The System Space and the Forge

"Otherworldly energy detected. Activating system."

"Acquiring planetary coordinates. Failed."

"Loading local power system and culture. Complete."

"Allocating available resources and establishing corresponding mission system. Complete."

"Host's energy system detected-psionic energy."

"Loading initial armor and progression path appropriate to host's species. Complete."

"Activating Basic Forge. Complete."

"Basic scan complete. Your initial armor has been configured as an entity known in this world as a 'martial soul.' Its initial strength is equivalent to iron. Basic Psionic Energy Output Component acquired."

"Once the host obtains sufficiently high-grade metals, the forge can be used to upgrade its strength. In addition, each time you acquire a Soul Ring, you may independently design a feasible skill using your existing components. The skill's psionic energy output power is tied to the age of the Soul Ring you absorb."

"Beginner mission activated-raise psionic energy to level ten. Mission reward: Hyper-Speed Component."

As an ethereal voice rang out, Leng Xiyue soon regained consciousness. Before she could digest those words, a vast city appeared before her.

Calling it sight wasn't quite right. She could clearly perceive every detail of the city, as though she had a god's-eye view.

The city looked rather classical, with Western-style architecture interspersed with countless gardens. Groves, lakes, little bridges, and flowing streams-it had everything.

Even now, the city continued expanding outward. Every kind of beautiful scenery could be found within it; calling it a paradise from a dream would have been no exaggeration.

At the very center of the city stood an enormous, white, pyramid-shaped palace. The entire structure was made from an unknown metal, and a gigantic blue crystal revolved above its peak. It looked very much like the ruins of some alien civilization.

Tempting fate, Leng Xiyue scanned it, only to discover that a transparent barrier separated it from the surrounding soul space. Perhaps this was a space that had originally come with the system.

Just as Leng Xiyue was looking around curiously, Xiao Bai suddenly appeared and linked arms with her. "Welcome to your mental space."

"This is my soul space?" Leng Xiyue was stunned. It wasn't that she didn't understand the concept of a mental space-the Sea of Consciousness Tian Meng had created for Huo Yuhao was more or less the same thing. But hers was practically a vacation resort. Even though she'd already had her suspicions, hearing Xiao Bai confirm it still gave her a little thrill.

"Yes. Everything you see now was created by that orb of light after it expanded and remodeled your soul space according to the culture of the planet we're currently on. For your consciousness, or a soul like me, living here really is a pleasure."

"As for this city... I don't know why it designed a city, or why it chose this style, but it certainly wasn't just for you to enjoy yourself."

"It's awfully stingy, though. To make you train, it gave you this lousy junk as your beginner gear. It wouldn't even spare a little crystal ore." Xiao Bai glanced at Leng Xiyue's armor, distaste showing on her face.

Leng Xiyue followed her gaze and only then noticed the pristine white armor she was wearing. She raised her hand to examine it closely and couldn't help feeling thoroughly pleased. "...I think it's pretty nice?"

Although it was called armor, the outfit didn't encase her whole body like ordinary armor. Instead, it was a white dress adorned with numerous blue gems. The blue-and-white palette was very pleasing to the eye, and the entire outfit was made of some lightweight metal. Neither uncomfortable nor heavy to wear, it was quite thoughtfully designed.

Perhaps to make combat easier, or perhaps simply to make it prettier, quite a bit of material had been cut away, leaving many areas entirely unprotected. As a result, it didn't look particularly defensive, but it was exceptionally beautiful. Simple and practical without seeming frivolous, it suited Leng Xiyue's tastes perfectly.

She was a girl, after all. How powerful it was obviously didn't matter; looking good came first.

Aside from that, a strange golden emblem marked her forehead, with a sapphire-like point of light at its center that gave off a deep blue glow.

Presumably, this was her soul mark.

Watching Leng Xiyue act as though she'd found a priceless treasure, Xiao Bai felt rather helpless, but she still explained, "After equipping this armor-or using Martial Soul Possession, so to speak-your basic attributes, such as strength and speed, will increase considerably. You can also use the devices on your wrists to condense the psionic energy in your body into equipment like weapons or shields, or replenish someone else's energy. These are its most basic uses."

"Like this?" With a thought from Leng Xiyue, a longsword shimmering with golden light appeared in her hand.

"Yes. Right now, you can only condense psionic energy into melee weapons like this to attack. You can also determine whether they deal cutting or blunt damage through their shape. But bear in mind that as your psionic energy level and your equipment's output power increase, you can make the weapons you conjure longer and larger, but you can't detach them from your body and fire them like ranged weapons."

"To cast powerful spells or launch ranged attacks, you'll need more advanced output components. Your current martial soul has been stripped down to the absolute bare minimum. I imagine the system will give you those components as future rewards, as a way of nurturing your growth. Once you've collected them all, this armor will be very powerful."

