While sitting at a desk in the newly reopened Walker Estate, Vera paused what she was doing the moment she felt Nick’s ping. Mentally checking the time, she barely managed to keep the smile off her face at the fact that he was arriving on schedule and without issue.

Opening the connection, she said, “Dear, I’m happy to see you made it back to Dorchester in one piece. Any problems during the trip?”

She could feel Nick’s affection radiating over the link as he replied, “No, no problems. The area has been cleared, and the army managed to put in a road, so the trip was easy.”

For the next few minutes, she chatted away with him, enjoying the feeling of his mind mingling with her own. It was rather surprising to her how much she’d missed him.

Although they’d spoken over the communication orb, and updated each other on what they were up to, brief communications like that were more akin to information dumps than actual conversations. Now that Nick was back in Dorchester, it was nice to be able to finally reconnect. Unfortunately, there were pressing matters that needed to be addressed, so she eventually steered the conversation to more important things.

She asked Nick to provide her with a deeper, more informative, first-hand account of his adventures alongside the wackos along with his evaluations of both the initial members and those who’d joined during the fighting. She made sure to thoroughly study the memory engrams he was sending, making mental notes concerning who stood out and who needed to be watched.

But mostly, she focused on the young man she’d ended up tying her house’s future to. Nero, or she should say, Lord Walker was now a war hero. The Thought Hub had been buzzing with accounts of his heroics and his victory over the kobalds. Therefore, she needed to know the actual truth behind the rumors in order to keep ahead of the public opinion.

While part of her attention was focused on Nicholas’ ongoing account of Lord Walker’s ether-shattering final spell, she mentally reviewed the pings she’d received from Lord Walker.

It seemed the moment Lord Walker had gotten within the range of the Dorchester Thought Hub, he’d uploaded his signatures to the documents she’d sent him. He’d also addressed each of her updates with simple, but sufficient, statements about how he expected her to proceed. It was an encouraging sign, and one that she hoped meant he’d begun to take his responsibilities more seriously.

Of course, that feeling only lasted a moment, as Nick had moved forward in his recounting and had now sent her his memory of Lord Walker’s morning address to House Walker’s leadership.

‘So, he really intends to let others handle everything, merely providing the direction. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,’ she thought to herself while stifly a grimace.

What was surprising was how happy Nick seemed to be about the young man’s proclamation.

Interrupting the memory engram she was receiving, she asked, “Nicholas, haven’t you considered what it would mean if he loses control of House Walker? We agreed to tie House Verina to him as a vassal. A mismanaged House Walker will result in our own sharing its fate.”

Nick replied easily, “Yes, I’m aware. But have you considered that despite Nero having put Cathleen in charge, you’re the one who is actually going to be running House Walker? She is only focused on force deployments and troop organizations. Take another look at the memory I sent you and you’ll see that they never even mentioned anything outside of their combat plans. Nero expects you to be handling the businesses and political side of House Walker. For that, I recommend you get in contact with Ms. Keening and the citizen interaction team she set up. That woman you found is quite bright and surprisingly motivated.”

Nodding along, she realized her husband had a point. Lord Walker wasn’t interested in learning to lead a house, that much was obvious regardless of how much she wanted it to be otherwise. So, she’d just have to take the reigns. As House Verena was essentially the Dorchester branch of House Walker anyway, she might as well act as the house head until such time as the leadership leaves for another city.

“Yes, I see what you’re saying. I just… I guess I’d hoped that he would have grown up a little after having spent some time outside the walls. He has such an instinctual business sense that it seems like a waste for him to focus on this ‘adventure’ nonsense,” she replied sadly.

She felt Nick’s emotional presence trying to reassure her, as he softly replied, “I know, dear. But, as Nero says, he is who he is. Try not to let your hopes for who he’ll become influence how you feel about him now. All we can do is trust that he knows his path, and be there for him to help him however we can.”

Vera couldn’t help it, and her mask broke into a small smile. “You’re right, of course. I shouldn’t condemn his choices, as his path is his own. After all, he’s done nothing but help us walk our own since he’s arrived here.”

Confused, Nick replied, “I don’t think he’s helped us so much as completely diverted us from where we were headed. We had plans, and since he walked into our lives, how many of those plans are still viable?”

Vera chuckled and replied, “Well, the ultimate goal was always for me to lead our house into the upper echelons of the ladder, while you transitioned toward your private studies. You were never interested in going much higher into the leadership of the Center Research, and I was just waiting for the right time to leave Center Intake so I could focus on politics.”

