Borderlands: Unnatural selection

"Hmm, a second vault might be a bit much for the old tree to keep to itself." he grumbled with a deep frown.

"Worried that Jakobs might get attacked by the other corporations if you found a second vault? Can't say as I don't see a precedent since Atlas only avoided it because they kept it secret long enough and even then had to fight off the corporate spies that swarmed them." I said honestly.

"Them vaults are a blessin and a curse boy, where one's found blood is spilt and I don't want Jakobs to get dragged into that mess. That said we are talkin about Baal 3 here, not the heart of Jakobs so we have some room to move still. If we go lookin for another vault on that planet we gots to keep it quiet or vault hunters'll come running like jabbers in heat." the old man said seriously.

"So how we playing this, lots of bodies looking or a quiet takeover and search with satellites?" I asked leaning forward in my seat fully focused.

"First we need to buy the planet, it's got a lot of wood so no one will think nothin of it as we've done it before. Then we need to start harvestin the stuff to keep up the image while we have a couple satellites scan the planet for caves. We can then start focusin on those spots and hope we find some alien stuff. Might take a few years till we find somethin though so you'll be needing to choose a different planet to hunt on for the meanwhile." he said taking another sip of his drink.-

"Give me a couple days, I still have some traits to integrate as well as my experiment with the egg. After that's done I'll look for anything that sounds like a good spot to do some more hunting." I said and he nodded before effectively telling me to get lost so he could get his work done.

I wasn't bothered by the rude send off since I knew he didn't mean anything by it, that was just the way he was. I headed up to my room in the manor and opened my house up again before stepping through the portal. I blinked a couple of times to adjust after getting inside before stripping off my outer layer of clothes followed by my skinsuit that thankfully stretched since it was a one size fits all type deal.-

Once I was fully nude headed to the bathroom before I gave [Iron stomach], [Disease resistance],[Amphibious lungs], [Thermal sensing], [Water resistance] and[Ambush muscles] the go ahead for integration while making sure to keep one copy in reserve for the egg. Hoo boy let me fucking tell you that going to the bathroom after stripping for this was a damn good idea. I immediately started to convulse in agony as blood, sweat and other stuff started coming out of every pore and hole I had.-

My stomach churned and my lungs burned while my muscles writhed and swelled in my legs. The process like usual ended quite quickly but was a fucking miserable time. I weakly stood up and turned on the water to wash the filth off of me and hissed as the hot water triggered my new thermal senses like a strange bright orange "sight" in my mind. I powered through the annoying sense though as I needed this vile shit off me yesterday. I grabbed a nearby bar of oak scented soap and my loofa and got to work on scrubbing the abhorrent shit on me off.-

My new thermal sense didn't work exactly how I imagined but was sorta like an extension of my eyesight that could be toggled on and off after I eventually figured it out. [Water resistance] made my skin kinda waxy I suppose so the water slipped off me like it had been tossed on an oiled piece of metal. Thankfully it also made it way easier to get the nasty stuff off me as the water took what I got loose with it.-

The only other trait just added that had a physical effect on me was [Ambush muscles] that while getting added to [Omega body] also focused heavily on the jumping muscles in ones legs and thus gave me highly robust calves and thighs. In a manner of speaking I now had the ability to jump the same distances a frog my size might. That might sound comical until you consider that also meant any kick I make was now strong enough to shatter stone and dent hard metal. That was what made my powers so dangerous, I might start out weak but if given enough time and oppurtunity I would rapidly approach superhuman in several regards like a snowball rolling down a hill.-

Even discounting the six month break I had to get educated it only took me about a month to reach slightly below superhuman levels. I could have gone even further if I hadn't purposefully capped myself in terms of how many copies of a trait I was willing to take. I wasn't sure if there was an actual limit to how many copies of one trait I could have. What I did know was that if I recklessly took every trait copy that appealed to me I'd never have any lifeforce saved up.-

Unsurprisingly the traits tended to cost more than the lifeforce I got from any one creature with them which meant I was operating at a loss if I didn't regulate my trait in and lifeforce in rates. It also didn't help that the higher the grade a trait was the higher the price in lifeforce it would cost. Trash was the lowest at a pitiful 50 units, Common was the true lowest acceptable grade and sat at 500 units. Uncommon was next at double the previous grade at 1000 units.-

The prices started jumping drastically from there which was understandable given the rarity and/or complexity of the traits past that point. Up next was Rare grade sitting at a hefty 5000 units to buy. Then the price of the next grade, Epic, jumped even further at a staggering 20,000 units. The final grade that I have only seen one time so far and that too only from a vault monster of all things was Legendary sitting at an asking price of 100,000 units to buy. I wasn't sure if there were any trait grades higher than Legendary but I imagine that if there were they would be ungodfully expensive.-

