GalaxSec: A Sci-Fi LitRPG (Skeleton in Space Book 2)

by Andries Louws

  “I agree, hon. Douglas, how can we reinforce a single piece of the structural frame?”

  Douglas stops looking around the GalaxSec base core room, pulling his flaming eyes from the rows of mysterious metal items stacked off to the side. Knowing what is expected from him by now, he doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he lets mana flow out of his hand, forming a trio glowing blue runes in the air.

  “Ooh, I told you those will work. How do we keep it supplied, though?”

  Douglas then realizes that he hasn’t even shown them he can make Mana Stones yet. Quickly forming one of the stones only causes him a slight bit of pain in his non-existent brain.

  “These…”

  “This…”

  And Douglas immediately regrets his impulsive decision. The pairs of burning eyes now trained on him hungrily cause him to feel goosebumps, his total lack of flesh notwithstanding.

  “This is fascinating. A homogenous energy storage medium?”

  “No, it has a singular flow direction, towards its center.”

  “Yes, yes. I see. Then, we could have everyone here charge these, maybe?”

  “Genius! This is why I always loved you.”

  “Oh, shut it. It’s nothing special. Now, Douglas…”

  On the one hand, the skeleton feels pretty happy that the couple stopped the sappy lovey dovey stuff they were doing again. On the other hand, both of them looking at him like a predator would look at an especially succulent little animal is also pretty unnerving. “Y-yes?” he cautiously replies, actually stuttering for the first time he can recall. He reflexively casts a Crude Mana Shield, stopping the two charging Shmees in their tracks.

  “Evot?” he sends into his badge in half reflex.

  “What?” sounds from his badge.

  “You okay?” he asks, desperately hoping for a ‘no’ so he can go help her.

  “Yes, I’m okay.”

  “Ungud says four hours. I’ll be up in two,” he mumbles, somehow scraping together a coherent sentence from the talk between Shmees he overheard earlier.

  “Good, I’ll manage until the-”

  The mana shield breaks, and Douglas is inundated by the overeager duo. He’s forced to empty a part of his mana pool, forming mana stones in all kinds of weird shapes. These new toys keep the duo happy for a while, allowing Douglas to concentrate on his job again. He checks in on Evot once more, but she rebuffs him curtly, causing the skeleton to sulk even more.

  “How is it going, Douglas?” asks the softer Schmee a few minutes later.

  Douglas looks up at her, wishing that his face could display the frown he is feeling. “Hard.”

  “The engraving thing?”

  “Yes. Mana channels take mana.”

  “Ah, so the further out you’re laying down mana engravings, the more mana needs to be spent in keeping the lines active?”

  Nodding at her quick uptake, he answers with a firm “yes.”

  “That’s why you’ve carved hollow channels through your bone plating?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ungud, stop that for a second. We need to discuss some stuff. Douglas, do you know of any patterns that can transfer energy over a distance?”

  Thinking of his Magical Control skill, one particular piece of information stands out. He holds up his hand again, this time projecting an odd spiral pattern. He projects the inverse of the pattern above his other palm.

  “Ungud, come over here. I think we just solved our mana problem.”

  The blocky Shmee stops talking to the wrinkled face of Klattio, who shuffles off while speaking towards the many people crowded around the ruined core door. Ungud walks over, the sparks in his eyes lighting up brighter as she spots the two floating symbols.

  “Fractal emitters?”

  “That one’s a receiver.”

  “No transceiver?”

  “Douglas, love. Do you have a pattern that can both send and receive?”

  “What?”

  “I guess not, thanks hon.”

  “You really took to being a female, huh?” blurts out Ungud.

  Silence. Douglas doesn’t move a single bone as the entire room grows cold.

  “We will talk about that comment later, Ungud.” Her voice drips with such massive amounts of venom that Douglas starts silently praying to the current DEITY of Death to take good care of Ungud’s soul. Yep, Douglas muses. Women of all kinds are bad news.

  “Now Douglas, how far are you?”

