Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 518: Exoria deployment camp

Tess, Lily, and I return to our current base, where everyone is already waiting, packed and seated in my trademarked manabloc chairs v3.1. We join them too.

I let a minute pass before saying, “So, second front?”

“I’m thinking, Nat.” Tess sighs, waving me off.

“What do you mean the second front!?” Sophie objects, to no one’s surprise, “You said we would be going to the 6th.”

“I know, Soph. It seems like something’s changed on the 2nd front and they need the Champion there.” Tess explains, seeming exceptionally frustrated as she does; she always gets this way when things don’t go according to plan. Her frustration making itself known as she begins to fidget, tapping on the back of her hand with the opposing index finger.

“We could still refuse, or just run away. I don’t think they would hunt us down just to conscript us,” I remind her.

“I know, I know. Backing out would be easy too, I could just tell them we were expecting to move to the 6th front. But I’m still trying to work out whether or not the danger outweighs the potential gain. It’s entirely possible that we won’t even need to fight, they might even ask us to stay on base because of the nature of the 2nd front. We could also register as non-combatants in the contract.”

“It would still be possible for a Champion-grade monster to attack the base,” Aaron points out.

“You’re right,” Tess agrees, as she groans in frustration. “I had everything planned out so nicely, we were going to start with the sixth front, and work our way up to the fourth front over the next few weeks, gathering more information, and going on some hunts in the process, all that.”

“We could always split up too. I could go out and help the technicians, while you guys can go somewhere else,” I say.

Tess’s reaction makes it clear she’d already thought of that. She just nods. “How about this: we all go and sign on as non-combatants for a few weeks. If we sense any danger, we leave. We can even bail for the eighth floor if it gets to be too much.”

No one seems to have a better idea.

“I’ll go with you to sign the contract.” Sophie stands up. “And I swear, Tess, if they try to push us into anything more, we’re rejecting it.”

“Deal.”

The signing goes smoothly, and they even offer us a salary, mostly in materials, items, and information. I leave the others to handle it, if only because it sounds boring.

There isnʼt much opportunity for slacking around as we leave the camp with the three lumorans and head out to meet up with the rest of the Champion’s group. It winds up taking us 15 minutes to reach it, in what feels like the middle of nowhere.

I sense around 100 mana signatures about half of which are comparable to ours, and in many cases they’re even stronger. Ten in particular, stand out as especially powerful, likely approaching or just managing to exceed level 400. All gathered to support this one Champion, all these men and women placing themselves at his disposal.

That one signature that shines the brightest within the camp.

I don’t touch anyone with my senses directly; mostly collecting this information from the air, and the lingering remnants of their presence.

In the middle of the camp, we find a huge square tent with a pointy roof, tall enough to fit a large apartment building inside, and damn if it doesn’t have some of the best defenses I’ve seen until now. Just looking at it with my eyes activated makes my vision start to haze over at the edges. All these mana threads, circuits, nodes, spirals, arrays, layered reactive barriers, and other things I can’t quite make out.

There are two slightly smaller, if still big tents, with dozens of smaller ones filling out the surroundings, all with a similar set of defenses, though not to the same extreme. Much like the larger one, every tent is white and feels transparent despite my eyes telling me otherwise. It’s a weird, and unsettling feeling. Leaving me to wonder if they’re doing something to merge into the background. Like to hide themselves or something.

As two of the Lumorans split off, the remaining one turns to us. “I’m Quent, level 8 technician and assistant to Exoria Overseer Ito, level 9 technician.”

He points his finger at me, the twins, and Sophie, “You, you, you, and you will serve as assistants under level 7 technician, Leth.”

I force myself to start remembering the names and put the questions away, just nodding. The twins and Sophie nod after a while.

Quent seems satisfied, “Lady Healer Lily will join Lord Champion’s healing squad, and the rest of your guild will serve as her assistants, companions, or protectors. As noted in the contract, none of you will be leaving the camp, and you will be registered as non-combat units under the Exoria deployment camp.”

With that, we enter the camp, heading towards one of the smaller tents.

“I’m Sarabeth, third in command and the one responsible for the defense of Exoria deployment camp,” a lumoran woman says, introducing herself as we enter.

Great, yet another name to remember.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

We introduce ourselves in a similar fashion, and wait as they get us registered with Quent’s aid, giving us that same circular mark complete with thumb print on the inside of our left wrists. It burns like ice for a while, and I take the opportunity to examine the mark itself. It seems to take a bit of our mana signature as identification, and after confirming it, charges it into a circular crystalline structure, causing it to vibrate at a highly specific frequency.

I’ll need to examine it further, but I already like it. The way Sarabeth presented it to us is a clear display of skill. Not to mention that the fact that she’s third in command, likely after Champion Feroy and someone else, speaks volumes as well.

Level 400? Higher? A bit lower? Would it be too rude to ask? Most likely. That’s unfortunate, I want to know.

“This will be your group’s tent. Your identification marks will allow you to enter. Later, we will add more locations to the mark as needed. But if you try to enter any location you are not authorized for, you may be killed without question. Please make sure to remember that. Any modification to the tent’s arrays is forbidden. You are not allowed to leave the camp’s proximity and doing so could trigger reactive defenses leading to your death. You are free to take a short rest, and in a few hours someone will stop by to lead you to your tasks as required.”

