Beyond All Expectations (Emerilia Book 8)
Page 31
“You don’t ever like to think small, do you, Stone Raiders?” Koza laughed.
“Small is boring. World domination, however…” Kim said with an evil cackle.
“Seriously, if you’re Brain, then who’s going to be Pinky?” Josh asked.
“Ah, you look reasonably dumb and happy-go-lucky!” Kim grinned and winked.
“Thank you. I’ve always wanted to be compared to a cartoon mouse.” Josh shook his head.
“Well, you made the reference.” Kim waved to Dwayne, Jules, Esa, and Cassie, who were already waiting in a group next to the edge of the first section of the city.
“This doesn’t look ominous at all,” Josh said as they got closer. He walked up behind Cassie, who pulled his arms around her and leaned back into him.
Josh started sputtering.
“You okay?” Cassie looked back at him with a crooked eyebrow.
“Sorry, just—” Josh clawed at his tongue. “Tasting your hair. Is that a new conditioner?”
Cassie laughed, a mischievous light to her eyes as she turned and hit Josh in the face with her long white hair.
Josh tried to get the hair out of his face but Cassie continued to lean back into him and holding his arms around her, making it hard for him to get the hair out of his face. As he got some of it out of the way, she’d move her head again and get him in the face again.
“Mercy, mercy! I give up!” Josh said.
Cassie and the others laughed as their esteemed guildmaster was reduced to surrendering to his girlfriend’s hair barrage.
Cassie flicked her hair out of Josh’s face, turning so that she faced him. She put her mouth next to his ear and used a party chat so no one else could hear. “I love it when you beg.” Cassie pressed up against him.
Josh looked around to make sure that no one had heard her as he looked down to her. “Well, little lady, what are you up to tonight?” Josh asked with a crooked smile.
“Hmm, well, I was looking to have some fun, but my boyfriend keeps on locking himself in his office.” Cassie pouted and pulled at her lip.
Josh winced. He hadn’t meant to but with the work that came with being the Stone Raiders’ guildmaster, he had pushed Cassie away—not by choice, but it had still happened.
“Well, tonight I’m all yours.” Josh tilted his head down as he put an arm around her back, pulling her close for a kiss as his other hand pushed away the hair on the right side of her face.
Their lips came together, heat spreading through their bodies. Josh opened his eyes to see an excited Cassie.
“Good!” She smiled, biting her lower lip in happiness as she turned around, once again leaning into Josh and holding his hands as they looked at what seemed to be nothing more than a cave.
“I still can’t believe what Dave, Malsour, and Steve keep coming up with,” Dwayne said as they continued to look into the darkness.
“With one move, we will double the size of Terra. Be nice to have some more room,” Esa said.
“Don’t think that it will be empty for long.” Kim looked to Lucy.
“We’ve already got most of the units rented out and we’re ready to purchase more teleport pads from the Aleph in order to place them down the length of Terra. It will mean we have way less congestions of people trying to get to different places across Emerilia. We’ll be able to allow more people to stay in Terra while also having more goods and more locations being connected more frequently,” Lucy said.
“So it’s going to remain a zoo for a while,” Kim complained.
“I find it nice to have so many people in Terra—makes it feel more alive. I can’t handle being all by myself with no one around,” Jules said.
“My city girl.” Esa smiled and grasped Jules’s hand.
Josh watched them all as Party Zero joined them. They greeted one another. Josh couldn’t help but keep looking at Steve. He now wore a simple set of hemp pants and shirt, with his massive Weapon of Power war axe on his back.
“So you thought to dim down the damn lighting?” Dwayne said upon seeing Steve. Instead of looking as if he were made from diamonds with swirling energy, he had made his body change colors until he now looked like a slightly tanned giant, but with faint tattoo-looking lines of compacted runes across his body and eyes that glowed with the power of the soul gems that made up his body.
“Well, I thought it might be for the best. Being a walking light show is a bit annoying,” Steve said. “Disco anyone?”
“I swear, I’m still trying to blink out the light spots,” Gurren complained. He and Lox were out of their Devastator armor. It was rare for them to leave it, but now that they were used to it, they spent more time outside of it, working on improving their own skills. Their own levels and abilities were amplified greatly by the armor, but it all relied on their own abilities. To take true advantage of their armor, they needed to continue to train past their limits.
“Is Malsour still off dealing with the Nalheim?” Kim asked.
“Yeah. Since they acknowledged him as the big shot, it seems that they’re pretty hesitant to take orders from anyone else who hasn’t proved their strength. The dragons, however, seem to have scared the ever-living shit out of them and have become the leaders of their race. It’s going to be some time until they’re all settled but they’re loving the Densaou Ring of Fire. The dragons are trying to work to see that they value things other than their prowess and strength on the battlefield. It’s going to be a long process but dragons are fine with playing the long game,” Induca said.
