PART 6

---

Dean couldn't say that he was surprised he'd been put in charge of Gray Land's settlement. Based on all he'd heard so far, "Lava World of Death" would've been a better name for the place.

Bath and Lisa had assigned him with the task of "figuring out" how to mass-transport people onto the planet. Considering the fact that he didn't know how to transport even one person through the magma-filled gate, Dean felt like he had his work cut out for him.

Thankfully, Dean was becoming quite adept at directing sapients. Over the past two weeks, sapients from Earth had ventured off onto Magnet Planet and Lime World.

He turned to his computer screen, selecting Virigard from his contacts. Then, he looked ahead, face screaming "concentration."

> Virigard,

> Get the latest prototype from the Mechanical Engineering Consortium.

> Permission to use the snake quasies is in order.

Dean quickly sent the message off, taking advantage of the thought-to-text technology that he was currently testing out. While it wasn't of his own design--that'd be crazy impressive--massive amounts of people were fooling around with making new electronic devices to increase their own aptitude and elevate their path points.

In all honesty, Dean couldn't believe how much cool stuff had just recently hit the markets. Much of it would've been considered revolutionary more than two months back, and yet these inventions were commonplace, completely saturating the market. While the deluge of new innovations stymied attempts at regulating the market, some of the more...dangerous technologies--those pertaining to the mind or body, for instance--still needed to go through phases of human testing.

The thought-to-text invention had been brought to Dean's attention by Fartuun. She'd been overseeing the invention vetting process. The job was utterly enormous, and one that didn't require her to do any actual investigation into inventions herself. Like Dean, she simply delegated tasks. However, about two weeks back, one of her underlings submitted the invention for human testing.

Fartuun, in turn, had immediately relayed it to Dean.

The full technology had been thought-to-thought communication. One aspect of this product, the feature that Dean was testing, was thought-to-text communication. While clearly less revolutionary than full-on thought-to-thought communication, the thought-to-text feature was more than enough for Dean's uses. Simply using his brain to send messages sped up his administrative process at least tenfold. Moreover, while the thought-to-thought feature was still under serious testing, Dean was able to prototype its thought-to-text aspect without risk.

He continued to do busywork while he waited for the gate-crossing invention to arrive. 'This better work,' he thought nervously to himself. He had so far collaborated with other recently-established COTD leaders to start colonizing the first two planets. However, this time, he was on his own: the other leaders had all been put on full-time duty organizing Magnet Planet and Lime World.

'Of course, they left the hardest planet to one person,' he thought bitterly. As soon as his eyes returned to the computer screen, he groaned, then pressed the delete key on his keyboard. One of the main qualms he had about the thought-to-text technology was that he couldn't let his thoughts stray while he was writing directives, or else he'd accidentally send off a message with "too much" detail.

"Dean!" Virigard's voice sounded from the Spire's office door. "It's here. Come outside and take a look."

"Coming." Dean put his computer to sleep, then got up grudgingly from his cushioned seat. 'Please work,' he mouthed, eyes turning skyward as thought offering up a prayer.

---

Lisa and Bath had been relatively patient, giving Juserin a full month to respond to their memo. And yet, even though today was the 32nd day, they still hadn't received a response.

"What do you think he's doing?" Lisa wondered out loud. "I would have assumed that he'd fled to get reinforcements, except doing so would take far too much time." She shook her head. "This region is far too isolated."

Bath nodded absently, focusing on city-seed development. Gray Land's soil lacked many key nutrients, while the perpetual cloud coverage further impeded the ability of his hardy dragonleaf to grow. Even the Sahara Desert dragonleaf variant was unable to survive.

As a result, he was carefully analyzing the planet's native--and unfortunately sparse--greenery. Part of Bath--the one frustrated from the trial and error of modifying his dragonleaf--almost wanted to call Gray Land a lost cause. After all, once the humans arrived, they could just turn the planet into an inorganic city of metal and glass, just as they'd been doing for the past century on Earth. However, the vast majority of Bath welcomed the challenge of creating enormous a city made from photosynthetic plants on a world lacking usable soil and reliable sunlight.

