That Time an American was Reincarnated into Another World

Chapter 218: Authority 7

The month of October was constantly eventful. It was easy to say that I had received more than enough opportunity for exercise. 

The Scourge was relentless. There were thousands of troops attacking in massive groups at any given moment. It was common for one, two, or even three divisions to be sent out for battle multiple times a week. The Snow Doves were especially busy. There was no longer any need for recon since we had planes but since we had the intel advantage, we were aware of every Scourge force that tried to make a move on us. It was often the job of strike teams to search and destroy those high strength low count forces. 

Thankfully we had things like helicopters that could drop us beyond the majority of enemy activity and not far from our objective. Instead of missions taking the better part of a day, it would take hours. It also meant we were getting more missions in general but I had to pick and choose my dissatisfactions. 

I may complain, but I wouldn’t have things any other way. I was glad to be fighting alongside the Snow Doves. I took pride in my ability to slaughter thousands of monsters in mere minutes. I could control battlefields, and with me there, my troops were in lesser danger. By extension, with me there, Nonnen was able to loosen his restraints and focus on his enemies, leaving the rest of his platoon to me. 

I didn’t want to leave because that felt like leaving my troops to fend for themselves, especially when the Scourge only picked up the pace. 

We were constantly slaughtering them, firebombing them, driving back their hordes. When the end of October came Polly estimated that we had killed over 200 thousand in just that month. However, when the second week of November came and ended, we had killed another 270 thousand in those two weeks. Scourge armies started increasing from 50 thousand strong to 100 thousand strong. We were receiving thousands of troops a day, pulled from the Kingdom’s apparently vast reserves, and yet it felt like we were losing more than we were gaining. Every soldier that died was statistically taking 20 to 30 monsters with them, which was an amazing performance record afforded only by bombing runs. But when 60 thousand monsters came, that was still 2000 dead troops, and far more wounded. 

270 thousand dead Scourge in two weeks meant 15 thousand dead troops in two weeks. And unlike the Scourge, we couldn’t replenish such numbers easily. They would overwhelm us sooner rather than later. 

That wasn’t even mentioning the battles among the Brigadiers. We had lost six during October. We had managed to kill 10 in that same time, which was just under a 1 to 2 exchange. After all, we couldn’t kill Brigadier Class Scourge with bombing runs. They affected that stratum of power in no way. 

It’s what the missiles and tanks were supposed to help with, perhaps some anti-personnel explosives I had in mind, but even after a month of development they wouldn't be getting fielded soon. Tanks were getting close but I had gotten word that they were running into problems perfecting the propellant for the main guns and making sure everything was “stupid proof” as I put it. All summoners knew exactly what that term meant but it was difficult to implement it. 

Still, they had prototypes out and Sawn was building tanks even though the shells weren’t perfect. He knew they’d get used and was stockpiling in advance. 

He also knew that the Treehouse was getting desperate. He was sending almost all bombs he produced to us in order to help me, but we were using them just as fast as we got them. C-400 planes were coming and going multiple times a day carrying all kinds of cargo, but it never seemed like enough. The Treehouse by itself was consuming more manpower and resources than entire fronts. It was like the Scourge was entirely focused on us because there was no other base that was taking as great of a hit by a long shot. 

However, because of that, my planes were showcased as the single greatest wartime invention in the Kingdom’s history. They were the only reason the Treehouse was able to survive so long. They would’ve been toppled under normal circumstances. 

The entire Kingdom was seeing just how amazing they were. Because of that, the Kingdom signed another contract for 2 billion coin with Sawn Industries for planes, bombs, more airfields, and more Aerial systems. Sawn couldn’t actually keep up with the orders despite hiring what seemed like every free enchanter in the Kingdom. 

And although I had to start paying taxes, I was slated to receive almost half a billion coin for my work. 

I was a rich man by every metric, and yet none of it felt like enough. 

Thankfully, I was about to acquire more of a different kind of power. 

With every day that I stressed myself on the battlefield, my cultivation advanced. My second Spark developed more and more, by leaps and bounds every time I drained my Psyka and regenerated it using my advancement formation. The Authority 7 behemoth White Crystal Maxwell gave me had vast power within, but I sucked it down every time I cultivated without issue. My dreams helped as well, as they always did. 

When the second week of November passed, I was close to advancing. It was then I finally decided to head back to the Capital, and I sent a message to Maxwell letting him know that he’d need to ready up. 

Authority 7 was here.

