Working on Benny with one arm, even with assisted mode turned on was a pain. The plates were easy enough to take off in some places but the wiring and minute gears and pistons were impossible with his other hand. Cog had screwed Benny’s armored plates on in some places with standard bolts and screws. But, in others something held the plates to the robots frame, it was an epoxy like substance that Kaleb could not identify. He had been working an hour and made 10 research point just from taking the thing apart before Kaleb gave up and decided to set the process to automatic, going through the workbench’s menus looking for some way to switch the dismantling process to automatic he noticed a tab marked “Shop”, he had forgotten he could purchase equipment through his work bench.

Scrolling through the shops menu he found several pieces of high-end equipment that would make his work easier but they were way out of his price range. Filtering the options to stuff in his price range it was disappointing to find the quality of the equipment dropped noticeably. He spotted several beginner skill books available for purchase also a handheld laser cutter that would make scrapping Benny easier. He purchased skill books on Robotics and Metalworking along with some general information books about the strange alien crystals he used to power his gadgets and the gadget company K-Tech. He also purchased a pen-sized laser cutter from Festus Tools, K-tech had one for a similar price but he thought it best to avoid them for now after his talk with Roy, Kaleb sent the order out and said goodbye to 1,300 credits he had earned.

Luckily the game mechanics allowed for instantaneous delivery in the form of a harried looking speedster NPC that appeared on his virtual doorstep. Taking his parcel from the speedster and signing for it, Kaleb offered him a glass of water before he went back to The Pit to open his purchase. First setting aside the laser pen cutter he opted to read through the books first. Picking up the beginner book on robotics a notification window popped up.

*Skill Book detected* Absorb Skill? [Yes/No]

Selecting yes Kaleb could feel the flow of information into his virtual brain was a feeling Kaleb never got used to. It was a heavily debated feature of most current VRMMO’s, if video game companies could implant any information they wanted into a players brain what stopped them from changing how a person thought altogether? Video game companies where adamant however that what they were doing was the mere illusion of implanting a skill, the information would sit stored in the immersion pod until the player thought of accessing the information making it appear as though the player had known it all along. It was still a weird feeling accessing information you had never learned but most gamers had gotten used to it. Doing the same for the skill book on metal working, Kaleb set about reading through the information books he had purchased, as these were not skill books he had to read through them, deciding to tackle the one on the alien crystals first.

Reading through the book was enlightening it also somewhat explained what had happened with his Ice Ray. There were various kinds of multi-colored crystals the four major ones however were, the blue Low-Energy crystals used in low-end gadgets and household appliances, the green memory crystals used as hard drives for high-end computers as data storage devices, red heat generation crystals used in some cars and heating units, yellow Electricity amplifying crystal used in energy production and most gadgets, and the purple High-End energy source crystals used to power entire buildings. The shade of the crystal also denoted how powerful it was in its given category, Apparently the light blue Low Energy crystal just wasn’t enough for the power draw of the Ice Ray, and all the jostling around probably hurt the design too.

Finishing the book on crystals Kaleb glanced over at the shelving unit full of plastic tubs of various junk hardware, sure enough he had one labeled Crystals. Walking over and opening the bin he found a dozen crystals 6 blue, 3 green, 2 yellow, and 1 red. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like he had any purple crystals and all the crystals appeared to be on the lighter shade of their respective color spectrum’s denoting they were the lowest variants of crystals. Kaleb briefly wondered why the shield he had created hadn’t used one of the yellow crystals, but he figured Shocky worked just fine as is and if the assisted creation system didn’t use one, it must be for a good reason.

Switching over to the book on K-tech Kaleb was disappointed, the book was little more than a propaganda booklet for the Technology company listing its various charitable endeavors and the good works their gadgets were doing in the fields of crime fighting and medicine. He wasn’t exactly looking for a complete summary of their alleged shady dealings but he figured something useful information would be in the book. The most interesting part of the book was a short blurb on Doctor Wolfgang Kersait, the founder of K-Tech and the man Roy had mentioned worked with his grandpa.

“A brilliant mechanical engineer, Dr. Kersait was one half of the superhero team Doc and the Streak taking down various drug cartels in the state of Texas with the help of Obadiah Nova. With hundreds of arrest made and various gadgets being sold through patents to various law enforcement agency Doctor Kersait hung up his jet-pack and patented Sonic Force Blaster (Still Sold Today!) and went into business for himself. K-Tech hired hundreds of Inventors and was quickly granted several statewide gadget contracts becoming one of THE greatest international sources for gadgets and hardware throughout this universe.”

While barely touching on the Doctor’s super hero career it raised a few questions with Kaleb. How did the Doc set up K-Tech so quickly? How fast did those State grants go through? Why was the argument Roy mentioned between his grandfather and Kersait not mentioned here? These had obvious answers: the man was a great hero, and this was a book written by K-tech itself so they’d leave out any disparaging happenings in Kersait’s career. “It might be a goose chase” thought Kaleb “but the game wouldn’t have thrown me a red herring this early, would it?”

