Just a Guy and a Gate to the Multiverse - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Chapter 8 - The wrong way to use a Stimpack

— The Institute, 2287 —

Third Person POV

The Directorate is deeply worried, if not outright panicking. That is probably the best way to describe the current situation.

Not only have they recently suffered an unprecedented breach of their defenses, a common Mister Handy robot somehow managed to attach itself to one of their Coursers during one of its surface mission, while the teleportation relay transported him back.

It caused quite a bit of chaos, shouting about returning some kind of young master while putting their Facilities on fire, before it was finally taken down by their synth defense forces.

None of them had any idea how that blasted thing had managed to accomplish that. That was simply not how the teleportation relay technology worked.

Worse, recent events in the Commonwealth have begun to challenge and contradict their understanding of their own work.

How is someone meant to react if the data they gathered challenged and disproved everything they believed in? Are there any protocols? Did someone do research in such a field of social Science? The very foundation upon which the Institute is built is crumbling directly beneath their feet, and they do not know how to react to it.

Their organization and its people have dedicated themselves to science, efficiency, research, and the progress of humanity itself. They are the peak of technology in this world, and they have unshakable faith in their accomplishments.

So how are they supposed to react when the data recorded by their own intelligence network challenges their belief in everything their scientific understanding stands for? They are the peak in intelligence gathering in this world. It is not an anomaly in the data. That might happen once, but not repeatedly.

At this point, their own eyes have witnessed it, yet their minds have a hard time accepting it. It should be impossible, and yet there it is.

How are they supposed to accept such a reality? How often do they have to ask that question until finally someone could come up with an answer?

They have always been aware of the occult and the supernatural, or at least the reports of strange sightings, cults performing sacrificial rituals, unexplained phenomena, and similar events.

But they never considered it a real possibility. While the reports existed, they were so niche and limited that they could always be dismissed as figments of imagination.

After all, they had never been their own reports or their own intelligence.

None of their synths or agents had ever reported anything similar. Sure, some of them disappeared without explanation, but that could have had many reasons.

Accidents, being killed before sending any data, the Railroad helping them escape and covering their tracks, or any number of other possibilities. There were endless explanations beyond anything supernatural.

Yet here they are. Factual proof recorded by their intelligence units. Not once, but again and again, wherever that subject moves. They have gathered data on hundreds of actions caused by that being since he appeared out of nowhere, and those actions are impossible to explain with their understanding of science.

Every head of the Directorate has reached the same conclusion. Whatever they are facing here is actual magic.

It is a form of magic that somehow follows the laws of physics at the same time, yet should be impossible to perform without highly dedicated technical equipment. And there it is, performing these feats with mere symbols in the form of circles inscribed onto different surfaces.

They even have several recordings of him drawing complex magic circles onto the ground in order to transform one material into a completely different one, build complex machinery, or even completely remove radiation from the area inside the circle.

If that is not proof of magic, then they do not know what is.

Added to that is the fact that none of them have managed to replicate his feats with exact replicas of his magic circles. Once, Dr. Li, the head of the Advanced Systems department, stepped out of the Institute and visited the remains of one of his magic circles. But she could not activate it either.

She found no traces of special materials there. It was a circle drawn into the dirt with a stick. Nothing more, just like something a child would draw while pretending to be a wizard.

And that is not the limit of his supernatural abilities.

They know he has some form of superhuman regeneration that outperforms conventional medical procedures, though they do not know its limits. The only reason they know about it is because he once left his power armor and was ambushed by a mongrel he had not realized was still alive.

The beast ripped his hand clean off, including the glove with the magic circle on it. Yet that being simply regrew his hand before reshaping his surroundings into spears that pierced through the mongrel’s body.

Maybe a clean shot through the head would kill that being, but they could not be sure of it. Complete, instantaneous annihilation might be the only way to kill him, and that would be hard to accomplish.

Especially since he is getting stronger rapidly. The most recent intelligence data about his physique confirmed super mutant levels of physical strength, while his outward appearance remained completely human.

It does not seem to be the result of an F.E.V. mutation.

Unfortunately, the Institute is unable to gather intelligence on that being while he isolates himself inside Vault 111. He has completely shut off any possibility of entering that vault or gaining access to the surveillance system from the outside.

