"This place looks nothing like the vault we opened other than the broken archway over there." Mordy said as he looked around.
"Of course not. That vault was a freak existence in my experience. The other two vaults were much more like this one in design. I still don't understand what made that vault in particular so damned important to the Eridians either." I said with a bit of frustration.
Maybe I was just unlucky but I was STILL missing whatever piece of context information I needed to get to the bottom of that vaults importance.
"Who cares about that I want to fight the monster already!" Brick said impatiently.
I had to agree with that as it wasn't important at the moment and I reached out and took the Baal 3 key out of my inventory since I preemptively put it there knowing we were coming for this vault. My friends readied themselves as I walked up to the dusty circular indent on the floor in front of the vault arch and moved to put the key into place. Once it slotted into place there was a slight rumble as the broken pieces of the archway began to rise only to stop and fall lifelessly to the floor again moments later.-
"Is the vault broken?" Lil asked confused as I picked up the key with a grimace.
"No this is my fault actually. I kinda forgot to charge the key again after I used it before. Oops?" I said awkwardly.
"Hold on you mean vault keys are one time use only when they are fully charged?" Roland asked incredulously.
"You try creating a stable pocket dimension outside space and time and then try and reopen the way in or out. That shits not easy and it costs a massive amount of energy to do. Because that how vaults work." I said snappily.
"Why can't you just charge it now then?" Mordy asked and I sighed.
"Because like I said it takes a lot of energy and i'm not exactly sitting on a mountain of Eridium right now. I'll need a few days to charge it at least if I take the route of turning matter to energy. Theres also the problem of finding matter nobody will miss to even do that to begin with. I don't mind slowly devouring a planet to do it but i'm fairly certain some other people might have some trouble accepting that." I said with a headache forming.
"You could always use asteroids, most of those are unclaimed after all." Roland suggested and I looked at him weirdly. "What? It was part of my retirement plan! I wanted to find a decent sized asteroid and set up a small place there." he said defensively.
"That is the most fuck everybody else retirement plan I have ever heard, respect man." I said nodding in appreciation.
"Whatever, is that a good enough solution?" he asked and I nodded.
"Yeah if I group a bunch of asteroids together and then convert them to energy I should be able to charge the key in a few days." I said confidently.
"Okay but how are you going to survive in space?" Mordy asked with a frown.
"I can easily whip up an Oz kit attachment for my shield that will solve that problem. I don't even need a special suit for my body either since my body is fully capable of withstanding the pressure and violent radiations of raw space. Shit if anything the radiation would make the charging faster as it fuels me." I said with a grin.
"If you have an Oz kit why would you need a suit?" Lil asked confused.
"The way an Oz kit works is that it uses your shield to protect your body and also produces oxygen for you to breath. This means it's burning through energy constantly which is not great for the shield itself. To fix this problem you'd ideally have a body suit to protect your body from the effects of space and have the Oz kit focus entirely on giving you air without messing with your shields energy output." I explained seriously.
"How do you even know this?" she asked incredulously.
"The old man was VERY thorough with my education. That little nugget fell under engineering, specifically space station repair protocol. Turns out Oz kits are supposed to be a temporary method and not the solution to space based existence." I explained with a shrug.
"I was just going to set up a shield to create a false atmosphere on my asteroid." Roland said with a frown.
"That is standard practice for that sort of thing so theres no problem there. I even know how you'd go about doing it too." I said reassuringly.
"How much do you have in that head of yours anyways?" Mordy asked curiously.
I grinned "A little bit of everything all of the time. Mountains of content, some better, some worse." I said quoting a funny song.
"Right, well what are we supposed to do in the meantime while you go charge the key?" Lil asked seriously.
"I can just leave my house down here so you can just chill there for the whole time. You already know how to use everything so I trust you not to break something worth more than all of you combined. As for Ladon he's a smart boy and knows how to find the portal even in stealth mode so he'll come and go as he wants." I said casually.
With that settled we headed back up to the ship and I set up my house in stealth mode and after churning out an Oz kit augment for my shield and installing it I got on my ship and set off for the nearest asteroid field. This solar system thankfully had a large belt of the floating rocks running right through the middle of it so it took me no time at all to get there.-
I vented the cargo bay of the ship before taking the airlock out. The cold of space crept over my body but the rampant radiations energized me and I felt my lifeforce stores tick up constantly. Using my flames from my palms I jetted the void away from the ship I was tethered to and found my first victim. I pointed my hand at it and a red energy bubble grabbed it before sending it towards me before vanishing. The house sized chunk of metal and stone crashed into my outstretched palm. But I felt no impact as I fully released my conversion powers causing the whole thing to vanish on touch as it's own momentum carried it into my path.-
Red angry tendrils of energy whipped out of me and tore deep furrows in the materials as the matter was converted to energy that further fueled MORE matter conversion. It was a virtuous cycle that was causing my lifeforce stores to skyrocket. While most of the asteroid was made up of a type of iron ferrite there was trace amounts of tritium which was a VERY high energy conversion material.-
It took me an hour to fully "digest" this one asteroid but now I was brimming with energy to make the next even faster. I phase locked another two similarly sized asteroids and used my conversion powers directly on them through those bubbles causing the returned energy to flood into me making me grin. The more I devoured the faster I devoured as soon I had a dozen asteroids being converted to energy simultaneously while my body emitted an intense green glow like I was a star in the void all onto myself.
https://www.pa treon.com/user?u=81578854#:~:text=pa treon.com/pa treon_loskro
_______________________________________________
Alexander Drake
Lifeforce: 1,395,299
Integrated Traits: [Clever mind-Rare grade],[Enhanced senses-Epic grade]X2, [Energy projection-Legendary grade], [Superior vitality-Epic grade]X3,[Lesser dragon breath-Epic grade],[Regeneration-Epic grade]X2, [Disease resistance-Epic grade],[Amphibious lungs-Uncommon grade], [Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade], [Water resistance-Common grade],[Active camouflage-Epic grade], [Eridian engineering expertise-Mythical grade], [Efficient lungs-Rare grade]x2, [Biometallic bones-Epic grade], [Quick thinking-Rare grade], [Minor spatial awareness-Epic grade], [Adrenal rush-Rare grade], [Mechanical engineering expertise-Rare grade]X3, [Gunsmithing expertise(degrading)-Common grade]X3, [Mechanical Savant-Epic grade], [Embodiment of destruction(partial)-Mythical grade], [Demi-god body-Mythical grade], [Martial savant-Legendary grade], [Tinkering instinct-Rare grade], [Phase-god(Incomplete)-Mythical grade], [Impenetrable hide-Legendary grade]
Stored traits: [Agelessness-Legendary grade],