“Ultra reactive anti-abomination acid… It’s a wonder why no one already implemented it in a special shell…” Designing the special chemical synthesizer unit of his future anti-armored abomination shell integrated production line, Aven was marveling at the prospective potential of this new chemical.

Drawing a “54” on the right part of this special unit, he let the modeling software do the rest of the work as he shifted to another computer not far away that had just finished computing the optimal heat dispersal parameters for the bulkhead of the alloy maker unit.

Seeing the result, it didn’t take him more than a minute to launch a new simulation with an adjusted thickness and thermal isolation which had a chance of working better considering the heat he was going for was so much above what conventional alloy makers should use, “If it doesn’t work then I’ll have to change the alloy makeup… Let’s hope not.”

Shifting to the main modeling computer, he saw that there was still an estimated time of 14 minutes before this instance of shell-shape was finished being tested, so he got back to his main coding computer and resumed programming where he had left previously.

Lines after lines of codes flew by in his mind and were transmitted to his hands, written from nothing or copy-pasting and adjusting the codes already written by others to perfectly fit what he wanted to do with his 3 new integrated production line models.

“Sir,” his escort interrupted him at some point, not urging him but still insisting, making him stop typing after a few seconds.

“Yup?” He looked back with eyes shifting everywhere, trying to quickly conclude this episode.

“The grade 4 production tech super you requested is here,” he clearly summarized why he was here, then proceeded to ask the obvious, “Should I let him in?”

“And what would you do other than let him in?” Blinking a few times playfully once he understood what it was about, he waved to show his agreement then moved to his data computer, making sure it was displaying the already-finished prototype units.

Half a minute later, a serious-looking “young” man with brown hair, black eyes, and tanned brown skin entered the room and started to tour it without interrupting Aven who was typing codes.

Sending a glance at the central table filled with messy documents, then at all the modeling computers hard at work calculating different and seemingly unrelated things, he ultimately arrived at the data computer where a data file entitled “Finished Prototypes” was opened.

Easily deducing this was as good as any way to start, he seriously selected his chair amidst a few dozens and started reading this document that was most probably intended to be read by him.

When Aven suddenly moved to refresh one of the modeling computers, he only sent a glance before focusing again.

And the longer he read… The more he frowned. All the production units looked familiar, but their insides were completely different from what he expected.

Despite some ideas being incredulous at first, when he read about the manufacturing process that was supported by concrete math formulas he knew so much, he couldn’t help but dwell a bit more on those weird sketchy prototypes.

Once he got comfortable, in part thanks to Aven who didn’t bother to accommodate him and kept his pop music in the background while actively shifting between computers, he started going around the other areas of the room, slowly trying to figure out why he had been dispatched here.

His experience was enough to tell him this wasn’t a simple project, the prototype integrated line components units he had just decrypted weren’t about one precise goal, they were about different ones. And they didn’t appear to be normalized to military standards at all.

Dodging an Aven who landed before a modeling computer and typed at lightning speed on a keyboard to launch a new modelization and simulation about a… Mach 30 platinum-tungsten alloy abomination plating cracking shell.

“Mach 30?” Not dwelling on the more than expensive alloy used or the extremely weird shell design involved, only the involved speed looked ludicrous enough to make him ask aloud.

And surprisingly, the young man filling in the new simulation parameters answered him without turning his head, “It’s possible as long as all the factors are put on our side~”

“Hu,” groaning in answer, the man then seriously went to survey all the other simulations and even personally browsed through some modeling computers to find all the tests that had been done, quickly linking them together and forming a picture of what the project he had been dispatched on was about.

Once he was done, he returned to the data computer and read over all the prototype units he had to make, and this time he followed up with a convenient list of all the machines present in the industrial machinery industry area that he could use.

Downloading everything on his own laptop, he then left the room, intending to personally go scout his short-term workplace.

