Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG
Chapter 264

Arc Flash. I thought it’d be a pretty straightforward ability, and I was right... kinda. After I went through my morning routine and got into the speakeasy, I finally started testing it out. Like I suspected last night, it was an active type.

I stood near the entrance to the place. With a thought, Arc Flash activated. Electricity surged through my body- no, transformed my body. In one moment, I was flesh and blood. In the next? I was made of pure energy as an arc flashed across space. My whole world turned into a pleasant buzz.

I controlled it somewhat, flickering into being on the other side of the room. Electricity crackled off of me in blinding arcs and I returned to flesh and blood once more. In a split second, I'd moved across the entirety of the room and became briefly intangible. Teleportation was nuts, but teleportation with an I-frame? If I timed it right, I might be able to dodge some massive AOEs.

After Arc Flash went off, my Kinetic ability was fully charged to capacity. Electricity arced off my shoes with sharp crackles. It was already good, even without the effect it had on my ability. A full recharge at any time I wanted would be kind of insane once I got better control of everything. 

I flicked around with it a couple more times. The fourth flash felt absolutely awful. It was a kind of debilitating pain that even Cold-Blooded couldn’t help me overcome. Every cell in my body felt absolutely drained. I collapsed to the floor of the speakeasy for what felt like hours afterward. For now, three flashes were my limit. Paired with Burst Step though, it should be more than enough to get away.

Once I recovered, I rubbed my left eye uncomfortably. I pushed myself to my feet and headed toward the back. It was finally time to work on the Aether Jumping tech. I could barely contain my excitement. This was something I wanted to work on ever since I first heard about it months ago.

I retrieved the components from my stash and disassembled everything. Raijin’s versions were good, but they were a bit out of date considering they’d been collecting dust in the storage room for who knows how long. Not to mention they were incredibly noticeable as Raijin tech. Good chance there was a watch out from the corp now.

I had more than enough knowledge about Aether Jumping to whip up my own variants of the tech anyway. I’d been printing parts almost nonstop in preparation of this moment, so I was finally fully ready to go.

Aether Jumping was pretty simple. There were three parts to it: the Portal, Anchor, and Tether. The Portal was simply the way to get in and out. Pretty straightforward. If it was just going in and out of the Aether, it wouldn’t be all that difficult. The true difficulty of Aether Jumping came from the Aether’s nature.

Basically, entering the Aether from the same Portal five times wouldn’t guarantee going to the same place every single time. While the Aether did overlay our dimension, it wasn’t a one-to-one. Space there, outside of a few exceptions, wasn’t stable and always shifted around. Getting lost in the Aether was a real issue.

That’s where the Anchor came in. Essentially, the Anchor was a checkpoint used to stabilize space. The area directly around an Anchor would be ‘saved’ by it, becoming much more solid. The chaos would cease, allowing solid ground. It was like a massively weaker version of the eidolon’s sub-spaces. And maybe the pavilion too, but I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if that was actually in the Aether.

Then there was the final part. The Tether was used to link up to an Anchor. If I were to leave the Anchor’s area, there was no guarantee I’d ever find it again. The Tether ensured I wouldn’t be lost for an eternity in the Aether. Extremely important to have. 

Likewise, Tethers were used to set a Portal to an Anchor. While the theory was all pretty straightforward, the tech was anything but. The first issue, of course, was getting tech to work in the Aether. If eidolons didn’t work on it alongside humanity, I doubt it ever would’ve become a thing. Aether Jumping was the closest thing to magi tech the world would probably ever see.

Anyway, the core idea and use of the tech for me was storage. What I wanted was to use an Anchor to save a ‘storage space’ inside the Aether, then use a Tethered Portal to access it from anywhere in the world. I’d never have to worry about running out of ammo again if I had infinite carrying capacity. 

I could maybe even set up an automated workshop inside of the space to constantly pump out commonly used materials, but that would all be for way later in the future. For now, I just needed to get the tech working.

I slowly built up my own versions of the stuff. I scraped Raijin’s designs completely. Although they were decent, I didn’t want my stuff to noticeably be tied back to them. And their stuff was designed for industrial scale. I didn’t need anything near that big considering it’d be for personal use.

I used the components and pieces to build my own Portal. Raijin’s, at least according to what I read from Owl, used massive unbound Portals to mass transport miners in and out of the Aether. They were titanic circular rings that needed cavernous rooms to hold. 

My design was closer to a projector. It was a theoretical piece of tech designed by Echidna herself, though never used by the eidolon. Instead of projecting a hologram or an image though, it’d rip a hole in the veil. 

I wanted to go with a gauntlet styled one, but I had enough wrist tech that anything else would weigh me down way too much. Instead, it was going to be a drone. Simply put, I no longer needed my silent drone that I built oh so long ago. My new Dragonflies basically did everything it did, but better. I no longer needed a drone for scouting, so why not set one up for this?

