Arch Druid POV - 2 days later.
“We managed to get back the encoded message using the interface parameters. You were right, his inner world is significantly larger than expected even for someone with his stats. They couldn’t get a better reading, it seems they were mostly put underground, but they put the lower bound at a 2 kilometer wide inner world.” The chief scouting officer reports back to me.
I already expected it to be huge, but ordering them all to get themselves killed for no reason would just be demoralizing. Mildly grumblings about this particular directive had already started to travel through the rank and file. Ignoring that, trusting in indoctrination was a good way to get a revolt, though plenty of the other Arch druids vehemently disagree.
With a shake of my head, I come back to his report reading the page. They weren’t gonna leave millions of elves occupying the precious inner world space forever. We didn’t manage to get any communication beyond what a little system shenanigans allowed but is more information than we ever managed to acquire in our brief bouts. And all I had to do was break standard protocol on surrenders.
The gambit paid off, and it would have been worth it even if we failed, considering a couple of deaths the enemy would have suffered to eliminate the isolated group was negligible in comparison. There is even a token chance we will manage to free them, either by force or a deal. Nad the deal seems more and more likely.
They know far too much for new system integrants, it is like at every turn they get access to a library worth of data, and they manage to find the nuggets of real information there. There are even secrets only from our race they seem intimately aware of that not even th goblins know of. All is speculation, but it almost feels like they have both direct and indirect ways to learn what we know and what is happening in the village.
That though scares me more than any Titan infested planet could hope to. More than any dark nature controllers, void meddling fools or any combination of hundreds of other advantages that gave hope to natives. Occasionally even allowing planets to maintain a minimum level of control against invading forces. But though I may be ragged, I know this is what must be the fate of this planet. The others still don’t dream of it, and if ever spoke aloud, they would lock me away in an insanity ward. But the only path to victory without relying on luck is to keep our full power on them long after it was economically viable to do so.
“And even then Nash, you aren’t content with just surviving in a continent far away from the invasion points, are you? No, you want more. You want everything. Every last square inch of ht planet together with your cursed tree.”
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Captured Arch Druid’s POV
What I saw… from this side. He showed me everything, hiding nothing. Even fleeting impressions of his emotions leaked through and for someone as experienced as me there is no faking it. He just dives into the fight with his whole being. But while he looks to be lost in combat madness, I’m not fooled. Even before capture, I knew I could guess, but after he forgot I was here, I could see beyond his acting. I see the real him, his power and mind cracking apart our defenses in moments, needed to allow other factors to come into play and that mind scares me way more than any battle crazed berserker.
He ‘by himself’ dropped our shield.
Something
And not by relying on some truly innovative and expensive contraptions.
No, he just found the wake point and hundreds of thousands of magic users lose control of their very mana.
Willpower from other individuals joined him, but he’s the lever they all support. He pushed, found the weak spot, hit it with deadly accuracy and worse yet follow through with his entire being. A display that stumps even me, a millennia old magic user intimately familiar with those very runes.
His actions are supposed to be impossible. Even more impossible than anyone in the army probably realizes. Sure everyone used the ’same’ runic language, but in practice, they are different languages that simply shared the same roots.
Now, in minutes, he dismantled the entire shield. Though this was the largest and most significant flaw, as I look back on our confrontations, I realize: He must be the main culprit behind most, if not all the unexpected happenings such as faltering shields and blurry attacks. He probably can just glimpse at a set of runes and know what they do. Instant feedback on the best types of attack and placement to break our shields. And the higher ranked Arch Druids, with their political schemes, left us in the dark.
Any invasion was dangerous, but unless we got a particularly bad one, or we showed up in the first couple of waves, the survival rate was above 99 percent for the first decade and even higher for a mid rank magic user such as me. Anything less is deemed a bad invasion. The numbers might improve by the end, but for now, they are atrocious. This is the type of planet where giving up and waiting for the system to open up alternative travel paths to the other planets to the edge of the galaxy would make sense.
At this rate, they are likely to kill well over a billion Elves.
All the lessons of my tutors, the glory of our race and our accumulation pale in comparison to an Aether warrior like him was chopping us down in such a methodical way.
