Chương 44: Interlude VI: Countdown

"I see you outdid yourselves again." Adjusted for the locals' perception and understanding, the pattern of vibrations propagated across countless, infinitesimal bundles of standing waves, spread and scattered and was absorbed, transmitting both energy and information.

"Now put the idiot that designed a nuke to explode while he still was in the blast radius on the table, so I can heal him before he is done in by his own stupidity."

Two hundred and thirty-seven octillion standing waves in two distinct complex patterns were struck by Verity's emanation, a web of interactions flowing through them and making tiny adjustments that culminated in their relocating the ninety-one octillion standing waves of the third complex pattern on the larger yet vastly simpler pattern with the local designation "table".

"Is he going to be OK?" the smaller of the two active patterns emanated an energy/information bundle that conveyed obvious worry and barely concealed despair - at least as far as the local girl could comprehend. Her communication would propagate on the world beyond, its influence affecting events beyond the locals' ability to observe, let alone count or track, indirectly but meaningfully impacting over a thousand births and deaths within a single planetary rotation.

"If by 'OK' you mean well-done..." Verity trailed off, modulating her response to cause precisely the reactions needed for a certain chain of events she'd been forging for eleven planetary rotations.

She rolled the semblance of what the locals called eyes for good measure, emanating an impression of carefree confidence that caused the two local girls to relax, while also propagating to the world beyond to destructively superpose with bits of prior influence to prevent one hundred and thirty-seven accidents, nine strokes and one tornado her actions would have otherwise indirectly led to. The further one could see down the tree of causality, the more responsibility they had for events.

That done, she got to healing. Jerry's complex pattern had been severely degraded, even at points scattered, by relatively high-energy emanations from the weapon he'd designed and built. Far beyond the locals' self-correction abilities, the parts of the pattern responsible for environmental energy and matter exchange would soon fail, quickly followed by those supporting sapience and sentience. In the locals' terms he was about to die, though that didn't mean what the locals thought it meant.

To avoid having to resolve that particular mess of teleological misconceptions, Verity invested a massive amount of power. Plus she actually liked the larval sapience; his greatest desire was the pursuit of truth and knowledge. Jerry's... body glowed strangely, emanating infinitesimal amounts of magic across all... frequencies for lack of a better local term. With sufficient knowledge and precision, it was possible to restore his pattern with less energy than a local spent on taking a single step.

On the other hand, healing had been requested thus providing it was allowed. With sufficiently creative interpretation of certain treaties, overcharging a basic bruise-removal cantrip still counted as healing in this case. If, due to inefficiencies, said cantrip needed enough raw magic to levitate a mountain to fully heal the target, why, who could have predicted that? And if the unused excess magic had environmental impacts certain people might complain about...

well, they should have lobbied for better-worded treaties. As Jerry's pattern sluggishly reverted to a less degraded state, it also infinitesimally adjusted to the enormous amounts of energy flowing through it. One million, six hundred and eighty-four thousand one hundred and thirteen disparate information constructs subtly shifted. Their meanings and contents weren't altered; editing a being's personality and thoughts was rather frowned upon.

They did streamline however, like one of the locals' crude information storage devices getting defragmented. They also aligned, attuned to the nature of the energy flowing through them, new patterns forming through the alignment of lesser patterns. Much like patterns of people could form nations, patterns of thought could form magic. Outright granting someone magic was the part of the treaties most often broken by certain parties, often leading to disastrous wars, so Verity did not do that.

Instead of directly forcing new patterns on Jerry's form, exposure to her energies let them form as naturally as being exposed to ambient magic. Better still, the emergent pattern was one of many, overlapping on Jerry's thoughts with several others, much like a sapient being could belong to different groups. Last but definitely not least, it was only an impression instead of fully formed, leaving to Jerry the final choice of accepting or rejecting it.

