[LitF] 61. A Meeting in the Future (Patreon)

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[A/N: Sorry about the one-week delay. This chapter was challenging to write for different reasons than usual. Too many descriptions of new places that are supposed to feel impressive. Then, I got caught in other things (wife got surgery, preparing to move out of this house, ADD-related stuff).

I'm terribly sorry, but I won't be making up for the lost chapter any time soon. I won't have the time. I'll add a reminder about it, but I expect to only be able to write it on July.

I can totally understand if you want a refund because of that. Just say the word either here on via DM and I'll do it at once, no questions asked.

Again, sorry.

Late chapters: 1]

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The massive mansion was silent and dark, except in an enormous bedroom. The luxurious furnishings one might expect from an aristocratic family were mixed with cyberpunk-themed paraphernalia, from posters on the walls to action figures from a tabletop game.

Not that the walls could be seen, as they were covered with thick metal to keep the sound from leaving the premises and attracting any servants.

"I don't know!" a terrified boy, floating in the air, screamed with difficulty through his missing teeth. "I swear I don't know!" he cried.

His green eyes were almost popping out, and his heart beat so fast it wouldn't surprise Arthur if it burst out of his chest. The prince had seldom encountered someone so afraid in his entire life.

Matthew Kelly was a nineteen-year-old human. In the modern world, he was an adult in most places. However, his demeanor and softness spoke of a spoiled boy despite also being a level 10 awakener. Mentally, he might as well have been a child.

Nevertheless, Arthur hadn't cared about punching him in the face with enough force to almost kill the guy and disfigure him.

He knew it wasn't honorable, but the lines between right and wrong had started blurring the longer Sophie had been missing, especially when it came to awakeners. Tomorrow would mark the second monthly meeting he should have with her and Tamara. The prince saw no signs that she would appear, as she had used no emergency channels to contact him.

It was in such a setting that High House Kelly committed the folly of publicly throwing their lot with the Terrell. They were the final human High House to take a stance on the war, the fifth to side with Arthur's enemies. The prince had no doubt the Kellys had postponed making a decision to inflate how much they asked to support Terrell. It had been a gamble that paid off, as most High Houses had remained neutral, and nine had denounced the League. The League and Terrell had been thirsty for any recognition in the end.

Arthur had decided to make an example out of the opportunistic cowards.

Well, to be honest, it was more of a strategic decision than out of derision, though he did look down upon them. High House Kelly barely fit the criteria to be called a High House. That made them the perfect target.

The Kelly family had declared themselves to be a House 550 years ago. Therefore, 50 years ago, they had reached the minimum to be considered for a promotion. However, it fitted none of the other requirements. It had no noteworthy accomplishments against monsters in a crisis, no experience ruling over a Dukedom-level territory for at least one hundred years, hadn't destroyed any level 50 dungeon or above, and hadn't groomed at least one level 50 awakener for every one hundred years of its existence.

Instead, it had donated a lot of money to the League and some institutions it sanctioned. The League had then negotiated with the other High Houses to drop the requirements because the times had changed. Although there were no records of the Kellys also bribing the High Houses that ended up supporting it, Arthur had no doubt it had happened.

The prince didn't fully blame House Kelly or the others for it. The dungeons were disappearing, and leveling up was growing too hard. It made sense to change how High Houses were established.

However, no human High House had been appointed after the Kellys. Tamara had found out they had bribed the others to prevent new nominees from stepping up the same way they had. They didn't want their commercial competitors to acquire the same status they had the same way—which they used for significant economic gain.

That irked Arthur. The corruption of not just the League but of tradition itself. Being a High House used to mean something. They had ethical responsibilities. Now, they had sold themselves.

Tamara had only found signs of nine of the nineteen High Houses on High House Kelly's payroll. They consistently voted with it to stop anyone who wanted to enter the fold. Still, the prince wondered whether the other High Houses—

Arthur sighed and shook his head. He was allowing his head to wander again. He always fell into that bad habit when something beyond his control bothered him.

He focused back on the matter at hand.

"You're lying," Arthur told the white-haired boy.

The whiteness of his hair wasn't a genetic trait but cosmetic alchemy. The expensive kind. Matthew Kelly had gone big on changing his appearance to please his sense of aesthetics, filling his nose and ears with piercings and his body with tattoos.

