Chapter 235: Worrying

Chapter 235: Worrying

Thunder cracked like a whip, and Rain’s sight returned. Not even the slightest charge remained in the air from the teleporter’s Arcane lightning, but his eyes were nevertheless assaulted by a riot of color.

First and foremost, he looked up, beholding a dome enchanted with an image of what was clearly meant to be Dystees. The god’s eyes blazed with pure white fury, beams of holy fire lasering from them to carve into the surrounding sea of demons. Those were painted in purples and deep greens, evoking darkness, with eyes flaming a furious red. Despite the sense of motion from the smoky light, the scene stayed fixed. Like a cinemagraph or something.

It was actually pretty badass.

Rain inhaled, breaking free of the captivation and taking in a lungful of hot and surprisingly thin air. Around him, the tightly packed crowd murmured with excitement, many staring up at the ceiling like he’d just been.

“See?” Ameliah beside him said. “Nothing to be worried about.”

“Never claimed to be worried,” Rain said, looking at her. He was worried, of course—just not about the teleport. After being portaled to another universe wholesale, continuity of consciousness was way down on his list of existential dreads.

Triggering an Essence Exchange so he’d have the marker for later, he dismissed the dialog with barely a glance before resuming his survey of the room.

Progress Report

marker_1: bloodmarsh [3061 Light 28 13:13]

marker_2: city_of_lights [3061 Light 32 10:00]

Span: 3.9 days

Character

Total Exp: 3,636,316 -> 5,436,316 (+1,800,000)

↳Mana Use: 1,800,000

Skills

Prismatic Intent: +36,558 exp, 2 -> 9 (+7)

Anchor Aura: +90,900 exp, 9 -> 11 (+2)

They weren’t trying to hide their status as adventurers, as doing so would have meant taking off their armor and losing its protection against Divination. They were trying to hide who they were, specifically, and to that end, they had removed their helmets and concealed Tallheart’s distinctive metalwork—not with cloaks, which would have stood out in the heat, but by mummifying themselves with green and brown strips of cloth in the style of Sadiiri mercenaries. In a world without TMZ, the chance of anyone recognizing their faces was vanishingly small, and Rain’s mysteriously changed eye color had little to do with it. Detection would have already alerted him if anyone he’d ever met had been in range. It hadn’t.

Still, he wasn’t able to shake the feeling that someone was watching them.

Probably someone is—if only to figure out what kind of magic I’m using. Good luck with that.

Half of the transit group from Dennoval were Xiugaaraan natives, wearing flowing robes trimmed with neon light, like something out of Tron. There were no restrictions on magic use here, for obvious reasons. The other half were either merchants or tourists, some dressed plainly, and some wearing flamboyant outfits no less eye-grabbing for not being enchanted. Here and there, other adventurers stood out like cut gems in a bowl of glass beads. Not by their dress, but by their souls. While the Xiugaarans were unilaterally awakened, they were soft, for lack of a better word. It wasn’t a problem of levels. Even the Entente guards overseeing the circus from the platform’s edge—some of them silver—felt like children.

“Clearing be of the station in day!” said a booming voice in Zeelada. Despite the volume, the words were lyrical and flowing, the entire sentence coming together in a rhyme. Rain was sure he’d bungled the translation.

The natives were quickest to move, those at the edge practically leaping from the crystalline disk to dart down corridors dancing with scenes painted in light. There was no such thing as customs or security, not in a place where the average citizen could punch down a tree. The Entente presence was simply a show of force—reminding foreigners that the city would not suffer the meddling of outsiders, and reminding locals that inter-house squabbling was to be conducted elsewhere. Like many places, the city’s justice system boiled down to ‘fuck around and find out’.

With the crowd thinning, Rain got a better look at the soldiers themselves. The Entente uniforms were of crisp, bleached linen, trimmed with the purest white light. Even their hair was as pale as snow.

