NOVEL SIMPLE Book 1 – Lesson 51: “Often, the best solution to a roadblock in life, is through it”
Alpha stared at the giant magic wall, grinding his gears… literally!
Since when had a wall ever stopped him?! This was ridiculous! He demanded to speak to the walls manager! But every time he tried to scale the wall, it would throw something new at him.
The first three traps seemed totally random, both in element and style, each time. One attempt might have seen the first 30 meters turn into burning tar, only for it to spew toxic, choking gas the next time. The traps were varied as they were frustrating, even if none of them could really hurt Alpha.
The final trap, though, was always the worst. Perhaps because this was the Earth Temple, the last trap was always earth aligned and always at the top. The first two attempts, they’d realized it was motion activated. Move too much, or move toward the city edge, and it would trigger, throwing the invader into the air 100 meters up. On their third attempt, Alpha had tried to cheat by leaping across the wall’s width.
As soon as he’d cleared the wall, it had actually extended to block him with a wall of stone.
On the fourth attempt, they tried something different. Instead of going over, they would try going under. That had failed as well. Alpha sent a swarm of nanites into the ground to scout for weaknesses, only to find that the wall extended underground several hundred meters, several times that of the wall on the surface.
In retrospect, that made sense. Alpha had already seen several wildlife species capable of burrowing underground at high speeds. Normal walls would prove no barrier at all to such creatures. Digging a pit large enough for the TAWP to fit into would take far more time than they had. At that point, they might as well try their luck with the gatehouse.
No. 7 suggested just that by the sixth attempt, but Alpha refused to be beaten by a wall.
It wasn’t even about getting inside anymore; now, it was personal!
On the eighth, Alpha stopped and really observed each trap as it activated. Whatever these holographic lights were, they appeared similar to arrays, yet they weren’t. When he asked his masked companion about them, No. 7 shrugged and said.
“Not a clue. I’m not a -Mage-. You don’t get many of that type around here. They prefer the -Gaia- continent across the sea. Any Mage you find around these parts would be a beginner in comparison. Not the kind of person that could ever touch on this level of spellwork.”
Oh? A different continent could mean different resources. Alpha filed that little tidbit away for later and turned his focus back to the wall. He turned to No. 7 and said,
“Well then. If going over the wall will not work, and going under it is a bust, there was only one reasonable solution.”
No. 7 sighed and started walking to the gate as they spoke.
“Finally. Let’s stop wasting time and get to the gate. No doubt our… ruckus has drawn attention, and they’ve reinforced it by now.”
Alpha laughed and responded.
“Why would we worry about that? We just need to make our own gate.”
No. 7 paused, then slowly turned to stare at the AI.
——————
No. 7 stood cross-armed next to the mysterious “Lord Protector,” or ‘Alpha’ as he’d named himself. Both stared into the large, shimmering bubble formation as the dozen flying slimes zoomed around inside, constructing… something.
No. 7 would be lying if they said they weren’t a little surprised. Time dilation formations were among the most difficult and expensive ones to create. They took centuries to master, and maintaining them required pre-built structures designed specifically for that purpose. Not only that, but even stronger formations could only speed up or slow down the passaging time by a small margin, roughly 40-60% depending on their quality.
That might not seem a lot, but when some pill refining or cultivation techniques could take decades to complete, these formations could shave years off the process.
Yet, Alpha had set up such a formation with little more than a dozen square boxes in minutes. Even more amazing, the dilation was one scale of magnitudes, not percentages. Whatever these boxes were, they were artifacts that even the Great Sects would fight wars over.
Part of No. 7 wanted to grab the boxes and make a run for it. The mission be damned. The value of these artifacts alone would have been worth a hundred such missions, and that was saying a lot. Archimedes might not have been the strongest, most talented, or even the wealthiest member of the Camp, but he was a professional.
Archimedes had become somewhat of a boogyman to the rich and powerful of the world; he’d never once failed to successfully kidnap someone and get away with it. Many paid a hefty sum in ransoms over the years or to be put on the “untouchables” list, at the very least.
And as Archimedes’s avenger, No. 7 had a right to everything he’d left behind.
But No. 7 quickly discarded that idea.
Even if they disregarded the danger of Alpha and his strange abilities, this was no longer just a mission of personal gain. If it really was true that there was an Army of Iris under the Radiant Sea, then things would only get more complicated from here. Every faction on Relictus, big or small, light or dark, orthodox or unorthodox, were bound to work together by the Undead Accords.
Iris’ army could and had destroyed mortal worlds before. Petty rivalries, old grudges, and disagreements all fell away in the face of the undead and their world’s very survival. No. 7 had already sent news back to the Camp through their own means. The word should be spreading even as they stood there. The question was, would it already be too late?
