12

Today’s events showed Charles just what kind of things could happen if he didn’t plan for every single possibility. It was not a pleasant prospect, having to plan for everything every day, but neither was getting interrupted every two seconds because of something that happened to him. As he thought that, almost as if to mock him the LAI initiated a communication, the first ever since it analyzed the magic that Isabelle used at the guild.

Someone has been following you since you left the guild.

Charles had little reaction to that statement, barely sparing a glance at the street.

“Threat level?”

Unknown

“Likely lower than the guy I just killed, right?”

Given his status in the guild, extrapolated by-

“Yes or no?”

Likely.

“Well, then. Let them be. Warn me if they do any rash moves.”

He kept walking in the direction of his base, thinking that he absolutely needed electricity to recharge both his suit and his weapon. Having it was paramount, because little by little he was drying up all of his reserves, and without them he would be just a weak human like everyone else. As soon as he managed to fix that issue, then he could finally think up a long-term plan and see what to do in this universe.

To make electricity he needed copper wire and magnets, and the latter were a problem because he didn’t have any. He’d need to find them before even considering how to make them spin inside the copper coil. Meanwhile, he kept chopping up trees with his new axe. All of his basic tools were still out of the ring and in the workshop, fortunately, so he could still do some kind of work while he waited for the guild master to bring him back the ring with all the supplies.

After dragging the last tree trunk inside his property; he entered the workshop and looked at the open door that was resting against the wall, next to where it was supposed to be mounted. The hinges were already in place, and all he had to do was to lift the heavy slab of wood and secure it in place. He crouched down, prepared for the lift, shifted all of his weight onto the legs and away from his back, and then grunted as his muscles bulged and tensed. He placed the door where it was supposed to be, and opened it. It moved flawlessly.

The LAI warned him that there was a presence hidden among the treetops at the forest’s edge, at the outer limit of his property. A basic analysis of the presence showed that it was the same person the LAI spotted several hours ago. Another bothersome thing, he thought, and for a moment he wished that they could just stop coming. But in the end, he realized that after each encounter he came out either stronger or with more tools than before, starting from the ring he got after he was poisoned.

He considered whether to shoot a warning bullet towards the forest, but then decided against it. He didn’t want his new opportunity to run away. He sneakily left through the window on the city side of his base, hidden by the concrete walls and roof from the line of sight of the trees. After circling back to the forest edge of his land, while making sure not to be spotted or heard, he eyed the tree in question. It was time to catch the annoying shadow that had been following him ever since the incident at the city walls.

He got close to the tree where the presence was hiding, and looked up towards the canopy to take a better look at his newly acquired stalker. It was a humanoid silhouette, although that didn’t tell him much with all the different species he had already encountered, and the figure was clearly trying to see what was going on inside his base through the still empty windows. It was just a matter of time before it figured out that there was nobody home, but he didn’t need much time to implement his plan.

The plan itself was rather simple, revolving around the one thing that set him apart from the common people of this world. He tried to take out the gun from the ring before remembering that he had no ring as of now, and that the gun was holstered at its usual place on his toolbelt. He raised the gun, aimed down at the base of the tree, set the power to maximum and squeezed the trigger.

It took one second for the gun to charge, during which it made an increasingly louder and stronger buzzing sound of power gathering. As soon as it fired, the now familiar boom shook the earth and the bullet immediately embedded itself several meters deep in the ground behind the tree. The tree was along the path of the rod of iron, of course, and exploded in a shower of splinters and broken wood. The trunk groaned and broke under the weight of the rest of the tree before finally falling down slowly towards the empty grass plains of Charles’ place. The shadow froze in fear and then tried desperately to free itself from the tangle of moving branches and vines of the tree. It jumped down and landed on the open ground, in front of Charles, just as he predicted.

A smirk crept on his face, the realization of a perfectly carried out hunt making his almost atrophied facial muscles move for once.

“Freeze!” He yelled at the figure.

She was now lit by the light of the setting sun, which revealed a young girl with a green hood and a longbow on her back. Her clothes looked worn and heavy, yet they conveyed the feeling of being warm and soft.

Her golden hair was flowing in the wind, with braids and free locks both, and the falling leaves from the destroyed tree were dancing around her and brushing her face gently, making her look like a goddess of nature. Green, emerald eyes looked at Charles from under the hood, surrounded by exquisite feminine features of untold beauty.

She stood there in silence, unmoving. Her bow was still on her back along with a quiver full of colorful arrows, but she was making no movements to arm herself. She was just staring at Charles, unsure of what to do next. She had been caught off guard, not that she had a plan for when she actually met the man, or she’d just start acting and stop staring.

“Who the fuck are you? What are you doing in my property?” Charles asked, speaking slowly and with surprise in his voice.

He expected everything else but a young girl that looked like she came out of a movie set. He reminded himself that in this world things such as this were normal and not only seen in movies.

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“My name is Eereen.” The young woman said, stuttering.

She was also blushing a bit, and together with the orange light from the sun she looked like she was a living painting.

“That answers the first question, albeit just barely. Now, what are you doing here?” Charles pressed on, uncaring of the stunning beauty before his eyes.

He had work to do and little time before inevitable complications would come knocking at his door. This was one such complication, but fortunately he handled it before it could turn into something really bothersome.

“I need your help.” The woman said timidly.

“No.”

“Please!” She begged, falling to her knees with eyes full of newly shed tears. “You are the only hope of my village!”

He frowned, puzzled at the fact that this girl was pretending to be so naïve. Who would even hope for a single person they didn’t know to save an entire village? This reeked of narrative exploits that were oh so very similar to those of the novels the LAI downloaded into his brain.

“Get out of here. I don’t need any side quests from you right now.” He said coldly.

