Outrun – Cyberpunk LitRPG

Chapter 207

The process of Aether Imbuement started at one place: the Crystallization Array. It was the centerpiece and the object that delayed me immediately getting to work on imbued bullets. The array was the silver disk marked carefully with a runic script. If I had everything set up right, the runes would allow me to access the Aether even without being a Magi or Adept myself. 

The whole process was closer to old-age alchemy than anything, where the alchemists of old sought to transmute iron to gold. Only, now, there was literal magic I’d be tapping into using the runic array. 

The setup for the more powerful stuff involved a bunch more. Elemental Enrichment Chambers and Focusing Arrays were the tip of the iceberg, and not something I can make at the moment. 

Not that I needed to. I wanted a simple fire-imbued bullet to begin with. It’d be easy, and a good starting point to see how much it would raise my firepower. If it was too little of a raise, I’d probably just forget about the whole Aether Imbuement Perk till I could make the higher-level imbuements. I had hope that it’d be effective though.

Anyway, the starting point was very simple. Once I had the runes set up, I needed to charge them. This could be done in a variety of different ways. If I was a Magi or Adept, I could literally just do it by hand. For me though? The safest and best way was to use something that already had the Aether flowing through it to jumpstart the connection like a car battery. 

I withdrew Crow’s Celestial Compass with a thought. Shadows condensed on my hand, ebbing away to reveal the ornate compass. I set it down on the Crystallization Array. It didn’t react immediately, but then again, it could take a couple hours.

I checked with Aetherial Perception, watching the silver runes slowly seem to absorb some of the ambient energy from the compass. It’d take a while before I could actually start using the Crystallization Array.

Hmm… I looked around with Aetherial Perception activated, noticing everything seemed to be sharper and more focused. It was almost as if I’d been seeing with a slight blur, and now could see clearly. It made it easier to pick out even the slightest fluctuations of the Aether. A side effect of Panther’s Sight?

I adjusted Crow’s Canteen of Chaos to start producing gasoline before moving on to other things. While waiting, I wanted to go ahead and start on a few other things I had in mind. 

I uploaded a simple small knife blueprint to the SITCH to start printing. I noticed the last fight with the Adepts--before Corvin and hella creepy Mother crashed the party--but I really didn’t have all that many knives. 

It was an oversight on my part considering I had Throwing Weapons Master and barely had any actual throwing weapons. Hence, the dozen or so knives printing away. They were to be cheap, disposable knives I wouldn’t be worried about losing in a fight. I also uploaded a slightly different model to replace my emergency boot shiv.

While that all was printing, I shifted focus to designing a new piece of tech to solve a new issue of mine. How was I going to shoot the imbued bullets? The turrets could be easily modified to, but would I really want to waste high-quality bullets like these in a turret? Especially while I had a limited supply.

Of course, I could just make rifle bullets or the like, but then I have to worry about reloading the right kinds of rounds for the situation. It wasn’t a horrible idea, as long as I looked past the complications that might arise. 

For one, I really didn’t need even more things complicating reloading and shooting in combat. What if I grab the wrong mag? What if I accidentally used my expensive Aether Imbued bullets? What if I drop the mag and waste them entirely? What if I didn’t even have my rifle at the ready? Too much to think about, and an over-complication of something I wasn’t necessarily good at to begin with.

So that raises the question; how am I going to shoot the Imbued bullets? I had thoughts to modify one of the pistols, but then I’d run into a similar issue as with the rifle, though to a lesser extent. Also, I couldn’t quick-fire a round. I’d have to draw the pistol, drop my rifle, and fire. Training could see the draw time greatly reduced, but otherwise? I’ll lose seconds, which could make or break a battle.

My initial solution after thinking it all through? A sniper rifle. Or, at least, that’s what I would’ve liked to go with. I’d be able to fire a large caliber Aether Imbued bullet that would do some serious damage. Already, I could see a bullet devastating Corvin in my mind’s eye. It was exceptionally attractive.

Except, a sniper rifle had its own issues. Mainly, I was never in a position to use a sniper rifle. In almost every fight I’d ever had, a sniper rifle would just get in the way. Especially since my fights were typically by surprise and close quarters.

That isn’t to say I didn’t want a sniper rifle. They were cool, so of course I wanted one. And it might make me approach certain situations differently if I had the option of super long range. But I'd never even held one, let alone shot one. I knew it had a bunch of calculations to get a good shot off, which wouldn't be too big of an issue for me. It just wasn't something I could get good at in the short term.

My actual solution? Wrist-mounted gun attachment for my shock gauntlets. Now, they weren’t the most practical of weapons ever. I could recognize that. There was a kind of wrist-mounted gun called the Avenger that Sentinel was working on in the stolen documents, and even they had issues with it. For them, why make a wrist-mounted gun when they could instead further develop chrome arms with guns embedded in them? The Avenger was a mostly abandoned project.

Four things stood out as to why a wrist-mounted gun wouldn’t work, and why it’d be a bad idea. It just so happens that those four things didn’t necessarily apply to me. My, erm, unique set of skills let me bypass a few of the restrictions, and the others weren't an issue thanks to Sentinel's donated research.

For one, firepower. To get a good punch on the weapon, a larger caliber would be needed. More force in the projectile meant more force being directly projected back into the bones though.

The easy solution was to either reduce the caliber, which would drop the firepower, or get metal bones. The latter of which didn’t really make sense. Again, why get metal bones when you can just get a chrome arm with a built-in gun?

