Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] Chapter 226: Book 3: Chapter 77: Last Minute

Read chapter 226 of Aetherios System [Slow Build OP MC, Isekai LitRPG/Cultivation] by TTReynolds on NovelPedia.

Book 3: Chapter 77: Last Minute Chapter 77: Last Minute They filed out into the mountain night with concentrated purpose, refusing to let the fear that bubbled within them win. Lanterns bobbed in place along tents and trees throughout the camp. Spells flickered where small circles of enchantment had to be tested and improved on. The Bang Bang, of smiths sang a chorus into the soft air, overlayed with whispers and hushed conversation of the soldiers. Off in the distance, far below, the valley was a black smear of smoke and ruin. But up there the air was clean and alive. The many squads spread out to their tasks without a needed command. Some went to a ring of flat stone and practiced formations until their muscles gave way. Meanwhile, Healers bent over the ugly, and the hurt, with filled poultices until the night air's smell gained an added tint of boiled herbs. Artisans bent metal and re-etched runes into talismans. And many more crafters and mages made battle preparation throughout the camp. Alex walked past the many groups like a shadow until he found a small tent at the edge of the camp where a single table and a stool waited outside. He sat and allowed the quiet to press in on him. The dim lantern light made the leather of his bracer gleam, and he took it off without thinking, his fingers already knowing how the straps came loose after months of repetition. The aether gems inside the bracer sat in their slots, each of them a cold, clear sliver of condensed magical will. He unslotted one and rolled it between a thumb and forefinger, feeling the pulse of the energy in it, the aether vibration that had been the source of so many tiny rescues during his deadly fights. “Obby,” he said under his breath, the rock somehow felt less like an evil mind leech when he announced things aloud. “It’s the best way to increase my chances, right? It’ll shore up that shitty energy pool situation.” “For sure,” Obby answered. “But it might not work at all. Never heard of someone trying this. Then again, I never heard of anyone needing to either.” He glanced at the training ground where the other wolrdstiders were training, at the people who’d trusted him, and then looked back at the gem. It was mortal-grade. Maybe not the most potent thing in the world, but it was solid, and cut for the single purpose to hold aether energy. He set his glyphcraft stylus on the table and exhaled slowly. His plan, as always, was risky. It was a gamble where the ante was his physical body. He had already fit two artificial gates into his spine. His first siphon plate lay warm under the skin behind his neck, a few inches below his natural bodygate. The second was a couple inches below that. If he could coax a gem into interfacing cleanly with the gate clustered over his meridian... and if the [Lattice Spiral] and the plate accepted it without blowing up, the enchantments bonded as intended—he could reroute a small but clean channel of aether into the gem. It wouldn't create energy out of nothing, but the connection might let him siphon and stabilize more of the aether he drew into his body. It also might let him draw on the aethergem much faster than having it slotted into the bracer allowed, saving him precious seconds in a fight. It was a dangerous plan. Yet, ‘danger’ was also the flavor of every decision Alex had made for the last few months. All his enchantments were the same sort of rushed, ugly, creations which were still somehow effective. All of them done for the purpose of making himself that much stronger, and protecting people he could not stand to lose. He set the gem in the center of the table and scratched a ring of tiny runes around its edges with his stylus. The ink glowed faint blue, then violet, as the pattern accepted his touch. He reworked the gem’s enchantment by pruning a few stabilizers and threading in a [Lattice Spiral] tether point that matched the siphon plate’s signature. Then he sealed the new glyph with a modified containment formula. T