by Rae Nantes
Her smile faded from her. "Yes, but she isn't doing well. She used too much mana and overworked herself." She paused. "The priestess is old, you know?"
"I see."
"Alex, we all need rest after that fight. We're all drained of mana and tired. I haven't slept in two days."
"So now what?" I asked. "And why are we on a ship?"
Willow pinched the bridge of her nose. "For fuck's sake, Alex. Maybe relax on the questions."
"Sorry!"
"No, it's fine. We're all a bit on edge. Look, we can't return to the mountain village because it was raided. We don't know how they found out our location, but it doesn't matter anymore. Now we're just..." She sighed. "Now we're just roaming around looking for another place to settle. Now that we have you, it doesn't matter where we go."
I already knew the answer. "The island."
"Rhoda," she echoed. "Well, I'm glad you can at least read, but no, it’s too soon for that."
I remembered now that the letter told me to get stronger. I was far from it.
"Okay, so how about—"
"How about you walk around and get some fresh air. I'm hungry, and I can't eat if you keep throwing questions at me."
I was disappointed that I couldn’t find everything out, that I couldn’t just interrogate everyone for everything I needed to know, but she was right. "Thanks for everything," I said with a smile. I knew I wasn't worth it, that I wasn't even worth saving. I was useless. I was dead weight. I knew it, they knew it, and everyone here was waiting for me to get my act together, secretly hoping my past life would take me over and possess me, purging this bodily vessel from its cowardice.
Willow was right. I needed fresh air. I needed to rest my eyes on the ocean waves and feel the breeze in my hair. Anything to keep me from spiraling into negativity and self-doubt.
I ruffled Willow's hair as I walked by. I went down the hall, through a maze of rooms and storage areas filled with barrels and crates, and up the staircase through a surprising amount of decks. The ship had to have been tremendous, and I started to wonder if they stole it. This floor had dozens of cannons lined on either side, each facing a closed gunport. It was dark here, but the sunlight slipped through the port spaces and caught the dust. The wind was whipping above me. I continued up the stairs and opened the heavy doors to the top deck.
The air was crisp and chilly, and the light was almost blinding. There was a massive sail that hung across the length of the ship almost horizontally like a bedsheet. I tilted my head as I studied it. Those weren't sails - it was more like white blimp was tied to the top of the ship. When I realized it, my heart skipped a beat.
I raced to the edge and slammed onto the rail to keep me from falling over. The sight took the breath from me. We were sailing in a sea of blue. The wind pulled my hair and caressed my face, and I could smell distant rain. I looked for the ocean waves, but they were far below us - passing birds the size of ants. This was an airship. Goosebumps ran up my arms in excitement. I looked for land but didn't see any, and after sprinting to see the other side, there was none to be found. We must've been soaring high above the Mediterranean. I stared out in wonder and amazement before I heard heavy boots tap the floorboards behind me.
It was boot-hat man. "Oh, hey buddy. First time?" He was puffing on a pipe, his eyes baggy and pink with a dull smile stretched across his face.
"Hey. Yes. First time." I wanted to snap back to the view and the sky and the sea and the world around me, but this guy himself was a world wonder. "Didn't you lose that pipe?"
"Oh, this?" He took it out of his mouth as if to reassure himself before popping it back in for another toke. "Nah, I have plenty. You want one?"
Before I could stop him, a small portal ripped open beside him and, without even bothering to look, he stuck his hand in. He shuffled his arm around, opened a drawer, and dug out another pipe, stopping to stare at his prize before handing it over. "Th-thanks," I said. It was a long black pipe, marvelous engravings painstakingly etched into it. I felt it better belonged in a museum of art, rather than to be stuffed with whatever fantasy hallucinogen was found here.
"So, meteor, huh?"
"What?"
"You tried to cast it," he said. "Heard you try it a couple times before we melted some faces." He looked at me with quizzing eyes as if he knew whatever I told him would be the wrong answer.
"I felt it," I said. "The spell. I remembered it from somewhere, and I tried, but it didn't work."
"Yeah, that's because it's nested."
"What?"
"It's a nested function. Heavens(fall) is above it. But even then, it takes a load of mana and experience to even try it."
"I see."
"Don't worry, buddy," he said. "You'll get the hang of it one day."
I wanted to grab him and make demands, but I calmed myself. "Can you teach me?"
He scoffed. "In your condition?" he laughed. "You'd turn the world to ash."
He was right. I would've tried. Had I the power, I'd run back and hunt out every player guild and castle and town and drop the heavens on them. I'd kill them again and again and again until they would just give up forever. After all, that's what they would do to me, to us. We were just nipsies to them, just artificial intelligence to populate their game - their entertainment.
"Well," he said. "You seem to be brooding, so I'll be on my way."
