November 4th, 627

“It’s about damn time.”

I smiled at Maxwell after he opened the door with his friendly greeting. His study was still as impressively rich as always.

“Hey old man.”

“You’re calling me old? You’re the one who’s taking forever to advance, moving like pond water. Your friends are leaving you behind, so maybe you should stop playing general and study more.”

“Playing general? I’m running a continental private military force that’s single handedly forcing back an entire Scourge front, as well as the industrial company responsible for supplying my forces and the Kingdom’s with catastrophic weapons. I’ve been getting pulled a thousand different ways for the last two years.”

“And I’m hearing a whole lot of excuses.”

I smirked as Maxwell turned to Umara, who was standing there with her white hair tied up in a braid.

“Afternoon, little lady.”

“Good afternoon, Sir Albarain. Thanks in advance for taking care of John.”

“Don’t thank me. You’re the one who’s gonna marry him, you poor soul.”

“Eh, it’s not too bad. If I ever get annoyed I just go spend all his money.”

“And so you’ve cracked the secret to a harmonious marriage. Come in and sit. John, you go plant your ass.”

Umara beamed with a chuckle while I moved to the tempering chair. The advancement Orb appeared in my hand, as did the large Crystal.

Today, I would take the step to Authority 8. It had taken almost 2 years and would’ve come faster if I hadn’t been so unbelievably busy. Even then, the fact that it took only two years was a testament to my talent. Others could easily take double or triple that time while dedicated to advancement, and for some, their talent would only barely help them reach my level after a couple decades.

I suddenly thought of Rayla. Previously the most powerful person I knew of after arriving in this world, her talent barely allowed her to slip into Authority 8. Even then, her combat power was lacking for a talented Authority 8. She certainly couldn’t even begin to compare to someone like Umara. I was pretty sure she wasn’t enlightened, and therefore didn’t have the vast foundations someone like Umara was gifted with. That wasn’t to mention my knowledge and the spells Umara developed with it.

And now, I would be reaching her level on paper. Even thinking back on what I had seen of her power, I had long ago surpassed it.

Authority 8 wouldn’t be the large leap that Authority 7 had been. I wouldn’t be creating a new Spark, but I would multiply the size of my reservoir of Psyka and get the opportunity to restructure some of my Mind Palace.

The most important part was the massive amount of Psyka I’d be bringing in. It was the first preparatory step toward what I’d have to do during my advancement to Authority 10.

Maxwell walked around me, slotting in the White Crystals around the chair.

“Are you ready? Let me see the formation.”

I silently raised my hand, the formation blooming with perfect recreation. I had already made it thousands of times before this, cultivating all of them without flaw.

Maxwell took a long look at it before nodding.

“Good. I assume you’re already prepared for the advancement itself and what you’ll be doing with your Mind Palace, so I’ll start the condensation now.”

“Mm.”

I nodded, the Crystals around me activating and dumping their Magika into the area around my body.

I felt the familiar pressure on my soul. It was comfortable for a while, like being wrapped in a warm heavy blanket.

It surpassed that soon after. It wasn’t painful, just a little stifling. It was difficult to move my Psyka around without pushing it away from my body.

I took a few deep breaths, my eyes closed as my mind calmed.

I had been preparing for this day for months now. I hadn’t gone into work for a week now, everything either put off for another day or simply delegated to someone else. I was busy relaxing myself and scheming. Not just for my advancement, but for what I’d need to do afterward.

I felt my skin tingle as the area reached full saturation. Although the pressure had to be colossal compared to my last advancement, it didn’t feel all that bad. Probably because of the things I’d been through since then.

After feeling suitably primed, I let my Psyka flow.

The advancement formation unfolded in my mind, arrays and clusters manifesting before connecting to each other at thousands of different points.

Like many times before, it was finished without flaw after about 80 seconds. That’s when I felt my Psyka flow through my brain, the formation bending it in such a manner that it expanded my power in a way never before known.

It triggered something in my soul, and once the process started, it couldn’t be stopped.

I suddenly felt myself open, like a void had bloomed in the center of my chest. The Magika around me started flooding in. The vast majority of it was converted to Psyka as it went through my advancement formation. But some remained as Mana and Vigor, tempering my body with its density and elevating my flesh to another level.

