Chapter 735: The Whims of People Like Me (Patreon)

They were seated on benches in a corner of a crowded city square, a sea of people flowing from building to building and street to street. The temples were abustle, Jason recognising the closest as churches for Trader and Healer. The buildings had the symbols of their gods emblazoned on the walls in place of signs.

“Jason,” Humphrey directed in his team leader voice. “You’ve worked with the recovery effort admin more than the rest of us because they used your cloud palace so much. Go get the current state of affairs from someone who isn’t the Adventure Society.”

“No worries,” Jason said, dark mist shrouding him. It vanished a moment later to reveal him in a casual suit that would play better with harried administrators than his normal tan shorts and floral-shirt combo.

“Lindy,” Humphrey continued. “Make contact with Estella and find out how her project is going. If she needs anything, get it. If you can’t—”

“I can,” she interrupted.

“Without stealing,” Humphrey qualified. “And don’t bribe anyone to do anything too egregious.”

“Fine,” she said grudgingly.

“Neil,” Humphrey said. “When we left, Hana Shavar was in charge of this place. She’s the high priestess of your church, so see if you can find and talk to her. I want you to do the same thing as Jason and get the current state of affairs, but from her perspective.”

“I’ll start with the temple,” Neil said.

“No, she’s in that building,” Jason said, pointing to a building next to the temple, the largest one situated around the square. “I think it’s a hospital, from the auras inside. Hers is on the third floor, opposite side to the temple.”

Jason’s companions all turned to look at him.

“What?” he asked.

“How are you sensing the auras in that building?” Humphrey asked. “Especially a gold-ranker.”

“Uh, aura perception,” Jason said. “My aura senses are pretty strong. Did you forget?”

“Jason,” Humphrey said, “your aura is retracted. You shouldn’t be able to blanket the area with your senses.”

Humphrey’s words were common sense in a city where powerful essence users kept their auras withdrawn. In addition to preventing them from bombarding every other essence user in range, any non-essence users could potentially be harmed by particularly strong auras, especially if the effects were stacked onto one another.

“Yeah, my aura is retracted,” Jason said. “That’s just polite. That’s why I’m just extending my senses.”

For almost every essence user, expanding their perceptual range meant pushing out their aura as well. Amos Pensinata had taught Jason how to project only his perception, such that only extremely sensitive people or those of much higher rank would notice. Jason had been working on it for months and was now capable of doing it effectively when not otherwise distracted. His attempts to pass the skill onto his companions had proven less than effective, only Farrah making any real inroads.

“You’ve come this far along,” Clive said. “Your aura does seem fundamentally different to that of a normal essence user. I’m going to borrow some testing equipment from Carlos so we can—”

“Nope,” Jason said and walked off, pointing at a building. “I’m pretty sure this one is main admin,” he called back, not stopping.

“Come on, Jason,” Clive called after him. “It’s for advancing magical knowledge. That helps everyone.”

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• [Jason Asano] has removed [Clive Standish] from group chat.

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“That’s not very mature!” Clive yelled after the rapidly retreating Jason.

***

The team did some basic reconnoitring of the city’s current state. Nothing was urgent; it was as much to practise information gathering as anything else. The team intended to be travelling for years, so the practise would do them good. It also helped them keep track of events in a city with no status quo as recovery and rebuilding continued. The population were refugees in their own land, unaware of the magic doom building up deep beneath the ground.

Nothing they found was too surprising. The official from the Continental Council was expected to arrive within the next day or two and the messengers had reached out to say they would be delivering the device to prevent the underground disaster within the week. Estella was almost done with her mission, having taken it as far as she could without an unacceptable risk of exposure.

There was a growing shanty town outside the walls that was increasingly a concern for city officials. These were people that rejected the official recovery program for whatever reason, from criminal history to distrust of city officials. The shanty town was outside the city defences, but they’d placed themselves between the walls and the adventurer camp.

With no urgent calls on their time, the group decided to travel on foot. They hadn’t seen the destruction from any angle other than looking down on it from above, Humphrey pointing out that while literally true, it was also a metaphor worth acknowledging.

“Jason and I talked a lot about power dynamics back in Greenstone,” Humphrey said as they walked debris-scattered roads, between buildings ranging from damaged to burned-out ruins.

“In fairness,” Jason said, “I mostly ranted at him about ideas that I'd only read about and never had practical experience with. I've learned a lot about the difference between ideas in concept and execution since then.”

“It’s true that you were quite naïve,” Humphrey told him. “But that was true for both of us. And you weren’t always wrong.”

“I never said I was wrong,” Jason pointed out.

“Jason’s ideas—” Humphrey continued, only to be cut off by Jason.

“They weren’t my ideas,” Jason’s said. “I’m pretty great but I’m not claiming credit for socialism. If nothing else, I like money way too much.”

“What I’m trying to say,” Humphrey said, giving Jason a stern look, “is that while I always felt a responsibility for people that came with being a Geller, I had never thought to question whether it was right that my name had the power it does. There's a world of people who never had the chance to escape the whims of someone like me.”

“But you’re one of the good ones,” Sophie said.

