Chương 24: Chapter 23: Short Encounter
Man.
I feel like I am about to puke my lungs out. But at least it's finally over.
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Refinement complete!
[Rare - Blink] => [Rare+ - Blink]
[ Rare+ - Blink]
|Rarity: Rare+| |Type: Mover|
Allows you to instantly teleport to anywhere you can see within a 15-meter distance. The location must be normally accessible to you.
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Nice, the distance increased by half. Statistics wise that was a good upgrade but practical use-wise? Not so much. But that had finally released a slot I could use for refining something useful that I should have done from the start. I would use it on Gene refinement.
But as I was doing so I got a notification.
[Are you sure you want to use Gene Refinement on Gene Refinement?]
...Well that was a weird notification, wasn't it? I already said I wanted to do it. So let's just do it.
[You have refined Gene Refinement. Gene Refinement has changed.]
Oh. That was certainly new and rather unexpected. How was it instant? What changed?
[Epic - Gene Refinement]
|Rarity: Epic| |Type: Trump, Changer|
Allows you to refine genetic makeup, increasing parts of it to improve its effectiveness. Essentially allowing you to upgrade biology and by proxy abilities.
Abilities under refinement can be sped up by exercising the ability itself. Each subsequent use of Gene Refinement on an ability under refinement increases progress by 1.
Cooldown: 8 Hours
Abilities under refinement:
1-[Rare - Exoskeleton](Progress: 7.4/8)
2-None
3-None
Huh, well that was certainly changed alright. The refinement quest was gone. Instead, it seems like I would just upgrade my abilities the old-fashioned way which was actually more than fine with me.
But this does put me in a more difficult position. Upgrading my abilities got more straightforward but at the same time whenever I am going to upgrade someone I would be sacrificing a charge worth 8 hours when I could instead use it to upgrade my ability.
Well, for now, the less rare an ability is the easier it is to upgrade it so I think I will work on getting my rare and lower abilities ranked abilities up to par with the strongest elite ones.
The first obvious one was Micro Hydrokinesis. It was already very useful so it would be great to upgrade it.
2-[Uncommon - Micro Hydrokinesis(0/4)]
Huh, so it doubles with every rarity increase? That means I am not touching Phase Shift for now as it would be really demanding.
I suppose I will put Gene Refinement again in the last spot. I won't be able to upgrade it anytime soon but at the same time whenever I use it the progress will slowly tick up until it does get refined and gets even better.
3-[Epic - Gene Refinement](0/64)
Yup, that looks good to me.
Once 8 hours pass I can upgrade exoskeleton and then upgrade it again since it's actually one of my best abilities at the moment.
Elite rank abilities such as Frostflare and Phase Shift take a lot of energy to use and maintain, as seen in how I ran out of juice less than a minute after I used Cellular Overdrive with Phase Shift. Exoskeleton on the other hand was the most efficient ability I had since it was a one-use thing and consumed mostly my minerals instead of energy to work.
Seeing as how I was finally done here I stretched and used micro hydrokinesis to give myself a quick rinse before leaving UA Academy, the sun had already begun to set, I had spent a while just spamming blink.
Well, time to head out I suppose.
⚀—⚁⚂⚃—⚄—•⚅•—⚄—⚃⚂⚁—⚀
Walking back home with a UA School Uniform alone was weird. I could feel and hear people gawking at me, the UA Uniform was a big deal after all, usually it meant that the person you were seeing was gonna become a pro hero in a few years.
Hell, I even had some rando come up to me asking for a signature, probably intending to sell it as some vintage if I hit it big as a hero or something. I just gave him a random signature and made him go away though.
Now though, as I am strolling through the main street of Musutafu I can't help but think about what I was doing and what I was going to do.
First of all, I wanted to move out of Toga's apartment and buy a proper house together. Toga was actually fairly rich thanks to her savings from her villain career, not easily buy a house levels of rich mind you, but enough to get a better apartment in the nicer parts of town until I broke the goddam bank by starting my own Gene Refinement business.
I was going to ask Nezu about it after the... USJ incident passes.
Yeah, that was still on the table, and it was going to happen very... very soon.
What could I even do there? Against the Nomu.
I didn't have the physicals to tickle his balls even if I used Phase Shift, maybe just maybe if I stacked Cellular Overdrive over it but I highly doubted my chances at that.
There was a chance I could occupy him with Gravity Jail but when I tested it as I was practicing Blink I noticed that I couldn't increase gravity to lethal levels yet. Well, I could increase gravity on the average person to the point where their body would fold like an omelette but the people here were considerably stronger than that.
I still had frostflare, which actually would probably be effective on the Nomu. Ice attacks worked on him and frostflare was essentially fire but negative. It was literally fire but instead of being hot it was cold and instead of burning things it robbed them of their heat and froze them.
Surprisingly for an elite-level ability it actually wasn't too energy-consuming, since it was actually a kinesis-like ability. Unlike something like Phase Shift which had an on-and-off button like usage, I could choose to send a basketball-sized ball of frost flame or I could full send a truck-sized blast of Frostflare with all of my energy.
