Chapter 218: A Group
———Lerim———
<12: 56 pm>
“...What are you watching right now?” Evari asked, seeing me glued to the phone. I suppose this is a bit of a rare sight. I don’t consider myself a smartphone addict, though I feel like the threshold to be called that has been raised a lot since the period those things were first invented. Everyone nowadays uses their phones pretty often.
“Oh. Just a stream from someone who goes into a dungeon a lot. She has a few nice pieces of advice to give to aspiring adventurers. Though obviously it can only go so far.” These streams of hers aren’t the most flashy, especially compared to that big collab she did a few weeks back. “I can send you a link if you want.”
“I’m good.” She explained. Right now Karra is just fighting through a group of monsters and beating them so quickly that she’s more akin to a blur on the camera. She always had a very ground movement speed with those legs of hers. I guess it’s to be expected of a horse. These demi-humans do have some perks to go along with their animal features. “...By the way, when are you going to fill me in about the whole Mage Remnants business? Both you and him are tight-lipped about it even though I’m at the scene.”
“I couldn’t be bothered. It’s nothing important anyway.” For her, at least, it’s not important.
“How is something that’s not important if three people come and try to kidnap you or something?” She said while looking at me skeptically.
“<Oh. By the way, have you guys heard about Mage Remnants?>” Karra said on the stream. I almost thought she was in the room with us and actually responded, but I don’t think that was it.
“Why don’t you tune in the stream of my friend here to find out?” I said before sending her the link to the stream.
“...Fine.” She said, probably taken aback that I’m bringing it up again, and then quickly folded.
———Orrel———
<1: 01 pm>
“Wonder why she’s talking about that now?” Jeff asked as he leaned back.
“Probably because of something happening that we aren’t aware of. There’s a lot of things she knows that we don’t.” I replied, simply throwing a guess out there.
“I mean in general we’re not gonna know who’s doing what at all times even if we discount her associations.” Gregori chimed in. “Probably got targeted by them, if I were to guess, or maybe someone mentioned something about them to her so it’s on her mind right now.”
“Would she really be? This town is a no-go zone for all sorts of people due to you-know-whos. I don’t think she even roams about out of town this week.” Jennla said, not seeing the first option as being a possibility. That is something we ultimately don’t know about. Like Gregori said, none of us really know everything going on in the neighborhood even if we’re all familiar with each other’s habits.
“It’s likely she didn’t but that’s just another thing we don’t know for sure.” Gregori said. “Speaking of Mage Remnants though, those guys don’t exactly have the best reputation in the underground magic world, right?”
“It’s weird to say that when they are the majority in that camp.” I remarked. Since most of the active magic users before all of this were them in the first place. There aren’t a lot of Ahdeid that should still be alive for one reason or another, and the amount of people who can practice magic but aren't part of the Mage Remnants and aren’t Ahdeid is even slimmer. They’ll most likely get indoctrinated by either and be associated with them, or killed in a freak accident due to not knowing what to do.
“No idea how they kept those things a secret for so long, outside of murders.” Gregori remarked. The books didn’t really go into detail, which makes sense, I suppose. Even if they know how they did it and did write it down, it’d probably mention some specific incident that would’ve recontextualized certain events that might be quite scandalous. Not that I would know if such information would result in anything, but I guess they couldn’t be bothered to think about it, so they don’t bother even addressing it in the first place.
The size of the library also means I haven’t stumbled across it, or perhaps it’s hidden somewhere. We can be confident that they have more documents they don’t share.
“...So it seems that something did come up, but she’s not sharing anything.” Malk muttered, having listened intently. He probably wondered if she’ll ever talk about encountering one.
“<Yeah. A friend of mine ran into one yesterday. It was resolved quickly, and thankfully it was at the outskirts of town, no harm done to others.>” Karra reiterated. Wait, and who is that exactly? When did that even happen?
We look at each other and it’s quite clear none of us have encountered one of those, and-
“It’s Kenni, it’s Kenni isn’t it.” Gregori said with a dull and somewhat annoyed tone. That is our most likely candidate, considering everything.
“I mean at this point, who else could it really be?” Malk remarked. “Can’t say I noticed a fight happening in town yesterday, but she did say it was at the outskirts. Did no one else sense anything?”
“I didn’t.” Jennla said. Well the ability to read powers isn’t exactly tied to your own strength, it’s an intuition you built up, so even if she’s the strongest one here she doesn’t necessarily have the best power-reading ability. “By the way, couldn’t it also be Emmie?”
“Maybe? But we know so little about her in general that it's hard to tell. One day she’s procrastinating and doing some fancy ladylike stuff like she ain’t a savage, and another day she goes out hunting people for sports.” Gregori pointed out. She is simply someone we shouldn’t really take into the equation even when compared to Kenni. “Now it would make sense for it to be Kenni, considering what happened. If someone figured it out they’ll probably make her a target for multiple reasons.”
