Some minor improvement

John closed his mouth before looking temptingly at the broken robots that littered the barrier for a moment. Fuck, I wish I could get all of that, but I’m on a probably very close time limit by now. Plus, there are so many questions I still need to ask Faith. Then he willed himself out of the barrier.

Finding himself in the middle of a crowd of students presumably walking to their next class, John looked around, spotting a purple haired somebody walking off into the crowd for a moment before losing sight of her.

John considered his options. The two clearly presented to him were to either go to his next class, sociology, which he hated, and continue on with his normal life or go off and explore his powers.

But he repeated the phrase he had said just moments ago, “Fuck that”

Pushing against the crowd, John idly wondered where he could train.

What about an empty classroom? Nah, that would get me caught in a heartbeat, not to mention that I don’t know how many people in this school have magic like Faith, on top of the fact that I’m definitely on weaker than most of them.

Now… If I was a powerful mage, paladin, or just general magic user, where would I NOT go?

Finally out of the crowd, John was standing idly in one of the hallways as he thought.

What about the school basement? It should be harder to detect barriers through physical material

Finally deciding on that, John walked over to the stairwell that was conveniently placed near him and began descending into the depths of the school.

John dove deeper into what seemed to be a maintenance/storage area for the staff and entered one of its maze like corridors, and once he found a decently sized, apparently unused room, he entered it. Taking a look around, it was a grey room, with dull, concrete walls and a very dim, uncovered light bulb at the ceiling and had some stacked tables in the corner, with lots of cobwebs and dust covering them.

Shrugging his shoulders after he had finished looking at his unpleasant surroundings, John thought, Good enough, and channeled a Barrier Dive, mentally envisioning somewhere he could train and experiment with his powers.

After the slight shift that John now knew accompanied entering a barrier, he found himself in a room very similar to the one he had just been in, minus the cobwebs, door, and overall mess. John lifted one of the tables with a by no means small portion of his strength from where it was stacked onto the ground, before he pushed it into the middle of the room. He walked around and sat on it, beginning to think.

Absentmindedly John cast Mana Javelin, throwing it at the wall, where it shattered in a small explosion of blue sparks.

Suddenly struck with inspiration, John did it again, but slower, observing how the spell was woven by his hands.

His hands moved slowly, blue streams of crackling mana running from them with each movement, until, finally, the familiar blue, transparent shaft of a Mana Javelin was slowly summoned into existence.

Furrowing his eyebrows intensely, John asked a question internally, What allows a spell to do these things?

John was not able to answer that question, and so, he shelved it for when he could explain it or ask someone who knew.

Hopping off the table, John turned to face the black tables stacked neatly in the corner of the room, wanting to level up Craft so he would finally be able to make stuff like the batteries or his gauntlet by hand.

About an hour and over a full mana bar later, John was surrounded with wooden blocks of various colorations, with only scraps remaining of the tables that had once stood stacked in the corner.

Craft has reached Level 5!
Mana Capacitance has reached level 4!
Mana Conductance has reached level 4!

Craft had reached level five, apparently allowing him to magically craft more advanced objects, such as basic tech.

John pulled out his gauntlet and summoned the Craft menu for it. After looking around for a bit, John spotted a repair function, listing $200 as the only requirement.

Not wanting to get a repeat of this morning with the whole shocking bit, John eagerly pressed the button and watched as the gauntlet very slightly shifted and smoked as the internal wiring was presumably both moved around and rewired.

After the gauntlet stopped shifting around, John put it in his inventory and equipped it. As its now familiar padded interior suddenly enveloped his arm from his fingertips to about halfway along his upper arm, John was pleased to note he wasn’t terribly shocked once again.

John put the blocks of wood into his inventory and thought for a moment about what to do, as he had around an hour left before his last class of the day, which was PE, a class he personally loathed.

John sighed after a few minutes of thought. My main constraints are materials and knowledge at the moment, so I’ll have to go gather some if I want to make some better things.

Reluctantly opening up the menu for Barrier Dive, John slid his finger over to the Crude Golem section and paused for a moment. John’s entire hand began to shake, remembering the bloody details of yesterday. I’ve... got to do this, even if I don’t like it. I need the materials and experience. Slowly, his finger came to rest over the button once more and pressed it.

John felt himself automatically exit the barrier as the countdown began. And just as quickly as it had begun, he was inside the recognizable city of golems. As the area surrounding him abruptly changed to the town this option had led him to before, but at daytime, which made it much less spooky. It seemingly depended on mood lighting to get its spook factor across.

