Acquainted
.
"… this is my little sister, Alleria." I introduced to the 'Servant Caster' with the lilac-colored hair. She had taken to keeping her outfit of her royal purple dress, which hugged her luscious curves, but similarly kept the black cowl and cloak, which kept any passersby from witnessing her lithe yet buxom, tight yet mature physique. "And this is—"
"I am Medea of Colchis, Mistress of Artifact Creation," Caster nodded, having already gotten introduced to the way that high elves talked and learned enough of our customs to fit right in—seeing as there was actually less cultural clash between her native Colchis and Quel'Thalas, compared to the difference between Colchis and modern Japan. But then she had to ruin it. "And Master Lirath's future wife."
Alleria's eyes darted between Medea's chuckling, amused expression and my facepalming, exasperated one, but she was a fighter not a coward like myself. While her cheeks grew pink, she drew herself up to her full height, which was still more than a head shorter than Medea. Yet she bumped her chest against the older lady's and harrumphed, "You're not going to be Lirath's wife! I'm going to be Lirath's wife! I'll fight you for it!"
"Oh ho ho…! That is quite alright, Little Alleria. Ah, you are so adorable, I could just squeeze your cheeks together and eat you up!" Caster claimed, before leaning closer and whispering conspiratorially, "You should know that one of the customs of the kingdom, for those who are powerful, is that you can have more than one consort—a custom that is even older than the kingdom with roots back during when the elven empire ruled the whole world…"
"Huh?!" Alleria turned to me for confirmation.
I shrugged.
That was probably right.
Yet Medea wasn't done yet, she kept speaking, though she kept an eye on me. She knew my preferences already—I wasn't about to keep something like that hidden from someone who would be my partner-in-crime. However, it seemed she still felt nervous about accidentally offending me or something. "And if you are Master Lirath's wife, and I am Master Lirath's wife, then it only serves to prove that you will be my wife too… oh ho ho! I am this kind of woman, ah…"
"Huuuh?" Alleria couldn't quite extricate herself from Medea's grasp, yet I couldn't really care. If Medea was mine, then whatever she did to Alleria was fine because that meant they were both mine. The inner obsession sated, I found myself being amused by the blue-screening that Alleria's mind was undergoing.
"Right, she is helping me with the crafting these days." And that wasn't incorrect either. Medea had found that the leylines in Azeroth were many times more powerful than those from her Gaia, and that the one leypoint beneath Windrunner Spire already held more power than the confluence of Fuyuki City.
It had been a matter of contention that she wished to prove that we didn't need anything from the Holy Grail War to accomplish any of my goals, not that it was a possibility consider she also revealed the function of the ritual as well.
My first goal for going onto the other side had been to flex my research muscles and study the remains or signs of how Emiya Kiritsugu functioned. His nature of preventing mending interested me because of the nature of the enemy that I would soon face on the borderlands—the trolls. Trolls had an innate regeneration ability which had been somewhat replicated by alchemy in the form of Troll's Blood Potions, but they were a pale comparison, because the racial regeneration of the trolls were a blessing from nature gods that they worshiped.
None of the details mattered much—what I wanted was to seek the capability of creating conceptual weapons and items using the system available to me, or failing that to invent new formulas to achieve this. Medea could have probably helped me on that, but this was a test for my current capabilities, not simply another step in the expansion of my interdimensional trade empire.
Yet returning to that same trade empire, Medea had found that she found maintain herself without the Grail Ritual's support through the ambient power around Windrunner Spire, though I could do the same thing with my own body. To this end, she decided that the current capabilities of my factory assembly lines, security features, and so on weren't enough. We were still looking for the possibility of summoning dead heroes to do our bidding, since I knew that the Shadowlands were a thing, but… that could wait, for now.
Necromancy wasn't something I wanted to indulge in on the side until I had the identity of a magister to protect my social standing and authority first. And the kingdom still had its uses, for all the Medea disliked it. Besides, she liked it as much as she disliked it, because it reminded her of Colchis in some regards.
The next and most important task for me and the workshop however was to create personal equipment. None of that mass produced stuff, though materials could still be used. I wanted to at least be able to keep myself safe from the average magus of Medea's world without having to lift a finger, or something… and with the power available to her here, as well as all the new magical theories and sources of power, that was a possibility.
Well, I was working on it anyway.
But back to what I was working on at the moment, Alleria turned to me in surprise. "But this is the first time I've met her! How could she be your enchanting master if I never saw her?"
"Alleria… I could answer with the word 'magic', but I think you'll be rather upset with me, won't you?" I smiled, just reveling the awkwardness that had built up between us over the last few months evaporating into nothingness. If this was what it took, then I had to look into adding more members into my harem. "Really though, honestly. Mages can cast teleport and invisibility, you know?"
"But… but… but…" Alleria knew enough about the basic theory as well as I did—I had been teaching her for a while now.
She knew that no normal mage was capable of casting teleport on whim. She also knew that only the elite were capable of maintaining invisibility for long periods of time or remaining completely unnoticed. One of the weaknesses of the invisibility spell as it was currently used in kingdom was that it was simply a light refracting spell.
Of course, some magisters and experienced mages had their own versions of these spells, but just like how nobles kept their own armies, mages kept their own spells a secret from everyone else.
… Sometimes I really wished to push for the agenda of information freedom in Quel'Thalas.
"Anyway, you girls figure it out." I turned around and walked away. This wasn't my problem anymore, and since Medea was so experienced, I hoped she could seduce my sister as well. Actually, I hoped she didn't succeed too soon.
Because I needed to enlarge my bed if this kept up.
.
Conceptual weapons and stealing from a king's treasury were nice and all, but I wasn't about to let greed blind my eyes. Besides, there were always future opportunities to loot Type-Moon's Earth.
As it was however, I needed to bring my assets together and strategize.
Honestly. Compared to accidentally losing my sister's love, facing heroic spirits or zombies or demons or elder things… that was nothing. I had feared them, sure, but I didn't cower from them. There was a sense of… exhilaration facing that danger. And as I faced them, my power grew. It might have been the Nephalem blood within me singing a song of doom, but I savored it.
So as one of my four Mirror Images opened the way to the Earth of Resident Evil, I reached across and offered my hand. I held her dainty fingers in mine, like as if I were about to lead my Caster into a waltz, as we crossed the threshold. Into this world that had already ended, yet did not know it yet.