His spikes in strength happen while he shuts himself inside that vault. Although they seem to have slowed down, his increase in strength is no longer as rapid as it was in the beginning.

Then there is his power armor. An impossible product, seemingly running on an infinite power source and breaking the laws of science once again.

At first, it was just an old T-45 power armor, the first usable model from the pre-war era, with devastating weaknesses. Even with his modifications, it would have been manageable. But over the months he appeared in the wasteland, he kept upgrading his armor to newer models.

Then he got his hands on some T-51 parts, and his threat level rose again. That was followed by the T-60. Finally, he even decided to attack some remnants of the Enclave and got his hands on the X-01 and X-02 models, turning his power armor, combined with his own modifications, into a weapon of mass destruction.

He is a walking army in one person.

At the same time, he is the main point of discussion within the Institute. Normally, such an individual would have been designated for immediate elimination.

Yet he somehow fulfilled one of the Institute’s main goals. Somehow, he created a source of infinite, independent power with his magic.

The debate was very heated, and the Institute was split like never before.

On one hand, he, whatever he was, seemed to follow a mindset very similar to their own. One of constant progress and scientific improvement.

The being dedicated most of his time in the wasteland to the acquisition of technology and data. He raided one vault after another, scavenging uninhabited ones for any working technology, whether it was their life-support systems, like water chips, experimental technology, like Vault 112’s Tranquility Lounger, or simply the data from the vault experiments.

He seems to have great knowledge of the hidden locations of the wasteland, easily accessing any facility and knowing the best paths into them. That had always been a challenge for the Institute. Just by monitoring him, they learned the locations of several vaults and facilities they had not known about before.

Even facilities that had been secretly constructed after the war. That made it entirely possible that he even knew the whereabouts of the Institute.

His own portable terminals, flat and compact models with graphical interfaces no one in the Institute had ever seen before, have far greater performance than any known system of similar size. Initially, it took him a while to create an interface for existing terminals, but as soon as he managed it, these allowed him to easily bypass any security system and gain access to a vault’s most intimate data.

Sure, the Institute can do the same. But it takes much more effort, especially when it comes to the logistics behind the hardware.

All these factors make him a potential recruit and ally for the Institute.

Yet at the same time, he is potentially one of the greatest dangers to them as well. He has shown great interest in the creations of the Institute. With his ruthless nature, he pursued any synth crossing his path in order to study them.

Even worse, somehow he is able to accurately identify their hidden synths that have infiltrated the wasteland’s major factions and locations to collect intelligence and manipulate events according to their plans.

No, the supernatural subject calling himself Matt is no easy matter for the Institute. He could be their greatest hope or their biggest threat.

And even after months of discussions, the Directorate is no closer to coming up with a solution or even a decision on their future course.

How was Science even supposed to react to the existence of Magic?

— Vault 111, 2288 —

Matt POV

“4531… 4532… 4533… 4534… achoo!” As soon as I let out the sneeze, I collapsed onto the ground, and my push-up streak was interrupted before I could reach a new record. “Damn, again? I feel like someone is talking about me behind my back a lot.”

“Whenever I find out who’s doing that, I am going to beat the shit out of them,” I muttered weakly while my hand grabbed the Stimpack sitting beside me on the floor before ramming it into my waist.

As soon as the medicine spread through my body, I felt my muscle tissue heal itself from the intense training, removing all the strain that had built up.

It’s my alternative to visiting that super dangerous Marvel universe with reality-bending entities, or beings that eat not only whole planets, but entire universes too. Honestly, I couldn’t come up with any idea on how to get some form of super strength that wasn’t either beyond my capabilities or didn’t require world attunement.

Instead, I came up with this method. The base concept comes from an anime, ‘The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic’. Basically, the main character of that story has healing magic and gets forced into a hellish training regime that is only possible thanks to said magic.

I took that concept and applied it to the healing items of a video game world, like the Stimpacks of Fallout. Of course, I am not a masochist, and my training is far more moderate than in that anime. I am mostly training on the side, aided by Stimpacks.

But there are some other factors playing a role.

