Grey raised an eyebrow. "You’re a man, aren’t you? Spit it out. What’s with all this flailing and decorum?"
"Pa..." Silva exhaled a breath that seemed half a laugh. "... Your mouth is truly vicious."
Silva stood to his feet. "Never mind. Ignore me. I’ll get out of your way."
Grey watched the silver fox leave. His hesitation seemed to be even in his steps, causing Grey to shake his head.
He felt a deep annoyance every time he saw Silva, not because he had any particular hatred for the man, but because he could feel the fakeness exuding from him.
Something told him that half-beast men like Silva weren’t supposed to be in suits or speaking like noblemen. But for some reason Silva insisted on doing exactly that.
If that was what he wanted to do, fine. But it was clearly not.
Grey shook his head. ’Whatever, not my problem.’
Pressing a hand to a wall, he managed to drag himself into the newly renovated space and slumped into the egg gaming chair.
He moaned out a sigh. That really did feel good, and it actually fit him. Clearly, Silva had either had it custom made or had ordered it with his new size in mind.
Being humongous was so inconvenient.
’Alright.’
Grey pulled out the Cyber Mat from under his tit and spread it out on the new stainless steel work surface before him.
He exhaled a breath, fought off some sleepiness, and plucked something off the shelves behind him with a line of blood from a finger he cut open. He was far too tired to keep getting up and moving, might as well take the time to practice with Heart Lance.
He plopped the item down on the new Cyber Mat and focused. This was the easiest test he could think of to figure out what the difference between this Cyber Mat and all the others he had been around was. So, he started with a material he was quite familiar with: Tempered Steel.
—
Object: Tempered Brass Steel
Weight: 0.14kg
Faces: 6
—
’Hm... nothing is different. Maybe...’
The Cyber Mat was black, gold and silver, but other than its color it was almost like any other Cyber Mat, having grid lines that went straight up and down, and straight left to right.
However, unlike other Cyber Mats, it had a swirling pattern to one side that reminded him of the Fibonacci Sequence, curling like a seashell.
Grey picked up the piece of Tempered Brass Steel and deposited it in the middle of the swirl.
—
Object: Tempered Brass Steel
Weight: 0.14kg
Polygonal Faces: 6
—
The result was the exact same.
Grey raised an eyebrow, looking at the hunk of metal incredulously. Was he just overthinking things?
’Polygonal...?’
A second of awkwardness passed and just as Grey was about to pluck it off the Cyber Mat and go about his business, something changed.
A projection of the Tempered Brass Steel appeared above the original item. It floated for a moment and then lines carved onto its surface, forming the familiar polygonal shapes of "Faces".
Faces were essentially the smallest unit an item could be cut into while still maintaining its properties. It was somewhat correlated with weight, but not 100%. Sometimes there were impurities and other interferences that could mess with the balance of things.
But an often ignored aspect was shape.
An extremely long and narrow ore would naturally have fewer Faces than another more uniform ore of the same kind and weight.
One would think more surface area meant more of a chance at Faces, but this was far from the case. The more deformed and unnaturally formed an ore was, the less whole the lattice structure would be, and the less useful it would be for crafting.
The illusory ore shifted in the air, and new cut lines appeared across its surface, confusing Grey for a moment.
—
Object: Tempered Brass Steel
Weight: 0.14kg
Curved Faces: 8
—
’... Did it just add two Faces? How?’
Grey reached out a finger toward the illusion and swiped at it. It spun in front of him and his face became weird.
He couldn’t find anything wrong on the surface, but if you cut the ore like this, it would be opening it up like some sort of blooming flower.
’It helps me find more efficient cuts? But why...’
The "why" Grey was asking wasn’t about why this would be useful, it obviously would be. What he couldn’t understand was why only the curved lines could do this.
If the curves could do this, what was the point in ever having the normal grid lines? Was it really that much harder to do? The only difference seemed to be that the lines curved during the cutting.
Until now, crafting felt very straightforward. There were Faces, you cut them, got your little cubes, then that made forging them with Cyber Cores very straightforward and easy.
But with these curved lines, it was actually a lot more difficult, and most blueprints probably didn’t account for raw materials in this configuration.
It felt like a lot of hassle.
’The Prometheus System probably has a method to modify blueprints made for gridlines into ones made from curves, but... why? What’s the point? Just to save money? I mean, valid... but I’m not really lacking money right now. Maybe that would be more useful when materials get more valuable...’
Curiosity got the better of Grey.
From his perspective, it was a waste of time to spend more energy trying to get Curved Faces, especially when his mind was a second away from passing out.
But he did it anyway.
He was correct about Prometheus. It did, indeed, have a method to convert blueprints forged for Polygonal Faces to Curved Faces. The thing was that the mechanical jaw blueprints didn’t need this conversion because it was already integrated. He hadn’t even noticed.
He didn’t mind it, rebuilding a mech he already had twice before.
The first time he built Tuned Jaw 0BJ37, it was casual and had barely had 3 energy units.
After improving it by literally eating metal it reached 10 units, but it was still pitiful.
It was only after having Prometheus improve it, and building it a second time, that he gained just over 20 energy units to it.
By now, he was extremely familiar with it, and that made it the least taxing of the mechs he could create right now.
Still, it earned him a headache that made his head feel like it was splitting in two.
The result, though...
’No fucking way...’
—
Sync Rate: N/A
Energy Reserve: 0/200
—
Prometheus had already optimized the blueprint, it was already perfect, and Grey’s Skill hadn’t increased that much. Even if it had, he might have been able to squeeze out five more energy units at most.
Just forging with Curved Faces instead of Polygonal Faces was a 10x difference.
Grey was speechless. Did he even have to make an Established Class Mech with a Vessel at this level? He could practically feel Prometheus buzzing, wanting to transfer over.
After a second of hesitation, Grey gritted his teeth and yanked his own mechanical jaw off his face, the pain nearly making him pass out.
His pain tolerance should be way higher than this... his body was truly weak right now.
"Come on."
He guided a flickering red gold flame into its new home.