Chapter 130: Her Domain
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-All abilities have reached Bronze 0. All attributes have reached Bronze rank.
-You have gained damage reduction against Iron Rank damage sources. You have gained increased resistance to Iron Rank effects.
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Nara groaned as she lifted herself off of the floor. The shower room washed away the rank up gunk from her body. It was absorbed by the disguised nebula material, sinking away into the floor without a trace, and somehow processed, if such foul expel could be processed; She didn’t care for the details of this particular function. The remnants had already been cleaned from her body, but she could still imagine the putrid scent, seared into her mind like burned fat she couldn’t scrub off the pan. She had gained much from this new world, one of which was a completely new top 10 list of worst smells she ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
She’d never get used to the sensation of literally remaking her body. The lower rank magic was expelled and replaced with higher quality magic. It was as if she got to experience the trauma of childbirth in 4K resolution and virtual reality feedback with full sensory input. She was shaky, as all were who went through this process, and readjusting to her new body sensations and attributes.
She was heavier now, and slightly taller. Her physical attributes were magic, but it did entail an increase in muscle density and efficiency beyond human limits. She was now 5 foot 9 inches—still the shortest member of the team, below Encio and Aliyah, although both were close. They’d increase in height too, so there was no way she’d catch up.
With bronze rank came superhuman attributes. She could lift a car, run faster and longer than Usain Bolt. She already had well-honed reflexes, thanks to her continual efforts and what her abilities naturally demanded from her. This was enhanced as she ranked up.
Everyone at bronze 0 had nearly identical attributes, if abilities were discounted; She was as strong as Encio now. Inclinations of fighting style resulted in some natural variations in physique and attributes. Her abilities demanded fast reaction speeds in melee combat, so she had a lean-muscular body type. She was lithe and flexible with compacted muscle, with whip crack reflexes, fast acceleration, and ability to switch directions at a snap.
Nara had advanced behind Encio. Her ability to astral jump into the wilds to seek enemies to fight boosted her ability to rank up, pushing her past Sen. Still, she didn’t do so often; she liked downtime as much as anybody else. Erras may lack the easy entertainment of video games, cinema, and tv shows, but it had much to offer. Boardgames at the beachside, theater, orchestra, folk dancing, festivals, markets, arena competitions, and other pastimes she was more than willing to have occupy her day.
Her reflection in the rank up room’s full-length mirror was balder than a newborn, eyebrows and body entirely barren like a desert stripped of all life. The scars on her wrist remained, as did the one on her chest above her heart. The misty river tattoo had disappeared, but her soul crest, as written on the tin, remained inked on her back as a permanent portrait of her soul.
She slipped on a change of clothes and stepped outside. She’d freshened up her body, now it was time to nurture her soul with the bounty of the earth.
Sage was waiting outside for her.
“Benefactor, if you’d allow me to fix your hair.”
“Of course.”
Sage accessed Nara’s inventory, hair growth cream tin within her hands. When her ability, Echo of Creation, had reached iron rank, she resumed Sage’s new bronze rank vessel. Sage was considerably excited for her new rank up abilities, although she was as always tranquil as a moonlit lake; She’d been with Sage long enough to sense it through her placid edifice.
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Ability: [Echo of Creation]
Essence: Dimension
Familiar (ritual)
Cost: Extreme mana
Cooldown: None
Effect (Iron): Summons an [Echo of Creation] to serve as a familiar.
* Can occupy up to three incorporeal bodies that act as dimensional loci. Cannot be used by enemies as dimensional loci.
* Can transform into cloth and blend into objects with limitations.
* Can move rapidly but inflicts no damage or non-damaging effects. Can dim and become transparent.
* Can traverse dimensions and attach themselves to allies and enemies as a small incorporeal cloth.
* Gains an instance of every boon you gain. Instance limit is reduced compared to the summoner’s maximum.
* While attached to an ally, the ally also receives the benefit of boons. This effect ends when Sage leaves the ally. This does not affect the summoner.
