Rising Tides

"How far is the progress buddy?"

[Report: Compression is underway. Currently at 13% capacity]

"This is taking longer than expected." Currently I was working on the core of my newest project. The outer shell was already completed in theory. I just needed to make the frame out of a hard material. And so far, the only material that caught my eye was the trinket I got from Venti.

My vision was broken beyond repair after fighting hades, but that allowed me to run a scan from the inside through the cracks. Magic helped a lot in that regard as it acted as a transmitter and receiver for it. So now I had the atomic model for the metal, now dubbed 'Odium'. It was 1500% stronger than lonsdaleite.

The only downside was that the strange behavior of this material caused its mass to be much heavier than I accounted for. The structure's center of gravity could easily shift with a few vibrations.

How did I solve that?

…..I may have cheated using mana, to just….decrease the weight.

Anyways, the core was complete and we were now going at 77,000 RPM. The heat generated within a few minutes of runtime was astounding, so much that I had to stop the experiment and add some liquid nitrogen containers for instant cooling.

It was going pretty smooth from then onwards. The frame was designed and created slowly using Odium and even the weapons I previously applied to my drones and exosuit were put into place.

It was the last step that showed me the finger. And it was the reason, I was standing here for more than an hour trying to solve it.

Magic.

Oh how conveniently annoying you are….

Why is that mixing magic and technology causes a ton of data errors to pop up? And why is it that I cannot use magic to solve these problems?

The answer is pretty self-explanatory.

While I could use magic to do anything, as long as I have enough of it. It was not possible to fix a broken spell using magic.

Take a scroll for example. Have you ever heard of someone use 'Reparo' on a broken spell inscribed in a scroll? A lot of magicians did! But they failed. The moment mana comes in contact with the inscriptions written in a scroll, the words change the mana's functions.

It is like putting the right numbers in a wrong equation.

So I had no choice but to brute force it. Hard code baby! That too in assembly! The diagnostic algorithm was complete but it was so obscenely huge and compressed that unpacking the file was taking a ridiculous time.

I couldn't step in here so it was solely up to veritas, and boy was he taking his sweet time…

[It is not as easy as you make it out to be, sir]

"I know, I'm just messing with you." So I just waited until he was done with it.

In the meantime, I invited ale to the base with me. She was fascinated by the things I built, but the thing she anticipated the most was space.

And I suppose it was an eye opener for an inhabitant of this world, the revelation that there is something beyond the sky.

'Should I take her there for our honeymoon?'

[Sir, I have detected a large fleet of battle ships closing in on us]

I froze from that statement and looked ahead to the monitor, now displaying more than 100 ships sailing through the sea at unprecedented speeds.

"Shit! I forgot about this."

The steam engine Arthur designed later before entering the academy. It was a deal he made with the genius artificer in return for the two phoenix wyrm necklaces commissioned by the royal family.

It did help save his sister's life during the war, but the steam engine they developed got into the hands of Alycrans to make faster ships.

i.e the ships going above me.

I planned to stop him from doing that, but it just left my mind when I was busy fucking my fiancé. What….I got priorities ya know?

Well at least I still have time.

"Veritas, put all energy into completing this project. I'll take care of these fodders."

[Confirmed]

Beep—!

I simple switch prompted the nano-suit to fly towards me before morphing into the old suit I wore for the first time.

"That's nostalgic" I opened the hatch and went out of my base, buckling a little for the sudden added pressure before stabilizing myself.

"So now…..how should I do it?" Stopping them was a no-brainer. I was underwater and they were above. Puncturing a big enough hole would've done the trick. If it were not for the mages who will immediately step in to stop the water from getting inside their ship.

I could attach some bombs along the keel to blow it up all at once but that's just circling back to the same problem.

One retainer is enough to patch it up.

"No wait. They have a different system of magic." The alycrans were considered strong for two things. Their teamwork and their mastery. The ability to harness magic was not based on talent like how Dicathen worked. They literally inscribed runes on their backs to harness magic.

The process had a downside of completely eliminating your ability to cast any other type of magic. But that in itself, also worked as a positive feedback by increasing their mastery over the given element. I doubt that most of the mages here can use the wood attribute.

They'd probably use an air bubble under their ship to replace the keel but their speed should be lot slower with the steam engine sunken underwater.

Also, none of them should have some bullshit trick like infinite mana.

[Deploying remote bombs]

The A.I assistant spoke up and 20 or so mini bombs started moving towards the ship, attaching themselves.

"It's times like these, that I realize how shitty being a mage must be…." They train all their lives to become stronger, but cannot stop a bullet without ever knowing what it is in the first place.

"The first rogue mage I met back in Marvel had the same problem." He was stronger than me back then, but his disregard for technology became his hubris.

"So don't blame yourself for what happens today. Blame me."

BOOOOM—!

"I will gladly be the villain in your story if it means you don't have to go through self-hatred." In the end there is no winner in war.

"^&$^%*(^$%%&^" Muffled sounds came from above, resembling the cries of a banshee as I witnessed the ships stop in their tracks. The large engines were slowly sinking and the top of the surface was slowly dyed red in blood.

"What a sight…." In contrast to my words, my mood was not as affected as it should be.

…..Should I say pity? Their situation was transparent to me. Slaves forcefully sent to participate in war, their families held hostage, their freedom stripped and only the upper echelons of their continent had some leeway.

It was not a small number of slaves either. The first wave in front of me is just a drop in the bucket. The real war will start once they get a foothold in our continent.

More than a million, more than the eyes can see. Their numbers will make them visible over the horizon. Like ants crawling out of the ground.

If I don't stop this war, innocent people who just want to survive will be forced into this, fueled with hatred, they'll stop only once they deliver as much pain as they received to their enemies.

"So come quick Agrona." I spoke with my eyes open, looking at the corpses slowly sinking into the sea.