Chapter 202: Anatomical

Chapter 202: Anatomical

June 9th, 625

The last few days of May I managed to get a full plane design out. It was really simple after I managed to figure out everything for the Mana Engine. After all, these magic planes didn’t need anything beyond a chassis and the propeller. They didn’t require all the systems to manage the engines or radar or fuel. On top of that, it was simple to make conduits for the plane controls, running the conduits to the wings and tail of the plane to operate the control surfaces such as the flaps and fins. Even things like air compressors for high altitude operations were easy, because if air warlocks were good at anything, it was compressing air. I had seen Umara do it hundreds of times, and there were a plethora of enchantments to do the same thing.

For now though, all Sawn wanted to do was get a working product out. Creating specialized planes would come later, even though I already gave him the general designs for bombers and fighters.

The time was coming to finally introduce a new dimension to the field of battle. Sawn would spend the month that I was at the Treehouse working on the Mana Engine and getting a physical plane out according to my specs. There was still a lot of testing to do, adjustments to make that simulations couldn’t account for, but that was stuff he could handle alongside his army of enchanters and summoners.

On the other hand, I was responsible for drawing up a guidebook. It would be about everything that one needed to know about handling a plane as well as the various roles a plane could serve across all facets of the Kingdom. It wasn’t quite a sales pitch, but Sawn would be using it in order to sell the idea later. I had convinced him to let me draw it up personally because I knew about what planes were capable of, especially different types.

From cargo planes that could move materials, food, and people across vast distances faster than even Rails, to bombers that could rise high in the sky and rain hell down upon the Scourge without so much as a worry about being scratched from thousands of feet up.

Granted, bombers were limited without physical bombs, but even fielding nothing but flying turrets would allow Magi to wreak far more devastation than they usually did, and without the cost of life it usually demanded. You could even man them with ordinary people.

I could imagine it now. Entire aerial fleets, each plane armed with anywhere from 2 to 10 turrets, all streaking through the sky and devastating the Scourge armies below. Even without turrets, warlocks alone could exercise wide area spells with the greatest effect, a dozen of them in a plane, acting as the turrets themselves. Hell, throw a Marshal warlock up there and he’d be untouchable.

Planes would change the entire Kingdom for the better, multiplying combat power, multiplying logistical effectiveness, boosting the economy massively. Even better was the fact that Sawn would be the sole seller, and I was the inventor.

I was about to become a very rich man, so I naturally had to make sure to hype up the product as much as I could in the guidebook. The only downside was the training it would take to create pilots. Even I didn’t know too much about that, but it was nothing that couldn’t be figured out later.

Making the guidebook was my primary goal during my time when I went back at the Treehouse, but even that had to take a backseat to the missions that came my way.

The Scourge was preparing.

They weren’t attacking much. There were only little skirmishes here and there, especially since Operation Breakwater was still in effect. The Treehouse had managed to push the lines forward, building bases across the front and stationing thousands of troops at each one. The Treehouse’s biggest issue at that point was supply lines, but that had been established a while ago and everything was running smooth. Hundreds of supply trucks were coming in and out every day.

The Generals knew that the Scourge was getting ready to do something big, especially since the Sovereign showed up, so their most pressing matter was figuring out what.

That meant recon. Lots of recon.

And since I had become what could be considered one of the leading authorities on recon, Charlie Company was tasked with handling the most important, and dangerous, missions. Both the Pathfinders and the Snow Doves were working overtime, and as soon as a new mission came our way, I was thrown in.

The missions Charlie Company was given were lengthy. They had gone on several missions while I was gone and most of them lasted around a week. They would barely get time off when they returned, stocking up in the forward bases before heading right back out.

So when I arrived I was immediately briefed by Polly and sent to one of the bases on the new front line. There I spent around a week doing nothing but crunching recent data handed off by Jasmine.

It was only on the 9th that Charlie Company returned from another mission. I linked up with them, and we were soon given our next mission.

Since I was back in business, I was the one given the mission data.

I filed it away before heading over and finding Nonnen. It looked like their Steeds had taken some hits so some of the maintenance workers were repairing what they could, Nonnen hanging around the garage.

“Brigadier, sir.”

“Good to see you, Envoy.”

“You’re looking rough.”

“And you’re looking spry. Seems like cushy Capital life is as enviable as I’m thinking it is.”

We shook hands before I leaned against the wall nearby, “Yeah, I’d be lying if I said it’s not, and if I said I wanted to be here. Enchanting work is nice. I get to go at my own pace, I’m in the Magic Spire, I work with smart people, I’m not worried about dying. I’d say it’s a few steps above doing this shit. The only thing I was missing was my girl.”

“Uh-huh. Keep bragging and I’ll rip out your brain so I can get a taste of some of those memories.”

I looked over at him with raised brows for a few seconds, “That’s quite the creative threat.”

“You like it? Came up with it a few days ago.”

“Mm. Very menacing.”

We both chuckled and stared out at all the vehicles. I hadn’t worked on anything besides the airplanes back at the Capital, even though I had offered to whip up a design for better ground runners. Sawn didn’t want to compete in that arena though. It would cost him more and Gearworks would be on his ass every step of the way, so it was more than worth it to simply focus on the planes and let them continue producing Steeds and Rails. There would be plenty of demand for flight anyway.

Nonnen sighed, “You have a woman? Is she a Magus?”

I nodded and smiled, “She is. Quite powerful too.”

“Who is she?”

“I’m not sure I should say. We caught a lot of heat for our relationship and if rumors spread, I might get in trouble again.”

“Oh? Is she a noble? You can tell me at least. You taught me plenty about secrecy anyway.”

