Collide Gamer-Chapter 1670 – The Final Pre-Expedition Meeting

Sometimes, John looked at his harem and found it a genuine wonder that they all could be silent. This was not only because of several boisterous and chatty personalities in the room, but also because of the sheer scope of it. Back in school, any gathering of more than 10 students was constantly chatting about this, that, and the other. Few teachers had managed to suppress that desire for more than ten or twenty minutes at a time and even then there were whispers.

To give his haremettes credit, they were more than an undisciplined gaggle of school children. They were pieces of elemental realms given individuality, seasoned veterans of many Abyssal battlefields, ancient weapons, goddesses, and humans that had seen their fair share of hardships.

“We’ll be setting out tomorrow,” he told everyone. “We’ll take the Wings of Servitude to Merida. Once there, we will attempt to establish a beachhead to let me put down a teleportation outpost. Yes, Lee?”

“Sorry if I’m stupid, but why are we not going with a commercial flight? Seems unnecessary to have Aclysia fly the thing back?”

“Because I don’t know if we can establish a beachhead,” John answered simply. “And we may need to head back as soon as possible if something unforeseen happens here. Plus, Aclysia won’t take the plane back. We’ll keep it stored in a local Protected Space.”

“That means you’ll have two points of significance to defend, my love,” Lydia pointed out.

The queen attended the meeting because it fell within her typical visiting hours, not because she had the opportunity to come along. Like Lu Zhi, Lydia did not have the time to get involved in a private project of John’s that was going to last quite a while. Momo had initially asked for a month. John did not know if this would take that same amount of time or even more. He doubted finding something that was clouding even Lorelei’s vision would be found quickly.

“If there’s one thing we do not lack, then it is high-powered participants in this expedition, so having two camps to look after does not worry me much,” John confessed. “I have a number of additional precautionary measures in case we run into notable resistance or competition locally. We can potentially forsake the aircraft or the teleporter, as annoying as that would be.”

“We’re all goin’, right?” asked Hailey.

“All of us except Nathalia, Nightingale and Eliana,” John broke the news to a grumbling reception. “There might be local guilds – actually, I know there are some local guilds, even if there is no noteworthy power in the region. Either because of them or because of that potential resistance we’ll encounter, we cannot have you get involved. Krieg would be an issue and I’d rather be in his good graces for a potential Lorylim crisis.”

“Any new information on those local guilds?” Scarlett wanted to know.

“Nothing more since we last talked about it. There seem to be fairly normal Abyssals in the city. About five to ten thousand, estimating by the size of the city, with the usual infrastructure. There’s an Abyss Auction outpost, an Apothecary hospital, a now defunct Fateweaver agency, and a few smaller international outposts, alongside the local infrastructure. Interesting is that, by rumours, there’s a sizable Abyssal population still in the forests.”

“Is there confirmation for that?”

“Limited,” was all John could say, sighing deeply. “No recordings, but enough evidence by word of mouth to take it seriously. Fianna met one of them or at least someone who said they were part of them. From what I could gather, it’s the natives that refused to partake in the Spanish guilds set up to integrate them and have endured since. They may or may not be involved in this current situation.”

“Right, so we got standard Abyssals and weird tribes in the jungle,” Rave summarized. “Doesn’t sound like notable opposition.”

“The notable opposition will be whoever is blocking Lorelei’s vision. Speaking of which, can you summarize any and all visions of this that you had in the past two weeks?”

Lorelei, her gift and power being what they were, had not been shut out completely. Whoever was keeping her vision blacked out did waver at times and so she had caught glimpses since that first minor prophecy after the wedding.

“What I have seen has been muddled,” Lorelei informed them. “Whatever is darkening my second sight is painting over a future in flux. I see a thousand silver lines and one of grey, forming a fence in front of a pair of broken goggles. I see a throne in a pool of blood. I see a coughing mummy. I see a fanged creature coated in poison. I see the obsidian teeth of a warrior digging for blood. Clearest of all, I see a dragon on two legs, holding a spear of fog.”

“Liakan,” Metra stated.

