Chapter 139: Warm Fuzzies

Erras general lack of military force under government control was the confluence of several factors. For one, essence users traveled to other locations in order to train. They needed to progress from low magic to higher magic zones, which led to an inevitable broadening of perspectives and cyclical movement. Some essence users could of course stay at iron and bronze rank, and those essence users were the ones who retired to work for local governments and nobles, forming the local peacekeepers and patrolmen. However, the skilled and experienced adventurers were the ones who had traveled the world.

Secondly, the Adventure Society paid well. While iron rank was the most difficult and the tightest expense-wise, bronze rank contracts and beyond made a good living; For most adventurers, that was anywhere from six months to four years of struggle. Not extreme by any length, and especially not to those of Sanshi who had waited years for their essences to begin with. Although they didn’t produce spirit coins like looting powers, looting rituals became resource positive at bronze rank, when used on bronze rank monsters. The payout was two-fold, once from the contract, and the second from the ritual. Most adventurers at bronze rank had a basic ritualist on the team (at least in Sanshi, where most adventurers got a basic education in it), either as an auxiliary or a core member, who could perform a looting ritual. Alternatively, they could hire an Adventure Society member to tagalong on contracts and perform the ritual for them.

Thirdly, the Adventure Society was flexible. Their charter with local governments could be negotiated, and could be renegotiated every 5 to 10 years. Adventurers in smaller cities often had more authority, while those in established cities had less authority. The Adventure Society were experts at dealing with disasters and monsters, and actively funded the research of rituals for communications and other methods to increase their effectiveness. They could contract adventurers from afar to help regions in need, which was a boon for less developed regions with little opportunistic draw. They serviced any region that would contract with them; the sole exception on Erras was Nekroz. While they were a political body, their lack of direct political ties meant dispatching adventurers to deal with disaster was considerably easier, without needing to work through the slowing mud of bureaucracy. Since keeping the population alive was necessary to even having a civilization in the first place, their expediency was necessary. Accordingly, the local government had an incentive regardless of political intentions to make sure their contract with the Adventure Society was profitable to the adventurers and the society.

Fourthly, the Adventure Society and many adventuring families turned their noses down at attempts to consolidate the power of essence users under a government. The very nature of essence users, with greater personal power increasing political power meant anyone that wanted to establish an army needed to be the most powerful person in the country. As such, only royal families with diamond rankers had any success in establishing royal guards and loyalist militaries. Combined with the general disdain of the populace, these factors meant that private armies hadn’t stuck, although many noble families hired washed out or failed adventurers as guards.

Thusly, the general view of the population towards adventurers was more of respect—they were expert monster hunters, those who pushed back the tide of disaster and fought against the forces of evil, whether it be alien invaders or devotees of the evil gods. The mirage competitors, conversely, were like local celebrities. They hadn’t the same license-to-kill aura and mystique of adventurers, many themselves with pure, untouched hands of snow white.

The brave ones who talked to adventurers wanted to be adventurers. The ordinary folk who had no interest in the lifestyle wanted to talk to the mirage competitors instead.

The end of the year festival, on top of its performance and competition extravaganza, was an intellectual showcase as well. Sanshi was the hub of learning of the Shian Union.

Nara often attended lectures with John and Aliyah, although it was clearly Aliyah who found the most delight and understanding in the advanced topics. However, Sanshi did have seminars and lectures on entry level topics, such as the one Nara had just attended on the development of the Adventure Society, which John found equally fascinating. With the threat of monster waves every 10 years, an established Adventure Society was integral to the development of emergent cities who could not defend themselves. Otherwise, older cities like Sanshi had relied on the union of powerful local families for their defense.

There was a marked change in the development of cities pre-Adventure Society era, and post era. Civilization started in the low magic regions, where monster waves were easier to survive. Powerful families were the backbone of civilization. Once one person had essences and survived until bronze rank, it was easier to get the rest of their family essences, and they were the most likely next candidates. As such, adventurer dynasty families were the natural result of prioritizing family over strangers.

These seminars took place at both outdoor amphitheater and indoor lecture halls, provided by either the Adventure and Magic society or the Academies. Nara was using this opportunity to develop her astral magic knowledge along with John and Aliyah. Lawrence too, had been accompanying the group on their academia adventures. He was as usual, diligently copying the books in Nara’s Archive for posterity. At this rate, they’d need a new line on front covers to credit Lawrence with transcription.

