It was the weekend after the fateful Library delve, a Sunday. Both Amanda and Robert kept the day for themselves
Robert took Amanda to a picnic on one of the few peaceful Realms he knew of. The place was like a watercolor painting. It was a land of rolling hills, gentle sun, fresh winds, fluffy clouds, swaying trees, and flowers. Flowers of all kinds, colors, shapes, and sizes.
Amanda felt goosebumps under her skin as her Druidic Attunement resonated with the lush, vibrant, and healthy flora. She rubbed her forearms and inhaled, letting out a faint squeal as she exhaled. He hugged her and she melted into his arms. "Goodness, Robert. Where did you find this place?"
"We're at a technical depth of three. This is one of the realms connected to the Maze Corridors. It's so far from the Faralethal passage that I doubt any human has ever set foot in here before us."
"I don't recognize most of these plants. And they have so much vitality and essence!"
"No business talk," Robert interrupted her. "I'll take you here anytime you want, but today is our day off."
She had to push her excitement down. Which was hard, because the plants figuratively begged for her attention.
Robert set down an expanding cube above the tree line. He had several types of cubes now. With his spatial storage ability reaching the end of stage 2, it was bigger than Amanda's ring, with ridiculous 30 cubic meters of volume. A folding staircase came down, reaching a big and sturdy flower petal.
They climbed onto the cube studio apartment, designed for couples. Since it had almost no interior walls and only a single floor, the cube could expand more, appearing as a block five meters wide by five meters deep by one and a half meters tall. Inside, the apartment was two meters tall and offered a thousand square feet of space, divided into luxurious spaces. A living room, bedroom, bath, restroom, kitchen, and dining areas. The exterior walls had big windows, letting lots of light in and allowing them to admire the view from anywhere. Its shielding was graded only for slow-moving dust and air purification, not for combat.
As a precaution, Robert cast walls of Force around the place, making it as sturdy as a castle's walls.
"This will be our getaway from all the pressure of civilization," Amanda declared as she switched into comfortable clothes and threw herself on the couch. "You are forbidden to take anyone but me to this place."
"That's okay. I'm even going to find all the passages in this realm and put a block on each of them. This passage realm is small, less than a square kilometer in size. It shouldn't have more than six portals."
Current theory said that a realm had a limit on the number of portals they could have, and this limit was always a perfect number. 6, 28, 496, and 8128. Most realms were capped at 28, while bigger ones like the Gurglock Ocean and Maze Corridors had an upper limit in the third category. Earth and Taulusia were in the fourth and biggest category, with Earth reaching its theoretical limit with close to seven thousand known portals.
But as passages kept opening on Earth, some hypothesized that the planet's limit might be 33,550,336. But if it was this big, it might as well be infinite. Robert believed it wasn't the case. Eight thousand was a lot. A city like Nova York, one of the biggest in the world, had less than a dozen passages.
While he geeked out the passage math and theories, Amanda studied his face.
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This is a POV change. You're welcome.
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Amanda beckoned. "Robert, can you sit here. We need to talk."
He startled, then calmed down and nodded. "Yes, what is it?" He sat next to her but his jaw was clamped shut, tense.
"It's about our unfinished conversation at the library," she explained. "I want – no, I need to know what you are feeling."
He had half a mind to dismiss her worries and fold his cards this round, losing the bids but keeping his remaining chips safe. And the more pressure she placed on him, the harder he would shut the door. Amanda knew that.
She read about relationships and how to make one's boyfriend to open up. Half of the advice she got said "don't even try, leave him alone to sort his feelings by himself", and the other half was divided into several camps, from "If he wanted to open up he would, just dump him", to "he's weak, dump him," or "you cannot ever use what he discloses against him", or "it's weaponized incompetence", and, finally, "if it gives you the ick, run away," among other minority opinions without much representation.
Amanda thought the real answer was none of these. Most of them came from a place of bitterness, self-protection, and indifference. But didn't she already knew the answer? Why make him talk if he obviously didn't want to?
"No. Never mind," She waved her hand in front of her. "You don't need to say anything." Great. They were back to where they stood after that last library raid. "Instead, would you listen to what I have to say?"
Robert nodded but his face appeared to want to be anywhere but there, right now. She paused, trying to find the right words. She found them but something caught on her throat when she tried to say them. Fear. Fear of ruining something she worked for a whole year to make real. Was it a sunk cost fallacy?
"Maybe I should fire Tyrone," she thought out loud, then became shocked when she saw no reaction on Robert's face. If anything, she thought his face was saying, 'are you testing me?'
Her anxiety spiked as she faced this kind of situation for the first time. Were they having a fight? A very one-sided fight? A thousand things flew over her head, drowning her reasoning in stray thoughts. She'd rather go back to the smile caverns and fight another giant horned clawed octopus than live through another minute of this. Whatever this was.
She wanted him to talk to her, scream at her, maybe even tell her what to do. Not this silent judgment. She had no romantic interest in Tyrone, at all! She didn't even pick him to be her bodyguard. It was just that...
