Chapter 184: No Outward Flaws
Nara supposed this day would come: it was inevitable. There was no way to avoid it, sidestep it, to shove her head in the sand like an ostrich, as if she wouldn’t be yanked up by her butt-feathers and forced to face the harsh sun of the outback.
Nara really hoped Knowledge knew what she was doing. If this world had no goddess of Knowledge, then at least what lay before her now had to be manual, with no celestial deity to slurp up the knowledge-soup of her brain she had just served up on a shining silver saucer by stepping into this world.
She’d blame Knowledge anyway. This was her plan.
*****
It was the fourth day when Tosen led her to the archivists.
Nara had ruminated over what she’d provide The Adventists with as a side of her…acceptance of her new life. While Nara presumed they’d remain cordial, Nara doubted she’d earn their trust or their secrets if she continued to withhold information. And, for each moment she remained on The Advent home world, the higher the chances of her letting something important slip—stony silence wouldn’t crack their walls, nor buy acceptance, and therefore not an option. Nara wasn’t a trained agent or spy; She couldn’t win against a nation in a battle of endurance.
She was unsure of how they were able to extract information from her, aside from the normal means. If what Yulia was saying was true, Knowledge should not exist…Regardless, remaining was risky—exchanging information to speed up information exchange from their side may be her only means of coming on top of the mutual espionage.
The Advent was interested in her for three reasons:
1. The Library of the Celestial Book (at least, what the library on Erras had collected).
2. Her one advancement in soul magic.
3. Her outworlder origins, nature, and knowledge.
Of those three interests, the books within her mind she was least remiss to give up, and least likely to cause unintended consequences. Sharing any sort of soul magic seemed risky to a civilization that actively dabbled in soul magic (or something like it) with harmonization, no matter how innocuous Nara’s intended application of it was. After all, harmonization was supposedly consensual.
She certainly did not want to accidentally lead The Advent to her world, not when Earth had its own problems to deal with: The Weaver of Dreams interfering with her world. The Advent already knew the location of Erras, and the library of the Celestial Book could still potentially be accessed by Adventists; it was still a trial open to iron rankers, and The Adventists seemed adept enough at hiding in societies. Not so adept as the Illusae, but Nara doubted anybody else could compare to a race that lived out another life completely and fully (where spying seemed an inadvertent opportunity rather than their main purpose).
Accordingly, sacrificing the knowledge of a single book at a time seemed the sanest option. Nara even had an excuse prepared: She was afraid of being ‘disposed of’ if she provided all the information within the library too quickly.
With their pitying acceptance of that excuse, Nara would succeed in giving as little as possible in two weeks.
Knowledge never did anything for just one reason, so Nara gave The Advent one of the books on astral magic that Lawrence had already recorded; She didn’t want to hand them something too inconsequential, for she may not gather the quid-pro-quo information and access she wanted should she give them Cold Attribute Rituals for Varied Food Preservation. She briefly read through them all, making use of her bronze rank spirit attribute to speed read more effectively, and chose the one with the least problematic information. Useful information still, just not something that could be weaponized beyond what anything else could be weaponized (she hoped).
All in all, it went better than Nara thought it would; they graciously accepted her initial offering of a single book and went about recording it and discussing it with other astral magic researchers.
Nara could only hope she hadn’t inadvertently handed them the very key to Erras’ destruction.
*****
In the next few days, nothing particularly exciting happened, either on Erras or on Premiesta.
…Except that Eufemia had chosen her mausoleum reward! (Eufemia would kill her if she didn’t think of her success with enough enthusiasm, so she made sure to inject proper appreciation into her thoughts and wishes.)
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Item: [Rime’s Echo] (bronze [growth], legendary)
Classification: Mirror, shield, artifact
Description: A floating mirror cut from the purest ice, bare of imperfections.
Effect: Floats around you. Float speed is determined by the [Spirit] attribute. Shape can be altered. Maximum shape change is determined by the [Spirit] attribute.
