Seeing the man hit the ground, Lloyd could only scratch his cheek in silence. Thanks to his implant that allowed him to see in infrared, he knew that the assailant was still alive, and that he wasn’t about to die anytime soon. The body on the ground would be losing its heat much faster in that case. No, Lloyd was trying to figure out what to do with his brand new prisoner.
“I have something to report, Boss.”
Lloyd was a little angry at the AI for the stunt it had just pulled, but what was done was done. The man on the ground had charged at him first, so he was in his full rights to defend himself. At least, that had been the law on Mars, he had no idea how things worked around here.
“Go on then.”
Lloyd had thought whether this was the right time for a report, with an unconscious man lying in front of him, but he internally shook his head. Josse had been capable of understanding time and place up until now.
“Boss, please look at the screen near the doors.”
Lloyd turned to enter the ship. His retinal implant could modify what he could see to some degree, but it couldn’t act as a full replacement to a screen. Lloyd didn’t worry about leaving the man alone, even if the man on the ground was somehow tricking him and was still miraculously conscious, it couldn’t do much under the watchful cameras of Josse, and the many guns it controlled.
When Lloyd came close enough to the monitor near the cargo doors, it lit up, showing a still from the event that just happened. In the monitor, he could see himself standing near the entrance, and the assailant charging at him from 3 different points of view.
“I am changing the brightness and upping the contrast now.”
Josse made the changes as he spoke, altering the images. Lloyd could finally see what Josse was hinting at.
“Tip of the sword is… glowing?”
Just the very tip of the sword was glowing a dull orange in the screen. Lloyd had missed it when the man was charging at him. Screen changed once again.
“Look at this too, Boss.”
The screen now showed the scene right before the man had charged at him, but the colors were washed out. Lloyd recognized that the feed had changed to show the ultraviolet spectrum. As the picture turned into a video, the man began to charge at him, his hand moving towards his sword. Midway through to the weapon, the hand began to glow white. The second the assailant’s hand began to touch the sword, the glow around the hand weakened, but the sword started to glow in exchange, just dimmer compared to how bright the hand had been. Clearly, the man had transferred some of the energy he had gathered in his hand to the sword. Last thing that the screen had recorded before the man was knocked unconscious were the tip of the sword glowing too. But that glow didn’t show up on the ultraviolet view.
“Was that… mana?”
Only thing Lloyd could do after absorbing this information was give a sigh- not even he knew what he was feeling. He had assumed this world to be some sort of fantasy world because of the goblins, breathable air and the similar fauna, but this sealed the deal for him. He was indeed in a fantasy world now.
Seeing him fall silent, Josse provided what little he had found from that short interaction.
“It was a field of unknown radiation. Subject lost control of the field when he passed out, allowing the radiation to escape, but it decayed soon after. I was not able to analyze any further.”
Gathering his wits, Lloyd marched outside once again. Mysteries of this world were not going to run away, but the man outside might just do so. He saw that the man lying where he had left him a minute ago.
Lloyd lifted his pistol and aimed at the man as he moved in closer.
“All right, any last words before I kill you?”
Lloyd had no intention of killing his assailant; he was trying to get a reaction. If the man on the ground was a human just like him, he was bound to get nervous even if he didn’t understand Lloyd’s words. Getting nervous would get his heart to beat faster. While Lloyd’s implant couldn’t measure the heartbeat of someone so far away in this darkness, a faster beating heart would increase the temperature of the body, making it clear to Lloyd that he was just acting. But the temperature stayed the same as he arrived within the touching distance. Even a nudge with his feet failed to get a reaction out of the body. Finally satisfied, Lloyd leaned in to get a closer look.
‘It’s fantasy, all right.’
The man whom he had assumed to be a human just like him turned out to be an elf. While Lloyd was no expert on aliens or fantasy beings, he knew what the ears glued to the head of the elf in front of him meant. Granted they were not as long as the ones the goblins had sported, they were sharp and pointy compared to his.
