Searching the Storm

John was standing in the Nexus once again, his bike was stored on the lower floor and he was in front of the crafting bench in his ‘workroom’ as he called it.

On the table in front of him was a translucent yellow coin, minted with the icon of a sword.

Upgrade Token (Weapon)
Use this token in conjunction with a finished weapon and a piece of material to upgrade the weapon with effects from the material. After this, the weapon cannot be further upgraded or modified until broken down again. Resulting effects of the upgrade are affected by rarity of the material, rarity of the weapon, current level of Craft and the user’s current level.

The question he was asking himself was if he should use that token right now to upgrade his spear or if he should wait with that. He always had the nasty habit of stockpiling stuff in games until they were ‘necessary’, but so far he had been pretty lenient with the things that he had gotten.

But this token made him think twice. This was the first time in five days that he had seen something like this at all so he wasn’t sure how many of these tokens he would actually get.

The second concern he had was whether the upgrade would impede with the set bonus that he would get if he ever found the shield. And that was a big if. But it was still a possibility that he didn’t want to rule out. The shield had been stolen from the Valkyries a couple of years ago if he remembered correctly, so there was the possibility that it still was somewhere in this town. Because, honestly, who would have any use for a shield that probably only get some real powers when it was wielded with the spear he was currently holding?

Then there was the thought about if he actually needed to upgrade the spear at all right now. So far his attacks were still extremely powerful and he had little to no problems with most of the enemies he encountered when he was actually sensibly fighting. He was still developing his combat style and exploring the possibilities of his skills, so why should he already start to upgrade his weapon now when he still had time to do it later when it was actually more powerful to do so…

Going through these arguments, John decided that, if he should find another one of these Upgrade Tokens, then he would upgrade his weapon. Until then he would save this thing for when it was necessary to push beyond his current ‘limit’.

Looking at his phone, he saw that it was already noon and that he should get going if he actually wanted to talk to Mariana today.

Before he left the Nexus in some civilian clothes though, John once again checked on his captive.

Andrea was currently sleeping in her cell, happily snoring away the daylight. John was glad that she apparently at least felt comfortable enough to actually be able to sleep. So he wasn’t the worst ‘host’ for her, that was a nice thought.

On his way out he patted both Thorn and Gary, ordering them to be good until he got back with a guest.

He was planning on showing Mariana this place. He trusted her, and he wanted to explain to her everything that had happened since the last time they had seen each other.

It had dawned on John that it was pretty rude of him not to stay in touch with her after everything that she had done for him… Hopefully, she wasn’t mad.

“Do you have any idea how mad I am, mister?” Mariana growled at John when he entered the Treasure Cove. He hadn’t even taken a single step into the store yet and he was already getting admonished for showing up. The people near the entrance either snickered at the exchange between the two or watched the scene with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh… I guess very?”

“Oh, you guess so? How would you feel when one of your best customers gets themselves involved with so much shit and doesn’t seem to think about keeping in touch with you? This is the thanks that I get for all those discounts I gave you!”

Trying to contain the situation (and dodging a D20 that had been thrown at him), John stepped into the store and let the door close behind him. No reason the people on the streets needed to hear this. Thankfully, there were relatively few customers in the Treasure Cove since it was Friday noon and school hadn’t ended yet. “There were a lot of things happening; I’ll tell you everything if you promise to not bury me in plastic dice.”

Snapping her fingers, Mariana already walked towards the stairs to the basement when the younger Mariana took her place behind the counter to look after the customers. It was still weird to know that that robot looked more like Mariana than actual Mariana Störtebeker did at the moment.

Following the pirate down the stairs, John was immediately pulled into the same Barrier as the last time, though this time he didn’t end up in the brig, standing just in the empty storage room below the deck. They had shifted between the store and the Barrier on the stairs so that neither the people below nor the people above could’ve seen them.

The now once again young Mariana Störtebeker looked at him with expectant eyes, “So? Start talking! And don’t leave out any detail! You know that we have all day in here!”

Mariana kept her questions for John’s story until he was done retelling the most eventful week of his life. Here and there her eyes widened when he told of his more dangerous exploits and a lecherous smile crept on her face as he told her about Aranea, Astrid, Aloy, and Kaen.

“…And then I killed like eight guys with a single grenade and felt really weird about how… nonchalant I went about killing them. I basically saw them melt before my eyes and felt nothing about it… At that point, I knew I needed to talk to someone about it, and I remembered the reason you left the Abyss, so that’s why I’m here now. I don’t know if I’m doing the ‘right’ thing, so to speak...”

