The invisibility wore off finally, and I felt no different.
I would not have noticed it fizzling out had the mental timer it came with not also disappeared. I was visible again, but there was no one available to confirm. Well, no one living or conscious.
The sleepyheads in the cage nearby didn't even twitch when I lowered the giant container filled with their belongings and pushed it against the wall.
Inwardly glad for that, I brushed the dust off my hands and brought up the system, giving my fully clothed appearance and the overflowing inventory a series of quick, pleased glances.
...
Name: Warren Fless-Bishop
Race: Human
Form: Young Adult (17)
Body: 90
Mind: 90
Soul: 1
Senses: 90
Loaded Materials: Super-Soldier Serum
Skills: None
Talent Ability 1: Tireless Body
Explanation: Your body rapidly eliminates the buildup of fatigue toxins in your muscles, making endurance a simple matter of available energy.
Items: Biomonitor, Blood Pump, M-10AF Lexington(3),DS1 Pulsar(3),Machete(2), M251s Ajax(2), Credchips(5), Eurodollar notes(€$3508), Braindance wreath(4), CredChips(5)…
Soul Points: 5157
...
My aversion to blood and viscera no longer what it used to be, I had gone around the den and looted each room and corpse for any valuable items.
Be it chips, medicines, implants, devices, weapons, tools… I swept them all into the system, my mind flush with ideas on how to best handle them. I also made copies of clothing articles that caught my eye and defined them for my own use.
That's how I ended up in a tight, black, long sleeved sweatshirt that hugged my body and emphasized the size and definition of my chest and arms.
Layering the armored vest on top of it made me look even more preem, like I was a special, top-tier operative that only went on impossible missions.
Others would not see this as an issue, but the one thing out of place with this whole image was my smooth, hairless scalp. It annoyed me every time I looked at it, but that was soon to end. I had enough time to address it now.
A copy of an already existing image and the application of a different color later, I held the best hair growth booster in existence.
Name: Snowy Mane Potion
Definitions:
Upon ingestion, makes scalp and facial hair smooth and snowy white. Grows scalp hair to shoulder length in 10 seconds. Color and texture change permanent. No pain. Tastes like milk.
Storm from the X-Men, Geralt from the Witcher, Kakashi from Naruto… these were some of my most favorite characters in all of fiction. Their personalities and abilities were mainly what endeared them to me, but their uniquely colored hair played no small part.
Now that I owned a system that could do anything, was it any surprise I wanted to emulate them?
My trust in said system absolute, I summoned the clear white potion and knocked it back without hesitation. I vanished the empty glass back into the system and licked my lips, savoring the freshness of the milk taste.
In a few seconds, a cool sensation enveloped my scalp and soon gave way to a painless tingling. Eyes glued to my selfie in the system, I watched the thin white tendrils of bleached hair I defined emerge all over my round, beige cranium.
After exactly 10 seconds, the tingling faded and I ran my hand through the freshly grown, shoulder length mane. I started out gently, afraid I might ruin the change somehow. But I soon picked up speed when nothing untoward happened.
I rubbed, swept and assaulted my hair in any way possible, testing and confirming the integrity of every strand. Though this left the entire crown a little messy, it was nothing that couldn't be solved with a comb or a hat.
Thrilled with the resounding success, I went back to the system, duplicated the test tube again and filled it this time with a white powder. I gave it the following definitions, saved, and summoned it to my hand.
Name: Wakefulness Powder
Definitions:
Upon contact with skin, seeps into the bloodstream and clears one's system of any sedatives. Takes 5 minutes to fully wake someone up. Leaves no traces.
Pouring the powdery substance into my palm, I entered the cage and blew it over the captives, making sure it covered every single one of them. I then wiped my hand, stored the empty glass and left the room entirely.
My work in this place was done.
The scavs were dead and their victims would wake soon. All that remained was to leave and disable the jammer my benefactor spoke about. This would allow the victims to call for help and let Trauma Team swoop in to do what they did best for those with subscriptions.
As I strode towards the exit I'd scouted earlier, I wrote the definition for my most expensive creation yet.
I came up with it during the looting session, my ability to multitask greatly improved after the serum transformation.
Like a bird about to leave its nest and enter the real world, I was about to take to the streets of Night City. I had my armor and my enhanced physique, but they weren't enough. Not in this gladiator pit of a city.
In this hellgate/unquenchable dumpster fire of a megalopolis, 30 people died each day in every district. And that number was the lowest estimate. I had no plans to contribute to that morbid statistic.
Hence I wanted to make my current protection methods and items more robust than they currently were.
Whatever I came up with had to be something that could secure my safety and survival against anything Night City threw at me. And that was asking a lot… to put it mildly.
Sudden and meaningless deaths were commonplace here, and they affected common people the most. Arriving in forms ranging from a stray bullet to a drugged up gangoon looking to "have fun."
With all this in mind, the first thing I considered was armor.
Using the total number of points I had, I could enhance my vest and clothing to obtain ratings beyond what those with powered armor or full-body conversions possessed.
