Arriving in the Desert a group of 8 people walked out of the FicSitine Temple, just like a different group did the day before to receive the two pioneers.
"How the hell did we miss that Pioneer Statue yesterday...it's huge!" Caldesan said while looking at the 50ft tall silver Pioneer Statue.
"I noticed it..." Gloss said quietly.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Cald replied.
"Well, you were passed out remember?" Gloss reminded her.
"Oooohhhhhh, yeah," Cald said while nodding.
"I went ahead and got us some horses, do you ladies know how to ride horses?" High Priestess Alana asked. Almost all the temples have a stable so they can go on expeditions to neighboring towns.
"Hmmm....yeah, we will not be needing horses," Caldesan said with a smile.
She then pointed her building gun and a weirdly curved box with wheels...spawned into existence.
"Muahahaha, everyone, this is a Volkswagen Bus!" Caldesan continued with an evil laugh that didn't sound convincing.
"I have turbo fuel too!" Glossarai replied.
"How far are the mesas and what was it called...the Sea of Desolation or something morbid like that?" Caldesan asked.
"It is about a 4-5 hours ride on a fast horse, or a day and a half with a slow trotter. And it is Seas of Desolation, they are lakes, but things in this world have a habit of exaggerating themselves. However, there are many lakes around here and only one very large one." Said Marchen Al'Mare.
As Glossarai also built a Volkswagen Bus, it was made with a silver metal that contrasted with a darker version below it, the group of people walked around inspecting the vehicle. The wheels had a single spike coming out of the axle like an old chariot, and on the front of the Bus there was the iconic "VW" symbol in a circle, that was a glowing orange color.
"These are....carriages?" Gnolt of the Naga asked.
"But do they not have magical power or horses to move?" Charine the Elven assistant to High Lord Jaenen asked.
"Hmmm, they said they don't need the horses though?" Pault Freeman, aide to King Desmian.
"They are called Volkswagen Buses, and they are indeed horseless, they run by burning a combustible fuel. During said combustion, it turns a crank to rotate the shaft for the wheels to spin with gears and such." Glossarai again went into an explanation that involved her extensive skill in simplifying her technological explanations in a world of magic.
"Anyways we should be able to fit everyone pretty easily, so if Charine, Melissa, Alana, and Marchen come with me, we can get going!" Caldesan said while hiding an obvious smile.
"What interesting selection you have there dear Cald, there wouldn't happen to be any ulterior motives in your selection of passengers, would it?" Gloss said with an evil smile of her own.
Before Cald could stutter out a response, a very kind feminine voice, that seemed to be as soft as silk, and as nice as can be, "Greetings honored delegates of the other nations, and greetings as well, Pioneers."
Everyone turned to see a nearly 8ft tall Giant Honey Badger garbed in the navy blue color robes common to the Giant Honey Badger Shamans.
"I am Apprentice Shaman Nalah, I am here on behalf of the Giant Honey Badger Society. I was wondering if I can offer my services in exchange for accompanying the Pioneers on their journey."
"Greetings Nalah, a pleasure to see you once again." Marchen Al'Mare addressed the Shaman in training.
"Ah, wonderful to see you again Marchen Al'Mare, I hope you are well." Nalah greeted in the same soft kind voice.
With the same sort of telepathic power that the two pioneers have shown to have, they once again made eye contact behind their helmets and nodded.
"Well, Nalah, it is great to meet you, this is Glossarai and I am Caldesan. We would love to greet you however, we require one thing from you that we need before you are allowed to join us." Caldesan said with a grave, yet somehow still excited tone.
"Oh, well, whatever could it be?" Nalah asked with a concerned tone of her own, do these Pioneers need her to prove her power or strength?
At the same time, Gloss and Cald said, "WE NEED A......HUG!!!!"
"Yup, this is not up for question, it is a necessity, sorry." Caldesan continued while everyone looked at the two pioneers like they are crazy.
"Cald, I couldn't agree more, very necessary." Glossarai also said.
After a sweet soft chuckle, the tall and large Giant Honey Badger opened her arms and said "Of course, come here." It was common for the Giant Honey Badgers to be physical with each other in everyday life, hugging is just another form of communication. They sleep in huge groups colloquially known as a "cuddle puddle."
Nalah herself was a mother to many daughters, and while these two were not hers, they were clearly young females and she instantly felt a motherly connection to them.
