57 - Chapter 56 - Day 2180

They all disembarked outside Rory’s shop and entered. Evelin had made it clear to Adya that it would be best to keep the visit as short as possible. Any extended time away from the estate increased the risk to Adya significantly.

Adya wasted no time, and made her way to Rory’s workshop. She found him working on a commission. Even though stopping him would cause this piece to be wasted, she felt she had no choice.

“Rory,” said Adya. “I need you to stop. We need to have a serious conversation.”

The distraction led to Rory cursing as the formation he had been working on failed.

“Could you not have waited?” asked an angry Rory. “I spent hours on that, and now all that effort is wasted. I will need to start from scratch.”

“Sorry Rory,” said Adya. “However, we don’t have the time. One of my retainers is missing. You may be targeted. I need you to come with me. If there is anyone close to you, then they need to come with us too.”

“What about the shop? The commissions?” asked Rory. “I can’t just shut the shop.”

“Can you trust your staff to keep the shop open?” asked Adya. “We can leave them to run things, and you can carry on working back at the estate.”

“I guess I can,” said Rory. “Give me some time to get things organised.”

“No time for that,” said Adya. “Take your current work and one of your staff. You can give them instructions in the carriage and then they can bring things back and forth.”

Rory looked nonplussed for a minute, then grabbed his formations books, and the piece he had been working on. He asked Maya to join him in the carriage and asked one of his other attendants to tie a horse to the carriage for Maya to use. He also gave them quick instructions on keeping the shop open and running.

Evelin left one of her people to watch over the shop and report any issues. Without Rory present, there was only a limited amount of damage anyone could do. The worst would be damage to the shop and the staff had been instructed to not engage in any altercations.

Within ten minutes, they were all back in the carriage, joined by Rory and Maya, and on their way back to the estate.

Rory spent the first part of the carriage ride giving Maya detailed instructions on what he wanted her to do. Once he was satisfied with his plans, they stopped the carriage to let Maya off. She took the horse and returned back to the city while they continued back towards the estate.

“So,” said Rory. “I reckon you better tell me what is going on. The way we left it was like all the bandits in the three kingdoms were after us.”

“There are many things to discuss,” said Adya. “Is it safe for us to speak on the carriage Evelin?”

“It should be,” replied Evelin. “Just don’t risk anything too sensitive.”

“So there are a couple of things,” said Adya to Rory. “I have managed to create an artifact that will be most sought after. I need you to pretend that you came up with it. I don’t want to reveal my expertise. The second issue is that I need to tattoo a formation on you, so that you can show anyone that comes looking to steal the secrets of the said artifact that you are unable to reveal the details. It is for your own protection.”

“What sort of artifact?” asked Rory.

“I can show you when we get back to the estate,” said Adya. She was not surprised that it was his first question. “The first thing we will do when we are back is your tattoo. We have no idea when we will need to be able to prove it.”

Even Adya was not confident in successfully creating the formation in a moving carriage. The rest of the journey passed in relative silence.

Upon their return Adya took Rory to her temporary workshop and tattooed the dummy formation on his upper arm. It would stay hidden unless Rory needed to show it to anyone. She then proceeded to tell him about the coin creation device. Rory was suitably shocked. Adya left him to play with the device. She also left a house retainer with him to take care of any of his needs.

Evelin and Adya returned back to her suite. “So what is the size of our cultivation forces now?” asked Adya once they were back behind closed doors.

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“We now have a total of twenty two tier 6s, including me, one hundred and fifty six tier 5s, and a few others at lower tiers,” said Evelin. “Most are now situated around the estate to provide protection.”

“How many are likely to be recognised if the council sends a tier 7 or tier 8 our way?” asked Adya.

“Most if not all will be recognised on sight,” said Evelin. “However, we are not making it so easy. We have used the terrain to our advantage and most of our people are hidden and are using various means to avoid detection.”

