Imperia: Return Of The Empire

How long were they going to sleep?

Vycter had zoomed out on the map tool and found that the Royal Capital was several thousand kilometers away. However there were people being sent out to collect crashed life pods and debris from the sh.i.p.s above. "Scavengers, rescue parties and law enforcement…?" He thought to himself as he saw that there were some red marks amongst the neutral ones.

Glancing over towards the unconscious girls, he let out a soft sigh and then gazed over towards Emile. "Hm…" Walking over to the teen's corpse, he knelt down and compared sizes. They were about the same height, six foot two inches in height. Though the kid was about two or three inches shorter. It didn't matter, at least the pants were a correct fit.

Using his inventory he mended his clothes to fit Emile as he undressed the teen. He pulled a switcheroo, putting his clothes on the boy and his own uniform on the guy then stuffed the body into the pod after pushing the shrapnel through the boy and out the front of his body. He made it appear that he had been stabbed in the abdomen before disposing of the evidence.

Vycter was now wearing a pair of black cargo pants, a black muscle shirt and a pair of water proof hiking boots. Walking over to the unattended tent, he would kneel down in front of a pile of duffle bags and began to go through them.

He tossed the ones that had the girl's stuff into the other corner of the tent and began searching through Emile's things. He pulled out a spring hunting jacket and immediately put it on. Despite it being around early autumn in the area, it felt better than nothing.

When he found a wallet, he pulled it out of the duffle bag and went through it. Putting a hundred and twenty Veskar Bank Notes into his inventory, along with the Credit chip.

[ Inventory now has a separate Funds tab. You have: 6,745 VC. ]

"Kid had a lot of money on a chit…" Vycter chuckled to himself, not knowing that since the war was going on this would only cover for essential living expenses. He would literally not be able to pay for shelter. If he rented an apartment though, he'd have to get revenue to pay for essentials otherwise he'd be homeless in a few months.

After he was done going through the belongings of the teens that he had indoctrinated, he would pile the duffle bags outside the tent before disassembling it and storing it into his inventory.

Shrugging lightly, he even put the duffle bags into his inventory, thinking against making the girls carry them. They needed to move and they needed to move now. If wasn't safe in their location for much longer.

As he walked over to Ceilia, he noticed that Soniya was slowly waking up. His eyes looked over at the girl as she began to groan. She then looked towards Kayelin as she started spitting dirt out of her mouth.

His eyes then wandered down to Ceilia who's eyes fluttered open before cringing and holder her jaw.

"Who punched me in the Jaw?" Ceilia couldn't recall the last few moments before being indoctrinated. Her eyes narrowed on the figure standing over her and reached out a hand. She had no idea why she trusted this stranger to pull her up.

Vycter reached down and yanked her up to her feet.

The girl began sizing him up a bit before looking at her friends whom were making their ways over to the two. "Why are you wearing Emile's clothes?" Soniya asked with her arms crossed. She didn't seem mad, just curious? Or was she confused?

Her feet looked like they weren't keeping her steady. It would be a bad idea to make them run right now at this very moment. How was he supposed to explain to these girls what just happened?

"Emile is dead." Vycter stated abruptly, "So I switched out my clothes for his."

Soniya made a slight duck face in response to his blunt confession. Though for some reason she couldn't even bring herself to think that he had killed her friend. Why couldn't she blame this stranger? Her eyes narrowed on the man as she sized him up just like Ceilia moments ago.

"My name is Vycter," He introduced himself as the girls were silently looking him over.

"I'm–" Kayelin was suddenly cut off as he waved his hand slightly.

"I know all of your names." Vycter stated as he pointed to the clearing where their tent had once been. Their tent was gone, but they knew if he had gone through their things, he would have found their IDs.

"Where are my things?" Ceilia asked anxiously looking around as she didn't see any of her belongings or let alone the duffle bags anywhere in sight.

"I have them, don't worry." Vycter dismissed her anxieties of their things being missing.

Their eyes lit up slightly as they all looked at him as if he was insane. What did he mean he had them? Where does he have them? They looked at the ground around his feet. There was nothing there. They looked up towards the tree branches, there was nothing hanging there.

Vycter shook his head slightly. "Spatial Storage Device," what he implied was a straight up lie. It wasn't a device, though it could be considered a tool.

However as soon as he spoke of this, they simply nodded as if accepting his explanation. "So what now?" Ceilia who had recovered from her anxious spout crossed her arms and stared at him.

