Magical Engineering

The cold had really set in once we hit January. That also meant we had survived until the end of the year. Twenty-twenty-six would be the first full year Earth spent as part of something bigger than itself. That was, of course assuming we could survive until the end of this year as well.

Both my confidence and determination that we would, were enough to make me not question it. Little William was coming along quite well. Alex had recovered from the pregnancy in record time, and now with her own core, they were taking every moment they could to experience the world together.

While I had never questioned before what kind of mother my daughter would be, I was still glad to see how much she enjoyed it. It likely helped that so far, William had been an easy baby. He had seemed to have entirely skipped the make sure your parents can never sleep newborn phase and went right into curious about everything toddler phase.

Laura had made sure to drop off a new set of toys for him before she left on another trip off-world. She had spent more time off-world than on since William was born. But given the first contacts she had managed to make, who was I to complain?

She currently had four factions discussing a future summit. That wasn’t even including the giants. We’d get the full details when she returned in the Spring, but for now, both Pryte and the president had seemed very hopeful at the news. Eventually, we’d need to send more people out with Laura, but other than Pryte, I didn’t have anyone I really trusted for that, and I couldn’t afford to lose him with Mel still gone.

That was someone who loomed large over the homestead even with his prolonged absence. In December, a family of Cloudforms had shown up unexpectantly, claiming that Mel had sent them here. Their two children were both nearly dead when they arrived, but after a week in the branches of the cloudtree, they were already showing signs of a fruitful recovery. I very much doubted they would be the last refugees Mel sent us. After everything he had done for Earth, I was glad to help his people in any way I could.

Of course, in the few months since our battle with the siren, they hadn’t been the only new additions to the growing city. The traveler’s gate had been rebuilt, and not only because the Traveler cores requested it. We needed a way to contain the weak spot in our reality that the siren breaking through had managed to cause. Thanks to Karlinovo and Elody, we hopefully had it entirely locked down from any more intrusions, but considering we hadn’t expected the first, there was just no way to be really sure.

Elicec had spent much of the time with his brother deep in study and practice. The letter they had received had led to him tripling his training time. He was preparing himself for whatever he needed to save his people. Cecile, on the other hand, had put most of his practice work into the fields.

The continued growth of the crops was nothing short of amazing. After a month of training others, Cecile had all the help he needed from both the Reltleons and some of the people who had continued to swell the human population numbers of the city. He was now working out a plan for a colossal greenhouse in the Midwest of what used to be the United States.

Several more countries had now joined in the alliance as intelligence had spread of Alexandria and the power we had concentrated here. I didn’t like the idea of what this really meant, even if they were still pretending to be aligned with the city. Eventually, someone was going to make a power play against us. There was just no way they were going to let my influence slowly grow over the whole planet without putting up a fight. But that was a fight I was putting off for now, even if I knew it was inevitable.

They were calling themselves the Global Protection Alliance. My biggest concern was that Roberts was no longer their president. I had grown to like the man, and the fact that he had only been kept around as a liaison with me was another troubling sign of the future. They had used the knowledge of Rabyn’s existence as a pretense for why he couldn’t still be in charge. Apparently, that had been a point the former president had pushed back on too many times.

When Rabyn had learned this, he had made sure to cook the man one of his favorite meals during his next visit. I had no idea how the Orc had learned just what those foods were, but Roberts had seemed incredibly impressed and taken aback by the gesture. Even stranger, they had stayed up drinking long into the night together.

John had worked with Rabyn and the new kitchen staff on a series of menus to make sure there was a constant meal available for anyone who wanted to eat in the dining portion of the great hall. While it also functioned as a full city hall, these days, it wasn’t accurate to just call it that, as we had several floors of living space connected to it, not only for guests, but people who wanted to live closer to the city center. Not everyone enjoyed life in the long houses.

When John wasn’t in the kitchens, he and Maud had started training together. Maud had used some of her abilities to bond with both of her cats. No one was quite sure what the full effects would be, due to her quest, but so far, the cats seemed to be growing physically faster than I would have expected of mundane animals.

Each of the cats had also gained a little bit of magic. As neither had seemed to fully awaken yet, it was hard to say exactly how much, and we hadn’t had a visit from a paladin of conservation since the change. The larger of the two cats, appropriately named Big, had seemed to have a shifting tuxedo pattern and looked different every day. Hecate, on the other hand, had stayed entirely black, but she now seemed to move in total silence.

