The Hub. My Hub, was bustling, Probes and Wisps were darting about everywhere. There were a huge number of them all involved in their own activities. I wasn't quite sure what the Wisps were doing, but the vast majority of the Probes were transferring Mineral cubes and Vespene canisters from building to building. Some seemed to be adding small decorative touches here and there. I noticed Mana gems were mixed in with Psicrystals. Jaina had been up to her old ways.

  From the nearly grave silent state the Hub was in when I first arrived, to this ordered mass of hyperactivity. I felt a jolt run through my spine, revitalizing me in a way I hadn't realized I needed. Something about seeing all of the improvements here, really made me feel almost whole again. My heart felt lighter.

  David was going bonkers besides me, "What is going on? Where are we? What are those Probes doing? Hey are those Wisps? What's this thing do?" As he reached out to touch the Hub's Central pillar, I grabbed his hand. He froze.

  "Please don't touch that. I don't know what would happen to you, or to me. Let's not experiment, with crazy interdimensional internal expression technology just yet. Maybe after Jaina clears you." He relaxed his hand, and I let him go. His shoulders sagged.

  "Sorry." He really wasn't, but he knew he should be. That was something, but I figured I should drive the point home.

  "Don't worry about it too much. Look, I understand how awesomely overwhelming this must be to you. You want to go and explore everything, figure stuff out for yourself. I get it." I gripped his shoulder gently. "Just please keep in mind that all of this, everything you see here, is some kind of dimension created out of my subconscious mind. Anything you mess with might do something to me." I swept my other hand to take it all in. "Good, bad, who could possibly say until it happens. By then, it might be too late." I extended my pointer finger and brought next to my temple making little circles, I plastered my best "I'm a fucking crazy person" look on my face.

  He laughed, "Try not to turn you into a psycho, check." Chalk one up to trying to explain things first, before getting angry.

  "It is already too late for My Lord there. He's been out of his proper mind for a long time now." Jaina teleported in with a cutting joke.

  I scoffed. "I'll have you know, I'm the very model of sanity." I put on my very best, I'm hurt, look. "It's the rest of you, that are a few fries short of a Happy Meal."

  Now that I thought about it, I was never very good at joking around with people. Maybe that's why I've always had such a hard time dealing with people. Everything seemed different now, it didn't feel like I had to say the right thing, or the best thing, I just had to try.

  Mith, ever the master conversationalist, chuffed his greetings to the Lady, and she smiled, she even leaned down to give him pets. He leaned into her attentions with that relaxed doggo charm. So enviable.

  I put my arm around David's shoulder, "Nice to see you, Lady Proudmoore. This is David Martinez." I patted him on the chest, "My newest friend, that has a few talents you might be able to polish." I held my hand out toward Jaina, "David, this is Lady Jaina Proudmoore, the most excellent Archmage, and for the the next week, at least, your teacher. Try to behave yourself."

  Jaina clapped excitedly, "Well, I was looking for an excuse to build myself another Mage Tower. Hello, David, let's get along." She dropped the formal act, I hadn't seen her do this often enough. She was always trying to maintain control. I couldn't blame her, but it was nice to see her relax a little. Let her hair down so to speak.

  David turned to me and mouthed the words, "Mage Tower." He had those sparkles in his eyes, the ones he gets when he's about to "geek out". I grinned at him and pushed him lightly towards Jaina. Now that I thought about it, Jaina got a similar cast to her eyes when she spoke about magic. They should get along just dandy.

  I stepped back with a sigh. I could now let the two of them talk without getting in the way. Which freed me to touch the Pillar. Got to check on my goodies.

  [ Ryan's Hub Options

  Mana Density: 3

  Time remaining until mandatory expulsion: 23 hours 48 minutes

  Current Stay Duration Limit: 24 hours

  Current Cooldown between Entries: 96 hours

  Raise Level

  Merge Classes

  Merge Skills

  Merge Abilities

  Ransom Allies ]

  Before I started raising my levels, willy-nilly I wanted to address a few things that were bothering me. I kept forgetting about a lot of of abilities and skills. Part of it was a lack of training, and part of it was simply because there was a lot of them.

  For example, I still hadn't tried shapeshifting. Somewhat out of fear of losing even more of myself, but more out of not seeing the utility of the forms I had available. There were few situations I'd been in recently, that I thought would have been made better by me being a Snake or a Treefolk. I hadn't ever used them, and felt no particular attachment to them. Let's use them as the test case for merging abilities.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  [ You have chosen to Merge Shapeshift: Serpent and Shapeshift: Lesser Treant. Are you sure? Y/N ]

  "Yes." As sure as I could be.

  [ You have received Shapeshifting: Small Forms ]

  As best as I could determine this ability would allow me to transform into any small natural animal. Cats, Squirrels, and so on. While that certainly increased the versatility of the ability, but hadn't actually addressed my concerns about shapeshifting in general.

  I spent a few moments pondering my next move. I snapped my fingers.

  Let's Merge Sense Mana and Ley Line Sight, I had a good feeling about that combination. And I'd hardly paid attention to any of the Ley Lines themselves.

  [ You have received Natural Energy Senses ]

  Jackpot, sort of. Sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch could all sense any form of "naturally" occurring energy. Ley Lines, most forms of mana, electricity, biological outputs like heat. It was amazing, and it was terrible.

