Chapter 7
The next morning greeted me not just with a good mood but with a genuine mental explosion, a tsunami of pure energy. Waking up felt like an electric shock, but not the painful kind. It was invigorating, and it evaporated every last trace of sleep and yesterday's fatigue in an instant.
I launched out of bed carrying a fierce, primal charge of energy, with a clarity of purpose and an itching in my fingertips to create something that I was fairly certain I'd never felt once in my entire past life.
This was what the damned system could do to an ordinary person: shatter his apathy and turn him into an obsessed workaholic. Terrifying. But also devilishly, intoxicatingly good.
Not even trying to resist the powerful internal impulse demanding I start immediately, I moved like a well-oiled machine. A quick, nearly ice-cold shower to get the blood fully moving. A hurried breakfast of leftover pizza, swallowed without much attention to taste because my thoughts were already somewhere else entirely.
And then there I was, standing over the table that had become my operating room. Laid out neatly across its surface were PVC pipes, a knife, sheets of sandpaper, a tube of sharp-smelling adhesive, and a simple piezo lighter. The laptop screen cast a bluish glow across my face, a basic online tutorial open on it. I started building.
The potato gun. The potato cannon. What I had privately and ceremonially christened the Spud Gun 3000. A simple construction that in the fevered nightmares of overzealous politicians would qualify as a weapon of mass destruction capable of annihilating all known life.
In harsh reality, though, it was just a clever arrangement of connected PVC pipes and flammable gas. From the main pipe, the barrel, a potato tuber was launched by the pressure of expanding gases and sent on its way as a projectile. Depending on the build, the seal quality, and the fuel used, a potato could travel anywhere from several dozen to several hundred meters. My build was going to be laughably simple, so I was realistically counting on a solid fifty meters, no more.
First I tackled the pipes. My movements were precise and calibrated, as though I'd been doing this my whole life. The combustion chamber, cut from wide 80-millimeter pipe in a section about forty centimeters long, got an unscrewing cap on top for loading fuel.
The barrel, cut from narrower 50-millimeter pipe and running about a meter long for better projectile acceleration, I carefully sanded at both ends until the cuts were perfectly smooth so nothing would interfere with the gluing.
I glued a cap firmly onto one end of the combustion chamber, breathing in the sharp chemical smell of the adhesive as it tickled my nostrils unpleasantly. On the other end I fitted an adapter stepping down from 80 to 50 millimeters. Then, with the same meticulous precision, I glued the long barrel pipe to the adapter.
The main frame of the legendary Spud Gun was done, and it looked surprisingly formidable.
Next came the ignition system, the heart of the whole thing. I drilled two tiny holes in the chamber cap for 4-millimeter diameter screws, then drove the screws in at a slight angle so that their metal tips inside the chamber sat just two to three millimeters apart, functioning as improvised but effective electrodes.
To the screw heads sticking out on the outside I carefully connected wires stripped from a disassembled piezo lighter, and then taped the lighter body itself securely to the combustion chamber with several layers of tape. I pressed the button. Click. A bright, sharp bluish spark with a dry crack jumped between the screw tips. Perfect. Practically ready.
Last touches before the triumphant test: a final check of all joints for airtightness and, of course, sourcing suitable ammunition. That last part required a quick run to the nearest grocery store.
Less than an hour after starting, the legend was complete. With satisfying effort I pressed a large, dense potato into the barrel and felt the pipe's edge shave off a thin layer of skin around it, creating a perfect seal.
I unscrewed the cap on the combustion chamber and injected a generous burst of propane-butane from a lighter-refill canister. Then I walked to the window, threw it open to let the cool morning city air into the room, and aimed the Spud Gun upward, targeting the flat roof of the neighboring building.
My heart beat just a little faster. I pressed the lighter.
A short but surprisingly satisfying and ear-pleasing pop. The potato projectile departed with an invisible whistle, successfully leaving the orbit of my fifth-floor apartment, if not Earth orbit itself.
At the same moment a system notification bloomed in soft blue light in front of my eyes.
[Created simple weapon construction "Potato Gun." Complexity: Minimal. Received +50 OP!]
I immediately leaned out the window trying to track the tuber's flight, but it turned into a dark dot too quickly and vanished against the morning sky. The sharp chemical smell of burned gas hit my nose, mingled with a faint, almost sweet scent of scorched starch.
The gun body in my hands was noticeably warm, and the recoil, weak as it was, had pushed pleasantly against my shoulder like confirmation that a real event had just occurred. This was real creation. Not a paper figurine, not a drawing, not a line of code. A functional, if primitive, device. In some sense, even a weapon.
I ran a finger along the smooth PVC, feeling the barely perceptible seams at the joints I'd glued with my own hands. The satisfaction was deep and almost intoxicating.
I hadn't just followed a recipe off the internet. I had taken separate, unrelated pieces of matter, pipes and a lighter and glue, and through force of will and knowledge and hands had turned them into something whole, something with a purpose and a function. It was a small, almost childish miracle, but it was mine.
