Calculating Cultivation
Chapter 125: The Devil Is In The Details

“How much longer do I have?” I asked the lead specialist who was looking over my health. This comprehensive checkup cost 100,000 units. I wanted to know exactly how much time I had left to reach immortality. While it was a bit pricy, it was worth it to have peace of mind and properly plan things out.

The medical industry was very limited in the Free Port. While basic health services were provided to every being by the Administrator for a couple of units, getting anything custom done cost quite a bit. Things like body sculpting or organ transplants cost a lot of units to be handled properly.

I could have found someone cheaper, but I went for the best and paid the premium for expedited service. Right after this appointment, I would be heading out with Yang Zi to pick up the energy pumps in our new vessel.

“I would estimate about 500 to 600 cycles before you start aging. After that another 100 to 200 cycles before your death,” the lead health specialist said. It was shorter than I was hoping for, but longer than the worst-case scenario.

“Since you are a cultivator, the best option for extending your life is intense energy therapy. There are also implants, but that would impact your cultivation. We have several options if you are interested.” I waved the lead specialist off. That wasn’t something I was interested in at the moment.

Breaking through with my cultivation would be the answer. Not small treatments that barely helped. Doing things piecemeal would only hurt long term. Getting through the next bottleneck and separating my mind from my physical body wasn’t just a matter of getting enough energy. It was more about having momentum, and having more energy helped with that process.

It was an all or nothing scenario for me to skip directly to the next bottleneck and then breakthrough in one go. Doing it in chunks might extend my life, but it also risked introducing complications. I had no structures inside my body or soul to hold in that much energy. If I followed a cultivation path, then I would be tied into that cultivation system going forward.

That was why I hadn’t gone back to the Heavenly Alliance. I would be trapped in their system, subject to the higher-level rules they imposed on their cultivators. Subject to the whims of whomever was in charge. I would not give up all my hard-earned efforts by returning to the Heavenly Alliance.

While I had been mad at Yang Heng for not rescuing me back in the Great World, perhaps that had been his kindness towards me. It was hard to say. But I doubted very many people or beings ever escaped the system that was imposed upon them from birth.

There were no regular transports to the Free Port from the Heavenly Alliance, which meant they kept such external movement through their boarders under tight control.

“Any other issues?” I asked the health specialist before I left.

“Your energy volatility is higher than I would recommend.” I frowned at that statement, since I didn’t completely understand what it meant.

“Energy volatility?” I asked.

“When you laid in the scanning capsule, we cut off all outside energy sources and took very careful readings of the energy within your soul.” I nodded at this. I had gone over all the procedures I would be undergoing. This place was also certified by the Administrator as being safe and had a health license to officially operate, which gave me comfort that nothing bad was going to happen to me.

The lead specialist continued speaking. “We projected certain images and asked you to focus your thoughts on those images. We have a baseline across multiple cultivators and used multiple images. We then compare the fluctuations in your energy to others, which gives energy volatility. This represents the risk of a Chaos incident.”

“How bad is it?” I quickly asked.

“If the base reading is 100 and a confirmed Chaos incident is at 10,000, you were at 871. Anything over a 1,000 would be concerning,” the specialist explained. It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t bad. Kind of like how much time I had left. I really had wasted a lot of time in the Great World.

“How can this number be reduced?” I asked.

“Isolation chambers. The more powerful and longer the better. But those are insanely expensive. You really don’t have to be too concerned at the moment. Just that if you cultivate, you should try and make sure the energy you use is the highest purity. This is the kind of thing that builds momentum the worse it becomes. That is why you need to make sure not to let it get worse.”

“If this number gets bad enough, what will happen?” I asked.

“There will be a Chaos incident, and you will die horribly. It isn’t a sure thing, but there is a correlation to larger energy fluctuations in one’s soul and energy and the chance of such a thing happening. If you want to think about it in terms of percentages, most have a 1% chance, you are at 8.71% chance. As for when these chances are taken into account, Chaos can’t be predicted. The scale isn’t linear. You are just at higher risk of something occurring,” the lead specialist explained.

Basically, it was like having a predisposition to some kind of illness. The illness might not happen, but if you took a large enough group, I would be in the portion that had a higher chance of an incident occurring. It wasn’t useless information, but it wasn’t helpful either.

