Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 79
🕑 Added 2023-06-29 02:50:07 +0000 UTCAs always when he was teleported, Felix felt a sudden lurch in the aether then looked around and instantly found himself in a large room where part of the floor was sloped and led to a curved wall. On the other end of the room, at the top of the slope, was a large table resting on a flat floor with no chairs around it. Instead of chairs, there was simply ample space around the table for people to walk by without it ever really getting cramped. Along the sloped floor, on either side of the room were a dozen chairs laid out in 3 rows that all faced down the slope towards the curved wall.
The only thing in the room other than furniture and what Felix brought with him, was a small lockbox in the center of the table. It looked like a miniature wooden chest that was either a normal chest shrunk down or a scale replica one might use for jewelry. It was not an ornate chest, instead it was clean and unmarred with no visible imperfections to Felix’s eye. Felix walked towards the chest and carefully tilted open the top. Inside, the chest appeared to be filled with small coins of various shapes, sizes and colors.
Felix reached his hand in and pulled a handful out confirming what he already suspected, the tokens were more faction tokens, like the ones he had received at the end of the tutorial. Felix stored the entire handful in his inventory then reached in and pulled out another. He repeated the process far more times than he thought would be necessary as the chest was much larger inside that it appeared to be on the outside. Eventually, he just stuck his hand in and stowed everything it touched to make the process faster.
As soon as he finished stowing all the tokens, Felix pulled his hand out and started to examine the chest except it suddenly vanished. He wanted to see if he could have taken it with him but it seemed like The System had thought of that. Felix had no interest in sorting through the tokens himself so he let Grim have a look while he walked towards the door at the back of the room.
As soon as his hand made contact with the door, as it didn’t seem to have a handle, he was presented with the option to request a visit to another room or leave the room. Since he wasn’t sure who to visit first and didn’t know if they would be in their rooms or not, Felix simply chose to leave the room. Before he could open it though, another screen suddenly appeared.
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Auction
The auction will start in one hour with the basic items presented by a screen. During this period, anyone will be able to list the items they are carrying, with some restrictions, and bid on items they desire. After a period of 2 hours for that auction, the tailored items will be presented on stage for anyone to bid on.
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Does it seem odd you have to bid on your tailored item?
Maybe it’s just in case you don’t want the item?
Then you could just sell it though.
Yeah. No idea.
Felix dismissed the screen then immediately realized the door he was touching had simply disappeared revealing a large curved hallway. The curve was in the opposite direction from the curved wall in the room and was immense. If Felix had to guess, the curve’s diameter was around a half kilometer across. He looked to the left and right and saw multiple doors just like the one he had exited through every few dozen meters and even saw a couple other individuals in the hall.
Felix avoided everyone and made sure it was difficult for any of them to strike up a conversation with him by rushing down the hall towards the lobby. Luckily, there were signs along the hall so he didn’t have to run around aimlessly until he found where he was.
Following the curved hall, Felix ran far faster than would be polite in a normal theater and arrived at a large double stair case leading downwards. As Felix descended, he passed by multiple other floors and the number of people in the stairway steadily grew. Felix ignored both the floors and the people, getting past the latter by simply flying along the ceiling, over their heads.
Finally, after what had felt like over a dozen floors, though Felix wasn’t counting, the stairs ended on a beautifully tiled floor. Felix stepped out and dropped himself to the ground as he looked around.
The lobby seemed to just be a massive open room with small seating nooks and tables scattered about. In the very center, was a massive table with various foods and drinks.
Felix knew there would be at most 20 thousand people at the auction and, though people were still adjusting themselves and filtering in, he was certain this room could fit them all comfortably. Even if 20 thousand people did attend, and they were all in the lobby at once, there would be ample room for everyone to move around between each-other without making physical contact with anyone.
Luckily, the room was split up a little bit so that it wasn’t just a pile of people in a room. Looking around, Felix saw a series of 8 signs along the walls that each had the names of one of the major cities. Then there were individual booths and areas where people could choose what to have on the signs.
There were a few immature signs already but most of them were more interesting. There were signs for blacksmiths to congregate under, leatherworkers, people who wanted friends, and two that seemed to be for match making. Felix figured those would all normalize themselves as more people entered the lobby and ignored all those signs for now.
Felix walked over to the sign that depicted Atalus on it and floated into the air so he didn’t have to push through the surrounding crowd of people. Under the Atalus sign, Felix saw a series of booths, couches, tables and sitting areas laid out all over the place with some space to just stand as well.
He found what he was looking for almost immediately though and flew over to the table where Noah and Amelia sat. He also saw Benjamin, Will and Alan at various other tables but he figured Noah was most likely to know what the plan was.
