The loop began again, dragging David back into its familiar rhythm: the damned forgotten air conditioner at the beginning and small chores. He moved through the motions almost mechanically, but his mind refused to idle. While his hands busied themselves with the reactor’s guts—tightening bolts, realigning parts, fixing the wiring—his mind drifted inward, circling around a question.

  What kind of power could he wield effectively?

  Clay had proven reliable, cheap in terms of mana cost. It was everywhere, no need to summon it—but it lacked teeth. Water? He could lug around a flask, but the effect would be the same: unimpressive damage for too much effort. Lightning was potent, but only when he had a full charge. He couldn’t exactly stash thunderbolts in AAA batteries. Ice had potential, but they would melt and he did not want to drag around a freezer.

  He frowned, rolling possibilities through his head, until his gaze landed on the heavy wrench in his hand. Solid, dependable, sharp-edged in the right places. Maybe the answer wasn’t exotic at all.

  The thought snapped into focus, and a familiar shiver passed through him—like the world itself acknowledging his idea.

  New Attribute Learned: [Minor Law of Steel]

  David finished patching up the reactor with renewed focus, then set off, eager to test this new path. The construction site where he had once wrestled with the law of clay still waited, forgotten and half-finished. It didn’t take him long to find what he needed: long steel beams, weathered by rain but sturdy to the core.

  He wrapped his hands around one, the edges cold and rough, and felt the connection flare inside him.

  With a grin, David braced himself, drew in mana, and hurled the beam forward—not with muscle alone, but with law. The steel cut through the air like a missile, embedding itself deep into a pile of rubble with a thunderous clang. And he did not spend a lot of mana, just like with clay.

  David stood and thought, but still could not figure out how to immerse himself in the environment of the law, there were no steel foundries nearby, so he decided to brute-force his way forward. No elegant meditation, no profound insight—just repetition and raw application.

  He dragged steel beams across the construction site, levitated them into the air, and slammed them forward at bone-crushing speeds. After some time he killed a few monster dogs using the new law. With every metallic crash, his control deepened, the law of steel etching itself into him. An hour passed in that grim rhythm—get the beam, levitate, throw, impact.

  New Attribute Learned: [Major Law of Steel]

  Exhaling, David let the latest beam hover lazily at his side, rotating like a gigantic spear. The power was intoxicating, but also absurd. He pictured himself trying to strap a dozen steel poles to his belt like some medieval porcupine or stuffing them into a backpack like overgrown tent pegs. He chuckled darkly at the image.

  Then the humor gave way to clarity: he had, essentially, reinvented a gun—only with extra, inefficient steps. A ballistic weapon powered by mana.

  “Great,” he muttered, lowering the beam. “I made a rifle, but worse.”

  That realization pushed his thoughts elsewhere. Maybe it was time to branch back into what had always been more reliable. The robots. The waiters-turned-soldiers. In the last loop, reloading had nearly driven him mad, fumbling clips in the middle of a fight. Teaching the machines to handle reloads themselves—that would be an upgrade worth chasing.

  Magic was fascinating, no doubt. But in practice? Robots with guns were still far deadlier than beams hurled by hand. He can always return to magic later.

  David stopped in front of the reinforced door to the robotics department. A red light blinked over the reader, waiting for a keycard. For a moment, he simply stared at it. He frowned slightly, his mouth pulling sideways in a grimace.

  “Of course. Nothing’s ever simple.”

  Then, with the casual air of someone who had long ago stopped respecting the rules of this place, he crouched down next to a pile of clothes of a “raptured” person. His hand rummaged through the pockets, past pens and crumpled notes, until his fingers brushed against plastic. He pulled out a red keycard, swiped it, and the light obediently flicked green.

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  “Thank you, nameless engineer,” David muttered under his breath, and the door slid open.

  Inside, the air smelled faintly of machine oil. The robotics wing stretched ahead, cluttered with rows of robots.

  He walked deeper, his footsteps echoing against the metal floor. His eyes flicked from machine to machine, tallying silently. Most were worn out, clearly pulled in for repair. But here and there, gleaming among the wreckage, stood almost new models—sleek frames, smooth plating, untouched by damage. Nearly a dozen of them.

  His chest tightened with excitement. Reinforcements. His little army, growing one iteration at a time.

