Just before Jake arrived, Emma was explaining to the two directors about the new production plans and even handed over the blueprints. Joel was looking over the blueprints when the door to the office swung open followed Jake and, of course, his statement
“do you think this could be any more ostentatious having an office on the top floor of a building?”
“I thought you said he was in a bad mood.”
“He was.”
“Well, his not now. Where did he go? If it works this quick, it must be fantastic, right?”
Jake popped out of Emma’s shadow. “what are we all whispering about?” Jake whispered right next to Emma’s head.
“Fuck. I didn’t see you there, boss.” Emma said
“Well, it would make for a really crappy skill if I couldn’t use it to sneak up on those people that are whispering about a man who is in the same room as you. Anyway, to answer your questions, I was at the only place in this settlement that seems to know what they’re doing.”
Emma said with a grin, “at least you know where to go to relieve some of that built up anger you were carrying around.”
“What?” Jake replied
“Never mind, I do have a question for you. That man you removed from the council, can I reinstate him? He may be a pompous ass, but he does his job well. I’m not saying we reinstate him immediately he should be made to prove himself worthy of the position first and on that I have sent him to deal with the UN with the other human member of the council.”
“You can do what you want with him, but if he does anything similar to what he did, I won’t stop at just removing him from the council. Make sure he knows that.”
After talking about the production Jake made it absolutely clear that only the meat class ship was to be sold to people outside of the settlement and the other ship was only to be sold to members of the mercenary group and the settlement guards for now at least till the production of new designs are available Jake also handed over all the modules he had made for the light fighters then he gave them a new blueprint of three different weapons designs for the runabout one was a rocket package that would replace the wing cannons then there was a centre line cannon that replaced the shields and the final one was explosive grenades that sat on each side of the lower canopy add could be dropped on a target. To install them into the system, the ship would need a new weapons display and trigger, which was to be added to the HUD.
After making sure the production would begin smoothly, Jake said his goodbyes to the group of people, then, as he was leaving, asked if there was a way to the roof. Joel walked out into the hallway with Jake and opened up a hidden passage that lead to the roof Joel and Emma followed Jake up to see what he was going to do up there the moment Jake got to the roof he removed the runabout from his ring. Climbing in to the cockpit, Jake said,
“I’m going to Europe. I will be back later.”
The canopy closed and Jake activated the systems and then pushed the throttles up to 30% blasting off into the distance.
After five minutes of skimming at treetop level at 30% power Jake pushed the throttles just a little more 35% was moving as fast as the shuttle did Jake waited for another five minutes with nothing happening, so Jack cranked the power up a tad more. 40% 45% 50% 55% the little ship shook and grown
“Just a little more.” Jake said as he rased the height he was travelling at, then nudged the throttles to 60% his mana drained away faster as the shield operated at 100% “one more, just one more.” Jake said, giving the engines 5% more the moment the ship hit 65% an ear-piercing screech rang out, followed by the left engine shouting down. The ship took a sharp bank to the left. Jake only had seconds to recover before the ship would be ripped apart, Jack pulled the right engine back to idle and pushed the nose of the ship down while twisting the control stick to give him yaw authority to counter the initial control issue with Jake’s enhanced abilities these actions took a lot less time giving Jake just enough time to pull out of his dive meters from the ground.
“Well, fuck me. That was close. So note to self 60% is the limit.” Jake may have been a little upset about not getting up to 100% but his little test had put him ruffly over Myanmar. He just needed to land and check out the damage before continuing his journey. Jake hovered over what looked to be a safe clearing, bringing the runabout down. Jake landed and exited the runabout and moved around to the rear to check the damage.
“This looks bad. The left engine blew out its thrust chamber and split the housing all the way back to the antimatter magnetic storage rings. Fuck, I was lucky there wasn’t a breach other wise dust right now.”
Jake looked over at the other two engines. In the rear thrust plate of the centre engine, there was a crack and a hole in the vacuum chamber. The engine is still operational, but there’s no way it will be able to refill its antimatter storage with the vacuum chamber damaged. The right engine was absolutely fine. Jake could, if needed, swap out the two engines so he could just fly on one, but he would prefer to replace the two damaged engines with new ones. Jake took a gamble and put the runabout away, then changed into his demon form and headed into the jungle. He hoped to make contact with some of the local beast folk in the hope they would help.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
It didn’t take long before two beast folk and one human spotted Jake.
