Chapter 58

Tessa and my sisters ended up joining us in the Grasshopper, as it would allow the four of them to scan any animals we might come across as well. We elected to stay on the continent we were on for the time being. Since we were primarily looking for animals, I activated the shroud so we didn’t scare any of them away. I also went ahead and tuned the sensors, looking for any lifesigns to make everything a little bit easier.

It didn’t take long at all until we found the reptiles that previously held the title of the largest flying animals to inhabit the planet. Similar to the quetzalcoatlus that were around in the Cretacous period, these large animals would look very similar to giraffes when on the ground, albeit with large, bat-like wings and being three or four times the size.

They were the animals that the dragons were most worried about. While quetzalcoatlus were too small and weak to pose any threat to an adult dragon or dragonkin, the same wasn’t true for their offspring. They weren’t even willing to leave their cattle on the surface of the planet, otherwise they would need to guard them all day to ensure that none of them got picked off by the many predators that roamed the planet.

It was curious that there were none of the large reptilian flyers near the mountain we had landed near, but a few kilometers away there were many of them, flying around or roosting on a nearby mountain. They lived very high up, creating large nests on whatever relatively flat surface they could find. In one case, we saw a nest in the mouth of a decent-sized cave.

After getting close enough to scan them, we moved on. We did see a few dragons flying around as we traveled, which were likely those who didn’t have anything to do for the time being. There was only so much room inside of the areas they were excavating, so it was understandable that they would do some exploration.

We flew around for a few more hours before we landed in an open area so my sisters, Tessa and I could all transform into our dragon forms. Ben had plenty of practice inside of Battlestate, and Abi would always be on hand to take over if he made a mistake. Once we were in our dragon forms, the five of us jumped in the air with the Grasshopper following a few hundred meters behind us. The five of us activated our camouflage as we flew, so to animals it would seem like the sky was clear.

We saw some pretty incredible sights as we flew several hundred meters over the surface. The planet was entirely untouched, so there were many beautiful clear water lakes, with a wide variety of animals calling it home while others used it as their primary water source. While reptiles were quite prevalent on the planet, there were a large number of mammals that grazed next to the lakes we found.

If you compared them to animals on Earth, they would probably be a mix of a bison and a porcupine. They were roughly twice the size of a bison and had what looked like sharp, foot-long quills that sprouted all over their bodies. The quills, along with some prestigious horns probably meant that they were a hard target to take down, especially if they grouped up tightly.

We flew around for a few minutes watching before scanning them and moving on. We continued to find and scan many more animals as we flew, but decided a change in scenery was in order. After finding a place to land, those of us in our dragon forms switched back to our human forms and loaded back onto the ship. Turning, I headed towards the ocean.

There were said to be a large number of whale-like creatures that called the ocean home, so I wanted to check them out and see what other interesting animals might live down there. It didn’t take long at all before we arrived, and I activated the shields before gently lowering the Grasshopper into the water.

“You’re sure the shuttle can handle this?” Ben asked as we descended past two hundred meters.

“Absolutely. As long as the shields are up and there is enough mana, we could descend pretty far. If I see the mana start to drop then I’ll just take us back up a few hundred meters and it should start regenerating.”

Like the large reptilian birds, it didn’t take long to find the large mammals that dominated the oceans. They were about three quarters the size of Blue whales, but were much more aggressive. Where Blue whales operated like a massive vacuum cleaner, sucking up several tons of krill each time they fed, the large mammals here fed on much larger fish and other animals. They were the apex predators of the ocean, but the calls they made underwater made them pretty easy to find.

Abi could pick up their calls from where she was several hundred kilometers away, so she tuned the sensors on the shuttle, allowing us to listen to their calls and follow them right back to the source.

“They sound just like whales,” Anja said. “Aside from the large reptiles, it is amazing how similar life is here, compared to Earth.”

“It’s to be expected,” Ben said. “The animals here and on Earth are all carbon-based lifeforms, so there are bound to be animals that look very similar between the two. It’s when you get to silicon-based lifeforms that things get weird. If we ever come across any, they’ll look unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

The large whale-like mammals were like something we had seen before, in movies at least. Around seventy feet long, the creatures looked like mammalian versions of a mosasaurus rather than a whale. Unlike whales, they didn’t have a massive flat tail to help propel them through the water. Instead, they had four flippers, two at the front and two at the back that they used, along with their crocodile-like tail to quickly move through the water.

They seemed pretty intelligent, staying away from the shuttle even though they could clearly see us. A few smaller ones came up closer as they investigated us, but they soon went back to feeding. We observed them eating a few different types of small fish before we scanned them and moved on.

