Adam's mention of Runestones caused the Alfari to visibly stiffen, their almond eyes widening, and a palpable unease quickly rippled through the human contingent.
Elena took a few steps towards Adam, one hand on her pistol in its holster while the other was behind her back, reaching out for one of Flint's Hellfire grenades.
From outside, behind the aliens' UFO, a squad car approached with four individuals walking out of it, weapons in hand, taking cover behind its doors.
The students of Professor Hendrick also felt the tension, and their movement synchronized, circling the area of the meeting from all corners.
All that Adam asked about was Runestones. Elden Lord Kaimu simply asked, "What about them?" These were the last words exchanged before the unnerving moment was broken by the raspy voice of Professor Hendrick.
"I think this has taken a very serious turn, gentlemen." He said as he took wide steps to arrive fast between Adam and Lord Kaimu, "Discussions like these should happen over a hot beverage to avoid misunderstandings."
His voice, usually calm, held a desperate edge as he took wide steps to arrive fast between Adam and Lord Kaimu, trying to make peace between the involved parties, but seeing as the stares of the two heads of negotiations weren't getting any less intense, he immediately turned to Kahori the Envoy, whom he had faith in to deescalate such a confrontation.
With a practiced, instantaneous kneel, Kahori addressed her liege lord:
"My lord, it is I who failed to convey the nature of Runestones to the humans," Kahori said as she understood the Professor's plea. "Abiding by my obligation, I haven't disclosed more than what was supposed to be said; thus, I couldn't prevent Vindicator Clay from misunderstanding the nature of Runestones."
Lord Kaimu listened to Kahori, but his gaze was still fixated on Adam, who also looked back at him while resisting the urge to blink. After she said her part, Adam turned to her and spoke with a sneer.
"I was under the impression that Runestones are your currency," Adam spoke with a tilted head, still smiling as he knew that this was a sensitive topic he was intruding on.
"I have had the pleasure of addressing other members of your race before, Justiciar Clay. Survivors who arrived at the Rifts through great difficulty; that's why I can understand and speak your tongue," Lord Kaimu said, as his posture changed, less tense and more composed and reserved. "I understood from them the concept of currency to your people, and the fact that you have mixed our concept of currency with yours is not unnatural. However, what we consider currency among us is far different from what you consider currency among your kind."
"Huh!" Adam listened to Lord Kaimu and couldn't help but narrow his eyes. "I get it now. So it is like… sacred currency."
The Elden Lord wanted to reply, but he instead inhaled and returned a nod:
"If you understand it that way, it is the closest thing to explaining it."
"So that's why you guard it jealously. It's technology and all that. It's your religion then," Adam said and stepped another step closer to Lord Kaimu. "Well, this complicates things."
"I can see that. But I am sure we can work on an understanding," the Elden Lord replied, now willing to negotiate as Adam had uncovered that much.
"So what if I tell you that I, as well as others, possess artifacts made by the Gobzkin, ones that contain runes. How would you feel about them?" Adam said, brandishing the club with the Bending Rune he keeps inside his coat.
He expected drama, he expected anger, he expected that the Elden Lord and the Alfari would lose their composure and announce him as some sort of heretic, but the reaction was rather interesting.
Through their large, almond-shaped eyes, he saw a look of sadness, but their tension nonetheless dissipated.
"The Gobzkin, they are truly barbaric," Elden Lord Kaimu spoke. "They took many souls for sacrifice and enslavement, they committed atrocities against innocents, and then they shackle the runes with such crudeness inside items to never see the light, condemning them to a painful death."
His monologue was tragic and funerary, imprinting negative emotions on Kahori and the servants, who lowered their heads and looked bitter when the subject was raised.
"They are much worse than Dragons," he continued with anger in his voice. "Dragons would simply crush Runestones for the magic inside them, but the Gobzkins are the worst." He then extended his hand to Adam, asking for the club, "May I? I promise to return it."
Upon hearing that, Adam hesitated for a bit before handing him the club. Lord Kaimu held it up to his eyes and, with his free hand, pressed the area under his hairline once again, to cause a pulsation of light to travel through the patterns of his body.
"It will fail you in a month if you press it too hard, and the rune inside shall die." He conveyed this with a saddened voice.
"Don't you want to take it from me?" Adam asked, eyes narrowed, capturing every emotion the alien showed. "To save the Rune?"
"No." The Elden Lord gave a flat reply, returning the club to Adam. "It is not my place to interfere between a Rune and its Attuned."
