Lurona city [southern shores of Fuminao Legacy Kingdom], local time [1794.01.01]

“All set!” Zeph exclaimed, jumping into Ghrughah’s carriage with a small spray of snow falling from his boots. He immediately shut the doors behind him. It was getting colder still, if that was even possible. Thankfully, the weather was still calm.

“Welcome back,” Makani said, smiling mischievously. “Any new unfair advantage for your collection?” he asked good-naturedly as Zeph started to take off his heavy winter clothing. “Or was that just your typical morning chat with an Onji?”

“Why do I hear so much venom in your voice, and yet so little jealousy?” Zeph asked back, looking at the man.

He was sitting by the window, still wearing his green-and-gold robes. Strangely, he wasn’t using any additional clothing to protect himself from the cold air outside. Whatever enchantments P’pfel and Ghrughah put inside his attire, they were evidently more than enough for the Air-specialized Manacaster to fully counteract the inhospitable environment like the winter in Lurona city.

On the other side of the small table, two of Kwan’s guards were sitting silently. They were fully geared, keeping their coats on themselves even in the warm interior of the carriage.

“It’s merely your imagination,” Makani waved away the question lightly. “So, what did you get?” he asked more seriously, putting his head in his hand.

The carriage jolted forward suddenly and Zeph reflexively activated the Anchoring enchantments in his boots to stabilize himself. He was getting good at using it.

“Nothing. Leilucia was absolutely uninterested in me,” Zeph shrugged, stepping closer to sit beside him on the soft bench. “Actually, no. I think she may have been a little chafed. You know, after System Onji and Aisha forced a reimbursement out of her…”

“Ouch,” Makani grimaced. “Well, you did have a hand in that…”

“Yeah… I was just translating between her and Gru, for the most part. At least she was happy from getting more information about you-know-what,” he said, hinting at Gru’s method of gathering the ‘positive’ Soul-wound Soul fragments. “She promised to help with the next step in his mental development, but I am not privy to the contents of their deal…”

“Don’t worry, System Onji will reward you accordingly when that happens, I am sure,” Makani said, trying to lift his mood before changing the topic slightly. “How was she, anyway?” Pure curiosity was written all over his face.

Zeph just sighed. “Nothing like Aisha. The closest impression would be ‘a strict military general’. Very pragmatic. And very much not involved in small matters. As long as everyone was fulfilling their roles, at least. Also, unreadable. Her true thoughts and motivations are one thing, but I am not even sure if she fights like a berserker or a cold-blooded killer. Easily could be both at the same time, actually… I am quite impressed that Aisha managed to get access to her Mana and… more direct assistance,” he said, shaking his head.

That woman, if a being of her caliber could even be classified as such, was easily the most terrifying creature he met, ever. Not because he felt threatened in any direct way, but because she made sure he felt the difference in power while giving no hints as to his current standing with her. It was like prowling through an unstable mountain pass during the night, always fearing that the next step would cause an avalanche. No matter how irrational that fear was, people always feared most what they couldn’t see or understand, and that Goddess was wielding that impression like one would a cloak… or a weapon.

“Hmmm… From what I heard, most behave similarly?” Makani said, kind of disappointed. “A little arrogantly and always keeping a distance… I hoped she would be more eccentric. Like the Library Onji. Heh, that story of yours was one of the best I have had the pleasure to listen to,” he chuckled.

Zeph’s brows raised. “Aisha never told you about Leilucia?”

“Neh,” he waved his hand dismissingly. “She can’t. Most information is classified, and all that. Anyway, the Onji’s Mana isn’t anything special – every high Priest and Priestess can exchange their own for a bit from their Onjis’. Even if the ratio of the exchange is ridiculous.” He said with disgust. “But yeah, the rituals are something else… before you ask – all they do is grab the attention of the Onji and signal what is expected from them. The rituals aren’t really working Spell formations, or anything like that.”

“Heh, I guessed that already,” he said, smirking. “I have seen Aisha at work a few times, after all. But let’s go back to business. I need to learn Force Beam’s condensed and structured forms. The one I was using until now only works with my Stabilized Telekinesis,” he said, bending over to retrieve the Cube from his backpack.

All of his gear was neatly packed inside the carriage, most in his backpack even, in preparation for their journey. Almost nothing was left behind. As for his strongest weapon, though… Unfortunately, P’pfel and Ghrughah found a problem with producing more ammo for his pistol. He asked them yesterday, before everyone left to sleep.

As expected, most chemicals necessary for the production of the original powder weren’t accessible on the market. They also lacked cheap, soft metal for the projectile’s core, like the lead for example. The two crafters were actually more interested in the railgun and coil gun ideas. Not the Earth’s implementations exactly, but the mechanisms behind them – it was easy enough to produce strong magnetic fields or temporary electric currents through enchantments. The idea of self-driving setup of electrical loops fascinated them even more. Well, the electric enchantments were in the early stages of development, so railgun probably wasn’t doable yet. Still, Ghrughah knew a good number of well-conducting metals, as well as ferromagnetic and magnetic materials that probably worked even better than Earth’s equivalents.

