Outrun - Cyberpunk LitRPG

I returned home after calming down. I thought deeply about it while I rested in the dune sea. That was twice now that I had come back from the pavilion to be assaulted by pure agony after selecting a perk. Maybe I should readjust my opinion on the mysterious things. There were three types, not just two. One that forced me to learn something through repetitive action, such as Cue, one that applied a near-magical effect to me, like Hidden Hands, and one that changed a part of my body? Or maybe I was overthinking this and there were no definitive types amongst the Perks.

I took a drink from the canteen and settled back down on my bed. I just had two Skill Points now. Then I would be done… at least till the next level up. Was it worth it? Torturing myself in such a way? Or… was it common? It’s not too different than getting limbs and parts cut off to get bigger and better chrome, and doing that was the cultural norm these days…

I shook my head, clearing out space to refocus on the Skills. I had been thinking about the two ever since I got them, and without a doubt I wanted to go for the initial level of Net and another rank of Tech. The two had great synergy with each other, and it was something I could start to monetize as soon as I got good enough.

‘Course, a large part of me wanted to throw in points towards Stealth and get it maxed out as soon as possible. Double down on my advantages and all that. I was hesitant though. Being hyper-specialized in one Skill wasn’t necessarily bad, but I wouldn’t have the versatility needed to do some other stuff.

I wasn’t looking to be a jack of all trades- or Skills in this case. No, I wanted to have a couple of Skills to fall back on. Net and Tech were some good ones, but I was also interested in First Aid and Evasion to bring some variation to my skillset. They were both in the range of one to four though, so using a point on them would be a waste.

I didn’t immediately put my Skill Points in. It would eat up four days to get through both of them, so I decided to go ahead and stock up on food stuff so I could knock them both out without having to leave the container. Four days would also give some time for any potential heat to die down.

I climbed down from my container and headed just down the street of the container yard. Bob’s Bodega sat in the corner in all its neon glory. I pulled my jacket down to better block the rain as I headed to it. I quickly moved through the store, heading to the silage section of the place. For a moment, I looked at the hundreds of pouches on display.

I didn’t have to get silage though… I had money now, or at least enough to get actual food. As much as I wanted to go with the cheapest option, I couldn’t deny how tantalizing the idea of getting ‘real’ food was.

I skipped past the small pouches of silage and headed to the pre-packs in the store. Unlike silage, which was largely just grains filled with additives to be a little nutritious, prepacks were equal parts soy and grain-based. They also offered far better flavors and nutrient value, but they were ‘course more expensive. Somewhere around nine hundred a month instead of the three hundred for silage.

Having enough food to actually put on some weight and ascend past skin and bones was just too good to pass up on. I could actually support some musculature if I moved off silage and enjoyed something better. And maybe, just maybe, I might also be able to get some height if I made my diet better. It was a foolish dream, but a very attractive one.

I could look for a gym membership while I was at it? Start building up some muscle instead of hoping to passively gain it. It would be nice to perform a takedown on Mira for once… doubtful if that would ever happen though. She had more than just muscle helping her out.

I looked through the flavors before grabbing a box of ‘ramen-flavored’ and headed to the counter. Three guys were sitting around smoking - tosta by the scent and slight green haze - as I checked out. Gangers by the looks of their attire.

They weren’t Jade Fangs. The Fangs were the overlords of Little Yukoto, but there were dozens if not hundreds of smaller gangs throughout the area that were just too small for the Fangs to bother dealing with. It was similar to finding an ant colony. It's too much trouble to wipe out an ant colony, so most people just leave them. If they were fire ants though, and the ants started to bite and attack, the ant colony would quickly be wiped out.

Thankfully, they didn’t even try to interact with me as I breezed through the store. It was bad for business to assault compliant customers in most cases.

The box of pre-packs cost four hundred fifty Rayn for two weeks' worth of food. Gah, my money… back down to just over thirty-three hundred Rayn. Still quite a bit, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t last long. If there was one thing Aythryn City was good at, it was taking money.

I set everything down and sorted it out before heading back to my bed. It was time. I mentally psyched myself before pulling the interface window up. Before I could second-guess myself, I tapped on Net and was pulled into an alternate space. It was very similar to the place where I learned Land Vehicles in. There was a colorful grid covering a pitch-black area. A terminal sat in the middle of the space, blinking to life. A single quill rotated on the homepage as I approached the device and prepared myself for a long and tiresome learning process.

