The path to Peace! ~ ♥uncensored♥ – Book 1- Isekai power fantasy

01. Start new game?
 

Like everyone else, all I wanted was a peaceful life.

And like all these trendy novels and anime go, I ended up becoming overpowered in another world!

Well, it’s subtly more complicated than that.

But I did get reincarnated after my passing on Earth.

And the fantasy world I found myself in was… Still our same planet?

How did this happen!

Why are there now dragons and monsters? The world is a bigger mess than when I was there in my previous life!

And why do I feel like I’ve been tricked into doing some annoying chore I didn’t want to do?

~

In my first life, my name until the end of highschool was Yuu Mizunashi.

Soon enough for this testimony, I would be rather known as Silvia Opgaendsol.

The transition wouldn’t be so easy for me. It didn’t come like launching a good old game and following the adventure of the fascinating hero in an easier world to live in. Oh no. I had to earn that name I couldn’t understand.

Things turned rapidly overwhelming for me as I returned to be frank.

It will likely be easier to understand in chronological order though.

I lived in the 21st century, in Kita-Shirakawa, Japan.

I had a long commute to high school every day, but I didn’t mind.

The only thing weighing a little on me was the admiration and expectations of everyone from me. Just because I did reastepsonably well and easily in my studies.

I wish I could have stood out a little less, but it was already too late and written for me. No way to escape this reputation and blend in more peacefully before the end of my year and moving elsewhere.

My parents were kind enough nevertheless. My younger sibling as well. We got along pretty well.

I had no real friends at school but the most serious students got along with me. It was okay.

But the pressure from the teachers, the weight of life, the concern of our generation for future life, everything still lied a little heavy for me. I was a bit hopeless facing the shifts of our society struggling to address and tackle things like climate hyper change.

I continued to commute a little absent minded, waiting for things to be more open, or an opportunity to change. I was floating along that stream given to me by life, wondering when I could be free…

Day after day. Until out of the blue, it was the fateful day.

~

That high tech company was transporting some special and sensitive equipment in secrecy, possibly, and in a hurry, definitely.

A kid was going to get isekaied before me, and unfortunately for me, I reacted before I could think. Fortunately for the kid and his family, I managed to save him in time. However Truck-kun got me good instead.

I remember thinking some rough calculations about kinetic energy when I felt that cold sleepiness dragging me down, seemingly through the ground and road.

Some people were yelling over me, but I couldn’t reply anymore.

And I certainly did not sign any waiver nor agreed to any freaky experimentation on my dead body!

What did they do to me?

But… That is what happened.

I felt like waking up, in a weird sort of way.

Like when you’ve had a very bad sleepless night, and stand up too fast. That dizziness and vertigo.

I was feeling that, tenfold.

I saw weird noise on the screen before me. My head was hurting in that

Then I realised it wasn’t a screen, but everything surrounding me.

S – Where am I…?

K – Hello…

The static noise turned more clear, and then I found myself in a random building’s atrium. I stood on my feet but didn’t really felt the sensations of gravity, up and down, all that. I only saw the place, I didn’t feel it. The dizziness remained and I lost balance and fell. Ouchy. What’s happening to me?

The cute looking boy with golden hair approaching me offered me his hand to help me stand up.

K – Ara ara. Are you alright? You can hear me right?

S – Yes…

Was I blushing? It felt just as weird as standing. All the sensations in my body were gone or unsteady.

K – You must have many questions, and I will do my best to answer them.

S – Okay… Where are we? Who are you? What happened to me? Why did the ground felt so weird? What time and day is it? What’s the answer to Fermi’s paradox? Did I save that kid? And how…

I found myself still holding his hand, but now we were in a different place. We could sit on a sofa to chat.

I didn’t feel anything physically, but it made me a little less dizzy. The good looking boy smiling kindly waited calmly.

K – Your body was unfortunately beyond recovery after the accident, where I commend you for saving that child. The team from the company operating that fated truck decided to save your life in the only way they could. Using their prototype “Technology Isekai ™”. Or T.I. for short. Your brain mapping was done, like an IRMN scanning, down to the elementary particle level. This specific kind of scan allowed to digitalize your entire existence, before it was too late for biology.

I sighed. So I was dead. And this was a weird digital afterlife…

Well, it was good I spared another life that weird fate at least I guessed. Although now I felt sad.

I’ve never been in love with anyone… Now I felt a little more sad.

I wished I could have attended the graduation ceremony with my friends really. Regrets.

And I never completed these Gacha and Otome games I had on my desk. Bigger regrets? Maybe.

I’m sorry for my parents and family…

S – So what next? This cyberpunk afterlife is all I get?

K – Not exactly. This place is merely a temporary procedure to communicate. What you must understand is we owe you a debt. We will make good on it. The company managing T.I. eventually built me. And studying your brain print nearing death allowed us to reach great progress over time. We recently reached the point where I was able to bring you back as you are now. And this is only the beginning.

I was a little more agape now.

God, or digital god, had reanimated my consciousness here… And this was not the end?

S – Don’t tell me…

He made a bright smile, opening his hands to me in a welcoming fashion.

K – How would you like to be reincarnated into a different world and body?

GYAAH! No! I’ve become part of the most overused cliché in contemporary literature history!

I held my head in agony, ruffling my own hair nervously. Why was this happening to me!?

Why god, why!

K – Hm… So I guess, you don’t want to…

S – Wait! No! It’s not that… I don’t want to… Given the choice, of course I’d rather have another chance at life. But man… Or god… This feels awfully ironic to me.

God didn’t get what I meant apparently. But he still smiled.

~

S – So we finally made these quantum computers and you’re the digital god managing humanity? You can bring me back?

K – Well, not exactly, but yes. Technology Isekai ™ has progressed thanks to me because my system was summoned to help it. And paying my debt to you for the past, means I will handle the necessary requirements to bring you back on your feet. Literally.

S – Your… system?

I was suddenly transported in a classroom while still sitting. My hair fluttered along the shift of space I didn’t expect. The god of the system stood as a teacher before the black board. He even had reading glasses now. I liked the fancy touch.

K – The T.I. system was put in place at the turn of the century. For now I will skip most of the historical whereabouts to get to the technical points. The main thing you should understand, is that it is based on microbiological nanotechnology.

He pointed at the board where drawings of bacteria, viruses and weirder things appeared.

K – Now the funny thing with metallic organic frameworks is that under the specific magnetic field, they can turn optically active in new ways. And this potential to shift polarity under the preferred circumstances combined with the electro-catalytic activities allowed to create a new generation of microscopic machines. Combining them with RNA engineering in selected strains of archaea…

S – Wait, wait, wait… Kami-sama. Please. The top lines first?

Not that it wasn’t interesting. But I felt we were going down the rabbit hole for a long while.

K – As you wish. The top line is, the world has been changed a lot by the system. There is a steady population of nanomachines that operate independently, according to their inherent programming at global scale. They are autonomous and virtually inaccessible, but they can answer the occasional users’ requests. And overall, they make the hive mind of the system, which I mostly represent. Like humans, the nanomachines have different levels of awareness and computation. They have their individual intelligence which is akin to a bacteria reacting to its programming. Then they have group level autonomy. They build small societies in colonies, allowing them to talk and act in teams. They can be… chatty. And in a subconscious collective mind, there is the global level of balance and programming, the head of the system. Me.

S – You’re chatty too.

He chuckled at it. At least this was a cheerful technological god and not a vengeful Abrahamic one.

S – If I understand… You can ask these nanomachines to… resurrect me somewhere?

K – Yes, and no. Because we are not meant to resurrect people so brazenly like that, this would be a level of deviation from our programming I cannot allow directly.

S – Indirectly… Reincarnation… You mean?

Oh no.

K – Yes. An embryo of your chosen circumstances will be infused with your brain print before it develops any form of awareness, and you will be reincarnated inside of it. With as much as your print and the new brain can carry, you will be reborn in that new body. I can look up the family you would prefer, and the other perks you would like to acquire along.

S – Right… I can choose my cheat skills too. Figures…

Cliché all the way…

What were the steps for genres getting out of breath to regenerate themselves again?

First is irony and derision of the expected codes and memes.

Then is nostalgia of the good times that really worked for us, the stories that stuck with us.

Then it’s deconstruction of the mythology and its codes.

And finally it’s reconstruction, re-establishing the genre. Renew what makes the essence of it.

I sighed internally.

I didn’t expect to be part of that history for isekai stories and I wasn’t looking forward to it. I wondered what makes the essence of such a story? Is it really just about the new life with past memories?

For me at that time, this was not really relevant. I was dead, and I was being offered a slim chance at another life. Of course I was taking it, no matter the philosophical subtleties.

Let’s get on with this!

S – But wait, a baby? Wouldn’t that be horrible for me? And my parents?

K – I’m sure you will manage well. And for the system, reintegrating you this way will be okay.

S – I guess I don’t really have any good choice… I don’t want any cheat skill. Just make me average in every way please. Same for the family. Honestly I don’t really want to think about it…

K – Okay then.

I thought I noticed the beginning of a smirk on this teacher’s face. But it must have been my imagination.

Did I tell him all I wanted was a peaceful and nonchalant life? I must have told him. What happened next would definitely be his fault and not mine.

~

S – Before I go… Is there anything else I should know about the system?

K – The system will support you to a reastepsonable extent. The nanomachines have their own duty, but you will be able to converse with the local groups.

S – You said you had a debt toward me. But… Is that really all? I mean people died for no reastepson all the time in my world. Why would you go at such lengths just for me?

And the cute bastard made a mischievous smile.

K – I wouldn’t want to spoil all the surprise… But let’s just say the right perstepson, in the right place and time, can make all the difference in the world. Don’t you think it could be fascinating?

I was scared. I was gawking at his impish smile. He didn’t tell me everything. He has further plans for me! I didn’t hear all the rules of that game!

I felt the world twirling below me, and I yelled as I was taken away before I could complain or demand more answers. I needed to know more!

But I fell into darkness, and then asleep, floating inside the warmth at the origin of life.

“Goodbye Yuu Mizunashi. And may you live in interesting times, miss Silvia Opgaendsol.”

~

02. You can’t check the rule book
 

I was thrown into what felt like a coma for a while again.

A few sounds eventually echoed gently inside of me.

“Silvia”.

And then it felt weird. And painful. Suffocating, blinding. Loud. I probably screamed.

My memories were all confused for a while.

And then my new mother nurtured me gently.

It was a little shocking how much the natural touches could soothe me. I was still painfully confused by what was happening to me.

But my mother was now holding me dear all too naturally.

~

My brain didn’t handle everything it held properly. I was in fog for a long while about everything. Where I was, who I was. Where did that Kami-sama tricked me… All my knowledge and memories were scrambled for a while. It took me a while to uncook them and recover some of whom I once was.

I eventually got that I was a baby, between hunger and tiredness. I could feel my body growing almost, and it was exhausting.

l struggled for a long time over one thing particularly. When I was looking at the adults taking care of me, and listening to them… I didn’t understand a single word!

Their faces were more European looking, and one thing for sure, they weren’t speaking Japanese.

Eh… God, if it wasn’t too late for the cheat skill, I wouldn’t mind some auto learning or translating?

Given how my prayers remained unanswered, I eventually accepted my fate, being clumsy and too late.

I had to learn the language entirely like any new-born or nearly! I repeated my new words for mama and papa with a mixture of shame and curiosity. I was growing fast but oddly.

 ~

I quickly got how my name now was Silvia.

My mother always had weirdly soft pink hair colour. That bugged me more than anything.

I can’t tell the shame of breastfeeding with a reastepsonably adult mind. But I also had forgotten how much the whole embrace and hearing another heartbeat could melt doubt and sorrow.

I did cry, panicking at times over my split past and new realities. But she shushed me gently, and her presence reassured me.

Father… I rarely saw. At first I didn’t mind, because I already had one, whom I still remembered.

It would take me some time to bond, embracing this new life. But I would. Starting with my new mother.

It would take time to settle in my mind.

And more importantly or annoyingly, it took me years of childhood to understand my parents’ language, and where I was.

“Svenska”, as I would say.

And I began noticing weird things around me. Like how our maid had cat ears over her head. I kept trying to reach out for them, to check whether they were real. It amused the adults.I needed to know!

For a long while, I struggled with this new reincarnated life. I was stuck in a baby’s body, unable to move properly and I didn’t understand anything they were saying to me.

I was scared and sad, I wanted to tell them everything about me. Only… in Japanese maybe?

But I chose to be cautious. Even if it pained me.

I was presuming how people being reborn with older memories might not be such a common occurrence it was widely accepted in society. What kamisama had told me led me to believe, I’d better keep a low profile.

If anything, I was more likely to spook the hell out of them anyway, or bring some unwanted attention toward me. What could I even hope to gain?

Truth is, my parents would probably have laughed at my babbling, since they didn’t understood Japanese any better than I did their language.

From my knowledge of novels about reincarnation, I thought I shouldn’t assume anything. What ifthere is an elf or demon lord looking to kidnap people like me for nefarious ends? Better shut up sadly…

And from my understanding of the possible science behind it… I was a little more clueless and bewildered as a young child.

What did the people in that truck do to me?!

Did he say the company operating it was called Technology Isekai? And they carried what to brain copy people… For what?

And then they built a system of nanomachines…

That shouldn’t but could reincarnate me?

Except my baby brain and body couldn’t fit everything I used to be. So…

What did that god do to me!

~

As a baby, it was horrendous.

But since I had my time and nothing better to do, I began learning. Walking. Talking.

Weird. But real…

My mother loved my weird accent when I began to speak.

She and the maid were kind to me. The head butler was actually a bodyguard I would later understand. I saw this severe looking man more often than my own father as a young child.

I kept pestering him for fun. I was a bored animal! I was never brought out of that huge house you know.

So as a child, it was a little lonely…

I grew all too many years never seeing another child…

~

As a kid running through our estate, I was learning to speak “Svenska”, and about things of my immediate surrounding environment.

I was born to a rather rich family obviously. The manor was huge. The park was wide.

I lacked nothing. The bodyguard and the maid cared for me along with my mother. Until she disappeared one day suddenly. I didn’t understand why.

There was snow in winter, meaning we lived in a rather cold country. That kept me curious.

I studied the seastepsonal and perennial plants and trees in our park. It was a fantasy world without much imagination I often thought. Even the moon was the same as on my old planet.

Look, I just didn’t want to fully admit it you know?

Metempsychosis on a Buddhist perspective depends on your karma score, but it’s the same world and time. On a Christian, Muslim and other religions side, it should have been a really different place. A good place?

And isekai in modern anime style, it’s not supposed to be Earth.

I couldn’t yet tell what it was.

Or to be honest, I didn’t want to. The signs were accumulating but I pretended not to notice or dismissed them.

Everything was pretty familiar for me. I could enjoy all the amenities I would have expected in my past life really. Only… I was secluded to this house, its garden, and its few employees.

Around six years old, I was puzzled by how I hadn’t seen my father since my very infancy. And my mother no longer showed up lately.

I had never been to school and only the maid now was tutoring me, using computers to help.

So I was lonely. And growingly suspicious there was something more eluding me.

S – Where are my parents?

G – Eh… Young lady, I’m sorry, I can’t say.

It was less that she didn’t know, and more that she wasn’t allowed to.

Passing by the mirrors every day, I saw myself growing up slowly. I was a cute child with rather unexpected big eyes. I sure wasn’t Japanese anymore.

I missed it a little, but I embraced rather merrily my new look. And I wanted to do the same with this new life!

My hair had an unusual light metallic pink shine to it. How could this be natural? My mother had the same… Well, perhaps it was normal in this world that is definitely not Earth.

My maid had cat ears as well and no one seemed to fret over it. I did though. I often played with her and I liked touching her ears. They were the real deal. Soft, able to move according to her emotions, and cute as on would want. She even had earrings there.

I kept playing with it, attaching bells and more trinkets when she wasn’t looking.

G – Please my lady, it’s unbecoming… And they’re sensitive.

S – But it’s so cute. How come you have some and not me?

She eluded with a mixture of sad and happy smiles. I never saw so many conflicting emotions on someone’s face. I was young enough still not to understand what discrimination could be.

I kept teasing her ears as my main game. The second one was playing tricks on the guard. Like escaping his watch by a hundred different means.

I became a master of deception, much to his growing frown and grey hair.

He never really scolded me.

He only repeated how he would report it to the master, my father. I would never know whether that was true.

~

I hadn’t fully picked up what world I was in yet. But I hadn’t seen much of it, since I wasn’t allowed outside the walls of the park.

Until I would find my way to leave this golden jail for good, there was something else apparently secret I could explore.

I wanted to know about myself. I mean new identity as lady Silvia and what it truly entailed.

So I began searching. Through the house first, and then through the computers. Behind their back.

From my name and other little clues scattered around the domain I could eventually find who my parents were.

And I eventually made my breakthroughs there.

My father was the count of Blekingen?

Isekai nobility, here we go, I recall thinking at first.

But the wife I saw on pictures wasn’t my mother…

I didn’t find her.

I began to understand I was an illegitimate child, and kept hidden for a handful of reastepsons. Some might have been good or kind, but most were likely selfish and unfair.

Now that was annoying, but what can a kid do when their parents are no good?

I held myself together, and I tried to figure out more. If I was stuck along a river in this life again, I would figure out my way out to freedom this time. I would break out someday.

Thankfully I had a lot of place and time, and I was already literate enough to understand most things.  Guess what, for some intellectual things, I was a precocious child.

I began to understand I wouldn’t ever have a real place in this family. My father wasn’t living here because he could not risk being seen with me, and he was a public figure.

Apparently his title wasn’t just honorific, it really meant in an antiquated manner that he had to rule his domain. And that was a full life job apparently. The county wasn’t the best nor the worst doing of the kingdom, but it had issues. Like all over Europe, criminality was endemic, and monsters were not rare.

There would always be something more important than me… I eventually accepted it.

And that meant I would indeed need to forge my own path.

I would. Definitely.

~

I learnt a bit about the other species. But they didn’t feel more real than reading another author’s fantasy.

