Chapter 693: Our Little Tank

Lilac didn’t seem to know what to do with herself.

The Thousand Door Bulwark had settled against her back so naturally that it almost looked ridiculous on her smaller frame. Its broad, overlapping plates stretched well past her shoulders, making her look even shorter than usual.

Grey stared at the contrast for a few seconds before the corner of his mouth started twitching.

"Genesis System really is an asshole."

Lilac looked over at him.

Grey pointed at the shield. "Gives the smallest girl here the biggest fucking shield. You’re gonna be our tank, L."

Lilac’s face turned bright red almost immediately. However, instead of shrinking away from the attention, she lowered her head and smiled.

This was a far cry from the nervous little expression Grey usually saw whenever somebody put her on the spot. There was enough real happiness in it that even Sabrina smiled as she watched.

Grey reached into storage for Ma Famille.

"Don’t."

The angelic woman’s voice cut through his thoughts so sharply that Grey stopped before the treasure ever appeared.

He frowned. ’What now?’

"Do not connect her to it yet. Your treasure is still limited by its current Rank, and what has formed between that girl and the Bulwark is already reaching toward Ascendant."

Grey’s fingers slowly relaxed. ’You’re saying Ma Famille would interfere?’

"Possibly. At best, it would offer very little that this connection does not already provide. At worst, it could force her growth through a Dominus-level structure and make her adapt around limitations that should not exist for her."

Grey’s expression tightened a bit as he looked at Lilac again.

"Wait until Ma Famille receives a Rank Up capable of allowing it to progress into Ascendant territory. Once it can follow her instead of asking her to follow it, then you may connect them without worrying about dulling what the Legacy has already started."

Grey hesitated a moment longer, then gave a small nod.

Annoying? Sure. But, not nearly annoying enough to justify gambling with something this rare.

He looked away from Lilac and over at James and Duke. Both of them had already tried approaching The Last Measure and Choirpiercer, and both had gotten absolutely nothing in response.

Grey’s face filled with open disappointment. "Look at you pieces of shit, really letting a girl go ahead of you."

James raised his middle finger without even bothering to look up from the table.

Duke followed a second later.

Grey shook his head like a disappointed father. "Pathetic."

Before either of them could answer, the next set of platforms began rising around Breejara.

Sabrina returned to her seat with much less hesitation than before. She still sat close to Grey, though her attention had already gone back to the auction stage, and the quiet determination in her eyes was stronger than it had been a few minutes ago.

Lilac had found something.

Sabrina wanted that too.

Whether it was a weapon, a Legacy or something else entirely didn’t matter to her. Somewhere in this absurd universe, there had to be something that would look at her and decide she was enough on her own.

Three new lots appeared beneath Breejara and Grey lost interest almost immediately.

Blueprints.

The first was for a modular defensive construct that could be reproduced at Established Class. He’s call it a poor man’s version of Lilac’s bulwark, but that would be giving it too much credit. The second covered a standardized ranged weapon, kind of like a gun-crossbow fusion, while the third looked to be some sort of low-cost transport mech, somewhat like a chariot built around interchangeable components. That third one was actually kind of cool, but it had too many weaknesses.

From Grey’s perspective, none of them were all that impressive. Yet, the bidding exploded so fast that he had to look at the numbers twice.

"Huh."

Axion-9 shifted a little. Somehow, he had ended up surrounded by the women again.

Grey looked over at him. "People are really fighting over that?"

Axion-9’s rings rotated once. "Of course."

Grey glanced back at the auction stage. "They’re so basic."

"They are reproducible."

Grey’s eyes moved back to him.

Axion-9 continued in the same matter-of-fact tone. "Arc II has significant army-building characteristics. There is a solo route through the Arc, but it has not been successfully used in many recorded iterations."

That got Grey’s attention. "So everybody builds armies instead."

"Effectively."

Axion-9 gestured toward the 3 blueprint lots as the bids kept climbing.

"Individually powerful treasures are useful, but scalable ones more valuable to most factions. A weapon that strengthens one Candidate may change a battle. A design that can be produced ten thousand times may change an entire campaign."

Grey leaned farther back into the couch.

That made sense. A little too much sense, unfortunately.

"Blueprints that are reliable, repeatable and easy to reproduce are particularly valuable during this Arc," Axion-9 went on. "If a faction can hand a design to hundreds of competent Mech Techs and receive nearly identical results, then these weaker blueprints can become the backbone of an army."

Grey’s gaze narrowed.

Under any other circumstances, that explanation would’ve made him very happy. His own submission held an entire progression path capable of producing Elemental mechs across multiple Classes. If armies were the dominant route through Arc II, then demand for it should be even higher than he’d expected.

There was only one problem.

Grey’s blueprints weren’t easy to reproduce. Far from it.

He had built them using everything he’d learned from Prometheus, Goblin engineering, Para Bot principles and his own increasingly strange understanding of Frames. On top of that, he’d thrown in enough little shortcuts that half the people looking at them probably wouldn’t even understand why certain pieces worked.

Sure, the designs themselves were complete. But, reproducing them accurately would take a Mech Tech skilled enough to follow details Grey had stopped consciously thinking about a long time ago.

His fingers tapped against the couch.

When he’d been thinking of the blueprints as just a way to get back at the elementals, that hadn’t mattered much. Now, it just might be. Though, only time would really tell.

Grey looked at Axion-9 again. "How much does difficulty affect value?"

Axion-9’s mechanical limbs paused for a fraction of a second. "Significantly."

Grey’s tapping stopped.

"If a blueprint requires exceptional skill to reproduce, then fewer factions can make practical use of it. Rarity increases theoretical value, while limited reproducibility decreases strategic value."

Grey stared at the auction stage.

Well... That was fucking annoying.

He’d been assuming that once the Elemental blueprint set showed up, every major faction with enough money would tear each other apart trying to buy it.

That was probably still true to some extent. However, if the people bidding were thinking about armies instead of individual masterpieces, then how hard his designs were to reproduce could turn into a serious weakness.

Grey’s expression slowly darkened.

The army-building requirement itself didn’t worry him. If Arc II needed Earth to build an army, then fine, he’d build one.

What bothered him was much simpler than that. He still needed over 100,000 Blue Cyber Cores for Prometheus.

If the auction decided his blueprints were brilliant but too difficult to reproduce, the number Grey had been counting on could come in a lot lower than he’d expected.

He stared at the bids climbing for 3 designs he thought were barely worth looking at. Then, he clicked his tongue.

"Fuck. This is what I get for being a genius."

For once, none of the others laughed.