Author's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
"I already miss Space," Lucy complained once we left Destiny. I sighed as I began to move my slightly stiff body. It might have only been a couple of minutes in the outside world, but we'd been inside a video game for at least two whole weeks.
I could see the others doing the same as they stretched. Once we were properly stretched, I started preparing a substantial meal. We may not have been hungry for over two weeks, but I still missed food, and judging by Rebecca's cheers, I wasn't the only one.
After eating properly, I stood in front of Lucy, grabbed a pawn piece and gently placed it on her chest.
"Last chance to back out or even sign a contract," I said gently to Lucy. She just rolled her eyes.
"Just do it, I'm sure you won't deceive me in any way," Lucy said gently.
"We've only known each other for about a... month." I said, my eyes widening slightly. Really, two weeks in Night City and then over... 500 hours, that was almost three weeks inside that video game. Wow... how time flies.
"That's more than enough," Lucy said, shrugging with a small smile. I snorted and pushed the Pawn into Lucy. Lucy shuddered slightly as the Evil Piece merged with her soul.
Lucyna Kushinada(T5) from Cyberpunk 2077 [23][404]
"Welcome," I said to Lucy with a smile. Lucy smiled slightly before extending her arms around my neck and kissing me lightly. She smiled at me once more before pulling away. I reached into my pocket and pulled out another Pawn piece, this time one of my two mutated pieces, and looked at Riveria. She simply nodded.
Riveria was a T6, so with my current power, it was necessary to use two pawns, or a mutated piece, and Riveria was worth the cost.
Carefully, gently place the Pawn piece on Riveria's chest, avoiding any indecent touching. The piece sank easily into her chest, causing Riveria to shudder slightly.
Once I finished, she blinked slightly as she got used to her new abilities.
"Welcome to my Peerage." I said cheerfully, Riveria smiled slightly before looking at me shyly.
"I…" Riveria tried to say as she squirmed slightly before leaning in and kissing the corner of my mouth. My eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Don't overthink it," Riveria said quickly, blushing as she pulled away. I could hear Rebecca hissing. I snorted and hurled a sharp curse at her, making her squeal.
"Alright, it's time for the powers!" I said quickly, clapping my hands. I briefly considered my Evil Pieces. I still had seven pieces left: a rook, two knights, three regular pawns, and one mutated pawn. That's still a lot of pieces. I hoped I wouldn't have to use them anytime soon.
As lovely as it is to gain more partners, I wanted to get used to and better get to know the ones I already had first.
"Let's see, then, The Guardian template for Rebecca, Added Power for all of us for Light and Darkness, eyes with Six eyes, and... nothing else ?" I asked as I went over everything necessary.
"The BFG-9000!" Rebecca blurted out. I stopped and snorted amusedly.
"Don't you already have weapons strong enough?" Lucy teased playfully, and Rebecca just smiled broadly.
"There are never enough guns!" Rebecca said cheerfully. I snorted.
"I mean, BFG is too cheap, serious, maybe not easy, but eventually upgradable and creating something similar to the giant cannon that is the BFG-10000," I said with a shrug. "Although I almost expected you to choose Crucible too." I added playfully.
To my surprise, the BFG-9000 only cost 20 credits, while the Crucible was worth twice as much. A plasma cannon wasn't as impressive as a weapon that negates devil immortality.
"I mean... Crucible looks so pre-made and all, but it's still a sword," Rebecca said, wrinkling her nose. "Besides... you've almost certainly got immortal-killing weapons already? I think I saw it in your head or something, " Rebecca said, lost in thought.
"Harpe, the immortal-killing scythe, yes, I can project it." I said simply, Rebecca shrugged.
"Then it's not really necessary. I like the look of it, but I'll be too busy using my Fire Hammer to destroy everything in my path before I remember to use Crucible," Rebecca said casually. I simply nodded.
"Okay, it'll be the BFG by itself then." I said, shrugging. "Lucy, are you sure you don't want the Silver Wolf template?" I asked curiously. She shook her head.
"No thanks, I can wait a couple of weeks to get GLaDOS's Aether Editing and start learning from scratch. Even though Arasaka forced me to do it as a kid, I really like Netrunning, and learning to hack reality sounds really cool. I'd like the challenge of learning it from the very beginning." Lucy said, her eyes sparkling. I nodded.
