There is Something Wrong with This Game

C019 – Clone Controller

[Ascension]

[Solstreus Magic Academy: Workshop Room-005]

After leaving the Exchange Area, Hecate spent three hours experimenting on how to engrave the Glyphs onto some cheap equipment. From that experiment, she reached a conclusion.

Her previous understanding of the similarity of Glyphs and Runes to programming was probably not wrong. Apart from that, she also discovered several other things that influenced the success of engraving Glyphs.

Some of them are Engraving Accuracy and Material Compatibility.

As the name suggests, Engraving Accuracy is the percentage accuracy of the engraved Glyph symbols.

The more perfect the shape of the symbols, the greater the chance of successful engraving. The completion will cause skills or spells to appear in the item information window, and can be properly activated when equipped. On the other hand, if the symbols are ugly or crooked, then most likely the engraving will fail and no skills or spells will appear.

In other words, the Artificer's Glyph drawing skills had to be good for ensure successful engraving.

The first time Hecate tried to engrave Glyph ended in failure.

She drew the symbols using some monster blood on the cheap Crude Knife (1) she exchanged earlier, washed them off with water and redrawn them a few times until she satisfied with the drawing.

At that time, the accuracy displayed on the screen only reached 15%. This result was not because the drawing was bad, but because she had taken the liberty to stylize the symbols as she pleased.

Then, she poured her MP into the symbols, causing them to glow red.

The result was not that surprising.

The engraving was completed, but no skills or spells appeared on the knife's description. The knife was not destroyed, but it has been filled with useless deformed Glyph symbols that cannot be used.

But of course, it wasn't completely for nothing.

Her earlier act just now was the final push to turn the act into a proper skill.

This means, it would be easier for her the next time she drew Glyph symbols, since system corrections could now be applied. Her (1+24) DEX  stat was more than enough to correct some mistakes during the drawing process.

It was like switching from manually drawing with a pencil to using a graphics editor software, such as Photoshop.

As for the next one, the Material Compatibility is the compatibility percentage of the material used with the Glyphs.

This percentage was also one of the determining factors for the engraving success rate. If this number is too low, there is a chance that the piece of equipment will be destroyed. At least, it needs to be 80% or higher to prevent this accident from happening.

In one instance, Hecate had experienced the importance of this compatibility.

She drew the Wind-type Glyph symbols using Frostdeer Blood (3) as ink on the cheap knife made of Lesser Iron Ore (1). 

Her drawing skills weren't a problem, because after the 7th attempt, she no longer stylized the symbol as she pleased. In addition, she was assisted by the system assist. So, her accuracy rate had reached as high as 89%.

But unfortunately, the total compatibility rate was only 8.75%.

As such, the moment the skill activated, sparks were generated from the Glyph and the knife shattered into pieces.

Naturally, she did see a red aura emitting from the knife, so she already knew that the process would fail. Nevertheless, she continued the process in order to increase her proficiency points.

And with numerous practice and learning, it did not take too long for Hecate's successful attempt.

This time she used Howling Grass Sap (3) as the ink, which had excellent compatibility for Wind-type Glyphs, and caused the compatibility percentage to reach 120%.

It could be said the result was more than successful.

And from this success, she found that the compatibility percentage also affects how much level and amount of the resulting skills or spells that can be used per day.

Hecate took a break and began to think about the results of her experiments.

In the end, she was only able to engrave one tier-1 spell.

When she tried to engrave one more spells, the compatibility rating immediately dropped so sharply that it was certain that the knife would explode if continued. Same thing happened for tier-2 spells and further.

"This must be because I used low level materials."

From the information she found on internet, it seemed to be related to the "data capacity" of the said knife. Each (star) rating on a piece of equipment provides "data capacity" equal to the tier of skills/spells.

For example, if she wanted to engrave two tier-1 spells, such as Firebolt and Fire Cracker, onto a piece of equipment, that equipment's rating had to be at least 2, and it had to be made from materials compatible with fire element. 

Then, if she wanted to engrave another one tier-3 spell, such as Vermillion Blast, the rating had to be at least 5.

1 + 1+ 3 = 5

It was a simple math operation.

But then, that couldn't explain some equipment as having more skills or spells than it should with the rating it had. Most likely, there are some ways to "optimize" or "compress" the data to fit the "data capacity" of the equipment.

That was why she was trying to stylize the Glyph symbols, trying to figure out the boundaries of the rules.

"Well, it's not working the way I thought it would..."

Hecate decided to cast aside the thought for now.

