Jenjo sat hunched over at an old desk. It was still early in the afternoon and yet the inside of his bedroom was almost pitch-black—with all of what little light there was coming from the gaps between the window blinds.

In his hands he held a letter. A letter from Siempre Elvanera. It had been more than ten minutes since he had finished reading it and yet he still sat there staring at it with sunken eyes. Over the past few years since he had started working at the plantation, Jenjo had learned to expect madness from anything with Lord Siempre’s name attached to it, but the contents of this letter exceeded madness. Jenjo was no stranger to cruelty, but the sheer wickedness of the experiment described in the letter made him feel sorry for the slaves and for himself. It was to the point where he seriously considered trying to quit his job—though he knew that the only result of such an attempt would be his early death. Elvanera Group knew better than to let those with the potential to leak information about their operations stay alive.

“Dueling Room.” He activated one of his Opuses. There was no real need to do this, seeing as he simply could have opened the blinds to allow more sunlight into the bedroom, but he liked to see the soft blue illumination spread throughout the room like an expanding balloon until the entirety of the room was submerged within the confines of the dim bluish light that was emitted as a byproduct of the technique.

Even though this was arguably one of the worst possible ways to use this Opus—which, due to the impatience of his younger self, could only be activated once per week—Jenjo nonetheless took satisfaction in the fact that he was strong enough for that not to matter. He was confident in believing that he was strong enough to kill just about anyone in Neighborhood 8 with just his baseline Abilities or maybe even with just plain swordsmanship. Whether or not he had access to all of his Opuses at any given time was a total nonissue.

Or, at least, that’s what he wanted to think.

After reading the contents of Lord Siempre’s letter, however, he wasn’t so sure and, as he peered out the window at an overcast sky, Jenjo feared that his easygoing days as the untouchable tyrant of Neighborhood 8 were coming to a close.

♦

Midday was walking back to his cabin after his second feast for the day in hopes of getting a few more hours of sleep before sunset. His goal was to sleep as much as possible that day in hopes of rejuvenating his body as much as such a thing would allow.

He thought about Oolong’s Dusk Night Dawn Tea as he walked through the streets of the neighborhood, which were getting busier now that it was late enough into the afternoon for a good portion of people to have meant their quotas, and he wondered what would happen if someone drank Oolong’s beverage and still forced themselves to get a full night’s sleep despite technically not needing it. Would 8 hours of rest become equivalent to 24? He had no definite answer for that but, if that logic ever proved to be correct, it would mean that Dusk Night Dawn Tea was superior to all but maybe two of the agricultural treasures—with only Neighborhood 1’s Lordmaker Rye, which was by far the most powerful crop Midday knew of, and Neighborhood 2’s Metamorphosis Mushrooms, which supposedly played a vital role in the creation and development of posthumans, surpassing Oolong’s signature brew.

If he could gain access to something like that, he was certain that his circumstances would rapidly improve. Maybe I really ought to do what I can for Glauster after all… He sighed. Cooperation was by no means his strong suit, and his fear of having someone discover the Elvanerean Ring further estranged him from the prospect of working with his cabinmates on open terms.

He sighed again upon looking up at the sky. Although the streets of the slave enclave were eternally shaded under the thick leaves and branches of the oaken forest above, it was still easy to peak through the cracks and see what the weather was doing—though there was never a point in doing so because the daytime weather of Neighborhood 8 was supposed to be always sunny and cloudless. In the two months that he had been at the plantation, that had always been the case.

And so it was quite alarming to find the sun was completely hidden behind an impenetrable layer of featureless grey. The shift had been very sudden, taking place over the span of maybe a few minutes at the most, and seeing this change take place immediately told him and the other slaves traveling along the road feel that something was wrong. Several people hurried into their cabins while many more sped up along their respective routes towards cabins of their own. Midday was among these people, hoping that maybe Gork or Romulo could offer some kind of explanation for the phenomenon when they made it back to the cabin for the day.

♦

Midday slept for another hour or so after returning to the cabin and, upon waking up, he was greeted with the deafening roar of unnaturally heavy rain crashing down against the wooden roof. At first, it made him assume he had somehow slept past sunset because it was not especially uncommon for it to rain during the night—though that rain was usually little more than a drizzle—but, upon looking through the cracks in the walls, he noticed that there was still light in the sky, albeit faint behind the dense fog that had set in.

Half a dozen narrow waterfalls of rainwater poured down into the cabin through cracks in the roof and had presumably been doing so for quite some time, seeing as the was the floor had already flooded to the point of being several inches deep. Holy hell… Just what are they thinking? He carefully stood up atop the elevated board that passed for his bed and surveyed the cabin.

