CHAPTER NINETEEN

Typically, pro mappers only had to decide which parts to keep or sell.

For other players, the decision was somewhat trivial.

A mapper could keep and use a part for many years before eventually selling it. While the price would still fluctuate based on the overall metagame, Overdrive parts were digital assets that couldn't age or erode.

They weren't depreciating assets such as cars.

However, Jason had a much more complex decision.

Like other mappers, he had to choose between keeping or selling parts...

However, he also had to factor in the Blazing Avarice, which consumed parts permanently.

After it in battle and studying it further after the game, Jason understood how the unique weapons system operated.

He pulled up the item's data on his screen.

BLAZING AVARICE

Description: The Blazing Avarice is a unique flame-based weapons system designed to emulate close combat items.

Whenever players find an item, they can consume the item to download the blueprints onto the Blazing Avarice. Players can also consume items from their inventory.

Afterward, the Blazing Avarice will create a flame-based replica of the weapon, complete with statistics and on-hit effects. The system can store seven items in total.

A pair of red gloves had spawned over the Red Minerva's hands.

However, the Blazing Avarice wasn't just restricted to the external gloves.

A complex internal system had spawned inside the Red Minerva's arms and chest. Despite the enormous amount of processing power required to operate the Blazing Avarice system, the modifications were invisible from the outside.

The immensely complex computer was burrowed inside his machine's arms, twisting around the internal skeletal structure like vines. The systems snaked around the Minerva's internal organs before joining together at the chest.

If the internal tools and onboard computing system hadn't been so expertly compressed and spread across his machine's insides, the circular computer would have stood at about twenty feet tall and ten feet wide - about a third the size of an Overdrive Mech.

The Blazing Avarice's external ports had replaced the Red Minerva's typical palm-generated beam blades. The left-hand blueprint system and the right-hand flame generation system had taken the place of the beam generators.

The fact that the beam appeared from his palm instead of a handheld generator always caught his opponents off guard.

In particular, Jason often feinted towards his opponent - as if performing an open-handed strike - before skewering them with his hidden energy blade.

However, the weapon itself had been weak with low base damage.

Its only asset had been convenience.

Although the Red Minerva was an offensive Mech, its One Star Boss status had severely restricted its overall strength. Its best statistics - Melee and Speed - had still topped out at a B.

Now that Jason had absorbed the strength of the Red Lamia, those limitations had disappeared.

He now had a sterling S-tier Melee and Speed.

Of course, getting to the S-tier was still only the beginning for competitive players.

Right now, Jason would rank his Mech at the low S-tier.

The gap between the high S-tier and the low S-tier was almost as large as the gap between the S-tier and the B-tier.

However, acquiring more items with the Blazing Avarice's blueprint system would further raise the Red Minerva's strength.

The absorbed items were innately part of the Red Minerva, and they could be summoned at any time.

In short, the Blazing Avarice was better than the old beam sword ports in every single way. The summoned items were both more powerful and more versatile.

Unfortunately, adding items with the Blazing Avarice permanently consumed the item.

Once the left hand burnt an item, it would never return.

For instance, the Titan's Macuahuitl was gone. It'd been permanently destroyed and added to the Red Minerva's internal databank.

After beating the mission, all the other items had appeared in Jason's inventory, but not the immense Aztec club. In this particular case, absorbing the club had been a good decision.

For one thing, Jason would have lost the match entirely if he hadn't activated the club. All the items in his inventory wouldn't be there if he hadn't sacrificed the Titan's Macuahuitl to the Blazing Avarice.

When in battle, Jason's primary concern was still winning the fight. Losing the match meant not receiving the end-of-game rewards.

Focusing too much on the loot he'd sell after the battle, only to lose everything as a result, would be the definition of foolishness.

For another, the Titan's Macuahuitl was the perfect example of an item Jason wanted to keep on his machine.

The Blazing Avarice was restricted to seven items, and deleting an item seemed particularly costly.

It would essentially mean that Jason had given up the money he could have earned by selling the item for nothing.

The best decision was to pick seven items that specialized in specific roles. Jason wanted weapons that would solve frequently encountered problems.

Normally, high-ranking Guilds were composed of specialists.

