Frostbound

Chapter 261 - Limping to the Finish Line

Hendricks (cont.)

It wasn't long before people flocked in. His team set up camp a distance away from everyone else and mostly kept to themselves, but as more and more people came pouring in, it began to become untenable.

Word had spread and it had spread fast.

Which wasn't something Hendricks thought he'd say after telephone lines and satellites were destroyed.

Oh, to have a phone again.

Most scientists, engineers, researchers, or any other of their ilk were stuck working on more important things. The array he used being one of them.

Phones took too much infrastructure to rebuild quickly.

Sure, they discovered a way to get electricity working again, but it was no good for the fried motherboards and chips that every device had. To get everything up and working again, it would take an entire overhaul of everything delicate inside the electronics.

The only thing that survived was the hardiest of technology. Things that weren't reliant on extremely tight tolerances. A techie had explained it to him once but he only got some of what the man was trying to say.

Phones, computers, and anything with a motherboard were built with only a specific amount of electricity to run through it. Any more than that, and they would fry.

After the Change, electricity, even in small amounts, carried with it Lightning mana. Mana, which was an energy that the boards were not capable nor designed to withstand, greatly exceeded that capacity.

It was like pumping the amps or volts up, or so that was how he thought of it. Hendricks wasn't a sparky.

Some of the other internal parts worked. Some didn't, as the new energy wrecked havoc on certain parts.

Batteries were built to contain a charge. They weren't built to contain mana.

The redesign of those was simple. Find something that could contain both electricity and mana. Capacitors were the same way if a touch different because of their distinct use.

That was about the end of his understanding, but the main takeaway from all of that was phones were possible, just not yet.

Even if scientists rediscovered, reinvented, or redesigned a way for them to work, it would be reliant on the same technology as before. Cell towers and satellites.

Both of which they didn't have. They also didn't have the servers capable of running them or the manufacturing capability to build them.

Which was why most research was directed towards more magical solutions.

Messengers, communications officers, radio operators, all the various jobs that relied on communication and were turned into Professions or Classes, had skills that could do it.

[Send Message] and [Pigeon Delivery] were the most straightforward and obvious, but there were also [Project Voice] which could be used over great distances. Communication spells that mages worked up.

Dimensional mages were spending long nights trying to invent teleportation with no luck.

Hendricks would just be happy with a car. That or a plane of some kind. Traveling thousands of miles over land on foot was not fun and he did not wish to do so again.

Somehow, in a day without phones or any other way of communication over great lengths, word spread like wildfire.

Starting with only a few hundred. Then a few hundred more. Then another group. Another one after that.

The endless tide never stopped. Camps took up every open space around the monolith and it only continued to get more crowded.

Which was when the fights broke out.

With a few years spent in their new reality, with powers that made people feel strong, conflict was inevitable.

Butting heads, colliding egos, short tempers, it was all on display.

It only got worse from there. Hendricks and his team were months early. The only people around were either locals or small groups traveling through that noticed something unique.

As time ticked down, that wasn't the case anymore. Solidified groups, larger and more organized started streaming in. Pylons and their leaders sent people to investigate and were coming back in force.

Then Factions started to arrive.

It started with those that were close by at first. Three Rivers, a Faction Hendricks knew about and was told to not cause conflict with.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They were set up to the South where the Ohio River met and merged with the Mississippi.

The Heartlands Alliance.

The collection of pylons and their owners who banded together in what they called the 'Heartlands.' Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska. Anywhere corn was grown was how Hendricks thought of it.

Smaller Factions rolled in from the Southeast. Atlanta, Jackson, Birmingham.

A Cowboy with a much too-large head strolled in like he owned the place and came from Hendricks could only assume was Texas.

The Stormlands, from the Midwest.

New York and New England.

Nearly everywhere was represented one way or another. Only Florida and places far to the North were still making their way. Florida's peninsula turning into a series of islands didn't help for travel.

As the crowd grew, so did everyone's ideas. With the thousands that were present, everyone wanted their voice to be heard which was nearly impossible.

Until people actually came to blows.

Hendricks wasn't sure who started it. The other advance teams had arrived by then which made his position stronger, but the group of a hundred was still outclassed by most of the other Factions there.

That being the case, they were mostly dismissed. They didn't have the numbers or the strength of some of the other people and in this day and age, that was all that mattered.

Still, they were close enough to the action that they could see the conflict happen.

Lightning flashed down and everyone's danger sense went wild as tempers flared. It took some pushing and shoving but Hendricks eventually got to a position so he could see what was happening.

