The Quantum Wanderer

***

Marcelo’s POV

Next morning, when I wake up, I take a look around the bed. Cecilia is there. We slowly wake up and go to the breakfast.

After Huginn, Muninn, Cecilia and I finish eating, I turn to Cecilia.

“How was last night?”

“Oh, it was easy. They should be noticing the asshole is missing right about now.”

“Is there a body?”

“In the piranhas’ belly.”

Charles takes a look at Cecilia. He is kind of happy, while at the same time a little fearful. Aquamarine stops eating for a little bit, staring at his conflicting emotions. She tilts her head and goes back to eating her dragon steak. I had decided to have some dragon meat for a change.

I look at Muninn.

“Muninn, where is the hero party now? Are they getting back to Angelica already?”

Muninn closes his eyes. He tilts his head. He straightens up and looks at me.

“Father, they didn’t go towards the Holy Kingdom. They are in the Big River now, but instead of going downstream towards Angelica, they are going upstream. Towards Arthuria.”

I remember that there are also people from several different countries in the hero’s party, it being over 20 people. And that Arthuria had a big part in the hero’s invocation. I wonder if he is going to the front…

“Please let me know if they stop at any harbor.”

“Sure, father.”

Huginn clears her throat.

“Papa…”

I turn to her.

“The kids would like to play…” She makes these puppy eyes.

I don’t really care. As long as nothing happens to any kid, it’s not my problem.

“I don’t have a problem, but you would have to be responsible for them. Do you mind?”

“I don’t, papa.”

“Well, if you don’t mind, neither do I.” I turn to the other girls. “What do you want to do today?”

“Is there anything that we can hunt?” Ruby asks.

“We can hunt anything you want, dear. It is just going to be on the boring side…”

“What about another kraken?”

“I don’t think there are others around. Even that one took me a long time to find. We could take a look at some ley lines, there might be something strong there. I don’t believe there is going to be anything stronger than a dragon, though.”

Ruby pouts a little. She tilts her head from one side to another. Then looks at me.

“What about another termite or ant nest?”

I shrug.

“Do you want to clear one?”

“Sure.”

“Ok. I think that Dávrin still had a couple of cities that got invaded by these creatures. I am sure he is going to be happy about it. We can take a look at that after breakfast.”

Ruby speeds up her eating. A couple of minutes later, still with food in her mouth.

“Iammdnne.”

I think she mentioned she is done. I laugh at my dear piece of chaos. I laugh a little.

“My bag of holding in our room. Dávrin’s Comm Gem is in there.”

The air around the table becomes a whirlwind. The girls’ hairs messed by the small hurricane. Ruby brought me my bag of holding. She is looking at me anxiously.

I laugh. She made a little mess, some of the food on the table fell off the bowls. I grab Dávrin’s Comm Gem, I put mana into it. I give it the time.

“Good morning, friend! How can I help?”

“It is something that we are going to have to talk in person. Do you have a couple of minutes?”

“For you? Always. An and others would have me dragged from the throne if I didn’t.”

I laugh.

“When can we meet?”

“When can you get to your room in the palace?”

“I can get there in 10 minutes, Dávrin. It is a lot easier for me.”

“10 minutes it is.” I close the call.

The other girls finish their breakfast. I turn to them.

“What about you? What do you want to do today?”

Cecilia is scratching her chin.

“Can I go with you guys?”

“Of course. What about you, Opal? Shandon, Aquamarine?”

Opal looks at her sisters. She is thinking about it. She looks at how excited Ruby is.

“I don’t think it is wise to have our sisters alone with you, my lord. Specially when they are this excited..."

I laugh at the statement.

“Ok, everybody in armor, then.”

We all go up, and put on our armors. It does take more than 10 minutes, though. I feel a little guilty. I open the portal, and we go through.

“Welcome friend! Ladies…” Dávrin gives us a look, up and down. “Now I feel underdressed somehow... By the way…” He gestured around, Andvari was there. “I mentioned him that you were coming, he wanted to be present as well.”

I nod at Andvari. He nods back. Dávrin continues.

“That being said, how can I help you, friend?”

“Well… Ruby was bored…” Ruby waves at Dávrin, with a smile. “We were thinking of cleaning an ant or termite nest. I remember you have a couple of cities to reclaim still, right?”

Dávrin starts laughing out loud, holding his belly. He keeps laughing, and starts slapping Andvari’s back. Andvari was just staring at us. Ruby whispers in my ear.

“No keeping corpses, right?”

I laugh at her.

“No need, I think”

After Dávrin is done laughing, he slaps Andvari on the shoulder.

“Since you’re here, make yourself useful! Which one this time?”

