Bab 193: The beginning has been made
"I guess that's it," said Ivy tiredly as the last plant took its normal size, nestled in a pot on the windowsill. On the one hand, the dryad had spent the least amount of mana possible, as for someone who had just learned about a new facet of her abilities, but on the other hand, she had to kill a lot of mental energy to maintain the connection with the Web of Life, and it was only thanks to the presence of Green's avatar, who was gently guiding her friend.
The unity is something like working with the astral, but in a strange way, because leaving the body is out of the question, and you can't see the aura of ordinary things. You just start to feel all the nearby plants as an unrealistically dense ball of threads penetrating the entire surrounding space. At least, that's what Pamela's description sounded like, while the rest of the trio, including me, never managed to fully feel the presence of the Web. It may well be another conjugate dimension that is very closely connected to Earth, but until I check it out in person, it's hard to say for sure. In the same books on natural magic, there is not a word about it, unless you count the mention of the Green Plan, although I may not have gotten to the right sections yet, or there is no such specific knowledge there at all. Zee's father did his best to replenish the library of Shadow Peak, finding some interesting and unique books, but he tended to favor more classical magic or ritual magic, and there was too much of it tied to personal feelings, a bit like the astral school.
"With practice, you'll find it easier to control the plants."
Abby stood next to her and put her arm around the green-skinned beauty. Ivy jerked at first, but quickly relaxed when she felt her reserve replenishing quickly.
It was just beginning to dawn outside. In Gotham's terms, of course, for the heavy black clouds hanging over the city were successfully blocking out the sun, and the streetlights were still on. The energy and energy we'd gotten from a night of lovemaking had been successfully spent on magical practice, so after a brief discussion, we all decided to go to bed, postponing our trip to the sea a little longer.
It seemed a little odd that the pale-skinned part of our unusual company was also tired, though no one had managed to follow Swampy's instructions for connecting to the Web of Life, but there was a logical explanation for that. First of all, some of us had recently fought Black's avatar, having spent almost two days without sleep, and secondly, after several fruitless attempts, we simply switched to more interesting tasks. For example, Harley began to explain to Mousey the basic principles of spell creation, paying special attention to control, because the same artifacts are better to be able to charge themselves, so that they did not suddenly shut down at a height of a couple of dozen meters above the ground. In the meantime, I was repairing the equipment damaged by plants and restoring the walls and the floor, bringing the interior of the apartment back to its original appearance. Fortunately, thanks to Sculptor, it was easy enough, except for a broken TV and a blown stereo by a frightened Frankie, which was solved with just one call to the nearest electronics store. So as soon as I'd picked up the order from the courier under Fries's suspicious gaze, I'd gone to bed with my loved ones, only to be awakened shortly thereafter by the ringing of a smartphone.
A burst of mana activated a telekinesis weave hanging in his aura, and the cell phone, as if by itself, jumped into his hand and was put into silent mode, without disturbing the sweetly sleeping beauties.
Babs was nestled on top of me with her nose somewhere in the neck area, Abby was on my right side, throwing her leg over the sandwich, and Ivy was sleeping on my left, a happy smile on her face. It wasn't hard to guess the reason for the usually frowning dryad's happy mood, because this time Harley was asleep in her arms, clinging to her breast like a baby.
The most interesting thing was that our auras continued to exchange energy even in our sleep, though not as efficiently as during sex. I had noticed this effect before, but two powerful dryads with slightly different mana shades had a very positive effect on the passive speed of the Seventh Beginning, raising it by one more unit. And with the increase in the number of points, the further development of Initiation became more and more difficult, although, due to the presence of a tattoo and plans to modify it, it is not so critical, because my mana itself should become noticeably denser, and with it will increase the reserve. In short, orgies are very useful and enjoyable, but sometimes you have to do other things. I had to gently pull the redhead off me and go into the next room to take a call from Alfred, having discovered a couple of earlier calls that I had missed while I was engrossed in the beautiful nymphs and then dealing with the aftermath of a pleasant vacation.
"Mr. Arkham, are you all right? You haven't been answering your phone."
The butler sounded worried.
For a moment I even felt a little ashamed, until I remembered the setup with the identity of my friend, who should have bought some small gift or made another useful artifact. Next time I might not be able to catch the set thrown in my face, and it's quite expensive and beautiful by the way!
