[CYA] Chapter 167: A Great Plan (Patreon)

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<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Cargo Bay>

Alex stood facing Juba, both men already well worked and in fighting mindset.

They’d done ground work and hand-to-hand fighting. The dark skinned man had utterly trounced Alex at every turn.

Oh, Alex was getting better, and kept in the fight for far longer than he had the first times they’d trained against one another, but the victor was never in question.

It didn’t help Alex’s attempts that he didn’t have any skill or training surrounding ground fighting save what he remembered from his martial arts days back in high school.

He did have knowledge of how to move his body, but that was equivalent to stage-combat training if anything. He wasn’t about to hurt himself, but actually hurting his opponent? He was building those skills from the ground up.

Now, however, he held his lineage steel dadao, and his rare fighting skill with the weapon was in full effect. As a passive skill, it would be allowed in this first exchange, even if more active ones like Multi-Strike were off the table.

Alex had placed the training edge of his weapon himself, verifying that the dissonant magics in his weapon didn’t interfere with something he placed on it. In consideration, that was likely how it was able to be sheathed, or even placed within his own Inventory without causing issues.

Regardless, the blade was dulled with a magical item that rendered any hit from his weapon down to a hearty thwack.

For this first clash, he wasn’t going to use a shield, relying solely on his remade weapon.

Juba chose an interesting combination of short sword and round force shield. The latter was a simple arm-guard that projected a round shield of force that remained fixed to the attendant arm.

Protection without weight.

Juba had complained that they weren’t very good in actual combat because the magics involved were binary, either holding perfectly or failing entirely. A physical shield could at least be seen to be degrading to give warning that it might give out. There were expensive variants that had indicators, but that was the realm of noble’s equipment.

Regardless, Juba had chosen it for this spar with a cheeky smile after Alex had explained the effect his weapon might have.

From what the description said, proximity to his dadao—when drawn—would cause disruption to anything not of the wielder or creator. That was vague enough that Alex was excited to test it out, but apparently, Juba had understood enough from that tidbit to change his gear based upon it.

The two men faced off one another for a long moment before Alex began to circle.

Juba circled in turn, holding his shield higher than traditional, taking advantage of its force nature to watch from behind the protection.

Alex executed a testing strike, and the shield punched out to intercept it.

Both men almost seemed to be holding their breath as the dadao connected.

The force shield… fuzzed, the vambrace seeming to give off a distressed buzzing sound as the magics struggled to continue.

Alex’s dadao slowed markedly—especially given he hadn’t put too much force into the blow—but didn’t stop.

Juba was able to jump backward, avoiding the sweeping cut and pulling his shield free of the sword.

There was a momentary silence before Juba exalted. “Yes!” He laughed jubilantly. “Yes, my friend. Yes!”

Alex found himself chuckling along with the exuberant man. “Are you ready?”

A black-on-black eyebrow raised. “Ready? This must be some sort of joke. My friend. I am eager.”

With no further warning, he charged forward.

Alex met the other man, getting the feel for his new weapon.

It was easier to use than ever, the multipliers it imparted allowed him to move just a bit faster and both block and strike with more power.

Juba switched to using his shield more like a cloak, to catch and divert rather than truly block or stop Alex’s swings or stabs, and that fact shifted their battle to one of dynamic movement and constant repositioning.

Alex’s smile grew as he finally matched the man on near-equal footing. He could tell he was still the lesser warrior, but in this, at least, the gap seemed surmountable.

They had clashed for nearly two minutes when Juba was finally forced to parry Alex’s attack with his own sword.

When the dadao encountered the magically reinforced training sword, the weapon seemed to tremble, buzzing in Juba’s hand and causing the man to flinch in surprise, dropping his weapon and allowing Alex to step forward and strike him on the shoulder.

The man blinked in surprise, then began to laugh again, the action infectious. “Truly, Alex, you are a wonder. We must test if that works on combat weaponry, or only training items.” He was nodding to himself. “These are not worked to resist interference, while my true set is, as are any of worth you will encounter in enemy hands.”

He shook his head. “But that is for later. You have won! Shall we go again?”

Alex calmed his wide grin and nodded. “I would quite like that, yes. Thank you.”

Juba waved that away. “No thanks, my friend. We learn and grow toward the benefit of all.”

They clashed again and again, adding in active skills and spells, and Alex’s dadao was a joy to wield.

It didn’t negate anything, not entirely, but it did have some interesting results.

In general, there were two types of skills or spells. Those that were actively fed power by the user, and those that were effectively packets of power, released on the world.

An example of the first was the force-shield that Juba was using. When Alex’s sword came into contact with things like that, it sent a resonant dissonance back to the source, making it harder or more costly to maintain, all while weakening the effect in a localized area.

The second came into play for things like the wind-blades that Juba could create.

They were wonderful harrying attacks, capable of cutting unshielded eyes or giving the equivalent of papercuts on skin, but they wouldn’t pierce armor without significant power added beyond the norm.

Eventually, Juba would be able to cut through almost anything, but that was still years off, according to him.

Pilar had similar limitations with her unaugmented spells, though they were less stark.

Her fire could ravage the surface level of anything—heat being a powerful means of damage—but when undead weakness to flame wasn’t present, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as the woman had come to expect.

Regardless, whether Juba’s wind blades or Pilar’s fireballs, Alex’s sword could destabilize the power that composed the makeup.

In this, Alex found that the System granted original spells were all but immediately dispersed, regardless of rarity or magical type, but as soon as they were advanced by a given person, they became more stable, more refined, and less influenced by the dissonance.

This leaned into his growing understanding of the magical language and the issues the System had with it.

