Second Genesis

Grey twirled the disk on his finger as though it were a basketball, lost in thought. His mind seemed elsewhere for a moment, but it looked as though he was staring at Breejah’s beautiful face.

She blushed slightly, looking away. Of course, she didn’t embarrass so easily, but she thought that that sort of reaction was exactly the sort Grey would want to see.

Unfortunately for her, Grey couldn’t see much but a brick wall after he realized the real reason she was here.

"Okay. Do you sell any maps to these higher cities?" Grey asked.

Technically, he could just use Frantz’s treasure to get there in one shot, but he knew better than to try something so crazy. He liked his life intact even if he could revive.

There was something particularly humiliating about dying. He hadn’t experienced it in a while, and he’d like to keep it that way.

Well, a "while" was actually just a couple days of real time. But hey, he’d take his wins where he could get them.

"We do, but these maps are expensive," she said with a smile after her flirtatious gaze faltered a bit.

Grey chuckled. "Let me see. Show me the three closest to my current location."

"Right away," Breejah said, swiftly changing tactics. Not all men were charmed by looks. Grey was a teenage boy so they thought this would work best. But if not, there were other ways.

She pulled up three maps and each one was worth 120,000 credits.

’Fucking highway robbery.’ Grey thought, shaking his head. This was more expensive than a Proving Class blueprint by far.

He bought them anyway. It didn’t actually cost him much in the grand scheme.

The maps were quickly integrated into his overall map, and the result was a huge swath of land opening up to him instantly.

Breejah couldn’t help but be surprised. She thought Grey would be cautious, maybe comparing and contrasting some of the amenities of the various cities. While they obviously didn’t show the full map in the introductions, there were still some ways of differentiating between what were better purchases.

The last thing she expected was for Grey to instantly buy up all three.

"Alright. A while back some nun lady hit me with a blessing that reversed the direction of all my Neural Pathways. I need an Ability that can counter something like that."

Grey was pretty sure the effects of his Crimson Dragon Nexis Suit could do that, namely the Dragonscale ability. But eventually he would outgrow it, and if he ever ran into a situation where he couldn’t rely on his Nexis Suit, it would be nice to have his own protection.

Plus, the Crimson Dragon Nexis Suit was designed for Linear and Recursive Neural Frames. Meaning, if someone had the ability to target his Resonant Frame specifically—like disrupting his rhythm, or cursing his sphere of senses itself—then he might still need something outside the Nexis Suit itself to protect himself.

Breejah nodded. "This sounds like a very complicated curse. Very few people can cast something like this. Since you mentioned a nun, then it is almost certainly an Oracle in training.

"In that case, you’ll need something specific. What is your Neural Frame Type?"

Grey just smiled. "Just show me all the options you have."

Breejah’s gaze flickered. She considered what Grey just said very silly. She could see the inventory of the tower, so once he picked something, she would know which Frame Type he had.

’Unless he purposely buys more than one to throw me off the scent?’

Remembering how Grey had bought three city maps just for the fun of it, she realized then that Grey just might do that.

She sighed inwardly. He had gone from so flirty to so cautious instantly.

Soon, a list of Abilities was laid out before Grey.

’These price gouging cunts,’ Grey cursed silently to himself.

The prices were exorbitant. Each one was in the millions of credits, the most expensive of them being eight million. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

’Whatever.’ Grey thought, picking out the most expensive one specifically for its vindictive nature.

The Ability was literally called Vindictive Reversal. It could absorb curses and debuffs levied at the body and then reflect them at greater power.

The problem was that you could only gain the strongest of those effects if you managed to reach Core Sync. And to reach Core Sync with an Ability, you needed to tie it to a Frame.

Right now, all of Grey’s Frames were filled, and in some cases over-filled.

However, he had one Linear Frame in Vampire Lord, one Branching Frame in Helion, a Resonant Frame in Last Paladin...

He had a slot for one more Frame. A Recursive Frame. And Vindictive Reversal happened to be exactly the sort of ability that might fit with a Recursive Frame.

Now he just needed a Recursive Frame.

At this point, Grey wasn’t even counting his so-called Prometheus Frame. He didn’t know what it was, couldn’t sense it, and it didn’t seem to have any abilities. Even reaching Stage II hadn’t done anything to change that.

Breejah was even more baffled when Grey just picked out the most expensive Ability and called it a day.

But as baffled as she was, when he pressed the Cyber Warp to himself and it vanished nearly instantly, she was floored. What kind of bandwidth did Grey’s Neural Frame have to have to download an Ability that complex so quickly?

"What do you think the best way for me to get a powerful Frame would be?" Grey asked.

"... Instances."

"Do you sell information on Instances?"

"Yes."

"Truly powerful ones?"

"The more powerful it is, the more scarce and abstruse the information. The lower tier Instances might give you direct information. The higher tier ones, not only is the information about the exact difficulty unknown, but it might only be a clue that leads you to another clue that only then leads you to the right location."

"I see..." Grey nodded. "I need a better Recursive Frame. I need a particularly powerful one, the most powerful one you have. Give me the best you’ve got that guarantees it’s related to Recursive Frames."