Museum Core Chapter 124: LOOT!

Jaclyn was aware of the fact that, right at this moment, she was utterly disgusting.

As it turned out, fighting underwater didn’t mean you automatically got clean as you retreated, and the blood and guts presently covering her were starting to stink to high heaven, to the point where the various sailors on the ship were actively starting to avoid the section of deck where she was standing.

And despite all that, her cleaning herself off would have taken a mere couple of seconds of focus; that was literally what her magic was for.

But she hadn’t. Couldn’t, really, she was too busy staring at the system window before her.

You have reached the peak of C-Rank and must now choose a new power to advance to B-Rank.

Two powers will be unlocked by reaching C-Rank, Level 20, and two more can be unlocked by achieving certain things. These powers will not necessarily be stronger than the standard offerings.

If you have already achieved the requirements, they will be listed aside the unlocked power; if you have not, they will be listed alongside the name of the power they gatekeep.

Same as always. Decide which superpower you’d like to have, then get it. That part was normal.

No, the weird thing was that she was at B-Rank!

How?

… stupid question, she’d gotten experience for killing the anchor beast, obviously.

But enough for her to get fourteen levels? At C-Rank?

Okay, no, step back, deep breath.

This was a good thing. A very good thing. One that would probably cause quite a few issues since she was now the only human B-Rank in the world, and if she, with her comparatively minor contributions, had gotten this kind of boost, both Daedalus and Elias had to be B-Rank too, which would cause all sorts of messes on the global stage.

Jealousy, assassination attempts …

Jaclyn continued to stare at the system window for a few minutes more, then rose to her feet while blasting cleaning magic in an area around her, instantly atomizing the gore caking her, anything that had wound up on the deck while she’d been standing there, and finally polishing the ship nearby to a mirror sheen with the leftover mana.

Yes, there would likely be some issues, but if C-Ranks were considered on par with nuclear weapons, what would that make her?

Either way, she shouldn’t feel bad about being powerful.

So, next step … picking a power.

Spirit Manifestation

Now you may manifest your projections freely and with a thought, while also granting them a degree of autonomy and automation.

Familiar Menagerie

With this ability, you may summon the various species you are bonded with as physical projections, with the exact power of your familiars depending on your Spirit Stat.

Variable Bond (unlocked by using your bonds in near-equal measure)

This power grants you the ability to swap out your bonds for others of the same kind (normal for normal, ancient for ancient, mythic for mythic).

You will be able to swap out these bonds in one week, with the interval between swaps decreasing as you grow in power, starting at one year.

Animal Kinship (unlocked by understanding your bonds, appropriately using the powers gained from them, and acting in accordance with them)

This power grants you the ability to bond to the wild itself, gaining temporary bonds with all nearby animals that aren’t actively hostile to you, with the range scaling with your overall level.

There were a whole lot of impressive powers here.

Familiar Menagerie would make her a one-woman army … or at least a one-woman fireteam. Powerful, usable in virtually any situation save ones that occurred in highly-confined spaces, but ultimately not something that would synergize particularly well with her fighting style, even if she couldn’t deny there was something enticing about standing back and watching her foe get torn apart by an actual Lernean Hydra.

Animal Kinship, meanwhile, was right out. Yes, it was powerful, but also highly, highly situational. In the London transformation zone, it would be a practically godlike power, limited only by her Spirit Stat, which was sky-high.

However, when was the last time she’d had a serious fight in that area? Mind you, the dungeon didn’t count as the area around it had been cleared.

Or what about any other area with plenty of wildlife to draw upon?

Crystal plains of Russia, nope.

Transformation zone beneath her feet … definitely not.

And the same went for the two areas that were yet to be properly explored, and the other oceanic zone that she was sincerely hoping she wouldn’t have to visit.

But she had more options.

Variable Bond, for example.

Take any of her current bonds, replace them with any other creature of the same “type,” then keep switching as she came up with good options. An excellent power.

For example, keeping her badger and hydra bonds but replacing the eagle with an ankylosaurus would make her almost unkillable while also granting her immense mass and momentum.