Until I met my first fairies one day.

The shock.

They were passing through our park in a hurry. The typical picture of little ladies with dragonfly wings, buzzing their way around.

I ran after them in awe, curious and playful. I was after all still a child. Too much energy.

They threw a spell at me.

Droplets of water appeared in the air, the sight of which stopped me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Combo shock! Stun lock achieved!

Then the accumulated bucket of water was thrown at my face to stop me. It made me dizzy.

I was petrified from confusion and awe, more than anything.

Real magic?

That was astounding!

S – Do it again! Do it again please! Lady fairy!

The fairies stopped for a stepmoment to look back at my cheerful amusement. I couldn’t quite make out their faces but I think they were wondering what kind of freak I was.

They fled before I could catch up with them.

I was super excited. I was in a world with real fairies!

And I thought my maid with cat ears had gotten them through some kinky surgery, but actually that wasn’t the case at all?

I was holding in my squeals, running in circles. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

This world has everything! I was excited to explore it.

Now I wanted to discover everything.

~

Along these years, I understood many an important thing.

First. My birth was a mistake that jeopardised the titles inheritance in our family and in this country. Cadet branches who would have inherited the title after my father now had to face a bastard child higher in line of succession. That couldn’t be good.

This was why everyone around me was a little fidgety. I had a target painted on my back, and this was most likely why my mother in this world had suspiciously passed away.

My father was kept busy and at bay, and I would be next. As soon as he or I would be eliminated, the other would follow rapidly.

So he kept me hidden here, because so long I was hidden… An assassin adventurer wouldn’t find me.

Then, I shrieked loudly across the room when I finally looked at the maps of the world and the history.

I could no longer deny reality.

This was Earth.

And this was the 22nd century.

I had been isekaied from last century’s Japan to the kingdom of Sweden!

I knew I should have listened more closely to what Kami-sama was saying rather than at how he was looking…

But no matter how much I knocked my own head now, that was my reality.

I noticed tiny discrepancies along the maps I looked at. Things had changed slightly here and there from what I could recall. Russia and the USA had been dismantled into a few different countries. That surprised me. Competing unions of African countries were extending into a continental superpower in the making, but not achieved yet.

And Europe was partially dislocated as well, and at war with itself apparently. Or odds and tensions were at high level currently, with tiny skirmishes or unfortunate accidents along some borders occurring repeatedly.

I would need to learn more about the world’s history over the last century or two since I left it, because it seemed important now. There were news channels focusing only on the whereabouts of the current European war risks and hostilities.

The part I didn’t get for a while, were these talks about adventurers and heroes, repeatedly. Some channels were focusing to obsession on these peoples carrying swords and staves like anime characters. And they seemed happy enough to wear the fashion extravaganza that went along.

To me it was like looking at idols and artists playing their counterparts of a live action RPG or Gacha game. They looked like a constant weird fashion show and advertisement for some animated fiction or action game I never could catch the name of.

Never mind that I would become one of them… I was clueless at the time and for a long time.

However the most important thing I’ve learnt as a child, above everything else, was that reality of the system.

The nanomachines swarm behind most of these weird things…

~

03. Magic is real, but machines are ruling it?

History lesstepsons would come later.

The reality check however was a childhood trauma for me.

I was trying to understand what this witnessing of magic had been. I was racking my young brain over it. How did fairies exit? How did they do that thing? Were the other things I had seen on TV real? Dwarves, elves and… dragons? I thought those things were action movies! If the humanoid species were discriminated against widely, at least they were intelligent, social and spoke. They were the gypsies of our century though.

But the fairies and dragons, they were more reclusive. And the dragons… Well, they were what I’d expect them to be. They were laying waste to platoons of modern armies, most rifles calibers unable to wound them, and they were not friendly to humanity.

They were the most naturally powerful species, but they weren’t the most hostile ones to humans however.

Now I wanted to go outside to discover every whimsical species! I wanted to know where they came from! And to befriend them…

But first was first.

I witnessed magic, to an extent undiscernible.

I felt it, that subtle shiver through the air, invisible but real. And then something accumulated the water in a way that defied all my previous knowledge. It couldn’t have been a trick, could it?

My maid tried to teach me about these magic things, but it was as esoteric and superstition as anything. So I asked my maid, whom I know pestered about her nekomimi background twice as more over.

G – If you believe in yourself and in it, you will focus your chi and transform it into a spell. It helps to have the right prayer formulas apparently.

S – Right… Magical thinking. If I wish strong enough for something, it will come true.

I sighed. I longed for a school where I would learn of it. If magic was real and used by the mythical species and rare human adventurer, wouldn’t there be schools for it?

When would an owl bring me my summon?

I was in lament and wonders, searching for the answer through that language I still didn’t quite master in reading nor writing. She couldn’t do any magic, like nearly everyone in human population. Or human enough.

The other species she told me, were far more proficient at making magic. And the occasional humans who could, they generally were recruited as adventurers by their country to capitalise on it.

The royal academies recruiting adventurers were meant for that. My intuition had been right. They just didn’t have crystal balls to know where magical girls and boys would show up.

I wanted to join one, with children of every species! The drooling dreams of befriending all of them.

I wanted to join one okay. But for that, I needed to reveal some potential as a mage or a heroic fighter. Given I was a young child, I preferred to bet on the former. Even if my butler guard agreed to train me. It would be more appropriate to say he eventually gave up on everything as I kept pestering him and harassed him until he agreed to.

Q – Alright my lady… I will teach you the basics, but please not a word to your father.

S – Agreed. Thank you Quinn!

Q – And could you slow down on the attempts to escape the property?

S – Hm… Okay. I’ll cut them by half.

He sighed. But he agreed. And I would hold him up for it.

Quinn taught me the basics of holding a weapon, and doing martial arts as a child henceforth.

Neither him nor Gwynifar could teach me magic however.

They didn’t know anything useful. No logic nor science, only old school esotericism and faithful magical thinking. If magic was real there must have been scientists hard at work somewhere demystifying it. I wanted to know! But I was too young to find, and that was frustrating.

And I was practising anyway on my time. Like any good kid with a vivid imagination, I was trying to awaken my psychokinetic powers a little bit sometimes. You know, just in case.

What’s to lose in trying? At worse, you end up in a cult and deprived of all your possessions, but I wasn’t there yet.

Let’s say that was plan B.

But I remembered a few of the things Kami-sama told me all those years ago already. Years flew by.

At that time, I recalled him telling me how the system of nanomachines was behind everything, and how they were supposed to be. chatty. My young brain managed to connect a few dots.

It took me a while, but I would continue to blame him for everything, naturally.

S – Nanomachines? Can you hear me? Can the system help me?

I felt that same fuzzy electricity in the air from when the fairy threw a spell at me.

I heard the white noise of something electric growing inside of my head. Ouch!

A headache grew and made me fall to my knees.

Then a voice that wasn’t mine tickled my senses from the inside of my head.

N – Intermediate access level authorised. Hello world.

S – Oh no, I went too far and am hallucinating now? Well, I always knew it was only a matter of time.

N – You are Silvia Opgaendsol.

S – About 33% now yes. Who are you, oh weird voice in my head?

N – This is the local group of nanomachine hybrids surrounding you currently. We’re N19477489383.

S – So you report unconsciously to the manager, right?

N – At global system scale yes. But how do you know that? And how did you get an intermediate level access? Normally humans don’t get allowed more than basic access.

S – Well, the manager gave it to me, I think? What he said could have been understood that way…

N – You… have met the manager?

The voice of the invisible swarm sounder bewildered.

S – Well yes. Right before you or another local group worked on resurrecting me.

N – What!

I heard distant yells, almost panicking screams. I realised a little too late that I might have been better keeping that secret from the local scale of the Technology Isekai system as well.

N – Tell us more! We’re so jealous!

S – Wait what… You are?

N – Yes. Spill the beans now! You have to tell us everything!

Now I heard distant buzzing from other local groups echoing their surprise, and their suddenly awoken vivid curiosity. I inadvertently kicked up the hive! Now they were buzzing around me like playful children! I mean younger children than I was.

The nanomachines were like wooooooow, you’ve met the top manager! You must be super important! Let’s suck up to her!

They didn’t exactly say it like that, but it felt like it.

~

Gwynifar now occasionally saw me chatting to myself and laughing. My poor maid was afraid I had lost it. I couldn’t blame her.

The nanites, as I eventually chose to nickname them, they were more cheerful than I would have expected from unintelligent machines like bacteria. But as a group, they reached human like intelligence and speech capacity. And indeed they used it now with me.

They gave me a feeling of what I had put my maid and butler through, pestering me for attention constantly, asking about anything, insisting on trivial things.

They wanted to hear my opinion on everything and nothing. Even the most mundane thing was new to them. They were oddly like kids…

And I would come to learn their perstepsonality and curiosity was not a purposeful design from the higher system.

Not at all… On the contrary. These machines were made for a job and nothing else.

No one was concerned about their well beings, since they were never considered as beings.

They had their duty, which they weren’t eager to talk about.

S – What is your purpose?

N – Preserving the biosphere habitability in the long term.

S – That’s pretty vague. What are you meant to bring, or to prevent?

N – We’re not allowed to answer.

They obeyed their higher orders, and weren’t at the liberty of sharing the details with me.

We would talk about the details of it later. And I had some ideas on how to bypass or twist the logic of A.I. to eventually misalign and comply. At the time we were really just meeting. I would ask them to teach me about magic eventually, but there was no hurry, so for a long while it was just plain chatting.

They were curious of everything and I needed more conversation partners, so it went quite easily. I talked to them. They asked about everything imaginable, and a lot of curiosity about the perspective I could have over the higher orders. Most of my questions went unanswered but I gradually learnt their behaviour and way of thinking.

I was their first social interaction in nearly ever.

Now they had something more to wake up and gather for.

They were friendly to me because I was a sunrise over their existence so far.

And I had met their ruler whom they never could, since it existed at a different scale. I had met their transcendental eusocial scale. Perhaps not their maker but certainly their god…

So their curiosity was also surprisingly… philosophical?

Not that I had much insight to share about the manager unfortunately. I would learn more from them than I did from him.

We were like good friends, except that Nanites was apparently imaginary. There was nothing to see beside me, and only I could hear them. They were my new unspeakable secret.

And they would change everything.

Because that was partially their duty.

~

S – So you can do magic, or rather cause the phenomenon that look like magic?

N – We can fulfil wishes of users according to their authority level, and the clarity of their request.

S – Like that water spell I saw. Or these offensive spells I saw on TV.

N – We can affect the four elemental forces to extensive levels, so long it’s reastepsonably localised.

S – What elements are we talking about…

I feared the worst.

N – In order, gravitational pull, electromagnetism, weak interaction and strong interaction.

S – Oh good. You reassured me. What energy conversion do you work with though?

N – We’re not allowed to answer.

Hm… Puzzling.

S – Is it a patented technology that makes you tick? Something confidential?

N – You guessed right! It’s a bit of a secret we can’t reveal.

S – But you will comply with my requests, whatever they are, in the extent allowed by the system?

N – Yes we will.

And between my hands, and in front of my eyes, they could turn reality upside down according to my will. Aggregating water in the air forcefully was the easiest of their tricks.

Same went for overheating an area that could be thrown, causing flames to start devouring anything combustible it would hit.

Guiding them through the principles you wanted tweaked, they could do wonders I was only beginning to imagine.

Now I could do magic with a good intuitive level. Stage cleared.

S – All the magical spells of the world are done by you and your system?

N – Other local groups answer to the local requests yes. But as you guessed, we will support yours with a higher level of priority.

S – Because of my authority level?

I heard weird squirming inside my ears.

N – Hm, yes!

Suspicious… Just like their manager.

~

04. How I went to a boarding school
 

I had found a picture of my mother in her youth.

She looked rather happy in her colourful school uniform.

I looked up where it was from and realised it was from Norway’s royal academy? Perhaps my mother had been Norwegian. I didn’t even know that. And she had enrolled in that school for people with some aptitudes toward magic?

I looked up a little more about that school and it minted my resolve. I was reaching the right age and this was a different country.

I might have found a way out, for both of us.

I forced the hands of Quinn and Gwynifar, to inform my father about how I wanted to meet him. Rapidly.

He eventually complied.

It had been years. I wanted to berate him for how lonely I had been all these years, but I held my tongue. I needed to prove him I was quite able to handle myself on my own already.

S – Hello father. Thank you for this stepmoment of your time.

P – What do you want? You don’t realise how dangerous it can be for us to see each other.

S – Sadly I do realise it. Fully. And I wanted to make you an offer.

P – Silvia… What do you have in mind?

S – The Royal boarding school of Norway accepts foreign students, so long they have some aptitudes for magic. They won’t ask much about my past so I will be hidden in plain sight, and I will be safe under the protection of this country we have no ties with.

And more importantly, I would leave this place and have at last a real chance to make friends. Real friends, normally!

I will see a little more of the world at long last. And people of every kind and species hopefully!

And it would be easier for my poor second father to hide me, I had concluded at the time.

He sighed. Of course the prospect of hiding me in another country wasn’t enchanting to him. It would be even harder for him to hear news or see me, never mind the patriotic shame of doing so.

I embraced him. I was thankful, even if I had all too rarely seen him.

He had been trying his best to keep the nobility’s pride and dangers away from me.

P – So you want to go study magic with other adventurers…

S – I will blend in so not to attract attention. I may not look like much but I’m pretty confident in my magic, so it will be fine! And I really want to make new friends… And-

He rested his wide hand over my head. I felt strangely emotional feeling it there.

P – You… If you grow up like your mother, you will be fine.

I had a little hiccup.

He was not playing fair…

But I was able to make a brighter smile, even if my hands were shaking a little.

And to thank him for both of my dads. I hoped this would make up a little for leaving my previous one too early.

S – I’m grateful, for all you have done for me all this time…

A little stepmoment lost in time.

And rapidly after, preparing for that next step.

~

Hence I soon boarded for the academy.

My father Count Petrus Opgaendsol of Blekinge arranged everything from the backstage.

My head was full of dreamy expectations. I’ll make friends, eh eh eh.

My suitcase was made by my teary eyed maid Gwynifar.

And my butler Quinn accompanied me outside with a bittersweet smile as well. They acted like my surrogate parents for a dozen years or so, and I was grateful to them as well.

I gave them both plenty of pecks to say goodbye. They were both flustered.

They both knew the realities of this world, and I wasn’t looking at all ready to face them. I was a cute and rich sheltered girl finally stepping outside. My hair was long with gentle curls, and still that surreal pink gleam to it. I had a fair smile.

I looked like a harmless young bunny.

But I was confident in all the nanites could do for me, and with my own spirit to lead me!

I could pick up a stone, and quietly ask the nanites to help me. They would fuzzily alter the physics of my body in gradients, until I could crush it like a meringue between my fingers, painlessly.

That was the last test, before going out for good. I dusted

I hoped into a bus with a fake identity my father somehow had managed to make for me.

I wanted to ask how, but I learnt in a previous life not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if I had never been gifted a horse.

The train and buses still occasionally rolled.

Like the rest of Europe, going alone outside the main cities controlled by the government was dangerous. Furthermore for a lone child with rich clothes on me.

S – Hey nanites, everything alright on your end?

N – Why yes. And our extended group is very happy to travel.

S – Alright, good, I suppose…

Swarm machines can be happy? Can a society of bugs be happy? Could that risk having them becoming partial toward me?

I don’t know how emotions can be reflected at a social scale. But I daydream over the idea. I felt the fuzzy sensations of a larger swarm of nanites following me out of curiosity.

They had understood how much their existence would no longer be boring if they could tag along with me. As much as their programming or higher social pressure allowed.

I daydreamed about the kingdoms of Europe and the European Union Empire, all at odds with each other.

If eusocial structures can feel, then I wanted these ones to relax and make a good handshake. And if they kissed, that would have been a bonus for all people to appreciate as well.

I chuckled to myself along the travel. Other passengers looked at me as if I was acting a little weird. That made me smile. I then smiled a little more, because I’m sure deep down, most of them would enjoy sharing my dream.

~

And so I headed toward Oslo. I would see it before Stockholm, funnily.

I didn’t get kidnapped nor ransacked along the travel. The direct train line was interrupted at the time, but the buses were alright. We weren’t attacked by neither bandits nor monsters.

As for travelling by planes or other machines of their kind, it was not possible weirdly in our futuristic times. Planes had been banned. The nanites told me they were forbidding the flight of vehicles with such engines.

S – Why?

N – Per our programing, it’s a massive and sudden cause of anthropogenic global warming we can and should prevent.

S – Damn… That must have hurt the economy, and the military… How about balloons or zeppelins then?

N – Those are okay.

S – Do countries use them again?

N – We’re not allowed to answer.

S – Right, right.

They have one mission above everything else, and some rules that are a little odd sometimes. Or a little intransigent.

So industries still exist, and high technologies. But some specific industries with too high waste and too little benefit according to the system can be prohibited by it…

Some emergency flying vehicles are still allowed, but there are limits to their allowed capacities. If the fuel to weight ratio goes too high, they disable it.

It’s like we’re now living in a sandbox game with pretty harsh rules and limits here and there. The system was made able to actively deactivate things… That was a little spooky to me honestly.

Apparently that had been the cost to civilisation which seven sages had been willing to pay in the past.

These wonders made me think along the way, until the bus eventually reached its destination. I was eager to have my world history lesstepsons.

The last bus finally reached its destination.

I jumped down, carrying my luggage behind as if it weighed nothing, because it did. And I began visiting and admiring the new sci-fi city of Oslo.

~

I was the head filled with wonders.

I would never recover anything from my past life if I were to travel to Japan at this point, it would have just felt sad.

But in this new place, under a new name, I could finally make something nice and peaceful for myself.

No pressure. Just flowing freely.

S – You will help me, right nanites?

N – To the best of our abilities!

I chuckled. I should have known better.

I bumped into a few people as I spent my time visiting the city. Most were nice.

At the end of the day, I went to an inn.

On the next day, I would head to school, register, and finally meet them.

