Two days after my foray into the netherworld, I wait in the town square. I technically don’t have to be here, no one does, but no sense in saving a few minutes if it pisses off the robot from the time he would spend tracking every one of us down. What Interested me was our interactions with him are quite different from what we heard from the other villages.
None of the others have a robot. All of them meet with a human-looking being, though I guess that their actual appearance is different and their powers are quite a bit less impressive than his, but I shrug as my perception reaches hundreds of miles out and I continue pushing with Aspen to grow the underground network as fast as we can sustain.
Alone, he is more limited but he dedicated nearly his entire time to the task and just by the sheer quantity he managed to push very far. He spent some time connecting all the seeds in the grid around our village. I can already sense just about anywhere within the low level zone, a thirty mile radius circle around the village, and in a few spots the network extends into the low level zones of other villages. Soon the mesh will be able to reach all 6 villages with no large gaps in between. When I extend my perception field range, not a single inch would escape me.
But most of the attention went to finishing the circle around the high level zone while grasping at any chance of discovering another place like the silver mine.
Everything is progressing smoothly and I almost expect bad news to arrive at some point, not because I am a pessimist, but it is the nature of things. Challenges were everywhere and it is only a matter of time until we encounter the next one.
In a couple of hours the next attack will come for all villages in the instance, though at least for us that is not a real challenge.
In my perception field a distortion, uniquely folding of space not resembling any of the ways I saw till now draws my attention, and an instant later a silverish colored being is looking straight at me.
I nod at him in greeting before he starts his short speech.
“Villagers, before I move on and get everyone’s coins, I must warn you of the trials to come.”
“Before now, things have mostly been easy. Even as the strongest village all you had to contend with was a single regular attack and a couple of others every couple of weeks. Now, at the 3-month mark, this dynamic will change.
“The system will start to send more difficulties your way. So this is the time where everyone that is not prepared to put their life on the line should return to your planet. As your race likes to put it, the free launch is over. I will give you a few minutes to decide.”
He looks at me and I realize he wants to talk. Cautiously I approach, climb the stairs, and he starts talking.
“I saw you spend a long time in your class trial. Did you gain anything interesting?” He asks.
Tilting my head in confusion, I reply. “Yeah, I learned a little and gained access to a couple of new runes.”
“Good, good. Though why did you spend so long inside?”
“I wanted to make the most of it and after I learned that time passed slower I didn’t even hesitate to enter the second level.”
“Ohh.” He says excitedly. “Though you probably had your memories locked, it’s a good sign to get such good marks on your trial, people usually wait years raining and acquiring knowledge about the nature of their trial before entering it. What did you choose?”
“One with the World. Why the interest?”
“This place is boring and I took a liking to you.” He starts mumbling to himself for a minute. What could he be thinking about? I focus my eyes on him as he starts up again. “That is a good fit for you, a very good class, though it will take you a little bit to see the real benefits. So far I guess you only have the perception field right?”
“Yes, and an upgrade to it.”
“That is pretty much standard for this class from what my race could gather. I can’t say much, but I will say this: don’t rush the class trials. Develop your powers before attempting it again.”
“That is what I was planning to do. Can you give me a hint about the contents of the trial or how to regain my memories?”
“No, hell, I don’t know what the trial was supposed to be for your class. I can only guess.”
“If you know the class…”
“There is a lot of information missing in my missive and I don’t think a single one of my race ever got this specific variation of class, people don’t share information willy-nilly, especially about the real top tier classes, and Automatons aren’t suited to this specific variation. We have plenty of similar classes, just not this one.”
“And you aren’t going to tell me anything more?”
“I will tell you that it has several development paths. From what we gathered it’s one of the less regimented classes. Though all the observation is external so I don’t know the specifics.”
I look at him, not pushing for more information and comment on his race. “Uhmm, Automatons, interesting name. I have just been calling you a robot in my head.”
“Fair enough. Though don’t tell that to anyone else from my race, some would consider it…. offensive, robots don’t…. think, they just follow their programming. Even with our quirks compared to biological life forms, we are still sentient beings, even the coldest and most logical of us has a spark inside themselves.”
