“Just don’t blow up. Pretty please don’t blow up in my face,” Jordan muttered to himself. He carefully tried to remove one of the power cells, as he’d now taken to calling the red crystals, from the drone. With a quiet pop, he felt all the tension from it go away as he pulled it out. The power cell still wasn’t fully disconnected, as a thick wire still connected it to the inside of the drone’s body.

A bit of time had passed since his earlier accident. Enough for him to have done a general review of all the bits and pieces of the drone, and handled them enough for Tinker to give him a basic comprehension of what he was working with. So after desummoning that one and waiting the required ten minutes, Jordan was not outside with a fully intact land drone.

Now that he’d gotten a better idea of how it could work while exploded into scrap, he felt a bit more confident about slowly taking it apart the old-fashioned way. Though handling the power cell directly had still caused his blood pressure to rise a bit, the current lack of it blowing up immediately was a great relief. With it still in hand, he took a closer look at how it was still connected to the drone.

Seems to be made from silver, from the look of it. But man, what’s the diameter of this wiring, like half an inch? The thing’s freaking huge! Jordan stared at it with a bit of awe. At that size, it wasn’t just a single solid wire, but instead a braid of silver wiring twisted together. Now, what difference did that even make?

Well, this was the part where Jordan’s education could finally be flexed a bit, no Passive Skills required. It was only now that his degree in computer engineering and partial progress into a graduate program for robotics could prove its usefulness. But what did that mean? Well, computer engineering could often be confused for computer science just by the same first word in their names. For anyone who’d never looked up the difference, that was fairly understandable.

But to make a long story very short, in general, computer science has a greater focus on software, while computer engineering did some software and also focused more on the hardware side of things. If you wanted a job coding the backend of a website? Computer science or something, although who really cares? However, if you wanted the much cooler job of potentially designing a new generation of GPUs? Then you went with the superior degree of computer engineering.

Not that Jordan was biased in that comparison, or anything. Nope, not at all.

Anyway, computer hardware obviously requires electricity in how it functions. So, as part of becoming a computer engineer, one would take courses that were also taken by electrical engineers. Though unlike those bastard electrical engineers who think of themselves as know-it-alls that could do the job of every other type of engineer, Jordan could admit that there were some gaps in his knowledge.

It was due to said gaps that despite being a type of engineer, he’d been a bit thrown off by deciding the optimal material for a building. Though if Jordan had to be honest, he would admit that there was every chance that it had come up in his education, but hadn’t been properly learned.

There was some homework and even a few exams that he probably should have been caught cheating. But hey, whose fault was it when it came to that? The student just playing the game, or the professor who did multiple choice as the bulk of the exam grade while recycling the same questions for years, thus leading them to be easy to find online?

And made even worse by a very recent and clearly not fully planned policy by the university at the time, that allowed students to take exams remotely while “sick.” Something which surprising nobody but the admin, somehow, had obviously led to a full-blown pandemic of ill students until they reversed course. But since they had implemented that with anti-cheating measures that were really the easiest thing to get around, the damage had already been done.

Anyway, what had he been thinking about earlier before getting sidetracked? Ah, yes, the wiring. So one of the main advantages of standard was that by nature of being a bundle of thin wires, it was physically more flexible.

This made them good for something that moved around a lot, shook, or frequently vibrated. In such applications, they were the better choice for something you didn’t want to replace a lot from what would otherwise be micro bits of damage. That’s why stranded wire is often the go-to choice for electronic devices, because nobody wants to deal with wire replacement for those.

However, it had to be said that there was a bit more nuance to this kind of wiring. Like the exact way in which it was stranded. Of which there were a few different standard types, but that was a whole discussion of its own for another day.

Solid wiring, on the other hand, did have its own advantages. Being a single and thicker piece meant less surface area for dissipation. Because while one might think that the stranded wire they’re holding is tight enough not to have room for air gaps, they’d be wrong. There was always room for air gaps. Always.

But that efficiency meant that solid wire was better for short distances that didn’t have the previously mentioned problem of shaking a lot. In addition to just being easier and cheaper to make, as well. When it came to a building’s infrastructure, a solid core wire was generally the preferred choice.

Though for both, there were always exceptions for where they were used, of course. It was just a matter of which type was seen as better for the application in question, rather than following some golden rule. Aside from the legal rules of actual codes and such, anyway.

So, for the stranded wire in front of him now, half an inch was definitely on the hefty side for its diameter. Now, that was definitely huge, but not outlandishly so. Yet there was one factor that made things a bit more… interesting, to say the least.

