Fortunately, there were no more ‘incidents’ with the camp’s newest Demon, or at least not enough of them to warrant my attention. The kobolds took to their task with gusto and with as much fanfare and pageantry as possible to clearly announce the presence of the Demon. Banners, horns, robes, thuribles full of incense, vendors selling dolls of the Demon with stunted limbs and a big head, free pamphlets full of facts about the Demon to educate the masses, the works. Combine that with mandatory education about the Twelve and One, and the masses were annoyingly well aware of the dangers that Demons present.

We did make it through all the mountains in this area, and now our camp was moving regularly every two or three days. It became easier just to have two camps and leapfrog them along, but either way, the great migration of the army of workers occurred regularly. Weeks passed as we made our way through plains that at times gave way to small forests or gently rolling hills. Dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes made this region of the world their home, and given the increased nature of their size and ferocity, the Adventurers were rather swamped in their work to maintain a perimeter.

Storm Mastodons also made the plains their home, their sonic attacks able to split your lungs with blood and thunder if you venture too close. Some species of Sky Whale, all white in color for camouflage, followed the Storm Mastodons around, the whales safely hidden in white puffy clouds. Both beasts were gentle giants one moment and rather ornery the next, and so I had to build land bridges over my road so that wildlife could cross over peacefully. Few found it to be an alluring prospect to be casually walking down the road only to have a bolt of lightning crash into one’s person because a Sky Whale thought some interloper approached too close to the herd of Storm Mastodons, and so the workload doubled thanks to those bridges.

That was not to say that everything was hostile. Bumble Turtles also walked the plains, typically favoring large fields of flowers. The great beasts had giant beehives on their backs, with rather large bees, about half the size of a hand, making those hives their home. A Bumble Turtle, which normally has legs like a tortoise, usually ambles along, slowly eating what it wants, which also serves to move the hive around so that it has access to more flowers. The bees reward the turtle with a tithe of honey, and the turtle provides protection and transportation to the hive. In a pinch, those turtles are exceptionally speedy, and they can scurry to a pond and dive underneath, keeping the hive protected in a bubble of air. I guess whoever named them observed them first underwater, because the turtles’ legs transform into the flipper shape more common with turtles when they are swimming about.

Squadrons of various species of Sky Manta Rays, numbering in the tens of thousands, would descend from the clouds to feed on other critters that swam through the air as if it were water. Curious and affectionate, some would veer off from the main group to beg for treats or snacks before ultimately leaving, of which there was a noted increase on food expenditure on those days, as well as a lack of productivity.

In short, all manner of flora and fauna made this plain their home, from the most primordial of dinosaurs to the most esoteric collection of bits and bobs of various critters smashed together to create novel creatures not seen elsewhere. Some were loved, others despised, but all were dangerous if provoked, and so our camp did experience casualties, just not faster than we could replace them. The workers could get briefings from sunup to sundown about the dangers of the wilderness, and they would still ignore them because some interesting critter caught their eye. These events just got filed away under ‘acceptable loss’, and the camp moved on.

Eventually, the plains gave way to scrubland, and the scrubland to badlands. I don’t know if such a term exists, but worse lands lie beyond the badlands, which we just call the wastelands. However, before we could get that far, we needed to get across one particular river that was well known to exist here, for it was among the deepest and widest the world had ever seen. This is where the various engineers, dwarven and gnomish for the most part, would earn their keep.

The Boys also made an impact, which surprised many of us. As [Herald of the New Age], they had certain boons granted to them. They simply made their way into the river, and after singing for a while, seemingly gathered every hydra in the region to them. The Boys dictated terms, and the hydras obeyed. While onlookers could only wonder as to what transpired, my many [Deeds] related to hydras provided me with ample context. As a herald of the Titan progenitors of their kind, The Boys were granted authority over their kin, and they commanded the hydras to not attack the people that move through the area and to furthermore protect the bridge from other predators. With their voice being more on par with high priests than kings, the hydra masses obeyed without question, and they each returned to their territory and provided no problems for the workers.

