Factory of the Magical Variety

by Conglomerate

Chapter 26: Peak

I was ready to try and gather Celestite again. I had built a plane capable of navigating the extreme cold, and I had taken care of the forest raids against my base. I was free to leave whenever I wanted.

Making sure my base was secure, including the vault, I headed out towards the now much larger clearing in the forest. A lot of the flora that previously existed here was dying. Where there was once flowers, brambles, and bushes was now something much more like a grassland.

Grass had overtaken a lot of the land due to the absence of trees, it hadn't taken over everything though, my constant movements in techs had made sure of that. Obvious dirt roads ran seemingly randomly across the field, with deep imprints from tires going over regularly.

The new tracks on the plane weren't much better, being wider, it crushed more of the grass. Repeated use of tracks would definitely destroy the area, leaving it a barren stretch of dirt.

That was off topic however, right now it was time to take flight once more. Checking everything once again, I made sure the plane was ready for the arctic conditions.

Being a larger plane, it would no doubt fly a bit slower than the previous one. To counteract this, I had spent more resources to fabricate some more propellers, I should make the trip in the same amount of time now.

I took off, ready for the two to three day journey ahead of me. Once again passing Canterlot, I reminded myself that I should actually buy some Titanite when I got back. I had something I wanted to try, and I had enough money that I could try experimenting.

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I passed by the large cloud again, this time there seemed to be even more activity, but as much as I wanted to find out, I didn't want to risk losing another plane.

Just then, a loud boom echoed out from the giant cloud. A large shockwave and arcing rainbow appeared from the cloud.

The shockwave nearly stalled my tech as it passed over, which greatly worried me. It wasn't easy to break the sound barrier, especially if you didn't know the composition of the atmosphere. Something over in that cloud had done it, which meant it could travel faster than I could.

I gave the giant cloud an extra large margin as I passed it.

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The rest of the trip actually took longer than I thought, it was either due to different winds or just the larger plane. I made it to the Frozen mountains in about four days. This time, it was day, and there were no storm clouds in the distance, perfect.

I landed on the same slope I had found last time, and because of the tracks, I was able to stop about halfway down the slope rather than at the end of it. The large chunk that fell off last time made it a bit shorter, but that wasn't a problem.

Looking around, there were no Celestite outcroppings just sticking out of the ice, which made sense. With snow falling and nothing to melt it, there really wasn't going to be anything around here besides snow and ice. Everything else was underneath, like the plane.

Down the mountainside, there was no obvious indication that the plane was anywhere near, it was too far buried and the environment had smoothed over all the snow and ice. I could tell where it was on the radar however, I just couldn't tell how far down it was.

Flying down, the snow was hard and solid, it must've been frozen together after melting a bit in the sun. It was able to support the weight of my plane.

I couldn't really see the frozen plane, but a little indicator was visible telling me it was directly below me, and judging by it's distance, it was pretty far down.

That was a problem, I didn't have a way to drill a hole large enough or straight down to reach the plane, so it was still stuck down there for the moment.

I did know one thing however, the ice was saturated with Celestite chunks, enough that they were visible a few meters deep. I did my best to brush away the snow from the ice wall, it wasn't very effective but it was good enough to get a view inside it.

Frozen in the ice, were a couple of small chunks of Celestite, and further back was a large outcrop of it. I still only had the small drill however, so it would take forever to actually drill through the Ice, especially if I wanted to get the whole plane through.

There was one solution, it was the fact that I brought the cannon. Explosive mining at the bottom of an avalanche prone zone was a risky thing, but it was the only option right now, and I really wanted the Celestite.

To start, I simply drilled a small hole in the Ice wall, flew back as far as I could go, and simply aimed for the hole. The first shot missed, and the explosion rang throughout the area. Nothing fell, and that raised my confidence, it looked like the mountainside was a lot more stable than I thought.

I fired again, this time blowing a large chunk of ice out of the wall. I continued to do this until the hole was now deep enough to reach the first chunk.

Reassembling the tech so it could fit into the hole, I drove in and drilled out the chunk. It came out remarkably well, and I now held my first chunk of Celestite on this world. There was still a bit of ice between me and the next chunk, and a lot more ice until the outcropping, so I would have to continue breaking my way through.

The next chunk was easy enough to get, but the real problems started when I moved onto the outcropping. Apparently the hole was now too deep, as a large crack started forming above the entrance, a huge chunk of ice threatening to fall down over the entrance.

The solution to this was easy enough, just build my own support with some leftover blocks. I actually did bring an anchor block, so it was a lot more effective than just leaning a pillar up against the entrance. Just to be safe, I fired from the outside to test whether or not it would work.

The roof shifted a little, but that was only because it wasn't entirely on the pillar, now it was. It looked like it would hold for now.

Continuing to mine, I eventually made it to the large outcrop, and once again driving the tech down the tunnel, I began drilling. The outcrop was pretty big, and was able to yield a lot of Celestite, almost completely filling my collectors.

The ceiling then started to crack, then several chunks of ice came loose. The anti-gravity properties of the Celestite must have been keeping this mine from collapsing, and now that I just broke a large field into a bunch of smaller fields, It wasn't enough to support the ceiling.

Racing out of the cave, I just barely made it out before the whole thing collapsed. I didn't have enough time to recover though, as the collapse caused a chain reaction to occur. A large chunk of the mountain up above crumbled off, creating a deadly avalanche.

I don't think I've ever assembled a tech as fast as I did right there, in an instant, the plane was rebuilt, and I started to take off. By now, the smaller chunks of ice had begun raining down onto my tech, thankfully the repair bubble I had installed did its thing, so nothing was too damaged.

The plane was picking up speed, but so was the incoming avalanche, I needed to take off and get above it before I got buried, again. Larger chunks started impacting around the tech as the avalanche fell closer, the plane was almost fast enough to lift off, it would be close.

A particularly large chunk of ice seemed to be rolling right towards my tech, it was quickly catching up to it.

The plane took off, and the large chunk of ice just barely clipped the wheel I had in the back, it was only a little jolt, I quickly recovered, and gained altitude. I had successfully dodged an avalanche.

With the Celestite firm in my collectors, I began the three to four day long journey back home. It was unfortunate that I wasn't able to recover the other plane, but at least it wasn't destroyed. I would have to come back for it sometime later, probably when I had access to Geocorp.

For now, I had the Celestite, so I could finally go to the moon, and get Titanite without having to buy it. First I had to actually buy some though, I still needed it to get up there. But I wasn't so sure I needed it to go down anymore, there was something I wanted to try.

To Be Continued...