Chương 26: Journey

Malachi woke feeling sore all over, and his stomach was still rumbling. When he looked at his feet, though, he had toes. All ten of them.

"Oh thank fuck," he said. He put his boots back on. He'd slept in his armor, which probably wasn't good for his back, but now when he looked, his 'Manasteel' class bonus was active. Well, on his cuirass and cuisses, at least. Malachi went to the trap door and peeked up. Hearing no griffins and seeing no flying mages, he went out and took a leak into the swamp and did a few stretches. Then he fetched his frostbitten toes and bloody rags.

He placed some stones next to the toes, then tied them all up with the rags and tossed it in a nearby pond. The bundle vanished beneath the algae-covered waters. No sense risking a hound catching the scent. He stood there for a moment, trying to think if he'd ever done anything grosser in his life. Probably not, he decided. The air was buzzing with large looking insects, one of which bit him in the arm, so he headed back down. Arisone was preparing 'breakfast.'

Despite Malachi's grumbling stomach, he was tempted to skip. That root really had tasted like ass. Malachi began to sort through their things. Arisone had taken the fire mage's repair cube. Simply holding it, there was now an option to activate it. He did, running it over his armor. The durability slowly ticked up. Useful as hell, he thought.

"How expensive are these?" he asked.

"Very. I would actually ask you not use it, as it can be used to repair significantly more powerful enchanted items, and only has limited uses."

"Oh," Malachi said, and stopped.

"How easy is it to repair this stuff anyways?"

"Impossible for you or I. We would require artisans. A smith and an enchanter working together, in the case of steel armor."

"Yeah, that makes sense." He looked through the aetherite Arisone had gathered from the chest. There were ten pieces, all of them 'cracked' quality, which he assumed was the lowest. Yup. He took five for himself, putting them next to the 'intact' aetherite crystal in his pouch and the cracked aetherite he'd gotten off Lord Tebor. He put the repair cube and the other aetherite back in Arisone's bag, where it glittered subtly next to the vials of essence she'd gathered.

She had the vials the Hadauns had gathered, too. It was probably worth something, but he had no clue how much. None of the essences were the kind his conduits could use. He'd bother Arisone about it later, when they weren't alone in a swamp surrounded by monsters and slaver people with serious anti-snake prejudice. How's the aetherite work? he asked SERA. Ugh, ask the gorgon. Her System Unit is being snippy again about the 'rules' again. I've explained that rules are a social construct, but it is not cooperating.

"How do these aetherite crystals work?" Arisone listed off the information like a child reciting a memorized lesson.

"They're used in enchanting. You need higher quality crystals to make higher quality enchantments. A cracked aetherite crystal can make a level one enchantment. Three can make a level two enchantment. No amount of cracked crystals will ever make a level three enchantment; you need a 'flawed' grade aetherite cystal for that. Lower quality crystals cannot be combined. Shrines, Mareakal be blessed, are the only method to take low-grade enchantments and transmute it into something of higher grade."

Her recitation ended, but she added in a more conversational tone, "Higher level enchantments also take a skilled artisan to apply. If you had a perfect aetherite crystal—the highest quality—it would be useless to you in this realm because no one here could forge it into anything. Not that you will find such a thing." They ate a breakfast Malachi tried not to think about. Then Arisone turned off the magical lantern and they exited the hideaway. They traveled in silence, knowing they were still being hunted.

Arisone kept a close watch on the sky until a dense fog settled in, and then she looked more relaxed. The fog slowed them down, but it also gave them cover. The trees of the swamp all dripped with vines, and their trunks were covered in a dozen different types of moss and mushroom. Most were dull, but there was an occasional splash of color, dulled by the dim light of the day.

"The farther we get from the dungeon, the less likely they'll find us," the gorgon said.

"It will be a year at least until that dungeon regenerates its trials. No amount of prayers to Sheothalia can hasten it; as She teaches, all cycles take the time they take." Malachi was completely disoriented at this point. Everything in the Dark Mire looked the same in every direction.