‘Perhaps he is even a half-elf?’
Lloyd had no frame of reference for how long the ears of an elf should be, and it was last of his worries at the moment. He had to make sure that the first sentient being he had come across didn’t die, even if he had a violent greeting.
Lloyd began to free the elf out of its arms and armors, as he analyzed him. The elf was about 185 centimeters tall, just 10 shy from Lloyd’s height. He had an angular face with golden hair, and even through it was caked in dirt and mud at the moment, Lloyd had to admit that he was rather handsome. After taking his armor and revealing elf’s undershirt and bare arms, he noted that they were thin and wiry. He took off the leather pants which held quite a few hidden knives too, which allowed him to make couple of new observations. For one, the legs of the elf were thin just like his arms. How he managed to pack so much speed to so little muscle was something Lloyd didn’t know, but he was guessing mana was involved in it one way or another. Second, and much less important thing he learned was that male elves could be just as well endowed as the humans…
Cursing the fact that he had not thought to bring something to tie the hand and legs of the elf, Lloyd hoisted the now underdressed elf to his back, and moved into the ship.
He first dumped the elf in front of the armory to get couple of zip ties from inside to tie the limbs of the prisoner. Done with the task, he moved to the room next door with the elf, the infirmary.
“Boss, the scans of the goblins are done. I wanted to inform you in the morning, but then all this happened. There are couple things of note in the analysis.”
Nodding his head so that Josse would see that he got his message with the indoor cameras, he grabbed the bloody plastic sheet below the goblins and dumped them on the ground. Lloyd moved the elf onto the scanner bed and informed Josse to set it up so it would scan starting from the head. Elves were not in the scanners library due to obvious reasons, so it would take long time for it to do a full scan. If there was a brain issue because of the close miss with the projectile and the subsequent contact with the ground, the elf could die before the scanner moved onto it. While Lloyd, Josse or the scanner didn’t know what a brain damage might look like to an elf, deadliness of the blood getting pumped into a wrong part of the brain did not change from species to species.
Getting the green light from the scanner, Lloyd started to secure the tied up prisoner to the steel frame of the scanner bed. He had no intention of allowing the prisoner to rampage and destroy the equipment inside the room. He was a little wary of any magical phenomena that the elf might use, but he was not too worried. If the elf was capable of throwing around fireballs, it would have done so before instead of charging at him with a sword like a mad man.
Lloyd got out of the ship for the third time tonight to dispose of the goblin bodies, and to gather and carry in the belongings of the elf. He then dumped them onto the conference room table and began to go through them. First thing he put aside were the dozen or so knives which he categorized as throwing knives, a 30 cm long dagger and one curvy dagger which Josse claimed to be a skinning dagger joined them. Lloyd had never seen a skinning dagger before, as they had not been used among the mercenaries, but there were couple of references to knives like this among the thousands of books and movies he had fed to Josse. Only sharp weapons Lloyd had experience with were the bayonet and the folding knives. Last weapon left on the table was the sword. Picking it up, Lloyd tried to analyze it, but besides the orange tip, it look like a bog standard sword to his eyes. Josse proved to be helpful once again, telling him that it matched to the descriptions of arming swords from middle to late medieval age. Not surprised that the weapon in his hand belonged to most popular age for fantasy books, Lloyd focused on the tip of the sword. After hesitating a little, he touched the orange part.
‘It’s cold.’
Lloyd didn’t know what he was expecting, but the tip felt metallic just like rest of the sword. Adding it to the other pile of weapons, he moved on to the armor. It was a 3 part set consisting of a chest piece that warped around to cover most of the wearer’s back and sides, a vambrace for each arm, and lastly, pieces of leather sewn onto a fabric pants. Other than that, there was also a worn pair of boots, but they didn’t manage to hold Lloyd’s attention for long.
