This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/FarmWhich4275 on 2025-12-17 08:49:01+00:00.
Life carried on as it had been for the last few months. Despite the tension in the air, a strange aura of calm carried through the valley as Caliban carefully wove his intricate magic of foodcraft. The dragons who paid more attention were now learning how to use their claws or the larger of Cal's knives to carve out portions of meat properly. Although everyone very much preferred Cal to do the cooking, the number of people, dragons and beastkin that now lived in this crater was becoming too overwhelming for Cal to handle.
Outsiders were permitted to pass through, scholars and traders seeking to purchase excess meats and spices occasionally braved the mountain pass. Aterius was the first of the Red Dragons to become fully part of Caliban's military force, now proudly strutting about wearing a set of the specially made dragon armour. Along with various devices that drastically increased his combat effectiveness, such as hidden fuel tanks mounted into the fireproof fabric of his saddles that gave his already formidable fire breath a napalm fuelled boost.
A dragon by itself is most intimidating, to see one armoured like a Great Knight of Old, even moreso. Cal carefully showed one of the Paladins within his new army how to carefully carve up some chops for an open flame barbecue. Caliban had mostly now been relegated to a support role, with everyone around him now finally understanding the fight ahead and preparing accordingly. Aterius wandered about showing off his new armour to the eye-rolling Elder Dragons, allowing scholars to carefully sketch it out and document it for posterity.
The Crater had changed significantly since Cal arrived, with hangars and military facilities now dotting various spots around the mountains. During his chopping and cutting, Caliban finally got a ping from his wearable. He approached Lady Sariah and Lorelei who were having a casual chat.
"Ladies... Sariah was it?" He asked.
"Yes it is." She replied plainly.
"Sorry, always been bad with names. The thing you asked for is done. Meditation chamber or whatever it was. Built to spec. Let me know if you need anything else, okay?" He said, gesturing to the glass dome atop the tallest mountain spire.
Sariah's face brightened instantly and she used her magic to fly up to it. "Well, she's excited. Guess I'll go back to my pod for now. I'm tired." Lorelei remarked and gingerly stood up.
Caliban walked up to her and hugged her tightly. "Nope." He said with a smile.
He picked her up and held her for a bit. She giggled and cheekily kissed him, resting her chin on his shoulder as he carried her back to the main hangar. A short moment of calm before the start of a crazy storm. Everyone in the crater carried on as normal, trying to get the coming madness out of their minds, at least for the time being and focus on preparation. Cal returned shortly after and was typing on his wearable. He approached the cauldron and asked one of the Paladins on duty if they could handle the rest of the days cooking without him.
They said they could handle it, so Cal made his way to the West area where there was a flattened plateau carved out of the mountain. He wandered onto this flat plane and started typing again, looking down at the canyon to see the kingdom he was forced to form.
"Looks like it can't be helped anymore I guess... Was hoping we could ignore this particular problem but reserves are too low. Such a weird planet..." Cal said to himself.
"What about our home is so weird then?" Serenia the Elf girl said as she appeared behind him.
"The fact is that this planet's crust has almost no naturally occurring silica. The sand here is made of some weird conglomerate that's hard to work with. It has silica deposits of course but they're too impure for my purposes. It's becoming a painus in the anus to smelt enough Glasteel, and our resource reserves are too low. I was hoping to avoid doing this but guess I don't have a choice." Cal replied calmly.
"Do what?" She asked, standing next to him.
"Let me ask you something... Do you guys have a kind of magic where you can create a little Golem kind of thing that you can look through to see what's going on and control it? Sort of like my drones and robotics but magical?" He asked.
"Well yeah of course, it's common magic." She said.
"Oh cool. Here. Try it on this. See if you can see through its eyes." He said, handing her an abnormally cute Teddy Bear.
"Ooohhh! He's so cute! What's he wearing though?" She cooed over the adorable toy and looked at its odd choice of costume.
"That's a Cosmo-Teddy. I got that one as a gift for Lorelei last year for a laugh. Thought it was cute, she liked it. It's one of the things she does, collecting and making teddies and cute toys as a hobby." He said and typed more on his wearable.
