Chương 45: Greatest Hits

[Title Equipped: Death's Foe (IV)] Her background AI updated her score and let her know she was considerably more powerful now. [EQ: 8. 6 → 14. 3 (Temporary)] That was what the score claimed, anyway. Whether she'd actually be lethal when it mattered was a matter of field testing. Kelly yelled the magic'S' word, and the universe obliged by turning her into what could only be described as a spreadsheet. Her status sprang into existence. [Name: Dr. Kelly Voss Race: Human Title: Death's Foe (IV) Rank: E- EQ: 14. 4 (Temporary) Traits: Mana Incompatibility (IX), The Aberration of mana (I), Mer-Blood (I), Primordial Blood (I), Troll-Homunculi (I), Lesser Mimic (I), Lesser Lycanthrope (I), Lesser Null-voidling (I), Skills:] Another win. She guessed that throwing unstable junk into her bloodstream paid off. Today with a stat screen. Yesterday with a seizure. Either way, progress. Today was off to a great start.

"Nothing like a proven routine to start the day, right?" Since the last iteration ended so nicely, Kelly crashed the morning by replaying the greatest hits—Times Square entry, handshake with Vaughn Security's grumpiest headcase'Jackhammer' Jack, and the usual bait-lure routine with Payne, the seven-point-zero EQ merc stuffed with enough hardware to double as multiple war crimes. Payne chased, she ran—right into her lab's warm embrace of automated murder furniture. Her base was eight-point-six.

Add in the wonderful combo platter of her Titles, the'Death's Foe' special, the Lycanthropic remix bumping her EQ to nine-point-five without it, her pet trick of skin-mimicry, a chain-blade honed for molecular disobedience, full lab lockdown authority, and a stack of Traits that'd make a war god sweat—she tuned up the merc with all the grace of a corporate write-off. Systematic, excessive, and professionally humiliating.

She flicked a hand, ordering the security bots to wrap up the twitching Genecorp mascot before he could leak his insides all over her lab floor. Honestly, Payne was still breathing purely on the bank's goodwill—his espionage toys screamed black-budget indulgence, coded to his DNA with failsafes that even she couldn't hack without filing for retirement. But as she watched his barely-conscious spasm attempts, she felt it—an itch of disappointment. Was this really it? The best she could do?

Just another rerun, another cookie-cutter beatdown of some rich kid's emotionally underfed murder-hobbyist? She could keep doing this forever. But did she want to? It wasn't shame—she just didn't want to be caught dead recycling her own choreography.

"Well..." Novelty deserved a seat at the table. Kelly tapped a new code into her chain-blade's shapeshifting base, and the weapon responded with a hiss and a shrugging whir, like a machine that no longer cared but still did its job. Steel twisted into the crude form of a shovel, because style mattered more than damage, as the merc wriggled like an idiot with bad timing. She strolled up, swung underhand, and scooped him skyward with a metallic slap that'd make physics wince.

The thick, metallic bone-cuffs held, the dignity didn't. He hovered briefly, contemplating poor enemy targeting and life choices, before she hit him twice more midair. Because landing with all your bones intact? Boring.

"Buddy, you don't look too great," Kelly called up, genuine in her mockery.

"Should I call you an ambulance or an airstrike?"

"Fuck—!" he snarled, a mix of outrage and shock, like getting battered with a shovel was somehow outside the combat manual.

"Fuck you!" The drone fluid pooling at his feet coalesced at her will, forcing him semi-upright.

"Want me to book a doctor's appointment?" Kelly asked, already winding up for another swing. Her voice laced with the kind of sweetness reserved for service workers lying through their teeth. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Fuck y—" He didn't finish. The shovel came down, something cracked—might've been a bone, or his pride—and he folded like a glitchy mech, screaming something probably inventive if his lungs still worked right.

"And now you do," Kelly declared cheerfully, punctuating the diagnosis with a grin. She had a feeling this was going to become a something of a morning ritual. After crushing the 7. 0 EQ merc, Payne, in every category that counted, plus a few meaningless ones she included out of habit, Kelly stood over the result with something close to relief. He had spent dozens of loops turning her organs into study material.

She once spent three hours replaying a memory recording of his shoulder movement just to understand how it turned mid-swing. That version of her lost, but this one didn't. This version broke through what had always snapped her in half before. She had grown, definitely. Every failure baked tighter into muscle memory that once carried death—her limbs still remembered how those losses felt. But they moved cleaner now. Faster. Now, her muscle memory carried forward motion. Victory.