But I'm not just artificial. I'm sentient! I'm a human fucking person, and I have emotions and desires and needs! I feel pain and sorrow and happiness and regret and fuck Smith and his shit-eating players to throw me into the dirt and throw me away like trash. I'll hunt that little rat fucker down and peel his skin off until he logs out like a coward. I'll find a way to tear out the broken systems that killed Leila and Trell, I'll shred the false aristocracies that kneel to the whims of the players. I won't kneel to a world that bends to the players, no. I'll create a world that forces the players to kneel. Or better yet—
A splash of water hit me on the cheek. I pulled my wild stare to see Willow pointing finger guns at my face, and from them, more tiny bursts of water. Fsst Fsst Fsst.
"Relax, Alex." She chuckled. "You're starting to smoke at the hands. Don't flip out and catch the ship on fire."
I took a deep breath. "Thanks."
"Yep," she smiled.
"Willow, I know what I want to do - what I need to do. I need to get stronger."
"Yeah, that's kinda obvious," she said. "That isn't much of an epiphany."
"We need to get stronger."
"Uh huh."
"No, Willow. We should start a new base of operations, a new village."
"That's the plan," she said. "Right now we're thinking about—" she paused. "No, how about we let you decide that."
Chapter 27
The Ashlands
It was called the Ashlands.
This was the region that had been dominated by war and disaster since the previous coming of the players. They told me it was once a sprawling nation that was wealthy and influential in the world, where new players would begin their quests and nipsies young and old came to live and work. When they told me stories about its wonder, it was made out to be a utopia - some fantasy land so unreachable in the past that it could've been Atlantis. Now it was thousands of kilometers of desolate wasteland and ruins.
"But what happened to it?" I asked them.
"You happened to it," they told me.
The Ayolian empire stretched far, mimicking the real historical Ottoman empire. Its heart sat at the start of the black sea in Istanbul, but in this world - my world - it was called by some other forgotten name. Now it was just a series of craters and glass.
I saw it when we passed it over. The stench of burned plastic and smoke rose high enough to reach us. The land charred black, the forests burned away, no sign of life and only marginally recognizable structures dotted the shores. Fallen roofs, a crumbling castle keep, a decayed boat. "A war was waged," they explained. "A war to maintain the pl
ayers' presence, a war to maintain the economy that depended on them. A war that they lost to you, to Lord Gaia."
The regions of Greece and Turkey, all the way to the Caucasus, all devoid of life and claims by neighboring nations. There was nothing to lay claim to, after all. Beside the disfigured strait that split Asia and Europe, there were no signs of resources to exploit or people to tax. Even the trade ships that passed through from ancient Russia to the rest of the Mediterranean would not even bother to stop.
I wanted to suggest building here at the strait. Istanbul, and before that Constantinople were once respectable cities that gained great wealth by controlling the trade that passed through. "Not a great idea," Yun told me. "We're wanted now. We have bounties and warrants for our arrests, and we'd be found out before any progress could be made."
He was right. The same problem is what drove us away from North Africa and the rest of Europe. If we landed somewhere else, we'd have to go back to hiding in mountain towns or caves, and we wouldn't accomplish anything like that. This meant the Ashlands would be our best bet.
"Willow," I said. "Do you have an information network?"
"We do in various cities. Communication isn't a problem."
"I need information that only a player can answer."
"And what is that?"
"A list of natural resources in ancient Turkey," I said. My memory of the player side was still foggy, but I knew what this world was - all the players did. This world was a replication of Earth, likely a simulation that had been built with an MMO shoehorned in as an afterthought. If geography was the same, then so should resource locations.
We spent next couple of days traveling along the southern shore of the Ashlands while we waited for the intel. We passed near the island Rhoda, the one Willow told me to find, but when I asked to get a closer look, they rejected the idea. "It's too dangerous," they said. "Manatech guards roam the place." I didn't push the issue. I knew then that even they did not feel strong enough for such an event. And besides, the objective now was to establish ourselves as a power, and dungeon raiding was low on the list of things to do.
On the second day, Willow received word from her informant while we fished on the shore. The informant handed out quests for information and new players jumped at the opportunity, hopping off the game to scoop out the records from servers and books in Stella Vallis to mark them on maps here. All for the cost of a little XP.
And so when boot-hat man handed me the map, I was elated to find we were right near an old silver mine. There were gold mines that were situated further inland, but we needed to be closer to the shore for food. I groaned at the thought of having to eat nothing but fish for a while, but it was our only option. When I suggested it to Willow, she consulted with the priestess, then back to me. The plan was approved, and we set sail.
***
We moved along the mountain ridge far enough inland to hide us from passing ships. There, we set up camp right at the foot of the mountain, sleeping in tents until we could begin building huts for ourselves. That was where we met our first problem - wood. The grass had returned to the valley, yet there were almost no trees around, and the only source of wood we could find were scraps and rotten trunks. I wondered if we couldn't just get boot-hat man to cut a tree on the other side of a portal and push the lumber through, but we needed to be self-sufficient.
Yun was able to come up with a great idea. We were able to dig out a long trench to park the airship into and use it as a centerpiece to build a base around. We could've built tunnels and rooms under the ground, but I rejected the idea. Living in a cave would be unbecoming of a lady, and I demanded my own cozy little home. It would be my home, and I wasn't going to live in the dirt like a snake. I didn't actually know if snakes lived in the dirt or not, but the point was clear and taken, and we settled on using stone and rocks to build with.
