Universal Power System

Using the last few of his special credits, Mako purchased a few essentials such as pills and a few pieces of scouting tech.

Next, it was Nathan’s turn to spend his credits, and thanks to Mako giving him a brand new Level 5 ability book, he was far stronger in the aspect of abilities; however, he still clearly lacked in armor and physical weaponry, both essential things for him and his team if he wanted them to clear the test and survive.

He had browsed through several items before but nothing really had jumped out to him as none fit his very unique and precise style of fighting.

He always relied on his Advanced Perception ability to make sure he always had the upper hand in every fight by being able to sense incoming attacks and being able to predict and analyze fight patterns.

His whole fighting style relied on his ability to adapt and overcome every situation he was put in but that was a guaranteed way of eventually losing as no matter how strong he got, he could never fully rely on just his senses and predictability to allow him to escape or adapt to every fight as his opponents became more stronger and have unique traits of their own.

Now with another ability under his belt, he was far more comfortable with taking fights as he had more options on how to engage the enemy.

Currently, he possesses the Level 5 Advanced Perception, Level 5 Hack, and now the Level 5 Blood Wolf Transformation ability.

Nathan opted to bring back his old transformational ability rather than his Explosion ability as even though the Explosion ability had more offensive capabilities and higher damage potential, it was very limited with few useful skills.

The Blood Wolf Transformation on the other hand provided Nathan with an ample amount of options to utilize it in the best way possible considering the situation he is in.

If he requires just a simple boost to his stats, he can activate partial transformation and gain a tiny boost. If instead, he requires a greater boost, then he can completely transform and take on the appearance of the Blood Wolf, or if he wants only to use the Blood manipulation which was the natural ability of the Blood Wolf, he could do simply that with multiple skills available for both his blood manipulation and his transformation ability.

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Right now, Nathan was browsing through the various stalls of the military display for the second time as he was still unsure of which path to go down in order to best utilize his current fighting style and abilities.

There were many eye-catching pieces of armor and weapons on display, each having great stats and passive or active skills but Nathan was still hesitant as none of them really worked well with his current build.

As the options began to run out, Nathan was feeling a bit defeated as he realized he would just have to go with a generic build and hope for the best.

His quirk, even though very greatly overpowered was acting as both a blessing and a curse. Thanks to his quirk, Nathan possessed quite unique and rare abilities that the average cadets would never hope to possess but because of this, it was proving quite difficult for him to find suitable items that would complement his abilities and help amplify them in one way or another.

After facing defeat at the last weapons stall in the display, Nathan sighed and was about to turn around to buy the couple of armor pieces and weapons that still looked decent to him and just call it a day, but just then his eyes landed onto a unique piece of equipment on display in the tech section of the display.

Nathan had no idea what it was but the Hack ability inside of him seemed to have a strong reaction to it and was pulling him to go further and take a closer.

Seeing as this was the first time he felt some sort of reaction from his abilities, Nathan was curious and decided to check it out.

The item in question was a regular mannequin, the size of the average cadet but was completely covered from neck to toe in some sort of mechanical suit that was ultra thin and constantly pulsating as if it was alive, changing its texture and color randomly.

Nathan’s Hack ability instantly reacted as he took a closer look at the mannequin, his ability being able to recognize what the mannequin was covered in instantly.

Nanites!

The mannequin was displaying a full-body suit made completely from microscopic robots, interlocking together and forming a unique armor around the whole body.

Nathan’s hackability was able to realize the inner workings of the nanite suit just by looking at them move. He could understand the nanites communicating with one another effortlessly and coming together to form a durable-looking one-piece body armor.

With no intention at all, Nathan’s hand suddenly began moving on its own towards the nanite suit. The ability inside of him became more and more alive as his hand neared the suit, his mind seemingly melding together with the millions of nanites as they continued to shift around and exchange information.

As soon as Nathan’s hand made contact with the nanites, a reaction occurred as Nathan’s mind made a connection with the nanites and the suit instantly stopped pulsing as all the nanites stopped all of their movement and locked themselves in place, forming a solid suit.

Millions of tiny streams of information followed through Nathan’s mind as he had now just taken control and overridden the suit, becoming the main unit that would pass out commands to the nanites to execute without any delay.

All the information about the nanites was quickly uploaded into Nathan’s brain as within a single second of him touching the nanite suit, he had already learned about all of the various functionalities of the suit and the capabilities of the nanites that made it.

