Quest Academy: Silvers, page 28
She held out her arms expectantly, and Sal finally conceded as he put down his pen. With a resigned groan, he took her offered hands and moved around her, turning her body with the momentum into a twirl.
“Ta-da!” he exclaimed in a deadpan voice before tapping his feet against the tiled surface. “Can I get back to drawing now?”
Upgrade looked thoughtful and kept a hold of his hands. “I think we need a few more opinions.” With that, Upgrade danced out the door, dragging Sal with her as she spun herself of her own accord. “Did you all know that we have a dancer in our midst?”
A few tired faces were their audience, and Upgrade raised her hand in the air with a flourish.
“I’d like it to be known that Sal wants to dance with me and is in no way under duress! I definitely didn’t say that I’d lock him out of the workshop if he refused. He just really wants to share in all of this creative energy.” Her laughs between sentences were accentuated with dramatic dance moves that threatened literally every workbench around her.
“If he’s not going to go to parties, we might as well bring the party to him!”
Sal managed one last glance at the chest of materials and his incomplete blueprint before Upgrade grasped his shoulders.
“So, Mr. Argento…show us how the Auctioneers dance!”
A few whistles and cheers came from the benches, and Sal laughed along with them. With a glance at the grinning Upgrade, he decided that he might as well just give in.
“Try to keep up.”
Chapter 38:
Upgrade
“I’m telling you, he has robotic legs. It’s the only logical explanation!” Upgrade groaned as she clutched at her calves.
She and a few of the others were sprawled out on the couch in Room 17 as Sal was walked through the steps of using the industrial forge and the fabricator. Upgrade seemed to be under the impression that she was going to drag him around the workshop in an elaborate dance, but the roles quickly reversed, and Sal had very much had the last laugh. As a reward for the show, a few of the Crafters offered to help him out with the sniper rifle restoration. Martin was currently walking him through using the fabricator.
Sal watched in awe as the firing mechanism was printed in front of him. Each of the tiny components was being replicated as he fed the machine his essence. He did as he was instructed and applied the layers of energy within the lines of the printer, and small lasers solidified that essence with the material. It was creating an essence-infused component.
He was delighted when his eyes immediately calibrated to the task and offered him a more precise measurement than the guidelines set out by Martin. He couldn’t explain how he knew, but Sal was sure that this machine was going to help him create components at Epic grade.
“Sal, lift your jeans! Are your legs real?” Upgrade insisted as she put down her wine glass.
Gosia, beside her, snorted in laughter, and Sal had to do his best not to laugh.
“Yes, they’re real.”
He was much more at ease talking to them now that he had made a few small pieces with the fabricator. He was really getting the hang of it, and his eyes had taken over a lot of the difficult things to keep track of. Sal didn’t need to worry about how much essence he was using or making any mistakes because his Mythcrafter ability highlighted any issue, and it also allowed him to fix any minor mistakes with his raw essence. Right now, Sal was sure that the component he was making was going to be Upper Rare grade at minimum, and that was without any finishing touches or upgrades.
“Now don’t forget the lenses!” Martin gestured over at the industrial forge, where the glass from the dismantled scope was being heated.
Sal nodded and focused on finishing the firing mechanism first. He knew that he would have overthought every single part of this process had he tried it by himself, but with the steady hand and guidance of Martin, he was moving through the stages like it was second nature.
“Upgrade, are you sure Martin isn’t the lecturer? I’m learning loads from him up here,” Sal teased as he finished the mechanism and placed it onto the table.
Upgrade didn’t move from her seat, but her eyes narrowed onto Sal. “Funny guy. Wait until your first class with me. I’m going to take the piss out of you in front of all your friends!”
Sal shrugged. “Assuming you can ever use your legs again, right?” He shot her a grin.
Upgrade turned to Gosia. “I’m actually going to kill him. I don’t care if he’s half robot. I’m going to kill him.”
Martin gestured for them to be quiet as he motioned for Sal to listen to the forge. “Your eyes can probably see it better than any of us here, but you can hear the change in the material when it reaches the peak temperature.”
Sal couldn’t hear any sort of difference, but his eyes could see the changes in the lens as it absorbed the liquified essence. One of the bottles that Vanessa had gifted him was apparently perfect for enhancing the sights. The casing was easy to replicate with better materials, but the key differentiator was going to be the lens, and his eyes could already tell that it had come out much better than expected.
Sal’s heartbeat quickened as he started to engrave the lens with the rune that Francis had picked out for him. It took multiple assurances from the Crafters that the engraving would be transparent, but Sal still couldn’t understand it. He was drawing on what was essentially glass, and it was absolutely going to obscure the vision of whoever looked through it. Despite those concerns, he followed their advice and channeled his energy throughout the process. With all the components now complete, Sal assembled them as the lens cooled.
Upgrade winced a few times as she watched Sal, criticizing his lack of technique, which deteriorated into her barking corrections at him.
Rather than getting defensive or ignoring her, Sal did his best to change his approach and follow her instructions. He knew that with the cores, he’d probably be able to use all the raw materials and force the upgrades like he had done with the gauntlets. With the quality of the materials, combined with the energy from the cores, they’d likely be Epic grade.