One more opportunity granted instead of an action decided and forced, the Word of Invention slowly took shape as the healing progressed. Amanda's complex pattern still hovered close to the recovering boy, emanating worry and guilt. Verity followed the sorceress's development with a critical eye; unlike her friends, this one had discovered the process of aligning her powers to ambient magical energy by herself...

then proceeded to take power from the enemy's undead and lesser fiends through force and use it as an element to align with. Multiple causality branches led to a new necromancer in her not so distant future and even more to a demoness of fire and ruin, so many that most people back home would strike her down if they noticed, but Verity withheld judgement as she always did. Those who judged preemptively were rather thoroughly missing the implications of infinite possible futures.

Unlike the other two, the complex pattern that was Maya was already aligned, but also fragmented. Past influences had seen to that, and Verity's work in fixing it was slow to bear fruit. Paths in which the girl's potential would have died unrealized in the cradle had been largely averted so far.

Those in which she'd grow up to become a monster would be an issue for a long time to come, which would be suboptimal for someone manifesting the Word of Force a mere eleven planetary rotations after the first exposure to magic. Beyond the underground safehouse, new patterns appeared in the fabric of the world. Some long awaited in the North that would push Verity's plans towards fruition, some more immediately concerning in the city proper. But those, too, had been accounted for.

"Healing's done," she projected, getting gratitude and relief in return which, unfortunately, she immediately had to disperse.

"While he rests, I got a new mission for you two."

"We just got back from a major battle," the taller girl forcefully projected, her pattern's interactions with the world unconsciously setting up an earthquake to the West as the Word of Force echoed through and made quite a bit more work for Verity to catch up to.

"The city's a madhouse out there - what remains of it anyway. We can't go fight monsters now, we need some rest!"

"I suppose I should tell the other survivors in danger of being slaughtered by monsters to wait, then," Verity signaled back, causing brief annoyance followed by guilt.

"The reward for a job done well is more work. You are one of the few that both no longer need physical rest and can survive doing what needs to be done. Who am I supposed to send?" She didn't need to see the girl's pattern shifting towards agreement, the infinite causal branches of the world shifting towards the desired outcome by a single choice.

"Fine!" The girl crossed her appendages in a rather immature way of conveying her dissatisfaction but still chose to go along with Verity's plans.

"Where's the fire I got to put out this time?"

"Funny you should mention a fire," Verity mused. Manipulating people to do what you wanted was simple; with sufficient knowledge and precision it could literally be done with a wave of the hand in the right time and place. But by making the manipulation obvious, conveying clearly what you wanted people to do while also making it the best course of action, you got them to choose to do what you wanted, which was far more optimal.

For one thing, even if they hated you and the plan they'd still chosen to go along with both.

"The enemy is about to set the old trailer park on fire to burn out a group of survivors."

"... did you say 'trailer park'?" Maya demanded angrily after a few moments of scrambled thoughts, a thousand old, deep patterns in her mind lighting up as her whole body went taut like a coiled spring.

"Yes." Verity said with a firm nod. Yes I did." With a wordless growl, the girl stalked out of the infirmary, her complex pattern unconsciously amplifying multiple destructive causal chains at her every step as the Word of Force moved infinitesimally closer to full manifestation. Only one Being in all of Creation had not hated Verity at least once, but she could live with that. xxxx xxxx The screen had been showing the targeting range for a long while.

Set in an artificially-lit hangar with metal walls, no windows and highly secure exits, it was filled with dozens of soldiers shooting at non-standard targets and even more technicians poring over hundreds of measuring and recording equipment. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story. A soldier fired the standard XM7 rifle to a distant block of ballistic jelly three hundred feet away.

The fully automatic weapon roared; silencer or no silencer, emptying its entire box magazine in one go would never be quiet. One second, two, three... by the time the soldier ran out of bullets several technicians were gesticulating wildly at their computer screens. Many of the soldiers were looking at their fellow grunt speculatively, too. And well they should, for the grouping of his shots was significantly tighter than normal for the three-hundred-foot range.

