Chapter 132 - Version 0

<---Chapter 131 - Mage| Table of Contents |Chapter 133 - First Flight--->

Kyle took an overview of the exosuit armor. Right now, it features mostly active engravings powered by embedded arcia crystals collected from the dungeons. Unfortunately, there were not enough noxious salamanders to go around, but plenty of rock spiders. To that effect, the prototype exosuit had an array of poor arcia crystals that served as the energy source for the engravings.

Both arms featured strength engravings and were constructed the same way he had done for the arcia prototype exosuit arm, which was based on Harrison's design.

Custom Prototype Exosuit Arm(Advanced)

From the moment flesh's weakness was revealed, disgust reigned

Active Skill: Strength Infusion (Advanced) - Provides user with immense strength on arm. +150 STR. Cost: 1 MP per minute.

Such an engraving couldn't last forever, Kyle having pegged the runtime to approximately two hours at best in the current iteration in the exosuit. Still, the arms were not the problem, having spent the most time on their design. Instead, it was the chest and the legs that gave the biggest problems, as they had no prior design comparisons, unlike the helmet stolen from Nox and the ancient spine bought at the auction. Even for the helmet and the spine, it was difficult to create a copy of the designs, especially when he did not have the facilities of the Oracle Chamber to assist him in inspecting the finer details of the engravings. Cutting them up here in Desham would be irreversible. At least he could glean some understanding of how the engravings should be connected together in a holistic sequence.

He lifted up the breastplate, heavily damaged from the cold snaps inflicted by the mage which wrecked its composite layering internally and caused it to crack at multiple places.

Custom Prototype Exosuit Breastplate (Intermediate)

From the chest comes valor.

Active - Resist (Intermediate): Temporarily improve resistances by 50% to penetrating attacks. Cost: 1 MP per minute

The engraving was a huge improvement over the original Aspis MK1 Armour, which had integrated point defense. Kyle chose not to integrate point defense, in the end, to prolong operational usage and also remove the cooldown of the engraving, reducing it to a pure cost-based engraving. However, with the breastplate damaged beyond repair, as well as the sabatons and greaves to being irreversibly wrecked and warped from the heat differential inflicted onto it, Kyle considered an overhaul of the armor.

He had a few main objectives for the exosuit: tough enough to deflect small arms fire, light enough to maneuver easily, and strong enough to overpower any enemy. Such an armor would be considered godlike, so none of the main objectives could be achieved without a trade-off in others. For the objective to be tough enough, Resist engravings like that of the breastplate had been applied to the exterior of the armor. I can enhance it by adding more layers to improve the composite dispersion of impact. I don't expect to be able to block a direct artillery hit, but I don't expect to be hit by it, either.

Manufacturing the armor plates was easy enough - repurposed factories in Desham had the requisite machinery and tools, albeit in a haphazard manner that was not as efficient as the purpose-built lines in Raktor. Still, it was enough for Kyle to create custom armor plates and weld them together, though not too much, as maneuverability would be compromised. The way Harrison got around it was by using Kusal Corporation Fabric, a Galactic-Era membrane that allowed arcite engraving to be compact and on multiple layers. Unfortunately, Kyle had zero access to any more of the fabric. His current right exosuit arm had the layering on thin sheets of metal, which worked well enough, though not as effective as it would have been with the Kusal Corporation Fabric.

Custom Prototype Exosuit Greave (Intermediate)

Swiftness is a state of mind.

+16 AGI

Active - Sprint (Intermediate): Allows the wielder to move moderately faster.

Cost: 1 MP per minute.

Both of the greaves helped enough to reduce the weight Kyle felt whenever he moved, but at the expense of arcia energy as well that strained the crystals even more. He still had internal arcia energy that he could rely on, but even Kyle himself was not immune to arcia exhaustion. Furthermore, that did not include the spine of the exosuit, one that Kyle created from scratch as he did not have the ancient exosuit spine on him currently, though he could recall facets of its engineering.

Custom Prototype Exosuit Spine (Advanced)

The backbone of a warrior.

+45 AGI, +45 STR

Active - React (Advanced): Allows the wielder to react faster to sensory stimuli by accelerating nervous signals and guiding arcia energy flow.

Cost: 1 MP per minute.

