STARGATE 2

Carl looked down at the single, palm sized, clunky, spiderlike robot that took him two weeks to properly make, and smiled at his accomplishment.

The Replicators that the little grey Asgard aliens were fighting and losing against in the Ida galaxy were a remnant of Ancient technology. From the example of the relentless self replicating robots, and the fear of Grey Goo that is associated with nanotechnology, Carl had a healthy respect for the dangers inherent with the technology.

Despite the danger of the technology getting away from his control and running rampant, using robots and nanotech was the fastest way for him to build up his technology base. If he had to build everything from scratch by hand, he would be forever chained to the forge. Too restricting.

The first thing Carl had done on arriving on the planet was to build a simple large house from materials from his Farm. A few simple charms, a couple of transfigurations, and the simple house provided everything he needed, but especially shelter from the elements while working on his technology. Already he'd been rained on a couple times on his new world. While he could use his profound energy and control of water to ensure the immediate area around him didn't get soaked, it wouldn't help his budding technology if they got soaked while he was away.

After building a large and simple house, Carl had worked on making a basic generator. It was powered by naquadria, an energy rich liquid produced from naquadah. The generator would "broadcast" the energy needed to power his spider bots.

It had taken Carl a few weeks to use his profound energy and control over fire to manufacture the generator and figure out how to magically alter naquadah into naquadria, as opposed to doing the process with technology.

Since the naquadria was a bit on the unstable side, Carl had taken his experiments away from the stargate and his little base to attempt to master the process. There were several explosions that Carl only survived because of how tough his body was, and his regeneration.

Clearly using tried and true technology was a bit safer than learning how to do it himself by magic, but Carl was still determined to learn how to do the magic of advanced technology for himself. He believed it would give him more insight and knowledge of the principles behind the magic, science, and technology. More insight and skill would in turn allow him to design better systems and technologies.

After finally building his generator and getting a stable source of naquadria fuel for it, Carl had spent the next week working on his primitive computer in his Warehouse, writing the program that would input the base code into his spider like robot.

During that week Carl had written multiple failsafe codes into the base code that would keep his machines from going out of his control. Any tampering with their base code would cause them to self destruct. Not even he could mess with their base code. If he wanted something changed, he would have to destroy the old ones and create completely new ones with new programming.

His robot's base state behavior wouldn't be anything ridiculous like "replicate". They would simply go to standby mode and wait for orders from Carl. Carl had introduced both a password and a magical lock attuned to his magical signature, so no one but him could command his little bots.

Hopefully his preparations would be enough to keep his robots under his control. If anything happened to challenge that control, Carl would act to fix it immediately. He wasn't going to be complacent and think that everything he did was perfect and not able bettered. He would learn from the Ancient's mistakes and improve, not stagnate in his arrogance.

The second week of building his little spider bot was spent using his magic to put together the hardware. It was small, delicate, and difficult work. Thankfully his control of fire was good enough that he didn't need a forge and moulds. He used his profound skills to control the fire temperature and shape in order to mould the metals to what he needed. His use of fire alone wasn't enough, so he used his magic via telekinesis to add a bit more of a delicate touch to the process.

And it had taken Carl multiple attempts to make the parts properly. Some of the pieces were as delicate as clockwork gears, so it had been quite a different and difficult application of his powers.

In the cultivation world, nearly every technique was geared towards more power and destructiveness. There weren't too many techniques out there to build skill in precision use of powers. It was a skill that Carl would have to practice more from now on, since he was going to be playing with technology a lot in the future.

So after an uncounted amount of tries, Carl finally had a finished product sitting in front of him. The only thing he had left to do was to upload the base code to his robot, and turn the thing on.

Carl hooked the little spiderbot into the connections from his computer and started the upload. It would take a while to accomplish, so while waiting Carl started playing with his control over lighting while distancing himself from his robot so he wouldn't damage it.

Over the years spent in time dilation with Caiyi, Carl had some extra time he spent training with his various affinities with fire, lightning, water, and darkness. It had been a bit of a surprise to find the Evil God Darkness Seed, cause he had thought there were only 5 elements. It made Carl wonder if there were other element seeds out there. Like light to balance the shadow, yin/yang, life, death, space, time, and others.

He couldn't imagine what being immune to time or space would do, but having an affinity for space and time is a direction that Carl would like to pursue. If he could learn those principles, or Daos, and if he could take it far enough, he was sure he could gain control over his world jumping. He could maybe even build that world for him and his loved ones that he had seen in the Mirror of Erised.

