As Emily stepped out of the inn she finally had a moment to take in the sites. The capital of Hatfordian Empire was creatively enough called Hatfordian City. It was built in a valley in a truly massive mountain range, stretching north to south. Emily almost had to lean backwards to see the cliff faces of the mountains stretching thousands of feet into the air, disappearing into blurry white fog.

Emily was in the outer district built between the newest wall and the last wall built. The city had been built in stages, the last expansion, the outer district, then, the middle distract, and the inner district, then, the noble district until the final two districts, the empire’s court district, and the dungeon district.

The entire valley got progressively smaller so the closer to the empire’s court the more costly everything become. This explained why the outer district had become the slums of the empire. The poor had been forced out of the other districts. Emily remembered hearing enough complaining about the poor that she could easily piece together the story. When the second wall was built the poor was forced out of the first two districts, when the third wall was built the poor were again forced out, and so on until the poor found themselves forced to move again to the newest district.

Merchant Street stretched form one mountain wall to the other in the middle of the outer district, splitting the district in half was palace road, a road where more than four horse drawn carriages could easily ride abreast of each other. This road went all the way to the empires court district. There were four more roads, two in the north and two to the south, which went that far, placed equal distance from one anther but those streets were barely two carriages in width.

The most expansive businesses centered on the intersection of merchant street and palace road. Weary travelers did not want to travel even farther after a long journey so businesses the closest to the intersection received far more customers than business further away.

Emily merged into traffic using all her talents in martial arts and gymnastics to weave through the crowd and not get run over by towering people not paying attention or one of the numerous carts being pulled by all sorts of creatures. Emily saw the standard donkey and horses but thrown in where massive four footed lizards, lizards that walked on two legs that could be dinosaurs, shaggy beasts that looked like small wooly mammoths, even one that looked like a grant cat, Emily was truly in another world.

As Emily turned onto palace road the crowding become even more intense. Seeing an extremely gaudy carriage pass by, pulled by two huge stallions, Emily took a chance and climbed onto the back storage area. With that Emily relaxed and watched the crowd. It was so crowded that it was more than an hour before they reached the middle district gates. Emily knew the length of time because she started counting time in her head.

Without slowing down the carriage was passed through, confirming this carriage carried someone important. An so it went as each district become less and less crowded until two hours later they come to the noble district. By this time the sun was going down and already the valley was cast in darkness as the towering cliffs blocked out the sun’s light.

As they passed through the final gate into the noble district Emily was relived no guards questioned her riding on the back of the carriage. Emily’s guessed that no one wanted to stop and question the carriage’s owner or they thought she was a servant. Now she just had to found out where Count Swift’s mansion was.

Looking around she saw estates pass her by. Each one had a gate exiting onto palace road and each displayed a coat of arms. On the tenth gate a coat of arms with a rearing white station on green background was displayed. Looking hard at the gate Emily’s skill activated and she saw a truly mesmerizing kaleidoscope of symbols and lines of coding. Again she did not fully understand the symbols but she got a sense of what they did. Protections, watching, warning, defend. Blinking Emily cleared her vision and lightly jumped off the carriage.

Following the mansions wall Emily found a street branching off palace road. Still following the wall Emily ended at an alleyway. Going off a hunch she made her way down the alley and found what she suspected, a small side door into the walled mansion. Doubtless used for servants to enter and exit without being seen Emily had the perfect spot to study the security system.

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Focusing her eyes on the door Emily’s skill activated again and she started to parse the information the skill provided her. Again the feeling of protection, watching, warning, defend, this time Emily dug deeper and felt a feeling of scanning, looking for listed mana signatures, which was exactly what she was looking for.

The system passively scanned everyone passing within range to see if they had the correct mana signatures which meant if Emily could add her own unique mana signature to the list of authorized personal she could gain complete access to the building.

‘Should be straightforward, they have to add guests and delivery people all the time’

Runic Scholar

A Runic Scholar is a person that is knowledgeable in the runic language and has managed to create and/or understands runes.

Emily searched for the possible subroutine and after a few moments she found the correct location. Taking a deep breath Emily raised her hand and placed it gently onto the spot she found. Willing the system to add herself to the list Emily was startled when a prompt appeared

‘So those lines of abstract symbols are runes. Lucky my programming skill works with runes.’

Happy to find a new area of knowledge to study, and succeeding in hacking the system, Emily walked boldly up to the door and without any doubts grabbed the handle and twisted the knob.

As expected the door swung open into a large garden with a straight path towards the back of the mansion. Closing the door to the alleyway Emily walked towards the door into the building proper. It was truly dark out but Emily could use the skill of seeing runes to see the world more brilliantly. It was not as bright and detailed as looking at runes but it was enough to navigate by. As she arrived at the servant and delivery entrance her sight flared as she found a hulking metal suit of armor standing like a statue next to the door. Emily saw extremely complex lines of rune coding that the golem worked off of and Emily could not even start to understand the golem’s core operating program.

Shaking her head and determined to one day understand and even create such a program from scratch, Emily opened the door into the mansion and walked into a sprawling kitchen. There were several tables made with thick planks of wood for food prep, six huge fireplaces that someone could walk into

comfortably, a dozen wood fired stoves, and enough pots, pans, and cookware to support a small army, which was close to truth. Feeding all the servants, guards, nobles, and guests had to require a massive amount of effort without the luxuries of electric appliances.

Along the back wall large trunks were lined up. Glowing brightly in her sights Emily made her way over to the items. Studying them Emily realized these trunks had an entirely different symbol language then the runes she had seen.

Opening one of the trunks Emily saw a black void. Taking a chance Emily plunged her hand into it. Her hand entered without any discomfort and imminently bumped into something. Grabbing the item she pulled it out and grinned as a delicious smell hit her nose. A perfectly cooked turkey on a silver platter was revealed.

The trunks acted like bags of holding. Customers at the brothel had used bags of holding to pull out an astonishing number of explicate devices over the years so Emily was very familiar with the items. The trunks most likely did not have the weight reduction added instead focused on preventing decay. In effect these trunks were this world’s refrigerators.

Smiling Emily hunted around and gathered some green beans, mashed potatoes, and a large tuckered of beer. Making a place at one of the prep tables Emily sit down and ate the feast slowly to savor the flavors of an expertly cooked meal.

‘Most likely the cook has an extremely high level in a cooking skill’ Emily mused.

Finishing up her meal Emily cleaned upped and made her way down the large hallway in the center of the mansion. Golems were spaced evenly all down the hallway so any intruder would be quickly be dealt with. Doors and opening were spaced at different intervals, Emily saw a dining room that could seat fifty easily, another lead into a small ballroom, Emily paused at closed double doors with golems on either side.

Stopping to study the runes on the door, Emily realized that this security system was separate from the security system Emily had just hacked. Though Emily was intrigued about what was behind the doors she did not want to try her luck again tonight. Moving on she stopped again in front of opened double doors that lead into a large library. Excited Emily walked in and took in the large room, on three walls floor the ceiling bookcases were filled with books, several coaches, chairs, desks, and tables filled the center of the room, providing numerous spots to read and study at, and lamps were scattered everywhere.

Walking to a table Emily touched the lamp in the center of the table. Bright yellow light flared and Emily grinned for this device used magic instead of fire, fire and books did not mix well. Though a little tired form all that had happened to her today the sight of so many books reinvigorated her. Picking up the lamp Emily went to search for a book to read.