To fight that god of strength and that golden god, I would need to create my own monsters.
After all, men killed monsters, but monsters killed gods.
City of the Sea
.
Terragrigia.
The floating city.
Built on the coast of Italy, this self-sustaining city powered by a satellite collecting solar energy and then beaming it down from the skies stood as a testament to human engineering of the late 1990's. It was something that I would have expected to see off of the coast of some Middle Eastern oil-rich country, not Italy.
Perhaps in the Resident Evil timeline, the Europeans were wealthier and more capable than their counterparts from the Earth I was more familiar with.
The city itself still stood as a shining beacon within the Mediterranean Sea, which was further proof for me that time seemed to move differently between our two universes when I did not interact with or connect to the Resident Evil universe.
Only several months had passed since I had pulled the Merchant from his spot in Spain, in this world at least. In mine, several years had passed, though I did interact with this world on occasion.
As I walked through the streets, I reveled in the feeling of passing through a modern city. I had missed this. The asphalt under my feet, the smells of industry and urbanization, the sight of towering works of steel and glass… it was so familiar, yet so foreign. Had I been gone so long that I had forgotten what it was to be human? To destroy the environment and take all that it was worth like a fellow human? To ravage the planet…?
"Please remember why we are here, Master." Caster's voice whispered into my ear. She was watching from the other side of the country due to the different tasks we each took. "We should get different samples…"
"… and I want to test my current limits. Did you know a melee-oriented wizard is actually one of my favorite builds?" I asked, despite knowing that the question confused her. "Never mind that. I want to test if my enchantments are holding up."
"It is barely a test, compared to the perception of Gaia," Medea grumbled, but she didn't seem very against it.
"It's a test of your abilities too… to combine our talents to weave such an illusion that could convince everyone watching that I actually belong and am a part of this world. A native." I rubbed the bracelet on my left wrist. It looked like a thick piece of knotted gold that had been woven like artisanal glass sculpture. If I pulsed with power or took on my archon form, it would glow with select runes out of the millions that had been compacted within—Medea was a better student of Azerothian runecrafting than I was, combining the new magic she had learned with her innate capability for summarization and my suggestion to inscript complex instructions within.
I was still a beginner in the study of taking her High-Speed Divine Words and translating it into a trait that could apply to Azerothian arcane magic, though I could already see that this was the progression of magic that would occur on Azeroth even if I hadn't thought of it. There would have been no way for Jaina Proudmoore's master, Archmage Antonidas, to write a thesis at twelve years old called "The Ramifications of Refined Reverse Time Travel Phenomena into Quantifiable Magical Practice" without simplification and condensation of the runes of magic that highborn were familiar with in the time of Queen Azshara.
Whatever the case, this bracelet had was our combined foray into rather powerful magical artifact creation that would fool a world soul, or something like that. It was overly ambitious, but I didn't want to step into the Medea's Gaia only to get sniped from across the city by some archer.
I wanted to be the one to snipe archers, damn it.
Sighing, I paused in front of what looked like an office building. The first floor was rented out, and I had stopped in front of an ice cream shop. They actually sold gelato, but because of the influx of American tourists, the English signs advertised ice cream. I couldn't tell the difference. The reflection that stared back when I looked into the glass of the windows showed me a boy who looked like he could have just started middle school, but could have also passed for a model or a child actor.
The illusion held up.
In other words, I looked like a runt.
Then the glass swung open and I had to take a step back, but I saw the face of the Merchant, under similar illusions to make him seem almost normal. He still looked like a murder hobo, however. He held up a cup of gelato, "Want one, boss?"
"Eh," I reached for it.
"Not mine," He pulled back and cuddled his cup of icy dessert like it was a baby. "Didn't you say you didn't wanna take anything, ah, infectious back?"
"I'm protected. Should be fine for now as long as there's nothing that can overpower my magic." I shrugged and then rummaged through my pockets. It sucked that they still used paper money at this time. "You got any change?"
The Merchant offered me a hundred in euros. "Keep the change, boss. Ya' need anything else?"
"Nah." I shook my head. "Let's just settle in. Another couple days at most, until the Panic."
"Right then. I'll go get the hotel ready," He walked off.
As he walked off, I looked back down at my wrist and then my shaking hands. Was I afraid or was I excited? I hadn't killed anything with my own two hands in a long time. I needed to get over it, and this, and the psychological barriers I had built up over time. I was no longer that newborn elf with nothing sitting awestruck before the overflowing might of the Sunwell wielded by the most powerful magisters of the kingdom.
That pilgrimage early on in my life still left some invisible scars within my mind.
I sighed again. Get over it, I told myself.
Get over it, and get ready to kill.
.
Four days later.
Early in the morning, a repurposed, defunct-looking cruise liner pulled close to Terragrigia. However, it was only when a plane flew over the city and starting dumping a deep crimson aerosol that events triggered.
This would be the start of an event similar to the Raccoon City Incident.
As aerosolized T-Abyss virus fell upon the city like a fog of blood, monstrous forms ambled off of the steps of the Queen Zenobia, its luxury cruise appearance having long since degraded to become a hive for the bioterrorist organization Il Veltro. Those monsters, with limbs thicker than most people's waists and flesh covered in black scales and gray scabs, were more than just giant, pulsing forms of rotten flesh—they had been engineered this way on a genetic level as mutant weapons.
These Bio Organic Weapons surged through out of the piers and quickly spreading through that portion of the floating city. As the morning sun rose into the sky, the screams began to rise.
I was enjoying my complimentary breakfast from the balcony of my suite when this all happened.
What rotten luck.
From here at the top of the hotel, I would have to wait an awful long time for the elevator to arrive. People were panicking and it seemed like every level of the building was filled with running people. I wasn't about to just jump down and make a superhero landing like a pleb, but I also didn't want to take the stairs either. One of the hotel's staff had been smoking there earlier in the day and the stench of the tobacco stung my sensitive, elven nose.
Perhaps elves were closer to nature than I had initially anticipated. I didn't expect that I would have adverse reactions to the exhaust of cars, or cigarettes, or the noise of the city, but I did. Though I had gotten used to the city's cacophony and much of the stranger smells and sights, I still felt something and so I didn't really like it. Maybe I was just born to be a hikkineet?
