Chapter 6
The choice, limited to a single option, felt like a tight collar around the neck of my ambitions. I had to cut straight to the bone. The Protective Field Generator and the Gravitational Gyroscope I discarded immediately. Both projects looked and sounded like titans compared to what I was capable of right now. Assembling either would require, at minimum, a full workshop, and at maximum an entire industrial complex and probably a budget I couldn't even imagine. Those were goals for a future version of me that didn't exist yet. The Stun Grenade, though temptingly practical, felt too... limited. It was a consumable, a tactical tool that in a pinch could be bought or replaced with something similar. No. I needed something fundamental.
That left three cards on my mental table, hopefully trump cards: the Poison, the Muscle Stimulant, and the Intellect Brew. The Muscle Stimulant beckoned, tempting me with its promise of strength without side effects. In a world where a super-strong thug could be lurking around any given corner, raw physical power was a serious argument. But the longer I read through the recipe lists, the clearer it became: brute force was just a tool. And I wanted to be the one who built those tools.
And so: Intellect.
It was the foundation of foundations, the base on which anything else could be built. It was what would allow me not just to blindly follow blueprints received from the Forge, but to understand them at a deep, intuitive level. To modify them, maybe. Improve them. Beyond that, in this universe, intellect was not just an advantage; it was a weapon of strategic significance.
Reed Richards, whose mind stretched as easily as his body, bending the very fabric of reality. Tony Stark, who had built a heart for himself and armor for the world out of scrap metal in a cave. Otto Octavius. Victor von Doom. Hank Pym. Even the perpetually broke Peter Parker. Countless people in this world had climbed to extraordinary heights, or plunged to the depths of madness, on the strength of nothing but a non-trivial mind. If this brew could overclock my processor even temporarily, even by a couple of measly units, the horizons that would open up before me were probably beyond anything my current, gray state of consciousness could even suspect.
And there was another reason. A more personal one, sharp as a splinter driven under a nail, the kind I tried not to think about. In my past life, I was not a genius. I was not an idiot either, no. Just ordinary. One of billions of interchangeable parts in a giant mechanism. I had studied hard, gripped my work with both hands, tried to leap out of my own skin to achieve something meaningful, but there was always someone smarter, faster, more talented. I had watched ideas that wandered through my head as vague, foggy shapes get embodied by other people into brilliant, successful projects. I had felt possibilities I had not thought of in time drift away to those who could calculate three moves ahead.
It was not so much offensive as it was exhausting. A constant, grinding race in which you already know your place ahead of time, somewhere in the middle of the pack. That was actually why, at a certain point, I had dropped everything and moved out to the countryside, and in all honesty I had never regretted it. But here, in a world where the stakes were immeasurably higher, where on one end of the scale sat Tony Stark's genius and on the other the Green Goblin's madness, being "ordinary" was a death sentence.
The Muscle Stimulant would give me strength, the ability to run or fight back. But it would not teach me to see the trap before I fell into it. It would not let me create something that could level the playing field against gods and monsters. And intellect was not just a weapon. It was my personal rebellion against a past defined by mediocrity. A chance not just to survive, but to finally become what I had always wanted deep down and never managed to be: the architect of my fate, not just another extra in someone else's story.
I walked to the window. Below, faceless figures flowed along the sidewalk. In my past life I had been one of them. A person living by rules written by others, buying tools made in other people's factories, building with materials produced by other people's technologies, following laws drafted by hands that were not mine. My creative drive had been boxed in by the rigid constraints of the physical world, the law, and my own limited knowledge. The Muscle Stimulant would make me a stronger, more durable part in someone else's machine. The Intellect Brew would give me a chance to become the mechanic.
Not just following instructions, but writing my own. Not a user of the system but a developer of it. That thought was more intoxicating than any whiskey. The ability not just to adapt to this insane world, but to understand its fundamental principles and, perhaps, nudge them a little in my favor. That was the highest form of craft I had never even let myself dream about before. And it settled my choice once and for all. Strength is a tool. Intellect is the hand that holds all the tools.
