August 26th, 626

Few people turned to glance at me when I walked into the Command Center of the Glass Desert, most focused on their tasks. The entire base was busy and people knew by now that I didn’t seek to interrupt with my presence. 

One man’s eyes found me and nodded. 

“Sir.”

“General Gaffney. How are our FOBs?”

“Perimeters have been established for both, but not without resistance. 1st, 2nd, and 4th Brigades are in battles every day.”

“Not surprising. The Scourge knows as well as we do that the line we’re trying to draw will be easier for us to defend than for them to attack. But little do they know…”

I looked down at a large holographic map, everyone around the table backing away from it when I approached. I placed my hand on top of a control pad, Psyka streaming in and rapidly changing the view. 

Euclid’s Anvil was an Operation with three phases. The first phase had been completed when the vast bulk of my troops and generals had been trained. The second phase was completed when the Glass Desert was established and reached full operating capacity. 

The third phase demanded that we engage in force projection and establish forward bases, drawing a new battle line. 1st Brigade, over the last month, has been hard at work both driving back the approaching Scourge and occupying certain pieces of territory, allowing other Brigades to move in and plant themselves. 

On the map I could see two FOBs. They were our new anchor points, the most forward bulwark of our new battle lines. At each one was a full Brigade of at least four thousand troops. 

It seemed like construction was going well according to the batch of pictures that popped up when I queried for them. At these bases I would be showcasing the defensive technologies that Wonderland had developed as well as the might of a properly fortified position. 

Walls with dozens of turrets, artillery batteries, shields, as well as sensor and alert systems useful for spotting both Scouts and sneaky Scythers. Sloped walls would allow us to pack in defensive positions while also being significantly more resilient, resistant to impact and the like.

Then there were the traps and natural barriers. Massive dry and wet moats had been dug around those perimeters, making direct sieges significantly disadvantageous to the attackers. 

We had also developed advanced systems of landmine distribution, both with aerial systems and artillery batteries. Thousands of landmines could be dispersed for miles around a base, and while no single one was powerful, it would allow those bases to cut down on a huge chunk of enemy numbers before contact was even made. After all, in Scourge armies numbering over 50 thousand, most monsters weren’t any stronger than Authority 4 or 5. 

Forces with an average of Authority 6 or 7 were rare and seldom appeared in concentrations greater than ten thousand.

Even then, an Authority 5 landmine could easily maim or outright kill an Authority 6 beast. Thousands of Authority 4 landmines could decimate half an army, and if said army didn’t wish to deal with the landmines, then they’d be either entirely routed or would simply sit there and take the hits from aerial bombings and artillery. 

I was willing to bet that those filthy monsters weren’t that smart. No matter what, it was a win for us. 

I smiled and checked some of the statuses for the FOBs. One was already laying minefields while the other was still digging its moat, currently engaged with a sizeable enemy force numbering about 20 thousand. Nothing they wouldn’t be able to easily handle. 

I nodded. 

“Good work, General. Have you seen Polly?”

“She left here not too long ago. Would you like me to summon her?”

“No, that’s alright.”

I waved, tabbing out of the screens I was viewing and setting the map back to how it was. Then I left the Command Center. 

I found Polly in Sector 4’s section of the base. She was sifting through some of the recent intelligence gathered from our friends at the Kingdom’s new Stronghold not far from here. 

She only had time for that because we had locked down the Glass Desert so thoroughly that any possible traitors or spies were weeded out early on. The girl I had killed in front of Jasmine was still sending reports back to the Third Claw, for all they knew. They didn’t suspect a thing. 

One thing that was beginning to concern me though was the number of Aerials that had gone offline within both the Third Claw and the Church. 

They were trying to crack my software, trying to study it. It was clear that cybersecurity was becoming an issue those organizations wanted to get ahead on, but that meant they would be looking in dark corners I didn’t want them to see. 

Luckily I had already planned for that. If they wanted to try and crack 256-bit encryption then they could be my guest. If they wanted to try and bypass the software and attempt to externally read the hardware, then they could deal with sifting through all of the fake masks I put on everything. 

