As I head further and further north, I start to push my luck a little. With already grown and charged formations for mana shields and fireballs hidden away in my inner world, I’m as prepared as possible in the short term so I dare to enter the high-level territory as I run north.
Each time I enter, it's almost as if a magical trap is activated and in a minute or two some beast comes bearing down on me. I can usually move back before they make their way to me, but when that is not possible I rely on a lot of mana, slowing formations and shields to give me the time as I face the level 100+ enemies trying to eat my face. None of my creations can hope to stand against even the weakest of thee beasts for more than a few moments, but they last long enough for me to cross the line and get to safety. I just have to avoid moving farther in and my safety is all but guaranteed.
I think about trying to dig tunnels, or heading in on a wooden ‘tank’ similar to our carriages, but with strong mana shiels and whatever defensive measures I can conjure, and I will probably do something like that in the future, but a single glancing scratch from one of these beasts is enough to instantly break a mana shield with about 500 mana. Even the strongest tank I could make would only last a few seconds. It would probably be another story if I made the tank from mithril or something, but I seriously doubted even deep steel would be enough to keep me safe.
I continue flirting with the danger of dismemberment or worse to help me level skills like analyze and learn more about the opponents on the other side of the line. So I continue to enter the space that is denied to us all a little further each time as I get used to how the beasts react and create further runic designs to help me.
Underground I start creating a network of roots, which they don’t seem to notice so I don’t bother to come up with anything fancy. Occasionally, I shoot a few of the bigger seeds close to each other and further in the high-level zone, with the intuit to start small concentrated. It feels wrong to just uniformly spread the roots all around and never let them form a grove.
When everything is connected, at least the outer half mile would be visible to me through Pando’s seed perception field. Very similar to my own, though much greater in range for obvious reasons while also more limited in detail.
Two days later and a good 2400 kilometers north I feel as if I should turn back. I still want to keep in contact with the village.
Before turning around, I catch a fallen branch. In the colder climate these trees developed differently, not in species but keeping the same variety the trees change the shape of their leaves. These are thin and pointy, not quite like pine but close. A simple adaptation that allows them to thrive in the colder climate, though I noticed little difference in how much sunlight each day. Yet another sign of the system’s interference in this created place.
I look up at the sun, by the distance and position I calculate only another 2 or three days to reach the quarter-turn point around the high-level zone. The very place I expect to find the coldest climate. Next time, I could try to go the full round but it’s time to head back.
Without stopping to enter the high-level zone, adjusting the runic compass, or even stopping to really catch my breath, the run through the charted path is a little faster. I head to the spot I met the Black Panther, the roots underground will be a little more developed there and I can contact the village.
I push against the ground with greater strength than all but a few sprinters could sustain for more than a few seconds back on earth. With my slowly but surely increasing stats and skill levels fueled by the Aether surrounding me I feel as the task become easier, but my maximum speed has hit a bottleneck. Not something insurmountable but the very physics of the situation demanded these limits.
Drag, the cube law, energy, and the formulas ruling their relation swim lazily in my mind.
I could calculate exactly how many joules of energy I spend with each step, but I don’t need to for now. Maybe if we were back on earth where those kinds of measurements would be useful, maybe even in the future as our Runic technology reaches the point where those small differences become the only place where to seek further improvements, but for now all I needed to know is that beyond my current tremendously fast speed of 50 kilometers an hour each extra kph would be hard-fought. If all energy for running was directed to overcome the wind a 26% increase in speed would double the actual energy expenditure.
I am not quite at the point wind was the only consideration, but even my fastest sprint didn’t reach 80 kph an hour, but at 48 kph I could go on for days. Quite a contrast to back on Earth where my sprint was over three times faster than my ultramarathon pace and the wind was only a minor consideration, almost a rounding error.
I ignore the numbers that slowly crept into my head and focus fully on running. Intermittently, I cycle my Aether as I change my running form. Even my katas take a back seat as I feel that my current activity is giving me plenty of progress stat-wise as it was.
The resource infusion I take to heart and my full focus goes to it every so often as I try everything under the sun to improve its effects on my body, if only slightly. Vigor and stamina slowly fall and raise as my rhythm varies and I recharge each of them.
I fall into an almost hypnotic state as I make my way back only to realize I’m back at the clearing with no conscious memory of the last two days. I almost keep going, but the bright red line to my left takes me out of my kinetic meditation session.
Reaching into the recesses of my mind, I can only remember about the first 12 hours but I just shrug, it’s not a bad thing.
A little tired, but strangely not overwhelmingly so, I sit down and connect to the root system. So focused I was, I didn’t even try to connect with the network in the last couple kilometers where the seeds were a little more developed.
I pull a comm from the inner world, and reach as far as I can trying to link the tendril reaching for the village, with some part of the network before laying back just to rest my eyes for a second as the tendril grows, One connection, two connections, three connections….
------------------------------------
Hours later I feel the stiffness in my joints and a cramp as sounds are blaring in my ears.
Cracking my eyes open, I groggy reply.
“What?”
“Nash is that you?” Asks a vaguely familiar voice and after a moment as my brain catches up, I awake properly.
