“How have things been down here?” Dave asked.
Jung Lee spent a lot of time out and about Ice City; he talked to a few people and seemed to just take in the atmosphere and enjoy being around other people. He also liked to have his own privacy and disappeared underground to these weapon development facilities. Only a handful of people worked down here.
“I have finally been able to complete the two-stage grand working that I have been working on.” Jung Lee smiled.
“Oh? How were you able to separate the two spell formations?”
“As you know, we have been imprinting the rather unstable and compact soul gem constructs with a magically coded imprinter. Once the imprint or spell formation has taken effect on the soul gem construct, we pump it with power, causing the spell formation’s effect to create a much larger effect than it would originally. Simply imprinting two of the spell formations onto the same unstable soul gem construct—well, that’s why we had to remake the third testing laboratory,” Jung Lee said.
“Now we’ve tried making shells with both of them in it and then on impact they would activate. However, we found that the energies annihilated one another so that their strength was just a portion of what it would normally be. We’ve tried to imprint two different spell formations onto the same grand working. They should have not had any effect on one another, but, the soul gem construct was so distorted that they ignited one another and turned a grand working machine into slag.”
“Yeah, it’s like we’re working with damn nitroglycerin—great stuff but just a little too much jostling and you’re turned into flying mince,” Dave said.
“Quite. So I’ve been working with soul gem permutations, specifically, I have created a soul gem construct but the highly unstable and compressed sections are now separated by a sheet of properly formed soul gem. I tried this first and it took more time but it blew itself up after a few minutes.
“So, I coded in some fail-safes and the round is still stable after a few weeks. It is nearly ten times more powerful than two other grand workings. It consumes the power of both the spell formations that is used to amplify their effects. I have taken the good sheet of soul gem and coded it to take power from special containers. The containers keep the round’s containment powered. Then, once it hits, the first grand working goes off and then the second mutually amplifies the effect,” Jung Lee said with an excited look.
“Damn, that’s incredible! Now we’ve got the round working—what combinations are you thinking of?”
“Well, we can use Light spells to break through shield and armor, followed by Earth magic that kills people from the inside, or Dark magic that would ignite once inside an enemy ship and warp the ship from the inside. Or we can use ground penetrators: they use Air or Light to break into a facility then the second part summons creatures from other realms; they attack from the inside, causing havoc. A boarding action, as I believe you call it, but since we are not using people but energy constructs, we can attack again and again,” Jung Lee said.
“We could mix the light penetrator with a fusion bomb grand working, get it inside and then break them apart.”
“Indeed. We can use this for all of the cannons. With the missiles, while we could do it, the needs for storage would be complicated and if they were to become unstable, then we don’t want to be on top of thousands of missiles. Although they are useful, if they are broken we need to have power draws in place ready to consume the released power before it can activate the spell formations. If these grand workings are broken, they could rip a hole in the side of our own ships,” Jung Lee said.
“Okay, well, that would be some serious coding, but I have a few ideas on that. I’ve been thinking of updating my outfit anyway so I’ll be looking into drawing in more power and ambient energy,” Dave said.
“What kind of ambient energy?” Jung Lee’s eyes flashed.
“Whatever I can get my hands on, probably.” Dave laughed.
Jung Lee was, however, silent, caught in thought. “If we were able to make a two-stage grand working, but then add in some additional coding to the stable section, we could make the first a light penetrator grand working; the second grand working would create as much damage as possible. Then the coding in the stable section draws in the ambient power from the light, the ship and everything else, using it to power the second grand working, make it a self-repairing code and it would increase the effect of its attack multiple times!”
“Would be a lot to figure out, though I can pass on what I figure out while I’m working on the new outfit,” Dave said.
“New outfit? I thought that your armor was fine?”
“It’s good, but it could be better and we’re going up against some pretty heavy hitters. I want to have the strongest weapons possible,” Dave said.
“What are you thinking?” Jung Lee asked, unable to hide his interest. Dave was not known as a person who would make something less than amazing.
“Well, seeing as I’m taking on the role of a mage, I should get some mages robes, right?” Dave grinned. “How are the interceptor modules?”
There were three main weapon systems for the warships. The first and primary was the cannons. After them, there were the heavy missiles, followed by the interceptor modules. These were not technically weapons but rather a countermeasure. They worked off the close in weapons systems from Earth—basically a system that spat out a large amount of items to destroy incoming rounds and attacks.
“We’re still working on it. It’s not so simple now that we’ve integrated the spell disruption ability.” Jung Lee sighed and sat back in his chair.
“What about the main system?”
“You want to see it?” Jung Lee asked.
“Sure,” Dave said, excited.
“This way.” Jung Lee got out of his seat. The air seemed to part for him, his every movement one of grace. He had come to integrate himself more and more with his Free Affinity spirits, gaining a deeper understanding of their elements and ways in which to use them.
His training had also come to change the aura around him and his very movements. He looked graceful but his movements contained power in them; he seemed calm but ready to leap out in a moment. It created an aura that demanded respect from those around him.