What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey doctor, let me just avoid all energy and Chaos, while also living out the remainder of my life in a sealed box.’ That was just stupid and self-defeating. There also wasn’t a direct relationship between this energy volatility and Chaos. Correlation did not equal causation. The energy volatility could be from my cultivation or all the other sources of energy I had used over my life.

There were some controls on the scan, but it was more pseudo-science than a rigorous and confirmed testing method. That was probably why it was brought up last. No doubt to push for the sale of some additional services that I didn’t care for or need. My main goal had been to learn how much time I had left.

I had at least half a millennia, 500 cycles. That was the answer I had come for and everything else was just noise at this point.

“I am leaving,” I declared and left. I had already paid, and I had seen all physical samples taken destroyed and the part of the guarantee offered was the eraser of health information. I had no doubt the Administrator would save such information, but that was just the cost of doing business. If the Administrator had it in for me, there was nothing I would be able to do regardless.

I got a vehicle to where Yang Zi was looking over our vessel and doing final inspections. It was in a larger hanger and completely black. The size of the entire vessel was about the size of a skyscraper. It wasn’t the smallest option out there, but it was far from the biggest. It was around the bottom 20% of vessels in terms of size.

It was simply a cost consideration. Upscaling meant that the initial production cost would rapidly increase, but also the energy requirements to operate the equipment. There were too many vessels and designs to have specific classes, but Yang Zi had told me it was definitely in the small category. The entire thing was shaped like a cigar with blunted tips. In fact one could call it cylindrical shaped.

That was something I had also asked about. Why was everything built like a geometric design. The simple answer was efficiency for the equipment and spatial compression. A cylinder shape allowed energy and space to be maximized. While some super organizations made vessels more unique to highlight their culture and species, they were looked down on as idiots. Either ignorant idiots who didn’t know proper vessel design, or powerful idiots who could ignore proper vessel design.

Micro vessels, like the one I traveled with Yang Heng on, or the escape ship I had evacuated from the Infinite Ring Complex were much smaller, so they used spherical designs. When things got bigger, it was easier to go from spherical to cylindrical, since spatial compression was about the two dimensional surface area one was traveling through.

The smaller the plane of compression, the less energy was used. That was why vessels tended to get longer and cylindrical rather than becoming spherical or cubic. And if you were going to spend energy traveling, you wanted to maximize the volume of your vessel, which meant making a cylinder.

An elevator had been lowered from the base of the vessel to the hanger floor. Yang Zi was there and I quickly reached him. “How does it look?” I asked.

“Good. Exactly what we ordered. The Administrator doesn’t mess around with purchases like this. What do you think of the plating?” Yang Zi asked me while gesturing up at the black plating covering the hull of the vessel.

“Dark. But I am guessing you mean you with energy sense. It blends in with the background energy,” I replied.

“Adaptive plating. Just have to avoid high or low energy areas for the most part and all anyone will see is background energy of the Firmament. The color adjusts as well to a certain degree. All automatic and inherent properties. Good stuff,” he said with a smile.

“Expensive stuff,” I replied.

“It is. Come on, let me give you the tour and show you where all the key systems are in case you need to use them,” Yang Zi said. I nodded at this and the elevator platform brought us up. The vessel had two sections.

The rear section, which was empty except for the outer hull, the central corridor and support bracing. This was the storage area and took up nine tenths of the vessel size. We could easily open up large lengths of the hull to move stuff in and out. There were basic gravity projectors to more easily manipulate large objects and to ensure they didn’t move about once in the hold.

The last tenth was at the front of the vessel where all the equipment was. There was a separate compartment for each system. Shields, sensors, life support, spatial compression drive, energy storage, and even a large workshop with fabricators.

For such a large vessel there were only eight small bedrooms. I also noted the lighting was very limited. “What is with the low amount of lighting?” I asked.

“Stealth concerns. We need to keep everything at a minimum. That is why lighting and even life support will be kept at a bare minimum once we leave. Most of the time it would be best to wear environmental masks,” Yang Zi said.

“It matters that much?” I asked. I thought I was big on stealth, but this felt extreme.

“Trust me. I went through the entire design and kept everything to a minimum. Even the waste processing isn’t automated. There is a small holding tank that will fill up and will be handled once we are clear of any tracking. Almost everything is closed technology as well. No remote interfacing or access. I won’t be able to use my implants, not like you care that much since you wear the glasses,” Yang Zi said. He was clearly unhappy about this and wanted to point out he was making a sacrifice as well.

