Chương 23: Giantbane

[Title - Giantbane (Rare, I-Grade): Killed a being a sub-Rank higher than the title bearer. Grants a 5% increase in attack speed when engaging an opponent of a higher Threat Level.] Kelly's eyes widened with surprise at the ease with which she'd gained a new title. Given that basic firearms and advanced weaponry could close such small gaps in strength pretty easily, killing a being a mere sub-Rank higher didn't seem like a rare achievement at all.

If all of humanity held access to mana, every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a shotgun would have held that title. Maybe even a few kids. Most of legal humanity clocked in under the 6. 0EQ threshold, or so the paperwork claimed. But for anyone that refused to follow laws, shady implants and avoiding major cities were still the better option.

Officials got legal clearance to push a bit higher—so did their friends, and anyone with an account full of zeros—but real power lived off-grid, deep web, anonymous, and highly motivated. Kelly ran the numbers. So did the Internet. The highest recorded EQ was just over one-hundred, held hundreds of years ago. If Ranks ran F to A plus an additional 'EX' or superstar classification beyond that, with each letter sliced into minus, base, and plus... That made twenty-one subgroups total.

That put a new sub-Rank boundary every 4. 76 EQ. And a full Rank shift every 14. 28 EQ. Which meant, given the highest enhancement record was set centuries ago, someone out there, probably smiling from an orbital chair made of reinforced ego, had blown past the charts and just hadn't bothered to upload the footage. From what humanity had scraped together in the chaos of day one, Ranks stopped making a lick of sense right after B. Rank B kicked in somewhere around seventy EQ.

71 EQ wasn't rare in the upper echelon, the 0. 01 percent who collected planets like bottle caps. Past B, the change went exponential and unknown, and Ranks got real stingy about handing out gold stars. Nobody had reported being an A, except a few upper-crust show-offs cracking privacy protocols just to remind the rest of the species how much better they were. Nobody had claimed anything higher. If someone did, they had the good sense to keep their mouth shut.

Gideon probably did—Kelly would bet her life on that, and she had lives to spare. She didn't doubt a whole fleet of A-ranks and above were having a great time watching the show from orbit, probably with snacks. But nobody cared about ranks anyway. Ranks were a different sport from levels. Kelly suspected the whole Rank system had been designed for people with skills to flash around, and everyone else was just standing outside the club, pressing their nose to the glass.

Kelly jabbed an injector into her side, medical nanotech flooding into her system like liquid scaffolding. She prodded at her ribs as they worked, feeling the sharp protest of bone that hadn't fused yet. All she felt was the familiar, useless ache of damage still radiating from her side. The fracture wasn't healing. Or rather, it was healing so slowly it might as well be posing for a portrait. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The medical nanotech had one job: hold her together on an atomic level, patch over the impossible, keep her from slipping apart. That didn't leave much room for fixing basic blunt force trauma. She exhaled sharply. Damage mitigation. It was something she'd never needed to prioritize, but if she took too many hits, the bots would be too busy with her biggest problem, prioritizing the impossible task of keeping her molecules from taking a permanent solo career.

She could still fight; she just had to make sure nothing important snapped in half before she secured the next reset. The last mimic finally collapsed in two halves, flesh still twitching, but Kelly's attention had already shifted to the gunfight. Gunfire cut through the station's steel supports, ricochets sparking off mechs closing in from multiple angles. The Obsidian contractors moved like predators on borrowed time—tight formations, bursts of gunfire, calculated, synchronized steps.

Their tactics carved a path through the station like a scalpel through flesh, exposing weaknesses, adjusting in sync, peeling back openings, weaving between cover like coursing hounds. One veered off, reaching for a discarded high-velocity gun, only for a mech to catch him mid-motion, the impact folding him like scrap metal caught in an industrial press. The others moved without hesitation, weapons pivoting, firepower escalating, intent sharpening like knives drawn in unison.

Their escape vehicles were dead metal, wreckage smoldering where the security teams had already done their job. Only one remained, parked just outside the chaos—their last viable exit still in sight. Momentum carried them toward the exit in a controlled sprint under fire. Kelly scanned the fight, exhaling slow. They were getting their asses kicked, but weirdly, most of them were still breathing—ten standing, two down, and the overclocked dumbass playing bullet sponge as if his life depended on it—which it did.

He moved like the whole station was collapsing on his head, using a large crate as a shield to soak damage so the rest could keep swinging. The squad adjusted, closing ranks, tightening their formation—no longer scrambling for cover, but shifting with purpose. Cornered animals with one shot at escape—as soon as they saw daylight, they'd take it. She was about to make sure they didn't get the chance. With a thought, her equipped title changed. [Title Equipped: Giantbane (I)] A five percent speed boost.

I need more samples. She needed volume. Did it rewrite her DNA with every change, embedding sequences as it went, or stack and remove abilities like modular upgrades? The only way to find out was to earn more. She needed Titles. She needed to do more reckless, extreme, questionably sane things. She needed to fight. But of course, she had no intention of dying. She sliced a Kelly-sized slab from the diamond-hardened container in a single clean stroke.

She hooked it over one arm, holstered the blade, snatched a rifle, and ran. As she drew close, weaving through the shattered husks of bots and mechs that hid her approach, her gun came up, target locked, and she aimed at a gunman too distracted to see her. One down. She fired. The overclocked brute's shield-carrying arm blurred aside and took the rounds without a look, his head barely moving. Each shot vanished into metal held up by muscle reinforced beyond reason. One shot made it into his arm.

Steam hissed from the wound, metal beneath skin swelling hot enough to shimmer the air. Vents along his ribs snapped open, bleeding pressure like a war machine between cycles. He turned with slow precision, the scowl of something built to move through walls, his gaze fixing on hers with the stillness of a targeting system. His step forward pressed sound from the floor. The next thing she knew, a mountain of muscle and steam was bearing down on her.