System granted spells—in this case—could be likened to long, verbose, overly wordy sets of instructions, and those were refined and streamlined by a given caster as they increased their proficiency. Each was trying to convey its intention via radio, and his sword introduced static.

The more convoluted the instruction, the easier the gist was lost in a bit of static, but when a spell was short and simple? Even mountains of static could be overcome, and the instructions received regardless.

This, of course, didn’t perfectly fit the reality of the situation, but after sparring with everyone who would give him the chance and testing his weapon against all the magics he could safely test it against, he was fairly confident in his general understanding.

And everyone did spar. With the bio-clean-ups, they were each a bit off kilter, but sparring and moving through their daily tasks helped level that out in short order. Even so, it would be a while before they stopped encountering the oddities every so often.

With their ship repaired and improved, the rest had to come to an end eventually, and it was finally time to sit down and decide the next jump destination.

The spin-up time had been improved to just six hours, and there were only two hours left before that point was reached.

Alex sat in the dining hall, focusing on his power as it flowed into the System provided form of Create Rations, while around him, the other Initiates were arguing about their next steps.

It was hard to view the pirate venture as a failure, despite the difficulties, but no one really wanted to repeat the experience, at least not right away.

Even so, the distress signal they were getting from one of the in-range star systems was… troubling.

It was a looping message, of a clearly terrified crewman, and the shadows of obviously hostile something could be seen in the background every so often in the short recording.

The station in question was a high priority for the Imperium, so investigating would give rewards no matter what they found, but it was still a rather unpleasant prospect.

Other options included a privately owned mining star system that they would actually have to pay to visit, but exercising the purchased rights generally returned quite nicely on the investment; another star system held a theorized pirate base, this one with four even smaller ships suspected to be a part of the group; and finally, a star system was undergoing a stellar flare, causing a breakdown of some key systems that a local planet didn’t have replacements for.

There were mountains of information provided for each possible mission, but Alex really didn’t want to be a part of the decision, so he didn’t pay too much attention.

There were also at least eight dozen systems with no specific notes or ongoing missions available to them, all within jump range.

As to how they had such a suite of selections? Well, in addition to reducing spin-up time and increasing accuracy, they’d also greatly increased jump distance. The reasoning they used to justify this was that it would let them be more choosy about where they went, as well as requiring fewer jumps to reach Dorgon when it was time to head that way.

They were not interested in arriving early, as from what they’d gathered from Bev, that would lead them to be roped into space-based orbital defense, which… they weren’t really interested in.

“I still say that with the new weapons, the pirate system is a good option.” Pilar crossed her arms and huffed.

John nodded but was also the one to push back on his wife’s statement. “Yes, love, but we can also get bonuses on the far end for having completed a variety of different types of missions.”

Grant grunted. “But we also get bonuses for each of the same type we complete.”

Alex grimaced. The concept reminded him of the science mechanic in Seven Wonders, and he’d always ignored that portion of the game if he could help it.

Though… that might mean that I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. His grimace grew.

When he’d played strategy games with coworkers or friends, he tended to find parts of any given game that seemed overly complicated or didn’t click with his thinking and actively ignored them. This was no different.

In all honesty, he didn’t much care what star systems they jumped to. He would help where he could, but his focus was on his own progression.

He had attributes to level, skills to hone, and the magical mysteries of items to unravel.

He was almost always training his resistance to magic, even if that one seemed among the slowest to advance. The oscillating tingling told him that his friends were continuing to push his resistance to examination forward. He doubted he’d find a ready source of curses to train that attribute, but venom…

Venom?

He had a thought and cleared his throat. “Can I see that distress call again?”

Everyone turned to him as his question cut through the far ranging discussion.

Kaylee shrugged and pulled it up on the nearest wall.

As Alex watched it play, he began to smile. “Pause it there.”

She complied, looking to him with a question.

He stood, walking over to the wall and pointing at the man’s neck, near the collar of his coverall. “See that?”

Everyone leaned in.

It was Lenka who responded first. “A reddening of the skin, a swelling, and is that a puncture mark?”

Alex nodded. “I think so. Later on, he starts rubbing that spot. I think he was bitten by whatever is in the ship.”

Grant gave Alex on odd look. “I thought you weren’t paying attention.”

Alex shrugged. “I caught what I needed.”

The other man grunted even as Natasha and Pilar shared a look, and the Russian sighed. “Spider bodies?”

The fiery woman smirked. “I thought he was past that.”

Alex shuddered at the momentarily powerful memory of waking up, literally buried alive in spider carcasses. “Not quite, but yes.”

Everyone turned their attention from the screen to him.

He shook himself, attempting to banish the memory. “I have an ability to resist venom, and it would be nice to be able to advance that.”

Grant smacked his forehead and groaned.

Lenka scrunched her face in obvious distaste and confusion, and John sighed loudly. “So, Alex, let me see if I understand you.”

Alex looked toward the marksman. “Go ahead.”

John nodded and gave a small smirk. “So, you want us to go into a space station filled with venomous creatures so that you can let them bite you?”

Alex swallowed, created water and swallowed again. “Yes?”

Grant barked a laugh, standing and walking to the kitchen. “Insane.”

Pilar and Natasha shared ‘I knew it’ looks, and Kaylee’s gaze became entirely flat. “Are you serious.”

Alex shrugged. “Yes?”

She sighed, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose. “You know, we can’t jump without you. It’s not good to put yourself in so much danger.”

He waved that off. “First of all, yes, you could. Without the helmsman, those controls would default to another crewman.”

Everyone gave him disbelieving stares, with even Grant leaning out to look his way with obvious, baffled confusion.

“But!” Alex held up his hands. “But, that won’t be necessary. I’ll be fine, especially with Juba at my side.” He gave a broad, innocent grin. “It’s a great plan.”

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