Our second and third attempts produced extenders that were exactly the same as the one we’d already made. We barely altered the amount of crystal we’d put in each one; going from three large ones to two large ones and two medium ones for attempt two, and one large one and six medium ones for attempt three. We waited patiently for the chain’s arc to die down to its lowest level for the second one, and then waited another ten minutes after that for the third one. Absolutely nothing changed.

I turned to Jun and shook my head when I identified number three. She nodded to herself and made a note in her interface on our findings, then handed me canister number four to put between the chains. This one was our first real experiment with the formula; we’d only put in a single large crystal, and filled the rest of the space with oil. We’d find out whether more or less crystal slyk was the answer extremely soon.

“I just hope it’s different.” Jun said as her hands left the canister, backing up a few steps to a safe distance. “If that one extender is as good as they get, then that’s a pretty huge letdown.”

“Especially because you need core mastery nine to even equip it.” I agreed, extending my hand to place the cylinder within the chain. “The sigil I had from the start was better–”

The arc that latched onto the canister was no stronger than before, but the explosion that sent me tumbling back was definitely new. I yelped in surprise as my ass was suddenly above my head, and Jun caught me before I slammed into the wall of the main building.

“Was that different enough?” I laughed.

Jun snorted while she helped me get to my feet. “You know that wasn’t what I meant. But yeah, it was. Do you think that was a good sign, or a bad one?”

“Explosions are rarely good, so I’m leaning towards bad.”

“Then we agree.” Jun said seriously. “Let’s see how right we are.”

(Shoddy,Scarce) Overloaded Oilslyk Extender: Infester Variant.

Core Mastery Requirement: 0.

While equipped, grants an external battery supply to a designated piece of equipment. Supply is equal to [0.5]/0.6/0.7/0.8% of current battery. Additional batteries designated to the same piece of equipment provide no additional bonuses.

Upgrades at Item Mastery [1]/2/3/4

“It’s rarity went up, but it’s definitely much worse quality-wise.” Jun pointed out, grabbing the malformed extender and hissing as she did. “And it’s burning hot too; we definitely screwed this one up.”

I studied the canister for a moment before nodding in agreement. I could barely see any colourful spots within the oil, and the ones that I did see looked like they’d been burned. Like electronic components that had overheated.

“So too few slyk crystals overload the extender. That’s good to know, but it doesn’t help us find the right ratio of oil-to-crystal.” I noted as Jun set the extender down a few feet away from where we were working with attempts number two and three. “Want to see what happens if we put in too little oil?”

The answer was nothing. As in nothing happened if the canister wasn’t completely filled to the top with oil. Not a spark, not an arc; just plain nothing. At least we hadn’t ruined a canister for that experiment, and we refilled this canister to the absolute brim with crystals before filling it the rest of the way with oil and letting the chain do its thing.

Not much of note changed with the rest of our experiments, with absolutely none of our attempts coming close to the utter failure that was too-few crystals. We did destroy another tube in an attempt to find the proper ratio, however, but that gave us a good idea of how little crystals we could put inside one of these before it overloaded. In the end, we finished ten tests and had three outliers.

There was the overloaded one on the terrible end, our closest-to-perfect ratio that we’d find without making this an actual research project, and one that we dubbed the anomaly. We’d done almost exactly the same thing we’d done with numbers one, two, and three for that one, but it had turned out so much worse than anything other than the overloaded options for some reason. It made me think that there was both a golden ratio and a… tarnished ratio? Whatever the opposite of a golden ratio is, it seemed as if the extenders had both.

I didn’t bother double-checking the overloaded one, but I put the golden and tarnished extenders next to each other to compare them.

(Shoddy,Few) Oilslyk Extender: Infester Variant.

Core Mastery Requirement: 15.

While equipped, grants an external battery supply to a designated piece of equipment. Supply is equal to [3]/7/12/18% of current maximum battery. Additional batteries designated to the same piece of equipment only provide [18]/25/33/42% effectiveness.

Upgrades at Item Mastery [1]/15/29/43

(Shoddy,Few) Oilslyk Extender: Infester Variant.

Core Mastery Requirement: 3.

While equipped, grants an external battery supply to a designated piece of equipment. Supply is equal to [1]/2/3/4% of current maximum battery. Additional batteries designated to the same piece of equipment only provide [7]/11/15/19% effectiveness.

Upgrades at Item Mastery [1]/4/7/10

At item mastery 10, the worst one we’d made was just barely stronger than the best one’s base level. And for someone who didn’t plan on increasing their core mastery, the weak one could end up being more than enough for their whole life. Especially if the weaker one was easier to level up, which I assumed would be the case. It seemed like Jun was having similar thoughts from her first words after we’d made number ten.

“If I wasn’t planning on getting a whole lot stronger, that weak one would be good for me. Core mastery 2, five percent maximum battery, and only level nine for the max stats. We could’ve made a bunch of these and connected them to each and every piece of my armor.”

“There’s no reason we can’t do that now, but with better ones.” I said.

