Chapter 41

Spoils of War

“My office, now. You too Rayquel.” General Fellina, I mean Tigran said as she gestured for both Rayquel and I to follow her. By the sound of her voice, I knew something was serious, but I couldn’t quite understand what. At least not until we got to her office, and I saw bags full of glowing cert coins. Worse, just looking at the certs made something inside my stomach sing with delight.

“Do you know what these things are?” General Tigran said, holding up a cert that glowed like a polished silver dollar. There was an odd portrait on the front of the coin, one that looked vaguely familiar. Unfortunately, I was too far away to make out the details of the coin completely.

I was about to say an off handed remark, but the general cut off all trains of humor with her next words. “Or why your name and face are plastered all over these?”

“My name and face?” I asked.

“Yep.” She said, as she flipped the offending coin end over end in my direction. I quickly caught it out of the air, and then looked to see a cert much like she had described. My Face and name on the front, then the details of what the cert was for, it was a psychically imbued cert.

Seeing the coin my heart began to race. “You got these from the humans?” I had taken forty-nine of the ones that came with me, but if they got the others then. Well, I didn’t know what else I could do with more. I was theoretically capped out, at least before I fully integrated in four years’ time. Well three and a half years now. But who was counting.

Hearing my question Tigran nodded in understanding to herself. “Good so you are at least aware of what they are. Now can you tell me why they were all over the battlefield?”

Hearing this, my mind began to spin. “Battlefield?”

“Yes, the battlefield outside of Dwenvarian space. As part of our cleaning efforts, we grabbed all space debris into compactors, burnt everything to ash and expected nothing to remain. The only thing is these coins never disintegrated. Hundreds of thousands of these coins, all appearing after a battle you were in. None of which could be destroyed, all of which had to be burned away from the enemy bodies.”

She said as if everything was a matter of fact, that my mind had to race to keep up.

“Hundreds of thousands?” I asked, not quite sure I heard her correctly.

“That is correct. Even Prolaxians that were killed at the far side of the planet, in places you never reached created these coins. We cannot exchange them; we cannot do anything other than bring them closer to you. Would you care to explain what these are?”

That was a good question. I still had only the vaguest notion of what these things were. Still, I focused my mind and tried to recall everything I knew about these coins.

“The coins as you call them are called certs where I come from. A cert is an abbreviation for Certified Experience Report Transcription. These are generated by killing scourge, or the Prolaxians in my universe. Before we are fully integrated with the system, we can use these to change the rarity of our class. We can do this up to seven times, taking it from the common version, that all classes start off with and move it to Omega rarity.”

After that I explained more than I thought possible about the coins. About how a non-psychic could use forty-nine of the coins to have a complete class change where they were guaranteed to become a psychic in some way. I also explained the way people could use the coins to level once they were integrated. There was also the note about the generator of the cert being the only person able to transfer the certs. Truthfully, I was a little confused, as I thought certs would only be generated by someone who was fully integrated into the system. But it seemed that understanding was flawed as this was the second time, I had managed to generate certs by killing scourge. In both instances I was the only quasi-integrated person around, so maybe that had something to do with it. But all I knew was this was a huge windfall, but I wasn’t quite certain what I could do.

“Let me get this straight, you can generate psychics by giving them forty-nine of these?” The general asked, I could see a cold form of avarice glowing in her eyes.

When she made that question, and I realized there were still hundreds of thousands of these certs lying around somewhere I realized her gleam. She was about to make an unstoppable war machine.

“Well yeah, at least that is the idea that I heard. I didn’t quite understand the process as I never got to witness the process firsthand. But Mel,” pain shot through me at the mention of that name. “I mean a person I know managed to do this exact process by infusing forty-nine mage generated certs. I was informed that the same process could be performed with psychic generated certs as well.”

“Can you prove this? Can you say, give Rayquel forty-nine of these coins, I mean certs to see if she can evolve her class rarity?” The General asked.

Hearing that I shrugged, then looked at Rayquel. With our weird interaction, the general hefted a large bag of coins onto her desk.

Clink, tinkle.

The sound of metal disks sliding and colliding with one another could be easily heard. Looking at the overstuffed bag, and then the others that were around her office I couldn’t help but think she was right about the few hundred thousand certs being generated.

Still, it was odd that so many certs were generated with my face on them, even though I ultimately had nothing to do with most of their deaths. If the reports that the General was giving me were to be believed.

From there, we did a bit of trial and error. I gave Rayquel forty-nine certs, at which time the face on the cert changed from my face with glowing eyes to a portrait of Rayqel, complete with butterfly wings. Then she proceeded to think about infusing the coin with herself. The moment she did, the cert in her hand disappeared and a faint glow overtook her body. Then from there, she infused seven coins and whoosh her class changed to Uncommon rarity. The class itself didn’t change, but she did note that a few of her Affinities had improved quite a bit.