"Are we going back to that village?"

"No. We are going to Matrasa. One of the larger cities. We can begin discussing a potential alliance between my people and yours there."

"Good," Malachi said.

"And you have a portal summoner there, too, right?" If they could connect friendly portals to Earth, that could change the whole war. And help them start searching for all the people who'd been taken.

"We do. There are also artisans who can make you proper equipment, and I would like these essences to go there. They are but weak essences, but our people have a great need of them."

"Weak essences?"

"I forget. It is still so strange Earth has no magic. Weak essences are the kinds taken off magical creatures or those who had low level mana conduits. They can, in sum, upgrade a skill to four, and are useful in initially expanding your mana conduits so they have access to more nodes. However, to upgrade your abilities past that, you need dungeon essences, a more powerful version. That can get skills to level nine.

Most scholars think there are six types of essence, with mythic essences being the most powerful, allowing level twenty spell or ability. That is the highest level ability we have knowledge of. It is likely no one in this realm will ever even see a mythic essence in our lifetime, never mind conquer the type of dungeon that produces one." Malachi nodded along to all of her explanation. Now he recalled SERA mentioning some of that, though he hadn't been in a good state of mind to learn at the time.

He needed to learn as much as he could about this magic. The better he learned it, the more information he could take back to help the Portal teams. The better chance he had of seeing his sister again.

"So… aetherite for enchantments. Essences to level abilities. Each requires special versions at certain breakpoints. Is that true for expanding the nodes available to you as well?"

"Yes. At a certain point, weak essences will no longer suffice to access new nodes."

"Uh, there's other stuff too, right?" SERA had mentioned something, but he couldn't remember what.

"Omen crystals. If the nodes are like stars painted in the sky, an omen crystal can unite those stars in a constellation. This allows multiple abilities to become one. Quite useful if you have filled your allotment of abilities." So there's a limit. Huh. I wonder why.

"How many abilities does a conduit support?"

"Two for a Common Core, three for Uncommon, four for Rare, and five for Legendary," Arisone said, again using a sing-song voice that told Malachi that answer was rehearsed by children. He noticed that 'Celestial' wasn't even mentioned. And hadn't SERA mentioned another one below that too?

"Do Class skills count for those?"

"No."

"Do Magical Core qualities affect the power of abilities?"

"No. But they do allow more opportunities for powerful spells formed from mergers. However, omen crystals of all kinds are quite rare. You are starting to see a pattern."

"All the good shit is rare." The two of them passed through a curtain of vines into an area where the canopy was so thick the light barely filtered through.

"Crassly put, but yes."

"And how do I level my Class?"

"By defeating the trials of Wardens and their minions, as well as obtaining System Artifacts. A Class Artifact will no longer suffice for you now that you have a class. You will need to enter Apprentice Dungeons to find System Artifacts. All advancement is ultimately gated by the trials of a dungeon." Malachi nodded.

"But like essences, they can be brought out. Those Hadaun didn't earn their shit, they bought it before their first dungeon, yeah?"

"With the right tools, yes," she said, pulling out one of the essence vials to demonstrate. It glimmered in the dim light.

"Unala's instruments are also found in dungeons."

"So the other option is to buy it. Or kill people and take it."

"And now you know why the Maatugivi wants the Dark Mire and Mareakal's bounty."

"Yeah." Instead of oil, land, and rare minerals, people here fought over dungeons and all the stuff that came out of them. Well, they probably fight over land too. The canopy thinned out. They passed by a fetid area where huge flowers the length of his arm were in bloom. There seemed to be a mist coming from the center of them.

"So what about Cores? If you have a Common Magical Core, can you upgrade it? Is there a limit to the number of Magical Cores you can have?"

"Yes, and yes," the gorgon replied.

"Once a Magical Core is integrated into you, it is the source of your mana conduits. By grasping a higher level core, you can improve the one you have, expanding its capacity for abilities and allowing additional conduit types. Such improvements also require magical potential, which I believe we've discussed. Magical potential is earned through the destruction of magical creatures. As a general rule, you can only have one Core. However, it is said to be possible to earn a second one through great deeds.

