Jake fired his rifle like a madman, bugs falling to the ground around him as the three attackers moved forward in a leapfrog pattern. Jake and the others had pushed forward, clearing a path halfway up the mountain. Behind them were the shuttle and Matt. Every 15 minutes, one of the three would return to the shuttle to regain their strength before returning with more potions provided by Matt. One of the other things Matt could do was provide each of them with a weak mana shield. The only issue with the shield was it could only take one good hit before it would break. Matt also used his staff to kill anything getting close to the shuttle.
“Erica, move up and clear the building. We need a new base of operations. Jess, move into Erica’s former position.” Jake said this, then moved to clear the next wave of bugs that were coming in on their position. Peeking around the corner, Jake noticed what appeared to be a rhinoceros beetle but on a much grander scale, as he crouched at the corner of what resembled a fish and chips shop. Jake looked at Jess and gestured to her to take up a position on the roof of the building Erica was clearing. Jess jumped up to the building’s escape ladder and climbed to the roof. Once she was in position, Jake stepped out into the street and fired his grenade launcher. The grenade flew and struck the rhinoceros beetle on its back. A loud explosion rang out, flames everywhere. The flames subsided, and still crawling forward was the rhinoceros beetle. Jake fired his rifle while running to cover.
“Jake, what do we do now? That thing is just too strong!”
“Keep its attention on you. I’m going to try and find a weak point.”
Jake climbed up to the roof of the fish and chip shop and headed towards the beetle. Getting closer to the beetle, Jake could hear gunfire going off behind him. Jess had fired at the beetle. Jake looked over the edge of the building.
“That beetle is fully armoured. There are no weak points o–.”
The beetle opened up what looked to be wings and, with a buzzing noise, lifted off the ground and flew directly at Jess’s position.
“Get down!” Jake yelled.
Jess jumped off of the roof just as the beetle hit. The beetle took out half of the wall, dust clouds blooming out. Jake quickly ran back to the building. As he got there, he could see Jess on the ground. She wasn’t moving, and above her, the beetle. Jake was trying to figure out a way to save her when the beetle opened its wings and took off towards the hangar.
“It’s leaving, just like that.”
Jake jumped down off of the building, landing in the street, and dashed over to Jess. He jumped over the rubble of the building to land beside her, leaning over her to see if she was breathing. Jake could hear a gurgling sound coming from her lungs. Her lungs were filling up with blood. Jake had little time left to save her. He pulled out one of Matt’s health potions and poured it down her throat before calling out for Erica.
On the second level, Erica was standing there, looking out of the giant beetle-shaped hole that was once been a wall.
“What the heck was that?”
After she had regained some of her composure, she left out of the building and landed close to where Jake was.
“Erica, can you help bring her back to the shuttle? We’re going to have to rethink our strategy. I’m thinking of teaching Matt to fly the shuttle. He has a large mana pool, so he should be fine with most of the systems. The only problem is arcane energy; he doesn’t have any, so he can’t use it to its full power.”
“What happens if he takes it and flies away?”
“You should know the answer to that. It’s a soul shuttle. I can simply unsummon it, and if he is in the air, I hope he’s got wings because, if not, the ground can be really hard.”
“Fair point. I just didn’t think you could do that to a kid.”
“Kid or not, if someone steals from me, then they will get what’s coming to them.”
Jake and Erica walked back to the shuttle, Erica carrying Jess in her arms. As they were approaching the shuttle, Matt came running out.
“What happened? Where is Jess?” As Matt said this, he looked over at Erica, then down at her arms. “Is she alive?” Matt whispered.
“She will be fine, thanks to you. Your potion saved her from death, but it’s going to take time for her to fully recover. And I have a job for you. Come with me.”
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Jake moved up to the cockpit and told Matt to sit down. He then went through the basics of flying the shuttle, firing the weapon system, and how to modify the shuttle’s shields. What he didn’t teach him was the navigation system and the autopilot. The only reason Jake didn’t teach him these systems was that there was no time left. Jake gave the command to Matt, and a moment later, the shuttle took to the sky. Matt was basically a natural at this. His only issue was the immense mana drain on his body. Jake may have miscalculated the mana cost, so using the weapons system was out of the question; it would drain him dry. Jake started thinking of alterations he could make to the shuttle. But first, they needed to get back to the crumbling building to set up a new fallback position. Once they were getting closer to the position, Jake pointed out the window.