“Thank you for your attention to detail. The spatial compression drive uses energy though?” I asked.

“Only thing that does unfortunately. Got both spatial dispersal arrays set up as well. Will have to work out the kinks once we leave, but there shouldn’t be any problems.”

“We have spare equipment?” I asked.

“At least one spare of everything we can’t make ourselves. You won’t believe the stupidity of some people. They spend millions of units on a vessel but have a single life support system with no spare parts. Then it breaks and the vessel becomes a donation to the next person to find it,” Yang Zi said with a shake of his head.

While I wanted to say no one would be that stupid, that would be a lie. “What about the hull? How much damage can we repair?” I asked.

“The material it is made out of is highly durable. Basic stuff we won’t have to worry about. Really it is more about the spatial compression drive and not flying into anything. This vessel is stealthy, which is our main hope of avoiding trouble. If there is anything that does manage to find us, I have decoys loaded up.”

“Decoys?” I asked.

“Large metallic drones we can chuck out of the ship and then cut power and drift. They aren’t great, but it should allow us to escape pursuit. Don’t worry, I can handle traveling and avoid trouble. The serious super organizations always let people know to keep away and have powerful sensor systems at their boarders.”

“Wouldn’t there be some super organizations that try to lure people in?” I asked them.

“Then they aren’t a super organization. The cost of dealing with people like us is a massive headache. Also, their neighbors would poke them as well. The trick is to know who is just posturing and who has the power to back up their claims. That is something I know how to do like the back of my hand.” I nodded at this.

With nothing left to do and supplies loaded up, I sat on the bridge of the vessel while Yang Zi took us out of the Free Port. There was no window to look out of, since the entire hull was covered with the stealth material, leaving no gaps unless certain systems were activated.

“Got to keep our communications exposed and broadcasting. If you don’t the Administrator takes issue. Now just a couple of days to clear the spheres and then we can set off to the pickup point,” Yang Zi said while we both sat in the dark bridge, with only a couple of displays giving off light.

“Can sensor systems really pick up light?” I asked.

“Yes. Don’t underestimate super organizations. That is how you die. While half the stuff I have heard might be made up, it is better not take the chance. That is why I don’t use a holographic display and stick to the most basic robust systems possible. This isn’t an exploration ship, we are energy pirates now, which means everyone who is even remotely affiliated with a super organization will want to kill us,” Yang Zi said.

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I thought I was worried about stealth, but it appeared Yang Zi was on top of everything. This was the kind of thing one couldn’t just read about, one needed to have the background and experience. That was why I was choosing to trust him about a lot of this stuff.

It also helped that everything was incredibly simple to use, even if it was annoying to be stuck in near darkness and have to wear a life support mask if I wanted to breathe properly. The entire idea was to make the vessel look like the background gas and energy of the Firmament as much as possible.

There were many small tweaks that Yang Zi did as we made our way to the pickup location for the energy pumps. Having the spatial compression drive take longer but expand and close a channel as we were moving so as to not create a shockwave through the floating dark gas. Also looking for natural currents of gas that were already present. Sure, it would add on 10 to 30% to the length of a trip, but it also made us much harder to spot.

The passive sensors and communications were only deployed occasionally. The rest of the time they were kept covered by the stealth armor of the hull. They were deployed to quickly confirm our position relative to the various super organizations and their passive broadcasts before retracting. Some super organizations could pick up on such passive systems and was one way they tracked people.

I had on the energy suppression bracelet the entire time as well. It didn’t impact my health in any way. It just captured any small minute traces of energy I might leak out of my body. Yang Zi had lower grade suppression bracelet as well to make sure his implants and life signs weren’t detected.

“The trick is hull pressure and a mapping program I have. It is also tied in with the spatial compression drive. So, when we move, we get a route that matches our planned one, while taking into account the flow of gases as much as possible. The trick is to stay below the threshold where any automated system would send up an alert. If it is too sensitive, then there would be way too many false alarms,” Yang Zi explained.

He had been incredibly chatty while showing me the controls and explaining how everything worked. I still had suspicions, but he clearly was making an effort to make sure they were resolved.

After traveling for several days we reached the spot with the 55 energy pumps Coordinator Lung had moved here for us to pick up.

“Clever,” Yang Zi said.

“Hmm?” I asked.

