Chapter 185: No Stone Unturned (2)

Jaxir’s disappointment lasted right up until he focused on the finished turret and its information finally became available.

The Construct Compendium hadn’t shown him any detailed stats beforehand. That made sense now that he understood how much the final result could change depending on the Conjurer building it, the quality of their mana, their Level, and how closely they followed or changed the underlying magic circle.

The screen that appeared above the silvery-blue weapon kept him staring for quite a while.

Name: Mana Repeater Turret

Grade: Common

Ammo: 100/100

Firing Rate: 3 shots per second

Total Damage Capacity: 10,000

Jaxir’s eyes narrowed as he reread the numbers, trying to decide just how annoyed he was supposed to be.

By normal standards, 3 shots a second was fast. However, Jaxir could already fire Cast far faster than that when he wanted to, especially after everything he’d learned about multi-casting and Attune.

On top of that, his staff cut the cost of a simple Cast so much that spending over 2,000 MP to make something slower than himself sounded terrible on paper.

The problem was that the comparison stopped making sense once he actually paid attention to the finished Construct.

Jaxir could feel the turret waiting beside him without needing any constant input from his mind. It was almost like a second caster that had been given one narrow job.

He didn’t need to stand behind it, aim it, or even stay particularly close once it was deployed. A simple pulse through the connection between them was enough to tell the weapon when to start firing.

That alone changed its value quite a bit.

He focused on the turret and gave it the smallest mental command he could manage.

The barrel swung a few degrees toward an empty section of cavern wall, following the direction Jaxir wanted without him having to guide every movement by hand.

He cancelled the command before it actually fired. Even so, the response was enough to make the annoyance on his face fade even more. Once it was deployed, the turret could handle most of the boring part on its own.

And there was more hidden inside it.

Jaxir spread his Attune through the finished Construct and followed the mana packed into the ammunition chamber. There, 100 individual portions had already split themselves into ready-made shots.

Tiny structures were wrapped around each one. They weren’t powerful enough to completely rewrite a projectile’s path after it was fired, but they were more than enough to make small corrections in the air.

Simply put, the turret had a homing function.

Jaxir leaned closer, studying those structures through the connection. The more carefully he looked, the more interesting they got.

His own Casts sent information back to him as they traveled through mana. These little projectiles carried a crude version of the same principle, gathering enough information about position and movement to adjust themselves without asking Jaxir what to do every fraction of a second.

It was nowhere near as sophisticated as what he could do himself. But, he had made this thing on his first attempt.

The mana running through its transparent frame had also inherited the characteristics of his own mana, so the entire weapon glowed with the same silvery-blue hue as his Light Mana.

Jaxir could feel traces of Twinkle hiding inside the Construct’s movement corrections as well, helping the shots change their paths after gathering information. He hadn’t designed any of that on purpose.

The Construct Compendium had taught him how to build a machine out of mana. After that, his own mana had decided what kind of machine it would be.

Jaxir’s gaze drifted down to the Black Light Fang resting against his chest.

What if he slowed the process down even further? If he changed the route his mana took through several sections of the circle and filtered enough of it through the fang while building, he suspected he could make the next turret out of Black Light instead.

That would probably cost a lot more than the 2,000 MP he’d already spent, and it might take twice as long to finish properly. However, picturing 100 autonomous Black Light rounds carrying the same piercing power he’d watched tear through this cavern made that sound a lot less unreasonable.

Jaxir rubbed his thumb against the fang while staring at the turret.

And that was just one change he’d come up with, minutes after making something he didn’t understand at all.

He hadn’t designed the firing mechanism, the ammunition structure, the targeting system, or the tiny calculations hidden in the homing function. All he’d done was follow the first lesson in a Legendary Compendium and produce a Common Construct with his Light Mana.

Yet, he had immediately found several ways the result might interact with abilities and mana characteristics the lesson had never accounted for. If that was the case, the ideas he hadn’t thought of yet were probably far more important than the ones already making him grin.

His attention shifted to the Reality Compendium lying beside him.

An illusion world could change what an enemy thought was around them. The Construct Compendium could store turrets until Jaxir wanted to deploy them.

So, what if he built an illusion that made attacks look like they were coming from fake locations, then hid several real turrets inside it before the battle even started? An enemy could spend the whole fight reacting to shooters that weren’t there, while the real ones attacked from positions they couldn’t trust.

Jaxir’s grin widened as the possibilities started to multiply.

He could make one turret visible and hide another. He could make an enemy think there were 5 when there were only 2. Eventually, he could create enough independent firing angles that even someone faster than him couldn’t safely decide where to dodge.

The whole idea got a lot nastier once he remembered that the Reality Compendium could raise a prepared illusion by one standard when it was deployed. And none of this even touched on what an Elite Construct might be capable of.

Of course, he directly ignored the fact that the Construct Compendium should be capable of the same thing. He assumed that it hadn’t yet upgraded because he hadn’t stored it into the compendium yet. So... how much better would it be once he did?

Then there were Mage Constructs.

Jaxir looked back at the Common Mana Repeater Turret and found that its Grade didn’t bother him all that much anymore.

If this was what the weakest successful version could do on his first serious attempt, then complaining about the 2,000 MP cost was premature. He needed to understand how far the thing could actually go before deciding whether it was expensive.

He reached toward the turret, the Construct Compendium open across his lap.

The moment he let them, the pages pulled at the finished weapon. Its transparent frame broke apart into thin streams of silvery-blue mana that sank into a blank section of paper.

A detailed image of the Mana Repeater Turret appeared there afterward, complete with its 100-round ammo count and every part of the structure exactly the way Jaxir had made it.

His first Construct was stored.

He turned the page, curious to see what the second lesson had to offer.

Nothing happened.

Jaxir tried again. The next several pages were sealed under a faint layer of golden light, and a short message appeared above them.

Further Construct teachings would stay locked until he successfully created a Mage-standard version of the first Construct.

He stared at the requirement for a moment, then chuckled and closed the book halfway.

"Fine, you stingy bastard. I get it."

The Mage Conjurer God wasn’t interested in letting someone skim through a Legendary Legacy and collect a thousand techniques they hadn’t mastered. Jaxir could respect that much, even if turning a Common turret into something worthy of the Mage standard sounded like it would eat an obscene amount of mana and time. For now, he had learned enough to know the Construct Compendium deserved a lot more attention later.

He pulled the Reality Compendium back into his lap.

Before deciding how useful the Legacy really was, Jaxir wanted to try all three parts of it himself. Besides, Reality had interested him far more than beast taming from the start.

He opened to the first teaching page and pushed a small amount of mana into the waiting circle, expecting some simple fake image, or maybe a projection of himself.

Instead, the page formed the outline of a human figure.

Jaxir leaned closer.

The first illusion was a puppet.