Chapter 179: Chili and Trust
It was with perhaps a little too much reckless abandon that Nara ventured further northward of Stanton, a little more every day, between her normal operations in Kallid. It was easy enough to stand on a tree top and step forward, ‘Astral Skipping’ to traverse large distances.
She found Karsile, the city built on the southern bowl of the Great Bay; It was the city Eufemia had grown up in, and the last city of Rowen in the stretch of No Man’s Land between there and the first cities of Nekroz. She traced the recount of Eufemia’s journey to Sanity’s Cusp, an independent city belonging to neither Rowen nor Nekroz. Its existence was tolerated by both sides for the potential of information exchange (i.e. espionage), an odd mixture of order within criminals—the city still had an Adventure Society branch and the presence of the gods of prosperity (Called for their generally positive effect on the progress of civilization. The ‘evil’ gods, such as Deceit, Disguise, Greed, Envy, Undeath, Destruction, etc., were could also be referred to as gods of ‘stagnation’, ‘chaos’, or ’decay’.)
The ranks were similarly varied: normal civilians who were the most unassuming of information gatherers, iron rankers that were generally most at risk, bronze rankers that fared better off, silver rankers that made up the bulk of daily operations, and the heavy hitting golds that Nara only suspected and knew better than to poke that hornet’s nest with her aura.
She pulled her hood further down over her head; it was best not to linger.
After a few weeks, she was finally far enough North, even further north than Kallid. The water here was dark and ominous: a pure inky black smooth as glass with nary a ripple of life. The hills and mountains were barren, blanketed in deep snow that almost never melted, except for the coaxing touch of a fleeting yet thawing spring and summer. The land was untouched, vast, and quiet.
She saw the effects of the array before she sensed it. The dome itself was invisible to the naked eye, but the muted sunlight painted a city in shades softer, desaturated shades. The delineation was obvious, if not because the snow without the barrier endeavored to give her a visual impairment through sheer reflective white if she didn’t give herself a fatal injury from falling off a cliff because of the jagged peaks and equally jagged light reflections.
Konnoch was the southernmost city of Nekroz, and was surprisingly large, for what it was. Buildings were still low, 3 to 4 stories at best, painted with formerly bright but peeling colors that stoically tried to resist the dampened sunlight. It was a trading city—a den of smugglers, thieves, and spies, and their more legal counterparts. Of course, what constituted as ‘legal’ in Nekroz itself was in question.
It seemed at least the city at all the normal protections: some level of temperature control, (even if it struggled against the northern weather), a level of self-repair and automatic cleaning, and the usual monster repellent. The Undead, particularly the liches, were known for their rituals, and it seemed they had some level of cooperation and local oversight to institute functional large-scale arrays and barriers.
Konnoch: Night’s End, the Den of Indulgence. It was where the unsavory sort indulged in their ills, where the rich with little sense and too much boredom pursued the extremes of what the living and the unliving could offer. It was in its own way, a developing tourist city. Those unaffiliated with Nekroz dare not stray much further north, into the heartland of decay (or un-decaying. It really is quite contradictory.)
For her first test, she’d try to Astral Jump past the edge of the array. It was massive: extending coverage past the city into scattered and patchy farmlands and mines. Not all undead were as infamous as the vampires, and essence user Undead often had mindless summons to perform menial tasks for them. While some magical varieties of plants could grow without sunlight, Nekroz capitalized on both day and life to feed their population; the living needed to be full to keep the unliving fed. The lowest level, ordinary citizen level of vampires or undead were also commonly laborers; Transformation wasn’t always a ticket to the higher strata of Nekroz society.
Without the gods of prosperity, Nekroz suffered from self-organized, uncontrolled, undirected research. Heretical researchers weren’t exactly known to dedicate their time to breeding black-leaf spinach to optimize yield and weather resistance. And it was rather self-obvious that the gods of decay weren’t particularly useful for the continued existence of an organization, either. Still, they made do.
For example, it all was rather against Destruction’s ideals: He much prefers The Fall to The Rise, or even worse, The Stability. He was not allied with almost any other god, even if the rest of the world lumped them together for convenience: benefit or harm.
With the concentration of her mind, a step and the sensation of dimensions flowing past her skin like mist: she was through. The first step had gone well then—her ability to use her Astral Domain as an intermediate step bypassed the dimensional travel restriction in and out of Nekroz’s array. Inter-array travel was still possible but limiting travel to the array’s edge slowed down travel. It was necessary, otherwise high rankers would teleport into the array and slaughter all the undead inside.
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-You have entered [Array of Dimensional Restriction, Array of Undeath Superiority]
-Dimension abilities cannot be used to cross the array boundary. The range of dimension abilities of unauthorized users is greatly reduced or entirely prevented within the array.
