World Seed: Game Start (39 page)

Celeste’s
directions lead me to the edge of the city, a wide fenced off area
with a single gate. Above the gate was a crooked sign, reading
‘Mike’s Garage. Fixer’s Keepers, Loser’s
Weepers.’ The slogan made me shake my head with a light laugh
before I walked in. A rather round human was manning the counter, and
by the oversized nametag on his filthy brown jacket, I discovered
that he was Mike. He stood just over six feet tall, and looked as if
he hadn’t bathed in a year. However, I could clearly see that
one of his eyes were robotic, giving off a distinct metallic shine
while a red light emerged from where the iris should be.

“
Here
to shop around?” He looked at me and smirked, crossing his arms
over his chest, which only amplified the awareness I had of his…
roundness. “Three silver to get in, but you can bring out
whatever you can carry. Ask the AI for help in finding and
identifying parts, but it won’t help you put them together.
That’ll rely on you.”

I
nodded, and handed over the three silver coins. I could feel my funds
constantly dwindling today, and it was not a good feeling. After
receiving the payment, Mike nodded and pressed a button, opening a
door off to the side of the counter. “Have fun.” He
chuckled, his whole body shaking with the motion as I walked through
the door.

Beyond
the door, I came across the real junkyard. I could see rows of broken
bows, guns, swords, armors, even a few items that looked like small
vehicles, all assorted into various bins. “Celeste, mind giving
me a hand here? You know what I want.” I smiled to the AI, and
then focused on my Aura Sight.

“
Roger
roger!” She said in a robotic tone that reminded me of an old
movie. Immediately, several of the bins lit up in my Cybernetic eye.
“Pistol, rifle, or semi-auto for the gun?”

I
couldn’t help but smile bitterly as a bow was not even part of
the question, but as it stands a bow would likely do me more harm
than good. “Both, pistol and rifle. Want some versatility.”
After I said that, a few of the bins that had been highlighted were
dimmed.

“
Melee
weapon, you wanting energy or physical?” She asked again, and I
nodded a bit this time. At least she hadn’t taken that choice
away entirely.

“
Hmm…
Energy, I think it would go best with my magic. Same for the gun, if
the options are the same.” By the time I had finished speaking,
only half a dozen bins were still lit.

“
Okay,
marked all the ones that seem to have the relevant parts. That
Identify software is really something.” She grinned up to me as
I approached the first bin. Inside of it was a collection of rusted
blade hilts, some broken, while some looked relatively intact. Don’t
have anything that can take care of rust, I think… Hmm…
Maybe..

I
had an idea, but wanted to wait before I tested it out until I at
least had a working product. If I was able to do so, even if it was a
bit rusted, I could possibly remove the rust afterwards. For now, I
looked over the different handles. Many of them had different styles,
so I knew they weren’t all the same model. I could only hope
that they mostly used the same parts.

Grabbing
five at random, I sat down in front of the bin, and began scanning
them with my Technomancy to determine their faults and similarities.
For the most part, the weapons were indeed identical in function, but
had slight differences in design. As for the faults in them, three
had bad wiring, one had a cracked power core, and the last looked as
if someone tried to break it apart on a rock to get it to work.

Still,
that meant all I had to do was replace the bad core with a good one,
and that weapon would be operational. Sadly, the type of core that
model used was unique among those five. And given its size, I
wouldn’t be able to use a seed to replace it, unless I managed
to get them much smaller. “Alright, Celeste, we have a winner.”
I said as I tossed the other four devices back into the bin. “You
able to do a scan for one with the same type of core?”

She
hesitated a moment before responding. “Extend your Mana Sense
into the bin, and I’ll mark any possibilities.” With her
assurance, I did as she asked, and soon a half dozen handles were
highlighted in my view. “Each of those have similar cores, but
they are all empty. From the scan, I think they should be chargeable
with a delicate balance of lightning and fire mana. I suggest
practicing with one of the cores before you settle on it.”

I
nodded, and channeled my Technomancy through my mana that was already
in the bin. Doing so, I grabbed onto the six hilts, and pulled them
out with my magic. This was one of the techniques I had learned from
Joseph, allowing me to move technology telepathically. Though, the
definition of technology was vague, as it allowed movement of almost
any manufactured product. The only restriction was the more natural
products were harder to control.

Once
I had the six out, I used my disassembling spell to break them apart,
took out the cores, then reversed the spell to put them back together
before discarding them again. The cores themselves looked like small
crystal cubes. Once again, Celeste helped me out when it came time to
prepare the charge. In my Cybernetic eye, two graphs appeared side by
side. Each had two columns, one with a lightning bolt symbol below
it, and the other with a fire symbol. One of the graphs was left
unfilled, while the other showed a balance of roughly 6.7:3.3 balance
of fire to lightning.

“
Thanks…”
I muttered softly, and began to manipulate my mana to try to match.
As I did so, the second graph started reacting, the lightning and
fire bars fluctuating as I attempted to achieve the proper balance.
Once I did so, and managed to hold it for a couple of seconds, the
graphs lit up green to indicate they matched. After that, I did my
best to maintain the feeling, the bars fluctuating slightly while I
grabbed the first core. Thankfully, I had a method to cheat here.
“Celeste, mark how quickly the energy increases.”

