Chapter 6: Starting Strong

An unknown number of screams of pain and rolling around back and forth later.

Haaa…haaa…haaa…

After going through such excruciating pain that I've never experienced before throughout my entire life for however long while the system stuffed my head and mind full, I survived through it and was back to normal shortly after it ended.

Holy fuck, that pain was something else. I honestly thought I was going to die again if it had gone on for much longer. I'm not a religious man, but I pray that I never have to go through that kind of pain ever again.

Not wanting to think about the off the chart pain I had just gone through any further, I quickly refocused my attention back on the holographic screen that had been sitting in front of me this entire time as I was going through hell. However, unbeknownst to me, my prayers would go unanswered and I would experience similar pain many more times in my path to conquer the wasteland.

[ Status ]

Name: Dom Mason Woods

Age: 0

Height: 1 Foot 10 Inches

Body Weight: 9 lbs

Race: Human

Level: 0

Experience Points: 0/1,000 | Formula: Next Level# x 1,000

Total Experience Points Earned: 0

Experience Rate: 160% | Formula: 100 + (Intelligence x 5)

Health: 680 | Formula: 100 + (Endurance x 20) + (Level# x 10) x 2

Health Regeneration: 0.0533 Health Per Second/3.2 Health Per Minute | Formula: (0.2 Health Per Minute x Endurance) + 1

Stamina: 1,360 | Formula: 100 + ( Endurance x 20) x 4

Stamina Regeneration: 0.8 Stamina Per Second/48 Stamina Per Minute | Formula: (1 Stamina Per Minute x Endurance) x 4

Carry Weight: 0/200 | Formula: 100 + (Strength x 50)

Critical Chance: 10% | Formula: Luck x 1

[ Effects ]

[ Armor ]

Body Damage Threshold 12 | Formula: Endurance x 1

[ Resistances ]

Radiation Resistance: 12 | Formula: Endurance x 1

[ Attributes ]

Strength: 2

Agility: 1

Endurance: 12

Intelligence: 12

Perception: 10

Charisma: 5

Luck: 10

[ Skills ]

Ballistic Weapons: 42

Energy Weapons: 42

Explosives: 32

(T)Heavy Weapons: 44

Leadership: 37

Lockpick: 30

Medicine: 52

Melee Weapons: 35

Piloting: 31

(T)Repair: 42

(T)Science: 42

Speech: 25

Stealth: 31

Survival: 32

Trade: 25

Unarmed: 35

Skill Points Gained Per Level Up: 12 | Formula: Intelligence x 1

[ Traits ]

| Gifted | - | Sex Appeal | - | Skilled | - | Take Another Rank 1 |

[ Perks ]

Active Perks: 

Passive Perks: | Champion Level Muscle Genetics | - | Human Supercomputer | - | Monstrous Physique | - | Rare Cardiovascular Genetics |

Combo Perks: 

[ Mutations ]

[ Gear ]

Weapons: 

Weapon Magazines: 

Armor: 

Clothing: 

Aid: 

Ammo: 

Miscellaneous: 

Money: 

[ Other Stats & Bonuses ]

Attribute: +150% to endurance gain, +50% to intelligence gain, +150% to strength gain

Body: +50% to blood circulation, +300% to ligament strength, +300% to ligament growth speed, +100% to muscle growth speed, +100% to muscle density, +300% to tendon strength, +300% to tendon growth speed

Brain: +100% to brain processing power, +1 to thought processes

Health: +100% to health, +1 health regeneration per minute

Sleep: Required Sleep 4 Hours

Stamina: +400% to stamina, +400% to stamina regeneration

Kill Counter: 0

[ Items ]

Weapons: 

Weapon Magazines: 

Armor: 

Clothing: 

Aid: 

Ammo: 

Miscellaneous: 

Money: 

Robots: 

Turrets: 

Vehicles: 

[ Quests ]

Ready to turn in: 0

Completed: 0

In progress: 8

(Daily) | Workout | Objectives: Complete your daily workout. Reward: 10 exp.

