Li took a moment to register what the count had said. He knew that he had been summoned into this world, but he had not particularly cared about the mechanics behind it. At first, he might have, wondering if there were others summoned like him, but it only took a day or two of hearing the history of the world from Old Thane to know that beings as powerful as him did not exist.

But Alarie would have knowledge that would either confirm or debunk Li's theory completely, and for that alone, he figured it was worth hearing him out.

"I'm an outworlder, but so what? Is that the only knowledge you have to offer me?" said Li.

Count Alarie shook his head. "Not at all. Please, follow me. We should not speak out in the open."

Alarie started to go back into his mansion, waving at his men to clear aside a path for Li. When Li followed, the vampire knights did not follow, instead standing in stalwart post outside.

Alarie opened a sliding glass door aside, motioning for Li to come inside. He kept his head bowed in respect.

Li acknowledged his deference and came in. When he looked around, he knew he was standing in an estate that spoke of the finest that Rivieran luxury could provide. He entered a living room that, from what he could tell, told him that Alarie preferred to show his wealth but not make it the forefront of his identity.

There was a great fireplace burning, and above it, the reptilian skeleton of a wyvern stood pinned as a trophy. In front of this fireplace stood a massive oaken table dotted capped with polished silver and engraved with floral patterns. A table for mass gatherings, judging from its size. Flanking the table were two dozen chairs of wood so polished that it shone, their seats covered with plush red cushioning.

When Li took steps in the house, his shabby boots, encrusted with sewage filth and mud, tracked dirt across lush velvet carpets tasseled with gold.

When he breathed in, he could smell the fragrance of cedar wood – a rare import from the western hinterlands – and lavender incense mixed together. The smell wasn't overpowering, just light enough to gently carry through the spacious rooms of the mansion.

But before Li could step further in, a maid made her way towards him and knelt down, her hands hovering over his boots.

"Good sir, may I remove your boots? I will have them cleaned. In the meanwhile, you can take any pair of slippers from the rack beside you. They are of enchanted sheepskin and will fit to any size," said the maid.

She looked at him with a warm professionalism, a controlled and welcoming smile upon her lips. Her hair was neatly combed back and wrapped in a bun, and when Li cast a glance over her complexion, he could tell she was entirely human.

"No need," said Li.

The maid paused for a second, unsure.

"Don't pressure him, Claire," said Alarie. He beckoned her away. "We will be conducting a discussion in the study. Do be a dear and fetch some tea, would you? I feel that it will remind our guest of home."

The maid stood up and bowed to Li before quickly shuffling away.

"A human maid?" commented Li.

Alarie nodded. "I like to grant opportunity where there is none. She, I saved from an orphanage. I like to say the life I give here under a roof of luxury is far better than what she would have eked out on the cold streets."

Li walked beside Alarie as they traversed further into the mansion, leaving the living room and ending up in a lengthy hallway marked with portraits of men that looked similar to Alarie.

"All are my past identities," said Alarie when he noticed Li glancing at the portraits. "It would be awfully strange of me to have lived over five centuries otherwise. Also, call me Alexei. It would be rude for you to address me by my 'family' name."

--

"Thank you, dear," said Alexei as Claire came in with a tray, two cups of tea releasing herbal steam into the air.

Li and Alexei sat opposite of each other from a great study table, its four corners carved into the mouths of dragons. Claire came by and placed the teacups on the table, her white gloved hands insulating against the simmering heat of the tea.

Claire bowed oncemore before she left, closing the latticed double doors of the study behind her.

Another fireplace, smaller than the one in the living room, lit up the study, casting a warm glow over Li and Alexei. They faced each other, both their expressions set and stern, as if they were heads of state ready to discuss the fate of kingdoms.

"This room is completely sealed from the outside world. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. Our words will be safe here." Alexei put his pale hands together and nodded. "Li, your name was? Is the tea agreeable enough for you?"

Li took a sip of the tea. He recognized it as jasmine tea, and the taste, he had to admit, was rather good. Nice and herbal – just the way he liked it. "It's fine."

Alexei sighed. "A relief. When the eastern kingdom of Xia still traded with us a hundred years ago, one of the first things they introduced was tea, and the drink has made such an impression on me that I find it indispensable to my daily life. It is an honor to find that I have followed the old recipes well enough that it agrees with a true easterner's tastes."