After
I spoke, I activated Aura Sight to allow her to measure the climb of
energy, while I also Recorded the process of charging the core for
two seconds. Afterwards, I stopped recording and pulled my mana back.
Seeming to understand my intention, Celeste spoke up. “Five
percent charge every ten seconds at that rate, and you are able to
maintain that expenditure for up to thirty seconds. The current power
level is barely at one percent.”

I
sighed, nodding my head. “How long if I also used my staff to
support me?”

“
You
could triple the duration if you did that, but you would need to be
out of Auto-Pilot to draw the mana.”

“
Alright,
so I can get fifteen percent in thirty seconds. That will at least be
enough to see if the item works or not.” I smiled slightly,
lifting the core again and triggering my auto-pilot program. The next
thing I knew, the program had finished, and I heard Celeste speaking
up from my wrist.

“
Looks
like a success. Try it out and we’ll know for sure.” I
nodded to her instruction, waiting a minute to recover a bit of my
mana before using my magic to take apart the ideal handle, slip the
core in, then put it back together. As an experiment, I turned the
device on, and an orange beam of light shot out of the hilt,
extending a full meter. Almost instantly, Celeste called out. “Turn
it off, quick!”

Naturally,
I was not one to question her decision when I was wielding something
that could potentially kill me if something went wrong. “What
happened?”

“
I
noticed energy fluctuations as soon as you activated the beam saber.
Likely, the damaged core was caused by a software malfunction. You’ll
need to find the flaw and correct it before trying again with a new
core. Although the exposure was brief, this one is damaged slightly
now as well, and will leak energy if it’s not replaced.”

I
sighed, nodding as I took out my Soft Stick. Connecting the two
devices with my Technomancy, I downloaded the program from the weapon
and opened it up on Celeste’s holographic terminal. The code
itself wasn’t that complicated, so finding the flaw didn’t
take very long. I was able to correct it by the time my mana had
finished recovering, and uploaded the new software back to the
device.

After
that, it was simply a matter of charging up another core, and
slotting it in. This time again, I waited a bit to recover my energy
so that I could keep an eye on it with my Aura Sight. After pressing
the button, I watched the beam once again extending from the hilt,
stopping just short of where the last one had. “Okay, looking
good so far. Test its damage out against your bow.”

I
winced when I heard her say that. “You really don’t like
that bow, do you?”

“
Sorry,
Falenel, but you sucked with it. I don’t think I ever saw you
hit anything with it if you didn’t guide your arrows with
magic.” I had to admit, she had a point. And besides, it was my
last starter weapon, so it wasn’t like there was a real problem
destroying it.

Pulling
out my wooden bow, I tossed it into the air, and held the beam sabre
at my side. When it came down, I abruptly slashed across, and the
wooden weapon was cleaved in two. I had actually expected a bit of
resistance, due to the durability enchantment, but it appeared that
it didn’t help the bow out at all. On the edges that were cut,
I noted distinct burn marks, so I knew that the blade had an
extremely high temperature.

“
Alright,
now we can move on to the next one!” Celeste smiled happily,
and highlighted two of the bins that had been shown before. These
seemed to contain sleek pistols of various designs, and we ended up
going through the same process as before. The one we settled on was a
design that was thicker in the middle, with various circular grooves
on the barrel. When firing, the beam was a deep blue, and this one
simply required the programming to be fixed up a bit and recharged.

Naturally,
Celeste had me shoot my old bow with this one as well to test its
firepower… as she did when I settled on a long range rifle for
my last weapon. This weapon came out a bit rusty, and the scope was
busted. However, Celeste showed me a working scope and offered to
have me replace it. Instead, though, I did something different.

The
scopes of these guns were based on high powered cameras with
different vision modes. So, once I had a working scope, I scanned it
with my Mana Sense, and very carefully upgraded my Cybernetic eye. I
actually failed twice, which had led me to be temporarily blind in
that eye until I reverted my aura to normal, and on the third try it
felt as though nothing had changed. I clearly felt that the mana
signature in my eye was far more complex than it had been before, so
the spell should have worked. Maybe I just don’t have a way to
visually tell the difference?

Celeste
was still helping me out with the connection program, so I knew I
hadn’t lost the software. However, the fact that I failed twice
before managing to upgrade my eye to a ‘low leveled’
camera from the game world greatly dissuaded me from trying to do the
same thing with other body parts in the near future. But, since I had
the eye, I went ahead with my plan.

First,
I copied over some of the software from the scope’s camera, and
modified it to work with my Cybernetic Eye. This gave me the
following message.

After
I was done, Celeste nodded from my wrist in a satisfied manner. “So,
you’ll use your eye’s zoom function to replace the scope,
and have me calculate the trajectory to replace the sights?” I
nodded with a smile, before testing it on the last remaining piece of
my bow. This time, the damage was quite easily visible, as it even
left a scorch mark on the metal floor.

“
Alright,
I can wash off the rust some other time. Now that I have the weapons,
and a way to charge them myself, I can get going.” I had spent
my full mana capacity on each of the device’s power cores to
charge them, though none of them had even gotten a quarter of the way
charged from that. In terms of energy efficiency, the blade was
easily the best, as Celeste calculated that it burnt through one
percent of its maximum energy per minute it was active. The pistol,
on the other hand, took one percent per shot fired. Finally, the
rifle took a full five percent for a single shot, and even had a
higher energy capacity than either of the others.