Allegedly, the hallway of arrays led to an underground city… eventually. It was unclear how long they had travelled for—no matter how hard Emilia concentrated, she couldn’t make a clock appear in her system access—and the city itself still hadn’t appeared on her map. The world above had vanished as well, leaving her map a long tunnel, slowly leading them into the planet. At the very least, the disappearance of Fran and arrival of Phlostra meant the awkward silence had been put to rest.

Back to questions and babbling it was!

⸂I would transport us in, but we have barriers set up to disallow anyone we don’t know coming in,⸃ Phlostra explained as they walked down the hall, Emilia continuing to examine the arrays they passed.

Most were copies of a dozen arrays, repeating every few metres. The majority were to keep whatever was below them safe. According to Phlostra, the city they were headed for was inhabited by a group that was neither on the side of the Risen Guard nor the Enclave, although a little over half of their members were descendants of Enclave families. In some cases, the entire family had split from the organization, while in others, a few members had left after various fall-outs. Others were regular citizens who had joined their city for one reason or another, and about a quarter were newer arrivals, who hadn’t grown up as part of their organization.

Phlostra herself was a rare descendant from a Risen Guard and an Enclave member. It took a moment, but eventually, Emilia remembered a story Zach had told her about the Risen Guard sending spies into the Enclave, shortly before the last visitation. Eventually, one of the spies had confessed to their Enclave wife, and all the spies had been killed by an unknown person.

She really wanted to ask the woman if she was a descendant from that incident, but it seemed rude, and the woman was so nice, Emilia didn’t want to risk upsetting her. Worse, if she pushed the woman wrong, she might stop answering almost all of her questions!

Unlike practically everyone she’d met who knew anything, Phlostra was actually answering her questions, and asking questions back! In particular, the woman was curious to learn the security programs in Emilia’s own world weren’t run by skills, but machines that interfaced with the aethernet—although explaining what a machine was to the woman proven challenging.

⸂Imagine the elevators weren’t run by arrays or human’s augmented by magic,⸃ V offered, trying to put it into terms someone from a world that seemingly ran entirely on humans and magic could understand. There was more to his attempt to explain, although Emilia wasn’t sure how much any of the locals understood it—even she wasn't sure she followed it, but given she had no confidence in her own ability to explain machines and technology to them, she was keeping her mouth shut. Points for the attempt.

Mostly, she was busy being distracted, thinking back to the elevators she had ridden with Boundary. At the time, she had thought it strange that they were powered by humans, but in hindsight, perhaps it made more sense that the humans were either augmenting their bodies with magic, or other aspects of the elevator were enhanced through arrays and gems. It would have been nice if Boundary had been more open with answers to her questions at the time.

Speak of whom…

[Emilia: how’s it hanging?]

Unsurprisingly, it took a moment for the Risen Guard to reply, but when he did, he didn’t disappoint.

[Boundary: What in the bloody universe does that mean?]

Emilia snickered to herself as she debated the pros and cons of explaining the joke behind the saying, although it had been around so long that no one knew its true origin story. That had never stopped the boys at school from joking about their balls in response to the question. Something told her Boundary wouldn’t appreciate the joke.

Instead, she sent the man a message explaining it was just a silly greeting between friends—which, to be fair, it was—and focused on tuning out the increasingly convoluted discussion between V and the locals about how technology in their world worked. The man clearly knew a lot about technology and programming, but his attempts to explain things hadn’t worked, and he was now attempting to clear up several misconceptions as they walked.

Emilia wasn’t convinced that Astra wasn’t feeding Gale and Caro questions, just to mess with V—no one but the three of them knew she was a visitor, and none of them were inclined to let that secret slip quite yet. While Phlostra and V could potentially tell she was talking, there was nothing strange about that: from everything Emilia had seen, Astra was a naturally quiet and shy child, regardless of her visitor status.

It took a while to clear up the confusion, but eventually Emilia and Phlostra continued their conversation about how security systems in each of their world’s worked. Emilia mostly wanted to point out that their own security systems suffered for the fact that they tended to watch the aethernet for specific types of activity. Some of the most advanced systems could completely block certain skills—useful (and terrible) in real-world raids, especially the rare PVP ones—but it was extremely difficult to lock a specific person out—or alternatively, grant access to specific people. Lock anyone from going in or out or using a specific skill? Sure. Specific person, not so much.

