Apocalypse Redux

Sidestory 6: Cultural Exchange

2122, Milky Way, Chimera Station

The universe was a weird, weird place.

Amy had known that since well before the very idea of a [System] had come into being, let alone actually appeared.

Because, guess what, humans were also weird, capable of doing some truly ridiculous things.

Then aliens had become a thing and the amount of weirdness she was aware of had tripled.

And now, she was heading to an absolute madhouse of a space station, one designed to be used by all three known sapient species, as a place of trade and cultural exchange … in theory.

In practice, it was likely a little too early for such disparate cultures to be forced into close contact, resulting in frequent clashes of varying severity.

Especially with the Assai. They weren’t aggressive, per se, more … terminally jumpy on an evolutionary level.

Their homeworld was filled with extensive cave networks and the habitable portions of the surface were almost exclusively covered in a dense jungle fused with the mother of all bramble bushes.

Which had left the Assai with a “fight or hide” instinct, rather than the human “fight or flight,” as well as a preference for exploring heavily armed, using warships with only minimal construction ability, designed to be able to build a return catapult but very little else.

So when they’d jumped into a human-controlled star system and been confronted by a human fleet, even one that was broadcasting the first contact package … things had gone badly, though nowhere near as badly as it could theoretically have become.

Although maybe not, considering how they looked, being insectile humanoid with two arms and two legs, two pairs of eyes for the front and back of their heads, heavily armored extremities over joints so flexible they might as well be liquid, white skin, and purple chitin plates that could project a bioluminescent light, when that was required.

Sad as it was to say, their appearance might have startled some jackass to attack, though the Assai had opened fire and made that an entirely moot point.

However, things had eventually calmed down, peaceful first contact had been made, care being taken to keep the fleets so far apart that combat would require a significant period of acceleration before anything could be done.

From there, it hadn’t taken long for this station to be built, each species giving it a separate name, though despite a complete lack of coordination, all three names wound up being that of some kind of mythological hybrid creature/monster. Though in such close quarters, cultural clashes were sadly inevitable, which made this place at least somewhat dangerous.

And now, they were about to walk into the proverbial lion’s den.

Amy fixed Jason with a hard stare, one final time.

“Behave.”

“Sure,” her husband replied, only to, in a creepily cheerful tone, add “Unless they start it.”

“Not what I meant,” Amy rolled her eyes. If someone actually picked a fight, well, they both knew it would be her who was more likely to do something drastic.

And with that, she warped space to carry them closer, Chimera Station rapidly becoming visible to even the unaided eye, looking eerily like the symbol for radioactivity, a central sphere meant for mingling surrounded by three separate, wedge-shaped, habitats, one for each species.

They rapidly approached the human habitant and she set them down on the deck of the personnel dock.

She also pulled out her ID card and presented it, though the copper-and-gold medallion and the embossed “S” in its center that became visible when she opened up her wallet would likely have served just as well.

And it did, the guard at “passport” control waved her through immediately, and Jason too.

Deciding whether or not to go with a fake name had been a bit of a decision, considering that he was “the Ghost,” one of the most wanted men alive. Because while his targets, one and all, absolutely deserved what they got, that did not mean that governments took kindly to what could, at times, be considered domestic terrorism.

Though that charge for releasing a skunk in a center of government was a tad much …

Either way, while he could keep off the record no matter what the powers that be did, she was a known S-Ranker and people would have eventually taken notice of him no matter what.

Ultimately though, they’d settled on him just sticking with his birth name, and simply claiming he’d “gone off to train in solitude,” as though he hadn’t mostly outgrown the edge lord tendencies of his teenage years. Then they’d underplayed his [Skills] a little, and made him look more like a solid A-Rank, a regular [Rogue] at the Level Cap, enough to make him appear powerful but not to the point where one could identify him as the Ghost. Because there were plenty of other people with his supposed skillset, and precisely none of them would be willing to cooperate with a governmental inquiry into the whole affair.

The next step was simple, go into the central hub and look around.

A quarter of an hour later, Amy and Jason stepped out into the vast concourse, which looked like something straight out of a cyberpunk novel, complete with numerous purple neon signs and all sorts of crazy shit on display.

And it was always veryapparent when something had been designed for someone intimately familiar with the intended recipient’s species, and when they weren’t.

Though, in general, people’s mental image of others was rarely even remotely accurate.

It was kinda funny how every sapient species known thought the others were superhuman, or “super-alien,” as it was, simply because they took their own advantages as a given while those held by the others were “ludicrously overpowered.” Humans had their endurance, a little kid being able to match an unenhanced alien with ease.

At the same time, the Koinians were immune to heat up to almost a hundred degrees Celsius and had regenerative abilities normally only seen in salamanders and other “can heal from anything ‘cept regenerating limbs” species, without needing the System.

And as for the Assai, they’d evolved in an environment where an attack could come from any direction, at any time, in an instant. They were born with reflexes that were normally found on the likes of fighter pilots and only improved from there … pre-System, obviously.

Though the reason she’d looked into the whole matter was because she’d found it fascinating how those advantages seemed to melt away as people leveled. Aliens’ endurance grew to match that of humanity, the Assai suddenly found themselves easily matched by humans and Koinians and, well, fire resistance and regeneration were some of the earliest Aspect [Skills] that could be gained.

Standards varied based on the person or persons they applied to.

For example, Isaac’s idea of “cleaning” was incinerating all the dust and debris, then airing out the room. Something that, granted, he had the fine control to pull off, unlike the vast majority of humanity.

Amy, meanwhile, was a mage. A wave of her hand and a thought and the dirt vanished as though it had never even existed.

And as for Jason, well, her husband did not clean because it made very little sense for him to spend minutes doing something she could do in a split second, he took care of other chores he was better at. Like cooking.

Slowly, they walked in between the shops and stalls, holding hands, causing no small amount of consternation from aliens who were yet to get that “handholding is a highly perverse sexual act” was a bloody joke.

One simply did not mess around with a proper cultural exchange, because the person on the end would have no way of separating truth from humorous falsehood … though she had to admit that the reactions were pretty funny.

A sound like a tremendous gong being struck suddenly echoed in her mind, as low as it was impossible to ignore. It was also one that was sadly familiar.

Arthur’s [Royal Call].

What now?

Judging by Jason’s expression, he’d also heard it.

They hurried right back out of the station, then she triggered [Alcubierre Bubble] to insulate them from the universe, making slipping into the [Round Table] easy.

The medieval throne room created by the [Skill] spread out in all directions as they closed their eyes, walls covered in various banners, one for every member of their vastly expanded roster.