The Hive, the highest-ranking guild on the server, had several experts who focused exclusively on areas like trap detection and Grunt destruction. After those specialists cleared the map, the group's Aces would deal with the map boss.

However, Jason had no guild, and he was determined to succeed by himself.

His best option was to become a skilled One Man Army, someone who could use the Blazing Avarice's flexibility to its fullest.

The Titan's Macuahuitl had a single overwhelming specialty - it was an incredible item when dealing with hordes of Grunts.

Now that Jason was trying to become a professional mapper, he would frequently square off against large groups of Grunt opponents.

The Titan's Macuahuitl was the best option to clear away weak enemies without any issues.

The enormous club's size and strength worked better than any melee weapon. It even outperformed heavy artillery fire, the conventional method for defeating Grunts.

On top of that, the Blazing Avarice's summoning process meant the enormous pillar of fire doubled as a deadly secret weapon.

Jason wouldn't be able to consistently catch opponents off guard by suddenly summoning the Titan Macuahuitl.

It had only worked on the Red Lamia's pilot because of a specific confluence of events.

With their Mech's throat destroyed, the Red Lamia's pilot had been forced to attack at close range because the machine had lost its other ranged attacks.

Most other opponents could simply stay back and dodge the attack once it came out.

However, the Macuahuitl ambush was still a valuable ace card hidden up Jason's sleeves. In fact, he could even deliberately engineer game situations to use the massive club.

Blasting an opponent from point-blank range with the Titan's Macuahuitl was essentially a secondary win condition.

Now, Jason had to find six other perfect weapons to complement the enormous club.

After that, he'd have the perfect machine.

Of course, that would be easier said than done.

There were plenty of concerns, both in-game and financial.

The solo pilot smirked to himself.

The requirement of destroying the items was the ability's only cost. It was a cost that only an independent mapper like Jason would notice.

Jason's financial situation was at the top of his mind.

He'd just left his job to move back into his parent's house. He needed to re-establish his financial independence as soon as possible.

The more expensive a part was, the more tempting it would be for him to sell it.

However, that temptation clashed directly with Jason's goal of improving his machine.

Expensive parts were expensive for a reason.

Parts were only worth money if they were interesting or rare.

Back at the gaming complex, Jason got paid no matter what happened. In the end, it'd turned out that not even the results had mattered.

Of course, there was also no sense of adventure or fulfillment.

Acquiring the Blazing Avarice wouldn't have been possible at the Overdrive Corporation. Giving up on a few excellent parts now was essentially a trade-off for gaining even more valuable items in the future.

Jason opened an Excel spreadsheet once he pulled up the full list of items. Then he dragged the window until it was parallel to the list of items on his Overdrive app.

He started by simply typing down every item he'd acquired, no matter how common they were.

Although the process was long and tedious, Jason knew that tidiness and organization were critical.

Considering the cost of consuming and then deleting an item with the Blazing Avarice, Jason wanted to examine every single option before making his final decision.

Jason was looking to fill five close combat roles.

The roles were Grunt killing, long-ranged strikes, medium-ranged attacks, ultra-close combat, and defense.

Since the Blazing Avarice could only absorb melee items, Jason didn't bother looking at ranged weapons just yet.

He was planning on arming his machine with a variety of firearms, but it made more sense to pick them later. He wanted ranged items that complemented his choices for the Blazing Avarice.

Jason already knew what he wanted for a defensive item - the trusty Pendulum Shield.

The shield was significantly lower-ranked than the other treasures Jason had seen in the Vault, but it was the perfect fit for his playstyle.

At the end of the day, the item ranks were just guidelines.

Per item ranking, the best shield was the Ivory Tower Shield, an expensive item that granted near- invulnerability to attacks in exchange for sealing the user's melee strikes.

The Ivory Tower Shield was a very powerful item that'd even seen play at the World Championship.

In contrast, the Pendulum Shield had never finished in the top eight of a sanctioned Overdrive tournament.

However, the Pendulum Shield perfectly fit Jason's ethos of turning defense into offense. He always wanted to stay aggressive and punish his opponent.

A turtling item like the Ivory Tower Shield had little appeal to him.

Of course, playstyle wasn't the only factor.

It was essential to pick a Defensive item that synergized with the machine.