He took one of the knives on the side of the table and moved it to a corner of the chest piece, before pushing the knife down as best as he could. He also added his entire body weight on top of the knife, but he still failed to penetrate the armor. After putting the knife back and bringing the armor closer, Lloyd noticed that he had gone only third of the way through. From the cut, he could see that the green of the armor was not paint, but the original color of the leather. Only green creature he had seen in this world had been the goblins, but this was clearly made from something else given its durability.
‘But why use leather? It is hard compared to leather from earth, but a thin piece of metal would be much better. Could it be because of the price?’
Lloyd was forced to move on from this line of thought once again. He didn’t know anything about this world. Was this man rich or poor? Was he strong or weak compared to rest of this world? Was magic one in a million, or could anyone do it?
Lloyd moved onto the bag. Emptying it, he was confronted with a wet blanket, a small hatchet and couple of individually wrapped packs of dried meat and bread.
‘At least they are not vegan.’
Last items Lloyd had taken from elf were the 2 pouches that he had hid inside his pants, and one necklace with some words on it. The written language was something neither he nor Josse recognized, but the AI added that they were somewhat similar to ancient Anglo-Saxon runes of the Earth.
First pouch contained 6 pieces of silver coins, 2 gold coins and handful of copper ones. Lloyd assumed them to be currency, but didn’t know their values. Copper and the golden coins were small, barely larger than his fingernail, but the silver ones were larger and much heavier. If the metal rarity in this planet was similar to Earth, then, copper coins should be the lowest domination, followed by the silver and gold afterwards. If Lloyd knew how much value each coin represented, he could have roughly calculated the values of the metals. But he was forced to carry along to the other pouch as he got stuck again. It contained little over half a dozen small blue crystals and one slightly larger crystal half the size of his pinky.
‘Mana crystals?’
Just as Lloyd was about to have a closer look, the screen on the wall lit up, showing him a colored cut away of a goblin.
“Boss, the medical scanner found similar crystals inside the goblins. Both of the goblins carried one in their center of mass.”
The screen zoomed in to show a closer view of the crystal.
“They are surrounded by millions of capillaries and nerve endings, but the analyzer was unable to find out why they were needed there.”
The scans on the screen vanished, replaced by a live recording of him sitting in the chair. The colors dulled, showing ultraviolet spectrum once again. Only thing of note was the presumed mana crystals in front of him, which were white instead of blue in the video, just like how mana had been.
“Boss, as you can see, the crystals are showing up as pure energy in ultraviolet spectrum despite being solid. I am not able to process this information any further.”
This was not the first time this had happened. Josse had used this line more times than he could remember, but all of them had been before he had fed the AI with all his science books and cultural material. After that only time he had heard it was when Josse was introduced to lying- the AI had been hard programmed not to lie, cheat or deceive to a point where it was unable to even process the concept itself at first. After thinking for couple of minutes, Lloyd came up with a solution that would help the AI, even if it was not strictly correct.
“Josse, assume that mana is a kind of energy that can solidify into physical material on its own when it reaches a certain mass.”
Lloyd shook his head bitterly. Now that he was stuck in this world with next to no hope of delivering the cargo, he had stopped reminding himself every hour that Josse was just a machine, resulting in him sometimes forgetting the truth.
“All right Boss, but the prisoner is about to wake up.”
While Josse spoke, the feed changed to show the medical room and the elf’s data. The man’s eyes were still closed, and he had not moved a bit, but his heartbeat was starting to get a little faster by the second. While the scanner was not able to make sense of the brainwaves emitted by the prisoner, it was clear that they were getting irregular. Whether the elf was about to wake up or pass away for good, Lloyd wanted to be there when it happened.
The elf was just waking up by the time Lloyd managed to cross the 20 meters between the rooms and took a seat meters away from the medical scanner, where the elf was tied up.
As Lloyd had expected, first thing the elf did upon waking up was to flex his arms and legs, trying and failing to break out of his bindings. Zip ties Lloyd had put on the elf were made to be used on augmented humans by the police, it was next to impossible to get out of them with brute force. Lloyd made a small noise on his chair to help the elf notice him. Drawn by the noise, elf finally spotted him. He tried to get away from him, but his bindings didn’t allow that.
