Apocalypse: Generic System by Macronomicon (shoe dog free ebook TXT) 📕

“Or in other words,” Jeb pointed at a nearby log, index finger extended, the other three clasped to his palm.

He crooked his thumb.

There was a hiss of displaced wind as the hardened air shot forward and put a hole in the tree, burying itself in the ground behind it.

“Finger gun.” Great idea number 3.

I’d call that a successful proof of concept. If that works, the rest of my ideas are likely to work....

It wasn’t that he couldn’t make the same effect manually. The benefit here was doing all the work in advance, so he could be focusing his attention on manually moving something, like the stiletto, for example, and if someone or something got close, he could finger-gun them without having to drop control over his stiletto.

And with his vivicant cane….

Where the hell is my vivicant cane?

He spent the next couple minutes trying to fish his ivory cane out of the water, until the water level went down far enough to reveal the damn thing had rolled further out than he’d expected, halfway stuck under a log.

He pried it out carefully, making sure not to break it. Damn thing was probably worth more than he was.

By the time he was done hopping through the muck of the ruined lakeshore, Jessica was on her way back with the loot in hand, still Jesus-ing over the water.

“What’cha got Jess?” Jeb asked, sitting on a log.

“Permanent stat boosting potions.” She said, showing him two bottles.

“Body,” She held up the red one. “Myst.” She held up the white one. “Which one you want?”

Jeb tapped his fingers on the cane, frowning. He needed to get more Body sooner or later to keep pace with escalating danger, but whenever he was given a choice…

“Myst.”

Jessica snorted. “Dunno why I asked,” She said, tossing him the white one.

Jeb downed it before he could wallow in his poor decision making skills, and Jessica did the same.

+3 Myst

Then he dropped the remaining six points from fighting the sirens, straight into Myst.

Nursing a throbbing headache, Jeb pulled out his map and checked what kind of dungeons might be nearby. They didn’t have much time left until they would be forced out of the forest. They needed to clean up around here, take a rest in the safe zone, then clear out the north.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 20

Body 10

Myst 43 +2

Nerve 18 +3

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

***2 days, 10 hours remaining***

“You take a break, I’ll keep watch,” Jeb said, writing on a piece of MRE packaging with a stick of charcoal. “I gotta do some homework anyway.”

Jessica grunted and took off her magic boots, wincing at the smell.

“There’s talc in the survival supplies,” Jeb said, pointing.

Alien bastards didn’t think a pencil and a pad of paper might come in handy, though. Jeb refocused on his piece of ‘paper’ and got back to listing his Great Ideas ™ for how to use Mystic Trigger.

1.        Land Mine

2.        Automate the Vivicant Cane

3.        Finger Gun

4.        Shield

5.        Grenades

6.        Projectile Return

7.        Safety phrases

Jeb tapped the other end of the burnt stick on the ‘paper’ but couldn’t think of any new ideas off the top of his head.

Then he went about defining how they might work.

For the land mine, if a creature larger than x and not him or Jess steps above the object, then boom.

Simple.

For the automated Vivicant cane, he could assign several different triggers to several different reserves of power bound to the cane.

Heart rate substantially below resting rate? Trigger the cane. Blood pressure dropping precipitously? Trigger the cane.

In addition to the passive triggers that could save his ass when he got blindsided, he could assign active triggers to it, such as simply saying a safety phrase such as ‘I’m not wounded, I’m just getting warmed up.’

Jeb chuckled at the thought of saying something that cringy out loud. Still, it was an observable event.

Finger gun he’d already done.

Shield was kind of an extension of the finger-gun.

Adopt a ‘shielding’ pose, with his arm curled up, shoulder raised, and head tucked in, and a shield of telekinetically stabilized air would spring to life, following his movements…no, it can’t follow my movements. It can only spring the shield, then let it hang there. It has no idea where I am, nor the ability to follow me.

Still, it provided some interesting utility, and Jeb saw himself using it.

Grenades were another simple extension of the concept. He could either take a  Myst lens, or make several dozen telekinetic arrows bound to a single pebble.

Throw the pebble and shout ‘fire in the hole!’ and boom. People die.

Might want a more obscure command trigger. Easily guessed ones could get me killed on accident. Wait no, if the condition is that I say it, the chances are slim…

Projectile return was simple. He could just bind several dozen triggers to himself, and when an object approached above a certain speed on a trajectory to hit him, the closest trigger leaps out and grabs the object, turns it one hundred and eighty degrees, then returns to sender.

Wait. That one might not work. It needs a way of knowing where the projectile is to reach out and grab it.

I know! I can have it create a bubble around me, and anything that intersects with the bubble gets spat back. It doesn’t need to seek out the projective specifically. I’ll need to create a variety of ranges so they don’t interfere with each other, but that’s not a big fuss.

What had inspired the Projectile Return was the fact that the people to the north used poison darts. Jeb did not want to get hit by one of those.

Let’s say…anything faster than ninety miles per hour. I’m pretty sure I could