Besides, as soon as those Aerials went offline, my contingency programs kicked in and simply deleted everything I didn’t want them to see. They’d be studying a barebones Aerial with nothing more than the handshake protocols they used to connect to the Nodenet. 

It was too easy to keep them in the dark, at least for as long as I needed it to. By the time they made progress, I’d be a hundred steps further. 

Polly looked up at me when I entered her office, nodding. 

“Hello, John.”

“Hey. How goes the Kingdom?”

“Eh. They’re acting like a neglected girlfriend. They still let off calls for cooperation, but we’re rejecting them since it’s a waste of our time. We’re handling almost all of the Scourge on the western front and they’re still sitting on their hands.”

“What could they even be asking for help for?”

“They just want intelligence. That, and if they run any missions anywhere close to us, they want soldiers and Heavy Metal to reinforce their battalions. Our generals are refusing since they can’t interlock with our command system. We’d just be doing all the work.”

“Indeed.”

I chuckled a bit. Our militaries were now completely unrecognizable from each other. Two totally different systems, with weapons that couldn’t be compared and a support structure that, by itself, could outclass the combat power of the soldiers that they would send. 

All while sustaining little to no casualties, compared to their double digit mortality rates. 

Polly sighed. 

“We’re updating them with battle records and kill counts. That’s all they deserve from us, and it seems to be keeping them in line. Knowing that we’re killing so many has culled any whining, for now. Still, we may have to make a show of ourselves, placate the raving generals before they try and do something stupid.”

“Mm. We could use something like that too.”

I smiled, staring at a wall and imagining the scene. 

“We could make a show of force. Drive over some Heavy Metal, form a joint task force for a few of their missions, and completely dominate the field. Not only would it shut up those generals, but the troops would start wondering how we’re so much better than them.”

“Make the soldiers lose confidence in their leadership.”

“And they’ll start demanding some metal of their own. Sawn Industries makes money and I’m a happy camper.”

Polly narrowed her eyes at me. 

“It all ends with you making money, huh?”

“War is the most profitable business for a man who sells peace.”

“You sell weapons.”

“Indeed.”

Polly rolled her eyes, making me laugh. 

I sat down on a chair in front of her desk, leaning back and taking out a fresh cigar, clipping and lighting it. Polly reached over and grabbed a bottle of alcohol while I did, pouring two glasses. 

My words came out with a puff of smoke, my hand taking the offered glass.

“That island we found.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m almost ready to deploy to it. You shouldn’t have to make many preparations since I’m only allocating a week, but nobody knows if we’ll actually be able to return when we want to. I want to prepare for at least a month of my absence.”

“So more of my hair is going to turn white.”

“We can invest in some hair dyes.”

“Haah…”

She sighed as I smiled. Some of her hair had in fact turned white after the events at the Treehouse. Even Jasmine was seeing gray strands. I felt a bit bad for them. 

Which was why their salaries had an extra zero at the end. They may have white hair but at least they’d have white hair and a mansion back home. 

“You sure I can’t just take that month off instead?”

“Sorry auntie. I’ll see if I can bring back a souvenir at least.”

“I’d rather a bonus.”

“How about paid time off?”

“Three weeks.”

“One to one for every day that we’re gone.”

“Deal. I’ll finally be able to go home and work on getting the new place furnished.”

I chuckled, sipping my drink. 

“How is it in the Whetted City?”

“Really nice, certainly better than the capital. My husband is still adapting since he’s away from family now but he’s not allowed to complain while surrounded by 8 million coin worth of enchanted stone and gold.”

“Hoho, Auntie Polly wears the pants in the relationship, eh?”

“So long as I’ve got all the zeroes.”

“Fucking right.”

I reached over, the two of us clicking our glasses together with smiles. 

……

After my conversation with Polly ended I returned to Wonderland. Umara was still at the Glass Desert, handling most of the preparatory training with the rest of the Desert Eagles. 

I, on the other hand, still needed to finalize my own preparations. 

