Chương 181: Chapter 180 [Portal Potential]

Diane was still turning her mug slowly between both hands when Leo brought it up.

"You should probably hear about the other thing Sam's been working on," he said.

"Might be right up your street."

"Oh?" Diane's attention sharpened immediately.

"Don't get excited," Sam said.

"It's not confirmed to be anything yet."

"He's being modest," Rika said.

"Tell her about the floating oval thing." Sam gave her the run down on what they'd found out about his stone disk. Diane set her mug down without seeming to notice she'd done it.

"You think it's a portal."

"Maybe," Sam said.

"Rock bounced off it when I tried throwing something through. If it is one, it's not doing anything on its own. It'd need something to connect to."

"A second one." Diane's fingers started drumming against the table.

"That's — Sam, if that's real, that's not just useful. That's massive."

"That's what I said," Phil put in.

"Before you get carried away," Diane said, holding up a hand, "you need to think carefully about where you test the second one. You can't do it inside the walls. Not until you know for certain you can shut one down if it goes wrong."

"Obviously," Parmo said.

"A way to bypass town defences isn't something we need after the attack we just had to deal with."

"Exactly," Diane said. Sam nodded slowly.

"We haven't jumped to testing the second one for that reason. Give us some credit." He rolled his eyes.

"I think we test it outside the walls somewhere to see if they link and if I can shut them off. If that works then we can talk to Mike about setting up an area that can act as a portal hub. We can head to the villages to set them up."

"Good idea," Diane said. It was around then that Lauren drifted over from the bar, drying her hands on her apron, eyes going straight past the conversation to the small golden shape curled against Growlie on the table.

"Oh my god. Who's this then?" She leaned in for a proper look, careful not to crowd.

"Oh, he's gorgeous." She looked over at Luka.

"He? She?"

"He. His name's Apollo," Luka said, unable to keep the pride entirely out of his voice.

"Suits him." Lauren glanced over her shoulder toward the bar. Victoria was watching and clearly wanted to come over too. Lauren laughed.

"I imagine Victoria will be over the second there's a lull. You'll probably have more people coming over the longer you sit here. The little guy's going to be popular round here." Victoria appeared not ten minutes later, wiping her hands on a cloth, hair escaping its tie in a few places. She crouched down slightly to get a proper look at Apollo, careful and quiet about it. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"He's beautiful," she said.

"I see Growlie every day, so you'd think I'd be used to seeing them, but a baby dragon. Don't suppose you'd mind if I took him off your hands, Luka?"

"Nice try," he laughed.

"Sorry, mate," Mars said, patting Growlie on the head where he lay curled beside Apollo.

"Reckon you've just been replaced as Victoria's favourite." Over the next half an hour, people came by to see Apollo, never getting close enough to spook him but wanting to see the cute new member of town. Mike arrived a little later, spotted the gathering, and made his way over.

"Heard there was a new addition to the town," he said, settling into a chair someone dragged over for him.

"Didn't expect quite this much of a crowd around him."

"He's a bit of a celebrity," Parmo said. Mike leaned in for a proper look, huffing out something close to a laugh.

"Good. Town could do with something like this. Been a rough few weeks."

"How's the food situation looking?" Torren asked.

"Last I heard the crops were doing well."

"Better than well," Mike said.

"Growth hasn't slowed down at all. Fish is solid too — nothing out here's ever been fished before, near as we can tell. No instinct to be wary of a hook yet. Only real gap left is meat. Can't exactly farm cattle from nothing, and hunting only stretches so far."

"That's part of why I wanted to talk to you all, actually," he went on.

"Been thinking on this a while, and I want to run it past the elders properly soon. We've got things worth real money out here — things nobody else round here has. If we can get some of it moving as trade, we could bring back things we're missing. Building materials, mostly. Some of our old infrastructure's sat useless since we got here for want of the right supplies."

"Through Stonehall?" Leo asked.

"Has to be, doesn't it. We've no roads out here fit for carts, and the fewer eyes on us directly for now, the better." Mike's expression sobered slightly.

"You all know we're on a clock already, with the inspector due out this way eventually. Word travels slow this far out, months at best before it reaches the core properly. No sense speeding that along by giving some greedy noble in the closest city a reason to start asking questions early. You heard about him?"

"The one everyone hates?" Leo said.

"Yeah, Shai mentioned they've had issues with him in the past in Stonehall."

"It's true," Shai added.

"He's a noble, so it's not strange he's got some standing, but the fact he's out here, away from the core, means he's not important enough to matter to them. And because the core rarely cares what happens this far out, he gets to act like he's the Emperor himself. It's frustrating — we can't just stop him with force, not with the risk he'll make something up and take it to the core. He never comes to try anything himself, but he'll often send his own thugs and cutthroats to cause trouble in the border villages."

"That's the one. Villages round here can't stand him. Works in our favour, far as keeping this quiet goes — nobody's rushing to do him any favours." Mike shrugged.

"If Stonehall and the others handle the trade for us same as everything else, we stay well clear of him. And it speeds things up for everyone — the faster we get our own infrastructure running again, the faster whatever we're sharing back with them keeps improving too. Just another piece of the same arrangement, really."

"Actually," Sam said, "there's something else you should probably know about." He gave Mike the short version — enough to get the point across without dwelling on it, Diane cutting in once or twice to back up the parts that mattered most. Mike's eyebrows went up.

"If that's real," he said slowly, once Sam had finished, "and you can actually get two of them to link up properly — that's not just useful for what I've been talking about. That's a different conversation entirely."

"How do you mean?" Leo asked.

"Trade's not just about Stonehall and the border villages. Empire's not the only power in this world, is it. If you lot can eventually get out and about, meet other places, other peoples — a fixed point you can always step back through changes what's possible. Not just faster. Further. Trade routes nobody else could manage, because nobody else has what you've got." Mike shook his head slightly.

"Could be looking at something a lot bigger than fixing a meat shortage, if this works the way you think it might."

"No pressure, then," Sam said.

"None at all," Mike said, entirely straight-faced.

"Keep me posted. On all of it. Sooner we know what we're actually working with, sooner any of us can plan properly."