"He probably hasn't made a decision," Bath replied, his mouth barely moving. "What would you do in his situation?"

"I'd surrender, obviously. Submitting to the dominance of another through formal surrender gives all gates to the dominant party, though no killing or mind-domination is required." This ran, of course, contrary to her aunt's information.

"And don't forget that acting against the victor after a formal surrender is a universally recognized crime." Bath raised an eyebrow as he said this, his mouth turning up into a wry grin. "You know, your aunt really was hopelessly uninformed." Lauretta hadn't ever needed to do the whole "dominance" dance with Lisa. "She could've simply given a formal surrender. Though, in her defense, the formal surrender ritual is arbitrarily complex."

Lisa snorted. "Arbitrarily complex? You need to have both parties at the surrender-er's primary gate. Then, you need to touch the sequence of lines on the gate just as instructed in the Universal Law Codes. And, if you touch the wrong lines in the wrong order, heaven forbid..."

Bath and Lisa were both cognizant of the fact that, without the so-called Universal Law Codes, taking over the universe would be a near impossibility. They hadn't even thought to look for any kind of universal laws, not before Lepochim told them.

"Just have Juserin surrender," had been his simple solution to Lisa and Nevis' diplomatic quandary. This, of course, led to the revelation that a set of unrestrictive, yet firmly-enforced laws existed throughout the universe. These laws were, conveniently, in the chip reader's encyclopedia.

"You're telling us...now?" had been Lisa's incredulous response. Lepochim, annoying as ever, just chose to shrug dismissively.

Regardless of how the universal laws came to their attention, Lisa had been spending the vast majority of her time familiarizing herself with them. She was shocked by just how many there were, especially since, by all records, the universal laws were referred to as an "underlying foundation" intended to provide key tenets without delving into serious detail.

"How in the world is the formal surrender law enforceable?" Lisa muttered. "Like, if Juserin were to backstab me, who would defend--or avenge--me?" Seeing Bath's confused expression, she sighed then clarified: "That was rhetorical." She knew Bath would prevent any kind of treachery on Juserin's part. However, most people didn't have a primordial entity watching their backs. If she didn't have Bath at her side, would some representative from Ildr, the Core, come and uphold justice?

Lisa highly doubted it. Why, then, did the Universal Law Codes exist? Lisa wondered if, perhaps, the Core really did send out enforcers. She probably just hadn't seen any because this backwater strip of gates was at the fringes of the civilized world...much like America's Wild West of old.

Lisa stopped pacing, then said, "I'm thinking that Juserin isn't going to care about some edict of the Universal Law Codes. Not unless he plans on going closer to the Core, but from what we know about him, I highly doubt that's the case."

"So he's planning some kind of trap," Bath replied. "Big surprise."

Lisa gave him an annoyed look. "Do we go through the gate," Lisa began, pointing in the direction of the distant lava flows, "and go to Illudis, or do we keep waiting?"

Bath chose this moment to look up. "What do you want to do?"

"It's been fun training here in solitude for the past weeks," Lisa stated, "but I think it's time to get a move on. We gave him the month. Now, we need to show him some of our might, y'know, give him a little...persuasion."

Bath cracked a grin. "Works for me."

"Don't help out unless I'm going to die," Lisa said, he voice's inflection rising at the end in warning.

"Or what?" Bath's mouth curved up devilishly to one side. "Why do you get a monopoly on all the fun?"

Lisa cocked an eyebrow. "Is it? Fun, for you?"

Bath's expression melted, exposing a tired face underneath. "Maybe. I've never conquered a foreign planet before." He sighed. "Though I'd say that, for the moment, building these cities and watching the consequences of my melodramatic appearances is more entertaining."

