“That counts as a reward?”
“I thought you would want fruit or a drink.”
Annie’s eyes lit up.
“Of course it counts, angel.
Of course it does.”
“Alright then.”
Aldric was well aware of what his Modeling Optimization did to people.
He had already dialed back some of its intensity and shifted the weight toward warmth and approachability.
He gave each of the siblings a hug in turn.
For him, it was a simple gesture.
For Annie, it was something else entirely.
That warmth.
She felt it again.
She had never stopped thinking about that brief contact in the tunnel.
It had stayed with her like something that had no right to fade.
Like radiant sunlight pouring out from somewhere inside the soul.
A warmth that came from somewhere deep.
How to describe it.
It was like standing in total darkness, danger pressing in from every side.
And everywhere Aldric passed, there was only calm and warmth.
Being pulled into that embrace.
It was like her soul being gathered into a vast, warm, golden sun.
Aldric left afterward.
He set down some fruit and a few drinks before he went.
A hollow feeling welled up in Annie the moment he was gone.
Like the cold, sorrowful world had closed back in around her.
“Was that an illusion?” Antor pulled his clothing tighter around himself, as though trying to hold onto a little warmth.
That one line made Annie look up sharply.
“Brother…
the angel…
he is a god, isn’t he…”
“He said he wasn’t…
but…”
“No…
he has to be…
can’t you feel it…”
“Do you remember the statue…”
Antor’s pupils contracted.
The statue showed two faces of the figure they carried in their hearts.
Two sides of what they believed the God-Emperor to be.
He didn’t know why, but something felt incomplete.
Like a piece was missing and he couldn’t name it.
He was just an illiterate miner with a handful of Federation technical knowledge barely scratched onto the surface of his mind.
He only knew that something essential was still absent.
Something he couldn’t identify yet.
Annie opened her personal terminal.
There was a photo on it.
Aldric holding her.
She held the terminal up and turned to face the miners’ reverent eyes.
“I was chosen by the angel.”
She kept going.
She continued the work Aldric had described as settling the workers down.
…
Announcement: New powered picks now available.
Players wishing to purchase or replace their current model may visit Engineer Antor’s workshop in the engineering section.
Every player saw it.
Drool, as the player with the most assets, went straight to Antor’s workshop and bought new powered picks for every miner in his squad, plus one for himself.
By now it wasn’t just the miners doing the digging.
Players had picked up tools as well.
“Damn, this is so much fun!”
“The old picks were completely worthless by comparison.”
Crack crack crack.
No matter how hard the rock or ore, under the psionic pick it broke apart in ways that seemed to defy the material itself.
“It’s finally starting to look a bit magical and rough around the edges.”
“Every other game chases realism.
This one is chasing something stranger.”
Drool had been swinging a pick for the better part of an afternoon and was starting to question his life choices.
“Hold on.
What game am I actually playing?”
He had signed up for an FPS.
Somehow he was now a miner.
“Drool, keep digging. Get faster updates on g.com.
Completion rate is critical!”
Drool dug through gritted teeth.
“I’m digging, I’m digging.
I love mining.”
“Where are all the rock-borers?
Get out here and let me hit something!”
The resentment of a working man is not something to be taken lightly.
The non-stop digging was wearing on him.
Ore gave less Reputation than rock-borers.
The tunnels kept getting longer and narrower.
Then Drool felt a faint scratching beneath his feet.
He was reading the chat at the time, which cost him a beat of reaction.
“Wait, there’s a rock worm!”
That scratching was the sound a rock-borer made tunneling through ore.
Without any warning, a grey-white head the width of a barrel mouth punched out of the rock.
An adult rock-borer.
Not good.
Snap.
Slipped.
The composite armor held.
The sharp mandibles hit and skidded off.
But they left two shallow grooves across the surface.
“Captain, there’s one behind us too!”
A miner shoved Drool flat.
Drool looked back.
Another rock-borer from the other direction.
The tunnel was too long.
Rock-borers from both ends.
Drool got up and took one step toward running, and a splash of deep red flooded his vision.
Not his blood.
Two borers.
The second one had caught the miner trying to get clear.
Reth.
“AAAAAH!”
