— Day 3 in the Ten Rings' Mountain Cave Camp.
As the palladium metal, under harsh and precise radioactive conditions, continuously amplified its own energy emissions in a recursive loop, a faint nuclear reaction began to stabilize within a tiny, controlled space.
Photons, excited by the process, spiraled along a weak magnetic field, eventually forming a perfect, glowing loop.
A soft light flickered, and a small lamp lit up.
"What is this thing?" Yinsen asked.
"It's a miniature Arc Reactor. There's a much larger one back at my company, but the principle is the same," Tony explained.
"An Arc Reactor? So, it's a power source? Like a battery?"
"If my calculations are correct, it generates about 5 billion joules of energy per second. That's enough to power an Abrams tank at full capacity or keep something even more impressive running for about twenty minutes."
"Wow, that's incredible," Yinsen marveled. "I've never seen anything like it."
"Neither have I," Tony admitted. "In fact, this is the world's first practical, miniaturized Arc Reactor."
"Mr. Stark, it's beautiful," Kagura Hitomi said.
Though her memories made the Arc Reactor familiar to her, she couldn't help but be awed by its intricate design and radiant glow when seeing it up close.
As she gazed at the glowing reactor, Kagura murmured, "It looks so warm, almost like…"
She paused, flashes of memories from the future flickering through her mind. A wave of emotion washed over her.
"It's as warm as your heart, Mr. Stark," she whispered softly.
"Do you like it?" Tony grinned.
"Thanks to the superconducting coil you dug up, I was able to solve the power issue. If you want, I'll make you an even prettier one when we get back."
He patted Kagura's head. "But for now, we've got work to do. I need to build a combat machine to help us escape."
'Ugh, another head pat!' Kagura pouted.
'Is he addicted to this or something?'
Just then, her holographic UI, which had been scanning the Arc Reactor, displayed a new notification.
Multiple information windows popped up, showing prompts she'd never seen before. As the scan completed, a new message appeared:
[New item added to the Shop.]
The Shop? Kagura was startled.
She had noticed the "Shop" feature in her system before, but it had always been empty.
It made sense, though.
Even though she was an automaton with a powerful energy core, she couldn't just create things out of thin air, right? If the Shop could sell strange items, wouldn't that mean she could materialize objects?
That sounded less like science and more like magic!
Curious, Kagura focused her consciousness and opened the Shop through her holographic UI.
The interface shifted, and sure enough, a new item appeared in the previously empty list:
[Negative Space Photonic Energy Device Blueprint / 10 QP]
'Well, this is interesting!'
Kagura opened the blueprint's description and read through it.
The "Negative Space Photonic Energy Device" was essentially the technical blueprint and detailed specifications for the Arc Reactor.
'Why not just call it the Arc Reactor? Is this system being tsundere or something?' she thought.
'So, because I scanned the Arc Reactor, I now have its blueprint? Does that mean if I had the right manufacturing setup, I could mass-produce these?'
Her mind raced with possibilities, and her plans for the future became even more concrete.
But there was a catch. Unlocking the blueprint required QP, and it was more expensive than unlocking her own skills.
'Ugh, what a rip-off!' she grumbled.
'But I guess it makes sense—technology is the ultimate productivity tool, after all.'
Kagura currently had 10 QP, earned from protecting Tony Stark during the attack.
There was also an additional task to save Yinsen's life, worth another 10 QP.
Before discovering the Shop, she had thought her QP was plenty.
She had even brainstormed a few unactivated skills based on her memories and imagination. But now, with the Shop in play, she decided to hold off on unlocking new skills.
If she could save her QP to get the Arc Reactor blueprint, that would be far more valuable.
"Kagura, could you help me calculate the stress function for the weapon-grade armor layered with Kevlar?" Tony asked.
"It should handle 5.56 or 7.62 rounds fine, but I want to see if we can extend the protection to 12.7 mm for extra safety."
"Sure, Mr. Stark," Kagura replied, closing her holographic UI and switching her system to electronic hacking and mathematical computation mode.
Her own knowledge alone wouldn't have been enough to keep up with Tony Stark, a top-tier genius in the Marvel universe.
Fortunately, her "Infinite Concept Skill System" holographic UI solved that problem.
With her electronic hacking abilities, Kagura could access the world's networks and even tap into idle supercomputers for complex calculations.
In fact, Tony had started delegating most of the computational work to her, and she had become an indispensable assistant.
What had started as a tentative partnership had now solidified into a strong working relationship.