Activating both the arms, legs, spine, and breastplate would result in a combined total of 6 MP per minute, equal to the consumption of a poor arcia crystal in approximately 4 minutes. As such, Kyle had placed slots in the armor along each of the limbs for the crystals, providing at least four for each active engraving section. This scattering also reduced the chances of his entire power source being knocked out.

While the armor was a step above the Aspis MK1 Armour, it was hardly a proper 'exosuit' in Kyle's eyes. A Galactic Era exosuit was to be a life partner in some cases, all that stood between a human and death. He expected the best for it, but given the short timeframe, it was hard to improve further. Now that he had collected experience with fighting against the mage, he vowed that Version 0 would be far better. Right now, the layering is non-existent - I can only stack similar engravings. He had already attempted it in the Culdao Peaks, but he was not able to combine point defense, resistance, and strength into a single exosuit arm, not without the Kusal Corporation Fabric.

If he couldn't improve the layering property of the exosuit, then the only other way he could attempt it is to improve the engraving himself to try and improve the operation of the exosuit. But what else can I improve about it apart from adding more composite armor? Kyle pondered for a while, considering the basic concept of defenses.

The reason why he needed a full body of armor in the first place was because of the variation in attack angles - protection was required all around, no one could predict where a potentially lethal stab or slash could come from. If he could 'predict' such an attack, then he could concentrate defenses there. Right now, he had to have the armor continuously running at full strength while fighting, which is a huge drain. Now, if the defense engraving could be toggled...

Kyle could most certainly toggle it manually himself, but it would strain his mental resources when he's in a fight, and he certainly did not want to have to dedicate attention to every single attack, allowing him to focus on the enemy itself rather than his own armor. It should be as seamless as my old exosuit, where the sensors would auto-track incoming missiles and...

A realization dawned upon Kyle as he quickly hauled a captured Yual point defense turret. While point defense itself was costly and featured long cooldowns, there was an aspect of tracking embedded deep within the engraving itself. It wasn't perfect, but at least it was better than Kyle manually toggling his engravings. I just need to copy it down and figure out which part of it performs the tracking.

The original Point Defense engraving was one of the few 'lost' engravings, engravings so complicated that their functionality was hard to improve or to break down further into building blocks. Many of the research books he had read had proposed a standard set of arcia engraving 'sections' that could be modularized, but the Point Defense engravings remained one of the few elusive ones, their sections not being utilized anywhere else and seemingly inefficient on their own according to leading experts in the Yual Dominion. Similarly, the optical stealth engraving Kyle had learned from the goblin den could not be broken down either.

He played around with a few breakdowns, avoiding some of the pitfalls that other researchers beyond him had already wasted twenty years on. I know this section and the other doesn't work independently, but maybe a third of this would work with these two-thirds.... Kyle fiddled around with 'sections,' modifying them on the go as he tried to figure out the inner workings. Soon, a crude copy of every section in the point defense engraving had been copied onto a simple metal plate, with Kyle using a thin copper wire to connect the inputs and outputs of the various sections.

Hours seemed to pass as Kyle tried various iterations, failing miserably. At times, the combined sections would emit a foul scent as the metal bubbled, while at other times, the metal plate would suddenly shoot off into the distance, nearly cutting a table in half. Each of these failures illuminated Kyle to the interior workings of Arcia furthermore, and he used it to bolster his mentality, keeping strong and convincing himself that there's more to it than it seems. There must be rules to it, its just that we don't know what the rules are.

Thanks to the System, he was able to read the description of 'section' combos that he had engineered together. Most of the messages he received were utter gibberish or just reports of failure, many being utterly useless. One of the combos he had simply caused the metal plates to glow and emit a green light. Just as Kyle was about to cross one more combo off a checklist he had made, he noticed that the green light's intensity changed as he lifted up the clipboard. Strange.

He waved the clipboard a little, the brightness changing in step with the movement. As he brought it nearer, the brightness intensified before calming down again to an ambient level. This is it!

Kyle hurriedly worked on the combo, trying to pinpoint the inputs and outputs. Soon he isolated the output section that caused the green light, resulting in a engraving combo that had various arcia energy output level based on the acceleration of an incoming object.

Acceleration Detector (Basic)

A shabby prototype of a simple detector.

