Magic Empyrean: Blood Coin

Despite being surrounded by the thick, enchanted walls, despite having fifteen meters deep layer of the earth above the ceiling, living in the real world made the people inside free.

Unlike all the others living in the under-dimension, they had unlimited access to pure, unfiltered magic. Rather than satisfying themselves with heavily restricted daily quotas, they could draw from the endless pool of this pure energy, directly from the planet itself!

Located under one of five main transition stations, even the filtered air sucked here from the atmosphere outside was so enriched, that by just breathing it in, their internal energy was always at its very peak.

Of course, compared to the under-dimension, the number of services or facilities was heavily limited. Not counting the basic medical bay, permanently understocked canteen and rundown resting room, the rest of the bunker was densely packed with various magic and electric tools, connecting them directly to both the underdimension"s grid and planetary network.

Apart from their living chambers and the main control area, every single room had its designated purpose, with s.p.a.ce enough to barely squeeze one person over the crew required to run the facility.

Sitting on an uncomfortable chair with legs lying against the table - great breach of the military code of professional conduct - Arthur was slowly sipping his cheap coffee. While it tasted like s.h.i.t, it packed quite a caffeine punch in it. This was the only thing that allowed him to keep staring at the monitors in front of him instead of just giving up and sleeping.

Even if the entire bunker was fitted for a total of twenty-four crew members, only seven of them were living there on a daily basis. The remaining number of personnel was contracted on short term application form, making the base even more desolate than it was supposed to be.

Arthur loved it. Stable work, good pay, only his closest kin actually adhered to the rules and staying underground instead of leaving the site to play outside. Thanks to that, this bunker actually turned into kind of a home for him!

Out of sudden, his lazy time got broken by a small, red window appearing on one of his screens. Apparently, one of the borderline generators malfunctioned!

Putting his cup away on the empty table nearby, he put his legs down and pulled the chair closer to the monitors. Touching the pulsating popup, a short message expanded into a long wall of text with numbers mixed in between. What was strange, was the fact that those numbers kept falling down!

"That"s strange."

Arthur murmured to himself while reaching behind with his hand to grab the coffee back. In his long time of service in the bunker, he never saw anything like that!

"What is strange?"

Appearing in the general monitoring room, man"s sister brought some snacks with her. After putting the platter she was holding on Arthur"s lap, she leaned over his arm and looked at the monitor.

"Have you ever heard about this kind of bug?"

Unable to put his mind on it, the man decided to seek some help from his family. While she was a tad younger than him, she had an informatics degree, far better at solving the software problems than himself, with just a magic engineering one.

"That"s probably not a bug. I guess that this generator malfunctioned. We will need to call the ministry. They need to send someone all the way over there. I just hope it won"t be any of…"

Just as the girl wanted to point out her worries, another red alert popped up. This one was actually worse since it had lines connecting it to at least seven generators!

"What are the chances that all of them malfunctioned at the same time?"

Burrowing his eyes slightly, Arthur looked at his sister.

"You might actually be right. I will check the logs and be back to you."

Shrugging her arms off, she straightened herself and sat in front of the chair next to Arthur. Pulling a special cord, she extended a keyboard from under the table and started energetically typing something on it.

During that time, Mike pressed the second red window and started a.n.a.lyzing the streaks of the data. While he might not be as great in coding as his sister, he still knew a fair bit about it.

"That"s not the software bug."

After a while, Arthur said out of nowhere, patting his sister"s arm.

"Come, take a look at this!"

Forcing Freya to leave her lines of code, he pulled her attention to several lines in the alert description that caught his eye.

"The change is too constant. If my guess is right, another alert should pop up soon."

Like in self-fulfilling prophecy, as soon as he finished his sentence, another window appeared on his screen, this time indicating that almost ten percent of the generators were slowly starting to choke!

"I will turn the green alarm on, go fetch Naria please."

Putting his coffee away yet again, Arthur"s pupils contracted, as he started dancing his fingers on the monitor"s touchscreen. In just a moment, green light enveloped the entire bunker. At the same time, a special notification was sent to the officers lazying outside the bunker, urging them to come back.

In the end, Freya didn"t even manage to stand up before other alerts started showing up. With a slight swipe of his fingers, Arthur sent the strategic map on the big screen, covering the biggest wall in the entire bunker. Only then did he realise the severity of the problem!

