Chapter 359
Ollie looked at himself in the mirror. All buttons buttoned. No lint on his suit. Tie slightly loose, unlike before when it was always tight. Hair brushed back, slightly messy. Heat and signature scanning glasses ready in his bullet proof jacket's pocket.
Today was October 18th. D-Day for the Rift Aperture System, using a single Origin Shard as a power source. The time dilation in the rift would be 1 day on Earth would equal 10 days on the other side. That's what Erin estimated, anyway.
Time to do this.
He exited the office and turned to the people working on the P5 level of the Oshawa warehouse. This place was once a contraband trade point, then became a Silver Lion underground facility, now repurposed for Ollie's own Glory operations.
Legal name: Glorious Operations Machinery.
It was too bad Rachel rejected 'Glory Hole'. They were literally punching a hole through space, after all. She did make a point that it would make the United Knights suspicious. This place was already hit twice by them after all.
But he didn't forget to complain to her about her 'keeping him in check' as always. Lightning never strikes the same spot thrice. Once definitely, twice also definitely. But thrice, that's impossible.
Since it was now a legal entity and didn't involve the lives of mundanes, the knights had no way to enforce their 'laws' on it. Erin was also a walking manual reference to the whole laws of Aur and Canada. There was no way they could use the law against him.
The problem was the Jiuling, specifically the blood blade. Ollie heard of the stories from the Guatemala rift, but the group had pissed off some of their grand elders.
There was one successful break-in so far by a Jiuling operative, caught immediately by Erin before they could use the elevator, the only way to get down.
At any rate, best to handle those problems as they came. It would probably be another 3-4 months until another Jiuling operative arrived, anyway, knowing how bogged down they were in their own bureaucracy.
Turning the corner, Ollie saw the Rift Aperture System. It wasn't housed in a dome as the whole thing was bare to the open space. Three columns extended upwards and angled into the middle platform. Each column held tripod looking things, except these were artificed with billions of lines of Origin System syntax.
At one of the columns stood a small platform with a screen. Erin was already there, connected to it via her control module.
"Hey Erin, how's it going?"
"The RAS is currently going. Coordinates are set to system LTI-09281 in Quadrant #758. I must apologize as the time dilation I have given you is slightly inaccurate. The time dilation is set to be 1 to 10.14."
"Oh.... ok. Glad you're going great."
"What is great is the completion of the Rift Aperture System Version 1.0," Erin said. "The time is 10:22PM. The agreement stipulated the meeting to be at 10:00PM."
"I think they went to get McDonald's on the way. Gale said he was going to get you a couple of flatbreads."
"The compensation is satisfactory," Erin said. "Do differing locations of McDs differ in the quality of their flatbread?"
"I dunno. I think so," Ollie said. "Some stores are rated higher. That's evidence."
"Crowd sourced data is truly reliable evidence. I shall await the flatbread. For science."
"So what kind of rift are we going to?"
"The original world of this rift was a blue world, similar to Earth. I've set the opening to be in the flatland just a couple of kilometres away from the graveyard."
"Wouldn't it be better to just set it where the graveyard is?"
"You are correct when it comes to natural rifts that appear in the world. With the Rift Aperture System, we cannot simply set it on our destination. It is designed to punch through the void and lead us to the other side. The process itself is inherently violent."
"Ok."
"The travel to the graveyard would be a simple straight line. It should take no more than 10 days to accomplish our mission."
"Don't let Gale hear you say that."
"What I say is merely fact."
"Sure. And things haven't changed since you last visited that place?"
"The Mohrusy has abandoned this front of the war. According to planetary signature levels, their presence has weakened since the recording."
Ollie looked over to the panel. Foreign glyphs and symbols filled the screen at high speed, not even in the English language. "Why couldn't you install English on this?"
"I've installed a Predefined Module into the system. It did not come with your planet's dominant language."
"Great. So only you can use it too."
"The young lamb can also use it."
"Huh, what gives?"
"I have given him access to the language."
"And why can't I have it?"
