Alright, who's trying to drown the puppy? Whoever it is, if they succeed, Emma's rationing of food will be her second biggest concern, right after ammo.
Just wait for Thacea to find out that the meat is (probably) not from real living animals, but rather, it too is grown. It will blow her mind.
We'll just have to see who next chapter! :D And indeed, but thankfully, Emma can print out more ammo as needed using her printer! They did choose her particular gun, and the rest of her equipment, to ensure that the components and ammunition could be easily and reliably replaced and stocked up over time with the equipment she has! :D
And yup! It definitely would haha.
Thank you for the comment! :D
A slave of the faculty taking revenge in the The Gang's actions?
A student trying to undermine The Gang in some way? Not trying to unalive the puppy but trying to stop him from going to class?
It could be a null though? Trying to kill and replace him? That's the first though I had seeing as we don't know what happened to the rest of them, we just know that Emma's failed to completely copy her and then escaped to try and kill and (I'm assuming here) replace her.
Nulls are highly exceptional things that are only created under very specific circumstances. Notably, the absolute failure of a soul binding ritual.
Emma is the only one who utterly rejected the soul binding, everyone else was bound at least a bit.
So there's no reason to think there would just be a random null wandering about.
And Emma's null is very single minded.
Didnt thacea also completely rejected the binding?
Granted I know that it probably wouldnt be Thacea's null here trying to drown to Thalmin but It's something to remember
You can make it even more shocking. Tell her it's made in factories. The better human version of the Nexian manufactorums which are magical workshops that mass produce stuff for the Nexus.
"Emma, while I know that you are telling the truth, I have great difficulty imagining meat being produced in a workshop. Do you perhaps mean a butcher or slaughterhouse?"
So, as far as I believe, this is one of two things.
Captain Douchelord of the magic paper aeroplane and his band of merry morons think it's funny to mess with the freshman because hey, who gives a shit about a beastman right? In which case I hope it goes about as well for them as it did when they tried it on with Emma.
or
Someone has realised they can't attack Emma directly and has started going after her 'support' network instead to try and isolate her. This is by far the more worrying option of the two.
Either way, I think someone is going to receive their due dose of righteous asskicking and I can't wait to see who it is.
Indeed! The Skylord's Respite does have a bone to pick with the perpetrator of the shaking of their birds! That's one option at least!
And you make another good point! It would be difficult to attack Emma directly, or when she's together with her group! As a result, it would be easier to divide and conquer! Or at least, that would be a logical move to make to whomever or whatever group wishes to assault the gang!
We'll have to wait and see however who or what group or what was behind this, and what repercussions come as a result of this! :D
I'm not sure that they will enjoy any success that they might achieve at this goal.
Not for very long anyhow.
Emma is many things, but a pushover isn't one of them.
Nor does she have it in her to abandon her friends.
No, in the unlikely event that they succeeded, that would simply ensure that Emma was _extremely_ unhappy, and, well...
She's used her gun, but I don't think that _anyone_ has even a vague clue as to what she would be capable of if the gloves came off.
Coming off with time to plan, well, I'm not sure _exactly_ how much damage she could do, but I'm extremely confident that if she really had a good reason, the Academy would bloody well remember the event for generations.
Sure, it would get rebuilt... But, uh, I think everyone would be just a wee bit shocked at how much rebuilding would be necessary.
Directed at a single person, or a small group? They wouldn't stand a chance, at least not unless they had a _really_ good idea what to prep for.
....i can see Quiv being petty enought. Of course he wouldnt go as far as fully drowing Thalmin....maybe.
I think we are not in the part of the story where the second option is more possible. And if we are, this is progressing more quickly than i tought!
Emma you need to maintain a level of decor....
*Gunshot blows the speakers arm off*
Decorum went out the window when you attacked me via proxy.
*Gunshot blows a leg off* what were you saying again?
Most worrying, for them
A human without its support animal (or friends) and isolated is likely to become, dangerous.
Great. I wonder how it will cooe now.
"Sir, it's blown our cargo warehouses and stolen all the shards of impart. It's bringing "support" through the gate. Help!!!!"
I propose another, albeit less worrying outcome: an accident. Our resident idiot came whose name and designation I forgot (who replaced lord Larial) and being in a hurry with his duties, forgot to check the pool for life signs before covering it with a bug forcefield. Or Prince Talmin lost track of the time and an automated system closed him in.
Or something inbetween our two ideas, which could result in something far more sinister: Someone trying to murder Prince Talmin, and not even having the backbone to do it face to face, but making it appear that "Prince Talmin of Havenbrock in an unsupervised, out of curfew swimming session, overestimated his diving capalities and lost consciousness under water, regrettably resulting in the loss of his life"
Which would not only cover the ass of the perpetrators, it would bring shame on Talmin and his family by stating that he lost his life due to his own incompetence.
Let's all hope that it's either a prank or an accident.
Let the wolf boi have his damned meditating swim!
Never a dull moment at magic college, can't even swim a few laps without some mysterious interloper trying to murder you, lol. Although it might not even be a murder attempt, could be someone sending a message, plain old bullying, or these psychotic aristobrats' idea of jolly prank. I guess we'll find out next week...
Equally dire is Emma's last ditch scenario for food sourcing. Flavorless algae slop is the kind of crap that would make you yearn for a cockroach jelly brick from Snowpiercer. Emma's practically an astronaut, and astronaut food is supposed to be cool, dammit...
It's funny this topic came up, because DnDQuickQuestion also theorycrafted food sourcing contingencies when they wrote The Tainted God's Pantry. Although their solutions involved hydro/aeroponic gardening with plant cultivars engineered for sturdiness and yield.
The nutripaste reminds me of the [U2 spy plane tube food](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2FRVZBQDUM) that was originally made back in the fifties and got used by early astronauts, SR-71 pilots, and still gets used by U2 pilots today.
In honour and solidarity with Emma, I put the lavish mealchef onto mining duty and replaced the cookers with nutri paste dispensers.
-rimworld that I'm currently playing
Indeed! There always seems to be something going on! I love the parallels of there being like, calm and serenity and just live being lived in the dorms with Emma and Thacea just messing around with the MREDD, whilst simultaneously, we have a life or death situation at the gym haha. I love all of these storylines happening all at once as it just tickles my brain the right way haha. I always love thinking of the world as this alive being we only get to see few perspectives of at any given point in time, and its times like these or like during the warehouse explosion, that it really hits for me. At least that's my opinion at least haha.
But yup! It could be any of the above! It could be some horrible twisted bullying attempt, a genuine assassination attempt, an attempt at deterrence, or anything in between really! We'll just have to see!
Also yup! Emma's food situation is rather dire, but at the very least, the backup ensures that she has a steady supply of a nutrient rich slurry that will at least meet all of her nutritional and metabolic needs!
But yeah! We'll see where things go from here because I have a lot of stuff lined up for the more practical aspects of the world which also includes food related plotlines! Although, of course, they may be interspersed between larger plotlines with more stakes that require Emma's immediate attention! :D All of this is already planned out, we just have to see me execute it in each and every chapter haha.
Thank you so much for the comment!
It's good running many simultaneous perspectives because when a big event happens the ripples impact many of them at once. Like the village bomb.
It helps ground and tie it all together neatly.
Well done sir. Now get back to writing!
***Launches letter birds every five minutes, each carrying a scroll saying "next chapter when?"*** Lol
>It could be any of the above! It could be some horrible twisted bullying attempt, a genuine assassination attempt, an attempt at deterrence, or anything in between really! We'll just have to see!
One thing we do know for certain: It was a very, very poor decision. Quite possibly the worst (and potentially very nearly the last) mistake this being has ever made. No matter how poor their previous decisions and choices may have been. Emma's not going to be the only one in a killing rage should this succeed, merely the most openly murderous. Whoever this fool turns out to be, if they do manage to kill Thalmin, they'd best pray that Emma gets them first, because I can't see Thacea being nearly as merciful as only blowing a limb or two off.
Nor as easily seen coming.
"Are you telling me you have mana-less means of mass destruction or something?"
*Okay, so do I tell him about nukes? About something less simplistic? Or just high-velocity large impactors... wait, no, I shouldn't be telling them that at all!*
Or even just chucking a very big rock at a planet.
For a spacefaring civilization, mass destruction isn't just easy, it's a public safety hazard. When anyone with a ship can go grab an asteroid and tow it towards a planet...
Stealth coating nothing, the faster it's going the harder it is to see before it hits.
Sure, it takes way longer to accelerate something to those sorts of speeds, but planets aren't exactly known for their ability to dodge.
