[You have received: Item · Taijun's Glass Fishing Rod]
[Compatible Soul Ability · The Angler detected. Bind this item to the ability?]
Anthony read the prompt on the chat group interface and selected "Yes" without a moment's hesitation.
In an instant, the glass fishing rod before him seemed to melt — dissolving into countless motes of drifting light that surged straight toward his head.
By the time he registered what was happening, the rod was gone. Vanished completely.
What remained was an intense, crawling itch deep inside his skull.
God, my head itches. Like something's trying to grow in there...
On pure reflex, Anthony reached up and started scratching — scratching and scratching — until, bit by bit, he coaxed the glass fishing rod right back out of his own skull.
A new notification bloomed before him.
[Item · Taijun's Glass Fishing Rod shows extremely high compatibility with Soul Ability · The Angler. Following binding, it has become a subordinate ability of The Angler.]
[Taijun's Glass Fishing Rod]
[Category: Fishing Rod]
[Effect: Enhances the effectiveness of Soul Ability · The Angler. When The Angler is active, increases the Affinity Level of the currently Bonded World by +1, and slightly reduces the time required per fishing session.]
[Description: Once a fishing rod from the world of Terraria — now, it has fused entirely with the soul of the angler you are.]
We won.
The thought surfaced the instant Anthony read the effect. Completely automatic. Completely sincere.
Affinity Level directly +1. Did people understand what that meant? What that was actually worth?
He'd worked himself half to death — grinding away for ages — just to reach Affinity Level 2 with the Cyberpunk 2077 world. And with this rod, he'd leap instantly to a staggering Level 3. Just like that.
And on top of that — he'd just spent lifespan reviving Carmen, which had pushed his Affinity Bond with that world to Level 1 as well. Tack on the rod's bonus, and that jumped straight to Level 2. Double the opening strength. Overnight.
Sure — maybe down the line, as his overall levels climbed, the rod's fixed +1 would start to feel diluted. But right now, at this stage of the game? It was an uncontested, unqualified top-tier item.
"This is excellent news... With this, the original plan suddenly has a lot more room to breathe."
Anthony did a quick mental tally of the Points currently sitting in everyone's hands, estimated the gap that still needed closing — and decided it was probably manageable.
So he returned to his post beside the kaleidoscopic Primordial River, planted his feet, and cast the translucent glass rod forward.
[Currently Bonded World: Cyberpunk 2077]
[Current Affinity Level: 3 (2+1)]
[Cyberpunk 2077 Affinity Level 3 Loot Pool: Low-grade Cyberware · Low-grade Equipment · Low-grade Consumables · Mid-grade Consumables]
Once the rod was cast, Anthony went still as a stone monk in meditation. He stood there without moving, barely twitching.
Occasionally he'd glance at the group chat and tap out a reply or two. Replying only took a flicker of thought — no physical effort required.
Chatting the group while fishing. Now this is the life.
...It'd be even better if I didn't only have twelve hours of lifespan left.
[Wordsmith of the Great Yan: @Lord of the White Holy Throne, Mr. Anthony — did the item arrive safely?]
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: Yep, received it. The kid loves it. Would buy again.]
[Wordsmith of the Great Yan: You're the same as always — cracking jokes even at a time like this.]
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: Ahem. Anyway — setting that aside. @AAA City Female Ghost, how are things on your end?]
[AAA City Female Ghost: Uh... hard to say, honestly.]
Carmen stared at the group panel, then turned to glance back at Ein — who had walked into the laboratory and was now inspecting the tank from top to bottom. She was silent for a long moment before turning back to type.
So her little stunt had rattled him after all.
Carmen turned her head. Her soul drifted through the air beside him, circling slowly, watching his face.
She listened as he called out for her — searching, hoping, getting nothing back.
In the end, she exhaled a quiet sigh.
[AAA City Female Ghost: Ein seems to be getting a little frantic.]
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: Nothing I can do about that — I don't have nearly enough Points right now to bring you back again so you two can have a chat.]
Anthony replied with a helpless shrug in his typing.
The resurrection Main Quests were stacking up by the day... and every single one of them felt impossibly far away. Genuinely hard to keep a straight face about.
