Back above the city, I slowly descended, reaching the dome, as it sparkled and deformed with each touch as I slid my hand around. The resistance it gave off reminded me of soft plastic.
I added a tiny sample of mana into my fist and gave it a jab. It glowed and stiffened immediately upon impact, like hitting a cement wall. My knuckles were throbbing, but I wasn't registering the pain.
Without any warning, a flash appeared inside the dome, as a green beam of light reached out for me, scraping my left cheek, as it passed straight by me and continued into the air, slowly fading away in the distance.
"Stop! That is Joe, who brought us here! Cancel the shield!" Harry's distinct voice sounded far away inside the dome.
Feeling my cheek, I wasn't sure if what awaited me was disdain or relief from the ancients. I wanted to formally apologize for going missing, and for dragging them into this world of chaos.
Shortly after, a line of green echoed away from the center of the forcefield, seemingly cutting off its power.
"Are you coming in?!" Harry yelled up at me, much louder than before, breaking me out of my thoughts about the people.
As my altitude lowered and reached the top of the city walls, I was greeted by Harry and four other ancients eagerly staring at me.
"Turn the shield back on!" Harry shouted without missing a beat. I was impressed with his aptitude for command.
"Well look who finally decides to show up! Do you know the shit we had to deal with, especially after you decided to nuke the land!" He chided me.
I just shrugged, "For me it's been less than an hour."
"Time dilation or time travel?" A curious ancient wearing glasses and red hair appearing to spill out of her, stepped up as she inspected my arms and legs.
I just stood there shrugging, while my personal space was being violated by this tiny girl with an oversized lab coat lifting my arms. I did ask for engineers and geniuses, which usually comes with a bit of social awkwardness, so I allowed her to satisfy her curiosity.
"How many days have passed since I went missing?" I queried with my arms spread.
Turns out I had been missing for almost three weeks! Did I take that many days to heal, or does the home of that wrinkled witch have some effect?
The focus changed when Harry was interrupted by his telepathy stone, and his eyes lit up, grinning from ear to ear.
"Victory is ours!" He shouted into the air, as cheering sprung out of the darkness and along the walls.
Soon after, Harry led the way down the wall, with me and a trail of curious ancients close behind, making our way to the king's castle. I noticed some artificial lighting was being used in the city, and the roads were now compacted tight, compared to the market district I remembered. The stairs we used were closer to the castle, so I reminded myself to explore and learn the city later.
The castle had a more complex garden than the villa, adorned with statues of naked women sprawled about and many exotic plants and trees, perfectly coordinated. To enter the castle, we crossed a bridge over a moat filled with what appears to be a type of coy fish.
Inside the spacious interior, no, more like a vast interior hall, it seemed to have been stripped and remodeled half-assed, but did appear like a makeshift science lab. There were solid gray tables lined up like stations throughout the room, with different experiments appearing on them. Ancients were filing into the room, walking at a quick pace from station to station. Tools and parts were scattered around the room, and debris littered just about everywhere on the floor. These people wasted no time gathering knowledge and experimenting. My heart was filled with joy and excitement.
"Amazing, right?" Harry said, staring at me smiling, "We were studying and learning lots while you were on vacation!"
I had to give him props, this was incredible. I was dying for knowledge of this world. Having been dumped here, being clueless and hunted, it has been a complete nightmare, so this scene was welcoming.
"Please debrief me on what you know," I wanted to joke, but these are serious times. It dawned on me how much death and destruction I have created thus far. My heart was beating normally, which seemed to scare me. How can I face my innocent daughter with this cold blooded heart and blood-stained hands of mine?
Placing those thoughts aside, as Harry moved us to a finely-crafted table made of mahogany, one used for a war room perhaps, adorned with maps and opened books. A crowd of ancients began huddling around the table. It seemed my appearance sparked a bit of interest.
Staring around at all the eyes watching me, I simply bowed and said, "Please allow me to formally apologize for going missing and bringing you to this world."
"Hah, this is the greatest thing to happen in my life! I should thank you!"
"Same here, haha!"
Heads nodded in unison, giving me comfort, but I knew the world would not be kind to us going forward. Our arrival was witnessed and possibly shared across the world by now. They feared the most recent legend of the Soul Eater, so they were bound to take action.
"Please debrief me on what you have found out," I said solemnly. Harry had a big smile and huddled forward ready to unleash.
