Broken Interface - Kernal: Post Apocalyptic Zombie LITrpg Progression Fantasy, page 21
The drill beneath him kept going as he considered what the parts of the interface could do. What power could they grant him? While working, he wondered exactly what Ivey had given up in order to give him that broken interface. He would have to ask. Hopefully, it was not too much, but as far as he was concerned, even though he could not direct his skill, she had saved him by pushing the bits she had into his mouth. First, they let him keep his sanity, but they also gave him an attribute point per level and those three skills.
Everyone else got to choose their path, but having no choice was better than dying. Plus, he had the option to consume the zombie cores, and that might be superior in the long run. From those cores, he could now move like Neo in The Matrix. There was also the enhanced Strength there that he might or might not already have been using, and of course, there was his Druidic magic. Not to mention what other powers the zombies could end up granting him. All in all, it was exciting.
His focus was on survival, so he could not use his power in the way he had originally envisaged it during those fever dreams. Back then, it had not been a weapon; it had been for crafting. Growing fields of plants and potentially constructing a house that others could marvel at. The abilities he possessed exceeded what he had wanted. His capacity dwarfed his flights of fancy pre-event. He could build a home that would exceed anything he had ever imagined when reading about wood elves and their soaring tree houses. In a day, he knew he could construct a larger dwelling than a typical house.
That power.
On the bed, he frowned. There was so much potential for beauty in what he could do, and instead, he was fighting for his survival.
Fair, not fair—it was all a moot point.
He had his mutated human skills and the free stuff from Ivey’s meddling. And free stuff was always a bonus; plus, the whole not being turned into a bloodthirsty zombie was nice. His life was a gift, and he would pay it back ten times over by the time that was through. He promised himself that.
From the broken interface so far, he had only benefited from the attribute allocation. His Strength and Speed. What about the three skills from his beast whisperer class? They had seemed pretty simple. At a very basic level, they were: Find an animal, tame the creature, then learn stuff from it.
The real question was how he could use the knowledge, but even as he thought about Animal Sense, he understood how the process was supposed to work. It was just a matter of triggering the interface.
Daniel used the spell.
He could immediately sense the humans nearby and a rat in the ceiling above eating the remains of some pre-event insect that had not survived the transition because of a lack of real estate when its body grew. There was also the feel of distant movement, which was the zombie right at the edge of his range, till it vanished as it kept moving on its mindless looping.
Daniel’s eyes snapped open. He involuntarily grabbed his skull where, under the skin, it felt like he was burning. Ivey startled at his abrupt movement, a small sound escaping her lips. He hugged her, pulling her in tight so she would feel protected and would not wake up screaming.
“It’s all okay. Sleep,” he whispered as the heat started fading away.
Daniel stroked her hair, trying to comfort her. She needed her sleep; she had been awake before him, terrified she was going to be torn apart when he woke up. In many ways, her day had been worse than his. After all, he had been busy and distracting himself the whole time, while she had been forced to wait and dwell on her thoughts.
The burning sensation finally faded, and it was just like what he had felt when scanning to determine the innate senses, so he was not that worried. However, that was not what was supposed to happen when he used the Animal Sense skill.
He had deliberately ignored it, but he noted that the way the innate scan worked had changed between the two uses. The first had been more painful but shorter, and the second one, while more comfortable, had taken considerably longer.
Sort of like a computer overheating when you asked it to do too much.
It was an effect of his broken interface. The lack of mass or the number of pieces was causing the problem he was experiencing. Because of Ivey sharing her interface, he lacked the number of… grains… that everyone else had received, and so his spells failed as the interface could not manage the calculations that were needed to support the “magic.” The fragments he had were overcooking, so to speak, and heating too much.
From the spell knowledge, the level one Animal Sense spell was supposed to have a range of up to a hundred meters, at least in the forest. His spell had barely extended for ten meters. The walls in the way should really have reduced the distance, but not by as much as they had.
It had been a failure. It was that simple. Plus, with fourteen levels, he doubted Animal Sense was still at level one, even if he could not check explicitly. Skills, according to what he had gathered, updated themselves regularly as people levelled, or at least that is what Anthony had claimed regarding his sword ability.
Daniel quickly suppressed the wave of impotent grief that went with thinking about the older man. He did not have time for grief.
The Animal Sense spell was broken, like his interface.
Were the other spells broken? He knew the answer, but not gathering the facts was never a sensible choice.
Entangled animal bonding. The moment he thought about the spell, he found memories floating in his brain where a striking older woman had taught him about it. He had never seen that woman before, but sure enough, she was there in his memories. Like Ivey had explained, the ability was like the Druid spell, but it was not identical. It was synergised to be used in conjunction with Animal Sense.