Nick replied, “Well, that’s true enough, I suppose. We were just waiting for your shipping business to grow enough to provide our backing when I took up my lordship.”

Replying swiftly, Vera asked, “And with Lord Walker’s support, hasn’t it?”

She could feel Nicholas contemplating what she’d said and decided to go in for the conversational kill shot, “If we remove our bias concerning who we think Nero is to us, and just look at our lives objectively, you’ll see that we’ve progressed further along our path in the past few months than we have in the decades prior to his arrival. We should focus on our own lives, and let our young friend focus on his own. He has been and is a wonderful ally and friend, and we owe it to him to treat him with respect and understanding.”

Vera could feel Nick’s annoyance when he replied, “Wasn’t that what I was saying in the first place? Stop turning the conversation around on me! You know how I hate that!”

Replying innocently, she said, “I have no idea what you mean, dear. Now, how long until you get here, I need to prepare the estate for your arrival.”

Having long since gotten used to accepting this type of defeat, Nick replied sadly, “Around thirty minutes probably. We’ll be there soon. Do you want me to pick you up anything while I’m out?”

Vera’s small smile grew a little wider on her face, having missed the feeling of poking at her wizened and politically inept husband.

—--

Together they walked in silence for over ten minutes before Academian Quincy asked, “Lord Walker, when you say that leveling is like enchanting yourself, you aren’t talking about casting an enchantment on yourself or anything, are you? I only ask because that’s an incredibly dangerous route of advancement that has led to more than one mage being corrupted and subsequently damned to one of the hells. Of course, that’s only when they aren’t caught and executed for their crimes before they have time to ruin their souls.”

Nero, having been brought out of his thoughts by the question, turned to look up at the man with confusion before parsing through what he’d just asked and finally understanding the man’s confusion.

Chuckling, Nero replied, “No, nothing like that. I’m sure some dumbasses try and use essence from the ether or maybe other planes… just shoving it into their center, expecting to gain a few levels. It probably works too… for a while at least… technically. But, obviously, that would turn them into monsters. Hell, that’s basically what monsters ARE, that is if I’m understanding those essence spawn point things correctly.”

Nick started to reply, “Well, no… not exactly. Monsters are dif-”

Ignoring Nick, as he was not remotely interested in the specifics, and already having made up his mind, Nero continued, “What I meant was that as a person lives, they either take in or generate essence due to their actions and thoughts, infusing that essence into their centers by giving it meaning. That essence becomes theirs, associated with their personality or identity. From there, the more personalized essence a person has, the higher their level, and the more ‘real’ they become. Higher levels are more real, right? Just like the matter in higher level areas?

So, it kind of makes sense that enchanting works the way you say it does. Since matter in a higher level area is a higher level, it’s harder to change, but a lot more resistant to outside influence once it has been. Low-level areas are like clay, easy to change, but hard to keep together. Again, just like people. Young people, or people at low levels haven’t really figured out who they are yet. As they get older, and have more experience, they figure out who they are, making them stubborn and resistant to outside influences.

I bet that’s why so many people ‘fall off their path’ or whatever. They start acting in a way that they don’t resonate with. You know, giving in to what the world wants them to be… letting the opportunities to be who they really are pass them by. Sheep, going about their lives, hating every minute of it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Don’t let anyone tell you who you are, right? That’s like leveling 101… Your path is your own or whatever.”

Nero felt both Nick and Academian Quincy thinking hard about what he’d said, probably just itching to explain to him what he was missing, or in what way he was wrong. But thankfully, they kept their opinions to themselves, most likely having learned their lessons about how he reacts to unasked lecture topics.

As a result, they continued for quite some time in silence, giving Nero the opportunity to look around.

Nero spent the trip examining the troops and potential members of his house with his essence field. He saw several people he recognized, others he didn’t. Their ages were all over the place, as were the densities of their essence fields. He’d learned to ballpark how strong someone was by their field, while also knowing that he shouldn’t rely too heavily on that kind of thing as it could be manipulated.

Hell, all of the evaluator’s fields fluctuated between practically non-existent and utterly terrifying depending on how much effort they were putting into hiding them. Nero had yet to see a pattern behind their random essence containment, but he was sure there was one. He just hadn’t figured it out.

