SSS-Rank Engineer: Only I Can Create Legendary Weapons

The clouds limped across the clear blue sky lazily, they were back on the road. Percy stared up, reclining against the soft seat of the carriage. He was trying to relax and clear his mind to think, arrange his ideas, and form a plan.

But soon the carriage hit a bump in the road and his head bobbed up and down. He cursed inwardly, straightening his back, and looking down at the jammed Spellbolt on his lap. There had to be a way to stop it from jamming.

He started disassembling it from the prods of the crossbow, the two curved arms that held the string. Except the Spellbolt didn't have any strings, and the prods were useless except for providing extra space to draw patterns.

After taking off the prods he twisted the stock of the crossbow, separating it into two halves: the long cylindrical stock, and the handle and trigger portion of the crossbow.

He would analyse it starting from the handle and trigger. If he was looking for what caused the jams then that was a good place to start.

There were three things that could cause jams in Spellbolts, he classified them as follows: Weak intent, Spirit energy draw, and Misalignment of patterns.

Weak intent he could check from the trigger. This was the point where your intent to fire was read by a circle called the Ice-fire circle. This reads your desire to harm based on a scale from I don't want to hurt you to die motherfucker.

If your intent was too weak then you couldn't activate the Spellbolt. It was originally so high that some people couldn't even fire the non-lethal shots. So Percy and Terra reduced the scale.

He checked the circle and troubleshooted it with some of the tests he came up with while studying the circle.

"It seems to be reading my intent properly," he murmured quietly. Thalos was sleeping right next to him. Percy didn't want to wake Thalos up after he spent last night on watch.

He then checked the shot selection of the handle. Here he had drawn a circle to help choose what type of shot would be taken: lethal, non-lethal, and disable. It was called the Branch circle.

There were three Aetherite lines drawn from this Branch circle that ran along the stock of the crossbow, towards the power source of the Spellbolt, the Spellcore.

When you pressed the trigger, your intent would be read and passed onto shot selection, and one of the shot types would be chosen, depending on how much killing you wanted to do.

He tested all three lines and each of them lit up properly, so he connected the trigger back to the stock and decided to check if it was a Misalignment flaw again.

Misalignment was caused when the multiple Circle lines that crossed each other and were used at the exact same time. Spirit energy would clash in these lines and could actually cause an explosion if the power was too high.

Not in these Spellbolts though, Terra made sure that these couldn't cross a certain range of power with each shot type.

He focused back on the stock, he couldn't check the Spellcore embedded inside the white wood because it was sealed inside. But he did check the circles around it and made sure they were drawing power properly.

Every circle had two basic components: the circle that surrounded the patterns and contained the spirit energy (which is obvious from the name), and the tap.

Taps were the point where the circle drew Spirit energy to cast spells, whether it was from a human or the earth itself.

Every circle drawn on the Spellbolt had a tap. The Ice-fire circle tapped a small amount of Spirit energy and intent from your finger when you pulled the trigger, the Branch circle used the small amount drawn from the finger to work too.

But to shoot, there was a larger amount of Spirit energy needed. That was where the Spellcore came in. By placing the bow against the ground, the Spellcore could absorb and store a certain amount of Spirit energy for about a month.

So when you wanted to fire, after your intent was read and a shot type was selected, then another circle would draw energy from the Spellcore and fire.

But with three different shot types, the complexity of the circle that drew Spirit energy from the Spellcore increased.

This circle was patented and made by yours truly. Terra helped a lot too, of course. It was a multi-layer circle called the Earth-avenger circle.

Making the Earth-avenger circle didn't make it easier to understand, unfortunately. It still suffered from the same problems all multi-layered circles had: random misalignment.

Only some parts of the complex circle would be used when shooting, but for some reason other parts would activate too.

"How is there spirit energy in the non-lethal lines when I only used lethal shots yesterday?"

He sighed and just reassembled the equipment, not bothering to check for Spirit energy draw in the prods. He already knew what was causing his problems.

He instead began to focus on the quest he completed from Tartarus.

━━━━━━ ✦ Optional Quests ✦ ━━━━━━

– Hunt down two Ashfang Lizards (Given by Tartarus, Complete!): The god of depravity and perversion delights in your work. Gather four Ashfangs. Rewards: One Rank 1 customizable reward, five additional stat points, the knowledge of how to make the Crimsonfire curse mark.

✧────────────────────────────✧

He immediately allocated three points to his strength and two to agility. The Rank 1 reward was negligible honestly, what he was focused on was the Crimsonfire curse mark.

[Do you wish to obtain knowledge of the curse mark? Y/N]

[Goddess of the Night thinks there will be no side effects to learning. But she knows there will be consequences for using this curse.]

She can fucking talk to me?! Why hasn't she said much in the last thirteen fucking years?!

[Goddess of Night, Nyx, says it's tedious and she thought he didn't need any help since Perseus already had his big-ass brain.]

He let out an offended huff. That was very true though. He turned back to the prompt still floating in the air.

[Do you wish to obtain knowledge of the curse mark? Y/N]

He accepted in his mind and braced himself for some type of eldritch revelation of knowledge. But the words and pictures seemingly flowed into his memory like water and filled gaps that he never knew were there.

He opened his eyes, they shifted to a grey color and widened as he understood. The curse mark was a terrifying weapon that called on demons and their warped magic.

It looked like a tattoo of swirling patterns, one that was cut into the skin of a living or dead person. It was a curse that killed entire bloodlines.

Carve this into some unlucky guy, and when you activated it, everyone related to that guy going back two generations would burst into flames.

Unfortunately that was all he got from the knowledge given to him. Tartarus did not reveal how it works, or if there were any downsides to using this.

Why the fuck did he give me this then? I wanted to study and dissect how they work but this is vastly different from Hermetics.

There had to be something he could do with it though. He wouldn't write it down for fear that it would activate.

[God of Depravity, Tartarus, is disappointed in your lack of foresight. He returns to his required slumber.]

Percy's heart nearly jumped out of his throat. The fucker was watching him this whole time. Can they read thoughts from this far?

He glanced around himself suspiciously, until the system screen popped up again.

[Goddess of Night, Nyx, facepalms at your obvious expressions. She returns to her required slumber.]

[God of Possibilities, Aether, watches with interest. He is not sure what Tartarus is planning yet.]

Percy cursed under his breath and tried to control his facial expressions. However this thing worked, it only showed Percy the thoughts that the gods wanted him to see.

Nyx hinted to him that Tartarus was just reading his expressions to know what he was thinking. And Aether was… just stating the obvious? He had no idea what Aether was trying to tell him.

But another prompt appeared.

━━━━━━ ✦ Optional Quests ✦ ━━━━━━

– Use the curse mark (Given by Aether): Your newest reward will need to be used soon. Use the curse mark on an enemy. Rewards: One Rank 3 customizable reward, ten additional stat points.

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