Narrative, gods, systems or even transmigrations meant nothing to him. He would not follow anyone undeserving of his respect, which meant he would not follow anyone else but Eve. Here there was no Eve, therefore he was free to do as he pleased.

His words, however, sparked something inside of the girl. He was already past the point where he even remembered what he said, distracted as he was by his inner thoughts, that for a moment he wondered if she was sick in the head. After realizing that it was him who was wrong, he didn’t say anything.

“A quest?” Eereen’s eyes lit up, the girl looking completely oblivious to what Charles was thinking. “The system gave you a quest? Because of me? Please, if you help me out not only will my entire village forever be in your debt, but even the system will reward you.” She was pleading him now, trying to leverage his compassionate side.

He was about to send her away at first, even with force if necessary, but the new information changed his mind. She was being a nuisance and a bother to him, true, and she was preventing him from completing his plans for the immediate future. He needed to get his hands on some electricity or sooner rather than later he would find himself in deep trouble. This was his main quest, system issued ones be damned. Get electricity and the reward will be that he won’t die badly.

But. What she said was definitely an interesting development. She didn’t know that he did not have access to the system and its quests. If what she said was true, then the system actively issued quests based on the circumstances of the individual, quests that Charles could never access himself because of his limited access. This meant that this girl right here could be a valuable asset to him, a way to get information about the system, and a target that he could easily manipulate by promising to help her and her village.

He knew what set him apart from the other people, who had access to the system: his LAI. Until he could trick the system into believing that he had no LAI, he had no way to get direct information from it. The girl could be a valuable source of information about said system in the meantime, and even the idea of making friends with her village was not a bad one after all. He needed allies for whatever he decided to do next, and he had to start from somewhere.

In order to help her village, he had centuries of scientific knowledge, a LAI, and his own ingenuity to help him. He was sure that he would not fail. They probably only needed to get their hands on some real engineering and then they would be alright.

“I will help you. Come.” He said, and turned around towards his base.

Eereen followed meekly, the tears only now drying on her angelic face. “Thank you… my village is in trouble because-”

“Before that, though, I need to get my hands on some magnets.” He said, interrupting her before she could start on an exposition tangent.

His mind fixated on the issue of the magnets, he refused to let her speak. He knew these things very well from the novels the LAI provided him with, and he didn’t want to start the quest chain just yet.

“Until that is done, I’m not doing anything else.”

***

Eereen followed Charles in silence, but inside her head the gears were turning rapidly. She knew that following this strange man through town and into the forest would be dangerous, the man had killed a gold rank like he was nothing after all, but she never expected him to obliterate the tree she was standing. She had not moved an inch after she fell from the tree, and only stared at the barrel of the gun for what felt like an eternity before Charles lowered his railgun. Only then did she allow herself to relax.

Then, she pleaded. She begged and cried, and in the end, Charles decided give her a chance. He didn’t tell her his name, nor was he listening to her request until he got what he needed, but at least he was not refusing her anymore like at the beginning. This had to be enough for now. He led her inside concrete building, and made her sit on a wooden chair. She looked around, first at the door, then at the empty window frames with curiosity and intensity. Then, she looked at the walls themselves. She had never seen concrete before, and to her eyes it looked like something that could only be done with magic.

Charles resumed working on his copper coil, moving with practiced dexterity and precision. He was playing in his home turf right now, doing what he always did best. He was building things. Eereen looked at the thin lines of various metals as they were hammered and twisted in a circular fashion. She was vaguely reminded of something she saw in the past, something that incidentally was very close to here.

She smirked, but then immediately her face returned to normal. Charles did not see her, focused as he was on his work. She kept studying him from her corner, waiting for the right moment to speak. He was tall and big, covered in a strange armor that perfectly fit his frame. Only his hands and head were left uncovered, while every other part of his body was hidden under that strange armor. Every time he hammered the metal, a hiss could be heard from the armor on his arms, and strange tubes of metal contracted and expanded at the rhythm of his movements.

At times, as he looked at the thing he was building, strange blue lines appeared before his eyes and arranged themselves as if they were alive. A square floated next to his head, full of dots and concentric lines that moved around, with a bigger dot in the center inside a square. There was another dot next to that black one, and it was yellow. The other dots were all red.

She knew that she could see all this only thanks to her special eyes, and said nothing about it.

“You said that you need magnets?” She asked, taking off her hood and revealing her long hair and ears.

Charles looked at her ears with interest for a moment, but then his gaze returned to the item that he was building. She blushed as he looked at her, looking at him with a sweet smile, but then noticed that he wasn’t looking anymore and her blush vanished.

“Yes, magnets. See this coil here? If I put a magnet in the middle and spin it, it generates electricity.” He said enthusiastically, pointing at the center of the coil.

“I never heard of magnets before.” Eereen said, looking down at the floor.

“You’re an elf, right?” He asked her. She nodded.

“A wood elf, yes.” She said. He smiled, lightly, for just an instant.

“It’s alright. If I remember correctly you people should not know too much about rocks after all.” He said. “Magnets are little rocks that attract iron. I just need a small one, then I can make my own magnets.”

Eereen thought for a while. “There is a skill that makes swords and armor move around.” She said to herself, while she thought.

Charles stopped what he was doing, even dropping a hammer to the floor.

“Really? Do you know it?” He asked with wide eyes and a new fervor in his voice that was not there before.

“I don’t know it, but I heard of a wizard who lived in a tower in the forest. He was among the few who still used to practice arcane magic.”

“Fucking exploration quests. The system better reward me even for already completed ones as soon as I activate it or else…” The man muttered angrily, then stared at her as if only now remembering that she was here. His face returned to neutrality. “Then let’s go. Take me there.”

He turned around. Eereen smiled to herself.