Chapter 179 - So, who won the bet?
A dull, pulsing thrum echoed within his unconscious mind. Only for the rhythmic noise to be interrupted by a soft beep from just behind his head.
Sluggishly and slowly, Archie began to stir awake.
Opening his eyes, everything around him looked blurry, like how opening your eyes underwater used to look prior to him getting his Perception past 80.
After a few disoriented blinks, his eyes were able to adjust themselves enough to focus on what was in front of him.
Glass? he thought, brushing his fingers against the barrier in front of him. His touch met smooth, cool resistance. Beyond it, a sterile white room loomed, soft-lit and unfamiliar.
He blinked again. Slower this time. Something felt… wrong.
Wait… is this water? He thought while noticing small bubbles floating around his face. No, this feels a bit thicker than water, a lot denser too.
It clung too tightly to his body, moved too sluggishly around him. A quick scan of his surroundings confirmed the worst: he was submerged, sealed inside a tall cylindrical chamber, and all around him were similar cylindrical chambers.
Great… I pass out after walking through the teleporter, and I get captured and put in a test tube.
Clear glass walls. Being submerged in liquid. Dim ceiling lights refracted in warped halos above. Yeah, he was definitely in some sort of mad scientist's lab.
He took a breath, or attempted to, finding himself unable to do so.
A fleeting sensation of panic twisted in his gut as he looked down.
A tube, similar to ones he'd seen connected to IVs, was connected to his mouth, and for some reason, his mouth was closed around it.
Confusion welled up inside him, and without thinking, he grabbed it and pulled. But nothing happened. His mouth remained shut, and the tube did not budge.
He hovered there for a long moment, heart pounding, trying to gather his thoughts.
Then his eyes caught something just above him. A paper, laminated, taped to the inside of the glass.
It took effort to tilt his head back enough to read it. The light refracted oddly through the fluid, but he was able to read it with no issues, as it was written in USL.
"Place your hand on the glass beneath this note once you're conscious. The exit will unlock. Get your bearings and your stuff by the door. Then head to the lounge. Try not to break anything on your way. —Bralmir"
I made it, Archie let out a half-laugh, half-cough, causing bubbles to rise in lazy spirals from his nose. Relief flooded through him, mixing strangely with the aftershock of pain and the throbbing weight of exhaustion still lingering in his bones. My teleporter worked…
Archie reached up, placing his palm against the spot on the glass just beneath the note.
A moment passed.
Then a soft hum vibrated through the tube. Mechanical locks disengaged with a muffled click-clack, and the fluid around him began to drain, swirling downward in a spiraling vortex that tugged at his limbs along with the tube that slipped out from his lips and unglued his lips together. The pressure in the chamber adjusted with a hiss, and before long, his feet touched solid ground.
The front of the tube hissed open.
Archie stumbled forward, catching himself on a hastily created mana platform with a groan. The air was cool and sterile, laced with a faint chemical tang, but it was air, real, breathable air.
Archie stood still for a moment, eyes scanning his hands as he flexed them once more. The knotted tension that had once nested in his joints and muscles was gone. Completely gone.
No phantom aches. No sharp migraines behind his eyes. No constant feelings of exhaustion. Nothing.
He reached up and touched his throat gently.
No tightness. No feeling of heavy oppression.
"Test, test," he said again, louder this time. His voice was hoarse but clear, not strained. His vocal cords were fine, not shredded.
He could speak…
Archie laughed, a real, full-bodied laugh that echoed in the empty, sterile chamber. He didn't care that it turned into coughing. He doubled over from the release of it, hands on his knees, lungs burning not from damage, but from relief.
He straightened up, face set in a wide smile.
"It's gone…" he whispered, almost reverent. "It's really gone."
His hand drifted to his abdomen, to which his scars were completely gone, save for the ones he'd received from getting impaled by a tree branch when he tumbled off the cliff prior to the System Integration.
