Chapter 112: A Non-Optional Review Chapter (Not Actually)
Nara’s appreciation for Lawrence had been thoroughly demonstrated, to his reluctance. Redell’s gift was in the works, but Amara’s gift was unaddressed. Sezan, Chelsea, and Laius had also helped with her rescue.
Let alone Chelsea, Laius, and Amara, how was she supposed to find a gift for a diamond ranker? She’d have to find something heartfelt. Nara put off gift ideas for now; it may take years, but she swore to figure something out. It’s not like they’d die of old age.
The oceanside pavilion nebula house had a deck that extended outward into the sea, perfect as a training ground. After dumping in all of her quintessence and even buying more from the market, the nebula house was feeling very livable. Light damage caused by sparring was easily self-repaired; the mimicry stone and wood would briefly transform into cloud stuff, then reform. As long as the house didn’t lose material, it didn’t need replenishment, although Nara kept a stock of cloud and star quintessence on hand.
Nara was sparring with Sen, although they did not use the ocean deck. Since they both had water-walking abilities, they fought on the surface of the ocean. Managing water walking while sparring was good training. Nara’s abilities formed her into an expert multitasker. Sen, on the other hand, didn’t have many abilities he needed to actively manage, so it was something Nara could help him with.
Today, Nara was practicing with the staff. She had largely neglected the form. Recent experiences pushed her to develop her defensive skill set. There was nothing she could have done to prevent Aaliyah’s death at the time. In the future, if another team member was at risk, Nara wanted to be there to block the attack. She had the speed. Sen was a reliable frontline brawler, but he could not be expected to block attacks for Eufemia, John, Aliyah, and Encio by himself. Encio was fast enough to not need it most of the time, but he was the squishiest member of the team, after Aliyah.
Aliyah’s new racial ability did stick improve her survivability somewhat. Encio had Immortality to fall back on, and Aliyah now had Mana Rebirth, previously Magic Affinity.
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Racial Ability: [Magic Affinity]
Effects with magic sub-type are enhanced. Boons received with the magic sub-type are enhanced. Increased resistance to same magic sub-type effects.
Racial Ability: [Mana Rebirth]
Transfigured from runic Racial Ability [Magic Affinity]. The effects of [Magic Affinity] have been lost.
When expending mana beyond a moderate threshold, gain an instance of [Vessel of Mana]. Abilities related to mana such as mana recovery, mana drain, and maximum mana have increased effect. Mana gained through your own essence abilities can temporarily exceed the normal maximum. Excess mana depletes over time until the normal maximum is reached. Mana-per-second may be expended to increase attributes, with each attribute and bonus increasing the ongoing mana cost.
* [Vessel of Mana] (boon, magic, stacking): Increased resistance to mana drain abilities. Abilities that consume beyond a moderate mana threshold have increased effect. Additional instances have a cumulative effect.
If health reaches a very low threshold, mana and all instances of [Vessel of Mana] are automatically consumed to prevent lethal damage and heal an amount increasing with instances and mana consumed. This effect can trigger once per 24 hours. This effect cannot be prevented or negated.
At gold rank, this effect may prevent death, triggering once per year.
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Aliyah had cheerfully theorized the ability should work through ability suppression given the circumstances of her death, but nobody was insane enough to put it to test, not even Sen, who insisted on knowing the ins and outs of abilities. The weakness of the life-saving racial was a the heal scaling with mana and instances of [Vessel of Mana] consumed, which may be very little if Aliyah had no mana left. Thankfully, Aliyah’s various mana-recovery options meant she often had quick options for instant mana, although Sen convinced her to splurge on some extremely fast-acting mana pills in the future, which had lower mana regeneration efficiency but extremely quick effects. She’d need the mana after reviving as well, if she were to have any chance of fighting back.
More importantly, it gave Aliyah new uses for her mana. Increasing her Power or Speed made Aliyah less of a sitting duck when her teleport was on cooldown. Increased power attribute resulted in more toughness and was a good way to mitigate a hard hit. Since Aliyah had mana in abundance, she could invest it back into the Spirit attribute for more damage. Increasing her own Recovery attribute wasn’t mana efficient except in niche circumstances where she needed to heal from an injury without triggering her death effect. Increasing multiple attributes simultaneously was expensive, but Aliyah often had mana to spare, if she wasn’t pumping up Encio or Sen like a drug supplier. (Aliyah assured Nara that mana had no addictive properties.)