Your System Unit will tell you if you become eligible." You're not eligible. Oh, thanks, SERA. No problem.

"Anything known beyond 'great deeds'?"

"If the legends are to be believed, it requires an act of great heroism. A lone warrior defeating a dragon. Surviving a Grandmaster's Dungeon on one's own. Forging and enchanting a Supreme weapon. Though it's unclear if the act itself is sufficient, or some sort of item or celestial being is involved. Such deeds are often legends passed down from other realms and thus difficult to verify." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Cool. I was also wondering about—" Arisone stopped and held up her hand. Malachi peered through the fog, but couldn't see anything.

"Follow," she whispered. They took shelter under a tree. Arisone pressed herself close to Malachi. The touch of her cool scales gave him the heebie-jeebies. He'd never liked snakes. Their scales just felt weird, and their fangs were scary as hell.

"You have your aegis spell. Place it over our heads," she said. Malachi wasn't sure what she was going on about, but then he heard the distant "RAWWWK!" of the griffin echoing above them. He summoned the shield above them. The air around them began to get cold.

"What was the name of that lordling's family?" Arisone whispered. One of her hair snakes was flicking its tongue at Malachi.

"Tell your hair to stop that. Uh, Lord Tebor. His dad was… Lord Marakof." Arisone gently reached up and booped the nose of the offending hair-snake that was bothering Malachi.

"I am beginning to suspect this Lord Marakof has… connections. Did you get the name of the ice mage?"

"Nope."

"He is… very powerful." That was when the first ice shard came streaking down. It cracked through the branches and splatted into the muddy ground, embedding itself. It wasn't hail. Malachi had seen hail. He'd even seen big hail once when they were visiting his grandma in Arizona. This was a straight-up ice dagger.

"Oh fuck," he whispered. Then the shards started coming down. They zipped through the air, smashing branches and splattering mud. One of them impacted his aegis, then another. The third one that hit it shattered it. One of the shards smashed into Arisone before he could recast the shield, but her breastplate took the worst of the blow. Still, she had a new gash in her scales. They pressed up closer together. The aegis shattered again. Mana: Low. Getting your spell shattered is cutting into your mana heavily.

There wasn't really another option, though. He recast it. Two more ice shards smashed into it, shattering it again. The fog around them glowed faintly as the ice shards on the ground fragmented into blue sparks and faded into nothing. One of the branches above them snapped and crashed down. Malachi's aegis shattered again. This time, he couldn't recast it.

"Out of mana," he said. He kept his arm above his head and another protecting his neck. An ice crystal came zipping down, cracking off his breastplate. Another embedded itself in his forearm. Malachi clenched his teeth, eyes watering from the pain. Then, miraculously, the ice storm faded. Two more shards dropped near them, but the storm was over. Malachi looked at the ice shard still sticking out of his forearm. Then it faded away, sparking, and his arm started gushing blood.

Two of Arisone's hair snakes started licking at it.

"Hey!" Malachi said in a harsh whisper.

"Arisone, get your hair under control."

"Apologies," the gorgon said, and made a tisk noise.

"Let me bandage that wound," she said, pulling out a roll of…

"Is that silk from the Warden?"

"Yes," she said.

"Gross. Hope that stuff is sterile. Alright." He held out his arm as Arisone tightly wrapped the wound. Fortunately, his health was still fine, having mostly recovered over the night and most of the day.

"Will that ice mage come back?"

"Hopefully not. It's a desperate tactic to flush us out, and he is lucky to have even hit us. It also indicates I may have successfully killed the tracker. After that display, that ice mage also should be out of mana for some time."

"Can't he drink a mana potion?" Arisone kept a straight face, but her hair didn't. Several of the snakes looked at him with what could only be described as 'concern.'

"How would one bottle mana?"

"Uh. I guess that's not a thing. Do we think they're gone? Can we get going?"