“Coordinator Lung isn’t an idiot. He dragged a refraction rock to this location. You can faintly see the outline in the display,” Yang Zi pointed out and I had to squint a bit.

“I am guessing some sort of rock that deflects sensors?” I asked.

“Some solid material makes it to the Firmament. Not much but some. What does make it this far tends to be really tough. Since it is inert matter, with very little energy, the background has more. Great for concealing stuff. I planned to do something similar when we set up the energy pumps. Now we move onto the surface and load up the goods,” Yang Zi said.

“Wouldn’t it be better to hide them inside?” I asked.

“If you want to keep something secret sure. But that is a good way to set up a trap. Enter some large caravan and have the door shut. That is how the Administrator can keep such a tight grip over all the traffic. Once you enter, no escape unless it lets you go. Also, a good way to block out sensors, putting a refraction rock between you and the rest of the Firmament. Have a vessel sneak up on your position.”

We carefully came to a stop just above the coordinates that had been given to us. “Nothing nearby that I can pick up. All right, next part is on you,” Yang Zi said. I nodded at this and left the bridge. I put on a bulky suit. While I would just need the mask to breathe, the suit would protect the rest of my body in case the environment fluctuated wildly.

Stepping into the elevator, it lowered, and all I could see was thick dark gas. I turned on the display in the helmet, another reason to wear the suit, and outlines of solid structures appear around me. Only the elevator hatch was visible from our vessel, while there was nothing else my suit could pick up.

As the elevator softly touched the refraction rock, I smiled to myself. I had a reciprocal life contract set up with Yang Zi. If either of us showed up at the Free Port without the other, there would be trouble. Otherwise, he could easily leave me stranded here and fly off. He might still do so, but it wasn’t worth the risk and future profit.

I made my way a short distance over to the designated coordinates and found a tarp covering a hatch on the ground. I moved the tarp. There was some gravity, but that could wildly fluctuate as well, another reason to wear the suit. I put in the code we had been given into the panel on the hatch and it opened. I then floated through a tunnel that curved to a large chamber just beneath the surface of the refraction rock.

It was just a very big asteroid, but the meaning was clearly different. There was no gas down here and I saw the outlines of 55 large cubic structures. They would barely fit inside the storage areas of our vessel, and they were supposed to be miniaturized. Each of the energy pumps was covered with a thick cloth. Probably to block them from being scanned easily or damaged.

I found hatch built into a portion of the cloth covering and turned the handle to open it up. It was just a hatch not an airlock and the pressure had already equalized. Probably some equipment built into the hatch to keep the equipment stable. Floating through the opening, the machinery in front of me looked incredibly complicated.

Thankfully, once everything had been arranged by Coordinator Lung he had handed over the operations manual and the size of the energy pumps. He might be difficult, but he didn’t want problems to happen with such a large transaction. If we sold energy at the Free Port, we would have to use his services or the group he directed us towards for 50 cycles. A minor concession to make sure we had the information we needed and one that Yang Zi had followed up on.

I had studied the manual when I wasn’t getting a medical check up or Yang Zi was showing me around our vessel. The energy pump was built without gravity in mind or appearance. Apparently, the Mind Lords weren’t fans of aesthetics beyond the utilitarian. I checked over the core components and everything was there as far as I could tell. Without starting it up it would be impossible to say for sure. I used a couple of handheld scanners, but nothing came up on their displays. I left the energy pump and closed up the hatch in the cloth covering. I had 54 more to check.

Yang Zi and I had discussed how we would handle things. The first step was for me to complete a cursory inspection. Once that was completed, I made my way back on the vessel and back to the bridge.

While remote communications would be nice, they would be too easy to pick up on. “All there?” Yang Zi asked me.

“Yes. I completed the cursory scans on all of them. Can’t say for sure without starting them up though.”

“What about the more difficult components?” he asked me.

“I took a glance. Bad news is that the Mind Lords used a three-dimensional array. Understanding what individual components do and how they interact with each other will be incredibly difficult to impossible. Good news, is that it can be copied. I can’t speak to the materials or technology, but the arrays used are built on two dimensional surfaces arranged in a three dimensional pattern.”

“You think they are trapped?” Yang Zi asked me.

