Darren climbed out of his gaming pod and stretched with a soft groan. He'd logged out immediately after having dinner with the women so he could get some stuff done. He took care of his usual routine upon logging out, including a run down to the gym to get a bit of a workout in. Once he was settled, he sat in front of his terminal and went to the official AoG website to check out the details on the recent update. The first portion was just a list of tweaks to a ton of magic spells and elements. Since no real numbers were given it was a bit useless. He'd have to use his magic to notice any changes to it. Since he was going to the dungeon soon, he would test it then.

One change that did catch his attention, players were now allowed to teach each other skills, abilities, and magic. The teacher was required to have the Teaching skill as well as a rank of over one hundred in what they wanted to teach. Adding to that, players could now teach themselves skills as long as they displayed real proficiency with the skill. To make it up to players with the Quick Learner skill, the Quick Learner skill would now let players learn new skills themselves at an increased rank based on their proficiency with the skill. This meant that, in the future, when Darren learned new skills on his own they would potentially start above rank one.

The next small thing was the creation of leader boards in a few categories. He glanced over them and immediately dismissed them. Since there were no levels the boards were broken up into things like 'Strongest' for the players with high Power attributes or 'Fastest' for players with high Agility attributes. The only boards that did catch his attention were the ones related to crafting. Each main profession had its own leader board. The board for Magitech Engineering was blank at the moment with no one listed on it. If he volunteered to sign up for it he would instantly be ranked first. He'd decide on if he wanted to join it later on.

Following the leader boards, was the announcement about Guilds being able to be created now. To create a guild the founder needed a certain amount of reputation within the country they wanted to found their guild. Guilds could contain an unlimited number of members while their benefits were tied to the rank of the guild. The guild's rank could be increased by completing missions and earning experience for the guild. Every one hundred ranks the benefits of the guild would increase a small amount. Given that any number of players could be in a guild, it made sense for the benefits to come slowly.

The next change in the update log was the one that excited him the most. Players had been given access to the internet while playing the game! Apparently a lot of players had complained about the lack of communication options within AoG. No chat groups, no instant messaging, no friends list, nothing that would let people talk to each other. As the developers didn't want to add something like that, they chose the option to allow access to the internet so players could access forums and chatting applications of their own to communicate with each other. For Darren, it had far more applications! He could now check details on guns and other weapons with ease!

Having access to the web while inside of the game would let him do research on weapons with ease and make it possible for him to create more accurate weapons. This change was simply the most exciting one for him. Now he didn't need to waste game time in the real world to look up and memorize plans for his creations. He could get all the research he wanted. Even better, thanks to the time dilation he would technically be reading the information four times faster. Of course, that was nothing new. All education institutes used VR classrooms with time dilation to learn more in a shorter time. Businesses did the same where possible as well.

Finally, the last update he found interesting had to do with minor changes to the calculations for the attributes. Once again specific numbers were not given. The general gist of the changes could be boiled down to; Increasing attributes other than magic would now provide a smaller increase than previously. This change was made to bring the other attributes more in-line with the Magic attribute. The other change was to how the Power attribute was calculated. Before Power just flatly increased damage dealt regardless of the source. Frankly, Darren had always found that a bit odd. Now, it made more sense.

The bonuses provided by the Power attribute to damage would be split according to the attribute distribution of the player. The average value of the player's Endurance and Agility would be compared to their Magic attribute and then divided between them. If the two values were even then Power would be split evenly in half between them. The total value of the three attributes could be considered one hundred percent. If Endurance and Agility made up seventy percent of that value, then seventy percent of the damage from the Power attribute would be physical while the remaining thirty percent would be magical. With his current attributes, Darren's magic damage would currently be slightly higher than his physical damage. Once he went into the dungeon and rebalanced his attributes his Power would be evenly split between Magic and Physical damage.

Darren approved of these changes to how the attributes worked. As they were before, the Power attribute was a little broken. A mage-type player with high Power and Magic attributes was previously capable of dealing significant physical damage due to their Power attribute. Now, their physical damage would be more realistic based on their choices. No more melee mages without a proper investment into physical attributes. All-in-all the changes brought a smile to his face. It should make things more interesting and more balanced.

Darren closed down his terminal and started to strip off his clothing. He could do everything he needed to do online inside of AoG now, including his post looking for someone to teach him holy magic. It was even better now that players could teach each other! His teacher just needed a good enough rank in Holy magic. He climbed into the gaming pod and closed the lid with a smile on his face. Things were about to get so much more interesting for him.

When Thomas opened his eyes, his room was filled with bright light. He'd logged out for roughly four hours so sixteen had passed inside of the game. Nightime was long over and it was already early afternoon. He smiled at Snowlily and stroked her head. He looked at her attributes and a quick bit of math showed him how her Power attribute would be divided. Forty-five percent of her Power would go to her physical attacks while the remaining fifty-five percent would go to her magical attacks. It wasn't a huge gap between the two but it was interesting. For himself, the gap was much smaller at forty-six physical damage and fifty-four magical damage.

Finished with his musing, the pair made their way downstairs to enjoy a nice lunch together. Unfortunately for her, that meant extra vegetables for Snowlily. The companions enjoyed their lunch together. When it was done, Thomas opened his character sheet and accessed the new interface that would allow him to log onto the internet while playing. He quickly navigated his way to the private forum and logged in with his credentials. Once inside he immediately noticed that there was a large increase in activity. With access now available in-game they no longer had to log out to read or reply to posts.

