The world comes into focus as I’m left at this elephant’s mercy.
Yes, I have a billion responsibilities and wishes, but first and foremost I need to SURVIVE.
Increasing gravity would take too long. Even with preparation, it would barely be of any help.
Using my roots comes with severe drawbacks in this environment.
Its trunk, which is as wide as my torso in the narrowest point. I need to get out of the way. Especially given it not simply aiming to hit me, but to grab me.
With my perception stat, I have the best thing short or an eternity to think. But I also need to start as soon as possible as possibilities reduce each moment. Most of my usual maneuvers can’t done now without the inere world, and the few that can won’t be effective. A hundred plans spin in my mind, but none seem possible.
My demise approaches and I seem to only have one shot. Using the very limb hurtling towards me to push off from.
I wait the last fraction of a second before it's time to act. Infusing my entire body with resources, and burning Vigor like its water, I windmill my mars and legs, while bending my spine to position my feet towards the incoming attack.
The elephant, ready to grab me doesn’t expect my reaction. A moment later, I glue my feet in the off angle that I manage to get into and then I try to push off. Half of my body contracts in reflex trying to keep itself intact and keep my bones attached in the correct position, and I feel myself failing at that.
The attack sends me hurtling to the ground at neck breaking speed but that is the best I could have hoped for.
I avoid its backswing trying to grab me once again and then I’m outside its immediate range.
I just barely manage to turn my feet to the ground, adding to the mild pain reaching through the adrenaline, but Life infuses my every motion and everything is already healing.
Sprinting as fast as possible for a second to create some distance, our dance begins. With some distance and my life no longer in immediate threat, I move and dodge nearly effortlessly while coming up with contingencies and preparing to come in closer at least one more time.
Without being forced to prepare everything in mere moments, dozens of options pop up, along with getting a better understanding of how quickly and in what positions its body can contort.
I try to maneuver several times to hit it without overly exposing myself to danger until the moment comes. I jump in a carefully calculated maneuver in between the trees, then tap on its left upper back on the last ‘weak point’.
A second later, its wild swing also misses me a second time but takes the nearby trees out of my reach and I’m left in a similar position to last time: meters in the air with nothing within touching distance.
But this time I’m prepared. In my hands, a storm of Qi and the tiniest hint of the precious life I accumulated, explode growing a thin rope of roots some 4 meters long and connecting me to the nearest standing tree. I pull with all my strength until the system destroys the growth touched by my hand, but that’s enough. I’m moving in the right direction. Before the elephant can step in range, I grab the trunk of a tree and pull myself.
“Safety.”
If before I had been moving conservatively around the elephant, now I’m downright paranoid, staying well away and no longer even putting myself in any meaningful danger to figure out its limits.
Moments later I’m firmly planted in the ground, with the roots coiled just under my skin and Qi ready to explode in an emergency after having touched and injured all four of the weak spots of the mob.
Safety last for a whole minute. But then I start to push once again. I don’t simply seek a thrill, nor do I happily dive into danger, but I need to learn. And I end up only giving love taps on its thick hide carrying the momentum my high stats allow reinforced by impact wards.
I probably tap its legs, trunk and even the pair of weak spots that I can from the ground a hundred times, all in relative safety. It’s nowhere near the level of danger that jumping on its back entailed, but I try to keep my head screwed on straight, instead of daring for more and more.
The hour runs down and the system takes the beast away, the fight and blood running through my veins die down and I can finally stop to analyze it all.
I entered the fight full of myself. Sure, I took a few precautions, but I’m far too used to fighting from an advantage with a forest fully ready to support me. The perception field is nowhere near as limited as the system’s skill amidst a thousand other little tricks add up. The system showed me now that I have to be way more capable than what I have shown.
I’m not enough.
I need to do, to BE better. I may not know how or why this trial took this turn, but one wrong move will be my last.
Maybe I don’t need to rely on force nearly as often. Proper strategy, may have allowed me to be relatively safe when confronting the enemy.
I look at an intrepid Albatross, already flying back and forth a mile away. My attempts to look into his eyes again hadn’t been successful. Still, I leave a tiny bowl of meat strips out as an invitation.
I walk past the signs of the fight that spread over kilometers where I used my raw power to bend the world to my desires. My mind works on an imperfect solution that will only affect some of my actions. But I can probably find more depth to my soul and take another step away from the rat race. If I manage, it might help me shelter those I hold dear and the ones under my protection.
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I want to always act as I have towards the Albatross. But playing a game requires two willing parties and if I have to take the scissors to the football in order to protect those I hold dear, I won’t kill the fun.
Drawing on my main class, I interface with the world around me.
The beasts around me will probably come to annoy me until I either kill or lock them in a cage. A few of the braver ones are already moving closer to our battleground. Every single one is full of rage, an infinite well of negative emotion powered by that cursed Aether. There is little reasoning beyond what aligns with the intent to destroy. Aether I can’t touch until they die, but although I do absorb a little from the system when the occasion presents itself, hat isn’t my goal.
A thought strikes me: those murderous instincts may be strong, but they gave way before an overwhelming being.
Perhaps that is what I need.
Directly interfacing with nature, though at a limited range without Pando’s DNA in their makeup, I reach a couple of hundred meters. I don’t want to simply induce fear nor do I believe that is what the situation demands. I expand my aura in a similar manner to the elephant. Not trying to be intimidating, but seeking the correct mentality.
“I’m strength.”
“I’m power.”
