It was all about the Tinkerer.

Sam barely saw what he was doing as he carved out a new room in a new section of the dungeon. He was dimly aware of the earth and rock vaporizing under his Absorb Minerals guardian power, and of the Minerals counter ticking up, and of the hammer blows he interspersed between magical collection to keep his mana reserves up.

What he saw instead were lines of code, wireframe diagrams, and description boxes detailing powers and abilities.

And the Tinkerer.

It was a skill he’d picked almost two weeks ago, more on a whim than anything else. It was a ‘deleted’ skillset, something the shapers of reality had deemed too overpowered or too broken to be included in the system. And looking it over, Sam had come to understand why.

On the surface, it was a simple ability; the user could activate it and then ‘tinker’ with any skills or abilities he possessed, adding or changing—or even removing—effects from each one. There was, presumably, a ruleset behind the skill that governed what abilities the manner in which he could modify his abilities, and some aspects were set in place and couldn’t be touched by the skill.

But while the shapers had been powerful beyond measure, they’d also missed things. Simple things, things that any first-year mana student could have pointed out to them in an instant. For in the list of abilities the Tinker skill could modify was included the Tinker skill itself.

Even that wouldn’t have gotten more than a quirked eyebrow and a cursory look from Sam, if it hadn’t been for the other factors. The mad god he’d met only a few days before had mentioned the skill. The notes on the skill itself hinted at ways to abuse its power. And Apollyon himself had given him the final piece, though he hadn’t known it at the time, simply by pulling Sam out into the Admin Room.

It had taken almost an hour’s worth of reading and study, bleary-eyed and utterly weary, before he’d found what he was looking for. The original ability that went with the skill was labeled ‘Essence Vision’, and in its native form allowed Sam to cast it to look into the inner workings of any skill or ability he possessed.

Those parts of the ability that could be altered were shown in green. Yellow, if they could be altered but he’d not unlocked the appropriate skills to do so yet.

Part of the entry for that particular power had read thusly:

Essence Vision:

Apply to: Skill(owned)

Which Sam took to mean the ability could only be used on a skill he owned.

But the entry was green. It could be altered. And after that hour of study, his ability now read:

Essence Vision:

Apply to: Skill(owned)

Item(owned)

Room(owned)

Racial Powers(Self)

Class Abilities(Self)

Class Powers(Self)

Underpinnings(Self)

It turned the power from a simple tier-1 skill that cost only a couple mana to use to a Tier 4 ability that cost nearly his entire pool to use once… But it lasted for hours, and it gave him almost carte-blanch to alter…

Everything.

He’d spent the last two hours reading, increasingly wide-eyed, at everything he could now put under his Essence Vision. Then he’d taken a break, because he was starting to see double, to go and hunt down one of his healer mobs. It had taken some fast talking, but he’d managed to convince her to hit him periodically with a spell called Finals Night, which would keep him awake longer with each casting, but he’d crash hard at the end of it.

So be it. He needed to work right now.

As he dove into the Tinkerer skill and his own class powers and underpinnings, he saw more and more possibilities. One of the abilities of the Tinkerer allowed him to give temporarily to others the powers he’d changed or altered for himself. What if he gave every mob in his dungeon a copy of Guardian’s Wrath? It would be like a bloody asteroid impact. What if he gave his workers the ability to put down rooms? It the dungeon could triple in size practically overnight, as long as the resources were there.

But all of these and more he put aside for later. There was only one thing he needed right now, only one goal he pursued with a fervor that he knew was making people who saw him just a touch nervous.

He didn’t care. He was on the clock, and needed to get this done.

The ability he was after was yellowed-out. Changeable, but he lacked some needed components to do so. Curiously, instead of skills, it was special rooms and items he lacked. That was… Odd.

But manageable.

Which was why he was carving out a new room. It would provide him with what he needed.

He bent his thoughts to the task at hand, and sped up.

He was on the clock.