Rise of the Night Stalkers

by Kurtis Eckstein

  Honestly, I felt like my capacity to reproduce had vanished as well. I mean, I sure as hell was certain I was male, but it was like the sexual aspect of my human self was just gone. At the very least, I found nothing ‘attractive.’

  Like, I could admit that Savannah would probably be physically appealing to most humans, and yet I could only see her as how someone might view a dog or a cat – something possibly ‘cute,’ but not ‘attractive’ or ‘appealing.’

  Well, at least, how the average human might view a dog or cat – I knew there were some weirdos out there.

  Granted, only time would tell for sure as to whether or not those basic biological functions were truly gone or not.

  Focusing on Harper’s stats again, I knew that getting her Thermoacoustic stat to 20 like mine was going to be a huge investment of 190 points. And, not only was that a lot, but those were resources that might be wiser spent on enhancing the weapons she already had, as well as giving her some protection.

  Not to mention, while the laser hand ability was powerful, it was also a little noisy, and currently Harper’s most useful facility was her stealth. It served both an offensive purpose, as well as a defensive one.

  Thus, giving her a noisy attack that might draw Aggro, while simultaneously leaving her without any natural protection, would just be a recipe for disaster. She’d be a true glass-cannon, who ironically would end up with ‘Taunt’ as well.

  Not ideal at all.

  If I wanted to keep her alive long enough to turn her into a powerful ally, then I first needed to focus on defense, speed, and skills that would allow her to escape a direct confrontation.

  Furthermore, I had to realize that just boosting those stats might not be the most efficient method of increasing them, since body augmentation could provide a massive boost.

  I glanced at the details of my Mass stat again to examine this factor.

  Mass: 113

  Systemic Skills: Regeneration, Reconstitution, Augmentation

  Body Augmentations: Enhanced Vision [s1], Clawed Digits [s1], Reconstructed Cardiovascular [s7], Reinforced Arms [s3], Reinforced Legs [s3], Spring Sacrum [s6], Coccyx Blade [s3], Wings [s4] (Lesser Socket, Lesser Arms, Elongated Digits, Digital Webbing), Hardened Skin Plates [s8]

  Enhancements: Strength +450, Endurance +850, Speed +350, Attack +5,500, Defense +7,100, Balance +50

  Debilitations: Endurance -79, Speed -201, Attack -156

  Augmentation Skills: Flight, Sharp Sight [s1], Night Vision, Thermal Vision, Spring-Blade [s3]

  I then examined her Mass stat.

  Mass: 26

  Systemic Skills: Regeneration, Reconstitution, Augmentation

  Body Augmentations: Enhanced Scent [s1], Clawed Digits [s2], Enlarged Hands [s1], Enlarged Feet [s1], Elongated Arms [s2]

  Enhancements: Strength +50, Speed +100

  Debilitations: None

  Augmentation Skills: Quadrupedal, Sharp Scent [s1], Night Vision, Thermal Vision

  Okay, so I assumed her boost in speed came from the capacity to run on four-legs, and it appeared that my massive boost in defense came from my hardened skin. Given that I wasn’t sure the speed aspect could be improved much – at least, not without giving her wings, or something else as a new form of transportation – I instead considered how much it would cost to give her a defensive boost.

  Processing enhancement request…

  Analyzing sub-handler 001 biometric values…

  Complete.

  Hardened Skin Stage 1 [s1]

  Estimated Resource Requirement (Augmentation): 71

  Estimated increase in defense: +885

  Estimated reduction in speed: -14

  Hmm, that was more points than I was hoping, but I could work with that. It would be a start, at least. But then, next up would be figuring out how to either increase her speed more, or discovering a method to allow her to escape easily.

  Duh.

  I was an idiot.

  The answer was obvious – wings.

  That would solve both problems, especially the escaping part. As far as I was aware, the vast majority of Night Stalkers couldn’t fly, and the ones who could would likely be weaker like she was, due to limited resources, which meant she would have a viable way to leave a battle if needed. Not to mention, it would also allow her to have other avenues of attack, giving her the option to dive bomb enemies from above if so desired.

  Processing enhancement request…

  Analyzing sub-handler 001 biometric values…

  Complete.

  Wings Stage 1 [s1]

  Estimated Resource Requirement (Augmentation): 68

  Estimated Resource Requirement (Evolution): 11

  Total Estimated Resource Requirement: 79

  Estimated increase in speed: +270

  Estimated reduction in speed: -6

  Augmentation Skills: Flight

  Interesting that adding wings caused both a boost and reduction in speed – again, likely because of the increased weight having an uncontrollable side-effect. It was also interesting that this change required an Evolution to take place, whereas the Hardened Skin did not. Plus, I wondered why the evolutionary resource requirement was so much less than for the fireball laser hand, or my idea to have cannons coming out of my shoulders.

  If I had to guess, I’d say that augmentation was just the physical part, whereas evolution must be the biological change that had to happen.

  Needless to say, I could work with this change too.

