So, what are my next steps?
First: Save up 150 OP and spin the gacha a second time. If this blueprint, with a bunch of useful recipes, is considered "simple," I'm terrified and incredibly curious to imagine what lies beyond the higher rarities. Iron Man Armor? Rick's Portal Gun? Atomic 3D Printer? The guesses are endless. Technology is my key to everything.
Second: Create a Potion of Intelligence. Ideally, several batches. Use them in critical situations, when designing complex devices, or to solve non-trivial problems.
Third: Unlock the Muscle Stimulator recipe. Or, if the second spin yields something more "tasty," I'll adjust my plan accordingly.
Fourth: Earn money and improve my life. Drop out of college, which now seems like a waste of time, move into better housing—ideally, a house with a garage for a lab—buy a car, and sort out other mundane details.
Fifth: Don't die. However, this isn't a separate step, but a super-step, a constant on which everything else depends. Don't attract the attention of the secret services, keep a low profile, don't act like a hero, don't run into trouble. Avoid everything that 99.9% of time travelers in books love to ignore. But they have plot armor—what about me? Can a system really be considered one? There must be seers, prophets, and other super-beings in this world for whom my anomalous growth potential should shine like a beacon in the night. But I haven't been annihilated yet. Therefore, either I must play some key role in the future, or I am so insignificant that they don't notice me, or—and this option appealed to me the most—my system makes me a blind spot for them. Okay, putting aside my thoughts, which are clearly beyond my level. Let's get to work building the Bulbamet-3000.
I let out a deep yawn and finally noticed the clock. One in the morning. Considering I'd last slept less than five hours, torturing my body any further would be foolish. Fine, the Bulbathrower could wait until tomorrow. But what couldn't was experimenting with my equipment. It wouldn't take much time, but it would give me an understanding of what was practically my only super-powered material ability.
The first experiment, the most obvious: containers. I didn't have a box handy, so I pulled out a desk drawer, threw in some odds and ends—a pen, an eraser, a couple of paper clips, an old key—touched it, and mentally added it to my inventory. Success. It took up one slot, despite its contents. Excellent.
But what about the contents themselves? Is the box a "container" preserving the relative positions of objects, or do they all collapse into a common heap in subspace? I brought the box back to reality, carefully arranged the pen, eraser, and several coins inside, memorizing their exact locations. I put it back in my inventory and immediately retrieved it. Everything was in its place, down to the millimeter. The inventory preserved not only the container object itself but its entire internal structure. This opened up enormous possibilities for transporting complex and fragile devices in the future. No shaking, no impacts.
Next, liquids. After pouring water into a glass, I tried to place just the water into my inventory by running my finger across its surface. Nothing. The system apparently required clearly defined object boundaries. Then I placed the entire glass of water into my inventory. Successfully. When I removed it, not a single drop had spilled. Moreover, there was not the slightest condensation on the glass's walls, even though the room was quite warm. This suggested complete stasis not only of time but also of thermodynamic processes.
The next logical test was time. I turned on the stopwatch on my smartphone and put it in my inventory. I waited for what seemed like about thirty seconds and returned the phone. The stopwatch showed the same time as when it disappeared, down to the hundredth of a second. Time inside the inventory was frozen. I recorded it.
Then came an experiment involving living creatures. Looking around the room, I found a small spider in the corner of the ceiling. Carefully placing my finger on the arachnid, I tried to place it in my inventory, but the system responded with an immediate and clear mental block.
[System] — Living creatures cannot be placed in the Inventory!
Oh well, I didn't really want to. Let's check the weight and dimensions. The only heavy items in my studio were a half-empty refrigerator and a two-meter-long wardrobe. Both went into inventory and back without the slightest problem. The maximum weight and dimensions haven't been established yet, and they seem quite large.
The final experiments involved the laws of physics. I heated a frying pan on the stove until it sizzled and put it away. Then I crumpled a piece of paper into a ball, tossed it, and while it was in the air, I also put it away. When I returned the ball, it simply appeared in my hand, without conserving its momentum. I repeated the experiment with a heavier block of wood—the same result. Momentum isn't conserved. But heat—very much so. When I took the frying pan out ten minutes later, I felt the heat radiating from it, as if I'd just taken it off the stove. Stasis really did extend to thermodynamics.
As I lay down to sleep, I mentally reviewed the results one last time. The lack of conservation of momentum was a slight disappointment. The idea of "firing" items from my inventory was tempting. But it was also a blessing. It meant I couldn't accidentally cause a disaster by grabbing a heavy item while running.
To sum it up, the system wasn't just powerful—it was also, in its own way, safe. It gave me incredible opportunities, but it also set clear boundaries. "You can't put living things in." "Momentum is not conserved." These aren't bugs but features of sorts. Rules that force you to seek more elegant solutions than brute force. The system doesn't want me to become a god, hurling asteroids from my pocket. It wants me to remain a craftsman. A smart, cunning, inventive craftsman who uses the laws of his world and his power to achieve his goals. And this approach appealed to me. It's quite… honest.
Before I finally drifted off to sleep, I smiled. Tomorrow I'll build a potato cannon. It'll be a silly, almost childish project. But in this new world, it's something more than that. This is my first real act of creating something more complex than wooden figures.