Second Genesis

Name: Call of the Skrill

Rarity: Mutated

Accepted Type: N/A

Rejected Type: N/A

Description: An auxiliary item designed to make your movements harder to track and difficult to predict. While you, yourself, are sure in your next actions, your enemies will receive a fear spike response that will make them doubt their own senses.

Abilities: Form three projections controlled by an extension of your mind. +100 DEX

—

The change was not bad at all. Grey wasn’t sure how these three projections would work, but the +100 DEX spoke for itself.

What fascinated Grey the most, though, was something that was a little less obvious, and that was how similar the abilities of the helm frame were to something like the Mech Soul item burning a hole through his pocket.

It took a treasure of what was a lower level and elevated it greatly. Of course, it didn’t make a Proving Class treasure as powerful as a Vector Class one, but it elevated it considerably nonetheless. The best part was that this wasn’t permanent. He could easily swap the Skrill Mask with something else.

There was also no need to worry about interference or those sort of problems anymore. When he first fused with a mechanical jaw, he hadn’t had a Cyber Space yet and he had been stupid enough to integrate the mech with his Skrill Mask still on. The result was that the Skrill Mask was effectively fused to his face until he managed to open up his Cyber Space.

This would never be a problem again. Of course, he had a Cyber Space. But usually he had to decide between one or the other. If he wanted to use his Skrill Mask, the mechanical jaw couldn’t be present, and if he wanted to use the mechanical jaw, the Skrill Mask would become useless.

This push and pull was something that Grey was constantly dealing with in everyday battle. But now, he wouldn’t have to. In fact...

He could use more than one mask or helm type treasure at a time. Meaning...

He pulled out another helm. Then, without hesitation, he paid the over 300 units he needed to satisfy the energy requirements of the helm frame.

—

Name: Crimson Rage Helm

Rarity: Mutated

Accepted Type: N/A

Restricted Type: N/A

Description: The helm of a warrior of an era. It wants for nothing but battle and blood. Consumes mental clarity for battle prowess.

Abilities: +3 STR and +3 SPD per second this helm is active.

—

’Three times stronger than before...? No, something else feels different too.’

Grey communicated with the helm and it triggered instantly. Wafting motes of crimson energy radiated from him and the world felt heavier than normal by more than a small margin.

His stats began to tick up quickly, leaping forward again and again, but the prickle at his mind was...

’It’s less. It’s not asking as much of my mind.’

Grey’s stats flickered past 100 and suddenly the pressure doubled. He could feel that it wanted more out of him, that it was asking for more, but the pressure wasn’t nearly as much as it should have been.

Grey kept holding on with relative ease until his stats crossed the 200 mark.

The pressure redoubled and a splitting headache hit him.

’Okay, that might be a bit much—.’

Grey only just had the thought when something clicked in his helm frame. The numbers stopped jumping and, instead, the energy units of the helm frame began to rapidly drain as well.

Well, Grey said rapidly, but it was only a unit or two a second. And with a vast well of over twelve thousand to work with...

’That’s over three hours at best and even in the worst case scenario it’s still approaching two hours.’

Grey slapped the table in front of him with a laugh. This was great.

As an Epic Grade item, the helm was good, but Grey was very hesitant to use it. He hadn’t even brought it out when he was fighting against Terran though it would have certainly helped end the battle far quicker.

The problem with the helm was that it didn’t know when to stop, and if you stopped the ticking up yourself, then all the stat gain would vanish.

But not only could the helm frame freeze it in exchange for stat points, Grey actually felt that—in exchange for more energy units—he could skip the time needed to reach those levels naturally. The price was still a bit steep, though.

’10 energy units per second. About +150 stat points is my limit on both STR and SPD, that would take me 50 seconds to get normally, so 500 energy units to get there instantly. A little under 10 minutes in exchange for instant strength... that’s probably worth it, too.’

Grey thought that this was already the best part about his new mechanical jaw, but he had never been so happy to be wrong. While he was testing it one final time, he found another subtlety that almost slipped right out from under his nose.

Right now, Grey’s STR was 76 and his SPD was 104. However, of his STR, only 18 of it was truly his. So, when his +100% Effectiveness from his Linear Frame breakthrough was applied, his functional strength became 36, then a +40 from one of his Epic items was applied.

For his SPD, only 52 of it was truly his, and then his Linear Frame effect was stacked on top of it.

However, what was so very brilliant about a mech was that it was integrated into a person in a way that a treasure never could be.

With a treasure, its buffed stats were too external for Grey’s Linear Frame to be of any use. But when it was a mech acting... that was an extension of Grey’s Neural Frame. Meaning...

Not just the +STR and +SPD of the helm had Grey’s +100% applied to it...

But so too did the +100 of his Call of the Skrill mutated mask.

’I need an END type helm or mask to fill my last slot right now.’

Grey grinned ear to ear.