Even before they reached the gate, Nick could already see the large column of steam rising into the air. He frowned. The generator was the base’s only source of power, but it was also like a giant signal beacon to anyone for miles, showing them exactly where the base was. It screamed, “Human settlement here!”
It annoyed him even more that, while the Black Witch’s base was ostentatious and extravagant compared to his in appearance, it had no such pillowy white clouds rising over the forest canopy. It was no wonder the herbivores and the other beasts had spotted them so easily. Even if they hadn’t stumbled across them by accident before the generator was even built, just being within several miles of it now would have led them right to their gate.
With the dragon scouts potentially searching for us soon, we have to do something about that . . . Nick thought as he watched the base gates open outward like french doors, welcoming the trucks that had picked up Nick and the rest of the group back inside. Will, half a dozen other drivers, and an adventuring team to ensure their safety had raced to their location as soon as they had determined their location and reported in. The extra people and trucks meant that, on top of being able to get the group back safely, they were also able to store nearly everything of value they had found in the debris to be analyzed back at the base.
As the group, now mostly healed thanks to Adele, walked through the snow-dusted yard, the sound of Clarissa complaining about being too tired and Elizabeth not even threatening her with a medicine ball if she tried to skip her workout told Nick everything he needed to know about how the group was doing after the battle. They were exhausted. Even if their injuries weren’t that severe, not a single person wasn’t struggling to keep their eyes open, and Elizabeth and Lou were looking even worse for wear. Topaz had whipped up an emergency anti-paralysis potion once they safely landed back on the ground, but it had only been a temporary fix.
As the brother and sister walked side by side at half pace compared to the others, Adele was the first beside them, putting a hand on each of their backs. “Alright now, you two, don’t think about using ‘I’m poisoned’ as an excuse to escape workouts today. Don’t forget what you always tell us: we don’t have beds for slackers.”
This caused Elizabeth to grit her teeth, nodding to her own catch phrase, but Lou went a little pale.
Topaz handed him a green vial. “It’s okay, Lou. I just need you to trust me and drink one more—”
“Don’t do it, Lou!” Seo-ah warned, laughing too much to be taken seriously. “I saw Nick drink one of those homemade creations, and he nearly died on the spot. He actually passed out from the pain. Just walk it off.”
Lou’s face got even paler as Topaz didn’t seem to give him a choice, shoving it in his mouth before he could say no. She tipped up the bottle and held the back of his head at the same time to force it down, clearly an expert at handling the situation.
“Lou?!” Elizabeth turned to him, waiting to see the reaction, at which point Lou’s entire body went stiff, his eyes frozen wide open as Elizabeth was forced, even in her injured state, to catch her falling brother.
“Huh . . . that should have worked,” Topaz mumbled, looking at the bottle for a moment before looking back at Elizabeth. Adele looked at Lou, whose eyes were still wide open even with the paralysis, and tried to heal him to no avail. Then, pausing for only a second, she turned to Topaz: “Do you think we will get a few more of those vials? I need to train my purification magic apparently. Since we have a practice dummy, I think—”
“That is not a test dummy! That is my brother!” Arnold shouted as he joined them, grabbed up Lou, and hauled him off like he was carrying a stiff wooden board.
“I’m going to just walk it off,” Elizabeth said, staring at Topaz warily as the alchemist turned to her.
“What do you mean? We’re the healers. We’re here to help,” Topaz replied as she began to fiddle with her vials, getting ready to mix another potion together.
“No, no, I’m okay,” Elizabeth insisted, looking over to Nick for help as she very slowly backed away from Topaz and Adele.
“I’ll help you to the gym so you can sweat it out,” Seo-ah offered as she came to her rescue, leaving Nick to handle the rest of the base affairs. She put an arm around Elizabeth and assisted the injured woman in getting away, Adele following closely behind while Topaz just turned her attention to Nick.
“At least you trust me still, right?” Topaz’s words were matched with a friendly smile, causing Nick to sigh.
“Yeah, always have,” he assured her.
It was at this point that Nick noticed Spencer and Clarissa, Spencer doing his best to comfort Clarissa, who, while physically fine now, was not doing well mentally. He could only imagine what she had gone through, and as much as he wanted to say something, to use his charisma abilities to help her process what she’d been through, he thought it best to let some things happen naturally, so he gave the two some space.