  Checking on the progress he’s been making, he looks at the hologram projection of the base slowly rotating in the centre of the core room. The entire GalaxSec planet-dropped base looks much like an elongated water droplet. The trio is currently inside the bottom sphere, three small dots shining brightly in the holographic projection, located in the most central part. Three internal tubes are marked in glowing light, the tops of all three ending near the central core. “Nearly there.”

  “Great. Then, we will need you to engrave these patterns and runes on the engines, just like this, okay?”

  Douglas just nods and does as she says. The engravings are made from complex lines of runes and a few patterns he taught them himself, modified to fit these engine things. Douglas honestly doesn’t even understand half of it, but if the two Shmees are to be believed, this will allow them to leave the planet. The mana channels he has been making are nearly at their respective target lengths, but they have cost him more and more mana to maintain. Unlike the bone Reworked he’d engraved so long ago, mana doesn’t really want to flow through the dense metal he has to work with here.

  Douglas then realizes that he has been so caught up in the Shmees’ pace, doing what they ask and nothing more, that he has forgotten about a central tenet of Magical Animation. He has been creating the central mana circulation path, to be sure, but he has forgotten all about the central mana stone. He’s also getting an inkling of what Ungud and co. are trying to do, so Douglas decides to just get it done.

  Walking over to the center of the room, he ignores the holograms flickering on and off around him and sits on the floor. Holding his hands out, he forms a sizable mana stone. He then uses a bit of Stone Moulding to create an indentation in the most central part of the core room’s floor. Dropping the stone in, and connecting the six channels he has been laying out, the strain on his empty skull immediately lessens. He then takes it one step further, ignoring the half panicked shouts from the two Shmees and the onlookers. He carves the receiver pattern into the large stone, and immediately feels it begin to tug on his mana the moment it starts glowing.

  With the new influx of ambient mana - all sapients he soul bound emit a bit of the stuff - the carving proceeds at speed. He reaches the engines moments after and starts on the complex engravings. He looks at the proposed model one more time and stops. He can see what the two grey beings are trying to do, but he also sees that its rather primitive and will waste a lot of mana. Douglas is not sure about how the engines work, but he does recognise a few things. The item on top of all three tubes is the same, a small ring surrounding a spray nozzle. The tubes themselves all hold rings that are slightly wider at the bottom.

  Douglas is pretty sure that, just like the Shot spells Evot made, stuff is supposed to fly downwards. He can basically feel his Magical Animation skill tick upwards as he starts re-designing the rune-covered design the two Schmee’s came up with. Instead of barely working lines of runes, he carves elegant patterns. The rune script that’s supposed to make several rings rotate is seriously complex indeed, and Douglas sees at least three spots that won’t work at all. Once again, a simple pattern does the same job, and more. It seems, being too smart can also be a detriment. The two grey beings had been so enamoured by the simple runes they’d found in the simple spells they know, that they didn’t bother looking further.

  “Done,” he reports, while immediately moving on to the second part of the task he was assigned. Using the slowly filling receiver mana stone as a base to carve new mana channels has turned out to b
e a massive boost to his engraving speed. Excess mana now flows through the channels easily, and Douglas actually has to prevent the engines from starting right then and there. Keeping half an immaterial eye on the overeager thrusters, Douglas starts reinforcing the entire base. Carving the three strengthening runes he knows, weakness to strength, softness to hardness, and brittleness to toughness, seems fitting here.

  Weaving these three runes in varying sizes through the base allows Douglas to get a feel for the place he has been staying in all this time. What he thought to be an underground basement actually turns out to be a buried spaceship. Douglas feels channels, tunnels, and rooms outside of the teardrop metal unit, but finds only dust and decay there. Then he suddenly realizes that his mana is now flooding through the entire base, and he can actually get a rudimentary feel for what’s going on. He feels the two Schmee’s pulling on his sitting form, asking him all kinds of too-complex questions. He feels the soul bound GalaxSec volunteers running around everywhere. Some of them just sit in a corner, others huddle over silent shapes, and others are too busy panicking. Deciding that while he is here, he might as well finish his task, a single Soul Bind circle appears in front of him.

