Chapter 67 The Portal Station
Once are inside the portal station, they stood at the back of one of the multiple long lines of over one hundred people to buy a ticket to the portal.
“Wow, there are a lot of different shifter breeds. At least I think they are different. Their ears and tail look similar to animals such as dogs, bears, and of course, cats.” Evernya marveled as her eyes roamed over the dozens of different ear and tail shapes of the surrounding shifters.
“The most common is catkin and wolfkin, but yeah, there are hundreds of different breeds,” Meira remarked.
“Why aren’t there any races besides shifters and humans here?” Evernya inquired.
“Most other races are living in their own communities outside of human civilization.” Meira discretely gestures to a woman ahead of them in the line to the right. “Sometimes, they venture into human-controlled areas such as her. She’s a Mer.”
“How can you tell?” Evernya asked while looking at the blue-haired woman who appeared to be in her 20s.
“Look at her skin.” Meira hinted.
Evernya looked closer at the woman, causing the woman to sense someone was staring. She glanced over her shoulder to find the source, but Evernya had already averted her gaze.
“Her skin a little shiny. Why is that?” Evernya questioned curiously.
“To reduce drag while swimming, their skin is tiny smooth scales that mimic human skin. Unless you look closely, you wouldn’t even notice a difference. Also, though, It’s hard to tell she is coating her skin in a thin layer of water to keep herself wet. Merfolk must keep their body wet at all times. Otherwise, they will dry out, causing them to weaken and eventually die. You will only see adult merfolk on the surface for this reason. All merfolk go through a rigorous testing process to ensure they have enough control over their water magic to keep themselves wet at all times before their community allows them to leave the water.” Meira informed.
“They don’t have fins or a tail?” Evernya questioned, discreetly scanning the woman for any abnormalities.
“They can shift into their water form, causing their legs to merge, creating a fishlike tail and their fingers become webbed. They are technically a variant of shifter, but most people consider them their own race. The system categorizes any water-based shifter as Merfolk, while land-based breeds scan as shifters.” Meira continued to educate to pass time while they waited in line.
“Does she have to wear a collar too?” Evernya asked, ever curious.
Ignoring the odd looks from the people nearby, Meira continued to answer her kitten’s never-ending questions. “No silver doesn’t affect Merfolk, so they are exempt. And besides, they would never shift in the middle of the city. They would flop around on the street and make a fool of themselves. Sespina puts Merfolk under the same category of demi-humans as elves or dwarves. They don’t trust them and sometimes look down on them, but mostly them alone to do their business and return to where they came from.”
“Damn, I wish I could avoid the discrimination. Are there other races that humans regulate harshly?” Evernya grumbled.
After glaring at any eavesdroppers, Meira answered her kitten’s question. “Yeah, some have it even worse, for example, vampires. Vampires not only can turn humans into vampires, but they also feed on human blood to survive. It doesn’t help that most mature vampires have telepathy, which, as you know, is on the controlled list. To combat all these potential threats, vampires always have to wear a special collar within human cities that senses if they try to feed on an unwilling human, turn an unwilling human, or use telepathy on a human. They make this collar out of an alloy of different metals with silver mixed in because like shifters, vampires cannot damage silver, but they can’t have pure silver in direct contact with their skin or it will burn them. On top of this, Sespina bars vampires from going near hospitals, schools, and many other places. If they break any of these regulations, the collar will incapacitate them with a powerful shock and if they continue to resist, the collar will inject liquid silver into their veins, which will painfully, and sometimes permanently disable a vampire.”
“Damn, that’s a lot worse than I have it. Why don’t they stunt their telepathy?” Evernya commented, adding in her next question immediately after.
“Racial abilities are much harder to seal, so they left it alone. Besides, no vampire in their right mind would allow their telepathy to be stunted,” Meira replied.
Before Evernya could ask, Meira elaborated on the topic, “Most vampires live in the slums or separate communities at the edge of the wilds, like I do because of these heavy regulations. They rarely go to cities. Instead, they send thralls to get them things. What makes it worse is all vampires were originally humans, so they know what it’s like to be on the other side of things. So even if they somehow avoided being collared, there aren’t many vampires in a city.”
“Yeah, if I had that many regulations against me, I would avoid human society too.” Evernya glanced at the nearby people before whispering in Meira’s ear. “Why does silver only affect me like a shifter?”
“I don’t know, but you are fortunate that you take after your shifter side on that one. If you didn’t, we would be screwed because there is no way I would allow them to force you to wear a collar that will hurt you.” Meira whispered back.
