Apocalypse Redux

Chapter 223: Interlude Moon

“You know, I’ve been thinking, is magic still supernatural?” Patrick asked.

“It’s magic, isn’t it supernatural by its very nature?” Raul asked while tossing a piece of jerky into the air for his pet dragon, currently in teacup size, to gobble up.

“Yea- …” Karl began to agree, then paused “What definition of supernatural are you using? Some say that anything beyond the laws of science, that cannot be properly understood, is supernatural. But I include magic in my calculations all the time. Some of it, anyway.”

He shrugged “Ask me again in a hundred years, when we’ve definitively figured out whether we can scientifically define everything about it.”

“There’s also another definition, which says the supernatural is everything not following the laws of nature.” Raul said, gesturing at their surroundings “There’s nothing natural about this shuttle. Magic is making it work, and the laws of physics are crying in the corner.”

“Is magic unnatural, though?” Patrick challenged “It’s a part of reality now.”

“Or you could say it just got tacked on by whatever created the [System].” Karl shrugged.

“Think about it, we had the world work one way, with science explaining a lot, and for the stuff no one understood, it was something to figure out later. But what about all the myths, the urban legends, the cryptids? What if magic was still there, but at a low level, the stuff that got dismissed by the scientific community?”

“You’re talking about a whole lot of hypotheticals we can’t prove one way or the other.” Karl pointed out.

“But what if it always was there, at low levels, just suppressed?” Patrick responded. He was, of course, referring to the fact that they knew magic used to be around and gotten removed by the gods, but he couldn’t exactly say that out loud, now could he?

“Does it really matter, though?” Karl asked, “We can sort of understand and categorize magic, but do you have any idea how often I’ve run into situations where the laws of physics hold water with everything but the part I use magic for?”

“Do gravity, the strong force, the weak force, and electromagnetism all have the same rules, or do they each have their own, with a few being shared, that togehter make up the laws of physics?”

Karl suddenly frowned “So you’re saying that we should include magic as a fifth fundamental force? Electromagnetism, gravity, strong and weak forces, and the arcane?”

“Why not? It’s certainly fundamental enough.” Patrick said “It’ll take a while to convince the physicists of that, but …”

The whole argument was well thought out, but looooong.

“Is that what you think about when you don’t have anything to do?” Karl asked and Patrick nodded “I just think about what cool tricks I can pull with my new powers.”

“You know, this is another one of those ‘is water wet’ kind of arguments that really has no right answer and only depends on which definition you want to quibble about.” Raul pointed out and returned his attention to his pets. He wasn’t going to engage, now that he’d figured out where this was going to go, which was nowhere. He wanted to do something other than engage in a futile discussion all the way to the moon.

***

Most people in Karl’s situation would have been rubbing their hands with glee. They’d have looked like the stereotypical mad scientist and not inspired a whole lot of confidence in their work.

Sure, what he was about to do was indescribably awesome, but that didn’t mean he had to look like a lunatic in the process.

His mech manifested around him before he phased through the wall of the shuttle and gently dropped to the surface of the moon. Isaac had given all of them Aspects that dropped their need for air down to the bare minimum, so just holding his breath was enough to last him for almost half an hour. But who wouldn’t use a mech when the perfect occasion presented itself?

It unfolded further as the space became available, rising up to a full four meters in height. Muscles made from fibers that could lift the weight of a cargo ship at a millimeter of thickness. Armor plates that could shrug off hell- and dragonfire. Additional manipulators with sufficient fine control that they could manually assemble the most modern microchips in the middle of a hurricane. Thrusters that could enhance the weight of the expelled propellant as he fed mana into them, letting him reach hypersonic speed in short order. A scanner suite that had most labs beat.

Of course, it was more than just the world’s most advanced scientific multitool. A Demonlord Blood-powered cannon could pop out of his arm at the drop of a hat. It wasn’t quite as powerful as the car-sized, single-use assembly he created against [Raid Bosses], but it still hit like a meteor.

However, none of those were what really made it tick, that honor went to the part that was soulbound to him.

[Any Tool, Anytime, Anywhere]. It looked like an unnaturally liquid glob of steel that could shapeshift into anything he needed, but this went beyond mere hammers, screwdrivers, and gun frames.

