About 25 days later having long crossed the halfway mark for returning people, we get ready for the next attack. Though as that thought flits through my head, the number of dead in the instance and on earth means that we will never actually hit 100 percent unless we start to count new births in the equation.

Then my mind goes back and I imagine the next wave of people returning with ‘news’ from Charlie’s village and even more people with faux inner worlds carrying resources and new magic developments. For as amazing and well developed as our efforts here were, along with the centuries under the system’s restrictions, the further along the instances went, the greater the selection level. And as much as we benefited even more greatly from sheer numbers to throw at problems, the people were some of the smartest and most talented people our planet had available. It wasn’t a perfect selection method and a few that could have stayed for a lot longer chose to return early, but the tendency was that the level of people returning and how much they could contribute to our defense directly or indirectly increased as time passed.

Still, even if few from Charlie’s village and a relatively small proportion from the other villages had returned. We are the exception. Most other instances hadn’t been as lucky in their dealings with the instance’s “NPCs”, nor had they ramped up industry nearly as quickly as we did, which hampered their economic engine to a point they were forced to return much faster.

A few villages even failed to get more than a dozen people this far after gross mismanagement and the malicious ‘help’ from the instance’s inhabitants. Luckily most instances had come together against the system’s threat and managed to do fairly well on that front, not falling for the instance’s inhabtants bullshit.

Then I recall the words I heard from the very mouth of their ‘elder’ or Grand Arch Druid Supreme leader of all of Earth and whatever else they may call him. Not something that I would have had the time to do ordinarily, but my other half expanded our knowledge base diligently with an incredible reading speed while using lower cognitive functions such as transcribing what he heard from the enemy’s camp with the help of his multiple plant brains.

They still assumed I was dead.

And as much as it pained me to participate in the lie, I can see the advantage in feeding that delusion of theirs. I was making progress in reclaiming my body, but when I would cross that particular threshold is unknown. Without my full capabilities back, I didn’t dare to put myself in their hands once again.

That forced me to move in another direction, equipping a few of the forward troops with larger and oddly shaped faux inner worlds so that they can replicate what I could do in taking the injured away.

Only when it suited me, I would reveal myself, hopefully only after I had properly healed.

Taking off in flight, I carry a fraction of the total number of troops that are going on the offensive, most others had taken a near permanent residence on the forts near the elve’s encampment.

Any foray that the elves dare, we counter with ruthless efficiency. Real time detection of their moves was a tremendous advantage. Even their best stealth classes failed to get past even the basic version of the perception field trained on the edges of their city that a few of my seeds kept around the clock. And even our more sensitive life sign detectors could relatively reliably pierce their skills.

Their best stealth types might slip away unnoticed for a minute or two if there wasn’t any perception field in the area, but with ‘perfect’ coverage from hundreds of miles around, they always tripped up our detectors generating the odd blips in their trail.

That they might overcome even this and strike at one of our more vulnerable locations was a constant concern. So the dozens of outposts, mining efforts and other settlements all had well developed security protocols.

All that was for another time. Although I also use my inner world, opening portals and dragging people in to be healed, I leave all but the most extreme cases for the seeds around the camp. In general, I do everything that I can to minimize the chance that they will detect me while still helping as much as I can.

Though the Grand Arch Druid’s next words settle my mind.

“You wanted hard proof that they haven’t lost their surrogate inner worlds? There…. I’m seeing hundreds of the injured being taken away.” He says while pointing at the spot someone was just taken away.

“Could it be him?” The old Arch druid asks, his heart pumping more vigorously.

“No, the portals formed are different. There were plenty of these types last time around. The difference is impossible to miss. Whatever method they are using isn’t the normal system user interface, but something closer to a space mage’s direct manipulation. Crude without the proper training and I can’t sense any of the mana that would be needed.”

I mentally note every word down even if I know that my other half is probably listening while recording everything more permanently than in his own memory.

I spend the rest of the attack perfecting my direct portal opening capability, imitating the technique the seeds used. Instead of just leaving it to the system, I directly manipulate space. Which on its face should be easy, but even without interacting through the system’s ‘interface’ when opening the portals. But it proves to be surprisingly hard.