  For exactly 150 points, I could give her a huge boost to defense, speed, and the ability to escape most situations if needed, which was a much better use of the possible 190 points it would require to get her Thermoacoustic stat to 20, never mind the additional body augmentations and evolutions that would be necessary for it to even matter.

  Sighing, I realized I had decided on my course of action.

  Obviously, I would work on investing the 150 points in Harper, and in the meantime I would give myself the ability to talk and start attempting to use fire magic. I just hoped I didn’t regret changing my hands, especially since undoing the modification might be impossible. I also didn’t know if the 79 points estimated earlier for the laser attack was the requirement for only one hand, or both.

  In the end, I might end up spending a good 173 points on myself, but given how much I could eat at once, I would probably finish my augmentations at the same time that Harper finished hers.

  Which was great.

  By tomorrow, we might both be in a good spot to handle most anything that comes our way.

  Chapter 12: Magic

  I could speak!

  And holy shit, I could blast things to hell and back with my hands!

  Hell yeah!

  The fire magic was especially nothing like I anticipated. Rather than my hands being like cannons, it really was as if I was generating a laser beam from my palms, which was amazing for setting shit on fire and even melting stuff a little.

  Whenever I used the ability, I felt my entire body begin to sing with energy as cracks of vibrant red appeared all over my midnight skin, especially on my arms. Those cracks then merged in the palm of my hand and generated a powerful blast of energy that I could shoot in short bursts, much like a gun.

  I hadn’t fully tested the range yet, but it was amazing.

  And costly.

  In the end, doing one hand had cost 79 points, whereas doing the second hand cost 68 – I had no idea why the difference, assuming that part of the change made inside my body for the first modification was a requirement that overlapped with the second modification, thereby reducing the expenditure needed to do both. But after that was taken care of, I also ended up bumping my Connection stat to 18, since I wasn’t quite satisfied with my speaking abilities at 10 and 15.

  But that wasn’t the costly part, since I had expected those expenses.

  Instead, I discovered that this new weapon was a constant resource guzzler. For every four shots I fired from my hand, I consumed 1 a
vailable resource point. It wasn’t horrible, considering that one meal from a normal Night Stalker would gain me twelve shots, but that wasn’t factoring in a needed reserve for things like regeneration, in the event I got injured.

  Thus, I would need to have at least six distributable points available at all times, to ensure I didn’t run out of steam in an unforeseen fight.

  However, that wasn’t the only unexpected issue.

  I also came across a handful of other problems I hadn’t anticipated, which lost us an unknown amount of time, since I had no way to keep track of the sun while holed up in the boiler room.

  For one, I could only hold 57 resources at once, which I had the system begin labeling as the maximum, before my body started doing the whole projectile vomiting thing the moment a bite of isopod got down my throat. Of course, the first thing I did was try to see if I could increase this maximum storage limit, but there wasn’t an option to do so. Similarly, Harper could only hold 38 resources at a time, which I found extremely confusing, especially when I considered the fact that she had 49 available resources when I first found her, along with another 3 being used for regeneration.

  Like, something just wasn’t adding up.

  And I had no idea what it might be. Why in the hell did she originally have more than 49 resources, when now she could only hold 38 points at once? Did Night Stalkers somehow automatically have an excessive number of resources when they first changed?

  That was the only logical conclusion I could come to, but I had no idea why that might be the case.

  It made one thing clear though – stockpiling large amounts of resources to use at a later date wasn’t possible inside our bodies. And to make it worse, we had to basically commit to something, only to potentially not have the resources to see it through. Really, that was the biggest problem to this limitation, considering the changes we wanted to make required more resources than we could hold.

  In the end, what that issue resulted in was our modifications requiring multiple stages to be accomplished – uncomfortable, almost painful, stages that rapidly increased fatigue.

  Stages that originally might have proven to be useless, or even a hindrance, until the second step of the process could be completed after several days or weeks of gathering points from regular Night Stalkers.

  Without this unique isopod, we would have been shit out of luck.

  For example, for Harper to grow wings, she had to first use all her points up to have her back reconstructed a little, along with the addition of small wing-like appendages that looked like normal sized hands with long fingers coming out of her back. Then, she uncontrollably fell asleep just as the process was completing, which meant she couldn’t eat right away again.

  My experience had likewise been similar, being required to nap before I could start the eat-digest-evolve-sleep process all over again. At least raising my Connection stat hadn’t induced fatigue much.

  And the good thing with Harper was that her wings were finished after eating and sleeping once more. The bad thing was I hadn’t anticipated her needing a tail to effectively maneuver in the air – an extra augmentation I had to add. Thus, she ended up with a thin three-foot-long tail with a small coccyx blade on the end, along with slightly more durable skin that looked like she was wearing a thicker wetsuit.

  Her stomach was finally covered too, so that only her face was unprotected by the thin black armor, with thin tendrils of the midnight material looking like thin claws reaching up her jawline.

  Overall, the results of our extreme discomfort really paid off.