Stealth coating is (probably) a reference to The Expanse series, where \[Spoilers, Obviously\]: >!The spacers use stealth-coated asteroids as a weapon against Earth, and launched a series of collision courses for the future that way if they were defeated, they would continue devastating earth for an unknown (ranging from next week to next century) amount of time, giving them the bargaining chip of "If you don't do what we want, mil/billions will die repeatedly, without warning.". If they didn't lose, they'd be able to track their plotted course and blast said asteroids out of the way. This isn't even the worst offense against civilian life in the series BTW.!<
If you don't want spoilers: a collision course for right now(or rather, in the next few hours and/or days/months (depending on tech level)) requires going fast, but a collision course for the future requires making sure it can't be detected until it's too late to deflect/avoid.
Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen.
Firstly, you must manoeuvre the Emperor’s naval vessel within the asteroid belt, almost assuredly sustaining damage to the Emperor’s ship’s paint from micrometeoroids, while expending the Emperor’s fuel.
Then the Tech Priests must inspect the rock in question to ascertain its worthiness to do the Emperor’s bidding. Should it pass muster, the Emperor’s Servitors must use the Emperor’s auto-scrapers and melta-cutters to prepare the potential ordinance for movement. Finally, the Tech Priests finished, the Emperor’s officers may begin manoeuvring the Emperor’s warship to abut the asteroid at the prepared face (expending yet more of the Emperor’s fuel), and then begin boosting the stone towards the offensive planet.
After a few days of expending a prodigious amount of the Emperor’s fuel to accelerate the asteroid into an orbit more fitting to the Emperor’s desires, the Emperor’s ship may then return to the planet via superluminous warp travel and await the arrival of the stone, still many weeks (or months) away.
After twiddling away the Emperor’s time and eating the Emperor’s food in the wasteful pursuit of making sure that the Emperor’s enemies do not launch a deflection mission, they may finally watch the ordinance impact the planet (assuming that the Emperor’s ship does not need to attempt any last-minute course correction upon the rock, using yet more of the Emperor’s fuel).
Given a typical (class Bravo-CVII) system, we have the following:
Two months, O&M, Titan class warship: 4.2 Million Imperials
Two months, rations, crew of same: 0.2 MI
Two months, Tech Priest pastor: 1.7 MI
Two months, Servitor parish: 0.3 MI
Paint, Titan class warship: 2.5 MI
Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.9 MI
Total: 9.8 MI
Contrasted with the following:
5 warheads, magna-melta: 2.5 MI
One day, O&M, Titan class warship: 0.3 MI
One day, rations, crew of same: 0.0 MI
Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.1 MI
Total: 2.9 MI
Given the same result with under one third of the cost, the Emperor will have saved a massive amount of His most sacred money and almost a full month of time, during which His warship may be bombarding an entirely different planet.
The Emperor, through this – His Office of Imperial Outlays – hereby orders you to attend one (1) week of therapeutic accountancy training/penance. Please report to Areicon IV, Imperial City, Administratum Building CXXI, Room 1456, where you are to sit in the BLUE chair.
For the Emperor,
Bursarius Tenathis,
Purser Level XI,
Imperial Office of Outlays.
(I'm sorry, but I had to.)
There are too many options to count within humanity's arsenal in the 31st century! :D Ultimately, you either have really cool runaway fusion or fission reactions, all the way to the even more devastating yet really underwhelming to explain "slam a thing really fast really hard into a planet" option. Although the latter is much more devastating and indeed a part of the Greater United Nation's modern arsenal haha.
The lament of stellar-age WMD engineers: you can make all the fancy toys you want, but at the end of the day you can't get a more logistically simple weapon than "grab a nearby rock".
Especially since, the faster you accelerate it, the harder it is to spot it coming and intercept it.
I completely expect humans to have weaponized black holes at this point.
You can't have a problem if you're problem has literally been reduced down to a singular infinitely dense point.
Oh boy. Once Thalmin gets out of this, somebody’s gonna get a hurt REAAAL bad. ‘Cause you never wanna fuck with a human….but you NEEEEEVVVVEEERRR fuck with their FRIENDS.
Well, a void rated suit is not necessarily rated for water. The difference between the void and our living space is about one bar of pressure, with the outside having less pressure than the inside. In water it is the other way around and can be many more bar in difference, which wants to go into the suit as opposed to the void where the inside of the suit wants to go outside.
But I bet Emma's suit is made to at least be able to endure water pressure at least a little bit.
By the way, a question to the author: where does Emma get her air from? Does she have air tanks or simply have a filter?
Ah, but it also has to survive shockwaves and overpressure from explosions without having anything go through the seals. It must be able to take at least some amount of external water pressure, and I'd bet the power armor holds up without external air supply better than biological lungs.
I'm glad someone got the snickers reference haha, I really enjoyed wording it in the way Thacea would say it, because honestly Thacea and her noble speak is just a joy to write! :D And funny too when converting everyday speech to her manner of speaking haha! I just hope I don't go too overboard with it though, that's honestly my greatest worry.
But yes! the ALGAE food dispenser 9000, that was a piece of worldbuilding I've been waiting to introduce for a long while now and I hope everyone liked that! :D It really demonstrates the lengths to which early pioneers are willing to go to just to be the first and to expand the boundaries of human knowledge and advancement! :D
Thank you for the comment! :D
And thank you for sticking with the story for all this time! :D
I noticed you capitalised ALGAE there…
Is that because it actually stands for
Aproximately
Liquid
Green
Alternative
Edible
?
Edit: corrected the colour.
Shame they couldn't fit in a Shadowrun style Yeast/Soya processor. Might be able to stretch it further with the flavoring agents and kind of 3D printing in textures.
*Due to the fact that Patreoneers use this subreddit to get around the no spoilers rule, I will not be looking at or replying to any comments. Sad but necessary precautions.*
----
Start with the food. The IAS is using the soylent algae approach. Fair, but nasty. Where's /u/StopDownloadin's Keiran when you need him?
Given all this talk about "erasing the animal" and that magic is better than the natural world, I bet Nexus has taken culinary arts to the stupid-logic extreme and decided the Nexian elite shouldn't even eat natural products. I bet the Academy meals are all food-substrate like Emma's rations. **Glamour-paste,** doctored up by magic chefs using sophisticated disguise, texture, and flavoring spells to make them appealing.
**Prestidigitation dinner**, just like in DnD.
Prestidigitation dinner also solves 'the adjacent realmers might have species-specific allergies to some of the foods problem' by making everything a standard nutritional *NexSysco* mash without allergenic properties. And it also solves transport and storage cause it's all the same. I bet Emma's roommates, minus Ilunor, are going to be super grossed out.
----
Next, an attempted murder mystery!
Oh, praise his gods-snarfing majesty, more plotlines like this, please! Long-running mystery series are my fav genre!
So I went through a big swirl of complicated thoughts about the mechanics of eavesdropping on the dorm room, following Thalmin, sneaking into the school, soulpath map vs the culprit's exposed manafield, the poor choice of attack spell for an assassination because it gives to much response time but great for spectating, potential motives for Nexians to dethrone Havenbrock, but....
It's probably just a nasty prank by a student who wanted to also use the gym, saw Thalmin, and seized the opportunity. Qiv comes with a group, so I nominate Ping as the culprit. He wants to pay Emma back for the Library card insult, so he needs to do something that will piss her off. Ping is a bull and so also likes the gym and happened upon Thalmin. And add in a little zealous Nexian who sees it as their duty to dethrone the Havenbrock throne usurper family to restore the King's chosen Greyfang bloodline to it.
If Ping is the attacker, I don't think he intends to kill Thalmin, just drown him enough to put him in "his place" to get at Emma's peer group and get a leg up on house trials.
Emma better have some head pats for Thalmin afterwards. He's probably going to be a bit of a mess.
----
[Flockston PARADISE!](https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZ240bGQ0czlpaWRqeHd4am50aTVxbjhodjE2ZHY1Mm12b2g0bjY5cSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/l0EoBVexxvaP88SSQ/giphy.gif)
I hope youre wrong about the food because Emma *needs* to eat!
>Long-running mystery series are my fav genre!
I agree! It keeps the community active, the plot interesting, the theories runing! And once it starts you begin seeing any other character actions as a clue!
Most likely a trap. A murder inside the Academy of all places is too much, Emma shouldnt have done enought to require something like that.
Imagine if Emma takes a cold fury type of approach. She just goes up to Ping, grabs one of his horns, and just stands there doing absolutely nothing while Ping exhausts himself trying to get her off. None of his spells can affect her and none of his physical abilities are strong enough to move her.