Its strength was in the partnership side of the spell. By using synergistic qualities of the two abilities, the connection could be deepened faster. The nameless woman had even shown him the technique by having him practice on a series of rocks that, from the spell perspective, behaved similarly to an animal. Teaching him how to negotiate a contract. In the wild, the beast whisperer would follow the creature that he wanted to bond for days, using low-level entanglement multiple times before committing, in order to get the most out of the bond. Each attempt would align the beast whisperer’s needs and desires to the target and bring them together. Even minor changes in disposition of the target towards the whisperer resulted in a significant strengthening of the union.
According to these recollections, the class was powerful, allowing the entanglement of animals up to twenty levels higher than the whisperer, and those memories were not talking about a level fourteen, either. These were users in the high thirties taming level sixty animals, and a level sixty monster could probably clear the entire hotel in a day, they were that strong.
While the skill was technically there, it was also clearly broken. Daniel knew instinctively it would be dangerous to even attempt to use it, unless he held the animal in his hands.
It was an excellent class, but the abilities did not function. At least the bonus attributes had been free. He should dwell on the positive and not get overwhelmed by the negatives. There were going to be enough negatives out there, human nature being what it was and all.
Daniel checked the drill.
It had penetrated three centimetres. He watched the drill automatically progress, trying to see if there was anything obvious he could do to improve efficiency.
There was not.
The existing method of exploiting the small holes in the concrete was the best he could think of.
Wondering what to do, he sent out a pulse of energy to watch the doors and cocoons, double checking that nothing had gone wrong. No changes. In some ways, the pulse demonstrated the ineffectiveness of his existing network of awareness. That rat above them was invisible, and it would remain that way unless it moved and created vibrations that were large enough to be sensed by the cocoons below it. He doubted his wood vision—for lack of a better description—would detect the rat unless it literally ran across the wood he controlled. It was not sufficiently sensitive to notice something that light at a distance.
Then his focus switched back to his beast whisperer class. The skill was so good, he just needed to get it working. But when he used the power, it failed because of how the fragments of the interface heated.
Thinking through the Animal Sense in more detail, Daniel started it up just enough so that he could feel Ivey with the spell and no one else. As it worked, he traced the flows of energy.
After a minute of using it at this absolutely lowest level, his brain was warming up too much, so he dropped the ability. A distant roar reached him from outside. Something huge was challenging something just as large. He shivered. Ivey clung to him tighter. Daniel bit his lip; he could not afford to be distracted. He needed to master his class skills.
Once more, his examination went internal. Counting the hot spots, there were six fragments of Ivey’s interface in him; and now that he knew what he was looking for, he could sense them within him. It was a new ability that allowed it, some sort of body-sensing technique that let him trace both his physical state and his energy flow. Six pieces. He wondered how many she had.
With his hand still over her shoulders, he tried to use his new technique to count inside Ivey’s body, but it felt like pushing on a steel wall. Ivey stirred, and he ceased all efforts, wondering if it was just random sleep movement or if his efforts had disturbed her.
The roar outside descended into squealing, as something fought for its life. It was not loud, but then it was coming from a long way away. Something deadly was eating a different man-killer. That reminded him of his situation, and almost instinctively, he used his growth ability to check on the doors, worried that the zombie was hanging around. It was not.
However, that expansion of energy had been effortless and nothing like what happened when he used the interface.
What did it look like?
Curiosity, as they say, killed the cat, but to survive, he needed to take risks, and this felt safer than fighting a zombie.
Once more, he expanded his senses while focusing inwards. That let him sense what was happening inside him. The alien pieces of the interface were now visible, and then he saw his own core. It, like those inside the feral mutated humans, was set next to the heart in the protected area of his chest.
It was massive. Larger than even the brute’s core, and he was surprised that he could not feel it when he breathed and moved. The shape differed, as well, from the ones he had cut out. Those, while never perfectly spherical, had been like river rocks, somewhere between a cube and a sphere. His, however, was flat and spread out, though in the centre it was thick.
He pushed on the centre of his chest to see if he could physically feel it, but the ribcage protected it nicely. It hugged his sternum and rib bones, presumably both protecting and reinforcing them, and it was wider than his hands. If power was correlated to volume, then his potential felt limitless. That solid blob of matter was so large Daniel imagined it had to be squishing his internal organs, but they were not causing discomfort.
Daniel could imagine what doctors would have said if they had seen this on a scan just yesterday. He would have been dragged into surgery; of that, he had no doubt.
The previous world no longer mattered. It was clearly history, and most of the lessons learnt from it were wrong. Everyone’s instincts were off. The only thing that was relevant was now and surviving the next hour, the next day, and if he wanted to stargaze, then the coming month. The core was there, and there was no reason he could not eventually use it to mimic the interface powers. Ivey might have a hundred fragments, but his core would have more volume. There was no comparison. He had way more raw potential.
