While the sun might have been fully up, it was still considered fairly early in the morning for those living in a certain forest on Vervina-C. A Bark Snake flicked its tongue with annoyance as it was disturbed from what had been a restful slumber up to that point. Its serpentine form slithered across the branch currently acting as its high-up near the canopy.
Not that far from where it’d been sleeping, a great deal of noise was echoing through the otherwise tranquil forest. The banging of metal against metal, some being’s victorious and semi-maniacal laughter, the boom of a small explosion, followed by a loud string of what even the dumb Bark Snake understood to be swearing.
It just slithered over to the next branch, hoping to get just a bit further away from the noise. However, unknown to the serpent, a flying object had already spotted it and begun to charge up a shot from its rifle.
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At the very corner of his vision, Jordan didn’t even notice the latest addition to his new stack of Experience notifications. He was currently far too busy to pay any attention to such a currently irrelevant detail like that.
Well, maybe less busy, and more dealing with the consequences of his own hubris. Staring into the silvery back of a phone to see his reflection, Jordan really hoped that a lack of eyebrows would be a trend and not just weird to see. Now, how did such a thing happen in the first place?
Jordan had begun the process of dismantling one of his land drones. He did attempt to command it to make itself fall apart, but that hadn’t worked. So what he had instead done as an alternative was load it with too many Overcharges uses than it could handle. And then like the air drone from last night, had it unleash all that extra energy before it could go away, and violently exploded as a result.
Now, while one might think that was how his eyebrows and what had been the start of some facial hair had gotten singed off, that would actually be wrong. He had actually focused the Overcharge uses on the guns, and then ordered the drone to take a few seconds to drive a few hundred feet away from his base before firing its guns to explode. And then even just to be on the safe side to account for rogue shrapnel, he’d also used those few seconds to run into the building and close the door behind him.
Following the boom, Jordan had then gone out to pick through all the scraps. It was his belief that the best way to learn about how something worked was to first break into a bunch of smaller pieces. Then try to imagine in what way they were fit together to make the whole, like putting a puzzle together.
While many would call that a dumb method to learn about precious technology, it was the method he used for his dad’s smartphone, many years ago. As it would coincidentally turn out, Jordan’s father was also one of those people who thought that method was rather dumb, and didn’t really appreciate what he’d done. While the grounding of his life had come afterward, Jordan still looked back at the memory with a light smile as he’d been picking up the pieces of exploded drone.
The following part was how Jordan had actually got an unwelcome clean shave, however. After grabbing as many drone pieces as he could find, he’d taken back to his base for study. The second after he’d dumped them all into a table and began to sort through them, Jordan had felt the tingle of inherent knowledge rush into his mind.
Just by holding a piece of rather alien-looking tech and then actually trying to think about its purpose, he had just known that it belonged to the drone’s motherboard. Opening the Skill in question that Jordan knew had just taken effect, he reminded himself about how it read.
Passive:
Skill: Tinker
Grade: E1
Scaling: Intelligence, Wisdom
Description: Increases the user’s ability to modify existing machines and create their own.
As far as a Description went, “improves the user’s ability” had just been a little vague. But now he understood how it actually worked. Just by handling a machine or part of one with the actual intent to work with it, he received an understanding of what he was working with. So even though the design of just a piece of the motherboard was wholly exotic compared to something from Earth, he’d still been able to know that’s what it was.
When Jordan had found another piece of it to put the two together, he felt the new Passive Skill kick into effect. Just by looking at how the broken bits of what had to be millions of circuits fit back together, he felt that he could never forget the design. Like if he closed his eyes, he’d be able to forever remember how to perfectly picture it in his mind’s eye. Jordan had been right on the money in his hopes.
Mental Blueprint would be a fantastic Skill to use in conjunction with the Industrial Transmuter. So fantastic, even, that its addition as an option had felt too good to be a coincidence. More and more, Jordan believed the System was likely taking his own thoughts and desires into account with the new Skills and evolutions presented. If that was the main factor or just one of several, however, he couldn’t really say for certain.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Then picking up one of the red crystals, Jordan studied it. Once again, Tinker kicked in to give him a more general understanding of what he was actually looking at. The crystal could best be described as a sort of energy cell, at least as far as the Skill let him tell. It was actually a bit weird to think about how it actually functioned.
