A/N: Really not happy with this chapter but I wanted to get some scenes in before the end of the arc (ie. a Cato's Notes)

Also apologies for the double length and late chapter. Some side stories coming up before the Cato's Notes.

Also not happy with the Guard training scene. Might decide to just cut it as non-canon if I find further problems.

"Hey, you had a great night?"

Cato frowned as the other man took a seat across from him at the cafeteria table. Bashal, the ironworker's chief inventor, flashed him a brilliant grin.

"It was okay, how was yours?" Cato replied bemusedly.

"Oh come on, don't be like that, I want details!" Bashal hinted heavily.

But Cato had no idea what he was hinting at, all he could do was give the big man a confused look.

A moment's pause. "Don't tell me nothing happened last night?"

"No? We had some new ideas for experiments on the Aura Light magic. It's very promising but we couldn't do the experiments in my room of course. Other than that, Landar certainly adapted better to my room's devices than-"

Bashal slowly brought his hand to his face, "you suck, man. You really suck. -"

"I'm starting to regret introducing internet slang to you..."

"- she went to your room, had a romantic lunch affair, used your shower! There's hinting and there's beating you over the head with a stick!" Bashal sighed.

Cato frowned at him, "okay, how did you even know she used my shower?"

"There's no way Landar would ever not use a new magical device. Also, she walked back to her lab in your bathrobe," Bashal gave him a flat stare.

"Good point. "

"Anyone who knows anyone important in the city going to expect you two to announce your engagement any day now. "

There was another pause before Bashal sighed and continued, "look, Cato, be honest here. Is there any reason why you two aren't together yet?"

Cato considered the question, and then thought some more. Enough so that Bashal grew fed up and interrupted his thinking.

"Selna! Just give her that engagement present already!"

Cato sighed, "fine, I'll think about it. What did you come for? Surely it wasn't just so you could gossip?"

Bashal grinned, "well, speaking of gossip, Minmay's servants are talking about Aesin's recent sickness. They think she's pregnant. "

"Are they basing it off her morning sickness symptoms?"

The ironworker nodded, "rumour is that she suffered a lot when she was carrying Arisacrota, and this time is the same. She can barely eat anything in the morning. If she truly is carrying another child, most of the nobles will be expecting Minmay to use it as an excuse to host a ball. He hasn't put one on for years now. "

Hm. So pregnancy tests were just at the level of observing symptoms. Cato wondered if Inath humans had the same hormonal cycle as Earth humans. Menstrual cycles were largely the same, as Kupo had confirmed, even among the Fukas and Elkas, although the cycles on Inath appeared to be slightly longer on average, being around 30 days on top of each day being slightly longer than an Earth day.

Family planning huh. Cato hadn't thought about addressing that before.

"You're not going to turn this into another product, are you?" Bashal elbowed him jokingly.

"It'll definitely sell," Cato mumbled, "an unplanned pregnancy has to be quite devastating to a family's finances. "

"Hey!"

"Um. "

Cato looked up from his paperwork, stifling the regret that he had ever introduced the printing press. The astronomer he was funding out of his own pocket stood in front of his desk.

"Ah! Telv! Did you find a planet? Or maybe the star charts?"

Telv fidgeted and frowned but stayed silent. It dragged on and on and when Cato was just about to speak up, she suddenly blurted out, "I found something on Selna. I think. Maybe. "

It was much later that night that Telv, Cato and Landar were at the little observatory built some distance away from the main city. Shielded from light as best as they could, the thirty centimeter lens was decent enough to see details on huge Selna.

Yet, at that time, Cato had wished he had forked out for a bigger telescope or better lenses. Trial and error grinding was expensive and didn't yield good results, calculated lens shapes were still experimental.

"Might be metallic. I think I saw the sunlight flash off the surface. Tch, the image isn't good enough. " Cato said as he scribbled observations blindly on the notepad next to the telescope.

Telv nodded off to the side. "Any idea what that is?"

"Looks artificial," Cato wrinkled his nose, "I don't think gas giants have metal pins in them. "

He stepped away from the telescope to let Landar have a go.

The strange object showed as a barely visible line on the surface of Selna. Placed quite far 'north', it avoided the major storm belt in the equatorial region, staying in a somewhat calmer band. As to what it was, according to Telv, she had been watching it as Selna rotated on its axis. The object grew and shrunk in length based on the time of the Selna day. It did move across the surface of the planet, at least its appearance and disappearance times were slowly drifting, but its movement was clearly slower than the clouds.

