Lily
Five hundred seats had been filled, each one costing an obscene amount of money and yet all this first lecture would receive was mastery of simple glintstone sorceries. The following lecture on gravity sorcery would receive a similar level of instruction and yet I fully expected these people to be repeat customers for next month’s second lecture.
I was intending to train people to take over the lectures beyond the first one so that I wouldn’t have to take the time to host more than the two beginner lectures each month for maximum profit but that was simply not viable when an integral part of this lecture was Great Teaching Whiz letting these people cast magic they really shouldn’t have been able to.
I could, theoretically, lend that power to others but I didn’t want to. It was mine and it would not be handed to others for mere convenience. Especially not when I enjoyed teaching. Besides, I was using the opportunity to practice my control over the Force as well as my reiryoku, the latter having had mana attached to it so I could see it and the former mostly being used to write on the blackboard.
If anyone cared that I was barely even hiding that I was technically manipulating my mana, they didn’t show it. Great Teaching Whiz also meant that I knew how to make my lectures interesting so I wouldn’t even have been surprised if they’d all just been too enraptured by it to care.
At the end of the day, they were all here to learn and I taught them better than anyone had ever taught them before, of that I was certain. If I used this time in as productive a manner as possible, who could blame me as long as I still made sure that they learnt what I’d promised to teach them?
Thomas Andre
“So, what do you want that you were willing to give me some seats to that lecture for free?” I asked Lilian Biron once the lecture was over and she’d taken me to her office.
“Say there were hypothetical threats to this entire world – ones that could kill you quite easily – would you be willing to cooperate with me in working to get rid of said threats?” She questioned rather than answering me.
Then again, that question in and of itself was an answer. “I don’t suppose you mean the Endbringers. ‘Cause I can’t deal with those.” I’d tried once upon a time. Most powerful hunters had and all we had to show for it were a bunch of monuments. With that simple truth in mind, how could I have continued to bother?
“No.” Lilian waved me off immediately. “The Endbringers are problematic but simple enough. If I had to, I could just leave this world behind and their regular destruction of various cities wouldn’t bother me anymore.”
“Then whatever you want my help to deal with is something that could target several worlds?” I raised an eyebrow at that idea but, then again, if even we had some magic that could reach other worlds, beings from other worlds probably had some of their own.
The teenager in front of me nodded. “For all intents and purposes, escape is impossible and staying here without succeeding will mean death.”
“If whatever it is you’re talking about is so dangerous, I’d probably be willing to help.” I’d risked my life for money before. If the alternative was a guaranteed death, I’d happily take at least having given survival a shot. “But I need more details if you want me to make any promises.”
“There’s a high chance that the threat I mentioned would be able to hear me mention its name and I don’t want to risk it having similar measures in place for its plans. So, if you want me to tell you everything, we’ll have to travel to another world.” She explained, looking surprisingly calm considering what she’d said.
“And what’s stopping that threat from listening in on us in that other world?” I felt the need to ask. “If it can target other worlds, it can probably listen in on them, too.”
At my words, Lilian grimaced. “I’m aware but this still has a higher chance of success than discussing things here.”
“Alright then. Can’t say I’m not interested in seeing another world, anyways.” I decided I might as well gamble on Lilian not just wanting to strand me on another world.
And, considering that she only had to grab my wrist to take me with her into a void full of things I couldn’t remember but which left me sick to my stomach after we’d exited it, there’s a good chance she hadn’t needed my permission. “Your method of travelling is really disorienting.” I told her after puking my guts out.
“I get that a lot. Missy and I are fine with it but everyone else ends up hating it.” She waved me off as I took the opportunity to look around, noticing that there was a forest around us.
“Whatever.” I waved her off, putting it down as weird magic nonsense in my head. “Now, start talking.”
Lilian shook her head towards me. “I need to set up a ward first so that we won’t be disturbed.” She told me before beginning to chant in a weird, disjointed language. A few moments after she finished the chant, I felt her mana flare and then settle around the area in which we’d arrived.
“What’s that do?” I felt the need to ask, putting it down as something interesting I might want.
“A ward to keep the local variety of monsters from bothering us. The things are attracted to negative emotions and enjoy mauling people. They’re not a threat to us but it’s still better to not have to deal with them in the first place. I still have a meeting with the local PRT director after this, after all.” She explained, smiling.
“Alright, so what’s it you want me to help with?” Shrugging, I accepted the answer without caring much more about it. If that ward was only useful in this world, it wouldn’t be valuable for my guild.
