“He’s been like this since he was admitted,” the nurse said, looking down at the pale boy upon the bed.
Both her clothes and the white room were sterile, making sure any and all possibility of infection was gone.
“Will he recover?” Ronin asked, steeling himself for what was to come.
“He hasn’t gotten any worse. But when it comes to something like this… You will have to understand, we’re not equipped to deal with this sort of injury, we simply don’t have the expertise.”
Ronin's hands clenched into fists. ”You mean a skinwalker attack?”
The nurse looked up at him, then placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure he will bounce back from this, he’s still young.”
A large machine surrounded the child, and numerous tubes were entering and exiting the small body. Scrabby looked more like a transhumanist experiment gone wrong than a child on the path to recovery. Be it injecting nutrients, stabilizing the heart, or filtering blood — the machine did it all. Hopefully, it would be enough.
“Alright,” Ronin sighed. “Call me if anything changes.” With that, he left the hospital, heading back towards Maximus Solutions. Whatever he had to pay to make Scrabby whole again, he’d do it.
“…”
As he returned to the factory, Ronin completed some academy exercises then began working on the modifications to the racing ship, the Eluvian. This was not a small job like what he'd done with the cargo ship. He'd be redesigning the whole ship this time and it would take plenty of hours before it was done.
As he and Simons worked on the design, time passed quickly. Before long, days had passed by, and Ronin's life became routine. When not doing academy exercises, or working on the racing ship design, he lifted weights. When not lifting weights, he constructed the meridians he'd learned about in his newest technique, beginning by creating paths from the alien artifact to the palms of his hands. Every other day or so, he visited the hospital, checking up on Scrabby.
A week passed, then that week turned into more weeks...
“…”
“What are you looking at?” Simons asked.
The planet was approaching winter, and this was one of those particular days when just every factor in nature seemed to add up in such a way to make the day as cold as possible. No doubt, the neighborhoods down in the valleys would be hard pressed to pay for heating today. Ronin would have been one of those people had it not been for the generous donation by the CLM.
And as for the people actually living in the slums? Many would likely never wake up tomorrow.
“Can’t you see it?” Ronin asked back, looking at the golden flame flickering back and forth above his palm
Simons gave a slight smile then shook his head. “You’re playing another one of those jokes on me, aren’t you? Give it up, I won’t fall for it.”
Apparently, only Ronin could see it.
Another new observation to note down, he thought.
Having completed two of the meridians leading from the artifact to his hands, Ronin had been testing out the energy's various effects. For now, this little flame was the limit of what he could do. It couldn’t burn anything, heck, it wasn’t even visible to normal people by the looks of it.
“Whatever, let’s just finish up the design,” he said, walking up to the interface.
By now, most of the design’s first draft was finished and what remained were only some minor adjustments before it was time to build the ship.
They’d picked a design scheme of a xenofuel-based engine. It should provide all the power needed to win races. With both the ship's side thrusters as well its central drive needing a lot of energy, Xenofuel was pretty much the best thing available to them at the moment.
The biggest challenge with this design had in fact been the modifications to the ship's internal framework. It was essentially the ship’s skeleton and whether the ship held together or broke apart, it all depended on how strong these frames were. By constructing them using a carbon nanotube-based alloy, Ronin and Simons had reduced the weight of the ship, making it faster. But the material, though light in weight, was not Kangdarium. With the ship now also having a more powerful engine, the weaker carbon-alloy had put the whole ship at risk of breaking apart. Ronin and Simons had had to get creative.
They came up with 3 variables to control for:
First, a ship's inertial dampeners could insulate its passengers from the resulting g-forces associated with rapid acceleration, but force could not be eliminated, only transferred over to something else. In this case, that meant the ship's internal frames. So, the more inertial dampeners they used, the more strain the ship would feel.
Second, a heavier ship would have more momentum when moving and subsequently, experience more strain. So, the lighter they could make the Eluvian, the less strain it would feel.
Finally, by changing the shape and form of the ship's internal framework, they could increase the load it could handle, regardless of which material they used.
This all accumulated into the current design having thick internal frames, reinforced by secondary frames where possible. Further, half the ship was made from carbon nanotubes and anything that could be considered redundant had been thrown out.
To make the ship easier to modify by racers, Simons and Ronin had also retrofitted every single cable and outlet it had. The design now made it possible to plug in almost any add-on you could think of. Be it turbo boosters or obnoxiously loud subwoofers, the modified Eluvian could take it. And if someone wanted to jury-rig something illegal onto it, there was plenty of infrastructure available to make this easier as well.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
After spending a couple hours finalizing the design, they both celebrated a job well done with a well-deserved lunch break.
“Let me do the printing this time,” Simons said eagerly, chomping down on a nutrient bar, its gelatinous texture causing his mouth to smack as he chewed.
“Sure, why not,” Ronin chuckled, taking a bite out of his own bar. "By the way, this will be the first real design of our own that we build. After this, we can actually call ourselves designers."
“Yeah, but that is only if the ship works. We've changed so many things, we're practically fully reliant on the simulation program now.”