His weakness wasn’t his power; it was his technique. It was incredibly wasteful to throw all that essence and materials at a weapon when he could do it for a fraction of the cost. That said, Sal was going to cut some corners by Upgrading small pieces at a time. Sal glanced at the sketches on the table and had to move one of them to the side. At some point during the evening, Upgrade had gone into the blueprint room to get his evolving dagger sketch to show to the other Crafters, then had left it on the table.
As the page slid over the other drawing, Sal stopped abruptly. In those few heartbeats, Sal couldn’t hear Martin or Upgrade or anyone else in the room. All he could see was the evolution rune overlapping the sniper rifle. His eyes couldn’t distinguish the difference between the two schematics and rather than seeing them as two different blueprints, they instead tried to solve the problem they thought they were being presented with.
The Mythcrafter ability created a solution that Sal had thought impossible—a path to creating an evolutionary sniper rifle. Sal’s eyes didn’t move as he started to redraw and correct everything he was seeing.
Upgrade groaned as she got to her feet. She looked like she was about to say something snarky when she caught his expression. His eyes were glowing in their vibrant purple. She glanced at Martin, who shrugged.
Sal didn’t respond to their attempts at conversation and instead started to sketch and draw.
“Bit late for corrections when you’ve already made the parts…What did you mess up?” When she moved closer to have a look at what he was drawing, she froze. Shaking her head, she looked at Martin and pointed at the drawing. “Are you fucking seeing this?”
Sal barely heard a word they were saying as he went through each of the designs. He couldn’t believe it made sense. It looked like the stupidest idea of all time, but his eyes said it could work, and they hadn’t been wrong yet.
His previous desire to do everything the slow and steady way had been thrown out the window because the new design demanded stupid amounts of ingenuity and power that only his ability could provide. It would require a team of master craftsmen to make it and a lot more than the materials they had.
Martin looked at the design and then glanced at Upgrade. “An evolutionary sniper? Bullets tethering to targets over that distance? There’s no way that would work! The dagger makes sense because it’s literally embedding, but a sniper? It sounds more like a fishing rod in this schematic.” His laugh was filled with total disbelief.
Upgrade didn’t share his mirth, sobering up as the design took shape. “Sal, it’s a nice concept and all, but it’s not what the client asked for.” Her tone was level throughout all of the excitement, but it needed to be stated. “You have your brief, and you’ve got your components. You just need to finish the assembly and send it home, okay?”
Sal’s eyes flickered back to silver as he took a step back from the table. Gosia, Martin, and Upgrade looked back at him with various stages of concern and disbelief. He could tell they wanted the best for him and that they were trying to guide him in the right way.
The problem was that they didn’t see what he saw and were going by a few strokes of a pen. Sal frowned. He knew he’d be able to finish the Epic sniper, which was the actual brief, as Upgrade had said. There was no way that he’d be able to brute-force his way to making the schematic he’d just designed because the material cost would be extraordinary, let alone the core consumption. Even if he had all the techniques that he needed, it would take forever.
Sal wondered whether he could outsource certain components to them and then just Upgrade them. It was a sound theory, but their capability was too low. It would be perfect if they’d be able to work on Epic-grade items rather than just Rare.
Sal faltered as he came to a realization. He hadn’t asked Divinity about the power change when he unknotted her ability. Surely, she would have said something if there was a negative outcome?
With nothing left to lose, Sal brought his hands together and spoke tentatively. “Hypothetically…if I was able to enhance your abilities for an unknown period of time, would you be interested in helping me build this?”
Sal pointed at the blueprint of the proposed sniper, and all three looked at him as though he had two heads. Upgrade was shaking her head and it looked like she was about to move into lecture mode about responsibility and managing expectations, but Martin interjected first.
“Since it’s a hypothetical…I’ll say yes.”
Upgrade gave him a quizzical look, and Gosia put up her hand too.
“Sure, I’d help.”
With a roll of her eyes, Upgrade shrugged and gestured at the blueprint. “Okay, yeah. If I could make sense of this, then I’d help you…but it’s not that simple.”
Sal raised his hand to stop her from speaking for a moment. Upgrade cocked an eyebrow and placed a hand on her hip as she gestured for him to continue.
“Next part of the question. Would you mind if I tried to enhance your power? You don’t have to do anything, and I don’t even need to touch you. It probably wouldn’t even work.” Sal grinned as he looked at Martin with a raised eyebrow.
Martin grinned. “Go for it!”
Upgrade narrowed her eyes at Sal. “Even if you have that Skill Master ability. There’s no way for you to affect the abilities of others. Your heart is in the right place, and it’s great that your ambitions for crafting are making you think outside the box ...but this ...this is insane, Sal.”
Sal smiled through Upgrade’s lecture as he unknotted Martin’s weave. The threads reacted to Sal’s touch, and it took all of a few seconds to undo the loosest of the knots.
Martin’s eyes widened as he took a tentative step back. He looked off to one side, refusing to look Sal in the eye as he hastily brought his hand to his eyes to wipe away his tears.
Upgrade rushed around the table to check on him, but Martin’s face was positively beaming as he breathlessly nodded.
