CH692 Alex’s Troubles I

***

Alex let out a quiet sigh as he entered his makeshift Rune Lab.

As always, he felt as though there was far too much to accomplish... and nowhere near enough time to accomplish it all.

When he first came to the Hollowcrest Wildlands, his primary objective had been to restore the functionality of his Rune-Tech platform.

Now, he had achieved that goal.

Not in the exact manner he had originally envisioned—but achieved it nonetheless.

With the Rune-Tech platform operational once more, one of the highest-priority tasks before him was the repair of the damaged Interplanar Orb.

At the very least, he had made a promising start.

From the fragmented remains of the Interspatial Grand Formation, he had successfully derived the damaged and degraded Interspatial Teleportation Formation at its core, later repurposing it into the Spatial Gate Formation he used recently to raid Lost Heathen bases.

However, Alex believed that as his understanding of the formation-spell hybrid deepened, he would eventually be capable of restoring it to its original form... or perhaps even improving upon it entirely.

Only— that would require time.

Alex exhaled softly at the thought.

Taking a seat at the Rune table within the laboratory, he began jotting notes across a sheet of paper.

’It’s not just the Spatial Teleportation Formation. I also need to recover the actual coordinates of Pangea,’ Alex mused inwardly.

This was something he had kept solely to himself. He had not even spoken of it to his wives.

The coordinates stored within the Interplanar Orb had degraded alongside the device itself.

Much like the longitude and latitude coordinate systems—GPS navigation—from his previous life, Pangea also utilised a coordinate system to locate different planes drifting within the vast void of space... including itself.

However, the system used by Pangea was far more complex.

The GPS systems of his previous world determined location based upon relatively fixed positions on a planetary surface. The motion of these reference points, relative to the observer, was negligible enough to be ignored for practical navigation. As a result, position could be simplified into longitude, latitude, and, for more precise applications, altitude.

Pangean navigation, however, was a system designed for traversal through the Void—a form of spatial navigation that could not rely upon fixed planetary references.

Within the void of space, everything was in motion. Planets, stars, galaxies... even the universe itself drifted endlessly through the cosmic expanse.

As such, calculating location was not simply a matter of determining position across three dimensions of space. One also had to account for a temporal coordinate.

And that temporal coordinate was critically important.

In the void, knowing an object’s precise three-dimensional position was meaningless without knowing ’when’ that object would occupy those exact coordinates. Everything was constantly moving. A location that existed one moment would no longer be valid the next.

’Fortunately, the temporal data remains intact. Thanks to that, the calculations won’t be easy... but they won’t be impossible either,’ Alex mused inwardly.

’The real issue is the spatial position data. I only have two of the dimensional coordinates intact. The final axis is corrupted. Somehow, I’ll need to deduce the missing dimensional coordinate myself. Only after that can I begin constructing an algorithm within the formation capable of continuously calculating Pangea’s exact current position in real time.’

Alex’s hopes rested upon the runes he had glimpsed moments before the Interplanar Formation activated back on Pangea—before everything had gone awry.

He intended to use that fragmentary runic data to extrapolate the missing information through calculation and pattern reconstruction.

Unfortunately, that was far easier said than done.

Unlike planetary navigation, there was no equivalent to ’up’, ’down’, ’north’, or ’south’ within the void. No naturally fixed orientation existed to serve as a universal frame of reference, greatly increasing the complexity of the calculations involved.

But more importantly— the knowledge required to even begin such calculations was incomplete.

The foundational theory Alex needed belonged exclusively to the domain of Space Mages.

Like many advanced specialist professions within Pangea, the knowledge of Space Mages was guarded with extreme secrecy.

Much like Magic Armour Designers, it was virtually impossible to gain access to true Space Mage knowhow without first becoming a recognised Space Mage oneself.

The secrecy surrounding the discipline was so severe that the organisations controlling such knowledge had deliberately didn’t include it in the Arcane Library servers they had bought at exorbitant prices.

As a result, even OmniRune lacked the necessary data. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Fortunately, it was not all doom and gloom.

Thanks to Merlin’s... extensive curriculum, Alex at least possessed the foundational knowledge necessary to approach the problem.

The issue was that he would need to perform countless derivative calculations before arriving at the formulas and constants required to even begin reconstructing the degraded coordinates—knowledge that would likely be considered elementary to an actual Space Mage.

’Beggars can’t be choosers. I should be grateful I even have a starting point at all,’ Alex thought to himself.

Much like the damaged Interplanar Teleportation Formation, this was another problem he could only tackle through brute-force analysis and iterative experimentation.

Which meant it would require an enormous amount of time before tangible results could be achieved—even with OmniRune’s computational assistance.

Alex continued jotting down his thoughts across the paper before him. Not because he feared forgetting them—his memory was more than capable of retaining the information—but because the act of writing helped organise the clutter within his mind.

Line after line filled the page with theories, equations, and fragmented concepts.

Eventually, he flipped the paper over to continue writing, only to realise he had already exhausted both sides.

Leaning back into his chair, Alex stared up at the ceiling.

’There’s simply too much to do...’ he sighed inwardly.

A familiar warmth surged within his chest as AetherKindle silently purified and refined the mana circulating through his body—particularly the mana absorbed through his Everspring Rune Tattoo, as it always did.

Alex’s thoughts unconsciously drifted towards the Spirit Magic he had recently developed.

’That needs far more work as well...’

A groan escaped his lips.

’In its current form, Spirit Magic doesn’t function without AetherKindle,’ he mused.

Spirit Magic enabled the creation of a fully autonomous spell platform—a conjured spell construct capable of independent movement and capable of casting subsidiary spells on its own.

As demonstrated during the battle against the Lost Heathen Combat Masters, Spirit Magic allowed Alex to create a combat support entity on the fly.

It also reduced the burden of continuously casting and micromanaging multiple spells simultaneously, since the ’Spirit’ could act independently once established.

However—

’The current iteration still has a fatal flaw.’

Alex’s gaze narrowed slightly in thought.

’Without something actively commandeering the conjured spell-form, Spirit Magic simply won’t work.’

***