Staff fighting had a different flow than Nara was used to. With a sword, Nara would make rapid, high damage attacks (mainly from hitting locations of vulnerability). With a staff, Nara needed space to swing. The increased weight and size was more useful for blocking attacks than her sword, which despite the effects of Dream’s Wake, could still be flung away. Against normal opponents it wasn’t an issue, but opponents like Graff and Sen with pure physical strength bodied through the nullifying effects of Dream’s Wake, like lumberjacks pushing over tiny girlfriends just by walking.
The two engaged in silent and serious sparring, dancing across the top of the calm bay. It was good practice to fight Sen—Nara almost always had to fight someone physically stronger than her (and that number increased by one with Aliyah)—once Nara had gotten used to the frustration of it all. That would change at bronze rank, where body type ceased to matter, and attributes were more magical than physical. Sen would always be the strongest person of the team thanks to his Mighty Strength ability, however.
Sen gave pointers, but she couldn’t copy his style. His was a vigorous style that leveraged his high strength to solidly block whatever came his way and used the length of the staff unleash devastating focused blows that crushed bone on impact. It was simultaneously offensive and defensive; a style that suited Sen with his high attributes and balanced offensive and defensive capabilities, with both as threats.
They played around with ability combinations, banning certain abilities to see how it impacted their fighting style. While Eufemia’s cancelling abilities were uncommon, it was something to be on guard against for that very reason. Monster typically didn’t have cancellation abilities, but they may have inherent aspects that made using certain abilities detrimental, like flame to a fire elemental. Practicing losing part of their ability set was just good sense she had heard from all sorts of more experienced adventurers: the academy, Sen and Encio, and her mentors.
Nara’s greatest weakness was when either Blade of the Boundary was sealed, or if she had a dimensional restriction effect. The first rid her of her two most important afflictions; She could still use Nirvana but could no longer invoke the conjuration’s effects. A dimensional restriction effect such as Inescapable partially denied Nara most of her escape abilities. Which abilities were prevented depended on the specifics of the effect: Since Cosmic Path acted on the gravity around her rather than herself directly, it avoided the restriction of Inescapable, which denied teleportation and non-damaging dimension effects directly on the afflicted. Infinity Domain also escaped this effect—it had always acted on the space around her, rather on herself directly. It was Node Teleport that suffered the greatest restriction.
Well…now Nara felt dramatic. She was quite relieved to find most of her defensive abilities survived unscathed. It was best not to rely on Node Jump anyway, as too much teleporting meant she wasn’t benefiting from Avatar of the Boundary and Astral Return. It had been a grounding exercise, settling some of the skittish prey-instincts within her that felt cornered and trapped without her powers. She glanced at Sen—had this been his intention?
As usual, his face was placid and unreadable.
Nara took a break, doing stretches across the surface of the water. It made her clothes wet, but she appreciated the feeling of water on her skin. Moreover, water-walking was just so cool.
“You’re feeling better.”
“Always with the statements that should be questions.”
“Am I wrong?” There was an amused, vaguely challenging smile there. No, Sen was almost never wrong. How he did that, the world would never know.
“No, I am feeling better,” Nara admitted. She rubbed her wrists, “If I see a portal up close though...” She trailed off. Just imagining a portal made her feel nauseous.
“I understand. Anything else?”
“Anything else?”
“We don’t know what you need help with unless you tell us. It’s what a team is for.”
“Anybody trying to approach or touch me in a non-workplace appropriate way.”
“People usually don’t like that,” Sen pointed out.
“Yeah, but I feel like I might try to rip the offending limb out of its socket if they do.”
“That’s fine.”
“Is it??”
“As long as you don’t kill anyone,” he said with an unbothered shrug. “Anyone lacking sense enough to mess with an adventurer deserves a trip to the church of the healer to check for afflictions compromising their thinking. If you want to justify yourself, you can always pay for the healing. By throwing spirit coins at them.”
“Wow, okay. Noted. That sounds like something Eufemia would enjoy doing.”
