章 69: 69. Element Nexus

Whipping the thin sheet of sweat that accumulated over his brows and exhaling Liam smiled in contentment as the chains behind him fell with loud clanking sounds on the concrete leading to Orien flying away from his shoulder at the sudden sound.

They had arrived at the Valkyrie.

"Help me take that off of you Gladius.", Liam said to his tame who didn't need detail to obey, immediately sitting down the giant let him take off the harness and as usual a reward was given and it was in the form of a large one percent vegetal cookie made of condensed iron truffle.

Placing his implant in front of his closed mouth he began to drink down what was materializing out of his inventory. It was a liquid paste tasting like strawberries composed of water, various vitamins, protein, and minerals way past the fatal concentration for humans.

It was basically poison but one that gained him plenty of time, it was because he needed to eat almost constantly or more accurately never felt a kind of satiety, or when it was the case it lasted but a short time.

Even more so when there was a strenuous effort, it's not as if he was going to die or weaken if he didn't eat anything for one day or more, he could probably last several months if he truly had no choice but his body still requires fuel and a ton of it to work at full capacity.

The fact he was constantly slowly growing in height, size, and weight amplified this, it needed to be fueled as well. He didn't run on magic or power of belief; the dozens of mitochondria-like organelles in each of his cells aren't going to produce their highly optimized ATPs with clean air and water.

For now, it was easily manageable, barely an inconvenience really. He wasn't badly 'designed' when no demanding activity both mentally and physically was done his body entered a sort of semi-hibernation state he wasn't going to starve to death but in the end, he still demanded more than any average human would in food daily.

The fact his character back in the game was in a constant state of hunger seemed to make instantly more sense in a very unpleasant way here.

And his eternal growth spurt wasn't going to stop as far as he knew, it was very consistent, unnaturally so even and that was something to take into consideration for the future.

With how it was now in a few years he would be taller than some of the adult Na'vi and in a few more years he would be taller than most. It was a bizarre but very real future if things went as calculated, that is.

This was aside from the potential consequences tied to such a height and his bulk, he wasn't lean and lithe like the Na'vi. Though he preferred his strength ten times over but for clothing and armors… This was a great annoyance more so with his growth.

Adding that presently everything not made to hold nearly half a ton on a small surface would snap under him. A very big annoyance in his daily life at Hell's Gate, he couldn't even sit on a regular chair.

So his growth by the square-cube laws would mean an exponential increase in mass and as such weight leading to him potentially weighing in the tons this was with his inventory empty as well. How Mary called him, a genetically engineered freak, was quite apt of description if a bit too pejorative to his taste.

'Even with this much artificial flavor the aftertaste is horrendous… Maybe blueberries will be better next time or a mix of both? Or maybe something extremely spicy or sour? Possibilities, possibilities, so many possibilities.', he thought, finishing gulping nearly one liter of this mixture of crushed animal and plant parts diluted in extremely mineralized water.

All of his senses were enhanced to various degrees, such as the one of taste adding to the fact his brain was capable of processing more information led him to pick up the minute difference when he ate, a gift for someone like him but also a curse for things such as consuming this 'highly processed source of nutrition'…

So the fake strawberry taste couldn't fully hide the ungodly taste of the 'flesh-organ-blood-root-fiber-smoothie' but two liters of water drunk in a similar fashion were enough to wash most of it away.

It helped but it was more of a band-aid type of solution yet this substance was very helpful when the time for cooking wasn't an option or he didn't have several kilograms of food at disposition, like now.

Liam cracked his neck and climbed the ramp of the space shuttle and before it closed he waved Gladius with a smile.

The great austrapede cawed and nodded happily all while still munching on the massive cookie as it walked away, his tames could take care of themselves in Hell's Gate while he was away.

Their status, unknown to anyone but him within the internal system of the base, was equal to Grace's own who herself was only second to him and this was recognized for his tames via microchips implanted deep in their skin.

Facial and vocal recognition was not up to date for his little family of mostly murder birds and it was better to begin with.

Moving past everything in the spaceship he arrived at the cockpit and as if it was a regular old car he lit up the already warmed-up propulsors.