On the other hand, Irra had taken it as a challenge and declared that she would recreate the explosion-driven ballistic weaponry all by herself. Zeph allowed her to be present during the talks even without signing a new contract – he already made peace with the idea of her leaving them behind, doing whatever she wanted in the future, and just hoped she would be able to leave behind her debts and the bad company she seemed to always surround herself with in some inexplicable turn of events.

As for her declaration, he could understand her somehow – the Alchemy was her domain, and yet the topic of the explosive powder was dropped almost immediately by her current coworkers. It was exactly why he wanted an Alchemist that could be more flexible than an ingeniator. The Mana battery for Gru was only the first problem they had to solve.

Either way, Zeph just left a few of his bullets for them to examine (Ghrughah already scanned his pistol and deemed it an extremely primitive mechanism, even if built very precisely) and made his escape before the debate escalated even more. He feared they would tie him down if he mentioned anything more, like the superconductivity or Maxwell’s equations.

After a moment, he produced the Cube and threw it at Makani. The man didn’t even try to catch it, instead producing a jet of air that slammed in down on the table, just before him.

“If by ‘Force’ you mean Scrubbing, then no problem,” he said confidently, placing his hands on the sides to check the current state of the contraption. “Why ‘structured’ Beam, though? From the five basic forms, ‘dispersed’ is better for defense, and ‘piercing’ is better for offense. Especially in the case of the Scrubbing module.”

“I need more versatility, not more predictable and known attacks. ‘Force’ is in the name of my Class. I showed the Effigy enough times for everyone interested to know what Class I have. I plan to build around my Spells and new discoveries instead.”

Makani nodded, visibly concentrating. “Wise. As for the ‘business’, Kwan requested to inform you that our earnings were so-so. On one hand, we have earned half of what we had planned from visitors. On the other, the companies and Guilds in the city showed much more interest in our arcade games. We will be selling much more than anticipated in the coming months.”

Zeph breathed out with relief. Maybe his loan to Ghrughah wouldn’t take so long to be paid back. “Why the business proposals, though? I had an impression that we are being pressed down by all of the neighbors with influence right now.”

“You will see soon, but you already saw how popular your machines were. Especially the Flight Simulator…” Makani smiled despite himself. “Did you see Ghrughah going at it? I have never seen him like that before!”

Zeph laughed at the memory. “Yeah, he was even more pumped up than during the small-prototype showcase in the twins’ hangar. I am quite sure he just created a new clan after the kids from the orphanage learned that he was the main creator… Or should we call it a sect already?”

Makani snorted. “Sports groups are a normal thing, you know? And if you didn’t notice, at least five more rivaling groups formed almost at the same time, so I doubt it will devolve into a blind fellowship. Not to mention, we had at least three more communities that formed around other games, like the ‘cimbergai’. That one was surprising.”

Zeph laughed at the name. He himself wasn’t sure where he heard it, but it was definitely better than ‘air hockey’, as the name not only sounded lame but didn’t have any connotation for people not knowing about real hockey at all. “I didn’t even know the disk could move that fast. Especially when Aisha called you to a duel! Kudos to our craftsmen for making it safe for the environment,” he laughed even more at the memory.

“Hey! I was tame in comparison to Aisha!” Makani protested. “I didn’t even use vibrations to enhance the penetration power! And she electrified it!”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Yes, yes…” he said in between laughing fits. “You…” he took a deeper breath to be able to speak, yet still smiling widely. “You should have used it. Ghrughah was quite disappointed you didn’t even scratch the walls.”

“Bah! If we knew you prepared it for us, the table wouldn’t stand a chance! Better be happy we didn’t destroy anything,” he grumbled.

“You still lost,” Zeph snickered. “We can place the next one in an enclosed room for you if you want?” he showed a devilish smile.

Makani glanced at him for a second and scratched his chin. “Well… if you offer…”

“100k”

Makani’s eyes immediately snapped back to his grinning face. “That’s uncalled for! Did you spend too much time with System Onji?!”

“We need to take precautions, you know? The cost of materials is not cheap~” Zeph sang in a greedy voice. “Don’t you want a revenge?~” He asked with fake sadness.

“Curse you…” Makani grumbled, clenching his fists. “We will talk about that later… If you want your enchantment and our cabin to stay in one piece,” he said, looking down at the Cube.

Zeph wisely stayed silent, but was still smiling. He looked out of the window instead, as they were getting close to the neighboring district.