Active Skill: Measure (Basic) – Measures incoming acceleration of a projectile. Lower and upper limits are configurable via modification.

Cost: 1 MP per hour.

The description of the engraving was lackluster, but it opened up a whole new avenue of application. Point Defense engraving had been the only engraving Kyle had encountered before where the effects were variable not by the user, but by the environment. This is essentially a switch. A variable analog switch. The ramifications could potentially lead to other analog electronics being developed, just like those of Ancient Earth. Kyle tried to work a little more to isolate the variable switch itself and decouple it from the requirement of a moving object but found it would take more time than it's worth. Right now, he needs Version 0 as soon as possible. Another time.

With the 'sensor' now available to him, Kyle had to figure out how to integrate it into the current existing engravings. He tried to couple the output with the input of the resist engraving, though it instead began to spurt out metal flakes like confetti, the metal plate being shredded away. The result grated on Kyle's nerves, frustrating him a little. I really don't understand the rule about whether there is even one. The outcome still seems random. He tried it with the greaves as well, also achieving a completely random result with the greaves vibrating in a strange melodic resonant frequency, forcing him to turn off the arcia supply.

Thankfully, the Resist and Sprint engravings were far more simple to understand - Kyle had to rework their layout a little and modify the input in order to incorporate it together. I don't really need active sensors for the greaves, but for the breastplate and other armor pieces it would be a marked improvement. He focused his efforts on attaching it to the Resist engravings first, and the rework was much smoother than his attempts to isolate sections of the Point Defense Engraving.

Active Resistance Engraving Prototype (Advanced)

The best defense isn't a good offense, it's a reactive defense.

Active - Enhanced Resist (Advanced): Upon detection of incoming object aimed at engraving, temporarily increase resistance to attacks by 50%.

Cost: 1 MP per minute.

Perfect for now. Kyle found this much more agreeable, the overall consumption rate of the exosuit decreasing. He quickly set up a few test plates, mounting them onto targets while hooking them up to an arcia supply and firing a few pellets. The results were the same, but the consumption over time was markedly less. Still, when he went to remove the test plate from the targets, he noticed that even with the engraving running, the plates still suffered from impact shock. Kinetic energy didn't simply disappear - while it could be dissipated through a larger surface area, Kyle himself would still feel the shock, and his body might be hurt. He recalled the mage's blast of pressure knocking him back, causing him to take some damage.

I do have the Necklace of Healing to cover any small damages... Kyle was about to move on until he considered another potential option. What if I could automatically trigger my healing as well? He fiddled with the arcia crystals on the necklace, knowing that they held the healing engraving internally. Unfortunately, he did not have the tools to migrate such an engraving over, forcing him to give up on such a potential engraving.

With toughness as a main objective improved, maneuverability should be improved as well. Kyle had a few moments in the mage fight as well as the fight against Soren, where he was forced to block instead of dodging. Furthermore, the armor was much heavier than his own body, reducing his overall speed. He investigated for ways to improve the current Sprint engraving, but found it to be a dead end. The Sprint engraving worked by improving stamina consumption when moving his legs, but it did not actually make him faster. If there's something that could accelerate me quickly in a single direction...

Acceleration engravings were already known - they were the basis for every arcia gun in the current world since combustion was never effectively widespread. However, the acceleration engravings accelerated objects along their length rather than themselves, making them useless for what Kyle wanted to do. He needed something that could provide an impulse, much like a rocket. Kyle ran through a few lists of known materials, seeing if there was a potion or explosive that could create the same expulsion effect that was common in the Galactic Era.

Still, Kyle wasn't particularly fond of having explosive material within his armor. Already the arcia crystals posed a potential liability, and strapping even more explosive fuel to it could serve as a weakness. Galactic Era exosuits previously had reaction thrusters that expelled non-reactive ionic compressed gas, powered by a safe battery that did not explode as hard on destruction. There must be a way...

His mind wandered to the arctech wagon's shaft engraving, which converted arcia energy to kinetic energy. He previously had a deep understanding of it as he wrote the reverse converter, one that the Seven Snakes and the goblins still use to this day. However, he began to draw the dots between the concepts, wondering if he could apply parts of it to his armor. If I can generate kinetic energy from an arcia energy source directly without a gas medium, then I should be able to generate kinetic energy on the armor.

