Chapter 36

Tom had been kind enough to spawn dozens of monsters for them to slaughter for the Experience, and the others had entered the dungeon for that purpose, leaving Emil alone with the servants. It was strange to think that this new world actually had rules like a video game, but Emil had come to accept that his new reality was very different from his own.

Oh, some things were the same. In the first days after being summoned, all of the summoned Heroes had been questioned closely by the king and his agents. Emil had answered the questions honestly about his life before death. He had been single, twenty-eight, a civic engineer for a small city in Iceland. They had gotten excited when he’d revealed his education and asked him for more details into what sort of knowledge he possessed.

Over the course of the previous few weeks, Emil had been spending most of his time drawing diagrams. He had demonstrated a water tower for the king and explained how it pressurized water. He had dozens of other ideas of things which would vastly improve the daily lives of the people of Welsius.

He had been surprised to learn that his plans for a sewage treatment plant were completely unnecessary; apparently the magic of Core Stones consumed biodegradable waste such as sewage. Most people just kept a chamberpot in their rooms rather than a dedicated toilet, and the chamberpot emptied itself so long as it was in the territory of a Core.

They still needed water to drink, wash, and cook, however. So the water tower plans were received with enthusiasm. Welsius had some plumbing, but it relied upon hand pumps to function.

Aside from that, he had inquired how roads were built, and he had immediately come up with some ideas for improvements. Unfortunately connecting the cities of Welsius with permanent roads up to Emil’s standards would be a monumental task, and the king had been less enthused with that project than he had been about pressurized water.

It would take Emil some time to become more familiar with the building techniques available to the Welsians, but he was confident that his expertise could help improve them as well. He wouldn’t be designing any skyscrapers, of course, but teaching them how to build with reinforced concrete would kick start their own architectural ingenuity.

Outside of his specialties, Emil had touched on the basics of the electrical sciences, explaining to the king that lodestones could be used to generate light, heat, and transmit signals over long distances. The king wasn’t too excited about light bulbs or electric heaters, but he expressed great interest in the concept of a radio. Of course, Emil wasn’t an electrical engineer, so a functional radio tower was perhaps outside his wheelhouse. But a telegraph would be simple enough. It would take some time and effort to build the infrastructure, but a functional telegraph system would revolutionize communication in Welsius.

While Emil was still recovering from the fact that he had been murdered while on holiday, he had enough projects to keep him intellectually busy and distracted. Engineering had not been consuming all of his time, however.

He pulled up the system and reviewed his status.

Name

Emil Stefanson

Health

110/110

Age

28

Mana

152/152

Race

Human (Outworlder)

Stamina

110/110

Class

Hero

Strength

11

Level

3

Dexterity

15

Subclass

Ritualist

Constitution

11

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Endurance

11

A part of him still couldn’t believe that this system existed, some sort of neural overlay which affected everyone in this world. He wondered how it worked, where it came from. Who designed it, and what happened to them. It was both too complex and too simple to have come about by itself.

For that matter, what were Cores? The benefits of living near a tame core were so significant that it was considered foolish to live outside their territory. Not just because they seemed to be the source of the system, but they treated sewage, they enriched the soil, they increased the growth rate of food animals, they reduced the prevalence and severity of illnesses, and they even provided a rudimentary banking system.

On the other hand, they were dangerous. They spawned monsters – how did that work? He had no idea, and like the system itself he wished he could figure that information out scientifically. While Tamed cores were supposedly safe, wild cores were apparently appearing throughout the country at increasing rates over the last several centuries, forming dungeons in formerly safe areas.

Emil shook his head and went back to drawing the diagram. As fascination as all of this was, he was researching something else at the moment. With a steady hand, he completed the magic circle, double checked his work and the reference material he’d been given by Fenard’s court mages, then began powering the circle with his own magic.

He had magic. He still couldn’t get over that fact.

Once he was certain that the magic circle was working, he put a hand inside. It didn’t feel any different, he reflected. Was it working? He released the pen he had been holding and watched as it … didn’t drop. The magic was working alright.

He examined the glowing lines of the ink that he had drawn, committing them to memory. Then he used his Skill to duplicate them, this time without the ink. A second magic circle floated beside the first made of glowing light. He grabbed a glass of water from a nearby table, drank a sip, then put it inside the second circle and watched it hover in midair.

He was uncertain what he thought of his subclass. Part of him wished that he had something like Jessica’s magic, or Grant’s strange abilities, but another part of him loved learning the mechanics of ritual magic. It was engineering on a level he’d never imagined, using forces he was only just beginning to understand. Whether his profession in his previous life had influenced his class or not, he seemed to be good at it.