-Light and magical light are suppressed. [Sunlight Madness] is prevented.
-[Undead] gain an increase to all attributes.
-[Undead] gain increased mana regeneration.
-The effects of abilities inimical to [Undead] are greatly suppressed.
-The effects of artifacts or items with effects inimical to [Undead] are greatly suppressed.
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Nara could sense the undeath energy here, subsumed into the magic of the barrier to weaken sunlight and empower the undead: another home ground advantage. She wandered as close to the edge as she could get, then following her curiosity, followed the edge of the very slight curve.
No doubt others had done so before, but she wanted to see for herself what she could find. Interestingly enough, there was something to find. Dark stakes of aberrant iron had been jammed into the frozen earth every so often, forming the stabilizing spokes of the barrier. They hummed with a sickly, grey-violet energy, and the metal’s surface was latticed as if it was covered in frost.
Nara’s better instincts told her not to touch them (she wasn’t an over-curious cat). If they could have been easily removed from the ground, someone would have done so already. Best leave the danger pins exactly where they were.
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Item: [Array Stabilizer (Undeath, Dimension, Dark)] [silver rank, epic]
Classification: Artifact, Array component
Description: A stake used to stabilize large scale arrays, allowing for increased coverage, improved strength, and lower maintenance costs. The stake is attuned to an array with Undeath, Dimension, and Light Suppression effects.
The stake is enchanted with additional effects.
Effect: ???
Effect: Sends an alert to [???] and [???] when removed.
Effect: When removed, inflicts an extremely powerful, long duration [Stun] and [Inescapable].
Effect: When removed, transforms into chains of iron to retrain the remover.
-[Record] of [Array Stabilizer (Undeath, Dimension)] has been added to the [Archive].
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Right...best not remove it.
That was as far as Nara was willing to risk herself, and she was starting to get the heebie-jeebies on her impromptu, solo, completely unnecessary, espionage adventure. It was nice to know that she could bypass their barrier, although she was sure that the AS and Rowen had their methods as well.
She formed her astral bubble and surveyed the land one final time (which, while majestic as all wide expanses of natural landscape are majestic, wasn’t really her preference. Nara liked greenery.) Still, all nature deserved her respect. Thank you Reality for existing.
It was during this brief, self-dramatic mental sendoff that Nara realized her vision was partially obscured by a figure standing in front of her. She couldn’t sense him—although, when she formed her astral bubble, she was disconnected from reality in all ways but physical perception, so the only surprising (terrifying) aspect about the man was that he had appeared in front of her too fast for her to notice.
Her hood was still pulled over her face, and her cloak pulled tight, because Nara had always been a little baby when it came to the cold and liked being swaddled up. Her feet and hands had always been cold in the office, and she had worn socks when she slept.
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“Interesting.” The man said after a pause.
Nara didn’t think this was the sort of interaction to go in the Otome-Isekai direction, but that really was such a tropey line. The man sort of did look like an uninspired Duke-of-the-North character, with the boring but handsome chiseled face, a pale face that even surpassed the most unrealistic beauty standards of melanin deficiency in China and Korea, and deep reddish-brown eyes that was uncomfortably redder than brown in the sunlight. The only particularly inspired aspect of his design was the two puncture marks... on his...neck. Oh. Shit.
(Somewhere in the tiny, semi-ridiculous semi-inspired portion of her mind, Nara wondered if that counted as a soul scar.)
“I had attacked you and you aren’t dead,” he said as if he couldn’t decide if he was pleased or upset.
Brilliant. Nara was extremely grateful for astral-reality non-interference bullshit.
“Who are you?”
Nara cleared her throat, experimenting a bit to modulate her voice a little higher than normal, and give it a wispier timbre. Her voice was magically produced anyway, and her experience with integrating aura while playing the lute gave her greater control over her voice now. Thank god for small mercies.
“Erm, I don’t think I should answer that to someone who had just confessed to trying to kill me?” She said, in a painfully fake voice.
He gave her an odd look, then shrugged. “Standard procedure. If the stakes are identified, kill on sight.”
Aiyah, so maybe she should be a little more careful about what she reflexively identifies, So I’m a Spider, So What? style. Let this be a lesson terrifyingly learned. She had half a mind to abandon the conversation and get out of dodge, but she also didn’t want the mystery man to know she could teleport out of the array space. Maybe he could still identify her on sight, astral bubble be damned. What did she know about the capabilities of high rankers?
She shuffled a little off to the side, stepping out of the array. There, much better.
“Adorable. I wouldn’t have said anything,” he said, face and tone smirking.
“Yeah, right.” Nara reflexively responded.
“I wouldn’t want to have to report to my superiors how an information vulnerability escaped.”
What superiors, she thought, because this man had to be up there. He was far too cocky to be anything but.
Now, what to do?