The dinging alarm, to let him know the upload had been complete, broke Carl from his thoughts. He extinguished the bolt of lightning he'd been playing with, and moved to his computer to double check everything was okay.

After a systems check, everything looked good, so Carl booted up his spider bot. The cute little thing was amusing to see as it got to its feet and started looking left and right to orient itself. It eventually focused on Carl, recognizing his magical signature and waiting for orders.

"Good boy, Pete." So what if Carl named the spider bot after Spiderman? Carl gave the password and then ordered the bot. "Come over here."

"Yes, sir." The tiny voice of Pete responded. Carl had thought it was dumb that the little bots the Ancients built had no way to communicate back to the user, so he fixed that.

"How are you, Pete?" Carl asked the little spider bot when he arrived at Carl's feet.

"Operating under normal parameters, sir. Awaiting orders."

"Good." Carl nodded. He indicated a pallet with trinium, naquadah, and other metals that were needed to create more spider bots sitting to the side. "Your first order is to use this metal to create 12 more spider bots like you, to help you with your workload."

"Orders acknowledged, sir. Beginning work now." And the little spider bot got to work dismantling the metals and started laying out another bot.

Carl enjoyed watching his little spider bot work. It only took it about 2 hours for Pete to finish building the next bot. When the bot was done, Pete 1 hooked an attachment to Pete 2 and installed the same base code into it.

The second bot "woke up" and after a brief look around to orient itself, joined Pete 1 in building the next bot. Carl smiled at his efficient little bots. While the bots worked on building him a workforce on the other side of the room, Carl returned to designing a basic computer system.

While Carl called it basic, it would be far more advanced than anything he had from Earth previously. The computer would be where he placed his designs, blueprints, and build orders for his work force of little Petes.

It was so frustrating working on a slow and primitive computer through a mouse and keyboard, when he knew he could build a computer that he could interact with via his mind. It would be much faster and an easier interface to get exactly what he wanted done.

After a few hours, Carl had finished creating the design for his upgraded computer and was watching the Petes finish building their last worker. Once the last Pete finished orienting itself, the group of 13 spider bots turned as one and strode forward until they stood in front of Carl. Carl smiled at his little squad of spider bots.

"Mission accomplished, sir." Pete 1 reported. "Awaiting Orders."

"Good job. Your next orders are to take the blueprint I'll give you and build the computer." Carl then hooked Pete 1 to the primitive computer and started uploading the schematics to Pete 1.

Since the upload didn't impact on his base code, and only stayed in Pete's normal memory, there was no reason for the self destruct codes to engage. Everything seemed to be working smoothly.

Carl watched the process as Pete 1 passed the schematics to the rest of the Petes. Once every Pete had the schematics, the group started working. The computer they were building was going to be a cube three feet on a side. It should last Carl a good while before he would need to upgrade it to something bigger.

After watching the Petes work for a few minutes, Carl left the house to spend some time wandering around the surroundings for a bit. He flew over the land that he would be converting into a city base soon, and looked over the landscape in the area.

He saw quite a few animals running around the nearby forest. They were all very similar to earth animals, with only some local variations. In the history of the Milky Way galaxy, over 5 million years ago a terrible plague had swept over the worlds of the Ancients. The Ancients had a hard time combating the virus, it was so virulent.

The Ancients that weren't infected decided to leave the Milky Way Galaxy to go to the Pegasus Galaxy to avoid the plague. But before they left they wiped out all life in the galaxy. The worlds were then reseeded with life that was free of the plague. So it made sense that many of the earth like worlds would have plant and animal life very similar to Earth.

Carl gave one more look over the scenery as he considered what it would look like in the future, before he flew back to his house. Even after so long of being able to fly under his own power, the little kid inside Carl was still not tired of flight. He still felt a bit of the thrill from feeling the air whipping past him, singing to him as Carl pushed his speed to the limits.

As usual, the short flight ended too soon when Carl landed in front of his temporary house. He entered just as the Petes were finishing up with the control chair that would let Carl interface with his computer easily via his mind.

Once the job was done, the Petes settled down in front of Carl, waiting for more orders. Carl set out some more metal for them and had them start making more Petes while he worked on inputting his blueprints and build orders in the computer.

Carl turned on the computer and was pleased to see it work just fine. He hooked up his old and slow computer to his new and updated one and uploaded the kernel of an operating system to his new computer.

With that done, Carl put the same magical signature and password security on the chair and computer that he'd put on the Petes. His computer obviously didn't have the self destruct codes for tampering that his Petes did, since he would need to update the operating system and data as he went. But the security made sure that only he could access and operate his system.

