Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (61/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 61 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Local Time: 15:45 Hours.

Thacea

A Kingdom of fire and steel.

A Dominion of manaless sorcery.

An Empire that claims the void beyond.

To say that I was curious about the demonstration ahead would be a disservice to the word and the concept it purported to represent.

To describe my current state as anything but excited, would be akin to describing the newrealmer as anything but exceptional.

For what lies in store for a people that should not exist?

What sights should be expected from a civilization that should not have surpassed the age of flame and muddied brick?

Could a sight, any sight for that matter, live up to the exceedingly high bar set by their seemingly antithetical nature? Alluded to by carefully chosen, yet fundamentally incongruent descriptors of an impossible world?

Perhaps not.

Or perhaps, there was still something yet to be said for the element of the unknown.

For if I were to ask myself frankly: ‘just how different can a realm truly be?’

I need only look to the alien and foreign structures that have become fixtures within a space not meant for their existence.

Moreover, I need only look at Emma’s newfound efforts at constructing what appeared to be a ring of steel with glass pillars, connected via the snake-like umbilicals to that loud humming box which gave life to these reality-defying constructs.

If this was her sight seer?

Then it proved one thing about her realm that has been consistent all throughout our interactions.

Their dedication to overcoming that which should have been their functional limitations, by circumventing the natural order itself, to brute force into existence principles that should not be possible without mana.

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Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Local Time: 15:45 Hours.

Thalmin

The unexpected.

That’s what the newrealmer embodied.

For with each passing moment came even more challenges to the worldview I thought was infallible.

Part of me was undeniably excited, jovial, utterly ecstatic at what the newrealmer had hinted, teased, and alluded to over the past five days.

Yet another part of me was terrified of what was in store.

But this wasn’t necessarily a fear of the unknown, nor was it a fear of raw power.

It was more so a fear of the decisions that would come next, should Thacea’s assumptions over Emma’s realm turn out to be true.

For what was being proposed wasn’t just a realm amongst adjacent realms, but a realm above the rest.

Part of me wished to embrace the disruption of the status quo that would inevitably follow from this.

But the fear that came with it was undeniable. Especially as I stared into the impossibly dark abyss of the curtains the newrealmer was putting up.

With the help of a fifth arm.

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Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Local Time: 15:45 Hours.

Ilunor

“WHAT IN HIS MAJESTY’S NAME IS THAT?!” I couldn’t help but to shout in utter disgust. As a wave of nauseating unease filled my form.

What had started out as a prolonged exercise in patience as the newrealmer began assembling her mana-less sight-seer, had suddenly evolved into a demonstration of body horror of unimaginable proportions.

I felt an overwhelming urge to express my fear and disgust, especially with the looming, multi-jointed arm that ended in a series of three claws that hovered ominously over me, but I maintained my posture as best as I could; unwilling to give in to the attempts at the newrealmer to soften me up prior to her demonstration.

This was all a standard ploy, to weaken my mental constitution, and thus leave me open to suggestion when her tricks came to play.

“Oh, crap, erm. I apologize guys. I should’ve told you about this earlier.” The newrealmer chuckled, reaching her normal arm up towards her back where this abomination of an appendage had originated from. Like a spider or some such abominable creature, it continued moving about on its own, divorced from her torso’s movements, as it began aiding in the construction of what was ostensibly a darkened tent around this circular metal construct. “It’s just my ARMS.” The earthrealmer spoke in this sing-song, lackadaisical, almost sarcastic tone of voice. As if she was amused by the whole affair. “In all seriousness, that’s just short for Augmented Remote Manipulator System, technical-speak for what amounts to just an extra artificed arm that’s used to aid me in these tricky aspects of assembly that would otherwise require two or more helping hands.”

I glared at the newrealmer for the longest while, expressing my discontent through my silence as I hrmphd out in disgust. “If your realm follows a similar trend to your naming conventions, namely, a gross overuse of descriptors with nothing to show for it… then I’d say all of your efforts in assembling this abomination of a sight-seer has been an exercise in futility.”

“Don’t hold your breath Ilunor, you might just end up purple.” The newrealmer shot back with not a hint of frustration but instead bemusement.

What exactly she has to be amused about is beyond me.

For if that castle earlier was of any indication, I expect at best a realm of well played actors, playing the facade of a middling realm with one or two clever novel tricks.

Mud and sticks they might not be.

But deific crownlands they surely aren’t.

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Dragon’s Heart Tower, Level 23, Residence 30. Local Time: 15:45 Hours.

Emma

The prep time was the most annoying thing about this. And it wasn’t because it was hard or anything. The EVI was doing most of the work with the precise calibrations and calculations needed to make this overcomplicated lightshow work.

The holo-projector was an older model, one that was Aggre-Printer friendly, where every one of its components could be printed off of a MS Class IX printer.

Which meant that its operation was both reliable, but also annoying to someone born in the last two hundred years after the advent of stable-holos.

For the ZNK-19 was a blast from that past, requiring a static rail that took up the circumference of about a third of our bedroom, five light-emitting arrays that would go around and around on the aforementioned track, and a black-out tent to maximize its contrast and thus its visual effect.

The projection started differently to that of the rest of the gang’s similarly fantastical methods of holographic projection. As unlike their seemingly organic means of morphing the world around to fit the content of their recordings, the human method very much embraced the artificiality behind the fundamental mechanisms of its operation. For as the gang stepped foot inside of the borders of the holoprojector, several things began happening almost immediately.