Noah and Amelia were sitting on a half circle couch surrounding a table with two other individuals that Felix didn’t recognize. He didn’t exactly want to interrupt their conversation but when he realized the crowd around the table were mostly people waiting their turn to talk as well, he decided he didn’t care. Floating over everyone’s heads and cutting the line, Felix lowered himself next to the couch on the end Noah was sitting on which caused more than a few dirty looks in his direction.
Felix ignored the glares and just looked towards Noah, “Sorry to interrupt. Which room Noah?”
Noah turned to Felix, “Did you get a booth too?”
Felix cofirmed, “Yeah.”
Noah nodded in acknowledgement, “Me too. Go to my room. Atalus leadership will be there and I believe Amani might join.”
“Sounds good.” Felix forced a polite smile then flew off.
He quickly stopped by the large table in the middle covered in food that seemed to infinitely replenish itself as soon as any item had been eaten. There were all kinds of foods from different cultures back on earth and many foods that were clearly not from earth.
Felix started on one end and sampled everything that smelled and looked appetizing until he was completely full. He even felt like he was being picky but when he looked ahead, he realized he had only sampled one twentieth of the table. He briefly tried to store items in his inventory and the Kryptos Repository but found that to be impossible. He gave up and quickly picked up a few more items, stuffed them into his mouth and floated back up to the ceiling then shot towards the staircase.
As he ascended the staircase back to his room, he received multiple requests for people to visit his room. None of them were from people he recognized so he declined and ignored them all. They started getting annoying after a dozen or so but luckily they slowed down significantly after that. By the time he got back to his room, they had almost entirely stopped appearing.
As he floated over to his door, he noticed a handful of people waiting around in the hall for someone to approach. Ahead of him in the hall he watched as someone left their room and the people in the hall scurried over to strike up a conversation. He overheard enough of it to realize they were just trying to befriend anyone on the top floor so he shot towards his door and disappeared before they could peel off their last victim.
His room was exactly as he remembered it but he barely glanced at it this time. As soon as he appeared inside his room he turned around and placed his hand against the door to leave. This time, he chose to visit a room and thought of Noah. After a few moments, the door opened and instead of the hall on the other side, he saw a room that looked identical to his own just mirrored. Felix walked through the doorway and looked around at Noah’s room.
The room was completely identical to Felix’s except, he had no way of knowing if there was once a token chest in the middle of the table since he knew that they disappeared once emptied. The only other differentiating factor to the room was that Noah’s room had someone in it, sitting in one of the chairs facing forwards. They noticed him walk in right away and looked over their shoulder to him.
“Oh… Hello Felix.”
“Hey Eva.”
Felix took one of the seats in a different row and across the aisle from Eva and was more than happy to just sit. They both comfortably sat in silence for a few minutes that neither of them dared break until Will and Alan walked through the door and into the room. Will sat next to Eva and Alan sat across the aisle from them in the same row, just a few empty meters between them.
As soon as they sat down, Will reached his arm over the back of his chair and turned his head to Felix, “We saw you float into the lobby talk to Noah then fly off. Wish I could have avoided socializing like that.”
“That’s a lie, you love socializing.” Alan retorted.
Will shrugged but kept his eyes focused on Felix, “Meh, sometimes. That was a lot of people, got tiring quickly. Also I wanted to talk to you Felix, I was wondering if I could pick your brain? Got a minute?”
Felix shrugged, “Sure. What’s up?”
Will nodded, “Basically, my build right now is entirely focused on fighting people one on one. I have skills to greatly increase my defense against all other attacks so long as I’m fighting. It costs a ton of energy but it get’s refunded if I do kill my target. Of course I use a rapier and I can get through most defenses. You have any thoughts on enchantments I should look out for, skills I should try and find? Any tips and tricks in general?”
Uhhhh… I get I’m an enchanter, but wouldn’t he know what enchantments would help him more than I would?
Felix heard someone open the door behind him and quickly glanced over to see Benjamin. He turned back to Will, “I guess your goal then is to stay on your target and keep them from running away from and exhausting you? I guess make sure you have good mobility. Poisons probably aren’t fast acting enough to refund you energy when you need it but they might give you an edge. On the other hand, a blade that slows your opponent down, maybe even freezes them as you wound them, would work nicely I think.”
Will scratched at his cheek, “That’s not a bad idea. For mobility, did you have anything in specific in mind?”
Felix shrugged, “Not really. I have jump spells on my boots that launch me around but maybe you just want to energy infuse instead.”
Will smiled and nodded, “Oh cool. I’ll look out for something like that, thanks.”
