A day later, I watch the round table in the command building as the others discuss plans. Though I don’t stand to the side, instead I’m flying through the sky, while they are comfortably seated inside my inner world. That detaches them from all the inertia and momentum I experience, and it would do that even if I choose to jink about pretending to be a fighter jet.

The mechanics of that all happen behind the scenes, neatly taken care of by the system, but the soul strain any jinking about like that would induce is very much real and that is why I accelerate at a relatively leisurely pace and in a straight line. It will make little difference in the final time for a trip this long, less than an hour from the most extreme profile I would dare to use, so I chose to conserve my strength. The closer I get to the end, even that mild effort I reduce to conserve my strength, even as dozens of dozens of other groups move hundreds of miles away from me with their own vehicles powered by faux inner worlds of their own which add to the strain on my soul.

I glance inside once again at Paul, our head enchanter and village chief that is sitting at the end of the table while Jason, our military commander, takes the opposite side with dozens of other dignitaries on the long sides of the table.

One of them, a chronically contrarian diplomat keeps arguing a dead point and I just wait for it.

“We have to get to them before they manage to make it too far away. This group is nearly a thousand miles inland after skipping your fort. Soon, it will be useless to pursue them. They could…”

“They could do nothing. Rushing in with that mentality is going to get more of us killed than strictly necessary.” Says Jason and I internally nod. “They split into fewer groups than I imagined, 40 groups of roughly 20 thousand. But regardless of how they organize themselves, this is a real fight. So half of us will go on the offensive against the city while the other half will keep hunting them down. After dealing with their city, we will reassess. That is the plan for a hundred reasons that I AM NOT going to repeat it. You have all heard it time and again and I’m getting tired of your crap.”

Then Russel chips in from his sitting position. “That’s the best plan we have, and the time to change it without new information would have been before we left. Changing anything now would just be confusing to our troops.”

“That is… there wasn’t time, he…” The diplomat looks around for support and finding none he chooses the wiser course and shuts his mouth.

A few more directions in this last meeting near the end of our flight, and then everyone splits apart to their own endeavors.

I simply study their reactions in amusement. Such a disparate group. I wouldn’t trust a few of them with the spare cash to buy an ice cream cone, but the situation forced them all here and as much as their views were different from mine and Pando’s village, I looked into their heart and they were under no mistaken impression that we could negotiate nor did they have hidden agendas that were more liable to get our troops killed than to help our efforts.

I hurtle through the sky, now starting to tap the breaks as the sleek lines cut the thin air of the upper atmosphere, and the mana rocket stops shooting water vapor.

By now, I could have switched to another propellant rather than steam, possibly something that didn’t even require mana with how much of our old tech tree we reclaimed, but I kept using the same old steam rocket. Under other circumstances, it might make sense and eventually, I would switch, but the value of simplicity overcame any marginal gains that a higher delta v or saving propellant mass could provide.

The reliability, the raw power that I didn’t have to carefully balance and a dozen other small advantages are too much to pass up to save a little mana, especially as I would have to set up production lines for anything that I might want to use s fuel and oxidizer. And that would come in addition to what I was already helping to get started for other industries.

The old rocket equations that so entertained me when I was a pipsqueak now make more intuitive sense after having actually used them on practical stuff, but they are also swept to the side as I go back to analyzing yet another runic blueprint.

We acquired more and more designs from all sorts of sources and I want to get back to this mental frame before attacking. Though I’m no genius of minutia that could speak on the tiniest difference between two sets of runes at length like Merlin, sometimes I felt that even completely unfamiliar runes made sense in a general way. Usually, I needed to stare at them for a long time for that, but that is why I practice the skill. Using it came more and more easily, almost like the skill of learning new languages.

The second language is the hardest, the third one easier and the hundredth would probably come by itself. If I went that route, powered by the system’s mental stats, I could probably become actually fluent in just about anything in less than a week.

