I remained on my back for several minutes, allowing my body a fleeting moment of respite. Normally, this sort of injury would take weeks, if not months, to recover from. Unfortunately, such an amount of time was impossible.
I steeled myself and prepared for the pain. In advance, I took yet another bacta syringe and jammed it into my lower abdomen. This would help a bit with the pain and healing process. Maybe I'd even be combat ready soon.
"Aggghhh!"
With less of a struggle compared to earlier, I managed to sit up. I mostly relied on my arms despite the pain still radiating from my recently relocated right shoulder.
Upon reaching a sitting position I took another deep breath, attempting to clear my head before looking around. As I had thought, no one was moving. I truly hoped it was not true, but the worst case would be that everyone is dead. However, I strongly believed that if I could survive, then there must be others.
Leaning forwards, I pressed off the ground with my arms and struggled to my feet, using the seat above the repair kit to support myself. Once I was upright, my eyes wandered and locked onto my master. He was my first priority.
His eyes were closed and he wasn't moving. He had a streak of blood flowing down his head. It covered an entire half of his face. From what I could see, the rest of his body appeared uninjured.
I walked up to him and wiped my hand on my robes, trying to clear some of the blood. I then held my half dry hand under his nose.
A sigh of relief escaped my mouth as I suppressed a cough. I felt a faint stream of air exiting his nose. This meant he was still alive but unconscious. There was hope.
I repeated this with each of the troopers that we had come with and even the pilots. Sadly, one of the pilots was undoubtedly dead.
I had nearly thrown up when I saw what had happened to him. One of the straps that secured him to his seat was half way through his neck. Blood was covering his entire body and pooling on the floor. He was undoubtedly dead.
Fortunately the copilot was alive, along with my master, and three other troopers. I decided to wait before relocating them. I needed to understand the situation outside first.
I walked to the back of the area everyone had been strapped in. This was where the cargo door was located. Normally, a button could be pressed for it to open. However, it was clear that there was no power in the shuttle. The only reason I was able to see was thanks to the emergency lights that tinted everything red. It was the color of light that required the least amount of energy to generate after all.
I unclipped one of my lightsabers and gripped it with both hands after pointing it towards the cargo bay door.
*PSHHHH*
Using all of the strength I could muster, I pulled up and around, cutting out a large hole in the door. Once I was done, I deactivated my lightsaber and reattached it to my belt. I then held out my left hand and willed for the force to heed my command.
*BCHHH* *CRASH*
The piece of the door I had cut out went flying, crashing into a tree that was several meters from the wreckage. I'm not sure how long I was out for, but it looked to be night time outside. The moonlight pierced through the canopy above and illuminated the interior of the shuttle. I turned around, taking my knife back out and getting ready to move my comrades turned patients.
-GE-
I sat on a short tree stump panting, heavy breaths filling my lungs as I tried to recover from my exhaustion. Fortunately, I was doped up on adrenaline and bacta so pain was currently not an issue.
My five remaining comrades lay motionless on the ground a few meters in front of me. What was I going to do? The shuttle is destroyed, we have no map data, and we are all critically injured. Sadly, this game was not inclined to provide us with a break.
[Quest Received]
[Lone Wolf I]
[Legendary Chain Quest]
[After an altercation with an unidentified freighter, your shuttle has crash landed in the jungles of Kashyyyk. Everyone you came with is either unconscious or dead. Surrounded on all sides by enemies and beasts, find a way to secure the lives of your comrades. The current objective is to secure a perimeter. DEATH WILL RESULT IN QUEST FAILURE AND THE END THE CHAIN QUEST.]
[+5 Levels, Emergency Supply Cache, Epic Holocron]
I started shaking my head in panic. "No… No. No. No. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK!"
Why now? A fucking legendary quest? Normally I would be ecstatic, but the timing couldn't be worse. I had no backup, no support, no way out. The only way off this world would be to either have my crippled ass fight my way out of the jungle, or to die.
While the rewards were fantastic for highly tiered quests, the difficulty was exponential. In addition, I had realized what the quest tiers really meant. The higher a quest tier was, the more drastic the consequences would be. These consequences would be derived from the outcome and could affect many things.
For example, the quest where we saved the Royal family on Alderaan. If we had failed, Alderaan would have been crippled. Their economy would have halted and any support they were providing the Republic would have disappeared. As a system near the core of the galaxy, their impact is not something to be doubted and could spell major implications for the outcome of this war.
Now, we have a damn legendary quest. I couldn't even imagine why this would be rated as a legendary quest. What could possibly be happening on Kashyyyk that is so huge? If this quest failed, it was possible that the entire war could be lost here and now.
The pressure mounted as sweat rolled down my forehead and back. Even the first part of this quest had the reward of an epic holocron. The value of this could not be overstated even if the words existed.
