Author’s Corner: Okay, so I managed to get some time to write after everything was taken care of. Though, this chapter is being posted after midnight, so I must say Merry Christmas Eve to one and all! Hope you enjoy the chapter(I’m actually more awake for this one than last night, so things might make more sense!), it’s a bit longer than the average.

As I was walking towards the starport, I heard a light coughing sound from my wrist. Looking down, I saw Celeste looking up to me expectantly. “What is it..?”

“Weapons.” She said with a tiny grin, making me facepalm. How did I forget to upgrade my weapons?

“Don’t suppose I can get away with saying that I didn’t think they would let me take it with me?” I looked down to her with one eye, the other still covered by my hand.

The holographic girl snickered, shaking her head. “Nope!” Afterwards, she pulled up another blue path for me to follow. “With your Technomancy and Engineering abilities, I’m taking you to a junkyard. It should be within your power to fix broken weapons, or assemble the parts needed to make your own. Doing it this way would be far cheaper than simply buying new weapons.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic, so I nodded my head slightly. “Alright. But, surely other people can do so just as easily. Why is there even a junkyard?”

The hologram smiled slightly at me. “I do not have all the information needed to provide an adequate answer. However, the guide indicates that any device sold at the weapon and power armor stores can also be assembled with parts from the junkyard. Likely, any weapons there have some defect or missing component, and its owner thought it would be simply cheaper to buy a new one than to get it repaired. However, if you combine the parts from two identical weapons, you should be able to make up for any deficiencies.”

“Fine, fine, I get it. As long as there are people throwing things away, there will need to be a place for it to end up. The island of lost toys.” I chuckled slightly as I walked down the path. I didn’t have much to worry about when it came to picking weapons. I mean, if the battery wasn’t charged, I could fix it with my lightning, or simply replace it with a Seed of Lightning. I might even be able to replace other key parts to devices with similar objects to increase their effects.

Celeste’s directions lead me to the edge of the city, a wide fenced off area with a single gate. Above the gate was a crooked sign, reading ‘Mike’s Garage. Fixer’s Keepers, Loser’s Weepers.’ The slogan made me shake my head with a light laugh before I walked in. A rather round human was manning the counter, and by the oversized nametag on his filthy brown jacket, I discovered that he was Mike. He stood just over six feet tall, and looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a year. However, I could clearly see that one of his eyes were robotic, giving off a distinct metallic shine while a red light emerged from where the iris should be.

“Here to shop around?” He looked at me and smirked, crossing his arms over his chest, which only amplified the awareness I had of his… roundness. “Three silver to get in, but you can bring out whatever you can carry. Ask the AI for help in finding and identifying parts, but it won’t help you put them together. That’ll rely on you.”

I nodded, and handed over the three silver coins. I could feel my funds constantly dwindling today, and it was not a good feeling. After receiving the payment, Mike nodded and pressed a button, opening a door off to the side of the counter. “Have fun.” He chuckled, his whole body shaking with the motion as I walked through the door.

Beyond the door, I came across the real junkyard. I could see rows of broken bows, guns, swords, armors, even a few items that looked like small vehicles, all assorted into various bins. “Celeste, mind giving me a hand here? You know what I want.” I smiled to the AI, and then focused on my Aura Sight.

“Roger roger!” She said in a robotic tone that reminded me of an old movie. Immediately, several of the bins lit up in my Cybernetic eye. “Pistol, rifle, or semi-auto for the gun?”

I couldn’t help but smile bitterly as a bow was not even part of the question, but as it stands a bow would likely do me more harm than good. “Both, pistol and rifle. Want some versatility.” After I said that, a few of the bins that had been highlighted were dimmed.

“Melee weapon, you wanting energy or physical?” She asked again, and I nodded a bit this time. At least she hadn’t taken that choice away entirely.

“Hmm… Energy, I think it would go best with my magic. Same for the gun, if the options are the same.” By the time I had finished speaking, only half a dozen bins were still lit.

“Okay, marked all the ones that seem to have the relevant parts. That Identify software is really something.” She grinned up to me as I approached the first bin. Inside of it was a collection of rusted blade hilts, some broken, while some looked relatively intact. Don’t have anything that can take care of rust, I think… Hmm… Maybe..

I had an idea, but wanted to wait before I tested it out until I at least had a working product. If I was able to do so, even if it was a bit rusted, I could possibly remove the rust afterwards. For now, I looked over the different handles. Many of them had different styles, so I knew they weren’t all the same model. I could only hope that they mostly used the same parts.

