"Of course, I trust you, gramps, it just wasn't the right time to come clean about them since I would've had to tell you of my dream that we'll get to after I tell you how I've come to possess my abilities."
"Go on, I'm listening." He responded, instantly dropping his act.
"You know how the video games you've played with us in the past give your character a window that you can use to increase your character's strength, well I possess a similar window that allows me to do the same."
Whilst my gramps was standing there stunned, Alice and I could literally see the gears churning in his mind, so we patiently waited for him to come back to reality. The moment he was done processing the absurd statement I had made, I reacquired his attention and continued on to explain the nitty-gritty details.
"The thing I have is called a system, and this system lets me pull up a holographic system window whenever I want at will that no one else but myself can see. Through that holographic window, I can navigate several tabs that display a variety of information depending on the tab."
"What kind of tabs does it possess?"
"To start, it has a status tab that displays all of my stats, such as my level, health, and stamina. Though that is not all, in addition to those, it also displays my attributes, skills, perks, and a bunch of other information."
"Going into further detail, my attributes encompass strength, agility, endurance, intelligence, perception, charisma, and luck. All of which can be improved through training and use, luck being the only exception. That sole attribute is more inherent and can only be improved via leveling up, quests rewards, and other such things."
"As for skills, they include ballistic weapons, energy weapons, explosives, heavy weapons, leadership, lockpick, medicine, melee weapons, piloting, repair, science, speech, stealth, survival, trade, and unarmed."
"Every single one of those skills can be improved, just like my attributes, with the same methods. Along with those methods, they can also be improved through reading and learning from books containing new information, which is one of the main reasons why I read as much as I do."
"So what does increasing your skills do for you, exactly?"
"Increasing my skills does a few things for me. First off, it implants new information and the relevant experience regarding the skill into my memory every time it increases. My combat skills provide the same effect, but in addition to that effect, my damage with the relevant weapons or means of combat they're associated with is raised by 0.25% per point."
"My perks also benefit from them increasing too, which is where I get my unique abilities from."
"Like the ones you showed me earlier?"
"Yes, exactly. I normally get them through level-ups however, they can be obtained in other ways. An example of that would be quests."
"Interesting. I've never heard or seen anything like this before, not once in the numerous years I've spent traveling and exploring the wasteland. That system of yours, if utilized properly, could allow you to become one of, if not the greatest, power in the wasteland, kid."
"Right." I responded with a bit of a smirk.
"Along with all that reading, training, and working out you do daily, I could see you achieving that some day... Wait a minute, you're actually planning on doing that, aren't you, you little shit?"
Looks like my gramps was able to put two and two together, about damn time.
"Hahaha, you got me. Yeah, that's pretty much what I plan to do, although not entirely. There's a bit more to it than just that, but we'll come back to that dream of mine and the goals I wish to achieve one day when we get through the rest of the system details."
"Fine, but we'll be having a long talk, a very long talk regarding this goal of yours when you're done explaining your system's details." He said seriously while throwing a stern look my way.
"That was already part of the plan."
"Now, continuing with the system explanation from where we left off, we've pretty much covered the status tab, so we'll move to the items tab and cover it briefly. There isn't too much to say about this one because it just lists off what items I own and what gear I'm carrying and have equipped. My gear is listed in my status too, by the way. Moving onto the quest tab next, this tab is similar to the last and only really displays information regarding what quests I have in progress and completed."
"The map tab is the final tab I have on the system window and currently it only shows Undercity 7 and the local locations within I've visited in the past. That said, I can see numerous other locations marked spread all across the map when I zoom out to the rest of the planet that I've discovered the whereabouts of from my many years of reading. But as of right now, they are all blanked out because, as I stated, moments ago I've yet to ever visit any of them."
"Alright, that does it for the system. You have any questions, old man?"
"Nope, not a one." My gramps responded curtly before quickly dragging both myself and Alice back to the living room to have me spill the beans on those life goals of mine.
After getting seated with Alice seated by my side and my grandfather across from us, I opened my mouth and began. "As you figured out, one of my goals is to become the strongest power in the wasteland. However, that doesn't fully encompass the goals I've set out for myself, what I truly wish to do in the future is to conquer the planet in its entirety, unite the human race under one banner, restore society, and become the de facto number one strongest being on the planet. That's what I dream of accomplishing one day."
"Those are quite some lofty goals you have there. How do you plan on accomplishing all that? Even with that system of yours, it will take innumerable years of planning and accumulation of massive amounts of resources as well as manpower to even put you on the same level as the major powers that exist out in the wasteland. So again, how do you plan on accomplishing all that?" He asked me while focusing his full attention on me, more than ready to scrutinize and dismantle whatever I was about to say.
As the old man was exerting a sort of immaterial pressure on me, something he likely obtained from his many, many years of killing and adventuring throughout the wasteland, I answered him steadfastly. "That they are, and you are correct. Even with my system, it would still take an enormous amount of effort over decades to accomplish what I dream of doing. But now that you've been made aware of my system and its abilities, I'm sure you understand just how powerful it could make me in the future if taken advantage of."
"I do."
"So let me ask you this, what would you say my odds would be if I had a photographic memory and had spent at least the last nine or so years accumulating knowledge to the point where there is only a small bit left I need to learn? Alongside that shit ton of learning, I've been training my skills with my oh-so-loving grandpa nearly every day nonstop for years on end, building up my physique, agility, endurance, and strength while also getting ready to move on to the next step in my plan. What would you say my odds are, then?"
"Better, but still not enough to where I'm happy. Let me hear about the next step in your plan, and maybe I'll change my mind."
"Sure, that next step is acquiring a place that will allow me to start accumulating resources and manufacturing the supplies I'll need for my trip into the wasteland."
"As to what kind of supplies I have in mind, they include but are not limited to weapons for the various scenarios I may or may not encounter out there, hefty full body armor to protect me from small pistol rounds to larger caliber rifle rounds, many kinds of drugs and medicines for all sorts of situations, more than a semi-truck load of ammo and, robots of my own design and programming that will make up the bulk of my force."
"Adding on to that further, two of the designs are human-like in terms of shape, hence they'll be able to use any weapon a human can and those too heavy and unwieldy for them. Which will increase my ability to handle a larger variety of enemy types and situations with them. I even have the designs on hand if you want to verify their capabilities."
"Sounds like you've prepared for many situations you'll encounter out there and yeah, bring them to me. I want to see what you've come up with."
Following Gramp's request to view my designs, I got up and went to my room before returning shortly with a stack of physical design blueprints and my laptop, the latter of which contained a copy of the programming and the digital blueprints.
"Here they are." I said, while handing him the stack of designs.
While he was looking through them, I booted up my laptop, logged in, and started up the simulation program I designed way back to fine tune the artificial intelligence programming. Once I had everything ready, I waited patiently for him to finish looking through the designs.
"I'm not going to lie kid, robotics isn't exactly my specialty, so I don't know much of what I'm looking at. However, from what I can see, they seem legit and their armaments look impressive, especially this crusader you designed." He said, pointing at the most heavily armed robot design I have had cooked up so far.
"Yeah, that's my pride and joy right there. The crusader is a heavily modified sentinel that I turned into a bipedal robot. I'm quite happy with how it turned out."
------
Want to keep me motivated to write throw the work some power stones.
Shameless plug, I have a Patreon that you can read ahead and support me on. You can find the link in the webnovel's description, under my username on here, and on the discord, the link of which is also in both of those places.