The Factory Must Grow - [Book 1: The System Must Live]

"That doesn't look good," Haleford absently commented, as the area around the tree began to flake apart into golden ash, drifting into the air like snow falling in reverse.

"Truly insightful," Veeran muttered, then raised his voice, "Now move!"

A thunderous screech of mana pierced Veeran's ears, a volume so great that any information beyond the magnitude and danger was utterly lost to the roar. A tug on the Healer's arm got him moving, and then the two of them were dashing through the woods. Around them, Veeran noticed other various small creatures fleeing alongside them, avian and terrestrial beasts alike sharing the instinct that whatever was happening was not something they should be around for.

Clearly, the tree had been a keystone of some form for the area's magic, and its death had unsealed something massive. It was too soon to tell whether this particular calamity would be something that would devastate its hollow or a massive section of the forest, but Veeran obviously hoped for the former.

Something sufficiently powerful dying could have unpredictable events, as whatever magic was wrapped up within its existence was suddenly loosed. Deities were like that, where their death could be even more disastrous than their life, much like how a nuclear bomb could cause far more devastation than the same amount of radioactive material would, because all of its energy was released in a single go.

This tree didn't have power anywhere close to that of a god, but magical influence wasn't directly connected to power.

Not that it mattered.

This could have been the death of power, the breaking of a seal, or the cracking of a focus. Each behaved differently, but as far as actions went, it didn't matter if dealing with a bomb, a volcanic eruption, or a dam breaking. In all cases, you just ran.

[Frostblade] flashed up, slicing through a vine that threatened to clothesline Veeran as he ran, then swung around to chop down a branch that would be inconvenient to slide under. The branch, however, didn't fall like it was supposed to. Instead, it began vibrating in place, and Veeran and Haleford were forced to go under it anyway. Behind them, Veeran heard a clicking sound, and felt a burst of wind at his back, carrying pink flower petals on the breeze as the branch dissolved into golden ash.

Probably not a seal, then.

It was still possible, Veeran didn't have the technical background to identify something this complex on the fly, but the kinds of changes inherent to something becoming undone and redone didn't feel like what might happen when simply exposed to a lot of new magic.

The two of them burst onto a small game trail, and Veeran happily took the less-difficult path. Behind him, he could still hear the roar of wild magic, but he refused to look back to see exactly what was happening, in case he might run into something during the glance.

"That way!" Haleford shouted, pointing off to the side, and Veeran looked at him confused.

"What?"

"Shelter, right? We're headed there? It's that way!"

Veeran frowned. He was pretty sure they were headed that way already, and while his sense of direction wasn't the best, did he trust that Haleford's was better? Actually, did they even want to get back to the shelter? More distance might be superior and-

"Oliver's wards! Come on, we need to get to safety!"

A flash of insight crossed Veeran's face. Right, the wards.

How much did he trust what Smith had made? He'd complained immensely about how sub-par his creations were thanks to lack of tooling.

Trust your teammates. It was an endless mantra, one made simpler to follow given the lack of other viable options.

"Take the lead!" Veeran shouted back, flicking his sword to indicate where Haleford had said the shelter was.

The Healer's face was flushed with exertion, and his chest was heaving, but he pushed forward with the strength of desperation. Veeran hoped Haleford truly knew where he was going, but any amount of distance they could gain from the epicenter would be helpful.

Ahead of them, a tree suddenly turned into glittering motes of gold, and Veeran's eyes flashed with concern. That was very bad.

To each side of them, random notes of magic began sounding, and even the ground underneath them picked up an ethereal, shimmering sound almost like music as the magical shockwave caught up to them. Behind him, Veeran heard the sound of trees falling, their crashes spinning off random noises both magical and mundane alike.

"Almost there!" Haleford yelled, his voice nearly lost in the sounds of catastrophe.

Beneath Veeran's feet, the dirt turned black then neon green, lifting into the air and taking him with it. He jumped off the floating dirt and sliced through a tangle of mana sneaking up behind them, briefly turning aside the onrushing flow of magic.

Then, they were in the clearing, though it already had begun to change. Some of the trees had begun turning translucent and otherwise crystallizing, and Veeran caught a glimpse of the space behind him… that was also in front of him, and some places in the middle that weren't to his right or to his left.

Rocks crumbled beneath his feet as he dashed over the shallow creek, tiny shards of broken stones embedding themselves in the bottom of his feet, but then he was in the shelter, and Haleford dove in a second later. Veeran's first instinct was to try and close the door or something akin to that, but there was nothing like that to be used here.

