Self Improvement

John walked home as quickly as his low Agility could take him, which really wasn’t all that fast, but he tried his best. As he approached his home, he was filled with excitement to test out these new skills and to learn how to make and understand mana batteries, whose function was quite obvious now that he thought about it.

John opened the door to his home with a key he retrieved from his back pocket, yelling out, “Hey Mom, I’m home!” but after waiting for a second, didn’t get a response.

Well, that’s odd, maybe she had to work late. I’ll go check for a note somewhere around here, he mused to himself; looking around his house resulted in what he was expecting: a note from his mother, reading:

Sorry, but I have to work late tonight, Dinner’s in the fridge, don’t spend too long on your computer, and make sure you do your homework.
-Love, Mom

Sweet, it looks like I have the place to myself for now, which makes this a lot easier, John thought to himself, pulling the skill book out as he did so.

Learn Mana Batteries for Idiots, Morons, and other Dummies?
YES/NO

Hitting Yes immediately, he was met with a sudden pop-up and understanding of how to create Basic Mana Batteries Ugh, I’ll never get used to that feeling, John thought, reading the pop-up the skill book had created.

That’s interesting, so will I be able to make them using Craft? John asked himself mentally and decided to put that to the test. Pulling up the menu for Craft, John noted to himself that another tab labeled “Magitech” had suddenly appeared, and upon tapping on that, he was met with yet another menu.

So, it appeared like he would need to supply the ingredients for the crafting before he started the process, but as he looked at the sections for the Cathode and Anode, he noticed that all of the available options involved metal. Where could he get some of that without his Mom noticing? it’s not exactly like we have spare appliances lying around, right? John thought to himself, taking a brief mental survey of things he could potentially disassemble for parts.

He suddenly came to a painstaking realization, that the only things he could take apart that wouldn’t be noticed were the spare computer parts he had meant to sell or build another computer with. He just had been too lazy and preoccupied with his schoolwork and self-admitted gaming addiction to do anything with them as of late.

John slowly trudged up the stairs to his room where the parts were stored; pulling them out, he decided to give them a look over, thinking, For science, I guess, but is this even entirely science at this point? before casting Craft, and selected the disassembly option, burning through a whopping 35 Mana in the process. Before his eyes, the individual parts began to levitate and then liquify after a moment, separating into slowly forming cubes sorted by what John assumed was material. Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now, does it? I’ll probably find out soon enough.

After about twenty minutes, which John spent checking his phone, the cubes had solidified completely, each the same size. After a quick Observe of each, they turned out to be normal materials: steel, plastics, and other metals like copper, tin, and gold.

Looking at the sheet again, John noted that he needed a container for each battery, and he knew just the thing: Mom’s mason jars. Most of them held about thirty-two ounces, if I remember correctly, and the Catalyst I have can turn 2.8 liters of fluid into Electrolyte, but what is that in ounces? A quick search on his phone listed that as about ninety-four ounces. It’s almost exactly what I need for three batteries, but thankfully it won’t fill them entirely, as cleaning up the mess from overfilling those things would be more hassle than it’s worth, John thought, while walking into the kitchen to gather the jars.

After a few moments, John reached the kitchen and looked through the cabinets until he found where she stored all of her jars she had gotten a year ago just in case that had never been used. Hope she doesn’t miss these, he thought as he took three of the thirty-two ounce ones out and placed them on the kitchen counter before opening up the crafting menu, where he selected the materials he had gathered.

Almost but not quite done, John was left wondering what to use as a base for the Electrolyte, the thing that would store the energy and something that would preferably be at least somewhat on hand. Pulling up the sheet for the catalyst, John could see no requirement for a substance to mix it with, but he wanted something not completely shit anyways, just so he had a chance to get a decent quality one even with only mundane materials.

After a moment of thought and a quick search on his phone, John found out that salt water conducts electricity fairly well when done right. Which I hope translates well to mana, John thought and grabbed a mixing bowl to fill with water and a container of salt from a nearby cabinet. After a moment, John realized that he was getting ahead of himself, and with another quick search, John found that he needed roughly ninety-two grams of salt for the 2.8 liters of salt water.

