The music was playing so loudly, Pepper didn’t even hear Andrea enter the workshop. He practically jumped off his barstool when she gently grazed her hand across his back. A quick adjustment on his holodex music control module and the volume lowered itself.
He turned to look at his girlfriend and saw she had already put the fast food off to the side of his workbench. She had dashed off to the side of the room and was giving Amprage some affectionate attention by the time he turned around. By the looks of it, Andrea was still wearing her work clothes from Eli’s Equine Sanctuary. Brown dirt coated her blue jeans, and there were a few pieces of straw sticking out of random places.
“Thanks for bringing me dinner.”
“Of course. It’s kinda a part of the whole boyfriend girlfriend thing.” Andrea smiled and gave him a wink. She turned back towards Amprage for a moment. “Okay, I’m gonna go say hi to your dad now.”
She started to walk slowly over to Pepper as Amprage said, “Or you could just stay here with me.”
They both giggled as Andrea reached him and wrapped her arms around him. She snuggled up and he could feel the exhaustion in both of their bodies. Andrea slowly pulled back and looked down at him. “You know, the first thing you need to buy when you win some prize money is a spa.”
Pepper’s mind wandered for a moment and he couldn’t find a single counterpoint to her idea. “I’ll be sure to add that to the list of items to get,” he said with a smile.
He reached over, grabbed the bag of food, and pulled it close. Andrea reached her hand into the bag, pulled out a large cup of French fries, and started to munch away before he had even had a chance to glance at the contents.
“Figures,” he said, flaring his eyebrows at her.
She shrugged her shoulders at him. “Can’t do anything about it. Guess you’ll just have to learn to live.” She ended with a wink, then turned and utilized a fry to point at his golem. “Looks like it’s coming along.”
Pepper huffed and his shoulders slouched. “I swear fans don’t realize how much goes into these things. At least at the club level.” He started to unwrap his dinner and looked at the crispy chicken sandwich. “And you had them add the bacon!” His mouth started to water, and he smiled.
Andrea smiled and started to lightly dance in delight at the comment. “Ha! Someone must be loved.” She tilted her head towards the clay figure. “It’s kinda crazy to see how much you’ve done in a month. You know?”
“I guess I didn’t really think about it. It’s just one thing after another. I had to make sure I got my carbon fiber conduits formed first. I wanted to go that route this time—make it easier for running the cables back and forth to the rune cards.”
“Can’t they just use the magic stuff?” Andrea asked.
“They tried that out years ago. The problem was that you couldn’t get solid sustainable energy flow to power the runes. It wasn’t worth the inefficiencies, and no one even tries. Having dedicated power from the cores has been found to be the best, but then it helps the runes incorporate their effects with one another.”
“Makes sense,” she said and smiled as she chomped down on a new fry. “When will you add the rune cards?”
Pepper stood up and walked over to his partially formed golem. He pointed towards the upper torso. “I’ll start working on them here probably tomorrow.” He tried to talk over the full bite he had just taken. “I’m going to put my core here, and I’m thinking I’ll do my controller card here, where a spinal column would normally go. This will allow me to reinforce the front plating to act as a shield.”
“But you’ll be exposed in the back.”
“Yup.”
“Aren’t you worried about that? Seems like a big risk,” Andrea said, leaning back against the workbench.
“I don’t know if there is any golem that doesn’t have a weakness of some kind. If you add too much armament, then you’ll be super slow. None at all, you’ll be fast, but taken out with a flick. That’s where the build strategy is really important, but then adding in a tactical plan and fighting style that allows you to put your strengths out front.”
Andrea flared her eyes and wobbled her head back and forth sarcastically. “So what’s your big strategy, then, Mr. Golem Builder?”
“Maybe you’ll have to wait and see.”
She rolled her eyes. “Or… you could just tell your girlfriend. Who am I gonna tell anyways, my dad? You know I don’t have friends.”
He chuckled. “I won this gravity rune at the last KBVS tournament. I’m not really sure how I want to incorporate it. Unfortunately, I don’t have the additional add-on for my golem training module, so I can’t really see how to make it work in the simulation.”
Andrea pressed her lips together. Her playful expression was enough to inform him that she had no idea what he was referring to. Pepper sighed and took another bite of his dinner. A few seconds later, he resumed.
“There are many ways to train with your golem. But the majority of people will use a simulator. Basically a video game, but more technically tuned to your build. You take all the data received from your rune analysis, and the holocube will create the 3D model. It allows you to go through and practice controlling your golem and see how it should perform in a match.”
