30. Emergency Repairs

Emergency Repairs

A horde of zombies tumbled down the stairs from the upper level of the shopping mall, the fall doing them almost no real damage.

Dozens, then hundreds clawed their way out of the pile of corpses, slowly forming a hideous wall of walking dead. They gnashed and reached, desperate to devour the living.

Cheng Rui’s Mark III twin laser turrets tore through these unarmored enemies with ease.

The kilowatt-class laser beams were powerful enough to melt through several centimeters of steel. They not only made the rotting bodies burst apart, but also set them on fire.

Even with his helmet on, the nauseating stench spread everywhere, vile beyond description.

Unlike his friends, the superpowered amateur roboticist had neither magic nor a special ability capable of blocking the smell.

“A self-contained breathing module is now officially at the top of the upgrade list,” the boy muttered under his breath while using his armored limbs to rip open the storefront of a hardware shop.

As he busied himself collecting everything from electric drills to lawnmowers to chainsaws and piling them together, the turrets kept firing behind him.

Against enemies this low-level, he did not need to pay them much attention. The turrets had been designed specifically to fend off weaker attackers while he worked.

But merely having materials was not enough.

Name: Cheng Rui
Health: 94/115
Stamina: 103/184
Mana: 101/161
Class: Level 23 Arcane Engineer

Skills [2 available points, 115 total]
Academics lv4
Analysis lv14
Disguise lv2
Charging lv13
Energy Weapons lv10
Enhanced Armorer lv16
Enhanced Electrical Engineer lv13
Enhanced Roboticist lv13
Manufacturing lv16
Ancient Martial Arts lv11
Instant Repair lv14
Language: English lv3
Language: French lv1
Persuasion lv5
Metal Creation lv9
Piloting: Combat Suit lv8
Programming lv7

Attributes [30 available points, 115 total]
Strength 14, Agility 26, Constitution 20, Intelligence 50, Perception 24, Charisma 14

In less than five minutes of destroying undead monsters, he had gained more levels than in the entire three days before the great battle began.

Part of that was due to the invaders’ influence on what he had come to call the local “magical field.”

He avoided calling it a field because, for one thing, it had no dimensions, and for another, magic was not a force. But it was the closest analogy he could think of.

Violence-based magic grew stronger under the invaders’ influence, but that was not the only possibility. In fact, thematically opposing the invaders weakened them, though the price was that one’s own power would also be weakened.

Beneath his huge, heavy armor, Cheng Rui smiled sincerely.

All systems had loopholes, even illogical systems based on their users’ beliefs.

Especially those based on belief, because almost everyone believed they were right and therefore deserved to win.

A week earlier, after he had been forced to leave me behind and flee, he had discovered this loophole while blindly groping his way through his new abilities. Now, that loophole was about to pay off.

Most of the zombies had been cleared out.

That meant it was time to work.

He put all thirty attribute points into Intelligence, raising it to eighty.

Doing so did not increase his mana or mana recovery, but it made all of his Intelligence-based skills stronger and more efficient, allowing each use to produce better results with fewer attempts.

More importantly, it let him use all those skills better.

His mental processing speed increased significantly. His ability to imagine things accurately improved. Pattern recognition and mental calculation advanced by leaps.

He could already see many ways to improve his armor: lower-friction and stronger servos, a power system with higher output and less waste heat, armor with better deflection angles and anti-spalling design, and more.

Things that might have taken genius engineers decades to conceive, he could outline in his mind in minutes—at least conceptually.

Manufacturing began processing the pile of resources.

Engines became servos. Cables and heavy electronics became power systems. The high-grade alloys in electric drills and jackhammers were worked into armor plates. Synthetic diamonds became optical components and heat-dissipation surfaces.

Metal Creation supplied raw material, framework, and structural support for most of the upgrades. That skill had already reached a high enough level to provide steel alloys stronger than titanium—or, where weight needed to be reduced, genuine titanium alloys.

With his two hard-earned skill points, he acquired two skills he had previously lacked: Fuel Creation and Ceramic Creation.

Because his Intelligence was so high, even these new level-one skills were fairly useful, and in the future they would become even more so.

After all, “fuel” and “ceramic” were extremely broad categories.

As he worked, the loophole he had discovered began to function.

Making technological products consumed resources. Natural materials were, in essence, violently destroyed so that something new could be made.

He was also destroying ordinary tools intended for peaceful use in order to create weapons—violent tools forged by his own mind and abilities to defeat the enemy.

From that perspective, his ability fit the invaders perfectly. He even used metal, fire, and lightning just as they did.

However, the invaders used those same themes to create undead, demons, and supernatural disasters—things many people regarded as unnatural.

Cheng Rui used the same magic to create and strengthen entirely natural, physical weapons.

Their applications of the same power were opposite.

Therefore, his magic was simultaneously empowered by the enemy’s strength and set against it, weakening the enemy in return.

Perhaps the enemy had never imagined that someone might operate under the same themes, yet oppose them utterly in application and purpose.

Perhaps the world they came from had never seen advanced technology, and until now, no one had had the chance to confront them with contradictory concepts.

As the remains of his laser cannon were reforged and added to his rapidly improving armor, Cheng Rui the Arcane Engineer drew ever closer to showing those foreign magical beginners what real magitech could accomplish.

He only hoped the girls could hold the line until he was ready.