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

While Timon and Roberts handled getting the man we needed, I took some time to have dinner with Elody. I was looking forward to seeing what she knew about golems while we had a quiet meal together. The little time we had started to share had surprisingly proven to be one of the best ways to help me relax, and I hoped that would still hold true despite the added stress of William's kidnapping.

"So you awakened a stone, and it has immediate access to your soul chat?" she asked after eating another bite of food.

"Yes, though I'm not sure if that's strange, as all the dungeon cores immediately get access as well. What worries me, and Karlinovo as well, is the strange way it keeps speaking," I said.

I then read to her some of the messages it had sent, as well as gave her a rundown on the prophecy we had heard before the jester attack had derailed everything. She was the first person to learn about it since our return. We just hadn't had a lot of time to cover that yet with everything else going on.

"That's interesting. Well, we do know the Earth is expanding from the dungeon energies, but the speaking part seems a bit unnerving. I'm not entirely sure how to tie it in with what you heard at that gathering," Elody started.

Two of her eyes rolled back in her head in a way I had never seen before, as the rest of her face looked deep in thought for a moment. The top two eyes returned to their normal orientation just as she started to speak again. "As far as I can remember, I've never seen anything relating to the prophecy before. Though, as I'm sure it's obvious to you, laugher burning from chaos likely refers to the jesters."

"Yes, it had been nice and stupidly hopeful that the prophecy had nothing to do with us for once. In hindsight, it was an idiotic desire that was far too good to be true. As much as I try to run from it, everything seems to revolve around us. The frustrating part is I don't understand why. From a pure numbers game, it shouldn't be happening." Many of the feelings I had built up over the last couple of days came out in my words.

They were meaner than I had intended. But Elody just continued to smile as she picked at her food. She understood I hadn't meant the anger at her, at least I hoped she did.

"You're entirely right there. Sometimes, though, that's how things seem to go," she went silent for a moment, biting her lip as though she was debating saying something.

All four of her eyes turned to look into mine, and then she started speaking again. "Sometimes some Olkerfins are born with an odd extra sense. It isn't widly talked about, nor is even fully understood. But those of us that possess the sense are able to tell when someone they encounter causes a ripple in fate, or probability. There is no consensus on exactly what it is, just that it alters something about reality around them."

I sighed slightly, having a feeling of where she was going with this. I had no idea how I felt about it. "I take it you have that sense, and you can see me rippling fate?" I asked.

"Yes. The only person I've ever seen who pulls fate along in quite the same way is my mentor, and even he pales before what the growing swirls around you have become. I can't tell you what it means or how it will affect any of us, just that you are almost certainly bound to play a giant role in the future of the Spiral," she answered with an apologetic look on her face.

"Honestly, I'll take it as an explanation. It's better than the nothing we currently have. I know most people would probably hear the idea of being told this like they were the main character, or some victim of cosmic stalking, but I think to me it's more along the lines of whether we have free will or not," I replied.

"Interesting view, but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by the last part on free will." Elody was still studying me as she spoke again.

"Free will is irrelevant. Either we have it or we don't, and nothing that can be done in regards to that idea can change it. So it just doesn't matter. If I'm some sort of person who causes fate to ripple, or it's just that things are happening that we get stuck in, I don't think it matters either way. We still have to react to it the same way," I answered, not sure I had done the best job explaining it.

"I think I understand. I've never heard anyone react to the news quite that way. It's generally why we don't tell anyone of our visions," she replied, smiling gently at me.

Before I could respond, a message window popped up.

I closed the window out, not bothering to reply to the new odd statement from Unakite. "I appreciate the talk a lot. Ivan needs me, though, but let's talk more about this fate thing in the future. While I'm not worried about it exactly, I am curious."

"Gladly," she said, her smile continuing as I stood up.

"So, you want to do what exactly with these pacemakers?" the newcomer asked. Roberts had returned with the expert as he had promised to do so. And along with Oscar Byrne had come every piece of medical tech he had sitting inside his house, plus at a nearby research building where he worked.

"I want to connect them into four people's cores and use them to detect any sort of change to how soul-core reaction should work. This will let us detect any soul tampering as it happens," Karlinovo answered.

