Earth spins in strange turns as the flow of enemy movement gains momentum and snowballs their invasion. Footholds and advanced are being raised posts everywhere. Dozens of locations that we now have to balance if we want to try and keep them bottled up.

I try to convince my friend of the simple truth, but he is having none of that.

“No, the enemy controls only a couple dozen locations, even if you consider the vast space between the few dotted points as their territory. Sure, we lost some ground, but that’s less than a percent of the globe.”

I imagine wringing his neck out while beaming the correct information into his mind, but he simply doesn’t see it. The worst part is that his arguments seem sound even if his conclusions are dead wrong. That’s why I wanna defeat him at his own game. So I reply:

“But that’s not the point, they managed to break free. To find a way to really hurt us. Half of our strategy was to keep them bottled up, they now control DOZENS of points and have access to way more resources.”

“It's been months since the wrong outbreak and we developed shields good enough that their attacks are almost back to the former level of danger. As we have a large contingent of mages.”

“Until they come up with another counter to our counter as they almost managed half a dozen times. If they choose a large battle to reveal their next iteration and it works…. they might manage to trap and kill half a million of our soldiers instead of just scaring us with the possibility.”

“Unlikely. They will probably have to find a completely new chink in our armor to exploit and now we are a lot more cognisent of those. We are closing anything that might be exploited. They expose our weaknesses and we learn.” he says and I feel him pulling away. He isn’t convinced and I probably took a very unhelpful line of reasoning.

That battle had already been a major turning point and he isn’t to blame for any of it.

“Relying on our knowledge of the enemy is a dangerous proposition.”

“True…but this is war, there are no certainties…” We both go silent in thought.

We can take almost any place with minimum casualties. If we concentrate our mages in assault at a time, but our attempts to do that so far have taken the pressure off elsewhere and that was also untenable. We can’t just let the enemy run rampant through undefended stretches of land. There are less than 100 million enemies on our continent. We have the numerical superiority even only considering full time soldiers on our side. But we aren’t willing to pay the price to eliminate their forward outposts. Not yet. And any victory now could be made up with their near infinite resupply of troops.

Nash might be the solution.

When he comes back, half of the planet expects him to snap his fingers and solve all our major problems.

The ideal hero single handedly accomplishes impossible feats.

It won’t be quite that simple, but they might be right, after a fashion. He usually relies on the backing of thousands or millions of people’s efforts at his back to allow him to do the impossible things he does. If it actually happens, it might take the edge off our learning spree. People will go back to resting in safety, not driven to get stronger themselves.

“I don’t know, this trial may be different. It has been months and he hasn’t returned. You can guess what will happen if they capture a second mithil mine. Each one may only be a finite resource, but even half an ounce is enough for them to build a stronghold anywhere.”

“He does tend to perform miracles, so we shouldn’t discount just yet, but maybe you are right.”

==========

Ajax’s POV

My small flying vehicle uses the carefully engraved mana batteries in my faux inner world and giant tanks of water to feed the steam rocket. Others with access to a faux inner world had started to use kerosene and oxygen similar to the rockets, but the simplicity of steam appeals to me. So it’s the option I chose. Even considering I’m only ‘carrying’ myself, I can’t go on forever, needing to replenish my mana stores in the mana highway once in a while. The trip was expensive, but as I approach the last pyramid with darkened eyelids and ready to cry tears of blood, I firm my resolve.

Waiting a day might have let me recover and aid my broken memory, but that would simply delay the ‘inevitable’ not make it easier.

If it’s only one more I can dig a little deeper to summon strength.

The minutes tick down until they are gone and only seconds remain. Each one tick of the clock is interminable but then I realize that my feet are touching the last couple steps of a carved stone and I’m almost at the corridor entry.

The entire memory of landing and walking up is gone. Maybe I’m worse off than I imagined.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

And this time I didn’t even bother to try a stealthy route.

A pair of spears come out pointed at me but then recognition appears on their face, and I keep walking knowing they ‘won’t’ try to skewer me.

I may be stealthy, but my father has to have learned of my journey by now. He is as always prepared. I pass the guards who don’t stop me and my step echoes in my ears in the narrow confines until I reach the central chamber and everything fades away. I head directly to the sarcophagus in the center positioning my hand correctly along the central axis of the pyramid, as I had done in all the others.

Jumping to the ceiling along that axis and coming back down, the system takes notice of me. Others had tried the same, but for some reason, it didn’t work for them.

I don’t know if I’m making their job harder, but now it no longer matters, not after It is already done.

The soldiers and staff protecting this last pyramid simply wait in anticipation watching my tired, but determined motions.

The system’s attention builds for a moment until it grabs a hold of me taking me elsewhere. Immediately find the fastest way to return to Earth. That’s the only thing that let me hold on to a shred of sanity in this strange grey world.