“So, antigravity is a thing,” he commented. “That’s useful, I’m certain, but I still can’t think of a way to use this class in combat.”

~~~~~~~

Grant reached out and he stabbed the gnoll in the heart. From ten feet away. With a dagger.

While he’d prefer a rifle, or a handgun, he had to admit that his legerdemain abilities were useful. He wasn’t entirely certain how it worked. When he reached out for something, the distance between himself and whatever he was reaching for seemed to shrink. When he tried to avoid something, the space between him and what he tried to avoid expanded.

He was still developing a sense for his new skill, but of the three newcomers to Welsius, Grant was easily the most dangerous. While he lacked the raw combat power of Sevin or the magical prowess of Jessica, that mattered little when nobody could hit him, and he could extend his reach through whatever defenses were put in his way.

It was curious, being dangerous again. He’d had some hand-to-hand combat training during his stint in the army, but that had mostly faded from his mind and reflexes long ago. It was his training with Antoine which had restored him to lethality, as the man had shown him how to tap into his spacial abilities and become a dangerous force.

“That’s so weird to watch you doing that,” Jessica said. “It’s like, you stretch but you don’t stretch somehow. If you couldn’t do it on demand I’d think my eyes were playing tricks on me.”

Grant shrugged. “We all use what gifts we’re given in this life,” he said. “Your magical abilities are likewise impressive, young lady.”

“I know. But they make sense to me. Your skills are just weird,” she said.

Grant chuckled. “Yes, well, my grasp has always exceeded my reach.”

“Behind you,” she said, and he spun. The gnoll leapt, and once more Grant felt space twist as he avoided the attack. A flash of light as Jessica incinerated the gnoll once Grant was out of the way.

“Thank you,” he said.

“It’s nothing.”

They continued to explore the dungeon. Not for the first time, but Tom had discovered that the core gained more experience if he changed the layout between sending his friends in to clear out the spawned creatures, so things were different this time.

Despite exploring the entire third floor, they never saw a single sign of the korgoath, despite the assurances from Tom that the cycloptic creatures remained inside the dungeon.

Speaking of Tom … Grant considered how to best help the boy who had given him a second chance at life. Grant could see through the situation not only with the eyes of an outsider, but one experienced in statecraft. What he’d learned of the lad’s abilities, and the importance and rarity of those abilities, matched the importance on which the king was placing the boy’s education and upbringing.

Legally simply having a class made one an adult, but Grant had raised four children and seven grandchildren through that turbulent age, and he knew perfectly well that Tom needed guidance. Trusting King Fenard implicitly, however, would be a grand mistake. The king needed Tom’s Skills, and would go to great lengths to acquire them.

For now, Grant simply remained close by and offered a quiet word of advice here and there. He was an outsider to the situation, and while that gave him a different perspective, it also limited his options. He would help Tom to pay the boy back for this wondrous second life, but first Grant needed to figure out how.

~~~~~~

The baby was born healthy, squalling her lungs out moments after the mother gave the final push. Aisha performed the Apgar exam, eight, and informed the mother that she had a healthy baby girl. Moments later, the babe had been washed and was bonding with the mother, and Aisha was washing her hands. She wished that this new world had nitrile gloves. Or even latex.

But then, the old world hadn’t had magic, she thought, as she returned to the mother and used her magic. The mother had come through the childbirth just fine, but birth always put strain on the body even when everything went right. With Aisha’s new gifts, however, the woman was up and walking mere moments afterward. All it took was a little of Aisha’s magic, and that was it. No need to stay in the hospital, the woman could go straight home.

Aisha shook her head. It hadn’t even cost her ten mana to heal the new mother’s strains. The other day, a man had come into her little clinic with a severed finger, and Aisha had been forced to decide whether to reattach it, or regrow it with her magic. If only she’d had these powers back in Kenya. So many lives she could have saved.

Instead she was just one more miracle worker in a land of miracles.

That didn’t lessen her previous training, however. She had already been appointed by the king as his Minister of Health, or whatever the local equivalent was. She hadn’t accepted the appointment yet, and wasn’t certain that she would. While she believed that her knowledge and experience could do so much in this world, setting policy and teaching was not the same as delivering babies and regrowing limbs.

One thing was certain, she had no interest in delving with the others who had come from Earth. She didn’t need to, either. Although her class listed her as a Heroine, her subclass was a Medico, and she gained Experience through healing. Let the others fight monsters. She’d fight disease, and bring life into this new world rather than snuff it out.

~~~~~~

“And you still have no idea where the mirror came from?” Fenard asked Yecha. They were in his private chambers, the anti-scrying magic active as they sat in the luxurious apartments.

“Aside from discovering it in his things, nothing is known of its provenance,” the spymistress confirmed. “We are, however, quite certain where its linked. Tom has been talking to Queen Gloracia herself. Members of the staff have overheard snippets of the conversation, but neither party has said anything untoward. The queen flatters him and frequently invites him to come ‘visit’ her nation, although we both know that if he were to leave Welsius for any other kingdom they would never allow him to return.”

“We’re little better,” Fenard pointed out, sighing. “I wish I could find fault in him for this. While it’s disappointing and upsetting to me, personally, that he would entertain notions of defecting, I cannot afford to take the route of the outraged leader demanding loyalty that he hasn’t earned. We shall simply have to redouble our efforts at courting Tom’s allegiance. Tell me, how fares his home village?”

“The monsters are still roaming. That lord you appointed has proven himself to be a useless drunkard. But the last I heard nobody had died.”

“And his parents?”

“Have also been approached by the Koratians,” Yecha said. “The Weavers have sold their surplus stock to Queen Gloracia herself, if the rumors are true, through that weasel Anaxis. It’s a shame we can’t simply hang him.”

“In order to hang him, we have to catch him doing something wrong,” Fenard pointed out. “Besides, it’s better the serpent you know on display in the terrarium than the one hiding in the bush.”

“Yes, I know,” Yecha sighed. “Well, they are setting out to join their son in his new estate soon. We’ve put together a small caravan to help them travel; they’ll be leaving in the spring. In the last communique, they were apparently also sending letters ahead to various Mage houses to discuss the admittance of one of the local children into formal magical training.”

“Oh? What’s this?” Fenard asked.

“It seems that a Tilluth girl of age nine or ten has awoken the Mage class. She hasn’t earned a subclass yet,” Yecha explained.

“Grease the wheels on the girl’s placement, and let Tom know what we’re doing in helping his parents and his friends from home. And if that Lubald has been lax in hunting down those monsters, light a fire under him about the matter!”