……

…

November 17th, 625

“Why is your house always so cold? It’s like you’re not as rich as me.”

“My clothes thermal regulate just fine. I like the cold anyway. Not a fan?”

“No.”

“I never took you for a summer guy.”

“I enjoy not worrying about having to warm up. The snow is bad enough outside, and yet you make me trudge through it without at least warming up your house for me to defrost in.”

Maxwell grumbled, making me snicker a bit. He acted like his clothes didn’t also thermal regulate better than mine. 

The house I had gotten was toward a more open area of the Capital. I had about two acre's worth of land to separate me from the rest of the populus and I had modified the property to sport a helipad for my personal helicopter. I naturally had one as rich as I was. It was good to get me from my house to the Spire or to the nearby airfield where I could board a plane to Wonderland. 

The house was big enough, certainly not a noble estate, but it was more room than I knew what to do with. The two biggest rooms were my office and bedroom, which was most of what I was concerned about. 

There were even maids who came in to clean occasionally. I was a personal chef away from living the high life. 

Maxwell waved, “Alright, let’s get this going. Took you long enough to get to this point.”

“I’d say a year and a half to get from Authority 6 to 7 is pretty damn fast.”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t break a hand jerking yourself off. Prep the formations and let me see them. Mind Palace technique as well.”

I chuckled as he set up the tempering chair. It was a nicer chair than what I remembered, cushioned instead of just wood, with a larger ring of Crystal cradles around it. It was also heavy with enchantments. 

I sat on it in the middle of my sparsely furnished living room before showing off all the formations. The advancement formation was by far the most complex but with this advancement I’d also be advancing my Mind Palace Technique to a whole other level. 

I already had some big ideas for how I would change it, and they would cascade into a paradigm shift when combined with the changes my second Spark brought about. 

Maxwell nodded when he saw the formations, starting to slot Crystals into cradles. 

“Good. Seems like I was right all along.”

“About what?”

“About everything regarding my Call of the Fallen Angel. It is the prime path for a summoner’s advancement. With every Authority you advance you are only proving that. The very fact that you have gotten here means it is the correct path. Now continue. I will wait until your advancement starts.”

“Hm, alright.”

I just nodded, closing my eyes as Maxwell slotted in the last Authority 9 White Crystal into the tempering chair. Once my advancement formation was conjured he activated the chair and immense pressure was placed on my soul, the Magika becoming denser than fog as it clouded the chair. I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. 

I went with it and started cultivating the last of my power. I was already on the threshold. 

I felt my mind open itself to more power, Psyka circulating along the advancement formation and coalescing in my mind space. 

My consciousness was moved to my Mind Palace. My soul stood within my Grand Library, the repository for all of my knowledge and memories. 

In the center of that library was the core where my Sparks were. The first, fully formed and churning heavily with computational power, the second, mostly formed, not yet filled with any information. 

The power around me was so dense that it took but a minute to add another layer onto the second Spark and maximize its power. That’s when my advancement formation flashed, manifesting over the Spark and engraving itself into it.

The process officially started. 

My entire mind shook as it and my soul opened themselves completely. Magika flooded in, washing through my entire Mind Palace, so dense that it became cloudy with power that I couldn’t seem to find a place for. 

The walls of my Palace were so heavily saturated that they became weaker instead of stronger. My Aura, originally cloudy with illusion, went into disarray. My Grand Library, full of books and texts and pictures, went through a shattering upheaval as my mind attempted to expand it, and failed when I couldn’t figure out how to make a library so massive as to accommodate that much power. 

My home, composed of familiar furniture mimicking my Black Spider Hotel room, was upended. It no longer acted as the anchor by which I remembered things. My memory was so good that it didn’t require associating one thing with another to strengthen the memory. That may have been true in the past but, especially with this advancement, it was far from the case. 

My memory was about to become perfectly infallible. I could already feel it working, but with that realization I became acutely aware that my Mind Palace would have to be changed. 

Down to the foundations. 

So I did what any reasonable man would do and destroyed everything. 

I pushed on the incoming power, pressurizing it and making my Mind Palace explode. The walls crumbled, the Grand Library came tumbling down, books vaporizing and my memories being released into the smoke.

Then I looked at my home, and after but a few moments of hesitation, I obliterated it. 

My realizations didn’t stop at the fact that my memory was to become perfect. I realized that my Mind Palace was more than just a memory technique. It was visualization, and that could be used in more than one way. 

