The shower, it turned out, was the literal best thing about this place. It was already a large open shower, but there were shelves that came out of the wall with a touch, so you could easily put soap and other hygienic products somewhere safe without too much effort. But the water pressure was amazing, there was a shower head that was large and could even detach to use with the hose as a hand held one, with pressure that with a bit of effort could likely clean rust from steel, but the best part was the ceiling. With the push of a button you could turn the main shower head off and have it pull into the wall, then the roof would start to rain. You could control the pressure, volume, and temperature quite easily from the shower panel, it was mostly intent based while touching the panel but it did have actual buttons to help get it perfect. This meant I got to clean myself in a heavy hot downpour from the heavens themselves.
Eventually though I dragged myself out, and into a silk night robe that Ignut had pulled out of the wardrobe for me and suggested I use. He mentioned that as people ranked up their skin sensitivity tended to improve, along with other senses, and while it could be controlled very few wanted to keep that up in their own spaces. So it's why the floors were perfectly smooth stone, the couches were all silky in their coverings, and even the night robe was made of a pure silk from something called a lunar wrath moth.
Laying in bed thinking about the day so far I realised just how insane it had been, however I could definitely feel the effect of the blessing from Eterna as it just didn’t feel stressful in a way that wasn’t manageable. Hopefully if I just kept pushing forward things would keep settling and I could reach a point where I could properly process the whole I died thing.
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The next morning Ignut found me sitting on the couch eating steak for breakfast, working out what to order when I got up and dressed had been difficult until I remembered that I was meant to be training in a weapon today and figured protein couldn’t hurt, and who doesn’t love a good steak.
“I am glad you seem to be prepared for today’s training, once you are done eating we will get the first training simulation set up where you can try some different suitable weapon options and pick one to train further in today” Taking a seat next to me on the couch Ignut pulled a book out of nowhere, of course this world has bags of holding or something similar, and started reading while waiting for me.
Once breakfast was wrapped up, and it still felt wrong to just leave dishes out on the coffee table instead of cleaning up, we made our way into the training room.
“Right so today you need to select Mana weapon selection simulation, this should give us a few options based on your compatibility that you can practise with. The goal here is just to see what feels best, and if there is something that you think you will work best with. Personal preference does improve the ability for you to grow as it simply leads to you putting more energy into improving during practice rather than tolerating it. Nothing you've shown will be unsuitable for gambit challenges, as when you get your first one we will go over how challenges are selected, but for now don’t think about anything other than your preferences alright.” Giving my affirmation that I grasped what he wanted I reached out to the cube to provide it the needed prompt.
The connection this time didn’t invade my personal being, but instead the cube expanded and floated down to the ground losing contact with my hand. Once it reached the ground it kept expanding until it was a little over waist height, and about three metres long.
Along the ground running an extra six or so metres to each side a glowing blue line appeared, and then turned towards the opposite wall running until it hit the wall and went up. About fifteen metres up it then turned again to meet in the middle along the wall creating a marked out space.
“Most training will involve either mental instruction, a construct or virtual trainer, or some kind of system prompt telling you what to do. In this case however this is something you will only be able to access with a trainer also in the room, as it's meant to be used for assessments to determine your future weapon choices. Now if you place your hands on the cube in the centre section it will create a weapon, this mana construct type usually gives three or four options, but with your compatibility I would expect either a really high number or a very low number, so we will just continue until it stops giving you new choices” Following his directions I placed my hands in the rough middle of the bench, then a blue glow rose up in the space between them taking the form of a rifle.
It looked a bit different to what I was used to, with a clear rifle shape and trigger, but I couldn’t see any safety switch or any mechanism related to ammunition which somewhat made sense if it used my mana to generate ammunition.
Looking up I saw a few standard looking vague humanoid targets made out of a soft blue material had appeared inside of the marked area, so taking this as my queue I picked up the rifle and tried to get comfortable looking at the targets down its sights.
I had fired guns previously, but this was entirely different. To start with each of the four shots I took I felt my mana pulled out and condensed into a bullet to replace the one I used. Then there was the kick back, or lack of, as being mana shooting mana it seemed to be efficient enough that it just barely kicked enough to know it had even fired. While it put some impressive holes in the targets being that it took nearly a full twenty seconds to make a bullet each time this was clearly more a marksman’s weapon of choice then anyone else.
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Putting it off to the side I hoped the rest weren’t like this, it seemed to be a decent enough weapon but with the delay in shots anything that didn’t go down in one go was going to have time to come and take a bite out of me while it reloaded.