Within my Mind Palace, I saw some of the infrastructure shake.

The sheer density of the power entering my body stressed the very foundations. But if it didn’t break, it would temper. The titanium of the walls around my fortress were strengthened and the weapons upon them were empowered. The facilities within my fortress were refined.

I did away with extraneous items, revamped my fabrication plant, tidied up the command center, and reorganized the data center with my Sparks.

Everything was streamlined. Power flowed with greater clarity and volume, exactly what I needed for this advancement.

As that all happened, the vortex of power above and below the Palace grew in intensity and size. Its bulk tripled in size with the initial influx of power, then doubled again over the subsequent several minutes.

After finishing the renovations on the Palace, I saw that its density had tripled on top of that. It was an effective 18 times increase in sheer power.

With more power came a far vaster ability to not just empower my summons, but extend my longevity. Just the raw numbers meant that I could fight 18 times longer in a battle, or dump 18 times the power into my summons over the same duration. However, a larger pool meant that I also regenerated that much more over the same amount of time. With enough pacing, my overall combat effectiveness went up much more than just 18 times.

The increase in power by itself was incredible. I could already fight Authority 8s on equal grounds before. Killing Authority 9s had been done as well after taking advantage of the nature of my weapons and the complacency of the Scourge I had faced.

Now, I was finally rising to the upper echelon of this world’s combat hierarchy. On the exponential power distribution curve, I now had the combat ability to face everything but the pinnacle. There was no reason I couldn’t do significant damage to Authority 10s, especially after I reached into my 8th dimension for new weapons.

I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to think I could challenge all of them, especially those that had reached beyond the Great Barrier. Not all Authority 10s were created equal. It was a major divider for a reason.

But there would be no doubting my power now. Short of that great divide, I would be the lethality king.

Yet this was just the first step of three.

I watched as my body was completely saturated, my mind becoming that much more powerful with the influx of Psyka. Although my thinking speed only increased half as much as the density of my Psyka did, my capacity to handle mental tasks skyrocketed. I’d probably be able to stay awake for a few weeks straight if I weren’t in battle.

This advancement was merely a primer though. Authority 10 would be the creation of my ‘third Spark’, though not as it had been before. It was supposed to combine my two Sparks into one, solidifying not just two concepts of my mind, but my mind as a whole. This would do more than just give me a mimicry of an auxiliary intelligence. I would be gaining, at minimum, a second mind as a whole.

Maxwell’s Call was incredible. He had earned his title as a genius thoroughly. After this advancement, I would be placing myself just below the greatest summoners throughout this world’s history. Then I’d surpass them before even reaching Authority 10, let alone beyond that.

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But the things I’d gain beyond the sheer power would set me above them by magnitudes.

This advancement was priming me for Authority 10. I would need even more power than this, which was what Authority 9 would give me. So while the improvement to my cognitive abilities would be put on the back burner, the amplification to my Psyka pool would be incomprehensible to any other summoner that dared compare themselves to me.

I couldn’t imagine what would happen to me during that advancement to Authority 10. Hopefully I’d be figuring out how to break down the Great Barrier around that time, and then doing so. But if Nonnen was any indication, my power needed to be far greater if I wanted to attempt that.

Far greater than what even this amazing advancement was giving me.

After what had to be at least two hours, my power finally started settling, some of my consciousness returning to the real world. I felt my body’s strength, a good step more powerful than before. I could feel the Mana in my blood and Vigor in my muscles.

I may not be quite able to go blow for blow with a normal Authority 5 knight, but it was infinitely better than being ordinary.

I smiled and looked down at my hand, gazing at the crest of the 13 stars.

High above my Mind Palace I could see the same stars, 7 of which were lit. I glanced across the eras of weapons I had gone through up until now.

And my eyes stopped at the 8th star, my 8th dimension.

With a thought, the barrier into it was shattered, the influx of power overwhelming it. The star lit up and I was greeted with the sight of a new era of warfare.

My smile widened, my heart beating in excitement. I knew ever since I had spoken to Kwon and Song that I may not be limited to my knowledge of how Earth had been when I left. Time was not linear between our worlds.

Even if it was though, it had been several years since I had come to this world. Technology was already growing at an exponential rate, and weapons technology was at the forefront. It wouldn’t have been surprising to see this kind of tech even under the paradigm of my prior ignorance.