I walked into a private lab of mine. It was strictly my own. I had access to all knowledge within it and the most cutting edge tools resided upon my tables. 

Boris was the only one allowed inside, and that’s exactly where he was, running some tests I had asked him to. 

“How is it?”

“Occasionally spitting out the right numbers, not as reliable as you want it yet, sir.”

“As long as it’s better than before.”

“It most certainly is.”

I nodded and walked over, looking at the screens in front of Boris as well as the new tool on the table. 

The primary purpose of this upcoming trip was data extraction. I wanted to crack open the secrets of that island and take everything of value from it. I probably wouldn’t be able to build those robots after the trip but that didn’t mean I couldn’t come out with some extremely valuable new technology. Perhaps a new enchanting method or new formations. Anything I could get my hands on, I’d be happy with. 

But nothing on that island would come to me willingly. I’d have to rip it from whatever maws were clamped around it, whether that was security formations or guardian robots. I may have light knowledge on Earth’s cryptography and networking, but that didn’t mean I knew anything that might help me decipher or extract data from that island.

So whether it was scanning those robots to get data on their internal enchantment structure or extracting data from repositories, I needed tools that could adapt to foreign systems and get me what I wanted. 

That led to a series of constant technological evolutions on my end. I didn’t have any Wonderland teams handle something like this since it was nearly exclusively related to enchantment security, a concept that could shake the very foundation of enchanting as a whole. After all, I was trying to build something that could extract enchantments from anything. The only way to do that currently was by having a warlock break down a device and destroy it in an attempt to make sense of the enchantments themselves. It was why my encryption was so important for the Mana Engine. 

The tool before me would change all of that. 

I called it the SEER Knife, standing for Scanning, Extraction, Eradication, and Raiding. There were three iterations on the table before me. The first was shaped like a Ka-bar knife, with a hilt and a blade made entirely out of the material used in Orbs. The second was shaped the same but made out of Psyka Crystals. The third iteration had a hilt but no blade, nothing there but a projection of pure Psyka. 

That third iteration was the important one. I needed this multitool to be able to sense all forms of magic, extract free data and enchantment formations based on its sensory abilities, eradicate any security or counterintrustion, and raid systems with my Seed programs. 

A big issue with this was the simple matter of interfacing. Orbs could be controlled by summoners directly but devices needed special cradles to read the data on them. Then there was the fact that enchantments weren’t meant to be scanned and analyzed conventionally. They could be installed easily but attempting to read them after that was a destructive chore. 

I needed my SEER Knife to be able to surpass all conventional modes of interfacing and use the omniscient power of Psyka to simply see the structure of all enchantments it came across, regardless of the kind of power utilized. 

It also needed to be able to bypass, destroy, and protect itself against all forms of security. I was willing to bet that this new civilization utilized Psyka in their enchantments and systems which meant that no matter how convoluted their systems were, the language of Psyka was still universal. I didn’t have to know their language in order to protect my devices against it. 

I reached out and picked up the bladeless hilt before me, the tools around it beeping in alarm as their target disappeared. 

My Psyka pushed into it, Psyka spewing out of the hilt like a geyser, completely without form or order. 

This was the issue with it. It wasn’t enough to just send Psyka into a device. The SEER Knife had to send its Psyka into whatever device I stabbed it into and then pick up any and all interference, aka sensory data. It couldn’t do that if the Psyka wasn’t orderly, structured, and contained, and it had to do all of that without my input. 

The first two iterations of knives were an attempt to create that structure with material that Psyka could easily flow through. Like water, Psyka naturally flowed through both Orbs and Psyka Crystals, but if there was structure, then I couldn’t pierce into any device I wanted and read its internals. If I came across something with a hard shell, a solid knife would be useless. 

I frowned, dumping more Psyka into the hilt and watching the geyser of magic intensify. 

“Psyka Crystals take on tangible properties after locking them with a frequency, but I don’t want this blade to interact with material. We need to find the middle ground. Form without structure.”

