Calm before the Storm

When Kaz saw the notification, it dawned on him how little time he had and how much he had to prepare. He pocketed his bike and shifted back to his base with his temporal shift skill and began to prepare. First, he erected a huge light shield around his base, he knew it wouldn't stop them but it would at least slow them down. Next he began to think of something to help combat them, so far he had a few ways of knowing how to kill them, either using sunlight, which is not possible currently, absorbing their energy or destroying their nexus gland.

He wasn't able to absorb their energy from afar but he could at least work out a ranged defense. He began working on a gun of some sort by first creating the bullets. Since he did not have access to bullets, he went with a magnetic propulsion design. The bullet was fairly easy to manufacture which brought him to the next step.

With the bullets ready, Kaz's next challenge was to develop a firearm capable of firing them with precision and power. Drawing upon his integrated knowledge of manufacturing and electrical engineering, Kaz envisioned a firearm that would match the innovative design of his bullets.

The firearm Kaz envisioned would have to be robust yet sensitive enough to handle the Magnetic propulsion bullets, or MPB for short.. He imagined a rifle, its barrel crafted from high-tensile metal scavenged from the ruins. The interior of the barrel would be lined with a series of electromagnetic coils, a design inspired by railgun technology. This setup would create a controlled magnetic field capable of propelling the bullets at incredible speeds without using traditional gunpowder.

Kaz worked tirelessly, meticulously crafting each component of the firearm. The heart of the weapon was its firing mechanism. It featured a chamber designed to house the bullets securely, coupled with a highly sensitive trigger system that allowed for variable firing rates; a gentle squeeze for a slow, controlled shot, or a hard pull for a rapid-fire mode.

As Kaz assembled the weapon, integrating a comfortable stock made from a form of silicone that he could create, and a precision scope crafted from the clearest crystals made from empty nexus crystals, he felt a deep connection to his creation. Every part was a testament to his ingenuity and determination, his will to survive in this desolate world materialized in this tool of defense and empowerment.

After hours of meticulous work, the rifle was complete. It was a thing of beauty and power, a harmonious blend of old-world knowledge and the limited materials he had access to on this planet. Kaz loaded it with a magazine of the bullets he made, feeling the weight and balance of the weapon in his hands, a symbol of his growing mastery over the elements of his strange, hostile home.

With a deep breath to steady his hands and calm his racing heart, Kaz took aim at a makeshift target in the distance. He squeezed the trigger, releasing a bullet that traveled with a silent but potent force, hitting the target with pinpoint accuracy.

[New Skill Acquired: {Weapon Manufacturing lvl. 1}]

[This is a skill from a subset of skills under the fabrication skill focusing on weapons, mastering the subset skills increases the strength and complexity of weapons made using the fabrication skill.]

The new information of skill subsets intrigue Kaz prompting him to ask a question.

"How many skills are there for fabrication?"

[Fabrication has a total of 6 subset skills as listed below:

Material Science

Electrical Engineering

Weapon Manufacturing

Architecture

Alchemy

Mechanical engineering

Currently, your fabrication incorporates 4 of this, original 3 under manufacturing. In order for your fabrication skill to evolve, you will need to find a way to incorporate alchemy and weapon manufacturing into your fabrication skill.]

Kaz wanted to investigate ways of combining these elements but decided against it for now and continued with his preparation. As he started putting away the materials on his workspace that he had been testing he noticed something, one of the empty nexus crystals shook slightly when his hand was near. He brought his hand close to it again, and it attempted to move to his hand, but the pull was too weak.

Kaz became intrigued yet confused, he went and picked up the crystal to examine it, and noticed it was doing something similar to what the husks had done, it started to try and pull energy from Kaz, but was too weak with its pull. Kaz's eyes widened at the discovery.

'If I can somehow incorporate these with my bullets, I may be able to make them more effective even if I don't destroy their nexus glands!'

Kaz began to experiment with the crystals, and realized they had a special property, in that they weren't a physical vacuum, but an energy vacuum, which is why they accumulate nexus energy so well. They would absorb energy due to the lack of energy within them, but their material makeup has a property of converting energy into nexus energy, or straight absorbing nexus energy. He began to refine the crystal structure to the point that it's vacuum force was much stronger, but not to the extent that it would overpower his ability to control his energy, but it was stronger than a husk's pull.

He put a normal full nexus crystal next to it and it immediately shot to it and absorbed its energy immediately. He began to incorporate this with his bullet design but came to some issues with it affecting the railgun system. What he ended up doing was encasing the bullet in an alloy made with energy crystals that seemed to repel energy transfer and comes off after the bullet leaves the barrel resulting in optimal speeds of exits.

Finally Kaz set up another makeshift target with an energy crystal in it and shot the bullet. Kaz's eyes widened upon seeing the bullet steer itself to the nexus crystal when shot at the target. He had effectively made homing bullets that drained the target's energy and stored it within the bullet. This could be used within his defenses and even his spear to not only kill the husks quicker, but get their energy from wasting away. Kaz immediately implemented his spear with this newly refined crystal that he called a nexus core.

[Skill level up: {Weapon Manufacturing lvl. 2}]

Kas glanced at the notification then got another idea that may solve how to combine weapon manufacturing and fabrication together. He began to work on a tracking turret. First he had to make a tracking and computer module to direct different servos and the targeting system he would need to design. To help with targeting husks, he implemented the nexus core which seemed to home towards objects with nexus energy, but calibrated the system not to discharge at him or fire at him were he to be in the target range.

As planned out this blueprint he incorporated his railgun design into the turret and once he saved the blueprint he got another notification.

[Skill fusion has taken place, {Weapon Manufacturing} will now be incorporated with your {Fabrication Skill}. While this won't cause your skill to evolve right away, it does allow you to combine your weapon workbench into your fabrication interface and produce blueprints of weapons through the interface.]

Until now, His weapon manufacturing skill was separated from his fabrication skill, so he would not be able to incorporate it into builds, but by designing a machine in his weapon manufacturing interface, it crossed those boundaries and caused the skills to combine.

Now with his newly upgraded Fabrication skill he started creating his turrets as well as creating a few backup plans throughout his base, which was more reminiscent of a complex. Beyond his light walls he started constructing barbed wiring and even pit falls into stakes fused with the nexus cores, and while doing so he unlocked another skill.

[New Skill Acquired: {Tower Defense lvl. 1}]

[When in your own territory, you are able to control all assets from an overview map system and are able to move them and place them how you see fit.]

Kaz grinned. "That would have been useful before I finished setting everything up."

After finishing up he went to his makeshift snipers nest and pulled out his railgun as the last strands of sunlight disappeared behind the horizon.

[Time of day is now Night.]