Everything was completely finalized.
Absolutely nothing else was needed, and only one thing remained to be done: depart.
The farewell from the Kent farm, to Conner’s ultimate fortune, wasn’t dramatic at all.
Although he immediately noticed the boys’ visibly deflated spirits, Conner limited himself to offering a few brief and simple words of comfort.
In his heart of hearts, he felt it wasn’t that big of a deal anyway; after all, it wasn’t as if they were leaving forever.
With the farm matters fully resolved, the team set off.
Under the protective cover of the night, the master plan finally began to unfold.
Reaching the coordinates of the enigmatic Dinosaur Island posed not the slightest inconvenience for the group.
After flying over the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the team reduced their speed and slowly descended toward the shores of that untamed land, isolated from the rest of the world.
Conner touched down gently, carefully setting down Raven, whom he had been carrying princess-style for the entire journey.
Before taking off from Smallville, Conner had openly asked how Raven would travel.
He knew, from his past-life comic book knowledge, that in some continuities she could fly and in others she couldn’t, but even when she did, her speed was no match for a Kryptonian.
Therefore, he offered to have one of the girls help by carrying her during the flight.
To his tremendous surprise, the young mystic stared fixedly at him and requested that he be the one to carry her.
Conner gladly accepted, though he feigned total indifference to avoid raising suspicions—all of this under the watchful and highly mocking gaze of Karen, who enjoyed every single second of the moment.
Meanwhile, Laurel and Kara—who had volunteered to help—took charge of transporting Conner’s and Kara’s ships through the skies, respectively.
‘What a great place to build a Jurassic Park,’ Conner joked to himself as he observed the island’s imposing geography.
The place seemed to have been completely forgotten by time itself, perpetually shrouded in dense mists and powerful magnetic anomalies that successfully blocked any human radar.
“Well…
so what are you going to do?
How do we start?” Raven asked, breaking the silence with evident doubt as she dusted off her clothes.
She had no idea what the exact plan was.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to start building a regular wooden house, just like those survival shelters that pop up on TV, right?” she added sarcastically.
She really couldn’t see Conner bringing any tools, construction equipment, or supplies, aside from the two metal ships.
Karen, Laurel, and Kara immediately threw him looks loaded with the same silent doubt.
Conner hadn’t shared a single detail of the moving process beforehand.
Conner drew a smile full of mystery and composure on his face.
“Don’t worry, I’m not doing any of that,” he explained, looking at Raven and the other girls.
“I won’t make you chop stone or carry logs, I assure you.”
The truth was that, originally, thinking about building the base had caused Conner a terrible headache.
He had spent entire nights racking his brain over where on earth he would get the necessary resources, steel, and materials without drawing attention; he even seriously considered tracking down and stealing shipments from mad scientists or corrupt corporations.
But fortune was on his side.
Out of pure curiosity, a couple of weeks prior, he decided to thoroughly review the technical specifications of the Kryptonian ship ROB had left him, which had been hidden away collecting dust in secret.
When he discovered the hidden function of his world’s technology, he couldn’t help but jump with genuine excitement in his room.
It made the entire plan absolutely effortless.
So, without giving the girls any further explanations, Conner picked up his ship and Kara’s using his super strength and rose into the air before the group’s highly curious gazes.
The women looked at each other, confused, but decided to follow him closely in flight to witness what on earth he was plotting.
Conner continued to fly at low altitude, completely ignoring the dinosaurs moving through the underbrush.
He scanned the terrain in search of the perfect spot until he located an imposing, solid mountain formation that felt ideal for his purposes.
Upon touching down right at the base of the immense mountain, Conner deposited the structures and activated the ship’s automated protocol through the command console, stepping back a couple of paces.
Before the incredulous gazes of the four women, and Conner’s burning, expectant look, a brutal molecular shift began to reshape the playing field.
Conner’s ship began to vibrate with a high-frequency electromagnetic hum.
Its quantum energy systems engaged, beginning to excavate the solid rock of the mountain completely silently, reorganizing the molecular matter in its path through a hyper-advanced transmutation process.
