Curious as to what sort of perk I unlocked, I suddenly interrupted her. "Hold up a sed, Alice. I just got a new perk."

  Alice, uanding the importance of the situation, paused mid sentence while I pulled up my system to see what I got and for what reason. Gramps, also hearing what I said from afar, got up and headed over here to find out what the test perk was.

  | Herculean Strength | Requirements 11 Strength: You've surpassed the human limitations for strength, thus your physical abilities have improved signifitly. First off, your carry weight is now in lih the amount of force you exert, so for every point of strength you have will now grant you 100 carry weight instead of 50. Besides your carrying capacity improving, you now have access to an item box of sorts based on said carry weight and both your melee as well as your unarmed damage are increased from 5% per point of strength to 10%. Last but not least, your carry weight is increased by 350.

  Sweet, I'll be able to carry a hell of a lot more weight a a ton more power when striking with my fists and attag with melee ons. On top of that, I've gotten an item box too. I already think of a shitload of uses for su ability, for example using it t a small arsenal of ons with me wherever I go so I'll be prepared for any situation I may face. It'll also be incredibly useful for moving and dumping all of those molemen corpses.

  Quickly dising how useful this perk will be for not just me but araveling with me, I opened up my mouth and began spilling the deets. "Alright, so the perk I just got is a majame ger. It not only boosts how much I carry by over 100% and how much damage I deal in melee bat it also gives me an ability called an item box, which will allow me to store as much stuff as I want as long as it doesn't exceed my carry weight."

  "That is a game ger. You could use that new ability of yours to carry tons of ons and ammo, thereby solving that ammo issue you've been having." Aliented.

  "Right, that was the first thought that came to mind when I saw that ability."

  "But alongside using it t along a literal arsenal, you could also use it to move mass amounts of material all on your own when you eventually get enough carry weight."

  "Very true, but in the meantime, I use it to move those stinking molemen corpses and bring turrets and other defenses into the cave system. With that said, I think it's time I brought up what we're going to do now, now that the moleman king is dead."

  "Mm, what do you have in mind, kid?"

  "I was thinking, siheir leader is dead, what is stopping the rest of them from fleeing the cave system besides all the other threats that exist out in the wastend?"

  "Not much." Both Alid gramps replied in unison.

  "Exactly, so the pn tomorrow is to go into the caves again and colpse the multiple exits that lead into the wastend. This will stop them from esg and possibly reestablishing themselves and causing more trouble iure. Aside from that, it will prevent any more mutants or other creatures from having any way of getting into the uy besides the official uy entrance."

  Looking to the both of them to see if they had anything to say, gramps piped up first. "This is your operation, Dom, and I have no issue with your idea, so we'll go with what you came up with."

  "So after you close off every one of their exits, it will be time for me to get my armor?" Alice asked, hinting that she wao get involved iion instead of bei behind in the foundry.

  "That's the current pn, so if all goes acc to pn, we'll be making your armor the day after tomorrow aing for the cave the following day."

  Alice, getting a retively definitive date of when she'll be joining me excitedly and happily tched on to me. As Alice was showing her affe and beginning to get a little handsy, gramps took this as his cue to bound left for far away couches he came from to get to napping. Not wanting to dispy some of the things Alid I got up to affe wise, I lifted her up provoking a yelp from her and carried her away to give her the affe she was seeking.

  …

  The day I woke up in the night as I normally did and after taking care of my m routine, I stealthily left my bedroom that I shared with Alid snuck to the gym in the basement to test out my rength. Walking in from the stairs, the first thing I did was ght to the barbell I did my deadlifting with and started loading 100 pound ptes on each side. The minute I had five loaded onto each side, I threw on two 25 pound ptes for a total of 1,095 pounds.

  With the weight loaded onto the barbell, I got into position and grabbed the bar. As soon as I was tent with my grip, I flexed my muscles and lifted the bar up, exerting quite a bit to pick it up off the floor. Log out the rep, I lowered the weight as slowly as I could to prevent it from smming into the floor and waking everyone in the house up.

  Fuck, that's a great feeling. I could never lift that much weight in my previous life. The most I was able to deadlift back then was in the low 700s and ead every time I did it was one hell of a fight to get the weight up… That's enough reminisg of the past, let me get back to it and see what my new max is now that my strength attribute is at 11.

  Ecstatic that I had surpassed my previous life's strength by nearly a whopping 400 lbs, I began increasing the weight ially to discover where my new limit was. After lifting for quite a number of repetitions, I found my new personal best to be 1,121 lbs. Quite happy with that number, I ied a couple of medstims into myself and started dois with that new personal record weight.

  At the end of the sets, I was able to add a couple more pounds onto the bar, increasing my limit by a smidge. Done deadlifting for the moment, I moved onto the other exercises and lifts I o do.

  ...

  Nearly five hours ter, I finished expl my current limits, so with everyone waking up shortly, I hopped into the shower to myself off. Once I was doh that, I headed upstairs and climbed bato bed with Alitil she woke up.

  She awoke shortly thereafter and once she did; we went through the usual m stuff before my typical crew and I were back at the foundry by 8:30 AM. With a lot on our pte today, Gramps and I immediately set into motion and got to work, leaving Alice to go to the pnniion area while ent right to the armory. Quickly getting my kit on from yesterday, I started going over what else I should bring along since I had a ton of extra spaow that I had an item box.

  The two of us discussed it for a bit before I ditched my NPDM in favor of a 7.62mm minigun and a 1,000 round backpack magazihat was still ie in my personal opinion. Happy enough with my test primary on, I began loading up on more backpack magazines for the 7.62 minigun and grabbing various explosives and heavy ons. As I iling the ons into the space, I began feeling as if weight iling up on me slowly but surely as I was stuffing the item box full.