No. 7 turned and spoke to Alpha in a flat voice.
“…. You know this isn’t going to work, right? Anyone with the slightest bit of experience could tell you this was a stupid idea….”
Alpha turned and stared down at them with those strange red eyes.
“As the ancient proverb of the Federation goes, ‘if it looks stupid, but it works, it’s not stupid.’”
No. 7 stared back in silence before turning back to watch the flying slimes work. After a moment, they spoke up again.
“… The more I learn about your people, the more worried I am.”
Alpha laughed and responded.
“You’ll get used to it.”
——————
Alpha monitored the translight bubble for irregularities. He’d been worried about using any translight technology ever since the space squid incident, but lucky for him, that appeared to be a one-off event. All the readings came back well within normal parameters. Then again, maybe that was strange, given all the weird interference in the area currently.
Alpha wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, though. Not after how much this setup was going to cost him. The translight nodes themselves weren’t too expensive, but he’d had to deploy a few nanite seeds in the area to them set up. That wasn’t even considering the special alloys he had to sacrifice in his storage to build the drill head of the [Core Drill] he was building.
The [Core Drill] wasn’t normally something he should have had access to. It was equipment designed for deep mantle mining on planets designated for scrapping. He’d requested the blueprints for it on a previous mission and never used it again. Nanite miners were more efficient for surface-level mining, and the special equipment required to survive planet mantles and establish proper mantle mines was expensive.
Lucky for Alpha, he needed none of that. The current build was little more than a rushed, stripped-down version of a proper [Core Drill], but it should be enough to bust through a couple dozen meters of stone. Better yet, since most of the materials were going into the drill head, he could come back and salvage it once all this mess was over.
There would be no retrieving the nanites, but the alloys could be easily repurposed. It was a risk, but depending on how well the enemy had reinforced the gate, Alpha may have used just as many supplies to break through there.
He much preferred the known cost he could later salvage versus an unknown cost against an unknown number of enemies.
Twenty minutes later, the assembly drones inside the translight bubble finished their task, and the translight nodes were collected. As the bubble collapsed, the stripped-down skeleton of the [Core Drill] revealed itself. On the surface, it was unimpressive; little more than a metal drill head roughly the size of the TAWP, with a carriage behind where the TAWP could lock into place. Nevertheless, it was Federation tech, so how could it be that simple?
The next part was going to hurt, though. Alpha mentally grimaced but gave the command. The assembly drones move to surround the drill, then attached themselves. Over the next few seconds, the drones dissolved one by one, their nanites breaking down to become the various internals and circuitry required to finish the construct. That would mean those nanites would be lost to Alpha and would have to be rebuilt using another seed.
Costly, but necessary. The various delicate components needed weren’t something he could make alone with just the TAWP’s internal factory. But the same nanites that made up the assembly drones and the TAWP’s nanite “skin,” for that matter, could mimic them.
He could salvage the drill head and the skeleton, but all of those internals would have to be reprocessed all over again.
The deed done, Alpha approached the finished [Core Drill] and stepped into the carriage. His TAWP slotted neatly into place as several magnetic clamps engaged and Alpha interfaced with the drill’s systems.
The next moment, the back of the TAWP clicked, then slid away with a hiss, revealing a small seated compartment and a short ramp. The cockpit was mostly a vestigial component for most AI-driven TAWP, but Alpha had found it useful enough to keep. It was quite useful for transporting living “guests.”
Of course, he’d remembered to remove any form of cockpit controls. You only made that mistake once…
It was a tight squeeze for most species, but not too bad, and if they didn’t fit in the cockpit, Alpha could always shove them into his cargo. That was typically a last resort, though; overexposure to spatial expansion tended to be unhealthy for biologicals. Despite the need for constant expansion to support their growing population, that was the primary reason the Federation regulated the technology to cargo and manufacturing.
Alpha called out to No. 7, who’d been standing by the wayside in silence.
“Are you coming? We’ve already lost enough time here; let’s finish this.”
No. 7 stood wordlessly for a moment, before throwing up their arms and walking toward the open hatch, and saying,
“In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess. I agree. Let’s get this over with.”
They crawled into the small cockpit, and the hatch silently closed behind them.
No. 7 secured, Alpha turned the [Core Drill] toward the wall, the ground rumbling under their combined weight. The drill head started spinning, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until it became a whistling blur that threw up a cloud of dust on either side. Then it contacted the wall, and Alpha muttered to himself.
“Time to see what’s stronger; Federation stubbornness or magical bullcrap…”