* Can be subsumed within the summoner’s skin. While subsumed within the summoner, increases the summoner’s regeneration. This effect increases with each additional body. This effect prioritizes the lowest resource.
Effect (Bronze):
* Can occupy up to seven incorporeal bodies.
* Can blend into areas of strong light.
* Can exert a small amount of physical force.
* Can access the summoner’s dimensional storage.
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Seven bodies gave Nara more leeway to use Sage as teleportation destinations. When she wasn’t fighting solo, she’d mostly utilized Sage for her ability to share Nara’s boons with allies. She had so far underutilized Sage’s surprisingly quick movement speed and general ability to avoid harm.
Now, Sage could physically interact with physical objects. It wasn’t useful combat wise—she wouldn’t be making any attacks worth a damn, not at her rank. The ability to interact physically was important for Sage’s own interests—her capacity as a servant.
Sage wouldn’t grow hair, so she could barehand the hair growth cream. She spread it over Nara’s bare scalp. Strands of brown hair regrew in slight waves like grass after a spring rain. Eyebrows were painted on, then trimmed and shaped. Her hair was gently brushed through, then cut to Sage’s preference. She gave Sage full control over her hairstyle—she hadn’t the eye for it. May as well leave it to someone who had honed her sense of style for a millennia. Sage and Chrome’s discourse of fashion was one of their few passionately shared interests, and both unequivocally agreed that Nara should offer her opinion and nothing more.
“I’ve have finished benefactor, is it to your satisfaction?” Another body of Sage held up an array of mirror for her.
“It always is, Sage.”
“You could bear to cultivate your standards, benefactor.”
“Are you saying your work is subpar?”
“No, benefactor. In this instance you are acceptably discerning.”
Nara harrumphed, nimbly jumping out of her highchair as it vanished into the floor.
“You and Chrome both like to pick on me. Only Thanatos is a good boy.”
“No such thing, benefactor. I seek only your improvement.”
Nara had not seen such a smug yet perfectly polite bow before. It was yet another skill Sage had ample time to perfect.
A couple of tired figures wandered back into the nebula house—the rest of the team. Sen just needed a little more to reach his rank up, and Eufemia, John, and Aliyah needed to be pushed a little further. Encio was overseeing everything, as the final push meant toeing the line.
“Congratulations on your bronze rank,” Sen said upon seeing Nara.
“Thanks.” She raised a tired hand in greeting from her sprawled position on the couch, snacking on some food Chrome had prepared for her. She could eat as messily as she wanted; the nebula took care of it. Well…she wasn’t a complete slob, and after some of Sen’s mildly disgusted and barely discernable side-eyes, she was careful not to overly indulge in her sloppier habits.
“Oh, the benefits of magic,” Nara proclaimed with luxurious indulgence. “The ability to eat wherever I want in my house!”
Eufemia’s look was the epitome of banality. “You and John get exited over the most mundane benefits.”
“I know the exhaustive tiredness of working 8 hours a day to come home to a countertop of dirty dishes. Cooking for 2 hours only to eat in 10 minutes and have a stove top full of pans to clean up. Sheets that need to be washed weekly, a perpetually dusty floor with leaves and pebbles and those thorny stickers tracked in from inside. Your desk fills up with unwashed bowls, why wash it when you’re going to use it the next day. The mailbox is full, and your roommate never sorts the mail. The trash needs to be taken out every week, walking over to the dumpster and chucking it in. Then you get a utility bill of 300 dollars and wonder why it’s not factored into rent in the first place. The you remember all rent is more expensive elsewhere, and you don’t want to drag your mattress up two flights of stairs again with the help of your friends you’ve promised to a bowl of ramen. Do you understand that feeling, Eufemia?” She had leaned forward, eyes earnestly pleading to be understood, as much as she could from her sprawl on the couch.
Eufemia paused, staring at Nara, “I do.” Which was not entirely a surprise, since Eufemia had been the most impoverished of the group. “So once I wash up, I’m joining you on the couch.” She stalked away, displeased with her state of disarray.
