It’s now lunchtime, somehow. I feel like only forty-five minutes or so has passed since I started working on these rings, but somehow, it’s actually been a full four and a half hours. I glance at the analog clock on the nearby wall and watch it tick a few times. Then I flicker on my [Bullet Time] skill and watch it tick a few more times. It does so a little less than half as fast in apparent time. I deactivate the skill and watch it again, just to make sure there’s no weird time perception screwiness going on.

  Having convinced myself that I just entered into a prolonged state of flow and there’s nothing immediately wrong with me, I decide, at Chloe’s insistence, to take a pause to eat some real food. As in, not hardtack, not ramen, not random berries Lindsey stumbles upon that might or might not be poisonous. But a real, honest-to-goodness meal of pizza. Pizza for lunch!

  And it’s good, too! One bite and I’m in heaven. Gooey, cheesy, greasy glory, undercoated by a thin layer of semisweet tomato sauce with extra basil and garlic, and on top, little bits of Italian sausage with a thick and hearty aroma of fennel seeds permeating in each and every bite. And we even have little packets of ranch dipping sauce for the crusts! Okay, so technically they are for the salad that I’m supposed to be eating in addition. But, uh… Sweet, heavenly bliss.

  Chloe wraps her arms around me and gives me another kiss. I’m a bit embarrassed at her insistence on so much public affection in front of the entire company, but what the hells. She likes it, and I’m willing to oblige.

  I’m less enthused about her insistence that I not go for the third slice of pizza before finishing my salad. It feels like I’m being scolded by her mother. And that has all sorts of unfortunate implications which I don’t want to even start to think about processing. I shudder as I shunt those intrusive, most unwelcome thoughts to the deepest recesses of the abyss, banished for all eternity.

  After lunch, once the hall has cleared out and gone mostly quiet, I retreat back to the corner of the large chamber and begin the process of sculpting these two new rings with the same formation as before. The one change I have made to the process since last time is to slot in the [Attraction] glyph last. That one is the most unstable, and makes the rest of the formation incredibly testy, to put it lightly.

  With this change, the crafting is proceeding far more smoothly than before. The glyphs are sharper and more precisely drawn, due to both more experience and a higher Skill rank. And as expected, silver proves to be a far better metal for enchanting accessories with. It’s a bit softer than copper, though the difference is mostly academic than practical. Far more importantly, it is capable of holding a lot more Ether— about two hundred and twenty percent— for a given amount of mass before that excess energy begins to convert to heat and start to dissipate. The added density of silver relative to copper only amplifies this benefit further.

  Before long, I get to the tricky part of linking the [Attraction] glyph to the rest of the array. As before, I draw the linking runes first, envisioning the final outcome with my mind’s eye. With adept precision and precise movements, I draw them, and then build that final and most persnickety of glyphs stroke by painstaking stroke.

  Also as before, I use my [Bullet Time] to prevent any unfortunate issues during the final construction process, or at least to give a few more seconds to address them before they become catastrophic. My precautions prove unnecessary, and within a minute of real time, my new masterpiece is complete.

  Maybe that’s a bit presumptive to call it a ‘masterpiece’. There’s way too much I don’t know and am not even aware of, before I can begin to climb to the peaks of Ethertech and its myriad capabilities.

  The System registration has a little less snark than the last one.

  [You have crafted a [Crude Ring of Regeneration].]

  [[Crude Ring of Regeneration]: An early attempt at ringsmithing created by an amateur [Mechanist] branching into the domain of accessory creation. While lacking finesse, the combination of a proper substrate and a well-conceived, if crude and inefficient, glyph array provides a modest increase in the rate of [Ether] regeneration of the one who wears it. [Ether] regeneration increased by 50% while equipped in an [Accessory] slot. (Percentage increase stacks additively with other percentage-based increasing effects.)]

  I furrow my brows. A fifty percent increase in [Ether] regeneration is nothing to sneeze at. But at the same time, it actually manages to be weaker than the first, flawed variant, which is giving me a roughly eighty percent boost at the moment. On the other hand, this one promises to scale as my own natural rate of regeneration increases. And while that rate of regeneration has thus far remained equal to ten times my [Mind] stat per hour, there’s no reason why other equipment or Skills or other yet unknown effects could alter that correlation. For better or for worse.

  “It looks cute,” Chloe says. “May I?”

  I slip the ring on her finger. “Strangely, it’s not as good for now, but it should keep up with us a lot better as we gain more stats and levels.”

  “Wait, what?” she asks. “Fifty percent is definitely a lot more than one unit per five seconds.”

  “It… It is? I’m only regenerating 850 points per hour. Fifty percent of that is only 425, versus 720 the other way.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Wait, Chloe, you only get… What is that… Twelve times your [Mind] stat in [Ether] regeneration per hour?”

  “I flipping wish! The damned System only gives me ten.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean about the System hating you. I get eighteen times. Kristil says her class gives her twenty.”