  I staggered. It was way too much information. And now I couldn't make sense of anything...

  The very air bled a viscous yet comforting power that buzzed and crackled warm noises into my ears. My eyes saw the swirls of thousands of colors that no human mind was ever meant to understand. I felt the trickle of my mana rich blood leaking from all my orifices as a cinnamon stream across my skin, the saccharin, bubbling touch of my emerald whispering Aura healed me. I heard Jaina speak mint flavored words that were cold and biting, and everything when dark.

  Hmm. Jaina's quick thinking had given me a chance to adapt to this monumental change in perception. Much like the initial merged abilities, I could tone down and even turn off these new methods of perception. As Jaina's spell wore off, I once again saw the world much as I always had, just with a little extra kick now. I could see David and Jaina's forms surrounded by their mana, Jaina's was cool blue, and David's was a rich red. There was a faint tone to their existence now. A soft melodic ringing.

  I looked down to see I was absolutely drenched in my own purple blood, which now glowed with both heat and mana. Oh, that wasn't good. I must of had a huge increase in my blood pressure, and sprung a few thousand leaks. A small wonder that I didn't stroke out. What a mess.

  "Are you alright, My Lord?" Jaina's body heat spiked up slightly. A sign she was worried about me perhaps. No, of course she was. We were friends weren't we? I shook my head and almost lost my balance again.

  "I'm fine now, thank you, Jaina. That was a crazy trip. Energy is a helluva drug." I was light headed from blood loss. But my Aura was already healing any lingering problems. I cast Remove Impurities to clean myself up. There all gone, it was like it never happened. I'll just keep telling myself that.

  "Were you in a state of Mana intoxication?" Now her body went colder, as she knew her capacity for mana was roughly the same as mine. If I was going over the edge she be soon to follow.

  "No, no. New expansion of my senses, all of them, and many new types of energy I could detect. It was all too much information. I'll have to take it very slow and learn how to use them properly."

  Even this muted level of my new senses would require some getting used to, but the benefits would be awesome. Now that I nearly fucked myself over, I was somewhat less inclined to continue the experiments. For now.

  David, who'd been watching us worriedly, started laughing his ass off, "And after you warned me... " Jaina looked at him then at me and then she joined in the mirth. Even Mith started jumping around in amusement.

  I stared at them helplessly for a minute. Fuck it, he was right. I joined in the laughter at my expense. Though mine might have been as enthusiastic as theirs.

  It was time to raise my levels, Just one each for now. I had plenty of experience. I guess surviving Smasher was good for something after all.

  The level in Archdruid returned my Aura of Growth. Wait, now that I thought about it, the Shapeshifting originally came with later levels. They'd striped out some things but had not managed to get rid of others. Perhaps that was a sign that my Case Worker wasn't so all powerful as he wanted me to believe. Hmm. There was far more going on here than I thought.

  Now I hoped they hadn't busted my class completely.

  My level in Gunslinger brought with it a new ability, Imbue Ammo. I stared at those words for a while in utter pissed off shock. How long had I worked on pouring mana into bullets? It took a long fucking time to even get the explosive results I had. And here comes this ability to just do it. Easy Peasy.

  I might had been more than a little bit pissed off. Somehow, I managed not to freak out David and Jaina again, while I calmed down.

  The Omnimechanic level gave me Affinity: Tinkering. Now Affinities were new to me. The sense I'd gotten from it was, I'd now have even more instinctual understanding of machines and gadgets, and how best to alter them. So it seemed that Affinities straddled the gap between Skills and Abilities.

  The leveling came with a down side, that slight void in my soul, seemed to grow a small amount. I really needed to find a fourth class to balance everything out again. But I didn't have the points or money right now to be looking for another class. Quality came at a cost, and I already had too many demands on my funds.

  I wanted to test my new tools, my hands were itch to draw my Omaha, but it could wait until I was back in Night City. Now I needed to check in Value Tree, and see if there was a currency conversion function.

  Short answer, there wasn't a direct conversion function. I could buy something for 10,000 Eddies or 100 Task Point or 10 Company Point. Now where I could convert currency, was in selling. You could choose the currency you sold items for, no matter what currency you bought it with. If I bought an item for 10,000 Eddies I could immediately turn around and sell it back to the Store for 80 Task points, or 8 Company Points. Let's say I brought the original item for 100 Task Points, I could sell it for 8,000 Eddies or 8 Company Points.

  In other words, I'd need more than 2 billion eddies to buy back Mr. Wick alone. And while I had no doubt I could eventually make that amount, I just had no solid time frame to work with yet.

  I also needed to check if I could sell raw materials like Mineral cubes or Vespene canisters. Or the goods I produce out of them. Hmm. Selling my Khalai variant weapons to the Store might be a great way to snag a profit.

  Interesting side note, If the value of something was less that 1 point of a currency, I couldn't buy it at the actual value, I had to buy it in lots that equal one point or more. The Store didn't like dealing with fractional amounts either and would force alterations of the currency amounts involved to the nearest whole number. What a picky Store.

  At least I knew I could make things work this way. Otherwise, I'd be scraping for Company Points for ages.

  It was time to check in with Alina and see how her experiments had gone.