On his own, small screen, the alerts indicated that some small problem occurred near the border of Patarian sphere of influence. Enlarging the map allowed him to notice, that failing generators weren"t random! They were forming a curve, spreading outwards in every direction!

"Connect me with the Beferian main bunker!"

Turning on the voice command function, he instantly called his nation allies. While their underdimension entry was located in the far north, their sphere of influence bordered the southern end of Patarian one.

"Who"s calling?"

Just a mere moments after giving out the order, a face filled with anxiety showed up on the big screen on the bunker"s wall.

"Sixth rank officer, Arthur Kawark. I"m sorry for ignoring the procedures, but can you tell me if you have encountered some problems with your southern generators?"

Though he was a colonel, he preferred to skip the formalities, using a more standardized system of ranking instead.

"You mean the generators turning off for no reason? Does that mean it happened on your side as well?"

From the widened eyes of the person on the screen, Mike could fathom that current trouble was on a lot greater scale than he would dare to imagine.

"Yes, it is. I"m cutting the connection. This situation is far beyond my level of competency. Good luck sir!"

Arthur didn"t wait to trade the pleasantries. Since his dark guess was slowly proving right, there was simply no time to waste on speaking!

"Good luck to you too. If we are right about the reasons, we can only pray to G.o.d for help!"

Breaking the connection with those words made a great impact on Arthur and his sister. After hesitating for a short moment, the man collected himself, swiped his fingers on the right side on the screen and… hesitated.

"Guys, what"s going on? It feels like the magic is thinning out!"

A new voice appeared in the room, startling the siblings. Since currently there were only three people in the bunker, there was no doubt who did it belong to!

"Did you just say that the magic is thinning out?!"

As if unable to accept what he just heard, Arthur turned on his chair and took a look at his fiance, face.

"Naria, are you perfectly sure about this?"

"Yes! At first, I thought that I just didn"t get enough sleep last night, but now I"m sure about it. Did something happened?"

As her big eyes stared at Arthur, she started to comprehend that something was definitely wrong!

"Yes, it did."

The man responded as he stopped worrying about possible consequences and pressed the red b.u.t.ton.

In just a second, h.e.l.l broke out in both the bunker and the headquarters back in the underdimension!

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For the first time in modern history, crossing the border was as easy as today. Lines of carriages, pushcarts and peddler groups filled the entire scenery all the way to the horizon in the west. Only near the Altarcian border did the crowd turned from a ma.s.s gathering to organised rows. After waiting in this enormous queue for days, no one wanted to be barred entry for something as small as misbehaviour!

Just a single year ago, before the war forced the Altarcian King to close his borders, the customs checks here were a h.e.l.lish experience. Just a single bag of wheat too much, a gourd of firewater or even a crossbow, and the dreams of getting rich in the neighbouring country would end up smashed under the soldiers" shoes.

Compared to the past, the current times were much more forgiving. As long as one cooperated with the Altarcian Officers and didn"t try to smuggle forbidden wares, one was free to enter the country. Of course, the reality wasn"t void of some overly attentive officers!

As the queue was organised to follow the numbers, whenever someone pa.s.sed the border, the customs station would call for the next in the line. While it made the whole process move without any major disturbances, it also prevented the merchants from choosing who will be in charge of controlling them.

"... boxes of cereals, seven boxes of andu fruit, three boxes of karra fruit…"

Mike saw a merchant hastily preparing a complete list of his cargo.

"... tonight. If we manage to sell it all, I will consider sponsoring you a voyage through the brothels then!"

An elderly trader was laying out promises to the manservants travelling on his coach.

With similar talks going on everywhere around them, there was no way they would be able to discern what was said in any of the checking areas. With the insane benefits offered by the Empire for those willing to expand its trading influence over to Altarcia, it looked like every single merchant from the eastern half of the country jumped at this opportunity.

"What do you think about this whole mess?"

Unable to find a single comfortable position to lie on his couch, Verkel tried striking a conversation to forget about the numbing pain of his bottom.

"Not only we can earn a lot from just a single carriage worth of wares, but Altarcians will also consider us their saviours. What else could we wish for?"