The water was still low enough that no serious had been caused but, seeing as the rain seemed to be getting heavier, he worried that the cabin would incur some serious damage if nothing was done about it. Seriously… What’s going on out there? He prayed that his cabinmates would make a quick return so that they might provide an explanation.

Midday knew that the weather almost certainly had something to do with the upcoming arrival of Siempre Elvanera, but he struggled to see why the person who controlled the weather throughout the plantation had chosen to make the Neighborhood as miserable as possible prior to Siempre’s arrival. He dreaded the thought of trudging through knee-deep mud on the following morning—and he was regretfully thankful that somebody else would be tasked with completing his quota for the coming day.

In any case, Midday decided that he had no time to sit around thinking about the flood or any of the potential reasons for it. His house was flooding and there was hardly anything he could do about it for, even if he plugged the holes in the ceiling, water could continue pouring in from the cracks and the walls and the gaps between the door and its frame. The only way to deal with the water, he believed, was to wait. Even so, seeing his house incurring damage so rapidly was stressful enough to force him out of the cabin and out onto the street where the rainstorm immediately rendered his clothes drenched.

“Is anyone out there?” He called out to the neighboring cabins out of reflex. Crying out for help was by no means something he enjoyed, but Midday was the type to cave in to whatever he deemed necessary rather easily. “I need some help here!”

It was impossible to see much of anything more than maybe ten feet away because of the dense fog and the heavy rain, but Midday knew that the people living in the surrounding cabins had surely returned from work by then. There were a few seconds of silence before a voice called out to him from across the street.

“Flooding?” The voice was mostly drowned out under the endless roar of the rainstorm, and the fog was dense enough to render the speaker invisible, but Midday could still recognize from the tone that the person asking the question was unperturbed by the rain—coming across as quite aloof.

“Yeah! Any ideas for what to do?”

“Not really.” The person, who was still invisible behind the fog, answered without hesitation. “I’ve got this handy dandy Umbrella Ring on me at the moment so, frankly, I’m not really even thinking about it.” Judging from their voice and the accent that went along with it, Midday guessed that it was an educated woman with an easygoing demeanor. The fact they had mentioned a so-called ‘Umbrella Ring’ was a bit strange, but he didn’t want to jump to conclusions. “But let me tell you this: if your house is already flooding after only a few hours, it won’t last to the end of the month. It’ll be raining nonstop for the 30 days or so—unless the experiment ends up killing all of you before then, that is.”

“Huh?” Midday winced. Who was this person? He had no idea. The way they were talking made it sound like they knew why the weather was acting so strangely. “What do you mean by that?”

“Who knows? All saying is that you either need to make some serious upgrades to that cabin of yours or find a completely new place to live.” The person stepped forward out of the fog and gradually came into view until Midday realized that the person he was talking to was by no means a slave. They wore the same uniform as Jenjo—complete with a burgundy trench coat on which Elvanera Group’s insignia was emblazoned and some form-fitting trousers. She wore three golden rings on her right hand and a silver one on her left and, upon seeing how the rain seemed to curve around her as though there was an invisible roof above her head, he decided that her Umbrella Ring—along with the other three—was a special-grade item. “Say, do you know where I could find a girl called Netari? I’m told she lives somewhere around here.”

“Who are you?” Midday took a step back. Was this Siempre Elvanera? He struggled to imagine that there could be anyone else with enough money to afford four special-grade rings. “And, if you don’t mind me asking, what business do you have with Netari?”

“Mulberry Slumpson is my name. I’m the head guard over at Neighborhood 3.” She replied nonchalantly. “I’m probably not supposed to tell you any of the specific details, but I don’t think any harm will come from telling you that Siempre asked me and a whole bunch of other people to come to this Neighborhood to do some preliminary work for tomorrow.” Mulberry shrugged. “Talking to Netari is one of my assignments.” Mulberry walked closer to Midday, pointed her middle finger up to the sky, and said: “Expand.”

The radius of the invisible roof produced by her Umbrella Ring tripled in size, expanding until it was almost as wide as the road itself. Midday found that the rain had stopped pouring down above him and that he was no longer getting wet—though the ground beneath was still muddy. The linen wraps that passed for his rudimentary shoes fell apart a little bit more in accordance with the sensation of his feet sinking deeper into cold mud.

“Gotta love the Umbrella Ring, I gotta tell ya,” commented Mulberry. “Neighborhood 3 is actually even rainier than this, so having one of these suckers is pretty much a requirement for anyone who works there… But I never thought I’d need it in the sunny wonderland that Neighborhood 8 is supposed to be. Crazy how things change.” She took a step forward. “Enough chit-chat! Could you go ahead and lead me to Netari’s place?” Mulberry gestured for Midday to start moving and, seeing as he was dealing with someone who could kill him with zero effort, Midday pushed his worries about his flooding cabin into the back of his mind and started walking. Mulberry followed close behind.