“Eufemia has the right idea. You would put up with that in your world?”
“Uh, it’s complicated.”
He gave Nara a reassuring nod, “If you don’t want to deal with it, we can deal with it for you. Are bugs okay?” Sen continued his questions.
“They’re fine as long as they’re not trying to insert themselves through my eye.”
“Is that it?”
“You’re saying that like I should have more traumas.”
Sen smiled warmly. “No matter how many you have, we can deal with it together.”
“You’re a cool dude for a teenager, Sen.”
“That last part was unnecessary,” he said, crossing his arms, a smidge grumpy, but still smug in his own steady way.
Sen was 19 now, so he wasn’t even that young of a teenager. Being ‘technically’ a teenager annoyed him as the youngest member of the team with John in his early 40s, Aliyah in her late 30s, and Eufemia, Encio and Nara in their mid-20s. There was nothing he could do but bear the teasing.
She still always marveled at his mental steadiness, but he had experienced more in life than by the age of fifteen than Nara had by the age of twenty. It felt a lifetime ago: worrying about student loans, a major she wasn’t particularly interested in, her first job at a pay below she wanted, and shady workplace practices and shitty management, and writing dumb career goals every year for upper management metrics who were entirely disconnected from how the workplace actually operated. What was he worrying about when he was fifteen? The ethics of policies for handling the raiders of Arlang territory? His inability to contribute or change much until he increased his own personal power? What sort of essence user he wanted to be?
They all had their own paths they walked.
“You still have the energy to tease me about my age? Was our sparring not challenging enough?”
“Oh. Mistakes were made.”
She instantly spun on her heel in an impressively wasted display of sheer reaction speed, and sprinted into the bay, elevating her speed with Cosmic Path, and leaving ripples in the water like a skipping stone.
“You dare run from me? You clearly have energy to spare. Come back here, Nara! We aren’t finished yet!”
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*****
Jiro Asanda settled back into a normal life with his wife Daiyu and his daughter Mio. He didn’t believe he would survive the ordeal—he had lost all hope of returning alive. Somehow, he and the remaining researchers along with that outworlder had been rescued. They were checked by purity priests for any undue influence on their minds, then released back into the world. They would probably be monitored for a while, but Jiro could not care less. Let the adventurers and the priests worry, he just wanted his normal life back.
At first, Jiro had been unsure and unwilling to believe. The resolution was so abrupt that he reeled from the situational whiplash, but Jiro thought himself a tough, steady man (relatively speaking). Once he was back with his family, his unwilling cult recruitment was out of sight and out of mind. He had research to conduct, a daughter to raise, and a wife to appreciate.
Jiro was within his office when he was shocked by a strange, slightly transparent colored light rectangle that appeared in front of his vision.
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-[Nara Edea] has requested a voice chat.
-[Accept? Y/N]
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The rectangle followed his vision as he turned, and his coworkers could not see it. He knew the name very clearly, and accepted, partially of curiosity of the fate of the outworlder.
“Hey Jiro, hope I called at a good time. Well, I guess called is not quite the right word. Anyway.”
“Nara? What is this?”
“Outworlder racial ability. I have a few fun ones. Anyway, I was wondering if you’d be willing to meet. I have some questions about what happened after I went and sank myself into a lake. And maybe some stuff I want to work through with somebody who shares my experience.”
“…I wouldn’t say I share your experience.”
“It’s close enough.”
“Again, I would not say it is.”
“So?” She apparently decided to ignore his objections.
“I’m willing to meet. I have questions of my own. There’s a café near the Magic Society tower, Mist-tea Morning.”
“Ooh good choice.”
“You know the place?” He was surprised. It was popular with Magic Society researchers, and its essence user prices and long lines of tired, grumbling researchers in need of a pick-me-up and the refreshing bite of jademint tea often kept other folks away.
“Nah, I just like puns.”
*****
Jiro had just descended the Magic Society’s tower. He was surprised to see Nara waiting downstairs for him first.
“I got us a table,” she said, gesturing in the general direction of the café.
He nodded and followed her. The plaza beside the Magic Society was busy with foot traffic, as it was often built as a locus of activity. Supplies for experiments, projects, and maintenance were loaded and unloaded into the building, functionaries and officials from various organizations frequently met at the ground level eateries. Researchers strode with purpose or milled about in the nearby park taking a quick break. Some of the devout or priests headed off to the divine square in their spare time.
