Chapter 202: The Wrong Line of Work

  “This ether realm has a convenient monster detection system,” Nara began. “It’s imprecise, but we will sweep areas with primary EQ1 to EQ 2 signals. There will be three stages to this training: solo, duos, and EQ jumping teams of 3 to 5. The ultimate goal of this training is to solo a higher EQ you are advantaged against, with the exclusion of support roles, who will pair with another to complete their task.

  “I will not train you in squad combat—I can’t train y’all in everything, and the nuances of training a squad is not my area of expertise. Many of you have plenty of experience in squad combat; I hope you can apply your training here to work in larger teams.”

  They set off across the green valley, ATVs bumping over dirt and loose rocks like a roaming pack of steel skin buffalo. A monster radar pinged, and the group disembarked from their vehicles. Nara analyzed the monster, then borrowed a page from Mona’s book, and asked the CAP trainees to appeal to Nara on why they were the best group for the job, or for those to nominate others to fight on that same criteria.

  The trainees were at least expedient, and a group was peer selected and dispatched to take down the monsters. They approached with a pretty standard dual pronged approach, which, while basic, was more strategic capability than what some Adventurers had. Some Adventurers really were weapons that you pointed to shoot.

  “Nora,” her sister said, standing beside her as she watched the fighting group. “I wanted to talk with you.”

  Her family were the only people that still called her Nora, and she didn’t mind it. She was Nora and Nara. Nara was her future now, but it was appropriate that those who knew her the way she was called her by her other name (she didn’t condone deadnaming. In her case she felt both names still applied.)

  “Sis,” she greeted. A single body of Sage and Thanatos were keeping watch at the duo currently fighting a pack of bronze rank monsters. She had put them through a variation of Erras’ tried-and-tested mobility gauntlet (aka throwing rocks at people doing elaborate parkour) and the results were already bearing fruit. There was weaving and strafing, and even better, some jumping off of the backs of monsters. Oh, and there! A genuine rocket jump! It brought a tear to her eye.

  “I was wondering if I could get some personal training,” her sister said. She caught Nara’s gaze—almost the same brown eyes as her, just a few shades darker, having inherited a smidge more of her mother’s dark-brown-almost-black eyes. “I’m improving—a lot—but I want to improve faster. I don’t want to fall behind the others.”

  Nara frowned thoughtfully. Elizabeth was a fair bit below average compared to her peers, but that was to be expected. She hadn’t any combat training besides what the Agency already provided, and didn’t use a skill book like Oskar did. Eva was in a similar position, faring even worse in some ways because her combination had very little direct power to compensate. Elizabeth had awakened a strength boosting ability, and with a special attack and charge attack, could punch hard enough to shatter bone, no finesse required.

  Eva did use that gun awakening stone though. A handheld railgun that bounced along her hard light constructs or sped through her illusions might prove a fun challenge for Nara when Eva hit bronze. Normally, Eva wouldn’t be able to calculate such complex trajectories at iron, but she had awakened a perception that allowed her to perceive trajectories.

  She considered her sister’s request, Chrome’s “are you being too hard on her?” bouncing around in her head. Was she being unnecessarily aggressive towards her sister? Had her sister been aggressive towards her because her younger sister had woken from a coma and seemed like a complete stranger? Her mental armchair psychologist went crossed-eyed from trying to figure out the new status of their sibling dynamic.

  Helping her sister may be a way to get closer again. Elizabeth was still her sister, and Nara wanted to get along with her. This could be Elizabeth’s way of offering an olive branch.

  “I won’t be the best sparring partner for you,” Nara warned. “Someone of your own rank would serve better to improve your skills.”

  “I’m already doing that,” Elizabeth clarified. “With Sofia.”

  “Alright. We can spar together back at base, after dinner.”

  *****

  “You’ve changed a lot,” Elizabeth said, breaths heaving from the sparring. Her agency issued uniform was dark with sweat, and her hair that wasn’t quite long enough to be pulled into a ponytail escaped her hairband and fell in wet strands over her face. “You’re not the sister I once knew. You’re like a different person.”

  “Another world will do that to you.” There was a hint of accusation in Elizabeth’s tone, but somehow the friendly filter that sweetened her words for friends had never applied to family.

