LIGHTNOVELONLINE Swarm
[Name: Vulture Test1]
[Type: Sensory Drone]
[Evaluation]
[Speed: 28/100]
[Agility: 30/100]
[Durability: 23/100]
[Sensor Accuracy: 62/100]
[Sensor Versatility: 59/100]
[Range: 60/100]
[Overall Rank: 38/100]
[Name: Vulture Test2]
[Type: Sensory Drone]
[Evaluation]
[Speed: 25/100]
[Agility: 23/100]
[Durability: 19/100]
[Sensor Accuracy: 63/100]
[Sensor Versatility: 61/100]
[Range: 60/100]
[Overall Rank: 31/100]
“Oh, gosh.” Cael thought, with laughter, upon seeing the awful ratings for the designs.
It just didn’t feel right seeing such low numbers, but that wasn’t what he was interested in. Cael’s eyes opened in shock upon seeing that his second design was only awarded a 61 stat in versatility.
The number of different sensors and components he had added into the design was excessive to say the least. Its weight made it barely functional as a drone, while the lack of armour across it rendered it a sitting duck.
However, its various components only managed to increase its versatility up to a measly 61, a whole 9 points away from his target goal. It became clear to him that if he wanted to complete this tall order, he’d have to put a lot of time and thought into it.
To prepare himself for this upcoming event, he looked into his skill tree and opened the ‘Combat’ section.
[Combat]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Gauntlet Overdrive]
[The user can increase the maximum power output of a powered gauntlet by 25% for 10 seconds. Causes a significant drain to one’s mana.]
[COST: 0.5MP]
[Cost to Unlock: 30 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Mana Shield]
[The user increases the durability of the armour plates of their exosuit for a duration of 30 seconds. Causes a significant drain to one’s mana.]
[COST: 0.5MP]
[Cost to Unlock: 30 Gears]
[Skill: Lv. 1 Flow State]
[The focus and dexterity stats of the user increase by 40% for 25 seconds, allowing for greater perception and battle intelligence.]
[COST: 0.5MP]
[Cost to Unlock: 30 Gears]
It was clear that his system was prioritising the mechanical side of things for the time being. He couldn’t think of why this was the case, but he also couldn’t discern any of the intentions of the system.
Even after all this time, he was given no hint as to who even created this thing and why it was stored in some random helmet in the middle of Carlo City.
Nevertheless, he still couldn’t upgrade or unlock any skills because he hadn’t met the criteria to doing so.
[Insufficient stats/titles for further skill unlock/upgrades]
[MINIMUM STATS/TITLES REQUIRED FOR FURTHER UPGRADES/UNLOCKS: Competent Merchant, 20 Intelligence, 10MP]
[User: Cael Breckenridge]
[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Novice]
[Strength: 4]
[Speed: 6]
[Durability: 4]
[Intelligence: 16]
[Dexterity: 6]
[Creativity: 8]
[Focus: 15]
[MP: 7/7]
[Skills]
Competent Merchant was still a title that he had no direct means of acquiring. From what he had observed previously, it was given as a random reward for achieving success at selling his creations.
All he could hope for was that the system would grant him the title once this first quest was complete – if he could complete it.
Then, he could easily unlock the skills and even upgrade and unlock the other skills within the other sections of his skill tree.
He had $331,500 in his account that he had ready to spend on gears. He would need 300 to upgrade his MP, then a further 1,000 to then upgrade his intelligence fully.
1,300 multiplied by 50 meant that he’d be paying $65,000 for all the items, which was a hefty price. He contemplated the numerous creations that he could sell with that money, or just how long he could live with that money in a place like Carlo City.
In his apartment, that would cover every other cost that he had more than 1.5X times over, with a significant portion left over for savings.
He also didn’t intend to spend too much money since he knew that his own exosuit would cost a fortune to create himself. He hadn’t been given the fabrication for this upcoming event and couldn’t rely on his system giving him one.
[Would you like to convert $65,000 into 1,300 gears?]
Cael agreed and that amount was swiftly added into his system.
He then applied the necessary improvements to his stats page, making him feel a warm feeling throughout his body. The capacity of his mana increased even further, and he could feel his body being invigorated during this upgrade.
With more mana to power himself, the limits to his physical strength had been lifted even higher. Additionally, he could power even better exosuits smoothly and efficiently.
[User: Cael Breckenridge]
[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Novice]
[Strength: 4]
[Speed: 6]
[Durability: 4]
[Intelligence: 20]
[Dexterity: 6]
[Creativity: 8]
[Focus: 15]
[MP: 10/10]
[Skills]
[MINIMUM STATS/TITLES REQUIRED FOR FURTHER UPGRADES/UNLOCKS: Competent Merchant]
Now that he had already met some of the other criteria, the notification only detailed the conditions that he had to meet that he hadn’t already met.
Having no control over upgrading his title, he let that matter rest for now, and continued on thinking of a better drone design to increase versatility.
He scoured the web in search of unique drone designs that he could magpie from. There were certain attack drone designs that had various different styles of energy blasters and projectiles to attack enemy troops, but bases as well.
Other drones had greater resistance to electromagnetic pulses intended to disrupt their inner workings.
He formed other test designs, trying to incorporate the other components and models that he had seen from a superficial level, but couldn’t even breach past the 65 mark. Whenever he would do so, the other stats of the drone would suffer too greatly.
It was to the point where almost all of his designs were pretty much unsellable. The quest was a true struggle, and a whole fortnight had passed during this time.
He cursed his system from preventing him from upgrading his skills, which would be a great help here. Of course, he could use his stats to try and improve his abilities, but he didn’t want to waste the money that he had. The money he had stored up was for the exosuit he’d have to inevitably design and purchase, and for the business he intended to expand.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t stop himself and spent 200 gears on upgrading his creativity stat to 10. While he was there, he decided to increase his base physical stats, which also had a more direct effect on his physical abilities.
Spending 400 gears, with 2 stat upgrades each in strength and durability, his strength, speed and durability were all 6.
[User: Cael Breckenridge]
[Titles: Novice Merchant, Vault Novice]
[Strength: 6]
[Speed: 6]
[Durability: 6]
[Intelligence: 20]
[Dexterity: 6]
[Creativity: 10]
[Focus: 15]
[MP: 10/10]
[Skills]
He ended up spending $20,000 just to get those stat upgrades and told himself that he wouldn’t get any more. It wasn’t worth spending tens of thousands of dollars for just a single quest.
However, when he looked at the punishment of failing such quest, he was made to believe otherwise.
The following days, he felt himself making more progress in the domain of finding a new design for versatility.
He was stood in his room, with several descriptions of drone models surrounding him. He did not have the funds to buy alteration permits so that he could see the further intricacies of these designs.
He saw no need to do so and continued looking at the several types of sensory drone to try and find a way to come over this obstacle. Looking at a certain image, with several identical drones beside each other, an idea suddenly popped into his mind.
He swiped away the panels in his vision to try and focus more, placing a hand on his chin. A few seconds later, a smile appeared on his face.
“There’s no way. I think I found a way to do this!”
The main word that popped up into his mind was ‘Swarm’. He imagined a system of drones, that were made up of individual models but functioned as a single system.
They would regularly communicate through electromagnetic pulses, and co-ordinate themselves in several different ways. If there were models with various purposes, like attack drones, sensory drones and other types of drones banded together, the versatility of the swarm would go through the roof!
Cael felt captivated by this new design that he had thought up, and spent the next few days fleshing out its functions.