Placing my hands down again, this time I watched a much smaller shape form. A quite small handgun, clearly meant to be used one handed by the size of it. Picking up the weapon I could feel a connection, similar to the cubes but much simpler, wanting to know how many bullets to make. Deciding to repeat my previous amount I prompted four, and suddenly enough mana to craft four bullets was drawn into the gun from my pool. If mana equaled power in bullets though I was concerned, as each rifle bullet had taken as much mana as the first three bullets for this handgun had taken together.
Aiming down the range it was quickly apparent that this gun lacked power and as such wouldn’t be useful over any reasonable range or against any level of armour or natural barriers. Putting this one over to the side as well I placed my hands back down again to see what I would get this time.
Prompt:
Feedback Requested: Please provide issues with each firearm to help narrow down selection.
Looking at the system prompt that was apparently sent by the cube I thought it over before responding. “The rifle is too large and slow to reload, I am likely to need multiple shots stored for versatility, but the handgun was far too weak. Either a much more powerful handgun or a more semi-automatic style rifle would be better.”
As I spoke a blue glow started to take shape again between my hands, this time forming something a bit more to my liking. It looked like a hand cannon I had seen in a few games when hanging out with friends as a teenager, a really large handgun that could definitely be held one handed but would have a lot of stopping power.
As I picked it up I got a more complex prompt, advising me a little of how the weapon worked as it was apparently more complex than a point and pull trigger.
Depending on mana input I could have it in handgun mode, which was a six shot high power short range firing mode, or I could extend the stock and barrel to enter into rifle mode. This mode was limited to three semi-automatic shots but they were more powerful and had a much larger range.
Feeling the connection between the two different switches, one for creating ammunition and one for switching modes, I prompted it to draw in the mana and got ready to try out both modes.
Firing with the handgun mode was extremely satisfying, a reasonable amount of kick back due to the sheer power of the shots and smaller size of the firearm, a nice solid sound as the mana bullet left and it left some really nice and large holes in each of the targets within its range.
Swapping over to rifle mode I found it to be a bit more comfortable then the first rifle, but this mostly stemmed from not having to create a new bullet each shot, and I was happy to find out I could create more bullets even if the supply was only partly filled up.
Putting the gun down I turned back to Ignut, “This one, whatever it is, is the one that changes shape. Its perfect, nice versatility and good feedback. Plus did you see the holes it can put into those targets in both modes? Fantastic.” Grinning away to myself I was quite pleased that I had found something so fun in all of this, quietly ignoring the suggestion in the back of my mind that I may have to use this against a living person sooner or later.
“Child, you had to pick a damn Mana-Morph of all things. Alright fine, you were far better with it then the other two, and you didn’t even try to see if the cube had other choices after so I doubt I can change your mind. So, go ahead and let the cube know you're done so it closes it up now and I will get you a book and some information on that weapon type.”
“Is there a reason you would want to change my mind? I would rather know now if there are issues with my selection” As I spoke I still put a hand down on the cube and informed it I was done with the program, and it started to withdraw while the blue lines faded and the firearms returned back into blue glowing mist and sunk into the cube.
“Not really, it's more mana-morphs are often difficult to find upgrades for. Most weapons you can buy up weapons that would be suitable for you up to around C Tier. But mana-morphs require divinity to craft due to them breaking some minor physical laws to shift how they do for such low mana costs, which means a demigod crafter would be required to make anything beyond the system created F Tier options. It does mean you're more likely to get one as a reward though, as weapons that you use in a challenge that are harder to find upgrades for via the marketplace have increased odds in the reward pools. Don’t worry about it anyway, if you really get stuck later we can look at options, but low tier mana-morphs are actually reasonably priced because they are system created like most F tier weapons, but are also not that commonly purchased to low demand means low prices.”
“Alright here, read these two books about mana-morphs today and tonight, then tomorrow morning I will show you the training plan. I am going to have to get some opinions from another trainer who actually uses a mana-morph herself as a go to weapon, as I don’t have much hands-on experience with one. If I get a response faster though I will try to swing by around dinner instead so you're ready to go first thing tomorrow morning.” As he finished speaking Ignut dumped the books he had been getting from the cube as he spoke, before walking off to the transport circle to head off.
Not having much else to do I made my way into the living space and glanced at my new books titles. ‘Mana-Morph’s ~ A Practical Guide’ and ‘Unique weapon challenges ~ Divine Gambit Challenge Guide’. Based on the titles they would hopefully be interesting to read at least.