Or she could try out a different mythic bond, now that it was possible to try out others, even if it would take a year before she could swap out an unfortunate pick.

All in all, on paper, it was fantastic.

Just one problem. It was called Variable Bond. It was variable.

The nature of her bonds had a direct impact on her physical abilities, with how they enhanced her by directly gifting her strength based on her Spirit Stat.

Yes, her power kept growing, and the ratio of her stats often shifted, forcing her to adapt, but there were no circumstances under which they weakened.

That kind of shift would likely be much harder to adapt to.

And even if the adaptations were surprisingly easy, or even a non-issue, she’d still have the issue of suddenly not having access to the abilities that she’d had since the very start, the abilities that had been baked into her muscle memory, the capabilities all her techniques relied upon.

Which meant she’d have to train up every single Bond, or combination of Bonds, separately, to the exact same degree as her original, main, “loadout.”

To once again quote Bruce Lee, “I fear not the man who practiced 10,000 kicks once, I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

Yes, not taking Variable Bond axed any thoughts she might have had about gaining any semblance of flexibility, but this was a matter of not wanting to be a jack of all trades, master of none.

She wanted to become a master, then use that kind of skill and ability to maximize the use she got out of her level and stats. Not bank on the fact that there was some random, potentially obscure, creature out there with an ability that trivialized a fight she was about to engage in.

Still, all that said, Variable Bond was a power she’d have taken in a heartbeat … if she hadn’t had (indirect) access to the full stores of knowledge of the Worldstrider tribe.

Because, for once, it was the power without requirements that was more suited to her powerset.

Spirit Manifestation streamlined her older Spirit Projection power to the utmost, allowing her to manifest wings with a thought and use them without having to move any part of her body and thereby actually fight in the air, automatically deploy her badger hide “armor” at the drop of a hat against any attack she saw coming or even just expected to be incoming. Things like that.

Also, this power would allow her to unlock the full range of her hydra manifestations, on top of the precisely two she’d gotten thus far.

The first was the “Serpentine Mermaid” she used to swim.

And the second had damn near given her dentist a heart attack. It hadn’t even been deliberate … he’d just asked her to stick her tongue out and suddenly found himself face to face with a forked, spectral serpent’s tongue that flicked at the air, mere millimeters from his own nose.

But with this … a single thought was all it took to manifest five ethereal serpent heads, sprouting from the small of her back and extending a couple of meters from there, curiously glancing around at their surroundings, ready to lash out at anything that she declared “a threat.”

Another thought dismissed the snakes, and summoned her wings instead, which she immediately used to launch herself skywards, feeling the wind rush across her face.

Jaclyn’s grin spread so wide that one could be forgiven for thinking her face was about to crack in half, were anyone close enough to see her.

She leaned to the side, and spun through the air in a picture-perfect barrel roll, only to come to a near-instant stop as she snapped her wings back open.

And then, she began to laugh, then laugh harder as she realized that previously, doing even this much would have likely seen her fall out of the sky from an inability to adequately pull off those tiny adjustments of her shoulders needed to control her wings, which was surprisingly difficult when belly-laughing like this.

Granted, it wasn’t like the hydras would stay secret for very long, especially considering that she’d used it aboard a destroyer in full view of the crew, but they would likely be a very nasty surprise for the next few opponents she fought, and even if it was just a random monster in the dungeon.

Now that that was done, though, she finally looked at her character sheet.

Name: Jaclyn Abrams

Race: Human

Class: Anima Monk

C-Rank, Level 6/20 -> B-Rank, Level 0/20

Class Abilities

Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)

Spirit Projection (E-Rank)

Ancient Bond: Haast’s Eagle (D-Rank)

Mythic Bond: Lernean Hydra (C-Rank)

Spirit Manifestation (B-Rank)

Statistics (1050 points available)

Body: 510 -> 585

Magic: 40 -> 115

Mind: 454 -> 529

Spirit: 460 -> 535

Skills

Pugilism 42 -> 46

Fist of the Indomitable Badger Immortal Badger Fist 44 -> 45

Athletics 44 -> 45

Situational Awareness 44

Bullshit Radar 37

Martial Arts 43 -> 45

Alternate Skill Set (currently inactive, switch available)

Mana Control 20

Utility Magic 20

Ballance 16

Breathing 12

Inspect 23

Movement 12

***

That was … well, that was certainly a crazy number to see.