Even though Vycter was anti-social, he was somewhat taken back that they weren't even grieving for the lost of their friend. Or at least their camping companion. He didn't know their relationship, but geez, he'd hate to be Emile.

[ The Indoctrination made you their pillar. The only one they care, other than themselves, is you. ] The soft robotic voice spoke up, accompanied by the text which scrolled by in his vision.

Nodding slightly as he somewhat understood, he would look over at Ceilia as she asked what they were going to do. "Hm…" He pointed to the South West, "We should head in that direction."

The four of them began to walk in that direction, but only a few seconds later, "Why this direction." Kayelin was now nonchalantly asking this question with a face of curiosity, the corner of her mouth brought up in a partial smirk.

"Reasons," Vycter stated without much of a tone. It was like an automatic response.

Ceilia blinked a few times and tilted her head with a stoic expression on her face. Walking at a matched pace with Vycter, she would look up at his face. This man was about a foot taller than her. All the girls in this group were between five foot two and five foot four inches.

Vycter looked as if he was just staring into space, completely lost in thought. However he was opening his Character Menu to see his current statistics. Rather than numeral values everything seemed to be graded with letters. The lowest letter available was F, while the ones after A were just increasing about of S's.

_________________

Name: Vycter Price Jr.

Age: Twenty-One

Gender: Male

Race: Augmented Human

Occupation: Space Marine, Operator.

Level: II

Available SP: 5 Points

Strength: A

Intelligence: SS

Perception: A

Endurance: B

Agility: A

Luck: C

Psi Talents:

Perfect Non-Attribute Affinity

Perfect Mental Affinity

Perfect Technological Affinity

[ Skill Shop ] [ Item Shop ] [ Tool Shop ]

_________________

Staring at the translucent screen, "SIPEAL, sounds familiar…" He mutters to himself outloud.

The girl's ears perk up as he spoke, but were confused about the word he spoke. They had no idea what SIPEAL was. Of course the reason was because SIPEAL was actually the name of the company which designed the game named Imperia. It was also used for the attribute setup.

"SP? Guess that's skill points." The girls didn't bother to listen to him since he was just talking to himself. He'd proceed to open the skill shop window and scroll through the available items he could get for five points. There were things ranging from everyday skills to those which refer to his Psi talents listed in his character screen.

He found one which really caught his eye, however it was two hundred points. The skill was Telekinesis which was part of the Non-Attribute and Mental Affinities. Letting out a sigh, he would continue to scroll. There was no 'list from high to low' or vice versa which actually annoyed the man.

Defeated he closed the skill shop and opened the Item shop. Multiple objects seemed to be available and it was all based on the amount of money he had in his inventory. Scrolling through he would find weapons. Judging by the prices he could buy quite a few items, including holdout pistols which can be hidden without being detected by scanning equipment.

Of course at the same time these weapons could be sold on the black market for several times the amount they were actually worth due to inflation form the war.

On the item shop menu there were various category buttons, which was nice compared to the lack of in the skill shop. He would press vehicles and his mind just blanked out. None of the vehicles had wheels and cost a fortune, especially the armored ones. As he continued to scroll down he eventually found a ACP which had treads instead of wheels or turbo-lift systems. It was extremely cheap compared to the others, but as he looked around the forest. This wasn't a good place to drive it considering there was too many trees within close proximity of one another.

Letting out a soft sigh, he pressed the food button and his eyes grew wide. The first thing he saw was gourmet meals packaged as Meals Ready to Eat. L.i.c.k.i.n.g his lips slightly he glanced towards the girls whom were mostly looking around as they walked.

"You guys hungry?"

All the girls eyes lit up and they immediately snapped to attention, standing in front of him now.

Letting out a slightly nervous chuckle he would order a set of four twenty-four hour MREs. These packages would appear in his inventory. He unpacked the boxes and revealed four sets of breakfast, lunch and dinner with deserts.

He'd hand each one what looked like a bag with three cans of food inside. They were marked as Veskar Government MRE Rations, probably due to being on the planet. It was actually unlikely that the Government gave this kind of food out to their soldiers. It was likely that it was given around to the nobles, while commoners were left to starve.

Closing the item shop menu he would proceed to open the last tool menu and scanned through the things that were there. The tools seemed to be additional functions for the Hub, such as a party system and even mental shielding. There were numerous choices, but it seemed that it required TP or Tool Points to acquire them.

He had none of those. Glancing at the description of a Tool Point, he let out a sigh. Apparently they could only be acquired by quests given by the system. That was rather disappointing.