“Oh right, I still need to get you guys those parts. If you give me a bit I can run and get the ones I have. We may need-” Zypher stopped as Denkou sounded an alarm.
“A minor quanum disturbance has been detected roughly thirteen kilometers south-east.” Denkou stated in its robotic tone.
“I guess we have work to do. You guys can stay here, I’ll go take care of it and also go grab the parts we need from my apartment,” Zypher said before pushing his stool back to stand. “We may as well get started as soon as I get back. Could you prepare the materials you already have and a work space?” He asked as he reached for the balcony doors.
“Absolutely. We’ll see you in a bit,” Alden replied with Zypher nodding in thanks before heading out and flying away.
“Where’s he going?” Nicole asked, walking back into the kitchen just as Zypher left.
“Oh, just to take care of a quanum disturbance and pick up the stuff we need for our teleporter. Come on, let’s go get things ready for when he gets back,” I said excitedly.
We decided to clean up the kitchen before moving on. Even though Alden had maids it just felt wrong to leave everything up to them. As soon as we had finished cleaning, we wasted no time moving to Alden’s basement where he had already set up an impressively large workshop. By the time we had managed to get everything out and organized Zypher had returned with a couple of large boxes.
“Perfect timing,” Alden said as Zypher placed the boxes down, “how did it go?” He asked, immediately noticing the unease in Zypher’s expression.
“It went fine but I'm concerned. The disturbance was a bus that had achieved sentience through quanum,” Zypher said, grimly.
“What’s so concerning about that? Seems pretty simple to take care of isn’t it?” Nicole asked, innocently.
“Well, remember that it's easier for quanum to manifest itself as a phantom and that they don’t really have sentience, they’re just hungry thoughtless masses looking to sustain themselves. The structure of physical objects that aren’t made from quanum make it very difficult for quanum to actually interact with them. But, when quanum does interact with them it becomes very difficult to detect, which incidentally means that the quality, or in this case efficiency, of the quanum is increased. So now, we have objects that are difficult to detect, that are imbued with quanum, and they gain some semblance of sentience on top of that. It adds an entirely new layer of complexity,” I explained.
“And within that complexity, a sentient quanum monster can utilize quanum freely and work cooperatively with others. If we’re not diligent, we could end up with groups of quanum monsters imbued into objects that work cooperatively to search for sustenance,” Alden continued for me.
“Essentially, yes. Based on what I saw, the only reason Denkou detected it was because it was an object as large as a bus. Think about how many small objects we have that they could easily be residing within that we aren’t detecting. We need to get this teleportation system working as soon as possible or I think we’re going to be in trouble,” Zypher stated, nodding sagely.
With an understanding between us we began working diligently to complete the teleportation device. We each took turns scouting the island looking for any more disturbances and were alarmed by how accurate Zypher’s predictions were. Over the course of a week we collectively handled over seventy disturbances and they seemed to only be increasing in quantity.
“I’m exhausted. This is getting out of hand but at least it's good training,” I said, wiping sweat from my brow and falling into a chair in the workshop.
I had just returned from my shift of shutting down quanum disturbances. We had gotten a fair bit stronger in just the last week alone. Nicole had managed to consistently stretch and maintain her aura up to a whopping forty meter radius which was excellent for scouting. Alden had gotten used to splitting his aura and controlling it remotely across the entirety of the island—it was substantially weaker the further from him it got, but for scouting, it was a little overpowered. Between scouting, handling disturbances, and our incursions into the 4th World, our powers were growing rapidly. Zypher had improved his aura to be able to coat his pulse shots, which allowed him to snipe from even further distances without his shots losing power or accuracy. I, however, had seen very little improvement. It seemed I had already improved so rapidly that I had hit a wall in my development. The fact that I misunderstood the properties of my aura shook my confidence in using my soul sense. Out of concern for my abilities going out of control again I tried to just stick to using my quanum and soul sense for scouting purposes. Even still, I tried not to let it bother me and instead chose to share in my friends’ successes.