The massive multi-ton vehicle started to fight back the shackles of the moon's gravity and easily succeeded in breaking them as it hovered two dozen meters above the ground.

Focusing, Liam piloted the spacecraft as it methodically moved above the massive rectangular object as heavy as three school buses he dragged here.

From the belly of the Valkyrie, six circles slid open by their center just enough for an equal number of short and bulky articulated arms adorned at their end by what looked like the barrel of a gun, each barrel as long as Liam was tall.

'Fusion reactors are stable… Everything seems in order.', Liam thought, checking both mentally and physically at all the data of the space shuttle.

Each of the barrels spun on its axis, flashing red lasers scanned where each focused onto the rectangle warped like a burrito in a protective layer of highly insolent and heat resistant material of polymer and steel alloy.

A warper that had been recycled dozens of times for atmospheric exit and entry. It was printed around each piece of the facility for their transport, damage done upon them while not grave was something that would waste time.

Several seconds passed as the laser did more scans and the main computer calculated the best way forward with his assistance. The six barrels recalibrated themselves to the millimeters then the warped rectangle worth almost thirty tons started to float up in the Valkyrie and stayed above completely unaffected.

There was no spectacle or fancy light aside from the red lasers, the few that had seen the scene didn't stop their current tasks either to appreciate this feat of engineering, it wasn't the first time they saw this nor would it be the last so they became numb to it for the most part.

They didn't even know what it was, how it was done, or why it was done, it was quite common with Liam but whatever it was the result was going to be a net positive for everyone that even the less affectionate of their benevolent dictator could realize this much.

The six arm-turrets were Magnetic Tractor Beams they were based on his Magnetic Gauntlet and the Tractor Beam of the Tekskiff but instead of a controlled gravity field, they worked by generating magnetic fields focused into beam-like forms all thanks to the pandorium used to build them, and weeks of work.

This difference in the fundamental force used led to the object needing to be lifted being magnetic to a no small degree and that it was to be lifted in a certain way.

Gravity was still very much in effect and depending on how an object was lifted it could lead to damage as the nonmagnetic structure could potentially collapse or fold on itself.

Something that would not happen with the Tractor Beam as it enveloped homogeneously the object but compared to it the Magnetic Tractor Beams could work at infinitely smaller scale due to the effect of gravity weakening the further an object lost in weight, but this facet was not of much use here.

Putting a no small percentage of the fusion reactors' energy production into the Magnetic Tractor Beams and by moving them Liam dragged the gravity-defying rectangle five meters below the Valkyrie.

Then he began the ascension to a few minutes later the atmospheric exit of which he weakened the magnetite hold as the effect of Pandora's gravity became but an afterthought thought.

Only around layer eighteen when he began the atmospheric entry of Naratskxepay did the power behind the Magnetic Tractor Beams were brought back up.

Flying in the white chaos that is the eternal blizzard of this moon, there was no way of knowing by simply sight which way was which. It was a very dangerous place to be, landing would not be impossible but doing the opposite was something else.

This was something Liam was very aware of, there was no need for an accident for him to realize, in an hour several dozen tons of snow and hail could accumulate on the top of Valkyrie if it were to land.

This was why bothering with a base in such conditions was at best stupidity and worst madness. It would be buried, crushed to never be seen again in barely a week.

This was a problem that was excessively hard to solve so the solution was to better avoid it altogether. And avoid it he did but going to another place on the moon wasn't an option as the blizzards moved, going under was.

And this was why after an hour of flight large mountain-like structures pinged in his mind through the computer his implant was connected to, those were extinct cryovolcanoes, as their names suggested when they were active they ejected cryo-magma composed here of a mix of liquid water, and ammonia of which upon contacts with subzero temperature on the surface froze leading to their current state.

Maneuvering closer the view cleared almost instantly as the cryovolcanoes' sheer size and bulk acted like a shield protecting a large white and icy blue area of the most powerful winds and as such what they carried but their shape was carved in a complex pattern without any meaning.

Progressing further down the protection given by those unique dead volcanoes the spaceship's speed decreased more and more to the point a human could outrun it then it slammed into the nearest cryovolcano.

The blanket of frozen snow broke apart before the hole of the Valkyrie revealing a massive cave and its insides were suddenly lit by hundreds of light placed in two straight upon the smooth cold blue ceiling.

