Fionn liked cars, he finally decided. It had taken him a while to reach this place, but despite everything, they were clearly the superior method of transportation.

Sure, unlike the constant but steady up-and-down of being in a horse’s saddle, when riding in a car, you felt each and every bump and unevenness in the ground beneath the tires. However, cars didn’t get tired, and were much less prone to “getting sick,” insofar as that applied to machinery, and unlike horses, they could normally be repaired after being damaged.

So yes, cars were amazing. Planes were also incredible, if a little loud. And helicopters were still terrible, the only good thing about them was that he could easily fly the kinds of distances they were normally employed for.

Oh, and one more advantage cars had was that he couldn’t use them. Therefore, he could always pass on that responsibility to another person and not even feel bad about it or be faced with criticism.

On the other hand, it seemed quite insane to let people this young control what basically amounted to a metal battering ram. Granted, Ms. Vogt seemed rather responsible, and the same went for her brother, but all it took was one idiot to cause horrendous damage. And when he thought back to all the things people who’d just become adults had done in his first lifetime … either modern humans were very grown up, or there were a lot of preventable accidents. And he wasn’t entirely sure whether he wanted to find out.

But whatever might happen in general, this car ride was perfectly safe and deposited them right at their first “target.”

They’d been asked to find a certain lance by one Arthur Pendragon, and if they hadn’t gone to unearth the man’s Courtmage, they could have actually already retrieved it.

The weapon known as Rhongomyniad did not have any particularly special properties as far as they knew, and King Pendragon had not corrected this impression. It was simply a supernatural weapon, well made, sharper than natural and hard to break, but with no particularly “overpowered” attributes compared to regular weaponry.

Granted, it would be able to injure creatures immune to mundane weaponry, rare as they were, but overall, this all likely had as much to do with sentimentality as it had with gaining a powerful weapon.

Dietrich’s nose, literally, if one went by the Skill’s name, [Nose for Treassure], had led them to a small random forest in Wales, and there, all the way to a pile of boulders.

“It’s in there, around five meters in, slightly below us,” the former monarch announced, gesturing in the direction.

“Any traps to worry about?” Fionn asked, even as he scried the area himself. He was still easily the most knowledgeable person in the world, but recent events had done a fantastic job disabusing him of the notion that he was anywhere near omniscient.

“Not that I can tell.”

So, they were as certain as they could be that things were “safe,” and Fionn cast [Geokinesis], holding the boulders on top where they were while shifting the lower ones, reforming the pile into a doorway … and promptly put everything back again as the stench of death wafted out. Very old corpses, rust, and mildew.

But the few seconds the doorway had been open had been for all three of them to see what was inside. A figure, clad in armor, kneeling with its hands on the hilt of a sword planted in the ground, staring at where the entryway had been created with empty eyesockets. Not an undead, not a monster, just … a corpse. A man who had stayed in that cave until his death, never even moving from that position.

And behind him, the lance had sat, planted in yet another pile of rocks, head gleaming even all these centuries later.

“I …” Fionn broke off, swallowed, and sighed. “That man has stood vigil for all this time so that his king might retrieve his weapon once he returns. I believe it should be his king who disturbs his rest.”

Dietrich nodded grimly, and Ms. Vogt followed suit slowly. She clearly didn’t understand this the same way they did; she was too new to all this, but she was trying. Her brother would likely have been the same, had he been here.

Those two … they’d either grow up to become great figures mentioned in the legends the current world situation would inevitably spawn, or they’d break. He sincerely hoped it was the former.

“So, where to next?” he asked after a long moment of silence.

***

“Well … that just happened,” Fionn muttered as he stared at the two swords resting against the back of the driver’s seat as they headed towards the airport.

They’d simply been found in the ground, one buried beneath several meters of muck, the other beneath ancient rubble.

Clarent, the sword that had slain King Arthur was yet another entry on the list of “well made and magical but not special” and had likely lain where Mordred had fallen, while Galataine was, well, interesting. They’d found it in what seemed to have been a random armory, whoever had put it there seemed to not even have known what they’d had.

Using his [Arcane Analysis], he’d uncovered just what its ability was. Empowerment through sunlight. Not quite to the point of actual invulnerability, as some legends implied or outright stated, but whoever wound up with this weapon would be a very lucky person indeed.