In that moment I understood that the Celestial Forge wasn't just a system mechanic for dispensing points. It was the essence of creativity itself, elevated to something absolute, a catalyst for creative will.
And if I was already feeling this kind of genuine, almost childlike delight from a potato gun, what was I going to feel when I assembled something truly complex? A protective field generator? Power armor?
A wide, predatory grin spread across my face on its own. I had barely started, and an entire universe of possibilities was waiting ahead of me.
As for the +50 OP, it was exactly what I'd expected: for complex and at least somewhat functional creations, the system was generous.
Another noteworthy detail was that the build had received a named designation. If I wasn't mistaken, this was the first time the system had given something a proper name. Everything up to now had been limited to generic, faceless categories like "figurine," "utensil," "origami." This felt like recognition.
So, current count: 65 OP.
Simple arithmetic told me that if I built just two more Spud Guns, which cost no significant money, time, or effort to make, I could spin Forge Reality again within a couple of hours. And no, I was not a gambling addict. That was a firm and unambiguous statement. This was cold, rational calculation. Simply the most efficient method available right now for getting a new technology package.
The only problem was that in my shortsightedness I had bought materials for exactly one Spud Gun. Which meant another trip to the hardware store to stock up on PVC pipes and piezo lighters.
Fine. The walk would air out my head and stretch my legs. I should probably be doing physical activity anyway, given that my current physique resembled a skinny pole.
Or maybe not yet? What if I pulled something from the system roulette like "super soldier serum recipe for home use," or better yet, the finished serum itself in a neat little vial? Right. For now I'd remain a skinny weakling. Physical training could wait. Priorities were set.
It was Friday, September 11th, 2015, and outside the weather was surprisingly warm and pleasant. I threw on a simple gray hoodie, jeans, and old sneakers, stepped out of my modest apartment, and was already thinking about what I'd do after farming OP on Spud Guns.
Walking down the street, I couldn't help noticing how completely my perception of the world had shifted.
Literally a day ago I saw nothing around me but gray buildings, a faceless crowd, and potential threats lurking in every dark alley. Now my gaze picked up details with an engineer's hunger.
I looked at construction scaffolding and mentally estimated how the design could be improved by adding cross-bracing for greater stability. I spotted an old, humming air conditioner bolted to a wall and mentally disassembled it into components, wondering whether there was a useful fan motor or copper heat exchanger inside.
A street lamp stopped being just a light source. I found myself thinking about its wiring, its bulb type, whether something useful could be salvaged from its sturdy aluminum housing.
The whole world had turned into a vast warehouse of raw materials and unrealized projects. The Celestial Forge had infected me with a creation virus, and now I saw everything through one single lens: "What can I make from this?"
It was like professional deformation amplified a thousand times. Better not get too carried away for now, though. I already had things to do.
At minimum I couldn't ignore the leatherworking. I'd spent money on that kit and needed something to show for it. And the Potion of Intellect was absolutely worth creating. If the system awarded OP for it, and I was somehow completely certain it would, the count there would probably be in the hundreds.
Everything still depended on what I pulled from the second spin and whether I had the brains to absorb and implement whatever I received.
Lost in thought, I barely noticed that I'd nearly reached the store. I went in, bought everything needed to build five more Spud Guns, which was the most I could carry without pulling out the inventory for something this trivial, and headed back home.
Along the way, at a certain moment, I noticed a burst of animated energy rippling through the people on the sidewalk. Passersby stopped walking, raised their heads, pointed upward. I raised mine too. And saw her.
On a thin, nearly invisible thread of web cutting through the space between buildings, a black-and-white figure moved at speed. Spider-Woman. Despised by one well-known mustachioed journalist, and viewed with mostly warm approval by the rest of New York.
She was close. Swinging between buildings, she executed a wide, elegant arc, and for one brief, frozen moment our gazes nearly met.
I had time to take in the details of her costume: the crisp black-and-white design hugging her frame, the hood that gave her silhouette a quality of mystery, the large white mask lenses that concealed her face while somehow still managing to look expressive.
She moved with an inhuman, liquid grace, like a drop of mercury, and yet power radiated from every motion, like a bowstring stretched to its absolute limit. Her web-shooters fired with a quiet but distinct "fwwwt," and she soared above the street, throwing a bold challenge at gravity.
Then she disappeared around a corner, leaving behind a sidewalk full of stunned onlookers with open mouths and one man standing in the middle of the pavement holding a stupid bag of PVC pipes.
Suddenly all my pride over the Spud Gun felt pathetic. Naive and childish.
Up there was real power. Real technology, or mutation, it didn't matter. Something that placed its owner on an entirely different level of existence.
And I had assembled a gun that shot potatoes.
An icy, sticky sweat broke over me. Reading comics and watching movies was one thing. Seeing this with your own eyes in three dimensions, with real sound, with the actual wind displacement from her flight, was something else entirely.
The threats in this world weren't abstract. They were just as real, fast, and lethal as anything you could imagine.
And my main goal, don't die, suddenly stopped being just the top line on a priority list. It became a physical necessity, obsessive and pulsing in my temples. I needed more. Much more. Immeasurably more than the ability to shoot potatoes.
