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Chapter 240: Fight Therapy
🕑 Added 2024-01-09 18:51:34 +0000 UTCCongratulations!
You have reached Level 18!
Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)
Class: Potent Thaumaturge
Level 18
HP: 13
Body: 92
Stability: 93
Nerve: 93
Attunement: 93
Free Points: 170
XP to next level: 55511
Dear Lord, we’re fixing to go supercritical in just a few levels. Perry thought to himself.
Thankfully, only reallybig changes would net Perry that amount of XP.
I just need to top making really big enemies, Perry thought. And research immortality so I don’t have to watch everyone I love die.
Of course that came with it’s own challenges.
One step at a time.
Perry divvied up the stats.
Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)
Class: Potent Thaumaturge
Level 18
HP: 13
Body: 135
Stability: 136
Nerve: 135
Attunement: 135
Free Points: 0
XP to next level: 55511
The jump from 91 to 135 represented going from 84X baseline to 725X baseline.
A cold sweat broke out on Perry’s skin.
What happens next level? 1451 points? Is it time to start hoarding points? Because after a certain point…more isn’t necessarily better.
Perry could practically feel The Tide watching him with interest, and it was only his slightly higher Stability that allowed him to avoid Watching it back.
Like watching an ant wake up and look back at the person watching them through the microscope. An animal moving with calculated purpose.
Perry shuddered and reeled in his senses.
Best keep things 3-D. Best pretend to continue being an animal until he knew the stakes.
May have to boost Stability a couple points higher in the future. The stakes of a slip-up are getting too high.
Perry glanced around at the surrounding people, laughing and high-fiving over defeating a Demon Lord. They seemed very…limited. All Perry had to do was release the tight leash on his senses, and so much information flooded in. They were little motes of light in a deep ocean that stretched out in every direction…Am I perceiving spacetime?
There were things…moving around them in, like sharks in dark waters. Things that’d always been there, but he’d never been able to see them. For a moment, Perry lost his focus and really looked at one of them.
It looked back at him. Mars waved. It took the form of a bit of errant wind wobbling a nearby bush and a man sneezing. They were part of this reality, but also apart from it.
Perry reeled his senses in again, like a kid who wouldn’t learn not to touch a hot stove.
I thought Stability was supposed to help with this.
At seven hundred times smarter than he’d been four years ago…Perry understood the concept of diminishing returns.
Still totally sane, though. Stability is high enough that this is freaking me out, which is a sign of a healthy fear response. Not crazy, just…expanded.
“Paradox, did you just get eight point six times stronger?” Tyrannus asked, a hint of despair in his voice. Perry was surprised the dragon actually noticed, given how gobsmacked he was by his first lady-dragon.
“I gotta go…talk to my dad.” Perry said, turning away.
Portal.exe.
Perry ditched, leaving Heather and Nat behind, seeking some answers to his current situation. Preferably from someone who knew what it felt like to not be human.
Perry stepped out into the street of Franklin City.
“AHAHAHAHAHA!” Dad’s Mechanaut voice rang through the streets, along with the terrified cries of pedestrians fleeing the scene.
“Witness what happens when Burger Joint fails to bring back the Spicy Mayo Burger as ordered by THE MECHANAUT! You beg for relief from mundane sauces, but the only remedy for your hunger will be my spicy patties of DEATH!”
He definitely has his formula down pat.
BOOM!
The side of a Burger joint exploded, and hundreds of dad’s insectoid robots swarmed out of the hole, carrying frozen patties and big plastic bags full of buns. One even had a fountain drink dispenser. Another had cups.
Perry was pleased to note that the side of the wall was made with his patented breakaway concrete. They’d be able to put it back together in a matter of minutes. Honestly one of his best inventions.
“You hosting another pool party?” Perry asked as Dad stormed out into the street. “Can we talk?” Perry thumbed toward his old lair, the motel formerly managed by Sophie that now acted as an informal party spot for supers due to its high tolerance for roughhousing.
Mechanaut’s oversized suit froze for a moment before glancing at the nearby news van and filming onlookers. To the outside observer, it wouldn’t’ve looked like that, but Perry’s senses were particularly heightened at the moment.