Sure I could effortlessly open them in the same manner, but they looked nothing alike. Trying to open a portal as they do feels like forging a signature from someone with lesser motor skills. Easier than the opposite, but still pretty damn hard. Relying only on my strange sense of space and warping it over and over whenever I have to immediately transport someone to be healed, the very precision with which I can enact tries to give away my higher level of skill. If I don’t purposefully introduce some shaking, there are barely any ripples on the edges of the portals and they don’t flicker when opening or closing.

Purposefully introducing those artifacts to match my seeds in frequency, amplitude and phase while making it all seem random and natural proves to be exceedingly hard. But just as hard as the exercise is, equality sweet is my increasing control after just a hours doing this. It may be a small step for my space control level in the grand scheme of things, but it came nearly instantly.

I probably need to limit this kind of practice, to not grow bad habits, but the change in routine is very beneficial to my development.

Then as they retreat and the main attack phase is over, the dynamic changes. I can’t enter the village safely and without being in the very middle pulling lighting from the sky I will run into all sorts of trouble trying to control it. I have a few other options but all of them would reveal me, so it is time to go another route.

Their city has grown enough that even with a large turret on a tall tower 50 meters inside their perimeter would come a couple of hundred meters short of their central building. Even this is already a generous estimate given how shallow our incursion would likely be without my help fighting through the thick of the system’s protections on them.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

With enough time and perseverance, knocking down each and every single building on the outer edges or something else might let the army reach deeper. There might also be other alternatives, but we didn’t know what those might be, even with all the conversations we recorded and translated with Ahjrahh’s help. Sure, we were the ones teaching the Arch Shaman Elvish, but he helped provide insight into a few more confusing aspects given the lack of cooperation from our elven prisoners.

Then on the top of a high tower with multiple layers of protection, a large cannon rolls out from one of the largest Faux inner wolds I had constructed and shaped specifically for its transportation.

I can feel the shock on half of the enemy’s faces, while others are ready to burst out laughing.

However, I know on a more fundamental level than anyone else here how that contraption works and what exactly went into its making. And that cannon it is no laughing matter.

My perception field once again absorbs each inch of the gun that feels like it should be installed in the largest of dreadnaughts, not being manhandled to attack something just a hundred meters away. At twenty meters long, made of gleaming deep steel and with runes infused in its body and on the outside ready to shoot out a half meter wide projectile.

Mana shifts and the runes and mages backing our shields from protecting our army to concentrating on this spot. But not just from the enemy, but to protect us from the effects of the gun. Only a dozen operators specially shielded stay within the one hundred meter danger zone.

The field is nearly wide open for the enemy to advance and destroy our big stick, but even the ones shocked at its appearance don’t know the level of power and danger that it is bringing.

Carefully aiming the solid deep steel bore, the operator's personal mithril infused gold shield enchantments pulse past their maximum power while they sit in special pods meant to protect them. Then the cannon buckles.

Expertly engraved runes push away most of the system’s restrictions on ‘tech’ and a custom explosive compound propels a hunk of steel and silver at supersonic speeds out of the barrel.

That engraved projectile explodes with a similar anti interference field of its own, burning out the runes powering it, even as the overfilled mana batteries in it are drained. Like the first real design that I helped to bring into existence, the copper gauntlet, this leaks its mana like a sieve emptying in less than a minute, but I didn’t need long term storage from it, it only needed to last a fraction of a second.

The engravings push away the system’s interference just long enough for it to hit.

Even before the sound of impact on the walls hit me, the weight of the system’s attention blankets everyone. It’s not immediately obvious to most people, but a decent fraction do notice it and I can tell that it is ‘just’ looking and seeing if we aren’t going to something else bad.

Speed, mass and energy are all intuitive with my perception field, still, the math runs flawlessly in my head, as I try to gauge the power of the ‘blow’.

We had accelerated the projectile as much as we dared while keeping the engravings in it intact. Even as it broke through their three main shields erected, it lost less than half its energy, dumping it all in the end directly into their ‘church’s’ walls. Walls that ordinarily would have splintered and fallen.

The supremely strong system restrictions on the actual building stopped the shot cold. Traveling in, the engravings on the bullet barely managed to keep it in steady flight, but hitting that wall feels like hitting solid mithril or maybe even something even more stupid like adamantine.

