Chapter 7
623 17 16
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

*Shhhh* *Shh* *Shhhhhhh*

''Master.''

''Yes Alice?''

''Another one of your packages has arrived.''

''Nice, just in time to test these out.'' Lucie was in her lab, and in front of her was a table, and on that table were six balls, that looked like, they are made out of some kind of metal. In the middle of these balls were, what looked like cameras, and right now they were just lying on the table.

''Ok, let's activate these babies.'' Lucie had watch on her left wrist, she pressed few buttons on the watch and the six balls started to float before her.

''Yes!!! It works. Now let's see if they work as intended.'' With few quick movements and button pressing, Lucie gave them command to bring the packed here.

After Lucie made the command all six of her balls started to fly, trough her lab doors, that were open, and in the direction of the mansion. After about a minute, the balls were back, but this time they all were holding a box. Each of the balls had four tentacle like appendices, that were holding the box.

The box was pretty big, about 5x5x5m and was made out of metal, well it looked like it at least. The balls themselves were about the size of a football. 

As the box was too big for the normal entrance, Lucie asked  Alice to make it wider, after a few second the box was placed in the lab. The box had a terminal were Lucie needed to scan her Team Zero badge, after the scan  the box opened. The top part retracted in the four sides, and the the sides retracted in the bottom of the box.

In front of Lucie was two types of ingots, ones were pitch black and others were silvery green. Next to the ingots were little grey box, with ten white crystals, that looked like 20 sided dice in shape, their size was about 3cm in diameter at the widest places. But the most space was full of mana crystals, with different shapes and sizes.

''Hihihi~, finally they're here, I can't wait to start on the projects, hihihi~.'' Lucie was jumping around with child like glint in her black eyes.


~Emmas POV~

Emma was coming back from her forest, she liked there as it was full on nature, and the many sounds of life. While going back at the mansion, Emma saw a box near their mansion.

'Hmm~, probably Lucie got something again.'

Emma went past the box and in to the mansion. No one was there except Emma herself. She went to the living room and started to look what's on the TV, but there wasn't really anything that she was interested. After bit of internet searching, and still not finding anything, she decided to make herself a tea, and afterwards go to the dungeon or the simulation.

As she was making herself a tea she heard something outside, she went to the nearest window where you could see the front of the mansion, and saw six floating balls with tentacle like limbs, lifting the box and flying away.

As Emma little interested in them she decided to ask Alice if she knew what they are.

''Alice, could you tell what are those six flying spheres.''

''Those are one of Masters creations.''

'Well, I kind of expected that.'

''Is Lucie in her lab?''

''Yes, Master is waiting on her packed to be delivered, and testing her creation performance.''

After brief thinking Emma decided to visit Lucie, as she herself had plenty free time, and if she was interfering with what Lucie was doing, she always could go and train.

After she waited for water to fully boil for her tea, she controlled the water and shaped it like a sphere, and made it orbit around herself. After the water was floating around her, she took some tea leaves and but them in the water. This was how Emma usually now a days made herself drinks. She didn't use cups but used her ability, as it trained her ability and she didn't need to clean after herself at the same time.

After she made her tea she started to walk to the Lucies lab. It took her a minute or two but when she got there, the doors were open, so she went in.

''Hihihihihihi~''

The first thing that got her attention, was Lucie jumping around some stuff, while laughing like a madman.

''Oh my, Lucie are you alright?''


~Lucies POV~

''Oh my, Lucie are you alright?'' 

As Lucie was fully in her fantasies how will she use theses materials to create some things, she didn't notice that someone other than herself and Alice was in the lab.

''Huh?! Oh hi Emma, I'm alright, just got little too excited.'' Although it startled Lucie a little bit, it wasn't anything new for her.

''So. What brings you here?''(Lucie)

''Nothing much. I got little curios when I saw the flying spheres.''(Emma)

As Emma was talking Lucie asked her new creations to organize the stuff from the box, and when Emma said the word 'spheres', Lucies gaze lingered little bit on the sphere that was floating around Emma. It didn't las long as her teammates and herself were used to it by now.

''Do you mean these ones?'' Lucie asked the questions while pointing at one of the flying balls, which right now was transporting some mana crystals.

''Indeed, what are those?''(Emma)

''Those are one of my new creations. They have two, Tier 2 mana stones in them, one is wind affinity ,and the other is metal affinity. Each of them has camera in front, and a chip inside that allows for receiving and completing the given commands, or for Alice to take control of them if necessary. All of them have four, 15 meters long tentacle like limbs, made out of the same magical steel as the outer shell, and they have six blades each that they can extract and retract at second notice, and these blades are capable of spinning around them at tremendous speed. And as all that is powered by mana they have some engravings inside the shell, that allows them to gather mana from the surroundings.''

