Jordan slowly sat down as he looked at the screens popping up. He’d been on his feet for a while now, and his left foot was oddly more sore than the right for some reason. Anyway, he probably needed a second to sit and take a break as it was. At the same time though, he made sure to summon his drone and have it keep patrolling while he then gave his full attention to the next screen.

New Class Skills available!

Pick from one of the following:

Active:

Skill: Summon Land Drone

Grade: E1

Scaling: Wisdom, Intelligence

Description: Create a land-based, autonomous battle drone to temporarily fight by the user’s side.

Base Cost: 2.5 TP per cast, 5 TP per minute to sustain.

Skill: Field Workbench

Grade: E1

Scaling: Wisdom, Intelligence

Description: Create a temporary workbench stocked with essential tools that allow for simple maintenance of repair of most standard machines.

Base Cost: 5 TP per cast, 10 TP per minute to sustain.

Passive:

Skill: Basic Technomancy

Grade: E1

Scaling: Intelligence, Wisdom

Description: Increases the user’s ability to fuse the capabilities of magic and machines into the hybrid known as magitech.

So there was good news and bad news here. The good news was that the System had unexpectedly been nice enough to give him a choice, rather than throw a random Skill that he just had to take and deal with. The bad news was also that it’d given him a choice, because now he actually had to think about it and choose just one.

And man, was it a choice indeed.

Okay, so it said that the Advancement Crystal would have an influence, and I think I’m seeing that in the last option. At least that one was pretty explicit about adding magic to its description, so there’s that. Now, on the other hand… does papa want a new drone for his birthday? I think so, but… what does the System count as essential tools? Because if I can hit that TP regen, then a free, pre-stocked workbench would be kind of nice to have.

First things first, Basic Technomancy was almost immediately eliminated. While he wouldn’t have complained too much if that’d been the only result of a random selection, it was clearly the inferior option. But it did establish the precedent that at least one choice would be directly themed around the Class inside the Advancement Crystal, so at least there was that going for it. Yet not much else, he just had to admit.

Now granted, the new drone Skill would be hard to use concurrently with his original one. At least in terms of how their costs compared to his current man TP and TP regen.

His max TP was 18 at the moment. So if he cast both Skills at the same time, their combined base cost would immediately bring that down to 12.5. Then to maintain them would require an upkeep of 11 TP per minute. So after factoring in his regen of 4.86 per minute and doing the math…

Huh, almost exactly two minutes. That was honestly quite a lot better than he had initially expected. For a fight, just a couple of minutes would actually be fairly long while. So if one person attacked him, Jordan could just turn around and turn it into three versus one. Where they would have to deal with both of his drones, and him as he also blasted away with his Energy Pistol.

Actually… two versus one would be good enough. Assuming that this drone also has the same max range, why would I even need to stay in the area? I can just book it, and let the drones do all the work. Same logic as when it was just Summon Air Drone, but now there’ll be two, so it’s like… double the logic. Yeah, that probably made sense.

Now as much as Jordan’s heart already belonged to the idea of a second drone, there was a part of him that still valiantly tried to rebel. That tried to stake a claim in the name of the Field Workbench, and convince the rest of his heart that it would be the better choice. That while a second drone would indeed be cool, this would actually make it easier for him to make use of the Tinker Skill outside of fighting. Once he had a secured shelter and the required TP regen, he could just keep the workbench up at all times and use that to work on whatever his heart desired.

And that was true, Jordan had to be a tad pragmatic in his expectations. When it came to these Skills, he’d already made a choice. The decision that would forever decide what every Skill would be like had come from earlier that day, as long ago as that already felt.

Class: Combat Engineer

Description: While on the frontlines of conflict, one has little time to focus on perfecting their craft. This Class focuses on still being able to utilize their engineering prowess for the machines of war, but while also having the power to effectively hold their own in battle.

Benefits: +1 bonus to Wisdom and Intelligence per Level.

The System had made it pretty clear that there was a line between combat and non-combat Classes. His Class seemed to be something that couldn’t quite be called a true hybrid, but was relatively close to said line on the metaphorical scale. Rather than build and create permanent machines, the most it seemed it’d ever give him was effectively just field maintenance.

So with that in mind, he could know what to expect from the Field Workbench and any future Skills like it. They wouldn’t be anything that allowed him to do something like build his own battle drones from scratch. But instead would let him repair them, if the ability to do so ever came from another source. Now granted, that source was pretty much guaranteed to come in the form of a Subclass. Since as the System had also explained, as he willed for it to pull up those old screens…

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The user may select either type to be their main Class. Then later on at D Grade, they will select the other as their Subclass. Upon final selection, it will be impossible for the user to ever change which one is their main Class or Subclass.