Adam received his club back and nodded:
"How thoughtful! I thought you'd be more angry."
"You are hunting for a weakness, Vindicator. It is obvious you want to hold us at a disadvantage," Kahori spoke from the side.
"Duh!" Adam shrugged, stating the obvious, then looked at the Lord, "What if I were to find a Runestone; wouldn't that anger you?"
"I would only blame my incompetent Rune Seekers for not finding it before you, but I would generously reward you for it," Lord Kaimu replied.
"Hah!" Adam finally laughed. "So you receive it and don't give it away. How do you people conduct an economy at this rate?"
"Among us, we trade with Runestones. With outsiders, we barter," Lord Kaimu explained simply.
"Finally! Some information!" Adam let out a loud sigh as he shook his head. "Next time you deal with humans, explain that part first."
The tension faded after that detail was finally revealed, and Lord Kaimu seemed to be considering Adam's suggestion. He turned to Kahori and ordered her to be clear about that policy with humans in the future.
With that finally out of the way, Adam turned to Professor Hendrick and asked him to lead the group to where he was keeping the Grub Processor. The camp's population was dispersed, and only a handful followed as the Processor was guarded in the most secure place in the factory shelter.
Lord Kaimu, Kahori, and four Alfari Guards were accompanied by Adam, the Professor, Elena, Megan, and ten armed students to the place. There, the Grub Processor was revealed in a wide room, surrounded by many machines and food sacks that were part of the food manufacturing procedure.
To call it a singular machine was a grave injustice, for it was a multitude of machines forming together one single behemoth. Adam and Elena had created something utterly alien to the Factory Shelter, a radical reimagining of the famed Grub Processors known in Wartopia's lore.
The Grub Processor they had at their camp was a singular beast of industry: a gaping intake maw, leading to a rending grinder, leading to a blazing pulverizer, leading to a meticulous sieving filter, leading to an intricate network of separation tubes, leading to a calculating recipe manager, leading to a churning dough mixer, leading to a precision bar molder, leading to a blazer drier, leading, finally, to the output sack.
As for this particular one, it was an oversized machine with an assortment of conveyor belts and would require manual intervention between some of the steps in order to make it look less freakish and easier for the survivors to maintain.
Adam even provided one of the laptops used as a control terminal in order to make the machine more manageable. The old operating system of the terminal had been completely overridden by a basic version of the sacred code that was a stripped-down version of the one from his base. It was a complete, basic sacred code interface with no Solarium fluff or Sol Imperius praises (which he had grown accustomed to), simply posing as a basic user interface with basic commands for the Grub Processor.
As the group reached that food processing chamber, the smell of starch and powdered food filled the air, but as they approached, the smell worsened, enough for the aliens to flinch and step back after a certain point.
"Soul crushing, right?" Adam asked, looking at the Elden Lord with a grin.
"What kind of dark artifice is that, Justiciar?" The Lord asked, frowning deeply, his form shimmering with a faint aura of light.
"That's the Beast of Feed, as we call it. It has many terrible names, but once it starts churning, all manner of toxins and pathogens in any organic materials will be microwaved to oblivion," Adam said, pointing out the production process. "Anything organic, from stale food to monster carcasses, enters a cone. It's intensely crushed, powdered, and sieved, with chaff being reprocessed. The fine powder is separated by nutritional value, stored in tubes. Protein, carbs, vitamins, and fat powders are mixed into a slurry, then shaped, intensely dried into bars, and dispensed for human… in your case, Alfari consumption."
Adam finally picked a food bar and handed it to the horrified Elden Lord.
Lord Kaimu looked at the workers who were operating the machine as Adam gave him a tour, seeing them dressed in heavy work garbs, masks on their faces, and heads covered with hats. He then looked at the bar in his hand, and a pulsation of light ran across his patterns once again as he truly looked into that bar.
With a taken-aback expression, he looked at Adam.
"That… is truly dark artifice," he said, almost shivering.
"Welcome to the grimdark," Adam replied. "It tastes like crushed souls and widows' grief, but it keeps the population from dying out."
"I doubt that spices will remedy this monstrosity," Lord Kaimu said, handing Adam back the food bar.
"Between you and me, I doubt it too. That's why I always say to add the additives after diluting the bars; it gives the illusion of something less horrible," Adam nodded and pointed to the terminal. "The upside is that we can understand the basic needs and adjust the nutritional values to fit any population's standards. I am not sure about Alfari consumption, but humans' default recipe goes for 55% carbs, 25% protein, and 20% fat."