And then there was the spider side of things to consider.
If there was no Spider-Man here, no Peter and no Miles, then the first one, the brilliant but fragile and insecure kid, might do something catastrophic trying to follow the heroic path of his braver girlfriend, if he and Gwen were even close in this version of events.
And Miles, well, he could potentially become the Prowler's successor, following his uncle's footsteps, but that was a relatively contained threat compared to a Peter-Lizard scenario, or a Peter-Goblin, or Venom.
The universe didn't seem like the type to let a wounded genius just slip through its fingers untouched. The only question was what specific path had been prepared for him in this particular branch. And whether I should even get involved.
Obviously I shouldn't get involved. I had already supposedly reached and accepted this conclusion. But some threats had a way of coming to your door on their own, and that wasn't a figure of speech.
Sooner or later I was going to have to engage with various events, because I had absolutely no idea which of the infinite variations of the Marvel Universe I'd landed in, and the probability of a global extinction-level disaster was not zero.
And I wanted to live. That was, when you stripped everything else away, the single overriding priority behind every step I took in this world.
Without arriving at anything more specific than a reconfirmation that I needed to keep doing what I was doing, sit quietly, keep a low profile, and build up my capabilities, I finally reached my apartment.
On the way I hadn't forgotten to stop at the grocery store and pick up more potatoes. Not just food anymore. Strategic ammunition.
[Created simple weapon construction "Potato Gun." Complexity: Minimal. Received +40 OP!]
[Created simple weapon construction "Potato Gun." Complexity: Minimal. Received +30 OP!]
[Created simple weapon construction "Potato Gun." Complexity: Minimal. Received +20 OP!]
System, take it easy! Cutting OP that sharply for each additional Spud Gun was aggressive.
I understood this was a safeguard against mindless grinding, but I had genuinely believed I could crank out a dozen of these things and walk away with 500 OP total. Yeah, only in my most optimistic fantasies.
Regardless, I now had 155 OP in total. I settled comfortably onto the couch, crossed my fingers, and mentally pressed the glowing "Forge Reality! 150 OP" button.
[Received information package (common). Risk of Disassembly (MouseHunt). (Unlocking information package costs 100 OP.)]
When creating a trap, one must account for how frequently the hunter moves between regions, as well as the wide variety of mice capable of completely destroying a trap. Since designing an unbreakable trap will likely make it cumbersome, the alternative approach is to design it to break intelligently.
This philosophy, applied to your craft endeavors, allows you to create things designed to safely disassemble into components regardless of circumstances. You will have to reassemble the item after breakage, but the risk of it flying apart completely under the force of a dragon mouse's fire is eliminated.
You can create items that, when destroyed, break into parts without losing any components. Traps, weapons, or tools easily disassemble and reassemble anywhere, making them resilient to powerful enemy attacks.
I reread the description several times slowly, and my brain started running the calculations at full speed.
This wasn't just a "repair skill." This was an entire engineering philosophy. Break intelligently.
It meant I could deliberately build controlled weak points into any construction, points that under critical load would act as fuses, preventing the whole device from shattering into useless fragments.
I pictured a power gauntlet. An enemy hits it with inhuman force. An ordinary gauntlet either holds or cracks and flies apart into pieces. Mine, designed with Risk of Disassembly in mind, simply comes apart into several large, intact modules: power source, field projector, handle. All components undamaged. I find somewhere to hide, spend sixty seconds reassembling, and I'm back in the fight.
This fundamentally changed everything. Durability and repairability stopped being passive characteristics and became active, dynamic forms of protection.
And what if I applied this not to defense but to offense? Could I build a projectile that on impact "intelligently disassembled," releasing its internal components as shrapnel or a chemical payload with maximum effect? Or a trap that after triggering didn't destroy itself but simply "unfolded," ready to be quickly reset?
Thoughts swarmed through my head like a disturbed hive. This seemingly simple "common" information package was a genuine treasure for an engineer. It gave me not a new recipe but a new way of thinking.
By first impression alone, this skill was going to be extremely useful to me down the line. Something I assembled for one purpose and then outgrew? I could break it apart cleanly and reclaim the components for the next project without wasting anything.
I wasn't going to spend the 100 OP on unlocking it right now, though, because according to the plan I had Muscle Stimulant lined up next, and that came after creating the Potion of Intellect.
Which meant yet another trip to the store to buy everything needed for it, and then waiting on a thunderstorm to charge the quartz crystal's lattice with lightning. Though, thinking about it properly, I could probably manage without the thunderstorm if I found an alternative charging method.
The irony was that to think about it properly, I needed the Potion of Intellect. I was going to have to scour the forums for an alternative to lightning charging.
Shaking off the spiral of obsessive planning that was starting to pull me under, I refocused. Time to get started on the first truly remarkable thing I was going to build.
Creating the Potion of Intellect would be direct proof that I was capable of producing non-trivial items with the potential to change outcomes. It would give me a real boost of confidence, and the OP reward for it definitely wasn't something to dismiss.
So, while it was still daylight, it was time to go buy a crystal.