Chapter 188

Matt felt Aster's excitement bleed over their link like a rising tide as she tried to remain calm enough not to sprint forward ahead of them.

She managed, but he could feel the great effort it took her.

Walking over to Winter, the specter of a woman brought up one hand. Now that he was closer, Matt could see that she only had skin from the wrist down. The forearm was made of twigs and branches, not clothes or some coverings as he first thought.

“Dost thou choose my side in the eternal conflict?”

Matt and the others agreed, with Aster yipping her excited answer.

Hearing that, Winter's raised hand emanated a blue glow that shone down on all of them.

Matt felt like a cup of cold honey was poured on his head, and it numbed him as it slowly crept down his body to reach his toes.

When it finally settled on him, Matt could feel the boon.

It was like his AI, in a way, except it had no interface and didn't really actively do anything. But that was the best comparison he had for the feeling. With a thought, he could sense exactly what perks the boon provided.

Currently, the feedback was simple. “Your ice and shadow powers are strengthened, and you resist damage from the same elements.”

Brushing against the boon had the same effect a second, then a third time. On top of that, there was another layer which confirmed what the recruiter had said. They were immune to the cold so long as they were in service of Winter.

After Winter distributed her boon, the four representatives of the seasons faded away until they vanished. In their collective places, a portal appeared in the air that opened into a blustery snowstorm. The first thing they noticed was the sheer amount of mana. Unlike most of Minkalla, where the mana was sparse or entirely absent, outside of some areas containing active magic, this part of the floor was flooded with winter mana. Then again, it probably was an area of active magic, so maybe it wasn’t that odd.

Once they were alone, Aster jumped into the air in joy. “Minkalla, I forgive you for not giving me a fox tail and ears. I got a winter court! I’m the greatest winner ever! Minkalla was expressly made for meeeee!”

Matt grabbed her on the descent and tucked her under his arm as the rest of them walked through the portal.

Coming out the other side, Matt was ready for a fight. But instead, he found himself on a busy street.

It could have been any low-tech city that still used stone as the main building material, and was currently having a snowstorm. Everything seemed perfectly normal.

Except the people around them.

At first, they seemed human, but when Matt looked directly at them, that illusion vanished like Aster at the sight of a hot bath.

The people walking by had general human proportions, with the same blue-white skin that Winter had, but without the body parts made of trees. Instead, everything else was slightly… off.

Their eyes were both too large. The sclera and pupil were switched, with the center of their eyes being white while the outer edges were various colors.

The differences didn't end there. Their limbs were slightly too long, and their fingers were thin and gangly. It wasn’t much, but his mind, enhanced by his Concept and AI alike, picked up on the differences. Once he saw them for himself, he couldn’t unsee the somewhat disturbing oddities.

When one smiled, he saw that their teeth all had sharp edges. They weren't like shark teeth, but rather human teeth that someone had taken a file to, which somehow made it worse.

It made for something almost human, and something deep inside Matt wanted to smash everyone until nothing remained.

Before he could do more than look at them, what appeared to be a normal human walked over to their side. Matt inspected the man and saw he was in fact a fellow human, possessing none of the features that the monsters had.

He spoke in the Corporations’ language, and in a more friendly manner than their dialect typically displayed. “Hey there. If you want to register with your faction's leader, follow me.”

From what little Matt could read of his body language, he seemed sincere, and they followed him. Still, they kept a decent distance between themselves and the newcomer, ready to react at a moments notice if he turned on them.

The man seemed unbothered and started speaking, trusting them to hear him over the falling snow and noise coming from the monsters around them, which were doing eerily normal things, like buying and selling goods.

“The monsters around us are weird. But don't fight them.”

Liz asked when the man deliberately didn’t say more. “Why not?”

They could hear the smile in his voice as he explained. “First, some background information.” He held out a hand behind himself. Matt rolled his eyes internally at the money-hungry mindset of that Great Power and its people, but pulled out a Tier 14 bar of steel and put it in his palm.