They settled into seats at an outdoor amphitheater. They were in attendance at a research competition. Each attendee was awarded with three voting slips per session, divided by topic. The votes of the 5 judges made up 75% of the overall score, but the audience would influence the final outcome. The audience in attendance were mostly intellectuals or those with a passing interest, so the contestants had to balance their presentation between dry biscuit exposition and soda pop oration.

“So Lawrence,” Nara said, settling into some small talk, “How goes copying those books?”

His thin lips were pulled back into a distinctly unamused frown. “If I could express it as a succinct percentage, I will let you know.”

“Alright then. No need to get snippy,” she said, but Lawrence was wearing her gift, even now. It made her feel warm and fuzzy that he regularly used the glasses she had Henri make for him. He had originally been rather nervous and reserved, but revealed more of his attitude as he became familiar with the group.

“A silver ranker in my place would be far more efficient,” he muttered. He wasn’t dissatisfied with the task; Lawrence never had any dissatisfaction with what his goddess asked of him. He was dissatisfied with the inefficiency. Lawrence wasn’t quite bronze rank yet, once there, his ability to transcribe material would increase. Since Nara didn’t actually know what was in the books, neither did Knowledge the goddess. Lawrence needed to transcribe them to add them to Erras’ wealth of knowledge.

“Are you going to leave Sanshi with us then?” Nara mused, a side-thought of the situation.

He grumbled. “And I have your permission to follow?”

“What’s your goddess say? Isn’t she in charge of you?”

He frowned. “I am not a method in which to communicate directly with my…” he paused, expression shifting from indignance to resignation,“…my goddess says that I am to follow if permitted by your team.” His expression seemed to say he thought it would be a pain that he now had to advance himself to bronze rank in short order.

“Alright, I’ll ask Sen and the rest of the team.”

“I’d be delighted to have you, Lawrence,” Aliyah added warmly, sensing his dour mood. “There isn’t anyone on this team I can discuss advanced magic theory with whom I don’t have to teach. At the very least, an extra hand to help develop the magic knowledge of two outworlders who need to understand astral magic to return to their home world would be a great help.”

She looked at John and Nara with a raised eyebrow as if to say, ‘I am doing all of this for you’.

“I’m doing my best,” John muttered. “I’m putting my best foot forwards. I didn’t expect to master a whole new field in my 40s, but here I am. Not just one field, but two.”

“Oh we know John,” Aliyah said, patting his back with an expression of soft pity, “You are doing your best.”

John looked to Nara, with an expression of aggrievance of a golden retriever falsely blamed for the pot the cat knocked over, “I’m learning well, aren’t I? This stuff is difficult. I feel more educated than I was back in university. I’m not some daft bloke. I have an education!”

“You are, John. Of course you are. You’re doing great.”

He lightly sighed, and turned his attention to the presentation stage and away from his youngers who were teasing him.

The reward for the competition was awarded at the end of the week, with three places. The top prize this year was the claim to a Rune Essence, a popular essence for casters, crafters, and researchers. The winner could exchange their prize for the second or third place prizes, if they wanted, since essence combinations didn’t necessarily want the rarest essence. Second place was the uncommon Glass Essence, and third was the basic but desirable Magic Essence.

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In between each presentation was a 10 minute question and discussion period where the audience and judges could ask the presenter specifics and discuss the research between themselves. The event lasted the full day; They’d leave in between to check out the performances Eufemia had selected for them. The day was divided by topic, attendees could stay for only the hours that interested them.

“Aliyah, have you done a presentation like this before?”

“It was many years ago, but I have. Ah yes, it was Large Scale Layered Array Implementation using a Shared Array Framework. It won me my Gathering Essence.”

“Sounds about as fun as watching paint dry.” It wasn’t a particularly engaging title.

Lawrence shot Nara a unhappy look, “It may sound like that to you, Nara, but the concept of using similarities between arrays as a baseline to better overlap them in order to reduce the array load is a remarkable improvement in the field of overlapping arrays, which, Nara, is important for all the conveniences and defenses we enjoy in the city of Sanshi.”

Aliyah chuckled at Lawrence’s fervor, “It isn’t as big of a deal as Lawrence makes it sound.”

“I respectfully disagree.”

“Nara has a point: It was certainly too dry and too technical of a topic for a festival, but it wasn’t this sort of competition I won it in. It was an internal competition within the Magic Society. My research was about finding similarities in large scale arrays to use as a shared baseline, to reduce the load of array in a given space. With this method, you could overlay more arrays in the same area, and reduce overall mana consumption, particularly when using arrays simultaneously.”