And, of course, he’d made sure that Dietrich had handled each weapon for a few seconds so that they qualified for his [A Blade Borrowed] Skill which would, in turn, be useable in conjunction with Fionn’s own [Arcane Superimposition]. The copy would only last for a single attack, but if it was subsumed in whatever Fionn happened to be wielding at the time,… plenty of ways that could be exploited. And off they were, heading to Ireland for a few spears.

***

“You know, I think I know where we are,” Fionn announced as they came to a stop in the middle of an empty field. “We lived here when Diarmuid died. Are you telling me his spears have been here the entire time?”

Because if they had, he’d be feeling quite stupid right about now. Not burying a warrior with his weapons because they’d missed them when they’d gone searching, potentially even lying in plain sight … granted, now, it was now an advantage, not having to retrieve them from an actual grave. But it still “ground his gears,” if he understood that expression correctly.

“They might have been moved here after you went to sleep,” Mia suggested, apparently having realized what he was worried about.

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“Possibly,” he admitted. It was still a strange coincidence.

“There they are,” Dietrich pointed into the air, at an empty patch of sky. “Two meters above us, and I have absolutely no idea why we can’t see them.”

He paused for a second, then took a couple of hasty steps back so that he was no longer directly underneath the spot. Walking under spears dubiously mounted above you was dangerous and stupid. Doing the same with magical spears where even the tiniest scratch would bleed eternally was solidly suicidal.

Fionn, meanwhile just stared into the nothingness for a long moment, then proceeded to spend the next several minutes unleashing his entire repertoire of curse words. Under his breath, of course, but he used them nevertheless.

“I take it that means you know what we’re dealing with?” Dietrich asked once he was done.

“Unfortunately,” Fionn sighed. “They’re right where they used to be, where they always were, just … elsewhere. They slipped into the Otherworld, the realm of many names, and …”

He sighed again.

“We can’t get at them?” Mia suggested.

“We can, but it might be dangerous. Very dangerous,” he admitted. “I can open the veil, however, I have rarely done so as there are many, many, convenient and natural paths between worlds. And we have no idea what is on the other side. It may simply be a random patch of wilderness, or, well, or it might be a court of the Fair Folk. Should we be really unlucky, it may even be a court of whom I have killed a member.

“And the Fair Folk are dangerous. Their magic is immense, can twist human minds, bodies, even fortune itself. If I open a gate and we come face to face with the Fae, even immediately closing it again could leave you eternally changed.”

That drew winces from both his traveling companions.

“So, prepare, and if it becomes necessary, unleash the full power of your attacks on the other side of the gate while I close it, if it becomes necessary.”

As he spoke, he cast a wide [Stone Pillar] at the ground beneath their feet, raising them a couple of meters skywards, right in front of the soon-to-be tear in the fabric of reality itself.

Fionn raised his arm, slowly, deliberately, palm facing towards the currently empty air. It wasn’t so much a spell as it was an exertion of pure will, magic pouring out of him and soaking into the world until it practically glowed to his senses, a beacon of supernatural power that promised both infinity and infinite power.

But he did not stop, kept continuing, until he finally curled his fingers into a vague approximation of a claw, wrenched his hand sideways, and reality followed.

The artificial place of power became a ring, a gateway, already being eroded as the veil between worlds attempted to heal itself. And while it would have stayed open long enough for them to retrieve the spears, the weapons had instead decided to fall right out, simply toppling over, spear-tip first … at him.

“Shit!” Fionn cursed as he leaped backwards, escaping not only the spears’ range but also the confines of the column, only a hastily cast [Gust] making his tumble back to earth somewhat dignified.

“You good?” Mia shouted down at him, and he responded with a grunted “yes” as he walked around the column to where the spears clattered to the ground. They were, well, exactly like they had been when he’d known them in his first lifetime. Two spears, one red, one yellow, leather wrapping the shafts in a simple diamond pattern, and elegant leaf-shaped spearheads that belied the sheer threat they hid.

But thankfully, as dangerous as their edges were, they weren’t overly sharp, at least as far as supernatural weapons went. So he wrapped them in the cloth he’d brought for just such a purpose. Trying that with, say, Mimung, would have ended terribly, but it did work here. And after a final layer comprised of the strangely named “ballistic cloth” had been added, he hefted both over his shoulder and leaped back atop the pillar to stare into the still open, albeit barely, rift.

