[CYA] Chapter 185: Potential Opportunity (Patreon)

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ifSLX7UN13nJD4poDZ7sZkfxqteqVKzkhxR2L4WSMN0/edit?usp=sharing

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<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Cargo Bay>

The crew of the Innominate looked over their work, smiling.

The vast majority of the frigate parts, which hadn’t been able to be integrated into the Innominate, were boxed up, and tucked to the sides, ready for sale or turning in for contribution when they got to Dorgon.

They weren’t able to use the shield generators from the frigate, unfortunately.

Pilar had been concerned that she might have damaged them, but after Audry had helped John purge the devouring flame aspects with systems already installed on the frigate, they’d been fully functional.

They were just not compatible with the Innominate. They took too much power and would have required a reworking of the entire mana-distribution system to integrate properly.

Alex claimed a hundred or so of the hand-sized emitters for study and hopeful use later, but given that there’d been hundreds? No one really minded.

For his part, Alex was ecstatic. The emitters were incredibly complex in design, but laughably simple in execution.

They took whatever spell was channeled into them and spread it out, using another mana source to add power to what would otherwise be dispersed magics.

These were designed not only to switch sources quickly—for both spell and power—but also to cast forth multiple layers when fed multiple spells, even if the spells that were fed in were identical.

The ‘books’ of their magic were fascinating, and Alex knew he had a lot to learn from them.

The crew had stripped out miles of high-efficiency mana cabling, Alex taking a couple of spools of this as well.

There was honestly too much to easily list, and Alex grabbed a little bit of each thing that might be of use.

They all wished that the shields were plug-and-play so that they could make the Innominate all but indestructible, but things were not nearly so easy, and the distributed systems incompatibility meant that they were left with useful goods and nothing more.

That actually stood to reason, actually. If all that it took for a more powerful shield was a more powerful spellform, then it would have been folly for the Imperium to not simply provide that to every ship in their fleet.

Still, Alex very carefully catalogued what he could of the magical spells, focusing on the methodologies more than the precise ‘words’ as he had those solidly in hand.

He flipped back through that book as they all took a final tally, the building hum in the back of his mind from the jump-drive charging providing an almost meditative feel.

Then, Juba leaned over his shoulder. “You are copying magics into a mundane book?”

Alex nodded. “Yeah. To look at later.”

The man looked confused. “I suppose they are lovely in a way.” He shrugged. “To each their own.”

Alex shook his head, chuckling. “No, no. I want to learn what I can from the magics.”

Juba hesitated, clearly even more confused. “But those are three dimensional, and that paper is flat.”

Alex gave him an unamused look. “Yes, and yes. That’s why I’m drawing from multiple perspectives.”

Juba blinked, then shook his head. “Yet again, you are a very stupid, smart person.”

The man pulled something from a pouch on his belt and tapped it against the shield generator that Alex had been studying.

There was a pulse of mana and the sound of cracking crystal resounded from Juba’s hand.

A moment later, he handed a three-inch cube to Alex.

Inside was a perfect representation of the spellform.

It was entirely physical, making his mana senses useless for learning more about it, but his eyes? It was still the language of power, and he could easily read the strokes and swirls.

Juba was talking, but Alex had been so stunned that he missed the beginning. “—so this is how we can input the spells into the computer for analysis, but Mages tend to dislike it as to them? It’s just so many cracks. These can’t even take mana channeling into them, as that would overwhelm the structure and shatter it outright.” The larger man pointed at the notebook in Alex’s hand. “But if that is of use to you, I assume this will be helpful?”

Alex gave a slow nod. “This… This is perfect.”

It wouldn’t let him use the spell, nor would it let him recreate the item, but that hardly mattered.

In essence, this was like a full printout of the binary within a computer. To most people, it wouldn’t be useful as more than a curiosity. Even if he found another computer to input it into, there was no easy means of doing that, and it might not be properly aligned given subtle differences in the various components.

Even so, with his understanding of the language of power this was invaluable.

…And he’d just gotten rid of the flesh golem skeletons… He could have copied out the entirety of the magical matrix with ease… He groaned in frustration before gathering himself to ask, “Do… Do you have more of the cubes?”