There was still one problem, one my mind had already turned over dozens of times: the ingredients. What if I could not obtain them because of their rarity or their price? What if they simply did not exist in this world? The second possibility I dismissed, trusting the system's adaptability. It should be able to adjust the recipe, find analogs. But the first was a real concern. Fine. In any case, this was a long-term investment. If I could not brew it in the coming days or even months, I would get to it later. I was not going to stand still in the meantime. At minimum, I planned to build a Spud Gun. At maximum... I honestly did not know. The Death Star, maybe. Ha.
I focused back on the internal interface. It did not look like a computer screen so much as a semi-transparent mental blueprint suspended directly in my consciousness. Text and icons glowed with a soft, ghostly blue light, and navigation happened not through eye movement but through pure intention. I thought about selecting the Intellect Brew, and the corresponding line in the list lit up. The "Confirm" button glowed next to the number "-50 OP," and in the center of the expanded window a three-dimensional model of a small flask with shimmering liquid rotated slowly. I paused for a moment. Fifty points. Earned by honest, painstaking labor.
My first serious investment in something genuinely tangible, even if only in a future sense. The thought that it might come to nothing sent a cold prickle down my spine. What if the recipe turned out to be unfeasible? What if I had just burned my OP for nothing? I shoved those thoughts away with force. The man who refuses to risk anything stays in his cardboard box in Hell's Kitchen until the end of his days, flinching at every shadow. I gathered myself and formed the mental command, putting everything I had into it.
"Confirm."
The blue inscription flashed. The number "50" scattered into a myriad of glowing particles and vanished, and my balance updated to a bleak "15 OP." Then came the pain.
It was nothing like an ordinary headache. It felt as though two white-hot nails had been driven into my temples and then twisted. Sharp, but brief, like a lightning strike. It passed after a moment and left behind a ringing silence in my skull and then knowledge. I knew the recipe for that brew perfectly, down to the last molecule, down to the smallest nuance. This was not like reading a book or watching a video. The knowledge did not "appear" in my head. It "became" part of me, as though it had always been there, like a suddenly resurfaced memory from deep in a forgotten childhood.
It was not just an ingredient list. I could feel them. I could almost touch the velvety, near-ghostly surface of the Phantom Orchid's petals. The sharp, sterile smell of isopropyl alcohol sat on the back of my tongue. I could almost hear the quiet, harmonic hum of a charging quartz crystal. The synthesis process unfolded in my mind not as a dry diagram but as a vivid, three-dimensional film playing out in a fraction of a second.
I watched Phantasmine molecules, the orchid's active compound, arrange themselves into complex chains and bond with silver ions. I observed the quartz crystal lattice vibrating under an electrical discharge, releasing the catalytic pulse that triggered the reaction. It was frightening and wonderful at the same time. The system had not just handed me instructions. It had implanted the experience of a nonexistent alchemist directly into my brain. And that led to serious thoughts: what else could it upload into me? The muscle memory of a seasoned pilot? The practiced knowledge of a neurosurgeon? The entire accumulated wisdom of a vanished civilization? The potential of Celestial Forge ran far deeper and far more dangerous than I had assumed.
Beyond the recipe itself and the processing methods, I had also received information about the ingredients. And that was the most critical part. Without knowing where and how to find a Phantom Orchid, the recipe would be nothing but a useless line of text. But I knew.
The recipe was not prohibitively complex, but it demanded precision and some fairly specific conditions. Four main components:
Active Agent: Phantom Orchid Pollen. Extractant: Isopropyl alcohol, 99.9%+ purity. Conductor: Colloidal silver, concentration around 20 PPM. Catalyst: Attuned Quartz Crystal.
Then the process. The quartz crystal had to be placed inside a Faraday cage and charged with a lightning discharge. Then the extraction: in complete darkness, Phantom Orchid pollen and isopropyl alcohol had to be mixed to produce Phantasmine extract, the key substance in the entire brew. Final stage, synthesis: the finished extract and the colloidal silver were combined in a flask, and the charged crystal was brought near it. Its field triggered a chain reaction.
The output was approximately twenty to thirty milliliters of clear liquid, one dose of the Intellect Brew, with an effect lasting a couple of hours. What exactly did it do? That was the most interesting part. It all came down to Phantasmine, an extremely unstable but powerful alkaloid that functioned as a universal neural conductor. It would not make me smarter in any permanent sense. Instead, it would force my brain to operate at absolute peak efficiency.
It would accelerate synaptic connections to something approaching the speed of light, sharpen access to every layer of memory including the deepest ones, and multiply my capacity for analysis and pattern recognition. The temporary nature of the effect came from the catalyst breaking down quickly into harmless components, after which the neural network returned to its baseline state.
"This is basically NZT-48," I muttered, turning over the problem of the main ingredient. "The effect is practically the same. Interesting. The real challenge is going to be those temperamental Phantom Orchids."
Temperamental was an understatement. The flower was essentially an endemic to places with residual "creation energy" or where the boundaries of reality had grown thin. It only became material and visible at night. During the day it existed as nothing more than a knot of raw energy. That was also why the extraction had to be done in complete darkness: the orchid could not tolerate ultraviolet light. As for where to find such places, I had a rough idea. In the Marvel universe, and specifically in New York, there should be plenty of them.
Abandoned sanctuaries. Sites of recent battles between powerful mages. Even the Greenwich Village area, where the Sanctum Sanctorum of the still-future Doctor Strange supposedly stood. In theory, any location with a high enough magical background could work. The Orchid problem was solvable, at least in principle. What about the rest?
Isopropyl alcohol of that purity was a standard laboratory reagent, and a quick internet search was reassuring: it could be ordered from any industrial chemical supplier. Colloidal silver could either be purchased or made, though the latter required a small lab setup, so buying was the simpler path. A quartz crystal of the required size and purity was equally accessible; geological supply shops existed for exactly that purpose. No serious, insurmountable obstacles. I exhaled in genuine relief. The system had managed to adapt the recipe to this world and to my current means. That was hard not to appreciate.
I opened the system interface and glanced once more at the lonely "15 OP" in the corner. Only then did I notice I had never actually switched over from the Forge tab to the Technologies tab. When I did, what greeted me instead of the expected emptiness stopped me cold.
Blueprint (Simple). Project: Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura. (Technology unlock cost: 100 OP)
"So technologies aren't one-time!" The words came out louder than I intended, and something enormous lifted off my chest the moment I said them. It was almost too good to be true.
And so what if the unlock cost for the next recipe from the same project had doubled? The Muscle Stimulant, healing potions, the Protective Field Generator, and a whole list of other interesting options were all still on the table. They were still coming. I desperately wanted to break into villainous laughter, but I held it back. Not yet.
This news flipped my entire strategy on its head. I had believed that each choice was final, that I was walking a narrow, single road with every other path cut off behind me. But this was not a road. It was a central square, with dozens of roads branching out from it in every direction, and given enough time I could walk all of them. Technologies were no longer singular, irreversible decisions. They were components in a larger system. I could plan combinations, build synergies, and keep strengthening without limit.
So. Next steps.
First: Save up 150 OP and hit the gacha a second time. If a blueprint loaded with useful recipes counted as "simple," I was equal parts terrified and intensely curious about what hid behind the higher rarity tiers. Iron Man armor? Rick's Portal Gun? An atomic 3D printer? The guesses could go on forever. Technology was my key to everything.
Second: Create the Intellect Brew. Ideally several batches. Use them in critical situations, when designing complex devices, or when facing problems that required genuine creative leaps.
Third: Unlock the Muscle Stimulant recipe. Or, if the second spin dropped something more "interesting," adjust accordingly.
Fourth: Earn money and build a real life. Drop out of college, which at this point felt like a waste of time, move into better housing, ideally a private place with a garage I could convert into a lab, buy a car, and handle the rest of the mundane details.
Fifth: Do not die. Though this was less a step and more of a permanent condition underlying all the others. Do not attract the attention of government agencies. Keep a low profile. Do not play hero. Do not walk into trouble on purpose. Avoid every single mistake that 99.9% of isekai protagonists in every book seemed to make with cheerful enthusiasm.