“Hm, I suppose,” I glanced over at him and activated my telepathy, [Her name is Umara Talerria, daughter of Duchess Talexia Talerria, one of the few in my so called Calamity Class who survived alongside me during the fall of Purple Sky. She recently told me that she managed to sneak her way into special operations, and she’s working her way toward Authority 8.]

That meant anything that moved on it was either Scourge or Human. It left little room for doubt on both sides.

Thankfully we hadn’t been attacked. Polly picked out a good route for us, so we avoided most of the hotspots. Now though, it was time to dive deep.

After setting up a small camp teams started getting sent out. We needed patrols for the camp so I was rotating squads out to take care of that while arranging the recon.

The great part about being the intelligence agent out in the field was that I could put myself wherever I wanted, and I sure as shit wasn’t going on a patrol.

After putting together the team, we kicked off the mission. I rode out with half the Snow Doves and a single squad of the Pathfinders. The Pathfinders were responsible for hanging back and keeping an eye out while the Snow Doves did their work.

I was right by Nonnen, and we took a Steed to our target area.

We stopped a mile out and hiked the rest of the way.

I got a bit hot with the walking. The summer heat was kicking in and it wasn’t snowing anymore. Despite it being far from beach weather, I was still pretty acclimated to the cold and even 50F felt a bit warm.

I felt a couple drops of sweat under my hood, my coat working overtime to cool my body as I marched up a hill, keeping up with the knights scattered around the area, walking in a loose formation.

I looked up, seeing the crest of the hill approaching, before looking back at Nonnen several steps away.

“I’m going dark.”

“Roger.”

I disappeared as he responded, my illusory stealth kicking in as I branched away from the rest of the squadron.

I hurried a bit as we got to the crest, making it to the top and setting myself up behind a large rock.

I took out my M40, and didn’t bother raising it when I saw our target.

Pictures didn’t do it justice. A truly gargantuan thing, completely biological yet its size made my entire body reject its existence.

It almost felt like I couldn’t see it despite knowing that its body, spanning hundreds of miles, was snaking through valleys and hills. My eyes weren’t prepared for what was before me. My mind was so convinced that something like this was impossible that I seemed incapable of grasping the images before me.

I stood there, frozen for far more seconds than I wished I had been, simply staring at the intestine. It was red like the biomat around us, writhing with muscles along its grotesque body, pushing who knows what across its length.

At some point I forced myself to turn around and kneel, staring at the floor, the stimulus slowly fading from my brain and allowing me to realize just how much horror was flooding my body. My breathing was fast, I was sweating despite being cool, and my muscles felt so weak that holding the M40 up was difficult.

I remained there, letting my body process everything. To the side I could hear retching. Some of the Snow Doves were vomiting, causing one of the warlocks to create a sound barrier.

I continued staring at the floor until I regained myself.

There was no mental affliction here. I realized that after thinking for a while. For a second I had thought that perhaps this intestine was capable of affecting Aura like Kings and King Bloods. But it didn’t. One could say it didn’t have to.

Its very existence incited terror, for it wasn’t something that should exist. It was an impossibility made flesh. What horrified me so much, what brought most of the Snow Doves to their knees, was the realization that not only was this thing real, but it was a weapon being used against them.

I turned around, looking back over at the intestine, still on my knees.

I would say the true horror wasn’t even the fact that it was a war machine designed to bring forth my demise. The horror came when I realized that I would be fighting against it.

Terror set in when I accepted the fight.

Now I had to figure out how to defeat it, and I would either die trying, or countless others would pay the price for my inability.

I gradually calmed back down as my adrenaline wore off and my mind processed the stimulus. I could feel the numbness overtake a part of my brain, desensitizing me to it, coping with it.

Once I was back at my baseline I turned to the others. They were all down the hill a bit, some heaving, others in a daze. Only the most powerful were still functional, and only two were able to help others, one of them being Nonnen.

The situation was under control though, so I went on with my job.

I scoped in from behind a rock and undid my stealth, getting a full view of the intestine and everything going on around it. There were well over 60 thousand monsters around the intestine, but I recognized many of the species as non-combatant Scourge. There were some servant species catering to the needs of all the other monsters while there was one new species responsible for urging along the expansion of the intestine. I got good looks at them, memorizing their behaviors and physical details. I memorized everything I saw regarding how the intestine grew and expanded, how it disseminated materials and supplies to the monsters around it, came up with hypotheticals about the transport process through the intestine based on the movement of the intestine’s body and the description of the shit it oozed out for the monsters to eat.

I also noticed a massive canal in the center of the intestine, one that monsters went in and out of. It could easily accommodate an entire marching army and was large enough for even Bombardos to walk through.

On top of all that, I noticed something most peculiar, something I may not have noticed without my special vision.

I could see thick poisonous Magika radiating from the top of the intestine. There was something there, a vein of power that looked like one long continuous Black Crystal. It was like the ones found in all Scourge monsters, except this one traveled down the length of the intestine, dozens of miles long just in my view, and going however far it needed to in order to reach the Epicenter it came from.

Part of why I noticed it was because it protruded slightly in front of the rest of the intestine as it was being built, like a little tailbone poking out from the rest of a spine. The rest of the intestine seemed to start growing from that protrusion, flesh sloping down and readying another layer for the builder Scourge to add on to the rest. I could actively see the flesh growing from that bone, blood and nutrients pooling around the area and making it redder than the rest of the body.

I came up with names and identifiers for all the different parts of the intestine I could see, coming up with an anatomical schematic. It was all basic stuff that we’d need to know to destroy it.

After memorizing everything I could immediately see, I looked away and took a break. My head pounded despite me barely having used any energy. My blood pressure probably skyrocketed. If this kept up I’d have an aneurism sooner rather than later.

I let out a sigh, trying to destress before linking up with the others and getting ready for close up recon.