Cald and Gloss immediately took their helmets off and smiled excitedly at each other before running over and giving the Giant Ball of Fluffyiness and soft robes.
A gasp was released from Nalah as they took their helmet off, obviously noticing the "eyes of power." But she still chuckled again as the ladies gave her a crushing hug.
"Oh my goodness gracious, you are soooo soft and amazing!" Caldesan said, drawing more laughter from the Shaman.
"Mhm! Mhm!" Was Gloss's happy-faced response that didn't contain words.
Nalah could only look down at the little Pioneers with amusement, she was going to have to look out for these two, the world was not a place for ones with their innocence. It seems Nalah just gained two more daughters, at least in her eyes.
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A stack of turbo fuel each and everyone was loaded into the busses. Cald got her to wish for passengers, however, Gloss was sitting in the driver seat next to a fairly cramped Nalah, smiling her ass off at Caldesans pouting face. Helmet on or not, she KNEW Caldesan wanted to have Nalah in her bus. There was nothing that soft and fluffy in existence on earth.
"So are there any chasms or cliffs I need to worry about?" Caldesan asked Charine who was sitting in the front seat next to her.
Charine's icy demeanor gave her a no-nonsense vibe, but if you looked at her during the random hugging session, even she cracked a smile after the confusion wore off. "It should be relatively clear, however, there are rock formations that you would want to avoid. There are also large worms that might try to attack us along the way, but you can see them coming so they should be easy to avoid at these speeds."
Caldesan's mind immediately went to an old science fiction series called Dune, "Oh my word, how big are they?" The sandworms in Dune were massive, able to swallow both Volkswagens in a single bite, with rows and rows of horrifying teeth. "DO THEY GO AFTER VIBRATIONS? Do we need to drive at an alternating and uneven pace to throw off their tracking???"
The pure terror in Caldesans voice, and oddly specific descriptions, made Charine worry. She immediately looked at Cald with concern, "No they couldn't eat a human in a single bite, but could take off your arm if you aren't careful. They might attack the wheels of this like they sometimes do to carriages."
Cald immediately relaxed, "Whew, that's good to hear. Well, these tires should be just fine." Thinking it will be a good test to see. In game, this vehicle could not take damage, but they could if they were in it when falling off a cliff....but with the No Fall Damage mod, that was removed. Not that Cald was looking for a cliff to drive off of, but it SHOULD be okay if they run into these worms. Some testing was required.
"Charine, what is your hometown like?" Caldesan asked after a few minutes of relative silence, besides the engine of the car, and some soft conversation in the back seats, it was quiet between the driver and first passenger.
Charine's beautiful Elven features grimaced, "My town was destroyed at the beginning of the war. However, almost everyone made it out alive, but the area is now destroyed. It was very beautiful, and it was called The Fallen Oak, as there was a massive oak tree that was carved into a bridge. It was a little yet beautiful forest. I am sad that it is gone." It wasn't clear if she lost someone or not, but it was obvious that the town meant a lot to her.
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"I see, I am sorry to hear that," Cald replied while keeping her eyes on the.....sand.
"Don't worry about it, there is almost no person who wasn't affected by the demon invasion, it is a miracle we survived at all. We are even luckier that you are here to help pick up the pieces." Charine said, showing a hidden smile, even if her eyes still showed pain.
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2 hours later, the 2 buses arrived at the edge of a large, still lake. It was clear that it was water, but as they said earlier there was sand on the water's surface in some spots, and other lakes were scattered throughout the distance. Despite being a desert, there were only large amounts of dried-out dead plants, as if water does come around sometimes, but most of the time it is a wasteland.
"Okay, Cald, this is a good spot to run some tests, and potentially just build our coal factory here. And, if my theories are correct we are about to change this world!" Gloss said excitedly.
"You mean about the infinite resources cause they never ran out in game?" Cald asked.
"Yup, exactly what I was thinking! You could pull water from the ugliest swamp and it still was fine water to use for anything. Not to mention they never drained the lakes or water resources that the Water Extractors were....extracting from." Gloss continued.
"This is gonna be fun! Should we just get some bioreactors going for a few tests? I have a bunch of plastic, I could make some plastic containers, a Packager, and we could package some water real fast to see if it is good." Caldesan said.
"Do any of you have magic to tell if the quality of water is pure or not?" Gloss asked the group of people trying to understand their conversation.
