Morning was a slower affair than Albert would have liked. He was hyped up after having found one of the core fragments last night, but the same couldn’t be said for the girls. Scrappy was being rebellious just for the sake of it, at least Albert hoped it was the case, and Lina was shell-shocked.

After a while spent eating breakfast in silence, right when Albert was about to think of something to break the ice a little bit, she started asking questions.

“You said… antimatter is even more powerful?”

The four little arrows from yesterday’s spell hovered in the air close to Albert as he looked at the huntress, in silence, for a long moment. He had mentioned antimatter in passing, but he didn’t think she would remember it. However, judging by her thousand-mile stare, perhaps the explosion of the atomic bomb left a bigger impression on the woman than he had predicted.

Had he known in advance, perhaps he would have acted differently. But, in a world of magic, he hadn’t thought something like an atomic bomb – no matter how powerful – would have shaken her so much.

“Yeah, it is.” He said tentatively, then as he spoke his words gained confidence. “It’s pure matter-energy conversion, not just the puny fraction of it that we got from fission. Fusion bombs are a good in-between, but nothing comes close to the utter and total efficiency of antimatter-matter reactions.”

Lina looked lost in her world for a while. “And you can just… use it? Do you have it in your storage space?”

Albert shook his head. “No. We couldn’t manufacture antimatter back in my time. Wish we could…” he began, but images of certain historical events came to mind soon after. “Then again, perhaps it’s for the best we didn’t get to it.”

“Thank the gods.” She said. “I don’t dare to imagine what it could do, if it really is that much more powerful.”

“But why are you so shaken? Can’t magic do the same?” He asked.

Lina didn’t answer immediately. “Maybe. I’m sure there are individuals who can cast such a grand magic out there. Demons, perhaps. Entire armies of mages casting simultaneously. But, Albert, don’t you see? What you did. The weapon you used. You said it yourself, it was just a tool. Just a tool.”

“Mm. A tool that could be mass produced, more or less.”

“Exactly!” Her voice rose. “And once it’s out there, anyone could use it! You can move it, hide it, trigger it whenever you want! Magic… magic doesn’t do that.”

Albert hummed again. He doubted what she said was true. “Really? There is really no way for magic to replicate that?”

She thought about it for a while. “There are ways, yes. But… no real way to hide or move any ritual that could be so destructive. A demon capable of such destruction would be bigger than a house and it would cost untold souls to summon it! A mage capable of such magic would be monitored and visible to anyone with magic senses from miles away! Your bomb… it was smaller than a cart, Albert.”

“Ah, I see. You got caught in a fallacy here. You saw how easy it was for me, both to have access to the weapon and to use it, and you extrapolated from there. Even at the height of our folly during the Cold War, Lina, one could not use an atomic bomb so lightly. In fact, I would say that magic is more dangerous.”

“How? I don’t see how it would be more dangerous than a bomb you could hide inside a large box…”

“It’s because magic is the devil you know. That’s why you are not as scared as you are of this new, unknown danger. But a mage could conceal their mana. A demon could be summoned in the middle of a city. A ritual could take place in the catacombs of a castle. Different methods, same results. In fact, I would argue that even the methods of delivery are quite similar, don’t you say? Hide the weapon, meet the conditions for its activation, use it where it hurts the most.”

“We can detect magic.”

“And we could detect when someone launched a nuclear missile.”

“I see…”

Albert nodded, content to just leave it at that.

The woman was not. “Wait, what about your Power? It can make more bombs, or even antimatter, can it not?”

Albert inhaled. “It might. Not right now, and probably not in a straightforward way.”

The Power seemed to know what he wanted to use it for. Creating matter from nothing like he did with food or the hedges around their temporary camps was much easier than one would normally think. The food only provided chemical energy to whoever ate it, and the hedges were temporary and their impact on the world very limited.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Making antimatter with the intention of releasing 9 times the speed of light squared times the mass of the matter in the form of energy? The Power wanted its pound of flesh if Albert were to create such a thing.

Which only made the deed hard, not impossible. And it would become increasingly easier as his overall power grew and the scope of things he could do broadened.

“Then—”

“Then it’s the same fallacy as before. I am not the norm, Lina. I am the outlier among outliers. Literally one of a kind.”

“Well,” the woman muttered. “I do hope what you say is true. Otherwise, it might be better to just let the world die.”

Albert said nothing.

The trio set out soon after they were done eating.

“Where are we going, Sir Albert?” Scrappy asked as she walked alongside them. Well, walked was perhaps an insufficient word to capture all of the nuances of what she was doing.