Fortunately… I reached to the back of my belt and unbuttoned a small pouch that was just big enough to hold a baseball. My hand came back into my vision grasping a glowing purple holocron. This was one of those priceless things. The contents of it could be beyond my wildest imaginations. The last time I opened one, I gained enough credits to buy a skyscraper for fuck's sake. Hopefully, I'd get something that would actually be useful.
Weirdly, I felt a connection to the holocron in my hands. It was clearly something through the force. I had no control over this connection but I felt that I could definitely tap into it.
Thus, I did exactly that. The holocron began to float in my hands as the corners began to rotate, clicking into position. The glow of the holocron intensified until I became blinded by the light.
After a few seconds the light faded away along with the holocron. Opening my eyes, I found a massive black crate in front of me. There were no markings on it and it appeared to be extremely durable.
I touched it and an item description appeared.
[HK-50 Droid Kit - Custom]
[Epic]
[The HK Series Assassin Droid is one of the most infamous and sadistic models of droid ever manufactured in the galaxy. Most notably used by the Sith Lord, Darth Revan, this model of droid was a source of great fear among those in power during the Mandalorian Wars and decades following it. This particular droid is one of a kind and priceless. It was modified by an unknown Sith Lord and was thought to be created due to their jealousy of Revan's HK-47. This custom model was created from a modified HK-50 droid that Revan designed. It was equipped with beskar armor skin, active camouflage, and a nanoreactor power core. The kit comes complete with spare parts, a millennia worth of fuel cells, the recipe for the diluted coaxium fuel cells, schematics for the droid, and a set of modular weapons arrays. While the origins of this droid are uncertain, it is guaranteed that it will serve you well.]
I could barely contain my excitement as I sprung off of the stump. Sadistic? Who the fuck cares? Rushing to the crate, I quickly found a large red button on the side of the crate that was below a small display. Without hesitation, I pressed the button.
*Whivvvvv*
The crate sounded like it was coming to life as it started to shift. The front face of the crate split as it opened up partly. A platform then slid out of the bottom of the crate, seemingly creating a workspace.
Suddenly, compartments opened and arms holding components began emerging from the crate.
*Pshhht* *BVVT* *PST* *Pst*
The sounds of welding, drills turning, and fluid lines being connected accompanied what appeared to be an assembly process. I watched on with awe as an unfamiliar material emerged from the crate.
I quickly put two and two together, realizing that these pieces were the armor skin. These pieces were made of beskar! Beskar was unimaginably variable! It could be said that it was a priceless material. While it could be bought, there was no set price. You had to pay whatever was demanded. That is how rare it is to find it for sale because of how precious it is to the Mandalorian Creed.
I directed my attention back to the crate as it appeared to be putting the finishing touches on the droid. All of the armor plates were a dull and dark gray. They appeared to shimmer quite strangely under the light of the moon above.
At last, the final piece emerged from the crate. The robotic arm secured the face plate onto my new droid before receding into the crate. My droid's eyes suddenly lit up, blinking yellow with each passing second.
Its limbs began moving in strange patterns, moving in large degrees of motion as if testing its capabilities. After about 10 seconds, the eyes turned a solid yellow before becoming white.
Its head slowly swiveled from side to side, seemingly observing the environment. "Where… am I?"
I tilted my head, extremely confused. "Uh.. What?"
The droid snapped its head towards me. I could imagine the scowl it would be wearing based on the tone it subsequently used. "I said, where am I? Do you not understand Galactic Standard? Are you some kind of idiot? I can draw you a fucking picture on the wall of a cave if you'd like."
I was absolutely astonished. Was this what it meant by sadistic? Ohohoh, this was gonna be fun. "Go check a star chart, dipshit."
The droid tilted its head downwards as its eyes flickered red. It then let out what I imagined to be a chuckled. "Oh, you're funny. I've killed Sith Lords. Do you think a mere padawan such as yourself could resist?"
I shrugged as I held up the authority token that had materialized in my hand before tapping it on my comm. This officially granted me ownership of the droid. "Care to say that again?"
The droid remained silent for a few seconds and then shook its head. "Fuck. Fine. Whatever. Can you just tell me where we are?"
I nodded. "That's a bit better. We are currently on…"
I went on and gave it the TLDR of the situation. It took nearly a minute since I wanted to fill it in on the details. As an assassin droid, it would probably make better use of the information than I could.
The droid nodded before punching the crate. "Shit. They're definitely coming." It then pointed at the unconscious men and woman behind me. "These are our allies?"
I nodded. "In the flesh."
The droid nodded before its eyes turned blue. Suddenly, a scanning matrix formed and swept over me. The droid let out a snicker. "Disgusting and barbaric, but you'll live."
I sighed, knowing that it was right. My self treatment was crude and barely passable. Fortunately, it would work for now.