All my talent cut short by that cursed instrument. My path to a true Arch Druid is now permanently closed. All my effort has gone to waste even if hostage trading or a similar deal goes through. And now the enemy whispering lies about healing me. Or maybe it isn’t a lie. Maybe this is just one more miracle.
He did regrow his arms and legs.
Every thousand invasions where following orders and the precepts of Elvenkind is the right path to survival comes one exception. And that time may be now. They look downright reasonable… for humans.
My stomach twists in knots at the mere thought. To be the first of my race to betray everything that my last few centuries had taught me.
Why did I volunteer to come over here?
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Automaton’s Seed POV
“Increase the power.” I mime a human voice with the same ease as a grandmaster touch keys on a piano. It doesn’t even take any conscious brainpower. My will simply translates itself into audible words.
Around me is a giant machine, a machine combining all the aspects of tech and magic that our world understood into the greatest prototype we could dream of. Runes, machined deep steel plates with cooling loops inside and space for coils of wire running between thousands of sensors provide the level of feedback we need to improve the design.
I wait and wait, running simulations and adjusting other parameters that were under my control and that I can nearly instantly change. A long time later, roughly a second, the magnetic containment strength starts to climb.
The careful balance of power and precision is marvelous.
I wanted to cross this first magical barrier. Achieving a higher energy output compared to the input with a fuel cycle we have a hope to produce in practical terms. If we had tons of Tritium its reaction to Deuterium would be enough but it’s not very useful given the world supply even in our hay day was measured in kilograms and now it barely reaches grams.
If I used it all to power the similar design of a fusion reactor, even a single neighborhood would burn through it in months. And the entire world in minutes. But we don’t need to rely on the easiest form of fusion with more complex, if harder to achieve, cycles available.
Hydrogen collides inside the reactor along with its catalysts, one of which ironically is the very rare tritium. That carefully tuned plasma fuel mixture folds over itself at incredible speeds and releases radioactive particles and waves. Enough damage that even tanks with very high constitutions get sick after enough exposure. But the energy is still very low, so after the layers of physical shielding a thin mana shield layer protects everyone lowering the radiation to incredibly low levels. Even better than a tens of meters thick lead protective layer.
Others had already rebuilt lesser versions of what I wanted to accomplish using old fission reactor designs, and in many ways, they are improvements to our tech, but they still relied on solid core designs. Even going to higher power densities as liquid nuclear fission reactors allowed were still limited enough that I wouldn’t be happy with them. Especially as one of the main goals this would allow was a vehicle with enough power at a high enough energy density to leave the planet. It wouldn’t come today. Even the largest and most powerful rockets strapped to the inner world and slowly carted to the upper atmosphere would be able to reach orbit considering the much higher gravity and the absurdly higher orbital speed they would need to reach. Not while relying on chemical reactions to provide the energy.
Improvements constantly arrive from the lowest to the highest level of tech, even if production is still very limited. And the system changes the game so much, Even the field of super fuels was starting to emerge. Liquids and more commonly solids with greater energy density than should have been able to be produced simply by chemical bonds.
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After all, one mole of carbon reacting to about 2 moles of oxygen should still release that same amount of energy as before the system, but things were no longer quite as simple. Mineral coal extracted from ‘richer’ parts of the planet tended to achieve more heat than the percentage of carbon in its composition would indicate. Usually in the single digits percentage, but the fat in people’s bodies and other sources sometimes saw entirely different results. And that was just something ‘dead’. I brush a small sample in the other room with one of my root limbs. A piece of wood cut down on the other side of the word, of a naturally fire-attuned tree that had a hint of mana in its composition and that could release roughly 3 times the normal energy output of dry wood.
I have no idea know where the energy is coming from and it was interesting, but would only be applicable in a few places. Even a super fuel with a hundredfold multiplication paled in comparison to a fully working nuclear reactor that runs on some of the simplest forms of fuel.
It may be interesting and something to explore after this, but getting stuck in that feels like a trap. A lesser result than what I could achieve.
The reaction rate ticks up as I had prompted and my mind comes back to the present. I control a thousand parameters, others I could only direct the ‘computers’, and the molasses slow response of humans even with the help of the system was something that I had to take into account. But the level of complexity that properly trained humans can achieve is simply without equal when dealing with new phenomena. With all the important systems that need responses in the nanoseconds fully automated, the ones that needed them in milliseconds were adapted to best suit me and the ones that required creativity or carried a higher level of complexity in good hands, we wait patiently.
