It was a clear, beautiful morning, and Lightforge was feeling refreshed. His dreams had been packed full of the possibilities for what he would be able to craft for himself. There were so many options, and he was ready to explore them all. His fingers were itching with anticipation and he just couldn’t wait any longer to get to work.
That was the drive that led him to be out on the street in the dark. The sun was far from rising, but the dark sky was beginning to grow just a shade or two lighter. It was the time of day where “late at night” and “early in the morning” overlapped. And here he was, out on the streets and ready to get to work once again.
His shop was the first to open that morning, though he wasn’t expecting any customers to come by for hours. That was more than fine by him. In fact, he was tempted to lock the doors and just ignored anyone who came looking for him. Of course, the store had glass walls, so everyone would still be able to see him inside. And those huge windows held all of his precious notes. It wasn’t hard to imagine someone getting frustrated and breaking a window to get to him.
That was probably an unfounded fear, but he would rather not risk it. Besides, it would be faster to just let people in and have them dealt with quickly. But all that would come later, once people started to drop by. For now he had the shop to himself.
Now the big question was what to work on first? He thought back through the various fights that he’d had so far. What would help him the most the next time it came down to combat? He had decent damage output, and it became incredible if he was up against something mechanical. Of course, that was only the case when it came to individual attacks; he didn’t really have many good combos. And his best weapon, his hammer, was slow.
With that being said, he generally didn’t have too much trouble dealing enough damage to end a fight. But defensively? While he could summon a shield, it was only a buckler. Getting it in position to block attacks was difficult, especially with his mediocre AGI. So he ended up taking a lot of hits, using them as chances to counterattack and deal more damage.
In some ways, he played like a berserker: hit them really hard, no defenses, and hope they drop first. But he wasn’t built for that kind of strategy, as it took sky high damage output to pull it off. The fact that he was trying it and nearly dying even at low levels was a testament to just how poorly he fit that archetype.
He made up his mind: he needed some protection. He looked down at the apron of heavy metal strips that was part of his costume. It looked really tough, but it didn’t actually protect him from a game mechanics perspective. It was just an aesthetic choice. But it didn’t have to stay that way; of all the materials at his disposal, scrap metal was easily the most plentiful.
He pulled it over his head and set it down on the workbench. He pulled out a piece of scrap and set it against the topmost strip. He conjured a welder and casually joined the two pieces of metal together, one on top of the other. It was a little bit sloppy, but it would work for his purposes.
He pulled more scrap from his inventory and repeated the process. Slowly but surely he made his way down, armoring the apron at every step. As he did it turned into more and more of a mangled mess of questionable welds. Hopefully it would help at least a little bit. About halfway down through the process he got a surprise when a system window appeared in front of him.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Forgeman’s Apron
Type: Armor
Quality: Custom (Common)
Damage Reduction: 2%
What was once a set of aesthetic armor has been transformed into true armor, if a little slapdash. Provides a small reduction to all incoming damage.
He tilted his head at the description. Forgeman’s Apron? Was the system pulling from his situation with Circe? Or was that why she’d picked the nickname for him? Just one more question that he honestly didn’t have time to consider. More interesting was the quality marker. He’d heard of Custom equipment, it was actually fairly common. It just meant that it was bound to him, and no one else would be able to use it.
That wasn’t particularly surprising, since it was part of his “official” costume within the game. What was much more interesting was that his goggles hadn’t done that. They were a more normal item that he could give away if he wanted. That was curious, and he would need to run some tests to dig into that. But, once again, that would need to wait.
Now that his armor was an actual item, it was time to see just how protective he could make it. With more metal and more tools, he got back to work. His general plan was to just load the thing up with as much metal as he could fit onto it. That was a plan that didn’t last long, as he was soon confronted by another system message.
Warning:
Item: Forgeman’s Apron has reached its maximum weight for your current STR rating. Any additional armoring will incur penalties to your AGI.
Current Damage Reduction: 5%
Huh. He hadn’t known that weight limits were a thing, but it made sense. It was a reasonable way to prevent players from doing exactly what he’d been planning to do. It was the sort of limit that was necessary to keep gadgeteers balanced. It was a mild damage reduction, but was there a way to make it even better?
He couldn’t add more armor, but what about other effects? He did the first thing that came to mind and connected the apron to one of his batteries. There was a low hum in the air and occasional sparks jumped between sections of the metal. It seemed intimidating, but there was only one way to be sure.
He reached out a hand and touched the apron. An electrical buzzing shot up his arm; it was more of a tingle than actual pain. Even so, it was unpleasant enough that he didn’t want to stand there holding it. Of course, that’s exactly what he would have to do in order to actually wear the thing. But, hopefully, there was a simple solution to that one. Among the random piles of junk that he had at his disposal was a large amount of rubber.
It took a while to melt down the rubber and coat the inside of his armor. He was fairly confident that this wouldn’t work if not for this world’s reliance on video game logic and physics. But thanks to those incredibly lenient requirements, he was able to accomplish things much more simply than would be required in the real world.
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Once the battery was attached and the rubber applied, he wasn’t surprised to see the notification pop up in front of him.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Forgeman’s Shock Apron
Type: Armor
Quality: Custom (Common)
Damage Reduction: 5%
Effect: Minor Penalty to AGI
* Range: Contact
* Duration: 5 seconds
* Cooldown: 15 seconds
Now that’s what he was looking for. Increased defense to keep him from dying and a debuff that would help make up for his mediocre speed. Opportunities to slip away from a dangerous onslaught would be incredibly helpful to him. He smiled at the creation; it was exactly what he needed more of.
