I am on top of the world. Technically I am on top of an armoured mount for a twin 35mm gun. But that did not prevent me from spreading my arms and to declare my position in order to annoy Ulrike. Other than this indispensable morsel of joy at being annoying, I actually got a cushioned seat and a slide that would take me behind the gun mount, on the theory that monsters are likelier to face the business end of our armament.

The riverine navy has learned about the aura sense of essence magicians. They now expect us not just only to do detection rituals, which I leave to Dejan for training purposes, but to also provide warning against monster with our aura sense. In their opinion we should be located high like a radar antenna to get the best results. I am not sure they are wrong. How could I? What I do find odd is that the ammunition in the mounts unmistakenly has a faint aura reminiscent of fire.

We are waiting for the loading of the container ships in our convoy delayed by a broken crane to finish and our captain to return from a final briefing with the convoy commander they call a commodore. Apparently these convoys are not necessarily posh enough to rate an admiral.

That gets me a greeting by a real navy captain, who is happy to have me on board. And I can be quite sure of that, thanks to my aura sense that is developing decently.

Our course is set first upriver, then through a canal with a lot of locks and then through another river up to the border.Is that a problem? If everything goes well, no, it is not. Though obviously the locks are an issue. They mean that one part of our force is on one side of the lock and te other on the other and one ship is trapped inside the lock. Supposedly the army was holding them.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

--

Seitenhuber facility

K: I was stupid. We have the report about the people with that strange detection apparatus our experts cannot fully reverse engineer. It shows their doses. By that Rademacher had gotten 10 Sievert when he entered the protospace.

E: Then the story about them looting monsters for the potions that can cure radiation sickness is true.

K: Do you want me to meet them or lean on the government to lean on them?

E: No, I’ve been told from higher up to make no demands on the government right now. We are milking them for political concessions. Or rather appear to. We need the Americans out. They have made some alarming breakthroughs in weapons research.

K: Then what?

E: Request all stuff found at the site this looting happened. If you had 10 Sievert and salvation came in potion form, would you have the wits to collect the empty bottle?

K: Right …

--

The passage through the canal took a few days, but everything went well. We detected one major intrusion to begin, but it was in an early stage and was intercepted. Tomorrow we shall finally enter the Danube.

I shot and looted a few iron rank monsters. We had a few incidents our big guns had to go on action and they did the job.

» The government has announced that the first cell of the Grid has gone online today.

» The rest is expected to reenter service during the night and the upcoming day.

» Proposals to celebrate this day as a public holiday are finding widespread approval.

I have just animated and tested Titanic#1, which is basically a magically propelled surf board with a pintle to put my conjured guns on. It works well.

D: This is it, the nightmare is ending!

P: Where will you go?

U: We have taken the standing offer to join the magical infrastructure division.

P: So the government wants to have people in case it evers needs to take over the Grid?

U: Essentially, yes.