Len jerked awake as Rick shook his shoulder.

  He looked around the cargo car, packs had been laid out across the floor, people waking up atop them, a hole had been cut into the roof at the front of the train and another a the rear of the car to give people an easy way to drop into the car and leave.

  The morning sun was coming through those holes. His friend held out a steaming bowl that smelled of beans, meat and something spicy.

  "Your turn to eat," Rick said. "The staff's working perfectly - we've got a rotation going. Three people keeping it charged, switching every hour."

  "Staff?"

  "The spell staff that you got from the forgotten dungeon and cast the tree moving spell into," Rick said.

  Len accepted the bowl, his stomach growling. He'd ridden through the mana fatigue as the faint glimmerings of morning had started darkening the sky before trading out.

  "No sign of the bears anymore. We're moving through the foothills right now but we're going to get blocked off in an hour or so, steep hills to our south, river to the east and mountains to the north," Rick said. "Those maps from Lucius are dead accurate," Rick said, settling into the seat across from him. "Every landmark, every elevation change - exactly where he said they'd be. Though there's one problem..."

  "No passes through," Len finished, spooning up the hot food. The mountains ahead were a solid wall of stone, people talked about the coal mines going all the way through the mountains and connecting them to their neighbors by a train.

  Though this was a pipe dream, the coal mines didn't pass through a third of the mountains they were carved into it.

  The reality was all goods moved through Plynthia arrived or departed by the coast or by four tracks that ran around the Stained Mountain range in the South East.

  "So you woke me up for work," Len grumbled around his food.

  "I've figured out a route right up to the mountains and lined it up somewhat with Goran. We cut through the mountains to Harmonia, get the Obelisk, then we turn back around the other direction and we angle it downward creating the tunnel we need to Goran." Rick pulled out his map and laid it out on a nearby pack.

  "Thinking just about here," Rick pointed to a valley that butted up against the mountain.

  "Water running through?" Len scraped up the last of his breakfast.

  "No, just rock."

  "Distance to the other side of the mountain range?"

  Rick grimaced and leaned his head to the side. "About Seven kilometers."

  Len sucked on his teeth and clicked his tongue.

  "Going to be easier and harder in some ways to what we're doing now."

  Christina dropped through the hole in the roof and landed quietly on the floor, looking around till she spotted Rick and Len, a grim look on her face.

  Don't think its about going through the mountain.

  Len, Rick you go ta moment?" Christina asked.

  "Yeah, what's up?" Len asked, feeling that something was wrong with how she was looking around, her jaw clenched.

  She dropped into a squat, resting her hand on a pack.

  "I thought that the boiler blow out was weird. The tears were right in the middle of the boiler, cut through it and the water reservoir," She spoke quickly, her eyes looking between Len and Rick. "The tear was weird, when you have steel peel then it peels along the rivets. There were some tears near the rivets, but the whole thing wasn't normal."

  "Okay," Len said, keeping his voice calm. It was like pissing into a fire, it did nothing to calm her as she grew more agitated with each word.

  "So when everyone showed up we got out steel sheets to meld them into the train to fix it up. We cut out the metal to create a clean shape to meld the metal on. Then I looked at the metal that we cut out, lined it up, trying to figure out how it blew out. It looked like it had been cut through in four places."

  "The bear, or one of them slashed through the boiler," Len said.

  "I went through the information again I tried to piece together what happened. The metal didn't show fatigue, there was tons of water on the ground so it had plenty to not explode. I found the maintenance record and it all looked okay. The interior of the firebox looked beaten up but not warped from overheating. I should have known," Christina shook her head.

  "That a sandstone bear swiped through the boiler of the train?" Rick asked sardonically.

  "Well something I should have known," She said.

  "Shit gets weird with mana involved," Len said. "You didn't know, we didn't and we knew that sandstone creatures attack Karsh in the future."

  "We need to warn them," Christina said.

  "Hey, you're going to get attacked by giant beasts in the future. Get ready," Rick said. "That doesn't make us sound insane at all."

  "Have you heard about what the printing presses have been doing?" Len asked.

  "They've been making posters with information on how to cultivate mana and temper the body so you can level up. Also stuff on the different skills?"

  Len leaned back against a crate, considering how to explain this to Christina. The young engineer's concerns weren't unfounded, but she was missing the bigger picture.

  "Right, all of that information we're sending around the world so that people can learn. Humanity needs to get stronger."

  Christina's brow furrowed. "But what if they use that strength against us? We're giving them the tools to become threats."

  "That's a good mentality to keep," Rick said with approval.

  "Yes, in the near term with the civil war and all that shit going on," Len cut in. "We're giving them information, not the resources we're stockpiling. Not the dungeons we've cleared, or the equipment we've gathered."

  "This will create wars," Christina pressed, her fingers drumming against her knee. "More fighting between cities and nations. People will use their new strength to grab power. Look at how strong we all are with the information from the dungeons."

  "It could, that's why we're protecting ourselves," Len leaned back against the wall.

