“Hey Noland! What are you trying to pull here!” Lisa shouted as he strapped on the air tank.
“Obviously like I said. I will resolve this once and for all.” He said serious.
Lisa walked in front of him. “And what about the link. How far do you think you can go without me.” She said.
“Just get an air tank then.” He said.
“No.” Lisa crossed her arms and took a step back.
“Damn it woman. Is now the time to get like this! Do you want to leave the dragons to kill themselves until there is no way to resolve it.” Roktar shouted.
“Of course not but from the way I see you acting, in that big hard head of yours there are only two options. Submit or die.” She said.
Listening to them argue, the others somewhat saw his point of view well. He was someone to act stupidly first and see consequences if there were any.
“And what would you have them do huh!” He shouted.
“First of all!” She shouted and looked at Tris, “I want to know about BOTH the dragons and ALL the known psi animals. Are they sentient, what kind of culture, can they speak, what are those strange words I heard from the dragon's words, what makes them so aggressive. If I don’t get these bare necessary answers I will not let you do more than that. Tris go out there and push them away again. From the looks of it they don’t have a large population.” She said.
“They don’t, they have a slow reproductive speed compared to the others. We pushed them to the moon since the two dragon types didn’t get along but they came directly from the original Psi fish and we used them to fly through space since it was faster.” Tris said.
“Go, push them back while I keep this bone head here.” Lisa said. She turned to Roktar and glared at him making him unable to move out. The link within the game hadn’t been tested so most of them remained within an almost pre programmed distance of each other they had gotten used to remaining in the last few weeks.
Roktar balled up his fist and wanted to shout but the glare from Lisa had him pull back until he finally burst and roared, “FINE! Do what you want woman! I'm going to take a look around INSIDE the station so at least follow so I can do that!” He shouted and walked off.
Olivia walked off but Lisa remained in her spot as she counted his steps and followed behind when he neared the corridor and kept counting paces until she felt weak at 100 paces and he looked back.
“Seems there are about 100 meters of room for us within the Nebula. This is progress at least.” She smiled at him before following behind.
“I should go.” Tris said and jumped out and let out a shout. The next moment a space wyvern appeared and took her on her back and after a strong psi wave the others began to gather forming a huge force of Space wyvern with her leading.
“Oi! There were this many!” Alex shouted.
“How many are there?” Luna asked.
“Around 500.” Magi replied.
“And the Ryu dragons?” Noah asked.
“Estimate 150… possibility of 50... remain on standby… incase all fighters die.” she said.
They watched as Tris and the Dragons began to battle. Tris remained near the back but kept directing them as if she was a general and slowly they pushed back the dragons who used brute strength and even some strategy they had developed to combat Tris’s set up.
“You know, the Ryu dragons are quite intelligent. More so than the Wyvern. They developed conscious thought first and pushed the Wyverns to obtain it. They are at least 2 times stronger and the rock armor is almost 30% harder than wyverns. What they lack in mobility they make up in strength.” Baal explained.
“So they are like living tanks.” Noah asked.
“That is a good example. Wyverns are like a fighter jet and Ryu are like a heavy bomber.” Baal replied.
“Why did you guys let it get to this stage then?” Ernest asked. “Those Ryu dragons are perfect combat space mounts. The Wyvern seem better for scouting and even simple civilian use while the Ryu are complete army beasts.”
Coming from the ex-military, he knew what he talked about when he was speaking about combat situation. Even without many ships they had natural fighters.
“We…” They didn’t know how to reply.
“Magi left it all to Tris and Tris didn’t like aggressive creatures.” Lia blurred out.
“This supervisor unit… searches for efficiency! Ryu dragons… are inefficient due to… racial pride.” Magi replied.
“Oh yeah, I should upload all the stupid orders you gave us to the others so they can see your grand leadership skills. I really wonder how Malcolm could leave you as one of the commanding AI for his company.” Lia said glaring at Magi.
“No!” She blurred out before her cheeks grew red.
Although androids are robots, they have built in features made to mimic humans including all the expressions.
“Oh~? So you like to keep the prim and proper image huh?” Lia grinned at her and Magi diverted her eyes.
“T-that has… nothing to do with it. This supervisor unit… has done her utmost… to aide.” She said.
“‘Mechanic unit, go and repair the mining ships and tug class ships so we can begin mining.’ Oh but what about the refining factory we have yet to locate? ‘Primary object is to obtain minerals we can focus on…”
“No!” Magi shouted and jumped at Lia who dodged.
