Grey made the smart choice. First, he took about an hour to pump out 10 Helm Frame blueprints and traded them in for 1.5 billion credits.

He was rich again, and then poor almost instantly.

It was such a shame he burned through all of Bas’ money. But even then, Bas hadn’t been billions of credits rich in the first place.

Soon, Grey had four patches in front of him. Each one carried the information for raw materials and the founding knowledge of mech techs at each step along the way.

It all came down to this. If his mind couldn’t withstand downloading these, and quickly at that, he was screwed.

This had to work.

Grey’s gaze flashed. He picked up the Proving Class one and stuck it right onto his heart.

He was tempted to do all of them at the same time, but he decided against it. If his comprehension was really what helped him do this quickly, then it might help this time as well.

Although this was just raw information, there would be some aspects intelligence could help with.

For example, back on Earth, rocks of a certain kind fell into certain categories of how they were formed and what they could be used for. If Grey got better at grouping these things with the easier information first, then when he moved on to the denser, higher level information, he could do it even quicker.

What even Grey didn’t expect was that the patch had barely touched his skin when the tattoo infused itself and then vanished.

—

[Download Complete]

—

Grey’s lip twitched, and maybe he would have made some snide remark if his mind wasn’t immediately flooded with information. However, it wasn’t overwhelming, and it felt like... it had always been his own.

’This shit is kinda scary... but also where the fuck were you when I had to study back on Earth? You’re telling me I don’t have to study and can just learn shit automatically? Gimme a kiss.’

Without missing a beat, Grey immediately slapped the next one on his chest, thinking it would take longer.

It did not.

He was already on the fourth, so focused on his task at hand and the information building up in his mind that he didn’t even notice that Barkeep Ji was the one with the twitching eye now.

"Well, that was easy. Nice."

Grey’s mouth seemed to be on auto-pilot.

What surprised him was that these books didn’t just have information on raw materials, or at least not the way he was thinking they would.

Not only did they have sections on metals, they had others on crystals, at the Vector Class there was even some information on incorporating living materials like trees and plants, some even going as far as to use the bones of certain animals.

They talked about compatibility with Spirits, what various tempering methods worked best, what other materials they clashed with.

Grey hadn’t even brought out his Cyber Mat and yet he felt like a whole new world was open to him now. He just saw mechs differently, and when he thought about his broken mechs, he realized that... maybe it was a good thing.

"Damn, I really fucking suck at this mech stuff."

Barkeep Ji’s lip twitched again.

He had seen Grey make 10 100% SA-index blueprints just a few minutes ago. And he did it in an hour.

Grey most definitely did not suck, but now he was kind of anticipating what Grey would be able to make now.

Grey hadn’t communicated with Barkeep Ji about what he wanted to do. His plans were all in his head right now. But considering his earlier questions, Barkeep Ji knew that Grey wanted information up to the Dominus Class.

With a flip of his hand, Grey brought out the Mechanical Jaw Lineage Tome. Quickly, he went through the pages until he stopped at the simplest Command Class blueprints.

The worst case scenario was that he’d have to rip one of these pages out. He had already thought of doing this before, but he felt that it was too disrespectful.

This was Globb’s last wish, how could he defame his ancestors like this after everything they had sacrificed?

He knew he wouldn’t even lose the blueprint. If he really wanted, he could just download it into his Cyber Space first before selling it.

But no. He wouldn’t do that, even though he knew there were some blueprints in here that actually far surpassed the Dominus Class and would get him a lot more than 800,000 blue credits.

The reason why he was in this situation, other than the fact the world was full of assholes, was because he flew down whatever currents his heart pointed him toward.

This pressure wasn’t going to change who he was.

The day would come when he’d take that contract and shove it down the throat of the guy who wrote it. And when he did that, he would still fucking be Grey Temolt.

Grey pointed. "If I can draw this to 100%, how much?"

Barkeep Ji smiled an unusually genuine smile for him. Who knew what this creepy guy was thinking. Grey almost wanted to hide his nipples.

"200,000 blue credits."

Grey blinked, he actually didn’t expect that much. That was more than the Dominus book, though not more than its Cyber Warp.

"Command Class blueprints are also worth a lot more as well." Barkeep Ji said with a smile.

Grey nodded slowly. Having to draw just four of these...

He took a deep breath. He felt that he could do it. But 100%... might be a stretch.

’I can do it. Lock the fuck in.’

Grey closed his eyes and focused himself.

The first thing he had to do was comprehend the full blueprint, then he could strip away the complex Curved Faces and focus only on the Geometric Faces.

He downloaded the blueprint and began to study it.

He could feel the guillotine of death hanging over his head. He had no idea how Amunet and Thi Lan were doing. For all he knew, they were already dead.

But the greater the pressure was, the more focused he became.