Chapter 12 - Beginning of a new life 1

Two hours have passed after the battle has ended. The lair was eerily quiet with the pile of the more than hundred bodies still smoking, with destroyed weapons and armor scattered all around the large cavern. There was nothing left alive in the empty lair, without even the usual carrion animals that feasted on corpses present. Suddenly, the deadly silence was broken by the wet sound of something moving around and digging through something. Hunter emerged from a huge pile of the crimera's feces, covered in absolute filth with half digested bits and maggots, stuck on his leather gear. As soon as he was free from the pile of shit, Hunter took off his helmet and immediately got on the ground, vomiting nonstop, until nothing was left in his stomach and only bile came out.

To complete the plan they came up with, Hunter and Glados needed to die in this battle, since it was risky to arrive at the fort together with the other survivors, and be identified by the local powers as a summoned hero. Since he did not have anymore information about the time after the 500 years the encalve was gone for, he did not know what state the new civilization was in, and how they will react to the large group of survivors showing up from no-man's land. Problems will certainly arise if he still tried to hide his face, or even worse, the fort could be overly paranoid and suspicious about the strangers coming from the monster infested no-mans land and imprison them immediately. Getting imprisoned in what will likely be medieval fantasy land with nobles sounded pretty horrifying considering this was a land of magic and slaves also exsisted.

So, Hunter, to disguise his death, as soon as the fireballs fell and chaos was everywhere, ditched his rifle and some of his spare gear and immediately hid in the location he chose before the battle. There were many small crevices and caves he could hide in, but since he was paranoid someone would notice him while he was running away, or people finding him while they were looking for survivors after the battle, trusting his airtight equipment to stop the smell and the filth, Hunter did something he would regret for the rest of his life, and dived into the pile of shit.

The small air supply connected to his helmet lasted for merely ten minutes and after that, the filter was only able to stop the stench for a little bit before it finally clogged up, and Hunter was fully hit with the stench. He immediately started to gag, and Glados had to take control of his body so he did not end up throwing up, and try her best to stop his sense of smell. It was not completely effective and it became the single worst experience Hunter ever had in his life, as he was forced to stay still and breathe in the stench until all the survivors have left and the coast was clear.

Before the battle, to make sure the survivors leave in haste, Hunter shared everything he knew about the monster waves with the group's leaders, and when they saw the illustrations of the powerful monsters that have appeared during the waves in history, they could not help themselves from panicking a little. So when the battle was over, to avoid being enclosed into the lair by the monster hordes massing up, they got ready to leave as quick as possible, and since with no time to bury the dead, burned all the bodies so the dead can at least keep their dignity by not having their body devoured by the monsters. After setting fire to all the bodies, they took what valuables to remember the dead, along with their weapons, and as soon as the emergency treatments of the injured were finished, the surivors left in haste towards the fort, with no more obstacles stopping them. The lair was now completely empty, and the first part of the plan was a success with Glados and Hunter successful in faking their death. Glados was hit by the plasma, and from the glancing blow that blasted into the suit with ease, the fake body he placed in the suit blew up simulating a gruesome death (which the survivors removed as best they could and burned along with the others), and Hunter's burnt rifle and his destroyed gear made it seem that he died in the acid.

Hunter told the groups everything about the waves, but there were two important information he did not share; the first thing he did not share was that, monsters of the crimera's caliber had their mana 'scent' linger on in the area for quite a long time even after their death, and any monster that were strong enough to sense mana will 'smell' this and stay away, making this a safe area. The second thing he kept to himself, was that, there was another, much smaller route to pass the mountains from here that did not go to the fort, but instead led to a border village that the scouts used. The monsters followed the path of least resistance, so compared to the large path that lead to the fort, the smaller trail would be much safer for Hunter to travel on, and with the village deserted with people taking refuge in the fort, Hunter would be in civilization without anybody noticing. He felt bad about not telling the other about the village so they did not have to risk being imprisoned, but he comforted himself by promising to come back and free them in the future after getting stronger if they ever did get imprisoned.

