July 21, 625

I pulled Sawn aside as soon as I was able, taking him to a private room, telling Boris to wait outside and keep people out.

Once alone Sawn looked at me weirdly.

“Is something the matter, John?”

“Yes, very much so. Have you wrapped your head around what we’ve just done, yet?”

“I’d like to think I have but the way you’re speaking makes me think otherwise. So what’s wrong?”

“This… method. This way to turn White Crystals into Elemental Crystals. It’s the most potent weapon this world has ever seen, surpassing any other by magnitudes, and it’s criminally easy to create. I'd like you to think about if that Crystal you just blew up was an Authority 11 Crystal loaded with fire mana and armed with the most devastating explosion spell you can think of.”

I looked him in the eye as he frowned, thinking.

I continued, “Then detonate it right in the middle of the Capital. Am I painting a clear enough picture?”

“...I see.”

Any remaining excitement in his Aura vanished, the atmosphere sobering. While he might not be imagining the same kind of devastation I was thinking of, it was similar. After all, he understood even better than I did the kind of power someone at those levels could wield, let alone how much sheer power would be released from one of those Crystals.

I spoke my thoughts, “We need to lock down this information, now. I’m not sure if you can but you should consider detaining everyone in that warehouse in some way.”

“Detain them? And put them where?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can build a village in some distant secluded valley where everyone who works on our top secret stuff can live. I don’t know what measures your company takes to keep a lid on secrets but you need to double down on them. We can’t let anyone get their hands on this information.”

I sighed, “If it relied on all the numbers I churned out not long ago then it wouldn’t be so bad, but with that new method they just came up with, anyone can fucking do it.”

Sawn continued to frown, “I don’t know. I can’t think of any way to keep this information from leaking. I have people who can keep an eye on those involved but there are too many who would’ve been privy to the method. Even if I could tighten down in the short term, eventually it would leak. Short of massacring everyone in that warehouse, I don’t think there’s a way to stop it, John.”

“Well that’s certainly optimistic.”

I let out a stressed breath before taking out a cigar and lighting it. It made me feel slightly better.

Sawn was right. There was no way to keep this secret unless we took drastic and illegal measures.

Well, there was one thing that we had.

I flicked my finger in realization, “The Magnitude Frequency. That’s the most important key. How many people know that?”

Sawn’s eyes brightened, “Not many. Only the warlock who oversaw the project, the one we spoke to, knows it precisely.”

“Let’s find him. Now.”

Both of us ran out, going back to the warehouse. There was nowhere to run out here, so that warlock was easy to find even if he tried to escape.

He didn’t, but I tended to think in terms of the worst case scenario.

After we grabbed the man we brought him back to the room to talk to him. Sawn went over his spiel about keeping company secrets. Something that helped keep a lid on a secret was not letting the person know just how important it was. Less value meant he wouldn’t take the risk to disseminate this information for short term gain.

After that Sawn asked if he had taught anyone the Magnitude Frequency. He said he hadn’t, which caused me great relief.

That’s when I blurted out, “By the way, it’s not called the Magnitude Frequency.”

“Hm?” They both looked at me weird.

“It’s called the Duodeka Frequency.”

“Duodeka…”

“It’s a more accurate name. I had scraped together the last name but since we succeeded with the project, this frequency should get a proper name.”

Sawn rubbed his chin before nodding.

“Sounds good. Bekim, since you pioneered the method for conversion, you’ll be getting commissions for this product. Just make sure to keep the Duodeka Frequency secret. We don’t want people stealing this invention of ours and reducing your commission.”

The warlock, Bekim, nodded happily, “Of course, sir. I won’t teach it to anyone.”

Sawn was basically buying this guy’s silence, but so long as it worked, I wasn’t complaining.

With that, the crisis was temporarily averted. I’d have to doctor some of my research papers in order to skew the Duodeka Frequency’s results. The reason I had suddenly given it a different name was to make the Frequency tuning itself less obvious. Nobody in this world knew what the hell Duodeka meant so now the secret was a bit safer.

Sawn sent Bekim out. As he left I wondered if I should just play it really safe and kill the man in secret. He was powerful, but still a warlock. They could all be killed if their guard was down. I could even hire someone to do it. Plex would probably do it for enough money, and I was about to receive boatloads.

Sawn turned, the two of us sitting in silence for a bit before his voice broke it.

“I’m about to transfer you some money.”

“Yeah?”

“We’ve gotten dozens of orders for some of our plane models, primarily cargo and passenger planes, as well as orders for airfield designing and pilot training. As per our contract and prior agreement, in exchange for receiving no boost to your 3 thousand monthly coin salary you’ll be receiving a clean 30% of the profits of all aircraft and aircraft related sales.

“Alright.”

“As for the amount I’m transferring, you’ll be receiving 30% of about 103 million. We haven’t finalized the military contract yet so that’s all for now.”

“...Holy shit.”

I faced him with wide eyes. 30 million coin, or 30 thousand gold bullion, was a cockload of money.

I thought back, remembering Rayla. She had been saving money for years, amassing about 30 million coin in order to buy a big house in the Capital.