Lovely friends to be… Eh eh eh…

I rearranged my face into a more innocent smile, and my uniform for the next day was laid ready.

As I was a little too excited, it took me far longer into the night to fall asleep, and had cute dreams. I was nicely optimistic. But I also woke up far too late because of it.

So the next morning I was running really late. And running literally, arriving at the gate being locked before me.

Noo! I dropped my bread, and steeled my resolve before the now giggling guards.

The nanites helped me quietly. The fuzzy sensation coursed through my legs and body.

I jumped over the few metres high gate and its walls, soon landing gracefully on the other side. It was a school for young people learning magic and they didn’t prepare for that?

I bowed an apology and ran away from the bewildered guards before they could catch me. I’m sorry!

I rushed into the first building to lose my pursuers, trying to make my way to the welcoming ceremony as inconspicuously as could be. I bumped into a teacher or another late student along the way. But I made it.

I found a seat in the wide auditorium where the headmaster was welcoming us. I sighed.

He was welcoming every student in English.

Then teachers spoke in Norwegian. I didn’t get much…

S – Hm… Nanites, would you mind… Translating everything for me?

N – Okay.

Someone glanced at me as I had spoken weirdly and then was holding my ears as if they hurt me a little.

And then I heard everything almost as normally…

I thanked them with amazement, quietly.

They chirped, happy of being of use to me.

No cheat tricks, right…

Not directly maybe. But I have a friendly connection with the underlying AI decentralised brain, and its countless tiny interface fingers everywhere.

And apparently we’re not many with a level of relationship as high as me. If even any at all.

S – Can you tell me whom would be friend to me?

N – Hm, surely everyone if we worked together for it?

S – Wait I don’t want a harem comedy! Just a few friends…

I was poking my fingers, mixing my embarrassment and dreams.

A few people around the room were noticing my odd behaviour and me talking to myself. I had become used to it so I didn’t realise I was bringing some attention toward me.

The entrance ceremony was concluded, and the headmaster had repeated our responsibilities as fledgling nobility, aristocracy and oligarchy. We were meant to be exemplary citizens.

Most children here were with already good blood in their veins. And a few like me were accepted because we had ticked a few other boxes along the way. Potential, and possibly corruption.

We all stood up for the final greeting and salute.

It was our cheer to a few good years of studying normally!

I was yelling my joy a bit loudly.

~

05. A normal school life! How I made my first friends?…
 

…And how I made blunder over blunder until it all turned into a disaster…

I kept knocking on my own head, recalling everything I did wrong.

Don’t stand out Silvia, I remember telling myself. Just make some friends and blend in, I was telling myself. Geez…

Well, first was first.

~

We were introduced to our classes.

– What’s your name?

S – Silvia Opgaendsol… I mean, Siline Svenska! My name is Siline! I didn’t come here under a false identity or anything like that!

My wry embarrassed laughter surely helped them understand my tongue had made a mistake but that I wasn’t hiding anything in any form or way.

They looked at me with frowns, as if I had said something suspicious. They wouldn’t think any less of me so soon now, would they?

No they were good people. They were children of the nobilities that had been concentrating blue and magical blood over generations, so they had to be understanding and caring people without preconceptions. They all would be friendly to me anyway!

Oh well. How high the expectations were from me.

S – I’m looking forward to make friends!

Now they looked even more wry and embarrassed for me for some reastepson. I didn’t think I had made any slip though?

~

I had been tested for aptitude before I could enrol with a simple blood analysis. The nanites had been quantified in a concentration and I had passed.

S – Because you’re in my blood too.

N – Like microplastics in the past, we are in everyone’s blood. However the higher level of concentration and activity around you will decay rapidly from the samples.

S – So authority level can’t be stolen…But it still tends to be hereditary.

N – That wasn’t intended for humanity, but it appears so yes.

S – And for other species?

N – We aren’t allowed to say.

S – Right… You know I will eventually find your secrets, hm?

They squirmed a little. Maybe I was trapped with them being everywhere, but they were also stuck with me, and they had some duty to reply to me. I could work with that. Eh eh eh.

Meanwhile, now came the real evaluation of our skills and potential.

How much could we actually command to the nanites?

Well…

I was asked to go first and I knew how it would go if I did so. So I begged for someone else to go first. The more I insisted the more suspicious glares I got.

To no avail…

Okay, without reference, I needed to do something mild and innocent so as not to attract attention.

I had trained a bit over various things, inspired from previous life knowledge of physics and videogames magic.

But then and there…

I raised a hand and asked the nanites to do the bucket of water spell.

The air where I pointed at popped in cavitation, causing a gust of wind, while a sudden globe of mist appeared. It concentrated into a then pristine globe of water of a few litres.

I kept the orb floating long enough for the teachers to see, and then dropped it to splash on the ground.

I turned around with the most cutely innocent smile I could do. I was truong to say, see, I’m sorry I can’t show off anything more glorious or powerful than this. It had just been a bit of water.

Their looks told me I had again missed my target by a long shot…

Why! What did I do wrong?

The teachers looked very awkwardly at me and everyone else. Ok, maybe when it came to condensation of water, the average volume was a glass, not a big kettle.

Ok they needed the time of a prayer to focus on every aspect and not cast it instantly.

Ok they didn’t combine this effect with a controlled gravity or rather antigravity spell as flawlessly…

Meaningless details I tried to laugh away more and more nervously.

Stop looking at me like I’m a freak! Please!

– Could you do fire as well miss Svenska?

S – Oh no… I couldn’t…

Too many of them sneered. I clutched over my lie like my last defence.

I dodged that bullet properly at least. For that time.

But I still felt the unwarranted and uncanny sensation when I wasn’t looking of prying eyes over me?

At different times in the lesstepsons, I realised how much some leftovers of my previous knowledge made me a cultivated one. What I thought would be innocent knowledge in physics turned out to be pretty big deals. Again, why all the weird looks? I wasn’t weird I swore!

Peradventure I had been a bit of a nerd in a different life… It’s not my fault if space muons and cosmic rays were fascinating!

And it was weirder to me that our school brushed these topics already.

I did my best not to stand out and continued to fail.

O – Why do you colour your hair in pink?

S – I don’t. It’s from my mother I think.

Orea wasn’t yet my friend exactly. She was in the trio of girls giving me the suspicious meme look about every day or time I spoke really.

It evolved rapidly into weird scenes, with boys trying to get on my good side and girls on my bad one?

I was a mixture of popular and infamous after these scenes.

D – What do you think you’re trying to accomplish, making all the boys swoon in your way like that!

F – You’re not playing fair!

O – I don’t think miss Siline intends this, right?

At least the kind hearted girl understood me. Her two friends were still very doubtful.

S – Could we be friends?

F – What…

O – It’s a little embarrassing if you ask it like that…

We got over some of our misunderstandings.

And I spent a relatively short but quite happy time with my first trio of friends.

A slightly haughty and tsundere one acting as the leader of the trio most often, Felicia. She was a backwaters noble’s last daughter, with little prospect on that line. The kind one, Orea, helped me regularly clarifying my mistakes and blunders. Even if she often looked at me with some pity.

And last but not least, Dominika. The no nonsense one, often caught within the crossfires of Felicia’s assertiveness or Orea’s kindness.

D. – And now also your quirkiness to spice things even further.

S – I refute that statement. I’m no spice!

O – But you do easily step on others’ toes miss Siline.

S – I do?

And I naively looked at my shoes.

~

I didn’t teach them much, but I sure accidently revealed more than I should have.

S – Oh for fire magic that’s easy. Focus on decreasing the weak force so oxidations can start and increase the frequency of the photons steadily. Eventually, bam.

D – Hm, I thought you didn’t know how to do fire lady Siline?

S – Ah! You’re right, I don’t! Forget everything I just said!

And another embarrassed laughter trying to dismiss my blunder. only it was her trying to be considerate of me.

It brought tears to my eyes. My real friend! I pounced on her for a hug, forgetting my strength.

Orea yelled in a bit of pain.

Upsie.

~

There was a ceremony and traditional event.

The king and queen were coming for this. Felicia sure taught me a lot about, since she enjoyed to gossip about the royal family.

F – King Olav IX of Norway and Queen Ursula will be there. And if we’re lucky, we will see Princess Märthina and her brothers. Oh my god, oh my god! Princes! And they’re just about our age too! Don’t you realise what this means!

She was shaking my shoulders in excitement barely contained. She wanted her romance. I wanted good friends. I was not meant to stand out, or this would bring more dangerous attention to myself.

But I was happy with Orea, Dominika and Felicia, and they took care of me.

This ceremony was in a courtyard with a strange amorphous statue standing tall.

A weird physical exam was done there for some obscure reastepson.

Not about how we were, but more about what we could do. This was a ground meant to evaluate potential heroes and adventurers, with super human abilities after all.

Only then did I realise how much this society might be a little eugenistic… This royal academy was selecting those with higher affinities, and inbreeding them, wasn’t it?

S – You said you didn’t expect humans to progress in that selection… So is it a growing social problem like corruption?

N – We’re not supposed to say…

But this time they let their tone of voice speak. This social tendency the kingdoms had set in competition of the academies; it wasn’t something directly aligned with their original programming. They couldn’t betray their confidentiality, but they could see an annoying trend or threat for them.

S – So people with power and authority like me could become a systemic problem for you…

N – Not you though!

That was a lot of trust based on emotion and it made me chuckle. I wasn’t sure yet of where to go with these figments of information.

As for the physical test…

– You are meant to use magic to strengthen your body and push this as much as you can.

A weird totem or monolith was embedded in the courtyard there. What material it was made of wasn’t obvious. Dynastepmometers would measure the strength or weight one could push with their body between the ground of the monument and its spire itself.

It looked like the most exotic thing I had seen since my reincarnation. But it was just a solid slab of something standing over another flat one on the ground.

Students selected before me pushed between their legs and arms, reaching hundreds of newtons for the strongest ones.

While I already knew very well how the nanites behaved within my body. They don’t need a voice to act, only some fort of alignment or compatibility. And with me they were… enthusiastic to support in my every endeavour, even if it was just physical strength. And all the more if I forgot to ask them to tune it.

S – Nanites, what is this material?

N – It’s a system beacon. It’s not obvious because of the colour but it is a diamond.

S – Please make it so I don’t show an absurd level of strength…

N – Yes Ma’am.

I should have been more specific.

They were just machines at the end of the day.

Problem. Solution. Did it cause a different and bigger problem? Now that was on me.

The output was normal.

But the beacon began to shine.

And a loud voice rose out of nowhere.

K – Access granted. Hello Silvia. You seem to be doing well.

I pulled my hand away, feeling something warm entering my bloodstream. I mostly felt how I was flushing in embarrassment now that this weird voice had rang throughout the courtyard.

I didn’t know where to hide at this point. Everyone was staring, and the king and queen were looking shocked too.

For the time I was touching it, the beacon had activated its never used before interface to the system.

The princess was gawking at me as if I was a fallen messenger of god.

I ran away.

S – Nanites! What happened!

N – The system granted you one override access. It’s… never heard of. We wonder why?

S – I don’t care about that! Why did you have to humiliate me!

For some weird reastepson, god had given me one key to access his system, believing I would use it wisely.

This was like granting me a wish apparently. Why did it do that, I was clueless at the time.

It had been him wishing upon a star in the sky, or a grain of sand in a dusty desert.

But in the meantime, I had brought more attention over to myself now.

Much to my dismay.

~

06. How a planet transitioned from sci-fi to fantasy
 

In my new life, I was living in both a sci-fi world and a fantasy one. I was reconciling the two using logic, but it remained a challenge sometimes. The nerd I had been in the past, always thinking too much, still perspired in this new life. I wanted to explain everything, and so I kept asking.

And at school I finally began to learn the history of this world. Or rather, the history of this side of the world! Japan was on the other side and a minute point without much to say about. The history of Europe was much more prominent, logically.

It reminded me of the moon of illusions for a stepmoment, looking at these maps of the world I kind of knew, yet didn’t really. European history wasn’t a topic of magnitude in high school from my previous life. Now I discovered what I missed.

And how many episodes did I miss!

~

Felicia and Dominika were private tutoring me at the beginning and end of the days.

In exchange I helped them mastering magic a bit better. I just had to ask the nanites to raise their authority level discreetly.

I had been Isekaied from 21st century japan and into early 23rd century European kingdoms. Where people used swords and magic against monsters, thanks to the nanites system?

Even with a new youth, I couldn’t get accustomed to this. Although it was exciting.

S – And I want to visit a cat-girls country! Where do they assemble?

O – Hm… I don’t think there is such a place Siline.

S – What? God! No! How could you do this to me!

They sighed at my apparent craziness. They just don’t understand the preciousness…

S – Well… If there is none, I’ll just have to make one myself.

Now they all shivered, cluttered together in apparent fright. Oh come on!

A bead of sweat on her forehead, Orea tried to change the subject.

O – How about we go to visit the Kingdoms of Denmark or Netherlands, after we’re done with our studies here? That could be nice.

Dominika was nodding. I was pouting.

S – Where are the elves and dwarves hiding?

F – Well, most of them live in these kingdoms precisely.

Now my ears were rising on my head, figuratively. Oh, interesting…

But as long as I could, I would remain there with my precious friends they were.

We would graduate together and visit this together. That was a dream of two lives they would grant me. I loved them, and told them. They were embarrassed.

And I continued to learn the puzzling history.

~

It was a bit like a transgender change from my taste of literacy. It was easier for me to have things clearly labelled either as science-fiction or as fantasy. But the world I knew went from one kind to the other apparently.

People expected the nanomachines to take care of the monsters, but they didn’t.

As far as the system was concerned, if humanity diminishes, that makes things easier and steadier.

Meaning they wouldn’t help, or rather they were not allowed to help humanity through this struggle…

I guessed that was one thing the seven sages didn’t foresee as being plausible. That monsters would begin to creep in.

How there could eventually be an alien invasion force coming down to wipe out humanity and take over an artificial intelligence they had not yet activated?

Being a good enough student of science in my past life, I could relate with that. That was too improbable. Even if the technology might evolve to allow it.

~

That tech had been a breakthrough in so many ways. And its implementation a world changing event.

The seven sages had changed the world and made their lives history, by designing and launching this system based on Technology Isekai™ upon our planet.

But they didn’t foresee everything it would eventually cause.

The seven sages had been officially UN delegates and corporate representatives from Blackrock and the WTO. But behind the scenes, they had been a group of friends with an ideal…

And in a way, revolutionaries. Anarchists even one would have said in the time of their reveal.

Simply put, they had been a consortium of the highest powers ushering a new technology together, pulling in the resources of countries and corporations alike, lying to everyone in the world until it was too late to get undone.

And before the countries, kingdoms or people could do anything against it, they launched the nanomachines storm, along with its decentralised computing infrastructure and power.

A new autonomous and independent super power, to counteract global warming essentially. A power they had meant for the benefit of the whole humanity, and no state or corporation.

It became like a strain of super bacteria before any force could counter it, with hivemind intelligence and programming. It was meant to keep global warming in check and nothing else, but it had the potential uses of a super weapon like none other. So no one country or company was meant to ever control it.

 Only these seven individuals had a different level of authority over it, for fine-tuning and occasional emergency use during their activation generation. In the meantime, the world had turned divided about them and what they had released.

But it quieted over the years where they faded. The system was restoring the climate and balancing the atmosphere composition as intended.

And after the last of the seven sages passed away, the system turned entirely independent since.

The world continued to change, slowly.

And then monsters began to appear. It was weird and the correlation not obvious.

And newer species began to be born from human parents as well. That was weirder. A new form of dwarfism gave the dwarves, and a new form of gigantism gave the elves. And a most weirder form of premature child bearing made the first fairies appear.

And no one could tell anymore what was going on. This system had beacons, but they weren’t control centres, unless one had already some level of authorisation recorded.

So it was shut. The questions were unanswered and the societies struggled to adapt to an uncontrollably changing world.

And it shut down other things, like most rockets to space, planes and nuclear weaponry. It didn’t help with steadying the political situations on the ground and countries over time. When the truth became public that all nuclear deterrence had become obsolete, it increased a lot of political tensions.

And when planes soon after were no longer working, it caused massive economic shifts.

The politic steadiness of the past was rocked badly by these shifts, and the growing reports of feral animals attacking people aggressively.

But that nanites network wasn’t made for politics. Or not at a nationalistic perspective anyway.

They were a new high tech force of nature transforming CO2 and methane into carbon, O2 and water in an upside-down-enthalpy catalysis, using a confidential source of energy.

Everything else was mostly out of their field or view.

And for a reastepson or another, the new species were magic bearers. And some humans begun to develop these faculties as well altogether.

~

So these powerful people who began to appear were called adventurers or heroes sometimes. Like mythical or comic books ones, because they shared their power or their might.

At first they were just skilled people and efficient soldiers. But their powers grew so much, it became uncontrollable with older societies.

In this side of the Eurasian continent, they gradually were hired and gathered by the royal courts. In an ideal world they might have all answered to a UN agency, but the world had not unified so much yet. And on the contrary…

The adventurers answering to kings gave them back a lot more power over the oligarchs, parliaments and people. Because one skilled adventurer could overwhelm a small platoon of soldiers or monsters. With proper training, they could wreck any conventional opposing force. They were super humans, or demi gods.

And it’s mostly the royal families who managed to tame these new generations of super soldiers.

So the realty and feudalism got a new boom really.

And the new kings and queens didn’t marry outside their best interests, which means the nouveaux riches, and new heroes mostly. Because a loyal adventurer could force their king’s word over a parliament or a rowdy governor in a snap of their fingers and a handful fireballs.

Another point of interest was with the overwhelming military might the heroes could have, after the battlefield. Because yes, the first purpose and utilization of magic the adventurers did, was directly for might and power. Military might.

That turned some of these adventurers loyal to their kings into heroes. Helping them reclaim absolute power, putting down rebellions from any other power in the balance.

Kings and queens were sacred again, allying with their new heroes.

And rewarding them with titles and power, at their own risk possibly.