But the sheer refinement of what I was seeing meant that I had jumped another era, as I had every Authority before.

“Heh… Hehehe…”

I started laughing, failing to stifle my joy. Umara tilted her head at me, Maxwell frowning.

“What’s got you laughing like a psycho, boy?”

“I’ve told you that the world I came from has technology you can’t fathom. Now, what if I told you that I’ve just gained access to some of the technology that I couldn’t previously fathom?”

“Well, I refuse to believe that your technology is that much more complex than our magic, so I think that’s just an inability on your part.”

“On some level, you’re right. Pound for pound I think their complexities would punch the same. It’s just in this world, there are singular people who handle that complexity by themselves. On Earth, you had the collective efforts of hundreds of millions advancing all facets of all subjects and niches. I can’t wait to see what will happen when this world hits the same threshold and acquires the benefit of both worlds. But for now, I’m the only one that wields both, and when I say you can’t quite fathom what this technology represents, I mean it.”

I stood out of my seat, calling upon several summons from my 8th dimension.

The first was a full body suit. It was open when it manifested behind me, my foot stepping into the foot assembly.

It closed around my boot as I stepped back, letting myself lean into its mechanical embrace. My other foot was encapsulated and my legs were clamped down on by a metal skeleton.

I could feel hundreds of different parts shift as the suit adjusted to my proportions. When the torso closed around me and my arms were locked into their positions, I sensed the rest of the armor deploy.

There were a couple dozen plates that adjusted around my limbs, different polymers and alloys that gave complete protection while being durable enough to take on more than just a blow or two before demanding replacement.

At first, I felt the suit move of its own accord, completing its adjustments and deployments. The armor was thick, heavy, and bulky, all of it hiding exceedingly complex skeletons of conduits, servos, suites of sensors, and redundancies.

I looked down at my hand, which was now covered by a textured glove. Above the knuckles of my fingers were metal appendages that bent with my form. Above my palms were either metal or rubbery textured surfaces that allowed me to use the fine motor dexterity of my fingers while also providing protection and utility.

The suit felt like its own entity. I could barely bend my fingers, not just because the suit was restricting me while booting, but because it was bearing its own weight for me. That weight was the reason modern personal armor wasn’t built like a tank.

This suit was the solution to that problem.

I finally felt the power kick in with an audible click. After a second or two my limbs fell, my muscles finally able to move and manipulate the machine like my own body.

I balled my hand into a fist, no longer feeling resistance, before summoning a helmet that went with this suit.

It was a full head cover, similar to the helmets I had made for my Iron Legion. There was a visor across the front and a thick but precisely machined metal cover everywhere else.

I lifted it and slid it over my head. A polymer around the neck sealed to a base on the suit, providing full environmental isolation.

Then, the HUD kicked on.

The visor in front of my eyes lit up with a logo resembling the 13 stars of my Crest. I saw it boot with hundreds of lines of logging code before flickering with activity.

Like a video game, I saw a weapon indicator, a biometric indicator, a small map, a compass, and some identifier tags that hovered over Maxwell and Umara, not yet configured but showing me their distance and whatever biometrics it could pick up from them such as heart rate, skin temp, and possible intentions based on their body language.

As that happened, I noticed the spirit of the suit and helmet start to infuse memories into my mind.

I could see the training manuals, dated for the year 2049, which meant the tech was some years older than that and the manual was likely being viewed some years after the manual was dated, probably in the 2050s.

The name of the suit was in the title.

The Armored Personnel Powered Exosuit, Model APE-77: Assault Configuration.

The Assault Configuration was dressed for frontal combat. Moderately armored compared to its heavier counterparts but retaining enough mobility to almost entirely eliminate the burden of weight and make a man feel superhuman. It was the flagship of the second generation of exosuit programs and the first mass produced model for the American military.

The same exoskeleton in this suit could be dressed down in other configurations, but looking in my 8th dimension, I couldn’t see any other options. Not that I was complaining. I’d likely be able to find them later.

The suit had heavy plates of some kind of alloy. The soldiers wearing it only needed to know that it was metal and could take plenty of blows from plenty of bullets. With the armor itself and all its burden being taken on by the exosuit instead of the body, it was possible to implement armor previously unwearable.