I wanted to test what sort of depth the ship could handle, so I had Abi plot a course to the deepest part of the ocean. It would also give us a good opportunity to see what life might be down there. We easily descended twenty kilometers below the waves before Abi let us know that the shield already would have collapsed without my current mana regeneration. She estimated that we could go another ten kilometers before the pressure got too much, so we gave it a shot.

“Uhh, I’m picking up a pretty big life form over here,” Ben said, typing on his console. “Whatever it is, it puts those whales or whatever they are to shame.”

“How big are you talking?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe two to three times the size? Abi can you help me out here?”

“I’m scanning it now to get some more information. It is curious that it was able to remain undetected during my orbital scan. Perhaps it is able to slow its metabolism to hibernate for long periods of time, and was awoken by the shuttle. I would suggest turning around immediately, however. The shields would likely hold up if you were attacked, but I wouldn’t want to risk it.”

It took us over thirty minutes to descend to this depth, so I definitely wasn’t going to ignore her advice. I didn’t turn around though, instead I just used the attitude controls to help propel us back to the surface. If we did get attacked, I wanted to hurt whatever sea monster was down here with us.

We kept track of its movements, but it never came within a kilometer of the shuttle as we descended.

“It appears to be sensitive to the light, which is why it hasn’t approached,” Abi said. “Keep the spotlights pointed towards it and you should be able to surface without issue.”

That turned out to be very true, and after about ten minutes the creature had begun moving away until it once again disappeared from our sensors. We called it quits on the ocean after that, instead heading out into orbit so we could check out Zokyrth as well.

We flew around for a while, checking out the sights and scanning land-based animals before heading over to see what we were truly interested in. The oceans on Zokyrth were dominated by dolphin-like mammals that showed extreme intelligence and worked together to take down prey. The difference between the dolphins and these alien versions was that they were extremely aggressive. Almost like piranhas in that way.

The initial scan determined that there were tens of millions of the animals living in the oceans, causing scientists to theorize that they had hunted larger species to extinction before rising to be the apex predator of the ocean. From what we had seen recently, it was very possible that there were some larger predators, they just lived much deeper.

The report wasn’t kidding at all about their aggressiveness. When we found a pod of the animals, they immediately started charging towards us. It was just two or three at first, who swam right into the forcefield but soon there were dozens of them swimming around us, trying to figure a way in. They apparently determined that that wasn’t going to happen, so they turned around, allowing us to follow them.

They found other prey shortly after, and we watched with morbid fascination as they tore into fish and other smaller mammals whenever they came across any. They seemed to possess very sharp teeth and strong jaws, allowing them to tear animals apart their prey and crush bones with ease. We ended up following them for twenty or thirty minutes before heading back to the surface. We would definitely be checking out those forms sometime soon.

We decided to head back to Yrranth, but not before seeing how things had progressed over here. We would probably also be able to take a portal back to Yrranth, which would save a little bit of time. It had been over nine hours since we had eaten last, and some of us were getting pretty hungry.

There were a lot more dragons and dragonkin around than there were when Olmith was here, but the only sign that they were actually working were the two huge piles of stone that had been excavated thus far. They had already used up a good portion of the land they had cleared, so it seemed like they would soon need to expand it further.

We hovered over the settlement for a few minutes as we watched, but soon descended and waited until a portal was available. It didn’t take long, and one of the Spectres operating the portals expanded theirs so the Grasshopper would fit through. The other two Grasshoppers were in use as well, as we didn’t see them at all by the time we landed.

While we were gone, Abi had undergone her next growth and was now quite a bit larger than she was when she left. I took the opportunity to open my phone to check how long it would be until her next growth, noting that it wouldn’t occur until just before 21:00 tonight. It was perfect timing, ensuring that everyone who wished to sleep aboard Abi would be able to.

My mom intercepted us as my friends and I headed towards the buffet line that had been set up, so I invited her to join us for lunch.

“How’d the exploration go?” she asked while we were in line.

“It was very interesting. I’ve already got a few thoughts on new forms, but I’m not sure when I’ll mess around. We did find something that the dragons should know about. Especially the Blue dragons since they spend a lot of time in the water.”

“Oh?”

“We wanted to see how far down we could dive in my Grasshopper, so Abi found us the deepest spot on the planet and we started descending. When we got close, a massive lifesign was detected. It headed towards us, but seemed very sensitive to light. When I shined the spotlights on it, it wouldn’t come within a kilometer of the shuttle. They should also be wary of the dolphin-like mammals on Zokryth as well. They tried to actually attack the shuttle before giving up, so we followed them around for a little bit. They absolutely decimated any other animals they came across.”

