chapter 117
One year later
***
“Another water portal disappeared from my sensors. Bet you 2000 it was cleared by Forward Horizon.”
“You really think I’m that stupid? Why would I just give you credit?”
“Can’t blame me for trying.”
“You know, it would be kind of funny if it turned out it wasn’t them.”
I just shrugged my shoulders at that. Even if it wasn’t, it would still be a bet I would make. I had no way of assessing how many guild points they have accrued over the past year, but it must have been huge. That ship has continued to clear water-type portals at incredible speed, not to speak of other portals.
“They’re still weak. I have yet to see them register a clear above E rank,” the stick in the mud said, always having to bring the mood down.
“So what? Not everyone has to strive to clear higher portals,” I answered back, knowing that I shouldn’t have, because that would encourage him more.
“That’s the problem with using robots as your fighting force. They will never amount to anything.”
In the Adventurers Guild, we do have policies not to speak like that about any adventurer, but it’s never enforced, so individuals like him think it’s fine to make fun of others.
I kind of wanted to argue against that, but my eyes were drawn back to the screen. There was a disturbance about a million kilometres away from the city towards the sun, but it seemed to be anchored.
All of us stopped talking. If it was some sort of fleet or a large ship, our sensors wouldn’t be the first ones to pick it up, but there was no alert.
Immediately, my hands touched the controller surface and I let my mana sense do the work. Thousands upon thousands of portals immediately crowded my mind, but with practised ease I pushed them aside.
We mainly monitored the creation of new portals, but most of the time we didn’t care about them, only when they were strong enough and if they were in space. And this signal was in space.
It was feeling like a B-ranked portal, which would be trouble.
“Do we have a visual?” I heard my partner ask.
“No visual confirmation yet,” I heard someone else answer, which was bad.
A B-ranked space portal was something that we could handle if we mobilised the entire Adventurers Guild and the forces of Paradise City.
I needed to pull my hands away from the control panel as my mind rang from the pain of the feedback. I wasn’t the only one, but I gritted through the pain and activated the device again.
As I pulled away, my hand shook. It was a strong A-ranked space portal, and from a few other screens, there was now visual confirmation. It was over a kilometre in radius.
“Oh shit,” someone said, in the absolute silence that had overcome the room.
Before I knew what was happening, my hand went to the emergency button. Immediately, alarm klaxons started and the room was bathed in red light. My mind quickly calculated that it would take approximately two to three months for that portal to break, and then we were all dead.
***
POV: Remi
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The last screw went in and I tightened it precisely to the required torque. It wasn’t a pretty-looking rifle—many parts of it sticking out—and dropping it would most definitely break it, but this was a first prototype and my very first magic-tech weapon.
It took a long while: a lot of mana-tech experimentations and devices built to finally be able to make this. I headed towards the shooting range. There was a small part of me that feared the weapon might explode, but I pushed forward.
Taking aim, I started to squeeze the trigger. Immediately, power coursed through its internals and gas was injected into the firing chamber where it would be turned into light. A small bit of my mana was pulled from my hand that was gripping the handle, finalising everything when the trigger reached the end.
A burst of light left the barrel. There was a decent kick back, which was so weird as I wasn’t firing a physical projectile. The bolt of light rushed forward at incredible speed, but I could still see it flying.
It hit the target, bending the metal and melting a large hole in it. To get the same result I would probably need a small cannon. The rifle started to smoke in a few places. Quickly I sent the nano machines into it, finding the mistakes that I had made.
There seemed to be quite a few. I was feeling incredibly happy. This was the first hard-light weapon I had possessed, even if it's a shitty one. There is a lot to do to make it better and currently, if it wasn't smoking it would still have taken one to two seconds before I could have fired again. That needed to be improved as well.
I got a message from Bob and opened it up. Did he already learn that I finished the prototype somehow?
“All of the skills that we have looted are now identified.”
Oh, that's right. A bit ago we had finally had cleared enough water-type portals to purchase the device that could read the skill stones we have gathered in the portals. That's going to be really good for our future income and would help us perhaps use a few of these skills if we know what we needed to change to make them acceptable for us.