Regardless, overall he felt a growing sense of community building up around him, everyone’s fields slowly seeping into each other as their familiarity with each other grew. Offhandedly, he wondered if in the future groups of soldiers would grow into mob units. He could just imagine them being real-world examples of gaming units composed of hundreds of soldiers. It was weird how the world seemed to go out of its way to warp reality into an imitation of the representations he used to know, but he was slowly growing used to it.

Everything here was a metaphor.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t find it all annoying on a fundamental level. As far as he was concerned, it was like with every new aspect of the world he learned, whoever had set all this up was deliberately mocking him.

Eventually, he and the rest of the troops made it out of the mountains and back into the area outside Dorchester. Surprisingly, he could see the land which had been destroyed by the fighting returning to normal. Rapidly growing trees were already showing up, along with bushes and wildlife. Had it been back home, it would have taken years for this type of recovery, but here… everything was already ‘respawning’.

‘Freaky,’ he thought to himself with a shiver.

It took longer than he liked, but not as long as he feared before they were back in the outer town around the wall. But, what he saw when they got there was not what he remembered seeing when he’d left.

The town was filled to the brim with people moving around and living their lives… clogging the streets like they were at a farmer’s market. Despite how many cheered and waved at their passing, Nero still felt the unjustified urge to lose his shit and shout, ‘Why aren’t all you assholes at work! Get off the street and get a job!’

Luckily, he managed to suppress that urge and instead asked acidly, “Why is it, every time I come back to the city, there are more people here than when I left?”

Scoffing, Nick replied, “Nero… please start using your link. I’m getting tired of reminding you about it.”

Nero turned to glare at the man, replying, “I am, smartass. From the moment we got in range of Dorchester’s thought hub, I’ve been dealing with the pings that were waiting for me. Luckily, most of them were sent ahead by Vera, but I’ve already taken care of all those.”

Returning Nero’s glare, Nick replied, “Well, did you check the city’s Thought Hub for recent news and opinion pieces? If you had, I’m sure you would have noticed that everyone is talking about the recent immigration problem and the lengths the nobles have gone to combat it since currently using the mountain city for the overflow is out of the question.”

Not willing to get into a debate, Nero didn’t bother replying. Instead, he put his energy toward what he recalled from having once or twice looked at the city version of the Thought Hub. From what he remembered, it was like an overly cumbersome message board, and without having more information on how it was managed, he didn’t trust it in the least.

But, now that he was more familiar with the link and confident enough in his ability to limit its ability to influence his brain… at least not without him at least noticing, he decided to take a better look around the message boards and play ‘average citizen of Dorchester’ for a day.

While the troops and potential members of House Walker made their way through the streets to the closest teleportation hub, Nero fully immersed himself for the first time in the city section of the Thought Hub. Instead of just looking at it as a long list of links and pages, he opened up his mind and dove into the stream of consciousness.

And boy was that a mistake.

Thousands of conversation threads suddenly categorized themselves as impressions in his head, while associated lists displayed themselves in his mind. Without fully diving in, he wouldn’t have had any idea how to find anything in all this content. But, now that he had, it was like having every single citizen's Facebook wall presenting itself to him, asking if he was interested in seeing the pictures they’d taken of their kids, while not being too pushy about it.

It was like being connected to another brain. One which had memories and structured thoughts that he could interact with at will. For the first time, he finally understood why it was called a ‘Thought Hub’.

Mentally stepping back, he felt the impressions slip away, and his connection to his link returning to normal. The lists and categories were all still there, but he felt nothing from them. It was… dull… uninteresting… lifeless, just like it had been when he’d first poked around on it.

‘Huh… OK… I’ll admit that’s kind of cool,’ he thought to himself.

Diving back in, he surfed around and got a general sense of who people were paying attention to. It was almost like a mental representation of a ‘recommended for you’ list based on how many people trusted the postings. It was so similar to what he’d recognized while being so totally different than what he’d expected.

He mentally looked in on what people had posted, along with seeing the representations of the noble houses and the connections they had. The city itself had several… pages… for lack of a better word. There was so much information just sitting there, just waiting for him to look at it. And all of it was from the first-person perspective of whoever had posted it.

There was no illusion of objectivity, as it was quite clear who’d posted what, and where the information was coming from. Had someone posted something they themselves didn’t believe, then the associated feeling would immediately give the lie away. It was brilliant, and yet utterly terrifying.

Mentally, Nero immediately began thinking of ways around such a simple trick. All he’d have to do is convince someone of something and then have them post his lies. Granted, people would know it came from him, but he could work through multiple intermediaries and probably hide his trail. He was sure more than a few cleverly duplicitous nobles had already figured that out.