“Ah, PARADOX!, The son of my most hated rival stands in my way! He wishes to test his mettle, but he will soon discover that mine has been forged in the fires of HELL!”
Perry sighed as a chaingun popped out of his dad’s arm and pointed at him.
I guess we’re doing this.
The funny thing about Mechanaut’s weaponry: It was stage weaponry. Most speedsters and high-level supers were clued in pretty quick when facing him. Sure it still shot thousands of high caliber rounds that would easily tear humans to shreds and looked real impressive on camera, but that was just the thing:
It looked great on camera because he dialed down the speed just low enough to look good in the standard FPS of news cameras.
Any slower and it would feel chunky on camera, and any faster, the sound would bleed together, making it feel less like a chaingun sound than a nerve-rattling hum that modern microphones couldn’t quite capture.
Knowing this, Dad had settled on a measly two hundred rounds per minute, or just a hair over three rounds per second. Sounded good on camera, looked devastating to civilian passerby, but… To any self-respecting Speedster, or someone who’d gone up to seven hundred times human baseline, it wasn’t really that fast.
If someone was actually trying to kill Mechanaut, he used lasers. Speedsters still hadn’t quite figured out how to go faster than light. Not without going crazy or stumbling into the fourth dimension and never returning, anyway.
Perry walked around the hail of bullets, keeping them missing him as he approached, making sure he didn’t draw dad’s fire into anything important. Mailboxes, concrete walls, Paradox brand re-sealing asphalt.
That sort of thing.
Textbook super fight.
Perry unleashed a couple pernicious prisons and used the inky black tar to throw dad back through the wall of the drive-through Burger Joint.
People are usually cleared out of the building that’s been busted through already.
Besides, it was out of line of sight of the news vans and cell-phone wielding onlookers.
Dragor’s Kinesis.exe.
Perry lifted himself up and shot through the hole, his dad’s autonomous robots fleeing with what was obviously party supplies that their creator couldn’t be bothered to simply purchase.
“Dad, seriously, I’m not really in the mood for this.” Perry said as he landed in front of the mechanaut’s suit.
“Sorry Perry, gotta maintain my street cred. What’s up?” Mechanaut said, brushing rubble off his armor.
“I don’t really…feel human anymore,” Perry admitted.
Dad’s helmet popped off with a dramatic hiss of air tubes –which he didn’t need– so the balding professor could look at him with his own eyes.
“What are you talking about?”
“I just hit level eighteen. I’m seven hundred times faster, smarter, and stronger. Everyone and everything looks stupid and slow, and I’m starting to see things and…What the hell am I supposed to do when the people I love look like mindless animals, and I can see the unspeakably huge things swimming through spacetime around us? And more importantly, what happens when the wrong one notices me looking back?”
“What’s gonna happen when I hit level twenty, dad? Is Perry still even gonna be here?” Perry’s voice choked a bit at the end of his question. With The System rapidly turning him into an idealized version of himself, there was no space left for Perry.
“Huh.” Dad grunted. “This is new. Listen boy, whatever you’re going through, you willget a handle on it. I know you. As for not feeling human…I don’t have much left of what you might call humanity. My soul had to literally rebuild itself from the ground up, and I don’t have many real memories of you before you were eight. I simulated many of them by scrubbing through security footage and embedding it as memory, but…they’re not real. Real memories have smells. Real memories fade, get corrupted, or idealized.”
Dad shook his head.
“Even with all that, even though I don’t need to breathe, or sleep, or eat, I still think your mom is the tightest piece of ass in all of Franklin and I’d simp for her any day.”
Perry broke into a half-chuckle, half-sob.
“Focus on your family,” His dad said. “That’s my advice. As for feeling like everyone is slow and stupid, why don’t you talk to Solaris? He feels that way all the time.”
“But…I’m still Perry, right?”
“Boy, that System can’t make you anything you couldn’t have become on your own.” His dad said, triggering a flood of relief. “Your mom has said it so many times that it’s easy to forget: You, Paradox Zauberer, have unlimited potential. You are still you and you will continue to be you, and if you catch the attention of the wrong cosmic being, maybe you’ll be able to do more than just kicking him in the nuts like your grandmother. The Earth needs people like that, who can look back at the things outside our reality and give them the boot.”
