Vol. 3 Chap. 143 A Flawless Plan
Truth had an unusual problem. Well, he thought it was unusual. It hadnt ever co up for him before, but maybe he was underestimating the challenges faced by other people. He nodded to himself, as he wedged himself up into the corner of the wall and the ceiling, relying on his inhuman strength and conditioning to hold him in place.
Yes, other people had their own struggles, their own burdens. Who was he to assu what problems they did and did not face? Perhaps this was just one of those questions everyone confronted.
Exactly how fast did lava flow?
If, hypothetically, one were to trigger an explosion in a volcano (sohow) and that was big enough to (sohow) cause the lava to surge and if, soone (sohow) left open the door to a secret base that connected to a lava tube, how fast could the lava flow through the secret base? Hypothetically.
He should have asked soone at the convenience store in town. Or an old tir smoking on a bench. An elder at ho was like having a treasure, according to his period romances. They would definitely know the answer. Probably dealt with this exact problem five or six tis.
He knew he was flapping. He needed sothing dramatic. Sothing that would at least draw the attention of those high levels. People who could handle mountain-lting level problems. The key to any surprise attack, any ambush, was speed. Which ant that the question wasnt idle. How fast did lava flow? And what would it take to flood the base with it?
So. Issue number one- investigating what was on the other side of the bulkhead. He dropped to the floor behind the workers coming off shift. His feet fell on the polished concrete silently. When he moved, his feet matched the steps of the workers exactly. They hadnt the faintest idea he was there.
They marched through the halls directly to a locker room, where they more or less collapsed.
Good God! Every ti I think Im going to get used to it. But I dont. That shit is freaky. When does the job get boring? A worker moaned.
It was a multi-step process trying to get your boots off. It was designed to be both sealed against things coming up the trouser leg, and just as important, stopped things from falling down into the boot. A complex system of straps and seals were employed, each of which took a few seconds to disengage. As a result, each boot took about a minute to remove. It felt considerably longer.
You arent bored? This from a woman who looked like she had been lted by heat and sort of smooshed back into a roughly human shape. Or maybe that was just the exhaustion. Whats so interesting about thousand degree rock bubbling and spitting pebbles of fiery death at you while you try to work?
Speaking personally, its the way you cant really see, breath or feel anything properly through the suit, but you know that if you take off any portion of it, the best case scenario is that you are maid. Its that Fear of horrific pain and/or death combined with claustrophobia that really makes sleepy. This from a pudgy little man who, upon removing the shoulder length gauntlets from the protective suit, revealed tattoos of catbirds on his arms.
One of you bastards has a cold beer in their locker. Or a cold tea, or sothing. Give it to , and I promise I will ntally take back at least one of the things I thought about you. This ca from a hunched over person, struggling to shrug off their sodden undershirt. I swear my aircon enchantnt is busted.
If you really think so, drop it off with maintenance. Dont be an asshole, just go do it.
Back and forth, the workers bickered and moaned. It all sounded normal to Truth. Could it really just be Starbrite talking to himself? It couldnt be, right? They werent ntal clones any more than he was a ntal clone. It was more like each person had their base personality nudged more in line with what Starbrite wanted.
Why did Starbrite want employees that reflected different parts of his personality? Why did he want their souls brought into line with his? Truth could feel the edges of so enormous secret here. Could this be the secret to Starbrites power? Sohow? But it sounded like Starbrite couldnt move around much. He needed a new body. Didnt sound powerful. And yet.
Truth eavesdropped on the moaning laborers, watched them put everything away, drop things for cleaning and repair, pull on their off-duty clothes before they shuffled off to the cafeteria. In the secret volcano lair. He had to stifle a hysterical giggle. If Sally was right, there were only three people in the building. Sally, Truth, and Starbrite.
He didnt want to believe Sally was right. It didnt feel entirely right. But he didnt have a better theory.
He followed the team lead when she split off. Apparently to report in to soone. Now why would you have to do that if everyone was a ntal clone of Starbrite? But then, the System had told him he was under instructions not to contact the main System Astrologica unless utterly necessary. Like when he completed a mission, or bought sothing through the System Shop.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
So it wasnt like it was one big, distributed, brain. Was it more like gardening? Sally said sothing like that, right? He was growing elixir ingredients. His employees, eventually the whole nation of Jeon, maybe nations around the world, would be his ingredients. To do what, exactly?
The team leader went into a little office with lots of cheerful underwater views of bright tropical reefs. Lots and lots of colorful little fish.
Hows it going in there? The supervisor asked.
Sa as usual. I would have thought all the bombardnt might shake sothing loose, but nope.
