Chapter 173 - San Kingsgrove
When System Portals first descended on Earth, it had been an absolute shitshow. At first ten great beams of light lit up over the most populated places on Earth.
…in the 1960s
You might be able to see the problem there. At the height of the Vietnam War, when conflict was getting especially tense amongst jockeying superpowers, enormous pillars of light appearing at major population hubs was one of the last things you wanted to see. Apparently the civilized world almost ended that day. A few leaks had detailed just how close some leaders had gotten to pressing the nuclear option.
Now each of these pillars of light were the most important strategic locations on Earth. At first, every nation had secured their portals with ruthless military control. Making each one a ruthless military installation of utmost importance and security.
Now, something like that was impossible to imagine.
Not with the impossible and sometimes literally physics defying beauty of San Kingsgrove laid out to them.
Crystal edifices floated in the air as statement pieces by famous [Enchanters] and [Smiths]. Skyscrapers with magical structural support dotted the skyline, crafted in a way to show off their enchantments in a display of magical wealth. A few FAA certified adventurers flew about. As competent as any pilot, but with far, far more maneuverability.
For those without flight? You could occasionally spot adventurers hopping across the Adventurer’s Platforms. These were little outcroppings on the first and second storeys of most buildings, designed so adventurers in a rush could hop overhead of all of the civilians down below. Some civilian tourists were taking pictures, trying to catch the adventurers in motion.
A true modern city of adventurers.
The difference was clear even far from the city proper. Beautiful homes, apartments, and luxuries were abound. The people here were fit, healthy and yes, mostly wealthy. The vast majority of the rich and powerful chose to live near system portals and it showed.
The other thing that was evident was the species diversity. Thinner people with pointy ears, bigger people with green skin and a fair few shorter people with beards mingled about.
Though one species clearly won out behind the humans.
It was the half-elves.
Say what you wanted, but given the chance, most adventurers almost always chose to be an elf. The looks and potential longevity as backup often outweighed every other choice.
Then those elves would return to Earth beautiful or handsome and… well.
It resulted in a lot of descendants.
Clara had her face glued to the window.
“So many people with shields… is that the current fashion?”
Even in the outskirts of the city, rich people carried around medieval weaponry as fashion pieces. A couple decades ago, someone had started a rumor that carrying around medieval weaponry increased the chances of you becoming a Destined and the fashion had never gone away. He remembered visiting the city as a kid and thinking that all of these people were adventurers.
Adult Ryan looked at the ornate shields that were clearly too light to be of any use and shook his head.
“Posers.”
Ryan turned around when he felt two pairs of eyes judging him. Milock was eyeing him from the rearview mirror and Clara was just staring at him.
“What? I’ll have you know that every single one of my equipment is very functional.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure wearing those robes so loosely they flap in the wind is all function.”
“It’s the impact! Being casual about it makes everyone think you have things under control. Back me up here, Milo.”
“Bit of a fifty-fifty on the Realmnet. Half call you a poser, half of them admit you have style.”
“Damn.”
“Fifty’s still a lot. You do have a literal themesong.”
“Wasn’t that your idea?”
“And you told me it was a stupid idea! Then you went ahead and got it made by Ozyell! Does he even know that it was my idea?”
“Oh yeah, it was your idea. Now the fifty percent number makes sense.”
“Screw you.”
The banter continued. They were trying to lighten the mood around the black hole of silent anger that was Barry
“Oooh, I want a decorative wand.”
Ryan chuckled. “Could get you an actual wand with a [Spark] enchantment.”
“Ew, why would I want to get something that’s no better than a flashlight?”
Ryan didn’t quite have a response for that. At least not something he could come up with a response before Milock interrupted them.
“Heads up, security. Everyone got their IDs?”
They were coming up to a security checkpoint. While it wasn’t quite the walled affair of a city in The Realm, it was still a magical barrier with enchanted concrete towers that apparently held weaponry that could shoot down hostiles in the eighth realm.
One of the main reasons for such things was, of course, control. Both the Adventurer’s Guild and the American government had vested interests in controlling who exactly was allowed to become an adventurer.