Whatever Bralmir had done, whatever this place was, it cured him completely. Every trace of that curse that had kept him sleepless, voiceless, and in constant agony… was erased.
Archie looked toward the glowing door at the far end of the room, where soft lights guided him like runway strips.
"Alright, Bralmir," he muttered as he started walking, shoulders square, bare feet striking confidently against the pristine floor. "You better have some of that beer."
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Archie approached the exit, the soft neon glow of the "EXIT" sign humming quietly above a sleek, metal-framed doorway. Just to the side, resting neatly on a sterile-white desk, he saw a small folded stack of clothes.
Gray sweatpants, a matching long-sleeve shirt, and boxers, all made from some high-grade, breathable material that looked absurdly comfortable, all of which he was unable to Identify.
On top of the stack sat a small note, written in Bralmir's neat, square handwriting:
"Wear these. The lounge doesn't need your bare ass walking around my ship. —Bralmir"
Archie snorted, rubbing a hand through his damp, unruly hair. "So, I'm on a ship..."
He took his time drying himself with the provided towel hanging from a nearby hook, then slipped into the fresh clothes. The fabric was cool, soft, and weirdly well-fitted. He didn't want to ask how Bralmir knew his exact measurements or how he ended up naked in a test tube.
Still barefoot, he turned back to the desk where three familiar rings rested in shallow indentations – his three Spatial Rings.
He slid them onto his fingers, feeling the slight warmth of mana welcome him back as the internal inventory expanded in his mind's eye.
His eyes widened. Everything was there. His armor, his tools…
The Basic Workshop – Blacksmith, in its condensed orb form, has his Mana Bike along with its Nature-Attuned Runic Mana Engine and Power Core, and the Totem of Spring's Ascent.
Archie looked thoughtful at the sight of his Power Core. "How did he take it out of the generator that was powering my teleporter and still get back to his… spaceship?"
The door let out a soft hiss and parted automatically as Archie approached, revealing a gleaming corridor of matte silver and smooth, seamless paneling.
An illuminated arrow pulsed to life on the floor just ahead of him, a faint golden hue pointing down the corridor. Then another appeared a few meters ahead. And another.
"I was wondering if he'd forgotten that I've never been here before," Archie muttered with a smirk, padding forward barefoot on the cool metallic floor.
As he followed the pulsing trail, his eyes began to drift over the corridor walls, and stopped in place to take everything in.
Embedded within the sleek bulkheads were displays, frames, and mechanical alcoves, each containing a marvel in miniature. One section showcased a suspended blade; long, elegant, seemingly forged from Fulgurite or some other crystalized sand, its edge seemed to vibrate every so often with arcs of lightning.
Further down, a small forge hammer floated in a stasis field, its handle made of polished bone and its head engraved with runes too complex for him to parse. A plaque beneath read:
"Prototype for Phase-Forging, Mark V — Still not idiot-proof. (Don't touch it, Archie.)"
Archie barked a short laugh and kept walking.
He passed a half-finished schematic pinned directly to the wall with what looked like enchanted nails, the paper still smoldering faintly around the edges. Dozens of others followed, some inked in ancient-looking chicken scratch, others scribbled over in charcoal and grease with similar handwriting. There were displays of mineral samples in vacuum-sealed containers, each glowing or pulsing softly with potential.
One alcove even held a three-tiered rack of gauntlets in ascending size and power signature, the largest marked with a tag: "Don't touch, it will explode a planet."
Everywhere he looked, the place was layered in ingenuity and madness, the kind that could only belong to a divine blacksmith with cycles of experience, wisdom, and zero concern for OSHA regulations.
Archie felt a grin tug at his lips again.
Finally, the last arrow led to a wide set of double doors. Brushed steel and reinforced with crisscrossing metallic vines, each etched with subtle runes that pulsed faintly as he approached. They opened without a sound, retreating into the walls.
Warm light spilled out from within.
