White Ball

We finish dressing back up and get off the wagon. Outside I can see the sun beginning to set. It seems our little love-making session lasted longer than I had previously thought. This thought brings me to an uncomfortable question. What exactly does this make us? It was pretty spur-of-the-moment and shockingly fast for us to reach that level of intimacy. Perhaps she had just been looking for a way to satisfy her lust, and I happened to be her type, which I guess isn't completely different from what I had been thinking.

I look over at Miah again, and she is certainly something to behold, beautiful eyes, is athletic, has a fun personality, finds me desirable ( and can take a good fucking), which I guess is my type now that I think about it. I try and imagine doing non-lewd lover things with Miah, and I can't help but blush thinking about just spending time with her as l-lovers (what the fuck, I can fuck her into another dimension after just barely meeting her, but fantasizing about holding her hand makes me blush, what the fuck is even my standards?)

I see Miah tilt her head at me, and fuck, I`ve been staring at her too much.

"Uhh, cultists, right! We were talking about interrogating some cultists."

I see her gaze focus on my face for a second (fuck I hope I'm not blushing).

"Yeah, you said you had a plan to make them talk?"

I recompose myself banishing all thoughts of l-lewd hand-holding from my mind, and smile.

"Yes, now that I know what my Domain is, I think I know how to better utilize it."

I see Miah's face turn a shade redder.

"Not that way. I meant in situations that are not the bedroom or, in our case, a wagon."

She turns even redder (and bloody hell, I think I'm never going to be tired of teasing her).

"W-what have you figured out?"

"Well, first of all, you never told me how powerful my Hume levels were, so you tell me if this might be possible for me or not."

She nods.

"Could I make one of them impossibly horny and desperate for release that they have no other option but to answer my questions in the hope I provide it for them?"

I see her pale.

"Wow, uhh, I guess? what was your Hume level again? I was kind of focusing on the fact you had 9 whole titles."

"I think it was written as 100-75, which, now that I think about it have no idea what it means. Is it 100.75?"

"No, the 100 is your maximum Hume level, and 75 is your minimum. It's basically a way to measure your fall of range."

"Fall of range?"

I see her grab the shard that I had previously tossed to the side.

"Your ability to affect reality isn't in at an even range. It slowly falls off until it reaches your max range, at which point it then dips."

I raise my eyebrow at that.

"Wait, so it doesn't just slowly fall off to zero. It falls to a certain level and then falls to zero?"

"It's not exactly universal. There are some people with no fall-off range, but on average, yeah, it's normally how it goes. Also just want to point out that your Hume level never actually drops to zero. It just falls to 50, which is the consensus reality Hume level."

More questions are forming in my head, but they're interrupted as I see Miah raise the shard to her mouth and activate it. I quickly turn away from the holographic screen, not wanting to peek at what I assume to be pretty private information.

"You can look. It was kind of the whole point, really."

"Huh?"

"I just realized that it's not really that fair for me to have seen your sheet and not have shown mine. It kind of feels too onesided, so yeah, you can look."

I slowly turn my head and say to her.

"You really don't have to. It was a necessity that made you have to look at mine. I'm perfectly content not knowing."

I feel two hands forcibly moving my head to look at the sheet.

"Would just look at the bloody thing. It's just going to be easier to explain some concepts I should have explained before."

I close my eyes.

"But it's a breach of privacy! You can just list the things you want to explain, and I'll be fine."

I hear her sigh and then quietly whisper.

"I just feel like it would be unfair, Sophia. Besides, I think we have enough intimacy to share this amount of privacy. I am wrong?"

I have to stop myself from squishing her cheeks from how adorable she just was. Instead, I content myself to hugging her.

"Of course. Though I have to ask Miah, what is currently our level of intimacy?"

I open my eyes to see a Miah in deep thought, and I feel my heart tighten from nervousness.

"I think l-lovers would be too fast, even if we did skip a few bases."

I feel my heart drop at that.

"But! We also passed too many lines to just start our relationship as just acquaintances, so?"

I feel myself smile at that.

"Friends, let's start with being friends."

I see a mischievous grin grow on her face as she whispers.

"With benefits."

I laugh at that, and she giggles with me.

"Alright, alright, that's enough. Look over my sheet, and I'll explain some things."

I let go of her and look over the screen.

