Valterion: The Space/Arch? Mage

Location: Magicon Empire; Song Duchy; El Hakim System; VS Stargazer

Grandpa John's ship vanishes, but the escorts stay behind. We immediately receive a flight plan, coordinating the orderly dissolution of the sphere of starships. It's followed by the most important thing: The coordinates for the Solar System.

Clara puts them into the navigation software while turning the Stargazer around to follow the flight plan we received. While she's doing that, I ask most of the others to leave the bridge, so we have more space to bring the starship to its destination. I mean, with all those people here, it has become quite crowded.

Luckily, everyone is understanding and they return to their cabins or the living room further back, who knows. That leaves me with Lucy and Lydia, who sit down at their respective consoles. Lisa asks to stay too, and I accept as long as she doesn't get in our way. She almost laughs when I tell her that and sits down close to Lucy to support her if we need additional A&D magic.

Clara fires up a new projection in front of us. "That's our projected flight plan to Earth. As you can see, it's quite the distance and involves a lot of jumps. Sara can probably do it in about a week of almost constant jumping, but considering the others, I estimate a total travel time of about three weeks."

I stare at the projection with my mouth agape. Three weeks! I did the trip in barely a day the last time when I got lost in hyperspace, holy shit. "Wow, I wasn't expecting that… Now I don't even want to imagine how much longer it takes for those who have to travel with the newly built wormhole route."

"It's actually not that much longer, as the ring segments are all prebuilt. They just have to assemble and connect them. I think it's an additional two to three weeks until the wormhole route is finished."

"Crazy," I shake my head. "Anyway, are we ready to jump out?"

Almost. Shay is just finishing loading up Lisa's ship, then we have to move a bit further away from all the other ships for security reasons, but then we're good to go."

"Okay, thanks, Clara! Just tell me when."

I focus on the window and watch the other ships slowly move further away. It looks like a well-coordinated mess, but obviously, there are no accidents. That would have been a very bad showing. A few minutes later, the first ships start winking out of existence, and I get a bit annoyed at the delay that Lisa's ship causes. But it's still better than waiting for the wormhole to be built. We can catch up along the way.

Finally, Clara gives the long-awaited go-ahead sign and sends me a set of coordinates. As it's the first jump on our long journey, I start with casting the Group Call spell again and connect to Alex and Simon to coordinate things. As soon as we're all set, I trigger the Starship Jump spell and we jump the full 30 light years that Alex, as a relatively fresh Senior Mage, is capable of jumping.

The next two weeks are filled with a lot of jumping and also a lot of downtime. Our speed is dictated by Alex's ability to jump. I feel a little bad for her, as she's in a constant state of exhaustion because she insists on jumping whenever she's capable. She says she doesn't want to let us down.

But I'd be lying if her gruesome training wasn't effective… She's constantly improving at a crazy rate. And you have to consider that her core can't grow naturally, as it's an artificial one. No, what's improving is her ability to use her magic more effectively. She needs less and less downtime the longer our trip goes.

But it doesn't come without a price… The constant jumping takes its toll, and she looks dead on her feet when I see her at our daily conference call across all three starships. That's why I call for a break two weeks into our trip. Alex needs it, even if she doesn't want to admit it.

Jack basically has to carry her to bed, as he tells us later on, but apparently, she falls asleep immediately. When she returns a full 24 hours later, she grins sheepishly during our video call. She also blushes deeply when Maja calls her out on it.

"Okay, I admit it… I needed the break. Are you happy now? Because I'm eager to continue. And don't worry, I won't exhaust myself that much again."

I smile back at her. "That's great to hear, Alex. And yeah, we can continue if you're ready for it."

"You bet, I am," she grins back.

With that, the last week of our trip begins with a little bit of a slower pace. In the end, this costs us one additional day, but we all agree that it was well worth it to take it slower.

Now, we're about half a light year from the outer edges of the Solar System and take our final break to unload Lisa's ship from the Andala's hangar. As soon as the Hilara is out, Lisa and her team take a shuttle to fly over and warm up the engines. Jack and the Hunchback stay with her while Simon and I prepare to do the final jump into the Solar System.

Once there, it's my job to teleport back alone and then jump again, but this time with Lisa's ship. That should bring our four starships safely into the Solar System, and the real adventure can begin!

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Location: Solar System; VS Stargazer

This is it! I'm back on the Stargazer's bridge after bringing Lisa's ship into the system. Alex jumped right alongside me, so now we're all within the Solar System. This feels surreal… I mean, being back here, just crazy.

We're pretty far out. From the way things look like we're even further from the sun than where the Stargazer was originally anchored. Vic and all the others have joined us on the bridge a few minutes ago, and they all look through the window in awe. I think it finally settles in where we are now.

"This is unbelievable," Kylie breathes out. "Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this!"

Toby chimes in from the side. "Yeah, completely true… Why are we so far out, though? There's nothing here. Can't we jump further in?"

Vic shakes her head. "No, that's part of the rules to make things fair. You are being delayed by flying closer the normal way so that those going through the wormhole can catch up. You'll still have a few days of a head start, but not multiple weeks. Oh, and nothing bans you from using your sensors to their full potential," she winks at the end.