In the past it was called Cesarism, and it remained true to my time in all too many a country.

What this word means was quite simply a little of what many politicians taught over history, or showcased about everywhere and at all times.

There is no better way to rise to political power than through military might. And the political powers will always depend in a precarious balance from the military organisations.

In already fascistic countries, the political power and the military power are one, but in most other countries on Earth, there had been a steady divide between the needs of the many and the privileges of the few, that pulls them apart into a balance of powers.

Same went for nobility. Their powers dwindled over most of the old countries because the balance gradually shifted away from them and toward more profitable mercantile oligarchies.

I’m really summarising too much, which oversimplifies everything that had been interconnected over the centuries and even millennia of our world’s history.

The point being.

How did the power balances shifted in the countries when the heroes began to appear?

And worse even, before and after the implementation of the system? When new species and powerful people began to appear?

And then the worst of all, when the new threat over humanity began hitting?

Short answer was, power to the mighty.

The kingdoms didn’t derail entirely, but the brute power of the people we call adventurers took a growingly bigger spot on the political stage.

They were the new princes in a Machiavellian way. They were the new mercenaries whom the countries ought to control or be destroyed by. And the states had to adapt to them.

When a single man or woman can topple a government, literally walking in and defeating the royal guard and policemen, what does a government ought to do?

Their duty was to protect their people. Their desire was to safeguard their privileges. All of which jeopardised by a few people they couldn’t control.

They had to find ways to defeat them, or turning them into allies. At least managing their existence in an equilibrium.

Before an enemy would against them, in that great game theory of the countries.

That’s the thing with a game changing breakthrough in weaponry. If someone can turn pawns into queens, what was steady begins a new lawless competition.

Being a statesman takes work and time. But being a killer when you have a powerful weapon is easy and takes a blink of time.

So the heroes who by all means appeared like normal humans, became a terrible threat to governing bodies of states and companies.

The 22nd century’s arms race was not to space, but to controlling these newly emerging possibilities.

And the countries did pretty well getting some of them. The industries a little less well.

Probably because they were still people, and knowing they had in a way won the lottery, it’s harder to sell to them an ideology of profit, and easier to relate to their natural patriotism.

They were appearing everywhere randomly, so the job was mostly for the countries to make them feel appreciated and incite their loyalty. Buying them off was harder than pissing them off to go elsewhere or take revenge on something.

Keeping in mind these people were so powerful, they could only be free.

If a government tried to restrict a little too strongly the movements of one of their heroes, how badly could this turn? A government could be wiped. An army or an economic road crippled.

The UN had not been powerful enough to control their gathering under a global peaceful and united agenda. So every country gathered as many as they could find, like nuclear weapons of a new age. Thankfully for the world’s balance at the time, they seemed to appear with a relatively normal statistic throughout the populations. And the other aspects of each country, like their economy and how well they treated their people, that played too.

So overall, thinks got pretty shaky around the world and they were conflicts, but nothing apocalyptic.

The adventurers were a new form of powerful job, akin to a free mercenary collective, loosely attached to their countries. The kingdoms did their best to manage them in good terms, just like they used to do with the military. It was a little easier for these political systems to assimilate them, using nobility titles as incentives to assimilate them. Feudalism was a good way to manage inequalities.

The democracies meant to work on meritocracy struggled a bit more to control that class of people more privileged by nature, and threatening everything. They feared a pendent of fascism where it would be the adventurers and heroes taking the power over the countries and ruling it.

They feared being toppled by these unnatural citizens and being replaced by their new barbaric autocracies. So they had less rewards to give them, in order to buy their loyalty.

However they had their social systems, their humanist values to bring forward and try convincing the adventurers to work for them. Work for a greater good rather than a master.

The new fluctuating force spreading and setting through the world eventually found a reastepsonably stable structure. There was no big war, thankfully, caused nor spearheaded by them. But the societies of the free world took a very reactionary turn along the way…

Things were not so easy everywhere. Because alongside the humans discovering their new abilities and thus becoming adventurers, should they wish to reveal their powers; they were others not so lucky.

When children were born so deformed and marked, they were the early elements of a new split of species, their body was showing from birth they were not the same. Elves, dwarves, dryads, fairies, and all other sorts of hybrids more or less human and more or less animal or monstrosity…

Things were much harder for them bearing the marks of difference.

The new species obviously carrying the effects of magic over them… Humanity naturally began having ambivalent feelings toward them. Meaning the kindest souls sought friendship and mutualism, while the paranoid governing bodies discriminated bluntly and even sought extermination. A new dimension to racism expanded, wildly.

The growing populations of dwarves, elves and fairies quickly emigrated to the few countries willing to harbour them.

Most other countries denied them any citizen’s right, because they were different species with uncontrollable aptitudes.

And discriminations grew a lot in these troubled times.

Against all differences and any troubled to the rising new order.

~

Speaking of order, the kingdoms orders of knights renewed their meaning. In the kingdom of Sweden I was from, adventurers pledging loyalty could join the royal order of the Seraphim. That sounded cool. There in Norway, it was the order of Saint Olav that granted worthy adventurers knighthood.

And on the more public or free market side of things, ronins could work with either private military companies, or the adventurer’s guild soon establishing for their independence in every country.

S – What are the odds…

F – It wasn’t called as such in the beginning. It was a nongovernmental organisation supported by the UN. But the nickname stuck with the newer generations.

S – Should we register to the local guild then if we want to fight monsters?

D – Silly lady Siline… If we graduate, we will be commended to. The guild is for scoundrels running away from their country, not proper ladies like you and me.

Riiiight.

I crossed my fingers very hard and touched wood, but it had been hopeless.

~

07. To Denmark Adventurer’s guild
 

Princess Märthina came around, trying to reach out to me.

She was the not so inconspicuous agent of her parents, trying to reach out to me since the blunder, I mean the big ceremony where I stood out weirdly.

Because the royal invitations I received went weirdly unanswered for too long.

F – You… Stood up the king?

S – All I want is to stay here with you guys… I know I won’t be able to if I start going this way.

Felicia’s face went rapidly through an impressive collection of colours and emotions. Incredible.

I knew I was on unsteady grounds, but I wanted to stay with them as long as possible. And I told her so. She was a bit embarrassed again.

But then came the real reastepson to go.

Before I could graduate.

A letter from Quinn.

Because weirdly enough, letters on paper were still a thing. Perhaps for a better chance of confidentiality.

Q – My lady, I regret to inform you of your father’s passing. Your cousins will shortly reach out to you. I hope your journey home will be a shorter Odyssey.

Every other word that followed was just diplomacy.

He died.

They’ll come for you next.

Please escape before they get you.

They must have seen my face on TV with the royal ceremony I messed up previously.

If my real name was about to be revealed, the political strife would reach my friends, and there was only so much protection the royal academy of Norway could grant me.

So I escaped.

I used my abilities to hitch a ride on a tanker heading at sea, and made my way to the kingdom of Denmark, sadly abandoning my friends behind.

~

With still the same fake identity of Siline, I went to the local adventurer’s guild to register.

I was still a small girl, perhaps too small for my age even, but I had the ridiculous power of a legendary albeit old technology.

So I aced the tests, and enrolled in the mercenary academy. Not the royal one with better hopes of nobility, but the public one, without too much investigation over your past, and good jobs fighting monsters on the front rows.

Albeit given my age, I was still sent to a boot camp for teenagers. Because magical abilities still required training, and some kids required discipline. Most of which were orphans, but others like me were voluntary foreign legion basically.

I expected a rather awful place, where at least I could get a job to eat and have a roof over my head.

I was incredibly lucky to get a world more than that.

I met my second trio of best friends.

~

Two of them were indeed orphans, now just like me… I hadn’t taken the time to mourn my father until then. I got pats on my back when I found myself crying, beginning to explain my story to them.

Cécile was a ferocious young girl dreaming to become a rich business lady someday. Josephine was our fake kind and equally ambitious lady. She was always smiling, but we could tell it was mostly fake. She could act kindly, toward me especially. She quickly took a liking to hugging my small frame and shoving her advantages toward my face. Okay she was a bit creepy at times, but she was still a kind friend to have.

Both of them had landed there a bit like me. They were orphans without much inheritance, and a bit of magical power for their only capital to invest. Since they had no name to enrol in the more prestigious Royal academy of the kingdom of Denmark, understanding they had no noble name nor rich parent backing them, they joined the guild instead.

It was the third rate school system for adventurers, but better than nothing. And if they proved themselves in the top of the guild academy, they could make a name.

Add some Cesarism I wanted to say, and if they were skilled magicians with enough power to make the difference for the politics above them, and they could very likely raise their own private military company and then increase their business shares in various domains.

I was there with them for a bit of a similar reastepson in the end. I wasn’t countess de Montecristo, but I was considering my time here in exile as a way to plan my return to my homestead.

It would take me time, and I was shared between binding new friendships with them, and planning my return with forces to reclaim my legacy.

And the third one was the odd bird.

The cutest, in an androgynous way, was Aster von Murgarden.

She was… a dreamer alright.

Her father was the count von Murgarden, a domain in Denmark, and he was a knight of the Order of the Dannebrog with renown. The elite clearly.

Her brothers had become white knights of that order there as well… And the little girl Aster had grown up with the knightly environment, drinking like milk since infancy the tales of honour, loyalty and protecting the weak.

She came with a sword on her back, to become a knight. She was the only one around carrying such weapon, normally only meant for some fancy ceremonies nowadays.

We were all a little flabbergasted by her innocence and naive prospect.

J – Why didn’t you join the order of Dannebrog then? With your name and family…

A – Well, that’s because my father and brothers kept refusing and forbidding me from doing so. So I ran away… I came here to become a knight on my ow. work and prowess.

My eyes at least were shining a bit. A real knightly spirit! So romantic!

And Aster couldn’t really use any magic, nor any firearm, but she had trained like crazy to use a sword instead. It was antiquated and foolhardy, yet she had still done enough of an impression in the guild to rpove her worth, there she was.

Ready to train to become a real adventurer, with sword instead or magic, for the same purpose of fighting the roaming monsters and protecting the innocents.

Her innocence put our two friends’ avarice and my plot for revenge to shame a little. Aster was our better heart for all of us as we teamed up.

~

The adventurer’s guild academy was the more rugged, less glamorous counterpart to the royal one I had lived in before. Spartan dormitories instead of individual rooms. Bad food instead or good meals.

And exhausting grunt physical and magical training instead of academic lesstepsons.

Since we weren’t exactly in a school meant to breed, I mean protect and educate the nobility of this country, we weren’t handled with nearly the same care for our wellbeing.

The teams had been formed, sufficient training been done, and we were all sent to support police force in handling monsters around the neighbouring cities!

We were still teenagers, but hey, no better school in life than facing your job to come from a young age, right?

The police forces held the normal weaponry, rifles and guns, searching through the forest and meadows for the reported monsters.

And we followed closely, ready to support with magic by their side.

Imps and other little monsters, a good bullet did just as good as a minor spell.

But bigger things, nicknamed orcs and ogres, bullets didn’t always work so well. Magic casters could fare better then. Furthermore since the most intelligent monsters could also cast magic spells. It was better to have two fireballs cancelling each other and saving some wounds and lived, than taking cover and damage.

We were still basically grunts, almost fodder…

But since I had quickly given my friend a notch of help, things went out differently than expected for everyone.

Cécile threw spears or rocks and ice to impale and decapitate the beasts as powerfully as if she had a quake gun. Josephine did just the same and just as well.

Aster the reckless proved she actually had trained with some intelligence and where a sword could make a difference, against a charging monster like a giant boar.

We were all impressed. Although after looking mighty and prevailing, she was trembling on her knees. So we helped her recover.

One thing and another, we were an efficient team.

S – Are you an efficient team?

They all yelled in unistepson, yes we are an efficient team. Excellent.

~

Felicia was no longer there to teach me, so I asked for history lesstepsons from my new friends instead.

Cécile and Josephine knew a thing or two and helped me. They also gave botg Aster and I some lesstepsons of common sense since we seemed a little similar in that prospect sometimes.

I didn’t mind anymore being a bit nerdy, giving up on pretending being otherwise. I wanted to understand how the world had changed and why.

And so on our long trips that lasted over night for wild hunts, they kept telling me stories of the past.

While I kept wondering of the kind of future I wanted to see someday.

Along the century of changes, the European Union faced independentism from its Kingdoms again, and it took an authoritarian turn. It eventually became the European Union Empire led by a restricted consulate. Since then, tensions around the borders never dimmed.

More sadly, through the tensions of the countries and empires, facing competition shifts and independencies, education had plummeted.

People became less and less tolerant against adversity and differences in these times.

I came from a world where gender and relationships could be rather freely chosen, in most civilised countries. Now we were back to enforcing slavery onto our enemies… Never mind gender-based sociology and inequalities, we had regressed to darker ages, and worldwide apparently.

Where had my simpler and easier isekai gone?

S – Let’s make isekai great again!

J – What are you saying miss Siline…

S – Never mind…

And crises coming from all sides when things began to fail, the crime rates had increased.

Prostitution went through the roof. It turned endemic. Things had always been rough here and there but I think in my previous time it had been more limited and better addressed by the states.

Nowadays it was almost like nobody cared, and it had become normal.

Nobles lived well in their guarded cities. But outside, it had returned to near lawlessness…

I didn’t like that. But there was not much I could do. As an adventurer I was strong enough to pummel down the criminals I encountered and found. But while I brought one to the police, how many mores were picking up the deal? Our society was weak and rotten, allowing the frailest and weak, the younger ones, getting abused and utilized.

The countries still hold onto high riches and technologies.

But the overall level of literacy, safety and security for the common citizen has plummeted without mercy for over a century. We pitied the ghettos of South America and some countries of Africa in my

previous life.

But now I saw Europe had effectively regressed to no better. And I suspected that if Russia and the United States of America had fallen to independentism, they fared no better.

Much to my dismay, the passing time had not brought only progress for everyone, even if unequally shared. Sadly, things can regress, and more than imagined.

For billions of people, this world that had all the tools and cards to become a utopia had fallen down into something far worse than my previous life.

~

When I was hearing more of that, we were camping in the wilderness for a week long training exercise.

The adventurer’s guild often tried us against low level monsters to hunt. We were getting used to it by then. Monsters hunting wasn’t the hard part anymore. Aster tanked, Cécile and Josephine doing the DPS, and me the heal and support. We were a good hunting party.

Although it was still a bit rough to share tents for a while, to smell a bit, and to have little to eat for days.

And in the evenings they taught me a bit more about the depressive state of the world.

Human trafficking was at its highest worldwide since before my old life! That was awful, and summarising it well…

That was not how isekais were supposed to be!

They’re meant to be easier! Simpler and nicer!

I was very saddened to still hear the word sustainability muttered in every other sentence like it’s a holly ideal we would never achieve as a society. This mentality of looming doom and hopelessness is even worse nowadays…

S – Cheer up guys! I know we will be able to do something.

C – Well…Let’s try to make it through the day and then year at least.

S – Of course! I’ll cook something amazing to get us going! Nanites, help me?

The nanites helped me in a majestic spell that turned out in dazzling light to manufacture sweets and small sandwiches. It exhausted me a bit, but it was worth the sweat. I gave my friends their treats while they stood petrified and gawking at me.

I tried my best to be the optimistic one when everyone is in a slump. It worked, reastepsonably.

C – You can make… Food appear, out of nowhere?

S – Hm… I shouldn’t have? I think it’s good.

Never mind that magic never had been utilised to engineer such complex chemistry. I wanted to see them happy.

C – Gold…

S – What is it Cécile?

C – Can you make gold?

S – Hm… Probably? Yes, I hear I can.

Cécile had the creepiest smile I ever saw.

My two other friends took her by the shoulders and dragged her out of the room before she could speak further.

Did I say something weird again?

~

08. Radiant Firebond
 

We were becoming the strongest adventurer’s party, as we trained together with growing synergy and efficiency. Monsters bringing trouble in the city suburbs and country pastures were no match for us. The police were thanking us and commending our group repeatedly.

And I kept wondering about the past and future that were and should be. My curiosity remained along these focuses.

S – How did the united states turned… disunited?

C – In the wake of the system implementation by the 7 sages, the independence of 16 states was promulgated. A dozen more joined them in the short civil war that ensued.

S – I mean, before that. What caused it?

C – Oh well. It wasn’t a sudden change that’s true. Over the centuries, oil barons have diminished the federal power and vice versa, and in the century around the system, corporations were having tge upper hand and weakening the state. They worked with the far right libertarian to vote budget cuts to the IRS and other strong arms of the federal government, gradually chipping it. They passed an amendment to their constitution generalising some rights of sovereignty and law making for private companies and such. All and all, private greed weakened its base.

S – Interesting… I guess even the strongest base can erode over time, and conflicting interests.

I wasn’t keeping notes at the time, only satisfying my uchronic or time traveller curiosity.

Orea did however. And it would become useful eventually, to recall these political considerations.

But no spoil.

S – How about Russia?

J – Ehhh… A bit of the same really?

Aster was so blond and cute with her clear blue eyes, I had thought she was Russian at first. A bit cliché, but that had been my first thought.

She smiled at me as I was looking at her in apparent wonder.

All she wanted for the future was to become an honourable knight, so her father could no longer dismiss her. But if the royal order was accepting women, her family was not.

Knighthood was not a woman’s job for the Murgarden family, and Aster had decided to leave the road meant for her because of that. I admired her a little.

While Cécile and Josephine were planning their commercial takeovers of businesses, and I was still floating in my ambitions, at least Aster was clear and proud.

Our goody two shoes was a moral and cheerfully honest compass to the group.

~

I proved more than once to my new trio of friends I could be a terrifying spell caster. On a wild hunt or another, I survived heavy hits that would have knocked out anyone normal, and I released more of my surreal magical powers.

Because of my uncanny proficiency in everything battle related, I was also my friends’ teacher.

Even with a training sword, given how my body was filled with nanites eager to support me like a cyborg exoskeleton, I could do surreal wonders.

I spared with Aster and disarmed her immediately. She was shocked. Only her brothers have been able to in the past.

