Chapter 77 – Preparations

Within the PDs the children, particularly Shuga, Sela and Ash had been trying to maintain an organised atmosphere of productivity. But as the weeks had drawn on, it would be noted that the week that past externally was equivalent to almost four months inside the PD, it was difficult to keep this up.

Looking at the kids as they sat expectantly awaiting the time when they would be allowed out and back into Binyon again. Shuga wondered how best to report on their progress to their benefactor Adam.

There had definitely been lots of progress with their combat training, with regard to use of spears, as Sela excelled as a teacher and practitioner. She was very calm and patient with all the children. Shuga didn’t know how she managed to do it, as after only one week trying to teach the children basic reading and writing, in the local dialect, he had almost given up.

Strangely enough, little Seria, was the main reason he had not quit. Her constant positivity when it came to anything to do with scrolls, was infectious. According to Ash, she had also made great progress with her use of magi-script and her symbol writing was almost as neat as some of the older children.

It was certainly functional as she had demonstrated many of her smaller array formations to the others. Almost on a daily basis, the children would all sit round at the end of the day, waiting for her to complete the latest of her configurations. And she was now able to manipulate the elements of earth, water, fire and light with quicker and quicker formations, just using the simple tools she had found in her fathers workshop.

But there was one positive side to teaching sessions – they all looked forward to having proper teachers. Though they did not say this directly to any of the older children who had tried to guide them, they more and more expressed it as a growing delight at the thought Libby and the others teaching them again but also at the fairy tale like ideas of Weihou Academy.

Weihou Academy, where they would meet others kids of similar age to themselves, and get schooling. Something undreamt of by a Relite, as only well off faction other world-ers went to school.

***

Adam entered the main PD where the children had been staying, Thawain keeping hold of the key still.

All the children were gathered around, sitting in groups expectantly waiting for what Adam was about to say but mainly itching to get out, and run free in Binyon.

“I have heard from Ash, Shuga and Sela, that you have all been working hard. Well done!” said Adam, withholding any chastisement that might be required, as he needed them to perform certain duties for him, if they were to prepare for winter proper.

“The snows have not yet started to fall, we probably have about a week to get things in order.” Said Adam, pausing as the children all looked in puzzlement at each other. What preparations were required? They had everything they needed.

“We may be self sufficient here but those in the village have been in hiding for the past week, leaving many of their preparations outstanding. It will be your job to help them fetch, carry and store perishables and to give them herbs and other food stuffs from our own stores to help them through the winter. So I hope I can leave you in charge of that while myself and Thawain take a tip to Weihou” Said Adam making all the children smile and nod their heads eagerly in anticipation.

Adam of course needed to go and rescue Bai Bo-Xue. He just hoped the guy was in one piece, he wasn’t a bad guy and he would hate having to explain things to the kids if things had gone bad. Hopefully his AI insurance policy would have kept the guy safe.

The kids ran in a flurry of delight into the environs of Binyon Village, halting only to collect their bearings before heading of in all directions to collect wood or carry herbs and food stuffs from the PDs. Thawain had already alerted, elder Wang Sheng and Che Gongnui of there coming. So Adam was free to start shadow-jumping to Weihou.

Bai Bo-Xue had had less discomfort than Thawain, all things considered. His captors had tried to brutalise and torture him but to no avail, as his own personal AI, Brey or as he liked to call him, spirit beast, had turned off all his pain receptors. This lead them to soon get bored and just plain frustrated, causing them to just leave him in his cell to rot.

Adam got to Weihou and could have just continued with his shadow-jumping but decided do things the by rote and planned to offer himself up for inspection at the town gates. When he got there he found a surprising number of people, rich and poor leaving town. Carriages loaded to overflowing with their property and food stuffs for a long journey.

Adam hurried to gates to find out what was going on. And was told there was a mass panic over the prospect of the void beast war not ending. It seemed there was a mass exodus.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

But Adam could not worry about that now his first problem for Adam was to locate, Bai Bo-Xue. So he hurriedly scouted around town until he found someone from the faction. He eventually came upon a man in one of the restaurants in town and took him into custody so to speak by putting him into one of his PDs, along side the other faction members they had acquired.

On seeing the state of his fellow members, that Echo and Trey and already started experimenting on, the man quickly complied giving them the location of a warehouse not far out of town.

