Chapter 618: Crafting in a Volcano (1)

The moment Grey unfolded the Cyber Mat against the volcanic wall, his attention split cleanly between the blueprint hovering in front of him and the battle unfolding below.

Brad had already stopped treating the weakened Fire Elementals like serious opponents, his hammer crashing down every time one managed to gather enough flame to reform, but the two Earth Elementals were forcing him to pay considerably more attention.

One of them ripped a pillar of volcanic stone from beneath the lava and swung it across the crater, only for Brad to meet it head-on with the hammer and send cracks exploding through the entire thing.

The recoil travelled through Brad’s arms and into his body, but instead of being thrown backward, his Linear Frame seemed to swallow the force and turn it into something useful.

That was what the hammer had wanted from the beginning, a path that didn’t spread power outward like The Relentless had forced it to, but instead took everything into one direct route and carried it through the body without hesitation. With Ma Famille finally letting Brad understand more of what the weapon was asking from him, every swing looked cleaner than the last.

Grey grinned and turned back toward the blueprint.

That same principle was exactly what the first ring needed.

At the Proving Class, a Linear Frame’s greatest advantage was simple direction, taking a signal from one point to another with as little waste as possible, which translated into focus, straightforward power, and ridiculous acceleration when properly specialized.

As it developed, that directness became harder to interrupt and increasingly capable of maintaining a chosen route even under interference, so Grey designed the Linear Ring to reinforce both traits at once.

Instead of increasing raw power directly, the ring would compress whatever Neural signal passed through it into a narrower, cleaner route while shutting down unnecessary branches before they could steal resources.

If Grey committed to an Ability through his Linear Frame, the ring would make that commitment far more absolute, increasing throughput while making outside interference, hesitation, and competing Frame impulses much less capable of knocking the process off course.

Below, Amara stepped directly into an Earth Elemental’s fist.

The attack passed through her chest without disturbing so much as a strand of hair, though her right arm remained completely solid as she slid forward with the momentum of the strike. Her hand disappeared into the Elemental’s torso up to the wrist, and when she withdrew it, the creature staggered as several internal fractures suddenly spread outward from somewhere beneath its rocky shell.

Brad looked over. "That is deeply fucking disturbing."

"Thank you," Amara said pleasantly.

Grey laughed under his breath and moved to the second ring.

Branching Frames worked almost opposite to Linear ones, trading overwhelming direction for flexibility, multitasking, and the ability to take one incoming signal and produce several useful responses from it. Even at low Classes they were naturally suited to agility, defensive adaptation, and managing several Abilities at once, while continued advancement made the connections between those options more flexible until one action could transition into another without the same rigid separation most Frames suffered from.

Grey designed the Branching Ring around exactly that.

Instead of merely giving him more pathways, it would temporarily duplicate the beginning of a Neural signal and let Grey route the copies toward several prepared options before deciding which one would actually receive the majority of the energy.

It was basically biological buffering, allowing him to begin three or four possible reactions to the same situation and commit only once he knew which response mattered, while weaker branches died off without wasting much energy.

"That’s fucking disgusting," Grey murmured approvingly.

The Fire Elemental Brad had just crushed gathered itself behind him again, only for another hammer swing to erase most of its torso before it could attack. Unfortunately, the Earth Elemental in front of him used that opening to drive both hands into the lava, and a wave of black stone erupted beneath Brad’s feet hard enough to launch him into the air.

He twisted halfway through the flight and slammed the hammer downward, sending a force through the rising stone that shattered the entire formation before landing heavily on what remained.

The third ring was Recursive, which Grey understood better now than he had when he first learned about the Frame Types. Recursive Frames weren’t naturally exceptional at one action, they became exceptional by repeating it, carving successful patterns deeper and deeper until something that once required conscious effort became practically instinctive.

As they advanced, that same looping nature also made them increasingly difficult to cripple, since disrupting one portion of the Frame mattered less when established routes could repeat, reinforce, or eventually rebuild the pattern.

Silver Maw had already given Grey an obscene amount of inspiration there.

The Recursive Ring would record successful Neural sequences and immediately feed a cleaner version back into the next repetition, effectively letting every use of an Ability become a tiny training session for the next. More importantly, if a signal encountered damage or resistance, the ring could loop information backward and attempt an alternate version of the same route, giving Grey a limited form of Neural redundancy without forcing his actual Frame to develop ten different pathways for everything.

Amara finally stopped playing defensively.

The Earth Elemental swung at her head, and she let the fist pass through her face before stepping inside its guard and sinking both hands through its chest. For the first time, her calm expression sharpened slightly, then the Elemental’s body jerked as she altered whatever she was doing inside it and withdrew just before the entire upper torso collapsed inward.

Grey’s eyebrows rose.

"Yeah, that’s hot."

That left Resonant.

The Resonant Frame was what Grey had understood best for the longest time, even if Prometheus had eventually made the idea far more complicated than it had any right to be.

Resonant Frames could extend their influence beyond the body, interact with other Frames and external energy, synchronize distant processes, and eventually impose enough of themselves onto the surrounding world that the difference between internal and external control started becoming blurry.

Its progression naturally deepened that control, so Grey didn’t bother making the Resonant Ring increase range alone.

Range was easy, but it was control that was invaluable.

The Resonant Ring would take every external signal Grey projected and constantly compare it against the response coming back, adjusting frequency, intensity, and rhythm until the connection approached the most efficient possible resonance.

Instead of Grey brute-forcing control over wind, metal, another Neural Frame, or whatever other ridiculous thing he decided belonged to him that day, the ring would help him find the exact rhythm that made the target easiest to influence.

Grey leaned back slightly and looked at the four completed ring architectures floating above the Cyber Mat.

Linear focused intention.

Branching delayed and multiplied options.

Recursive refined the useful of repetition.

Resonant perfected connection over distance.

That left just one. Grey looked toward his pinky ring.

Grey really didn’t know much about this ring. It had some being very useful to him a long while ago. He didn’t even quite understand what it was meant to accomplish, but over time, he had realized it wasn’t nearly as special as he thought it was. He could use it.