“Can you stop pouncing on anything and everything in your cat form for a minute?” Albert asked, faking a greater than normal degree of exasperation at her antics.

Lina’s chuckle told him he was successful in distracting the warrior from her thoughts about the bomb.

“Nope!” Scrappy’s voice was sing-song. It now came from behind Albert, the girl having shifted back and forth from the realm of shadows to change locations. “You have no idea how much I missed hunting like this, Sir, that you don’t!”

“That I don’t.” Albert smiled. Let her do her thing. It was also good training. “Anyway, I had Jeff use his unorthodox methods of asking *cough* the Universe – insert joke about deities here – to gauge how far the north-pointing arrow wants us to go. And it appears it’s not too far.”

“Do you have any idea what we might find there?” Lina asked.

Albert shook his head. “It’s already quite the miracle that the spell worked at all. It wasn’t built to track multiple fragments of the core.”

“I see.” The warrior said. “We are quite powerful now.” She looked at Scrappy pointedly. “We should be fine.”

***

It took a whole week to reach the location. Not due to distance, or Jeff would not have heard the end of it from Albert, but due to bad terrain. Overwhelming power brought convenience, as Albert said, but only so much could be done when there were three people to be ferried across a frozen tundra riddled with sinkholes and crevasses from half-magical half-natural glaciers of unknown formation.

At least the vistas were breathtaking. By the time the little arrow pointing the way was ever so slightly moving in place, meaning the party’s movements had a noticeable effect on the trajectory it was pointing, the world had only 37 weeks to live, and the saturation of Doom energies had reached over 7% of the total amount of stuff in the air.

Air aside.

Lina only has 10% saturation herself. We need to plan for either a new power-up or at least a solution to the Doom problem.

I’ll dedicate more processing power to the task. Don’t worry Albert, it shouldn’t be too hard.

How about Scrappy?

She grows organically. Now that her whole class is unlocked, and now that I have been able to study it for a while, I concluded that it should grow when exposed to sufficient external pressure.

I see. Meaning than when the Doom becomes too much or she encounters something she can’t defeat…

It will trigger an evolution, yes. How it will manifest, however, is anyone’s guess.

I see. Thanks.

“We should be close,” Albert said, loudly enough for the team to see. He squinted. “Should be… beyond that ridge over there.”

They made quick time, and at the end of the hike they were slightly out of breath but the sun was still high over their heads. This far North, for they had travelled a lot, the sun was a bit lower and would set earlier than it would farther south.

The arrow pointed at a small, dark circle roughly halfway up a mountain on the other side of a valley.

“What is that?” Scrappy asked. Having B-tier attributes meant that her sight, even without calling forth her more feline traits, was by far the best of the trio.

Albert cheated with magic. “A door.”

“A door?” Lina echoed him. “Why would there be a door in a mountain big enough to be seen from here?”

Albert hummed. “Huh. It does look like a bunker to me.”

“Bunker?” Scrappy asked. “What’s that?”

“A sort of castle built inside of a mountain, accessible only from underground or from fortified doors like the one we see. Although… A bunker door isn’t supposed to survive several millennia of magically powered erosion agents out in the wild like this. Unless… ha!” His eyes shone briefly as he changed the spectra of light, and not just light, they could catch. “It’s magically reinforced, of course!”

He didn’t mention that the bunker seemed to be teeming with activity.

“Is this from your era?”

“That’s right! And with some luck, we might solve that other problem we have.”

“Going back in time to save your world?” Scrappy asked innocently.

Albert made a face. “Perhaps not that one.”

“Crossing the ocean?” Lina offered.

“Indeed.”

I wouldn’t trust planes or other vehicles to have survived several millennia, Albert. Magic or no magic.

Ye of little faith. Albert replied, smiling under his beard. Which, he thought, needed to be trimmed as soon as possible.

Seriously, Albert. Do not attempt to use any vehicle you may find there. Especially not to cross an ocean!

Albert smiled again. It was rare to see his AI this worked up.

Say, do you think I should get rid of my elven features by the time we go back to the past? I’ve come to realize I don’t really hold any attachment to them.

Albert! I am serious and you should take this seriously too. I know it might be very tempting to commandeer a small plane but—

Chill! What’s got you so worked up? I never talked about vehicles, have I?

Then how do you intend to cross such a distance?

Remember the Erebus portal plan? Do me a favor and sweep the mountain with active scanning.

The AI did so. Oh. Dimensional magic.

Not just any dimensional magic. But one whose flavor I recognize.

The Lair.

The Lair. Which means… Erebus.