The most important reason Jason picked the Pendulum Shield was the difference between his upgraded Red Minerva and the initial Red Lamia.

As in most games, highly-rated NPC bosses were more powerful than the playable version.

Although his machine had grown far stronger after absorbing the Red Lamia's genes, there were some critical differences between the Red Lamia and Jason's machine.

Jason wanted items that complemented the playable Red Minerva, not the Red Lamia boss Mech, which had a very different playstyle.

For one thing, Jason lacked boss-exclusive abilities like Queen's Command.

The Overdrive Corporation followed specific fundamental design rules that very few Mechs could break. One of the most important rules was a general ban on summoner-class Mechs.

While manually controlled drones or other remote weapons were acceptable, a machine that could summon a storm of AI-controlled allies would quickly break the game.

Overdrive was an extremely mechanically intensive game.

Controlling a single machine was already extremely difficult. There were only a few players skilled enough to control drone armies.

Even though the Overdrive AI was rather simplistic, there was enormous strength in sheer numbers. A single Mech that could spit out a whole army at once would still overwhelm most opponents with little effort on the pilot's part.

The second nerf was that the Red Minerva still couldn't fly. The machine's cave dragon identity had remained even after absorbing the genes.

The Lamia's internal flight system had been an added modification, not an innate part of the machine.

If Jason wanted to, he could purchase the flight system himself and install it into his Mech, but he preferred spending his Credits on other items.

However, the last difference between the Red Lamia and the Red Minerva was the most important.

The Red Minerva's defense rating was a mediocre B, not the Red Lamia's sterling S-rank.

Like the flight system, the machine's pale Graft Armor had been a frame modification rather than an innate part of the Mech.

The original Red Lamia had looked human when Jason battled it.

The upper half of the body, although eerie, had greatly resembled a human woman's.

But as the battle went on, Jason eventually realized that the face behind the skinlike mask was a cave dragon.

Jason's Red Minerva still had the ability to transform into the Red Lamia.

However, his version was far more feral. The human-like face was bright red and covered in scales.

Losing the graft armor had increased his machine's speed, but the lowered defense changed the Mech's playstyle.

The old Red Lamia focused on attacking as tanky artillery while in ranged mode.

Jason's upgraded Red Minerva was an offensive Mech at heart. His Lamia form would play as a swift and mobile sniper, gunning down foes while slithering from vantage point to vantage point.

With all that in mind, it made little sense to use one of the Blazing Avarice's all-valuable slots to shore up his weaknesses.

It was much better to complement his strengths, which was why Jason happily locked in the Pendulum Shield.

After searching through every option, Jason found only a few items that he wanted to keep long-term.

Three of them were the weapons he'd used against the Red Lamia.

Jason happily kept the Titan's Macuahuitl while adding the Valorous Ji and the Pendulum Shield into the Blazing Avarice's blueprints.

The versatile Ji could fit both the long and mid-range options.

Jason could throw the flaming spear before conjuring a new one from his palms. He could also use it to jab and keep hand-to-hand opponents away from him.

Last night, Jason had noted that pulling the Ji from his back was a difficult inconvenience. Now, he could summon it out of thin air with the Blazing Avarice.

Jason also kept the Ghostfire Dagger, but he didn't bother absorbing the item.

Considering the weapon's small size, absorbing it was unnecessary.

While Jason was right to want an ultra-close combat option for when opponents got inside the guard of his spear, the Red Minerva still had its trusty resupply wristbands.

Jason wanted to keep the seven all-valuable slots free for as long as possible.

The Ghostfire Dagger was small enough that Jason could easily store it inside his gauntlets, which made the weapon an exceptional option.

The last item Jason downloaded onto the Blazing Avarice was the Gorgon Flail.

The frightening weapon was the perfect fit for the Red Minerva, a queen of flame and poisons.

Unlike the Ji or the Titan's Macuahuitl, the Gorgon Flail was a crowd control item designed to stun and hamper opponents.

Gorgons were women with the hair of snakes. Their gaze could turn enemies to stone. The most famous example was the legendary Medusa.

The powerful Hemoborn item consisted of a Gorgon's head tied to a short steel pole of about ten feet in length.

Ten feet was enormous for a human, but the Gorgon Flail was considered a short-range item in a Mech's hands.

The item specialized in crowd control effects.

