Li Li Mei was rooted to the ground as if a ndscaper had pnted her there. Her body was rigid, her face locked on the man in front of her. Jason looked more rexed, but the rigidity of his casual posture told a different story.

  “You know this dy?” Belinda asked.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Does your p only have seven people on it?” Estel asked. “Why do you know them all?”

  “I vaguely recall Taika mentioning that I knew more people amongst the Earth refugees. And that they didn’t join him and Travis because they didn’t want to be sent to me.”

  “And they bet on the kindness of strangers etting help from you?” Estel asked. “How bad is your reputation where you e from?”

  “It’s not great,” Jason admitted.

  “I tell by the way she’s looking at you,” Belinda said. “That’s the way sandwiches look at Neil.”

  Li Mei remained frozen as Jason wandered closer. He was not a tall man, and stood eye to eye with her.

  “Hello, Miss Li. How have you been?”

  She finally found her voice.

  “You really are alive then?”

  “On and off. The people from Earth think I’m dead?”

  “Some. I didn’t believe it.”

  “Why not?”

  “We thought you were crazy, ba Earth. Running around, treating govers and magic fas like they were insequential as you did… whatever it was you were doing. You never expi properly.”

  “No one was willing to listen. All any of you heard was the word ‘power’ running through your heads in a loop.”

  “It was a time of unpreted opportunity, or so we thought. Only after I spent time in this world did I realise that we were dogs, fighting over scraps. You were doing things like they do them in this world, because you thrive here. You fit.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Belinda called out. “He’s weird everywhere he goes.”

  “It’s kind of niowing that it’s not just here,” Estel said.

  “It does feel like a vindication of all the things we say about him behind his back.”

  Jason turo look at them from under raised eyebrows.

  “Do you two mind?”

  “No, we’re good,” Belinda said.

  “She’s very pretty,” Estel observed, drawing an exaggerated look of exasperation from Belinda.

  “You are such a skirt chaser. I ot take you anywhere.”

  “All I said was that she’s pretty.”

  “I’m standing right here and you’re eyeing off other women, right in front of me.”

  Jason shook his head and turned back to Li Mei.

  “e on,” he told her. “We’re taking a walk.”

  ***

  Li Mei’s ste building was in one of Boko’s less reputable areas, a warehouse district far from the gardens and uies.

  “The gold rankers ione,” she said. “That was you, obviously.”

  “Yes,” Jason firmed.

  “I heard it was some famous team out of Vitesse.”

  “My team. I just haven’t been on it for a while.”

  “I never liked following adventurer news. Clearly, I should have been more diligent.”

  As a fner and a small woman moving alone, she’d stantly caught looks as she made her way through the streets, fending off unwatention with her aura. Moving through those same streets with Asano was a pletely different experience.

  “What’s going on?” she asked him.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “We’re very obvious outsiders here, but people are stepping around us without so much as a g’s almost like they’re pretending they don’t see us.”

  “They’re subsciously not paying us any attention. If we do something too unusual, they’ll notice. And a small number of people respond with aggression and anger instead of getting lulled in.”

  “You’re doing this?”

  “It’s bee a habit. I try to avoid attention when I , these days. I stop it, if you like.”

  “How? Some kind of mind trol?”

  “I don’t think magi do that, at least not directly. The soul barrier shields the mind, so you have to use workarounds. Physiologically maniputing the brain, that kind of thing. The goddess of knowledge ’t read minds, but she has access to all knowledge, so she effectively .”

  “Then how?”

  “Aura manipution. I ’t alter their auras, but I modute mio something that most people will instinctively and subsciously overlook. It’s like how you never look at your habitual surroundings unless something ges and makes it stand out. I’m giving off ‘that chair in the er you never sit in’ vibes.”

  “And you’re doing it for both of us.”

  “I first started w on this ba Earth, based on some vampire tricks. I’ve had a lot of practise and training with my aura sihen.”

  “Now that I’ve seen this world, I only wonder how much you could have offered us ba Earth. If we’d treated you like a visiting dignitary instead of a odity to be divided up.”

  “My knowledge was limited. Farrah was the one you should have goer.”

  “No offence, Mr Asano, but you were a lot easier to manipute. She ko shut up and walk away when she didn’t know something.”

