Tyler Swift
Now that I was done with the introspection, it was time to pay attention to Tickets. Yes, I was aware of what Chaos Gacha entailed, unlike virtually any other protagonist, so I wasn't gonna sit here and pretend to figure out how this worked.
What? You thought I was above reading trashy fantasy fanfictions just because I was far removed from virginity? That'd be projective of you if so.
Now, let's start with this, shall we?
[ASTER Augmentation Ticket]
|Rare Item|
Halo - A ticket that when ripped, sends the user into a dimension with highly advanced robotic doctors and surgeons who will perform the ASTER procedure on you in order to turn you into a Spartan. This procedure is perfected and will not cause failure regardless of the target's age or condition. This procedure gives a more durable skeleton, enhanced musculature, visual acuity and reflexes with enhanced mental clarity.
Huh, that was pretty intuitive. And also Holy Jesus! Look at the roll! I knew Gold Tickets were supposed to give most likely Rare rolls, but even if that was what I rolled, that didn't necessarily mean it would be something useful. This, though? This was extremely useful. It was a ticket -pun intended- to becoming more, plain and simple. I knew what Spartans could do even without their MJOLNIR Armor. I would get enhanced all around, becoming a superhuman, and my survivability would especially increase. And that was something you never could have enough of in Earth Bet.
I looked around to see that I was still alone, then looking at the light-green ticket with the UNSC symbol on it which I just summoned from Item Space, I ripped it in half without hesitation.
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After getting seamlessly teleported back to where I'd been, I checked my wrist watch to see that exactly zero time had passed between the two teleportations, confirming that time had stopped when I hadn't been here, just as the robotic personnel had ensured.
As one of the operators had been explaining to me what the procedure entailed and expected results, which had been going right over my head, I had asked them if they had a pamphlet of sorts I could read later at my own leisure.
Surprisingly, they'd had, which I brought with me.
Project: ASTER+
Occipital Capillary Reversal: A surgery is performed on the occipital lobe of the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain, which is the visual processing center of the brain, where the procedure reverses the direction of blood flow in each capillary to boost the blood flow beneath the rod and cone receptors of the retina, increasing the visual prowess overall.
Projected Average Successful Results:
-Visual acuity of 20/4 (compared to the 20/20 of average human)Angular resolution (image resolution) of 0.2 arcminute (for the average human, it is 1 arcminute)
-Can differentiate up to 2,5 million different colors (compared to the human average of 1 million)
-Scopotic sensitivity (low-light vision) of functioning vision down to 0.001 lux (compared to 0.01 lux of average human, which is the equivalent of the light a full moon emits)
-Capable of retinal adaptation in seconds to minutes from bright to dark environment transitions depending on the severity of the transition (compared to potentially dozens of minutes required for the average human)
-Motion detection capability of 215 Hz (compared to the average human's 60 Hz)
-Increased visual stamina where sustaining ocular performance at a combat-ready level for days is possible with little degradation
Perfected ASTER Procedure Results:
-Visual acuity of 20/1
-Angular resolution of 0.05 arcminute
-Can differentiate up to 4 million colors
-Scopotic sensitivity of functioning vision down to 0.0002 lux
-Retinal dark environment reaction time of under a second even in the most extreme circumstances
-Motion detection capability of 600 Hz
-Inexhaustible visual stamina; the brain will shut down due to sleep deprivation before the visual prowess has a chance to suffer even marginally
Carbide Ceramic Ossification: An advanced carbide ceramic material is grafted onto each bone individually to make the skeletal structure virtually unbreakable.
Projected Average Successful Results:
-Despite the "virtually unbreakable" remark, merely harder to break but otherwise still breakable bones
Perfected ASTER Procedure Results:
-Markedly closer to being virtually unbreakable, but still breakable bones
Catalytic Thyroid Implant: Growth hormone is implanted in the left thyroid gland, stimulating muscle/bone growth and strengthening bones.
Projected Average Successful Results:
-Increased muscle and bone massIncreased bone toughness
Perfected ASTER Procedure Results:
-No room for further improvement which could be done for muscle and bone density except reducing the risk of the procedure down to zero
-Further increased bone toughness
Muscular Enhancement Injections: A protein complex injected intramuscularly, increasing muscle/tendon strength, muscle endurance, and reducing lactase recovery time.
Projected Average Successful Results:
-56 km/h or 35 mph of top running speed
-Lifting strength of 3.2 times the body weight
-Stamina 4 times that of an elite Olympic athlete
Perfected ASTER Procedure Results:
-145 km/h or 90 mph of top running speed (WARNING: Trying to sustain this kind of speed over a period exceeding 10 seconds will result in significant muscular and tendon damage, primarily centered around the calcaneal tendon, cruciate ligament, gastrocnemius muscles, and semitendinosus muscle.)
