RM Vol 3: For a World without Boundary – Interlude: Reality Anchor

Author notes:

No, it's not that buggy Scranton Reality Anchor! That thing is soooo outdated by the 80s!

*Using a tentacle to pat the chaddest Reality Anchor* This girl right here, is mine, Nicolae's 100% new and improved, anomaly-proof Reality Anchor!

P.S: Album will be updated with 3 new pictures!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/waZgkRa3UQhqKQBi9

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"Reality is how I see fit." The phrase was said by Yuki after the successful activation of the first reality anchor.

Reality anchor, a nifty piece of tech that has been developed to stabilize or counteract what is identified as anomalous effects, such as, but not limited to reality warping or other magical and supernatural phenomena, within a certain area. Emerging out of the need to aid in dealing with threats that may prove too much for a standard military response, it takes the scientific minds of Belka approximately fifty percent of their manhour to perfect the technology. Without the arrival and aid of Nicolae however, it's estimated that it will be dozens of years before the technology could reach its experimental phase.

As expected, the efficiency of a Shoggoth proves to be unrivaled. With Nicolae's help, the current crown jewel of magitech is born. A reality anchor is built around a miniaturized supercomputer, with its outer layers consisting of things like mana generators, sensors, domain projectors, and so on... Each layers and equipment are enhanced with the aid of precision runic engravings while the outer casing is made with the strongest mana conductive material available. But those are just the hardware aspects. It's the software inside the supercomputer that is responsible for the miracle that's going to happen.

Built from scratch by the collective effort of Yuki, Nicolae, Einstein, and Ningyo, the software allows a reality anchor to be fully programmable and easy to utilize on an ever-changing battlefield. First, an anchor has an IFF system, preventing it from interfering with the magical and supernatural abilities of ally units. Then, depending on the size of the reality anchor, it can cast a citywide or larger area of effect domain. In this domain, the variable that is reality is heavily reinforced and applied to enemy combatants or phenomena. An example or two would be the cancellation of mana empowerment and spell casting of enemy units, or the forceful pull and anchoring of an elusive pocket dimension back to reality.

The tech totally wasn't made so that Yuki could order someone to raze Auschwitz to the ground.

Yet, what is reality?

You use reality to refer to real things or the real, tangible nature of things rather than imagined, invented, or theoretical ideas. Reality is also a variable, at one moment in the past, reality didn't include the ability for mankind to fly. But right now at the present, reality even encompasses the known magical systems, the divines, and the blurred nature of an afterlife. Yet, to most people, reality is only what they know to see, can see, and what they want to see. It's easy to see why reality isn't a fixed number of digital commands just from those alone. It's also why it's imperative that a reality anchor is made to be easily updated to new data, even on the fly, mid-usage.

You can't have an anchor enforcing a fixed algorithm of reality based on what the users know, only for someone, after a moment of epiphany, to pull a reverse UNO card and start bringing in more and more variables, thus making an anchor unable to keep up with them to perform its job.

As such, specialized programmers and data readers have to be trained and deployed in conjunction with a set of reality anchors. Without the mankind element to parse, process, and prioritize the data stream, a reality anchor will never reach full operation capacity on the battlefield, built-in supercomputer or not.

And since the mankind element is so crucial to the successful usage of an anchor, only the best of the best in the field is recruited for the position. Coupled with the highly classified nature of the magitech equipment, the entire reality anchor program is put under the umbrella of ONI. Making it so that while the top brass of Belkan armed forces know a thing or two about it to deploy them on the field, they most certainly have no idea how the thing even works.

Coincidentally, the brave many who volunteered to be put under the effect of a reality anchor or many of such have described the feeling they got as:

"It's like being run over by a steamroller."

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"I am telling you to raise the alert level to the highest against enemy attack! Not for you to be a damn firefighter you fucking imbecile!" Lady Lyssa cursed, outraged when she saw the military garrison's response to her mobilization order. "What are you waiting for!? Get going, you fool, or it will be you that I operate on next!"

Lady Lyssa slammed the telephone, cutting the line with the Senior Colonel in charge. Turning around with eyes shimmering with anger, she speaks to Ottile Apocalypse. "Get down to the lower levels and secure the experiments. In fact, alerts all other labs to make sure nothing's gonna fuel the fire until we can seal the dimension again!"

"As you command, Lady Lyssa." The Apocalypse moves away, gathering a small group of scientists and guards with her.

Lady Lyssa then turns to Cocolia. "And you, get the girls to seal the dimension."

Cocolia instinctively responds. "But Lady Lyssa, the girls have overexerted themselves with-!"

"Then making them better! I have a feeling we don't have the time to just wait for them to stop overheating." Lady Lyssa said that while looking unconcernedly at the bleeding young girls, their bodies flushed red with steam flying off. However, she barely finished her words when she felt something, a wave of something that rejected every fiber of her being.

It's a suppression of sorts, a strong one at that. With trepidation, Lady Lyssa notices that the mana-sensitive instruments in the bell tower have either short-circuited or just deactivated themselves. Fearing the worst, Lady Lyssa turns to a Crusader, who is also feeling the same suppression from the look of her pale breathless face.

"Hey you, try using a small scall spell!"

"I-I can't, Lady Lyssa, something is stopping me from casting it! M-My whole body has never felt this heavy before!"

"Damn it!" Lady Lyssa curses before trying to light up her own mana. With effort, Lady Lyssa can only snap a small, crackle of spark above her fingertips. "Fuck! If I can only do this then...!" Lady Lyssa turns to the view outside the tower, more specifically, her eyes gaze up toward the sky. As a result, she sees the dreaded sight of the skybox showing cracks.

At first, there are only a few, but soon after, the cracks grow at an exponential rate. This culminates in the skybox exploding in millions of pieces before dissipating, thus finally revealing the true Sardegnian sky above Auschwitz.

In a fit of rage, Lady Lyssa punches the wall, saying. "Order every single soldier and Crusader we have to be prepared for immediate enemy attack. This time... Fight till you're the last one standing, use every means necessary. As for me, I need to look presentable for our new guests."

Lady Lyssa leaves, still can't quite believe everything has come crumbling down on her so fast, quite literally at that.