Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

If it got too low, he had no doubt he would lose power to those sections of the manor and they would be inactivated. All the more reason to finish this and see what needed to be done to recalibrate the energy converters that were powering the manor. It was irritating to have yet another problem to deal with, but it didn’t bother him as much as it would have before today. Maybe it was because other things were more pressing; he looked again at the countdown. Less than a day and a half. Get super powers. It’ll be fun, right? Gus sighed and hurried to get the next crucial item on his to-do list: armor.

Gus locked the door to the control room to prevent any Nth getting inside. He didn’t know if it would make any difference, but better not to make it too easy if any got inside. It made him think of any other ways they could infect the manor.

“Nick, can you make steward and any other robots go into a standby mode and hide in storage until we sort the zombies out?”

“Good thinking. You won’t be able to access Stuart or any other automated manor systems besides the ones you have unlocked with FP.”

“That’s fine. It’s my next stop.”

Gus headed to the Foundry. He checked the screens and tried to enter design mode, but the system apparently had a timeout on how long it retained scans, and he would have to once again stand on the sensor. As he stood to get scanned, the system flashed an alert that there was a hairline fracture down the length of his naginata. Gus was glad that his luck stat was so high or he might have had the weapon splinter in half during a battle. Using Kroutonium only in the blade was a little short-sighted, but he hadn’t considered the implications.

A quick check showed minimal time for repairing his naginata. Gus input additional mods for strengthening the shaft. Gus made a core that extended down the entire length of the spear, and connected to the blade. By selecting a reinforcement mod, channels in the core split into a hexagonal meshwork that spread down the shaft, highlighting where the Kroutonium would be placed. Then as the metal was redistributed, the length and width of the blade decreased, but less than Gus expected. The screen directed him to deposit the naginata into a nearby hopper, and a time of one hour with a picture of the weapon showed up in the queue.

Gus swiped through the different types of armor available. Multiple types of items that covered individual parts of the body as well as sets were available, but they had penalties to agility, some severe. Gus needed something that helped with evasion, not slowed him down.

“Gus, would you be open to a suggestion?” Nick asked tentatively. Thrown off by how different Nick’s new persona usually acted, Gus stopped looking at the screen.

“This manor is one of only twenty-six locations worldwide that can synthesize Nth. You now have the ability to make more Nth, which can be utilized in your own body or to create one for me— “ Nick started to say.

“Yeah, I remember. Sorry for being selfish; I really should have thought about it more. There’s just been so much going on, but that’s really no excuse. Here let me see what—”

“Hold on. I have an idea, and just listen to it all before you discount it, can you do that for me?”

“Sure, shoot.” Gus cocked his head at Nick’s atypical behavior.

“What if you use the remaining Kroutonium to make additional Nth? I could utilize the new Nth and embody it to become a living armor, able to modify according to different needs.” Nick suggested.

“You can do that? That sounds awesome!” Gus squinted his eyes knowing that Nick was holding something back. “Wait… what’s the catch?”

“There is a little drawback…” Nick said tentatively.

“Spill it.”

“Kroutonium is almost always used for weapons and armor. Over the millennia, it has been used like this, then gathered and taken with the Nth if they leave the planet due to an apocalypse event. If you chose to use the Kroutonium to make Nth, it would become part of the Nth as a collective. Forever. It could have large repercussions adding another foreign consciousness in the mix, plus if Earth is lost and I go back to the collective, who knows what happens then? Without a guide, will the consciousness in the Kroutonium take control and a new Nanobot Interface Construct come into being? It could potentially be very bad for the whole cycle and possibly against what the builders intended when they made the Nth.” Nick said.

“You’re telling me no one in forever has tried this?” Gus said with disbelief.

“Usually most hosts who have access to this amount of Kroutonium are so megalomaniacal that this suggestion would never be considered. I hesitate to even suggest it, but the benefits would be amazing. You would have an armor that would scale with your level, able to be modified on the fly as needed. If the rumors that the quantum server is made out of Kroutonium are true, as well as the rumors that it is unhackable due to its sentience, it could be some of the only armor to withstand a direct Dark Nth attack.”

“That seems a little sketchy. You’re guessing a lot of that, aren’t you?”

“You’re right, none of this is tested, so it could offer no protection against the Dark Nth. We could be creating the first Kroutonium-infused Dark Nth if we fail,” Nick said ominously.

Overwhelmed, Gus leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair in indecision.

“I don’t know if it’s worth the risk. I’m assuming there’s no real way to test this beforehand either…”

“No, not really.”

Gus was torn again by indecision. He hated how wishy-washy he could be because he was always worried about problems that never happened.