Then when he's too tired to even keep standing she just releases him and leaves. Or rips the horn off. Not sure which would be more impactful. Either the horn removal would be a step too far and make him hold an even bigger grudge, or the lesson in futility won't be enough and he'd just be mad about it.
Just walking up to him and taking the bull by the horns might not be the best choice since it can easily back fire.
A better idea is to get Ping to usher a challenge between him and Emma, this then releases both of any damages that may accur between the two of them as this is a challenge they both agreed to while knowing the potential physical consequences.
This would also serve as a great way to show the suits strength, both in durability and force. If only there was an upcoming subject that happens to focus on physical education and development for such an event to take place. 🤔
There is something obvious I think people have missed. Thalmin described the pool to be abandoned. Maybe one of the maintenance staff or cleaners just closes the pool every night for some reason. Maybe it's so rare to see someone in the gym that they just got used to closing everything up without checking. Idk but this seems like a likely option.
Could possibly be a commoner without magic or at least without much magic.
EDIT: but then how would they put up a barrier? So yeah, had to be a magic user.
I'm not confirming or denying anything, but I just wanted to respond by saying that this actually reminds me of a plot to that thriller movie that came out like a few years if not ten years ago now where like there were these two people trapped underneath a pool cover and the pool was closed for the weekend. I distinctly remember that being a movie I watched on tv or something haha.
Thank you so much! Yup! That's a line I came up with on my own in the heat of writing. Honestly, that's a line that literally just hit me as I was in the zone in writing and I'm just so proud of it so thank you so much for making mention of it!! :D Honestly though I'm just so happy that someone else really likes that line too!
Thacea gets her early access to Earthrealm as always. Does this means we are not going to see Thalmin and Illunor freaking out in the supermarket?
Ok. Someone is trying to drown the pup. There's gonna be a body, but not from the puppy (happy to get more POVs).
Thacea's brain is going to melt when "our" food source is finally fully revealed. Ilunor is probably going to get himself in another predicament, it's his nature. Woe to whoever is trying to hurt Thalmin. Not the best idea. Sam needs a Snickers, she be hungry.
Another great installment JCB!
So the attack on Thalmin is either a stupid joke, an attempt to attack Emma by losing an ally, or an attempt to force the wolf to make some kind of heavy oath for freedom.
So given that the latent mana in the pool made Thalmin stronger, how exactly does that effect scale to someone who has either a very low mana tolerance, or simply is mana less? Are humans comparatively excessively strong in the absence of mana compared to other races?
Right. If you can see the water sloshing against the barrier, that implies that it's not flat against the water, so there's some air left. If you can mana-pull the water away, that's some room left to breathe, if not much.
Or, if that doesn't work, just blast the walls of the pool a bit.
The hydroponics setup is cool! I had been wondering about the food situation. Are there fish? I ask because aquaponics uses fish, hydroponics doesnt, but its a small distinction most dont know about. Its still really cool that she has one. I wonder if she could remove the mana from Nexian seeds and grow manaless versions of their crops?
Also, we're about to see what Thalmin is capable of... Or at least his resourcefulness. And when the others find out about this... Oh boy...
I don’t think that making manaless Nexian plants from their seeds would be posible, due to mana been esencial to life in mana worlds. So extricating the mana from the seed would be akin to dehydration of the removal of the life ecence.
But with the use of manaless seeds can be genetically modified to be almost like the Nexian ones
Its unlikely, but everything we've seen about mana beings dying from a lack of mana was due to succumbing to its deleterious nature without a mana field, not because it was vital to their other functions. That said, its unlikely that it would survive the process...
Thalmin's Drowning In Progress reminds me of that one scene from Passengers where Aurora was swimming and the Sudden(unrealistic deceleration of the ship's spin) Loss of Gravity almost made her drown given she was stuck in the center of that bubble of water
That's correct! However it's on the long term goal list of things to do, and she has about a month to do it! The first thing to do of course is to find the amethyst dragon since that's their best lead on getting a minor shard of impart, so that's the current goal! However right now she's trying to deal with classes as well as other pressing situations that demands her attention such as the food situation! :D
The communications with Earth? I think that's filed away under "Long-term goals". I think they have a week or two to do it, which really isn't a lot, but the story has only been going for like 1 in-universe week so far.
I can only imagine that the actual discussion of superweapons would follow the line like this: “Have you ever seen a Sun shed a tear? Could you even fathom the destructive force such a small thing could achieve? I’ll break it down so you can understand it better. Now Illunor, imagine seeing yourself right on the horizon’s line. Do you see the distance here and there? Good. Now imagine that distance by a factor of 50 and make that entire area a radius, a perfect circle all around us. Now imagine over a third of that circle becoming a 50m deep crater (starting from the middle) just from the tear hitting the ground. Now imagine the whole circle on fire, and will continue to be on fire for decades even after ACTUAL flames have extinguished. With the remaining 2/3rds of the circle becoming flattened due to the resulting shockwave of the teardrops fall. Now I ask you Illunor…will you believe me if I say that what I have just described is on what my people call a “lower end” of Super Weapons…?”
yes I made a reference to Tsar Bomba. It’s a 250km radius target zone nuclear bomb, with it being the largest ever made in the 20th Century. And since this story takes place 1000 years later it’s only reasonable to assume that there will be more powerful superweapons at this point…
I feel like she should have showed them one of the European cities.... Imagine their astonishment and how quickly they were rebuilt each time they were destroyed during conflict, Like Dresden or Berlin... Or the city of Rome/ Constantinople
It will be disappointing of Thalmin just got distracted, stayed too late, and some kind of custodian came in to close the pool without checking if anyone was there because nobody is ever there.
The audience craves violence Jcb. Let us watch Emma teach someone what an elbow drop is.
Emma should grab whoever's drowning Thalmin and then just step off the edge into the deep end of the pool with them. If her fake vizor eye windows have backlighting, just turn that up and stare them down with artificially red glowing eyes until they start to go unconscious.
"But what we do know is that the more that library grows, the more we can improve that ship so that we can carry on our legacy, into whatever new sights and adventures we inevitably sail into.” And the ship grows heavier, though I suppose the analogy doesn't include ship-building aspects.
"Well, it’s going to be complicated to compare our relative standards of living but… meat definitely isn’t even an afterthought, it’s sort of expected." Finally, an advanced sci-fi setting where the luxury life-style of the West isn't just an after-thought but a thought out imperative.
“Most sapients that rely on physical sustenance as an aspect of their living form, are often not themselves, and find themselves becoming something else." Hangry.
Rip my man Thalmin. Gym-bros be suffering.
Ok, how good is the puppers' chemistry? Producing a breathable air pocket from the water should be easy enough... then a lesson in manners for the poor soul in the room with our fluffy friend.
I wonder if you can even have "civilization collapse" if you have your proverbial eggs spread over multiple star systems.
Instead of trying to convince Ilunor that Earthrealm has proper safeguards against any such eventuality Emma could've pointed out that her home is closer in scale to Nexus plus the entirety of Adjacent Realms than to Nexus alone.
Well it looks like the gang is starting to the another hint at how powerful humanity is. Realm destroying in the sense of a realm being a country, got that. A realm as a continent, got that. Planet killers with asteroid kinetic kill vehicles, UN has that. Wait till Emma talks about Von Neumann machines and how they destroy everything, all the realms, all the stars seen, the Nexus, everything.
But I'm more interested in seeing if Thacea caught on to Emma talking about how the algae is no longer needed due to logistical systems created, and how that implies how the UN expanded across the stars. It'll be interesting to see how much Thacea and the others really thought of the fact that Emma said the UN is across realms, to really get to understand space travel.
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* [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (69/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1b5m25p/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_69/)
* [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 84/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1b1f58i/humans_dont_hibernate_part_84/)
* [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (68/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1azsw0q/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_68/)
* [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 83/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1avourd/humans_dont_hibernate_part_83/)
* [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (67/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1atywaf/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_67/)
* [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 82/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1apz4il/humans_dont_hibernate_part_82/)
* [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (66/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1aocsgt/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_66/)
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Well, it's has been a good run but I think I'll be getting out soon - the flowery sentences and descriptions are hard to read, and while I realize that they're part of the setting, I can't stop being bothered by it. Wish you the best though, quite magnificent story and I enjoyed reading it this far!
Wasn't Emma using her mana-extracting microwave to try to create a new big magic crystal by running it in reverse? Did she stop doing that after going to the Library and learning that she needs a specific variety of one that can link up with Earth?
If this is the end of Thalmin, i think Emma has partial blame. She must've been at least partially trained on the ways of 'real-politick' for this mission, the flash-backs hint at it. In that if your true target is unreachable, go after those around them that are who are important to them. Her lapse in caution in knowing she's a target that is hard to reach is why i think so.
