Exploration

Braxton returned to the Blast Furnace. Ickthous was doing well on his own. He had completed several suits of armor and many weapons. Braxton took a load of these back to Celious' camp. It wasn't a big issue just a little business. The mounts Celious' people were grooming were selling faster than they couple train them. The tribe was doing well. Most of them had nice human crafted weapons made by Mr Smith. The tribe had expanded with the successful trading they had more food. That lead to a population explosion. Everyone was happy to see Braxton in camp.

Celious held another feast in his honor. This time he introduced him to his wife. Her name was Iesha and she was the tribes shaman. This worked out well for Braxton. He began asking her questions about magic.

"Iesha can you learn new magics or are you stuck with just the one?" Braxton inquired.

"It is possible to learn new spells. Those with talent are rare." Iesha replied.

"How do you learn them?" Braxton inquired.

"My family has an innate ability. Most of us can use it early. We have a list of creatures that have abilities we can learn. We gain them by consuming their flesh. Finding these creatures has become difficult. As you can imagine, they were sot after for their abilities during our warring years." Iesha informed.

"Is there a way to tell if a creature will impact a magic ability before you consume its flesh?" Braxton inquired.

"They all have strange blood. Most creatures have red or blue blood. Magic creatures have different colors. If my people consume blood their offspring cannot learn magics. That is why most of my people cannot learn magic now. The diets of the tribes often includes raw meats. They ingest small quantities of blood and their magic line ends. It is hard to keep the young from eating it. That is why most of our royal children born in tribes lose their ability to learn magics. My children can use it. I've gone to great pains to make sure they know all this. My grandchildren hopefully will be able to as well." Iesha explained.

"That is interesting. I think I know of two different animals that have magic skills. I found one with black blood and on with clear." Braxton said as he summoned a vial of clear liquid.

The vial piqued Iesha's interest. "Can you get me some of their flesh?"

"Maybe, I have no idea on how to locate the horse like creatures. The bug I got this blood off should be easy. I have no idea what magic it might possess yet." Braxton stated plainly.

"What did it look like?" Iesha inquired.

"It was a blue beetle with black spots." Braxton said.

"It might be a sound magic. I can't be certain. There was something like that but, it wasn't the same colors. It had a sonic attack ability. The story that talked about them said they could kill armored earth walkers. They would lay eggs in their mountainous bodies. It was a crazy story, the bugs were only a foot long. They were black with red spots. My ancestors called this ability brain blast but, no one has had the skill for a hundred years or more. The creatures haven't been seen for a long time." Iesha replied.

"Can your skill get stronger if you eat more of their flesh once you have learned an ability?" Braxton pressed.

"Yes, that was the problem. Once we learned their ability it was the only way to make it stronger." Iesha responded as if she was embarrassed about that fact.

"How do you know if you learned a skill?" Braxton requested.

"We can sense it. Those of us with the skill notice here is something new in our minds. Or so I've been told, I've never experienced it myself." She volunteered slyly.

"I will try to find a couple more of them. I want more of their blood. Maybe we can both benefit from these creatures and you can help me learn more about magic." Braxton offered.

"I would like that. If you find some return with them as fresh as possible. I will prepare them myself. The blood you care take before or after. I have no need for it." Iesha planned.

The two talked long into the night. Iesha was full of old tales and legends. She had recently arrived from the royal court to marry Celious. Her last husband had died and her other children were grown. She explained that she could live three times as long as her male count parts. As long as she lived she could have children. It was seen as a great honor for the royal females to have fifty children during their lives. It made the horde stronger.

Braxton left the tribe he next morning. This trip had yielded a surprising wealth of information. His next stop was back at the base camp. He decided to wander around with the environmental suit. But he wanted to know if he could be seen with heat vision. He knew two people with that skill, Demon and Moonshadow. The night watch from his first days in the Blood Furnace. It had been a long while since he had heard or seen either of them.

Braxton returned home and had Vixen try to track them down through her military connections. He didn't want to wait around or get his father involved. Magical abilities were still unknown and he didn't want to open up that can of worms. His discovery had been completely accidental. If the skill had been more subtle he probably would've never know about magic himself. If everyone knew it, things would only get worse.