Once that was all set up, Carl settled into the control chair and interfaced with the computer. So fast! It was a pleasure to work with an advanced piece of technology.

Carl updated the operating system, adjusting it to be robust and work in a way that Carl felt was comfortable. Once that was set up, Carl pulled out the repository that he'd pulled out of the statue building that was previously standing on the planet. He hooked the repository up to his computer and started copying all the data over. His operating system hoovered up all the information and started organizing it according to the criteria Carl had set up.

Looking at the expected time that would be required to copy and organize the data, Carl wryly smiled. Even as strong, intelligent, and advanced as his body was, it had still taken him 42 years via occlumency to sort the blasted thing. And here his computer was going to do it in just over two weeks.

'There's another difference between humans and machines.' Carl thought. 'The sheer speed machines can operate at.'

Now that the process was started, there really was not much for Carl to do until his computer was finished. Any more designing and building could wait until he could interact with his computer that already had all the science of the ancients loaded onto it. What should he do now?

It had been just over a month and a half since he started the jump. He knew the gate address to Earth from the repository, but he wasn't going to go back to the motherland just yet. He still had a lot to build before he was ready to go and handle the hot mess that was Earth.

He also wasn't sure just when the SGC started using the gate shield to stop any uninvited guests, and he had no interest in seeing if he could survive smacking into the shield and falling back into the wormhole. When he was ready and had built himself a space ship is when he would make his trip to earth.

And while Carl would like to start making trips to different planets to start his meddling in the galaxy, he really wasn't sure where things were. His memories of the show had the different planets being labeled things like PJ2-445. But that didn't correlate to anything in the Ancients database. And that database was very out of date on the local situation.

Carl snorted to himself suddenly. "Even after getting all the information on the 'Ancients' and knowing just what they liked to call themselves, I've fallen in the habit of calling them ancient. The Alterans and ended up doing a lot of stupid things. I don't think I'll change that habit of calling them ancients, to remind myself how outdated they were. If anything it's a warning to myself to not get complacent. Because what happened to their civilization, despite how mighty they were? Gone. Only a bunch of body-less lazy bastiches remain, floating around and making nuisances of themselves."

Carl abruptly reached out with his magic and twisted just so. A ball of glowing white energy appeared in front of him. The magical techniques for controlling or banishing ghosts were surprisingly useful on the bodiless ascended being that used to be an Alteran when it was human. Carl was surprised how easy it was to catch the ascended ancient, despite the ascended being having a lot of power at its disposal.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here? A nosy little snot ball." Carl chuckled as he held the ascended being firmly in his magic and didn't let him utilize his power.

"How dare you trap me, flesh bag! Release me!" A male voice sounded out from the so called snot ball. "I warn you things will go worse for you if you don't release me immediately!"

Carl chuckled as he kept his magical grip on the glowing snot ball. "Well, it sounds like someone has a superiority complex." The bodiless ascended being just had to change his cry to 'I am your god!' and he would sound like a Goa'uld.

"Of course I'm superior to a primitive ape that is meddling in what he doesn't understand!" The snot ball raged.

"Oh, well, I'm a quick learner, unlike you, apparently." Carl snarked at the ascended being. "So why don't you explain it to me. Starting with why you are here spying on me." Carl stated while giving the ascended being a little shake, which caused the being to shriek in startlement. He was certainly not used to being under someone else's power.

"I'm not spying! You're just not allowed to touch the repository! You're ruining the plan by changing things!" The snot ball accusingly stated.

'Hmm, now why does that sound familiar?" Carl thought for a moment before it came to him. 'It reminds me of how the Powers That Be on the BtVS world acted. They too had a bunch of plans on how things should go, no matter what the flesh bags with free will thought about the matter. And they didn't care about how much suffering their plans caused. If these ascended beings are like that too, I might just change my policy of avoiding them.'

Carl's smile unnerved the glowing Ascended being for some reason.

"Now, why don't you tell me this plan?" Carl politely asked, amused that the glowing ball of snot was quivering a bit in fear. "I'm a reasonable being, and I'm sure we can come to some kind of understanding."

"I c-can't talk about it! It's prohibited!"

"Hmm. Can't or won't talk, I wonder? I'm not sure you're even in the know on what the plan is." Carl speculatively mused, eyeing the being in doubt.

"Of course I know what the plan is! I'm entrusted with protecting this part of it, after all!" The glowing ball of energy bragged.

Carl wondered if ascending damaged the brain, or if the being in front of him was always such an idiot that was easily led about by his nose by his peers.

