“I’m going with Lyissa to look for some silver, maybe we can safely get Perez up,” I called over my shoulder to no one in particular. Someone let out an affirmative.
My eyes were set on the High Elf currently stewing in her own little world. Her gaze alighted on mine as I started the trek back down to the chem lab on the second floor.
Eventually the second lighter set of footsteps followed. The echo was a thankful reminder of burning the midnight oil, as the Otherworlders sometimes said, late nights in this Administratum tower. Shuffling reports, moving containers, yawning softly while waiting for something to happen. Peaceful times. Quiet times.
Then the smell of charred flesh wafted into my nostrils. Right. The first male Terran I’d tested Rune Shot on. The second in the lobby blown up by what Maekita called a grenade. Thankfully the System filtered out what I knew was described as the stench of death.
It wasn’t that dying was completely unknown to someone like me, like Cordo, like Ana. Beings who had been part of this World since our parents decided to each bring new life into it. I could count on one hand the number of times I’d personally passed on and needed a legitimate resurrection. The experience was jarring. The System took a little of you in order to stitch everything back together, the Debt. If you had the Levels or Experience, that was all.
If you didn’t have any to spare, say, for instance you were backed up against the corner of your Prestige Class you couldn’t go below…
Something else was taken. I didn’t know what.
People that got to that point usually had better sense to retreat than tempt fate. There were adrenaline thrillseekers who laughed in the face of the Reaper with reckless abandon but they were few and far inbetween. Even in Warzone games that some countries organized, it was extremely frowned upon to do more than heavily Incapacitate someone beyond the skill of a journeyman he-, hea-, heale-, Medic type.
Extend that over years. Decades. Generations. The only things now being offered back to the System were nonsentient cullings and the occasional accident, no constant Dungeoneering since it was no longer required to get ahead in the world when plying honest trades and only occasional monster slaying.
A thought occurred to me. Where did Recursion sequester all of our stolen-
“I assume,” Lyissa cleared her throat politely, “you want to look for the material and not an item of some sort? There’s almost nothing of the latter this close to the lobby.”
“Yes. Something like that.” I said, looking over toward the bullet-ridden chem lab section. Damn, that’s right, it was shredded during the fight. “I thought we might be pushing our luck with foraging for magic. ‘Volatile’ and ‘unstable’ came to mind as I was taking a nap earlier.”
“Being damaged logically could lead to those situations, especially in these unknown waters,” Lyissa agreed.
“Unknown.” I stepped forward to lead the way, stony faced. “Right.”
We spent a few wordless minutes scavenging through reagents, organic or otherwise. I was distracted by plant samples, preserved animal parts, reagents needed for lower Tier medical and a few crafting necessities. Lots of the delicate inventory was spoiled courtesy gunpowder and shrapnel.
Barring removing his curse, some silver dust to inhibit the Werewolf part of Perez to at least get him conscious might work. Theoretically.
If I had one of those shiny Rimefrost Cords - oh, they must exist if I can recall them - then he’d be able to live with the beast contained. Fancy little bracelet that suppressed most of the uncontrollable urges. They had their own curse though, always finding their way back onto the owner’s wrist each sunrise.
But, if we found one inert, broken, unstable? Who knows what it might do. What if he managed to overload the stressed item? What if it created a feedback loop and instead empowered the thing that the Cord was meant to keep contained?
“Any luck over there?” I called out, sliding my hands over paper labels marking various medical herbs. “I found things that I can attempt to craft bandages with.”
“Quicksilver. Not helpful. Unless you want to give him a drink ‘for science’ as Terrans sometimes say,” she responded with her back to me. Vials clinked as she searched through metallic samples. “We may have to look into personal lockers and offices.”
I stopped. Fingers clenched over the counter bracing me, breathing evenly. Other hand making a fist, my vision focused on that red window that popped up when a certain Elf laid hands on my new responsibility. It had been quietly festering in my psyche, red exclamation mark spilling above my Health and Mana bars.
“Lyissa, this is not an accusation, but I want you to listen closely.”
Turning to face her, she had frozen in the middle of reaching for some other article on the other side of the room.
Hand near the holster, my finger hovered over the thumb strap that kept the handcannon secure when not needed.