Juba nodded. “They are in the supply room.”

Alex almost slapped himself in the forehead. “Input crystals.”

Juba smiled. “Exactly, my friend.” He hesitated. “I feel I should tell you that they cannot take readings of cast spells. Don’t shove one in the way of a fireball and expect to get anything useful.”

Alex chuckled. “Understood. Thank you.”

Nothing else truly stood out after that until they were nearly done with the final itemization.

Kaylee grunted. “Hey, what’s this now? A new mission just popped up on the edge of our jump range.”

Grant moved toward her. “Another distress call? The Impressa didn’t fall into trouble again, did it?”

She snorted a laugh. “No, nothing like that. It’s a military unit requesting transport to Dorgon. They have their own means of stasis; they just need transport.”

Alex’s eyebrows rose. “Hey, that’s gotta be worth some good contribution.”

She nodded. “It looks like it.”

John cleared his throat. “How many?”

Kaylee shrugged. “It’s a platoon?

Alex frowned. “I… have no idea how many that is.”

John chuckled. “About fifty, assuming similar organizational structures. What sort of unit is it?”

“I’ll just read it to you: the Fire Drake platoon of the Imperius Mechanis Minora seeks transport to Dorgon after successfully suppressing an abyssal proto-tear in the Yomi system.”

Grant made a choking sound. “Imperius Mechanis?”

“Minora.” Kaylee added. “But yes.”

“That sounds like it might be giant robots.” The man looked positively giddy.

Kaylee shrugged. “They can’t be that big or the mission wouldn’t be listed as for our class of vessel.”

“Still, that has to be arcane power armor at the very least.”

Lenka chuckled. “Magical Iron Man suits?”

Grant turned his grin her way. “Maybe, yeah. That’s so cool! Can we please take that one?”

Kaylee was reading closer. “As a heads up, there is a note that if another abyssal tear is detected within our jump range while we are transporting them, we are obligated to divert.” That caused some hesitation, but Kaylee went on. “Tutorial Addendum, here: There will be no true deviations in a tutorial. This is simply to expand your knowledge, that you are aware of this threat when you return home.”

That… was only slightly terrifying, but it didn’t change anything in the moment. Not really.

No one had any objections, so it was agreed.

There shouldn’t be any combat, and it shouldn’t even take that long to pick the platoon up, get them settled and hibernating, and move on to the next mission.

Lenka groaned. “Leprechaun-fool’s gold.”

That drew everyone’s attention, and Pilar prompted the woman. “What?”

“We could have just spun up the frigate and jumped it to the system with us before giving it to them. Then, we’d have gotten the contribution for bringing the ship and the platoon, and they’d have piloted it for us.”

There was a moment of stunned silence before Grant looked around. “I mean… we could—”

A chorus of NO!s cut him off before he could even suggest undoing their work. It basically always took longer to build then tear apart. It would be the work of weeks to get the shield frigate back up to snuff, and even if they wanted to, they didn’t have that kind of time.

Grant shrugged. “It was just a thought.”

Kaylee patted his shoulder. “Sometimes it’s best to keep such ideas to yourself.”

He deflated slightly but nodded. “I guess.”

That soured their moods just slightly, but it wasn’t like they could have known, and they’d made the best choice they could have at the time.

Regardless, this was still a fantastic haul.

<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Duty Station>

Alex groaned as he relaxed in the chair of bridge mode.

He’d just finished a bath to cleanse off the sensation of grime, even if his coverall had already taken the actual dirt away before it could build up.

He’d worked as hard as any on the frigate, pulling valuable parts from the exterior in an attempt to salvage as much as they could from the valuable vessel.

Now that they were done, Alex was guiding the Innominate in pulling it into a higher orbit to leave the remains for the colonists to salvage.

The scrap would be useful to them even if it wasn’t worth the storage volume to the Innominate crew.

As he worked—the task hardly taxing—he looked over some information that Natasha had sent his way.

The planet below was an interesting—if hardly unique—one, without enough natural, sapient life to have spawned a worldspirit, the colonists were attempting to jumpstart that process, and a lot of oddities came with that.

