Learning from my past tries, I nailed what I wanted this time first go. I made it danger sense for hive cities, which was perfect as it was narrow enough to avoid irrelevant knowledge, but was also broad enough, unlike how it sounded. But hive cities could have a huge number of biomes within them due to their sheer size.
For instance, the swamp just outside Glow Gate. The first shard didn't do much, just gave me a great deal of information, but lacked the practical skills or reflexes. This was further built upon with the next shard. But the third fragment expanded it massively, giving me actual reflexes, the kind that saved your life.
Interestingly, it also interacted with my other fragments, particularly the scavenger and soldier ones, further enhancing those and itself in particular areas, almost like they were synchronising, becoming more than the sum of its parts.
When that last fragment was slotted, a brilliant spark appeared. Far larger than any I had seen before, shimmering golden instead of the usual silver. Reaching out and poking it, I got the distinct feeling of a goal? No achievement or better yet, a milestone.
Unless I misinterpreted the feeling, I gained it from having ten knowledge fragments.
What this meant, or if this was going to be a regular occurrence, I wasn't sure. But I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so used it without compunction.
After all the sparks I had used for combat, I got back to what I enjoyed: technology. With little idea of what I wanted, I let it go as broad as it wanted and used it on technology or maybe engineering, able to fix technology and maybe even fabricate my own. Either way, the rush of knowledge knocked me out for a full day.
It had given me that much information. Not much practical knowledge, but a huge amount of theory, which would hopefully be useful in the future. It felt like a crash course in advanced technology, everything from mathematical formulas to physics and material engineering.
More to the point, it wasn't knowledge from my old world; it was tech for this incredibly backwards yet advanced universe. So it was truly a staggering amount of largely useless information, albeit useless in the short term.
One thing that struck me as odd: for all my combat knowledge, my soldier shard barely touched on close combat. It included some tips on using a knife, but almost nothing on hand-to-hand fighting.
This could be the norm, but to my mind, it felt somewhat odd. It was only when I delved into the soldier's knowledge that it started to make a little bit of sense. It mostly came down to two things. First, as a soldier, you worked as a team so they could cover you and so you didn't need hand-to-hand, theoretically. But the most important reason was the vast number of ways to die if an enemy got close to you, not to mention most, if not all, most enemies were going to be stronger or more numerous than you, so hand-to-hand combat was essentially a death wish.
Still, this left me with an opportunity for experimentation. Feeling a little more secure with all my combat knowledge, I decided to try to pull from my half-forgotten memories, just to prove they were real and I wasn't mad. I wanted to draw from the combat system called MMA. But with a far higher focus on actual fighting to the death.
I also tested to see if I could bank my Sparks for later use. That was a most definite no, to the point I almost lost the spark.
I used boxing, Muay Tai and kickboxing as my striking component, with judo and wrestling as my grappling component and then at the end a little of jiu-jitsu for ground-based grappling. It received less focus however, as if I was on the floor, I was likely about to die.
This spark fought me the most before finally clicking into place, flashing through me and giving me theoretical knowledge and some experience of each combat art, but no experience of them working together as a system.
The next spark was much the same, but I gained more muscle memory of all the combat styles. However, again, little skill in using them together to cover the others' weaknesses. It was the third spark that pushed me over that threshold and filled me with knowledge of a competent fighter using a system he had spent over a decade using.
I felt like a new man when it fell into place. I could see it in my walk. I was far lighter on my feet, but more than that, I could gauge others' relative skill. Maybe not what style they knew, but I could tell by the way they walked how to fight them. This also synergised with my danger sense fragment, helping me pick out trouble in people, not just the different environments as it was before.
Unable to help myself at this point, I had to slot a fragment into the one I had created all those months ago. When I brushed against it with my mind, I got back Technician. I wasn't convinced at first, but it had shown how valuable it was. Ignoring all the background knowledge it had given me, I just felt more comfortable with the tools in my hands. Like I had been using them for years.
With a focus on maintenance and repairs, I allowed the spark to go to work. As with others, it built off what was there before.
So even without a focus on a particular piece of tech, just imperial, I got a huge amount of practical knowledge. So much so that I pushed the next several months' sparks into it as well. One thing I did find out was that the broader the topic or path, and the more powerful the topic was, the more sparks were needed to reach the next threshold.
For most of them so far, I had only needed one to reach the second level in the knowledge fragment. Not so for this one. I needed three, and I would need six to get it to the next milestone. Annoying and disappointing, but the amount I gained from it was amazing, so I couldn't be too bitter about it.