I should also point out that as someone who hunted animals even if I shouldn't have I understood the need to not destroy whole ecosystems recklessly. Catching a single fish or even a dozen was fine but if you caught too many fish in too short a time it would fuck up the whole ecosystem in the area. This meant little to no fish if you ever came back, killing the goose that laid the golden eggs as it were. This meant that besides creatures like Ratch which were both invasive as all fucking hell and nearly impossible to eradicate I wasn't just slaughtering anything that moved this whole time.-

Honestly speaking this wasn't even a morality thing for me so much as a common fucking sense thing. I as a predator obviously thrive best when there is prey for me to hunt so naturally common sense is that I don't make my prey go extinct if I can help it. I didn't really HAVE a moral bottom line that I wouldn't cross, like I wasn't an asshole that went about doing fucked up shit regularly because I could but if I had no choice but to allow it or even participate I wouldn't feel guilty afterwards.-

In hindsight maybe that's why the being that gave me this second chance at life said that this place would fit me like a glove I never knew I needed. Morality was fucked sideways in this new crazy reality I found myself in and I fit right in. Introspection aside after getting cleaned up I washed my clothes before slipping on the skin suit alone and walking to the menagerie while the rest dried.

'Now to see if this works the way I hope.' I thought a little nervously.

I rested my hand on the egg and ignored my powers telling me the traits and stuff of the thing as I turned my powers inward towards the traits I had waiting to stuff into the egg. I carefully nudged [Strong nose] and stopped it when it tried to integrate but sort of forced it out of my body instead which let me tell you felt weird as shit. If sending out lifeforce into another thing felt like extending my grasp beyond my actual hand sending a full on trait out was like burping but from my hand instead. It wasn't painful or anything but it was DEFINITELY a strange sensation.-

{Tyrant egg(Chomp Stomp)

Lifeforce: 4505(developing)

Traits:[Aphrodisiacal sweat-Rare grade]- 5000 units, [Omega body-Rare grade]- 5000 units, [Armored hide-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Strong bones-Uncommon grade]-1000 units, [Flame breath-Uncommon Grade]- 1000 units, [Minor regeneration-Epic grade]- 20000 units, [Enhanced vitality-Rare grade]- 5000 units}

At first glance it looked like my experiment had failed but if you paid attention you'd be able to notice that the trash trait [Poor smell] was gone. 

'It worked!' I mentally cheered in excitement seeing this.

This served to verify two things for me, first that I could indeed give traits to another living thing. Maybe it had to still be developing like this one or maybe not, further testing needed for clarification. The second was that I could enhance or negate an aspect of a creature that received the trait by giving it a trash grade trait of that type or a trait that was better than it's current one for that type. In this case I had enhanced the creatures sense of smell from bad to average which while not like phenomenal or anything was still an upgrade in the end.-

[Clever mind-Uncommon grade]

[Imprint-Common grade]

[Precise vision-Rare grade]

[Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade]

2000 units

I was only able to stuff these four traits and another chunk of life force into the egg before I got a feeling of fullness that I took to mean it needed to adapt again to these new changes but I was getting kinda excited looking at it's current status.-

{Tyrant egg(Aberration)

Lifeforce: 6505(developing)

Traits:[Aphrodisiacal sweat-Rare grade]- 5000 units, [Omega body-Rare grade]- 5000 units, [Armored hide-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Strong bones-Uncommon grade]-1000 units, [Flame breath-Uncommon Grade]- 1000 units, [Minor regeneration-Epic grade]- 20000 units, [Enhanced vitality-Rare grade]- 5000 units, [Clever mind-Uncommon grade], [Imprint-Common grade], [Precise vision-Rare grade],[Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade] }

I noticed that the species title had changed from chomp stomp to aberration which was fitting since this egg was clearly a freak of nature or would it be unnature since I made it this way? Whatever the case I was grinning ear to ear in honest glee at the thought that I looked on track to get my pet monster after all. If I could somehow manage to make the creature into a quadruped and stuff a working set of wings on it's back I may even be able to make an honest to gods dragon or at the very least something that LOOKED like one.

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https://www.pa treon.com/user?u=81578854#:~:text=pa treon.com/pa treon_loskro

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Alexander Drake

Lifeforce: 169,677

Integrated Traits: [Gun expertise-Uncommon grade], [Clever mind-Uncommon grade]X3,[Enhanced senses-Rare grade], [Omega body-Rare grade]x4,[Superior bones-Rare grade],[Armored hide-Rare grade], [Fire resistance-Uncommon grade], [Bone regeneration-Uncommon grade], [Corrosion resistance-Uncommon grade], [Energy projection-Epic grade], [Superior vitality-Epic grade],[Flame breath-Uncommon grade],[Minor regeneration-Rare grade][Iron stomach-Uncommon grade], [Disease resistance-Epic grade],[Amphibious lungs], [Thermal sensing-Uncommon grade], [Water resistance-Common grade]

Stored traits:[Aerial expertise-Common grade], [Amphibious lungs], [Water resistance]