LIGHTNOVELONLINE Arc 1 | Chapter 29: Next Stop
It hadn’t taken Emilia long to realize leaving the decision of how much to reduce her D-Levels to Payton was the best—or at least the easiest—option. As a result, the rest of her time between Olivier leaving and her classmate waking had been spent trying to decipher the information she’d gotten from the bartender’s head and the purist building’s security system. She hadn’t gotten far on either, her Censor alone not powerful enough to do more than glance over the material and extrapolate based on what the two of them saw, but what they had found had been interesting—enough for her to know where they probably had to go next, assuming she had cleaned up the information correctly.
Now, with the Virtuosi System vibrating around her, she reached out to her old code, urging it to go over the information—to confirm that she hadn’t massively fucked up when she’d analyzed it earlier—with all the processing power of the system behind it. That code, so lovingly, tediously, obsessively created by her younger self was still inside her, even if she hadn’t used it in over a decade. It swirled around her, grabbing onto the information and cycling through it, searching for what she needed. Her Censor burned, and then the knotting bay spit to life beneath her body, cooling her down as it worked.
Time skewed, elongated until she could barely feel the coolness. She needed to not feel it, as much as she could because the knot therapy was going to hurt like a bitch. Bodies—genetic sequences—weren’t meant to be manipulated so much in such a short period of time. Small changes felt like nothing. The number of changes she needed was huge—was essentially like rotting her body from the inside out, forcing her to accept one change before changing it again and again and again and ignoring it as it screamed.
So yeah, barely being able to feel the coolness was a step. Hopefully, by the time Payton really got started, she’d be even deeper than this.
Her Censor shuddered, the black world of the Virtuosi System—because she hadn’t bothered to load up a proper environment, given she wasn’t planning to be here long—vibrating a little harder as information from the bartender’s head began to form in front of her, some of it weaving in with the security system’s information.
Most of it… was still pretty garbled. A conversation about purist ideals. A mention of a younger sister’s death. Employment information passed from the bartender to the strange man—nothing given in return.
Then.
[You won’t have long, before SecOps catches on. Knotters are rare but…]
[I’ll need to get out of the city.]
Laughter—the man who had given the bartender the knotters laughing.
[Out of the country.]
Had the bartender really not realized this would lead to him being wanted throughout Baalphoria? Sure, there were probably purist clubs he could seek refuge with, but what kind of life would that be, trapped in someone’s guest room while the world wanted you dead?
[I ain’t becoming a fucking lynie!]
More laughter.
[Do you think the only places outside Baalphoria are Free Colonies?]
The bartender had sputtered, muttering about how of course he didn’t, even as her Censor sent a feeling through her that implied he had thought that. There were other countries, ones not associated with the Free Colonies. They were rare and unpleasant and an entire ocean away from their own continent. They hadn’t even helped in the war, instead erecting huge barriers using technology even D-Tect hadn’t been able to guess at to block off both their enemies and the Alliance itself, even communication bouncing uselessly off them.
Relations between Baalphoria and those countries had always been strained and silent, only goods moving between them. Never people. Never knowledge or news. Now, those relations were non-existent. Now, those same barriers still surrounded those countries, having never come down after the war ended.
Some people thought they had died, locked themselves in with monsters who wouldn’t be held back even by those mysterious barriers. Others thought they just didn’t trust that the world was safe—that they couldn’t see the world outside any more than the rest of the world could see in. Still more thought they knew something Baalphoria and the Free Colonies didn’t—knew that the world still wasn’t safe.
Of course, it wasn’t. Not with echoes still occurring, but most people doubted those were worth keeping a barrier around your entire damn country.
Personally, Emilia had little opinion on it, but she liked to think they were afraid. Not of echoes or enemies from the abyss, but from the humans they had abandoned. She, for one, would be perfectly willing to go find whoever had decided to leave them to die and get some answers out of them as to why. Why did they leave them to suffer? Why didn’t they even give them a hint as to how to protect themselves?
Would it have hurt them to give Baalphoria and the Free Colonies the secrets of that barrier?
Did they feel anything for all the lives that two decades of war had cost?
[Where then?]
The man had sent the bartender a ticket, the little bit of information that Emilia had been able to decipher earlier.
[Use this, whenever you need to get out. You can find me there.]
[But where will I—]
Emilia might not have been able to see the expression of the mystery man, but she could feel the sheer terror it had caused in the bartender. Yet, when the man spoke again, his voice was calm—almost kind.
Manipulative.
[I’m afraid we’ve been burned before. I assure you, it is not that we do not trust you. However, for everyone’s safety… I’m sure you understand why we cannot tell anyone the name of our supporter before—]
[I understand!]
Emilia wasn’t convinced the bartender had understood, but he had accepted the knotters, the ticket, smiled and waved and bid the man goodbye. Stupid. Desperate. Sure, the mystery man could have had good intentions—intentions to truly keep both his supporters and distributors safe—but it didn’t feel like that.
No, it felt like a trap. Distribute our drugs for us, then when you need out, we’ll kill you! Well, death was a way out, just not the one most people usually had in mind.
