“That’s not true,” Maya said as she shook her head vigorously and squeezed my hand hard. “You may have been created artificially, but it doesn’t mean you’re not real. You are a living, real person just like me or Nadia or Pinky.”
“I’m not sure about Pinky, though,” Nadia added as she grinned. “I mean, he was a programmer, and it shows sometimes. Every now and then, he speaks such gibberish I’m not even sure if he’s a human or machine.”
“Ha-ha, very funny, Nadia,” Thomas said before turning his attention to me. “But Maya’s right, man. So don’t be so harsh on yourself. That’s true that your body was created artificially and that you possess the memories of a person who lived in 2020. But you aren’t him. You are an altogether different person with your own thoughts, feelings, and desires. Think about it this way—you were actually born the moment when you woke up in this world. How does it sound?”
I realized I liked Thomas’s take on this. While I possessed the memories of the real David—well, some of them—I was not actually him. My own life had begun when I woke up in my teleportation chamber on the previous space station. A lot had happened since then. I had fought side-by-side with my teammates against bandits, mutants, and aggressive creatures. Those were my own memories. That was my life.
“There’s still something I don’t understand, though,” Nadia said.
“What is it?” Thomas said.
“I thought brain scanning was invented much later,” Nadia replied. “I’m pretty sure that there wasn’t such technology in 2020. At least, that’s what they told us in history class.”
“Yeah, I agree with you for once,” Thomas said. “Maybe, Echo can help us out.”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I shook my head.
“What do you mean?” Nadia asked.
“We—my former teammates and I—asked Echo how we ended up in this world, but he couldn’t answer the question,” I explained.
“Why couldn’t he?” Maya asked.
“He told us something about riots taking place on the main space station, which resulted in some of the hard drives being damaged,” I said.
“Oh, there was a riot on the main space station, Echo?” Thomas asked in a strange voice. I also noticed that my new teammates exchanged glances.
“That’s correct, warrior,” the AI replied. “But you should not worry. The riots had long since been suppressed.”
“That’s a shame,” Thomas said quietly.
“Most of the damaged hard drives has been restored and the information stored on them retrieved,” Echo added, ignoring Thomas’s last remark. “So I now know almost everything about David and can answer almost every question you may have about him.”
“So what about his scan then, Echo?” Nadia said. “How come it was taken in 2020 if brain scanning was invented much later?”
“Officially, brain scanning was invented much later,” Echo said. “You are absolutely right about that, warrior. However, many years ago, there was a Chinese organization responsible for manufacturing a virtual reality headset called the Macro Envision, as well as many VR video games for the headset, such as The Weaponized.”
“What?” Thomas exclaimed. “You mean, the game had the same name as our organization?”
“That’s correct, warrior,” the AI replied.
“So, the leaders of our organization are from China then?” Thomas posed another question.
There was a brief pause before Echo replied.
“Not exactly,” Echo said. “The organization responsible for creating the Macro Envision VR headset was Chinese. However, the leadership of our current organization was made up of many ethnic groups, not only Chinese.”
Echo was an AI and always acted as such. When asked a question, he always replied almost immediately. However, he seemed to have hesitated before answering Thomas’s last question. I wondered if it signified something.
“Okay, so what about that Chinese organization you just told us about?” Nadia asked. “The one that created that whatchamacallit VR headset.”
“This organization was illegally and secretly creating brain scanning technology,” Echo replied. “The main purpose of the Macro Envision headset was not gaming. It was just a front. The main purpose of the invention was altogether different. When a person launched a VR video game on their computer and put on his or her Macro Envision headset, the device was scanning their brain, with the user being none the wiser. Then the brain scan was copied to the organization’s hard drives. Since the Macro Envision turned out to be quite popular, a lot of brain scans of various people all around the world were made. As time passed, the brain scans were copied from one hard drive to another. Some of them, like David’s scan, made it through time while the others didn’t.”
“So David’s brain scan—me—has been stored on the hard drives for many years, right?” I said when Echo finished speaking.
“That’s correct, warrior,” Echo replied immediately.
“How come I ended up here then?” I asked. “I mean, waking up on the space station to become a warrior for the organization? It surely wasn’t by my own choice, was it?”
The AI fell silent for a little while.
“Error,” Echo finally uttered a single word.
“Here we go again,” I sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Maya asked resentfully. “I thought you told us that you could answer any question about David.”
“I said I could answer almost every question about him,” Echo said as calmly and emotionlessly as always. “Some of the hard drives on the main space station were so badly damaged during the riots they were beyond restoration, so the information stored on them have been lost forever.”