Instead, he could only stand at defense and hope that Smith's defenses would hold fast.

It seemed promising at this point, the deafening cacophony outside had strongly faded in substitute of the inarticulate yet rhythmic sounds that he associated with Smith's handiwork and industry in general. Technology, when he had a Metal-based class anyway, could be described the clinking of gears meshing and pushing against one another, the rhythms of something artful and precise forged from the mighty blood of the earth.

The shelter creaked ominously around them, the storm of wild magic pressing like a strong wind against a flimsy construction. What Veeran assumed were diagnostic or warning glyphs shone brightly on the inside of the woven construct, and wisps of golden power forced their way in, be it through the open entrance or by seeping in through the stone walls surrounding them.

That nothing was directly making its way through the wall Smith had actually enchanted was a very good sign, though. That meant their Artificer knew his stuff really well, and if they didn't survive this, it would be because they never had a chance.

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"What… was that?" Haleford asked, between gasps for air.

"That is what happens when something powerful dies," Verran plainly replied. "Though to be more accurate, it could also be the result of something powerful dying or a seal being broken. That tree, whatever it was, was the epicenter of a lot of very powerful magic, and this is the result of it being absent."

"Really?"

Veeran tilted his head to indicate some uncertainty, "It's an assumption, but one that matches my experience. Either it held a lot of power, held back a lot of power, or focused a lot of power. I don't think it held back power because of the way things have fallen apart."

Veeran went quiet for a moment and held his hand up to indicate Haleford ought to also be silent. An unnerving sound had filled the air, and he looked outside to see what it might be.

The clearing they'd painstakingly expanded over the past weeks was awash with wild magic. Trees had turned to crystal, random rocks were scattered around, new bushes had sprouted, Smith's copper furnace was spawning a lizard composed entirely out of flames, the stream had decided it wanted to float into the sky rather than along the ground. Meanwhile, the pond on their other side had frozen over yet was burning with bright green flames that cast dancing shadows on the ground, while fish frantically swam back and forth within the cloud of magenta smoke it was releasing. A tree had its branches spread out and grow thin, then somewhere along the way invert and become roots for another tree growing on top of the first, but if Veeran looked up to the top of that tree, somehow he instead found himself looking at the first tree once again.

And it was all covered in a golden sheen that was obviously there, yet didn't distort the colors underneath in any way. It was so pervasive that Veeran could see exactly where the protection of the shelter began. It wasn't smooth or precise or anything like that, but licks of golden mist kept protruding into the entrance and all throughout the area overlooking their pond, yet never making more than an inch or two of headway.

None of that was obviously the source of the sound that concerned Veeran, but after a couple minutes of waiting on-guard the noise faded, still unidentified, and Veeran returned his attention to Haleford.

"Why do you doubt it was holding back power?" Haleford asked.

Veeran shook his head, "That is not something I can properly explain, but intuition. Nonetheless, such is good for us, because at this point that would be the one most likely to kill us."

"Why?"

"If something contains within itself that much power, upon its destruction all of that power is released at once. If it's strong enough, there can be fairly substantial pre-detonation and post-detonation effects, but still best described as an explosion. Effectively, an enormous magical bomb." He indicated outside, "It seems unlikely that it was Divine. I heard nothing that indicated it might have been, at least. Though my ears aren't perfect, and [Frost Knight] is hardly [Godhunter]. A tree-god for a forest that's never known intelligence. Not that it matters, anything with enough power will take some measure of reality along with it as it dies. Magical irradiation, unleashing a storm of wild magic. Like the Dragons unleashed by runaway spells, but a thousand times worse. Though I doubt you need my explanation to understand, I presume?"

Haleford grimaced, and nodded, so Veeran continued.

"So long as we can survive the initial explosion, which so far we have, we shall survive in the long term. Maybe with some lingering health problems, but if we emerge relatively unscathed it is still a victory. This whole area might become uninhabitable, but it also might not.

"Second option. The tree might have been sealing power, acting as the capstone for a magical geyser, and now a lot of built-up pressure is being released into the area. With that, our only hope of survival would be to have outrun the spreading effects as the magic overflowed and subsumed its surroundings. Less devastating in the short term, but still deadly in the long term, and would leave us trapped in the meantime. Like a volcanic eruption. The power will eventually fade as it runs dry, but it could take a very long time. Weeks, months, even years or centuries if it's really extreme. Not something we can count on, and the entire area will be impossible to survive until it does subside.

