System Supervillain, Chapter 156

Chapter 156 – Wrapping Up

We didn’t just up and leave Srusk now that the Russians had taken over. I mean, we could have. There wasn’t anyone in the Russian military or amongst the Russian supers who could have stopped us, after all. However, there were reasons to stick around, at least for a bit.

First, Nemesis had his digital hands full, directing the drone workers on the Rhuk to make the adjustments we’d talked about after our first real fight. The Gravity Lances were now something that we could not afford to be as liberal with as before, since they now had some draw on the ship’s power reserves, but they would now be more effective against Gel-nak warships. And the spinal cannon was now a major threat, rather than something a station or warship could potentially ignore. To compensate for the increased power draw, Nemesis tweaked the power core to have better storage capacity, giving the Endurance Reserve a boost. Unfortunately, the AI did need to weaken the shields slightly in order to make it so they weren’t drawing from the reserve, but they were still offering 20 points of both rPD and rED, which meant the Rhuk’s defenses could now withstand 60 points of killing attack damage without the ship actually taking damage.

That was no small thing, since the Gel-nak battleship we’d destroyed had a total defense of 55 points, including their shields. Sure, the Gel-nak shields also provided Mental Defense and Power Defense, but with Lucy on board, she could project those same powers to cover the ship and anyone on it during combat. The fact that a stealth ship just over a hundred and sixty meters long was stacking up against a warship over a kilometer long, and doing it so favorably? That was proof that the Mechanics had done one hell of a job building my ship.

While Nemesis was working on the ship, Web Mistress was working on the data she had casually ripped from the Gel-nak’s space station and the battleship. Both of them had plenty of information about the current state of the Empire. Sure, we all knew the big picture, now, but there was so much more the data could tell us. I had twelve more portal devices on board the Rhuk, and I wanted to use them effectively.

The Empire, despite its current instability, was still mostly holding together. Yes, different regional leaders and military commanders were bickering and fighting over who would be the next Emperor, but where they fought, they fought with ships and warriors, not destroying infrastructure or ravaging systems. The civil war was still mostly civil, which meant that things could still turn around for the Empire if someone managed to figure out how to create a new Royal Line.

Naturally, I was disinclined to allow that to happen. Which meant I needed to further destabilize the situation. Srusk being a major food hub for the Empire was an unexpected boon. My choice of target had been less based on overall strategy, and more on knowing that this was the system the Gel-nak brought the captured slaves from Moscow here, and I had promised the Russians a chance to reclaim them. For the next step, I needed more information, so that I knew the best place to strike.

The rest of Devastation was still on Srusk 4, helping with the distribution of clothes and supplies to the rescued prisoners, and ensuring that the Gel-nak who had survived their takeover of the prison turned slave camp were handed over to the Russians to face their full displeasure. When the surviving Gel-nak found out that the ones who had caused so much damage and death were mostly untrained and unarmed civilians, and the actual military was coming? They started begging Stolen Victory and the others for death.

The girls might have been playing up the Russians a little. Just a little. They were still heroine enough that they weren’t going to actually torture the captured Gel-nak, especially since most of them were apparently normal workers drafted at the last minute since the riots killed too many of the ‘Slavetenders’ and ‘Slavewatchers’. However, that didn’t mean they had to be nice, and there certainly wasn’t anything in their moral codes keeping them from scaring the Gel-nak.

Sibilia and the others were talking with the converted Administrator and her family. Oris and her mate were a treasure trove of information in their own right, in a different way from the databases that Web Mistress was trawling through. Sure, the databases had the technical data and the big picture, including what the people who actually had power were doing, but that was the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. To get the ‘why’, you needed more of a boots on the ground look into the psychology of the Empire, and the different castes.

There was also the matter of Sibilia’s vision of the future, the one that made her reach out to me. The newly-changed Frost Gel-nak would have a better idea of who these quasi-primitive warriors we were looking for might be, which might help us narrow down the list of worlds they might be on. The mix of particulates, solar radiation, and the like to match the colors in Sibilia’s vision were not incredibly common, but it was still like looking for a needle in a haystack, especially since we couldn’t assume that these Gel-nak were still inside the Empire’s borders. The Empire didn’t exactly sound like a welcoming place for groups who kept samples of ‘pre-ordered’ Gel-nak DNA, after all. That was sedition in the making, and no Empire tolerated open sedition. Which meant they’d be hiding.

As for me? I was giving Hoarfrost the basics of the System, at least as far as Web Mistress and I had figured things out. For instance, teaching her how to arrange her Status so that she could squeeze a few more points out of things, and minimize her weaknesses. Also giving her some ideas for getting access to ‘System Teleport’ or ‘Bag of Holding’ type powers, like the ones I’d given myself. That would leave her better able to handle herself, when someone eventually came to challenge her for her position as ‘Queen of Srusk’, if the former Queen of Siberia really took up that role.

And there would be a challenger, eventually. Even with the Russian supers and military staking a claim here, and with the portal to keep them connected to Earth, Srusk was a key resource system for the Empire, in both food and materials. Someone was going to get it into their heads to try and take the system back. And when they came, they’d be bringing someone with Administrator powers, so Hoarfrost needed to be ready.

