chapter 63 the meeting starts (work in progress)

Vincent saw the shock on Daniel's face and somewhat amused said "this is an artificial habitat, people on verulus are very particular about their pets, especially Anthony, I personally never understood the attraction, but your grandmother has an astral whale named Maya, now that I think about it you're mother used to have a ghost tiger but it's been a while since I saw it, while Joseph's pets have basically taken over specter mountain, and they kind of work as security even if it's not necessary, well, at least they keep the reporters away"

while they were talking a gorilla covered in golden fur arrived and said "little vincent welcome back, who is this young gentleman? let's go have some tea"

while they flew toward an enormous three Vincent said "this is Joseph's and Phoebe's son Daniel, Daniel this is the guardian of this habitat, Gerhard"

Daniel said "nice to meet you"

Gerhard nodded and said "likewise young master"

soon they were sitting around a table that was on the tree and vincent said "we caught two spiritual beast's that Anthony should like and brought them here" and took out the hazard cages with the abyss serpent and bone shark sleeping inside

Gerhard brought a teapot and started pouring a cup for them while he said "master will be happy to see them when he comes out of seclusion"

Daniel wasn't interested in those two beasts that he couldn't eat, but the moment the tea appeared with some small cookies he was happy to at least have a snack

he started by taking a sip and something magical happened, suddenly Daniel's mind was even more clear than it was until now, and some small things he was stuck on in the cloaking shield project became simple

in shock, Daniel said "what's the name of this magic tea?"

Gerhard said "it's enlightenment tea why?"

Daniel said "the name is very appropriate, thanks"

Daniel never used a computer or other devices to work on his projects, Tickles was all he ever needed, as soon as the tea took effect, the cloaking shield that he was thinking of in the background surfaced, soon he started to revise what he had and in mere minutes made progress that would usually take him a week

they saw him lost in his thoughts and let him be, it was normal to have epiphanies while drinking enlightenment tea

soon later Gerhard left to bring the two new guests to their habitat, and when he came back Daniel was waking up from his enlightened state

Daniel said "thanks I need to go back to my lab"

Gerhard took a small jade box and giving it to Daniel said "this is some enlightenment tea remember not to use it more than once every two days"

Daniel smiled happily nodded and said "thanks, I'll keep that in mind" and took the box, he was thinking that he should go fish another couple of rare spiritual beasts for this extremely handsome gorilla

soon Daniel was back at the cloudtrain lab, and the cloaking shield v1 blueprint was finally ready to be tested

now it was Tickle's turn, and as always he did everything fast and efficiently, in less than an hour the cloaking shield was mounted on a cloudtrain section and the testing phase started

a couple of days later the result's arrived, and it kind of worked, the members of the Specter family could easily find it, but they were hardly a fitting jury since all of them were high-level pros

in the end, Daniel concluded with Phoebe's help that it should be hard to detect for anyone and any technology below the peak-fourth stage, but at a certain distance a satellite that big would be easily seen in any case, after all, it didn't have the same invisibility as the badge, but as a v1 this was may be his best work yet

Daniel right now should go back to the energy source or energy storage problem, but the truth was that 10 new ideas had already hit him, and he still had another two solutions to find for the project satellite

Daniel started to think of a possible solution and only one came to mind, when he was at school he was able to divide his attention among 20 professor jellybot, why not divide his thought into 10 or so Daniels each thinking of a different project?

of course, he soon realized how ridiculous this thought was, listening and memorizing were one thing and research and development another, he simply wasn't able to divide himself, even if he was able to think about many things at once

after having procrastinated long enough, Daniel was ready to go back to the battery, the poor Almony was still in the jar but Daniel was on a roll and completely forgot about her existence

just as he started to revise what he had on the battery project so far Vincent came, the meeting was about to start

Daniel and Vincent walked to one of the many empty rooms in the Specter castle, in which a big round table made to accommodate many people was

as they took their seat, Obelix, Andrea, White, Sophia, Joseph and Phoebe arrived, with a new guest that Daniel had never seen before, a loose-looking teenager with short black hair and glowy purple eyes, that was taking sips directly out of a vine bottle and they all sit down

