Gaia smiled, and took a seat. I didn’t mind her hanging out at all, I also felt stupid. So much for my thirty-three intelligence. Actually, it was twenty-one right then, without all the bonuses from my armor in Evolution Online.
Steve said, “Okay, ships, bombs, and don’t forget we still need to design armor with enchantments.”
Yeah, I hadn’t forgotten that.
“Anything else besides those three things?”
Gwen nodded, “Not for you maybe, but a lot of us need melee and distance weapons. With darkness I can be effective without it, but not as effective.”
“Agreed, I was kind of thinking of that as part of the equipment part. Ship first.”
We decided the ship didn’t have to be all that large. We would use it to jump star systems in moments. So, it didn’t need crew quarters or a fancy mess hall. We designed it with a thousand seats, and also a large enough space to stand an additional two thousand in a pinch.
It didn’t take all that long for Steve to build in the resource level. It was stark, and a little ugly, with a cockpit, a large number of plain metal chairs, and another area as large just for standing. That latter was both to carry more in an emergency, but also the debarkation point where parties would teleport out to their destinations.
We also laid out all the gems where we would need them. The largest grand enchantment by far was the thousand gems required to fold space. Gwen’s cloaking system was just a hundred. Steve just needed thirty for propulsion, gravity, and inertial dampers. Cassie only needed three for life support. Four more for the sensors which would work just like the probes minus the folding space capability which was built separately into the ship, the display would also be integrated into it which would require Lara’s help. Lastly, we put in ten for a mana shield. Ten thousand wasn’t much protection against weapons, but it was more than enough to hold off the deadly radiation found in deep space.
I only needed one gem for the food part, just in case we got stuck on one for a long time, but we’d make a few of them scattered throughout the ship just for convenience.
Then a few more singles, for docking and airlock systems if that issue ever came up.
That was pretty much it. We’d planned a lot more bells and whistles for our personal party ship for six back in Evolution Online, but we didn’t need it for what we were using the ships for. Which was basically an interstellar taxi, and a platform to launch attacks from.
Of course, we’d built the ship, and laid out the gems and assigned them to functions, but we hadn’t actually enchanted any of it yet. The six of us broke up, and we went to look for volunteers to help us with our assigned parts. In theory, with enough help, we could finish the thing before dinnertime.
And we did…
Chapter Twenty-Three
We had one ship, and one sensor probe. Lara’s fix had worked, and we could now identify ships on the surface of a planet. Gaia agreed to make nineteen more of the former, and one hundred ninety-nine of the latter.
Gwen said, “Let’s hit the personal stuff tomorrow, my brain needs a break.”
Steve grinned, “The ships are pretty ugly.”
Dan smirked, “Come now, they’re not that bad, from the outside anyway.”
That much was true, it was a sleek ship. Wide, and very long, but not very tall.
“When we build our ship, it will be much nicer, inside and out, with quarters, weapons, and all that. This is just a mass transport ship, and we won’t really need them outside of ferrying large groups between systems. I don’t see them being used all that much, once we’re split up between the four planets of humanity. We can use smaller ships and probes to keep an eye on everything else.”
Gwen nodded, “I was thinking you could probably fold space between planets, if you rose us up into the sky on a slab of ice of some sort. Then you could teleport us, along with all the air around us for ten meters or so.”
“Huh, that might work.”
Cassie said, “Enough about work, we’ll get back to it tomorrow like Gwen said.”
Gaia appeared in an explosion of silver light.
“Before that, I’d like to share an idea. I like two hundred probes, I don’t like having two hundred databases. I’m going to make those like I said, but I’m also going to build my own secondary receiver. It won’t have the remote-control part, but it will have the data gathering part, and receive the information from all twenty probes. So… the user of a probe system will control the probe and have its information available, but anyone will be able to tap into the master database, and peruse any data from all the probes, at once. The data will also be appended with age, since the probes can only be in two hundred systems at a time.”
Lara said, “Sounds great to me.”
Gaia smiled, and nodded before she disappeared on us again.
After that, we all discussed just normal day to day things. It was hard to avoid the subject of what was going on entirely, but we didn’t discuss any plans or new ideas. Not until the next morning, at breakfast…
We were all pretty silent, as we woke up, enjoyed the coffee and food, and tried to get our minds going. Really, it was the first real indication of change. The online world felt exactly the same. The scents, eyesight, the way my brain worked, touch, hearing, it was damned impressive actually. Because I’d noticed a difference when we’d gone from Earth to the old perfect world. I’d also noticed a difference going from perfect world to Evolution Online. It was obvious though, that change to Evolution Online was designed to get us used to how our senses would be in the real world, with our new evolved bodies and minds that could manipulate the forces of magic, as long as we had the working scientific knowledge of the universe.
Gaia had done an amazing job there.
Point was, there was a difference. These were real bodies, which meant we woke up when we woke up, and falling asleep the previous night hadn’t been immediate either. In the game world we woke up when we felt we should, out here in the real world we needed alarm clocks.
