Chapter 201: Chapter 186: Exchange

South of Dawnhold, in an otherwise featureless plot of scrubland, grew a dome of stone. It looked like a commonplace, if unusually shaped, landmark, as if a rock formation had just happened to sprout in a perfect hemisphere, with no signs of brickwork or unnatural construction.

The construction was, of course, unnatural. Kranakellicium, the [Sovereign of Stone and Flame], had commanded the bedrock to rise, and it had obeyed.

I hadn't been involved in the setup, but Bruleg had apparently taken the enchantments needed for a null mana room and applied it to this dome in a manner that could be controlled at will. Alas, we couldn't exclude mana completely, because Darren needed it to open a portal. I had concerns about any attacks destroying the dome and its enchantments, flooding the portal with our mana, but there was little that could be done about that. I judged the chance of an attack to be low, and an attack that took out Bruleg to be lower. Worst case, he could control the mana manually, with what was obviously a rank five mana control skill.

Despite my suggestion, it had been built here rather than a dungeon, but was far enough away from civilization that I wasn't going to complain about it. Ironically, Serlv had decided against a dungeon because she felt the monsters could pose a danger in the event of any unexpected occurrences. With the Law, there was no way to let her know that was the entire point.

The trio of dragons, myself, Cluma, Darren, Tilyana, Horail and Vargalas were present. Enough big names that I hoped I would have nothing to do but translate our previously discussed trade plans, and maybe produce an occasional hand-eye-spider.

"All has been as well prepared as it can be," commented Serlv, overseeing the setup. Inside the dome, we had light crystals with attached mana batteries shining from the ceiling, a marked area of floor for the portal, and arrangements of potential trade goods. Small bars of exotic mana-rich metals, along with silver and gold, were neatly arranged on a tray, with potions, precious gems, magic crystals, monster cores and some enchanted items on another. There were several monster corpses on pallets, even if they were only smaller ones, as well as a chest of more conventional goods like clothing and farm tools. How much would work on Earth, and how much of what did work they'd actually be interested in, remained to be seen. Personally, I expected silver and gold to be the only viable goods.

We also had a length of steel cable, one end connected to a contraption provided by Vargalas. Lightning crystals connected to mana batteries would provide a demonstration of what was possible. I'd snuck in a few questions to Vargalas as he set it up, and confirmed that lightning crystals cycled between positive and negative at a high frequency, which explained how they worked without having two terminals or statically charging the planet. I was fairly sure real lightning didn't normally involve alternating current, but at least it was vaguely sensible. Unlike an ice crystal, which had less respect for physics than Cluma had for personal space.

A thought which made me glance over at the set of mana-enriched materials. A second later, my reflection in the ingot of tempulite turned around to glance back. Boy were those Earth scientists in for a good time, if we ever found a way for them to safely play with this stuff.

"Then let's get this over with. Darren, would you please open the portal?"

My little brother—clinging to Cluma's leg in his nervousness at being stuck in the middle of this important event—reached out into the room and pulled on the mana. Space rippled before us, spiralling in a disk. The wall behind the distortion seemed to withdraw and darken.

Why was he clinging to Cluma? Why not me? Was I not a reliable big brother?

Violet mana crackled around the edge of the disk, which by now was almost opaque. And then it wasn't. Unlike the Earth portals, Darren's were transparent. A perfectly clear window hung in the air, through which I could see the same barricades and armed soldiers as last time.

"Looks like I don't need to sacrifice a hand this time," I said.

ding
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
278 further administrative notifications follow.

"But we had best hurry up. The System just tagged a few hundred of them."

I thought they were planning to keep people away from the portal this time, but instead there were more? What were they up to?

I saw Bruleg throttling the mana supply, leaving enough to power the portal, but ensuring it wasn't draining the environment. Serlv was focused on the portal. Cluma was giving Darren head-pats, congratulating him for his good work. Tilyana was looking unhappy, which wasn't a great sign. Either it implied the voices in her head had fallen silent again, or else she really didn't like what they were saying.

"(Hello? Anyone over there?)" I shouted through the portal.