Censors could be used as keys, and they had worked out a way to attach identifiers to sparking—which was as close as anyone in their world got to teleporting—and slide lines. In theory, without the proper identifier on your skill, the security system would activate. Slide line exits could refuse to activate without the identifier, but when it came to sparking, even the best security systems couldn’t do more than fully block all sparking or activate if someone without a key sparked into it, and those security systems were limited in what they could do: mostly, they could only notify security personnel of an intruder.

The idea of security magic that would only let certain people through without even needing a key, even if it obviously wasn’t great when you wanted to evacuate a new ally, was fascinating. Phlostra was equally interested in how keys could be utilized and had promised to try and set Emilia up with their head of security, if they found time.

That all came later, however, as V was still working on explaining technology and skills—and unfortunately, how arrays and code were similar—to everyone. In the meantime, Emilia contented herself with messaging Boundary, asking why he had been such a bitch when they’d first met.

[Boundary: There are eyes everywhere.]

Well, that tracked. The man had seemingly been following a script, in their first interactions. Poking at her with approved information and questions, and rarely answering her own pokes.

[Emilia: is no one watching us here?]

[Boundary: No.]

Emilia stared blankly at the curt message as they walked, Astra and Gale’s hands holding each of hers. She’d been a bit surprised, when the teenager had snatched her hand back up after it had been dropped while she tempted fate and examined the arrays, but she had. It was cute, if a bit worrisome. The teenager was good at hiding her feelings, and Emilia was sure there was a lot rattling around inside her head. Eventually, those emotions would pop out. Hopefully, someone the girl trusted would be around to help her pick up the pieces.

Still, there was a little part of her that missed holding V’s hand.

[Emilia: how are things there?]

It took such a long time for Boundary to respond that Emilia was beginning to consider whether the man was giving her the silent treatment, rather than just coming out and telling her to fuck off. It was so difficult to tell through these messages—the messages sent through Censors were infinitely better. Strictly speaking, Censor messages didn’t have to include an underlying feeling of tone or emotion, but between friends, most people sent at least the occasional wisp.

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It helped, especially when someone was being sarcastic or was upset. Emilia would have preferred people just come out and say when they were angry with her, but in a way, she supposed that letting annoyance come through with their message of “Okay” was telling.

This? Only Boundary’s messages and silence? This was challenging to understand, and she didn’t even know if she should ask him about it!

Luckily, before the silence dragged on so long that she was going to have to either ask or accept that she shouldn’t message him again, the man sent her a message.

An extremely long message.

Apparently, the fact that the Risen Guard messaging system wasn’t monitored had opened a floodgate, facts about the situation back at the Risen Guard compound now flooding her vision.

Basically, everything was bad.

After they had left, chaos had broken out. That wasn’t exactly surprising. What was surprising was the spread of it. Apparently, letting her live had been an experiment of some sort, and the fact that she’d gotten away was causing a disagreement among the higher ups as to what to do. They all agreed that they would be keeping no more visitors prisoner—which, seriously? It seemed like massive overkill to just kill visitors they captured, considering she hadn’t done more than knock a few people out during their escape. Granted, it could be argued that she’d also kidnapped a few children, but still! Said children were fine and had wanted to come!

Moreover, this meant that the visitors who were still being detained—as in, had never been released from Risen Guard custody—were now on the chopping block. Boundary wasn’t sure how many had been killed, but from what he had heard, it was a significant amount.

[Emilia: did no one, you know, try to kill themselves to get out of here?]

If she were left stranded in Risen Guard custody, especially if it had been since the beginning of the raid, she certainly would have contemplated it. While she wasn’t sure on the exact timing, they had to be at least halfway through the raid by now as well. It would be insane for them to be holding out hope they’d get away and have a chance at winning. Hanging around just didn’t seem like a smart move.

It took several minutes for the man to address her question, another message about what was happening with each of the children coming through first—presumably he had been in the midst of writing it.

[Boundary: I believe several tried. The system did not allow them to die.]

Well, that was good to know. Interesting as well. Emilia wasn’t planning on offing herself anytime soon. That didn’t stop her from idly tucking away the thought that, if she were critically injured, trying to kill herself might actually save her. There was no saying how the system prioritized rules like that, it was worth keeping in mind.

As for the kids, they were the least chaotic, although the Risen Guard doctors had questions about how Conrad had healed Stephy and Kelly—lucky for him, as he was now on a do not kill list. The pair were, thankfully, doing better than before. Whatever the other visitor had done, it had greatly improved their prognosis.

