Lightforge’s shop was, as a general rule, a messy place to work. And despite the fact that he’d spent the previous day cleaning up and organizing, that was once again true. Small components were strewn across his workbench as he worked with the various devices that he’d slowly been disassembling all morning.
He was muttering curses under his breath, or at least the closest things he could think of that wouldn’t have the system censoring him. The night before he’d spent several hours trying to use one sensor at a time to analyze the XP potion that Gray Guardian had brought him the day before. The results had been incredibly disappointing.
As it turned out, none of the sensors could give him useful information on their own. Each one provided bits and pieces that were probably useful, but only if made into part of a greater whole. And he hadn’t been able to switch the scanners back and forth quickly enough to put the data together, so now here he was.
Trying to assemble the sensors into something more sleek and effective was going to be a challenge, but he’d jumped into it without hesitation. So far it had not gone well; it was just so much more complicated than anything that he’d successfully made so far. If only he had some blueprints or something to work from, it would make everything so much easier.
Wait, blueprints? Something about that felt familiar. He didn’t have any blueprints, but he had definitely seen some. There wasn’t a long list of places where that might happen, so it didn’t take him long to remember.
The abandoned lab. When they’d claimed their rewards for clearing the dungeon, the prize room had been filled with a lot more than the items that they had taken with them. There had been parts, half-finished devices and, yes, blueprints. That was yet another thing that he had forgotten about instead of taking advantage of the opportunity. He’d grabbed a few loose parts from the floor, but that had been it.
And, of course, there was the reason why he hadn’t stuck around. There was some sort of bioengineered monster that his team hadn’t actually killed. It was probably still running around somewhere down there, and it had been a tough opponent even with a group. So was it worth the risk.
Probably.
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The building was exactly how he remembered it. The wall had been repaired where the laser cannons used to be, and the door was no longer dented from where he’d nearly caved it in. It was still a brick warehouse that looked completely nondescript from the outside, which was almost certainly the point.
He had come alone. He shouldn’t technically be in any danger, and it would take a while to assemble his friends anyway. If this was a bust, he didn’t want to have wasted anyone else’s time.
He actually ignored the door this time. He wasn’t looking to go diving into the depths of the dungeon, especially with the risk of running into that weird scaled wolf that they’d left behind. He was hoping to bypass all of that instead. He ran his hands along the bricks, feeling carefully for any sign of a gap or seam. He was pretty sure he knew where to look, but he wasn’t completely sure.
A few feet from the main door, he found it. The slightest breeze slipping out from between two bricks. He pushed against the section of wall and there was a quiet hiss as the hidden door slowly slid open. He heaved a sigh of relief.
There had been no way to be sure that would work. Part of the mission reward had been “Access to Lab Vault.” The purpose of that reward was to grant access to the valuable items that they had won, but why not grant access from the outside too? With the lab not resetting, it was a perfectly valid idea. And luckily, it had worked exactly as he’d hoped that it would.
The door swung open and he walked into the vault. It was much as he remembered it; it looked oddly like his own shop after a particularly busy few days. Half built constructs and random parts littered the floor and the room was just a little bit too dim to be comfortable.
And there, lying among the rest of the mess, were scraps of paper covered in precise images. Blueprints. He rushed over to one and snatched it from where it sat. It was for a simple attack robot, which wasn’t particularly surprising. The underground lab had been full of them. And he probably had the right parts to build at least one of them when he got back. He went to put the paper into his inventory, but instead it glowed blue in his hands and vanished.
New Blueprint Acquired!
Name: Fido Attack Dog
Type: Robot/Weapon
Quality: Uncommon
The list of required and recommended components scrolled past his vision too quickly for him to read all of them at a glance. Even for what appeared to be a fairly simple robot, the parts list was long. It wouldn’t be a simple matter to reproduce what he’d seen in the blueprints, but it would be well worth his time to do so.
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He looked at the space where the paper had been a few moments before. Huh. He hadn’t known about that. Why hadn’t Circe mentioned it before? She seemed to know way more than he did about Gadgeteers, but she also seemed to enjoy watching him figure things out for himself. Still, it would have been nice to know that he should be looking to collect blueprints before bumping into that fact completely by accident.
Of course, he couldn’t really bring himself to be too upset. This just made his job that much easier as he wouldn’t have to remember anything as he used the blueprints that he found. That helped to put a smile on his face as he dug through the messy vault in search of more blueprints.