The 2 seconds to my spot, pass and I feel a pressure wave hit but that is it.

Without higher level engravings or significant improvements, we were only on the very edge of the possible.

Their territory shrinks without leaving a single scratch in their stone building. If I could get that same thing for my own house. Make paper thin walls protected by the system that could survive anything….

No, now that I think about it that sounds like a bad idea.

Everyone stays on their tiptoes, ready to come back charging to the defense of our main siege weapon if the enemy chose to rush in. But they don’t try to destroy the expensive piece of machinery and runic work.

If their city grew just another 200 meters, even with a few more improvements that I knew we could make, the equation would change. We would need fundamentally different and better engravings or worse yet to put gold or gems inside each shell. But for now, we have a real way to strike at them without me having to expose myself.

Though as the thought of putting gems comes in, a self destructing design that would leave useless melted silicon or carbon spread as a thin spray over their city might be workable. We would need to test for a bunch of things including how likely would it be that they could recover would be useful but it is a worthwhile avenue of research for one of the tens of thousands of teams around the world that had joined us.

Or maybe I would start a new team given how important this is.

I feel the hundreds of kilograms of silver with my perception field, now completely warped and half melted splayed over their city mixed with steel scraps. The cost and the hand delivery of so much of the metal to their doorstep pains me.

Then a gun technician breaches the back of the ‘naval gun’ to load another solid kinetic impactor.

I gauge the reduction in their territory. Only a couple of yards, so we will need another hundred shots to get them to the absolute minimum size.

I’m left without anything to do or anyone to help only watching instead of actively participating. So my mind turns to other endeavors. I put on a bright alarm lamp just before me, should my attention be needed elsewhere. Then I warn the right people and seeds to be on the lookout because I’m no longer paying attention.

Much more interesting than the cleanup job are my own engraving efforts. Not basic magitech such as the cannon, but engravings that are meant to work entirely with magic with a power density that would once again propel us forward. Pushing hundreds or even a thousand mana points on a single spell now didn’t require amazing control, time or an oversized engraving. All that came at the tip of our fingers… under the right circumstances.

Still, I’m a long way from a master and as my mind dives in, learning how should I cut the gem to extract the most from its properties I gaze at the near infinite sea of possibilities.

I had a few dozen gems from the Jwaneng mine, without even counting the other mines already outputting stones, some with more success than others. But half of them were already cut after me and a few other people got done with them.

Only a dozen people worldwide admitted to working with gems so far after we put out inquiries and informed them of the potential benefits of gems and though I’m no expert gem cutter, I’m training diligently with a talented man while my perception field gave us an almost unfair advantage. I didn’t need fancy 3d scanners, magnifying glasses or even measuring calipers, I simply ‘saw’ them in the deepest sense of the word, and I could start cutting instantly.

I always knew where and how I could cut something with virtually no chance of screwing up and grinding away more than I was supposed to or at the wrong angle. Though instead of a diamond or an emerald, I hold in my hand a much more common and simpler gem: a quartz crystal. Weighing nearly half a pound it is so clear I might not have seen a single blemish before the system and I am ready to get its base as perfect at its tip.

Even now, it is nearly perfect, but the practice and test results would help me understand their nature further. For my next project, I don’t need the current shape, but something symmetric.

So under my teacher’s careful guidance, I give myself to the process. Cutting the gem and setting it atop a rod that is nearly solid gold with fine structures engraved all along it.

In the end, I channel my Qi through it, shooting a fireball 30 meters farther than I had without it. Useful, powerful and enhanced in a linear fashion even beyond the 28.5 meters I estimated with this design and quality of materials would wield against its former state.

“Another failure.”

“You are improving your gem cutting and you will learn the best shapes and the proper runes to work with in due time. Or someone else will and I doubt that you want the glory of being first yet again.”

His words help slightly lift the cloud that had been forming, but there was still something missing, a link that was lost whenever I cut one gem and it isn’t only about my inexperience. The same happened to all the gems I tested from around the world cut by masters of the craft.

My Qi organized itself in a more concentrated form and it become more potent, while the ‘sharp’ corners or the smooth lines of polished stone help it in intangible ways, it didn’t ‘taste’ the same as what I saw in raw gems straight out of the ground.

But like he said: I would figure out in time.

I usually do.