  "Though it also means that everyone is going to get stronger, not just the nobles. The nobles won't have much of a head start. People who work everyday, that have built up their skills, they've got the advantage. Fighters are some of the slowest to level up compared to those that make something."

  "Conscription flew right out of the window," Rick flicked his hand.

  "The nobles will force them though," Christina said.

  "How? Most of them are going to be weaker." Len studied her.

  "They have weapons. Armor, guns!"

  "The guns aren't working properly right now, they have swords and armor. Most of them just wear cloth clothing. There are a few that use metal plates even for armor. The stronger your body is the more injuries you can live through and the faster to recover."

  Len watched Christina process what they were saying, her fingers still tapping against her knee. He could see the gears turning in her mind as she considered the implications.

  "Think about it - a blacksmith who's been working metal for twenty years suddenly gets access to mana. Their body is already conditioned from the physical labor, their skills are high from experience. Now add in cultivation techniques?" Len gestured to emphasize his point. "Compare that to some noble who's never worked a day in their life."

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  Rick nodded. "The nobles are used to having power because they controlled resources and had better training. But now?" He snorted. "A farmer who's been working the fields for decades is going to have more raw strength than any guard captain. And they know how to use tools as weapons."

  "You'll start to figure out someone's relative level just being around them. Becomes a sort of innate sense. You feel the domain around them, the region that they can instantly cast in and they draw mana from," Len added. "No more pretending to be stronger than you are. A noble ordering around someone twice their level? Good luck with that."

  Christina's eyes widened as understanding dawned. "So when we spread the information..."

  "We're evening the playing field," Len confirmed. "Actually, we're tilting it in favor of the working class. They've already put in the hours developing their skills."

  "The nobles won't be able to maintain control through force anymore," Rick said. "They'll have to actually provide value to keep their positions. Or they'll get steamrolled by people who've earned their strength the hard way."

  "And the common people are much easier to talk to and have a constructive dialogue with instead of the nobles that think everything should be given to them," Len smiled.

  "You say all these things with such clarity and conviction like you know," She siad looking at them both.

  "We been wrong yet?" Rick grinned.

  "No—" She frowned.

  "We have more immediate issues that we need to focus on right now," Len said, derailing her before she could start linking too many things together.

  "Yeah, like how we're going to bore through the mountain," Rick says

  Len pulled out his notebook and began jotting down points as they talked.

  "First issue - ventilation," he said. "We'll need air flowing through the tunnel while we're digging and afterward for the trains."

  "And lighting," Christina added. "Can't work in the dark."

  Rick traced the proposed route on the map. "Support structures too. Seven kilometers of tunnel needs proper reinforcement or it'll collapse."

  "Water seepage," Len noted, writing quickly. "Mountains always have underground water sources. We'll need drainage systems and waterproofing."

  Christina nodded vigorously. "And the tunnel has to be wide enough for two sets of tracks, plus maintenance access along the sides. That's a lot of rock to move."

  "Speaking of moving rock," Rick said, "we need somewhere to put all that stone we dig out. Can't just pile it at the entrance."

  Len made another note. "We'll need teams rotating - diggers, support builders, track layers. See what we can do with enchanting and magical means, and what we have to do the old fashioned way. Also we'll need to check supplies to keep everyone fed.

  "Also any equipment any team working down here will need," Rick said.

  "Don't forget power sources for the excavation equipment," Christina interjected. "Whether we use steam or mana-powered tools, we need reliable energy. Can we do that off of ambient mana?"

  "That is going to be harder," Len clicked his tongue. "If we can set up mana gathering enchantments we can direct that into the rail and the train allowing us to capture mana over a much larger area."

  "We're going to have to collapse or fuse the entry point we go through to deter the sandstone bears coming after us if they're still following, Rick said.

  "Or after," Christina added. "The tunnel will need permanent defensive structures."

  "Survey teams," Len continued writing. "We need to know exactly what kind of rock we're dealing with, any fault lines, caverns, or water sources in our path."

  "Why do I feel I'm going to be on that team?" Rick muttered.

  "Great thing that you used you're ole vibrating vision," Len said.

  Rick groaned. "I was in my mid forties!"

  "And having a quart-life crisis," Len grinned. "We'll need to figure out a process for this all too to optimize our movement."

  It all added up to a great list of problems, exciting Len. The more problems there were the more solutions were to be found and if they could figure out ways to clear several problems at the same time that was even better.

  "Carving the tunnel is the easy part," Len said.

  "Hard part is making sure it doesn't all collapse—magic is going to be the easiest," Rick shifted against the pack he was leaning on. Honestly it would be best to make a cylindrical tunnel, that way the whole structure supports one another. We compress the material together, that'll reduce how much we need to remove."

  "Alright. Compress the rails out of stone too?" Len asked.

  "Yeah, need to compress sleepers to. Then we put graded materials underneath the track to allow water to drain."

  "Grade it on a very slight angle so that it drains out of the tunnel?" Christina asked.

