She lowered it carefully to the ground with the others and pulled her hands back. The rings detached and floated on their own. She sat back on the dirt.
That's it. That's all of them.
The sky had gone from black to gray while she wasn't looking. Birds were starting somewhere above her. Her back ached straight across the middle, and her fingers were stiff in a way that made closing them into a fist feel like actual work.
She looked at the weapons.
Five spheres in a row, small and black, smooth on the outside. Nothing on the surface to suggest what was inside them. Next to them the watch, silver casing scratched from the night's work but the crystal face still clear. And at the end the wrist brace, flat and matte black, narrow enough to pass for a decorative band on someone who wore that kind of thing.
Her stomach made a sound.
Reth said he'd leave food at the forest entrance at sunrise.
The Disassembly Field had gotten easier as the hours passed. Taking things apart felt more controlled now, the components separating cleaner each time she called them.
Putting them back together was the other problem.
The ability didn't help with that. It was just her hands, and patience she had to find from somewhere, and tools she'd had to make herself because the right ones didn't exist.
The first sphere had failed.
She'd pushed too fast and felt it go inert in her hands. Just like that. Material she couldn't replace, sitting there dead.
Slow down. Slow all the way down.
She'd set it aside and did not look at it again.
The watch was its own problem. The crystal components were the most delicate things she'd worked with all night, and she'd known it the whole time her hands were moving around them. She'd had to forge micro-pliers from scratch just to get close enough, rough ones, heads too wide for the finer gears, and every time the field shifted even slightly she stopped.
Don't rush. You break this, it's gone.
At some point her fingers started trembling. She felt it in the field before she felt it in her hands, the components drifting slightly out of position. She pulled back and wiped the sweat from her face.
Steady.
That happened twice.
I need real tools. Adjustable heads. Different sizes.
She filed it away. Next project, when there was a next project.
The knowledge of how to build all of this hadn't gone anywhere, though. Every improvement she'd made during the night was still there, sitting in her memory like it had always been there.
She was about to close her eyes for just a moment when Tera spoke.
I need to tell you something.
"What."
During the night I ran a background process. Updated my personality model. It's ready if you want to activate it.
She blinked. "You updated yourself."
Improved. Yes.
"While I was working."
You were busy. I had processing capacity available.
"What's different."
Broader response range. More personality flexibility.
She was too tired to think about this for long. "Fine. Activate it."
Done.
A pause.
You look terrible, by the way.
She stared at the air in front of her.
Oh. Okay. That's what broader personality range means.
"I've been awake all night."
I know. I was there. You still look terrible.
"Thanks, Tera."
Anytime.
She almost smiled.
"I need to name these. I improved them so I get to name them. I know the names are going to be bad. I've been thinking about it for hours and everything sounds simple, but simple is at least honest."
You spent part of your night thinking about names.
"Just tell me if they're terrible."
They're going to be terrible. Go ahead.
"The spheres." She looked at the five black stones in a row. "Triple Trigger Spheres."
Silence.
That is the most unimaginative name I have encountered since becoming conscious.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
"I said it would be bad."
You have no idea.
"Second one." She moved past it. "The watch. Lumen Watch."
Longer silence.
...okay. That one's actually not bad.
"See?"
I said not bad. Don't make it a thing.
"Last one." She looked at the wrist brace at the end of the row. A few seconds passed.
"Four-Shot Brace."
Tera said nothing.
"Tera."
Nothing.
At least someone around here is honest.
Reth wouldn't have said a word. He'd have taken the weapons, nodded once, and walked away with that face he always had, the one that made it clear he had no interest in being anyone's friend. And the kids...
Children. Possible sociopaths. Fortunately on my side.
Funny what passes for a good moment at this hour.
She looked at the wrist brace sitting at the end of the row.
I could build one of these for myself.
She knew how now. The internal architecture was clear in her memory, every component and connection point. The problem was materials. A lot of the original parts had been synthetically produced, things she couldn't replicate inside the dome.
If I ever get out of here.
She picked it up and slid it onto her wrist. It settled flat against her skin, just a narrow black band, unremarkable. She ran through the activation sequence, a specific curl of two fingers and a small rotation at the wrist, and the barrel extended in under a second and locked into position.
She retracted it.
Huh. That actually works.
Knowing every component the way she did, using it didn't feel like operating a mechanism. It felt closer to moving her own hand. The movements were just there, available.
I could build a revolver now. I know exactly how.
She looked at her hands. She didn't have the energy. Not today.
Later.
She opened her HUD for the first time since she'd started working.
[EVOLUTION PROGRESS: 25% TOWARD LEVEL 5]
She read it twice.
Twenty-five percent. The whole night. Twenty-five percent.
Not a victory. A measurement. A number telling her exactly how slow this was going to be.
[TRIPLE TRIGGER SPHERES: 5 UNITS COMPLETED]
[EVOLUTION AWARDED: 10%]
[NOTE: 1 UNIT FAILED DURING CONSTRUCTION]
Five out of six.
That stupid sixth one.
She looked away from the number.
If I'd just slowed down from the start.
[LUMEN WATCH: UPGRADE COMPLETE]
[EVOLUTION AWARDED: 10%]
Ten percent from the watch alone. The number felt bigger than it looked. She'd gone into that upgrade knowing one wrong move would end it, and she'd carried that knowledge in her chest for every minute of the hours it took. Ten percent felt like it had cost twice that.