  This will be useful for training, but right now I o be nimble and light enough to run at my fastest speed in case we e across something ued… Hmm, let me check out the system to see if there're aures gles associated with the em box.

  Following that thought of mine, I pulled up my system and navigated over the item box se to see if there was anything to take advantage of and ihere was a toggle located right beside the item box that read felt weight. Toggling it off, I was immediately relieved of the heavy weight that was beied on my body.

  I tried aed out several other things after that, attempting to figure out the extent of the trol I had over the weight. Eventually I found out that I could trol how much weight I wahe item box to exert on my body via my will. In addition to that, I also discovered I could toggle the felt weight on and off with the same method eliminating the o open up my system to do it every time, which was ve.

  The st thing of note I found was that the item box's weight was separate from what I was actually carrying physically, so that was a nice plus. Luckily, it works that way since I already envision myself trying to workout at home but uo do so because I have a literal arsenal ohat I doly waher my mom and dad to discover. Even if the ces of them doing so are unlikely if I keep it stowed away in my room…

  Leaving that hypothetical behind this item box is going to make increasing my physical attributes so much easier, I basically be training almost the entire day with this ability. The future gains I'm going to make with this are going to be insane, especially so when I bi with Maxigen. Though that will unfortunately have to wait until I remove the extreme ive side effects from the pound.

  Ahing for me to use to my advantage, I got back to filling my item box that shared its carry weight with whatever I had on my person physically. After filling my item box with a sizable arsenal, I threw a number s and other medies and was basically carrying along enough meds for myself aher people.

  Loaded up with over a 1,000 lbs of ons, ammunition, armor, meds, and gear spread ayself and the item box, I turhe felt weight on to where it was heavy but not to where it would affect my abilities ively. Feeling the weight that was stantly exerting pressure all ay physique, I left the armory and proceeded to the miunnel, where my robots were ready and waiting. Quickly leaving the foundry behind, we ehe cave system a off for the furthest cave exit.

  …

  The jourhere wasn't all that quiet nor peaceful, but we reached the st stretch we o gh to get to the exit.

  "We're nearly at the first one, gramps. We just o pass through this bit ahead of us and we're there."

  "Good. Once we close this entrance, we'll move on to the other four. Hopefully, by the time I you and Alie, we'll have the lot of them secured."

  "Hopefully."

  Heading through the rocky passage, it opened up into a sort of wide cavernous room with a rge craggy hole ying on the far end of it that led to the wastend. In addition to the new sery, we were met with several armed molemen as we entered. And so, with more targets found for elimination, we instantly dispatched them before we casually grabbed their corpses and threw them out of the cave into the wastend for the mutated wildlife to feast upon.

  With the vermin removed, it's time to seal this exit.

  Getting immediately down to business, I took out dozens of demolition charges my robot workforce prepared over the night for today's mission. Handing a good many of them to my bots and gramps as well, we got to pg them around the exit.

  In no time at all, we set the bunch of them up where they o be. Thus, with charges pced, I had everyone, including myself, fall bato the passage we took to get here. Detonator in hand, I lifted the cover on button and pressed the now exposed button, triggering dozens of explosions in the cave room we were just in moments before.

  Waiting a few minutes for the dust and colpsing rock to settle, we walked back dowuo check our handy work. Not even reag the end of the passage, we came upon rubble that was entirely blog our path forward. Mission aplished, we turned right around and began moving to our sed target.

  My group and I successfully made it to the objective without much issue besides having to extermihe occasional molemen group we entered on the way there. After clearing the exit of any and all hostiles and cheg the general viity outside of the cave, we pced our demolition charges and hightailed it out of there. When the bunch of us had regrouped a safe distance away, I repeated the same as I had taken with the first one and activated the detonator, setting off dozens of explosions in an instant.

  Cheg our work mier when a majority of the debris had settled, we left satisfied and tinued on from there to the third exit. roup traversed the cave system for about an hour before we started nearing the third exit and as we were getting closer to it, I began pig up on gunfire ing from the dire of the exit we were traveling to.

  "Yo, gramps, we might have trouble up ahead."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "There's a ton of gunfire ing from the dire of the exit up ahead. So I'm guessing we now have something else to deal with besides the molemen now."

  "Hmm, it could be a lot of things, but there's no point speg when we'll just find out when we arrive. Let's go check things out, kid."

  Not knowing what was happening up ahead, we sped up our pace to find out what the situation was sooner rather than ter. As we reached closer and closer to the exit, the gunfire became more audible and louder the closer we got.

  No more than five minutes is all it took for us to reach the end of the cave passage we were traveling through. ing upon the end, I kept my presence hiding field active like I've been doing this eime and stayed in the passage's darkness with gramps and my robots while what was taking pce.

  If it was before when roup first started exterminating the molemen, I wouldn't have been able to get this close with everyoanding right behind me. But sihen, a majority of my skills have undergone a signifit increase with all the bat and stant skill usage I've been doing the past few days.

  Because of that, my presence hiding field's capabilities have bee increasingly more powerful, allowing myself as well as whoever else is with me in the field's rao creep up unnoticed as long as nothing is looking in eneral dire. I wonder how strong it will get when I have several hundred skill points ih. It'll probably be pretty busted then.

  Imagining the sight of moving a small army of robots in the dead of night to take out an enemy force, I saw several dozen molemen attempting to take down a group of five Giant Gi Monsters. Watg them fight it out over the mi was quite obvious the molemen were on the losing side of things and were struggling to even breach the massive venomous lizards' scales.

  I've seen enough time to kill them off, seal this exit, and move on to the final two exits.