He didn’t know how long it would take to reach D Grade. It could only be assumed that was through reaching a certain Level. That could be 25, 50, or even 100. Who knew for sure until anyone got there? In any case, he was willing to wait until then. Especially survival would ideally be less of a daily goal by then anyway, versus just having more firepower now for said survival.

On that note, he had now fully made up his mind on what he’d be picking.

Selected new Skill: Summon Land Drone

Finalize the user’s selection?

Yes, Jordan affirmed. With that now done, he went ahead and immediately addressed the next screen awaiting his attention.

Advancement Crystal absorbed!

Please select the following for its essence’s use:

Influence next Skill gain.

Or

Influence current Skill evolution.

Once again, just to see what would happen now, Jordan tried to select getting a new Skill. This time, however, a different kind of pop-up appeared.

Insufficient essence for this option!

Current Advancement Crystal essence: 0/10

Wait… only 10? Really? So if I can assume that each gem adds at least one point of essence, then I should be able to also gain a second new Skill! And if I just need one for the evolution and then another 10 more for the next… Holy shit, that means that these gems are worth even more than I imagined, Jordan thought as he stared at it with some disbelief.

His thoughts quickly went back to the Mightiest Slayer leaderboard. He had already assumed that the total number of kills would jump up from the doubled Experience and Advancement Crystals. But if 22 total gems could lead to such a massive boost between the two options, then it was only a matter of time before people slaughtered each other to at least get that many. And then even more, as they inevitably sought the next step of progression to get ahead of everyone else.

To make matters worse, you didn’t even need to be the one to do the killing in order to turn the corpses into gems. One could only imagine the kinds of fights that’ll eventually break out amongst the survivors of a clash between large groups. Because why share those kinds of spoils when this System was clearly showing a theme in rewarding that kind of selfish behavior to put yourself first?

But for now, it meant that Jordan could take as much as three more steps forward today. First things first, he needed to be 100% sure that the first evolution would only cost one gem, and that he hadn’t misunderstood that implication.

Alrighty, let’s go with current Skill evolution.

Skill evolution is confirmed.

Please choose one Class Skill from the following to be the subject of evolution:

Summon Land Drone-E1

Summon Air Drone-E1

Zap-E1

Overcharge-E1

Tinker-E1

Notably absent was the single General Skill that both Jordan and everyone else in his group had received. The gained Skills had only directly said that they were Class Skills, so he supposed that it was at least consistent in that distinction. It did make him wonder if there would be a way to gain more General Skills. But that was for future Jordan to find out.

Right then, let’s not pick something too quickly. Because first things first… Jordan mentally focused back on the connection to his patrolling drone. It was still doing its job, without any problems. So he supposed that it wouldn’t hurt to desummon it and be inefficient with his TP usage for just a quick moment.

As one drone disappeared, another soon took its place.

Appearing on the ground next to him, Jordan once again felt a rush of intuitive knowledge as he used the new Skill for the first time. The land drone was about the same size as its older sibling, so comparable to to a basketball. Though rather than it frame being a core with four parts extended out for the propellers, the land drone was just a fully centralized unit.

In shape, it was honestly a lot closer to a modern tank than anything else. It even had the matching treads to make the comparison more accurate. Yet as if to make up for the dramatic lack of mobility compared to the other drone, this one clearly had more firepower. Because while the air drone had just a single gun hanging off the middle of its underside, this little guy had two. Again in a similar style as his Energy Pistol, but with a pair of barrels that were side by side and sticking out the front of the main body.

As the final physical difference, Jordan knew that his drone was a lot tougher. Partially because just by looking at it, one could tell that despite the similar size, this guy had a lot more weight and heft to him. And just from the System-granted information, it was actually just reinforced with thicker pieces for its body in order to withstand extra punishment.

When it came to the specs beyond the actual body, there were a couple things of note. First of all, the max range remained the same at a solid 25 miles. For the max speed, however, it was exactly half that of the air drone at only 50 miles per hour. Which Jordan supposed couldn’t be a subject of too much complaint, since that was still pretty fast and only somewhat under highway driving speeds.

You know what? Screw it, I’ll be able to do one more of both anyway after this. So, System, let’s just double down for now and evolve Summon Land Drone, Jordan decided on what was effectively just a whim. This new drone was already cool, but now what if it could be made even cooler with a Mage-sourced evolution?

Selected Skill for evolution: Summon Land Drone

New Skill evolutions available!

Pick from one of the following:

As three more options popped in front of him, Jordan only needed to give them a brief glance to already come to a conclusion. The new Skills were all at least decent options, but as for the evolution and the options it gave him.

This was the good stuff.