They exited the workshop where Jung Lee had been working on alchemy potions and headed deeper into the weapons facilities.
“I didn’t see Jekoni. Where is he?” Dave asked.
“He’s the one working on the interceptor modules. I simply don’t have the understanding for magic that he has. He’s been poring over it as soon as we got here and hasn’t left other than to find information from others,” Jung Lee said.
Jekoni didn’t need to eat or sleep, and over the years, as he had been kept within the dwarven mountains, he had further increased his already vast knowledge of magic. Something that took him weeks to work on would shock most people from Emerilia. Even Dave looking at it all was left in shock at his ideas and plans.
They entered a room where there were a variety of tables along the walls and a range extending to the right. On the only desk in the room, there was what looked like a massive Gatling gun. But this one was covered in runic lining and hooked up to a soul gem interface behind it.
Jekoni looked up from where he was tinkering on rounds that were off to the side of the interceptor unit. “Dave, Jung Lee!” Jekoni said in greeting. Even his hat perked up, the tip of it waving at them in excitement.
“Hello, Jekoni, Hat,” Dave said.
The hat jumped off Jekoni’s head and landed on Dave’s, bopping around in excitement.
“Seems that I haven’t been taking him out nearly enough,” Jekoni said.
Dave blinked a few times; it felt as if he had just leveled up his Intelligence by a massive amount. His mind seemed to open as ideas moved through it. “I didn’t know that Hat was this powerful.”
“He’s useful at times.” Jekoni smiled. “So what brings you two here? Want to che
ck out the interceptor modules?”
“That was our plan. Dave came down here in order to check out how we’ve progressed,” Jung Lee said.
“Well, good and bad. I’ve nailed down what form the interceptor is going to be in. After going through the information on weapons that the humans had and their ability to defend against the Jukal weaponry, these Gatling gun prototypes have proved that they can fire rapidly and with the right adjustments be incredibly accurate. As you know, the Jukal’s main weapon systems are their massive laser cannons, their fighter wings, and their missiles.
“The interceptor is good to deal with the missiles. However, dealing with the cannons—unless we want to have that energy smashing into our shields constantly—we need to break it. From the information we were able to gather with the sensor units on the Datskun watching the generations of Jukal ships moving through Emerilia and hovering behind the second moon, we know that they have refined these cannons with magical runing. So, we really need to deal with them first.
“So, we need to insert something that can disturb spells. There are two ways to break a spell. One—understand the spell formation and rip it apart, or two—insert so much energy into it as fast as possible in order to overload the caster’s ability to control the Mana and it all backfires. Now, we don’t know what kind of resets these cannons will have, so the second option will make it easier as we’ve got to just throw in wild Mana that will surge the cannons. How much Mana we’ll need to make it backfire—well, that depends on their systems. I don’t like the solution as we’ve got to concentrate our interceptors on the spell beam for long enough to destroy it. If we break the spell formation, it’s much harder. We need to adjust each of the rounds ourselves, or we can automate it. I’m stuck on trying to figure out a way to automate it and make it fast enough to imprint it onto the interceptor’s soul gem rounds without stopping. These rounds are going to need to change from one type of round to another in order to break different beams and spells they launch,” Jekoni contemplated, stroking his face, while Hat moved from side to side, looking at Dave and Jung Lee like an excited puppy and waving to them adorably, the contrast of the two made Dave shake his head, hiding his smile under his hand.
“We’re trying to make the one weapon system do too much—have the interceptor system have a Gatling gun and then a Mana-based projection weapon. The Mana weapon will target spells; the Gatling gun physical weaponry. The Mana projection will only target one single rune, the power consumption rune, destroying or altering it. Destroying it will take more power, but altering it—if it is carved into the magical circles, then it will be impossible. We can only use the projection against people if we wanted to do the second way. Instead, we attack that single power consumption rune and we burn that thing out, melt it so that it’s useless. They’ll have to replace it or their weapon will be dead,” Dave said.
“How could we target it?” Jekoni asked.
“Well, we make the projector able to change.” Dave smiled. “We have magical coding plates built into it, ready to change from rune to rune. Only when the projection senses that it is affecting the spell formation will it stay and deal with it. We’re going to need to give it some decent processing power but then we’ve got good things coming from the group dealing with AI and their processing centers. We can use that to change through the nearly one hundred runes that control power. Then they will smoke the little bastard out and the Jukal are down their main cannons.”
“That would be impressive. The Jukal’s laser cannons can be regarded as their strongest weapons, capable of burning away shields with the sheer power output that they channel directly into the shield’s power couplings,” Jekoni said.
“Looks like someone has been reading up on the materials,” Dave praised.
“Well, as the tests are running, there’s plenty of time to read a few books with the help of Hat,” Jekoni said.
Hat straightened up proudly on Dave’s head.
Dave thought on the armor that he was building. Information and ideas started to flood his mind as he felt power from Hat channeling into his head.
“Do you mind if I borrow Hat for a bit?” Dave asked, stunned by how Hat had been able to increase his Intelligence, allowing him to easily see through some problems that he had been thinking on.