The Lounge.
Archie stepped forward.
As the doors slid open, Archie was immediately struck, not by more weapons that were easily able to destroy planets, but by something more.
The far wall of the Lounge was one seamless, massive window, clearer than the clearest crystal, curved slightly outward, and stretching from floor to ceiling for a hundred meters wide.
And beyond the glass lay the cosmos.
A sea of stars scattered across a velvet black canvas. Glowing nebulae spilled color like spilled paint across the void. Planets of impossible hues drifted slowly through space, some ringed with brilliant arcs of ice and stone, others orbited by latticework structures that pulsed faintly with artificial light. A small cluster of asteroids passed close, golden light reflecting off their metallic surfaces.
Archie stood there for a long moment, breath caught in his throat. He'd seen the stars before, briefly, through maps or telescope feeds, but never like this. Never raw. Never so close that it felt like he could reach out and pluck them from the sky.
"…Damn," he muttered.
"Right?" a deep, familiar voice drawled from inside the room. "Just a heads up, that's not made of glass, it's made out of nanites."
Archie blinked, snapping out of it. He turned his head to the right.
There, reclining comfortably on an absurdly large sofa reinforced with what looked like void-hardened steel and dragonhide, sat Bralmir.
Seven feet wide in the shoulders, just under five meters tall, his beard braided and threaded with bits of molten metal that still glowed faintly. His right hand held a champagne flute that looked comically small between his fingers.
He lifted it in greeting. "Long time no see."
Archie smirked, the corners of his mouth widening even further at the sight of his friend whom he hadn't seen in months. "You glorious bastard."
He stepped forward, and Bralmir rose from the couch with a grin.
The handshake clap came naturally, but looked rather comical as Bralmir's hand practically engulfed Archie's entire arm.
They both chuckled and dropped onto the couch.
Archie leaned back, arms sprawled, exhaling slowly. The warmth of the lounge, the closeness of stars, the presence of a blacksmith god beside him, it was surreal. But it felt right.
"…You drink champagne out of something that looks like a shot glass in your hand?"
Bralmir chuckled, swirling the liquid. "Aye. Makes the bottle last longer."
Archie snorted, letting his head fall back against the couch, eyes still flicking toward the stars.
"So, who won the bet?" Archie asked, turning his head to look at Bralmir, who turned back to him with a solemn expression on his face.
Bralmir's solemn expression lasted all of two seconds before it cracked into a grin.
"You did, you smug bastard."
Archie blinked. "Wait, seriously? I honestly lost track of time towards the last two weeks of the month."
Without answering, Bralmir snapped his fingers. A nearby compartment in the wall hissed open, revealing a small floating platform bearing a single item: a barrel, ornately carved with twisting vines, and a rather risqué depiction of an elven bar wench holding a tray of beer mugs.
Archie's eyes widened. "Is that–?"
"The Elven Mistress," Bralmir confirmed proudly, rising to fetch the barrel. He set it down between them and uncorked it with a flick of his massive thumb. The scent that wafted out was rich, floral, and potent enough to singe nose hairs.
Archie let out a low whistle. "I can already feel my mouth watering."
Chuckling, Bralmir took out two mugs, one his size and another human-sized, and began pouring the luminous golden liquid in both mugs.
Archie took the offered mug, uncaring of the mug size difference between them, and clinked it with Bralmir's and took a long swig.
Archie exhaled sharply. "That's... unfairly good."
"Aye." Bralmir leaned back with a grin. "Barely a few hours left on the timer, by the way. If you hadn't stumbled through that portal when you did, I was about to come drag your almost dead ass out myself."
Archie blinked, lowering his mug. "Wait, what do you mean? You knew where I was?"
"Oh, yeah." Bralmir waved a hand as if brushing aside cosmic logistics. "Found you on that hellhole planet, Fractal, three days after you landed. From there, I just watched my Archie Reality TV Show."
"Huh?"