This implied all sorts of things that made Cato's eye twitch.

It looked like someone had stuck tiny pin into Selna's impenetrable lower cloud deck. It didn't seem to be made of clouds either. But a solid object on a gas giant? How did it stay above the crushing depths? What under all of Selna's red light could possibly survive on the unimaginably harsh conditions of a gas giant?

The existence of the Thing made Cato want to scream.

Better yet, how did it get there? If it was natural, Cato would dearly love to see what natural process could possibly make that. If it was artificial, and this was looking likely, then 'how'? 'How' everything. And he could add 'why' to the open ended question stack.

"I don't know what that could be either. It's not something mentioned in legends," Landar murmured, eye glued to the telescope.

Cato rubbed his temples. He wasn't feeling a headache but it seemed like the proper thing to do. "There's nothing we can do about it. We can't even fly, let's not talk about a space program, yeah? I'll buy you a bigger telescope when we work out the lens shape equations, but... I'm sorry. "

Telv bowed, accepting his apologies with only a resigned air. She was quite used to people dismissing her interest in the night sky, at least Cato was interested even if he couldn't do anything beyond throw money at the problem.

"Mhm, so if the Ironworkers can build sufficiently thick steel walls, I am certain that we can get liquid air easily. Magic is really good at cooling, I was quite surprised to find that cooling and heating cost the same amount of power for the same amount of heat. ... No, of course not! Cooling is much harder than heating on Earth if you're trying to get to very low temperatures! It was a big surprise for me!

From there, it'll be easy to get the basic oxygen furnace the Ironworkers wanted. It'll be a whole new world for steel again. ... yes, precisely, that's why we're proposing a partnership outside of the territory, we simply don't have the manpower for new industries. "

An arm descended on Cato's shoulder, interrupting the pitch he was trying to sell to the circle of merchantmen and prospective investors

The circle of men looked up and paled slightly at the sight of the chancellor's face. Minmay had a perfectly polite smile, yet the atmosphere around him seemed ice cold.

"Cato, I do recall you promising to attend at least one social ball, didn't you?"

Cato winced and gestured around at the table, "I am currently doing that. "

Obviously, the chancellor was not going to accept that excuse, "socializing doesn't mean making business introductions. Many more people want to talk to you too. Come, we'll make a round across the floor together. "

A flurry of exchanged contact information later, Minmay led Cato away from the table.

The ball was hosted in the large hall that normally hosted the Minmay Bank's main floor. The building was originally intended to allow the common people to place their deposits in the bank, all to soak up more currency. The chancellor's resistance to paying out interest and potential runs meant that uptake was slow and the bank building's ambitious open floor plan was more or less wasted.

Instead of being limited by the need for supporting walls, the Minmay Bank building used a new steel reinforced frame pioneered by Muller. Sculpted columns arranged in a ring surrounded the biggest open indoor space in all of the Federation, all inset with polished stone and sealed with concrete. Glass skylights made from the University's float glass experiment were placed in the domed ceiling, the starry night sky and the glow of Minmay city shone over the milling crowd while liquid Light ran in lines across the roof and outer walls.

Said crowd consisted of a veritable who's who of Ektal country. While the premise of the ball was to celebrate Aesin's pregnancy and introduce Arisacrota to the noble society, wealthy industrialists, land Barons and even envoys from Inath and Ranra had answered invitations. The ball served to showcase Minmay's prosperity and with people from all over Ektal and beyond gathered together, the ball was also a trade and industry exchange, as so many events in Minmay boiled down to.

Amidst the fluttery flamboyant dresses, delicate perfume and fluffy men's shirts, Chancellor Minmay deftly moved Cato from group to group. Making introductions, receiving well wishes and then moving on, Minmay sighed as he watched Cato fumble yet again.

While he didn't strictly need to bring Cato around, Cato and Minmay had already become a famous pair of names in Ektal aristocratic society. The far sighted inventor and his noble sponsor. Many of them would have expected Cato to get an honorary title by now, perhaps Mayor of Minmay, and consequently, this ball also served to introduce Cato to them.

"Of course, madams, those dishes were prepared by Kalny's chefs, I will convey your compliments to him," Cato said.

He was polite and did not commit any faux pas, but any noble past the age of ten would see straight away that Cato was stiff and uncomfortable. The various ladies would try to engage him in conversation but Cato would always inadvertently kill it. The chancellor dealt out a compliment to another lady with barely a thought, still watching Cato talk to them out the corner of his eye.