She stiffly straightened, turning to face me slowly. Her sapphire eyes traversed from my Firearm and up to my own scarlet irises. Leaning against the shelf, her arms spread wide with palms flat against it. Her way of showing she had mirrored my cautious stance.
“Warning, Control Nexus alert,” I read off the red Status panel that faintly throbbed in the corner of my vision. “Attempt to usurp control of large city territory Greenharbor logged, ?Undefined? Company officer.”
“Ah.”
The High Elf nodded pensively, looking down at the floor. Any number of thoughts, from trying to pry the truth about the matter from her, asking about the past, probably not threatening her, flew through my mind. She must have had the same kind of rush coursing up and down her nerves.
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“Jericho, I just-“
“DON’T. I don’t want an explanation. I don’t need one. All I want,” I barked quietly, doing my best to keep still, “is to believe that my senior just slipped and accidentally pressed a few glyphs, no matter what they were.”
“I will not insult your intelligence by going along with such a naïve lie,” she whispered testily. “But, do not pretend to legislate over things you don’t comprehend.”
“Reaper’s last kiss, Lyissa, I’m trying to give you an out. You know that I can’t trust you implicitly now, someone doesn’t go straight for a command so specific like that!”
“Imagine my discontent when the Nexus also still wouldn’t respond to a non-Terran,” Lyissa spat back. There it was, that venom from before which took me aback before. The curt, soft-spoken and motherly functionary façade was off. “You have no idea what kind of catastrophe waits for us.”
“Really? I don’t? Maekita, Cordo don’t? Stars above and below, Liastra doesn’t?! Where do you maintain some form of high ground in this situation?” I shook my head in dumbfounded amazement. This wasn’t some aspect of the ‘game’ Otherworlders so often liked to compare my life to. “Why couldn’t you wait for a window to discreetly ask me what I found out and to, I don’t know, come down here for an entirely different tone to our discussion?!”
“YOU DON’T TAKE RISKS WITH CHILDREN HOLDING NUCLEAR BOMBS!”
Taking a step back, I didn’t understand what she said.
Just the unbridled fury. Terror. Tears of rage.
Thoughts of drawing my weapon flew out of my mind. This was something other than self-righteous dogma or her own grab at power. She was trembling with emotions beyond the normal range of… of her Race.
“You don’t… trust… people that haven’t earned power like this. Let alone have it dropped in their lap by some figure outside the System, completely removed from the consequences of its misuse. Can you blame me for the cloak and dagger approach?” Lyissa continued, hurried but quiet. “Yes, I’m outwardly a High Elf. Before Recursion, I was an incredibly powerful sentient capable of impressive feats – routine things others considered heroic – but I was content. Content with passing paperwork, content with training new people, content with discovering new things and helping others do so.
“Before that? Yes. I know what a Faction is. I know how that aspect of the System functions. I’ve seen firsthand the strife that this-, no, our World went through before your parents even existed in it. However, I have no idea if you are the same Jericho that had his hand on the Nexus. You came out with a curious tattoo he says is his Faction’s insignia. Able to interact with the one mechanic of the System that helped drive society into nothing but tears, blood, and ash.”
Chewing on my bottom lip, eyes on my boots, I nodded along with her explanation. Reaper’s kiss, this was not how I wanted things to go.
“What is a nuclear bomb?” I asked softly. Crossing arms, my worried expression met her frustrated sylvan features.
“Think of-,” she tried to begin, voice cracking. Holding her hand up as I went towards her, she took a shuddering breath. “Think of that missile. In the courtyard. Larger. Think larger, then think larger than that.”
The electro-magical flux Bombardment attack. It most likely disrupted all the magic in the area as well as people. Something bigger?
“I would try and use the equivalent pre-Recursion spell, but I can’t. It doesn’t exist here. It’s larger than Strategic-grade. The entire city, the coastline, part of the interior, consumed in a cataclysmic amount of damage with clouds of debuffs and damage-over-time conditions that last for days. Months. Years.”
Lyissa’s eyes glazed over, looking through me and the wall behind.
“Thousands of lives reduced to mere shadows on walls in the blink of an eye. What were left standing from the shockwave, at least. A bright flash of light that even the blind could see.”