“I’ll let Selalea know about the oceans next time I see her. It sounds like they will be safe on Yrranth as long as they don’t descend too far, but they’ll have to see how deadly the animals are for themselves. I think they’ll be able to handle themselves.”

“I know the adolescents and adults won’t have any issues, but their young could be vulnerable. It didn’t take them very long to figure out that they couldn’t get through the shuttle’s forcefield, so they could easily ambush a young dragon if older ones weren’t vigilant.”

“True,” she said. “So what are you guys going to do for the rest of the day?”

“I think I’m going to work on some skills, now that my mana is insane. I think I’m going to try to get Teleport up to rank one hundred by the time we leave for Veria.”

“What’s it at now?”

“Five,” I answered.

She laughed. “I think you’re underestimating just how much you need to teleport to finally reach rank one hundred. I got there, but it took me an extremely long time. Rank fifty requires you to teleport about fifteen million kilometers. After that things begin getting crazy. I don’t remember the total amount of kilometers you need to travel to max it, but I believe it is somewhere in the four hundred fifty billion kilometer range. I’ll be interested in seeing how far you get by the time we depart.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said. “I think I can teleport close to five hundred thousand kilometers at a time now, with less than twenty seconds between each teleport. It definitely won’t take me long to get to rank fifty.”

“It slows down a lot after rank fifty. At that point you’ll be able to teleport a distance of five million kilometers at a time, but rank fifty-one will take you one hundred teleports, minimum.”

“Those numbers are absolutely insane. I knew you could teleport to the moon, but I didn’t realize you could teleport much, much further than that,” Sonja said. “Does Portal have a similar range?”

“Not nearly,” my mom replied. “I can only open a portal about a tenth of the distance that I can teleport to. Opening a portal requires a big chunk of mana, and then you also need to spend mana to keep it open. The bigger the portal, the more mana that has to be channeled into it to maintain it.”

“Actually, maybe I’ll work on Portal instead,” I said. “None of us have been able to make a full-sized portal as of yet. Perhaps it’s time we rectify that.”

“You absolutely should,” my mom said. “You used it pretty well in your last boss fight, but there are so many more applications. One of you could open a portal allowing Ben to fire spells or Sonja to fire arrows indirectly, or use Portal to send monsters falling to their death. There is also the fact that not all of you will be able to teleport to the same spot, either because you can’t teleport that far or you haven’t been to that location. Portal solves that. All it takes is one person using Portal to evacuate an entire team to safety.”

“You could also move large, heavy objects from point A to point B really quickly, just like the dragons have been doing with the gravel and shipping container,” Ben said.

“Exactly. Portal is an amazing skill in it’s utility. It can be the edge you need in a fight, or it can be something that helps your quality of life. Once you’re able to open a stable full-sized portal, you’ll find so many different uses for it going forward.”

After lunch, the five of us got started on that right away. My mom was on hand to give us some tips, but we got it, after a while. Neither Mason or Sonja could keep their portals open very long, but they could keep them open long enough for one or two people to run through while they held it open. Ben, Anja and I, on the other hand, could keep our portals up for much longer. I could even keep a portal open for hours, depending on the distance.

The initial mana cost of Portal changed with almost every cast of the spell, because the distance between the two points played a big factor in that. It also increased the drain while it was active, but not by a huge amount. Once a portal was open and stable, all that was needed was a steady supply of mana and it would remain open. To close a portal, you simply ceased channeling mana into it

We all continued practicing for a few hours, trying to rank up the ability as much as we could. Doing so would increase the range and slightly lower the amount of mana needed to maintain a stable portal, while also increasing the maximum size of the portal we could open. Of course that also came with the side effect of increasing the mana cost, but as Portal ranked higher and higher, it would allow us to move more and more people through at once.

We had first started opening portals with the two ends about two meters apart, making sure we could open them up to their maximum diameter. Once we had achieved that, we moved the two ends a little bit further apart and tried again. Slowly but surely, we were leveling up the ability with each and every successful portal.

Unlike Teleport, you didn’t need to physically travel through your portal to level it up. Instead, everytime a stable portal was opened, progress would be made. The amount of progress depended entirely on how far apart the two ends of your portal were, however. Going from rank one to rank two required us to open portals for a combined fifty kilometers. That ended up taking all of us varying amounts of time, simply because of the disparity in how much mana we had available, as well as how fast we regenerated that mana.