'Impossible' used to be the word for what she couldn't do, but today, it didn't fit anymore. She stopped thinking that way. That was why she circled back: to erase the thing that used to hold her back at every turn. In the end, she let him go. She had to. Handing him over to Jackhammer would've turned into a long-winded parade of questions she didn't have the patience or time for—right now she was just an intern who had illegally boosted her EQ in a crisis. That was far from unprecedented.

But if Jackhammer started digging into why she could crush a 7. 0 EQ highly equipped combatant solo, he'd find everything she didn't want in Vaughn's archive—starting with the true nature of her illegal EQ crisis jump and ending with the part where she had cracked the key to exactly what everyone wanted. Thankfully, her best Title needed her in a near-death state, so to Jack, she had returned looking like she had barely survived and hadn't just made a psychologically stunted killer eat a shovel.

"Maybe I should've killed him?" She muttered once out of range, wrestling with the moral conundrum between personal growth and the value of life. Nah. Letting him escape? That worked better. It made her look useful to Genecorp. More than useful, actually—like an asset with a touch of danger, a person they could make something out of. Genecorp wasn't dumb enough to let an 8. 0 EQ asset from their top competitor just stroll out of a lab without a second thought.

They'd be scrambling for the next move, and she was in a prime position to skip past the usual bureaucratic nonsense. That meant less of the'prove your worth' game and more of the'we have something for you' song and dance. Of course, that also meant they'd take her more seriously, and that wasn't exactly great either.

Still, even after her attempts to scrub the footage, she was absolutely 105% certain Jackhammer had sent a report of the whole mess upstairs, complete with extra emphasis on her'upgraded capabilities.' Which, of course, meant Vaughn was going to get involved in a more explosive manner sooner or later. At that point, she'd be faced with a choice: either skip visiting her lab entirely or face the end of her day being hunted by capture teams getting increasingly powerful with every attempt. That option sounded…

promising. She smiled, wondering what kind of effects she could earn by being rapidly hunted by the most powerful groups in the known systems. If that didn't offer new Titles to play with, she didn't know what would.

"Someday," she said, almost sentimental, then let out a whistle and walked toward her truck like the thought hadn't happened. Immediate priorities held more appeal. Scientific breakthroughs in magic wouldn't make themselves, and they carried more success rates than the current plan of getting creatively killed before dinner. She had already bagged a troll sample before breakfast by tracking it early.

The oversized grey idiot was already a block from Kevin's barrier and building up to its tantrum, still wrecking buildings, wandering near Kevin's checkpoint, and barking at crushed and pulverized dumpsters, treating them like little metal boxes with a purpose it didn't understand. She had needed to grab its material before it caved the barrier, flattened Kevin's squad, and got claimed by whatever death cult had flagged it for harvest.

That meant she had saved time by skipping her visit to the Hyperloop entirely, and Rook wouldn't have to get in a firefight before he could leave to save his dog, Max. She had used that time wisely, taking actions that allowed her to augment her body in ways she had never even considered.

"Wait—Voss! You can't—" Jack, the head of security, ended a call Kelly couldn't see or hear and turned to catch a glimpse of her leaving, her boots gliding smoothly over cracked tiles and shell casings as she darted through the ground floor lobby.

"Voss!" Jack's voice chased her from the lobby through the foyer. He hadn't started sprinting yet. He was doing the fast-walk thing people did when they wanted authority without cardio.

"You are not cleared to leave the floor." Kelly kept moving. Her badge hit the employee gate sensor with a chirp.

"That's fine. I'm revoking your floor."

"What the hell does that mean?" She kicked the door open hard enough to rattle something expensive. Two steps in and moving fast, she shouted back.

"It means I'm emotionally unavailable."

"You're ignoring protocol!"

"No, I'm not!" She moved to her truck at a sprint. By the time Jack reached the entrance, she was gone. The only thing left behind was a lot of broken parts and a mild administrative crisis. She wouldn't be back. That building had seen enough. The City's East districts held answers to questions she'd been asking for years.

Deep in the lab, the machines were off—wiped. But one still ran in a line that exactly 5 people in existence had access to. It blinked red: Unknown classification. Category: Magic Theory #163889 - Experiment success Logged Subject: Dr. Kelly Vo—ERROR 494— Anomalous Creature #7364828 Recommended Action: Immediate Containment