While Lucie was explaining her new creation, with quite the enthusiasm, Emma made small stream from her tea sphere to her mouth, and drank some.

''By the way do you know where Aurora and Mara are?''(Lucie)

''Hm? Ah right you were all day in here. Well, they both decided to visit their families again.''(Emma)

About a month has gone by after the test, and as they can freely go about anywhere on the island, Aurora and Mara started to visit their families regularly, not everyday but still about four times a week.

While Lucie started to use her money on some crystals and metals for her projects, as they all went to the dungeon almost everyday.

''Hmm~, well Aurora probably was eager to tell, her family how she yesterday got to Tier 3.''  As Lucie talked she started a furnace, the furnace worked on fire affinity mana stone, and slowly the flame got hotter and hotter.

''Indeed,  well that's normal I guess, as they both have families near where they live.'' Emma was watching as Lucie was looking at the fire.

''Well, can't blame them, all of the Team Zero members had a rough time in the past. But recently you started to talk with someone on the phone quite a bit, can I know who it is?''(Lucie)

''It's my older sister, she was the only one who stood up for me, and was nice to me in the past. And I just recently remembered calling her. I had the idea to call her when I fully have gotten used to the new environment. But all the training and other stuff going around for getting stronger, made me forget about it. So one day on the internet I stumble upon her picture, and remembered about it.''(Emma)

''Well, we all had some hard pasts, so it's no wonder we work much harder then others, plus as the UA says we have talent. Hard work plus talent, and we can see how fast we advance trough Tiers. Aurora is already Tier 3 as she works harder then any of us, and if I needed to tell who would be next, it would be Mara, then you, and then me. But still it's not far before we start to advance to Tier 3. Mara probably will advance in the next two days, basically in weeks time we all will be Tier 3.'' (Lucie)

''Indeed, talking about families can I ask a question?''(Emma)

''Sure.'' While Lucie answered she threw some of the silver green ingots in the furnace.

''Do you have someone close, you contact from time to time, because haven't seen you contact anyone, and I know your an orphan. Sorry, you don't need to answer if you don't want to, I just curios about it.''  Lucie could hear in Emmas voice that always is calm, get little shaky, half way trough.

''It's ok. And no I don't really have anyone I'm close with, the closest would be the headmaster of the orphanage, as she was a nice lady, and taught me some stuff, as I was a curios child. I did get in lot of trouble, because of my curiosity, and then usually she would scold me, but nonetheless she was really kind. It wasn't much but she took good care of me. And as thanks for taking care of the troublesome child that I was, about three weeks ago I started sending them money from time to time, so the ones in the orphanage could live better, and so that she herself can have some leisure. So you could say she was like a mother figure to me, but I haven't contacted her ever since I left orphanage, for multiple reasons.'' (Lucie)

''Can you help me with this?'' Lucie said as she pointed at the ingots she put in before, that had turn practically liquid.

''Sure, what do you want do with them?'' Emma

''Fill those molds, please.'' Lucie pointed at the molds that were few meters away from them. 

''Ok~.'' With her ability Emma controlled the liquid metal and filled the molds one by one. The molds were small in size, but there were many of them. 

The molds were put in two groups, on one side the some of molds were little bigger then the other group. It didn't take long for Emma to fill all the molds, as they were already fixed in place, so that they don't move around.

''Well, I'll be going now.''(Emma)

''Ok bye.''(Lucie)

As Emma went back, Lucie went near a big machine were all the mana crystals were put. All of the crystals were in a spherical container, and under it was a big transparent cube, in witch there was some kind of blue powder. And there was a tube going from the spherical container to the cube with blue powder.

Lucie pressed some buttons on her watch like terminal. The lid of the container closed and it started to make low humming noise, slowly a blue powder started to go trough the tube and in to the cube, it was the same blue powder that was already in the cube.

It didn't take long for the cube to get full. After it was filled to the brim with the blue powder, the low humming nose stopped, and no more powder was made.

The blue powder was mana crystals that were thoroughly crushed. After the cube was full, Lucie pressed some buttons, the container with its tube got disconnected from the cube, and the two metallic limbs that were holding the container retracted so that it was some good distance from the cube, lying on it's respected metallic frame so it doesn't roll around the lab.    

Lucie checked if the cube was fully closed and started the next step in her project. The cube started to flout about a meter off the ground and was slowly spinning counterclockwise. Then a metallic ring flew out of the ground that was around the cube. The ring just like the cube started to flout. This ring was flouting around parallel to the ground, and the cube was in the middle of the ring. The ring started to spin clockwise and neon blue stripes started to appear on the ring. 

After all that was done, Lucie left it like that, and went to her computer to see wats new on the internet.


After little bit of time and looking at random news, Lucie got off her chair and went where the molds were. One by one Lucie started to open the molds, it wasn't long before one of the two groups of molds were opened, and all the parts were put one her workbench. All the parts were silver green in color. 