I nod slowly. What she's saying makes sense. "Okay, then let's start! Clara, please set course toward Earth. I'd say we leave the other planets for last and try to be one of the first groups to explore the real prize here."

"I agree, going to Earth first should be the best choice… The course is set, and I informed the other ships. We're ready to cruise on your mark, Sara."

I stand up and walk to the center of the bridge. Then I turn around and look at everyone. "We're here now, so let's not waste more time! Let the Earth Adventure begin for real! Clara, engage the engines."

A slight shudder goes through our starship, and we start moving. I also set up a rotation cycle for all our Utility Mages across the three non-military ships to keep the Engine Enhancement spells running.

Here on the Stargazer that means just keeping our gigantic magical batteries capped off, but on the Hunchback and the Hilara, a Mage must keep the spell actively running as they don't have the battery capacity to toggle the spell to battery use only. Teleporting the people from ship to ship keeps us Space Mages in the loop too, and Maja on the Andala has enough Peacekeeper Mages to do her own rotation cycle.

For the next week, not much happens besides more and more ships appearing on our sensors. They are all pretty far away, though, as the arrival points seem to be in a wide circle all around the Solar System. So far, no other ship has arrived in our close vicinity, but this might change when more ships arrive. We traveled here at breakneck speed after all. But we're still not the first ones here; that honor goes to one of the 17 groups that have already been here when we arrived.

Anyway, once seven days of traveling are over, things become much clearer, and we can even recognize planetary shapes by looking through the window in the front. Unfortunately, we arrive from another angle, and so I can't retrace my first trip into the star system. Another couple of days pass, then we cross the path of Pluto, at least according to our map, because the planet, or rather dwarf planet as Nick chimes in, is currently on the other side of the star system.

But with that, we have officially entered the interesting parts of the Solar System! We decide to stop enhancing our engines at that point and even pull back on the throttle a bit in case we come by anything interesting on our way in. We can afford to take three more days to reach Earth instead of just one.

That decision awards us with a nice view of Jupiter two days later. The planet certainly has seen better days, but it isn't as bad as I expected. Apparently, the sensors on my yacht are not really accurate at such great distances because I expected to only find parts of Jupiter, as the sensors back then suggested.

Most of the moons around the planet are in pieces, but there's one that looks suspiciously fine. I guess it was protected somehow. We collectively decide to visit that place later on. Maybe even send out Dave and his team on Lisa's ship for an archeological inspection if other things require my team's attention. Even better would have been to leave them here right now, but Vic stops us from doing so. Apparently, the meeting point for everyone is close to Earth, and only then are we allowed to roam.

That said, the planet itself looks a bit weird… According to historical documents, there should be a gigantic storm on the surface that looks like a red dot and should be larger than Earth in size. But I can't find it anywhere… It's just gone. Actually, the whole atmosphere is in disarray, and our scanners show strange emissions coming from the planet.

I look closer at the readings and compare them to my memories. I think those emissions could be what was picked up by the yacht's sensors when I was here the first time. With the low resolution and the Sun in between as further interference, this could be the cause for the readings back then saying the planet was in pieces.

But that doesn't matter right now. We can be glad that Jupiter is still here, because that one moon delivered us our first location to investigate later on.

After leaving Jupiter behind, we slow down even further and slowly navigate through the asteroid belt. Our sensors mark a few other locations of interest out there, but we continue further as we're not allowed to stop anyway. Next planet in line is Mars, but as with most of the other planets, it's currently not close to where we're flying. That leaves us with the final stretch, and we all watch the blue-green planet grow bigger and bigger every hour.

We're on our final approach now, and slowly but surely, we also begin to see the other starships already waiting in orbit. It's those 17 teams that have been here before us. Clara cuts off our engines, and we join them to wait for further instructions.

After a few hours, the initial awe dies down, and the others leave the bridge to return to their rooms and catch a little bit of sleep. I send Lisa a message asking her if she wants to join me to talk overall strategy. She agrees, and so I teleport her over. We're alone on the bridge for now, so I can talk about things most of the others aren't supposed to know for now.

I point at the Moon, which is a bit to our right currently. "Look, that's where it all started. There's a facility where I found out about Project Exodus and received the signal coming from the Magicon facility down on the planet."

Lisa listens to my every word in rapt attention. "This is all still so surreal… I can't believe that you've been here already, even if I know that you were. But do you think it's worth going to that facility on the moon in the beginning?"

I shake my head. "No, I don't think so. Maybe later… I didn't really find much there… Sure, the facility is probably bigger than what I explored, but I think our best bet is to go down to Earth immediately. I'm thinking of starting somewhere in old China and searching for something Song Medical related. Or maybe Australia and directly go for the big fish named Magicon."

Lisa looks deep in thought. After a while, she replies. "Song Medical would make sense. If there are any DNA checks like you described, we would have an advantage… But didn't you say the Song Medical headquarters was destroyed?"

"Yeah, at least the place where I visited was done for. But who knows, maybe there's something underground or at another place? I mean, we have way better sensors now."

Lisa nods. "Right, so we go for it?"

"Yeah, let's start with your family's company!"