With that taken care of, we spent another month just prepping for the bridge. The approach on each side had to be constructed, along with caissons to keep the water away from where the eventual piers of the bridge would be built. The caissons had to be constructed in pieces and assembled to the whole, and the entire construct of each one slowly lowered into the water as we built it, for in places the water was simply too deep to allow them to be made all at once. One looking at the bridge may be inclined to say that it had entirely too few piers to support it, and one would be correct. For although obsidisteel and obsidicrete were wondrous materials that could bear loads far higher than normal stone, they still had their limits.

Thus, I commenced my first major enchanting project on such a large scale. While I had ample experience making trinkets and baubles, enchanting such a massive structure would be an undertaking far beyond my experience. The crux of all the effort would go to massive spheres of iron coated in brass. Two in total, and each spanning over 30 feet in diameter, they were no small undertaking to forge and place within the ramped approaches to the bridge, one on each end.

The general idea was to redefine space, such that some of the area beneath the bridge, most notably those points farthest from any support piers, would have their load supported by the surface of the spheres instead of the empty air directly below the deck of the bridge. As long as the pressure was applied evenly to the surface of the spheres, they would stay intact, although such pressure would generate heat. That heat would then be processed through my proprietary enchantments and S.M.A.R.T. crystals to convert the thermal energy into mana, which would then sustain the enchantments.

This whole process would experience a net loss, and so more S.M.A.R.T. crystals would act as accumulators and relays around the region to collect and redirect ambient mana to the bridge. Such leeching of ambient mana had to be dispersed across a large area to ensure it remained sustainable and did not negatively impact the environment too harshly. As such, one could spot a grid of obelisks on both sides of the bridge that served the purpose of collecting mana. To this end, I needed to get to the Greater level of [Enchanting], and so I broke my piggy bank of Experience Points to purchase those Skills, which left me rather destitute for any emergencies.

However, that only met the mana needs of the bridge itself to stay upright. We still needed mana to create the energy needed to collect river water, purify it, and pump it through pipes some 800 miles to its final destination. It remained no small undertaking, and while mana remained more efficient and safer than more mundane means of energy manipulation and transfer, such as an electrical grid, some principles remained the same.

Waterwheels were attached to the bridge, just beneath the deck. More magical abuse of physics, via my enchanting, allowed the wheels to leech the kinetic energy from the flowing water without actually touching the water, provided said wheels were positioned within a respectable distance of the surface of the water. My army of engineers designed and constructed the facility that converted that kinetic energy into mana, and then that mana into a force to process and pump the water, along with all the bells and whistles to ensure it could be controlled safely and could respond to various disasters, such as a loss in pressure if a pipe burst. The engineers also built some sort of primitive intelligence, artificial in nature, that could manage the power generation, one on par with the intelligence that goes into making a golem, although more sophisticated in that it could solve problems that fell under scenarios related to its purpose.

I poked my nose in on how all that worked, added a few ideas and enchantments here and there to streamline the process, for which the engineers were grateful and eager to learn more in how I accomplished my enchantments. Sadly for them, I have always walked to the beat of my own drum, even when I had learned the basics of crafting enchantments back in Berkerin from any artisan that would teach me. Some people seem to think that there exists some direct relationship with expensive materials and complex constructs to make good enchantments, and so that was how society developed. I disagreed.

Even before I selected my Greater Focus in [Enchanting], I had a knack for creating my own methods to enchant things. I created my own language and library of runes to define the enchantment, and my own materials to hold them. The Greater Focus allowed me to take it a few steps further. I could create my own rune library, and the World recognized and respected it. As in, the Annals of the World-Heart contained a copy of my library, which allowed me to bend the universe itself to follow the instructions of my runes. This meant I could define complicated processes or functions with a long series of runes in one script, and use a single symbol in another script to refer to it on an object. The key takeaway there is that, without such a boon, I would have to write out those complicated functions on each and every object if I wanted to refer to them on said object. That may work on something like a cuirass, which has a lot of smooth and flat space to inscribe runes, but not on a small dagger or a gear. I suspect this whole process had been done in the past by someone powerful, otherwise the runes that enchanters use would not work at all.