“Most likely. I will have to really sit down and look over the arrays in detail and do some tests. Very careful tests. Thankfully the Free Port had some examples. Not many, but at least I won’t be completely clueless.” I let out a sigh. “It all depends on how much they have integrated one array into another. Like I said, I will need some time to look them over. As for any weird energy signs, nothing that doesn’t match the manual. I can’t speak to the technology, but as long as they aren’t active, we should be fine,” I said. Yang Zi nodded at this.

Next up was bringing out equipment to cut through the refraction rock to take out the 55 energy pumps and put them in our storage. I spent a lot of time moving along the surface, pushing a cutter. Once a large section had been cut, Yang Zi manipulated the gravity fields to move that portion of the surface away and put the energy pumps into the hold.

Being an energy pirate was hard work. While it might seem simple, each step had to be carefully done, while there was the stress of someone showing up. This was the most dangerous part of the operation. If someone showed up we would have to flee and lose everything.

Thankfully this portion of the Firmament was an old war zone and Coordinator Lung hadn’t betrayed us. The war zone aspect meant there were a lot of people looking for things to salvage. That was why a refraction rock in this location was useful. No doubt some salvager found it, and then sold it to Coordinator Lung who moved it here and used it as an exchange point.

No doubt after we left, it would be moved somewhere else for another exchange. Thankfully there was no issue loading everything up. It was an incredibly tight fit, but we managed to fit in all the energy pumps. The air was slowly filtered as Yang Zi began heading back to the Free Port. We would sign off on the transaction and then get any last-minute items.

Entering the cloth covering of one of the energy pumps, I began to closely look at how it was all set up. It was a marvel of engineering, formations, and overall design. Thankfully I had an idea what each component did, but the problem was the minute details. Each formation was composed of multiple arrays. I could work out what the formations did at a high level.

The formation to break apart the barrier of Reality between the Firmament and the Astral Plane, creating a microscopic hole if I was understanding correctly. The energy would be drawn in to the lower energy inside the pump, which drew away a lot of energy inside this space. Once the energy was there, it was combined with a liquid, was moved through this energy chamber. From there the liquid infused energy would go into the technological side of things. The liquid would be filtered once and then stored in a tank to await transfer to another process or more filtering. The outbound tank had a lot of places to connect to it.

As for the liquid being used, I had no idea about its composition, or the materials that made up the pump or its various components. After looking through everything I made my way back to the bridge to have another chat with Yang Zi.

“Progress?” he asked me.

“There is no obvious trap. But the formations and the arrays that make up those formations for the energy extraction are complex and very detailed. I will work on deciphering them later, but there is a liquid used in the extraction process. From what I can tell, most of the miniaturization was done in terms of extracting energy, and how much the pump can store and process. It can operate for a cycle at most, then new liquid will have to be brought and the energy infused liquid will have to be emptied,” I explained.

“Only a cycle? That is not that long,” Yang Zi said. I nodded at this.

“That is why I came to talk to you, so you are aware. There is only one round of filtration too, the bare minimum. My guess is that these pumps were meant to work in tandem over a large area, as a sub module to a larger complex. The liquid, it isn’t something I have seen before.”

“I know what it is. It is not a simple solution, but an incredibly complex crystal, suspended in liquid. The problem is buying the liquid with low energy. The only use for the stuff is for energy pumps. Each faction has their own mix. The super organizations make the stuff in the Mechanical Layer if they can and then ship it here. Or have a reprocessing facility.”

“You have a solution?” I asked.

“We rerun the liquid back through the pump, increasing the energy density. Also, that will mean we can leave the pump alone for a much longer period of time.” I nodded slowly at this.

“It will make them easier to detect. Also, the efficiency will drop, each time the liquid is cycled back through. There shouldn’t be any problem with the materials from what I can tell, but I can’t say anything about the technological components.”

“They will be fine. These energy pumps are designed to work with the energy of the Astral Plane and to create a strong barrier between them and the outside until the energy can be filtered and processed more. As long as the energy density doesn’t exceed that of the Astral Plane, then it should be fine. As for the liquid itself, we can build some tanks in the vessel’s hold and fill it up. Then drop it all back off at the Free Port for more processing,” Yang Zi said.

“You clearly have put a lot of thought into this,” I replied.

“Cycles upon cycles. This is where the real units are. I am fairly sure I can hide the energy pump and build a connection to loop the two tanks togeather, but my main concern are the formations.”

“It will take time. Even then, I would like to see them in operation as well to get a better understanding. We should be back at the Free Port fairly soon?” I asked.

“Almost there. After that, we will head out.”