“That does sounds really impressive.” Nara knew efficiency in size was and processing was part of the goal of modern computing. It was how room sized computers that outputted braille dots evolved into the pocket-sized smartphones held in the palm of the hand.

“I have my bit of fame too, miss inventor.”

“My respect for you grows, lady researcher,” Nara said with a dramatic bow, as best as she could perform from her seat.

“As long as you understand,” Lawrence said, partially satisfied, but still eying Nara skeptically.

It was probably inevitable that his evaluation of her intelligence dropped a bit.

*****

The astral magic section of the presentations were sparse, as many researchers had been abducted and killed over the years, or otherwise turned away from the field through monetary incentives, courtesy of Adventists that remained undiscovered. That didn’t mean there were none. Astral Magic was the theoretical physics of magic, and there were always curious researchers challenging the field and seeking the final frontiers of magic.

The presentations were a good refresher for Nara, who was surprised that she understood most of the material. The calculations she wasn’t as able to follow along, but concepts and theories were the star of the presentations, not the background formula and figures.

Magic Society researchers had studied the persistent portal arch in the Advent astral space. The presenter described their discoveries, and how they planned to create a persistent portal network across Erras. It was a technique The Advent had mastered, and one Erras wanted to harness for itself.

“…the persistent portal poses a large strain on the ambient magic. Installing portals in nearby astral spaces offsets the mana load onto the astral space, although it poses an infrastructure issue…Temporary activation of permanent portals greatly reduces the mana load, and is the most likely use scenario. The permanent portal can transport up to the rank of its construction, with no limit on capacity, however it drains mana per person that crosses its threshold. This cost increases with distance, unlike ability-based portal conjurations…”

In any world, it was the quintessential move to research the artifacts of other factions left behind and harness them for themselves. She was excited to see Erras slowly bridging the gap in their astral magic technologies.

Once the presentations of the astral magic block had ended, the four of them turned in their votes and headed to their next destination, a small local play recommended by Eufemia.

The celestine of merlot stood out among the crowd. Her posture and attitude warned others not to bother her at the moment. Thanks to that, the table that she sat at across from plaza stage was empty of onlookers and lollygaggers. Nara was always surprised by Eufemia’s startling ability to control a crowd, not through aura, but through posture and presence. With her skill book, From One to One Thousand, and Laius’ aura instruction, her already well-honed ability to leverage expression and actions to manipulate others had transformed Eufemia into a master of ceremony. She was the conductor with the crowd as her unaware orchestra.

The stage resembled the wooden ones of renaissance fairs. It was a quick construction, with wooden planks nailed and hammered into efficient and semi-sturdy platforms. These weren’t essence users; they didn’t have stone shapers to just make a stage, and stone and earth shaping wasn’t allowed in the city unless it was for construction, as it’d mess up the paved and tiled floors.

The four joined her at the table, and Sage’s various bodies returned right on cue with trays of food and drink from festival street vendors.

“Thank you, Sage.”

“Of course, benefactor.” She faded away, unseen but at her side like a phantom of dust.

They were a little early for the performance, so they began to snack on the food. Meat skewers were of various meat varieties, as nothing was standard. Bolo, heidel, and pheasant meat was common, as well as local fish varieties. Pitchers of various drinks were filled with either alcohol or festival cocktails. Noodle dishes were topping with shredded meat and submerged with an alcohol and fish based white broth that warmed the stomach and reddened the face.

“Nara,” Eufemia quietly said, with an accompanying aura nudge technique she had picked up from Laius, or perhaps her skill book. “I want to give you something.”

“What is it?”

She removed a tin of cosmetic cream from her inventory, placing it directly in Nara’s hand.

“It’s concealment cream,” Eufemia explained. “Covers up identifying marks, like scars and tattoos.”

“You know alchemy?”

“I know what’s useful.” Obviously, was implied. “I can make some magical hair dyes, skin tone potions, and color-changing contacts, if you want a change from your basic from brown on brown.”

“Ah,” Nara said teasingly, “And you’ve gotten tired of red on red?”

“When I’m being chased.” She twirled a lock of her shimmering, celestine hair. “Not great for making a stealthy escape, but great for an eye-catching distraction. I know you haven’t felt that you needed to cover up the scars Nara, but if you want the option, you have it.”

Nara didn’t have a use for the concealment cream yet, but if and when she returned to Earth, they did represent an aspect of her otherworldly escapade that she’d rather not explain. On Erras, they were marks of valor. Scars garnered respect. On Earth, her story would elicit pity or uncomfortable questions. She didn’t want pity, and she didn’t want the soft, soothing, voices and sympathetic yet shallow expression of those who would never understand why she’d wake up in a cold sweat, doubting reality.