The first would be the world attunement I acquired in the Fullmetal Alchemist world. It gave me the potential of an average person from that world. Assuming I was born average in my previous world, I should have the potential of two average people in one body.

Plus, there is the small fact that fighters in the Fullmetal Alchemist world can reach building-level physical strength, even without alchemy. Something like that isn’t possible on a normal Earth, so it is definitely superhuman strength.

So no matter how my world attunement works, even with average talent, I should have the potential to reach superhuman levels of strength.

That made me do physical training with shortcuts instead of hoping for some kind of Super Soldier Serum to fall into my hands.

A physical workout isn’t the only one I did. I even built myself a combat training simulation in this Vault. How does it work?

While I have collected the technology for deep-dive virtual reality from Vault 112, it’s a bit too complex to use. It’s not as advanced as in Sword Art Online either. They use so-called Visotron loungers, also called Tranquility loungers, to put someone into virtual reality.

Those are some really bulky pods, and it was a pain in the ass to get one of them here all the way from the Capital Wasteland. I had to build my own airship for it. And both Vault 111 and Vault 112 are still on the East Coast.

If I want to visit Shady Sands, I would have to travel across the entire country to the West Coast. Although it has already been destroyed, if the Fallout TV show is part of this continuity. I never specified that to my Multiversal Gate.

Anyway, that VR tech is a pain in the ass to use, and it takes a ton of programming work to even set up a functioning environment. I am just one guy. While I am now a lot smarter after focusing on all the perks that give me knowledge, and after raising my SPECIAL stats to 10, then to 11 with those collectible Bobbleheads, it still takes too much time for me to program a working virtual environment all by myself.

Maybe in the future. Hopefully, I will have a very long life. I am still too busy, leveling has slowed down a lot, and I am still over a hundred levels away from unlocking all perks. It has already been over a year since I got here.

My training simulation chamber uses hard-light holograms. Yes, Fallout has real hard-light technology. I got them from Sierra Madre, a city in the southwest of the country. It was my longest trip to date, but it was well worth it.

The hologram projectors I got from there are a lot simpler to program than an entire virtual environment. They already have standard human models built in. All I had to do was program the hand-to-hand combat movements, and I got an immortal sparring partner.

These things are amazing as a labor force that never tires, or as a security force. The only limitation is that whatever hologram they project needs to remain within the area of the projector, and I need to program most of their functionality. They lack artificial intelligence for now.

That is a topic I am careful around. I saw too many movies and shows where the AI goes rogue. Even in Fallout.

Anyway, those holograms are indestructible. Their only weakness is the projector and the need for energy. But with indefinitely lasting Fusion Cores, that energy requirement is easily taken care of.

The only reason I don’t share my Fusion Cores with others is that I am too scared of people coming after me for them, or them being used against me. Infinite power is the dream of many, especially here.

I already had my fair share of trouble with remnants of the Enclave and the Institute. Both of them tried to capture me.

While it wasn’t unwelcome, since they delivered a lot of tech to me, like the latest version of Power Armor, the X-02 model developed by the Enclave in the last two centuries after the war, it is still annoying.

Also, I expanded my defenses here by a lot. This whole Vault is filled with defensive turrets and fortifications. I sealed the main entrance to this Vault, too. In fact, Sanctuary, the biggest settlement in this region, has expanded far enough to now sit on top of the Vault too.

Instead, I expanded the Vault through a tunnel system with several new rooms. Many of them are hidden behind walls that I transmute every time I want to enter them. If anyone wants to find me in here, they will need a demolition crew.

But those defenses are necessary. I am quite rich now. Not only do I have all that tech I collected, but also plenty of resources. I have an entire room filled with gold bars.

Like I planned, I went all out in this world, abusing my meta knowledge and becoming a major economic power. And yet, even after being here for over a year, I haven’t unlocked all perks yet or accomplished all my goals.

Fighting entire factions alone to loot them is dangerous, after all. But loot is love. The grind goes on.

I will relax in the next world!

Just then, my personal radio signal on my Pip-Boy received a message. “Commander-in-Chief? The troops you specified are ready. We can depart as soon as you want.”

[ End of the Chapter ]