Lilian was quick to answer, “Two things. One are the Monarchs, beings that are planning to invade Earth and who lost some of their forces to the Rulers, who put them into Gates so as to shove mana into Earth in a futile attempt at making humanity survive long enough for the Rulers to be able to arrive in time to fight the Monarchs without humanity getting wiped out in its entirety.”
“So you’re saying the Gates are, what, some kind of weird training system?” The idea should’ve sounded ridiculous but it didn’t feel wrong to me. “Then why the dungeon breaks?”
“Presumably to force humanity to learn how to use the mana the Rulers granted them. It wouldn’t increase the survival chances by much to just hand people mana, after all.” Looking at it that way, it suddenly no longer seemed impossible.
“And these Monarchs are how strong exactly?” I felt the need to ask.
“The Monarch of Destruction made Kamish. He also made a whole lot of other dragons and is stronger than them by a massive margin. In general, expect every Monarch to be more powerful than Kamish.” I’d expected a lot of answers but that wasn’t one of them.
Kamish’s strength, I knew better than anybody else who hadn’t been there. And, even then, my fellow National-Ranks hadn’t traded blows with the damn thing. Kamish had been powerful. And there’s apparently an army full of this kind of monster.
Of course, I had no proof of her claims but, depending on what she asked of me, I’d simply demand proof before I’d be willing to help her.
“You have a plan?” The idea of cooperating with Lilian for free against this kind of foe wasn’t even remotely problematic. If humanity’s survival relied on it, I’d do it. I was part of humanity, after all.
The teenager before me nodded. “The Monarchs will still take several months to arrive as far as I know so we have some time to grow stronger before then. As such, I’m willing to offer you and up to ten of your guild members to join the lectures usually reserved for my guild members in exchange for vows that neither you nor them will share what I teach in them.”
The deal itself just about convinced me that, if nothing else, Lilian believed that the threat of these guys was real. Otherwise, she would’ve attached some kind of price tag to it. There was, however, one question left, “Why only ten?”
“Because lectures get less efficient the more students you have and I’d rather teach these people to be useful than teach a bunch of people how to be better fodder.” The words were as casual as they were callous but they were probably not wrong.
If the fight ahead of us was as dangerous as she claimed it would be, I would prefer to have an elite group that could actually make a difference, too.
“Alright then. You have yourself a deal.” Negotiating here wasn’t my style. I wanted wealth but none of my money would matter if everyone would die, myself included. “Now, what’s that second threat?”
“Scion.” At the answer I received, I couldn’t help but stare dumbly for a moment, not really registering it until I blinked and noticed that Lilian was looking far too serious for that to have been anything but the truth. Or, at least, what she believed to be the truth.
“The guy who rescues cats from trees and constantly goes from one place to the next, helping people?” It was kind of incomprehensible to think that the dude who most thought had some screws loose because of his weird priorities was apparently some kind of super threat.
“He and his dead girlfriend set up a ritual to sacrifice all life on countless worlds to somehow turn them into infinite mana.” I heard what Lilian said but it still sounded strange to me.
Except, I couldn’t find any signs of her lying to me. “Let’s say that I believe you, how do you know?”
“I can see the future of worlds I interact with. I can also, as of recently, see mana and I can see parts of the ritual setup in the world we’re from.” Lilian explained, still sounding like she meant it. “Even before that point, I could sense several weird things.”
“Like what?”
“Some hunters have mana and magic that’s innate to them, others have mana that’s from the Rulers. Considering the fact that we didn’t have mana until a couple decades ago, the latter are actually the more reasonable ones. Then there’s the fact that some Gates have creatures from entirely different worlds that are unrelated to the Monarchs and said Gates turn into inactive pathways to the worlds their inhabitants are from upon being cleared. Pathways that linger enough that I can still see them but no one else would be able to pick up on them. And, of course, said pathways are also connected to the ritual, acting as channels for it that’ll extend it into other worlds.” She explained, sounding problematically serious for what I’d genuinely hoped to have been a joke.
Except, jokes weren’t usually that detailed and they definitely didn’t make sense. There were two kinds of hunters – the ‘simple’ ones that usually got mostly generic abilities and then the more complex ones that got abilities that were usually centred around one ‘theme’. The former were the reason for ‘class’ assignments and the latter were the reason for the PRT classifications.
There was overlap, of course, but it was easy to see a pattern when it was such a weird one.
