With my meager physical strength, having only my hand augmented wouldn’t serve much of a purpose, but it could still give me the upper hand if the element of surprise were on my side in a fight.
Yet, even finding the benefits available to me by unlocking my Augmentation skill early, there was the drawback of its cost. Activating the skill in the initial Stages had a massive draw of 30 PC, followed by a 5 PC per second sustenance rate, meaning even if I did use it, I’d have, at best, a few seconds to pummel my opponent.
’Sigh, if they weren’t all so damn expensive, I would just buy all of them and then spend the next couple of years slowly training them up, but no, as it stands, I can only choose one.’
Making a hard decision, I chose to ignore Augmentation and Control, my reason being that I would unlock Augmentation upon reaching Alpha Grade anyway.
In the case of Control, although it would be nice to have it since I had no conceivable way to use it, with my max PC being only 110 points, I couldn’t convince myself to spend my only exchange ticket to learn the skill early.
That left only Psy-Shock and Psy-Tag on the table for purchase. Luckily, the exchange ticket negated the Arkadia Coin cost of the book, so with that settled, I used the proven method of ancient times.
Closing my eyes, I pointed my index finger in the direction of Psy-Tag and began the mythological chant…
’Eenie meanie miney moe, catch a tiger by his toe, if he hollers, let him go, eenie meanie…mineeyyy…MOE!’
[Thank you for your purchase; your item has been sent to your inventory.]
Opening only my left eye, I peeked at which book I had purchased and shrugged before pulling it out of my inventory and examining the small booklet the size of an adult palm and only a dozen or so pages thick.
’Psy-Tag it is then,’ I thought while opening the grey-colored book, which looked more like a pamphlet.
The moment I did so, my eyes glazed over as the words and pictures housed on the confines of the pages of the book lifted and flowed into my mind.
Having gone through this process a few times, I wasn’t caught off guard when my vision blanked out, and I found myself standing in a large, white, empty space.
Looking around, instead of taking in my surroundings, the first thing I noticed was that the ground seemed much farther away than expected, and that was when I realized I wasn’t in my childish four-year-old-sized body; no, I had returned to my full adult size from the future.
"Well, that’s neat and slightly annoying; heh, if it’s going to be like this and I’m stuck in my older body, I will have a tough time adapting the techniques to use as a child."
The instant those words came out of my mouth and echoed across the open landscape, I felt a strange sensation as I noticed the ground suddenly rising up.
"Ah, me and my big mouth!"
WOOSHHHH
Blinking twice, I looked down at my body and realized I was wearing the same thing as I had been today in the hospital, and sighed loudly, knowing I had magically become my younger self again.
’A red and blue onesie with the world-famous Fighter Rangers printed across my chest. I knew I shouldn’t have relived my action of running around the room singing, "GOGO FIGHER RANGERS!"’
As strange as it may seem, I did try to keep things as they had been so as not to shift my personal life by too much, so the goofy things I did as a little kid were a must-have, such as my Ranger Dance, Running around roaring like the T-Rex from DinoPark, hell there was a military show my Dad watched called Jag, about a naval fighter pilot who became a lawyer, and every time the theme song came on I’d run around the room acting like a plane.
Sure, most of these things may be embarrassing, but when I saw the joy and laughter I brought to my father, I couldn’t rob him of those experiences.
"Heh, begin learning sequence," breaking out of my revelry, I uttered the specific command used to trigger the Technique learning, and the white space shifted into a college-style classroom.
For the next while, I sat and listened to a lecture about the theories behind the Psy-Tag technique, learned the particle cycle and formula behind making it work, and even partook in live demonstrations where I would experience using the technique, which would eventually evolve into a skill.
By the time the lesson came to a close, and I opened my eyes back in the hospital room, I had experienced weeks of training in the span of only a few minutes of IRL time and had a decent grasp on what Psy-Tag was capable of.
In short, it was a technique that allowed me to clone my consciousness and merge it into the mind of another person.
Overall, it was a super relevant and useful technique that anyone with high enough stats could learn; however, I was able to take it much further.
Although anyone could technically use the technique, if I were able to evolve it into a skill, I could do so much more with Psy-Tag than you’d expect.
Read lat𝙚st chapters at fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓ Only.
From the lectures, I learned the obvious limitations of the technique, which would burned PC like a furnace, and I was also able to surmise the changes it would undergo once upgraded to Skill Status.
For one, under the influence of my Talent, I could effectively create a miniature, invisible me who was able to share the senses of my target so long as my stats were high enough, and THAT was something I desperately needed.
While Amanda and my brother Slept, I went through the methods learned through Arkadia and the Technique book, molding particles within my brain and merging the methods learned with my Talent.