Over a thousand free points to distribute, on top of the automatically applied points for growing in rank, seventy-five for each stat.

Seriously, how powerful had the system considered this anchor beast to be?

***

The anchor beast “belonged” to Daedalus. That had been the agreement.

But he’d already taken what he needed and was currently in the process of leaving, the Belfast so stuffed with materials that it had seemed on the edge of sinking as it left.

Yet it would have taken a hundred Belfasts to transport that much material, so there was a whole lot of monster left lying about, to be picked over by everyone who could get to it any way, shape, or form.

Wyatt Granger was among the first to look through the mess.

Most of this would likely wind up used to create weapons, which would likely wind up looking like something straight out of Resident Evil, or maybe The Thing. Much of this might have been just flesh and/or cartilage, but since it had come from a B-Rank creature, things could easily wind up working out anyway.

Not exactly a good move from a PR perspective, but if some abomination like that wound up being needed, public perception would likely be a secondary concern.

But that was a question for the crafters, who were currently “fighting” over the water-breathing items, which Granger didn’t need, since he could filter the oxygen for himself on his own.

And he was here in pursuit of knowledge, specifically, any reasonably intact pieces of the monster’s cybernetics.

Summoning and sending out a dozen globes of light, then swimming around until he found something was a bit time-consuming, and he had a cleaning spell going almost constantly to get rid of the blood and other, far more indescribable, fluids.

But pretty soon, he spotted a chunk of something decidedly non-fleshy the size of a keg of beer, but jagged, broken, and sharp.

Yeah, he wasn’t going to pick that up with his bare hands; that was what telekinesis was for.

And a brief burst of mana later, the “crystal” was floating in front of his face.

Alright, now to look inside it without breaking the damn thing.

… he really needed to get his hands on a proper spellbook. At some point, soon. Because his current “inspect” spell was actually a variant of a cleaning spell, distorted beyond all recognizability. The process started by making the spell check how hard it would be to clean something, were it present in dust-form, then began to work backwards from that to, somehow, show him what was going on on the inside.

Then again, this was a matter for the Gearheads; he was just curious and wanted a look at it.

And, well, it was basically a huge slab of graphene, shot through with veins of gold that … wait a second …

Granger began to turn it, then flipped the fragment over entirely, only to be forced to reverse the gesture a moment later, but after another thirty seconds of spinning it around as though it were caught in an invisible washing machine, he finaly held it in a position that allowed him to confirm what his gut instinct had already told him was true.

They were runes. Runes, written in a strangely three-dimensional way, Granger was unfamiliar with, and he only knew one of the thirty-odd present … but they were runes. The same ones he’d studied endlessly until he’d managed to create his Logos Mage Class from the combination of his general thirst for knowledge, multitasking ability, and finally, the only magic skills he’d been able to practice without actually having any mana.

But this was just magic. Where was the tech? This was magi-tech, right?

Most likely, this was no core piece of whatever device it used to be a part of, no power source or big processing unit or any other bit that should easily be able to recognize as being important without actually being aware of what it was … but even so, at the barest minimum, there should have been a visible power conduit.

What was this thing even made from?

Granger glared at the device, hoping a System window describing it would pop up.

It didn’t.

This was a B-Rank material, obviously, but there was a lot beyond that. It was familiar, though. What on Earth was this?

Granger nearly facepalmed when he figured it out. Graphene. Since when was that conductive?

Actually, he did facepalm then. This, he knew. From the science museum, in fact. Carbon, properly aligned, could conduct electricity. Quite well, in fact. It was just that doing so at a sufficient quality, on the industrial scale required for regular applications, was beyond current science and likely would be for the foreseeable future.

