//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7 
// Story: A Technological Displacement 
// by Tenebris Lucifer 
//------------------------------//

Getting up from my chair I check the time on the nearby clock, “8:30? Already? *sigh* It always surprises me when the sun comes up and yet I always know when it comes over the horizon.” 
Looking back at my sketch’s I smile contently as I had made a new breakthrough using principles from my psionic magic, that being a psionic energy reactor which would theoretically be 100x more efficient than the ion crystal reaction that my machines ran off of, and it was completely renewable to boot! Sending it back to the base for Arbiter to safe keep it. I quickly headed downstairs and ordered some oatmeal and orange juice to keep this pathetic meatsack of a body operational. While eating some mare from another table came up to me and attempted to flirt, but after releasing a small bit of killing intent she scampered off, after that I was left alone for the rest of my tasteless meal. Leaving the inn I continue mapping out the town in my head eventually making my way back to the forest they call the Everfree. Walking in I started heading for the old castle as it was the epicenter of the blast. Taking out my pocket scanner I boot it up and start scanning the area for any abnormalities in the immediate area's magic. After a few seconds it compiled its report. Next I took it deeper into the forest and I mean deeper as I didn't know how far the magic from the artifacts had penetrated into the forest, as I continued into the forest I was attacked by multiple creatures but they eventually stopped, fortunately my body had only a couple of lacerations that I quickly healed. I did eventually find an ominous cave that was covered with multiple drawings and wards of various unknown languages, using my scanner I found that it was radiating the magics that surrounds this forest, but instead of going into it like some cliche manhwa protagonist I marked it on my map, turned around, and left. 
As I headed out of the forest I checked both of the magic readings on my scanner and came to a conclusion I hadn't thought of. The harmony magic as the ponies magic appeared to be a highly invasive magic spreading everywhere and uprooting the natural magic of the world, quickly scanning myself I found that this pony body had somewhat of a symbiotic relationship with this magic, as it allowed them to manipulate the world around them to a much finer degree, but the deeper I looked into the report the more worrying it became as when I looked at the genetic analysis report I found that the genetics of this body had been stagnated, this meant that this pony body could not naturally adapt to its environment forcing them to use more harmony magic to stabilize their living habitat causing more stagnation to this world.
‘This is bad, very very bad,’ I thought to myself as I made my way back through the forest, ‘If this isn't reversed in a century or so this world may very well die, but how do I reverse this?’ I continued to ponder this question throughout my journey out of the forest and into the town. Finally I had an idea.
‘If I destroy/neutralize large sources of harmony it should at the very least slow down the destruction of this world, but how do I find them?’ This was the problem but a solution quickly came to mind, ‘I just need to build a large sensor for concentrations of harmony.’
Going back to my room I lock the door with high level sealing runes and place down a warp gate back to the tower. Going through it I’m greeted with the metallic smell of plasteel and various other smells associated with a workshop. I quickly went to the cryo-room and switched into my research and development body, a large fully mechanical body made of mechasteel (a high grade self repairing alloy) nanites with several dozen high end enchantments mixed into the material during processing, going back to my workshop I collect the necessary parts for the blueprint I have in mind and assemble a prototype. Unfortunately when I turned it on it proceeded to explode destroying a good portion of my body.
“Energy overload.” I muttered to myself bitterly, ordering new parts from the quantum network. I started rebuilding the machine with a better capacitor, thankfully when I turned it on it didn't explode, instead it simply shut down after about 5 seconds.
“Information overload? OK let's do this then.” Bringing in a quantum computer I connect the sensor to it and flip them on. After a couple of minutes I look through the reports and am blown away.
“How? How are there hundreds of concentrated harmony? Unless… this stuff was spread on purpose.” I briefly pondered this before nodding, “This is sadly the most likely conclusion and it was likely made and spread by a pony at that, after all how come ponies are almost completely compatible while the other races aren’t?” Right at that moment my mental alarms started going off, meaning that someone was trying to break through my sealing runes. Changing back into my pony body, I jumped back through the warp gate and closed it behind me, and quickly hid anything suspicious before I opened the door. Staring back at me was a familiar Lavender unicorn and her little friends.
“What were you doing?” I asked Twilight with slight annoyance.
“Me and my friends wanted to talk to you about these “prosthetics” that you said you would give to Scootaloo.”
“And that gives you the right to try and break into my room?”
“Well we-”
“Let me ask again.” I said in an icy voice, “Does that give you the right to break into my room?”
“No.” She replied meekly.
“That's what I thought,” I stated before closing the door and re-locking it. But before I could move away from the door someone started knocking on it again. Going back to the door I swung it open and found myself face to face with Twilight's angry friends and a bubbly pink pony.
“What?” I asked indifferently.
“WHY DID YOU YELL AT TWILIGHT!” Rainbow dash yelled into my face.
“For the record I didn't yell at her I told her off, speaking of which where did she run off to?”
Applejack stepped in, “Well after you were done tellin ‘er off she went all teary eyed and ran off.”
“I see,” I stated before attempting to close the door, only for it to be stopped by a light blue aura.
‘Note to self-put selective magic runes on the door.’
“Darling, you must apologize to her,” Rarity stated.
“No,” I said flatly.
“Wh-why not?” Fluttershy asked quietly.
“Because she attempted to break into my current living space and if I recall that is a crime, should she have succeeded she would have been lucky if I had only pressed charges for breaking and entering.”
“Lucky?” they collectively asked
I nodded, “Very, Now then I have no intention of apologizing to her as she was in the wrong, should she wish to apologize to me I will consider accepting it, and let me make this clear before there are any more chances of these incidents. I. AM. NOT. YOUR. FRIEND.” I stated slowly, “I am here for business and business only, if you want to make small talk with me I might tolerate it but anything beyond that I will not tolerate, understood?”
“Yes,” They said in unison.
“Good now, leave me alone.” I said while closing the door, after locking it for the third time I put a selective magic rune matrix on the door and went back to my workshop to continue my work. Back in my research and development body I started trudging through the mountains of data, picking out targets and isolating city centers without large harmony concentrations such as small towns and junctions, while also isolating large concentrations of harmony such as large cities, but I noticed that three of these sources were moving and after cross referencing it with a map I came to the conclusion that these are the so called princesses. Marking them as targets I look at the other two sources, one was in the town of ponyville so it was likely the elements and another was deep within the Everfree next to the old castle.
‘That's what's probably restraining the forest's magic.’ I thought to myself whilst marking it as the first target. Though I didn’t stop going through the data and marking the other concentrations based on severity. I eventually finished looking through the data and zeroed it in on the three moving sources. After doing this I had a sudden thought, wasn't there a being that could absorb harmony? Pulling up the archives I search for cases of magic stealing entities, and thankfully find what I'm looking for.
‘Tirek ey?’ Looking through his info, he can apparently absorb harmony and make it his own/or consume it. Due to this he was defeated and imprisoned by the princesses in Tartarus, the land of demons. Sadly there was sparse information on Tartarus itself but its location was easy to discover after cross referencing a geological map with the legends surrounding it. Surprisingly it was relatively close by, only about 400 miles thankfully. Going back into my pony body I walk back into my room and close the gate behind me. Thankfully no one else had attempted to break in, and after rechecking all the runes on the door and reinforcing a couple I laid down on the bed and peacefully went to sleep for once.