Seras was considering the monster bodies when she summoned up a large board and threw it down on the lush carpet of moss. She then began unfolding the board to make a large flat surface. Next she grabbed one of the monsters and dragged it onto the board, then the next. Manually coiling them up to make sure they took up as little space as possible.
She looked down at the pile of monsters and bit her cheek as she thought. It would be tight, but she should have enough space.
“What are you doing?” Athena asked as she pushed herself to her feet.
She was clearly shaken by the experience, but some sort of inner grit was fighting off the looming terror. That or training of some kind familiarized her with being suddenly overwhelmed by a monster and suffocated. Seras felt like Athena was a timid person so she was personally leaning towards training, but where would someone get training like that without being an adventurer?
Her mind flashed to disturbing thought from her word, a job she tried really hard to forget. Some terrorist cult out in the badlands kidnapping nomad kids and raising them into child soldiers under a harsh physical regime with psychotropic substances warping their minds.
Driving a bus full of traumatized glassy eyed nomad kids was one of the reasons Seras stopped sleeping.
She shook her head, “setting up a harvesting ritual,” she explained.
“You know harvesting rituals?” she asked.
“Of course, its free money. I’m just trying to figure out the best way to draw this circle, I don’t have much space to work with.” Her mind was currently running through several iterations of spell circle, looking for the best option.
“Why not chop them up, or do them separately.” She asked.
Seras turned her gaze to Athena “you’re not familiar with harvesting rituals are you.”
She looked embarrassed, she kicked the moss a bit “no, I’ve only ever seen looting abilities at work.”
“Yeah, well harvesting rituals are more nuanced. A looting power gets all of the monster at once, but with a harvesting ritual you need to either do it one piece or make several circles depending on monster size. But multiple rituals fucks with the ambient magic, making subsequent rituals messier or less effective. So if I can I’d like to just do one big one.” Seras racial trait, Blueprinting software, came up with a good circle that would maximize loot.
She pulled out several magical tools from her pocket space and began setting up.
“You sound like you know a lot about harvesting rituals.” Athena said conversationally.
Seras grunted an affirmation, “one of the guys I travel with, Flint, he’s a pissy bastard but he knows his stuff. Especially harvesting rituals. Its another way of making profit as a trader. He taught me a thing or two once I got Dustin to harp on him.”
“You travel with a trader caravan?”
“Yup, they were the ones who found me buck naked in the desert. Took me in, showed me the ropes, and even got me on the path to being an adventurer.”
“Why were you naked?” she asked incredulously.
“Outworlders remake their bodies, not their clothes, I wasn’t supposed to even have hair apparently. But I got a bit lucky in that regard.”
“I see, and they’re the ones who taught you how to fight then?”
“I knew how to fight before I got here, they’re the ones who should me how magic could help me fight better. Training, essence advancement, aura manipulation, that’s all on them.”
Seras felt Athena’s aura brush up against hers, “your aura is pretty good.”
Seras smirked, “had my aura power less than a month.” She boasted.
Athena looked surprised. “Then its really good.”
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“Thanks, Dustin’s an old man whose had nothing but time to work on aura training, and he’s pretty good at teaching it. Had me doing the exercises before I had my aura power.”
“That shouldn’t be possible, you can’t consciously manipulate your aura without an aura power.”
“Sure, but you can develop the right kind of mindset beforehand, and that training slots in pretty well once you awaken an aura.” Seras explained as she began to spread out lines of salt. “Aura is an expression of the soul, and even if its not a one to one equation your mind set still had some bearing on it. Dustin says that means some people excel more in other fields of Aura training. I’m used to punching up, fighting back against shit I have no right facing. So I have an easier time pushing back against aura suppression, while I’m sort of crap at aura stealth.”
“You felt pretty hidden to me back in the camp.” Athena commented.
“That’s something else picking up the slack for me. I had an active camo unit before I got shunted out of my reality. I think that when I remade myself that part of my abilities developed an artificial aura masking ability. Either that or it was always there, though I doubt that. Auras are just mumbo-jumbo on my world, it’d be weird for a piece of tech to accidentally also mask aura.” Her own statement forced Seras to pause in her pouring a consider what she had just said.
She was beginning to have suspicions, but that wasn’t enough to tip the scales one way or another.
She returned to her task and finished drawing the circle. She then summoned up her mana excluders and mana lamps to smooth out the ambient magic.
One final check and Seras enacted the ritual.
20 iron spirit coins have been added to your pocket space
2 iron rank monster cores have been added to your pocket space
7 plant quintessence have been added to your pocket space
Iron rank bowie knife has been added to your pocket space
15 spent lead bullets have been added to your pocket space
The monsters were turned into rainbow smoke and the materials were deposited into her pocket space. Seras and Athena had made sure to stay away from the rancid smell rainbow smoke, but a slight breeze through the tunnel was slowly blowing it their way. They both took slow steps back to avoid the smell.