As for Aven, he didn’t bother with this newly arrived grade 4 production tech super, his project wasn’t even at the prototype testing phase after all, and he had a lot more innovative knowledge he wanted to translate into true destructive power.

…

Faction Contribution Quest: Nation of Eland Military

Innovating: Give your faction new ways to achieve its goals. The more impacting and practical the innovations, the greater the contribution.

Reward: 8 000 FCP

“Sigh… Still such a derisory amount… Or most probably, compared to the need for tech-produced ammunition, innovation is useless as long as results aren’t demonstrated,” resigning himself, Aven finished eating his meal and headed towards the production hall, or in this case, the volunteering hall.

The moment he reached it, he accepted the volunteering quest-

Faction Contribution Quest: Nation of Eland Military

Volunteering: Contribute to the stability of your faction without asking for anything in return. The more time spent and the harder the tasks, the greater the contribution.

Reward: Claim?

-and started to contribute his grade 2 energy that was so filled with knowledge that all the ammunition he produced reached a tech-production enhancement of 200%. At least when he had checked yesterday, he had reached this threshold.

It had already been a week since he had started his transition from production tech super to innovator tech super, and despite hoping as much as he could that the innovating quest would be able to counterbalance his daily expenses, this hope didn’t come true.

What he was facing instead was a brutal return to reality, with every hour dedicated to innovating earning him a “simple” 800 FCP when he was working body and soul for it.

In fact, the only reason he could even reach such an amount was his dedication and the fact that he was only para-innovating, not really innovating, but more using what was already there and pushing the limits of physics and engineering as much as he could.

So while he could definitely say he was innovating, as in, “designing practical implementations of ideas that resulted in the introduction of improvements”, he knew that he wasn’t the one who came up with all the ideas he was using.

He was only gathering and fusing everything.

His phone’s alarm went off after 5 hours had passed in the production hall, making Aven stop infusing his energy and claim his quest.

Faction Contribution Quest: Nation of Eland Military

Volunteering: Contribute to the stability of your faction without asking for anything in return. The more time spent and the harder the tasks, the greater the contribution.

Reward: 301 500 FCP

“Okay, that’s done,” he confirmed that the amount he had just earned surpassed 217 600, then promptly walked back towards his design room, accepting the innovating quest on the way.

There, he crossed the only other person that could be said to be participating in his project, a guy with whom he had an unspoken agreement to just keep to their own and only talk when there was a big problem or something that couldn’t be written easily.

‘I wouldn’t even know his name if not for my appraisal ability…’

Alain Estrade

Faction: Nation of Eland Military

Arriving at his main desk for the last week, Aven settled down familiarly and admired the nearly finished code for his future 3 integrated production lines.

‘Thank you, predecessors who are still alive~’

Accessing his knowledge, he surfed on it to find where what he wanted had already been done before, then copy-pasted it if it had already been done, or wrote it from scratch if it didn’t exist. And the latter had clearly not been the majority.

From the interface to all the checks to make sure every unit was working as it should, programming was clearly not the most difficult task for him to realize, and that’s why he had picked it as the first.

Because once it was out of the way, he would be able to fully focus on the rest and work up from there.

His way of proceeding was maybe not the most optimized, but it was the textbook tried and true one, and with no practical experience at all on this side of things, he much preferred referring himself to ways that had succeeded.

“I’ll finish today! Today I say!” Telling himself that aloud, his typing speed increased slightly.

After working 10 hours on it this morning, followed by a 5-hours volunteering break he had just finished, Aven was ready to spend the rest of his nearly 15 hours of peak mental conditions on finishing the 3 prototype codes.

“Yes! In your face, normal working hours! I’m a freaking coding freak” Registering the finished code, Aven stood up and gave himself a standing ovation and did strange poses to externalize how hyped he felt.

12 hours. Half a regular day of uninterrupted coding. That’s what it had taken him to finish the final code prototypes for each of the 3 integrated lines he was designing.

