novelraw Chapter 64: Pay to Win
Chapter 64: Pay to Win
The "Fabricator" wasn’t a machine, it was a room that ate reality and spit out objects.
Rin stood at the console in the castle’s armory, staring at the holographic blueprint of the Void-Runner. It looked like someone had smashed a tank, a stealth bomber, and a luxury SUV together, then painted it matte black.
[Blueprint: Void-Runner (Mk. I)]
[Class: All-Terrain Transport]
[Capacity: 8 Passengers + Cargo]
[Cost: 5,000 Mana Units + 500kg Refined Glitch-Glass]
[Build Time: Instant (Admin Override)]
"Glass," Rin said, reading the requirements. "We need half a ton of glass."
"Not normal glass," Varg corrected, tapping the screen with a metal claw. "Glitch-Glass. The stuff growing out of the desert floor right now. It’s crystallized mana fallout. Highly volatile, explosive if you hit it wrong, perfect for an engine core."
"So we have to go out there," Joy gestured to the balcony where the neon grid-sky was pulsing, "harvest explosive crystals, and bring them back here without blowing up."
"Welcome to fetch quests," Rin said. "Grab your gear."
---
The Static Wastes were beautiful in a headache-inducing way. The white geometric blocks that replaced the sand dunes reflected the grid-sky, creating an infinite mirror effect. Floating islands of terrain drifted overhead, waterfalls of blue data pouring from their edges.
Rin stepped out of the main gate, his boots crunching on the synthetic ground.
"Temperature is stable," Leo reported, scanning with his HUD. "But background radiation is high. If we stay out here too long, our mana circuits will fry."
"We grab the glass and we go," Rin ordered.
He pointed to a cluster of jagged, translucent spikes jutting out of a white dune fifty yards away. They hummed with a low frequency sound.
"Tayo, shatter them," Rin said. "Joy, catch the pieces. Vane, create a container."
"On it," Vane slammed his hands onto the white ground. It didn’t respond like earth, it rippled like liquid, then solidified into a stone crate. "This terrain is weird. It responds, but there’s a lag."
Tayo aimed his emitters. "Resonance spike."
He fired a precise sonic beam.
The crystal spikes didn’t shatter. They screamed.
A high-pitched digital screech tore through the air. The crystals vibrated, glowing red.
"Stop!" Senna’s voice crackled over Rin’s comms. She was back in the cage, but Rin had given her a headset. "It’s a hive mind, you idiot. You just rang the dinner bell."
The ground around the crystals exploded.
Creatures burst from the white soil. They looked like scorpions, but made of clear glass and neon light. Their tails were fiber-optic cables ending in laser stingers.
[Entity: Data-Scorpion]
[Rank: D (Swarm)]
[Attribute: Energy Reflection]
"They reflect energy!" Rin shouted as a scorpion fired a laser at Tayo. "Don’t use beams!"
Tayo ducked, the laser singeing his dreads. "Physical damage only!"
"I got this," Kelvin roared, charging forward with his axe. "Smashy smashy!"
He swung the massive axe, connecting with a scorpion. The glass shell shattered, not into gore, but into data shards that dissolved.
"Efficient," Leo noted. He didn’t use his shadow blades. He used his fists. The Aegis suit’s servos whined as he punched a scorpion, the impact turning it into dust.
Rin moved. He didn’t have a physical weapon, but he had the Grey.
’Static Mastery: Decompile.’
He wrapped his fists in the gray void. He didn’t punch the scorpions; he touched them.
A scorpion lunged, its stinger glowing. Rin sidestepped, grabbing its tail.
The gray energy surged. The scorpion didn’t break; it unraveled. The code holding it together failed, and it fell apart into raw mana.
"Collect the shards!" Rin yelled, kicking a pile of glittering glass toward Vane’s crate. "We need the loot!"
It was a chaotic harvest. They fought the swarm, shattering the mobs and scooping up the remains. Joy used her telekinesis to ferry chunks of glass into the crate while Nyx crushed scorpions with localized gravity wells.
"Incoming," Echo said calmly from the rear. "Big one."
The ground shook. A massive pincer erupted from the dune, seizing a floating island and dragging it down.
A **Logic-Eater**.
It looked like a centipede, a hundred feet long, its body segmented with screens showing static. Its mouth was a black hole of swirling code.
[Boss Detected: Logic-Eater]
[Rank: B+]
[Ability: Memory Wipe]
"Memory wipe?" Joy panicked. "It eats memories?"
"It deletes skills," Senna’s voice came over the comms. "Don’t let it touch you or you’ll forget how to use your mana."
"That’s a terrible mechanic!" Tayo yelled.
The Logic-Eater roared, diving at Kelvin.
Kelvin raised his axe, his aura flaring red. "Come on then!"
The creature’s mandibles clamped onto the axe. Kelvin’s red aura flickered and died. He looked confused, staring at his hands.
"I... I can’t feel the rage," Kelvin stammered. "How do I swing?"
"It silenced him!" Nyx shouted. "Rin, do something!"
Rin looked at the massive worm. It was made of code. Heavy, dense code.
[System Request: Admin Command]
[Target: Logic-Eater]
[Action: Quarantine]
Rin didn’t attack it. He edited the environment.
He slammed both hands onto the white ground.
"Wall," Rin ordered.
Four massive walls of gray static erupted from the ground around the worm, forming a box.
The Logic-Eater smashed against the walls, trying to chew through them, but the gray energy burned its mouth.
"Leo, drop it!" Rin yelled.
Leo understood. He leaped into the air, activating his gravity drives. He hovered above the box.
"Orbital Strike," Leo synthesized.
He didn’t fire a beam. He vented his entire mana capacitor into a single, super-dense sphere of shadow matter. He dropped it.
The ball fell into the box.
The explosion was contained by Rin’s walls. A column of black fire shot upward into the sky.
When the smoke cleared, the box was empty except for a massive, glowing blue crystal.
[Loot: Logic Core]
[Weight: 200kg]
"That counts as glass," Rin panted, dropping the walls. "Grab it and let’s go."
Kelvin shook his head, his red aura flickering back to life. "I remembered how to be angry," he grunted. "That sucked."
They loaded the crate and the massive core onto a floating pallet Nyx made, dragging it back to the fortress.
---
Back in the armory, Varg was practically drooling.
"A Logic Core," Varg cackled, petting the crystal. "Do you know how rare this is? This isn’t just glass, this is a CPU. I can make the car think."
"Just make it drive," Rin said, dumping the rest of the shards into the hopper.
The Fabricator hummed. The room vibrated.
Rin placed his hand on the console.
[Resources: Sufficient]
[Fabricate: Void-