Chapter 97: You Can’t Refuse

With the meeting wrapped up, the team had time to themselves once again. Nara decided to sort through her inventory, which had once again swelled with a prince’s ransom of items.

“This is what I get for putting inventory management off,” she muttered. “Bad habits across realities.”

She had a lot more of the usual: low rank spirit coins, quintessence, monster parts, basic consumables, essences, and awakening stones. Notably, she had some bronze rank weapons and equipment. She had looted a few back during the Celestial Book trials, and she had forgotten about them until now. The essences had been a higher priority to sort out, especially now that she had a side gig as a philanthropist.

She removed a bronze rank Serpent Fang dagger from the inventory. It rapidly grew hot in her hand, as if she was a too-curious toddler slapping their hot hand onto an electric stove. In just a couple seconds, it was too hot to hold, even with her new and improved pain tolerance.

“Ouch!” She stared at the bronze rank weapon that clattered to the floor, over-dramatically clutching her hand. “So, this is rank rejection.”

Ordinary high rank objects and materials could be held by those below their rank, such as naturally occurring gemstones or certain artifacts. However, when the magic within was so thoroughly shaped and tempered such as those necessary for adventurer equipment, rank rejection increased in strength as well. ­

Consumable objects usually posed little issue, such as potions or other limited use items. The magic within was less refined and less durable than permanent, persistent equipment. Adventurers often kept a higher rank potion around in case of emergencies. It healed faster than a potion of their rank, but the potion toxicity persisted for longer, increasing the time before a potion could be consumed again.

For edible magic, essence users should not eat anything past one rank above. That rule was iffy at gold rank, where diamond rank magic was so potent that it was best not eaten even then. A diamond rank spirit coin was too crude to survive, but diamond rank food might be survivable. To gold rankers, it was their fugu.

For artifacts, it depended. As Chelsea would say, it was nuanced. Some items could be used by anyone at any rank, and other items could not. For those not interested in magic theory (such as most adventurers), all they needed to know was that their equipment was the final thing they upgraded, either with ritual or with purchase.

She decided to keep around a few pieces of bronze rank equipment she found useful. She couldn’t hold on to them for long, but a throwing attack or a single stab was viable. The larger weapons such as clubs, swords, staves, whips, and bows she would sell. The smaller weapons such as throwing axes, daggers, blades, needles, and knives she’d keep. She let the team pick what they wanted from her stash, but they had their own trash heaps of miscellaneous equipment to sort through (Aliyah did claim a bronze rank staff of the magical variety). Her Guide made inventory management user-friendly, but other inventory powers didn’t come with a graphical user interface.

Her GUI came from her Party Guide, not her inventory, so the convenience was the combination of two abilities.

Thankfully, her Party Guide worked for all of their respective inventories as well. Without Nara, John could manifest a binder that detailed all the items he possessed. With a thought, the binder always opened to the correct page. His Case Files always provided more details about the object such as material, age, approximate cost, and origin. An information officer like John had uses for this information, while Nara did not. John may not have been a detective on Earth, but he was fulfilling his dreams and living vicariously on Erras.

How would their lives change once they made it back to Earth? Nara would like to bring her family to Erras, or give them the opportunity. Her mother would enjoy traveling to see the wonders of a magic world. She would give her essences and monster cores.

Her older sister had a boyfriend the last she remembered. Nara had spent 6 months on Erras, so 8 months had passed on Earth. Had boyfriend been upgraded to fiancé? Her sister may be unwilling to uproot her life there.

At the very least, they could take family vacations on Erras. With the money Nara had, she could more than afford it for her entire family. She’d also be an expert translator. On Earth, Nara was bilingual. Now, she was omnilingual. She couldn’t wait to cuss in Russian on a world that’d appreciate it.

“Step one, essence up the family. Step two, take them to visit a magic world.”

She rubbed her temples and slumped forward.

“Step one is going to be a doozy. How the hell do I explain magic?”

She prayed to the god of Stability that she wouldn’t have to be the one to break the existence of magic to the world.

It’d certainly be one way to go down in history.

*****

Nara let out a sigh, flopping onto the couch in the Jade Garden penthouse suite.

“Home at last…”

The rest of the team shuffled in, spreading out. Eufemia beelined towards her bath. They had already used crystal wash, but there was something soothing about the sensation of hot water on skin that even essence users couldn’t give up.

“How about a trip to the hot baths downstairs, anyone?” Nara posed.

Their hotel had a communal outdoor bath view and a view of their gardens, part of the hotel’s namesake. A one-way privacy screen prevented any peeking, although essence users had less compunctions about nudity in the first place (it was rumored that primarily leonid lands of Atisalhaya had even less compunctions of nudity, hot and sandy as it was, that they walked around in near-transparent oasis silk robes that cooled the skin.)

