Another Place—A Different Time

Amty-oha scowled as she heard the Mining team from an adjacent Clan return. Literally heard them, not because of their boots or gear. No because they sang some stupid dirge to someone who either died in the Portal or did something heroic.

Amty-oha was not an expert on their idiot songs.

Mining tales of Miners tells,

Of one who went to Mine and Fell,

For though they crossed the Line within,

All Mines and Miners meet their ends.

But, ho' today's a Mining Day!

And lo' the Miners come to play!

We take our Picks for Mining licks,

To each our own, the Mining tricks.

But woe to those, the Mine it Picks

For lo' they go give Death a Kiss,

Who was Kissed amisdt the Dark?

T'was Silvia who played their Part!

Who Fell that day, like it was Art?

T'was Silvia who played the Part!

Mining tales of Miner's Tells,

Of one who went to Mine and Fell!

Amty-oha tried very hard not to crumple any of the reports on her desk as she was forced to listen to the Miner’s pass.

Where in the Nine Hellish Sects was Lorant. She’d sent back plenty of opportune Portal locations. Sure they weren’t S-ranked but those didn’t appear for at least a hundred years after a new planet gets integrated to the System.

She scanned a paper on her desk, the location of a still open B-rank, the highest she’d discovered so far. Surely, Lorant wouldn’t find it difficult to climb from C-rank back up to join her at her current A-rank.

Maybe one of the other demons from a rival Sect had come through first?

She growled and placed that paper off to the side of her desk she had other reports to go over. Problems to solve. She thought she’d have made more progress in the year or so that she’d been on this subterranean world.

Yet, her Larvae Clan was falling behind many of the other Dwarven Clans. The crumpled and then re-flattened report in front of her claimed it was because of superior weapons and armor. The Dwarves in her Larvae Clan reported that they had too few Blacksmiths, Alchemists, Enchanters and Researchers.

With teeth clenched she made a note at the bottom of this page. ‘More funds need to be allocated to buying equipment.’ She would not let these Dwarves make the same mistakes as her people on Crendalar had. Too many Skill slots taken by Crafting Skills and Research oriented Imp-dung.

With a click of her tongue she moved on before her frustration at Crendalar’s failure could overwhelm her. She needed to stay on task. There was just too much different about this Luther’s Edge that she never could have expected.

The next report of what Fragments her people had collected summarized one of the most major of these. While they were Card Shards they also weren’t. On Crendalar Card Shards could be collected and pieces of equal Rank could be combined to form Skill Cards. What you got was largely random, and you could then choose whether to add the new card to your Heart Deck, Sell it, Trade it, or one of many different options.

Sective Agora—she moved to a shelf and pulled out one of her many journals from the Elven planet. She skimmed the pages reminding herself of the differences that were present. As she remembered, the Card Shards and combination were identical.

Sective Agora had the same system to Crendalar. She skimmed over a note, and paused. Many Elves claimed that the Cards that formed were highly dependent on who collected the Shards after a battle. That the Cards formed were possibly less randomized?

That had never been proven. She kept skimming, and growled as she reached her own note about the problems on Sective Agora.

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‘Too many Crafting and Gathering Skills are forming. It’s like the System wants the Elves to fail.’ Right, that was possibly the only difference between Crendalar and Sective Agora. On her planet Crafting and Gathering Skill Cards made up perhaps thirty to at most fifty percent of the market.

All she remembered was that those idiot Researchers and Crafters had to search for what they wanted. Imbeciles one and all. Just like those fools that chose to accent their Skills with the Pink Element. She placed her journal back onto the shelf forcefully and returned to her desk.

She needed to stop letting her emotions overwhelm her. She took a few steadying breaths and then sat back down, returning to the report on the Fragments. These Fragments were essentially pieces of a Crystal, that could be combined together based on Rank. That part was where the similarities to Crendalar and Sective ended.

Once combined together, the Skill was ‘learned’ and as far as she could tell, couldn’t be unlearned. Crendalar and Sective simply allowed an individual to pull unwanted Skill Cards out of the Heart Deck. If removed for more than a few hours the Demon or Elf would lose all progress and stats associated with the Card, but it gave Elven Jaegars or Demonic Vânătors the opportunity to test out Skills and replace them.

Here she’d been forced to stop Dwarves in her Clan from combining Fragments into Skills, because they too often received useless Crafting or Gathering Skills. Instead she focused on Braun-Doranthal, one of two Dwarves she’d found with the Demonic Vault Skill on Ulther’s Edge.

The fact that there was two of the Skills made her excited. Had there been two on Sective Agora?

She quickly lost that excitement though, when she realized that Fare-ahm had a significantly poorer quality Demonic Vault. Like Aurora’s and Braun’s it could still upgrade and gain Sub-Skills, Buy and Sell Skills, but Fare-ahm’s had no curator to help the individual—and had far fewer Skills to offer.

