Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 880: I knew you would do that

[Acceleration]. That’s one of Tacita’s skills, I think, or something like it. I’ve noticed it a few times before, but the way she can build up speed out of nothing, the signs of the skill activating, and the fact that the longer she runs, the more speed she can gather, are all pointing to it.

Some of these thoughts come from me directly, mostly thanks to my own observations. Others come from training inside my mental space, those 600 days I spent there with Lissandra.

Or was it 601? Yeah, I think something like that.

I’m reminded of that as I watch her just running around and playing with Fuci. Dennis sometimes joins her, and she seems to be equal parts annoyed and unbothered by it. It’s sort of like a swallow watching a young chick trying to fly.

Anyway, I use these thoughts as a distraction. A distraction from Savant and Sophie, who’ve taken to fighting once again, and from the notification I just got a few seconds ago.

[Mana Manipulation - lvl 85 > Mana Manipulation - lvl 86]

This... this is a bit worrisome.

The duo seems like they’ve finished arguing, and now they’re looking down at the crate where the talnium is still being stored. We haven’t even finished fully unpacking it.

The yellow wooden crate is open, but inside it was a green metal crate wrapped in what seems to be a reflective blanket made of silver metal, or something.

Opening the green metal crate, we find another smaller crate. This one is silver in color and has been placed inside a sponge-like pink material that’s extremely good at kinetic absorption. And at this point, you begin to worry if you should continue on to open the silver crate.

We surely did. Each step took us hours of extremely careful examinations and a few trades with corporations nearby, aided by Izzy, who made sure they weren’t pulling one over on us.

So now, even the silver crate is opened, and inside it lie a few vials of a transparent liquid that moves a bit like mercury, and within that is the talnium. The metal is in the shape of loops, exactly like the sort you have in your breakfast cereal. Moreover, talnium looks like a blend of dark gray metal and an obsidian-like stone, somehow perfectly blended together.

And it is as weird as expected.

We have been warned, so all of us avoid using any sort of spatial skills or teleportation marks in its presence. Even the twins’ telepathy reacts a bit unpredictably, so Dennis most of the time stays as far away as he can. Min-Jae, with his gravitational energy, isn’t allowed to so much as reach for it, and every time he wants to take a look at the talnium, he borrows one of Tess’s old eyepatches to cover his implanted gravitational eye.

I wonder, what would happen if Noodle ate talnium? What would happen if you stored talnium in a spatial cache?

And what would happen if you tried to store a spatial cache in a spatial cache?

It’s important questions like these that keep me up at night.

Sophie and Savi come out against my plans to take a piece for experimentation. Their argument against it is pretty strong if I’m being honest. They just have to point to all the defenses on the crates.

Fair enough.

Many times, I've heard that the people here harvest talnium, rather than truly mining it, they harvest it. And apparently, the process involves placing a special item at certain very carefully chosen places.

You wait 100, 200, or 1000 years to return, and then there should be some talnium gathered around the item. It is something about spatial resonance and harmonic diffusion, or whatever, which gathers particles of sand over time and causes them to take on this state under their own force.

There used to be natural places like this where talnium gathered, but they were overharvested and were rendered incapable of continuing the process naturally.

So, processes to do so artificially were developed, and there are only certain zones where one might be permitted to do so. Of course, this all needs to be done while hiding your talnium growth device so nobody can steal it.

Interestingly, there are likely hundreds and possibly thousands of devices all over the planet. And more interestingly, plenty of them belong to groups or corporations that have been destroyed over the years, and no one knows their locations. Some might even be hidden after being illegally placed by some higher-up from one corporation or another.

That results in people, every once in a while, finding one of these places where the device has lain for thousands of years, placed by some long-forgotten, erased group or corporation.

I think most of the corporations aren’t even marking where they’ve placed the devices out of fear of espionage, while the information is only ever shared between the higher-ups, leading to the current situation.

I find all of this to be very, very cool. I’m a simple man, I want to take a shovel and go out, try my luck, and dig into the desert to find my very own jackpot. After all, I’m different, surely luck will smile upon me.

As for the crate I forgot I placed here oh so long ago, it’s probably from one of the illegal operations. Harvested, shielded, hidden, and waiting for a ship to come to pick it up, that, for some reason, never arrived.

[Selective Adaptation - lvl 26 > Selective Adaptation - lvl 27]

Another notification appears, and satisfied, I wait a bit and then stab myself in the leg with Veto.

“Earth, calling Nathaniel,” Sophie grumbles.

Without taking my eyes off the notification, I reach out to my subminds, and with a bit of thought acceleration, I quickly replay the past 30 seconds of arguments they’ve been having.

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“I agree, we’ll probably need the devices that corpo guy mentioned to be able to safely manipulate the talnium, and even then, we’d probably end up wasting it,” I say.

“What did you even expect from this? You can probably count the people and groups able to use talnium on your fingers,” Sophie sighs.

“Six-armed thylarin have like 30 fingers.”

“You know I meant human. And yes, maybe there are some other things you could do with talnium other than spatial caches, but you’ve heard how expensive those blueprints are,” she says.

“Well, no matter how much they ask, I refuse to sell them my blood, eyes, hair, flesh, or bone. At least until I am confident Lily can make sure they won’t be able to clone me or use it against me somehow.”

