BIOLOGICAL SUPERCOMPUTER SYSTEM

Chapter 1308: An unexpected reunion (5)

That same night, Erik gave new powers to his friends. He gathered the group in the main room, the one the clones cleaned the most from the monsters’ remains, and proceeded.

Erik had spent the entire day planning the distribution of powers with the clones and the biological supercomputer, but of course, he also asked for input from the others. In truth, they didn’t have that many requests or wishes; they just wanted to get stronger, something Erik took literally in some cases.

Rick and the clones had collected various powers from the thaids around the area, so he had a good pool to choose from. However, they still came from the relatively weak thaids the clones could kill with their actual strength.

They discussed the powers in detail, analyzing each one, studying their potential in combat and the compatibility with his friends’ existing abilities, but in many cases Erik had to modify them, and that needed many DNA points.

There was also another problem. It became clear that to survive on Mur; the others needed three powers, so he had to give two to everyone but Amber, Mira, and Emily, who just needed one. This simplified some aspects while complicating others.

In general, Erik decided to give the group members powers that increased their survival chances in a broader sense.

Enhanced strength and healing or regenerative powers were the most obvious choices. There were many melee fighters in the group, so it was the best choice, anyway.

Later, Erik gave them the powers.

Gwen got enhanced strength and regenerative healing. As the team’s main fighter, she needed both offensive capability and durability. The combination allowed her to strike with greater force while recovering quickly from injuries sustained in battle and would complement well with her birth brain crystal power.

Ben was given similar power choices but with different implementations. He received Armored Exoskeleton and regenerative healing. The exoskeleton would give him the defenses Gwen had, lowering his chances of being injured. Combined with regenerative healing, this made him an ideal front-line combatant and, for sure, would make him harder to kill.

Allan received powers that complemented his existing combat style. Since he had a brain crystal power that allowed him to create a mana spear and to imbue it with lightning, Erik gave him the only power the clones got, and that was related to it. Based on what the clone said, they found it inside a river nearby, which was filled with eel-like thaids.

Even this power needed some modifications, but Erik paid the price. What Allan got was the power to generate an aura, which surrounded him with a field of electricity that shocked anything that came into contact with him.

This created a perfect defense for close-quarters fighting while, at the same time, dealing damage. His second ability, instead, allowed him to create bone spikes.

The ability allowed Allan to increase his skeletal density, making his bones stronger and more resistant to impacts and fractures during fights. This would help him handle the recoil from his attacks and make him more durable in close combat.

While not the most powerful ability, the bone spikes gave Allan two advantages: better defense in close combat and more ways to attack enemies.

However, while it was true that the clones chose it because they found nothing more suitable, Allan saw its potential.

The spikes could injure opponents when they least expected it, while the electric aura made fighting him in close quarters nearly impossible due to the pain, spasms, and damage it inflicted.

Martha received powers that enhanced her birth crystal power, which allowed her to control and strengthen plants.

The problem with her birth brain crystal power was that she couldn’t create them, so Erik gave her the ability to at least grow the surrounding vegetation faster, exactly like he could do many years before.

It was a power very similar to the one he had, his birth brain crystal power, but with a simple difference: Erik edited it to make it stronger than what he had back then.

In truth, its original ability to grow plants was even better than what he had now, Verdant Architect, because it required far less mana to grow them at the same speed. Of course, it couldn’t control the plants.

Thanks to this and her birth brain crystal power, Martha could fight virtually everywhere. Rapid growth allowed her to speed up the development of plants, which she could use to create barriers, weapons, or cover during battle.

He also gave her the ability to create poison, editing it so that she could infuse such poison into her plants.

As for Floyd, he gained abilities suited for melee combat. This time, it was entirely under his requests, but they made sense.

Floyd was essentially a melee fighter, with a power that was originally better suited for defense. He had nothing that would help him fight or move.

Since the clones got the brain crystal from a weird monkey-like thaid with a whipped tail, he asked them to give him that.

The power was rather simple; it allowed him to create a mana tail ending up in a metal-like whip, which would be useful for fighting, but the clones were sure he wanted it because he could use it to dangle around trees.

Erik gave him a poison-creating power too, which was called Poisonous Touch, that he kept as it was so that it could work with Floyd’s limbs.

Amber instead asked Erik for something straightforward and practical. And she got a very common strength enhancement brain crystal power, which was abundant in this part of the forest due to the prevalence of strength-based, or insect-like thaids.

This way, she would be stronger in melee and would be better at running. Actually, Erik also got one of these powers for himself and edited as much as he could to at least offset the difference in strength between him and the thaids.

As for Mira, Erik had to work a lot on some of the powers he had available. There was a creature that could create mana claws, which Erik edited to turn them into mana arrows. That way, Mira could have infinite arrows, and she wouldn’t even need to bring a bow with her, since she could simply throw them.

Erik did his best to increase the penetration power of the arrows and to calibrate this with mana efficiency, but everything ultimately depended on how much mana she used.

He couldn’t increase mana regeneration until the clones matured, unless he found appropriate powers to modify and combine for that purpose.

As for Emily, she asked Erik to give her something that would increase her sniping abilities. Erik agreed but gave her something that would actually also increase her survivability, and he got the right brain crystal power for that, thanks to the clones.

Emily got an enhanced camouflage power. Though not true invisibility, Erik modified it to be more effective than the original version the clones harvested from the thaid it came from.

The power allowed her to blend almost perfectly with her surroundings if she didn’t move, which was essentially what she was going to do when sniping. Erik also made it so that the power was more effective the more she remained still.