The prince felt those changes were a less powerful statement when it came to awakeners. No matter how long the earrings had been there, an awakener's body would regenerate if they were removed. Getting rid of tattoos was also much easier when you could just magic it away. Granted, some alchemic products could do something similar, so even the rich unawakened could revert their body to a "pure" state, but still...

Arthur sighed again. He was rambling to himself once more. And demeaning someone just to entertain himself.

"I– I'm not lying!" Matthew replied weakly. "Look at me! I don't fit here! They tell me nothing!"

The Truth Seeker trait, supported by all of Arthur's knowledge and senses, let him know the only true thing the boy had said was that he didn't fit in that place. Even then, that was a partial truth. The expensive computer in the room and the collection of action figures and sneakers in the adjacent rooms told the history of someone trying to change the environment to fit themselves instead of leaving. He didn't dislike his family or its way of doing things; he only disliked some superficial parts of his life.

The prince shook his head. "I told you I didn't want to torture you. You mistook it for unwillingness to do what's necessary."

Arthur's initial punch had been a warning, but some people misunderstood the message. The boy had misinterpreted the prince's subsequent healing as weakness. Matthew might be too soft, almost a teenager mentally, but even children could learn the wrong things and become twisted.

Tamara had warned the prince about that possibility, but he had hoped he wouldn't need to resort to crude methods.

High House Kelly's business method had much to do with taking hesitation for weakness. They thrived in exploiting their opponents' morals or attempts at finding common ground. Arthur had said he didn't want to torture the boy, and so Matthew was trying to use that to gain enough time for someone to come help.

Arthur grabbed Matthew's little finger—

Tamara, going through the mansion's main office's documents, gestured for Arthur that she had found something. The prince felt it in his domain, stopped himself, and looked into Matthew's eyes. There was so much terror there, yet so much defiance in his heart. He could do so much if only he didn't assimilate the wrong side of the cyberpunk culture he enjoyed so much.

A moment later, Tamara gestured that she had found what they were looking for and that no confirmation was needed.

Arthur killed the boy, left the corpse on his bed, pulled the metal coating the walls, and went to meet with the maid.

The House Head's office was big without exaggeration, with bookshelves covering the walls and a big mahogany table in the middle. The main chair behind it, on which Tamara was sitting, was comfortable and well-crafted. It looked like a wooden throne of sorts. The guest chairs were considerably smaller and less comfortable.

One of the bookshelves was a hidden door to a room filled with metal cabinets and files. They were well categorized, though Tamara had gone through some papers on every category to see if there wasn't something amiss. A random check like that wasn't enough to ensure there wasn't a document hidden in the wrong place somewhere, but it was better than nothing.

Arthur didn't know where she had found the password for the computer she was checking on the office's table, but she had.

Evidently, the computer and file room were defensively enchanted. However, although magitech had brought countless advancements to magic, everything that mattered was still unlocked with a key or a password. The attempts to automate a-pens technology to recognize people's souls hadn't worked. Some attempts had been made in fingerprint and facial recognition, but magitech, or pure magic, made it too easy to fool.

The things Tamara didn't have a key or password to open, like the door to the cabinet room, were solved the good old way: brute force. The enchantments on the door and walls had been crushed. Arthur's Sage's Eyes let see some runes meant to destroy the files in the room if the protective enchantments failed or were tampered with, but there were also ways around that. Enchantments, like spells, were a delicate whole. Affecting a small part could unravel everything. Even when enchantments had separated parts, you just had to destroy enough of it to make everything stop working.

The entire wall was filled with holes created by thousands of daggers Arthur had used to destroy the enchantments before going to meet with the only awakener in the house.

"They didn't get a tip and run away from us, master," Tamara said as Arthur entered the office, still looking at the black screen with white letters. The softwares on this box-looking computer were ages behind what Arthur had seen on the Institute's tablet. And yet, it was considered high-end outside awakener research centers. "They went to meet with the League. It summoned every High House supporting them. No reason is stated."

It didn't take a genius to guess it was related to Arthur, and he didn't like what he thought the answers to his following questions would be. For them to be missing today...

"When is the League's assembly?" he asked. "Where?"

The maid looked at him to reply, "Tomorrow. Brumilia. The Four Seasons Resort." Her eyes contained the same anxiety Arthur felt.

