This is Our Land (Emerilia Book 5)
Page 37
Malsour held an image in his mind of the Aleph power station, moving it around to see the best way it would take advantage of the ley line. After a few minutes of altering, he finally knew where it was going to be.
Malsour placed his hands on the ground, willing his Mana through the rocks, down toward the point he had marked in his mind. His Mana raced downward at first, slowing after a few minutes. It became harder and harder for it to push onward and downward.
Malsour lost focus on time as it moved through different materials under Malsour’s control. Finally, just a thread of his Mana reached where he wanted to create a drop pad. Malsour continued to push Mana through the link he’d made. It was painfully slow and hard work, as if he were carving out a letter in Mithril with a mountain on his back.
Malsour grunted and sweated, focused totally on his task. If he were to take a rest, then he would need to make a new path to the drop pad’s location. He welcomed the stress on his body, smiling. With the Stone Raiders, he had come to welcome the harder tasks, pushing himself further and harder.
***
Dave had his eyes closed and floated around in his chair in a lazy pattern.
Inside his mind, he was looking at the different spells he had seen battle mages and the Aleph mages using, as well as those he had seen used in the fields of Cliff-Hill.
There was a beauty to the spell formation, a weave through different factors to come to a final creation. Though, to Dave, it felt as if something was missing from the spells used on the vertical gardens. He compared them, looking at how they coaxed the plants to grow more. It was a stimulation of chemicals within the plants that made them grow.
Dave thought back onto fights he’d seen Earth mages using plants. With his near photographic memory, something tugged at the edges of his mind.
A little saying that one of the Aleph gardeners had said: “Although Earth magic is good at growing plants, slow and steady is the way to do it. You’ve got to let the plant talk to you and tell you if it’s ready to grow, and then you only grow it to just before its limit, else it might not give that good of a harvest.”
Dave pondered the words.
“Okay, so, plants live off a few things. They need carbon dioxide, water, sun, and nutrients in the ground, so…” Dave smacked himself in the head, groaning at his idiocy. Inside his mind, he was remembering glimpses of plants that had fought for Earth mages. After a fight, they were withered and dead, all of their resources and fuel used up to fight. Earth magic commanded plants, and supplied them with nutrients in the soil. It might draw in more water from the surrounding area, but they were used up in a quick fight. They didn’t have the endurance of, say, Earth golems, or Dark mages’ metal and stone.
It didn’t take that much energy from the Earth mages to command great swathes of forests because they were using the forest’s energy.
Dave opened his eyes and his interface, moving to his notepad and the 3D sculpting tool.
“Okay, so, what if we were to supply them with water, the proper light lamps and maybe some fans to keep the air circulating if they have a huge growth rate?” As Dave talked, he added in a sprinkler and irrigation, and then light lamps, altering them, so that they covered the entire area. Fans would circulate air through the area.
Now with a basic structure, Dave looked at the different components that he needed to make magical coding for. The lights needed to be the right wavelengths of light so they wouldn’t burn the plants, or give them the wrong light. That was a bunch of researching online and finding the best places to grow crops across Emerilia and comparing farmers’ notes.
Then irrigation just needed a simple rune to keep the water moving and a sensor in the soil and air, so that the sprinklers would keep the area at a certain humidity without needing someone there the entire time. He added in Earth runes that would keep the soil nutrient-rich; he added in the ability to alter the composition of the soil’s layers and nutrients as well as the growth rate put on the crops.
The air fans were complicated in figuring out the best way to have the air moving over all the crops in a manner that wasn’t too fast to blow them over but enough that they would be saturated with carbon dioxide.
“I’m going to need to set up a circulation system that pushes the carbon dioxide into these growing areas,” Dave muttered as he looked over the rough 3D sculpted area. It was a basic greenhouse with different systems and magical coding off to one side.
“Later I can maybe try to automate the whole thing, but that will work for now. Have to see what the gardeners and farmers think.” Dave sent the plan off to some who he had talked to get a better understanding of what they needed.
He checked on the city’s progress. It was about a kilometer wide from floor to opposing floor and four hundred meters deep. It was a ton of work to carve out the different places and although they had a bunch of miners, it still took time. They were also having a problem with the two refineries in the housing complex not being able to handle all of the material going through it, so there was a backlog of materials waiting to be processed.
Dave’s smaller miners and repair bots were working on carving out places for the runners in what would be the outside of the city. Once they were in place and the city was five hundred meters long, Dave would start powering the runners and cut out the city with a one-hundred-meter-thick floor. Once the runners took the load of the city, then Dave could start the rotation cycle and get the city turning and open up access to all sides of the city.
“So many things to do.” Dave smiled to himself. He reached out through his sensors, taking in the information that they were relaying back. He used them to find what Malsour was working on.
The drop pad was coming along slowly. Hundreds of kilometers away, through compressed stone, Dave wasn’t surprised it was so hard for even a Dragon to manipulate.
