My rickety flying bicycle fights the wind kilometers above the ground, trembling in the turbulence with steam shooting vapor at supersonic speeds. That accelerates me as quickly as my soul allows me. But that sensation I’m fairly used to, what most tires me is my exacting use of the Creation skill.

Imposing my will on reality and ‘teleporting’ atoms from the block in between my hands into a new shape is hard work.

The bell nozzle forms from the base with small channels carved for optimal colling that only need basic feedback on the size and the curves. Though as I get to the combustion chamber the precise placement and angles of the fuel injectors and all the other little structures become much more important. The sparse feedback needs to be much more constant and detailed to make sure I make everything works as intended. We don’t have the time to experiment and figure out what works, WE need to get a working design right now.

Knowledge streams in my mind. Memories, telepathic connection and mental images overlay the several perception fields from everyone that can contribute including, miracles of all miracles, Auto’s field. Everything that I knew about seeds told me that he would be the last one from the second generation to acquire the faux perception field if he ever did. But not only did he get it, but it's an impressive version. The impressions from it are tunned for the scientific phenomenon, instead of the neutral one I have or the nature attuned most seeds develop.

They simply ‘highlight’ different things. Nothing too extreme, but even a tint to a room’s lighting can shift what you see, let alone a sense such as the perception field. He is much more attuned to temperature, chemical composition, angles and distances. For the briefest of split seconds, I feel that I’m the source of his skill through our soul connection, but the pressing needs and my own clumsiness make that impression slip away.

I let the knowledge and feedback from everyone form inside my mind in the closest shape to my own understanding that I could achieve while molding the engine. If I had to work under a similar time crunch, making even more intricate shapes than a simplified rocket engine that didn’t need its more precise components like a fully mechanical turbine, I would be in trouble. But half of its components have been replaced by magical equivalents.

A Swiss watch would take me hours while even a basic modern computer chip is simply outside the realm of my capabilities, but a partial rocket engine is in that sweet spot so that I can still rush its manufacture while getting something with tight enough tolerances. Barely 15 minutes later, with my brain frying from holding so much simultaneously, I finish. Bleary eyed and feeling my twisted brain coming back into shape in an almost physical manner, I inspect it:

Simple Rocket Engine – Creation skill

Time until disintegration: 1 month 3 days, 12h 32m 35s

Not the holy grail of ‘infinite’ time, but more than enough for our purposes. A wave of pride at having made that washes over me. I CREATE it in the most fundamental sense. Sure I had help, otherwise it would be only a piece of junk that resembles functional equipment. But my hands, my Qi, MADE it.

The others go to work on other things, most of which are a lot less critical in their tolerances. Fuel tanks, the body of the rocket, chairs and even lightweight racks to store equipment inside faux inner world with strict weight budgets.

Packing as light and compact as possible is essential to reach the greatest possible number of reinforcements. Usually, that is barely a concern, but this time even if they are gonna inside the inner world, I can’t dodge the issue of mass at the speeds I calculate they will reach. My soul simply wouldn’t survive that if it had to account for the extra energy to make the faux inner world accompany the rocket at such crazy speeds.

The inner world is extremely useful in making the craft smaller, but it’s still gonna have to carry its own mass.

Teams of people make the landing apparatus, the mana batteries and the smallest of components needed to power the craft. The small battery will need to be refilled constantly from the mana pools of the people inside instead of being able to carry millions of mana, but they have more than enough to keep up with the rocket's requirements for the first few minutes, which is all they really need.

A thousand thoughts organize themselves in a split second, instead of the minutes that it would have taken before the system. But my focus is back and I start work on the second engine with a much better idea of what I need. Especially given I have a reference look at and copy.

Making the 8 copies consumes my attention. Each one I make lets me breathe more easily, knowing that things are well on schedule after I take on the hardest part even as another team takes the first engines to test. Even without moving parts, with the compressor and valves substituted by mana-powered variants, I made it in a rush and actual testing could reveal we missed something critical.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

We are working with blueprints instead of real examples.

I play the timeline in my head. Even with everything going smoothly, our reinforcements will likely get there after the goblins head out, but they should still be able to make a difference.

Too bad I can’t go myself. I would have to eighter ditch the contents of the inner world or take the slow route.

But that wasn’t even the main thing holding me back. I can feel the Aether thickening in the air. The Elves had something up their sleeves. Another nasty surprise for us and even if a good two-thirds of our elite level combatants were going away, I will be here to stop ANYTHING the elves try. I trusted Pando’s Vilage and most of the people that fought the elves, they are tough and competent, but compared to them, I’m an indestructible machine and I would rather risk limb rather them letting them risk their lives.

