Malan’s shoulders were on fire.
He would have been grateful that much the same sensation in his legs had somewhat faded to a low burn, but for the fact his entire upper body felt like it was going to fall apart. His arms trembled, and his sweat-slick fingers strained to hang on to the cool metal of the pull-up bar, but he refused to give in to their longing to let go and end this assault on their comfort.
One more.
Sucking in a deep breath, and then another, he hauled himself upward, dragging his chin above the height of the bar inch by agonising inch. One final grunt took him to the required level, and with a flush of triumph he dropped to the floor, only for his exhausted thighs to give way beneath him, and he slumped to the floor on his back.
He didn’t bother attempting to drag himself to his feet, opting to remain on the cool floor dragging in breath after gasping breath. In the corner of his room, the display that linked him to Tanwen’s systems dinged with an alert, and his grin broadened. The [Disciplined I] title had flashed after he’d completed his first, painful workout on the equipment Elena had bought for him before she’d left, and he’d not missed a day since.
It wasn’t as though he’d had much else to do. Jump travel over long distances required a standard of equipment that Tanwen was just not yet equipped for. As it stood, Tanwen could system jump to adjacent stars twice in a row, before requiring a twenty-four hour cooldown. The main drawback of this was that the long distance to the Alpha Centauri system took a full five days of system-hopping and waiting for the Jump drives to be ready to Jump again.
It had left him with precious little to do besides chat with Tarai and make a start on becoming the person he needed to be to match his new responsibilities.
The [Student I] title had come after several sessions of study with some of the dataslates and texts Tarai had brought with her to help him along. It was a peculiar thing, being so overtly rewarded for something where the payoff was normally incredibly intrinsic—he couldn’t argue with the benefits of it, however. Since discovering that the Pilot System would find ways to reward him for things outside of combat, he’d been as dedicated as he’d ever been.
Each day had begin with an intense workout, ensuring he was pushing himself to his admittedly rather poor limits. It wasn’t necessarily that he was unfit—it was hard to be that when your day to day for several years had consisted of maintaining an aging research station’s systems, and hand scrubbing its sensor arrays—but he’d never had much reason to really push his limits. To find out just what he was capable of, physically.
On the Miotov, all going too hard had accomplished was punishing you the next day with aches and pains as you repeated the already agonisingly monotonous tasks.
Before that, his idea of piloting a Starbound prior to bonding with Tanwen had been a lot less physical than it had actually turned out to be. Being a Starbound Pilot had been something he’d worked towards all his life until the Jauda. The usual path was to ace as many of the flight systems qualifications as possible so that you knew how to operate and maintain a ship back to front, before applying to the Nexus.
If accepted, you’d study there for several years on strategy, combat doctrines and actually piloting a craft—among dozens of other things—and only then would you be eligible to be tested for compatibility with the vacant Starbound craft currently held by the UGC. That time essentially served as UGC Naval Officer training, and the 99% not compatible with a Starbound would usually filter out into ranking crew positions in the UGC military.
Malan had basically skipped all of those steps. He knew ship systems inside and out, and could patch up any number of issues, both technical and mechanical. But the rest of it? He was sorely lacking, and didn’t exactly have the time required to make up the lost ground before he’d have to look these people in the eye.
Still, he was an academic at heart, and that side of things was coming as easily to him as it ever had, only now the System was rewarding him for it. He just wished he could make his physical growth just as effortlessly fast.
After a few minutes, the worst of the muscle-burn had faded, and he pulled himself to his feet with an audible groan, and hobbled across to his display.
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[Disciplined I→Disciplined II]
The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself. You have pushed yourself to the limit of your physical capabilities with a complete workout and no more than a one day break between them 5/5 times. Your energetics receives a 5% increase to it’s total. This number is cumalitive with other bonuses.
Progress to the next Disciplined III: 5/25
[Student I]
Learning is a victory that can never be tarred, nor taken from you. Yours are few, and hard won, but as long as you continue to learn, they will be the foundation of everything you build in the future. You have completed 5/5 hours of dedicated study. Your Cognizance receives a 2.5% increase to its total. this number is cumulative to other bonuses.