Now, actually proving that idea was a whole other story.

In fact, it required him to create an entirely new spell to be able to differentiate between aligned and non-aligned carbon atoms, assuming such a difference even existed … but creating spells like that was his bread and butter by now, even if in doing so bent the original spell to an even more ludicrous degree.

And when he cast the new spell, it revealed a network of “wires” insulated by disordered graphene that was far more intransparent to electricity.

Why didn’t they use copper for that? Was the graphene really that much better? They clearly had access to metals, as evidenced by the gold used to channel mana, but …

Bugger me.

There was a reason he could easily imagine this had happened. One that, if taken to its logical conclusion, revealed the truth of why the transformation zones apparently hated microchips and anything that contained them.

“It can’t be that simple … can it?” he wondered, glaring down at the object in his hands.

Then again, that was how this sort of thing usually went, didn’t it? Everyone stared at the problem blankly, until eventually, a whole series of seemingly random happenstances made neurons fire in just the right way, allowing equally random bits of information to come together into a cohesive whole, forming the solution to … well, something.

In this case …

Good God, this was embarrassing. How hadn’t he realized this before? He’d had all this information practically from the very start, for crying out loud!

Bloody hell …

So, the problem was truly, stupidly, simple.

“Valuable” metals were the best materials for channeling mana, yet a lot of those metals were equally good at channeling electricity, which was why they were used in making, you know, electronics.

And normally, that was fine. The mana would flow along comparatively straight wires, at least in the grand scheme of things, and harmlessly vent at the other end.

But microchips were far more complicated, with far tighter turns and “wires” that were several orders of magnitude thinner. Far more likely to channel mana in “improper” ways while also infinitely less resilient to the consequences of the mana flowing through it.

Because, into what were other forms of energy transformed into when they became “waste,” as what did particles vent energy they could no longer contain?

Heat.

Mana poured into machinery built from channeling-capable metals, into the microchips, the flow got snarled up in the tight turns, and it got chucked straight back out while some of it was transformed into heat, a process that didn’t stop until, eventually, the whole thing just plain melted.

So, that was the reason; now what was the solution? Keep the entirety of the ambient mana in a transformation zone out of the sensitive electronics, obviously. Which required runes, which, in turn, needed mana to run and might accidentally drag the ambient mana through the electronics or something similar.

He’d have to figure something like that out, or someone else would manage it, but then again, people had been trying to make this work from the very beginning, just keeping out the ambient mana.

Well, actually, for his personal electronics, he could just use Arcane Stasis to achieve the same effect while they were on his person. But that wasn’t exactly a solution that was replicable, let alone scalable to the point where one might be able to “live a modern life” in a transformation zone.

For now, that was that.

Isolate electronics from mana.

Yet at the same time, that solution was also inimical to making magitech.

Magictech needed mana to function, so keeping it out wouldn’t work, yet letting it in would fry the “tech” part.

There were solutions, though.

Either make the circuitry from something that wouldn’t randomly channel mana, or build microchips in a way that ensured that the mana could safely and harmlessly flow through it without also randomly causing an actual effect, on the off-chance that the end result was somewhat close enough to a rune to make something more spectacular happen … somehow.

So … that was the secret to magitech. Now, how the hell were they supposed to actually make any of that to the quality apparently required?

***

So, this was the part that wasn’t fun. The waiting.

Yes, Thomas could move the carcass “on his own” with the Belfast, or at the very least, the remains of the heart, but that would take a couple of days. Which was why he was okay letting the Royal Air Force take a decent chunk and fly it over to him.

But even that would take/was taking hours, time which he’d have to fill, somehow, before he started climbing the walls, or did something else stupid, such as sending mental messages to Elias until he went batty instead.

Thomas pulled up his list of champions, looking it over.