"Your mind is yet too weak. Attain Arcane, and I shall grant you access."
Ollie sighed. He kinda already saw that one coming. Whenever he did look at Erin's artificing, it was a whole different world that he hasn't explored. His own artificing ruined the minds of the mundane. Their language might just do the same to him.
"Would Rachel understand?"
"Fear not. The woman of fire does not possess access to the language."
"Got it," Ollie said. The issue with Rachel was more about Esther rather than her own fiery temper. Kinda made a lot of sense why she was so... overbearing. He was very protective of Cassie whenever they went out together. Since he was Witch Raven's apprentice, no one really dared touch them though.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
A loud group talking over each other came from behind him and Erin. Gale, Rachel, Lily, the twins, and Xinyi were all there. None of them held anything in their hands, as expected of everyone using Gale as a walking inventory.
"Ollie! Is it ready yet?" Gale asked as he materialized two brown bags and handed them to him and Erin.
Opening the bag, Ollie took out the paper wrapped burger inside and took a bite. He always did like the doubles more than the quarter pounders. "Erin says it's ready, so it has to be, right?"
"I do not lie, short one," Erin said. "We must review the mission in haste before we set foot into our destination."
"Anyone got a table?" Rachel looked around everywhere and saw the table just a couple of metres away by a storage unit.
Ollie telekinetically grabbed the table over with a couple of chairs, placing them around it. "Yo, let's eat first."
Everyone sat around the table, including Erin, as Gale materialized each one of their food. Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese American, American, and McDs.
Ollie's eyes twitched as he saw the multiple different restaurants they had gone to. Out of 5, he only recognized the McDs. "Seriously?"
"Eh, bossman, chill. We got here in time."
"The group arrived 30 minutes late. Do not spread false information."
"If Gale is going to choose, we get to choose too," Clyde said.
Turning to Rachel, Ollie also saw her opening up the sweet and sour pork with fried rice plate. "What happened to that not being Chinese?"
"I mean... if I pretend its american food, then I think it's fine." Rachel avoided his eye contact. "Besides, it's the twins being idiots."
"Weren't you the one that wanted to get Gale his McDs?" Lily asked.
"How does it make sense to wait at a restaurant for more than 20 mins? McDs is like 5!" Rachel yelled.
"I called the restaurants in advance, allowing us to pick up right away. I also optimized the direction so we arrived here with the least amount of turns," Xinyi said.
"Good job, Xinyi. But you wouldn't have to do that if it weren't for two idiots and then the rest piling on top of it."
"If the twins were going to get their diner food, I was going to get my Vietnamese food," Lily said.
"That's adding to the problem, Lily!" Ollie yelled. "What the hell happened since I was gone?!"
"Lots of things!" Gale said excitedly. "Are you going to eat the rest of your burgers?"
Looking in the bag, there were 3 more. "Yes."
"The flatbread of this specific location is indeed higher quality. Who chose this location?"
"Rachel did."
"The woman of fire's choice is commendable. Be grateful your debt has decreased."
"Weren't we supposed to talk about the mission!?" Ollie asked, yelling.
"That's part of the reason why we brought food," Lily said. "Erin, you wanna start?"
"What do you mean?" Ollie asked.
After taking one more bite, Erin said, "Let us start the lecture."
"What lecture? This is a debrief," Ollie said.
"Quiet, short one. Do not interrupt the adults," Erin said.
"Psst, Ollie," Gale called out, making him turn around. "Just eat your burger. It'll be over soon."
Ollie sighed and took another bite of his burger. The 'debrief' began, taking up a gruelling 1.5 hours about the local vegetation, fauna, climate, and edible biomass available in what Erin called 'Theatre LTI-09281 Habitable Planet Ru89'.
First off, the living creatures on the planet were all bigger than moose and bears. Specifically, Erin used multiples of those animals so that Gale could understand.
