Chapter 66: Rearment |
A loud ZAP echoed through the machine shop, making Derek jump and spill both the book and metal cylinders he’d had in his lap all over the floor. The last time this had happened, he’d been using ball bearings; those had made a considerably bigger mess, but he still chose to haul himself over them, rather than risk stepping on one and falling.
And the sound of loud cursing in a language he now knew to be Gaelic filled the room as Mimi leaped back from the sparking remains of her “project.”
Yeesh.
Derek let himself drop back to the floor and cast [Lifesurge] onto the engineer, knowing from the last couple of times that had happened that she’d need it.
When Mimi glanced up at him, he almost flinched back. She looked … well, feral. Oh, the fact that her hair was standing on end from the electrical discharge wasn’t helping the impression; her ears all but vanishing in the mess, but it was her face that had really changed. Eyes that had suddenly acquired split pupils, teeth that had now sharpened into those of a predator, a slight elongation of the face into something vaguely foxlike as she sighed, seemingly uncaring of the pink-gold blood running down the side of her face from a now-healed cut.
“I think you need a break,” Derek said, flatly. So did he, admittedly, but none of his projects had exploded thus far.
“Fine,” she growled, tone harsher than anything he’d ever heard out of her, then stalked out of the room, leaving Derek behind to look over the mess that was supposed to have become an elemental focus cannon.
The history books had failed to mention how temperamental those things were, on top of all the other issues these things had had.
But the autocannons were finished, sitting up against one wall, the mount around the size of a washing machine, the protruding barrel like two party-sized beer kegs stacked on top of each other.
If the rounds could be enchanted to hurt spectral enemies. And it might also be a requirement for striking eldritch creatures.
Derek sighed and turned back to his own chair, gathering up the rounds he’d dropped earlier as he went, reaching his destination, missing a few but deciding that was alright. Any that he hadn’t found had wound up under something and therefore shouldn’t pose a tripping hazard.
The process should have been simple: infuse an object with mana, then impose a pattern into said mana. Spellcasting, except you weren’t quite triggering the spell, and doing so in a place separate from your body.
But simple was not the same thing as easy, as Derek was quickly realizing.
Yet another metal cylinder warped in his hand, cracking and growing brittle while the mana faded away into the background, leaving him with yet another piece of scrap to feed to the bin sitting next to his chair.
Maybe his problem was that his spellcasting ability had basically zero [System] support, because he’d sacrificed the related [Skill] to boost his spatial magic.
Derek facepalmed. No, he did not have a way to quickly level [Spellcasting] and remove the issue. But he could compensate for it. Could use [Superior Arcane Spatial Manipulation] in its place. Or so he hoped.
Grabbing the next round, he tried to infuse it with [Spatial Detonation], with the caveats that the round would only be able to blow after being fired from the autocannon, and ceased contact with the weapon. But once those two conditions were fulfilled, they would detonate upon contact with another object.
A simple enchantment, but those were the best when it was possible to go that route, as complexity was the enemy of (mana) efficiency.
Derek stared down at the round in his hand as the mana twisted and undulated, stretching in and out of the medium he was attempting to transform into a weapon of the arcane.
Then the first condition clicked into place, rendering it “safe.” But it was not yet successful.
And then the fingers with which he was holding the metal began to dig into it, pressing through it as though he were dealing with soft clay. Shoot.
With a curse, Derek clenched his hand into a fist, squishing it like Play-Doh, then dropped it into the bin.
Okay, I got close that time. A few more times, then … if I run out of spare blanks, I take a break, Derek decided, repeating the process on a new victim.
This one … honestly, he wasn’t entirely sure just how to describe the mess it had dissolved into, but a mess it was, “dripping” down his fingers in oddly solid chunks that thankfully fully solidified when striking the ground. At least the cleanup was simple.
And so it went, him turning more and more high-value metal into scrap until …
Enchanting (uncommon)
This is the art of granting an object the ability to cast magic. In a way, at least. By anchoring a spell to an object capable of sustaining it, the spell will exist in a half-cast state, no longer carrying the raw potential of mana, not quite holding the sheer power of direct magic. Once set, enchantments can be made to either feed off mana stemming from either the environment, the user, or both.
You may add conditional triggers. You may add multiple enchantments to the same object. You may place conflicting enchantments onto the same anchor without negative consequences as long as they are not active concurrently.