"Yes, sentinel," Arisone said. They started moving again, cautiously. Both of them kept glancing up at the sky. When a shadow passed over them, Malachi jerked his head up, but it was just a pair of heron-like birds flying through the fog.

"So, uh, how much farther to Matrasa?" Malachi asked, still keeping his voice low. The fog was patchy now. He spotted an osteovine coiled in a tree, but Arisone was already leading them around it.

"Not much further. A three day walk. You should know it is second city of the Theveta Polis, but their primary city is significantly farther away." That doesn't make sense. A 'polis' is a city, SERA. Yeah, you're one to talk, you nearly failed 6th grade history. Look, I've been sorting through the terms you do have, and none of them quite work. It's like a clan, but it's centered around a nest-family, not a biological family, and it can span multiple cities, but there's always a primary city.

City-state is closer, but it's hard to call it a 'state.'

'Country' doesn't work because that implies stable borders and territory claims, and that's just not what's happening here. Maybe an actual historian could help me out with terms, but right now my sample size of English is one. Malachi pondered that. He hadn't really considered that gorgon family and political structure would be so different that the terms would be untranslatable. Alright, fair enough. But Mr. Jones was a shithead who just didn't like me. Oh yeah?

So all the teachers that gave you Ds were just assholes? No, I deserved it from Ms. Beckham. In my defense, geometry is stupid, and I've never once needed it since then.

"What's in Matrasa? Besides the people we need to talk to for an alliance and the portal summoners," Malachi asked aloud, since he didn't exactly want to re-hash school.

"Artisans. Specifically, smiths, woodworkers, tailors and enchanters. As I said, we can get you a proper weapon there. They also do enough trade through the main portal that you'll likely find food more to your liking." Malachi brightened. That sounded good.

"How hard is it going to be to connect to Earth, then?"

"Simple enough. The portal mage will merely need its cosmological coordinates. How familiar are you with cosmic geometry?" Malachi's mood instantly soured. SERA, shut the fuck up, he thought, because he could just feel the bastard Unit smirking.

"I can find the hypotenuse of a right triangle like nobody's business," he said. Then, seeing that Arisone hadn't gotten the joke at all, clarified.

"We don't have cosmic geometry on Earth. There's astrophysics, but I don't think that's going to help here." Also, I don't know astrophysics.

"It may be challenging, then. The coordinates must be widely known, given how many incursions you described, but that knowledge has not made its way here. How did you get to the Dark Mire?" Shit, Malachi thought. Well, I guess as long as I avoid mentioning the Celestial Core, I should be good, right? Besides, we've both saved each other's asses now. That's got to count for something.

"The scientists on my world tried to close a portal using a device they'd connected to a Magical Core. Something happened. The portal destination changed, and constructs started pouring out. When Command decided to bomb our position, I led as many people as I could through the portal so we'd stand a chance."

"Constructs? Like the kind found in Dungeons?"

"Not quite. We ended up in a weird place. It had these giant pillars atop mountains, supporting a ceiling that was several miles high." Arisone furrowed her brow.

"There are others of you, then?"

"No," Malachi said, and felt his gut twist. It hit him hard enough he stopped walking for a moment. He tried to swallow the unexpected grief. It had only been a few days.

"Ah. I'm sorry for the loss of your clan," she said.

"Yeah. Me too." He swallowed again, then continued, lying only a little bit.

"I found a Magical Core there, then made it through a different portal, which vanished as soon as I stepped through. Then I stumbled on your village a few hours later." The gorgon's hair-snakes were looking at each other in apparent puzzlement.

"Who opened the portal? And how did it open so close to a warded village?"

"I dunno," Malachi lied. If Guardians were the source of Celestial Cores, he needed to keep the fact that he'd encountered one a secret. Arisone seemed to accept that.

"It is a strange realm you describe. I have never heard of such a place, and I am well studied." Time to change the subject, Malachi decided.

"So. Uh, what's the political situation like with the Theveta Polis? Earth has some pretty deep geopolitical schisms, though there's been… uh… a bit of progress on that." I like you better now. That gorgon's System Unit is really squirming now. What? It has to translate 'geopolitical' into Miterlossa. That'll show the fucker.