  Nara let Elizabeth take her rest. This wasn’t enough to exhaust Nara, not by a long shot, and sweat was a foreign function as an outworlder. She had vague thoughts of whether the lack of sweat meant her body suffered at temperature regulation, or if temperature regulation no longer depended on the evaporation of sweat. Aliyah wasn’t a focused biologist, but she’d be happy to run tests, if Nara let her.

  “You’re still really my sister?”

  “As much as I can be the same person, sis,” she said, tired of this whole implicit accusation. Nara was sure of herself that she was who she was, but she really didn’t need others worming doubt into her mind. Too much to doubt herself over already. Ship of Theseus. The Star Trek transporter. Or the more literal soul-changing magic of essences. Her soul had changed, many times over, with its first sundering and rebirth in the astral, then once again with essences. Her body had changed, created entirely by magic by a ritual based on the memories of a forgetful soul and changed repeatedly through rank-ups. Her very nature had changed, from human to outworlder.

  In a more literal interpretation, was she still genetically the sister of Elizabeth or the daughter of Lynn and James?

  So, she tried not to doubt who she was. She was herself.

  Nara idly wondered how much her sister had really known her anyways. There were never that close; two very different people, with very different values. There was a prick of a thorn sting, that Elizabeth thought her different enough to be a different person, but the sensation disappeared as quickly as it had hurt. She was who she was now, it hardly mattered whether her sister could accept the change.

  “You used to be so awkward and nerdy,” Elizabeth said within half a beat, not one to ruminate.

  “Awkward to you, maybe,” Nara replied. “We have different conventions of friendship.”

  “Back in high school you only ever read books, played video games, watched anime and Doctor Who.”

  Nara raised an eyebrow. “You did all those things too. You still do. You watch more TV shows than I do.”

  “I wasn’t on a world without modern entertainment for a year and a half.”

  “It was still true before I fell into a coma.”

  “And now you’re—different.” She barreled on, not willing to concede Nara the truth of that argument. “Now you’re…Intimidating. Oh, I know! We should go clubbing sometime! You still don’t have a boyfriend, right?”

  Nara glared at her. “Don’t you start. Mom’s already being annoying about it.”

  “Whatever. You have hot teammates. Bring them.”

  “You, are married.”

  “We. Aren’t. Blind,” countered Elizabeth. “I know a good ass when I see one.” She leaned over and pinched Nara’s waist. “Still snatched, especially now that you’re actually fit.”

  “Just a reasonable workout routine of monster slaying,” Nara said dryly, and smacked her sister’s wandering hand away, which was now curiously poking at her abs. It was a compliment, however, so she’d take it. Elizabeth did have a strength increasing ability, but it didn’t transform her recreation athleticism into instant post-coma abs yet (The Flash, how unrealistic!).

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Besides, I think I was always somewhat intimating,” Nara said, quick to change the subject. Although Nara’s self-worth wasn’t tied up in having a significant other, there was a lot of soft vulnerable flesh Elizabeth could dig into there, and she could scent that like a blood hound. Like Eufemia in a way, although Eufemia always fight like she was digging out the puss of a wound to heal it, not to make it bigger. Well, only to friends; to enemies, Eufemia would happily bleed them dry. Nara was already missing her. “My roommate back in college—you know the one, the one I didn’t like. Er, Harper or something—"

  “Hailey?”

  “That one! She complained to the RA that ‘I looked scary’. I was just sitting there quietly studying! I mean, what the fuck is the RA supposed to do about that?”

  “God, what a bitch,” her sister said agreeably.

  “Yeah, she was a total bitch. Such a hypocrite too.”

  There was nothing quite so relatable as godawful roommates.

  “Your roommates now?” Nara prodded. She flung a dry sweat rag at her sister. She was mostly cooled off by now, the agency’s air-conditioning in the ether realm was magically powerful, but she still mopped at her hairline.

  Elizabeth snorted. “Nothing so terrible. Lily Cho and Imani Mason.”

  “Poor Aaron is outnumbered,” Nara commiserated.

  “He can deal. Lily—she’s a bit of a mess. She leaves her clothes over chairs all the time, forgets to put food away. She’s not an asshole about it, she’s always putting stuff away and apologizing. But Imani? Imani is a Queen.”

  “Like you?” Nara kindly offered.

  “Like me,” Elizabeth shamelessly agreed. “I’d sacrifice my favorite Aritzia dress to strut like her. God, her legs! I can’t say she’s entirely military material, or whatever the fuck this agency is supposed to be—”

  “You’re not exactly military material either,” Nara cut in, raising a questioning brow. “Stay at home programmer, proud and loud dog mom, homemade dinner party host.”

  “More than you ever were,” Elizabeth snorted. “Introvert, engineer, musician.”

  “Still not military though,” Nara said. “I can cooperate, but I don’t think I can follow orders. Why do this then, instead of just being an office agent? They have plenty non-combat positions, and you’re actually a good programmer.”

  “I talked to Eva for a bit. Our generation is surprisingly similar across countries. I’m not much of a D&D girl—”

  Nara thought that Elizabeth would be, if Elizabeth could let herself get past the thought that roleplay was uncool or beyond mainstream nerdy, like Overwatch or Minecraft.

  “—But you know how much I looove Superman and Spider-Man. Anyone can be a programmer, how many people get a chance like this?”

  Whether it came from narcissism or just the desire to pursue a unique opportunity, Nara understood her reasoning.

  Nara stood and prodded her sister with her foot. “Up, sis, time for more sparring.”

  “You’re not even sweating! How unfair,” she groaned. This time it was a good-natured complaint, and Nara couldn’t help but crinkle a smile.

  “I told you to spar with someone your rank.”

  “And don’t touch my pants with your shoes. You’ll get dirt on them.”

  “It’s not even your ‘designer’ clothes. They’re agency issue. Real top shelf stuff.” Although the Agency probably did pay a premium for them. Ah, military pricing.

  “Because wanting to be clean and hygienic is such a big ask.”

  “This is really the wrong line of work if you want to be clean.”

  *****

  The training camp ended; Nara drilled the 30 trainees with as much Erras-origin adventurer knowledge as she could. Most of her training centered on the 3-phase training cycle, the utilization of mobility, full ability utilization, and Erras-origin adventurer survival wisdom. The structure of Earth’s essence users would never be the same as Erras’ adventurers, but lessons of how to pick your battles and live another day still rang true. Nara hoped the most important lesson the trainees learned was how to assess risk, strategize, be resourceful, and best tackle a stronger enemy—it would always happen, and the bronze rankers of Earth were already running into silver rank enemies.

  Erras’ adventurer philosophy balanced strategy and challenge. Challenge begot progress, which at the end of the day, was more power to survive the night fight. Challenge yourself when the stakes are low so that you can win when the stakes are high.

  After this, together with John (and input from her teammates back on Erras), she’d consolidate a written training program that went along with recording crystal instructions from her teammates, and disseminate the theory of Training-Combat-Mediation to the ASI as a whole. The 30 trainees would be watched closely, especially the non-core trainees for their progress.

  She was just one person; any true change would be by creating a new and comprehensive training regimen and advancement method, rather than individually training agents herself. It would lack the overall quality of education that even Sanshi had, but would also be implemented to more agents on a worldwide scale. If successful, the amount of monster cores that would save the Agency would be tremendous. And while more skillful Agents was important to the Agency, it was those numerical savings that made all of it more tangible. Skill couldn’t be priced, but monster cores could.

  “Our field agents’ most important role is to clear the proto zone of monsters,” Jessica explained to Nara and John.

  “We don’t know why they form,” Luas added in, “there’s theories…that they bridge the space between the ether realm and reality, relieving pressure between the two. What sort of pressure?” he shrugged, answering his own question.

  “And that’d be why the monsters spill into reality when the bubble ‘deflates’,” said Jessica, who was sipping another cup of Agency special coffee. ‘Sipping’ was perhaps a tad generous, when her waste bin at her desk was full of stained paper cups. “A proto zone collapse causes ether to flood the coterminous reality space, and temporarily raises the ether quotient—quality and quantity. Sometimes that’s enough to trigger additional manifestations, so that zone will be under observation for some time.”

  She drained her cup and added it to her growing paper mountain. The cup rolled off, dropping onto the typical office carpet, so grey and mottled they wouldn’t have been able to see stains anyway. She sighed, leaned over, and plunked it onto the top of the pile, pushing hard enough to compact the mountain.

  Besides her odd coffee addiction (odd for an essence user), Jessica’s other notable personal effect—besides an assortment of practical office stationary—was the picture frame of a young woman, who was embraced from behind by another woman. Both were smiling joyously; Nara thought there may be some familial relation in their facial features to Jessica, but she had never been good with faces. The faint layer of dust present on all of Jessica’s other items was absent from the frame, and Nara could only conclude that the people within it were important.

  “There’s two main types of zones,” Jessica explained, unaware of Nara’s distraction. “Volatile and Stable. Volatiles are the ones we need to worry about—”

  She was interrupted by an alarm from her agency issued phone, blaring loud across the office space. Other workers similarly snatched up their smartphones, staring at the notification. Similar notifications flared across her desk monitor, pinging with urgent headers. The office started into a controlled flurry of motion, phones ringing, workers speed walking with binders and folders, shoes tap-tapping against the floor. A din of voices raised the volume of the floor, the former quiet now a drone of sound. Someone brushed too quickly past Jessica’s desk, shaking the leaning tower of Dixie, causing a few cups to spill from the bin.

  “Volatile zone,” she read out. “Oxford. EQ 2.8.”

  “That’s higher than normal,” said Lucas, a tad nervous.

  Jessica chewed her lip. “They’ve been getting higher.” She jerked her head towards John and Nara. “They want to send the two of you with Diya’s squad.”

  “Why us?”

  “The volatile zone, because of its volatility, has limits to what it’ll permit before triggering a spontaneous collapse. Learnt that the hard way,” she said gravely. “We’ve can analyze the allowance with scans, but we have rough guidelines from experience of what a volatile zone will permit.”

  “The average is around a squad,” said Lucas, “That’s why they were formed.”

  “Get ready,” Jessica said, already throwing together her own supplies. “You’re being deployed.”

  *****

  Nara and John looked like fantasy cosplayers had shown up at a military LARPers convention. Nara resembled more a martial arts cosplayer, while John was more in line with a traditional western fantasy. He had upgraded to a better armor in Kallid, now made with thick cloths, leathers, and iron plates in choice locations. His thick collar of the caramel fur of a bostial was distinctly out of place in the August heat, although John would not sweat from it even if still could.

  Camo military tents had been set up at the entrance of the proto zone in a hurry, agents stood around in tight groups preparing for operations. Communications were the most important preparation—the Agency had figured out a way to communicate past the proto zone boundary with a signal relay. With concealment arrays and a bit of luck, it’d go unnoticed by any monsters prowling within.

  Diya and her team were preparing, strapping on body armor, checking over external equipment—magic crafted grenades secured on a belt, spare weapons and magazines in case their own abilities failed for whatever reason, or just to conserve mana. Based on surveys and scouts sent in, additional equipment would be provided—gas masks, night vision goggles, antidotes, or breathing equipment. The environment of proto zones varied even more extremely than the ether realm, half of the difficulty was having the right equipment on entry.

  John and Diya’s squad popped a bronze spirit coin, sustaining themselves for the fight ahead. A few grimaced from the battery acid tang of undiluted magic.

  “The zone is a floating island-based zone, with areas of low gravity around the floating islands,” a scout briefed. “There is no discernable floor or end. Assume death should you fall. There are 8 islands, at varying elevations. At higher elevations, the air is thin. You’ll need oxygen. There’s an abundance of ranged enemies that stay within the low gravity zone to reduce the damage of incoming fire—moderately intelligent, but still animalistic. Smaller floating rocks and obstructions float between the island can be used to cross. Cross with care—it is a moment of vulnerability.”

  Watson cursed under his breath.

  “Looks like our mobility training is going to come in handy, ladies,” Diya said.

  “Try not to let your fatarse fall, Watson,” said Warthog. “But maybe even gravity don’t want ya.”

  “Like you’re one to say that,” Watson said. “You’re just as much as a fat bastard as I am.”

  “Fatson,” Warthog said. “Chubson—”

  “—That’s not even my name—”

  “Ladies,” Diya stressed, “shall we save the body shaming during a round of beers when its warranted?”

  They shuffled, boots scuffing up dirt. “Aye, Lieutenant.”

  “Ready up,” Diya ordered, “We’re going in.”