“Lia stop teasing her so much.” Noah said.
“You know what I just said was true. I suggested we find the refining factory first and get it running so we could make parts first before mining but she wanted to gather brute minerals first which didn’t make sense.” Lia said.
“Mining objective… was to obtain… quality feed for… Psi beasts.” Magi said.
“So why didn’t you say so.” Lia said bluntly.
“Subordinate unit… needs no reason for work.” Magi said
“Then subordinate unit need not work without a reason either.” Lia said as well.
Noah just sighed and look out at the fantasy like battle. “So what kind of abilities do they have?” He asked.
“Well from what we know it's just physical strength but Tris can infused psi into the wyvern leader and use it to control the others.” Baal said.
“No psi breath or something?” Alex asked excited.
“That would be awesome but they never did that before.” Ricky said.
“It may need a lot of psi and maybe even a rider or something to cause them to do it but we don’t know if they can.” Lia said shrugging.
“You guys had several months and all you did was leave them to do random crap without investigating their abilities.” ernest said his eyes burning.
“We were busy getting the station and repairs. Magi was also focused on making Warp technology and all that so only Tris was left.” Lia said laughing dryly.
“What was Olivia doing? If I remember correctly she was left with Tris.” Jessica asked.
“Brewer unit… was studying the… compound makeup of… mutant vegetation.” Magi said.
As soon as her title came out everyone knew what that mean. Most likely it was what Noah’s father was seeing at this moment.
“Well why don’t we look around. I'm sure there is more than just this to see. I'm quite curious about the station. How much did you restore of it and how many generators are up?” Noah asked.
“Only two generators are up and they're a real pain to maintain since they follow a 100% condition policy. The ship is supplying this sector at the moment because the generators are shut down because the new psi is affecting their parts after invading the system. Its altering to many parts making the generators inoperable at the moment.” Lia sighed.
“How is the ship producing so much power?” Noah asked startled.
“You’d be surprised by how efficient the generator is with the new energy.” Xero said. “That thing got upgraded to complete psi metal with this new psi as the main energy source mixed with electricity. The current output is nearly twice as much as it previously was. Only the engine and thrusters are offline but most of the electric systems have already been undergoing this irritating process of upgrade and even the VI we picked up is getting affected. Its developed AI level networking.” Xero said.
“... let's go Lia, show us around.” Noah said and Lia nodded. Vivi and Jessica followed as Vivi told Jessica about her scouts and how it worked and how after she logged in she installed a program that lets the scouts send her the information which is translated into targeting data for her.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
The others followed their own AI as they looked around.
Noah and Jessica in particular reached the teleportation pad room where the Blink drive was placed and upon reaching the reconstructed room Noah just looked around then looked at Lia and Magi and asked, “Why are you using a destroyed teleportation pad instead of a working one. Also why don’t you try using the Blink drive separate from this? The two work in completely different systems since one is to travel through space and the other is to warp short distances. A warp gate would work much better than this.”
Lia instantly began to laugh while Magi was stunned, “See tiny, I told you that it was better to make a gate instead of using this place. The power crashes each time you use it and you still can’t learn more than 50% which is just the Xetra tech! Ahahaha!”
“Why? Did she… tell you ahead of time?” Magi asked.
“No but just look at this. You connected lost technology from an ancient civilization with one of another. I understand you wanting to get it to work but like Lia said, you learned 50% of the system but it's equal to 100% of the blink drives systems. Why not study the teleportation technology first then begin merging the two into our own unique technology. The Gate would also work better for us if we have a way to keep connected.” Noah said.
Magi looked dejected upon hearing this. She had wanted a portable warp drive that would equip on the ship instead of making a gate which would make it hard to return without another one.
Sighing she just left making Noah and Jessica smile wryly. “Her intent was good at least.” Jessica said.
“But she went the wrong way with it.” Lia said bluntly.
“No matter, we can work on both projects. The Warp Gate can be the main entrance and exit and we can make one that fits into the ships and acts as a ‘key’ to open and close the wormholes.” Noah said.
“Easier said than done.” Lia replied.
“Has research every been an easy target? Trial and error is the way to go for this. Not like we are in any hurry to leave anyway. The Xetra are on full attack so if we suddenly show up it will cause a big pain for us.” Noah said.
“Eh? Really? The Xetra showed up?!” She said surprised.
Being logged on keeps her from seeing the news and being isolated didn’t help either. The next thing Noah asked about was the language.
