“If I agree to this, how do you expect our people to live?!” the leader of the Wells Cn shouted.

  I expined the pn to bombard the wastend with him. He understandably got agitated.

  “That—”

  “You do realize just because you don’t outright target us, causing widespread damage to our living area will doom us all the same! The ecology that supports us will be ruined. The few resources this inhospitable wastend has to offer us will be destroyed too. If you go through with your pn, you may as well just finish us off quickly.”

  “Please, Eugene, let me finish. I didn’t propose this pn without thinking it through. We will be airdropping supplies to the affected cns. We’ll also need to coordinate with them to ensure they won’t be caught up in the attacks, so we need your cn to help us negotiate as you have done before.”

  “Airdrop us supplies? Then we’ll be at you and your corporate friends’ mercy. As much as we trust you, there’s no way I can agree to something that would put the lives of my people in other’s hands.”

  “We both know your people are more resilient than that. Even if we cut off supplies, you have dozens of alternatives, like stealing from the nearby cities.”

  We stared at each other for a brief moment as he took another hit from his pipe. He exhaled the smoke slowly.

  “Let us cut to the chase. How will your pn benefit us?”

  The average corpo would respond that they wouldn’t have a choice and that we were already considerate with giving them a heads up and compensating them. After all, we could choose to go through with the pn without their consent. However, there was no way I would agree to do that to my allies.

  Plus, I had a pn or two that could use their assistance in the future.

  “I’ll help bridge the gap between your people and the rest of the world.”

  “Specifics please.”

  “There are no specifics yet. We are quite flexible. It depends on how you want your people’s lives to change. I can provide you with any type of support you need in order to catch up to the city dwellers. We can terraform the wastend back into fertile nd and create cities or provide more advanced technology to make your nomadic lives easier.”

  “Ha. Mr. Halls, I never took you to be one of those who gave out empty promises, but I guess I was wrong. You should at least make it sound convincing. Are you trying at all?”

  “No, I’m serious. I can stand by my words and follow through.”

  Eugene frowned. What I had just told him didn’t sound realistic, sure, but I really did pn to deliver. Once this war was over, there would be no reason left to keep my abilities a secret. It would take some time, but I could dedicate all my upgrade points to whatever I wanted.

  I could pursue any scientific discipline to address whatever problem I choose. If we could really overturn the way society was run, I wouldn’t have to fear infringing on the interests of the consortium or any of its members. I could bring out as many disruptive technologies as I wanted.

  In his perspective, it was understandably hard to wrap his head around how I could possibly do good on my word. I couldn’t reveal everything hastily, so I just stayed quiet and let him arrive at his own conclusions.

  “Do you know why we always lived isoted from others?” Eugene asked.

  “Because you don’t trust the corporations?”

  “That is one part, yes. The main reason is that we want to stay away from the culture of constant scheming against everyone. We’d rather live simple lives. It’s not that we enjoy living away from everyone or prefer the environment of the wastend.”

  “That’s something we can help with. The goal of this war in the first pce is to end the era where corporations reign supreme. Your help will lessen the amount of lives that will need to be sacrificed to accomplish this.”

  “That remains to be seen, but we can afford to take a chance to see how things py out. I know you’re busy with the war. Go on. I’ll have someone contact your employees to arrange the details.”

  “Thank you.”

  With the support of the Wells Cn, they would soon help us negotiate with the numerous cns living in the various wastends of the world.

  While that took pce, I remained with my fleet, earning experience points the other way.

  Like that, a month somehow passed uneventfully. Everyone knew it was the calm before the storm, but no one knew when this storm would come. For us, we hoped it would be ter rather than sooner.

  That’s why we excitedly entered the top-secret control room on Aegis that controlled the pnetary weapons.

  If I didn’t know what type of pce this was, I would’ve thought it was just some typical security room with dozens of screens on dispy. The cameras showed various parts of Earth instead of the interior of some buildings and came at different levels of zoom. Some overlooked an entire continent, while others were closed in on a specific block in a city.

  As I walked over to the biggest seat in the room, I even noticed many of the feeds were directed at the wastend. It was zoomed out enough for me to make out the border of these dangerous zones. It was easy to spot these borders thanks to the stark contrast between the unrelenting sandstorm and the calm area around it.

  I was given a brief tutorial on what to do before I pressed the correct buttons at the scheduled time. The entire ordeal felt so casual despite the potential destruction our actions could produce. Everyone in the room watched the screens emotionlessly as giant mushroom clouds sprouted up on various screens.

  +10756 EXP

  I continued to press the buttons again, or to be more precise, pulled the triggers. The second round produced significantly fewer experience points as the wastend monsters were either wiped out or smart enough to take cover underground.

  For the entire day, I stayed in this control room. We didn’t constantly fire down every second of it, though. We only fired at the scheduled time periods, allowing some breathing room for the mutants. There was no use making them too scared to leave their holes.

  However, these beasts weren’t mindless. Towards the end of the day, I was barely getting any experience points at all. Like we feared, they adapted. Sensor readings all showed them staying in their irs more, so we called it a day when we realized that.

  For the next few days, I would repeat this mundane chore. In between sessions, I browsed the news to see if it had any drastic impact on the regur folks in various megacities. It wasn’t hard to find out, as dozens of articles were written about the orbital bombardment.

  Many fear mongering publications took advantage of this and spread wild specutions while tens of thousands of small businesses were desperately scrambling to find out the cause of the commotion. NPC ran a tight ship. No one had a clue as to what we were doing. My only worry was Sis, who apparently was familiar with the system.

  During our conversation, he kept things vague, so I didn’t know exactly how much he knew. However, he should know our recent actions were bad news for him.

  Three days after we started bombarding the wastends, Sis’ fleet took action again. They formed one comprehensive mega fleet, determined to run us over. Whatever he knew, it was evident he wasn’t keen on letting us have our way. The concentration of his fleet was a testament to that. He wouldn’t allow me to slowly pick them off to strengthen myself.

  With the pressure on, I gnced at my status window as I prepared to upgrade. It was time for us to take action as well.

  Status

  Level:

  60

  EXP:

  5197/6000

  Musculoskeletal:

  358

  Neural Reflex:

  191

  Visuomotor Coordination:

  207

  Endurance:

  132

  Sensory Perception:

  155

  Upgrade Points:

  42

  Upgrades:

  Stealth +7Hacking +5Cybernetic Engineering +10Stealth Technology +12Software Engineering +12Electrical Engineering +10Aerospace Engineering + 10Particle Physics +11Enhancements:

  SAID: Halls Corp Grand Maestro Elite v1

  Bio-Coprocessor: Halls Corp Fsh Elite v1

  Optics: Halls Corp Monocle Elite v1

  Cyberarm (Left): Halls Corp Talos Elite v1

  Cyberarm (Right): Halls Corp Talos Elite v1

  Cyberlegs: Halls Corp Hermes Elite v1

  Vertebral Column: Halls Corp Theseus Elite v1

  Auditory: SocialCorp Echo Custom

  Vocal: SocialCorp Orator Custom

  Cardiovascur: BioGen Lifepump Custom

  Sensory: Halls Corp Argus Elite Custom

  Additional Processing: Halls Corp Custom ST

  Miscelneous: Halls Corp HSU Custom Shade