Perry heaved in a breath, and let it out, wiping the tears out of his eyes.
“Thanks dad. I’ll talk to Solaris.”
“Do that. He’s got some seriously valuable insight in how to handle being semi-immortal in a field of molasses-people.”
“Good. Now…” dad’s helmet flipped down.
“You mentioned being seven hundred times stronger? I’d like to see what that looks like.”
“Dad, wai-“
BOOM!
A forcefield deployed out of Mechanaut’s chest at the speed of magnetism, which admittedly was faster than Perry could move.
The field caught Perry in the face and sent him tumbling back out onto the street.
The concrete crumbled away from his bare skin like Styrofoam.
“Really!? Are you that much of a battle-maniac!?” Perry demanded as he stood.
“It’ll take your mind off things!” Mechanaut shouted as he charged through the wall. “Besides, we’ve never really had the opportunity to fight as Mechanaut and son…of Mechanaut’s most hated enemy!”
Perry rolled his eyes and slipped around the slow-motion charge and punched Dad in the side.
Clang!
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
While Perry could treat normal steel somewhat like play-dough, Dad was doping his armor somehow. If he had to guess, the old man was using some form of magnetism to lock everything in place and prevent it from moving, effectively making the armor harder than it had any right to be.
Perry dug his feet into the asphalt and shoved, sending Mechanaut flying into a light pole.
Honestly I don’t even keep track of the cost anymore.
BRRRR
Mechanaut whipped out his chain gun and began spraying Perry with lead.
Perry walked through them, not even bothering to dodge this time.
The impacts felt a bit like walking through moderate sized hail.
It stung a little bit, but not much more than that.
Dragor’s kinesis.exe.
Perry reached out with Dragor’s Kinesis and grabbed the chaingun, intending to rip it off.
The instant the spell made contact with Dad’s armor, Perry perceived an aggressive counterspell following the causal chain, intent on infecting him, warping his perception of the fight, and causing him to lose.
Perry dropped the spell before the counter hit him.
“Fool! I’ve been fighting Hexen for well over two decades!” The mechanaut shouted. “You’ll have to bring more than that if you want to defeat me!”
Perry wasn’t sure how his old man made what appeared to be a magical effect with technology, but at the highest level, it all blended together.
“If you can’t surpass Hexen, how do you expect to save these bystanders from my wrath!?” The Mechanaut asked, gesturing to a woman and her baby, seemingly frozen in fear.
That gives me an idea, Perry thought.
“You want an original spell?” Perry asked.
“Try if you dar-“
Paradox’s Time Out.exe
The restraint spell he’d invented from bullet grasshoppers when he was trapped on Manita by his uncle landed…on the mother and her baby, freezing them in place and rendering them immune to physical damage.
“I see, trying to save the…Umm, what are you-ACK!”
Dad finally lost his beat when Perry picked up the frozen bystander and her baby and began beating on the Mechanaut armor with them.
BANG, BANG, BANG!
“You know what? You’re right!” Perry said between swings with his improvised bystander-club. “This does take my mind off things!”
“Parado-“
BANG!
“Perry-’
BANG!
“Could you-“
BANG!
Mechanaut staggered back, his ten-foot-tall armor sparking where the soccer-mom had dented in the joints.
Perry set…He checked her purse.
Perry set Mary and her newborn Phillip down, leaning against a wall like a cardboard cut-out, not a scratch on them.
Perry snapped his fingers.
Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.exe
The scrying orb blinked and manifested a fifteen-story railgun in the center of the street, appearing around them.
The projectile in this case…The Mechanaut.
“Wait a min-“
With a thrumming pulse of electricity, The Mechanaut was accelerated to 16k M/s, or about .005% of the speed of light. Straight up.
Perry followed him up into the sky, using Dragor’s Kinesis to part the air so his clothes didn’t catch fire.
The mechanaut’s armor shed its rough metal disguise and liquified, turning into a spherical orb that cut through the upper atmosphere as it turned back at him, firing a death-laser.
HP: 12
Perry modified the refractive qualities of the air around him and scattered the laser after the first hit, approaching with the Pernicious Prison.