“I’ve tested the magnitude frequency with the expelled magic, not that it means you shouldn’t run your own tests. You always see things I don’t.”

“Hm…”

I cut my Psyka and pushed the hilt into the device on the table, activating everything once more and flooding the device with Psyka from a White Crystal. It started spewing out like a geyser again, but this time, I added my own spin on it. 

I put my hand on it and started tampering with the Psyka, tuning it to the magnitude frequency. 

The Magnitude frequency was used when creating Elemental, Vigor, or Psyka Crystals from White Crystals. It allowed two Crystals to tune into and destroy each other. Add a bit of the three energies to it and you could create whatever Crystal you wanted after some stabilization. 

I wanted a tuned frequency that would give the spewing Psyka some form, but without the tabgibility that would make it interact with matter. A double edged desire but one that would give me all advantages if I could rectify it. 

I started moving through the frequencies, the geyser spinning about erratically as it flailed along with the changing frequcnies. Like water being vibrated with sound, the Psyka flowed along with my tuning, allowing easy manipulation. The issue was that the flow had no end. 

Though, perhaps I didn’t need it to. 

“If I want it to be a sensor, let’s make it a sensor…”

Psyka flowed from my hand, forming a complex series of encoding formations that bound and sent the Psyka forth according to its frequency. For a moment, Psyka started exploding out omnidirectionally. 

But then I finished the formation, tuning it actively as it worked alongside my frequency modulation. 

The Psyka started pulsing, then narrowing, its properties shifting. It started behaving like light waves, beams of Psyka shooting from the hilt. 

“Get me the Brick.”

“Yes.”

Boris scrambled, running across the room before grabbing a large metal brick. It was packed full of enchantments with no purpose, a testing brick we used for things just like this. 

He placed it in my outstretched hand, and I placed it in front of the beams of Psyka. 

At first, the Psyka passed right through the Brick, but as I started adjusting the formations in front of the hilt, that changed. 

They started refracting off the enchantments, scatting throughout the Brick after bouncing off all the various formations within it. But then I tuned it, the Psyka reflecting instead of refracting, returning to the hilt. 

I grabbed another device and placed it within proximity, and finally, with a bit of adjusting, got a return. 

I smiled. 

“That’s right. Why didn’t I just make it a kind of Lidar system? I can grab enchantments with this, even intercept signals. It’s not restricted to just reflecting. I’ll have to differentiate between empty and loaded enchantments, as well as the kind of signals, but that can all be figured out with codified Psyka. I can make it both scan and talk to whatever device I’m raiding…”

I muttered, continuing to adjust the formations in front of the hilt and watching how the Psyka reacted to the enchantments differently. 

The only downside to this was how obvious the knife would be when intruding on something. Its magic signature was about as bright as a star to anything I was trying to scan. I was beaming pure information into the Brick, into its enchantments, disrupting its magical flow. 

But that was something I could work on. At least with this, I had a proper foundation, alongside everything else Boris had developed. 

“Alright Boris. We’re pulling an all-nighter.”

“Yes sir…”

I got a slight sigh from him. This was far from the only all-nighter he’s pulled with me here but I wouldn’t get any complaints through the night. The man worked hard because he knew how special his position was. 

Like that we crunched formations and experimented for the next several hours. The knife changed form a bit more, both Boris and I adding and removing all manner of transmitter and receiver systems, as well as implementing the copious amount of programming necessary to support data transmission. 

Using Lidar to scan, encoding those pulses of Psyka with data to be pushed into enchantment systems, using receivers on the hilt to get return data. With normal electronics something like this would be impossible, at least on such a simple device. 

But I could codify Psyka however I wanted, each pulse carrying out all three of its purposes. Now all I had to do was standardize the device and load it with all my software, something I had spent the bulk of all this time working on. 

I’d have my very own ICE, utilizing a cipher engine I had devised running on English, the standard Kingdom language, and the complex magical language of Psyka. 

With all that, even if I ran into an unknown software system, I wouldn’t be the one in danger of getting cracked and hacked. 

I smiled as everything came together. 

Those ruins were mine. 

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