Three months later.

As I was chilling in bed in my usual position with my hands clasped behind my head, I started thinking back on these last three months of preparations and training for entering the old vault mines.

A few months have passed since I started getting ready for my little excursion into the mines, and the progress I've made in these said months has been overall pretty good, I would say... Hmm, I got a bit of time to burn so let me go over all the progress I've made in depth before I check to see if the quest |It’s Hunten Season| is ready to turn in.

To start off my progress report, I've ground out a +5 in both my melee and unarmed skills. In addition to those increases, I've also gained a plethora of sparring and close-quarter combat experience over these past three months from uncle Gomez and the other vault security officers who lovingly beat it into me for my own good. But as a side effect of doing all that training with them, I now have several more additional uncles that I have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. Sigh, what a pain.

I could’ve started the mole rat hunting trip two months ago since I met dad's requirements and had most of the gear needed already made. However, I ended up deciding not to so I could invest and dedicate even more time and effort into my training, grinding out my skill points, and gaining increasingly more fighting experience.

Looking back on it I'm glad I didn't enter the mines earlier because the only real fighting experience I had at that point was the recent training I had just received, and the fights and brawls I would get involved in on the streets in my previous life when the boys and I would go bar hopping. Thus, getting that extra bit of experience and training seemed like a worthwhile endeavor. Dad was also very happy when I told him I was going to delay my adventure for an additional two months.

After informing him of the delay back then, I showed him the gear I had managed to produce over the period and as soon as he inspected everything I made for my trip he looked to be more than impressed with the quality and the extent of my preparations. As a result of that, he didn't appear nearly as concerned as previously and his confidence in me, from what I could tell, seemed to improve by a substantial amount. It was pretty obvious that the preparations I had already finished showed I was taking this little venture into the old vault mines very seriously.

Onto the next bit of progress. I've acquired additional resources and also managed to learn the required hacking skills needed to breach the armory's security and break into it. That only ended up having a medium-difficulty password, which was a welcome surprise. I was initially expecting I was going to have to beat a hard-difficulty password, but thankfully I lucked out. If I hadn't, I would've had to delay my trip until I could gain access to the armory or find some other way to make a decently powerful ranged weapon since I decided to do away with the bow after a bit more thought.

So on one of the nights during this period of progress when security was somewhat lax, I hacked the terminal and broke into the armory undetected, and started looking through it. One of the first things I noticed in my search was that the armory had quite an extensive selection of equipment and was stocked with everything from 9mm pistols to 5mm miniguns to even heavy combat armor and pulse grenades. Although no power armor, unfortunately.

After I had gone through a significant portion of the armory that I had access to, I only took the stuff I knew for a fact I could take without it being noticed. Hence, I was able to "Borrow" 2 broken laser pistols and 1 broken laser rifle that were already disassembled for parts off to the side of a workbench with me.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

However, that was not all. As I was about to leave with my halfway decent haul, I made another discovery in my break-in. That was the armory did, in fact, have recharger weapons off in a far back corner of the armory secured in a weapon locker. As soon as I found that out, I grabbed 3 microfusion breeder cells that weren't attached to any laser weapons in the locker on my way out. So I could study them and possibly replicate them at a later date.

Some weeks following my armory break-in mission, I managed to gain a good understanding of how the cells functioned. Once I did, I figured out how to replicate the microfusion breeder cell's technology soon thereafter with my pre-existing microfusion cells. Not satisfied with just that, I began improving the capacity and performance of the cells because there were a ton of inefficiencies in the original designs.

The day I finished the cell's redesign and improvement, I went on to rebuild the disassembled laser rifle I had borrowed from the armory. And while I was rebuilding it, I took the liberty to customize it by adding a second barrel to it to increase the durability of the weapon.

Besides that little upgrade, I also set the barrels up in such a way that they will alternate fire similar to how a gatling-style weapon fires minus the rotating barrels part and all that jazz. Because of my modifications, the weapon can fire in full auto with a fire rate of 800 that can be changed on the fly between full and semi with the selector by the trigger.

Once the base of the weapon was completed, I kitted it out with some additional modifications to it by adding a laser sight, a red dot sight, a sling, a vertical fore grip, and finally 4 microfusion breeder cells to the weapon. After all was said and done, I basically created an unlimited ammo laser light machine gun, although it wasn't all that light with it sitting at a total weight of 20 pounds. But for a light machine gun, it's a pretty light one since it's not being weighed down by ammo on top of the weapon's weight.

The weapon's stats ended up being quite good too, for my first time ever making a weapon other than sharpening a few sticks as a kid in my previous life.

| AER 18 LMG |

Damage: 25

DPS: 333

Fire rate: 800 Fully Automatic, Semi-Automatic

Weight: 20

Class: Heavy

Ammo Type: Microfusion Breeder Cell

Value: 10,500

Attachments: Red Dot Sight, Vertical Fore Grip, Weapon Sling

Item Description: A large double laser light machine gun was designed and made for hunting mole rats, but the creator went a bit overboard and made it too big for its original purpose. Designed by Harold Todd Woods.

As great as this weapon is I probably won’t be taking it out on this upcoming trip because I can’t really sneak it in easily unless I want to drag a cart around with me and it's a bit too much to use against a bunch of blind mole rats. I also want to try to lower its weight a bit more if I can, but seeing how my strength will just continue to rise as time goes on.

It honestly might not be worth wasting my effort on trying to cut the weight down when I'll be able to handle the weapon just fine in the not so distant future. Especially when I start producing and using my own performance-enhancing drugs and begin making massive endurance and strength gains with their assistance. Hence, that isn't a real reason not to bring it along...

Anyway, moving right along to other weapons, I made another laser weapon afterward from the leftover parts I got from the armory and one more additional trip into the armory. The resulting weapon from said leftover bits and bobs wasn’t too shabby either, but nowhere near as impressive as the AER 18 LMG, in my opinion. That aside, it sure as hell is better than the bow idea I had originally.

| 12G Laser Pistol |

Damage: 8 x 12

DPS: Variable

Fire Rate: Semi-Automatic

Class: Light

Weight: 3.5

Ammo Type: Microfusion Breeder Cell

Value: 3,000

Attachments: Laser Sight, Micro Red Dot Sight

Item Description: A laser pistol heavily modded into a handheld laser shotgun with an intricately designed beam splitter. This energy weapon features a laser sight for increased ease of use and accuracy when hip and point firing, a micro red dot sight for better accuracy, and an upgraded microfusion breeder cell which supplies the weapon with unlimited energy. Designed by Harold Todd Woods.

This one I can actually hide on myself relatively easily and because I integrated a beam splitter in the design, it should excel at disposing of the sort of prey I'll encounter, since they basically have zero damage threshold. Therefore, I will definitely be taking it with me on my mole rat hunting trip.