The early morning sunshine streamed in through the window in Lightforge's base. He had drawn the blinds to prevent just such an inconvenience the night before, but the sun had found a gap between the slats to use. A gap that was perfectly placed to have the light fall across the gadgeteer's face. He grunted and turned away from the light, but it was too late. He was awake.
With much groaning and complaining, the large man pulled himself up to a seated position on the couch. His ability to resist damage meant that his back wasn't stiff or sore, but it didn't make sleeping on the couch any more comfortable. He kept telling himself that he needed to get an actual bed, but it wasn't likely to happen anytime soon. There were too many other things that he needed to do before he could devote money for something like that.
The haze of sleepiness hung over his head until he climbed into the shower and let the warm water do the last bit of work to wake him up. His mind finally began kicking into gear, and he started to process everything that had happened over the last few days. His mind had been consumed by the mission, but now he needed to shift priorities.
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In less than an hour from when the sun had woken him, Lightforge walked into his shop with a smile on his face. It was just as empty as always, but today was when he started to change that. He walked up to his work table and opened his inventory. Thanks to the lab dungeon, it was packed full of various odds and ends that may or may not be useful when it comes to crafting.
He knew the right way to approach the problem. He needed to sort through the various pieces, identify them, and organize them according to their function and rarity. Then he could make a list of ideas for creations that could likely result from the parts at his disposal. It was a slow and meticulous process, but it would definitely produce results.
Unfortunately, that sounded incredibly tedious and boring. Instead, he dumped his entire inventory onto the table in front of him. It all appeared as a literal pile of junk that was nearly three feet tall. Without giving it a single thought, he picked up the closest item to him. It was a warped piece of steel that had once belonged to a robot, probably as an arm. It was hard to tell just by sight, so he inspected it.
Name: Basic Robot Arm
Type: Scrap
State: Destroyed
This might have been useful once, but it’s impossible to be sure at this point.
Lightforge read the description and sighed before tossing the scrap metal over his shoulder. He’d expected to see scrap given the source of these parts; he’d helped to destroy the thing, after all. It was still disheartening to see, especially on the very first component he looked at.
He continued checking bits and pieces, hoping that not all of them would be so badly damaged. The destroyed components began their own pile on the floor behind him. After picking through a half dozen items, he’d found two that were in working condition.
The first looked like a handheld fan, or at least part of one. It was a little electric motor with fan blades mounted on it. With the fan blades extended, it was about as wide as the palm of his hand. The second was a complex system of tiny spinning wheels all held together into a shape like an oversized marble. He suspected he knew what they were for, but he inspected them just to be sure.
Name: Pinwheel Motor
Type: Component - Movement
Quality: Common
State: Damaged
This motor comes attached to a set of small fan blades, perfect for powering a small flying machine.
Name: Basic Gyroscope
Type: Component - Stability
Quality: Common
State: Undamaged
This common gyroscope allows machines to correct themselves and remain properly oriented in space.
As expected, neither common item was particularly interesting on its own. In fact, Lightforge was confident that he could pick up identical parts for just a few dollars in a hobby store. Or at least he could have done that in his world. Here he’d fought through a mad scientist’s lab to get them.
He held one item in each hand, studying them. It seemed obvious that they could work together somehow, but he wasn’t sure how to make it work. He didn’t mind that piece of information, it was simply the truth. What he found much more interesting was whether or not it would stay true for very long.
A quick glance to the corner of his vision showed the skills that were available for his use. He focused on one that he had never used so far and activated it. Construct.
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Static electricity shot through his body from his toes to the tips of his hair. Involuntarily, he sharply breathed in and nearly lost his balance as his view of the world changed. The components in his hands each gained a faint outline, the gyroscope in green and the motor in yellow. Automatically he knew that it represented their current damage state.
He looked at the pile of components on the table in front of him, but they didn’t quite have the same outline to them. Instead, each item had an outline that contained an entire spectrum from green to yellow and then to red. But they weren’t identical; some items had a lot of red and only a sliver of green. Others were the opposite, and many were somewhere in the middle.
This, too, he understood immediately. Since he hadn’t inspected anything on the table, he didn’t know their exact state. But he had enough experience as a Gadgeteer to make some educated guesses based on sight. That’s what the spectrums represented: the more green, the more likely an item was undamaged. Same for yellow and red for damaged and destroyed. It wasn’t perfect, but it let him sort through things much faster.