It had only been a couple of seconds but the vendor assigned to the stall quickly took notice of one of his star pieces suddenly becoming deactivated and noticed Nathan’s hand touching it.

The vendor had no clue as to why a cadet’s single touch would cause the whole suit to become deactivated but he didn’t really care as he seemed like the probable cause of why the suit shut down so quickly.

So the vendor quickly reached out and grabbed onto Nathan’s hand, pulling it away from the nanite suit while instantly making it spring back to life and pulsate like before.

The vendor was visibly confused as he couldn’t understand why the suit was reacting in such a way but he now knew for sure that it was because of Nathan.

After getting his hand forcefully removed from the nanite suit, Nathan quickly snapped out of his trance with slight annoyance and a terrible headache. He quickly freed his hand from the vendor’s grasp who was still confused as to what had just happened.

"What the hell did you just do, kid" The vendor asked Nathan.

Nathan still feeling weak after getting his hand removed replied with discomfort in his voice, "I don’t know... It’s your damn machine!"

The vendor wasn’t expecting such an attitude and decided just to let it go after seeing that Nathan was not behaving normally and he didn’t know whether it was the suit that did something to him.

Whatever it was, the vendor didn’t want to get into trouble and risk getting the officials involved.

"Nevermind... Are you okay, kid?" The vendor asked, trying to diffuse the situation and calm Nathan down.

After a couple of seconds, the headache seemed to have gone away and Nathan was back to normal. It was hard to explain what had happened as it wasn’t anything that he or the nanite suit did, but it only occurred after his hand broke contact with the suit.

He didn’t know what to make of that but knew that he would have to look into it further once he had complete access to the suit.

That’s right! In the mere seconds that Nathan made contact with the suit, he learned about all of its capabilities and was now determined to buy the nanite suit.

"Yeah... I’m fine, sorry about that," Nathan apologized to the vendor, diffusing the situation completely. "I must have just gotten a bit lightheaded,"

Even though Nathan’s behavior was quite odd, the vendor decided just to shrug it off and take his word for it.

Nathan immediately began asking for the price of the nanite suit to which the vendor’s eyes glowed a little as he hadn’t been able to make a single sale all day. It seemed that none of the cadets were interested in high-tech weapons and armor components as all they wanted were the regular power weapons and armor.

The vendor began to explain all the details about the nanite suit and it seemed like he would go on to talk for hours, but all of this information was stuff that Nathan had learned through his Hack ability when he touched the suit.

He pushed the vendor to skip past the details and just give him a price so that he could see if he could afford this very important item that would be crucial for his performance in the exam.

"Well kid, this suit comes with the complete bundle which includes the suit, the holding cartridge to store the nanites when they are not in use, 3 additional nanite cartridges to replace any that get damaged, and a neural interface transmitter that would connect your mind to the nanites, allowing you to control them with your thoughts alone." The vendor explained.

"Oh... for the love of God, just tell me the price," Nathan said with annoyance clearly evident in his tone.

No wonder this guy wasn’t able to make a single sale the entire day, the way he drags on the conversation would put any cadet to sleep.

"Oh yeah... right, this complete bundle will cost you 800 tokens," The vendor replied while nervously scratching the back of his head.

It was way too expensive and completely out of Nathan’s budget of 500 tokens.

’Damn it!’ Nathan cursed in his thoughts as not only was the suit too expensive for him, but he had to waste so much time listening to this idiot talk about all of its features.

Nathan was feeling more hopeless than ever before, he had no idea what he was going to do now as the nanite suit was the perfect item to suit his every need but he was 300 tokens short.

Out of desperation, Nathan asked the vendor if he could give him a discount of any sort to which the vendor sadly nodded no.

"I’m sorry, but it is strictly prohibited for us to manipulate the prices for anyone, I can’t help you." The vendor replied putting the final nail in the coffin of Nathan’s hopes.

"It’s a shame that they made it this expensive, nobody that has shown interest at it today was able to afford it," The vendor said with a look of pity, "I don’t get who was in charge of these prices... the neural interface transmitter alone is worth 400 special tokens... It really is a shame,"

All of sudden, a spark of hope reignited inside of Nathan’s heart as he continued to listen to the vendor yap on and on.

"What did you just say...?"