After making sure Zeph wasn’t preoccupied, Gru started sending his happy impressions. Being able to see the mesmerizing lights of the city up close for the first time was a one-in-a-lifetime experience. Especially for a previously-blind creature like him.

It seemed that his companion started to develop quickly after acquiring a new physical sense. The impressions that he could share with Zeph were becoming more detailed by the day. It took him a while to get used to fully, but now Zeph was sure that Gru had even better eyesight than he himself right now. A ridiculous notion, but Gru’s body upgrade was not limited by the versatility mainframe – it was modifiable and partially mechanical in nature, going by the materials necessary. Not to mention, Gru was now in possession of three eyes and was sending him impressions that were hard to understand for a creature with a merely stereoscopic vision. Zeph was sure it would get even more out-of-hand in the future.

Also, as Gru adapted to the new organ, he advanced from imitating the eyes of living organisms all the way up to bettering their functionality. The interesting part was, Gru didn’t really like any vision that wasn’t incorporating wavelengths visible for Zeph. Ultraviolet and infrared were even more disturbing for him than for humans… although, humans could only ‘see’ those by using tools that changed those wavelengths to the visible spectrum, so maybe it wasn’t that strange.

Anyway, it seemed that Zeph’s Soul memories had a major influence on his companion. He felt comfortable while seeing the world just like Zeph did, but the idea of a compound eye was horrifying to him.

At least Gru used the better model of the eyes available and created his as they should always be – with retina on the surface and nerves underneath, like in an octopus eye.

Yes, the eyes of Earth’s Vertebrates (humans included) are made inefficiently and in reverse. The nerves actually cover the retina that is responsible for processing the photons into workable neural signals. The only reason we can see, is the presence of biological optical fibers that transfer the light to the retina underneath the neurons.

It was a hard guess at the moment, but Zeph speculated that the organisms on Corora didn’t have that problem.

Anyway, he managed to persuade Gru to form another, more complicated eye that could not only gather the infrared and ultraviolet, but also change the natural contrast that an eye would produce and disable some of the wavelengths at will. He, basically, wanted an eye that could work like the Predator’s vision in the old games – something that would prove indispensable in a survival environment. There were three problems, though. First, Gru would need time to actually form and test it. Second, he would connect it directly to Zeph’s nerves because he didn’t want anything to do with that kind of vision, which meant a lot of training on Zeph’s part. And Third, he agreed to only one eye of this kind. The impressions he had sent were kind of alien, but it seemed even his new body upgrade had limits.

Desynchronization seemed to be a problem – Gru couldn’t just make an infinite number of different eyes. Heck, he wouldn’t be able to make more than six total, probably. Going by Gru’s own testimony, it had to do more with his anatomy and processing capacity than the upgrade itself.

Thankfully, because becoming a literal realization of Biblical angel wasn’t on Zeph’s list just yet, it was more helpful than limiting.

“Finished,” Makani said, waking Zeph up from the slight trance he got himself into.

“What took you so long?” he asked, taking back the Cube.

“I managed to enchant the main frame at the center and all five configurations near the corners. Much more useful than showing you one Spell at a time,” he said pridefully. “Now, praise me, mortal!”

Zeph had an urge to snicker at his friend, but couldn’t really. What Makani just did was that much impressive. “So, they weren’t lying when they said you were a genius…” he whispered, checking the constructs inside the Cube. “How did you even know how I—” he frowned. “Gru?” he said in a cold tone.

“Ha! Don’t be so petty! Now, praise me more!”

“Ugh…”