Now that he had the lair to himself, which was now a temporary safezone and the survivors not coming back anytime soon with the season long wave, it was time to go onto the next part of his plan. He needed to prepare an alias to use in the new world, and with the stories of magical golems he read in the database, building a mech disguised as a magical golem and acting as a golem meister sounded like a viable option as a job. It has been more than five hundred years, so he did not know if it would work, but he decided to use an alias as a survivor from the enclave as his background, and together with the honorary noble title that one of the scouts received after pleasing a loyalty, his fake background could be used to explain his 'golem' and all the artifacts he had in his possesion. He was worried about the remaining survivors of the enclave and his lies easily being found out, but five hundred years was a very long time, and since he was only going to use it as a last resort when absolutely necessary after gathering enough intelligence, he decided to roll with that plan for now. There was nothing else he could do at this point to forge an identity, and he had to just hope that the country he was going enter was not going to be as stringent on checking someone's identity and just avoid attracting any unwanted attention.

After a short time to recover at the cart (that the survivors did not take since it was visibly just full of scrap metal and spare parts and was inoperational), Hunter moved his cart deeper into the lair and began to work on his industrial printer. Before he began however, he asked Glados to go harvest the mana core from the crimera's corpse that died not too far away. He felt bad about taking the core for himself, but it was not likely that Dominic nor Seoyun would come back to this valley after so many people they knowed died here, and even if they did come back, they did not seem like the kind of people that would be interested in searching the valley for the crimera for the loot, and Hunter absolutely did not want someone like Chang Chee taking the core.

Something was off about the guy with how much control he had over all the other chinese people in his group, with his people willingly following his orders to the death and voluntarily giving up their lives for the group. The extremely disciplined way his group moved, their gestures and how they communicated, all told Hunter that, one, they were either trained soldiers and Chang Chee was a high ranking soldier/official back on earth, or two, ChangChee had skills related to mind control, or three, in the worst case scenario, all of the above. With their large numbers, they were sure to become a powerful group later on, and Dominic's group, who banded together under survival, was not likely to stay together as a group after they reached the fort, so denying more power to a potential enemy/competitor seemed like a good tactical choice. He knew those were just piss poor excuses, but powerful crimeras like this one, according to the encyclopedia, had manmade manacores that stored imense amounts of mana, and had complex runes that automatically regenerated mana unlike normal manacores. It was the perfect candidate for a powerplant for his mech and a stable power source for his industrial printer, and it would be stupid for him to let this unexpected oppurtunity go, even he if failed at his his initial goal at not leaving any trace whatsoever (he is going to ditch the cart and suit). But, he was never going to be on the list of suspected people, since he was now among the dead and the risk was worth it.

By the time Glados, who was absolutely covered in blood returned with the mana heart, the printer core was fully repaired and finally ready to be operational after centuries of being abandoned. Hunter connected the adapter that was included in the printer to harness to the mana heart (the printer is from the federation which is magitech based), and activated the printer core, and watched as the tethered box, floated up in the air, propelled with its hover propulsion systems and shoot a beam at the pile of material that was placed next to it.

The printer core then projected a wide beam that started to materialize the frames of the industrial printer. It was much faster than his smaller printer and he could visibly see the pile slowly decreasing in size, and after an hour, his industrial printer was complete. The completed printer was a simple four by four and six meter tall, negative pressure steel box that was set at that size to be able to fit and print the entire frame of his mech and its armor. At the side of the printer was a laser emitter that was used to supply the printer with material and a box that could fit a power source and on the bottom of the box was four hover plates that held and moved the object being printed around.

But before he started to design and print anything however, there was something he needed to do. He retrieved the remaining nanamachine canisters and injected himself with four of them. It was finally time to build the biochips and upgrade Glado's capabilities and his. With how important magic was in this new world, he needed a way to utilize runes, and decoding and translating the magic books that he found at the enclave was proving to be a challenge even for the advanced AI. Runes formed the basics of magic in this world, whether it was engraved onto an item or into the 'soul' or mental world of the individual, and when the appropriate amount of mana flowed into the runes which was basically a complex circuit, the runes produced the same phenomena everytime following a certain logic. Runes were basically a pattern, a language, a code that were utilized and combined into more complex things, to produce different results.

Learning this language was taking Glados a long time since she had to go over all the runes, spells and mana circles shown in the books and compare thousands and thousands of common patterns and find the pattern's relationships and common rules between them, so they could be translated into something comprehensible that Glados and Hunter could understand. If Hunter was educated and trained as a mage, it would not be very hard to just read the books written with the specialized language that required someone to be able to utilize mana to read, but the real problem was that the books were not basic beginner's books and did not go into any detail about how each runes worked in large complex circuits as a component with just basic illustrations of what effects the entire circuit had as a skill. Also basic theories and knowledge about magic was only mentioned sporatically all over the different books.

