"Whatever," Rosen muttered to himself, leaning back against his headboard as the adrenaline from the heist finally began to settle into a low, buzzing hum. "As long as I don't go out of my way to poke the hive, I don't have to worry about any Multiverse-level threats for at least a decade. The big cosmic stuff? That's Kamar-Taj's problem. Let the mages handle the interdimensional tentacle monsters."
He stared at the ceiling of his high-end apartment, the ambient glow of the New York skyline filtering through the floor-to-ceiling windows. He felt invincible—literally, thanks to the Divine Shield skill—but he knew that in a world where gods walked the earth, "invincibility" was a relative term.
He shifted his mental focus, pulling up the System's skill log. His eyes hovered over two specific entries that had felt... different during the draw. Pocket Factory and Engineering Upgrade.
These, along with Rocket Barrage, were the signature moves of the Goblin Tinkerer. In the game, they were straightforward. You plopped down a tiny building, it spat out clockwork goblins that ran at people and exploded after forty-five seconds, and you moved on. You shot some rockets, you stunned some guys. Standard RTS stuff.
But here, in the cold reality of a Manhattan penthouse, the System had done something radical to them.
"This isn't just a power-up," Rosen whispered, his eyes widening as he read the updated descriptions. "This is a full-blown career change."
The True Form
The System had split Pocket Factory and Rocket Barrage into two distinct modes.
The Normal Form was exactly like the game. He spent Mana, and the System "printed" a temporary structure or a volley of energy-based missiles. It was fast, it was magical, and it vanished when the timer ran out.
But the True Form? That was where things got wild.
If Rosen provided the physical materials—steel, copper, gunpowder, microchips—the Pocket Factory became a real, permanent manufacturing hub. No Mana cost. It would churn out clockwork bots that didn't just explode after forty-five seconds; they would exist indefinitely. He could build an army of robotic minions, a literal mechanical legion that stayed in the real world until they were destroyed or he scrapped them.
Rocket Barrage: True Form followed the same logic. Instead of firing glowing Mana-bolts, he could craft his own physical rockets. Their speed, their payload, their blast radius—all of it depended on what materials he fed into the design.
"Wait a second," Rosen sat up, his mind racing. "If I can build the rockets myself... and I find the right 'ingredients'... could I literally manufacture a tactical nuke?"
He let out a short, hysterical laugh. The idea was terrifying, but the System didn't seem to have a "No Weapons of Mass Destruction" policy.
The Knowledge Dump
But the real game-changer was Engineering Upgrade (Level 2).
As soon as he focused on the skill, a massive, oily, gear-grinding weight of information slammed into his brain. It wasn't like the other skills, which were more like muscle memory. This was knowledge.
[Engineering Upgrade - Level 2: You have mastered Intermediate Goblin Engineering. You can manufacture and repair any mechanical product you can imagine, provided you have the materials.]
[Warning: As a Goblin Apprentice, your products may be unstable. Expect occasional explosions, unintended sentient behavior, or smoke.]
"Goblin Engineering," Rosen mused, feeling the new neural pathways firing in his skull. "It's not just Gears and Cogs. It's... everything."
He looked over at his bedside lamp—a sleek, modern piece of brushed aluminum and frosted glass. Suddenly, he wasn't just seeing a lamp. His brain began to deconstruct it. He saw the wiring gauge, the resistance of the filament, the exact tension of the spring in the toggle switch. He knew how to make it brighter. He knew how to make it walk across the room. He knew how to turn it into a thermal detonator.
He looked at his TV. His refrigerator. His smartphone.
"I can build these," he realized, his voice trembling with excitement. "I don't just have superpowers. I have the ultimate R&D department in my head."
His mind immediately jumped to the biggest fish in the pond. Tony Stark.
Right now, in 2007, Stark was probably somewhere in Malibu, drinking expensive scotch and thinking he was the smartest man on the planet because he'd perfected the Jericho missile. Next year, he'd be stuck in a cave in Afghanistan, desperately hammering out the Mark 1 suit from scraps.
Rosen looked at the ultimate skill for the Tinkerer: Mech Goblin.
In the game, it was a transformation. In reality, it was a blueprint for a high-powered, combat-ready exoskeleton. A mech suit that could tear through tanks and shrug off small-arms fire.
"I could build my own Iron Man suit," Rosen said, the words tasting like victory. "Actually, why stop at a suit? I could build a fleet. While Stark is struggling with his flight stabilizers, I could be rolling out Goblin-tech mechs that run on pure, high-octane chaos."
The mental image of him showing up to Stark's big "I am Iron Man" reveal while piloting a ten-foot-tall, steam-belching goblin mech was almost too good. He could see Stark's face now—the confusion, the ego-shattering realization that he wasn't the only genius in town.
The Shift in Strategy
The "smitten smile" on Rosen's face wouldn't fade. But as the sun began to peek over the Atlantic, painting the New York skyline in shades of bruised orange and gold, he forced himself to think practically.
Up until tonight, his plan had been simple: Be a ghost. He was going to use the criminal underworld as his personal piggy bank, robbing gangs like the Kingpin's whenever he needed to buy a new skill or a potion. He'd be a mercenary, a free agent who lived in the shadows and stepped into Marvel events only when there was a paycheck involved.
But Engineering changed the ceiling.
Robbing gangs was fast money, but it was "dirty" money. It was cash that had to be hidden, and it didn't give him a seat at the table. If he used this knowledge to build a company—a tech empire that made Stark Industries look like a lemonade stand—he'd have more than just money. He'd have influence. He'd have a legitimate front for all the "weird" stuff he was doing.
Plus, there was the Alchemist angle.
He'd drawn Acid Spray from the neutral hero list earlier. Just like the Tinkerer's skills, it had a "True Form." He now had an Alchemy recipe for a chemical cocktail that could eat through reinforced titanium. If he could unlock the Alchemist's ultimate—Transmute—he wouldn't even need to rob banks anymore. He could turn lead into gold. Literally.
"I can't just be a thief," Rosen whispered, pacing the length of his living room. His footsteps were silent on the hardwood, but his mind was a riot of gears and chemicals. "I have to be a mogul."
The Itch to Create
The excitement was a physical thing now, a buzzing in his fingertips that made it impossible to sleep. Despite the grueling stress of the Fisk Tower heist, his body felt light and energized. That was the Watcher template—he didn't need eight hours of shut-eye like a normal human. His cells were humming with elven vitality.
He walked over to the window and watched the first few yellow taxis begin to swarm the streets below like ants. The city was waking up. New York didn't know it yet, but the hierarchy of power was about to get a serious mechanical overhaul.
"I need a workshop," Rosen said, his eyes scanning the industrial buildings near the docks. "I need scrap metal. I need chemicals. I need to see if these blueprints in my head actually work."
He grabbed a light jacket, concealing the Orb of Fire in his inner pocket, and headed for the door. He didn't use Blink this time; he wanted to feel the pavement under his feet. He wanted to see the world through his new "Engineering-vision."
He was done with the "recharge" phase of his plan. Now, it was time to build.
As he stepped out into the crisp, morning air, the smell of coffee and diesel fuel hitting his senses, Rosen didn't look like a master thief or a supernatural hero. He looked like a kid with a secret.
"Let's see what a Level 2 Goblin Apprentice can do with a New York junkyard," he grinned.
The "True Fragrance" law of the universe was in full effect: he had once thought the magic of the elven skills was everything, but now? Now, the cold, hard logic of machines was calling to him.
He walked toward the subway, already calculating the structural integrity of the train cars as they rumbled beneath the street.