“Oh this is the Yhigro race language. They are a dead race but their language is incredibly complex and surprisingly good for the coding process. It opens up quite a few options for coding something so complex like Warp or teleportation technology.” Lia said excited.
Noah looked at all this and all he saw were many different strange letters. “So can this be translated to english because I doubt we could learn it as quickly as you AI.” Noah said.
Lia thought a while and began to force a smile as she realized he was right. They would first need to make the basic alphabet then building the language’s phrasing and so on and then teach them to coding form for this language’s strange methods.
“I… I will see to trying to translate what we did. If you want to learn I will try to make a learning aid.” She said while coughing.
“That would help a lot.” Noah nodded.
“NOAH!!” A bellowing roar came from outside. They walked out and saw Roktar holding two metal containers with a grin. “Oh! There you are! Help me taste test the drinks Olivia made. They are so rich in Psi that I wonder if this stuff can knock me out.” He laughed.
Noah looked at the metal containers frowning.
“Don’t worry Noah. All these were tested with machines and I removed anything that was even remotely poisonous without drinking too much.” Olivia said.
“Without drinking too much?” He asked skeptical.
“Alcohol will kill after drinking too much so of course, without drinking too much. Don’t worry, of all the alcohol these had the weakest reactions and the lowest alcohol content.” She said but it didn’t alleviate his worry but he still followed his father back to the ship and into the dining room. Taking some cuts and putting one barrel on a table and opening the tap he filled up just the bottom.
A strange green glowing but transparent liquid came out and filled the bottom of the cup.
Suddenly the glow grew more intense and the glow changed to dark green and then blue green.
“Ho~! What's this?” He asked his AI.
“That reaction happens when it is exposed directly to the Psi in the air. The metal casket helps prevent that and keeps it in its most natural state which allows it to age and be preserved longer. When it is exposed, it will rot within the hour.” She said and paused and sighed, “It will then release a poison gas which causes drunkenness and hallucination.” She said.
“Seriously!” Roktar said in shock as he looked at the drink and sniffed and could smell the strong alcohol smell and he then took it to his mouth and took a small sip and tasted it. After drinking he smiled and perked up and drank more and nodded. “Good, this is quite amazing. I feel like it’s heating up my stomach and moving into my body as soon as it hits it.” Roktar said.
The next moment his body began to release even more Psi which burst forth from his body.
“What!” He shouted and stood up.
“Wait sit a moment let me see.” Olivia said and he sat away from the casket and she began to scan him.
“Output of psi from your psi center has increased but it isn’t an actual increase in production and instead it seems the drink stimulated the center to pump out more psi. It’s possible that drinking a cup of this will speed up the healing of the psi center so that it can return to its natural size.” She said.
After five minutes the psi returned to its natural flow.
“It pushed it out for five minutes only. So it's only a temporary effect, lets see the other drink.” Noah said and went to the other drink and opened the tap and saw a red glow which grew a tad bit stronger but turned into a dull yellow.
“I hadn’t expected for there to be such strange effects to them.” Olivia said before Noah drank.
“I think what you brewed could be called alcohol potions.” Noah said and drank the other drink. The drink went right down and the burning feeling came with it but it began to cool rapidly and escape his stomach and go to his body. The psi was flowing through his veins before it finally escaped and entered his channels and it moved to the center like the other and slowly penetrated it then what came out was a dull yellow psi which caused a numbing feeling to go through Noah’s body and he soon collapsed as his body ejected all that yellow psi. It came out like yellow steam but there was a smell to it that made others sick as it kept coming out.
After ten minutes it ended and Noah recovered and he felt his body lighter but as he removed his glove because of something uncomfortable he found a really smelly sweat stuck to his body.
Olivia scanned Noah that instant and what came made her quite happy. “Oh my! This drink seems to have an effect of regulating hormone levels and ejecting excessive substances form the body via sweat. Ah~! Tris and Lisa will love this for its effects.” She said.
“Speaking of Lisa, where is she?” Noah asked.
“She was behind me so maybe she went to the infirmary after we arrived. We found that the walls don’t seem to affect our link in the game so it's quite easy for us to maintain distance now.” He laughed.
“I’m somewhat regretting not being able to drink this stuff.” Jessica said sitting at the side bored as she looked at the two caskets of unique beverages.
“Don’t worry miss. You're not missing out on much. These aren’t fine wines but hard liquor and you would have dropped from one shot mostly because you probably don’t drink it and might not like it.” Roktar said.
“Well it's still boring.” She said.