After hours of moving an inch every few minutes, Mike was too tired to hold any real conversation. While he did reply, everyone could hear a lack of interest in his voice.

"Oh, come on! If you are not following Xyenna"s example, at least comfort me for a bit! We have nothing else to do after all!"

Unwilling to let go, fat merchant pointed at the woman lying on the back of Mike"s carriage. Fitted perfectly between the boxes of fruits and bags of flour, she appeared to be either dead or asleep. Only when she heard her name being shouted, did she raise her head a bit.

"Take that stinky finger off my face!"

Noticing a round piece of meat pointed right at her, Xyenna snarled at its owner. While they were travelling together, Xyenna"s harsh character made it hard for other people to get along with her. While she had no problems with the rest of their companions, for some reason she despised Verkel to the bone.

"If you are willing to be the first one killed here, just say a word!"

Fat merchant deserved a word of praise here. With just a single action, he made this sloth of a woman raise her hand to where her sword lied!

"Calm down, sister. There is no need to waste your energy in correcting this pig behaviour."

A burly man lying flat on Bern"s wagon joined the fray. With an empty bag shielding his head from the sunrays, he nonchalantly pointed his hand at Verkel.

Too lazy to pursue the matter, Xyenna rubbed her eyes before prompting herself up. After shaking her head for a bit, a devious smile surfaced on her face as she turned around to look at Mike.

"But this ball of fat has a point! I"m sure that my arm would make for a perfect pillow!"

"I"m sorry, but I won"t gamble between losing my chast.i.ty or manhood."

Not daring to turn his head around and look at the girl, Mike murmured under his nose. While he at least paid some attention to her, his voice only showcased how uninterested he was in keeping any conversations.

"Tch, no fun!"

Xyenna clicked her tongue seeing Mike"s reaction. With a sudden bout of life appearing in her eyes, she looked again at her employer. Kneeling on the bags of flour, she brought both of her arms down, putting her supple breast into even a better view.

"Am I really that scary and unattractive in your eyes?"

After finishing her sentence, she bit on her tongue to force some tears out of her upturned eyes.

"Do you really believe this?"

Without a warning, Mike straightened up and turned around. Bending himself over the wall separating the cargo and the couch, he placed his pointing finger on her lips.

"You really should consider…"

Young merchant flicked his finger upwards, hitting Xyenna"s nose.

"... going back to sleep."

With his voice turning from intoxicated and aroused back to a cold one, he turned away with a triumphant look on his face.

"You do realize that you are responsible for springing her into this action, do you?

Mercilessly replacing the fake tears in his bodyguard eyes into real ones, Mike switched his sight to a fat merchant.
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"Hahaha…"

Unable to come up with anything smarter, Verkel could only pretend to laugh in response. While his blessing allowed him to be successful in most of the task that he took upon, relying on it made him lazy. Unable to be bothered by hard work in achieving his targets, he just took advantage of his gift. This att.i.tude earned him rather bad fame, resulting in nicknames like a "pig" or "fatso", describing both his mind and his body.

While Merchants were bickering among each other, the remaining trio in the company didn"t pay them any heed, focusing all their attention on the set of cards spread out at the third carriage coach. With a gourd of firewater at stakes, they couldn"t allow any laps in their concentration!

"I knew I shouldn"t play with you guys!"

After raising the claims over and over again, the merchant wielding the t.i.tle of the oldest in their group raised his hands and thrown his cards on the wooden plank serving as a couch. With a dissatisfied face, he pa.s.sed a simple bottle to his bodyguard.

"If I were to be ignorant about your blessings, I would bet that you used them in the game!"

Plainly upset about the loss, the old merchant couldn"t let go of the bottle without at least a bit of mopping.

"Maaaan, it"s not about winning the game! It"s about not losing it!"

Veil, his bodyguard explained with a wide smile plastered on his face. Making sure to take the bottle from his employer"s hands before uttering this remark, he uncorked it and take a few gulps before pa.s.sing it to Verkel"s mute mercenary.

"You… YOU! How dare you!"

Hearing the words spoken by his comadre, Bern"s face reddened as he realised what happened. To think that he would get tricked in his own game! Just as he was about to fly into a rage and demand the bottle back, they finally heard a call their whole group was waiting for.

"Group nine, six, nine, come to the eight gate. It"s your turn now!