Chapter 176: Thirty Days to Avoid Turning Your Friends into Infrastructure

The emergency family meeting took place in the dining room.

Lucian dragged in a whiteboard from the laboratory, parked it beside the table, and wrote three lines with a thick black marker.

PROBLEM: THE WORLD MAY EXPLODE IN THIRTY DAYS. ACCEPTABLE COST: MONEY.

UNACCEPTABLE COST: PEOPLE.

Evelyn took a sip of black coffee. “Subtle.”

“We need a replacement for the Keystone architecture,” Lucian said. “No permanent soul binding. No single point of failure. Operators must be able to resign. And this continent’s continued existence cannot depend on five people staying alive and reporting for work.”

He turned to the flow calculations.

Every alternative he had devised was less efficient than the ancient system. A distributed grid needed thousands of relay stations, trained engineers, maintenance schedules, spare parts. Every added person introduced another chance to connect something backward.

Five excellent people carrying everything was monstrous.

It was also cheaper, faster, and, within the old design’s assump-tions, safer.

Lucian cleared the abacus and ran the figures again. “How much?”

Evelyn lowered her cup. “Initial estimate—” “Wait. Let me prepare emotionally.”

Astra, bundled in her pink puffer jacket, pushed a little dish of strawberry ice cream toward him.

“Have some first.” He took a spoonful.

“Eighty-five million gold just for the materials,” Evelyn said. “Plus four thousand tons of black mithril for the distributed mana cables.”

Lucian inhaled strawberry ice cream.

Unified System v3.0 appeared while he was coughing.

[PRELIMINARY ARCHITECTURE COST COMPARISON]

Legacy centralized model: Low material costs. Critical dependence on living operators.

Stolen from NovelPhoenix, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Distributed model: Extremely expensive. Replaceable components.

[HOST’S FINANCIAL RESPONSE]

Denial.

Anger at calculator. Cash-flow recalculation.

Search for corporate tax deductions.

Lucian wiped his mouth and leaned back.

“So we can buy everyone’s freedom. At a price that may kill the buyer.”

He went to the map of Solaris on the wall. Five large red points marked the proposed Keystones.

With another marker, he began breaking their functions into small circles spread across towns, dwarven forges, railway stations, and magic academies. Blue lines connected them.

Sylvia watched him work.

“You want an institution to take each person’s place?”

“I want to split each job into enough smaller jobs that nobody has to become a load-bearing component.”

He drew another branch. Then another.

At the head of the table, Eleanor leaned forward.

“If someone needs to hold the sovereign function temporarily while we build this network, I can accept the interim assignment.”

“No.”

She looked at him.

Lucian stopped with the marker still in his hand. “I don’t like it,” he corrected.

“I know.”

“It’s a terrible—”

“And if it’s my choice?”

He had no immediate answer.

Outside the dining room, representatives from the Iron Hammer Alchemy Guild, the National University, and the Holy See were waiting for the technical briefing. Through the glass, they could see his map spreading across the continent.

“The greatest administrative network in history,” one whispered, loudly enough for Lucian to hear.

He was trying to make himself and his friends less important. Apparently even that looked like a bid for world domination.

Half an hour later, the briefing was over. The delegates left to begin arranging material supplies.

Five people remained at the table.

Astra picked up a biscuit. “I can still hold the energy supply for a while. So you have time to work.”

“I can help keep the language archives available during the transi-tion,” Sylvia said.

Evelyn spun a wrench around one finger. “We don’t have to use the same solution for all five roles.”

Eleanor came around the table and stood in front of Lucian.

“This time, Vance, don’t take the whole job yourself. And don’t make our decisions for us.”

He looked at the four of them.

He had drawn a network with no central bottleneck, then put himself in charge of deciding whether everyone else was allowed to take a risk.

That was an inconvenient resemblance. The central display chimed.

[SOLARIS CONTINENTAL STABILITY WINDOW]

Time remaining: 29 DAYS, 23 HOURS, 59 MINUTES. Recommended next step: Establish reversible interim support.

Nobody at the table was waiting for an order. They were waiting for him to sit down and talk.