It was half an inch, without any insulation. Not because Jordan wasn’t counting it, but simply due to the fact that it was a naked wire. One that was made of silver, at that, meaning it had both a lower resistivity and higher conductivity than basically all other metals. So why didn’t people use silver all the time for such applications if it was so great? Because silver was expensive, while copper, as the second-best metal, was much, much cheaper.

Yeah… no, I wouldn’t ever touch that with my bare hands. But it should be fine, as long as I always wear the gloves from my Engineer’s Uniform. If the Reinforced part of its full name lets it tank that power cell blast earlier without a mark, then the electrical protection should be able to handle this. At least I’d hope so, or else it’d be kind of screwed up for the System to provide starting equipment that doesn’t even let me poke around an upgraded version of a Skill; that’s basically just the land version of the Class’s starting Skill.

However, it did bring up a fair point. Was there even electricity going through that wiring? And surprisingly in this world of magic and the seemingly impossible? Yes, actually, yes there was. From his poking around with the exploded bits earlier, Jordan had managed to find out a very important detail. While it did absorb his Tech Points as a basically infinite energy source, it didn’t just use it in its “raw” form.

Now, as for what that actually meant…

Ker-chunk!

“That was a… healthy sound. Yep, totally didn’t just fully break that off,” Jordan lied to himself as a metal plate hit the dirt. It’d taken a bit of swapping between his collection of tools, but he’d managed to pull it off in order to take a look inside the drone.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Now in its defense, it was after he’d started doing so that Tinker had given him a feeling that there was a better way to remove the plate without actually breaking it. But the impression it’d given him was one of requiring a very specific tool, but since it was just a feeling and not an associated mental picture, it wasn’t really one he could just have made at the moment. Though for future reference, he’d probably take the time at some point to figure it out himself through some trial and error.

But within the drone, there were a couple of things of immediate note. The first was a whole bunch more of the power cells. Which he believed to be the ones responsible for powering the land drone’s movement, separate from the set around its guns. It was most likely how it worked for when he used Overcharge, and had to make a choice between a more powerful attack or a speed boost. He was essentially just choosing which set of power cells that energy was going to go through.

In addition to them were plenty more wiring, of course. But the thing at the very center was the real prize. Back when the System had given the option for an evolution called an Arcane Core, it’d only described it as a change to the drone’s base systems and core functions. However, as it turned out, there was a literal core too.

Pulling off another plate to give himself more room to actually fit his hands and tools through, Jordan then reached inside. Then very, very slowly, he began to fiddle around in an attempt to find a way to safely remove the core without making something go kaboom. Luckily, going extra slow meant plenty of time to remain aware of the nuggets of guidance provided by Tinker. If there was one part of this process that he wouldn’t cut any corners on, it was this.

Though at the very least, he was a little less afraid of a fiery accident occurring again. Because after earlier, he’d made sure to look through his pocket space to think of something to mitigate the ability to get burnt, should something even worse happen. And luckily, he’d found something.

Name: Blacksmith’s Flame-Resistant Uniform

Grade: E1

Description: A standard set for Blacksmiths across the multiverse. It has been built to provide the wearer a moderate amount of protection from fire damage overall. With an added resistance to the piercing and bludgeoning damage types for its gloves.

Now while Jordan couldn’t use the weapons and such tools for other Class, it turned out that the clothing was a different case. There was a limit to that, however, which was called practicality. Could someone collect enough sets of various sizes to turn themselves into what would basically be a Russian nesting doll of armor? One where each layer could potentially cover a different type, to protect themselves from everything?

Sure, but with how much stuff you’d have to wear to achieve that, it simply wouldn’t be very feasible. Jordan was already getting sweaty working under the sun, while wearing two sets of equipment like this. Plus, without showering or bathing for the last few days, he could only imagine that anyone who met him now would probably get killed by the smell alone.

Yeah, Jordan should probably make the time to head by the river and take a bath in it. He decided to do so a couple of hours before sunset. That way his hair would have enough time to be fully dried off before his intended exploration through the portal tonight.

But, eventually, Jordan’s bated breath turned into a heavy sigh of relief. About the size of the main body of the air drone, it was pulled outside and now sat in his hands.

Earlier, Jordan had only handled individual pieces of the core. Or specifically, those that had actually survived the explosion from too many Overchage stacks. Because, as he’d already begun to figure out, the core of the drone was apparently super fragile. From what Mental Blueprint allowed him to recall about exactly which surviving parts had been related to the core a a whole, only a minority of them had remained intact.

