Goblin shenanigans.

That is what I observe after the messenger gets me. Not only that, but the Elves aren’t idle. They are preparing for… something. I drive myself nuts trying to figure out what they are preparing, but it doesn’t come.

While our more nature attuned enemies had been blunted to a large degree, the goblins picked up steam. Our understanding of their politics is tenuous, but a few of the captured still talked even knowing that strictly speaking their orders are to stay silent. I worry about how to extract as much knowledge from the elves as possible, but simply by their relative isolation even as the majority hated us there are the rare few that actually looked for connection with the cooks, cleaners and the guards.

We get way more captives than anyone expected, which just makes the numbers work even further in our favor.

Even when they don’t speak answer aloud, if I know one of them has the information I need, I have more personal ways to extract that information. The perception field allows me a direct feed to their brain where I watch the nerves and electric signals travel in a similar fashion to humans.

Just asking the questions often gave me the answers I wanted.

The elve’s utter failure after trying to kill me and their temporary restrictions put greater pressure on the other invasions. The system ‘punishment’ had already ended months ago, but the goblins seized the chance to lead in a more prominent role. As I look at the implements that their shamans are singing and dancing around apprentices fuse bones making the whole thing larger, then carving it before the next layer.

Giant Bones that are already 6 meters long with handles like enormous battering rams get a constant stream of ‘sacrifices’ growing ever so slightly.

The Arch shaman and his apprentice, now a lot more well rounded in strength talk to me:

“Again, there are too many variables to know what specifically this will turn out be, that isn’t that important. What matters is that they are powerful. They are going to lose a lot of people if they just come charging out of their city to take over somewhere else, maybe even most of their armies, but we don’t have anything that can come even close to stopping them.”

“Can you give me an idea of what these bone rams do?”

“They knock anything in their way down. Hell, I don’t think our main shield around Pando’s city would stand with them at our doorstep and it’s the strongest in the world by a wide margin. To move close to anywhere important, they will have to wade through our forces and defenses. Without protection, their numbers will dwindle before they can accomplish anything, but that tool is on another level. I have been working on counters to their more common strategies, but I didn’t think they would go this route. I don’t have anything ready for that.”

“What are the limitations?”

“Movement speed and they aren’t gonna have enough spirits to get two separate groups. They can build spares, but they all need to remain in close proximity, otherwise, they will be as useful as a solid bone ram. They will want at least two more just to be certain. The spirit that makes it work will flock to any ram as long as it is in one piece. And one is all they need.”

“How long does each one take to make?”

“Considering their numbers and skill level: twelve hours each.”

“So, they could finish this and make another 3 or 4 by the end of the month?”

“Yes.”

“This is troubling. I feel something in the air, my gut is warning me but I pinpoint where the danger is coming from.”

“They have been coordinating more closely these last few months. I have seen the signs. Even with my race trying to take the lead, something has fundamentally changed with the elves. Winning through any means is becoming more important than the honor of their ‘glorious empire’.”

To the side, our own resident ‘handyman’ Elf that seemed to have some level of skill in just about everything, almost like a knockoff version of myself speaks in perfect ‘goblinish’: “I agree.”

My mind spins and only a single answer is within reach. I run my perception field over all our stores of kerosene and oxygen as the choice of fuel. There is no time to make more, so with a limited amount of fuel, each person that I send will also slow their final speed.

I take in a deep breath pondering the implications and trying to plan. I.. we need to send reinforcements. The time frame limits my options. Even if I started to modify the craft and send over the minimum amount of mass accelerated to the absolute maximum speed over the next hour or two inside the inner world and only afterward would the rocket start to burn, all but the most limited number of people would get there in time. It isn't certain but assuming we had 30 hours, the rocket would need to use a good portion of its fuel accelerating that very fuel. However, if I settled for getting there a little late, but still quickly enough that the enemy couldn’t get anywhere important, I could expand that number of reinforcements while still arriving in a timely fashion.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

My mind fires at absolute maximum speed calculating the optimum choice and until a decision comes.

I look at the military commander and city chief and they seem to know what is on my mind, though not the specifics. They simply nod and I ring the alarm. “Five minutes to the inner world. Reinforcements for Egypt. Code Scarlet. Limited slots. Overfill will head for the elve’s city.”

A moment later, the city which had been bustling with gossip and speculation snaps into motion. Drilled responses even from those not required to answer echo throughout the streets. I open up hundreds of portals in predetermined positions all around the city and moments later streams of people start to enter the wide gates to my inner world. A few are already fully armed and armored, others drag large packs from by their rooms or barracks. I even see a lost soul throwing money at hat a merchant to buy a helmet forgoing leisurely haggling. He must have either lost or damaged his last one beyond repair.