The outworlder looked much improved (That wasn’t hard, given that she was previously near catatonic from pain.) She had a mild appearance that didn’t stick out, ordinary if for her faint eyebrows and the black, oddly floating gem earring on her right ear. While ordinary in appearance, she held the distinct magnetism that all well-trained iron rankers started to possess, something Jiro was aware he lacked. As a core user, he hadn’t undergone the training adventurers subjected themselves to. She wore a style that was unusual in Sanshi, but Jiro didn’t know fashion well enough to know from where. With a glace he could tell of the quality—simply, it was the quality of clothing sold to well-off adventurers. Pockets heavy with coin, their tailored clothing used the highest quality material as well as magical enhancements for durability, self-cleaning, self-repair, climate adaptation, and self-drying. For an iron ranker, she was doing very well for herself. It made him relieved, somehow, that she wouldn’t suffer the poverty iron rankers often struggled through on top of what she had already experienced.
Notably, he noticed two diamond shaped scars on her wrists. He glimpsed them under her sleeves, but didn’t know if she was intentionally covering them or not.
“Thanks for meeting me out here on such short notice,” she said after ordering some tea for the table and a few snacks. Jiro was feeling peckish and gladly partook.
“Rather, I’m surprised you got here so early.”
“Another outworlder ability,” Nara said. “I can pretty much go wherever I want, if I’ve been there before.”
He noted it but did not ask further. Any thought of her as a subject of research, even willing, sent a nauseating twist through his stomach. “Why did you want to meet with me? It is not entirely unexpected, but I would not call us more than acquaintances.”
“I’m going first? Hm, well...” Nara leaned back, holding her teacup and enjoying the aroma and flavor for a moment. “It was a relief that some of you survived. I had been told The Advent usually left no survivors.”
“They leave no survivors?” Jiro said, horrified. The reaction was lesser now that time had passed. He still had to remind himself that he was safe, and that he was with his family again.
“I knew about it before we were abducted,” Nara said. “My familiar, Sage—” she gestured, and a floating silver robe rose from the ground, who gave a neat bow of acknowledgement “—had some prior knowledge of The Advent and how they operate. We told the Adventure Society, and they were working on a response before all that.”
The robe bowed in greeting, “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Asanda.”
“Likewise.” After her brief greeting, the familiar disappeared in a shimmer of light.
She folded her hands, her smile fading from her face. “All that means is I thought I had abandoned you all for death when I sank myself in the lake. I told them killing you all was pointless, even though they had, up until that point, killed everyone who had not joined them. It’s too optimistic to think they were indefinitely imprisoning people.”
Jiro processed the new information, then realized: “You’re not responsible for what they could have done to us.”
“Aren’t adventurers supposed to protect other?”
“Not at the cost of their life.” It was after all, a topic that is rehashed every so often. There are always disgruntled people that have lost someone, to monster waves, to criminals, to dark forces, who argue and claim that adventurers have not done enough. Perhaps some adventurers do not—the nobles who are adventurers in name only—but the Adventure Society was a volunteer organization. The regional city guards, it was their job to protect. This point had been argued over and over, debated and picked over repeatedly, that almost everyone had attended or read some sort of opinion piece on the topic, and they’d all collectively groan whenever someone new tried to bring it up, as if they were the only person who had ever lost a loved one. Adventurers could be removed for doing nothing but would not be punished for trying; it was inevitably, how those do-nothing core-fattened nobles were eventually disgraced. The line between willing and forced sacrifice was thin. Adventurers would report for duty in times of crisis, but they could not be forced to self-sacrifice. It was a line resolutely drawn in the morals of Erras.
Nara had been told this many times before, but she was surprised to see non-adventurers (or at least non-combat essence users) share the same sentiment. The strong protected the weak did not mean the strong self-sacrificed for the weak. Her mind was polluted by media of Earth—heroic sacrifices, last stands, desperate gambits. They weren’t expected in reality. Heroes were what they were—heroic—because they were not the norm. Nara wasn’t heroic.