Progress to Student II: 12.3/50
Malan allowed himself a small, satisfied smile at the upgrade to his [Discipline] title. At the moment, the gains from it were marginal, but even just the upgrade from I to II had doubled the bonus, which he hoped would mean the bonuses would continue to be exponential.
He strolled to the shower humming a little tune, doing his best to ignore his screaming muscles. Within a quarter of an hour, he’d dressed himself in a smart grey and black flight crew uniform—the closest thing they’d been able to find to an officer’s uniform on Mykeser’s market—and taken some general purpose painkiller to ease the soreness from his workout.
“Tanwen, where is Tarai currently?”
“Awaiting your arrival on the bridge, Pilot.”
He found her sat at one of the crew stations to the left of the control dais, several data slates arrayed before her, and a wall of text scrolling slowly across her display. A focused frown creased freckled features beneath a messy bun of flame-coloured hair impossibly pinned back by a stylus.
She hadn’t noticed his arrival—even when the automated bridge doors slid closed behind him with a gentle hiss. Malan was pleased to see she had finally given up on her formal robes, instead opting for a far more comfortable crew uniform. It was like his, except that instead of the stone grey he’d opted for, hers was the same crimson as her robes had been; he assumed, so that she was still in some way representing her order.
“Researching anything interesting?” He asked and had to fight to keep the smile off his face when she near enough jumped out of her skin.
“Well,” she said quickly, trying to hide just how startled she’d been. “I’ve been looking into your recently unlocked class. If I can find what skills it might unlock for you, or how it may evolve in the future, we can plan how best to allocate your stat points from here on out, rather than you doing it on a spur-of-the-moment basis. I can also help you plan some commonly attained titles to accumulate their associated bonuses.”
He blinked for a moment, caught off guard by the answer. Their time so far had been getting accustomed to sharing the same spaces and essentially living together, whilst getting properly situated aboard Tanwen. They hadn’t really spoken much beyond the regular introductory pleasantries you might share upon meeting a new housemate—favourite foods, pets and family etc.
Admittedly, that last one had been rather awkward, given that unbeknownst to either before Malan had asked, they were in fact both basically orphans, though Malan had known his parents for longer.
“Well, that’s…incredibly helpful, actually,” he said, unable to think of anything better. “Thank you.”
She smiled a smile that was a half-step away from saying ‘I told you I was good’. “It’s my job now. Besides, given that in your first few days bonded to Tanwen yuo’ve managed to fight off an Abyss incursion and charge an entire fleet of pirates head-on with no guarantee of back-up, I figure my new captain isn’t the brightest, so we better get started on making him a badass to compensate.”
Malan scoffed, but couldn’t argue—strength was exactly what he wanted. What he needed.
“Anything useful?”
She winced. “Not especially. It seems Breaker is a particularly rare class. There are no examples in the materials I have with me. I’m hoping I’ll find something back in the Archives.”
Malan clicked his teeth in mock disappointment. “A shame—especially after you talked such a big game, too. Seeing as you mentioned the archives, are you all set for our final Jump? I think we’ve kept them waiting for long enough.”
“Ready when you are, Captain.”
He grinned, and felt Tanwen’s Jump drives initiate without him even needing to vocalise the order. On the display in front of them, Malan watched as a glimmering tear in the fabric of reality opened in space, and Tanwen’s voice rang across the bridge.
“Jumping in 3…2….1….”
The pull and blinding light of Jump travel washed over them for a full twenty seconds before it began to ease, and Malan heard the ding of a new notification.
Quest Advanced: Starbound.
You have arrived in the Alpha Centauri system. The Celestial Nexus calls its new Starbound home to join the fight, and he will have no choice but to answer. Rewards: A new Title, Stat Buffs, A choice of one of three upgrades for you Starbound.
2 . Swear Allegiance to the Nexus, and be announced to the world as the latest of the Starbound.
Special Title Acquired:
[In Memoriam] You have arrived at the Celestial Nexus to take up the mantle of Starbound.