The entire city moves in unison.

With a minute to spare over 99 percent of the people I expected to take are already inside and I start flying away slowly waiting for the timer to run out as the last few stragglers show up. When the portals are about to close I shift colors, past yellow reaching a deep scarlet, then it collapses just as I move out of range.

I may not be able to go all the way to Egypt with all our troops, but I should be able to reach over 3000 kilometers an hour at a high altitude increasing the rocket engine’s efficiency and giving an initial speed boost. They are gonna get to the other side of the world pretty fast. Faster than anything else we have available, planes, magical flying vehicles and even flying buses.

The automaton seed pushes the plans as we better delineate the goals and I understand that my initial timeline was a little too optimistic. I’m definitely gonna need those two hours if not more.

The number of reinforcements gets cemented at 300 thousand. NOT a huge number compared to the size of the battles we usually participate in, but they are the absolute cream of the crop and would tip most fair fights in our favor.

“Auto?” I send it to the most logical minded of my seeds.

Listening. Comes the reply.

“I think that we are gonna need to link up. That is the only way I will know even a fraction of what I need to make the rocket engines. Or rather you link to my other half, I can’t do that directly even with the help of the dual mind skill.”

I sense the automaton seed moving through the earth, by directly manipulating mana with a level of skill I hadn’t expected, not with how much time his experiments with tech required. In a minute the hand of his avatar body touches the outside layer of my other half’s seed brain. I can almost feel the shift happening as the Aether that lends him his personality takes over.

The simplest rocket engine design we made post system pops in my head through my link. Though there are two layers between the ‘source’ of knowledge and myself, I can still get enough feedback to do what I need.

Their attempts to use my Creation skill in the manner I’m planning go nowhere. It might not be completely impossible, but what I need now is to use the skill well outside the parameters established by the system’s ‘manual’. My other half still couldn’t use most of my higher skill applications ‘unsanctioned’ by the system.

My full attention is mandatory for this part of the plan. Finding a comfortable meditation position in the flying bicycle, I put a solid block of deep steel across my lap before flooding it with my Qi. My creation skill tended to act up when I tried to directly create even basic metals like iron with my own resource, but I found a workaround that even mana couldn’t do. Instead of making the monumental effort of creating something out of nothing, I repurposed the essence of something real into something that has a decent level of permanence in the world.

I’m not using the skill quite as the system intended, but making those short lived constructs isn’t very useful. Even my best efforts with all the tricks in the world couldn’t get me something that lasted more than a couple of hours even considering the fairly basic metal I’m using: Deep Steel.

I want to make something greater, something real. If I had the time, I could take this block of steel heat it up and pound it into shape or better yet: machine it. But that is not an option with how tight time is. So I borrow the properties of the Create skill while opening a portal between my hands and the small space left for the rocket in my flying bicycle, to shorten the distance even more without having to move my hand back and forth.

Going deeper and deeper in my meditation while still trying to keep myself conscious, I start with the ring at the base of a hybrid rocket engine. Not in fuel, but in technology. Partially powered by magic, partially by good old fashioned physics. Dozens of points of Qi flood each second as that simple action strains me to a new level given the precision that this simple ring needs to achieve.

My Back to Basics skill flares in full glory. A few of the things I’m doing are by themselves highly complex, but the main bottleneck lies in balancing the hundred little actions I only started to explore and try to take to the next level. Pushing myself in this new way, with a time crunch makes the skill manifest more strongly than in my usual practice sessions.

I extract mass from the block in my hands and as if the atoms are teleported into place like I’m a supersonic 3d printer.

I need a fraction of the Qi compared to making metals with Mana while using real metal as the basis of my construction. I feel the strain alleviates slightly, as the skill takes the step I had been trying to make reaching level 101 even without conscious effort right this second. I know far too little about how the skill actually works, but all my preparations seem to slot into place.

The fact that the skill makes things ‘out of nothing’ still breaks my brain, and then those very things simply puff out of existence when the timer runs out.

Why?

Each second the engine grows more complex, but I don’t have to worry about boundary layers separating, delaminating, getting a smooth surface or even using an unsuitable steel alloy for printing conditions. I simply imagine the block in my hands losing mass while the sculpture before me takes shape. My class and subclasses come together forming a whole greater than its parts even as I spin a story about what is happening.

That story is the bow tying it all together.