The plan was to code it with automation and set the drone up as a small tank surrounding the projector. The Portal was an interval, and extremely consuming, part of the Aether Jumping tech. Allowing it to be destroyed was not an option. 

The projector was a pain in the ass to get together. Even with all the parts and components I needed on hand. I still had to Transmute more and more raw materials to get it to work. It didn’t help that I had to take it even slower thanks to working with volatile Aether materials.

The drone itself wasn’t that big of an issue. It was an easy thing to make nowadays, especially with all the accumulated knowledge I had. I was originally going to go with just hard plate armor. The weight wasn’t exactly kind on my back, nor was it light enough for the drone to fly without some kind of Gravitic chamber built into it.

Instead, I covered the drone in something I was going to call Spring Scale. It was a type of armor I'd thought about in the past, but only just became capable of making thanks to Quantum Automation. Basically, it was formed of countless tiny scales, each of them extremely durable. I used the same stuff that they used in deployable ballistic shields to make each part. If nothing else, it’d hold against small arms.

Then there was the mechanism part of the Spring Scale. When one scale was hit, it’d compress backward against the other surrounding scales and a spring at its back, causing a wave. The combined resistance absorbed most of the force generated by a bullet. I wanted to add in some kind of charging port that could turn the spring energy into electricity, but then it got bulky again so I scrapped it.

The expiremental armor turned out better than I thought it would. In testing, it held up to several AR rounds without much of an issue. It’d only be a problem if I pulled out heavier weapons or armor-piercing rounds, but hopefully the drone would never be exposed to that. All my code was focused on evasion and stealth anyway.

The Portal projector was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as the Anchor proved to be. That alone took a week to get working. Stabilizing an unstable dimension was, as could probably be guessed, extremely difficult. It didn’t help that stuff kept blowing up when I messed up. I even lost a few fingers one time, which was… well, at least I knew how to sew fingers back onto hands now.

The Tether wasn’t nearly as bad. After gaining as much experience as I did while working on the Anchor, it was practically a breeze to make. I got it all done in a day. 

During my breaks, I worked on some other stuff. My chrome, in particular, was nearing completion. They were all looking good, though I’d need a bit more polishing to get them done. 

With Transmutation, I didn’t have to worry about running out of materials. Using the Crystallized Elements to exchange was almost like an infinite resource glitch in a video game. I was literally making stuff out of almost thin air through the Imbuement Array. Whatever was behind the Perk really like that kind of stuff for some reason. 

I took some time to go to the Constellation Night Market when it rolled into town and bought some ICE for all my gear. I dumped fifty thousand Rayn on a fairly high-end one. Combined with my other purchases? I was down to just over fifteen thousand Rayn now.

I also took a short break to get a Perk. It was for Driving. I went with what I had already planned to snag: Air Vehicles. It was a long and tiring process figuring out how to fly everything from space shuttles to flyers to even old-fashioned bi-planes.

The process itself was more or less the same as Land Vehicles. The learning space teleported me around and sat me down in countless different vehicles. It was extremely confusing at first, but once I got the hang of all the buttons and switches, it wasn’t too bad. Most things had a similar enough flow to them, so I started breezing through the long list of Air Vehicles before too long.

All in all, though? It was a pretty relaxing couple weeks. A lot of time to just chill and hang out at the speakeasy, working on projects that’d been on my mind for what felt like a year. I pumped out a ton of Aetherial Imbued bullets during the time, too, including new Shock Shots, as I was calling them. I’d have three different elements to pick from next time I got in a scrape.

It was good for me, I think. No worries during that time and I could just vibe and keep my mind off of things. Healing, almost. Almost. The tree still gave me near panic attacks every time I saw it against the city skyline, but even those were slowly cooling down.

— — —

Two weeks later, I headed for Absolom Clinic. My bag was fully loaded with my chrome. I’d made several different options in advance in case something wasn’t quite up to Nael’s standards, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I’d grown a lot from just half a year ago. Hell, I’d grown a lot in just the past few weeks alone. Just not vertically…

Nael hunched over a sleeping man, digging into the man’s intestines. He looked up when I made a light noise at the door. “Hey, kid.”

”You- uh- you good?” I pointed to his hand, still stuck into the guy’s stomach.

He glanced down, refocusing. “Oh! Yeah. This guy got hit with a neuro-acid bullet. Just- just give me a sec. Time sensitive.”

“Should I come back later?” I took a step back toward the door.

”No, just take a seat.” He waved to the waiting chairs with his free hand. “Almost…”

Nael ripped out his hand, bringing quite a bit of gore with it. The unconscious man on the table groaned deeply. The surgical chrome he used casually released, dropping a bullet into a nearby tray. The bullet sizzled for a few moments as the neuro-acid met the air.

