Sparing no time, Jordan made the decision to start with test three before revisiting two. He could have breakfast first, and then keep experimenting as he ate.
He approached the Transmuter with both the lit stick and the Rabbit, after grabbing it. While the fire was still going, Jordan placed both inside the machine and made sure that both sliders were closed. As he heard the click to indicate that they were fully secure, a mental picture was already forming in his mind.
Jordan wanted roasted Rabbit on a skewer. He imagined the wood as fully processed, like the sticks used for a kebab. Already separated pieces of Rabbit meat as a kebab, to be precise. For this one, the organs had yet to be removed and were still inside of it. But that was fine, as it would let him see how the Transmuter dealt with the extra material that was intentionally left out of the desired image.
The large machine vibrated once more as it kicked to life. Notes already in hand, Jordan counted aloud out the processing time.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi…”
This time, it was by the count of five that the vibrations came to an end. So about a full second longer than the pair of tested arrows from last night. Before anything else, he then checked what the cost had been for the Transmuter’s Charge.
Charge: 98.6%
“Alright, so a decreased cost of 0.1% from before. Let’s see if that’s possibly because it ate the excess materials or not.” Jordan went over the output slot, and opened the sliding glass. Even before reaching for the object inside, his mouth started to water the moment the delicious smell of cooked kebab hit his nostrils.
Once again, the machine had done exactly as he’d desired. Jordan pulled out a skewer whose length was almost entirely covered by small chunks of meat. Once again, the transmuted item was only fairly warm to the touch, though the meat definitely appeared to be fully cooked through.
Experience Earned!
+24 EXP
As the pop-up flashed in his vision, he took a bit off the top of the Rabbit kebab. As far as he could tell, it really hadn’t included any of the organs and had shaved a bit of mass off the stick to make it a thin skewer. In terms of if the fire was even necessary, he would find that out in a minute.
“Little bland, definitely needs some seasoning. Hmm, slightly gross thing to think about while eating, but if I collected sweat and such, it should be able to separate and extract the salt, right? Eh, maybe something to try at least once at some point,” Jordan pondered as he took another bite.
Anyway, he really should redo the Overcharge test now. Just to get it out of the way so he can move on to trying more new experiments, if nothing else. Putting away the pencil and notes so that he had a free hand while still eating, he then pulled out a third arrow.
Only about a minute later, Jordan took another bite of kebab while logging the result. It was now confirmed that his past self from last night hadn’t just been imagining things. Test number Two-One was an identical repeat from before. Slightly more powerful vibration and then heat coming off the finished item, but otherwise no difference compared to not using Overcharge on the Transmuter.
Now the time for what he personally logged as Test Three-One. Since he still considered cooking more Rabbit meat into a kebab as the same test, just without the added fire this time. To keep the base from getting dirty, Jordan went back outside to once again skin, behead, and then bleed out another Rabbit. And then, in the time it took to initially bleed a bit before slowing down, he had grabbed a new stick of roughly the same size as the first one.
It felt a bit tedious to repeat the process when the machine would have easily deskinned and removed the bones anyway, but it had to be done. The point wasn’t to make things easier for himself, at least not yet. The point was to replicate the results of an experiment while only changing one factor. If one didn’t care and just let all the factors be completely different, then why even bother trying to repeat the test?
“Results of Test Three-One,” Jordan was soon noting after deposing the second kebab into his pocket space. “Identical to Test Three in every noticeable way. Adding fire seems to have made no difference in either the result or the Charge usage. For the arrows, I was unsure if the shafts were made of real wood due to being given by the System, or if they were some alternate material. But now, it can be concluded that the Industrial Transmuter has no trouble working with organic matter.”
It had to be noted that at the end of the day, Jordan had studied to be an engineer, not a labcoat scientist. Which meant that when it came to the full process of the scientific method, he was willing to work with what could called an… abridged version. As long it worked and got what he needed to know recorded, then it was fine, right? No need to sweat the details beyond what actually matters from an entirely practical standpoint.
In any case, it was time for the grand reveal of the fourth test.
As much as Jordan did like the taste of Rabbit, he was more of a medium-rare steak kind of guy. Yet until the day that he encountered cows on this planet, or at least a very similar animal, proper beef steak appeared to be in short supply. But in that case, why not make some himself? Rabbit or cow, both were just protein and fats in terms of their fundamental building blocks. So if he just pictured his ideal steak and focused extra hard on it specifically looking and tasting like beef, it might work.
Jordan put another whole Rabbit into the machine. Thanks to the hunting done by his group, a fair number of their bodies had been picked up. By his count, even some of those that his drone had killed but then he, admittedly like a bit of a fool, had chosen to ignore picking up were present. Someone else had picked up the slack on that front, before their chest had been ripped apart and…
He tried to forcibly blink away the mental image. When it came to focusing his mind’s eye, he didn't even want to know what would happen if he accidentally pictured their face while transmuting meat. If the Transmuter even accepted the accidental image, the resulting product would likely be pretty morbid, to say the least.
After taking a few seconds of just breathing deeply in and out to clear his head, Jordan activated the machine. Or at least… he tried to activate it. But when he tried to will it to start creating the steak he was picturing, it remained inert. Of his tests so far, this was the first one that actually got rejected.
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“Alright,” Jordan began to note. “It seems that the Transmuter actually is rather strict with what it considers the original material. According to its own judgment, Rabbit and beef are too different despite both being meat. I will now proceed with an alternative idea as Test Four-One. This time, it’ll simply be the creation of a Rabbit steak. However, rather than literally being beef, I’ll try to focus on simply making it taste the same as beef steak.”
With the Rabbit still inside the input slot, all he had to do was reimagine the desired product before trying again. Once again, however, there was no response from the machine.
