Chapter 12
At the hardware store, I moved quickly and precisely.
I had a clean list in my head, the product of the Intellect Potion and a few hours of online research.
PVC pipes in the right diameters for the crossbow and the water gun, elastic bungee cord, a compact pump, a couple of valves, nozzles.
Parting with another hundred dollars was unpleasant.
The wallet that had felt reassuringly thick in my pocket just yesterday was now depressingly flat.
A remaining balance of a hundred bucks had a way of making a person feel exposed.
I repeated the mantra in my head: "Money is not a problem. I have the Miracle Box."
But there was a difference between knowing something and feeling it.
Fine.
I had a clearly defined goal in front of me, and I intended to hit it.
Time to start crafting the PVC Crossbow.
Crafting.
That word had started to carry a kind of weight for me, something close to reverence.
It was not just an assembly process.
It was an act of creation that the system itself recognized and rewarded.
So, where did the transformation of a plumbing pipe into a weapon begin?
With bending.
I took a seventy-centimeter length of twenty-five-millimeter-diameter PVC pipe in both hands.
Held over the heated burner, the white plastic slowly began to yield.
A characteristic acrid smell rose into the air, and the pipe became as pliable as soft clay.
I carefully but confidently bent it into a clean arc, measuring the curve about twenty-five centimeters from the center.
For the next five minutes I simply held it in that position, feeling the plastic cool and stiffen beneath my fingers, locking the new shape into its memory permanently.
The arc was ready.
Next, the body.
This part was simpler.
The same pipe, fifty centimeters long.
I carefully cut a slot at one end as an arrow guide, then clamped a wooden block to the middle of the shaft for a handle: simple, functional, comfortable.
After that it was a matter of detail: attaching the arc to the body with screws, stretching the elastic bungee cord across the arc.
The bowstring snapped into place with a tight, promising click.
The final element: the trigger mechanism.
I cut a small lever from a wooden spoon and fixed it to the body.
A simple latch of thick wire to hold the bowstring, connected to the lever, and it was done.
The crossbow lay in my hands, functional and surprisingly formidable in appearance.
But I did not call it finished, and the system stayed quiet.
Of course.
What was a weapon without ammunition?
The arrows were straightforward.
An ordinary wooden dowel, thirty centimeters long, sharpened at one end and notched for the bowstring at the other.
I pulled the cord back, seated the improvised bolt in the guide.
Now it was complete.
Just to confirm functionality, I aimed at one of the cardboard cereal boxes stacked in the corner and pulled the trigger.
There was a sharp crack, and the arrow whistled through the air and punched through the cardboard and the plastic bag inside with a satisfying thud.
Solid penetration.
And the system, fortunately, agreed.
[Created simple weapon design "PVC Crossbow." Complexity: Minimal. Received +50 OP!]
Excellent.
By analogy with the Bulbamet, the next crossbow would net me 40, and so on down.
But before I started running production, I needed to test one hypothesis I had noted during the Intellect Potion brainstorm session.
I picked up the newly assembled crossbow and began methodically taking it apart.
Disassembly was faster than assembly.
When a pile of components lay in front of me again, I swapped the wooden handle for a different but nearly identical block and started rebuilding.
Five minutes later, a crossbow sat in my hands again.
No notification.
Silence.
Theory confirmed.
The system could not be fooled by repeatedly assembling and disassembling the same thing.
It rewarded the act of creation, that specific Spark that breathed new life into a collection of parts and turned them into something whole.
Once that potential had been expressed in a particular set of components, it was spent.
Those same parts could, however, be used to build something different entirely.
I confirmed that separately by swapping out the wooden trigger I had originally cut from a spoon.
A new piece of wood, a new element, a small but distinct creative act.
Logical.
On to the next item: the PVC Water Gun.
Honestly, after the Bulbamet, the Marx Generator, and even this crossbow, building it felt like snapping together a children's kit.
Just four steps: a reservoir from a wider-diameter pipe, a valve, a nozzle, and a pump connection.
I filled the finished assembly with water, opened the valve, and deliberately aimed the stream at the bathroom wall.
A powerful jet hit the tile and splashed everything in a wide radius.
Stupid, simple, and unexpectedly satisfying.
And the system approved.
[Created simple weapon design "PVC Water Gun." Complexity: Minimal. Received +50 OP!]
I knocked out the remaining 65 OP by building a second crossbow and a second water gun, earning 40 and 25 OP respectively, and landing at a total balance of 415 OP.
For a moment I was genuinely tempted to spin the gacha at 300 OP, but it was a brief, impulsive thought that I let pass without acting on.
Instead, I opened the system interface and sank the OP into unlocking the Box of Magic Ore.
The points were immediately debited, and without any fanfare or notification, the box appeared quietly in my inventory.
Thankfully, it did not vanish from the Technologies tab either, though the price of the next box had jumped to 500 OP.
Useful for the future, but one was enough for now, at least I hoped so.
I looked around the studio, which over the past several days had descended into what appeared to be a state of cheerfully unsystematic chaos.
Pulling out a two-by-two-by-one-meter box here was simply not an option.
Not because space was too tight, I could clear a patch if I had to.
The real problem was the floor.
This was an old building, and I had no interest in stress-testing how much weight the boards could take when loaded with hundreds of kilograms of ore of varying densities.
The risk of the floor giving way was probably small, but "probably small" was not good enough.
I needed to find an outdoor location, or at least somewhere with a solid concrete slab.
It was four in the afternoon.
Hell's Kitchen was running its usual noisy daytime shift, and the sunlight made the streets reasonably safe.
I changed into inconspicuous street clothes and headed out to find a temporary staging ground.
I needed an abandoned building, somewhere so visibly unpleasant that even the homeless would pass it by.
The neighborhood had no shortage of candidates, but I was looking for something specific: secluded, minimal foot traffic, and well away from curious eyes.
Half an hour of winding through alleys that reeked of urine and rotting garbage later, I found it.
A five-story, unfinished brick shell with empty window frames, standing on a small vacant lot.
The walls were buried under layers of aggressive graffiti, and the ground around it was torn up and littered with construction debris.
Perfect.
Even in a place like this, letting your guard down was not an option.
I stopped at the nearest convenience store and picked up a can of pepper spray for ten dollars.
A small expense, but it settled something in my chest.
With the can tucked in my pocket, I slipped inside the building.
Inside, the air was dim and heavy with the smell of damp concrete dust.
Every step I took rang through the emptiness and made me flinch slightly.
I moved carefully, checking each room in turn, until I found what I was looking for on the ground floor: a small, windowless room with a single doorway, set deep inside the structure.
After confirming I was alone, I held my breath and materialized the Miracle Box from inventory.
It appeared without a sound, massive and completely out of place in this landscape of ruin.
The box was packed to the brim with rough, unrefined stones of every shape and size.
"Well, it really is full," I muttered to the empty room, my whisper sounding unreasonably loud. "And at first glance, most of this ore is on the common end, just like I figured."
I picked up a heavy, dark gray piece with a metallic sheen and sent it to inventory for analysis.
[Chunk of Raw Earth Lead Ore (Galena). Weight: 1.4 kg. Metal Content: 89%. Rarity: Common. Condition: 10/10]
Lead.
With nearly ninety percent metal content.
This was not just ore, it was practically a finished product.
I gave a silent mental bow to whoever had designed the box.
Curiosity pushed me forward.
What else was in there?
I pulled out a reddish-brown stone.
[Chunk of Raw Earth Iron Ore (Hematite). Weight: 1.7 kg. Metal Content: 82%. Rarity: Common. Condition: 10/10]
It became clear that a full audit was necessary.
But sorting through hundreds of kilograms of ore on a dirty floor with no containers was not realistic.
I needed bins.
Which meant going back out into the city and spending more of my already thin budget.
Looking at the haul in front of me, though, complaining felt like a sin.
I tucked the box back into inventory and left the building.
At the nearest hardware store, I bought a set of ten large cardboard moving boxes.
Another ten dollars gone.
The boxes were flimsy, but their physical properties were irrelevant for inventory purposes.
What mattered was that they were containers with defined boundaries.
Back in the same secluded room, I laid all ten boxes out across the floor, turning the space into a rough sorting center.
I summoned the Miracle Box again and started what turned out to be a monotonous but deeply exciting marathon of treasure assessment.
I picked up each piece of ore, sent it to inventory for a moment to get the system's read on it, and based on the result transferred it to the appropriate box.
The industrial metals came first.
[Chunk of Raw Earth Copper Ore (Chalcopyrite). Weight: 1.2 kg. Metal Content: 84%...]
[Chunk of Raw Earth Tin Ore (Cassiterite). Weight: 2.1 kg. Metal Content: 80%...]
[Chunk of Raw Earth Aluminum Ore (Bauxite). Weight: 1.3 kg. Metal Content: 82%...]
The boxes filled steadily.
Then the real excitement arrived with the first precious metal.
[Chunk of Raw Earth Silver Ore (Argentite). Weight: 1.1 kg. Metal Content: 86%...]
My heartbeat stuttered.
And then more followed.
[Chunk of Raw Earth Gold Ore (Nugget). Weight: 0.7 kg. Metal Content: 88%...]
[Chunk of Raw Earth Platinum Ore. Weight: 0.4 kg. Metal Content: 82%...]
[Chunk of Raw Earth Palladium Ore. Weight: 0.5 kg. Metal Content: 87%...]
[Chunk of Raw Earth Titanium Ore (Ilmenite). Weight: 1.0 kg. Metal Content: 89%...]
When the first wave of sorting was done, I stood looking at ten labeled boxes: ten categories of ordinary, terrestrial ore.
It felt modest at first glance.
Where was nickel for alloys?
Or tungsten for high-stress tooling?
But complaining in the presence of gold, platinum, and palladium at metal content this high was absurd.
The financial independence those three boxes represented alone was staggering.