"You understand other than knowing the words you are saying, and only from context, I have no idea how to do any of that. I get that our world has changed radically, and I'm one hundred percent behind learning how I can use those changes to advance the field of medicine, but you are going to have to start much earlier in this explanation," Oscar replied, sounding bemused with the whole situation.

I was just glad the first person Roberts had sent us to wanted to work with us. It made some of this all the easier, potential spy or not. And Timon was strongly leaning toward not being a spy. These two facts combined were making me hope we had a best-case scenario to deal with our growing pile of shit.

"Trust me, I understand. I still barely grasp how a lot of this works, and I just wish we had more time to spend studying and practicing it all, but right now, we have people who need the experimentation to be done as soon as possible. Ivan, any chance you want to at least cover the basics, as simply as you can?" I asked after sharing my own experiences.

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"Yes, yes, I suppose it's best we cover some of the rudimentary ideas here. Keep in mind I'm no teacher, though. I don't have the right makeup for it. Which reminds me. Dave, don't let me forget that we need to track down old Henjen. As much as the man and I fought, he's the kind of guy we're gonna need."
I gave Karlinovo a nod. I had read several of the man's books while in the archives, and if Karlinovo thought it was safe to make contact with him, I was willing to entertain the idea. Henjen Klank could very well be an asset.

"So essentially, everyone's body has a soul. That soul interacts with most mana fields to produce what is commonly referred to as magic. The bodies of the vast majority of people can only be pushed so far using just soul energy before their bodies cannot grow anymore. This is where the core comes in. It is a pool of mana condensed directly into the body that begins to work with the soul. We call this the soul-core reactor. This reaction allows the body to sustain more soul energy as well as produce its own mana through use of the core." Karlinovo stopped as Oscar had raised his hand.

"I'm guessing this is a very high-level overview, as I imagine there are tons of other factors in play here, yes?" he asked.

Karlinovo nodded.

"Okay, then why isn't this something that is native to Earth? Why did it only show up after the invasion?" Oscar continued.

"That has a lot to do with the System that was put in place to help guide the reactions. While it's entirely possible to do this without the System, the connection to one makes it much rarer for anyone to destroy themselves in attempting to do anything basic. There are a lot of other facets to the System's existence, the intelligence behind it being one of the biggest topics, but these are things we can discuss when we have more time," Karlinovo answered.

"Alright, alright, I think I'm starting to follow. So then we need to attach the core mana flows into a pacemaker, but also still get the pacemaker to monitor their heart for irregularities. If we can get the energy output correctly modulated so as not to destroy the circuitry, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible," Oscar said, grinning like a kid at Christmas.

"Correct, and this is where this all starts to get very complicated. The field of magictech theory is very undeveloped, as few worlds have bothered to push technology as far as yours has. Which brings us back to the lack of mana point you asked about. The fact that this planet, hell, even this universe, seems entirely mana-barren forced you to develop in ways we don't often see within the Spiral. It especially isn't seen in a universe that gets to remain free like this. So that means lots of experimentation, and as I am not any sort of medical doctor, this is not a field I can be reckless with," Karlinovo explained.

"Yes, I think all our patients would very much prefer caution here. We don't need their hearts destroyed. We especially don't need their soul knots ripped apart either," I added.

"Wait, what are soul knots?" Oscar asked.

"Those are the core of the issue that we need the pacemakers to monitor. A monstrous race of creatures called jesters has altered some of our friends in a way that they can force them to act against their will, and this is the first step in attempting to entirely free them from that control," I answered.

This would likely have gone faster had we given Roberts more time to bring Oscar up to speed. But time wasn't currently a luxury we had. And with Timon and Pryte busy handling the former president's induction, however they thought was needed, that left Karlinovo and me to handle this.

"This is all fascinating. I wish I had brought more equipment. Then again, I'm not even sure where to get what I want. We can likely jury-rig some of the pacemakers to do what you need once I understand the energies involved somewhat better, but for anything long-term, we are going to need to start at a much more basic level. For that, we are going to need some medical implants before the days of wireless technology," Oscar said, digging through one of the boxes that he had brought.

"Start making a list of anything you need. I'm done waiting for anyone to provide us with the instruments or technology we require. We will get whatever is needed ourselves," I said, entirely serious. If we could raid the archives on another world under the threat of a multiversal-level faction, we could handle some smash-and-grab across Earth.