“How’s the battles going?” Nara asked Sen.
“I’m close. The others still need some more time.”
“Take your time. I’ve been enjoying this break. Catching up on studying astral magic, practicing my lute, going to the orchestra, touring the world and all that. Leisure stuff.”
“You have your portal ability now?” Sen asked.
“You want to confirm what we can do with it?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Once everyone has eaten dinner, we can do a little experimentation.”
*****
The group stood around the portal arch in the center of the nebula house.
“That feels intimidating,” Eufemia said. “It feels like my soul is telling me I better trust the power on the other side because its dangerous.”
“You didn’t get that with the door domain?”
“Not as much. We felt your aura there, but it didn’t feel dangerous,” Aliyah said. “This feels different. It is reflective of your extent of power?”
“I guess so,” Nara said. “On the other side of that portal its my soul. I’m the god of my own soul, if that makes sense. It’s my little playground of imagination. I can do almost anything in there. The problem is what stays when it comes out.”
“It’s as if my soul is asking me if I trust you with my life,” Aliyah said. “That’s an easy answer.” She strode confidently through, curiosity brimming in her eyes. She had already been there once dead, but she was excited to see how the experience would change when she was alive.
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What she saw on the other side was Nara, who greeted her with a wave.
“I didn’t see you enter.”
“This is an avatar,” Nara said. “I’ve been experimenting a bit with my capabilities here in my free time. This is my soul; I know everything that occurs inside of it. The avatar gives physical representation of that capability. It’s not the exact same thing as me itself. That is to say, you could probably feel a difference between me and the avatar if I show it. It’s like this is AI Nara, and the other one is real Nara.”
“I’m not sure what that means. Could you elaborate?”
Nara could have just implanted the meaning within Aliyah’s mind, but she felt it was invasive and disrespectful to Aliyah. Outside of extreme situations, there was no harm in verbal communication.
“This is me, but it’s not 100% me. It’s like, 99% me. That 1% is what lets the real me walk outside intact, while the avatar would disintegrate.”
“So you cannot swap bodies?”
“No, there’s importance to the real body. The others are all clones, and only the one is real, no matter how physical they seem here. Unfortunately, it’s not a way to cheat death, beyond exiting here anyway.”
Annihilating her body would separate Nara from physical reality. She wouldn’t go to the realm of the dead, but neither could she return to the land of the living. The issue was creating a physical body—if she could recreate Amara’s ritual, she may be able to forcefully induce another outworlder body creation to revive herself. But that was another entry in a long list of ‘you’re not well-learned enough to pull this off’ that Nara kept on a little slip in her soul library.
Avatar Nara stood back as Aliyah took her first look at the realm. She hadn’t opened the portal up at the lakeside pavilion, but rather at the city within her soul. It was inspired by a modern Earth city, but buildings were no more than 8-12 stories tall. More European city than American or Australian city. The architecture was an eclectic mix of modern glass, Sanshi inspired wood and stone archways and rafters, and classic romantic European, without the grime of pollution and trash, the differing architecture forming something Nara coined as ‘green-romantic-Zen’. The greenery was plentiful, as usual, with many buildings with rooftop gardens. Often there were intermediate gardens, of the Zen variety. Streams and rivers ran through the city, water so clear Aliyah had a strange urge to dip her fingers inside and drink it down, despite lacking any need to drink water anymore. Birds flittered through the sky, or rested upon the many lake parks. Cats draped themselves lazily on fences, ledges, windowsills, and steps, making a nuisance of themselves as usual. Every so often, dogs that resembled wolves trotted by, tails up and happily wagging.
The city was walkable, without a single car in sight. Cars were Nara’s eternal enemy, her seething hatred born of traffic and a daily commute of a blacktop suburbia. She would never subject herself or anyone else to that cruel and unusual punishment in her soul city. Instead, both an extensive subway system and light rail system ran through the city. Vehicle lanes were separated from the walking roads. All was gently shaded by trees, protecting them from the admittedly mild and pleasant sunlight.