This wasn't a cave in the truest sense but the exit of the cryo-magma from another nascent now dead cryovolcano that had started growing below another one. Liam was proud to have caught this on the radar this pearl and knew how lucky he was to have done so.

It was perfect, perfect for the facility revealing itself before his eyes, on a flattened ice was a tall symmetrical structure of a hundred and ninety meters long (~623ft) and seventy meters (~230ft) width, for both at their utmost.

It was composed of dozens of rectangular blocks perfectly fused in the shape of a lozenge with three small extensions growing out from the border in its middle as if they were legs or roots and it broke the perfect symmetry.

Asymmetry he was here to fix, approaching almost to the point of hovering above it the barrel of the magnetic tractors, began to move independently as the 'warper' around the rectangle was lifted away revealing a structure identical to the three other 'legs' of the massive metal lozenge.

It contained a 'miniaturized' nuclear reactor like the three others, something Liam didn't have the Engram off but building them wasn't exactly difficult for all the other knowledge in his possession. It's at the end of the day for him a good old dynamo powered by an external energy here heat, nothing fancy about it.

The structure spun in the glacial air with the five remaining Magnetic Tractor Beams as Liam oriented it and manipulated it toward its intended target and as if the massive structure was but a vulgar piece of lego he plugged it in, both parts seemingly fusing.

"Finally, fucking finally… The Element Nexus is finished now onto the Element itself but first a check-up if everything is in order.", Liam mumbled with an immense amount of satisfaction, a large smile showing pearly white teeth before it disappeared by a metallic helmet closing over his face.

It was an armor or more accurately a spacesuit of a similar design to the Titanium Seer V2.0.7, the one he used when out on Pandora.

But compared to it the Titanium Protector V1.3 as it was named had the purposes of protecting against the void of space, radiation of all types, highly acidic or basic environment, and could switch between mods for extreme cold safely for extended periods up to -170 C° (−274 F°) and its inverse at 360 C° (680 F°), this all the while being able to breathe.

As the Valkyrie began to land and the 'warper' of the nuclear reactor was folded into a flat square and placed on the ice Liam moved at the back of the shuttle.

And with a dumb grin on his face that looked out of place, he started to run and jumped down through the still-opening ramp. Spinning in the air gracefully he fell slower than he would on Earth and Pandora due to the lower gravity giving the time to reorient himself and land one knee on the ground, the other up and first planted in the ice as he slowly looked up.

'Superhero landing.', he chuckled internally as he walked toward the entrance of his facility, passing dozens of fist imprints on the hardened ice.

He might appear extremely serious, no-nonsense, and stoic to others which he was. It wasn't an act, he was very bad at this kind of thing but he wasn't like this at every second of his life, quite the opposite in fact. It's just there was a time and place for various things.

A set of doors that camouflages itself with the wall opened before him as he entered to then close, the sound of air being vacuumed, then pressurized water washing the ammonia away from his spacesuit from all sides to the sound of air both drying him and replacing the icy moon air echoed.

After this process ended a new set of doors opened revealing an interior of metallic grey, holographic screen, soft blue light, and a plethora of budding plants that now were almost unrecognizable but were of both from Pandora and Earth. It was the Living Quarter with everything needed for someone like him.

But that wasn't what interested him, he walked toward the newly integrated nuclear reactor and finalized the connection to the main and subsidiary cooling systems and energy-related ones.

After this, he continued his checkup to tour to see if everything was operational and ordered the main computer of the facility to do the same digitally.

Only when he was certain all was functioning correctly did he finally take off his spacesuit put it in a specialized washing machine, took a shower then throw on a pair of boxers, pants, socks, and clean shoes, this left his torso bare but he didn't care, there was nobody and if there was he wouldn't care either.

Downing the same abomination of a smoothie from yesterday but this time nearly four times the quantity nearly leading him to puke even with two liters of water added to wash out the taste. He was satiated but that wasn't in the most pleasant of ways.

He waited fifty minutes for his metabolism to truly begin the digestion then he walked toward the Blood Extraction and Filtering Room or BEFR for short, his mind focused on the future, apprehension, and excitement mixed together.

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