After Earth Online: The Iron Warlock

Felton City

He woke up the next morning fully rested and without any sort of aches, his face mask was ruined, but maybe that was for the best. It didn’t really do much if he had to be honest, so he’ll probably have to go look for another one. He got up to the bathroom, washed his face and came back into the room, he did his best to clean up his clothes and picked up his bag, and then he marched out of the room hoping to hand the keys back to the receptionist, but the middle aged man was fast asleep. Leo dropped the key and turned to leave when suddenly.

~sszzz!

He turned his head quickly in the direction of the holographic screen above the receptionist’s counter. The screen itself was coming from a circular projector that had its chord running down below the counter. Leo wanted to ignore this feeling, but being able to talk to machines was a tool he’s not really made use of yet. So he shrugged his shoulders and placed his hands over the projector, cutting off the hologram as his [Technopath] passive took over and he suddenly found himself connected to a network.

It was a closed of server for the motel, mainly the logs of the visitors, the blueprints of the motel itself. The searches made over the internet by customers who had used the Motel’s Wi-Fi. He had access to a bunch of feeds from a camera, a paper trail of Tax evasions notices, the criminal act made by the owner of the motel by hacking and removing the motel’s registered information from the city’s logs, making this place an off grid black site. Tax was no longer a problem, and it became a den for criminals, especially those who had secret deals, And the hidden fight club on the roof that had an event every Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

But beyond that he got enough information about the city he was in, Felton city. It was somewhat like New York in the real world, only smaller, and it was an island city off the western coast of Terra Alpha. The new name for earth after a disaster had mashed all the continents together. It had a branch of the Hero League, a couple of hero teams operating from different parts of the city, and over a dozen criminal organizations and villain groups, one of which the owner of this hotel belongs to.

The city itself is a tourist attraction, its clean beaches and unique sea life, and most of all, the largest aquarium in the world, built underneath the city. So past its sewers, was a mirror image of the city itself, built from reinforced glass where the exotic aquatic creatures could interact with visitors. It was a city itself below the island, but the people who get to live there have to actually be the richest of the rich while others are just tourist.

He got his information, while it was just basic, it was enough for him to come up with a rather comprehensive guide for the starter area, or rather not a guide but an exposition. Leo removed his hands from the projector, stumbling back a bit as a wave of dizziness hit him. So much information was running through his mind at that time, that it had put a little too much pressure on his brain. He picked the key to his room and went back up, logging in to GameDome. An online social platform dedicated to virtual reality games.

He started typing up his exposition about Felton city, making sure the post had enough detailed information, but not all of it; so that he could cash in on those later. The post would show up on After Earth Online’s GameDome page. Only a certain amount of words would be readable before other players would need to use real money to unlock the rest of the information. For now, this would just be a start, hopefully at least a hundred people are able to read the exposition, especially since he set it at a 150 Nigerian Naira, which according to exchange rate was about 50 cents or half an American dollar.

If he gets that amount of people to read, then hopefully by tomorrow he should have at least 15 thousand naira, enough to feed himself and his siblings for a week. he pulled his hands back and thought about what he was going to do next, he had a few ideas though. The underground or rather above ground fighting ring was tonight at 9pm on the roof of the motel, he wanted to register himself. Killings were not allowed, so this would be an opportunity to train this [Street Fighting] skill of his. But since he had the whole day to himself before that, he was going to go sell some Leviathan for more money and see if he could get access to a supplier, after all the best way to climb up a criminal organization is to start as a delivery boy, what could possibly go wrong.

.

[Technopath is now level 1, you can now understand more complex machines and control small machines]

Leo looked at the notification on his screen as he made his way past a playground and towards an apartment complex, there was an obvious lack of proper law enforcements around here as the people in this side of town looked like they could bench press a dozen police officers. Leo kept an eye out as a man made completely of rocks and a good eight feet tall strolled past him walking a dog. He looked to the left watching as a couple of kids chased another with teleportation abilities while a man that seemed to be on fire flew in the air above.