That was the place and date they had assigned for the next monthly meeting, in which they hoped to find Sophie. It was too much of a coincidence.

Their operation had been compromised, and Sophie was the most likely to have revealed anything.

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Jorge had once said that the League lied about how only awakeners could produce Intent-Conducting Miniature Crystals. Supposedly, that was a way to keep the world in check, as it depended on magitech.

The man hadn't been entirely wrong. However, his suspicions had been slightly shortsighted.

Tamara had learned by accident that the League actively hindered most attempts to detach magic and technology from each other. They didn't want people to realize magic might not be needed if you were willing to expend more in the short term to plan for the long term.

The League incurred a monetary net loss to ensure the substance was mass-produced and distributed cheaply enough to satisfy the world's production needs. At first glance, it might look like the goal to help civilization not collapse but thrive as awakeners disappeared had withstood the test of time at first glance. However, the dependence on the League conveniently ensured that the status quo it defended for strong awakeners became harder to shake. Although Arthur didn't doubt awakeners were required to make ICMC, some evidence Tamara had found suggested even low-level awakeners could do it, so the League—and everything that came with it—wasn't needed.

Furthermore, such convenience was rooted in the very principles behind magitech.

Emily had once explained that magic technology had started a little over one hundred and fifty years ago, though, naturally, it had been pretty crude back then. The Intent-Conducting Miniature Crystals of nowadays were the latest iteration of the original Multi-Purpose Intent Crystals, which themselves were based on an unnamed special alchemical ink.

The ink had been developed and proposed by an independent dwarven researcher in the human-owned Faculté des Sciences du Futur, a college-slash-research-institution created to find solutions to the world's waning mana levels. Kudmiline Flintbane had theorized that although enchantment was replacing awakeners in some low-level functions, it couldn't advance fast enough to make up for how quickly mana was disappearing. Enchanting was too complex, and its secrets were too greedily guarded by individuals, Houses, and organizations. Eventually, magic would be surpassed by the even cruder mechanical inventions popping everywhere. She worried that the unrefined machines caused too many injuries and deaths as they were developed.

At least, that was the goal taught to Emily. Whether Flintbane was that pure-hearted was anyone's guess.

Flintbane developed a special ink that allowed for precise drawing, dried quickly, and was so dense that it was converted into mana slowly, thus making enchantments last for a while. Her goal was for everyone to use it instead of any other substance. That would allow researchers and enchanters from anywhere to share their findings and quickly develop an enchanting standard.

How pure the dwarf's intentions had been was irrelevant because someone in the League got wind of her research, bought it and her expertise, and further developed it. The ink became a unique, long, thin crystal that melted under the slightest pressure, the MultiPICs. They were first released with metal casings that pushed the crystal down and looked like fancy pens.

The League lobbied heavily for every enchanter to use it and funded anyone willing to adapt their old enchantments to the new standard. It also richly rewarded any enchanter who shared blueprints that used MultiPICs with the League. There was even an extra reward if they allowed the League to make the blueprint public. The caveat was that the blueprint had to be different enough from everything else the League had.

The genius shrewdness was how there was an even bigger reward if the innovation was made on any mechanical or tool being developed at the time. The League agreed with Flintbane that either they did something for technology would surpass magic on daily matters. And if they couldn't defeat an opponent, they would mix so intrinsically with them as to make it much more challenging to determine what was what.

Magitech was born.

The incentives caused a technological boom. Yet, there was significant resistance to commercially selling items made with MultiPICs. Ancient, well-established enchanters used their power and influence to make their products look good and sabotage magitech.

Yet, a few years later, an awakener had an idea that seemed obvious in hindsight but changed enchanting and the world forever.

MultiPICs' main selling point for commercial usage was that an awakener could draw with two pens simultaneously, one on each hand. "Double the efficiency for your time!" the League advertised. One day, an enchanter linked a bunch of pens together in a kind of metallic claw that he held in the middle and tried to enchant five pieces of equipment simultaneously. It didn't work at first. He kept experimenting until he found the solution: linking the crystals in a chain until they touched his skin.

The League quickly learned of it and created a similar tool held by complex, hinged supports that allowed the tips of multiple drawing crystals to move fluidly over a big table. Its main downside was requiring constant crystal refilling, followed by needing the enchanter to spend some stat points on agility and perception to allow for precise drawing on many things at once. Still, suddenly, a single awakener could enchant more than ten objects at once.