“Eufemia is already gone…How about you Aliyah?”

“I will join you. Sen?”

He nodded.

The three head down to the hotel baths, passing some other residents of the hotel, discussing various topics. Adventurers usually rented hotels suits long term. Those of higher rank usually built their own compounds near their favorite city for their families to live in, and stayed at hotels when they traveled. Adventurers preferred fortifying their residences with expensive arrays, which required space.

Landlords and loan lenders were typically essence users, either retired adventurers or those who had never been adventurers. Anyone who could afford essences bought them, but not everyone wanted to fight. Ranking up without fighting needed money, since monster cores became increasingly expensive past iron rank.

Aliyah mentioned how overlapping arrays for defenses was a topic of great study. Applying too many arrays in the same location caused them to interfere with each other and render them all useless. A cursory glance at the magic of Eldester-jos, Zariel’s home world, was efficient and specialized but low powered. Erras’ strength was their high powered and robust magic that was in turn, considerably wasteful.

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Sen headed off to his section, and Aliyah and Nara to theirs.

The months were moving from summer to fall, but their bodies screamed for some TLC after a month long exertion. It was a warm, pleasant night, and the baths were most agreeable on their skin.

As promised, a beautiful garden view was there for them to enjoy. Volcanic rocks veined with jade were the centerpiece of floral and stone arrangements that exuded tranquility.

“Alcohol, Aliyah?” Nara said, offering Aliyah a small cup. She conjured a wooden plate that floated on the surface of the hot spring baths, setting the small bottle of alcohol on top. It resembled sake, but with a sweeter almost maple flavor that Nara enjoyed.

“You aren’t normally a purveyor of the spirits,” Aliyah said, taking the cup. Of the team members, Aliyah was surprisingly the most alcoholic of the bunch, surpassing Eufemia.

“Feels like the right mood. It’s mostly all Chrome on that side. He chooses the alcohol; I choose the tea. Cheers.”

They clinked glasses.

“So I know your parents are family friends with Sen, but how’d you meet?”

Aliyah settled back into the bath, her glowing runes diffusing light through the water.

“My family has no blood relation to the great families of the Shian Union. It’s almost rare. My parents are low level officials that work in administration.”

“Paper pushers?”

“That’s appropriate,” Aliyah’s chuckles were warm like spiced apple cider during a cold winter storm, and it sent contented shivers down Nara’s spine. “My mother works in the Records Department. Every policy, every document, filed away and stored. My father is an assistant for a higher ranked government official.”

“So, your typical middle class family.”

“These phrases you keep using are quite apt,” Aliyah mused, and continued her story. “I’ve been interested in ritual magic since I was young—however my interested started, I’m not entirely clear. A long friend of my mother learned of my interest and offered to tutor me at the Magic Society, so she became my mentor.”

“And also how you ended up mentoring Sen with magic?”

“Oh Sen... Sen was stubborn. He resisted his mother’s instructions of learning ritual magic under me. He was a very unruly child,” she said conspiratorially. “Still is.”

If by unruly she meant “just as obsessed with training as she was with rituals,” then Aliyah was correct.

“You’ve got some fun stories then. I’m a little curious what unruly Sen is like.” Aliyah gave her a look. “More than a little,” she amended.

“Hmmm, he was unruly but never destructive. He was far too well-behaved of a kid for that. He’d clean up my workspace to annoy me.”

“Aren’t you always clean?” Nara said, recalling Aliyah’s workspaces.

“He annoyed me so much it became a habit! If I put my own stuff away, he couldn’t annoy me by cleaning it up. He’d place back all my books and tools and materials and papers and for the first few weeks I struggled to remember where everything had been!” Aliyah’s voice rose, remembering her frustration. “At the time I wondered who was teaching who!”

“Malicious compliance.” Nara approved. “He was a smart kiddo.”

“He was a brat that pretended to be well behaved. Oh, he found other ways to mess with me once I was worked out of that bad habit! He’d send back all the records I had borrowed from the Magic Society’s archives. I’d have to go and hunt them down, so I started to keep copies of everything.”

She held up a photo crystal.

“This became my weapon to counter him. I’d make a list of what I had borrowed, and take a photo of the list. I also took photos of important pages within the records, or borrowed on of the magic society’s transcribers to make my own personal copy.”

“What else?”

“You’re that curious?”

“It’s fun to hear a different side of my friends.”

“Well…he’d sign me up to research outings I hadn’t planned to go on. At the time, I didn’t go on any research outings at all.”

“You were a hardcore bookworm?”

Aliyah sighed, nursed her alcohol and leaned back over the edge of the bath. “I take after my mother. She likes the records, and I found enough inspiration within books. Why would I need to see magic outside? Within my workshop, I had everything I needed. As revenge, I dragged Sen along with me on these outings, and gradually Sen showed an interest in external magic too. Not because he was interested in magic theory—”

“But in it’s practical and strategic applications?” Nara accurately concluded.

