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

Clark was kinda bored, and he couldn't be happier.

The best emotion for any healer to feel was boredom, because that meant they weren't needed, and any day when a healer wasn't needed was a good day. Yeah, Alyssa needed occasional bits of [Unblemish]ing when she was trying to figure out her fire-jump combination, but he could usually fix her up quickly. Seven Power was plenty to fix up bruises and thin fractures, with a newly-earned third point in Capacity meaning he usually could fix her up in a single session.

Other than that, the main healery duty he had was patching up Oliver whenever he burned himself in some way or another. And it was neat, healing someone with magemorfish, because the... texture was different. He was still working on figuring out how to work with the altered nature of his body instead of against it, but Clark was certain that he'd figure it out sooner or later!

What was really cool about that, though, had to be how Oliver's blood vessels had shifted somewhat to align with the flow of his aura, meaning the veins in his hands were straight and angular instead of swooshy and curvy, looking like a circuit board rather than a twisty net.

There was also the lingering question as to why Oliver hadn't regrown any of the hair that he'd lost during his epic battle with the machine, getting the System node working. Magical ailments, which magemoropis counted as despite being benign, didn't respond to what the afflicted person wanted to happen, but maybe Oliver's Aura stats had reshaped his body in accordance with his wishes? Or was it just like that, and the fact Oliver liked the outcome was just a coincidence?

Whatever it was, it was really, really cool.

Clark held out a bit of discarded meat in a cupped hand, cooing slightly to reassure the black petalfur as it crept closer and closer, very skittishly preparing to eat the morsel directly out of Clark's hand. If it got just a bit closer, then Clark could finally pet the little critter, which was something that it clearly and desperately needed.

It was friend-shaped, and so it would be his friend eventually.

The petal-shaped clumps of fur stood up on end, and its nerves failed it, leaving it to scamper away an instant before it could snap up the little piece of meat. Clark sighed and tossed the morsel into the shadows it had fled into, then [Unblemish]ed the bit of blood off his hand before turning back to Henrietta as she sat down on one of their new actual chairs. The cooking area in general had gotten a good few refinements as of late, and genuine stools - no backs, but maybe those would come someday - were one of the newest additions.

"Hi Commander Inq!" he waved, ladling up a bowl of soup and handing it over. "Are you doing well?"

She gave a bit of a tired smile as she gratefully accepted the food. "It's always such a delight speaking to you, Haleford. It's... no, that would be impolite."

"What weighs on your mind such that it bothers you so?" he asked. It was always so nice to have it confirmed that he was helping people. A lot of people didn't want to admit when a smile could help them, because they thought that acknowledging such a trivial thing might help them would make them seem weaker. But the Commander already knew how awesome she was, so she didn't need to doubt it... which, of course, just made her that much cooler.

"Bothering me? There's... well. No, not really bothering. Just, things are hard," she sighed. "So very hard. I did just feel the last digger inkling die, which means the Ironworks will need to be cleared out before we can get more iron from there. But that's not too bad. The ballistae which Smith and Veeran are working on should help with that, but it's really just a stopgap."

"What challenge is there? Have Oliver's latest creations not been wondrous? I was particularly amazed by the function inherent to his brackets. Previously I never received the opportunity to to truly study one, but they are extremely cool! The magic is all swirly and elegant and Oliver said he was harnessing the power of his motions to power the things, and that just really seemed cool!" Clark hadn't really understood most of what Oliver said, as was typical, but he always sounded so confident and smart that it didn't really matter. He could just get lost in the words and nod and feel like he was getting smarter.

"Have you seen the latest ballista prototypes? I'll be checking them out soon, but I've been informed they use a similar mechanism to track their targets," Henrietta said. "But no, Smith has been doing quite well. If we had a hundred of him, things would be far better. But there are only five of us, only one Smith, only one Veeran, only one Ride, and of course only one you. There just is so much that we can't do, and I'm seriously worried about the portal as a result."

"But of course there is only one of me, and of you. We are always ourselves, in all places and times. Why would such a thing be worrying?"

Henrietta gave him a bit of a skeptical look, "I'm not worried about us being ourselves. It's that building a portal requires the might of nations, tens of thousands of hands building towards something when we only have ten."

Clark wasn't really sure why that was an issue, but nodded anyway. He understood, Henrietta was having doubts. It wasn't bad that she had them, though she was of course incorrect because she didn't understand things properly. Clark had often found that the more awesome someone was, they more they thought they weren't awesome, which was clearly what was happening here. So, he wasn't going to let that dissuade him! "Ah, but we are destined to succeed! We are the Heroes who bring Fate into worlds which had none, it is our presence which provides a future to these places!"

"A future, it's not..." Henrietta sighed, acknowledging Clark's obvious wisdom. "I don't know why I'm debating this. I agree that we can do it, it's just going to be hard. We just don't have much to work with."