If he could get his core to do the work, instead of the interface, then his Animal Sense problems would be circumvented.
The question was how?
Chapter 24
Daniel kept focusing on his core. The drill continued, and he could see the tiny pulses controlling that power, radiating out from his centre, down his arm, and then into the wooden conduit he had created.
Once more, he enabled Animal Sense, but only for a moment. Everything was still being funnelled through the interface grains. For a couple of minutes, he futilely attempted to route the calculations, the magic, out and through his own cores; but each time he engaged the skill, those interface grains heated to where he had to drop the power before he did permanent damage.
There was a cracking noise.
His concentration switched instantly as he enabled Wood Sense to track down the disturbance, reaching out and seeing everything that was nearby. Thankfully, there was no movement in the room. If anything was there, it was currently frozen solid and invisible. He did not think the monsters were that smart. Still, he kept monitoring while checking that the cocoons in both rooms were undamaged. Everyone was safe and asleep. Switching focus again, nothing was touching the door and trying to breach the room.
No noise apart from the regular slight snores beside him and the restless shifting of a kid in the other room.
What had created the sound?
Was it possible it was just the groans of the building? Who knew what magic had done to the structure? Did they need to get out immediately? He reined those thoughts back. Ivey would have told him if that was a risk. After all, they could have fled out the window; and instead of pushing for that, she had gone the other way. With her extra knowledge, she thought they were safer here. Daniel hated being blind to these things, that Ivey had all this detail and working spells, and he had . . .
Animal Sense flared out. Nothing was in the room. And to punctuate the point, his interface grains heated red hot. The world was what it was. He had powers beyond what Ivey could imagine.
The creak came again.
Straight below him.
Daniel, with an internal curse, cut power to his drill. It had penetrated ten centimetres down through the floor, and the concrete had creaked. Daniel hoped it had not alerted any monsters in the room below them. Not that they could go through the solid concrete, but he wanted them to be unaware till he was ready to lure them into a trap. The less information they got, the better.
At his command, some sap was created that was released out into the surrounding material. Daniel changed the process to drill, scoop, and then drill again. Ensuring the whole time that the area was wetted down. The sap, besides muffling any creaking, would also act to stop pieces of the rock from falling through when he breached.
How thick was the floor?
It would not be that deep, and he was sure the drill would get through soon, but with the sap in place, Daniel moved his attention to other activities. No more noise. He prayed internally and then forgot about the process. There was better stuff to be doing than worrying about things he could not influence.
His mind returned to his exploration. Getting Animal Sense going would tangibly fix one of his current pressing issues, which was an inability to scout accurately. Solve this problem, and survival could become a possibility.
Daniel attempted to only use his core; but try as he might, when he pushed his focus through its dense structure, the Animal Sense spell failed dismally. It no longer even stirred. The only time it worked was when he used the broken interface directly, which made it useless, as those fragments he possessed were only enough to scout his current room.
Frustrated, he focused on the core that refused to be part of the spell. He needed that massive expanse of potential to get involved. Just like when entering wood, his consciousness descended into his own chest, feeling out both the physical core and the connection he had to it. The feel of the core varied across its expanse. There was a distinct difference between the centre and the edge. Curiously, he put the Animal Sense problem aside for the moment and explored internally, focusing on the feel.
The centre area where the core was thickest felt the most natural. His mind seemed to interact perfectly with it. The entire process was new to him, but if he had to guess, this space had been tailored to his brain. Using this section would be like wearing his work boots, just comfortable. His brain fitted the area, but the further he drifted from the central mass, the more alien the whole thing felt, especially the irregular bits of the surface.
Curiously, he touched the drill while focusing on the core. A little of the area he felt comfortable with lit up. On a whim, he threw his mind into Wood Sense. A different spot activated, but it was still central. He grew a tendril. All his plant power was accounted for in the friendly section of the core.
What about the other parts? The alien bits. There seemed to be nubs coming off the primary structure that did not fully belong. Daniel knew it was part of him, but it also wasn’t. Tumours, so to speak, that had been added onto the pristine central space.
Concern grew. It had only been a day.
Wait.
Suddenly, understanding bloomed within him. He remembered the innate skills that had come up on the screen when Ivey had helped him check. Initially, those were plant abilities and Strength, but then he had acquired the Speed ability and extra question marks in the Strength part of the screen.
With that insight, he looked more carefully at the alien add-ons.
Now that he had a guess about what the different feels could represent, he quickly found the add-ons that represented the Speed and Strength areas. The Strength got his attention. After all, he had already used the Speed one, and the Strength area was noticeably bigger, with the considerable internal dedicated space that had the familiar feel of the growth core.
