Jake was aware that climbing, willingly back onto that table was probably a sign he was going insane. But if this worked, he could hunt even stronger monsters. To maintain the town for a day at optimum comfort for all the citizens. Plenty of water, air, food, and power to live without worry he needed something like three B rank cores a day. Lesser ones converted up at a rate of ten to one just like their credit value. But to support Ella's town he needed three times that much. The credit value that players were given was actually pretty bad he thought but didn't really see a reason to complain.
He had set a goal for himself of fueling both long enough that if something happened to him they would be fine until others could take his place. He hated the thought of someone else having to do this. Worse, doing it and not knowing the truth. But, he didn't see any other options. So he would seek out more power for himself. He wanted to leave for the next region. But alone they wouldn't let him go. Even if they accepted that his attributes weren't being measured right they didn't think he was strong enough to risk the next tier.
At a minimum they wanted all his equipment upgraded to an acceptable level. What that was he wasn't sure but he figured his main armor was at least there now.
A new drone entered the room, below it hovered a prismatic object. Glowing in a rainbow of different colors. As it got closer he realized it was an elemental heart. But unlike anyone he had seen so far.
"Just hold still. I need to prep your gauntlets for the upgrade." Jon's voice came over the speaker.
"I thought basic bought gear couldn't be upgraded more than once. Don't I need custom ones first?" The table felt like it was humming under him again. It had done this before when he prepared to install the armor. The air even started to vibrate around him.
"Normally yes. But your weapons are as unique as you are. Have you noticed how they partially integrate with your flesh? Your boots too. This isn't normal." Jake remembered Cass and Gadget both had upgraded boots but they didn't shape shift. They had just turned into a different style.
"I believe this is something to do with your unique class. Most classes are assigned to new players based on their innate strengths and abilities. Anything with a weapon you might recognize, like a gun or a wizard's staff, is just a combination of skills prepared for them that they can use. Truly unique classes like your own, well they are generated by the grand AI left by the founders. It means you possess something that requires a truly unique setup to maximize your potential." Jon's tone was excited again.
"But what about other unique classes like the Flak Cannon?" Jake asked as much to keep from thinking about the pain that was certain to come with the upgrade as out of curiosity.
"That isn't a real Unique class. Anything that uses a weapon someone else could in theory pick up and use doesn't count. Even if someone ripped your gauntlets off. When they tried to use them they wouldn't be able to partially merge with them. Well if they were lucky. If they did try to integrate with someone else, I expect it wouldn't end up well for the others." There was a pause. "It gets complicated I guess. But just understand that true unique classes are really really rare. One in a million kinda rare." Jon's voice got giddy. "I'm so glad you started here."
The air was now electric, and sparks of energy were visible. But Jake felt nothing this time, his purple glowing bar did start to decrease slowly. He figured that meant it was working properly. The air did feel heavier around him tho making it hard to breathe. "Put your hands together please. It will make this easier." Jake laid his hands over one another on his chest.
"Good good." Jon said. Then the drone was hovering right over him.
"Will this be like the last one?" Jake asked his mouth suddenly dry.
"You mean hurt? No no." There was a pause. "Probably."
Before Jake could react to that last part the drone dropped the elemental heart, the omniheart. It landed on Jake's gauntlet. A voice spoke in his mind startling him.
"Upgrade Material Accepted." It was a digital female voice.
Jake's gauntlets both turned into liquid metal and merged together into one large mass. The prismatic heart floated on the top and then Jake watched as what looked frighteningly like a mouth opened out of that blob of liquid metal and swallowed the heart. There was a loud crunching sound as if it was chewing up the hard elemental heart. So far though, no pain.
"Error. Insufficient materials." The same female voice spoke into Jake's mind. The living metal shifting and moving around his hands stilled and returned to just large oversized gauntlets. They were smoother now, more… organic looking. Less like mechanical armor and more like living oversized hands. But other than that, no changes.
"It says there wasn't enough material?" Jake shouted as he flexed his fingers.