Cost: too variable to offer a range
Warning: the efficiency of enchantments upon a given object scales inversely with their complexity
There we go. Derek sighed in relief, carefully setting the successfully enchanted round into the box he’d prepared ahead of time. The box with enough space for fifty of the darn things. Oh, the hubris …
And now that he had the [Skill], it would normally be the time to start fusing others into it, to create something much more effective. Except he had no such thing, even this [Skill] had not been something on his radar just yet.
Even so, the standard version should still do some work. After a break.
***
The next day, Derek found himself slumped in his seat, slowly sliding off it, feeling too fried to even try and catch himself before he slipped to the ground, rear end hitting metal with a loud “thump.”
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“Ow,” he sighed as he dragged himself to his feet, picking up the final box of freshly-enchanted rounds, then stumbled his way over to where the autocannons were waiting.
“Thank you,” Mimi muttered from behind him, still trying to get her magical beam weapon to work. “Also, you’re not installing those guns until you’ve had a break.”
“Do I really look like I could install them?”
… Whoops, that came out cattier than I intended.
“You look like a zombie,” Mimi replied. Without turning her head. But Derek believed her anyway.
“Thank you,” he said. “Holler if you need anything. I’m going to bed.”
Four. Thousand. Rounds.
All enchanted with any of half a dozen effects, ranging from something as exotic as his [Spatial Detonation] to simple pure mana infusion that would allow them to hurt ghosts and such. Finished in barely more than a day.
Derek gagged, the aftertaste of the mana potions he’d drunk to finish the last hundred or so coating every inch of his mouth. Worth it?
And he had to do this again after he slept because they’d definitely want at least one full reload for each weapon available …
***
In the end, installing the weapons turned out to be quite simple. For all that they’d be a stone-cold pain in the ass to reload/recharge, until then, they were literally plug and play.
Well, bolt to the hull, empty his mana pool several times over to enchant it to be able to endure the Dragonfly’s acceleration, run the command and control lines, rewire them twice because they didn’t work, curse, nearly take his frustration out on Mimi before reconsidering it in light of the consequences of upsetting a fae … and then, even after all of it had been technically finished, the weapons successfully installed, it turned out that their original turrets blocked far to much of their lines of fire, resulting in them having to repeat the entire process …
All told, the entire process of retrofitting the ship took nearly a week, from design to final installation.
Worth it? Maybe. It’d certainly make sure they wouldn’t run into any similar issues in the future.
Perhaps if they upgraded the ship to become bigger, they’d be able to more easily diversify its equipment? But that’d require either more crew, or enough Levels and [Skills] to compensate for the increased maintenance requirements.
Leaning back in his captain’s chair, Derek grinned and triggered [Alcubierre Bubble], hurling the Dragonfly back into the mysterious star system that had already caused them so many headaches.
Around them, space warped and twisted, their view of the stars vanishing beneath a malestrom of light and radiation until, a couple of minutes later, they erupted back out into the real universe.
Derek couldn’t help but hold his breath, half expecting yet another ambush as some kind of eldritch fucker leapt out of the ether and chewed its way through the hull.
But nothing wound up happening. Nothing save him running out of air without really noticing before he was suddenly forced to start breathing again.
It was kinda stupid. He could “breathe” in a hard vacuum, no problem, but hold his breath for thirty seconds in normal conditions, and suddenly, he had a problem. How did that make sense? The [System] said so, that’s how!
Still …
Derek’s stomach was still twisting into knots as he watched the sensors, the sensation refusing to leave him even as he settled in to wait for the long haul.
***
Five hours later
Fortunately, the first creature to show its ugly mug was, in fact, not immune to energy weapons.
Unfortunately, said creature had stealth on a level that really shouldn’t have been possible in space … which really just meant its personal bullshit was perfectly on brand with the eldritch.
A sound like nails on a chalkboard rang through the ship like the universe’s most disrespectful alarm, coinciding with the ship’s actual alarm, which began to screech the instant the ball of ropey grey intestine and shockingly white bone claws became visible to the sensors.
Derek could feel his stomach rebel, whether at the sound or picture on the screen, he wasn’t sure, but that didn’t stop him from reacting immediately, space twisting to open the distance between them, to try and get that fucking thing off the hull. Yet as reality rippled and stretched, the creature stayed put, seemingly having decided it would simply not accept this alteration of the world around it, and continued to flay the hull while greenish energy began to sink into the metal.
