Chapter 49: Wheels and Meals

Chapter 49: Wheels and Meals

Truth “thoughtfully” relieved Loudmouth of his spear. He gave it a quick once over. It was just a long, polished bit of wood with a broad metal head. Maybe it had ritual significance? You could hardly call it a weapon. Though with his current body, that calculation changed. He looked down on Loudmouth. He didn’t have a way to tie up the villager. Nor did he have a way to gag him.

Truth sighed. He carefully kicked the unconscious man once in the head. Hopefully, the brain damage wouldn’t be too severe. Sometimes cultivation could clear up those sorts of injuries, and they had to have some kind of doctor here, right? Or shaman? Something?

Right?

Feeling low, Truth skulked towards the rammed earth huts. He avoided the ones with smoke rising out of them until he realized all the huts had smoke rising out of them. It looked like he would have to knock out even more people.

The village was a scattered collection of huts built around a stretch of dirt road. There were little fields out back of the houses, and it looked like there was a well centrally located. There were three wagons parked in town, seemingly haphazardly. Big, ugly things. Well, not big. Small ugly things, big compared to the sleek people carriers he remembered from living in Jeon.

Truth kept skulking. People were cooking dinner. Three or more generations gathered around a wood-burning fire, cooking in iron pots or pans. Vegetables, mostly, flavored with bits of dried meat. Big plastic jugs of water, bleached by the sun.

Tucked under the eves of one hut, he found a broken down two-wheeler. The system had highlighted it in blue. A preview of the treasure finder reward? The seat was rotted out, the foam half lost. It looked like some... quite a bit... almost all of the critical talisman lines were broken or worn away. The chained spirit powering the thing was still in place, thank Prager.

He stared at the two-wheeler a little longer. It was a broken wreck, but the really broken part was the talisman system that moved the magic from the spirit to the wheels. You didn’t even need control runes for steering, as the operator just aimed the front wheel with a couple of handlebars. And as a qualified Talisman Maintenance Technician, repairing this wasn’t a big problem with the right tools. An odd thought hit him, and he stifled a giggle.

Truth gently extended a finger, letting his long nail rest on a worn section of the talisman. He half closed his eyes and ran the Meditations. All he wanted was for his right index fingernail to be strong enough to etch metal. Not much. Nails were already hard. The metal was designed to be carved. Not a giant leap. Ferociously holding the image in his mind, he traced a little bit of the line.

It worked. Stellar demons be praised; it worked!

Truth smiled. Now he had a plan. Working swiftly, he repaired the two-wheeler. It had a little rack on the back, which was lucky, though he would have to steal some rope. It was the work of but a minute to do some high-speed (very high speed) snatch and grabs through the village’s windows- a jug of water, a pot of food, rope, and barely a minute more to attach them to his iron steed. Just for luck, he tied the spear along the frame. He peeled out in a plume of dirt as outraged villagers started searching for the wiseass stealing their food.

Mission Complete! Reward- improved standard of living, access to your Personal Development Sheet.. Chain mission begun- Travel to the City of Shomburuti and secure lodgings. Waypoint added. Reward: Improved standard of living, next mission in the chain. Bet you wish you had punched yourself in the nuts and gotten that One Hour Treasure Finder reward now, don’t you? HINT: Some missions are repeatable!

It felt oddly good to hear the “Mission Complete!” chime. It really shouldn’t, but it still made him smile. He was developing the ability to selectively ignore parts of the System messages. At least until they could revisit the subject of jamming the System into a wasp's nest.

Truth drove down the desert road for an hour as fast as the bound spirit could spin the wheels. There was a collapsing wreck of something up ahead. Some kind of service station, perhaps, where one could load up on food and water or repair damage to your vehicle. Long abandoned now, crumbling concrete and corrugated steel roof still releasing the heat of the day.

Truth pulled into it and ate his very first meal. It was... terrible. The food was clearly not done cooking, the vegetables tasted weird and unfamiliar, and the dishes ranged from savagely bland to Not-Even-God-Can-Save-You spicy. The only halfway decent thing was the enormous flatbread every kitchen seemed to have, with its slightly sour, nutty taste.

Unfortunately, the look and texture of the bread reminded Truth uncannily of sponges used to clean and degrease weapons in long-term storage. The kind of ash-gray color that seemed to fade into the night.

Which he saw through remarkably well. The night, not the bread. That was still opaque. Truth looked up into the extraordinary heavens, the galaxy's edge making a starry road no longer hidden by the glow of Harban’s lights and pollution. Yeah, his eyes were amazing now. He didn’t have perfect night vision, but low light vision? Yep, yep, yep.

Speed- 2.5

Perception- 2.4

Proprioception- 4

Reflexes- 5

A person who hadn’t been using a body development spell should have a stellar ray attunement of between thirty and fifty percent, and the other values should be roughly equal to their level. Each whole number was intended to correspond to the “average” Starbrite employee of that level, with the numbers after the decimal corresponding to how far past that level the body cultivator was. It didn’t tell the whole story, of course. Not nearly. But regardless of Starbrite’s manipulation, Truth’s numbers were more than a little off.

Even then, Truth knew these weren’t “Wow, great job on your PT!” numbers. They were “Just think of all the people who will benefit from what we learn from your vivisection! No, of course we can’t use anesthesia, it would totally invalidate the results,” numbers. Although the System must have known, given it generated the numbers. Or was it just his local System? But then, why would the evil little sprite keep it secret? His head swirled with questions.

Now, Truth had cultivated exactly once since his rebirth, and it had felt spectacular. So high hopes for the attunement. As for the rest... well... he was still Level Two, and he was clearly a hell of a lot better at everything, so...

BODY DEVELOPMENT *NOT GIMPED EDITION*

Stellar Ray Attunement- 90%*

Bone Density- 5.1*

Strength- 3.7*

Speed- 4.0*

Proprioception- 7.0*

Reflexes- 7.0*

Level Progression- 93%

Truth gave the sheet a hard look.

“Summon Humanoid System Interface.”