Grey raised an eyebrow. "You’re a man, aren’t you? Spit it out. What’s with all this flailing and decorum?"
"Pa..." Silva exhaled a breath that seed half a laugh. "... Your mouth is truly vicious."
Silva stood to his feet. "Never mind. Ignore . I’ll get out of your way."
Grey watched the silver fox leave. His hesitation seed to be even in his steps, causing Grey to shake his head.
He felt a deep annoyance every ti he saw Silva, not because he had any particular hatred for the man, but because he could feel the fakeness exuding from him.
Sothing told him that half-beast n like Silva weren’t supposed to be in suits or speaking like noblen. But for so reason Silva insisted on doing exactly that.
If that was what he wanted to do, fine. But it was clearly not.
Grey shook his head. ’Whatever, not my problem.’
Pressing a hand to a wall, he managed to drag himself into the newly renovated space and slumped into the egg gaming chair.
He moaned out a sigh. That really did feel good, and it actually fit him. Clearly, Silva had either had it custom made or had ordered it with his new size in mind.
Being humongous was so inconvenient.
’Alright.’
Grey pulled out the Cyber Mat from under his tit and spread it out on the new stainless steel work surface before him.
He exhaled a breath, fought off so sleepiness, and plucked sothing off the shelves behind him with a line of blood from a finger he cut open. He was far too tired to keep getting up and moving, might as well take the ti to practice with Heart Lance.
He plopped the item down on the new Cyber Mat and focused. This was the easiest test he could think of to figure out what the difference between this Cyber Mat and all the others he had been around was. So, he started with a material he was quite familiar with: Tempered Steel.
—
Object: Tempered Brass Steel
Weight: 0.14kg
Faces: 6
—
’Hm... nothing is different. Maybe...’
The Cyber Mat was black, gold and silver, but other than its color it was almost like any other Cyber Mat, having grid lines that went straight up and down, and straight left to right.
However, unlike other Cyber Mats, it had a swirling pattern to one side that reminded him of the Fibonacci Sequence, curling like a seashell.
Grey picked up the piece of Tempered Brass Steel and deposited it in the middle of the swirl.
—
Object: Tempered Brass Steel
Weight: 0.14kg
Polygonal Faces: 6
—
The result was the exact sa.
Grey raised an eyebrow, looking at the hunk of tal incredulously. Was he just overthinking things?
’Polygonal...?’
A second of awkwardness passed and just as Grey was about to pluck it off the Cyber Mat and go about his business, sothing changed.
A projection of the Tempered Brass Steel appeared above the original item. It floated for a mont and then lines carved onto its surface, forming the familiar polygonal shapes of "Faces".
Faces were essentially the smallest unit an item could be cut into while still maintaining its properties. It was sowhat correlated with weight, but not 100%. Sotis there were impurities and other interferences that could ss with the balance of things.
But an often ignored aspect was shape.
An extrely long and narrow ore would naturally have fewer Faces than another more uniform ore of the sa kind and weight.
One would think more surface area ant more of a chance at Faces, but this was far from the case. The more deford and unnaturally ford an ore was, the less whole the lattice structure would be, and the less useful it would be for crafting.
The illusory ore shifted in the air, and new cut lines appeared across its surface, confusing Grey for a mont.
—
Object: Tempered Brass Steel
Weight: 0.14kg
Curved Faces: 8
—
’... Did it just add two Faces? How?’
Grey reached out a finger toward the illusion and swiped at it. It spun in front of him and his face beca weird.
He couldn’t find anything wrong on the surface, but if you cut the ore like this, it would be opening it up like so sort of blooming flower.
’It helps find more efficient cuts? But why...’
The "why" Grey was asking wasn’t about why this would be useful, it obviously would be. What he couldn’t understand was why only the curved lines could do this.
If the curves could do this, what was the point in ever having the normal grid lines? Was it really that much harder to do? The only difference seed to be that the lines curved during the cutting.
Until now, crafting felt very straightforward. There were Faces, you cut them, got your little cubes, then that made forging them with Cyber Cores very straightforward and easy.
But with these curved lines, it was actually a lot more difficult, and most blueprints probably didn’t account for raw materials in this configuration.
It felt like a lot of hassle.
’The Protheus System probably has a thod to modify blueprints made for gridlines into ones made from curves, but... why? What’s the point? Just to save money? I an, valid... but I’m not really lacking money right now. Maybe that would be more useful when materials get more valuable...’
Curiosity got the better of Grey.
From his perspective, it was a waste of ti to spend more energy trying to get Curved Faces, especially when his mind was a second away from passing out.
But he did it anyway.
He was correct about Protheus. It did, indeed, have a thod to convert blueprints forged for Polygonal Faces to Curved Faces. The thing was that the chanical jaw blueprints didn’t need this conversion because it was already integrated. He hadn’t even noticed.
He didn’t mind it, rebuilding a ch he already had twice before.
The first ti he built Tuned Jaw 0BJ37, it was casual and had barely had 3 energy units.
After improving it by literally eating tal it reached 10 units, but it was still pitiful.
It was only after having Protheus improve it, and building it a second ti, that he gained just over 20 energy units to it.
By now, he was extrely familiar with it, and that made it the least taxing of the chs he could create right now.
Still, it earned him a headache that made his head feel like it was splitting in two.
The result, though...
’No fucking way...’
—
Sync Rate: N/A
Energy Reserve: 0/200
—
Protheus had already optimized the blueprint, it was already perfect, and Grey’s Skill hadn’t increased that much. Even if it had, he might have been able to squeeze out five more energy units at most.
Just forging with Curved Faces instead of Polygonal Faces was a 10x difference.
Grey was speechless. Did he even have to make an Established Class ch with a Vessel at this level? He could practically feel Protheus buzzing, wanting to transfer over.
After a second of hesitation, Grey gritted his teeth and yanked his own chanical jaw off his face, the pain nearly making him pass out.
His pain tolerance should be way higher than this... his body was truly weak right now.
"Co on."
He guided a flickering red gold fla into its new ho.
User Comments
0 comments from readers