By the time I did finish my pancakes—I had missed these so much that even while the city was under attack, I still wanted to finish these one last time, especially with the side of bacon, which I hadn't even eaten this entire life time—I strolled down the stairs with a modification to the filtration spell as to keep the ashes from getting in my mouth.
The stairs were abandoned by this time, though I saw the occasional smears of blood and vile liquids on the walls. There were still screams outside, though the stairs were isolated.
I heard the sounds gurgling. The wet, moist sounds of feasting below, at the bottom of the stairs.
With my elf eyes, I peered down and saw a man who had panicked and slipped and fell from the top of the stairs, falling and crushing the lower half of his body against the ground. His back must had been ruined, but that mattered little because of the ghastly, towering figure that was tearing through his stomach and devouring his flesh chunk by chunk. Blood flew in specks all over the white-washed walls.
The monster was one of the mass produced Bio Organic Weapons provided to Il Veltro called the hunters. They were top heavy with powerful arms that powered their knife-length nails. These biological terrors were humans grafted with reptilian genetics in a fashion, making them look like the Killer Croc or that one Andrew Garfield Spider-Man villain, the Lizard.
However, this creature specifically had a hood not unlike that of a cobra's, and as it finished its meal, its claws tore through the walls like a hot knife through marbled beef. Small chunks of debris clattered to the ground, and its yellow eyes darted to me.
It was one thing to see these hunter mutants coming down the ramp of a ship through a scrying spell. It was another to be within ten meters of one, as its blood-dipped claws dripped with its last kill. The smell of death permeated through the air.
I was not unfamiliar with death. I had faced it before, even in this life. I had hunted before. But I had not seen a dead human in a very long time.
The look of terror on the man's torn face, the way his jaw had been ripped off and chewed to bits within that bloody maw, and the smell… the smell.
The hunter rushed up the spiraling stairs. Its shoulder bounced against the wall as it jumped up too faster, too far. Having found its new target, it locked its eyes upon me. And in a moment, I would be dead, if I did not do anything.
Because I had frozen up.
Was it shock?
The lack of experience?
I should have done something. I could have cast a frost nova and held the creature in place—this version of the spell was conceptually capable enough to hold the primordial evils of another universe in place. Or a wave of force, that could push it back. Slow time or ray of frost could hold it in place. With paralysis, any of my lightning damage spell would stun it to oblivion. Ice armor, storm armor, energy armor—ah.
Ah.
Right.
I was thinking too much. I had been studying too much. I had forgotten how to act before I thought.
And then, like any amateur, I overreacted based upon my emotions. Like a child panicking upon seeing a jump scare, and then button smashing every emergency hotkey available to him, I pulled no punches.
What I pulled instead was the cosmic energies from a foreign realm—different from any of the three that I had set foot in thus far. From within this plane of existence of pure arcane power, there laid an entity of such might that the resident mages of Sanctuary who were knowledgeable of its existence feared it so like it was their doom.
A mad, vainglorious mage had once crafted a Black Obelisk to steal its power. The Nephalem Wizard would learn of this technique and construct a spell for which she would then use to transform herself into such a being of pure arcane power. Those same mages of Sanctuary would hate her and fear her in the same breath for such recklessness—that she would doom them all if such an entity truly appeared in their world to bring forth its wrath. It was an ultimate spell, sometimes used as a last resort, and other times to unveil true power. The strain it put on the body strained life and soul, if the unworthy used it, if they did not burn up from the arcane energy consuming their body, then their souls were rend to nothing by the power they held in their hands. For this and many more reasons, even after I had learned the spell, I dared not experiment with it.
Archon.
Power overwhelmed the laws of reality around me and pulsed outwards—Slow Time. The railings of the stairs frosted over as time bent itself and the motion of individual atoms lagged to snail's pace. This range of effect spread outwards from my body to the hotel, then the block, and then the streets beyond and then beyond that, until the entire city had become encased in a bubble exiled from the flow of time. One of the most basic and easiest to maintain powers of the Archon form.
I had, in truth, wished to practice my Spectral Blade and my Diamond Skin spells, walking around the city like a magical knight. It would have been fun, from my armchair adventurer's point of view. But it had come to this… if nothing else, I would need to abandon the Resident Evil universe if the Archon Entity truly did find its way to this place. Until I had gathered enough power to befriend it, destroy it, or enslave it…
But the power of the Archon form was far more than slowing local time to a crawl. Cosmic arcane energy swirled around me, but my own body had come composed of darkness and light, glowing purple as the condensed arcane power became me and the silhouette of my body looked like I had become the totality of a violet nebula.
My hands looked like the Pillars of Creation, and the energy that gathered in my palms looked like miniature galaxies. Each breath I exhaled expelled countless stars. Since it had come to this…
… I poked the hunter, injecting a fraction of a fraction of my power, now that I had little clue as to how to measure the significance of this form in quantifiable means. But that triggered the fraction of a fraction of the power of the Archon known as the Disintegration Wave. And so, the bio-weapon popped like a balloon.
"Remember," Medea reminded me still tenderly in my ear from her cozy atelier in the Vatican atop whatever other leyline intersection she had claimed for herself, but sounding somewhat annoyed. "You need to leave enough so that I can collect samples."
I looked down, and found that the arcane power that dripped out of my finger had eaten up even the remains of the monster, from blood to bone. "Oops. Right. The Arcane Strike and Arcane Blast abilities don't seem to have any disintegration effects."
"… I'll try my best to accommodate you, Master. Why did you use this form? Is it because this universe is disposable? I assure you, there is nothing to fear from the Servants and Masters in Fuyuki City. I, your Medea, shall take good care of you," She soothed.
It wasn't that I didn't believe her, but I just didn't believe her. Still, it was better that she thought I was testing myself, than if she thought I was shooting… prematurely. Ahem. "I would have to try this eventually, Caster."
"It would be amusing to see how this mundane world will reconcile your majesty with the reality that they can understand, Master." She giggled, "I await your good news."
And then her presence faded from my mind, but I had no doubts that she was still watching.
Looking down at my feet, which were floating in the air, I sighed.
One good thing about the Archon form was that it did not adhere to the laws of gravity, so I was floating in the air. I teleported myself to a place above the city, and checked the devastation that had been wrought since early in the morning.
