Grey wasn’t talking about butterflies fluttering in his stomach or the sort of burning sensation that came a night or two after a walk of shame, he was talking about the feeling he had gotten after he picked up raw materials.
When he was testing the stronger materials, they came with an especially strong tingling when he picked them up. By comparison, the weaker materials were much more subtle.
Grey had experienced this feeling many times before. In fact, it was thanks to this that he had realized he could use May’s Nexis Suit at all.
’L and R... I’m guessing it’s referring to left and right. In that case—.’
Grey squeezed down on the raw Resin Frame Mesh, his eyes focusing. However, after a moment, he frowned.
’Nothing.’
He was hoping to feel the electrical pulses moving through in one way or another, but he didn’t get anything so easy.
’Even if it did, what difference would it make? If I turned the stupid thing over it would just rotate the other way. How would you tell if it’s left or right then, you idiot.’
Grey cursed himself, running his hand through his hair again.
A breath at his neck made him suddenly jolt. Esmeralda had appeared right behind him at some unknown point, and because of the angle she stood at, the only thing Grey could see was her murky eye and the monstrous, scar-covered half of her face.
He felt his blood run cold.
"Having problems?" she asked with a smile.
Because of being impressed by Grey earlier, she had answered his question about Resin Frame Mesh metals before she realized what she was doing. But now she was wondering if Grey had just used the equivalent of a parlor trick to trick her.
It wouldn’t be a surprise that the Mechanical Jaw Lineage had a method of quickly sorting blueprints. While Grey’s ability to communicate with his Neural Frame so quickly—and at the mere Proving Class alone—was impressive, it wasn’t going to get her a replacement eye if he couldn’t actually craft.
Honestly, she was feeling a bit embarrassed by her own thoughts.
From the beginning, she could have sorted the blueprints herself. She had scrambled them like that as a first hurdle for Grey to cross. She had been more focused on his speed than anything else.
But if he didn’t even know the basics of crafting, then it was all worthless.
"Of course not. This process takes time." Grey replied.
"Mm, it does take time. But it might take an infinite amount of time if someone doesn’t know the difference between an L- and R-Frame, don’t you think?"
Grey cursed inwardly. "Listen, lady. If you could just find Mechanical Jaw Lineage people hanging around everywhere, I’m sure you would have already gotten help with this."
"You think I couldn’t?" Esmeralda smiled a bit dangerously.
"Then that probably just means you scared them away with that face of yours. Take a step back and let me handle things unless you—."
Grey’s world went black.
—
[You have died. Better luck next time. Oh wait, there won’t be a next time. Toodle-oo.]
—
**
"..."
Grey wiped his mouth of vomit with the back of his wrist.
’Okay, maybe I deserved that. But she won’t let me breathe. The moment she gets an inkling that I’m not as practiced as she thinks, her suspicion gets turned up to a hundred and it’s like I’m playing in a minefield at that point.’
Shaking his head and gathering himself, Grey walked toward the table and started tossing blueprints out. Once he was done, he pulled out the raw materials again and stared down the daunting task before him.
’I guess I should stop stalling and dying and finally just do it. But I think I know what makes the Resin raw material either L- or R- now... the question is, is it left from the perspective of the user or the perspective of an outsider. Or is it from above? From below...?’
Grey took a deep breath, his thoughts meandering. Looking up from the blueprints, he decided to give it a go.
The real nightmare was going to be the Loading phase. If he couldn’t even get out of the Forming stage, he could just kiss his life goodbye.... Again... and again... and then again...
’Come on Grey, lock in.’
Grey picked up the Twice Tempered Purified Steel and focused. His eyes kept darting back and forth between the blueprint and the steel.
To the side, Esmeralda was, once again, having a hard time hiding her shock. This time, Grey hadn’t even accessed his Neural Frame, he just looked for the exact two blueprints he recognized, tossing all the others away.
To do so from sight alone...
From Esmeralda’s perspective it looked like Grey was well-informed, and far more skilled than he actually was.
What happened next made her even more sure of that assessment.
Grey held a Cyber Core with one hand, placing his fingers on the Cyber Mat. In his mind, he watched as the Twice Tempered Purified Steel crumbled into motes of light, forming over 1020 Faces. He only needed 930, so he directly separated 90 of the Faces, leaving a mesh that looked like an energy of continuous and random geometrical shapes.
And then he began to shape it. His mind visualized the blueprint, forming the outer shell and hollowing out the channels within at the same time.
In the outside world, the materials hovered above the Cyber Mat and Esmeralda watched as the outer shell of the Ball Bearing Eye solidified.
’... So fast...’
It was just the outer shell, but moving hundreds of Faces into place perfectly in the Proving Class was practically a Herculean feat.
Each face was a small shape with each corner having a degree of freedom of movement. If one imagined a network of Faces like a bundle of string, pulling on one corner caused a shift in neighboring Faces.
To set them all so quickly—even if it was just externally—made Esmeralda’s breathing quicken a little bit.
But then as excited as she was, it all came crashing down both figuratively and literally when Grey’s body swayed and his vision went black.
He crashed to the floor, the echo of his skull smashing against wood being the only thing that resounded for a long while...
Until his snore.
Grey had passed out.