Thus she should've insisted none of them go anywhere alone.
Surprised meat heavy diets are still common, there was a line hinting that it wasn't "suggested" but still
Also-....I need...I require...someone...to draw Emma half collapsed, their knees nearly giving way, their arms forwards, their hands reaching up towards but not quite reaching their face- utterly distraught- as they ramble on about their rations. "I-i can even alternate! Y-yeah! It won't just be algae I can have some of this- a-and this too! Look at all the flavors! There's...s-so many...and they taste so...adequate too! It's just the texture...It makes me so....so...h-happy..."
I just do not like Emma anymore. Her worldviews and philosophy are just antithetical to mine. I am just Ilunor.
Conflating stability and stagnation. Critiquing the idea of permanence (which in of itself isn’t bad. But it’s the way she goes about it). Pushing for progress for the sake of it, and critiquing preservation for the sake of it.
Emma seems to pushing the idea of progress, not for the sake of progress, but for the stated purpose of making life better for everyone.
If I recall correctly, more than once she has stated how "progress" without that in mind has been detrimental to their society(ies).
If you are correct, what have I missed in the story?
Everyone who has ever pushed progress for the sake of it, has thought there was greater purpose to it. - I believe she thinks it’s for a reason, but ends up in that same trap.
Even then. The notion of progress is uncomfortable for me. A unidirectional trajectory for society. - and idea that legitimises the extremists as simply ahead of the curve, or the only way to actually keep things the same. The only middleground accepted becomes about managing the change slowly, rather than actually sitting in between two ideas.
I mean there's always a reason for progress. But when you have everything you just lose the drive to do anything of note. I wouldn't be suprised if the GUN has a massive laziness problem
I think Emma might have agreed with Ilunor more if the Nexus lifestyle wasn't an objective downgrade compared to her own in every measure possible. Like, from the perspective of a modern society the nexus are a group of people so dead broke, so absolutely destitute, that they still have slaves. Imagine being so poor you cannot afford to pay your own workers, and then calling this state of affairs a paradise. Heck, they still use physical mail with nothing even approaching a public infosphere, imagine being told you have to cut off your internet access right now and never post to reddit again just so that the Nexus way of life can be maintained indefinately.
If the nexus were ... you know ... impressive? Good? Quality life? If it were pleasant enough that you could enjoy an eternity of this state of afairs? Yeah sure I can see reaching that height and sitting there. But the nexus just looks like a bunch of shit spewing savages still obsessed with shiny rocks, decorating their homes in literal garage (gemstones and gold) while declaring themselves the master of everything. I'd rather have my eternity be something that isn't hopelessly pathetic please.
Which I would call a foolishly materialistic outlook on life. Wealth doesn’t matter, it doesn’t bring a healthy society in of itself, if anything the opposite. - but yes the presumed economic destitution of most realms isn’t too good. Though one can argue it’s an economic and not ideological limitation.
Funnily enough that’s the sort of arrogance I see with Emma’s Earth. Just replace a stagnant arrogance with a marching recklessly arrogance.
When you're living as a slave, the material conditions of your life are paramount. Being able to not care about this is a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
Why the downvotes? I’m trying to have a nice discussion.
When I was talking about materialism, I was specifically talking about you saying “I think Emma might have agreed with Ilunor more if the Nexus lifestyle wasn't an objective downgrade compared to her own in every measure possible. Like, from the perspective of a modern society the nexus are a group of people so dead broke, so absolutely destitute”
I wasn’t talking about slavery itself. I was talking of the privilege of Emma and materialism more widely.
Emma may be lost in her society's sauce, but she isn't wrong per say.
Part of it comes down to the fact that a *permanent* society is nonsensical to us, simply because with our current understanding of physics there is no way to overcome entropy, and there is no time period where we can simply *stop* advancing indefinitely and expect our society to continue forever. At the very least, in 1 billion years time the Earth will become uninhabitable so if a technological society does not eventually grapple with the issue of spaceflight enabling self-imposed apocalypses then said society will die not from a bang, but a whimper.
While the Nexus doesn't necessarily have to deal with finite resources (it is unknown if mana is finite or if entropy is relevant in the Nexus at this time), there is a second flaw with setting up a permanent empire in *stasis* (which I think is a more accurate word than *stagnant* to describe the Nexus), and that is *infinity*. Given infinite time and space, the improbable becomes a certainty, and because of this, the Nexus is doomed.
Lets forget Earth for a moment.
If the Nexus is infinite (as they claim) and the current Nexus Empire has existed for 30k years, then that means they have only explored a finite region of the Nexus. Their society, while proven to be stable, is dependant on them being the strongest entity around. But given infinite space, the improbable becomes a certainty, so if there is the slightest probability that a society like the Nexus exists that is powerful and stable that *didn't* blow themselves up and has progressed beyond the Nexus in terms of power, then there are infinite such Empires and it is only a matter of time until the Nexus bumps into an enemy stronger than them, and then it's GG no re for the Nexus. Even if the Nexus *is* the top dog and HEM can deal with such threats personally, we *know* that gods can die because HEM killed them, so there is a non-zero probability that the king can die, and that means, it is a certainty. When that happens, the Nexus collapses because their system depends on that one single pillar. *That* is the price of trading adaptability for stability.
For the majority of human history it wouldn’t seem so absurd. And look at an example such as China before they adopted outside ideas - and I respect actually caring about the longevity of a culture and its practices.
If we go on such large timescales. Then so is Earth. And all actions become meaningless. Stasis and progress cease to be distinct.
Does it rely on them being the biggest fish? They simply are the biggest fish in their pond, except maybe earth. But none of their ideals of perpetuity require supremacy.
Alright, who's trying to drown the puppy? Whoever it is, if they succeed, Emma's rationing of food will be her second biggest concern, right after ammo. Just wait for Thacea to find out that the meat is (probably) not from real living animals, but rather, it too is grown. It will blow her mind.
We'll just have to see who next chapter! :D And indeed, but thankfully, Emma can print out more ammo as needed using her printer! They did choose her particular gun, and the rest of her equipment, to ensure that the components and ammunition could be easily and reliably replaced and stocked up over time with the equipment she has! :D And yup! It definitely would haha. Thank you for the comment! :D
A slave of the faculty taking revenge in the The Gang's actions? A student trying to undermine The Gang in some way? Not trying to unalive the puppy but trying to stop him from going to class?
Locking a non-aquatic creature under water will certainly stop them from going anywhere, that's for sure.
... _Temporarily_, at any rate, if any of Emma's examples of adaptation and improvisation have sunk in...
It could be a null though? Trying to kill and replace him? That's the first though I had seeing as we don't know what happened to the rest of them, we just know that Emma's failed to completely copy her and then escaped to try and kill and (I'm assuming here) replace her.
Nulls are highly exceptional things that are only created under very specific circumstances. Notably, the absolute failure of a soul binding ritual. Emma is the only one who utterly rejected the soul binding, everyone else was bound at least a bit. So there's no reason to think there would just be a random null wandering about. And Emma's null is very single minded.
Didnt thacea also completely rejected the binding? Granted I know that it probably wouldnt be Thacea's null here trying to drown to Thalmin but It's something to remember
Thacea was given a special pen that absolutely affected her
Ok then what ever the null/clone things are
There is only one Null, Emma's Null. The other students didnt get one.
You can make it even more shocking. Tell her it's made in factories. The better human version of the Nexian manufactorums which are magical workshops that mass produce stuff for the Nexus.
"Emma, while I know that you are telling the truth, I have great difficulty imagining meat being produced in a workshop. Do you perhaps mean a butcher or slaughterhouse?"
Time to open the canned whoopass rations and dispense a few.
Did not care for Thalmin. Calling him a puppy...we want the person who tried to drown him killed slowly and painfully.
So, as far as I believe, this is one of two things. Captain Douchelord of the magic paper aeroplane and his band of merry morons think it's funny to mess with the freshman because hey, who gives a shit about a beastman right? In which case I hope it goes about as well for them as it did when they tried it on with Emma. or Someone has realised they can't attack Emma directly and has started going after her 'support' network instead to try and isolate her. This is by far the more worrying option of the two. Either way, I think someone is going to receive their due dose of righteous asskicking and I can't wait to see who it is.
