AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Chapter 127: Going back

Year 3, Winter, First Month, Second Week.

Did we lose them?

Karl looked back worried, the light brown horse under him was sweating too much and needed to take a break. To his delight, the answer came not even a minute after the question was asked.

It doesnt look like theyre moving towards us, the locator indicates theyre moving south

Diana finally breathed a sigh of relief, she couldnt have hit further from the truth, having a capable operator in the team was better than good equipment. After a short break, they continued moving towards the green mountains, as they couldnt afford to rest yet. Because they met a large pack of obstinate white wolves, they ended missing their stop, now they could only stop to drink water in the magic tunnel. To avoid having to go to a river or another dangerous place and to dont lose time digging a well, they were stopping at their old temporary camps and using a portable WET to extract water from the wells.

Fortunately, the scouting teams found a large horse herd one week after the Council meeting. Using an adapted magic locator, they found the herd 65 kilometers from their city. This time, capturing the horses was much easier since they could use a barrier to contain the beasts. However, transporting them back would be tricky, so Karl had to travel and tame them there.

The process of taming the horse was similar to the oath but forceful. Sadly, the first two horses died in the process, but then Karl finally got the process right and finished taming the other ten horses in two days. Like the oath, he had to extract spiritual energy from the horse, form a spiritual rule and merge it with the soul, so the Array was pretty much the same. The big difference came when forming the spiritual rule because the horse couldnt do it as the disciples did, so Karl had to make the rule with his energy, then try to modify the horses energy to match his concept before merging it with the soul.

The first challenge was to isolate one horse, place it on top of the taming Array, then force it to use its spiritual energy. With time and patience, Karl got the first two steps right, but the last one required extensive experimentation. If it wasnt for Johanns suggestion Karl might have taken a few more days to discover that blowing strong winds against the wind horse would make it release its energy.

Unfortunately, the part of forming the obedience concept as a spiritual rule also failed two times, which led to the fatalities. Using his concept of obedience wouldnt work for the horses, so he had to adapt it until he matched the horses concept of obedience. After he got the first right, taming the remaining nine was easy.

To tame the horses, Karl used a simple concept of obedience and tied it to an Alchemy mark, so the beasts would be forced to obey who was carrying the mark. Of course, the part of obeying wasnt just saying a command, after all, the beast couldnt understand them. However, with Katlyn and Marlens help, they quickly taught the horses to understand the reins and a few voice commands.

With only a week to their long journey, Karl spent the rest of his available time building the long-distance communication center and adapting all the old communicators to work with the new design. The major change was making the receptor (previously called attractor) only receive signals from one communicator at a time. After several teams started using communicators, interruptions and misinterpretation of messages often happened when two communicators sent messages at the same time.

To solve this, Karl used a Focus Rune to create a unique concentration of the lightning effect for each communicator. Even when someone sent a signal from a long distance, the concentration of the lightning effect would be unchanged, as only the volume of energy would decrease. So, using concentration was the best choice to create a signal identifier for every communicator.

When idle, the receptor would work normally with the attract lightning effect turned on at all times. When a team wanted to communicate, they would send one signal and wait five seconds before sending the message. During this time, the operator working at the long-distance communication center would change the operation of the receptor to only attract signals with the same concentration of the communicator that sent the signal.

This would be possible because a Contain Rune would be connected to the receptors metal to absorb the lightning effect. Then, the energy contained in the Rune would be used as a parameter for the attract lightning effect. So, if another communicator tried to send a message while a communication was already happening, the tool would fail to produce any sparks. Of course, the communication center would have three receptors working to receive multiple communications at all times.

Additionally, the communication system improved a lot since they started using it. The operators now used different duration of lightnings to send different codes, so a complex message could be sent in less than a minute. They also establish two-way communication without the need to modify the tools. Ten seconds after sending the code for end-message, the sender would hold the communicator active for one minute, during this time, the operator at the center could make a reply by switching on and off the receptor to form a message, which could be interpreted by the sender by counting the sparks in the tool.

Initially, Karl didnt know the reach of the new receptor, but he hoped it would be enough to take the signal close to the magic tunnel. Fortunately, he exited the signals cover less than ten kilometers from the tunnel, so after he builts a signal repeater in the tunnel, chances were they would be able to communicate from the Adventurers camp all the way to their city. The cover would be more than terrifying 600 kilometers.

One week and two days after leaving the city they finally arrived at the tunnel.

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