I’ve only gotten one additional skill: Extended Range, which has helped tremendously with portal clears. Otherwise, I have been saving my slots for more powerful skills that would synergise with me better.
I have been able to increase my skill levels quite a lot, it was always nice to see the progress I have made. One thing that was irking me was that I was still in E rank.
I have made progress, though for sure, but the calculus was quite simple: we were able to pull out a lot more materials needed for our project from E-ranked portals than trying to struggle against D-ranked portals, which also had a lot more competition on who was able to claim them.
As I was walking back to my workshop I was stopped as FH forwarded me a red alert, not from us but from the Adventurers' Guild. Apparently, an A-ranked space portal opened up near here. I didn’t even know portals like that could open around these parts.
The important thing was, what came after that part of the alert. Every space adventurer was put on standby to either be called to action or to be notified to escape as far away from here as possible.
That was bad, if you didn't follow those rules you would be kicked out of the Adventurer Guild and that would be really bad. They still didn’t know what threat lies within the portal.
“How bad is this, FH?”
“It should be two to three months before anything could exit that portal, so it's not immediately critical, but we also can't leave as we didn't have any travel plans registered. We need to wait and see what comes of it.”
“We are packing up and heading back to base, finish everything fast,” I ordered everyone.
As we travelled, we read up on A-ranked space portals. The most likely thing to come out of that was a huge space monster or multiple ones, but there could also be an entire fleet filled with ships that most definitely would have battleship-sized vessels.
Higher ranked portals quite often had monsters that were once people. They were terrifying opponents as they could use technology and were quite cunning, and given the way they were created, they didn’t truly understand what was going on.
Only after they had left the portal and survived for a while did their minds properly return to normal, like with every other monster.
As we landed at our base, Bob and Sam soon joined us around the table. Lola had been working hard, and she was quite close to finishing up the last of the bio-cybernetics that would give each of my crew members the best chance to get the affinity they would like to get.
Before we could start this emergency meeting FH forwarded us a guild report. It seems that their scouts worked fast. There was a video of a ship flying horizontally to the portal, tipping in to gather data, then get out as soon as possible.
What we saw was a huge ship in a weird shape, approximately 4 kilometres long and 1 kilometre high. Surrounding it were a lot of tiny fighter-sized vessels moving in and out. They were above the moon that was seemingly ravaged, like something had taken all that was valuable from it, leaving nothing but rubble behind.
“It’s classified as a Riiver mothership portal. It’s a class-black threat. This means everyone must participate in the fight because they can’t be allowed to get a beachhead in our galaxy,” FH explained.
The web went crazy as soon as the information was revealed. Apparently, this was a really big deal, and every ship that could reach here before the portal broke had been ordered to respond and make their way here for the battle.
“It seems like it’s time to upgrade all of you,” I said to everyone.
“I will start assembling our bodies immediately. Bob will have to be the last, but I think I can get the last of your custom parts ready before everyone else's body is finished. It will take me two weeks to have everyone’s body ready,” Lola explained.
“We won’t be upgrading everyone at the same time. As soon as one is finished, you get your upgrade. Even if you don’t get anything special and can’t even control mana, it doesn’t matter, because these bodies would still be miles above what you currently have.”
Everyone agreed with that. I could feel FH quietly waiting, almost like she was standing, watching us but not being a part of our circle. It was harder for her to feel included because she was the ship and didn't have a body to move around in.
“Bob, Sam, I need your help in pushing our neural-net production to high enough levels that we can finish replacing everything on board Forward Horizon. While I’m not sure if that’s enough for FH to have the same change as the rest, it would still help us in the coming fight and give us the chance to practice we need to fight,” I said.
“Practice?” Dean asked.
"Of course, we haven't actually been in a proper space fight before. Also, I want us to at least run a dozen supply missions to the planet before the portal breaks. This should give us enough fighting data and shake off the cobwebs we have gotten while on this moon."
“Understood, Captain,” Dean replied, steel in his eyes. All of them had that, and I could feel FH’s appreciation and anticipation. She would finally able to be something more than just a transport vessel.
There was no time to waste. We still had plenty to discuss, but we did it over our bond as everyone started working on their tasks.