At least a good twenty percent of the city had been consumed by violence already. Several smoke stacks rose into the air from the damage already dealt. And many people had already become mutated by the T-Abyss virus to a form that was a cross between the Slender Man and Mind Flayers. They also seemed to grow chitin, or weird growths, or jagged limbs.
Eye-less, shambling, twisted of form and structure, and with a variety of monstrous forms. If nothing would be done, the city would be quarantined in days, and then destroyed in weeks… but this virus would survive and thrive.
The Italian government in this world would have acted fast. If I remembered correctly, they would have blocked the city off within five days, and the entire event would only go on for three weeks before central headquarters commanded the use of their solar energy satellite to shoot down a beam of concentrated light that would cause a chain reaction that would destroy the entire city.
Caster would be off to study that device later, and if she could provide results, then I would need the Merchant to help me steal that satellite laser. Until then, however, I had a good two or three weeks of play time in this city to get me some live fire experience. I really needed to shake the bookworm in me of, but I wasn't expecting to become some Wizard badass just from this. I was also doing this for amusement—who didn't like killing zombies?
Seeing the biological monstrosities howling beneath me, I felt my Nephalem blood singing and pounding against my ears.
Best get to it then.
And a beam of prismatic light filled the air.
Upperclassman
.
Another hunter swiped at me.
I had lost the status of Archon an hour ago, being unable to maintain it passed five minutes. Within that time, I had destroyed around five percent of the city on my own.
The games couldn't have done this form justice. It was a game after all, and game mechanics were hardly lore compliant.
What was I saying, blaming the game?
I grimaced at the thought.
It was my own inability that caused this destruction. There might have been no means for me to know what a fully unleashed Archon's beams and blasts could have looked like, but I knew I had finer control on my powers than this. My own abilities honed through long periods of experimentation might not have been keyed to that of the Archon form, but the practice of actually controlling arcane power was one that I had familiarized myself with just after I learned how to hurl my first magic missile.
So I hated myself for that. Not because of the massacre that happened, or the wanton property damage, or the collateral damaged that was triggered by my experimentation with the abilities of an Archon. No. That didn't measure up in my heart. I always knew I couldn't save everyone in the kingdom from the Burning Legion—I had made my peace with that.
Not caring about everyone, or not trying to be Superman, or any other superhero, or even caring about everything, well, that was just dandy. It was as elven as it was human. Worrying too much about what I didn't do or what I couldn't do would help no one.
No, what I hated myself for was my own lack of control of my emotions. Power overwhelming. Such power sang within my veins, and I felt I had grown greatly simply from the stresses of gaining and maintaining the form for such a long time. During that time, power, power, power… it was intoxicating. It didn't enable me. It clouded my mind. I could think of nothing else but to savor it.
At the time, I wanted to dance among the stars literally. I wanted to reshape worlds, collapse stars, crush systems with my will. Wanted. It was never about ability.
It was like if a child had just touched alcohol for the first time, and had been given a gallon of tequila, and then given the unlocked controls to a bomber drone and told to get the highest score by destroying the most buildings. On some level, I might have been intellectually aware of what I was doing, but in truth, there was no reasonable way for me to stop once I had started.
Every moment I stayed in the form of the Archon, I wished to use more and more power. I drew more and more from the source, and I felt more and more powerful.
God. What a mess.
I dodged the hunter's swipe. Just because I only learned the basics of a ranger's training didn't mean I had been incapable. Even without the pulse of the Sunwell's waters reshaping all elven forms to be more perfect and attune with magic, these beasts did not have anything outside of base instincts. They relied too much on their overwhelming speed and power. With enough analytical ability and reaction speed, anyone could predict how they were going to attack and where to move.
It wasn't to say that they weren't powerful. A hunter's attack could still take an arm off of me just from a glancing blow if I didn't do anything to protect myself, or wear no protective equipment. For the sake of training, I took off anything that could have turned me into an unstoppable killing machine.
So if it did hit me, it could potentially kill me. If it got me on the head, or on throat, or through the heart…
… close, but no cigar. My dominant hand swung out, and I pointed at the beast. An untouchable, unseen blade trailed along my forefinger though it did not exist. What did exist was the gash it left, the arcane cut that followed, from a mere millimeter away from the tip of my finger when my hand was by my side to twenty meters away when my arm had become fully extended.
Spectral Blade. It was a ghostly spell rooted in the concept of Cutting. Rather than actually forming a dance sword or an invisible blade, what happened was that I evoked the very essence of the Cut, making carving fissures in whatever was before me.
When I first used this spell, it spawned eight cuts in random directions between 90 to 180 degrees in front of me at a range within ten meters. By tier two, I had mastered the five runes—Flaming Blades, which increased the power of the cut with each attack, Siphoning Blades, which drained the material essence that constituted reality of the target to fuel my arcane power usage, Thrown Blades, which took on the power of the lightning element and allowed me greater control of length and depth of each cut, Barrier Blades, which temporarily took a portion of the power of each cut to defend me from the concept of harm, and Icy Blades, which simply took on the a cold element and froze my targets and caused them to shatter when hit once again.
That was great, if not for the limitations of the spell, which was that it was still a melee range attack and one that required me to fight as if I were a mage knight with far better physique than I actually had. Honestly, just dodging and running about already left me panting.
However, by tier three, I found further understanding of the concept of Cutting. I combined the five runs of the spell, and I found I could direct the cuts. Thus, rather than randomly appearing, I could have eight-slashes-in-one… a concentration of the ability, though it did not actually make the spell any stronger. It was only easier to control, now.
It seemed that in the realm of conceptual bullshit, Sanctuary didn't fall too far behind Gaia. Much of it had been obfuscated by game mechanics and developer bullshit…
… the hunter was bisected.
And the hunter behind it too.
The car behind the second hunter was cut through like a science fiction laser had just split its trunk off its body.
The asphalt and sidewalk under the hunters and the car were gouged into as if the nail of the finger of God had come down to scratch an itch only to remember that he was omnipotent and could just will away the itch.
"The samples are still warm!" Medea hissed in my ear.
I winced. Then I pulled out one of the cardboard boxes she had prepared for me from my enchanted bag and levitated the still twitching corpse of the bio-weapon into it. "Of course, Caster."