Effect: Reflects all attacks made against the reflective side of the mirror. Very powerful or higher rank effects may not be entirely blocked or reflected. When the mirror can no longer reflect or block attacks, it becomes briefly intangible, allowing the rest to pass through. Maximum reflected or blocked damage per attack is determined by the [Spirit] attribute. Less effective at reflecting or blocking fire subtype attacks.
Effect (Iron): Blocks the user from magical targeting, homing, magical perception, and aura perception while behind the mirror. Very strong auras or perception may not be entirely blocked.
Effect (Bronze): The mirror may be teleported for low mana. The mirror must return to your side before it may teleport again.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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From Eufemia’s description, it was a pure plane of ice, unlike a mirror in that it was un-smudgeable, and seemed more of a blue-white sheen than the silver-green of a mirror. It was cold to the touch, and one would almost expect their fingers to be covered in a layer of fleshly melted ice-water, but touches came away but cold and dry.
It was a one-way mirror: one side reflective, one side transparent. Unadorned; its only beauty was the inherent beauty of the purest winter, glacier ice untouched by the impurities of humanity. Nara thought Eufemia would think of it too plain, well—
“If it’s simple it doesn’t clash. Do you know how difficult it is to find an artifact that matches with all of my abilities?” A displeased glance at Nara. “…And yours all but falls into your lap.”
—Nara supposed that made sense. Nara could almost imagine the hair toss, the narrowed eyes, and the scoff: “What do you know of fashion?”
Sage delivered other regular updates: the Adventure Society had launched an investigation into Advent activity in the Kallid region; Maelon had been captured (unfortunately for him Kallid had well-trained scouts in abundance) punishment still pending; Inventor Society reports on her various projects; the status of her essence-aid recipients—sometimes they wrote letters, and she wrote back letters of advice, unqualified as she was in all aspects other than as a financial sponsor; the portal that had been commandeered to lead to The Advent home world was also investigated (Nara later learned from Tosen, that a single passage through cost a diamond rank spirit coin, and that had been cheapened because they had borrowed the properties of a emplaced portal in the first place. Ritual and astral vessel methods of interdimensional travel were typically more efficient). After her ‘kidnapping’, the Magic Society was trying to develop a method to prevent Advent interdimensional portal travel, to prevent at least one method of invasion.
Nara even found The Advent’s rituals on interdimensional travel, so this journey had been fruitful for her indeed. Unfortunately, the problem remained the same—she did not have the interdimensional coordinates of Earth. Typically, in the wider cosmic community, diamond rankers would make their way to one of the astral cities such as Interstice, which would effectively bring a world into the wider cosmic consciousness. As Earth had no diamond rankers, no one knew where Earth was.
At least, no one that was willing to share. The Weaver of Dreams must know.
*****
Astral jumping remained her hidden hand, but Nara did travel with the aid of another portal user across the planet of Premiesta to verify their brazen claim of a poverty-free world. Even flitting to the edge of suburbs and skulking in the shadows like a cryptid photographer trying to catch the sight of the mythical slums, no ‘phenomena’ revealed itself to her. Even in Erras, very few (relative to the whole population) starved (not to say that Erras didn’t have poor tribes or people, but that most did not starve). Impoverishment was more an issue of quality of life than quality of survival. However, all of Premiesta was ‘First World’, a seamless union of magic and technology had long eased the creases of both; it was hardly a fair comparison to pit Earth against it, when it relied solely on one and not the other.
Intracity travel made use of large scale, permanent portals, powered by a city-wide array that sapped just a whisker of mana from every person within its bounds: A ‘mana-tax’ so to speak, but one that Nara begrudgingly approved of collecting. Everyone regenerated mana, from the normals to the diamonds, and letting anyone sit at full was a waste of a ‘renewable’ resource. It was unsurprising that wind, solar, hydro, and other non-magical energies went unearthed, when mana flowed through the pores of the boundary and every person like an energy ambrosia.
