Chapter 131: Rekindling Friendships
John sighed as he exited the domain portal, “Why don’t I have a mystical kingdom of my soul? I haven’t had any thoughts of being a god, but it all seems rather harmless. Nice and safe.”
“Unless someone enters,” Eufemia said.
“Nice and safe for me,” John stressed. “I like safe.”
“I have a thought about that,” Nara said following John through, “I think, originally, it would have just been an inventory ability like yours. We outworlders usually have our body annihilated in dimensional crossing. Mine wasn’t—”
“Your body wasn’t destroyed?”
“I think it’s in a coma. The point is though, that for a long time I acted as if I didn’t have a body, while John, yours on Earth had been vaporized by the dimensional crossing. Then recreated.”
“Dead as a doorknob,” he agreed.
“So, I noticed when we retrieved the bodies from Graff that the Adventure Society did something called a body reclamation ritual,” Nara said.
“Ah,” Aliyah explained, “While looting has a similar effect, the body reclamation ritual preserves the body if it is primarily magic, such as higher rankers. Looting a silver ranker would cause their body to disintegrate as it’s reached as similar level of pure magic as outworlder bodies, so a body reclamation ritual is a method to retrieve items from a dimensional storage without destroying the corresponding body. Looting a body is considered rude, so this is the alternative.”
“But the whole premise of outworlders, or soul-born as Zariel calls it, is that our bodies are recreated. That means, as a premise, the body is an unreliable location to store our items. Or to attach a dimensional space. However that works.”
“You’re saying that my inventory is also attached to my soul too?”
“Yeah. If you get the right racial ability evolution, maybe you’ll have a little soul playground. You and your kids can go swinging on cloud swings and sliding down slides made of pudding.”
“They’re a little old for that,” John said, but his tone said he bought into the idea.
“I’d like to verify that,” Aliyah muttered, “But that would mean we’d need to loot an outworlder. Shame, they’re so rare.”
“No,” Nara denied with rising suspicion, “That’s not a shame. And we don’t want to see any dead outworlders. Any dead anybody.”
“If I get a chance,” Aliyah said. “At least a body reclamation ritual.”
“No.”
“If I outworld myself then die, could you use a body reclamation ritual on me before I get revived?”
“Absolutely not. Aliyah, stop trying to die. Once is enough.”
Aliyah’s dewy puppy dog eyes were not convincing.
*****
With easy access to her Astral Domain, there was little reason to use her door domain or temporary domain. The door domain was still useful for storing and removing large objects from her inventory. The temporary domain had little payoff for what the nebula house could provide without her dedicated concentration. Never say never, however; the challenges of adventurer life were a lesson in niche use cases.
Reading over her Guide logs (something she did when she was procrastinating studying astral magic), Nara had noticed a curious entry—an iron rank boar monster had been killed and looted by her ability during their battle with Siyu, yet she had no recollection of such a kill.
“What could this have possibly come from?” she mused. She was still out and about Sanshi while the other members of the team were making further attempts to advance to bronze. It had been another three weeks. Just John and Eufemia were left, and they were tantalizingly on the verge like a steak just out of reach on the countertop for a hungry lab too short to tip it onto the floor. If they just stretched a little further…
She made her own light progress in the meantime. Bronze rank would take another year or so, likely a year and a half or two years. Iron rank progress was typically extended into a year by gaining awakening stones and training fundamental abilities from scratch, otherwise it’d last shorter. For someone like Sen and Encio, if they hadn’t other reasons to slow down, they could’ve accomplished iron to bronze in half a year by pushing through with non-stop monster contracts. Adventuring families knew the value of taking iron rank at an easy pace—consequences were usually low, and the skills and lessons learned then would save their lives at later ranks. Iron rank was a rank of fragility. Learning a mindset of caution and preparedness wasn’t so easy at higher ranks when not even a bullet through the eye would kill you, until someone figured out how to do it and splattered your head cavity across the blacktop.
