Chapter 246: The Man With A Plan
"My first skill," Akira said, holding up a finger. "It’s called [Quick Craft]."
"What does it do?" Melody asked.
"It lets me throw together a functional gadget in seconds. With whatever materials I have on hand, I can assemble something fast and put it to use." Akira answered.
"The quality depends on what I’m working with and how much time I have before I need to use it. With better materials and more time, I get a better result."
Melody frowned, thinking about it. "Does that mean you could build anything? Or is there a limit to what you can make?"
Akira was quiet for a moment before answering. "The moment the class was awarded to me, I noticed something."
"Knowledge that wasn’t there before was suddenly just... sitting in my head. Things I’d never learned and never studied. How parts fit together, how mechanisms work, how to put things under stress and have them hold."
"But the knowledge is not endless," she continued. "I can feel the limits to it. I have to think, put the pieces together myself, figure out what I want to build and how. The knowledge gives me the foundation, but I still have to do the work."
She leaned back slightly. "And I can tell that as I advance, there’ll be more. The knowledge will grow with the class."
Lukas nodded slowly. "So right now you’re working with a foundation, and the higher you climb, the more you’ll have to build from."
"Exactly."
"What’s the second skill?" Melody asked.
"[Scrap Grenade]." Akira couldn’t help but smile at that. "It allows me to pack loose metal fragments and volatile compounds into a makeshift grenade."
"When I throw it, it releases a burst of shrapnel on impact that pierces light armor and leaves bleeding wounds on everything caught in the blast radius. And if one is close enough, it can kill them."
"That pairs well with [Corpse Explosion]," Lukas said.
"That’s what I thought." Akira nodded. "I now have two different kinds of explosive damage. One uses whatever corpses are nearby, and the other I build myself and carry in. That means I’m not always dependent on having bodies around to cause that kind of damage."
"That’s good," Melody said. "We can get explosions anytime we want now."
"But that’s not the one I’m most excited about." Akira straightened slightly, a large grin appearing on her face. "My last skill is the one I actually like."
"What is it?" Lukas asked.
"It’s called [Mechanical Companion], and it lets me build and deploy a small autonomous robot from salvaged parts. Once it’s built, it fights on its own. And before I deploy it, I can choose its role. Whether as attacker, defender, or support. The configuration I choose during assembly determines how it fights."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Melody spoke. "That’s actually cool."
Lukas nodded in agreement. "Think about it. You already have [Resurrect] to raise undead, and now you can field a mechanical unit on top of that."
While he had [Monster Ball], and their capabilities were now overlapping, the hidden dungeon had already shown that they won’t always have the luxury of fighting side by side.
"You now have two types of summons," Melody said, sharing Akira’s grin. "One organic and one mechanical."
"And they fill different roles," Lukas added. "The undead you raise are whatever the corpse already was, but with the [Mechanical Companion], you can configure it yourself. You get to decide what it does before it ever hits the field."
"Defender configuration especially," Melody said. "If you build it to absorb damage, it takes pressure off all of us. Lukas already burns through shields constantly. Having something else on the front line would help take the pressure off you."
"Or attacker configuration," Lukas said. "Drop it in alongside an undead and let both of them pressure the same target while we try to hit them from range."
Akira watched the two of them talk, a warm feeling in her chest.
It felt good to have people she could trust to keep her secrets. People who would always be on her side, no matter what happened.
Her mind went back to the Underneath, and that was when she remembered something she’d been meaning to say.
"There’s one more thing," she said.
Lukas looked at her. "What is it?"
"Bull." She said.
"Who?"
"The glowing man who had come out of the Underneath with me."
"Oh, that man?" Melody blinked.
"I’m almost certain he knows about my new class. The way he looked at me when the reward screen came up, it was as if he’d been expecting to receive the class, but hadn’t."
Melody frowned. "You think he knew the hidden dungeon gave out classes as rewards?"
"I think he might have entered that dungeon on purpose to get the [Tinker] class himself," Akira said. "Or something like it."
"He’s been trapped down there, but a man like that, B-rank, calm, and completely in control of everything around him? He didn’t feel like someone who’d stumbled in by accident."
"You think he was waiting," Lukas said quietly.
"That’s what it felt like." Akira nodded. "And there’s a rumor that he’s connected to the Infinity Guild. Nobody down there could confirm it, but nobody denied it either."
"And there’s no guarantee that the guild didn’t know about the hidden dungeon," Lukas said.
The room was silent.
"Then we’ll keep this quiet," Lukas sighed. "No one outside this room needs to know about the [Tinker] class for now. We don’t know what Bull’s angle is or whether the Infinity Guild has any interest in us yet."
"Agreed," Melody said.
"When we get back to Salaria," Lukas continued, "we’ll go shopping. We’ll get whatever materials you need for the new class, and you can work on it behind closed doors."
Akira gave a short nod. "I already have a few things in mind."
"Good." Lukas pushed himself to his feet, rolling his neck. "We’ll sort the details later. I’m getting a bath first."