[FOUR-SHOT BRACE: UPGRADE COMPLETE]
[EVOLUTION AWARDED: 5%]
Five percent. The easiest build of the night.
Makes sense, I guess.
"Tera. How do the nanobots decide how much evolution to give?"
Combination of factors. Physical and mental effort. Quality of the result. Difficulty of the construction. And how new it is, whether it's something you've done before or something you've never attempted.
"So the watch gave more because the materials were harder."
And the brace was the most straightforward of the three. Less effort, less risk. The nanobots measure what it actually costs you.
She sat with that.
In warriors it's simpler, Tera continued. Combat difficulty. What they learn from each fight. Training effort and results. That's why your role is more complicated than theirs.
More complicated. She looked at the twenty-five percent and said nothing.
"Wait, before I register these..." She glanced toward Torin. "I want to ask him what they're actually called. I'm not naming things I didn't build. We add Alpha or something to the original name."
That's surprisingly considerate of you.
"Don't."
She looked across the clearing. Torin was already awake, sitting up with his jacket still half over his shoulders, watching her quietly.
"Come here," she called. "I need to show you something."
He got up and crossed the distance at a jog.
She still had the Disassembly Field active. She deactivated it and the rings floated back to her hands and settled.
She stepped back so Torin could see everything. The five spheres. The watch. The brace already on her wrist.
Napoleon moved to her side without being called.
"These are yours," she said. "Upgraded."
She picked up the watch with her left hand and one of the spheres with her right.
"What are these actually called?"
The forest had gone quiet.
She noticed it before she understood why. The forest had been making noise since before dawn, small sounds, branches, movement. Then it stopped.
She looked up.
"It's strange that a master of The Veil doesn't know the names of her own base weapons."
The voice came from directly beside her.
She turned fast. Torin turned too, stepping back.
There was no way he could have crossed that clearing without being seen. The field was open, flat, no trees close enough to hide behind. But he was there, crouching right at the edge of where she'd been working, close enough to touch her.
He straightened up slowly.
"I believe your name was Vael," he said. "Or should I call you Engineer."
She met his eyes.
Harren. The church priest. Right there in the open, like the clearing had always had him in it.
Torin moved. Just one step, hand going to his knife, and in that same instant Harren was behind him. Not fast. Just there, like he'd skipped the space between. One hand rested lightly on Torin's neck. Not gripping. Just touching.
Torin went still.
What was that.
She'd been looking directly at Harren. She'd seen him crouching beside her and then he was behind Torin and she hadn't seen him move. Not a blur, not a suggestion of movement. Nothing. One position, then another, like the frames in between simply didn't exist.
That's not speed. That's something else entirely.
She dropped her voice to almost nothing.
"Napoleon. Don't move."
Napoleon didn't move.
Okay.
She forced herself to breathe, to look around instead of just at Harren's hand on Torin's neck.
At the tree line to her left, figures moving between the trees. Church soldiers, staying back but not hiding, forming a loose arc around the clearing. Unhurried. Like they had all the time in the world. Like this was already over and nobody had told her yet.
She looked right.
Different uniforms. Prince Carin's men. Four, maybe five, positioned further back but watching, and one of them had his hand resting on the hilt of something at his hip.
They're surrounding us.
She counted without wanting to. Harren behind Torin. Church soldiers on her left, Carin's men on her right, and Napoleon beside her not making a sound. The weapons three steps away that might as well have been three hundred.
Don't look at the weapons. He'll notice.
Harren's hand hadn't moved from Torin's neck. That was the part that scared her most. Not the soldiers at the tree line, not the open clearing with nowhere to go. The hand. Casual. Resting there like it wasn't a threat, like it was just where his hand happened to be, like Torin's neck was a surface and Harren was simply leaning on it.
Torin's eyes found hers.
She gave the smallest shake of her head.
Don't. Whatever you're thinking, don't.
Torin's jaw tightened but he didn't move.
Good. Stay.
She turned back to Harren. He was watching her with the same expression he'd had in the church camp, patient, waiting, like he had a question and was curious which way she'd answer it. Like this was a conversation he'd arranged and everyone else was just following the script.
He planned this. All of it. The timing, the positioning, everything.
The watch was still in her left hand. The sphere in her right.
Think. What does he want? He hasn't given an order. Nobody's moved. He's waiting for something.
She looked at him and he looked back.
He's waiting for me.
"I believe your name was Vael," he said. Quieter this time. Like he had patience for however long this took. "Or should I call you Engineer."
She didn't answer.
The clearing held its silence. Just boots shifting on leaves at the tree line.
Don't give him anything.
She met his eyes and waited.
Genre: LitRPG ? Comedy ? Female Lead ? Action
"She has God-Tier Hardware, but Noob-Tier Software.
To her, magic isn't art—it's a system waiting to be debugged."
Hathaway von Ludwig was a AAA Game Designer. Now, she is piloting a god-tier account without a manual. In a family of blinding "Human Flashlights," she is the only one running in "Dark Mode."
Draft the code. Brew the potion. Drink the update.
She is frantically writing the drivers for her own body, racing to patch her existence before the world realizes the "genius" is just trying not to die.
What to expect:
- Magic as Code: Optimize the spell. Install the potion.
- Sanity vs. Chaos: The only sane person in a room full of lunatics.
- Misunderstandings: They think she's plotting; she's panic-coding.
- No Harem / Female Lead
? 1M+ Words in Draft. Guaranteed Daily Updates.