46. Upgrading the Mecha

Upgrading the Mecha

A suit of armor could only hold so much technology.

Its shape, and the need to accommodate the wearer, also created a whole series of engineering problems.

A larger device with a simpler shape could easily be far more powerful than a combat suit at the same technological level.

And when deployed on the battlefield, it did not endanger the person who made it.

As the person in question, Cheng Rui considered that last point very important.

Which brought him back to his newest skill.

What he could build in a short time was limited by the mana available to him.

In fact, for projects that had to be created in a single piece because of the limitations of magical manufacturing or the fragility of individual components, the amount of magical energy he could access over a short period set a hard ceiling on both size and complexity.

With this new skill, if he was willing to pay the price, he effectively had as much as six times his mana available for manufacturing.

And with a horde of monsters closing in while lightning towers pinned them down, of course he was willing to pay.

Using Emergency Charge felt like drinking a dozen cups of coffee, chugging a liter of energy drink, and plugging himself directly into the main power line.

Energy poured through his system.

Pain, fatigue, even injuries seemed to stop mattering. He filled with a sense of invincibility, a conviction that he could do anything.

Cheng Rui did not need to check his still-limited health to know that indulging in that dangerous thought would be unwise. If not for the need and motivation to solve the team’s problem, he would have suppressed it immediately.

A nearby demon roared, gathering a fireball in each hand.

That was very motivating.

Energy sank into the collapsed underground passage beside Cheng Rui. It flowed through rubble and rebar, through the iron in old pipes, the lead and antimony in illegal toxic sealants used by construction companies that had not cared what they buried under the city, the copper in underground power cables, and the optical fiber in communication lines.

His Manufacturing skill reached deeper still, touching his damaged powered armor and all the power sources, servos, and energy weapons he had previously used against monsters.

Nothing he had made before was enough to fight the inhuman army now attacking their position.

The three of them were not facing isolated undead.

They were not facing a squad of hundreds.

They were not even facing multiple powerful enemies.

His armor sensors could detect and count thousands of vibration and heat sources moving through the ruins toward them. By connecting with those sensors, Cheng Rui could perceive them even though his eyesight was still terrible.

He ran the numbers almost immediately and reached a depressing conclusion.

Even with his new skill, nothing he could build would stop that wave.

As for the girls’ efforts, he was less certain, but judging from how hard they were already struggling, they could not do it either—unless they had trump cards of their own.

Supported by perception and common sense far below his Intelligence but still at the edge of the superhuman, his eighty-point Intelligence began working on the problem.

His system called it Perception, but Cheng Rui was not sure that was accurate. He did not really feel smarter.

Then again, how would a seventeen-year-old boy know what becoming smarter felt like?

A question for later.

Creating a super-genius, foolproof, unstoppable plan to save himself and the girls from imminent death would require too much processing power.

Reviewing every piece of science and technology he had ever read, inferring from those what his skill enhancements could do, and simulating potential solutions—

Even his superpowered mind could not do all of that reliably.

Not even close.

But Cheng Rui knew the plan did not need to be perfect.

It only needed to be good enough.

Meanwhile, copper, iron, and carbon emerged…