  I was certainly satisfied.

  I checked my stats again with a grin on my face, something I had done repeatedly ever since my augmentations were finished. Of course, not a lot had changed in terms of numbers, except for my Connection and Attack stats, but it made a world of difference in what I was capable of.

  HANDLER

  Physical Condition: Stable

  Psychological Condition: Stable

  Fatigue: 3%

  Mass: 114

  Strength: 623

  Endurance: 852

  Speed: 233

  Dexterity: 100

  Balance: 100

  Connection: 18

  Thermoacoustic: 21

  Attack: 11,700

  Defense: 7,991

  Distributable Resources: 41 / 57

  Yep, my attack was the full 11,700 which was more than double what my tail was capable of. It also appeared that the attack debuff of -156, that I had associated with my tail, didn’t affect my fire magic. Although I knew now that if I was using my tail, then the minor debuff still applied since my weaponized appendage had remained listed as 5,344 under the Attack stat. I assumed it must be a weight thing affecting how much force my tail generated when springing out, but didn’t know for sure.

  Either way, it was a minor debuff.

  Similarly, Harper’s stats looked good too, now that she had a boost to her speed and defense. The addition of the wings, tail, and thicker skin had also increased her Mass by 9 points. Furthermore, the tail had a bonus effect I hadn’t anticipated – she got a +50 Balance enhancement that was more than enough to max out that stat.

  SUB-HANDLER 001

  Physical Condition: Stable

  Psychological Condition: Stable

  Fatigue: 1%

  Mass: 35

  Strength: 102

  Endurance: 39

  Speed: 274

  Dexterity: 87

  Balance: 100

  Connection: 19

  Thermoacoustic: 1

  Attack: 917

  Defense: 1,271

  Distributable Resources: 14 / 38

  Based on our speed stats, I wasn’t too surprised that Harper would be able to fly faster than me, because she was a lot lighter than I was. I mean, just comparing our Mass stats showed that I was more than three times heavier, although I didn’t quite look like I weighed three times as much since my tail made up a sizeable portion of my mass.

  Still, while her biometrics were a ton lower than mine, it was an amazing improvement.

  She now had the speed and accessibility to get away from most enemies, and she was at least a little more durable as well. Not to mention, the fact that I had to add a tail ended up giving her a secondary weapon, considering that transforming the end of it into a blade like mine wasn’t much of an extra expense.

  The weaponized coccyx wasn’t enough to raise her max Attack though, since her bite still did more damage, but the extra weapon could mean the difference between life or death in a fight. That also indicated that the only reason why the Attack of my blade was so high was because of its ability to spring away from me at high speeds.

  I could theoretically focus on giving her tail the ability to extend like mine, but I felt like her overall build right now would benefit best from having a long-ranged attack, since she was still pretty squishy in terms of absorbing damage.

  Of course, that meant I needed to go ahead and start focusing on her Thermoacoustic stat, even though it was going to be a really long process to make the modification – a change that we might not be able to finish before the isopod carcass became inedible.

  But I didn’t see any other options right now.

  Sure, I could just keep giving her tougher skin to raise her defense, but then that would reduce her speed due to the extra weight, which would require me to upgrade her wings, only to cause a repeating cycle. In the end, she might be able to take more damage, but she wouldn’t be able to truly defend herself.

  Because sometimes the best defense was to just have a good offense. And really, evasion and offense together were a very powerful combination, with it probably being the route I would had taken if I had been in control of my growth up until now…

  Well, then again, maybe not.

  But not because her build wouldn’t be superior than my original one, much like that other magic-using Night Stalker had been. Instead, it had to do with circumstances and survivability.
>
  My build made more sense in a situation where a person didn’t know if they were going to survive another day. Alternatively, the build I was aiming for with Harper was something that would be powerful in the end, but wouldn’t actually pay off until a large amount of points had been invested.

  In that sense, fire magic was sort of a luxury.

  A luxury that she could afford, only due to our difference in circumstances. Unlike how I started, she had me to protect her until she could attain a power that would allow her to protect herself. Essentially, thanks to me and my new willingness to keep her safe, she could afford to waste all those points on an ability that wouldn’t reap any benefits until it was complete.

  Harper also didn’t have to fight to the death for 2 to 3 points at a time, which would have been the biggest deterrent to pursuing this type of route in the beginning for myself. That isopod carcass was a major game-changer. Even if they were so rare that we never found another one ever again, the points we had obtained so far put us months ahead of all the other Night Stalkers.

  Smiling with a satisfied grin, I focused away from the stat screen, my gaze shifting up to the little demon flying around in the sky as she tried out her new tail, with the very last modification I made being the bladed end. I was watching her from the roof of my building at the moment, since I had barricaded up the first floor while Harper had been sleeping from this last change.

  Now, neither human nor monster would be able to enter the building, except from the roof. All entrances were completely blocked off with a shitload of random furniture and vehicles. I also had done a thorough sweep of the building to ensure that it was empty.