|—|
—Author Note - If you're looking to support me, please go over to my pat-reon – I'll be uploading advanced chapters there and even have just created a chat to get any ideas any of you might have concerning this here story.
For now though I'll be stockpiling chapters on there while regularly posting here.
—patre*on.com/Artificers_Legacy [remove the *]
~|—|~
Markus slowly opened his eyes, immediately feeling like puking his guts out.
He felt like he had drank an entire keg of beer and a bottle of whisky in one sitting, something that he had done and lived long enough to feel the consequences of.
His body felt like mud, the simple act of blinking feeling like a chore he was not too eager to do.
" Urghh~ what the fhuck?" He groaned out, slurring his words a bit before everything that happened before he passed out returned back to him.
And as if on cue, a screen suddenly blared out infront of him.
[—You fought and killed an Irradiated Mutant Deer Creature. –Reward: 5 Talent Points!]
' Fuck off.' He irritably commanded, watching the screen quickly disappear from his vision.
He was not feeling like entertaining anything at the moment, his body still feeling like shit.
And already having guessed that his 'IP', whatever that was in full was the reason he passed out– he decided to check his status again.
[—Name - Markus Blanc.
—HP - 100%
—IP - 37%
—[-]—
' Damn, that slow?' He thought, having already deduced that it was the next day from the early morning dew that lingered around from the plants around him.
Happy about his abilities sensing capabilities, he shifted his head to the side, quickly finding his hiking companions strewn about on the ground around him as the dying Amber's of what had been a fire sat at the middle with him being the closest.
He also noticed that he had a jacket on him, looking at it closely he almost let out a chuckle at seeing who's it was.
And right besides him, sleeping as if they were not in a foreign jungle was Octavia sleeping soundly.
He paused as he stared at her, his eyes having strayed down to her boobs and finding her tits pressing against her garment in a distracting way that did his morning hard-on no favours as it pressed against his jeans a bit uncomfortably.
He smiled at the gesture though, a bit surprised at it but happy about it while promising himself to look out for her.
After all she had been one of the little who hadn't tried fleeing away as they were charged by a carnivorous deer.
But then again that might have just been fright, freezing in place in terror just as Clarke did.
He kept sleeping in that position, hearing the soft breathing of the others while feeling his strength returning bit by bit.
It must have been about thirty minutes before he could stand up, immediately after he did that he put the jacket back on its sleeping owner—stroking her hair in the process as his eyes took a weird glint before shutting that down.
He shook his head, making his way towards a plant.
He was thirsty, so with half a mind and an ability that allowed him to manipulate flora, he commanded the plant—his eyes glowing a green hue as the plant slowly shriveled up before three pingpong sized green fruits grew from the plants dead remains.
He picked them, quickly throwing them in his mouth one by one.
He grimaced at the bitter taste and chewy sinewy roots inside, that didn't matter though as he swallowed the fruit full of liquid.
He had basically extracted all the liquid from the plant, even some from the soil and changed the genetic structure of the plant to bore fruit when normally it couldn't, all in a 5 minutes.
So with liquid in his dry lips, he looked around himself. Finding that they were between a groove of trees, all of them riddled with luminescent growths on its bark.
' I remember this from the first episode.' He thought, then suddenly frowning.
Did that mean that he had missed all the events of the first episodes? Especially the river snake accident?
He frowned staring at Octavia, finding that her leg didn't seem to have any tears as it should have if she had been attacked by that huge snake.
So that meant that either those events didn't happen because of his interference, or that they hadn't happened yet.
' Already the timeline is going to shit.' He grumbled, walking off into a distance, collecting the luminescent plants and growths on the tree barks.
He'd see whether he could repurpose them to give them a natural light source in the camp.
So while waiting for the others to awake, he scoured around their camping area, collecting simple plants that could be repurposed into spices, edible roots or those that had interesting properties he could study and induce in other plants.
[Nature's Forge] in tandem with [Science—Tier~2] was showing its profits in spades, the 'echo' as he called it, from all the plant life was now easier to understand, though there were some things that made little sense to him.
But thinking of that, he still had Talent Points that he obtained and some he hadn't used because he was caught up in a conversation with Octavia back before they got attacked.
So seeing that this was a right time as any, he opened up his System, only for his eyes to widen at seeing the change in talent points.
[—Name - Markus Blanc.
—HP - 100%
—IP - 43%
—[-]—
—Body - 1.2
—Mind - 1.9
—Soul - 6
—[-]—
—Talents - Science[2] – Social Talent[3] –Growth[5] – Sword Talent[3](+2)
—Talent Points - 10
—[-]—
—Abilities - Deaths Feast[A+] – Tek Domain[A+]¹ – Nature's Forge[S-]²
—[-]—
From up to down, he found that his stats had increased even if by a fraction.
While his soul stat had jumped from 5 to 6, all of this probably having something to do from exhausting whatever energy pool they grew to power their abilities.
Next was his talent points, that was a large number.
Especially since with it he could if he wanted, obtain 10 talents of random tier.
But that seemed to reckless to him.
He didn't want to be a jack of all trades but master of none, that would just spiral him down and drain him as he tried mastering a hundred professions when he could be mastering those needed to survive way quicker, then he could broaden his horizons.
So with that thought and looking at his talents he made a decision.
[—Ding! To upgrade Science to Tier 3 – 3 Talent Points will be used. Would you like to go through with this action?]
Immediately he agreed.
[—Ding! Science has Tiered Up to Tier 3!]
And then once again he felt the 'echo'. A sort of feedback loop about each and every plant in his vicinity, from the estimates on how long they have existed to whether they were toxic and what they would grow into, he felt it all.
He grins, feeling his mind expanding but at the same time feeling constrained—something he was confused about for a second before he shrugged it off.
He was focusing on [Science] for the simple fact that it amplified what he could do with both [Nature's Forge] alongside [Tek Domain], two abilities that he'd use a lot in their future.
The second was that because they were in a post-apocalyptic world, a world where technology was rare with threats at the doors—technology would save them a lot of trouble.
So left with 7 Talent Points, he made another decision.