Finished with his books Kaleb glanced at the clock, 11:20 pm, still plenty of time to work on a few things. Grabbing the pen-sized laser cutter and using his newfound knowledge of robotics Kaleb cut where he would put Benny’s Data crystal. The robots had to have one, how else would they be able to recognize friend from foe; so Kaleb used his new laser cutter and removed Benny’s short square head finding nothing except a pair of red-tinged lenses attached with hundreds of wires and piping leading further into Benny’s broad chest cavity. Grunting to himself and his preconceived notions Kaleb began the arduous task of cutting Benny’s chest plate all the way off.

A few minutes and several curse words later Kaleb completed his journey around Benny’s form, cutting through several bolts and epoxy layered sheets of metal. The smell of the epoxy was strong enough he opened his garage door to dissipate the fumes, a choice he immediately regretted upon leveraging the metal plate off of Benny’s torso and finding half a corpse. Gasping and swallowing down both his scream of revulsion and possibly his own virtual bile, Kaleb quickly shut his garage door and cracked several rectangular windows around the top of the garage to help with the smell. Taking a deep breath, he returned his focus to the man in the machine or the half a man inside the robot to be more accurate. The man was dead, bisected at the waist with no signs of intestines or organs spilling out onto Benny’s lower extremities, grey skinned and with no eyelids the man stared up at Kalebs ceiling as wires and tubes spider-webbed around him almost cradling him in the chest cavity of the giant robot.

Sitting in the center of the man’s chest, embedded into a shallow crevice in-between the man’s rib cage was a bright green Memory crystal. Roughly an inch long and shining brightly the crystal seemed to taunt him with its placement, but the crystal was far too valuable to leave in the robot-man-thing both to him and possibly the police. Taking a deep breath and reminding himself that the guy was dead and not real Kaleb quickly reached in and snatched the crystal, an electrical hum that Kaleb hadn’t noticed seemed to die when he removed the crystal and the robot itself seemed almost to relax once he removed the crystal.

Kaleb, trying not to think where the crystal had just been, walked over and set it carefully on his workbench. Glancing up and the clock again the bright red numbers seemed to scream 12:00 am, he completed a couple more things than head to bed, he could log off but he wanted to stay immersed as much as possible while he had his time away from work. Setting the memory Crystal aside, he set about drawing the blueprint for the recording device he had told the group about, using a strong slim metal band to fit around his head and several pieces from Benny’s own head including the memory crystal. The blueprint was for a monocle that attached to the metal band and would record whatever he looked at, but as he set the blueprint to scan, the system generated a notification.

*Attention*

The following device is for the Head Gadget Slot make sure you have one open.

Cost to unlock Slots: 10 RP (+10 RP for every slot unlocked after the first.)

Quickly checking his status page he saw though while he could afford to unlock one of his head slots, he had 25 points thanks to taking apart Benny and it, technically, being a new day, it would leave him with only 15 Research Points not enough to recreate a weapon, although he had the triangular sword blueprint from the Bladelings. “Fuck it” he thought buying the slot and setting about working with the assisted mode guidelines to create his recording headband, it was quick work and once he insured the device could record using a laptop, he found in he’s houses bedroom he uninstalled the Memory Crystal and set it aside just in case.

Standing up from the workbench Kaleb turned and looked and the giant Bruiser sitting in the middle of his garage, the giant Bruiser with a dead man inside it, shaking his head and sighing he turned back to the workbench and turned on the automated disassembly getting another notification.

*Attention*

The Automated Disassembly is now turned on. Time till full disassembly 7 hours 8 minutes.

Maximum Research Point gain estimated at 70 points - conditions of lab + proper equipment

Total RP gains = 55

Followed by a long list of all the items he would gain from the disassembly including several organic ones from the poor sap inside Benny. Giving his go ahead for the disassembly Kaleb yawned loudly as he reached into his lab coat pocket for the blueprints he had gathered during the tutorial event. Spreading them out on the workbench he had just enough time to see that 5 were the same triangular sword blueprint before another notification popped up.

*Duplicate Blueprints Detected*

Merge?

[Yes/No]

“Well, that’s convenient.” Thought Kaleb as he clicked Yes. Three of the blueprints disappeared leaving 2 triangular sword blueprints and the armor blueprint he got from the bruiser in front of Nova Hardware. Looking at the newly formed blueprint it was just an enhanced variant of the Bladelings own sword. Not looking too much at the stats Kaleb set the workbench to build both the Bladeling sword and Bruiser armor, he knew the system would not give max gains but he was tired and it was approaching one in the morning he would at least have something when he met up with the group at 9. Yawning again Kaleb clicked yes on the workbench one final time then turned and walked into his in-game home trudging slowly to what he assumed would be his room.