“How’s the air?” Ameliah asked, distracting him by laying a hand on his forearm.

“Thin,” Rain replied. “Too many people breathing it.”

“That’s just the elevation, lad,” said the elderly unawakened merchant jammed beside them, grappling with a crate of salted fish jerky—odorless thanks to Purify. “City’s on a plateau, though you wouldn’t guess it from the trees.”

“Ah,” Rain replied, though Ameliah hadn’t really been asking about the air. As he’d feared, there wasn’t much free essence to be had with this many awakened around. With all the trees he’d unlocked in the past few days, he felt like he was starving. They’d need to descend quickly. At a guess, it was rank five in this particular spot, but his ramscoops were barely doing better than they’d been in Dennoval.

“First time in the city?” the merchant asked, oblivious to Rain’s idle calculations.

“Been a while,” Ameliah replied politely, taking a step forward as a gap opened, then clicking her tongue as she was cut off by a man hairy enough to be part yak.

“Guild, are you?” the merchant asked. “Here for the auction?”

“The delving,” Rain said, seeing no reason to lie. The nosy merchant was unawakened, but clearly unfazed at being surrounded by leveled individuals. Like the rest, he was giving him and Amelia space, but simply as one gave space to a large piece of machinery to avoid being accidentally crushed. It was kind of refreshing, really.

“How about you?” Ameliah asked, though she sounded distracted.

“Me?” The man laughed, sounding surprised. “No, I take it back. No way you’re Guilders. Far too polite. No Guilder’d ask after an old mule like Egust. See that one?” He nodded toward one of the other adventurers through the crowd. “That’s more the style.”

“Sweetie, people are staring,” Ameliah said. The two of them had reached a staircase, the path forward continuing along the side of a tower, the too-high steps winding without so much as a railing for safety. “Control yourself. You’ve faced worse than a crowd.”

She’s right. Filth, I’m not ready to be paddling in this pond, but I’ve got no choice. Freaking out isn’t going to solve anything.

Rain slowed, then slowed further, coming to a precarious stop on the stairs, buffeted by the wind. “Sorry, Honey. I’m a slow learner. Haven’t been in enough stressful situations.”

“That is probably the least true thing you’ve ever said,” Ameliah replied. “Here, take Gumdrop before he dissolves someone’s face.”

Rain smiled, turning to accept the angrily vibrating slime, ready and raring to defend him from anything and everything.

[Settle down, you.]

Rain shook his head, petting the impossible creature as he tried to take his own advice. Dozer’s evolution was yet another thing he wasn’t ready to process. Unleashing a plague of endlessly duplicating Essence Slimes on the world was another fear he didn’t have time for. Zero hadn’t split yet, at least, or hadn’t before they’d left.

Reaching across a tenth of the world, Rain found a Detection anchor. Zero was fine. The baby essence slime—no capitalization—was chilling with Tallheart at the moment. Detection wasn’t sight, but the scene was probably adorable. She hadn’t divided and had as yet acquired only a few Tel. It would be a while—weeks if not months or years. The rest of Ascension was all accounted for, with no unexpected additions.

Everything was fine.

Resuming his climb, he mentally typed out an update for Vanna, feeding it to his Radiance macro for encrypted transmission. Tarny had the painstakingly written-out codebooks he’d need to decipher it. The chances of anyone understanding even a hundredth of the randomized magic swirling around him was slim to nonexistent, but sending anything in the clear when he didn’t have to would be foolish beyond belief.

“Better now?” Ameliah asked, following patiently. “All calm and collected?”

Rain smiled, basking in her amusement mixed with concern, trust, protectiveness, and, above all, love. “I know, I know, I’m a hot mess,” he said, then laughed. “Let’s go find a party before someone unexpected turns up, yeah?”

