Chapter 37
In the valley where the Tower of Salvation had once stood, Joseph came out of his luxurious tent and walked to Ansk. "Report."
Ansk stood ramrod straight. Both his Exspheres gleamed. "Tomorrow we will have a new batch of Exspheres ready for harvesting. Furthermore, we found fifteen more Cruxis Crystals in the pit. I have drawn up a list of thirty names for you. Select the suitable candidates and Brighton will attach the crystals tomorrow and let them begin adapting."
When he as alone, Joseph smiled. If only Magnius knew that his ideas about cultivating and attaching Exspheres would be such a success. Joseph recalled being surprised that his barbaric superior was very keen on Exsphere research. The Pyroclasm turned out to have read a lot of the literature and one of Joseph's counterpart's main duties had been overseeing the experiments Magnius wanted conducted.
Experiment might be too kind a word, Joseph decided. The order had usually been along the lines of, "Select ten of the vermin with different mana signatures and put an extra exsphere on each of them. Inform me of the results."
Still, he'd come up with a simpler method of exsphere cultivation—although themed with his customary brutality. He'd said fear, anger, and physical exertion. So run the vermin to just this side of death and make life miserable for them to boot.
It turned out that have a 'herd' of humans controlled by a number of guards, kept constantly running, was 20 percent more efficient than working them in the ranch. And if one took all the unnecessaries out of the equipment, like the monitoring systems and the network access, a few portable devices were all the magitechnology you needed to do it.
Joseph had later found out Pronyma had had one of her fits of paranoia and assigned her to try to spy on Magnius. Joseph was grateful to Lloyd's group for slaying Kilia. He'd hated the psychotic freak experiment.
Oh, yes. Lloyd. Joseph had found it ironic that he had survived his home ranch's destruction by conducting business at the Asgard ranch, and avoided the second ranch's destruction by being on the way back to Palmacosta!
And then he'd been adrift, wandering during the crisis with the Great Tree and Derris Kharlan's appearance.
Afterward the world had been rejoined, he'd gotten the idea to implement Magnius' ideas, start small, and build up an army. All he'd needed to start with were a few Exspheres, and he'd found those easily enough. A trip to the Iselia ranch had cannibalized the necessary equipment, and then he'd been able to make his own herd.
His Cruxis Crystal twinged. He rubbed it, and reminded himself that Magnius' second so-called theory had been harder to implement. The Grand Cardinal had wondered if two Exspheres with similar mana signatures would not interfere with each other and, in fact, give further enhancement. And that'd been true, but it was tricky to match them.
Joseph walked down to the pit, and watched the extensive scaffolding crawling with slaves who were prying Exspheres out of the rock. So many of them, the sides sparkled as much and more were uncovered. He'd only noticed them because the rain had exposed some of them.
Soon, the ex-Desian thought. Soon, he'd have enough of an army to go challenge Tethe'alla, and then he'd be ruling the world. And his first order of business would be to use Tethe'allan magitech to improve the damnably slow communications here in Sylvarant. He hadn't heard back from his lieutenants in ages.