  “Welcome to the team,” he said quietly, almost reverently, before turning his gaze toward the back of the department, wondering what else this place might be hiding.

  David paced through the robotics wing, the problem with reloading gnawing at him. The more he thought about teaching the cafeteria droids to reload pistols, the trickier it seemed. Their arms were too stiff, too limited. One hand couldn’t even reach the other—how were they supposed to swap a magazine? Maybe he could make them work in pairs, one assisting the other? Inefficient, but possible.

  He was still mulling over the logistics when a side door drew his attention. A testing room. David slipped inside—and froze.

  In the center of the chamber stood a prototype. Not a utility drone. A humanoid.

  It had arms—proper arms, with hands and fingers! Its design wasn’t far from certain movie droids David had grown up with, the kind that carried blasters across deserts of two suns. Except instead of a face, the head was a sleek screen. And on it, glowing with eerie familiarity, were the two cartoonish eyes he already knew from the delivery bots in the cafeteria. (The same ones he weaponized)

  “Thank you,” he whispered, looking up toward the ceiling as if to thank some higher power. Or rather, the company’s CEO.

  For once, the man had invested in the right thing. Not like those harebrained projects from the past—the self-driving scooters that caused thousands of lawsuits one summer, or that ridiculous sketch of a plasma sword. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? At least those disasters hadn’t made it past concept art.

  But this? This was different. This was perfect.

  Interlude 4

  CEO Steve Maskerberg stood in the cold silence of his private vault, tucked deep beneath his mansion on the edge of the city where his company’s headquarters loomed. His ears burned, prickling with that peculiar heat—someone was thinking about him? He brushed the sensation aside and focused on the rows of sealed cases, shelves of devices, and the locked cabinets of prototypes that hadn’t seen the light of day.

  He was searching, hunting for anything that could give him an edge. A tool, a relic, a forgotten project that might push him to get more abilities from the system. Unlike most, Steve had no issue with survival. His mansion was fortified, its defenses layered and smart enough to handle the roaming beasts outside. Food, water, power—everything was secure. But security wasn’t enough. Not here, not in this cursed loop.

  He’d died a few times, during reconnaissance. Painful lessons, but worthwhile. The deaths were not in vain: now he knew the dome around him was shrinking. That truth had driven him down here, into the vault, to sift through the ghosts of his company’s ambition.

  Turrets embedded into the mansion’s walls and ceilings—paranoia made steel—rattled off in bursts, their barrels flashing in the distance as they shredded the odd creatures roaming outside. Steve Maskerberg didn’t even flinch at the noise. If anything, it reassured him. Every shot that landed meant more experience, and the system didn’t seem to care whether he had personally pulled the trigger or not. He came to the conclusion that every monster death inside the dome gave him credit, even if one slipped on its own feet and broke its neck. But who knows. Nobody had given him any tutorials.

  His gaze slid across the vault until it stopped on one of his more dangerous creations. A bitter smile tugged at his lips. The self-driving scooter. God, the lawsuits. A graveyard of PR disasters and broken teenage bones. It would’ve been perfect now, if only he had a flock of idiot thrill-seekers to ride them straight into enemy lines. Shame.

  He moved on, boots echoing against polished concrete, until something on the shelves caught his eye. A brow arched. “Oh,” he muttered. “This might do.”

  He heaved an enormous prototype backpack free from its rack, strapping it onto his shoulders with effort. The weight crushed down on him immediately, forcing a grunt from his chest. Millions had been sunk into this beast, only to have development scrapped—six hours of battery life wasn’t marketable. But for Steve? For a man who could resurrect with a fresh one waiting in storage after every death? It was perfect. Infinite retries. Infinite chances to grind out power.

  Panting, he reached behind his shoulder and found the handle docked into the pack. It slid free with a satisfying click, tethered to the backpack by a flexible reinforced hose-cable. He pressed the ignition.

  A blade of raw plasma, nearly a meter and a half long, roared to life. White-blue light poured across the vault, dancing in reflections on chrome and steel of other prototypes. Steve’s grin widened as he swung it experimentally, the air sizzling with each arc. Childish glee lit his features.

  “Who said money can’t buy happiness?” he murmured, striding toward the mansion’s entrance with his new toy humming at his side.