“&^%$%$*^*%&*%!”
Lloyd’s brows furrowed, trying to find a solution for this problem. He had to learn the language of the locals one way or another if he was going to be stuck here for some time. Had it been earlier, he might have hoped to become a hermit, living far away from the civilization, but it was impossible now. If someone had managed to come and find him in less than 3 days, then it would be impossible for him to expect no-one else to come after him.
“Look dude, I have no idea what you are saying.”
There was one way for him to learn the language fast, with the help of Josse. As long as he could provide Josse with a full vocabulary of the language, the AI could easily translate and emit whatever he wanted to express.
“&*^@%^@..?”
Lloyd might not have understood a thing of what the elf had said, but he managed to spot the hesitancy and uncertainty in the sentence.
“&*&^%!”
Ignoring the elf, which had closed his eyes after shouting something, Lloyd started to think through how to learn the words of the language that the elf spoke. Easiest way would be for Josse to show objects on a screen and for elf to voice them out. But before he could do anything, elf’s eyes opened with a force to itself. At the same time, Lloyd felt something slip into his mind. It was not painful or intrusive, but Lloyd started to feel emotions that was not his. Worry, Pain and Nervousness.
Not hesitating one bit, Lloyd drew his gun and aimed at the man, ready and willing to kill.
“Woah, woah, bro- no, SIR! Please don’t!”
“Give me a reason not to!”
Only then did it him that he could understand what the elf was saying. Shocked, Lloyd stared at the elf as the prisoner spoke.
“I am sorry! But this was the only thing I could think of. Please, lower your weapon.”
Lloyd didn’t lower his gun and focused on the feelings streaming through.
Apprehension.
Fear.
Trepidation.
Dread.
“What does this spell of yours do, exactly?” Even without the feelings streaming through, Lloyd had ways to tell if he was lying. Now that they were in a bright room instead of the dark of the outside, Lloyd could count the heartbeats of the elf, every twitch of his fingers, and the smallest shakes of his muscles. It was surprisingly easy to tell whether someone was lying if you knew what to look out for. And with his neural implant, he didn’t even have to known them. That was why the Martian Academy had spent years forcefully spoon feeding the student how to keep entirety of their body in their control.
“It’s not a spell! It’s just a Tier 0 trick. It just allows 2 souls to understand each other better!”
Hearing that, he focused on his mind once again. The feelings coming from the elf were not the same as the ones borne of his own mind. He could easily differentiate what was his and what was not, so he was not worried about that aspect. What he was worried about was magic being able to penetrate the sanctity of his mind.
“What else can you do to one’s mind? Speak!”
Lloyd added the last part after feeling the confusion of the elf in his mind. Lloyd knew that he was making it impossible for the elf not to know he was not from here, but he had to ask this question. If the elf lied to him now, he would pull the trigger, no questions asked.
“Nothing! No-one can get behind the innate defenses of a soul without being many tiers above. I am not even a Tier 1 Mage! This trick just connects 2 souls to feel and understand each other better. It can’t do any harm even I wanted it to.”
Lloyd gave an internal sigh of relief, but stopped himself halfway through, noting that the elf could also feel what he was feeling. Indeed, most likely learning that Lloyd had lost the intention of killing him for now, he lost the dread he was feeling. Lloyd allowed him to stew in his thought for now as he ordered his neural implant with his thoughts to tell Josse to send the audio recording of the last 10 second into his implant so it can replay it for him.
‘As I thought.’
In the recording, Josse was speaking Standard English while the elf spoke in his own language. Despite knowing what the elf had said due to understanding it the first time, Lloyd couldn’t get a word of it now.
‘So the ‘trick’ allows us to understand the intent behind the words, but not the words themselves?’