Despite his best efforts, Martin couldn’t articulate what was happening. His eyes widened further, and he stared at Sal in shock.
Sal continued to navigate Martin’s weave. He had started with a few easy knots on the outside that practically melted away with his touch. It was pretty tiring, if he was honest, and the weaves were stubborn in comparison to his own.
Some knots were wound so tight that it would have taken an age to pry them loose. Sal ignored those for the moment and continued to unravel the easy ones. After the third knot was undone, he released his power and blinked a few times until he was back to reality.
Martin stared back at him with a goofy smile and red eyes. He exhaled and chuckled at the same time. “Sal, I don’t care if this is temporary…this is probably the best I’ve felt in my life.”
Gosia’s hand shot up. “Me next!” She glanced at Upgrade and then back to Sal. “I mean, if that’s okay!”
With a nod, Sal closed his eyes and repeated the process on Gosia. She didn’t have many knots to begin with, and the few that she had were at the center of her weave. Rather than just giving up because there were no simple ones, Sal worked on one of the core knots, despite how difficult and tightly wound it was. It took longer to work out that one knot than it did to do three of Martin’s. He couldn’t explain it, but Sal felt more exhaustion than before…but continued regardless.
When he was done, the knot tried to reform, albeit slowly. Maybe it was because of the work he had put into it, but Sal had no intention of letting it knot itself once more, and moved the weave in such a way that it couldn’t form again. He made a mental note of what it had looked like before, just in case it had any negative effects on Gosia. When he opened his eyes, he wasn’t sure what to expect, but the grin on Gosia’s face was an absolute relief.
“You’re both fucking with me, aren’t you?” Upgrade scowled as she looked between the three of them. “You planned this when I went into the blueprint room, yeah?” With a shake of her head, she crossed her arms and stared them down. “Okay, if this is some big joke at my expense, I’ll bite. Go on, Sal, make me more powerful! I can’t wait to see the punch line.”
Rather than activating his power immediately, Sal reached into the chest and took out a small core. He didn’t want to have to rely on his own power for this one, because Upgrade’s ability was the most important part of the puzzle if they were going to create the blueprint with the materials they had.
With a steady look, Sal caught Upgrade’s eyes. “You need to promise me that you’ll make this first, before you work on the drone. Okay?”
He said it with a smile, and Upgrade’s demeanor faltered.
“You’re actually serious, aren’t you?”
Sal gripped the core as he activated his ability. The surge of essence washed through him, and he felt more than energized. Upgrade’s weave was an absolute mess, and he was astounded at how much power she had been able to utilize with what she had available. Martin’s three knots and Gosia’s one tough knot were nothing in comparison to Upgrade.
If he had to estimate, there were about a dozen knots of various severity and a few flow issues where the weave just kept tangling. With the added essence, Sal got to work and untangled everything he could see. After the first five, he wondered whether he was maybe going overboard, but he reasoned that he needed her power to be potent to make the rifle.
The issue that he could see was the weave losing its strength, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it. As that thought crossed his mind, his skill seemed to nudge him into guiding the weave in a different way. Sal complied, and it felt right. He listened to a few more of the nudges, which allowed him to strengthen the weave considerably. The thickness of it had grown, and Sal knew that it would be much tougher to knot or tangle it. He took one last glance and was happy with his handiwork.
When he finally opened his eyes, he felt as if he were choking. Panic set in, and Sal frantically tried to escape from whatever was trying to kill him.
“You’re strangling him,” Martin cautioned, but Upgrade kept up the tight embrace.
Her fists gripped his sweater as her chin buried into his shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
When Gosia finally pulled Upgrade off Sal, he was able to catch his breath. The first thing he saw was her pendant, ripped off her neck and placed on the table. Her grin was wide as she breathlessly laughed at something that only she could see. Sal recalled the same expression for both Martin and Gosia, but Upgrade’s transformation was that much more dramatic. When she turned to look at Sal, her expression was one of excitement.
“I can channel essence!” She closed her eyes as her body transformed into its armor. “I don’t need the core!”
Sal stared in disbelief as the armor transformed into something extraordinary. What had once been Rare-grade armor, was now…Legendary?
Upgrade looked at the schematic on the table, the grin never leaving her face. “Well, we made a promise, didn’t we?”
They all turned their heads to Sal, and Upgrade asked the question all of them were thinking. “How long do we have with these powers?”
Sal scratched the back of his head as he shrugged. “I think it might be permanent.”
Chapter 39:
Legendary
Sal opened his eyes to the sound of excited voices all around him. He blinked a few times and realized that he was laid out on the couch in Room 17.
Upgrade placed a cup of coffee on the surface beside him and gave him a wink. “You’re just in time. All the components are ready for assembly.”
Sal rubbed his face, and he glanced at the clock. It was nearing six in the morning. It jolted him awake as he looked at the group accusingly. “You said you’d wake me up at three!”
Upgrade’s smile never left her face as she gestured across the table at Martin. “He wanted to re-make the mechanisms, and they turned out great. We also had another little project we wanted to work on while you were out for the count, so don’t be too annoyed.”
