Colin's posts

"Only one way to find out." Leo replied.

He then cracked his knuckles, and got to work, with Violet helping him out when he needed it. Specifically, when he had questions about what terms meant.

Surprisingly, that was the majority of his questions. When she put it in terms he could understand, he seemed to be able to work quite efficiently.

Unfortunately, the progress was still slow. But it was moving forward. They even managed to somehow get past the protection that they had encountered.

"...it's starting to interface somewhat properly." Leo then said, sitting back and exhaling slowly, taking a small break.

"Hm. Fair enough." he replied.

"Then I need to bypass this." he said.

"This is very sophisticated stuff, but everything has a weakness." he then reasoned.

"I just need to dig and poke around until I find it." he told her further.

"I have to." he continued.

"Lest the entire world be possibly put in danger."

".....hm." Leo muttered.

"Strange that it's here, then." he said.

"But I have several ways to get through such things." he went on.

"Can you think of WHY it's here?" he then asked her.

"Who might have done it, when, and why?"

Leo merely sighed in response.

"Corrupted or not, we have to try." he said.

"It's just as useless in a format we can't access than it is corrupted." he reasoned.

"You said it yourself, the tech here can't handle your own tech." he went on.

"So it's MY job to fudge and jury-rig this until it temporarily can, in ANY way." he said further.

"Now, what does THIS line mean?" he asked, gesturing to a message that popped up, using terms he wasn't familiar with.

"Indeed." Leo agreed.

With that, they started to work on getting the device to interface properly with Leo's setup... and at first, they were having absolutely NO success.

That is, until Leo tweaked someone manually on the stick, and it looked like his tech was starting to read what was on it. Starting to. And it was slow... to massively understate it.

"We've made progress!" Leo declared.

"If we follow this line of troubleshooting, we might be able to get this done more quickly." he told Violet. "....relatively speaking." he then added.

Both Aly and Ryker were enjoying the dinner, but froze for a moment when Eke made his suggestion.

"Oh?" Ryker asked, breaking the brief silence.

"Sure." he said.

"I can have some contractors out in the next little bit." he told him.

"Why the sudden change?" he asked.

And they were BOTH curious about the whiplash in tone, from the undead dragon dooming them all, to THIS topic. Or was this nothing more than an attempt to lighten the mood?

Leo paused his work for a moment, but then sighed.

"I see." he said.

"That... that is truly a shame." he said further.

"Technology and mana can go hand-in-hand beautifully. They can work together and enhance each other marvellously." he went on.

"Such a shame that one choked out the other." he lamented.

"I understand your hesitation now."

Leo almost dropped everything when he heard that.

"Uh... I... well..." he stammered.

"We're up to... well... 10 terabytes here." he admitted.

"But 72k? Holy hell." he mumbled.

"This is gonna take more mana than I thought." he muttered further, cracking his knuckles.

"When this is over, you and I must have a more casual discussion about technology." he commented, getting to work.

"I would love to tap into your advanced knowledge."

".......I see." Leo responded.

"Well, ironically enough, it's gonna take mana to solve this." he said.

"Right, I can see the basic workings here... and the damage done to it should be easily fixed or worked around..." he said further, digging out some small tools and supplies.

"I'll need information about this, though." he went on.

"Mostly the storage limit it has, so I don't overload my setup." he continued.

"But I'll ask as I go." he then said further.

"That all right?"

"All right." Aly replied, still a bit worried.

"....yeah, sure." Ryker said.

'...weird...' he thought.

'Something's not right, you know.' the demon told him.

'I know.' Rkyer responded mentally.

"There's some ice-cold bottles in the back of the fridge." he then told Eke.

"Let me see it." Leo replied, as his setup started to power on and boot up.

Violet handed him the piece, and Leo grabbed an eyepiece that a jeweler might use, and carefully looked it over.

"Hmmm..." he mumbled.

"Mmhmm... mmhmm... hmmm..." he muttered further.

"It might need some manual tweaking, but I think I might be able to get it to interface with my setup." he told her.

"I've worked with other-worldly tech before, but this really is quite sophisticated." he then commented.

"I'm very impressed and intrigued by it."

Leo watched Hollie go, before looking at Violet.

"Well... hello, there." he greeted her.

"I'm Leo." he introduced himself.

"What's your name?" he asked.

As he talked, Violet saw him open the briefcase, which opened up into a portable computer system, but far more sophisticated than any laptop or portable computer.

For this world, anyway.

Emerald returned the hug, and watched them go, before sighing.

"....Rylie..." he mumbled.

"I'm sorry..." he said quietly.

Meanwhile, Hollie and Violet had made their way to Angela's office, and were waiting by the open door. Sure enough, there was a swirl of sand in the room, and Leo appeared, a metallic briefcase in his hand.

"...wow." he muttered.

"This place is definitely not doing well..."

Emerald just sighed.

"I... I don't know if I can see Rylie right now, as she is." he admitted.

"So I'll stay here for now." he said.

"I'll keep poking around here, see if I can find anything more than can help." he then told the two of them.

"...if that works, anyway."