It takes a while for the mana consumption of the portal to come down. I’m doing my absolute best to both delay that and raise that ‘equilibrium’ point. From absurd levels nearing a billion mana for the first few seconds quickly passing a hundred million mana and settling in tens of millions of mana points per second. That is still significantly higher than my guess for the normal draw levels for such a portal, but not enough that they will be forced to close it.

I hit the string of space connecting both portals.

I try to build the amplitude like it’s an extremely long chord on an instrument. Always timing my pushes so that the vibrations will get stronger over time. Each hit another little push on a swing until the result is orders of magnitude greater than I could achieve even with all my strength.

Try as I might, however, this won’t collapse the bridge or even make it inconvenient to use, it will simply increase mana consumption. I slowed practical use of the portal for a couple of minutes and this extra mana consumption will last for a while. Days or weeks given the length of the string and how little energy energy it loses.

All my effort seems trivial.

At least I managed to do something. The system may make portals, but maintenance seems to be the Elf’s job and they don’t have a space mage to even see what I’m doing let alone a way to counter me.

The enemy beyond the second archdruid seems happy with the state of the portal and deems it safe to traverse. I delayed as long as I could, but it’s nowhere near enough.

If I was stronger I might have been able to make it unsafe to transport people.

If I had lasted another half an hour, we could have moped up the last of the goblins hiding in the pyramid, but today is the day of failure.

Now, with ‘infinite’ reinforcements, that number not only increased, they managed to ram a ‘forward’ outpost right outside the ‘gates’ of one of the most important cities on the planet.

People from the region and even from farther away had unconsciously sensed the coalescing of Aether and had drawn closer to the Aether icon, even if for some stupid reason they didn’t see fit to protect the source of such cultural significance.

I take a deep breath. Complaining, as deserved and righteous as it is in this case, won’t accomplish anything.

My mental fingers grow numb against the system just keeping my pinprick of a portal open, but I hold on for dear life. My mind turns over to any solution beyond becoming a bigger drain on the resources of the enemy, resources that they weren’t using to the full potential as this state of consumption is well below the level of their army’s regen. But I continue the clock ticks down, the last ambers of my hope die one by one.

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Nash’s second mind POV

I feel sluggish with less than a hundred points in my mental stats, but the other half needs all the help he can get even if so far the effort seems just shy of entirely futile. Still, my focus is on the other side of the world, looking for how I can affect it there.

The system keeps pushing outward claiming small pieces of the pyramid for the enemy. Though we don’t know too much, it feels like a gift, for having ‘unlocked’ the pyramid. I grow roots ‘defenses’ like the hundreds of other seeds that decided to come over to my side after seeing their efforts weren’t helping my main mind. They had helped to break through, but now he was the one holding on by his fingertips.

Slow and methodical growth of the enemy’s domain pushed Pando’s roots back, though the new ones offer way less resistance. Even the older roots underground offer little resistance against the system. I asked Pando to not only grow the roots but to give them greater significance, give them similar weight as the older ones had. Pando can’t fully replicate that effect, but some heightened level of intent seems to be enough to blunt the system’s encroachment.

Then it’s my turn to act like the original half.

I pull not only on my skills but something more. I pull on Aether, trying to capture the properties it lends to things and people and I write a story. Similar to the story he had started, but not so skillfully. Still, to counter the enemy's expansion efforts, the roots are carefully carved with ‘random’ runic scribbles.

Even if I don’t carry the same level of fluency as a native speaker, it’s functional. I keep my actions consistent. I’m not making new words in the runic vocabulary, I’m simply trying to delineate the ones that I already know in a way that makes sense, following rules partially fuelled by instinct and partially by logic.

I glimpse the last little sliver of the Automaton’s Aether, but the thought of how much it influenced that seed and the unknown interactions turns me off from it. Sure it had potential, but I have my own strengths and achieving a goal the hard way would always be more satisfying.

Those thoughts bleed into my actions and made the effort a lot more effective, so I keep thinking. Effects that only the original Nash could touch before start to become more tangible in my hands until the system is buffet back.

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I grow rings around that entire perimeter with dense repeating rune scripts covering Pando’s roots and making a stronger domain against the system’s incursion.

Without a lot more than random scribbles and constant attention, they would lose that in time, minutes instead of seconds, hours instead of minutes. However, the system seems unwilling to help the invaders to gain any territory beyond the edges of the pyramid. In the places where we still have any kind of ground, the fight only intensifies as our soldiers slowly lose ground with the enemy’s reinforcements and strengthening restrictions of the system.

An hour passes and I finally get a firm lock all around their territory, but not even a few random leaves manage to touch the pyramid. I add as much as I can to Pando’s repertoire over here. I grow the roots in such a way that he can advance and retreat with ease without losing them while building layer on top of layer. Each one takes the strength of the last and reinforces it, making the entire thing even more resilient than previously.