When raised into the air, the Gorgon's gaze could stun opponents in an area-of-effect cone in front of the Red Minerva.

At closer range, the snakes could bite and grab opponents, inflicting poison damage over time and forcibly holding them in place.

Under normal circumstances, the Gorgon Flail also served as a traditional weapon. Players could hit opponents with it just like a regular flail.

However, Jason had access to many powerful items that dealt far more damage. It was best to stun them with the Gorgon Flail before switching to a more powerful weapon to finish the job.

The Gorgon Flail filled a significant gap in the Red Minerva's combat abilities. Crowd control effects set up big combos. Temporarily stunning foes was an excellent fit for a machine that had gained such dramatic stopping power.

However, there were two particularly powerful items that Jason decided not to equip.

The first item he left aside was the Hydrochloric Gauntlets.

The acid-powered gloves were extremely powerful and a good fit for Jason's playstyle, which involved quick attacks and assassinations.

Unfortunately, the gloves clashed with the ports of the Blazing Avarice.

It was exceptionally difficult to equip two weapons mounted on the same part. They almost always overlapped with each other.

Even if Jason cut a hole in the gloves for the ports, the poison would gradually sweep through and damage the internal circuitry.

It was a shame, but Jason was determined to build around his new Blazing Avarice ability. Knives, like his Ghostfire Dagger, were far more synergistic.

The second item he'd decided to sell was the legendary Dragonbane Sword.

The weapon's value was extremely high due to its rarity, but it wasn't a good fit for the Blazing Avarice.

It was simply too limited.

The sword was well-made, and it would still inflict significant damage to regular machines. However, items like the Valorous Ji were just as effective against the vast majority of opponents.

The Dragonbane Sword's true power was only brought out when fighting against living dragons.

Out of the four Mech classes, the item could only be used against one of them, the biological Hemoborn.

On top of that, it only worked on draconic species, and Jason didn't anticipate fighting dragons nearly enough to make the weapon worth keeping.

All in all, the sword's added strength would only make a difference about two or three percent of the time.

Compared to what Jason would gain by selling it, it just wasn't worth it.

Part of Jason was tempted to equip the item and focus exclusively on dragon slaying missions, but the loot rewards just weren't worth it.

He was much better served selling the item to collectors and waiting for a sword with greater overall power.

For now, Jason filled the other slots with cheap and affordable items such as a Level Ten Sword or the Ironsteel Flail. Those items were generally inferior to the Valorous Ji, but there was no need to keep the slots totally blank.

All of these intermediate items cost less than two dollars. Jason wasn't giving up much by equipping them to his machine.

Next, Jason began picking out his firearms.

Fortunately, the process went much quicker without considering the Blazing Avarice.

Everything was just a keep or sell decision.

For his typical armaments, Jason hid a pair of high-caliber revolvers in his wristbands.

The weapons reminded him of the .44 Magnum, an item he often used while playing the PvP mode on Call of Duty as a kid.

Jason had never been very good at Call of Duty, but the weapon's high power always made him feel like a total badass when he landed a kill.

Just like his Ghostfire Dagger, the supply depots significantly boosted the item's convenience. There was no need for Jason to draw.

The powerful revolvers would just appear in his hand.

Jason could even reload on the fly with the wristband's built-in resupply arms.

The revolvers would be his top generalist option.

For his other ranged attacks, Jason already had the Pestilent Snipe and the Red Minerva's flame breath.

For most missions, there was no need to overcomplicate things.

However, Jason still kept a few items out of the pile, including grenade launchers, heavy explosives, and even a bazooka.

Under most circumstances, Jason wouldn't bring such heavy equipment. It would quickly weigh the Red Minerva down.

Considering his Mech's average defenses, Jason didn't want to trade speed for power.

However, the extra options would be invaluable when attacking heavily-guarded maps such as space stations.

The Blazing Avarice couldn't absorb ranged items, so Jason had no choice but to keep his alternate equipment in his hangar instead of jamming it onto his Mech.

By the time Jason finished everything, it was already well past noon.

The Vault had been filled with over a hundred items, and Jason had closely considered every one of them.

Now that he'd finally completed the long process of examining his spoils, he could finally deliver everything to OverManiacs, the server's top parts retailer.