“Ohh, sorry, was sleeping. Yeah, It’s me. The connection must have been completed while I was catching a few ZZZ’s”
“It’s fine. Is everything ok over there? For that matter where are you?”
“The closest border to the higher-level zone. I made a little hut over here so I can get a nap.”
“I didn’t know you were expanding the network in that direction quite so soon. That is… quite far away."
“I just finished it. Took me a while, but it's worth it.”
“Are you trying to level there? That is dangerous, even Greg doesn’t joke around with those level 100 plus beasts.”
“Nah, just exploring. But that is not why I called, give me the updates about the village,” I say anxious to know how things have developed.
“We are fine, ….”
I listen as he updates me. Most things have developed as I expected with the main reason for my return still three days away. That meant I could remain around here for a while longer before helping with the attack. After a good ten minutes he finishes so I ask to be transferred to the MRI and wait until I hear Burge’s distinct voice.
“Nash, is that you?”
“Yeap. How have things been going in my absence in the Institute?”
“Fine, we managed to make a few advances I’m certain you will appreciate.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Yeah, like what?”
“Remember the flying bicycle you asked us to create?”
With my heart suddenly in my hands, I tentatively answer:
“Yes, that was the pipe dream...but to be honest I take a flying dung beetle.”
“You don’t have to settle for anything. Now mind you, the rune we used is maybe mana efficient, but it limits the height of flight to about three times the length of the vehicle. So a 2-meter craft can only hover to about 6 meters high. We got a couple of people who were studying aerospatial engineering and they have been an enormous help.”
“I’m glad, now tell me more about it,” I say rubbing my hands as I finish working out the kinks from my sleeping position.
“We tried to make a normal plane, but the system somehow recognizes what we are trying to do and interferes every time. Even kites don’t fly like they should but we managed to get around it by using a rune that creates a magical ground effect field.”
“Could you tell me how you made it? Maybe I can create one of them without having to come back to the village.”
“I can do better than that. We finally fixed some of the kinks in data and image transmission. If you can make a simple runic working, we can connect our visual senses so you can see all the changes we made.”
Over the next few minutes, we work in concert to make the sense sharing rune formation, finally rid of the crippling headaches and dizziness it used to induce. Making it with my roots is as easy as ever and the connection is established smoothly.
I piggyback on Burges’s vision able to see everything around the institute. As he sits at the table, he ruffles through papers and slowly shows me the runes they have made over the last few days.
Plenty of them are the small changes you expect from better understanding certain formations providing small upgrades, but they finally have figured out something else I am very much interested in and I ask about it.
“So, now we can show visual data through the connection?”
“Yeah, we still haven’t figured out the other side of the equation, how to compress a picture so it will be able to be used as a security camera. But it works wonders for visualizing something stored in one of the memory cells you came up with.”
“I left more of them in the village, a small cache of those memory cells tucked away in my hut. You can pick them up later I will leave the door open.”
“Damn, you can do that from so far away?"
“It won’t be pleasant but I’m pretty sure I can,” I say as my stomach flips at the mere thought. Shaking it off I continue: “So come on, get to the bicycle already.”
“Ok, I mean we call it that, but it can be in any shape we want. The MIT students helped make it aerodynamic, but you can grow a monstrosity if you want to. Now, pay attention.”
He continues to tease me, slow-rolling the presentation, though he doesn’t add anything superfluous, just choosing the order to delay the actual presentation of the schematic but finally he unrolls the largest sheet on the table. In front of me is a wonderful sight, a 4 feet wide page filled with runes that will take me hours to work through, but I don’t need to meticulously analyze each rune to recognize how they managed to achieve the ground effect.
In the center a few slightly larger runes, similar to the ones used on the carriages to ‘inflate’ their tires, grabs most of the mana output and cycles it, forming some kind of resonance. It looks as if the runes uses the mass of the ground to repel itself.
“So, did you figure out how it works?” He says with what I imagine is a big grin.
“Yeah, you cause a resonance with the central runes and uses the mass of the ground as a feedback mechanism to return a similar field, sustaining the craft in the air. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t even need something as solid like the ground working on water and maybe even the tops of trees.”
Crossing my fingers, I hear a groan from him and a loud snort from someone else in the lab. As he turns around, I hear one of the new researchers speaking to him.
“Told you, he would get how it works in moments.”
“Well, it seems you are more brilliant than I expected.”
I reply with a laugh before speaking.
“Well, I was guessing as much as anything. It’s the only thing that made sense, I will still need hours or days to be able to deconstruct the entire thing and understand how it works.”
“Sure, but it is still very impressive. All that only from a glance.”
“Sure. It isn’t a perfect match to electronics, but I always had a way of seeing a schematic and in a few moments getting it. How it works, and how to fix and what was broken just screamed at me.”
“But…. I thought you lived on Pando and was all peace with the tress and what not?”
“Yeah that too, but I had to make money somehow, an hour of my time here or there was plenty for me.”
“If you want I can help fill in some of the major parts of how this works.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
He continues speaking, but seeing something through the corner of his eye reminds me of an idle thought I had and the possibilities before me open a whole world, no, a whole universe.