The adventuring world was split on this topic. Those who wanted to train seasoned and reliable adventurers valued the inherent danger of iron rank: This was the stand of the Arlang family. The other prevalent view was to push past the fragility of iron into bronze as quickly as possible, then develop important lessons there, where mistakes weren’t so fatal.
The second method had improved survivability in the short term—you couldn’t die at iron rank if you weren’t iron rank. However, there were no definitive, organized studies to figure out in the long term whether the first or second method resulted in high rank survival rates or influenced ascension to gold and diamond ranks.
There was value in both methods. The Arlang’s worldwide prominence was a testament to their method. Yet, who could deny the increased monetary gain of bronze rank contracts and superhuman durability?
Nara thought over the battle with Siyu: He had his Bloodstone Servants, his Crystalline Monstrosity, and his vampirized monster horde.
“Ranshi had handled those monsters, in front of my domain door,” she slowly realized, “One must have made it through.”
And her domain door had killed the iron rank intruder.
She looked over the description of Soul Legion once again.
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Racial Ability: [Soul Legion]
Language adaptation. Essence, awakening stone, and skill book absorption. Immunity to identification and tracking. Resistance to dimension-restriction effects. This is a legacy effect of [Free Spirit].
Transfigured from [Soul Sanctuary] by [Blessing of Legion].
A portion of all familiars are kept within your soul even when familiars are not subsumed. This allows you to use effects and abilities granted by familiars as if they are subsumed and telepathically communicate with them from any distance. When familiars are subsumed, their subsumed effects have increased effect.
Your body is considered your territory. Your territory is hostile to enemies that trespass within it, damaging them in the process. Your subsumed familiars may attack foreign entities within your territory. The attacks and damage of your familiars when attacking foreign entities is based off their characteristics. You can control the strength of this effect or disable it. This effect applies to any object or territory connected to your soul. This effect shares your ability to ignore rank disparity.
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“Anything connected to my soul? That would include this nebula house on top of the door domain.”
Her Astral Domain counted too, although this effect was pointless there. What need does a god have for physical defenses?
Cloud flasks and her nebula flasks had impressive defenses. They were world famous for well-deserved reasons. Not only for their adaptability, but for their strength as a mobile fortress. Now that she was bronze rank, she had also upgraded her nebula flask to bronze rank as well.
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Item: [Nebula Flask] (bronze rank [growth], legendary)
Classification: cloud, star, vehicle, artifact
A nebula within a flask.
This item is bound to [Nara Edea] and cannot be used by anyone else.
Use the energies within the nebula flask to create buildings and vehicles made of nebula cloud. Available forms are restricted by rank.
Items contained within the nebula construct when it is returned to the flask are stored in a dimensional space and cannot be recovered until another nebula construct is formed.
Available forms (Iron): Nebula house (grand), Nebula house (adaptive).
Available forms (Bronze): Carriage house (grand), Carriage house (adaptive).
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The carriage house was the transportation form of the nebula flask. It could transform into a form suitable for land, sea, or low altitude air travel. It’d be their primary mode of transportation in the future, outside of portals.
Their team was shaping up to have several portals.
Aliyah’s Rune Gate had developed into a portal at bronze rank, from it’s inventory powers at iron rank.
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Ability: [Rune Gate]
Awakening Stone: Holding
Special Ability / Conjuration
Cost: None
Cooldown: None / 10 minutes
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Effect (Iron): Allows the user to store items in a dimensional pocket.
Effect (Bronze): Allows the users to create a portal that is able to transport 10 Iron rank individuals, 1 bronze rank individual, or equivalent amount of mass. Items in dimensional storage do not count towards this limit. This effect has a 10 minute cooldown.
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It had the same capacity and distance scaling as Nara’s portal ability. Almost all portal abilities followed this standard. Nara’s Astral Affinity gave her a slight increase in portal distance beyond the norm, but that was the case for any portal user with Astral Affinity. Portal Specialists were most commonly found in celestines, who shared their Astral Affinity with outworlders. The specialization was rare to begin with, needing expensive essences, but celestines were the gold standard.
Eufemia’s Mirror Realm was the single most utility packed ability Aliyah had ever seen. It was a never seen before ability, completely new to Eufemia.