“And that’s the problem,” Humphrey said. “That’s what Jason got me thinking about. There are good ones, but there’s no shortage of bad ones. The way we decide who gets that power isn’t good. What if, instead of Thadwick, we had you, Lindy?”

“Then I’d probably have been an entitled turd sandwich as well.”

“I don’t believe that,” Humphrey said. “I think, under all those layers, you like what we do. You like helping people, and all it took was giving you the chance.”

Humphrey gestured at the destruction around them. Labourers cleared streets and loading wrecked sections of building onto carts, hauling it away to be magically recycled into fresh building material. Guards were protecting them after a few instances where recovery resources were the subject of violent looting.

“We get to walk through this city with impunity,” Humphrey said. “Through this whole world, really.”

He looked around at the devastated city.

“An attack like this,” he said. “Yes, we could have died in the fighting, but at least we would have died fighting. We need to remember that even when we put our lives on the line, we are privileged in a way that those we protect are not. We can't always choose our own fate, but at least we get to fight for it. How many of the people who never got that chance would have taken it if they had? How many, if they had the choice, would face the dark to protect the ones that can’t?”

“Three,” Belinda said.

Humphrey laughed, giving his head an amused shake.

“I’m a little more hopeful,” he said. “After all, you and Sophie were given the chance, and here you are. Adventurers. Heroes, even. Helping people. And you can play bitter ex-criminal all you want, Lindy, but I know you like what we do.”

“You’re talking out the back of your pants, rich boy,” Belinda told him.

“Yes, I am rich,” Humphrey said. “The Gellers have more money than any other family in Greenstone. All you have is more money than most of them.”

Belinda opened her mouth to retort before what Humphrey had said sunk in and she froze, mouth still open. The others stopped walking and looked at her with amusement.

“Really?” she asked.

“Belinda,” Humphrey said, his tone full schoolteacher. “You're an active silver-rank adventurer. All those monster cores we sell, who do you think buys them? It's people like the Greenstone aristocracy. Their family coffers go into raising silver-rankers who never protect anyone. They’re paper monsters. Think of all the opportunities you have at your rank. Why would you lord it over a bunch of bronze and iron-rankers in a low-magic zone in an isolated corner of the world? Because it's the only place you can. Greenstone's silver-rankers are small people who spend all their money to make themselves feel big.”

“He's not wrong,” Neil said, himself a Greenstone aristocrat. “Anyone who wants to make something of themselves leaves. My family isn't a big deal in Greenstone because all of our talented people go off to make something of themselves. We don't have lingerers monster-coring their way to silver. The family doesn't support that. There are great reasons to live in Greenstone, but when you're an adventurer, it's a place to be from, not a place to be. The big families and their silver-rankers are literally making money at their spirit-coin farms and they sink it all into keeping up appearances. Monsters cores, imported goods. Do you have any idea how expensive shipping things to Greenstone is?”

“You're rich, Lindy,” Humphrey said. “Extremely rich. I know Jason flat-out refused to churn out spirit coins for you, but don’t think I’m not aware of all the extra moneymaking you get up to. I don’t care if you’re clever enough to make more coin than the rest of us from our adventuring. I know you put time and effort into making that happen. So long as you actually do the adventuring, I’m happy for you. Just don’t rip off or hurt anyone that doesn’t have it coming.”

Belinda stood silent, looking at Humphrey, blinking in mild confusion.

“Come on,” Sophie told her, grabbing her hand and pulling her back into stride. “Humphrey, be a dear and bring my mother along.”

“I can walk by myself,” Melody said.

“You can run off and be a menace by yourself as well,” Humphrey said. “Be thankful we don’t put a suppression collar on you. If I didn’t love your daughter so much, I would have.”

They walked in silence for a time, taking slow stock of just how devastating even the repelled attack of the messengers had been. Weeks of recovery efforts had removed vast amounts of rubble and debris, but there was more work ahead than behind. Many buildings were too far gone for anything but demolition.

Witnessing the reconstruction was an unusual experience for Jason as the elf city made extensive use of living trees, shaped by magic and integrated with more traditional construction materials. Many dead trees were uprooted and removed while damaged ones were salvaged in a process magically closer to healing than repair. New trees were put in place, their growth magically accelerated by essence abilities, rituals and significant amounts of compost and fertiliser.

They arrived at what had once been the entertainment district, where they had been part of the defensive force. It was no less devastated than anywhere else, making their efforts feel hollow, even knowing the people that had stayed safe in the bunker below ground. Even that had been a near thing. Monsters had burrowed through the defences and if Jason's duel hadn't spilled inside, the monsters would have. Fortunately, the people inside this bunker had lived.

“As bad as this is,” Humphrey said, “it’s inspiring to see people coming together for the common good.”

“If only it didn’t take so much damage to make it happen,” Belinda said bitterly. “The time will come when all this is forgotten and people start crawling over one another to reach the top of the pile again. And the people already there will start kicking them back down because you're right, Humphrey: they aren't all good ones.”

“On that cheerful note,” Jason said. “I'm going to go. I sense some auras I recognise, so I'm going to go off and check on some people. I'll catch you all up.”

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