But the limits of that path were immediately obvious. I'd have to take the armor off sometime. Moreover, it was the most boring and uninteresting thing I could do with such a powerful system.
What wasn't boring though was the superpower route. The options on that front were endless and much more appealing.
Skin hardening, force fields, a healing factor, and many, many more that could serve as both a lifeboat and shield were at my fingertips. The question then came down to "what's it going to be?"
I started by listing off all the powers I could recall(which was a lot), mentally playing out their advantages and disadvantages. I had just gone through seven of them when I shook my head and stopped. This would take too long. I needed a different approach.
I went back to the problem I intended to solve and dug deeper to find exactly what I needed. Not long into the deep dive, I realised that bullets and other weapons were not the true danger in this city, or anywhere for that matter.
A knife laying on a table could not jump and slit someone's neck on its own. A person had to grab a hold of it and run its edge across another's throat. That person with the intention to end his fellow human's life was the real danger.
This boiled everything down to people and their intentions. They were the two main things at the root of my worries and surprisingly, all the problems in Night City.
Whether they were stupid or downright evil, the intentions of people and the people themselves were the true source of Night City's extreme and hazardous nature.
Every negative aspect of this place—the soul-sucking corporations, the poisoned water bodies, the overflowing garbage, the lawless gangs—could be traced back to conscious decisions taken by unscrupulous people.
If I didn't want to end up as a consequence of some random crapsack's evil intentions, I needed to be able detect said intentions and take measures to stop them from becoming reality.
This train of thought made me think of danger detection and precognitive abilities, making a well known ability jump to mind instantly. My choice was made then and there.
...
Name: Spider-Sense Serum
Definitions:
Grants the drinker Spider-Man's ability that warns and guides him away from potential and immediate danger. Fast Acting. No pain. Tastes like water.
Like all the system-created substances before it, the purple serum was placed in a test tube, saved, and summoned to my hand. It cost a whopping 4184 points. 35 times the cost of the SSS. It was shocking, but also not at the same time.
Spider-Sense was arguably Spider-Man's most useful ability. If the serum worked exactly like I intended, it would make me damn near untouchable. Just like him.
Nearly salivating, I raised the test tube to my lips and gulped down the purple substance.
Feeling no new sensation take root in my body, I shrugged and hurried to the exit, aware of the rapidly dwindling time. I didn't want to be here when the victims woke up.
The stubborn sliding door between me and the outside world lasted about as long as the ones before it. Ignoring the smoke and shower of sparks brushing past me, I took my first step outside and noticed the gray steps that lead upwards.
They were enclosed by walls of the same color on both sides, making it look like I was emerging from some sort of underground bunker. I cleared the stairs in a single leap and confirmed my hunch. The den was underground.
No wonder there weren't any windows.
Standing in an abandoned, dimly lit compound, I turned around and took in the sights, sniffing the air repeatedly. The bunker was underneath a sorry looking, heavily graffitied building with completely boarded up windows.
The two story tall structure was surrounded by heaps of garbage bags, a couple of unmarked vans, cardboard boxes, and strewn about shipping containers, most of them covered with varying shades of rust and their doors hanging ajar.
I kept sniffing, ignoring the obvious, potent aroma of garbage and wondering what the subtle but faintly detectable melting pot of other odors were. So far I could make out oil, grease, chemicals, and smog.
A district instantly came to mind, but I stowed the assumption and approached the warehouse, my eyes glued to its roof.
My benefactor explained how the scavs were able to keep Trauma Team from finding their location. It was a jammer that cutoff anyone in its radius from radio and NET signals, even the scavs themselves.
This is the reason my first two victims didn't call for reinforcements with their internal agents. They literally couldn't.
I brushed the image of their corpses from my mind and stopped a short distance from the building. I lowered my gaze from the roof ledge and crouched, calling upon the strength in my legs. It was time to see how high I could jump.
Without so much as a sound, I shot off the ground into the air, soaring past the warehouse entirely. I reached a height that would've seen me land feet first on a 3 storey building. I could leap tall-ish buildings in a single bound!
Needless to say, my elation was—not at an all time high—but still high.
With a thump, I landed on the warehouse, my balance easily keeping me straight and stable despite standing on the roof's brick edge.
A quick scan of the dim rooftop revealed my target. Walking over to a tarp that smartly matched the roof's colors, I lifted and tossed it away to reveal a squarish, black device with four bright red dots arranged horizontally on its center.
It had the length of a tablet and the thickness of a book. I turned it over and noted a power cable whose connector had been jury rigged to feed it power. I grabbed the makeshift plug and yanked, producing a short lived electrical chirp and small spark show.
With a wave of my hand, I tossed the depowered jammer into the system and turned around.
My current location seemed to be deep in an abandoned industrial area. This combined with my earlier sampling of the air and told me only one district fit the bill. The gang that called it theirs came to mind immediately and that was enough reason for me to get moving.
Quickly noting which directions led to areas with tall buildings and bright lights, I chose a random one and walked towards the roof's edge, a gray hoodie appearing over my vest and shirt.
Pulling the hood over my head, I slipped my hands into its front pockets and dropped off the roof.