  He let out a chuckle.

  “You have more knowledge now,” she said. “As do I. You were here for what? A year and a half befoing back? I’ve beeen times that. The things I could do oh now. I could ge the world.”

  “It’s been a long time, Miss Li. The world ged on its own.”

  “You have tact with Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “We’re not here for me to answer your questions, Miss Li. We’re here to decide what happens to you now.”

  “I didn’t do anything illegal.”

  “Pallimustus takes more of a ‘spirit of the roach thah does. Which you know, or we wouldn’t have caught you running.”

  “And you’ve been given discretionary power over me.”

  “If someone had to give it to you, it’s not real power. Especially not in this world. You’ve beeo my discretion because I took that authority, and because no oh the power to challenge me will do so. Not over you. Which is why I am assuming you chose this low magie for your little scheme.”

  “It wasn’t that little.”

  “A matter of perspective, I suppose.”

  “You were like this oh, too. Ag as if our s were too small for you to bother with on anything but a whim.”

  “They were.”

  “I realised that, after ing here. But now we’re here, and you’re still ag more important than everyone else.”

  “It’s not me that’s important. I have responsibilities.”

  “Saving the world again? In an unexpined way, from an iermihreat, but trust you, it’s really important?”

  “Stop that. You know I like banter, so you’re trying to engage me. Make me like you.”

  “Is it w?”

  “I’ve had better,” he said, but a smile teased the ers of his mouth. “I’m not going to kill you, Miss Li, or hand you over to the local authorities. As much as I do like the direess of how things are done here, the more discretionary the power, the greater the ce for corruption. This pce be barbarid the only che that is the moral pass of whoever has the power.”

  “No world is perfect, I suppose.”

  “No. Same for the people in them, even those of us who get to travel to both.”

  Their meandering path led out of the warehouse distrid into a nicer area, close to a small uy campus. The buildings were a mix of sandstone blocks and the region’s signature green brick. There were tall, thin trees, simir to palms. Leafy green pnts grew out of pots and alcoves, or dangled from balies. Water features were promi, from els that fed the abundant pnt life to fountains pced at road juns as roundabouts.

  “They call this the Oasis City,” Li Mei said. “There are multiple apertures to the water astral space here. Apparently, some cult tried to sabotage them years ago, but they are well guarded, here. The cult had more luck out in the desert, so I’ve heard.”

  “They did.”

  “You were involved?”

  “Peripherally. I was still in training when the big battle took p the water astral space itself, so I missed out. Which was good, because a lot of people more powerful than me died, including my friend Farrah.”

  “This is a different Farrah from the oh you oh?”

  “No. I died too, ter, fighting the being that cult worships. When I came back to life oh, some itities decided that she should as well. They thought there should be at least one person I trust there.”

  “There were a lot of reports, ba Earth. Interviews with people who entered you. You used to talk off-the-cuff about things so outndish that we would dismiss them as nonsense. Like ing back from the dead. Now, I realise that at least some of them were true. I’m more credulous than I was, but ic beings bringing people back from the dead is a lot, even for this world.”

  “Go ask the goddess of death. Her church gave me a certificate to say how many times I’ve died.”

  “Isn’t the death god a man?”

  “Gods like to keep things flexible in that regard.”

  “You say that like you know a lot of gods.”

  “How much of this is you pretending not to have exhaustively researched everything you could about me after getting to Pallimustus?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Your aura reveals your emotions to me, Miss Li. You are doing a remarkable job of hiding your fear, by the way. I used to do that, but I lost the knack. It’s healthier to work through the emotions than bottle them up, believe me.”

  “I saw you murder people on television with your mind, Mr Asano. I believe you.”

  “Good. Now, enough about me. Tell me about this operation of yours. The local authorities are worried that you’re quietly fundraising an undead army or something.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “They don’t know you. They have no idea what you would and wouldn’t do, and the worst-case sario is always bad on this world. It wasn’t that far from here that a blood cult was trying to summon a world eating leech monster.”

  “Don’t you summon a leech monster?”

  “He’s a good boy,” he said defensively. “Anyway, the point is that they don’t know what you want because they don’t know you. You were careful about that part.”

  “Not careful enough.”