Serenia ignored him mostly and just enjoyed the sight of the adorable thing. She then wove a bit of her magic, her fingers fluttering about, eyes glowing slightly as she carved a spell into the air. A flash of light, a spark of power, and the teddy plopped onto the ground and started moving about of its own accord.
"God that's freaky..." Cal said to himself as the toy climbed onto his shoulder and stayed there. "Anyway... Should be done shortly. had to make some concessions thanks to the lack of resources but it works."
"What exactly do you need Silica for? What is silica? And why cant you use ours?" She asked.
"The conglomerate sand deposits on this planet are too impure for industrial use, and the few actual Silica deposits are contaminated with other minerals making it very hard and expensive to make any glass. The glass we do use is called Glasteel, which requires pure silica to make - because it's effectively a transparent metal alloy. Hence the name. I also need Silica to make some computer components. Up until now, I've been able to skirt this by salvaging and melting down old robotics, but the resource pool is running a bit dry. So I'm going to have to do what I was hoping I wouldn't have to for a long time to come." He said, still typing on his wearable.
"And what's that?" She asked, the teddy bear speaking and not him.
He finished typing and the ground opened up in front of them like a gigantic metallic mouth. Massive blast doors split open the ground and revealed a vehicle of some kind mounted vertically. It looked boxy, angled, square and significantly less elegant than any other machine Cal had built thus far. It seemed almost rudimentary compared to the other vehicles Cal had thus far built.
"Caliban... What is that?" She asked.
"Don't worry about it." He said, grabbing the teddy off his shoulder and looking at it. "You'll find out momentarily. Now, get off this place and get back down with the dragons." He said, placing a drone camera on the teddy's head. "A rocket silo launch pad is NOT a safe place to be." He said with a wicked smirk and disappeared down a hatch.
Serenia could see what was going on from her perspective as Cal suited up carefully, attaching the teddy to a harness on his uniform. Serenia hastily climbed down from the launch pad and went towards the projection screen. She sat down and started to meditate to get the best experience from this. Serenia had nowhere near the training or experience she needed to do this kind of thing so casually, but something inside her screamed she had to watch and maintain the connection. She wasn't able to get too far as Lady Sariah appeared behind her, wrapped around her and helped her out by sharing some precious Mana and concentration.
The projector screen popped up, this time showing the drone camera feed from the teddy. Sariah wrapped her arms around Serenia almost defensively as the two sat on a large pillow, eyes closed and now in a meditative trance. Both women could see through the teddy's eyes now as Cal started something. The view from the cockpit strapped to Cal's chest was something else as the camera began to shudder and shake. Shortly after, the crater was overcome with the shaking of a small earthquake and the thunderous roar of engines.
The ship Cal was piloting then rapidly climbed, as if a gun mounted into the ground had just shot it out into the sky. One moment it was there, the next it was gone. It climbed at an absurd speed. Cal read out altitudes as the ship made its way into the planet's atmosphere.
"Ten miles... Thirty miles... Fifty miles... Eighty miles..." He counted.
The glass of the cockpit was on fire, the atmosphere of their home world slightly thicker than Earth's, but no match for the sheer force of the rocket engines propelling the ship forward. When they reached the hundred mile mark, the atmosphere started to thin out and the fire on the glass slowly dissipated. Then, from inside the cockpit everyone watching could see it. Space. They were in space. They could also notice how Caliban was suddenly extraordinarily tense, hyperfocused and stressed. His eyes darted in every direction at once and his hands kept an abnormally tight hold on the controls.
"PDC's online... Shields at 60% marked for debris. One-sixty miles. Leaving gravity well at... One ninety. This planet is goddamn huge man... No wonder I needed a frickin' rail mount." He said and looked behind him at the world he was leaving behind. "From what I can gather we're at maybe... 1.2Gs. That's slightly above eleven metres per second squared. Maybe a couple hundred miles or so fatter than earth. Magic probably explain...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1porpwo/in_another_world_with_my_war_factory_part_13/