《The Suit-Maker》Part 7- Back To Work
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When I got back to the workshop, I wanted nothing more than to go straight back into Dive. However I wasn’t some snot nosed kid that came out of school with a fancy degree and no life experience. I had been working for over a decade and I knew that it was the little things that made the difference between a successful workshop and a total failure. The first thing I did was cleanup. The place was a disaster area and the last thing I wanted was for a potential customer to walk in and then straight out due to the mess. I took my cleaning bot from home to the workshop, placed it on the ground and switched it on. It didn’t like the workload it had in front of it, beeping furiously at me, but I made no apologies and left the whole thing to it.
While the bot was cleaning up, I did an inventory of the place. Unfortunately, it was a short exercise. Not a single spanner or screwdriver was left. My best guess was that the workers who used to work here helped themselves to some items before joining the unemployment line. Such thing can’t be helped and I had half-expected it. I then checked on the security of my new property. It was pretty standard stuff. An alarm to the local police system in case of break-ins and white noise filters to prevent spying from the outside. Anyone determined enough could probably break through the security but considering the aged equipment inside, there was currently no need for me to upgrade the security. I keyed my cybernetics to the system so that I would be alerted if the alarm went off but otherwise I left it as it is.
With most of the miscellaneous stuff out of the way, I set an alarm on my cybernetics and got back to Dive. After a night of rest, I felt more clear-headed and on the drive to the workshop, I thought about how to make my Steambot viable for the market. The biggest problem I had was that the Steambot was such a well-known Suit that it was hard for my model to stand out. I need to make it unique in some way.
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I pull up my Steambot and looked it over. The Steambot was known to be strong and tough and those are strengths I couldn’t improve on without pushing my model to Grade 1. I had to go the other way. The strengths of the Steambot may be well-known but so were it’s weakness. The main drawbacks was it’s lack of speed and range. Even in it’s day, the Steambot was considered slow and clumsy and many enemies fought it at range. I need to find a way to not only remedy those drawbacks but to also make it unique as well. I pulled up the Grade 0 enhancements and settled on two products; the X-S Cable Punch and the SH-3 Legs.
The X-S Cable Punch used steam-power to launch a fist at an opponent and then a cable to quickly reel the flying fist back into place. It would give the Steambot a useful though limited range attack. The SH-3 Legs was different. It had a springing mechanism that was powerful enough to allow the Steambot to jump at enemies from a distance. The problem was that the SH-3 Legs do not run on steam. It uses Clockwork Technology.
Running different sets of technology together in a Suit was hardly unknown but they were considered to be very unreliable. No matter how well drafted, anomalies continue to happen on such machines and a malfunctioning Suit was not only less than useless, they were a danger to it’s operator. Many designers had tried and failed to develop any sort of consistency in their Suit’s performance when they combined different sort of technology together but I did not really fear the challenge. When you start from the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up!
I started with the X-S Cable Punch. With the IK Battle-axe already on the right hand, I installed the Cable Punch on the left. As the Cable Punch used Steam Technology, I did not think installing it would be much of an issue. I was right and the Cable Punch was easily installed, but I then discover something I had not expected. The Steambot has extendable arms that allowed the Battlesuit to throw some very powerful punches. Pressurize steam would build up in the shoulder of the Steambot and it would be released the moment the punch was thrown to give it extra power. The way Victor Sage did it gave me the idea of connecting that mechanics to the Cable Punch. I created pressure valves that connect the Cable Punch to the pressurize steam in the shoulder in the hope of making the punch more powerful. My new Tinkering skill showed it’s worth. I found it easy to make the small little adjustments needed to give the Cable Punch an explosive power it didn’t had before. I ran a short simulation and the end result was a Cable Punch that was noticeably more powerful than before. I resisted the urge to continue tinkering with it and went on to the legs.
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Though the SH-3 Legs was widely considered a good and reliable product, it was never a popular model even in its heyday. It was a simple question of competition as there were other better models available and the SH-3 Legs was overlooked. However the SH-3 Legs had an advantage over the other products. It was powerful. The model had a springing system that allowed it to be used on heavy Suits and the three meter Steambot was a big and heavy machine. Most Grade 0 legs would probably break the moment the Steambot landed after a jump. I installed the legs and immediately got into trouble.
Clockwork Techology and Steam Technology were different technology that ran on different principles but luckily for me, I wasn’t the first person who had thought about integrating them together. I used the other two Dive screens to pull up articles on integration of different technologies and focused on Clockwork and Steam Technology. There were a lot of articles and I had to filter out the unnecessary to focus on Battlesuits.
The trick was to have a separate operating system for the secondary technology. I managed to find a series of articles by a scientist who managed to incorporate both technology with a reliability rate of eighty percentage. This meant that one out of five times, the secondary technology would simply not work but with my tinkering skill, I hope to bring that figure up to at least ninety percentage. After studying the articles in detail, I began to install the legs. I created new pathways to link the legs to the operating rig and modified the rig to install an extra pedal near the feet for the jump. It was a little crude but totally acceptable for a Suit from the Steam Age. It wasn’t easy and I had to double-check the articles at various times but in the end I managed to install the SH-3 Legs on the Steambot.