We were all pretty much awake, thanks to the life-giving coffee I’d made, by the time we finished breakfast, and started to plan for the day.
Gwen said, “I’ve been giving the armor idea a lot of thought, and it’s probably best to keep it simple. The main armor itself, for everyone, will have four enchantments to protect against fire. That should give us ninety percent protection. It was pretty clear from the scans yesterday the aliens do not have projectile weapons. The fifth enchantment on the armor should be an air enchantment, that will create and maintain an atmospheric bubble around the suit. Just in case one of us gets stuck in space somehow, or one of the planets we visit doesn’t have an ideal atmosphere. Build one, and then ask Gaia to make twenty thousand copies.”
She paused a moment, “Then there’s eight more options. Two rings, two earrings, two feet, two bracers. That’s forty enchantments at five each. My suggestion is to make every item plus five, to either strength, agility, intelligence, or wisdom. Then people can mix or match for what they want. So, Jason for instance, would probably pick plus twenty to wisdom, and plus twenty to intelligence, while I would want a perfect balance of all four. Cassie doesn’t use a melee weapon, just a bow, so she’d want a mix of intelligence, wisdom and agility, but not necessarily strength.
“So, in essence we need to build all eight four times, then give them to Gaia to copy out a mix of choices for each person that wants the suit. If they want something different, they can make it themselves.”
I nodded, “I’d probably do exactly what you said.”
Gwen nodded, “So we need to find thirty-one more people with the Light Sphere to make one full set of eight objects four times, once per ability point. At five enchantments per gem, it will take them all seven and half hours for their master gem. Cassie, you have air and light, so you can build our armor enchantment that everyone gets.”
Gwen paused, and then she asked, “Any other ideas?”
Steve said, “Sounds good to me. That leave
s a lot of options and combinations open for people to choose from. What about weapons?”
Gwen frowned, “Swords are pretty easy. Bows and crossbows might be harder, we can’t exactly leave the building and go to the surface for them. Not with the enemy probes surrounding the planet. We also don’t want more advanced weapons, or we’d be doing initiate level damage with them. We’re masters of the sword, bow, and crossbow after all.”
That was true, there were tons of metals downstairs the Earth Sphere people could forge into swords. There were some trees where the food was grown, but they were fruit trees. Not exactly the best for bows or crossbows.
I nodded, “And the weapons Gaia won’t copy, nor the enchantments for them, so we’ll all be stuck making those for ourselves. That’s okay though. I can probably create and grow some red oaks, maybe bamboo?”
Gwen sighed, “The biggest question is if an arrow or bolt will get through the enemy’s armor. It might just be best to go with spells.”
Dan said, “Armor piercing tips would help. Their armor is tough from what the scans said, but no tougher than human bullet proof armor. They certainly aren’t as strong as that green shit the quadrupeds had.”
Gwen nodded, “Good. Let’s focus on the armor today.”
I shrugged, “I need something to do. I won’t be a help enchanting, so I can build and harvest a bunch of trees. You’ll have to make the bows.”
Dan nodded, “I won’t be a help there either, only the light sphere people are needed for armor, so I can start making longswords that will have a gem socket on the pommel for enchantment.”
Gwen nodded, “Good point, only Cassie and Lara are needed to make the armor set enchantments. Still, Dan, someone is going to have to make the rings and armor pieces.”
Dan sighed, “Good point, I’ll get on that too. I guess I need to build one armor, and four sets of the eight others.”
I laughed, as I had a crazy idea. I was a master now, and I could create animals and sentient life. That still freaked me out a bit, we were in the real world. Demi-gods indeed.
Gwen said, “What?”
“You’ll see, let’s go.”
Gwen glared, but I didn’t say anything. She followed me as I got up and headed for the elevator which would take us to the food growing level.
“Any idea what we’ll do out here, assuming we win of course. There’ll be five thousand of us on each planet, acting as police if not as rulers, I’d really prefer we didn’t do that latter part. That will give us a lot of time to be online, or just relax for once maybe? Lots to do, but nothing all that time critical so we can enjoy some balance between striving and working, and relaxing and celebrating.”
Gwen sighed, “I don’t know. Whatever planet we end up on we’ll build a house like we usually do. We’ll also be building a nursery this time. I assume we can rejoin Evolution Online from anywhere, with an act of will. I love you, and we’ll figure it out. Probably best to focus on getting through the next week or so.”
I nodded, “Maybe, but we don’t want to forget what we’re fighting for.”
Gwen asked, “So how scary is Gaia, she already copied the ships and probes, overnight.”
I smirked, “Her brain is far vaster, and she can do millions of things at once. I’m not at all surprised. She’s running a world with one percent of her capacity, less than that, I imagine copying a few things is a lot easier than that. But… to answer your question… she would be terrifying if she wasn’t following those rules of hers. Hell, we’re scary, and she makes us look like mewling babes.”