Tyrone was the one who pressed for the position.
She thought he wanted the job for the status and career advancement but...
What if Tyrone had feelings for her? What if he was checking his butt while he walked behind her?
"Did you ever check on my butt when you walked behind me?" Amanda asked.
Robert's throat moved as he pressed his lips to suppress a laugh. He exhaled. "Never. But only because I feared your Granny would pluck this information out of my mind and do whatever she ought to do," he leaned forward and whispered. "Because let me tell you a secret, your butt is very nice to look at."
Amanda wheezed as the shock made her lose control of her lungs. "Yeah?"
"But in reality, your butt is not that exceptional," he corrected with disdain, then smirked as he checked her out head to toe. "When compared to the rest of you."
She preened under his gaze. Wait. What were they talking about? The sudden reverse cleared Amanda's cache memory. It also almost caused another reboot. She tried to speak but was very sure what came out of her mouth was intelligible babbles. She wanted to hide from his gaze but also show him even more of herself.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
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This is a POV change. You're welcome.
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Robert felt bad for teasing her like that. Amanda led a sheltered life until she went to the Academy and her first semester was spent trying to prove people, she should stay in the combat division. He remembered the skittish girl that survived the Reverse Recognition Squid's attack. Even then, she had always taken the lead, at least when she could slate a veneer of business on the situation.
She probably had feelings for him from the get-go. That first dinner they went to. She probably already had her sights on him. The outward reason, to have a bodyguard closer to her power level because someone stronger breathing down her neck would stunt her star's growth, it was a good reason but not the only one. It only told half of the story.
He moved forward and grabbed her shoulders. Amanda raised her head to stare at him, her green eyes glistening with tears on the verge of dropping down her cheeks. They finally came down when she firmly closed her eyes and leaned in to get a kiss. He wanted to admire the face she was making but it would be too cruel to let her waiting. He took the offered lips. It was a slow kiss, one of reassurance and not one of passion or desire.
He cast Telepathy and abused its empathetic upgrade, to wordlessly convey his feelings to her. The feedback he got was relief and a bit of desire. Differently from the other mind-reading spells he had, the person had to choose to send the feelings.
Robert's only worry about Tyrone was that the pugilist ranked much higher than him on the bad boy scale. So, he made his move.
"You are too dumb to figure this out, so I'll answer your previous question," he said, teasing her to raise his bad boy score.
She glared at him, but then softened and smirked. "Yeah, I'm practically a brain dead billionaire," she drawled.
"Exactly," he tapped her nose and chuckled. "You should have female bodyguards. Veronica got her second star already and is improving really fast, with all the raids we put her through daily. She's a combat medic, so we need a tank. If we can get another woman that can fight in close quarters and tank some damage, you should swap Tyrone for the both of them. They can do double-duty as your handmaidens too."
"Who do you think I am, some elected queen of a far away planet that becomes inconsequential after the first trilogy? I don't need handmaidens. I'm also tough as nails, with my tempering."
"I know. But I still don't want to see a single scratch on you."
"Really?" She challenged him with a gaze that declared she wouldn't be coddled.
He made a show of sinking his nails on her sides. "Yes. Unless I'm the one scratching, then it's okay. I'll heal it later."
Amanda fired Tyrone next Monday. But the couple enjoyed greatly their Sunday getaway together. Amanda learned the wonders of post-fight intimacy.
Robert even left the floating apartment there, shifting it to the liminal void before leaving so nobody would mess with it.
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Tuesday, Robert took Amanda to a special raiding spot. The constant raiding paid off greatly. Amanda was close to reaching a hundred percent completion of her second star. And she wanted to get it now.
People usually took years to reach this stage. But most people also raided as a day job, delving into sage passages and fighting the same monsters over and over. The lack of challenge caused them to slow down their primal Ether generation and eventually get stuck one percentile points from ascending.
With Robert ferrying them to dungeons and good realms every day, everyone in their group was progressing at a breakneck pace. Now that Amanda was nearing her next ascension, her family decided she could get her own Artificial Satellite Core, the best money could buy.
It all started with an odd request.
"Hey, babe, can you take me to the Fecking Puma Realm?"
It turned out that the cat hell already had a name. Robert farmed primal ether there for two hours every day. In those hours when the mere mortals were flopping around unconscious in their beds.
"Sure. One rule, though. I will stay around, will keep the pumas from pouncing on your back, and most definitely will drag you out if things get dangerous."
They appeared on a wide tree trunk and Robert dropped three Shield Voidling Elites, each of them empowered by his two stars combined.
The elite constructs cleared the place of pumas and kept the ones that insistently jumped to die on the black tentacles while Robert set everything up.
They had appeared near the biggest clearing Robert could find. He conjured a thick platform of Force magic and let go of Amanda as she jumped on the invisible floor.
Clearing the branches, the pumas used to jump on them was a fool's endeavor. The rate at which the native vegetation regrew made Amanda impressed.