That being said, I had no issues dropping the caliber to something much lighter. Say, a point twenty-two or something without all that much punch. The main power of the Imbued bullets would come from the Imbuement, after all. While I high caliber could increase the effect multiplicatively, it wasn’t necessarily required.

Recoil was another easily-solved issue, and it played back into the whole firepower thing. Sentinel’s Avenger had an innovative design that cut quite a bit of the recoil, or at least redirected it so it wouldn’t shatter an arm bone. Add that design with a low caliber? Not even an issue.

Aiming and accuracy were the third major points. I was mostly in close range anyway though, so aiming wouldn’t be too difficult with training. The barrel would also be rather short, so the weapon’s accuracy wouldn’t be the best. Up close though, that wouldn’t really matter. 

As for workarounds? Adding a camera in line with the gun would help with targeting. Throw in a targeting array on top of that and have a reticle pop up in my HUD? Massive boost to aim. 

The barrel being too short would still be an issue, but in this case, I could once more steal from Sentinel. They had a unique barrel design that, while unfortunately dropping the power of the shot even more, could boost accuracy way up. 

And finally, the fourth issue was self-injury. I could mostly ignore this with Quick Healing, and there were a host of preventative measures I could take to reduce this problem. 

The recoil breaking a bone or shattering my elbow could be mostly taken care of with Sentinel's recoil reduction tech and using low calibers. Venting the superheated air of the bullet was easy enough, even with the complications of using it to cycle the round. 

Fragmentation of the bullet in the barrel and accidentally shooting my hand were the biggest issues, though I could once more fall back on Sentinel for their designs. They really were one of my greatest benefactors, huh? And even if I did get hit, it wouldn’t be the end of the world like it would be for other people.

With all these thoughts swirling in my head, I worked on a blueprint for the SITCH to start working on. Like the turrets, they’d have plenty of moving parts. Thankfully, quite a few parts of it were already taken care of by Sentinel.

The biggest change was for the ammo feed. Sentinel used a cartridge-less mag that ran down the length of the arm. Not a terrible idea, but it limited dexterity and looked quite awkward to use. While a lot of their designs were really good, there were spots like this that directly pointed to it being an underthought prototype.

I adjusted the ammo feed to be a drum mag design that would wrap around my wrist. It’d have sixteen shots before needing a reload, with an easy feed system akin to loading a tube shotgun since I wouldn’t be able to pull the mag off. The shells would eject out, catching in a small tin that I could quickly pull off and dump if needed. Otherwise, though, the shells could be fairly reusable.

I worked on the design quite a bit more, even as the SITCH finished printing and the hours pressed on. My main focus was on shifting the design so it wouldn’t be easy to point out parts coming from Sentinel and changing its profile to be as small as possible. I wanted it to fit alongside my shock gauntlets and likewise be completely unnoticeable like a hidden weapon. Eventually I settled with making the drum look like a thick bracelet.

The first prototype being a working one was required since I wouldn't have time to rework it. I checked, double, and triple-checked every facet of the weapon. Once I was satisfied, I sent it to the SITCH to start printing parts. I made two of them, and the parts wouldn’t even finish for four days. The mag feed and targeting arrays in particular would take a long time.

I took a little break to go clean up even more of the speakeasy. The place was starting to come along. Without bringing down contractors or the like to actually fix stuff, at least. It’d still need a full makeover if I wanted to open it, but it no longer looked like a trashed and burned-out husk, at least. Hmm... how would I get the building's ownership though? Whatever. That was a problem for future Shiro.

As I walked around the place, I felt my mood inexplicably lift. My tension and worries seemed to just ebb away as they were never there in the first place. It was quite relaxing, and the only reason I noticed the shift was because I watched for it. Squeaky Clean did indeed do as it promised. I could easily see this place filling up if the effects lingered. Bars were typically a place to relax and relieve tension, after all.

Feeling refreshed, I returned to work on Aether Imbuement. I checked over my supplies with Aetherial Perception, carefully inspecting the Crystallization for any faults or leakages along the runes. Looked good to go.

The silver plate radiated brightly with the Aether, although the Compass looked a little worse for wear. Its energy had definitely been drained by the array, though it was slowly starting to recuperate. I banished it, making a note to check on its energy levels over the next couple of days.

With everything set and ready, I set up the array on a table and slowly poured gasoline into the divots and small trenches. They filled up quite quickly. Once everything was set and done, I took a lighter and set the gasoline ablaze. Fire immediately erupted from the surface of the array.

As if the heat activated it, the entire array thrummed with ethereal might. I shifted my vision once more to the Aether, watching as the flames themselves seemed to be energized and turn magical. The bright glow of the Crystallization array faded slightly, losing maybe an eighth of its brightness as the process ticked by.

Eventually, the flames surged brightly before condensing. A force seemed to apply to them, pressuring the flame into a small and smaller ball. The flickering light grew brighter and brighter as it condensed, like a small sun. Eventually, it turned into a small red bead flickering with an internal light. It was about the size of my fingernail.

I waited a few more moments as the array turned off, signifying the end of the process. I didn’t immediately pick up the Crystal Flame. Although there were certainly differences between the learning space and the real world, I had no doubt that some things remained the same, such as the Crystal Flame being extremely hot to the touch for a few minutes after the crystallization process.

Now I just needed to grind it down to dust--which was also a complicated process thanks to its volatile state--and mix in a small amount of Aetheria. Grinding it down required flushing the atmosphere around the crystal with an inert gas to keep it from combusting while hand grinding it. All of which I could do, though it’d take a while.

I could probably manage four bullets with this amount. Hopefully, their effect would pay off the pain of making them.