I took her hand as we arrived at an underground farm. There were some trees, and bushes as well for berries and the like. I walked over to an empty spot while I build the spell in my mind. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been around them enough, to know what they were made of.
I released the spell, and trees started to sprout from the ground, and grow at a highly accelerated rate.
Gwen gasped, “Steel oaks?” she asked in a strangled voice.
Yeah, I didn’t think of it right away, because they were game creatures, not real trees back in the real world. Well, they weren’t real trees in the real world, until now. Their mental touches were relaxing, as I felt welcome among them. They just seemed… younger, because they were.
I grinned, “That should make some pretty good bows and crossbows, if I can get them to make them that is.”
Gwen squeezed my hand, and then kissed my cheek.
I walked over and put my hand on one of them, and then cast commune. I knew it would take a long time, so we sat down under the bough of the tree to get comfortable…
Several days passed as we prepared, and we waited as more and more master level groups joined us in the outside world.
I went ahead and built my own weapon as well. A four-foot-long staff, with five enchantments in it. I wouldn’t be using it as a staff weapon, I wasn’t a melee fighter. I had far more mana than the grand enchantment with only five thousand mana. I also had five spells running all the time maintained by mana per second. The detect and assess life combo, mass heal, ice shield, and the two types of fire blast. I could also use the detect life spell to pass as a target for my fire blast spells. Another way the detect life spell was different, is I could now pulse it out to reach a mile out with a thought to get a snapshot of my enemies farther out. I could have made it go farther, but I couldn’t imagine needing to.
I’d thought about updating that to true turret spells and the like, but I could cast those if I needed them, or if I wanted to mess around with other combined sphere magic.
The staff itself seemed so weak to me in comparison, except I could dual cast with the staff, and use it for things during battle without giving up the time required to make them happen. All it took was a split-second thought to activate the enchantment.
The grand enchantment on the staff had five different spells in it, and most importantly they were spells that didn’t depend on huge amounts of mana to have a large impact. The first two spells were summon elemental spells, one for fire and one for water. Perhaps I’d use them more in battle, now that I didn’t have to take time away from more damaging spells during battle to cast them. More importantly, summoning was cheap, and the staff had more than enough mana for it.
The third spell was resurrection. That was important, because if both Lara and I were killed, anyone else in the party could grab my staff, and bring us back. Resuscitation was an advanced science after all, so I figured as long as they did so within two minutes, we’d be back to life and actually still be us, even if one of those enemy plasma weapons burned us to death, or we were blown up. I could of course use it on others if they died, but Lara and I also had the option of the spell. It was just… the staff would be faster.
The fourth spell could create a hail of ice spikes of the non-magical variety. Four thousand mana was enough at master level to create and control twenty thousand square feet of water. That was a lot of ice spikes. Of course, the spell only used five hundred mana, and created two thousand ice spikes a square foot of water each, and then rained in the direction I chose. Call it overkill, but I sucked at aiming, and without magic invested in the ice I’d have to aim manually. I didn’t imagine that would come up often.
The fifth spell wouldn’t come up much either, and I hoped the third was rarely used as well. The first two I’d try to use often. Anyway, the fifth spell was a mix of creation and entanglement. It would hold, not kill, and attempt to disarm.
Regardless, we pretty much had what we needed. Intelligence on the enemy, ships to get there, enchanted armor, and weapons. Now all we needed was a plan we could all agree on…
Status.
Name:
Jason
Classes:
None.
HP:
20,468
Regeneration 1.5%/sec.
Race:
Half-Elven / Half Human
Mana:
344,373
Regeneration 1.9 (4.1)%
/sec.
Platinum:
66
Stamina:
9977
Regeneration 1.2%/sec
Gold:
448
Level:
41
TNL: 154,608 / 4,100,000
Silver:
55
Strength:
15
Bronze:
47
Agility:
14
Intelligence:
21 (41)
Willpower
12
Wisdom:
19 (39)
Magical Spheres:
Fire:
Master level 1 (41)
Water:
Master level 1 (41)
Air:
Initiate level 1
Earth:
Initiate level 1
Light:
Initiate level 1
Darkness:
Initiate level 1
Life:
Master level 1 (41)
Death:
Initiate level 1
Skills (Combat)
Combat Skill Name
Description
Level
N/A
Skills (Non-Combat)
Skill name
Description
Level
Sneak
Allows you to move silently.
Master level 1
Builder
You can build a large mansion.
Master level 1
Hunter
Your skills at tracking and killing animals.
Master level 1
Meditation
Calm and focus your mind.
Master level 1
Not bad, I’d gotten past forty intelligence as well. Which expanded my mind and made my casting even faster, in case I needed to cast anything that I didn’t have as an offensive duration spell it would take me another second or so less to cast, the same as when I hit thirty. Two to three seconds, depending on the spell, instead of the three to four in my thirties, or four to five in my twenties.
Cleansing Fire Page 20