However, there were only three people present.

Arthur, Franz Habicht, who’d recently become the Bundeskanzler, and Davy Jones, whose Flying Dutchman was as at home in the black void between stars as it was on the salty waves of the Earth.

“Is the world ending again?” Amy deadpanned.

“A world,” Habicht corrected, a wave of his hand creating an image of an oddly purple world above the table in the center of the room. “The fourth known intelligent species, which is still in the stone age, recently uncovered by a Koinian [Explorer]. It’s too far from any population centers for anyone to enforce the existing treaties about a hands-off approach with low-tech cultures.”

The treaty in question had many names, most of them official, but most people simply called it the “Directive,” after Star Trek’s “Prime Directive,” though it was a thousand times more complicated.

Because unlike the “Prime Directive,” which was an absolute law with zero leeway which was obeyed or ignored more based on what the scriptwriter needed than anything else, the real equivalent had nuance, and took into account that not only would any kind of contact influence a primitive culture, but someone would do it, even if it was illegal.

The potential prizes that could be won by being the first to access a new summoning pool, alien [Classes] and more besides … all of it was just too tempting, unfortunately.

A full naval interdiction might have quite literally flown over the locals’ heads, were this a normal first contact with a low-tech culture, but as per usual, the [System] threw a massive wrench into things, you could never know what someone was capable of, and no possibility could ever be ruled out.

Also, once again, simply knowing there were aliens out there would change things, a fact that could not be kept secret now that the new civilization had been located.

Though in general, the treaty didn’t outright ban interference or simple tech transfers, it just limited it to a level that should be “safe.” In theory. Maybe.

“What’s their actual tech level, ballpark?” Jason asked.

“Stone age, literally,” Jones replied. “I haven’t had a chance to look at all the raw data from the [Explorer], that hasn’t been handed over yet, but every bit of what we’d consider signs of advancement, like metal smithing or agriculture seems to have been created by [Skills].”

Right … Jones had been an archeologist, historian, or something in that vein before all this, Amy recalled.

“And what do you want us to do about it?” she finally asked.

If this was about diplomacy, why go to either of them? Jason was, well, Jason, and her idea of negotiating was based around making offers the other party couldn’t refuse. Refuse and not be an idiot, rather than her forcing acceptance, that was.

Ultimately, using their usual methods here was near-guaranteed to end badly.

“As members of the [Round Table], Arthur can teleport things to you, you’re closest, and I was able to get my hands on some of the UN’s interdiction treaties,” Habicht replied, vanishing from the [Round Table], only for a portal to iris open and him to throw though a large suitcase.

Then, the portal snapped shut and he reappeared, once more as an astral projection while the suitcase was still real, and could be retrieved from the combination astral space-pocket dimension by anyone who was bound to it.

Doing so would slightly strain the [Skill], however, moving goods was much easier than teleporting people.

“And what are we supposed to do with those?” Amy asked.

These things were part legal document, part spellscroll, and could be used to create an area that could then only be entered with the permission of the ruler of whatever area was protected, unless one outright broke the protection. Though that was difficult to do subtly, or in such a way that could be played off as an accident.

Someone who claimed that firing a nuclear missile at an inhabited planet, never mind a missile that subsequently detonated, would get slapped with a negligence charge so overwhelming that it might even have been less damaging to just fess up.

There was one small issue, though. One needed to be a ruler to use them. So …

“Are we supposed to conquer the locals?” Jason added.

“Give them to as many of the local leaders as possible, let them choose what they want to do,” Habicht said. “It’s not like we can force them to do anything.”

Well, they could, only having a single planet under their control left them horrifically vulnerable, but doing so would defeat the entire point of this.

Ultimately, it would have been better for everyone involved for these new aliens to never even have been discovered, not for a few thousand years, at least. Humans, Koinians, and Assai would doubtlessly still have an advantage by then, but the power dynamics wouldn’t have been this uneven.

But you had to deal with the hands you were dealt.

“How long do we have before others show up?” Amy asked.

“The planet was located literally five hours ago,” Habicht replied.

“So let’s go, then,” she replied, grabbing the suitcase and chucking it through a briefly appearing portal to land in her real body’s arms.

And then, she redirected their [Alcubierre Bubble] to carry them to their actual destination.

***

The world extending below them was exactly how the hologram had shown, and more besides. She hadn’t been a scientist in the STEM field in decades, but she hadn’t forgotten the years of study she’d had stuffed into her brain before the [System] had appeared. And she had enough analysis spells to do the work of an entire university’s worth of diagnostic equipment.

This place had the most thoroughly alien biosphere ever discovered, functioning on a fundamentally different set of basic elements than virtually any other inhabited world, using fluorine as an oxidizer rather than, well, oxygen.

Oh, the chemists would have a field day with all this, and maybe she’d join them for a few years, dust off the old knowledge, go back to basics.

But that was for later.

For now, they had a job to do. Amy let herself drop, falling into the outer layers of the atmosphere … yet she only had a split second to notice how different the air smelled before her attention was dragged away by her throat closing up.

This world was an assault on the senses in ways nothing else had been. It was hardly the most dangerous or inhospitable environment he’d ever been in, but it was the smelliest. Hard vacuum didn’t smell like anything (duh), and many other environments might be filled with toxins but these weren’t toxins the human olfactory sense was set up to detect.

The fluorine-based compounds present here, however, were ones that the human nose noticed immediately and subsequently set off every alarm her heavily outdated lizard brain had with regards to “chemical weapons” … and promptly engaged chemical warfare protocols, which involved shutting the airways because keeping airborne toxins out was more important than getting oxygen in.

And while Amy, and any other human even remotely close to her Level, could ignore things like that, and the moment she “reminded” her body that it was immune it would let her breathe again, there were thousands of compounds that set off her body’s defenses.

Yep, that wasn’t going to be annoying, not in any way at all …

It wasn’t even like she had to breathe, there were Aspects for that, one of which she had, but she liked breathing. She’d gotten used to it, and suddenly not being able to do it irritated her to no end.

But Amy would deal with it. In a few hours, she’d have acclimated, found her footing, and nothing about this world would bother her anymore. Until then … perhaps, she could take down some of those “wild” monsters.

Because while the simple fact that, well, the planet was still there, inhabitants and all, proved the fact that autonomous summoning hadn’t entirely spun out of control, there were still more free monsters running around than on every other known inhabited planet put together.