"First, we discovered our kingdom resides in Africa," he pointed to the rough outline on a map that showed us surrounded by three expansive kingdoms. We were near the southern center of the continent, Kingdom of Doron taking up much of the north, Kingdom of Hova taking the southeast, and Kingdom of Elforia on the southwest. The drawings went blank further north past Doron. I assumed this was the extent of Sarconia's knowledge.
"Second, Jerry, a mathematical genius, was able to calculate how far into the future we are, using only the stars…" he paused, leaving me in suspense.
Hurry up man, I must know!
"One-hundred thousand years, give or take a few decades." He finally spilled out.
I had to take a step back, that is far more than I estimated. That is one-hundred Soul Eaters making appearances, since our people were vanquished into the Sea of Feelings. The loss of souls throughout each millenia must be unreasonably high.
He interrupted my thoughts with his next statement, "Third, we learned lots about mana and magic, even how to build magical tools, hence our badass forcefield, which I named, Siege Stopper One."
The amount of casualties would have been really high if the dome was not in place. The people in this city were mostly commoners and scientists, not soldiers. The trebuchets nearly destroyed the dome, if I didn't act fast enough, it was only a matter of time before it broke through.
"I was meaning to ask, why was the city under attack?"
Turns out, as he explained, two reasons, first, the people spotted scouts in the surrounding forests. It seems the billow of fire and smoke from my 'accident', in addition to witnessing the white columns, caused nearby nations to become wary of Sarconia. Second, probably the main reason, was the resource for building magical tools comes from a mineral called, manite rock, that condenses and forms at the top of mountain peaks. He assembled a team of volunteers from the blue aura ancients to scout the mountains to the far East.
When they reached the bottom of the mountains, they were ambushed by an unknown group of soldiers, at least unknown at that time. One of the ancients was killed, which affected me more than I expected when he mentioned it.
"What was their name? I hope to honor the memory of our fallen," I interrupted.
"Joshua Sterling," an ancient, wearing thin glasses spoke up. I nodded, thanking him, repeating the name in my head to remember.
Harry looked down for a moment, then continued, mentioning that after defeating the ambush, the scouts made their way up the mountain. He sort of glossed over how they won, but after seeing what Dean was capable of, I didn't question.
Close to the top of the peaks, they found a mining base, where they found demi-humans, or more specifically, beastmen and dwarves, supposedly from the Kingdom of Doron! It caught me by surprise that there were more than just humans in this world. Magic really has veered the natural path of evolution for our species too, not just for wildlife.
After talking to the lead foreman running the mining base, they ended up taking a bulk of the manite rock mined back to our capital. I'm guessing they stole it.
"I told them over the radio to bring as much as possible back," Harry admitted stealing!
As it turns out, the surrounding nations have been at peace due to the mineral rights of the mountains, with contracts for leasing the mountains and surrounding land in exchange for gold and alternative resources. The Kingdom of Doron held an exclusive right to the mountains in Sarconia, and defended them heavily from bandits and intruders.
It seems that word spread of us taking the minerals, plus, with the Soul Eater's return, snowballed into a full blown war.
"Apparently, that was just a contingent army, broken off to defend the mountains," Harry casually added.
Contingent? Nine to ten-thousand men? I spoke up, "Please elaborate."
He shrugged and explained, "Well… it seems nations are ranked based on how many manite mineral deposits each controlled. That is why they had a large force guarding these mountains, lucky for us, they were too far from the main base at the time, so we took advantage."
Yea, that would piss off any kingdom, if we strolled right in and violated a contract. We would easily appear like the devils in this scenario. With the previous leaders gone, we should have been a bit more diplomatic before just casually engaging.
"We brought back the manite and our fellow scientists here began their experiments. Our blue aura team code named, Deadly Blues, were assigned to scout for signs of movement from the army, which happened after three days. It then took the army another five days to reach us, since it was over a hundred kilometers away.
I asked them to build a forcefield at all costs, which took up most of our research time. I didn't expect them to cover the whole city, but it was worth the effort!" Harry finished, exasperated.
I scanned the crowd hovering around us full of nods and smiles on their faces from their accomplishment and Harry's compliment. Now I was itching for more knowledge on how these magical devices were created.
"Alright, but it seems we messed up diplomatic relations with other countries. We will need to fix that. But first, please tell me how magical tools are created," I lightly condemned Harry for that mistake, but changed the topic immediately.