Then a younger girl, perhaps a few years below Cato's age, gave up trying to flutter her eyes at him and stepped close to Cato to push herself against his arm. A bold action that would have attracted only a little attention and gossip if not for what followed. Before the chancellor could step in and rescue him, Cato took a step away from her and tore his arm out of her grip. It was only a short moment but a frown shot across his face before Cato smoothed his expression into a stiff smile.

The casual conversation died a swift and fiery death.

Minmay cut in, not letting the awkward silence continue, "I'm sorry for taking him away but Cato and I still need to meet many more people and I see Chancellor Duport's father over there. "

He gave the lady he was talking to an apologetic smile and got hers in return before steering Cato out of the mess. The girl whose approach Cato rejected looked completely mortified and quickly left the group.

"Bringing up Kalny's chefs was a good reply but you should have continued by suggesting a different food or drink," Minmay commented lightly, "you can't expect those ladies to talk about the details of Kalny's foray into gourmet cooking. "

Cato sighed, "I messed that up. Who was that anyway? Is she going to cause problems?"

"That girl? The first daughter of one of the Central Territory barons. The man manages six villages I think, all windeye farmers. " Minmay glanced back but she was already lost in the crowd. "She might be a little insulted but it won't be a problem. Not that she can do anything, your influence is greater than her family's. I'll also write her father a letter afterwards. "

Another pause. "Being a noble is pretty hard, isn't it? I'd hate having to watch everything I say like this. "

"We don't have balls like this very often," Minmay patted the man's shoulder to reassure him, "besides, gossip will go around. By tonight, none of them will be making passes at you anymore. Still, if you didn't want that to happen, you should just get engaged to Landar. Why aren't you wearing something of hers anyway? I hear she gave you a bracelet some time ago?"

"That was an engagement bracelet, I was meant to give it back to her when I decided to accept her proposal," Cato replied weakly.

"You could still wear it, that would at least signify that you have a proposal and are considering it," Minmay suggested.

The chancellor watched as Cato frowned and decided to liven him up, "and if you do accept Landar's proposal, you'll be the one wearing it anyway since she asked first. You better not use this incident as an excuse though. Even if both of you are the least romantically inclined couple I've seen, she definitely won't like it. "

Cato's flat stare in return was at least reassuring. The man had at least that much awareness. "I'm not suicidal. If I said that, the bracelet would probably blow my hand off," he shot back, "I'll talk to Landar after this. "

Minmay led them in a wandering trip through the crowd for a long while, not stopping for more than a few moments at each group to exchange pleasantries. Cato was still contemplative when they ran into King Ektal and his entourage at one side of the hall.

The mood turned into stiff business faster than a starving reki at the feed bowl.

"King Ektal, I am glad to see you here, I hope you are enjoying yourself?" Minmay opened.

The King nodded his head without pausing. Good. "It is pleasant enough, your ball is quite lavish after all. I look forward to your future. " Indirectly referencing Minmay region's development and future taxes.

"Of course, the city has grown greatly," Minmay nodded back, "I wonder, have you given thought to the proposal for a strong offensive north of the Snow Wall?"

"Yes indeed, it was quite the daring proposal," King Ektal replied, "to move northwards of Fort Yang into the desert in search of survivors of the zombies. "

"That is the overall goal, the first step would be to retrace the journey of the Elka expedition and set up a base in the abandoned city. That would allow Elkas to range further north to explore the area past the desert. "

"Three weeks of marching will be a challenge however," the king commented, "I doubt many parties have the ability or will to even take on such a request. Just the food required to move the proposed half the Fort Yang garrison would require special taxes. "

The taxes wouldn't be a problem however. Minmay smiled, "last I recall, the Central Region has far too much food due to the new farming practices. A one time levy combined with purchases by an Ektal logistics company might even raise popularity among the peasants by propping up the price of food. "

"A good point, I will consider the proposal," King Ektal nodded to himself, then switched topics, "on a different matter, I find myself in need of a large number of weapons. Mercenaries and knights are all well and good, but if the push northwards is to succeed, the food supplies transportation should have at least some self-defence. I would require some seven thousand guns of your latest model. "

So that was how King Ektal was planning to stay within the Rule of Arms. Self defence, eh? A polite fiction at best, Ektal wanted his own army.

