Luke set the letter down and said, “Hey, Bumblebee?”

  Bumblebee looked up from where he had been unsuccessfully trying to get Jinx to play with him. “Yeah, man. What’s up?”

  “Do you have an idea of how many slimes and ents and what not there are supposed to be out there? Cormac told us to do a survey.”

  “Nah, no idea. Shepard and Sandwich usually took care of that shit. I wonder if that’s why Cormac made them the leaders? Cus their names start with S, ya?”

  Luke vigorously shook his head to get that stupid idea out. “If I take you back to the portal, can you call one of them up? We need to know the numbers.”

  “I don’t have Shepard’s number and Sandwich doesn’t want to talk right now. I think he needs some time. You should probably talk to Elwood Services. They have the daily mission reports. I bet the info’s in there.”

  “Ok, that’s obviously what I’ll do. Why didn’t you say that first?”

  Bumblebee shrugged and said, “You didn’t ask.”

  Luke sighed heavily and turned back to his power armor. He sat down and switched his leg back to his walking one, then pulled out his toolkit. His mana torch was old, but it was the second most powerful tool he had. When activated, it used the tiny mana core at its base. A violet spray came out of the nozzle and loosened the bonds between atoms. That made any material act like soft plastic. He could smooth out scrapes, squish together holes, and reshape bent parts. It was a wonderful tool. Some of the lower quality tools weakened the materials with the repairs, but Luke had won himself a silver level mana torch. He could use it dozens of times on the same spot before it started to make metal brittle.

  Bumblebee got bored of bugging Jinx and started wandering around the shop on his own. He started on the west wall where the weapons were. There were swords and daggers, spears and halberds. The shield and armor section was small but impressive.

  After some time, the young guy wandered past the dishes and utensils, past the faucets and stoves, to end up next to Luke. Bumblebee didn’t interrupt his work intentionally, but his lingering presence was distracting.

  Luke put down his tools. “Sorry this is boring for you, Bumblebee.”

  “Nah, man. It’s all good. I know you gotta fix your mech.”

  “Yeah. I’m mostly done with repairs. I hope you don’t mind waiting, I want to make some improvements too. A better helmet and magic gauntlets so I can use the swords.”

  “You won’t need the gauntlets.” Kruro said and looked up from her work.

  “Why not?”

  “You have a class now. You can use mana instinctively and feed the inscribed weapons. You should replace your helmet though. I don’t know how you see out of that thing.”

  “It’s not easy. I assume you mention it because your helmets have vision enhancing runes? I’ll take it. Any other enhancements?”

  “Mana Vision and Vibrational Senses. I can teach you the runes now if you want. You can invert them yourself.”

  Luke stood up. “Yes, please.”

  Kruro did jazz hands and slithered over to one of the completed power armors. She pointed to a rune directly above the visor’s slit.

  ?

  ζ??

  ?????

  ???

  ?

  “This will be your first Apprentice rune. I have no doubt you will quickly learn it with your egg cracked human skills. The main difference to the novice runes is that the linking symbols are spread to the outside. That allows the central nine to hold two intents. In this case, mana and sight.”

  Luke peered down at the rune. Each symbol was slightly smaller than he had ever inscribed. He would have to work to get them right. He knew from experience that changing the size of a rune also affected how far apart the linking and power transfer runes needed to be. If he didn’t want to spend days testing out permutations, he would need to copy Kruro’s design. Inverted of course.

  He started copying out the rune, on paper, for practice. “Do you have any suggestions on a mental image for mana? I haven’t had it for long.”

  “Hmm. Good point. I suppose you need more experience with mana, particularly the sensation of it moving from your core to activate a skill. What skill did you learn from your War Machine class?”

  Luke decided not to mention he got two skills. So far no one knew he had a platinum class. Besides the fact that it was two levels over Kruro’s own, he didn’t want the extra attention from having the highest level class he had heard of. Even Cormac’s class was only gold.

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  He said, “I got a repair skill. I have to use it before I get hit, and then again to fix my power armor.”

  She thoughtfully hissed. “Not the best repair skill I have heard of. You will be using twice the mana as others. However, I assume it repairs all damage, not just selected sections?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t tried it out yet.”

  Kruro’s eyes went wide. “You have more self control than I did when I first earned my class. Come, let us test it now.” She slithered over to the wall of weapons and grabbed a hooked sword.

  Luke grinned and popped open the chestplate of his mech. He wiggled into the suit and buttoned up. He was briefly reminded that he needed a padded pilot suit and then he was distracted by new sensations.

  His class buff activated as soon as he was in, increasing his every stat. He felt better, his muscles were stronger, joints looser, his mind quicker and the world brighter. It was like he had been sick and had been suddenly cured. At the same time, Machine Bond activated, and he felt a connection to his mech blossom in his mind.

  Luke sighed with relief and stretched out his arms. He felt so much better. He could see how this could get addicting. His physical stats had basically doubled and his mental ones were noticeably better. He wondered if he could stay in his suit for the rest of the day, even when inscribing.

  Kruro’s hook sword caught his eye as she slithered closer. He hurriedly turned his mind to the Repair Craft skill. Thankfully, the new skill came with the instinctual ability to activate it. He felt a burst of energy flow from his core.