Name: Miah Starborn

Titles: Head of AL

Species: Human

Age: 21

Sex: Female

Height: 5'2''

Weight: 48.1 kg

Profession: Unregistered

Balance: Empty

Status

Level: 4

Domain: Tinker

Range: 5 feet

Hume level: 80-60

Strength: 8 (80%)

Dexterity: 12 (75%)

Constitution: 10 (71.4%)

Charisma: 11(73.3%)

Magical Capability: Incapable/50 Mp

"First of all, you can see my Hume level is lower than yours. Mine would be considered slightly above average, while yours would be considered above average. So I think you can probably do what you had in mind. You can probably even skip trying to arouse him the normal way and just use your Domain alone to boost his libido directly."

I breathe a sigh of relief. Hunter was definitely not my type, and neither was the masked dude( I guess I don't have a thing for people who kidnap and try to kill me, who would've thunk.)

"Now, on to the other thing I forgot to mention. Magic."

I can feel myself growing excited at the mere thought; for some reason, I feel a certain familiarity with DR that does not happen with magic. It feels truly like uncharted territory for me.

"Now, while I can't perform magic normally, as you can see from the fact I'm registered as incapable, you may notice I still have magic. That's because magical energy, or mana as we like to call it, is everywhere. It generally gathers around living things, but there are some materials that are known to attract mana. Using these materials, it is possible to create objects capable of producing magic so that even people incapable of producing magic themselves, like me, can channel their mana through and activate magical effects. We call this magitech. I say this because doing magic yourself is not too dissimilar from using an object to do it. You have probably felt it, gathering that energy deep inside your very being, concentrating it onto a point, and transforming that energy into something else, in your case, a bolt of lightning."

"Do you have a magitech with you?"

"Unfortunately, no, I had to sell most of them to fund this expedition, a tale for another time."

She says the last part quickly when she sees me preparing a question.

"As a tangent, by the way, that's the reason some people are incapable. They simply can't convert that mana into something else."

I nod, grasping that familiar sensation etched into my essence. From the looks of it, it has all recovered.

"So what? I can just channel my mana and transform it into anything I want?"

"Yes and no. While you are capable of transforming your mana into different energy or matter, there are still some limitations. Most people have specializations, things that they are really good at transforming. For example, a person can be really effective at converting mana to water, being able to summon massive waves, but suck at making fire, only being capable of producing a small spark."

I try as a test to produce a small fire at my fingertips and feel a slight drain; as the energy is gathered at my fingertips, a bright small white flame forms.

"How much did that drain you?" Miah asks, looking amazed at the flame.

"Not much to start it. I only had to put a small part of my total, though maintaining it is still draining me a tiny bit. If I were to put it into percentages, I would say that to start it, it took around 5%, and to maintain, takes me 0.1% every second or so." In fact, I can feel my mana returning at a pretty similar rate to the drain.

"Then it looks like you got proficiency in flame magic. You should continue testing the various elements during the journey. I can tell you all the ones that have been discovered by the magical community."

I nod, dissipating the flame.

"Now, enough stalling. Let's tease some cultists." I say with a grin.

Miah nods, and we descend upon the prison. The torch that was hanging by the wall has gone out, but I rectify the darkness by creating a ball of white flame on my hand, illuminating the sandstone in a pale light.

We make our way to the cells and are surprised to find no one there.

"W-what, how the hells did they even-" I hear Miah ask incredulously.

I approach the cell where Hunter should be casting a better light upon it. It is completely empty, save for a symbol marked on the sand. It looks like a dot surrounded by three oblates circling the middle dot. Surrounding these three shapes are another three markings. The one above looks like a question mark, the left one looks like a single claw mark, and the right one looks like a line curving in itself. As I stare at the symbol, I feel that familiar headache building in my head.

"Know what this symbol means, Miah?" I say, pointing at it while turning my gaze away from it.

She looks over it and, after a few seconds, responds.

"I don't think I do. It's ringing a few bells, though. I could probably search for it on the shard net. It's really familiar."

I turn over to look over the other cell, but it's the same, empty save for that symbol on the floor (wait, what did she say?)

"I'm sorry. Shard net?"

She looks back at me with surprise on her face.

"Fuck me. Did you forget that too? I mean, it's obvious in hindsight, duh, you forgot about a shard, of cour-"

"Miah, the point."

"Right, right. The shard net is an immaterial space where people with shards can communicate with each other, create their own spaces where they can upload information, or just dick around and post unfunny jokes. It's, I think, the place with the most information on the entire world. (barring very esoteric and secretive knowledge, those are usually found in college libraries or hidden stashes of lowercase f forgotten scholars)."

I somehow am not surprised by that revelation. For some reason, I had just assumed such a thing existed. What I am surprised about, however, is the name.

"Shard net? Why is called Shard net?"