After the man inspected it and it vanished into what Matt assumed was a spatial ring, he explained. “They’re Fae, or at least something approximating it. Associated with the seasons and technically human, but not really. Mostly, it’s in the contracts. Any agreement made is binding, no matter how in jest it may have been made. Treat any offer as serious, because they gain power when fulfilling an agreement, and they gain even more if it’s broken, assuming you even can break them. Always, always ask for the price and conditions when dealing with them. There’s one poor gal from the monster collective, some kind of mink, who was asked if she could help clean up and politely agreed. Last I heard, she was forced to clean up chamber pots with her own pelt and will be doing so for another two days. At the same time, don’t offend them. I’m pretty sure they all have some kind of internal code of honor that acts a bit like an agreement, because they can be scary if they feel their honor has been besmirched.”

Matt whistled. He knew the old legends a little, but not more than the basics that had been in a popular movie a decade ago. Fae hadn’t been seen in a Courtly Warfare floor for at least a few thousand cycles.

They would all need to be careful, and would have to watch themselves around these Fae.

Aster flicked an ear and asked, “Why not just leave?”

The man continued without asking for more money, which earned him a little respect from Matt.

“Like I said, once they enter into a contract with you, they become stronger with the magic to enforce it. Also, even if you manage to kill one on your side, you get no Genesis Energy. You also get blacklisted, the Fae will be hostile to you, and you won’t get any Favor, so your boon won't grow. The only way to remove that is to pay off your bounty by killing the other seasons' Fae, and then give up the Favor that you would have received.”

Matt pursed his lips, hearing that, and asked, “Does that count if you kill one in an accident in a fight? Like wide area attacks?”

The man shook his head. “Nope. Or at least, we don't think so. It's only happened once when a [Bolt] jumped to a wounded Fae. It killed the Fae, but none of the raiding party turned hostile, and his Favor still increased for the kill of the spring Fae. But I would be careful. This is still Minkalla, and it isn't one to be nice.”

Before they could ask another question, the man pointed at the building in front of them.

It, like all the others, was made from stone, but this one at least seemed larger and grander.

When they entered inside, Matt noticed the illusion that had settled over them had vanished to a thin mist. It could be seen through now, even if it still blurred the finer details of everyone.

Their guide led them through the lobby and through a maze of halls until he opened a door with eight desks set up.

Each was manned, and as they walked in, the people sitting at them looked up at them hopefully.

A man on the right side pumped his fist, seeing them. “More Empire! Ha!”

Waving them over, he gestured them over to his desk and stuck out a hand. “Welcome.”

As he did so, Matt inspected the man. He was a dark-skinned man with bright orange eyes that Matt felt were manifestations, just like his own white hole eyes.

“Bradley. Call me Brad if you wish. Nice to meet you all.” The smile he shot at them was hardly visible as the illusion started to creep back over his features, but Matt knew the man.

He was on their list of Empire Pathers who entered Minkalla this cycle openly.

Bradley was part of a team in the last cycle's Tier 10 tournament. He and his wife had come in second place in the team fights, and individually ranked in the top ten for the solo tournament. He was a lava mage with a Talent for the element, but focused on a close-range melee style fighting. He relied on his innate resistance to heat to punish anyone who dared to get close.

Rumor had it that he was changing the definition of what his lava was. From a mix of fire and earth, he was trying to replace the earth part of the lava with metal. It would technically make him a molten metal mage, but what really mattered was if he could make the change with his Talent keeping its effect.

Either way, he was strong and well known.

His wife, Jill, was an archer. Unlike her more hybrid husband, she stuck to more traditional bows and bow spells as much as possible. When fighting in range, she mostly used her bow rather than resorting to magical effects.

While archers normally had issues in close-range combat, Jill had spent more than her fair share of training as a rogue, and was brutally effective with her dagger.

That combo carried the duo through their own Tier 10 tournament without any hiccups.

Seeing Bradley here and manning what could only be a recruiting desk gave Matt a degree of confidence in their entire setup.

After shaking their hands, Bradley asked, “What do you want to be called? I see the blank masks and won't pry, but I need to call you something.”

They had codenames set up beforehand, and Liz easily answered. “Blue, Silver, White, and Yellow.”