"Hmm, well, it sounds like you're an important person among your peers. I'm sorry I haven't introduced myself. I'm Carl. And what's your name?" Carl suddenly shifted the conversation to keep his prisoner off balance.

"Mordan. Nice to meet you." The creature faintly spoke as if dredging up the faint memories of the basics of politeness that he hadn't needed in years.

"It's good to meet you too, Mordan. Now, since I've ruined your duty to watch over the item left here, how about giving me the broad strokes so I can see if there's anything I can do to help you?"

Carl could almost feel the shifting emotions of the ascended being in front of him, which was interesting. He didn't get that feeling from others that had bodies, but the energy wave lengths of the ascended seemed to transmit their feelings. Carl figured that was a big reason that Anubis found it so easy to manipulate Oma Desala into helping him ascend.

"All I can say is that it will end a threat to the Ascended Council, and we will finally be free of their tyranny." The ascended being explained, clearly trying to get Carl's sympathy with the language he used.

With what Mordan let slip along with Carl's meta knowledge about the Stargate world, Carl could make some guesses what the ascended were trying to do. If Carl was right, the ascended were trying to guide the conflict in the galaxy in order to build some forces that could fight against the Ori, while being capable of being responsible with the technology left behind by the ancients.

Perhaps they only told the creatures on the physical plane that interfering was against their rules. From Carl's memories of the show, there were a whole lot of instances where the ascended interfered with the physical plane. So the fact that they didn't interfere was blatantly nonsense.

Maybe the reason they picked Anubis to interact with was because they were hoping to make use of the Goa'uld, since they were the race in power. Carl figured that maybe the ascended council thought they could use Anubis to guide the Goa'uld, making use of them to be the forces used against the Ori's troops.

But once Anubis ascended, they were able to read Anubis' emotions and understand that Anubis had been hiding his evil nature all along and wouldn't be their pawn. They wouldn't be able to make use of Anubis or the Goa'uld in their war. They would need to encourage and build up a different force.

Perhaps the reason the Ascended didn't permanently take care of Anubis was because the partially ascended Goa'uld was useful as a means of providing an enemy for their chosen troops to sharpen themselves on? It would give them practice in fighting against the troops of the Ori that had abilities.

So all the death and misery that Anubis spread around due to his partially ascended powers and knowledge, could be indirectly attributed to the ascended council for their refusal to deal with the problem they created.

Carl admitted to himself that he may be judging the ascended council a bit too harshly; he may be jumping at conspiracy theories. But Carl decided it didn't really matter if the council was being hypocritical and lazy, or calculative and overbearing. The results were the same either way. Many deaths and lots of suffering around the galaxy because of the ascended council's decisions.

At the very least the ascended council condoned the actions of a murderous and crazy half ascended Goa'uld, one that they empowered to be worse than other Goa'uld. Even if they didn't help Anubis in his actions, they did nothing to stop the problem that they directly created.

The council didn't force Anubis to fully descend, and they didn't imprison or kill him. So they had a certain amount of responsibility for Anubis' atrocities. And Carl wasn't best pleased with their actions.

Carl debated to himself what he should do with the spying ascended being, Mordan.

'Why does this situation seem so familiar?' Carl suddenly wondered. 'Oh, yeah. It is similar to when Yun Che wanted to let an enemy that had vital intel on his strength go in order to send a message.' Carl realized.

'But is the situation and the solution really the same?' Carl thought about whether he should try to kill Mordan or not. 'In the previous situation at the Frozen Cloud Asgard, the enemy was actually attacking with the intent to kidnap Yun Che's wife. It would have turned into a fight anyway unless we let them kidnap Yun Che's woman, which wasn't going to happen. They were for sure our enemies.'

'But in this situation, the snot ball was only spying on me, not actively attacking. He only started blustering and threatening me when I caught him. He probably acted like that because he was very frightened and grasping at straws. The idea that a flesh being could catch and detain an ascended like him must terrify him. So, should I let him go with a warning to the council to leave me be? Should I imprison him, or execute him? Or should I send him back to the council with an offer of being an ally?' Carl was in deep thought as he barely paid attention to the ascended being in front of him, despite keeping a tight grip on him.

'One thing is for sure, whatever I do with Mordan, I'll need to redesign my wards to keep the nosy bastards out. I'll have to be especially paranoid when I start teaching my people Ki and Profound Techniques. I certainly don't want to let these bastards spy on my techniques and spread them among my enemies.'

Making his decision, Carl focused his attention once more on his prisoner.