“So, other Administrators can send chat messages through the System interface, but we can’t directly affect each other?”

“Exactly,” I nodded to the ice-themed villainess. “The Administrator interface will show you the names of other Administrators in the system, but won’t give you their location, or allow you to go and ‘edit’ them directly, under normal circumstances. If you open up a help ticket, though, any Administrator in the system would be able to access it, which means they’d get carte blanche to change you. That’s what I did to the Administrator here, and what the Gel-nak wanted to do to me and Web Mistress when they first showed up in Earth orbit.”

“So, why didn’t they just use the System to ‘order’ us, instead of trying to use viral weapons and the like?”

“Because that goes against one of the main rules that Web Mistress and I have found. Doing something like that would definitely be flagged to get the supervisors, whatever they’re called, to look at things and intervene. That’s why you need to limit how much you alter people without either clear consent, or a help ticket. And don’t ever add or subtract points, unless you’re adding someone as a Local Administrator, like I did for you. Whatever changes you make, needs to be a net zero in terms of points.”

“I get it,” she nodded. “Forced changes draw attention, changing point totals draws attention, and so on. You don’t want to make someone with more power than you think that you’re a problem that needs solving, so you work within the boundaries.”

“Right. But since you can’t use admin powers to send your enemies into the sun, you need to be ready to fight them. Fortunately, your base powers are a lot like mine even if yours are fey-based instead of mutant-based, so you have good adaptability.”

I took a breath, and pointed to the fancy bracer on her right arm. “However, your only offensive ability other than your ice magic is that needler gun you have. It is a nice piece, from what I saw while I was examining your status, but as an ‘Energy Blast’, it primarily does STUN damage, which means even though you have the Penetrating advantage, that’s going to apply to the STUN, not the BODY damage. More importantly, it is also magic-based, which leaves you vulnerable to people who can suppress magic, or the ‘does not work on holy ground’ bit that applies to all your other abilities.”

Hoarfrost nodded slowly. “Good points. I know from the Guild forums that you’ve always had items with different power sources, to combat power-dampeners and the like. Universal dampeners are rare, and all. I don’t suppose you would have any suggestions?”

I considered that for a second, and said, “Well, since you’d be adjusting the item itself through the System’s Administrator interface, instead of going through the normal upgrade paths, you have some options. Personally, I’d shift it to a Technology base, and make it into a Multipower. Limit things properly, and you should get it to just about the same cost, before adding on the slots for different options. Keep the Energy Blast as one option, and add another as a Ranged Killing Attack, perhaps Armor Piercing as well. It is fine if they both go against Physical Defense. All told, you’d just need to adjust some of your other abilities enough to find four points or so, which should be doable.

“After that? When you get more XP, consider adding the same attacks targeting Energy Defense, and one with an Ego Attack to target Mental Defense. That will get you a good variety, without needing to invest a ton of points into a new piece of kit. Once that’s done, I would add more points to your Ice Magic Variable Power Pool. The more points you have, the more powers you can have active at the same time. Personally, I have thoroughly enjoyed stacking Ice Armor on top of the armor my costume provides.”

“Reserving points for that would take away from your other ‘ice’ options, wouldn’t it?”

“It does. However, that isn’t as big a problem as you might think, since my blade has reliable attacks that I can use more or less at will, as long as I manage my END properly. If you ever find yourself taking more STUN damage than your CON from an attack, that makes you skip an action, which can lead to you getting royally fucked in short order.”

“And not in the good way, yes,” Hoarfrost chuckled. “Fortunately, I learned that the easy way, from watching others get ‘stunlocked’, as the kids say it, while I struck them repeatedly, until they fell. But knowing that conjured armor would stack with my own protections is nice.”

“Yes, that was how I managed to take out Jinlong without him even being able to react. The man was most certainly a stronger overall combatant than me, but taken by surprise and stunned? He was dead before he had time to react.”

“Hah! The old difference between the Warrior, and the Assassin, or the Ranger. The Warrior is at their best in the open field, but an Assassin striking in surprise, or a Ranger in the wilds will have the advantage. I may not be an Assassin, like you, but I have learned how to keep battles to my preferred grounds.”

“And being immune to the freezing cold, with no need to eat, sleep, or breathe like a mortal being, means that you can do a lot of things in the wilds of Siberia that others simply cannot,” I nodded. “Keep that same attitude as ‘Queen of Srusk’, but remember not to push things so far that someone thinks orbital bombardment is the way to deal with you. At least, not until you find a way to teleport between worlds.”

“True, even one such as I would have trouble dealing with attacks that ruin entire kilometers at a time.”

“That being said, you could probably do some nasty things with the Missile Deflection power, if you wanted. Reflecting an enemy warship’s attacks back at them would ruin someone’s day.”

Hoarfrost blinked. “An ice mirror, made of magic, designed to reflect all attacks back at their source? It would not even cost that much of the points available to me. Thank you, Iceblade, you’ve given me something to think about. In return, let me show you the way the System structures a spell I call Ice Castle.”

“Oh, that does sound interesting.”