“Can you tell me anything to help me?”
“No, I have a little leeway, but I want to save it for a surprise.”
“Now I want to know what the surprise is.”
“Let me see if it will pan out first. If I succeed, it will be worth it.”
“Is the danger you warned us about real, or is it like the warnings from some of the villagers?”
He looks into my eyes intently for a good minute, before looking away and saying.
“It’s real enough.”
I look out as he starts collecting the money from everyone. I feel the buffeting wind, strong enough that a few dry leaves even swirl in the air.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
After paying the 4 silver coins I notice that a few people chose to take his warning and return to Earth early. Even with my perception field, my brain can’t process each of the thousand people around me, so I can only guess as I feel about 30 people disappearing.
After working with the smithy on the +5 weapons and on even more expensive ones the 4 silver seems almost inconsequential. Even being double the payment from last time, I don’t feel anything, though if it continues doubling every month, eventually I won’t be able to keep up.
The next time will be 8 silver, and without the village subsidizing everyone's stay maybe half of the village will be short on funds. But even if we manage it in our village, plenty of other villages estimated one or two hundred people returning to Earth because they were short of money. They couldn't save enough in a month as they were still relying on more basic job levels, like the starting 10 copper coins from the first few weeks in the smithy.
I let the automation’s words swim in my mind after I go looking for our merchants. Shaking my head I recall the scouts making their way back to the village from the other side of the instance. They are making good time, but they had to sleep and it was very far away especially as they didn’t actually choose the shortest path with a couple of them making their way on the outside to encapsulate a greater area on the map.
As the Automaton leaves, simply teleporting right out of my perception field with barely a ripple in space and no runes or anything of the sort that I can feel the temperature and pressure drop. Not a lot, but with my high perception stat, not even these minute changes can escape me.
What is going on with the weather? Could it have something to do with his warnings?
Running through scenarios in my head, I move to the walls. An attack is coming in just a couple of hours. An attack everyone in the instance will experience. I sit in my usual spot and send my awareness miles away from the village continuing to help Aspen grow. I don’t take the attack coming lightly, but my gut tells me this is not what he warned us about. This attack will probably be like the last, and I will be here to help thwart anything if it’s stronger than expected.
Hours later, my gut feeling is proven correct, though if last month's attack was pathetic, this is downright pitiful compared to how much the entire village has grown and I don’t even help much letting everyone get a slightly larger share of experience. I see Greg standing back for some reason without joining the fray, but I ignore the oddity.
A few minutes later After the corpses are dragged away to be dealt with and not even the echoes of the battle remain, Charlie approaches me.
“I saw you didn’t push very hard.”
“It wasn’t needed, let everyone else get a bigger share of the Exp, it will do more good than sitting in my pool unused.”
“Can’t argue with it, but that is not why I came. Can you take an hour or so and pass by the mines to bring back the ore?”
“Sure, same thing as usual?”
“Yeah, just switch the containers and we handle the rest.”
In minutes I’m moving at 160kph cruising speed in the direction of the closest mine with the improved version of the single-person flying bicycle. The very same one I used to escape the mobs on the other side of the high-level zone. Soon Burges might even have an improved version that would be a little faster, though at my request he id focusing more on the ‘mana economy’ side of the equation.
The crafts use far too much mana to use for bulk transportation, but even a fraction of a mana point saved every second meant significant range improvements and would help save the limited mana supply. With a single person like myself using a lot, it may appear endless, but even a few dozen vehicles regularly using it could consume all our mana.
The uses for mana and scale of projects we have are was increasing way faster than the regen and meditation skills from the people providing most of the mana for our projects, which are not mages, though the change there is not that impressive, and that doesn’t even take into account the mana saved for practicing magical skills.