I recalled all my experiences when visualization massively amplified my abilities. It did so with not just memory but with my illusions and mental trickery. It allowed me to hide from even Authority 10 Magi if they were duller than Nonnen. My visualization allowed me greater accuracy with my weapons, allowed me to connect with them on a level unknown to any human throughout Earth’s history. My accuracy became almost as rightfully perfect as my visualization. 

And so I came to one simple conclusion. My Mind Palace was not to be a mere memory/mnemonic technique. It was also not to become solely a defensive construct that protected my mind. 

My Mind Palace was to become a weapon. In a time when the Scourge was pushing harder than ever to wipe us out, in a time when I spent almost every waking moment on the battlefield among my machines of war and brothers and sisters in battle, I devoted everything toward killing those monsters. 

Thus, I demanded that my Mind Palace become another weapon by which all else would be perfected, honed, and amplified. 

A weapon had purpose. It had strengths and limits that could be compensated for by other weapons. Most importantly, a sufficiently powerful weapon became its own shield. 

And so I created a weapon of my mind. 

After I toppled everything, I visualized the greatest weapon ever conceived, the framework by which I’d shape the facilities of my mind. 

War. 

War was the single greatest tool of destruction. War drove technology. War was used to impose upon others. War was used to protect. 

Within war there was intelligence and brutality in equal measures. Intelligence gave tactics, subterfuge, and technology. Brutality was used when intelligence had already borne all the fruits it could give. When the tactics were formulated, when the subterfuge had failed or succeeded in giving its advantages, and when the technology was developed, brutality was enacted with those fruits of intelligence. 

The Scourge demanded that I be a master of both. With brutality I could use my weapons to slaughter thousands of monsters. With intelligence I could develop weapons that enabled others to slaughter millions. 

With a thought, I built the first structure, the all encompassing fortress by which everything else would be facilitated. 

The fortress was massive, composed of Grade 5 Titanium, one of the strongest metals I could imagine. It was circular so as to defend and attack from all sides and lifted upon tall foundations made of the same sheer titanium that sloped upwards into segmented titanium walls towering 200 meters into the air and being 50 meters thick. Everything was further enchanted as much as it could be, the power of Psyka coursing through every inch. 

Inside of these walls was an industrial complex. Not of simple factories but of data centers and fabrication plants. 

I started on the fabrication plants. 

It composed an entire half of the fortress and was where I would engage in enchanting and production. I manifested the necessary facilities within, creating tools that eased the design process, that could error check with programmed systems, that could simulate even better than Sawn’s own simulators could. After all, I had modern equipment, and I had figured out how to program magic. Within these facilities I could create anything given enough time. Then there were the machines responsible for building and assembling the things I designed, as well as an open field for testing the products that came off those belts. 

The second thing I focused on was the War Room. There I created a massive digital map that contained everything I had seen on maps from the Treehouse. Along with the map there was a console that could coordinate troops and track their statuses, useful for keeping up with the condition of platoons and enemies during active combat and developing tactics and strategies. 

Beside the War Room was the Armory, the third facility, a place where I cataloged all of my weapons and armaments. I’d be able to create loadouts for different situations, streamlining the summoning process. 

The fourth thing I focused on was the Command and Control Center. 

It was at the top of the titanium fortress, way up in the sky. It was there that I created the coordination systems to operate things during wartime. From there I would guide myself and others during battle. It was different from the War Room. One was for tactics, the other was for operation. One demanded intelligence, the other demanded brutality. 

In the CCC I’d control my body like the weapon it was. The War Room would pass me the tactics and updates from everything around me, but it was ultimately up to the CCC what I did and how I responded. 

I gave myself a captain’s chair and everything, one that sat behind a dozen screens that could track information and consoles all around that allowed me to respond to new developments.

After building that I took a step back, thinking about a few more things and making additions to the fortress as a whole. 

I separated the walls into four sections, and on the first section I inscribed Anarchy, leaving the other three sections blank. After that I went across the walls and added turrets. Some were huge autocannons, others were missile batteries, others were large bore cannons. I added missile silos behind the walls and added dense razor wire to the base of the walls, as well as some point defense and anti-air just behind the main turrets, and mortars and artillery within the walls for indirect fire support. 

I smiled and nodded approvingly. Attached to every single weapon were thick belts of ammunition or stockpiled armament just waiting to get fired. Now it was a proper fortress. 

I also added my living quarters, a mimickry of my Hotel room. While it was no longer an anchor for my memories, it would still be a familiar place for me to reside and rest. 

