Kyle experimented with all kinds of Formation Arrays for around 200 years. Naturally, he wasn't just setting them up and changing them. He was also connecting them with each other to create several combined Formation Arrays.
As he looked at his latest creation, he couldn't help smiling with pride.
'Look at this bad boy!' he thought as he looked at the black sphere in front of him. It only had a diameter of about 100 meters and looked like a normal Concealing Formation Array from the outside, but this was anything but a normal Concealing Formation Array.
Kyle easily passed through the black sphere, and as soon as he was inside, he found himself inside a black sphere that had a diameter of over ten kilometers.
He had combined a Space Expansion Formation Array and a Concealing Formation Array to create this space. However, there was even more to it.
As soon as he entered, several spears made of iron came out of the walls of the Formation Array.
BOOOM!
An explosion shot the spears forward, and all of them flew right towards Kyle.
Iron Manipulation, Explosion, Sensing, and Aiming Formation Arrays.
The spears flew towards Kyle at speeds of less than a kilometer per second, but for some reason, they reached him in an instant.
Dynamic Space Compression Formation Array.
The spears hit Kyle and exploded into fragments, which quickly flew back towards the bottom of the isolated space.
Magnetism Formation Array.
The fragments were transported to the loading docks.
Transportation and Storage Formation Arrays.
The fragments melted down, and the molten iron was pulled together again.
Heating and Iron Forming Formation Arrays.
The molten iron was quickly cooled down and hardened to form long metallic sticks.
Cooling Formation Array.
Then, the iron sticks were shaped into spears again and launched once more.
It was an endless loop of attacks.
'It works great!' Kyle thought. 'Just sucks that every Formation Array consumes Energy Stones to run. If I could create an Energy Gathering Formation Array, this thing could literally run forever. Sadly, Energy Gathering Formation Arrays are super difficult to create. They need the Major Law of Space or Gravity to work since they directly pull Energy out of space and gravity, and I don't know these Laws.'
'Anyway,' he thought as he opened his Communicator for the first time in a long while. 'I should keep reading.'
As Kyle kept reading, he realized that he already knew the majority of the things inside the guide, but there were still several parts that gave him answers to some problems he had been facing.
Within just a couple of days, Kyle finished the entire basic guide.
The end of the last document had an interesting sentence.
"If you can set up all of the Formation Arrays in this guide, you are now officially a Formation Array Technician."
Kyle remembered the very first document talking about the specific terms for Formation Array Masters.
Everyone dealing with Formation Arrays was called a Formation Array Master. It was just the overarching description. However, Formation Array Masters could also be put into different categories.
Formation Supporters knew the basics of how Formation Arrays worked. They were often used to maintain and run big Formation Arrays. All the people operating the Teleportation Formation Arrays were Formation Supporters. They roughly knew how the Formation Arrays worked, giving them the ability to work with them and fix minor mistakes.
One could liken them to IT Support. They knew enough about PCs to fix the most common mistakes, but they didn't know how exactly they worked. Sure, they knew what RAM, a graphics card, a main board, and a CPU roughly did, but they didn't know how these things did what they did.
A Formation Technician was someone who could set up Formation Arrays. They knew what materials they needed and how everything had to be set up. A Formation Technician generally knew everything a Formation Supporter knew and more.
Then, there were Formation Engineers. They were the ones who conceptualized new Formation Arrays. Formation Technicians knew how to set up Formation Arrays and how to combine different Formation Arrays to create a bigger one, but they didn't know how to make entirely new ones that weren't just combinations of existing designs.
Star Genesis was a Formation Technician. She hadn't conceptualized her own Formation Arrays. She had simply bought the designs and set them up.
'I'm a Formation Technician now,' Kyle thought, 'but I don't think I want or can stop there.'
Kyle looked at the other folder in his Communicator.
This folder contained the advanced guide for Formation Masters with Fire and Metal Affinities.
'My goal is to change my aura, and I can't use standard designs for that. I can't guarantee that nobody has a Sensing Formation Array that negates a Disguise Formation Array. If I want to be safe, I have to create a new thing.'
Kyle opened the folder and looked at the document names.
'Yep, thought so. No wonder this advanced guide was so fucking expensive.'
Some of the files contained the words Formation Technician, but there were many more that contained the words Formation Engineer.
'Huh, this also includes a basic guide for Formation Engineers, which is different from the other basic guide.'
'I'm actually getting interested now,' he thought as he opened the first document.
There were more requirements and rules, but there was no issue.
After some time, Kyle came to the actual lessons, which proved to be quite different when compared to the earlier guide.
'Huh, instead of telling me how stuff works, it just gives me a list of experiments.'
'Sure, why not? I like experimenting.'
Kyle performed several of the experiments, and he noticed a couple of peculiarities.
Quite often, the Formation Array he set up worked very differently from how he had predicted it would work.
When he was done with the first list of experiments, he noticed a common pattern that he hadn't noticed before.
After the list of experiments came a short explanation, which confirmed Kyle's earlier guess but with additional information.
'This is way more fun than the other guide!' he thought with a smile as he went to the next page.
More experiments.
More results.
The document ended, and Kyle went to the next one.
As he worked through the documents, Kyle felt like he was learning an insane number of things, and it wasn't even boring!
Eventually, Kyle reached the first exam, which consisted of only a single task.
He had to create a Formation Array that achieved a certain effect. Of course, there were also a bunch of requirements like Energy efficiency, size, maximum number of Nodes, maximum number of Connections, maximum cost of materials, and so on.
The first exam was pretty easy.
The second one also wasn't difficult.
However, as Kyle passed more and more exams, he noticed that they were starting to get difficult.
During the earlier exams, he had just needed a couple of seconds to conceptualize a fitting Formation Array.
Then, it took minutes.
Hours.
Days.
Finally, Kyle started to take years to conceptualize a fitting Formation Array.
Fartmation Technician
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