The ancient named Tamara who inspected me at the wall stepped up to explain. I was blown away by the complicated process, though some of it went over my head.
There are three components to building a magical tool. First, the capacitor to store mana, made of refined manite, and processed by a green aura user to align the spin of the mana. I interpreted this similar to how electron spin is aligned to create magnets? Somehow this allowed a set amount of mana to be stored, with the infusion of excess mana causing it to trigger the magic, and then stopping your mana flow to halt the magical output.
Second, a core that stores memory instructions, also built using manite, but this time a red aura user burns their memory of what the magic should do or perform into the material. They didn't elaborate on this part much, as it seemed to get some concerned looks during the explanation. I made a mental note to inspect the process in the future and get more details.
Third, to allow any colored aura user to use the device, a teardrop shaped glass was used as a prism to convert the aura to the required color. Varying qualities allowed different aura colors to be transmuted. Apparently the teardrop required very specific conditions when being created by a red aura user, which they hadn't fully understood.
I flinched as I remembered the teardrop object hidden in the Viscount Demon's jacket was still in my pocket. Holding my left hand out for Tamara to pause her explanation, I stuffed my right hand down my pocket and pulled out the teardrop.
The room gasped and went silent. I was a bit confused, when Tamara broke the silence, "That is the highest quality we have seen so far! Give me!"
She scurried up to me and yanked it out of my hand, as she delicately held it. I wasn't attached to it, so I just watched as she stared at it for a few seconds.
"Tier Five!" She yelled out and repeated, "Tier Five!"
She must have noticed my confusion, as she coughed, and explained, "The aura colors are assigned a tier in the following order, blue, red, green, purple, and yellow."
Healing is the highest tier? I would have thought purple, considering how overpowered it was. Seems like the age old debate of which subject is more complex, physics or biology has been decided in this era.
"Why is white not listed?" I asked.
Everyone turned to look at me, burning their eyes at me. Did I say something weird?
Tamara pulled up a chair next to me and stood on top of it. Staring really close at my eyes, as I couldn't help but just blink rapidly.
"That color was not in any textbooks we found," she said, staring more intently at my eyes, "Dean did say you could use both blue and red aura, I was curious how you were flying though."
I took a step back away from Tamara, who seemed intent on moving closer hopping with the chair.
"Well, in the void I go to, my irises shone a gray color with flashes of white light behind them, and a noble carrying an artifact told me I had white aura."
"Hm, your eyes are brown though," she seemed perplexed at the conflicting information, but so was I, although relief set in knowing I wasn't walking around with demon eyes. She quickly jumped off the chair and darted to one of the stations in the back of the room yelling, “Don’t move an inch!”
As she ran back, she was holding the artifact I mentioned, trying to activate it. Her eyes bulged through her glasses and an evil smile rose from her mouth.
“Your aura is bursting out like a hurricane! Can’t you keep it in?”
I was confused by what she meant, and I suspected she knew as well.
“Hmph, do you see anyone here with an aura right now?” she asked.
It hadn’t dawned on me, but I could not see any aura. Shaking my head.
“Hee hee” she mocked, adding, “We have discovered four tiers for mana collection, but we suspect far more.”
It seems the first tier is just being able to collect any mana. The second tier is making it more dense to darken the color. The third tier is the pinstripe aura I saw on Dean back at the King’s docks. And the fourth tier is making it invisible altogether. The artifact can only detect up to the third tier.
“You are on the first tier, Mr. Soul Eater,” she mocked me again with an evil smile.
Soul Eater, that title echoed in my head as she said it. I remembered my hypothesis about the Sea of Feelings and how mana might come from the souls themselves.
My expression must have hardened, as Tamara stepped back a bit concerned, thinking she went too far. I waved it off and shook my head.
“Listen up everyone, I’m sure you’ve read about the Soul Eater by now. But that's not important, what is important is that all ten billion people from our era are trapped at this very moment in what's called the Sea of Feelings,” I calmly stated in a serious tone. The crowd seemed to garner more interest as they huddled in closer.
“If my hypothesis is correct, the mana we are collecting is the very essence of their souls,” I let the cat out of the bag.
Gasps and murmurs spread through the room. I knew far too well that magic usage was irresistible, just as oil was in our era. This was going to be an impossible uphill battle to control.