It was …

“Is it supposed to look like that?” Dietrich asked, pointing at the white wall that was on the other “side.” There was no sign of the otherworld, no people, no plants, nothing even remotely distinct from any other point on the featureless blank canvas.

“Definitely not,” Fionn said. “It’s like … honestly, with how much magic I brought to bear, even if the other side had been the inside of a mountain, I should have been able to open a real gate. That is not the otherworld, it is merely … something in between. Outside this world, but not in any other world either. Like a …”

“Pocket dimension? Extradimensional pocket?” Mia suggested, throwing around the terms as though she were familiar with them. Strange, he thought she was an engineer by trade, firmly rooted in the rules of mechanical motion.

“Those sounds like apt descriptions,” Fionn nodded. “But I was not trying to rip into a pocket of some kind, I was trying to step into another world, This is … concerning.”

“A mystery for when the world is no longer in immediate danger of ending,” Dietrich interjected. “It could be important, but unless there is a direct link between this and the System, I think we have bigger problems.”

“Like when we do this to find Gae Bolg and it actually falls on someone,” Fionn suggested darkly. “Let’s go.”

***

Another long and bumpy car ride later, they reached the site where the world’s deadliest weapon had lain for almost two millennia.

Arguably deadliest weapon. They’d spent hours debating the topic in the car.

Modern nuclear weaponry could annihilate cities in an instant, easily handing them the title of “most raw destructive power” even if the various [Ascendant Capstone] Skills gained at Level 50 seemed to all protect from such indiscriminate and indirect attacks.

Gae Buidhe and Gae Daerg, the spears that they had just retrieved, would cause wounds that would trouble the victim for the rest of their life, be it measured in seconds or decades.

Mimung and Excalibur were both swords that could not be blocked by the physical and metaphysical, respectively, protecting oneself from them was functionally impossible.

Gae Bolg, and the two other spears, could be blocked, but if they hit, they ended lives. A barbed spear formed from the bones of an ancient sea beast, one that, once thrust into someone’s body, would grow, barbs ripping through the victim’s flesh until the entirety of their body was shot through with bone spikes, every muscle and organ ripped apart.

If one could land a clean hit, it would end the battle. And would then have the supremely unenviable task of cutting the spear free of the corpse. It was a trump card, to use modern parlance, an “ultimate move” that could finish fights in an instant but also cost its wielder the fight if employed at the wrong moment, against the wrong target.

Though there was one big advantage it had over all the other weapons that had already been retrieved. He wouldn’t have to carry them around, he’d just have to summon it because the weapon was, well, summonable. Once it had been “handed over,” it could be summoned at will … unless it was stuck in someone. As far as he could tell, it had to be retrieved manually.

And much like the previous weapons, Gae Bolg was located in another “pocket dimension,” seemingly having slipped just barely outside the world, not truly a part of “Earth,” but not having wound up in the Otherworld either.

Fionn didn’t even have to summon a [Stone Pillar] this time around, the weapon was “located” just above the ground. A wave of magic, a mental “wrenching” of the saturated section of space, and the barbed crimson spear came tumbling out. This time, he was ready however, snatching it out of the air with ease, grasping it below the head while making sure to avoid even coming near the spikes.

He held it for one second, then two, and then, it simply vanished, just as the voice of the System spoke into his mind.

[Trait Registered: Bond with the Spear of Mortal Pain]

Fionn closed his eyes and exhaled slowly as he felt the presence of the weapon settle in his chest, calm, waiting. Calm, patient, full of lethal intent. He suppressed a shiver.

“So, that should be everything in Great Britan,” he said, hoping he was hiding it as well as he he thought he was. “Will you be fine collecting the German tressures on your own?”

“Should be. If there are more pocket worlds, we do have available to cellular phones,” Dietrich responded, patting his pocket.

While he and his squire drove off in the car, Fionn flew back to Dublin. He had gotten oh so very distracted in recent times, and while he had had a very good reason to divert from his intentions each and every time, the delay had only grown longer.

So, time to knuckle down and get it done. Find people with magical potential, build a school for them, then use Tristan Vogt’s ability to transfer knowledge to get them up to speed in record time. And use them to, hopefully, obliterate the next wave. And all those that followed after, until he was finally free to go chasing the new mystery he had uncovered.