Slowly nodding, the captain looked at him with soft eyes, “Okay, I’ll put my questions on the back-burner for now, we’ll deal with what you felt there first. So, yes, I did say that I left the Abyss because of how little I felt about people dying but I meant something different there. I didn’t mean the people that I planned to kill, I meant the people that followed me, that swore allegiance to me, were **** to work with me, the people on my side. My strategies became more and more ruthless with less consideration for casualties. They were but tools to be used in my mind back then, resources to be expended.”

She took a slow breather before continuing to explain, “So, firstly, don’t feel bad about killing anything inside these Barriers. They aren’t born and don’t live the same way we do. They need the Barrier around them to survive and they live in a sort of state where they are supposed to die to keep the Barrier alive. When nothing inside a Barrier with creatures dies, things get... weird. As for the humans, you find in these Barriers, they are more than likely nothing more than creatures that look human. They don’t seem to have the same kind of intelligence we have, and their ‘social structure’ basically is just that of a pack of animals. Any structures you find in Barriers are not created by them. They aren’t human. Technically they aren’t even alive.

“Second, don’t feel bad for your enemies when it has actually come so far that you’re in a life or **** situation. The Abyss can be a pretty chill and relaxed society, but when things get serious, they get really serious. If you have something to fight for, do that and stand by it. If you start doubting yourself, others will know and they will use that to their advantage. Stand by your principles, and judge your enemies upon them. It sounds corny, but when all you have are just a couple of seconds to decide to fight or to avoid the fight, you have to trust your guts. If you feel like your enemy deserves to die, then do so swiftly. As long as you don’t take enjoyment out of the killing, you’re still human and you’re still a ‘good guy’.”

Taking in the words, John furrowed his brows, “But what if my judgment is wrong?” which only resulted in him getting softly punched in the shoulder.

“There you go again, doubting yourself! You will know what’s right and what’s not, I know you enough to see that. Try to think about what’s at stake for the people you care about. So what if you sometimes make errors? That’s called life! You make mistakes, you learn from them and then you keep moving on. The thing you’re missing most right now is experience, and experience is learning. Now stop overthinking this! You will know what you have to do when something like that happens. You have a good head on your shoulders and you’ll get through anything the world will throw at you.”

Was it really that easy? Did he really just have to trust his own judgment in these kinds of things? Was there even a reason to doubt himself? So far, there was no point where he fully regretted his decision when it came down to it in the end. Sure, he could’ve handled some things differently, but hindsight is always easier. Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he looked at Mariana again. “Thanks, I think I really needed that pep talk.”

She grinned as she saw his mood lighting up, “Good, glad to be of help to you. Now, I do have some questions. Oh, and there’s something I need to show you later.”

Curious at what she wanted to show him, John waved his hand, “Sure, ask away.”

“What was it like to fuck Aloy?”

Well, that was certainly not the first question he had expected…

“It was… weird? Honestly, I feel kinda weird about how I went about it, but the sex itself was amazing. It was kind of primal, animalistic…” he answered, slowly gaining a shade of red on his face.

Nodding approvingly, Mariana kept on asking, “And any plans for other video game girls you’re going to boink?”

“Not right now… I have enough girls to care about right now in the real world, no need to add more video game ones to that…”

“Right, right, growing a harem is a slow and sometimes tedious process,” she heartily laughed.

Raising an eyebrow, John just had to ask a question of his own right there, “Are you talking from first-hand experience there?”

Shrugging her shoulders with a smug look on her face, Mariana just said, “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe that’s nothing for you to know right now.” Then her face turned a bit more serious, “So, do you trust the Fateweavers?”

That question caught John on the wrong foot once again. That was a pretty heavy shift in tone… “I mean, right now I don’t have any reason not to? They seem to be open to me, I’m stoked about the work they offer me, and so far every question I had was answered in a way. So I guess I do trust them.”

That question seemingly was enough for the captain as she immediately asked the next question, “And you want to follow in the footsteps of Victor Frankenstein now?”

John had to shrug at that question, “Not really? The things he did sound pretty fucked up, and that’s just the things written in the story, no idea what else happened. It’s just that I always was a fan of the story about him and the ideas that were in that story. And now that I know that he was a Fateweaver, I kinda want to know what actually happened to him. I couldn’t care less if I’m like him or not.”

“Maybe I can shed some light on some deviations from the story then,” said Mariana nonchalantly.

“And how would you do that?”

“Maybe I have personally met him and can tell you about him?”

“Did you?”

“Maybe.”

Sighing, he had a feeling on where this conversation was going, “Okay, so you seem to know things that I don’t. What do you want for that info?”

“I want you to look further into him. When I met him I assumed he was just a guy in the Abyss on a rough patch of life and only later learned about parts of what he was. Didn’t even know he was a Fateweaver up until now…”

John didn’t even hesitate in his answer since he wanted to look further into the guy anyway, “Deal. Now, what do you have?”