Magical Engineering [Progression Fantasy, LitRPG] (Book 3 Complete)

We had sealed Rabyn, Connie, and the brothers in another meeting room while we worked. There hadn't been time to initially talk to them and find out exactly what they knew and didn't know. There was also the problem of what to do with them now that we understood more about their soul knots. I didn't just want to lock them away, but it did mean, for the time being, they couldn't have any further access to information that could be used against us.

As people were filing out of the room, I took the spare moment to send a message to Maud. Now that the meeting was over, my worry about Alex and John had crept back in.

I closed the chat window only to see the others looking at me. I realized someone had said something while I was focused on the chat. "Did one of you say something?" It wasn't likely to be Karlinovo, but Pryte and Timon both had an odd stare going in my direction.

"Yes, I asked what you wanted to do with them in the meantime. We can't just let them free in the city," Pryte replied while Timon shook his head and laughed. It was a welcome sound.

"Sorry, I was checking on the others, and the conversation went longer and more distracting than I expected." As I said this, I gave Karlinovo a small glare. He just shrugged back in return.

"As for the soul knots. I don't know what to do with them. I don't want to lock them away. They didn't do anything wrong themselves. This was done to them against their will, but at the same time, I do understand the dangers," I continued, answering Pryte's question as best I could.

"We don't want to lock Cecile or Rabyn away anyway. Gonna have to find a solution here that doesn't involve that. With John gone, Rabyn is pretty strongly needed to maintain our supply of food at the rate we are doing it, and we can't let Cecile's crops go to waste," Timon added.

"What would happen if we tried to bind them under our own soul oath? Would those even work with the Arena ones failing?" I asked.

"Nothing good. Even if oaths weren't failing, and we had someone capable of tying the bond, we don't know exactly what their own knots contain. If we overlap our own oaths that are contradictory to previous binding ones, we could just kill them outright. What we might be able to do, though, is monitor their souls," Karlinovo answered, a look of an idea blossoming on his face.

"You've got that look like you just thought of something brilliant and stupidly dangerous again," I said, being very familiar with the times I've also made that face.

"It shouldn't be too dangerous. We just need some of your medical devices. I read about something called a pacemaker in one of the textbooks we've collected. It's used to monitor human hearts and alter their heartbeat if needed. It will take some adjustments, but we might be able to use it to detect changes in their soul energy," he explained.

"I'm really not going to enjoy the next call with GPA. But yes, that's the idea behind a pacemaker, and if you think we can adapt that tech, we should do it," I said, sighing at the thought of the future call with people that I wanted to choke.

"Well, that's one potential solution then. We can leave them locked together tonight and worry about that tomorrow if we can get the tech. But we do still need to sit down and see what they remember," Pryte said.

"Yeah, yeah, I suppose we do need to do that. Let's go talk to them. I'm worried about the brothers anyway," I said honestly. I doubted Cecile was handling this well, and even if Elicec was pretending to be, it was unlikely he was either.

We left our main meeting room through the secondary door. We had had a series of meeting rooms built so that a long hallway ran behind them, so as to make them all accessible without needing to reenter the main hall. One of the biggest reasons for this was the addition of an extra room that could only be entered from any of the five main meeting rooms that were generally off-limits to anyone outside the core group. This last room was where we had sealed the others.

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It hadn't been intended as a prison, or anything of the like, when I added it to the plans. The long-term purpose of it would be to connect to some of the tunnels we had built and allow for a secondary much more private route to a meeting room. In the strong possibility that we had prying eyes in the future, this would still let us have meetings as needed.

Instead, I was now using it to imprison my friends, something that bothered me a great deal. Even if I knew it wouldn't be permanent, it was still another thing the jesters had taken from us, which meant it was another thing they needed to pay for.

Pryte stopped in front of the door and traced several symbols onto it. There was the barest hint of a clicking sound before the door swung open. Inside the room, four faces turned to look at us.

"Dave, I want you to know how deeply sorry I am for everything that happened," Rabyn started to say before I cut him off.

"None of this is any of your faults. We all knew you had the soul knots. If we could have found a way to get rid of them or even know what they were doing, we would have. But what we need to discuss now is how much exactly you remember doing with them." I wanted it to be clear as quickly as possible that I didn't believe they were responsible for what had happened today.

"I can now pinpoint certain periods where the blackouts seemed to occur, but what exactly I was doing during them doesn't seem to be within my memory. It's possible they are hiding buried somewhere, and it requires the soul knot to activate the pathways to the memories, but I can't be sure," Rabyn answered.

"I can't even do that!" Cecile followed up. Connie and Elicec nodded along with Cecile.

"For tonight, I think you're going to have to stay sealed in here. We've got an idea on how to monitor your soul knots, but it will be experimental, and we don't have the tech on hand yet. I'm also going to do everything I can to find a way to remove them. I wish I had better news," I said, truly sorry that I didn't have another option in the short term.

"It's understandable. Gramps would've locked me away, too, so I get it. Just try to find a way to get us out of here sooner rather than later, if you could? It's kind of cramped, and Rabyn sweats a lot when he's pissed and anxious," Connie said with a smile.

"I'd also prefer fewer of Connie's singing practice sessions," Rabyn added with a small glare in the Dwarf's direction before turning his head back to us and continuing. "I understand you cannot tell us the details, nor should you, of William's rescue, but this experience seems to be dredging something loose in my brain, and I'm not entirely sure what it means. Once you get this soul knot out of me, I will need your help to explore something."

"Keep that thought as sealed as you can for now. In fact, if you are able to suppress it, do so. I'm going to spend the night sealing off this room entirely as best I can from signals being able to get in or out, but as I don't know the means of their connection to you, and certain other things I've learned about since being reborn I don't know that I will be able to stop it entirely," Karlinovo said, already fiddling with the marks on the door.

