Chapter 7

-[Wynne]

He let out a groggy groan as he regained consciousness. He immediately noticed that the floor he was laying on was frozen but strangely, he didn't flinch. It was the opposite in fact, he felt comfortable with the chill it gave.

Pushing himself to sit upright, he noticed that the rest of the room was still covered in a layer of ice.

An alarming thought occurred to him. 'How long was I out?' He wondered, pulling out his scroll…that was frozen shut.

He struggled a bit, carefully shaving off the ice and opened the scroll from its collapsible state. '3 hours. Did anyone try to get in?'

He had locked the door before embarking on this slightly insane task. If someone managed to see him unconscious in that state, he'd probably be waking up in a hospital bed instead of the floor.

Looking around the room covered in ice, he let out a sigh. 'This is going to take some time.'

•••

It took a while but he eventually got rid of the ice before he was needed out of his room. Even then, he was still going over what he had gained from this 'incident'.

Sitting in the bathtub, he frowned a bit. The hot water that usually felt so enjoyable wasn't so enjoyable anymore.

It wasn't to the point that it was unbearable but it was noticeable to him. Raising his hand above water level, a soft chill followed it as visible cold mist emitted from it.

Carefully placing his palm on the surface of the water, he noticed the change as the heat shot down to more comfortable levels, some blocks of ice appearing before he quickly stopped.

His experiment had been a partial success but even then it wasn't a bad thing. As he had expected, he had gained the ability to generate ice.

He could freeze anything he touched but ranged usage was out of the question, at least not without using glyphs.

An icy blue glyph appeared above him, spinning as it shot a beam of ice at the wall in front of him. Icicles grew and covered that area of impact.

He didn't expect for his semblance to be affected but so far, only good things had come out of what he had done. The one negative that didn't really affect him was his newfound preference to the cold.

It wasn't like he couldn't stand warm or hot environments, he just preferred a little ice to cool the air.

He mentally noted that he'd have to allocate time to get his new powers under control. He didn't want to accidentally freeze someone to death.

-[Later]-

With an abundance of lightning dust and his proficiency in using time dilation glyphs, he picked up another branch of technology to study.

Robotics, machines, gadgets…he was going for hardware rather than software this time. He'd long since realized that the people of Remnant were too scared to be creative and too stupid to truly advance.

Shaking his head, he put it out of his mind, he looked around the spare room that he had turned into his personal lab.

In the center of the room was an ugly looking robot or as it was called, the Atlesian Knight-130. The SDC was in a partnership with the Atlas Military so it wasn't hard to get his hands on one of them.

He didn't want his room getting cramped up with projects or ideas so he had the staff prepare this while he was hitting the books.

After his success with Schnee Entertainment, Jacques had more or less let him do as he pleased. The man barely bat an eye when the butlers hauled the robot into the manor or when the room was transformed into the lab that it currently was.

Walking around the robot, he carefully inspected it. Books alone wouldn't make him an expert in this field, he needed a more hands on approach.

Even if it did, who would believe that he became an expert on robotics in under two weeks?

He laughed at that before he took on his objective of carefully dismantling the robot before him.

-[Ironwood]-

Looking at the screen in front of him that had an inbox filled with mail, he frowned. He was getting a lot of mail but the one he was looking for never came in.

He held a bit of regret for not moving earlier to bring Wynne to his side like he did Winter. He was telling the truth when he said that he wasn't trying to poach the boy from Jacques but now he wished he was lying.

From what Winter had told him, Wynne had never displayed any interest in software development or anything of the like.

Though, her information could be said to be outdated seeing as how relations between her and her younger brother were in shambles after she left to join the military.

He had a few scientists look into the game to see how good Wynne's skill was. The answer was one that made him frown. For a code meant for a mere game to impress his genius scientists, Wynne's skill was nothing to scoff at.

He personally didn't care about the game but with this new development, Wynne had revealed a talent that could be dangerous if allowed to grow outside of his watchful eye.

He barely had the chance to talk to him before Jacques came swooping in. If the boy, with his skill, was in any way as problematic as Jacques then he would have a lot more to deal with in the future.

He was aware that Jacques dealt with faunus in a less than reputable way but it had yet to raise any major issues so he had ignored it. The SDC provided a majority of the support that the Atlas Military received in the form of dust and sometimes funds.

The complaints of the few weren't enough for him to risk losing that support.

Whether or not Wynne was intentionally trying to take a different approach was beyond him. The game had surprisingly garnered support from faunus as well despite it being a Schnee product.

In a way it wasn't surprising seeing as how there were apparently some faunus characters in the game that were supposedly enjoyable to play.

From his brief encounter with the boy, he could tell that he still had things he planned to do. The ambitious look he saw reminded him of Winter and he knew that a motivated and talented mind out of his control was a dangerous mind.

-[Wynne]-

Looking at the parts of the robot laying around, he hummed in thought as he tinkered with the parts.

His accelerated learning indeed gave him an immense boost but he also had to put in the work to learn. It didn't automatically give him knowledge, it simply boosted his speed and ability to learn to inhuman levels.

He could confidently say that he was smart even before he arrived on Remnant so working hard wasn't an issue. His original goal was to graduate from college and get a degree in robotics so the only thing that had changed so far was the stage.

Though he had learnt a lot so far, he needed more time…and more books.

He let out an exasperated sigh as he picked up his scroll, ordering for more robots and more advanced books to be bought and brought. "I'm going to be busy for a while." He muttered as he went back to tinkering.