It took me three days to earn that, and more money would continue to flood in over the next few weeks and months, especially once the military contract went through with the Kingdom. I’d be sitting on a mountain soon enough.

It took me a few seconds to let the realization settle. I was rich, and not just figuratively. Sure, I might not be at the uber-rich level like a Duke or Sovereign, but for a commoner, I was doing pretty fucking good already.

I smiled, thinking of the things I could buy. I could improve my armor for starters, maybe even improve my pocket space. I’d have to get myself a luxury bed that I could cart around and use on base or in camp, maybe even a new climate-controlled tent for long missions.

Sawn spoke, “You have a Polaris Card, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm, we’ll have to call them and figure out the transfer tonight. We’ll also need to figure out your taxes.”

“Taxes?”

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“Of course. What, have you not been paying your taxes?”

“...”

He stared at me for several seconds before snapping.

“Buffoon.”

“You forget where I used to work.”

“How have you gone this long without paying any taxes?”

“It’s easy when you have physical gold to buy things with, and a bank that isn’t tracked by the Kingdom. Plus, I don’t have a residence they can go to. I still live in the Black Spider Hotel.”

“But you are a part of the military now. They can find you.”

“Indeed, except for the fact that nobody will know about how much I’ve just received, because it’s going to the Polaris Bank where I’m an anonymous customer under an untraceable Platinum-level Company.”

I winked at him, making him shake his head.

“You still need to pay taxes on your salary, because I have to report that.”

“That’s fine. What’s the rate?”

“It’s a bit over half.”

“Fucking tyrants. I’m losing over 1500 coin a month to a bunch of scummy dictators.”

“...”

Sawn didn’t respond to that, probably because I had a massive grin on my face.

We walked out of the room, getting ready to head back to the Capital.

On the way to the helicopter, he muttered, “Wait, is that why you rejected the salary increase so much?”

“You can be a little slow sometimes, friend.”

“I have better things to think about than your psychotic desire to evade taxes.”

“Good. Keep that in mind while transferring the money.”

……

…

For the last 10 days or so of the month, my focus lay on training pilots. There were 10 chosen summoners who were to receive my teachings, and those 10 would go on to train even more pilots. I made sure to teach them everything, made sure they memorized it all as summoners should, and made sure they could fly without any assistance before I left.

10 days to carry out a mediocre flight school. It was a bit scary but these people had powerful minds and it couldn’t be my problem forever.

Thankfully, by the end of the month they were all able to take off, perform a few maneuvers, and land without a single person crashing. It was a good thing too because I wasn’t interested in finding out if their subpar parachutes actually worked, though we did have to do tests with that too.

While doing all that I made sure that all my texts on aircraft, flight mechanics, and whatever else I could think of were all thorough enough to be finalized. I was able to put everything on Orbs so that was a pretty quick process. It was nice being able to effectively copy and paste my thoughts onto a sphere of glass. If only I had that shit during university.

I had Boris reject most of the correspondence I received over that time. There were only 2 messages that came from Dukes, and both were from people I know, that being Talerria and the Raven Family.

Talexia had given me the message at the behest of her Ancestors, which she made known in the letter itself. It was a rather brash piece of writing but I found it quite funny.

Long story short, she told me that if I wanted to continue to pursue Umara then I’d have to find her in Special Operations. Otherwise, she told me that she was about as hands-off as she was going to get and that opposition to our relationship was no longer the kind that concerned my health.

Which basically meant we had the green light.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that information. Or, it was more like I didn’t react to it as strongly as I thought I would. Maybe I just didn’t care since I had never even considered things going any other way, or maybe it was expected after the showcasing.

Now I’d just have to get to Special Operations. How long that would take, I wasn’t sure, but now that Umara, Feiden, and Tana had all entered, I’d wager that it wouldn’t take long for me to at least get the chance.

Although, I’d like to get to Authority 7 first. Progression was coming along nicely. I was hoping to advance before the end of the year, so perhaps that’d be when I got my chance.

Until then, I just needed to buckle down, stack bands, and drop some bombs on the Scourge.

Being a weapons developer was quite nice, especially when the weapons were getting used on monsters. No ethical dilemmas, money in my pockets, and most importantly, it was cool as fuck.

……

…

“Do you know what he wants?”

“No, I only just got the call.”

Umara shook her head, strolling her way to headquarters. The coat over her armor fluttered with the strong winds, Feiden and Tana flanking her. The two were dressed in their own knightly armor, heavy but not so bulky as to restrict movement.

Umara glanced at her Aerial one more time before entering headquarters and making her way to one of the top offices. Gurns had called her and she was curious why.

They arrived, the door already open. They immediately noticed the General sitting there with Gurns as well as two Marshals on chairs to the sides.

Gurns looked up at them, “Come in, you three.”

They walked in silently, trying not to glance around yet subtly measuring themselves against the characters here. The General was like every other they’d seen but the Marshals were still powerful. Umara recognized them too. Both of them were Dukes. One was Duke Olle and the other was Duchess Vivien, someone she had seen before at a tea party long ago.