Finally, after an hour of waiting in line, it’s finally their turn. The duo walked up to a lady who looked to be in her 20s standing behind a desk.
“Two tickets for the Minea portal, please.” Meira requested politely.
“IDs please.” The woman responded businesslike.
Evernya handed Meira her ID, who then set them on the counter for the lady to scan. After scanning, there was a momentary pause before the scanner glowed green.
“That will be 100 crystals.” The lady stated, handing back their IDs.
Meira swiped a card on the provided card reader to pay. After paying, the lady handed them both a ticket.
“Have a delightful trip.” The lady said before moving on to the next person in line.
“This next part may feel a little weird, but don’t worry. All it's doing is scanning our bodies and storage devices for illegal things.” Meira warned as they approached an arched passage with a gate blocking their access to the portal area.
“How does it scan your storage device? I thought that is a mini dimension.” Evernya inquired.
“It is, but by law, we must make all storage devices viewable by someone else if they push mana into it. However, only the owner of the storage device can remove or store items. This scanner functions the same way, but it only scans for certain mana signatures of illegal items. Everything has a set mana signature, so it’s easy to find the illegal items. Of course, privacy is important, so the scanner doesn’t display the contents unless it flags an illegal item.” Meira informed as they stand in line.
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Fifteen minutes later, they reach the front of the line. One at a time, they stepped under the arch, which ran a beam over their bodies, causing a weird tingly feeling everywhere it passed. After almost thirty seconds of scanning, the scanner turned green for both of them, opening the gates, allowing them access to the portal area.
While waiting in line, Meira explained will happen next. “All we have to do now is walk through the portal. It may seem scary, but you don’t even feel anything. It’s like walking through a door.”
“I’ll take your word for it. I find it cool that you can travel hundreds of kilometers by just walking through a portal.” Evernya replied, attention directed at the massive ten-meter diameter wavy blue portal. Her eyes followed people orderly walk through the portal from the right lane while the left lane had people returning.
As they worked their way toward the front of the right outgoing lane Meira explained, “Yeah, before the invention of sustainable portals about 100 years ago, most people had to travel through the wilds to move to another city requiring multiple powerful people to guide them. Escort missions were very common at the adventuring guild because of that. Of course, you could hire a mage capable of creating portals or teleporting you, but that required thousands of crystals for a one-way trip. It’s still not worth using the portal system to commute to work, but at least now most people can afford to travel to other cities safely if they need to.”
Fortunately, the line moved quickly as only five minutes later, their turn arrived. Meira walked forward through the portal with Evernya following after a momentary hesitation. An instant later, the duo appeared in another portal room at least ten times the size of the one they just left. Instead of a single large portal, this portal area housed dozens of five to ten-meter diameter portals with a sign hanging above them, indicating where they led.
“What’s stopping us from going through another portal?” Evernya asked curiously while eyeing the gigantic thirty-meter diameter portal, dwarfing all other portals leading to Buran.
“Remember the ticket that was in your hand? It disintegrated after you traveled through the portal. If you try to go through another portal without a ticket, the portal will block you.” Replied Meira while ushering her kitten along out of the inbound lane.
Once out in the open area between the portals and scanning arches, Evernya continued to ask questions. “So, if we wanted to go through another portal, we would have to go through the process again?”
“Yea, but you get put in a different streamlined line since there is no need for the security and items scan,” Meira answered, pointing toward several lines leading to a long counter just inside the portal area as near the entrance of the portal room.
“I definitively don’t want to do this regularly,” Evernya commented, tail puffing slightly from the crowded area.
“We got relatively lucky. I thought we would have to wait for at least two hours,” Meira stated, while nodding in agreement with Evernya.
Evernya scowled as she replayed her previous time standing in a line, commenting “I would take waiting in line here then that horrendous Mage’s test wait.”
“Yeah, but you did a good job controlling yourself in that stressful situation.” Meira complimented, giving her kitten a one-armed hug to comfort her.
“In the end, it didn’t matter because of that racist asshole,” Evernya grumbled.
Before her kitten lost control, Meira interrupted, “It did matter because of how well you endured that stressful experience you passed your Shifter stress test.”
After taking a deep breath to calm down, Evernya commented. “True, what that asshole did kind of overshadowed my shifter stress test.”
“Hopefully, he learned his lesson after your little torture session, but somehow, I doubt someone like him will ever change,” Meira muttered while leading Evernya toward the exit of the portal area.