“Al-bharuz seems like a good choice. It is a little to the north, it is also close to a tributary of the big river.”

Dávrin is passing his hand through his beard.

“That works.”

I turn to Dávrin.

“Where on map is it?”

Andvari pulls out a map from his bag of holding, there are some places marked on the mountain range. He shows me one of those. The picture of a castle with an x crossing it. He points me to an area to the south, a picture of a castle.

“And we are here. The city above ground there is going to be bigger than the one we have here. It is going to be abandoned, of course, but because of more commerce it used to have, it is going to have a lot more constructions.”

“Ok. Thanks.”

Dávrin laughs again.

“No, my friend, we thank you!”

I turn to the girls.

“We would have to do a little portal hopping to find this…”

“Or you can ask me, father…”

“I forgot about my brilliant son for a minute…”

I pet Muninn on the chest, he does his proud pose. I look around. The girls are already in armor. I am already in armor. We are ready.

“Please, son…”

Muninn opens a portal, the girls and I jump through it.

We are now in the middle of a forest. Nature has re-taken a lot of what was man built around here. We are on a road, but it is very wild. We pass through the ruins of what used to be a wall.

I extend my senses around the city. Instead of just a point of exchange, this is what would be a big village. There are several buildings around. The place could probably have had more than 50.000 people at a point. It even had an inner wall as well, indicating that it would probably have different districts that different people would be able to access.

More importantly, there are around half a dozen ants on the outide.

“There are some ants around. Around half a dozen. Who wants warm up?”

I take a look at the girls. Ruby is looking at me anxiously. The whole thing was her plan. Cecilia raises her hand.

“Can I have a couple?”

“Ok. Cecs, you can have the one closest to us, let Ruby have the other five. Actually, Ruby, why don’t you go for the queen? That way you can have your fun. Once you kill her, all the other ants are going to go there, in a frenzy. Just try not to hurt the dwarven city in the process.”

She bites her lower lip. She gives me a kiss on the cheeks, and Ruby is gone, mad speed. I can feel Cecilia reinforcing herself. She starts running towards the closest ant. She withdraws her sword, and jump on it. I stay on a watching distance.

The ant is a lot slower then her now. It tries to attack her with the pincers. Cecilia holds the pincers and throws the ant over head. The ant falls on it’s back. In that position, it throws a spit of acid. Cecilia side steps it, and is almost immediately by the ant’s side. She cuts the ants head off.

At this point, we hear a sound of agony coming from deep in the city. I extend my mana senses, and all the ants in this surface village are running towards a single point. I can only assume it is the entrance to the dwarven city.

We all apply flying spell, so that we can move faster, we go towards that point. Cecilia is chasing the ants. She cuts the hind leg of one of them. It throws some acid towards Cecilia, she easily avoids it. The ant turns around and keep running towards the dwarven city. It turns out that the loss of a limb is not enough to distract the ants from their duty to protecting their queen.

Cecilia passes by them, occupying a tighter place the ants are going to have to go through to get to the city.

Cecilia throws her new railgun spell, she kill two of the ants. She experiments with other spells as well. She tries to kill one with enhanced fire spell, it doesn’t go as well. The ant is still alive after the spell, but in a very bad shape. It is basically dragging itself towards Cecilia.

Cecilia then does the maser magic against the last ants. It works well, they just drop dead. They can stand heat from the outside, but apparently not from the inside. Perhaps I should have tried that in my previous cleaning.

I get close to her, she finishes the half burnt one.

“Congratulations! You did a group of ants in.”

“You have no idea. I tested the different spells! The one you guys call microwave is fantastic! The railgun is also something else.”

I smile. It is nice that my girls are having fun.

“How do you think Ruby is doing?”

There is an earth tremor. Some earth falls from the ceiling. The feeling is not of a common explosion, it is more the case when you throw some gas into the fire. A VOOM shakes everything.

We keep walking down the tunnel, we reach the dwarven city. There is a whole in the dome, it has that round aspect of the paths dug in by the ants. There is some smoke coming out of it.

A very dirty Ruby comes out, floating, from the hole. She sees us. She smiles, and comes my way like a missile. She has ant goo all over. I side step her, she goes rolling on the ground until she hits the cave wall.

Opal looks at her.

“SISTER! YOU ARE DISGUSTING! PLEASE!”

Ruby is sitting on the ground. She hits her own head. “Teehee.”

I smile. I turn around to the dwarven city, I do a full scan to see if she got everything. She did. The place that might have been the egg chamber became a pool of magma, the earth around it collapsed.

I open a gate to our showers at home. We all take our armors off and washup. When we come down, it is still noon.

We take a stroll through the city. The night approaches, we go back home.