The voidlings were quickly overwhelmed before she could set up her plants.
"Here they come!" He warned.
"I need to set up! Can you hold them back for a minute or two?"
"No guarantees that the pumas won't knock your vases down."
Amanda grunted as she nodded briefly and went to work. She dropped six big planters and seeded them. The plants started to grow. Her Gatling Beans gave her long-range coverage. An alien vine that had thorns able to drain lifeforce and nutrients out of its victims to enrich the soil. And her pummeling succulent for close quarters defense.
The pumas didn't wait for her plants to mature. Robert placed his space compression barriers and started to shoot them with his bow, while iRobert fired void lances at the pumas. He now could multitask with his imprint and keep his full focus on his own tasks.
As her plants started doing their job, Robert took a backseat and just watched for any troublesome pumas, like the ones who could ignore physical attacks.
Boosted by Amanda's powerful talent, the plants behaved and performed more like animals then plants. They moved, reacted, and sensed air pressure and vibrations. Amanda still had to direct them, especially to aim the Bean Gatlings. Even other Nature Archs couldn't achieve the same results using the same seeds, unless they were way more powerful at manipulating Nature essence than Amanda.
The vines were the most important plant of the trio. The essence and lifeforce it stole and stored fueled the other plants, easing the burden on Amanda's essence pool.
Amanda divided her attention between managing her plants and blasting the pumas with either lightning or pressurized water jets. Between her satellite core, druidic attunement, and the essence from kills, she wasn't lacking essence to empower her spells. If anything, the risk was that she would develop essence poisoning.
The pumas came from all directions but from below. Still, some tried to scratch Robert's wall of Force. After the first few minutes, they settled on letting Robert cover ninety degrees at the rear, straight above and below, leaving Amanda and her plants with an arc two hundred and seventy degrees wide to defend.
Robert placed a two star shield voidling underneath the wall. His essence-on-kill power made it easy for the construct to pay itself off.
Pumas jumped from branches higher than them. The bean Gatlings spat bean after bean, laced with Nature essence, a staccato of pops like compressed air. When they survived and managed to land on the platform, the vines shot at the wounded pumas and sucker the life out of their bodies. Those who landed on spots where the vines were occupied got a bone-crushing slap from the succulents.
After fifteen minutes of carnage, Robert started to use mage hand to push the dead pumas off the platform. The vines had sucked the dead dry and these cat husks plummeted down into the endless pit of jungle below.
"Tap out!" Amanda shouted. She felt sick and needed a respite to cleanse her system of dross essence. Robert cast Blink and touched her armored shoulder, leading her to the liminal void.
"Fifteen days," he announced the duration of their visit after checking his clockwork timepiece. "You are doing a good job."
Amanda all but preened at the compliment.
Robert took a meditation pillow from his storage and set it on the floor. "Sit down and cleanse your body."
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No advance warning and no adaptation period. What Amanda found most jarring about these visits to the liminal void was to cope with the idea that the world remained still while you had all that boring leisure time.
And what she admired the most about the liminal void was Robert's ability to return and behave like he hadn't spent months in solitude. She knew he kept a detailed journal in his head but it still was mind-boggling.
The stream of pumas was endless. Some breathed fire (which Robert blocked with a wall of Force to spare the plants), others shot water jets or blades of wind. They cut and damaged the vines, who had to use the stolen energy to repair themselves. Worse, when said energies weren't enough to support the plants, Amanda had to use her own essence. The wave after they rested in the liminal void was so intense that Amanda found herself out of essence minutes after returning from the liminal void.
"Stop casting spells and try killing a few pumas with a weapon," Robert advised. "When your plants run out of steam, we're going home."
The tripartite combination of her Druidic Attunement, the draining vines, and the satellite gave Amanda great staying power but this realm was taxing even on someone with seemingly infinite reserves like Robert.
Once Amanda ran out of steam, the pumas killed the plants. Robert took over and did an excellent job at crowd control while Amanda recovered her planters and collected any seeds that could have good evolutions.
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Just by having Robert as a safety net, Amanda's gains were smaller than otherwise. Primal ether was produced in times of great despair and life-threatening risk. While many conjectured why that was so, a lot of people risked their lives to escape the crushing, flattening growth curve.
Many underestimated their position and got stuck when the curve became flat. Others took too many risks and paid with their lives.
Even if it slowed down one's growth, power was necessary. Power to punch above one's weight class. Power to defeat as many enemies as they came, in endless waves.
Stagnation, when it arrived, was always in the high nineties. Fate was a cruel mistress. To know only a sliver of growth lies between you and power unimaginable, only to never achieve it.
"Eighty-four percent," Amanda announced. " This session with the pumas pushed me forward by four percent."
"Good."
"I wish I could go back right after recovering my essence."
"All things in moderation," Robert disagreed. "We are raiding four Dungeons on cooldown (Revolution, Toy Roleplay, Mimic Library, and Moon Beasts), plus this realm now. Come, we need to write a report for Noah."