Tweaking the parameters up and down, trying to find the balance in the new regime we were exploring, I reach a 0.8 energy return before the collapse comes.
Which was not fully unexpected.
If all I wanted was a number as high as possible, I could just blast the machine at full power and then downregulate parts of it while the hot gasses are still in a higher state of reactivity. So for a very brief moment reaching something around twice as much energy inside as there was outside.
Still, I can smell this milestone just around the corner. Crossing the scientific breakeven point in a stable configuration. For now, its an academic achievement, given that in practice, other losses of energy on the other steps would make running the reactor would use more energy than it generates. And the fact that it took significant amounts of mana for the internal shielding complicated matters further as seemingly there was no way to produce mana from energy. But with the right design, the mana needed could go down a lot and the energy required to run the reactor generates so much excess output that it would be useful in ‘all’ situations.
Hundreds of humans that had worked on pre system projects assisted the effort. Some of them didn’t adapt well to the system, a few others are incessant complainers about the quality of materials that didn’t quite match the previous standards available in the supply chain. Luckily they aren’t a majority.
Ohh, we already have working reactors if such and such company still produced good quality metal.
That is in many ways a moot point. We now had access to more metals, some with new properties, it was a trade off at the start, but soon we would be surely on the other side as any small loss of ‘quality’ would be overwhelmed by the absurdly high standards of material properties available, nobody could complain about the results. We already had stronger steel alloys, capable of handling higher heat capacities and greater efficiency in energy conversion, even if they aren’t ‘perfectly uniform’.
I watch the counter as it climbs near that magical threshold using the next profile. The engineering breakeven point is the real deal, but I will still count this as a win if I get it.
The analog counter behind a perfectly clear pane of glass stops climbing and hovers for a moment before dipping slightly. This last result isn’t even as good as our best average of roughly 92 percent with a few lucky 98 instances that lasted at least 10 seconds. Though the variability of manual human input is the main factor in both pushing the boundaries, but also risking more and making such results less consistent. Simply following what we had already done, we could reliably reproduce those 92 percent nine times out of ten, but that wasn’t pushing to improve, but just to retain a certain level.
Even after I crossed both thresholds, in the start it probably would come with all kinds of restrictions and limitations. At least the nuclear fission reactors already working on could be put to use. But I still consider them partially a dead end. The system’s technological restrictions and change to our crust made mining fissionable materials much harder.
Fusion is the future and that is where my focus will be.
The cycle comes down then when the effects of our alterations of the last attempts fade away, we start another run. It ramps up past the .50 the automated system sustains independently even with fairly random configurations and my input becomes more and more important.
I can faintly feel the thin layer of Aether in the air through my link to the root network, though I know that isn’t the answer, both because of cost and the fact that Aether doesn’t meld well with tech.
Which is a simplified way to look at the world. Aether could probably enhance someone’s mental capacity to do anything including develop tech. Without Aether, this machine as it stands would have no way of working. Besides the question of mana, Aether infused matter makes materials stronger, allows for Mithril to reach unprecedented levels of strength and the bulk of deep steel and other alloys in its construction seem supported by it. Aether seems essential for the system’s survival.
But I can’t just stuff Aether inside iron ore and expect magical properties to appear. If it was that simple, Nash’s experiments would have been a lot more successful. An unknown process needs to occur, maybe something only the system could do or a natural process that requires a certain chance and time. Modifications on the atomic level or even subatomic. So while as a way to alter the base layer of reality in a permanent manner, Aether is immensely helpful for Tech, that is only in this indirect manner. Throw a wave of Aether at a computer, even the best shielded one and it would release the magic blue smoke that kept it running. Pure Aether simply gunks up anything more complex than a Swiss watch in moments.
In between each of the interminably slow tests, I ran hundreds of simulations and analyze the results of each new attempt tweaking the next runs on the fly. All in an attempt to find a configuration with greater promise, just like the last few months. Though in another hour this will again stop as we shut it for the next upgrade which will allow a little more control, more power and a better sensor suite to witness what is happening.
Then I let it all fade away, only idly going through my job.
