9.4

Testing things using silverspore nanomachines was fun. Eve didn’t think she would be a pyromaniac explosive ordinance nut, but explosions were fun. Of course, before she started blowing things up, the first thing that was taken care of was shielding. Autonomous shielding that didn’t require Eve to pay attention was absolutely the best. It looked like a strange cloud of nearly invisible sparkling dust floating around her person. Each layer was only a micron thick, and the shielding worked off a simple principle.

The OODA Loop.

She’d had the principle beaten into her, sometimes quite literally back on Earth. It was a core principle of modern warfare, and Eve gave no bones for stealing it. Magical worlds or not, the concept was one of the cornerstones of combat, and the Witch’s Dust made it beyond broken.

There were four core principles in action:

Observe.

Orient.

Decide.

Act.

The first shield would decipher the attack being used by observing it.

The second shield would orient all other shields to Devour.

The third shield would decide the most efficient method to eat the attack.

The fourth shield would act on the information of the previous three.

Each layer was a micron thick, but between the outer layer of her shields and the inner was roughly 1×10^(-7). A metric gazillion shields split into groups of four, and they extended in a cube covering all angles. While she practiced against Kudzu in recent time, he had spent the better part of three days trying to get through with no success. Her poor plant ally was distressed because, at the start, he had managed almost to hit her. Unfortunately, as the defensive groups were breached, the OODA Loop was teaching the silverspore nanomachines not only how to defend.

Eve’s shielding also taught them how to attack more effectively.

Eve was impressed how her Witch’s Dust could easily interpret her desires and transform them into true magic. Attacks would simply start disintegrating, be reflected, or even counterattacked. It took her a solid week to realize the silverspore had taught itself to create an offensive set of attacking spores outside the defensive shields. While the defense was being attacked, the offense was instantly taught how to rip the attacker apart into their component Elemental or molecular pieces. In a creepy twist, this almost always took the form of grey ashes, grey dust, or grey goo.

Grey, not silver, there was a message there, possibly.

Effective but complete nightmare fuel. Eve thought, watching a multi-ton vine turn to harmless sludge as it attempted to hammer her into a paste. I had to meditate into a semi-coma while reading since I can’t sleep from constantly imagining a Grey Goo scenario. Not a pleasant way to imagine the world ending at all.

Eve had a complete idea of how her passive defenses and attacks worked; that was all that mattered now. More importantly, she had learned the basic concept of explosions.

Magical explosions.

Which, to be honest, were 100 times better than normal C4, as she knew because she had experience with both. Magical explosions were colorful, explosive, and loud. All three core components of a good time. Witch’s Dust had zero problems in the detonation department. If anything, silverspore was rather gleeful at blowing things up by rearranging atoms or just splitting them.

Eve was impressed at the new expansion to the swamp she created while testing if she could split atoms. Fighting her ally, as she was currently doing, had led her to test the theory of breaking small stuff. As a result, a smoking crater two hundred meters deep and seven hundred and eighty wide was being gently filled by swamp water, currently to the side of both combatants. She contributed a bit to speed up the water fill by using Witch’s Dust to create a tiny runic script circling the blast crater, for increased rapid liquid movement. It had been an impressive yet lengthy combat test, and while Truth blocked the blinding flash quite well, it still stung. The smoke cloud rising in the air wasn’t anything to worry about, in her opinion. Everyone who was anyone knew there was a dragon here, so it wasn’t a problem for large-scale destruction to occur randomly. As for the Matriarch, her sleep was draconic. Which meant she wouldn’t wake for anything short of a direct threat, as doing so would interrupt the common method of true-blood dragon Leveling, sleep.

The immense release of energy from the blast had been devoured by everything nearby, from grass to insects. No creature allowed their buffet of food from the explosion to be wasted. Even the layers of dirt consumed the released power as if it was just another delicious treat. Witch’s Dust ensured that nothing harmed her body, and Eve could physically see the energy vanishing harmlessly over time. She watched as the energy that wasn’t consumed by organic or inorganic substances transmuted into Air elements. It was a fascinating process. Eve also gained a tiny window into how terrible the arrival of mana was back on Earth.

"Did you gain any experience from that experiment?" Eve asked Kudzu. It would be fantastic if she could apply such a simple cheat for bonus Levels.

"The energy released from the explosion is a tasty bit of nutrition but far from generating experience," Kudzu replied after a moment.

Essentially, Mana moves things from natural to Elemental, barring rare circumstances. Eve thought. The very fabric of reality shifts when mana is introduced. I can easily see every electronic device being destroyed on Earth as mana shifts electricity to the Lightning Element.

No wonder there were no nuclear fusion plants in the news of Tal Mor or history books she had found. Mana refused to play nice with anything that wasn’t elemental. Creating a steam engine might be possible, but why anyone would go through the financial effort to make one made no sense. A mana engine was cheaper, quieter, probably more efficient, and easily recharged from ambient mana over time.

There was no reason to invent technology that didn’t use the most effective fuel source, mana. It made a twisted sense to Eve, now that she more clearly was able to witness the workings of the universe through Witch’s Dust. Kudzu swung multiple vine tendrils, each tipped with a visible different rune. None managed to get more than a few centimeters into the shields.

Eve watched the thorny whips striking once more and snapped her fingers. Everything within her Zone instantly disintegrated into more Witch’s Dust. Kudzu flipped a vine at her in a clear signal of annoyance. She giggled as the one-finger salute pulsed on the vine’s tip. It had been a long time since Eve had so effortlessly beaten her alchemic ally. Thankfully, unlike most men she had trained with, Kudzu didn’t have wounded pride from losing to a female that wasn’t even his species.