I thought the surprises were over.
Then, digging through the ore at the very bottom of the Miracle Box, I found three pieces that looked wrong.
One shimmered with every color of the spectrum.
The second was coal-black but seemed to pull light into itself rather than reflect it.
The third glowed faintly with its own dim light in the shadowed room.
Inventory confirmed what my instincts had already suspected.
These were something else entirely.
The box had saved the rarest and most exotic items for last.
And each of them, even by the system's standards, carried enormous value.
I picked up the first piece, the one that shimmered like a captured rainbow, and felt a faint, strange vibration travel through my palm as I touched it.
[Chunk of Raw Vibranium Ore. Weight: 0.3 kg. Metal Content: 96%. Rarity: Rare. Condition: 10/10]
I exhaled sharply.
Vibranium.
The metal of Captain America's shield, Black Panther's armor, the Winter Soldier's prosthetic arm, and countless other technologies belonging to an entire secretive, hyper-advanced nation.
I set it down with the same careful deliberateness I would have used on a live grenade.
The second piece was coal-black, but deceptively dense for its size, as though it was absorbing the dim light around it.
[Chunk of Raw Adamantium Ore. Weight: 0.4 kg. Metal Content: 93%. Rarity: Rare. Condition: 10/10]
Adamantium.
The metal coating Wolverine's skeleton.
The physical embodiment of absolute, unthinkable strength.
A cold sweat broke across my skin.
Having both of these metals in my hands at the same time was not just luck.
It felt like the universe was either testing me or mocking me outright.
The third piece glowed softly in the dimness of the room with a light that seemed to come from somewhere deep within it, like an ember from a forge built by gods.
[Chunk of Raw Uru Ore. Weight: 0.5 kg. Metal Content: 98%. Rarity: Rare. Condition: 10/10]
Vibranium.
Adamantium.
And Uru, the metal of the gods.
At that moment I nearly laughed, caught somewhere between hysterical terror and pure, breathless wonder.
I had no idea yet what I would do with any of these three.
But what I knew with absolute certainty was that in this world, people were not merely willing to kill for what I was holding.
They would tear your soul back from whatever came after death just to make you tell them where you had hidden more.
Walking around with these materials was the equivalent of hanging a neon sign around my neck reading: "Kill me and inherit the power to reshape the world."
I gathered every last fragment of all three ores, placed them together in a separate cardboard box, noted their total weight in my head, and sent that box directly to inventory.
Let them stay out of reach of reality.
With the most critical items secured, I settled in for the full inventory.
The next two hours dissolved into monotonous but essential work.
The room filled with the steady thud of stones on concrete, the soft hiss of displaced dust, and my own steady breathing.
It was the job of a warehouse laborer, an accountant, and an appraiser all compressed into one person.
I hauled hundreds of kilograms of ore out of the Miracle Box, assessed each batch through inventory, and sorted it all into labeled boxes.
When the dust finally settled, a complete picture of my newly acquired fortune arranged itself clearly in my mind:
Iron Ore: ~700 kg
Lead Ore: ~500 kg
Copper Ore: ~250 kg
Tin Ore: ~200 kg
Aluminum Ore: ~150 kg
Titanium Ore: ~80 kg
Silver Ore: ~60 kg
Gold Ore: ~12 kg
Platinum Ore: ~10 kg
Palladium Ore: ~6 kg
Vibranium: ~2 kg
Adamantium: ~1.8 kg
Uru: ~0.5 kg
Roughly two tons of ore in total, with approximately two hundred kilograms of impurities mixed through.
Not bad at all.
The system had not lied: the more valuable the metal, the less of it existed.
The hierarchy was obvious and consistent.
The plan took shape in my head on its own, clean and inevitable.
Step one: separation.
Gold, platinum, and palladium, the metals with the highest immediate monetary value, had to be isolated from the industrial base metals.
Step two: storage optimization.
Everything in the main bulk, iron, lead, copper, and the rest, needed to be consolidated into one large container in inventory so that the Miracle Box itself would sit empty and automatically refill with new ore in a month.
Step three: keep the daily grind moving.
Get home before the streets fully surrendered to the night, and squeeze out at least another small crafting session.
Even with everything else on my plate, I needed to maintain a minimum of 50 OP per day.
Step four: legalization prep.
Plan tomorrow's route through the pawnshops, not forgetting the detour to a smelter for the gold.
A quick comparative price analysis was needed, but I did not even have to burn an Intellect Potion for that.
Satisfied with the sequence, I packed all the sorted boxes and the Miracle Box back into inventory, folded the remaining empty cardboard boxes, tucked them under my arm, and headed out.
Twilight was already settling over Hell's Kitchen, and the night's regulars were beginning to emerge from the darker alleys.
Tomorrow was Monday, and it was going to be more than just another hard day.
It would be the first day of a genuinely new life.
The day I stopped being a broke orphan from Hell's Kitchen clinging to the edge of survival.
Tomorrow, I would start building something, an empire of my own making, even if it was still a personal one for now.
//==============//