“Let’s say I believe you,” And, at this point, I was inclined to reluctantly believe it, “What do you think we can do about it? Scion’s in a league of his own so I don’t think we can stop him.” It bothered me but everyone knew it to be the truth. If I was a National-Rank, Scion might as well have been a World-Rank.
“For one, I can make a binding vow to tell nothing but the truth while giving you the info on Scion if that’d make you feel more confident in my claims.” Lilian offered before continuing, “As for doing something about it, I’m still working on that. It’s part of why I’m even approaching you. I need help if I want to figure out a solution to this problem and, at the very least, us having an alliance should make things easier for me in our world. Besides, I already could use your help with the Monarchs so I might as well at least let you know about the more dangerous threat in advance.”
“I’ll take that vow.” I decided, “And you’ll have that alliance if you can still honestly tell me all of that afterwards.” Gambling everything on her being wrong was too much even for me, I decided.
At the very least, it couldn’t really hurt me for the two of us to cooperate in our world.
Piggot
“What am I looking at, Biron?” I asked, already more than a little bothered by how quickly the teenager had managed to gather a substantial amount of hunters. A week she’d asked for but distance was no problem for her and neither was money so the gathering of her new recruits was trivial.
And now she’d somehow managed to become important enough that I’d been forced to agree to meeting her in her office just for her to show me some red crystal in a transparent container.
“A substance called dust. Fire dust to be specific. It’s from a world in which almost all mana ended up being turned into dust as far as I can tell. And, the moment aura or mana come into contact with this stuff or specific technology is used to harness it, it generates various magical effects. Consider it as spells in mana crystal form if you want to.” The girl explained, once again reminding me that she had access to entire worlds of resources.
“I assume you want to sell it if you’re explaining it to me.” I wasn’t dumb. The Birons, or Lilian at least, hoarded all the best things they got from their interdimensional wanderings for themselves. She’d all but admitted it when I’d asked her about tech from other worlds.
She nodded in response. “I’d explain the entire grading system the world this stuff is from uses to decide the prices of dust but it’s irrelevant. I’ll sell nothing but the highest-quality dust, anyways.”
“Get to the point, Biron.” I ordered, annoyed at her wasting her time with words I didn’t believe and couldn’t verify. “You want the PRT to run the tests required to make it legal for you to sell this stuff.” It was the only reason I could think of for her choosing to approach me about this. The Travelers Guild was growing rapidly but it didn’t have a research and development team yet that could run such tests.
“I want you to test it and let me use the results for advertisement. After all, no need for me to do any demonstrations when you can just give me all I need to make it clear to people that this stuff is useful.” Lilian explained shamelessly.
“I want a permanent discount on everything if we do this.” I demanded immediately, wanting to squeeze as much out of her as I could.
She shook her head without hesitation. “I’m willing to offer a 5% discount on any dust purchases made by the PRT.”
“20%.” I negotiated, already knowing we’d waste a lot of time on this.
And we did. But, in the end, a 12% discount on this ‘dust’ was likely worth it if the girl sitting across from me felt like it was worth selling. She had, so far, carefully picked exactly what to sell and focused on making all hunters that had the money required her customer base. Spells in crystal form were likely to be useful measures to cut down casualty rates.
Seeing the sheer variety of dust types on the list Lilian Biron had given me so I’d be aware of what to expect from each type just made it even clearer that the stuff was likely to end up quite valuable.
Missy
I didn’t have to wait for Lily to check up on the situation in Star Wars. In fact, I wasn’t sure if Lily’d have been helpful in the first place. Sure, she’d helped the jedi get Sidious but that’s because I’d asked her to. If I hadn’t done that, I was sure she wouldn’t have bothered.
And, looking at the news, I knew that I’d made the right choice in going here early.
Palpatine had been executed for betraying the Republic and killing two of the jedi guarding his cell when a mercenary had tried to save him and that was where the good news ended.
Dooku had still founded the CIS and they were officially at war. And a large part of the Senate was pushing hard to use the clone army despite the jedi having already revealed that said army was a trap the sith had prepared for them. With the droid army the CIS was using, I could kind of understand where they’re coming from, too.
And the first battle of Geonosis had been a battle of nothing but jedi against droids without the clones. Many still managed to escape but it was known that several jedi had died and people were using that to argue that the clones were a necessary evil.
The entire situation was a disaster and I had no idea how to go about maybe fixing it.
I could probably destroy droid ships with just my spatial magic but that wouldn’t work on an army of them. Not because I couldn’t do it – I had no idea whether I could reach that far or not – but because I couldn’t be everywhere.
