Awakening

John found himself levitating in the midst of an endless void. He had absolutely no idea how he had gotten there or what this was, only that it felt… vaguely familiar to him. Wasn’t I… getting that trait upgrade? What’s going on?

Suddenly, a burst of motion caught his eye at the edge of his vision. Spinning to face it, he found nothing but the unrelenting darkness. Every fiber of his being screamed at him that there was something wrong, which persisted even after he double checked around himself, seeing nothing amiss aside from the… eternal void sitting in all directions. Ah yes, not a thing wrong with the presence of literally nothing surrounding me.

But that gut feeling did not stop there, it grew larger and larger by the minute, causing his entire body to uncontrollably shake. As it reached its peak, John’s body screamed at him to get away… But where to?

Abruptly, all of the hairs on John’s body stood up as he sensed what could only be described as a… presence behind himself.

Despite the protests of every fiber of his being, John pushed through the cloud of fear, forcing himself to look at whatever this was. I need to face this head on. Weakness will only be my end.

With large, **** movements, he gradually came to view this… thing. What he saw etched itself into the essence of his being. A singular eye, larger than life, seemingly the best attempt at emulating matter, created by something that had only seen glimpses of what matter, let alone life, looked like.

The disembodied eye was completely flat, being comprised of a simple circle contained within an iris of ever-shifting forms. And worse, it was staring directly at him.

His eyes met it for the tiniest of moments, and yet that was all it took. John saw past the eye and into something that he was not meant to. Something g͓̲͍̫͖̥̻͟l̸̨̛͚̻͙̳o̴̖͎̥̤̥͇̳r̞͈̫͍̙̭͎ì̛̘̠̤o̼̜͕̬u͟҉̧͉̬ś̛̺̳͖͈͙̬̰͖͢.

John awoke to the sound of blaring sirens and incredible warmth. His eyes shot open, immediately witnessing the landscape of twisted metal and flame that surrounded him. Clambering to his feet the moment he could, John faintly remembered something about… an eye...

Shaking those thoughts from his mind, John focused on the situation at hand. Which after taking stock of it by looking around for a moment was that he was surrounded by the wreckage of the towering display of whatever that machine had been, along with flames. Lots of flames in fact, they were climbing towards the ceiling that had been unreachable minutes before. Next, he realized that he didn’t have a way out of this situation. He was surrounded by danger on all sides.

So keeping his full health bar in mind, John did what anyone would expect him to do by now. He ran up to the closest, most intact section of steel plating that wasn’t entirely surrounded by fire before raising his hand up to it and attempting to put as much of it into his inventory as he could. With a metallic screech, holes were bored into the riveted sheet, clearing a way through what seemed roughly big enough for him to barely fit through it.

Compressing his body as much as he could, John attempted his best to squeeze his way through the hole, only slightly burning himself where his uncovered skin met the scalding metal with a hiss of pain.

-8 HP (-16 before armor)

After making his way through with only a few more minor cuts, he found himself directly in front of the paneled far wall. After inspecting it a moment, he found the small seams that presumably separated the wall from the door.

John activated Machine Mind for a moment to see whether he could control something remotely to open it, but to no avail, as he found nothing around him that he could access. Left with no obvious solution, he racked his brain for something he could use to survive this.

It was then that he remembered one of his more neglected skills, Move. Despite it being only level 1, he hoped it would work if he pumped enough mana into it.

So John pointed towards the lower lip of the door, before focusing his mind and channeling the maximum amount of mana he could possibly do, even going as far as using Overclock for that extra boost.

The sensation was a bit different from what had been previously; it felt as if part of the mana was also being stored throughout his body, not only being localized to his hands.

Feeling that he had reached the apex of how much mana he could put into the spell with a burning sensation that accompanied using Overclock, he unleashed the raw **** of the shaped mana into the panel.

With the sound of tearing metal and cracking stone, the surprisingly light panel flew upwards before getting stuck on whatever rail system it was designed to roll on. Not wanting to be around when it inevitably came back down, John darted forwards and out of the bunker.

Once he was out, John found himself back where he had entered the secret area. After taking a quick glance around to make sure it was safe, he took a moment to look at the list of popups that he had accrued in his time in… whatever that thing was.

Beyond human
Receive your first trait. I was wondering when you’d finally explore a bit.
+20 Exp
+1 END

One of these things is not like the other
Discover your first secret area of a barrier.
+30 Exp
+1 Rare Materials Crate

New Quest: Discovery
Objective(s): Stumble upon the location of 5 different secret areas.
Optional Objective(s): Inform yourself of the backstory of at least 1 barrier.
Rewards: +200 Exp, +1 Stone of Secrecy
Optional Rewards: +1 Trait Pick from a barrier whose backstory you know. This does not count towards the normal limit.
Accept? Y/N

Overclock has reached level 2!
Move has reached level 2!

“C’mon Gaia, Loot Crates? Really? I’ll take the stuff, but that’s just distasteful.”

John quickly looked over the quest with interest. As his eyes flickered over the objectives and even the optional objective, he immediately hit “Yes”. I’m going to be doing this shit anyways in all probability, might as well get some more out of-

His thoughts were immediately interrupted by an arrow burying itself into his side.

-5 HP (-13 before armor)

With a cry of pain, he threw himself through the door frame to take cover and darted off to the side. After the wound healed and the pain subsided moments later, John took a peek outside to see what he was dealing with.

What he saw was certainly not anything he was familiar with. It was reminiscent of the Ranger Golems that he had encountered earlier, but with some pretty obvious alterations.

The stone plating of the golem had been replaced by sheets of what looked like aluminum, that, combined with what was likely an improvement of the internal design, allowed it to move with even greater dexterity than before. It wielded a crossbow that shone in the sunlight, looking as new as if it had been made that very day.

The mask that adorned its face was still porcelain, but now seemed to be crafted using much more precise techniques, being made up of many plates that shifted as if to emulate expressions, emphasizing the creepiness to a greater degree than ever before.

Wanting to find out whatever the fuck this thing was, John ducked back behind the doorframe and charged an Observe for a moment before throwing it towards the golem.

Well fuck, I guess this is because of me getting that upgrade, isn’t it?

So John summoned a Mana Javelin in each hand with a good chunk of his mana reserves and launched them towards the most obvious weakness of the construct overall. The eyes, optical sensors, whatever you want to call it. As they impacted the mask of the golem, they shattered the faceplate and obliterated the eyes along with a good portion of the head.

While this didn’t kill it outright, the lack of eyesight did disable it. The absence of this meant that the only thing it could do was wildly shoot at where it believed him to be.

Of course, none of the shots came even close to hitting. So John summoned another javelin and launched it towards the torso of the golem, where it solidly impacted, splitting the protective shell of the golem and shattering something important inside. The golem then fell to the ground and faded away into nothingness, only leaving behind a plate of aluminum as the only indicator that it had been there at all.

So he went over to put it into his inventory, taking a cursory glance at a popup that had just appeared.