  "Yeah, slope it towards Goran, we've got the wells and the water collection, but we could use this as a man-made stream of water from up this way," Rick said.

  "So have a sand bottom layer, then pebbles and gravel under the tracks," Len said.

  Len sketched out a rough diagram of the tunnel cross-section in his notebook. "I've been thinking about using the rails themselves to transmit mana, we could do that here. Carve a mana gathering enchantment into the tunnel walls and then fuse a bit of stone to the sleepers and have the mana going into the rails. Are stone rails going to be okay for the train, flexible enough I mean."

  "I don't think so," Christina said.

  "Okay so we're going to need wood which means we're going to need quite a bit of it."

  "I'm on it," Rick pulled out his sound talisman and called Simmons.

  "For ventilation." Len tapped on his notebook. "I'm kind of thinking about growing something through the tunnels. It would be great if it could glow like some of theplants that we saw in the whispering grove."

  "Won't they need light?" Christina asked.

  "Set up light crystals in the hue that would help stuff grow?" Len suggested.

  "Simmons is going to gather as much wood as possible. He's going to peel up the tracks behind us too, Wilbur is going to make him another hopper to compress it into the last cargo carriage," Rick said.

  "Now the other problem is what are we going to do with all that extra material?" Len asked.

  Len scratched his chin, considering the stone they'd need to handle. His mind wandered to the expanding walls of Goran, the new buildings rising daily.

  "We could use it for construction back in Goran," Len said.

  "We can compress the stone into uniform blocks," Rick said, his hands moving as he described the process. "Anyone with high enough building skill could help. Make them massive, two meters long, by one meter wide and high. Going to be real tight. This is mountain rock, there ain't much compression to be found in the rock. Going to get really mana intensive."

  "Make enough blocks to make space for the whole train, pull them out to block up the entrance. Then move the train in. As we make more blocks ahead of the train, we move them out the path of the train around the train and behind us," Len said.

  "Trigger a controlled landslide to hide it completely. Give us some breathing room to work," Rick said.

  "Then the only space that we have not filled with blocks is where the train is," Christina said.

  "Yeah, hard, but workable. Try and give ourselves lots of room with dumping as many blocks out this side as possible. Then when we head back to Goran can pile up a ton of the blocks on the Harmonia side and we do the same thing going back to Goran?"

  "Depends on how long it will take us carving the route underground," Rick said. "Don't want to take forever doing it."

  "Can tell people there the enchantments, the direction and position. Get them to start digging in our direction. You check in with Goran?" Len asked.

  "Yeah I gave my grandma a report. She understands and is going to pass on the information. Captain Sam has been talking to the people that are working on station two, they're going to adjust their path incrementally. Though they're just using spells, not enchantments so its going to be slower."

  "We can use the linked ledger to draw out the enchantments, they can copy and use them to speed things up," Len said.

  "Right!" Rick nodded.

  "There's also the chance that we run into more than rock, the stained mountain range usually has iron deposits, and where there's iron..." Christina trailed off.

  "Coal seams," Len finished, seeing where she was going with this.

  "If we find both, we could set up smelting operations," Christina smiled.

  "We'd have to treat the coal, but we could use all of that to make the rails," Rick said.

  "Enchantments too, build up the train, armor, weapons the works." Len said.

  "We can make cut offs so people can come back and mine it," Rick said.

  Len made another note in his book. The idea had merit - finding raw materials during the excavation would solve multiple problems at once.

  Len flipped back through his notes, organizing the jumble of ideas into clear steps. "Let me read through what we've got in order of operations."

  He cleared his throat and began reading:

  "Step one: Survey the mountain face for the best entry point and map our planned route. Rick's vibration sensing will help identify any caverns or water sources we need to account for.

  Step two: Clear the entry area and set up initial defensive positions. We'll need space for the train and block storage.

  Step three: Create uniform stone blocks from the excavated material, two meters by one meter by one meter. These will be used both for construction and for sealing the tunnel behind us.

  Step four: Establish the initial tunnel section - cylindrical shape, compressed walls for stability. Install drainage layers - sand base, then gravel and rock. Set the wooden rails atop this. It'll be big enough for two trains to pass one another and maintenance paths.

  Step Five: Make more blocks from the stone taking up space.

  Step Six: Set up support infrastructure; enchantments to move air, light crystals, plants—luminescent ones if we have them—and growing formations to give us clean air.

  Step Seven: Install mana gathering enchantments in the tunnel walls, connected to the rail system through the stone sleepers.

  Step Eight: For any mineral deposits we find - iron or coal seams - we mark them and create access tunnels for later mining operations. Use what we need now to continue the building progress."

  Len looked up from his notebook. "Did I miss anything critical?"

  "If we find caverns we should reinforce them too and shove blocks into them to give us more room to work too," Rick said.

  Len added the note.

  "I think that's about it," Christina said.

  "Right, easy," Len's voice dripped with sarcasm.