Amty-oha flipped to the next report, and almost crumpled this page as well. Her Mana farms weren’t working! She’d collected hundreds of Dwarves that only had the Mana Pool Skill and thus were considered relatively useless to the Clans. She figured that her two Demonic Vault users could simply Pull Mana from the Farms and trade it in for mC.

But this report claimed that they could Pull and send the Mana to the Skill, it didn’t give them mC at a one to one ratio. In fact, the last couple lines of the report claimed it awarded mC at a fifty-to one ratio, meaning she’d never make enough that way to buy her people powerful Skills.

At least the Fragments for Skills sold well for mC, otherwise she would have just given up and moved on from this stupid world.

Well, she would have considered moving on. But probably waited until Lorant arrived so she could take him with her.

An urgent knock sounded on the door, and she looked out the window of her Cave Office. The moss was glowing orange, so it must be early morning. Time for the newest reports.

“Come,” she said.

A messenger stepped in. One of the few she allowed to see her—since the Dwarves seemed adverse to her appearance. The short and slim messenger, at least in comparison to other dwarves, bowed low, waiting for her command. She gave it and he stood back up to his full four-foot height.

“Mistress Amty, there is one urgent report this morning. I will start there,” the messenger said nervously. He’d worked for her for the last few years, and she instantly was on edge. What could make him nervous?

“Go on,” she intoned, keeping the nerves out of her voice.

“There is a report from Crendalar,” the messenger said after a hesitant pause.

Oh, now she could see why he was nervous. Messages that pertained to Laurent-Axe did have a habit of making her upset. Still, if this was a response to her sending the location of the B-ranked portal, then it was surely good news.

The corners of her mouth turned up as she began anticipating better news. When he didn’t immediately continue she crooned, “Go ahead, Jasper-Aurent.”

Jasper swallowed and mumbled something, which made her smile falter. She hadn’t heard him, but she detested when people didn’t speak clearly. He saw her look and immediately bowed saying, “Sorry Mistress, I’m sure this isn’t the news you were expecting.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do not apologize for the news I didn’t hear. Apologize for not speaking clearly! Now what is the report from Crendalar say!”

The Dwarf paled, as he should, under her displeasure. “I’m sorry for mispeaking Mistress—” again he paused to swallow. “—What I said was that Lorant-Axe has entered a Portal—” her mouth began to return to its previous smile. “—but it isn’t one for Ulther’s Edge—”

“What?!” She shouted, even as she poured out her Martial Power, Mana and Endurance, flooding the room with her power. Her fists clenched, and her teeth ground together. For a moment the orange lights of early morning turned red, as he Aura surged forth.

She thought it only lasted seconds but by the time she got a hold of herself, she found Jasper bleeding from his ears, eyes and mouth—twitching on her floor. The messenger’s inability to convey more information or answer her question sent her back into a rage.

She’d just go find someone who could!

* * *

Nearly a hundred years later Amty-oha stood in front of another Portal, this one leading off of Ulther’s Edge. This place was doomed to fail. The System awarded to many non-Combat Skills that were meaningless when pitted against the Ascension Trials that she knew would come.

At least S-rank portals were beginning to show up, which meant she could enter this one with her full power, and wait till after night fall to exit its Time Dilation Bubble. Then she could search the dying planet for a new place to go. A new World with better stock.

Amty-Oha stepped through the portal and arrived in ankle deep swamp water. She growled at her unfortunate choice but still spun and began walking in a direction that looked like it contained dry land.

Then she simply continued moving in that same direction till she arrived at the Vale. Many Monsters attacked her, but they all discovered just how powerful her carefully selected Skills and leveled stats were. They may be considered S-rank but she would be a World-Power at the very minimum.

She had very little to fear from an un-Ascended World. Her one disappointment in leaving Ulther’s Edge was that she’d failed to take the Demonic Vault Skills with her. Not for a lack of trying. She just wasn’t able to push them into her Heart Deck.

She assumed it was because they weren’t Skill Cards, but she’d been able to form Fragments and get Skills that way. Skills that worked and leveled. Skills that were unerringly Combat oriented, unlike the useless Dwarves.

“Thus why I left,” she said to a corpse of a Wyvern near her feet. Unsurprisingly it didn’t answer back. Still a shadow behind her did. A shadow created by her Necromancy Skill.

“It was the right decision Mistress,” Braun said, even as he formed together into a Shadow Puppet of his previous self. She smiled at him. “The Dwarves were too focused on Crafting and Arts. Thus why they Awakened such useless Skills.”

“Agreed,” Amty-oha responded. “And it isn’t like I haven’t started over before.”

“Exactly, Mistress,” Fare-ahm said as he too formed together.

Soon, an entire Clan, no multiple Clans of Dwarves formed together around her, and began to serve her food, and distract her as time slowly passed toward nightfall.