And judging by the fact that many were ripping their way through the ruins of settlements, this wasn’t some kind of hunting preserve the locals had let be filled with monsters before killing the one that had initially been summoned, the only one that could activate autonomous summoning.

In fact … darn.

With that many monsters down there, that many active instances of autonomous summoning … it wouldn’t be today, it wouldn’t be tomorrow, it likely wouldn’t even be in the next couple of years, but one day soon, these numbers would rocket past the point where the natives could weather the storm.

Of the three massive supercontinents she could see down there, one was largely free of monsters, a second only had a sporadic spread, and the third … the third was completely overrun, with only the ocean having prevented the beasts from spreading across this planet like a ravenous tide.

“You want to fight those, don’t you?” Jason asked, a wry grin playing across his face, then he held out his right hand. “Gimme.”

Amy immediately tossed him the suitcase, both the thing he was asking and teh thing he was offering being immediately obvious. Then she belatedly waved her hand and teleported a few of the treaties, which took the form of old-fashioned scrolls for some reason, into her spatial ring. She might need those.

“Thanks.”

***

Though it wasn’t an issue quite yet, Jason was sure that this planet would kill him.

With boredom.

Diplomacy might not have been Amy’s thing, but it was his thing even less. In fact, doing things that could not be achieved through talking and proper channels was the whole bloody point of not just his [Class] but also his membership in the [Round Table].

And yet, when he took his first deep breath of the local air, he couldn’t help but grin. Oh, the possibilities …

[Fiendish Alchemy] was a variant on the standard [Alchemy] [Skill], specific to the [Rogue] [Class] tree, it specialized in wreaking havoc, and it was going off endlessly.

Simply breathing was enough to conduct alchemy here, there was so much here that was toxic, explosive, or both, all he needed to do was inhale, flood the air with mana, and breathe it back out to make one hell of a mess, though anything that had evolved in this place was likely highly resistant to both fire and the general reactiveness of fluorine.

But any humans who went here … it was almost like the air actively hated you. Forget about the trees speaking Vietnamese, this was the kind of environment you never wanted to even think about invading.

He was just glad that he wasn’t having the same trouble with his lizard brain that Amy was.

As he fell, the noise of air whipping past began to grow ever louder, rapidly drowning out all other sounds to even his sensitive ears, until he shifted into a more appropriate skydiving pose and lightly landed on the ground, rolling to absorb what little momentum his [Featherfall] hadn’t negated.

His clothing flickered briefly, then settled on cloaking him in a black shirt and drab grey pants. Well-made, decent looking, but hopefully nothing that would cause an issue due to resembling ritualistic clothing, or being in a symbolic color … damnit, he was starting to sound like Isaac.

And look like him, for that matter.

Unless he was in a situation where he absolutely could not afford to be seen, he preferred something slightly more colorful, half the joy of screwing with terrible people was them knowing he was screwing with them, and the fact that there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it because he was, well, the Ghost. It was right there in the name, he was impossible to find, impossible to catch, and the only things people knew about him were the things he let them know.

He also used his [Infiltrator] [Skill] to adjust his apparent Level and clothing quality, making sure that his outfit wasn’t overwhelmingly more valuable than what the locals wore, and that his Level wasn’t high enough to be outright threatening.

Most people could only hide themselves from various forms of [Inspect], a complete and utter negation of efforts to find out more about them being the best they could manage, but being a walking blank was almost as suspicious as having his character sheet visible when he was somewhere even remotely secure, so Jason’s [Class] afforded him a little more leeway there.

Though he did keep most of the [Skill’s] other effects off. No magically attempting to make curious eyes slide off him, no illusion magic based on what people expected to see, etc., nothing that would make it look like he had bad intentions. He was going to play this completely straight for once, zero pranks, zero shenanigans.

Jason also strapped one of his simpler knives to his side. He didn’t want to appear unarmed, but he also had some truly vicious weapons in his arsenal, ones that simply oozed bloodlust. Bad idea. Really bad idea.

And then, he just started to walk in the direction of a cooking fire he’d seen from above at a slow pace, not even bothering to suppress his “kid in a candy store” instincts, looking at anything and everything that looked even remotely interesting, which was most things, pocketing interesting stones though he reluctantly resisted the urge to harvest the interesting plants. Those might be used by the locals, and theft was not a great way to start this off … he had far too much diplomatic knowledge stuffed in his mind for an agent provocateur/saboteur/general nuisance.

Although he preferred the title of “Prankmaster General” that Amy had bestowed upon him, fancy hat and all.

And now he was tempted to put that thing on, in all its gaudy glory. And he did, waltzing through the wilderness of an alien planet, until he got close enough to his destination to start hearing voices. He waited there for a while, eavesdropping, listening to countless conversations without even bothering to get any of the context, trusting [Omniglot] to fill in the gaps.

It was an interesting language, to say the least. Granted, Jason wasn’t a linguist by any stretch of the imagination, and quite frankly, he didn’t want to be, but he did speak something to the tune of seven hundred languages, and this one was special.

It was … well, it seemed simple, but the more he thought about it, the more he felt that “streamlined” was the correct descriptor.

Something that Jason’s native languages were the exact opposite of. French was fiendishly complex to a near-ludicrous degree, and English, well, English had been cobbled together from countless other languages, combining elements from all over, containing all sorts of special exceptions to all grammatical rules, multiple words that were written and pronounced the exact same despite having entirely different meanings … all the issues that came from being an old language that had evolved over centuries in an empire that had spanned the globe.

The one the locals spoke, however, this one … one word, one meaning, no complicated declinations, no shifting seemingly arbitrary rules that even native speakers sometimes struggled to understand, no varying meaning based on inflection. Just pure information.

And while the overall vocabulary seemed small, it seemed to him like that was only because they created ever larger compound words to describe things.

And not in the way he’d had to muddle through abroad a few times, where he combined a woefully inadequate vocabulary with pantomime to somehow get his point across.

No, this seemed to be a baked-in property of the language, with simple, straightforward, and to be entirely honest, like it was the entire point?

Quickly running through a couple of mental conversations about modern human life, he found out that he could use the language easily. Seamlessly. No need to invent new words, modify grammar, no nothing … weird. Very weird.

At that point, he just walked up to the camp. That was a mystery for someone else to solve.

It was … to be honest, the first thing that came to mind was the fact that it was real. Plenty of people, pre- and post-[System] had rebuilt Stone Age settlements, but there had always been an oddly artificial feeling to it. This place, on the other hand, it felt lived in, it felt needed, it felt like someone’s home, all despite the fact that the place was far more modern than the statement “stone age technology” would indicate.