“Burges,” I interrupt him. “Let see if I can read that book on the hand of the new researcher.”
“Ohh, yeah, almost forgot about that. Before your little heart explodes, yes, you can read the books from a distance.” I watch as he takes the book and leaf through it, and finally the beginning of another of my plans is starting to come together in my mind.
I spend the next hour getting the details of how our library would start, it was already in motion, but I expanded the scope to encompass other villages and much more data than most people would expect. With access to the data storage and the books from the village, the two villages who were fully connected to us would be able to rent a reading of our books without having to buy it themselves.
They could pay with mana, system, or Pando’s coins.
All my batteries were already bursting with mana, but I am always adding to my collection along with the ones under a couple of other villages, the massive one under my home and the ones in the village. Even this place would be getting one in a few moments. I don’t have to worry about running out anytime soon, maybe I will be the one giving mana to the village and not the other way around.
I close the connection, as I start to grow a four-meter long flying ‘bicycle. Though I use the term loosely given it doesn’t even have a single wheel. I grow a faring in the specific dimensions and shape provided on the blueprints to reduce the aerodynamic drag as much as possible. I may have plenty of mana, but no sense in wasting it.
They still haven’t tested the vehicle extensively, so now I know exactly what I will be doing just as soon as I finished my preparations.
I start moving the battery from my inner world to this place. Earth and nature mana are as expected very useful now, though I still retain enough of the battery in the inner world to continue my mana expenditure. From the ground, I draw some of the roots already grown previously to refill the inner world and speed up the process of making a battery.
Now there is another place that mana can pool. The path to the village is still fairly narrow, so only 1.5 mana per second can flow from there. But in the days and weeks to come that will slowly increase.
It is not the first time I have done this, and the whole endeavor was starting to become routine. Though, with a few of the developments on the other side of the coin, perhaps I will soon no longer be the biggest mana battery ‘manufacturer’. Stuart and Merlin are working on a promising lead that would allow for runes to be cast.
If we joined forces the sky would be the limit. Imagine leveraging my inner world and other capabilities to make giant runic structures.
I leave all of this for later and start on the last of my immediate tasks. In the last few days I have grown a different kind of seed, which is as heavy as a watermelon, though longer and thinner; about a palm wide and half a meter long. With the contraption to shoot it, I start at about a mile from my spot and slowly but surely extend the tendril perpendicular to the line dividing until I’m pretty sure I have reached the limit.
If I’m correct, the maximum range is around 15 kilometers. Even if they can’t connect, I will have some ‘root islands’ already in place when I eventually extend tendrils further in the high-level zone.
I don’t know if we will be able to make our track further inside anytime soon but the beasts don’t seem to bother with the roots, so I make full use of the ‘loophole’ and in the next weeks I may have access to something much deeper into their territory than our strength would normally allow.
My plans run through my head but in a moment, I discard all of them. Leaving the test of the flying craft for later may be the mathematically way correct way of accelerating my growth, but I can’t wait another moment.
I mean come on, it’s a flying craft…. that flies through the sky. Even if it was limited in height, I would be soaring amongst the clouds at a hundred miles an hour. I look up, but all I see is the blue, not a single cloud up there. No color variation, well but even if there were clouds the craft couldn’t reach that high.
I finish the last touches, climb on board it and start to pour my mana into it. Like a helium balloon I begin rising and very slowly drifting with nothing to stop my movement but the very air. I rise eight, nine, ten meters high before reducing the flow of mana to the runic formation responsible for lift and start to pour mana into the propulsive one. Just a tenth of a mana point each second into the second one, and lazily the craft starts to move. I grab the steering handle in front of me, to align the profile of the craft with the direction I’m going.
As I gain speed, dodging around the trees, I climb higher rising ten meters above the treetops slowly gaining speed as I increase the mana to the propulsion unit. Let’s see how fast can you go.
I head South wondering if it will be hotter? How would the trees there change?
Perhaps I could make a little foray inside the high-level zone with this craft. There was just so much I could do before heading back to the village.
-----------------------------
Small Goblin settlement
I squint my eyes as I see something in the sky, something moving fast. A brownish dot approaching me… fast, very fast. Worried I start backing away. It couldn’t be heading in my direction, could it? Perhaps I should increase my pace.
I turn and start running. Each look back, I see the dot is closer. Not only closer, but heading straight for me.
No, no, no.
“I don’t want to die.”
A frantic scramble ensues as I do my absolute best. Damn short legs, I can't run fast enough, too many obstacles in the forest.
The very moment I think will be my last, I hear a thump to my left. Looking over there, I feel mana emanating from some thirty meters away. Stepping lightly, trying not to make any unnecessary noises, I creep closer to the overturned ground.
Closer I see a hole in the ground and confirm this is the place the mana is coming from. I think of digging it from the ground where it burrowed itself, but that seems wrong. I resist the impulse to lay on the ground. I’m not a shaman, just an apprentice and if someone caught me worshiping something without a shaman confirming it came from the spirits, I would get into a lot of trouble.
I pat the dirt and leaves off my coverings and start running back to the village. I have to tell the Elders about this. It fell from the sky, so there has to be some meaning to it.