That's when one of the oldest and richest enchanter organizations to have ever existed realized there was no stopping the tide of progress.  One of the Kingdom of Laon's Chamber of Enchanters' low-level employees was a brilliant—and uncredited—unawakened who elaborated the perfect marketing stunt to catapult the organization into becoming the most prominent magitech company of the following century. They rebranded themselves as YouTech, purchased many multi-enchanting devices and blueprints, claimed their products were the best, and built a city in two months using magitech to prove it.

The monetary investment was out of the charts, but it worked. People worldwide came to see the place, marvel at magitech, and spend money on YouTech's latest innovations.

They named the city Brumilia in honor of the company's president at the time.

Arthur and Tamara were currently flying, invisible, high above Brumalia, and understood how the people in the past had felt. They stared at the ambitious city below with unhidden awe. The timeline notwithstanding, the town looked shiny new and as if someone had cut it from the future to place it there.

Brumilia, also known as the City of the Future, was fully owned by YouTech, who only rented space there in predetermined leases. They constantly demolished and upgraded the buildings to keep them looking futuristic. You couldn't spot a single sign of age anywhere, not even in public places, despite Brumalia being well over one hundred years old. The cost of keeping things like that was unimaginable to Arthur. However, it had to be profitable if YouTech still maintained it despite losing its almost monopolistic position in the magitech market. It was currently "merely" the fourth largest magitech corporation in the world.

The city wasn't located in Avaria but had had a direct link to the Institute. So, while not every tech on display was the actual latest, it wasn't like the computer in House Kelly's office. Moreover, Brumilia contained humanity's arguably peak human technological research institution, the Faculté des Sciences du Futur, relocated there after a deal involving undisclosed terms.

Brumilia changed its color palette and style every seven years. Currently, it was green, white, and light blue, with spots of all colors here and there. YouTech had insisted for a few years that "The future belongs to nature and the people." Trees and bushes grew everywhere, hiding most people and cars on the streets, which were wide and still half-obscured. Many plants were flowering, and there was an effort to mingle the flower colors in an aesthetically pleasing manner.

The buildings were all circular white skyscrapers with light blue windows. Every building mimicked trees by having "branches," horizontal corridors that supported annex buildings a few stories tall, terraces, or communal areas. A lot of peak magitech was required to keep the heavy structures from falling. The corridors were horizontal, though, which took a little from the beauty of the things. There were more and larger annex buildings the higher you went on a building, almost like an inverted pine tree.

Supposedly, that disposition of space made the privileged positions at the top of the city cheaper, as they were more abundant. That was YouTech's stated purpose, making it so not just the filthy rich could physically live above everyone else. In practice, it only made the top spots even more expensive, as people moved in with their extended families or associates and weren't willing to give up on renting parts of their floor to breathe the same air that just anyone did.

If anything, that had been a brilliant tactic from YouTech to get more money. Of course, they rented the apartments to the highest bidder, not based on how deserving a handyman was. The broader workforce still lived below the rich—when they were lucky.

The truly poor lived outside the city proper. Brumilia had too few buildings because of how far the top branches reached and YouTech's unwillingness to build anything below the suspended annexes—which, of course, made housing costs even more expensive. The city had a vast territory, but it wasn't enough to shelter everyone who worked there. The nearby towns had whole neighborhoods right at Brumilia's borders where the ordinary people lived. Those looked normal enough.

Although Brumilia's roads were well-kept, the privileged populace's preferred transportation medium was flying vehicles. Not hovercars, which were still exclusive to the League. Instead, an enchanted hoverboard was placed underneath the cars or motorcycles of Brumilia's rich and powerful, who could then drive it with an attached joystick. It was YouTech's exclusive and expensive magitech.

The hover attachment flew slowly, though. The genuinely influential awakeners flew their cars around themselves or paid others to do it. That allowed for a faster speed and made them look better. Even then, most awakeners flew by themselves or only used individual hoverboards. However, the trend for the latter was that mostly the young or those using the company-provided equipment during their work hours "lowered" themselves so.