Rough buildings formed by geokinesis, “appletrees” that had been entirely created and shaped by plant manipulation abilities, utility spells, and enchantments leaving things sparkling clean and sanitary to a standard far higher than the most modern cities of Jason’s youth.

The only difference?

If an alien had walked up to any human city along the main thoroughfare, or at least the most well-trodden path, there’d have been a huge hullabaloo.

Instead, when he got his first good look at them, and vice-versa, the response was strangely calm.

A shouted “Greetings, stranger!” followed by a simple wave of the hand.

As for the speaker, well, they were an obviously alien being with tough-looking grey skin, a full head shorter than him, with thin but wirey in a way that spoke to them being significantly stronger than one might expect at a casual glance, though as per usual, with the [System], physical appearance and physical power had absolutely no relation whatsoever.

Oh, and the alien was utterly naked, save for a tiny loincloth that covered whatever unmentionables they may or may not have.

“Hi,” Jason replied, stopping where he was, waiting and looking around. The initial speaker was, apparently, the standard. They weren’t identical, mind you, but they all shared the general characteristics of “short, grey and thin.”

However, the clothing was highly varied and entirely utilitarian. People seemingly wore what they needed to do their job, whether that was heavy armor, utility belts, and the like, while the default seemed to be the tiny loincloth.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Although what really tripped him up were the children. Or at least that was what he assumed the shorter aliens to be, based on their height and a complete lack of [System]-enhancements. Not only did they share the same kind of “adorableness” that young humans and most baby animals had, big eyes, high foreheads, endearingly clumsy movements, but the little ones were fast. As in, any one of them could have easily beaten Usain Bolt in a hundred-meter race.

Whoa.

Well, it seemed the rule of most alien races having at least some incredible physiological capabilities held for the fourth one discovered as well. Something for the scientists to geek out over.

“What do you want?” the original speaker asked, though Jason mentally translated that into something more polite, based on what he’d heard, the locals didn’t consider bluntness rude.

Good. Humans could learn something from them, because way too many people would throw a hissy fit if you tried to get to the point in an even remotely direct route.

“I’d like to talk to your chieftain,” Jason replied, though, of course, their word for chieftain was really “person-in-charge,” which seemed to have alleviated at least some of the ensuing confusion.

“We don’t have a singular leader,” another alien piped up.

“Is there anyone, or any group, that makes decisions for the entire village?” Jason suggested.

“Us.”

“Meaning everyone?” he guessed.

“Just the grown-ups,” came the immediate reply.

Gods, this was going to take a while, wouldn’t it? He didn’t know what he needed to request, so he’d have to ask each question individually as he started to find out what he needed to know, and the alien couldn’t proactively provide the answers because they had no idea what he didn’t know.

Oh, this was a task for someone with significantly more patience than him …

Jason groaned internally, gritted his teeth, and kept going, eventually figuring out that he’d be able to talk to all the adults collectively in the evening, and until then, he was welcome to stick around and trade with any individuals he met, he just had to promise to behave.

You have sworn a [Reciprocal Oath of Hospitality]. You cannot attack your hosts unless they attack first, nor can they attack you unless you initiate hostilities. Unless the oath is circumvented, violence is impossible.

That certainly made things easier.

And he just wound up sitting next to the first alien who’d talked to him, who’d introduced herself as “Cendi.”

“So, what do your people call yourselves?” Jason finally asked.

“As a tribe?” Cendi frowned.

“No, I mean all your people. Every tribe.”

“Are you somehow not a part of that group?” Cendi frowned harder.

Jason grimaced. “No, I’m a member of an entirely different species, from an entirely different world.”

Cendi just did her species’ equivalent of a shrug. “I suppose that’s somewhat different. The [System] calls us ‘Dromon.’”

Uh … perhaps being fascinated by the concept of aliens was a purely human and Koininan thing? But there was one other thing that made him curious.

“Did the [System] give you your language?”

Another shrug, but this time, it was Cendi who decided to start asking questions.

“You said you’re here to trade, what are you offering and what do you want to get?”

Aaaaaaaannnd that was the question he didn’t really have a particularly good answer to.

“I want to get information and I’m offering a magic scroll that can protect your territories,” he finally said. He was supposed to give the scrolls away for free, but if these Dromon were even remotely like humans, they’d treat anything free with suspicion … yet they weren’t human, were they?

Well, obviously they weren’t human human, but they were also just generally different. Specifically, they had more fully adapted to the [System] in general.

Even with lifespans that had grown past the point of absurdity, most people still spent much of their time in the proverbial rat race, working hard and while they were being rewarded, was it really worth it when there wasn’t a dire need?

The Dromon, on the other hand? They were a-okay with doing what they needed to get done, and was that was finished, they spent that time doing what they wanted to do. They still had, or just plain had, the ability to relax and enjoy life without first needing to reach the absolute pinnacle of everything.

It was nice … at least until space in front of him cracked and splintered, pale-blue arcs of energy tearing open reality until a small scroll came flying out of a newly-opened portal.

***

The monsters below were weirdly … “same-y.”

Sure, there were a lot of different ones, monstrous animals, elementals, and elemental elements, but still, they all felt similar.

Like … uh … like a disparate group of individuals that nevertheless all fell under the same overall “header.” For example, a gathering of various monkeys, they’d all have fur, four legs, and a tail, and even a person entirely lacking zoological knowledge or experience would likely be able to guess that they were related in some way.

Visually speaking, the monsters here were nowhere that similar, yet they just had an aura about them … not an “[Aura]” aura, just a general vibe.

However, even so, they all radiated the same malice all monsters did. These were beasts that only existed to murder the sapient races of the universe, with the small side effect of granting supernatural powers to their slayers should they be defeated. Monsters were monsters, and they had to go.

A loud howl rang out, echoing across the flat plains she was hovering above, alerting all other monsters present.

Oh … yeah, this was going to be fun.

Amy’s opening salvo came in the form of a series of elementally charged [Micrometeor Hails], dozens of golf-ball-sized orbs of rock sweeping the area directly below her clear, reducing flesh-and-blood monsters to shredded bits of meat while blasting elementals apart.

A towering mass of water had somehow managed to avoid being hit in the core and immediately began to pull itself back together again … only for a [Magic Missile] to blast it to pieces. This time, it stayed down.