Seras let out an annoyed sigh. The materials were all basic monster parts, no crafting materials beyond quintessence, no awakening stones or essences, and the last two were just the weapons she had used during the fight. “Nothing good.” Seras muttered.
Athena looked at her, “you have storage power, do you also get to know what’s inside it.”
“Yup, Outworlders get unique racial traits on rebirth. I’m told there’s a bit of variation, like how some get harvesting powers. I got powers that replicate things I had in my world, mapping and directions, language adaptation, Biomechanical physiology with an added repair feature, blueprinting software that helps me design and test things like my guns and magic circles. And the last is somewhat useless, net connection. It’s supposed to mimic the information super highway on my world, all of humanities knowledge at your fingertips. Mostly used for porn. But right now, I can only access monster registries, essence powers, and the farmer’s almanac. Need divine permission to access more things.”
Athena considered what Seras had said, “have you asked for permission?”
“Yup, Knowledge shot me down.” Seras said as she collected her equipment.
“That would be the first Goddess I’d ask, but she’s not the only one. You mentioned porn, I know the church of Fertility has large stores of similar material. Their less provocative priests spend entire lifetimes adding to it.”
Seras blinked, “there’s a Goddess for porn?”
Athena cleared her throat, “it’s a bit more nuanced than that, but yes. Her church says it helps with fertility. And besides her there Healer, his church has been leading healing research since the dawn of time. And Dominion and Liberty both have extensive legal collections.”
“Isnt Dominion all about rulers and tyranny?” Seras asked.
“That’s a misconception, why wouldn’t Dominion like laws? They’re one of the most effective way to control people. His clergy are very ‘letter of the law’. While Liberty prefers the spirit of the law. And both have conflicting views on what laws are good or not.”
Seras was intrigued now “any other’s I should know about?”
“Hero’s church chronical’s legends and epics, mostly ending in sacrifice. My mother often read me those as bedtime stories, until I realized they were all true and shared my name sometimes.”
“And that name would be?” Seras asked leadingly.
Athena’s mouth snapped shut.
Seras guffawed “I probably wouldn’t know if you told me.”
“If its all the same I would rather not say.”
Seras rolled her eyes, “alright, none of my business anyways.” She tapped the tips of her toes against the board and watched as it vanished. “I really need to look into the these gods a little more, I never heard of Hero or Liberty. Is there a god for everything.”
“Not… everything. But theres lots. The ones that really matter are the big ones since they tend to have sub-Gods. Like Revel having Vinyard, Brewer, and Orgy as subordinates.”
“There’s a god of porn and orgies, I’m loving this whole religion your world’s got going on.”
She shook her head, “doesn’t your world have Gods, how do you do things work for you?”
Seras puffed out her cheeks and slowly blew air out as she processed the question. “According to Knowledge the gods were once real. But now they’re dead. There was this big divine war, left my world a mess. Wiped out all of civilization, burned off most of our oceans, and blew a massive crater in the side of our world. Goes straight down to the mantel. We call it Ruin now, but Knowledge said it had a different name once. I grew hearing religious wackjobs claiming that the dead gods would raise if we gave them our money and prayed really hard. Some even made their followers take some really nasty drugs so they could ‘speak’ to the gods.” Her tone said everything she thought about them in one.
“Why did your gods go to war?”
“Fuck if I know, something about divine paradises. Might have even been real if the gods were, but now they’re dead and my world is Ruin.”
Athena looked at her with big sad eyes, and before Seras could react she rushed her. Seras braced for an attack, summoning her revolver back into her hand. But an attack never came, instead the giant of a women wrapped Seras in a deep hug.
“Hey, what’s, shove off.” Seras squawked.
“I’m sorry.” She said, but didn’t let go.
“If your sorry then let go.”
“Not that. I’m sorry you grew up in such terrible world, I often think this one sucks, but yours sounds worse.”
“Yeah, well that’s life, we don’t choose how it screws us.” Serea muttered, but it sounded weak to her ear.
“Maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t make it right or better.”
Seras took a deep breath through her nose and slowly let it out, then seeing no way out of the hug chose to hug back and make it end faster. It was doing weird things to her heart that wasn’t good for her health.
A long minute later Athena let go of her, and Seras was left awkwardly shuffling around. After poignant pause Seras eventually spoke up, “your, uh, a lot more interesting than I first gave you credit for.” She said eventually.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“Well I thought I had you pegged,” Seras stopped as she tried to think of the right thing to say, “but I’ve been wrong before.” She said lamely.
“I really don’t want to know what you thought, do I?”
“Probably not.” Seras turned back to the tunnel and gestured outwards, “the labyrinth awaits.”
Athena stepped forward, eyes scanning the tunnel, not eager to be caught unaware a second time. Seras followed behind and fiddled with her nerve sensitivity to fix the lingering sense of warmth. But nothing seemed to work.