“Sure. It won’t be too hard to work on the disruptor,” Jekoni said.
“Good. In that case, I have some armor I need to work on!” Dave quickly left the workshop. He saw a free room and headed into it, opening up windows and altering the designs that he had created on his interface.
It looked like a cloak with a hood. Runic lines covered the cloak on the inside and out; gray lines cut against the black cloth. Inside, Mithril plates were formed to the body, creating close-fitting armor. They, too, had runic lines that reached up to spread out to the cloak. Other lines covered the white body, gray lines on the pure white and textured Mithril.
On the model’s hips were the two conjuration rods, modified with bands on them that could be flicked with a finger. There were multiple pouches along his belt and on his wrists, there were two large bracers. They had multiple bands that could be rotated into different formations. Runic lines covered them.
The armor was sleek and powerful. The white armor and midnight black coat created a striking difference, while the gray lines seemed to speak of barely controlled and ferocious power.
In the weapons facility, there was everything one might need in order to build anything. Dave pressed a preset on his toggle bar. His clothing changed to his working gear, including an enchanted dwarven smithing apron. His conjuration rods turned to two different sized hammers. He reached down to his pouches as he found a table; he pulled out different materials that had gathered for his project.
Ingots of Mithril, silver, and ebony were stacked neatly. Two different soul gem constructs were placed to the side: one a solid state original; the other the flexible version that Kol had created.
Then he pulled out a roll of cloth. It shimmered slightly, drawing the eyes to the dark material. Dave put this down with almost reverence.
As Mithril was the strongest metal on Emerilia, Dragon scale was the strongest cloth. It was lightweight and breathable but when hit by magic or by force, it would create ripples, expending the force outward. It could also be made to form a shape. Unlike cloaks that would wrap around people as they were fighting, a Dragon-scale the cloak seemed to have almost sentient ways as it moved out of the way of people’s arms and feet.
Hat bent forward to look at the cloth.
Dave stopped, thinking of Hat and the cloth—they were actually very similar.
“Ah, you must be made from Dragon-scale cloth,” Dave said out loud.
Hat bounced slightly in agreement.
“Well, then, I will have to put this to use!” Dave said. The cloth was nearly as expensive as Mithril. It could only be made by special weavers of the Per’ush Islands and mage’s college and one needed to create special tools in order to form it. This created a powerful but extremely expensive material.
Dave pulled out plans for the Dragon-scale clothing as well as the various plates and pieces of the armor that would go against his skin. He would use the Dragon-scale cloth to back his Mithril plates as well as for his cloak. The amount in his arms would make many supreme experts on Emerilia fight bitterly for even a few square feet.
Dave laid out the materials. He looked over them and then pressed his hand against the table. He connected to the soul gem construct of the facility. In the corner of the room, a smithy appeared, identical to the smithy he used in Terra.
There were anvils and working tables, as well as multiple tools to form, heat, and cool metals. Runic lines carrying power appeared in the corner of the table. Dave guided them to the flexible soul gem construct.
He then pressed his hand to the flexible version, closing his eyes as he put in heat exchanging magical coding, then gave it his plans for the armor so that it would grow into th
e form he desired.
It gathered power and started to create a cuirass as well as the pauldrons, greaves, upper arm and lower leg outlines. With time, these outlines started to become more solid as the soul gem grew faster.
Dave gathered up the Mithril, ebony, and silver and moved to the smithy. He prepared the Mithril and put it into the furnace. The heat was so intense Dave had to increase his Mana barrier’s power as he placed the Mithril inside. He quickly followed with the ebony and silver.
From a pouch, he pulled out different metals and materials, putting them onto the metal so that they would melt in and serve to alter the materials to better suit Dave’s needs.
Flames and waves of heat washed over his Mana barrier. He pulled on goggles over his face. Heat blasted at him as he stood there, his attention wholly focused on the materials within the forge’s heat.
As the metals changed states, he started to add in different materials or work them in different ways. All of this was to alter them. Just adding a few flakes of another material as they were being smelted wasn’t enough to change them. With the soul gem-created forge, Dave was able to section off the forge to get different heats for the different metals, allowing him to alter and change them.
All of his knowledge came from Kol’s own playing around with various metals and combining it with Earth’s knowledge of metal smelting processes.
As the metals were finished, Dave used tongs to pull them from the forge and into cooling areas, where the magical coding pulled the heat from the metal to cool them rapidly. Dave kept them all close, even as they went off to the side.
Finally, all of the different types of ebony and silver had been completed. Dave hadn’t succeeded with the altering of the metals each time and it had taken him two days to get all of them sorted out. Using his soul smithing art and his Touch of the Land as well as Kol’s information, he was quickly able to assess which metals had reached the state he desired and those that hadn’t. The Mithril, which had been under the greatest heat for the entire time, looked as if it was no longer as solid as before but still that criss-crossing pattern was revealed.
Emerilia Series Box Set 4 Page 71
