyn finished listening to his explanation, then decided to go help with the accidents. If there weren’t monsters to deal with, then that was certainly a good use of her time. She hadn’t had anything overly important planned for this morning.

The one thing she really needed to handle, mulling over the message that had caused this mess, she could handle anywhere.

Knowing that she was inarguably one of the strongest people in the world had put a smile on her face, albeit one that was wiped away almost the second she reached the first accident site.

Yet her mind kept drifting back to the system message, even as she worked.

All those systems … she knew most of them, she’d even encountered some personally, but others made very little sense.

Such as the System of Unified Power, which was linked not to a place, such as her own System of Infinite Skills, which originated from the village nexus the Worldstrider Tribe had carried with them across universes, or a deed that needed to be done in a specific transformation zone.

Instead, it just said “find and speak to the Champion of Dretolara, the wielder of the Spear of Longinus,” with no further explanation. And wasn’t that name going to set the cat among the pigeons in all theological circles … the only silver lining was that there was a non-zero chance that she’d be able to keep herself out of that mess entirely.

And finally, Warborn and Warlock … those two had to belong to the two hard-to-explore regions in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean, respectively.

Yet another reason to go explore those, she supposed. Although she wasn’t looking forward to it. Even being part reptile, the thought of moving through a place that hot filled her with dread. Both those hellholes were, well, hellholes.

But there was something else contained in that message, something incredibly concerning: there was not just someone stronger out there, but they, whoever they were, were a complete and utter unknown, on top of also being so powerful that there was, at least according to the system, no set of circumstances that could let her bridge that gap.

Considering her own strength … that was very concerning indeed.

***

Six hours earlier, Frigatte Braunschweig, Atlantic Ocean

There were certain instincts one needed to lose to do certain jobs.

Doctors couldn’t be squeamish.

Actors couldn’t have stage fright.

And any profession that required one to put oneself into danger for others, be it as a police officer, firefighter, or soldier, well, they needed to be able to look fear in the eye, and tell it where to shove any notion that they’d back down, ever. And that went doubly for special forces.

Yet staring out across the ocean, imagining plunging into its lightless depths … Müller couldn’t help but feel a hint of fear.

“There are three kinds of people, those who are alive, those who are dead, and those who are at sea.”

The quote was literally ancient, and when on dry land, it felt like it should belong to the dustbin of history … but standing here changed that. Standing here brought the enormity of the ocean back to the forefront of his mind. Even with literal superpowers and a magical artifact that would let him breathe and ignore the effects of pressure anywhere on Earth, the deep, dark ocean was still a house of horrors.

Now, why did that damn system of machine ascendency require him to reach the bottom before it would activate?

A big design flaw, in his mind, but not one he could do anything about. So he gave himself one final push and flung himself into the waves below.

The icy water of the ocean swallowed him up in an instant, and the world vanished behind a veil of blue. Even with his sensory power, the area he could perceive had shrunk; a vision capable of reaching all the way to the horizon suddenly curtailed, restrained, locked in … perhaps the fact that he could normally see so far was what made his current situation so, well, terrifying.

But that was just about the full extent of the terror of the deep sea. Even though he couldn’t see as well as normal, he could still see relatively far.

In fact, there was only a couple of hundred meters stretch between where he stopped being able to see the surface and where he caught sight of the ocean floor.

Hardly pleasant, but not quite as terrifying as it had to be for people without sensory abilities.

As for the ocean floor, well, it was the bottom of the ocean. Stone buried beneath layers and layers of silt, with the odd dead plant or animal corpse randomly lying about.

Swimming further down, then flipping himself right-side-up again and pushing his feet against the bottom was all it took to open the system window.

Greetings, Mortal, welcome to Atlantis!

Current Population: 0 (unless you decide to emigrate)

Current Threat: high (all atmospheric systems collapsed, monster activity, guardian active)

Guardian Status: active (WARNING: you may be mistaken for an invader)

Would you like to use the System of Machine Ascendancy to ascend to C-Rank?

Would you like to see the boundaries of the System of Machine Ascendancy highlighted in your vision?

Would you like to learn more about the System of Machine Ascendancy?

This was what he’d come here for.

Thanks to off-world intel, he’d already known what he’d get for C-Rank if he continued to use the system belonging to the British Transformation Zone.

Actually, he knew exactly what he’d get for every rank going forward. Power copying, a better version every time, but only one power per rank, meaning he’d still be stuck with the same overall number of supernatural abilities.

And while that gave him quite a bit of flexibility, the C-Rank version “only” gave him temporary copying and was limited to powers below his own rank.

Yes, getting to pick a power for anything he killed and keeping it for a week, unless he swapped it out early, that was, was a potent ability, but required too much setup to be truly useful.

He’d have to know he was going to be fighting something, have enough intelligence on the target to identify a clear and exploitable weakness, and, finally, have a way to get a power that would actually allow him to take advantage of said weakness.

Possible to pull off, yes, but not easy, and reliant on far too many external factors he had little chance of influencing.

Not to mention that having a constantly changing ability came with even more downsides, such as it being hard to master his powers, a lack of guaranteed synergy, or the simple fact that, at the end of the day, a power below him in rank was automatically beneath him in rank, and therefore limited.

He still read over the particulars, just to be certain this would go as expected, but it was effectively the supernatural equivalent of an EULA. Ten words were one that should have sufficed, a whole lot of defining of terms that were obvious to anyone with a functional brain, and warnings that only the stupidest of individuals would have had to have spelled out for them ... yet he read it all anyway.

