Catherine clinched her staff as she tried to use it to keep herself upright as another massive scrap shell beetle or at least the burning husk of one slammed into her shield spell. She had done her best to try and protect the underground shelter, but this had been going on for almost an hour and she was far from a combat mage. Yes, she knew some basic combat spells, or she wouldn't be able to put up the barrier. But she had never undergone the strenuous training required to become a true combat mage. In all honesty, if it wasn't for her staff's ability to continue to cast spells for her, she would have long lost control of the barrier.

  Her mana pool had limits and while it was larger than the average citizen, it was no bigger than the common adventurer. Normally in an adventuring party they would pull their MP either using an artifact or potions or whatever method was available. But in a small village like this those options were far more limited. She had a few mana potions on her, and a group of guards had been sent to get the small box she had in her home. She could even see them making their way back now, but even with the potions added effects, the drain was just too severe, and she wouldn't be able to keep the spell going for much longer.

  So, she downed her second potion, and reached into her pouch and pulled out a third, handing it off to Sophia, ordering the girl to drink it before taking over for her. Despite many popular beliefs, the potions, while did give a small additional boost to one's mana pool when drunk, they gave a far more useful passive mana regeneration bonus. However, drinking too many for that boost too quickly could lead to mana poisoning.

  She had Sophia drink hers as she handed off the staff to Sophia so she could continue the spell. She then choked down her last mana potion. Sickly sweet and strangely sour at the same time like a blend of bad wine and spoiled blueberry jam.

  Alchemists with specialized brewing techniques and skills could make them far more palatable. Catherine had actually had some of the better tasting versions during her studies in the capital, but the cheap stuff you could get from your average village alchemist was downright nasty in comparison.

  When Sophia took over maintaining the barrier, she started to hear a faint ringing in her ears. That only got louder and louder until her ears popped, her teeth ached, and she tasted copper in the back of her mouth. She wanted to let go, but she knew she couldn't because she had to maintain the spell. Then, as the ringing reached a crescendo, it suddenly stopped, and she heard it for the first time. She finally properly heard it. The barrier seemed to flex and shift before wave like patterns formed onto the outer wall, to anyone there they only looked like distortions in the barrier. Though if Austin had been paying attention to it, he would have noticed the wave patterns matched bandwidth wavelengths from his communication systems.

  When Catherine spotted the distortions, she went to grab her staff back from Sophia. She was however, startled when the girl's head suddenly perked up, eyes glowing a faint bluish green as pixelated ethereal wisps flowed from the corner of her eyes.

  “I, I can hear them, I can hear all of them.” her head turned to the nearby turret, and the barriers squealed for a second before.

  “Target section 3 through 8 eliminated moving to target section 44 through 12 to cover for turret 3-115 power supply at 32% and dropping new targets identified firing.” A synthetic voice came through the harmonization of the barrier as if from an old and badly tuned radio. There was static and pops, but words could be heard, nonetheless.

  Her head turned to the beetle that had been by her side for so long as it continued to fire.

  “High priority target located by aerial assets. Trajectory calculated. Beginning deployment of strike package on target.” As the voice came through the barrier, the beetle planted its spike into the ground, converting into its turret form. But this time instead of the traditional laser, the entire back half folded into a three prong array that quickly began to spin. Greenish energy formed in the center of it before with a crackling pop and the smell of burnt ozone, a bolt of green plasma shot into the air only to rain down over the wall in a hail fire of explosions.

  Sophia turned her attention to where she knew whatever was in charge of all of … this, was she needed to talk to them, she needed to know. The barrier screamed, it was so much. It was so much more than she was expecting, it was thousands of voices overlaid into one harmonic Symphony. She reached and reached, she knew it was there, she had heard it before, and she needed it now. As she desperately clung to Catherine's staff, as she tried to make the connection.

  “Unknown communication attempt detected.” Austin's internal systems prompted.

  To say he was confused was, well, an understatement, as the entire-tire time he had been on this planet he had yet to see anything that was capable of reaching out to him. Let alone on the shortwave bandwidth and with the frequency and Hertz level, he was detecting they'd have to be right on top of him. It didn't make sense, it should not be possible yet here it was. Austin considered ignoring it at first, though as he stopped to analyze it he realized it couldn't possibly be a cyber attack. It was too well… primitive. What he was looking at was equivalent to an early 19th century AM radio. If it wasn't for his few remaining sensors, he doubted his system would even be able to detect it at all. So, it would actually take a bit of effort on his part to even try and receive the signal if it was an attack, it was a very poor one. And with how short ranged it was, it was either the enemy or the villagers. Neither of which seemed likely, but he wasn't willing to take the risk and open the communication. Then all hell broke loose as the connection opened on its own.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Sophia felt a sudden surge of power as her system forced itself open. Instead of the blue boxes she'd normally see when she touched in appraisal stone, lines of code shot in front of her as the barrier began to burn with the same pixelated ethereal energy as her eyes. Meanwhile, signal waves and coding scripts appeared and disappeared on various spots throughout the barrier as it tried to destabilize only for some outside force to hold it together.

  “Error! Hostile! Hostile! Error! Hostile! Hostile intrusion attempt detect! Detect! Detect! Detect! Detected! Data wall breach! Error! Error! Data wall breach System! System! System! System down! Down! Down! Down! Admin! Admin! Admin! Advanced administration access codes detected! Access code accepted. system access granted.” The voice rang both through the barrier and inside Sophia's head as a third party downloaded a massive amount of data into Austin's systems.