Emilia sent her Censor out, searching for any information it could find on purists and foreign countries—even on the Free Colonies and any purist connections they had themselves because you never knew. Some of the Free Colonies were so secretive that they could have been anti-irregular, anti-every other Free Colony, and no one would know.
Then, she pulled up information on the ticket the bartender had been given. She had glanced it over while waiting for Payton to wake. Ship’o Stars was a bougie, astronomically expensive airship hotel. It had only been in operation for the last three years, travelling over Baalphoria and a few of the closer Free Colonies. Apparently, it was currently over the ocean to the east of Piketown, enjoying sights of the pink tide.
It was also, unfortunately, extremely exclusive. The kind of place you only got into under three circumstances: you were famous, you were gifted a ticket, or you won a ticket. While Emilia could ask Olivier to get her a ticket, she didn’t really want him involved anymore in this, especially since she would need him to, you know, not be involved if she was arrested and needed a lawyer. She also definitely wasn’t being gifted a ticket, which left option number three: win one.
Ship’o Stars was, very fortunately for her, also a private raid platform. The rich and famous wanted mind-bending experiences in the real world, and Ship’o Stars gave them just that. As a result, the ship needed great raid heroes to make the experience even better. That was where gifting of tickets came in, but it wasn’t enough. Very few private raid platforms—either real world or virtual ones—made their player lists or statistics public, and as popular as public raids were, the best heroes devoted most of their time to private platforms these days.
Which left exclusive, private raid platforms like Ship’o Stars to host their own virtual contests. Fortunately, being a hotel with a constantly shifting guest list, they ran contests around the clock, hoping to find new heroes worth bringing to their platforms for a few days or weeks. Emilia had even heard that, if you preformed really well, they might offer you a long-term position on their staff.
Her arm twitched, a muscle in her physical body contracting as Payton straightened out a gene. Physically, she couldn’t move, but her virtual self still stretched her fingers as though it were her real body. The ache moved, slowly stretching out into her shoulder and down into her forearm. It would continue to spread and spread until her entire body ached. Then it would stop and Payton would move to the next gene and the next. So many knots to go through, not all of which were actively affecting her D-Levels, but would need to be straightened out to get to others that were.
Even if he had seemed excited to be preforming knot therapy on her, Emilia knew she was still going to owe her classmate so much for tonight.
Her Censor pulled up a list of raids being held by Ship’o Stars. There were quite a few, some starting soon, others already ongoing. You could enter most virtual raids at any point—as long as they didn’t require an invitation—even if that were contests. Generally, you were unlikely to win if you entered too late in the game, but it wasn’t impossible.
It all depended on the rules, and Emilia had already read over the rules for the contests going on tonight, and she already knew exactly which one she was going to enter.
{A Life (not) in the Stars} was a horrible name, but all of Ship’o Stars’ contests had similar names. Stars, stars, stars. Too much branding. This particular contest had caught her eye for one reason alone—one reason that made it unique: you could win multiple tickets. Most of the contests offered only one or two tickets for the top heroes. Ship’o Stars wanted what was all but free labour from their recruited guests, after all. Adding in friends and family who might be shit heroes, just there to eat free food and enjoy the amenities? Nah, not worth their money.
{A Life (not) in the Stars} had some pretty hardcore rules, but it also offered a grand prize of ten tickets. Even the second and third place prizes were five and three tickets respectively.
Emilia would be happy winning any of them, although, admittedly, finding ten people to come with her would be a pain. Maybe she’d be happier with second or third. Yes, that sounded like a much better idea. Plus, she didn’t want the publicity of winning the grand prize. True, most people didn’t really pay attention to the winners of these kinds of events, but it was still a little too close to announcing to the people from her old life, “Hey, look! I’m right over here!”
The last time she’d been stupid enough to do that had been when she’d accidentally ranked in the Top 10 Heroes for the season. She’d been lucky no one had noticed, or at least, no one had ever said they noticed—never shown up in Piketown looking for her.
She selected {A Life (not) in the Stars} and watched as the black world around her faded into a world of stars. Her Censor prompted her, asking if she’d like it to continue searching for information on purists and any connections to foreign countries or Free Colonies—yes—and if she wanted to contact anyone, tell them she was going into a game—no.
No. She had thought that over—thought it over far longer than she had her decision to give Payton control of her knotting or whether going into this game was a good idea or not—and decided that no, she didn’t need or want help with this. This, the world of {A Life (not) in the Stars} and the rules that bound it, was one better suited to playing alone.
Most people could not be weak or ignorant. It was why, even though this contest was offering such a large prize, the hero count was low, barely 500, compared to other, single ticket contests, where tens of thousands of people were fighting each other for such a small prize—wasting precious Virtuosi hours trying for the smallest chance at an all-inclusive solo trip.
Emilia could be weak.
Emilia could be ignorant.
Emilia would not break from being weak and powerless or alone in an unknown world, the way so many people would.
A small notification confirmed for her that she had successfully connected to the system and that the time skew was 5 days/hour. One month, crammed into six hours—25 days crammed into five for her, since she was starting an hour late.
Then the world, the stars, the feeling of the aether vibrating around her vanished, and she was falling through time.