Last but most importantly, I went and made the Data Center. 

Located at the core of the base, the Data Center was where the core of my intelligence resided. 

It went all the way down to the foundation, and upon it I built two sectors. 

The first sector was for my first Spark. It was a sector that I placed my Spark into and surrounded with supercomputers. The supercomputers would take the processing power from my Spark and distribute it accordingly to the rest of the fortress with thick fiber optic cables. To anybody else not from Earth, the sight of this complex sector was unintelligible, looking like a jungle of metal and wire. However, I took it a step further and restructured my visualization of the Spark entirely. 

I allowed it to take the form of a basic AI. It’s effectively what my first Spark was. It was a secondary processing unit that could act as a miniature mind. I could give it tasks, draw on its extra computing power, or have it control things like my telepathy, automating functions so I could free my mind up for other things. 

The Spark was implanted into a projection device and attached with hundreds of cables to all the surrounding supercomputers. After setting up cooling systems to cool the supercomputers with liquid nitrogen and exchangers to bleed heat to other radiative systems, I activated the device and projected my visualization of the Spark. 

An image appeared in the air above the device, a massive network of lattice nodes connected in a pattern similar to neural networks and glowing a deep red, symbolizing the heat that such computational systems would normally generate. It hardly made sense but it’s how I imagined this crystal Spark being translated into an intelligence similar to a brain. 

However, there were gaps all across the projection. I knew what they were. It was the memories required to run the Spark. 

So I moved on to the second sector. 

The second sector, where my new second Spark was placed, was a bit more comprehensible than the first. 

There, I put together a center for all of my knowledge and memories. There were data racks stacked on top of each other and neatly placed throughout the room. On each rack were not hard drives, but data crystals. 

It was a cross between hard drives on Earth and Orbs on this world. These data crystals could store magnitudes more information than normal hard drives, and there were 50 of them in each data rack, each crystal having an optical reader attached to it, which broke off into a fiber optic cable. 

There were hundreds of data racks, tens of thousands of data crystals and fiber optic cables that all shot up to and traveled across the ceiling in neat organized bundles before dropping to the Spark. 

After hooking the Spark up to a projection device like the first and connecting all the fiber optic cables, I activated it and saw the image. 

The other half of the crystalline neural network appeared in the air, glowing cold blue with inert information rather than active data, the opposite of the other Spark. 

With a nod, I left the second sector, moving to the true core of this data center. 

I reached the last empty room and pondered before running two massive fiber optic cables from the two neural networks and attached them to a singular device in the central room. The device was another Orb, sitting upon a pedestal, about 3 feet in diameter. The two cables latched onto it from the left and right, spitting their data straight into the Orb, both visualizations of my Sparks converging into one image. 

It appeared within the Orb, a dense purple neural network. They filled each other's gaps, each one capable of taking from the other without any inhibition or delay. It was almost like an actual brain, two sides of the same coin coming together into one cohesive whole. 

I sighed before enchanting the pedestal and connecting this data center to the rest of the base. 

My entire Mind Palace flashed when that happened, conduits engraving and flashing across every wall and floor, every system connected to every system. 

That’s when the Data Center changed, the small room with the pedestal flashing as the walls took on projections. 

The small, dark, metal room bloomed into a massive white space with paneled walls, floors, and ceilings with grid markings all over them. 

I looked at the pedestal and touched the Orb, thinking of something. 

“Cat.”

The room changed, becoming a shelter where a dozen cats were held in cages along walls. 

Then it shifted again, showing a house, a kitten running around the living room and chasing a child pulling a string behind them. 

It shifted once more, an adult cat curled into the lap of the child, now a teenager. 

It continued shifting, turning into a forest, where I saw a tiger prowling through tall grass. 

It shifted from there to show a lion in a savannah, chasing and hunting a herd of prey zebras. 

Then when I willed it, the images flashed away, returning to a blank room. 

Above the Orb was a search bar and a word within that bar. 

“Think.”

I muttered, understanding that this place had just become more than some cold storage for data and processing. It had become more than I initially conceived. 

A secondary mind that could, in a way, think for me. I only had to think of a cat and this facility would hand me every detail about a cat within my mind. It would be perfect data, data that I could pull on with my Psyka and Aura directly. 

I wasn’t sure what this meant for my illusory abilities, but it was immediately clear that my Auric technique had just taken a hardly fathomable step forward. 