| Area 51 | Objectives: Gain access to Area 51 by any means necessary and explore the site from top to bottom. Rewards: Perk | Alien Researcher |, 40 Repair points, 40 Science points, 40 Medicine points, 450,000 exp.

| Maxigen Improvement | Objectives: Research, improve, and remove the negative side effect of the Maxigen drug. Rewards: Perk | Drug Researcher |, 5 Medicine points, 5 Science points, 2,500 exp.

| Nevada Conquest | Objectives: Become the undisputed number one power in Nevada and take control over the state in its entirety. Rewards: Perk | Territory |, 25 attribute points, 250 skill points, 10,000,000 exp.

| Power Surge | Objectives: Win the battle for Hoover Dam and become the sole owner of it. Rewards: Perk | Power Surge |, 5 attribute points, 25 Repair points, 250,000 exp.

| Surpass Your Human Limits | Objectives: Reach a value of 11 in every attribute.

Rewards: Perk?, 10 attribute points, and 100,000 exp.

| Take Over The Cyberdynamics Robotics Facility | Objectives: Clear out all hostile forces and set up shop. Rewards: Perk | Certified Roboticist |, 5 Science Points, 25,000 exp.

| Wasteland Conqueror | Objectives: Conquer the wasteland and take over Earth in its entirety. Rewards: ???

As I proceeded to scan through my status page, I immediately noticed an oddity.

Why is my health so goddamn high, I shouldn't have over 210 health going off of what I know.

Following discovering my first oddity, I started looking through the rest of my status to see if there was anything else that was different and quickly identified a number of other things that wouldn't have occurred after the character creation process in the games.

Hmm, that's odd, quite a number of things are different from the three wastelander games. My abnormally high health aside, I shouldn't have several perks right out of the gate, nor should I have a bunch of quests that appear to be generated based on goals I've set for myself.

Honestly, I can't complain, these changes are pretty sweet compared to what I would get normally when starting out. That said, if things are already this different right as I'm beginning my journey, what's to say that many other things won't be different in the wasteland from the games as well. 

Sigh, please let the events take place when and as they're supposed to. If not, I'll have to make more than a few changes to my plans on the fly in the future. Something I'd much rather avoid for obvious reasons. There's also a chance that many of them may not take place at all…

Well, there's not much point in going down this rabbit hole because there's nothing I can do about any of it until I'm older. And for all I know, the changes might only be related to the system, or at least I would prefer that to be the extent of them.

After catching myself from going down a rabbit hole chock full of hypothetical changes that may or may not exist, I began checking out the other system tabs. Once I had gone through a majority of them, I selected new since it was the last remaining one I had yet to investigate. As soon as I did, I was presented with an assortment of information regarding the new perks I had obtained.

| Champion Level Muscle Genetics | Your muscles' density, shape, and position are about as good as they can possibly get, making you a genetic anomaly in just the muscle category. But besides that, your tendons and ligaments are abnormally strong as well which gives you the ability to increase the weight of your lifts at a much faster speed without injury compared to regular humans who have to wait for their ligaments and tendons to catch up with their muscles. With all of that being as it is, your ligaments, muscles, and tendons are stronger and more resilient than humanly thought possible and grow at an accelerated rate. +1 endurance, +1 strength, +100% to strength gain, +100% to endurance gain, +200% to stamina, +200% to stamina regeneration, +100% to muscle growth speed, +100% to muscle density, +300% to ligament strength, +300% to ligament growth speed, +300% to tendon strength, +300% to tendon growth speed.

| Rare Cardiovascular Genetics | Your cardiovascular system is much better compared to the average human thanks to your larger number of veins and their even distribution, not to mention your larger and stronger heart that helps pump the larger amount of blood in your system. +50% to health, +1 to health regeneration per minute, +50% to strength gain, +50% to endurance gain, +50% to intelligence gain, +100% to stamina, +100% to stamina regeneration, +50% to muscle growth speed, +50% to blood circulation.

