Chapter 44: Round Three

Chaotic Alloy Weapon Enhancement

The Junkyard Goliath was a life form made from a little of everything. It spent most of its time resting, ordered its underlings to rearrange the objects that made up its being, and condensed the essence of being sort of a lot of things down to a pinpoint concept.

The Chaotic Alloy Weapon Enhancement repurposed that energy down to an enhancement to change a single weapon or weapon component, one that will introduce an element of randomness to every attack made with it.

As much as Sean hated it, randomness and chance were his friends. On a pure numbers basis, he should be dead already. And for better or worse, the Mystereamer was starting to fall behind his other weapons. The Spectral Sticker did almost everything it did but better, and the jagged shank didn’t throw as easily or as well as the Spectral Darts. He wanted it in his loadout, sure. But it had to justify its place, or it was just another piece of hardware to accidentally stab himself with.

Using the strawberry dagger, he carefully removed the wrappings around the weapon. It came loose easily, as if his Adhesives Mastery was helping him along. After removing as much plug mud as he easily could, he readied the weapon enhancement to work on the blade component. If he was going to enhance anything, it would be the part that was likely to last him the longest, the one that he’d be the least likely to replace as better materials came available.

Mystereamer Blade (Chaos Alloy)

Despite retaining its initial shape, the material that makes up this blade has been modified to a higher, post-apocalypse tier of metal. Each strike with the blade will behave erratically, with a chance of causing random status conditions or irregular wounds. In addition, the conventional physical damage the blade deals will sometimes be replaced by a different, randomly selected elemental damage.

Now he needed something to wrap it in, but he had some ideas about that as well. When he had entered The Shanktuary, he had decided to take a chance with one of his rolls of duct tape, hoping to put his new alchemy talent to some kind of use. Dumping an entire role of duct tape into a plastic bag that already had a good amount of slime-ooze and a few vials of toxic clump glue wasn’t entirely without risk, but it was a way to test the limits of how weird the alchemy skill would let him get.

It turned out the skill was okay with at least that much weirdness.

Goose Tape

The combination of pre-apocalypse tape and post-apocalypse natural ingredients has resulted in something slightly better than any of its individual components. Goose tape is an enhanced, ultra-tough material that binds to almost any surface, resists most sorts of conventional wear, and works with you to make both crafting problems and hare-brained adhesive Hijinks difficulties a thing of the past.

Goose tape is now a baseline (Common) material, and is now a purchasable item exclusive to Sean Lawrence. It can be found as a standard item available in any Apocalypse Vendor’s stock, and can be further enhanced beyond (Common) with appropriate components.

Once he had rinsed off the transformed tape, Sean was able to see its changes went beyond a simple adhesive soak. The alchemy had completely remodeled the tape, consuming all the ooze and glue to make a jumbo-sized role of tape with a rougher, more robust texture, a thicker backing, and so much stick that Sean was afraid for his arm-hair.

Given his superior taping skills, it was only a few moments until he had a functional knife again.

Mystereamer 2.0 (Chaos Edition)

Constructed of a chaotic alloy and high-quality adhesive tape, The Mystereamer 2.0 loves to be weird. Each strike holds its own potential surprises, and is just as likely to poison an enemy as it is to freeze them, roast them, or any other of dozens of charming, unexpected horrors.

Effects: +4 SAV, Chaotic Strikes

Sean had cycled through all his notifications, spent all his stats and enhanced his equipment as much as he could. He briefly considered sleeping, but given that he had just spent eight or nine hours conked out, it seemed like that base was already covered. Besides a quick shower that he very thoroughly enjoyed, there was nothing left to do. He gave his stats one last look before he left, still shocked at how much higher they were.

Sean Lawrence
Level 25 Human (Prisoner of Time)
EXP: 14002/65000

STR: 15 (19)
DEX: 40 (42)
VIT: 25 (27)
SAV: 45 (46)
MAG: 59 (65)

—

Abilities: Shankmaster LV3, Adhesives Mastery LV2, Stitch Up LV4, Hard Time LV3, Cellblock Brewmaster LV1
Achievements: E-Raticator, Uncommon De-nominator, Three Spectral Bears, Make-shift Ranger, Forest Dragon-kin, Mini-boss Massacre, High-Proof, Late-Start Long-Shot, Junkyard David, Front-yard Defender

As near as Sean could figure it, he had at least eight hours before he’d have to make any kind of decision on what he was going to do. And, freshly showered, he found his next biggest concern was that he was starving. He didn’t have a lot of marketplace credits left, but they were about to become useless to him either way. If he was very, very lucky, some of those marketplace food vendors worked late nights or very early mornings.