During dinner, Dávrin’s Comm Gem activates, I answer it.

“Hello, friend! Good evening.”

“Good evening, Dávrin. Thanks for the tip on the ant’s nest.”

He laughed on the other side.

“I am getting in touch with you to know if it is clear.”

“Sure. As far as I know, it is. There were no alive ants, neither in the nest, nor in the city by the time we left. You might have one or two scouts that were outside during the time. Let me know when you reach the place, I could do a last sweep before the dwarves enter.”

“Thank you, friend. I will contact you if we have any difficulties… Just out of curiosity, how long did it take?”

“I didn’t have a clock, I don’t know… 15 minutes…?” I take a look at Ruby. She tilts her head from one side to the other, then nods. I get back to the gem.

“I checked with Ruby, 15 minutes seems about right.”

Between two pieces of steak, Ruby comments.

“It would have been faster, but the ants were on the slow side… I had to wait for all of them to gather…”

Dávrin laughs on the other side.

“Thank you again, friend. The colonization team is already on its way.”

“Sure, but I didn’t do anything. This was all Ruby. And Cecilia. She killed half a dozen of them.”

Dávrin laughs again on the other side.

“Sure. Thank you, lady Ruby, lady Cecilia. We really appreciate your help.”

“No problem.” Cecilia answers.

“Hummgh.” Ruby lets out a sound, her mouth full.

The call is over. I finish my meal, and Muninn hops towards me. He wants to talk about something.

“Father… I have some news…”

“Sure. What is it?”

“You asked me to keep an eye on the hero. They unboarded the boat, but not in Arthuria. They are coming to the empire.”

“Hummm. That’s intriguing.”

I am thinking about the implications. Rudolph clears his throat, I turn to him.

“Yes, Rudolph?”

“Lord, you have received an invitation to have breakfast with the duke tomorrow. The messenger told me that this is happening because of new, urgent, information.”

I open the invite. It says that there is urgent information Edward needs to share. We are invited for breakfast. Rudolph lets me read the invite, before clearing his throat. I turn to him, he continues.

“What reply can I give the messenger, lord?”

“Tell him that we will be there.”

“Of course.”

Rudolph turns around. I look at the table, Shandon is making a face. I turn to her.

“Is there something wrong?”

“Their food is bad… They try to mix the steaks with other things, and it is not even the steaks we eat here…”

Opal clears her throat, staring daggers at Shandon. Shandon recoils a little bit, and adds.

“My lord.”

Opal sighs.

Cecilia laughs.

“It seems you have spoiled us rotten, my villain.” She laughs a little bit. Opal and Aquamarine nod at the statement. Cecilia continues. “Do you think this thing tomorrow has anything to do with the hero?”

“Possibly. We don’t have to worry much, though. Edward is going to tell us what is going on.”

After the girls are done having dinner, I turn to Ruby.

“I still didn’t ask you what you used. How was the fight today?”

She opens a smile. A predatorial one.

“First, I used sister Opal’s strategy. I went straight for the queen. When I took out all her legs, she started screaming… Then I just had to wait for all the ants to get close enough.

“That is what took most of the time. I killed some of the by sword. Not much to it. It’s not like they could really hurt me. Their carapace is actually good to avoid the spits.

“When all the ants were close enough, I let out a burst of breath. I thought at least some of them would survive. The nest was much bigger than the other ones we had cleaned… But… Oh well.”

I kept thinking at how much older that nest should have been. The city was already taken by vegetation, meaning that there had been a longer time. A larger nest made sense. Then I realized just how much powerful the girls were.

Ruby kept loosing spars against Opal. She wasn’t even the strongest one. She killed those things in a record time. I laugh a little bit.

“Did I say anything funny, my lord?” Ruby asks.

“Not funny on itself, I am just finding your new levels funny.”

She smiles. She cleans her nails on her dress and looks at them.

“And this time I didn’t chip a nail!”

I laugh. I turn to Opal.

“Do you think an elder would be able to clear a nest? How long would he take?”

Opal tilts her head. She is doing some math, before answering.

“It is not a simple question, my lord. Our breath is enough to kill even the strongest ant or termite. The problem is their numbers. It is easy to kill the ones that come outside the nest to protect it, but fighting all the way to the queen…

“First, the elder would have to change shape. At most, griffon. Otherwise, moving inside the nest is complicated. The scales in an elder are weaker than the skin magic you applied on us. Never mind our new scales. Numbers, lack of caution, aggression. All of that is on the ants’ side.

“I would say they might be able to clear a nest, but with a chance of failure. Definitely not like sister did. Perhaps like sister Cecilia would do…? It is hard to be sure…”

I shrug. I am happy that girls are strong enough to protect themselves against anything.