Added to that were all the hours he had done in the previous 7 days, each day being more than 28 hours long.

“Finally, hehehe~” Salivating at the idea of finally working on the core of his project, meaning helping Alain design the most perfect integrated production line’s component units, he shifted his seat to a modeling computer where he had kept repeating operations for optimizing the difficult alloy making units.

Reaping all the data without looking at them, he then moved to another computer he had used exclusively to find ways to isolate and inject the ultra-aggressive anti-abomination acid he was going to incorporate into his 2 new shells.

“Hehehe~” Creepily laughing as he reaped once again the resulting data from hundreds of simulations he had done, he moved to yet another computer, this one containing armor cracking shell designs.

Then from that one, he moved to a computer he had used to exclusively simulate different flat-headed shells that were intended for huge and unarmored targets.

“So much data~” Using a hair-raising tone, Aven gathered data, some revolutionary, as if they were berries out in the woods in the middle of summer, then he brought them all to his data computer to start finalizing all the component units that he couldn’t finalize before.

Being able to finalize so many things brought about the feeling of finally putting everything together.

This alloy formula that was tested thoroughly by someone else, all its properties had been found, but then, for some reason, maybe its price, it was shoved into the archive until he suddenly found that it was perfect for what he wanted to have in his armor cracking shell,

This acid formula that was not only hard to synthesize, but also overly hard to store, but its properties were too strong to ignore, and the only thing he had to do was find a way to properly contain it with more chemical bathing in the main injection head he was designing.

This special triple-base propellant that must never be exposed to the air, this aerodynamic shell incorporating cutting-edge innovative stabilizers, this new empty-headed bullet that splits at impact, perfect for huge targets, this new dual hydraulic stabilizer that would make sure the barrel and the chamber would be perfectly aligned…

His 2 new shell designs were just the result of optimizing what was already there with the knowledge he had claimed that touched on everything, same for the new weapon he had designed to be used exclusively for those 2 shells.

“Sigh~” Contently sighing in his chair after half an hour of frantic component units finalization, Aven couldn’t feel more fulfilled than he was now, “If that’s really the path that I must take… Then I’ll happily take it. This feeling of fusing so many things is just amazing.”

Feeling inspired by what he had just said, ideas flew by and collided everywhere in his mind, each seemingly more interesting than the other, and all involving new fields he wanted to step into and innovate in.

“No!” Slapping his 2 cheeks, he stopped daydreaming and refocused, “There’s an abomination surge coming! Stop thinking about designing revolutionary trains or helping create more efficient cultivation resources! ”

Despite saying so though, he took the time to write down all the ideas he had just gotten before really refocusing on furthering his 1st project.

…

“It’s been a month…” Overlooking the massive securized testing range where Alain was ordering people around with the same serious expression as ever, Aven realized that he couldn’t have worked faster than he already had.

Approaching the artillery sniper prototype he had designed from the ground up that was being readied for its first full test battery, he displayed his confidence openly, not fearing that it was going to fail horribly at all.

“Only a month to arrive at this stage is faster than any other project of this size I participated in before,” a deep voice pulled him out of his thoughts at some point.

Making a cool-looking twirl, he faced the incoming only other official participant in this project, Alain Estrade, and smiled even more confidently than before, “You’re working with someone who will go down in history, so expecting anything less than what I showed would be a sacrilege to my future self.”

After more than 3 weeks of tacitly working together, their relationship had gone beyond just work colleagues and more into the domain of familiar acquaintance. At least, they had respectively learned of the capabilities of the other.

Aven had learned by combining different snippets of conversation that this grade 4 production tech super working with him belonged to a generation of people that had actually lived through a lot of what was written in the history book of the human era.

His precise path still remained unknown, but what was sure was that he completely lived up to the name of being a grade 4 production tech super, and that was seen in his tech-production enhancement, or tech-enhancing, capabilities.