“Great,” Nadia muttered.
“Well, it’s not all that hard to guess how you ended up being a warrior for the organization,” Thomas said as he looked at me.
“You got a theory?” I asked. “I’m all ears.”
“The Weaponized was once a pretty nice organization,” Thomas said. “It helped colonists living on distant planets to deal with bandits and aggressive creatures. Then the organization began to run into one financial snag after another. The leadership changed. The new leaders took a tougher approach to get over their financial problems. That’s how The Weaponized turned into a criminal organization. Our team was forced to do a lot of bad things. For example, we once took a mission to deal with a group of bandits and retrieve some technology they had stolen from someone. As it turned out, those were not bandits but innocent people. And our mission was to kill them and steal their stuff. However, Echo denied the fact. He kept telling us those were bandits despite the fact that we had talked to those people and learned they were no criminals.”
I nodded and told them that my previous teammates and I had once had a similar experience. I gave them a brief rundown of how we had to destroy a mining colony that Echo claimed was a pirate base.
“So, The Weaponized has been snatching every opportunity to stay in business,” Thomas continued. “It even began to hire people who didn’t have any past military experience like Maya or me. There was a shortage of people willing to work for the organization, which is why the leaders have been grabbing every opportunity to acquire new warriors. I believe that’s how you and your previous teammates ended up working for the organization. The new leaders had a human body created and your consciousness uploaded into it. They did the same with the four of your previous teammates and—voilà! Four freshly created warriors were ready to serve for The Weaponized. So they basically created four clones and by doing that, violated the law. Again. As Nadia said human cloning is illegal.”
I nodded, lost in grim thoughts.
“This organization has to be brought down,” Maya said quietly. “They committed too many crimes and caused lots of innocent deaths.”
When I looked up at the blue-haired girl, I saw Nadia, who stood next to her, shaking her head.
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��We should quit bringing this up,” the redhead said quietly. “Echo is hearing every word we say.”
“Yeah,” Thomas said and fell silent.
I looked between my new teammates. There was a rebellious atmosphere in the Control Room, and it was almost tangible. I could tell it was not the first time my new teammates were having such a conversation.
“What about we pick a mission?” Nadia said and glanced at Maya.
“If David’s ready to go, then I’m too,” the blue-haired girl said.
I nodded.
“Let’s get cracking then,” Thomas said.
For the next several months, we completed lots of various missions, and soon all of us leveled up to 100, which was the top level.
Leveling up from 75 to 100 gave me 25 skill points to use.
I had learned almost every skill for my Passive and Ultimate Abilities. They were extremely powerful by that point. It was time to learn some new skills for my Active Ability. It was a really long time since I had learned new skills for my Blink ability.
When I leveled up to 76, I first checked the skills that I had already learned for my Active Ability.
Green Rune (Active Ability) — Blink
The First Branch of the Active Ability:
Name: Ready for Action
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Active Ability.
Recharge delay: 30 seconds
Status: 3/3 (Completely Learned)
Name: Unstoppable 1
Description: You gain an additional Blink charge. While the Active Ability can be used several times before going on Cooldown, after you use the Active Ability, you will have to wait some time before you can Blink again.
Recharge delay: 1 second
Status: 2/2 (Completely Learned)
Name: Reacher
Description: Increases the distance of the Active Ability.
Blink Distance: 30 meters
Status: 3/3 (Completely Learned)
The Second Branch of the Active Ability:
Name: Unstoppable 2
Description: You gain improved recharge delay for the Unstoppable 1 skill.
Recharge delay: 1 second
Status: 2/2 (Completely Learned)
Required skill: Unstoppable 1
All the three skills from the First Branch of my Active Ability were learned and fully upgraded. On the Second Branch, there were two more skills that I had not learned yet.
The Second Branch of the Active Ability:
Name: Faster, Faster, Faster
Description: For a short amount of time after using the Active Ability, your movement speed increases.
Speed increase: +10% (Current: 0%)
Duration: +1 second (Current: 0 seconds)
Status: 0/5
Name: Trigger Happy
Description: For a short amount of time after using the Active Ability, your reload speed increases.
Duration: +3 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Speed increase: +10% (Current: 0%)
Status: 0/5
I decided not to learn any of these two skills for the moment.
The Third Branch of the Active Ability was also unlocked. It contained two skills to choose from.
The Third Branch of the Active Ability:
Note: While the Third Branch of the Active Ability contains two skills, you can learn only one of the two. So choose carefully.
Name: Going supernova
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Going Supernova skill to temporarily blind nearby enemies.
