"I can use some of this", Kaden muttered to himself as he walked around in the armory. He didn't find any of those bigger weapons that could have been danger to him. Perhaps they were elsewhere. He did find some battle armors, though. "These... these are good. Just some work to toughen them up."
They were roughly human sized advanced armors. Basically suits of steel.
"What are you doing Kaden!" Emina shouted as she came to the armory with some of the people in tow.
"Just taking stock of useful things", Kaden replied and then looked at the shelter's people. "Emina has told you a lot of useful things. If I choose to take something from here, consider it a payment." Then he looked back at Emina. "If we are to ever return to our time and get out of the remnant safely, we will need to prepare. The armory was our target in our time, yes?"
"This isn't the same", Emina replied. "These people need everything they got and it still might not be enough."
"They are weaklings, we are strong", Kaden pointed out. "There is very little they can do. Strength is what matters. Always. Besides, it seems to me that you are led around by your emotions too much. Was it not you who said our future likely required us to be here, yes? Anything we do here is something that must happen in that case. Also, if you have concerns for these people, some of them will likely survive to cause those events required for our time to exist. Do not concern yourself with their needs any further."
Kaden casually said all that. There was no need to be concerned about these ancients or their wellbeing.
"We don't know that for sure!" Emina replied angrily.
"We are here", Kaden continued. "We exist. We survived. I might be somewhat angry that I don't get to kill some people, if they really get erased along with our timeline, but survival is my highest concern. I will do what I need to. To go back will require preparations and I want to ensure I am ready for that. If I have to choose between my survival and being able to go back, I will choose my survival. These ancients mean very little to me."
"If you want to get back we might need their help and they might not help us if you mess with them", Emina told Kaden. "They understand matters that we do not. I was just in discussion about some theories as you basically broke in here!"
Kaden's attention perked.
"And?" he questioned.
"You are insuferable, do you know that?" Emina replied. "But yeah, sure. One of the scientists here wondered if the time distortion is basically a tunnel. Or perhaps you might imagine it a string in wind. Its end and start point may flutter across all possibilities chaotically depending on currents of causality. The tear only opens up when that ending point connects to this possiblity. That means if we are to go back, we need to have this timeline connect to ours which it isn't right now. If true, we might be able to go back."
"Are you saying we should restrain ourselves?" Kaden asked. This would obviously be Emina's objective.
"What I'm saying is that we need to do something that will cause this timeline to lead to our future", Emina said.
"That could be anything", Kaden argued. Then he looked at the people from the shelter who were quietly watching the argument. Then he said in their language. "We might even be required to kill all these people."
Emina gritted her teeth.
"Right now you should stop trying to cause problems until we understand more!" Emina said also in english to calm down the situation.
Kaden shrugged.
"Sure whatever", he said and turned around to walk out of the armory. "I came here to only take a look. I have things to do. Its not like they can move all this stuff elsewhere. I will come and take what I need once I have a plan ready."
"And you are expecting me to discover how to return while you collect everything you want?" Emina questioned Kaden.
"You may do what you want, but you are likely better choice to interact with these ancients", Kaden pointed out. "Both of us will benefit from the current situation, I believe. You will need me to escape and my chances also increase with you. Neither of us will leave the other behind."
This was likely the truth. Even if Emina was able to discover way back to their own time, she would likely perish on the way out. It was even likely, if she was with Kaden. Also, while Kaden was interested in the ancients and their understanding of world and its rules, he knew a lot of that was already recovered and he would be able to discover if he grew strong enough. That is why he was far more interested in the mana in the era between cataclysms start and gods arrival. That was something which didn't exist in future at all.
With that, some time passed. Kaden avoided the inhabitants of Shelter 03. With all the time travel and who they were, Kaden felt uncomfortable around them. It wasn't that he felt threatened by them or anything, but there were too many questions. Be it Emina's suggestions that he and Emina were meant to have come there or why it was so significant, there were things Kaden wasn't comfortable with. It didn't even need to be significant. It may even be possible were progenitors of some significant people far in the future and no other significance. How did they get off Murika? Did they or their descendants do so before beasts grew in power to match human race? Did gods help them? Would they speak of this visitation from far future? Risks!
There was no way to answer many of these questions. Kaden didn't wish to mingle with them. Instead he spent time near the surface where the seemingly endless mana storm unendingly raged. The surroundings seemed to change appearance as time passed. The mana storm altered everything. Nothing seemed constant. Why was the shelter only constant? This brought more proof to Kaden's suspicions about the Shelter 03 being slowly turned into a remnant. It wasn't one yet, but was well on its way.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
Kaden ignored the matter and prepared formations near the entrance to regulate mana and give him some defense. As long as he was careful he expected to be able to cultivate with very little danger and perform his studies on the mana. As for going further away from the shelter, he decided it would have to be only short excursions before returning. He still planned to purify his mana as much as possible which might lead him to search denser pockets of mana and newly formed crystals fit for his use.
Cataclysm was obviously dangerous, but at the time it happened, there were no others who had cultivated other than Kaden and Emina. Having done so, the denser mana brought some level of protection from the violent ambient mana. The normal humans randomly even without cultivating had generated cores and subsequently exploded. Kaden already had a core, so his would only absorb the pure mana. As long as he didn't take in enough to initiate evolution, all would be fine and even beneficial.