And with these words, Quent leaves.

I look around inside our tent. Even though it seemed transparent from the outside, inside I can see that the walls are made out of a thick, canvas-like material, supported by metallic rods, while the flooring is made of polished, compressed stone, likely created by some stone manipulator.

There are multiple rooms as well, so calling it a small tent might be an understatement. It’s more like a small house. Even the furniture here is mostly wood, nicely shaped and looking as if each piece were made from a single section of wood without any nails or joints.

I quite like the style, so like the others, I walk around, exploring our new living space. Pretend-to-be-sleeping Biscuit is obviously in my arms, and I notice him curiously sniffing away when he thinks I’m not paying attention.

When I reach out to pet his small head, his tiny tail twitches as if to wag from side to side, but he catches himself and stops mid-movement, his body tensing up.

“When they come to us to help with the Champion’s armor maintenance, do you want to try taking it over to take it for a ride?” Dennis asks, striding up to stand my side and shower me with questions. “Do you think it’s in that huge tent? Is it a simple suit of armor? Or is it the size of a building? You can make something like that with your mana, so it must be at least that big if not more powerful, right?”

His brother steps up to me from the other side, blocking my path so I can’t escape, “Nat, I’m serious now. We need to learn how to build a suit for ourselves. I want my own Gundam.”

“It sounds fun, so why not if there’s an opportunity and time.”

“Ha! I knew you’d see it our way!” Aaron shouts, carelessly clapping my shoulder in an uncharacteristic manner with a happy smile on his face, “What do you want in exchange?”

I give that a bit of thought but can’t come up with anything at the moment, “Weʼll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Sophie comes closer when I gesture at her, and we all put our heads together as I say, “Remember as much as you can. Dennis and Aaron, collect and store as much info as you can. Sophie, make your memory pockets, or whatever you call them, and do the same. They probably won’t show us the most important parts, but even the slightest bit of information will be helpful. For the Gundam for Aaron, for your golem and bond, Sophie, and for my Regalia.”

“Do you really want to call it Regalia? After the skill? don’t you think that’s kinda lame?”

“Shut up, Soph, it’s a perfectly good name!” Dennis interrupts, quickly rising to my defence and poking her, which gets an irritated noise from her. He turns to me, “Does this mean we will be getting less training?”

For that, he gets a look full of disappointment from Aaron, who knows exactly how I will respond.

“Hell no,” I reply. “Since we’re in camp and won’t be fighting monsters for the time being, we’ll be using this time to train even harder. I have a lot of things I want to test out.”

As promised, they come to get us a few hours later, escorting us outside and over to one of the larger tents next to the big three in the middle.

There are small entrances on either side, and we enter through one of those. As we enter, the bustle of movement takes the place of the eerie silence we heard outside, now unrestrained by the canvas of the tent, and we find ourselves bombarded with the sounds of powerful flames burning, metal clanging, people shouting at each other, chains rattling, and the rush of steam. There’s also a lot of concentrated mana in the air, the temperature is higher, and the air smells like metal, oil, and something hard to describe.

Our guide this time is a man introduced to us as level 7 technician Leth, the man we will be working under as assistants. Like all lumorans, he has black skin, crystalline features on the sides of his neck and across his shoulders. His hair is pale yellow, and his eyes are golden. He also likes to smile a lot, excitedly showing us inside the tent.

“You now have access to this site. We’ve temporarily dubbed it Workshop Number Three! Workshop Number One is managed by level 9 technician Ito, and Workshop Number Two is currently for level 8 technicians only. This is where I work, and you will be helping me to the best of your abilities!”

Sophie, the twins, and I just nod, much to his amusement. “Don’t worry! The shyness will fade soon. There is no time for that kind of thing here when there is so much work to be done!”

He gestures for us to follow, and so we do, quickly coming to a stop beside two other lumorans, each accompanied by a small group of their own. One of the groups consists of three thylarin—two men and one woman with pale blue skin, and four very muscular arms, unlike most thylarin I’ve seen.

Leth, after taking a moment to greet the two lumorans, returns and explains in a quieter voice, “The other groups here are mercenaries like you, each led by a level 7 lumoran technician like me.”

He gestures at the thylarin group, “That trio seems very interesting. They have experience working on armament-type equipment, and one of them even possesses a fragment of eternal fire, so that helps!”

Our eyes move to the other group and Leth continues in a similar manner, “That one is more experienced. We’ve worked with them before, and even level 9 technician Ito took a liking to them.”

The group in question consists of a vyssari woman, a human man, and a tall man who is probably several heads taller than even Jean was, clearly a member of that giant-like race I encountered before.

I get a sense of competition whenever I catch the gaze of the thylarin party, but the second group seems disinterested and confidently follows their lumoran technician to their corner of the tent.

We follow Leth as well until we finally reach a piece of metal that towers above us, reaching for the ceiling of the tent. It’s as thick as I am, and the inside is plated in an entirely different metal than the surface. And there are inscriptions etched throughout, each one carved into the metal at the depth of my finger. There are even channels made of mana-conductive metals, leading to nodes of inscriptions.

Most of all, it reminds me of a pauldron. A pauldron for something very big.

“This is just a spare, but let’s see what you guys can do!”