CHAPTER NINETY EIGHT

Jason spent the rest of the night taking apart several Red Minerva frames in his Mech Workshop. He'd entered the crafting area before for basic adjustments, but he'd never modified any machine so thoroughly before.

When making advanced modifications, the crafting workshop allowed players to adjust their builds from two different perspectives.

The first was the overall perspective. Jason sat inside a command tower looming above the station, and the first of his backup Red Minerva frames was strapped down beneath him like a patient at the surgery table. A set of large mechanical manipulator arms let him cut his machine apart with various tools, including a massive scalpel.

However, Jason soon found that the broad adjustment lacked the fine detail needed to make minute changes. He was able to cut open the Red Minerva frame, but he struggled when making small adjustments to the internal organs, especially the veins and arteries. His own version of the Red Minerva had additional complex internally wired systems, like the Blazing Avarice and the genetic modifications that let him transform into the Red Lamia.

On top of that, adding the Mana Gatherer Spikes created yet a third delicate external system to incorporate into his build.

As a result, Jason switched to the second control mode - fine control. Instead of standing above his machine, he maneuvered around on a small floating Repair Pod. The Repair Pod was a circular sphere about the same size as a car. Jason was able to freely fly around the Red Minerva and use the pod's fine tools to make fine adjustments.

Jason then spent the rest of the night experimenting with fine control.

The procedure was fascinating. Jason was very familiar with the base frame, so he already had a general idea of what the insides looked like, but seeing everything laid out was a very different story. In the past, he'd only known where the different organs were so that he could dodge fatal damage. Now, he actually knew what everything looked like and what its precise purpose was.

By the end of the night, Jason hadn't even started taking his main machine apart, but he felt much more confident about his crafting abilities. Taking apart the base frame had taught him a key lesson - his set it and forget it strategy of solely equipping parts had some pretty key limitations.

He'd most heavily noticed those limitations when battling against Castor. The spider martial artist had seemed very crude on the outside. The machine's mechanical and biological parts were split in a seemingly crude and inelegant manner - Jason had never heard of a machine that was mechanical on the bottom side and biological on the top side. The hands were more smoothly integrated, but at the end of the day, the aesthetics didn't matter.

Castor's machine was designed to maximize performance. He'd carefully considered which parts to make biological and which to make mechanical.

The next day, Jason woke up and ran through the Towering Crag a couple more times to get more experimental parts. He blasted through the stage without any problems, and it was pretty funny how dramatically the tables had turned. Before, he'd erroneously struggled just to get a single win, not even realizing he was supposed to take it easy. Now, he was an actual competitor who was running through the stage to get additional crafting practice.

He'd done tons of practice last night, but he still wasn't good enough. Jason only stopped after dissecting enough frames until he was completely confident he could completely break down the Red Minerva and put it back together again without destroying the innate frame or accidentally killing the machine's biological parts.

Around the afternoon, he got a text from Stephanie asking him what he was up to.

"Hey, what's up. We're doing some missions tonight and were wondering if you wanted to join in!"

Jason thought for a moment, then shook his head. The offer was pretty tempting, but the next time he saw the guild, he wanted to make sure his machine was finished. Judging by the work he'd already done, he thought it would take another week or so until he finally felt comfortable making changes. He decided to add another few days to stay on the safe side.

"Ah, I'm working on my new build right now, I'll probably be free in another week and a half. By the way, do you still want to work on that alien Mech you were talking about?"

It was a few days ago, but he remembered Stephanie being really excited to turn the alien Mech she found into an artillery unit. Hopefully, Jason would have much better knowledge of the Hemoborn class by then after all these dissections. It sounded pretty grisly, but at the end of the day, Overdrive was just a game - he wasn't actually a monster tearing countless dragons apart in ruthless experiments.

Stephanie's enthusiasm somehow carried over her text. It was just words on the screen, but Jason could imagine her grinning excitedly just as if they were on the Overdrive server.

"Hell yeah! Let's do it - I can't wait to see the build you'll come up together too. You're going to test it with your friends at that game shop, right? What's it called again? And what does your Mech look like right now?"

"Ya, I'll practice with my friends at the Good Game Shoppe. And yeah, I'll show you when I'm further on, I've mostly been practicing right now."

Jason would have loved to send her a copy to impress her, but he just didn't have anything to show yet!

Even after dissecting the Red Minerva, he didn't feel comfortable moving straight to the real project. Part of Jason felt like he was just stalling and delaying the inevitable, but considering the permanent ramifications of his build change, he wanted to make sure he was perfectly prepared. As a result, he also took apart various Spell Titans, working through different frames for the next few days. There was no way he could take apart a unique proprietary frame like the Biomancer, but he still wanted a strong familiarity with how Mana Gatherer Spikes worked before proceeding further.

At the end of the week, Jason admitted to himself that he was prepared as he'd ever be. The thought of proceeding was still nerve-wracking, but he wasn't going to feel more prepared if he just stalled and continued tinkering around with irrelevant frames.

He logged into Overdrive from his basement bedroom, then got to work.

As soon as he entered the server, Jason headed into the crafting room, then activated the advanced mode of the Workshop, which allowed him to put two machines in the room at the same time. The Red Minerva was strapped down on one side and the Biomancer was on the other. Jason started by draining away the Biomancer's ooze, revealing the frailer base frame beneath it.