“Greetings, my name is Jake Everval, and I would appreciate some help in finding a good source of metals. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find some.”
The three men walked closer to Jake as the human said, “you stranger, are coming with us.”
“Really, this is how it’s going to go. You are going to strong arm me.”
“Are you kidding? Were not idiots, we can use identify.” One of the beast folk said.
Jake just laughed and asked, “well were are we going then?”
“To meet with the camp commander’s we sore you land your ship and I think we could perhaps help each other out.”
Jake thought for a minute, then said, “You're one of the anti-government forces.”
“Yes, but not one of. We all joined under one banner after the system. As for our friends here, they joined us when the government started rounding them up and executing them all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jake said to the two beast folk.
“We didn’t want to fight anyone, but if our lives are threatened, we will fight back,” one of the beast folk said in a determined tone.
“That’s good. I actually have a safe zone located in Australia that is run by beast folk and humans. I also founded a mercenary group, that if offered payment will help but my guess is that what you really want is my ship and for that I can say you can’t have mine but we have just started producing similar ships for export and I am willing to have your group as our first customers.”
“I shall bring this up with the commander’s,” the human said.
The group of four entered the camp and stopped at a fire where people were cooking food. Jake was quite interested, as he hadn’t seen many people eating food after the system. Seeing that so many people were coming over, Jake identified them. All of them had levels between 10 and 60. There were less at level 60 but to at least have some was a good thing and the ones at 60 weren’t all beast folk. Some were human as well, which was a pleasant surprise.
“You three can stay here. I will go talk to the commander’s, then come and get you. Also, try the food. You will be in for a surprise.”
“I will. I haven’t eaten since before the system.” Jake said
Jake walked over to the cooked food and asked the cook, “do I need to pay you anything for the food?”
“No, you eating it is payment enough.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Sorry, my profession is a chef profession, so when you eat, my strength grows.”
“Now that is interesting.” Jake said as he grabbed a BBQ chicken leg. As he bit down and swallowed the meat, a notification popped up
Item
BBQ chicken has replenished 10 points of mana
“That’s an interesting profession you’ve got there.”
“Thank you for the strange compliment.” The chef said as he went to serve the next customer.
Jake sat down with the two beast folk and began asking about their treatment amongst the humans here.
“The humans here treat us okay. I guess not as equals, but close enough that it doesn’t hinder our goals.”
“And what are those goals, exactly?” Jake asked.
“To make a new nation ruled and operated by, as you would call us, beast folk.”
“I’m sorry if that offends you, but in my defence, it is what the identify tells me when I use it.”
Jake then asked, “where are you thinking of making this new nation?”
“We were thinking here, but the issue is we don’t wish to harm these nice people.”
“What about a different country? Let’s say Australia if I give everyone you the weapons, I’m sure you could scrape out a good stretch of land for yourselves. I would say maybe try taking the state of Tasmania. That way, you can separate yourselves from the mainland and be relatively close to my territory, so if you’re in trouble, my people can help. I won’t deny it. I would like to have a recruitment hall in your territory for the demon’s hand mercenary group.”
The beast folk sat there staring off in the distance for a second blank faced, then said, “the leader of our group would like to speak to you about this subject. But it’s going to have to wait, as it seems the camp commanders have sent someone to get you.”
Jake looked over and saw a group of five people heading in his direction. Jake identified them
Human
Level 69
Human
Level 67
Human
Level 62
Human
Level 60
Human
Level 40
“Who might they be and who is the low ranker?” Jake asked the beast folk.
One of the beast folk lifted his head to look only for the low ranked one to yell. “You dare look at me beast, I swear if we didn’t need you for our fight I would kill you all just for the points your miserable lives would give that is.”
“I see, so he’s a tosser. Are there many like him here?” Jake asked. The beast folk went to reply, but the low-ranking kid as Jake now referred to the man shouted again.
“Hay, demon looking fucker, get your ass over here. Don’t make us drag you over here.”
Jake was shocked. “Try it then, kid.” Jake said one of the beast folk touched Jake on the shoulder and whispered, “just go along with it for now. Our leader has been watching, and she has finally had enough of these humans. If you get my point.”
“Tell her I will go along with this for now, but I can’t say how long I can put up with this tosser.”