Grey wasn’t exactly the sort of person one might claim to be... patient. But by some miracle, he found some today.
Maybe it was because he was so tired of fighting that the monotony of checking every nook and cranny of the cabin was more cathartic than anything else. But whatever it was, he didn’t give up.
After not finding the tome in any of the obvious areas, he checked what was left of the witch’s corpse, even opening up panels in the quasi-mech suit she was wearing.
Grey didn’t know what else you could possibly call it. Though it took the form of a cabin instead of one of those Gundam-style badass giants he had seen in anime before, it functionally worked in the same ways.
He didn’t find anything there either.
There was nothing on the witch’s corpse, nothing in the bookcases and armchairs of the cabin, no obvious hidden compartments anywhere.
But Grey didn’t even show any frustration. Somewhere deep inside, he seemed sure it had to be somewhere.
So many times now, this new world he was thrust into had screwed him over. But he had learned if he just controlled what he could control, everything would fall into place just like it should.
No. More like he would force it to, even if he had to bend iron with his own hands.
That was when Grey started peeling off a piece of metal from the witch’s encasement and began to use it as a crowbar. He pulled the trim off from around the walls of the cabin and then started to peel back the wooden flooring one by one.
Grey had no idea that his actions had a certain octopus creature sweating bullets. But it was already too late.
When Grey was about 20% of the way through peeling the flooring up from the floor joists, he found it.
Grey blinked for a moment and then sank down to his knees. There, between a pair of floor joists and partially obscured by the remaining subfloor, there was a tome.
It had a metal spine and corners that looked welded onto the worn black leather that formed the rest of it. At the center of the front cover of the tome was a metallic jaw, bearing its canines.
For some reason, looking at it, Grey felt hints of danger, as though it might leap out and rip his throat out at any moment. Yet, that fear felt so very far away.
For a moment, Grey just sat on his knees, his body depleted, his mind blank.
Then he started to laugh.
Grey could feel a lump forming in his throat. It was just a moment away, a brief hint of weakness from overwhelming him. The tears seemed right there.
But he refused.
Grey couldn’t remember the last time he cried. Maybe he was too young to form memories back then. He liked to tell his grandpa that he wasn’t even sentient when his parents died, so that grief was all the old man’s own to deal with.
He really didn’t like being around grieving or crying people. So whenever the anniversary of his parents’ death came around, he found whatever excuse he could to not be around his gramps.
What Grey realized in that moment, though, was that he had only kept looking not because he was too tired, and not because he had suddenly become patient.
It was because it was the only thing he had left.
Everywhere he turned, there was a new obstacle, some new bullshit just waiting to knock him back down.
As defiant as he was, he was tired of it. He had never dealt with such frustration in his life, such lack of control.
Seeing the tome just sitting there—just the fact it was really there, that it really existed—filled him with such an overwhelming sense of relief that he almost broke.
He almost showed weakness.
BANG.
Grey slammed a fist into the flooring. The skin at his knuckles split and his blood flowed.
After a deep breath, he slapped his face with both palms hard, his eyes radiating with a menacing bloody light.
This was all he needed. He could succeed here. So long as there were some guardrails, some rules that were actually followed and not bent on a careless whim...
He could do this.
He didn’t need it to be completely fair.
Just give him a 10% chance. No, 5%.
’Just 1% is enough.’
Grey reached down and gripped the tome, pulling it up.
—
Operation: Second Wind of the Mechanical Jaw Lineage
Quest Rank: Rare
Mission Type: Retrieval
Objective: Completed
Reward: Path of the Mechanical Jaw
—
Grey’s hair blew back as he heard a roar echo through his ears. He wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the eye or not, but the metallic jaw on the tome’s cover unhinged, lunging at him.
Grey only had the time to blink, but when he could finally see once more, the tome had gone back to normal and the light it was radiating earlier was likewise gone.
The tome rested in his palms, heavy and feeling... substantial. It was hard to describe it as anything else. It was like it had a presence and refused to be forgotten.
Unable to contain himself, Grey opened the front cover.
He wasn’t 100% sure what he was going to find, but if he was correct, this was some sort of mech-related lineage. Logically, this tome might teach him exactly what he had been hoping to learn from the gnome technician in the first place.
In that case, he wouldn’t have to peg all his hopes on the city’s rules cooperating with him.
Grey felt a tingling sensation when he touched the first page, and he found the next pages stuck together, as though it refused to allow him to go any further.
’This sensation is...’
Grey understood immediately and shifted the Nexis Suit on his forearm until it slid into just the right place.
After squinting hard, Grey just barely made out the first words that popped onto his notification screen.
—
[Welcome, descendant of the Mechanical Jaw]
—
[Downloading Path of the Mechanical Jaw...]