"Okay, Mordan. Here's the way it is as far as I see it." Carl soberly stated. The feeling from Mordan let Carl know the ascended was paying close attention, which was good. "I don't really know your people. And I don't have any reason to trust you. You also don't have any reason to trust me. But from where I'm standing, you don't get to dictate to me how things go. But I'm willing to listen to your people's advice."

"But, why wouldn't you listen to us? The council is wise and has millions of years of experience." Mordan plaintively complained.

"That may be true, but I don't know that they would look after my best interests. After some time of getting to know each other, I'm sure we'll build up more trust. But right now, I don't know you or your council's cause, what drives you, what I should expect from you. I don't even know the rules you operate under."

"So I'm saying, we need to get to know each other before we can trust each other. That will take time." Carl explained. "Why don't you go back to your people and tell them about our meeting. Let them talk it out, and come back here in a month so we can continue to talk and get to know each other."

"Why so long? It won't take more than a few days for the council to come to a decision."

"They may be ready after only several days, but I won't be. Limitations of the flesh, don't you know?" Carl blatantly lied to misdirect Mordan away from his true capabilities. If the snot ball bought his load of BS, then he deserved to get fooled. "So why don't you have your delegation come in a month so we can chat and talk about a cooperation at that point?" Carl suggested.

Carl got the feeling from Mordan that he was still unconvinced about why Carl wasn't just accepting of his assurances and urgings to trust them, but he had no idea how to go about convincing Carl. Eventually Carl sent Mordan off to talk to his vaunted council.

'And now, here's hoping that I did the right thing. Mordan himself wouldn't do anything too drastic beyond talk my ear off. But who knows how the other ascended will react.' Carl looked around his base. 'One thing is for sure, as I build up my base I'm going to have to ward the shit out of this place.'

XX

While his advanced computer was sorting the repository of knowledge, Carl worked with his outdated Earth computer to give designs and build orders to Pete 1 and his horde of spider bots. The first thing he had them build was a temporary security building to house the stargate, until something more permanent and secure could be built.

Any uninvited guests that came through the stargate would be immediately disarmed, quarantined into separate rooms, and given a medical checkup. At least that was the plan once Carl had his own forces in place to staff his facilities.

For now Carl set up some wards in the security building that would stun and imprison any visitors, alerting Carl that some people needed to be taken care of.

Meanwhile Carl had set up wards that should keep the ascended out of his base unless he invited them in. It would have to do until Carl could build some Potentia to power stronger planet wide wards.

Once Carl's computer was finished storing and sorting the repository of knowledge, Carl was ready to get to work. He sat down in the command chair and starting interfacing with the computer.

Carl started pulling up different plans that were stored in the database, and began tweaking them. There were so many things to build, he wasn't sure where to start at first. But a little flash of memory of playing some RTS (real-time strategy) games gave him an answer.

If he didn't have a steady and sufficient supply of resources, he wouldn't be able to get anywhere. At the scales that he was going to be working on, he couldn't rely on his Farmville farms. They were great for providing everything he personally needed, and supplying his few businesses. But building an organization that spanned even just one solar system was more than his farms could provide. And Carl didn't want to be the choke point of the whole system.

So Carl needed some long range communications and power distribution systems and satellites to scan for the needed resources and provide his Petes energy. His army of Petes would soon be leaving the little area that his naquadria generator could cover. They would need to be able to continue to get power and instructions from home base wherever they went on the world.

And the satellites Carl planned to build were important to help communications and deep scan the planet for what resources it had. Without that basic information, the Petes wouldn't know where to go to get the resources needed.

Carl added the communications building and satellites to his build queue. The Petes were almost happy to have direction and something to do. And Carl enjoyed watching the little guys work.

While they were chugging away at building the communications building, Carl was working on the next design. He obviously couldn't expect his army of Petes to travel the planet on their own spidery legs, that would take too long. They needed transport around the planet and the ability to haul the resources they gathered.

He didn't have any roads or railways built up on this rugged planet. It would take more time to do so than Carl wanted to wait for. So he pulled up some plans for hover trucks. They would stick close to the ground but be able to overcome any ground based obstacle.

Carl chuckled a bit at the vision in his head of little spider Petes with a trucker's ball cap on their heads while they drove their trucks on their spider-trucker routes.

Soon enough the Petes finished the communication center and launched a few satellites, that started their scans of the planet. Carl looked over the information as it came in, and started making his plans for mining the resources.

Carl briefly considered using the mining spells he knew from the HP world to go grab a large amount of ore for his army of Petes to process and have material to jump start his progress. After some thought, the only reason he had for why he didn't want to do it that way was to have everything be the accomplishment of his Petes. Doing it all the hard way, they would have something to be proud of.

