The Vortex Container is a magically broken device, in a good way that is. To accelerate a person’s mental progression by nearly ten times the original amount of time required is already a world-shattering discovery.
According to what Luon had found out so far about the Vortex container it was first developed half a century ago by an engineer from Novera Corporation.
Within the company were many different divisions with their own research papers and based on their department’s merits, the funding was scaled accordingly. No one knew the engineer who developed the Vortex Container. However, they did know it wasn’t the person who publicly announced it.
Kathal Raizen, on paper, was the developer of the Vortex Container. Although later he was praised by many for bringing the idea to the world, his colleagues didn’t think so.
He was notoriously known to the engineering society as a bandit and a thief. He had collaborated with many engineers in their projects, but due to a series of events, he magically became the founder of many important devices.
The reason he wasn’t caught in the act was that his father was the second most important person in Novera Corporation. Using his backings, he pressured other scientist and engineers who were reluctant to have him. He became the sponsor and the lead of those projects and with this known to many people the origin of the Vortex Container vanished from everyone’s sights.
Kathal became extremely arrogant because of the Vortex Container. When everyone first tried it during the demo period, they were shocked at its performance causing him to smile as he saw the looks of frustration and admiration from his fellow peers. Using his newly acquired wealth received from the government to fund the project, he squandered a majority of it and caused many problems.
Later Kathal mysteriously died, and the news reported his cause of death was from drunkenly stumbling down the stairs.
Because of his actions, rather than making friends he made numerous of enemies, and with no one listed to lead the project the government took over.
Because of this the widespread use and mass production of the product took 10 years, and later on the government had started to consider the using them on babies. This was the start of the Novera Corporation’s rise to power.
At first, the decision to incubate children was an optional choice that very few opted to do so. However, when the first child who was solely raised by the system reintegrate into society, it changed everyone’s view.
This child was smarter, stronger, and more importantly more beautiful than everyone else. When the adults lamented that they were born during the wrong time period, a human rights movement rebelled against this system. With many discussions and debates, it was proven that children who were born from the system made more contribution to society than those who weren’t, so in the end, those unsatisfied peers joined the new system.
With precise calculations, they advertised this voluntary incubation to be perfectly safe creating a new kind of superior beings. This caused a sudden boom of interest in the field of genetic manipulation, by injecting the genes of other races some of these children became even more powerful to match their superior wisdom. Of course, this choice was also optional as it had cost several times more to maintain, these children who received this new genetic code were called biometric beings.
Although Luon was partially against the research of genetic manipulation, he wasn’t able to do anything about it. After all, the only way to research it was to use other humans in experiments. They say they used animals as test subjects, but everyone knew it wasn’t like that on the surface. However, they only turned a blind eye towards because of the threat of the Inzektor menace.
And now Luon enters this dark and political society that supports engineers from the shadows. The deeper he got into the field, the deeper he was in the darkest parts of society. Fortunately, his teacher is one of the most influential being that was a part of this field.
After a night of studying in the Vortex Container Luon received the details from Zekar about his engineering examination, and after doing his morning routine did he made his way to the faculty.
When Luon arrived at the front desk he met the female receptionist he had during his first examination, and after a light greeting he said, “I have an appointment for my level 2 examination, the application number is B324.”
The female receptionist appeared confused as she didn’t know about Luon’s appointment today, but after registering the number, she did indeed find the application. It was a last minute application, so of course, she didn’t know about it. However, she professionally said, “I have your application, please go to the second floor, room number 14 for your examination.”
After checking in Luon made his way to the exam room. The set up was similar to the first examination he had before except for the countless materials and tools missing on the table top. Instead, it was replaced with a box that had a digital display with several basic buttons resembling an ATM, only instead of cash you could only withdraw items and a book on the countertop beside it.
“Welcome, Luon Fate, to the second level examination room. I am the first of the three judges, Alpha. You may call us Alpha, Beta, and Delta respectively, but doing so isn’t necessary,” the speakers in the corner of the room robotically said in a neutral tone.