Shakily she withdrew a certain rectangular device with a familiar crack across its screen from her pocket.
“I found an item entry in the SysTablet for a Fission Core.”
I wracked my brain. A missile was like an even bigger bullet, could be loaded like my Arcanotech handcannon, exchanging a regular magnum for a Rune magnum with a specific Element. Different payload.
“An ammunition type?” was my hesitant observation.
“Material. They have many uses. It could provide electric power for an entire continent at our era of technology,” Lyissa murmured, shaking her head, “but this new post-Recursion World is threatened by tyrants playing God with forces that should not be possible. Combined with magic, circumventing traditional obstacles in the Otherworld this Tek comes from-“
The Elf gradually stood.
“You used Diagnose on the weapons, yes?” Lyissa asked. I nodded in return. “The Winterfield rifle is a different season of the Firearm I knew it by. The era of Earth-Terra I lived in.”
“When did y-, oh, right, I was unconscious. I would have guessed you were old enough to know about Factions but-“
“Hah, well, you could say that I’m an old soul,” she chuckled, stopping me short. “But that’s a different story.”
“That still doesn’t reassure me of your motives. You know of a potential destructive force from merely a single item entry. Others like you will too, if they bother to check,” I pressed, pointing at the SysTablet. “Tell me, Lyissa Stormleaf, Observer of the old Administrata, where do we go from here?”
Turning away from me, she surveyed the chem lab stock behind her. Buying time as well as for the legitimate goal for coming here. I patiently waited, arms crossed and feeling a chill pass over me.
“I did not handle your news with the necessary discretion. For that, I apologize,” she murmured, slowly turning to face me once more. There was a metal tin of something between both her hands. “You have less reason to trust me, but do you believe I would wish this World harm? That I want to see that terrible cataclysm brought into our reality?”
“No,” I immediately replied. “But as it stands, I can’t give you the access you need to the Faction in order to position Reclamation to our fullest potential. Not for lack of trying. Not for want of spite.”
“I understand.” She turned towards the exit to the stairs.
“Wait, stars below, I didn’t finish,” I growled, catching up to her. “That in mind, maybe that’s the first thing I ask that person on the outside to alter. It might turn out to be risky if all of a sudden non-Humans can claim a Nexus, but the less the Terrans control, the better.”
“That… that would disrupt any form of logistics they could create. Hamper the resources they might come across. The item entry existing doesn’t provide a recipe for how to make it, but anything that-“
“-denies the Arcanocracy time and resources needed for them to discover how to make that Fission Core, should there be a sociopath in their ranks that desires it,” I finished. It seemed like a decent compromise. Lyissa was receptive at least. “By the way, do you know what a Rook is?”
“It’s a set piece for a table game. It resembles a tower like the one we stand in, able to move horizontally and vertically across the board unless obstructed,” she frowned, tapping the top of the can presumably of silver of some sort. “Why? Have you never played chess?”
“Well, I’ve never had time to sit down for them,” I replied vaguely, stretching my arms behind my back. “I’d rather be flying and adventuring.”
“I see. In any case, we should get back to the others. I believe I saw a function to preview Class and Level progression if we are to plan accordingly,” Lyissa stated, making for the stairs. She paused, fixing me with a cautiously raised eyebrow. “Come out with it, why did you ask what a Rook is?”
“Let’s just say that if you happen to touch any ancient magical Tier item past our comprehension like, say, a Nexus and a tactile telepathic link is established,” I shrugged nonchalantly, “make sure you ask if it’s Rook and that you know the Draco tattoo man.”
“Amontillado, I swear that you will meet your end like your namesake,” she sighed, clearly not in the mood for levity as she waved her fingers at me. “Aegis.”
“Eh?”
A leaf-like shield the size of my palm apparated and weakly slapped my cheek, bursting into bits of arcane glass-like flecks that itched like poison ivy.
“Hey! Excuse me, miss Stormleaf, I thought that was perfectly clever!” I cried out in mock exasperation.
I heard a tiny chuckle.
+Member added to Faction: Reclamation – Lyissa Stormleaf, Level 5 Elf Heavy.+
It was worth the inconvenience.