It was then that I was thankful for the magic of my world. Though earth spells couldn't create lasting bricks, we could use powerful water jets to cut some out of the mountain, then float spells to bring them in place. With about three dozen of us working until evening, we were able to get several cabins built each with several rooms. Although I wanted my own place, Willow told me no, and that I'd have to live with her until I could cut and float bricks on my own. The best I could do was make clay.
After the housing was built, we then needed to divide up the jobs. For the first day, a dozen was sent to scout the area nearby, a dozen more to investigate the silver mines, and the other half of us to work on infrastructure. For me, that meant starting a garden as I had always dreamed of, using seeds that were stolen from one of boot-hat man's portals. The others decorated homes, built rain catching systems, irrigation canals, windmills, defensive emplacements, and even a stone tower to look far up and down the valley. With so much accomplished in a few days, it became clear our limiting factor would be people and money.
When the scouts returned, they came with a ship full of silver.
Chapter 28
The Republic
It appeared money was no longer an issue.
For some political reason, the Ayolian empire had banned the use of magic to aid in mining operations, likely to handle inflation and to guarantee jobs to low-skilled workers. For us, that meant the mine was still packed with silver that our mages could dig out effortlessly. Only a few spells to carve out wide swathes of rock and a few more to pull out the silver.
Now the problem was how to spend it. This obviously meant a fabulous shopping trip by hopping through portals, but we needed more permanence in our logistics. Only a few of us had the skill to make the portals, and if we were to grow like I intended, we would need a port, and so a port was built.
It was a really just a solitary pier off the shore, large enough to dock trade ships and wartime vessels to, but small enough to be considered merely a trading post built by some distant mercantile nation. We created a flag for this fake nation and called it the Keva Republic. It sounded just foreign enough to work and easy enough to say that passing traders wouldn't screw it up somehow. Now all that was left was to get some ships.
That was solved by having Yun dress up as what we imagined a distant foreigner to look like - a fur hat, fur boots, a fake mustache, and an over-the-top accent. "Yesh!" he said before going through the portal with a sack of silver in his hand. "Ve vill buy ship, yesh." He bowed at our applause and left with his bodyguards. He returned a few hours later, drunk and triumphant. The ship was purchased, filled with exotic silks and wine and other necessities, and would arrive within a week. I wished that we could just operate solely off airships, but given their expense, most merchants used seaborne vessels to save money. An airdock would be something at a later time.
Yun also accomplished his other objective, and that was to inform the trading guilds of the Keva Republic's demand for supplies. Soon we would have merchants lining our port to unload whatever they could at us - wood, iron, coal, weapons, scrolls, food and drink - all for whatever silver we could throw back at them. With our planned rate of spending, we weren't sure how long the silver mine would last considered it was operating for the last 500 years, even without magic. By cultivating our mercantilism now, we would be prepared to lessen our reliance on mining in the future.
While we waited, some of us took the time to lounge around our humble little village, enjoying the communal campfire to fend off the chilly breeze. Willow and I entertained ourselves in our own way, mostly just her practicing magic against my walls while dangling new spells in front of me. The first time she offered to teach me pyrolize(), but by the time the day was over, I was already spent of mana. The day after, I snuck out in the early morning to give it some practice. I spent hours playing with the spell, burning little blades of grass before moving onto bigger things like tree trunks and rocks.
The rock didn't burn or melt or do anything cool really, but it did spark an ingenious idea. I knew pyrolysis was used for certain types of stones to create oil and gas, but I
couldn't remember the exact process. Likely because the human copy I was made from didn't pay attention in class, or that I was just uninterested in the technical specifics on how ancient people made energy before solar and nuclear became the gold standards. I regretted not knowing, but I figured that if I could get some engineering student, a player, I would be able to start a mining operation of my own and introduce a new type of oil and gas to this world.
But why stop there? Why not just go full speed and industrialize the world? Would that benefit the people, or just send us into the darkness? I knew it was our largest concern - Stella Vallis's largest concern - on dealing with the newfound people on Earth. The introduction of advanced technology to civilizations locked in the dark ages would likely bring catastrophe, and by that example, it has. Would the people of my world move forward with technology without sprinting to world-killing weapons? I supposed it wouldn't matter. Considering the meteor we just dropped on Nisa, we already had weapons of mass destruction. Yet this would lower the skill ceiling.
Regardless of how I felt about it, it seemed the world was headed that way. I heard how guns and airships weren't a thing last season, twenty years ago, and in that short of a timeframe, they're already perfecting them. It would make sense, after all, that a player gets a hold of a musket, complains about its accuracy, then demands a blacksmith to rifle the barrel.
"Alex."
I looked up and saw Willow standing there, staring at me as if she were about to burst into laughter. "Hey."
"You've been staring at that rock for about thirty minutes." She smiled. "Have you found a new hobby? Pet rocks?"
I tossed it aside. "I prefer dogs."
She laughed. "The ships arrived. We have food, so now we have no excuse to go hoppin' through portals for a quick food run." She crossed her arms at me.