“Well, if I ever see him again, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill him,” Evernya vowed under her breath just loud enough for Meira to hear.
“Neither would I, but you can’t leave evidence because he is a human mage working for the Mage’s council,” Meira warned.
“Don’t worry; I’m not that dumb. I’m not throwing my life away for a piece of trash like him,” Evernya assured despite several increasingly gruesome methods of torture running through her head.
“Good, he is not worth it, but he deserves to be dead. No one tries to enslave my little sister and keeps their right to live!” Meira exclaimed a little too loud, causing the surrounding people to give Meira a weird look but soon continued on their way.
“Well, we better get you a collar and get going. It’s getting late, and I want to do a lot of shopping before the auction.” Meira prompted as her mood took a turnabout from anger to excitement as she daydreamed about what to buy for her kitten.
Unaware of Meira plotting out her shopping torture session, Evernya agreed. “Fine, let’s get this over with.” Suddenly, a thought crossed her mind, prompting an immediate question. “So if I need a collar to be in a tier 2 city, then how am I in the portal station of the city?”
Meira replied, only half paying attention as she continued to lead Evernya through the crowd while simultaneously picturing her kitten in several beautiful dresses. “They made all portal stations separate from the city barrier in case of an attack, allowing them the capability of locking down the portal station. So if one city falls and the attackers gain access to the portal network, they can’t continue taking over cities because they cannot leave the portal station. It has the added benefit of allowing shifters who don’t have collars to use the portal station of a tier 2 city to travel to another Tier 3 city. Tier 1 portal stations function the same way, so even without a collar, travel by portal is doable.”
Evernya’s mood instantly brightened upon hearing the good news. “Great! I know you mentioned it earlier, but it worried me that avoiding a collar would keep me stuck in the Druth area. In the end, it looks like I’ll be getting one anyway, but I don’t want to wear it more than I have to.”
“You aren’t the only one. If you look around, you will notice very few shifters here are wearing one. They rarely put it on until they leave the portal station.” Meira pointed out, drawing Evernya’s attention to the thousands of shifters within sight, of which only a quarter of them were wearing shiny silver collars.
“Why do they have to make them so bulky if we can’t damage silver? Why not make them light and thin?” Evernya questioned while eyeing passing shifters with thick and wide silver collars encasing most of their necks in silver.
“Well, they want the collar to be noticeable, so they made them bigger than they need to be. Also, silver is a fairly soft material, even with strengthening enchantments. To make it worse, they purposefully skimped on strengthening enchantments to force you to buy another collar sooner. They generously offer half off a new collar if you turn in your old one, which is such a rip-off. I can’t even enhance the durability enchantment after it binds to its owner because if I try, the collar will think it’s tampered with and alert the authorities.” Meira replied with apparent distaste.
“Wow, I’m starting to think they make all shifters wear one, not to protect the humans from being attacked, but because they want to make money,” Evernya commented.
“To be honest, that’s most likely the real reason, but we can’t do anything about it either way,” Meira remarked as they reached a wide one-way archway leading to the main lobby.
“This place is crazy!” Evernya exclaimed as she stared wide-eyed at the massive lobby.
Seemingly endless crowds of people were wandering about, entering and exiting hundreds of stores along the outer edge of the oval-shaped room. In some places, the crowds were so thick that people walked shoulder to shoulder.
Meira surveyed the portal station lacking the awe of her kitten as she explained, “Well, this portal station connects a dozen cities with at least a hundred thousand people each plus Minea has a population of around ten million people in the city alone not counting the suburbs. It doesn’t help that with the summer solstice going on, most stores have sales running.”
“This place is like a massive hybrid of a train station, mall, and airport,” Evernya commented after recovering from her shock.
“I don’t know what an airport is, but yea train stations in big cities can be pretty crazy. It’s another reason I avoid public transportation.” Meira commented, barely audible over the loud crowds as they approached the center of the lobby.
Evernya reinforced her ears with mana as a sound-induced headache began pounding. Upon noticing her kitten’s discomfort, Meira picked up her pace toward the big sign to the left of the exit of the portal station, reading customer services with collar registration in smaller font underneath.
As they were weaving through the hordes of people, Evernya suddenly jumped and spun after feeling her tail pulled. She scanned her surroundings, but she couldn’t find the culprit in the mass of moving people. Giving up, she turned back, only to find she lost sight of Meira. Her tail puffed as she rushed as fast as she could towards the Collar registration room, figuring Meira went that direction.