She could try to question Duke Danger. Nara had the foresight capacity of a normal rank crystal ball, so no doubt her opponent-in-conversation would get more from her than she’d get from him. This was an opportunity, but what kind?
Ah, yes.
There had been something she had wanted to do for some time. She had been a disappointment to herself, to her hopes and dreams, to her aspirations. The was a prime opportunity: perhaps, a fraction too late, but one she’d be remiss to waste any further.
She pulled her lute from the astral and sat down on an astral construct.
“Dearest stranger, since Misfortune played her hand to cross our paths, how about we commemorate this unfortunate encounter with a song of circumstance? With it, I pray that your-and-mine relationship lasts for but the length of this song, and once, ended: forever parted. To what do you don’t say about this proposition which you cannot refuse?”
“...What? You were being normal just a minute ago.”
“Clearly, stranger, abnormal circumstances require abnormal actions. For what did you expect of a stranger-from-a-strange land to say to her not-killer of a realm of night?”
“Do you have some sort of a mental illness?”
PTSD, maybe? A thin grasp on reality? “A mental illness? Who ventures into Nekroz without some sort of mental impairment? That, I offer as true.”
“That is incredibly insulting to a large and undeserved population…Are you going to play?”
“Are you going to stay to listen?”
“You want me to stay?” He said, incredulous.
No not really, but now that’s she’s gone this far she may as well fully commit. Eufemia would be proud.
(Would she, Nara? Chrome questioned.)
“So, a humble song from a humble bard? What say you, Stranger of Danger?”
He looked at her flatly. “Fine. You play this, and you’ll leave?”
She hadn’t considered that since he could not kill her, maybe he’d want her gone. Otherwise, he’d have to stand here, at the outskirts of the barrier, waiting for her to leave. Did she have him by the balls? The mildly sadistic part of her wanted to hang around and see how much absolute shit she could force him to listen too. Too bad she couldn’t play back It’s a Small World: That’d drive anyone mad.
Nara was an honorable, perhaps less-than-mysterious and more ‘overly verbose’ bard, so she’d keep her word and leave.
“I shall.”
*
“...There really are only crazies in Nekroz. Fuck.”
Although, he enjoyed the song. Musicians were just about as pleasant as death in Nekroz. Which was to say, tortuous in length and tone (screaming).
*
“Nara, what the fuck is wrong with you.”
“Chrome, you know what.”
“Oh, Sands, I know. I regret our acquaintance.”
“I love you too Chrome.”
“Do not.”
*****
Between Nara’s gallivanting, which wasn’t so much a surprise as an expectation (she did eventually tell Sen about it, and he had returned her thankless exposition with a hard, disappointed glare), Nara had decided to stop by Theodore at the smithy, The Kallidian Smith. An uncreative name, as far as names went, but it got the point across (and Encio expressed his preference for something simple to something offensive to his highborn sensibilities like Monster Meal: “At least it doesn’t alliterate”).
Mona, her Adventure Society certification instructor, had made the point to properly equip herself, and Nara had done so—but not to a complete enough extent. She still hadn’t taken her words fully into account. Partially, essence users did not want to overly rely on equipment for combat, since it could hinder progress. Since there was an experienced crafter at hand with an adequately friendly relationship, Nara figured she should pay him a visit as a customer.
The Kallidian Smith was a large smithy, home to around 10 crafters. It was a cooperative forge, with many sets of forging and crafting equipment of high quality, suitable for bronze and silver rank crafters. Theodore’s reputation may have tanked with the adventuring side of the essence user community, but the crafters had always been his friends, even if they disagreed with his now overturned denial of upgrading his former team’s equipment. Crafters knew better than most how state of mind affected their creations. If Theodore wasn’t feeling up for it, it wouldn’t have been possible anyway.
The forge was warm even through the temperature control arrays, furnaces glowing with hot reds and oranges. The sounds of sizzling metals, clanging hammers, and popping flames suffused the forge, a symphony of metal and effort. An adjacent room with more expensive temperature control housed the detail workshop, where accessories were engraved with steady hands, inlaid with magical jewels, and enchanted with effects.
A heavyset forger noticed her loitering at the entryway and called out to her.
“Who’re you here for, lass?”
“Theodore. Is he in? I’m Nara.”
The forger grunted his assent. “He’s mentioned you. Head on in towards the back. He likes the cover.”
Certainly, if Nara had been an adventurer looking to harass Theodore for growth items, she wouldn’t have wanted to face the barrel-chested, muscles-bulging, fire-eyed silver rank smoulder keeping a watchful eye on the entryway.
Nara was suddenly struck with the awareness that this was probably Theodore safe space.
