While the other girls were busy with helping clean up the rest of the station, I was basically stuck on the ship for the rest of the day.

At least I still had Renata, Ries and Mara to keep me company so I wasn’t complaining.

Right now, I was just chilling with Mara once again in her medical room since she wanted to keep me close for now to check on the effects of the suppressant she gave me.

Also, she did a ’deep scan’ on me and was checking the results of it, whatever that meant.

I peeked at her over the back of the chair, "How’s progress?"

"Do you mean progress with your Psionic energy or progress with your gene mod?" Mara asked without looking up from her terminal.

"Since you asked, I guess both?"

She reached over to the side and tapped on the keypad on her workstation to bring up a few screens, looking through them silently before turning back to her work.

"I would say that your gene mod is around fifty percent done and your Psionic readings are stable for now. Do you feel any different, Captain?"

"Not particularly. Unless you count being really bored as something different, because I certainly don’t remember being this bored in a long while."

"The recreation room is open, Captain," She reminded me.

"True... But I’m not in the mood for that at the moment. Actually something crossed my mind after what you told me about the Psionic Crystals... I realise that I’ve never really seen how you two use them to increase your powers."

"Once your Psionic energy has stabilised, I can show you, Captain."

"Is this something that non-Psionics should not see or something?"

"Not really. It’s just that you would probably need to know the ritual anyway so we might as well do that."

"Hmm... Well alright, then I have another question. Even though I have you on my ship, I haven’t really looked at what Gene mods you still have in stock. What do you actually have on sale? You’re still selling them, right?"

She hummed, "Hmmm~ There’s many different kinds I have in stock. I’m still making them to sell them when we stop by other stations after all. Which ones are you interested in?"

"Err... I don’t know? What do you have? It’s not like I have a list of them with me..."

"What I meant was are you looking for Combat mods or Vanity mods, Captain?"

Oh right, those were the two categories that gene mods would fall into.

Last I remembered, she told me that Combat Gene mods are basically mods that will change how you might deal with a combat scenario directly, like giving you super strength or something. Then Vanity mods would be mods like giving yourself a centaur body or growing a dick.

I scratched my cheek, "I don’t think I’m looking to change my body much at the moment, especially since you already plan on doing that with Renata’s mod anyway. So maybe some Combat mods?"

She reached for her personal terminal and tapped on the screen to project a holographic screen in front of me, scrolling through until she stopped at a specific window.

"These are the ones I have in stock. The ones that have a red border around them are the ones that I don’t have on hand currently but I am able to make. The ones with blue borders are the ones that I both don’t have and won’t be able to make since I’m missing some things I need to make them. The ones with grey borders are gene mods that I am unable to make for reasons but I might be able to source them from other Gene splicers."

Ok... Let’s see what she has on the list here then...

I’m not particularly looking to mod myself right now anyway, since I don’t really want to change myself too much if I can help it.

While I’m quite fascinated by the fact that a pill or injection could give you powers, I didn’t really find the idea of changing my body for it as something that I was comfortable with.

For now, I’m just looking through what she has that I might, a big stress on the word ’might’, be interested in.

The last time I scrolled through her list I was only half paying attention since I was just curious what kind of mods there were but right now it’s a little different since I’m basically trying to find if there might be some mods I might want to use on myself.

Let’s see here... At the top of the list there’s the standard enhanced strength mods which are the most popular with Mercs.

Apparently there’s different levels of strength that you can give yourself from just a small dose to allow you to lift up to twice your body weight and the really, really hardcore ones that could let you punch through tank armour.

This was one of those that I thought I might be interested in but there’s a small note at the bottom of it that mentioned taking this mod might make delicate work harder which means it would affect my cooking.

I then spotted the next one which I thought was quite practical for Mercs which was the mod that increased bone density so you’ll be more resistant to damage.

"Anything bad about increasing your bone density?" I asked.

"Yes. You’ll be heavier depending on how much you strengthen them. The more protected you are, the heavier you’ll be so you’ll basically be overweight without all the fat," Mara answered immediately, like she had been asked this question before.

Right... So that means if you increase it too much, you might even cause your bed to break by lying down on it.

I suppose as long as I don’t go for the most extreme option, I should be fine?

"And what about the reflexes thing? Seems like it would be good to be able to react faster to stuff."

"That one’s fine. I would recommend to stay away from the more extreme ones since in some cases, people aren’t able to turn it off and they basically have to live with their perception of time being slowed down a lot."

"By how much?"

"It’s said that the most extreme case was one guy who basically aged himself to death within ten seconds. He experienced fifty years of his life in those ten seconds when the gene mod took effect and just died on the operating table."

Oh geez...

I looked at the next one, "What about this fire breathing one? This sounds cool."

"Look at the pictures."

I did as she asked and brought out the pictures that showed the people who took the mod.

I immediately decided that I wasn’t going to take this one since it basically made your throat glow all the time and it looked pretty annoying to deal with.

"This flexibility one seems good?" I muttered, eyeing the next one on the list.

"It has its uses. But that does decrease your overall endurance since it has to make your body parts more malleable. You might even struggle to lift up stuff you could easily lift before."

I gave her a pointed look, "If you’re trying to dissuade me from getting Gene mods, you’re doing a really good job of it."

She shrugged, "All mods have their pros and cons. I never said that they would be perfect."

"So what’s the con of the mod you’re making for me that is supposed to give me tentacles or something?"

"It’s an experimental mod which may or may not give you tentacles and they may or may not have a mind of their own which may or may not want to kill you."

I blinked at her, "Are you sure I should even be letting you do this to me?"

She waved her hand, "It will be fine. I will make sure that I am completely sure that I completely covered all the problems before I administer it to you, Captain, you don’t need to worry about that."

"So why are there so many cons with all these mods that I pointed out?"

"Because individually, they do their job really well to the point that the other parts of the biological being might not be able to compensate to catch up with the mod. This is why Gene Splicing is an art, Captain. You have to know what you want to achieve first before you start planning for all the mods that you need in order to achieve it because you can’t just get it with just a single gene mod. You need to pick and choose the mods you need to cover for the cons of each mod while also making sure they do not negate the effects of each other. And that’s also assuming that you have the tolerance level for having that many gene mods."

"That... Sounds like a really long and painful process."

She nodded, "It is. Someone wanting to give themselves an insane level of super strength might take an entire year or two of just getting Gene Splice mods just to achieve that and probably over dozens of different mods just to ensure he doesn’t kill himself getting it."

Damn... Now I remember why I didn’t bother with Gene mods...