  In the core room, where everyone is getting rather scared of the blue glow surrounding everything, the groaning of the base, and the rumble of the engines, silence descends. A few of the onlookers faint when seeing the incredibly complex spell shape appear in front of Douglas, their brains not capable of handling the truth in the formation. The rest just stare in fascination, unable to tear their eyes from the very spell that gave them life again. Ungud and his as of yet unnamed girl are quickly overheating, their decentralised nervous system working overtime.

  Then another spell shape pops into being, a second before the first one disappears. High above, a blue light appears and fades on the forehead of a corpse. Then another, and another. Each new soulbound individual gives off the slightest trickle of mana, which is quickly sucked downwards into the large engraved mana stone Douglas is sitting on top of. This mana is then poured into a new Soul Bind spell shape, creating a cycle of mana, with Douglas in its centre.

  Then the last corpse is a corpse no more, and Douglas reels from what he sees. Evot, her entire body blazing with mana as it unravels, is being eaten by a Reworked dragon. All the power coming into the stone beneath his hands, all the power he has been storing in his mana stone filled skull, and all the energy from his forehead. All that power, he gives to her. Up above, in the lobby, Evot’s eyes snap open.

  Now empty of mana, Douglas stands up with determination. “Engines are done. Base is strong. Go when full.” Shutting both yammering Shmees up with a thunderous voice, Douglas carves a small transmission rune into the central stone, adding a small little line of text only he knows. Then, taking a little bit of mana from the stone for himself, he creates another mana stone, carving in a receiver rune surrounded by the same line of text. He then walks up the stairs, stepping through the slagged door, walking across the fainted bodies of the onlookers.

  The stone in his hand starts glowing faintly by the time he is nearly at the lobby, and Douglas is honestly extremely relieved. He wasn’t sure whether or not the large central stone would be able to start supplying his smaller stone with excess mana. Just sucking the large stone dry would cause all the engravings to start to break down. As his own pool is still pretty much empty, he eagerly sucks up the little trickle of excess power coming from below. He then walks up the ramp towards the lobby, speeding onwards as he starts hearing the sounds of battle coming from above.

  The first thing he sees is Evot’s head disappearing into the gullet of another large Reworked. His mind basically crashes as he sees the large jaws snap shut, the long neck attached to the head retreating out of the doorway. His hand is up before he notices it move, and the Piercing Exploding Shot spell is forming without him actively trying to cast it. He barely manages to stop it from launching, as it would more than likely blow up Evot too. Instead, Douglas activates every single Magical Animation engraved in his metal plating at once, and tears through the air. He bursts out of the door, pulverising parts of flying Reworked as he does so.

  [ Histaff Rework- ]

  Snarling at the blue messages to get the fuck out of here right now, Douglas looks around the moment he appears outside. The sun has set, and he spots traces of a moon shining down somewhere to the side. Then he spots the tentacle necked Reworked that just ate Evot, and sees that it is but one head of many. The thing is made up out of a large white armored base, at least four hundred meters wide, with a forest of slender necks waving in a nonexistent breeze. The skeleton spots a bulge in one of the closest necks. He immediately lets his spell fly, and follows the bright projectile with his eyes as it smashes through the Gargantuan’s frontal plating.

  The explosion happens, and three Histaff smash into Douglas. Two are of the flying variety, and all they accomplish is making the blue dot at the bottom of his vision blink harder as they splatter themselves to pieces. The third one is a walking triangle, large hinges allowing it to walk and roll around. A light drizzle of Histaff slime starts raining down, making the night darker still. Quickly phlogistonating a spear of ice into his hands, he uses the sudden influx of air to smash the cold spike into the triangle’s midsection. Douglas breaks it off, leaving the point inside to freeze the entire thing over, while trickling in enough mana to reform the sharp end.

