After an exhausting interview in a crystalline domain and a thorough check up to cap things off, the girls are utterly exhausted even if they technically have just woken up. The sun shines brightly above their wall-sized windows, preventing them to doze a couple more hours in their now cold-interior rooms. Selica lies on her bed, once a wooden frame complete with the creaks one can hear from lying on it, and feels the unusual cold steel hugging her body to sleep. ”I’m taking a shower.” Gallian eagerly leaves her bed and heads straight towards the restroom. Selica again notices her friend's red hair subtly glowing from the sweat coming down from her forehead.

“Well, I’d like to take a walk around the district. Even just around the stalls near us.” Ashlin says, “How about you Selica? What do you wanna do first?”

”Aside from sleeping?” Selica really wants to hug her exhaustion away through the fluffy pillow she’s holding, but the sun’s vibrant rays prevent her. “I could maybe look for that hall the aids were talking about, see how they joined and see who didn’t.”

”I see, looking for Shellon I’m guessing.” Ashlin quickly assumes what she meant. ”Y-Yes! Last I saw him he was about to...pass, but since M was able to talk to them earlier I’m positive that he’s alive and well.”

Though Selica is worried about her friend Shellon, in truth she’s more curious about the rest of her potential neighbors. She has seen a brief glimpse of them during the final conflict, and unlike Shellon’s group Selica never had the opportunity to talk with them as they were mortal peril at that time. Hopefully now that the danger has finally passed, starting a conversation can start smoother than before.

“Okay, say hi for me and Gallian for them.” Ashlin starts walking towards the bathroom door. “Hey Galli, I’m going out and window shop, you’re gonna follow me?” ”What?” Gallian’s voice hollowly echoes inside the bathroom. “Sure, I guess. I’m getting hungry as well.”

”But we just ate?” Ashlin quickly responds, but stops midway. “I think?” She holds her stomach and Selica can hear faint rumbles coming from it. Was the meal they ate back in M’s place not real?

”Anyways, I’ll be going now.” Selica waves as she leaves the room. She can ponder about M’s weird dimension later. ”Hey where is is she going-!” But before Gallian could finish her sentence Selica had already left the room. Outside of their room is a more accommodating, and less interior-fluid, hotel proper. High ceiling decorated with chandeliers accompanied by wood and gold accents. The walls are made from a varnished wood Selica could have only seen in churches or highly-official buildings rarely established in Heroes Hill. The smell of the hallway is aromatically sweet, similar to a bed of Frolick Daisies her parent’s neighbor used to plant near her room’s window.

“This is definitely a better hotel than the one in Mushvel.” She says out loud as she walks through the hall. The hallway is quite spartan despite the ornamental furniture decorated along the way. Selica allowed her curiosity to inspect the other rooms’ doors. Though all the doors are identical in both shape and size, the only difference between each other is a piece of paper tacked on top of it. Selica looks closer and reads multiple names listed on the paper. Unfortunately after crossing through all the rooms leading to the end of the hallway, none of the names listed in the papers ring familiar to her.

Eventually Selica reaches the railings leading down to the stairway. But instead of seeing a set of stairs going either up or down, she’s met with a huge extravagantly decorated pit instead. It’s like a deliberate space ornate with the same gold and wooden arrangement of décor left gaping and open at the edge of the hotel, extending greatly in both ends. Selica tries to sense any form of magic in the pit, but the instant she does a vibrant force of mana alerts her senses. The mana forms into a font cascading from the top of the building flowing down to the deeper from where she is. Selica tries to reach out towards the said font of mana mentally, and the mana quickly responds by showing a mental prompt on her head.

”Floor?” She received a telepathic word echoing through her head. She’s read about this, instead of creating normal stairs and other mundane accessibility features like doors and such some arcane architects would use telepathic automations instead to replace them if they can get away with. And seeing as Selica is in Magecraft City, she’s kind of expecting to see some “wild” implementations of magical automations in her stay here.

”Ground Floor.” She answers’ back telepathically hoping she gets the right response for it, and sure enough after a brief pause a small railed elevator slowly lowers itself from above to her floor. Selica both excitedly and hesitantly steps on the elevator and the moment she enters the elevator lowers itself at moderate speed. While going down, Selica tries to look at the other floors but is prevented to do so as every floor is obfuscated by a thick layer of blue fog (similarly colored to the color of the mana she felt guiding this elevator) instead.

”Ground Floor.” Another mental voice telepathically speaks to her as she approaches her destination. Selica jumps out of the elevator and is greeted with a more lively and accommodating atmosphere of the hotel’s foyer.