"Can the Academy in Tirien not supply your needs? Last I heard, they had a dart gun model in production that exceeds the range of my guns. " Minmay asked idly.

King Ektal snorted, "they can get me a hundred pieces in three months. That is nowhere near the number I will need and far too late. Despite what they claim, the Ironworkers guild cannot manage to achieve truly standardized parts without working extremely slowly. "

The chancellor smiled and nodded back, "very well. If you contact Willio, I am sure he is able to fulfill your request. I will speak to him to ensure your purchase is given the weight it deserves. May I offer the expertise of my guard captain to work out how much ammunition you will require? Minmay Power company can also provide magical power supplies for the guns if you require that too. " Which the king definitely did. The capital city only had two drills for mana wells, there was no way he had enough magic to supply everything.

The king's eyes betrayed a flicker of surprise at Minmay's easy capitulation. The sale of such a large number of weapons was not a trivial matter, it must have seemed like Minmay was giving away his very favourable position of military parity with the capital. No aristocrat would ever give up that sort of advantage without a larger boon in court, the king was probably expecting him to ask for a powerful position in the country's governance.

Chancellor Minmay had his own reasons though. The Minmay region would never be able to match the capital territory in the long term. Just the population difference alone would mean that once the industrial changes really took hold, the capital territory would go back to having all the power again, just like before. The current advantage would last for perhaps half a decade, and the provision of seven thousand guns would not change that. Just a short period of advantage for Minmay to establish itself in the higher value industries.

After all, Minmay city could never fill the demand of the entire country, much less the Federation. The industries here were already straining for the lack of labour and money. Much better to be the supplier of high quality machinery, military weapons and research than trying to do everything.

Ektal's purchase would mean an injection of money worth several years of Minmay city's taxes. Quite apart from a welcome relief of the permanent money shortage, that much money also meant opportunities to expand the weapons making ability of Minmay city.

The Ironworker Company would probably spin off a new company with one of their current factories just to build the desired number of guns. Afterwards, that factory would flood the market and drive every other gun maker in Ektal out of business. And simultaneously position Minmay city as the premier supplier of the best weapons money could buy. The future political importance of Minmay would be secured and with it, his worries about the other territories.

Best of all, this future advantage would not be subject to any political shift that might happen later.

"Hm. You have my gratitude," King Ektal replied warily, clearly trying to understand what political games Minmay was playing here. Too bad for him, the chancellor was playing a different game.

Minmay just smiled back and bowed respectfully.

Landar hummed as she twisted around the crystals in their mounting. There were many types of crystal, magical and not, but she was specifically researching the crystals that grew on zombies based on the sample returned by Ka's expedition and the few shards collected from the last major attack.

Crystal, as the known magical material, was definitely wrong. While it shared the same property of being stable if not damaged, the crystal used in crysteel disrupted magic, which zombie crystal did not, and the optical properties were all wrong. Zombie crystal was much shinier.

Basic destruction experiments proved that zombie crystals were composed purely of magic and only stable if larger than about a finger's width in all dimensions. It also had magical properties that reminded Landar of a living creature's lifeforce but it had been proven that zombie crystal did not regain magical power unlike normal living things. It did animate recently dead bodies however.

A frustrating few months had been spent trying to extract its secrets, but the only conclusion Kupo and her research teams had reached was that zombie crystal was almost certainly power storage for the zombie. And armour. And maybe something else.

It was the maybe portion that had received a boost lately. The lifeforce like property and its tendency to raise dead bodies whose lifeforce had not yet faded meant that the magic in zombie crystal could be baited out of the crystal by presenting it with dead bodies. The portion that had left the crystal could then be destroyed and the crystal would spend yet more magic. Once repeated enough, the zombie crystal would go 'dead', unable to reanimate bodies but still a stable magical material.

But it was still composed purely of magic. The remaining crystal didn't have lifeforce like properties and that was why Landar had a hunch that 'dead' zombie crystals were a pure magical material.

There was no way to confirm her hypothesis until a method of examining lifeforce was discovered but she could run her physical tests on the crystal itself now that it was relatively safe.

The beam of light reflected from the polished mirror shone through the zombie crystal in its mount, then onto the wall behind. Landar had tuned the facets of the zombie crystal to reflect part of the light back into the original mirror in order to reduce the reflections. That this was possible indicated that the crystal itself was optically uniform despite the external surface containing many facets and despite examinations by jewelers confirming that the crystal's weak lines meant it was polycrystalline.