First of all, the cities were all heavily shielded and warded against a myriad of things that Alex would rather not consider. Apparently, the ‘off-gassing’ of mana from sapient beings could and would spawn horrors if not captured and processed by a worldspirit or intricate magical formations.

There were simple versions that the colonists carried when they were traveling away from the established settlements, but those weren’t perfect, however, and the results were things from nightmare and dark myths of humanity.

The problem apparently increased when the sapient was sleeping, as more of the person’s unconscious intent mixed with their magic.

As it turned out, worldspirits did quite a lot for a world, and people inevitably led to horrors and disasters of all kinds without one to shore up the cascading issues.

In space, the Innominate had workings equivalent to those in the walls of the large settlements, and that led Alex to digging through the library of magic radiating off the ship at all times until he found the right heading.

He couldn’t glean too much from the magics within given that they were considerably above his level, but he could at least determine that it was a sort of intent filter? It stripped the fluctuations left within mana as it left the people who generated it, and it was that clashing or uncontrolled intent that formed the issues.

In his training, he found that it was recommended that anyone forced to be away from a ship for long periods—or outside the sway of a friendly worldspirit—spend the time in deep meditation to suppress their own cognition as much as possible and prevent their own mindset and mana from degrading their equipment or leading to horrors in the void of space or on otherwise non-hostile planets, moons, or asteroids.

It seemed that a common ‘early’ upgrade to ships as large as the Innominate was to bind the ship to a young worldspirit and build it up from there.

In fact, larger ships often started their service life as the same class of ship as the Innominate, only being increased in size once they acquired a worldspirit.

It seemed that they were actually pushing close to the edge of what was possible without that framework. In some cases, they’d crossed the line, but only because what Kaylee was doing was actually very similar to what a worldspirit would allow, if a bit more limited in some ways and more focused in others.

Regardless, worldspirits seemed to be the backbone of the Imperium, and that lined up with what the Watcher had told them in their Q&A session.

The System was for worldspirits, not humans. Humans and other sapient beings were tolerated and aided because they provided benefit to the worldspirits.

As Alex moved on to fill his remaining time before the next jump with training, he had a passing thought. I wonder what this will mean for us, once we get back to Earth.

<Jameson, Real - Tutorial, Tutorial College #00982>

Unbelievably, Jameson was actually getting tired of learning about magical things.

It was funny as he’d never have thought it possible, but here he was, excited for the next day, when they’d be allowed to take missions outside the campus.

There were even talks of customized dungeons that could be purchased with merrit, usable to push the purchaser forward on their chosen path.

It would be dangerous, but it would also be exciting.

This last lecture, however, did seem important.

“Earth as you knew it is gone. Five inhabited worlds have been combined along with some six that were reclaimed after their populations and worldspirits were slain or departed for one reason or another. This new Earth will be filled with dangers and opportunity in equal measure ranging from monsters and natural treasures to ruins and the wealth of lost civilizations.” He looked around, meeting the eyes of each student before he continued. “Now, you all grew up on worlds with a non-System worldspirit. Such would have kept all mana, all experience, all that they could to themselves. This was an instinctive action as it was, in all likelihood, barely sentient itself. The System has discovered a better way, and it will be showing that to the spirits, regardless of which wins in the end.”

The ruby-red skinned man strode back and forth, a blue flame that wavered and sparked harmlessly upon his head and brows in place of hair.

“There are five worldspirits and when this tutorial ends, their conflict will begin, Earth entering a short, schismatic time. A world can only have a singular worldspirit, after all. Those that lose out will be given other opportunities, if they survive and if they perform well enough. But until then, Earth will be contested, and much of the protections afforded by worldspirits will not be present.”

Jameson leaned forward, drawn back in once more. He just hoped that he would not be drawn into the clash between the five, but there didn’t seem much chance of that.

They could—and often would—choose champions or create sapient factions in the clash of supremacy, but participation was always voluntary.

Still, it was good to know that the end of the Tutorial wouldn’t mean things were settled.

It seemed that it would be quite a while before Earth could move back toward a stable state, no matter what that ended up being.

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