Opening his phone and setting a timer for when he had to go to his next class, John then set off at a brisk pace into the sunlit city streets.

The next hour went by in a blur of shooting golems with Mana Javelin and aiming for their weak spots, occasionally getting smacked around by a few lucky shots, and looting whatever they left behind.

Just as John was finishing off a golem by tearing out its driveshaft, what John was dreading happened. The boss spawned.

The lights around the buildings began to flicker, before turning off entirely in a shower of sparks. The entire city was eerily silent, with none of the gentle hum of machinery or the clank of golems working in the distance. The whole area appeared to be focusing its energy on one thing, and one thing alone.

And then as soon as it had started, everything resumed as it was before, with one minor exception. The clanking of rapidly approaching metallic footsteps.

John thought, Man, that would’ve been much more cinematic at night. If anything, it was kinda boring this time around.

The day before, John would probably have been racking his brain for a plan, slightly panicking, like he had done yesterday.

But today was a new day, and he was ready.

John waited as the golem dashed towards him, a Mana Javelin in each hand, preparing to cast Machine Mind on it.

The golem came within striking distance, a clear smirk on its ceramic face, and swiped at him with one arm.

But John was one step ahead of it. With skills that could only have come from his Dark Souls days, he rolled under the attack, clumsily but just barely acceptable to avoid the massive fist that held enough **** to create a small gust of wind in close proximity to the blow.

Now behind the golem as the roll completed its course, John activated Machine Mind.

Greeted once more by the now slightly less alien extra sensory experience, John focused on the dim “light” that was the golem, ordering it to open its access panel and to rip it off.

With a slight bit of a mental tug from John, the golem reached backwards towards the metallic panel John was facing and tore it from its hinges after a moment of strain, accompanied with the terrible groan of overexerted and then tearing metal.

The inside mechanisms of the golem were, even at a glance, a mess of gears and wiring. John found what he was looking for after an instant: the blue rod encased in its torso, what John now understood to be a very basic form of mana reactor.

All of this took place in a few seconds, of course, and so John released his control over the golem and began to throw everything he had at its weak point.

John got the first three off quickly, and with each impact, a stream of sparks erupted from inside the golem; the next one, however, was interrupted by the golem regaining some of its senses. It abruptly turned around, winding up to punch John once again.

As its massive fist came roaring towards John, he dodged under it once more. But this time, he wasn’t as lucky. As he launched himself forward to begin the roll, John’s eyes widened as the fist, closer than he had anticipated, came ever closer and closer, and he could only think a single thought in the moment that followed. Fuck.

The next moment, John was numb to the world. Where am I? he thought, in a haze.

And then it all came rushing back to him. The **** of the punch travelling through his body as he sailed into the air, the impact of wood and glass breaking under his body, and the crunch of his bones shattering.

As his body rapidly repaired itself, he regained his senses at an equally speedy rate. Opening the eyes he didn’t realize he had closed, John found himself embedded in a wall belonging to one of the many decrepit shops that lined the street. A hazy shadow slowly came into focus as it approached.

John focused on the approaching figure, only to meet the smiling gaze of the Golem, in the process of winding up yet another punch. This time, he knew he would not be able to survive it.

Reflexively casting Machine Mind, John took control of the Golem once more with the last dredges of mana from his internal buffer, directing it to turn around to expose its back to him.

John staggered out of the crater his body had formed, spreading dust and fragments of glass everywhere.

Raising his hand upward, John summoned the last drops of mana stored inside his gauntlet and molded it into a Mana Javelin, and with both physical and mental effort, he threw it as hard as he could towards the glowing crystal at the center of the golem.

The Javelin flew true, impacting the gem directly, where a spider web of cracks began to form upon its surface.

The golem was seemingly unfazed by this, and after recovering from John’s temporary control, it slowly stood up.

As John prepared for the worst, he was interrupted by a sound. Crack. And as he looked upwards for the source of the noise, he only saw the gem. It had begun to audibly fall apart, and piece by piece it crumbled as he watched.

The golem shuddered but proceeded to get up and attempted to face John directly. Attempted was the key word there, as it only made it halfway through the action before collapsing to the ground.

The golem slowly began to crawl towards John in large, shuddering movements. The blue lines decorating its body began to slowly fade to black, the Golem’s ceramic faceplate contorted in rage all the while.

John watched as the golem’s movements began to slow with each audible crack of the gem. Before, finally, with one last CRACK, the golem collapsed.

With a triumphant smile and laugh as he pondered how exactly he was not dead just yet, John said in an exhausted voice,