Still, when I didn’t even know the alphabet, even if they tended to conform to a similar overall structure, learning became harder.

Instead of simply going and experimenting with them, I use my knowledge of Aether to pass over the armor with runes and develop a deeper understanding of the effect of magic, with help from knowing the final effect and precise memories from the mana passing through it while elves wore it.

The perception field focuses on it as I push mana through once again, the nearly immaculate defenses forming a basic shield inside my inner world that enhances my perception and even the tiniest of mana flows can’t escape me.

I use all my skills to connect to it and let myself be fully absorbed back into the endeavor after the brief break to watch the meeting.

I fail to get anything beyond what I had already learned on previous attempts, but I know that there is more to it so I go to the next exercise, this on not ‘stolen’ from the enemy, but a new rune pattern that was discovered by spending a few precious few system points.

Or rather a copy. The original was producing a strange field of lightning that debilitated anyone inside a 10 inches wide circle.

Even I had to take care when I entered it even with all my defenses and insular skills that help me shrug off most effects.

But these runes we had not just failed to understand or properly replicate, unlike the equipment that we took from the enemy, these could seemingly only be powered by the system using its interface.

Though it took mana from our batteries, any mana that we directly gave to any such defense or offensive pattern simply failed to produce a reaction and even simultaneous use was impossible as mana that wasn’t guided by the system simply phased through.

It is strange to watch shapes that you know work and that in mana from one source but not another.

My mind overthink this and a thousand other dilemmas and I deepen my connection to the hundreds of examples that I physically have in the inner world. But soon I only have 65 more minutes, so I stop everything and carefully start to apply the ‘breaks’ more vigorously.

With only half of the total army and even this number reaching well over a million troops, the inner world starts to seem cramped.

Soon, we wouldn’t be able to do these trips without constructing layers on top layers to house all the troops even if everyone stood and was organized with their provisions.

Even now, I still hadn’t hit a full 10 square kilometers at surface level and that’s accounting for all the areas that I didn’t want anyone stepping over.

I glance at my gardens, forests and other places for the variety of plants to grow. I’m especially careful about the section split for growing nuts, berries, seeds and a few of my other favorite foods. The instance had been a nightmare, but now I had it all back and nothing could take them away from me.

Cashew trees just beside blueberry bushes, tall pines near fig trees. And each of them is the real deal, no facsimile that I made to resemble their Earth counterparts, but everything exactly as I remember. Though even with the inner world, keeping them all healthy in such close proximity took some doing from a few of the calmer seeds that didn’t want to do more than grow in peace. The disparate needs that each tree had in soil nutrients, water concentration and sun exposure consumed their attention. Though I was just grateful for their help instead of being resentful as a few other people felt when I told them about those seeds.

They had already multiplied a lot, most of it at my prompting and even Pando felt that each split past the clear benefits diminish both parts in an intangible way. Rushing now might turn out to be a disaster. In the end, they are still living beings and I need to ket that in mind instead of starting to think of them as a resource.

With a head shake, my eyes take in bright red fences to stop anyone from going there by mistake and stomping over the more sensitive spots in my inner world. Then my attention goes back to where it should be right before we land: looking for any surprises.

My inner world and therefore perception field is much larger than when I came back to earth, with even a pair of spotlights that are on the very edge of my capabilities at over 2 and a half kilometers away, but that is nowhere near enough to see the village, I spin it around me and use my other long range sense: vision and I try to spot anything more.

Tems of scouts carrying telescopes train them on the village looking for anything out of place, but nothing shows up.

On the final approach to the island, I can finally see their village with my perception field.

Nothing has changed in the last 12 hours since I looked at the growing island while still in contact with Pando’s root network, but when I don’t know what half of their defenses could do and the other half I only learned by witnessing in action dread over what the possibilities threaten to take over.

Everything gets more complicated when you don’t have any idea what your enemy is hiding in their sleeves.