"Ua-a-a," I yawned widely. "Yeah, it's okay, don't worry. It was just too much of a reunion after a long time apart."
"It's been less than ten days..." the older man couldn't help but remark.
"But what a lot of things! So many things have happened. Was that the only reason you called?" asked I, finally waking up and starting to pack for the trip.
Not that it was necessary, given the portal, but I wanted to have most of the materials I needed on hand, even though getting back to Gotham from Africa would be faster than getting from home to the city center for a local worker.
"No. I wanted to pass on information about flying transportation," replied my interlocutor streamlined.
After these words I was a little upset, thinking that Bats had found out about the plans for his bird, but instead the elderly Briton only informed us that the Batairplane was now waiting for us at Wayne Mansion. While some were having fun, Simon and his company of demons decided to head back to Gotham, and the only adequate way for them to do so was to travel via mouse airlines. Still, none of the unusual company had an American passport, and their appearance was not particularly suitable for flying either. And although demons could turn into kittens for a while, the chimera did not possess such tricks. We took a longer route back after waking up, but that was just one more reason to strengthen the bonds that had begun to form. Ivy stayed close to Harley, comfortably nestled between the horny blonde's legs while I entertained the rest of the harem.
Eh, on the one hand, of course, it's bad that we didn't manage to hijack Batairplane and get an additional dose of endorphins, and on the other hand, without Alfred's help, we would not have flown to the Red Sea, where we managed to arrange a great vacation on a private beach.
It was only four days later that our company settled down, and that was more because of the redhead who had to return to Gotham. It could be that she would have agreed to stay longer, given the excellent service her ass got, that I even had to use regeneration after the pens of the faithful companion, especially the next exams she had only in early March, but the girl's father clearly began to suspect something, because before she was incredibly rare to leave school and went out of town to a friend. It was a good thing that Ivy's enhancement had a small side effect in the form of a slightly pale skin, to which does not stick tan, or else suspicions would have been more.
By this time Batairplane returned back to the mouse superhero and his new charges, to whom he decided to organize a practical training on liquidation of consequences of global catastrophes. Apparently, in this way Bruce wanted to show that the activities of superheroes are not only fun with evil villains and hunting down criminals, but also a lot of accompanying victims, as well as ruined lives. Yesterday you had a loving family, a good home and a successful career, and today you look at your ruined house with tears in your eyes and the paw of a monster sticking out from under the rubble, which recently was your wife. What the latex-clad man didn't expect was that helping to identify the bodies and clearing the rubble, along with dealing with local supervisors and emergency services, only convinced Nightwing and Beastboy to become real heroes in order to prevent such events. Rob's constant lecturing didn't even help. The big guy who'd been bitten by one of Arcane's creatures.
Having transported Mousey by portal back to Gotham, I finally had time to do my business. Due to the lack of suitable transportation, the trip to the south of Africa, where the world's largest diamond deposits are located, had to be organized on my own. Fortunately, there was an airport in Khartoum, where airplanes flew out from time to time, carrying numerous passengers who wanted to leave as soon as possible the city, whose northwestern part was attacked by a virus unknown to science. Getting into the cargo hold was incredibly easy, but sitting in the cramped room next to the sexy beauties without taking any active steps was a real test of will. Because of the presence of fragile equipment nearby, intimacy was forbidden, because it was unlikely that a civilian airplane had protection against a sudden burst of magic, as well as a redundant circuit to control the engines.
Thanks to a will of steel and an interesting book on golem creation, we did make it to Kimberley in peace. This town was chosen for a reason. It was the site of one of the world's largest abandoned quarries, called the Big Hole. It was dug for forty-eight years by fifty thousand miners, and without the use of machinery. The most curious thing is that for all that time they managed to extract about three thousand kilograms of diamonds, while Sups dug up a whole ton of diamonds in just a couple of days, and that's only the ones I got, and the other part of the gems will probably be used to create the League headquarters. Although, the annual production of diamonds in the whole of South Africa is about eight million carats or one thousand six hundred kilograms.
The logical question arises: why should I do all this when I can just ask a superhero in blue tights and a red cape for another favor? Because I can! After all, the skills to create a secret lair and an army of golems don't appear out of thin air.