Lloyd thought of something, and ordered his implant to constantly scan his brain and transcribe the words he was hearing. The implant would also stream it to Josse, who would combine this with the audio recording of the elf’s speech to quickly re-construct the language. All Lloyd had to do now was to keep the prisoner talking. This was not a problem to him, since he was the warden in charge of the prisoner.
“Okay then. Do you want to do this easy way or the hard way?”
Lloyd asked after eliminating all his emotions. He had been trained to do this at the Academy, so it was not much of a problem to him. The increased dread streaming in from the elf also acted as a crude feedback loop, making it even easier to do so.
“Erm… Easy way..? Please?”
First lines of the interrogation taught at the Academy was always the same no matter how the prisoner answered, but the reactions to catching the prisoner lying changed accordingly.
“All right. You see, I can tell when you lie. Now I am going to ask you your name and surname. I want you to answer one of them correctly and lie for the other one. We can always switch to the hard way if you lie at both.”
This kind of interrogation would not work for any kind of military personnel. Had someone tried to do what he was doing to the prisoner to Lloyd, he would have laughed in their faces. But conversely, this style was extremely effective against civilians and non-combatants. It would engrave into their minds that lying was impossible, and that they would not get hurt as long as they did not lie.
“Galdwin. My full name is Galdwin Allot.”
Another thing helping Lloyd right now was the magic trick that Galdwin had cast. He could feel the confusion and incredulousness of the elf.
“So you don’t want to play the hard way. Your name is indeed Galdwin, but surname you gave is wrong. Since I asked for you to lie, there won’t be a punishment this time, but if you choose to lie again, you will lose a finger. Now, what is your surname again?”
Fear and anger were the 2 main feeling that came from the elf this time. It was understandable; after all, these feeling were what he wanted the elf to feel. It was easy to talk and pull information out of an angry person, but incredibly hard to so the same to someone who had given up on life. Anger stopped one from giving up.
“A-Arvo.”
From here on, it was just a game to Lloyd. He knew that he had no intention of killing Galdwin, but the elf didn’t know that. He held all the power here.
“Nice to meet you, Galdwin Arvo. Now do tell me, what brings you to my humble establishment?”
They had a long night in front of them.
. . .
“And then the thief says to girl’s father ‘Greeting sire, I hope I am not disturbing the owner of the mansion with my late visit.’ Can you believe that, bro?!”
“Hahaha…””Pahahahaha!”
They both laughed, even though neither of them found the punch line funny.
One of them had to keep the other talking to further the language profile and the other one though that he had to make Lloyd like him enough not to kill.
“Anyways. Bro… Can I ask for something?”
Lloyd knew what he was going to ask for, but acted as if he had no idea. Now, after little over 8 hours of Galdwin talking and him listening, he had better understanding of the elf’s personality.
“Go on, I am listening.”
The language profile had been ready hours ago. There were still couple words missing in his lexicon, but they were very rare. It had been more than an hour since he recorded a new word. Josse had already perfected the grammar. Now only thing he needed to do was to actually learn it.
“Can I go to the toilet?”
“…”
Lloyd didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. 3 feelings were coming to him from his connection to Galdwin. Hope for possibly getting out of this alive. Resignation due to the fact it was out of his own hands. And lastly, shame, because he really had to use the toilet…
“Wait here.”
Lloyd got out of the infirmary and walked into the conference room, where he packed Galdwin’s belongings. For one, he didn’t need him anymore- the lexicon was done and Galdwin had run out of important things to talk to him about, and had started to tell him the stories of this world. Lloyd had also learned that this world didn’t have a centralized government or system to hunt him down. And lastly, as far as Galdwin knew of, it would be next to impossible for someone of this world to harm him as long as he was inside the ship.
Finally done with packing, he also stuffed all but one of the knives and the pouches into it. Picking up the sword, armor, and the bag, he returned to where he had left Galdwin, still tied to the bed. Lloyd dumped everything to the ground and begun to cut one of his arms free. Done with that, he gave the knife to Galdwin.
