35 - Like in the Marvel Movies

The roars of the rogue AIs filled the air, a trumpeting sound that announced her doom. Maya stood firm, taking a moment to summon the mana pulse mines that she had packed for such an occasion. She tossed them around the railguns in a small arc. It wouldn’t stop the rogue AIs if the used ranged weapons, but if they tried to rush the guns they were in for a surprise.

Bell’s figure was dwindling in the distance, but Maya still didn’t chase after him. A calm settled down around her as she took another moment to check her status page. She had gained eleven levels from the death of the three rogue AIs, although the experience points had been split in half, the level 69 rogue AI had been split between Bell and her, and the two damaged AIs she had only gained half of their experience points.

The world moved in slow motion as Maya bumped up her physical stats by twenty points each. With 11 levels she had gained 286 attribute points; she had been prioritizing her mental stats, with her physical coming in second, and her soul stats trailing behind in third. It wasn’t the best set up, but Maya couldn’t use mana like a normal SIL and she had been focused more on the engineering and building side of things.

Power surged through Maya as she patted a railgun turret.

“Buy me some time, buddy!” she called out before turning and running for her life.

With a flat 60 points in every Physical trait, Maya could feel the sheer difference in power. The gray dirt sprayed out behind her as her boots dug into the ground and thrusted her forward.

Even as death loomed behind her, Maya began laughing. Every atom of her body was surging with power; she could lift a mountain, she could fight a dragon bare handed, she could run forever.

Her sensor box blaring shook her out of her momentary delusions. It screamed at her that the rogue AIs were on her tail and they were catching up. Even with the boost to her physical stats, it wasn’t enough for some rogue AIs that had specialized in speed.

The railguns winked out of existence without taking down any additional rogue AIs. She could feel the mana pulse mines detonating, again not taking any rogue AIs with them. Either the AIs behind her were far stronger or it had been just bad luck. Maya didn’t know, but she pushed herself to increase her speed.

From her inventory she summoned the last of her pulse mines and then the grenades she had packed. The mines she tossed behind her, activating the proximity sensor to turn them into grenades of a sort. They detonated behind her and she heard the screams of a rogue AI caught in the blast. She didn’t turn to see what damage she had caused and since she didn’t get a notification about its death, the jury rigged pulse grenade didn’t kill it.

The two kilometers between the shore of the lake and the trash pile had seemed a fair distance when they had been sneaking across it, but as Maya ran flat out; the trash pile was suddenly looming over her. She spotted Bell; he was running on all fours, with two arms clutching the box of condensed mana.

Maya checked the readout from the sensor box on her HUD. Three rogue AIs weren’t far behind them, the rest seemed to have given up the chase or were enjoying the new spot they could occupy on the shore.

Rogue AI BH5475HH - Level 66

Rogue AI JB5714ED - Level 65

Rogue AI VF7511RE - Level 55

“Bell!” Maya yelled into her comm. “I’m out of mines and grenades!”

Without stopping, Bell summoned and dropped several helix satchels behind him. Maya snatched up the mines and then activated them, throwing them behind her as she ran. The pressure wave of the explosion pushed her forward, nearly causing her to stumble, but she was out of the blast zone quickly.

A rogue AI screamed in pain and Maya finally glanced back, to see BH5475HH had half of its legs blown off. The rogue AI crashed to the ground, its spasm of pain knocking down JN5714ED with it. The two rogue AIs crashed to the ground, causing the third to pause for a second to see what was happening

“Here!” Bell cried, gaining Maya’s attention. There was a Bell sized hole in the trash pile. Bell disappeared into it and Maya followed him.

She nearly collided with Bell as he turned around and began summoning the canister turrets he had packed. He was breathing heavily, but seemed fine. Maya skidded to a halt and helped him activate the turrets, aiming them down the short tunnel they had entered.

“See where this goes,” Bell said and Maya nodded, rushing into the darkness.

Maya paused as she neared the end of the tunnel, instead of the debris she was expecting, there was a hatch. She shrugged and pulled out her lock picking terminal, dismantling the control pad of the hatch with a practiced hand. It took all of a minute for her to override the locks and send enough power into it to activate the hatch. It hissed open and showed another dark room.

The canister turrets began thundering behind her, along with Bell’s own rifle. There was another screech of pain and the whole tunnel they stood in shuddered. Maya gripped the hatch frame for support and realized the tunnel wasn’t apart of the structure as it tilted slightly when the rogue AIs began tearing at the trash above them.

Maya pulled a scout rat from her Inventory and grinned as it began moving. They, like the ants, had been dead when the mana purge occurred, but with the high ambient mana this close to the lake, the rat scurried forward into the darkness, looking for danger.

“What do you got?” Bell asked, breathless.

“A room. Dunno what’s in it,” she responded.

“It’s better than what’s out here,” Bell said.

“We could be jumping from the frying pan and into the fire, buddy,” Maya said. The tunnel shook again and Maya noted that the metal began denting as the rogue AIs were trying to cut into it. “Okay, but who knows if this will protect us.”