"Don't forget to seal it in time, and send it over so I can put it into stasis." She huffed and sounded so exasperated that I could almost hear her pouting. "Really, Master. For all that you're so talented in your craft, how it that you can't cast a stasis spell?"
"Maybe it's so I can leave other people something to do. Or else they'll get jealous of me," I uttered without thinking. I was tired. This was the most I've walked in ages. I must have circled the city a good five times now.
Il Veltro and Morgan Lansdale, the head of the Federal Bioterrorism Commission who funded the terror organization and supplied them with the virus, really skimped out on the monsters. They used a classy virus in the T-Abyss, which could turn even fishes and plankton into virus-perpetuating monsters, but they only brought a bunch of hunters along. I was starting to find less and less of them already. "These bio-weapons weren't even that strong!"
"Uh…"
"Or is it me who is strong?" I stroked my chin. Wait, did I say that out loud? I was getting exhausted.
"… Boss?" The Merchant walked up behind me, as he stored the contained hunter corpse away under his coat. "I'd hate to interrupt ya' in your, ah, day dreams, but…"
"No, you don't." I grumbled, before adding to Medea, "Anyway, how many more do you need?"
"We should be fine with the number of both the virus victims and the hunters, as you call them, Master. I do not think I would have any problems in replicating them." She said, confidently. One could even think that she sounded a tad smug.
I rolled my eyes. A part of me was disappointed that even though I had reduced myself so much, the hunter bio-weapon were still not a true threat. Maybe if I didn't use magic at all…? Another part of me reminded myself that this was just one step in the long road to becoming something greater. "It's not for replicating them, Caster. I don't need to replicate them. I wanted to understand how they were made in the finest detail, so that we could do it without magic, if we needed to."
"But that is retracing so many steps, Master. Wouldn't it be more efficient to simply stick to our strengths?" She asked.
"Our strengths are not enough. We need more tricks, and the one thing I might have is time." I retorted. "Only by understanding how it's done can we interfere with the manufacturing process with magic."
"… there is scholarly value in this," She admitted.
"More than that." I pushed, "Because we know too little. You know too little. If we go to Fuyuki as we are now, you will die. There are monsters who were once called heroes who hide there, and your world is filled with… worse things."
She still sounded contrite, but whatever psychosis she had pushed her to believe in me. Or at least, she ignored all the bits about me that didn't fit her worldview. It was weird. "It is better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. I shall do what I can, Master."
I nodded, and then lowered my hand and turned to the Merchant. "What is it?"
"So there's this elf, see… she's, ah, lookin' for ya, Boss." He said.
Ah.
Right.
Because I maintained the portal open on the other side, so time seemed to fall into an equilibrium. I wondered about that—if Antonidas experimented with time related magic so much, and the Bronze Dragons did not punish him, would I have the same leeway? Was this even a Bronze in disguise? "And what is she looking for me for, Merchant?"
"That's the thing, that got your sister off her case, see. This new elf, well, she said, ah, she's your fellow student, of the same master. So no one's stopped her yet, but now she's waiting outside the spire and looking mighty annoyed." He had the audacity to smirk.
"… Caster, we're putting operations here on hold for a moment since we have enough samples anyway." After a whole two days of killing and looting, I was feeling a bit homesick anyway.
.
"You're in a lot of trouble, boy." An elven woman who looked like she would be in her early twenties if she were a human said to me with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. She wore the robes of a proven mage, which was to say that she passed her classes and the magisters approved of her skill, or she paid the right people the right amount of bribes.
However, her attitude did not impress me. "Excuse me? You are rather rude, aren't you?"
She opened her mouth to retort, but it seemed she had more self-awareness than first impressions told me. Instead the sorceress scoffed, "I am Elsharin, apprentice of the Seeker Kelen. I could be a magister if I so wished. And you don't need to introduce yourself. You are Lirath Windrunner, regent of Windrunner Spire."
"So what business does a fellow disciple have with me?" I leaned back against the frame of the door and eyed her up and down. If she didn't have that permanent scowl on her face, and her hair hadn't been bound so tight, then she might have looked pretty. "Let me guess, you don't approve of me."
"Then you're not completely incompetent. You have used my mentor's good name to get rid of a pair of apprentices questioning the validity of your commercial business a while back. The news of this has spread, and it tarnishes the reputation of Master Kelen," She spat.
Technically, she wasn't wrong, but after the long two and a half days I have had, I didn't really want to give anyone the satisfaction. "They didn't have authority to collect taxes from me. Nor were they in the right to inquire about the business of Prince Nallorath."
"They don't need to be, because they weren't inquiring about Prince Nallorath even if it seemed that way." Elsharin groaned. "Couldn't you have said something to someone before they went and blabbed it to their masters? Whatever the case, it was the work of the Third Prince, not the new King Anasterian, so you don't have any royal permit for doing what you did. Didn't you think of that?"
"… because there's conflict between the King Anasterian and his brother? I had thought of that, but I didn't believe that it mattered. I was just a vendor," I pointed out.
"Then if you were just a vendor, you need to pay taxes on the produce you have sold. I believe it is two parts of the whole for enchanted goods greater than ten pieces." She tapped her chin in thought, and then looked at me all smug and haughty as if she were standing atop a tower looking down at me. "And even that doesn't matter… because the Third Prince would not protect you from the Seven. Half of the right to tax is in the hands of the Convocation of Silvermoon, yet since they all do not know you outside of your aid that you provided to the Third Prince, there only needs to be one of the Seven who dislikes you for all of them to vote against you. Do you think the King would protect you for helping his brother make the King look bad?"
"… look bad in front of who?" I frowned.
"King Anasterian's father abdicated. He did not die yet, and he is a source of authority, especially as King Anasterian seeks to solidify his royal power." She rolled her eyes, "Has magic studies rotted your mind, child? This is why magisters shouldn't take common mages for students."
"But Master Kelen has already agreed… it is not up to you what he thinks, though I suppose it is possible for you to influence his mind. I don't think you'd go that far. That would be overreaching, won't it?" I studied the micro-expressions of her person and squinted. "Besides, Prince Nallorath promised me his friendship. Surely that's worth something."
Elsharin scoffed, but then she grimaced. There was a look of pity in her eyes. "I suppose you have some potential in you. You aren't the worst possible underclassman and fellow disciple I could have… There are certainly more brainless elves in the academy right now, and you have yet to attend. Do you think the friendship of anyone in high nobility is worth anything, especially friendship traded and bought?"