She looks puzzled for a moment before answering me.

"Because it is a link of multiple shards, kind of like a net? And it's only possible to access it using shards?"

I nod at that, still feeling a sense of mild wrongness.

"The way you describe this, it seems this is extremely large. How many people even have shards?"

"Oof, I do not know that off the top of my head. I think it's aroun- Hold on. This is a perfect opportunity for a demonstration."

I see her taking the shard and whispering 'open net' on it. Suddenly the crystal glows, and a holographic screen appears. This time, however, the only thing displayed is a bar with a magnifying glass beside it.

I see Miah tap the bar with her fingers and a series of letters appear beneath the bar. She taps the keys until the question 'How many people have shards?' appears on the bar, she clicks to confirm, and multiple lines of text appear. She clicks the top one with 'How many people own shards worldwide (05/1024)' written.

The screen changes and I can the design of the page is different from the ones before, with a purple and green theme instead of plain white. On the top of the screen, 'University of Septo-Gratia' is written, and beneath that, the title 'How many people have shards?' again.

Miah scrolls the page down too fast for me to accompany, and she suddenly stops, reads a bit, and then deactivates the shard.

"Well, according to a study by the University of Septo-Gratia, it is estimated that 1.4 billion people have shards, or around 80% of the population. The study was conducted a few months ago using the unique SPs (or Shard protocol) of the connected shards."

I pause at that.

"That seems like an excessively high number for something that is lost tech."

She actually nods her head at this.

"Turns out the Forgotten really thought these shards were important. I mean, of the few ruins we found of them, about 30% were factories for these things. It doesn't take too much to put two and two together and reactivate these factories using a bit of reverse engineering. We had plenty of examples. But yeah, I can actually see why the Forgotten placed these things as the highest priority. I honestly couldn't see myself living without one. It's just too damm convenient."

She snaps her fingers.

"Come to think of it. We'll have to buy one for you when we get back to civilization."

I shrug.

"I guess. Though, couldn't I share yours?"

I see her balk at that.

"And have you mess up my algorithm? Noo, thank you, I worked very hard to program it to show me only stuff that is actually relevant."

I shake my head, not actually fully understanding what she said, when I realize we are very much still inside the middle of a dingy prison with no idea how two prisoners got out.

"Miah, I think we lost the thread of the conversation, the symbol; you said you could research about it?"

"Ooh yeah, I knew we were forgetting something. Right, let's do that real quick."

I see her open the Shard net again, and this time, type in 'Encyclopedia of symbols'.

I hear Miah whistle when the page loads.

"Ok, change of plans. This might be a bit slow. Turns out there's a niche for this particular topic, and some people have taken to cataloging symbols very seriously."

I sigh.

"Then let's continue this admittedly interesting research on the wagon, shall we? It does not look like we can surmise any more from this situation than we already have. We should probably be preparing to head out anyway."

She nods, and we make our way back to the wagon. We give the camel water and food as we set ourselves up to depart. The sky above has gone dark, and I can see for the first time since I awoke in that forest, the night sky of Aesir.

It is something to behold, with the curved line now glowing a soft pale light and partially illuminating the sky. Above the line, a white moon partially shattered, with bits of it still drifting close to it. The stars just as impressive as the ones in Miah's eyes, shining bright constellations of different colors, ranging from blue to violet to sometimes even green.

I spend at least five minutes just looking at the sight before me. At some point, Miah decided to join me, leaning on my shoulder.

"You know, I never really asked, but what even is that line cutting across the sky?" I say, turning my gaze to Miah (who, by the way, looks ethereally beautiful with the soft pale light from the line illuminating her tranced expression.).

"It's a ring." She says, and before I can ask her to elaborate, she continues. "After the moon shattered to causes unknown some five hundred years ago, the shards that should've fallen like meteors upon Aesir instead slowed down and entered the planet's orbit, creating a ring around our world. Before you ask, no, we don't know why any of those two things happened."

I nod and go back to observing the night sky, pulling Miah closer to me.

We spend a few minutes there in silence, just appreciating the gorgeous sight. Finally, I hear Miah get up and tap on my shoulder.

"Come on, big girl, we can appreciate the vista while we're moving."

I get up from the sand and join her as we begin our journey northward toward the Mountains of Madness.

...

...

...

Our journey through the deserts of Aker is a boring one. Between having to conserve our energies during the day and at night having to switch watches so we can sleep, we have no opportunity to get intimate and instead spend our time talking.

On the first day, I asked her to explain our destination.