Armored corridors of burnished alien metal, towering hermetic hangars, and high-tech laboratories began to structure themselves out of thin air, adapting symmetrically to the natural subterranean geography without altering the outer surface.
Simultaneously, the protocol linked the capsule Kara had arrived in.
The hyperdrive engine and databases of the second ship were sacrificed and dismantled by the technological nanite colony itself, successfully transforming into the fortress’s central clean energy reactor, an advanced medical regeneration lab, and a massive system of invisible defensive shields that would camouflage the entire base from the cosmos.
In a matter of a few incredible hours, a Kryptonian fortress had been born before the eyes of the astonished group.
Without waiting for the girls to process the impact, react, or start bombarding him with questions, Conner was the first to take a step forward, notably excited, to explore the base that had just emerged before them.
Breaking out of their stupor, the girls didn’t stay behind and followed him immediately toward the armored blast doors.
The interior tour was a technological delight.
The base featured perfectly defined modules:
The Grand Library: An immense holographic data hub housing all the scientific knowledge, millennia-old history, and rich culture of the extinct planet Krypton.
The Research Center: A super-laboratory equipped with cutting-edge technology where advanced scientific and medical projects could be developed.
The Security Vault: A reinforced vault made of heavy alloys, specifically designed to store and contain highly dangerous artifacts or technology.
The Sanctuary: A harmonious architectural space, designed with absolute acoustics and isolation, tailored specifically for meditating in peace and practicing Torquasm Vo safely.
Automated Defense Systems: Computerized sentinels and hidden turrets programmed to safeguard the entire perimeter from any intruders or spy satellites.
Everyone spent a good amount of time exploring and familiarizing themselves with the facilities of what would be their home for a very long period, until Conner suggested they go out for some fresh air and formally explore the island’s outer surface.
The outdoor ecosystem was simply majestic.
Gigantic trees that easily rivaled skyscrapers towered imposingly toward the cloudy sky, dense prehistoric ferns blanketed the humid ground, and the air felt thick, heavy with pure, prehistoric oxygen.
As they walked through the underbrush, a powerful rumble echoed in the distance: a group of massive Brachiosaurus crossed a wide nearby river with an incredibly peaceful slowness, while a couple of Pterodactyls glided gracefully over the treetops.
The girls observed the landscape with quiet curiosity, but nothing more.
For beings capable of destroying mountains with their fists or manipulating darkness, giant lizards didn’t break their worldview.
Only Conner was genuinely thrilled.
Things like seeing live dinosaurs were experiences that only existed in textbooks and sci-fi movies from his past life.
Even though he had stepped foot on the island a couple of times during previous reconnaissance missions, it didn’t take away a single ounce of the adrenaline and childlike excitement he got from watching them eat or roar; and even knowing perfectly well that he was millions of times stronger than them, every time one of those beasts approached his position, he felt his heart race a bit from the pure fascination of the moment.
Karen suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, abruptly interrupting Conner’s trance.
The blonde crossed her arms, tilting her head as she looked at her husband with a raised eyebrow in a clear gesture of suspicion.
Conner blinked, snapping out of his Jurassic daydream, and noticed that it wasn’t just Karen looking at him in that strange way.
Laurel, Kara, and Raven were also observing him with analytical expressions.
Conner internally wondered what was going wrong; they were all supposed to be happy and jumping with excitement to be living on a prehistoric island inside a hyper-advanced base.
Subduing his posture, Conner cleared his throat and asked:
“What’s up, girls?
Why those weird faces?
Aren’t you supposed to be celebrating the base’s grand opening?”
“Conner…
there’s something I just can’t seem to understand,” Karen admitted, narrowing her eyes as she tilted her head.
“This place is beautiful and these animals are strange, but with your ships’ automated technology, we could see that the entire underground fortress construction process was automatic, fluid, and fast.
We didn’t have to lift a single brick or manually secure perimeters.