All he could do was hope that once the Ability Enhancement feature was unlocked, it would ease at least some of the pressure.
As that thought was still turning in his mind, Anthony caught the faintest flicker of movement at the corner of his eye — the float on the surface of the river had started to bob.
He blinked, mildly surprised — and then snapped the rod back immediately.
Fast bite this time. Barely under an hour, all told.
So the "slightly reduces fishing time" passive on the Glass Rod is already kicking in. More effective than I expected.
With a sharp pull, the glass rod arced upward — a single point of blue light glimmered on the hook — and in the next instant it flew into Anthony's hand, resolving into its true form.
[Qilu Division Optical Implant Mk.2]
[Type: Low-grade Cyberware]
[Effect: Enhances visual imaging capability.]
[Recycle Value: 67 Points]
Bad news: still something he absolutely could not use himself. Cyberware for a dead man. What kind of sick cosmic joke was that?
Good news: the recycle value was legitimately high.
Just as the skill description had promised — now that his Affinity Level had reached 3, Anthony was pulling basic cyberware from the river. And cyberware, as it turned out, was expensive. Remarkably, gloriously expensive.
Anthony's eyes lit up. He hit Recycle without hesitation, immediately converted the Points into lifespan, and watched his remaining hours spike back up to 77 in one shot.
He exhaled.
That. That feeling of finally having breathing room. That's the one.
Carrying the warm glow of a man who's just had a decent harvest, Anthony cast the rod again and settled in.
Time trickled by, second by second. The Primordial River churned around him in its endless shifting colors — and out at the very edge of his vision, somewhere in a distant section of the river, he could see waves building. Growing. A roiling turbulence that seemed to be escalating steadily, sending a faint unease crawling up the back of his neck.
But even as he watched the horizon with quiet wariness, the haul kept coming.
Over the next five hours: first, a length of bioplastic blood vessels. Then a RAM Cascade module.
And then — at some point in the middle of all this perfectly normal fishing — Anthony reeled in what appeared to be a mechanical bird.
The kind that goes... underneath. Women's use only.
Anthony stared at it.
He did not understand. He felt, on a fundamental level, that his mind had been contaminated.
All he could do was shake his head, murmur truly, this is a cyberpunk world, and recycle the thing as fast as humanly possible.
...That said — bizarre as it was, the thing sold for 110 Points flat. Which was genuinely, undeniably impressive.
After recycling everything he'd caught, Anthony counted up his total and found he'd accumulated over 200 Points. He reeled in the rod, temporarily, and pulled up the group chat.
[Lord of the White Holy Throne: @All Members — I've saved up enough. Everyone submit your share — let's unlock the Ability Enhancement feature.]
[AAA City Female Ghost: On it.]
[Founder of the Golden Spirit: The progress on this is genuinely remarkable.]
After a brief chorus of commentary, a group-wide announcement flashed through the chat.
[Group members have submitted a combined total of 1,000 Points.]
[Feature · Ability Enhancement has been unlocked. All group members may now view their personal Ability Trees within the chat group and spend Points to upgrade abilities along those trees.]
[Additionally: as all group members are currently in soul form, the Soul Ability Tree has been specially unlocked as a supplementary system within Ability Enhancement. Each member's Soul Ability Tree is uniquely customized to their individual circumstances.]
That's a lot of content.
Anthony stowed the rod and, with considerable curiosity, tapped the newly appeared icon on the group interface.
Two skill trees materialized before him — laid out like something from a classic RPG, both of them blanketed almost entirely in unlit grey nodes.
He scanned them quickly. The first was his Soul Ability · The Angler — only a single node glowing, representing the bare foundation of the skill. And above it, the tree stretched on and on, seemingly without end. In its own way, the ceiling wasn't low at all.
The second was what the announcement had called the [Soul Ability Tree]. Anthony tapped into it.
An even more massive tree than The Angler's unfolded before him — sprawling and enormous enough to make his head swim for just a moment.
And then his gaze snapped into focus.
There, at the very top of the grey, unlit expanse — one node. The most important node. Glowing.
He forgot to breathe.
[Unique Ability · Perfect Resurrection]
[Unlock Condition: ???]
"Holy SHIT — my resurrection arc is GO!"
____
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