Blueprint: Crimson Fracture Jaw

Weight: 15.7kg

Faces: 101,970

Grade: Command Class

Raw Materials:

Tempered Ruby Sheen Steel: 62,114 Faces

Bloodlens Resin Frame: 24,328 Faces

Splitting Lightning Signal Lining: 14,700 Faces

Feral Frenzy Nullite: 828 Faces

—

There were so many more Faces involved that it was hard for Grey to even look at it directly without feeling like the world was splitting around him.

His mind was actively trying to comprehend everything it came across, and it seemed to be trying too hard this time.

He closed his eyes, pinching his brows. Then he tried to blink the pain away and try again, but he failed once again.

Grey’s jaw clenched as he closed his eyes one more time. He took deep breaths.

It wasn’t that this was so far beyond his realm of understanding, it was that there was just too much. Sure, there were also some aspects that were harder to grasp, some aspects of this form of crafting that were well beyond anything he had run into just yet.

But he couldn’t even get past the surface level to see what those things were.

Grey was about to open his eyes to try again when he forced himself to stop.

’No. Not like this. Ramming my head against a wall and trying to get the same thing to work over and over again will just be a waste of time. I’ll burn myself out and get nowhere. I need another approach.’

Grey’s gaze flickered from behind their lids, he took a deep breath, and this time, when he opened his eyes, he focused on the item list instead.

The irony of the problem was that he hadn’t yet traded for the book on Command Class information, so it was impossible for him to understand everything about these materials at all.

However, if there was something he had learned from his time going through the Proving Class to Vanguard Class books, it was that raw materials often built upon one another.

Established Class raw materials were often evolutions of Proving Class ones. So on and so forth.

There were some with evolutions that triggered vastly different results, but the root always remained related in some way.

The second thing of importance he learned was that naming conventions and nomenclature followed similar patterns as well.

For example "Resins" all had similar purposes. It was the same reason there were a million different forms of "Tempered Steel", or how he had never seen an item page without some form of "Nullite" on them.

Each one of these things were clues.

Grey began to organize his thoughts more and he almost instantly picked out one oddity on the page that didn’t quite line up...

By all rights, if you took the devolved versions of this item list and tried to make a weaker mech, it wouldn’t work at all.

Ruby Sheen at lower ranks didn’t work well as a Tempered Steel at all. Normally, it was used in items that didn’t need great durability.

In most cases, it was used for its beauty. It was a steel with a glossy sheen and reflected like ruby. When tempered twice, it could even become transparent like real polished ruby.

It was in that twice tempered state that it started to show some more usefulness. You could play with its transparency to allow circuits on opposite sides of a mech to communicate with and interact with one another, or sometimes even use it as an energy transfer method—something only a Nullite should usually be capable of.

But this wasn’t its twice tempered form, this was just a normal tempered forming, seeming to suggest that it was just there to beautify the mech.

But then Bloodlens Resin was involved, and that was a truly aggressive Resin. Resins were usually used for added flexibility. They gave the steel more elastic strength, but, at the same time, while they couldn’t act as a path for energy like Nullite could, they could guide that energy.

Bloodlens was extremely aggressive, and it was one of the evolving raw materials that had a very predictable path upward. Whether it was the Proving Class or Vanguard Class methods, all of them were just more aggressive than the last, scaling exponentially.

Bloodlens used energy like a source of lifeblood, leaching from it. However, in doing so, it had to direct that energy through its lattice structure.

When it filtered a certain amount of energy at a time, it entered a liquid state that looked quite a lot like blood. When in this state, its properties changed, and rather than allowing energy through, it trapped it, using it to fuel its existence. Thus its name.

Then, when the mech was turned off, it would return to its solid form.

But only a tempered steel that was extremely sturdy could withstand this sort of expansion and contraction. Ruby Sheen... most definitely could not.

This problem was only made worse by Splitting Lightning Signal Lining.

A Signal Lining raw material was similar to a Resin, but more aggressive. It didn’t just direct energy, it amplified it. Bloodlens was already too violent, how was Ruby Sheen going to withstand yet another aggressive form?

Feral Frenzy was like the cherry atop it all. Nullites were often very passive and only really known for their conductivity. They were highly efficient, insulated machines.

That was their job.

They were what built out the actual circuits within a mech, not much unlike copper on Earth but on a whole other level.

Feral Frenzy Nullite was one of the very few exceptions. It took hold of energy within it and tainted it with a berserk sort of energy, tinting it red and forcing it to flow faster.

The only explanation seemed to be that Ruby Sheen had to undergo a drastic evolution when it reached the Command Class. But... that answer felt... wrong.

Grey frowned. ’If I assume it scales normally, even twice tempered Ruby Sheen wouldn’t be capable of anything like this. At least 80% of the tempered steel types I can think of wouldn’t be able to. Something is up here...’

But for some reason, Grey kept coming back to the same idea...

Whether it was the tempered steel of choice, the Resin Frame, the Signal Lining, or the Nullite...

All of them were red.

And Grey couldn’t even begin to fathom why his brain kept going back to what should be a clear coincidence.

’... Crimson Fracture... Jaw...’