The sky of Premiesta, Nara noted, was a stunning pour of space dust, not unlike her very own Nebula Flask. It was as if a very irresponsible creator-God had spilled glitter upon the fabric of the sky, unremovable with the strongest of vacuum cleaners (or perhaps, just a very irresponsible and artistic diamond ranker.)
There was also a notable absence of space craft, although Nara questioned whether she’d be able to see space-faring vessels even from the tallest of buildings she perched upon, whether the cinematic spectacles of space operas had misled her mind of what was perceivable from the grasp of earth. Long-distance space travel was regarded as folly—traveling the astral was only perilous as protecting the vessel of reality against the anti-matter of the astral was, with the only other concern of how to navigate the astral itself.
If she was in a generous mood to concede The Advent’s successes, astral travel was just warping. What determined the ‘duration’ of astral travel in terms of time elapsed in reality was something Nara wanted to study when she had more time. All she could do was dutifully Record the books in her Guide (or those that were in a compatible form), and stare forlornly at their information repositories.
Nara set down her pen and overlooked her messy diagrams, scribbled notes, and incomplete equations. She’d neaten them when she reviewed them later, but not now.
Another time.
*****
The structure of teams in The Advent differed from what Erras did. Erras had many cultures of adventuring based on nation, but The Advent’s methodology was singular: There were standard teams, and there were flexible teams—or as young Adventists colloquially put it—‘odd’ teams.
The standard teams resembled what Nara expected of a demon-king-slaying RPG party. There was a ranged damage dealer, a defender, a melee damage dealer, a healer, and a fifth member, usually a buffer or debuffer of sorts, or some other relatively standardized archetype.
Odd teams were a mish mash of various roles, with one member often dual or triple classing. Even in standard teams each archetype had some role outreach, that was inevitable with personal variations, but odd teams went beyond that. The three, now four-person team, that Nara was a part of was an odd team.
Sanshi teams were a mix of odd and standard, with no rules on composition as long as the team worked. A standard team member meant their role was uncomplicated, like Sen, Encio, and John, which balanced the complexity of the rest of the team. When an engagement favored simplicity, Sen and Encio became the core of the team. When complexity would succeed where simplicity would not, Eufemia’s role became pivotal, and Sen shifted to become a rock in turbulent flow (John unmentioned, since a healer was always pivotal).
This creation of standard and non-standard teams was intended so that The Advent could more easily utilize essence users on an interdimensional scale. Standard teams could be deployed where their solid team composition was the right tool for the job, and could easily be scaled up for larger battles, each team fitting seamlessly into the formation of a larger whole. Odd teams often formed smaller, elite strike teams, the right ‘odd’ team used as a precision tool. Odd essence users could also be slotted in as fifth or sixth members in standard teams as needed, providing just enough shift to sway a situation that a standard team may not have fared well against. Despite their moniker as ‘odd’, there was no mockery from standard teams.
If nothing else, The Advent understood everything had a place within their harmony.
Nara was not the expert tactician Sen was, nor did she have the discerning eye of a teacher that Encio had. She watched the standard and odd teams in their practices when she could, and even participated in sparring with them.
They were skilled, of course. She suspected the team she belonged to as well as the training center she frequented, in the heart of the capital, was one for elite essence users: Those with soul crests that had proven themselves in their education.
They had no obvious outward flaws. In terms of pure weapon skill, they placed above Nara, but below Sen and Encio. They utilized their full suite of essence abilities, unlike poorly trained core users who tended to rely on the most impactful few. They battled against a variety of simulations, standard teams and odd teams both pushing themselves in situations they’d struggle against. They split their teams in half, combined them, restricted themselves.
They had no outward flaws. Yet…Nara felt they lacked something.
Intensity. Decisiveness. Daring.
Nara could not think it was a bad thing, for the peace they were afforded. But it was a weakness.