Arron woke up in the early morning, he had at some point sent dinner down to Ultima despite the soldier being asleep, and when he went into the monitoring room he was very unpleasantly surprised.

  Ultima was still in bed, clearly awake, but he wasn't moving from his bed at all like he usually would do. He was staring at the food that was still sitting on his desk, at this point the bread was stale and the soup was practically jellified. He made no moves to actually grab it, or get up to do his usual practice. He just silently stared at the now bad food.

  The doctor put on and adjusted his white lab coat before heading to Ultima's room, opening up the door and stepping into the mostly empty room. Ultima glanced at him, but didn't stand at attention, or budge at all. "Ultima, what has made you feel down?" Arron asked after a moment.

  Ultima watched him, his clouded eyes staring him down. There was no emotion behind them. Making it appear as if there was truly nothing wrong with the super soldier. Arron slowly stepped forward, sitting down beside the soldier. Who did nothing to push him away or move away, just turning back to stare at the bad food.

  Arron took out a notepad and pencil, handing it to Ultima. “You can tell me with this can’t you?” he suggests.

  Ultima stared at the page, taking it slowly, staring at it. He wasn’t given an order, not by Gareth, so after taking it he doesn’t actually do anything.

  “Ultima, please. You, look, as your creator I…order you to tell me what’s wrong?” Arron tries, not really expecting it to work. After a moment though, Ultima nods and begins to write down onto the paper in his usual slow way.

  It felt like half an hour passed at least, but it’s really no more than five minutes. In those five minutes though, Ultima kept erasing letters and rewriting them if they weren’t perfect. He put so much effort into this wording and this admission, despite how little it really was. When Arron took it, he felt like it didn’t help much, he just had more questions.

  Ultima wrote “Why do I exist?” a series of four words, painstakingly written down, clearly he was going to write a whole lot more, but these were all that remained from him paring everything down to the most simple form.

  Arron stared at the paper before turning his gaze back to Ultima. Who’s emotionless gaze was just observing him back without any sign of feelings behind it. Arron hesitated before slowly speaking again “I can’t answer that Ultima. It's not something that I can give you an answer to. I didn’t even guess that you could ask that sort of question” Arron admitted. “What brought this on, can you tell me that too? I order you too, if there is a reason” he says, giving the notepad back again.

  This method of communicating was slow, but it’s what Ultima could do. Arron notices that Ultima was writing faster now. Still erasing and rewriting words, but he wasn’t being slow about it anymore. It only takes about two minutes to finally write the sentence out and hand it back.

  Ultima’s next sentence was a bit longer, but it still remained perfectly written out with painstaking precision “Why do I feel nothing unless I’m fighting?” he wrote.

  Arron talked not long after reading it, not looking away from the paper as he gave an answer “I don’t know Ultima, but, what do you feel when fighting?” he asks. He moves to give the paper back, only for Ultima to move over and use the pencil to write upside down. Arron also realizes he didn’t actually give an order this time, just prompted him.

  It only takes a second for him to write it out, and Arron turns the notepad over to read the single word he wrote. “Alive” was all that it said, a single word. Arron feels like he’s gained some insight into his creation from this. Arron sets the notepad down and moves closer. Ultima glances to the notepad, then stares at the doctor getting closer.

  Arron hugs him, it was a simple action. One that Ultima doesn’t reciprocate, he doesn’t show any reaction. Besides minorly tensing up, before Arron moves back and stands up “I don’t know, but, Ultima you don’t need to feel like you need to be quiet about this. If you ever feel like this again, then come find me. Talking about it had to help a bit right?” Arron asks.

  Ultima slowly nodded, untensing, he clearly didn’t like the hug, but at the same time he didn’t react violently to it.

  Arron nods “I’ll find you better fights, don’t worry Ultima. I’ll help you out. I promise” the doctor says, moving to leave the room now that he had just learned a lot and needed time to work things out. Like deleting some footage from the cameras. He was mostly surprised by the fact that Ultima could question his own existence.

  Just as he walked out the door, it felt like there was a quiet voice, a growl, more animal than anything else. “Thank you…Arron,” a voice says softly. Looking back though, Ultima was as silent as ever, staring at the wall and showing no signs of saying anything. Of course he didn’t, Arron was just hearing things, leaving and shutting the door.

  Meanwhile, Ultima slowly let out a long and deep sigh of relief. That was a very risky move, but Arron just liked him too much, speaking of liking him too much, he opened up his relationships menu as he was just notified of finally ranking up in his relationship with the doctor.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Relationships

  Doctor Arron: Confidant (00/100), you're his life's work Ultima, so he will place trust in you like you did for him.