“Welcome back,” Nicole said, smiling warmly from a chair across the room.
“Oh, thanks,” I said, returning her smile with one of my own.
“You’re just in time, we need you to meld some of these components together for us,” Alden said, ignoring my obvious exhaustion.
“Aww man, can’t I just relax for a bit?” I whined.
“Well, if you get this done, it will be pretty much complete and we just need to let Zypher and Denkou program it with the information Cadeyrn gave us,” Alden said, in a serious tone.
“Fair enough,” I agreed as I pushed myself out of my chair and made my way over to the devices.
So far we had developed a circular pad as the platform, large enough to hold seven people. We only had to link the console with it to get it all working. After some tinkering, and with Cadeyrn’s instructions, I used my excellent control of elements and soldered the cables together. We were unable to use an actual soldering iron as the materials we were working with required much more precision and heat than we could accurately achieve with a handheld device. After roughly an hour of soldering, it was finally complete, we just needed Zypher to finish the programming portion of it.
“Awesome, let's try powering it on before I get started on the programming,” Zypher said, as he began plugging in some cables and flipping some switches.
We watched as the pad started to emit a dim light and made a quiet whirring noise as it turned on.
“So far so good?” Alden asked, observing the device closely.
“Absolutely. I’ll start working on the firmware. Give me a few hours!” Zypher announced, excitedly.
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“In the meantime, did you want to spar?” I asked, staring at Alden, who briefly glanced over at Nicole.
“You boys go have fun, I’ll go monitor the island,” she said, waving us off.
“You’re the best,” I said, smiling excitedly.
“Of course,” Nicole said matter-of-factly. “Don’t beat him too badly,” Nicole added, tapping Alden on the shoulder as she walked out.
“That’s just mean,” I whined.
“But not untrue,” Alden chuckled.
“Oh, it's on now. Let’s go!” I said as I started running in anticipation towards the training room Alden and I had built a few months back.
It was really just a massive square room, roughly the size of a tennis court with concrete walls reinforced with quanum. We built it in order to train in secret but it hadn’t seen much use as of late.
“Same rules as usual?” Alden asked, as we stepped into the room.
“Absolutely, the first one to stop moving loses,” I agreed.
Alden pulled out a coin and dropped it, the metal clang it made as it hit the floor signifying the start of our match. Before I had time to react, Alden had two clones surrounding me with blades at my neck, his included.
“Well this is awkward,” I said before clasping my hands together and quickly pulsing out a strong mix of my aura and quanum in a circular wave pushing Alden and his clones back.
Alden, while briefly stunned, recovered quickly following up with a swift lunge towards me with an all too familiar flurry of strikes. I managed to dodge each strike with practiced ease—until his clones joined the fray. I swung my arm outwards and spun in a circular motion, my sword appearing in my hand, and parried all their strikes simultaneously causing Alden to pause momentarily in surprise. Alden once again recovered quickly, making an awkward horizontal slash aimed at my torso. I ducked under the incoming slash, rising again to counter with my blade. I sliced with a vertical slash only for Alden to swiftly side step it. I smiled cheekily at him as I continued the full motion of my slash behind me, cleaving his clones in half causing them to disperse.
“Well played,” Alden complimented before waving his sword casually outward.
The ground was quickly flooded with ten centimeters of water and Alden dropped into it, vanishing. I knew his intentions were to pop up randomly and unpredictably, so I carefully charged my hand with lightning and thrust it into the water hoping to shock him out of it. In that instant, I heard the whirring of wind and leaped backwards just as his two blades came rushing towards me. Looking carefully I saw they had been wrapped in a vortex of wind, if that hit me I’d be done for sure.
“Sword of Damocles. Cast your judgment,” I said, as a flaming sword appeared atop Alden’s head.
“Really?” Alden feigned a whine and with a quick upward slash, the water below flew upwards extinguishing the flaming blade.
