Chapter 210 – The Eternal City 2 – Mansion Hohenstaufen

Chapter 210 – The Eternal City 2 – Mansion Hohenstaufen

Eventually Lydia returned to them.

“That was disgraceful!” Of course, the first thing she did was reprimand Thana. “Not only did you reveal part of your powers, but you also hurt John. Let it be known that I am thoroughly disappointed!”

“Yes, yes,” Thana sighed, utterly defeated. “I get it, I get it, I have the fucking mental state of a toddler and I don’t deserve dessert, cuddles, or anything good. Everyone would be better off if I was just barefoot and stuck in a kitchen or whatever the fuck.”

Lydia blinked twice, looked over to Aclysia, then back to Thana. “As long as we are clear on that,” the princess stated, deciding that this instance of Thana’s disrespect was not a fight worth having and finally they were on their way again.

John looked at the platform with their luggage floating after them. “Can’t we just use that to get to our destination?” he asked. It had been extremely fast, so it would save them time to just climb that.

“It has neither a lot of speed nor the windshield outside of the lanes,” Lydia remarked; “Therefore, it is best used to just take care of our luggage.”

John accepted that as a fact while they went towards the edge of the floating island and one of the many mana streets. Now that he looked at everything more closely he started to recognize that there was some sort of planned network going on here. Of course, not every island was connected to every single other island. Instead, what he was looking at was a three-dimensional network of streets that stretched through the sky. The longer he looked the more it looked like highways connecting cities. A direct path was seldom available but there was always a path. Figures in the distance, the size of ants, moved with extreme speed on top of these lanes.

“So how does this work?” John wondered, when they stopped in front of these streets.

It was at least ten-metres wide and divided into two sections by a central railing. That railing, the only solid part to the whole structure, was bolted to the island. It was made from some goldish metal. The same material also framed the street to the left and right, serving as the barrier between the people using it and the long drop to the city below. When John touched it, it felt like rubber. Not that he got a long time to test that feeling. A sensation like a reverse electric shock made his hand snap back.

“Hey!” John exclaimed and, worried, checked his health. He had used the waiting time to let Undine heal him to full. He still wasn’t psyched about losing more HP today. Interestingly enough, he didn’t lose a single life point, instead he had lost half of his MP.

“That is Romuglehn,” Lydia explained, looking at him with an amused glint in her greyish blue eyes. “It is a material of unknown composition that apparently only Romulus can create, and the best mana transmitter known to be in use. The mana streets, or Arcan Pavimentum as they are officially called, create a circular mana stream that we can safely step on. Normally it is the job of the city officials to make sure they don’t run out of energy, but I think you just saved them that trouble for the next few days.”

“Days?” John asked and shook his slightly numb hand. “I only lost like half and this street is like 500 metres long!”

“Ya have stupid high mana,” Rave giggled.

Lydia nodded, “In addition, as I just said, Romuglehn is an extremely efficient transmitter. These streets almost exclusively lose energy if somebody uses them.”

Lydia simply stepped on the blue, streaming surface and immediately was carried off at an impressive speed, roughly equivalent to what cars were allowed to drive at in inner cities. The platform with their luggage followed her and Thana simply stepped on without another care.

“Let’s go, this seems fun!” Rave said and grabbed John by the hand. Together they went onto the stream.

The feeling of the ground moving underneath John’s feet was surprisingly unsurprising. It felt like he was riding on an escalator. Similarly, he could just walk forward on it. Of course. Rave had other plans, trying to run in the other direction just to see if she could. The answer was no, she still barely moved backwards. “Hah,” Thana laughed at her, managing to counteract the mana streets natural movement while running backwards, hands folded behind her head, “you are really fucking slow.”

It was the same as every other house belonging to Lydia, just bigger. John felt thoroughly disappointed. “Why?” he had to ask. His tone was agitated, the dullness of her choice of internal decorations clashing so heavily with the grandeur of the city at large. “Why do you use the same style everywhere?!”

“Because the company that does it presented me with a contract for 10 years in which they would redecorate every house that I pointed them at. Not having them work would be a waste of my money,” Lydia crossed her arms, “and wasting money is a cardinal sin.”

“This is so boring,” Rave complained.

“Yeah, way to bring down the fucking mood,” Thana added and looked around, “Nice Renaissance mansion and what do you do with it? Wooden floor and Prussian blue everywhere.”

“I like it,” Momo pushed against the popular opinion.

Aclysia nodded, a sparkle in her eyes, “The kitchen was supreme in the last house, I cannot wait to see this one.”

“Your complaints are dismissed. Anything that goes against Prussian blue is wrong by default,” Lydia said as she peeled out of her jacket and orderly hung it onto the wardrobe. “Take the door to your right. You will find the living room behind it. Turn left and go to the door ahead, that will take you to the kitchen.”

Aclysia bowed and was off. John smirked. However boring it was to be in the third house with the same, solid wooden furniture, as long as he had his girls around at least it wouldn’t get boring. ‘Oh right, I have achievements to look at,’ John reminded himself and did that while he was getting out of his winter clothes.



Yeah, there it was. Just a bit of Charisma though. Nothing new.



Great, more Libido, just what he needed. Couldn’t something give him a free Relationship Slot or something? Neither Thana nor Nathalia had joined his Harem officially yet, but the former kept clashing with Lydia while Nathalia’s existence kept egging on his girlfriend. It was only a matter of time until one of these situations, or something he wasn’t even aware of at the moment, escalated and he would be in the middle of it. Something that he REALLY didn’t want to experience.

‘Guess I’d better go grind out the two needed levels today,’ John decided. It had been a while since he had taken the time to actually level anyhow and he needed money for a few things. There were still some windows left though.



‘Oh for...’ John cried out in his thoughts, ‘Now I have two levels in that class I can use whenever, and I don’t even want to. Urgh, just stacking them for the time being.’



Wait... Wait what?