She pointed at each of them in turn. Aster was Blue, Susanne Silver, Matt White, and Liz Yellow.

They went with the simple and expedient answer of going with their eye colors, so in the case that their masks failed, they could hopefully still hide most of their identities. There was no reason to paint a target on their backs by revealing their masked identities on a first meeting, after all.

It was slightly problematic with Matt's white hole manifestation in his eyes, but they hoped the code name of White, and not letting people look too long, could remove most suspicion and inquiries.

Bradley took the code names in stride. “Well, good to meet you. First things first, I have some explaining to do. Don’t fuck with our hosts.”

He then repeated nearly word-for-word what they had paid the man from the corporations for.

Matt was only slightly annoyed at paying for free information; it had been simple Tier 14 steel, and nothing too expensive, but being scammed irked him.

After the warning not to make agreements, he started talking about how their faction actually functioned.

“The Fae warriors are set into four categories. As far as we can tell, this stands true for all the factions. First, you have what we are calling privates. They are the rank and file of the troops, basically mid-Tier 14s with nothing besides decent armor and two skills. That skill depends on what they do, by the way, but it's always simple. A melee fighter will have something like [Mana Slash] or the like, while archers will have [Piercing Shot], and the mages have an [Ice Bolt] or something similar. If you reached this level this quickly, and you're peak Tier 12s, you should be able to single handedly carve your way through dozens, if not hundreds of them with your eyes closed. They're trash that takes up space, and little more.”

Bradley paused and hesitated for a second before asking, “You are strong, right? I don't want to assume and get you guys killed.” He held up his hands in a placating gesture, and even nodded to everyone else in the room, who were all deliberately not looking over at them, but were certainly listening carefully.

“I'm not asking for the crowd to listen in, but generally, we like to know what Tier of rifts you guys delved on the outside, and how quickly you do so. It gives everyone else a decent expectation of your skills without giving away anything too important.”

Liz nodded and easily said, “Tier 15, no issues. And we finish them quickly.”

She didn't mention that with Susanne there, they could have reliably pushed into Tier 16 rifts, as that would have been giving away too much information.

Bradley nodded at that, and Matt could feel everyone's attention focusing on them more. “Ok, so top Pather level. Good, good. That makes things easier. Yeah, the privates are trash to you guys, then. They come in large numbers, but get cut down in large numbers. Above them are what we're calling sergeants. They're stronger, smarter, and better equipped. They also give four or five times the amount of Genesis Energy per kill than a private. That comes with an increase in danger, though. They all have at least five or six skills that round out their roles, and they're well-equipped to boot. Don’t underestimate them, but if you're delving Tier 15 rifts without issue, you should be able to defeat the sergeants without issue as well. They're pretty common, and at least one always seems to accompany any group of five or more privates, no matter the mission.”

The older Pather paused for a second and added, “Also, your Favor increases more for killing them as well… Yeah that's about it.”

He looked over to a woman in the seat next to him. “Did I miss anything so far, Tiffany?”

The woman responded in the Guild language, which told them everything Matt needed to know, even if he didn’t recognize her name as an important Guilder. “That's pretty much it for the first two ranks.”

Bradley nodded. “After that, you have lieutenants. They fucking kick ass, and will make you earn each and every kill. So far, we’ve only fought and killed two of them. One was by a Feddy, and he nearly lost his life during the fight. The other was killed by my very own lovely wife, and even she struggled a little. They're peak Tier 14s, all their armor is enchanted to the limit, and they're specialists. If you fight a melee one, he's going to be a fucking beast in close range. Same goes for whatever their specialty may be, mage, ranger, rogue, or whatever combination you can think of. The general consensus is that they’re around as strong as the average Tier 15 boss. But with only two data points, we really don't know much about them beyond the fact that they're strong and good. As we learn more, we try to share it. That's the whole point of this room, after all. All information comes and goes here, so some people can't hide anything.”

The woman in Sect robes spat on the floor at the comment, which spoke volumes at who had tried to hide information.