Aliyah laughed. “For all his strategic mind, he is rather obvious sometimes, isn’t he? In the end, his mother’s plan was a resounding success: Sen’s views were expanded on the importance of learning outside his chosen field. He didn’t need mastery in external magic, just the basics.”

“Or just the knowledge. He doesn’t need to know how to cast everything, just what his options are.”

“We developed a mutual understanding, and I decided to partner with Sen and join the Adventure Society as a part time adventurer.”

“You rubbed off on each other.”

“Oh we did. You’ll notice he still likes to punish people constructively.”

“Yeah,” Nara muttered, “By forcing me to spar with him again and again.”

“Drag him on one of our astral magic sessions if you want to get back at him,” Aliyah advised.

“I have permission from his mentor?”

“Tell him it’s training. He can’t refuse.”

Their conversation was interrupted when a shadow cast over them. Another person must have entered the baths.

They looked back to greet the newcomer.

*****

Nara awoke with a startled panic.

She cast a darting glance at her surroundings: She wasn’t in her room. She didn’t remember what happened last night. Clearly, she never made it back to her room.

Where was she? Where was Aliyah?

She calmed herself, sliding off the bed and onto the floor. The ground was a strange neutral temperature, like it was internally heated. The whole room was the same; an oddly perfect temperature that made Nara feel like she didn’t feel the temperature at all. It was part sensory deprivation tank and part perfect day for an outing.

The room was simple, but it wasn’t bare. It was more spacious than she expected, around the size of a typical master bedroom. To her left was a window.

She immediately rushed up to it, only to discover at the touch of her finger pads that wasn’t a window: It was a screen. It didn’t feel like one, but the magic it projected was photorealistic, showing a beautiful scenery of forests and mountains. It was like one of those science fiction rooms, with LED screens to simulate a beautiful scenery to conceal the dystopia outside.

She tried to push her aura out, only to realize she could not. A thin choker circled her neck. It felt like cloth, but it was not. No matter how she tried to lift it from her skin, it remained skintight. It was more tattoo than clothing accessory, but the almost imperceptible thickness between her skin and touch told her it was not.

Nara had been suppression collared many times before, under her own hand and with no lock. It was common for sparring practice, especially between iron rankers who didn’t have the best control over their abilities. That experience prevented her from outright panic.

Panic she did not, instead, Nara was overwhelmed with a new sense of powerlessness. The feeling of safety and security she felt from her innumerous escape abilities, both in her racial abilities and essence abilities was gone. That void unsettled and shook her. Beyond just the fear of waking in a strange room, Nara feared her lack of magic. She sat with her back against the bed frame, resorting to calm, repeated breaths to clear her mind once more of the expresso-shot of despair that had pounded her blood.

Sen had trained them for this. He had been insistent that they all develop their ability to fight without abilities; Aliyah, reluctant as she was, dedicated some time to learning the stave for self-defense. Her own ability to fight was still intact, and the knowledge of The Way of the Traveler still easily accessible. This reassured her, and Nara collected herself to further evaluate her situation.

She cast her attention back to the room: There was a desk and chair combination across from the bed. It reminded Nara of a work from home set up, except there was no laptop or monitor on top. The furniture style was too contemporary, all clean edges and ninety-degree angles, to be Erras’ style.

Nara briefly wondered if she had been teleported back to Earth.

No, if she had a suppression collar on, this couldn’t be Earth. Plus, the wall screens weren’t LEDs, but magic based.

There were some indoor plants, which she recognized as Sanshi’s varieties. Instead of being potted, they grew directly from the floor, a patch of dirt and a small lip separating them from the floor.

At least there’s plants if there’s no window. She ran a finger down a waxy leaf, letting it sooth her by touch.

To the right of the desk was a large, transparent wall, with a pad beside it.

“This…can’t be?”

She touched her hand to it, and the door surprisingly slid into the ground, revealing a closet.

“A touch pad?”

The revelation of advanced magitech fostered a now growing sense of unease. Nara was still on Erras, this she knew definitively. She couldn’t have been transported through a portal without consent or trust. The Sanshi plants confirmed this, hopefully.

The clothing inside was simple and high quality. Basic T-shirts and pants with relaxed cuts. Thankfully, not stereotypical solid colors like insane asylum white or hospital pale blue. It leaned more towards minimalist fashion than internment in a health care facility.

She tried to use her inventory, but nothing happened. She tried to astral jump but that was prevented as well. She already knew they wouldn’t work, but it didn’t hurt to check. That she knew it’d fail didn’t stop the knot in her stomach from growing.

She slumped down onto the wall. All her observations and recent events added up to a singular conclusion.

“I’ve been abducted by The Advent.”

And nobody has ever returned alive.