She felt guilty for her decision to ignore the life and death of the other researchers, yet she felt no remorse. In the same situation, she would make the same decision. Saving Aliyah was the best she could do. In a decision between captivity and death, she’d always choose death. Problem is that option kept getting taken away.
Give me liberty or give me death should be her new motto. Culturally appropriate: America, fuck yeah!
“I had thought you drowned yourself in the lake after the death of Aliyah,” Jiro said. “I was surprised to see you fished out of there.”
“Oh, Aliyah’s alive. I forgot to mention that.”
Jiro laughed a smidge maniacally. “I’ve seen her around! Imagine my shock when I saw her walking the halls of the Magic Society good as new, as alive as anybody else! I was surprised to see you alive, too.”
“Ah…I guess the fact that outworlders don’t need to breath isn’t common knowledge.” She gestured to her torso, then her head, “No heart, no lungs, no brains. Zip, zero, nada.”
Aliyah had known since her focus was on magical arrays and astral magic. Jiro didn’t care about the higher theoretical magics; his focus was on magics that could shape and reinforce the physical.
They paused for a moment, both appreciated the free wheeling birds and their morning song. The magic screens of The Advent facility hadn’t been so evocative, illusory and dead, a desert mirage of a painful dream.
“I have some thoughts on why they left us alive,” he said abruptly, interrupting the lulling calm.
“Ah, I’ve gotten you thinking?”
“I can’t help myself. I am a researcher. It’s what I do,” he said wryly. “After you said your piece and left, oddly they left us entirely alone. They just stopped caring. They were usually focused on a specific task. I could sense it—but we had no idea what they cared so much about. As for that astral space base, I don’t think they cared if it was discovered. Maybe your ultimatum spared us, or maybe they lost the need for secrecy. I’m not sure…”
“Did Ceram survive?”
“An Adventist retrieved him later. I don’t know what happened to him…Do you want him dead?”
Jiro didn’t know what compelled him to ask. Killing others was distant for a researcher like him. He’d killed monsters before; most essence users have, even if he was a core user. To be fair, even scrunched grandmothers have killed lesser monsters in their indignant rage over the pests that munched on their carefully cultivated gardens.
Nara pondered this thought. At the time, she would have tried to kill him, but she had to focus Aliyah’s retrieval. Nara was a mild person whose extreme emotions usually faded quickly; she couldn’t help it, anger was exhausting. But if she had the chance, would she kill him?
“I might.” It was the best answer she could offer. “I wouldn’t sacrifice anything to kill him, but if I had the chance, I would take it.”
Jiro didn’t expect that. The image of Nara taking apart a bronze ranker with a needle and a dagger in single-minded icy focus was seared into his mind with a cold light. “You scared me shitless at the time, and I wasn’t even on the receiving end of your attack.” He reevaluated her now, the cold rage overlayed with the woman placidly enjoying tea, savoring the fresh air just as he. “You’re a calmer person than I thought.”
“Not calm,” Nara said. “I just don’t have the energy for continuous emotional rage.”
“Tired then?” Jiro chuckled. “At your age?”
“I’m an old woman inside,” She smiled like it was something secret, a joke he wasn’t in on.
“Are you?” Jiro asked, something niggling his curiosity.
“No. I mean, probably not? It’s complicated. Did you managed to hear anything about this ‘focus’ of theirs?”
Jiro shook his head, “They were free with information on how their organization supposedly operates, yet kept quiet on their plans for us. It was unnerving. I’ve already told the Adventure Society all that I know.”
With tea sipped and treats snacked, the worst part of Jiro’s life resolved, as quiet and unassuming as he hoped the rest of his life would be. He prayed that Pain would be satisfied with his tithes, to pass him into Peace’s safe embrace, that all he’d suffer was project crunch times, the frustrations of his superiors, the uncertainties of a father raising a growing daughter, and eventually, long into the twilight of his life, the ails of old age.
*****
Jiro departed from their impromptu meeting, leaving Nara to ponder her thoughts and emotions. A bit of self-reflection was healthy (come heavily recommended by Redell), so Nara dove her hands into the lake of her mind, pulling objects to study them.
