Thankfully, it wasn’t that hard for Lifre to escape the moon before it crashed down to the ground. Even with how fast it was falling in this layer’s enhanced gravity, it would take quite some time, more than an hour before it hit the floor. Once Lifre had pulled herself together, she had Aurivy guide her to where some of the shrapnel had fallen, and then finally jumped out to use the gate and leave.
It was only a few minutes later when she was rushing through Tubrock’s palace, heading for his private workshop. As she barged in, the dwarven craftsman glanced back, briefly pausing his hammering on a large sheet of metal. “Oi, what’re ye doin’ here, lass?” He asked in a gruff tone.
Lifre simply grinned, running over to an empty workbench. “I brought you presents from Fyor!” She exclaimed, opening her inventory and starting to dump out all of the different materials that she had gathered.
Tubrock’s brow twitched, forced to just stand there and watch. He had heard about the new floor of Fyor, and the mysterious ‘memory mineral’ that had been found, but it was clear that Lifre had gathered more than just that. “Did ye mine out a whole mountain or somethin’?”
“And a moon!” Lifre nodded her head, causing the dwarf to open his eyes a bit wider.
“Since when does Fyor have moons?”
“Well, it had one! It broke down after I mined out its core, though! Oh, speaking of which, these were a part of its core.” Lifre grabbed two of the black shards from her inventory, pulling them out at the same time. The moment her hands were both out of her inventory, her eyes went wide. Her arms flew out from her body to either side, colliding against the far walls while still holding the fragmented stones.
Tubrock’s brow twitched once more, looking at the arms that had been completely pulled off of Lifre’s body. “…Ye’d best consider yerself lucky to be born a slime.” He said in a serious tone.
“I’ve always loved being a slime! It’s so much more convenient than being a fleshy meat person!” Lifre nodded seriously, growing out two new arms.
Tubrock waved a hand, exerting the power of his divinity to grab the two stones that seemed to be repelling one another. “That must be how the moon came to be.” He muttered, feeling just how much force the stones were exerting on one another.
“They’re like super magnets, right?!” Lifre exclaimed happily. “Oh, but they’re not magnetic, and magnets can’t just fly like that. Magical magnets. Magicnets? Maginets? I’ll let you figure out the name for them.”
Tubrock shook his head, doing his best to tune out the energetic slime girl. One of his abilities using a combination of the Forge and Innovation domains was to analyze materials and find places where they would fit in modern technology. “If this can be controlled, it could perhaps be used to make some flyin’ cars.” He then began applying ki, mana, even spiritual and natural energy to one of the pebbles to see if he could reverse its ‘polarity’ and draw in the other stone. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no convenient method of doing that.
“Far as most tech goes, this is basically trash.” He said in a harsh tone.
“Guh!” Lifre flinched, shocked to hear that something she thought was so cool would be worthless. “I-I mean, it can’t be all bad, right? Maybe… oh! Maybe you grind it up and lace arrowheads with it, and put some on a bow. Then, it’d make the arrows fly out super fast, right!?”
Tubrock glanced at her pitifully, before shaking her head. “If that becomes the mainstream, all anybody would need to do to avoid an archer is to carry a small chunk of this. Any arrow laced with the stuff would avoid them, no matter how good the archer.”
Lifre flinched again when her idea was refuted. “Well… this created a whole moon! Couldn’t we use it to make flying islands?”
Tubrock arched his brow, before deciding to give a demonstration. “By my guess, there must’ve been another vein of the shite directly beneath the moon.” As he said that, he pinched one of the fragments between his fingers, slowly relaxing his power on the other to let it move more than a meter away.
Afterwards, he slightly turned the piece he had pinched, and the other shard flew through the air. “These pieces will always try to maintain a constant distance and alignment with each other. The only reason it made a moon was that this pair was properly aligned.”
Lifre pursed her lips, before her eyes went wide. “It was able to create a localized gravity field that could even counter Fyor’s intense pull! It sucked me in while I was flying to it!”
That caused Tubrock to blink, looking down at the shard in his hand again. He could sense a very faint gravitational pull from the shard, but it was only slightly more than that of a normal object of this density. It must get exponentially strong as the size increases…
Tubrock offered a small nod at that. “If ye can get large enough pieces, as well as the paired veins to go with them, ye could create a dwarf planet.”
“Isn’t that what Lorek’s for?” Lifre blinked, only for Tubrock’s eyes to twitch.
“Not what I meant.”
Looking at the various news coming in from different sources, such as Ashtanu’s research lab, or even Thelsa’s reports on the new minerals, I had the feeling that it was time to fast forward again. We still had a long way to go in terms of developing void defenses, and I wanted to skip ahead to a point where James would be back in action.
