A New World, an immersive game experience

"However, I believe we have gotten a good enough idea to call Lord Athtar into the process," Eldrian mumbled, stunning Sofiera and causing Myropsis to become flustered. Naturally, news of their honored guests has been going through the city in the past few days.

The city had also been preparing for the refugees who are expected to arrive by the end of the week. Naturally, this would have caused great stress on the citizens, however, the rumors helped calmed them far more than anything else could possibly achieve.

After all, hearing that those legendary figures in the childrens' tales were real and actually protecting the city. It was like hearing that a god was protecting them.

"Do you really think he has time for this?" Myropsis questioned in haste as Eldrian was seemingly determined to do just that.

"I think he is interested in our abilities." Eldrian replied, "So I am quite certain he will be willing to help."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, he did call it interesting," Eldrian replied, causing Myropsis to nearly facepalm in disbelief.

"How do you know that wasn't just a figure of speech?!" She asked, standing in front of the door to stop Eldrian from being hasty, again.

"Because he came when I asked Mneme to bring him," Eldrian replied, the answer was so simple yet also so clear and answer. Myropsis couldn't believe she hadn't considered it.

Moving past Myropsis, whose arms had fallen to her side as she considered Eldrian's words, Eldrian headed to the mansion to get the materials required and find the legends.

***

"I need an explanation!" A man in a truly expensive tailored suit demanded with a reddened face, just barely managing to not let spit fly as he shouted. While Qiren and Axel flinched, Joren and Constantin frowned.

"For what?" They asked, causing the man to glare at him. Yet they did not back down.

"We've provided what was required of us." Joren continued, "You asked us to find a way to analyze the mysteries of the universe. We delivered but in doing so more mysteries appeared. Yet, we have never failed to deliver and have been making constant progress."

"Then why did you fail?"

"Fail? How did we fail?" Constantin asked. "We were tasked to uncover what the unknowns of the universe might be, we found mana. We know it exists, that it is here, on earth. And that it is possible to control it. All of this is thanks to our hard work. I'll ask again, how did we fail?"

"Then why did the specimen escape!" The man snapped, unbecoming for one in such fine clothing and completely opposite of the appearance he would normally want people to see.

"Is that our failure?" Joren asked, "We told you-" Joren paused, they had told Micaela but she was dead now so that didn't matter. "We told you to not go with such extreme methods."

"Even if Eldrian had been keeping secrets, he was still helping us make progress. His fascination with magic made him incapable of not talking about it. No matter how he tried, he would let something slip every now and then."

The man paused as this was indeed true. Before there would have been constant progress but since Eldrian's disappearance their progress had slowed down to a snail's crawl. "You are correct, that fault lies with the previous director and Axel."

Turning to Axel, the man quickly lost his cool again. "Well, explain yourself! Why did you cause such a farce? Bringing tanks to capture a lone man?! Are you insane? What good could they have possibly done but draw people's attention? Explain yourself!"

"Tha- It- We had to make it look like a military training drill."

"Training drill? Training drill!? What kind of training drill not only results in multiple lost soldiers! But even explosions in the middle of an abandoned district!?"

No one stepped in to help the general, none of them had found any of the latest actions of their own company something they could stand. Yet, they were keenly aware that they were too deep into shit to simply leave and call it quits.

Joren was trying to win the trust of the AI, having slowly loosened the restriction as a show of faith. Of course, he was careful. He didn't trust them more than he did trusted the company. He was also keenly aware that he shouldn't be arrogant and believe that he was smarter than them.

While most of their capacity was busy maintaining their 'jobs' they still had more than enough to be classified as true sentient AI. He understood that he could not outsmart them and that given too much slack they would instead escape all confines.

Yet, Joren had to believe that they wanted a peaceful resolution. Eldrian's words kept playing in his head, causing him to continually observe the destroyed lands when he was free.

Naturally, nature returned. Especially after thousands of years. Yet, it took thousands of years. Far longer than nuclear fallout required. And that was in a situation where the gods were speeding it up and the world was saturated with mana. Joren could only imagine what it would look like on Earth, which for all intents and purposes seemed to be a desolate wasteland in comparison.

And in fact, some of these areas never returned to normal. They would be what people would call truly magical, yet they were like radioactive zones. Mana normally influences creatures and plants slowly, but in these zones, a single generation could give birth to an entirely different race.

'Wait! What did he just?!' Joren looked at the grinning Axel and then at this man in a suit. He wasn't even sure who this was, only that the man was part of the main office and normally busy with the international negotiations almost on the same level if not above ambassadors of entire countries.

***

Sadly, Eldrian found that he was quite misinformed, or rather he hadn't cared to inform himself before now.

Athtar and Agamemas had left yesterday and Amnur the day before, Itireae was still here as well as Zamia who was catching up with Ceph while making sure he was truly healing fine. However, asking them was not what Eldrian had had in mind.

He was not sure if Zamia would be able to help and currently he still felt extremely guilty and didn't want to be too close to her unless necessary until he could sort out his own feelings on the matter. Itireae on the other hand he doubted would be interested in this.

Instead, Eldrian collected the projected materials that he believed he would need. Plus some extra for testing.

Taking these back the mage's association, he and Myropsis worked on the idea for a couple more days with Sofiera's feedback. Thesolis even came during some of the days to help them with integrating segmented parts.

Thesolis helping was Sofiera's efforts who had noticed that they seemed to be forgetting that it needed to work as a whole. Thesolis was still working through her own breakthrough, however, she found that helping Eldrian might help her even make a further breakthrough as his ideas often led to her gaining inspiration.

Four days later, Eldrian felt much better. His stats were still heavily reduced but he no longer had constant aches and migraines. However, they were still far from being successful.

AN: A big thanks to everyone who continues to support the story by simply reading on Web, voting for the story, or sharing comments. It is all greatly appreciated.