“Bunch of big lizards with wings,” Suzy said from beside her girlfriend, who bumped her with her hip.
Lights suddenly started to turn on within the second section of the city. The lights came on in groups as Mana flowed into the second section. A city was revealed, with different automated creations moving around to check various parts of the cylindrical city. The city seemed to be moving rather quickly.
“I didn’t think that it would be rotating already,” Josh said.
“It’s not—we’re rotating,” Lucy said.
Josh looked to everyone, who had amused looks on their faces. “Oh,” he said, connecting the dots. “I walked into that one, didn’t I?”
“Little bit.” Cassie smiled and looked up at Josh over her shoulder.
A deep rumbling could be felt as the second section of the city started to move. The pace at which the first section of the city moved seemed to slow down as the second section started to speed up.
Josh could sense the massive amount of Mana that was being expended in order to push the second city along.
It moved faster and faster, but to those in the already moving second city, it looked as if its rotation compared to the first city was only slowing down. The city sped up until it looked as though neither the first section nor the second section were actually moving as they rotated at the same speed.
Then the second section started to move slightly faster. The different streets and roads started to match up as well as the underground passages, sewer systems, and soul gem-coded pathways. The second section seemed to come to a stop, all of the roads and various parts matching up. There was still a two-foot gap between the rotating city sections.
As Josh watched, he saw the soul gem constructs and the different stone and metal grow out from their respective sections. It was like watching roots grow at high speed; they tangled themselves together, fusing and becoming thicker and thicker.
The gap between the sections disappeared as the different linking materials, passages, and infrastructure connected and fused with one another. It took about ten minutes from beginning to end.
“You couldn’t even tell that they were two different sections.” Kim admired where the two massive city sections had been fused together.
Repair bots moved over the area, checking where the cities fused.
“That’s one hell of a sight.” Josh looked from the fuse point to the different parts of the second city that were coming alive.
He could see past the second section of the city and see the flashes that came from the drills made of light that were already cutting into what would be the third section of the city. There was no stopping progress and it looked as though Terra wasn’t going to be slowing down anytime soon.
***
A few hours after the second section of Terra had been connected, the leaders of the Stone Raiders said that everyone was allowed to go out and take on whatever quest they desired. They had updated their own quest boards. There were traders, mages, adventurers, kingdoms, empires, and even cities looking for Stone Raiders to carry out their various quests.
Malsour had taken a look at the different quests that were available within the guild as he walked to Pandora’s box. It didn’t take him long to reach the hidden laboratory.
Dave, Steve, and Bob were all looking at a star map that was projected in the middle of the laboratory. The different desks were the same organized chaos as always, with different workshops on either side of the main open laboratory. To the back right, there were the power sources and the rear had doors that would allow them to access the growing portal hub. Malsour, with his hearing, could pick out the carts that were moving from one portal to another, keeping their various projects going.
Getting the anchor to work in another system had allowed Dave to advance his Librarian as he had used his research to make the anchor, thus proving another theory.
Quest Completed: Librarian Level 5
Use research to prove a theory
Rewards: Unlock Level 6 Quest
+10 to all stats
500,000 Experience
Class: Librarian
Status:
Level 4
Effects:
+40 to all stats
Read 5% faster
Understand 10% more of the information that you read
Quest: Librarian Level 5
Use research to prove a theory (1/2)
Rewards: Unlock Level 5 Quest
Increase to stats
As such, his character sheet’s stats had also increased.
Character Sheet
Name:
David Grahslagg
Gender:
Male
Level:
240
Class:
Dwarven Master Smith, Friend of the Grey God, Bleeder, Librarian, Aleph Engineer, Weapons Master, Champion Slayer, Skill Creator, Mine Manager, Master of Space and Time, Master of Gravitational Anomalies
Race:
Human/Dwarf
Alignment:
Chaotic Neutral
Unspent points: 0
Health:
49,100
Regen:
24.22 /s
Mana:
15,930
Regen:
58.45 /s
Stamina:
5,420
Regen:
50.90 /s
Vitality:
491
Endurance:
1,211
Intelligence:
1,593
Willpower:
1,169
Strength:
542
Agility:
1,018
Although the extra stats were a nice boost, Dave was focused on the system that they had gained access to, rather than the fringe benefits of getting there.
“Hey, Malsour.” Dave turned around slightly, playing with the beard at the end of his chin before he looked back to the map.
“What have you been up to?” Malsour looked at the projection.
“We’re figuring out where to put our second portal within the Nalheim’s home system,” Bob said.
“So, this is their star system?” Malsour asked in an excited voice. He looked to the star system map that showed the orbiting planets and the sun at its center in real time.