Alarie cocked his head. "Though, I suppose you are not truly an easterner, considering that you are not human."

"You know what I am already. An Outworlder." Li slid his tea aside. Alarie didn't know that he was once a human. He didn't know any specifics about his summoning, just that he wasn't from here. "Enough pleasantries. I hope you know that you are still walking an incredibly thin line here. Tell me what you know, and if it is useful to me, you might still live."

Alexei nodded in understanding. "Very well, and I am correct in assuming that you were summoned, no?"

"You're right about that." Li leaned in a little closer, more interested now. "What are you going to tell me? That the people that summoned me need me now? If I recall, they did sound pretty desperate. You know them? If you do, why don't you tell them I'm busy."

Alexei shook his head and instead raised his hand. His hand, as white as a sheet, started to quiver, enveloping in a film of faintly flickering white. He started to sweat and breathe heavily, his thin chest almost seeming to cave in as he sucked in for air.

The film of white condensed into a single point on Alexei's palm before expanding a little into a blinding white portal. Exhaling, the vampire placed his palm flat on the table and withdrew it. Smoke curled out from his hands, and the wood of the desk had been thoroughly burned.

But at the center of a ring of scorched wood lay a bullet. A modern bullet.

For the first time since he had arrived in this world, Li's eyes widened in surprise. All of a sudden, the memories of home that had almost faded, of a world that rumbled with cars and television instead of horses and vendors, rose in his mind.

"How did you do that?" said Li.

Alexei took a moment to steady his breathing before he coughed into his hand. When he withdrew his hand, a spot of bright red blood bloomed on his pale skin.

"Forgive me," he said as he withdrew a handkerchief from his doublet pocket and wiped his hand thoroughly. "That was Source magic. With it, I can open a channel into the Source, the space between all worlds, and draw from other worlds. However, I am afraid it takes a severe toll on my life force."

Li had never heard of source magic in Elden World. He suppressed surprise and allowed Alexei to explain.

"It is a mystical art that exceedingly few know of," said Alexei. "A closely guarded state secret of the Elves, for they have been the only ones to truly harness the source. It is why their civilization stands so much more advanced than ours. It is why they occupy the head seat of the Republic, equaling even the dragons. I should say that they were the ones to summon you as well."

Li asked the most pressing question. "And can they summon more like me?"

Alexei shook his head and picked up the bullet. "I severely doubt it. You saw how much of my life I had to sacrifice merely to open a channel small enough to withdraw this little thing."

He crushed the bullet in his hands until it became little more than flattened sheet metal, slivers of black gunpowder crumbling on the desk.

"And that is all I can do even as a higher vampire that has lived centuries. I shudder to think of what the Elves had to sacrifice to bring you to this world. If I had to quantify in terms of life, I should say it took the blood of millions to bring a being of your power here. In any case, they are in no position to ever try such a channeling again."

Li took the crushed bullet casing and looked it over. It even had a serial number to it, though to where he could not tell.

"Where did this come from?"

Alexei shrugged. "I do not know. Source magic is fundamentally chaotic. After all, it is an attempt to reach out into the space between worlds, a vast flux of space so immense in scale that all I, an existence infinitely small in comparison, can do, and the elves for that matter, are opening channels and hoping something of worth comes from the other side.

Where that channel leads is entirely random. Some days, I find myself with strange little critters. Other times, flora. Times like these, little objects. The elves, with their centuries of practice, are only able to widen the portal, allowing larger things to come. They can control for quality, but barely. All they know is that the more life they burn to create a channel, the more powerful the being or item they summon."

"Interesting." Li flicked the bullet casing across the desk. He looked at Alexei and saw the vampire more at ease, feeling that he was supplying enough information to Li to keep himself alive. "Is it just the elves that can do this? Where did you learn it? Can I learn it?"

"The elves were the first to understand the phenomena of source rifts and harness the power. They are the only ones with access to the magic, and I can say that it took me over a century of masquerading in evellien society to even get a glimpse of their secrets." Alexei looked at Li. "As for you, I cannot say I know for sure. Evellien experiments would indicate that outworlders such as the duchy's Heroes cannot access the Source, but even so, there is no reason for you to learn this.