"… it's not binding." I realized.
"No. It is. The contract you made with the Third Prince binds him to be your friend. But what is a friend?" She pointed out, "To him, a friend who is bought is nothing more than another pawn. You've met Aertin Brighthand, who follows the Third Prince about like his farts smell of roses. He saved the Third Prince's life. Many times. Can you say the same?"
"Alright, you made your point." I didn't want to hear anything more about this matter. I just wanted to have Alleria bathe me and then go sleep in my warm, fluffy bed. "What do you want then?"
"You're not a complete buffoon… I found something interesting south of the troll empire, the barbarian tribes, and the swamps." Her eyes twinkled with delight, like a cat who had just found an interesting toy. "Tiny, strange creatures, with more mind than muscle. Terrible physique, but innovative. Aid me in studying this new creature. I'll tell Master Kelen that you're not useless if you do. Maybe I'll even list you as one of the authors in my thesis! But not if I write a book about them. Too much royalties involved there."
And I couldn't give a shit about this… but I suddenly remembered that I had a bunch of specimen samples I had just collected. I knew how to study them with the tools of modern Earth. I could even study them with my enhanced perception. But I didn't know how arcane magic studied biology in detail like a specialized magister might. So even if it was begrudging, I knew this was an opportunity. "… Where is this, and how long will this take?"
Crowded
.
Windrunner Village held 2,680 elves. As the only village along the southwestern coast of the kingdom, our main produce was fish. Our second largest production was wood working goods, such as fishing boats, bows and arrows, and furniture. After that, we sometimes had excess grain, and we were one of the main sources for lifetime career rangers. Only about six hundred of those villagers were a part of the household retinue, while the remaining were simple commoners.
It was a military town, for more reasons than one. It was basically the sort of town that people moved out of rather than move into.
Approximately 14,000 elves lived in Tranquillien, and it was at the center of the southern half of the kingdom. In many respects, it was the biggest elven settlement south of the Elrendar River, making it seem rather metropolitan to many of the younger elves of my village. It produced many things, such as magical goods, research materials, and luxury trade goods, and several generational magister family clans made it their residence. While few owed complete loyalty to the Grand Mayor of the city there, it was a settlement of highly skilled artisans, so it was protected in a sense by its own prosperity.
Honestly, I had lived in megacities with populations above twenty million and thirty million in my past life so both of these settlements seemed agrarian in nature, beyond how much elves were in tune with the forest as part of our heritage. Even though we had mostly given up druidism and worship of Elune, high elves still held trees in reverence.
But I had to come to Tranquillien to Elsharin's workshop. It was a small three story building on the edge of the settlement, and her studio living space was on the second floor. She owned the building and paid her taxes to the Grand Mayor of Tranquillien through her small herb garden in the backyard as well as sometimes offering her magical services as a supplementary mage.
When I arrived at the third floor and found her fiddling with a crystal ball the size of a washing machine, I might have let out a scoff. That didn't endear me to her, which might have been counter-intuitive to my purposes of learning advanced arcane biology from her. Well, if nothing else, I could have a supplementary course in scrying. "I thought you were going to drag me onto a ship and sail south."
"Ships aren't so easy to rent. They are costly, and the kingdom makes one true vessel every hundred years." She rolled her eyes without looking up from her work. Then she paused. "… Good. You're here. How did you find me?"
"Did you think I would just wander around Tranquillien and ask?" The corners of my mouth twitched upwards.
Elsharin waved a hand, and the image within the crystal ball disappeared. It had been some kind of complex community, but I was too far away to see what she was looking at. The architecture was not elven, and yet it was neither the brutish things that the trolls built nor was it the primitive huts that humans lived in. "I had imagined something of that nature, yes. Furthermore, you just walked right in. You aren't a normal apprentice, are you?"
"I thought we had established that in our first meeting." I blinked.
"That's not what I mean." She huffed, hurriedly cleaning up the messy array of papers on her workbench.
I placed my hands on my hips. "Then what did you mean?"
Elsharin walked up to me, and I found that she smelled rather nice. Her chest wasn't too flat nor was she too buxom, and if she only wore glasses, then she could have pulled off the sexy librarian look. I couldn't quite catch her scent as she poked my chest, "You. You're not a novice mage. Only one with sufficient power can just… cross the threshold."
I looked over my shoulder and focused the energies pulsing through me in my eyes. The blue runes at the side of her door became more visible. I had thought them to be doodles, but that just showed what I knew. Couldn't say that aloud however, or else I would lose even more relationship points. "You'll have to show me how to do that at some point. I only learned from books, so you must have some special tricks people don't write down."
"Maybe we can trade. I'd like to hear of your upbringing. Master Kelen didn't look into you, and left that to me, but I only have hearsay. You are the firstborn of Lireesa Windrunner. You have twenty-two living relatives. Your younger sister is Alleria, who has prospects in becoming a ranger in the Farstriders." She ticked off, and then studied me. "But outside of knowing of your reclusive nature, very little is known about you. I had thought you were like the other children of nobility—lax and lazy, sedentary in habit and incapable of learning. Clearly, I was wrong about you."
"No need to stroke my ego too much. You'll give me a big head." I chuckled, before pulling one of her chairs over and sitting across from her and resting my elbows on her desk. "I am a simple man. I don't very much like politics or business, but it seemed that I needed to dip my toes in both, if I wished to actually learn anything of value."
Elsharin stared at me, her expression complicated. Then she closed her eyes and stood. "I apologize. I must have made the wrong impressions when I barged into your home. Oh, don't look at me like that. You are personally a competent mage. You are at a minimum my equal in standing. Look, I'm not good with introductions or apologies. That's why I apprenticed with Master Kelen."
"Because he stays out of social situations?" I found myself smirking.
"Because he places knowledge above playing games, but he also has the personal power and standing to keep himself out of it. You don't see anyone bothering him for anything, not even Grand Magister Belo'vir." She pointed out.
I had to concede that even if I didn't want to have such closeness with the ruling powers of the kingdom, I also didn't find something like that inconvenient. If I could have all the small matters stay out of my way, then that would already be a gift that kept on giving. "Alright then. So. What have you been working on. Were you watching the gnomes just now in your crystal ball?"
