Screams erupted from the crowd and people scrambled for cover. Men and women ran for their lives as a gigantic mechanical and betentacled squid-mecha appeared on the horizon. A crew of men and women in what seemed to be a mixture of spandex, regular clothing, and various forms of armor, showed up to fight the creature.
The mortals ran for their lives, but I stayed put, cloaking myself to avoid an embarrassing incident of someone trying to “save” me, or attempting to take me hostage.
“What are we doing?” said Hong Mirae. Similarly invisible. Apparently having followed my cue.
“Mhm? I’m just watching this superhero vs monster fight...Did you know that this universe was a ‘comic book world?” I said.
“Oh, you mean like a universe with people flying around in capes and stuff,” said Hong Mirae.
“Yup, pretty much,” I nodded. Literally watching a woman in a cape, throw a bronze spear through one of the eyes of the mecha-squid.
“Huh...Neat. Do you mind if I watch too?” said Hong Mirae.
I shrugged.
“I didn’t see anyone charging a fee to watch this sky…” I said. Making a poor, hard-to-understand, joke.
Hong Mirae stood beside me and we both craned our necks at the sky. Occasionally, a fireball, energy blast, or chunk of rubble would fall in our direction. Hong Mirae would either block it with her spiritual energy, or I’d use my nothingness to swallow it whole. At some point, I realized that Hong Mirae had taken my hand in hers. The battle ended quickly with the police carrying away a mad-scientist-looking guy that had been inside the mecha-squid.
Hong Mirae and I then wandered off as reporters came to take pictures of the heroes. We stopped over at a nice little gelato place whose owner had quickly resumed business once the danger had passed. Then we spent the rest of the evening just sort of talking and enjoying each other’s company.
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With the colossal amount of downtime that I suddenly had on my hands thanks to being grounded on this planet, hero-watching ended up becoming a permanent hobby of mine. I found other things to do. There were occasionally small Empty-network and Empty-Dream-related tasks for me to handle. There were also occasionally decisions that I needed to discuss and make with my fellows in the Empty-Society. However, by far, my time was mostly left empty for Hero-Watching.
In hindsight, it was probably for the best. Hero-Watching had a lot of cross-over with the dark-song watching that I was also “actually” supposed to be doing. The mass of dark music that was gathering just outside the Sigfrid Union’s front lawn was attracting pests. I had my constructs eliminating, and capturing, the majority of the pests, but occasionally some would slip through.
If one of the creatures that had been drawn by the dark-song had the potential to be truly dangerous, I wiped it out before it could cause havoc. Otherwise, I let the local heroes handle the issue. Which led to more hero-watching. Through my hero-watching, I’d learned a fair bit more about the power structures present within this world. I also learned about the various privately-sponsored, and publicly-run, hero-leagues. As well as, the various underground coalitions of villains and super-powered criminal syndicates.
In terms of the hero-leagues, the biggest group was the Sigfrid Radiance, a huge league headed and backrolled by the Unions Department of Justice. Then there were also smaller groups like the Blackstar-Lawmen, and the Knights of the Neon-Roundtable. In terms of the villainous groups, there was a pretentious group that un-inventively called themselves the Unknown-Collective, there was the Deepsea-Cartel made up of a large number of aquatic-beings, then there was the Cult of Ornithopes, an annoying little group of overreaching sorcerers and mad-scientist types, that somehow seemed to be everywhere within our slice of the cosmos, because I remembered hearing about them back in the Shattered World, and I’d had to wipe out a lot of their operations in other parts of the Empty-Bell Complex.
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On a certain other night, Yuval and I decided to make dinner for the team. We were both in the kitchen making dinner for the section of our observation team that had stayed in the mansion instead of spreading out within the entire Sigfrid union.
“Hey, I’m about to quickly pop back home, and later I’ll be looking at some of my territories over-yonder, did you want anything?” said Yuval.
“Huh...I think I’m good for now. Thanks for asking though,” I said. Smiling. Thinking for a second before shaking my head.
Yuval smiled and shrugged.
“Fair enough...I won’t be heading out until tomorrow so, if you think of something...Or even if you think of something while I’m over there, feel free to give me a call,” said Yuval.
“Cool...Thanks,” I said. Nodding.
We then returned our attention to the baked-penne and roasted sea-monster that we were cooking. Even if we were living as mortals, that didn’t mean we had to limit ourselves to mortal ingredients, and our friends and allies were able to easily send groceries our way, via the Empty-Networks, inventory, and mass-transfer systems.
Cooking with Yuval was always a pretty enjoyable experience. It was nice to work with someone who not only knew their way in a kitchen, but also enjoyed being there. After cooking, we had a few glasses of wine, while waiting for the others to join us at the table. Overall, it ended up being a peaceful night.
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When I wasn’t hero-watching. I was cultivating. I couldn’t cultivate my body. It was already at peak of mortal capability and pushing it past that would have invalidated the purpose of the skinsuits. Which was just as well, since, with Jack and Kalpana elsewhere, I couldn’t rely on the dual-cultivation that was so integral to the methods I usually used. That being said, that didn’t mean I was utterly without a method to train myself. After all, my true-form, my core, was that of a reality-altering Idle-clicker system.
So, for the sake of increasing the strength and power of my spirit and soul, I returned to my roots and used “clicking” and concentration to increase the potency of my powers. I also “clicked” to increase the attainments I had in regards to my various skills and abilities. It was actually kind of fun watching my numbers go up like that. I wasn’t sure how much stronger I could get the few centuries that we’d be here in the Sigfrid Union.
I wanted to see if I could surprise Jack and Kal with my progress, by the time I was done here. I was already continually and constantly growing, based on my nature, it would be interesting to see how much more I would grow if I seriously focused. I was especially interested in increasing my attainments with data-analysis and data-manipulation. If I got meaningfully better at manipulating one-third of the core fundamentals of reality, I would be much stronger, which would in turn make our Calloway clan much stronger.
