5/19/25

Somebody decided to run the factory again for a few moments. It made me have to work to keep the bridge open. I have never been quite so happy for a thing being closed as I have been for no classes to day.

5/19/25 addendum

Took a nap because look at that spacing. Today looks like two words. The official explanation for the sudden attack was the testing of the factory’s central generator. Which they did yesterday night to cover things up some. Or perhaps there’s some other non-magic drinking part that they did test.

That doesn’t matter nearly as much as the damage to the bridge, and they way they’re selling the attacks. Subjugation is a great way to frame things if you want people to fight back, especially against an attacker that has made little effort to speak or otherwise shape the narrative outside of their actions.

And I guess they don’t care? I mean, the one that wants this world may have plans like that, or may not, but if the minions don’t care enough to advance those plans….

The plans may as well not exist at all.

I don’t think this has set anything back, but

5/20/25

I was more tired than I thought by fixing the bridge. I didn’t even get to mention the stuff they had me do with the army in knight armors. It wasn’t interesting in and of itself, but I wonder if anyone will manage to find a good use for these impressive but focused beasts.

At least if they can manage to make the manasphere, they’re going to have a great energy source. I would also happen to find it most satisfying if they manage the idea wholly on their own while not realizing what they’re doing.

Mostly because of how it would infuriate several people I am obligated to dislike academically and arcanally. Having not met any of master’s rivals or their students, I’d prefer to keep an open mind socially about them.

This has given me an idea. I will be back to write when I have craft supplies.

I forgot that the twenty-four hour store that had a good amount of crafting supplies was closed by reason of being completely destroyed. I hadn’t set foot in it for so long that I forgot to check on the place. Well, at least I can order online. I am surprised that hasn’t stopped for anything that can’t be drone-ed into place.

I guess the idea of carrying on is strong with the world here. Plus, again, the amount of advances that make re-building so fast.

5/21/25

Even the asbestos warning because a pre-repurposing-of-this-town factory having a big accident can’t get rid of my smile. It just puts it behind a very nice mask that as a pilot I didn’t have to pay a dime for. Even better, I am getting to keep it.

I have absolutely no idea what I’d use it for, but I’m already almost irrationally happy, so what’s a little more happy?

Now, what else to put in the welcome kit? I have the milk, some materials to make a little mana fold, preserved foodstuffs, premade and frozen food stuffs, pineapple flesh, a pineapple, and several cubes of very good quality beef.

Well, good quality for the price. I’ve read up a little and it’s actually a pretty bad cut of beef only really good for stewing or long marinating. At least one of those is almost a given on winter months, and it’s still better than what I’d be able to get back home or at master’s tower. I’d say that even a noble would take this as the good kind of campaign food. Just need to do something to preserve it.

I have also sacrificed a good bit of my night vision for a few weeks to ensure that there’s some shadows in place for the arrival tonight.

But what else? Oh, books. How could I have forgotten. Books and something cheaply copied from the library. Luckily I decided to write early today to focus my thoughts.

Oh, before I go. SmartPhone Get One. Insert maniacal laugh here.

Okay. Went to the library that was still open, got out the full twelve books I could get. The material didn’t matter as much as having a variety of sizes, some in color, and different kinds of binding. I can’t even price some of these books, but in this twelve I have what should have been decades of work, thousands of kroner worth of money, and lots of something else. I’m going to be honest.

I lost where I was going with that one when I went for kroner instead of any other coin I was familiar with. I feel pretty safe in saying that nobody uses such an old coin for actual trade anymore. A few of them are a good in and of themselves.

Has master Alissa actually seen the pile? I never asked, but it would really have ruined that comparison if she’d never seen the thousand crown pile. More ruined.

Well, the basket is finished, and I have a few hours before I’d normally be writing and two or three before she should arrive. I guess I’ll get to cooking. I do have some beef for stewing, after all. Enough to make some quick stew and also have a few bits left over to show off.

To the oven!

5/22/25

I am now glad for the lack of routine. I mean, not completely, as I had to work with the local army again, but in the wider sense. That the school is still closed. That I was able to mostly divert my social obligations to being online. That I’m basically left alone here and have managed to rearrange the monitoring stuff to my liking and use.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Obviously, most of today was bleed over from yesterday, getting master settled in, and then making a schedule because she’d lost a few hours going through the bridge. The schedule was unimportant presentation fluff. Building hype, as it were. I don’t think we stayed on schedule past the first item. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that even the first item, eat the stew, didn’t get completed on schedule.

Mostly because I remembered one thing that was great, but that we wouldn’t be able to take full advantage of. Hot water almost on demand. (Clean water was part of the preserved food items I had squirreled away.)

Hot showers on demand is a thing I never want to get tired of. Master Alissa isn’t going to be tired of it, even though her mastery of magic means that it’s only a few mineral reagents away. I’m pretty sure penny for penny (or grosch for grosch) the hot water here wins out.

The deal for me was one of the more common and basic uses the nobility had found for succubi and incubi; sympathetic contraception. I don’t know if it’s going to work across dimensions, but I lose next to nothing unless I suddenly lose use of Natal or the Chevalier for long periods of time.

Most of the other stuff was about as impressive to her as it was to me in the beginning. She had a few bigger reactions/thoughts about some other things.