  Then one of the many large heads falling from the sky, ragged end still smoking and flaming, explodes in a bright laser show of flowing ribbons. Evot lands, her legs springs of glowing paper. Then Douglas is pulled backwards just in time for another massive dragon head to smash into the floor. He is tossed back into the GalaxSec base, landing in a crumpled heap of metal clad bone. Getting back to his feet, he sees Evot standing in the doorway, her back covered by a smoothly glowing sheet of blue. A rather nice spell shape moves across the surface of the shield.

  [ New spell shape learned; Mana Shield ]

  [ Crude Mana Shield integrated into Mana Shield ]

  “You’ll be up in two?”

  “Hello.”

  “Don’t hello me, you shining piece of snert!”

  “Hello,” Douglas repeats.

  Evot just slumps down onto her butt, her back against the mana shield. “Hello, you dumbass. Thanks for the save.”

  “No problem.” Douglas truly looks at Evot. Her previous neat uniform is in tatters. He briefly wonders how it’s even possible for so little fabric to remain, yet for it to still cover the bits that seem important to be covered. The fact that the slime covering all of her makes it cling to her every curve anyway makes that sort of a moot point, though. Other than that, she looks tired. Bags under her eyes, wounds covering her entire body, he only now sees that she missing her left hand and her right ear. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, don’t worry… Actually no. Where were you for the last six hours? I nearly died so many times. Only through the volunteer fighting corp did we manage to not be overrun.” Evot turns from a brave warrior, hanging on courageously, to a very tired person who just wants to rest over the span of two sentences. Douglas just walks over and lays a hand on top of her head. This is around the time that Evot seems to have realized the state of her clothes. The blush creeping up on her face only speeds up as she senses Douglas’s mana entering her body. “N-no need to go that far…”

  “Food?”

  “What, no? I already ate my rations.”

  “No, you have food?”

  “Wait, so let me get this clear.” Her mood once again shifts. “You let me fight off god knows what for six whole hours, three times as much as you asked initially, and you... you want me to make you food?”

  Wondering why she is back to asking stupid questions again, Douglas just nods.

  “Right. Have a nice life. I’m going.”

  Looking at the retreating back of Evot, Douglas internally promises that he will have the nicest life he can. He stares at the ramp
going down a long time, ignoring all the murmured conversations happening around him. Determined to fulfil his promise, he turns back to the door just in time to see the mana shield wink out of existence and a whole slew of Histaff monstrosities barge in. His talk with Evot made him think of all the neat spells that she made. He then realizes that he hasn’t cast the Exploding Shot spell even a single time. He sends the small kernel of tightly packed light that is a result of a hastily cast spell towards the oncoming horde and braces himself.

  The ape-like Reworked that walks into the spell looks oddly at the small hole burned through its chest for a few moments. It then seems to hiccup, smoke and steam wafting from its orifices and chest hole. It then keels over backwards, smashing into the floor with a wet squelch and a large spray of red goo. It’s insides turn from red goop to runny liquid within seconds, leaving a shallow red puddle and loose bone plating behind. The stone Douglas is still clutching in his hand glows brighter, and he wonders what that is about.

  “Douglas, whatever it was you just did, do it again!”

  As if Evot’s voice breaks some kind of silence spell, the chaos starts up again. All the beings watching from the sideline start making noise at the same time, and Douglas reflexively throws another Exploding Shot at the newest horrors making its way through the door. The multi-horned bone tortoise doesn’t bother avoiding the small spark. The small orb burns its way through its face, the shining light easily traceable as it enters its main body. The same deep yet modest explosion happens, and the entire thing falls apart. Red water streams from the shell in a small wave, rivulets making their way into the base.

  Douglas casts a fireball in front of himself, moving it around to swat the few smaller flyers making their way into the base. These just burn, thick slime visible when they pop from suddenly being cooked. Douglas pops his head outside the door, and spots one of the large dragon heads lying in front of the entrance. He uses ten mana to cast another Exploding Shot, and watches it burn its way into the still wriggling neck. Another small pop later, and the entire thing deflates, its slime running out of its bone plating like water.