Jordan wasn’t sure what starting the Skill at E2 actually did. There was no clear indicator or note from the System about it, beyond the fact that it was clearly stated as such for each presented Skill. He could only really assume that it might only come up after he finalized his Skill selection, or that it was just a built-in boost that it would already come with.

Maybe even as part of the inherent knowledge after using it once, he could tell if the System had actually pre-selected an evolution for it. In any case, he would only find out after he finalized his choice. Something Jordan did with little hesitation, as he already knew that this Skill would be immediately applicable to his intended project.

With a new Skill and evolution under his belt, Jordan then took a proud look at his current Status.

General Info:

Name: Jordan Joyner

Species: Human (Earth)

Guild: N/A

System Info:

Class: Combat Engineer

Subclass: N/A

Traits: Tech Savvy

Titles: Initial Merger, Adept of Advancement, High Lord of the 42nd

Level: 6

EXP: 237/5625

Grade: E

Resources:

Tech Points: 27/27

Tech Points Regen: 9.70/Min

Stats:

Strength: 30

Dexterity: 33

Vitality: 35

Endurance: 32

Intelligence: 54

Wisdom: 65

Will: 31

Free Points: 0

General Skills:

Active: Appraise-E5

Class Skills:

Active: Summon Land Drone-E4

Active: Summon Air Drone-E1

Active: Zap-E1

Active: Overcharge-E1

Passive: Mental Blueprint-E2

Passive: Tinker-E1

As for actually trying out the Passive to see if it got him any inherent information, he’d have to wait until he got back home first. Though he’d actually have to get some real hands-on working with tech to get that going, most likely. Since even with his handling of the Transmuter so far, it hadn’t really felt like Tinker had ever been activated.

Jordan hopped back onto his drone. Even from its own evolution, its guns didn’t really look all that different. Though now that he thought about it, he’d always seen the difference only after a new instance of the Skill, hadn’t he? Somewhere in the distance, a drone had its TP supply cut off. Though it would still be ten minutes until it fully took effect, so something to be resummoned after he returned to his Kingdom.

But on that note, he did make just a slight detour before heading back to his Kingdom. Since he had those few extra minutes to kill anyway after the driving time, Jordan decided to spend them taking a look across the boundary of the wildfire. He followed along the path of the line of where the leaves had been burnt to ash and where they’d been left untouched. Yet rather than just a weird coincidence in one spot, it really did seem to be a line that extended for as long as he could see while riding his drone alongside it.

Looking at it was actually kind of unnerving, if Jordan had to be honest. It wasn’t just a line, but a perfectly straight one. When practically everything in nature had at least some level of imperfection, if you looked closely enough, this was just eerie. Something about it just felt wrong. Like a boundary line between chunks of where a video game environment began and ended, but placed in real life instead.

And yet… as he thought about it, some aspect of it did seem familiar. Like he’d seen this sort of thing already, at some point in the last couple of days. But where? And when? It was just the vague sort of familiarity, from another instance of it that he might not have recognized at the time.

The line was a clear boundary. One that was near the river was the only landmark of note, acting as a sort of separator between the river and the forest. A separator… between the forest and…

Jordan’s eyes widened with sudden clarity. The field! The trees between that grass field where this had all started had been placed in a straight line. Jordan was sure of it; he just hadn’t noticed at the time due to how distracted he’d been with the Grass Panther and reeling from the deaths of his group.

It would be an extra detour to delay the planned schedule for today, but Jordan ordered his drone to begin heading there anyway. It wouldn’t take him that long to get there, really. Not when his drone was still moving at 50-

Wait a fucking second. The evolution for the guns hasn’t applied yet, but neither has the debuff for its speed or toughness! That’s… huh. That feels like something that could be potentially exploited, right? Like someone, somewhere, will find a way to take advantage of that as a glitch. Or is that actually an intended feature, System? Jordan asked, to which there was of course no response from the System itself.

It was to be noted that, unlike the first evolution, this last one hadn’t come with any changes to how the TP cost of the land drones functioned. Though perhaps that was comparing apples to oranges anyway, since the Fundamental Evolution had entirely changed how the resource cost worked.

With that as some very interesting food for thought, Jordan speeded his way back to the field of grass. With some liberal uses of Overcharge to get there even faster, something which was quickly becoming the new standard, it didn’t take him long to reach it.

When he did, all Jordan needed was just one look to confirm that he’d been right. Despite the tree trunks obviously being of varying sizes, there was an invisible line between the forest and field that none of them passed. It actually looked quite obvious, in retrospect. But with this and the one by the river to officially establish the beginning of a pattern, what did all of this even mean?

Jordan didn’t want to go so far as to assume that he was in some sort of simulation or virtual reality. That was just a cat that could stay deep inside its bag with all the issues that kind of thing would bring about, well, everything. But at the same time, the idea of this all being some virtual reality just… didn’t feel right. Jordan knew that wasn’t actually an explanation based on any sort of real logic.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

But when he tried to picture this as being just an artificial simulation, something deep inside seemed to simply reject that whole idea. Besides, if that was the case, then that felt like an important detail that should have been mentioned from the start. He couldn’t think of any benefit the System would have in hiding it, and instead chose to present this situation as just them being moved to a different planet.

As Jordan idly turned the drone back around toward his Kingdom, it was with a contemplative expression on his face. As he rode through the forest, his mind was far away and deep in thought. Boundary lines between areas that could block environmental changes like forest fires. A predetermined spot for the Mandate and where his Kingdom would have its starting territory. The gateway that was relatively close by, which seemed to be there as a means of fast travel to the area on the other side.