It was perfect for the sort of up close and personal melee fighting that he tended to do, but it was less helpful against ranged attacks. He would still get the damage reduction, but the secondary effect was useless at range. He would need something else to protect himself from opponents who stayed a bit further away.
The obvious tool for the job was the small shield that he could make with Hard Light Construct. With the improved armor on his torso, he would be able to focus more on deflecting attacks that came from range. But the problem was the size. By default, the shield was a buckler strapped to the side of his arm. It was a little smaller than a dinner plate, and he had yet to find a way to change its size. In fact, he hadn’t found a way to improve anything about his conjured light weapons.
And that was odd. They received buffs every time he leveled up and improved his stats, but that was it. So far he hadn’t gained any secondary skills that would add functionality to the weapons that he already had access to. Such skills surely existed, but there was no way of knowing when he would gain any of them. It felt like it had been too long since his powers had truly grown stronger.
He already knew about some of the synergies that existed between his powers, but were there more? Was he missing out on the chance to stretch his powers in brand new ways? As frustrating as it could be, that was the type of question that set his mind ablaze. They opened new possibilities that he hadn’t considered before, which was always welcome.
He conjured his shield and set it on the table in front of him. It was a simple design made entirely of semi-translucent blue light. Mind and will alone had failed to change its shape or size in any way, but what about a gadget? It seemed like the perfect place to start experimenting.
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Lightforge would never claim that all of his ideas were good. Quite the opposite, in fact. He’d spent enough time in this new world to know that he tended to jump headfirst into some truly terrible decisions without ever looking back. They haunted him sometimes, but they didn’t deter him. It was all part of the learning curve, and he was learning.
That was what he kept telling himself as he studied the latest failure to add to the pile. For once there wasn’t a literal pile growing beside him; he’d finally realized that he should be reusing the same parts in each of his prototypes. There was still some loss, but it was far less than his previous efforts at rapid prototyping.
He tried a variety of frames, holders, and even full metal shields to try and alter the design of his existing shield. The hardened light simply refused to hold to those shapes no matter how much he wanted it to. It was as if the light didn’t even notice the tools that he was trying to use to control it.
For example, at one point he’d tried to open the shield inside a small metal box. The box had shuddered exactly twice before the shield popped into existence just above it instead. Similar things happened with other shapes that he tried to force the shield into. In some ways it felt like it was too late to change the shape once it had already begun to manifest. But how could he affect it any sooner?
The tipping point came when he realized that his tools were still made of light. Light given solid form by his powers, but still light. He found a glass prism and mounted it inside a cylindrical housing. Instead of trying to form the shield near it, this time he placed a hand on one end of the cylinder, focusing on the energy flow that made his creations possible.
The energy, the light that made up his tools and weapons, flowed from his hand and into the small device. The prism within hummed with the sudden energy, and the light began to appear and solidify all around it. After a moment he had a shield slightly larger than the normal one, but with a shining metallic core at the center of it. Unfortunately, the edges of the shield were wrong. They were hazy and just slightly indistinct, as if the light were being stretched too far and was running out.
Well, the prism had worked, so why not other optical devices? He dismissed the shield and added magnifying lenses to the new emitter that he’d built. In fact, he added multiple layers of the magnifiers just to be safe. Just like that he was ready for the next experiment.
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He woke up some time later with a splitting headache, a phenomena which he hadn’t known was possible here. The headache made his memory hazy, but it slowly came back to him over the course of a minute or two. He’d activated the magnifying shield emitter, and it had worked. The shield came out bigger and stronger than before.
In fact, it had been overkill. The shield had first appeared at nearly half his own considerable height, but it hadn’t stopped there. It had continued to grow until it was larger than he was, and even then it hadn’t seemed ready to stop. As it grew out of control, his AP bar had drained like the bottom had gone missing.
In a matter of seconds he’d expended all of his energy, which had then caused him to pass out. That had apparently cut off the supply to the device, because it was now lying next to him on the floor, inert but otherwise undamaged. He should have stuck to only one set of magnifiers at first.
This led to yet another round of experiments and he tested the limits of this new knowledge. A shield that made him pass out or use up all of his AP was completely useless, so there needed to be limits. At the same time, he liked the idea of being able to break out an enormous shield like that in an emergency. Maybe with Gray Guardian on hand to force feed him with recovery options?
The end result was the most complex pieces of technology that he had yet crafted. His shield emitter now had a collapsible ring that would define the boundary of the shield. There was also a control system in place that would allow him to adjust the amount of magnification up and down depending on his needs. With the ring limiting the size of the shield, the excess energy would instead go into making it tougher and more resilient.
And if the need arose, he could drop the limiters and max out the shield in both size and strength. Even if he didn’t pass out, such a shield would last less than two seconds before leaving him utterly exhausted. He’d been knocked out by the power another half dozen times before coming to that conclusion. Those figures would improve as he grew stronger, but this was a strong start.
New Item Crafted!
Name: Hard Light Emitter
Type: Booster
Quality: Uncommon
Effect:
* Increase the diameter of a hard light shield by up to 150%
* Increase the durability of a hard light shield by up to 40%
* Increase AP cost proportional to increases
* Shield limits can be removed to create a large and powerful shield at an extreme AP cost
You have reached level 9!
Free Points: 4
You have gained a new Ability for Hard Light Construct:
Name: Shatter Blow
Type: Special Attack
Cooldown: 20 seconds
* On contact with an enemy, cause your hammerhead to explode
* In addition to the normal attack damage, inflict additional explosive and piercing damage to all enemies within a small area
* The hammerhead reforms automatically after the attack is completed.
That was a lot of information. Apparently he’d been right on the precipice of several new jumps in power, and he’d finally gotten himself over the edge. He couldn’t stop himself from grinning like a madman. He couldn’t wait to test out all the new improvements.