He had no idea how it would it work, the concept clashing with physics. Kyle had to fight back the urge to dismiss it as a fantasy, knowing that he was working with an exotic element here. He etched a copy of the shaft's engraving from memory, but this time, he converted it into a plate form, and instead of mounting it on a rotating axle, he placed it on the desk before hooking it up to an arcia supply and activating it.

In a sudden burst, the metal plate shot up into the ceiling of the workshop, blasting upwards through the roof and carving a hole, while the contents of the table were thrown into disarray. Kyle stared in surprise through the gaping wound in the tiles of the roof, before he heard an "OW!" outside, the plate having hit a recruit in the middle of doing pushups right in the butt in the training field.

Kyle didn't bother retrieving it, knowing that he had succeeded. He hurriedly marked locations on a manniquin for the positions of the engravings, before minaturizing it to reduce the amount of acceleration it exerted. For each axis he wanted to move it, he placed a series of the engravings along its length, acting as though they were thrusters mounted to a space suit of sorts.

Acceleration Engraving Prototype (Advanced)

Expels kinetic energy.

Active Skill: Burst (Advanced) – Allows for a motion impulse burst in both directions of the engraving. Chance of overheating.

Cost: 2 MP per burst.

Title Obtained: Arcia Engraver (Advanced)

Glimpses of the inner rules of arcia begin to emerge

+30 INT, +18 DEX, +50% chance at improving quality of final Arctech Equipment.

The sudden surge of the title inserted even more information into his head, making him more acutely aware of the underlying principles of the engravings. In a flurry of inspiration, he made improvements to the engravings, improving their consumption rates and removing minor defects. Kyle knew Version 0 could be tough enough and fast enough now; he just needed to get used to the addition of thrusters. He began to draft up a blueprint of the armor for the breastplate and the greaves, before heading over to the factories to request for the manufacturing of plates. It would take a few days for the plates and armor to be fashioned, and another day for him to implement the engravings.

As he returned to the workshop once more, he found Hayden waiting for him outside the barracks at the parade square, having returned to Desham. "You know, I was just in the middle of improving the forward's base defenses. This had better be important." Hayden said quickly as she joined up with Kyle, entering the workshop.

"It is. It concerns our ability to smuggle resources into Ocra to stall the siege." Kyle didn't look at her, clearing out his workbench and focusing on his next task.

"I heard from Feldon you're considering a tunnel."

"Far from it. But instead, I need you to design this." Kyle drew a shape, Hayden only even more confused as she squinted at the paper. "This... is this supposed to be a coffin?"

"No. But I need it to survive impacts. If it helps, you can think of it as an armored coffin."

Hayden tapped her chin, thinking a little before realizing what Kyle wanted. "You want to fire the coffins over the walls of Ocra?!"

"It doesn't matter how it gets there. I just need this design. Can you do it?"

"Sure, but it's going to take a while. Is this more important than the forward base?"

"If this isn't done, there will be no more Ghosts in the whole of Versia," Kyle replied cryptically. "Get it done as soon as possible."

"Fine... but this better be useful." Hayden still held a cynical look, though she took the blueprint and left back towards the factories of Desham, leaving Kyle alone in the workshop once more, where he focused on his last main objective for the Version 0 exosuit: strength.

With the new title, I could fashion a much better weapon. He laid out the weapons that he had right now: the Thunder Blade from Soren, railgun, and Oriental Bloom were all fit for their role, but they each had their own weakness.

Thunder Blade (Advanced)

Wrath of the heavens manifested.

Active - Lightning Strike (Advanced) – Electrify the air and targets nearby through an imbalance in electrons

Cost: 2 MP per minute.

The Thunder Blade allowed him to cut cleanly through most unimproved armor, though not as efficient as a plasma cutter. Kyle felt that the range of it was severely lacking, even with the newly added acceleration engravings to the exosuit. He did not have the sheer speed of Soren, nor did he have skills dealing with lightning that could benefit from it, which meant that the consumption of Arcia needed to keep it up was too taxing.

On the other hand, the railgun he had was impressive as well, able to blow out entire armored wagons with a well-placed shot that did not require much arcia consumption. Still, it required ammunition that he had not much space for in his exosuit, and the current limit wouldn't last in a long-term battle such as a siege. Kyle couldn't count on the fact that he would have resupplies lying around, especially for battles that he foresaw.