By molding part of the mass to be non-conductive, having it line thin “circuits” that had become superconductive, he could essentially create a constantly changing and adapting supercomputer that outright ignored most issues that came with miniaturization. Figuring out how to make it work had taken, quite frankly, forever, and he’d probably taken up 90% of the university computer engineering department’s time while working on it, but it worked. It worked, and the one-cubic-meter machine was on par with most server farms.

And, of course, all his various material-reinforcing and tech-controlling [Skills] flowed through every fiber of this construct, taking it well beyond what its physical properties dictated.

Of course, none of that was, strictly speaking, needed here. He’d have been just fine going out in his pajamas, but who would do that?

When Karl’ feet touched the ground, he sank into the rock up to his knees, firmly anchoring him to the moon’s soil.

The [Aura of the Limitless Engineer] at work. He could infuse it into something to directly manipulate that object, to put himself inside it and work it on as precise a level as was needed.

When working on a scale as large as, well, the moon, that mostly meant ensuring he wasn’t tossed around when applying his powers.

[Visualize Creation] overlaid the plans that had been drawn up months ago onto the ground, then [Geokinesis] let him shape the rock as though it were just clay, creating a wireframe model that would have shattered under its own weight in seconds if it hadn’t been for his [Structural Reinforcement].

That took him around fifteen minutes, so he let go of his current breath and took another from the air tank clipped to his waist.

Now that he had a basis to work from, the real work could begin.

His personal storage space, the [Class]-based [Personal Warehouse], had been utterly stuffed with the needed materials before coming here, and a veritable flood of stuff flooded out.

Doorframes thickened and the groves to attach the pre-built airlocks to added themselves autonomously. Silicates transformed into aerogel mid-vacuum, one of the world’s best non-magical insulators clicking into place before moon-rock flowed over it.

Chunks of the ground began to refine themselves into raw metals, which were then combined with the trace materials he added from his storage, forming vastly superior alloys.

Mere seconds later the freshly gained metal shaped itself into the parts he needed, reinforcing the new building wherever it was needed.

More rock flowed over the top of the building to create the ceiling, which was immediately transmuted into solid crystal. A window with an unmatchable view, but vastly tougher.

Overhead, yet another person had to be rescued, having accidentally launched themselves into the sky with their enhanced stats. With a lot of the lower-leveled people, that usually left them flying through the air in a long, shallow, arc that ended in a huge plume of dust. Embarrassing, and the spacesuit usually needed some repairs afterward, but with no consequences beyond that.

But if you launched yourself away at almost escape velocity, returning to Luna firma would take forever and there was no guarantee that they’d manage to make it back without jetting off for a second time.

Therefore, the poor astronauts and their superb space-maneuvering capabilities were going to be on rescue duty for the foreseeable future.

Thankfully, Karl had a very good excuse for why he didn’t have to deal with that.

“How’s it going?” Raul asked as he stepped next to Karl. The ranger wasn’t wearing a spacesuit, or any kind of protective equipment, just a pair of shorts with a utility belt and a short-sleeved t-shirt.

Perks of having a [Skill] that made the area around him perfectly suitable for his habitation. A too-high temperature cooled, a lack of gravity compensated for with magic, that sort of stuff was easy enough. But it also extended to a complete lack of gravity and even eldritch beings altering the fundamental laws of reality, which allowed him to walk his dinosaur on the surface of the friggin moon as if it were a normal park.

“Well,” Karl said as another room was completed “All the rooms with ceilings already put in are ready to be pressurized, the biodomes will take a bit longer.”

“Ok,” Raul said and ensured that the rooms were fully habitable, then came out a mere thirty seconds later “I’m going to look at the Apollo landing site, do you need me for something else?”

Karl shook his head.

“Call me if you need me,” Raul told him and headed off into the distance, a dinosaur riding on his shoulder, a chihuahua-sized dragon bounding around his feet. The whole scene felt almost eerie, the lack of an atmosphere to diffuse the sunlight meaning that the illumination seemed unnaturally harsh.

***

A few hours later, Karl walked through the newly built and pressurized base, doing a final check. He hadn’t quite figured out the trick to moving around in one-sixth gravity, but that didn’t matter. [Structural Reinforcement] was set to strengthen any wall he came near, which meant he wouldn’t do any damage even if he were ricocheting off the walls and ceiling at every possible chance.

… which he was. Relearning every movement was a bitch. He was getting better, slowly, as was everyone else, but right now, the chaos at the moon base could pass for a three-stooges skit.

It would be funny … if it wasn’t his job to fix everything that got broken.