Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (65/?) WiP 1 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! Here is the Work in Progress for Chapter 65 I hope you guys enjoy! :D

“Emma.” Thalmin uttered out with an uneasy and darkened timbre. “What is happening?” He pointed, expectedly, at the rapidly developing enclosure dam. As activity doubled, tripled, then quadrupled in a matter of seconds on the timelapse. With ships and aircraft buzzing around monolithic and motionless beams lying flat on their sides on either side of the harbor; and land vehicles scurrying back and forth with trailers full of eclectic and niche machinery.

“It is a dam.” Thacea finally managed out after all this time, her words spoken through a face seamlessly hiding the turmoil deep within. “They are constructing a dam.”

“A dam?” Thalmin parroted back. “For what purpose?” He then gestured at the two rivers further up the bay. “That is the wrong place to build a dam. For the only thing that would be controlling would be the flow of water either out from the rivers and into the ocean, or-”

It was at that point that Thalmin stopped in his tracks. His eyes suddenly grew wide with a look of utter shock as he turned towards me with an expectant, awestruck gaze.

“-to prevent the flow of water from the oceans themselves, from overwhelming the city, yes.” I answered, completing the lupinor’s train of thoughts without a moment’s delay as I gestured towards the dam.

“I will not ask if it is even possible, nor will I ask why.” Thalmin responded shortly thereafter. “The answers to both questions are quite obvious to me. However, I will ask you this - are your people so stubborn, that they would actively resist the very forces of nature signaling a time for your departure from such a geographically vulnerable chokehold?”

“Yes.” I answered without even a hint of hesitation. “That’s exactly it. We’re stubborn, Thalmin. And when push comes to shove, we won’t allow even nature itself to upend our plans. When we humans want something, when we humans value something, be it a place, an object, a resource, or even an ideal, we will commit to securing and defending it… no matter the cost. The impossible becomes possible when humanity defines it as our goal. So no matter what nature decides to throw at us, be it wind, water, or even the quaking of the earth beneath our feet, we treat it like any other challenge - an obstacle to be overcome.”

“Hubris.” Ilunor spat back.

“Oh is it now?” Thalmin shot back.

“It-”

“So when an adjacent realm does it, it’s no longer The Triumph of Sapiency, but Hubris, now is it?” He continued, completely upending Ilunor’s rebuttal before he could even form it into words. “Is Emma not speaking eerily like an elf right now, Ilunor? Or more specifically, a member of the distinguished crownlands?” He continued even further, driving home his point as Ilunor continued to shrink despite not shifting in size whatsoever.

“Thalmin raises a fascinating point, Lord Rularia.” Thacea finally reentered the fray, if only to add a point that bordered on the mercenary prince’s passive aggressiveness, but was delivered in a way that was more matter-of-fact than anything. “Do her words not run parallel to the teachings of Alarcar the Enlightened, or Estronar the wise? Does she not speak of the same triumphs of sapiency over the unthinking, unfeeling, savage and primal forces of nature? Does she not speak of the Great Four fundamental truths?”

Ilunor grew increasingly quiet, as his breathing all but stopped at that point.

“Earthrealm seems to very much pass all the checks of a civilized realm, Ilunor, let alone the prerequisites for a basic newrealm. Everything, from their capabilities down to their very defiance of the natural order, seems to very much match even the hallmarks of the Crownlands, no?”

Thalmin was, in a sense, rubbing humanity’s achievements up in Ilunor’s face much better than I ever could have. Considering he had both the vitriol of a defiant adjacent realmer, and the cultural context by which to make it hurt even worse than I ever could’ve managed, it made sense to outsource that bit of flexing out to the lupinor.

Moreover, boasting for the sake of boastfulness wasn’t my goal. It was merely a satisfying byproduct.

This entire exercise was, after all, still aimed at pulling the Vunerian in from the threshold of denial, back into a comfortable state where he was able to suspend his disbeliefs, to allow for everything to sink in at a steady, sustainable pace.

A few more seconds passed as time was slowed to allow for the major milestones of the project to be seen in excruciating detail. From the erection of temporary storm barriers, to the placement of cofferdams, to the draining of said cofferdams leaving massive empty chasms by which thousand foot-pylons were then thrust deep beneath the soggy bottom of the bay itself; the sheer scale of the project was unlike anything else seen before.

Yet it certainly wasn’t going to be the last.

As lessons from this project would be put to use in the following decades and centuries, leading to the foundational treatise by which further megaprojects would quite literally be built upon.

“A Nexian planar mage could have simply erected a dam of similar size and scale in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the effort.” Ilunor mumbled out under his breath.

“And yet we managed to do so without the aid of any mana in sight, let alone a planar mage.” I responded tit for tat, before turning towards Thalmin to begin addressing one of my prior points.

“Reaching a comparable level of greatness by means of mana-less labor and excruciating toil.” He rebutted.

“Excruciating toil which lessens and lessens with each passing year.” I shot back just as snappily, highlighting all of the manned and unmanned machines working away at the erection of the walls of the dam. “As we push forward for a future not dictated by the labor of men, but accelerated instead by the rhythm of machines. A future where the forge of civilization lies not with the whims of any one mage or group of mages, but by the voluntary participation of the entire citizenry; sharing in expertise, experience, and perspectives. For there isn’t one man who has the capacity to design every last component of this dam. Nor is there one man who can magically give rise to it with the flick of a magical wrist. Instead, there’s a team, a veritable army of experts required for the job.”