She used to be an ordinary STEM worker with a full-time job in the tech industry. She had a rude awakening to the wider cosmos, then outworlder’d herself a new body into reality. In just a few days, by the generosity and rather pushy advice of four of Innovation’s Retreat (perhaps with slightly ulterior motives on Amara’s side), she became an essence user and started her adventurer training.
She met Sen and Aliyah, then later Encio, Eufemia, and John, and they formed a party due to shared interests and good first impressions.
The advice of the Amara to embark on the path of an essence user was good advice; she needed a higher rank to cast the rituals that inter-dimensional travel usually required. Her adventures led her to the Celestial Book trials, as suggested to her by the god, Traveler. There, she achieved victory over her mimic, gained the information of a library the size of a football field, and met Sage and later Chrome.
Afterwards, they confronted Oswald about the lazy management of the trials then took a break in Esmera-Mar to get their immortal crests. They received important training from Maya, Sen’s older sister and the Arlang heiress, who ‘forced’ them to pair up with team members they were weak with, and use creativity with their abilities. Along the way, she learnt a quote-book-full of adventurer wisdom: Adventurers did not need to practice for their strengths; they trained for disaster. Along with his sister, Sen was constantly pushing the team to train in their weaknesses.
After a battle with Vallis in the Academy’s mirage chamber, they took on their first 2-star contract, where they engaged Graff, a bandit leader who had been attacking solo and duo adventurers to steal their equipment and loot their bodies. Beside the Celestial Book trial, it was one of Nara’s first encounters with the dangers that adventurers faced, as well as the first time she made the decision to kill somebody, and follow through. They could have reported the bandits and left them for a different higher ranking adventurer to handle, but they chose to engage Graff instead.
Erras’ culture focused greatly on personal responsibility. Not much was expected of iron rankers, but the high your rank the more you were personally responsible for. It was impossible to fully control adventurers; instead, as long as they didn’t murder innocents or unduly commit crime, much was permitted. If you made a decision, you took responsibility for that outcome, whatever the consequences may be.
Graff and his brother were captured where they were executed by the Adventure Society, and Roan Sei’s body, and the other dead adventurers, were returned to their families.
A month later, the team set out on the Astral Space Expedition together with many other iron rank adventurers. Their experience in the Celestial Book Expedition prepared them for swarms, and they handled the experience readily. The situation was complicated by Zariel-laat, who had a proposal not only for the expedition, but for the entirely of Erras. Nara discovered that Zariel’s motivations had been to stymie the progress of The Advent indirectly. The Illusae were infiltration specialists, living amongst others as natives, and possessed information about the threat of The Advent. Zinnia Helianthae, the Continental Council representative, was dispatched to establish diplomatic relations with Zariel’s people in the region of Sanshi.
Upon return to Sanshi, Aliyah and Nara had been abducted by The Advent. There, she met several other captured researchers and Lina, who was instructed by Hellis Fallen, the operations commander, to give her special attention to her invention of a technique in soul magic as well as the knowledge contained in her Guide ability.
After her escape attempt, Raina Bow, the gold ranker of The Advent recaptured her and investigated her aura for Nara’s ability to shake off ability suppression.
“Wait a minute,” Nara thought out loud. “Why didn’t they just use a higher rank suppression collar?”
Rain Bow had chosen to force the suppression shackles upon Nara; a suppression artifact which assaulted Nara with constant burning pain and life energy. The suppression shackles provided the life force and fire energy necessary for Nara to survive the nightmare beetles.
If they had just used a bronze rank suppression collar, Nara would not have been able to escape. At the time, Raina and Hellis hadn’t known that Sanshi had the capabilities to locate them, so what drove her to use crueler methods? They were far too intelligent and far too fixed in their creed to use torture on a whim. Raina claimed it hurt her to torture Nara, even with an indirect method such as the beetles. If they were willing to wait months for people to enter the portal, why hadn’t they waited for Nara?
It was bullshit that Raina felt her pain, but their extreme methods were indicative of something else. They had, after all, chastised Ceram at Lina’s behest originally. They later set Ceram off as a method to push Nara over the edge.
Maybe Nara was overthinking it, yet her instincts told her she was not.
Nara would pay a visit to the captured Raina Bow: What did she know? Or, what did she think she knew?
She’d try at least; she had no idea if the Adventure Society would let her.