As unlikely as it was, there still might be something important hidden within.

Eventually, however, he finished and dismissed the window, moving back onto the original welcome message and clicking the “ascend to C-Rank” option, which immediately threw up a new window.

Choose a piece of technology to integrate, or dismiss this window to go search for/retrieve something suitable.

The choice was … well, not exactly “obvious,” considering how many different options there were, but it certainly wasn’t that hard to pick a good piece of tech. The only real limitation was that it had to have a unified purpose of some sort, as far as anyone could guess. Simply stacking a whole bunch of unrelated bits of gear onto a large vehicle was highly unlikely to work, so they hadn’t even bothered to try.

“Thou shalt not rules-lawyer magic” was a pretty important guiding principle. Yes, you could create a logical argument for why “x should do y” in theory, but if reality failed to comply, then what were you supposed to do? Argue with it?

Someone else could take that particular risk, but this was where he drew the line, and reading the “EULA” had only reinforced this idea. This System granted a very varied and flexible powers, but also ones wont to screw you over if you failed to properly consider your options.

His first impulse had been to simply grab his rifle and “integrate” it, but soon realized that, at the very least, he had to ask around if anyone had better ideas.

Some ideas had been stupid, others too fantastical to be realistically put into action, others still ran squarely into the issue of having a high likelihood of screwing him over by not being “specific” enough.

Then there’d been various outdated variants that they’d have the devil’s time procuring, such as a Jagdpanzer, or tank-destroyer, which was a concept that hadn’t been in use for decades.

And so on.

Until eventually, they’d settled on something far too large to transport here.

All of that was a very long-winded way to say that there was a plane back at the surface waiting to take him back home, where his “prize” had been sitting for the last week, made ready in preparation for his reaching C-Rank.

***

The actual absorption of his chosen technology went by with relatively little fanfare. He could just brush the tarp aside, covering it, touch the smooth metal, and it would vanish in an instant, leaving the huge tent of fabric to collapse in on itself while he stared at the new status screen.

Integrated Technology: AC-130 Gunship; custom-modified

A gunship (an aircraft, to be specific), designed for ground bombardment, modified with heavy, single-shot weaponry built to knock out individual, durable targets.

Therefore, its primary purpose has been determined as [Aerial Fire Support], therefore. It will grant you the power to use the weapons which typically fulfill this purpose, the flight to move above the battlefield, and the coordination required to adequately provide support.

Granted Abilities:

Flight (ponderous)

Heavy direct Fire (railgun)

Suppressive Fire (six-barrelled 20 mm gattling gun)

Built-in Communications (radio suite)

Automatic Tracking of designated Targets (various sensors)

His main goal had been a weapon that was a part of him and grew alongside his requirements; everything else … that was just a bonus.

Getting the plane had been surprisingly easy. Of course, the Bundeswehr would want to power up their strongest enhanced soldier; he’d just expected to have to fight a hell of a lot harder for it, especially considering that the Bundeswehr didn’t even have any AC-130s. But they did have the cargo-carrying variant, the Lockheed C-130, and one of those had been modified, and placed here in anticipation of his ascent.

And now, this airplane built just for him was gone for good, absorbed into himself. Someone would complain, now that there was no way to take it back, but that was just how the world worked …

Hell, someone had even gone through the effort of mounting an experimental railgun on the airplane. Well, it was a working railgun. The big problem with it was the fact that it wouldn’t keep working without heavy maintenance. But since the weapon shouldn’t wear down as he was only calling upon its metaphysical concept … it should be fine.

And he’d be able to immediately try it out, since a shooting gallery had been set up weeks ago, as a result of his progression being slightly slower than expected.

But before he could go try things out, a new status window appeared before him.

Congratulations!

As the first (and presently only) human being to draw from multiple Systems, you have completed the final step towards bringing about the Earth Unified System (EUS).

Welcome messages are currently being sent out to all humans over the age of majority.

Well … there was no way that wasn’t going to cause trouble …

***

So yeah, things had gone a little pear-shaped in the last hour. Every person doing something requiring precision/attention had gotten startled and had their visions blocked, and not everyone had gotten the chance to dismiss the system window before something happened.

That sucked.

However, the system also seemed to be capable of learning.

EUS Update:

All future system windows will wait to show up until such a time that it is convenient.

Which was nice … but it was still semi-horrifying that that had even needed to be said.

But eventually, things calmed down, and he was allowed to play around with his new power.

The very first thing he tried out was flight.

While being entirely a bonus in addition to the firepower he’d actually wanted, he couldn’t help but be disappointed by its reality.

After all, it was based on a relatively slow and cumbersome aircraft, and that same property translated to his aerial movements. However, since this was a plane he was talking about, he needed to keep moving to stay aloft, at speeds still measured in hundreds of meters per second, which did make him “fast” by most standards, certainly too fast to stay in one area too long, while still being too slow for aerial combat, especially with his huge turning radius.

And he was loud. The flight would be fundamentally incompatible with the stealth that was the cornerstone of his skillset.

Not to mention how painfully slow his acceleration was. Compared to anyone else who could take to the air, he was a flying pig … but that was just something he had to get over, wasn’t it?

No, he’d been going after the idea of absorbing a weapons platform, capable of wielding multiple different weapons, which would hopefully, in turn, give him some variety in the offense department. And he’d gotten them, as evidenced by the ruined firing range that lay below him, smoking.

Thankfully, the weapons were his now, and the flight was just a bonus.