Species: Apex Sabertooth (Cheshire)

C-Rank

Powers

Master Lacerate

Blur

Feline Grace

Dance Between the Raindrops

Species: Juggernought Sloth (Dexter)

C-Rank

Powers

Rubber Limbs

Wrecking Ball Fists

Pillar Manifestation

Bloodlust

Species: Drider Monkey (Jan)

B-Rank

Powers

Steal

Dungeon Relay

Item Transfer

Telekinetic Field

(empty slot)

Wait, what was up with that species name … ooh, right. He’d named it that as a joke while messing around with the system, months ago, and entirely forgotten about it.

He’d started out as a spider monkey, and what was scarier than a spider? A spider-centaur thing the size of a freaking truck!

… but not important in the grand scheme of things.

The important part was that Jan had actually hit B-Rank, almost certainly as a result of him having dropped all those depth charges, leaving Thomas with a free slot waiting for its power.

Not that there was much of a choice to be made, Jan could summon anything from the dungeon, but only use the summoning tokens. Giving him the ability to utilize mana and thereby wield magic items would definitely make a huge difference, even if he wasn’t actually supposed to be on the front lines of combat.

And then there was the Belfast, which had obviously grown to B-Rank as well, and he’d already prepared a power for that.

Species: Wraithborn Cruiser (Belfast)

B-Rank

Powers

Unique Existence

Manifold Forms

Dungeon Conduit

Arcanum Core

Screw the Square-Cube Law

As for the power’s name, that was actually something the System would have to take full blame for.

It did exactly what it said on the tin; it took the Square Cube Law out behind the woodshed and beat it within an inch of its life. It effectively nullified the big issues that came with something becoming big and heavy while moving across something solid that wouldn’t mold around the bottom like water.

Gigantism on the ocean was simple, gigantism on land … not so much.

But Thomas could seriously use a form of the Belfast that could operate on land, so he’d given it a modified version of Titan’s Physique, one which focused purely on handling the issue of mass, while leaving the bearer’s size alone.

All that being said, however, there was one more issue: actually building the damn thing. Which required him to design it first. Which he was patently terrible at.

Another problem to throw at the think-tank, he supposed.

Still, he had two old champions to bump up to B-Rank and empower, and finally chose his new one … though that had already been taken care of. Mostly.

Because while, once again, he hadn’t been able to upgrade his newest creation to B-Rank, he’d been able to bring it up to the very brink in the past.

It was a monster he’d been slowly leveling on the livestock he’d been buying from the Brits, then later transitioning to lobbing long-range attacks at delvers and running away before anyone could get a good look at it. And so on.

He could have gotten it to where it needed to be in a couple of days if he’d thrown his new creature into combat directly, but this was going to be his ace in the hole. That required a degree of secrecy, one which he maintained by varying the equipment he gave it.

The fact that he was cooking up something powerful was out in the open, yes, but anyone with half a brain would have assumed he either already had, or was in the process of creating, a trump card.

And this was going to be his newest champion. The Weretiger.

The creation had been a relatively simple process, really. He’d superimposed the pattern of a human and tiger with the ability he’d gained at D-Rank, then had it kill a pig to hit F-Rank so that he could give it a power that would stabilize the hash its creation had made of its genetic code.

Because while the pattern fusion was an easy power to apply, it was incredibly difficult to create something that could actually survive for longer than five seconds. Unlike when it came to champion creation, there was no automatic compensation for his errors; he had to either be a master at biomodification (which he wasn’t) … or just rely on magic to fix everything.

But in this case, there was a lot more to it than a simple band-aid upon this mess of his own creation.

Werebeast Physique was a basic power, one that stabilized its physiology, yes, but it did so much more. It turned the weretiger into an actual, you know, werecreature, giving the creature two separate forms, a regular human one, and that of one of the most lethal predators in the natural world.

Well, current natural world, but according to Elias, a too-great difference in mass would make a hash of the fusion.

That was two separate bodies, two separate fighting styles, and an even more lethal hybrid, all for the low, low price of a single power. And since the gear would be automatically be banished once the monster’s physiology shifted far enough to no longer be able to hold it, he’d be able to create three different sets of gears, one for each complete transformation, and one for the hybrid form, each with a separate set of enchantments and abilities.