Grabbing five at random, I sat down in front of the bin, and began scanning them with my Technomancy to determine their faults and similarities. For the most part, the weapons were indeed identical in function, but had slight differences in design. As for the faults in them, three had bad wiring, one had a cracked power core, and the last looked as if someone tried to break it apart on a rock to get it to work.

Still, that meant all I had to do was replace the bad core with a good one, and that weapon would be operational. Sadly, the type of core that model used was unique among those five. And given its size, I wouldn’t be able to use a seed to replace it, unless I managed to get them much smaller. “Alright, Celeste, we have a winner.” I said as I tossed the other four devices back into the bin. “You able to do a scan for one with the same type of core?”

She hesitated a moment before responding. “Extend your Mana Sense into the bin, and I’ll mark any possibilities.” With her assurance, I did as she asked, and soon a half dozen handles were highlighted in my view. “Each of those have similar cores, but they are all empty. From the scan, I think they should be chargeable with a delicate balance of lightning and fire mana. I suggest practicing with one of the cores before you settle on it.”

I nodded, and channeled my Technomancy through my mana that was already in the bin. Doing so, I grabbed onto the six hilts, and pulled them out with my magic. This was one of the techniques I had learned from Joseph, allowing me to move technology telepathically. Though, the definition of technology was vague, as it allowed movement of almost any manufactured product. The only restriction was the more natural products were harder to control.

Once I had the six out, I used my disassembling spell to break them apart, took out the cores, then reversed the spell to put them back together before discarding them again. The cores themselves looked like small crystal cubes. Once again, Celeste helped me out when it came time to prepare the charge. In my Cybernetic eye, two graphs appeared side by side. Each had two columns, one with a lightning bolt symbol below it, and the other with a fire symbol. One of the graphs was left unfilled, while the other showed a balance of roughly 6.7:3.3 balance of fire to lightning.

“Thanks…” I muttered softly, and began to manipulate my mana to try to match. As I did so, the second graph started reacting, the lightning and fire bars fluctuating as I attempted to achieve the proper balance. Once I did so, and managed to hold it for a couple of seconds, the graphs lit up green to indicate they matched. After that, I did my best to maintain the feeling, the bars fluctuating slightly while I grabbed the first core. Thankfully, I had a method to cheat here. “Celeste, mark how quickly the energy increases.”

After I spoke, I activated Aura Sight to allow her to measure the climb of energy, while I also Recorded the process of charging the core for two seconds. Afterwards, I stopped recording and pulled my mana back. Seeming to understand my intention, Celeste spoke up. “Five percent charge every ten seconds at that rate, and you are able to maintain that expenditure for up to thirty seconds. The current power level is barely at one percent.”

I sighed, nodding my head. “How long if I also used my staff to support me?”

“You could triple the duration if you did that, but you would need to be out of Auto-Pilot to draw the mana.”

“Alright, so I can get fifteen percent in thirty seconds. That will at least be enough to see if the item works or not.” I smiled slightly, lifting the core again and triggering my auto-pilot program. The next thing I knew, the program had finished, and I heard Celeste speaking up from my wrist.

New Spell Unlocked!Charge Device - Technomancy - ★

By measuring the type of energy accepted by a device, you are able to charge the device by matching the energy with your mana.

Mana Cost: Varies

“Looks like a success. Try it out and we’ll know for sure.” I nodded to her instruction, waiting a minute to recover a bit of my mana before using my magic to take apart the ideal handle, slip the core in, then put it back together. As an experiment, I turned the device on, and an orange beam of light shot out of the hilt, extending a full meter. Almost instantly, Celeste called out. “Turn it off, quick!”

Naturally, I was not one to question her decision when I was wielding something that could potentially kill me if something went wrong. “What happened?”

“I noticed energy fluctuations as soon as you activated the beam saber. Likely, the damaged core was caused by a software malfunction. You’ll need to find the flaw and correct it before trying again with a new core. Although the exposure was brief, this one is damaged slightly now as well, and will leak energy if it’s not replaced.”

I sighed, nodding as I took out my Soft Stick. Connecting the two devices with my Technomancy, I downloaded the program from the weapon and opened it up on Celeste’s holographic terminal. The code itself wasn’t that complicated, so finding the flaw didn’t take very long. I was able to correct it by the time my mana had finished recovering, and uploaded the new software back to the device.