Dipping into one of the most respected posters profiles, he saw a recent post from some lady named, Melinda York. She was a distant relation to someone on the council of leadership and apparently loved to gossip. Nero was able to watch a memory engram she’d uploaded of a conversation she’d had with several notable citizens who were ‘in the know’.

It was like watching an episode of ‘The View’ crossed with a podcast. He ‘felt’ their opinions as much as he listened to them. While they didn’t necessarily influence him in any way, he could tell the things they were serious about, and what they were unsure of. Also, he couldn’t help but notice the subtle, but quite obvious plugs they were giving to their families' businesses.

The subject of the day was the war with the kobalds, and the effect it had on the city. They covered the strained facilities trying to make room for the immigrating outlying villages. The possible threat of what it could mean to ignore the density shift currently underway. They also discussed the pros and cons of asking for aid from the kingdom, and whether or not Dorchester could survive on its own.

At one point, someone brought up the city's new unique, Lord Walker. Nero found it immensely amusing how divisive the subject was. The subject changed before the arguments about what he represented really got going, but it was enlightening nonetheless. Apparently, many nobles weren’t happy with the new trading posts he’d had Vera set up.

When they mentioned their own businesses, he could tell exactly what they were doing. The method of transmission didn’t allow them to lie or obfuscate in any way. Oddly, he knew that somehow each of the people being shown had uploaded their own version of the memory, seamlessly splicing them together to create what he was experiencing. It was like watching a combined first-person perspective from all of them, while not even remotely being confusing.

Calling it weird would be an understatement on par with calling triple pepper hot sauce spicy.

Honestly, Nero got so caught up in the nuances of what he was seeing that he’d forgotten why he’d logged on to the Thought Hub in the first place. His sense of time and connection to his body dulled, and his thoughts felt separate from his physical body.

‘It’s like an entire society of influencers… but NOT a nightmare. If I’d ever had doubts about any of this being real, this clinches it. I could NEVER have imagined a world like this. Hell, even having proof of it being true, downloaded directly into my brain, it still isn’t enough for me to truly believe it,’ he thought to himself sarcastically.

Barely having paid attention, he was brought out of his fugue by the feeling of the world around him shifting.

Blinking away the light from the teleporter he hadn’t noticed he’d taken, he looked down from the ornate stone platform he was now standing on and onto a gravel courtyard filled with patches of perfectly landscaped gardens. Looking around, he saw that he was under a gazebo of some kind, with what looked like massive doors laid down by hinges onto the ground. Had he not been able to get a wide-angle view with his essence field, he’d have no idea what he was looking at.

In the distance, he saw what appeared to be the unholy love child born from a tantric sex ritual performed by a massive mansion, a French palatial estate, a castle, and a log cabin. Nero was frozen in place, not comprehending the architectural clusterfuck he was looking at.

Feeling a gentle hand on his shoulder guiding him down the overturned door, which had for some reason been turned into a ramp, Nero awkwardly stumbled forward while most of his attention was focused on trying to figure out where he was.

Ripping his attention away from the ridiculously large building in the distance, Nero saw Vera walking up to him with that same stern yet blank expression she’d always worn. However, something about her was different, as instead of being in the center-type robes he’d gotten used to seeing her in, she was wearing what looked like battle robes.

Behind her, spread out in rows were people dressed in matching elegant uniforms. There must have been fifty of them… maybe a hundred… who knows, as there were a lot of them… and Nero didn’t feel like counting. It was creepy enough how they were all just standing there staring at him.

His senses made it very clear that they were all filled with expectation and hope, and the entirety of their attention was focused almost exclusively on him.

Coming to a halt directly in front of Nero, Vera said, “Welcome, my lord, to the Walker Estate. If you’ll please follow me, there are some matters that you need to address before you can take your rest.”

Without another word, she turned around and walked off toward the building in the distance.

Nero, after blinking several times to clear his head, turned to Nick, who was conveniently still on his right and said, “She didn’t even say ‘hi’ to you. What did you do to piss her off?”

Rolling his eyes in annoyance, Nick replied, “I’ve been talking to her over the link since we arrived in the city. It’s not like she was surprised to see me. What did you expect?”

Nero shrugged absently, reminding himself once again that he really needed to adapt to the world before something ended up biting him in the ass… again.

‘The trick’s going to be keeping it together and not losing my damn mind like everyone else around here,’ he thought to himself sourly.