Instead of touching down in the middle of the mess, Amy cast [Mageweaver’s Fortress], one of her favorite personally-designed spells to warp the area, cratering the land everywhere that wasn’t directly underneath her while raising a pillar of magically reinforced stone until she only had to descend a couple of meters. Yet the spell didn’t stop there, instead turning the circular pit that now surrounded her into a literal deathtrap, downward-facing spikes lining the walls while nasty, hoked, spears covered the ground, making a fall much more lethal.

Of course, the alteration didn’t fail to cause a further commotion, monsters as far as the eye could see surging towards her.

Some slithered, some crawled, some leaped, and some outright flew. And a whole lot of others started spitting acid, fire, and something that seemed to be liquid nitrogen but she wasn’t quite sure.

The magical attacks were ripped apart with a mere thought, while overpowered magic missiles leaped from her hands and curved around to hammer into the various flying enemies that got a little too close for comfort.

Her mana gauge was dropping like a stone, emptying like a beer keg at Oktoberfest, but only a true meteor strike could have caused more devastation than her presence.

Some kind of kangaroo-cat hybrid thing managed to put enough force into its leap to reach her, but it stopped dead as she flexed her will and slammed her [Aura of Mystic Union] into it. Or rather, the air around it. And then, tied the whole lot of them together.

Not physically connecting the molecules in the air, that, in combination with [Thermal Conductor] let her easily make liquid nitrogen, but rather fusing them in a more ephemeral way, forcing the air to be carried along with the monster, absorbing a huge amount of its momentum.

Of course, that little trick was somewhat limited, it could easily be ripped apart or even outright blocked with sufficient [Aura] control, but her being able to land it against an enemy fifty Levels below herself was never in question. And as for it being countered after the fact, well, even if the energy hadn’t been disrupted by the kango-cat, she’d have let it go anyway.

Amy grinned as she watched the monster drop, fall away into the spikes lining the bottom of the pit. The first of many to suffer this fate.

However, as she kept going, she began to grow slightly irritated and glared at a massive hill in the distance.

“Are you going to do anything?” she sighed, and lazily lobbed an [Acid Comet] at it, the truck-sized globule of corrosive liquid landing squarely on the monster’s back, which promptly roared in pain and immediately rose to its feet, as quickly as it possibly could, sending huge clods of dirt and stone flying every which way.

“Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly …” Amy grinned as she watched the Tier 10 monster approach, every step of the walking mountain appearing slow, yet crossing huge distances with each stride due to its sheer size.

Come on, come on, you little coward …

Her efforts against the closest enemies continued but she was barely paying attention, instead, her gaze was fixed straight on the titan … until it crossed the invisible line demarking the edge of her next stunt’s range and was blown into a million pieces by a multicolored sledgehammer of light that tore clean through it.

[Arcane Union] had always been a powerful [Skill], but the new powers it had gained as it leveled had made it downright absurd.

From combining spells cast by people who let her to using the spells people weren’t holding onto tightly enough to using spells that had already been used up in their entirety.

All the little balls of energy and power both she and her enemies had scattered about the place, the missed projectiles and beasts detonated from the inside as she’d force their own attacks down their throats … all of it had coalesced in her hand, concentrated down into an orb the size of a tennis ball, until she’d hurled it at the enemy. Then, it had expanded to wipe it from the face of the Ear- … of the alien planet, whose name she was yet to know.

So, would these things back off? Or would they gather their courage, their any confidence they might have felt being born from a fundamental misunderstanding of just who they were facing?

The horde of beasts slowly backed up, step by step, before they suddenly switched to treading in place, unable to retreat any further as they found themselves pressing against all their fellows who were yet to realize that she was, in fact, a lethal threat … and then, the veil of intimidation broke.

They were monsters, after all. The [System’s] beasts forged from random matter and mana, a gun cocked, loaded, and aimed at their own faces by the fools who summoned them. Assuming the summoners went about it in a foolish way, at least.

Intimidating them was never going to last … though she was still surprised it had taken this little time.

Amy retrieved a large potion bottle from her spatial pocket, yanked the cork out with her teeth, and downed it all in a huge gulp. There were more modern, more accessible, bottles out there, but she loved the sheer viscerality of this style of bottle, despite the fact that it’d gone out of style centuries before she’d even been born.

Her natural magic regeneration dropped while her proverbial tank was filled to bursting, and she met her enemies with an endless barrage of spellfire … until even her refilled mana pool ran dry, so she triggered her next trump card, the ultimate power of her 5th Evolution, [Arcana Unleashed].

The [Skill] drained every last drop of mana she had remaining, merging it with the magic in the world. Making her a part of the magic of reality itself. And then, she began to shape it.

Amy couldn’t cast her big, strong, devastating spells like this, no meteors, no titanic fireballs, nothing like that, but she was more than capable of wreaking absolute havoc.

Small flames that had been caused by all the previous attacks exploded as though they’d been hit by her strongest fireballs, acid puddles pulled themselves off the ground to form elementals, plants came to life as the sky overhead turned thunderous … though that was not the greatest power of this [Skill].

No, that honor went to her ability to enchant the ground and create runes, forging a never-ending network of magic and supernatural effects, all perfectly streamlined using the textbook-perfect rune- and spellcraft.

And when it was all finished, she grasped it all with a mental hand … and wrenched, twisting and warping the entire creation in a way that would have made most magic casters, Patrick in particular, faint in horror.

But they had gone the usual way, buy spells with [Skill] Points until you could learn them from spellbooks and other places they were written down, learn from spellbooks until you could write your own.

Granted, she’d done that too, but her power came from instinct, from reshaping magic using not just her understanding of the supernatural, but the world itself, fusing and combining it into a creation of twisted, savage, beauty.

Prismatic light washed across the field of battle, a lethal aurora that reduced anything it touched to dust and swept it away.

Slowly, her mana began to tick back up, and Amy readied herself to return to orbit, however, it seemed like this time, the intimidation had stuck. Or maybe, she’d just killed everything that was close enough to see her … save, perhaps, a few of the massive mountain-sized kaiju that might have survived the wave of devastation but were in no shape to go after her quickly enough to reach her before she’d regained enough mana to deal with them.

With all that done, Amy decided to go visit the nearby ruins of a small village, which she’d sensed through [Arcana Unleashed] and made sure to avoid destroying.

It would have been nice, if it hadn’t been abundantly clear that a whole lot of people had died here not that long ago. Bits of corpses, long-dried bloodstains, shattered buildings, and other signs that, whosoever had lived here, they hadn’t just left, but stopped living altogether.

At first, she’d thought that, maybe, this here had been some kind of hunting resort that had gotten out of hands, a place where monsters had been let accumulate before someone strong enough to take advantage of the XP offerings dropped the hammer … but no. This was both a monument to the summoners’ foolishness, and a graveyard.