Also, he'd just shot sixty-seven rounds without a reload when his magazine had only held twenty. The technicians got the soldier a new weapon and a new box magazine straight from the last supply run and got him to shoot again, the sensors recording everything while they argued. Then they gave him another weapon and another, the box magazines varying as well. The soldier repeated his impossible feat nine times, the number of bullets he fired actually increasing slightly by the ninth attempt.

The tenth he only managed to fire the standard twenty rounds, which was still impressive considering he'd been given a magazine full of dummy rounds that should not have fired at all. More tests with more soldiers followed. Many displayed greatly increased weapon performance similar to the first test to varying degrees, some with emphasis on accuracy, others with firepower, others still with multiplying, refilling or longer-lasting ammunition.

Repeated tests showed that for most of the soldiers results diminished sharply if they were given another weapon model to fire, were mostly static for the same weapon type, but very slowly improved with repetition if they used the same weapon they had in the recent battles. The tests continued despite most of the soldiers showing signs of major exhaustion, stress, lack of sleep, low morale or even the occasional wounds, but nobody complained.

Everybody understood more data on the new abnormal phenomena were absolutely critical, and the survivors of the Army's latest defeat were more willing to keep testing than most. Of the few hundred survivors that had displayed abnormal capabilities, most were pretty similar in what they could do and how effective they were... but some were not.

A young brunette volunteer from Mobile Emergency Response Support that could only be described as "mousy" aimed an M17 pistol that seemed to be made out of rainbow-like crystal. When she pulled the trigger, a tracer-like trail colored a vibrant red hit the first target, which promptly caught on fire. With ballistic gelatin being 90% water, that was rather impressive. The second target was shot by a similar tracer-like trail colored bright orange... and exploded as if from a small grenade going off within.

The third target was hit by an orange trail and immediately started hissing, rapidly melting to a foul-smelling sludge. The green magical shot made the following target rapidly blacken and sag until it was reduced to dark brown dust a tenth of its volume. The one hit by the blue shot froze over almost instantly and shattered, while the indigo shot turned the target into a sheep... which still died to the physical bullet damage.

The violet shot was the brightest and more like a beam than a tracer round; it also made the ballistic gel disappear without trace. The woman was by far the most unusual case but by no means the only unique one. Soldiers that could enlarge their bullets to cause more damage or multiply them to hit multiple targets. Snipers that could make bullets home in like tiny missiles or magnify penetration and overall damage many times over.

One old sergeant whose shots turned into small but thick clouds of locusts that ate the ballistic gel of multiple targets in under a minute before disappearing. A military policeman who could make every weapon shoot a jet of fire like a flamethrower that scaled in size and range with the weapon's bore. Said MP's partner could make weapons shoot bubbles that grew to engulf her targets and were tougher to shoot or cut through than infantry ballistic plating.

While the enemy in the occupied city brought more legions of unnatural creatures and spread about supernatural weather, the US military scrambled to understand the methods of the enemy and take advantage of both their strengths and weaknesses. xxxx xxxx Legate Mott of the dominion of Maveth waved his arms and another mass of earth and soil the size of a large room turned whiter than the purest snow before sublimating into pure magic.

Before the twenty-foot gap in soil and bedrock could collapse from the abrupt change, two Dark Masons moved in. The first maintained a constant flow of magical repairs to keep the new portion of the tunnel stable, while the other conjured slabs of steel that would stabilize it, if not permanently, then long enough for the campaign to conclude. That done, the team of three advanced sixty feet and repeated the minute-long process, as they had been doing non-stop for the past few hours.

Working underground without rest would have been grueling for mortals, as the ancient Mavethans had found out then proceeded to replace their slave labor with the far more reliable undead and magic-wielders. Compared to even Dark Mason training the simple construction work was quite relaxing; unlike Maveth's cursed obsidian, ironstone and black adamantite bedrock, this world was proving soft and malleable. The first part of the project would be finished in mere hours, with the rest done in only a few days.

If all went according to plan, Mott's hastily-built above-ground base would last long enough for them to finish while also gathering the needed magical investment to spark their project to... not life certainly, but something close yet simpler and purer. To that end, the Legate had put his other Dark Masons into repairing the base's damage and repopulating its armies against the imminent resumption of hostilities.