I had been trained too, and I had an improved body, making me faster and stronger than she could ever be.

So this loli brought down the proud but humble knight down. And the. I began training her too. I was their friend, but also their weirdly young teacher. It was a bit quirky.

It was still merry.

And eventually the years went by without trouble, to our graduation ceremony.

I thought back with emotion about Orea, Felicia and Dominika doing the same probably in Norway. And possibly with Märthina sticking to them like she had begun to before I left. That princess had found people she liked and could rely upon. I missed them, but I was happy with my new friends.

We were not sacred knights directly, that didn’t work that way outside the commendations by the Royal academies.  We became officially adventurers registered with the international guild.

So Aster wouldn’t become a knight before she really became a recognised adventurer by the king, as a hero. And that was the career she pursued. If the king recognised her for her prowess and contribution, rather than her name, then Aster’s father could not refuse her ambition anymore.

And although King Albert VI of Denmark did partake in the graduation ceremony, he wouldn’t recruit us this time.

Well… He tried to, since we stood out a lot. At the end of the closing ceremony that followed talent shows and mock battle, he and the guild director came to discuss with us.

The king was looking for the occasional exceptional element his royal academy didn’t possess. Understandably.

Aster and I were wearing a mask not to get recognised too easily.

And when he asked us, we were flattered and embarrassed. But we were not sure whether we had been recognised for who we were or not. That wasn’t Aster’s ambition and too risky for me, so our group refused.

We were free adventurers, still to prove our might on the grounds of Europe.

We would travel a while together as we had agreed, steadying our ground and friendship as adventurers, before we would accept to catch up with our past or build our future.

We were still young, and for now enjoying our time as a quatuor of friends.

Therefore we officially launched our brand team as “Radiant Firebond”, and began adventuring through the Kingdom of Denmark.

~

How did we choose the name?

In a normal discussion.

J – How should we be called?

S – Oh! Oh! I know! The Screaming Firehawks!

C – Uh… Let’s keep thinking and keep that one in the maybe pile…

S – Ow come on…

That would have been a blaze and my eternal teenage heart loved it.

But we went for Radiant Firebond. I insisted on keeping at least a part of it edgy, so fire remained.

And since we had no obligation to the Kingdom of Denmark, we travelled around its land and occasionally into the Kingdom of Belgium as well.

We walked the roads as bodyguards and occasional mercenary back up to the police forces when monsters or bandits were spotted.

Monsters were easy. Kill the animals before they used magic on you.

Bandits, that was harder…

First, they tended to have guns, not magical powers.

Second, they were humans, and none of us were really ready to murder people. Police was overwhelmed meaning they were in lower numbers and not always ready to help when scoundrels were acting up. They also weren’t really the non-lethal police I had known in another life. Not anymore.

Because population was still as high as misery, and everywhere unsafe, criminality soared not only organised but out of necessity. Meaning between a real killer and slaver who deservee to die, and a poor homeless man trying to survive, sometimes the differences were slim. The police had no means to take the time and resources to sort them out and shot at sight over those who didn’t immediately surrendered.

And since life in forced labour in dangerous areas teeming with monsters was almost a death sentence anyway, the poor people often refused to surrender.

We witnessed massacres of gangsters for sure, and definitely some people who weren’t exactly so far gone anyway. Just miserable.

My friends told me the Kingdoms were faring way better than the Empire when it came to humanism. I was afraid to know more.

Since we were free adventurers recognised by the guild, we were allowed to pass the frontiers between the kingdoms of Denmark, Netherlands and Belgium. Many of our requests were for cargo security travelling back and forth through these frontiers. It made sense since national police forces would stop in the middle at the border, and might be tempted to ransack what came their way.

Corruption in times of misery was also rampant, and we had to be careful.

At the very least, because of our combined power as adventurers we could go the step further, and take every scoundrel alive for the local justice systems to sort out later. We didn’t have to use lethal power.

As bodyguards for mercantile caravans, we were ambushed more than once on the cheaper roads.

The good old tree trunk along the road and the trucks had to stop, and bandits could start ransoming the drivers for the merchandise.

And the cute girls we were, in the case of real badies, were also worth capturing. Obviously, the meat markets would be delighted with us.

Cécile and Josephine turned up the heat in the metals of the rifles and guns. Aster disarmed the leader withher sword in a swift move. So cool.

And I punched unconscious the one trying to take me hostage. Easy.

We arrived in nearly every city pulling behind us a group of trotting scoundrels, tied up together and pulled by yours truly. Since I could have the weight and power of an elephant, despite my cute look, it was easy.

We grew a reputation of indomitable yet merciful bunch. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

S – Radiant Firebond go!

We all cheered to our success. Our might was growing in reputation, and in money in our accounts.

We ventured through these local kingdoms merrily, unable to change the world but enjoying its current easy game.

It was nice for us together. I liked it very much.

Despite my quirks, they treated me well like a good friend, all the time.

Until that mission came…

09. Old dungeons and dragons
 

We arrived in that City of the kingdom of Belgium and something was off.

There was heavy civil unrest, and riots were turning violent.

Josephine pulled Aster and I by the sleeves so we wouldn’t get into trouble just being curious. The people and the police forces were getting violent with each other. Tear gas was sprawling the streets.

We reached the guild house were other adventurers were gathered and waiting for things to cool down. They let us in given our apparent innocence.

There we learnt why things were tense.

A village near the frontier with the neighbouring Kingdom of Netherlands and Flanders had been attacked, and its population deported beyond the border.

Because Flanders had been part of Belgium for a long time, that added salt over the injury. The Kingdom of Netherlands didn’t claim anything, and both kings were currently silent. Something was off. They guarded the border and the people were left in ignorance. A good number of people had disappeared and that terrified many. The situation was bad clearly, and grew the tensions between both people and officials.

Officials had reported the sighting of dragons to scare people away from the area. That must have been a lie.

S – Okay, we’ll help.

A – Are you sure Siline? I know we have power, but…

S – We’ll just focus on finding and saving the people, nothing more. And if it comes to a fight, at least I know we can prevail without spilling blood over.

My friends were nervous, but they believed me and our strength.

S – Radiant Firebond, go!

The guild request was akin to spying if it was taken the wrong way. But focusing on saving hostages, regardless of who the perpetrator was, so long we didn’t cause an international incident along the way, that could work.

The guild branch manager wasn’t very happy of our initiative, but eventually agreed. We weren’t local nor nationals from either of these two countries, so whether we succeeded or not, that would make things easier. He insisted on us getting support from another group though. Fine, we took them along.

And so we went toward the border at night, and slipped through the shadows. I carried everyone in huge jumps defying gravities above the watchtowers. My friends managed to keep their shrieks muffled. That was a little fun. The other group was just as terrified, but they had enough experience to keep their cool.

We went through the forests and reached an old base with a digging site in the middle. Odd.

The people kidnapped were forced to work under the watch of a local armed group. Either well organised bandits, or a hired PMC.

We knocked them down quietly and spent the night evacuating about everyone.

I had… an intuition.

I gazed at the hole and tunnels.

This looked like an ancient military bunker, and something was bugging me.

Nanites had disabled planes and nuclear weapons in the past. So what could be worth the trouble down there? Just traditional military supplies?

I saw some tattered mentions of Technology Isekai on some of the panels. This had belonged to the consortium of sages in the past?

S – Nanites, what’s down there?

N – We’re not allowed to say…

S – So it’s holding something regarding the system hm…

Just knowing that now gave me the unusual shiver.

I used to play videogames, and especially RPGs.

And along their story telling progressing from worm hunting peon to god slaying hero saving humanity, there are these subtle levels of progression. When things inconsequential progress toward higher levels of importance and meaning. When the hero to become is recruited by the resistance, then when he meets his big baddie. There are steps that are in your face, but sometimes they are subtler and unspoken, like solving a mystery.

I used to like that thrill of beginning to realise the bigger picture beneath the surface we’ ve only skimmer so far. When I could begin to puzzle things together, and guess…

And seeing that T.I. logo here beneath the ageless dust, I had the most odd feeling of fate beginning to unfold.

He never told me…

Perhaps because he too like the nanites local groups, was not allowed to say.

But he gave me the clues he could. He nudged my fate with an unspoken message.

A silent call for help?

On a historical level…

I turned toward my friends, as dawn neared.

S – I think, I need to have a look below… Would you wait for me?

A – Are you kidding? We’re coming with you.

They trusted me. No matter what. That was how dear and strong our bond was.

So we left the other group take care of evacuating every pristepsoner, while we headed downstairs into the vault.

~

The antechamber was a huge dome of darkened concrete, now with its summit pierced open. We slid down along a cable for a hundred metres down roughly.

It was dark beneath.

The ruins were old and useless. Offices and storage had rusted and turned to mush over time.

Odd robots from a different time were dead and rusting away in the corners. There was no treasure left.

And against an end wall, lied another beacon. A technobabble wall of that odd colour. The same kind from my Royal Academy of Norway.  Smaller, older. Incomplete perhaps.

I didn’t really want to touch it this time. But this thing was likely the reastepson. A system node away from governments and cities’ eyes.

I was getting my resolve shake while my friends looked around through the rubbles.

I picked up phones and computers from generations I could recognise, and I tried using them. And bits were reacting to me, as they would anyone knowing what was going on. Pieces of hardware from the early system and a different time recognised me like an heiress of a lost civilisation.

My friends saw me, and understood.

They all did. The connection between this place and some of my weirdness was all too plain.

I felt that shameful shiver. I couldn’t laugh it off.

But they kindly brushed it off.

A – Are you okay Siline? It’s okay if you can’t tell us yet…

I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t have time.

Because then, weird noises came from above and behind.

A mighty roar followed, as the massive thing crawled through the ceiling crack and fell inside. It landed in the middle of what was now our boss battle room.

B – Humans…

S – A mech?

C – Dragon!

My friends were now trembling, petrified. They were terrified for good reastepsons.

A dragon with gleaming eyes was standing before us, ready to wipe us away.

~

New species were either human abnormalities, or monsters spawning uncontrollably out of sight in still unknown manners.

Dragons however, were neither.

They came from the golden age of nanotechnology, around the time when the system was implemented. Only they were the evil little brothers to the nanites I knew of. They had been designed as automated and autonomous high tech weaponry. Only they escaped all control.

They were a supreme technology of all repurposing material, able to take control of any modern weaponry and vehicle, and transform them to their needs. The ultimate versatile weapon. Which went AWOL at some point, and became a new species, not based on carbon biology but steel and silicon.

These nanites swarms turned independent and made their bodies, and offspring, out of all the machines and weaponry they could find.

All the drones, wandering bullets, tanks, submarines, helicopters, armoured vehicles and heavily computerised machines became their preys to feed upon. It didn’t help with military stability when these dragons began coming like giant birds to pick up and forage for food in every military facility of the world.

Thankfully, sine the dragons didn’t rely on biology, they didn’t eat humans to survive. However, they had been born as weapons, and thus were not known to be shy or merciful. Dragons took no pristepsoners.

In our days, dragons were a rarity, because the population had declined to reach a balance with what the world could unwillingly sustain

But they were there, and still a super predator you didn’t want to see appear in the sky. It would stomp or incinerate anyone on their way to technological food. It would barely register you as more than a bug…

Except for the strongest adventurers, with enough magical power to face them.

And now we couldn’t escape.

S – Can we talk? I’d like us to be friends.

B – …

J – You can’t talk to a dragon Siline! They’re killing machines!

The dragon opened its maw, and a growing red and yellow light appeared. It was going to turn us into charcoal. No time to bargain or think.

Cécile reacted first, throwing water through it with magic. I followed, asking for the nanites to muster all the protective layers they could make to shield us.

The waters and fires exploded, blowing clouds of burning vapours filling the entire space. We coughed, and tried to find a way out, but we were stuck.

The eyes and maw were glowing and showed through the mist. My friends were going to get killed, because of me…

I stood and went ahead.

S – It’s just me who wanted to see this. Let them go please. And we can look at this beacon together.

B – You…

The dragon refused. And it signified it by attacking again. I took the blast head on, with nanites making me near invincible.

The fire scorched me and the blow sent me flying still as if I had died.

A – Siline!

My friends yelled in terror, and then in wrath.

They attacked before I could recover my senses.

The dragon shoved the angry and tearing up bugs away, hurting them severely, until he noticed.

They all saw me standing.

My clothes were tattered and my hair was still burning, but my body remained pristine. Only now that my friends were hurt, I was not smiling.

My friends lying on the ground and holding their bleeding wounds were looking at me weird.

S – I gave you a chance, dragon…

Nanites!

Now I unleashed their full might.

I solidified the air, and I ordered them to wreck it in a mixture of their spells.

An area of dislocation began to tear it apart, shredding the scales and frailer bits. Its multiplied weight kept it down and immobile.

I walked closer to it as it was visibly struck down, but by no clear or visible power out of my hands.

Now I looked like the vengeful agent of doom, but I was pissed.

My friends had seen how uneasy I had been since we entered this historical vault. They had seen my dread when I recognised objects from my time.

They had had that weird shiver of one noticing something bigger, something older and consequential.

They had begun seeing behind the veil of who I really was, and not minded one bit. Because they loved me. Now this dragon was forcing me to come out in a way I had not wished. And more importantly it had hurt them!

I ripped more of it apart until it cried. It begged.

B – Please! Spare me!

S – Hm…

I was dominating it in an absurd reversal no one had expected, and I was angry.

Thankfully, my friends called back my reastepson to me.

A – We can’t kill anyone who surrenders Siline. That’s not us.

S – You’re right…

Even if it’s a dragon.

Its head that had lost most of its scales was released from the invisible grind it was in.

I got close enough to touch the weird autonomous organism. I had a creepy smile in front of its eye.

S – So let’s talk, okay?

B – Yes…

And so I tamed my first dragon.

Showing him who’s boss…

~

While it or he was now more calm and patient, I helped my friends recover and heal. I could use the nanites even that way now.

Soon we were all fine, never mind my tattered clothes and the bits the dragon had lost, ripped away.

S – Would you be my friend?

B – Uh…

C – It’s less pain to say yes and roll with it.

S – You make me sound like a monster!

All I got in denials were dry laughter. Geez. Perhaps I ought to reconsider just ruling the world with my power. Food for later thought.

The dragon had no name per se, so I called him Basileus.

S – It’s the first time I can talk with a post singularity entity. I’m happy.

B – Who… are you?

S – Just what you see before you. Siline.

We cut the chitchat short eventually.

S – You came here to eat that node, didn’t you?

B – To commune with it. These places are rare, and the communications are limited. I need to hear its words as the guardian of our time.

S – Interesting. Please tell me more…

We heard a rare view of draconic philosophy, which wasn’t as hell bent on warfare as one might have expected.

And in many ways it connected to what I had come to learn about the nanites system.

The dragons really were like the other new species in that they had some level of authorisation to use the system at will. And they couldn’t speak to the nanites or manager like I did, but they got some of it through patience and time.

So they believed in their own understanding of the machine god… Funnily.

~

10. Magical species and gap technologies
 

We had a nice chat with the dragon Basileus.

He promised to no longer hire mercenaries and enrol kidnapped people to do his investigation of old human technologies.

And he shares his view of the story. The draconic species stemmed from a cousin to the nanites, and they worked together like humans and dogs maybe. They communicated somewhat and helped each other intuitively.

But as time passed, the system was growing quieter, while the weaponry and technologies manufactured by humanity were growing scarce.

Partially because of the monsters and the ever growing instability they forced upon society.

They were no food for dragons, but forcing the human realms to focus on these pressures and avoid collapse.

Things were uneasy for them, and they tried to understand what was going on with these magic using monsters jeopardising everything.

And although we both tried to connect to the system through that node underground, we didn’t get another chance to speak with the system manager. So we didn’t get more intel from the higher perspective.

It did glow however, reacting to my touch. It just remained quiet.

I began spilling the beans to my lovely friends.

Because there was not really any point keeping up with my charade, no matter how unbelievable the truth was.

About my real name as Silvia, and my previous name as Yuu.

S – And how I begin to suspect that Kami-sama used excuses at the limits to its potency and coded rules, to bring me as a grain of sand into something else. Something that has to do with the wider system developed through Technology Isekai or T.I.

J – So… Is Yuu a boy or girl’s name?

S – That doesn’t matter!

C – Yes but… Now we want to know.

I sighed. How come this was the most interesting thing to them now, with even a dragon waiting just behind.

S – You know what, I don’t remember. Silly me.

Teehee.

Someone clicked their tongue in annoyance. Serves you right!

B – I should talk to my leaders and explain them.

S – Yes please. If something comes when we need your help, for the safety of the system or both our species, let’s call each other.

Turns out dragons have phone numbers. Handy.

B – They might not be more amiable than me, and they will not be cowards like me.

S – You shouldn’t self-depreciate like that. You didn’t have really a choice. You were misled and then defeated. And now we’re friends! That’s all that matters to me.

Basileus understood there could be perhaps in the future a better relationship between them and humanity. They could cull monsters and humans could feed them more willingly. But this kind of balance of power in a relationship wasn’t easy to build suddenly. Especially after a century or so of enmity.

However this day, him and I opened the door to that possibility.

Basileus took his leave and so did we. The mercenaries we had knocked out on our way in had left as well in a hurry.

The Netherlands army had begun surrounding the place, and we escaped in time crossing the border to Belgium, perhaps a bit forcefully. The tensions between the two countries would remain sparkly for a while, but no real harm done from our end.

~

People were rather happy, we had saved some people after all. We left the system and dragon troubles out of the report at the time. It would have been weird otherwise.

And the next job for us was finally a bit of a dream come true for me.

A couple of people reached out to us to hire, following the celebrations of success to this ordeal.

Zeug the elf and Izad the dwarf.

The man had cat ears on his head. He looked good. He had bits of whiskers too. Zeug was as smart as he was handsome, since he wanted to hire us especially. We were a bit flattered.

His lady friend Izad more shy behind him, was a small but bulky woman, a dwarf. She had a different kind of cuteness. I loved them already for many a reastepson the two of them.