A man was dead.

Blackened and burnt to a crisp and two people were arguing over his smoldering body.

"Do not talk to me like you can order me around!" A man yelled angrily. He wore a fancy robe with branching lightning bolts embordered on it. They curved and branched up the sleeves before dancing along the center of the robe.

Hendricks' first thought wasn't about the gaudy robes, but on how powerful the man felt.

It was like standing in the middle of a storm waiting to be struck down.

It wasn't hard to figure out who the man was. Only one person wore such opulent robes and talked so arrogantly. The Stormbringer.

Another title he pinned on himself.

From the power radiating off him and the fact his conquering of Chicago was well known, he could call himself anything he wanted when he had the power to back it up.

"You think you can just kill one of my men and get away with it?!" Another screamed back. His hand gripped his sword which was already drawn. The hat gave him away but so did the accent.

It wasn't a coincidence that the two most arrogant people came into conflict early.

Seeing where this was heading, Hendricks made a quick exit. He did not want to get caught in the crosshairs.

Things like that only kept happening.

The deaths were kept to a minimum, especially with so many Healers around, but it was still surprising. Not only that people would do that, actually murder another person for such silly reasons, but that it kept happening.

It was like gang retaliations.

One side had to get revenge and it started a cycle that could never end.

Luckily, Hendricks wasn't the one meant to deal with all of this. He was only the leader of an advance team. He wasn't a diplomat or an ambassador.

The Admiral would have to deal with everything when he arrived. When the timer hit three weeks out, he finally did.

The Factions all had similar enough themes that they were easy to lump together and identify. Some even had banners and flags that they carried with them. Most settled for badges and insignias.

One Faction had everyone dress all in one color.

None were as cohesive and unified. Having most of their army comprised of former military demanded that of them. Even if they technically didn't have a country to serve anymore.

Arriving with thousands at his back already gave the Admiral a bit of notoriety, but it only grew when people realized that he was an actual Admiral and it wasn't just a self-given title.

He didn't wear the uniform or have the symbol pinned on his arm, but everyone knew who he was.

After he arrived it was like a whirlwind. Some deferred to him because of his rank, others because he had the numbers, but he swayed most of the unaffiliated pylons to follow his lead.

Even some of the stronger ones joined under his banner.

He immediately took charge of who he could and had everyone working on construction. Anyone who would help was given a job. Trenches were dug, walls were put up, and stone was dragged up from the ground and molded into place.

All to entrench themselves as deep as they could.

Hendricks wasn't privy to the meetings that took place. The talks between leaders, but he had eyes to see the outcome. Some were unhappy and voiced their displeasure loudly, but the killing stopped.

The main argument against them was that the walls and everything they were building were going to be useless. No one knew what the test entailed. It could be one massive enemy or thousands of little ones.

Some even thought combat wasn't a given. Saying it could end up being a puzzle or something similar.

Others claimed it would be a Dungeon as that was the only thing that made sense. Except it wouldn't be a normal dungeon that went deeper into the Earth, but one that had floors heading upward, into the sky.

The tall monolith certainly allowed for such a thing, but that didn't make it a given.

Throughout it all, more and more people arrived.

Tens of thousands by the two-week mark on the timer. A hundred thousand by the one-week mark. Every day closer had thousands arriving.

With 6 days left on the timer, another army of thousands marched in from the West. A group of three separate Factions that traveled together.

One came all the way from Canada. The other came from Yellowstone with the last one coming from Denver. All three bordered the new mountain range that split the country in two.

Still, for all the faults that this meeting had and the fights that broke out, there was an underlying energy that refused to be stomped out. One positive out of all the bad.

The missing persons.

With everyone from all over conglomerated in one place led to everyone asking about people they knew. Friends or family that lived far away when the Change hit.

Asking if they saw them, if they knew anything about where they were.

Most requests were met with sad shakes of the head or gestures of uncertainty, but rarely, there were gasps of surprise and tears of joy.

Those were few and far between but there were still uplifting to witness.

It was at the four-day mark when another Faction rolled in that had everyone's heads turning. Every Faction leading up until that point arrived on foot. Marching in on land.

But this one was different.

They arrived on boats.

They looked worse for wear and had many, many damaged parts showing along the hull but the fact they were floating at all was what mattered. They essentially limped to the finish line, but they arrived all the same.

Another thousand arrived.

A small drop in the total of the crowd gathered, but it was a marvel to witness firsthand.

Everyone coming together to face whatever this 'test' was the System threw at them.

Even with all the tension, Hendricks couldn't help but get excited.