"I'll work on that just as soon as we get these to your friends. I'm going to assume thanks to some magic we won't need to worry as much about healing time or pain management, but I think I'd still prefer someone to be placed under anesthesia before we do a surgical operation, and as a note, I'm not remotely qualified to do the surgery itself. Do you have a cardiac surgeon hiding in this city somewhere?" Oscar asked.

This was somehow something I hadn't considered again. I had gotten so used to magical healing, I had entirely forgotten the very basic concepts of the medicine I was used to being treated with. Oscar was entirely right. We needed a whole medical team for this. We also needed a volunteer willing to go first.

"We don't have anything like that, but we can get it. In fact, we already should have considered a medical team," I said, annoyed with myself for somehow overlooking this.

"Yeah, that had just dawned on me as well. The good news is that now that we have Roberts, we can just send him out with Timon, I think. Don't need to send you every time, Dave, and don't have to worry as much about people being freaked out by Pryte," Karlinovo added.

"I had reached a point where I was nearly ready to just send Grant, but I'm not sure how well the average doctor or scientist would handle being whisked away by a military man they had never met." I shook my head as I added my own thoughts, already suspecting the answer to how poorly it would go.

Not wanting to miss the current talks, I quickly sent Gamma a message to go relay what we needed to Pryte and Timon. I figured they could make the decisions there on how best to grab the people and supplies. In the meantime, we could figure out exactly how to go about wiring mana channels into a pacemaker.

I considered the idea of using my own abilities, but I was worried that it would tie them too much to myself. And if that turned out to be the case, I was sure neither Rabyn or Connie would be thrilled at the prospect of being networked into my ever-growing core connections. Elicec probably wouldn't either, but Cecile, on the other hand, might just laugh at the idea.

Oscar began going through his boxes and placing different devices on the table we were sitting around. They all resembled each other with subtle differences, ones I'm not sure I'd have fully noticed if I weren't looking for exactly that. For the most part, each of the devices looked to be roughly the same size, but it was the wires that differed. I wasn't sure if the materials used were what required different thicknesses or just because of the strength of the signal that needed to be passed through them, but they were certainly different gauges.

"Is this as small as the leads go? I'm concerned these may be too big to easily thread into internal mana channels, especially if we want the soul channels themselves," Karlinovo said, reaching for the one with the smallest wires.

"Technically, we could probably downsize them, but we will run into long-term structural issues. How long are you hoping to keep these functioning for within their bodies?" Oscar asked.

"Hopefully not long. How long is a normal pacemaker good for? A decade?" I asked.

"Depends, some less, some longer. But if you are talking less than a year, that is well within what I believe will be a safe zone if we scale this down even further," Oscar replied.

"Perfect, let's get to work," Karlinovo said, passing the smallest pacemaker to Oscar.

Gamma

"Dave says we need to get everything, included the doctors and nurses, to run a surgical room. I am not entirely sure how to do that, but he says it is very important," Gamma said as they flew into the meeting room that Pryte and Timon were using to talk to the former president.

"Of course he did. Actually, I should have known we'd need those. Hmm, there's a hospital in Anchorage. I know a surgeon there. We can probably convince him to help with this as long as we promise him access to the city and magic," Roberts replied.

"How well do you know this doctor?" Pryte asked, giving Roberts a judging look.

Gamma got the impression they had interrupted something here, but if Dave had told them to, that meant it was more important. Gamma didn't think of themselves quite the same way as Beta did when it came to the empire. But they did still consider themselves a loyal subject of it. After all, Dave had given them access to real magic.

"Well enough, we did a background check as much as we could when the travel between here and the capital started," Roberts answered.

"Good, I will tell Dave we have it figured out," Gamma said with some excitement in their voice.

One of the few classes banned from the Arena, not because of the danger or horror it posed to the others, but because of the suicidal recklessness of those who tried to master it, was the A Cappella Dragster. It turns out trying to both serenade a battlefield while driving a makeshift vehicle across it almost always causes horrible crashes. Most people are just not capable of the focus splitting needed to multitask effectively.

No known user of the class has ever made it past the first floor, and finally, after the incident where Beca Toretto famously crashed a series of buses into all of the competitors, somehow entirely by accident, ending the floor in a total team wipe, the class was placed on the permanent ban list.

Distasteful Classes Volume 1 by Zolinjar