Second Genesis

Grey went through the blueprints rapidly. It took practically no time for him to scan every single one.

What he didn’t know was how abnormal this was. Amunet was still as stiff as a board to the side, feeling like things could go sideways any moment now. But Esmeralda’s pupils were constricted—well, at least one of them was.

’This child’s Neural Frame resonance speed is frighteningly fast. Is this the last gasp of the Mechanical Jaw?’

She didn’t know exactly what Grey was doing, but she could feel a Neural Frame activating when it did. Whatever Grey was doing, it seemed like he had some sort of way to sort the blueprints.

The three piles grew larger.

One of them was significantly grander than the rest, taking up what must have been over 90% or so of the more than 200 blueprints. This pile was unsurprisingly the fraud pile as assessed by Grey’s Cyber Space.

The second largest pile was the pile of blueprints that were valid, but far too powerful for Grey to ever make sense of or understand.

The last and smallest pile with just two blueprints were the valid blueprints of the Proving Class tier.

—

Blueprint: Ball Bearing Eye

Weight: 2.3kg

Face: 1,002

Raw Materials:

Twice Tempered Purified Steel: 930 Faces

Resin L-Frame Mesh: 61 Faces

Aura-laced Aurum Nullite: 9 Faces

—

Blueprint: Glass Rotating Eye

Weight: 2.1kg

Faces: 987

Raw Materials:

Twice Tempered Purified Steel: 916 Faces

Resin R-Frame Mesh: 58 Faces

Aura-laced Aurum Nullite: 13 Faces

—

’For eyes they’re so heavy.’

But Grey could see why from their blueprints alone. The eyes at the Vanguard Class were heavy for an eyeball as well, but they were still just 0.2kg. The reason for that was because all of their components were concentrated into the eyeball itself.

For the two Proving Class blueprints, they were more like face plates with an eye in the middle. To use them, at least half your face would have to become a mask of mechanical parts.

But considering half of Esmeralda’s face was scarred beyond recognition, Grey highly doubted she would mind. And even if she did care, he quite frankly didn’t.

’Alright... now what?’

Grey pushed all the other blueprints away, letting them slide off the table without a care so he could clear some space. He stared at one and then the other, his eyes starting to twitch as he realized that narrowing it down to which ones were actually valid didn’t make the blueprints any easier to understand.

Both blueprints were extremely similar. Each was a face plate that formed to half the face and a larger portion of the forehead. They were both made of almost identical materials and had very similar Face totals.

’Form... Load... Intent...’

The first step should have been to shape the raw materials properly, analyzing, purifying, and then modifying them into the correct configuration.

This was definitely the easiest step, at least for Grey who had great spatial awareness. But the problem was how complicated the configurations were.

The form of the outside was fine, but the real problem was always the inside.

For the iron jaw, it had been simple. It just had a few connecting points to his Neural Frame. So long as they were connected at the proper nodes, it would work.

But these two blueprints were on a completely different level. The face plates were similar to the iron jaw in that they had protruding points that inserted into nodes of the user’s Neural Frame. However, the closer you got to the eye, the more complex those patterns of protrusion became until instead of protrusion, they began complex spiralling networks.

Just looking at the blueprints themselves made Grey feel like he was going dizzy, a fatigue pulling at his mind.

’First let me lay out the raw materials.’

Grey quickly found what he wanted. Twice Tempered Purified Steel had a similar shimmering color to medical grade steel, while normal Tempered Steel had more of a matte finish to it.

Aura-laced Aurum Nullite had a delicate glow to it that normal Aurum Nullite hadn’t had. Much like Twice Tempered Purified Steel, it felt like an upgrade to the raw materials Grey had used in his own Iron Jaw.

The most difficult raw material to set aside was Resin R- and L-Frame Mesh. Both of them looked completely identical. There wasn’t a single difference to be found between them.

Even when Grey used the Cyber Mat to analyze, he got Resin Frame Mesh back. He used his Cyber Space to analyze, but it too came back as Resin Frame Mesh.

This left Grey a bit baffled. Why could his Cyber Space analyze blueprints of the Vanguard Class and yet had so much trouble with a material that was supposedly of the Proving Class?

’Fuck me.’ Grey ran his hand through his hair, ignoring the slimy worms again and exhaling a heavy breath.

He knew the answer to his own question. His Cyber Space wasn’t "analyzing" blueprints, it was just documenting like it said. But now it had to actively classify something.

To test his theory Grey reached for a metal he had felt had a particularly tingly sensation when he touched it before. As expected, his Cyber Space came back with a direct error.

—

[Error. Item is too high Class to analyze]

—

Grey took a breath and exhaled. ’Here we go again. What do I do now?’

There was no way the valid blueprints would have a mistake in them. That meant there was either a way to process this material himself, or a way to differentiate them that wasn’t obvious right now.

Grey turned toward Esmeralda. "Do you not have any L- and R-Frame Resin Mesh material?"

Esmeralda’s eyes narrowed. "Whether Resin Frame Mesh is L- or R-oriented is dependent on the methods of the crafter during the crafting process. Do you not know this?"

Grey’s lip twitched. "Never mind, then."

’Fuck me.’ He cursed for the millionth time.

Grey analyzed the blueprints in his Cyber Space again, hoping and praying for some sort of clue. As he did so, he subconsciously rolled the raw material through his fingers.

’Tingling sensation—!’ Grey suddenly jolted.