After the initial installation, I spent the rest of the morning tinkering with the Steambot to make it better and more reliable. The System said that it was in my DNA and I believed it. I instinctively knew what to do to improve the Steambot’s performance and by the time my alarm went off for lunch, I had done all I could. Dive had a robust simulation program for inventors to test new products and for the first time in my life, I made use of it. A full simulation test costs 1000 DP and would take a full day but I didn’t have time for that. I took a limited hour long package that costs only 50 DP. Though limited, the simulations should be enough to catch any glaring weaknesses I had missed. I let the simulation run as I went out for lunch.
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Wings of Sorrow
Tension permeates the city of Bleakridge as forces within its walls struggle for supremacy. Grim Thorne, the disinherited son of the Earl, is a fly caught in the web of power struggles between these forces. When Grim closes his eyes, he can still see the bodies piled high from the first day of occupation. The day he was branded a bastard in the southern fashion. The day his father let them. Soldiers from the south bearing green cloaks and royal seals maintain order in the streets of Bleakridge, ensuring that the lifeblood of commerce continues to flow through the port city. In the slums beyond the outer wall, the Sons of the Reaper lurk. Some call them heroes, others villains. But all fear them for their relentless devotion to the old ways and the freedom that entails. In the castle above the city, resides the Earl of Bleakridge. The man who bent the knee and saved the lives of his people, if not their souls. After twenty years of occupation, the tension is coming to a head and Grim has to choose. Sympathetic to the Sons, duty bound to his father, and forced into service to the king. He must rise above the brand on his neck and decide where his true loyalties lie. But, after so long, it can be hard to tell who is deserving of loyalty. The King’s men who enforce order with a blood-soaked iron fist? The Sons who more resemble terrorists and crime lords than revolutionaries? Or the father who watches the bloodshed and does nothing? In the end, it is always the place of the young to bear the sins of the old.
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Chasing a demon through a rift, Vale finds himself in Aimsir-- a Celtic world controlled by game rules. No one remembers anything about who they are or where they're from, except Vale. Transformed into a member of the Sidhe race, Vale tries to piece together why he has arrived, and where his lost companions have vanished to. Unable to control his leveling, he tries to rely on strategy, craftiness, and his sense of humor to survive in this strange new place, and hopefully unravel the mystery of his arrival-- at least until he's killed again. ----------------------- Lightning Heroic is a fairly crunchy, isekai (portal fantasy) LitRPG Light Novel. Each chapter has full-color illustrations from @desutroyah . For the High Quality Cover Art, visit this link: https://imgur.com/a/f8SQqDA Lightning Heroic includes: Crafting, Weak to Strong MC, Base building, and lots of Guilds For fans of manga/anime, adventure, and main characters who are not OP.
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8 197Thieves' Den
A retired modern thief died on his way to an island paradise. Only to appear in a young lad that died from hunger and being wound. Watch as the man find a dungeon and turn it into a thieves den in the medieval slum district.
8 184Shadowlove
Princess Yasuline Mona Lights has lived her life only within the grounds of her castle home. Only understanding the world of Atlas through stories by the castle workers and the incredible adventure stories from her father. However, her life took a change on the day she met the infamous assassin who is called the White Reaper. After being saved from an assassination attempt from a united band of demons. She is then flung out to the world of Atlas on a quest to find the group and stop them before they strike again and hopefully prove herself to be an incredible adventurer just like her father.
8 175Re-Ordaining of the Chosen
Alea cheerfully hummed as she descended the steps, brimming in upbeat while her colleague, Quarren Leos, shot her a look of skepticism. “So… were you right about him?” he asked doubtfully. She came to a stop for a moment, her humming falling silent before she shook her head, waving her medium length light-blonde hair from side to side. “I was wrong about him.” Quarren raised an eyebrow in confusion at the convoluted response.“But you seem quite happy?” he asked again. “Because I am. But I was wrong about him. He was… so much more than I ever expected.” Alea looked at the sky overhead with a smile. “That boy… no, that man, is amazing. I firmly believe he will come to stand on top of any adversary he faces. He is destined. He is Chosen.” Quarren snorted as he stepped past, shaking his head. “Okay. Each to their own beliefs but you’re sounding like a nutjob. That skinny twig? Everyone calls him a cripple, you know,” he shook his head.“Rumours are always false, Leos,” Alea answered with a disapproving shake of her head. “You wouldn’t know. He is so, so much more.” “I saw him with my own two eyes. I didn’t see anything redeeming,” Quarren rebutted. “Well…” Alea chuckled. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.” In the year 917 of the Imperial Calendar, the Great War had just ended between dozens of nations. Farrien welcomed home millions of troops and warriors with the Archdukes of Aerianne and Kanaria leading them at the forefront. Since the founding of Farrien, the Aerianne and Kanarian Archduchies have been pillars upholding the Kingdom from enemies. It was common belief that they possessed special blood blessed by the Goddess Stecia, who gifted the lineage to the first King of Farrien when he first founded the country. All were ecstatic when the current generation of the two Archduchy's, after the war, agreed to let their children wed. The excitement was short-lived however when the Aerianne Princess proved to be a dragoness among men but the Kanarian Prince was worse than even mediocre. The Prince disappeared and the wedding was shortly forgotten as society lived on. Until one day the Young Heir of Kanaria returned to Farrien a changed man, bringing demise with him. Follow the story of the Chosen ordained by the Goddess of Time as he returns to the past to right his wrongs and set things back straight again! Many thanks to xSTAYc for the cover design and various co-creative elements in the conscription phase! :p
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