Buttopia
patreon
Chapter 219: Winter Marches On
🕑 Added 2025-08-07 22:05:43 +0000 UTCMagical Engineering Book 4: Wide Area Networking
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 it still didn’t compare to the tenth floor of the Arena.
__________
!Combatants Defeated!
Corrupted Knowledge Human (x6.012E4) {200 Experience}
-Experience Gained [1.202E7 Points]
+Multipliers Applied+
No Armor (x1.1)
No Weapon (x1.1)
I Stand Alone (x1.1)
All At Once (x1.1)
So Many Bosses (x5)
Even More Bosses (x10)
5 or More Modifiers (x5)
10 or More Modifiers (x10)
20 or More Modifiers (x20)
Do a Little Better (x1.5)
-Total Experience Gained [1.320E12 Points]
+Modifiers Applied+
Remove Weapon (x1.1)
Remove Armor (x1.1)
Randomize Starting Locations (x1.5)
x2 Opponents (x1.5)
x3 Opponents (x2)
x4 Opponents (x2.5)
x5 Opponents (x3)
½ Level (x2)
⅓ Level (x3)
¼ Level (x4)
⅕ Level (x5)
x2 Opponent’s Level (x1.5)
x3 Opponent’s Level (x2)
x4 Opponent’s Level (x4)
x5 Opponent’s Level (x8)
All Opponents are Bosses (x1.5)
The Walls are Lava (x2)
Remove Sense: Auditory (x1.5)
Remove Sense: Visual (x5)
Random Mutation (x2)
Poisoned (x2)
Starving (x3)
Lose 5 Levels Per Modifer (x22)
-Total Experience Gained [3.857E21 Points]
__________
What this told me was that I was going to have to figure out how to beat the first floor of the Arena. At least the good news was that Corey wasn’t remotely exhausted. This was starting to make me think it wasn’t just the modifiers, and it was partially the experience difference gained that caused the feedback. Hopefully, I’d get to test that soon. But that would be a tomorrow goal. Today I had a snowball fight to get to.
“You’re late!” Maud’s voice yelled at the same moment the snowball hit me in the back of the head. “And no shields that cheating!”
Considering the snowball had hit me, I wasn’t sure why she had added that part, but I got the message either way. I turned and spotted Maud, John, and Alex standing in front of an army of kids. That hadn’t been part of the plan last I had heard it. Well, if they could cheat and get an army, so could I.
I pulled up a chat window, just as another round of snowballs pelted off my body.
__________
>Dave: Beta, Gamma, I want as much snow thrown at them as you can manage. But don’t actually hurt anyone.
>Beta: For the Empire!
>Gamma: Corey, manifest and join us!
>Corey: I will, it sounds fun.
>Apollyon: I am coming too!
>Dave: Just remember, these are kids, no real attacks!
>Corey: Understood
>Maud: Wait, what?! Nooooo :(
__________
Three of the cores forms’ manifested and popped up in front of me. They instantly went to work making and throwing snowballs as the children scattered. Beta took to the air and scouted out their positions, constantly shouting where everyone was hiding. Human, Reltleon, and even one of the Cloudform children were all moving about in giant fits of laughter as they tried to hit the cores back. One of them, Dean, I think, managed to even hit Beta as they flew by.
The battle finally ended nearly an hour later after little William had had enough of the cold, even bundled, and with added magical heating, he was still done with it. He had calmed down the moment he was safely in the great hall, and playing with a small set of blocks on the table. Several large pots of hot soup had already been waiting for us the moment we arrived. It seemed John had been planning out this little ambush in more detail than I had realized.
“Dave, can I borrow you a minute?” Pryte said. I had been too busy having a peekaboo contest with my grandson to notice him enter.
“Oh yeah, sure, what’s up? Anything important?” I asked.
“Yes and no, we will almost certainly be having a bigger meeting, but I wanted to brief you first, so if you’ve got a minute?” he replied in his serious tone.
“Alright, yeah. I’ll be back, everyone,” I said as I got up and followed him to our more secure meeting room.
“I knew it had been too quiet, so what’s going on?” I asked as I sat back down.
“The Wrenderling Dwarves have entirely collapsed as a faction. I know why everything was so quiet on that front now. Their creditors have seized all their assets and are planning to auction most of them off,” Pryte answered.
“Wait, does that including the Twinoge’s homeworld?” I asked, worried. There was no way we could afford to buy a planet.
“That’s where this gets even more complicated. So you know how the Spiral seems to be behind on a normal expansion phase and factions are getting a bit tense from it,” he replied.
“I know you’ve said it several times, and I kind of get the idea. Seems similar to a concept called mercantilism mixed with colonialism. Maybe, I’m not actually sure I remember how the first worked correctly, but I’m getting away from your point. Why is this more complicated?” I asked.
“All of the planets in the universe are being offered as prizes to factions based on their resources, development, mana flow, etc. To win these prizes, the Spire Committee for a more Harmonious Spiral has decided to throw a giant competition for each of the worlds,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, now understanding. The Spiral was at the point of trying to use circuses to distract from whatever was going on, and we had just been caught in the middle of one because there was no way in hell we weren’t going to help the brothers.
Nivedi was just a young man when he first met Pelmo. That didn’t stop him. When the jesters came to his world while he was away and killed or kidnapped everyone he knew and loved, a new rage was born in his heart. The message he found from Pelmo, quickly written in the back of his favorite book, sealed his determination. His crusade grew as it burned its way across the Spiral. Every Jester he found died, horribly, but not without giving him clues to move forward.
After years of scouring Spiral worlds still with no sign of Pelmo, and near hopeless to ever see her again, he met a man who spoke of the Jesters’ true home, the place they came from before they were allowed in the Spiral. And so Nivedi turned the forces of his crusade, those who had suffered just as much loss from the Jesters, deep into chaotic space on one last hunt. Their ultimate fate remains a mystery to this day.
Ten Thousand Tales of Love Across Infinity by Breena Belinda Blue