“Sure.”
“You maybe should also look into armor. Even just cloth with good enchantments to keep you mobile.” Benjamin added in.
“How much defense could enchantments on cloth offer? Is it worth it?” Will asked, clearly in Felix’s direction.
Felix thought about it for a few seconds, “I had impenetrable cloth wraps in the E grade. So a decent amount.”
Not sure if that’s a thing in D grade but I’m sure… I gotta look into enchanting cloth for defense myself.
Will’s eyes went wide, “Woah, really?”
The free advice session continued with Benjamin then Henry, who had just showed up asking Felix for his advice on their builds. Initially, with Will, Felix had been too caught off guard to realize it but the whole thing was rather exasperating.
He felt like he was that one kid in the family that was good with computers so everyone else was asking him for tech support. It wasn’t so bad that he had to leave or shut it down but he was starting to realize he didn’t really fit in that well.
The conversation evolved to almost everyone in the room arguing and sharing their thoughts on each-other’s builds. The only stand outs were Eva who remained silent and Felix who was doing his best to participate as little as possible, only contributing the bare minimum when someone addressed him directly.
Noah and Amelia had showed up at some point along with Amani who avoided talking about her own build but did offer criticisms. Felix thought about ducking out with the excuse of getting more food but ultimately, he decided he could just sit through it.
It wasn’t irritating anymore because they were rarely asking Felix his advice directly but it was more that he just didn’t really care about the conversation at hand. Everything anyone was looking for to improve their builds, he had at least a rough idea of a spell or enchantment he could make to accomplish. He started to feel like he was either a parent listening in on a conversation between children or just someone much older.
A lot of the problems they were having he just didn’t have or already had solutions for. He started to feel more and more like he didn’t really belong as the conversations progressed. Up to this point, he hadn’t really had many in depth casual conversations with anyone so it had never really gotten to this point.
When he talked to Noah he almost always had a purpose. With Benjamin, Will and Alan, he could only remember one casual conversation in the world event and they just told him about their families for a grand total of a minute. Even Amani, seemed to be enjoying herself as she deftly navigated the conversation to avoid the topic of her own build.
Eva seemed to be somewhat of a kindred spirit, avoiding the conversation entirely but Felix wasn’t sure if it was just nerves from being in a room with entirely adults or something else. Also she was 13 so he wasn’t exactly looking to her for conversation.
His feeling of alienation only got worse as the conversation drifted to things they missed about earth and things they did and didn’t like about the tutorial. Felix had done this before, sit and listen in on someone’s problems, mostly with David. The difference was usually that David was a certain kind of person that didn’t want emotional support or someone to commiserate with, he wanted someone to help him find solutions.
Felix was more than happy to talk through David’s problems because he could just be honest, blunt and David listened. Here, he found he disagreed with just about everyone and the entire topic of conversation was just so pointless to him. He distracted his mind by practicing spell forms and juggling mana but even then, he couldn’t help but get a little annoyed.
They were in the integration, their universe had changed. There was no point in reminiscing about how much less danger you had felt on earth. This was reality and in Felix’s mind, there was nothing to do but accept it.
As much as he didn’t like being exiled from the integration universe, his home universe, he couldn’t help but slowly come to terms with and actually feel like it was the right call. He should have fallen far behind everyone else with the massive risk he had taken with his class. Looking around though, he knew that would never be the case, not here.
Felix’s musings about being kicked out were interrupted when the conversation shifted to a few people poking Felix to talk about his own build.
“Just a lot of long term investments I guess. I seem to have my current level more or less handled so I’m just trying to abuse that to accelerate myself as much as possible at the expense of… well, the now.”
“You’re still a caster though right? and an enchanter? or some derivative of those?” Will queried.
“More or less.” Felix shrugged.
“I’m just surprised you stayed human.” Benjamin said.
“Isn’t that risky? If everything else starts to outgrow you, you could fall behind. You don’t want your city to be conquered or someone to assassinate you like Ashok and Lav’Gur.” Amani chimed in.
Felix smiled, “That’s not really going to be a problem. I’m stepping down in the next few months.”
Amani shot forwards in shock and leaned towards him, “What? Really? Will Noah run the city? What are you gonna do?”
Felix tilted his head back and forth, “We’re gonna try going with something like an oligarchy for now. I’m going on vacation, sort of.”
Amani leaned forwards and tensed, “When?”
“In 6 months.”
She relaxed, “I see.”
Everyone else in the room except for Eva, who was still silent, knew about Felix’s exile and Amani seemed satisfied for the time being so, the conversation shifted over to other small talk topics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