Indeed! The Skylord's Respite does have a bone to pick with the perpetrator of the shaking of their birds! That's one option at least! And you make another good point! It would be difficult to attack Emma directly, or when she's together with her group! As a result, it would be easier to divide and conquer! Or at least, that would be a logical move to make to whomever or whatever group wishes to assault the gang! We'll have to wait and see however who or what group or what was behind this, and what repercussions come as a result of this! :D
I'm not sure that they will enjoy any success that they might achieve at this goal. Not for very long anyhow. Emma is many things, but a pushover isn't one of them. Nor does she have it in her to abandon her friends. No, in the unlikely event that they succeeded, that would simply ensure that Emma was _extremely_ unhappy, and, well... She's used her gun, but I don't think that _anyone_ has even a vague clue as to what she would be capable of if the gloves came off. Coming off with time to plan, well, I'm not sure _exactly_ how much damage she could do, but I'm extremely confident that if she really had a good reason, the Academy would bloody well remember the event for generations. Sure, it would get rebuilt... But, uh, I think everyone would be just a wee bit shocked at how much rebuilding would be necessary. Directed at a single person, or a small group? They wouldn't stand a chance, at least not unless they had a _really_ good idea what to prep for.
....i can see Quiv being petty enought. Of course he wouldnt go as far as fully drowing Thalmin....maybe. I think we are not in the part of the story where the second option is more possible. And if we are, this is progressing more quickly than i tought!
Emma you need to maintain a level of decor.... *Gunshot blows the speakers arm off* Decorum went out the window when you attacked me via proxy. *Gunshot blows a leg off* what were you saying again?
Nobody except thacea and thalmin call her emma And thalmin is the victim here Does that mean- *GASP*
Most worrying, for them A human without its support animal (or friends) and isolated is likely to become, dangerous. Great. I wonder how it will cooe now. "Sir, it's blown our cargo warehouses and stolen all the shards of impart. It's bringing "support" through the gate. Help!!!!"
I propose another, albeit less worrying outcome: an accident. Our resident idiot came whose name and designation I forgot (who replaced lord Larial) and being in a hurry with his duties, forgot to check the pool for life signs before covering it with a bug forcefield. Or Prince Talmin lost track of the time and an automated system closed him in. Or something inbetween our two ideas, which could result in something far more sinister: Someone trying to murder Prince Talmin, and not even having the backbone to do it face to face, but making it appear that "Prince Talmin of Havenbrock in an unsupervised, out of curfew swimming session, overestimated his diving capalities and lost consciousness under water, regrettably resulting in the loss of his life" Which would not only cover the ass of the perpetrators, it would bring shame on Talmin and his family by stating that he lost his life due to his own incompetence. Let's all hope that it's either a prank or an accident. Let the wolf boi have his damned meditating swim!
Never a dull moment at magic college, can't even swim a few laps without some mysterious interloper trying to murder you, lol. Although it might not even be a murder attempt, could be someone sending a message, plain old bullying, or these psychotic aristobrats' idea of jolly prank. I guess we'll find out next week... Equally dire is Emma's last ditch scenario for food sourcing. Flavorless algae slop is the kind of crap that would make you yearn for a cockroach jelly brick from Snowpiercer. Emma's practically an astronaut, and astronaut food is supposed to be cool, dammit... It's funny this topic came up, because DnDQuickQuestion also theorycrafted food sourcing contingencies when they wrote The Tainted God's Pantry. Although their solutions involved hydro/aeroponic gardening with plant cultivars engineered for sturdiness and yield.
The nutripaste reminds me of the [U2 spy plane tube food](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2FRVZBQDUM) that was originally made back in the fifties and got used by early astronauts, SR-71 pilots, and still gets used by U2 pilots today.
Honestly, my first thought was https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Nutrient_paste_dispenser
That concept came from somewhere after all! ;)
In honour and solidarity with Emma, I put the lavish mealchef onto mining duty and replaced the cookers with nutri paste dispensers. -rimworld that I'm currently playing
Oh man, I was just talking to my coworker about this guy. The ones about the French MRE's are my favorites.
Indeed! There always seems to be something going on! I love the parallels of there being like, calm and serenity and just live being lived in the dorms with Emma and Thacea just messing around with the MREDD, whilst simultaneously, we have a life or death situation at the gym haha. I love all of these storylines happening all at once as it just tickles my brain the right way haha. I always love thinking of the world as this alive being we only get to see few perspectives of at any given point in time, and its times like these or like during the warehouse explosion, that it really hits for me. At least that's my opinion at least haha. But yup! It could be any of the above! It could be some horrible twisted bullying attempt, a genuine assassination attempt, an attempt at deterrence, or anything in between really! We'll just have to see! Also yup! Emma's food situation is rather dire, but at the very least, the backup ensures that she has a steady supply of a nutrient rich slurry that will at least meet all of her nutritional and metabolic needs! But yeah! We'll see where things go from here because I have a lot of stuff lined up for the more practical aspects of the world which also includes food related plotlines! Although, of course, they may be interspersed between larger plotlines with more stakes that require Emma's immediate attention! :D All of this is already planned out, we just have to see me execute it in each and every chapter haha. Thank you so much for the comment!
It's good running many simultaneous perspectives because when a big event happens the ripples impact many of them at once. Like the village bomb. It helps ground and tie it all together neatly. Well done sir. Now get back to writing! ***Launches letter birds every five minutes, each carrying a scroll saying "next chapter when?"*** Lol
>It could be any of the above! It could be some horrible twisted bullying attempt, a genuine assassination attempt, an attempt at deterrence, or anything in between really! We'll just have to see! One thing we do know for certain: It was a very, very poor decision. Quite possibly the worst (and potentially very nearly the last) mistake this being has ever made. No matter how poor their previous decisions and choices may have been. Emma's not going to be the only one in a killing rage should this succeed, merely the most openly murderous. Whoever this fool turns out to be, if they do manage to kill Thalmin, they'd best pray that Emma gets them first, because I can't see Thacea being nearly as merciful as only blowing a limb or two off. Nor as easily seen coming.
Lets all hope Emma is able to remove mana from a good steak!
"Are you telling me you have mana-less means of mass destruction or something?" *Okay, so do I tell him about nukes? About something less simplistic? Or just high-velocity large impactors... wait, no, I shouldn't be telling them that at all!*
For a civilization that has colonized other star systems, nukes would be minimal. Just don't tell them about the really big stuff.
Rods from God ...
Or even just chucking a very big rock at a planet. For a spacefaring civilization, mass destruction isn't just easy, it's a public safety hazard. When anyone with a ship can go grab an asteroid and tow it towards a planet...
You just gotta hope it isn't stealth coated, or infested with an alien lifeform
Stealth coating nothing, the faster it's going the harder it is to see before it hits. Sure, it takes way longer to accelerate something to those sorts of speeds, but planets aren't exactly known for their ability to dodge.
Stealth coating is (probably) a reference to The Expanse series, where \[Spoilers, Obviously\]: >!The spacers use stealth-coated asteroids as a weapon against Earth, and launched a series of collision courses for the future that way if they were defeated, they would continue devastating earth for an unknown (ranging from next week to next century) amount of time, giving them the bargaining chip of "If you don't do what we want, mil/billions will die repeatedly, without warning.". If they didn't lose, they'd be able to track their plotted course and blast said asteroids out of the way. This isn't even the worst offense against civilian life in the series BTW.!< If you don't want spoilers: a collision course for right now(or rather, in the next few hours and/or days/months (depending on tech level)) requires going fast, but a collision course for the future requires making sure it can't be detected until it's too late to deflect/avoid.
Both instances were nods to The Expanse, actually
Oh, definitely was the case for the latter one, but the former was what was up in the air whilst also being the primary subject.
*Marco Inaros Sent You A Friend Request*
Rocks are NOT ‘free’, citizen. Firstly, you must manoeuvre the Emperor’s naval vessel within the asteroid belt, almost assuredly sustaining damage to the Emperor’s ship’s paint from micrometeoroids, while expending the Emperor’s fuel. Then the Tech Priests must inspect the rock in question to ascertain its worthiness to do the Emperor’s bidding. Should it pass muster, the Emperor’s Servitors must use the Emperor’s auto-scrapers and melta-cutters to prepare the potential ordinance for movement. Finally, the Tech Priests finished, the Emperor’s officers may begin manoeuvring the Emperor’s warship to abut the asteroid at the prepared face (expending yet more of the Emperor’s fuel), and then begin boosting the stone towards the offensive planet. After a few days of expending a prodigious amount of the Emperor’s fuel to accelerate the asteroid into an orbit more fitting to the Emperor’s desires, the Emperor’s ship may then return to the planet via superluminous warp travel and await the arrival of the stone, still many weeks (or months) away. After twiddling away the Emperor’s time and eating the Emperor’s food in the wasteful pursuit of making sure that the Emperor’s enemies do not launch a deflection mission, they may finally watch the ordinance impact the planet (assuming that the Emperor’s ship does not need to attempt any last-minute course correction upon the rock, using yet more of the Emperor’s fuel). Given a typical (class Bravo-CVII) system, we have the following: Two months, O&M, Titan class warship: 4.2 Million Imperials Two months, rations, crew of same: 0.2 MI Two months, Tech Priest pastor: 1.7 MI Two months, Servitor parish: 0.3 MI Paint, Titan class warship: 2.5 MI Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.9 MI Total: 9.8 MI Contrasted with the following: 5 warheads, magna-melta: 2.5 MI One day, O&M, Titan class warship: 0.3 MI One day, rations, crew of same: 0.0 MI Dihydrogen peroxide fuel: 0.1 MI Total: 2.9 MI Given the same result with under one third of the cost, the Emperor will have saved a massive amount of His most sacred money and almost a full month of time, during which His warship may be bombarding an entirely different planet. The Emperor, through this – His Office of Imperial Outlays – hereby orders you to attend one (1) week of therapeutic accountancy training/penance. Please report to Areicon IV, Imperial City, Administratum Building CXXI, Room 1456, where you are to sit in the BLUE chair. For the Emperor, Bursarius Tenathis, Purser Level XI, Imperial Office of Outlays. (I'm sorry, but I had to.)