"Hmmm, I believe I have something for that." Nalah raised her paw with a stone that she pulled from her elaborate necklace.
"We Giant Honey Badger Shamans can make Runic Stones with many purposes. This one here will purify the water of all poisons and impurities, leaving a healthy amount of minerals. It glows blue when it is finally clean. But it also glows different colors depending on what is affecting the water." Nalah said while holding the stone, which was just a stone with markings all over it, about the size of a half-dollar coin, but ovular.
"Perfect, so we need some biofuel for the Biomass Burners that will power this quick experiment." Gloss said.
"I already have 2 stacks of biofuel, I just brought it to in case we needed to use a chainsaw, so we don't need to worry about that," Caldesan said, since the chainsaws could use biofuel, it was much easier to use and limited the wasting of the precious regular fuel for the Exosuit.
"Alright, just give us a few minutes to build this real fast. I will work from the water extractors and you start with the plastic containers and we meet in the middle yeah?" Gloss planned fast.
"Sounds good!" A thumbs-up was exchanged as they ran off to start building.
A massive platform was created from the flying bags that turned out to be concrete. Looking at the "tiles" it was 20x20, which was 100x100 meters.
Gloss ran across the tiled floor to the water and began building the strange-looking water extractors. She then began to link them together through a circular hole with giant orange metal pipes.
"What metal is orange?" Merchen Al'Mare asked anyone who thought to answer. This was the only question that made it to the vocalization stage in the long process of communication, as it is a much more difficult process when you are completely speechless.
"I have no idea." Pault Freeman replied dumbfoundedly. He is a human who had a hobby for smithing and was an amateur smith in his free time before the Devil invasion. He hasn't had time to get back into it, but anything metal will draw his attention.
Back to the ridiculous magical display of conjuration, Cald began with making a single Storage Container, putting a couple of stacks of plastic in, then making a single Constructor, with another single storage container on the other side and MK1 conveyor belts in between. She seemed to interact with the machine as she selected the plastic bins for the recipe, and moved on from there.
10 Biomass Burners came into existence, cables connected everything, and a Packaging Machine was in the center of the madness, connecting to the water extractors and the bin where the empty containers would be. There was power poled making it an entire network.
"Alright, I am turning on the power!" Cald yelled.
In a matter of minutes some of the most intricate-looking, automated machines, came to life. As soon as Gloss yelled "Okay!" back to Cald, a large sound of energy and power seemed to resonate through the area. The group looked at each other as the power turned on, the conveyor belts carried weird blue rectangles to the single "constructor" as Cald named it. The machine made incredible noise, sparks, and more from within the depths of its frame. In a strange series of complex simplicity, the machine was able to produce square containers that continued to their next stop, as if floating on a river. The plastic containers worked their way into the large Packager Machine.
The water extractors powered up and began pumping water in. The orange tubes had a segment that seemed to open up as a full pipe and showed its contents and flow rate with the series of rings.
"What am I looking at?" Charine said to Caldesan as the two pioneers stepped back to watch it work for a minute.
"Well, this is our test, we are seeing if the Water Extractors affect the environment. In other words, we have a feeling that we will be able to pull water without actually draining any." Cald gave a quick description before Gloss spoke up.
"Nalah, could you come here please, it looks like the first packaged water is just finishing," Glossarai said walking towards the Storage Container that was connected to the output belts of the packaging Machine.
Gloss put her hand on the side of the container and stilled for a second, then she pulled the same blue containers that were coming out of this Packaging Machine on the conveyor belts out of thin air, and held it in her hands.
It was a 5-gallon jug of water that was see-through, and also didn't match the shape of the old square containers, as if the water itself changed it. Gloss then conjured a workbench with her magic and set the water jug on the table.
"Okay, let me just open it, then you can do your magic!." Gloss said.
She removed a cap that was also made of plastic, and Nalah walked up and dropped the stone into the container. It immediately began glowing a very pure royal blue.
Nalahs breath caught in her through, "Oh my whiskers! This has to be the purest blue I have ever seen. This water is perfectly pure, usually, the stone is light blue for the cleanest water...This is beyond that, this water is blessed! It's holy water from FicSitine herself!"
This statement made Glossarai and Caldesan look at each other with a confused posture. "What do you mean holy water?" Gloss asked.
"This water contains Divine Magical Residue. You two truly are incredible." Nalah said with stars in her eyes. She held her hand over the open jug and the stone flew out up into her hand and she replaced it on her necklace.