He hadn't entered the room with the rest of us. I wasn't even sure he had turned his head at all when he was addressing the people in the room, but his finger was tracing two of the runes on the door while his other hand was fiddling with a thin strip of wire. The mana threads in the door altered just slightly as he worked. While I could discern that much of what he was doing, I still didn't understand the underlying work on a technical level, and that was something I needed to learn.

"I will attempt to do so, amongst other thoughts as well," Rabyn replied.

"Rabyn, do you have enough food on you for the next day or so?" I asked, not sure what else they would need. If they couldn't remember anything about their interactions with the jesters, we just didn't have much to talk to them about, and as much as I liked them as people, I wanted to get them free of the dangers with the knot, rather than waste time on pleasantries.

"Yes, we will be fine there. Go work on what you need to do for us and the city." Rabyn gave me a hard stare with those words.

"Alright, just keep tight, guys. And Elicec, Cecile, stop blaming yourselves. I can see how angry you are, Elicec. I promise we will get this fixed," I said, nodding to the brothers as I spoke.

Neither said anything in return, but I spotted the barest hint of the frown fade from Elicec's face. I knew he would take this the hardest. But there was nothing else we could do to help ease that pain beyond time.

Karlinovo pushed the door shut and triggered several of the runes, and some new lines that hadn't been there before flared to life. There was now the slightest hum coming from the walls around the door frame. A mote of dust landed on the wall and caused a light popping sound as it made contact.

"As far as I could tell, they were all being truthful," Timon said as we walked back down the hall.

"I don't know if that's better or not. But one last question before we break for the night. How exactly did this all happen? The attack that is. Do we have a post-mortem?" I asked. I had a general idea of what had been done, but I was hoping we had learned the full details from the witnesses and participants.

"What I've been able to figure out is the moment we left through the gate, the jesters attacked. They had three initial targets: Maud and the two gates. That means they are fully aware of the soul chat, but figured Karlinovo wouldn't be able to do anything trapped in the dungeon. They again seemed to underestimate Glorp and sent their 'greats' for Elody first," Pryte explained.

"I wonder why. They saw what he was capable of in the Arena. Seems strange not to get him," I replied.

"All they saw was that he was fast. Elody was the one who fought them off. She was a bigger threat in their minds. They had no idea how strong he had grown, and to be fair, that wasn't strong enough. While their weaker forces were dominating the civilians as quickly as they could, the 'best' was likely hunting for William. What we don't know yet is if that was their only goal or if we stopped them from any secondary plans," Pryte finished.

"Figuring that out will be my problem, and probably the jester's problem as well. Oh, if my ex turns up, Pryte is in charge of meeting her. Trust me, it's better that way," Timon said with a grin, refusing to elaborate further.

I consider pressing him for what he meant, but I didn't have the energy for it. Fighting that death curse on top of the losses from the battle had left me nearly drained. I wanted to crawl into bed and never leave it again. But as that would just get more people killed, instead I'd settle for a night's rest.

Rabyn

The last thing he could remember before the battle was a melodic voice simply saying hello. Even trying to dredge that from his brain had been hard, mentally grueling work, and what he had spent the majority of time doing since they had sealed him in this meeting room alongside the others with soul knots. His memory had resumed the moment the core had found him. Everything in between was blank.

Alongside that return to awareness was a deep, simmering rage. He had grown to like these people who had taken him in, despite what he had done alongside the attempted conquerors of their planet, by choice or otherwise. And for those monsters to dare tamper with his brain and turn him against people he now considered friends was something he would never forget.

If it wasn't for the soul knot, he'd have accompanied whoever had gone in search of the jesters on their quest for revenge. Though he supposed that had it not been for the knot, the need for vengeance may not have been as strong. It didn't matter, though. Those damned monsters had done something to him, and they needed to pay.

Worse yet, the realization of the gaps in his memory had unlocked something else deep in his mind. Something had been altered there. And as much as he wanted to explore exactly what it was, digging into the alternation while the soul knot still festered didn't seem like a wise course of action.

"Do you think we are going to be okay?" Cecile's voice broke Rabyn from his thoughts.

He looked over at the young Twinoges. Some of the light that was usually in their eyes had vanished. He added that as another thing to the list of reasons the jesters had to pay. "Considering the insane things we've been through so far, yes. I fully believe Dave and the others will find a way to remove these damned soul knots. Then, assuming there are any jesters left, I invite the three of you to join me in a campaign of payback."

"Yeah, Rabyn's right. We've got cots, and I'm sure Rabyn's got food. Let's just call this a weird camping trip. We all feel terrible for what happened, but remember it was not our fault. The jesters did this to us," Connie added.

Rabyn nodded a confirmation of her words. As he settled back into his spot, trying to focus on anything besides the anger, the door made a clicking sound. He looked over, glad to see Dave had come to see them. He hoped they had some sort of cure figured out.

The tropical rainforest mana orb is an odd combination of magical effects not often seen together within a mana orb, and this is more true than the average environmental orb. Most wielders are unlikely to be able to reach the true potential of the mana orb, due to the amount of time and investment required to truly unlock some of its top-tier abilities. It is one of the few mana orbs capable of producing radiant mana, and to do so at such early tiers is nearly unique.

In fact, it is that mana source that is believed to be responsible for the creation of the orb itself. The orb does not seem to be a mutation of a generic forest environment, but something born within a radiant mana field. The longer I study environmental mana orbs, the harder it becomes to build anything I would consider accurate as an evolution path for them. My study into this specific orb is the primary reason I've now segmented my study of these mana orb types into their own research branch.

Environmental Orbs: A Mystery of Creation by Henjen Klank