Luon couldn’t tell the gender his judge was from the robotic tune the speakers had, but this didn’t matter to him as he pointed out, “Instead of Delta shouldn’t it be Gamma?”
At this time a more feminine robotic tone, similar to Siri which he experienced during his first simulation, had said, “The names are merely codenames, I am Delta. There is no need to talk to us as all we will do is say whether you passed or not and our judgment of your final product.”
“Beta,” the speakers said in a more deeper voice with extra reverbing. It reminded Luon of a particular alien race he had played in a real-time strategy game that was popular in the first simulation. Seeing that all he said was his name, Luon assumed since the other two had introduced themselves the last person must have felt more inclined to do so.
Coughing a little, Alpha said, “The task you have to do for your second examination requires innovation. As you may already know the first examination is the foundation stage of an engineer. The second examination is to evaluate your ability to solve problems that people have. To pass this examination, you are required to create a device that can replicate a skill of your choice and allow the average powerless person to wield it.”
Alpha continued, “Your examination will start the moment you take out any materials from the intraspatial storage in front of you, and you have thirty minutes from now to decide a skill to replicate. Listed in the book in front of you is a compendium of recorded skills which you are allowed to replicate, please do not create something that may harm our facility or we will fail you. Also, there is some data and recordings from other engineers who tried to replicate some of those skills, you may find it inspiring. However, you only have 30 minutes so be careful.”
Luon nodded to his remark as he thought, ‘Well I guess is explosives are a no go.’
Seeing Luon nod, Alpha said, “Good, without further ado, your thinking time…”
“Starts…” said Delta.
And finishing off the sentence Beta said, “Now.”
Right away Luon started flipping through the book of skills to find something, interesting and useful. Listed in the book were a numerous amount of skills as well as the name of projects that tried to replicate the skill. Reading over some of these names Luon found that only a minority of them were successful as they were well-known to consumers nowadays. The rest were listed as uncompleted and discontinued projects.
As Luon rapidly went through each page, he stopped on a particular skill and thought, ‘If I make this a reality, can I take this with me when I leave?’
Luon smiled as he started going through the research data on a particularly unfinished project with an interesting skill.
…
“You’re not the judge this time dad?” said Shizuka in a room monitoring Luon’s examination.
Dio smiled and said, “The old folks from last time were dissatisfied with the results, so they wanted to make it a little harder this time. Originally you could replicate offensive and damaging skills, but this time they restricted that choice.”
Dio sighed a bit before continuing, “Those old folks think that by creating useful tools they could beat the Inzektors, but they’re just being delusional. Well, it’s going to be a little more interesting this time since all I know about Luon is that he makes a bunch of weapons. So maybe this kind of thing wouldn’t be so bad.”
“What if he fails because of this?” Shizuka said as she began to frown upon the situation.
“Well, I guess it just means he’s not as good as you, isn’t that something you would like to see?” questioned Dio.
Shizuka paused a moment to think, she then shook her head and said, “Although, it would be an interesting sight to see him below me. Nobody else would be able to rival me in this generation, I would be bored and uninspired to work without any competition.”
Dio who had a neutral expression on his face during the whole conversation frowned a bit as he said, “Shizuka, aren’t you underestimating the other members of the Alliance a bit? The universe is wide, so wide that there will always be a better person than you.”
Shizuka nodded in understanding. However, she firmly said, “And until that day comes, I rather have Luon be my whetstone to become the best craftsman in the universe. There will be a day where I would be able to create legendary artifacts and sell them on the marketplace for people to pick out like vegetables in a vegetable stall.”
“… good luck with that. How about we just watch how your rival is doing for now,” said Dio as he sighs.
Shizuka nodded as she focused in on the monitor, seeing her expression Dio couldn’t help but think, ‘Selling legendary artifacts like vegetables in a vegetable stall if someone could mass produced them like that then why would we need other engineers? Luon, you brat, teach this child some common sense in crafting. Well then again he’s also a freak, and I guess I was the reason why she was like this in the first place…’
Dio let out a sigh once more before watching Luon’s performance, he felt the hair on his head became just a little whiter… just for a moment.
