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 RuiHealth: 94/115Stamina: 103/184Mana: 101/161Class: Level 23 Arcane Engineer

Skills [2 available points, 115 total]Academics lv4Analysis lv14Disguise lv2Charging lv13Energy Weapons lv10Enhanced Armorer lv16Enhanced Electrical Engineer lv13Enhanced Roboticist lv13Manufacturing lv16Ancient Martial Arts lv11Instant Repair lv14Language: English lv3Language: French lv1Persuasion lv5Metal Creation lv9Piloting: Combat Suit lv8Programming 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…