He wasted no time in putting up a post asking if someone could teach him or knew of an NPC near his location that might be willing to teach him. Along with the post, he connected his email account to the interface so he would get a system message whenever he got a new email. With everything set, he moved onto the fun part. He pulled up a search engine and began looking into magnetic acceleration-based weapons. Rail guns and coil guns, also known as gauss rifles, became his primary focus.

He hadn't spent all that much time learning about them in the past so he found the subject rather interesting. Originally, he thought the complicated nature of such weapons would be too complex for him to emulate inside of the game. After all, making a complex computer was way beyond his capabilities. However, he could do things with magic that would be deemed impossible in the real world. One of those things was potentially creating unidirectional magnetic fields. In other words, a magnetic field that only worked in one direction as opposed to normal magnetic fields that worked in all directions.

To make sure he was right, he retrieved his trusty metal ball from his inventory and began to play with it. He used his Magnetic magic to the best of his ability. He was able to create a contained magnetic field that followed his will. Essentially, he formed his Magnetic magic into a flat-ended cylinder. No matter how close the flat end of the cylinder got to the metal ball, it had no effect. Not until the cylinder of magic actually touched the ball, at which point the ball was instantly propelled through the cylinder from one end to the other.

The testing proved that he could create magnetic fields that only propelled objects in a single direction. It also proved that he could control exactly where the magnetic fields would have an effect on the metal. What did all of this mean? It meant he didn't need complex math or timing to get the maximum benefit from using magnetic acceleration to launch projectiles. He could simply create a rifle similar to his Spell Cannon and use enchanted rings to created one-way cylinders of magnetic force. Each one being more powerful than the last to increase the acceleration and kinetic force of the fired projectile.

Given how much power he wanted the weapon to have, his only real choice was to make a rifle. Since he also wanted something a bit beefier than his handguns, it all worked out. He browsed around for a bit to decide on what caliber he should make the rounds for the weapon. In the end, he decided to go with fifty caliber rounds. Big and badass, they would be able to deal damage to just about anything and would make most forms of metal and natural armor useless. Especially if he made rounds specifically for armor-piercing. Another reason he chose fifty caliber was simply that the large size of the round provided a lot more room for creating things like incendiary or explosive rounds. They could be made with mana crystal interiors and enchantments far more easily than smaller rounds.

With the caliber of the rifle decided, he moved onto creating some preliminary designs inside of his blueprint system. Since the weapon would be using magnetic acceleration to fire the projectiles instead of Firestone powder, a gas-piston system to create a semi-automatic weapon was impractical. Instead, he went with an old school bolt action. Given the size of the rounds for the weapon, he was limited to designing a five-round magazine to avoid making it too big or bulky. Lastly, he designed the barrel itself. It would have five linked magnetic enchantments. All designed to grab the bullet and accelerate it to the next one. Each enchantment would have to be stronger than the last to further accelerate the projectile.

In his previous work, he'd learned two important things about enchanting. First, a single item couldn't have more than one enchantment on it. He discovered this when making the camp stove for the pirates. Even though he'd drawn two separate enchantments onto the item, they both worked simultaneously when mana was channeled into the item. If someone saw only that they would assume that an item could only have a single enchantment. They would be wrong. Thomas hadn't realized it at the time but he'd broken this particular rule in the past. Specifically with his Spell Cannon.

That was the second thing he learned. The spell cannon had multiple enchantments but technically speaking, the weapon only had a single enchantment on it. The rings that compressed and amplified the shots fired by the Spell Cannon were, technically, separate items. The rings could be removed from the Spell Cannon without harming the weapon. Additionally, the rings would continue to function even after being removed. Sure, the Spell Cannon would lose a lot of power but it would still function. Using this knowledge, he could create similar rings for his new weapon and give them different enchantments so they provided rapid acceleration in stages instead of all at once.

To get the projectile moving he would use a small amount of Firestone powder, similar to a primer cap, to start the process. Once it moved into the first stage of the magnetic enchantments it would rapidly accelerate into it and the remaining four enchantments until it left the barrel. Thanks to the unidirectional magnetic magic, the timing would become irrelevant. Without the risk of the timing being off, the projectile would experience pure acceleration. The only drawback he could think of at the moment were power restrictions. His mana pool was limited so he designed the stock, pistol grip, and handguard to be hollow so he could fill the empty spaces with mana crystals. He would only know how many shots they could supply power for once the weapon was complete.

Thankfully the bolt action rifle wasn't an overly complex weapon and was easy to copy with active access to the internet. He only had to copy measurements and work on his personal modifications and additions. When he was done with the first iteration of his design he got the first glimpse of his next project. It was a rifle with a length of over one meter with a large barrel that had five evenly spaced rings along it. The large magazine hung in front of the trigger guard. The butt of the rifle was slightly larger than would be expected to allow more room for the amalgamated mana crystal it would contain. Overall, he was very happy with the design.

Next, he needed to design the ammo and shell casings for it. He was looking forward to seeing what kind of chaos he would be able to unleash with specialized shells.