With the initial test complete she applied seven more and once again her class rarity changed. This time to Average, but her class type remained the same. It wasn’t until she made her third change from Average to Epic that her class type changed from Psychic to Mentalist. A minor change in the grand scheme of things, but vastly superior to what she had. Finally, by the time she had made all seven evolutions her class type changed twice more from Mentalist to Grand Mentalist, then finally to Sage.

After that, there were a few more tests conducted. The first was we performed the same ceremony with the General, who was also somewhat of a psychic. By the time she was done, she was a Grand Psionic, that was one of the evolutionary paths I had received early on during my evolutions. To see that as her final form was somewhat shocking. I tried to keep my face neutral, but it seemed the General could read more from my thoughts than I thought possible.

“All right, now before I ask you to donate these to your people. I want to check and make sure you cannot use these yourself. Please try to add them to you now. Maybe try a different way, try adding them to your current affinities. Or even to your Psionic Prime class…” Cough. Cough. The general started coughing violently and violently struck at her chest as she seemed to begin chocking out of nowhere.

I cast a heal on her, but to no avail. She turned bright red and looked for a moment like she was about to suffocate, but then slowly she managed to take in a breath of air once more.

“You okay?” I asked.

The General nodded, then feverishly pointed at the certs and left. I assumed to get some water, as she was still coughing violently when she entered the hallway.

“Should we go with her?” I asked, looking at the general who was quickly making her way down the hallway and hopefully towards a water source.

“No, she seemed like she wanted us to take care of these coin…I mean certs while she was away.”

“Okay, I don’t see how this would be different. But let’s see what we can do.” With that I tried doing as the general suggested. First, I tried adding to the affinity, but as all my affinities were already maxed out, this made little sense and nothing seemed to change. Then on a whim, I thought about the idea the general almost had before she began choking. With a mental shrug, I took the cert and had it kind of hover over my class title Psionic Prime. Then to my surprise the cert disappeared.

Progress towards first unused Affinity Slot 1 of 1,000.

Seeing that line my eyes nearly bugged out of my head.

“What? What is it?” Rayquel asked.

“It says I have an unused Affinity slot.”

“Wait, does that mean you can get more Affinities?” She asked.

With that, I shrugged, but was eager to find out. We had literally hundreds of thousands of these things. So, me using a thousand of them for this didn’t seem that big of a deal. Seeing as all the certs here in the room were mine, and I had earned a few of them. I didn’t think this was too much of a risk. The general did gesture towards them, as if she wanted me to try. So… with that train of thought I began gobbling down certs like a fat kid with a box of cookies.

Also, it turns out that a thousand of anything is a lot. The entire large bag that the general placed on the table, barely had over a thousand certs in it.

Once the 1,000th cert was applied I received a new message.

Unused Affinity Slot Power conditions met. Generating Random power now. Power Mind Shield applied. Due to class and user power rating Affinity set accordingly to 99+%.

That wasn’t the best of powers, in my opinion, but it was still a decent power as it was a passive ability. This meant it remained on, even when I used other active psionic powers. In my opinion passive abilities were always better, as they didn’t require you to think about using them. There was also a way I could actively increase the efficiency of my Mind Shield but for the most part its passive effects should protect me from most daily activities. This would hopefully make it so my mind didn’t show up by scans of other psychics. Mentally I wondered if this was the same power that the hive mind queen had, and the humanoid monster we had to fight by the world tree? But my thoughts were quickly derailed as I saw Rayquel hold up the next cert to me.

Looking at it, I gave her a questioning glance.

She just shook her head and said, “well?”

Hearing that I took the cert and once again tried to apply it to my class. This time just like the last time I was greeted with a message, though the message had slightly changed.

Progress towards second unused Affinity Slot 1 of 2,000.

“This one requires two thousand certs.” I stated.

Rayquel just gestured to the bags of certs that lined the General’s office. Something told me that there were likely more elsewhere, she just wanted to see these being used first. “Not like there aren’t more. Also, these literally all belong to you. It would be the least you could do to clean her office for her.”

With that argument I was once again reminded of how absolute power should absolutely be taken when offered. Shrugging to myself I began once again cleaning out the General’s cramped office. In all a total of ten thousand certs went to giving me four new Psionic affinities.

Mind Shield 99+% Mind Heal 99+% Total Recall 99+% Revelation Sight 99+%

When it came to Mind Heal, I had a pretty good idea of what I could expect. This was a power that should help me heal the minds of people that were attacked. As a preemptive test, I used the power on myself and found that there was a lot of damage. Some was explainable, like recent wounds from the scourge hive queen and her damaging attacks. But there were a few others that caused the hairs on the back of my neck to rise as they were thicker and had long since healed. This meant they weren’t recent but had been left to heal so long that scar tissue formed over top of them. I began prodding, but suddenly felt jolts of pain when I tried.

