Cara, a seasoned observer of devastation, stared into the crater with wide eyes. This was no ordinary scene, not something she expected from an unevolved human anyway. As she watched, the hillside and the structure hidden beneath it began to mend. It was a structure she knew all too well, a Hyperlite battleship, the same type of ship that ruthlessly attacked and destroyed her own all those cycles ago. This unexpected discovery sent a thrill of excitement through her, igniting her curiosity. “How did you arrive here?” She mumbled to herself, looking into the exposed hanger bay.
She had already received the message telling her she had entered the ‘Secret’ grove, a place that was no longer a secret. When she approached the ship beneath the grove, she cautiously inserted her hand into the hole, her fingers brushing against the self-repairing structural beams inside the ship; her suspicions were confirmed. The message revealed to her that the ship had transformed into a dungeon. She doubted the ship's auto-repair function would still be operational after all this time, but one never knew.
Looking around, Cara activated Forensic Reconstruction and, using her interface began to recreate the scenario that had caused so much destruction. She scanned the exposed insides of the dungeon and then the concealment projectors. After tracing the residual mana densities and power readings covering the area, she concluded that Sam was not the sole source of the explosion but instead the catalyst. She detected traces of stable mana, the type used in power cells, mixed with two unknown types of magical energy, suggesting the explosion resulted from a violent reaction between power cells and Sam's volatile magics. This revelation only deepened Cara's unease. She was becoming increasingly trepidatious about meeting this Sam as she traveled, especially since witnessing the explosion after finding dead e-grades along her path. She almost began to think Sam was one of this planet's silent gods who came down to play with the mortals for her sadistic entertainment. It was a stretch, but it wouldn't be the first time it happened in the multiverse.
Stepping back from the crater’s edge, Cara fought the urge to explore the dungeon. Sam had obviously been there, and she hoped the Pathfinder was still nearby. Cara doubted Sam was still in the dungeon, especially after she caused so much devastation. She could only hope the insane woman hadn't blown herself up, which, according to her daughter, was something the Pathfinder did pretty often.
Cara sighed; the dungeon could wait. Before leaving, she sent several drones in to assist in the rapid repair of the concealment towers so the grove wouldn't be easily discovered by curious explorers who, like herself, were attracted by the explosion. Satisfied she did all she could to hide what might be the path to her freedom from this planet, Cara set off in search of the elusive Pathfinder. Looking back as she left the grove, she vowed to return and gut the remains of the ship that had murdered her people.
***
“Dammit, that hurt!” Sam groaned, picking herself up off the floor of her soul, “And how can I hurt myself in my own soul?” She knew the answer but was too pissed at herself to acknowledge it. Blowing smoke out of her mouth, she examined the ruptured power core she had been tampering with and sighed. She mumbled dejectedly, "I guess I will just have to let the equipment do its thing. It doesn't look like I'll be able to speed up the process."
It hadn’t taken Sam long to figure out what all the equipment in the workshop did. The bank of monitors was obviously a work/control station with detailed instructions and controls for each piece of equipment that Sam could mentally access; the workbench was filled with various machines with uses ranging from armor and weapon repair to nanite fluid synthesis chambers and everything in between. It was most easily described as a tinker’s wet dream. There were even several nodes that could fabricate mana cores! Seeing the nodes, she immediately started forming a better core for S-2. It cost nearly all the cores she auto-looted when the dungeon blew up, but it would be worth it. Then she discovered a unit that would make blank drives that S-2 could download to so she could swap the droids software to a different body. She did the same for the remains of S-4, hoping she could repair the destroyed droid whose core had thankfully survived.
The circular metal pads were for fabricating parts. They were like 3D printers that ran off of mana instead of raw materials. However, like her Repair skill, the printers would work faster if raw materials were present.
Sam set about printing a Sentry Droid frame for S-2 to download into. It wouldn’t be as high a level as the first one she fought, but it would be better than the frame the droid had right now.
To do that, Sam first had to destroy the droid frames in her inventory so the printers could have templates to work from. Fortunately, destroying the frames provided the necessary raw materials to use. It was painful to watch most of the components she looted get dissolved and uploaded to her workstation as available templates, parts, and materials. Mostly because she knew it would take weeks to recreate everything, she sacrificed inside her soul workshop at the slow rate the printers operated. But then again, the components weren’t doing her any good floating in her inventory, metaphorically collecting dust. Plus, the items she created would have an arcane or void affinity and be more tailored to her power level. Still, watching the parts for one of the Mobile Armor frames slowly disintegrate as they were turned into templates nearly killed her.
Returning to her workstation, she checked on the progress of S-2's upgraded core and started a new spare one for S-4…since she had just blown up the first spare, she had started the machine working on.
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S-2’s upgraded core was about fifteen percent complete, so after checking the other items she was fabricating, Sam wandered back to her workstation and sat down in the plush chair. She moaned in relief as the chair molded around her body. “What a nice setup,” She thought, wondering if she could play some games from memory on the workstation computers. Unfortunately, unlike her music, no game icons appeared on the monitors.