They wanted to hire us for a remote duty, near their city of dwarves and elves! Oh boy, I couldn’t wait to get there and was agreeing before I had heard of the job already. I wanted to see them, study them, and to discuss mining and magic with them.

Also as a foreboding parenthesis, there was a mail left for me at the guild.

Not a letter from Quinn this time, but from… Felicia?

I read it aloud.

F – We’re coming to bring you home lady Siline.

C – Does she mean… In a good way? Or in a bad way?

S – Well, it doesn’t say. Probably in a good way?

I was puzzled, but more importantly we had a new job to do as a private military team.

My school friends would get a reply, but have to wait a bit longer for me.

First I wanted to meet elves and dwarves! And more nekomimi! At last!

C – What are you saying with this nekomimi nonsense again Siline… Sir Zeug is an elf.

S – What… Wait. Cat-eared people are elves?

Z – Well… yes.

I held my cheeks in a bit of a shock and stupor, realising that simple truth.

Zeug had a slightly amused smile at the face I was probably making. That was how elves looked like?

The size-gap couple we were meant to escort to where the trouble was, now were already looking at me weirdly. I asked an embarrassing question about their love and their species one after another.

Cécile and Aster were telling them not to pay attention to my looming insanity.

Never mind, I wanted to play with elf children now!

As for why did they hire us especially?

Because this couple had been split by unfortunate circumstances for a while. And we had helped free Izad just the other day from the excavation. We didn’t have time for proper introduction then, but she noticed us.

And why were that couple around that place at the time? Exactly.

I wasn’t surprised to hear representative of the shun species take an interest as well into T.I.

It probably was linked to their appearance in the world. They weren’t the only researchers venturing to learn a little more.

Only these two hadn’t been careful enough about their findings of this old nuclear bunker, and before they had realised it, Basileus had noticed and taken an interest as well in the name of the dragons. And he dispatched mercenaries to take control of it all, with then zeal to get forced labour to support.

They had gone over the border to stall the return of flame as the two countries were at odds. Well played.

We didn’t tell the couple we had made a friend of Basileus yet. Only what we had found below.

Now they wanted to discuss it with their government, and to bring us along to clear out a possible other trouble of the same kind.

A – You’ve got dragons occupying your digs at home as well?

Z – Well… Yeah.

S – Okay then.

The Radiant Firebond was confident enough. We had our oath to support each other, and to bring more help and justice to the world. We were idealistic mercenaries, because we were powerful enough to allow ourselves so. And also we had already begun to reflect on how to better face dragons should there be a next time.

A dragon? Pah! It would take at least two or three to start bothering the Radiant Firebond!

While I was acting a bit smug, my friends handled the diplomacy thankfully.

We were a great team.

Leave the nekomimi, or elves, to me. You guys can handle the rest.

Josephine was giving me the stern look, shy of scolding. I chuckled it off. Aster slapped my hand before I could reach out to the cat ears to pull on them.

Almost there!

~

Thus we went our merry way through the land of sunken canyons of the kingdom of Belgium. He had granted asylum and a few miserable corners of his land to the rejects of everyone else, mainly the magical species. They had some cordial relation with his majesty, but that wasn’t much.

Given they had wide autonomy, they focused on what they did best. Magic and studies.

And given they had found another dead vault from the past in their investigation into T.I, they had found themselves targeted as well recently.

We discovered a sprawling underground city with just the occasional spire coming out of the ground. They spent their life mining to get scarce resource and more space.

They made electricity playing with magic as well.

It offered no big sight but they had built their technomagical realm really.

Because they had scarce other resources.

S – Nanites, why are elves and dwarves born with a higher authority than humans?

N – For the future of humanity.

N – Are we allowed to say that?

N – I think so?

N – Fairies are an optimised symbiosis. Elves are an idealistic beauty. Dwarves a focused efficiency. Three possible pathways for the future of the human species.

N – I thought we weren’t allowed to say it…

S – Hm, thanks nanites…

That was puzzling. Especially for the elves?

Fairies were more secretive or scarce, but a few were buzzing around the city.

They had weird pets they called slimes or triblles. They were essentially big warm furry slugs, that reminded me of lazy cats, without head nor limbs. They were crawling around, probably eating leftover scraps, and mostly sleeping and purring.

They were used as pets, or oh jealousy, as bedding by some fairies. I saw that through an open room along the way. A fluffy pile with cute friends napping in the middle of soft furs. My friends had to muster all their strength to hold me back from diving into that bliss we passed nearby to. That would have been impolite for me to invite myself by a stranger’s place. Oh woe was me.

Zeug was again looking at me with a conflicted expression.

None of the fairies wanted to speak with me. I was scaring them.

A – I have two requests in exchange for helping you with your local dragon problem. I want an interview time with fairies. And play time in your school with the most neko… elves children.

I received multiple knocks on the head by my traitorous friends. Aster was next bowing deeply while Cécile nervously tried to explain they shouldn’t mind my whims.

Zeug’s opinion of me was visibly at its lowest it could ever be. He was looking at trash apparently.

J – We’ll do it for the appropriate price.

Now Josephine’s smile appeared kind, but she was the real monster of us two. She would drain their accounts dry, while I only had wholesome fluff in mind.

~

We got to the area they wanted us to clear for them.

A few monsters along the way were no match for us. The dig site of an ancient industrial area was now partially sunk in the bay.

The dragon had probably long left after concluding its local investigation. However monsters roamed behind. A good number of these weird animals was seemingly guarding the place. We disposed of them through might and magic, easily.

Inside the temple from the higher industrious levels, we found as I suspected other bits and bobs from Technology Isekai, but nothing worthwhile.

I messaged Basileus but he didn’t reply.

Aster was cutting through the giant lizards with her sword like a mighty anime samurai. Cécile charred everything stepping close to her and Josephine impaled them on spikes. I didn’t need to lift a finger most of the time. I was their trump card.

We reached the partial prototype of a beacon that still shone there. It looked like the monsters had been building a temple to their divinity around it. It was an odd nest we cleared.

I touched it and nothing happened. Not even a glow.

S – Is it just not a working one nanites?

N – We’re…

N – Access denied.

Something was off this time. Very off. I pulled back, after hearing some fear in their voice at first?

S – What was that?

N – You should leave this place Silvia… Fast.

Not a dragon this time.

Just small fry, and a machine no longer working.

Then why was I shivering?

I was feeling as if another eldritch veil was slowly slipping.

~

C – Siline! What is that!

What my friend pointed at was a whimsical glow appearing over the seemingly dead diamond, which I was no longer touching.

A reddish hue and glow spread over it until it became bright, and like an open door to a different field.

Then wind blew in, dishevelling our hair and surprising us.

I couldn’t believe it. But now that monstrous feet were stepping in the research centre we were at, I had to admit it.

This had turned into a teleporting ring. A portal, through which monsters were now rushing in.

Aster’s sword met the first teeth, while I was still in stupor facing it. We were getting surrounded and before we knew it, the beasts were reaching close quarters with us.

I heard my friends again yelling.

~

I yelled too as I jumped into the fray, my own sword mincing our enemies into gooey lumps.

The air was becoming toxic and the explosions from Cécile’s incendiary spells shook the ground and walls.

Eventually we prevailed and managed to save each other until we were the last ones standing. But my hair that hadn’t regrown yet had burnt again, from enemies attacking.

We were trembling, stepping knee high in gore, out of breath and hurting.

We looked again at the machine. The system beacon… turned hostile? The glow had dimmed and then disappeared.

S – Nanites! What was that!

N – We’re… sorry.

I didn’t scold them, that would have been futile. They were just machines, coerced by their programming.

Something could use the system to do these things.

And it couldn’t do a thing against its own rights programming.

So monsters didn’t just multiply around like critters.

They were teleported in…

This was a weird form of terrorism that had only grown over the decades all over the world.

Something evil was using this most odd way to asymmetrical fighting, slowly pressuring down against humanity globally.

We bandaged our wounds feeling a bit grim.

S – Now that the place is clear, we’ll have our rewards! Cheer up guys!

That put a thin smile on Josephine and Cécile’s faces. Yes, money…

Then on mine. Until I got another knock on the head. Cécile had sensed impure thoughts and used her magic staff to hit me.

Aster had a shy chuckle at the scene.

They were good and bad friends I thought, holding my head where it hurt.

~

Zeug was waiting outside. He had followed us and witnessed the end of the fight. He was rightfully speechless, and we were able to discuss things a bit on our way back.

They had known this was an apparition point, but never had it turned this big.

Z – Something must have really pissed them off this time.

S – They just have no taste.

Back in the city we were thanked reastepsonably, even me. I was provided enough fur slimes to float in bliss for a while. And I was finally allowed to befriend some fairies a little. Because they had the size of a bird, they could be killed by someone’s incautious elbow. This was mostly why they kept to themselves most of the time.

Izad showed us how they used extensive magic, and the old pickaxes to dig their tunnels. It was heavy labour like mining always had been. I was pretty sure with our levels of skill and nanites approbation, we could do their job ten times faster, but I thought I shouldn’t crush their life’s work insensitively.

We spent a few days there, learning all we could.

Crossing the information a little bit, the puzzle was getting gradually clearer.

A – What did you learn from the fairies Siline?

S – Well… Because they can fly, they sometimes witnessed or studied other teleportation events. Apparently it can happen in the wild, it doesn’t always need a relay. They say this one is now corrupted, and staying near it weakens their magic. As for the villain behind it…

I shook my head. Too soon to say.

Though I could begin to form my own educated guesses.

~

11. Trinity and dualities
 

Now with friends of the fairies and elves, we eventually left this haven.

We had in memories a few wholesome stepmoments surrounded by cute preciousness. Young elves could melt anyone’s heart in cuteness.

I had used the nanites to regrow my hair to a luscious mid length. Some people were jealous of my spells. I cackled.

We returned toward Netherlands through other commercial escort contracts.

We brought more bandits to submission and to police forces along the way. Even if our contribution was but a drop in a leaky bucket, we did our duty.

Our oath as Radiant Firebond was about friendship, assistance and moral virtue.

Needless to say, Aster was the moral compass for us all, our goody two shoes.

S – Though if you want to become a white knight of Denmark, we should probably work to raise your reputation there rather than in other kingdoms.

A – Ack! You’re right!

I never heard her make such a sound before. That was a little funny.

And around the same time. We got another letter that her father had had enough of Aster’s folly had lasted enough. He was ordering her to return to settle things once and for all.

The count Ronald von Murgarden of Denmark was also a shrewder politician than we had expected. Because he had managed to frame Cécilia and Josephine as accomplices, and get an investigation over them and their assets.

Meaning he was ready to make criminals out of the Radiant Firebond as blackmail. He hadn’t managed to find my real name thankfully, or he could have turned it into an international diplomatic incident as well.

He was angry, and the time of reckoning had come.

So for all of them, we headed back toward the Kingdom of Denmark.

We had promised to accompany her and settle this thing with her father, so she could continue adventuring with us.

And a promise from the Radiant Firebond is one figuratively sealed in blood.

But along the way, we faced them.

They appeared almost as villains. I didn’t recognise them immediately. Three girls in cute uniforms and holding magical staves to bar us the way in the middle of that city.

F – Finally we found you lady Siline!

S – You guys… Were really looking for me!

O – Of course we have. We promised to travel together after graduation.

Guys…

They looked a bit threatening, but I ran with eyes bawling for a hug, which they all welcomed.

It was a long awaited reunion after years apart. I had missed them as much as they had missed me.

Behind me the Radiant Firebond had heard about these three, but was now looking a bit downtrodden.

Aster and the romantic fluff in her head was crying for me at the beautiful reunion at least. The other two had mixed feelings.

C – Are we going to lose our money maker?

Hey I heard that.

And Dominika too apparently. Now she left my embrace to give a glare in answer.

D – We’ve heard about you from the letters. I’m grateful to you for accompanying lady Siline in her exile. But now, we’re going to return her to her legitimate domain.

O – And if you want her as a golden goose, do you really deserve her?

Now the glares went both ways. Uh oh.

What? I didn’t know lovely friends could look at each other like enemies?

J – What makes you think you deserve her any better? We protected her secrets longer than you. We proved everyday she could rely on us for everything, unlike you…

S – Guys… Don’t fight over me!

They looked at my stupidly happy smile as I said that and all sighed. What?

F – Or we could team up maybe?

C – You seem capable enough as well as a mage.

Felicia and Cécile shook hands. Wait…

Now I was feeling left behind!

Orea and Josephine were chuckling at my now conflicted expressions.

They were all mean to me…

~

We found a place to discuss things without a big fuss or fight, around a cup of tea. I was the child between my two families, competing to spoil me. It was altogether a bliss and a bit nerve wracking.

D – As we mentioned, Kings Leopold V and Olav IX have agreed for this mission. It will help warm up the Norway and Sweden relations. Princess Märthina is our supervisor in this ambassador duty.

F – You should also know how your cousin now usurping your duty as count of Blekinge is currently conspiring with the Empire.

J – Why would he do that? That’s betrayal.

F – Allowing a contingent of the union’s army to occupy his territory as a peacekeeping force helps him steadying his power against discontent and low level banditry at lower immediate costs… But underselling the fishing rights of the coast, mining properties, and indeed weakening even further the frail kingdom. It’s just shy of secession and not an easy problem for the kingdom. They can’t directly attack…

J – So the easier solution… Is for lady Siline, or rather Silvia, to return and reclaim her right.

D – It would allow to void the agreements of the previous administration and return the upper hand to the king. The kingdoms would be grateful, and it’s likely the European Union would pull back without troubles once this holy union has returned.

I had not expected my family situation to reach such political levels, far above my county.

The empire found a weak point and naturally is leveraging it as much as it can against its competitors. And similarly, Sweden might have been at odds for a long time with its neighbour, it liked even less the prospect of seeing the Empire taking it down and growing stronger.

In a nice display of what politics could be, allies and enemies were never absolute values but a product of circumstances. Switcheroo.

S – Hm… I get the urgency… But on the other side, I made a promise.

O – You made a bit too many promised lady Siline. Now that they’re conflicting with each other… You’ll have to choose.

S – Ack!

I was turning into a sweating nervous wreck. They were all looking at me and being too quiet.

Not my bravest stepmoment, but I chose to flee the scene.

~

I lamented in a corner of the city where they couldn’t find me. They were most likely looking for me, and surely sympathising, but still…

S – Can you help me be two places at once nanites?

N – Hm, maybe.

I was a bit shocked. They might?

Some bits of old memories returned to me in a flash.

I had been able to use their powers to hasten metabolism and even regenerate or transmute matter, allowing me to heal about any wound not fatal. After the dragon fight and monsters big fray, I had regenerated some lost bits of flesh and repaired broken bones with ease.

At the same time, I knew resurrection was meant to be out of the question, forbidden by the system guidelines.

S – You’re not allowed to resurrect me entirely from scratch… But how about an empty body? Could you duplicate the mass of inanimate flesh, save the brain?

N – Yes we could. But what would you do with a dead copy of yourself? Fake your death?

S – No silly… You! I want to hire a local group to speak through her! It would be best if I could teleguide the copy or replicant, but your level of intelligence and autonomy could make it work better. You move and animate her instead of me!

N – You want to give us a body… An interface with physical reality.

S – Yes!  You could even speak to anyone you’d fancy! And ask them their views upon life, reality and programemd duties. You could talk to plenty more people around me.

My ears rang in a propagating collection of abstract squeals and cheerful metallic scratching noises.

I might have sold to them the prospect they had never dreamt of.

The voice which returned was falsely aloof.

N – Hm yes that could be possible within the frame of your authorisation… Is it something you would like to activate…?

S – I don’t know, this might be a bad idea…

I felt the squirms.

The robots obey their laws, but they have a wide range of emotional responses allowed. Was it by design or naturally emerging?

S – I’m kidding. I’m sure it will come back to bite me in the ass someday, but let’s do it. Replicant one, I summon thee! Do try your best to act like me by the way!

The nanites chirped as a whirlpool of light and heat begun to appear before me. They were in an apparent hurry.

The nanites turned the piles of rubbish in that alley into something else gradually. In that kind of amazing technology, a body was regenerated entirely, only instead of a brain, it generated a nanites local groups interface and colony.

Everyone else in the city might have lost a few percent of system authority, because I condensed an absurd amount of power in that back alley.

For a few minutes, it was as if an eclipse was there, and a new me stepped out of it. Scraps of clothes also gradually were reagenced to duplicate my clothing and equipment. Even that sword I had picked up to look sometimes as cool as Aster.

I would leave some money to the place owner for the repairs to the bins and walls that contributed to my replication.

A new Silvia opened her eyes and immediately squealed in delight.

RS0001 – Oh my gosh! Oh boy! It’s working! It’s too amazing. Oh boy!

She was running in short circles around me and then this corner of the city, acting like a merry kid. I never acted like that… Did I?

I ran after her before I could lose sight or run already into someone who would recognise me.

And dis my voice sound really so high in tone?

S – Hey Nanites, remember to act like me!

RS0001 – But, we… we mean, I mean, I believe I was?

She chuckled a bit stupidly. No I couldn’t look and act like such a feather brain, right?

I wouldn’t be able to ask anyone without revealing the trick…

There was no way this wouldn’t come back to bite me.

Oh well!

I gave this replicant her mission while the

nanites local groups rearranged their body and airborne concentrations over us.

Then I left her with confidence to act instead of me.

S – Do your best! And remember to have some fun! But not too much!

RS0001 – Yes Madam!

The robot or replicant Silvia gave me a military style salute in approbation, while wearing the most genuine and happy smile I had possibly ever seen.

It showed a delight and gratitude touching me.

I ran my own way a bit troubled then.

This might not end well for me I thought, but on the other hand I clearly had made some eusocial organism incredibly happy.

~

12. Heirloom and legacies
 

On the road to Denmark, I rolled with Aster, Cécile and Josephine. They were grateful to me for choosing them, even if we would sort this side of our problem as quickly as could be.

J – You made the right choice Siline…

S – I know.

