Lair by Carl Stubblefield (recommended reading TXT) 📕

“Can the chef make food that alters certain stats that I would like boosted?” The robot nodded in the affirmative. Gus considered that he would try to make another bag while he waited and wondered if it would be more beneficial to boost agility to make the weaving a bit easier or intelligence for more skill stamina. He settled on boosting agility.

This meal was some small grilled meat that tasted vaguely like pork. It was delicious and Gus told himself not to think too much about where the meat came from. This meal gave a three point bonus to agility. As he ate, he pondered why he could still get stat increases, if the meal was engineered to react with his Nth. He still had access to his abilities and skills. The only explanation seemed to be that his Nth must be functional, but the NIC aspect was offline.

As he headed back to the Foundry, Gus reviewed his stats and logs. Ether Weaving had leveled to five, dropping MP costs by sixty percent, and Ether Warping to two, which reduced its MP cost fifteen percent. That netted him 700 XP and 1400 FP.

Gus felt even more awake after the meal, so he headed back to the Foundry again to make another bag. He was soon in the zone and worked continuously until movement caught his attention from the corner of his eye. Gus was surprised at his progress; the agility boosts had really made a difference! He once again expanded the inside of the bag as much as he could and tied off the ends. An idea began to form in his mind as he looked at the completed rim, a different size than he had initially been intending, but it might just work. He’d have to check out the Foundry controls and queue up some more items.

The Nth-ball that had started at the size of a Bocce ball, began to expand to the size of a volleyball. Gus sat in anticipation of something else happening, but the ball sat there again for five minutes. It felt like at least a half an hour, but checking his watch, Gus noticed that time had barely passed at all. There was no sound or sign that anything was happening, which made the wait that much worse.

Gus decided he had to do something or he would go insane. He went back to the control room and tried to distract himself looking through the different types of traps and configurations. He could see the ball from where he sat, and every time he looked he saw no change.

There were drones of different types, other classes of turrets, and various traps that could be launched. The higher-grade Tier 2 traps were grayed out. He could read their description though, and these traps seemed to require more extensive installation.

Since the drones and turrets used none of the available energy, he queued everything he needed. He hoped Nick would just come back online already and be ok. He couldn’t go into the upcoming battle alone. This was taking entirely too long; he itched to put some of his plans into effect, but he needed Nick.

“Hurry up!” he screamed, his voice echoing impotently among the large machines of the Foundry.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Glitter Freeze

Day 10 4:22 AM

0:18:48 remaining

“Guuuuus…” a voice gasped in his head. It sounded like it came from someone who had crawled through the desert, or a dead man’s last gasp.

“Nick!” Gus flew out of his seat and made it to the conveyor belt. Grabbing the handrails, he vaulted down the stairways leading to the conveyors where the hybrid Nth were coming to life. The ball fluttered and blinked, winking in and out of activity, each time a different shape. It hurt Gus’ eyes to look directly at it, giving him an instant headache and a sense of wrongness.

No, that wasn’t the right word, it was just so alien that his mind refused to wrap itself around what it was seeing. Impossible optical illusion shapes formed, but in three dimensions. No! Colors and hues, spatial anomalies bent back on themselves in ways that had not been seen before. No! No! No! His mind recoiled. He couldn’t pull his eyes away though, and slowly, his mind made it past the turbulence like a raft passing the rapids, and everything calmed and smoothed again. The ball dissolved and fell to the tray like grains of sand.

“Did you miss me?” Nick said, from a bald green head that formed from the sand-like particles pushing itself out of the tray and… winking? The tiny head gave a grin and winked. Gus was startled enough he fell flat and barely avoided flipping over the handrails around the gangplank into the machinery below.

“I guess not…” the little head said.

“Nick, is that really you?” Gus asked. In response, the iridium-colored dust fluttered out to create an outline of a human form, and the hue changed to the appearance of purple glitter… It looked like the invisible man after a night at the strip club.

“In the flesh. In the flakes? That’s probably more accurate. To calm your fears, the process was a success! And I have a newfound appreciation of what humans and all the other species experienced when they became Nth-assisted. I am undergoing a similar process. With different tabs and gauges much like you have. None of it really applies to you particularly, but it is strange to be on the other side of the process.”

“So what can you do?” Gus asked.

“I’m not really sure yet, there isn’t exactly a manual, and I can communicate with the Kroutonium but it is… odd. I can direct a question toward it, and I get what appears to be an unrelated image, vibration, or shade of color. It will take some time to connect and communicate. This has never been done before, and I get no responses to my queries to the quantum server. I know you