"Oh!" The Elden Lord's eyes lit up (literally) as he saw Adam fiddling with the terminal. "You can control that through this… what do you call it?"
"Terminal," Adam turned to him.
"No. These… figures!" Lord Kaimu pointed at the screen. "It is a wondrous artifice, this one."
He was more interested in the laptop's programming than the rest of the machine, but the moment he reached his hand out to examine it, the laptop's OS suddenly glitched.
"Whoa!" Adam exclaimed with a frown as he looked at the machine, noticing that the Food Processor had ceased functioning. "What did you do?"
"No—Nothing! I barely reached out!" Flustered, Lord Kaimu replied and looked at the people around him.
The situation remained mysteriously tense until he backed away from the terminal; only then was Adam able to reboot it.
"This is strange!" Adam frowned and turned to Professor Hendrick. "Has this happened before?"
"No! That's a concerning glitch," the Professor said, approaching the terminal beside Adam.
Adam was taken aback, but he then experimented with something.
"Would you please try to reach out for the machine again?" Adam asked, facing Lord Kaimu.
The Lord didn't seem bothered by the request and did as Adam asked, but at the same distance as before, the laptop glitched and went black.
"Alright… this is no coincidence," Adam deduced the problem, as did everyone present. "It seems that our technology isn't compatible with you, Lord of the aliens."
Looks were exchanged as it turned out to be something rather wild, even for the aliens. Murmurs started to spread, but then the Elden Lord spoke, his pride seemingly hurt:
"This artifact… it shies from me?" He asked, a shake visible in his hand as he pointed at the laptop.
"By any chance, Lord Kaimu, if you don't mind answering my question," Professor Hendrick turned to him, fixing his glasses.
"Of course, Sage," the Lord turned to the Professor.
"Does your body house some sort of high energy that radiates particles and such?" the Professor asked.
"…" The Elden Lord was silent for a bit before answering with clear reluctance, "Yes. An Elden's body is a conduit of shimmering energy."
"Then it makes sense," the Professor nodded, scratching his chin. "This must be like an SEU."
"A Single-Event Upset," Adam nodded in agreement. "When a cosmic ray, high-energy particle, or even a stray neutron slams into a transistor or memory cell, some data can turn crazy. A soft error in normal cases, but it seems that you are radiating with energy that is making our devices act up."
"Just as Justiciar Adam said. Except this error was on a major scale," the Professor nodded. "Ms. Kahori has approached many of our devices, and such an event didn't occur."
The Elden Lord looked away, a bit affected by this:
"For an artificer to be held back by his own nature from interacting with an artifact is saddening!"
While the Elden Lord seemed in a tragic state of mind regarding being unable to interact with human technology, the meeting was concluded between the heads of the factions regarding food supplies. It was decided that this type of food would be used in emergencies and in combat marches for the Alfari forces, rather than being a regular ration.
For it, the Elden Lord promised both protection for the shelter and spices for trade, as well as non-runic weapons and protection gear; something that both the Factory Shelter and the Wartopian Camp lacked.
"While it would be much, I'll ask for a large batch of food in advance, since the mobilization of the Rift-bound unit-of-a-hundred that I was charged with will require a lot of resources that we don't have," the Elden Lord said, joining his hands, then changed the topic. "With that out of the way, let's talk about my personal services as an Artificer, which I have great pride in."
"Excuse me?" Adam frowned. "I thought this was all about food supplies."
He felt like he was missing something, but the Elden Lord cleared it right away:
"It is nothing, my friend. It is a service I provide as a practitioner of the Artificer way and as a Runesmith," he said, clarifying the misunderstanding. "I am looking for certain materials for my craft, which is a personal request unrelated to my official duties. If you help me with them, I can help you with your runic artifacts."
"A deal under the table, I get it," Adam noted.
"I feel like I get your expression, but it is nothing against my creed or duties," the Elden Lord replied and pointed to Adam's side. "I can mend your rune for you, which would be a great feat to save a Rune's life."
Adam thought for a bit, turning to his people and considering the enticing offer.
"Well, I don't see why not…"
Yet, just as he was about to accept…
"PROFESSOR! PROFESSOR!" Raj came running, sweating all over and out of breath.
"Raj, take a breath, dear boy. What's going on?"
The Professor ran to Raj, trying to calm him.
"A raid, sir! Gobzkins! An army of Gobzkins!" Raj said and dropped a bomb of bad news. "We're under siege!"
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