Back in the foreign market, an old man sneezed as he dropped off a crate of salted fish from the cart he’d rented, not having been able to find a porter to help him for a reasonable fee. Truly, he was getting too old for this. He stood up, arching his back in a stretch and most assuredly not turning to look through a number of buildings at the souls of the lovely young couple he’d been chatting with. Because that was not a thing he could do.

The man in chains floated within the Maelstrom, staring into the empty heart of the void. Around him, the world’s essence hurtled past, pouring out into the great nothing beyond. Once, that nothing had scared him. Now, it called. All he needed to do was to step through.

Step through, and the world would be safe from the danger he posed.

It would not, however, be safe from itself. There would be no release. Not for him. The work was not done.

The man in chains turned, rubbing at his wrists as he floated back through the calamitous wind, away from that terrible edge. Fecht had done this. Fecht, the man who’d shown him how the world must be controlled to avoid just such a disaster. Fecht, who’d sworn his Empire would prevent just such a thing. Fecht, who’d known such terrible power could rest in no more than a single pair of hands. His hands.

Now, he was gone. There could be no more denial of that fact. No more doubt. The Empire had been forced into a crucible. Already the fires of starvation were spreading through the heartland. It would grow worse. It was already growing worse, not helped by increasing reports of the mysterious, systemless monsters.

The Empire would survive.

It would emerge stronger, taught the price of weakness. He would guide it. He was the only one that could, but for it to work, there would need to be sacrifices. Rot, cut away so the body could live. Only then, once he stood alone and order was in place, could he step down. Only once he’d ensured that power such as his could never rise again could he rest.

He could not do it as he was now. He would need to become stronger.

“Lightbreaker!” a voice called out as his magic returned. A panel of light formed beneath his feet, sputtering system magic replacing the dwindling force of will as reality reasserted its hold. The forces trying to tear his physical body asunder relented, lifting the strain from his mind. After only a few moments more, the voice called again, and Lightbreaker used it to orient himself.

“There you are!” Dominus Bekerim yelled as Lightbreaker alit on the rocky crag beside him. Dominus Alarus and Dominus Illus were there too, bearing wary expressions. The winds were still howling, but Bekerim had erected a barrier of Force around the tip of the crag—the mana twisting as the system struggled to keep it under control. Bekerim was of course oblivious to such nuance. His unneeded volume was born of frustration, which was born of stupidity in turn. “Damn it, we ordered you to—“

“Silence,” Lightbreaker commanded.

Bekerim took a step back despite himself, but then rallied. “We’re in command here. You can’t tell us—”

“I can,” Lightbreaker cut him off. “I claim the throne.”

“What is your will, Potentate?” Alarus asked, falling to one knee, Illus following soon after.

Bekerim looked like he was about to burst, grinding his teeth at the betrayal he was too much a fool to have expected. He dropped to one knee, then bowed his head. “Fine, you fucks. We could have taken him together.” He spat to the side. “I’ll serve.”

Lightbreaker suppressed a sigh, wondering why his captor-turned-mentor had ever tolerated such blatant incompetence amongst those who’d been granted the right of power. He had real problems to deal with. Problems like the High King. Problems this idiot could in no way help him solve. He raised a hand, power gathering at his fingertips. “Your service is not required.”

“What? No! Wait!” Bekerim said, scrambling back to his feet. “You need me! The Reach won’t follow an Osaran!”

Lightbreaker shook his head slowly. “What was it you said outside Fel Sadanis? The last time you tried to tell me what to do? You wanted to hear the screams?” He unleashed his magic without waiting for a response. Not even a smoking pair of boots remained when the silent light faded. “I prefer not to.”

This close to the tattered edge of reality, there hadn’t even been a limit for him to break.

“Adamant Unbending!” Illus’s terrified voice rose over the crack of the wind, unleashed as the malfunctioning system finally realized the barrier’s caster was no more.

“Adamant Unbending,” whispered Potentate Vannon, his words hollow beneath the storm.Ñ00v€l--ß1n hosted the premiere release of this chapter.