The rest of the kids were continuing along, worried about where Emilia and the others had gone, but slowly settling into life at the compound. A few of the kids, whose parents were confirmed deceased and had no relatives who could take them, had been moved to their—hopefully—permanent homes, where they would be trained for suitable jobs over the next decade or so. It was rare for kids to be placed in homes so early, and the Risen Guard would be monitoring them closely, and reassessing the younger ones occasionally, to make sure they were still a fit for the job.

[Emilia: have you told Caro’s parents he’s gone yet?]

Officially, no, the Risen Guard hadn’t, but only because Caro’s crazy babysitter had told them first. Technically, that woman was a member of the Risen Guard, but she had told them without the permission of her superiors. Luckily, they knew Gale, and when the woman had mentioned Caro and Gale were missing, they had said it was fine.

Gale would keep Caro safe.

Caro’s failed babysitter had not liked that, and what followed was a long stream of chaos that the Risen Guard was struggling to contain, simply due to the fact that they couldn’t locate the woman.

It seemed that Caro’s babysitter belonged to an old and powerful Risen Guard family. The fact that she had been assigned to watch Caro at all had been a punishment for something, and had already been considered shameful by her family.

Now, combined with her losing the small child?

Now, shit was bad. Not only had the woman disappeared, following Honey’s advice and tracking them the way Conrad had been planning to take them, but she was also leaving a trail of disasters behind her. Powerful as they were, her family were currently protecting her from repercussions—apparently she had destroyed at least a dozen buildings in the first city she came to for seemingly no reason—however, in Boundary’s opinion, they were quickly growing sick of her antics.

[Emilia: seriously?]

[Emilia: that much in so little time?]

They hadn’t been gone for that long! A day, at the most! How could one woman cause so much damage!?

[Boundary: The Risen Guard work quickly.]

Okay, as much as tone and emotion didn’t flow through their messages, Emilia was pretty sure she could hear the deadpan joke in Boundary’s words. It was also clear from his subsequent messages that he knew the Risen Guard wasn’t working fast enough. Included in his messages was a list of several dozen cities they should avoid getting anywhere near, due to conflicts that had broken out inside them, as well as a promise to keep the list updated.

[Emilia: shit, is that all from visitors?]

[Boundary: No. Several factions have taken the opportunity to cause their own chaos.]

Several factions. Emilia could guess at whom those were: the Enclave, the overseers, whatever this group below them was, possibly a few offshoot groups within the Risen Guard as well.

[Emilia: you worried?]

Honestly, she hadn’t really expected an answer from the man, she just hadn’t known what exactly to say. Not saying anything had seemed wrong.

[Boundary: I am always worried.]

Emilia was still mulling over Boundary’s words when her map finally updated to indicate they were almost at the city. As usual, a question mark indicated its location, with no more information available about it until they reached the edge of the hallway and the city actually came into view.

The city system of the cavern they emerged into wasn’t nearly as extravagant as the city system above, but as they made their way through the empty streets, Phlostra confirmed that the four towering buildings that occupied the cavern had similar city levels within them.

⸂They are far bigger than we need, but we wanted to be prepared for more residents,⸃ she explained as she led them into a building.

Unfortunately, their guide continued on to a set of stairs, and they were forced to climb up a dozen floors. They were easier to climb than any other flight of stairs Emilia had climbed, the note she had seen about her lowering level in the last labyrinth still swimming in her head. It was good to know everything that had happened so far hadn’t been completely useless, even if it certainly felt like it had been.

Still, unless V had learned something while they’d been apart, they were no closer to winning this thing, or—more importantly—finding a way to end the blood curse.

Or gaining normal access to the system.

Frustrating—it was frustrating, and Emilia really didn’t understand why people enjoyed these things. Granted, she had specifically joined a raid that most people—save perhaps that crazy family—actively avoided, but still! Raids were meant to be fun! They were meant to be like games, with goals and tangible ways to figure out how to win! This just seemed like torture, the world of the raid just as confusing and random as the real world.

That was, of course, assuming there wasn’t anything real and tangible about reading the will of the universe, and as Phlostra left Emilia and the kids into a temporary bedroom—allegedly, they would be moved to a more permanent one inside a city and not a lower hallway tomorrow—Emilia realized that she was going to have to actually try reading the universe herself, sooner rather than later.

There was no way she was leaving this raid without knowing she could at least read the universe here.