And then there was the Micro Hydrokinesis, the Nomu was god awfully stupid to the point where it wasn't even sentient and wouldn't act unless it was ordered. I could probably tear apart his eyes with micro-hydrokinesis.
So... I probably had a shot at taking Nomu down. I could Gravity Jail Shigaraki and Kurogiri and blast with Frostflare, from what I remember they weren't really stronger than Peak Human. With no one to command him, Nomu would be a sitting duck.
Why wasn't I informing the school about the impending ambush? It was pretty simple.
I was a greedy bastard.
Even if I was putting people in danger through my own inaction I wanted those rolls. And overcoming USJ is sure to give me plenty.
Nodding to myself about just how irresponsible my choice was, I entered the rather large grocery store to grab some groceries, Toga promised she would cook burgers today and I would stop gambling before I missed that.
As I put the burger buns, meat and some veggies into a bag I heard a loud shout ring out.
"All of you!!! No one fucking move! This is a robbery! Anyone moves and I am burning this fucking place down to the ground!!!!" Turning my head I saw a dishevelled man with dirty blond hair and a scraggy beard with fire covering his arm.
Oy vey...
This guy did a really good job at choosing this store at this time huh? Just when I am looking forward to my burger? He must be stupid or suicidal, both considering even a suicidal man wouldn't want such a brutal death.
"All of you! Throw your fucking wallets on the floor and get on the goddam floor or... or she gets it!" The man looked around in a panic before grabbing a... child? by the arm and holding his flaming hand to their head. He was holding her arm pretty damn hard too as I could see her wince and tremble from fear.
"N-no please..." Then I realized that no, they weren't a child but instead just a really short person judging by their general build and her goddamn large breasts. She was wearing an oversized hoodie, she also had long reddish-pink hair and pink eyes that were trembling in fear.
Seeing me not moving unlike the background characters around the man turned to me with a sneering grin that twisted in rage as he took in my uniform.
"You! Fucking UA brat, you think you are too good for this huh!? Do you think your shit smells good too you fucking brat!? Get fucking down I said!" He moved his hand from near her head and pointed it at me as the flames glowed brighter.
Now, you see, trying to rob the store I am in and making me wait for my burger time was already bad enough for me to make sure you never walk again.
Then threatening a sexy shortstack right in front of me and hurting her while doing so?
That's pleading to the judge for a death sentence.
"What the fuck are you waiting fo-!" I ignored his words and swapped to Phase Shift before disappearing from his vision with my speed, he quickly released a stream of fire but I had already moved to the side and avoided it, reaching the decrepit man's side in a short stride before I raised my leg.
Crunch!
I felt the satisfying crunch of his face caving in as my leg boosted by Offensive Form met his skull in perfect form. His nose broke and his facial bones cracked, the kick had such power behind it that his feet were lifted off the ground and he went flying before landing on the ground and skidding a solid meter and bumping into the solid wall unconscious probably not dead.
Hopefully not dead.
There was a solid chance that he was still alive.
I was not holding back much.
Turning off offensive form I turned to the shorter girl who looked at me with awe in her eyes, I got on one knee after approaching her.
"Are you okay? Your arm looks pretty roughed up there, looks like he grabbed you pretty tightly." I gently grabbed her arm she still looked shocked, I knew a decent bit of first aid from having to fix myself and my subordinates in the streets.
I lowered her sleeve a little to look at her arm more closely, thankfully it wasn't very bad. That guy must have been a real limp-dicked loser with no real combat ability.
I smiled at her.
"Well, thankfully you aren't injured, I'm glad. Try not to use that arm to lift heavy things for a few days." She looked at me with wide and blushed like a beetroot.
...Wasn't she like an adult or something?
"O-oh OH! Yes, I mean yes thank you very much! U-um could I ask what your name is...?" I shrugged my shoulders.
"The names Hakari Kotaro. Nice to meet you miss." She blushed looking at me while the other people finally worked up the courage me after I beat the villain and celebrated.
"Woah! As expected of a UA Student!" "You sure showed him!" "Man, you will be an excellent hero in the future."
I continued receiving praise from the people around me before the cashier informed me that a hero would be on their way and realized that it probably would be counted as vigilantism if I left now.
So, I would have to wait here and give the police my testimony and all that junk and be late for my burger time.
Sigh.
What a reward.
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Feat achieved! Save Manami Aiba +1 Silver Gacha Ticket
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Who?
A/N: Hey guys, I decided to change how Gene Refinement works because honestly, the previous version felt annoying and cumbersome to work through. I don't want to assign tens of meaningless sidequests every time Hakari wants to upgrade power. I think this one works better and fits in better with the rest of his system. But I want to hear your thoughts about this change.
Do you like the Gene Refinement change or not?
Also fun fact, La Brava 3 foot fucking 8. She is fucking miniscule. She is shorter than DnD dwarves. Also, you might have noticed that she is still in her depressive phase and that is because of remix, this timeline she never saw Gentle Criminal. For reasons you can definitely guess considering I am the one writing this.
What did you guys think of the chapter and La Brava as well as the Gene Refinement rework? Hearing your thoughts about it would really help. Your comments help motivate me and help me improve.
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