“Got it.” He leaned back and wiped at his forehead. Then came the process of patching the man back up. Nael flooded the wound with some kind of liquid and started sewing him back together. The fluid was… maybe something to counteract the acid?

I watched, intrigued, as Nael showed off his medical skills. In what felt like just a few minutes, the wound was all sealed back up. He covered it with a protective layer of spray-on synth-skin. The man looked like he was never even wounded in the first place.

Nael stood up and stretched out, hitting a device next to his surgical chair. A tendril snapped out of the chair, waving around a UV light to sterilize everything. It followed it up with some kind of spray, and then began automatically cleaning up.

Nael moved to the side of the room, washing off his hands and cleaning out the surgical chrome. Once it was all clean, the hand reverted back into a normal hand. “Got your new chrome?”

I shrugged my bag off my shoulders and pulled out all the stuff. “A few options too.”

“Nice, kid.” Nael hiked a thumb towards the recently operated on man. ”Let me get him settled in, and I’ll take a look at it.”

“Chek.”

Nael casually picked the guy up. He was at least double Nael’s size, and yet the Medek didn’t even seem to struggle. He easily carried him to the back rooms. Nael returned shortly after, and set up a bunch of sensors. “Bring it all over here.”

I moved my bag of goodies over. I’d made two different Neural Links, one based on Cold Moon’s blueprints and the other free-handed. There were also three different Neural System Interfaces. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure which of the three would be the best, so I brought them all anyway.

Nael chatted with me lightly about the weather as he got to work scanning each and every piece of the tech. Most of them he moved over into a pile, though two of them didn’t seem to pass his standards. Both were the Neural System Interfaces.

”Something wrong with them?” I nodded to the two NSIs.

He glanced over at them, running a hand down the metal. “Only if you’re not worried about frying your brain. Whoever built these designed them for mil-grade stuff.”

”Is that… an issue?” I thought more capacity would be good, no? Thats why I spent so much time on them. And, well, the actual human-machine interface was complicated.

”Look, it's not an issue if you aren't worried about Glitching or Desynchronization, but having that much juice hooked up to you?” His eyes flicked over me. “Besides, you don’t have any need for that kind of thing without way more chrome.”

Right, right… Well, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I liked my limbs just the way they were, thank you. My Perks probably wouldn’t work with most chrome anyway.

Hmm… getting some knuckles might not be a bad idea, though. I could make my shock gauntlets a permanent feature. Or maybe one of those shoulder-mounted cannons the Valkries had would be cool? Shoulder replacements though…

Speaking of, what happened to Brunhilde? I expected her to contact me, but nothing since. Did she wind up dying? No way I was that lucky, right?

”What do you think?” I asked the Medek once he finished his last checks. I’d based it all on other chrome, so it should be up to standard. I wanted to innovate a bit, but I’m not a hundred percent how it’d all play with a body so I kept modifications to a minimum. 

Nael side-eyed me. ”Where’d you get this stuff from?”

I glanced the other way. ”A friend.”

“Well… your ‘friend’ needs to study a bit of biology, but nothing too bad. I can fix the few minor incompatabilties.” He waved his hand at the terminal. “The code itself is pretty advanced, albeit the ICE is a bit simplistic.”

I spent fifty thousand on that ICE. No way it was just simplistic, right? It was supposed to be on the upper end! Ugh- this sucked… I didn’t even have enough Rayn to upgrade even if I wanted to.

”They’ll hold up to your bioelectricity levels. Your friend custom built all the augs?” Nael held up the Neural Link based on Cold Moon Solutions. The metallic neural system dangled from his hands. “This one is probably better than the other. The internal batteries and converters will work well with your ability.”

“What about the NSI?”

He set the last Neural Link down and lightly tapped it. It was the only one that made it through his testing. ”Pretty standard. Should hold up with most chrome. I like the manual disconnect feature.” 

”Did you see the inbuilt chip?” I pointed toward the feature I was the most proud of in that one.

”Sure did.” He rubbed his chin and checked his terminal once more. “An internal HUD projected directly into the brain? Good workaround.”

That particular one was inspired by some of the tech built into the Shen Keng Maniac I put down. It took quite a bit of testing and simulations to figure out how it all worked, but I was happy with the result. Even if I kept a clone-flesh eye, which was doubtful, I’d have a HUD. Not to mention it’d save an augment slot in future cyber eyes.

Nael did a few last scans before patting the chair. “Looks good. Alright, you want both of these, kid?” 

“Chek.” I hopped up into the seat, making myself comfortable.

He started moving around the area, pulling machines down as he set up. “Okay… let me know if you feel anything wrong when you wake up. Getting two at once is a bit risky…”

I figured. The Neural Link should mostly be fine though. I spent most of my life with one. As I was now? I felt oddly empty and light. The NSI was the biggest issue. It’d probably be fine though… right?

I laid back on the chair and breathed in the knockout gas.