chapter 116
POV: Remi
Bob managed to find me a decent box filled with cigarettes. It was good timing as I really needed it.
We were back to clearing portals, but on board we had the stabilising gateway for portals. There was one unfortunate problem with this device, and that was that it wasn’t strictly just mana tech; it also had some parts that would be classified as a mana item.
The deeper you went into crafting, the more complex things got. At first, I only looked at the technology side of things, mana tech and magic tech, with the artefacts after that. If you imagined it as a tech tree, it would be a straight line up in complexity and strength, with mana tech at the bottom.
Turns out there’s a parallel tech tree if you went with the same analogy. There were different names used for it like mana crafts, mana items, mana devices. They were for describing weapons like a sword that bursts to flame and stuff like that. It’s not technologically based but more magically based.
Artefacts are still called artefacts no matter what the basis of their construction is, as they achieve similar things. What they do is make inanimate objects into something more. When I read up on this more thoroughly, it reminded me of what I was doing with my crew members.
If we succeed in giving them a chance to learn skills or just give them innate abilities, then technically they would be classified as artefacts.
My musings were interrupted as the ship started to take off. It seems that they were done with this portal, so it was time to move on to another one. We were taking our time, so we were now a bit more selective about what types of portals we took.
I was gaining little advancement now; the portals were too weak to properly advance me, but it wasn't as bad as the last rank jump. Also, my mana reserves were now a lot larger, so clearing portals wasn't as exhausting.
Our cargo holds also filled up a lot faster because we were taking a lot more material out of the portal. Now instead of just taking the most expensive stuff, I was also using my looting ability to get us the necessary materials for the bio-cybernetics, so a lot of top-quality flesh, bones and, most of all, sinew.
It was a bloody affair, and we needed to set up a proper cleaning station for all the AIs. Before, we managed to get by with having a small team on cleaning duty, but we needed something more robust.
We will also soon need an extended stay at the base, as we have gathered up quite a lot of upgrade materials for all the drones and droids. It won’t take too long to get all their bodies upgraded to be strong enough to handle the next rank of portals; the problem is our damage output.
That brings me back to my current problem. There is a reason why regular technology falls short on a smaller scale than ships. You could just fit so much more power using mana in a small area. On a larger scale that advantage falls off quite fast, but I’m learning that magic tech and artefacts could give advantages even at that scale.
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All of it comes down to how the distinctions are made between all three. Artefacts will generate what they need to function. Mana tech requires a lot of mana, as it almost exclusively runs on it. Gathering and storing mana on a large scale is difficult and time-consuming, it also costs a lot.
Magic tech is a good middle ground. It uses a lot less mana because it supplements a lot of its consumption with different forms of power, like electricity. It does need a more refined source of mana than just something you collect. It needs to come directly from a person.
Magic and mana items are basically the same, although it seems that they would be better for close-combat-type weaponry, while technology-based would be better for long range. In the end, it doesn't matter because I do not have the income to supply my entire force with mana-type equipment, and they are unable to use magic-type equipment.
There is no point in mentioning artefacts in that discussion, as each one is well above my entire net worth. So right now, I’m a bit stuck. It wouldn’t be a problem to get a squad equipped with mana-type weaponry.
That would, however, limit us at the next rank of portals quite a lot, and we don't need them for the current one, which we can handle.
I could try to push technology as far as I can with upgraded materials we can get from portals, but I am not as arrogant to think that I can do something that billions of others have failed at. There is a reason why regular technology disappears as you get higher in rank.
I will have to revisit this problem at a later date. There is a hope that perhaps I might be able to find some type of skill to fix this in the future, but that wouldn't help us right now.
FH is doing a lot of research to hopefully figure something out, and I guess I should continue to practise and learn how to properly make mana tech so when the time comes when we have a solution, I would actually know how to build the things we need.
It took me close to two weeks, but now I was confident that I could actually assemble the stabilisation gateway and disassemble it when needed. Next was to start figuring out how everything worked. Nano machines and minor repair was a combination I didn’t expect to be so helpful.
Nano machines didn't survive long inside mana tech, but minor repair kept them alive, and best of all, if they did damage something inside or when I needed the nano machines to rip something apart to understand how it worked, I could now fix it if I kept the damage small.
It was risky to do something like that, but I could push myself further when I finally got minor repair to rank up to apprentice. This helped a lot.
“Captain, I have something interesting to show you,” FH said and sent me a data package.
There wasn't much data, and a lot of it was corrupted, but the title was already interesting enough. It was for a laser-type rifle, but it wasn't using regular light, it was something called hard light.
It was difficult to figure out how this worked, but it was magic tech. A few hours later, FH sent me more data, this time on the concept of hard light.
It was quite fascinating. Somehow, they managed to make light have a lot more mass, so when you fired it, it acted more like a projectile instead of a laser. It was slower because of that, but it was still incredibly fast. It did not only deliver heat damage but physical as well.
It seemed to also consume more gas every single firing than just using regular laser fire, but it would still save so much space compared to physical projectiles. The damage also scaled better with stronger mana channels by a person, and if you upgraded the technological side of the weapon as well.
It seems to be the next stage for gun-type weaponry. Most of us wouldn’t be able to use it, but I could, and perhaps in the future my crew members as well.
“Nice find, FH. This will definitely boost our strength.”
“Always happy to help, Captain.”
She will keep searching for more about this hard light concept. Bob is also quite busy; he still hopes that we might be able to find some skill that would help boost all our forces. Sam is helping him, and I wish them the best of luck, even though I don’t think it would be so easy.
Dean is helping Lola as much as he can, but he also is currently in charge of the portal runs. Both of us are usually the only ones that go in, with everyone else doing other jobs. Sam isn’t even with us, instead staying back on base helping Bob.
We had found a rhythm of sorts. We were progressing fast, so knowing my luck, something was going to go wrong sooner rather than later. The list of things to do wasn’t getting smaller, but it was getting clearer.