  “You were doing quite well, until gold rankers came along. In this part of the world, that’s bringing a bazooka to a knife fight. Belinda ael have decades of experie spying and thieving. Disguise magic to for anyoo see through, and perception that listen to you from three buildings over. Hardly anyone uses privacy magic here. Few people have the perception to make it worthwhile, so using a privacy s here makes you stand out more than whispering in a er in a big bck cloak.”

  “That’s how they found me? Because I was using a privacy shield?”

  “It was a data point. Overall, they were very impressed with how you set everything up. They suggested I hire you.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m trying to build up a staff, to smooth out my return to Earth. It’s going to get plicated, especially ohey think they knoerful I am.”

  “Ohey think they know?”

  “Best they don’t find out how powerful I actually am.”

  “And telling me meaher you’re lying and wao tell them, or you don’t think I’ll be able to.”

  A sanguine smile was the only response she got.

  “You know that going back to Earth is no small thing, magically. I looked into it.”

  “I have better options than most.”

  “Any options are better options than most. Messenger magic?”

  “Amongst other things, but we’re talking about you. Take me through the basics of your operation.”

  “Simple enough. A basic prote racket using disenfranchised workers as my leverage. Wouldn’t work iies where the industry associations work a lot like unions. In the remote areas, though, it’s all aristocratiers and exploited workforces. All I had to do was exploit them better. A towing here, a pamphlet there. A few well-pced figureheads who are handy with a rhyming slogan. Did you ever see the episode of Justified where Boyd Crowder vihe townsfolk to sell their nd to Mags Be?”

  “How good was Walton Goggins in that? My sister said he had a tooth essence, of all things. Sorry, what was your point?”

  “I paid charismatic people with folksy charm and no morals to vince people to do what I want. I may have also actally ied try music here.”

  “The good kind? I love me some Dolly Parton or Johnny Cash.”

  “No. The kind that pao the audieh iic rural imagery to mask an underlying political agenda.”

  “Maybe I should hand you over to the Adventure Society. You’re a monster.”

  “The point is, I rile people up until they cause trouble, then the families pay me to grease the wheels of industry. I get paid and the locals get some tokeure so they feel like they got a win.”

  “You didn’t get pushback from the families?”

  “They sent some people to look around. Rough up random people. If they were petent, they wouldn’t be w as thugs for aristocrat families at the bottom of the magical barrel. They quickly realised I was careful enough that paying me would be cheaper than finding me.”

  “Is that why you did it here, so close to where I lived? The low grade of industry thug?”

  “In a way. What the low magic gets me is an absence of everything that high magic gets me. Do you know what it’s like in a big adventuring city?”

  “I do.”

  “But not in the same way I do, I suspect. You had proper adveraining. Powerful es. It’s different when you’re an untrained core user from another world. In the big cities, that makes you a waste of potential at best and an experimental subject at worst.”

  “A big ge from your treatment oh. Low magies gave you some of that back?”

  “Yes. I got out of Estercost. The whole try is bubbling with magic. I did some wandering. It was easy enough to pass for an aristocrat from some po one has heard of, os from my family.”

  “You seem to have done alright for yourself.”

  “I discovered the advantages of low magies. They don’t look down on core users as much, and silver rankers are the peak elites. In pces like this, I got some of the respect that I missed from Earth. And once I had that, I could make money.”

  “For what? I’ve heard you’re raking it in, but if it’s not to fund a waeancer, what are you doing with it?”

  “Did you know that you buy gold-rank monster cores here?”

  “So?”

  “So? Do you have any sense of how hard those are to get your hands on ba Earth? They let me look at one ohrough reinforced gss while fnked by armed guards. Here, you just walk into a trade hall and buy them. It takes an ungodly amount of mohus, the racket, but you just buy them. For money!”

  “You want to reach gold rank?”

  “Who doesn’t want to reach gold rank?”

  “Fair enough. You couldn’t find anything more legitimate?”

  “Breaking into new markets is hard, and I was no mertile expert oh, let alohis p. But people, when you get down to it, are always the same. Australian, ese, elf, leonid. People are people, rich people are rich people, and they do what rich people do.”

  “Exploit poor people.”

  “Exactly. I’ve been running this game all over. For years, now, going from one low magie to the . Never pushing too hard, never overextending, and never overstaying my wele. This isn’t the first time I was heading to a sudden and discreet exit. Just the first time I was caught.”

