If this skill maxes out, you might even be able to fly in real life.
Two hours later, you log off decisively. The data fee costs 600. Mech wear and tear costs 1,500. But you don't care at all.
You take off the headset. Your stomach cramps with hunger. This is the price of frenzied gene evolution. Without a word, you grab the battery and charge again.
Current floods in once more. This time, you notice your body's electrical capacity has increased by a full ten percent. Your physical limits are being forcibly pushed wider.
Once the hunger fades, you clench your fists tight. Mind unusually calm. Killing birds still isn't efficient enough. At supersonic speed, you can't track every flight path. You pinpoint the real issue precisely. You need sharper reflexes. The ability to read every moving trajectory clearly.
Tomorrow at the company, you must farm dynamic vision at any cost.
You grit your teeth silently. Let them have their elite monopolies, their gene blockades. Given enough time, you will tear this oppressive age apart piece by piece.
You unplug the charging cable from your body. You decisively put the headset back on. Your target is clear. Rats and birds. As long as it farms skills, you couldn't care less how anyone views this hundred-plus-ton steel monster.
Your Blade mech stomps hard into the grass. Dynamic vision plus one.
Killing small creatures isn't just satisfying, it makes you stronger.
But you have no idea that thirty miles ahead, on a cliffside, four eerie figures blended perfectly with the rock have already locked onto you.
"Commander, target sighted," a woman with a rasping voice reports.
Mutant huntress Kim, staring coldly at the beat-up, rusted-out mech on her screen, gives the order with cold precision. "Standard procedure. Cut off his escape. I'm going to take this junk apart inch by inch and break him completely."
Kim thinks she has you cornered. Little does she know. Reaching the edge of the plains, you look at the thirty-foot-tall wild grass ahead and suddenly decide hunting rats in there is too much trouble.
You yank the control stick hard. The mech abandons the plains entirely, thundering toward the mountainside. The turn is impossibly smooth. It leaves Kim's squad, lying in wait to ambush you while you farmed monsters on the plains, completely stunned.
The four mutants of Kim's squad exchange baffled glances. No matter how hard they think, they can't figure out why you suddenly abandoned the plains and dove straight into the ravine.
You couldn't care less what these hidden lurkers think. You fire up the rocket pack, leaping like a steel beast from peak to peak. In under five minutes, you reach the target mountain range.
The mech radar goes completely blind here, but your sonic manipulation skill works wonders. Closing your eyes, waves of strange chaotic ultrasound sketch out the mountain's internal structure in your mind.
You pull out a shockwave bomb. Set the timer. Aim at a roughly eighteen-foot-wide downward opening and hurl it in.
Boom. A black cloud of dust mixed with shards of energy bursts violently from the opening.
Sonic manipulation plus one. Sonic manipulation plus one.
A dense flood of skill notifications floods your vision once again.
But this explosion stirs up a hornet's nest. Thousands upon thousands of bats are startled, pouring out of every crevice like a massive black cloud. They eventually swirl down into a deep ravine nearby.
You glance at your skill panel. So close to breaking through.
You fix your eyes on that bat-packed ravine. A manic grin curling your lips. You unclip your one and only mini hydrogen bomb.
Just then, Kim's team of four, using bio-camouflage like four miniature mechs, glide silently into position on the cliffside above you. They draw their blades, ready to crush you completely. You have no idea anyone is above you.
All you do is hurl the mini hydrogen bomb hard into the ravine. Then spin around and bolt for retreat.
The mini hydrogen bomb detonates. A terrifying energy shockwave tears the entire ravine apart instantly. Before you can even admire the carpet of bat remains, four miniature mechs wrapped in rainbow light are suddenly blown clear into midair. The bomb's energy shockwave instantly disables their bio-stealth systems. They get flung skyward like sacks of garbage.
"You bastard. I'll kill you."
What in the world?
You're stunned. Kim's team of four, fully enraged in midair, force their bodies steady, becoming four blurring afterimages, raising eerie long swords to cut straight down at you.
You instinctively fire the rocket pack, ready to bolt, but in that split-second flash, a terrifying beam of light thousands of times brighter than the sun slams down from space without warning.
The screen goes black again.
You slump in the cockpit, completely numb. Seriously. I'm just farming monsters. Who hits me with an orbital cannon this time?
Meanwhile, Kim, having dodged disaster by ducking into a cave, watches her three subordinates vaporized outside, breath ragged, blood trickling from her mouth, screaming curses in a hysterical rage. "There's definitely a mole. Those Federation bastards."
She has no idea that cannon strike was nothing more than the base's automatic defense system, clearing a high threat target.
Mech piloting plus sixteen.
You watch the skill surge in your mind. You see a familiar apology in your inbox. Remote defense system caused unintended damage.
Fury rises in your chest. You exit straight to the interface and call customer support.
"I want a new base. This is a crime against humanity, this game. Blasting players with orbital cannons every five minutes. I'll sue every last one of you." You go full force at the support agent. All fire and fury.
"Sorry. Base transfers are currently unavailable." The support agent stays as unmoved as ever.
"Can't transfer, huh?" You sneer. "Fine. Then compensate me. Three hundred shockwave bombs and three hundred mini hydrogen bombs. Refuse and I expose you on every platform there is."
After a long thirty seconds of silence: "Five hundred shockwave bombs. Mini hydrogen bombs capped at one hundred."
"Deal."
You almost jump up with excitement. You threw out a wild demand on a whim and they actually paid out. Munitions worth tens of millions in gold. With this stockpile, what's left to fear? B-rank. A-rank. Let them come. I'll level the entire map without blinking.
You log off decisively, dropping into the bathtub, eager to check your panel.
Sonic manipulation. Grandmaster.
You take a deep breath, staring at the ceramic cup on the sink. You don't exert any force at all. Just a light rub of your fingertips, and a crisp snap rings out.
Crack. Shatter.
The ceramic cup over twenty feet away explodes into countless fragments in an instant, without warning.
You leap up out of the bathtub. You stare at your own hands in shock, heart pounding without pause. Metal, glass, wood. You tear through the room like a maniac who just got a new toy, testing everything in sight. All it takes is a snap of your fingers, tuning the frequency, and within thirty feet, any solid object shatters apart under the invisible soundwave.
In reality, you are now, in every true sense, a living human weapon.