Then he floated down on his Repair Pod and started cutting the two machines apart. His hands trembled against the controls, and as absurd as it sounded, he felt almost like a surgeon. Despite all his practice, he knew that a single mistake would irrevocably damage his Mechs.

Jason's first step was trying to figure out how he could merge the Biomancer's ooze tank with the Red Minerva's stomach. If he could somehow get his machine to produce ooze of its own accord without attaching the external tank, he'd solve his storage problems.

Unfortunately, after taking his two Mechs apart, he found that wouldn't be possible. The parts just weren't compatible. The Red Minerva's acidic stomach could feed into a mechanical part, but it couldn't incorporate one inside of it.

With his first idea failed, Jason immediately moved on to the next solution. After spending a lot of time crafting and dissecting Mechs as practice, he knew that the first solution almost never worked out. The machines and their various restrictions and requirements were too unpredictable, so multiple backup plans were needed.

Jason set the stomach integration idea aside for now. If he couldn't combine the two parts together, he'd probably try to feed the poison sac directly into the tank. That way, his ooze manipulation abilities would naturally come with high-level poison abilities.

With his first idea failed, Jason decided to go for something a little easier.

One of his machine's main problems was its separate Red Minerva and Red Lamia forms. Instead of focusing on two specialized modes, he'd hoped to average out the two different forms, creating a new unit that balanced out the strength of both machines.

In this case, Jason just directly followed the guidelines he'd seen online - he stimulated his machine's body with electric charges to begin the transformation without completely committing to it. After that, he could use a second stabilizing charge to lock in his Mech's new form.

Jason gradually started the partial shift, and his machine slowly and steadily transformed. It was almost like he was adjusting a dial on a thermostat - he wanted the build to have the perfect distribution of strengths. The Red Minerva's neck gradually lengthened, his machine's poison sac swelled, and the leg musculature decreased as they almost fused together. However, Jason stopped the process right at the twenty-five percent mark, then adjusted a bit further ahead to the thirty percent mark.

Fusing the Red Lamia and Red Minerva forms with a 30:70 split between the two combined Mechs would increase his machine's firepower and poison abilities by a moderate amount in exchange for a decrease in his speed. The build wouldn't be a pure sniper like the Red Lamia, but Jason would still have access to the Pestilent Snipe in this current fused form.

Overall, Jason felt like the decision was worth it for a pretty simple reason - he definitely didn't use the Red Lamia form in over thirty percent of his battles. Adding the snake woman's strength os his machine, even in a reduced state, was a good compromise. On top of that, he'd gain additional benefits by adding the Lamia's increased poison abilities to the Biomancer's ooze.

After locking in his fused form, Jason went back to his original problem - how to allow his machine to attack with the Biomancer's ooze. Since he couldn't just use his stomach, his only option was to attach the ooze tank directly to his Mech.

Although it would decrease his speed, it was worth it to add the additional amount of power. Jason carefully rewired the two Mechs, adding an additional mechanical tube that attached the newly fused Red Minerva's poison sac and stomach to the tank slung over its shoulder. The combined part-biological part-mechanical organ granted his Mech the ability to create corrosive ooze. On top of that, his Biological Beast summons would have an additional poisoning effect, which would compensate for their lower damage and offensive abilities.

With his second problem solved, Jason moved on to the third issue. The Mana Gatherer Spikes were typically mounted at the elbow, which linked the power source to the Mech's hands, the area used to cast spells. However, Jason already had another extensive system that needed his hands free - the Blazing Avarice.

Jason thought for a moment, then came to a solution.

He cut through the Red Minerva's arms, revealing the black wires and internal computer systems that allowed his machine to summon its flame-based replicas. He then began moving everything he could to the right side of his mech's body.

In the end, he left only a single thin wire in his partner's left hand, which linked to the blueprint memory device required to trigger the system. That was the only item that couldn't be removed - everything else, including almost all the storage and flame-based replication systems, had been shifted to his machine's right-hand side. Now that Jason had an excellent understanding of the cave dragon's inner workings, he successfully made the move without damaging any of his other parts.

Next, he then placed both the Mana Gatherer Spikes he won from the Biomancer on the left-hand side of his Mech, strapping them both onto the left shoulder. Like the Blazing Avarice system, Jason wound up bunching together most of his wired parts, using his newfound familiarity with Mana Gatherer Spikes to keep the invaluable parts functional while maintaining his planned design of splitting his machine practically in half. In this case, Jason was planning on controlling the poisonous ooze with only the left-hand side of his machine, so he only needed the Spikes to deliver mana to his left hand.

By the end, his Mech looked utterly bizarre, but he was confident in its power and the work he'd put into it. The Red Minerva's appearance had shifted due to the partial adjustment, leaving the machine with a longer neck and a slightly bulkier build.

The entire left arm was now covered in ooze that'd leaked out of the tank. The overflowing ooze also covered part of his Mech's back, most of the upper leg, and even a bit of its face. A sickly glow flickered through the disgusting muck, hinting at the slime's new poisonous nature.

Meanwhile, the right-hand side remained mostly unchanged. Jason would still be able to access his typical flame-based melee weaponry. In fact, if he stabbed an opponent tagged by his corrosive slime, he could even ignite them like he had in the initial Biomancer battle.

With his new build locked in, the only thing left was to test it out.

He closed up his computer, then headed over to the Good Game Shoppe for some test matches.