The Mechanaut armor split into thousands of duplicates the rough size and shape of crabs, scattering every direction while concealing where The Mechanaut was.
There were no dimensional wiggles to indicate his father had tucked himself away via shrinking or a dimensional pocket. He’d just vanished.
Perry’s eyes narrowed.
It was a trick. Since Dad’s body was robotic, it was fair to assume that the body itself could be considered an extension of his armor. If his armor could split into thousands of decoy crabs, there was nothing to say his body couldn’t do it too.
I can still perceive his soul, so where is he going to put it? It’s like a shell game.
Before he could pin dad down, the crabs coalesced into half a dozen highly mobile robotic hunter-killers, each the size and shape of a man, yet designed to move in a way that was distinctly inhuman to elicit fear and confusion.
Perry broke them.
While he was busy with the robots, a force built above him, seemingly coalescing from hundreds of thousands of discrete sources, bouncing off the upper atmosphere to punch him in the face.
Perry had to admire the ingenuity of bouncing an attack off the ozone layer. It was the mad scientist equivalent of hitting someone with a boomerang.
Perry tumbled back down to the ground, grappling with one of the killer robots, using the high-tech, ultra-hard death-bot with razor sharp claws to soften his landing.
BOOM!
HP: 11
Perry’s elbow shattered the robot’s chest, leaving it twitching in its asphalt crater as he climbed to his feet.
The other hunter-killers landed in a circle around Perry and unleashed a veritable blender of dimensional force blades reminiscent of those used by Dr. Replica’s Invisible Stalkers.
Perry felt a grin stretch across his face as he was forced to the limits of his speed, dodging blades at a rate that forced him to consider the molasses-like consistency of air.
This was no longer a show for the cameras, this was them getting warmed up. The cameras saw nothing but a blur and an electric hum. This lack of staging for the benefit of the public told Perry that he had his dad’s undivided attention, and that felt nice.
The action gradually escalated, but Dad eventually won due to both of them not wanting to actually destroy Franklin City, or each other. Since dad didn’t actually have a physical body, Perry eventually started slowing down.
Once that happened, Mechanaut sucker-punched him with a new suit of armor from out of nowhere.
Perry sighed, half-embedded in one of his concrete walls, his muscles pleasantly sore, but already recovering to full, stronger than they’d been twenty minutes ago.
“Thanks, dad. I feel better.”
“Thanks for taking it easy on me,” Dad said, giving him a thumbs-up.
Comments
Kiew
This was an amazing chapter. Perry talking to his dad was so genuine and had me nextdoor to tearing up. Thank you Macro.
Travis
Thank you for making this story.
FriskyPotato
Holy shit. He’s into Superman levels with this level. As lvl 19 he hits “I punched god to death” levels of strength, by 20 he evaporates universes by twitching. Awsome, although we’ll probably not see him level again in this novel.
FriskyPotato
I assume you mean this one? If your talking about something else, name drop it I want to check it out.
Nicholas Grey
Mark of the Fool also taps into this when the MC learns blood-magic type healing, and also has the Mark - which teaches him to do anything (except magic and combat) *perfectly*. Any. Thing. Theoretically-perfect workout plus magical healing means he ends up looking like he ate the Minotaur for lunch.
jesse copenhaver
Only really seen one other exponential story. Do you somewhere good ones?
TimeDrawsNigh
If he splits all 1,451 points at level 19 that’ll give him ~362 per attribute for a total of 497 Attunement. He’s gonna be 33,968,912,063x faster/stronger etc. Holy shit. That would give him 67,937,824,126 points to spend at level 20. At least I think my math is right.
Stephen E Wilson Jr.
The manga/anime "The wrong way to use healing magic" is based on that premise. Healers are muscle-bound speedster at the peak of human potential and beyond.
Jeff Wells
I worked out once how much super healing aids things like strength training. You basically hit a point where your recovery time becomes nil and can just rep your max lift and add pounds to your max every couple minutes. At Perry's healing he could see months of results over a single workout session. Of course Perry doesn't need that, but other super healers should also basically max out their fitness very quickly.