My mom was an absolute taskmaster, making sure each of us reached at least rank two before dinner time. That was easier said than done, because it required opening portals with a total distance of one hundred fifty kilometers. There wasn’t sufficient room to level it up quickly in the area around Abi, so we picked one of the large open areas we had found and repeatedly opened portals to it.

We saw some rather interesting sights through our portals during that time, as portals don’t make the same loud noise that Teleport does when used. They just simply appeared in the desired place, as long as we had been there before. It meant that we were able to ‘closely’ observe the porcupine-like animals among others, even though we were several kilometers away.

I ended up hitting the rank two mark far sooner than my friends were able to, but I stuck around and continued to level up, reaching rank three by the time everyone was gathering for dinner. It was still outside, as Abi wouldn’t be ranking up for a few hours yet. After we had eaten dinner, we were invited to check out the progress the dragons had made thus far.

The entrance they had made in the mountain was big enough to carry even the largest of dragons with ease, which was a far cry from the much smaller tunnels I had seen on Earth. In the previous fourteen hours they were also able to fashion a massive door out of two chunks of granite. They weren’t yet on hinges, but they would be pretty hard to get through once they were enchanted.

Walking through the entrance, it was easy to see the very slight inclination in the tunnel before us. When asked about it, Olmith stated that it was to prevent rainwater from entering the city while the doors were open. There was no risk of flooding because of the elevation we were at, but rainwater would always be an issue.

The tunnel was much shorter than I was expecting, and was still quite rough, not yet having been sanded and polished to make everything smooth. We came across another set of thick granite doors, though these ones were sitting on their side, stacked up next to each other. Beyond that, the sight had our group collectively gasp.

The dragons had already excavated an absolutely massive spherical area that was at least two kilometers in diameter. Around the room were a number of tunnels in various stages of completion. There were nine, in fact, evenly spaced throughout the room. There was also another, much larger tunnel in the bottom of the sphere, but that had just started being made.

“This is our portal chamber for Yrranth,” Olmith said. “You’ll note the nine alcoves currently being carved out around the chamber. When finished, nine portals will be installed. The outer eight leading to the main city for each dragon type, while the central one will lead to the dragon council meeting chamber. I’m sure you’ve all noticed the large tunnel being carved out in the bottom of this sphere. When finished, it will lead to the capital city. Or at least the underground part of it. We do plan on creating a city above ground, but that won’t be for a while yet. We’ll soon be creating a chamber that splits off from the tunnel below, which is where we’ll be storing our eggs for the time being. It should only take another five or six hours, and then we’ll start transporting the eggs down there.”

“What about the portal to Zokyrth? Where is that going to be?” Ben asked.

“In the center of this chamber. I have a team that is slowly and carefully chiseling out the slab of granite that the portal will sit on. When done, four massive chains will anchor it to the ceiling, allowing it to hang in place. This chamber, as well as the tunnel in the bottom are meant to allow dragons to fly around, instead of walking. There will be a number of smaller portals and tunnels to allow dragonkin to move around with the same amount of freedom. We want to build big, now that we have the freedom and space to do so.”

“How are you preventing the ceiling from collapsing down on us?” I asked.

“We aren’t, not yet at least. We’ve only hollowed out a small part of a very large mountain, and we’ve been sure not to do too much damage as we continued to excavate. It’s still extremely stable, but an earthquake could change that. In the next few days, we’ll be carving enchantments into the rock itself to make things even stronger. Later on, we’ll be putting up netting which will prevent this chamber from collapsing long enough for everyone to evacuate. It would require a massive earthquake, or this mountain being fired on from orbit for that to happen though.”

“So is the one of Zokyrth going to be identical to this one?”

“The chamber, yes, but other parts might be different. It all depends on what is found while we’re expanding the tunnels and creating chambers. They’ve already needed to drain the water out of a reservoir that was in the way, though that is a rather simple matter. It’s when we get too close to magma pockets or rivers that we need to be careful. Dragons are pretty good at withstanding the heat, but even we couldn’t survive if submerged in magma.”

Even though they had done a lot of work in the short time since we’d arrived, there wasn’t much to see. Things would definitely change in the next day or so, but for now we exited the chamber and headed back over to the Grasshoppers. None of them were presently in use, and night had fallen a short while ago. We had seen some of what was out there during the day, now it was time to see what was out there during the night.

We had some additional people come along with us this time, however, which necessitated using all three shuttles to fit them all. The dragon council wanted to see more of their new worlds, but they didn’t quite have enough time to fly around before we headed to Veria. Some of them would be staying, but others wouldn’t see Yrranth or Zokyrth for many months.