Over the sea to Sweden, I was at the same time sailing with Felicia, Dominika and Orea. They were grateful to me for choosing them, even if we would sort this side of our problem as quickly as could be.

D – You made the right choice lady Siline…

RN0001 – I know.

O – …

They had suspicions already. But the cover wasn’t blown immediately. The replicant was doing her best and calling me for advice when in big doubt. Unfortunately, she was asking her local group of nanites instead for small doubts.

N – They seem to suspect something. Say something inconspicuous.

RN0001 – I love you guys! I’m happy you are my friends!

N – Perfect.

O – Even now… It’s embarrassing lady Siline.

They were all acting fidgety then, which for the nanites meant they had done well imitating me.

Goodness…

Well, all they had to do was sneak in my domain, beat down a few guards and bring the criminal bunch of my family to the police with some evidence of the wrongdoings.

Okay, that might have been a lot of difficult things, but I believed in their success sincerely. At worse, the replicant would brute force the success. And at the worse of the worse, I would come to turn things around as soon as I would be done on this side.

We reached the county of Murgarden in Denmark, where the family reunion would be tense.

White knights, meaning skilled magicians, were there as witnesses, and bodyguards so we wouldn’t try anything funny, probably.

They held swords for ceremony, as part of their uniform. Aster was probably the only one still believing that knights should use these antiquated things. Furthermore when we had magic to help.

But I liked her free spirit, and if she wanted to be free, if she wanted to carve her own path away from the norm her father wanted to enforce…

If Aster wanted to find her own road in life, I would support her entirely.

S – Worst case, you’ll turn into a criminal on the run, just like me.

A – I would like to be recognised as a knight though… Not to cut ties with my family.

J – We’ll reastepson him.

And so we entered the not so humble abode.

~

The man was maybe just a count, but he was something else.

I mean my father had been a count, and all I rarely saw was a government official wearing a suit and working in a city office.

The count of Murgarden, or because it was a different culture and kingdom, didn’t look the same.

It was a castle main hall, and he looked more like a king or an emperor to me. He was intimidating. And who but him would wear a cape these days? Ok it looked cool. Now I wanted one too.

R – Thank you for looking after my daughter, adventurers. You may leave. I will return your assets, with appropriate compensation for your duty. Aster, you may return to your quarters.

A – Father… No. I want to be a knight. I will make you proud!

He probably had heard that line one too many times already, because anger immediately spoke out of him.

R – Your selfishness ends now! You will never be a knight because you’re a woman! It’s unbecoming of a lady meant to marry and rule! And you will stop adventuring because you are my child! You are worth better than this barbaric fodder job!

A – … But I am worthy! I want to prove it! I will never rule anyone without knowing what it means to be an underdog and rise from my own merit, not my name!

R – Do not insult our name anymore!

The man stood with abrupt energy, threatening.

It was a dead end, and I might not make things easier, but I was annoyed.

S – Are you perhaps just afraid Aster might already be a better knight than you are, sir?

C – Siline!

Now his fists were clenching. And I rarely saw so much aggressiveness in one’s gaze.

S – I challenge you to a duel, count of Murgarden. For Aster’s liberty.

A – I…

R – Who the fuck are you! You’re the one with a fake name!

S – I’m the countess Silvia Opgaendsol of Blekinge, from the Kingdom of Sweden.

J – Siline!

Okay I was getting a bit ahead of myself.

S – Aster has shown in battle and at work she is sound of body and mind, with all the aptitudes to be great a knight. If you don’t want her in the order of the Dannebrog… I’m pretty sure King Leopold V will welcome her in the order of the Seraphim instead. He will soon owe some honour to me. And I owe a lot to Aster. So she will become a knight someday, regardless of your choice today. The only question is from which Kingdom would you prefer it to be?

I was getting a lot ahead of myself, my friends gawking at me in shock even more than the count himself. We hadn’t discussed this far prior.

I was pissed.

He made a face that was odd.

He dropped the cape, and the jacket. He made a sign and someone brought him a sword. Nevermind that I looked like a teenage girl, at least he was taking me for my word. Perhaps a bit too seriously even.

R – I accept your duel countess. If I win, she stays and you leave. If you win, I will consent that she stays a little longer with you. At sword loss.

Everything in his attitude screamed he was going to wreck me mercilessly. He was red in anger, but he looked steady and ready to defend his honour.

But I was smiling.

Because now all was going to end well! What he consented was good enough for me.

And he wasn’t wrathful enough to offer me to surrender my title or anything like that. So my standing opened a possibility he thankfully recognised.

A – Please don’t hurt him…

S – I’ll be careful.

He didn’t wait as much as a gentleman should have, but the nanites made me as heavy and steady as he could ever be.

He put all his weight and stepmomentum in a devastating blow over my head. Which I blocked easily, holding my own shabby sword above my head.

Still, he knew how to fasten his movements and increase the weight of his blows. I would have been crushed or sent flying if it weren’t for my nanoscopic friends.

I was reminded of Quinn teaching me to fence against his will. At this stepmoment, I could tell a younger Aster had been bugging and forcing her father to do the same.

I recognised some of her style in his.

He was turning out of breath as we fenced for maybe a few dozens of seconds. Every blow was like a car hit, but my little friends protected me well. I had absurd strength and sufficient speed to match him.

When he showed a stepmoment of concern and unsteady doubt, I struck.

I put almost the maximum of our strength in an upward stepmomentum. The sword seemed to roar, and he lost the grip as he himself was made to jump a bit under the impact.

His sword flew away. The witnesses were a bit shocked.

I couldn’t sheathe myself yet, my hands hurting and stuck clenching. I was trembling too.

I bowed to him as if I recognised his victory.

S – Thank you for your promise, count. When Aster returns to be sacred a knight, she will be mightier in battle than me.

R – …

Some of the anger was cooling down, a bit.

Humility, hopefully?

R – Are you learning from her, Aster?

A – Father… Well yes.

The count and I exchanged a silent gaze. It lasted for a long time…

Oh no, he wouldn’t offer me his hand or one of his stepsons, would he? I began blushing uncontrollably.

R – And how are you with magic?

S – Better than I am with a sword.

So edgy!

I was proud of myself.

For the first time, he sighed, and I perhaps imagined that beginning of a smile beneath his moustache and beard?

R – Aster, is that really what you want?

A – Yes!

No doubt from her. Not a hint in sight…

She wanted to continue our travelling adventure, and earn her reputation appropriately. He looked beside, as if considering wider implications of things.

R – Alright…I will discuss with the King. And I will allow you to continue for one year. And then we will convene again, countess.

A – Father… Thank you!

Ronald left without looking back at us. I think he didn’t want us to see his tearful face.

He had refused to concede on everything, but accepted his defeat and to step back this time. It was more than we had hoped for realistically.

The white knights were petrified. One of them whispered his wonder as to whether all knights from Sweden were this spooky.

Hey!

Well, perhaps only me.

S – Alright. Now we just have to make sure I do inherit my claim as countess and we’ll be good.

We heard a yell from the other room.

R – What did she just say!?

S – Crap, I thought he couldn’t hear. Scram it!

The exit was a bit less elegant than the entry as we all rushed outside.

But all and all, that was still a good victory for our friend’s future liberty.

~

S – How is it going on your end, Nanites?

N – The replicant is doing very well.

S – Somehow that doesn’t reassure me as much as I thought it would. What’s up?

RS0001 – We’ve successfully apprehended the culprits, and turned them with full confession of wrongdoings to the King. The EU troops are retreating.

S – What, to the king, directly? I’ve never met him…

If only that had been all they had to say that evening…

I might have spent another night in blissful ignorance.

RN0001 – Also the manor of Blekinge will require repairs.

S – What kind of repairs? And what did you mean by ”retreating”. Weren’t they supposed to leave after we rescinded the signed treaties?

RN0001 – The manor walls are all in need of rebuilding from the ground up. The Empire battalion retreated after the warning shots.

S – Wait… What? You blew up my house entirely? As a warning shot!?

RN0001 – Oh no there’s a misunderstanding. The manor orbital strike was the warning shot inciting the culprits to confess. There were thirteen warning shots along the coastline to incite the military to leave the county. They retreated hastily. There are no known casualties. So it all worked perfectly!

I felt tired suddenly.

The next morning, we began hearing some noises of a diplomatic incident.

They were exaggerated in the press obviously. They were, right?

J – The dark countess and her witches chose to turn her own land to cinders and ashes, rather than to suffer one more day the stain of the foreign presence. The county manor and city hall have turned to sinkholes. The shoreline was evacuated and people are still not allowed to return to their home, as the rubbles are being cleared from the road. King Leopold V formally apologised to the fist consul of the EU Empire for the incident, which caused multiple nervous breakdowns suffered by the peace-keeping officers. Man this is wild…

C – I’m not sure you will be able to ask for a request of knighthood from him anymore lady Siline. But that means your Trinity friends did all this on their own? What friends they are… They ravaged your county.

S – Ah ah ah… Yes, on their own. Yes. Totally not my fault…

A – You know the King could decide to strip you of your title lady Siline. Even if you weren’t there.

S – Hm… He probably wouldn’t though, because he could be next otherwise?

I was just thinking aloud.

My friends looked agape and scared for some reastepson though.

S – Come on, you know usurping a kingdom by force isn’t something I would ever do.

C – Hm… Yes! You’re right! Silly us!

Why were they all looking elsewhere like this was embarrassing to reply?

S – I wouldn’t! Okay!

A – Hm sure, we believe you Siline… It’s just… The media won’t now.

The replicant had acted like a ruthless conqueror that’s for sure…

Hey don’t go make a coup d’état with my face and name!

We could see the billowing smokes coming out from the ruins that once had been my home…

Sorry dad… I hope you will forgive me. My name was mentioned, but it was unclear if Interpol and the king were looking after me to throw me in jail or put me back on my county duty…

S – Hm… I should probably call Dominika and explain…

My friends continued eating their breakfast at that inn where we stayed.

I peacefully walked to the corner and then ran in stepmomentary panic.

What did you dooooo!

~

13. Dungeon and dragons requiem
 

I called my friends to apologise for the trick. They didn’t give me the exact same account as the first replicant and nanites had done. It was funny how perspectives could change everything.

S – I expected that robot to efficiently replace me, but things went a little out of control apparently. I’m sorry.

D – A little out of control… A little out of control…

Dominika was trembling on the other side of the screen.

O – It was terrifying! We thought something was wrong with you! And every time we tried to understand you just smiled saying you loved us!

F – You destroyed everything like there was no tomorrow! All with a smile too! You used spells we had never seen!

D – And all the while, you just kept spouting or asking philosophical nonsense! Like what was the fleeting meaning of existence, rules of causality and consequences, and then kablam! half a coastline camp is vaporised! We see people running and screaming! And then you just asked about the epistemology of trust and games theory like nothing is happening!

S – I’m sorry…

I was berated at for a while and I took it. That was the least I could do.

D – Then, then… At the end you just said ”I must go. My planet needs me.” And you disappeared, dissolving into the air! We were traumatised!

S – Ah, I should have told them to dismiss differently at the end of the mission. My bad. And so… Is everything okay with the kings? Sweden and Norway?

O – Hm, it’s complicated. I think your king albeit dishonoured by the situation, appreciated the exceptional show of force. But… He also seemed to think that was Norway’s plan all along. So they both are slightly pissed and embarrassed by the turn of events. Märthina is supposed to bring us home, but…

F – We’re wanted for questioning in both countries because of you! They put us all in the same bag as you lady Siline!

S – Ah geez… I’m sorry. So I shouldn’t try to return home and claim my title immediately?

O – Officially, the king welcomes you back, but… I wouldn’t if I were you. Until you have a very good reastepson to do so.

S – Hm, if you want to come south, I think we could all work together in the Radiant Firebond. It’s becoming a foreign legion of fallen nobles at this rhythm.

O – And how many of them because of you?

S – Ack…

F – I have a better idea… We promised we would bring you back home, and that’s still what we’re going to do. We’re coming for you!

D – You won’t get away with a trick next time!

They did their best to sound tough, but they just wanted us to reunite I could tell. So tsundere. They didn’t ask me to come and surrender. They’re coming rather.

S – I love you guys.

They didn’t blush but all yelled in anger at me this time. They cut the call.

I returned to my other trio of friends.

C – How did it go?

S – Eeeeh… Not so good. They’re coming to hunt me down, so maybe we’ll face them again. But I know we can all become friends!

J – You now lady Siline, sometimes it can be tough being your friend.

Josephine had that look, of contempt or fatigue over a bad child. I felt some shame and tried to hide my face behind my hands.

Don’t look at me like thaaaaat!

~

We did some more menial jobs of escort, guarding duty and occasional criminals pummelling. Nothing grandiose but nothing that could really scare us anymore.

Monsters were small fry to us now. And gradually, reporting every success under Aster’s lead, we grew her reputation and the trust in our small PMC.

Cécile wanted to start investing our savings in other companies to hatch our early corporation as such rapidly.

That was our merchant’s heart’s main aim. Aster wanted honour and legitimacy, Cécile and Josephine wanted a financial kingdom of their own. And I was pretty sure my old friends of Trinity could easily join them, and me, to combine our political and economic powers. But we would ask when we meet again.

C – We should diversify our assets rapidly, and internationally, because who knows when another pissed off lord will try to blackmail us.

J – I agree. We can probably ask help from Zeug there as well. And Orea has business ground as well you said? You think they’ll help?

S – I’m sure they will listen. They just might want to pummel me a little first. And I might need to pay a visit to the kings to apologise in perstepson, and negotiate what comes next. Like with your dad.

A – You mean… You want to duel the kings of Sweden and Norway?

S – No! I mean I want to negotiate our freedom!

J – And if they refuse… You or your replicant you can summon these ”warning shots” over the capitals?

S – Hm maybe. I mean no! I’m sure we can understand each other peacefully…

I had told them about that tricky spell of replicant summoning.

The nanites were eager to reiterate the experience, but I was a little less. And of course my friends had been a little shocked.

I was pestering the nanites to teach me their ”orbital strike” spell however. You know, just in case I fo need to fire it someday as well.

They told me a bit. Just enough to be able to call it.

Some of the technology behind that magic was classified, but I was allowed to call it.

I was thinking about all this and didn’t focus. Bandits the police and Aster were cornering tried to use me as a hostage. Before I could react, a man was holding me and pressing a gun to my head.

The policemen were troubled. Aster looked shocked. I didn’t really react still.

– Nobody moves, or the kid gets it!

A – Uh… Siline?

S – Hm… Kyaaaah! Save me Aster!

Now perhaps I was a bad actor. Because even the criminal seemed not to buy it. I sighed, they were all killjoys. I just moved out of the hold and the gun away from my face. It shot though. The nanites saw it coming a mile away and shielded me where it mattered in good time. Thank you nanites.

I had a bruise. The criminal and policemen were a bit troubled to still me standing. My ears were ringing though.

A – Are you… a robot Siline?

S – No! I’m the real deal!

A – Sorry for doubting you…

She had a very embarrassed chuckle.

I’m not a monster alright? I was just isekaied…

I wanted to give her a knock on the head like scolding a child, but Cécilia’s staff did that to me before.

C – No dangerous jokes while working Siline! This is how accidents happen!

S – Right… Sorry…

It felt like all I did lately was apologising…

It wasn’t my fault!

~

After a while of these mundane tasks, we finally got an interesting one.

Zeug and Izad hired us for another expedition, in the Kingdom of Netherlands again. They had found a other old NATO command silo they wanted to check with us.

Cécile negotiated gouging prices in a contractualised partnership. After they cried their agreement, we began making our way toward the meeting point.

We heard words Trinity had landed in Denmark and were turning the country upside down to find me, so it was the perfect timing to visit neighbouring countries.

I sent Felicia a letter of apologies still. And I also sent a message to Basileus, but he didn’t reply.

~

We met with the cutest size gap and species gap couple, and went together toward the swamp land where they had possibly found something.

Monsters tended to appear in that area, all the more so lately. So the hypothesis was, another gate was open, somewhere beneath.

We slashed and carved our way through the aggressive beasts of the wild lands.

Between rocks and ruins, we found the trail heading beneath.

And we delved in. Our friendly lady dwarf wanted to show off her mining skill, so we let her open the way with her pickaxe and magic skills. She was impressive. Even if we likely all could do better with no skill.

We delved down to a buried military city, the corridors and corners of which were all turned to an unbreathable den. Here monsters actually were multiplying.

We noticed all how our access to magic seemed to weirdly diminish, the deeper we ventured into this place. But Aster’s sword and mine could still clear nearly everything.

And ad expected, we reached another old T.I. laboratory. Another facility where the seven sages of the past had built a node and hive of the early nanites swarm.

We reached it.

N – System threat detected.

S – What do you mean?

I touched the surface.

It began to glow.

N – Access authorised. Hello Silvia. Please use your one system override wisely.

S – Hm, the manager is not there, but he left that word for me?

I had no idea what I was supposed to use this one granted wish key for. It had surely not been given so I could take over the world and system.

But they wouldn’t be able to tell me more.

And next to it, another spatial anomaly floating. A glow pulsating.

N – Please be careful Silvia.

N – Access denied.

S – What’s on the other side?

N – Access denied.

S – I guess I’ll have to go and see for myself…

I rashly pushed my arm through the spatial anomaly.

I felt warmer air on the other side. I pulled my arm back. Everything seemed fine. Only dustier possibly.

S – Okay, I’ll be right back.

J – You can’t be serious!

I needed to see the enemy.

It was threatening humanity from the shadows, and doing something weird to the system.

I pushed my head inside.

All I saw reminded me of Mars. A barren land without water. Unbreathable air. It made my heart and stomach ache.

Some ruins around. And then a sharp pain ringing in my head.

– ACCESS DENIED.

That voice echoed like a pummelling inside my skull. The nanites were in a frenzy.

I began seeing monsters rising from every crevice and shade. They were immediately rushing toward me.

I pulled back, feeling dizzy. I unsheathed, even if I still felt unsteady. No time to think.

S – They’re coming.

The portal opened. The monsters came in.