"The final option, with the tree was holding two kinds of magic separate or otherwise mediating their interaction as a focus, might be the most likely at this point. Maybe it was on a leyline intersection, and now two kinds of magic are colliding uncontrollably, but right now there's two titanic sources of Mana attempting to do what they do best, and it's changing this area as a result. That one could be the most dangerous in the long term, like a dam breaking and leaving the area downstream permanently flooded, but it's still probably going to be survivable because if there were any massive banks of magic or leylines hostile to life in the area, we would have seen signs."

"How do you know all this?"

"I don't truly. But when something dies and it unleashes a storm of wild magic, I can guess. Though I am hardly an expert in the subject. This is merely extrapolation from personal experience."

"Wow. You're really cool, you know that?"

"Hah! It is not something I have heard much," Veeran honestly replied. "But on occasion…. It's good to see the youth still like my lessons."

"Why wouldn't we? Your stories are awesome, and you've seen so much crazy stuff."

Veeran shook his head, "It's a different world, these days. Better, in a lot of ways. Worse, in some others. But someone like me, no. I had my day."

And the world truly was better, overall. He'd fought, and he'd won, and this new generation would never know the heartbreak and despair that came with the way things once were. He wouldn't give up any of what had made him today, but so too was he glad that they'd made certain the Age of Oppression would never come again.

"Your mana is visual, right?" Veeran asked, getting a confirming nod in response. He jerked his head towards the opening. "What does it look like to you?"

"It's... wooshy. There's a lot of magic coming our way, and giant clouds of mana keep sweeping over things and sinking into them, but it all breaks over the shelter and leaves something like a shadow back there. There's a lot of stuff out there, I'm amazed Oliver's furnace is still working."

"Is it now?"

"Pretty sure, it and the sleeping hut both seem to be holding strong, but the furnace hasn't even changed color. The salamander is neat, though."

"It is quite the handsome fellow," Veeran agreed, watching as the pyric lizard finished pulling its way out of the smelter's chimney, and was now protectively coiled atop the furnace's dome.

Around them, the shelter crackled and groaned as a new gust of magical pressure broke against it, but the construction held up admirably.

Veeran paced back and forth as he watched their surroundings become unmade. Even if the 'shadow' of the shelter protected their pond from the worst of it, it was still strongly beset by the literal winds of change. Portions of ice transformed into quartz and sank, then lit up underneath the water with crimson lightning. Shadows of trees danced together, contorting and separating from their origins, then being pulled into the air as black mist before dissipating. Without shadows, the trees became desaturated and semi-unreal, revealing other mutating trees behind them.

"How powerful was that tree?" Haleford marveled. "And you managed to kill it?"

"Power alone does not mean you're better at surviving. Even the greatest Archmage will die to a slit throat."

"Yeah, but…" the young Healer indicated the wild magic outside, "No human would cause that much when they die."

"Even the Emperor?"

Haleford flashed Veeran a grin, "I will not fall for that trick question. The Emperor simply cannot die."

"Everything can die," Veeran grimly replied. "If it lives, it will someday die."

"Philosophy is different. You know what I mean."

"I do, and I am not. If it lives, it dies. If it dies?" Veeran shot Haleford a glance, who opened his mouth to respond, then seemed to think better of it and closed it again. Smart kid. "This is simply the way of things."

"Yeah but… oh right. This planet isn't Chained, is it?"

"It is not. It is also-"

"Not a planet, yes, yes. I misspoke." Haleford suddenly looked at the wall. "Think that might be an issue?"

Veeran looked at the area the Healer indicated, then tilted his head to instead listen, closing his eyes to better conceptualize the sounds around him. The sounds of the outside, of slithering and grasping and creaking vines, definitely was louder from one place than it was elsewhere, but it was largely drowned out by the steady and uninterrupted ticking of enchantments.

"It will hold," Veeran stated, with a bit more confidence than he felt.

"At your command, Warrior," Haleford responded, then dropped to the ground and started sorting through some of their rations.

"You want some food? I'm hungry, and you should keep eating while I finish healing you."

As though conjured by the Healer's words, Veeran's many wounds obtained while clashing with the tree began to ache once more, something that he'd quite nearly forgotten about during their hastened retreat.

"I suppose that would be wise," Veeran agreed, and he sat down to get some food to eat as the world outside fell apart.