Jeff Wells
Perry is what another superhero novel I read classified as a "true speedster" - that is, his speed doesn't come from some dimensional shenanigans or some kind of magical acceleration, but from raw power. He's just strong enough and can move his limbs fast enough to go hundreds of miles an hour. Typically they were an order of magnitude slower than the shenanigans type of speedster, but that novel classified true speedsters as some of the scariest mofos around, because they were absurdly strong, fast, and usually durable to match their strength. It's like Superman vs The Flash. Superman is way, way scarier than the Flash, though Flash is faster in raw speed. Perry is approaching shenanigans level speed as a true speedster. He should be well past Superman in raw power at this point. Pretty crazy.
0xFFF1
Speedsters get the Required Secondary Powers. Perry isn't a Speedster. He's a Tinker/Drainer.
Nathan Ganesan
He's really just an overenthusiastic roleplayer.
David Giles
Tyrannus is probably about to be asked by Perry to be an Anchor for him, as one of the few people with even a chance of killing him
Hayden Leech
Must be tricky to constantly make sure you’re not igniting the atmosphere or creating massive sonic booms every time you move. Hey that could be a fun spell. A spell that passively removes wind resistance. Perhaps just by making Perry phase through the atmosphere. Wouldn’t leave massive wind tunnels behind him either. Would suck to accidentally act like a sideways tornado in a city.
STORRM
man i remember when this was a power armour book T-T now Perry is the meat mecha, they grow up so fast.
Mundane
Now this is what I love about a Macronomicon story. Lots of kids these days try to write fiction with exponential growth but no one can actually show it like you can. Looking forward to some absolutely mind breaking chapters <3
Macronomicon
I imagine it's not a flat translation, because wind resistance is a thing. bu tyeah, he's probably pretty fast.
Barkeep
So uh. Fastest human can run like 27 mph. Assuming 20mph being perry's base...does that mean he can run 14,000 mph.... Isn't the sound barrier 700ish? Google says fastest experimental jet can reach just over 4500 mph. So parry is 3 times faster then that.
Ryan Naquin
Tyrannus started their fight cause he saw perry get 5% stronger. I imagine seeing perry get 860% stronger would prompt him to call it off. Hopefully Billy's new attendant can councel him on not letting pride get him killed, cause dispite his somewhat murderus tendencies, i like him as a character.
Hayden Leech
Poor dragon. That was pretty fucking rapid. He totally thought he had the Perry situation under control right up until a bunch of Billy’s acolytes got nuked. Then three basically back to back levels changed the game entirely. It was scary enough when Perry casually made vast improvements to the curse that Tyrannus and several teams of scientists spent weeks designing. …when he was almost nine times less intelligent than he is now.
Robert Apgar
Looks like the Dragon fight is permanently over lol
afgasd adgasd
Oooo okay the story sounds like it's diverging from that spoiler post way earlier
Dominic Harney
Father/son bonding at its finest.
sambee
Immortal Zauberers’….the universe might not survive an immortal Gramma or Sera.
David Fletcher
That was fantastic. Family bonding and whatever is fun, but that burger joint opening was the best. I love how ridiculous his dad’s villain act is.
Tsorov
One of the best chapters in this fiction up to now! Thx for the chapter, looking forward to the talk with solaris!
Person
He doesn't. 1 point per level, and he had to spend some along the way. IIRC it was 5 points for HP that scaled to his current toughness (so right around "HOLY SHIY")
Andrew
Thank you!
rizen
Jesus Christ. Yeah. Tyrannus is going to want a permanent ceasefire now.
Mikey Sawanec
Love a good relationship between Dad and Son
Gaunt
Good ol' family bonding
Doodlyboy15
Good grounding and father son bonding. Thanks!
Apotheosis
Good chapter, I look forward to seeing the solaris conversation
WickedlyDesigned
Quick question: why doesn't Perry ever invest in HP? Would slow down his growth, get him some more automatic defenses, so why?
Hayden Leech
Oooh
Rafnyd
Just two guys, working out their feelings with a bit of exercise.
alex ayala
This was honestly so sweet and wholesome. What a lovely chapter
Macronomicon
1 minute of recovery is a little over 12 hours at 725X speed. I think it definitely qualifies as super-healing now.