He’d found and absorbed a half dozen blueprints when he finally hit the jackpot. A wide smile split his face as he studied the blueprint in front of him and the requirements listed on the page. It was perfect, and he had all the parts that he needed.
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Back in the shop, sparks flew as Lightforge’s hands moved in a blur. Tools and components flew back and forth as his body instinctively followed the blueprint that was now etched into the back of his mind. He hadn’t been able to wipe the grin from his face ever since leaving the old lab.
Of course, he also couldn’t stop kicking himself for not grabbing the blueprints the first time around. He would be so much further along as a crafter if he had, but there was no changing it now. He’d finally rectified that incredibly stupid move and was learning from his many mistakes. But that wouldn’t make his mistakes any less stupid.
It was truly amazing how much quicker and easier it was to build things with the help of a blueprint. There was no testing or guesswork, he simply followed the instructions to reach the end that he wanted to get to. In fact, it was a lot closer to building legos than actually working with electronics. In some ways it was almost boring, he felt more like an automaton than a craftsman.
At the moment, he honestly didn’t mind. A little lack of fulfillment was easily worth the end result in this case. And with just a few more tweaks and work, his newest device was ready to use.
It was a cubic chamber about half a meter on each side. There was a thick, transparent door on the front that opened to a space that was completely surrounded by sensors of every kind. Even without it being on, it hummed softly as energy coursed through it. The backside had a built-in computer terminal that was ready to present the findings for whatever was placed inside.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Multispectral Analyzer
Type: Sensor
Quality: Uncommon
Scanning Time:
* Basic Scan: 20 seconds
* Detailed Scan: 5 minutes
An in-depth, detailed scanner suite with the capacity to sense and analyze a wide variety of energies both mundane and magical. This model is limited to small items only.
It was perfect. He smiled down at his creation and pulled the XP potion from his inventory. He set it down inside the scanner, closed the door and turned it on. He set it up for a detailed scan and sat back in his seat with a wide grin on his face.
There was no guarantee that he would even get anything useful out of this scan, but there was a chance. And even a small chance of being able to replicate XP potions would be so world changing that it was worth spending the time and resources on it. He allowed his mind to wander for a few moments, thinking of the possibilities that this might bring to him. It would instantly make him one of the most important people in this world.
The scanner beeped and brought him back before he could sink too far into his own thoughts of world domination. He hit a key on the scanner’s computer terminal and it lit up in a rainbow of colors and readouts. There was a lot there, but it was organized and held a whole bunch of cool ways to analyze all of the data.
The main display showed the potion bottle, now surrounded by a swirling energy aura of constantly shifting colors. That aura represented the types of energy that went into the potion and allowed it to function. None of them would show up in real world radiation charts, because this was a magic potion.
Instead, there were a series of floating labels showing up on the screen that marked different sections of the aura as “Reinforcement Mana,” “Growth Mana,” and “Universal Energy,” just to name a few. But there was one that stood out as unique even among the litany of labels that danced around the screen.
The label was attached to a thin tendril of dark red energy that came up from the center of the bottle. Surrounded by all the other types of energy, it was all but impossible to see from most angles. But it was always there, a small, steady trickle that was faint but ever present. And the label flickered in and out of existence, as if the scanner were trying not to show him what it said.
“System Overwrite Energy”
His jaw dropped as he stared at it. If that was what it sounded like, it more than he ever could have hoped to gain from the scanner. The more he thought about it, the more it made a sort of sense. The potion, like a lot of items, actively altered some of the behind the scenes data that ran the game. It only did so for the one person who took the potion, but it was happening.
And in this new world, there was a specific type of energy that it used to accomplish that. An energy that granted access to the fundamental aspects of the world and would allow him to do… what?
Anything? Could he achieve godlike power over everything in this world? That seemed unlikely, but it was possible. There were probably a host of strict limitations to the energy that he hadn’t discovered yet, and he didn’t strictly know how to produce the energy at all. But he knew that it existed.
It should have been obvious from everything around him, but this simply took an extra step to reinforce the idea. This world was governed by a system. A system with rules that could be manipulated if you knew how. A system that he just might have a window into. There was no way of knowing what might come of this information, but he knew two things for sure.
First: this was the most important thing that he could have learned. And second: this was dangerous information to have. Anyone who learned about it would see the possibilities of what might be done with such energy, and would likely have few qualms about how they got access to such power. He would need to be very careful in how he proceeded.
Even with the risks now looking at him over the horizon, he smiled. This was an entirely new level of potential that he had just unlocked in the world, and he couldn’t help but be excited.