I gave a simple nod and left the data center. 

I backed away and saw the entire Mind Palace. I made sure it had enough facilities to support what I’d do in the future, including a place dedicated toward processing advancement formations. 

This place would become my weapon. It would conduct war, and it would excel at every facet of what war entailed. 

It was my war machine. It was brutalist, utilitarian, but that’s what war called for. I wouldn’t give the Scourge the luxury of flair or finesse. I would slaughter them with utter efficiency. 

But of course, this massive fortress would need power to drive all of its functions. 

I rubbed my chin before looking beyond the fortress at the flowing vortex of power that was my Psyka. 

The pool had expanded to many times what it was before. Just like this fortress was several times bigger and far stronger than my previous palace, the vortex was not just 5 or 6 times larger, but thicker, denser. 

I shifted that vortex, gathering up the rest of the lingering power through my mind and situating it above the fortress. 

Then I made it flow downward, the vortex converging in the center of itself before dropping like a beam of light and shooting into the fortress. 

The entire structure flashed, every conduit nearly overloading before it was all saturated with dense power. 

That’s when I finally felt my mind blank, my consciousness disappearing for an undeterminable amount of time.

……

…

Maxwell sat on his own chair not far from John. 

Initially he had simply activated the tempering device and waited, sipping a glass of wine and reading a book, bored out of his mind. Not that he hadn’t often been bored these days. He had long learned to deal with it and be idle. 

Several hours passed though and John was still going through his advancement. So much Magika was flowing from the tempering device that Maxwell couldn’t help but be worried for the kid’s body. It was supposed to temper him, not kill him. But from the density of Vigor radiating from John’s body, he had to be at least at the Authority 3 or 4 standard for knights. Of course, John couldn’t actively use any of that Vigor but it still strengthened his body to an unbelievable degree. 

He couldn't help but wonder what was happening in his mind that took so long. The Mind Palace technique should make things go by quicker. Maxwell had managed to develop the technique for himself. It was rudimentary since he couldn’t take advantage of an advancement to entrench the technique, but he found that it greatly helped with keeping his mind balanced. 

His broken vessel was prone to overexerting itself. The Mind Palace was a good way to stabilize himself. He could admit that this student of his had come to him with an amazing thing back then. 

What John was doing was something different though. 

He decided to take a nap while waiting, slumping a bit in his chair. 

That lasted for about 4 hours before he was startled awake. 

His mind picked something up, a vast impenetrable Aura that threatened to blast his own away. 

But it didn’t. Maxwell’s eyes snapped open just in time to see it. 

John’s power was solidifying, his Mind Palace finally taking on form. It was projected through his Aura, and Maxwell felt like he could see into John’s mind. 

He barely understood what his senses took in. 

A metal fortress of colossal proportions, armed with inconceivable weapons of such destructive force that the only reason he could comprehend their power was because Maxwell himself had seen what the height of Sovereign power looked like. 

The vortex of power that converged down upon the fortress with a beam of light was the only indication of the level of power behind those weapons. It was impressive, but nothing that surprised Maxwell. 

No, what he found hard to comprehend was the sheer complexity behind what lay within the fortress, in its deepest depths. 

Visualizations of devices so utterly dense with computational power that no human could possibly hope to match it, not even the greatest summoners. Worse yet, it was real technology, not simply a baseless visualization of something John didn’t understand. 

Maxwell could sense these things in John’s Aura. Every weapon, every construct, was something that John created because he understood how they worked and what they could do. 

The issue was that none of those things were within the bounds of what this world understood. 

He sensed one thing that gave it away. Sure, there were hints of things from their world within that fortress, but Maxwell could sense the distinction in that fortress, as if John himself was speaking its characteristics into his mind. 

It was Earthly. It used modern design, ballistic armaments, Grade 5 Titanium Alloy, microelectronics. It was a war machine.

It was of another world. 

John is not from this world. 

Maxwell reeled when the whispers came into his mind, pulling back his Aura and scowling at the adult man before him, willing himself not to be terrified of the fortress's ability to wipe him from existence with a single one of those thousands of cannons and missiles. 

It would be shameful to show weakness before his student. It would be lowly of him to show inferiority before someone who came from an entirely different world. 

He gradually calmed down, John’s mind closing itself off as the advancement completed. 

Maxwell let out a long sigh, shaking his head and rubbing his face in exhaustion. 

“What terrible place have you come from John Cooper? And what terrible things have you been brought here for?”