"They are in good standing. Hmm. I suppose you don't know Theveta is not my polis. We are allies, of a sort. There is disagreement on how to handle the sanctity of our realm. And, old grudges among the poleis. Thessalinth will command them again to victory, as it has. If we must crush the Klimakessa Polis again, we shall."

"What exactly prevents you from unifying against the Maatugivi Empire?" Arisone looked confused.

"Unify?"

"Like, all the polises work together?" Poleis. It's a Greek word, so it uses their plurals. I'm literally drawing this from your own memory.

"You mean, work toward common purpose?"

"Yeah. A military alliance. Elect a head general or something to run all your armies and drive the Maatugivi guys out. And keep driving them out until they get the idea." Haha! Translate that, idiot! SERA gloated. Wait, what did I say that doesn't translate?

'General.' Hahaha! Really? What the hell, they don't have generals? Meanwhile, Arisone was already replying, and Malachi had missed the first part.

"…not any sort of precedent for a collective hunter-groups band leader, or 'elections.' There is a natural order to the world, and even the Klimakessa follow it." This is going to take some explaining, Malachi realized. I hope you have a new appreciation for how hard my job is. Oh, shut it.

"It might help if we tell each other a bit more about how our societies actually function." Malachi started off with a brief explainer on how Earth's countries worked and the major powers, doing his best to answer Arisone's questions. He could tell he hadn't done the best job. He'd never really been a 'politics' guy. He'd watched Schoolhouse Rock as a kid though, so he could at least explain some of the basics. Then it was Arisone's turn.

SERA was obviously struggling to find concise ways to translate some of the concepts, because sometimes he'd hear words even as Arisone's mouth had stopped moving. He got the basic idea, though. Gorgons had big nests where the males lived and eggs were hatched. Young females then were raised in creches. Gorgon loyalty was to the nest.

That used to mean a single physical location, which was also some sort of religious temple, but as cities had grown, the nest-creche became more abstract, and was more tied to a primary city. But not entirely. During times of peace, poleis would cement ties of family by establishing nests in another city. Can we just call the family units clans and the political structure a polis? SERA grumbled about linguistic origin, but allowed it. So each polis has a clan, established by nest-origin, not who had sex with who.

The polis encompasses a capital, secondary towns, and niches inside other clan's 'territory.' Is that the gist? It sounds… annoyingly complicated. All intelligent species are complicated. Now keep listening. Nests and creches were sacred, and supposed to be inviolable, even during what was otherwise total war. Any gorgon who didn't respect that was either executed or tortured and executed, depending on the severity of the violation.

"… to some degree, we are all opposed to the Maatugivi Empire, because they do not respect such sacred rules. But the Klimakessa refuse to stop their portal trade with them, and seek to gain new technologies and weapons from their would-be-conquerors. It is m—it is the Thessalinth Polis's position that there should be a realm-wide trade embargo with all Hadaun and their allies. We know receiving a nest-gift changes the demeanor of the males.

As much as the hunter-elders would like to believe they are above such manipulations, we are still the same creature. Even a gift freely given comes with a price." Wait, how high ranking is this gorgon? Malachi wondered, catching her slip of the tongue. They both had secrets to keep, it seemed. He didn't press her on it. For three more days, they traveled in a direction he'd started thinking of as 'north.' Malachi's stomach was a twisting mess. Almost none of the food agreed with him.

Occasionally, they'd have to fight some sort of less intelligent creature—a lesser osteovine, or something SERA called a 'mud crocodile,' which had some sort of earth-manipulation powers. Malachi got absolutely caked in gross swamp debris, and then when he tried to wash it off, two venom lampreys attacked him. Fortunately, his armor stopped him from getting bitten. The next day, Arisone said, "We're getting close to the city. There should be no creatures to worry about this close to Matrasa."

Naturally, that was when a giant root haunt rumbled to unlife right next to them.