She continued to look things over, choosing to avoid picking up anything, only observing.

Certain objects looked like something she might have used a hundred years ago, forged by a combination of magic and [Skills], but anything not springing from the [System] was, quite simply, primitive.

“Primitive” was a fairly common pejorative, one that implied that the described individual or group was stupid and unsophisticated, when it really shouldn’t.

Just as its dictionary definition stated, “primitive,” was just another word for “young,” something in its early stage of development. Something that could, in turn, create the appearance of the term’s pejorative connotations being true.

Because just while a certain degree of advancement or refined methodology was required to ascertain something, the knowledge gained could often be used in a much simpler environment.

For example, Mendelian genetics had been discovered after years of effort, in a cultured garden, with the help of plants that had been cultivated for millennia, something that would have been much harder to achieve in prehistoric times. And it was highly unlikely that anyone would have thought to try in those times.

Yet despite that, the knowledge gained by Gregor Mendel could be used at any time, under any circumstances, as long as you were dealing with an issue of improving domesticated life forms.

Which was why one could be forgiven for conflating primitive with, well, the usual bevy of insulting adjectives it was often associated with. Someone with a modern education could see “obvious” solutions that were really only obvious from their point of view.

However, the people they were “judging” lacked that same perspective.

She could feel that specter of prejudice on her shoulder, whispering, trying to convince her to look down on these people because she was oh-so-much better. Then her better angels took that thing out back and smacked the shit out of it.

For all that Amy was proud of her achievements, of all the effort she’d put into getting where she had, she was keenly, painfully, aware of just how much luck had been involved as well.

She sighed, shook her head, then decided to put on her proverbial Sherlock Holmes hat and began to look at everything from the perspective of “how do we stop this from happening elsewhere?,” because that was the most important question that needed answering. Not just for these people, but for all people. All species.

The obvious answer was sharing information.

As important as it was to learn from one’s mistakes, it was far cheaper and simpler to learn from someone else’s … but you needed to know about them to do so, if the information wasn’t shared, the same thing would happen over and over again until everyone had learned their lesson.

It was easy to get a global communications network up and running, but would someone whose entire world had, for practical intents and purposes, only been a few hundred square kilometers at most have realized the sheer power that kind of information sharing provided?

Yes, it was soft power, the kind that worked best in a world that at least pretended to prefer diplomacy over warfare, but it was power all the same.

Oh, and she should probably endeavor to be extra polite here, Jason too, which wasn’t something that came naturally to either of them unless they genuinely respected the person they were conversing with.

What was that quote again … oh, right: “Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”

Not that she thought the locals were savages, it was just that she very much doubted they’d have the same attachment to “keeping the peace” that many modern people did, something that often instead translated to telling whoever was being insulted “please play doormat because no one can be arsed to deal with the guy who’s the actual problem.”

If she stumbled over some spoken or unspoken rule of “polite” conduct in a way that seemed deliberate, it was unlikely to be dismissed the way a Koinian or Assai might have.

Although she preferred the Mike Tyson quote which had the exact same core meaning: “Social media made y’all way too comfortable disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

The idea of there being actual consequences for purely verbal misbehavior was so foreign to many a person that that alone would likely become a huge source of conflict … not that there was any even remotely realistic chance that a meeting of cultures would go well.

Humanity had an entire history’s worth of examples of how that could go badly, starting with the colonial era and only getting worse from there … well, no, actually, some of the shit specifically Belgium, the British Empire, and the African Slave Trade, that was about as bad as it could get, the yardstick of atrocities. That being said, shit like that had happened all throughout history.

The point was, this wasn’t an “asshole Europeans” issue, it was a matter of “asshole humans.” Not that all humans were bad, just that there were enough shitheads to guarantee a catastrophe.

And while she was hardly knowledgeable on alien histories, the Assai had their own very dark history, and the Koinians weren’t exactly angels either, though their tendency towards creating complex hierarchies made assimilation somewhat easier than it would have been for other species.

Plus, it wasn’t like malice was the only thing that had the potential to cause huge problems.

“White knights” could also be immensely destructive, wanting to help the “poor widdle aliens,” uplifting them while still working hard to maintain their own superiority, and that was only the start of things. What if there was a civil war, a bloody one, that an outsider wanted to stop? Or a war in general?

How could one stop a war while on the outside, you ask? By butting in, usually using military means, yet nothing united bitter enemies like an outside mucking about, intentions be damned. History showed how things would devolve from there.

And so on, and so forth.

Of course, what she and Jason were doing was just another form of “white knighting,” she just thought that their form was acceptable, yet didn’t everyone?

Give her a spell to mess around with, a lab to go crazy in, or an enemy to incinerate, and she’d be happy like a kid in a candy store, regardless of how difficult the task wound up being.

Diplomacy … blech.

While she wouldn’t let the fight here drag on, the more Jason got done, the better.

Amy continued to poke her way through the ruins, though there was no actual “poking” involved. It confirmed her initial judgment. Proficient usage of what the [System] provided, but an overall Stone Age tech level.

Would they forever remain stuck there, seeing no reason to advance their base technology, instead focusing on the supernatural side of things until a technologically superior enemy rolled straight over them … actually, barring a miracle, that was exactly what would happen.

But if these people had been discovered a couple more millennia down the line, how would things have turned out?

Well, if she didn’t clear this continent, they might not have a future regardless. What she’d achieved thus far barely even amounted to a stay of execution.

***

The inside of the scroll was, unsurprisingly, covered in writing, but not one he recognized or had ever learned. And yet, he could read it perfectly.

Obviously, it was written in what seemed to be the “standard” Dromon language, but it should have taken him at least a few minutes to learn the associated alphabet … which it didn’t. It was as though the instant he read something, the meaning engraved itself into his memory, which briefly startled him, however, the instant he started to feel nervous, the transfer stopped.

Was it all voluntary?

Jason shrugged. He was effectively immune to all manner of mind control, so he let the process continue at a slightly reduced pace, on the off-chance there was a sting in the tail somewhere … there wasn’t.

It was just as straightforward as the language itself, one word, one meaning, one letter, though the limited number of building block words meant that it was much easier to memorize than, say, the vast library of characters of the various Chinese languages. No quibbling about spelling or interpretation, nothing likely to diverge into regional variations … it was as though someone a bunch of linguists had come together to create a perfect language meant to stand the test of time.

Maybe not a group. Too many cooks spoiling the broth and all that. Or, as the old joke went, “a camel is a horse designed by a committee.”

