I was teased all the way by Audrey, who clearly was enjoying the idea that I named him Alfred, and was now stuck with a majordome, when I could have gotten a more… ‘handy’ familiar. Giiru of course failed to see the link between the name and the role, but I didn’t doubt Audrey would fill him in sooner than later. As we arrived at my box, I went in to get Alfred.

I was greeted by the sight of an immaculate room, cleaned windows and folded bed. Alfred was on the computer, running a defragmentation if I believed what I saw. He turned around when he heard me, and floated toward the center of the room.

“Greetings Mistress. I took the liberty of preparing a clean outfit for tonight’s dinner. If you want to freshen yourself, I can offer tea or coffee to your guests while they wait.”

I tried to speak, but couldn’t shake myself from this stupor. Wait, tea?

“We had tea here?”

“It appears so Mistress. It was in the nightstand lower drawer, a surprising location if I say. Of course, I’m afraid it’s not exactly of the greatest kind, but I’m confident I can make it taste… slightly better than water.”

Still in a daze, I just nodded to him, and went to the bathroom. I was so excited before I hadn’t even noticed how much dirt I put over myself when I brushed some mosaics to better see the details. The bathroom was even cleaner than the room, if it was possible, and perfectly organized. I undressed and started the shower. I had a lot of water left in the tank before the weekly refill, due to my earlier travel, so there was no reason to not use it.

Giiru POV :

I was standing outside the apprentice valkyrie room with my partner when I felt the aura of an elemental coming from the still slightly opened door. A ball of darkness appeared, bowed to us, and invited us inside to wait as it’s mistress prepared. Audrey started giggling, muttering something about an accent. I sighed and went inside, and she followed. I used the time to study this being structure. Although I missed some of my most useful tools for this, I could make due with experience.

And it was pretty clear why the young heroin ‘only’ gained a few levels. This was surely the most poorly executed creation I’ve ever seen. She basically just took a chunk of darkness, compressed it and poured death mana inside until it was animated. Still, at this level, it was amazing she even had enough mana to do that. She said something about life conversion thought, that might explain it. Well, at least she hadn’t botched the animating part, so it’s evolution potential was intact. It just had to start from almost zero. Seriously, what are those gods thinking, giving her spells that powerful. Of course she can’t cast it right!

When we were inside, it introduced itself, and offered us a beverage for the wait. I accepted a cup of water and immediately forgot his name. And if anybody think it’s cruel of me to not even try to remember names, he should remember I have known literally millions of people. You need to stand out a lot for me to remember you in the sea of faces that is my past.

Audrey asked for a coffee, and the pseudo-soul went to make it. From that disgusting powder. She told me before that people still used true coffee beans, but it was a lot more costly, and difficult here. Still disgusting.

“So, Alfred, how do you, you know, ‘feel’ things?”

Audrey took the initiative to further her knowledge of artificial lifeforms. She’s a great person, and with my help, she’ll become even greater.

“Though I would be unable to explain the intricacy of it, I think I can give you my feeling. I think I interact through my ‘Mana sense’, ‘Darkness sense’, ‘Death sense’ and the feed-backs from my artificial sensory organs. Even if I only get to have one at a time for now.”

“One at a time? You mean, since you hear me, you don’t see me?”

“Indeed, I’m actually locating you by your mana emission, and your Death aura. Thought you’re quite easy to see with this one.”

Of course she is, her Death affinity is amazing for her level. It’s good that she has Life too, or she would already have started to manifest some changes. Though her personality seems already close to some of those necromancers, so maybe she doesn’t change because of that?

“It’s so cool, can you teach me how to do that?”

“I’m afraid not, as I do not understand the principle myself. Ah, it seems Mistress is getting ready.”

The valkyrie voice resounded from the bathroom.

“Alfred, can you please bring me something more… let’s say casual? We’re not going to a fancy dinner or anything, just grab something at the mess.”

The pseudo-soul audibly sighed with disappointment before opening a drawer containing a fully prepared spare outfit and bringing it to the bathroom, leaving us alone.

“Do you know how he’s touching things? I mean, he barely seems material.”

“Like most elementals, he’s probably manifesting his element as a physical entity. That’s how they manage to have a body, and why elementals require mana to survive. Some elementals are different, but they’re far and between.”

“You met a lot of elementals before? I mean, proportionally?”

Good, she caught herself. Smart girl.

“A lot yes. After a certain level, mages can create elementals easily, and even low level mages could with the help of formations or divine guidance. The greatest cities were using them massively, and I’ve seen some wizard’s castles entirely manned by varied elementals. If you throw in variants like this one, and naturally occurring ones, I’ve seen almost more of them than I’ve seen mortals.”

“That’s a lot… Wait, naturally occurring ones?”

“An elemental can spontaneously awaken if some conditions are met. And they’re not that hard to meet. Usually, a lot of a pure element, a lot of mana, and some stagnation. The explanation advanced by some was that mana is always attuning to it’s environment, and if nothing stop the process, mana will fuse with the environment. Then it’s just a matter of quantity.”

“It seems easy enough. Wouldn’t it be easier to create elementals like that rather than relying on spells and formations?”

“It’s far easier, you just have to dump mana in a room with the right element, and wait. You can even stir it up by forcefully heightening mana concentration, or attuning mana yourself. But elementals created that way are known as ‘Feral elementals’. They don’t care for anyone or anything but themselves. Of course you can tame them, but it takes time and care. If you create an elemental, he’s already attuned to you so much he will probably try to be your familiar as his first conscious act.”

Which probably saved the young valkyrie life, since even in this sorry state, this pseudo-soul hold enough power to cut her to pieces in about a second. Truly a divine spell creation.

I saw the young valkyrie coming out of the bathroom, followed by a pseudo-soul carrying what looked like a dark silk dress.

“Wow, this dress looks amazing! But, why did you take that to an archeological site?”

“You know, in case of big celebration, or something like that… It’s always useful to have and…”

Her tentative was so unconvincing that even the pseudo-soul seemed a little awkward.

“Ok, my mother put it inside my bag so I would find a boyfriend. I was not going to wear it, I swear.”

“So sad, you’d look dashing.”

The valkyrie smothered the malicious twinkle in Audrey’s eyes with a light slap behind her head, then went to the cart, so we could finally go to eat.

On the way, the girls tried to figure the next objective. The archeologist really wanted to try and find someone who could talk about the atlantean god.

“I happen to know some things about it, since I was there. Even if the atlantean were living here, they were people of the sea. They created a lot of small town on the coasts of interesting places.”

“You think those towns might have survived?”

“Well, the atlanteans seem to have died, but those towns were usually pretty free of access, so there should have been other people there. I can give you a small list, depending on the direction you want to go.”

“Somewhere in Greece maybe, so Audrey can use her relations?”

Ignoring the doubtful look in Audrey’s eyes, I went on.

“I remember a small settlement in Crete. A place called Kydonia, but maybe the name’s different now.”

Audrey started searching on her phone while Sarah thinked about it, and drove. Those phones are amazing. What would have been a godly artifact is now a simple tool even children can have and use.

“I found it! It seems it’s name is Chania, a 100 000 inhabitants city in Crete. It says here it was founded by greek people, but someone found evidence of a previously existing village. You think it’s the good one?”

“Giiru, check the map, does that seems right to you?”

“As far as I remember, yes, it seems to be the place.”

The young valkyrie smiled as we stopped outside the mess.

“Then, our next destination is Crete!”