This core, it’s basically everything for the drone. It can survive having its guns, treads, or both critically damaged. But if even one part of this thing fails? Yeah, that causes a cascade of failures that quickly leads to the whole thing shutting down. Just by being able to directly handle and closely inspect the whole thing, Tinker was dutifully providing him with more information on how it all came together.

For one thing, it was the thing that seemed to convert his TP into electricity. And also could do the reverse as needed. This at least appeared to be proof that Tech Points wasn’t some wholly magical resource pool that only affected his Skills and Energy Pistol, but something that could be explored as an actual energy source.

Additionally, Jordan was now pretty sure that this was what actually caused a drone to desummon when damaged. With how long its claws had been, for example, the Grass Panther would have easily been able to scratch at the core when it’d taken down his air drones. All it would have needed to do was catch it with a mid-air swipe, and tear through the metal exterior to damage the precious core beneath.

But while his air drone would continue to be desummoned, the land drones would not, thanks to the Fundamental Evolution. However, after the evolution, if their cores were shut down from combat…

His eyebrows rose with a sudden understanding. One of the core’s purposes was to stabilize the power cells. That’s why they were fine now, side by side, but had caused that blast earlier when he put two of them in contact. Yet since that stability was a function of the core, that would be tossed out the window the moment it shut down.

So, if something ruined the core without blasting apart the drone as a whole like the Overcharge explosion? Well, an explosion would very quickly happen anyway. An even more powerful and violent one, if anything. At least from what just two touching had caused, and then could be imagined as scaled up with what had to be at least a few dozen power cells in total.

“But if that’s how it is,” Jordan muttered to himself as he had an idea. “As well as the Overcharge strategy worked against that guy, it isn’t always feasible. Not when I have to be touching the drone, and then also be close enough to the target for the drone to reach them before the Overcharge juice goes away on its own. But if I could at least order the land drone to cripple its own core and self-destruct without desummoning like the air drone would…”

Jordan decided to give it a try. First, he put the core down before heading back into the safety of his base. Then, Jordan gave it an order that was simple in its mental wording as the first try. He ordered it to self-destruct.

A few seconds passed, and nothing happened. As his second order, he tried to have it turn off the system keeping the power cells stabilized. Again, nothing. Then for attempt number three, Jordan instead ordered to just shut down the entire core.

That one actually did something! He immediately felt a change in the mental connection as it… cut off his TP supply to the drone. So rather than go kaboom, it just did the cut off that he’d done before to begin the ten-minute desummon process, just from its end instead of his. And while the ability for it to do so was technically something useful for him to know, it just hadn’t been the ideal result he’d been hoping for.

When Jordan had been working with the core earlier, he’d done so on his knees. Just to due to how short the land drone itself was. But after grabbing the core again, he sit down with crossed legs on the dirt. He was going to find out if there was a mechanical reason why his idea had failed, beyond the drone simply being incapable of processing the order itself. And he intended to do his best to discover that reason if it existed, even it if took long enough for him to need to get comfortable first.

Minutes upon minutes steadily ticked by as the sun slowly moved across the sky. Jordan carefully tried to inspect the core and use his tools to mess with it a bit without accidentally setting something off. Until eventually, he found what he’d been looking for. Or rather, Tinker informed him about it.

It wasn’t that the drone hadn’t understood the order, but a physical restriction. After removing part of the outer shell of the core itself to get an even deeper look into its inner workings, something had been hiding inside. A computer chip. One placed near the middle of the core, and was connected damn near every part of it.

And thanks to Tinker, Jordan had an understanding of what it was meant for. The chip basically acted as a safety feature, one that prevented the very thing he’d been trying to do. As far as he could grasp, the only reason the Overcharge trick worked was because the energy levels involved literally overwhelmed the chip itself. Whether that was by overheating it to the point where it began to form, or simply short-circuited it with the energy levels involved, he wasn’t sure yet.

You know, makes me wonder, just exactly whose design did the System base these on? I can only imagine it’s like my uniform or the material for the base, where it’s apparently based on a so-called standard for the multiverse. But someone has to set the standard. I don’t know if it’s some large company or other kind of organization, but it means that if the drones are also copied from their standard, then their design is going to be inherently different than something the System itself built, right? Hence the need for a built-in safety feature, probably to keep the consumer from blowing themselves up, Jordan thought to himself.

But now there was obviously something that he needed to do. To at least try to see if it could be done even once, just to see if he could. Because even though some might consider it a bad idea, he would say that it was an important part of understanding the drone’s mechanisms, so that he could more easily build one himself.

He wanted to see if it was possible to deactivate the safety feature.