But while Kyle’s panicked yammering echoed through the neon-drenched precinct, Orren stood cool, his gaze hard as a frozen datacore. “How do we deal with that damn bug? Hell if I know,” he muttered.
Orren flicked his eyes to his Neural Matrix, 160 Neural Data points pulsing like molten chrome. That Void Kraken didn’t scare him shitless anymore. Come looking for trouble, you filthy bastard? I’ll carve you into scrap, plain and simple.
With that thought, Orren strode out of the precinct, his boots clanging on the grimy chrome floor.
“Officer, where the fuck you going?” Kyle called.
“To hunt down Kern. You coming, or what?”
“Me? Nah, I’m good…” Kyle clearly had zero love for that maniac Kern. After that grenade stunt, he was half-convinced the guy was a goddamn psycho.
For Orren, though, chilling with Kern felt a hell of a lot less suffocating than dealing with these ass-kissing thugs. Still, his mind kept drifting back to that octopus freak. Rumor had it, the Void Kraken matched Spark-5 strength. With Orren’s current combat juice, he’d likely get crushed like a cheap hoverdrone.
Word was, Spark-5 was a brutal breakpoint—cross it, and your power spiked into the void-damned stratosphere. To take that thing down, fancy skills alone wouldn’t cut it. Skills, at the end of the day, leaned hard on raw stats to unleash their full badassery. Take a basic Energy Slash: in the hands of a Spark-10 warrior, it’d cleave a megatower in half. At Spark-1? A glorified sparkler.
Orren was still a measly Spark-1, with a shit-ton of room to grow. But climbing the warrior ranks? That was a damn nightmare.
Generally, there were two paths to power.
First: throw credits at it. With enough cash, you could optimize and rewire your Neural Chip to level up. This world’s power was pure willpower, channeled through Neural Chips into potent brainwaves that juiced up weapon nanites for insane bursts of destruction. A top-tier chip could pump out brainwaves so fierce your combat stats went nuclear.
Second: grind your soul’s strength, bit by agonizing bit. How? Start with basic meditation techniques—slow, grueling practices that trickle-fed your soul’s power. For freaks with crazy potential, meditation could forge a soul strong enough to rival gods, given decades. Rumor had it, these techniques were relics from ancient Earth, passed down through the void.
Or you could pop soul-boosting drugs—pricey as hell. Jumping from Spark-1 to Spark-2? At least 300,000 to 400,000 credits. Orren’s entire net worth barely scraped that. One upgrade, and he’d be flat broke, scavenging slum scraps. As for modding his Neural Chip? That was a millionaire’s game—1,000,000 credits, minimum.
“Wait a damn second…” Orren’s brow furrowed, a spark of genius igniting in his cybernetic haze. Those ancient meditation techniques? They were skills, too, weren’t they? Could he Overclock the shit out of a meditation skill with his Neural Data points?
Heart pounding, Orren jacked into the darknet, his fingers slashing across the holo-interface, hunting for a lead. Soon, a high-grade meditation technique lit up his screen like a neon beacon: Void Meditation!
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Void Meditation: Sink your mind into the void, drawing power from the abyss. Like ancient ascetics, you’ll slowly forge an unimaginable soul force.
This bad boy was Red-tier, rare as a clean slum, priced at a jaw-dropping 200,000 credits. Meditation skills, being slow burners, usually went cheap online—Green-tier ones cost 10,000, 20,000 tops. But Red-tier? 200,000 credits screamed it had serious juice.
Orren gritted his teeth and smashed the purchase button, his credits draining like blood from a wound. The second the transaction cleared, a flood of data surged into his brain, crackling like a digital storm.
“Holy shit, this is the real deal—an ancient, badass meditation technique…” He’d dabbled in a Green-tier meditation skill before, but compared to this Red-tier beast, it was a flickering candle against a supernova. The Void Meditation’s efficiency was at least five times stronger, maybe ten.
Those 200,000 credits? Worth every damn penny. Expensive shit always delivered, didn’t it? Sure, the price might be a rip-off for most suckers—too steep for the payoff. But Orren wasn’t most suckers. He could Overclock this baby to god-tier.
Eyeing his Neural Matrix, 160 Neural Data points glowing like a dying star, Orren didn’t hesitate. He slammed his will into the system, Overclocking the Void Meditation with a feral grin. The interface flared, his Neural Chip screaming as it burned through cycles. His mind raced, dissecting every cryptic detail of the Void Meditation’s code.
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[Your brain hits overdrive, parsing the Void Meditation’s arcane secrets. Finally, you spot a glitch—something off in the neural rhythm.]
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[You try to patch the Void Meditation… Failure. But the attempt deepens your grasp of the void’s pulse. Void Meditation lv0 → lv1.]
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[You keep Overclocking, neural waves surging like a storm. You pinpoint flaws in the meditation’s flow, ripe for tweaks. Void Meditation lv1 → lv2.]
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[You push harder, but the code resists. No breakthrough. Void Meditation lv2 → lv3.]
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[Another failure. The void’s secrets slip through your fingers. Void Meditation lv3 → lv4.]
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[Failure again. Your Neural Chip sparks, overheating. Void Meditation lv4 → lv5.]
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[The string of flops sparks a revelation. Your soul, tempered by the grind of refining the meditation, surges with newfound power. Spark lv1 → Spark lv2.]
What the hell?! Orren’s heart leapt, a grin splitting his face. He’d just fucking leveled up to Spark lv2, no drugs, no chip mods! He could feel it—his soul force had swelled, a roaring furnace in his core. Controlling his Neural Chip was child’s play now, brainwaves crackling with lethal precision. His laser weapons hummed hotter, their output doubled in a heartbeat.
Quantified? Spark lv2’s combat juice was twice that of Spark lv1, no contest. But his Neural Data points had dropped from 160 to 100, burned out by the Overclock. He could push further, but dipping below 100 risked frying his brain unless he had a crisis or some recovery gear. Orren wasn’t that reckless—yet.
“Void Meditation at lv5? Its efficiency’s jacked up five times over!” That meant this lv5 Void Meditation was twenty-five times faster than a Green-tier lv1 meditation. A goddamn soul-forging machine.
He pulled up his Neural Matrix to scope the damage:
Neural Matrix: Orren Bran
Status:
? Class: Neural Hunter
? Level: Spark Tier - Level 2
? Brainwave Strength: 200
? Neural Data: 100/200
Equipment:
? Standard Energy Blade
? Standard Energy Pistol
Cyber Skills:
? Surge Blade lv1
? Firearms Use lv2
? Neon Sprint lv1
? Shadow Weave lv5
? Void Meditation lv5
Special Skill: Neural Overclock
“With this beast, I might hit Spark lv3 in no time!” At that level, with his arsenal of badass skills, what Void Kraken? He’d slice that squid-thing to ribbons. And with Void Meditation’s insane grind speed, he might even join the Interstellar Guild one day, becoming a legendary Starblade Warrior.
Orren knew his body’s talent was mediocre at best—his Neural Chip and soul force were nothing special. But with a juiced-up meditation skill and a stack of killer abilities, he could go toe-to-toe with the real geniuses, the heavy hitters.