A departure from his original plan mandated by the locals' proven adaptation of their most destructive weapon into magical construction, but not unwelcome. Mott welcomed the challenge. He owed his great power first to his Lord, but secondly to all the clever enemies that had opposed Mavethan intrusion not just with strength of arms but also foresight and ingenuity. Absorbing the lessons they had to teach only grew the glory of Maveth, as was proper. It was Mot's job to find a way to survive being taught.

Half an hour later, footsteps echoed in the cavernous, gently curving tunnel they had been excavating. Two pairs of them, in fact; one slow and incredibly heavy, the other so light they were barely audible. The Legate smiled; the agent he'd sent forth had finally arrived. Without pausing his work, he called out a greeting.

"Welcome, sergeant," the Mavethan invader said pleasantly.

"I see you brought company."

"The brat wouldn't stay put," an enormously muscled man grumbled down from the height of five and a half cubits. He wore one of the locals' sleeveless, too-thin shirts, originally leaf green but now dirty and stained enough to be mostly dark brown and yellow. Trousers that were similar to one of the locals' military uniforms bulged around tree-trunk like legs that stomped down with crude gigantic boots.

The same rough musculature and bulk strained against the stained shirt as a barrel-like torso, with arms thicker and longer than the man's legs, a nonexistent neck and a thick, meaty head topped by short-cropped blond hair. Dirty blue eyes glowed ominously behind narrowed eyelids, glowering down at the man's tiny companion.

"And who might you be, young lady?" Mott asked the child, pausing in his casting to greet his guests. Instead of answering, the slip of a girl hid behind the man's leg, her head barely reaching above his knee.

"A pain in my arse, is what she is," the 'sergeant' grumbled again in a voice like clashing rocks.

"Managed to kill one of those zombies you gave me for grunt work and would have run into the battlefield if I hadn't caught her."

"An auspicious turn of events," Mott commented.

"Mavethan children must destroy their first zombie before being accepted into our training programs. The younger they manage it, the greater their head start over their peers. And if they fail?" the Legate shrugged.

"Then both the unworthy and the foolhardy had been discarded from the volunteer pool. Nobody forced them into the attempt without preparation but their own failings."

"Bah, brats are just brats. They need discipline to be worth anything," the man countered. Mott didn't voice his disagreement; educating the shortsighted was not in his job description.

"That imp said you wanted me. Another mission?"

"Indeed." At Mott's words, the overmuscled fool did not even try to curb his excitement, eyes gleaming and mouth positively drooling at the prospect. But because he had been and would be a useful fool for a while longer, Mott did not give voice to his contempt.

"Survivors have gathered in your old place, my friend. I'd send some of my forces but the... nukular weapon has severely depleted their number and resistance fighters will almost certainly turn up." The Legate purposefully mispronounced the intriguing destructive device's name, concealing the extent of his understanding of the locals' culture as he often did with his latest guest.

It made him appear uncultured thus easily manipulated to the fool, despite what should have been the Mavethan civilization's obvious complexity and superior means, in turn making the fool easier to manipulate.

"Resistance fighters, you say?" The fool's eagerness intensified, as expected. Then again, Mott had won the man's allegiance with power and longevity fueled by killing, something the disgraced former sergeant had absolutely zero moral arguments against.

"You want them captured or dead?"

"I leave the decision up to you, my friend," Mott said with a shrug. He'd been willing to be the man's friend at first, because competent collaborators were not easy to find and the conquest of the world had initially been planned as a long campaign. Alas, the fool had proven even more willing to be Mott's witless pawn.

"I just want this... trailer park was it? I want the place cleared out for new construction."

"Excellent.," the fool readily agreed.

"Got a place for me to leave the brat?"

"There's a guest cabin next to mine," Mott said, the girl's face paling at the words. If she continued proving smarter than her father maybe Mott would get a proper recruit out of this debacle after all...