Someone approached the portal, again in a hazmat suit. Should we be wearing them too? Thankfully, it didn't obscure his face, and I recognised the wearer as Gregory Charles, the occasionally-nameless minister of extraterrestrial affairs.

Unnamed human, Commoner (1/1)

Still level one, and still unnamed, as far as the System was concerned.

"(You seem unconcerned about disease,)" he commented.

"(And you seem unconcerned about System encroachment; almost three hundred affected so far. What are so many people doing near the portal?)"

"(Three hundred? The range last time was less than a hundred yards, and we've cordoned off everything up to a mile away from this facility. The only people anywhere near are those already confirmed to be affected. We could all see 'connection lost' error messages.)"

I frowned at that bit of news. "(Then either you have a large encampment of intruders, or this time it's spread out more than a mile.)"

Mr no-name had been looking unhappy to start with, but that extra bit of news only dented his enthusiasm further. "(I have my concerns about how risky this operation is, but I've been instructed to follow through as far as possible, so let's just hurry up.)"

"(We agree. We've prepared a range of potential trade goods. Metals that don't exist on Earth, but they all incorporate mana into their structure, so what they'll do on your side is anyone's guess. It's very possible they'll decay into their non-magical base forms. And of course, silver and gold, which aren't magical at all, but we can produce ten kilo ingots that I believe have high purity. We don't have the ability to properly test them, though, so you'll want to confirm their purity yourselves.)"

If my suspicions were true that they were a hundred percent pure, their Earth value would hopefully shoot up. Refining exceptionally pure samples with Earth technology was expensive, and I doubted anyone would claim a one hundred percent pure ten kilo ingot. Our samples were far smaller, of course, because there was no way in heck we were giving them ten kilos even of silver—let alone the more valuable gold—at this stage.

I handed the tray of ingots through the portal, but my expectations were somewhat betrayed. While the various steel materials did indeed start decomposing, clouds of mana floating off them and dissipating into nothing, the mythril and orichalcum remained intact. Was it related to the way mythril and orichalcum could hold an enchantment indefinitely?

"(Interesting. The steel based materials decayed, but mythril and orichalcum—which are alloys of mana with silver or gold—survived.)"

Mr no-name stared open-mouthed at the tray, mostly at the corpusclite—which actually drew up and reformed itself into a bar as it decayed back into steel—before shaking his head and putting it down on a table next to him. Another hazmat-suited individual immediately approached, carrying a dim violet light attached to a thick electrical cable. Something to sterilise it with? In exchange, he handed over a container of their own.

"(For our part, we have physics, chemistry, biology, maths and engineering textbooks, up to university student level.)"

The institute was going to have a field day. Or a field century. We didn't have any fancy violet glowing things, though, so Cluma stepped up instead, blasting the container with [Minor Harm]. Earth bacteria were unlikely to have much in the way of health points.

I'd never really thought about it before, but how did life affinity mages cure disease? Life affinity was for healing, not killing, and I knew they didn't have any sort of sterilisation skill. An ability that killed bacteria but only when they were inside something else would be odd. Did they stimulate a natural immune system response instead? Likewise, how did life affinity cure diseases like cancer?

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Did the hospitals have secret stashes of death affinity mages that I hadn't had a reason to meet yet?

"(For other goods, we have corpses of some local wildlife, a crystal that stores mana, a few types of precious gems, potions and enchanted items, magic crystals, and some basic clothing and tools.)"

"(We can't take corpses without preparation, but we'll accept the others.)"

Heh, 'accept'. As if they were doing us a favour. Still, in a way, they were. Seeing the mythril and orichalcum samples survive their trip, I was legitimately interested in what else would.

The clothing and tools were obviously intact, being completely non-magical, but that didn't mean they were unchanged. Tools in this world performed differently depending on the skill levels of the smith that made them. Would that translate? These had all been knocked up by Grover, who wasn't the best smith in the world, but the tools should still be far tougher than the steel they were made from.

The potions didn't survive, decaying immediately on arrival. The enchantments likewise spluttered and died, even the preservation-enchanted box, which normally did a good job of preserving itself. The runes themselves remained, though, and based on my experience with Cluma's dagger, I suspected they'd revive if brought back into this world. The magic crystals behaved the same; with no ambient mana to draw on, they fell dormant.