“So you’re going to install this gravity card, and then you’ll put the data into your simulator. “
“Yup.”
“And you’ll play around and see how it all works. Then you go and beat everyone at the club match.”
Pepper chuckled. “Something like that.”
“See, I get it.” She winked and then walked over and gave him a hug and a kiss. “Okay, I need to go take care of Dad.”
“Okay. Thanks for dinner.”
“Of course.” She winked again and walked out of the shop.
Pepper turned and looked at his golem. His mind now filled with thoughts of the gravity rune and how he would tactically approach his next match. He glanced at the shelf where he kept his rune cards.
He reached up and brought them down onto the workbench. A small knot formed in his stomach and his heart sank as he remembered the moment he had chosen to steal them. Though Kyle had gifted them to him after the fact, it still hadn’t replaced the memory of the time when he had felt entitled to something that truly wasn’t his.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
His mind quickly flashed to the tear that had streaked down Kyle’s face when they were riding in the truck. Kyle could have easily kept the rune cards, but he’d insisted that Pepper have them. Kyle gave these to me because he believed in me. He wants to see me succeed, and that is exactly what I’m going to do.
He picked up the two Ronin energy refinement runes and let their reflection sparkle in the workshop’s light. Then he set them off to the left while he looked over the Dark Dwarf energy strike and the Koto force blast next to it. Both of these are great… and I already know how I plan to work them into my fighting technique.
Pepper then grabbed the Dark Dwarf gravity rune and put it next to the two energy refinement cards. His mind struggled with the thought of balancing out an offensive and a defensive approach. He had nothing in regards to defense beside his ability to continue to add more physical armor. Unless… I could use the force blast as more of a defensive option that keeps me at the safe distance that I need. There is a great offensive use to it, but… if I use it as a dual purpose, that could supplement my defensive shortcomings.
His eyes kept focusing on the gravity rune. He couldn’t really explain the sensation other than saying it was a hunch. This rune could be the one item that gave him an ultimate advantage over his competitors at KBVS. It was then that the RuneCast episode replayed in his mind. The ability to now utilize indie cards in the League.
He grabbed hold of the gravity and energy refinement runes and lifted them up side by side. If this doesn’t work, I will have completely ruined two incredible rune cards… but if it works… this could be an epic custom build. He quickly flipped the cards over and began to look at how each card incorporated the different chips.
There was a significant size difference between the two card wafers. The Dark Dwarf was significantly smaller, and its Crossfire Dispersion Channels, or CFDC, didn’t look nearly as capable as the Ronin. Pepper, now curious, opened up his holodex and navigated his way to the technical spec library. He was able to cross load both technical specifications into one comparable window.
He narrowed in on the CFDC ratings. His curiosity was answered when he saw that the Ronin was rated at a 12 hex Power Disbursement Rating, or PDR, compared to the Dark Dwarf at a measly 4 hex PDR. He took a final bite of his sandwich and tossed the crumpled wrapper into the trashcan. A 12 hex PDR makes sense for the refinement rune. It needs to relay the refined energy to the runes that need it. Whereas the gravity rune is merely distorting the gravity field around the area of effect.
Pepper then looked at the Flash Energy Cache reserves of each chip. In that category, the Dark Dwarf rune was far better than the Ronin. The Dark Dwarf’s FEC had at a surprising rating of 10,000 spark cycles compared to the Ronin with only 1,000 spark cycles. Once Pepper saw it with his own eyes, it all made sense. The Ronin didn’t require a high spark cycle because it was being fed energy from the core.
He then moved onto the Rune Processing Unit comparison. There wasn’t a great difference between the two. But the Ronin did have a higher performance rating of 7 quantum FLOPS of processing power, compared to the Dark Dwarf with 6.3 quantum FLOPS. Pepper tapped his fingers on the workbench. The more he looked at the technical specs of the two rune cards, the greater the temptation.
His curiosity and excitement finally boiled over and he reached for his soldering kit. He quickly rearranged his workspace to ensure he would be safe working on the cards. He wanted to make every attempt to avoid damaging the cards if his experiment failed, and he wanted to try to repair them both.
He looked over each card intently and then decided it was best to utilize the Ronin as the baseplate for this custom job. His gaze narrowed in on the back soldering points of the rune card, and he meticulously brought the metal to its melting point, disconnecting each pin individually.