Aliyah was at the top of a tower—an arrival pavilion, she recognized. A plaza surrounded the pavilion tower, indicating it as the heart of the city. Looking over the city, it was odd to Aliyah that there was no divine plaza. All cities had a divine plaza. Even Nekroz, supposedly, with their evil, chaos, or neutral gods. Why would the god of the realm have a divine plaza to gods that do not exist here, she realized.
Same as the first time, she felt Nara’s aura suffused through the entire domain. The railing she ran her hand against, the very air she breathed. The sunlight that kissed her skin, and the gentle breeze that swayed with her hair.
“What a fascinating sensation,” she mused. She did feel a different sense—a sense of restriction. While she was dead, Nara could not restrain her soul, unless she revived Aliyah’s body temporarily. Her soul was free to leave. Souls could not be trapped. The physical body functioned as the method to interact with physical reality, as well as an unintentional prison for the soul. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation, rather, it was just the awareness of it. The same as reality—the soul was no freer there than here. Except Nara herself was reality with her hand on the levers of life and death as she wished.
On by one, the other members of the team passed through the portal, each experiencing the same sensations Aliyah had just worked through. Lastly, Nara herself stepped through the portal. Avatar Nara had been correct; she did feel different.
It was like the avatar was the moon, and Nara was the sun. It was her reflection, not the real source of light. She felt intrinsically connected to the domain in a way Aliyah did not understand nor could explain other than the obvious—it was her soul. She also felt the power that swept past them. It was like divinity had manifested, the rolling waves of power—except she embodied all the power. Not just a singular concept, a singular authority. She reigned it back, and she felt normal again. The Nara they all knew and recognized, yet bellying an endless power.
“Shall we start testing?” Nara said. “Unfortunately, the only bronze rankers we have are Encio and I, so I can’t test the limits for higher rankers.”
“What did you think to test first?” Aliyah asked. She was the first to recover from her reverie.
“Distance. I can portal anywhere in the world, but I don’t know if that applies to everyone else. I have a baseless feeling that it doesn’t.”
“Baseless?”
“Perhaps not baseless,” Nara admitted. “According to my instincts, I can probably transport anyone of any rank. My portal to this realm doesn’t bar anyone from coming inside, if they can make it in in the first place. Exiting is rather more complicated.”
Essence abilities were instinctual on some level. Nara’s control here at a base level was the same, although detailed actions required understanding and exploration. She could, for example, changed the way light itself looked, felt, and worked. Fine tuning would require practice and a greater knowledge of physics, as well as some creative capacity. Changing light itself, after all, was not a function based in reality.
“The portal inside ignores the rank capacity.”
“It’s not even really a portal going inside,” Nara hummed. “It’s more a doorway.”
“Or an astral space aperture,” Aliyah posed as an alternative. “The normal ones have no restriction on rank, no matter the rank of the ambient magic.”
“Exactly. However, when I think about distance, my instinct changes. Your own soul is aware of your original position in reality, where this is between realities. I can ignore distance thanks to my Astral Traveler ability, but that doesn’t apply to others. Basically, exiting this location back to reality means conforming with the limitations of reality. My limitations. Some of them at least.”
(Planets, of course, moved at tens of thousands of miles per hour in their orbits, so portal distances (and other position and distance-based abilities) were a function of relative positioning, not absolute, or portals would be shucking them off into the dead of space.)
“Distance, not capacity.”
“Not entirely. Those who enter are free to enter at any rank—if they can bring themselves to cross the threshold. However, if I were to conjure a portal to a different location, I don’t think they’d be able to exit.”
“You’re just saying your portal ability functions as normal. It’s not that complicated,” Eufemia said. “Everyone can skip inside to take a look at your soul, but you can’t take them anywhere beyond your ability limits.”
“Yep, pretty much. So I can open portals to reality, but transporting those other than myself must still obey the distance limitations from their last location in reality.”