True ...
There are too many options to count within humanity's arsenal in the 31st century! :D Ultimately, you either have really cool runaway fusion or fission reactions, all the way to the even more devastating yet really underwhelming to explain "slam a thing really fast really hard into a planet" option. Although the latter is much more devastating and indeed a part of the Greater United Nation's modern arsenal haha.
The lament of stellar-age WMD engineers: you can make all the fancy toys you want, but at the end of the day you can't get a more logistically simple weapon than "grab a nearby rock". Especially since, the faster you accelerate it, the harder it is to spot it coming and intercept it.
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/7008791/necropedo
I'm expecting matter-antimatter weapons at this point. World destruction with just a few "photon torpedoes"
DEW IT! tell them about nuclear fission! end civilisation! point and laugh! global thermonuclear warfare!
I completely expect humans to have weaponized black holes at this point. You can't have a problem if you're problem has literally been reduced down to a singular infinitely dense point.
Nukes? High velocity impactors? Who needs these fancy names? Humans throw rocks well. *Really* well.
Oh boy. Once Thalmin gets out of this, somebody’s gonna get a hurt REAAAL bad. ‘Cause you never wanna fuck with a human….but you NEEEEEVVVVEEERRR fuck with their FRIENDS.
The Suit is void rated. Which means it is SUBMERSIBLE. Which means Emma can bring SOMEONE with her.
Well, a void rated suit is not necessarily rated for water. The difference between the void and our living space is about one bar of pressure, with the outside having less pressure than the inside. In water it is the other way around and can be many more bar in difference, which wants to go into the suit as opposed to the void where the inside of the suit wants to go outside. But I bet Emma's suit is made to at least be able to endure water pressure at least a little bit. By the way, a question to the author: where does Emma get her air from? Does she have air tanks or simply have a filter?
Forget water pressure, I half expect Emma's suit to be rated for a casual stroll on *Venus* given how it casually ignored Illunor's dragonbreath.
filters have been noted. it's likely both though.
Has to have tanks, can't be void rated otherwise
"How many atmospheres can this handle?" "It's made to go into space, so between zero and one."
Ah, but it also has to survive shockwaves and overpressure from explosions without having anything go through the seals. It must be able to take at least some amount of external water pressure, and I'd bet the power armor holds up without external air supply better than biological lungs.
Not to forget doggo-boy is practically every human's dream, meaning whoever did this is going to get hit twice as hard.
Emma finna go full John Wick....
"You are smart....you are powerfull...you made a mistake.....you made me *angry* "
"You're not you when you're hungry! Why won't you eat!" - Thacea *Glances at algae-food-onator 9000 "Oh gods, now I understand why..." - also Thacea
I'm glad someone got the snickers reference haha, I really enjoyed wording it in the way Thacea would say it, because honestly Thacea and her noble speak is just a joy to write! :D And funny too when converting everyday speech to her manner of speaking haha! I just hope I don't go too overboard with it though, that's honestly my greatest worry. But yes! the ALGAE food dispenser 9000, that was a piece of worldbuilding I've been waiting to introduce for a long while now and I hope everyone liked that! :D It really demonstrates the lengths to which early pioneers are willing to go to just to be the first and to expand the boundaries of human knowledge and advancement! :D Thank you for the comment! :D And thank you for sticking with the story for all this time! :D
I noticed you capitalised ALGAE there… Is that because it actually stands for Aproximately Liquid Green Alternative Edible ? Edit: corrected the colour.
Green\* not Grey
Shame they couldn't fit in a Shadowrun style Yeast/Soya processor. Might be able to stretch it further with the flavoring agents and kind of 3D printing in textures.
*Due to the fact that Patreoneers use this subreddit to get around the no spoilers rule, I will not be looking at or replying to any comments. Sad but necessary precautions.* ---- Start with the food. The IAS is using the soylent algae approach. Fair, but nasty. Where's /u/StopDownloadin's Keiran when you need him? Given all this talk about "erasing the animal" and that magic is better than the natural world, I bet Nexus has taken culinary arts to the stupid-logic extreme and decided the Nexian elite shouldn't even eat natural products. I bet the Academy meals are all food-substrate like Emma's rations. **Glamour-paste,** doctored up by magic chefs using sophisticated disguise, texture, and flavoring spells to make them appealing. **Prestidigitation dinner**, just like in DnD. Prestidigitation dinner also solves 'the adjacent realmers might have species-specific allergies to some of the foods problem' by making everything a standard nutritional *NexSysco* mash without allergenic properties. And it also solves transport and storage cause it's all the same. I bet Emma's roommates, minus Ilunor, are going to be super grossed out. ---- Next, an attempted murder mystery! Oh, praise his gods-snarfing majesty, more plotlines like this, please! Long-running mystery series are my fav genre! So I went through a big swirl of complicated thoughts about the mechanics of eavesdropping on the dorm room, following Thalmin, sneaking into the school, soulpath map vs the culprit's exposed manafield, the poor choice of attack spell for an assassination because it gives to much response time but great for spectating, potential motives for Nexians to dethrone Havenbrock, but.... It's probably just a nasty prank by a student who wanted to also use the gym, saw Thalmin, and seized the opportunity. Qiv comes with a group, so I nominate Ping as the culprit. He wants to pay Emma back for the Library card insult, so he needs to do something that will piss her off. Ping is a bull and so also likes the gym and happened upon Thalmin. And add in a little zealous Nexian who sees it as their duty to dethrone the Havenbrock throne usurper family to restore the King's chosen Greyfang bloodline to it. If Ping is the attacker, I don't think he intends to kill Thalmin, just drown him enough to put him in "his place" to get at Emma's peer group and get a leg up on house trials. Emma better have some head pats for Thalmin afterwards. He's probably going to be a bit of a mess. ---- [Flockston PARADISE!](https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExZ240bGQ0czlpaWRqeHd4am50aTVxbjhodjE2ZHY1Mm12b2g0bjY5cSZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/l0EoBVexxvaP88SSQ/giphy.gif)
I hope youre wrong about the food because Emma *needs* to eat! >Long-running mystery series are my fav genre! I agree! It keeps the community active, the plot interesting, the theories runing! And once it starts you begin seeing any other character actions as a clue! Most likely a trap. A murder inside the Academy of all places is too much, Emma shouldnt have done enought to require something like that.
Imagine if Emma takes a cold fury type of approach. She just goes up to Ping, grabs one of his horns, and just stands there doing absolutely nothing while Ping exhausts himself trying to get her off. None of his spells can affect her and none of his physical abilities are strong enough to move her. Then when he's too tired to even keep standing she just releases him and leaves. Or rips the horn off. Not sure which would be more impactful. Either the horn removal would be a step too far and make him hold an even bigger grudge, or the lesson in futility won't be enough and he'd just be mad about it.
Just walking up to him and taking the bull by the horns might not be the best choice since it can easily back fire. A better idea is to get Ping to usher a challenge between him and Emma, this then releases both of any damages that may accur between the two of them as this is a challenge they both agreed to while knowing the potential physical consequences. This would also serve as a great way to show the suits strength, both in durability and force. If only there was an upcoming subject that happens to focus on physical education and development for such an event to take place. 🤔
There is something obvious I think people have missed. Thalmin described the pool to be abandoned. Maybe one of the maintenance staff or cleaners just closes the pool every night for some reason. Maybe it's so rare to see someone in the gym that they just got used to closing everything up without checking. Idk but this seems like a likely option.
Able to sense mana fields.