Still, we brought a lot of toys this time and the dynamic is bound to change.

Hundreds of ship sized flying buses deposit our troops on the edge of the island. With numbers that actually come from Pando’s village slowly skewing into obscurity. This time we had only 80 thousand compared to the total number of a million troops and a similar total number spread with the pursuing parties.

Coordination is unparalleled, but even then there are limits on how fast we can physically move such large numbers. Even as the first second and third lines out of ten move on the attack we still haven’t deposited half of our troops.

I sit at the edge of the island, nearly a kilometer from where the action is. But I can reach past their walls all the way to the back line, so I’m still close enough to make a difference anywhere in this battle. After dropping a few dozen shield generators around me and ‘hiding’ in my bunker, I can dedicate all my attention to the usual stuff.

Even with all my efforts, we had failed to find a single other healer returning from the instance or ‘create’ one and my Life stores were dwindling. Lines of injured people coming back to the inner world have days, or weeks long wits for natural healing if their injuries presented a low likelihood of death. I can’t afford to heal milder injuries, in both time and resources. Only the worst injuries saw any Life, and I could only behold it together because of my increasing control and longer healing songs.

With one of these songs, I even managed to hit 13 notes for a total savings of roughly twenty percent in simple cuts that I only had to ‘glue’ together. The most common type of injury and therefore the one I had the most practice with.

That is besides the one that I learned as they got their healer back on his feet that had been 21 notes long and I even managed to add one more note to that for a staggering 40 percent savings whenever I had to regrow tissue damaged by fire and it was even fairly effective to recover in most other forms of tissue loss.

With two minds and my double now fully integrated with the seed, we could be a lot more purposeful in our actions. Another aspect that helped to alleviate my concerns was the powerful fields that increased the recovery rate under the beds of the injured.

It was expensive to maintain, but an Asian doctor on the other side of the world working with low level enchanters had developed the improvement.

I glance at it and marvel at the changes to the complex set of runes they managed to get working even without understanding magic nearly as much as I did. But even if I was the greatest magical genius, thinking that all discoveries should be mine or at most from one of my talented colleagues would be the height of arrogance. Sure, I could do a lot but billions of humans were on a whole other level for the parallelization of efforts and even if the ones that returned as a general rule were not the best selection from our planet as the system measures such things, what this many people working together could accomplish was still magnitudes more than the smaller and separated instances, let alone a single person, no matter how talented.

I look at the design and feel the runes. It has severe drawbacks in hospital use, but despite those and the high mana cost, a larger field can be concentrated around a single person. In trade, an erratic field reaching at least 10 meters wide in all directions negatively affected everyone including the doctor and staff for a rough doubling in recovery rate compared to our best normal fields.

I didn’t have to worry about that being outside the inner world and not even being able to step inside if I wanted to.

And that was not the only way my healing improved.

Stronger and faster compounds to glue cuts together, improved salves and healing aids, new techniques to speed up recovery, minimize blood loss and all types of useful effects. Best of all, all of them compounded with my own healing efforts saving me again even more Life.

The only healer in the world. Every death on my shoulders.

But there is also a simplicity in the lack of alternative, the simplicity of the action. The lack of moral and technical quandaries trying to tear my mind and will apart. But that was balanced by other decisions, such as which people do I work on? Who’s is beyond help and I shouldn’t waste my Life on? Where do I draw the line? But in this, there are at least only ‘two choices’. And in the chaos of battle, I don’t have time for doubts, only action. No attacks to watch out for in my relative safety. Even the danger the others are exposed to I ignore to concentrate my efforts on healing and transportation.

So I heal, until is no more need and calm reigns. Not a single weapon clash can be heard, and even the enemy’s magical attacks stop after their numbers went down enough.

It’s time for me to don another set. So I take off my white lab coat and put on armor meant for conquering and destruction. A shift in body and mind to become chaos incarnate.

Then I let loose on their city and repay what they have insisted on inflicting.