“Yeah.” Dave smiled, looking to Malsour, who looked at the hologram with rapt interest.
“Close your mouth—might have flies go in.” Steve chuckled.
“So, we finally got scans of the system. What are we building first?” Malsour asked.
“That is the million-dollar question—well, billions or trillions if we get into the asteroid belt,” Dave said.
“We need three things, really. One, we need metals to build various items and structures. Then we need organics to grow the soul gem constructs and we need helium-3 to be used as fuel within our reactors.” Bob looked to Malsour and paused the star map.
“Here’s the bind: we’ve got a gas planet here that we can pull multiple kinds of gas from and can refine out hydrogen. We need a hell of a lot of it to meet the demands for our fusion reactors. Right now, we don’t have enough to keep the reactors we have going for more than four months. We’ve just expanded too quickly.
“We also need materials in order to keep up our production levels. Though there is a nice asteroid belt along the peripheral of the system that we can hide in to make all kinds of different projects, it’s too far from the gas planet to make it feasible to get the needed hydrogen from it. Then we also need organic materials for different projects, including the project to grow those who are still within the Earth simulation,” Dave said.
“And we can’t get those organics from anywhere but Nal and some from the asteroids. But then that’s going to require a lot of power and materials to make the coding to make sure that the Jukal don’t see us,” Steve said.
“Okay, so we do the gas planet first, get all of that going, then we start on the asteroids and then go back to Nal,” Malsour said.
“That’s what we’re thinking but it also comes to our true issue.” Dave looked to Malsour fully. “The Jukal have multiple different scanners looking into the gas planet. So we would have to use machines with massive stealth capacities and the ability to haul in that hydrogen, as well as a structure to hold the portal and power it while it’s within the planet. We can’t have machines going back and forth from the planet’s orbit and back down. It would be easier to spot than hiding it within the gas cloud. We can program the factories to make what we need but it will take eight months before it’s ready—and that’s only with two harvesters as we don’t have enough materials for more. Now, even with these two, we’re going to get a lot of hydrogen.”
“It’ll be enough to keep the power on for another year at least,” Bob interjected.
“Yes, but it’s risky as hell,” Dave said.
Malsour sensed that they had been arguing about this for a long time.
“Our second option is to put a portal on the true ice planet within the Nal system,” Steve said to Malsour. “There’s nothing watching it and it’s stable, so that we don’t need to create a structure to hold the portal in place. Also, we can use our miners that we have with some modifications in order to harvest the frozen hydrogen. It’s much closer to the asteroids around the peripheral for mutual support at certain times of its orbit. There is a chance that we can maybe get some organics from the ice ball.”
“However, it hasn’t been scanned, so we’re not sure how dense the hydrogen is going to be. So, we’d have to put a portal down, which would take up a month’s stored energy to do, then scan the place,” Bob said.
“From our spectral analysis, Steve’s been getting decent readings of hydrogen being on the planet,” Dave rebutted.
“However, this is a spectral analysis; I wasn’t looking at specific regions of the planet, so it might be that we put down the portal in the middle of an area that is barren of the hydrogen we need,” Steve said.
“So, it’s a shot in the dark: we take months and most of our power and resources to hopefully mine the gas planet and possibly get caught, or we mine an ice planet using up most of our power for no guarantee of the materials we need.” Malsour rubbed
his neck. “Dealing with the Nalheim was easier than this.”
“The ice planet is lower risk to our security and has the possibility of getting something. Steve, if you had more time and more information on the planet, could you maybe find us a decent region to land in?” Dave asked.
“I can get it within a few thousand kilometers probably,” Steve said.
Dave looked to Bob and Malsour.
“It really is a shot in the dark, but with the gas planet, there’s just too many things that might go wrong.” Malsour looked to Bob.
Bob nodded and sighed. “Okay, well, it looks like we have our decision. Now let’s see about putting a plan together.” Bob knew that they weren’t trying to gang up on him but rather using their own reasoning to work through the same problem as him. Now that a decision had been made, it was time for them to put all of their effort into seeing it through.
“Well, first, we need to make a teleportation array in Nal. Going to be a hell of a lot cheaper power-wise to move things from Nal than here in Emerilia,” Dave said.
“I swear, these teleports are trying to make me blind,” Bob muttered.
Malsour looked at Bob oddly before he shook his head. “All right, I’ll help you out,” Malsour said.
“I’ll see if I can find a region with a high possibility of having hydrogen within it,” Steve said.
With that, they got to work. Dave, Malsour, and Bob all went to the different factories, getting as many parts of the teleportation array made as possible. But still, some of them had to be made by hand so it wasn’t long till they were at a table with carvers at hand with ebony sheets and molten silver in front of them.