The vegetation was hostile, most were carnivores and could swallow animals the size of 2 or 3 bears. The climate was harsh. Constant rain, storms, and harsh winds that could blow away the woman of fire's fire if she wasn't careful. Rachel asked to feel how strong that would be, and Erin gave her a slight taste of the wind that caused a whole ruckus in the entire underground.
Fortunately, Sarah wasn't here today to yell at any of them if they caused trouble.
Lastly, the edible biomass. Erin called them fruits, but they could grow up to the size of elephants. There was a certain fruit that looked exactly like a watermelon. She warned everyone that it was not a watermelon. It was highly toxic and would kill a normal mundane in half a second, and would disable a Resonant for at least 6 hours.
All in all, this mission was nuts. It was now 5 minutes past 12, October 19, 2070.
"You said we would depart on October 18," Gale said. "Guess we won this time."
"Your observations are correct, but utlimately disregards the nuance of the delays you've caused upon this operation. Be thankful I have not added debt to your account," Erin said.
"Thanks, Erin."
"Your gratitude is unnecessary."
"Ok, shall we fire it up?" Ollie said, rubbing his eyes.
"Pfft, firing it up. Erin would say she would need to inject it with energy to turn it on or something," Kyle said.
"Idiot..." Lily muttered.
"The loud one is correct. He has grown smarter. I commend your newfound intelligence."
Rachel laughed. "Idiot."
Ollie shook his head and then caught Xinyi's eyes. "How you doing with this group so far?"
"It is..." Xinyi thought about it for a moment before continuing. "I'm happy. These past 2 months of living have been a dream for me, to be honest."
"Seriously?" Clyde asked.
"Wait, why are you the one asking that?" Lily asked.
Clyde shrugged.
"How much does a maid cost?" Gale asked.
"Why don't you just ask Rachel to help you clean up?" Lily asked.
Ollie's heart thumped when she asked that question. She probably had no idea what she was meddling with.
Gale turned to Rachel. "You wanna be a maid?"
Rachel's face flushed. She tried to speak, but nothing legible came out from the random noises she made. It ended up with her glaring at Lily, who had asked the question.
It gave Ollie all the information he knew about the state of these 2. Their situation was a catch-22. If Rachel told Gale what she was, then the cold war between Erin and Esther would blow up. If Rachel didn't tell Gale, then they would never know what each other was, since the 'stars were watching', preventing them from even speaking of their own races. How would Gale even react to knowing that she was a Dainv this whole time?
Ollie wasn't dumb enough to not know how they looked at each other. Not knowing this whole time would create a massive debt of untold truths between them. The more they waited, the bigger they would think that each other hid something.
Erin walked up to the control panel of the Rift Aperture System. Her control module wires entered the system. From the storage unit near where Ollie got the table from, the door opened and a single Origin Shard floated out with a blue outline.
Floating over to Erin's palm, she crushed it, and it shattered into a tiny billion grains of light, transforming into a river of stars that flowed onto each of the 3 tripod arms on each column. The Origin Syntax all lit up as they hummed a low rumble.
"Prepare for punch through," Erin said. "3... 2... 1..."
She inserted her signature into the Rift Aperture System. Suddenly, as if reality had shattered right in front of them, a triangular rift opened up right in the middle of the 3 columns. Its edge look like sharp broken glass and immaterial, exactly how rifts look like.
Beyond the rift, looked like a green world, much like their own, except everything looked rather distorted. Trees sprawled upwards like mushrooms, giant beasts roamed the land. There was a single beast over at the mountain, only seen through the clouds as lightning provided its silhouette.
"This looks like a death trap," Kyle said.
"No shit, bro," Clyde said.
"Gale, how is it?" Rachel asked.
"I wanna hunt that big beast," Gale said, pointing at the beast beyond the mountains and behind the cloud.
"Definitely not. We get in, then get out. Capisce?" Ollie asked.
"I see where the twins get their personalities from now," Xinyi said.
Lily cocked her deagle back, checking the chamber, then returning it to its holster under her tactical gear. "I'm good to go."
"Let us depart," Erin said, entering first.