“Get dressed and get the fuck out of here. Oh, and if you tell someone about me, I’ll come and find you. You won’t enjoy what will happen then.”
He didn’t have to try too hard to put up a front, as the connection that was still active between them told Lloyd that the elf in front of him, who was putting on his pants, was dreadfully aware of that fact.
“Yes Sir! I swear an oath on my honor that I won’t!”
The hasty oath given by the elf was a sham. While there was indeed a some kind of magical oath in this world, Galdwin had forgotten that he himself had mentioned that either one had to be a Tier 3 mage, or someone stronger than both parties had to be witness for it to be binding.
It didn’t take long for Lloyd to kick Galdwin out of his ship.
“Don’t forget this connection too. Dispel it.”
Galdwin, whose heart was now filled with joy instead of dread, got out of his shock. He had been out of it since Lloyd had came to untie him, still not believing he was getting out of this deal like this.
“R-right. Yes, Sir!”
Lloyd saw Galdwin close his eyes like he had done when casting the trick, and couple seconds later when he opened them, the connection was gone.
Lloyd felt liberated. The fact that he was capable of suppressing his emotions didn’t mean he liked it. It always felt like locking yourself in a cage too small to even move a finger.
Done with his task, Galdwin half walked- half ran, trying to get away without seeming too rude. Lloyd shook his head. He wasn’t sure whether the elf was running to get out of here, or to go far away that he could do his business in private. Either way, Josse was forced to accompany him as long as the drone could.
Seeing the elf go, Lloyd returned to his room to sleep. He might have many tasks to do, but he had a lot of time too. The continent, as far as his source knew, was a mess. A rising Empire had been defeated at the sea 6 years ago, causing their soldiers and the conscript from all over the Empire to die a terrible death. In the end, Empire had fallen in all but the name, sparking wars of independence all over. Due to this, there was no centralized organization to track or hunt him. In the first place, only the citizens of a single town of one of the most backwaters ‘countries’ in this continents even knew that something had happened here. Even then, they thought it was just a meteor that had fallen. Only person who knew otherwise was Galdwin, so as long as he managed to keep his mouth shut, Lloyd and Josse could easily hide here for a long while.
As for his tasks, there were 2. One, to learn the language. Just because Josse had analyzed the language didn’t mean he had done so too. Technically, humanity had the ability to download information directly to the brain, but it had been banned after a disastrous case of crimes against humanity. Lloyd had to learn it the old fashioned way.
His last task was to cultivate. In essence, cultivation was similar to bodybuilding. One had to exercise to build up their strength in both of them, but in the case of cultivation, the main ingredient to strengthen oneself was mana. Muscles would take in the mana from atmosphere, integrating it onto themselves as Galdwin had put it. In time, the body would reach its limit, where it couldn’t take in any more mana. If pushed beyond one’s limit, the body would rapidly consume the mana it held, forcing it to evolve. This was called jumping Tiers. Each jump would increase the capabilities of the body by 20 to 30%. The most miraculous part of this was that it not only did so for muscles, but the nervous system too, allowing one to think and act faster and be more precise.
How much of this was bogus or just plain misinformation, Lloyd didn’t know. What he knew was that at this moment, he was just as strong as Galdwin due to his different biology and genetic enhancements. But Lloyd’s body, which had not grown in this world, had never seen mana, resulting in him still being in Tier 0.
As for being a Mage, the Tier 0 Galdwin had very little to say about it. Lloyd would have to find another opportunity to fulfill his curiosity.
I like the changes from the original. Thanks for having Lloyd strap him in to the med-scanner for the interrogation (which totally makes sense) and asking both general questions (which would explain any general knowledge Lloyd might have in the future, including magic and cultivation) and specific questions about what effects magic can have on the soul of an undefended person (since he so easily did the spell for translation purposes)... having a vulnerable soul/mind would be problematic.
Hope you're doing alright, can't wait until the next chapter.
Good progress
No typos spotted, but they could be hiding...