Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]

"What in the deepest layer of hell?" Kristil asks. "We're in the Tower, I know it. I can feel it. I know we haven't left it or been transported outside of it… And yet, that's a town. Those are people. Real living, breathing people. Chloe, please pinch me, because I swear to God, I think I must be seeing things."

"It's real," Chloe says. "Everything you see is real."

"But… I… This makes no sense."

I pinch Kristil's shoulder, eliciting a small spark to my fingers and 50 damage to my [Health]. She turns to me with a look of astonishment and indignation, before sighing with her head lowered.

"I– I guess this really is happening. I– I just don't…"

"Is it so hard to believe?" I ask. "We have superpowers now. We were just flying around, fighting monsters. You literally changed your body into lightning. I'm having a conversation with my swordstaff, and it speaks back to me. Chloe can heal your wounds with magic. All the while, we've been fighting monsters taken straight out of an RPG. Why is it that, among all of these otherworldly, supernatural phenomena we've been living through everyday, seeing a town like this in the middle of one of the Tower floors is what baffles you the most?"

Kristil sighs. "Damn you, Sera. No offense meant or anything, but why do you have to choose a moment like this and act so… reasonable?"

Chloe and I turn to each other, an incredulous look upon my girlfriend's face. The two of us start giggling.

"What? What did I say that's so funny this time?"

"Nothing," I respond. "It's just that I'm the one who's usually saying that to Chloe. It's a bit weird being on the other end of it."

"Hmph!" Kristil's face tinges red with embarrassment. "Well, whatever! Let's just get going so we can figure out where we need to go and what we need to do… or wherever… Whatever!"

Chloe and I follow behind her in silence and at some distance, allowing her to vent off some of her… charged personality. Before long, we're at the gates of a small town, one which is populated, and not by people trying to kill us on sight.

"Well, you two," Kristil says. "Are you just going to stand around, or are we going into town?"

As soon as she says these words, a System popup appears in the forefront of my vision.

[Warning: Once you enter Synthir, you will not be able to easily leave. Proceed with caution.]

Kristil stops her otherwise unrelenting march through the city walls for a brief moment as well. Chloe looks at me with furrowed brows, which suggests that all three of us got the same message.

"I think this means that once we get into town, it'll be considered a different floor."

"Well, I agree with Kristil in this case," Chloe says. "There's really nothing out there that warrants us roaming the wastes. And we probably should get moving, just in case the Warden decides to pay us a death sentence."

And so we do. We're waved through the checkpoint— little more than a simple guard tower along a wall of logs and a few bits of stone and mould— with barely more than a cursory glance of our gear and persons. Our suspicions about this being a new floor are all but confirmed when we pass through and into the town proper. A brief wave of dizziness overcomes me as the environment shifts and space around us contorts. The outside idyll, which once felt right there, mere feet away, now looks so distant, as though it would take a thousand steps just to move a single inch in that direction.

None of the inhabitants— people or constructs, whatever they are— seem to notice, and they are still free to come and go from Synthir as they see fit. Meanwhile, I take a step backward, just to confirm, and sure enough, I'm pushed away from the checkpoint by the bending of space itself.

"Alright, you two," Kristil says, her impatience on full display.

On the one hand, I appreciate her enthusiasm, but on the other, I shudder just thinking about how many goodies she might have overlooked or even walked right by in her haste. There certainly is a difference between being thorough and being meandering, and right now, we're fully on the former side of that line.

For the sake of maintaining the peace, we do move with purpose around the winding streets, but I would rather take a longer look around and examine the wares in greater detail. We might not be able to pay for any of them with a lack of local currency, but even a few moments here with a new artifact could spur the sort of ideas I need to further progress Ethertech back on Earth.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Why, young lady," a peddler says from one of the numerous open-air stalls lining the largest street in Synthir. "You look like you're not from around here. Might I interest you in some of my finest offerings?"

I glance to my sides just to make sure he's not speaking to anyone else, quickly confirming that his inquiry is directed at me. I shake my head. "I'm sorry. My friend is in a bit of a hurry, and we're all quite short on cash after our travels."

"A traveler with no money? And yet, you don't have the look of a beggar. There is more to your tale than you're letting on."

"We're… not from around here. Somewhere very, very far away. I'm not sure how far away, in fact. So, while we have money from our own land, we don't have any local currency."

"What about that staff?" he asks. "It is clearly of remarkable quality and craftsmanship. I'd pay you two hundred platinum coins for it."

"I'm sorry. It's not for sale. And it's a bonded item in either case."