You meet the parameters to unlock a legacy Class.

Error… system user already has a class.

Do you wish to switch your class from A&*MT#2 (Legendary) to Speaker of the Dead? (Mythic – Locked rarity)

Yes No

After skimming the prompt, I tap No, not even considering the possibilities or the specific circumstances that led me to it…The fewer memories the system touches…

My mind is blank. My memories are corrupted. Not the worst of it. I simply sit in meditation back in the middle of the pyramid trying to recover, to piece myself together. In another minute, I get up, only to find no changes, nor any system messages.

So I simply walk out, knowing this isn’t over.

“Did you…. find what you were looking for? “

“No,” I say wanting with everything I’m to curl up and sleep. To rest and let the world take care of itself, to give in and let even the memory of my lack of memory fade away. It would be so easy to just…. be a child again.

I look to the horizon and I know I can’t choose that.

“I fear I still have one more place to visit.”

“Where?”

“The enemy’s pyramid.”

“You…”

But I’m no longer there to listen to his words. Mana surrounds me and a portal pushes my flying vehicle out. Waiting for only a fraction of a second to gain a few meters of distance and avoid spraying the pair with super heated steam, I slowly turn up the power on my way back to Giza, my home city.

It’s time to find a way in and nothing is going to stop me.

==========

Automaton seed’s POV

Direct feedback on what is happening inside the nuclear reactor with the perception field lets me acquire the information I need.

My stores of knowledge about how tech works, how nuclear fusion happens and this specific model help me predict the perfect way to react.

My speed allows me to react in real time.

Each day, the engineering Q, aka the real Q value rises. The ratio represents input and output energy, but not in a theoretical sense. This ration accounts for all the losses and with my help, it’s only climbing. Now already reaching 1,5 for brief bursts, though most of the time I fail my attempts and stay near the ‘magical’ 1.

The enormous energy output of my carefully tuned attempts is intermittently dumped into the grid to recharge batteries and be used at a cheap price for industrial processes that can work in brief and unpredictable bursts such as electrolysis.

We finally have a minimally effective design. But it needs my direct guidance. The autonomous design is simply useless for now. And even on my best day, I can only control one reactor at a time. A hint of the lingering frustration that the pre system researchers talked about hits me.

“A working design is always 30 years away.”

Another wave of news washes over everyone hindering their performance. The enemy is on the move. Nash isn’t home and the enemy has come out to play.

At first, I simply ignored it, but that was growing harder and harder as the enemy gained more territory and forced more of our people to take to the spear or the staff, wielding stamina and mana into instruments of death.

What had probably started as a half panicked response, now carried a reality I didn’t want to lend credence to, but I keep it in the back of my mind.

As the moment passes, I find the proper mindset to start building on the fusion ladder. I easily cross a Q of 1.1 and everything extraneous fades away. Only a single thing is of any importance and it sits right before me. Repeating thoughts of the enemy are simply distractions while I’m working.

I work on the small inefficiencies following the complex shapes for the plasma manipulated by magnetic fields that would certainly collapse upon themselves without my knowledge and skill. And they grow easier to balance.

The motion of improving becomes my world. I won’t let the shipbuilders get too far ahead of us, I will crack the code and provide another major attack avenue for our troops. We need it for yesterday.

=========

Enemy.

“We found it,” I report to my superior.

“What?”

“What you sent us to look out for: a source. We know they must have a few with how strong and advanced they are and we found one. Better yet, it’s not just a valuable source, its a Mithril planetary source.” I say failing to contain my glee.

“What are the readings?”

“In between 10 and 20 grams a month without any upgrades.”

“Holy empire, the system must love these humans. Did the scouts give away their location?”

“No, it was pretty much halfway through the journey and they didn’t even need to get closer for a proper scan or stop to sleep nearby. We passed close enough to get good readings. I doubt the enemy has any idea.”

“How far?”

“Ohh. That’s the best of it. Less than 8 thousand kilometers.”

“That’s still pretty far away.”

“Yes, but well inside our envelope.”

“Do we have a good distraction?” I ask while pulling a map and unrolling it on top of the table to get a better picture of what is happening.

“We can steal their chemically powered airplanes. They are too fragile and small to be useful in the small numbers we can acquire, but should provide ample distraction.”

“That will expose a few more of our capabilities just for a few planes.”

“But that is not the real prize. It will draw enough of them away to make our main effort easier. Nothing else matters right now.”

“Too bad we can’t buy another portal to the closest outpost,”

“Not for now. But with the right maneuvering, we can use the Mithril inside…..” I tease out.

“Your mind is on the right track. Okay, call a few of the Archdruids higher up the food chain. It’s time to plan.”