Lorelei nodded. “It appears the Azure Tribe has taken an interest in this matter – or at least she has.”

“With Mengele dead they are off the leash,” Nia stated. “It was predictable that they would take an interest in their own affairs next.”

“They are best situated to scan Mengele’s remaining archives,” Nightingale added.

“For the others, I have no clue what they mean,” John spoke up. “Lines, a throne in a pool of blood, a mummy, a fanged creature, obsidian teeth, all of those could be metaphorical or actual places.”

“On the topic of Mengele – any advances on the translation?” Scarlett asked.

Momo swayed her head in an uncertain gesture. “Yesn’t. I was able to work out that Mengele already had the farmland areas of the peninsula scanned. That’ll spare us the easiest part of the landscape to comb through – if we trust that they did their job thoroughly.”

“Soldiers in a dictatorial state have a tendency to lie about their accomplishments so they don’t get shot,” John mumbled. “Then again, Mengele felt quite intensely about this one. He would have had some kind of truth teller on it.”

“What kind of area are we talking about anyway?” Rave asked.

“…Practically the entirety of the peninsula,” Momo confessed and rolled out the copy of the damaged map again. The gash in its middle and the various other damages made the majority of the inland unrecognizable. The shape of the peninsula by and large was off, as old maps tended to be, but it was close enough to be recognizable. “As you can see, the map starts with the point of the peninsula facing Cuba. There is also a coastline on the other end of the map, so… Untold amounts of square kilometres.”

“…I guess if it’d be easy to find, someone would have done it already,” Rave said.

John decided it was time for some good news. “We have the advantage that both Lee and I will be attending. Between the two of us, we’ll be able to sense any Protected Spaces at a range.”

“Do we have any reason to believe that there’d be any of those still surviving?” Scarlett asked.

“Plenty,” Lee answered. “We use the modern Protected Space for everything, because it is efficient and everyone can learn it. That being said, the ancient empires wouldn’t have wanted their centres of population or major cultural sites to be subject to constant upkeep. They would have found one solution or another and, that solution being specialized for their specific purpose, they’re going to last for a long, long time.”

“Although all the ‘unimportant’ stuff would have disappeared by now.” Momo sighed. “That and all the hubs where they may not have thought it necessary or did not have the time to slap a solution on it. A great loss for archaeology.”

“There’s also the question of how many of these barriers are still inhabited in some form to this day,” John added.

Lydia picked up her cup of cool water. “Much of Akkad can still be found because Lorylim infest it.”

“And someone or something is likely to still exist in these ruins.” John rubbed his chin. “What unnerves me is that we are likely to have more competition than just the Azure Tribe. Them being there makes sense to me, but who else would have any reason to go there at this…” He stopped himself, several accusatory gazes reminding him of what the most likely reason was. “Suel.”

Nightingale bit a piece of diced cheese off her talon. “You leaked intel, do not be surprised when that has consequences.”

Deciding not to bet on the chance that this was just a coincidence, John shut his mouth. No need to further amplify the power of that ‘I told you so’. “In summary, our information about the locals is limited and the area we have to cover is enormous,” he kept the talk on topic. “Which means that we may or may not run into our opposition. It’s not exactly hard to miss people in the jungle.”

“Alrighty… so, what’s our plan?” Rave asked. “Beyond the ‘flying over and searching’?”

Everyone’s attention shifted to Momo again. John was typically the main organizer of the harem’s plans, but this was her baby and she knew more about the operation than he did. This was both on the specifics of this case and the general best approach to locating ancient ruins.

“After we have established a base of operation around Merida, we will first head to Tathnuachan.” Momo had several of her Firefae land on the part of the map she was talking about. Half of the people around consequently stood up to get a better view of that specific area.

It was north of the big gash, relatively close to the coast, and right next to another burn that had been copied over from the original map. On the rubber mat, the originally singed wood was recreated through dark colouration. Scanning and recreating an item could lead to the loss of details, but it could also lead to the highlighting of others. In this specific case, what likely had been the barest of contrasts between ink and half-burned wood had turned into a sharp enough difference to see the stylistic representation of houses and a lake in a bubble. A couple of signs in Nahuatl were scribbled underneath.

