Chapter 218: Inherently Corrupting (2/2)

“It makes it better.”

“How?”

“It’s a kind of magic from my world.”

“I thought your world didn’t have magic.”

“That’s why we have to get creative. There’s a magician in my world who made a Ninety metre statue vanish and reappear, right in front of people. It’s probably the most famous statue on the whole planet. It’s called Liberty Enlightening the World, which ultimately proved a bit ironic.”

“How can someone be a magician in a world without magic?”

“With misdirection and deceit, which aren’t inherently bad. They can be used to entertain and delight. It’s just that people can also use them for untoward ends, because there’s money and power in it. Let me tell you, politics in this world is child’s play. In my world, everyone has a recording crystal device and no one has magic. Even the most ignorant, at least in my homeland, just have a better idea of how it all works. No inherent hierarchies of power. You have to build them yourself, or be born into them.”

“That’s why you are so dismissive of them,” Arabelle said.

“That, and they shaft people over.”

“It sounds fertile soil for corruption,” Arabelle said.

“There’s no such thing as an incorruptible system. All you can do is your best to make it less crappy.”

“What about if a god was running it? Who could influence a god to corrupt them?”

“I’ll refer that question to the church of Purity,” Jason said.

Arabelle scowled.

“I don’t like what’s happening there,” she said. “Why would Purity throw his followers in with these cultists. They’re defilers.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Jason said. “I’ve got the scars on my soul to prove it.”

“Yes, your soul is almost unrecognisable from when we first met. Actual, aura-changing events are rare and you’ve had three in a series of months. It’s probably for the best that you have that personal crest, because between the changes and your anti-tracking ability, trying to identify you from your aura without it would be an unreliable prospect.”

“The changes aren’t completely bereft of benefits,” Jason said.

“Yes, your ability to suppress auras and attack souls is impressive in action,” she said. “At iron-rank, only those with highly trained aura control or an ability to counter aura suppression will be able to stand up to you. That said, don’t go thinking you could do to the likes of Humphrey or your friend Valdis what you did to a bunch of untrained dregs. You should keep in mind all the elite adventurers who assembled for Emir’s event. They are your contemporaries, not these locals.”

“I’m aware,” Jason said. “We sparred with some great teams and they handed back out butts in a box on the regular.”

“I recommend you practice your aura control with your team mates,” Arabelle said. “It’s hard to find people you can trust to do suppression and anti-suppression drills with.”

“I’m wary of that,” Jason said. “When I first gained the power to use soul attacks, I told myself I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to. Of course, that didn’t last long. It’s almost as if power were inherently corrupting.”

“We can discuss that at length, later,” Arabelle said.

“There may not be time for that,” Jason said. “The ability I’ve been waiting on was the one that just reached bronze. It’s time to start trying to get into the astral space in earnest.”

When the sand barge arrived, the Adventure Society officials on board took over from Jason’s team in managing the rescued people. The team gathered around Jason, obviously worried.

“I’m fine,” he assured them, not mentioning Arabelle’s presence in the veldt. If she wanted to remain hidden, he wasn’t going to spoil it.

As his team prepared to return to Greenstone via the skimmer they had rode out on, Jason tested his newly bronze-rank power. Jason waved his hand and a line of substantive shadows appeared on the ground, dancing like dark flames. Then an archway rose up out of it, made from what looked like of a whole piece of polished obsidian. The dark fire then rose up to fill the arch.

“That looks an awful lot like the shadow gates in the Order of the Reaper’s astral space,” Humphrey said, then looked to Jason and Clive. “Something neither of you seem surprised about.”

“I had an inkling,” Jason said. “Shade has seen that power before.”

“What aren’t you telling us?” Humphrey asked.

“That’s a conversation for later,” Jason said.

“Where does the gate go?” Clive asked.

“Back to the town where the Adventure Society set up their management hub.”

Jason squared his shoulders before walking through, emerging in the middle of the town’s main street. The sensation was very familiar to him; a disembodied sensation of movement, as if the world was turning around him. It was more intense than his usual shadow jumps, but he had experienced it a number of times now, with Hester’s portals.

A number of people were looking at him, having seen the archway rise up out of the ground. Sophie came through the portal after him, then Clive. He lacked the astral affinity that made portal travel more of an exhilarating rush than stomach-churning lurch.

“Alright, test over,” Jason said. “Back we go.”

“Give me a moment,” Clive groaned.

On the way back to the city they experimented with the power, finding three major limitations. One was distance. As best they could tell, the range was around forty kilometres. Clive’s told Jason that was normal for a portal ability and he could expect it to rapidly improve. It would increase by it’s current range at each minor threshold of advancement, meaning that by the time it reached the peak of bronze rank, it would have ten times the range.

The next second limitation was capacity. Ten iron-rankers or one bronze ranker could pass through the gate in either direction before the power was consumed. One iron ranker would be able to pass through and come back five times before the gate was depleted.

They were able to talk a bronze-ranker they encountered on the way back into testing it, but could not find enough regular people willing to walk through the sinister magic archway for testing purposes. Suggesting that the ones who were up for it go through and back multiple times resulted in the few they could find backing out. It was at that point that Belinda asked the obvious question.

“Why not just ask your interface power?”

Jason and Clive looked at each other, then shared a nod.

Help: Ability limitations, [Path of Shadows] (Dark)

Capacity (Bronze 0): 1 bronze-rank, living entity. Alternatively, 10 iron-rank instead of 1 bronze, and 10 normal-rank instead of 1 iron-rank.Capacity is reduced by taking large amounts of non-living material through, either directly or in dimensional bags. Items in dimensional storage generated by personal powers do not count against the capacity.Range (Bronze 0): 40 kilometres. Destination must have been previously visited, before or after obtaining this ability.

“That was deliberate,” Jason said.

“We wanted to field-test the power with unbiased views before looking to the interface,” Clive added.

“You forgot the blindingly obvious thing, didn’t you?” Belinda asked.

“Yes,” Clive said immediately. “Yes we did.”

“Seriously, Clive?” Jason asked. “You folded like an origami swan you have to put somewhere without throwing it away for long enough that the person who made it for you won’t get offended when you finally throw it out and claim the humidity made it fall over or something.”

“That was very specific,” Sophie said.

“Completely hypothetical,” Jason asserted firmly.

“What’s origami?” Neil asked.

After getting back to the city, Clive and Jason told the team about the idea of going back into the Order of the Reaper’s astral space.

“There are no guarantees,” Clive said. “Jason’s ability doesn’t say anything about breaching dimensional barriers. That means we have no idea if we can get it to work, or how long it will take to figure that out. I’ll be going to stay with Emir’s team at Sky Scar Lake to work on the issue and Jason will be portalling in every day so we can do a series of tests.”

“In the meantime,” Jason suggested, “those of us who planned to work at the training centre being set up should do just that. We can also use this time to decide, as a team, if  going back to the astral space is something we want to do. We have no idea how many unknown dangers we would face, so even if we can go back, it doesn’t mean that we should.”