Even so, the letter was just plain weird.

Greetings, Jason.

My name is Kiretas, I am the archivist of the Dromon people and have recently become aware of not just your presence, but a second being of your species currently in the process of cleaning up the Lost Continent.

There are not many people who can see the implications of your presence, however, I am sadly aware of how badly this may end, and believe both you and your companion are here to at least attempt to prevent that from happening.

Therefore, I would like to meet either one or both of you, and converse, perhaps, together, we can find a way superior to anything either of us could have invented separately.

Below this letter, you will find directions to my home based on landmarks and other guides you are able to see “from orbit.”

Please, do not make decisions for the entirety of my people without conversing with at least some of us.

“Wasn’t planning on doing it on my own ...” Jason sighed. “Conversing” was, in fact, the entire bloody point. Though perhaps that had not been obvious enough?

Either way, this was either an incredible opportunity or one hell of a trap.

That was when Jason noticed Cendi staring at him with wide eyes.

“Is that a letter from the grand archivist?” she asked with bated breath.

Jason shrugged. “Maybe? What do their letters normally look like?”

“Exactly like that,” Cendi said, still looking awestruck. “What does it say?”

“He wants to meet,” Jason said. “I was thinking I’d go after talking to your tribe’s adults.”

“No, you need to go now, this is the archivist,” Cendi insisted. “We’ll understand.”

Jason got the distinct feeling that they’d actually think less of him for attending the meeting as promised, so he bade her goodbye and asked her to apologize to the others for him.

Then he went to go look for Amy, which should be a piece of cake, all he had to do was follow the explosions … if he was in the general area.

If he wasn’t, he’d have to rely on a little quirk of the [System] that even Isaac hadn’t known about.

Any two people who were at the Level Cap, had been together for at least fifty years, and had married for reasons of love would automatically gain the [Spousal Bond] [Skill] that could, among other things, allow the bearers to find each other anywhere in the universe.

Jason began to run on the empty air, rapidly ascending into the outer reaches of the atmosphere before letting himself fall again, dropping towards what the letter had deemed the “Lost Continent.”

The name said it all, didn’t it?

That was what all of the Earth could have turned into if not for Isaac, and if the village he’d just left, without anyone over the Third Evolution, was a general indication of the Dromon’s strength, they’d have been obliterated if those monsters decided to invade. Or rather, once they finally spilled so far off this continent that they found their way to the other landmasses.

A small, tiny, part of him imagined that this could perhaps become somewhat romantic, the classical dashing rogue and the beautiful, charming lady, together on the fields of battle … but it seemed like this would go far more like how battles involving Amy always went. With her hurling around spells of titanic power, and everyone else making sure to stay away from whatever she was targeting.

He used [Spousal Bond] to announce his presence, making sure she didn’t accidentally blow him up, and then waded into the fight.

[Stealth] went up, covered with [Cloak and Dagger], which allowed him to slip right back into stealth if he managed to kill with the attack that uncloaked him, his conjured [Assassin’s Daggers] manifested as a pair of long, slim, stilettos, and with his preparations done, he began to wade into the field of battle, blades flashing.

The brain was always the easiest target for a quick kill, going through the eye, nose, ear, or the point where the spine met the skull, so that was what he normally aimed for, the eerie yellow light of [Piercing Strike] briefly illuminating the field of battle before [Cloak and Dagger] sucked him back into the world of darkness, leaving behind only corpses and confusion. And Aspects, though they were soon vacuumed up by his [Thief’s Pocket].

He occasionally threw in a [Bladefan] to carve up a group of small monsters, then used [Retrieve Blade] to rip the knives through the survivors on their way back into his hands, but for the most part, he went after the biggest targets he could find that had survived Amy’s initial rampage.

Though even with how quickly he was cutting through his targets, his kills didn’t even amount to a fraction of what Amy was racking up.

“Oh, hey!” she called out and waved when he was close enough, only half-paying attention to the monster she was in the process of roasting. “Things going well on your end?”

“We got a dinner invitation … minus the dinner. The ‘grand archivist,’ seems to be this world’s Isaac,” he replied with a wry grin. “ So, milady, would you do me the honor of accompanying me?”

“Now?” she asked, half laughing, half disappointed at the possibility of having to leave.

“Now,” he confirmed.

“Oh, fine,” she sighed and marched over to him, at which point he handed over the letter. And a few moments later, she was once again whisking them skyward.

And from the moment they were back in orbit, it was a matter of minutes to locate their destination. The letter’s directions had been extremely good, pointing to four distinct natural landmarks, then asking them to draw lines between them and locating the point where the lines crossed. From there, it was an obviously simple matter of actually going there.

***

From orbit, it hadn’t seemed all that remarkable, but as they closed in, Amy could start to see the details of the building they were closing in on.

And it was a building. Not an artificial cave shaped by geokinesis, not a hut made from monster hide, but an actual house that would hardly have looked out of place in a medieval town, though the architecture reminded her more of a yurt than anything else.

A round, twenty-meter diameter stone dome, with a low tower in the center, all made from thin yet heavily reinforced stone plates placed upon a skeleton of wood, with panes of clear crystal that was, for all practical respects and purposes, glass, acting as windows.

And what could she see, through said windows?

Books. Hundreds of them.

They were roughly made, seemingly constructed off magically cleaned and preserved monster hide, held together by monster sinew. All very simple, but at the same time, it was centuries ahead of where anyone else was. Heck, it had taken millennia for man to advance to the point of inventing writing, let alone create as efficient a storage medium as bound books, rather than scrolls or even stone slates.

Technology at this level was much harder to locate from afar than anything that used steam power or electricity, so she couldn’t be sure, but this was likely the greatest concentration of knowledge and progress on this entire world.

And the instant they landed, down to the very second, the door opened to reveal one of the locals, who called themselves “Dromon,” according to Jason.

“Kiretas, I presume?” Jason asked. He’d shared everything he knew of the language with her on the way here, though it was still not entirely clear if everyone spoke the exact same version of it. Though in the here and now, it didn’t seem to be an issue.

“Yes,” the Dromon replied. “Hello, Jason.”

Then, Kiretas turned to Amy. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name just yet. I’m Kiretas, many call me the archivist.”

“My name is Amelia Shaw, but please, call me Amy,” she announced, only to pause for a second. “Can I ask how exactly do you get your knowledge? Because we’ve referred to each other by our names several times while on this world, so you don’t have some kind of omniscience, but you somehow knew about what Jason did on the other side of the world. So, how does it work?”

