Endzone: Simulated Apocalypse

The next morning, when Cyanide woke up, he felt a warm body next to him.

Instinctively, he reached under his pillow to find a weapon, but his hand was intercepted by a soft, gentle bouncy feeling. Squishing it slightly in his fingertips, he frowned in the dark, unlit room.

'… This... is not a weapon.'

Suddenly, a girl's voice moaned gently, and Cyanide hurriedly backed away against the wall, cautious. Due to the lights being off, he had no idea who it was, but judging from the voice, it sounded like...

"... Luna?"

"Mmn...? Oh... Cyanide... good morning..."

Slowly, the girl sat up on the bed, stretching her arms cutely.

"... Why were you in my bed?" Cyanide asked hesitantly, but Luna only giggled.

"I changed you out of your dirty clothes and washed you up last night," she said. "I think sleeping with you was an apt reward for my hard work, no?"

"..."

Cyanide could argue with that, but he knew Luna didn't mean any harm. Besides, it would be a lie if he said he 'disliked' her sleeping with him. He certainly wouldn't go out of his way to invite her in, but he also didn't care if she did. After all, she had just gotten her new physical body—Cyanide could understand her wanting to try hugging someone and embracing the feeling of touch. Still, he didn't know how to feel about Luna changing his clothes and washing his body without him even knowing, but that was a matter for another time.

In any case, once Luna left to try her hand at cooking, Cyanide realized that he was Level 31 after checking his system, and had unlocked a whole new plethora of abilities. He didn't recall ever seeing a level-up message telling him so, but it must've been from killing that purple entity yesterday. Due to its strength, he gained 2 straight levels from it, and the reason he missed it was simply because of the side effects of the Ascension process.

He was also informed of what happened with the so-called Titan of Shadows last night, and quite frankly, he had no idea who the guy was. He called Cyanide his mortal nemesis, sure, but… Cyanide had about over 500 of those—mainly the friends and family members of his past assassination targets.

Still, the Titan of Shadows was not yet a threat to Cyanide in any way or form. He learned from Kirika that the guy was Level 29 currently (the same as Kirika, who had also leveled up from the fight the day before) but that was still 2 levels down from Cyanide. If he dared to challenge Cyanide again, Cyanide would first test out his abilities, then kill him using an adequate amount of strength. As simple as that.

Before that, though, he first wanted to go through what new abilities he received from hitting Level 31—or, more accurately, Level 30. Reaching Level 31 didn't unlock anything else apart from the usual CP and SP. He spent the former on STR to make it a nice solid 100 as there really was not much else that needed to be leveled up right this instant, while conserving the latter for later—he now had 6 SP saved up.

The two system features unlocked were, quite coincidentally, related—one of them was Weapon Enhancements, and the other was Weapon Modifications. Both had to do with customizing and enhancing weapons, and after fiddling around with the system a bit, Cyanide discovered that there was, in fact, a Tutorial tab all along.

Of course, this was essentially useless to Cyanide since Luna existed, and that was probably why he never found out about it earlier. But now that she had a physical form, it would be more difficult to be by Cyanide all the time and explain every little piece of new information t-

"Oh, Cyanide! Good morning again~" Luna said, suddenly appearing in a screen beside the main system's hologram. "I'm cooking right now, but worry not—I can multitask and explain what this is all about at the same time."

Cyanide, staring at his almost too-helpful partner, blinked. "... Right."

As it turned out, he was proven wrong. Even though Luna did have a physical body now, she could still help him out in ways similar to before, since her core was ultimately still in the virtual, digital world.

After listening to Luna's explanation, Cyanide had a pretty good idea of what Weapon Enhancements and Modifications were. It was a lot easier than reading the Tutorial pages, and saved time too—by the time the two were done, Luna had finished cooking as well and invited Cyanide to breakfast.

Essentially, Weapon Enhancing was a system that could directly upgrade a weapon's base stats—things like its ATK (attack) or refreshing the DUR (durability)—as well as increase the number of modifications that could be equipped on it. Enhancing required finding multiple copies of the same weapon, and for each rank it was enhanced to, more copies would be needed for the next level.

Weapon Modifications, on the other hand, required finding weapon mods—modifications—which can now be dropped from mutants after unlocking this feature. There were different rarities of modifications, and the rarer it was, the more powerful it was. That was the general rule of thumb, anyway. On top of Modifications and Enhancements, though, the Infusion system which he had already unlocked a while back still applied to weapons as well… though with weapons, it transferred a special trait of said weapon rather than a stat like with armor, and Cyanide did not have any weapons with special traits that could be transferred yet.

Of course, right now, Cyanide did not have any mods either, since he just unlocked this feature. He did, however, have plenty of copies of the security officer pistol and kitchen knife he used in combat. He originally had taken multiple duplicates of the item in case his old ones broke, but he never expected saving multiple copies to have this use as well.

And so, without further ado, he decided to experiment a bit. There was no need for any exterior equipment or anything, and the system could just take care of everything on its own. All Cyanide had to do was select the weapon he wanted to Enhance, click on the [Auto-Add] button to add the copies into the process, and...

"... Done," he whispered under his breath as the system agreed with a 'Ding!' sound, and a message was displayed before him:

[Enhancement Complete]

[Your «Kitchen Knife» has ranked up!]

[Rank 1 → 2.]

[✦✦✧✧✧]

[ATK 25 → 30.]

[DUR 62% → 100%.]

[Available Mod Slots 1 → 2.]

The row displaying the four-pointed stars, of course, represented the rank at which the weapon was at: 2 out of 5.

"Hm... neat."

Cyanide liked the idea of upgrading his weapons like this. It was satisfying to watch, and compared to training, depicted a more numerical and accurate representation of his exact increase in strength. He could appreciate that—it's been a while since he was last intrigued like this.

In the end, he ended up using up all the [Kitchen Knife] and [Officer Pistol] duplicates he had to continue enhancing them.... leaving only one of each as backup.