The Stat That Cuts Both Ways

Part three of a reader's primer for the Integration Era Two posts ago I defined the six stats. Last post I tried to make them feel like things a body could hold. There's one I deliberately skipped because it didn't fit either post cleanly, and it's the one the series keeps coming back to. Flux. If you want the shortest version: Flux is luck, and the bargain is the bargain. If you believe in good luck, you have to accept bad luck too, because they're the same thing measured from different sides. Here's how that plays out in an Integration-era person's life. ## What Flux actually does Mechanically, Flux governs critical hit chance, ability mutation probability, tolerance for corrupted zones, and access to designation paths the system doesn't normally allow. In plain language: a high-Flux person's abilities do more than intended. They also sometimes do less. They occasionally do something else. A low-Flux person fires a skill. The skill does what the skill does. Reliable. Predictable. Boring, in the way that a well-made tool is boring. A high-Flux person fires the same skill. Most of the time, it does what it does. Sometimes it hits harder than any similar skill...