Chapter 5: Foundations and Fragments
The passage of time in Piltover felt strange. Days passed quickly, marked by the steady ticking of gears and the fading ink of notes scribbled in haste. Before Steven fully realized it, several months had slipped by.
He hadn't become a genius. He hadn't suddenly invented something revolutionary. But he had learned.
Painfully. Slowly. Consistently.
...
...
His fingers no longer fumbled with tools like they once did. His understanding of arc conduits and harmonic crystal resonance had gone from a vague blur to something tangible. He could sketch circuit layouts from memory. He could spot when a stabilizer core was misaligned. He could troubleshoot low-tier energy surges without panicking.
He had built things. Small things, perhaps. But they were his.
The first was a simple kinetic lamp, powered by a hand-crank mechanism and a weak hexcore no bigger than a coin. Most students would have dismissed it as a child's project, but for Steven, it was a turning point. The day the lamp flickered to life was the first time he truly believed he could make something that worked.
Next came a pressure-sensitive tool glove. Crude in design, but functional. When worn, the glove helped steady the user's grip and distributed pressure evenly, allowing for more delicate work. Steven had built it for himself, after too many sleepless nights left his hands shaking during fine adjustments.
Then came something more ambitious: a miniature vibration sensor. It was inspired by a textbook case study on mining equipment. His version couldn't detect anything beyond a few meters, and the readings were often unstable, but it was his blueprint, his calculations, his soldering.
He had started keeping them his projects. Each stored in a wooden box under his bed. Not to show off. Just as reminders. Proof that he could do this.
Still, not everything worked.
His latest attempt a rotating gravity ring designed to stabilize hexcore fluctuations had exploded in a puff of smoke the moment he activated it. The metal casing melted, the tiny crystal at its core cracked in two, and he'd spent an hour cleaning soot off the ceiling.
Failure stung, but it didn't crush him anymore.
...
...
He had come to understand something essential: every mistake taught him more than the books ever could. In failure, the theories became clearer. He no longer chased perfection—he chased understanding.
One afternoon, while testing a small auto-inscribing pen for blueprint replication, Steven sat back and looked around the workshop.
For the first time, he didn't feel like a stranger.
The other students still outpaced him. Some were crafting aerial drones, others building refined energy regulators. But Steven was no longer at the bottom. He wasn't racing them. He was building his own path.
He returned to his desk and picked up the prototype pen, watching as it sketched clean, thin lines across a scrap of parchment. A copy of his original design, drawn with delicate precision.
Not perfect, but close.
He smiled to himself.
I'm not helpless anymore.
That night, back in his room, he opened the box beneath his bed. Carefully, he placed the new pen beside the other creations. Each object had its flaws uneven edges, crude finishes but together, they told a story.
A story of someone who refused to give up.