“Don’t forget them wanting to trade for your sp-”

“We don’t talk about that, and stop laughing, you asshole,” I interrupt her and turn to Savant. “What do you think?”

“I find it fascinating, and the concept of spatial caches is interesting. But other than that, its greatest value is in its use in constructing the big intergalactic travel gates.”

“That? You could always just learn to teleport. Ruby can easily teleport all over the universe.”

“I think your view of things like that might be skewed. Not to mention she likely needs to place a mark or reach towards that place before she opens a portal there,” Savant shakes his head.

“Yeah, Nat, the universe is kind of big,” Sophie adds.

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving my hand, and looking at the vials containing the talnium, I swing my hand down and slap those bad boys to create a satisfying noise.

Both Savant and Sophie jump up while Sophie shouts, “MOTHERFUCKER! I knew you were going to do that. I KNEW IT! And it still scared the shit out of me!”

I nod at that and think that maybe I’ve been getting a bit too predictable as of late.

As I begin to close the boxes one after another and reset the defenses, I ask, “So how much talnium is this?”

Savant gets to answer, “This should be five packets worth, so quite a bit if you consider that to complete the 11th floor quest, you would’ve only needed half a packet per person.”

I look confused, and so does Savant when he sees my expression, but Sophie gets it first. “A packet is around the amount that would fit into one of those tiny pre-workout drink bottles. I have no idea why it’s called a packet, but that’s how it’s measured. For long term storage, you put talnium into bigger vials with more of that weird liquid, as you can see in the crate that you forgot you buried here on the planet of Xyphos.”

“That’s a better answer. Savi, learn from her,” I say, nudging him, and then, deciding to be a good person for today, I add, “Sophie’s smart, isn’t she?” as I try to elevate Savant’s image of Sophie.

In response, I get confused looks from the pair, but having already finished closing the crate and snapping back the last seal, I walk away, leaving the barrier and heading over to a group of demons. Even if they aren’t from the same group or even the same planet, people are starting to gather in groups. Selari with selari, vyssari with vyssari, and other similar clusters, where they can talk things out. I think many feel a bit more trusting when talking to members of their own race, though everyone here knows it makes no sense.

Of course, some people seem content to gather in random groups, often the ones that have already met in Beyond.

The demons are no different, and there are around fifty of them here at the moment. All of them are from Hell difficulty, with maybe 10 to 20 from Beyond. And unsurprisingly, five or so of them are members of the Primordial Knights, who introduced themselves when they barged in just as we were unlocking my crate.

“Guildmaster Gwyn,” these five greet me with excited smiles, coming closer, and some of them even tap my shoulders in a friendly manner.

Some others come closer as well, curious about me. There’s a lot of probing, and almost all of them take a moment to measure their hearts against mine, and I let them sense my heartbeats. I even change the rhythm, opting for a slower, more powerful one, letting more kinetic energy and thermal heat seep out.

There are a few more annoying cases that I pressure with my mana until they finally give in.

By passing out.

The whole time, the five from the group chuckle and even trash-talk the ones that step to the side with their tails between their legs.

With this solved, the lunatics all gather around, and for some reason, Lily’s there as well, standing near me. Her hair is white, her eyes are red, and she’s even made herself a pair of black horns that elegantly grow from her forehead and bend towards the back of her head while parting to the sides. Her fake heart beats, now almost indistinguishable from the real thing.

"What do we do, Guildmaster Gwyn?" she asks me seriously, her voice coming out deeper than usual.

I blink and stare at her for a moment before shaking my head. The demons around begin to nod and call out like Lily.

"What do you want from me?" I snort. "The Great Ruler of Diligence is having such a hard time, and you would give him even more work? I would never."

"The armory destroyer?"

"But isn’t this all his fault?"

"I don’t care about some Ruler. Do you think he would fight me if I asked?"

"Who?"

My attention is drawn to the muscular demon in the background who asked the last question. Out of respect, I give him a nod, and he returns it before whispering to a demon near him and asking what a Ruler is.

He’s one of the Beyonders present.

"For now, you’re going to stay put. I don’t want to see you causing too much trouble," I say. "If anything like what happened with the crate of talnium happens again, come to me first. And I’m willing to spar with the ones with primordial energies outside of the common five if there are any. And no, not to the death. You can find me later."

With that, I turn and leave, with Demon Lily following swiftly by my side. In that same slightly deeper voice, she asks, "You just wanted to tell them that?"

"I kind of had to. Too many of them recognized me, and the five from the guild have been spreading it all over. These lunatics wanted to start doing risky things to show off and prove their worth before trying to challenge me."

"Huh, really?"

"It’s how they work." I shrug and ask, "Did you find any vyssari with a wyvern bloodline?"

"Two of them, though it’s not as pure. I can still use it to purify the blood, I have a tiny bit more. I gave them healing marks in exchange."

"Won’t they try to sell them to the corporations?"

"I made it so they can’t be moved, and they’ll only activate with the owner’s signature. Then I also got vows from them in exchange for adding a few more marks, so I don’t think they’ll try."

"Sounds good. Then, tomorrow we can start with upgrading my Mana Vessel to the second stage."

"Your primary class upgrade is going to be scary when you finally get to it," Lily says.

"It better be."