It all just felt very… intentional. Like these things had been placed with an intended purpose in mind. And with how the System seemed to encourage direct competition and handed out rewards like candy to those who did perform the best, he could only imagine that this setup would lend itself to that idea.

Jordan could already picture at least a couple of ideas. Because if there was a Kingdom somewhere on the other side of each portal, claimed or unclaimed, he could only imagine that it’d be an easy way for other such gateways to act as the key to world conquest. Why start with your actual neighbors if, instead, you could just conquer the other side of the world and defend the single portal as a key point?

And finally, for real this time, there actually was just one last stop before his Kingdom. Jordan rode up to where the gateway had been last night. But before he’d even reached it, he could already see from a distance away that it truly was just gone.

When he got to where it’d been, the only evidence of its prior existence could still be found in the snow on the ground. Only slightly melted in the warmth of the early morning, due to how shaded the tree canopy kept everything below it. He imagined that when night came once more, the portal would reappear to freeze anything that melted while potentially bringing a fresh batch of snow with it.

By the time Jordan returned to his Kingdom, a good bit more than ten minutes had passed since he’d desummoned the drone earlier. So as soon as he hopped off the one acting as his loyal steed, he summoned a new land drone to check out what the evolution had done for its appearance.

And when he saw it, he couldn’t help but whistle a bit.

Both the size and length of the twin barrels had grown. And with the pre-evolved drone next to it, the direct comparison was even easier to make. The hexagonal pattern on the barrels was even more intricate than before, with the blue glow they emitted clearly a bit brighter than before. The red crystals that contained more blue energy within also appeared to be bigger and brighter. Along with just more of the crystals along the base of the barrels, in general.

Yep, definitely looked like its guns had gotten an upgrade.

For a moment, Jordan contemplated if there was an exploit he could create out of keeping all the drones in their pre-evolved forms. But after taking a bit of time to think about it, he couldn’t really think of any good ideas. At least not anything that would be worth the handicap of deceased firepower, which would kind of go against the point of why he’d gone with the evolution in the first place.

So, with that decided, he just went ahead and desummoned the other land drones too. As soon as the ten minutes were up, Jordan would immediately resummon the drones and send them back out for more farming. As long as one land drone and air drone remained close by to patrol the area around his base, he was fine with sending the rest out to explore their maximum range.

Actually, probably a better idea to keep two land drones as the patrol instead. That’ll free up the air drone to try and hunt anything that’s higher up in the trees. Since after a certain point in height, there just really isn’t an angle the land drones can aim from just by adjusting their position.

With that thought, he went ahead and just sent a mental command to the air drone with that updated order. After that, Jordan went inside to make himself some breakfast with the Transmuter. He was now down to his last Rabbit, so it wouldn’t be long until he fully switched to a Bark Snake diet.

Though sustaining that would require him to have the drones lead him to wherever their murder spree was, and right after it happened so he could put the corpses away before they began to decompose. It was too bad that they didn’t have the capability of grabbing stuff to just bring back. Though if that was something that might have been unlocked through the Fundamental Evolution that allowed their shapes to change, it was too late to regret it now.

In addition, Jordan would probably need to add some variety. He could only imagine that the lack of anything other than small critters in his diet would be good. His body currently felt fine, but it probably wouldn’t be much longer until it began to get on his case about the lack of essential nutrients. Considering that the Transmuter couldn’t turn one kind of metal into another, he doubted that he could turn the plant matter around into an edible salad.

Something to think about. Perhaps if he looked hard enough, he could forage for mushrooms and such. Or better yet, why even do the foraging himself? If the drones were capable of understanding what water was and located the river, then they could surely do the same for anything he imagined growing as fruits, vegetables, and such. If the System added Rabbits as a creature on this planet, then surely copying over apples and stuff from Earth wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

But after breakfast was quickly consumed with, it was time to get to work. From his pocket space, Jordan dumped some of the ash he’d been digging through earlier and had remembered to take with him. The dumped ash was put inside the Transmuter, and basically fed to the machine as its own breakfast to restore a bit of Charge.

Now then, Jordan did want to get to the fun part of taking his drone apart and playing around with that. But he already knew that if he did so now, he’d forget to make his preparations for tonight. So, just to get it out of the way, he began to pull out sets of clothing to start Operation: Freezing To Death Is Bad.

The plan was very simple. He just wanted to turn the spare clothes into proper winter wear. Including better protection for his face, that was more than just a strap of fabric acting as a cheap bandana. The first part of that would be eyewear. Something that could be done with what he owned, since he did have a decent amount of plastic to work with.

A slight smile formed on Jordan’s face as a somewhat amusing thought came to mind. In this world, hard plastic would likely remain much more precious than metal for quite a while. He knew that Blacksmiths existed as its own Class, but more than that was the simple reality of materials. For his Transmuter, metal could be easily collected just by taking a piece of equipment from the many Classes that were given items with varying levels of metal.

From just a small weapon like a dagger being the only thing given by the System, to enough armor to cover someone head to toe. There was also the idea of natural ore deposits for things like iron, which he was sure had to exist at least somewhere on this planet. He was pretty willing to bet that he could just toss a chunk of raw iron ore into his Transmuter, and then just get a cube of refined iron back as the machine ate all the impurities within the ore.

But putting that thought aside, it really only took Jordan a couple of minutes until the winter gear for tonight was ready. A full set of thick clothing, made to be big enough to fit over his Engineer’s Uniform.

Alright, that’s done. Now then, Jordan thought as he stepped outside. The other newly summoned land drones had already been sent off. But one still remained as the drone that had pulled the short straw. But even so, what it had remained here for was in the name of something far greater than itself.

It would be a sacrifice in the name of research!