  And therein lies yet another weakness of my class, which I didn’t even realize until just now. I have a stupidly flexible class that can build incredible technology beyond what the whole of humanity could accomplish just a few months ago. I have the tools to craft accessories and gear, and can even imitate and surpass the spellcasting from dedicated [Mage] classes. And in exchange, I get piss-poor [Ether] regeneration and the absolute worst case of multi-attribute dependency I’ve ever seen. I can only imagine how bad it would be if I were getting two stat points starting out instead of three.

  I’d be a dead woman for sure, considering how many close calls I’ve already had to this point. To say that I’ve been reckless in my pursuit of levels, of gear, of treasure and monsters and everything dangerous the System has seen to place in the world, would itself be the understatement of the year. If not longer. And once again, the one bailing me out of my inexperience and weakness is the woman standing right beside me, smiling with those enrapturing eyes that glimmer of gold the moment she shines her [Ethersight] upon me.

  “If you have any more rings, I think I’m going to try to make a few more of these,” I say. “[Ether] regeneration seems super important, since we can’t exactly go and buy [Ether Canisters] at the local grocery store.”

  “I’ll go take a look and see if anyone has anything that they’d be willing to offer up.” She gets up and gives me a quick kiss on the back of my neck before strutting off with all the swagger and confidence of someone who just won the lottery. Am I really worth all that to her?

  It’s not long before I’ve again tuned out the outside world, oblivious to everything except my mind, body, and the second silver ring in front of me. Just as I did before, I sketch out the same patterns, the same glyphs and runes and sluices as I have, their effects documented, both individually and in combination.

  I realize something about my class. It isn’t, first and foremost, an artisan class. It’s not about creating masterpieces, works of art that will be renowned as the pinnacle of craftsmanship throughout the cosmos. It’s a [Mechanist] class first and foremost, as befitting its name. Designing and building prototypes is part of the class, as is crafting and refining those designs, then iterating on them for continuous improvement over time.

  But just as important is industrialization. Mass production, standardized, interchangeable parts, the myriad cogs and gears and now transistors and circuits and everything else that goes into the technology of today. And tomorrow, we will have Ethertech powered by forces that would have been thought of as magic mere months ago. And programmed by an array of symbols that operate according to rules so intricate— so convoluted— that mortal minds can’t properly fathom them in the absence of special Skills and classes for that exact purpose.

  And yet, the researchers in my old world were able to bootstrap enough knowledge even to create me. And then, to transport me through the Etheric dimension between worlds and allow me to be reborn in the body of a human being.

  That… raises a very, very difficult question, which I ponder as muscle memory guides me through the process of creating another copy of my [Crude Ring of Regeneration]. What happened to the girl whose body I now inhabit? Is she me? Am I her? Did I fuse with her? Is she somewhere inside of me? Or did I…

  Then again, there’s no proof that there was another girl. Knowledge, power, and technology enough to create me and send me to Earth would also be more than enough to recreate me. It’s… a small hope, but it’s enough to prevent me from spiraling any further.

  As I emerge from my entranced state, I see a new System notification.

  [You have gained the Class Skill [Mass Production (Rank I)]. Would you like to acquire this Skill? (Class Skill Slots remaining: 2/6)]

  I see no real downside in filling an empty Skill slot. At the same time, I’m also not looking to be a shining example of someone who didn’t do enough research into her class and ended up getting screwed somewhere in the fine print.

  [[Mass Production]: One of a [Mechanist]’s most important skills is the ability to produce large quantities of her products. From design to prototype to small scale to mass production, the [Mechanist] is on the forefront of industrialization, turning imagination into reality. This Skill provides an eidetic memory of past designs, successful and not, allowing you to more precisely re-create them again and again, as many times as materials allow. Production quality and speed increases significantly when crafting using a design already used before.]

  The part about an ‘eidetic memory’ gives me a bit of pause. The Skill reads a bit like it might have mind-altering implications, and that deserves further contemplation. I don’t like the idea of anyone or anything, especially not the System, influencing my mind. It is the only thing that is categorically, definitively, and irrevocably mine, and if I ever do lose it, I’ll no longer be me.

  On the other hand, it promises to be an incredibly useful skill. Possibly even the most useful skill of all. One soldier can turn the tide of a battle. One armorsmith and a forge? She could create swords and armor to outfit a hundred soldiers, even a thousand, and change the tide of an entire campaign. And an inventor, designing a better weapon, can not just alter the fortune of an entire war, but shift the very foundation of warfare itself. Usually for the worse.

  It’s why I’ve been hesitant to take this path. It’s why I refused outright the first time and earned Jackie’s ire. Ire that hasn’t fully abated even though I have softened my stance on the matter as a result of more recent developments. But seeing these cultists and how they’ve killed without a shred of decency and threatened to continue to do so has changed the calculus. It’s one thing to create new weapons to fight an offensive war, or turn them to even more nefarious purposes.

  But using them defensively seems… Different. On the one hand, there’s not a huge difference, since one can so easily and fluidly become the other. But on the other, that distinction, if only paper-thin, matters to me. I won’t allow the people of Red Clay City to be destroyed by some raging cultists. And I especially won’t let Chloe fall victim to them.

  My choice is clear. I take the skill just after finishing the ring. Numerous, overwhelming sensations take hold of me, and it takes every bit of willpower to drag myself back to my cot, where I promptly pass out just before dinnertime.