Borderlands: Unnatural selection

In this new dangerous reality of mine [Burn]s importance as a life preserving method could not be overstated. If I ever got in a situation were I had to trade damage with a vastly superior foe this could make me entirely unkillable for a short span of time. If I had one issue with this new set of powers it was that I didn't have enough information to go off of. Like I obviously wouldn't turn into a freakish monster from collecting traits since that would have defeated the purpose of creating the powers.-

But at the same time the details were a little nonexistent on what would happen when I stole traits for myself. There was much more than that too as I wasn't sure how I'd know what traits something had or even if I had enough lifeforce to get said trait. There was a lot of information missing to give this powerset well defined structure but I froze when I had a thought, a VERY possible theory.-

'What if this powerset DOESN'T have limits? That being said it was top shelf and I asked for something with infinite potential and this certainly qualifies. I just didn't think that it would be so vague.' I thought with a headache.

I decided to wing it and figure this shit out as I went and turned my attention to the weird chests and floating object held in the strange statues hands. I walking over to the odd angular statue I examined the thing in it's hands.-

[Eridian Habitation unit

Level: Relic

Description: All the comforts of home .... to go!]

The object itself was this black metallic sphere thing with this beautiful amber glowing crystal in it's center. 

"Is that a fucking pokeball!?" I blurted in shock.

I reached out and yoinked the thing off the statues hands without hesitation and with more than a little greed. I grimaced when it started to glow amber orange and stick to my hand even though I tried to get rid of it like a cat with tape on it's paw at first.- 

'Wait it doesn't hurt?' I froze as this thought hit me.

Lifting my hand up to stare at the thing I saw some orange bar shaped lights on the side of the ball that were slowly filling up.

'User binding or is it recharging somehow?' I wondered curiously.

Whatever was responsible for the creation of this thing was clearly the same thing responsible for the creation of those robots I ran into on the way to this vault as the design was very similar though clearly this sphere was way more valuable. After staring at the ball in an attempt to unlock it's secrets for a good five minutes I got bored and decided to ignore it for now and go check out these out chests at the back of the chamber. There were two kinds of chests with only one of them appealing to me aesthetically.-

The first kind of chest was this pale white stone rectangle with two glowing green diamonds intersecting carved into the lid. It was about four feet long and two feet tall but was frankly bland as shit. You opened it by hitting the lid, I'm not kidding you literally had to hit the lid for it to open. When the things did open though I immediately decided that I was never going to judge a chest by it's cover again as three items just sort of pixelized into existence on the two shelves of the chest.-

The three items had three different colored flame glows much like my gun and shield did before I equipped them. I hurriedly looked them over and was surprised at what I found.

[Name: TR386 berserk rifle

Level: Common

Type: Combat rifle

Damage type: explosive X1

Manufacturer: TORGUE

Affix: N/A ]

[Name: ML1183 vicious scattergun

Level: Rare

Type: Shotgun

Damage type: Pyro X1

Manufacturer: MALIWAN

Affix: N/A ]

[Name: Hp7003 Needler

Level: Epic

Type: Pistol

Damage type: Standard

Manufacturer: HYPERION

Affix: N/A ]

Three weapons with different levels and even manufacturers. The problem? I had no idea who the fuck these manufacturers were or what their weapons were about besides shooting things. I thankfully was able to figure out what another two elements were though with [Pyro] and [Explosive] showing up like this.

'What's the the difference? Explosives tend to be fiery so like is it a local thing or is there actually something different about it?' I pondered confused.

I didn't grab the guns though since I didn't have anywhere to put them at the moment and moved on the the next chest that was of the second type and my personal favorite. It was this nice red color and had segments in it that split to the sides when it opened and this clearly decorative horned head sculpture thing on it's top.-

When it opened the internal layout also proved different than the previous chest as there was a single large shelf in the middle and two smaller shelves that unfolded up and to the sides. Once again there was guns inside the chest that manifested from thin air but nothing legendary level. The same applied for the last two chests in this chamber though I did noticed that the glow despite being the same color for some of the guns was also larger which I assumed meant they were the better weapons.

"BRRRRIING!" a sort of chiming sound rang out from my hand and the sphere stuck to me fell with a "TINK!" that startled me.

'I forgot I was even holding that, Time to see what this things about then.' I thought as I picked up the sphere and started pressing and trying to twist different parts of it to figure out how the fuck it worked.