Lisa beamed. "Excellent! Then, now that we have this all sorted out, would you please do the honors?"

Bath snorted. "What?"

"Take me to Illudis!" she cheered, lifting a hand triumphantly into the air.

"Take yourself," he grinned. "I gave you damned good boons, and you finally had sufficient time to get acclimated to them. You should have more than enough power to get through the gate on your own."

Lisa shuddered. "Can't you just bring me?'

Bath's eyes practically crackled with glee. "Didn't you just tell me to only interfere if you were about to die?"

Lisa groaned. "That was on Illudis," she clarified. Her face screwed up into a sour expression before she added, "Fine, you win. Don't you dare let me die if I fuck up."

Bath nodded sagely. "Of course. Let's see how long it takes you to get to the gate. Ready, set..."

"Wait just a sec-"

"Go."

---

"Wow," Dean said under his breath, admiring the machine before his eyes. "How did...one month..." He couldn't express his ideas cogently. The machine in question was a sleek, white, thirty-foot long rocket. It really did look like an overly-long, skinny space rocket. Dean wondered just how Virigard had arranged for its transport.

"So, this can go through magma?" Dean asked, now turning to his right to address the three project leaders.

One of them, a woman of dark complexion, nodded and gave him a smile. "Magma won't be able to touch it. We should be able to transport twenty people at a time using one of these, and we can produce many more with the raw materials recently excavated on Magnet Planet."

Dean nodded slowly to himself. "Incredible. I can clear this for testing," he said, looking expectantly at Virigard and mouthing, 'Right?'

"Unmanned testing, to start things off," she interjected. "That can begin today, as long as you've made the system to work without sapient controllers."

"Of course," another project leader, this one an olive-skinned man, replied. "We planned for the transportation system to be fully automated."

"Then, um," his gaze had already returned to the large, sleek craft. "Have you worked out how to transport this through the Spire?"

The scientists gave him blank looks. After a moment of awkward silence, Virigard cut in, saying, "We can make a tunnel. Just give us a half hour."

Dean smiled appreciatively. "Great. Well, seems like everything's figured out. I'll be expecting a progress report immediately after the first round of testing elapses."

Wasting no time to chat, Dean smiled crisply at the project leaders, then ran back to the Spire, his departure so fast that the three engineers were left reeling.

"See you soon," Virigard chirped before escaping underground.

The three project leaders shuffled awkwardly, then turned back to their creation. "Well, I guess we'll just wait," the woman with the dark complexion murmured.

---

Bath watched like a proud mother as Lisa wielded her improved magnetic sense to create an airtight shield around herself. The magma initially parted around her rapidly-fluctuating magnetic field, only to pushed away by the many shards of heat-resistant hafnium-composite powder she'd obtained from Earth. The granule-sized shards were numerous enough to coat her entire magnetic field in a silvery sheen, as though she were surrounded by a stretchy silver film.

'Giving her this boon first really was the right decision," he affirmed. While he'd given her two more excellent boons over the past weeks, this one was still by far the most useful, serving as Lisa's bread and butter in everything from bodily locomotion to landing punches.

And seeing her land fiery punches that left craters three feet in diameter was, to Bath's mind, a thing of beauty, especially as the flames danced around her fists' magnetic fields and streamed backward over her arms.

Bath wasn't concerned at all as Lisa made her way through the magma to the gate. She was currently flying downward to the gate with her eyes closed, her rapid descent sloshing up magma waves behind her. Bath saw that her eyes were closed, likely so that she could fully focus on using her echolocation boon to prevent magma from touching her skin.

'She really needs to break that habit,' Bath thought, assessing Lisa's performance. 'Closing her eyes just to use echolocation? Why waste all my carefully-designed eyesight boons?'

In the span of a few seconds, Lisa torpedoed through the gate. Bath's face broke out into a small smile, then he, too, raced into the gate, forming seamless metal armor around his body while plummeting into the magma's depths.