LGHTNOVELBOOK Chapter 10: System Reckoning
### **I: Stacy's Crucible **
On a planet where neon-lit forests clashed with bone-choked ruins, Stacy Peters crouched in the shadow of a derelict starship. Her new body—a patchwork of scars and sinewy strength—thrummed with adrenaline. The air reeked of ozone and decay.
"Movement," hissed her companion, Jax, a cyborg with a plasma torch for a hand. His ocular implant whirred, scanning the treeline. "Zombies. Five o'clock."
Stacy tightened her grip on a scavenged vibroblade. These weren't mindless corpses. The zombies here *remembered*. The one leading the pack had been a sniper in life; its milky eyes still tracked targets with lethal precision.
"Flank left," she ordered. "Aim for the knees."
The fight was brutal, a dance of rust and rot. When Stacy plunged her blade into the sniper's skull, its hand spasmed, signing a message in mercenary code: *Aegis Facility. EMP cache.*
"Muscle memory," Jax muttered. "Creepy, but useful."
Stacy wiped gore from her face. "We need those EMPs. The vampires in the Spire District are amassing an army. If they crack the cyborgs' neural nets…"
"We'll be corpses with better fashion sense," Jax finished. "Let's move."
As they retreated, Stacy glimpsed her reflection in a shattered screen—her mother's blue eyes, her father's stubborn jaw. *Tom's out there somewhere. I have to believe that.*
Stacy Peters yanked her vibroblade free from its skull, her vision momentarily overlaid with glowing blue text:
**[Combat Summary]**
▸ *Zombie Sniper (Lv. 23) Defeated!*
▸ XP Gained: +1,450
▸ *Muscle Memory Harvested: [Marksmanship] (Basic)*
▸ New Skill Unlocked: *Precision Strike (Accuracy +15%)*
"Hell yeah," Stacy muttered, dismissing the notification with a blink. Her System—a relic from whatever cosmic entity had dumped her here—flared to life in her peripheral vision:
**[Status]**
**Name:** Stacy Peters
**Class:** Adaptive Survivor (Lv. 19)
**HP:** 287/320
**MP:** 45/100
**Stats:**
▸ STR: 18 (+2 from [Brawler's Grit] passive)
▸ AGI: 24
▸ INT: 14
▸ LCK: 9 (*"Yeah, that tracks,"* Stacy thought bitterly)
**Skills:**
▸ [Vampiric Blade I] (Steal 5% HP on hit)
▸ [Pack Awareness] (Detect hostiles within 30m)
▸ [Precision Strike] (NEW)
Jax, her cyborg companion, kicked the sniper's corpse. "You're getting faster. Still not faster than *this*, though." He tapped his ocular implant, which whirred smugly.
"Says the guy who still runs on Windows 2077," Stacy shot back, grinning. The banter was routine, but the System's cold metrics kept her grounded: *12% adrenaline depletion, 3.8 seconds until next hostile contact.* She spun her blade. "Incoming. Werewolf pack—east side."
"How do you *always* know—?"
"Magic," she lied.
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### **II: The Grind**
By midnight, Stacy's System logs read like a war chronicle:
▸ *4 Vampire Scouts (Lv. 17-20) Defeated!*
▸ XP Gained: +3,200
▸ *Bloodhound Senses (Basic) Harvested* → Upgraded [Pack Awareness] to Lv. 2 (45m range)
▸ AGI +1 (Quest Reward: *"Swift but Fragile"*)
She crouched in a derelict subway tunnel, allocating her latest stat points while Jax welded the door shut. The System's interface—a haptic display only she could see—pulsed gently.
**[Stat Allocation]**
*Available Points: 5*
▸ STR: Invest 3 → 21 (Unlocks [Brute Force] passive)
▸ AGI: Invest 2 → 26 (Threshold Bonus: +5% Dodge)
Her muscles hummed as the points clicked into place, bone density and synaptic responses recalibrating in real time. *Cheat codes for the apocalypse,* she thought, rolling her shoulders.
Jax eyed her. "You've got that look again. Like you're… updating."
"Cyberware envy?"
"More like existential dread. You're not even human anymore, are you?"
Stacy flinched. The System had been cagey about what exactly it was turning her into. **[Class Evolution: Adaptive Survivor → ???]** hovered in her menu, grayed out since Level 15.
"Still me," she said quietly. "Just better at not dying."
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### **III: The Aegis Facility **
The Aegis Facility's core glowed with Celestial alloy—a material the System identified as **[Cosmic Tier – ???]**. Stacy's HUD flickered erratically as they breached the vault.
"EMP cache ahead," Jax said. "But we've got company."
Cyborg sentinels lurched forward, their neural nets crackling. Stacy's System tagged each with crimson markers:
▸ *Aegis Sentry (Lv. 25)*
**Weakness:** EMP, Spinal Core Disruption
▸ *Aegis Commander (Lv. 30 – BOSS)*
**Weakness:** ???
"Time to grind," Stacy muttered.
**[Quest Activated: Shattered Aegis]**
▸ Destroy the Aegis Core (0/1)
▸ Defeat Aegis Commander (0/1)
**Rewards:**
▸ Class Evolution Unlocked
▸ [Celestial Shard] x1
The fight was chaos. Stacy ducked plasma fire, her System calculating trajectories:
*Dodge success rate: 67%. Recommend AGI boost.*
She burned 10 MP to activate [Ghost Step], blurring past sentries. When her blade found the Commander's spinal core, the System screamed:
**[CRITICAL HIT!]**
▸ *Aegis Commander (Lv. 30) Defeated!*
▸ XP Gained: +5,000
▸ *Level Up! (Lv. 20 → Lv. 22)*
▸ *Muscle Memory Harvested: [Tactical Analysis] (Advanced)* → Unlocks [Weakness Scan]
The core exploded.
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### **IV: The Starship's Secret**
In the wreckage, Stacy found it—a crescent-shaped starship, its hull etched with Celestial runes her System translated as *"Worldstrider."*
**[Celestial Shard Detected!]**
▸ Synergy with [Adaptive Survivor] class detected.
▸ Integrate Y/N?
She hesitated. "Jax? You seeing this?"
"Just a hunk of metal. Why?"
*Of course. The System's mine alone.*
She pressed a hand to the ship. "Integrate."
The shard dissolved into her palm. Her vision whited out.
**[Class Evolution: Adaptive Survivor → Celestial Nomad (Beta)]**
▸ New Perk: [Worldstrider's Insight] (Decipher Celestial tech)
▸ New Skill: [Shard Overdrive] (Burn HP for +50% STR/AGI, 60s)
When her sight returned, the ship's controls whispered to her in glyphs only she could read.
"Coordinates logged," she breathed. "Tom's universe… it's reachable."
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### **V: Diane's Gaze**
In her divine prison, Diane Peters watched her daughter's System flicker with borrowed Celestial code. She smiled, her fingers weaving starlight into the Loom.
*"Grow stronger, Stacy,"* she murmured across the void. *"Outgrow even what I became."*
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