The Crystal magical material was also naturally polycrystalline when formed, and like all other crystal materials, split light beams along its boundaries. That zombie crystal did not made Landar think that it had a magical function that involved its optical properties.

Just a hunch, given that observers were virtually certain zombies with great amount of crystal were also the origin of light beams.

She tapped the crystal, turning it this way and that, and examining it magically. The magic composing the crystal itself was unstructured, like other magical materials, but Landar tapped it with a tendril of magic anyway.

The beam of sunlight shining through the crystal rippled, sending rings of light flowing outwards then back to its normal single beam.

Hm. A magical reaction, definitely an indicator the magical material could change states. Although this was the first time Landar had seen a magical material with more than one state, this reaction was similar to what a spell might look like if the whole spell was a single large manual trigger switching into an active state. And this state affected the optical property, just as Landar guessed.

She wrinkled her nose and looked up to find the lab still empty. Where were the rest of her alchemist colleagues anyway? Landar huffed, here she was working on discovering the secrets of zombies and they were out there spending so much time on lunch!

The door swung shut behind her as she stormed out to drag the rest of the team in, leaving the zombie crystal shining in its mounting.

Cato pushed open the door to Landar's lab, feeling uncharacteristically nervous. He had come here before many times after all, there was no need to be nervous.

"Landar?" he called.

There was no answer. She must be out.

In the center of the floor was the zombie crystal mounted onto the optical bench, sitting next to the path of a sunbeam in the dark laboratory. The sun had clearly moved in its position since Landar had left and the skylight was no longer in line with the mirror anymore.

Next to that was their ongoing collaborative project for the next generation magic circle. Cato smiled as he recalled the times he and Landar and many of the University alchemists had, going over the design again and again. Enchanting one prototype or another before discarding it.

They were close to a final design. Soon, maybe a month, they would have a magic circle controlled by an actual designed programming language instead of just a hodgepodge of magical effects and a timer.

At the far back, in the shadows, sat Landar's old independent projects. Vague ideas given form and discarded halfway through when they turned out to be infeasible. Landar's workshop was truly one of the mad scientist.

Cato kept his smile as he wandered through the space, noting the messy piles of notepaper detailing observations. It looked messy but Landar swore she knew where everything was and demonstrated that with her ability to fish out any particular file he asked for. That was a fun afternoon.

"-those lazy guys! Gossiping over lunch like a bunch of ladies when there's investigations to be done!"

A familiar voice grumbled outside before Landar pushed open the door. "Oh hey, Cato!"

He nodded back, "Landar. I wanted to talk to you, is now a good time?"

She shrugged, "the research division is still at lunch. Apparently they're gossiping about Mira's new boyfriend. Like she hasn't gone through seven of them in the last year alone. "

Mira? Ah, one of the alchemists.

"That's all right, I just wanted to talk to you about this," Cato took out Landar's bracelet from his pocket, still in the padded box he had designed for it.

She blinked at it and blushed slightly, "uh, right. We'll be alone for a while yet. "

"I'm not sure if you've heard what happened at Minmay's recent ball but I wanted to avoid any misunderstandings," Cato kept his face carefully neutral, "while I did get approaches from some of the nobles at the ball and an engagement is one way to refuse them politely, I don't want you to think that is the reason.

Also, I must confess that I am still hoping we can find a way to travel to Earth. I am not going to ask you to return with me because this goal is not about me going home. I know travel from Earth to Inath is possible because Morey was summoned deliberately, and the stories imply travel between worlds was something that was done in the past. I want to do more than just travel back, I want to build a bridge between Earth and Inath so that everyone can travel if they want to.

I have been thinking about you ever since you gave me this bracelet. I know we work well together, we understand each other in a way that many couples would be jealous of, and I do think we can be great friends to each other for a long time to come. These are the reasons why I want to ask you to marry me. It is clear we don't feel the love described in stories but I wouldn't mind sharing the rest of my life with you. "

Landar picked up the bracelet from the box and smiled back, "you didn't need to say all of that. We do understand each other after all. Your goal of allowing anyone to travel between Earth and Inath is ambitious and definitely something I will be glad to help with. " Her smile gained a dash of mischievousness, "also, I was the one who asked you first, so you get to wear the bracelet. "

With that, she handed it back to him.