However, now with Glados finally being upgraded with more than thousand times the computing power compared to before, she was able to quickly go over all the circuits in detail and by running complex calculations and testing multiple theories, she was finally able to translate how each of the circuits and runes worked in all the magic books they had. Until now, the only way they could utilize mana cores was through the mana to electricity adaptors that was purely based on technology with its plans already exsisting in Glados's database, presumably since mana which was pure energy was a potential source of power for the terraformers. Now that they were able to fully utilize runes and create magical equipment powered with the mana cores, with Glados's knowledge of runes combined with her knowledge of technology, there were now endless possibilites on what they could accomplish.

From what Glados could translate and summarize from the books and the enclave, the basics of magic was the following; The largest and most complex collection of runes was a mana circle which every mana user possessed in their mental world or 'soul', and could be divided into three distinct groups of runes, that when combined together, completed the three basic steps which allowed a mana user to use magic. The first part of the mana circle contained the complex rune systems which collected mana from the surroundings/material (mana cores) and distributed it to other parts, and was where the mana was 'produced' in the mana circle. The second group contained the circuits that controlled how and where the mana was stored and this mana storage was what the mana core was for the monsters. For mana users, where the mana was stored varied widely between with race, external magic users and physical magic users and so on. The remaining part of the mana circle was taken up by the mana circuits that determined how the mana from the two groups were utilized and this was the main area where the runes for most of the skills were located at. Skills could overlap in two or all different parts, like specialized skills like detection skills and mana siphon skills etc. Mana circles were extremely important to Hunter since, mana circles formed the core concept of magical equipments with runes on magical equipments following this exact same theory of collection, storage and distribution of mana and were simplified form of mana circles. For example, in the case of the woman's staff it did two things, it amplified the users spells and stored skill runes for faster casting. It recharged mana on its own just like the crimera's core and was also able to be recharged from other sources of mana, like monster cores.

Mana circles was not really a flat circle but was more like a three dimensional sphere with each sphere greatly larger than the one before it (think about a ball's surface area in relation to its diameter), and so the number of mana circles was used to measure a mana user's overall strength and the level of skills were based on how many circles it required. More space meant more space for complex circuits/more skills and along with the increased complexity that was allowed, multiple circuits could be added so more mana could be processed at once to power much more powerful skills and allow the use of multiple skills simultaneously and faster spell recasting.

How many mana circles a person could ultimately obtain in their life was limited at birth, with multiple factors such as innate talent, mana sensitivity, mana capacity, race, family heritage, and the most important part, whether they were born with or without a mana circle. Non - mana users could also obtain a mana circle and become a mana user but it was extremly difficult to do so with their lack of talent and mana sensitivity, and methods to 'awaken' as a mana user was a closely guarded secret along with the mana circles, with unique mana techniques and skills passed down in the family from generation to generation. The main way to get more powerful as a mana user in this world was to train and increase mana capacity and mana circle size, learn new skills, new mana techniques and knowledge and theory of magic, and in the end ultimately form another mana circle by breaking past and 'leveling' up their mental world. The average person could achieve all of this by doing things like joining the military, becoming a mercenary or adventurer, entering schools or buying mana techniques from fallen nobles, but truly powerful mana users were predominantly limited to nobles and the ruling class. There were powerful people that were recorded in history that were normal people, but even then, most were nobles with those that were normal being exceptionally talented. This was all information from five hundred years ago, but Hunter did not think the status quo would have changed much.

Now that he got the larger picture of the magic in this world, Hunter realized just how ridiculous the gods were, sending brand new mana users down to this valley without giving them a chance to 'level up', resulting in them not being able to fully utilize the overpowered spells they were summoned with. In fact, it limited them so badly that, they were only able to use a couple of skills and subsequently ran out of mana they could use with the single circle being a chokepoint even with the insane amount of mana they had in their body. With all the handicap they had, Hunter realized just how much of a monster, people like Seoyun's party, Dominic and Chang Chee were, absolutely overshadowing others, and from what the books said about some truly talented people unconciously forming new mana circles on their own, it terrified him that those people with just two or three circles at max, were already strong enough to down a crimera that were said to have required entire armies to defeat.

Now that he understood the overall power levels of mana users in this world, Hunter realized he did not have to worry about standing out too much, with other summoned heroes and the inhabitants of this planet completely overshadowing him. Extremely powerful mana users above the 5 circle mark were certainly rare, but according to the scout's reports, powerful adventurers and mercenaries ranging from 3-4 mana circles were dime a dozen in this area where monster attacks were frequent, and with the current monster waves going on, he could fit right in with all the other adventurers and mercenaries crowding here from all over the country to make quick money. Even if he went all-out on his new mech, it would still be hard to catch the attention of the powerful mana users, since, while golems were certainly rare, anybody could own one if they were wealthy enough with even competent 3 circle mages able to build one.