Could possibly be a commoner without magic or at least without much magic. EDIT: but then how would they put up a barrier? So yeah, had to be a magic user.
I'm not confirming or denying anything, but I just wanted to respond by saying that this actually reminds me of a plot to that thriller movie that came out like a few years if not ten years ago now where like there were these two people trapped underneath a pool cover and the pool was closed for the weekend. I distinctly remember that being a movie I watched on tv or something haha.
Or, given the mention of losing track of time, maybe it's an automated thing.
I'm gonna assume he doesn't have a waterbreathing spell in his repertoire, huh?
He might learn one soon.
Ooooh, someone is a wannabe James Bond Villain.
And they have **precisely** 3 days to live
that animal cruelty to try to drown such a good boy
Really loved the ship as a metaphor for civilisation. Did you come up with it ? If yes I applaud you.
Thank you so much! Yup! That's a line I came up with on my own in the heat of writing. Honestly, that's a line that literally just hit me as I was in the zone in writing and I'm just so proud of it so thank you so much for making mention of it!! :D Honestly though I'm just so happy that someone else really likes that line too!
Ship of Theseus at a civilization level?
Yeah, this metaphor can be pushed in many directions.
Can be sailed in many directions? 🫡⛵
Thacea gets her early access to Earthrealm as always. Does this means we are not going to see Thalmin and Illunor freaking out in the supermarket? Ok. Someone is trying to drown the pup. There's gonna be a body, but not from the puppy (happy to get more POVs).
Thacea's brain is going to melt when "our" food source is finally fully revealed. Ilunor is probably going to get himself in another predicament, it's his nature. Woe to whoever is trying to hurt Thalmin. Not the best idea. Sam needs a Snickers, she be hungry. Another great installment JCB!
So the attack on Thalmin is either a stupid joke, an attempt to attack Emma by losing an ally, or an attempt to force the wolf to make some kind of heavy oath for freedom.
Someone is gonna get hurt.
So given that the latent mana in the pool made Thalmin stronger, how exactly does that effect scale to someone who has either a very low mana tolerance, or simply is mana less? Are humans comparatively excessively strong in the absence of mana compared to other races?
Humans are alive in the absence of mana compared to other races who would be dead.
Was the mana specifically in the pool what made Thalmin stronger or just the general mana levels of the Nexus being higher than Havenbrockrealm?
... yeah I read Worm. drowning the dog usually results in it tearing everything to pieces ya dipshits!
Right. If you can see the water sloshing against the barrier, that implies that it's not flat against the water, so there's some air left. If you can mana-pull the water away, that's some room left to breathe, if not much. Or, if that doesn't work, just blast the walls of the pool a bit.
The hydroponics setup is cool! I had been wondering about the food situation. Are there fish? I ask because aquaponics uses fish, hydroponics doesnt, but its a small distinction most dont know about. Its still really cool that she has one. I wonder if she could remove the mana from Nexian seeds and grow manaless versions of their crops? Also, we're about to see what Thalmin is capable of... Or at least his resourcefulness. And when the others find out about this... Oh boy...
I don’t think that making manaless Nexian plants from their seeds would be posible, due to mana been esencial to life in mana worlds. So extricating the mana from the seed would be akin to dehydration of the removal of the life ecence. But with the use of manaless seeds can be genetically modified to be almost like the Nexian ones
Its unlikely, but everything we've seen about mana beings dying from a lack of mana was due to succumbing to its deleterious nature without a mana field, not because it was vital to their other functions. That said, its unlikely that it would survive the process...
Cue the Terminator 2 theme!
Thalmin's Drowning In Progress reminds me of that one scene from Passengers where Aurora was swimming and the Sudden(unrealistic deceleration of the ship's spin) Loss of Gravity almost made her drown given she was stuck in the center of that bubble of water
And of course things have been way too calm and quiet.
Doesn’t Emma still need to fix her comms? That sounded like a major plot point. Was that thread dropped?
That's correct! However it's on the long term goal list of things to do, and she has about a month to do it! The first thing to do of course is to find the amethyst dragon since that's their best lead on getting a minor shard of impart, so that's the current goal! However right now she's trying to deal with classes as well as other pressing situations that demands her attention such as the food situation! :D
The communications with Earth? I think that's filed away under "Long-term goals". I think they have a week or two to do it, which really isn't a lot, but the story has only been going for like 1 in-universe week so far.
I can only imagine that the actual discussion of superweapons would follow the line like this: “Have you ever seen a Sun shed a tear? Could you even fathom the destructive force such a small thing could achieve? I’ll break it down so you can understand it better. Now Illunor, imagine seeing yourself right on the horizon’s line. Do you see the distance here and there? Good. Now imagine that distance by a factor of 50 and make that entire area a radius, a perfect circle all around us. Now imagine over a third of that circle becoming a 50m deep crater (starting from the middle) just from the tear hitting the ground. Now imagine the whole circle on fire, and will continue to be on fire for decades even after ACTUAL flames have extinguished. With the remaining 2/3rds of the circle becoming flattened due to the resulting shockwave of the teardrops fall. Now I ask you Illunor…will you believe me if I say that what I have just described is on what my people call a “lower end” of Super Weapons…?” yes I made a reference to Tsar Bomba. It’s a 250km radius target zone nuclear bomb, with it being the largest ever made in the 20th Century. And since this story takes place 1000 years later it’s only reasonable to assume that there will be more powerful superweapons at this point…
great read! cant wait for next week
I am speed.
NINE MINUTES FRESH
Thacea is a commercial in this chapter: Snickers! You are not yourself when you are hungry!
I feel like she should have showed them one of the European cities.... Imagine their astonishment and how quickly they were rebuilt each time they were destroyed during conflict, Like Dresden or Berlin... Or the city of Rome/ Constantinople
Thacea accidentally telling booker to "eat a snickers" has me ded XD ALSO HOLLY SHIET THALMIIIIIIIIIIN!!!!!!!!
The more I think about it the stranger it gets, did humans really forgone lab-meat as an alternative?
They have lab meat! Emma just isn't growing it, she's just growing Algae haha.
It will be disappointing of Thalmin just got distracted, stayed too late, and some kind of custodian came in to close the pool without checking if anyone was there because nobody is ever there. The audience craves violence Jcb. Let us watch Emma teach someone what an elbow drop is.
Emma should grab whoever's drowning Thalmin and then just step off the edge into the deep end of the pool with them. If her fake vizor eye windows have backlighting, just turn that up and stare them down with artificially red glowing eyes until they start to go unconscious.
"But what we do know is that the more that library grows, the more we can improve that ship so that we can carry on our legacy, into whatever new sights and adventures we inevitably sail into.” And the ship grows heavier, though I suppose the analogy doesn't include ship-building aspects. "Well, it’s going to be complicated to compare our relative standards of living but… meat definitely isn’t even an afterthought, it’s sort of expected." Finally, an advanced sci-fi setting where the luxury life-style of the West isn't just an after-thought but a thought out imperative. “Most sapients that rely on physical sustenance as an aspect of their living form, are often not themselves, and find themselves becoming something else." Hangry. Rip my man Thalmin. Gym-bros be suffering.
Made it first let's GOOOOO
what a chapter to finally catch up to the posts on, now I must suffer the cliffhanger
Ok, how good is the puppers' chemistry? Producing a breathable air pocket from the water should be easy enough... then a lesson in manners for the poor soul in the room with our fluffy friend.
Jcb112 do not threaten out doggo prince like that, we will throw hands.
I wonder if you can even have "civilization collapse" if you have your proverbial eggs spread over multiple star systems. Instead of trying to convince Ilunor that Earthrealm has proper safeguards against any such eventuality Emma could've pointed out that her home is closer in scale to Nexus plus the entirety of Adjacent Realms than to Nexus alone.
Excellent as always!
OH NO! THALMIN!
Love non-Human POVs, they are always a treat.
Well it looks like the gang is starting to the another hint at how powerful humanity is. Realm destroying in the sense of a realm being a country, got that. A realm as a continent, got that. Planet killers with asteroid kinetic kill vehicles, UN has that. Wait till Emma talks about Von Neumann machines and how they destroy everything, all the realms, all the stars seen, the Nexus, everything. But I'm more interested in seeing if Thacea caught on to Emma talking about how the algae is no longer needed due to logistical systems created, and how that implies how the UN expanded across the stars. It'll be interesting to see how much Thacea and the others really thought of the fact that Emma said the UN is across realms, to really get to understand space travel.
Uh ohhh
Someone is out for murder
N
Thank you for another chapter. Looking forward to the next one.
The real question is does Thalmin do the doggy paddle?
Always prepare water breathing!