—

There was, in fact, a food vendor who worked late nights. His name, he said, was Bernard, and he ended up being an oddly charismatic guy compared to what you’d expect from a post-apocalypse kebab vendor. Sean asked him what it would take to have him just keep cooking meat and rice until he was too full to eat anymore, and the answer ended being so close to the total amount of money he had left that he left the remainder as a tip.

By the end, he was so absurdly full of roasted meats, he almost forgot to leave a note. By the time Brett and Estesia were up and about, he’d be long gone in one way or another. Keeping specifics out of it, he cited weird system stuff and let them know they probably wouldn’t see him again. To the extent he could with his limited skill in letter-writing, he tried to let each of them know how thankful he was for their help over the last week, and he was aware that they’d kept him alive where he would have otherwise died.

He botched it. He could only hope they’d fill in the blanks themselves.

Hefting his pack, he left the marketplace for the last time.

—

The street was still dark, but the moon was now fully out to the extent where he could at least see where he was going. Without many places to be, he thought he’d probably head to the former site of the dump, where he expected to have the least chance of getting in trouble before he made his final decision on what he’d do.

Trouble had other ideas, and found him first. As he walked down the street, he heard the sounds of footfalls approaching and muted conversation. A single glance let him know that it was the offworlders, with Eike in the lead. Despite the fact that Eike had declined to kill him in the past, Sean had no desire to test the limits of how far that questionable mercy went. He ducked into an alley, setting himself up behind a derelict dumpster and hoping they didn’t notice him.

As they passed, it seemed his stacked increased-stealth-in-the-dark bonuses were going to be enough to let him pull it off. Eike and the two of his companions whose names Sean didn’t know passed without so much as a single glance. Then came Breca. If anyone was going to notice him, it was probably the archer build. For a second, it seemed like he might, as he paused slightly in front of the alley and stood there for a moment as if he was sniffing the air. But then he moved on too.

Sean stayed put. He was fully ready to hunker down for five minutes, give the offworlders the time they needed to get distance, and then continue on his way. Then a single set of footfalls, walking in the opposite direction Eike’s group had, approached the alley.

Please let it be a normal-ass earthling. Sean thought. I’ve already had enough trouble for a few days, I swear.

“I bet you’re wondering how I found you.” Breca’s voice rang out. “Or maybe you’re hoping that I don’t want to deal with Eike if he finds out I took a little detour to kill you.”

The footfalls were still approaching the alley, and Breca’s voice got louder as it did.

“Do you think I really care? I’m already ranked highly enough to get into the competition. If I run, they won’t catch me. I might not get as far by myself, of course. But the rewards are higher for solo runs, you know. And who knows? I might just get lucky and get ahead of that idiot and take the rewards for myself.”

He doesn’t know I’m here for sure. He’s fishing. Sean was desperate for that to be true, especially as he heard the crossbow’s string click back into the locked-and-ready position.

“Really, the biggest reason I’m here is because you made a fool of me. Twice.” Breca was moving down the alley now, his nasally voice ringing off the bricks. “And I won’t stand for that. Not from anyone, least of all some peasant on a backwater world. The second time, I made sure to mark you.”

It was the worst possible match-up for Sean. His class was heavily banked on DEX and SAV, but presumably so was Breca. If he was only at the average it took to enter the competition, that meant a full ten levels and sixty points more than Sean had. It was hard to imagine a version of Breca who wasn’t faster than Sean. In almost every scenario, Breca would either pin him to the walls here or chase him down and catch him between the shoulder-blades with some kind of poisoned bolt.

Somehow, Sean didn’t care that much about what the numbers said. Because he knew two things that Breca didn’t. The first was that he had way, way more points than were reasonable stacked up in his MAG stat and a fully-charged burst skill in the form of Hard Time that was just raring for a good test subject.

And the second was he had experienced much, much more of Breca than he had tolerance for. This guy was going down, and he was going down hard.

Fuck stats. Let’s show him some of that violent nature Jeff thought I couldn’t get.

Sean burst out from behind the dumpster, counting on his initiative and the dark to give him a split second of extra time. It worked. By the time the crossbow twanged, he had managed to get his new dual-target time-alteration capabilities into play, both slowing Breca down and speeding himself up.

It had always been an open question for him whether or not an item leaving an enemy he had slowed would maintain the slowing effect once it separated from the person he had targeted. With satisfaction, he saw the bolt maintained a slowed-down status as it left the crossbow, although only for the fraction of the time that the skill’s duration would normally work.

Between that and a preemptive dodge he had set into play even before the crossbow fired*,* he managed to move just fast enough to get out of the way of the green, sizzling bolt that Breca sent his way.