"But we have plenty! Why would we ever require anything more? The Emperor entrusted us with this mission through his servants, of course we can succeed! Why should we fear? The portal is surely the easiest part! The stories always tend to stop right after the demon king is killed, so surely the remainder must be a mixture of droll and routine work?"

"It tends to be less exciting, that's true. Anything that's a lot of base paperwork and management doesn't tend to attract much attention from the media, so it gets skipped over. And coordinating tens of thousands of people directly and indirectly... that's one thing. Doing the work, though?" Henrietta shook her head.

"It's definitely not going to be easy, and I'm not sure how much we can really prepare for it," Henrietta sighed and took a deep drink from her soup bowl before setting it to the side. "I'll talk it through with you, familiar you, maybe it'll help me figure things out. Are you working on anything else?"

Clark happily shook his head. If he could help out just by listening and learning cool new things, that was the best possible situation!

"Alright. Tell me to skip something if it's too basic. So, the fundamental nature of reality is an abnormally large, possibly infinite number of these clouds of existences, all intermingling and floating together. Those Realms are infinite collections of infinities, a spectrum of multiverses which share characteristics with one another. And even though our home is deep in the Realms of Void, meaning it's mostly empty, it's upstream of the current of Fate from here, and it's that current that we ride during Allosmos to arrive on worlds like this one, which suddenly lost a lot of Fate and are trying to replenish it."

Clark nodded. He wondered a bit where she was going with all of this, because it was all pretty basic stuff. She was good at explaining it though.

"Now, how far down the currents of Fate is unknown. We might have dropped just a tiny ways down, or we might have dropped to an altogether lower 'terrace,' to borrow terminology from the Zigguraut Model. But no matter how far down, it will almost certainly have some new form of magic native to it, which when cross-pollinated back home helps with increasing the resilience of reality."

'Resilience of reality' was one of those fun terms that Clark never really understood. It was supposed to be good, but reality was already... well, so real, that he didn't get how it could become more real or more powerful. What was stronger than existence?

"Now, without knowing where we ended up, we can't really know where we're headed back. We'll need to take measurements to calibrate where we need to aim our portal, which nominally requires a world-spanning set of collaborative casting and measurements being taken, but also has a number of shortcuts that might apply. Either way, we'd need help taking measurements, which is something we just can't do here."

"But could we not simply have Oliver make enchantments to take those measurements, right?" Clark asked. Oliver was awesome! He was already making all kinds of really advanced and really cool things, what sorts of stuff would he be able to make once they had gotten just a bit further?

"He'll have to. Or, perhaps more accurately, he'll have to make something that can make those enchantments. We'll need too many for anything else. But, as I'm being reminded every single day, trivial tasks for a human can be extremely hard for a machine to do, and these measurements aren't trivial even for a human."

"Oliver is far too brilliant to allow such a small thing to stop him!"

"Well, that's just the start. Depending on how far down the current of Fate we went, there's wildly different levels of power that might be needed, and we'll need to get a solid tap on the world's magic to get enough power if it's more than just a tiny jaunt. At least the actual Structure should be straightforward enough. Just about any kind of teleportation can work as a baseline, so we've got plenty of options."

Clark was mostly lost at this point, lots of words floating around his head, and he found himself once more in awe as to how smart not only his teammates were, but also how smart the first people to figure all of this out was.

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The Blasphemous Emperor of Mankind was said to have been the very first to return after being whisked away to another world completely unprepared, but such was only to be expected of the man who had overthrown the Tyrants and locked their remnants away in eternal prisons? Even to this day, they cursed his name, renewing his title with their every breath.

The fact that Henrietta had also managed it just made her that much cooler... oh! He could learn more about how cool she was! He doubted he'd understand it, because Henrietta was currently talking to herself and treating him like he was just her familiar, but maybe he would understand it and figure out a new way that his boss was just the absolute most awesome.

"What of the other portal you have created? You did create one previously, did you not?"

"True. That one... well. With my other Expedition we leaned heavily on the local magic. Lord Noctis had an artscape that he called the Twilit Realm, imposed on reality what things would be like at 'the end of days,' or something like that. When we killed him, the effect somewhat persisted, and we turned that into the site for the portal. That was mostly structural, for targeting I grew an Yggdrasilic sapling we'd discovered on our journey, and coordinated with a college of wizards to make it grow in the direction of home by aligning its branches with various cosmological signposts, and which harmonized with the Twilit Realm remnants in a way that enabled us to harness a cosmological alignment upswell to grow it into a Path to Beyond Day's End... alright. I think that answers my question. Thank you, Haleford."

"Happy to help!" Clark brightly agreed. "Though I must inquire as to how I aided?"