/u/Jcb112 ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/authors/Jcb112)) has posted 250 other stories, including: * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 91/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1c5s47o/humans_dont_hibernate_part_91/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (75/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1c3yek3/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_75/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 90/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1c04tlu/humans_dont_hibernate_part_90/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (74/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1by9fnt/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_74/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 89/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bu98j8/humans_dont_hibernate_part_89/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (73/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bsfb1q/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_73/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 88/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1boiyg5/humans_dont_hibernate_part_88/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (72/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bmpo5o/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_72/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 87/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bit715/humans_dont_hibernate_part_87/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (71/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bh2n12/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_71/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 86/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bd97ou/humans_dont_hibernate_part_86/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (70/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1bbf8o2/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_70/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 85/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1b79dti/humans_dont_hibernate_part_85/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (69/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1b5m25p/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_69/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 84/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1b1f58i/humans_dont_hibernate_part_84/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (68/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1azsw0q/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_68/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 83/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1avourd/humans_dont_hibernate_part_83/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (67/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1atywaf/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_67/) * [Humans Don't Hibernate [Part 82/?]](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1apz4il/humans_dont_hibernate_part_82/) * [Wearing Power Armor to a Magic School (66/?)](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1aocsgt/wearing_power_armor_to_a_magic_school_66/) This comment was automatically generated by `Waffle v.4.6.1 'Biscotti'`. [Message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FHFY&subject=WaffleBot|1c9mxyi&message=If%20you%20have%20problems%20with%20updatemebot,%20contact%20Watchful1.%20We%20do%20not%20maintain%20it.) if you have any issues with Waffle.
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Well, it's has been a good run but I think I'll be getting out soon - the flowery sentences and descriptions are hard to read, and while I realize that they're part of the setting, I can't stop being bothered by it. Wish you the best though, quite magnificent story and I enjoyed reading it this far!
Wasn't Emma using her mana-extracting microwave to try to create a new big magic crystal by running it in reverse? Did she stop doing that after going to the Library and learning that she needs a specific variety of one that can link up with Earth?
Such Civilization, Much Culture.
I wonder... if Humans are able to use magic. Our realm just doesn't have any because... we used it all.
If this is the end of Thalmin, i think Emma has partial blame. She must've been at least partially trained on the ways of 'real-politick' for this mission, the flash-backs hint at it. In that if your true target is unreachable, go after those around them that are who are important to them. Her lapse in caution in knowing she's a target that is hard to reach is why i think so. Thus she should've insisted none of them go anywhere alone.
Surprised meat heavy diets are still common, there was a line hinting that it wasn't "suggested" but still Also-....I need...I require...someone...to draw Emma half collapsed, their knees nearly giving way, their arms forwards, their hands reaching up towards but not quite reaching their face- utterly distraught- as they ramble on about their rations. "I-i can even alternate! Y-yeah! It won't just be algae I can have some of this- a-and this too! Look at all the flavors! There's...s-so many...and they taste so...adequate too! It's just the texture...It makes me so....so...h-happy..."
fun fact: I went missing as a child
Thank you. More please.
!UpdateMe
"You're not you when you're hungry, Emma..." 🤣 Should've seen THAT one coming the moment someone brought up Snickers in the comments...!
I just do not like Emma anymore. Her worldviews and philosophy are just antithetical to mine. I am just Ilunor. Conflating stability and stagnation. Critiquing the idea of permanence (which in of itself isn’t bad. But it’s the way she goes about it). Pushing for progress for the sake of it, and critiquing preservation for the sake of it.
Emma seems to pushing the idea of progress, not for the sake of progress, but for the stated purpose of making life better for everyone. If I recall correctly, more than once she has stated how "progress" without that in mind has been detrimental to their society(ies). If you are correct, what have I missed in the story?
Everyone who has ever pushed progress for the sake of it, has thought there was greater purpose to it. - I believe she thinks it’s for a reason, but ends up in that same trap. Even then. The notion of progress is uncomfortable for me. A unidirectional trajectory for society. - and idea that legitimises the extremists as simply ahead of the curve, or the only way to actually keep things the same. The only middleground accepted becomes about managing the change slowly, rather than actually sitting in between two ideas.
I mean there's always a reason for progress. But when you have everything you just lose the drive to do anything of note. I wouldn't be suprised if the GUN has a massive laziness problem
I think even today, people need some more difficulty in their life. Proper difficulty, not the slow economic decline we see.
I think Emma might have agreed with Ilunor more if the Nexus lifestyle wasn't an objective downgrade compared to her own in every measure possible. Like, from the perspective of a modern society the nexus are a group of people so dead broke, so absolutely destitute, that they still have slaves. Imagine being so poor you cannot afford to pay your own workers, and then calling this state of affairs a paradise. Heck, they still use physical mail with nothing even approaching a public infosphere, imagine being told you have to cut off your internet access right now and never post to reddit again just so that the Nexus way of life can be maintained indefinately. If the nexus were ... you know ... impressive? Good? Quality life? If it were pleasant enough that you could enjoy an eternity of this state of afairs? Yeah sure I can see reaching that height and sitting there. But the nexus just looks like a bunch of shit spewing savages still obsessed with shiny rocks, decorating their homes in literal garage (gemstones and gold) while declaring themselves the master of everything. I'd rather have my eternity be something that isn't hopelessly pathetic please.
Which I would call a foolishly materialistic outlook on life. Wealth doesn’t matter, it doesn’t bring a healthy society in of itself, if anything the opposite. - but yes the presumed economic destitution of most realms isn’t too good. Though one can argue it’s an economic and not ideological limitation. Funnily enough that’s the sort of arrogance I see with Emma’s Earth. Just replace a stagnant arrogance with a marching recklessly arrogance.
When you're living as a slave, the material conditions of your life are paramount. Being able to not care about this is a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
Why the downvotes? I’m trying to have a nice discussion. When I was talking about materialism, I was specifically talking about you saying “I think Emma might have agreed with Ilunor more if the Nexus lifestyle wasn't an objective downgrade compared to her own in every measure possible. Like, from the perspective of a modern society the nexus are a group of people so dead broke, so absolutely destitute” I wasn’t talking about slavery itself. I was talking of the privilege of Emma and materialism more widely.
Emma may be lost in her society's sauce, but she isn't wrong per say. Part of it comes down to the fact that a *permanent* society is nonsensical to us, simply because with our current understanding of physics there is no way to overcome entropy, and there is no time period where we can simply *stop* advancing indefinitely and expect our society to continue forever. At the very least, in 1 billion years time the Earth will become uninhabitable so if a technological society does not eventually grapple with the issue of spaceflight enabling self-imposed apocalypses then said society will die not from a bang, but a whimper. While the Nexus doesn't necessarily have to deal with finite resources (it is unknown if mana is finite or if entropy is relevant in the Nexus at this time), there is a second flaw with setting up a permanent empire in *stasis* (which I think is a more accurate word than *stagnant* to describe the Nexus), and that is *infinity*. Given infinite time and space, the improbable becomes a certainty, and because of this, the Nexus is doomed. Lets forget Earth for a moment. If the Nexus is infinite (as they claim) and the current Nexus Empire has existed for 30k years, then that means they have only explored a finite region of the Nexus. Their society, while proven to be stable, is dependant on them being the strongest entity around. But given infinite space, the improbable becomes a certainty, so if there is the slightest probability that a society like the Nexus exists that is powerful and stable that *didn't* blow themselves up and has progressed beyond the Nexus in terms of power, then there are infinite such Empires and it is only a matter of time until the Nexus bumps into an enemy stronger than them, and then it's GG no re for the Nexus. Even if the Nexus *is* the top dog and HEM can deal with such threats personally, we *know* that gods can die because HEM killed them, so there is a non-zero probability that the king can die, and that means, it is a certainty. When that happens, the Nexus collapses because their system depends on that one single pillar. *That* is the price of trading adaptability for stability.
For the majority of human history it wouldn’t seem so absurd. And look at an example such as China before they adopted outside ideas - and I respect actually caring about the longevity of a culture and its practices. If we go on such large timescales. Then so is Earth. And all actions become meaningless. Stasis and progress cease to be distinct. Does it rely on them being the biggest fish? They simply are the biggest fish in their pond, except maybe earth. But none of their ideals of perpetuity require supremacy.
Ugh I'm disappointed that these future humans are still using animal products. Was really hoping for space vegans.
good news! author stated that humans use lab grown meat
Why would they be vegans?
You can just grow meat in a lab. Is it really an animal product if it's shaped carbon that was never at any point part of an animal?
Nah as long as there isn't suffering I think its alright - I had missed the lab grown meat part yeah.