This security stop was more of a pointless formality. Something to remind everyone that defenses existed and you could not just rush into the city and run into the System portal and become an adventurer.
The car came to a stop at the security. They were strangely a lot more attentive than what Ryan remembered. Ryan shuffled so that he was sitting on his exposed hand to cover the vapors. Though there hadn’t been a need, the security guy was more focused on Barry. He kept his eyes on the orc while talking to Milock.
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“Name and reason for your visit?”
“Just helping Barry here visit some old friends. None of us have been here in a while so we’re going to go shopping and look around, touristy stuff.”
The border guard shuffled through their IDs, making sure his scanning device caught all of their names and pictures. When the details checked out he leaned over the car and nodded thoughtfully.
“Just a heads up, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but an incident has happened and everyone’s a bit tense towards non residents. I’d consider meeting your friends outside the city barriers.”
“What incident?”
“Don’t know. One of those incidents where if I did know, I wouldn’t talk about it.”
The guard gave Milock and Barry a look. It probably meant high realm adventurers or the government messing around. Something that no civilian would ever want to bother with.
“Gotcha. Thanks for the heads up, but we kinda really want to check out the city, you know?”
The guard nodded. “Just know that there’s a lack of adventurers at the moment. Normally that means less work but…” The man trailed off, then shook his head. “Anyway, have a good day and enjoy San Kingsgrove.”
“Thank you.”
As they drove away Clara addressed the rest of them. “What do you guys think? I think that security guard was way more disturbed than he let on.”
Ryan didn’t think much of it. “Probably nothing to do with us? Milock?”
“Apparently there was a bright flash of light and a small explosion but nothing that serious.”
Clara was a little confused. “An explosion’s not that serious?”
“It’s not that uncommon, adventurers mess up all the time. It was in one of the inner areas so I didn’t think much about it.”
Clara looked at Milock weirdly. “Aren’t we heading to the inner area for Ryan’s arm?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.”
——
San Kingsgrove was more haphazardly designed than Manhattan’s system city. Having come in at a later date, when the eighth realm expansion settled, people had land here that they had held for dear life knowing it would increase in value over the years.
They hadn’t been wrong.
The closer your home was to the shining beacon of light, the more it would be desired by adventurers.
The more it was desired by adventurers, the more everyone desired to live there.
Not to mention the rumors that said the ambient energy from system portals was enough to cultivate to realm zero.
All that to say, they acquired two rooms in a hotel that cost a thousand dollars a night and that was only in the outer area of the city. By the time they actually arrived into the inner area, they’d passed a handful of real adventurers and their group was getting stares.
Not at Barry, but at him.
“The adventurers really are a little too tense. Everyone’s trying to size me up.”
Clara looked around, she was unable to find the staring eyes, not when they looked away from her before she could see them. “Are you sure it’s not your imagination?”
“No,” Barry said. “They’re all a little too tense. Either the explosion was worse than they said, or the fighting’s worse in The Realm than what’s being leaked. Rookies.”
The orc apparently just had to insult them while they were in earshot. One of the adventurers stood up from their seat, apologized to the person they were with, and started marching towards them.
Ryan looked to the sky.
“Why did you have to do that Barry?”
“If I could notice them sizing you up, then they’re not being guarded at all. They’re both tense and sloppy. What else do you call them other than rookies?”
The adventurer that had been walking towards them at normal speed, sped up to a pace that was at least at the fourth realm. Which meant he was in front of them in seconds and in Barry’s face.
An elf, tall and lanky with a custom bow and a sword in his belt.
“You want to say that to my face?”
Ryan tried to stop the orc. “Barry–”
“Rookie.”
The elven adventurer’s hand flashed forward, trying to grab Barry’s shirt. Ryan’s hand blurred forward at the same time. Before he could grab the elf’s arm, the adventurer snatched theirs away first. That speed put him in at least a Fifth Realm, likely even higher.
The elf glared at Ryan.
“I wasn’t going to hurt him.”
Ryan glared back. “Adventurers shouldn’t get physical with civilians.”