Mostly seeds, but also metals shaped on demand. I suppose that comes with the greater knowledge and skill, but she could also be planning a very fancy garden. Of course, the chances of the fancy garden being magically important are so high that I’d feel bad for taking bets against.

Oh, and the whole of greenhouse technology. I’m pretty sure she’d give an impressive number of important organs for the glass, steel, and a generator. Solar, gas, any kind of generator. Oh, and a battery. Solar or whatever generator and a battery. I need to mention that to her later.

Batteries make it better. It almost doesn’t matter what it is, batteries make it better. I’ve got a few things to show off that idea to Master Alissa.

Having to end early. My writing is waking master.

5/23/25

Walk about the city after my training was the plan. It was actually uninterrupted, but extremely late. That really surprised me. There was a portal attempt at the other places, a factory heart re-activation, and yet nothing here.

Of course, this city is still pretty dead compared to how it was before. Master was just surprised by the sheer number of attacks and how alive it still was. Even after I floated my idea that it was an attempt to get a pleasure world for some large-and-in-charge greater demon, it surprised her.

I didn’t have a gun to show her, and licensing or black market issues were what made me not want to take them across worlds.

At least with Master here, the repair of the bridge is an easy thing. The amount of possibly reagent grade material she’s found is impressive. We can’t actually buy, store, or even take all the stuff she wanted to test or make folds of, but that was a given well before we went out. I only had a cup’s worth of knowledge and testing in comparison to her barrels of knowledge. And that cup only held specific waters, so it wasn’t even a full cup of testing.

I’m going to make a guess right here. I’m going to call early August as the end of testing time. Possibly as early as the last few days of the month before, but I’m saying it’s more likely to be the first week of August.

Now I have to try and figure out a way to get Master Alissa into a knight armor. Perhaps I should see if she can take the rush of both kinds of armor and negotiate on that? Even if I can’t, a few folds filled with the power is good for experimentation and we can always try sneaking in and getting her to touch a core.

Factory core or knight armor core, either one is probably going to have some real impressive results.

Transfer to a note-to-self for later: both of us should hunt for the secret masters. They’re going to have the pull needed to make this easier, but also have reasons to want to shut it all down.

I also mentioned how this world could, without really knowing what they’re doing, make the manasphere. Or at least a wired version, which I think was supposed to be better, but just totally impractical for the amount of high-quality metals involved.

This world’s production of metals is insane, both amount and quality. Need to make some kind of purchasing agreement here and funnel it to artisans back home. Oh, and tools. Get better tools for our favored makers, and this will be even better.

Of course, getting a good furnace from here would be best of all, but it would need lots of infrastructure to get full use out of. Wait, I need to look and see if there’s electric furnaces and what else they need.

At least the greenhouse idea had some fairly simple needs, most of which could be theoretically repaired if the bridge looks like it’s going to collapse for the next few centuries. Glass is easy to repair with magic. We’re not going to need full power, so that can probably be poorly repaired multiple times.

And also with the ideas fully on display and finished, we can probably make a much larger, poorer version that still works.

The lights were the big sticking point. I still don’t have a good answer, but there’s some long lasting ones, perhaps a blessing is the answer?

Have to confer with both Master Alissa and whoever of the Madorra is going to be along later.

5/24/25

This was, perhaps, the strangest way I’d ever ended up helping a magical ritual yet. For reasons of morale, somebody in some organization wanted to do an impromptu parading of the knight armors and army together. I got informed by a phone call from the base by one of the front door secretaries. Jude something or other. I managed to get on both of their good sides and haven’t used their last names for so long I’ve forgotten both.

Went around the repaired and repairing bits of the city once, showed off the not-quite-unique trick that they’re calling the shadow magic I used in Natal, and then got to be fancy near the apartments I’m living in.

So I opened up some while making impromptu ‘smoke’ rings that were about as charged with magic as I could manage. Anyone that ends up reading this in the years after my death gets no prize for guessing the direction the rings went. You may try and be specific for extra points as long as that little parade didn’t somehow manage to get a popular depiction back home.

Then it’s back to no prize. Although I’m going to have to wait a little bit for Master Alissa to report how much she was able to capture from that stunt, and then how much she’ll be able to actually use. The second number is the one we’re actually interested in. If there’s a lot that can be freed from the shadow magic construct without denaturing, then we have a celebratory move I need to argue about doing whenever I finish a battle in the state to do it.

If not, I’ll still argue for it as a celebration, just not as hard or as much. I can’t think of a good use for magical shadow right now since it’s notoriously hard to recycle into powering a new spell, but that doesn’t mean I won’t think of a use for it. I haven’t had the chance to test the shadow gun with it, for instance.

Preliminary numbers are in. It’s not quite enough to make me want to argue strongly for a new celebration, but the sudden nature of the parade also means that the best setup that we could manage was not present. Once there’s at least a good capture set-up we’ll know for sure. Master just wanted to test as an in-case situation. Perhaps the armor’s core would manage to output so much that even with my middling skill and the lack of proper preparations, there would be enough to recover that a lack of prep would still be more than worth it.

Funnily enough, I think there is that kind of output in Natal and the others, but the internal channeling bits that were the ‘bones’ and ‘ribs’ mean that most of the power can’t be so easily transferred out as mana. As anti-demon forces, yes, but then again, that was almost certainly a secondary, if poorly understood, purpose for the knight armors.