Theoretically, even the unawakened could control hoverboards. Still, it was kept exclusive to awakeners because it was "too dangerous" for an unawakened person if the enchantment failed and they fell from the skies. Or so the excuse went. Truthfully, it was just about keeping the unawakened out of the exclusive leisure flight club.

The flying vehicles and people moved through lanes invisible to the naked eye that special glasses they used allowed them to see. There were many more flying lanes than ground ones horizontally, and they also came in countless vertical layers. So, although the traffic was relatively heavy, the gaps between everyone prevented it from looking crowded. That was even truer when looking from above, as the very middle between buildings was kept free of traffic, meaning most flying people were hidden under the buildings' branches.

And then, flying even higher in the air than the tallest skyscraper was the Visions Museum.

It looked like an "alien flying saucer" from the popular culture that had preceded the current—but already dying—cyberpunk craze. It was massive, made of light blue and white metal. Although it was called a Museum, it was more like an amusement park with countless attractions based on different visions of the future. It also contained seven hotels, including the Four Seasons Resort.

That's where the League meeting was taking place, and Arthur had hoped to meet Sophie. Discretely so. Which was now impossible.

Brumilia showed no signs of extra protection against any invader, but the Visions Museum was surrounded by hovercars, scouts in circular flying machines, and awakeners flying individually on all sides. The Museum's outer walls had been adapted to send and receive light signals for long-distance communication without mana interference. There were also countless teams of awakeners on top of the flying saucer, including a few dozen war tanks of the kind Arthur had only seen when demolishing Terrell's casinos. The mana-less magic rifles were absent, though.

The prince regretted not grabbing a copy of the rifles back then. Terrell hadn't deployed them against him ever since.

One in every ten guards wore enchanted goggles different from those needed to see the invisible lanes. Arthur assumed they were meant to pierce stealth and locate intruders. He also expected them to be checking the level of anything in the air around the Museum. It would be impossible to approach undetected.

"The plan backfired," he told Tamara, who was using her aerial camouflage skill to keep them hidden. Even so, they were still very, very far from the Museum, just in case.

The prince had chosen the Visions Museum for their next meeting precisely because it would be almost impossible to approach it after they were inside. If he were inside a massive structure of metal like that, he would be impervious to any attacks he saw coming. He could protect anyone easily. Moreover, Arthur usually moved around underground, which the League had already figured by now but could do very little about. So, they wouldn't assume he would come to a place such as the flying saucer.

"It's normal to make mistakes when our judgment is clouded by emotions, master," Tamara replied softly, comforting both of them rather than admonishing him.

"So it seems," he agreed.

They had pointedly avoided discussing what to do when they arrived. The silence had been comforting. Looking at the stupid floating disc wasn't.

He would rather avoid attacking it. The League only had to make the thing "malfunction" due to Arthur's attack, and at least tens of thousands would die as it fell and toppled a few skyscrapers. He couldn't keep the shit afloat by himself. It was too big, and his magic reach too small. He wouldn't have enough mana regeneration to keep it in the air. Probably.

Yet, sneaking in was impossible. Every container going into the Museum was inspected. The League canceled the place's regular activities for the week, so there was little traffic. There was no blindspot for him to exploit.

Thus, the answer was as obvious as unpleasant for him to hear.

"I suggest I sneak in alone, master," Tamara predictably said. "I'll confirm if Lady Brimstone is inside and return as soon as possible."

Tamara had the skill to hide her level and was more experienced at such things than he was. That was still dangerous. If Sophie had been compromised, as she very likely had, considering their meeting place had leaked, they would know Tamara was coming. They would know about her abilities. They would be prepared.

Moreover, even if she survived, Arthur would have to deal with not only one but two hostages being used against him.

Speaking of which, the thing he hated the most about the Museum was how thick its walls were, especially the external ones. His Mana Sight couldn't pierce more than a few layers before everything became a mess. He couldn't conveniently look for Sophie from a distance.

Arthur sighed. He would rather not attack head-on, but he had no choice.

"No," he said directly. "Let me prehend you. We'll move fast, don't be scared. Once inside, I'll drop you wherever I think is safe and make a commotion so you can work." He looked at his maid's eyes. "Find her for me, Tamara."

She nodded her head somberly. "I will, master. If Lady Brimstone is in that place, I'll bring her with me. No matter what. I would swear to Fate if the mana disruption wouldn't reveal our position."

