Apocalypse: Generic System Macronomicon (miss read books TXT) 📖

Well, on the upside, if these exist, then surely a Lens of Good Vibes will find its way to me one of these days. I should see what I can find at music festivals. Happiness probably tastes like unshaved armpits.

“Whatcha got?” Ron asked, sitting next to him.

Jeb wordlessly handed the lens over as he studied the rest of the guts. There were a few more components buried just behind the lens: a tiny Myst regulator, along with something that looked suspiciously like a chip, with several different pinholes for Myst to travel through, called a variable behavior inhibitor.

“Oooh, interesting,” Ron said, turning the lens over in his hand before he also licked it, making a sour face.

“Fireballs?”

“Or summoned creatures,” Jeb said. “I was thinking giant worm-scarabs.”

“You guys are creeping me out,” Amanda said, watching them pour over the guts of the slave collar with growing excitement.

“You just wouldn’t understand.” Ron said, rolling his eyes.

Amanda raised a brow.

“I mean…” Ron glanced at Brett.

“What are you looking at me for? You’re the one that stepped in it.”

Jessica snorted, her eyes still closed.

Jeb tossed the inhibitor into the fire and pocketed the regulator. He could pour Myst into it, and the tiny metal box allowed it to thread outward in a fine spool of energy, seemingly good to go for hours.

That’ll be handy.

“Sleepy time folks,” Jeb said, holding out his hand. Ron reluctantly put the Myst lens back in his palm, and Jeb pocketed that too.

The night passed surprisingly peacefully, and Jeb used that as an opportunity to study the fire-fly lantern. He was able to find where the top of the lantern had been crimped on and gently loosen it, peeling off the top to reveal the delicate guts of the magic item.

Inside was a part that could siphon small amounts of Myst from whoever was in physical contact, which fed into some kind of capacitor that would ‘tick’, or discharge every time it reached a certain amount of Myst, and a several sandwiched pieces of ‘miniscule’ Fire, Fly, and Control lenses. Tiny pieces of lens no bigger than a grain of rice pressed together tightly.

Jeb suspected that if he were to manually try to feed Myst through it, he’d burn out the lenses immediately.

His voltage was far too high.

Hence the tiny siphon and capacitor.

It really was a good way of maximizing cost to effectiveness, seeing as all three lens sandwiches could probably fit on the tip of his finger, they must have been relatively inexpensive.

The most important thing was that the design gave Jeb a good idea on how to create a system that could create controllable monsters. Controllable anything, really.

Let’s see, we’re limited by the smallest part, which would be the Very Small control lens, about the size of a quarter. I could do...giant scarabs…giant worms…

To be on the safe side, he wouldn’t make anything bigger than a horse… No, I don’t think they’ll be useful like that.

There was no guarantee the creatures would be robust enough to assist them in any meaningful way. In a system where Attributes like Body were a factor, couldn’t people and monsters with lots of it swing way above their weight class?

How was he supposed to know how much Body a created creature had, anyway? Jeb doubted it would be very high from the get-go, so even if he made death-worms the size of buses, if they got torn through like tissue paper, he’d be at a loss.

If not summons, then what?

Jeb immediately thought of slapping the Control Lens together with the Pure Flame lens and making the equivalent of a lightsaber.

As drool-worthy as that was, it was little more than a fancy toy. Would a flame-sword be cool? Yes. Did they need a flame-sword? No.

Did they need an automagic smelter/shaper? Well, probably not, but it had more utility than a flame-sword.

Jeb’s idea was to take the pure flame lens and pair it with the Control Lens, along with the small regulator riding shotgun, with a Control lens salvaged from the lantern affixed to the  output on the regulator.

That should give me what I want…but I should test it before I get too far into this.

Jeb pried one of the five sandwiches of lenses out of the lantern, then peeled them apart using the edge of the blade. Once he had the miniscule lens separated, he gently attached it to the front of the pinhole where the little iron box released Myst.

Once that was done, he filled it with Myst and then disconnected himself from  it.

Sure enough, Jeb was able to control the small amount of Myst winding out of the regulator.

He used the thread of Myst to pick up progressively larger objects, until the rice-grain Control Lens snapped around five pounds, leaving the regulator spilling uncontrolled Myst into the atmosphere.

Okay, we’re gonna have to make the big Control lens pull double duty.

Jeb compared the size of his pure flame lens to the other with a frown. With careful cutting, I might be able to get four Very Small lenses out of this one. Just small enough to nestle beside the regulator.

Alright, let’s try this.

Jeb hardened a razor-sharp piece of toothed air and dragged it across the side of the lens, cutting it hot-dog style. He made sure to save the dust. Who knew what you could do with lens dust?

Once he cut it long ways, he cut it down the center, and got four roughly equal parts.

Jeb pulled out his file and got to work.

The hours went by as Jeb whittled, first working on the lens, then fitting it in beside the regulator, making sure each of them had a unique section of the Control Lens, and that they wouldn’t overlap with each other.

Then he went about