Of course, they had plot armor. Did I? Could a system count as one? There had to be seers, prophets, and other super-powered beings in this world for whom my anomalous growth rate would shine like a beacon in the night. And yet I had not been neutralized. Which meant either I was destined to play some key role in the future, or I was so insignificant I had not registered on anyone's radar yet, or, the option I liked most, my system made me a blind spot for anyone looking. Alright. Setting those thoughts aside since they were clearly above my current pay grade. Time to build the Spud Gun 3000.
I yawned properly and finally noticed the clock. One in the morning. Given that I had last slept less than five hours ago, punishing my body further would be genuinely stupid. Fine. The Spud Gun could wait until tomorrow. What could not wait were the inventory experiments. They would not take long, but they would give me a clear picture of what was practically my only material ability with anything resembling the word "super" attached to it.
First experiment, the most obvious one: containers. I did not have a box handy, so I pulled out a desk drawer, tossed in some odds and ends, a pen, an eraser, a couple of paper clips, an old key, then touched the whole thing and mentally sent it to inventory. Success. One slot taken, contents included. Excellent.
But what about those contents? Was the drawer acting as a "container" that preserved the relative position of its objects, or did everything collapse into a common heap in subspace? I returned the drawer to reality, carefully arranged the pen, eraser, and a few coins inside, and memorized their exact positions. I sent it back to inventory and immediately retrieved it. Everything sat exactly where I had placed it, down to the millimeter. The inventory preserved not just the container itself but its entire internal structure. That opened up enormous possibilities for transporting complex and fragile equipment in the future. No vibration. No impact. No shifting.
Next: liquids. I poured water into a glass and tried to inventory just the water by running a finger across its surface. Nothing happened. The system apparently required clearly defined object boundaries. I inventoried the entire glass of water instead. That worked. When I retrieved it, not a single drop had spilled. More than that, there was no condensation on the outside of the glass at all, despite the warmth of the room. That pointed to a complete stasis, not just of time but of thermodynamic processes.
The next logical test was time itself. I started the stopwatch on my phone, put the phone in inventory, waited what felt like around thirty seconds, and retrieved it. The stopwatch showed the exact same time as when it had disappeared, to the hundredth of a second. Time inside inventory was frozen. Noted.
Then came the experiment involving living things. Scanning the room, I spotted a small spider in the upper corner of the ceiling. I carefully extended a finger to it and tried to place it in inventory. The system's response was instant and unambiguous.
[Living beings cannot be placed in Inventory!]
Fair enough. I had not been particularly attached to the idea anyway.
Weight and dimensions: the heaviest things in the studio were a half-empty refrigerator and a two-meter wardrobe. Both went into inventory and came back out without the slightest resistance. The upper limits of weight and size had not been established yet, and they appeared to be considerable.
Final round: physics. I heated a pan on the stove until it was sizzling hot and inventoried it. Then I crumpled a sheet of paper into a ball, tossed it into the air, and inventoried it mid-flight. When I returned the ball, it simply appeared in my hand, stationary, with none of its falling momentum preserved. I repeated the test with a heavier wooden block. Same result. Momentum was not conserved. Heat, on the other hand, absolutely was.
When I retrieved the pan ten minutes later, heat was still radiating off it exactly as if I had just pulled it from the burner. The stasis genuinely extended to thermodynamics as well.
As I lay down to sleep, I ran through the results one final time. The lack of momentum preservation was a mild disappointment. The idea of launching objects directly out of inventory had been an appealing one. But on reflection it was also a relief. It meant I could not accidentally cause a disaster by retrieving something heavy while moving at speed.
To put it plainly: the system was not just powerful, it was also, in its own way, safe. It gave me extraordinary capabilities but drew clear lines around them. "Living beings cannot be placed in Inventory." "Momentum is not preserved." These were not bugs. They were features. Rules that pushed me toward more elegant solutions rather than raw, brute-force ones. The system did not want me to become a god hurling asteroids out of my pocket. It wanted me to stay a craftsman. A smart, resourceful, inventive craftsman who worked within the laws of his world and used every tool at his disposal to reach his goals. That approach suited me. It was, in its own strange way, honest.
Before I finally drifted off, I smiled to myself. Tomorrow I would build a potato cannon. It would be a ridiculous, almost childish project. But in this new world, it was something more than that. It would be my first real act of creation, something more complex than folding paper. My first true step forward.
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