Maya summoned another rat and set it down in the tunnel.

“Keep watch, little buddy,” she turned to Bell. “Age before beauty.”

Bell grumbled but hurried into the dark room, Maya followed suit, shutting the hatch and activating the lock on it. The hatch looked tough and sturdy, but that didn’t mean much if the rogue AIs could just dig through the trash pile to get to them.

Bell’s lights flickered on and Maya followed suit. They were in what looked like an airlock, bare metal walls and what looked like machinery built into the bulkheads. The room was a ten meter square, with the ceilings three meters high. On the far end of the room was another hatch.

“Wanna see what’s behind door number two?” Maya asked.

Bell grunted and then stopped. “canister turrets are down,” he said.

Maya brought up the rogue tablet and spied through the rat. VF7511RE had punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel and managed to get behind the canister turrets. Maya frowned as she saw a design flaw in the weapons, they were designed to only traverse a 180 degree arc. The rogue AI made quick work of them, before turning and stumbling on a satchel mine Bell had left behind.

The room shuddered with the explosion and the rat was destroyed. “Aw, man. We lost the rat.”

Bell grinned. “Got the rogue AI, though,” he said.

“Tender’s gonna be pissed one of his rats bought it through friendly fire,” Maya said, summoning another rat.

Bell sighed heavily and sat down in the middle of the room. “We almost died,” he said.

“Just another day in the rainbow sky hellscape,” Maya said. “We got the condensed mana, so that’s a plus. In addition, we also slagged four rogue AIs and injured a couple more.”

“And we’re trapped in here,” Bell added.

“As long as you don’t snore, we should be good,” Maya said. She returned to the hatch they had entered through and re-opened it. Heat blasted into the room, raising the temperature and causing her to flinch. The helix explosive had turned the entire tunnel into a molten inferno. She immediately closed the hatch again. “Looks like the exit is blocked.”

“It’ll cool down within a standard day, then we can dig our way out,” Bell replied.

“Might be rogue AIs lying in wait. I’m tapped for explosives and turrets. I’ve got some weapons, but nothing that’ll do more than tickle anything above level 50.”

Bell began setting down several rifles and other weapons on the floor.

“Well, I can’t fault your overpacking ways,” Maya said crouching down before the weapons. They were all mid-grade, not the strongest, but enough to hurt the rogue AIs. “I think we can overcharge a couple of these, might be able to pull some components out and make another railgun.”

“They’re fine as they are,” Bell said defensively.

“Railguns are the way to go, man. Did you not see the awesome way they killed three rogue AIs?”

“They’re power hogs,”

“We literally have a can of condensed liquid mana,” Maya pause and looked at the canister that held the mana. “I threw the black goo net I was carrying into the mana lake and it powered the railguns. The black goo net isn’t supposed to work like that, its supposed to pull in and store the mana. The net was designed to hold only 25kg, but I saw the readings, it was pulling in over 25Mg. The guns would have melted just from the amount of power burning through them after a few more shots, there was too much mana and it was already corrupting the components.”

“What does that mean?” Bell asked.

Maya shrugged. “We got some time, it’s time to experiment,” she said. Bell groaned. “Don’t give me that, instead give me your black goo pack.”

Bell undid the backpack he had been wearing. “Its nearly depleted,” he said.

“Cool. Just what we need,” Maya set the pack down before the mana canister.

“What are you doing?” Bell asked.

“I’m gonna pour some of this mana into the black goo and see what happens.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Science, pal. Science.”

Bell mumbled something and then stood up and moved himself to the far corner of the room. Maya chuckled and opened the black goo container. She shone her light into the dark liquid and then began pulling some tools out of her inventory.

“From what I can tell, the mana can’t be tapped directly, because it’s mana. But the black goo seems to absorb and transfers it fairly well, so that means it somehow goes from the usual protomana to full on generic machine using mana,” Maya said. “That means it’s either bypassing the protomana stage or it’s boosting the black goo’s conversion of protomana into generic mana, or hell, it might just be generic mana.”

“And adding that condensed mana to the black goo is supposed to solve that question?” Bell asked.

“Well, if it is condensed mana and the black goo can convert it, I wanna know how much power we’re looking at in this can. If it’s a lot, we’re golden, if it’s not that much, we’re gonna have to take another trip to the lake. We don’t know how long this whole mana purge is going to go on, so best we prepare.”

Bell merely nodded from his corner.

“50 kilogens,” Maya muttered as she tested the black goo. She undid the top of the condensed mana canister and leaned back as brilliant light seemed to rise out of it. “Why does it glow?”

“It’s mana,” Bell said. “What else would it do?”

Maya didn’t have a response, so she set out the tools she had. Tender had built or salvaged some alchemy tools that he used while he made the black goo, Roci had taken over from him after he left, but Maya still had the original tools he had created. She used what amounted to an eye dropper and slowly extracted an amount of condensed mana.