Energy beams were already slamming into it, vaporizing the top half of the creature in an instant. The fact that they were being unleashed at point-blank range … at the same time, the ship shook, and the far too many sensors staring at the creature ceased working. And even those that could see it were only serving to report that what was left of the monster was too close to the hull for their guns to shoot.
“I have a stupid idea,” Atticus announced, though he clearly went right ahead and did it without asking for input.
First, the port autocannon fired at the lowest possible setting, and all but fell out of the barrel, drifting along the ship in a surprisingly tight formation.
And then Atticus fired the starboard thrusters at full and pushed the ship into the cloud, smashing into explosive munitions that Derek realized weren’t designed to not explode against the ship if somehow wound up hitting them after they’d left the barrel.
Of course, they didn’t actually strike the hull. Because guess what had been positioned between the bombs and the tin can they called home? Obviously, it was the monster, which writhed beneath the hammerblows of Derek’s favorite spell … and then it was torn away from the hull by an invisible force. Or so it appeared at first, before Derek realized that it was them who’d started moving away from the enemy, Atticus’ [Instant Redirection] having shifted the Dragonfly onto a least-time course from the monster, opening up the distance enough to bring their secondary armament to bear once again.
And then it exploded, the display drawing in neat little lines to show the passage of the invisible beams as they speared the creature and vaporized it in an instant.
Warping Stalker (Lv. 75) has been slain. 500 XP gained (2.000 XP base increased to 8.000 due to level disparity, reduced to 2.500 as compensation for extreme tool use, distributed across 4 people as per their contributions)
Hm, interesting. Using the ship was still costing them, but they were getting XP directly. And the [System] thought something of his contributions, even if it thought more of what the others had done. Also, it was time to prepare the ship for the next fight…
So Derek needed to put in replacement munitions, check the weapons for damage, then go help Mimi if she needed it, enchant replacement ammo, maybe even deepen their reserves … but there was another person with magic aptitude on the ship.
“Atticus, you know the basics of enchanting, right?” Derek asked.
“I mean … I’m learning,” the other man admitted.
“Can you make rounds that are more than metal with mana stuck to it?” Mimi asked, already halfway out the door to go inspect the damage. “
“No.”
It was now that Derek truly saw the big drawback of his first [Class]: being able to get at least decent at anything meant you were expected to help with everything. Enchanting munitions, fixing the ship, installing gear, magical cleaning …
Right now, though, his job was simple rearment, easily done by climbing out the airlock, clambering across the ship, sticking the ammo in the receiving slot, and finally heading back inside.
Only to immediately run into Mimi, face flushed with fury as she glared at the bulkhead next to him.
“What did that thing do to our ship?” Derek asked, hoping that he wasn’t the cause of her annoyance.
“Atomic restructuring of the hull material. It’s basically crystal now.”
“And that’s …” Derek trailed off. It was bad, obviously, but why was it bad?
“Crystal is hard but brittle,” Mimi explained. “And now we’ve basically got a massive fault line running along one side of the ship. Something big hits us there, and half our compartments are going to be open to space.”
“Including critical systems?” Derek asked.
“Mostly just the power supply would get severed,” Mimi explained. “It didn’t jump to the cables; it’s just the superstructure, but all of that is going to have to be undone. Call it … twelve hours?”
Derek cursed. But at least that’d give him time to work with Atticus on enchanting, making sure they had two people capable of reloading the autocannons.
Which would leave … well, it’d leave just Ye-in on the bridge. The Dragonfly was small enough that one person could control it on their own, but separating out weapons and flight control would be better.
Once again, however, getting things ready more quickly was probably the correct choice … even if “ready” mostly just meant preparing more reloads.
Right now, these little clashes weren’t quite worth it for them, but they were adapting. Improving. And it certainly felt like they were well on their way to making this work. Of being able to kill one of those things without half-wrecking the ship.
And once that worked … well, sky’s the limit. [Skill]levels to start with, but those were obvious. Aspects, monster pieces from creatures that had a more physical form than the first one or actually stayed intact, not to mention how this could wind up affecting future [Class] Evolutions.
Even if hammering out all the dents between fights was going to get real old, real fast.