The first thing Selica sees are the tall golden encrusted wooden pillars marking the hotel’s foundation. Similar to the ones near her room, these pillars also carry a similar scent of Frolick Daisies. Next to these pillars she notices crowds of people engrossed working in the hotel’s entrance hall. Busy bodies all doing their part in conjuring and restoring the magical gaps Selica can feel in the foyer. Some of these mages are humans just like her, but there are also face-veiled elves, brisk-looking orcs, multi-limbed drider-folk, short-statured halflings, statuesque dwarves, stone-skinned ravinites, and more races Selica has never even heard or seen before. She’s in awe that despite all these vastly different races differing from one another, they make it look so easy to work together.

But before Selica becomes completely enamored by the atmosphere, she snaps herself back to why she’s down here in the first place. “Focus Selica.” She shakes her head. “Concierge first.” She briskly looks around to where the concierge is and sees a large circular table manned by what she assumed to be a uniformed individual in it. Selica approaches the table and is quickly greeted by a Ravinite in uniform. Ravinites, also known as zombies or the “undead” in some other cultures, have a distinct feature by having their skins akin to rocks and stones compared to the fleshy counterpart from other races. Their eyes are also small and quaint with most having four small beady eyes as they’re more accustomed to the dark depths of the ravines around Acclodia rather than up here on the surface. The one who greeted Selica is quite prim. Her painted eyes, neatly tied rope-like white hair and their seemingly polished out “skin” tells Selica that this is a woman who has taken extra care for her looks to be universally accommodating to all races as possible. ”Hello, little one.” She greeted Selica with a rehearsed smile.

“Um, yes. Ac-ccoldia U-uno.” Selica tries to reply in ravenite. She stammers profusely because of all the languages she has practiced in her youth, Ravenite has never been at the top of her list. Despite being Acclodia’s secondary native tongue, there’s really not many books from the Ravinite people that have not been translated in the common tongue. And since she has never been one to leave Heros’ Hill before up until recently, she has never found any motivation to learn the language at all.

Instead of answering in common though, the concierge woman simply looks at her with a curious intensity. Selica can feel the woman’s beady eyes staring at her intently, and then smiling. ”Nativides!” Haila pitiynes, aruchesa!” The concierge exclaimed in ravinite and then proceeded to talk in the same tongue at Selica who was visibly at a loss in the conversation.

“Please, I-I only know a few words.” Selica answers back in common with a flustered face. She could not even comprehend any of the things the concierge said to her. ”Oh apologies!” The concierge returns back to the common tongue. “I thought you were fluent, seeing as you knew our greeting. Apologies. My name is Zirnel, I’m the hotel’s concierge, is there anything you wish to ask?”

“Yes.” Selica quickly picks up the common as if she was thirsty for water. “I would just like to ask where the hall is reserved for the...new tenants?”

With that question the calm and cheery Zirnel immediately turned cautious, and started opening books under her table. “May I ask your name please.”

”Selica Bursnan.” Selica answers briefly.

”Let me check.” Zirnel quickly scans the books she’s holding and within a minute she places her finger on top of a page and extended her hand to Selica. “Your hand please, mam.”

”Um yes.” Selica extends her hand for Zirnel to hold it. A brief burst of mana surged between Selica and Zirnel and after a moment it subsides.

“Okay Selica. I’ve just confirmed your identification.” Zirnel released her grip on Selica’s hand. She then started writing something on a piece of paper and handed it back to her.

When Selica opens the piece of paper, all she’s given is a bunch of symbols and characters totally alien to her. Some are obviously shapes, others are squiggly lines meant to look like cursive, and others are just dashes of some sort. ”Just go back to the elevator where you came from, and think “Hameza Hallway”. That and this piece of paper will navigate you through the corridors to get you where you need to go. Okay?” Zirnel quickly replies.

Selica looks back at the paper and finally realizes that she’s holding some kind of password to navigate the hotel’s transportation system. If a hotel has such a strict and secretive method of protecting smallholdings like this, she can’t even begin to fathom the layers of security for some of the more important areas in the city.

“Thank you!” Selica immediately bows and replies. “Also! Can this paper be used multiple times?”

”Oh you don’t need to. Once you’ve traveled to said place once, the elevator will let you get there just through telepathic command.” Zirnel immediately replies. “If you mean with your friends, unfortunately you can’t unless you accompany them to get to the place together.” ”Okay, thank you.” Selica waves goodbye as she leaves the concierge area.

“You’re welcome! And be careful! Hey! We still need an additional layer of magic here.” Zirnel replies happily as she pivots back to meet another group of mages working within the lobby.