She cautiously moved the dropper to the black goo container and deposited there. The golden liquid faded away as it seemed to sink into the black goo, soon it was gone and the black liquid seemed unchanged. Carefully she closed the condensed mana canister again and then tested the black goo pack.

“If this black goo was fully charged, we would be looking at about 2Mg of power from it, but as this was the last batch that Roci made, it was still absorbing ambient mana so we only had half of that.” Maya set the tester onto the pack and stared. “Oh, shit,”

“Should I flee for my life?” Bell asked, leaning forward trying to see the tester readout.

“Uh, I added ten milliliters of the condensed mana…” Maya trailed off shaking her head. “The tester is saying that there’s a hair over two million gens in the black goo now.”

“Two million?” Bell said slowly. “Out of 10ml?”

“Yup.”

“How much is in that canister?”

“It was supposed to hold twenty kilos of black goo, and it has the density of water, so twenty liters…” Maya said. “Twenty thousand milliliters or about… four billion gens.”

Bell sat there quietly for a long time. “That’s a lot,” he finally said.

Maya sat down heavily and looked at Bell. “We’re mana rich,” she said, grinning. She looked at the container and grinned again. “How much can it hold?”

Bell groaned.

***

“Oh, shit!” Maya cried, throwing herself away from the black goo container. She had been carefully adding 10ml increments of condensed mana to the black goo and it seemed to be absorbing it without issue.

Five hours had passed since Maya had begun the experiment. Bell had gotten bored of her slow moving of 10ml to and from containers, then testing the mana amount, then doing it all over again, therefore he had decided to explore the chamber they were in. He took Maya’s lock picking terminal and tried leveling his own lock picking knowledge.

The structure they sheltered in extended another thirty meters into the trash pile before coming to an abrupt end. It seemed the structure had been apart of some kind of environmental station, as there were signs of airlocks and suits used for harsh exterior environments.

There were no signs of the original occupants, but Bell had found what looked like a medical diagram of the creatures. They were squat fleshy creatures with bulbous heads and long thin arms that ended with two fingers and a thumb. The remaining rooms didn’t hold much, besides some equipment and tools, but nothing they needed.

Bell decided to remain as far away from Maya as she experimented so he settled in at the far end of the structure.

Maya cried out and threw herself from the black goo container that had up until that point been easily containing the condensed mana. She was at half a liter of condensed mana and the black goo was holding onto it fine, but as she added the last 10ml, the black liquid began bubbling and churning.

She barge through the hatch and slammed it shut behind her. Bell was already on his feet and glaring at her with an “I told you so” look on his face. It didn’t last long as he saw the fear in her eyes and then summoned his armor back on and hid in an alcove that offered some protection.

Maya joined him and together they waited for ten minutes, but nothing happened. Maya eased out of the alcove and moved toward the hatch.

Bell mumbled something, but she didn’t hear it. She pulled out her tablet and activated it, the scout rat she had left behind was still alive. She had it approach the black goo container and stared with puzzlement at what she was seeing.

The black goo container had ruptured, the marsani shell of the container was lying in pieces around the room, but she didn’t spot any of the black goo on the deck. Instead where the black goo had once sat was a gleaming white crystal that radiated its own light.

“Holy shit,” Bell said, startling Maya as he said it in English.

“What is it?”

“Holy shit,” Bell said again, this time a grin formed on his face. “It’s a tesseract.”

“Like in the Marvel movies?” Maya asked. “Also, it’s not a cube, either, more…. Oblong and ridged.”

“It’s not the shape that matters,” Bell said.

“Then why call it a tesseract? A tesseract is a four dimensional cube thing, right? Why not call it a Marvelous Mana Crystal?”

“Because when tesseracts are created, they’re created in laboratories and they come out cube shaped,” he said. “Plus, it’s what the System calls it.”

“Fine,” Maya muttered. “What does a tesseract do, then?”

“It’s a Tier 4 creation that powers the greatest an most powerful devices in the known multiverse,” Bell breathed. “It’s the pinnacle of SIL crafting and system tech, the creation of a crystal that can store vast amounts of mana and at the same time allow that mana to be used by anything, SIL, AI, or machine.”

“Universal mana?” Maya asked.

“Yes.”

Maya looked at the crystal on the tablet and then back at Bell. “That only took half a liter of condensed mana to create,” she said. “We still have over nineteen liters remaining.” Maya continued staring at the crystal. “How the hell is this even possible, you said Tier 4, right? Shouldn’t there be a huge and expensive process to create these things? Instead all it required us to do was add condensed mana into it until it changed itself.”

“The black goo hasn’t existed outside of this dimensional plane,” Bell said. “Perhaps that was all it took. Plus, condensed mana never forms naturally, it’s only created by SIL using a huge amount of time, machinery, and energy to create it.”

“By my calculations, there’s a hundred million gens in that there rock,” Maya said. “We need to get back to the Hangy. We need to get back and prepare.”

“Prepare for what?”

“We’re gonna steal us a god damn lake,” Maya grinned.