To begin, he first brought up the design program for the printer and started designing a new power armor that he could always have on at all times. With his intelligence and mental capacity greatly improved with the biocomputers, Glados forcefully uploaded engineering knowledge into his head, and in no time, Hunter was able to understand most of the basic knowledge to build his powerarmor. Hunter was immediately able to skip 8 years of engineering school in just three days and his new intelligence was on a level that could be called a super power now. It was a strange feeling, how he had no memories of learning any of those knowledge, but when relevant, any related knowledge all magically appeared in his head, and he felt like a genius scientist, even when this only being possible with the biocomputers and his nanomachine modified body.

Having the knowledge and utilizing the knowledge were two very,very different things, but with Glados's help and shamelessly copying the database's exsisting powerarmor plans to reference, after a few days he was able to finish his first ever original design. The powerarmor was composed of five large components;

- Extremely thin synthetic full body innersuit that had temperature regulation and cleaning runes, and it was made of a material that automatically contracted and sealed his wounds in case of injury.

- Airtight synthetic nanotube muscle suit mixed with metal alloys strands that greatly increased his muscular and skeletal strength and blunt attacks resistance and the suit also included recepticles and mounting points for armor and gear. The entire suit was covered by the best mana circle Glados could currently make and a couple of the larger refined mana cores were placed in strategic locations to be used as a host to store mana. Unfortunately the space on the suit was limited and made the mana circle only equiavalent to a 2 circle.

- Plate armor that resembled medieval armor, covering all of his critical areas with plate armor and chainmail on other parts and the entire armor was covered with runes that increased defence, elemental attack resistance and many more utility runes. Runes were mostly inscribed on the insides of the armor to hide how complicated it was and make it seem much simpler.

- A simple surcoat + cloak that covered most of his armor, and gear that had stealth runes that matched itself to the environment and better hide his presence.

- A fully enclosed helmet that completely lacked any vision slots. Visibility was obtained with vision runes on the exterior of the helmet combined with various optics, and the innards of the helmet was filled with everything that his old helmet had such as infra red/thermal vision, video feed from drones, maps, and Hunter also covered the entire inner surface of the helmet with runes that infinately supplied him with fresh air

All of his gear needed immense amounts of mana to power, so the power produced from the 2 circle mana circle was entirely used up to power the suit's functions, and he was left with no power left for any offensive skills. He could potentially solve his power situation by attempting to duplicate the crimera's core, but it was simply not on the level that could be currently be duplicated, with the core, leagues beyond Glados's current level of magical knowledge.

Since he had to give up on using any magic for now, and had to go back to using firearms, he decided to make a blunderbuss that shot rune bullets unlike most mana guns that were just fancy wands and staffs that amplifed magic. Actual guns that shot mana bullets like the one that he was attempting to make did exist, but they were more for rich people show off their wealth, or for sidearms, with rune inscribed bullets being prohibitably expensive. Hunter could just print rune bullets all day long, as long as he had mana cores and materials, so while people might look at him like an idiot for using rune bullets in actual battle, this was the perfect option. Also since his main weapon was going to be his mech powered by the crimera core anyway, it did not matter as much.

Magical equipment in general was expensive; magical equipments like his suit that had a lot of functions especially so, with how hard it was to produce, with all the mana circuits used on equipment difficult to design and implement with the extremely limited space and all the precision engraving it required. It was comparable to designing a computer chip, and if the size, shape, location of the runes was just slightly off or not optimal, the runes did not work at all or got destroyed. It required truly skilled mages to design runes for complex magical equipment, and only the most skilled blacksmiths could ingrave all the complex runes precisely without error. Even for the more common magical equipment with much less features, they were still expensive, with engraving runes a time and money consuming process with all the specialized skills it demanded.

Hunter was basically cheating at this point, with 3D printers that no living being could compare when it came to precision, and Glados's ability to design magical equipment with ease. While thinking about all of this, he suddenly had a no shit moment, coming to a realization that he could just make an easy living selling weapons, and not even have to worry about risking his life at all. A merchant that was a golem meister that sold weapons sounded like an exceptionally good idea, and in the excitement, Hunter got ahead of himself and started to print various weapons that he could use to sell as a travelling merchant.