| Monstrous Physique | Requirements 11 Endurance: You've surpassed human limitations for Endurance, gaining increased toughness and resilience. +1 DT for every point of Endurance and you now gain 20 health instead of 10 for every point of Endurance you have. In addition, the amount of sleep you require each night is reduced from 8 hours down to 4 hours, and your health regeneration goes from 0.1 per point of endurance to 0.2 per point. Lastly, +100% to both your stamina and stamina regeneration.

| Human Supercomputer | Requirements 11 Intelligence: You've surpassed human limitations for intelligence and have developed a photographic memory as well as multi-thought processing. Adding to that, your brain's processing power has increased quite substantially, +100% to brain processing power for every 10 intelligence you have. Additionally, your experience gain has increased from 2.5% to 5% for every point of intelligence you have. Lastly, any negative xp gains from all sources are now negated entirely.

Shit, if I had known I was going to get a busted perk for getting any one attribute to 11, I would've changed my attribute distribution.

Haa, a missed opportunity… Well, whatever, I can't change or do anything about it at this point. At least the perks I got are stupid good, especially Monstrous Physique. That perk alone is guaranteed to save my ass at some point, with it giving my body a pretty substantial amount of damage threshold this early on thanks to my high endurance attribute.

And with the amount of damage threshold I have currently I should be able to shrug off and entirely negate stabs and slashes from combat knives and other such weapons from regular run-of-the-mill bandits when going by the games' numbers that I remember crystal clear courtesy of Human Supercomputer.

While I'm on this topic, I could also hypothetically survive taking a hit directly from a mini-nuke at some point in the future, as well with this perk's effects. Though I would have to have well over 2,000 endurance to be able to tank a hit directly from a mini-nuke.

Besides the regular damage a mini-nuke's detonation would produce there is the gamma radiation to worry about, but if I wind up at the point where I'm tanking mini-nukes that amount of endurance should give me a minimum of 2,000 radiation resistance. Which would be more than enough to sustain and negate whatever radiation damage a second would be coming off from a detonation, so that would be a nonissue…

My new tanky body and thoughts of tanking literal nukes with it in the far future aside, that 50% reduction to the amount of sleep I need every day is pretty massive too, having an additional 4 hours a day will enable me to get a hell of a lot more shit done. Which over the number of years I'll be spending grinding away in Undercity 7 will 100% put me on a far higher level than if I didn't have them before I eventually set foot out of the safe confines of the undercity into the wasteland.

Human Supercomputer will also be a huge help and will no doubt speed up my acquisition of knowledge as well as my research thanks to the extra thought process I'll have. Although I won't be able to really make that happen until I'm able to get my hands on the necessary material, which won't be happening for at least a couple of years. Unless my new parents have the stuff I'll be looking for in the house.

Aside from those two attribute perks, both of those genetic perks are pretty great as well effect-wise. And due to them both being genetic perks, I wonder if they can be passed on down to my kids. I didn't get to have any rascals of my own in my last life, so this one I will be making it a priority to at the very least have a few of them. Thus, it would be great if they could inherit them.

After viewing everything in the new tab within my newly acquired system, I looked through all the tabs one last time to see if I had missed something and I hadn't, hence I closed the holographic system screen. A few seconds passed by before I was transported back and right as I was, time resumed again after a couple of seconds. Time resumed and my mother's womb continued pulsing like it had been previously before time came to a halt with the addition of faint sounds coming from outside of her womb.

This went on for a while and upon reaching a certain point, the pulsing frequency sped up. Looking like it was finally time to say goodbye to my mother's insides, I swiftly positioned myself so my head was facing toward the exit of my mother's womb. Before I knew it, I felt myself begin to be pushed out and following that, something began to tug at me.

Here's to hoping nothing goes wrong. It would suck to have spent all this time waiting around, sitting in a womb for what was at least weeks just to die again.