The Oriental Bloom served its purpose as a decent sidearm, and while it lacked the firepower of the other two, it was much more versatile at dealing with an array of weaker enemies. Pellets were easier to store in the side of his thigh armor slots as well, but that was the extent of its usefulness.

I need something that can pack a heavy punch and is economical on resources. Kyle considered using just his fists, but close combat was not the norm in a war like this and for the foreseeable future. He recalled that there were Galactic Era lasers in the dungeon prison where he stored Soren, but they required the Galactic Era battery to operate. Removing that would mean Kyle had no way of holding Soren down, risking exposure to the Wardens that were behind Soren.

Kyle wasn't ruling out ammunition-based weapons just yet, though he considered melee weapons first. He ran through a few possibilities, recalling that he had utilized Lionel's neon-red hammer with Delayed Assault, as well as Riker's pipe with Reinforcement. They would all perform much better with an arcia crystal embedded... Kyle stopped himself in his thoughts, realizing he had missed an important detail about the arcia crystals.

He walked over to a crate of them, harvested during the Ghosts’ tenure at Tenar. There were practically countless of them, used to augment Aspis MK2 repeaters commonly. Still, Kyle picked up one in his hand, before throwing it as hard as he could at the wall. The moment the crystal hit the wall, the pent-up arcia energy within it burst outwards in a rapidly expanding blue ball of fire, dissipating as quickly as it had appeared and leaving a burnt mark on the wall of the workshop. Interesting...

A plan began to come together for his new weapon, one that would utilize everything he had learned so far. Something that can act as a melee weapon with good range and explosive force using the crystals... Days passed in isolation, Kyle only listening to reports from Feldon regarding the Siege of Ocra and other military movements. Not much had changed, with Count Leon still planning on starving out Ocra and waiting for his supplies to be restored.

However, his weapon development was not going as planned. He scratched his head in frustration as he tossed out yet another failed prototype onto a pile of nearly one hundred failed creations, the engravings mutating the metal once more. I can't combine the acceleration, delayed assault and explosive result of the arcia crystal together. Theoretically, I should be able to, but... Kyle had expected the Advanced Arcia Engraver title to kick it and improve the quality of the final equipment, but if he could not even get to the final equipment, there was no way he was going to trigger it.

The main issue came from the explosive nature of the crystals. Kyle wanted to weaponize it, but in doing so, the crystal would blow up in his face if he tried to wield it in a melee weapon. He knew that Lionel's hammer of Delayed Assault was able to transfer forces into the objects they hit, but for some reason the explosive force was not transferred at all. Kyle was about to consider simply putting the arcia crystals into the bunker-buster projectile Hayden had created until a eureka moment surfaced in his mind. That's it!

He quickly pinpointed the offending sections of the engraving that were conflicting, before finally realigning and concentrating the explosive force of the arcia crystal into a single funnel aimed towards the tip of the weapon, passing the result through a delayed assault engraving that transferred it to the target. As he finished up the first version of the weapon, the effects of the Advanced Arcia Engraver title began to kick in, filling his mind with learnings, nuances and inspirations he had never seen before, though it was all isolated to improvements only related to the weapon in front of him.

Still, it was enough to spur him into a frenzy, fixing and re-etching traces that were once acceptable but now horrendous in his enhanced understanding. A few more hours passed in a trance, Kyle's hands and mind moving automatically to improve the quality of the weapon to its highest point. At last, he wielded it in his hands, the weapon taking the form of a heavy spear with arcia crystals embedded along the shaft, glowing engravings tracing their way to the top of the spearhead, where the intricate traces were protected under an outer layer of hardened metal, preventing the engravings from mutating. This could even put some Galactic Era weapons to shame.

Spear of Defiance (Master)

The force of a raging typhoon dwells within

Active Skill: Six-Axis Delayed Strike (Master) – Accelerate the spear in any given direction with explosive force. All objects hit will suffer delayed implosion attacks after a configurable delay of maximum two seconds. Strength of follow-up impact can be manually controlled.

Cost: 100 MP per cast at maximum impact, minimum 5 MP.