“I’m death to those that wish me ill.”
“I stand alone at the pinnacle.”
I may not be able to ignore their threat, but if I get the balance right, they may flee rather than fight me. I won’t lie spouting that I still hesitate to kill those threatening me but if I want to create another path, a greater path: I have to start now.
It has been too long already.
My attention is laggy, trying to hold on to all of this territory filled with chaotic nature. Moving through Pando’s territory, directly or indirectly is the only thing I know how to do. I need to figure out how to operate in foreign places rather than making the world in my image. The day will come I will have to fight for my life in the worst possible conditions and I rather do it now, where there is at least the veneer of fairness and a hint of control. Somewhere I’m still under some of the system’s protections.
I feel a drag to my every action from keeping my ‘aura ‘expanded. The connection, the raw power I have available, how I can wield it and the weight that each of my moves carry. I’m only gonna need much more practice, to come back to normal making this into something as easy as breathing like I managed for my inner world’s functions.
As a beast gets within range, it hesitates. Not enough that it retreats, but its advance is much more cautious.
I’m on the right path.
---------------
Automaton’s seed POV.
‘The enemy is acting up.’
‘They are getting too uppity.’
‘They are about to do something
‘When is Nash coming back?’
Thousands of public messages on the Network and dozens on the perception field bounce in the back of my mind. Every second of waiting is interminable when I’m this anxious, but reality doesn’t move at my pace it moves at the slow human pace if not slower.
The wooden walls of the lab, inside Pando’s secondary inner world piece, are covered with pipes and wires even making the very job of finishing up the reactor slower.
The fully biological beings learned to deal with time and space constraints and I could probably let go and try to slow myself down to deal with one of those. But I won’t. I will make everything and I will think as fast as I can, all the time, for 100 percent effectiveness.
I won’t allow myself to slow down just because it’s boring. That is where defeat lies.
Humans developed incredible levels of patience, something my tree heritage should have taken care of is probably within the top one hundred highest priority goals for me.
Patience, patience.
I need to work on it.
So important, patient for days, years.
I have patience, I just, just……
No, I don’t.
The clock ticks with nearly idle work, comparatively speaking. I can see how close the last few bolts are to the proper tension and the final checklist toward the delivery of the Fourth fusion reactor.
But no matter how excruciating the wait is, it eventually ends. 28 minutes, 14 seconds and 358 milliseconds late, but that is actually good for humans considering the complexity of the job.
“The fourth room inside the primary lab on one of Pando’s Faux inner worlds is online.”
My mind phases the perception field over the entire reactor with greater precision than any other seed given the reactor sits inside a faux inner world and I inherited that particular skill from Nash.
I do one last thorough check on the latest design. This time I don’t find a single screw that needs an extra Newton meter, nor any slightly loose wire that needs crimping or other obvious flaw. Skiping this step would be asking for it to melt down the first time we turned it on and then I would have to come back to the third reactor design while this was fixed.
Directly interfacing with it through the grown roots, I expand my efforts. The other researchers and operators are already used to my shenanigans and I’m kind of the lead researcher, except when it comes to dealing other the other humans, their lousy schedules and acquiring materials… the boring stuff. A few of the best researchers that had been hard at work in getting things ready go back to the third reactor but I remain with the bulk of them. There is still more to be learned there. I just rather work on the bleeding edge.
Getting things in place to turn it on also takes forever, but I’m taking direct action to address what is missing, so it’s the good kind of forever. The forever I wouldn’t mind too much if it actually lasts forever.
Deep steel plates, covered in a polished reflective film form a nearly fully functional reactor. We are short of the actual goal, but this is probably the first design with any real considerations for practical usage with the hope of working. We just need to get the balance right.
The engineers continued to upgrade the grounded ship. We wouldn’t see the fruits of their labor until we manage to get the heart of the metal best working, but they keep pushing past expectations creating and improving it in every conceivable manner.
We finally got the budget we wanted approved with this design. The day is coming closer.
This core used nearly a kilogram of mithril which ate a decent chunk of the world’s supply, let alone just our village. It will definitely not be an option for every ship, especially the larger ones. Way too expensive for the small trinket that it is compared to the possibilities, but this is a prototype, we will figure out how to make it cheaper in the future. Maybe even find a way to forgo Mithril altogether.
It seems possible.
My attention comes to fuel streams entering it as power heads to the magnetic containment. The balance of energy and matter had been precisely calculated, the cycles of magnetic confinement trying to replace mana shields where possible and the water meant to cool and extract energy from the reactor are all in place. We will probably move to direct energy conversion similar to more common magnetohydrodynamic generators on future designs, but for now, this will have to do for now.
This magnificent work of art crosses that first and easiest threshold.
The scientific gain factor reaches 1.1, 1.2… 1.5 and then it collapses, coming short even the last design’s record.
But now we have the data needed for tuning the thousands of fuel injectors and the actual alignment of the magnetic fields.
“We will run it again until we get to 2, then regroup. This design should be able to get there easily.”
My mind spins and I can already see a thousand tweaks I could manually apply to allow a higher level of efficiency. It won’t be directly useful for the mass produced version, but it will probably allow us to reach the magical engineering or ‘real’ breakeven point. With magic, it has come down to a very low range.
I force this last shift into measuring the theoretical input of energy against the theoretical output, but the real against real value accounting for all the little inefficiencies inherent to any transformation. That number instantly comes down to about 0.4.
I will get it to 1 and beyond and then… the sky will be mine.