"Ah. I see. Well, if you are here in Synthir, I suggest you avail yourself of the many wares our town is known for." He pauses for a second, just long enough for me to feel that something is a bit off. "Here, I don't normally do this, but here's a silver coin as a gesture of goodwill. May it serve you well."

I pocket the coin, thanking the merchant as I go through the possibilities for why a street merchant would be so suspiciously generous. Maybe he plans to accuse me of theft later? Or perhaps, as I had felt earlier, the System pulled some sort of shenanigans just then. I did feel a small shift in the middle of the conversation. And more importantly, though this town— Synthir, very aptly named— appears real, right down to the sights and smells, it's not. A monster, or a human, or anyone else, could attack at any time. Best to be prepared.

"You sensed it too, right, Chloe? The way that man seemed… almost possessed for a moment?"

"Something did seem off. I'll keep an eye and an ear out for any signs of status abnormalities."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah. One of my Skills allows me to [Assess Health] on a target."

"That seems incredibly useful. Thanks."

Chloe smiles, gripping my hand a bit tighter as we make our way through the stalls. As we do, I keep an eye out on all our surroundings, looking for anything that seems… out of place. But there's nothing that strikes me, at least compared to the baseline in my mind. There are a couple of people creeping around in a nearby alleyway, but I think those are just petty pickpockets or others trying to evade the town guard.

When we get to a fruit vendor, I use the silver coin to buy an apple each for Chloe and me, receiving a small sack of eighty copper coins in return. And they are delicious. Ripe and juicy, but with a good bit of tartness to them, almost as though they'd been crossbred with a lemon through some sort of magic.

Truly, we are in Fantasy Land, and it's… surreal. There's a tavern and an inn not too far away, along with many stores and plenty of homes all around. A lot noisier though, and far more compact, with narrower streets and most buildings being built right up against one another. The overwhelming majority of folks are traveling by foot, with a few horse-drawn carriages and wagons occasionally parting the sea of pedestrian traffic. With this in mind, it makes sense that Synthir would be so much more densely packed than modern cities on Earth.

No, this is off. If this is a world integrated by the System, the couriers should be moving way faster. There should be people flying around or at least hopping from rooftop to rooftop. And yet, I detect absolutely no use of magic anywhere in the city. My own still works, though–

"Chloe, can you cast a healing spell on me? I just need to know if you can."

Chloe closes her eyes. Her brows furrow and, after a few seconds, I feel the warm light of her spell filling me. Though, in the process, Chloe seems fatigued.

"It feels like there's a massive weight on my [Ether] right now. My passive Skills work just fine, but trying to cast magic takes so much more mental concentration than it should."

"I figured as much. No one else is using magic, and the entire town and society are built like those from medieval Earth, not a world with magic or magitech. I'd be willing to bet that that crystal in the center of town has something to do with it."

"You think the goal of this mission has to do with breaking the Crystal and setting Synthir to rights?"

"It's the best conjecture we have right now. We should stay close; I have a Skill that passively negates power suppression, so I can defend us all if need be."

"I agree on both counts. I can't see anything else that screams 'your pathway further into the Tower is in another castle'."

Kristil sure looks irritated at the two of us, sans the sparks that often dance around her when she's annoyed… Which is quite often, now that I think about it. I'm not sure if she's realized it yet or not, but I'd be willing to bet her own magic is also being suppressed.

On a related note, I do hope she's found someone to talk to with regard to her grief, and is working on being less explosive with her temperament. Maybe it's her class influencing her rather than leftover anger after everything that happened with the Order of the Wilds. That much isn't my place to pry. But one of these days, I can't help but worry that something bad is going to happen if she can't learn to control her power rather than having her power and class controlling her.

"Why…" Kristil mutters under her breath with gritted teeth. Her fist is clenched, but only the tiniest bit of electricity arcs forth.

Chloe and I pull her into the nearest alleyway. After checking for the presence of any eavesdroppers or potential spies of… whoever is in charge of the city, we huddle behind a nearby dumpster.

"We think it's the crystal," I whisper. "Chloe is going through the same thing."

"And you?"

"Immune thanks to a Skill."

If Kristil was angry before, she's absolutely seething now. To her credit, however, she takes a deep breath and calms herself in short order, her anger now tempered into a fiery, hardened resolve. She turns to us with hardened eyes and speaks in calm, measured words.

"I hate it. I hate that these people are being deprived of the power they ought to have. I hate that they're being kept in a cage. Sera, Chloe… We're going to fix this, right?"

"Yeah," I say.

"At the very least, we're going to figure out what's going on, and from there, figure out how to deal with it," Chloe says.

"Let's get going, then," Kristil says. "I don't want this to go on another second longer than it has to."