It was his first Master quality equipment, and the feeling was impeccable. Kyle had seen plenty of well-machined and handcrafted weapons, both traditional and modern, during his time as a Crime Lord. He could tell this one was not lacking at all in quality, and he was slightly impressed with his own abilities that had been helped by the system.

Still, he noted that the cost of the maximum impact was astronomical, consuming up to 4 arcia crystals. There are only twenty embedded along the shaft. The important thing about the spear's concept though, was that even if Kyle ran out of crystals on the spear's shaft, he could easily either use his exosuit's arcia crystal or use his own internal arcia energy as backup. Now the question is - is the power better than the Thunder Blade?

He went out to another part of the barracks where there were trees, using one of them as the testing target. With a single thrust and activating the maximum impact, the tip of the spearhead jabbed into the bark, showing apparently no results until the trunk of the tree began to expand rapidly after two seconds, before bursting outwards in a dazzling display, the entire tree disintegrating into wooden splinters that shot everywhere, even cutting parts of Kyle's skin.

As Kyle was slightly satisfied with the strength of the damage, knowing he could kill the mage in one hit now if he wanted to, he suddenly felt a sharp jabbing pain in his hand where he gripped the spear, as if a molten hot iron was attempting to burn through his palm. He quickly let go of the spear, before watching four arcia crystals ejected outwards from the spear's shaft, the sizzling surface melting the grass as it clattered to the floor. It was clear from the cracking of the crystals that they could not be recharged any longer, becoming a single-time use ammunition.

Despite the drawbacks, the Master-quality spear was far and beyond what the Thunder Blade could do. Kyle would have to test it on a variety of targets to ascertain its full potential, but with the other three weapons in his arsenal, he doubted anything short of a Galactic Era exosuit could stop him. Or a mage who can see arcia. Still, he knew this was the best he could have.

The invention of the Spear of Defiance also gave him another thought. This... this could be a missile on its own. It would be extremely unguided, but the acceleration engravings and explosive force were equivalent to a bunker buster strike if thrown from afar, though he felt that this was already what a railgun could perform assuming line of sight. Perhaps this could be incorporated into a rocket system to be used by the Ghosts.

The resulting explosion and rushing gust of wind outwards from the tree naturally brought all of the Ghosts out, thinking that they were under attack. Feldon was about to sound the alarm when he saw Kyle standing over the broken body of a full tree. "What the hell just happened?!" Feldon asked.

Kyle didn't bother to elaborate, moving back into the workshop to clean up the Spear of Defiance. A few more rounds of polishing and bluffing improved the handling and maneuverability of the spear. The addition of acceleration engravings along its length also allowed Kyle to swing faster than he could exert in a given timeframe. Soon, the completed parts from the factory were also delivered, Kyle etching and assembling everything into a menacing monster mounted in the very center of the workshop, the armor intimidating.

Wearing each part slowly and testing for the range of movement, he eventually donned the entire armor without bolting it down yet, moving around and activating some of the acceleration engravings. He brought it out to the parade square, frightening the recruits and even some of the veteran Ghosts as the terrifying exosuit exhibited inhumane speeds and agility, the spine regulating the flow at full capacity.

Hayden had returned merely to announce the completion of her armored coffin, only to see Kyle throwing kicks and punches in the Version 0 exosuit as if he wasn't wearing anything, each punch causing the air to tremble and each step causing the ground of the workshop to shake. The sight of the improved exosuit intrigued Hayden even more, but Kyle didn't show her the details, instead bringing her to a meeting room, calling a general briefing with Feldon and the other Veteran Ghosts.

"It's been four days since we intervened at the Siege of Ocra. However, our efforts to hamper Count Leon's progress are not enough - we will need additional methods to securely send supplies over to Ocra. This means we'll have to run the blockade. With Hayden here having completed the necessary steps, our next move to secure said additional method. Hayden, you know where the bases of Project Aurtla are, correct?"

Hayden squinted her eyes. "Yes, but they are heavily guarded. What do you want to do with them? If you're thinking about landing in Ocra, there's no chance - you'll be shot down in minutes! Not to mention, there's no runway built there yet."

Kyle held a knowing smile on his face. "Who said anything about landing?"

<---Chapter 131 - Mage| Table of Contents |Chapter 133 - First Flight--->