The process seemed to take forever, but he had finally removed the rune from the card and moved on to the Flash Energy Cache. Thankfully the smaller chip only required half the time to unsolder it from the board. Pepper then transitioned over to the Dark Dwarf card and went through the same process of removing the rune and the FEC.
All the required pieces were now separated out and he went about connecting the new configuration. Though his hands began to cramp after the long day of working on a multitude of different items, he still powered through and forced his body to comply with his wishes. The tension of the process and his proximity to the hot soldering iron caused small beads of sweat to run down his face.
Pepper placed the tool back onto its stand, then stood up and backed away from the workbench. He took a moment to stretch, wipe his face, and take a few deep breaths. Amprage looked up at him with a tilted head of curiosity, but he ignored his bonded familiar. Instead, he slowly turned back towards his creation and walked forward.
He wiped his hands one final time to ensure there was no moisture on them and then picked up the card. The Ronin wafer was a deep crimson red in color. Gold and copper inlays ran from one chip mount to the other, and all pointed towards the center, where the newly installed gravity rune sat. It had a warm gold and yellow gradient to it. A slightly darker brown etched rune was suspended within the center of its small viewing window.
Pepper grabbed a spare 8 × 8 GTC 12V cable. He quickly plugged it into the card and then went to connect it to his holocube. His mind was racing faster than the holocube and his fingers, and he impatiently waited for the analysis and diagnostic application to load up. Though it only took a few seconds, it still wasn’t fast enough, and Pepper began to tap his foot rapidly.
The screen flashed to life, but rather than the application opening up to its full capacity, it displayed a notification in plain block text. System Update Required. Your system will automatically apply critical updates now… please do not turn off your system or attempt to exit the application. This update will take approximately 1 hour.
“One hour! Nothing takes one hour any more! Where is your server located where it takes that long to download the data? Mars?” Pepper ran his fingers through his hair. He pulled it tight and finally released his grip to ease the tension. “This is… just… dumb!” He turned around and put his hands on his hips. “Well, now what am I going to do?”
“You could take me for a walk,” Amprage said, still looking at him with a tilted head of curiosity.
“What?” Pepper asked, ensuring he had heard his familiar correctly.
“You have been neglecting me lately, and you could simply take me for a walk to fill the time while you wait.”
“But… Amp… you don’t need to go on a walk. What exactly are you going to do, virtual pee on the fire hydrants you see?”
“If it would make you feel better, I would happily simulate the urination process. However, there are many benefits to walking, most of which would be your current mood.”
“My current mood? What’s wrong with my current mood, and how exactly can you… wait… you did an essence scan, didn’t you?” Pepper’s head dipped at an angle as he looked at the metal dog.
“Yes, I did an essence scan, and my readings show that you are clearly upset and in need of decompressing from the situation that is currently causing the tension.”
Pepper lifted his hands and conceded. “Fine… we can go for a walk.”
“Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.” Amprage jumped down from the recliner and started to zoom around.
Pepper couldn’t help but laugh. “Why are you like this?”
“It’s the dog personality profile. I can’t help myself, but I must say, I am getting quite dizzy!” The golem ramped his speed up until he lost control and came to a screeching halt as he slammed into the wall. “Ow.”
Pepper chuckled. “You didn’t even feel that.”
“It was more emotional damage than physical damage, Pepper.”
The two made it out into the backyard, and Pepper started to drift towards the side of the house that would lead them out to the street. He was heading to the gate when Amprage started to wobble towards the house.
“Wait! I need to get my leash.”
“You don’t have a leash. Heck, Amp, you don’t even need a leash. I literally am talking to you.” The entire conversation baffled him, but sure enough, Amp bolted right through the back screen door, twisting the frame into a mangled mess of cheap metal. “What the heck, Amp!”
“Sorry not sorry—I’m so excited that it’s overwhelming my internal circuitry,” Amp yelled back. It was just a flash of a second before the familiar returned, and lo and behold he had a leash draped in his mouth.
“When did you get that? And where exactly did it come from?”
“Dad got it for me! Megan forced him to buy it.”
Pepper pressed his lips together and shook his head. “That figures.”
The two wandered off, and Pepper couldn’t help but feel his spirits lift. He watched Amp waddle up and down the sidewalk, the leash dragging on either side of him. The entire sight was one he wouldn’t forget for a while, but as his eyes shifted upwards, he took in the sparking universe looking down on him.
“We are about to take a bold step forward, Amp… and destiny is not ready for what we’re about to accomplish.”