“Beyond the lieutenants, there are generals. No one has seen one in action, or even seen them at all, but the Fae will happily talk about them. From what we've gathered, they seem to be boss-level humanoids with a combat prowess of at least Tier 16 or Tier 17. We think they’re probably only meant to be taken down in large groups, but like I said, we haven't seen any of them, so it's impossible to confirm.”

Bradley leaned back in his chair and sighed. “That's really all we know. Most of us have only been here for a day or three max, and we're expecting this to drag on for months at a minimum. We have no idea how large this place is, and currently, scouting is our number one priority. If this floor isn't doing anything weird with the space, we expect it to be at least the size of a normal planet. Since there aren't three levels to this floor, we can’t be sure Minkalla didn’t increase the size of this battlefield to compensate. It both has and has not happened historically, so it's just a question of which scenario we fall into.”

The older Pather spent a few more minutes explaining the housing situation and inter Great Power trading.

They had a portion of the city set aside for portable houses, as well as barracks for anyone without such luxuries. And there was both a trading area for the Fae and one for the delvers. Fighting was strictly forbidden inside the city, and would come with heavy penalties to their Favor if anyone tested the Fae on that rule.

Before they left, he asked one final question. “What are you guys good at? Any specialties? We can’t really pay anything for special assignments, as we don't have a central governing structure, but we’re trying to keep track of anyone who can contribute beyond killing. We might have need of your expertise, and Minkalla seems to heavily reward assistive help. Scouting, and sharing that information, is a great source of Favor right now.”

Matt looked around at the eight men and women sitting around, seemingly doing nothing. “Is briefing the new guys also a good source?”

Bradley laughed at that question, but nodded. “A fantastic one. The better we explain things to you guys, the more favor we get, and it's not a little. Can’t say I’ll sit here forever, but before the fighting starts to happen, you won't see me leaving too often.”

After a quick discussion through their AI, Liz answered the original question. “Alchemy and enchanting. We're good, but we aren’t Talented at it.”

The glowing eyes flicked between the four of them before seeming to give up, and he just nodded before writing that down, and adding the note into a larger folder that was passed over to him from the corporation table.

“We doubt you'll want to stay here, so feel free to explore our surroundings. There isn't anything dangerous beyond the odd monster or two, but with our boons, they aren't hostile. The Fae don’t really like it when you kill the same season monsters, but you don't lose Favor, and you do get Genesis Energy. From our scouting forays and repelling actions from the other seasons, we think they act as forward scouts and natural barriers to fast expansion because they are extremely hostile to anyone that isn't on our side.”

Matt nodded to that. It was an interesting tidbit of information he intended to look into after they settled down.

Liz asked a few questions about leadership and things of that nature, but so far, no one had been able to corral all the Great Powers into working together. Right now, they were all just relying on the fact that they were smart and knew what had to be done, but no one was claiming overall strategic control.

Bradley expected that when more people appeared, the palace in the center of the city would open, and Fae leadership would start to direct the battle strategies, as they could only direct sergeants so far, and even that was limited to things like sending out a scouting mission.

Matt nodded to the Pather as they walked back out to the bustling city. The city was packed, and as they walked, he inspected the Fae around them. They seemed so normal and human in their actions.

People carried goods and argued. They chatted and smiled.

It felt far, far too real for his comfort.

Rifts didn’t have sapient life. That was a hard rule that everyone knew. Whether it was because Minkalla was from a higher realm, if that was truly the case, or the fact that it was made up of ruins, the monster's around him seemed too normal. He heard offers of partnerships, merchants hawking wares, and even requests for aid, not that he paid them any mind.

When they exited the city gates they wordlessly took to the air, and Matt only paused around a few hundred feet up as he realized something was wrong.

“Where’s the snow coming from?” He asked as he looked around them.

There were no clouds, but there was a constant flutter of snow that gently fell down. Looking back to the city, he activated his Concept and used his AI to its full potential.

It noticed things he hadn't.

The snow was literally coming from nowhere, and it didn’t seem to build up on anything. Not the streets, nor the ground outside the city. The level of snow stayed static.

