Chapter 363 - Far Future Ch. 73 ??? But in the Long Run, There???s Still Time to Change the Road You???re On... (1/2)
I watched the Haze change colors with the underlying elements of the plateau and different energies dominant in areas. My Trembling Domain flashed past hundreds of veins of ores and elements Energized with different powers, sinking into the stones and extending like serpents out and down, begging for miners to come and take them away.
They formed sort of an axiomatic network of anchors to bleed out the energies of the Warp, sucking them away and out into the world. Of course, mining them would remove those anchors, and what might happen then?...
The idea that the Warp is what made this planet viable as a mining world, and yet would eventually be the source of its destruction when those veins were mined out and the Zone exploded out and took the whole planet, was definitely on my mind. Philius was not too happy to concur with me, but while he technically had the authority to abandon the planet, realistically it was impossible. The amounts of Energized materials and their variety meant it simply wouldn't happen unless you parked a fleet atop the planet. Too much money to be made... as if mega-cities sitting on an alkaline world didn't show that.
In the meantime, I was effectively a mass surveyor daring to go where none of the mining corps dared to. The amount of the wealth I was running past would make even the Great Families palpitate... but they simply had no ability to exploit it with the Warp Zone so close. Building a facility so close would be throwing their money into a shredder...
Sixth, there were subterranean waterways.
Cave networks under my feet could be formed by burrowers, but the irregular nature of them meant water had coursed through them... and in case of several of them, some sort of water still was. I could feel it vibrating against my Domain, even if only rarely did it come into actual range, but the existence of tunnels of liquid coming out of the Warp definitely gave me pause... especially if the tunnels and flowpaths were the kind set up by the ages...
Water had once flowed through the stones beneath my feet. Hellworld, my arse...
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I took occasional breaks from endless skimming of stone, jumping cracks less than a hundred yards across, and taking detours of sometimes hundreds of miles to cross canyons and chasms that went down just too far which I had to go around.
Of course, I did go down a few of them as they descended to the bowels of the planet, and generally didn't have to descend too far before some spideroids had crossed even the massive gaps with web structures, which was enough anchor to keep my lived-line intact, even if they later fell away. Temporal rules were weird enough, I didn't question them. If I had to hack my way through dozens of house-sized spideroids of various kinds as I trotted along a web that refused to cut me or stick to me, well, win-win!
I would swing out far enough from the plateau to get into areas surveyed by satellite, establish a GPS lock above the Haze with a drone launch I was carrying around solely for that purpose, and then swing back on course, leaving a trail of dead things.
Doing so basically confirmed everyone's analysis that spatial bending was going on, as I had travelled about thirty percent further then my GPS coordinates would indicate. I should have passed the northernmost edge of the area, and instead hadn't even reached it yet.
The roiling boundary area was throwing off fairly regular spatial disturbances and erratic temporal ones, although not very strong in the latter. So, less fast or slow time, then reverse, none, or normal, eddying and ebbing back and forth. Of course, that didn't mean there weren't accelerated temporal regions inside...
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As I was circumnavigating this big zone, I was naturally also going to be passing other mining zones and mega- or kilocities. The mining zones would run up to the foothills of the plateau, but no closer, so taking a detour to sweep my lived-line closer wasn't much. Getting close to the cities generally involved almost a day of shifting course, running along the walls of the sprawling megaplexes, or in one case, a ravaged ruin wailing with the ghosts of the dead, and yet slowly and laboriously being rebuilt, or at least stripped and salvaged, by the other mega-cities and planetary governor. Naturally its durasteel foundation and a considerable number of Underspire dwellers were still alive down below, living on soylent, gak, and one another...
As long as I got this initial run down, flying to the cities, or even teleporting, would be fine, as I could simply hook into the extant lived-line if need be. Double duty was a fine thing by me.
It was a lot of running, but I didn't mind. My thoughtstreams were always busy, as I didn't need to be somewhere to tell people what to do, and to give and receive information. I was at the heart of the most immediate and multi-faceted information network on the planet. A lot of my running was in a fugue state, recording information and passing it on.
The Map, and the untold amounts of wealth it showed, kept growing. Karmic gains were steady, certainly enough to pay for what I was spending every day as I was growing my Marshal and Warlord capacities... and, of course, spending Deep and Broad. The fun of the far future demanded all of the Skill Ranks I could give them, and even a 40+ Intellect wasn't giving me enough.
Too much stuff I needed to know, because I didn't have anyone to split the load with yet... although Briggs would be trying soon enough.
When we started making some serious Karma together, that would be pretty good...
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Multiple detonations blew against the Shield Briggs had put up, hammering against the psi-enhanced, Full-Tempered, and Hardened Adamantine.
Much of the force was shunted away and above him by the Focus, the rest just hammered into his heavyfoot and was conducted away, blasting away the sand and dust beneath his boots.
His arm came whipping down, and the air cracked and roared in the wake of the blow as he let go of Beat.