Chapter 112 Mass Evolution (7)

Two years, that is the time that my sensors had told me had passed while I was researching.

To say I was surprised would be an understatement. All I had been doing was researching, building prototypes, then researching again. It was a familiar routine but to lose track of time by that much was almost an impossibility.

My eyes narrowed as I calculated the possibility of my senses not reminding me of the time, it was almost a zero percent chance. Looking around I surveyed my surroundings, despite the years that had passed the dirt upon my feet, the grass that grew from it, nothing had changed. To my eyes it was as if only a day had passed, not even that.

Analyzing the grass and ground, I saw that it had not changed at all from the initial scan that I had done years ago. It was like time had never passed.

However I could not deny the truth, if all of my senses said that it was two years then two years it was.

It did not matter if it was more than two, if it was ten, a hundred, the time dilation of this realm compared to the realm I was in was in the thousands, years passing by in mere seconds of real time. The only reason that I was even surprised was because of the thought of how mortal I had felt. For so long I had relied on the inherent enhancements done by my creator not only to tell time, but for combat, for research, for crafting, to think that they may have failed was something that had never been considered.

However when I looked down at my gun, I knew my time was not wasted, even with all the worry it brought I could not help but feel pride at my accomplishment. A thought and the trigger was pulled, a great impact forcing my shoulder back and an explosion in the distance.

The power of my personal gun had been multiplied hundreds of times during the time that I had stayed in here but that was not the only thing that had changed.

During my search for more and more blueprints, integrating the best parts into my own, I had found prosthetics.

None as great as mine but each of them had things they did great at.

One of them had better stability of the arm then mine, which when integrated into my own allowed me to perform more precise modifications up to the manipulation of the very material.

This was what allowed me to integrate the modifications into my pistol. I had yet to actually start messing with the rifle that I had at my side. None of the modifications that I had made to my pistol were done to my rifle. I wanted to know what I was doing before I started to mess with my beloved rifle.

But now that I had these upgrades I could more accurately modify it. Looking around I found a rifle blueprint that I thought would go nice.

The first thing that I did was look through the blueprint, finding anything that it had done differently to decide on what I wanted to modify in my rifle.

Although the material needs were a problem, they weren't as much as I would have expected, the bullet generator that I had taken from one of the gun's blueprints allowed me to use the dirt below me to generate any material I needed as long as I knew the chemical makeup of it.

Memory was no problem to me, the hard drive that was my brain allowed for me to record anything that I learned, forgetting nothing.

Picking up the dirt from the ground I transmuted it into raw metal. While I could have transmuted it directly into the metal that I wanted, to do that would deprive it of the soul that would be hammered into it during the creation process.

With reverence I held the rifle up and slowly disassembled it, the parts flying this way and that. Each was organized into different groups. The shell into one place, the inner working further separated into the rough shape of what It would look like when reassembled.

The first thing that I did was look at the blueprint, although I could reconstruct it in my head it was nice to have a visual reference. While I was studying the blueprint my hands were not idle. Using the ore that I had previously created, I started to manipulate it according to the blueprint.

…

'Done' I thought to myself looking at the newly constructed rifle. It had taken me a while seeing as I had to create every material from scratch but I was satisfied.

Now that I had the weapon in front of me I could start with the modifications. Immediately I dismissed taking the trigger out, I knew that it could be more efficient if I had but it felt sacrilegious to do that. However the other options were still there. The powder for the bullets was of an entirely different make and though it was much more efficient, allowing the bullet to propel to mach 8 almost double what mine were capable of, it sacrificed its aether conductivity.

I could brute force it but it was an interesting problem that I wanted to solve, if I was able to solve it then I would most likely be able to double the force and speed of it.

My first thought was the inner workings of the rifle. If I was unable to alter the bullet then maybe I could alter the rifle so that it would alter the bullet for me.

'Ah, that would work,' I thought to myself. The powder only needed to be contained in aether resistant metal to work but what if after it had already ignited I changed the composition of the bullet and then reinforced it.

My hands got to work immediately, implementing the idea. Of course I did not do this to my rifle, instead I implemented my changes onto the replica that I had made.

…

BOOM

"SHIT" The rifle exploded in my hands sending shrapnel flying into my face and body. Luckily my reflexes were fast enough to throw the rifle away and back off before they had made their way to my body.

I was lucky that I did my testing away from my still disassembled rifle, during all of my building I had neglected to reassemble my rifle deeming it unnecessary.