After that, it was simply a matter of charging up another core, and slotting it in. This time again, I waited a bit to recover my energy so that I could keep an eye on it with my Aura Sight. After pressing the button, I watched the beam once again extending from the hilt, stopping just short of where the last one had. “Okay, looking good so far. Test its damage out against your bow.”

I winced when I heard her say that. “You really don’t like that bow, do you?”

“Sorry, Falenel, but you sucked with it. I don’t think I ever saw you hit anything with it if you didn’t guide your arrows with magic.” I had to admit, she had a point. And besides, it was my last starter weapon, so it wasn’t like there was a real problem destroying it.

Pulling out my wooden bow, I tossed it into the air, and held the beam sabre at my side. When it came down, I abruptly slashed across, and the wooden weapon was cleaved in two. I had actually expected a bit of resistance, due to the durability enchantment, but it appeared that it didn’t help the bow out at all. On the edges that were cut, I noted distinct burn marks, so I knew that the blade had an extremely high temperature.

“Alright, now we can move on to the next one!” Celeste smiled happily, and highlighted two of the bins that had been shown before. These seemed to contain sleek pistols of various designs, and we ended up going through the same process as before. The one we settled on was a design that was thicker in the middle, with various circular grooves on the barrel. When firing, the beam was a deep blue, and this one simply required the programming to be fixed up a bit and recharged.

Naturally, Celeste had me shoot my old bow with this one as well to test its firepower… as she did when I settled on a long range rifle for my last weapon. This weapon came out a bit rusty, and the scope was busted. However, Celeste showed me a working scope and offered to have me replace it. Instead, though, I did something different.

The scopes of these guns were based on high powered cameras with different vision modes. So, once I had a working scope, I scanned it with my Mana Sense, and very carefully upgraded my Cybernetic eye. I actually failed twice, which had led me to be temporarily blind in that eye until I reverted my aura to normal, and on the third try it felt as though nothing had changed. I clearly felt that the mana signature in my eye was far more complex than it had been before, so the spell should have worked. Maybe I just don’t have a way to visually tell the difference?

Celeste was still helping me out with the connection program, so I knew I hadn’t lost the software. However, the fact that I failed twice before managing to upgrade my eye to a ‘low leveled’ camera from the game world greatly dissuaded me from trying to do the same thing with other body parts in the near future. But, since I had the eye, I went ahead with my plan.

First, I copied over some of the software from the scope’s camera, and modified it to work with my Cybernetic Eye. This gave me the following message.

New Software Applied to Cybernetic Adaptation: EyeVision Modes

This program allows the user to alter how they perceive the world through several different ways. Current Vision Modes: Aura, Zoom, Infrared, Ultraviolet, Night, X-Ray

Mana Cost: 30

After I was done, Celeste nodded from my wrist in a satisfied manner. “So, you’ll use your eye’s zoom function to replace the scope, and have me calculate the trajectory to replace the sights?” I nodded with a smile, before testing it on the last remaining piece of my bow. This time, the damage was quite easily visible, as it even left a scorch mark on the metal floor.

“Alright, I can wash off the rust some other time. Now that I have the weapons, and a way to charge them myself, I can get going.” I had spent my full mana capacity on each of the device’s power cores to charge them, though none of them had even gotten a quarter of the way charged from that. In terms of energy efficiency, the blade was easily the best, as Celeste calculated that it burnt through one percent of its maximum energy per minute it was active. The pistol, on the other hand, took one percent per shot fired. Finally, the rifle took a full five percent for a single shot, and even had a higher energy capacity than either of the others.

Going by the various bins I had visited, I returned the parts I had previously left out and got ready to leave. As I passed by Mike at the counter, he nodded to me, noting the three new items in my hands. Since I had just ‘purchased’ them, I didn’t want to shove them in my inventory until I at least made it out the front door. After I did so, however, I no longer had any issues and stuffed the three weapons in with my staff. Since I had a large enough grove now, I had planted more of my herbs, freeing up a good bit of inventory room.

My next stop, naturally, was the starport. However, as I got there, I was just in time to see the needle-shaped shuttle blasting off into the air, leaving me behind on the ground, feeling like I had just missed my bus to work. “It’s alright, Falenel.” Celeste spoke up consolingly from my wrist. “There’ll be another one in a few hours…”

Author’s Basement: And now, with chapter complete, I resign myself to sleep. The chapter should be much earlier tomorrow, if nothing interrupts me. However, as it is Christmas Eve, there is always the chance I won’t be able to post one at all. I beg of you all to cast aside your pitchforks during this holiday season!