A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 599 - Overdoing It

'I really hope GAIA won't screw me over.' Eldrian prayed that this would all work out as he continued to wrack his brain.

"Evale!"

"Yes?" She was shocked to see the state he was in, having heard some of the conversations she still wasn't quite sure what to make of it. Diades was after all over a thousand kilometers from Kynigo.

"How long would it take you to get to Diades if you were to go all out?"

"That's over a thousand kilometers-"

"How long?"

"Traveling light, I'd make it in just over a day but I would be spent."

"If you take three?"

Evale suddenly realized what Eldrian was getting at. Eyes flying wide she prayed that it would not come to that. Prayed that Diades still stood strong, though no word had been heard from Diades for the past few days.

"So you would be able to fight and the distance would be a trivial matter. We need to prepare for if Diades falls, Elizabeth?"

"I'm afraid we did not go through Diades-"

"Um, actually."

Turning to the player, Eldrian felt a wave of relief wash over him. "Did you fix a teleportation?" He did not even bother to get the player's name.

"I did, is it-"

"Hurry back to Kynigo, talk with...", 'Fuck, whose left in the-' Eldrian turned to Jannet, "Jannet!"

Jannet got a bad feeling, "I need you to get her to the city as quickly as possible." Turning to the player, "Empty your inventory and take two of the inner cannons and as many cannonballs as you can."

Nodding the player looked at Jannet who was not happy with the deal. Shockingly, she got chills when she looked at Eldrian and saw the look he was giving her. Swallowing her pride, she threw the girl over her back and ran at full speed. Wanting to end the humiliation as quickly as possible.

'So some care and others don't.' Eldrian noted, "Evale," Suddenly the centaurette got a similar feeling as what Jannet had just received.

"Let me guess, we're going on an expedited mission."

"Yes, we will be going after the roaming undead." Eldrian nodded and looked towards Elizabeth.

"You will keep command of this group, approach the undead with care. Players first, NPCs only if you confirmed there is no higher grade undead in the mix. You can see on the screenshot which are dense and which aren't, go to the smaller ones while we are gone."

Nodding, part of every player itched as Eldrian just spewed words that should be kept from the NPCs. Luckily, the situation had evolved into one where everyone understood it was not the time to question the choice of words.

Grasping Evale's hand, Eldrian jumped and landed not so smoothly on her back. His mind was too on task to even bother thinking that he was riding on her back.

"Go southwest, there is a group of undead fifteen kilometers away."

Nodding, the centaurette started galloping at full speed. Eldrian was amazed at how close her and Ceph's speed was, at least on the ground it was close.

"I'm going to prepare something, when we pass them draw their attention and have them group."

Nodding, Evale reached them in just a few minutes. As soon as she saw the undead, she pulled off her bow and took aim.

The arrows she had left after the siege were not the best, but they were still plenty capable of killing skeletons and zombies in a single hit thanks to their enchantments. Not runes, enchantments.

While picking off the undead one by one, she circled around them. Causing the undead to all move close and closer.

'This should work, considering...' Eldrian mumbled, handing Evale the mana crystal which he had just added a few runes to.

She looked at him, confused for a moment before nodding and attaching it to one of her arrows. His runes glowing slightly on the surface of the crystal, not engraved. Something she had never witnessed before.

Letting the arrow with the crystal attached fly, it sailed through the air beautifully. Just as it was about to land in the horde, Eldrian let the runes do their thing.

As this was his first attempt, he had gone a bit overboard. Adding the entire combination of runes that he had used to help the dwarves against the reavers.

A total of 750MP in the runes, all going off in an instant. Destroying the structure of the crystal that contained another 3000 raw mana which quickly took on the element it was surrounded by.

Evale's instincts screamed at her. Having turned tail long before, she realized she would not be able to outrun the explosion.

"Duck!" Eldrian shouted as he jumped from her back and quickly drew the rune of fortification long with the barrier one mentally. The two managed to absorb a lot of the impact, Eldrian was still sent flying but Evale was mostly unhurt.

Luckily, he had also activated his items' defensive abilities. While he was seriously injured, having broken an arm and a few ribs, his life was not in danger. The distance Evale had made certainly had saved both their lives.

***

"What do you think happened?" Therdul mumbled after getting the call from Eldrian whose explanation on why they should hurry was very unclear.

"If I were to take a guess, he probably realized that we didn't have as much time as we thought." Erik replied, "We should focus on getting the first plantation up and running as quickly as possible."

"We haven't even been at it for a day, heck, we've just learned how magic is used to increase crop growth..." Grumbling, Therdul racked his brain for the most effective method of vertical farming with the crops available that would also incorporate magic.

There were naturally not nearly enough mages to have them use magic to speed up the growth of plants. It was possible, however, it was not cost or effort-effective.

Instead, in the center of each crop field, there stands a pillar, on which a system of arrays is installed. All the pillars of all the fields of a farm would work together, powered from a central point on the farm.

Depending on the need, the output could be varied. But what the array does is not actually enhance the growth of the plants directly. Doing so takes far too much mana.

Instead, the array simply tweaks the balance of the elements in the area. Normally increasing the nature element, which allows plants to grow much faster.

They weren't able to go into the details of how this all worked, but Therdul was amazed that it could also enhance the other elements. For example, in a dry year altering the output to increase the water element to help the plants grow steadily.

Again, it isn't that the array actually summons water and waters the plants. Instead, the increased water-mana density causes more water to condense and slowly move to the area.

And due to the fact that it did not directly modify anything a single small nail-sized mana crystal could fuel the entire formation for over a year.

Most shocking perhaps was that through this simple variation of mana density the crops truly grew far faster. Normally a crop rotation would only last one month, thus there were twelve harvest seasons in a year if the winter wasn't too harsh.

AN: A big thank you to everyone who continues to read and support the story on WN.