Adam entered the warehouse which appeared to all and intense to be empty, clearly a cover for a hideout nearby and sure enough within a few minutes he had detected a hidden trapdoor with his energy senses.

Underneath was a length of tunnel leading into a cave like structure, all around was dank and lined with moss from the excessive damp. Clearly they did not think much for the health of there captives as it was also freezing down here, Adam’s breath appearing in plumes of air before him as he walked through the cave.

He hoped to god that Bai was not dead and started to shadow jump through the caverns until at last he spotted something up ahead. He found Bai strung up and manacled against a wall with his captives sitting in a nearby room. Should he just take Bai and go? , not when there were some more free specimens to experiment on.

Soon he had Bai, who turned out to be alive just suffering from mild hyperthermia and needed a few good meals inside him. The two men next door were interrogated by Echo and delivered information on the Golden Needles Sect headquarters and more interestingly to Adam, their armoury.

It was about time he chose a fighting style and not just his crazy mixed up forms. He needed something that would not make him stand out so a traditional one was needed. Arriving at the armoury he took everything deciding to investigate its contents at his leisure when he got back to Binyon. On his way back he setup a few arrays to allow for quicker travel to and from Weihou.

Arriving back he deposited Bai Bo-Xue with Zhang wang sheng and went on his way. To his relief everything was as it should be back at the village so he set about the task of going around the village’s perimeter and setting up arrays to keep out any unwanted guests. These were hidden under large walls that he erected all around the village. He wondered why he had not thought of it earlier. That paired with the expected incoming snows should deter any would be attackers for the time being. According to the locals all routes to the village would become unpassable over the next few weeks.

On his travels round the village, he saw the children scurrying about diligently working on their various tasks and as soon as he saw Zhang linlang passing, he informed her of his work so he didn’t have to bother explaining to anyone else and could get on with finishing it before nightfall. He could carry on happily in the dark but he knew everyone else would be retiring for dinner long before then and wanted to meet up with everyone then.

The task was quite monotonous and required little from Adam, giving him a chance to inspect the weapons from the armoury which had been deposited in a PD. The most interesting find was the thousands of needles and weapons used to shoot needles that the Golden Needle Sect held in their arsenal. But the other weapons were of interest too.

He thought back to when he last took on the void beasts and how little damage he could do to them with the weapons he had then. He definitely needed a better solution than making traps for the dumb beasts. He did not relish being squashed quite literally to death again.

Back on earth some kind of armour piercing rounds would do the job but due to the size of most of beasts firing needles into them would just make them into pincushions. He needed something far deadlier but practical.

The unknown energy would be promising if hadn’t been more destructive to himself than his target. Maybe Libby and Echo had come up with some ideas that would at least give him a direction for his currently idle speculations.

“Any possibility of being able to use the unknown energy with a weapon, to enhance it’s effectiveness?” thought Adam, directing his thoughts as always to that inward space where his AI resided.

Echo had been working with Trey on a more pressing matter how to safely contain the unknown energy and keep it from killing Adam. Most importantly when it spread like a wildfire to his brain causing instant death.

Experimenting with humans was very energy intensive, making trial and error experimentation impossible. Instead they had worked specifically on producing seals to keep the energy contained and away from vital organs. This had met with some success but would require a complete rewiring of meridian channels throughout the body or use of GTAs situated at points throughout the body which could turn on and off seals as required allowing the energy to travel along the channels without damage occurring.

“We could create a blade or other weapon that has the unknown energy that we are now calling negative energy, by the way, applied to it. But we haven’t as yet run any experiments on this. We do however think we are close to being able to control the energy within your body but would like to run tests on how it effects your body over extended periods.”

Basically Echo needed to try it out on one of their specimens and monitor them for degradation from the energies over a period of time to check for safe usage and how well the seals lasted out.

“We should be finished testing by tomorrow” said Echo truthfully.

Adam discussed the choice of weapons and Echo promised to investigate which would work best with the negative energy. Echo didn’t really see the point, anything that the negative energy came in contact with was as the earthlings say “toast”.

The use of longer range weapons against the void beasts was still upmost in Adam’s mind as he retired from making the protective arrays around the village. Sela was one of the first to congratulate him on his work jumping up to give him a hug as he arrived at their house. Although she had muttered that an elemental effect should have been added, such as fire to burn whoever came near. The other kids seemed to be happy to get in as the weather was showing all the tell tale signs of winter with a brisk chill wind coming in from the east bringing with it dark clouds.