“You will not advance even an inch outside without paying a steep price. You will not let the system be your only advantage, you will have to pry each flake of precious metal from deep underground with your hands if you want more than you already have. I will make sure each inch of territory you possibly get is going to be expensive.

“For you come to Earth uninvited, to oust us from our very land, to bring death and suffering. Maybe there are other circumstances, maybe you saw little choice in your actions, but you still decided that our resources are more important than any moral for you to have. And your words don’t even lend credence to that.”

That tenuous balance of the system against Pando and the roots continues in the very edge of the territory. It’s slow, and the system spends effort to manage it, but its force isn’t infinite. Not when it has to spread it throughout the universe, so there is a chance that it will charge that cost from the Elves. Regardless, the elven reinforcements managed to fully push our forces back as the actual system’s defenses turn on.

Fireballs and shields to rival what dozens of mages could produce under Merlin’s guiding hand are simply too much if we can only attack in such a small area.

Our root network completely surrounds the pyramid, but it can’t approach an inch.

The entire world is at my fingertips, a mere thought and I can look anywhere, but my mind turns to the expanding and growing roots not just around this pyramid but all the others around it. More and more roots enter the smaller pyramids even if I can easily explore them all even without the help of those roots. They won’t be taking them easily.

The perception field tells me everything I want to know as fast as my mind can absorb the information. I replay the enemys’ actions in my mind, but their actions don’t call out anything to me. I have no idea how they ‘activated’ the pyramids. Our ‘Aether icons’.

The battle loses a little of its edge as our side gains ‘time’. Small teams occupy the other pyramids and greater defenses are erected around them. From reinforced central chambers to the growing perimeter around the main pyramid getting stronger.

They ‘stole’ one pyramid, the largest ever built, right from underneath our noses. We won’t let that happen again, not without them having to pay a steep price.

The elves continuously send reinforcements through the portal to the goblins. Each elf steeping though requires an unbelievable amount of mana, but they can afford it with the millions of elves in their city. Then our preparations finish as we are ready for another attempt. With such hasty shield and tactic modifications, we won’t be able to put our current numerical advantage into play inside their tunnels. But in the ‘open field’, keeping them bottled up shouldn’t be a challenge.

The enemy ‘activated’ the pyramids, by ‘simply’ stepping on them and flashing a bit of mana around. Maybe not completely, to further activate the defenses and the portal they needed to reach the central room, but the shamans only needed to chant a little to manage that.

I had looked into activating such Aether Icons, unlocking them or whatever terminology the system had. But thousands of people touching hadn’t done anything. Sending mana and dozens of other tests hadn’t borne fruit. No system interface nor any other change came over.

Yet now, what was supposed to be our trump cards simply welcomed the enemy.

Maybe I’m way off my mark, but if even the Goblin’s and Elve’s methods are different, it might not even be in the ballpark for us natives. We are meant to accomplish something else, while they already know their goal. We are playing a game in which we don’t know the rules or rather we only know a few of them.

The enemy gets a point for every time they get to an Aether Icon, while we don’t. Though we gained something from destroying their cities, it was a lot more work compared to simply touching them.

My connection to the other side of the world fluctuates and I realize I’m flying. I open my eyes and read the memories of the original trying to gather what he is planning and a grim pops into my face.

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Nash’s main mind POV

Roughly ten million people are stationed in the inner world as I try to shave off as much mass as I can in short order. Most of it ends up being humus or high-quality soil, though I do keep enough to ‘permanently’ sustain all the nature and living plants still inside. The homes, barracks and other living spaces grow to accommodate the number of people, but they aren’t a bottleneck weighing only a fraction of the huge swathes of land I took inside the inner world.

It will take me days to reach Epypt at the relatively slow speeds I can achieve given I’m dragging the inner world with me. Even lightening the load as I’m doing right now will only fractionally speed that up making reaching the 3 thousand kilometers an hour a little easier.

But I slowly speed myself up.

I dropped the ball and the enemy took advantage.

But not all is lost yet, we could take more defensive patterns and my reinforcements would ensure we had the power to back up our distant allies even if the situation fundamentally changed by the time we got there.

I keep myself below 10 kilometers of altitude which allows nearly constant direct contact with the root network. I consider the increases in mana consumption and heat build-up on the actively cooled steel carapace of my flying bicycle, but they are negligible in comparison. This way I can help if the enemy moves while I’m in transit. The only cost I actually care about is the marginally slower speed, but I calculate such a thin margin without anything breaking that those few minutes don’t even bother me.

The impulse to kick myself for the oversight comes again. Then the impulse to kick someone else for not listening to me, but instead of releasing the anger, I dive deeper into meditation trying to find all the answers that I can.

When I get there, the enemy is going to pay a steep price.