  “It’s not what I’d call moral.”

  “There are worse things to do that stir up people with legitimate grievances. I may even have actally instigated positive social ge, once or twice.”

  They were passing by a water fountain with a lot of foot traffic moving around it. There was a wide, slightly damp lip for people to sit, and Jason did so. Li Mei followed suit. He pted her words for a while, w how much was true and what was a lie. He could read the emotions in her aura, but using that as a lie detector was more plicated than he made out. Which he was certain she knew.

  He could read her emotions, but her aura trol was very solid now, which it had not been oh. She was very good at regimenting how her mind was reflected in her aura, making it harder for an observer to glean information from it. He had to respect that, given that it was a talent he excelled at himself.

  He also suspected that her actual mind was as well-anised as her aura, something he had not exceled at. She was good at framing the facts in such a way that they pointed where she wanted, instead of at the truth.

  “If you came to work for me,” he said, “your loyalty would have to be to me. Not a, not one of the magical fas. Not even my , ba Earth. To me.”

  “You want to offer me a job?”

  “Maybe. Haven’t decided, yet.”

  “When I saw you in my ste building, I thought it was the end. The dangers ba Earth were sedate for someone like me. Whe, you were fun, na?ve, charming. A little dangerous, but that was exg. By the time you were killing people with your aura on television, I knew all that was left was dangerous. I thought you were a maniac. Then, I’m about to go on the run and there you are. It felt like I was standing with a cliff at my back, and you were there to push me off. I remember what you were like, ba Earth. At the end. No one knew if you were going to make a joke or snap and kill twenty people.”

  “I’ve had a lot of therapy. And I know what it’s like to be desperate and alone, in a world you don’t uand. This is not a cliff, Miss Li, and I’m n to push you off.”

  “So you say. What if I tell you that I don’t want to work for you?”

  “Then you catch a ride back to Earth with the rest. Ahlings I round up. I’ll take you all back to Earth, unless you don’t want to go.”

  “I want to go. After everything I’ve seen and learned here? I’m going to have so much money and power it’s obse.”

  “Not ied in w for me, then?”

  “Of course I’m ied. In this city, diamond rankers are practically a myth but, from what I hear, they’ve been hanging around you like you’re all golf buddies. I’ve heard that you tend to get caught up in crazy things, but everyone in your orbit is wealthy and famous. Standio you is like pining that the hailstones are made of gold. The only problem I’ll have is getting you to trust me. Because you probably shouldn’t.”

  “I’m not promising to take you on, just take you to Earth. But if Stel and Lindy say you’re worth it, I’m not going to ighat.”

  “I’m not going to say yes to that. Or no. If your offer is real, I’d like to talk to some of your people. See what I’m potentially getting into.”

  “And I o look into what you’ve been up to before I make that offer. See what kind of person I…”

  She looked at him as he trailed off, looking around with suspi on his expression.

  “Something’s here,” he said and stood up off the side of the fountain. “Something that’s very good at—”

  A massive sword bde erupted from his chest.

  Annou

  TL;DR:

  No chapters st week of August and first week of September

  Dragon appearance schedule below

  I'll be taking some time off to attend Dragon at the end of August into the start of September. That's a lot of travel time, to and from Australia, especially my part of it, which is an isnd south of the mainnd. I'll be taking two weeks, which will include a little time to recharge the batteries.

  For those who will be attending Dragon and want to see what I'm up to, here is my event schedule (subject to ge by anisers):

  Wednesday (Pre- event): In versation with Matt Dinniman, author of Dungeon Crawler Carl. There will be signings at the ends, but this is more Matt's event than mine, and will require purchasing one of his new re-releases to attend. https://eagleeyebooks./event/2024-08-28/matt-dinniman-talks-dungeon-crawler-carl-w-shirtaloon

  Friday 2pm: Book signing session at the Aethon booth (booth 3502).

  Saturday 10am and 2:30pm: Panels, both at the Embassy CD Hyatt Sunday 7pm: litRPG event at the Iional North-South Hyatt

  Sunday 7pm: litRPG event, Iional North-South Hyatt

  Monday 1pm: Panel, Embassy CD Hyatt