"If you're sure, even if you have any idea about what you want, just tell me," I said immediately. Lucy nodded. "Then let's see," I said, pressing buttons and buying all the necessary things.
"Hmm, Becca, do you want the template or a Power Swap?" I asked curiously. Rebecca looked at me curiously.
"What's the difference?" she simply asked.
"To begin with, the Power Swap will take a week to complete." I said quickly, Rebecca's eyes widening.
"So much?" she complained.
"But you could choose the full roster instead of training it from a T4. You're a base T5, while The Guardian is T7. It would cost about... 48 credits thanks to the Defense discounts, and you could use all the full skills up to now." I said simply, and Rebecca stopped.
"A template costs 20 credits, right? So it would just be about 28 extra for all the power?" Rebecca asked, surprised. I nodded.
"Yeah, it's not much, so it's your decision. The only thing is you'd lose all your base abilities, but... and I say this with all the love in the world, you don't have that much. Most of your abilities and strength come from your weapons and implants, and well... they can't really take those away." I said timidly. Rebecca opened her mouth before closing it, thought about it before shrugging.
"You know what, just do it, I can handle a week! If that means being able to use everything I'm used to, fine," Rebecca said excitedly.
"If you want, I can put you to sleep and place you in a time bubble for a week; you'll barely feel like a few seconds have passed." I said, shrugging my shoulders.
"That's terribly convenient, do it!" Rebecca said excitedly. I sighed and bought the option.
Rebecca(S5) from Cyberpunk 2077 Power Swapped to Young Wolf / The Guardian of [S7] [-48]
BFG-9000 [-20]
Paper Trail [Lucyna Kushinada] [-1]
Six Eyes (Complete)(Mod.) [-50]
Added Potential x8 [Riveria Ljos Alf has Light (Destiny), Darkness (Destiny)]
[ Lucyna Kushinada has Pack's telepathic connection (Twilight), Light (Destiny), Darkness (Destiny)] [GLaDOS has Light (Destiny), Darkness (Destiny)]
[You as Serena Prince has Darkness (Destiny)] [-40]
[245]
I was about to buy The Light for myself, when an idea occurred to me, a very, very stupid idea… maybe.
Rebecca needed a Ghost to revive herself. In fact, it would be nice if everyone got one. I mean, I'm sure Enid could revive us from practically anything. Even the most esoteric or conceptual things—that's how broken her power was.
But really, I'm sure she'd faint a dozen times if she saw any of our bodies, so I didn't want to pressure her on that point.
So… a way to achieve the same effect as the Ghost, but without the Ghost, was difficult to achieve that result, but I had just come up with an idea.
I quickly browsed through various pages of The Company and finally found something genuinely useful. There was a way to buy Ghosts as a sort of 'program' that would constantly activate; it was strange, but it seemed to be effective, although it appeared to need to be linked to another person to function, to a source of The Light. They required a connection to The Light to revive.
The Ghosts that could be purchased as Companions had their power internalized at the time of purchase, so they could revive with their own power without needing a connection to The Traveler. Still, these options lacked that ability.
I even found a way to convert the Evil Pieces to function like the Ghosts. I modified the Evil Pieces inside my Peerage members, or the unused pieces, to give them the same abilities.
Healing, shield, resurrection, limited weapon and armor storage, and transmutation of materials into weapon ammunition. It would cost 20 credits per Evil Piece, the full cost of buying a Ghost, but it would be worth it.
It would be a much better way to work; it would be very difficult for someone to strike the Evil Pieces lodged in their souls. But there was still the problem that it needed an external power source.
I bit my lip hard; buying The Traveler was impossible. The Traveler was a Tier TY, an Imaginary Tier, which meant its purchase cost was 5 IMG Tickets. Even if I completed the mission to destroy Arasaka completely, I would only get one ticket.
I would have to complete several missions of the same difficulty to buy The Traveler. I wrinkled my nose and went to the 'Slightly Used' option, buying a companion captured by a previous contractor and resold. This lowered the purchase price, but it always depends on the reason for its resale.