“Hmm, true," Ronin agreed. "Good thing Haraken agreed to be a test pilot. Let's just hope he doesn't die in the process.”
“Don't even joke about that!” Simons replied, pointing a finger at him.
“…”
Finishing the meal, Ronin walked over to the 3-D printer, pulling out a multiscanner as he waited for Simons to begin printing. There was something he wanted to test out today. He knew that although the alien energy didn't seem to interact much with the real world, it could. Just based on how his own body had been strengthened by it, that fact was undeniable.
“Ronin, which components do we start with…?” Simons asked, uncertain.
“—the carbon nanotube alloy of course.”
“Alright, some of the components may come out wrong though.”
“That’s expected anyways, just get going.” Ronin replied with finality.
Neither of them had made a material like this before, but they had to take the plunge at some point. Considering half the ship was made out of this stuff, there simply wasn’t any way around this.
As Simons began the printing process, Ronin scanned the components, then sent the data quickly over to Simons who compared the values to the blueprint. But Ronin also did something else as well. As the hot carbon mixture came out of the printer, he extended one of his palms, releasing the alien artifact energy onto it.
This is…? It’s actually working!? He thought in shock.
Most of the energy just passed right through, but some stayed behind in the material as it cooled. What could this mean?
He needed to test this. Staying quiet, he continued infusing energy into every new component Simons made, alternating the time at which he infused the energy and how much he poured in.
As new components came out, he began experimenting further, utilizing the mental image technique from presenceless. Before releasing the energy from his palm, he envisioned an image of toughness and resilience, drawing upon the strongest memories he had of the two concepts. He used an older memory of himself going to work at his part time job with a broken leg for resilience. And for toughness, a memory of his fight with Specter. Bundling the two memories together, he focused them into a singular mental image which he then placed inside the forming carbon alloy.
As time passed, and more components were printed, several of the ones on the conveyor belt became cold enough to touch. It was time to check if his little experiment had worked. Grabbing several of the cooler components, he quickly ran over towards the testing area.
“What are you doing?!” Simons shouted.
“Getting some anomalous readings here,” Ronin mumbled as he began placing the various parts into the different testing chambers. He closed the transparent chambers shut, then activated a series of different programs.
The multiscanner could pick up a lot, but far from enough when it came to something like this. Ronin had already used the scanner on himself and no, the artifact energy could not be measured. To make sure whether what he’d done had had an effect, the material needed a true physical test.
Inside some of the sealed off chambers, lasers began blasting the carbon compound. In others, drills bore through it and pliers tore it apart. Ronin, now eagerly observing the process with rapt attention, barely noticed Simons coming over.
“Why would you test the material so early— wait, what’s this?”
Ronin gave Simons a knowing glance. “Told you something was strange with these nanotubes. You sure you don’t have magic fingers or something? These values are outside anything I’ve ever seen on this stuff.”
His thin-necked colleague looked confused. “I-I don’t know.”
The components he’d simply infused energy into had barely changed at all. Some of them had a 2% increase or decrease in performance, but that was within normal variance when making alloys.
But the ones he'd used the mental image technique on? These were different. The readings showed a drastic improvement in the material's mechanical properties. From tensile strength to elasticity, they were all much higher than they should be. Some even showed tensile strengths of over 20% above the theoretical maximum.
This could no longer be explained by a normal variance in the printing process, not anymore.
This is it! He thought.
He’d been worrying about making it as a spaceship designer before, but those worries evaporated the moment he saw these values. He could make stronger materials than anybody else, which meant, his ships would be able to do things which no one else could. He could also make more for less, and he would always have an edge over the competition. This was his gimmick; this was what would draw in customers!
But more importantly than anything else, he could use the potentia panorama to something other than fighting now. He’d found nothing in it about creating something new, only knowledge on how to gain the strength needed for destruction. This was a different path, not one that resided in the so-called fields of strife. The presence had spoken of a path of conflict, but this was something else.
A path of creation.
The words resonated out like an iron gong inside his mind. This was what he wanted to do. This was how he would use what he'd been given.
“Ronin, please tell me the measuring equipment is working properly.”
He nodded. “It is.”
“Do you know what this means?”
Ronin looked back at Simons. “I do.”
Simons wet his lips hesitantly: “If we can make the internal frames this strong, the things we can add…”
Ronin couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “We can pretty much do whatever we want.”
His rotund friend couldn’t hold it in anymore. “THIS WILL BE THE COOLEST RACING SHIP EVER! WE CAN EVEN SELL IT IN THE PROFESSIONAL CIRCUIT!”
Ronin laughed out loud. “IT’S HAPPENING SIMONS! AND WITH HARAKEN HELPING US—”
“LET’S BUILD IT NOW!” Simons shouted, interrupting him, his whole face turning red from excitement.
They ran back to the printer— well, Simons did something more akin to a quick walk, but they made it back to their stations in mere seconds before beginning to print out more components again.
There was greatness in the air today, and now, all they had to do was to help bring it out.