44. The More Limits, the Stronger the Effect

The More Limits, the Stronger the Effect

For the first time in more than a week, Cheng Rui began to wonder whether choosing Engineer as his second class at level five, instead of continuing to focus on being a wizard, had been a mistake.

Sure, he could build cool magitech weapons and armor. Those creations could easily crush a small squad of monsters or withstand artillery fire, and when he went all out, he could make them in a cave from a box of scraps within minutes.

But when he was not wearing armor, and when he had no technological equipment at hand, all his superpowers were almost indistinguishable from those of an ordinary kid.

And to his horror, he kept finding himself in exactly that situation.

A fireball nearly struck him in the face, but was absorbed by the red-haired witch.

Meanwhile, the blonde big sister was fighting enemy undead knights, and fragments of shattered armor and weapons occasionally flew toward his harness.

Fortunately, the light exoskeletal protection was enough to resist such attacks. So as long as he stayed out of the main line of fire, maybe—just maybe—he could survive a few minutes in this bombed-out, cratered, ruin-strewn hellscape.

A sudden cough reminded him that even if the monsters did not kill him first, he was not sure whether the greasy, choking smoke rising from all the burning buildings, or the concrete dust still drifting down after the latest bombardment, would get him first.

His armor was still damaged and buried at the bottom of the collapsed tunnel.

His mana was almost empty.

His chest—actually, most of his body—hurt as if he had fallen down several flights of stairs.

For now, all he could do was hide in a corner and let the girls deal with the monsters.

A younger, more naive Cheng Rui would have hated this. He would have insisted on clinging to the fantasy that he was the chosen hero, the one who saved everyone and then had girls throwing themselves at him.

The now more experienced monster hunter gave a self-mocking smile and shook his head.

He had seen how Chi Li grasped magic intuitively and manipulated it as easily as she influenced people. He had seen how Sister Lin ignored wounds that would have left most people curled up on the ground crying.

The more mature and less childish Cheng Rui could admit—if only privately—that he lacked Chi Li’s empathy and did not have Sister Lin’s nerve.

But that did not mean he was useless, no matter how much easier it might be to pretend he was.

Since beauty and brute physique were off the table, it was time to make his brain work again.

Why go against type?

Name: Cheng Rui
Health: 67/130
Stamina: 74/208
Mana: 9/182
Class: Level 26 Arcane Engineer

Skills [15 available points / 130 total]
Academics lv4
Analysis lv14
Deception lv2
Charging lv13
Energy Weapons lv11
Enhanced Armorer lv16
Enhanced Electrical Engineer lv14
Enhanced Roboticist lv14
Manufacturing lv16
Ancient Martial Arts lv12
Instant Repair lv15
Language: English lv3
Language: French lv1
Persuasion lv5
Ceramic Creation lv3
Fuel Creation lv2
Metal Creation lv9
Piloting: Combat Suit lv10
Programming lv7

Attributes [15 available points / 130 total]
Strength 14, Agility 26, Constitution 20, Intelligence 80, Perception 24, Charisma 14

Before the black-haired boy had time to examine the changes in his character sheet, he suddenly found himself forty meters from where he had just been standing.

The left half of a fireball-throwing demon alien slammed into the spot he had occupied a moment earlier. Green-black blood sprayed everywhere, and a few drops splashed into his eyes, stinging like chlorine.

“Watch where you throw things!” he shouted, blinking hard as he tried to restore his vision. “Do not throw chunks of damn alien life-form at me! They are disgusting and corrosive!”

“Sorry, Cheng Rui,” an unusually pleasant voice called from somewhere above him, “but everything is a mess right now. It’s hard to track all of it!”

“Just don’t do it again,” he said with a sigh, then groaned when he realized his vision was still blurry.

It would recover soon. Since his Constitution had reached twenty, he healed as fast as most video-game protagonists. That did not make impaired vision any less dangerous or annoying.

Before all the setbacks and serious injuries, he might have been extremely anxious and afraid.

Now his stats could tell him exactly how much panicking would reduce his chance of survival, and gave him sufficient motivation to suppress the urge.

At least, somehow, he could still see his character sheet clearly. And during that great battle, he had leveled again. So perhaps he could find some way to solve this.

First things first: put all available attribute points into Constitution, raising it to thirty-five. His maximum health rose to three hundred and twelve, and his current health increased proportionally as well.

There was no reason to die while searching for a longer-term solution, not if he could avoid it.

Then he examined the only new supernatural skill available to him.

At first it would only be level one. If it had a cost like his other skills, he had barely enough mana to use it once.

But that would have to do.

In most games, the problem with wizard classes was their lack of powerful healing skills. Focusing on magitech had narrowed his thematic range even further.

A skill for repairing machines, granting them low-level spiritual repair, or even allowing limited reassembly after destruction—those were possible.

Enhanced Medicine, Biotechnology, or Medical Electronics might also be obtainable. But none of those would help him in battle, or without suitable resources.

Within the theme of his abilities, very few skills could.

Obviously supernatural skills like Manufacturing, Charging, or resource creation were technically engineering-themed, and did not apply to his very biological body.

Or did they really not?

He rapidly considered hundreds of possible choices and rejected them one after another, while a vague idea gradually took shape.

If his skill system’s flexibility was limited, then the more closely a new skill related to his ability theme and the skills he already possessed, the more room it should have to perform in other respects.

With that thought, Cheng Rui examined skill options that could restore energy like Charging, create resources like his various Creation skills, and impose additional limitations elsewhere.

The more restrictions placed on its use, the stronger the effect should be.

If it happened to be exactly what Cheng Rui needed in this situation, then that should merely be a fortunate coincidence, unrelated to how narrow the skill’s application was.

Obviously.