"Would you mind if I try some of this... Holy Water? It has me, most curious." Gnolt the Naga asked, incredibly curious to see if there was a way to purify large amounts of water. The Naga have been dying out and forced to live on land with the corruption of the waters, including in the oceans.
Gloss shrugged and pulled another 5-gallon jug out of her inventory, "We should have enough for everyone if you all want one."
Everyone wanted a jug, so Cald and Gloss handed them out. After everyone had at least a sip, if not carefully pouring some into a canteen, then they all seemed to feel relaxed and at ease, and old aches and pains and stress seemed to disappear. This water was divine.
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"So let's talk numbers, a single Coal Generator uses about 15 coal per minute, and I know it's about 270 water per minute for 6 generators, that's 90 coal per 6 coal generators, which is 450 MegaWatts per minute. So I think we should do 10 rows of 6 Coal generators which would give us just around 4500 MW. It would cost us the production of 30 Water Extractors as well, and I think we should do the stacking setup." Glossarai said.
"Yeah, put them about 20 meters above the surface of the water, and I'll start laying out the rows of Extractors. Oh wait....we need 90 times 10 coal per minute or 900 total coal per minute, so that's 2 coal nodes with MK4 belts, those can carry 480 resources per minute so 450 is no problem. Easy as pie." Caldesan said.
"Resources Node Creator!" Caldesan shouted.
After looking through the options she selected the Pure Coal node, and put 2 down side by side on a flat spot near the water. Then turning to the equipment bench and work table, she pointed to the gun and made what looked to be an orange metallic chest. She put her hand on it for a second then went to work creating what she needed for the miners, including inventory space.
"MK2's ought to do the trick!" Caldesan said to herself as she made things that disappeared as soon as they seemed to be finished.
"What are you making Pioneer Caldesan?" Nalah asked with unfathomable curiosity.
"Well, I am making the Portable Miners required to make the larger MK2 Miners that will sit on the resource nodes! They just take a little bit of crafting and voila! Also, just call me Cald, okay?" Cald said while turning back towards the resource nodes. At this point, there was a massive floor that just spawned into existence defying gravity itself. It was rectangular, massive, and sat at least 20 meters from the surface of the lake.
A single column of 5x5x5 meter cubes rose from the surface of the water acting as the anchor to the whole platform. Spread from the single tower, the floor did not touch the ground, did not waver or move at all, and was easily supporting the other Pioneers' weight. The platforms did not budge, at all.
"This is incredible Cald, I am nearly speechless. How is it floating like that?" Nalah continued.
"Hehe, just let us finish this, and we will do some technical explanations," Caldesan said while creating a platform on TOP of the nodes. The platforms were lined up in the same Cardinal directions as the platform Gloss made, which was now easy to snap the platforms to. On top of the platforms, she built the two MK2 miners.
Completing the building she built a dual window for both machines to run conveyor belts out of the same side of the building. From there she finished the four walls, with a row of windows on the second segment up. She covered the top while flying above the building, making a perfect rectangular cube.
A cascading series of booming detonations sounded from the floating platform, drawing everyone's attention. The first row of 6 Coal Generators formed from nothing and seemed to "drop" into place with loud booms. They were all facing the same direction, and the line of tiles in front of the giant machines lit up yellow before disappearing as Glossarai deleted them. The next row of Coal Generators faced the other direction so that the inputs were lined up with the same empty slot the first row was lined up with.
"This....this is magic on a scale I have never even heard of." Pault Freeman said to no one.
Caldesan then floated near the water and lined up a platform underneath the just deleted platforms in the air. She then made 6 Water Extractors that floated right on the surface with a large hole that pointed towards the center of the platforms and continued the process. 3 per side of the floating dock, which held the piping that fed the water to the 6 generators.
It was an easy job from there for piping, belting, and wiring, they set it up so they could start the first row of generators by jumpstarting them with a series of biofuel machines. That would kick start the process, then they could turn on the next row, and as 2 rows could cover the cost to run them all, they connected the rest of the generators right after.
Within 30 minutes, the entire system was built and running. They finished everything off by putting walls up and an automatic industrial-looking door at the front that was next to the dual conveyor belts, which were fed a constant stream of black-looking rocks into the building to be consumed.
The power of the Pioneers was very real, and efficiency was first.