Tinker didn’t give him a dictionary definition or anything like that; he just… knew. Similar to the inherent knowledge given as the basics of how a Skill functioned, but not quite the same. It was more like an active recall, where he thought about how a certain aspect of something machine-related functioned while he was working with it, he might just be able to then answer himself. Like he’d always known the answer to a question, but had just forgotten up till that moment, was the best way he could describe it.
In any case, the red crystal was effectively where his TP went when he cast Summon Land Drone. They were basically like batteries that stored the TP and used it to power the drone’s functions. That was also why there was a direct supply around its twin weapons, to quickly pull from for the energy of repeat bolt firing.
Now the crystals by the barrels themselves had been placed as a connected series, whose sides were touching. Curious about that particular feature in its design, Jordan had picked up another crystal and held the pair together. And that’s where his mistake had been.
The second they made direct contact, a rush of understanding clicked into place. Despite their solid-looking form as crystals, these guys actually were rather easy to make unstable when touching against each other like this. Something that the land drone, when whole, had the function of keeping stable. But not only was that source of stability gone, the exploded drone was still being fed with the reserve of TP it was taking up to remain manifested. This meant that the red crystals with blue energy inside were still being actively powered, even now.
“Oh fuckety fuck!” Jordan cursed as he dropped the crystals and immediately tried to get up from the seat. But the reaction that had already been started wouldn’t stop now, and had already been working fast to accelerate. After getting up, the only thing he had time to do still was throw up his arms in an effort to protect his head.
A blast of heat and pure force then sent Jordan, and all the loose items on the table, flying. Jordan was thrown all the way against the opposite wall of the concrete room, knocking the air out of his lungs upon impact. After then falling down to the ground, it took him a minute to just catch his breath. Then while groaning, Jordan blinked the dancing lights out of his eyes before slowly pushing himself back up.
Now we were back to the present, of him inspecting the damage. Aside from the hair getting singed off from the heat, it wasn’t like the skin of his face had been magically left alone. From what he hadn’t shielded with his arms, there were some minor burns. Nothing too bad, just blisters that only hurt a little now and would probably itch like Hell later.
Though staring at the poor reflection of himself, the phone had begun to shake in his hands. Jordan’s breath became short as his heartbeat rapidly sped up. He could feel the blisters on his face turn into skin actually melting off. The hair on his head combusting into a full blaze that made him a living torch of fire. Feeling sickened and about to throw up, Jordan quickly put the phone away and stopped looking at the damage.
Man, this is a full-blown panic attack from fucking trauma, isn’t it? Jordan thought to himself as he wrapped his arms around himself, trying to forcibly stop the shaking. It was almost funny in its own way, how even the ability to logically recognize what was happening did jack shit to actually make it better.
The reality was that, even if it’d only been for a moment, even if it’d been quickly reversed by a Skill, he’d burnt to death. For just a second, Jordan had died. And before that, he’d experienced things that nobody alive could describe. Not even he could describe it to anyone, really, if just thinking about it shook himself up so badly.
Think about the physical; ignore what’s going on mentally. Think about the physical; ignore what’s going on mentally. Just treat yourself like a machine to be diagnosed. Turn off everything else. Come on Jordan! Just do it! He mentally chanted.
He tried to force himself into looking down at the rest of his body instead. Of how despite also taking the blast, the parts of the body actually covered by his starting equipment remained largely unharmed. And just to further distract himself, he opened the screen of what could be thanked for that.
Name: Engineer’s Reinforced Uniform
Grade: E1
Description: A standard set for Combat Engineers across the multiverse. It has been built to provide the wearer a low amount of protection from piercing, explosive, fire, and electric types of damage.
After that, it still took him a few more minutes just to mostly calm down. Only mostly, since his pulse continued to feel a bit higher than normal. This wasn’t something that just a night of sleep would be able to help. He wasn’t if anything could, really.
But then, a dark thought gave him a half-smile. “At least I’m not a Pyromancer or have any Skills directly related to fire. How fucked would it be to have your trauma triggered by your own powers every time you used them?”
It didn’t really help much, but it was good to find the humor in even bad things, right? But after taking one last deep breath in and out, Jordan forced himself to start gathering the drone bits that had gotten scattered in the blast.
He still had more work that needed to be done.