As she skimmed through the template files, Sam suddenly stopped and slapped her forehead with one hand, frustrated at her ignorance! "I'm an idiot!" She said to the monitors. Pulling out the Hyperlite Mana Core, she received as a prize from the raid event, along with the ship design diagram. "This has been sitting in there the whole time! Ugh, I could kick myself for not thinking of this sooner!” She seethed before calming herself, saying, “It’s only been a few hours, and you’ve thought of it now, so just move on.”
Sam took a deep breath and relaxed slightly. Grabbing a laptop from her workstation, she carried the mana core and schematics to one of the printers, which she discovered were actually called mana fabricators. She linked the laptop to the fabricator and placed the thin pad with the ship schematics on its shiny metal surface. The equipment came to life lifting the pad to hover suspended at her eye level, and prompts appeared on her laptop monitor.
Object detected. Scan Yes/No?
Selecting 'Yes,' Sam read the following prompt.
Object identified as: Mana Tablet; contents Hyperlite Mana Core instruction manual and ship design schematic.
Download the manual and schematic to the S.A.M. database. Yes/No? Note: The tablet will not be destroyed.
Sam chose ‘Yes’ again, and after a brief flash of light, two icons appeared on her laptop screen: the manual and the ship design.
Selecting the ship design icon opened the most complex wireframe model Sam had ever seen. After a bit of fumbling, she stripped away layers of the model so that she could inspect each part if she wished. “This thing is huge!” Sam finally exclaimed when she stopped playing with the model and zoomed out on the design to see its scale. She noticed writing on the bottom right corner just above a scrolling parts list that had hundreds of thousands of entries. The words read:
Corvette Class Warship Hull Number 736A.
Recommended crew size: 16 bipedal lifeforms, maximum 260cm tall.
Minimum crew size: 8 bipedal lifeforms or 1 Technomancer of sufficient level to link with and control a minimum of 44 separate functions. Note: crew size can be reduced by installing an AI-assisted flight module.
Maximum POB other than crew: 34 bipedal lifeforms, maximum 260cm tall.
Recommended loadout: 4ea small, fixed weapons; 2ea medium turreted weapons; 1 large, fixed weapon.
Hanger Capacity: 4 Starfighters, maximum 9 meters in length, 8 meters in width, and 5 meters in height.
What followed was the insanely long list of parts detailing everything from the chemical composition of the viewscreens to how many grams of nanofluid to put in each actuator. It even listed the thread count and density of the sheets for each individual bunk in the sleeping quarters and the recommended caloric value for each crew member based on size that should be kept on hand for journeys lasting up to one System Standard Cycle a length of time Sam had yet to figure out.
Sam was overwhelmed, and she expressed as much when she exclaimed, “This will take years to build! And where will I put it anyway?” Then, looking around at the enormous room she was in, she realized exactly where she could store the ship. “But is it really safe to store a freaking one hundred-fifty-meter-long spaceship in my soul?” She wasn’t sure, but she did know that she wanted to get off this planet, and currently, building this spaceship was her only option.
Worried that if she disintegrated the mana core to create a schematic, she might not be able to recreate one good enough to power the ship, Sam reluctantly placed it back in her inventory. She then opened the fabricate screen on her laptop and uploaded the schematics. She eagerly read the projected time to complete the ship using three separate processes. Using one hundred percent mana would take three cycles and five months. Using a fifty-fifty mix of mana and raw materials shortened it to one and a half cycles. And finally, if she provided all the raw materials, it would take ten months. This all hinged on Sam's ability to keep enough materials on hand so the fabricators wouldn't have to use mana.
"I wonder how long I have now with all the parts I haven't used already?" Sam mused, checking her inventory. She still had a lot of stuff in her storage, but it wasn't worth an entire ship. She pulled out one of her few remaining arcane mana crystals and replaced the tablet with it on the fabricator pad. After accepting the prompt to analyze it, she checked what it could be used for and was happily surprised that the small crystal would account for a significant amount of raw material. She suspected it wasn't the energy in the crystal but the type of energy the construct was made of and discharged.
Excited, Sam grabbed a void crystal and had the fabricator analyze it. The results were nearly ten times as powerful as the arcane crystal. Sam fist-pumped and checked her inventory. She dumped all but five of her arcane and void and mana crystals onto the pad and checked how much of the ship she could build if she used the forty or so crystals she provided. The value read 1.375% with a time of roughly forty-eight hours. Sam did some math, which was easy, thanks to her current class. "Let me see…if I can keep this thing supplied with crystals, then I could be finished with the ship in…hmmm…carry the one," she snapped her fingers, exclaiming, "less than one hundred and fifty days!"
Sam immediately selected 'Yes' to the prompt to fabricate the ship. After watching the crystals disintegrate, she started buzzing around her soul room, mumbling as she paced, "What's next? I for sure need to stay until the S-2's frame, core, and CPU upgrades are complete, and maybe S-4's body also…assuming I have time. I also switch back to my Arcane Pathfinder class and start creating more crystals ASAP! She was so excited that she was giddy. Not only would she have her very own spaceship, but it would be in less than six months!
Then, all her excitement came to a grinding halt. She skidded to a stop and exclaimed, “Recommended crew size of sixteen! I won't be able to fly it!”