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Ability: [Mirror Realm]
Special Ability / Conjuration
Cost: None / Very high mana
Cooldown: None / 10 minute
Effect (Iron): You have a personal, dimensional storage space. You may duplicate known armor conjurations. This may make your version of the ability higher or lower rank than the original, including losing or gaining additional effects from higher ranks. Duplicating armor incurs a very high mana cost. Duplicated armor adapts to your body. Duplicated armor can be equipped and unequipped directly onto your person. Duplicated armor conjurations that are completely destroyed must be re-duplicated. A single duplicated conjuration may be stored at a time.
Effect (Bronze): Up to three armor conjurations can be duplicated and stored. Duplicated armor conjurations are gradually repaired when stored. Non-duplicated armor and equipment may be directly equipped and unequipped directly onto your person.
Effect (Bronze): Conjure a mirror gate between two locations on a regional scale. The distant gate must appear at a location you previously visited. This effect is a conjuration with a very high mana cost and a 10-minute cooldown. Other effects can still be used while this ability is on cooldown.
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It boasted an inventory, armor conjuration, and portal ability in a 3-for-1 special. Eufemia’s inventory capacity was, however, the smallest—small enough that she had to assign due consideration for what she kept on hand—yet Eufemia was surprised to find herself with the most enviable ability in the party for once. Duplication specialists like Eufemia often suffered at low rank due to the complex nature of their abilities and their reliance on allies or enemies: using an enemy’s own ability against them was fun in theory, but often ineffective. Encio, for example, was fast enough and knew his own abilities well enough that Eufemia rarely ever hit him with his own God-Sundering Slash in mirage chamber battles. Eufemia would never be as fast and agile as swift essence users with their swift attacks, or as strong and sturdy as might essence users with their mighty attacks. Despite this, she was starting to see the incredible versatility and transformative power these ability sets held at higher ranks.
Despite his Dimension Essence, none of Encio’s abilities manifested a portal. He already knew since iron rank that was the case, since his family had tailored his abilities for him. For those that had known bronze rank upgrades, none of them had a portal ability. For abilities without a known bronze rank upgrade, none of them had been likely to develop into a portal either.
Upon the discovery that Soul Legion affected anything connected to her soul, Nara had tried several more experiments with the nebula flask. Unfortunately, none of them bore fruit. She had attempted to directly portal to her nebula flask beyond her normal portal range, but it had not worked. She could portal to her Astral Domain from anywhere, but the Nebula Flask, while soul bound, did not share this characteristic.
*****
Many students attended the Adventurer’s Academy, bronze rankers included. While there were sparring grounds for bronze rankers, the bronze rankers that remained attended for the Academy’s educational classes. Enterprising adventurers saw the value of the educational opportunities provided by the Adventure Academy beyond just slaying monsters. Higher level education in Erras was uncommon beyond churches and the Magic Society. Most adventurers could read, not because they had learned little, but because their higher spirit attributes made learning language incredibly easy. By silver rank, everyone could read, regardless of whether they had tried to learn or not. Both the Prep Academy and Adventure Academy offered literacy classes, although none in the party had needed them. Eufemia had been the only one with an educational background in doubt, but she was far too enterprising to ever miss the advantage literacy provided.
In Erras, the nobles pushed back against general education, with the church of knowledge in opposition, offering free basic education where they could. The nobles of Sanshi had not originally opposed the literacy classes offered by the Academies—essences users were inevitably upper crust, no matter what socioeconomic class they started at. The adventurer flunkies would gain stable employment as guards for nobles’ estate, so nobles had no inherent issues with the education of essence users.
What they had not realized was that the Academies heralded the coming era. Small scale formal trade education was on the rise, along with literacy rates. Various societies started sponsoring their own academies. The Magic Society gained their members through mentorship and apprenticeship; however they saw the value of larger scale education. The Labor Society needed people who could understood economics and currency. The Trade Society needed well educated traders, linguists, and those who could calculate and determine shipping schedules. With Sanshi’s growing population, the local government needed more people. Employing only essence users was expensive, which meant they needed literate civilians.
The bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
Nara walked the academy grounds, partially training her own aura, and partially enjoying the familiar and comforting grounds. She was working on a new technique based on her experiences with Sezan and her own insights. She’d need to work it over with Laius. Her half-training half-leisure was interrupted when she felt a familiar aura at the iron ranker’s sparring grounds.
Duncan Walker was at the training grounds, practicing with a shield. He wasn’t starting at the bottom like Nara had, nor had the boost of a skill book. Even though he had started his path by completing odd jobs, he had not stopped training at the Prep Academy either. He was just average, of course, but would keep at it like raindrops eroding stone. Someday, he’d become a natural wonder.
He was with Alea Len (Nara was unsurprised that she had judged Duncan the most likely to get himself killed. Defenders were predisposed to self-sacrifice). She was attacking him with a wooden dagger. She was skilled with a small blade, hitting him repeatedly through his guard. The wooden dagger did no damage, only stunning Duncan, but the blows would still hurt. It served to toughen up new essence users to pain. Like Nara, some hadn’t been in fight before. Not all went through the Prep Academy for their essences, and even those who did, not all were physical competitors.
He learned slowly, but kept at it. Gradually learning how to space himself from Alea, how to move his shield to block, and what positions left which of his own body vulnerable.
She remembered how she had learned similarly with Vallis, and found herself a little forlorn over that lost friendship.
The aura technique she was practicing was one that spread out her presence like a mist, making it difficult to detect her. When she first arrived in Aviensa, Sezan had been using a more active technique—subtly pushing aside other people’s perception to push them away from a specific area. Her’s was a combination of various inspirations and making use of her original strange aura properties. Her aura had been described as mist-like before, so she leveraged that property. She wanted her aura to blend into the surroundings, then have her own person do the same—a figure in the mist.
When executed well, people would pass by her without realizing she was there. When she failed, she’d get strange looks for standing at the top of the statue in the portal plaza. Her success rate against other essence users was incredibly low, while against normal people it was far easier to pull off. Their lack of active control over their auras meant that subtle manipulation was easier to pull off.
It wasn’t a thought she enjoyed. That people lived without realizing their auras were pushed aside, feeling as though they shouldn’t walk in a certain direction for no particular reason, like chattel.
Conversely, the instinct to leave when confronted with a stronger aura or being redirected was inherently of self-preservation. Normal people could sense the danger. If the manipulation was towards death or danger, Nara was sure it wouldn’t be as effective. It was because it was harmless or beneficial that it worked.
Erras had their own ethics; They focused less on the intermediate details than the whole picture, as long as the details themselves weren’t too extreme. So, practicing aura manipulation on civilians was fine as long as you did nothing to harm them. Getting into fights with other essence users was fine as long as nobody died, and it didn’t become torturous or unduly humiliating.
She was undetected by Alea and Duncan as she sat at the table, enjoying a snack with Thanatos beside her. He was the familiar that most liked spending time outside, even if he hadn’t anything specific to do. Chrome liked to play competitive table games and cook. Sage liked to busy herself around the house, grocery shop, read new books (she had a penchant for the gossip), and complete other tasks. Nara wondered if Thanatos’ companionship if it was out of consideration for her—she didn’t like to be alone.
While Alea was harsh towards Duncan and critical of his flaws and mistakes, she could see their bond growing. Duncan was happy to have a teacher who didn’t give up on him. Alea was impressed with his perseverance. Alea didn’t trust easily, yet Duncan was clearly an earnest, honest, and straightforward fellow. He was common folk, just like her, just trying to make his way in the world and fulfill his dreams. She saw that aspect of herself in him. She wanted to protect her little brother’s dreams and fulfill her own, to dirty her own hands to keep his clean.
Another aura surprised her: Vallis Nisei. She was still iron rank, but Nara’s surprise disrupted her concentration, breaking her mist concealment. Vallis strode confidently over, the same upright and bold young woman Nara had grown used to.
“Nara, it has been some time.” She gestured to the seat across from Nara. “Can I sit?”