She opened her inventory and looked at the stuff she had brought with her today. Most of them were low level materials that she exchanged before. Then, her gaze suddenly fell on one of the entry lists, namely the uniform of this academy.

The robe and the cloak.

Both of them were currently only "2" rated equipment, but they were growth-type equipment that absorbed the wearer's mana and would become stronger with time. Besides, they were adorned with gorgeous decorative patterns, befitted the status of the Special Staff.

Unfortunately, Hecate didn't feel any motivation to wear them.

The robe was ultimately a robe-type equipment that covered two equipment slots, upper and lower armor. It wasn't too different from the Magician Robe she had replaced, in favor of the Ceremonial Blouse and Skirt just a few days ago.

As for the cloak, it was supposed to be worn alongside the robe, which changed color based on the type of mana the wearer had released. With how Hecate used various elemental spells, wearing them separately would likely cause color mismatches later on.

What's more, wearing both of them together was just too stuffy, like wearing two sweaters together.

Both of these clothes covered her body from neck to ankles. She tried to wear them together before and only found it very uncomfortable walking. It was clear that they were impractical for Hecate to wear, as she moved around a lot during battle.

While they may be practical for others as they provide more protection, this wasn't the same for Hecate.

"It's a shame, but I'll only be wearing them in this Academy."

Hecate sighed.

It was enough to wear the uniform in front of the people in this place just for the sake of status, nothing more. When alone or outside, she could just switch back to her previous comfortable clothes.

Her gaze then moved to the figure stood nearby.

It was a white, slightly translucent human <del>girl</del> loli figure, which was very similar to her appearance except for the lack of color. This girl was naturally, the body created by her new skill, Mana Clone.

The clone, who had been left on standby ever since Hecate made it the moment she came into this room, stood silently in a corner of the room, consuming Hecate 500 MP for every minute. As for the reason why she kept the clone, it was simply to increase skill proficiency just by letting it exist.

Currently, the clone was like a ghost with a translucent white mist body. But as time goes by, the mist becomes thicker and less translucent. It won't be long before the skill reaches Lv2 and perhaps by then, the mist will become more human-like.

"Come here, the fragment of mine!"

Hecate tried to control the clone with her thought.

When used in conjunction with a certain skill as support, such as Auto Production, the system will take over the body to perform tasks. But when the skill was used independently like this, it seemed the clone could be controlled in some other way.

Trying to control the clone with thoughts was not easy, and Hecate struggled a lot in her practice. The clone's movements were not smooth, and it was like a broken doll possessed by an evil spirit.

But Hecate already thought of a solution to this problem.

It was a method based on the commonly used method to create movable bodies in the VR-Space. By the way, it was taught in the Virtual Reality course in her Grade 2 senior high school curriculum.

Anyone who has the privilege, or has been granted privileges in the VR-Space by its admin to manipulate objects has a special interface, which they can use to create, edit, or delete objects, NPCs, and even animals.

The first step to creating an NPC or animal starts with body modeling. After that, they had to create some motion presets for each body part of the model. To be precise, they have to arrange the order of movements of each part of the body to create the walking preset, followed by running, jumping and other presets.

But naturally, there was no such interface in the game Ascension.

"Well, let's see..."

Hecate tried to remember all the clone's movement motion and mapped them to her memory. Then, she sorted and rearrange them based on the basic movement presets from the VR-Space object manipulation manual.

These arrangements then converted into thought commands and placed them on an unused hotkey.

She tested the hotkey by pressing it with her finger, ordering the clone to walk forward. The clone that previously was doing crazy movements, now made smooth movements and walked forward according to orders. Even though the clone's movements were still clumsy like a marching soldier, the experiment was undoubtedly a success.

Hecate smiled with satisfaction at this result.

"I need to buy another hotkey sets."

She tapped the interface and selected the Hotkey option.

In there, a total of 5 Hotkey sets which contain 10 hotkeys each existed. She tapped the + button at the bottom of the lists, and a confirmation window appeared.

Without further ado, Hecate pressed yes.

In that instant, the entry in her Hotkey menu has increased by 10 more hotkeys.

The 6th hotkey set costs

600 which was equivalent to 30000, and this price will increase by

100 for each set thereafter. It was by no means cheap, but Hecate felt it was worth the price.

"I hope this investment is worth the trouble."

With this, Hecate proceeded to create other presets and place them in hotkeys. The presets that she had created include changing direction, running, jumping, sitting, crouching, standing, and many more.

Now controlling the clone was like controlling a console game character with a game controller.

There are still many things that needs fine tuning, and the small room is not suitable for carrying out proper tests, so they must be tested outside later.

Hecate spend some time with the clone before log out for lunch.