He opened his eyes from using the sensors and opened his interface to check the building progress of the refinery. “Forty-seven percent.” Dave bit his lip in thought. “Well, I guess there is really nothing that I can do right now to speed things up. Everything’s in the miners’ and repair bots’ hands. When the farmers get back to me, I can see about working on that, and Dark mages are better with speeding up forming the different facilities.”
Dave looked over to the doorway as Matt, one of the Stone Raiders’ artificers, stepped into his workshop.
“Well, I’ve heard of work driving people up the wall, but never floating up it in a chair.” Matt grinned.
“Well, I wasn’t able to smooth out the floor and my runners kept on getting caught, plus it’s relaxing floating around,” Dave said, defending his actions.
“It does look cool. Where do you want these ingots?” Matt asked.
“Place them in the correlating resource hoppers.” Dave waved at the factory lines off to the side.
Matt looked at a pop-up before he dismissed it from his screen. Apparently Dave’s request had turned into a quest.
“Hmm, I should check my class quests,” Dave muttered to himself. He opened his interface as Matt put ingots and materials into different bins.
Quest: Dwarven Master Smith Level 4
You must craft 1 weapon of SS quality, or 50 of S Quality with your Smithing Art (Currently 0/1 (0/50))
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 quest
Increase to stat gain
Quest: Friend Of The Grey God Level 4
Get the Stone Raiders’ Guild Hall functional
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 Quest
Increase to stats
Quest: Bleeder Level 3
Get the Stone Raiders’ Guild Hall functional
Rewards: Unlock Level 4 Quest
Increase to stats
Ability to disable Jukal Link
Quest: Librarian Level 4
Contribute to someone’s research topic
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 Quest
Increase to stats
Quest: Aleph Engineer Level 4
Help
build 1 Aleph facility
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 Quest
Increase to stats
Increased access to Aleph College Knowledge
Quest: Weapons Master Level 4
One handed and shield 0/1000
Two handed 0/1000
Dual wielding 0/1000
Archery 0/1000
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 Quest
Increase to stats
Passive skills from other weapons increase from 25% when not equipped to 50%
Quest: Champion Slayer Level 4
Kill 100 Champions (85/100)
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 Quest
Increase to stats
Increased/Decreased reputation with Affinities
Quest: Skill Creator Level 2
Personally teach 1 person your Skill (0/1)
Rewards: Unlock Level 3 Quest
Increase to stats
Quest: Mine Manager Level 8
Pay 20,000,000 gold
Rewards: Unlock Level 9 Quest
Increase to mine’s output
Quest: Master Summoner Level 2
Open a rift to 10 planes (0/10)
Rewards: Unlock Level 3 Quest
Increase stats
“Hey Matt, I know you’re an artificer, and you know something about magical coding. Would you be interested in learning more?” Dave asked.
“Yes.” Matt’s head turned around so fast Dave thought he broke his neck.
“Would you say it’s a topic of research for you?” Dave wheedled.
“Yeah, sure,” Matt said, a confused look on his face.
“Boo-yah!” Dave punched a triumphant fist in the air. “All right, finish up with that and I’ll teach you about magical coding.” Dave grinned. If I can teach him, then I might be able to get Skill Creator and Librarian up a level!
“Be done in a second!” Matt moved much faster to put the ingots from his bag of holding into the various factory hoppers.
Chapter 37: Oncoming Tournament
Geswald looked out over Emaren from his office’s large windows. Day had turned into night as he lost himself in his thoughts.
“Sir?” Pete said from the doorway.
“Hello, Pete,” Geswald said, his voice as tired as he felt.
“We have got word from some of the people we know who went to Devil’s Crater. It seems that the Stone Raiders’ videos of them fighting the Demon Horde was right. They’ve made a friendship with the Devil’s Crater inhabitants and are regularly clearing out the crater of wild animals and clearing out dungeons. However, we were not able to get a reading on the strength of the Stone Raiders there. We were able to get some on those who are training in Cliff-Hill. We weren’t able to get any information on their other guild hall. We have no location for it and it seems the only way to reach it is by teleport pad. The Cliff-Hill smithies are owned by a person called Dave Grahslagg, a member of the Stone Raiders. They’re expanding into Cliff-Hill and another company also owned by Mister Grahslagg is the ceramics factory in Cliff-Hill that is expanding into Zol’Ord.” Pete stopped talking, waiting for a reaction from Geswald.
“Anything else?” Geswald knew that even if the Stone Raiders all got killed off, they could come back. They had run away from Selhi after their fight with the PKP Guild and Lord Esamael believed that they would do the same when confronted with his army.
Geswald hoped it would go as Esamael planned.
“It seems that any of the Stone Raiders who desire to join the tournament will make their way directly to the mountains where the tournaments are being held. They have the gold for it and the guild wants to show off their strength.” Pete paused, as if wondering the best way to continue.
“Out with it.” Geswald looked to Pete, feeling better after knowing that the majority of the Stone Raiders would be far away, unable to interfere.