“Sis, let's go see if we can’t shoot down some dragons! I learned how to maintain your weapons so I kept the railguns in check but they were upgraded by the psi.” Vivi said.
“I’ll wait then, the power will probably be too high for me to handle.” She said.
“Then want to try out how my scout system and your sniper work out?” She asked.
This time she had to think a bit and agreed. “I’ll be going and seeing how Vivi made the system. You two can enjoy yourselves just don’t overdo it.” She said.
“A bit late for that.” Noah said sighing as he remembered his brutal past with his father being the scapegoat for more than half his brews.
Jessica waved and walked out while each of the men took a sip of the drink they did not have and felt the effects themselves.
Afterwards they each took a bath while Olivia retrieved another two barrels and it continued.
Ernest and Hilda walked around checking out the ships. In particular one destroyed one that was a fighter ship which had half the engine broken and one wing but he saw that were were several of these ships and broken in different places. They were scrapped though and taken apart and he cursed his AI since he was the one to indiscriminately take them apart since they were broken. Luckily there was a passage to a hangar on the side which they hadn’t touched yet since they had plenty of resources already and there they found a similar scene but the ships still contained their parts.
“At least we can get some fighter ships.” Ernest sighed thankfully.
“Tsk. I knew I should have come here more often.” Chuck cursed as he looked at the tones of scrapped ships. Unlike the first hangar this one was extremely messy as if a hurricane passed through here. The other one had been organized thanks to the help of the Wyverns and all the ships were put into the dock spots and had the energy couplet attached. Not only that but that hangar was lit up and this one was dim clearly showing they were from different start up sections.
Using small lights they walked through the place as they looked through the ships until he found other doors but didn’t go further since there was nothing left to see. The lights beyond there were turned off so without a strong light it would be impossible to move on and Ernest had his own training to follow him and going into the unknown unprepared.
Withdrawing their steps they left and returned to the place that only had the mining ships and tug class. He looked at the mining ships and saw they had a four man riding capacity but the ship was clearly made for a different race not human and the systems were sure to be different as well. It would take a while to get this thing to a language they understood.
After looking around they got bored and walked to the edge of the energy wall where they found Alex and Luna. Near them were a few wyvern who were injured but Tris was healing them. Looking closer they saw the soft flesh uncovered under the hard rock.
“Their body is soft!” Hilda said.
The others turned and Tris nodded. “Yes, their real body is actually quite weak but their armor is as strong as ship hulls.” Tris replied.
Looking outside they saw several bodies of the Ryu be dragged in and deposited.
“It's not good to leave those there. When sunlight and psi comes in contact with their blood they explode.” Tris said and called up a video showing it. They were startled by the strange phenomenon.
“Still, it’s such a waste of a good creature. How many died?” He asked.
“About half. This usually happens around even half month and the number of casualty are usually the same each time maintaining a balance of how many each side has.” Tris replied. “There, you all can go.” She said.
“We thank Cra’tv and the Ma’sar, Cra’tv of the Cra’tv, for your aid.” one of the Wyvern said and they all leave afterwards jumping out.
“What are those strange words they use?” Alex asked.
“From what I gather, they mess up the pronunciation of several words such as Creature and Master. Their own names Ryu and Wyvern was confused for Ria and Vi’erm. It’s slowly evolving into their own language. If we suddenly left them along for at least a year they would surely form a new language.” Tris explained.
“Whatever, is there any hidden weapon store in this place?” Ernest said.
“Nope, not on this floor. You should see the top though but Magi prohibited us from searching there. Stupid brat.” Chuck laughed coldly.
“Why would she prohibit exploring?” Hilda asked.
“It would divert our attention from what is important at this moment, she said.” Tris said.
“But…” “Aren’t we staying here a long time?” All the players asked.
“We thought the same thing but seems she is determined to finish that warp tech so we can leave this place behind for some reason.” Baal said.
All the players looked at each other confused and shrugged. “Well even if she finished it we wouldn’t go as long as there was no two way transport method for it.” Ernest said what everyone was thinking.
“Figures as much.” Chuck commented. “We told the brat the same thing but she just wants to get that Blink Drive working even if it's one use only.”
“I wonder what her objective in doing so is?” Tris asked no one in particular.
“Welp I don’t care but.” Alex muttered and grinned as he looked at the ships. “Xero where are you! Come show me how those miners work. I've been itching to try those out!” Alex laughed and moved over.
Ernest and Hilda looked on and not knowing what to do they shrugged and went log off since they had nothing to do and went to train a bit and get their body moving more.