Cato's smile turned stiff when he noticed the flare of magic accompanying her action. Landar must have recharged the bracelet's weapon. They shared a moment of silence, then he said, "we should plan a trip to visit the Iris again. Your father and mother will want to know. "

Landar's face immediately told him how much she disliked the idea.

"Don't look like that, I'm sure your parents don't want to find out about us getting engaged through the newspapers. "

Landar's scowl remained but Cato knew she just needed time to get over her immediate dislike.

Whatever her reply was going to be was lost at the clatter of voices outside as Landar's team of researchers began to return from lunch.

The first man opened the door to find Cato and Landar standing together in the middle of the laboratory.

"You're going to wear it here?" Landar asked, raising an eyebrow. Well, she knew he wouldn't be embarrassed about this.

Cato grinned back, "sure, of course I will. " And snapped on the bracelet to his wrist.

The cheers of the alchemists crowding at the door could be heard all the way across the university.

"All right! You've gone through basic training, so I'm going to assume you all know how to point a gun and shoot, how to follow orders and what the signals are. You're here because as a veteran, I'm supposed to train you all so you survive your battles with the zombies. "

The man stalking down the rows of Minmay Guard was not a grizzled sergeant but an apparently youthful young man. Though his experience was amply displayed by the claw scars on his face and the limp on his left foot.

"How many of you can hit a man sized target at fifty meters, eight out of ten times?"

"Sir? They don't let us out of training squads until we can hit nine of ten at fifty. The standard for snipers are eight of ten at one hundred with the new winged bullets. "

The veteran nodded, "that's good. I got sent here at six of ten at fifty. All right, I've arranged targets in the range down there. Get your weapons and line up. "

The soldiers jogged sharply to the firing line drawn in the grass but they were interrupted by another command.

"Closer! No more than one hand from shoulder to shoulder," the veteran barked, shuffling the recruits until they were crammed together into a dense line. "In the trench lines here at Fort Yang, you'll have to shoot in worse conditions than this. There are seven thousand Minmay Guard and twice that in knights and mercenaries from the King, all crammed into about six kilometers of trench in three lines.

Ready!"

A small forest of steel rails underslung with wickedly sharp bayonets rose up to shoulder height. The gleaming new metal shone under the sunlight.

"Aim! Fire!"

A massive crack of thunder resounded down the line. Not a few of the guns wavered under the wall of sound.

"Ready! ... Aim! Fire!"

The veteran steadily paced the commands but the second volley was far more ragged than the first. More than half fired late in trailing pops and cracks behind the primary thunderous sledgehammer.

"Ready! ... Aim! Fire!"

The third volley was chaotic. Some fired early, many late and a few never managed to load at all, having fumbled their ammunition in the cramped line. The veteran simply kept up the beat.

"Shells! Ready!"

All the Guard had been issued a single fireshell each and a number from one to three was painted on it. This was the number of commands they were supposed to wait for before using their assigned fireshell. For the exercise however, the soldiers simply threw a stone carried in a belt pouch.

"Aim! Fire!"

The interrupted volley was even worse, barely sounding like a volley at all. The throwers mostly failed to fire and the pebbles arcing out at the command was clearly under-strength.

"Ready! ... Aim! Fire!"

The beat of the command was somewhat better, most of the soldiers who hadn't fired in the last command now ended up waiting for this volley.

"Bayonets!"

This command was at least better followed. The line of points were hurriedly readied and the forest of points were thrust forward to form a barrier of sharp steel.

"And now you're all dead. " The veteran commented, "at ease!"

He watched the recruits turn around, varying levels of unease on their faces. He knew that the Guard were still trained in only discipline and the basics of their weapons before being sent to the Fort.

"That's about how long you have before a charging horde of zombies reach your line from fifty meters. Let's go see how well you shot. "

The target line of strawmen was looking decidedly worse for the wear. Paper target faces had holes in many places and the straw was spilled all over the ground. Some targets were untouched however, and some had more than eight holes.

With the number of soldiers and volleys, there was significantly less holes than the theoretical number of shots.

"That's about one in six," the veteran said, dabbing at the targets with a red paintbrush from his belt. "These zombies have stopped moving. "

The number was a rather dismal one quarter of the targets.

"It takes four to six bullets per zombie to put one down. Half that number of bowgun arrows. More for reki zombies but those are easier to hit anyway. If those targets was a human army, you'd have shredded them. But it won't stop a zombie charge. My first battle was like that. Half my squad died when our trench line was overrun. I only survived by running back through the mines to the second line with the help of a squadmate.