After everything was over, both Net and Tech, I moved over to the desk with a pre-pack and flipped on my handheld radio. They were… interesting, I guess. It had more flavor than silage, yet not nearly as good as the synth food I could get from a restaurant. Still an overall improvement though.

I relaxed, feeling the beat of music flowing through me as I started searching through the Net. There were two things in particular I wanted to look into: Nathos and the eidolons. They both hinted towards the origins of the interface, and it was really about time I put some effort into researching them.

Nathos was an anomaly, and definitely a fake name as most Edgerunners had. He had a meteoric rise, coming out of nowhere as a powerful hired gun from the Northern Council in the continent of Reuthus. According to what little information I could find, he turned from a nobody to the Northen Council’s top runner in just a couple years, and it looked as though nothing could stop him.

He was incredibly popular in Reuthus for being one of their best fighters when it comes to their mutant infestation. Their infestation was quite similar to our own Dune Walker issue over here. Mutants actually had some level of intelligence though there were fewer of them overall.

His notable achievement apart from fighting the mutants - and the one that got him on the map as an assassin - was the execution of Triste Corp’s VP from the top of a mountain range over fifty miles away. Probably why Kaynis said the guy could put a bullet through a cricket’s leg.

He also was suspected of assassinating a Vurn City-state Senator through similar means. Countless other assassinations were attributed to him, but, as they say, a known assassin is a bad assassin. Most were simple suspicions based on matching MOs. The only one that was for sure him was the assassination of Triste Corp's VP.

Everywhere I looked, he had some incredible achievements all related to guns. If I was right in that I got the interface from him, then it seemed he pumped every possible Skill Point and Perk Point into making his firearms skill the best it could be. He specialized in shooting and became a true terror to his opponents.

As far as I could tell, he had a promising future ahead of him as the King of Death. That is- until it all came crashing down, literally. He died during his infiltration of the orbital Sentinel Corp lab where he stole the research and plummeted back down to the planet, which is where I came in.

Assuming he got the interface in the same way as me, then it must pass on when the current user dies. It was a little reassuring? As long as I was alive, which was a no-brainer, I shouldn’t have to worry too much about others having an interface… I hope. Thinking I was super special and the only one with this power would be a mistake. It's probably best I still stay aware. Complacency would only get me killed.

Researching the interface brought me to my second inquiry: eidolons. They were most definitely tied up in the interface, probably the very creators of the system itself. I don’t know why or how, but there was no denying their touch. Everything from Trait names to Perk names to even the request board hinted towards them. So then, what were eidolons?

Eidolons were the single strongest entities in all of the aether. They were the peak hunters, the apex predators of the dimension. They were also the source of a Magus’s powers. A Magus would contract with an eidolon, and then gain access to said eidolon's sprites to cast magic… I think… researching it was difficult due to how many theories there were about them.

Magus, Adepts, Kinetics, and Apothecaries were a small fraction of the population, so there wasn’t nearly as much information as I would’ve liked. Most articles and pages were written from an outsider’s perspective, so they were untrustworthy at best, and entirely false at worst. There were very few resources that came from a proven Magus on the Net.

Who were the eidolons though? That was a bit trickier since there were so many of them. They all had a name and took the shape of an animal. For instance, Fox was an eidolon who appeared as a, well, fox. No one knows if they were the actual animals themselves, or if they were just beings imitating the shape to appear more approachable. It was a terrifying thought.

The most common eidolons that granted their power to Magus were Fox, Wolf, and Bear, though there were dozens if not hundreds of other ones, like I said. Interestingly, there was no overlap. There was only one Fox, and every other fox of the aether was under ‘her’.

Unfortunately, my search for knowledge about both Nathos and eidolons proved to be potentially full of inaccuracies. The Net was vast, and most articles and pages I read from were purely speculation or outright lies, especially in regards to eidolons.

Nathos simply suffered from having almost nothing written about him, probably because most everything else was under the heavy restriction of the powers that be. It made sense. Covering up the actions and existence of an assassin was like step 101 for not getting caught.

I took some time to do some other things, like research how to use the bola thing and some other stuff I was interested in. The bola was surprisingly easy. Just throw it at someone to wrap them up, then squeeze the glove into a fist to start shocking. The period of relaxing also helped me come to a decision I had been deliberating over.