This would further add onto the versatility of this creature, while also allowing it to whip out an entirely new slate of tricks at the drop of a hat, throwing out yet another wildcard to further screw over anyone who messed with this beast.

And, of course, to allow it to use the items, he’d had to give it Arcanum Core as its second power.

Then, the third power had been an elemental power; this was supposed to be his mage champion, for which he’d selected Cryokinesis not only for its capabilities in the crowd control department, but also because of how perfectly it synergized with its fourth power.

Fractal Strikes had once belonged to the Gemstone Dragon anchor beast and allowed it to project its attacks through nearby crystals. Normally, this was something that required a very specific kind of environment to be effective … but a tiny modification was all it had taken to make the power work on ice crystals instead.

Granted, that mostly limited it to ice, heavily reducing its ability to work with other kinds of crystal, but since that would have been ninety percent of the uses even without the limitation … who cared? Thomas certainly didn’t.

A tiny loss of functionality in return for perfect synergy was about as perfect a trade as one could make.

But now, now he needed to have it kill something. Anything. Anything at all, just to get put that tiny bit over the top, to trigger the advancement from the very peak of C-Rank, to the absolute bottom of B-Rank.

Thomas sent it after a pig, which he’d kept in a pen in the back yard, staring after the weretiger as it loped forward in its hybrid form.

It was three meters tall, entirely covered in black and orange fur, piercing yellow eyes flashing to anything that moved, lips pulled back in a grim parody of a smile revealing stark white teeth, while arms that hung slightly past its hips ended in claws that were beginning to slide forth as it closed in on its target, each the length of a small kitchen knife but infinitely sharper, capable of cutting regular rock or metal as easily as air, and tearing through most ranked metals as well.

The pig just so happened to be looking in the direction of the exit as the weretiger emerged … and that failed to make even the slightest lick of difference.

In an instant, the farm animal’s head was torn from its body, and that was that.

Thomas immediately absorbed the weretiger back into the dungeon and initiated its ascension.

The weretiger manifested before his inner eye, three separate forms overlaid without any input on his part, the tiger, human, and hybrid forms endlessly melding into each other without ever truly joining, transforming without ever changing.

It was perfection, a monster of practically incalculable potential.

He grinned and began empowering it in the way all champions were. Anything “biologically” possible was applied with a simple thought, and anything of a more metaphysical nature could also be strengthened further.

Its ability to fuel regular skills was increased to the utmost, and so was its mana pool, but that was only the start of things.

Every single body part that could be enhanced was, spidersilk was spread across the skin to form an incredibly durable mesh capable of turning aside a whole lot of attacks, claws were edged with metal and tipped with diamond, bones reinforced with metal, and so on.

It was still mostly supernatural biology, but it also had a whole lot of advantages that evolution never could have come up with.

But Thomas also made some cosmetic changes, turning the orange part of its fur white while deepening the black stripes, likewise increasing the contrast between fangs and the inside of its mouth, between the claws and pawpads. Also, he decided to change the color of its eyes from warm yellow to a stark, cold blue to match its ice power.

Then he applied those same changes to the hybrid form as well.

As for the human form, he decided to make some other changes. The blue eyes and white hair stayed, obviously, but he also added some extra features to make his human champion visibly inhuman, just to minimize fears of “oh my God, he’s going to replace us” and so on.

A pale white skin, like someone who’d never ever seen the sun so much as a single time, with a slightly unnatural shade of grey added, eyes that were just slightly too big, a mouth that was slightly too wide, teeth that were just a hair too pointy … nothing actually scary individually, but the overal impression was still decidedly off.

Exactly what he wanted, in other words.

And now, the pièce de résistance, the B-Rank power, Lightning Form.

The ultimate combination of defense, offense, and movement. It was, effectively, a copy of the power someone using the System of Elemental Mastery would have gotten at B-Rank, which was both the inspiration for this ability and the reason why Thomas had finally been able to actually make the power, which was a variant of Fulgurkinesis.