Vincent stood up and said "everyone is here, let's start with some introductions, Daniel this is my father alexander a peak ninth stage cultivator who protects the Sun federation upper galaxy, father this is Daniel the latest member of our family"

Daniel said "nice to meet you great-grandpa"

Alexander said "nice to meet you too, please call me by name I'm not as old inside as this son of mine"

Daniel said "ok Alexander"

Vincent said "ok we can start now, first on the agenda is to bring everyone up to speed"

Vincent spent the next hour explaining all things Daniel with the help of the others, Alexander was really surprised about everything this new great-grandson of his had done in just a few years

with everyone updated Vincent said "we need to find out the specifics about Daniel's ability, if it really is related to wormholes, and how to cover up this wandering robot business that the reporters are going crazy over"

Alexander said "now I understand why you were so cryptic, but you still messed up, couldn't you find an excuse to lure me here?"

Vincent replied "even if I asked you to come to dinner would you have come?"

Andrea said "enough both of you, we need to think about solutions, not quarrelling"

Alexander said "the solution it's simple, let's leak that Daniel is behind the robot's, and everyone will look that way and not realize something bigger was hidden under it"

Sophia said "that will just make those old things even more suspicious"

Alexander replied "not if the leak is accidental!"

Phoebe said "the refiner competition!"

everyone looked at her with question mark on their faces and Phoebe explained "I brought a maru to the competition but the old version is somewhat different and no one made the connection, I can leak a photo through one of my subordinates account and raise everyone suspicion"

Vincent said "yes, that would work, soon everyone will realize on their own we are hiding these robots, but we still need an explanation on how they ended up behind the hive frontline"

Alexander said "a month and a half ago a wormhole opened in the upper galaxy, I spent an hour there studying it, maybe we can use it somehow?"

Joseph said "no, we called you after everything was done, it wouldn't take a genius to realize something was wrong"

Obelix said "we can hide it in the spirit of research, we sent a small unit of automated robots to fight against the hive in an experiment to create cannon fodder and spare soldiers' lives, some time later we lost contact, the rest explains itself, Phoebe went to retrieve them because they are property of the Specter family, who would dare to contest that, I can create a fake trail of documents and leak one or two of them trough some backchannels"

Alexander nodded and said "that's good, like that we will not need to make any statement or hold any press conference until they think that they know everything, if Daniel doesn't use his wormhole ability in public no one will know"

Daniel was very amused by all of this, it was funny to think of solutions together like this so he said "what about the itchy explorers?"

Alexander said "the what?"

Daniel said "when I was lost on retak I thought about creating a network, and later started throwing itchy in the wormhole I created, with the 24 I threw and the 14 we planted on the way back home, there are now 38 itchy in total out there that are gathering materials to build satellites, and since I can't go personally to explore, I thought of doing it through them like that VR game we played in the past"

Vincent facepalmed, Phoebe and Sophia didn't think much about it before since no one was supposed to know about Daniel's invention, but now that became suddenly a problem

everyone was thinking about it when Alexander said "can't you just make them different?"

Daniel said "even if they have a different shape the base technology would be the same, it wouldn't take a genius to make the association"

Alexander said "then make them different at the core, let's buy some robots from someone else and use those ones as a base"

Daniel thought about it and then said "that would be boring, no, it will take some time but I can arrange something different, if I change the battery, and memory, and modify the weaponry, it won't be as easy to discover, of course, itchy it's a dead giveaway if they found him there's nothing I can do about it"

Obelix said "are you sure no one can steal the nanites"

Daniel said "protocol 1 orders them to self-destruct if they are captured and unable to escape or they start experimenting on them, that's the best I could do"

Obelix nodded and said "let's hope that's enough"

Alexander said "it could work, cultivators wouldn't waste their time analyzing technology or we wouldn't use the hazard room as a dump for it, even if your robots are destroyed they probably won't look too close"

Vincent said "all right, now that we found a solution for this I suggest we move to the garden to test Daniel's ability"

while everyone was nodding and standing up Daniel said "I kept Tickle's ability too, do you want to test it?" surprising everybody, they were so concentrated on Daniel's ability that no one realized Tickles had to have unlocked one too at the same time