In that instant, I lunged forwards, my sword transforming into a spear imbued with lightning, thrusting it towards him. Alden dodged to the side, spinning around the spear, as he thrust his swords back at me only to be struck in the back by a large bolt of lightning which caused him to stumble briefly. While the attack slowed him down he was still able to dash sideways and take a defensive stance before I could follow up.
“Wew, that hurt. I think it’s a tad bit unfair that you can use all the elements and I’m stuck with two,” Alden complained, a tad bit of frustration leaking out.
“Says the guy with clones,” I said as five clones burst out of the water surrounding me.
“Cocytus,” Alden said simply, almost passively, while I was distracted by his clones.
It was a big sign of Alden’s growth. An incantation was the best way to help your mind visualize the effect you wanted your quanum to have. The fact that he had managed to shorten such a powerful attack into one word was terrifying. A flurry of snow started to gust around me causing ice to start creeping up my legs. It was then I noticed that it was being cast by not only Alden but all his clones as well.
“Oh, you bast-” I was frozen solid before I could finish.
Soundly defeated, Alden melted the ice and I stepped free.
“Well done. That was a well executed strategy,” I said, incredibly impressed with his proficient use of water and air elements.
“To be fair, you weren’t trying that hard either,” Alden said, disappointment briefly appearing on his face before fading into a smile.
“I certainly was, you were just a step faster than I could keep up with to be honest. I know you think I could have used Sakujo but I can’t use my weapons with it and it still takes too much focus to utilize,” I complained as I used some air and fire together to dry myself off. “Alrighty then, lets go a few more rounds, I want to test some stuff,” I said, readying my sword.
“Sure thing,” Alden agreed.
We continued sparring, messing around and testing random things until Zypher called us back to the teleportation pad.
----
“So, it works?” I asked, staring at the dim glowing pad.
“Oh yes. It certainly does. Nicole has already tested it out a few times and so have I. As long as we have the coordinates, we should be able to go pretty much anywhere. So long as we have enough quanum stored that is,” Zypher said, excitedly.
“It feels really weird in comparison to yours Cian, but it's definitely less disorienting,” Nicole said, causing Alden and Zypher to stare at me incredulously.
“She knows what she said…” I said, my hand covering my face which caused Nicole to smirk slyly.
“Back on topic…Think we could get to the mainland with it?” I asked, seriously.
“Sorry, it doesn’t look like we can. I set the coordinates and it just kind of fizzles out. Give it a shot if you want,” he said, with a dejected shrug.
Stepping onto the pad, I channeled quanum into it and used Cadeyrn to interface with the control panel. The lights on the pad grew brighter as it began to buzz and whirl loudly before it immediately stopped.
“See? Doesn’t work. Denkou has no idea why,” Zypher complained, flipping through notes trying to find an idea.
“Barrier detected at the target coordinates. Teleportation to this zone is not possible without the proper access code,” Inazuma stated in a robotic tone.
“Cadeyrn?” I asked in confusion.
“Inazuma is correct, I’m analyzing the data now,” Cadeyrn stated.
Inazuma, being almost strictly defense focused, supplemented Cadeyrn's observational abilities. After a few quiet moments Cadeyrn started explaining.
“It seems that there is an incredibly strong barrier around the ‘mainland’ as well as this island that you are referring to. I see no way of breaching it without the access code or a different mode of transportation,” Cadeyrn stated with a tone of finality.
“Damn…Well, we’ll have to figure that one out, maybe my father will know something,” I said, disheartened.
“Let's focus on what we can do, like going to the 4th World in our physical bodies,” Zypher said, nudging us back on track.
“I think it’s time to pay my commander a visit,” he added, stepping onto the pad.
Alden and Nicole stepped onto the pad in agreement but I hesitated. I felt like we had hit a wall in our information gathering despite the current opportunity before me, I simply felt wrong leaving for some reason. After a few more moments of awkward hesitation, I joined them on the pad. With a brief command to Denkou we were suddenly inundated by white light before being transported somewhere else.