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Such a boon also provided me with infinite security that no one could steal my runes for their own purposes, and thus copy my runes to make their own enchantments. I could grant others access to the library that defined what those runes did, usually as specified in contracts as to the limitations of what runes can be used and on what objects, but without said access, such runes were just fancy scribbles into objects. This meant I could grant someone access to use my runes, but that person could not further grant such access to additional parties without my authorization. I could also revoke access to the library at any time, and so someone wielding a sword that used my enchantments would find it to be no more than a normal sword should it be turned against me. Ergo, many aspiring or established [Enchanters] would sell their own family for a chance for me to share access to my rune library with them, and so I would find myself with a growing crowd of such petitioners over time.

As one may imagine, a great deal of the time in preparation for the bridge was spent programming my runes and defining my library. Making the runes flexible and scalable was the key. For instance, if I wanted a rune that made something hot, I needed to be able to pass in the parameters of how quickly it should heat up, the maximum temperature it should have, the maximum mana draw it could use, the mana source for it, the target of what it would heat up, and so forth. Memories of past lives became more clear to me as I drew upon their wisdom, for in some of those lives, I had lived in societies of advanced technology, where programming of such a nature was commonplace, if not equally as shrouded in mysticism or complexity as this world such that it exceeded the cognitive abilities of the common man.

Then came the cycle of testing runes and going back to fix them as I slowly hashed out what worked from what did not. Torborg had much wisdom to offer on such things, for apparently the dwarves had ample experience in programming things, such as golems or clockwork machines. He instructed me on design patterns on how best to take complex problems and programming and to break them down into smaller parts that were predictable and followed doctrines and conventions. This saved me a lot of time, effort, and aggravation so that I avoided stringing everything together like a massive tangle of spaghetti, and instead I had organized the chaos in such a way that it would perhaps be reminiscent of circuitry.

Then came the tedium of actually building the bridge. While designing the bridge and its enchantments had proved to be a challenging and stimulating endeavor for the mind, the grunt work of actual construction left something to be desired. Being no stranger to hard work, I made trips to storage areas for the stone needed for the bridge and hauled it over, with Nanu and Skull serving as escort each and every time. I would say they did so without complaint, but at times, there were passive-aggressive comments related to the tedium of such undertakings. To remedy such misgivings, we may have deviated from our flight plan a time or two to hunt the local wildlife, much to the annoyance of the individuals who maintained the schedule.

However, brick by brick, the bridge was assembled as days passed into weeks. The sheer quantities of materials involved in construction would beggar most nations if purchased at market value, and that isn’t even considering what conventional labor would cost to haul and process it. In short, this was one of the most ambitious construction projects the world had witnessed in centuries. Initial estimates all that time ago during our planning phase in Berkerin had been optimistic.

The bridge, including the approach, stood just shy of three miles long, for we took into account the most extreme conditions of seasonal flooding, migration patterns of fauna, and other forces of nature. Each end of the bridge had a fortress around it to protect it from the wilderness, and the deck of the bridge was high enough that nothing from the ground could reach it. Yes, even the bigger species of brontosaurus couldn’t reach it if they stood on their back legs, those big bastards and their stupid desire to chomp on things in high places, not that I am still vexed about their habits in any way to this day.

The bridge itself, dubbed “The Rainbow Bridge” because of how I used obsidian with a rainbow pattern as the veneer of the bridge, stood resplendently tall with a commanding view above the river by the time construction was completed. It was not a completely aesthetic choice, for something about the riot of colors deterred certain pests from nesting upon it. A great celebration was held before moving on, as well as a partial recovery day to allow the many hangovers to run their course.