The rest of the time was spent on training the new Spell constructs while Gru and Makani made fun of him. Not a pleasant time. Not at all.

~~~

The Tower was now visible in the distance. It was made from the same yellowish rock as most buildings, but was decorated with black and neon-green. The latter even seemed to produce some light of itself, like fluorescent paint in a low light would. The only reason he could see it, was because the left side of the tall building was covered in shadow.

He also now understood why so many business partners asked for cooperation. The city was not only paralyzed, but quite badly damaged, too. If the owners were to rebuild, they could as well incorporate something new. Especially if the idea was already tested out.

As for why the city looked like that, there just weren’t enough Guards to cleanse all the streets in the wake of the Undead rising left and right. Aisha wasn’t kidding about the influence of the marine life on the process of spreading the Soul conglomerations – the propagation should have died long ago without their life energy and consumption cycle.

As so, people evacuated to enclosed blocks, leaving most of the terrain free for the Undead to roam freely and without repercussions. The effect?

Mayhem. The city was paralyzed. If not for the Guards keeping the main streets clean, they wouldn’t be able to even travel through them so easily. It was also the main reason no one attacked them. Probably.

But most of the terraces and buildings were inaccessible. Even if Zombies weren’t that strong, Chiropteridas’ bodies formed most of the hordes. Those had strength in their own right, even when Zombified. It was simply too dangerous for people not accustomed to fighting, and there was just too much terrain to cover for the military.

“How many Undead Hearts have they used?” Zeph asked absentmindedly, looking at the streets.

“Enough it seems… The Mana network is down,” Makani noticed, pointing at the inert, damaged pipes as they drove by. “That will cost the city a lot. Not only in materials – the citizens aren’t fueling the defensive systems.”

Zeph’s frown deepened. “Are you trying to tell me that they not only paralyzed the city’s production, but are chipping on the Mana reserves it has?”

“No. It’s worse and more complicated. I am quite sure the city lost the credibility of security. Many people would try to leave, major groups and organizations included.”

Zeph sighed depressingly. “Then, they managed to achieve their goal… The coming beast attack will have a much easier time now…”

“Not necessarily,” Makani said without emotion. Zeph eyed him skeptically. “We had quite a good standing with the higher strata. Not to mention, it’s the city of inventions. Some people would definitely find the situation beneficial in one way or another. But let’s leave the politics to the politicians, and fights to the fighters,” he shook his head dismissively. “We can only worry about ourselves right now.”

They spent the rest of the travel in silence, looking at the destruction and the fighting groups visible in the distance. Zeph even spotted some random ‘solo-players’ hunting the Undead for Soul fragments. Despite the dire situation, no one was panicking, which was already a step above the Earth’s ‘customs’.

In the end, he concentrated once again on the Tower ahead. It was visible from time to time because the road was meandering quite a lot. It took him a while, but he recognized the structure. It was built just like a university complex but with one difference – a massive tower was built on the foundations formed from lower buildings. He never took a good look at the building from a distance, so he was quite surprised by the arrangement.

First of all, it was already built on a small hill that seemed lopsided, although it was kind of hard to tell because of the architecture covering it. The district around it was walled off, somewhat, but the main buildings below the Tower weren’t even close to symmetrical. The Tower itself had at least thirty floors – which was saying something when each floor was at least five meters high.

How to say it… It looks more like a massive, artistic monument? The asymmetrical façade is breaking the immersion, though. He scratched his beard while trying to come up with a better description. For future generations, of course.

“Did you just think something rude about my Alma Mater?” Makani suddenly asked, squinting his eyes at Zeph.

“Not really. What? Did you finally awaken your mind-reading abilities? Or the auguring?” he deadpanned, not even looking back at the man. “By the way, if most of the people that are visiting it are giving similar comments, it’s all on the architects. Look, the right side is wider than the left…” he said, pointing at the strange discrepancy. “Was it planned like that? And it seems to lean to the side slightly…”

Makani could only sigh in irritation. “It’s freedom, you idiot. How many times do you see symmetry in nature?”

“Quite frequently, actually,” Zeph said, now livelier, turning to his companion. “Did you hear about… Ugh, what was the word… fractals, I think?” he started, using a really obsolete word for ‘fern-like self-replicable shape’.

Makani just facepalmed. “Just… shut up already!”

~~~

After saying their goodbyes to their escort – as planned to exit the Tower with another, less conspicuous method – they entered the main building.

It took them no time to reach the environmental chamber on the seventh floor of the Tower.

Well, the first floor was counted from the highest floor of the adjacent buildings, so the measure didn’t make much sense. Anyway, looking down, they were around sixty meters above the ground, so around thirty floors up… while accounting for the hill.

Right after crossing the checkpoint at the entrance to the complex, Makani took out his strange medallion – the same one to which Gru reacted not so long ago. Zeph still didn’t know what it did, but it worked wonders on the locals. Not only were they treated better by the personnel after Makani uncovered it to the public, but everyone moved away when they passed the overcomplicated corridors of the Tower.

Well, part of that could lay in the fact that Zeph was in his futuristic attire – the strange helmet with a glass for a face included – and was fully geared for a fight. But he felt more like an addition to Makani’s presence in the Tower and for a few good reasons.

As a reminder – Makani and Zeph were much shorter than even typical humans. They could be easily mistaken for Twergs. Yet, even the most muscular, geared, and tallest of people politely shuffled away when they passed them. Some of them even bowed slightly to Makani!

It was a truly ridiculous experience, but again, it wasn’t a high school or even a university. It was a Tower. Some people stayed on the level of Practitioner for decades. Most of the people they passed were probably older than Zeph himself. The hierarchy here wasn’t dictated by age, but the ability.

And yet, it was still quite bizarre.

Besides that, they were never again asked to identify themselves. Even with the strange attire he had, they were just let through every checkpoint like it was only natural.

Zeph started to understand why Makani had so high esteem, and why it was broken during their first meeting. The Tower was built around promoting the excellence in their craft and the people that furthered said craft.

A typical corporational play, but this time under a group that seemed to really follow their own tenets.

As so, in quick order, Zeph entered an empty, small room with brown stones for the walls and floor…