After realizing that the only reason he had against grabbing a bunch of ore to get started was "because", Carl immediately headed out and spent a few hours pulling up metals with his mining spells for his Petes to process. Transportation was even easier for him. Ever since he became a Sovereign Realm cultivator, he had a pocket dimension that he could store stuff in.

He set the ore down in a convenient place for the Petes to access and process the ore so they could build their hover trucks quickly and get started on their mining operations. While Carl wanted his operation to be self sustaining, he realized that it would have taken the Petes too long to get started initially.

Carl then returned to his self assigned job, adjusting the blue prints in the database and populating a build list for the Petes. Carl planned that his base would eventually be a city, so he needed everything organized properly. He started at the bottom, water and sewage. With the detailed scans from the satellites, he planned out how his city would have water brought in and dispose of its waste.

With the advanced technology Carl had access to, he didn't really need to have power or communication lines run, but he decided to have them laid as a backup to his technology. That was one of the mistakes that the Ancients had made, in Carl's opinion. They relied on only their main advanced technology, instead of a robust system of backups. Carl wanted to make sure what he was building was robust and wouldn't fall apart from just one or two technologies failing or being attacked at a critical point by their enemies.

Carl's whole plan for his future city was that he would build his own estate in the center. It would be the ruler's palace, the center of his organization and empire. He would build it on a grand scale. And as he had more people added to his budding empire, his city would be built based on the basic designs and zoning he decided on. Anytime he gifted or sold parcels of land to any future citizens, they could design their own estates or businesses as they wished. And the basic utilities would be there for them to hook into.

The individuals that most proved their loyalty and ability to him would continue to receive benefits that allowed them to build their own little demesne. They could establish their own families and dynasties.

And he would have a standing army of his own that his citizens could apply to join. They would be the elite troops that could go anywhere and do anything needed.

Obviously his plans were big enough that he couldn't accomplish everything in 10 years. But for the first time, Carl was willing to plan out and act for a long term investment. He was planning for something beyond the original 10 years, something he could come back to.

Carl eventually planned to be in charge of his own destiny and movements, apart from the jump chain. Living with Caiyi for so long had woken something up in Carl, and he was eager to build himself a future, instead of just accumulating powers and waiting to see what happens at the end of the line.

XX

Once the supply chain was established, the Petes started building with a will. Carl saw his estate start to build up. He had taken a lot of inspiration from Caiyi's palace, but adjusted it to make more sense with the technology and magic he had available.

With the basics handled, Carl turned his attention to building himself a space ship that he could travel around on and visit the motherland.

After Carl once more perused all the designs that the Ancients had in their database, he realized that he didn't like any of them. Not to mention that they were all built to be crewed by thousands, and he was all by himself with only his Petes to help him.

So Carl started his design from scratch. For the outside of his ship, Carl decided to go with a simple puddle jumper sized ship. With his access to space expansion runes and enchantments, Carl decided he would go the route that the Time Lords had. He would have a small ship that was bigger on the inside.

And Carl ran into a bit of a snag in his design work. The software the Ancients had for designing ships had absolutely no data on the magic and profound crafting abilities that Carl had. So how could he design his desired ship properly, and trust in it, if his database had no idea how to utilize his knowledge and skills? Would his ship be a disaster waiting to happen?

"Well, time for another stint in the Time Pearl." Carl commented to Pete 1. "This will take a while that I don't want to spend in outside time."

Carl then gathered his army of Petes and, with his power generator and computer, entered his Heavenly Time Pearl.

The Petes were tasked with building a science and testing facility in the land of the Time Pearl with material from his Farm as well as expanding his computer. He wanted a more robust set up if he was going to be testing and gathering data. One of the first things they built was the device to build and recharge Potentia. He would need power if he was to put in his full effort to study how his Magic, Ki, and Profound Energy interacted with technology, not to mention making things robust enough to not break easily from his extremely enhanced strength.

When the device for recharging Potentia was built, Carl used his all senses to follow along with the device while it recharged the Potentia he had found. Thanks to his abilities, he soon figured out the knack to recharging the Potentia. His practice in mastering the technique for charging Potentia paid off; he soon had stacks of the incredible batteries that drew their power from pocket dimensions.

The weeks started slipping by quickly as Carl started his work. While the Petes worked on building his science facilities, Carl worked on scanning his Library of Magic into the database. Then he worked on entering everything he knew about cultivation, profound tools crafting, medicine, and insights he had gained on the nature of fire, water, wind, lightning, and darkness, from a cultivation perspective.