"Gnomes?" She blinked and then squinted. She squinted a lot. It made her look like she was always in a bad mood and always glaring.
"Well. A name for them." I shrugged and thought back the little scurrying things in the crystal ball. "It's g'not an elf. It's a gnome."
"Why do I have the sudden urge to hit you?" Elsharin frowned.
I quickly changed the topic, "Do you have something wrong with your eyes?"
"Now who is being rude?" The older elf woman crossed her arms. Those robes weren't tight enough to be flattering, not like a librarian's outfit. But maybe that was the point; she wasn't clueless about how she dressed herself. "But you are right, perhaps it was the long hours under candlelight, but my eyes have become strained."
"Hm." I nodded and made a noncommittal sound through my nose. Glasses weren't invented yet, but we should have magic that could heal eyes… though if this was her natural state, then maybe there was nothing that could be done. "Couldn't, uh, you magic yourself a pair of better eyes or something?"
"What do you think magic is? I do not have such access to the Sunwell, and even if I did, its powers are not used for something so mundane." She huffed, "Besides, the eyes are too fine and delicate for precise manipulation… I have spend the last fifty years of my free time studying them, but I have found little means to permanently fix my sight."
"So what have you done in that whole time then?" I wondered.
"If I crystallize arcane energy, then I can temporarily add a layer to my eyes such that my sight becomes enhanced." She said proudly, "It is a complex spell and requires concentration to maintain, though it is one of my own creation."
I nodded, "Right then. So you haven't done anything to actually fix your eyes? Couldn't you have just asked a crystal artisan to make lenses for your eyes?"
Elsharin pouted, "There are only three crystal artisans in Silvermoon, and they make fineries for noble houses. There's no way I can afford it… I have tried to work on troll eyes and experiment with fixing sight, but it has been slow work. There are laws against invasive experimentation on other elves, you know?"
And she was just smart enough not to experiment on herself. Yes, I thought I had a better grasp of her personality already.
On one hand, I could help her. On the other hand, I didn't even really know her. Maybe if I knew her better I would go grab her a pair of glasses from one of the two death worlds I could connect to. But until then, this wasn't my problem. I couldn't even profit from this exchange! "Right then… I suppose there's nothing to be done. So, about those gnomes."
"I'm still not sure about that naming." She frowned. "How do you even write that word?"
.
"Big brother, you're home," Alleria jumped into my arms.
"Yes, dearest sister." I pressed my lips on the softness of her neck and took in her scent. Yes, this was still my favorite scent of all the elves I came into contact with.
She only allowed me to pull away after our long embrace. Her cheeks were hot and pink, and if it was possible, I would see stars and hearts in her eyes. This wasn't just simple love, I knew, but an extreme adoration. "Here, allow me to take your coat for you."
I let her take my overcoat—it was winter and I had to put up the appearance of actually traveling between Tranquillien and Windrunner Village if nothing else but to not seem suspicious. Still, I blinked at the warmth of her reception. "You're being rather friendly today, Alleria."
"… I thought about things." She nodded to herself, hanging up my clothes while turning her back to me. It was hard to tell what she was thinking without seeing her face, and the bounce of her long ears attracted my attention.
"Oh?"
"Yes, big brother." Alleria inhaled a deep breath. Then she turned to me, the corners of her eyes wet and her expression tender. "I… it's not fair. You always know what to say. But, but now… do you still remember what you said to me, on that stormy night, so long ago?"
"You are mine, Alleria." I repeated those words, tasting them and feeling them. It had been so long since I made that statement that I had almost felt like they lost meaning. Time really eroded all things. "You're mine."
"Mm." The petite elven girl closed her eyes, as if she had tasted ambrosia. "Yes. But if Alleria is yours, then Lirath is mine. Big brother, I know… I know I don't know how I feel about anyone else who intrudes in our life…"
"Is Medea really that bad?" I chuckled.
Alleria shook her head. "Medea… likes to touch me too much, but she is kind. But if she is yours, then she is mine too!"
I laughed at that, and then reached over to pat her on her head. Ah, that was a good feeling. Her head felt so soft and silky to pet and run my fingers across. "Alright, Alleria. If that is what makes you happy, then she is yours too."
"Oh, and big brother?"
"Yes?"
"You shouldn't make Medea sleep all by herself." Alleria walked off, "Winter nights are cold, don't you know?"
I nodded and followed her into the Spire, interlacing my fingers with hers as we held hands and strolled in. "But the bed will be a bit crowded…"
Corporate Recruitment
.
The problem with a small town headquarters was that there were no recruitable talents from resourceful educational facilities here. In other words, I couldn't build an organization from Windrunner Village… not without years upon years of investment into training and grooming.
The Merchant could at best pass for a sales manager or project manager at best. He was capable, but there was no way I was going to let sales people get into the C-suite. He knew how to use people's desperation to close deals, and there was value in that… but as I grew in power, I needed different talents.
At this stage in the company's life, we didn't need someone from sales making long term directional decisions. Though I still gave him a lot of operational freedom and leeway—he was still the regional manager of sales and acquisitions for two worlds.
On the other hand, Medea of Colchis had an obsessive personality type that once I had shown her enough kindness, trust, and loyalty, she reciprocated several magnitudes over. I didn't even hide it, like I had with Alleria, when I first started with influencing my little sister's tastes. With my Caster, I simply told her that I wanted a closer connection. It did go both ways because of this honesty, but I was counting on it. She had more proof that I was never going to toss her aside, just as I had more assurances that she would actively seek out my best interests.
She had this problem of overconfidence, and perhaps arrogance, however. It showed in how she looked down upon anyone she came across. It wasn't unwarranted—she was one of the first practitioners of magecraft on Gaia, lived through the era of gods, and held powers that might well be beyond mortal capabilities. And that personality was how Caster was, she would either love you or she would loathe you. Very extreme. I couldn't have someone so close to be being so easily blinded by her own ego, but she was the most intelligent and useful personnel I had, so I took the long way with her, since I wanted to put babies inside her anyway.
With her magical skills, I placed her temporarily in the seat of chief researcher, knowing that she could not hold the seat forever. There were other things that would hold her attention, but like any startup, she had to do several jobs at once.