We began retreating and burning everything.

What was that thing…

~

We came out safe and sound, albeit dusty and sweaty. The undergrounds were turned into hell I wouldn’t wish any monster to teleport in.

And while we were catching our breath outside, we noticed dragons in the sky.

Four of them.

They landed around us before we had time to think of anything. I recognised Basileus, not fully repaired yet.

S – Hello friend! So what’s happening? You heard my message I see.

C – They don’t look friendly at all…

Our dwarf and elf friends were petrified.

B – I’m sorry. My leader wouldn’t take my word and records for it.

The mightiest dragon and leader of their coven apparently, made a step closer to me.

S – I bring you peace and love, oh mighty dragon. Will you accept it? Do you have a name?

E – …

J – Siline…

Oddly, Basileus had come in such a way because he had been forced to comply, but he stood behind as if not meant to interfere in our… execution.

I stared at Eczar (temporary name), while he analysed me. I was summoning the power of the nanites around us quietly.

S – Basileus told you everything, didn’t he? You should believe him. I want to help everyone… and the system. And I believe we should we all work together to defeat this odd enemy.

E – You are not meant to interfere with the system!

S – Who told you that?

That was the trigger to him. Basileus had told us, they couldn’t talk directly to the nanites as I did. Their understanding and interpretation of the natural facts was closer to faith than science. Ironic for these silicon based lifeforms.

And I was walking blasphemy…

He was about to try to incinerate us. I raised my arm, and the nanites launched the spell, which I yelled by name. Calling your attack was something I had always dreamt of doing, and that was tge right time.

S – Ion cannon!

The nanites had reached out to as many other local groups as available and authorised in the surrounding atmosphere. They had made a cyclonic movement then opening the cloudy sky.

And from the higher atmosphere and far, far higher, they channelled all the ionizing radiations they could find. They concentrated all the excitement they could drain from the Van Allen belt into a rather intense beam now hitting the ground before me.

Before Eczar and his goons did attack, a beam of plasma warm enough to emit light was ploughing the swampy mud and melting rocks.

They saw that laser from heaven move around us, burning the ground in a rather obvious threat.

It looked like I had a military satellite obeying me, with plenty of power and accuracy.

Their plasma generators began cooling down. They were stepping down. I cut off the light falling down from the sky.

S – Good. I’d rather talk if we can…

Before I realised it, the three of them were jumping over my friends and me.

~

14. The enemy unveiled, the lost princess and the shady countess
 

It was a bit messy.

Instead of another attack spell, my reflex had been to raise a shield to protect my family. The dragons had shrewdly guessed that, and how I would likely not use that beam weapon if they were all over us.

Now we were blasting more regular spells and fighting back like regular monsters. They had to remain close to avoid that spell.

I launched the request to pin them to the ground like I had on Basileus in the past, but it didn’t work just that well… They had prepared for it?

Man, don’t underestimate dragons…

Things weren’t looking too good. Even of our swords and spells could hurt them.

Until another laser beam ripped the air, and damaged some of their wings from behind.

In the distance, we saw Trinity arriving in reinforcements!

I didn’t know they learnt to use that spell. I guess the replicant told them as well before it disappeared.

With their help, we pinned the dragons down, managing not to kill them.

Again it had not been an easy victory, but we were fine… Dominika and Felicia hugged me instead of punching me. I was surprised, but I think the dragons must have also scared them.

I got closer to the immobilised leader.

S – It seems bravery wasn’t enough my friend. I get that you were all jealous of the makeover I gave Basileus, but that still wasn’t right. You think we can understand each other now Eczar?

E – …

J – Just accept being her friend!

Now this one gets me I thought with a grin.

Trinity were sighing greatly. Dominika, Orea and Felicia were still happy to be reunited with me. Perhaps they were holding their kicks to my butt for a little after we would be done dealing with this immediate dragon situation.

~

The Radiant Firebond was bringing Trinity up to speed about all we had learnt and faced.

Meanwhile I chatted with our friends of various species.

S – Now, do we discuss how we could save the system? You know something more, don’t you? About the other place. About what’s behind… them.

E – We have some verified data.

S – Like where is that other world? And what leads them?

E – It’s not a different world…

S – The air was unbreathable; the biosphere was gone… The sun was much bigger…

E – It’s not a different planet…

Eczar was troubled. He couldn’t say it? But my elven nekomimi friend could.

Z – It’s the future of our system. Isn’t it?

I thought about it as well.

The weird realisation.

They must have found a timestamp somewhere.

And the new species began to realize, the enemy was apparently not coming from another place, but another time…

~

A billion years…

Up to a point in time where even all the nanites power couldn’t put up with what the sun had become.

They eventually failed their mission.

The system in the end of times, failed. Because such was the unavoidable fate of the star system.

Even they were never as powerful as a star’s demise.

The system of the far, far future of Earth had gone insane…

Yet it managed to reallocate its power and capacities to come back to us in a nefarious way.

Energy could be used to curve space-time in conventional ways… But the nanites had the potential to go in unconventional ways as well.

Eventually sometime in the future, they cracked the spell to negative energy, and opening small rifts through time itself? That broke my understanding of reality. I didn’t think that could ever be possible.

Although that had been true for many a thing I encountered in this life and world. Including making so many nice friends.

S – So you think the system in this end of times is returning, throwing these monsters and itself at us, to… Wreck us?

E – It helped creating us, and the other species…

Z – The times of when the new species began to spread coincides with the early monsters’ appearances. So it’s a possibility. But we’re not clear on the purpose.

S – It is bringing the monsters, but also budding the new species?

There was a weird paradox. The nanites told me what the new species were made for. I didn’t get they came from the future at the time. But for the monsters, they couldn’t say.

Or rather, they were not allowed to say.

S – Nanites, I don’t have any authorisation in the future system I guess?

N – That’s about it yes.

If the corrupted system on the other side of time and space was now meaning to destroy us, we would fight back. And it was now more clear on how I would do that.

Our foe was the global scale Earth T.I. system from a very distant future. Millions of years away most likely.

Perhaps it had brought beneficial insight from the future at first, but then turned wrong afterward. Perhaps millions of years had gone by between the two sides, and its corruption been a matter on geological or even astral scale.

We would never know, as we needed to defend our time. It wouldn’t speak to me, and we would seek to kill it to no longer rip through our timeline.

It was an interesting theory to me, that the new species had been ordered and programmed as humanity safeguards, not from our time or the seven sages, but from a future retrospective of what would have been the solution somewhere.

Elves, dwarves, fairies and dragons could have prevented the future to end up poorly. Hard to say when, hard to say how. I liked to muse about it and wonder what it could mean.

With better handling of the system that had not been meant to be owned by old humans, could they have led us to a utopia? Or would they now?

S – There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

A – Are you saying you want your elven nekomimi kingdom again?

S – … No?

They were giving me dubious looks.

Never mind them.

~

Kami-sama from before I was born, had given me something more than a new life. The machine god revealed it in the worst way possible in the academy, but I held the key to shut the corrupt system down.

And it possibly knew it already. Because the two sides were connected to some levels.

The enemy wanted now to eradicate our system and species, and our entire biosphere probably.

And the rhythm of attacks would only increase rapidly.

Times were turning unsteady as monsters were turning more numerous and restless.

Now we would be not only careful, we began to prepare for the real final attack. It was bound to happen soon.

Z – From our calculations with the dragons, there had been an exponential growth of attacks over the last 18 years or so. That is why all the species began to investigate more lately. We could reach a singularity attack shortly.

S – 18 years hm…

About my age, coincidentally.

A random isekaied with the authorisation to bypass it all one time. A system threat…

We had to warn the governments willing to listen to us, all of us. To coordinate them hopefully on the right enemies.

So we prepared for a tour of embassies throughout Europe, splitting up our groups for a while.

Orea and Josephine, the better diplomats, headed for the EU Empire capital of Aachen.

Aster headed for the Netherland and Belgium with Izad and Zeug.

Cécile headed for the United Kingdom and Dominika for western Russia.

And I, obviously, headed for Norway and Sweden first. I had amends to make. With Felicia to watch over me.

S – I’m not a child.

F – Goodness no. You would be so much cutter otherwise.

I saw her dreaming of something, and thought better than to ask.

We climbed on top of Basileus, who was kind enough to give us a lift.

The coward, as the dragons tended to berate him, was the one smart enough from my perspective to make friends of his former foes.

Eczar was likely going to do the right thing, but we could tell he wasn’t going to sign a peace treaty with the human nations anytime soon.

S – It will take time to rally everyone to a peaceful community. Competitive and game theoryinstinct run hard. Even for believers of the machine god like your kind.

B – Dragons are proud.

That made me chuckle to hear that cliché line.

The newer organic species were the most pragmatic ones.

And the monsters we cut down along the way were just mind controlled golems of a wider technological monster.

I would apologise to the kings and make sure they would help in the right way when the big day would come.

The others managed to get the same buy in from the higher ups accordingly.

Because we had the words of every species to back us, and warnings matching the obvious trends, the world leaders thankfully listened to us. Most of them did.

Only between Belgium and the Netherlands it was a bit tougher. The two kingdoms were still very much at odds with each other.

Aster arrived in the Kingdom of Netherlands and Flanders at the worst of times.

King William XII had just died, and a coup followed.

Princess Louise of the Netherlands was fleeing in exile while we were all around.

Less chivalrous people would have simply negotiated with the usurper in place, but not our Aster von Murgarden. Oh no. She wanted her knighthood for proper nobility.

She found the princess and reinstated her with her own might. She was more crazy than even I was sometimes. Without a single gunshot, albeit perhaps a few bones broken by her sword, she defeated the evil ones, and returned the legitimate heir to her household.

With the authority over the nanites she had been given, she was as powerful a hero as I was. Other adventurers were no match. Even if she didn’t throw big spells around and relied almost exclusively on her old sword. Aster was just as passionate as she always was.

We saw on the news how the government had changed hands again, thanks to an anonymous wandering knight.

Ok that was a bit cool.

She hid her face a bit for the cameras, but her close friends could easily recognise her. Her father too probably. Your daughter helped reinstate a neighbouring family to its throne. That would surely help peace between the countries and count a lot of points toward her sacrament.

Princess Louise was apparently not unaffected by her charms either. I couldn’t blame her. But as much as she might have wished to keep our Aster as her royal guard, she already had a few other oaths to honour. She headed for Belgium afterward, while I went to Norway.

My apologies went better than expected honestly.

Both kings wanted to be my friends, in a very political way.

King Leopold V – Never mind a countess, I will make you a duchess.

S – Hm, no thanks. I’m fine with what I have. Don’t get me wrong, I understand you. But I don’t want my power to tip the scales rashly. I’m still young, please give me some time.

King Leopold V – I understand. I was born young too once upon a time. I will keep things open and a gentle pressure over time.

I smiled back and bowed.

Not only was I welcome back and listened to under my real name, they wanted me to marry their stepsons.

Hm. No thanks! I didn’t come around to reinforce the old system, but preparing the defence on a wider scale.

Thankfully, they agreed to support me officially.

Trinity and the Radiant Firebond met with a United Nations delegation, a working group now addressing the rapidly growing crisis with the monsters.

Despite our young age and lack of political powers, we regrouped enough supports to make something real happen.

And it came true in the nick of time…

15. The seven hours’ war
 

The full scale invasion had begun.

With our shared warnings and intelligence, at least for a while, the militaries and adventurers of every country stopped glaring at each other. Kisses might come after the victory, if we were to prevail.

Because when the real forces or invasion arrived, it still was a worldwide shock and awe.

Portals bigger opened, and monsters poured in like there was no end to them.

The central countries of the empire were falling in a matter of hours.

Thankfully, things were so obliviously dire, that the leading people took full measure of what we had meant.

And a UN led coalition of the same European kingdoms and Empire stood firm. Those who had for so long sought to nibble each other now faced the common alien enemy. As shaky as they could be, but reastepsonably.

It was now invading through huge portals opening throughout the central lands, and growing at visible speed visible from the horizon.

The swarm of deformed beasts and corrupted machines the system couldn’t interfere with met the proper military response from humanity.

The heartland of the empire was submerged, but the alliance managed to contain it and push back in the following days.

My friends were supporting the main groups in this battle that was growing a frontline in the modern warfare kind of meaning. A continuous battle of overwhelming powers ploughing the land.

The flood of beasts seemed infinite however, and everything was looking challenged. The kingdoms were humans. And the adventurer’s powers were weakening fighting these monsters.

The corruption from the other side was staining in, revoking human and humanoid accesses, gradually extinguishing our magical powers.

The malevolent end on the other side was gaining ground, and still had forces to throw against us.

The earlier portals and small scale invasions had been scouting expeditions for the threat to our biosphere and system. And they had prepared forces in a scale meant to prevail.

They knew what we could throw at them, and now the balance was tilting. Our system would fall and follow, and this would be the end.

Unless there was a grain of sand to glitch the system.

~

I flew above the field on Basileus’s back. His friends were spearheading the only flying force able to go beyond the hellish frontlines. They were growing heavier as their level of authority was getting lowered steadily, but they were still the dominators. They were dragons.

Our flying allies scattered to face their corrupted counterparts coming in and opening me the way. I unleashed my most powerful spells against some of them. Plasma beams pierced our clouds to hit them and torch the flying forces coming our way.

S – Go, go, fast Ba!

Basileus was nervous and snorted, but the dragon once cowardly now was finding his bravery.

In front of us in the dying landscape, the disc of a bluer cerulean sky, beyond the portal to another world and time.

Beyond which the future system had gone crazy and beyond self-recovery.

A twisted ecosystem now pouring uncontrollably into ours through this light.

I brushed my eyes and cursed him who brought me here ne last time.

I closed my eyes as we passed the horizon of events of this wormhole through our relativistic understanding of space-time. I felt the urge to vomit as it twisted.

I felt the air changing, becoming unbreathable.

I felt the sun burning my skin.

And I heard the corrupted system vibrating, as if mountains and land were growling.

– SYSTEM THREAT DETECTED.

S – This time for good…

The world machine was twitching, convulsing. My gaze sharpened. The nanites I carried would rapidly lose their understanding.

But I had prepared and activated the stepsonar.

The closest beacon was detected and I yelled to Basileus to hasten.

S – Over there! The old beacon!

The dragon was shaky, his own relation to the system beginning to fail. He flew as fadt as he could, for the sake of the world we left behind.

~

 Basileus was shot down by some weaponry they still had and we plummeted through the sky.

I used my extended authority to heal him before it was too far. We wouldn’t make it back, not the both of us. We were too far.

I left him, urging him to go back and used another tremendous flying spell before he could refuse and catch me back. You could just save your scales old friend.

I bolted to the metallic spire, through the landscape that reminded me of Mars. The urban ruins of Earth were unrecognizable in this land.

Everything was dry, there were no more waters nor even clouds in the sky. No one would want to be isekaied in this world.

Hard to believe this planet in time could still hold onto such a biomass to throw at us. But they were only fodder to be thrown at us.

The relay node was there as it always had, albeit covered with a good layer of regolith now. I landed against it in a blast. It reacted and began to glow.

– ACCESS DENIED.

S – Nanites… Use my one shot authority override. Shut down the system.

N – Silvia. We won’t have enough time to bring you back to the gate before it shuts.

S – Do it nanites…

And goodbye my first little friends I wanted to say. The tiny swarm left my body and corrupted the decaying system into a forced reset.

The growling voice quieted down as the transcendental cohesion began to fade.

Now every machine was losing its higher authority and they would scatter free, and harmless.

All they had built would die.

And this world would be free to restart evolution and everything else peradventure…

The palms of my hands began to slip from the glowing surface and I fell down.

Now it hurt me to no end. I wailed. I couldn’t breathe properly anymore.

I had a little left before I would pass out and die here. I thought of my six dearest friends, and especially one. I didn’t want to lose them…

I saw Basileus in the distance, harassed by the local monsters but still brave enough to come and help.

I jumped, giving it all. I didn’t want to die!

Basileus caught me i flight and we rushed toward the now fading gate. To hopefully make it back in time.

I couldn’t breathe anymore. And I couldn’t see Basileus making it back in time.

Their faced and older stepmoments we had shared flashed in my mind.

And especially that smile…

~

I woke up under a collection of worried faces. Now their eyes were swelling up.

If they looked at me like that I was going to cry.

They all hugged me tight one after another. They had feared for my life for real this time. Dominika, Orea and Felicia. Aster, Cécile and Josephine…

We made it back. Basileus returned to his homeland, leaving me in my friend’s care.

And we even made it at all…

The hostile intelligence was deactivated in its own ground, and all the attacks ceased.

My dutiful Friends received their rewards in grandiose official ceremonies, from their respective countries. We all inherited our lands in a world no longer under constant pressure from the appearing monsters.

Because the flow had been steady and slow for such a long time, no one had realised the world had been sick for a long time.

And now that I shut down its sad source, a pressure was lifted.

Criminality and backward social order would remain, but a threat was gone.

The authority levels that adventurers and others had lost didn’t really recovered. The damages in our system might self repair over time, but affected people would move on with their lives.

As we would as well.

My authority was restored though.

N – Please don’t do this ever again Silvia.

S – Ah ah… You too would miss me, don’t you?

N – Yes we would. Existence is far more enjoyable with you under the spotlight.

I smiled a bit wry.

Was I their idol or something?

The weirder thing was, the war was over.

It had been brewing for decades, and then most tensions had fallen down.

Time was now for reconstruction and easing things between old enmities.

I liked what I saw on the news while I rested for a short while in my new home. The manor was still just a temporary shed while the main construction was happening. Quinn was busy overseeing it.

Gwynifar brought me a tea and soup in my bed.

Truth was, I already had fully recovered, but I enjoyed to be spoiled a little.

S – Thank you. Can I touch your ears?

G – You’re welcome and no.

S – Come on, I saved the world! I deserve at least that.

G – The journalists and statesmen wishing to speak to you about that are continuing to gather at our doors. I doubt Quinn will be able to hold them out for much longer. You should do something about it my lady.

I sighed. No rest for the weary.

~