The monster core survived. I could even see it with [Mana Sight], a glowing sphere floating in a completely empty void.

"(Of the magical goods, the monster core is the only thing that survived. It's possible those tools will exhibit interesting properties when used, but unlikely.)"

Mr no-name nodded and added the new trays of stuff to the line of things to sterilise. Which only left one more item on our list before we could close the portal and call it a day.

"(And finally, do you want to test an electrical supply?)"

"(I don't suppose you've matched it to the specifications of our power grid?)"

"(No—it's whatever the lightning crystal spits out. According to Vargalas, the frowny elf over there, it's AC with a 'high' frequency and a voltage he described as 'lots'.)"

Mr no-name sighed, but agreed to a quick test anyway. I tossed the thick, copper cable through the hole in our world, where it was caught by some people who weren't wearing a suit under their hazmat suits, but who did appear to be wearing kevlar vests. I wonder how one of them would stand up to a hydra bite? Probably not well.

Did Earth have anything that would protect me from a sonic breath? Did the sonic breath even respect physics to begin with?

"(That insulation could be better,)" complained the minister. Was no-one else allowed to speak to us?

"(We don't have plastics. Normally we'd have used the skin of a lightning affinity resistant monster, but we weren't sure you'd like that. Given your reaction to the corpses, I'd guess not. Plus, it would probably lose its resistance on the other side of the portal.)"

Thanks to the elves discovering rubber, we at least had something, but it hadn't been applied well, and then we'd wrapped the result in multiple layers of thick fabric. Not the sort of thing anyone would want to get close to, but hopefully it would survive a quick experiment.

On the other side, the workers had—with great difficulty, given the cable's weight and their non-System-boosted normal human strength—hooked the cable up to a box with more dials and buttons than an aeroplane cockpit, before standing well back and nodding at the minister. "(Okay. We're ready here. Flip the switch.)"

I signalled Vargalas, who activated the thing that was functionally equivalent to a switch. Having something to physically flip would have been more satisfying, in my opinion, but we had to make do with what magitek we had. Although, I did experience a substantial amount of amusement at the fact that the bit of equipment they were using to measure what we were producing was far larger than our generator.

Dials spun. Lights flashed. Nothing sparked or caught fire. A complete success.

ding

A complete success, I repeated, nervously checking my messages.

Working...

At least tell me what it's working towards, dammit! Worrying about what the System was doing on Earth was driving me crazy. As long as it stuck to dinging at people and cut off cleanly each time we closed the portal, everything would be fine, but when it came to things like this, it was hard to trust it to cooperate. At least a glance with [Soul Perception] still showed everyone on the other side to be Law free.

"(Bloody hell!)" exclaimed one of the workers, forgetting the no-talking rule, if there had been one. "(We're pulling a megawatt from that! How's a box the size of a toaster putting out a megawatt?)"

"(Magic,)" I replied, grinning.

"(And that's sustainable? You can build lots of those things?)"

"(There'll be a limit as to how much cable we can run through a single portal, but the generator is sustainable. It'll run like that forever with no fuel, and we could easily build hundreds of them.)"

"(Well, despite my concern over the risks of this arrangement, the payoffs are certainly tempting. We need to discuss things at our end and examine the goods you've given us. Can we ask you to open another portal in a week's time, and we can work out our next steps.)"

ding
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
1498 further administrative notifications follow.
You have begun to form a new skill
You have formed a new skill: [Language: Common]
You have begun to form a new skill
You have formed a new skill: [Language: English]
Skill [Engineering] advanced to level 6
Skill [Soul Perception] advanced to level 16
Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 27

Everyone on both sides of the portal suddenly sprouted looks of confusion, presumably having been dinged at and granted their respective language skills. Also, I levelled [Engineering], despite not really being involved in the experiment beyond picking up and tossing a cable. Not that I was complaining about that bit, but it was nice to have something nice to focus on against the background of 'oh crap' that filled most of that batch of messages.

"(Umm... I don't know if this changes your mind, but the System just tagged another one and a half thousand people, and has apparently learnt the concept of regional languages.)"

The temporarily nameless minister swore.

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