“Cheating witch. Dust affinity is utter bullshit.” The vine said, splitting open at the end to reveal a talking mouth. Kudzu had moved from images to actual speaking vines after reading through the Common tongue for the Prison Plane. Both of them agreed it would be best if they could communicate if needed.

“Hah! Remember when you forced me to keep teleporting from multi-ton vine strikes? Or when you poisoned everything in my Domain to choke me out? Or when you spat high-velocity seeds at me like a Gatling gun? Turn around is fair play now, you vile alchemist!” Eve said, grinning sadistically with her sunglasses glinting.

“Tch,” Kudzu said. “Holding a grudge for so long, what a predictable thing for the Boom-Slicer to do.”

“Boom?” Eve said.

Both of them looked at the result of her atomic explosion.

“Ok, but that was, like, an accident.” Eve pointed to the crater. “I didn’t think it would work.”

“Ah, when my lab explodes violently, I can claim the same thing, right?” Kudzu said.

“Accidents happen.” Eve said after a pause, “You aren’t actually at risk of blowing up your lab, though, are you?”

“Of course not, but just in case, I like to have an excuse ready for the Hut,” Kudzu said with a sly tone.

“Excuse? What excuse?” Eve asked suspiciously.

“I’ll point to this crater and let the Hut’s imagination provide the insight,” Kudzu said.

“That’s a low blow, even for a plant,” Eve grumbled.

“On a more important note, what’s your plan for Tier Five?” Kudzu asked.

Eve created a chair and table to sit at before relaxing, “I’m not sure. After reading a few basic leveling guides, there seem to be two major schools of thought.”

“Up and Out,” Kudzu said, crafting a cup of tea and scones for Eve as she nodded at him.

“Exactly. I’m still undecided, Witch’s Dust is a nice hammer, and you know what happens with those.” Eve said, sipping her tea before devouring a chocolate scone.

“Sure, just fill the Matriarch with your vile silver minions and kaboom!” Kudzu said, “Seems like an easy nail to settle.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea. Dragons are magical bullshit murder machines.” Eve said, glancing at the rapidly growing grass by the slowly filling swamp crater. "What are the chances she has some Skill, Spell, Trait, or another cheat that turns food into pure Levels?"

“So, the copious amount of energy released turns the Matriarch into a Tier Seven with said draconic cheat. Then we are all eaten for a thousand years in agony before being digested.” Kudzu said.

“Yeah, that about sums my fears up,” Eve replied, crunching into another scone.

“Rituals then?” Kudzu asked.

“Ritual of Space to lock the Matriarch down. Ritual of Blood to cut her draconic regeneration. Ritual of Time to stop reversals. Then the Seven Sins Rituals.” Eve said, taking a sip before continuing, “If they all work, Witch’s Dust could eat her alive, in theory, while you kept her bound.”

“I’m sensing a lot of if in this planning,” Kudzu said.

Eve pointed off in the distance to her Hut, “Felix will eventually reach Tier Five. At that point, he can handle the Ritual of Space and the one with Time. You can do the Blood without backlash since you don’t have any. I’ll do the Seven Sins because I can return after they finish and kill me.”

“True, once both begin feeding on the mana swirling into the center of the swamp due to Felix’s spatial array, it shouldn’t take long to move to Tier Four before reaching Tier Five using the slaves,” Kudzu said, his vines swaying in tandem.

“You have feelers out at the bottom, right?” Eve asked before grabbing another chocolate scone.

“Indeed. I cannot look directly there, as it would immediately alert the Matriarch. Instead, I seeded the area with pressure-sensitive native water flora. The current changes in pressure suggest a deep sleep with long synchronized breathing that never pauses.” Kudzu said while his vines regrew over the recent practice battle site.

Eve nodded, “One of the things all the information I can find is draconic species are extremely sensitive to danger. However, it should be fine if we don’t raise suspicions. Some of the bones in the refuse pit we found are centuries old. It suggests she has been feeding here a very long time. Habits like that are hard to break.”

“If she does realize the trap before the Rituals strike, we’ll need a retreat,” Kudzu warned.

Eve finished the last tea and the final scone before replying, “Fine. I’ll explore as soon as I figure out the best method to sacrifice the incoming slaves. Will we be fine for the additional ten tons of BH2?”

Kudzu’s vine gave an OK symbol, so Eve rose to deconstruct the paper table and chair into Witch’s Dust. Teleporting to the Hut allowed her to take a luxurious shower with soap gained from the drow merchant. She would need to address the feeling of cleanliness as a matter of the expense. Buying soap in the middle of the Wilds was not a constructive use of funds.

I need to clear out everything hostile for a distance of at least a few thousand miles. Eve thought, scrubbing her hair with specialty crafted paper tools. We’ll need a massive distance to retreat before setting a secondary battle location. Kudzu didn’t say it, but we both know there is no escape once the first blow is struck.

Dragons never forgave or forgot a foe. All the books agreed, especially the dwarven ones. Either victory was gained in the first battle, or the entire war was lost. There were ways to ensure the Rituals of a Witch didn’t fail, though they were costly in terms of sacrifices. The best way would be to build two Ritual sites. The first site would be built around the feeding platform. That was what she called the circular space beside the bone pit. The second site would need to be at the tip of her explorations.

Both options would require time.

Fortunately, the Matriarch had recently eaten based on the bones they had discovered in the feeding pit. All indications pointed to at least a decade ago, at the earliest. If she planned on the worst, Eve would have around forty to fifty years to prepare.

If I can’t win, given that long to prepare, I can at least escape. Eve thought as she stepped out of the shower before fluffy towels began drying her off. The demand for BH2 will only increase, which is fine. Once Kudzu finishes the defenses, I can commence exploring the area.

Every book she had read claimed the Wilds were filled with two things in equal measure.

Treasure and Danger.