Mana Farm
My breath caught in my throat for a moment. If Gilda thought I wasn't going to like this idea, then I probably wouldn't. I wanted to give her idea a fair shot, but this wasn't giving me a good feeling. I almost knew what she was going to say before she said it.
"We have thousands of lifeforms from Earth on this vessel in stasis. It may be that some possess enough mana to help empower you."
Crap. Gilda wanted to turn her Noah's Ark into a mana farm for Cordelia.
"No."
Cordelia looked conflicted, but Gilda looked downright combative when I gave my answer immediately.
"Willie, these creatures will also die if we are destroyed. It is also in their best interests for us to use their power to save all our lives."
"Fuck. No. Not happening."
I wasn't going to let her use Adam and Eve as a fucking battery for Cordelia. This whole situation was already fucked up enough. That was a line I wouldn't cross.
Gilda glared at me. I knew she wanted to find some way to convince me, but I wasn't going to budge on this one. After a little while of this standoff between us, Cordelia tried to chime in.
"The high-level cores are fueled by the mana of hundreds of prisoners. Feeding more prisoners to a core is how the Demon Lords reward loyalty. If we don't have a similar power level when we fight one of them..."
I just glared at Gilda as Cordelia trailed off. In the silence, I heard a voice I didn't expect.
"William, don't be such a stubborn boy. Gilda's idea is really clever."
I never expected Millie to be the one to push for this. They now knew my memories, so they also knew how I felt about this. Before I had a chance to turn around and reply to her, she continued.
"Cordie's body is the safest place on this ship. Even if the ship is destroyed, she will be able to protect anything inside her. Being indestructible has its benefits. I'm living proof of that."
The unusual bitterness in her voice stopped me in my tracks. Millie had been hidden inside the core for most of her life to keep her safe. I had even seen Cordelia's core body floating unharmed in the vacuum of space. By all accounts, that body was nearly indestructible. As I was trying to process my thoughts and feelings, Millie continued.
"Think of it like killing two birds with one core... Hehe."
She cracked herself up at her own lame joke, which totally broke the tension. Cordelia looked at me with an apologetic shrug. Gilda took the opportunity to try to move the conversation forward.
"It would be best if we discussed the particulars inside a simulation to maximize the remaining time."
I knew she was right, but it was hard for me to keep up with my shifting emotions. I already knew I wasn't the best strategist. But the real frustrating part was that I kept finding myself in situations where my morals had to be tossed aside in favor of practical solutions. Maybe that was just what war was like.
"Fine, let's get into the simulation now. But I'll need to know more details before I agree to anything."
Both of them nodded. I looked over to Millie, but she waved us off absentmindedly. Apparently, she was working on something else right now.
Once we were back inside the simulation, I set up a campfire, and we talked for a long time. Eventually, I agreed on the conditions that any creatures put into Cordelia's core would be let out after the danger had passed.
The space inside Cordelia was apparently able to conform to the needs of any type of creature. She could use some of the mana she absorbed from them to create appropriate environments and provide for their food. The more I found out, the more I was amazed at dungeon functions. To hear her explain it if she had enough mana, she could recreate miniature worlds complete with flora and fauna. How she was able to monitor and control all of that was beyond me, but she acted like it was no big deal for her.
The plan was to remove a sampling of creatures from stasis and place them inside Cordelia as a test. Gilda wanted to start with Japanese plants and animals for some reason. Cordelia said she could recreate a couple of small ecosystems from Japan using the samples in stasis combined with the information from the computer.
As she got started with that, Gilda and I started removing the samples from stasis and placing them into Cordelia's core body. The animals would most likely still think they were on Earth. We wouldn't know how much mana they could provide until they were revived, then Cordelia could measure their output.
I saw some familiar animals and plants, but I also some that I had never seen before. The weirdest thing was they were all tiny at first. Most samples were no larger than a small coin. Some were as small as a grain of sand. They all had to be teleported to be decompressed back to full size, then removed from the stasis field. The process took most of the day just to get through all of the Japanese samples. I learned a lot because I was downloading the relevant information for each creature as I worked.
Millie was still working on something to do with her nanites. So it was just Gilda and me most of the time. By the end of the day, I was mostly over my irritation with her. Watching her do this work, it became even more clear to me than ever that Gilda was really a scientist. On Earth, I knew scientists sometimes did experiments on animals, which many non-scientists thought were cruel and unethical. My own work used cows for food, and some people thought that was cruel and unethical too. Not to mention how some people saw my hunting and fishing. I secretly wondered if Gilda saw us all as test animals in a cage or penned up cattle. I really didn't want an answer to that question. The whole idea made me uncomfortable and reminded me that until recently, I was a human test subject for her.
When we were almost finished working, Cordelia stepped out of her core with a worried look on her face.
"I'm getting a good amount of mana now, but there's something I think both of you should see."
Behind her was a confused looking creature that was somewhat like a cross between a fox and a raccoon, called a tanuki.
