Chapter 140: Viva Las Vega

Chapter 140: Viva Las Vega

While it’s not uncommon for spur-of-the-moment marriages in Vega, I strongly recommend against it. A lot of the youth these days are treating it with too much ease.

Sure, if you split up and throw your ring away, who’s going to hold you accountable for your choices?

But marriage is one of the last links to the world before ours. A promise of commitment to a partner that shows your devotion. For the young, it's hard to imagine such a lasting and tenuous relationship, since marriage is never easy. But that, more than anything, is a reason to treasure such a commitment and hold it to a higher standard.

Regardless of whether the Magi care to enforce or even track the numerous alcohol-induced ceremonies on the strip.

-Davis Harrington, Sanctity Of Marriage, (304, 3rd Era)

“Viva Vega,” Rochester cheered—a bottle raised to the sky. Erec lifted his own; careful to handle the glass with his steel gauntlet. Apply too much Strength, and it’d shatter. But then, he supposed, even without Armor he’d have the same problem.

For the foreseeable future, they’d be wearing it around the clock. Paranoia about the captured thugs, and overall safety necessitated it. He’d loosened the restrictions after getting to know the Pendragons, but now things changed. Despite all of that, he allowed the expedition party through to Rift to attend and take the night off for Rochester’s celebration.

He’d made it mandatory, in fact.

Erec set the bottle on his lips, the sweet rush of bubbles and tang of citric in the beer refreshing. The buzz barely went down before a heavy arm landed on his shoulder. Even with the Armor, he felt himself shake. Erec looked over at the mountain of a boy from the soccer match.

When he’d first seen him on that field, he’d thought they were an obvious match-up. The boy even had a couple of inches on him, but... Well, he’d lacked when compared to Erec. His Strength Virtue might have been higher, but when Fury got into the mix, it hadn’t been a contest at all. Erec frowned and tried to hide the expression.

“Good, isn’t it?” the boy asked, already slurring. Rochester’s kickoff to the party was a bit late, and some of the Pendragons already had a couple of hour’s lead in the drinking.

“Yeah, don’t have anything like it back home...” Erec said. Where was this going? Maybe there wasn’t an ulterior motive to it at all. A lot of the Pendragons were, frankly, more friendly than the Knights. Time and time again, he had to remind himself to feel comfortable with it.

“Finally snogged Enide, huh?”

Erec flushed. That was why he’d come to talk. “How did you—“

“S’okay brother! Word gets around in the family like that,” he snapped his fingers. “You two going to have a good time together in Vega? Maybe you’ll get hitched? Hear it’s an old-world tradition.”

“What’s wrong?”

[Our priorities have shifted.]

“Are you talking about this expedition?”

[No. buckeroo, I’ve been looking through the scrubbed data present on the military facility. That Rift they opened was operating for three years before the ‘end of the world,’]

That... Well, Erec wasn’t too sure what to think about that information. Everyone knew the Rifts opened after the Goddess’ silver flames bathed the earth. She’d burned them with her silver fire to protect them and give them a chance against the monsters that would come. Or so they said. That was almost definitely a lie, but he hadn’t considered the weight of what they’d discovered. An operating Rift in an old-world facility?

“VAL, I have no idea what this even means. Do you know how they managed it? What were they trying to do?”

[I said so already. They derived their designs from Vortex Industries’ intellectual properties—I wasn’t privileged with a lot of the data and research designs in our subspace initiative, but I could recognize the similarities. Our priorities have shifted. That girl, Enide, mentioned one of our facilities. Based on my knowledge of our company resources, I believe there to be another active Artificial Intelligence there. One who has access to a lot more of our subspace data.]

“...You want us to go with them to that vault, too?”

[Based on my analysis, I predict it’ll be paramount to drawing a complete conclusion on the state of the world and how these Rifts function.]

“Fuck,” Erec rubbed his forehead. Both the booze and the rush of information and its implications spun him in circles. The old-world government had opened a Rift. If they stole the tech from Vortex Industries, it wasn’t a stretch to think that they could, too. And if they did that before the end of the world, and that’s what caused the Goddess to come and burn them up?

There was too much there lined up together to ignore.

“VAL, did your company end the world?” Erec said carefully, his teeth clenched and his heart racing.

[No. Your Goddess did so with fire. We both witnessed that, however, I believe it is in our best interest to investigate whatever research we have on the matter, as it appears to predate that world-ending event. Perhaps we can find a solution to these Rifts once and for all.]

“So you really believe there’s something there that might get rid of the Rifts? What, you want to save the world?” Erec asked, flabbergasted. It seemed impossible, and the association they now had with the Rifts was...

[Stability is good for research. I’m not suggesting that the result will be ‘saving the world,’ but it’s impossible to say what we may or may not accomplish when applying the correct methods. I chose that conclusion to suitably motivate you, since doing so may mean parting with your home for good. By all indications, Boldwick will not be sticking with the Pendragons forever. Observe. Think about it. And know that whatever is in that facility likely holds a bigger benefit for us than anyone else in this world.]