“I know that. It’s just… it’s such a waste of materials making a bad one. But someone out there’s gotta be equipping all the weak people, right? So how much are they wasting on people that refuse to work to be stronger?” Jun sighed, then shook her head. “I know from back home that a lot of people want everything without putting in an ounce of effort to get it, and a lot of people that have things don’t even recognize that they didn’t do anything to earn it. It’s everyone in between that suffers for greed and envy.”

That was more than a little out of character for Jun. I wondered what had brought on that introspection for a moment, until I saw that she wasn’t looking at me. Her neck was slightly tilted upwards, and she was focused on Keratily, who was just now peering over the side of the trawler.

“Your family’s one of the people who didn’t earn what they have.” I stated, recalling Jun’s previous statements about her family’s wealth and power. “But why now?”

Jun tilted her head at me, but locked right back on Keratily a moment later. “I don’t know what it’s like for humans, but we got a whole lot of stuff back home that should not be disposable. We went through more water than almost anyone I knew, we grew gardens inside our property that never once made anything we could eat, and we had everything new before our old stuff ever broke. Everything we wasted, someone else could have used. But because of all that privilege, I never really had it that bad. So… I’m struggling with trying to feel out what it would be like living my life but without all that money and stuff. What if my parents still didn’t care about me, but we were poor? Would I be here right now, or would I be stuck in some dead-end job back home trying to put food on the table for people that don’t care if I come home at night?”

“I don’t–” I started, but Jun held out a hand for me to stop.

“I’m just venting, Seb. You don’t need to say anything. I just… I just… I want to know if the money made my family into what they are, or if what they are made them all that money. And everything stems back to the woman who’s standing on top of that trawler.”

I looked up once more at Keratily, but she was still just staring down at us motionlessly. I squinted at what looked like a speck on my visor next to her, but it took me a moment to recognize one of Okeria’s mostly concealed drones hovering next to her. He had to be relaying our conversation to her, which could spell trouble for Jun.

{One of Okeria’s drones is right next to her.} I warned Jun through a message, then bent down and scooped the extenders into my arms. {I’m going to go see if I can convince Okeria to let us at the slyk he killed for some oil and crystals. Do you want to talk to Keratily alone, or do you want me there with you?}

Jun lunged in to grab an extender that was about to fall from my arms, then shook her head. Her message came a dozen seconds later. {I’m not opening that jar of weeds until we’re strong enough to clear this place on our own if we need to. But when that time comes, I want you with me. Maybe The End could put in a good word for us if rootia turns out to be just like every other Keratily.}

If it came to that, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be just one word. If The End’s troops were stronger than literally anything I’d ever seen, I couldn’t even begin to imagine how strong it was. “Do you want the best one of these, even if you’re not at mastery 15 yet?”

“Oh, I hit fifteen while we were dismantling the first slyk.” Jun said offhandedly as she pressed the most powerful extender to her right shoulder. “Huh; it just warned me that I’m close to reaching my trinket limit. Four trinkets total? Isn’t that a little low?”

Keratily crashed to the ground just behind us, then strolled forward as if she hadn’t just dropped like a rock. “It would be three for you, if your core wasn’t what it is. And no, there isn’t some formula to determine how many trinkets you can equip at one time. It starts at three, stays at three no matter what you do, and only increases if you find a piece of gear or a function that allows you to increase that number.”

I felt the ribbons on my shoulder as Keratily spoke, wondering why that restriction hadn’t existed in my old life. Everyone I knew had equipped as many trinkets as they could fit on them, and that was probably the only reason we’d managed to claw our way up to hazard tolerance fifty.

“Is it three for everyone?” I asked, trying to put on the air of a newcomer to this world instead of an old man frowning at change. “Do different species have different limits?”

“Yes, actually.” Keratily said with mild surprise. “It has something to do with the unique abilities each species comes with. A Staura with godblood has a trinket limit of three, but Okeria has a limit of five. I know that the Maqdim can only equip one, but I haven’t researched the exact numbers for any of the other species.”

And that probably meant humanity’s absolute lack of any kind of uniqueness let us equip as many trinkets as we wanted. Or our limit had been flat-out removed for the trial run, and I’d get a trinket space warning the moment I equipped one of these extenders.

//OR YOU COULD ASK THE ENTITY THAT CAN PARTIALLY READ YOUR THOUGHTS.

//IT MIGHT HAVE AN ANSWER FOR YOU.

{Right, right. So how many–}

//HUMANS HAVE EIGHT TRINKET SLOTS AVAILABLE TO THEM.

//THE SECOND-MOST AMONG ALL SPECIES POPULATING THE ALL-WORLD.

//AND YES, THE LIMIT WAS PREVIOUSLY REMOVED FOR YOUR PEOPLE.

That was good to know, and I chose one of the better extenders to press to on the side of my right thigh. My core gave me absolutely no combat advantages, so I’d have to make good use of all my equipment and trinkets, both corrupted and not, if I wanted to stand a chance.