Effective range: +1.5 meters around (Current: 0 meters)
Duration: +0.5 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Status: 0/5
Name: Pusher
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Pusher skill, which creates a powerful gust of dark energy originating from you and spreading in all directions, which might knock your enemies off their feet.
Effective range: +3 meters (Current: 0 meters)
Pushing power: +20% (Current: 0%)
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Status: 0/5
I could learn only one of these skills. When I learned one of them, the second one would be locked. I gave the matter some thought.
After pondering on it for a moment, I decided to learn the Going supernova skill. The Pusher skill could create a gust of dark energy that would knock nearby enemies off their feet. I was not sure if it was all that useful.
Moreover, to put it to good use, I would probably need to blink in the middle of a bunch of enemies in order to knock over as many of them as possible. It would a very dangerous thing to do. I had never used my Active Ability to do something so reckless as blinking into the middle of a bunch of aggressive enemies. Sure, after blinking for the first time, I could use my Active Ability again to blink away from enemies. Thanks to the Unstoppable 1 and Unstoppable 2 skills I had learned a while ago, I could blink three times before my Active Ability went on cooldown. But there was a one-second delay between each blink. It might be more than enough for one of my enemies to inflict a severe wound on me.
So I decided not to learn the Pusher skill. Instead, I used five skills points to learn and fully upgrade Going Supernova.
Name: Going supernova
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Going Supernova skill to temporarily blind nearby enemies.
Effective range: 7.5 meters around
Duration: 2.5 seconds
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Status: 5/5 (Completely Learned)
Being able to temporarily blind my enemies I blinked next to might be very useful in certain circumstances.
The Fourth Branch of the Active Ability was unlocked now. It contained two skills to choose from. I checked them out.
The Fourth Branch of the Active Ability:
Note: While the Fourth Branch of the Active Ability contains two skills, you can only learn one of the two. So choose carefully.
Name: Kinetic Wave
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Kinetic Wave skill to shoot a wave of dark energy in the direction you are facing. Anyone whom the wave of dark energy touches might be knocked off their feet.
Size of the wave: 3 meters in width, 1.5 meters in height
Distance: +3 meters (Current: 0 meters)
Pushing power: +20% (Current: 0%)
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Status: 0/5
Name: Phaselock
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Phaselock skill to shoot a wave of dark energy in the direction you are facing. As soon as the wave touches an enemy, a sphere of dark energy will be created. Anyone who ends up inside the sphere will be locked in another dimension and will not be able to fight for a short while.
Diameter: +3 meters around (Current: 0 meters)
Duration: +1.5 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Status: 0/5
Again, I gave the matter some thought. Kinetic Wave was kind of similar to Pusher because both these skills could let me emit a wave of dark energy to knock enemies off their feet. I was not sure if causing my foes to fall was such a useful feature.
So I decided to learn Phaselock instead. Being able to trap some enemies so they could not fight for some time might be very useful in some circumstances.
Name: Phaselock
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can use the Phaselock skill to shoot a wave of dark energy in the direction you are facing. As soon as the wave touches an enemy, a sphere of dark energy will be created. Anyone who ends up inside the sphere will be locked in another dimension and will not be able to fight for a short while.
Diameter: 15 meters around
Duration: 7.5 seconds
Cooldown: 60 seconds
Status: 5/5 (Completely Learned)
The Fifth Branch of the Active Ability was unlocked now. I checked it out.
The Fifth Branch of the Active Ability:
Note: While the Fifth Branch of the Active Ability contains two skills, you can learn only one of the two. So choose carefully.
Name: Hidden
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can become invisible for a short while and gain increased movement speed.
Duration: +1.5 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Speed increase: +20% (Current: 0%)
Cooldown: 90 seconds
Status: 0/5
Name: Smoke Screen
Description: This is an active skill. After using the Active Ability, you can create a cloud of darkness that lasts a short while, blocking all enemy vision in or out of it while you can see through the cloud.
Duration: +3 seconds (Current: 0 seconds)
Size of the smoke cloud: +5 meters around (Current: 0 meters)
Cooldown: 90 seconds
Status: 0/5
Again, I decided to give the matter some thought before learning one of these skills. Both these skills seemed extremely useful to me. Hidden allowed me to become invisible for up to 7.5 seconds if I learned and fully upgraded the skill. Smoke Screen allowed me to create a cloud of darkness—whatever that meant—to block my enemies’ sight for up to 15 seconds if fully upgraded. Hidden was good for tactical retreats, Smoke Screen for temporarily blinding enemies and getting combat advantage over them. In some circumstances, the former skill would be very useful, in others the latter one. I was not sure which one should I learn.
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 46
