-Six Years Post Saturation Completion. CONT.-
"He's gone… he's actually gone, I wasn't ready…I thought…I thought with the increase in lifespan brought by Ranking up that I would have so many years to pay him back for all he's done for me…" I sobbed while crawling forward and leaning against the worn-out recliner.
My life was never easy, especially after I got injured in the Military. Picture being 21 years old, at the peak of physical fitness, and then suddenly realizing one day that your legs just don't work the way they should.
Before, you were athletic, participating in competitive sports like hockey, wrestling, and jiujitsu, to suddenly being unable to walk without a limp and having close to zero balance.
That was me; I had practically destroyed my right foot, both ankles, and my left knee in a training accident that found me on the receiving end of six different reconstructive surgeries. The result was extreme nerve damage in my right foot and the inability to put any amount of weight on my left knee.
During those times, I spiraled out of control, abusing my painkillers and drinking alcohol in excess, practically wasting my life away. Brenden was still in the Military, so he never really knew the full extent of what I went through, but the one person who was there, who took care of me when I was at my lowest, was the very man who I spent my entire childhood at odds end with.
My Father was by no means an easy person to get along with, especially given the circumstances that he obtained full custody of my brother and me, and being a product of his age, he was very rough when it came to raising us.
One of his most significant catchphrases was, "Men simply raise boys differently than Women do." It was something he would often say in conversations about Brenden's best friend, Mason, who grew up in a house of only women.
Being the rebellious child and eventually teenager that I was, and adding in a hint of Adhd and a splash of the Tism, you can pretty much assume how I reacted and handled the very rough upbringing.
I would get into screaming matches with him on a daily basis, doing and saying things with the sole purpose of getting a rise out of him, and it didn't stop there.
Still, when I needed him the most, he was the one to pick me up, keep a roof over my head, and keep pushing me to do something with my life, to be better.
It took me nearly a month to pull myself out of the depression my Father's death put me in, and eventually, I packed up the house and sent everything to Brenden before putting the place up on the market.
In the end, thanks to the reputation of my brother and the Legacy of the Jörgensen family name, I earned 2000 High-Gamma Coins for it, which was a MASSIVE sum of money when compared to the previous value of USD.
With that money in hand, I purchased a HoverCycle from the Beta Shop and went on the road.
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April 28th, 2035, I wasn't idle for almost a year since my Father's passing. Following the information I had extracted from EleBolt, I was able to locate and mark all of my targets.
Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot I could do, thanks to my paltry strength, so I spent the better part of last year training, diving into one Beta Instance after another, and understanding the changes my Talent had undergone.
For Starters, I had finally reached the Gamma Rank, but that was a given, considering the ample amount of Gamma-Coins I had on hand after selling my house.
Even more critical than increasing my level and Rank was something seemingly impossible that had transpired during the fight on July 4th, 2034.
My previous Beta Grade Talent Potential had transformed, or Evolved, into something drastically different.
To this day, I'm still not entirely sure what it was that happened, and while I do have theories, some better than others, it wasn't something that I've ever been able to replicate in another person.
It was almost like a perfect storm of randomly occurring situations forcefully tempered my Talent to a point where it was forged anew.
Before…my Talent looked like this.
{Talent: Psy-Kinesis}
{Talent Rank: None}
{Talent Potential Grade: Beta}
However, after the death of my Father…this is what it became.
{Talent: Primitive Psy-Kinesis}
{Talent Rank: Beta}
{Talent Potential Grade: Gamma*Upgradable*}
{Talent Growth Rate: 52%)
That's right, my Talent Potential had jumped from Beta to Gamma, but that wasn't all; there was a tag attached to it that gave me hope.
Right now, my Talent only had the Suffix, Primitive at the front; however, if I could upgrade it to Gamma, it would increase to Enhanced, Delta, it would become Advanced, Zeta Super, Theta Ultra, Sigma Ultimate…and if by some crazy chance I was able to evolve my Talent all the way to Omega…it would become Primordial.
Months of experimenting with my new Talent taught me what happened during that fight. Basically, my Psy-Kinesis wasn't just a persuasion technique; it actually had steps and phases.
The glow is a reaction to the Energy Particles being burned as a fuel source, and when it came out of my body, coating my hands, that was a technique called "Augmentation," part of the "Primitive" version of my Talent.
What's more, the damage I was able to output when under the Augmentation scaled off my Intellect Stat, which had been my primary source of spending Stat points for years and, thus, my highest stat.
At the time S*** hit the fan, in late April of 2035, I was living in the middle of nowhere Alaska, in a cabin I built by hand, well…maybe not with my hands but instead by training my Talent for the most part, when I heard the news.
Humanity…was at war.
As if predetermined, every foreign race nation on the planet suddenly lashed out at their neighbors; so long as Humans ran things in that area, it was targeted.
The Elven Races, Dwarves, Merfolk, Lycanthropes, and Vampires all wanted a bigger piece of the pie that was Earth, and to do that, they declared war.