Thus, I sent a message to everyone with access to Heaven’s Gate, letting them know my plan. Even if they didn’t immediately ascend, they’d be there shortly after. This time, Tsubaki made it clear that she would be coming with me.
With a flash of light, I ascended to the Admin Room once again, preparing the alarms for when I would want to end this acceleration. While I was setting everything up, I heard the door open behind me, and glanced back to see Tsubaki emerging. “Greetings, my Keeper.”
“Glad to have you here, Tsubaki.” I smiled. “Never feels the same when you’re not around.” She seemed pleased by that, given how her tails were swishing behind her. Shortly afterwards, Gerard appeared, as did Dana. The others, such as Julia and Aznod, seemed intent on remaining in the world, so I didn’t bother them.
I doubt I could pull Lifre from a few decades of adventures, anyways. I shook my head with a faint chuckle, before issuing the command to accelerate time.
It had been more than eight years since the sixtieth floor of Fyor was discovered, and there was still no progress in moving to the next floor. They had even created a brand new job to fill this gap, known as the ‘Gatekeepers’. The gatekeepers were individuals capable of resisting Fyor’s intense gravity on their own, and their only job was to explore Fyor’s sixtieth floor by constantly refreshing the gates.
Regardless of whether they managed to find the passage to the sixty-first floor, they would be paid for their time according to their level. This was a rather popular job among those older adventurers that were on the verge of retiring, because this allowed them to earn money with essentially no risk.
The Adventurer’s Guild had even created a special tool that would download an individual’s minimap and add it to a growing database. By comparing all of the map information that they had received over these eight years, they believed that they had explored roughly ten percent of the floor.
Ten percent was by no means a small amount, given the total size of the sixtieth floor, but it was also a rather disappointing estimate, given that they had thousands of people covering the ground by randomly teleporting hundreds of times per day.
One significant change was brought about by the new transmorphic stone that could only be produced on this floor. Due to its unique ability, these stones are regularly mined and broken down to miniscule pebbles. These pebbles are then ‘retextured’ by infusing them with dimensium and draining them to turn them silver, and sold to households as convenience items. After all, whether it is a cooking utensil, tools, or even toys for children, these stones are able to take any form that the user is familiar with.
Another remarkable ore found in this floor was one that, when smelted down into refined metal, became a room-temperature superconductor. This sparked a mining frenzy within the sixtieth floor, as many technology companies sought to obtain samples of this material.
From that moment on, technology began to advance by leaps and bounds, with formerly bulky machines becoming far more streamlined. Even the Perfection Chambers or Divine Forges within various facilities were remodeled, becoming little more than a small closet for one to walk into. Unfortunately, even as the years passed, there seemed to be no sign of progress in Fyor’s exploration.
As time went by, the Ashtanu Research Institute seemed to become less and less influential after the departure of their lead researcher. While the foundation’s research was no less impressive, the problem came from its competitors. Those who had always sought to undermine the institute for their own progress suddenly found themselves becoming more and more successful as time went by.
After more than a decade passed, tensions were climbing within the research facility. For fear of the entire lab spontaneously exploding, they were unable to even mention the name of their former boss. For the first time since the institute’s founding, people began to resign. Although it was only two resignations, it was a significant event in the history of this institute.
When she saw her former colleagues leaving, Treisha couldn’t help but grit her teeth in frustration. The two of them had always contributed to the research projects, but very rarely offered groundbreaking help. Among the two, only Three-Fifty from the March was truly extraordinary, due to his natural information processing speed.
“It’ll be fine.” Chelsea said as she walked up, patting Treisha’s arm. “If they want to leave, they can go.”
“But… just because we’re… ‘under new management’, they couldn’t hold on anymore?” Treisha complained, still unable to say how they were waiting for James to return.
Chelsea nodded her head, a somewhat cold smile on her face once she knew that the two were well out of earshot. “Like I said, it’s fine. Even if they’ve forgotten, do you think the world will forget that those two are James’s students?” She asked, saying his name for the first time in years.
Treisha’s eyes widened, momentarily thinking that James must have resolved his problems if Chelsea was willing to say his name again. However, after thinking about it, her brow twitched. A small smirk rose over her face, and she nodded her head. “Yes, they are his students, after all.” She agreed, confirming Chelsea’s words. Even the other researchers had been forced to suppress this identity of theirs for nearly a decade, seeming to forget that this was why they joined the institute in the first place.
Without knowing why, the two departing researchers suddenly felt their backs becoming cold. A sensation of looming dread filled them, and they began to wonder if it was truly a good idea to leave as they had. Although their stress had risen over the last decade due to the almost oppressive atmosphere of the lab, they had forgotten… just how vengeful Chelsea could truly be when it came to James. With just a few words, she had sentenced them to share in a mere fraction of James’s fate.