Rather than explore the supercontinent we were currently on, we headed over to the next closest one. It would have been an hour or so flying through the atmosphere, though it only took a few minutes of sub-orbital flight. My friends, sisters and I hadn’t checked out this continent yet, so everything would be new to us.

The continent in question was one that took almost the entirety of the northern pole of the planet. It wasn’t buried in ice like the Earth’s poles were, but it did have a few snow-capped mountains. Aside from that, it was heavily forested with thousands of lakes in various sizes. The fact that nature was allowed to grow unimpeded meant that there weren’t any grasslands to speak of. Trees and shrubs had claimed the entirety of the continent, which would likely have a big impact on what types of animals we saw there.

It was too dark to see anything when we arrived, and I didn’t want to use the spotlights, as those would likely scare away any animals that were on the prowl. Instead, I hit a button on my console and the display changed. Where we were previously looking through a window, it was now as if we were all wearing a pair of thermal goggles. We could see a huge number of heat signatures beneath the canopy, but it was hard to actually see the animals themselves.

We ended up flying around for twenty minutes before we finally saw something of note.

“Over there!” Ben pointed.

I looked where he was pointing and saw a heat signature, though it wasn’t all that different from the creature’s surroundings. It had six legs, and looked very similar to an image of some of the predators on this planet. I called out to the other Grasshoppers so they could see it, while rotating the ship until we were looking directly at it. It looked up in the air for a moment, sticking out it’s long tongue a few times, before turning as it continued through the trees.

It wasn’t the easiest thing to follow, so I hit another button on my console which changed our view from thermal to night vision. The Scyftans among us took the time to scan the large creature, while others just watched it.

It seemed to be hunting something as we watched, and we found out what it was a short while later. It climbed up in one of the large trees before pouncing on a smaller creature that was feeding on foliage below. It killed its prey almost immediately, and then jumped back into the tree to eat it’s meal. We watched for a little while before moving on and seeing what else we could find.

One point of interest for us was a very large lake that was about one thousand kilometers inland. If you took every lake on Earth and added them together, they wouldn’t even come close to this one in size. Olmith and Pharomna were particularly interested in the lake, as it could prove to be a good spot for the Blue dragons to build around. When we got there, however, we realized that it wasn’t really a lake at all.

“I’m seeing at least a dozen of the whale-like creatures we saw in the ocean,” I said, drawing their attention to the large shapes on the sensors.

“I’m also detecting some sort of underground river as well, Jonathan,” Abi said. “It could very well connect to the ocean. Interesting, I’d never seen such a thing before.”

“That would be one massive underground river if those things are able to swim here,” Ben said.

“How about we check it out,” I said, switching the shroud for the shield as I began lowering us into the water. The other three Grasshoppers followed and we began our trek through the river. There were a few of the large whale-like creatures coming and going from the ocean, and we had to squeeze by them to continue on. They weren’t afraid of us though, and just kept on swimming.

There were a number of underground openings along the way, but we just gave them a cursory look before continuing onwards. It really did seem like it did connect to the ocean, though it would take hours for us to actually transit it. To get around that, my mom took her helmet out of her dimensional storage, donned it, and then teleported through the water ahead of us. She was gone for about five minutes, but soon a portal had opened in front of us. I took us through, followed by the other two Grasshoppers, and then my mom teleported back inside.

I took us back out of the water and we could see the southern tip of the continent we were just on.

“Amazing,” Pharomna said. “Can we go back to the lake? I want to see the depth and get an idea of how big it truly is.”

“Sure,” I nodded.

Rather than start flying towards it, I took us up for another sub-orbital flight before arriving back at the lake less than ten minutes later. We descended back into the water and then checked things out in more detail. It wasn’t the deepest of lakes, it’s deepest point only being fourteen hundred meters, but that suited Pharomna well. She didn’t want to build her city anywhere where a massive sea creature could easily get to.

“There!” she pointed when she found what she was looking for.

It was the mouth to an underground cavern, which was perfect for the beginnings of a new base. While Blue dragons were very proficient flyers, they were even better swimmers. I’d learned that they prefer to take off from the ocean rather from land, so this would be perfect for them. They would have a very large source of water to fish in, and they would be relatively isolated. They could even block off the river leading to the ocean if they wished, just for some additional security.

Pharomna wanted to check out the cavern, but the mouth was too small for the Grasshoppers to fit. It would definitely need to be widened out so dragons could fit through it, but we just marked the location and then continued. Pharomna was one of the dragons who would be remaining here, so she could work with Olmith to get started as soon as their two portal hubs were complete and the eggs were secure.