“Which, if true, poses an issue,” concluded Aliyah.
“Yes. Long term, that means I’m not sure I can use this portal to transport others, like John, across dimensions.”
That shook John out of his fugue. He had studied a bit on astral magic and portal magic. Portal magic was important to the healers, and moving civilians to safety was important for treatment and saving lives.
“What would change that?” he asked.
“I don’t know. My best guess is an understanding of the magic required for dimensional passage. That’ll just take more studying. We have the full library, but working through it all is an issue. The time I’ve had with it so far is just not enough. Or some sort of magical item…I don’t know what’s possible or what’s needed in that case.”
“Why do you need an understanding? You can’t just—” John waved his hands, “Will it into working?” John knew it wasn’t that simple, but he had to ask.
“I’ve mentioned that the only things that I can make here and bring out to reality are objects I understand. Spirit coins are easy—there’s just materialized magic. I can make stable ones up to my rank, so bronze rank. As for other objects that I can make permanent—water for one. A few other things….”
She trailed off, making a realizing she was better off not committing to spoken word. It was a revelation that would overwhelm this current conversation, so she kept it to herself, for now. She did trust her team with the information, once she told it.
“…I have a feeling though,” Nara continued after her original pause, “That the longer I experiment with this place, the greater my ability to make permanent changes to…”
“To what?”
“To others, reality, anything, I guess. I’m like a toddler at a piano. I can bang on the keys and make sound, but It’ll take dedicated study and practice to achieve mastery and make a song. For example, while Aliyah was dead here, I could have revived her. But my revival would not stay in reality. She’d die if she left through the portal, if she was dead now. Except…”
“Except what?”
“Theoretically, okay? If I killed Aliyah now, and then just reverted her back to a living state, she could leave alive. If I killed Aliyah, then revived her, the revival wouldn’t stick.”
“That sounds like the same exact thing,” Eufemia said exasperatedly. “Why would that change anything?”
“One is restoration to a recorded state,” John reasoned. “And the other is magic you cannot cast?”
“Right. I don’t have to do anything fancy because I’d just be putting you back together the way you came in. It isn’t time reversal exactly, since time still progresses, but I can copy the previous state of existence into the present. That doesn’t harm anything, since that’s your default state to begin with. But we’re getting a little sidetracked,” Nara said. “My point is that I need to understand something well enough to do it here without having it kill them when they leave.”
“Why would it kill them?” Aliyah posed, head tilted curiously.
“Ah. I can explain that,” John said in a rare moment of being the relevant expert.
“For once,” Eufemia muttered.
John shot her a look of fake displeasure. “There’d be a disconnect between the soul, body matrix, and body. If the disconnect is severe enough, the soul would try to change it back, which might kill the body.”
“Right,” Nara said, “If I just changed your hair color, your soul would revert it back when you left. It might stay for a little bit, but not for long. As essence users, we heal from changes back to the normal dictated by our body matrix.”
“But if you removed the heart of a person that still needed it,” John said. “They would die when they stepped outside, even if they could live with it gone in this realm.”
“Yeah. So, just a little common sense. Don’t do anything that’d kill anybody. If I did, revert it.” Nara paused. “…We got sidetracked again.”
Aliyah grinned without guilt.
“For now, there is no faster way than to master astral magic. Sorry John. Although, at least, I won’t have to be gold rank or something. I can bypass rank here.”
“That’s fine and all, but who knows what will come first at the rate you’re mastering astral magic: Gold rank or dimensional magic mastery.” Aliyah just had to be too realistic on the subject of study.
“Are you bitter because you think I’m not studying enough?”
“No, of course not,” Aliyah too swiftly denied.
“Might as well give it a spin then,” John said, moving the conversation forward. “The whole portal thing.”
They were all suddenly teleported down into the plaza from the top of the tower where they were all at. They hadn’t felt themselves move, yet there were in a different location. A new portal was in front of them.