So… You are reading on g.com, the official source.
why did you beat around the bush so much back in Smallville before deciding to come?”
Laurel nodded slightly beside Karen, sharing the exact same doubt through her violet eyes.
They felt that Conner could easily have executed this automatic construction months or even years ago.
Why delay it so much if the ship did everything on its own?
Hearing the demand, Conner furrowed his brow and, internally, began to sweat mental buckets.
He couldn’t tell them the raw truth: ‘Hey, sorry, it’s just that I’m an idiot and only a couple of weeks ago did it cross my mind to read the ship’s options menu.’ That would completely destroy his image as a strategic and calculating leader in front of his wives and guests.
Fast, his mental gears began spinning at maximum speed in search of a perfect, intellectual excuse.
Suddenly, a flash of memory illuminated his mind.
Upon stepping foot on the island’s soil, he vividly recalled certain data from the classic comics: DC’s Dinosaur Island is physically and mystically connected to the inner-Earth realm at the center of the world known as Skartaris.
He himself had taken the time to search for and locate the exact entrance during his previous explorations.
It was the perfect alibi.
Conner relaxed his shoulders, drawing a highly confident and mysterious smile on his lips.
“You’re completely right.
The surface of this island doesn’t represent the slightest challenge to our capabilities, let alone the logistics of building the base, as you’ve just witnessed with your own eyes,” Conner declared, turning on his heels.
“The real reason why I consciously stretched out the decision to move to this fabulous and cool place…
ahem…” —he paused a second upon seeing the girls’ blank stares at his egocentrism, and continued— “…wasn’t out of construction laziness or fear of dinosaurs, since they clearly aren’t a threat and even serve as nice garden pets…
The real reason is a very different one.
Follow me.”
Conner led them with a firm step through a dense, closed path of prehistoric brush to the entrance of a deep, dark cave, located a few kilometers from the site where the Kryptonian base had consolidated.
As they ventured into the depths of the cavern, the natural darkness began to be displaced by a strange, dense, and flickering shimmer of emerald-green mystical energy that illuminated the rough limestone walls.
Upon reaching the back of the large underground chamber, the four women stood completely mute and speechless.
Before them towered an imposing, colossal, and ancient stone structure, covered in hand-carved mystical runes that vibrated with a massive power that made the air hum.
In the exact center of the stone arch, the fabric of reality itself seemed to tear in a perfect visual distortion, revealing a landscape completely alien to the planet: an eternal sun that never set, vertical mountain ranges of colossal proportions, and an atmosphere heavy with an impressive physical and magical pressure.
It was, undeniably, an active dimensional portal.
Conner stood right in front of the structure, letting the emerald glow reflect directly in his pupils.
Although he hadn’t physically explored it yet, he knew with absolute mathematical precision what it guarded.
“This is the real reason for my delay and my caution regarding the move,” Conner stated in a deep voice, loaded with a mix of seriousness and restrained excitement, pointing at the energy breach.
“This portal is the direct entrance to a strange and untamed world.”
He glanced out of the corner of his eye at his companions, whose initial distrust had instantly transformed into a tremendous and intense warrior expectation.
“I’m not completely sure of all the creatures and dangers that ecosystem might harbor in its depths,” Conner continued, crossing his arms, “but I can assure you of something with total certainty: down there, pure and ancient magic reigns.
And as you well know, magic is one of the few forces against which we Kryptonians are practically defenseless.”
Internally, Conner grew a little alert as he uttered those words.
It was an uncomfortable truth: magic had always been, along with kryptonite, one of the few variables that caused him genuine and constant wariness.
While the girls processed the immensity of the revelation, Conner couldn’t help but shift his gaze directly toward Raven.
He had every right to mistrust that subterranean realm.
Although he didn’t know if there was kryptonite down there, one thing was indisputable: sorcery abounded in Skartaris, and that was enough to turn the place into a threat.
But now, the corners of Conner’s lips couldn’t help but lift into a sly smile of triumph.
He had a multiversal-level mystical expert on his side.
The board was perfectly secured.