She crossed down the center of the forge, which thankfully had a clear pathway down the center. The members of the forge knew how to keep themselves neat, lest there be accidents. It exuded professionalism and competence to Nara’s untrained eye, and Nara decided it was probably a good forge.
Theodore wasn’t in the middle of hammering anything away, so she was pleased to see he wasn’t actively busy. He was reading some literature on rune application—important to his forging and crafting process, which used runes and engravings to imbue and shape effects.
He looked up. “Oh. It’s you,” was his curt greeting. But his aura betrayed that he was secretly pleased to see her. “What are you here for?”
“I’d like you to craft something for me—and before you get mad, I just want a normal piece of equipment, not a growth item.”
He eyed her, with only mild doubt. “Go on.”
“With my set of abilities, the early stage of the battle can be a struggle—not for me, but for any objective I must protect. I just don’t have enough instantaneous damage. Sacrificing too many boons early slows my momentum, and the rest of my damage is entirely backloaded—execute, ramping afflictions, and growing boons. It’s a faster ramp than you’d expect, but still.”
“I see. And what equipment do you have now?”
Theodore was clinical about his consultation, recording Nara’s concerns on a notebook; He and Sen would get along.
“Hm, just my sword for combat, and occasionally the accessories I use: night vision goggles and the like. My robe is conjured, and the cloak I wear is just for cold weather.”
“...It’s not cold out. It’s spring. What do you need a cold weather robe for,” he said, not a question, but a criticism.
“It’s for fun,” she amended. “But it is crafted for cold weather.”
“Your sword...is it classified as an accessory or as a weapon?” He was hesitant to ask, broaching what had been a difficult topic between the two of them.
“Do you want to take a look?”
“Are you serious?”
“Just don’t try to take it apart or anything.”
“Just what do you think of me.”
“A reformed thief.”
He pursed his lips. “I may deserve that.”
“Hands out, handsy.”
“That sounds like a far worse offense. Do not call me that.” He did not obediently wait with his hands out (he was not some child waiting for treats!) but did gesture for Nara to set Nirvana on the table. She materialized it as a sword and placed it there.
He carefully picked it, a monocle magic circle glowing in front of his right eye. Its concentric rings whirred and slowly spun, and all seemed quiet despite the sharp clangs of forge work.
“...Do you know what a Core of Finality is?”
That was not what she expected him to ask.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s what your ‘sword’ is made from.”
“If I may, benefactor,” Sage gently interrupted. “I know of the Cores of Finality.”
Sage’s interruptions had stopped phasing Nara a long time ago. She always knew a few bodies were lurking nearby. Whatever Sage wanted to get up to, she was free to do so.
Nara nodded for her to continue.
“The Core of Finality is a material generated from the terminus of a universe. When a universe has completed its expansion then inevitable contraction, it eventually forms a core of finality. There are many names for it, but that is a common name.”
Nara had not forgotten that her greatest gain from the Celestial Book trial had not been any stone, or even the library, but Sage herself. Thousands of years spent there: Sage must have read the entire library.
“The Core of Finality is known for its properties of infinite density and infinite potential—it contains all that a universe had generated. While the property of infinite density has been suppressed, it, the property of flowing transformation has been polished; Although, I would expect density manipulation at later ranks.”
“Fortune’s blessings,” Theodore murmured, low and reverberating. “I thank you.”
“...You're welcome?”
He rolled his eyes. “I thank you as well.” He gestured to Nara to take her sword back, then kindly offered an explanation. “When I analyze an object, I am able to record the materials that construct it.”
Huh. Not unlike Nara’s Guide then. Nara suspected it offered more detailed information on items (such as material composition, origin, material properties), versus the general and effect overview Nara’s supplied.
“It functions on crafting material. With another ability, I can convert limited quantities with a ritual.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can make the damn metal from other materials. Or whatever it is. Well...at a cost.”
“Uh-huh. I’m betting that cost is mighty significant.”
“I’ve learnt enough not to bet with you. Crazies,” he muttered under his breath. “It wants a diamond spirit coin. Among other materials. It’s not a material that exists at anything but diamond rank.”
“But you’re thankful anyway.”
“It’s part of why I wanted to see your growth items. But of course, I’m thankful.” He grinned, jovially but equally full of sharp teeth. “I have never given up on diamond. One day I will use that damn material, and I create a weapon to surpass yours.”
“Right...I’m happy for you.” She was—a goal was motivating. Diamond was more hitting the jackpot than anything else, and if Sezan was any example, being motivated didn’t make diamond more likely, sorry Vergil. “How about I show you some other stuff?”
His eyes widened: he knew what this meant. An olive branch, a gesture of trust. The oddly gruff yet posh leonid couldn’t handle his prolonged emotional eye contact. It burned him like chili in the eyes and was just as punishing as trust and forgiveness. He looked away; his reddened eyes hidden from view.
“Thanks.”