Source magic is a dice roll of cosmically bad chances. When one opens a channel, a hundred-headed die is rolled, and ninety-nine out of one hundred times, the result is absolutely useless. That one golden instance that one rolls correctly, it is something so insignificantly useful that it would have been better to simply spend the sacrificed life elsewhere.

Often times, I do not even know if something is useful or not. I recall once a quaint little sphere of metal dropped upon my desk. It beeped with a red light before indiscriminately exploding and nearly burning down my entire study."

"Wait a second." Li's mind flashed to Jeanne and her status as a hero. "You're telling me that these 'heroes' are outworlders?"

"In a way. They are products of natural source rifts." Alexei clasped his hands together, preparing for a long speech. "Tell me, Li, how much of this world's history do you know?"

"Enough." Li knew some from Old Thane's tales, but he hadn't thought it important enough to really commit himself to learning. The farm was far more important, after all.

"Hmm." Alexei tapped the table with his bony fingers. "Then I'll start from the beginning. If you feel you already know what I speak of, then do not hesitate to cut me off.

A little over a thousand years ago, there came the emergence of the four primal gods and the eight demons of the dark. You know of these entities, do you not?"

"I do." Whenever Li saw murals dedicated to the four gods and their battle against the demons, he knew that they came straight from Elden World. In the game, there three primary stats: strength, agility, and insight. For each of the three stats there were three patron gods – the main deities of the game.

There was Chi You the Six-Armed for strength, Khonsu the Nightborn for agility, and Zahak the Eyed Serpent for insight. Then there were gods of light and darkness, two sides of the same deity called Helius and Noctus, that gave patronage to most of the faith-based magic in the game.

And the eight demons of the dark were just the names for the first campaign's main antagonists. A typical demon general and seven heralds that represented each of the sins of man. At higher cycles of new game+, they demoted to secondary antagonists, with final bosses becoming beings such as rampaging eldritch deities, dragons that had lived since the creation of the world, and so on.

Alexei raised a finger. "Those gods and demons are the result of natural source rifts. You see, this world seems to have an unique phenomenon wherein certain cosmic chances lock into place that cause beings and influences from other worlds to manifest.

A thousand years ago, it is said that the heavens lit up in glorious fire and the earths shattered open. Then the gods descended from the light and the demons crawled up from the dirt. In reality, it is simply likely that two natural source channels opened, one in the sky and one in the earth, and these natural channels are far, far more potent than any tinkering that intelligent beings are capable of manifesting.

The gods and demons corrupted the world, introducing mutations for the manifestation of classes and attributes as well as the basis for all magic and skills that we know today.

But even before them, there was likely a prehistoric rift that introduced all the mortal races of this world, the humans, the beastmen, the elves, and such. The immortal and magically attuned ones such as dragons and, of course, vampires like myself came with the gods and demons, manifesting from the very same rifts.

The heroes are the result of yet another natural rift with the blood moon from half a century ago being its heralding catalyst. But instead of summoning beings, the moon instead infected certain human children with the capacity to develop powers independent of magic or skills. These powers seem to come from an entirely different world for they operate independently of our magic.

They also seem to manifest certain traits unique to them. They naturally tend to call themselves heroes, and a common secondary ability that they share is the power to conjure tight-fitting armor they call costumes.

Take, for example, Sunstar, the greatest hero of Soleil and the terror of the inhuman Republic. He possesses the strength to wrestle with giants, and yet he has no discernable strength or agility attribute to speak of. He can soar through the skies as well as any dragon and conjure up rays of scorching heat, and yet he has no magical aptitude to speak of.

His attacks pass through all magical barriers and yet he cannot be healed by any magic. Incompatibilities between different worlds of powers, I should theorize."

Li sunk back into his seat as the pieces fell together. These heroes weren't just men and women that were called heroes for their acts of valor or power. No, they were literal heroes. Superheroes. Whatever world their powers came from was one of caped crusaders and masked villains.

"Are these all the natural rifts you know of?" said Li.

"All that are recorded among the Evellien arcane archives, yes," said Alexei. "The merging of mortal races, the coming of gods and immortals, and then the blood moon of heroes. But where you stand is a most pressing issue."