Glorp had taken his siblings deep into the forest about a month ago. He had been putting off a funeral rite for his parents for a very long time, it had turned out. And now that things had finally settled down, he asked permission to do it. I agreed as long as he was okay with Alpha keeping an eye on the camp from afar. He had been glad for the offer, as he was still worried about his siblings’ safety after their last hike into the woods.

During his vigils, Alpha had managed to manifest a form, much to the chagrin of Beta, who was still unable to. The best guess any of the cores had was some sort of block on the concept of having another form. With how self-assured Beta tended to be, it seemed a likely answer.

Apollyon had enrolled at the new school, just as the other cores had wanted them to. Elody and Quarilyn had been handling most of the school’s curriculum using a series of guest speakers as needed for topics they couldn’t cover well. After accounting for all the children we had in the city, we had only filled one hundred and twenty of the one hundred and fifty seats we had been prepared for. That number even accounted for the polar bear.

Elody had been keeping me apprised of the school over lunch for the last two months. Thanks to the help of Karlinovo and Connie, they had managed to put together a well-rounded educational plan, and so far, the students were thriving. We would need to start working on acquiring more mana and class orbs for them at this rate.

In a month, our first dungeon delve was going to happen just to help with that future problem. Pryte and Yorela had found a faction very interested in our skills. We wouldn’t be able to visit the location just yet due to a strange weather pattern on their planet, but once the season changed, it was time to try our hand at it. Corey was looking forward to meeting another dungeon core. I hoped we could capture it alive.

Most of my time had been taken up either with my grandson, various science projects, or my time in the simulator. I was determined to push myself. My family had grown, and I needed to be capable of keeping them safe, but that didn’t mean I could ignore all the projects going on throughout the city.

I also couldn’t ignore the strangest revelation so far. The Earth was growing. It wasn’t by very much, and it wasn’t very fast, which is why it had taken so long to notice and figure out where the dungeon energy was seeping, but it was happening. The main worry along with it had been what would happen to underground creatures across the planet, or the things lurking in deep caves long undiscovered.

Not to mention, there were also still the Orcs that had fled underground. We were reasonably sure none remained on the surface, but finding them below ground with the dungeon energy interference was basically impossible now. So whatever it did to them, we weren’t going to find out until it was too late.

Feral mana beasts were popping up at a rate higher than what would normally be expected for a world like ours, at least that was what the former librarians and Karlinovo thought. The answer, though, was obvious, and we had already considered the chance of it before it had even happened. The spike Apollyon was socketed into was not only responsible for the growing Earth, but also the dungeon energies, mixing with the mana flow and changing the animals.

Grant and his team had expanded to handle the growing issue there. His relationship with the Global Protection Alliance seemed tenuous as well. He had been extremely loyal to a government that didn’t exactly exist anymore, and as far as I could tell, he wasn’t happy with the change. He was still reporting, but I wasn’t sure how much longer that would last. And if it changed, I would make sure he knew he was welcome here, no matter what any outside authority may claim.

All in all, the days since the siren attack, while they had seemed more peaceful, I knew that most of us were feeling a cold tension building. The Twinoges’ homeworld was something we would need to help them with, and it was only a matter of time before events on Earth truly came to a head. Right now, it felt like that, despite all the progress, we were still just in a holding pattern.

That feeling was a big part of what had led me to push myself even further in the simulator than usual. I still couldn’t beat the first floor of the Arena. I needed to find a way past that, if I could ever expect myself to keep my family safe.

It turned out that these days, my regeneration could easily keep up with both the starving and poison modifiers. And thanks to the cores, auditory and visual were nowhere near the handicap they should have been. Even more interestingly, it seemed that despite a dungeon core not being with me, they would still participate in the simulation. Alpha would vanish and reappear where they were once the simulation finished. I had no idea how useful that knowledge could be in the future, but there was always the chance.

The biggest trick to the Basement of Shadow, it had turned out, was just making sure I killed the bosses before they had time to really orient themselves to the simulation. This meant the second the simulations started, the cores and I spread out, unleashing every bit of mana we could as quickly as we could. Sadly, they seemed immune to the lava, so that trick was out, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t make the walls lava at least for the added experience. Finally, after a few days of trying, I managed to hit a new record for experience for the simulator, though it still didn’t compare to the tenth floor of the Arena. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the nοvelfire.net