“Move over, the test is going to start,” indicating with both his head and words to get out of his way, Alain approached the artillery sniper prototype and began infusing it with his grade 4 energy.

‘Energy aura…’

From the side, Aven could literally see the energy flowing through Alain’s body and into the massive sniper. It wasn’t because he had acquired a talent or anything, no, it was just that grade 4 energy was so intense that his basic energy sense could translate visual feedback from it.

After a few minutes, the whole testing range had been cleared of staff, and only massive plates of alloy remained behind, ready to face the imminent test fire.

Behind the artillery sniper prototype, Alain finished infusing the beast with his best and pushed the chamber open, letting a heavy armor cracking shell roll inside with no care at all.

Seeing that, Aven noted that there didn’t seem to be a problem with the easy loading.

Once again infusing his energy, this time into the shell, it took a few more minutes before 3 alarm pings were sent, announcing that the weapon was going to be fired.

Everyone put on their noise-canceling headphones and made sure they were protected by a reinforced glass window, and then watched on as finally, the strange tank-gun-sized sniper was fired.

Accompanying a shockwave that spread from the concrete ground and made them jump a bit, a massive supersonic boom reached everyone’s ears despite their protection, and then it was followed by shards of something hitting their protection layer from a direction that appeared as bright as the White.

“Ho~” Enjoying the whole process more than he probably should, Aven keenly observed the bright direction, knowing that only a very successful test fire would have resulted in something that intense.

When the aftermath settled down, everyone became able to see the result of the armor cracking shell on consecutive alloy plates.

Everything had been passed through.

All 50 plates.

“Hahaha!” Laughing uproariously the moment he saw that, Aven repeatedly jumped into place alternatively looking between the undamaged artillery sniper and the molten alloy plates resulting from an impact with the shell that had just been fired.

As for the staff, everyone looked stunned, having not expected something like that at all. The only exception apart from Aven was Alain, who had his brows raised.

“Are you shocked? Do you think I was only displaying theoretically possible specs but that they would not be attained? Hahaha!” Teasing the old guy abundantly, Aven continued laughing even as Alain sent him a silent contemplative glance and started ordering for the testing range to be renewed.

10 minutes later, after Aven had inspected not only the artillery sniper prototype but also the used shell after putting on all the appropriate gear to be protected from possibly still active molecules of acid, the testing range was finally ready for another test fire.

But this time there was something different.

“What is he doing? Why is he infusing the plates?” Whispering, Aven asked himself what Alain was doing.

Another 5 minutes later, finally, Alain had come back, and the curious young man didn’t hesitate to use this opportunity to ask, “Did you infuse the plates? Why?”

“Because my first energy specialization is atomic bond strengthening, and if this time the armor cracking shell can pass through even half of them, then I'll be convinced that those new shells maybe have something for themselves,” he seriously answered, not wanting a misunderstanding to take place.

But it seemed that he had forgotten about an aspect of the project leader, he was extremely witty and willing to talk when it came to socially interacting, “Atomic bond strengthening? How is that relevant to being a production tech super? It’s not, right? How did you compensate for having taken such an unrelated specialization? Did you turn it into a special strength, or-”

“Forget about it,” realizing his mistake, Alain charged another armor cracking shell into the spotless artillery sniper and redid his infusion.

Seeing him start infusing, Aven had no choice but to reluctantly stop asking questions even though more and more of them appeared in his mind.

When the 3 alarm pings echoed, Avan adopted a heroic pose after putting on his noise-canceling headphones, ready to face the whole aftermath of this shell heroically from the front.

Eventually, both the concrete shockwave and the supersonic boom happened a few seconds later, and… There was no bright light this time, not even chunks of anything hitting the glassy protection wall.

“Hahaha!” Only Aven started laughing after seeing the result once again, and this time he turned to look at the slightly astonished Alain with an arrogant smirk plastered on his face, “That’s more than half I think!”