“Yeah. Looks like we’re really in for it now.” Useph said before taking a long sigh. “Just great, now we’re on the shitlist of secret underground magic people.”
“That’s really not something we need to worry about in the slightest. The fact that someone here only encountered them now of all times just showed how well-protected this place is.” Gregori said to lift up the mood a little. “If anything, we’re probably very safe from any kind of assailants unless those guys went nuts for something, at that point we’d be dead in seconds.”
“Honestly the latter point could be said for literally everyone on the planet. Lest we all forget, there’s no theoretical limit to the power output of a spell, and we know for a fact that people like Rico and Wana are vastly stronger than us who could theoretically terrorize a city or two.” There was basically no indication that we are comparable to them at all. The fact that they can conceal their strength to the point that there was no sign of their true power leaking out at all for us to sense.
“...That makes us sound so full of ourselves, regardless of how true the statement is.” Qyunda remarked. I suppose that is true, but it’s hard to convey such an absurd claim without looking ridiculous no matter what. “But speaking of Mage Remnants. They aren’t exactly all united, right?”
“Of course not. No way such a network spanning multiple nations doesn’t have some internal conflict and segregation. We don’t really have specific names of each group, but we do know that generally each group stationed in different cities could be considered someone from different factions.” Gregori answered. “It’s very likely that we are only dealing with a small subset of them that might not quite realize what they’re getting into. It should be noted that according to the documents in the library, most of them aren’t actually as strong as us.”
“Seriously? Here I thought they have training practices that had been passed down through generations or something?” Qyunda mockingly said.
“According to the books. The low mana density in the atmosphere prior to the Eclipse means that your mana regeneration rate is quite low, which means less opportunity for anyone to practice in any substantial way. Unless they find an area with a leyline they’re not going to get much done.” I answered this particular question, if it’s even meant to be answered. “The Eclipse causes the mana density to increase significantly, which means we use less of our personal mana pool and regenerate them faster by absorbing them through the atmosphere. We also have the training grounds in the form of dungeons to siphon mana from those creatures as well, and from my understanding the amount of actual monsters beforehand was way, way less than what we got now.”
“It’s like their training went to waste then? That’s gotta be quite a crushing experience.” Qyunda remarked.
“I wouldn’t say that. They still got a headstart and they already know how to use magic before all of this. I believe they are probably stronger now on average than they were a few years back, but depending on when the book was created, it might not be a big increase.” No one actually knows when those books were even first written. There’s no data available on that front.
“...Hey. Aren’t we kinda like a mage society ourselves? We got a school for it, places to train, even some wise masters, if we’re gonna call them that.” Jeff suddenly spoke up.
“...I mean. You’re not wrong. I guess we’re like new blood on the scene, not that I think we could really be considered to be that similar to such a secret society.” Gregori said, not sounding too convinced. “We’re probably better off just thinking of ourselves as something entirely different.”
“I mean we were already called freaks of nature at one point, which is rich considering the other people in the school.” Qyunda mockingly said. I don’t know where she heard that from but I’m not surprised if someone calls us that. We seem to be an easy target of envy around these parts. Moreso the fellow students, I don’t think the adults care that much… I supposed we’re technically young adults, but that’s besides the point.
“A bunch of jealous nobodies. If they’re that envious then they should’ve trained and studied more. Putting it on us is just a loser mentality.” Malk said, being quite blunt with his statement.
“...What floor is Karra on right now?” Useph asked. Guess he lost count.
“Seventy-four. It seems like she’s willing to go much lower than that based on the speed at which she’s moving. She might be going for a hundred this time.” She is usually quite chill during the streams and only does about sixty or so before calling it quits.
“Guess she’s just spicing up the content…” Malk said before looking around, clearly getting impatient. “Why are the orders taking so long? I know we ordered a few dozen, but come on, what is with customer service nowadays?”
“Just be patient, dude.” Qyunda said as she leaned back on her chair. It hasn’t even been that long since we ordered.
“...Okay, here’s one thing I wanna ask.” Useph spoke up as we continued to wait. “We still don’t really have a motive for why the school was renovated, right?”
“Nope. We probably will never figure it out fully.” Gregori said as he focused on watching Karra’s stream. She is still moving extremely fast and speedrunning the dungeon, essentially. “Best to stop thinking about it. I know we were thinking and discussing it for a while during the first few months.”
*Beep* *Beep* *Beep* *Beep*
“Ooh! Finally!” Jeff said before he got up along with Malk to carry the food we ordered.
Soon both of them came back with what could be called a mountain of burgers and fries.
Certainly indulgent, but we haven’t eaten here in a while, and we might as well be a bit greedy today.