The fact he could already see Kaylee, bubbly as always, running toward him while holding a clipboard tightly to her chest made it easy for his mind to switch its focus anyway.
“I have a report to make, and we need the best cryptolinguists, cipher breakers, and mages we can afford. Spencer and Clarissa will—” He paused and looked over at Spencer and Clarissa again as he tried to judge whether they’d be able to handle a briefing now. “They’ll be able to fill you in on the symbols we need decoded.”
“Got it,” Kaylee assured him. “As far as the rest of the report the drivers sent ahead of you, I’m told we have a lot of material being delivered?”
“Yeah. More than we need to make every person in here two sets of armor from the metal,” Nick told her as he thought for a second, “which isn’t a bad idea. I think it’s time we make use of all the blacksmiths Roland has on staff.”
“Hey, I don’t need help to handle it,” Reggie protested, quick to reject the idea of adding Roland’s people to his forge.
“But you’re going to take it because you might not need help, but we don’t have the time to wait,” Nick ordered, shutting down that line of thinking. He knew how proud Reggie was of his smithing skills, but he also just needed as much as he could get out of the new materials as fast as possible. They were on a clock, and he knew in the back of his head it was ticking quickly.
“Alright, fine, I’ll go share the spoils with the bellow-blowing bit—” Reggie stopped and then course-corrected. “I mean blacksmiths that didn’t even take part in the fight.”
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“That’s the spirit,” Nick replied, overlooking his frustration and pretending he didn’t hear a thing since he knew that, if he were in Reggie’s shoes, he’d probably be just as mad. “As for everything else, gather up the stuff we need and let’s find a spot for it. When we go to upgrade or build a building with all the essences we’ve gathered, the expansion will automatically process the materials. It’ll save you the effort.”
“Oh, right,” Reggie’s eyes perked up at that. “I forgot about that cheat code.”
“Yup,” Nick grinned. “We have to abuse the system at every chance.”
“Nick, you wanted us to translate the map, but we don’t need to translate further. You have two weeks till the next jump,” Spencer interrupted their conversation. “We can keep deciphering the rest, but that number will hit zero in two weeks, and I can make it into a digital clock you can read, but you need to remember we’re on a timer before you do any base building . . .”
Nick understood immediately what Spencer’s concern was: defenses. Even though he had already made the decision to switch from focusing on things like turrets or guns to investing in people, it was still hard to convince others of course. Quick solutions were always the first thing a panicked person went to, and with the amount of materials they’d salvaged, there was no way that he didn’t think they had enough to pick up those quick defenses.
“Is that really what you’re trying to say?” Nick asked. The others within earshot, especially those that had been on the expedition with him, were focused very intently on what Nick was saying.
He could tell from their anxious faces that they had the same worries that Spencer did. “You want to be safe, don’t you?” Nick questioned him. He hated having to use Spencer to make an example of his point, but he knew that Spencer was bright, and if he could convince him again, he could convince the others. “You’re worried that, in two weeks, they’ll discover us, and we’ll have hell to pay for it, aren’t you?”
“There’s no way they won’t,” Spencer assured him. “They’ll be here, and we’ll need more than the strength we have already if we’re going to handle them. That scout ship alone . . . we relied on Ingenga’s people for support just to reach it.”
Nick nodded. “You’re not wrong. We did. But let me ask you this: Even if we get the best drones and build the greatest defenses, how long do you think it’ll be until the full weight of a hundred dragons overruns us?”
This caused Spencer to gulp, forced to swallow his anxiety as the others looked equally scared by what Nick had just stated. It was an obvious step in logic: if they were discovered, they had no way to stop the inevitable death of their world as they knew it.
“What’s with the long face? Why are you so nervous?” Nick asked with a laugh though, trying to break the tension a little, even if forcefully. “You act like I’ve told you something you didn’t know. Isn’t that what you’ve always known? What you signed up for from the start? When I first came to you to tell you the truth of our fate, didn’t you know what you were getting yourself into? We’re not here to live through an apocalypse; we’re here to stop one.”
“I know, but . . .” Spencer’s words dragged into nothing as his eyes went from Clarissa, who was still looking rather beaten despite being healed, to the ground.
