Chương 87: 058 – Welcome to Irorimachi

Loren that found flying through Surcease was… well, one of the most boring flights ever. Perhaps it was the lack of in-flight fried peas. Despite the wide and clear windows, there was nothing to see but the bright pink wing, which in hindsight was probably to be expected of a planet perpetually covered by darkness. The view through the screen—which was no longer showing the 'kaiju incident' in Crashpoint City and had gone back to forward view—was only slightly less monotonous.

Occasionally, there were illuminated lines that had been identified as public roadways, usually connecting one town to its closest neighbor. Sometimes, there would be a mild yellow glow to indicate a town, but the boat never passed close enough to show them. This was apparently standard, so as to minimize the disturbance from aircraft engines. Of course, not many people were enjoying the view, because most of the normies were trying to figure ask the Kaedekin about the aforementioned 'soul' research.

They seemed to have rationalized it as the Kaedekin's term for memory engram recording, and were fishing for the extent Kaedekin used it in biometric security and machine learning, which… well, Loren wouldn't be surprised if the Kaedekin actually used it for those things. Normie rationalizations were often right for the wrong reasons.

The Kaedekin, for their part, answered questions as best as they could, though more often than not their answers were 'I don't know', 'Uh, I'm not sure how that's relevant to the subject, but I'll try to answer it', or 'that's not how that works, how did we get here?' Though Loren noticed that the Kaedekin seemed to notice when they were being misunderstood now, though their response was to try explaining it from the start, in increasingly simple words.

Commander Bronze probably noticed, and she wondered what he made of it. Then they arrived at the College of Flames. Loren had harbored mixed expectations ever since the College of Flames had been mentioned.

A part of her expected something like the college she attended, with centuries-old buildings (repairs and upgrades didn't count), tall shade trees, ancient garbage hidden in the most random corners, and random displays of childish political activism that no one cared about because students had no money and no influence.

Another part, the part who was a Pyrotheurgist, thought of either elaborate underground complexes with wide open rooms, overpowered ventilation, fast-closing blast doors, and Faraday-caged server rooms; multi-level penthouse apartment complexes atop heavily defended skyscrapers with wide open rooms, overpowered ventilation, fast-closing blast doors, and Faraday-caged server rooms; or private family mansion complexes on isolated islands in the American archipelago, remote mountain sides, private forests, seaside beaches or hot deserts, equipped with wide open floorplans, overpowered ventilation, fast-closing blast doors, and Faraday-caged server rooms.

Having done some of her own experiments, she had eventually seen why the ventilation and blast doors were important. The server rooms were just being paranoid and redundant. What she actually saw looked suspiciously like someone trying to use perfect geometric shapes in city planning again. There was always someone trying it every few years, never mind the fact that centuries of experience had shown the idea was unsustainable because it inhibited expansion and made transport a nightmare.

It had begun as a muted glow dead ahead of the boat, with a line of light leading from it and leading off somewhere to their five o'clock. It hadn't appeared over the horizon so much as slowly started glowing brighter as they had gotten closer. But then, Loren had already seen that this darkness acted more like gradually thickening fog than simply a roof over the world to keep the sun out.

She had expected the glow to get much brighter, to become like a city a night that she was familiar with on Earth, and was surprised when she felt the boat slow down well before she thought it should have, and found the glow had resolved itself into a complex ahead of the boat. The best she could describe the sight in front of her was that someone had made a giant crescent moon greenhouse. No, not a crescent.

A fang, thick at one end and tapering at the other, although there were outbreaks of expansion that made the shape less the result of intention and more of a happy coincidence. Through the transparent roof—and Loren wasn't sure if the Kaedekin would still use transparent steel or some other, cheaper material for it—she could vaguely make out an overhead street view. Streets, spaces with white grass and white-leaved trees, actual green plants, and various buildings of indeterminate purpose and uncertain dimensions.

The curving fang surrounded a thick forest consisting of very tall, possibly ancient white-leaved trees, although there was a gap between the two that might have been a circumferential road. A single road cut through the vaguely circular forest, leading to a smaller, isolated complex in a clearing at its center. Due to the height of the trees, the only feature of the complex visible was a tall, wide tower built out of what looked like stone.

It was too dark to make out details, and Loren couldn't be sure of the scale, but the tower rose well above the height of the trees. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. And then the boat was turning again, and the tower moved out of view as they headed towards the fat end of the curve to the base of the fang, where there was a large square area that wasn't covered like a greenhouse.

A quarter of the square was occupied by a covered structure that Loren initially pegged as a warehouse, though she revised it to motorpool when she saw vehicles moving in and out of it. There was some kind of colorful artwork on the roof, though again she couldn't make out any of the details. As they got closer, the nose angled low and clearly intending to land, she saw pink shapes that seemed to be the clones of their current vehicle.