Yep, always a good idea to have your first patient as a brain surgeon to be yourself. I quipped to myself, but then stopped before I could go any further and cause irreparable harm. My first thought of course went to my brother, and how he had been awakened for four years, and not for the first time I wondered what he might have done to me and our parents after his awakening.

Then I had questions about the last two powers I had acquired. “I have no clue what Total Recall or Revelation Sight might offer.” I said. By this point the general had come back and was pleased to see that at least a few of the overstuffed bags in her office had been emptied.

“Revelation Sight?” The General asked excitedly. “Can you try turning it on?” She asked, her eyes still beaming.

I did as she asked, and only felt a blinding gold light flood my eyes. “Ahh!” I said, blinking wildly. “No, it appears to be a passive power that is always on.” I answered.

The general stared at me for a second, then nodded. “Good I want you to tell me if you see anything odd or out of place with that. Regardless of how strange it sounds; you must tell me.”

I looked at her like she was crazy, but she made me promise. Finally, it seemed there was nothing else I could spend the certs on. I still couldn’t level, as I hadn’t fully integrated. My affinities for my new powers were off the charts and it seemed I was stuck with only four additional Psychic powers. Fortunately, two were passive, and I after how badly my eyes still burned from the Revelation Sight, I had no intention of trying out Total Recall, at least not for the current moment. With that I proceeded to gift both Rayquel and the General ten thousand certs each so they too could unlock four new affinities.

I didn’t pay attention to what the General got, but for Rayquel I could almost feel her growth. She gained Biocontrol, Commanding Voice, Psychic Scream, and Flight. The addition of Flight almost felt redundant, until it was noted that it was a passive ability, much as Biocontrol was as well. At this we realized the first and fourth seemed to be Passive abilities, while the two middle abilities were almost always active.

The general confirmed this to be the case, though she failed to confirm what her new abilities were. In fact, ever since her coughing fit, she seemed to be a bit more reserved in her interactions. Instead, she let me decide what to do with the certs. The first thing I did was offer them to the other humans, at least forty-nine to each human. Then we opened it up to the Endarian students, then the faculty and staff. Then we even tried with a professor or two. Of the professors, only Astria was willing to try. Contrary to opinion, she didn’t lose her Mage class but rather gained a uniquely powerful Psionic class. The only problem was that she didn’t gain any Psionic powers with the new class. Not until she spent an additional ten thousand certs herself to get the basic four affinity slots. When she tried to purchase more once again, she was denied. Still, she was very pleased with her new class, which she didn’t make note of. Along with her powers, which she also didn’t make note of. She did however state that the first and last ones were passive, while the middle two were active.

Honestly, I was a little disappointed by the secrecy of the professors, but then realized it was likely a safety thing as they needed to keep their true strengths hidden from most students. I was tempted to just gift the remaining certs to the general, but that was quickly shut down as I remembered the certs could only be transferred once.

Again, I had a question about why everyone was able to evolve their class. Especially when everyone had gone through the awakening process so long ago.

“I don’t know. I just have a time that reads time to integration 3 years, 11 months, 30 days, 19 hours, 35 minutes, and 17, 16 seconds.” Rayquel said.

I blinked in astonishment but then after quickly checking I too found what she was talking about on my own screen. time to integration 3 years, 6 months, 11 days, 15 hours, 05 minutes, and 44, 43 seconds.

I looked at the time and sighed, realizing that so much had happened to me in so short of a time. I was also sort of scared about what the future held for me. Every time I closed my eyes, I would get visions of Mel being swallowed by swarms of scourge. This was why I just continued to push myself forward in my physical training. Recently I had begun to break all my personal records, meaning that at this pace I was certain to break through my physical thresholds here shortly. At least that was the goal, something good had to come out of all the lost sleep after all.

Still, I could feel the day coming when I would be back in my home universe. There were so many things I needed to do before and when I got there that I began writing everything down. I couldn’t help but feel that the Mind Heal ability was a godsend, as it will likely be exactly what I need to help Mel out. That is the other thing too, I still have visions of my brother forcing himself on her.

“You okay?” Rayquel asks.

I blink for a second, and finally realize my fists are clinched tightly and I was creating a Telekinetic vortex right in front of me. With that, I realized I was doing something entirely wrong.

“I’m fine. I just need to work off some stress.” I say.

“Care to train together? We will be heading into the Gemini Temple here shortly after all.” Rayquel said.

Shrugging and realizing training with someone else was a good thing, I obliged and followed her to the team practice fields.