Between all the gaps was a polymer seal for full body protection. Around that were a few layers of soft armor topped with some standard camouflage fabric that either covered or accented the armor plates.

Topping all that was another layer of pockets and utility. A holster for a sidearm, a chest rig for holding magazines, pouches for grenades and tools, knife sheaths, and more.

It was definitely bulky. For me, who was used to everything being stored in spatial rings and wearing nothing but my slim coat, it would be a lot to adjust to.

Not that I wouldn’t happily make the jump.

Once the exosuit was fully booted, I moved my limbs around. According to some of the logs I saw flash across my eyes, the system tried to run a diagnostic and configuration in order to adapt the suit’s behavior to my own, but was halted.

I could only assume that the spirit of this exosuit had something to do with it. These summons were not perfect recreations of the forms they took on. They were the ideal recreation, quite literally the spirit of the technology.

There was a good chance this exosuit would be much better than its identical counterparts on Earth.

For instance, there was no discrepancy in my own actions and those of the suit. It followed my will perfectly and was adjusted to every one of my joints like it had been custom fitted to my body. With a mere thought empowered by Psyka, I was able to manipulate the HUD and change the identifier tags for Umara and Maxwell to friendly.

On a whim, I flicked the visor between its different modes, going through its night vision, thermal, and fusion visuals. All of them had augmented reality displays over them, giving improved utility.

After playing around with some of the other functions I finally brought out a new weapon.

It was called the Caseless Munitions Rifle Model 21, or CMR 21. It operated by locking a bullet in front of an ignition chamber where a newly developed explosive liquid was injected in precise amounts. The result was a caseless weapon capable of firing at variable and customizable speeds ranging anywhere from semi-automatic fire to fully automatic fire at over 1200 rpm. The liquid solution was stored in two canisters in the shoulder of the weapon and mixed during injection, while the bullets were stored in conventionally shaped magazines capable of holding several times more than cased bullet magazines.

The only limitations for the weapon, short of access to the specialized munition resources, were heat and chamber durability.

However, it was just the first example of the new technology I would have access to.

From extreme range sniper rifles to smart munitions, explosives, and brand new ways to conduct warfare, the gear presented to me in this 8th dimension was beyond even what I would’ve guessed before advancing.

Each Authority was jumping eras, and with exponential growth, this jump was significant. The exosuit would multiply my strength and, depending on how it responded to empowerment, could give me capabilities comparable to knights around the same Authority. By itself, the exosuit was worth the entire advancement.

Everything else was within expectations, simply a matter of applying smart technology to the finer facets of weaponry. When I left Earth, such technology was not just being theorized, but actively developed and produced. It may not have been getting mass produced for entire militaries due to financial unwillingness, but technology solved that issue in time.

This era of technology was only between two and three decades beyond the time that I had left. Every advancement before had jumped about that much time. I was thrilled to see myself getting such useful tech at this level, thrilled that I wouldn’t be limited to merely what I knew. It only meant that I would be able to survive the dangerous battles I was bound to get into in the future.

But it also left me with questions, the same ones I had asked myself when Kwon and Song told me what year they had come to this world.

If the timelines between this world and Earth weren’t linear or parallel, then could I ever hope to step back into a world where my family still lived? Getting back to Earth was a pipe dream, but I figured that if there was a way here, there was a way back.

But finding a way back wouldn’t help if I came back to an Earth many decades in the future, a future where my family was either aged and elderly, or dead.

I knew anything was possible at this point, but the thought of it still spoiled my mood every time I thought about it. And unfortunately, it was impossible for me to just ignore it.

I sighed and continued checking out the new gear being bestowed upon me. I forgot sometimes, but my coat wouldn’t last forever, wouldn’t always be able to keep up. That I was getting my hands on high tech armor meant that in the future, I’d be able to supply myself with armor capable of operating at my level, never to become obsolete.

Granted, I’d probably want to buy myself something nice anyway and give myself some more insurance, but the minimum was always nice to have. Not everything could be prepared for, but I’d always have my summons.

I looked at Umara through my visor, smiling.

“I heard that Vetsmon flew in a week or so ago. Call everyone up. I’m itching for a good spar.”