A man in a trench coat walked up to Haseo, who was still struggling to ignore the floating satellite over his head.
[An Apocalyptic Pet is approaching. Synergy is 100%]
Haseo saw the 100% and squinted his eyes. What did it really mean? Synergy is always high, but what would the point of announcing it?
He got really lucky or destined for a random sketchy guy walking up to him to have something he needed? Probably not, if that were to happen it would of just sent pets over the system.
Haseo started messing with the system screen to see if there an option to automatically get the pet.
Honestly with how things are going, he just needed to put in effort for a little bit of time and then ride the high as he was just handed things.
The man was just standing in front of Haseo, who was focused on his system screen. The man didn't want to be rude, so he just stood there and waited.
The speed of clicking sped up as Haseo noticed the man in front of him. The system had a built into audio canceller when it is open, to save those from embarrassing themselves when speaking out loud. As it would be pretty dumb to have a system talk to the person to thier mind and they don't take any measures for them slipping up.
Sweat started to drip as Haseo got lost in the system menu. One nice function of the system was if someone tried to get your attention when browsing the system, it can pause itself and allow the user to postpone till they can get back on the system.
But when using it and no one tries talking with you or event starting, you have to go to the menu and log out.
But if you couldn't find it, like how Haseo was just randomly clicking to find information out and didn't know the way back, you were stuck. The back button being the only thing to help him find his way.
"Dammit! Why is there no home button on this thing?! Just let me logout!"
[Voice Command Logout….. only currently applicable to menu screen. Goodbye.]
The system screen disappeared, the man seeing this started to speak. "Ah, hello there young man! I see you have started your adventure!"
Haseo smiled. "Oh, hello there professor! It seems you have come to congratulate me on my first… pet. Though I am surprised I didn't have to pick between a few on them. Would bum be out if I liked all of them."
The old man scratched his head. He was in a dirty robe, though calling them rags would be an offense to rags, it was difficult to tell if he had on shoes or anything else.
"I am just a vagrant, why call me a professor? I haven't spent any time in school at all to be honest. My home planet was enslaved by Apocalypse Insectiods, getting rid of the need for school."
"Hmm, school is bad where I come from, so I can't tell you if it was good or bad you didn't have a school. My home planet was plagued by failed school systems, wanting to cut squares into circles. But when they found them to come as circles, they cut you down to a square before turning you into a smaller circle so they can claim any success you make stumble across."
The old man stared at Haseo for a bit. "Yeah, but I have everything downloaded to my brain so the need for school wasn't there. The bugs came and conquered our civilization and gave us jobs."
Putting his hands in his robe, the old man pulled out a sphere shaped cocoon. "My job is to hand out these little guys. Don't let the coccoon trick you, these are little Death Butterflies, I guess calling them fairies works as well."
Haseo took the sphere, not thinking about how he felt disgusted by bugs, as the squishy sphere stuck to his skin he froze in place.
"Yeah the feeling is a new one, probably should of warned you. But if I did, you would be like the others who run off. Sigh, anyways I should explain the history of that pet. Wouldn't want you to think it was a scam."
Haseo turned his hand over, the coccoon didn't bulge, as if it was fully stuck on his hand. "I never mentioned any worry about you scamming me, a free pet is a free pet. Besides, at first I thought this was going to just be boring. But seeing the addition of pets and not guns, this is getting interesting."
"I could tell you about that, but I want to talk about the cocoons first. Everyone always overlooks their bug pets, I don't know if it bias as a bug conquers being or not, but that is a mistake! I dare say bugs are stronger than dragons or machine or the undead!"
4 horseman of the apocalypse, 4 type of pets named. While the bug pet seemed to be perfect as pestilence, it came with a death modifier. His key pet was probably the machine type pet. That means he needed an undead and a dragon pet.
"So bug pets start out weak and end up as the perfect evolved specimen. Sure, they are useless the start of their life, but aren't most things. So each category of the pet gives vastly different type of beast."
"Let's start with your bag of joy, it has a Death modifer. You will still need to get it a weapon class level and add 22 constalations, but I can give a vague guess."
"And before you say anything, my vague guess is the best you will get. Each thing added to your pet vastly changes its identity. Then there is the fact that each pet has a unique ability."
The old man frowned and thought back to the words he spoke. "I guess if you get something special, my guess could be way off. Anyways, as Death Bug it collects souls to get stronger to evolve."
"It doesn't have to get the kills itself, just having it on your being allows it to feed itself. All pets need to eat, so it will be on an auto feed soul option unless you change it in your system menu."
"The form of the soul or data you have fed to your little bug determines its pseudo race. Say you killed a bunch of snakes and fed it. It should summon serpent abilities in some form."
"It could turn each full snake soul into a giant snake to fight in your side. Maybe you can toss the cocoon itself and it explodes into snake rain."
"The place I got yours was sketchy, but it is the first wild cocoon I found. Normally I just collect the ones that get dumped into my stomach. But Bug Daddy said he was tired and… you don't need to hear this."
Haseo zoned out when he heard it was a wild cocoon. What was the difference between wild and not wild? What if some old man dropped his cocoon sack while walking back from the beach?
That sack belonged to someone, just because you found a cocoon with sand on it in a forest and claim it is a reverse butterfly. Than being told you were dumb and decided to pawn it off on the first kid you see.
"Oh but looking at you, you seem to lean heavy into technology. You might be able to summon giant animal Mecha. This is my strongest gut feeling. You can ignore it, but it will probably be true. Timelines are fickle."
Every other word or so was enough for Haseo to understand what was going on. This old guy dropped a hint he could use Mecha. Despite the lack of seeing them lately, they were important at the beginning. So not everyone can get to use Mecha, so he had to be careful.
"There is some others things about your bug, but I feel like I might slip up. So I'll talk about bugs from the other 3."
"Bug pestilence, obvious combo. The ones I have on me are still newborn and haven't developed much, hence why I didn't offer them."
"I met a nice mouth egg laying woman, she would vomit eggs into your mouth. They were all average bug troop troop, but thier entrails produce a 100% bug transformation."
The old man smiled as he rubbed his belly. "She was my first, I miss her so much. In truth, my current partner is the man she left me for. I was so lost when it happened, I fell hard."
It seemed this old man wanted to talk about his risqué life with his bug conquerors. But the fact a 100% bug transformation was average, Haseo knew he should be paying attention to every little thing. This old man was a terrifying monster who liked to gossip about past relationships!!!