Turns out that big obvious amber gem part was a button and once it clicked the most fascinating thing happened, it shot out of my hand. Defied gravity and everything as it shot through the air before going through the portal of the vault leaving me standing there speechless.

"Get the fuck back here!" I roared angrily thinking my loot was making a break for it.

In hindsight not my finest moment but to be fair I had no idea how this alien tech worked at the time. Anyways I left the vault and immediately my new powers went haywire as it was suddenly like a very annoying voice screaming in my head to take the lifeforce of the giant monster corpse and that it had some great traits. That shit was disorienting as all get out since I wasn't expecting it but I managed to stuff that new instinct down to a manageable level.-

Once that was done I was surprised to see a small black metallic archway with a familiar amber button at the top not far from the vaults still open portal that looked like a mini vault.

'Is that what the ball turned into?' I wondered in surprise.

Shrugging I didn't hesitate to walk right into the portal to see what was up with that whole thing. What I discovered was amazing on so many levels I had a hard time processing it.-

To start I suppose I should clarify that the inside of this mini-vault was an entire building that was easily able to house a small platoon. I as the registered owner of this whole alien smart house got this sort of tour/tutorial of the place when I first got here which was shocking as hell but super welcome since learning by trial and error sucks. It had built in waste disposal rooms(bathrooms) and even running clean water in hot, cold and every temperature between. -

My favorite part though had to be the alien food maker thingy in the largest room that was a big amber orb thing on a metal stick lever that you grabbed and thought of whatever food you wanted before pulling it down. Glowing orange and black alien projector beam things would then pop out from the wall and sort of 3d print whatever food you had been thinking of. A bit of a downside though was that you couldn't come back for seconds since the food creator thing had to recharge for a whole twenty four hours even if you had it make you a single chicken nugget.-

Kinda stupid I know but I wasn't the one who made the thing so what can you do? Still if you "ordered" a bunch of food right from the start it wasn't a problem so I guess it worked out anyways. In case you were wondering I got a Salisbury steak with portabella mushrooms and Havarti mac and cheese for my first meal, so worth it. Moving on from the food creator thing this place had a grand total of twelve rooms with five being "purpose" rooms according to the tour/tutorial and the rest being spare rooms that were totally empty so I could do whatever I wanted with them.-

The five "purpose" rooms were a herbarium, a menagerie, a simulacrum training space, and a spatio-translocator map room but my personal favorite was the crafting/tinkering room. The first and second of those rooms had an input menu in each particular specimen containment and care unit that let you adjust the parameters to be ideal for keeping whatever you put there alive and thriving. Did I forget to mention that this entire place looked like it was made for giants? I'm talking twenty foot ceilings and each room being large enough to play baseball in.-

The third room was for lack of a better description the fucking matrix training room in that it created hard light enemies that reacted and acted like normal enemies. I very much planned to abuse the shit out of this feature for the next year to shore up my massive weakness to running and gunning with any sort of accuracy. The fourth room was lacking any tools but had a waist high workbench table and a matter to matter form reconstitution gizmo thing that deconstructed whatever I gave it into it's base materials and remade them into whatever I wanted of the same stuff.

This meant while I might not have any tools or parts at the moment I could use this to make them as needed so long as I fed it the right materials and knew what the hell I needed and how it was made. Finally there was the spatio-translocator map room, or the teleporter room as I like to call it. Built in motherfucking fast travel for the win! In all seriousness the way it worked was that I could set up my mobile home here at a spot, designate that spot as important using this room and from literally anywhere in the universe teleport the entire place to that spot from this room.-

Not super useful at the moment since there was only a single place marked as important by default and I had no idea where the fuck it was but in the future, game changing. My only real gripe with this porta-home would have to be that it was almost entirely barren smooth grey stone. No furniture, tools, decorations, not a damn thing that wasn't built into the place. Still despite that I didn't mind at all because like the description said before I grabbed it "All the comforts of home ... to go!" the potential for that was there so long as I was willing to put in the effort to fit the place out.-

'First things first though, I need to go power up from the dumb giant outside.' I thought with an excited grin.

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Loskro here! I'm going to show the traits, their costs and amount of lifeforce he has like game screens with an exact unit amount but the real thing is more an instinctual understanding he'll have. Sorry if this little message of mine breaks immersion but I felt it important to say before I got criticized for it.