“How much time do I have?” I asked.

“Quarter of a cycle. That is probably how long it is going to take to get to the place I want to reach in the Firmament,” Yang Zi replied.

“That long?” I asked with some surprise.

“Once we get off the main travel corridors, we will be going much slower. And we need to get to some place remote where we won’t run into issues. I know a patch of the Firmament that is mostly abandoned. Lots of automation, but the good salvage was picked clean long ago. Dangerous, but as long as you know your way around the bots, then you won’t have too much of a problem.”

The corridor Yang Zi mentioned were the highly traveled routes away from the Free Port past the nearby super organizations. They shifted as the Firmament itself shifted, but there was too much traffic to interdict them easily and that had a good chance of annoying other super organizations. Some even had designated areas for travelers to pass through their territory from one side to the other with heavy monitoring.

As one got further away from the Free Port, the traffic tended to disperse more and more, while the danger increased. Still for the initial portion there wasn’t that much to worry about unless you were being tracked or your route was known.

“And an energy pump won’t trigger these bots?” I asked.

“Possibly, but I know how to get the energy pumps into stealth. Some refraction rocks near where we are going. We will pick up a couple and squeeze them in. Probably set up 10 energy pumps in the first area and then we will move on.”

We continued to chat about the steps we would take going forward. While I didn’t have a lot of responsibilities, they were important. Understanding the formations that were being used was critical to working out if there were any hidden traps.

The technological and mechanical side was much easier in terms of knowledge, but would require more hands on work. After discussing the matter some more, we would spend at most half a cycle in the Free Port, getting knowledge and fully converting one of the energy pumps togeather.

That was the bad thing about only having two people as part of this operation. One of us always needed to be on the bridge and monitoring what was occurring. For the most part that would be Yang Zi. Rather than get to the location and modify the pumps it was better for one of them to be done and then I could copy the instructions Yang Zi gave me.

As for the materials themselves, that wasn’t a big concern. We did have the equipment to process the floating gas into whatever we desired. A necessity for a long term trip like this. As for the special materials that were part of the pump, Yang Zi had a large technical database he had accumulated over his life. So, we could make minor changes and updates if needed, but the energy cost was high.

It was simply much easier buying the materials we needed from the Administrator in the Free Port. The purchase would be through one of its proxies, but this was the kind of thing that made the calculator so powerful. It created a stable position and then sold services and cheap goods to anyone who passed through. With every transaction creating a profit for the calculator.

As for the energy we used for all the equipment and the spatial drive, we wouldn’t be using the energy from the energy pumps. That would be like putting raw oil into the fuel lines. It had to be processed and purified first to a certain standard. Otherwise there would be multiple risks. Like having some of the liquid having a higher energy density than other portions. Or having some kind of contamination that got pulled in from the Astral Plane. Or even worse, some kind of Chaos contamination. That last one was unlikely, but it was possible.

That was why this entire process was carried out by a super organization and not by two people trying to make a lot of units. It was a massive industrial process, both creating the necessary equipment, and processing the energy. Yang Zi had a lot of knowledge to fill up the holes in the process and the services offered by the Free Port covered a lot of the holes as well.

Even with all this support it was still a massive headache. That wasn’t taking into account the competition and the risks involved with what we were doing. Exploration was far more stable than being an energy pirate. There were no hard numbers, but about 90% of the explorers never returned. The people pumping energy wouldn’t hand over information to the Administrator, but the loss rate was probably just as high, if not higher.

Even with all of this, the profits were just too much. Once we set things up and got past the initial hurdle, then it would just be pure profit for as long as we could keep things going. Yang Zi wanted to keep upgrading and eventually making his own energy pumps.

It was technically possible, but until I worked out exactly what the formations did, the risk was too high. Just copying and pasting a design could work for the technological side, but for the energy side it was far more complicated. Even with all the preparation Yang Zi had done, it wasn’t a field where there was a lot of demand and there was an even a lower number of beings who even reached my mediocre level. Then there was the huge knowledge gap and different systems used for arrays and formations.

Again, there were similarities between certain symbols and what I knew, along with general layout, but it was like studying Japanese and then having to work with Chinese. I couldn’t just assume what things did, I would have to either get the knowledge from elsewhere or conduct limited, small-scale tests to prove or disprove my assumptions about how everything worked. Hopefully without blowing myself up or causing a disaster.