John put about 6 and a half tablespoons of salt into the mixing bowl and began to stir the water with a wooden spoon, making sure to mix it well for about 15 minutes before stopping.

Arms aching from the effort of stirring for so long, John took a few moments to rest and recover. After he was done with that, he grabbed the Basic Mana Catalyst from his inventory and, after taking a good look at the blackened, flakey stone, dropped it into the water with a small splash.

He looked inside the bowl, interested as to how these two substances would react with each other. But as he was watching, all he saw was the catalyst slowly breaking up and slowly spreading across the inside of the bowl.

Suddenly, the liquid began to bubble and crackle before him, and John felt a brief wave of heat on his face before a bit of the liquid splashed at him.

-7 HP

“Ow! Fuck!” John said, both surprised by the sudden reaction with the water and shocked by the sudden burn on his face that faded in a few seconds thanks to Gamer’s Body.

He cautiously reached with the wooden spoon, careful to not put his face above the bowl again as he did, and put it inside whatever he had created, then he began to stir slowly, as to not get any of the now boiling substance on the floor. That would be difficult to explain away, John thought, concentrating on stirring and not getting it on himself again.

Before he knew it, the substance had settled into a clear, slightly blue color and had mostly cooled down, mixed as well as it was going to be. John then pulled up the menu once more and selected the final ingredient he needed for it to be complete.

John pressed the craft button and was met with an error:

Crafting skill level too low to craft, manual assembly required.

Guess I’ve got to do these by hand, he thought, pausing for a second and continuing. It’s not like everything will be given to me on a silver platter all the time.

So John took the mixing bowl filled with Treated Saltwater and poured it into each jar as evenly as he could, all while some of the aluminum in his inventory materialized and, with a slow drain that totaled up to 12 MP over the course of a few seconds, melted and reformed into a thin sheet of foil, which John then wrapped each container’s sides in.

John realized that he didn’t have a lid to insert the copper through and had to look for a few moments through the kitchen cabinets to find some that fit well enough to work.

He then found himself with lids that didn’t have holes for the wires through them. He was aware that he could probably use even more of his extremely limited mana reserves, but he’d rather use something mundane, like a drill that he knew for a fact was in the garage.

John got the drill out of the garage and drilled through each of the lids in approximately the same place.

Now he had to deal with sealing the holes to avoid liquid splashing out. Thankfully, there was a hot glue gun in a box on the counter, which he plugged into the wall to let heat up.

After a few minutes of waiting, the hot glue gun was hot enough, and John used it to seal the gaps in the jar lids so nothing could splash out when he was using them. Who knows what would happen, probably something extremely bad, considering that the crafting prompt said they had a tendency to explode when broken, John thought.

Finally finished with the Mana Batteries, John stored each of them in his inventory and was met with two more pop-up’s.

Craft Lvl 2
Increased Complexities of Items may be crafted, Mana Efficiency increased.

Mana Batteries Detected, Enable Overflow Charging?
Yes/No

Hell yeah! John thought. Now he wouldn’t have to waste as much mana when he was doing things and his mana regenerated above his maximum. The downside was that these things discharged rather quickly and the high mana resistance meant that it wouldn’t store energy at a 1:1 ratio. But hey, it’s better than nothing, right?

With the next level of Crafting under John’s belt, he hoped to increase the number and quality of things he could craft soon, maybe even get some Mana Batteries that weren’t quite as shitty and had a better capacity.

With the Mana Batteries completed, even crude as they were, John felt like they had the potential to be quite useful; all he had to be careful of was to not get the mana batteries hit by anything and presumably stay at range.

After all of this manual effort, John was starting to feel hungry, however he still had homework to do for the next day, so he put off eating for now and started to lumber upstairs to his room, glad that his homework was at least on topics he knew well.