Braxton ordered an video camera with night vision and several other sensors built in. Then he ordered motion activated lighting for the building. He took them to the hanger and set up them in the hanger's lab. He ran tests on himself using each of the cameras sensors. The motion sensors on the lights picked up his movements but the camera couldn't find him. He watched the playbacks many times. Eventually he picked up the movement of the dust on the floor where his feet moved. That was the only trace he detected. It was so minute he barely noticed it.

"Alpha err X, can you detect this minor displacement of dust? I'm curious if you can detect it from normal dust being blown around by the wind. Do you think you could use that to track invisible creatures?" Braxton thought.

"Processing request... Need more data to complete assessment. Request suspended until further data is collected." X system responded.

Braxton decided to let this idea go for now. He returned to base camp and walked out to hunt. The bugs he was hoping to see were not in the area. Many of the creatures seemed to have gone more into hiding. The explosions from his weapons was his first thought. They hadn't made to much of an impact since their arrival. Between the two of them they had killed less than fifty creatures in the months since he arrived. He had also moved in a large area killing. The one major change he made was clearing he pass to the water hole.

Braxton walked for three days. He went deeper into the new lands than he had before. There was a large hill he wanted to climb. From there he could scout long distances. It wasn't hard reaching the top. Beyond it was hard to see and it took him a full day to find a good vantage point through the trees.

Below on he far side of the hill was a rainforest setting. Trees were everywhere and a large river system was in plain view cutting its way through the forest. The new environment seemed to in lower elevations. It was harder to judge the shapes and elevations due to the trees and other vegetation covering the surfaces.

Braxton used his scope to scout the miles ahead of him. He spent hours searching. He found nothing that interested him close by. He crossed the river area in his search. Finally he saw two triangular shaped hills. They were miles apart one was in the northern area far on the horizon. The other was a bit closer but could've been thirty miles away and fifty miles southeast of the other one.

The top of the closer one had a flat rocky looking top. His scope was great but the details weren't easy to see at those distances. He needed a kayak to cross the river at the least. It was unclear how long it would take to travel through the forests to get there. It wouldn't be an easy trip.

He killed a couple small creatures on his way back to base camp the next day. They were a winged purple snake species. These didn't trigger any notifications from X system. But his notifications since X took over seemed to be much less frequent. His information wasn't playing when he consumed bloods at all. The X system might not be tracking the data which worried Braxton a bit. He continued his return trip to camp. That was an issue he could investigate better in a safe environment.

The second day X voice stopped him dead in his tracks. "Halt, collecting data." X ordered.

Braxton heart skipped a beat at the forceful female voice. He followed the instruction but, scanned the area with his eyes trying to figure out what was going on. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. As he continued to look, X spoke again. "Data confirmed tracking target. Projected image available."

His UI display showed a blue dotted image in a horse shape. Seconds later three more of the dotted images appeared. They were hazy and seemed to move jerkily. It wasn't like watching actual creatures smooth fluid movements. One moment the image would show an upright horse. The next it would have its head down. The image provided very little detail aside from an outline. It was enough to target them.

Braxton lifted his 20mm sniper rifle. X spoke again "Linking with scope. Populating data image into scope." The dotted image appeared on his scope. That was new but the program may have been suppressed when Alpha system was running things. This weapon was one that was designed to run with the old X armor platform.

It wasn't possible for him to aim at the head with the movement being sketchy. The body image came and went too but, it always reappeared in the same place. It provided an actionable target. The range was listed on the scope. As Braxton moved slowly to drop to the ground the horse images seemed to freeze and vanish. They were less than two hundred yards away. Even though the screen showed nothing there, Braxton knew they were in the same spot. He pulled the trigger.

The bullet impacted before the gun finished coming to a rest. The creature took two steps and fell. The horse ended up being a Stone Ghost. He recognized it as soon as it became visible. The armor plate he bullet impacted was shattered. The bullet didn't penetrate the body but, the force of the impact was enough to kill the creature. The other images had bolted away and vanished quickly. Braxton collected the body. This was a huge win for him.

