The Primal Hunter

Some realities remained, such as the constant requirement for funding, but he had found such a thing was attainable through simple trade, and with the man called Sultan, he had a financial broker to handle any products he no longer needed while acquiring new raw materials.

Of course, one could not forget Haven itself and Lord Thayne, providing him with new interesting objects and paths for obtaining high-level goods. The Treasure Hunt and subsequent Auction had already been an exemplary learning experience, allowing him to collect technology of Yalsten to disassemble and learn from.

Many creations were under construction, hundreds of blueprints had been created, and his head contained ideas for thousands of potential inventions or recreations. His most impressive right now was called New Horizon and had recently been put into operation.

New Horizon was an exploratory vessel sent out into space, and to his knowledge, this was the first time a man-made object of their planet had entered space since the integration. It had not been an easy task making that a possibility. Firstly, the skies on Earth were now incredibly dangerous, and there were many natural barriers. He also theorized that the atmosphere would kill most creatures mid-to-late-tier C-grade trying to pass through, and even if one made it to space, the dangers were far from gone as the concept of a vacuum was not as absolute anymore. Space held many dangers.

At least there was enough of a vacuum for New Horizen to still have constant acceleration as it absorbed mana from the atmosphere. But once more, the biggest challenge had been the atmosphere, as most powerful creatures in the sky ignored unmanned vessels.

The key had been an item from the Auction:

[Damaged Transportation Pod (Rare)] – A pod created to transport individuals over a long distance. This pod was originally made to allow the weaker denizens of Yalsten to travel outside their realm safely through wormholes, and the vehicle has an incredibly high resistance to all space magic. The inside of the pod is spatially expanded. Due to damages incurred during an escape and subsequent decay of the entire vehicle, it has led to a severe decrease in rarity. The pod is still functional but has severely limited speed and limited spatial expansion. During the escape, the generator was damaged, making the pod require constant power infusion too.

Arnold had completely disassembled the pod to use its skeleton. The materials used on the vessel’s surface were made of a special metal that seemed to almost ignore the heat and much of the other concepts that would hurt something exiting the atmosphere.

He saw no use for the spatial expansion feature and had gotten rid of those parts entirely as he filled the pod with modules to optimize flight as well as its control range and ability to relay information through almost impossible distances.

Long-range information of any kind was difficult to transmit without mana or other concepts interfering, but that is what he had the skill given by his Blessing to handle. He was grateful to his Patron, Oras, for that one, as it had been instrumental to his current Path.

The destination of the exploratory vessel was not entirely determined, though it was sent out at first to explore their own solar system.

While examing that everything functioned within parameters, he was contacted for the second time that day. The City Lord had sent over a message, and as she rarely contacted him, Arnold established it had to be important.

Reading the message over, he frowned for a moment before realization struck him. For a while now, he had measured seismic activity, but he had assumed it was perhaps just C-grades fighting deep beneath the earth or perhaps just a natural shifting of the environment. Now he hypothesized it could perhaps even be these termites.

He agreed with her assessment that a scan of this hive was necessary, but he also believed she and Lord Thayne had underestimated these termites. If his current scans were accurate and the seismic activity was truly caused by these termites, then the size of this hive wasn’t just a country underground but an entire continent.

Making his thoughts known before being sure would be unwise, so Arnold decided to prioritize dealing with this hive.

Taking off his current work coat, Arnold went towards an elevator off to the side of the workshop – one Lord Thayne had never bothered using. Not that he needed to, as it was primarily made not to go up but down.