‘I should learn the language over the next few days,’ John thought.

“Tathnuachan was next on the list of Mengele’s destinations,” Momo reported. “It’s reportedly been the dwelling of a sacred lake. Probably a village built around a large cenote.”

“If he had it on the map, why didn’t he go there sooner?” Salamander asked.

“…Are we looking at the same map?” Momo asked and got a warning glare in response. “Sorry, I’ll explain: to reiterate, the map is between 600 and 3000 years old, magic messes with dating instruments. We know for a fact that it is not accurate to the actual coast line by… just looking at it. Then there’s landscape shifts that happen over such a timescale which probably aren’t that substantial in that part of the world, but they are a thing.” Momo pulled out a regular map of Yucatan and had more of her Firefae circle and area south-east of Merida. “It’s probably somewhere in this nature reserve… I guess I should just show you all my research note version at this point. Scarlett, could you…?”

“Leave it to the technomancer,” the redhead mumbled and gestured at the flatscreen.

John immediately got where this was going. “If we can find Tathnuachan, then we can potentially make out the position of the paths.” frёeωebɳovel.com

“It’s not going to be quite that easy, since the paths themselves, if they ever existed in real space, would probably all be grown over by now,” Momo swiftly curbed the enthusiasm. “Still, it is the best and closest lead we have.”

“Seems like all the roads would come together where Rex Magnar cut a hole,” Rave observed. “Must be where the most important spot is.”

“Maybe or maybe that’s your mind filling in the blanks,” John said. “It’s also the centre of the map, so it draws the eye. It could just as well be that the roads just come together there because everyone wants to get to the east coast and take a boat to the island from there.”

“Or everyone wants to go west,” Momo added. “The problem is that we have no idea what purpose this map originally had. I assume it’s the roads for a pilgrimage of some kind, but it could be a fruit traders yearly route or something like that.”

“Would be pretty funny if that’s what survived the ages.”

“Happens all the time,” Lee threw in. “One of the oldest surviving pieces of writing is an Akkadian copper trader eternalizing his complaints about low quality copper on a stone tablet.”

“I think this is a bit too impressively worked to be that, but people invest time into strange things all the time, so who knows.” John shook his head. “Back to the strategy. So we will attempt to find Tathnuachan?”

“And then we’ll try to follow the road from there. If we fail to locate that city, village, whatever it is, we’ll instead go after other odd spots on the map.”

John nodded along, then picked up the conversation. “As for the manner in which we will pursue that strategy, we’ll split up into two, maybe three groups. We’ll have a group to protect the teleporter back, a group to protect the plane and a group to do the actual exploring. The teleporter will potentially be given up, depending on how far away from Merida we get. We can take the plane along as we go.”

“We can?” Rave asked. “Through the jungle?”

“Yeah, it’s fairly easy actually,” John said. “It can roll and it runs on mana, so fuel won’t be an issue. We’ll just have Gnome turn the forest into a stone road ahead of it. It’ll be mana intensive and the plane will no doubt lag behind, but at our level it’s viable. It’s not the instant way back that I would want, but it is a quick one. We’ll have to see where we can establish teleporters.”

“Can we take off in the middle of the jungle?” Hailey asked.

“It’ll be difficult, but doubtlessly yes,” John answered. “Either we create a sufficient path using magic or we’ll just have everyone who can fly lift the plane up beforehand.”

John knew what he was saying was bonkers by any mundane standard. Between Ehtra, Beatrice, Sylph and Salamander, lifting a plane was a perfectly plausible course of action though. Carrying it a prolonged distance may prove difficult, but they only needed to get it stable enough for the engines to take over.

Being extremely powerful had its advantages.

“We’ll do the split up after we land and have our beachhead established,” John continued with the explanation. I will also leave the Ambassador Double here to stay in contact with our goddesses and the general happenings. We are leaving tomorrow morning.”

“Then let’s have fun while we can,” Lydia stated and stood up. “I won’t see your real body for several weeks, most likely.”

That was the sad consequence of events like this.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