The elf’s eyes narrowed at Ryan’s left arm, then scoffed. “But this guy isn’t a civilian is he?” He turned to Barry. “What are you, a Settler? Calling us rookies? That’s rich. World’s changed a lot since your time, old man. We’ve been out there, organizing mass-evacuations from cities and I don’t need someone who’s used to burning them down to call me a fucking rookie on my downtime.”
That was almost a fair comment. Barry wasn’t having any of it.
“If you were–”
Clara clapped her hands, as close to Barry’s ear as she could reach. It made the orc jump up in surprise. She turned to the adventurer.
“Okay! Sorry mister…”
“Vedslaw Kingstrike, [Ranger].”
“Cool name, Mister Vedslaw. I’m sorry for our old pal here, he’s just a little tense because his friend’s out there fighting for The Realm and we haven’t heard from her in awhile. You understand right?”
Vedslaw took a step back and reassessed the orc. “Ah. The information blackout. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your symp–”
Ryan elbowed the orc in the side, hard enough to bowl him over. He put an arm under the orc’s shoulder, then winked at Vedslaw.
“Sorry about my old friend here, he gets a little sleepy when the sun’s a little too bright.”
Vedslaw blinked at the dude that had just admonished him for getting physical with a civilian. Then shook his head and walked back to his companion.
Barry swore and tried to shrug him off. Unfortunately for the old and very grumpy orc, Ryan was quite familiar with carrying uncooperative people around.
“Let—me—go.”
“So you can keep picking fights with random adventurers in the street? No way.” Ryan turned to Clara. “Good work by the way.”
She gave him a thumbs up. “All in a day’s work.”
Only once Barry promised to keep quiet had he let the orc go… which had taken a surprising amount of time. He had hoped bringing Barry along would help keep his mind off Seffara. Now he was starting to understand just why the orc had been given the [Berserker] class.
Ryan shook his head and flipped a coin.
It landed on tails.
“We’re taking a detour.”
“Why?” Clara asked, confused. “The shop’s just over there.”
Her complaint was fair. He still hadn’t told them about his meeting with the Manager.
“To throw off a certain person trying to predict my next move.”
Clara tried to figure out who he was talking about. Milock seemed to catch on quicker.
“You really think a coin will stop her from figuring out your next move?”
Milock thought Ryan was talking about the Witch Tyrant. Which was fair, but wrong.
“Wrong person, not her. Anyway, I’ll explain later, but yes, a coin might be able to do exactly that.”
Funnily enough, Barry didn’t complain, the orc just glanced at Ryan and followed along. They took a meandering detour that seemed ultimately pointless. Then they arrived.
It was as if someone had taken the most stereotypical gothic architecture and plopped it in the middle of a modern street. While half-medieval style stores were common in some of the more commercial spots of San Kingsgrove, this was more residential urban.
Only a headstrong high realm adventurer could both bully and pay her way out into building something like this.
A little bell chimed them in.
Only a few steps into the landing stood a pedestal with a thick book pointed out at them.
I, Witch Grettfield do declare that all of those that sign below to be under the sacred duty of hospitality. I will treat you with honesty and respect as long as the same is held in return. All those that do not sign will not be covered and may be asked to leave at any time.
It was indeed, a guestbook. [Witch] Grettfield was a well-known ninth realm that always dealt fairly with her customers and was known for her discretion.
Clara shuddered as she signed. “Woah. This feeling in the air? Is it mana?”
The amount of mana was equivalent to the ambient levels in The Realm. It shocked Ryan to feel it.
“Yeah, it’s probably enough to start developing your mana channels.”
A voice called out from further in. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t use my own mana to develop your development dears.”
A tall willowy elven woman stepped into the hallway leading to the landing. She stepped forward and eyed Ryan’s arm, tilting her head at him.
The action instantly reminded him of the Witch Tyrant and made him raise his guard. The [Arm of the Arcane Saboteur] tingled in response, wondering if there was a magical plot that needed to be unravelled.
His arm did nothing to make [Witch] Grettfield wary. She simply kept her curious gaze.
“It’d be a true shame to have to ban such interesting guests.”
Ryan was pretty sure the Realmnet was misinformed. [Witch] Grettfield wasn’t a ninth realm [Witch].
She was a goddamn dragonslayer.