My usual machine like tendencies aren’t serving me. I had failed too long and too often to simply keep marching on the current course.
Yes, I was making progress, but I need something in the next few months or at most a year. Not a decade away now as some had suggested is a realistic prospect. The pace had been higher than that, but still not anywhere near what I wanted.
I remember Nash, his race, and his own capabilities. Then the automaton’s race and so much I lacked from my own heritage. I’m missing something, a loss in my soul and as I imagine Nash, I sense a deeper layer of long buried instincts awaken. Instincts that the Automaton’s Aether nearly overrides pushing me to mold myself towards the precision of engineering and mathematics in every action. Seeking perception in closed loop circles. But now I consciously exert dormant muscles and I lean heavily into emotion. That always works for Nash, why not me?
The perception field, even the basic one that a few seeds unlocked would be damn useful now.
That strange new sense that Nash brought to the fold and we imitated.
But achieving it wasn’t a consequence of simple work or age, but from attaining proper alignment. I can see the dismal statistics on how likely it was that I would be able to develop the skill, but hope is rekindled now. Even as math tells me to ignore this, something else drives me forward. A core of light almost guiding me to success.
A pair of other seeds telepathically send what they glimpse from the inside that chamber, but secondhand knowledge always comes with drawbacks and the main ones now are speed and bandwidth. But I let that knowledge ground me.
I became the tech mind of the Automthon’s Aether, but I was born to be Pando’s progeny, to grow and be untamed.
Math tells me my extremely uncharacteristic outlook put me in the less than one percent likelihood of acquiring a ‘faux’ perception field in the next millennia. That’s roughly ten times lower than the second worse odds from all the seeds. But I have potential, and I’m not content with that.
Statistics are incomplete.
I drag my own roots to battle those assumptions. Math simplifies the world and is a useful tool, but that is all it is: a tool. It doesn’t account for the true randomness of biological life and even if I forget that sometimes:
I’m fully biological.
I’m a seed, the progeny of Pando which absorbed both the Automaton’s and Nash’s Aether to achieve a strange balance.
My thoughts start to go in circles, but I catch the thread of light and keep going. I didn’t do anything nearly as extreme as absorbing the berserker Aether from the HLZ beasts, but the effects had been unknown and Nash only let me absorb it together with his own Aetehr. His Aether was in many ways weaker and at the start hadn’t made much of a difference, but as the years and centuries passed, even when I leaned too hard on my machine side, there is a tiny flame that can never go out even in hurricanes and tsunamis trying to consume all I’m and make me a machine.
I deliver myself to that little flame. I trust its source of that, that is both my self and my friend.
Following my gut, even if biologically speaking I don’t have a functioning digestive system, I sense something in the distance. Something faint, heat beyond belief, a core in the toroidal shape as I knew the nuclear fusion to have. My flame analogy is replicated in the world. My imagination runs wild and a clendoscope of images presses on me as I start to hallucinate. I lean into the madness and draw everything that I can from it. I seek to listen, to make myself for a moment into not only Pando’s progeny but Nash’s as well. I give in to my wild side, my fully biological side and that tiny flame burns like a magnesium torch. The brightest star of them all, if one that will consume itself in no time.
I lean into this unrooted reality. The source of all my creative ideas and then I open my eyes.
The reality of the world is bare to me.
Not through the human eye imitation in my avatar body. No, I achieved a perception field and it came to me in a moment of madness or a moment of genius.
The best kind of moment.
I need more of those.
I look forward, consciously aware of what I had been feeling, what I might have toughed a few times in the past, though those might have been just my imagination.
Parsing out the extremely high energy outputs, everything comes into focus even as I directly manipulate a few of the parameters under my control on the cooldown process. Thousands of mana points every second, megawatts of power streaming from chemical batteries and capacitors even as the energy grid slowly recharges them and I feel the plasma.
Ohh, this is gonna be more useful than I thought.
“Power it up again, I have a few ideas to test before the upgrade.”
Everyone looks at me as a wild tone leaks into my voice, instead of the mechanical one they expected from me, but their stares simply slide off before my genius. With intimate knowledge of what is going on inside the chamber, I will be able to tweak this round of upgrades into a cascading improvement cycle.
“No way I’m gonna need a decade now. Come on, not time to waste.”