chapter 114
POV: Remi
The mana circuit connected, and nothing seemed to be blowing up. Finally, a success.
Looking at the time, it was already morning. It seems that I have been up all night, but can you blame me? Bob did exactly as he promised. I pulled up my status screen.
Name: Remi Graves
Age: 34
Species: Human variant (bio-cybernetic) Male
Bonds:
AI: Lola, Bob, Dean, Sam (1200+)
Ship: Forward Horizon
Items: FH-02, Revolver, +
Enhancements: Bio-cybernetics, Bio-nano machines
Body: rank E
Mind: rank E
Core: rank F
Innate ability: Looting variant
Affinity:
Basic: rank G 1/3 20/22
Mind: rank G 1/3 3/7
Mechanist: rank F 1/3 4/12
Skills:
Apprentice Mana Sense
Apprentice Mind Guard
Apprentice Telekinesis
Novice Command
Apprentice 6th Sense
Novice Sense Aura
Journeyman Hardened Connections
Novice Resistences +
Novice Extended Command
Novice Solid Mana
Now at the bottom, there was a new skill, Solid Mana. Usually, it was used as a defensive skill, and you could use it to make pure mana defensive structures around yourself. But it is also desired by crafters because it allows you to take control of mana that surrounds you.
It would only allow you to do so with purposeless mana, so unfortunately, there was no way of using it to stop incoming magical attacks. It did seem to fit nicely into my mechanist affinity.
I’m still quite bad at it, only able to control a 6 by 6 inch cube, and not even solidify it to the point that it could support the weight of a simple screw. But what it did allow me to do was make sure that the mana inside this cube didn't react in unpredictable ways.
The magic circuit that I made was extremely simple. As I fed it mana and flipped a switch, it moved a cogwheel, turning it about 30°. It was a completely useless mana circuit, but it didn't have any mechanical connection between the two actions, only a magical one.
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So why did I do this? Because that was one of the first exercises in one of the instruction books about mana tech FH has been able to get me.
It served two main purposes: first, to show how you could do things that would not be possible with regular technology without adding more parts; and the second, to show that even while building mana tech, it was a good idea to still use proper techniques because of how inefficient such connections could be.
This small action took about the same amount of mana I would need to lift a 5-kilogram weight with my telekinesis for a about 10 seconds.
So, while you could make magnificently complex and out-of-this-world devices, their mana requirements could be so high that nothing could power them before the circuits themselves burnt out from the amount of mana needed to flow through them.
But it also helped me to understand what was now possible. It was going to be a long journey until I could build my own stabilisation gateway for a portal. Even then, I was still going to need an example of one to study.
Most of the technology our ship possessed and what I know is because I broke apart devices and learned how they worked. There was one other way of learning mana tech and that was to get an apprenticeship, but the limitations that came with that were something I wasn’t keen on.
“Captain, I have news about the police situation.”
That made me remember the dead bodies. It still saddened me that we had to do that. I have always hated how some terrible people would hide behind innocence, using them as a shield. But when the need comes, I have always been quite cold in my calculus. I was not exactly sure what the number is, but I would be willing to sacrifice quite a few to keep my friends safe.
“Is it good or bad news?” I asked FH.
That young child hitting my leg with those tiny tentacle-like arms, her mother trying to pull her away, but I just shook my head. No reason why the child couldn't take her anger out on me. We did our best for those people, but nothing was going to bring them back.
“The police have ended their investigation. They have concluded that it was a cult attack, and a serious one. We have received quite the reward for our efforts.”
It felt wrong to get rewarded for something like that.
“What kind of reward?”
“City contribution points. We can now get quite a lot of rare stuff, usually not available on the open market.”
I took the mana circuit I had made into my hand and crushed it. The only way to stop innocents from getting hurt was to be strong enough. The only way to do that was for us was to push forward.
“Is there a stabilisation gateway on that list, and can we get it?” There was silence for a few beats before she answered.
“Yes, but we can’t afford one. We aren’t too far off, but we aren’t a few points away either.”
“What would it take to get the missing point?”
“It would take a lot of work that will take months to years, depending on what kind of contract we could get.”
That wouldn’t work, but then she continued talking.
“Or we could donate 15.62 million credits to a recommended charity. That would get us exactly the points we need.”
The Solid Mana skill already took a big chunk out of our funds, this would take another. The upsides were, however, too big. It would give me a complex piece of mana tech to examine. Now that I could also assemble it myself, we wouldn’t have to hire anyone else.
It would also mean that we wouldn’t miss the portal we would need to farm when we found one.
“Donate the credits and get us that portal stabiliser.”
“Understood, Captain.”
To everyone else I sent a message. It was quite a short one, describing what we were about to get and to prepare for a lot of portal raids.
It would be good to get myself to a stronger rank that would allow me to better use this new skill of mine, and of course, I should then be properly able to use Sense Aura when we start upgrading all the crew members.
I should really go to bed, but it was time to start designing upgrades to the Mark II. We didn’t exactly know what percentage of the body needed to be bio-cybernetic and what could be metallic for the soul to start growing. That wouldn’t be a problem for every crew member except for one, the ship itself.
It would be impossible, and actually make it worse, if we were to try to change all of it into bio-cybernetics. That would just bring too many problems. The bio-cybernetic neural net that Lola came up with and was currently running my left arm was a different story.
It was better than the current cables running through the entire ship, and not just the cables but the heat sinks as well. The only thing it wasn’t was more durable, but it wasn’t too far off. It would mean that we needed to change some types of connections, but that was doable.
As I continued to sketch out all the things that needed to be replaced, I finally came up with a crazy number. We would require nearly 10 tonnes of the stuff. It would bring the overall weight of the ship down by 3.9 tonnes, but that meant a lot of portal materials needed to be collected.
I shared the designs with Lola, Bob, and FH. One of them wasn’t excited because she would have to basically make all of it herself. Where we could supply raw materials, making a factory line to make the neural net would be impossible. Most of the time you needed to constantly be adjusting things when making it to make it a viable product.
Of course, Lola understood that this was needed, so this wasn’t something that she wasn’t going to do. I let her continue for however long she wanted. Stopping someone from bitching because their job was annoying was something I was never going to do.
But now it really was time to go to sleep. I was thoroughly exhausted. Not even when I was trying to escape from Earth did I feel that there were so many things I needed to do as I did right now.