Lucie started to assemble all the parts and half way trough she too two of the white crystals, or as they are called blank crystals. 

The blank crystals, weren't rare or anything, but were just uncommon. The blank crystals had both good and bad reputation. Here's why, normal mana stones, can be upgraded, for example you can take Tier 2 mana stone, and fuse it with Tier 1, of course to work both mana stones need to be the same affinity. The process of upgrading is made so you can advance the mana stones Tier, but the thing is that it isn't used normally. The upgrading isn't used normally because of two problems. 

One, the success rate goes down every time you upgrade one an the same mana stone, and sometimes to get mana stone in the higher Tier it needs to go trough many fusions, but mostly they brake in the process.

Two, even if you succeed fuse it many times, the mana stone gets bigger every time it gets upgraded, for example, Tier 2 mana stone that got upgraded from Tier 1 mana stone can be two time bigger then natural Tier 2 mana stone. 

And here comes the blank crystal, it can be fused with any kind of mana stone, and can have any affinity in them, and even multiple of them at the same time. Plus the blank crystal doesn't grow in size, if it isn't tempered to grow artificially.

Now why would a crystal that can have all the affinities at the same time, and has good practicality, have a bad reputation? Well if normal mana stones when fused they absorb about 80% and up of the mana stones power, the blank crystal absorbs only about 1%. So basically it needs to have many more mana stones to advance the Tier, and every affinity has their own Tier. Fire can be Tier 2 but wind Tier 1 and so on.

So the blank crystals are good but they need ton of mana stones for them to be useful. 

So Lucie took the blank crystals in the middle of assembling, and continued. After bit of time in Lucies hands were two silver green pistols, and each of the pistols had blank crystal imbedded in them at the back. Lucie inspected them to see if there was any errors, but it looked like everything was in place. The style of the pistols were modeled similar to desert eagle.

After the inspection Lucie put the pistols down and started to open second group of the molds, it took her little less time then the first. After all the parts were on her workbench she started to assemble them, and in the middle assembly she took one blank crystal. 

This time, after the assembly, there was a sniper rifle in Lucies hands, in the same color as her pistols, silver green. The blank crystals was embedded little above the handle of the sniper rifle. Same as the pistols, Lucie inspected it and put it down. Then she took her pistols and started to block every hole there was on them, and even cover the blank crystal, she did the same to her sniper rifle. It took some time, but at the end all that was needed was blocked.

She went to the furnace and started a fire, she waited for it to get near the needed heat, and put some ingots in it, but this time she put the black ones instead of the silver green. 

It took longer for theses ones to melt, she took her one of her pistols and started to carefully apply the melted mass to the pistols outer layer. It took some thinking from Lucies side, but in the end she figured out and started the process. The process was long and there was no space for errors, and she had the plan to do that to both pistols, and the sniper rifle. 

''Sighhhh~''

All that process took some while and as there wasn't room for mistakes, when Lucie finished the last bit, and fixed in place the pistols and sniper rifle, Lucie let out a heavy sigh.

Right now Lucie was lying down on her labs floor, and her black hair was little messy. After some lying down Lucie got up, she inspected if there was any errors or places she messed up, on her new weapons. Seeing that all was good she started to unblock all the places she blocked, and at the same time looking if she made any mistakes. After concluding that everything was done perfectly she was happy, but she didn't stop to celebrate, instead she went where the powder filled cube was.

She went near the cube, but the powder was gone, or more precisely it had turned in a crystal, yes the cube was now one big mana crystal. Lucie checked out if all of it was fully crystalized, seeing it was fully crystal and no powder she pressed some buttons. The transparent started to shift, and there started to appear some hole in it. The holes were about 5 cm in radius, the box itself was about 7x7x7m. As the holes appeared there stated to grow crystals out of them. 

Lucie watched as the crystal grew, but at some point one of the holes closed with force, and the result was a piece of the crystal that grew trough the hole go separated from the big cube crystal. When the crystal got separated, a hole opened in the floor, and crystal fell in that hole, and when the crystal went trough the hole, the hole closed as if it never existed.

After the fist separation there were many more and the barrier holes opened and closed the same with the floor.  

Lucie went near a machine that was almost few steps from her, and waited. After little bit of waiting machine spat out something, in one of the boxes under it. Lucie bend down and picked it up, it was a bullet that was made out of the mana crystal. The moment Lucie saw it she started to jump in joy, and giggling nonstop. 

It took some while for Lucie to calm down, but when she finally did she went near her table where her computer was and leaned back.

''Fhuuaaaa~, finally Alice we did it.'' You could here that Lucie was overly happy just by her voice.

''Indeed master, the results are perfect.''

So what Lucie did and why. Lucie made herself guns, in this world guns existed, but there were three types.