There are a few lessons here. In the chaos of a battle, it will be far more difficult for you to aim. The volleys of guns, screaming and shouting and the Mist screen blurring your targets all make your job more difficult. Even with drill and training, its hard to hit more than half the time. The second lesson is that we win because we're prepared. There are mines, spellcannons, summoning stones and more than one line of trenches. If you're about to be overrun, retreat. Those bayonets are not there for you to hunt zombies with. They're there so you can kill the ones in your way.

Those of you with fireshell number three will almost certainly never be commanded to use them. If you're retreating and the area behind you is empty, you can use it to cover your back and slow the zombies down as they put it out.

Lastly, if you're unsupported, set your gun to fire inertia bullets. It consumes more magic from your staff, it flies slower and takes more to down a zombies if it doesn't work, but you don't have mines or fireshells, you might as well hope. The zombie magic has weak areas and if you just so happen to hit one or if their aura has collapsed and the zombies are giving a final charge, one inertia bullet that works will blow a zombie in half. "

The veteran sighed and gestured for them to gather closer around him.

"The truth is, for all the Guard infantry's numbers and the recruitment posters, we're not the ones meant to kill zombies. We're the meatshield, the poor bastards given a gun, some training and get sent to man the trenches. All our efforts and sacrifices are meant to delay the zombies, to slow them down, to catch isolated packs and pockets. The spell cannon, the summoner and the linked wand batteries, those are the weapons that make the most kills.

So don't try to be a hero. There are no heroes before the monsters. We all die the same as the rest. They have no mercy, no fear, nothing human in them. If we run, if we break, the big killer weapons depending on us will be surrounded and destroyed. The zombies will then hunt us down and make us one of them. We stand and fight together, to support and with the support of our brothers and sisters in other roles; or we die together.

We die in the trenches to draw that line in the mud. To say, this is where the monsters stop. "

The veteran straightened when the moment had passed. "I'll see you all tomorrow for another round of shooting drill. "

"Yes... yes, yes!" Landar shot up into the air like a sugar rocket as the numbers appeared in the air.

"Deviation no more than one micrometer!" Cato grinned next to her, eyes fixed on the meter wide metal ring that was the culmination of exacting work over the last months.

"Enchantment code, here we come!" Landar yelled back.

There was silence all around the 'safe' alchemy laboratory as the other alchemists were distracted from their work. Not a few of the newbies were looking at the pair as if they were crazy but the veterans had long become used to their excitability.

"Is that what I think it is?" Omal elected himself to be the one to ask, well aware that the rest of the open workspace was listening in.

"Sure it is!" Landar chirped back, "that's the prototype of the next generation of magic circles! We reached the goal of creating enchantments with micrometer precision! And we're going to have an executor that will accept code instructions instead of being directly controlled by functional threads. And there's Bashal's idea of rotating the circle on a gimbal to allow the most accurate angle for the emitters. There's so many new features we're planning to include, the new circle will be totally different from the old one!"

Omal smiled at her chatter indulgently. It was obvious she was in a bit of a mood but Landar wasn't running on crazy yet, and Cato was right there, so he said nothing except to turn to Cato.

"I think the name magic circle is a bit misleading," Cato pointed out. True enough, instead of the normal double circle of the control line and the enchanting magic, the prototype was a metal octagon forged from the new chrome steel. There were no markings for the gimbals Landar was talking about nor were there any sign of the distinctive red and yellow painted metal blocks of compilers. Only a great big mess of threads with cards to hold them sticking up every which way, clear signs of patches and corrections over a process of refinement.

"It's not much to look at yet," Cato said, noting Omal's gaze, "this is just to test the improvement to the base accuracy of the enchanters. Micrometer precision makes it able to create structures beyond human ability. The circle also works while standing vertical, allowing a continuous material to be passed through it, rather than enchanting in batches. Best of all, none of it requires magic more accurate than what it can produce, the circle can be used to make more of itself. "

Omal nodded to himself, "what sort of things could we make that would need to be that precise?"

Landar cut back in, "All sorts of things! My rockets need a stabilization system and the gyroscopes don't work because the controller isn't fast and accurate enough. I'm hoping this will help!"