“So unless we get very unlucky,” said Adya. “Then we should not be discovered. However, we should prepare for the worst case. We also can’t have a fight breaking out too close to the estate, it would put all the non-cultivators in danger.”

“That is true,” said Evelin. “Let me review my plans and also see if there is anything back on the search for Jarel.”

“Also please send me the details on that communication formation,” said Adya.

Once Evelin left, Adya communicated her frustration to Sai and Mai.

Adya: We really need to come up with a way for us to manage long range communications. This situation makes it hard to manage resources effectively. It also takes too long to learn anything.

Mai: Yes our operational effectiveness is severely hampered by the limits in communications as well as real time intelligence gathering.

Sai: The ideal solution to both is launching our own communication satellite network. However there are too many issues and gaps in our knowledge for that to be practical in any realist timeframes.

Adya: Is the system not effectively tracking everything and everyone already?

Sai: From the way it allocates skills and experience, and the way it can send direct messages, then yes it would seem to have a direct connection to every sapient creature in the universe.

Adya: Would it not make more sense for us to try and piggy back our communications on the back of that existing connection.

Sai: That would give us the comms ability, but not the real time intelligence capability.

Mai: We still need real time intelligence, even if it takes longer to implement. Using the system could also leave our comms vulnerable to attack by others. We don’t know if you are the only one who can manipulate some system functionality. It may work as a stop gap, and for civilian use, but would not be suitable for secure military comms.

Sai: It is not so straightforward. We need to understand the size of the planet we are on, and the gravity. We would need to test to see if the universal constants we used in applied mechanics from the old universe still apply here. Then we would need to design and build all the modules for a functioning satellite system from scratch using formations. We would need to create either massive mana batteries or a self charging system. We would need to test whether it would work in geostationary orbit. We would need to build tens of thousands of these devices. Then we would need to work out a launch mechanism. Lastly we would need to build a secure communications artifact to interact with the satellites and a control hub to monitor and maintain the fleet.

Adya: And given that the technical and material basis is completely different in this world, we would need to create a lot of the technical theory from scratch.

Mai: Lastly we have no idea what sorts of threats exist both in the upper atmosphere and space. So again we would need extensive testing to ensure our satellites would work.

Adya: This would be a massive undertaking and require mountains of resources. Do you have any idea how long it would take to create a workable plan?

Sai: I don’t have enough knowledge to even start the analysis at this stage. We need access to significantly more advanced knowledge. Otherwise, we need to start creating the technology from first principles. That would take decades if not centuries even for me. It would also require us to travel to gather knowledge and materials.

Adya: Not to mention that it would just make us a target for yet another reason if we were to actually build it without being powerful enough to protect it. It's the ultimate catch 22. Anything we do to gather resources and become stronger would make us targets, and therefore we can only do so after we are strong enough to protect it in the first place. But if we were to be strong enough, then we wouldn’t need to build it in the first place.

Mai: That is not true and is reductive thinking. Once we have enough personal power to protect our work, we can use the advancements to empower our sect and increase the tactical and strategic effectiveness of the whole group.

Sai: We probably need to work on both paths as it will get us where we need to be faster. Also there is no ‘strong enough’. There will always be someone or something stronger, not unless we reach the peak of power.

Adya: I think that is what we will have if we become the inheritors of the system. Getting there is the challenge, especially since we don’t know what we have to do to get there.

Adya returned to her training and experiments. However the nagging feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t leave her. As the day progressed without any news of Jarel, the feeling only grew.

The only change in the day came when one of the cultivators delivered the details of the long distance communication formations to Adya. She wasted no time in scanning the requirements and runes into the database Sai had created.

Sai initiated a passive parallel process to analyse the details and to improve their understanding. It was the largest and most complex formation they had come across to date. It would take several days to start to get results. Even then some of it would most likely require testing in the real world. It seemed like the formation knowledge they had already gathered was a very small part of the whole picture.

Adya returned to her experiments and the interminable waiting.