Most of the time, it always came with a mild or very severe trauma, or even a substantial loss of power—the more severe the trauma, the cheaper the purchase. But I wrinkled my nose in disgust as I read the options.
The only ones whom I could manage to buy were those with severe trauma, who were more like living dolls than sentient beings. Their trauma was so profound that it prevented them from doing anything for themselves, much less controlling their powers. Worse still, most of the damage was spiritual, to their souls, so it wasn't as simple as erasing all the bad memories and starting from there.
And although The Traveler wasn't entirely… communicative, he was still conscious and independent, and I didn't really want to see how he, a primordial being with one of the strongest paracausal forces in the Destiny universe, had endured such an intense trauma.
I shuddered slightly and considered the options before sighing. There was only one option left: either I or someone else would get hold of the Traveler template and create a connection. The best option is for it to be me; it saves me the need to buy the Ghosts, since I could modify the Evil Pieces myself to function as Ghosts.
That… wasn't a bad idea, if it weren't impossible to get a template from The Traveler. As I said, The Traveler was a TY, meaning it was an imaginary tier, and it was impossible to copy templates from those tiers; literally, the Template Staking option didn't work with templates above T10.
So the only option left for me to get the template was Power Swap. I'd stayed away from Power Swap for myself after the whole incident with The Company's warning, but I couldn't avoid it for the time being.
The Traveler, the Great Machine… The Gardener. The most significant source of The Light within that universe. With the capacity to generate and revive life on an unimaginable scale, capable of terraforming entire planets in a short time, it is enough to easily support life.
The Light was really focused on creation, or giving life, something that had a terrifyingly high affinity with my templates, my alchemy, my Schiavos, my Reality Marble, and more. I had a real affinity for creation, so the template aspect didn't bother me.
Furthermore, The Light is not only linked to creation; it can also be used to destroy, and it is terrifyingly effective. There are countless things it could do.
Mainly because of how paracausality worked.
Paracausal energy, like The Light, was literally magic. Well, it would depend a lot on each person's definition of magic, but by MY definition? It was totally magical.
For me, any supernatural phenomenon was magic. Plain and simple, and that encompassed almost everything. Even psychic powers, most of the time, were just magic disguised as science, explained with techno-chatter.
Paracausal force does not follow the rule of cause and effect; it runs parallel to causality without interfering with it, as its name suggests. It allows something to happen simply because it can, as long as the bearer's will and the paracausal force permit it; it will simply occur.
When using The Light to perform a feat, there was no correlation between cause and effect in standard physics, but there was under another, plausible system. And that was what magic was: the power to use supernatural forces to make impossible things happen.
So, I wasn't really bothered by changing the template. It was just… what it implied that bothered me to some extent.
That would change my basic Baiser template, which I found repugnant to the very core of my being.
At this point, it was a part of me—Baiser's magic, La Verita, the lust, everything. It was all part of me; simply removing that part of me felt repulsive. So, if I wanted to do a power swap, I would use a Stacking Template on Baiser's template without hesitation.
But then there was the whole business of becoming The Traveler, a paracausal entity of unfathomable power. Practically a god, capable of feats on an unimaginable scale. Obviously, I couldn't get the Power Swap for The Traveler's full roster, so I'd have to lower it to a T7, or at most a T8, which wouldn't give me any more power than I already have, but still.
Being a primordial being of paracausal energy, which, over time, would become capable of affecting entire galactic systems, entire universes, was simply… I couldn't imagine it.
Oh, I knew mentally that I could eventually reach that power, but this… this made it more real somehow.
I bit my lip hard.
"Just do it," I heard Bella's voice in my head, making me jump. "You're overthinking it, so much so that I can hear it from a mile away. Just do what you want," Bella added immediately.
"But-"
"But it's okay, if you really don't like the result, you can do another power swap," Bella said with a snort. I stopped stiffly.
That… that was true. I almost wanted to huff at my stupidity before quickly pressing the buttons; Bella was right.
Power Swap to The Traveler(T7) [-20]
Template Stacking I [You as Serena Prince has Hiiragi Utena /Magia Baiser (Gushing over Magical Girls)] [-160]
[65]
Author's Notes: Yay! Chapter 200! Thank you all for reading this far and for all your support!