Kingdom Of The Weak 303 Good Stuff To Bring Home

Since there was no requirement for her to serve out a ten year sentence, merely having to accompany Remian during his twelve-day period, she actually didn't need to use an acceleration at all. Just for the sake of having more time to learn, though, she opted for it and thus learned at 100x acceleration, at least for the first few minutes (5-6 hours in accelerated time).

By then, Remian was starting to dabble in other subjects. A little bit of metallurgy, a little of science, a bit of mechanical engineering…

He was exploring subjects, not mastering them. He wanted to see what he could make use of before committing time and attention to the topics at hand, so he could pick and choose what he felt could be useful.

One of the fields in which he felt he should definitely spend time in was Psionics. He was tempted to study magic, but thinking back on how his world was already running out of mana, he felt that doing so might not be worthwhile in the end.

What he was looking for was ways to improve productivity and standards of living that could be managed by a Cla.s.s-3 civilization. He didn't need to learn warp theory or how to create artificial wormholes; even if he managed to learn it, his home world simply wasn't advanced enough to use such knowledge. They first needed to develop the tools and power sources step by step until they could reach that point. Remian alone wouldn't be able to catapult his entire world into advancing that far so easily.

It would be different if he could throw open the interstellar doors and grant his people consistent access to the wider galaxy as it were, but there was simply no telling if he could ever come back here, much less enable others to do so in the future. He could only take whatever he could get in these twelve days and then find his way home.

Actually, Remian hadn't been told, but he was going to take more than twelve days to finish his ten year sentence. The reason for this was that the acceleration would not be on forever; eventually he would need to rest, and sleep wasn't accelerated. In fact, due to the stress of the acceleration on his mind, he was going to sleep longer and more heavily than ever.

But who would notice the pa.s.sing of days in this windowless room? The lights would be on and brighten or dim according to the controls. It was altogether too easy to lose track of day and night if not for his new visor's internal clock, and real time hardly applied to Remian who was going to be perceiving time in an extremely accelerated pace.

To the people watching, Remian basically went into Virtual Acceleration for mere minutes before he stopped it in exhaustion and went to sleep. To him, it had been over twelve hours and he was truly worn out and needed to rest. A quick scan indicated that he was going to sleep for at least nine hours.

"Make sure he's well fed." The corpoman spoke. "This man is, for all practical purposes, innocent of any crime. Take care of him properly. The Conglomerate will be watching."

"We'll send in a high nutrition breakfast when he wakes." The prison guard a.s.sured him. He turned to the other guards. "Turn on sleep enhancement. Let him have as good a quality sleep as we can manage."

This cut his expected sleep time from nine hours to just one.

***

By this time, Mindy and her crew had taken down three Spectres and her leg hurt like crazy.

"Fireball!" she casted the spell from a scroll, too tired and in pain to walk over to the last two Spectres to fight them.

Of the two, one wrestled with Wulfgar while the other had gotten surrounded by Joshu, Jans and Denise. The three of them only had broken bows and arrows at hand, but oddly enough, these wooden weapons proved as threatening to the Spectre as Mindy's sword of fire. Mindy's first spell was aimed at the one wrestling Wulfgar.

Her second was aimed at the one surrounded by the hunters. Keeping that sequence, Mindy hurled spell after spell at first one and then the other Spectre while her friends whacked them with everything they had.

As for Tang Yin, he was setting up some sort of formation under the Rift.

And the Rift itself was stirring slowly. Something was coming through.

"Hurry! We have to finish these two off and then deal with whatever is coming through!"

They hurried, but the Spectres still held them off for a few more minutes. In that time, a Spectral leg ad already set foot through the Rift.

"Tier Five!" Joshu groaned.

They surrounded it on all sides, whacked at it with broken bows and tree branches, scroll-casted spells, Joshu even took out his water canteen and threw his water at it. It raised a fuss, roared in outrage and fought them off for the better part of ten minutes before it finally fell.

Tiredly, they sat down to rest while looking out for any more incoming Spectres.

"Can you hurry it up?" Mindy asked Tang Yin.

"This is a very delicate operation! I can't rush it, or bad things could happen!"

"How bad?"

"Very, very bad!"

So they waited and guarded Tang Yin and fought off the occasional Spectre that chanced by.

Hours pa.s.sed.

***

After waking up to a heavy breakfast of stuff he couldn't even recognize, Remian finished scouting around the subjects and started to learn in earnest.

He went straight into metallurgy and kept at it for 'thirteen hours' straight. Then he went back to sleep, woke up an hour later, and continued to study.

Once he was tired of the subject, he started to study electrical engineering, thinking of how Jim was working on electric motorization. Then, he went back to metallurgy to consider materials. Eventually he moved on to power storage, focusing on stuff he could put together with his homeworld's level of technology or just a bit higher.

Abruptly, he stopped and called for the guards. "Can I have some paper and pen or a pencil? Something to write on that wouldn't freak out people in a Cla.s.s-3 civilization?"

"Paper? Like… real wood pulp sheets?" the guard blinked in astonishment.

"Yes, exactly!"

They gave him a stack of slightly yellowed paper and a graphene 'autopencil'. Remian knew now what to call all the black stuff the Quarin used. It was graphite and was basically interwoven carbon. Remian's world was still quite a ways from being able to manufacture it, unfortunately. As it was, his best hopes for his people in the field of metallurgy were t.i.tanium and vanadium steel.

For energy, there were a good many ways to develop it, but Remian didn't like the idea of using polluting fossil fuels. He much rather preferred to study hydrogen and thorium.

As for power storage, Remian favored Lenisu Bulbs. He did study chemical batteries just in case, but if he could just bring back some Lenisu seeds, those living batteries would be far more efficient.

In fact, keeping in mind the Wilds' feelings, Remian was more inclined to study Biotech than electronics.

Six hours after he started his sentencing, the Corpoman came to visit. That was when Remian asked for what he wanted.

"You want to buy plants?" the Corpoman blinked. "And agricultural tools? Genetic sequencers? Nanotech… no way! Yours is a Cla.s.s-3 civilization! We can't just bring devices of our technology levels to your world! There are laws against such things!"

"Just seeds, then? Surely you wouldn't begrudge fellow humans a bit more variety in our food?" Remian pleaded.

The corpoman relented. "Fine. Just commercial foodstuff. There will be no medicinal or drug related plants of any kind!"

"That's fine!" Remian leapt at it.

The reason for that was Lenisu Bulbs were actually eaten as common dessert by the Draconian race and were thus qualified as commercial foodstuff. Also, Mankri Kelp was commercialized food in most of the 41 nations, and that seaweed alone had immuno-boosting properties that might very well clear out about half the common sicknesses in Remian's homeworld.

"Flereo Mint?" Remian asked, hesitantly. It was more like seasoning than food, but more importantly, it had a great deal of effect on dental health. "What about Steakfruit?"

"Mint is fine, but Steakfruit is patented."