Its a giant, ancient volcano. Itll take more than a few low yield spells going off against our wards to shake it. The supervisor chuckled.
Guess so. The mana conversion systems and heat miners remain within the expected paraters, failure rate is on the high end of the range but within projections-
I can get all that from your reports. What I want to know is how it feels.
She blinked at him. Truth watched the byplay. The supervisor was deadly serious. He was the kind of man who can turn a paunch, a cheap tie and a comb over into badges of competence.
How what feels?
How do the tunnels feel? The mining rigs? The ritual anchors? How do they feel? I know what it feels like in those suits, but did you feel safe in the tunnels? Did you feel like soone was watching you? Like sothing was wrong and you just couldnt see it? How did your shift feel?
Um. Well. Not fine, obviously. Nobody likes being in the tunnels. The supervisor nodded. But Id say pretty normal? None of the alarms were tripped or bypassed if that is what you are getting at. None of the banishnts or wards were damaged either. It all looked fine. So, as shifts went, it went fine?
The supervisor nodded slightly. Thats good. You know why I ask, I assu.
Worried about infiltrators coming in through earth movent spells or tunneling demons or sothing?
Or sothing, yes. He sighed, smiling a little. Its a quirk of the lava tubes. Most of the cone of the volcano is near solid basalt and volcanic rock. But there are these little tubes snaking around.
Tubes we can use. She nodded. And theoretically, with a very specialized spell load out, soone could use it to get to us.
Its incredibly unlikely, of course. And there are guards on our side of the bulkhead. But Im not in charge of this side of the bulkhead. So any little warning bells you hear ringing, any vibes that might turn into problems later- I want to know about it. Because when things go wrong inside an active volcano
She smiled at the frumpy looking man. Appreciate you looking out for us, boss.
Nonsense. You are all valuable KPIs. You exist to make my numbers go up. The good numbers. The bad numbers you exist to make go down. He waved her out of his office. Truth hung out with the supervisor a bit longer.
The wax tablets and pools of rcury on the supervisors desk were displaying streams of information. So showing security footage inside alarmingly red tunnels, others showing numbers going up and down. Truth recognized a few of them. They were reporting devices that tracked things like air quality, temperature, cosmic ray density, things like that. From there he was able to figure out roughly what he was looking at.
It was a power source. He had never seen anything like it. Generally, ambient cosmic rays were more than enough to power almost anything, really. Sotis you needed a big spell array to gather the energy, but actually generating the power was not unheard of, exactly, but very, very weird. He didnt understand the chanism, but sothing was taking that lava and turning it into usable cosmic energy. Powering what, he didnt know.
Nothing felt excessively energy dense. Not the lab, not the curses holding down Sally maybe the wards? The whole volcano was covered in magical protection. That had to be drawing a ton of power. Have sothing set up that could shrug off the big blasts of energy, limit the spells that could hit the mountain, force people to go in on foot and then feed em to the monsters outside could be it. But the display didnt say where the power went. Just that it was coming in, and all the systems continued to report green.
The lack of a giant red button labeled Warning! Self Destruct, DO NOT PRESS! was disappointing, if expected. But the basic notion was pretty clear- there is a machine, a magical device, that was sohow turning lava or heat into usable energy. He could work with that.
There was a knock on the door.
Co in!
Got a mont to talk about shift schedules? A weedy looking man asked. Truth took that as his cue to leave.
Truth could feel bits and pieces sliding around. He didnt think Sally was right about the System Astrologica, or at least, not all the way right. He knew that the System took over people and harvested chunks of their souls, but it was also a pretty hands-off manager. You had to directly get its attention if you wanted to talk to it, mostly. That system-fairy, for example, never just turned up on its own.
Sa thing applied to him just possessing her body, or whatever he was planning. Again, if he wanted off-world, he could have done it by booking a ticket. Why kidnap a Shattervoid child? There was sothing he was missing, sothing he was missing
Truth road the halls, checking the other doors as he went past. He got VERY fast at cracking the locks, which was handy since he had to stop, run away and hide from the trolls depressingly often. He ca to the conclusion that as secret volcano lairs went, this one was a bit of a snooze. There were staff apartnts, so barracks, a ss hall, a managent ss hall, a senior managent dining room, janitors closet, etc. All the normal things that Truth associated with army/PMC bases.
On the second floor, he found a room the size of a large lecture hall, covered in dense arrays of runes and spells waiting to be activated. All focused on a currently empty ritual space at the front of the hall. There were odd looking devices, sowhat like pipes, extending down from the ceiling. Truth smiled. He had found the ritual room. Now he could really get cooking.
Reviews
All reviews (0)