"So what even are the Mountains of Madness? It seems like a very striking title to name a region after."

She looks vaguely disturbed but answers my question.

"The Mountains of Madness are... complicated. Nobody has ever explored the whole of it. The most we got is a rough outline of its borders"

She pauses for a moment before continuing.

"We know that prolonged expeditions tend to fail miserably, with explorers often turning mad, disappearing, or simply turning back, claiming they were too afraid to continue. Of the reports we receive that aren't incoherent mumblings, they claim that staying at the base of the mountains is the safest way to traverse and that venturing too deep into the dizzying heights of the mountain is the quickest way to lose your way."I see her bite her nail at that.

"If we had more supplies, I would have chosen to brave the desert and go eastward, where we wouldn't have to traverse that accursed mountain range. Alas, we still need water and food to survive, and as unpleasant as the Mountains of Madness may be, they, unlike this desert, still have wildlife and streams we can use to survive."

"So I suppose we'll be rushing through that area as fast as possible. If that's the case, will a camel even help us in that type of environment?"

She shakes her head.

"Even if the camel could keep up with us at that type of ground, the animals are the first ones to go mad in these expeditions."

"Mad how?"

"They bite at their owners, refuse to move, and sometimes even self-mutilate when they reach a certain point."

I grimace.

"That type of mad, huh?"

She nods, and we go into an uncomfortable silence.

"Aaaanyways, how's about those magic proficiencies, huh?" She suddenly says.

I know she is doing this to distract me from the fact there's a real possibility we go mad, buuut it's magic! So I do actually get side-tracked by it.

"Ooh yeah, you were going to tell me the elements that were discovered, yeah?"

She nods enthusiastically, likely glad to move on from the gloomy topic.

"Yep! There are like 13-ish main elements, with some esoteric ones still being discovered. The ones we'll be testing today are: Water, Fire, Earth, and Air." She takes a deep breath.

"Ligh, Lightning, Nature, Blood, Necromantic, Space, Gravity, and Time," She says in quick succession.

"The fastest way to see what you are proficient with is just trying it out, so let's get cracking, shall we?"

We spend the next few hours practicing all the different elements, and I found that I am proficient in:

Lightning, Light, Fire, Spatial & Necromantic (Which Miah explained was the element for any magic that related to working directly with life in any way. Like healing magic and the like.)

I also found that I am neutral in:

Water & Air

And that I suck at:

Time, Gravity, Earth, Blood & Nature

"Well, that is a very impressive fucking repertoire, if you'd pardon my Aeginic. Most folks have only one or two proficiencies and are pretty much incapable or neutral on everything else. Now, I did leave some of the more esoteric magical elements, but I think we have a pretty good outline of what kind of mage you should be building towards."

I raise my eyebrow at that.

"Like what?"

She claps her hands.

"Well. Typically wizards and sorcerers tend to focus their efforts on what they are most likely to have to work with. For example, a scholar that works in a research branch and is proficient in, let's say... fire magic is not going to want to know how to effectively make the biggest fireball they can. They'll probably focus on how to enchant fire onto objects or how to change the properties of the fires they summon, stuff like that."

As she says this, she stares directly into my eyes.

"Counting on your luck, you'll probably find yourself in all kinds of dangerous situations. So I don't think it'll be very useful for you to dedicate your efforts towards that direction. Instead, try and find ways to more effectively summon lightning or better ways to implement necrotic magic into high-stakes situations since normally it takes a while to manifest that type of magic."

I nod and begin practicing a bolt of electricity in between my fingers.

...

That night I am woken up by Miah shaking me.

"Huh? whazzat?" I ask, still feeling half-asleep.

She just points to a point on the horizon with an expression I can't quite decipher yet. I have to struggle with my eyes to stay open to even see what she was pointing at.

And stood in between dunes of sand is a silvery gleam, focusing on I can see it's the tip of a half-ruined building jutting out of the sand.

I look back at Miah, and the excitement on her face is palpable.

"Sophia, tha-that's a-a Forgotten ruin, holy hells, just what in the fuck is our luck."

I look back at the building, feeling that same headache building, and look back at Miah.

"I suppose you'll want to explore it?" I asked, dreading the migraine I will probably get.

"Do I?!" She rhetorically asks, ignoring the dread in my tone, and at this point, she has already changed courses to where the building is.

I sigh and turn back at the building, but for some reason, the building pain in my head doesn't increase. In fact, I can feel it decreasing. I furrow my brows in interest. Perhaps I can find some answers here.

"Alright, I'm with you."

And I swear I hear her squee with delight.