"Currently, we can't use the signals in spells to send messages because the signal portions of the spell are too big and consume too much power to be feasible," Cato added, "by allowing signal lines to be shrunk by nearly ten times in two dimensions, we reduce their volume and thus power used by a hundred times. "

"And there is the magical sensors! The precision will let us create sensors that can actually make pictures instead of a single value! We can have a detection grid that can magnify the patterns of magic at a very small scale! Who knows what we'll see down there!"

Omal chuckled as both of them started to feed off each other. Clearly, Landar was still overly excited at their achievement.

The two men squatted in front of the hissing contraption, watching the lines on the chart recorder on the bottom.

Both men cursed the rebuild that shifted the output location of the sensors to the knee height position it was stuck in now.

"Well, Bashal, it seems you have achieved something great here," Cato congratulated him, "I estimate you've nearly doubled the efficiency of the steam engine with this. How I never thought of cooling the cold side with magic, I don't know. "

The ironworker guffawed, "it's not a steam engine any more. It's an air engine! No water in the boiler!"

"Indeed. "

"I was inspired by your equation, the colder the cold side, the more efficiency possible in the engine! So I just used magic to cool it and wanted to test if it would pay off and it did! And the engine compresses its own magic to run the cold side so it does not need magic power inputs. Plus magical inputs allows magical valve controls to make the engine more reliable than ever before!"

"Indeed. Bashal, I believe I already congratulated you. I never thought of using magic on the condenser because Earth always used cold water. "

The two men watched the engine drive the flywheel along a few more powerstrokes.

"Why only cold water though? Why not something colder than that?" Bashal asked after a moment.

Cato shrugged, "Earth didn't have magic remember? Cold water is simply the cheapest available cooling source. It's everywhere after all. "

"I'm still meeting issues with the valve sealants though, I need to ask Kalny for better heavy oils. The furnace can't run beyond a few hundred degrees before the oil in the hot valves becomes too runny while the cold valves freeze when below negative fifty. They also tend to carbonize or cake even at this temperature. And this prototype can't run for more than a day or two before everything starts gumming up with ice. "

Cato nodded. Unfortunately there was no easy solution to that problem beyond testing different formulations until something was found. In this sense, the steel technology had outstripped nearly everything else, Bashal had apparently liquefied air in his very first attempt on this design. The steel walls had held up even under cryogenic conditions because the Ironworkers were already using magical cooling for steel hardening.

Bashal of course had to calibrate the pistons and cylinders to their cooled dimensions, the cold cylinder of this prototype literally could not run at room temperature, it was just too loose.

The hot cylinder was also limited. Coal furnaces of Ironworker designs could melt steel. Pressurized thousand degree air input to the hot cylinder was theoretically possible for the furnace to achieve. Actually doing it ran into issues with the steel becoming soft, the lubricating oil catching fire and assorted mechanical failures due to extreme heat.

Despite the demanding operating conditions, need for a costly cooling of the cold side before starting operations and running at less temperature difference than the energy inputs could achieve, the third generation steam engine was still far more efficient than before. The fundamental improvement being the lowered heat sink temperature was significant.

As they stood up and dusted themselves off, Bashal commented casually, "I do have another strange observation for you. "

"Hm?"

"We do know that the magic energy collected by the power boxes and are used for spells are not the same thing as the magic density that is built up in magic compression engines and the mana wells. However, we tried using the cooling cylinder to perform magic compression to power the same cooling spell, we ran into an interesting effect when channeling the magic energy collected back into the high density internal cylinder volume. " Bashal paused dramatically, enough that Cato had to hurry him up with an impatient gesture, "it appears that under high magic energy ratios and high magic densities, mana crystals form very quickly. Much more than the natural formation rate in the mountains. "

The ironworker grinned as Cato, "but it gets better! The mana crystals that formed was the high density variant that the explorers found in the mountains six months ago. Not just that, these high density crystals contain magic energy, not just high density mana! Sure, we lost magic energy in what appears to be a magical material formation, but the formation actually caused our compression cylinder to lose pressure! Once the formation started, our piston went all the way to the bottom, turning all the compressed density into a single flat crystal. "

The pair was silent for a long moment. Then Cato spoke up, "it appears that some high energy experiments are warranted. To think that magic crystal formation needed magic energy on top of magic density. I really should have thought of that. Can the University loan a magic compression engine again? I'd build my own but yours are better. "

Bashal grinned, "as long as I get credit as first discoverer, of course you can borrow one!"

With the agreement made, Cato practically ran back to the University to arrange a new testing area. Neither of them noticed that this was the first time anyone had asked for academic credit over commercial benefit.