-Lifting strength of 10.6 times the body weight (WARNING: Trying to utilize the lifting potential in its entirety without sufficient protective gear covering the points of the body that are in-contact with the weight may result in various injuries, including but not limited to bruises, skin laceration, muscle laceration.)
-Capability to maintain non-stop, high-intensity muscle function for hours on end until exhaustion starts settling in; otherwise infinite stamina
Superconducting Fibrication of Neural Dendrites: A series of alterations is performed on the synapses throughout the body, to increase the speed at which neurotransmitter matter travels between neurons, increasing reaction speed.
Projected Average Successful Results:
-Average reaction time of 20 ms (for the average human, it is 265 ms)
-Capable of entering a state dubbed as "SPARTAN Time" in high-stress situations, which is essentially the Spartans' version of bullet time
-Rapid pupillary reflexes that grant significant flashbang resistance
-Anecdotal evidence indicating increases in intelligence, memory, and creativity
Perfected ASTER Procedure Results:
-Average reaction time of 5 ms
-Can enter "SPARTAN Time" at will, though overuse may become mentally taxing
-Super-fast pupillary reflexes that grant practical immunity to flashbangs
-5% increase in IQ
NOTE:Unlike the standard ASTER procedure, the Spartans produced through ASTER+ do not require maintenance.
Yeah…
I didn't want to wax poetics about the transformation I had just gone under. The hard numbers were there anyway. However, that didn't make the differences less surreal.
First, maybe it was the placebo effect, but the world around me seemed more… vibrant. I didn't know why this part caught my attention first specifically. Maybe it was the Tyler in me. He'd been more of a musician than a painter, but he'd still had an appreciation for all sorts of arts, and seeing the world with four times the color might have pleased his artist soul.
The other thing I realized regarding my vision was how clear my vision was. Just looking at my fingers, I could clearly see into the crevices that made up the fingerprints. Another thing was that I could single out each individual star on an American flag that was about… half a mile away?
All of this was busted. And these weren't all there was to my vision. And I also had gotten enhancements more to than just my vision. So as I realized that it'd take me ages to sort through every little difference, I decided to get a move on and discover all of these nuances later.
With that, I rolled my second ticket.
[High Speed Regeneration]
|Elite Ability|
Gives you a rapid healing factor, even bullet holes and stabs will close in a few seconds. You can further speed up healing by expending energy.
…
Wow.
This would have been one hell of a strong ability on its own with the sheer survivability it granted, but pairing it with a Spartan-plus physique, which would also let me ignore all the warning labels in the paper I'd been provided with?
There was one word for this: nasty. This was utterly, obscenely, disgustingly nasty.
And I wasn't even done with my rolls.
[Foxfire]
|Rare Ability|
Allows you to wield Foxfire, the signature of the Kitsune race. Although Foxfire is lower in power than other flames of the same tier, it is capable of being maintained for long periods of time and is capable of changing its shape and texture to create disguises, illusions, and to deceive targets.
Hmm. It wasn't as busted as the other two I'd gotten, it didn't neatly fit into the pain-train build I could now rock on either. But I still liked it. It was both an offensive power and a utility power rolled into one.
Illusions…
This gives me an idea.
See, Tyler's situation before I'd gotten shafted in here had been kind of dire. The bus he'd taken from down Boston to arrive at Brockton Bay had been delayed massively. Due to that, it hadn't been until eleven p.m. that he'd finally gotten off the bus, three hours later than expected.
And wouldn't you know it, apparently there was some kind of city-wide policy where any accommodation establishment, from hotels to motels, refused to check in customers after ten p.m. unless they made an appointment before that, which Tyler hadn't known until he'd visited his first motel here.
I didn't know what was the brain-dead reasoning behind this kind of stupid law was, but I supposed I was glad that Brockton Bay didn't disappoint… at disappointing.
So here I was, only with my purse, phone, clothes on my back, and a guitar case with only a guitar's neck in it, which was a long story in itself.
Toughing it out in the streets was an option. It wouldn't have been Tyler's first rodeo, and I had less to worry, which was more of a figure of speech considering I was wholly incapable of that, now that I was a regenerating, fire-throwing Spartan-plus.
However, just because I wasn't afraid of death didn't mean I became suddenly suicidal, and strolling and napping about in the openness of Brockton Bay was just asking for trouble.
The other thing was that… I liked my comforts. So I'd rather just find a warm bed to slide under its covers… and a woman to slide under her bosom.
And [Foxfire] just gave me an avenue for that.
I raised to my new height, which was two inches added onto Tyler's original, already whopping height of six and a half feet. Those robot guys had been nice enough to readjust my clothes to fit my improved stature, both the ones I was currently wearing and the ones in the bag. No MJOLNIR Armor though, which was a shame because I'd seen three of those armors in the lab they'd had operated on me.
It's time to return to my roots.
And with that, I took off toward the direction where I felt the nightlife was just getting started.
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