The three gave a casual salute after standing themselves in the middle of the room, all eyes on them.

Gurns spoke first, “We called you in here because you three are intimately familiar with this man.”

Gurns tapped his desk, an image projecting into a screen in the air. Their brows raised, recognizing John.

What had them surprised was the fact that he was in front of the King himself.

Umara questioned, “What happened?

“Many things, Umara, but nothing that I’m sure your friend isn’t very happy with. Are any of you familiar with his recent work?”

“No.” They all shook their heads. They had just gotten back from a two week long mission, and even that was part of a larger operation that took them away from the base for months at a time. Umara could barely remember the last time she had sent John a message.

“Well, allow me to enlighten you.”

Gurns tapped the desk a few more times, a dozen different images and a video all projecting onto the screen, cluttering it slightly.

They all saw winged vehicles with spinning blades on their front. The video showed this vehicle, how it used the front blade to speed up, and then fly.

The most shocking part was how fast it went, especially when it showed the vehicle doing a fly-by, the camera capturing the plane up close as it zipped past.

Gurns smiled, “Previously, only certain Sovereigns and exceptionally skilled and specialized Marshals could use air magic to fly for extended periods of time. That kind of magic was dangerous, inefficient, not worth the expenditure most of the time. Now though, your friend John Cooper has managed to manufacture flight. He calls them planes.”

A picture of an aircraft expanded into the primary view, “These planes can reach speeds of up to 400 miles an hour, can reach heights of around 30 thousand feet, and can fly at 400 miles an hour for around 8 hours, with ranges of over 3000 miles. And that’s with just two Authority 6 White Crystals. I’m sure I don’t need to explain just how amazing this invention is, and how useful it would be to utilize in the military.”

The three smiled, Umara especially. She had a wide grin, and she recognized those planes.

There were descriptions of them in her grimoires. John had described flight and theoretical machines that could achieve it. He had also attempted to figure out how a warlock could fly with air magic, detailing the kind of things they’d have to do with the atmosphere in order to make it work. Long story short, it was absurdly hard without the warlock hurting themselves or expending massive amounts of energy for little effect, energy that would be better spent killing an enemy, or disrupting them if one had to run.

In his words, humans were about as aerodynamic as a brick. Umara had thought about trying to make a brick fly and realized that it was a good way to visualize just how impossible it was.

Now though, it seemed he had done it. John Cooper had invented flight. It seemed that’s why he was seen with the King.

Gurns looked at Umara, “You look happy.”

“I am, sir. That’s my boyfriend. I’m proud of him.”

Duke Olle suddenly chimed in from the side, “I didn’t realize your mother had approved of your relationship, Talerria.”

Umara’s smile disappeared. She refused to look at Olle, lest she piss herself off.

“My relationships are mine to determine. And I’d like to see anyone pressure us after John has revolutionized the world as we know it. Sir, do you know how much coin John will make from this invention?”

“Not precisely, no. But I do know that Sawn Industries just signed a contract with the military for some of their planes. The transaction amount for that contract is sitting at 800 million coin, to start.”

“Fuck…”

Feiden blurted out under his breath, baffled by that amount of money. Only the Kingdom itself could move that much coin in one go. It seemed like just an appetizer too, as that was only a contract for the military, not the rest of the Kingdom and its nobles as a whole.

Umara suddenly smiled again, glancing at Olle for a second. She knew about John’s contract with Sawn. He had told her that he was to receive up to a third of the profits that his inventions brought in. Depending on the profit margins, he could very well make over 200 million coin off of the contract alone.

Not even her mother could move that much coin in one go, and she was a Duchess with generations of nobility backing her. Their value came from all their assets, not raw gold. Granted, among those assets was the entire City of Joffrun.

It was still safe to say that John had set himself and his future family up for generations of kingly luxury with this singular contract.

Umara thought about the future, catching herself thinking about making a family, and everything that entailed.

She cleared her throat before she could flush, looking at Olle again to find a humorous frown plastered on that wrinkly face of his.

Gurns leaned back, “Anyway, the point of me calling you three in here is to notify you of certain changes that’ll be occurring. We have an airfield slated to be built within the next month that will house these planes and another type of aircraft called a helicopter. In response to these new vehicles, we’ll be creating a special task force that will utilize them. You three will be in that task force. At some point, should he still be interested, John will also have the chance to join that force.”

Umara perked up, “If he’s interested now, could he join?”

“My apologies, but I have no intention of taking on an Authority 6 summoner, no matter how good his lethality is. He’s busy anyway, so now isn’t a good time. However, if and when he reaches Authority 7, I’ll consider it.”

“Understood.”

Umara nodded. It was reasonable, even if she wanted to see him here right this minute.

Gurns brought out and set down a few small books.

“This is information pertaining to aircraft and how they will be used in a military setting, mostly drawn up my John Cooper. Educate yourselves. Be ready for a new kind of warfare. You all will be at the forefront of this transition, and in time, we’ll see just how well this invention will be able to hold off the Scourge.”