Once again, it did exactly what it said on the tin. It allowed the Weretiger to partially or completely transform itself into lightning, both allowing a lot of physical attacks to go straight through it, and inflict massive damage to enemies upon contact. But when it completely transformed into lightning, it would move across the battlefield as a flash of lightning, both wreaking havoc on anything it hit or crackled across, and rapidly repositioning.

Unfortunately, it actually couldn’t stay put when enough of it was transformed, and couldn’t really steer beyond choosing what direction to go in, but that was fine.

He’d almost given it Item Transfer instead, but considering the tiger was a house cat, not a boss he’d send out to fight in the jungle for a lack of an Avatar power, so that was much less of a requirement. And as useful as the trinity of Dungeon Relay, Item Transfer, and Arcanum Core was, it also ate up a lot of slots.

This was his new boss … without a name.

Tony?

Okay, nope. In fact, while Thomas knew “Tony the tiger” was a thing, he only knew about him in the context of the TV show “The Office” once having referenced it.

Also, he wasn’t a big fan of it.

Part of him wanted to go with the slightly classier “Anthony,” but still, making a reference he didn’t even understand wasn’t really the way to go.

And “Tigger” was right out, even though that particular character was in the public domain now.

What about renaming it after some historic figure, like Jan?

He couldn’t think of anyone specific. Except Santa Claus, who was, in turn, loosely based on one Saint Nicholas of Myra, but he didn’t want to name a creature after a saint. That felt wrong.

And then he had a perfect idea.

Jack.

As in Jack Frost, also known as “Old Man Winter,” a spirit of the cold season, protector of children, and literal force of nature.

Certainly a strong name.

Thomas had the newly named champion head downstairs, to what would become his core room, while using the new power.

A thought was all it took, and Jack transformed into a blur of electricity that moved quicker than he could blink, shifting back into his tiger form at the end of the corridor and sliding another ten or so meters before the momentum was wholly cancelled.

And after a millisecond of turning and starting to move down the next corridor, Jack flashed to the end of that one too.

Of course, that little trick has also already eaten nearly ten percent of his mana pool, endlessly flashing about the place clearly wasn’t in the cards … but it was still damn cool to watch. And certainly entertaining enough to last him until he got his delivery.

***

So … apparently, the person who’d planned the “delivery” of his item had been a tensy bit insane. Or a genius whose intelligence was too great to appreciate.

Either way, it worked … even if it did make a huge mess.

But then again, simply dropping the monster part from above the area where the transformation zone would fry the plane’s electronics was most likely the quickest way possible to make the delivery happen.

And it wasn’t like cleanup was going to take too long for a dungeon such as his, all he had to do was absorb everything in the “landing zone” on the room that wasn’t a part of the structure itself.

Then, he began to replicate the chunk into the last empty chamber of the vortex controller until it ran out of space … and for a long moment, nothing happened.

“Well, shi- …”

Before Thomas could start to unleash profanity properly, the vortex controller hummed happily and lit up.

And the interface now displayed but a single word.

“Ready”

Three and a half weeks until he could actually use it, though.

Plenty of time to cause a bidding war between anyone who might want to gain the advantage of hosting a dungeon, making a badass set of armor for Jack, and maybe in general play around with equipment some more.

He couldn’t really use Elias as a mannequin, for obvious reasons, but the weretiger would happily do it.

Maybe some more fantastical creations for the weretiger’s animal form too …

And maybe someone would find something interesting in the other transformation zones. After the real threat of the Guardian of Atlantis had become known, the fear of unknown anchor beasts had reached stratospheric heights.

*******************************************************************************

Bit of a random suggestion, but I recently binged this Webtoon, it's genuinely one of the most fantastic stories I've ever read. So if any of you also enjoy webtoons, I'd like to respectfully submit The Warrior Returns (https://www.webtoons.com/en/action/the-warrior-returns/list?title_no=3265). 
It's a lot like Dungeon Crawler Carl, in that it's dark and deeply emotional, along with amazing worldbuilding and has a deeply atmospheric music score on a lot of the chapters (much like the DCC webtoon, incidentally).