The scream tore down the entire length of the tunnel.
“Fire!
Wait, no!”
Drool was half a breath away from ordering the clone soldiers to shoot before he stopped himself.
They couldn’t fire in here.
Too close.
Already right on top of them.
If they opened fire, the ricochets in this rock tunnel would hit everyone.
Even with clone soldiers’ accuracy, the odds of catching friendly fire in a cave this tight were far too high.
No room to fall back.
His reflexes, honed sharper than most people could match, moved his arm before his brain had finished deciding.
The powered pick came up and swung forward.
Thwack.
The head of the pick connected with the rock-borer’s skull.
The kinetic force drove the psionic tooth straight through.
“My miner!”
He only had two.
Losing one was losing half, and the recruitment slot would lock permanently on top of that.
The miner had also just saved his life, even though the rock-borer probably couldn’t have broken through his armor in the short term.
Rage overtook the fear.
Something surged up from somewhere he couldn’t point to.
Faced with a creature several times his size, Drool finally stopped being afraid.
He charged it.
“Die!”
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
He sat on the ground afterward, chest heaving.
The kind of reaction he had just demonstrated wasn’t something most people could do.
Looking at the rock-borer he had caved in with his own hands, an indescribable rush hit him all at once.
Adrenaline and dopamine flooding through him at the same time, making him shake.
Then the red and the tension closed back in.
“Reth!” He shouted it at full volume.
My miner.
“Medic!
Get here now, someone needs help!”
The medic arrived and examined the injured miner’s wounds.
“Save him, save him!”
The medic said it flatly. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“Outside treatment parameters.”
“Aren’t you a medic?” Drool grabbed the medic’s arm.
“The injuries are too severe for emergency field treatment.”
“His intestines and spine have both been severed.”
“The most I can do is close the wound.”
Drool looked at the miner.
The damage to Reth’s midsection was almost total.
Nearly three quarters of his body across the waist had been cut through.
One more fraction and it would have been a clean bisection.
Drool’s memory went back to the moment the ork cannon had launched him across the battlefield.
The injuries had never actually healed.
They had just been suppressed.
It wasn’t until he got back into the stasis pod that he found out his bones were broken, and he had burned Reputation to repair them.
Wait.
The stasis pod.
“Sir…
am I going to die?”
“I’m…
I’m sorry…
I’ll…
I’ll return…
to the God-Emperor…”
“Shut up.”
Drool looked at the activator on his wrist and pressed it.
“Exoskeleton, activate!”
…
“Move, move, move!”
Drool ran back toward camp with Reth on his back.
He moved fast.
The commotion Drool was making drew the attention of every player nearby.
A long streak of blood followed the path he had taken across the ground.
“Drool’s miner is injured?”
“How is it that bad?”
“Is that a near-bisection?
Did the rock-borer do that?
That’s almost a clean cut through the waist!”
Everyone had been digging.
Everyone knew what rock-borers were.
“The further in you go, the more of them there are.
I’ve started treating the mining sections with a lot more care.”
“I’ve been doing the digging myself now.
I can’t bring myself to send the miners in.”
“Shooting in the caves is too dangerous.
I just caught one of my own ricochets.
I was being careful too.
It was satisfying at first, now it just feels terrible.”
…
“How do I not have enough Reputation!”
Drool hit the side of the stasis pod with his fist.
He had spent heavily on the psionic powered picks, and his Reputation had run dry.
Treating wounds this severe, injuries that had nearly cut a man in two, would cost several times what he had left.
“Use ours.”
Drool turned around.
Bruceus.
Vrekk.
Nearly every first-round player had gathered around him.
“Use ours.”
Drool opened his mouth and couldn’t find any words.
“You lot…
I…”
“Vrekk…”
“I can take pain, it’s fine.”
Vrekk rolled his eyes.
“Are you seriously taking that literally?
I was just talking.”
“You really think I’d be petty about this?
Save the miner first.”
“Extreme survival mode.”
“One more person.
One more bond.
One more unit of strength.”
And then the Federation’s own words, repeated back without prompting.
“Isn’t this exactly what the Federation is?” Thaniel_a_goodchild much appreciated