Over the years, around the quarry has emerged quite a large city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, which is not averse to visiting tourists, but only to the pit itself is strictly forbidden to approach and it can be viewed only from a special platform next to the museum. During the rainy season, the quarry turns into a huge lake, where drowning is a no-brainer. But, in general, the Big Hole cannot be called a completely man-made structure, for it is an explosion tube - a specific type of volcanic structures of the platform type, having a cone-shaped form. They arise due to the breakthrough of magma rich in volatile components to the Earth's surface, and such tubes usually have several channels at once. It is clear that, unlike the main one, they are more difficult to detect and less cost-effective to develop because of their much smaller diameter and high probability of collapse. However, these difficulties could not become an obstacle for the locals. Having stumbled upon the volcanic rock, they happily dug long tunnels, hoping to stumble upon diamond deposits and get rich. In the end, however, most of these private tunnels quickly became abandoned because of the sudden death of the miners or because the depth was too deep and the amount of gems too small, when even the most stubborn realized that they would rather die than find something useful. But for magic, a major collapse or lack of ventilation was not a serious obstacle, so one of such abandoned mines became the basis of our future secret base. Earth magic perfectly coped with strengthening the walls, turning them into an indestructible monolith, illusion magic reliably protected from extreme tourists, spatial magic and artifacts provided good comfort, and natural magic provided a pleasant environment and an additional line of defense.
The only disadvantage was the lack of communication with the outside world. The only downside was that there was no connection to the outside world, of course, but then the base would quickly cease to be secret, even though Harley had a good grasp of encryption. But even here I was able to finesse my way out of it by turning to artifacting. After a couple of days of calculations, and then another day of enchanting and fiddling with measuring devices and a soldering iron, I managed to create several through mirrors. They were very similar to the artifacts from the Scarface books, that is, they could transmit image and sound, but I also added the ability to generate electrical impulses. Someone may think that this is the usual protection from intruders, and I'll answer that originally it was, but by adjusting the power and connecting the phone and a simple manipulator, imitating the signals of a computer mouse, I managed to get a fully working mago-technical smartphone. The phone itself, in fact, is now always in Gotham, and its screen is broadcast through a see-through mirror. It is controlled by a ball and two spring-loaded buttons placed at the base of the artifact. In the future I plan to attach a full-fledged touchscreen to the magic mirror, but for this I will have to deal with drivers and more detailed understanding of the power of electrical impulses. And we should not forget about the poor compatibility of technology and magic. This problem was partially solved with the help of neutral barriers damping strong magical impulses and material basis, when weave tracks are literally cut inside the material and filled with magic gel, but it's not clear how resistant such a system is to loads. I still have to think about a camouflage for the Justice League headquarters.
However, it was enough for the current tasks. The golems were not fully magical, but more like robots. In general, the creation of autonomous dummies in fact turned out to be quite laborious, but at the same time relatively easy, because they did not need to be programmed, because all their actions were controlled by small spirits with primitive minds that could carry out simple commands. Though one could still argue about the simplicity of the commands. Earth spirit even without cheating in the form of X-ray vision or high-end scanner, can literally find a needle in a haystack or a diamond in a huge piece of rock. It was obvious about the painstaking: inside the base for the golem it was necessary to cut more than a hundred small runes, to enchant the core, which is a diamond, and to lay special highways, so that the spirits could control the unusual for them shell. However, it was not yet worth forgetting the difficulties with personnel. Small spirits are not senior creatures who are interested in their own development, and therefore the Earth dimension, and besides, elementals can also create a suitable body for themselves, so only a small part of the weak etheric beings agreed to stay in the real world for a while, and here we should partially thank my laziness and creativity, because without them with the conclusion of contracts would clearly be big problems. When I first made the golem, when I had to slowly and unhurriedly create separate limbs from a solid piece of rock and supply the whole thing with dozens of small symbols, I couldn't help but envy necromancers who are able to create ordinary servants almost by sheer force of will, if only they had a suitable body nearby. And so, thinking about the plight of the lords of the dead, I suddenly realized that the basis of the golem can be a metal frame, and with all sorts of accessories, such as a steel drill and hydraulic drive. So, offering the summoned spirits an unusual receptacle, some of them, just out of curiosity, were ready to work for a couple of days as miners, and there, having evaluated the quality of natural energy and "interesting" tasks to find beautiful stones or tunneling, agreed to stay for a couple of months.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone