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Skill [Superimpose] advanced to level 16
For your efforts to inject high-velocity metal into your veins, [Test Subject] awards 5 soul points.

Ow ow ow ow ow!

In the fight between my arm and a chunk of metal moving at a few hundred metres a second, my arm had managed to win, but it hadn't been a flawless victory. Rather than making a hole, it had made more of an impact crater. Without the aid of [Superimpose], it certainly would have gone straight through.

Thankfully, [Regeneration] was already taking care of the wound. Totally worth it for five soul points. Also for serving as a data point to myself for how Earth weapons stacked up against System abilities, and a demonstration to the Earthlings that trying to rush in and shoot everyone wouldn't work too well.

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Skill [Regeneration] advanced to level 2

Of course, not everyone had backup adamantite arms, but they didn't need to know that.

"(I think the sooner you can cut the System off from Earth, the better,)" said their spokeswoman.

"(Yeah. I can see your point of view. We'll do what we can, but like I said, we aren't supposed to have access to the controls, and trying to force our way in may not work.)"

The group were frowning at the thought of nearly a hundred-thousand bullet-proof individuals running around their planet. Maybe my display had been a little too effective.

"(Can you give us a rundown of what sort of skills and abilities people are likely to unlock over the next couple of years?)"

I did so, explaining the standard first and second rank classes, and the sort of abilities they had. By the time I was done, Krana had returned, and at that point I gladly switched my role from negotiator to translator, rewording the occasional sentence to mask the odd hint of the Law. As expected, the guild representative thought a hundred level twenty monster cores was a stupidly low number, and would have been quite happy to turn them over there and then. The guild hadn't even bothered sending anyone important; it was Simeon again.

The institute, on the other hand, had sent over a few people, including Vargalas and Kari. They negotiated for a fair amount of stuff before I happily informed the spokeswoman that my estimate of a hundred cores a year had been far too low, and we could easily do a hundred times that. She professionally informed me they didn't have a use for that many, but I saw her twitching, realising she'd messed up.

It turned out that using [Mana Sight] to keep an eye on things like heart rate was a pretty good advantage in negotiations.

It was less than a day before negotiations drew to a close, and Krana set off to play taxi once more, bringing Darren in to send them home. And that's where we hit upon a problem.

"But I don't know where they came from," he pointed out. "I can send them to the same place as last time?"

An obvious problem, once we stopped to consider it. Darren hadn't been here when the portal they came through opened, so he had no idea where the other side of it had been. I could give coordinates, thanks to the foreign soul notifications, but they weren't any use to him. The best he could do was send them back to the city.

"(We can't risk opening up a portal anywhere near civilians,)" said one of the nameless diplomats, the others finally starting to get involved now that their mission had gone off-script.

"(I agree. It would be far too dangerous,)" said one of the guards, who seemed to be their leader.

"(I can see three options. We teleport you back to the Blue Skies Institute, we teleport you back somewhere random, or you stay here. Or we can push a note through a portal instead, which should leave it open for less time than you all walking through.)"

"(What would it take to open a portal back to where we came from?)"

"(You'd need to open one to here from there, and leave it open for long enough for Darren to reach it.)"

"(And why are we relying on a little kid to open portals in the first place?)"

"(Because he's the only one in the world with the trait that lets him do it. There's no skill or class for world-hopping. Or, if there is, no-one has found it yet.)"

"(Given the average population density, somewhere random is statistically likely to hit fewer people. Of course, we're also statistically likely to land in an ocean, and there's the contamination issue,)" said Dr Withermark.

"(Staying here would be a failure of our mission; we need to deliver these cores,)" said the spokeswoman, carrying a bag of ten cores I'd taken out of my own [Item Box] as an initial payment. The way she'd twitched again when I'd casually brought out ten of the things almost made me feel bad for misleading her, but she was the one who'd started it. "(I can't think of any other options, so let's hold a vote.)"

No-one voted for random portal, not wanting to end up in mid-air or in the sea. Maybe even underground; it hadn't happened to any of their portals, but we had no evidence it wasn't possible. A few voted to remain, but returning to their Blue Skies Institute was the clear winner.

"(Okay, everyone line up. We'll open the portal here, you run through as fast as possible, and then we'll close it. If it's anything like last time, we'll need to destroy it rather than closing it neatly, so get away from the other side.)"

The group lined up in rows of four, and I was thankful the interior of Darren's portals wasn't the same length as the normal [Spatial Archmage] versions. Darren focused on the space in front of them.

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Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates 0.062, 0.011, β
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates 0.062, 0.011, β
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates 0.062, 0.011, β
982 further administrative notifications follow.

Less than last time, but the majority of the city had already been infected.

For a large group wearing a lot of unwieldy inflatable plastic, the diplomatic squad made it through the portal in record time. Darren was able to close the portal once they'd all passed, but he did so by tearing it to pieces, in a way that was only slightly cleaner than my brute-force spatial affinity method. No connection lost messages once he was done, either.

"Right. We need to try to get access to the ark again," I said. "I don't suppose anyone has any ideas?"

"For what reason?" asked Serlv. Had I never told them I'd found a way to detach people from the System? I don't think I had; I'd just described it as a solution to the twins' problem.

"To sever Earth from the System. Since their previous portal, it's continued to influence Earth even with the portals closed. That's causing them some problems."

"The place is sealed. Access is only granted in an emergency."

"I'm fairly sure this qualifies as an emergency. We just need to convince whatever controls the door of that."

Serlv made a deep, guttural, rumbling noise, which as best as I could tell meant that she was thinking but didn't much like what she was thinking about. "We can try, but I can't guarantee access."

"That's what I told them, too."

"Very well. I shall bring you there."

"Wait, what's the ark?! This sounds interesting!" exclaimed Kari.

Serlv sighed, leaving a layer of frost over Kari.

"Very well. I shall bring you too," said Serlv, picking up us both. I felt a simple explanation would have done, rather than needing to bring her with us, but I wasn't going to turn down another head to throw at the problem. Maybe literally.

"It's where the System physically is," I explained, watching Krana picking up the other humanoid guests as we departed. With Serlv's speed, we soon left them far behind.

"So, what's the ark?" asked Kari. Had she not heard me over the wind? No, wait... Even Krana wasn't allowed to know it was where the System lived. Stupid memory filters.

"It's where the earth mother kept some important stuff," I tried, stealing not-Blobby's explanation.

"What sort of stuff?" Kari prodded, remembering the generic answer, but not happy with it.

"Important stuff," I repeated. "And I just gave you an example, but you don't remember it."

"What? No you didn't."

"Indeed you did not," said Serlv. "Yet Erryn would prefer us not to speak of it, so please hold your curiosity and view it with your own eyes."

Was that why Serlv had brought Kari? But she had no reason to indulge Kari's curiosity, so why? I hadn't spent much time with Serlv, and we'd only ever met in the middle of emergencies, so I didn't have any sort of handle on her personality.

"Bah. Boring," groaned Kari, before turning to me with a sparkle in her eye, ears perking upwards. Uh-oh. "So, looking forward to tomorrow?"

"Why? What's tomorrow?"

"Oh my. Poor Cluma," gasped Kari, raising her hands to her face in mock outrage. "Her own boyfriend has forgotten mating season."

"Oh, that. Her first time will be next year," I said, looking away.

"Really? I know beastkin have a later puberty than us, but that's even later than usual."

Bah. I was barely able to talk about this sort of thing with Cluma, so no way was I doing it with Kari. "Can we talk about something else?"

"I'm trying! You won't talk about the ark, you won't talk about your love life. What's left?"

"Magic? That's normally your thing, isn't it?"

"Sorry, but you've kind of spoilt magic for me. You've blown my mind so many times that I just can't get the same buzz out of plain conversation any more. It takes you turning up with completely new materials and ideas, or overturning centuries of belief about how things work."

"Fine. Here's another topic. How bad was it getting that tail grafted, really? I'm considering getting one of my own."

"Oh?" smirked Kari. "It wasn't too bad, once we worked out the maximum increment in length between stages. But tell me more. Why would you want a tail?"

"I just think they're cool. Besides, I've chopped enough limbs off for science that I feel the need to balance things with an addition or two."

"Your conversation is disturbing," chimed in Serlv. "Then again, you did ask those humans to... what were the words? (Shoot) you with a (gun)? Are all humans from your world as strange as you?"

"Hey, I'm no stranger than Kari!"

"What's a (gun)?" asked Kari.

"Sorry, but Erryn told me never to spread information about Earth weapons."

"Oh, so it's a type of weapon? Interesting. Did only ten members of their party have them, by any chance?"

Of course, Kari had [Mana Sight] too. Which meant... "Hey, if you were looking at them with [Mana Sight], how were you not laughing your head off at their toiletry arrangements?"

"I almost did, but then I imagined myself having to wear one of those outfits just to talk to someone, and decided it would be mean. Made me feel a lot better about my tail, though."

"Oh? I thought you'd be all for it. Imagine being able to work on your research for days on end without needing a toilet break."

Kari gave me a long, hard stare. "And once again, poor Cluma. Her boyfriend really has no idea how girls work."

"Uh... I'd like to deny that, but..."

"As loath as I am to disturb this fascinating insight into humanity, we have arrived," interrupted Serlv. "Besides, would wings not be a far more useful addition than a tail?"