"What?" Jon's voice came over the speaker sounding annoyed.
Shortly after he was bounding down the steps back into the room. Jake sat on the table looking at his gauntlets.
"No no no this makes no sense. That was an A grade upgrade material. The entire heart, do you know how hard it is to get an intact elemental heart?" Jon was pawing at Jake's hands before putting on goggles to inspect them a second time. "Ugh. Great, I don't know what went wrong. It should have worked. I really should have worked." He seemed frustrated then suddenly calmed down. "Oh well, at least your hands didn't blow up." Then just shrugged.
Jake decided he had gotten more than enough upgrades for one day.
**********
Growling and barking the shaman ordered the lesser Grims to their tasks. Two of the smaller monsters dragged a corpse over to him. It was the largest of the ones they had. Its hands were badly damaged and its head was gone. The Shaman looked it over before barking out its orders. The Grims started stripping off their gear to be taken to the liquid metal pools and fed to them. The corpse would be taken to the spawning pool and given to the first champion.
Grims had no gender, there were no males or females. So the shaman believed he had two different species of corpses. He had created a second champion spawning pool and was feeding the smaller weaker looking corpses to it. He didn't want to taint his first champion with the lesser race, no matter what his god had said. Thus all the male corpses were tossed into one pit and the female into another. He stood and watched as the dark sludge dissolved them. The single egg floating in each one pulsed as it sucked up the nutrition.
Drool dribbled from his chin with excitement as his narrow lips pulled back with unrestrained excitement. None of them had stone hearts to use. But it didn't matter. He had fed all their strange weapons and armor to the pool of living metal. It seemed to be helping. His smile grew bigger as he remembered the old chieftain's screams of agony as the blessings grew faster from his body. Soon, they would be able to move to the next stage of their god's plan.
**********
Jake checked in with Clive who eyed his new armor with both interest and trepidation. "You speak to Jon?" When Jake nodded Clive shook his head. "I tried to get them to keep him from reaching out to you. But your town seemed to think it should be left up to you."
Jake shrugged. "Well, at least it all worked out." Clive said. "It did all work out right?"
"Well enough." Jake paused. "Any news on the Gigatortoise?"
"It is still moving away from us, currently it is moving into the deep wilds. Not towards any hub, so we are lucky." Clive paused then before adding. "We still haven't found any of the other bodies. But we couldn't risk sending others down into a permadeath zone. You understand?"
Jake just nodded. Only Cass's corpse had been recovered since he brought it out of the permadeath zone. He couldn't ask anyone else to go in there. Nor did he feel he could go in himself to look. He thought they deserved a proper burial but the shrink the town had him seeing who knew the truth. Insisted that going in there would probably be bad for his mental state. Jake had relented, reluctantly.
It was still early enough for him to make it over to the God's Fist area where he thought there were at least two packs of Maws left to hunt. After absorbing the processed mutagen from the day before he nodded to Clive and then he left off.
Battling the Maws he went all out for the first time. Not only to test out his new armor but because his Survivor's Fury was on cooldown still. He had gained another noticeable boost to speed and strength after absorbing more mutagen. This time he also utilized his Rift Jumper ability. The new armor's shield appeared to only deflect about as much physical damage as his old. The blue glow lowered but the purple stayed full each time he was attacked. It did seem to recharge much faster tho. Also, the armor it self seemed quite durable, handling the sharp gnashing teeth of the Maw monsters easily. It was soft and flexible like leather normally but would also harden like steel when hit. It really was the best of all deals.
He managed to kill twenty four Maws without ever going below half health. Jake considered that an encouraging improvement. If he could get the rest of his gear upgraded, he would demand to be allowed to move to the next region.
Leaving the Maws he was at least not exhausted for a change. Still, it was well past dark as he trudged back towards the hub. He hadn't gone very far when he heard a voice on the wind. Following it, the blatant desperate cries for help grew louder and clearer. The female voice sounded raspy as if they had been yelling for a long time. Hearing it made his steps quicken.