“Thank you, Eufemia, I appreciate it.”

“I know the value of options,” Eufemia said. Her words articulated her pride in her abilities which provided her exactly that.

In Nara’s period of recovery, the one who had spent the most time in the mirage chambers had been Eufemia. She was under the instruction of Sen and the veteran essence users of his family and received dedicated training on how to anticipate enemy abilities. Her ability set could be a scalpel or a hammer, Eufemia needed to know which to pick.

Eufemia was prideful, but she could also easily abandon her pride. In Nekroz, she learned that pride was a tool. It could be used to dominate or cause someone else to underestimate her. She could build someone up and tear someone down. Make her pride appear to be a point of weakness, then discard that weakness when it is targeted. In battles against the most dangerous of foes—other people—emotions were weapons.

Eufemia had bowed her head and asked the Arlang family to mentor her. They obliged; it was a benefit provided to all Arlang team members.

The next time, Eufemia swore, she would be the one covering her team’s back, and not the one being picked up off the floor by Encio. She was harsh on herself, but Eufemia was an actress that pursued perfection, both on the stage of performance and the stage of battle.

Nara was curious, so she unscrewed the cap of the tin. The concealment cream was a similar color and translucency as petroleum jelly but with the consistency of oil-based moisturizer. It didn’t look like Earth’s concealers, painstakingly concocted to match a specific skin tone. She gently dabbed a finger into the tin, and spread it over the scar on her left wrist, both on the underside and topside of her arm. As she spread the cream, the scar seemed to vanish in a display of magical photoshop.

She touched her wrist in awe, unable to quite believe her eyes. She felt no difference at all, not the cream or the texture of scar tissue, not that her scars had any texture difference to begin with—they were representative, and not actual scar tissue.

“I’ll come off with crystal wash, but that stuff washes everything off,” Eufemia explained. “Anything else—water, blood, oil, sweat—won’t affect it. It’ll last around a day, but too much magic and the concealing effect will be overpowered.”

“Too much magic?”

Her brows crinkled, looking for an explanation that she vaguely remembered. “Aliyah said it was… something about the magic matrix asserting itself over any effects that differ from its matrix blueprint. Use too much magic, and your matrix realizes it shouldn’t be there, or your rank’s natural resistance to change asserts itself and removes the effect.”

“You’re not sure?”

“Does it matter? Either way, it doesn’t work once you decide to stop pretending to be the quiet girl and start deciding to be the violent girl. An ability here and there won’t remove the effect, but who needs concealment when blood will conceal it for you anyway?”

After saying her piece, Eufemia turned her attention towards the stage performance. The troupe had finished their preparations, and the troupe’s representative had started her introductory speech to kick off the performance. She was using a voice projection artifact, although it was a just a badge on her lapel rather than a megaphone or microphone.

The performance was an engaging story about the life of Chiyo Jeshi, who started as a common Sanshi woman who revitalized the performance culture, gained her essences, and went on to marry Aziel Fenhu. Actors playing actors was a challenging setting, but the Phoenix Feather Performance Troupe pulled it off. It held the ups and downs of what many suffered today both in Erras and on Earth—sexism, classism, interference from the powerful, and those that pressured her to use performances for propaganda. That’s not to say Sanshi’s performances didn’t have some level of propaganda now, but anyone could write a script, and troupes could perform what they wanted; accepting sponsorships was their discretion, but it hadn’t become the government-controlled media some nobility had wanted.

“That is a good troupe,” Encio said, giving his applause at the end of the play, “Dramatized, but otherwise historically accurate. I’m surprised with their quality.”

“Surprised? I’m the one who recommended it. What are you trying to say?”

The two bickered; Encio with his usual infuriating smugness and Eufemia with her barbed retorts, neither giving an inch.

*****

The warm fuzzies in her chest warmed her like a crackling fireplace in a winter storm. Nara had people around her that she loved, and loved her back.

She was content. Nara didn’t feel the highs of joyful exuberance, her emotions always flowed mildly, but the sun of Erras gentle warmed the sea of her emotions to comfort.

This world was a glittering jewel. It had its imperfections and inclusions, but it only mesmerized her further. She couldn’t let go of it. In a wonderous self-realization, Nara was glad that she existed. Whatever whim of the astral had allowed her soul to come back from the ashes, she was thankful it had.