Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (32/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here's the Work in Progress for Chapter 32 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Thacea and Emma’s Bedroom. Local Time: 0500 Hours.

Emma Booker

I fucked up.

Big time.

And I had no one else but myself to blame.

You know that feeling when you dive head-first into a project that you had zero doubts would somehow work itself out in the end?

The sudden surge of confidence that comes as the indomitable human spirit suddenly takes the wheel, and assumes that just because you were having guests over for dinner tonight, that you’d be able to assemble the dining table, the countertop and everything else but the kitchen sink?

Well that was me at 0300 hours when my eyes landed upon the hygiene module, and pictured the inevitable outcome of a steaming hot shower after an entire day of nonstop grinding.

I couldn’t help myself but to fall into the same trap as every other would-be DIY-er. I couldn’t stop the excitement, the sudden surge of energy, and the absolute hyperfixation that came with completing a project that promised nothing but endless positives, at the expense of some time and effort that would prove minimal in the grand scheme of things.

My sights were set solely on the endless possibilities of what would come after everything was assembled and done, that I never stopped to ask myself if I actually could.

Or more specifically, if certain fundamental basics allowed for the whole plan to work in the first place.

But I’d read through the manual, and followed every procedure too.

I was this close to completing the task at hand.

However, reality came down hard when I got to the final, deceptively simple part of the assembly process.

A part that was, objectively, the most straightforward one out of everything.

Yet it was the one that doomed me, and had single-handedly turned all those hours of toil and sacrifice into nothing more than a complete exercise in futility.

FINAL STEP: REFER TO [UNDESIGNATED WATER SOURCE] FOR ATTACHMENT OF INTAKE PIPE [EIP23] TO EXTERNAL PUMPING MODULE [EPM-1].

That one, final instruction, decimated me.

Especially as I got to that final step at just shy of 0500 hours, when I finally had the entire damn module set up, only to realize that I had missed out on a vital pre-procedure checklist that I’d purposefully skipped because I’d assumed it would be a non-issue.

And that’s why I only had myself to blame for this fiasco.

Because I’d assumed that the availability of a water-source in the dorms would’ve been an open and shut case. It only made sense that that was the case, as I saw that Thacea had clearly used the dorm’s en-suite to shower just the night before.

It was because of this that I didn’t even bother checking the bathroom to begin with. I thought that whatever was in there could’ve easily fit the hyper-modular fittings of the source-intake pipe.

My thoughts couldn’t have been further from the truth however, as what I saw within that bathroom made me question the very fabric of my own reality.

As within those four marble walls, was nothing.

Nothing, but a series of dull flat marble surfaces, and some strange wall-fittings that looked like something out of a 21st century ‘modern’ art exhibit.

There was nothing here that resembled a tap, or even hinted at the fact that there were even any pipes carrying running water behind those four bare walls.

The only other thing of note here was an unseen light source keeping the bathroom lit.

Aside from that, there was literally nothing else here.

This meant I had only one option available to me.

The most logical and straightforward option, of simply nudging the avinor princess awake just so I could ask where I could find a fucking tap.

Whilst it was the most straightforward thing to do, I just couldn’t get myself to doing it.

I’d thought about going up those stairs to nudge the avian awake, to then apologize profusely for disturbing her sleep… but given everything Thacea had done for me thus far, and considering the fact that I was responsible for almost all of the headaches we were currently experiencing, it just felt wrong for me to disturb here at that hour.

So I was left with the inconvenient truth of my circumstances, and decided to just embrace the suck, toughing out the folly of my hubris…

At least, until morning came around.

At that point, I could rest easy in actually asking the princess for pointers on the enigmatic engineering that was the bathroom.

Until then, I would sleep.

And hopefully, my shortsighted adventure would bear some fruit when morning rears its ugly head around.

=====

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Thacea and Emma’s Bedroom. Local Time: 1000 Hours.

Emma Booker

Good news: My hard work actually paid off.

Bad news: It came at the expense of my breakfast.

Upon waking up three hours later, forcing my carcass up and back into the suit, I’d managed to flag down Thacea just as she was getting out of bed.

The princess’ reactions to my questions were… nothing short of the politeness I’d expected from her.

Which managed to put me at ease as I was getting worried I was starting to get on her nerves with my constant flurry of questions.

The bathroom turned out to be yet another demonstration of the Nexus’ completely unhinged philosophies. As it relied entirely on a mana user’s manipulation of the room to operate. Apparently, they took the whole concept of a modular, personalized room, and just ran with it. With every aspect of the room relying on the mana user to form, shape, and structure the space to their liking before use.

Thankfully, certain elements could be permanently turned on.

This included the water mains, which I immediately hooked up the pipes to, as the mana-contaminated water was quickly siphoned into a series of filtration units, all with the express purpose of extracting every ounce of mana present within the water.

This process took about two hours to do.

But by the end of it, I was rewarded for all my troubles by one of the best showers I’ve ever had.

All the stress, even the constant ticking of the bomb which now gnawed at the back of my mind, seemed to all fade away for a few short minutes as the warm water washed everything away.

The bad news however, came in the form of the little MREDD experiment from the previous night.

As I opened up the triple-pressure seal on the interior of the tent, I was met with what could only be described as cardboard.

The soft, white, fluffy loaf of bread had literally become a baton. Whilst the pancakes were now more reminiscent of a mini-frisbee that cracked and crumbled the moment I laid my  fingers on them.

The readings indicated that there was perhaps a power fluctuation from the dual-usage of both the shower and the MREDD simultaneously. Nothing that would result in failure of the mana-extraction system for the shower, but one that seemed to interfere with the environmental controls of the MREDD’s food extraction unit.

The EVI would need time to process the unfortunate outcome of this experiment.

But with everything said, this did make me a bit anxious of the long-term food-security of this mission.

The MREDD needed to work.

“Emma Booker, it is logical to assume that since the extraction of mana from both water and food is indeed viable, that the only point of contention is now the palatability of the foodstuffs rendered through the MREDD.”