“Go for it.”
She joined Nara across the table, looking out at the training field at Alea and Duncan.
“Do you know those two students?”
“I’m sponsoring one of them, and a teammate has a contract with another. You don’t know Alea?”
Vallis raised an eyebrow. “She’s my aunt’s type of person, I can tell. I’m not privy to all my aunt has done.”
“Sorry.” For assuming she was, Nara supposed.
“Don’t be. For aunt and niece we were close. She was my family in this area. My parents are back in the Nisei territory. It’s a natural assumption that we shared more than just kinship, such as information and intentions...” Her eyes looked beyond Nara, wistful of her own lost relationships. “I wanted to congratulate you on bronze rank,” she said, shifting the conversation. Congratulating rank ups was an important aspect of Erras’ culture, and Vallis was too well-raised to forget it.
“Thanks. It’s a recent development.” Nara scanned Vallis’ aura, iron just below the floor of bronze, around minor ranks 8 and 9. “You’re not far yourself.”
“I’ve been delayed by recent events, so you’ve surged on ahead of me,” Vallis said with a smile.
“How was that, are you okay?”
“I’m fine! Just fine!” She laughed, but it was a shade off from true heartiness. “I was questioned by the Adventure Society, but nothing rough.”
“Only kiddie gloves for you?” Nara snarked.
“Ha! They could’ve been rougher with me. I was offended to be treated as if I was so delicate, I couldn’t have handled an aura workover and a little tussling! It would at least been an exciting story to tell, but all I have is a long absence and nothing to show for it.” She bombastically thumped her chest, asserting the resilience of her body and mind.
The confidence in her next words faded a touch, hesitancy seeping in like ink through wet paper.
“When I rank up to bronze, how about we spar again? If you’d like.”
“Yeah, I love to.”
“Really? Is that fine?” she asked again, unsure: a rarity of Vallis that Nara decided she had seen enough of.
“It is. Vallis you’re my first friend my age on this world.”
Vallis wasn’t the sappy sort, but Nara’s words caused her to squeeze her eyes shut, dam walls holding back rising water.
“…This world has given you a poor showing,” she said softly.
“My world mistreats their own people; all worlds do, and we should all work to change that. I just wasn’t on the worst end of it there. Even here I’m still blessed with generosity, companions, and kindness. Scars might remain, but the pain has faded, Vallis.”
Nara once again felt the strange reversal of roles. Vallis had been her senior in life and experience here. Now, Nara was the one comforting her. She’d like to think she was now Vallis’ equal in experience. That they were now true peers speaking from the same step in the staircase of life.
“You like hugs?” Nara asked.
“What, do you?” Vallis smirked, wiping her leaky eyes on her sleeves, scrubbing tears away to reveal a smile.
“You may not be the sappy sort but I am.”
“How about a handshake?”
“I can do that.”
The two stood, strongly grasping each other’s hands in a two-handed handshake, both grinning wildly upon feeling the warmth of each other’s hands. Vallis’ hands were roughened and callused, a part of normal rank carried through, her perseverance a treasured part of her identity.
“Bronze rank, Vallis, don’t be a stranger. Now it’s your turn to catch up.”
“Catch up to what?” she scoffed good-naturedly. “You haven’t surpassed me in skill.”
“Don’t be too surprised when you eat dirt next time. You might find yourself finding a new friend with the ground.”
“I wouldn’t want to break up your friendship with it. I know how much you value your friends.”
“I think we all should be friends. I don’t mind, let me introduce you.”
“Ha! If you’re successful, I’ll treat you to a nice meal. The nicest place I know.”
“Do you think I’d find that impressive now? I’ll have you know I was once a 3-star adventurer.”
“Now, you are not. You’re back to 1-star again!”
“You’re taking big for someone who hasn’t gotten past 2-stars ever. Are you sure you aren’t royalty, princess?”
“How about we settle this now? I don’t believe I can’t win against you even at iron rank.”
“Now that’s dog wash and you know it. Get ready to get friendly, Vallis.”
“Do your best to introduce me. This is your only chance.”