Selica runs back towards the elevator, ignoring the tugging curiosity pulling her back towards the foyer area to talk with the other mages in there. She used every once of her self control to just reach the elevator and mentally say “Hameza Hallway”. But once she did, the elevator immediately followed her instruction and immediately moved. At first the elevator moved up, but then it suddenly moved to the left, then to the right, then down, then horizontally. In a few quick turns, Selica is utterly lost already in the different fog-covered hallways she is in between, but eventually the elevator slowed in front of a clear floor. Instead of being greeted by a long hallway, Selica is instead welcomed by a huge golden door right at the cusp of the elevator.

“Hameza Hallway.” The voice speaks in her mind once more. Selica slowly leaves the elevator, and once she does the elevator slowly leaves, leaving an empty magically-empowered space in its wake.

Selica cautiously walks towards the doors, trying to feel any magical signature she could find, and so far she can feel that most of it can be found behind these doors. She reaches out towards the doors and slowly pushes them. Selica expected them to be rough, and would require more strength than she could possibly have, but the moment she pushes them the door willingly opens.

The interior is nothing compared to the golden brimmed decor the hotel has been carrying. The entire room is white and gray, lit by ghost fire chandeliers to perfectly illuminate its interior. Inside the room are large circular tables with ghost-like images appearing on top of them. Selica can see some figures hovering over these tables while some have diagrams and even blueprints of some sort. In between these tables are people, some familiar some are not, conversing and using the table all together. Selica walks in, bypassing the room’s scrutiny as they completely focus on a myriad of topics, some of which focuses on the things being shown above the tables. She manages to catch glimpses of them; some tables show plant-like of different sorts, others show rock formations, others show maps, and few of them show scribbles of what she could only perceive words.

In between these focused groups of people are small elevated platters filled to the brim with different assortments of delectables. Selica tries to look at the closet platter near her and sees some familiar foods placed on them: wolfbait soup, cherry pop stew, and sautéed bristleboar hide. She looks over to the other table and they even offer more selections absent to the ones closest to Selica

“It’s exactly the same!” A familiar voice echoed from across the hall. Selica curiously follows the voice and immediately finds out that it was Shellon’s. Shellon’s group are all huddled up together in one table arguing. The image floating in their table is a four-legged beast. ”No it’s not, stupid.” Despi’s familiar voice answers back. “Look at the muscular lining here, the wiring is more ancient than the oldest runners we’ve faced.”

“And look at these teeth.” Cartrid is at the very back of the table trying to spin the floating image in the table towards him. “It’s obvious that teeth are more rugged than the ones we’ve faced before. If the report is true, then these teeth are used to bite down solid rock.”

Selica followed the string of arguments from their group until eventually she arrived at their table. She notices that Shellon’s entire group is there, even Deringer who’s been sitting (might actually be sleeping as Selica guesses) on the far side of the table.

“Oh Selica!” Shellon immediately notices and waves at her. “You’re up already. Seeing that you’re here means you took the offer, huh?” ”Y-yes!” Selica is caught off-guard a bit. Her eyes wandered around and saw that every other table had other similar projections just like the ones where Shellon and his group are. “What is this place?”

“Hard to say.” Old man Deringer is sitting by a chair beside his group. “When we got here the whole place was deserted, the only thing inside were these hologram tables.” He taps the closest table with the butt of his gun.

“From our guess it’s an information hub.” Revo adds. “But, with no one to brief us or to greet us even, the whole place is definitely suspicious.”

Selica scans around the hall. The place is spacious enough to fit in around hundreds more of people as the room expands further to both the east and west wing indefinitely, but if she recalls the place from the outside, the hallway could not possibly be this long at all. She can feel the walls emanating a certain degree of magic, purposefully extending the hallway’s dimension to fit the magic’s need, vaguely similar to what happened during the test. Selica has previously noticed the city’s carefree use of spatial distortion magic and she’s not sure how to feel about it. In one hand, the confidence the city has in distorting spaces so freely to fit their need like a mage inspires her, on the other hand she recalls the Psy rain during the test and fears what might happen if a space like this is full to the brim and is suddenly became wet by that anti-magical rain. Which also raises another question, how were they able to maintain the spatial magic of the testing hall under that heavy rain?

After a brief fright, Selica recollects herself back to reality and allows her eyes to wander aimlessly through the crowd. So many mages of different origin and potential. These people will all be my neighbors, she says to herself. There’s a level of excitement brewing inside the young mage as she tries to guess what masteries of magic her neighbors will have. After the test, she’s learnt that simply knowing a plethora of spells is not the only determinant to consider one as a mage. As Deringer has shown her, even the simplest of magic missiles can become truly destructive even in the most anti-magic of situations with enough mastery and knowledge applied to it.