His Farms provided plenty of materials for the Petes to work with while in the time dilation, so his testing facility, based entirely on the ancient technology, was ready quite quickly. While the facilities were impressive, they were a bit inadequate to handle his abilities. The ancients had made their designs based on the expectations of dealing with baseline, unenhanced humans. They had no access to Ki enhanced individuals, let alone those with Profound Energy. So it wasn't too surprising that Carl had to make many adjustments in his facilities as he accidently broke things.

So Carl spent months and years using the recording technology, and constantly adjusting it and building it up, to study magic and all the uses of it. From the Arithmancy to Ancient Runes. Potions, charms, transfiguration, and alchemy. Even blood magic, rituals, and dark arts.

As Carl began seeing all the data being gathered from a scientific approach to studying magic, he wasn't surprised to note that there were lots of gaps and mistakes in the Wizarding World's Arithmancy. It wasn't that they weren't clever or intelligent enough to get it right, it was just that they didn't have the proper tools available to get accurate information to base their calculations on.

Another problem was that they still worked their calculations on parchment by hand. That had definitely been holding them back. Calculations that took fractions of a second for Carl's computer to accurately finish, would have taken a wizard weeks or months, and that was if they didn't make a mistake somewhere and have to start over.

While technology could never replace the awesomeness of being able to manipulate the world around them by sheer will power and magic, science and technology could make the study and understanding of the forces involved so much better and more efficient. Then he could use that knowledge and technology to maximize the training needed to become proficient in wielding magic.

From his studies of the magical discipline, Carl created better training schedules and study materials. He knew his Luna, Hermione, and Fleur would love the books and information he would bring back to them.

Aside from his own magical abilities, Carl spent quite a lot of time scanning magical materials with his technology. He had all the different magical herbs, plants, and creatures that he could produce from his farms to scan. He scanned every aspect of magic interacting with itself, with different materials, and with his technology.

Carl also performed many experiments with the Runes Schemes that he would be installing in his space ship. What would happen in the case of loss of power? What if an outside attack damaged some of his rune schemes? How could he most efficiently use his magical knowledge and abilities to enhance his technology so it still remained robust?

Carl soon lost track of time as he continued to experiment. He had all the food and materials he needed, he had a massive project, and he was enjoying the hell out of learning so much.

After decades had passed, Carl realized that his experiments with magic were giving him diminishing returns for the amount of time he spent on them. He had done all he could with the knowledge he had, and any further advances would be cutting edge, new discoveries. Carl had already swore to himself that when he reached that point, he would move on to other studies.

While he could spend the entire 10 years of absolute time in the pearl doing more experimenting and expanding his knowledge, he knew that spending 365,000 years alone inside time dilation would not be healthy for him.

So Carl moved on from magic and started his studies into measuring Ki. The body energy that he learned to manipulate in the HSDK world was amazing for being able to take a baseline human, and through only some basic training, allow him to access his body energy and perform amazing feats.

He wanted to understand it and how best to help others grow their Ki. He also included the technique of The Great Way of the Buddha in his studies of Ki. He felt that the Great Way of the Buddha was a method of devouring outside energy to build up the body and increase Ki. And he was soon proven right, as he adjusted his sensors to be able to track the energy while Carl was practicing the technique.

After a few years, Carl realized that he had reached the limits of what he could learn for now with regard to Ki and training it. The next step he would need would be to take some baseline humans and study the effects on their bodies as they developed their Ki, to scan and catalogue the changes from the very beginning of the process.

The other big thing about Ki was that it relied on a person's comprehension ability and sensitivity to feeling the energy to really advance. The Great Way of the Buddha relied heavily on a person's comprehension ability to advance in the technique. So Carl knew he would have to have quite a few test subjects with differing abilities to get a good range of information on the subject of Ki.

Once Carl had moved on from studying Ki, he began his studies on Profound Energy. There was so much information that Carl had gathered, that it took a long time to get through. While Carl had been in the ATG world, with his access to the Royal Family's library, he had made copies of all the information they had. All the various cultivation and combat techniques of an Empire had been available for him to copy.

He had vast amounts of different Cultivation resources available from his Farm. He had new metals and crystals that the Ancients had never even imagined that he needed to scan. There were also the animals and animal parts that were used in everyday cultivation tools, weapons, and armor. And many of those animals and plants needed a long time to grow, even under the fast growth speed of his Farms.

Profound arrays, all the tools Carl could craft, the medical field, and alchemy. The sheer amount of information Carl had on Cultivation took a long time to get through and scan.

And then Carl repeated the experiments he had done for magic and technology, and now focused on profound energy and technology. Carl lost track of time once more as he worked to gather as much data as he could.