It is the physical fighters and the craftsmen that didn’t use much mana which supplied the bulk from our mana. Just their sheer number compared to dedicated magic users means they have much more mana. Compounded with little use for the resource while their skill levels were low and their mentality didn’t adjust to being able to properly wield the magic they had available at their fingertips, it resulted in a surplus of mana that we could tap into. But even with so many villages selling and trading their excess mana to us, these limits got more stringent as their industry only ramped up.
A couple of minutes later, I get to the first mine and replace the half a dozen containers, each with close to a hundred tons of ore, with empty ones. It isn’t required, I could just transport the ore, but trading the containers saves me a few minutes. As I take my flying bicycle out of the inner world to head for the next mine, I stop myself.
Yes, it would save me a few more minutes, but I could use the time to experiment with pushing vigor and mana really hard, and that is exactly what I do.
Several points of mana on each step as the air blow and my eyes almost tear up, not nearly as fast as if I had been flying but there was no windshield to protect them and I could use the practice.
I run at some 90 kilometers an hour for a few seconds, then slow to jog to recover. My body can barely keep together after only a few cycles, but I keep it up. A few people focused on agility must be able to run faster but I had yet to see any of them running in person.
I continue to put this intermittent stress on my body until I can no longer trust my legs to keep me upright. This is supposed to be a more efficient way of training the body instead of going for longer at low intensities. At least in the sense of pushing my limits, it is very effective and I will wait to see if my stats reflect that after a few days or if the exhaustion I got is the cost for discovering another path that won’t increase my stats.
An hour later I drop the thousands of tons of ore stored in dozens of wooden containers near the smelting furnace in the village. I am still hiding exactly how my inner world worked from almost everyone, but it is a reality that I can’t completely avoid as more and more people in the village observe my strange actions and speculate about what I can do.
“Here is your ore Stuart,” I say to him.
“Thank you. If you can wait a moment,” he says entering a storeroom close to the nearest forge, before coming back carrying a cloth bag with thousands of small round silver blobs. I barely needed to brush my perception field against it before a wide smile come to my face.
“Mining has been good then?” I say. Looking around and seeing no one else, I place the ten ingots of silver in the inner world.
“Yes. Both of the silver mines are producing a steady output, and the mining bots have been working wonders. And this,” he says pointing at the bag, “is just your share.”
I beam before saying: “We did test it extensively before sending the bots there.”
“Even with all the testing, we couldn’t know for sure, just guess. Whatever was causing so many problems for the development may be different on the other side and we likely forgot or skipped some test. Luckily it doesn’t seem to be anything critical.” Stuart says.
“Things have been running smoothly so far, right?”
“Yes, but I don’t think it will be worth replacing the miner with machines anytime soon. Even after working all the major kinks out, it is not efficient enough to be worth the effort outside the high-level zone and when we manage to secure the area it will be worth sending actual people inside.”
“Not while there are available miners, but eventually the population will diminish enough that it may be worth the effort and mana cost just so the people left won’t have to spend time there themselves.”
“We will see. There is too much we don’t know about how things are gonna go and the improvements of the mining machine, in the coming months we will have a better idea of whether that is the path to take.” He says moving back and already standing close to the smelter as I fill the three meters tall crucible with copper ore to help them begin the process.
“Your inner world is really useful, isn’t it?”
I smile and don’t say anything for a few seconds before changing the subject.
“Are you moving to full mana battery production?”
“Yes”, he says with a wide smile on his face. “Merlin finally cracked the code. With the help of a single high-level engraver we will be able to produce enough batteries to hold almost a million mana every single day without increasing the number of workers.”
I whistle. “That is way more than I was expecting. It’s what? An increase in current production capabilities of over tenfold, while reducing the need for engravers?”
“About that when compared to before we partially cracked the code for casting runes. Now shoo, let me work.” Stuart says with a wide smile on his face.
“Ok, just tell me when you are going to be making this battery, I want to go there and see if I can get anything by watching you guys.”
He huffs before checking the schedule and telling me.
I walk away as workers start arriving to place the logs to heat up the smelter. I take one last look behind before turning the corner with the clearing now too far away for me to reach with my perception field.
That’s definitely something I want to witness.