“Huh, actually expected that one to work. But if I have to make a guess, maybe even just tasting like beef would require a change in the fundamental composition of the material? I don’t know if it’s similar a matter of there not being enough fat or something. Or if it’s an even deeper issue of the protein structure of the meat itself being too different. Will require further testing,” Jordan concluded.
But that sounded like something that would require multiple tries in the form of various iterations of the test. In any case, he decided that all the different versions of Test Four could be saved for later. For now, he just pulled the Rabbit back out and returned it to his pocket space. Now was the time to move on to Test Five, which will be-
Experience Earned!
+39 EXP
Level Up!
Level 4 to Level 5
“Oh! Must have found another Level 3; that’s pretty cool. The second one for today, so maybe they’re just more active in the forest during the day? Anyway, let’s get these Free Points spent first before I forget,” Jordan decided as just a quick change of pace.
As for where they would be allocated this time around…
Hmm, good question. It’s really a choice between two things. Do I want to keep pumping up my TP regen until it can at least support both of my drones’ upkeeps at the same time? Or do I want to focus on either Endurance or Vitality? Splitting the Free Points between both would probably be a smart way to steadily make it harder to get sick, hurt, and improve my stamina. At least, that should be an overall assessment of what both would help with. Actually, what am I even thinking?
It wasn’t really an honest choice to make; Jordan just wanted an excuse to repeatedly justify his already predetermined decision. Of course he was going to aim for keeping both of his drones online 24/7. To decide anything else would only mean that madness had finally claimed his poor mind.
In fact, it might already be too late for him. The very fact that he’d gone with Intelligence for his last Level instead of more Wisdom could only have been due to an instance of at least momentarily going insane. Hopefully, it was merely a lapse of judgment due to his exhaustion by that point last night and not a sign of mental cracks already forming. But once the Free Points were allocated, Jordan took a look at his now updated screen.
System Info:
Class: Combat Engineer
Subclass: N/A
Traits: Tech Savvy
Titles: Initial Merger, Adept of Advancement, High Lord of the 42nd
Level: 5
EXP: 2/3600
Grade: E
Resources:
Tech Points: 26/26
Tech Points Regen: 8.94/Min
Stats:
Strength: 30
Dexterity: 33
Vitality: 35
Endurance: 32
Intelligence: 53
Wisdom: 58
Will: 31
Free Points: 0
General Skills:
Active: Appraise-E5
Class Skills:
Active: Summon Land Drone-E2
Active: Summon Air Drone-E1
Active: Zap-E1
Active: Overcharge-E1
Passive: Tinker-E1
Huh, another jump in the new EXP requirement. You know what? I said that I’d try to figure out the math for that later. Well, later is now, and I already have a decent sample size for the pattern. Just have to see if the math ends up being simple enough for me to figure out right now, Jordan thought. Better to just get it out of the way now, versus pushing the matter even further down into the vaguely eternal future known as later.
The known sequence so far was as follows: 100, 225, 900, 2025, and now 3600. A pretty fast increase in the rate of required Experience Points between Levels, all things considered.
So from 100, you could just multiply it by 2.25 to get 225. Then, from that to 900, that’ll be multiplied by 4. After that, multiply by… huh, 2.25 again to reach 2025. And finally, multiply that by… hmm. Jordan actually had to scribble out the calculation on a piece of paper, rather than doing it in his head again.
1.78 if you round up, but technically it’s 1.77 infinitely repeating. Okay, I can kind of appreciate the System not keeping the formula too simple, even if that’s now more work for me to figure it out. How about we try this next, then?
Minutes dragged on as Jordan continued to think of and then try new ideas to crack the sequence. After a little bit, he went over to the nearest table and its paired chair so that he could actually sit down. Plus it meant that after placing the paper down, he could jot down notes with one hand while finishing his breakfast with the other. Something which ended up being both kebabs, as he switched to mindlessly biting off chunks of the second one soon after finishing the first.
“Ahah! Fucking finally!” Jordan cheered a little while after the second skewer was also cleaned off. The resulting formula actually wasn’t that complicated, not at all. It’d just ended up being rather specific in an annoying-to-figure-out kind of way. If Jordan’s solution was correct, which he did feel rather confident that it was, then it could be written out fairly easily.
(Current Level times 15) times (Current Level times 15). That would result in the next sequence for the following Level’s EXP requirement. So, if you took that from when he was Level 4, the fully solved formula would be as such:
(4*15)*(4*15) = 3600
It had just thrown him off for a while because the initial EXP requirement for Level 1 was outside the formula. Maybe the System just liked an even 100 as the starting point, or something. But once he had the random idea to start looking at it from Level 2’s requirement of 225 as the real starting point, then things had steadily begun to click together. Perhaps it’d been designed this way because they started for Level 1, not Level 0. And if you were to put 0 into the formula, then the result would obviously just be 0.
Once again, the power of brute forcing random guesses until you stumble upon the answer proves its value! Jordan proudly thought to himself.
It was a sentiment that would likely have made many mathematicians shake their heads in shame. But once again, he was an engineer, not a mathematician! And if a process works, then it works! As long as the final result remained valid, then it didn’t matter what others thought about the method for how you got there.
Now with that done, he could move on to further testing with the equipment he gathered, like turning that helmet into an actual bucket. But it was still good that he had focused on the formula now. If he had decided to just put it off, then he would just entirely forgotten about-
“Oh, damn it!” Jordan cursed, smacking his forehead. Of course that thought would trigger something that he had managed to completely forget about. Something that he should have remembered to check right after waking up, before he even came down the ladder. But he hadn’t, because it turned out that he truly was still a forgetful moron in disguise.
The mysterious purple sphere from last night.