"I was trying to figure out how far in advance we should be planning out, if that makes sense."

Clark nodded, uncomprehending.

Henrietta chuckled, "You reminded me that basically none of the final portal configuration last time were things I would have - could have, even - planned out right after landing. There were preparations, absolutely, and plenty of details which I did know would be needed, but it was only as we were boots on the ground working on it that we could actually do everything needed. Until we figure out more details about what our portal will be like, all we can really do is build out our industrial base, make sure that no matter what nonsense we need for our portal, we're equipped to create it."

Clark kept nodding. "So shall we begin to search for a suitable location for our portal, then?"

"Well," she mused, "If you find an active rift which leads into another world, let me know. Even if we can't redirect it, a natural portal would be incredibly useful for knowing what would work best on this world."

"I shall endeavor to locate one at once!"

Henrietta laughed, "Oh, I love your sense of humor. And I won't say anything else, lest I insult nobles."

"Worry not. Father was certain to make it most clear that insults of other houses were perfectly allowable any times they were not listening and we were not being recorded."

"I'm sure he did," Henrietta sarcastically agreed, finishing off her bowl of soup. "Do you want to join me as I check out what Smith and Veeran have been working on?"

"That would be most delightful!"

Clark walked one way, and the stick pointed at him.

Clark walked the other way, and the stick kept pointing at him.

Clark doubled back, and the stick smoothly spun to stay pointing at him.

Clark hunched over, getting beneath where the stick pointed, and waddled to the side. The stick did not follow. Clark stood up, and the stick didn't point at him. But as soon as he started to move towards the stick, it immediately spun to point at him again.

This was so fun!

"Yeah, yeah, I know it isn't working properly. I need to figure out how to get it tracking you past the half-pi point," Oliver sighed. "You don't need to rub it in, I know it's an issue. I'd like to get it fully articulate in the polar axis, but I think something about the platform it's sitting on is confining it to strictly the zenith hemisphere, and ignoring the nadir one."

"I think it is marvelous you managed to even get it tracking me in a circle!"

"You don't need to patronize me, Clark. Motion-based tracking is too easy for praise, let alone with how much I struggled getting it working."

Man, Oliver was so awesome. "Not at all, I-"

"Smith!" Henrietta's voice called out, and Clark fell silent to allow for his Commander to speak. "I want you to look at this trigger mechanism."

Clark followed along, curious. Jacob was standing off to the side as Henrietta and Oliver hunched over a workbench, looking at some mess of metal and reed that he couldn't decipher.

"What are they doing?" he whispered to Jacob, trying to get a better view of what they were looking at.

"You are aware of how a crossbow works, correct?" Jacob asked in a hushed tone, and Clark nodded. "Pull back a string and lock it in place, pull a trigger and the string flies forward, shooting a bolt. Good. This works slightly different. Everything is built around the winding mechanism, that's that tube there, see?"

The tube in question was a reed that had a slit cut in the top. "At the bottom of that tube, there resides an iron bar which pushes that dog."

"There's a dog there?" Clark asked. He didn't even know there were dogs on this world! Why had nobody told him? He realized he might have been a bit too loud and had definitely interrupted Jacob, so he quickly closed his mouth right afterwards.

"Not that kind of dog. When speaking with regards to mechanical mechanisms, a dog is a form of hook that blocks or transfers movement. Our 'dog' is that piece of metal that they are sliding back and forth. It and the bar are enchanted such that the dog will move down the bar, pushing anything which it touches alongside it. Which in this case, will be the string of the crossbow."

Clark was a little lost, but he didn't let it show. It would be way better if he could get his hands on the things, but he'd settle with this for now he supposed.

"Don't worry about it too much. Just remember that when the dog is on the bar, the crossbow is being drawn back."

"What about when it gets to the end of the bar?" Clark asked.

"Then it just stops. We don't have any mechanical latches, so that's what keeps it in place."

That seemed like it had a big problem in it to Clark, but he figured that the others had a solution.

"Now, that makes things tricky, because we need the dog to also release when we want to fire, but still be usable afterwards. What Inq and Smith seek to craft is a suitable means by which we can separate the bar and the dog on command, which would let the crossbow fire, while making ensuring the mechanism resets appropriately. To accomplish that, the tube drops on one end, just far enough that the dog loses contact with the bar and goes shooting forward until it comes back into contact with the bar on the other end, thereby resetting the mechanism."

"Cool!"

"Now as it lacks a latch, resetting the mechanism is challenging, and is therefore the current source of this conundrum. It ought to be motion-based, however, to ensure that it all functions appropriately and shoots at anything which moves quickly."

Clark suddenly realized something. "How will we not get shot by this?"

Jacob's lips twitched into a grin, though his words were far from reassuring, "When an arrow seeks those running from it, it is best to walk. Move slowly, I suppose."