Point Zero by Aer-ki Jyr (christmas read aloud TXT) 📕

or bigger, they came in like a wrecking ball and would often destroy the target molecule or atom rather than deflecting off it or absorbing into it.

But photonic use was a matter for the reactor assembly to deal with. Fuel design was all about producing as much photon ocean release as possible per volume, and this new design…as yet unnamed…was indicated to have the potential to far outstrip current Star Force fuels in terms of raw power production, power spike, and absorption potential…while having a significantly higher decay rate. That meant it had to be used regularly, and wouldn’t store well for long term scenarios, but in a ship’s reactor that had to keep internal systems running constantly, they’d need more than the decay rate release of photonic energy every second of every day, so it seemed perfect for continuous use reactors.

The downside was you couldn’t build up a fuel depot for it the way you could for Vendium or Prose Trifate. Those could be stored for millennia with virtually no breakdown, and Menchi knew Star Force had huge repositories filled with them scattered across the empire, as well as a mandate that all new ships had to have at least one reactor onboard capable of using both in case fuel production facilities like Menchi’s Star Forge were shut down, cut off from the fleet, or destroyed.

But this new fuel…it was going to be a game changer. Now Menchi just had to figure out how hard it was going to be to produce outside the limited amount synthesized in a lab with very precise alchemy controls. You couldn’t use those for industrial scale applications, so Menchi had a lot of work to do figuring out a way to get the same synthesis pathways using other means…because he knew already the current process supplied was not going to be good enough. He’d use it at first, but he was going to have to tweak it, and the particle techs that developed stuff like this had a habit of only worrying about whether or not it could be done, rather than figuring out ways to do it efficiently.

That’s where fabricators came in. They’d take a discovery and figure out how to make it better, faster, and at less energy cost. And from the look of this, Menchi had the biggest challenge of his life ahead of him, for this design was clearly ahead of Star Force fuel technology. A huge leap ahead.

And Menchi was damn curious to know where they had found it.

5

July 9, 154931

Solar System (Home One Kingdom)

Earth

Kian-093 jumped straight up, traveling more than 15 meters before grabbing a suspended set of rings without having to use his Essence or Jumat. He grabbed onto one with his normally tan right hand, then began to monkey swing from one to another across the new super-sized obstacle course.

His skin hadn’t gained any color changing properties like a lot of the others had, but it was now a little thicker and tear resistant. Almost slippery when dry, though right now he was pouring out sweat as his inefficient new body went through the rigors of newb training…something he hadn’t had to deal with more than once in his life, and that was a very, very long time ago.

Yet his base attributes in the ‘Furyan’ body were largely superior to his bests in his Saiyan body, though not in all areas. Still, being out of shape as he was, he was near to his peak if not exceeding it in all aspects, with agility being his lowest area, but that was due to his size increase that now put him at 6’11’’.

Paul had been right about eating heavy, for when the size modification began he felt starved immediately. It didn’t happen gradual, and when it finally peaked out he felt a great sense of relief…both from the lack of ravenous appetite, but also from the disappearance of his tightly packed psionic tissue. It was still there, though modified now in some cases, but it had some breathing room now that his body was larger. His previous form had gotten crowded, so it was no surprise that all 100 trailblazers had seen the same size increase, with the smallest of them now standing 6’ 7’’…which was Oni-081…and the largest at a whopping 8’ 3’’, which was Brad-050.

But all of them didn’t look big. They looked painfully thin and scrawny, for their musculature had to stretch out to their new forms, with the minimal new tissue being added to accommodate the changes. It would take time to buff up again in all the ways they chose to, but the size increase was messing with Kian the most, for his arms and especially his legs didn’t move in the way he was used to. He was having to relearn everything that was familiar, including running cadence, and Wilson had devised this new training course specifically for their immediate needs…and their size, for a good sprint for Kian now had him easily over 100 miles per hour without even having to go Saiyan.

That speed, along with his larger mass, meant a lot of momentum had to change position when he tried to redirect…and he’d run into quite a few obstacles trying to go too fast too soon, but each day his body was rapidly adjusting and adapting, despite the fact that his upgrades were over. He could feel it clearly, though had a hard time articulating it. The transformation was done, as was the peculiar Essence effect, and now he was a youngling again in a new race that was patterned after his old form.

And each of the trailblazers was different. No two had exactly the same attributes, though they shared many. Kian had no mental upgrades, at least not as far as the extra organs that Roger, Paul, and some of the other more heavy naval types has gotten,