It's Not Easy Making Money in the Apocalypse

"These are all certified Allknowing." Cecelia confirmed as I opened up a box and pulled it out. "It's still in the original wrapping. You can't find a better stock than this."

"Sh-should I take it now?" I asked worriedly.

"It works like all of the other ones. You inject yourself and you'll feel a rise over time. They say that focusing on improvement immediately after injection leads to greater gains."

"So, I should go study after injecting myself?" I asked.

"There was never any solid study on it, but that was the belief, yes," Cecilia responded icily. "If you were increasing strength, then weight training after injecting would lead to the greatest gains. Since the injections have diminishing returns after each dose, it might be better to make the most of each dose."

"With this many doses, and possibly the recipe, is it even necessary?" I asked.

The thought of injecting myself until I had a ten intelligence was extremely tempting. Wouldn't that make me a genius? I was already worried whether I'd be able to reach six, but with these injections, I could become a ten with ease.

"Do whatever you want! Hmph… if you aren't going to listen to my advice, why ask for it?" Cecelia snapped.

"I'm just weighing my options," I responded helplessly.

I pulled out the boxes of Allknowing. Each box contained ten doses of Allknowing. There was a total of ten boxes in the storage room. That would make a hundred doses in all.

"One dose is usually enough to increase a point." Cecelia declared with a sigh. "According to studies, this is dependent on various things about the individual. Their aptitude, pre-existing intelligence, and even their age all come into play. The second point might take two or three doses if you're lucky. Then four to six. Ten to twelve for the fourth point. Twenty-five to thirty doses for the fifth point. As for gaining a sixth point, It's negligible. If you inject more than fifty doses at a time, it'd be dangerous healthwise. However, there is no study of anyone injecting Allknowing repeatedly… correction, there was a study, and you're standing in it."

The 5S had been a rather new thing right before the end of the world. There was still not a lot known about stat-boosting. Sorcery wasn't even a status for most people, and studies were only just coming out critiquing the Allco recipes. This was what I was able to determine by asking around. Since the end, Wastelanders wouldn't hesitate to inject themselves with it for the advantage it'd give them over others, but that didn't mean the drugs were necessarily safe long-term.

I was less squeamish about the Allgility and the Allmighty because those changed my body. Body-changing drugs were not something that odd. Even in my world, there were steroids and enhancement drugs that could make you stronger or faster. As for a drug that made you smarter, there might be some people who'd claimed that this vitamin or that mineral would do so, but most of that was just a homeopathic remedy. I wasn't sure I wanted to take something that messed up my brain.

Yet, if there was anything I needed now, it was more intelligence. It wasn't just because I wanted to get on the top floor of Allco R&D and unlock their secrets. I also needed that intelligence while building my business. At the end of the day, I was still a kid floundering his way into business. I tried reading a few books, but in reality, I skimmed most of them and remembered even less. If I could just remember things better, then I wouldn't need to depend on Cecelia instead.

"So, the top I can get is eight." I sighed.

"An eight isn't bad." Cecelia responded, as an artificial intelligence, even I'm only rated as a six."

"S-seriously?"

"Hmph… artificial intelligence ratings aren't the same as human intelligence. Your world has something called IQ. It's not as accurate as the 5S, but if you want something equivalent, a three is average, and the average IQ is 100. A six would be 200. With eight, you would likely have the IQ of the brightest minds of your generation, around 240. As for reaching 10, you must remember this was a theoretical pinnacle of peak human performance. Expecting to reach 10 in any status would make you a monster of ages. To do so only through Allco injections is rightfully a pipedream."

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I calmed down a bit with her explanation. I knew that she was probably right. I was just getting ahead of myself. She had been right. I had imagined getting all the recipes and then injecting myself until I had ten on everything. It would be like having a max character in a video game. Yet, this wasn't a video game, and achieving a ten would require dedication. Perhaps, if I wanted to quit all this, go to college, and study and become a scholar while slowly injecting myself with Allknowing, it was humanly possible.

I pulled one shot out of the box. After looking at it for a second, I removed the wrapper and injected it. Then, I closed the box and put the rest of them into my digital inventory. As I was doing this, I noticed something else sitting on the shelf. I reached out and picked it up. It was a pistol. As soon as I picked it up, a red light turned on.

"Quick, plug me into it!" Cecelia cried out, causing me to nearly drop it, but I still plugged her in. "Quick, upload the Master code."

I did as she asked, and it was only then that the light on the pistol's handle turned green. "What was that about?"

"That is a smart pistol. It was registered to the doctor whose office we are in. If someone else picks it up, it is rigged to explode. I managed to delay it long enough for you to upload the Master code, but I won't let you know how close you came to losing your hand."

"Haaah…" I let out a breath. "Thank you."

"Hmph… you grabbed it with your Perco hand! I'm in here, so naturally it was for my safety." She scoffed.

As much as she still wanted to act aggrieved, she had been helping me quite a bit. I just realized how she'd been concerned for me when we were talking about the drug too. Could an artificial intelligence have those kinds of emotions, or was I just imagining things?

"This gun, is it like the smart gun I gave Katarina?" I asked, partially to myself.

"It's been heavily modified." She responded. "The user must have had an interest in guns. However, it doesn't synthesize bullets. It uses a pulse of energy. As for its power source, it's a Allnuk battery. It'll last until the heat death of the earth. There is a cooldown if you overfire, but you can set the energy of the pulse. You can set it with enough energy to knock back a murderdragon, but then it'll take time to cool down. You can also set it low enough to just stun people."

"Stun people… like students?"

"It was set at the level where it would knock out a child. That's the modified part. Most guns like these only have three settings. He turned it into a range, but you need a Perco to set that range."

"A Perco?" I perked up. "I wonder if we can find his corpse. I can get another Perco."

"Perhaps that Allknowing is already starting to kick in. You starting to think like a Wastelander. Where next?"

"I want to go to the nurse's office," I explained. "It suddenly dawned on me that if we're going to deduce the formula of the Allknowing, then we're going to need the experimental stuff too. Jeri will have a better idea of determining what was added or changed if she had both versions to compare."

"It dawned on you?"

I touched my head. "It's a strange feeling. It's like my brain is clearing up and I'm able to see things a bit easier now. I wonder what my 6S looks like now."

I didn't hesitate, bringing it up on the Perco.

Name: Daniel Miller

Strength – 4

Stamina – 2

Speed – 5

Smarts – 4

Sense – 3

Sorcery – 2

So, it did increase my Smarts by a point. I decided to hold off on the others and take them slowly. If I injected them all, it wouldn't be the most efficient method, and it wasn't like I needed to be at six by tomorrow.

"Are there any hidden paths that enter into the school from up here?" I asked.

"You'll need to climb through an air duct."

"That's fine."

"Okay, then I'll plot a course for the nurse's office."

"No." I stopped her. "First, we need to meet up with Riker's group."

"You're not going to leave them for dead?"

I shook my head. "No, I have an idea. I'm going to need them alive if I want to pull it off."