If it so happened that there was no way to return by the time his evolution starts, Kaden planned to do so deep inside the shelter. At that point he assumed it was unlikely that he would ever return so it was mostly a secondary plan.
While he cultivated, he didn't do so at his best rate, but concentrated observing the part of the mana he didn't understand. To begin with, he wasn't at the spot yet where he would advance to the limit of his current stage, he was taking in pure mana, but he was also letting out old less pure mana. Even having just started it, he could tell it was very beneficial. The pure mana was extremely easy to manipulate.
As for what he would do once he returned to his own time. The current plan was to optimize his internal formation and make his core stucture itself more perfectly. He would have to get past Condensation stage with how his internal formation is at the time of advancing. Kaden expected core had some similar restrictions, but he knew very little of beasts and their ways.
"I will probably have to find some beast that is willing to help me", Kaden thought.
The beasts or Cari would perhaps be more reasonable and could be worked with. Perhaps if he had something to trade for it ... or take by force somehow. Knowledge was harder to just take, though. Kaden was leaning on more friendly methods.
Replacing his mana with the better one was going very well. It wasn't exactly hard nor was there mysteries related to such process. Sometimes people in his own time would do so, if they found access to good source of mana and it would benefit them somehow.
As for the mysterious part of the mana. It simply refused to do anything at all! Despite this, Kaden refused to believe it was some illusory useless part. Even so, it seemed to not react to anything. Kaden was completely stumped.
He even took a risk and went out. Considering the mana storm, it wasn't hard to find mana crystals, but one that was good quality was another thing. The mana changed so much that mana crystal didn't have time to form with balanced structures. Kaden wanted solid crystal that contained roughly average composition of the local mana. One could say a crystallized form of the current ambiet chaotic mana. A chaotic mana crystal.
He found quite a few mid grade elemental aspected crystals. Some of them even wind and fire. They would be useful once he finally decided to advance. He wouldn't have to gather all from the surrounding mana, even if it was extremely easy to do so.
He eventually found a place that looked like crystal explosion. Kaden expected that a large bolt of condensed mana had struck there.
There were lot of mana creatures floating about and they frenzied as they sensed Kaden. This was likely because he was relatively large concentration of extremely ordered mana nearby in comparison to the chaotic surroundings.
Despite their numbers, they were not difficult to beat. Just like majority of the crystals he had previously found, the mana creatures had formed in similar ways. Unbalanced. It didn't take much effort at all to disperse their forms.
As Kaden was extracting a proper crystal, he felt mana shudder. He frowned and quickly, and roughly, separeted large enough crystal from the ground and left. It seemed the smaller mana creatures were not the only ones. Somewhere nearby was larger, more powerful one. Kaden wasn't able to tell how strong it was, but it was strong enough for sure that he didn't want to casually mess with it.
"Its enough", Kaden thought to himself as he escaped. "This is good enough piece to continue my study."
Since he had been out for a while, Kaden returned back inside the shelter and returned down to the lower levels.
While Kaden pondered on what to do with the crystal, he found Emina speaking with the people of the shelter. It seemed to be Ron, the scientist, and seemingly his colleagues. Kaden planned to let them do as they desired, but things don't always go the way he wanted.
"Kaden, there you are!" Emina shouted after him as Kaden was about to leave. "I know you don't care about these people, but we could use your understanding of formations."
"Oh?" Kaden decided to humor Emina and stopped.
"We are planning on building monitoring devices around the rift", Emina explained. "We thought to mix our understanding a bit. Ancients and their methods of creating wondrous machines is well known and here we could mix our understanding of mana to produce accurate methods of determining when the tear opens."
This did make sense, but there were likely other reasons. Kaden made a good guess regarding that.
"And you want these ancients to learn something of formations?" Kaden added with slight mocking tone.
"In return they give you knowledge of their electric circuits and the ways they 'program' their machines. You might discover ways to apply such methods to formations", Emina told Kaden without even trying to hide anything.
Kaden hadn't thought about that. He was interested.
"Heh, I'm willing the entertain the thought", Kaden began. "But I will require some more. If I'm going ot work on the tear, I want to also know more of your understanding of time and space."
Kaden felt the people of future had greater understanding of such matters. The ancients never had teleportation, spatial bags or that sort of things. Yet, such information was usually reserved for people stronger than him. Getting access to such understanding now rather than later was desirable.
The ancients looked at each other for a moment, then nodded.
"We can agree to that", Ron told Kaden. "We get to learn your methods and you ours. We will begin and we would like you and Emina to observe and plan how we are going to do this."
Rest of the ancients came to introduce themselves.
"My name is Fulton", a relatively large man said to Kaden as he extended his hand to do that handshake thing. Kaden wasn't going to do so and Fulton quickly noted the matter. "I'm happy we don't have to bring that greedy Stefan to negotatiate any kind of trade deal here. I understand you don't view us favorably, but working together will be beneficial for all of us. I look forward to working with actual practical time traveling."
"I am Tony", said the remaining person. "While Fulton is good with metal, I'm good at putting those metal pieces together.
"Yeah, whatever", Kaden muttered. "Lets not waste any time." He was then reminded of his own research that would have to be put on hold until he could return to surface again. He could work with the ancients for that time.