“This portal leads to Aviensa,” Nara said. “Which is waaaaay outside of my ability portal range.”
Aliyah stepped forward, and tried to get through the portal, pressing on it. It was as solid as a steel vault door, entirely immovable and impermeable. Nara stepped through it, disappearing from the realm, then stepped back through the portal.
“So, that’s a no go,” she said. “As I thought.”
“There’s great value in veracity,” Aliyah said, already writing the revelations down. She had so far recorded every one of Nara’s hypothesis, and marked which ones were verified.
“Alright, now its configured for the edge of Sanshi,” Nara said.
Aliyah approached the portal, and successfully passed through.
“Encio, could you do so at least 3 times?”
He nodded, and did as Aliyah asked.
“That verifies her theory on capacity,” Aliyah said. “At bronze 0, Nara should only be able to transport a bronze ranker once.”
“So I can ignore capacity of the same rank, but not of a higher rank. That’s a little unexpected.”
“We haven’t verified whether that’s true for higher rankers,” Aliyah said. “We only have your instinct to go off of.”
“Even then,” Eufemia said, looking around the realm, “I don’t think any random gold ranker would saunter in here so carefreely. If they were dumb enough to ignore their instincts without trusting you, they’ll immediately figure out inside that you could kill them.”
“A trust requirement is difficult ask for any random bloke,” John said.
“The best benefit of all this is,” Nara said, “Is my ability to escape. And some other things, that I’ll explain at another opportunity. I think we’ve spent long enough here for today.”
Sen tone was curious but proud. “When have you been able to enter portals?”
“Not just any portal,” Nara denied, “Just my own.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“Uh… I did a little stunt to delay Siyu. Chrome wouldn’t approve it at the time unless I promised to use my own portal.”
He narrowed his eyes disapprovingly at her vague answer. She was infinitely more powerful than Sen here, but she still felt the judgement like a priest frowning disapprovingly at their god. Nara noticed Sen was surprisingly effective at leveraging his disapproval. He was getting subtler. Gah! And it was effective at making her feel guilty!
“I may have let Siyu suck my blood,” she reluctantly admitted, chastised on Sen’s weighty gaze alone.
“Are you crazy?” Eufemia burst out, suddenly shoving up forwards into Nara’s personal space in a rare show of aggressive body language. “That was incredibly dangerous! You could have been transformed into a vampire!”
“I’m fine,” Nara reassured her, tone soft. “That racial ability of mine is effective against transformative and body-based effects. It blunted the effects of his curse, and my blood attacked his body from the inside out. Nobody can claim what’s part of me,” Nara said. “Not even my blood.”
Sen arms were crossed, still sporting an aura of disappointment that Nara found herself quickly growing used to.
“You should have told us about this plan.”
“I didn’t have much time. He was killing people!”
“You have a communication power.”
“I can’t really double task that well.”
“Now that’s nonsensical,” John chuckled. “You’re the best multitasker here.”
“Isn’t that you? You rival Lawrence in reading speed and information processing, and you don’t have an ability to boost it.”
“I’m not fast, I’m just efficient and good at recognizing patterns. A skill honed of years of deskwork.”
“Is there something about your world that makes you good multitaskers in different ways?” Aliyah mused. “You both seem quite adept in it in various ways.”
“I think musicians are good at multitasking in general,” Nara said, happy to sidetrack once again. “I was a musician on Earth too. You have to sight read, tune your instrument, produce good tone, match pitch with the rest of the group, follow the tempo, pay attention to dynamics and style, and watch your breathing.”
Nara hadn’t remembered what instrument she had played on Earth. If she needed to watch her breathing, then the instrument she played must have been a brass instrument or a woodwind. She had committed to the lute in this world. It was a musing for another time.
Sen angrily cleared his throat, quieting the group.
“Nara.”
“…Yes?” she responded guiltily.
“Next time, communicate your intentions. Even if you carry it out against my advice, I at least want to know about it. I care about your safety. The only way we can help is with knowledge. Do you understand?”
“…Yes.”