Now I just need to survive another bout with the weight of the world on my shoulders.

====================

Second Archdruid POV

“Ohh, glorious leader. We are going to crush these humans right?” Asks one of the new sycophants. Though I detect a hint of derision hidden that echoes out in the other Archdruids in the safe zone.

“Yes, we will crush them like the bugs they are,” I say almost perfunctorily. The others don’t look at me. I try to summon the bloodthirst that has evaded me for months, to summon belief or anything that would make me feel, but those that knew me recognized the lack of weight in my voice.

I don’t believe my words.

Even if we succeed, it required two major races gathering forces. And as much as we like to curse the humans, they don’t have spaceships they managed to shield from the system to lay waste to our armies from safety. Nor are they aren’t a warrior like race that would have given level 50 users a run for their money before all this started. All they have is their little world tree and a single Aether wielder. Well over a year in search of our first decisive victory and we need the goblin's help. We even needed the help of the 3 minor invasions to get here. All this work for one miserly piece of the board that the humans still didn’t know they had, otherwise they would be so careless with it. Millions and eventually billions of lives were spent in one of the worst invasions that we participated in.

The other couldn’t see it yet. It will cost us dearly. We should be forcing them back so much that their only hope would be hiding in their strongholds instead of trying to get the first little victory in our war. And they grow at the same pace as we do.

But not only are their low level troops strong enough to contend on equal footing, I could feel HIM breathing down our necks. Others might falter and the humans may even experience large scale losses if we get ‘lucky’, but as long as Nash is alive we will never be safe. He is going to find a way to be a thorn carving its way through our flesh. It’s like he watches us around the clock, learning way more secrets than any newcomer had a right to. But that is madness, paranoia that shouldn’t be spoken aloud.

Only when our strategies came from outer space, like a black meteorite arriving in the middle of the night they had a chance to work. Those seemed the only blows that occasionally harmed them.

And even that last minute of a fiery warning, as the meteor burned against the upper atmosphere, is often enough time for him or one of his people to create the countermeasure for our attack while reinforcing it and often start laying the groundwork for future improvements. He became a shining example that gave the enemy hope at every step. A nexus of power. He could simply wade into our midst without fear.

No group of elves less than tens of thousands even had the smallest chance of taking him down while he has Aether to burn. Invisible Aether, but we all know it’s there. And Aether I suspect he barely uses and that is scarier than anyone else realizes.

That Aether feeds his progress. Now our only hope now is to mar his assent to prominence before they start to capitalize on their advantages as defenders. Before the system teaches them how to work with Aether Icons. Before the very world turns hostile against us beyond what Pando managed to achieve. It is different every time and just telling someone how you can do it isn’t enough for them to replicate it. Before they won the board and they fortify every single piece so much that it would take ten times the amount of power to acquire. Before they learn to REALLY unlock the Aether Icons.

My mind comes back to the present as an Arch Druid supposedly under my command lets derision lace his voice. He doesn’t even bother to coat it in a veneer of politeness.

”When are you gonna buy the upgrade?”

“At very the last second.”

“Just do it now, it will be about one percent cheaper. They won’t be able to respond even if they instantly learn what it is. We know the speed of their ‘flying busses’. They are as limited as any similar inner world vehicle. Only 2 hours before the attack. We shouldn’t be timid, we are Elves and this is a Nature planet. The enemy is strong but they aren’t all powerful and if we don’t drive our advantages, they will neuter us.” His words, sound perfectly reasonable and I almost grin as the pieces click together. This is what I sensed over the last few weeks but didn’t have the spare mental power to decipher. The first nail driven into my flesh forcing me to choose as they ready themselves for a coup. I had ‘seniority’ in both age and arrival order, but we are all the ‘same’ rank. Until someone higher or specific orders from one high don’t come I should have been in command.

But actual politics is way more complicated. I can see clearly my inevitable fall. I knew how to stop it or at least blunt it, but this is our best shot to accomplish anything for the next few months. And after such expenses, it would be stupid to give in for mere power and control.

“I will act in the manner that best benefits us. Playing our cards too early if there is no advantage to it would be folly. You saw how quickly they counter every strategy we try.”

Whispers travel around in coded messages that I can’t understand. They had come up with a custom cipher. So it starts, but while I have any power, I will do my utmost against the enemy, even if it's futile and my own head ends up on the chopping block, either metaphorically or literally.

After the coup, none of this will be my concern.