  These files not only flooded his network but seemed to systematically analyze and compress data files throughout his network. At first Austin thought it was a hostile hack attempt, attempting to steal all on board data, but then why was he still there? Why was he still functional while Austin was locked out of his own systems, he could not help but notice the severe boost in runtime he was experiencing. His Jerry rigged attempts at code and patchwork programs were optimized before sections were replaced with new code. Simultaneously, multiple terabytes of data were dumped into his system, housing thousands of programs he could not access. It only took them 3 seconds to do all this before fully returning Austin to control with a rather insane boost in processing power. He quickly ran a diagnostic along with several scans on his main AI code before comparing it to his code beforehand, along with the examples he had on file. Well, he did not have the time to fully analyze every section of code line by line, even with the boost. But he couldn’t find anything to be concerned about with a cursory glance. He'd let the scans run in the background though as far as his own system records could tell. Well, if they could still be relied on, he was still himself, just not nearly as …. Glitchy?

  As he reviewed the data logs of the attack, something stood out to him. At first, they had attempted a brute force hack before seemingly realizing his system's layout and used an administration code to access his system. Annoyingly, he could not see which code had been used, whatever had access to his systems, had purposely deleted that from his records.

  He was a guardian class AI, the only people who would have access codes that could override him directly was his own captain, another captain of a ship carrying a guardian class AI of a battleship, super carrier, or super destroyer class, or a higher ranking official in Terran Fleet Command…. But that didn't make sense Terran Fleet Command had been wiped out. Hadn't they?! There were humans here, true, but their tech level was too low for this. Fleet command couldn't still be active, could it? No, that wouldn't make sense. No human could survive that long. He had been alone for over a hundred cycles, let alone however long he was offline for. No human could have, but how, how did they have those codes?

  “Hello?” While Austin had been running those calculations, only a few seconds had passed in the outside world, but that was long enough for Sophia to regain enough of her bearings to try and attempt to use the still open line of communication. The barrier had more or less gone back to normal, it still had the distortion of the frequency bandwidth on it, but other than that it was about the same. Though Catherine's staff had seen better days, though nothing beyond what a simple mending spell could fix. The gem on top was emitting sparks and the wood in the staff that held the gem was blackened and burnt. Upon hearing Sophia's message, he lowered his clock speed so he could hear the rest.

  “Hello, can you hear me? I, I don't know what that was, but please tell me you're still there”

  “Affirmative you're coming through clearly enough, though your signal's not very strong, but I can hear you. Can you receive?”

  Austin was wondering how he was now able to understand them so easily when his communication database had not been fully completed yet. Until he realized once whoever it was had started talking, one of the locked files had opened up. Contained within was a basic translation index file for the local dialects, well, he guessed it was time to make proper first contact with the locals.

  “Before anything else happens I just wanted to say thank you for helping us. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for helping my mother and thank you for everything. I, I don't know how long I can keep this up for. I can already feel my mana pool waning so I just wanted to say that.” As Sophia said that she felt the familiar buzz and warm sensation of the system notifying her that she had done something. She tried to will her status screened open like she did with an appraisal stone, but unlike when whatever had happened earlier, her status appeared now projected on the barrier.

  [level up! You have now reached Level 3. Due to unique feats and achievements, multiple class choices have been unlocked. You have one open class selection available. Classes: Radio mage. You have used magic to tap into the realm of science in communications. While granting you unique forms of magic and spell casting, this class cannot be effectively used without exterior equipment. Empathic mage. Connect and communicate with the spirit of creatures, people, and in rare cases objects to form bonds or contracts. Techno magus. A variant on the artificer class that blends the standard mechanical and crafting nature of an artificer with the more traditional spell craft of a mage.]

  Catherine could barely believe what she was seeing, she was almost as baffled as the nearby guards, this was Sophia's magic. No wonder she had never been able to figure out what the girl's specialty was. She had believed it was a basic empathic ability. She had known a few mages that were some levels of empathic before, and usually they became healers or caretakers, or in the case of those that were too sensitive, child tenders or hermits. But unlike them, Sophia's ability wasn't just a side effect of her power. It was her power, and when it had been amplified by the barrier, it had been tapped into by something more. Something that was able to wield the system itself as its tool and use the poor girl. Though thankfully she seemed unharmed despite being used as a go between by the whatever it was and the spirit

  Because Sophia's benefactor had to be a spirit because the only other options of things she knew were far more terrifying. She had once met the great guardian spirit that watched over and maintained the mage school she had gone to. It was ancient and it was powerful. In darker days it had held the walls of the school against siege engines and armies, and it had only been a mid grade spirit. Admittedly, one that had been imbued with great magics but still a spirit, nonetheless. And now Sophia, a young untrained human girl in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, had not only awakened one but found a way to communicate directly to it and it spoke back. Something only the greatest of mages using powerful rituals could normally do, and she had done so with a barrier spell and her simple staff. If that had not been crazy enough, the girl had then somehow used the barrier to pull up her own status screen. Something that should have only been done, something like a status or an appraisal stone, or a magic tool.

  Who had then been granted a class, most didn't unlock their first class till Level 5, and usually it was a very basic class, and only one, sometimes if they were particularly gifted, 2. The girl had three, three freaking advanced classes. 2 of which she'd never even heard of, though from what she could read in the description it was basically a more powerful version of an artificer. She had known mages and Smiths, some of them elves and dwarfs, who had much longer lives than a mere human who had spent the majority of that life trying to get that class. And the girl was being offered an improved version of it for her first choice. Humans, humans weren't supposed to be gifted like this. They were the shortest lived of the races, the physically weakest, and the least magically inclined of the races. That's why they were usually treated as servants or lesser. This, this was something you'd only see in the truly talented of the nobility of the higher races. Not some random girl and some far-flung human village, this just didn't happen.