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20 – A Tryte problem (1/2)
🕑 Added 2023-05-15 13:54:42 +0000 UTCAlbert - Tryte Outskirts
The clouds loomed. As he got closer and closer to the village, Albert could see the full extent of the weather anomaly with his own eyes. It unlike anything he had ever seen before, going even beyond the superstorms he saw in some odd documentary late at night. And this, he thought, was only the tip of the iceberg. The beginning of the apocalypse, of the event the coming of the system was asking him (indirectly for now) to fix.
It was not a comforting thought, yet there was pride to be found in responsibility.
There was a swirling mass of clouds spewing ice and rain on the town, like a gigantic spaceship made of water vapor and lightning. It was beautiful in the way scary yet majestic things are, but the sight did not make going there any easier. Off to the side there was a fork in the road, a stretch of dirt mangled and churned by the heavy tires of the military vehicles, and at the end of the road the silhouettes of tents and containers were surrounded by all sorts of jeeps and trucks in green camo. None of them even close to the perimeter of the Exclusion Zone.
There were people milling about in the rain, carrying out ungrateful tasks, so Lloyd made sure to drive carefully and to keep a low profile. By this point the road was no highway, there was no highway that got to Tryte, only badly maintained countryside roads barely wide enough for a truck to pass through, riddled with puddles and potholes.
Finally the perimeter came into view. The edge of what Lloyd called the Exclusion Zone was made of pylons projecting a shimmering forcefield that contained everything that was within it and didn’t let it out. It was evident that it was even having some effects on the climate, for on the other side of the forcefield fence the weather was so much worse that it was impossible to see father than a few meters. The ice and rain had accumulated on the ground in heaps, forming crystals and piles that were oddly shaped and not consistent with how snow should usually behave.
The pylon towered. It was easily a hundred meters tall, a structure of metal and plastic and wire from which the forcefield extended out to the sides until it met another pylon in the distance, going all around the village. It was exciting and awesome, seeing actual magic in action somewhere else than his bedroom and the trials set up by the system. There was an urge to check the shield out, to dissect how the pylon worked, to study the field. But no. Albert checked the clock, and noticed that there were still around an hour forty minutes before the detonation. Then something caught his attention, and he activated [Perception] tuned up to eleven to look around in the direction of the pylon. There was something there, like a residual shimmer that was different than the magic used to project the shield.
“Someone teleported out recently.” He said as he got back into the car, slamming the door behind him as quickly as possible and shivering to heat himself up. “I saw traces of tachyons.”
Lloyd turned up the heat. “Are you sure it was teleportation?”
The car’s engine strained to keep the heating on. “I tachyons are either that or time travel, which is a sort of teleportation after all.”
“Okay. What about the structure? Is it responsible for the shield?”
Albert nodded.
“Did you see anything wrong with it?”
“I don’t know. I think I might Appraise it, and see if the system helps me out a bit. If it doesn’t… well, we might have a problem.”
The hiss of the wind managed to penetrate inside the car even with the doors closed, making it hard to talk without having to shout. “Keep an eye out. I would offer to cover you in case the teleporter comes back, but I don’t think this old bag of bones could be of much help. I’ll keep the car running and hot!”
Albert tilted his head with a smile, and braced himself for the weather. Then he was out, again running through the half-frozen mud towards the hidden silhouette of the pylon shrouded in the hail of the storm. When he was close enough that he thought he was in range, he used [Appraisal], but not before doing a thorough check of his surroundings. When he was sure the place was clear, he finally focused on what the system displayed for him.
[Forcefield Pylon. One of four pylons keeping the Tryte containment zone cut off from the outside world. Currently working properly.]
[Quest Update.]
- Quest: Investigate the anomalous event in Tryte, and find a way to save Temalas City.
- Investigate the Pylons. [1/4]
- Reward: [Teleportation] skill video.
“There are four Pylons surrounding the town!” Albert shouted before he even was sitting in the car. “This one is fine, we need to check the others until we see which one is broken!”
Lloyd nodded. The engine revved. “Finally, a plan. How much time do we have?”
“A hour thirty.”
His grandpa nodded, a thin smile curving his lips. “Then hang on tight, we taking this girl for a ride.”
Then he took off, driving the sports car (definitely not suited for the task) through the mud and dirt of the cross-country like he was in a rally. They raced against time, circling around the village in the middle of the inaccessible zone through the flooded fields and the thick waterlogged soil, following the impassable perimeter. Albert had tried to touch it but found it to be impenetrable, not even budging to his attempts at going through. Perhaps magic could have helped, but he had this feeling that it would not have been a good idea to do that.
The second pylon came into view less than twenty minutes later.
“Go, go, go!”
Albert dismounted the car before it even stopped, the engine still revving madly, and made a beeline for the pylon. Here too he found traces of teleportation, and when he appraised the pylon, the quest updated its counter to [2/4].