Then another thought pops up in Selica's ever curious mind. All these people agreed to still be in Magecraft City despite what happened during the test. She’s heard the numbers from Lady M earlier, but seeing these same numbers in person makes her realize how many they are actually. Selica starts to ponder. Was the test not as difficult as she might have thought? Does the promise of becoming a resident of Magecraft City really outweigh the horror that they had to go through during the test?

Or are these people just exiles and being forced to live here despite what they’ve been through their only path to survive.

For Selica, she has already committed to becoming a resident of the city. She may not have fully accepted it internally, but the first steps towards said outcome are ones she willfully made. She’s slowly convincing herself that the weight of the test’s struggles is only slightly less heavier compared to the promise of being a part of a city made specifically to cultivate and nurture mages. This is her rationale, it may not be a perfect one but it is the morale footing she has decided to stand on to grow as a mage.

She looks down at her hands, still slightly singed from the stupid burn Gallian did to her hand in case they did die during the final confrontation. There’s another, more personal reason why she took the offer to be a citizen of Magecraft City. The newly found friendship she’s built with Gallian and Ashlin is like a precious diamond she found while digging through the test, and she is not willing to let go of it. Leaving the city and having her memories of them removed is not something she’s willing to risk even with the burnt mark reminder present in her hand. She wonders if these people also have the same moral or a personal reason for staying here.

“Is the offer really worth it?” Selica speaks her mind unknowingly then quickly closes her mouth after she realizes it.

“Hm?” Fortunately for Selica, it seems that only Shellon was able to hear her muttering.

“No, I mean-.” Selica flusters, but slowly mellows out to explain what she means. “I mean, is being in Magecraft City really worth it after what happened during the test? Would that not deter most for ever entering the city after that?”

”Ah that question, huh.” Shellon listens sagely to his young friend’s concern. “It’s the biggest question everyone here seems to be asking, and truth be told the gang and I almost didn’t take the offer. We've had our fair share of shitty situations happen to us during our service because of some higher ups before. What happened during the test, or rather who made things happen, was very reminiscent of those times and we just didn't want to go through any of that again.” He answers.

“Then what made you stay?” Selica asks.

“This thing.” Shellon points back at the floating still image of a creature floating in the middle of the table. At first Selica didn’t understand what Shellon meant. It’s just an animal Selica thought, but as she stares longer she notices that instead of flesh, the animal in question is instead made from metal.

“What...is that?” Selica could determine the basic parts it has of what supposed to be an animal, but instead of it being made from muscle, tissue, and skin, the animal is made out of steel, wire, and electricity. Selica immediately recalls the Faith Crawler she saw in M’s dimension. They didn’t look like they came from the same family tree, but their composition is eerily similar. Selica has studied a fair bit of golemancy before just enough to be familiar with it, but seeing this canine-like contraption and the Faith Crawler really blows her mind how that study has evolved on its own.

“It’s a Sand Hound.” Shellon explains. “Or we think it is. Its design and the design we used to hunt back in Ben Hallow dessert is eerily similar. The only difference is some of its minute patterns are too old even from our own database. You can even call it an ancestor of what we used to hunt before.” ”Wait hunt? You used to hunt these things?” Selica stares at Shellon with a puzzled look.

“Yeah, conventional firearms don’t work on these guys’ thick, metallic hides. So they enlist our group to hunt these things using magic missiles instead.” Shellon explains. “But considering these ones are born close to ancient mana crystals, I think the opposite would now be true instead.” Shellon places his hand over his chin and starts rubbing it. Selica has never seen his friend so deep in his thoughts before.

But the inquisitive moment the two shared was broken as suddenly the hallway’s doors started to creak open. Everyone’s attention shifted away from the tables and towards the door.

White Cloaks. The same white cloaks and turbans that used to hunt Selica and the rest of the mages in the city emerge from the other side of the door.

“Silencers? Here?” Shellon instinctually tries to pull out his gun, but Deringer quickly holds his hand.

“Easy there.” Deringer whispers, “We’re not in conflict anymore.”

Shellon visibly took more discipline than he could ever muster to stay his hand from his gun. Despite his calm demeanor, Selica guesses that even his friend is still having a hard time recovering from the fight.

“Captain Misignor, Chief Commander of the Silencer Security Bureau.” The first man introduced himself. He then slowly removed his turban and slowly wrapped both of his hands inside. Once he tightened it, he slowly kneeled down and prostrated himself with his wrapped hand placed in front of him. The other Silencers behind him did the same.

“On behalf of the city’s supposed “protectors” we humble ask for forgiveness for the transgressions my team have made you go through.” The Chief Commander shouted as he planted his faces on the floor in forgiveness.