This really was a game that showed earth in an era where almost everyone had special abilities. As opposed to how novel such a game would and should be, what he was seeing here was just too real. It was gritty and there really were no filters to it at all. Leo ducked his head to the side as he watched a trio of purple skinned women beckoning him over for a good time. Prostitutes no less, but the surprising thing was that they were players and that caught him off guard. That wasn’t something he was expecting to see.

He stopped in front of the apartment complex, but he couldn't get in. there was a glass door, but it seems it needs some sort of key card to or at least a biometric scan to open. It was weird, and it really didn’t make any sort of sense. While Leo might not seem like much, only being lucky enough to have gone to secondary school, he was still smart enough to have picked up a lot of skills. He wasn’t great, but he had great deductive abilities that sometimes were borderline imaginative. The funny thing was that most of his ridiculous deductions usually turn out right or as close to the truth as it could get.

For an apartment building in a seedy neighborhood, this was way too much security than was needed. Leo shrugged and moved closer to the door, placing his hands on the security pad. He established a connection with the building’s security system almost immediately, there was a lot of information to be gleaned on the surface, but there were a lot of firewalls upon firewalls, and then an inordinate virtual maze that needed a key of some sort to navigate.

He didn’t need to go deep, he just wanted to get the door open, but even that was a bit complicated as using his ability to do was like trying to complete a jigsaw puzzle. There were so many things that he needed to put in place to be able to open the door, and he would need a little bit of time. He got the feeling that this would be a whole lot faster if his [Technopath] ability was at a higher level, but all he could do was just trudge through.

Leo felt that in a way this was what digital hacking from an organic mind was like, or basically hacking in general. He was trying to pick a digital lock in a virtual world, honestly this was crazy, and honestly it was also exciting. In real life Leo was known as someone who was really quiet, he was the eldest of his siblings and he had to try his best to set them a good example and give them a strong figure to look up to. But in here, right now in this moment, he was just getting such a weird rush from breaking into a building that obviously belongs to a criminal that would not hesitate to kill. Now he just needs to open the door.

“Ah! That’s it.” Leo muttered with a small smile as the door beeped and an indicator above it blinked the green. The door swung outward and Leo stepped into the building only to come face to face with more than three dozen guns, a couple of knives, a bazooka, and a squirrel like alien that was holding on to a grenade, why would he be holding a grenade.

“Um… Hi?” Leo asked with a voice that was a little too high pitched to be considered normal, he slowly raised his hands in the air as a woman with snakes for hair and heavy sun glasses came close to him and pointed a revolver under his chin. And based on the weird symbols and the glowing chamber of the gun, he could bet his ass that the gun wasn’t normal.

“Who the f**k is you? One word from your filthy mouth and I’ll blow your head to pieces, answer me! Who are you, who sent you?” Leo opened his eyes wide and looked at the woman with annoyance on his face, she just said if he said one word she would put a bullet in his skull, and now she’s asking questions. Leo looked at her as if to say ‘make up your damn mind lady’ but that was just in his mind. Apart from the gun, the fact that she had snakes for hair was just messed up on so many levels.

“Big sis you told him not to say anything, so I don’t get how he would be able to answer you.” The squirrel alien with the grenade said, and while Leo would have felt inclined to thank him, he was a tiny woodland creature holding on to a weapon of mass destruction that was as large as half his body with two fingers…. Leo really regrets coming here in the first place.

“I know what I said Bomber! Now tell me why you’re here? And it better be a good reason or ill pump you full of lead.” Leo swallowed as he raised his hands higher before answering.

“I’m sorry for intruding, but I came here looking for a job.” He said with a strained smile, but all he got was.

“Sorry poser there are no f*****g vacancies!!” and then the woman with the hair for snakes and scary looking magic gun whacked him with it as darkness took over his sight.

[you have been knocked out! Your suffering from a mild concussion and will be unconscious for 30 minutes.]

[Technopath has leveled up to 2, you can understand programs and their directives and change them to suit your needs, you can now create weak digital viruses]