It was a striking oddity now that he was aware of it.

Sharing his information with everyone else through his AI, he brought them up to speed.

Susanne shrugged. “This is Minkalla. Weird is normal.”

Aster ran around the air and laughed. “Who cares? It's perfect! I can feel my mana cycling the winter mana in the air on its own. This feels like the home I’ve never had.”

Matt grabbed his excited bond and probed their connection to see if Minkalla was influencing her, but even with a thorough inspection of her spirit, he found nothing wrong or unusual. She was just happy.

Letting her run around again, Matt looked up and asked. “How high do you think the roof of this place is? If we can get high enough, we might be able to see the whole floor.”

Liz shrugged and got on the flying sword he pulled out of his spatial ring. “I don’t know. While Minkalla is a planet, courtly warfare isn't always a sphere. Last time it showed up, it was a giant square surrounded by unbreakable walls.”

As everyone piled on Matt’s flying sword, he threw his entire mana generation into the blade, and they flew off at a crazy speed.

Up and up they went, but the ceiling of the fourth floor never seemed to come any closer.

Even when they flew a thousand miles up, they didn’t seem any closer to the ceiling, so Matt gave up.

He would have pushed higher up, as they were getting farther from the ground, but two things stopped him.

Once they hit the mile-high altitude, the ground underneath them started to become harder and harder to see, as a mist-like layer started to form over the ground. At their current height, it was a wall they couldn't penetrate at all.

The second reason he stopped was the growing feeling that Minkalla was using the same space-expanding trick that it used in the safe room to make sure that no one could ever touch the walls on the ceiling above them.

If that was true, it was literally impossible for them to reach the top, and with the veil over the ground, it was a pointless endeavor anyway. The entire point of them taking to the skies was to scout the surroundings.

Still, it was useful to be so high.

Pulling the mirror that broke illusions, they inspected their surroundings, but found no one spying on them.

Matt opened up. "Plans?”

Aster yipped before anyone else. “I’m going to start getting more Favor somehow. I might try to join a scouting party and start learning the surrounding area.”

Matt nodded at how seriously she was taking this. While she was overjoyed at getting the floor and theme she so badly wanted, she hadn’t forgotten that this was Minkalla.

Susanne nodded. “I think I’ll join you. That was my plan anyway. I don’t really craft anything useful unless we want to send mean letters with really nice handwriting to our enemies. What about you guys?”

Liz looked to Matt, and he explained what he wanted to do. “I intend to abuse the ever-loving shit out of my Talent. We have time before the fighting starts, and I want to use that time to do some support work. My first thought is about scouting. We're practically blind now that we can’t just fly up and check out everything personally, but I have a few ideas about that. If they pan out, I can get us a drone network that will feed information back to the city, where we can aggregate and distribute it. If, and I stress if, it works as I envision, we will have an unparalleled defensive advantage.”

Susanne whistled in appreciation. “You can do that? Damn. That seems really complicated, but I’d love to have an eye in the sky telling me where and when to strike.”

Matt nodded. “That's the idea, at least. We’ll see if I can do it, and if I can, whether or not Minkalla will even allow something like that. But I'm hopeful.”

Liz smiled at him. “I like the idea. I will probably join the scouts for a little while, but I also want to start using the herbs and ingredients we picked up along the way. See what I can do. This floor almost always takes months at minimum for a victor to win, so I have some time to experiment.”

With that settled, they headed back into the city and went their separate ways.

While the others went to scout and see if they could stumble on enemies so close to their city, Matt went back to the human base building and talked to Bradley and the other representatives about his idea.

They were noticeably excited at the idea of a way to see their surroundings, and promised to send him all the metal they had. They also showed him a workshop he could start working in.

There was even a Sect woman who had said she was skilled in forging, who they promised to send his way once she returned from her own patrol.

But first he went to the healers area and found someone who could regrow his missing toes.

Once he did that Matt started doing what he always did when he had a new problem to solve through crafting.

Planning things on his own.

With a rough outline of what he wanted, and how he thought it could be done, he then threw mana at the problem.