First, the good old regular, but as technology was more advanced they were too, but still were mostly used by police, and law enforcement in civil area, as the regular guns had no effect on higher Tier people, and monsters.

Second, magic guns, basically the bullets are made out of pure mana, no metal or anything like that.

And the third, the bullets are made out of rare metals or materials, and looking of what they are made of people can inject mana in them.

Usually the second is the most popular for hunting monsters, because the first douse almost or none damage to higher Tier monsters, and the third option is just plain old expensive in general, as one round of bullets can cost a fortune.

Now what Lucie did was make the third type. The crystal bullets will be strong enough to damage enemies as mana straightens them, and as the crystals don't have any affinity she can inject them with any of them.

She will use the blank crystals for injecting different elements in the bullets, for the needed situation at the time.

The silver green metal she used to make her weapons was mithril, as it is really good mana conductor and works well with it. 

The black metal was orichalcum, it was metal that basically was biggest enemy for mages and mana. It fully reflected mana, so if there was a box made out of orichalcum and in it was ball of many it would just be stuck there, as no mana based attack can't hurt the black metal. 

So Lucie has mage her weapons so that inside was mithril and outside is orichalcum. Using the blank crystal and mithrils affinity with the mana she will strengthen the crystal bullets, and give them affinity if needed. And at the same time the orichalcum will prevent even the slightest spec of mana to leak before firing the bullet, making so that the attack is full powered.       

And the big crystal cube construction will provide her with both pistol and sniper bullets, so she doesn't need to waist money on them.

It took Lucie and Alice both a whole month to figure it out an build it, even when Lucie was training or in dungeon, she though about it, and Alice was running calculations in the background all the time. So Lucie was really happy when all worked after all that planning, learning, and building. 

The hardest part of all that was the mana crystal cube. It took the most of the time to figure out how to make it do wat it supposed to do. Mana crystals when they are fed more mana then their capacity, they start to make the surrounding mana purer, and the crystal functions as filter. But if the mana is put too fast in the crystal, it starts to grow bigger and bigger. These mana crystals themselves are different purities, the purer the crystal, the higher it's filter ability is. 

Lucie made the cube crystal, crushing other mana crystals in to powder and then crystalizing it, so its purity is top notch. But how she accomplished the fast growing of it was trough interesting means. Lucie made the metallic ring that floats around the cube to feed it mana with incredible speed, plus making them both spin in different directions, makes something like a mana whirlpool. Lucie needed to make some engravements here and there, but in the end she made it work as intended.

So now the mana crystal cube, not only grows fast and makes Lucie the needed bullets, it also filters the mana in the lab, making the surrounding mana higher quality. And as the crystal is really high purity, it is much tougher then normal, and is more compatible with mana. So although Lucie doesn't use rare or expensive materials for her bullets, her bullets still are top notch. 

Plus with time the bullets will get better, because if the mana around the crystal becomes higher quality, with time the crystal will become purer, making it more tougher and better conductor for mana.

And while Lucie was thinking about all the work, her six spheres were fusing all the mana stones with the blank crystals that were imbedded in the guns. After all the dungeon visits, Lucie sold everything except the mana stone, and know all of them were equally fused between the three blank crystals.

As the number of mana stones that Lucie had saved up, was quite big it took some while to fuse them with the blank crystals, but after all of them were fused Lucie went and checked her new weapons.

The mana stones were divided equally, so every blank crystal was almost the same. Lucie checked what kind of affinities were in them that had reached Tier 1 at least, because if they weren't Tier 1 they couldn't be used. The only affinities that had reached Tier 1 was fire and wind, and Lucie wasn't surprised as these were the two most numerus kind of monsters they fought. She could fell earth and water affinities weren't far off from reaching Tier 1.

After inspecting the blank crystals Lucie put her pistols and sniper rifle in her storage ring. She then went where her bullets were made, and put all, the ones that were made, in her storage ring. 

Lucie went outside her lab and summoned her pistols out, and loaded them. She didn't put bullets the usual way, but using the storage ring properties and put the bullets in her guns directly. She it her some training to master this trick, as she trained with different kinds of boxes, started big, and at the end she could put a palm size ball, in a box that was about the same size as the ball. All the boxes she trained with weren't transparent, and at the start she made some mistakes, but in the end it was all worth it.

So as the Lucie loaded her pistols, and pulled the triggers.

*Bam**Bam*

She felt some knockback but it wasn't big, after she tested how pistoles worked, she switched them for her sniper rifle.

Lucie took the right stand, and started to aim in one direction, as there wasn't any targets she just shot in one direction.

*Boom*

Lucie was happy with the results, she had a plan to test her weapons on some targets, but she was little too exhausted for it. So Lucie left that for tomorrow.

After testing her creations, she closed the lab, and went to the mansion.

16