The rest of the evening is a calm one. We talk with Charles and Lucille, they comment on their day. Almost boring. But boring is good, boring is safe. In this world, boring is a luxury.

We retire for the night. Ruby and the girls attack me. I thank the gods for my blessed life.

Next morning, we dress up and go to Edward’s. On the gate, the guards inform us that we are being expected, and we are lead inside.

When we enter the house, Edward calls out from the living room.

“Good morning, friend! How are you? Ladies…”

“Good morning, Edward, Addrianna… Anthon?”

Anthon was there as well, with Cesar.

It must be something serious. Edward approaches us, as we follow the butler inside the room. We all move to the dining room.

The breakfast is very varied. After Shandon’s complaint, I realize that they don’t have the same amount of steak in the breakfast as we do. They do have some, but there is a lot of bread and fruits. I hide my inner laugh.

Sophia, as always, is the perfect host. It is funny to see her effort on that. She courtesies Huginn and Muninn, calling them ‘your majesty’.

After some quick talk, the children are taken to another room. Only the adults are left in the room. We start eating. Edward casts a silence spell on the room. He produces a letter from his bag of holding, and shows it to me.

‘Dear Duke,

We have noticed the quality of new warriors that have been grown in the different schools. We congratulate the excellency of the schools, on providing such a great level of talent in this new generation.

We have the honor to announce that they are going to be welcome in the united army.

This is a moment of bliss, in that the hero is going to visit them personally, to escort them to the Holy Kingdom, where they will be able to finish their education, and join the demon subjugation army.

We decided to warn you in advance, so that you can get in touch with them and prevent any misunderstandings.’

I pass the letter to Cecilia, that reads it. She starts laughing. She passes it to Opal. Opal reads the letter, but keeps looking at us with an intrigued face. The same happens to the other dragonesses.

After they all read it, Opal asks Cecilia.

“What is funny, sister? What does the letter mean?”

“That letter is a threat.”

Opal gets the letter from Aquamarine’s hands. She reads it again.

“Really? What threat?”

“They are saying, in a veiled way, that we are to be forced to work in the army. And that the hero is going to come hero to make sure we don’t run and we obey.”

Opal looks at me. I nod my head.

She looks at Edward. He also nods his head. He gives the letter back to Edward. Opal turns to me.

“My lord, can I assume that you don’t want us in the army?”

“Yes. I wouldn’t force you into something you didn’t want. Much less let someone force you.”

“Thank you.”

Cecilia laughs hard. Edward turns to her.

“What is funny?”

“You don’t know my sisters. The thank you means the subject is already done and decided.” She looks at Ruby. “Sister, what about fighting the third strongest human alive?”

Ruby was playing with her food, kind of sad. She lights up at that moment. Cecilia giggles.

“You are going to be very disappointed, though.”

I laugh. Anthon is making some weird faces, together with Edward. At this point Edward grabs a Comm Gem from his bag of holding.

“Excuse me. It looks like there is some big trouble somewhere.”

“Of course.” I answer.

Edward leaves the room. I turn towards Addrianna and Anthon.

“So, I heard that the kids have been playing in the park. I hope they are enjoying it.”

“Oh yes, very much so.” Addrianna answers. “I do think you are getting Sophia a little bit spoiled, though.”

Huginn laughs a little.

“She says that our steaks are better, papa.”

I shrug.

“What can I say? I am the weird uncle that spoils the kids…”

We all laugh. Edward enters the room. His face is red, it looks like he is almost popping a vein. He has a malicious smile on him. He sits down and starts talking almost immediately.

“THOSE BASTARDS! SONS OF BITCHES!” He calms himself a little. “But then again, not something I wouldn’t expect.”

“What happened?” Anthon asks.

“I just got the news. Two men of the hero party decided to… Force themselves on the guild attendant. They just left the guild. They kept her all night.” Edward turns to me. “I now declare this a bandit hunt. Sir Marcelo, would your party accept a quest from the guild?”

Cecilia has this murder intent around her. The mana is leaking. Not as strong as it happened with Opal a little ago, but still… She bends the silverware unintentionally.

Aquamarine turns to her.

“What happened, sister?”

“They forced the attendant to have sex with them.” She then turns to Aquamarine, eyes sad. “Sister, it could have been me if not for this…”

I raise a barrier between the girls, Edward, Anthon and Addrianna. Their murder intent is leaking. After some time, Edward breaks the silence.

“I know that I am biased. I don’t want Sophia marrying that… that… shit. Even if he didn’t participate, he allowed. No one in his party would disobey him. It is a military party.

“That being said, will you take the quest?”