‘I made things worse.’ That realization left me reeling but it wasn’t wrong. Sidious, despite everything, hadn’t wanted the Republic to be ruined but, now, the Republic was facing a choice of either accepting a clone army that might end them or facing essentially endless amounts of droids while not really having an army of their own.
I could’ve blamed Lily for this but my twin wouldn’t have stepped in if I hadn’t asked her. Knowing that she couldn’t be sensed in the Force, I’d wanted for her to catch Sidious off-guard and she’d done exactly that. Meaning that this was entirely my fault.
Maybe if we’d waited until after the Clone Wars had started things could’ve turned out better. Or maybe I should’ve asked her to help even earlier. Except, we’d only had magic for a bit more than a month and access to Coruscant for even less time so that really wasn’t an option.
‘You should’ve waited until there was an opportunity.’ The thought sounded suspiciously like Lily but it wasn’t wrong. If this was the result of us stepping in too early, maybe I should’ve been more patient because I refused to believe that this was the best-case scenario. It couldn’t be when the galaxy was now at war and the Republic lacked the military strength required to protect itself from the CIS and the sith at its helm.
I hated having to admit it but this was a fuck-up. I didn’t really know for sure how we could’ve done better but I was sure there was something! There had to be!
‘When has “doing good” ever worked out before? It’s all just a waste of time and effort.’ I heard the words in Lily’s voice and I denied them despite the weight of my mistake weighing me down.
“I need to think.” I decided before I could continue to keep thinking thoughts like these.
A moment later, I left Coruscant once again, uncaring of who might’ve seen me as I left. Only, the guilt didn’t stop eating away at me just because of the change in scenery. I’d messed up and I had no way to fix it and that was all I could focus on even after coming back to Lily’s Traveling Home and locking myself away in my room.
Like a child, I hid from the world I’d ruined on my bed, with a blanket thrown over me in a poor attempt at comforting me.
I’d wanted to protect people from monsters and all kinds of dangers after gaining magic. My entire life, I’d seen all these news about Protectorate hunters and how they saved people and, after becoming a hunter myself, I’d wanted to join them. Except, Lily hadn’t wanted to and I’d been fine with that because we could still help people in other ways.
Of course, Lily cared more about profit than helping people but taking care of Gates was still important and helpful and a good thing to do. That Lily was working on figuring out how to stop some ritual that’d kill everyone just made it even better.
Except, my twin turned out to like hurting people more than she liked helping them and I fucked up every time I tried to help anyone in a major way. I fucked up with insisting on fighting Leviathan despite Lily telling me we wouldn’t even be able to genuinely hurt it while it could’ve easily killed us both and I fucked up with asking Lily to help the jedi catch Sidious.
I’d done well to set up an evacuation method in the shelters but that method would probably only work as long as I lived. Lily’d told me that and I’d ignored it because I believed I could make a difference fighting Leviathan. I hadn’t. Not really, at least. It didn’t retreat until he was outmatched due to Scion showing up and I could barely even remember who I’d protected with my magic but I did know that many of them had died not long after I’d protected them because they’d still been near Leviathan and dodging one hit wasn’t enough in that case.
‘What else did I screw up?’ I couldn’t escape that question now.
I’d definitely kind of messed up with Lily, too. We’d spent a lot less time together lately than we usually did and I wasn’t stupid enough to think it had nothing to do with our fight about her lack of empathy.
I wasn’t comfortable with how callous she was and she was probably still angry that I’d nearly ruined our relationship over it. Not enough to take it out on me but enough to avoid me even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself.
Case in point, she usually gave me new powers from other worlds pretty quickly but she’d already confirmed before our spar that she’d gone to a new world and still hadn’t given me whatever she’d gotten out of it.
‘And I probably don’t even know all her powers.’ I frowned to myself at the thought but I couldn’t help but feel like it was the truth. Lily got random powers sometimes and I didn’t know more than a handful but I had no idea if those were all of them or just the ones Lily felt like telling me about.
I hadn’t known about the castle. Or the hills covered by a colourful forest in the distance that probably were more than just scenery just from how much mana they had. Or the wings I apparently had, too. Her eyes, I’d known about immediately but that’s because they suddenly started glowing one day.
Ultimately, Lily had a bunch of powers and she wouldn’t even tell me about them!
“Fuck it.” I decided, “I can go to other worlds without telling her, too!” With my mind made up, I left this world and, for the first time, sought out a new one on my own initiative.
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