“That’s the building there. Land on the roof, just don’t land too hard.” Matt lined up for landing, his palms sweaty. “You’re doing good. Just bring it down slow and easy. That’s right, two meters to contact.” Grinding sounds could be heard as the shuttle landed. Upon landing, Matt had inadvertently given the shuttle some lateral translation. This shifted the shuttle’s position from being in the centre of the roof to the edge. Jake looked over at Matt.
“That’s a landing, I guess. Expand the shields and help defend the area. I will start working on a kinetic weapon for the shuttle that you should be able to use.” Jake went to the nose of the ship and removed one of the two weapons pods. Looking at how it worked, the pod itself had no physical wiring connecting it. It seemed like they had built the firing mechanism directly into the pod itself. The main issue Jake was trying to figure out was how it integrated into the shuttle’s system. Stumped, he reattached it to the shuttle, and once he did, a notification showed up in front of him.
“Would you like to integrate a weapons pod into the shuttle’s system? Yes/No. Warning: The shuttle’s system can only accommodate three weapons systems at a time.
“Well, that’s handy. No wires required, just plug and play. I’m sure there are ways to abuse this, but that’s not what I need. All I need is a method to affix a honking gun to it. I’m thinking, some kind of rotary cannon would be good. The problem with that will be ammunition. Maybe if I take down the sleeping area and put in an ammo rack instead, it can be self-loading. This could work. The next issue is whether we would classify multiple barrels as one weapon or more. No, it said weapons system, so what is a system? If I look at the weapon pod I took off, that was classified as one system even though there are two pods. So if I put a rotary cannon in a pod with a grenade launcher, will that work as one system? I’m going to have to test this out.”
Jake sat down outside of the shuttle, pushing out his cauldron. He began working on the ammo rack first. He kept it as simple as he could. There was no requirement for the rack to be built in one piece, so Jake built it in parts. The rack was a simple open cage and a closed box for the powder. It took Jake a day to make the rack, but once he did, he took a break. Erica walked up to him and stared at his cauldron.
“What is it? Do you have a question or something?”
“Um, how does that work? You created a full-sized rack from such a small cauldron?”
Jake laughed. “It’s actually an interesting question. It seems that when I am working on something, the cauldron helps me calculate the size of the actual object. Once I remove the object from the cauldron, the cauldron sucks arcane energy from the air around it and transforms the size from its smaller version to the full-size version. The problem with this is that, if the object is big, it requires more arcane energy to transform. This leaves a deserted space that will take a long time to recover. So, I’m sure you could guess what would happen if I made a ship in the cauldron.”
“The area would be enormous, right?”
“Oh, yes. To make a ship the size of this shuttle would drain the arcane energy of around a quarter of a planet’s energy.”
Erica looked at him in shock.
“I see. So, did they make the ships in the Wandering Imperium this way?”
“Yes, if you base your judgment on what was written in those books.”
“So, how big an area would Aaliyah La Flame’s have drained of energy, and how long would it take those areas to recover?”
“Well, the book said Aaliyah made around 100 ships the size of the Jaxxen and 20 twice that size. So, my guess would be around about a galaxy’s worth of energy. And about the recovery time, well, the larger the area, the longer it will take to recover. So that galaxy will have no arcane energy for over a million Earth years.” Jake started laughing hysterically.
“What are you laughing at? That is horrible. All the people living there won’t be able to advance past F grade; they can’t leave the home system and travel the cosmos.”
“You’re right. She drained that place dry. But what you don’t get is that the place she did that in had already been destroyed. That entire galaxy was turned into slave labour.” Jake opened his arms wide. Erica looked at him oddly.
“Yes, your home galaxy was the one that was drained dry. The same thing that happened in your galaxy, the slavery, and the destruction of cultural heritage, has been happening to every new universe that gets integrated into the system. The system only gives us newly integrated. A planetary shield that will only protect us from orbital bombardment, and it gives us the option to take part in a tutorial. That’s right, it is an option, it’s not mandatory. So, I can tell you many people will decide not to take part in it.”
Erica got up and walked off. “I don’t think I set her mind at ease there.”
Jake got up and entered the shuttle and walked up to the cockpit. Looking out the windscreen, he looked for a suitable location to put a weapon sighting system. “It would be nice to have a heads-up display, but how would that work? I would need the system to help with the display. I can create the housing, but I don’t know how to make glass. Maybe I should talk to Jess about it when she gets healthy again, or maybe Matt would be best to ask. Oh, well. I should just start working on the things I can do.” Jake left the shuttle and sat down in a new location to work on the cannon.