Asharub_Pervez

Raen Solis has never known comfort—only rejection, debt, and failure. Trapped in a crumbling apartment in the lower districts of Velden, he survives by doing shady game-boosting gigs and digital scraps, praying each day won’t be his last.

Then one night, a sudden power surge from his worn-down rig knocks him out cold. When he comes to, a glowing interface hovers before him:

[SYSTEM LINKED: SKILL SHOP INTERFACE]
Any skill. Any mastery. For a price.

The Skill Shop System Runs on Cash

The first light of dawn crept across the Arkbound testing ground, spilling gold over steel as NEAR-01 and NEAR-02 stood still at the newly enclosed two-acre plot. Both bots had halted at the edge, their forms upright but clearly exhausted.

CLANG.CLANG.

Both bots dropped into a crouch, mechanical arms folding in as sparks briefly popped from their joints. A clean five-meter gap sat between them—intentional, precise.

Raen stood still, eyes focused on what they'd built.

The entire area had been walled, marked, reinforced. No machines on Earth—let alone two newly activated prototypes—should've been able to do that overnight.

"They actually did it," Raen said, almost to himself. "A full month of construction work… in a single night."

Korin's eyes went wide. "Wait. You're serious?"

"They were never supposed to last that long," Nyra said, stepping closer. "We didn't even run long-term stress tests!"

Lira blinked rapidly. "And they weren't built from scraps. These were real components, our best—assembled by hand."

Saelyn's voice cracked with disbelief. "I watched them carry reinforced steel like it was foam. This isn't efficiency… this is a breakthrough."

Raen turned to Korin. "Bring the lift. Let's get them back to the lab."

Inside Arkbound Lab.

Both bots were gently laid out on twin diagnostic tables. Raen wasted no time, opening their motor cores. He waved for quiet as he inspected the systems.

"Motors are fried," he confirmed. "They weren't rated for this kind of constant strain."

"More like extended maximum performance. They ran at 100% for six hours."

Raen glanced at everyone. "We built these with good parts—but we didn't think they'd need to be this durable."

As he tapped into his Electrical and Mechanical Mastery, blueprints formed in his mind—formulas, optimizations, adjustments only someone with mastery could pull together on the fly.

"I'm replacing the internal drives with a graphene-laced tri-core motor, paired with a quantum-regulated torque regulator. It'll cool faster, run smoother, and re-balance output on the fly."

Lira just stared. "You're making a motor that thinks?"

Raen grinned. "More like a motor that knows when not to die."

After several hours, the new motor cores were installed. Then he stood up and connected to NEAR-01's systems.

"This one," Raen said, nodding to NEAR-01, "is going to upgrade that one."

"And that one," he said, pointing to NEAR-02, "will begin creating the next units."

"Wait, what?" Nyra shouted. "They can build each other now?"

Korin slowly whispered, "This is no longer a robotics lab. This is something else."

Raen smiled and moved toward the door.

"Conference room. Tonight. I'll explain everything."

Dawn of Grit and Sparks