“Nothing has changed, Spencer. We aren’t going to put deadbolt locks on the door, reinforce it with steel, and wait for the Apocalypse to come knocking. We’re going to take every step and every measure we can to beat it back before the end can reach us. We don’t have two weeks before they find and attack us, we have two weeks to destroy every flying ship they own so they don’t even know where to begin looking,” he told him, his eyes then going from Spencer to the others. “If you think I came here to accept my fate, you’re mistaken. This cold, frozen hell isn’t about to become my grave, and I won’t let those dragons claim my corpse either.”
“What I’m going to do is this: I’m going to take all these fresh-farmed critter essences over to the heart of the gym, and I’m going to follow the one creed I’ve had since I began this campaign,” Nick continued, walking over to where the essences had been piled up for processing. “That as long as I work out hard enough, if I put in enough effort into building up my own muscles, they won’t betray me. I don’t know about some ambiguous super drone or tech marvel that might be offered in this outpost’s building menu, but I do know about my own strength. I know how powerful I am, and I know that there is no limit to how powerful I can become. Now you can try to hide here, turtle up, and await your fate, but I won’t. I’m going to show you the Heart of the Gym, the strength that praying at the Altar of Steel day in and day out can bless you with. I’m going to show you victory.”
With that, as he looked out once more upon the crowd of people around him, which had grown larger and larger the longer he talked and the farther he walked before reaching his destination, he opened up the heart of the gym, immediately taking the menu over to the building section. There, he found exactly what he wanted—the upgrades for the gym and the means to improve his people—and he selected them:
Level 1
Type: Specialized Training Environment
Capacity: 10 Trainees at a time
Dimensions: 25 ft x 25 ft
A specialized training annex within the gym equipped with enchanted mirrors and echo crystals that project illusionary trainers based on the physical combat and movement skills known by Nick. These illusionary instructors simulate proper technique, issue corrections, and provide reactive feedback to trainees, allowing for focused, high-level physical skill acquisition.
Effect:
Generates up to 5 illusionary trainers that teach any physical or aura skill Nick knows, granting trainees a 15% boost to learning speed and execution. The system auto-updates with Nick’s newly learned skills.
Cost: 200 essence fragments
Power Requirement: [1]
Spotter's Rights
The Spotter's Rights upgrade harnesses the collective power of a crowded gym environment, ensuring that the more trainees working at full capacity, the greater the overall gains in strength, agility, and endurance. This upgrade amplifies the training benefits as more individuals fill the gym, leveraging the energy and motivation of a high-capacity environment to maximize results for everyone.
Effect: Base Training Bonus equal to a +10% increase to training efficiency when the gym is at 50% capacity. For every additional 10% capacity, the training bonus increases by 2%, up to a maximum of +50% at 100% capacity.
Cost: 850 essence fragments
Even with the most expensive one-time purchase he’d ever made at the base, Nick had crystals left over and spent the rest on capacity upgrades to the gym, the sauna, and infirmary as they’d be in even higher demand soon. Nick had to upgrade the steam power plant to cover the energy costs of the new buildings and expansions but it was worth the shards.
With the upgrade choices made, the gym and all other facilities were hastily evacuated as the upgrades were made manifest by the power of the heart of the gym and the essence fragments that fueled it. The gym and infirmary seemed to take a deep breath as they expanded, steel girders growing, support beams expanding, and floors, ceilings and walls stretching out as their footprint was increased by 20%, adding to their total capacity.
The new building was another matter. It was technically an addition to the gym but was formed on its own 25-by-25-foot site, exactly where all the materials that had been recovered from the the crashed dragonkin ship and the various pelts from the herbivore raid had been placed. As the new building was formed layer by layer, created from the ground up, the materials were processed, leaving neat piles of alien metals, woods, bones, and pelts.
Within fifteen minutes, the Echo Hall of Form was completed. It stood one story tall, and while it was hardly larger than a one-bedroom studio apartment, inside the building was a wide-open wooden floor, and on the far end was a complex-looking group of projectors.
Satisfied, he looked back at the crowd. “Now, those of you who want to see victory with me, you know the timer. The clock they gave us had two weeks? WE’LL CRUSH THEM IN ONE!” Nick felt pumped up from the situation as his call was heard and they responded with a loud yell back.
“LET’S GO!!!” he shouted again and his flock of followers, beaten, bruised, and bashed up after having walked or fought an entire day, mustered their energy once more as they moved like a pitchfork mob to the gym, ready to claim their workout and the victory Nick had promised.