With his new Concept application, he could push past Minkalla’s normal restrictions on AIs, and when combined with his 2,560 MPS to throw at the problem, he made progress quickly.

His initial design was based on the golem harvesters he had studied two decades ago, when they dealt with their first ruin.

The golems had small harvesting drones that were able to locate, identify, and collect various items in the area.

He had taken a pair at the time and retrofitted them to work for them harvesting materials in rifts, but eventually, they had gotten stronger, and had access to far more advanced harvesting drones.

He even had a pair of drones that he could use in Minkalla, but they were incredibly complicated, and nearly impossible to even repair, let alone make by the thousands.

And Matt needed thousands, if not tens of thousands of drones for what he wanted.

Which meant he needed to simplify the design.

He had to enter their house and search their crawl space, but he eventually found their own golem drones off in a corner, buried with some of their older equipment that brought back fond memories.

After reminiscing for longer than he should have, Matt went back to his workshop.

Reactivating his AI, he inspected the old drone.

If he had pulled it from a rift, it would have been impossible to read anything, but the golems had been a ruin, and he was able to see how they were built.

Seeing how they worked, Matt shook his head.

It was worse than he remembered, but in a good way.

The drones were dead simple, with Tier 5 runes that used a few clever interactions instead of anything fancy. The issue was that the base design was too simple. He needed something greater than the basic enchantments that the harvester drone had for his plans. Their design worked, but the range was far too limited.

But scaling something up was just a matter of iteration and testing for his AI.

Exiting and putting his house away, Matt used the provided forge and started hammering out a rough drone of copper.

It wasn’t pretty, but in four hours, he had recreated the drone and started adding systems and formations as needed.

The sensor was wholly inadequate, which was only to be expected from a Tier 5 item, but Matt had hoped for more. It could detect humans and materials, but the range was awful.

The harvesting drones he currently used had sensors that detected various light types, and used manatronics that were cheaper to make than the Tier 15 plus runes that the more advanced harvesting and scouting drones used. Tier 15 runes were a million times more complicated, and were nearly impossible for anyone below that Tier to comprehend, let alone enchant.

Using his AI and too much mana, Matt scaled up the sensor formation that the golem drone used.

It was abysmal in both efficiency and range when compared to both the Tier 15 runes and the manatronics, but without the Empire's resources, he had no access to the second method, and couldn’t enchant the first.

As he let his AI work on trying to make a better formation, Matt hammered out a rough body for the drone he wanted to produce.

Unlike the golem harvester, which needed to hover and pick up material, Matt wanted scouts. They just needed to see and send what they saw back to them.

In that vein, Matt scrapped the four repulsion runes the golem harvester and all other commonly known harvesters used, in favor of a more bird-like shape.

He started his design with a basic glider template. There was almost no hope of outmaneuvering someone dedicated to hunting the scouts down, so mana efficiency would be the main priority over speed and stealth.

At first, he wanted to cut out the body altogether, as he didn’t need a fuselage. But he begrudgingly put it back into the design, as he realized he needed somewhere to store their power sources and somewhere for his transmitter.

His next iteration a massive wing-to-body ratio for long-range efficiency, but he ended up quickly cutting that down, as a 41:1 aspect ratio was great for efficiency in static testing, but was awfully visible when he needed something that wouldn’t stand out against the clear sky. He knew he couldn't hide the drones but he didn't need them so large it was impossible to miss them.

It took two revisions of his ideas before he ended up scrapping the overall body when he realized that he would be constrained in size by the internals more so than the wingspan.

With that in mind, he started working on the fuselage when a woman in Sect robes entered his forge.

Matt could feel the distrust that radiated off her as she looked around even before she entered the place.

“I'm White. What should I call you?” Matt offered a hand, but the woman stayed back. It was painfully obvious that she was watching him for hostile movements.

“You may call me Young Mistress Blazing Hammer.” He was going to say hello when she added. “I do not wish to work with imperial scum, but I wish to win more than anything else. If your idea is unworthy, as I expect it to be, I will leave immediately.”

Matt sighed.

This was going to be fun. He just knew it.