  Officer Gareth: Trusted Soldier and Higher Up

  The Ark Organization: Secret Weapon

  Ultima suppressed a smile at the relationship menu, seeing that it now said the doctor will trust him more made him feel a bit better. The events of last night, and his choice to fully embrace being an NPC were still weighing on him. However, he'd rather burn brightly than burn long. It would be boring to just be an easter egg, or downright sad if he chose to just remain as a background character.

  He stood up and did his usual ten laps around the room while deep in thought about how to proceed with the immediate part of completing the final origin mission. That being that he had a level up ready and waiting to be used. Despite having no inventory, the best way he could describe it was that he had an item, one he knew would boost his power quickly to the next level in his custom class. Well, there was no better time than the present.

  Level Up!

  You can either gain one skill or one ability from this level up, you also have gained one creation point, which can be used to make an additional skill or ability or immediately boost one of your stats by a single point.

  You have selected to gain one ability and will also use your creation point to create another ability. Please enter the information you'd like to include about these down below.

  Ultima began to mentally write out an ability while he started an exercise routine. Eating breakfast when it came and saying nothing as the guards took away the old dinner food. He finished by the time breakfast was polished off, sitting at his desk for a moment to look over the first ability he made.

  Weapon of Heart: Draw forth your inner strength to create a weapon. This weapon is considered magical and takes on a form that fits your true potential. you choose it every time you create it. The drawbacks are that only one weapon can exist at a time, the weapon must be rainbow colored, and it can only be used under the effects of Ultimate Limit Release. Also, for the time being, it will only make melee weapons that are the size of yourself.

  He made this particular ability for one simple reason, that being he didn't expect the higher ups to give him a weapon regardless of how obedient he was. At least not right away. So instead, he'd make use of his custom class to make a weapon. He had no idea how to actually use weapons though, so letting the system decide seemed like a good idea. He looked forward to when he could actually see what fit his true potential.

  The drawbacks were harsh, but they were all ones he was fine with. Only one weapon existing at a time seemed limiting but trying to use one when he never used a weapon at all would already be a learning experience. The second one was because he liked rainbows, and he was sticking to that damn motif. The third was just for dramatic effect and to make Ultimate Limit Release even more enticing to use, and it was such a harsh penalty that the system even said he could make two weapons at once when he added in that penalty. He rejected that though, for no reason other than thinking that focusing and needing to create one weapon would already be pretty hard.

  Then there was the second ability he could make, he had to make it a good one, and one that would also work without the penalty of needing to release beforehand. It was fine to have a burst mode, his favorite sort of things were transformations and when a person 'went all out' but if everything relied on it, then he would be useless after using it once since that restriction still existed.

  After several minutes and staring at one of his walls, he began to practice again in the middle of the room, deep in thought as he kicked and punched at the air. He felt like lately he'd been getting faster; he made sure to stop a chuckle as he imagined that maybe he could throw a dozen fists out at once if he got fast enough like in some anime. A thought suddenly struck him as he was trying to throw more punches. It was so, so cliché, and so dumb. He began to mentally write it into the blank ability box while suppressing a smile.

  Blitz Point Beatdown: Explosively release a portion of your hidden strength in order to create a number of attacks that follow with the triggering attack. Hitting the same point, or near the same point depending on what is needed repeatedly. If done in the air, the repeated punches or kicks can even form a barrier if spread out enough or create a shockwave. The number of attacks created depends on many factors. It does not make your punches stronger or faster on its own

  Consecutive blurred punches or kicks, even if this skill ended up being ultimately not too good, the sheer fun of it was what inspired him to decide to make it. He submitted both abilities and checked his new status menu.

  Alexander "Ultima"

  Class: Ultima 2

  Skills: Enhanced Physique, Broken Mind

  Abilities: Ultimate Limit Release, Weapon of Heart, Blitz Point Beatdown

  Statuses: Hypnotized (Strong)

  Stats follow below

  Strength: 11 (10)

  Dexterity: 10

  Intelligence: 10

  Endurance: 12

  Wisdom: 8

  Luck: -0

  Notes: All around average, stats of ten are considered the average, so you're slightly above average in endurance. As an effect of your regime, you've earned a temporary +1 to your strength, continue your training to make this a permanent increase. You're currently hypnotized, which has dropped your wisdom down just a bit, rendering you worse off against further charming or hypnotism. Your luck is [null].

  He stopped his attacks and took a deep breath, after thinking through and creating these two abilities his headache was intense once again. He still felt better though after making them.

  He checked the Server countdown, with ten days remaining, he had to prepare for people to possibly find him. That meant he had to be in a position for people to find him. If he relied on the snooping sort he'd likely run into chaotic people, ones that wouldn't be good companions at all. He had an idea on how to fix that, but he had to wait for Arron to come and talk with him again, which he hopefully would.