385 - The First Two Guidestones Pt. 1 [Sturmblitz]

A/N: I'm not dead. Just wished I had been for the first half of december or so. And then christmas.

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A clandestine expeditionary force made its way through the countryside — six figures in dark cloaks, all riding steel beasts faster than any animal, closely followed by a similarly-disguised humanoid tank — a UOT-314-01 Steelwing, the fastest mass-production third-model tank suit, if a run of nine total units could be considered “mass-production.” Chained to the Steelwing and to the tankmen’s blitzgandr bikes was a hovering cargo transport, dragged along like a great chariot at a speed far beyond the machine’s own capabilities.

Crovacus Estoras counted among their number. He didn’t dare to withhold something a powerful cultivator had explicitly instructed him to give to the Newman Sect. He had in fact handed over the guidestone to Zelsys Newman personally, mere hours before departing for this very expedition.

However, he had prioritized acquiring his own share of the spoils as quickly as possible, to the point of mustering a squad of Hellhounds to accompany him. This was not out of greed or some desire to get ahead of others — in fact, it was simple curiosity, perhaps even a sense of adventure that refused to be stifled any longer. What could that mysterious, masked man intend for his line, and what dangers could lurk in such a place? As far as he knew, this man could be a survivor of the Three Kings Era, or someone who had stumbled upon the Nameless King’s inheritance. His knowledge wasn’t particularly deep, but it was deep enough to know that the Nameless King had been the foremost master of blackstone among the triarchy.

What the guidestone “for the soldiers” pointed towards was an exceedingly well-hidden bunker. The guidestone acted as a navigational tool, and, when triggered in the correct location, it dissolved into black sand, opening a hidden gate.

It was revolutionary. This technology was unprecedented… And impossible to manufacture. The astronomical demand for cold-iron could be fulfilled thanks fo recent advances in materials science that allowed direct, reactor-assisted refinement of mundane ore into low-grade cold-iron, but that was just the start. Willowdale, even after its rapid industrialization, even with its current ability to manufacture new tank-suits and their underlying technologies, lacked the ability to fabricate more than perhaps 20 to 30% of what was described here.

Even now, having made great technological strides, after having unified a great deal of disparate research, after receiving much counseling from the Kargarian Iron Brotherhood and even several independent mechanical experts, Willowdale could not manufacture what was described here. The technological base was present, but fabricating even the fundamentals would demand entirely new tooling, and new factories would need to be built just to accommodate the advanced manufacturing techniques.

In fact, these technical specification documents blurred the line between “technology” and “artifacts,” to an even greater extent than the Bloody Zero had at the time of its original production — to compare any technology with that machine as it was now would be unfair, it was clearly a living artifact at this point. The individual components required not just highly advanced assembly machines, they even had to be assembled under ritualistic conditions. There were no full tank-suit designs to be found here, but that didn’t matter. Crovacus had learned a great deal during his tenure, as he personally oversaw all development of that crucial technology. And based on these specifications, he knew one thing: No human could pilot something built using this technology. Only a cultivator could withstand the forces exerted upon the body, and only a cultivator specifically trained on this technology could fully draw out the potential of a machine using it.

This was a true treasure trove, the only problem being that to properly make use of all this, new cultivators would have to be raised. The Hellhound Corps and the newly-formed chivalric Order of the Steel Serpent would surely more than suffce — Crovacus would just have to accelerate the projected development timeline a little. He didn’t doubt that the Walking Tribulation, who had time and time again secured his position, would support the formation of a second fully-fledged sect in Willowdale, even if it was unorthodox. The difficulty would arise in establishing and maintaining a sense of equal footing between the Newman Sect and the Serpent Knights… Especially if the other sects protested this defiance of tradition. If Crovacus needed to form the Serpent Knights as subservient to the Newman Sect, it would be a problem — not because of any of the current higher-ups in either organization, but because of the disciples on either side.

Perhaps even more impactful was the fact that, once the manufacturing base was in place, much of this could be applied on a lower levels. The common militiaman could be armed an armored to a standard unprecedented throughout history, save for perhaps the golden ages of the Ankhezians and the Three Kings. The civilian sector would also inevitably benefit.

Only an empty cavern was left by the time they were done with the place — Crovacus stowed much of the most vital items in his personal tablet, while the larger items, or those too unstable to be stored in this manner, were loaded onto the hover-transport. The entrance sealed itself behind them as they left, its surface eroding within moments to a state that could barely be distinguished from the surrounding rock even by the eye of one who knew it had been there.

Crovacus undertook the same journey not much later, this time eschewing the full escort in favour of two Hellhounds and his own son, Halxian. Half of his reason was that the journey was much longer, spanning past the historical Grekurian border, to a place just barely within the Blackwall’s borders, a journey that took multiple days even on blitzgandrs. The second half was that he knew they wouldn’t need nearly as much cargo capacity thanks to the guidestone’s hints. What they discoverd was no vault of technology… But a trove of ancient Grekurian blades and cultivation method fragments.