Medea also counted as a tactical aerial artillery, a defensive security system, an artificer, and an executive secretary. Because of her many skills, I told her I hoped to reduce her eventual workload to just being my secretary—that would leave time for her to stay at home more too. She was not opposed to the idea.
What remained of the company assets would be the several trade routes that I had already established—all of them law abiding and tax paying just to keep people out of my hair—and the one hundred-personnel bodyguard retinue I had recruited. I had provided them with enchanted modern body armor as well as some more esoteric defenses on top of the products I had already provided them, which were the armaments I had provided the Third Prince. They worked their asses off for the longest time, thinking that I was a self-sacrificing son and dutiful lord of the kingdom.
It might have surprised them when I gave them their mission briefing in front of a gaping portal.
No, it wasn't a portal to another world.
Elsharin proved herself to be an able arcane biologist. She even found trace amounts of "shadow matter" as she coined it, within the corpses of the gnomes she retrieved—and thought that they were humans whose forms had been twisted by some unknown demon.
It took everything in my power not to laugh in her face. But honestly, it wasn't a bad guess, and I learned a lot from her. I felt that I could probably brute force my way into replicating most of the viral creations that I had found in the Resident Evil universe—I still needed to go back there to see the news reports on how the world reacted to my Archon form, by the by. It was good enough for now, because I could make magical adjustments to the mutant creations with some predictability in results, but I would have liked more fine tuning.
Anyway, the problem with Elsharin, my fellow apprentice of Master Kelen, was that she was awful at operational security… or operations in general. She was good with dissections and that kind of operations, of course. However, a problem arose when she tried to procure gnome samples.
Elsharin hypnotized giant hawks to just grab gnomes from the ground and then carry them across half the continent to her laboratory.
What the fuck?
She burned the remains after she was done with them.
Apparently there had been magisters who experimented with necromancy on the trolls as a means to fight them before the Convocation banned that because and I quote, 'it didn't fit the aesthetics of our race'.
Anyway, that was why I sent my elite magical elven commandos through the portal to grab me a hundred breeding pairs of gnomes. There were tens of thousands of them that leaked from Uldaman—a facility of the titans, which had been seeped with just enough corruption that the mechanical servants within were cursed with flesh… the creation of the gnomes.
Somehow, just years after they were made, they had already forgotten their origins. Then again, the titans were dead now and everything was heading to a shit show on this planet of mine. Was it any wonder that I was looking for a safe homeworld to move to?
But no… all I found were potential death worlds.
What awful luck.
Elsharin's book came out, by the way. It sold about two hundred copies, mostly to collectors. She seemed to see that as a success, but no one really cared who discovered the gnomes, because the people of the kingdom were even more short sighted than she was. These were the same people who wouldn't believe humans even had any use until the kingdom was about to be destroyed by the trolls.
But after the thesis and the book were published, Elsharin lost her interest in the gnomes. The next expedition to study the 'flora and fauna' of the southern continent wouldn't be for another eight years. So I had a large window of opportunity...
... To get me some intelligent wage-slaves.
.
"You have forgotten who you are. That is a problem. For how else will you be able to make decisions without knowing who you are?" I spoke atop my podium. "Similarly, how can you make any choices if you are kept ignorant. I shall enlighten you. I shall lead the way. I am selfless, for unlike many of my kind, I believe I can help you, and I believe in your potential for greatness."
They didn't have a choice but to watch this brainwashing session. Like so many others. It was simple in utility, but once an idea was out there, there was no taking it back. I had to be careful who could be watching, and what could learn from my actions.
"You were created by the Pantheon of the Titans. They brought order to countless worlds. Order. Order is essential to living. It is discipline, it is duty, and it is cause and effect. Order is the fundamental logic behind the use of arcane magic. The titans created you as tools. But you didn't choose to be tools. You weren't capable of making a choice either. And you didn't know the perils you would be facing as the tools of the titans." I intoned, seeing the little swirls in their eyes—a reflection of the very large swirl moving behind me.
I wasn't using just one method. I remembered that this was a functional mechanic in this world, especially as my engineering skill steadily rose. There was a name for the minor version of this in the games, the Gnomish Mind Control Cap.
How delicious the situational irony.
I nodded as I brought the narrative back. "One such risk was the corruption of the creations of the void. They cursed you with flesh… with chaos. With the capability for disorganization, for derelict of duty, but also capability for growth, for choice. Both sought to use you as tools, as pawns, and as playthings. I see you as a downtrodden friend. So I saved you. I helped you. I shall clothe you, and feed you, and provide you with warm home, and purpose. And you shall have choice too… I will not force you. But through this purpose…"
… the sermon, for what else could it have been, went on for some time. And it would go on every day until I was certain that it would hold, not as ingrained knowledge, but as part of their culture and part of their tradition. It was a series of recordings I had made in advanced. There was no way that I would stay there acting like a priest everyday. A couple of the gnomes had volunteered to be priests of me though, come to think of it.
The overall community proved docile, having just discovered calendars, pottery, and the written language a few years ago. Brainwashing had at least one part education after all. These gnomes would see themselves as those who made the choice to swear themselves to me and their duty to see to my interests. And through them, I would gain generations of returns down the line.
A long-term, moonshot investment, for sure.
That was why I had fun with them. I split them into two 'clans', and named one Kouga and the other Iga. For the reference to hold, I taught a portion of them of what I expect them to do—to protect me and my interests without earning blinding glory. To be ninja. I didn't tell them how to do it.
No, restricting the gnomes would make the whole point of kidnapping so many of them and raising them moot. I wanted mad scientists to be born from this exiled tribe. I wanted utility from them.
I wasn't going to make it easy for them, but they had so many more resources than the gnomes wandering around the future Dun Morogh, the snowy mountains that wouldn't become home to dwarves for several hundred years more. Those poor gnomes lived in mountain caves and scavenged herbs for food. They were too physically weak to fight the native beasts, and that would be how they would remain for a long time to come.
Still… two hundred new dependents. I would need to utilize magic to make sure crossbreeding wouldn't cause any problems. What I had learned from Elsharin would allow me to perhaps see to improving them, if nothing else but to make them a bit more stable and longer lived.
In a decade, I would have two hundred ninja mad scientists, if all went well. If everything went according to plan.
Ah, how laughable the thought.
Nothing ever went according to dreams and ambitions in business.
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