After taking note of the items in front of him, he realized that there were more changes that he’d been ignoring. Specifically, there was now a glowing grid floating in the air in front of him. Well, “grid” was probably being a bit generous for the moment, as there were only two squares. But he suspected that as he leveled up that it would grow to accommodate more complicated crafting.
For now, he reached up and placed one item in each square. The outlines around them both changed to a light blue and they hung in the air, perfectly still. Hard light tools appeared in his hands, and a confirmation window popped up to make sure that he was doing this on purpose. Once he’d confirmed it, it was time to work.
It wasn’t as simple as touching the items together and watching them fuse. That would have been far too easy. Instead, knowledge began trickling into his mind about how to connect the two components so that they could actually interface. The information was nice to have, but he still had to perform the process by hand.
Experimentally, he removed a screw from the motor’s casing and let it go. The screw floated lazily in the air, out of the way but within easy reach. He smiled at that; it was always nice to confirm that the system had been designed to be free of as many annoyances as possible.
Since he didn’t have to worry about losing anything, he quickly set to work. Removing screws, shifting wires, and occasionally creating holes that hadn’t previously been there. While it was interesting work, it was still just attaching a thing to another thing. Not exactly rocket science. Luckily, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was learning the process to create items of his own.
Within a couple of minutes, it was done. The gyroscope was mounted on the bottom of the motor, hanging below the fan blades where it should be safe. He smiled at his work, and his smile only grew when the system notice arrived.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Stabilized Pinwheel
Type: General
Quality: Common
State: Undamaged
The newly attached gyroscope will ensure that this little motor can take to the air without immediately spinning out of control. At least in theory; this model is currently missing a power source, so we may never know.
The smile slipped from his face a little. He hadn't thought about a power source. His first creation sat still on the table in front of him, completely useless. In retrospect, it made sense; every machine he'd looted so far had either had batteries or had been permanent fixtures that probably had a hardwired power cable.
On the other hand, that also meant that his junk pile included a lot of batteries in varying states. He reactivated Construct and grabbed a battery that looked mostly green. It went into one of the crafting slots while his previous creation went into the other. Once again tools appeared in his hands and he went to work once again.
This time was definitely different. There were a lot more wires to deal with, and there was no obvious place to attach the battery. Eventually he decided to just strap it to the side of the thing, which he did with a thin strip of scrap metal. When it was done, he didn’t even bother to check the description; it was obviously unbalanced. It didn’t take a genius to see the problem, which was helpful since he didn’t consider himself one.
He immediately began sorting through the pile of parts on his workbench, looking for another battery of the same type. It didn’t take long to find and attach it to the opposite side of the motor. With a deep breath, he checked the description of the new device.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Balanced Pinwheel
Type: Flight
Quality: Common
State: Undamaged
Balanced and stabilized, this little machine is ready to fly! It has no eyes and no brain, but what’s the worst that could happen?
Lightforge’s hands trembled with excitement as he studied the item in his hands. His first true creation. He held it gingerly, cupped in both hands. It was small and probably frail, but he had made it. And now it was time to test it.
He gently lifted it into the air in front of him and hit a switch on one side of the motor. Instantly the air filled with a soft hum as the propeller came up to speed. Ever so slowly, the device lifted off from his hand and hovered in the air in front of him. It hung there, suspended in the air as it gently bobbed in place.
Lightforge shouted for joy and threw his hands into the air in excitement. A little too much excitement, honestly, because one hand smacked the little flying device on the way up. He watched in horror as his creation zipped across the store in a drunken line. His breath caught in his throat, but hope began to rise as he watched the gyroscope go to work, stabilizing the machine as it tumbled through the air. Given enough time, it would slow and stop on its own.
Unfortunately, it ran into a wall first. It had slowed considerably, but not enough. It crashed into the wall and something shot back across the room and past Lightforge’s head. He barely even noticed it; he was too busy watching his creation lose all control and go tumbling to the floor.
He ran over to assess the damage, and wound up chasing the thing around the store. The motor was still running, and the device was skipping and spinning across the floor in truly bizarre ways. When he finally caught up to it, he realized why.
Half of the propeller was missing. It had been shattered in the impact, and was probably the thing that had gone flying by his head. Everything else looked relatively simple to fix, but that was a serious problem. But even with the distress of that revelation, he couldn’t help but smile.
There were a few kinks to work out, but he’d made his very first creation. And it had worked. Now all he had to do was keep going.