Arthur smiled, nodded back, and prehended her as soon as she stopped prehending herself. Then, he turned away from the Museum and flew at high speed for a whole minute.

Finally, he turned back and shot ahead.

Mana flowed furiously through his body as he made himself and Tamara move as fast as he could. He spent mana to take his acceleration to the brink. More mana ensured he and Tamara weren't hurt in the process. He achieved supersonic speed in a few moments, then hypersonic, and then he was right before the flying saucer.

He had brought tons of metal, and a sharp drill flew before him. That's where Arthur was investing most of his attention, and his metal mana reserves were used with abandon. The Museum's outer walls were heavily enchanted for defense, and unlike almost everything made of magitech in Brumilia, those were actual enchantments made by strong awakeners. Most likely, that was the last large project YouTech's peak enchanters took.

Alas, they weren't prepared to deal with an ascender with 62% of metal comprehension moving at hypersonic speed.

The quickly rotating drill's pointy end was as sharp and as hot without melting as Arthur could make it. The kinetic energy behind the strike was basically Arthur's best physical shot. As the metal found resistance, he kept willing it to keep going at the same speed as before. Fate took more of his mana to make that happen, and although he did slow down for an instant, that was the extent of the crisis.

The Museum's outer walls gave in. The enchantment in that section shattered, and the drill went through, followed by Arthur and Tamara.

On the other side, Arthur found a large, simple park with a high ceiling and walls covered by plants. It was empty, and he kept going.

The next wall wasn't as magically protected as the outer one he had just gone through, and he found himself in an amusement park with a rocket theme. Toys of all sizes and different attractions were everywhere, including actual flying rockets with predetermined paths that kept active despite the lack of public.

Arthur slowed down but didn't try to avoid any of the dozens of machines he tore through. He got to the opposite wall and went through it.

And then he reached his target.

Like every hotel in the Visions Museum, the Four Seasons Resort was also an attraction. The big main building was in the middle of that enormous section of the Museum. It resembled twelve buildings mashed together like a pie chart. Each "pizza slice" started in the middle of the resort and extended to the section's distant walls, each themed as the early, middle, or late parts of the four seasons. A river ran the furthest away from the main building, touching the section's walls.

The main building's Early Summer segment was an open gazebo with a few hundred summer houses spread throughout vast grasslands with fruit trees. A few dozen cozy summer houses were available for guests through the grassland. In the Early Summer section, the river was wide and ran gently, and the make-believe enchanted sky was blue with a few clouds.

Then came Middle Summer, where the grassland was replaced by an actual desert and the river was almost dry. The central building was made of white stone blocks and closed almost like a fort. There were no clouds in the sky. The temperature was terribly hot there.

Late Summer was built like an old, humble tourist city, with stone-paved ground and a few modest buildings. The river was large, like a big lake with moving water. Aquatic activities, from swimming to jet skis, were available there.

The other seasons also had themes for their parts of the four seasons. Middle Winter impressed Arthur the most. The building looked like a palace carved out of pure ice, and the sky was the darkest night. Although there were no fake stars like the impressive sky in Early Winter, it maintained an even more awe-inspiring aurora borealis over the half-frozen lake-like river.

Arthur ignored all the beauty after glancing at it and frowned as he stopped flying above the main building. He could see a few thousand awakeners were indeed staying there, including some at level fifty or above. The League was meeting there. However, there were no extra protections in that place like outside the Museum.

The League couldn't be so arrogant as to believe the outer walls were enough to stop him, could it?

Before he could follow that line of thought, his eyes went through a female form of pure and blood mana. A shape he knew very well—intimately, even. It was deeply etched on his memory despite it being two months since he last saw it. And even if he had had any doubts about its identity, Fate would've confirmed it for him.

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| Human — Level 55

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The prince focused on his domain and allowed himself to feel Sophie after so long. He got goosebumps on his arms, legs, and nape. His face flushed.

Sophie.

Sophie was there.

He could detect nothing wrong with her in using his domain. She was safe, too.

But why was she sitting on a room with three humans and three dwarves, all high-level?

Why had Sophie not sent any messages and was sitting calmly with what remained of the League's Joint Command, the leaders of one of Arthur's enemies?

And why was a man's head on an enchanted box beside her?

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