Underworld - Book 4 - Chapter 24

  
I didn’t make it to morning before my assistance was requested. Travis and I had been able to spend a good six hours together before I had to depart though. His rage bled through a few times, but not once did it take over again as we continued to talk. I considered it a good step. Even when Clarissa pulled down the stone wall blocking the exit, Travis didn’t try to leave while he was still in his Werewolf Form.
I nodded my farewell to him as she closed raised the wall back into place. Now would be his hardest test. He’d have to try to keep his sanity while he was alone for another hour or two.
It was Clarissa herself who’d made the request that I join her, so turning to face her now that the wall was in place, I noticed the excitement she was trying to hide.
“What’d you do?” I said.
She rolled her eyes. “You say it like I did something that would get me in trouble. I figured out how to duplicate the stone consistency of the surrounding area so that the mana collectors above the Maze don’t crack when we redirect them.”
“Sweet! Do you need my help?”
“Nope. It’s already done.”
“Really?”
She grinned, showing off overly white teeth. It seemed her hair wasn’t the only thing that had been bleached in her transformation. “It’s already done. Now our biggest problem is making sure the mana cannon doesn’t blow up when we try to charge it.”
“Russ showed me his giant resister that he says you have a plan to cool…”
She gave me a single nod. “You want to see it?”
“Let’s do this!”
***
For some reason I’d expected the resister to be connected directly to the Maze’s mana collection system high above us near the ceiling, but instead I found that she’d be able to direct the mana channels with Khun’s help into the room just outside of the Master’s Chamber. I was rarely over here because we’d always had the Maze closed off. 
Running parallel to the ground, Russ’s six-foot-long resister, that was thicker than a minotaur’s waist, hung in the air at chest height connected to numerous crystalline mana channels on one end, and the wall on the other.
“Tada!” Clarissa said, sweeping her hand toward the installed resister as if seeing it explained everything.
“It looks great.” I replied.
“I hear the doubt in your voice. It’s hanging in a big open room, so Trevon has plenty of room to cool it. You see these?” She pointed to the multiple mana channels connected to the resister. “These are for redundancy. This is actually the most likely to fail part of the entire system. The resister was made extra large so that it doesn’t crack with constant changes in hot and cold, but these don’t normally produce heat because they carry little resistance. Having more than one also allows the surge of mana to flow down more than one path in the case one fails before it gets here.”
“As for the resister, it isn’t large just so it doesn’t crack, but having a larger surface area will make it easier to cool.”
“What about the connection to the wall?” I nodded toward it.
“Khun takes over from there. He won’t give us all the details and doesn’t seem to trust that we can pull it off, but if we do, he says he’ll take care of the batteries from there. He’s also providing the connection to the mana cannon in the Inner Perimeter. All we have to do is connect the projector and direct it from there.”
I shook my head to myself. “It sounds like you have everything in hand.” What I was really thinking was that it sounded too easy—like there was more that should be going wrong.
“We’ll have it built by the end of the day.”
“Incredible. Thank you, Clarissa.”
Her eyes fluttered before shooting to the ground. She didn’t turn red, but purple as she blushed. “Too bad we can’t exactly test it without likely damaging the whole thing. With enough tests we could probably make it stable, eventually, and have a permanent mana cannon, plus supply Khun with as much DP as he could ever want…”
“I wish we could, but if this thing only works once, we want it to work when we need it. There just aren’t enough materials to make another one.”
“Master, I should be able to help with that.” Suddenly, Khun appeared at the entrance of the room in full spectral pirate form. We both spun to meet him.
“Hello, Khun.” I said. 
Before I could ask what he meant, Clarissa also greeted him. “Hi Ghosty!” 
“Rock Princess.” Khun replied with a bow of his head.
Uh, Rock Princess… What’s that all about?
“How can you help?” Clarissa asked, beating me to it.
“I’ve finished creating diagrams of each of the mana machines that returned with Master Elorion and Mistress Aeris. I can now create them at the cost of DP.”
“How much would it cost to recreate the entire system?” I said, not waiting for Clarissa to ask the question.
“568 DP if I was to create each machine and undertake the construction on my own. For just the necessary machines, 329.”
My heart sank. Such good news and yet it crumbled in the same breath. 329 was three times the total we could collect. No, that wasn’t correct. With the mana batteries installed, if we never went through with the plan to charge them all at once, we had the ability to store 800 DP more than before. Obtaining the DP necessary would take about 75 days. It wasn’t an absurd amount of time, but with the threat of Mistress Nava and no knowing when she would arrive, it was far too long to wait around without our possible deterrent.
“If I may.” Khun said, guessing at my train of thought. “If the system fails, it will be unlikely that every part will fail at once. Each individual part cost far less than the whole. I can get you a detailed list if you prefer.”
“Thank you Khun. Please do that.” I replied. “We might as well get the counsel together and discuss it. Do you think you can have it ready by dinner time?”
“Consider it done.”
***
I didn’t have to look for something to do. George ran up to me as soon as I walked into the Living Quarters. Following him, we headed toward the stench of manure. Passing the entrance to the Cave Swine, he stopped when we reached the next one. This was supposed to be for new liter of piglets when they came, but it was too early. So why then did I hear numerous squeals?
Looking at him, he nodded that it was what I thought it was.
“How?” I said.
“One of the sows must have already been pregnant.” He shrugged.
“Must have?”
“I’m no pig farmer, and these aren’t exactly normal pigs.”
“Well this is good right?”
He let out a deep sigh. “Well. Come see for yourself.”
I didn’t see Olivia around, but her handy work was already in place. Vines in a crisscross pattern up to my waist covered the entrance to three of the rooms that were now acting as pens. He didn’t have to say anything. One look at them and I saw it clear as day. Each room had three piglets except for the last one had four. They were large for what I knew of piglets, but that was no surprise. They were Cave Swine after all. The surprise what they were all glowing a subtle milky white in the mana realm.
“Did you feed them grain already?” I said.
“No. They just had their first feeding.” He pointed behind him. I saw the mother sow sound asleep. “It wasn’t from their mother’s milk either. They were born with it.”
“Can you see their mana?”
He shook his head. “Nah. I can smell it, I think. They smell more like you, well, when you are you. And I can feel that there is a difference in their auras.”
“Smell it? What do I smell like?”
“I don’t know. Olive oil maybe.”
I must have look at him funny, because he responded with a laugh.
It was the first time I’d heard that someone could sense mana with their nose. At first, I was reluctant to believe it, but it would be far from the oddest thing I’d learned since entering the Underworld.
“Do you think they’re like this because of their mother’s diet?” I wondered out loud.
“That would be my guess. And she’s only been eating Light Magic Grain for a few weeks at most.”
“Thank you, George. After dinner tonight, would you mind coming to the counsel meeting? I think there are going to be some questions.”
“Sure thing, boss. I’m not sure what I can tell you, since you probably have a better understanding of this mana stuff than I do. But I do have a nose for it, so…”
With a pat on the shoulder, I left him after that. Our little experiment with our herd of pigs was getting more promising by the day. It would be a number of weeks before we could test it, but it was likely that their meat would produce even better buff’s than the cave swine we’d already butchered. I was also intrigued to know what would happen to the creatures if they were exposed to the same mana for generations. I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but I was hoping for some kind of super buff.
As soon as I exited the hall of cave swine piglets, Steve was standing there waiting for me. Instead of being dressed in a simple t-shirt and shorts, we wore a cloak of midnight blue over his armor with his hood pulled back. It didn’t look like he wanted to discuss the crop. It wasn’t even breakfast time yet and this was turning out to be a busy day.