The rest of the trip back was undisturbed. He ate MREs the rest of the trip and pushed hard to make it back quick. He did a good job draining the blood. Then prepped it. Ickthous wasn't happy when he put the body back into storage. "Hey, I want those armor plates." Ickthous demanded.

"Sorry, I found a shaman. The body has to go to her. If she doesn't need to armor plates then I can bring them back." Braxton replied plainly.

"I'm supposed to get all the materials. This is against the deal we made." Ickthous pushed back.

"No, it isn't. I made the deal with Celious not you. The body is going to his tribe. I'm still keeping with the deal. If you have an issue with that you can travel back and ask him yourself. It will cost you a month of travel." Braxton fired back.

"Just tell him to give you one of the weapons I made him for proof." If he gives you one, that will settle the matter." Ickthous said.

Then he warned "If he doesn't, our deal ends. I will give you no more weapons or armor I craft."

"If our deal ends, so does your welcome in my camp. Two can make threats. I'm getting tired of your suspicions." Braxton replied angrily.

The two sat working silently for the next few hours. The black blood filled twenty nine vials. This had been a larger one. Braxton thought the first one must have been a baby. Rather than spark any fresh issues by processing the snakes, he finished his current project then left again.

He ported home then directly back to Celious' camp. He quickly acquired a weapon from Celious after explaining the issue. Then gave the Stone Ghost to Iesha. Her eyes went wide. "You found a ghost horse? These were said to be no more when my ancestors were still living in the earth." She said in hushed tones.

"That was the second one I found. There were a couple more but, I won't kill anymore of them. They don't seem to be aggressive." Braxton replied.

"This cannot be spoken of again. My people would go to war to find more of these." Then she took a necklace off and handed it to him. "Give this to Ickthous. Tell him he is sworn to never mention this horse again." Iesha said calmly.

To Braxton it looked like a simple colorful charm necklace. Nothing special jumped out about it to him. He put it in his pocket and asked "Can I get the scales off it?"

"No, they are to fresh. If armor was made out of them it might be noticeable. Their armor was the stuff of legends in our past. There are still two working suits of this material. A new set would set our world on fire." Iesha said looking at Celious.

"Okay, I'll just tell Ickthous I wasn't allowed to bring it back. I will have to find something to replace it I'm sure. I'm getting close to moving on now. He will be alone at the base camp by next week I think." Braxton informed.

"I will send his wife and another male and female. It would be bad to leave him alone. We are tribal creatures. That should help his moods." Celious joined in the conversation.

"Tell them to follow the paths when the reach the camp. I have boomers set in the ground around the entrance. I wouldn't want them getting killed." Braxton informed.

"I will thank you." Celious returned.

"I hope to see you again soon. I do not know what is in store. The new area I'll travel in is different than anything else I've been in before." Braxton said as he walked away.

Soon after he was back at home. He spent a week at home with his kid and the two women in his life. He reviewed his business status and made time to speak with all those in his employ. His father made a trip to see him too.

Braxton didn't have enough of the data sorted to share it with his father yet. Not to mention the way it was protected made it hard to reach. It was safe where it was now. He had made it almost impossible for most things to find their way to it. By removing the other gates from the spacecraft, he had isolated that access point. The other one was hidden inside a cave without direct access. He suspected at least one more gate near it, but had no way of knowing where it might be yet or if another existed at all.

Braxton was impressed with how his business had continued to grow. The people he had hired kept finding new ways to make him money. Vixen was keeping close tabs on that aspect of things too. The blood sales had made him a billionaire and showed no signs of slowing down. Restrictions of blood returning to earth had been all but stopped entirely. His gate was the only one that wasn't being monitored for trafficking. The people that knew about it at all were few.

Private gates were about to hit the market but the restrictions on blood sales put an end to that enterprise. Untreated blood was deadly too. Without someone knowledgeable in the process killing creatures was pointless. Braxton had cornered the market in acquiring most of those people. His treatment of those people that worked for him brought the rest into his fold. Every time Braxton Sr opened new portals, Braxton Jr had a crew access the location and setup shop. None of them used his gate, they used public ones.