It might be a tad rude, but she had to ask. Because right now, the anticipation was killing her.

Kiretas made a movement that she interpreted as the Dromon equivalent of a shrug.

“No, I don’t mind. In fact, I encourage curiosity, it’s what everything I do is based on.”

Amy got the vague sense that the twisted expression he put on at that point was a smile, though she wasn’t sure.

“I’ve had [Classes] based on knowledge seeking, and sharing any wisdom I uncover. If there is a piece of information that someone wishes to spread a certain piece of information, and that piece of information would reach me through the normal ways, I will know that information the moment it starts to spread from one person to another.”

Ergo, no mind reading, no automatic uncovering of their secrets, no real potential for blackmail … hopefully.

Amy glanced over at Jason. While his [Skills] were more bent towards getting away with lies than detecting them, he was still better at seeing through bullshit than she was. He met her gaze, and the wordless message of “he’s not lying” passed between them.

She chose to [Inspect] the man.

Kiretas the All-knowing, Level 200 Paragon Scholar

Holy …

He was the strongest Dromon on the plane, at least based on what they’d seen on the way here, and any [Class] with “paragon” in the name was likely powerful.

Not [Paragon] itself, mind you, that was a general teaching/leading [Class] of legendary rarity, but anyone regarded as being the paragon of a given archetype … well, Jason was the incarnation of what a “rogue” should be, and he was an absolute menace to people he cared to attack.

It was another one of those things where the [System] tagged two things with the same name, the same way “aura” could refer to both halo-type effects and actual [Auras], with anything titled “aura of” referring to an [Aura] and “so-and-so aura” meaning everything else.

According to one of Isaac’s infrequent rants on the vagaries of the magical structure, there was likely some heretofore-unknown language the [System] was written in that was then translated into whatever language the user spoke, and in that particular language, these misunderstandings were not possible.

Heck, Isaac, and Kiretas would probably get along famously, wouldn’t they?

Amy sighed. This was too serious to be living in dreamland.

“Why don’t you sit?” Kiretas offered, gesturing to a table in the corner. “I’d offer you some food and drinks, but as far as I can tell, only your Aspects are keeping you safe from this planet’s nature.”

Well, he was absolutely correct about that, though she was a little surprised that he’d figured it out so quickly.

“Thank you,” Jason accepted a split-second before she could, and the three of them sat down, Kiretas on one side, his back to the nearest bookcase, the two of them on the opposite end of the round stone plate.

“People from beyond the stars have discovered our world, and now something will happen,” Kiretas announced. “I might not have seen what happens when two people of vastly different technological levels meet, but I can’t imagine it goes any better than when a tribe who focused on leveling encounters one who didn’t. But you don’t seem to have hostile intentions. So, what is your plan?”

Huh … maybe this would go smoothly. And the “I know you’ve got something to say, spit it out” really did remind her of Isaac.

“We have several magical artifacts that can be used by the people who rule or own a piece of land to shield it from intruders, any outsiders who want to enter would have to request entrance, or breakthrough in a way that would display obviously hostile intent,” she explained. “Our governments intend on ensuring that the meeting of cultures will be on your terms as much as possible, and these artifacts will make it harder to play violations off as accidents.”

“No one can guarantee that it’s going to go well, but I can tell you that if you encounter the other races as things are now, it’s almost certainly going to be a disaster,” Jason added.

“Other races?” How many?”

And suddenly, Kiretas was reminding her more of Patrick, that light shining in his eyes reminding her of how the team’s other mage had always gotten when finding something even remotely interesting.

“Two,” Amy said.

An invisible shudder went through the Dromon at that before he replied in a far more measured tone. “Can you tell me about them after we’re done?”

“Sure,” Jason promised.

And then, they talked about how they’d be using the treaties. It took surprisingly little time because, well, it was simple. Kiretas was the proverbial spider at the center of a vast web of information that spanned the globe, and he could disseminate information just as easily as he could receive it. Some slight alterations to the treaties to make sure they only affected those alien to the Dromon homeworld, and then, the widely-respected [Paragon Scholar] could tell the various tribal elders and leadership counsels how to use them.

In addition, while Kiretas was fairly limited in terms of offense, he did have a high mana pool, a solid set of Aspects, and the wisdom to get nastily creative, making him an S-Ranker by any measure.

And soon enough, the conversation turned to other topics.

“How did your language come to pass?” Amy asked. “I was surprised to hear you use the same one as a village on the other side of the world. Or do you just use every language your entire species knows?”

Kiretas gave a noise that she interpreted as a laugh.

“No, the [System] is responsible for that. I’ve been investigating the source of our language and as far as I can tell, it took the small existing bits and pieces of our rudimentary communications and turned them into the language it explains its prompts in. Global usage followed almost immediately.”

“So it gave you your writing, too?” Jason asked.

“Oh, heavens no,” Kiretas puffed out his chest. “Why would it, when it talks to you?”

“Wait, your status sheets and [Skill]-descriptors aren’t written down, they’re read out loud to you?” Amy asked, aghast.

“Yours are written down?” Kiretas answered with another question, sounding equally puzzled.

Amy and Jason both nodded.

“Huh,” was Kiretas’ only response. “But no, I’m the one who invented the written form of our language. I needed a way to share information without making some messenger memorize everything.”

What. The. Fuck …

Amy just stared, and even without looking, she could tell Jason was doing the same.

Kiretas gave another “shrug.”

“It seemed the prudent thing to do.”

“You must have gotten a pretty sweet [Class] out of it,” Amy commented, when she’d finally picked her jaw off the floor.

“[Inventor of Recordkeeping] was pretty powerful, yes,” Kiretas confirmed, then seemed to deflate slightly. “It was about the time when the Lost Continent became overrun. I realized something needed to change and, well, my hope was that sharing information would be what we needed.”

To be honest, at this point, with someone like this in their corner, Amy was starting to think the Dromon would have been okay even without their help. But she still felt she needed to offer.

***

And in the end, things wound up going fairly well. The governments of the three races dispatching diplomatic parties to the Dromon did their best to make sure no one misbehaved for fear of looking stupid or weak in front of the others, and kept their own corporations in line.

Though the simultaneous and violent implosion of three vast corporations, one per species, each planning on doing something unspeakable to the Dromon certainly did help hammer home that there were people who disapproved of mistreating those who lacked the power or influence to protect themselves.

Jason might have been the [System]-acknowledged best [Rogue] in the universe, but he was neither the only one with impressive levels of power, nor alone in enjoying “sticking it to the man.”