And move on we did, this time with massive pipes being installed under the road to transport the water that would be needed by the thirsty defenders of our world, since summoned water was not safe for drinking. Technically, the water never touched the inside of the pipes, for enchantments kept a thin layer of air between them, since pure water tends to be rather corrosive. However, pure water doesn’t allow buildup of sediment, so the pipes would not need to be cleaned, which saved future me from future headaches of maintenance.

It was also at this time that I had a sufficient stockpile of stone prepared at depots near the bridge such that I could be burdened with additional tasks. Encampments would be constructed along the route, each large enough to house 10,000 soldiers and their attached non-combatants for the legions that would inevitably march down this road. A doctrine had been established back at one of the many meetings in Berkerin all those months ago that an experienced legion could cover 120 miles in a day on good quality roads. Ergo, encampments were constructed at such distances, and eventually I would need to backtrack and build said encampments all the way north through the wilderness on the other side of the bridge.

Backtracking to the depots to get more stone would prove to be more bothersome and time-consuming the further we ventured away from the bridge. With my capacity to quickly churn out simple goods via my [Advanced Thermal Bottle], I could quickly churn out metal barrels with all my enchantments scrawled into them. It just took some effort on my part to empower the enchantments so that they actually worked. These “Barrels of Holding” were attuned to hold stone, and were given the good enchantments such that they would sustain their pocket dimensions even in areas with low quantities of ambient mana. Various [Haulers], [Porters], [Wagon Masters], and the like would create a continuous stream of caravans, complete with their escort of more martially-inclined individuals, to pick up more stone for me so that I could focus on production. While they did not come out and say it so directly, Skull and Nanu became much more chipper after such convoys were established. The fact that I pumped out storage containers that cost more than most [Enchanters] earned in a year like some sort of factory press paled in comparison to how they had more free time.

And that free time went to more training and sparring. Using magical attacks at all times in tandem with physical ones proved challenging. Nanu made it look simple, but she assured me that such practice would expedite my progress in unlocking [Parallel Minds]. That promise in no way spared any of us from being beaten black and blue on a regular basis, for Nanu kept growing in power now that my flight was officially established and her [Hoard] continued to grow. It was not just Skull and I that were included, but Gambino, Bambina, Torborg, It-Has-Pockets, Alterez, Jericho, Chooka, Bellwright, The Boys, Ribbette, and Hopper were regular attendees to the beatdown that was her training. Even Platinum Adventurers threw their hat into the ring from time to time, such as Blythnin, who reveled in the challenge more than most. All of us combined did not always fight her all at once, and indeed the gap between Nanu and the rest of us grew smaller by the day, but she was still a force to be reckoned with. Considering that more of my little gang was getting armed with enchanted weapons and armor from my experiments, we would soon overtake Nanu any day now. Any. Day. Now. It's just over the next hill.

I shuddered to think what other Princes from other flights could do. Nanu assured me that, compared to her peers, she was well-trained, experienced, and generally groomed to be one of the best. She was also much older than most of them, for she had been born at the dawn of her first flight and had lived past its dusk. As a [Archivist of Secrets], she needed the skills and muscle to protect that which she guarded, and she excelled at “punching down”, where she can handle multiple opponents weaker than her with ease. Any single threat beyond her means to handle she could stall against until reinforcements showed up to defend the flight’s greatest treasures. Ergo, she was rather elite and exceptional, which she took no shame in flaunting in a playful manner when we touched upon the topic.

And so, with all the dinosaurs behind us, we ventured into the scrublands and the badlands beyond. Even in late winter, it was still oppressively hot most of the day, for the passing of seasons did little to change the weather this close to the equator. Well, hot for the masses, not for me, as I had the Skills to handle it just fine, but work remained on pace. It slowed because people were too hot, but sped up because there was not a whole lot for the workers to do to clear out the already smooth and largely barren terrain.

As we neared the heart of the badlands, scouts reported a most unusual discovery. A dungeon had been spotted directly in our path, one with a peculiar nature that needed to be addressed before the road continued too far. It was also when that familiar voice spoke to me once more.

“In three days at dawn, arrive in Group 12 with Jericho, Alterez, and Bellwright. Please save me.”