“Alamos of the mage’s college was at the Verlun location. It seems that one of our people we sent to make the Stone Raiders look bad was incapacitated and then escorted out. We could have spun it to make them look bad, but Alamos was in the store and agreed with the Stone Raiders’ treatment of the mage. He expelled the man as soon as he returned to the college and made it clear that the mages of the college reflect on their institution. Any behavior that is unbecoming of a mage’s guild or college student will be reprimanded and punished accordingly,” Pete said.
Geswald’s eyes thinned as he took a deep breath in. “Interesting.” Geswald pondered. “Seems that the mages support them, and have given them some added protection. Let’s see if we can’t reach out to those who don’t agree with this current ruling. See if we can’t use them later. Also, see if we can decrease prices here and make the stores that the mages deal with more appealing than the Stone Raiders’ in Verlun.”
“Also, the adventuring guild, while they haven’t made it public, most of their chapter houses refer to the Stone Raiders as an ally. The Stone Raiders give them a discount and assist the guild but don’t pay fees,” Pete said.
Geswald snorted.
“With the decreased prices, the adventurer’s guild is getting a lot more from the Stone Raiders than they could get with their fees. Also allows them both more freedom.”
“I have heard that the trader’s guild want to increase their ties to the Stone Raiders as well as Dave Grahslagg’s businesses. They assisted with helping the people of Devil’s Crater. Being such a new secured village within Ashal, it is sure to grow into a city with both its natural and manned defenses. The fact that there are dungeons within their walls and not too far beyond is sure to attract all manner of people,” Pete said.
“Yes, which is making it much harder for me to apply pressure and still not go against what the guild’s leadership is telling me.” Geswald pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a loud and frustrated exhale.
“I know it’s not my place, but it seems that the Stone Raiders are becoming quite a powerful force in Emerilia.”
Geswald let the tension in the room grow.
“It does, doesn’t it? I wish we had a way out of this mess, but we’re in too deep. Esamael has given us assurances, and based on what the Stone Raiders have done in the past and how they will be playing in a tournament, we should be okay. There are just a few hundred of them.” Geswald waved his hand as if it were a moot point. He didn’t know the full power of Esamael’s forces but from what he had gathered, it was around a half million strong.
More than enough to deal with the Verlun hall.
“They’ve been recruiting. They’ve got nearly five hundred in training camps, or being cycled through Devil’s Crater for training. Their vetting process is in-depth. We haven’t been able to get anyone in and while they don’t hire the highest-leveled people, they take on those who are driven and believe as they do,” Pete warned.
“Our cards have been played. All we can do now is try to stack the rest of the deck in our favor.” Geswald felt more tired now than when he had started talking to Pete.
***
Dave watched as Matt used the carver. His runes were a mess but they were easy enough to read.
With computers, keyboards, and voice recognition, there really wasn’t that much of a need to learn how to write with a pen and pencil back on Earth. Maybe it’ll be easier for the POEs to get the writing aspect while the Players can understand the coding method better—maybe pair them up?
Dave snorted, already starting to plan out the best way to teach his magical coding to others. He’d made a ton of interesting things with his simple magical coding, but there was just one of him. If he could have a dozen coders, he could spread the load out, all of them refining Magical Circuits and coming up with new code.
It could be a magical coding revolution! Dave focused back on Matt’s work with a smile on his face.
Matt finished off his final rune, ending it with the Xelur symbol of end. He looked at it, as if expecting it to explode.
“Okay, now let’s put it in the test cage.” Dave cl
apped Matt on the shoulder.
“Okay.” Matt put it into one of the machines Dave had created to ease his magical coding.
There was a line of code in a box, with four lines of code depicting different corners around the inner box. Matt placed the piece of metal into the inner box.
He pushed a switch on the side of the outer box. It lined up the runes, activating the Mana barrier in the outside box. He turned on another switch; the metal floated.
“Hmm, might be an idea to make a control bracelet, easier than having to conjure runes into my armor,” Dave muttered to himself, looking to his spear bracelet. Adding in the ability to turn it on and off and allow someone without the conjuring skill to change its outputs was pretty revolutionary.
Maybe add a higher powered ability to the bomber runes engraved on the DCA’s armor? He shook his head, concentrating on the metal band as Matt turned a dial also placed into the table next to the testing station.
The runes below the metal lit up; the runes engraved into the metal started to glow. The magical code didn’t store much power but it should be enough to activate it.
“Well done.” Dave grinned as the metal vibrated slightly and then settled back down.
“Thanks.” Matt took a shuddering breath and grinned nervously. The last ones had blown up rather spectacularly; the runes had not been deep or refined enough and the energy escaped randomly, and there was no power control. The metal had filled with energy and continued going, making it unstable and adding another black mark to the testing station.
“Well, let’s see what you’ve made.” Dave smiled. He understood some of the runes but he’d let Matt pick and choose what he wanted to make.