  Behind his belly button and out of phase with the physical world was his mana core. It had formed when he gained his class, but had faded from his consciousness when he left the mech. Now it rushed to the forefront of his mind as he felt mana cascade out of it. The energy flowed along channels inside of him and then suffused itself into his mech. The entire process took about five seconds. Too long for combat use, but short enough to use right before battle.

  A quick check of his mana showed that he had lost fifteen points of mana out of his twenty-one total. Hopefully the second part of the skill wouldn’t cost fifteen points as well, otherwise he wouldn't be able to use it until his mana pool refilled.

  “Are you ready?” Kruro asked.

  Luke nodded, but then remembered they didn’t nod here. “Yes, I’m ready. Try not to damage the fleshy human inside. My skill only repairs machinery.”

  “Try not to flinch then,” Kruro said and swung.

  The hook sword made a whistling noise as it blurred through the air. Luke would have flinched but he didn’t have the time. Her sword hit his left hip and left a long gash all the way to his knee.

  Luke stumbled to the ground as the runes powering that leg lost power. An involuntary "Eep" escaped him. As soon as he hit the floor, she bashed his left forearm with the flat of her sword, creating a spiderweb of cracks across the chitin. The impact made him flinch again, bringing his arm up to his chest. Kruro used the distraction to cut the base of his helmet and knocked it off his head. It all happened in less than four seconds.

  “Stop, stop, stop!” Luke yelled. “You might hurt me. We don’t need to destroy my mech to test my skill.”

  “Calm yourself, hatchling. I was done. This will test if your skill can handle simple slices, blunt impact cracks, and parts that have been separated from the whole. You were never in danger.”

  “Oh. Well, remind me never to get you mad.” Luke said and sat down.

  He turned inward and found the trigger to activate the second half of the Repair Craft skill. He mentally crossed his fingers and activated it. Mana rushed from his core and lightly touched different parts of his suit. It hit the leg first, and the long gash sealed itself before his eyes.

  The cracked forearm was next. The cracks sealed themselves in reverse, healing up to the impact point. Luke looked up just in time to see his helmet flying towards his face. He flinched back, but the metal never touched him. It settled around his neck and sealed itself back on. The entire process took about fifteen seconds.

  Kruro slithered closer and examined his forearm. “A comprehensive skill, congratulations. It looked like a temporal skill too. Very rare. What grade did you say your class was?”

  “I didn’t. I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk about the details of my class. But maybe that’s a human thing. Is it Kalibutan culture to share class details?”

  “If I had any doubts about your class being a warrior one, they would be dispelled by that question,” Kruro said and slithered back to her obsidian workbench. “Combat classes keep their details secret, always worried about betrayal from their fellows. Us crafting classes trust each other and work together. But don’t worry, I won’t ask you to extend a trust you clearly don’t feel.”

  Luke felt bad now, keeping the secret of his class. She seemed hurt that he didn’t trust her. That didn’t change his mind though. The fewer people knew about his class, the smaller chance someone could successfully betray him.

  She turned her back on him and went back to work on the new set of power armor. Bumblebee stepped up and held up his hand.

  “High five, man. That’s an awesome skill,” Bumblebee said. After Luke carefully gave his tiny human hand a soft metal hand high five, Bumblebee continued, “It’ll save your life, for sure. I wish I had the skill myself. What I wouldn’t give to have field repairs. Hey wait. You can be our field repair guy! That’s awesome. We are going to get so much more done, even with just the two of us.”

  Luke chuckled. “Yeah, man. Team Skywalker-Bumblebee is going to clean up. Hey, how many monster cores do you get in an average week?”

  “Hell yeah. Team SkyBee, BeeWalker, or Bumblewalker, heh, not that one. Probably SkyBee.”

  “Focus, Bumblebee. How many monster cores can we get in four Kalibutan days?”

  “I don’t know, it depends on what happens. Some days we get nothing, some days we get loads. I don’t really know for sure since we never get to keep them. If I had to guess, I would say ... five monster cores?”

  “Five cores in a week? That’s decent. We can work with that.”

  “No, five cores a day. Some are big, some medium, most are small though.”

  Luke blinked slowly. Five cores a day? That was huge. The smallest monster cores went for $4,000 on Earth. The one Cormac gave him was worth $22,000.

  Bumblebee snapped his fingers. “Oh, you know what? I bet there were a bunch-a cores we left in the spider cave. Babies don’t always have cores, not if they’re new. But I betcha most of the spiders we killed had a core. We should check it out, just in case. If we get a lot of them in one day, we get a bonus from Cormac. That would be fire.”

  “Sounds like a plan. We’ll head out there right after I inscribe my helmet,” Luke said happily.

  Luke was glad he was sitting down. They had killed dozens of spectral spiders in that cave. If even half of them had a core, Luke’s cash flow problems were over. That tidal cave was a goldmine. As long as they didn’t run into another spider queen or other impossibly huge monster, they would be on easy street.

  Wait. Had he just jinxed himself? He had. Luke bit back a swear. Better make sure they brought plenty of weapons along.

  Today’s chapter title comes from Jupiter Ascending