Those flares are really bright.Keeping our position secret has become a lost cause anyway. Leutnant Jäger is approaching our car.
LJ: I am not ready to let this convoy advance any further. I fact I need to know more about the tactical situation. In particular I need to know whether more monsters are arriving.
T: We can do a detection ritual
LJ: Yes, you can. But, how many consumables do you have?
T: For about seven rituals.
LJ: That is not enough. No, we, that is, you are going to try out that mysterious device.
Thomas and I are being led to our armored transport car. The device looks like a big ball, a bit bigger than a baseball, its lower quarter made out of copper, a thin strip of black stone-like material dividing it from the transparent rest with a shimmering crystal spike on the very top. Attached to it by a lug on the bottom taking away a lot of the air of an eldritch manifestation of otherworldly power is a conventional tripod for video cameras.
Somebody had helpfully used paint to indicate shapes of hands on the metal shell.
I put my hands there and feel connected. Not in the intimate sense, but rather like playing Tetris. The pieces fit. I let the power flow and am rewarded with understanding. This is an extension not of my body but of my mind. And it tells me to open my new eye.
I can see some kind of screen vibrating like a piece of metal having been hit with a pebble and a hole already scaring over nearby. This information wants to be free. I make the sphere light up and it shows a blob with a wider undulating shape of a jellyfish in the direction facing away from me.
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P: It tells me that it wants a map
The leutenant gave an order
LJ: Schmid, get the box that came with it.
LJ: It „wants“?
P: Yes, it doesn’t have a personality, but it is designed to explain itself to its user and to be fully enabled. It may actually be addictive in the sense that those young people are glued to their phones. Though it is not a passive experience. Foremost I need to power it.
LJ: How long can you do that?
P: Depending on usage between 20 and 90 minutes. I do not have the maximimum power output to use its full range, but still the power requirement go up a lot with range. I got maybe 30% more range than with a ritual.
Thomas was walking around the device.
T: The dividing band is showing writing under in the direction of the blob. It says „category 2“ and a compass heading, it looks like, 200 degrees.
LJ: That puts it between us and our point of origin. 4:08 in the morning
He gave more orders
LJ: Sergant Neumann, have the remotely controlled mines placed. Anything over the radio from HQ?
SN: Aye, sir, No news.
LJ: And you gentlemen, loot those monsters. They seemed unusually strong. We may get something good.
--
Thomas is drawing out the rituals while I am at ready near the device. We have fed it a crystal that dissolved as we touched it to the spike and now the sphere can show very pretty miniature map of the area.
Thomas bursts in.
T: Strike!
He is holding a grey essence cube and a row of vials in his hands. I touch the vials.
P: These are healing potions. You better go tell Jäger. And congratulations to your new essence.
T: Mine?
P: Yes, it is a gun essence. You cannot take two identical essences, remember?
T: Right.
P: So do not fear that I got infected with generosity.