After many decades of work, when Carl finally hit the point of diminishing returns, he briefly considered exiting time dilation at that point. But there was one more thing Carl needed to study before he built his space ship and left the pearl. He needed to understand how Magic, Ki, and Profound Energy interacted with each other in his technology.

Besides, while he was in time dilation, he wasn't worried about what was happening outside. It must have been just a short time outside. Carl finally looked at the clock to see how much time had actually passed.

"I've already been in here over three hundred years?!" Carl laughed. "Man, the Time Pearl was definitely the best item purchase I've made. I would have never gotten a fraction of this done in only 10 years without it. Now, time to get started on seeing how Magic, Profound Energy, and Ki interact with each other and technology."

Already from his studies of Profound Energy and Magic, Carl had determined better metals and alloys he could use to build his space ship. The infusing of Profound Energy or Magic into normal materials made them fundamentally stronger. The various abilities of arrays and runes were amazing for micronizing his ships systems. Pocket dimensions and expanded space for the win.

Time passed by and Carl learned a great deal about how his technology, Profound crafting, and Magical crafting worked together. Once he gained enough practical knowledge in how the different forces worked together, Carl decided that it was past time to build his space ship and get out of his time pearl. There were things to do in the outside world, and he was beginning to feel like a shut in.

And while he loved all that he learned and built, he was starting to feel stifled and lonely in his time pearl.

Carl was still all for his idea to build a small ship that could traverse through the gate system, and was bigger on the inside. So he got working designing his ship.

Utilizing all that he learned, he built his fighter sized ship that was bigger on the inside. He thought the basic cylinder shape of a Puddle Jumper was pretty dumb looking, even if it made sense to maximize the ships size while still allowing it to pass through the Stargate.

However, Carl had access to space expansion magic and pocket dimension capabilities, so he wasn't constrained by such considerations. Carl decided to build his ship to be similar in appearance to a Battlecruiser from the Terrans in the game Starcaft. It was a simple matter to have the wings and protrusions collapse into the main body of the ship so that it could pass through the Stargate when he so desired.

When in the mode for Gate travel, Carl's ship was approximately the same dimensions as a Puddle Jumper, 4.7 meters diameter, and 8 meters long. But inside, with expanded space, it was 4 kilometers long and 2.2 km high, with many decks and redundant systems.

Carl's Battlecruiser, which he named the Yamato after the Starcraft Battlecruiser's main weapon, had three engines to move about. An intergalactic hyperdrive, an interstellar hyperdrive, and sublight engines that could get the ship moving right up to the edge of the speed of light.

Carl also added some flight runes to the ship, so that if by some strange occurrence his engines were offline, he could use his own magic to fly the ship, at least for basic maneuvers.

It had shields to protect against energy beams, physical projectiles, and phased missiles. It had a cloaking device, transporter, and the best damn scanners in the galaxy, as well as Communication devices that could connect across whole galaxies and communicate in near real time.

On board the ship he had the best medical bay the Ancients could construct with his entire database of medical knowledge. Life support systems that could provide air, water, and food indefinitely. Living quarters for over a thousand passengers, even though Carl's ship was automated and run by his orders.

He had entertainment and training facilities, dining rooms, and plenty of heads with full shower and bath capabilities.

The Yamato's weapons compliment included a rail gun, a beam cannon, and those phasing missiles that the Ancients loved oh so much. With pocket dimensions as storage cabinets, the Yamato could fire off slugs from its rail gun or a constant stream of missiles for over a week straight before running out.

Aside from the purely technological weapons, he was able to channel his magic and profound energy abilities through his ship at need. So he would hopefully never be without a means of attack.

And every ship system had a main, backup, and tertiary power supply. If one system's power supply went down, the backups for other systems supplies could be diverted in a moment to provide power anywhere needed. The ship was chock full of the upgraded Potentia he had designed.

Carl even added a Room of Requirement that he labeled his holodeck.

Yes, Carl was quite proud of his ship.

Once the Yamato was built and tested, Carl had accomplished everything he wanted to. He gathered his army of Petes and the Yamato and put them in his pocket dimension, and exited his Time Pearl.

It had only been a bit over four days outside his time dilation, while it was over four centuries inside. Doing mad science by himself was fun, but it was definitely slower than having large teams doing the work for him. Something he would have to keep in mind in the future.

Carl pulled the Yamato out of his pocket dimension and took it for a test drive. No matter what, he felt a sense of satisfaction and pride from his incredible creation. It had certainly been a pleasure to build, and it was proving fun to drive too.