Another square formation had tanks similar to the ones they had seen in combat in the Crashpoint footage, and there were assorted other shapes, vehicles that the Kaedekin either saw no need to keep under cover or were simply too big to do so practically. There also seemed to be a train station along one edge although the tracks themselves were currently empty, while a train sat at what looked like a small attached railyard, possibly undergoing maintenance or simply not in use.

Loren couldn't make out too many details, but didn't see anything in the way of turntables or tracks that split. There was a very good chance the Kaedekin lifted the train off the tracks to work on them… They landed and Loren got off with everyone, the Kaedekin picking up the replacement air tanks with their magic and just floating them along.

"All right, just to check," Namine called as they formed up at the base of the boat's cargo ramp, the pallets of air tanks lined up neatly to one side.

"How is everyone's air holding out? Does anyone need a replacement tank? No one? All right, then! If you need new air, just mention it. Seraphine, you're up." Seraphine skipped to the front. She'd put on her wizard hat at some point, her wand held like a cane in one hand. It spun in her grip with the kind of easy grace that said she'd been handling it for years as she pirouetted in place to face them all instead of just turning around.

"Hello everyone, and welcome to Irorimachi, the logistics and supply town for the College of Flames!" she said cheerfully.

"The College is one of the oldest joint education, research and manufacturing centers in the Dancer system, and is over four hundred and fifty years old. The college was originally established as a way for the at-the-time newly developed and growing number of Flame wielders to conduct research for more refined uses of their magic beyond 'set things on fire'.

Research began with trying to replicate the known spells of old Earth heroes—sorry, 'violent vigilantes'—" for some reason, this drew a laugh from the Kaedekin, although Loren knew she was missing some kind of joke, "—such as Black Queen, Red Jack, Bloody Mary, Frozen Garden, Magus Erebus, and the Sovereign of Twilight, Consort of the Abyss. Some of the research succeeded, some failed, and we opened up new avenues of research in the process.

Since then, we've been continuing our work in rediscovering all the old Earth spells, finding applications for the ones we already know, conducting research into the capabilities of newly emerged kinds of magic, and buildings things only we can build. Irorimachi itself is an emergency response hub, and in the event of a mass casualty event or large-scale destruction, the entire college can be transported to anywhere on the planet in as little as forty minutes to assist." She sounded very proud of that last part.

Inside, the part of Loren that had been told she needed to hide from normies because they would demand things of her they had no right to ask for and she had no obligation to give, and would hurt her to get what they wanted was screaming. The adult that had realized the normies unknowingly did more work to hide her than she herself did kept a straight face. And the wizard who could only get drunk on the placebo effect watched and listened very carefully to see what happened.

"I'm sure you have questions, and we'd be glad to answer as many of them as we can," Seraphine continued, the normal Kaedekin smile—effortless and guilelessly cheerful—looking a tinge proud.

"But if any of them are very technical, I'd suggest you hold off until we actually reach the college, where people a lot smarter than me can answer them better."

"What sort of things does the college manufacture?" Cooper asked, his voice recognizable to her from the last visit to the Kaedekin. He at least seemed to have adapted well to the fact the Kaedekin always gave straight answers to direct questions.

"Generators and medicine, mostly," was the immediate answer.

"Every town and city in the world has a College-made converter in their Pyrotheurgic Thermo-Electric generator, and college regularly mass-produces enhanced alpharmaceuticals for every hospital in the Dancer system! The college is also a major manufactory of enhanced amino acid nutrient fluid for mass production of cultured beef." Cultured… beef?

"Your meat comes from cell cultures?" someone said, putting it together much faster than Loren had.

"You don't raise cattle?"

"Ony for milk," Seraphine said.

"Cows can't really graze on this planet. There's too much heavy metal in the soil, they'd end up with toxic concentrations of metal that they'd pass onto us. Making meat with cell cultures is really the safest way for us to make meat into a common staple food, and even then it wasn't possible to make it a daily staple until the College developed enhanced nutrient fluid." The Kaedekin glanced to the side, where Loren noticed a… yup, it was a bus…

a bus and what was recognizable as a bulk cargo truck heading towards them. Both seemed to have turrets on their roofs, but she reserved judgement on that. After she'd just seen a giant worm thing rampaging near a city, having turrets on all vehicles seemed perfectly sensible, especially since she didn't know what the non-gigantic local wildlife was like.

"Looks like we have time for one more question before we need to board."

"Will we have a chance to sit in at one of the classes or observe one of the manufacturing processes?" a familiar voice asked, and Loren glanced towards Falling Stillness's power armor.

"I'm sure the College wouldn't mind, though that would depend on what's on the College's schedule for the day," Seraphine said as the bus pulled up near them, followed quickly by the truck.

"And I think that's enough questions for now. All aboard, please!" The Kaedekin were already floating the air tanks towards the truck.