"Also, the weapons you condense now can't completely ignore defenses like the laser weapons you're imagining. Psionic energy drawn directly from the void is entirely different from psionic energy refined from local resources. Until you extract void energy to upgrade yourself, your condensed weapons can still be blocked, and armor or protective aura will impede them, just as they would energy attacks like wind blades."

"You can also collect some powerful weapons and coat them in psionic energy to enhance them."

Although Xiao Bai's entire explanation was about how terrible the armor was and how heavily restricted her current psionic energy was, Leng Xiyue was having the time of her life. One moment she condensed a hammer, the next a huge cleaver, and then a whip. Though called weapons, they were more like extensions of her limbs. Whatever she created obeyed her as naturally as her own fingers. Of course, she had absolutely no technique when using them and was essentially just swinging them wildly.

In Xiao Bai's eyes, these things were naturally pathetic. But psionic energy itself was far superior in quality to soul power. After all, it took fifty thousand years' worth of Soul Ring age to condense level-ten psionic energy. Surely psionic weapons could trounce a whole host of high-grade martial souls, too?

That's enough! Who needs ranged attacks? Looking cool is all that matters!

"By the way, Xiao Bai, what's inside that building?" Leng Xiyue pointed curiously at the building in the center, whose style was completely different from everything else.

"That's where the system itself resides. Inside the barrier is a separate space. All equipment related to the system's functions is stored there, such as the forge you just acquired, as well as the place I lived before meeting you. I don't have sufficient access privileges to enter the remaining areas, like the warehouse, so I don't know what's in them. After all, I'm just a soul dragged along with it, no different from a prisoner."

"Still, I imagine there must be quite a few good things in there."

After offering a few hesitant explanations, Xiao Bai changed the subject. "If you want to use the forge, you can operate it directly either here or in the real world."

Though Leng Xiyue was curious, she knew better than to push her luck. Since this space came with the system, its rewards and such were probably stored inside, along with plenty of advanced alien technology. That gave her a basic understanding of the system's capabilities.

Knowing that was enough. As long as she followed the system's rules, everything inside would be hers sooner or later. Trying to game the system and take shortcuts would probably only get her abandoned-she didn't believe that a race from an advanced civilization would be so sweet and naive that it had no safeguards against such things.

With that in mind, Leng Xiyue asked about something else. "So what is the forge?"

"You can think of the forge as a laboratory. It has two functions. One is to help you complete scientific research and fill in the gaps in products you know about. If you have some concept of something that already has a precedent, and you're familiar with its operating procedures and applications but not its specific components, it can reconstruct a detailed blueprint and transfer it into your mind as knowledge. Or it can supplement a partially completed product with some research behind it, perfecting it into the result you need."

"Keep in mind that you can't use it to realize things that don't exist, that exist only in fantasy, or whose broad functions and theoretical effects you know without understanding their underlying systems. Take the nuclear weapons from your world, for example. Merely knowing that nuclear bombs are powerful and produce mushroom clouds isn't enough. For a relatively complex product like that, you need to have done some research into its triggering mechanism and the energy source inside before the forge can fill in the gaps and reproduce it. At the very least, you'd have to be a graduate student in a relevant field."

"Simple products, however, are easy to reconstruct. For something like a car, if you know its general structure, how it's driven, and what energy source it uses, the forge will automatically fill in the components. Even if the final result differs slightly, its functions will definitely be the same."

"Its other function is to turn those ideas into reality. The forge comes with a relatively small, fully automated production line. Materials can be transported directly inside through an external storage device, and it can then automatically manufacture anything you have a blueprint for."

"Once you've collected enough materials, upgrading your martial soul will also have to be done through the forge."

"As for developing blueprints, you can contact the forge and conduct research at any time while you're in your soul space. The system has a fully developed thought-transmission function."

After listening, Leng Xiyue more or less understood. This was a very practical function. It couldn't realize her wild fantasies, but it could reproduce things within her knowledge-relatively common modern or early modern items that had left a strong impression on her.

Unless those wild fantasies had blueprints to provide a solid theoretical foundation.

For now, such a function didn't seem particularly useful. But soon, Leng Xiyue smiled knowingly. She had already thought of how to put it to use.

Seeing that Leng Xiyue seemed to have drifted into some grand vision of the future, grinning so widely she was almost drooling, Xiao Bai chuckled softly.

Whatever the case, having aspirations was a good thing, right?

Seemingly sensing something, Xiao Bai interrupted Leng Xiyue's daydream. "By the way, this system doesn't seem very smart. You can already claim the reward for its first mission. But I'd advise you to wait a bit. You'd better help that young lady outside recover her soul power first. What little soul power she had in her body has already been drained dry by the forge."