Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

have stirred. There were some that had been wandering outside the barriers before they were sealed inside. Occasionally, one would meet an untimely demise, falling off a cliff or some other mishap. Unfortunately, he could not turn any of the other living creatures on the island. They had to be sufficiently intelligent or the Dark Nth could not bond.

What set this death apart was that there hadn’t been any severed tendrils for many years now. With the other attacks that had happened, Methiochos had to protect his brood. His enemies had most likely found him and would try to take everything.

Methiochos felt the darkness within him. It trembled and raged as his emotions swelled, and he had to relax to avoid being overcome. He was tired of the constant effort to push back the Dark, but what was the alternative? He knew of its insidious designs and had basically sacrificed himself to trap it here with him. There would be nothing left to rule if the Dark Nth destroyed everything. It had shown him its true desire. If it got loose, not only humankind would lose, but the cycle could be broken forever.

###!###

Gus showered and changed outfits, dumping the old one down the laundry chute. He wondered where they went, but guessed it really didn’t matter since he could wear a new suit daily for about a year and still have something to wear.

After initially putting his suit on, he noticed that it was tight in the legs, then the material stretched and resumed a comfortable feel. It probably was due to his level up yesterday and his constitution increase. It now made sense why supers wore so much spandex. When you leveled up and your muscles grew, who wanted to split their pants?

He had even heard that some of the advanced super suits the really high-level supers wore were made of Kroutonium, which would actually level along with the owner. They often had multiple forms and could evolve in their own right. He left the manor and headed down to Atlantis Beach, gauging how much sunlight was left in the day. He began running.

“Nick, what do you know about Kroutonium? Are there any suits in the manor that have it?” Gus made it to the beach and turned to his right. Since he would be running, he had only brought Razorback, leaving the spears. It made him feel exposed and he had to keep reassuring himself that he would just have to flee any encounters that arose.

“I do not show any suits that contain Kroutonium, but there are a number of Nth-assisted suits that offer small stat bonus—”

“How does that work, are there Nth in the clothing?” Gus interrupted. “I’ve always accepted stat increases from gear in games, but what is really happening?”

“The simplest way of explaining it is that there are informational arrays woven out of specialized material and embedded in the fabric of the item. I won’t go into all the details of what that material is composed of because it’s a whole other lengthy discussion. But just as a computer can be upgraded by adding some internal hardware, these arrays allow the Nth to gain more processing power, which translates to an increase in stats. If a host has too low a level, the Nth are insufficiently evolved to access or utilize the array and agitate the host so no damage happens from trying to interface with the incompatible array.”

Gus screwed up his face, comparing his game experience with his new real life situation, going through the implications.

“So are there scalable items?”

“Only Kroutonium-infused items have the ability to scale.”

“Why? Is it alive? How does it evolve? Is it Nth-assisted?”

“Let me answer each in turn. Do you recall how we talked about different types of matter?” Gus nodded and activated his Basic Flight ability, until his MP drained to zero a couple seconds later, and the first inklings of null headache began to appear. It looked less like flight and more like just a bit more air time. He would have to pay attention to not drain his MP pool. Basic Flight was an MP hog.

“Kroutonium is basically one of the sentient forms of matter. There are no sentient metals on earth, so it is a difficult concept to understand for some.”

“Is it like the Terminator model T-1000?”

“Not exactly, it does not change its form at will, however it can be manipulated, and usually allows itself to adopt a form into which it is fashioned. It then will attempt to magnify its function in that capacity. It finds satisfaction in this type of growth.”

“You said usually, can it deny a form?”

“Certainly. If it is fashioned into a form that allows no chance of evolution, it can cause itself to have a critical failure. Using the material for lugnuts is not only a waste of a resource, but may be problematic if the material ‘breaks’ if used on an aerial troop transport.”

“Yikes, how do you know what it wants? If a weapon failed in a fight, that could be game over.”

“Nth have difficulty understanding Kroutonium, since we have a limited understanding of how it ‘thinks.’ Our conclusions are based solely on observed behavior, but unlike most sentients, Kroutonium obeys predictable laws and there is not the individual variety of responses to stimuli that we see with humans, whose opinions are vast and varied. In that sense, Kroutonium behaves uniformly. Whether this is due to some hive-mind or a strict alignment of their nature is mere conjecture. While it is sentient, it prefers to be acted upon initially, then it tries its best to improve upon this directive. Concerning the material, we have the most data when it is used in armors and weapons, so it should be safe to use in these items.”

Gus stopped trying to focus on flight and activated Dash on a regular basis. When enough MP was regenerated, he would activate it again, to maintain his momentum.

“As you know, the material you call Kroutonium is