The previous atmosphere passed rather quickly as Liam started using the holographic clock.
The mission they had was to find the cause of the monsters appearances and, if they were caused by demons, to catch them.
For that, Aurora asked Liam to come along.
Liam was not only someone who was connected to the underworld, but he was in contact with information networks of different nations.
Perhaps some networks were big enough to only be in the major cities, however, there were always smaller information networks that could be useful.
“There are many people in the city,” Liam muttered without avoiding looking around the surroundings of the city.
Mangalia City was not as large as one would expect, but being a port city and being close to Constanta City, it could be considered a growing city.
It took less than an hour to arrive from Constanta City and that showed the closeness of the two cities.
However, the number of people was now noticeable at a glance, and a large part of them were mercenaries and adventurers who were not accepted into the army.
It wasn’t as if they volunteered for work, most of them were paid to go and participate in the abyssal portals.
For Aurora, it was nothing unusual when her group was paid as members of the official forces of the Falion Empire.
Even though the abyssal portal still had an unknown threat level, it wasn’t to the point where people volunteered.
It wasn’t as if there weren’t that kind of people, but it wasn’t a majority.
“I’d like to feel at ease, but are they waiting for the allied forces to lose, or is it just out of curiosity?” Liam hesitated seriously.
Aurora drove slowly deeper into the city, following the map on her GPS, but her gaze was on the crowd.
It was hard to pinpoint what the cause was.
Maybe the adventurers or mercenaries thought that at some point the allied forces will have trouble and decide to hire them or maybe they expected to be hired to keep the calm around or they just came looking for some opportunities.
“I think...”
Before Alice could respond, the alarm immediately sounded, and the common people started to evacuate.
Cars pulled into the street and into the safety zone of the buildings.
“A quick evacuation,” Aurora muttered as she stopped the car and parked it.
She didn’t move to look for the creature as it appeared about twenty meters from her position.
A distortion in space slowly formed in the air, letting out a hint of ominous aura so prevalent in mutated creatures corrupted by ‘Chaos’.
“You may rest assured. I, Adala, the ‘Blue Tide’ have come to save you.”
At that moment, a voice rang out and from the sky, a young woman descended as a glow faintly emanated from her.
If she were wearing metallic armor, what they observed they would think was from the sun, but that young woman was wearing tight-fitting clothing that highlighted her curves giving her a touch of sensuality, but at the same time a unique sense of confidence and the fluttering cape gave her a very ordinary ‘superhero’ feel.
The wind pushed the blue hair of the woman in her early twenties as she gave a smile to the group and getting others to pull out cameras to record.
A drone could also be seen following her to record.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ll help you,” Adala said with a friendly smile.
Alice just ate some chips as if she was watching a show and Liam looked at his holographic watch casually, making it seem as if time by stopping had been wasted.
“Thank you,” Aurora replied with a polite smile.
Denying the feeling that at some point she too wish to be a ‘heroine’ that came from the sky... And she ended up being one in an equally flashy style.
Sure, helping her group was just a joke, all three of them could be considered S-Ranks and despite her using her sword when necessary, she was confident in her strength.
Adala’s expression quivered at that look, but since she was on camera, she turned and looked at the creature that had just appeared.
“A B-Rank,” Liam muttered and, whispering under his breath, asked. “Boss, are we getting paid if we waste our time like this?”
Adala, who had come from the sky, had a personal title and that meant she was an S-Rank, but right now she found herself looking at the creature seriously.
What had appeared was a bear with sharp black claws, eyes full of madness, and jaws with too many fangs.
Aurora elbowed Liam, who retreated silently, like a scolded child.
That man commented on purpose and loudly enough for Adala to hear it and shiver in annoyance.
So it was a well-deserved elbow.
Alice let out crunches of potato chips as she laughed softly.
Only Aurora remained serious, trying to give her the proper respect due Adala, who reminded her a bit of her time as a teenager.
“Grrrr!”
“Die!” Adala declared, waving her hand and creating a sphere of water around the bear.
The bear was large and heavy, but the sphere of water covered it completely and even though the creature had mutated and transformed into a monster, it still had qualities of an animal.
That meant it needed to breathe and could drown.
In the end, the creature drowned in the waiting, and when the water that made up the sphere disappeared, it fell to the ground.
Adala kept the corpse in her space ring and gave a smile. Those who applauded then directing her looking at her for the last time revealed an annoyed expression as she realized that Aurora was the only one who nodded with a smile.
Without causing any public trouble, she disappeared completely.
“With all this show, I just lost valuable minutes of work,” Liam muttered, shaking his head in disappointment.
When Aurora gave him a look, and he hid in the car laughing, amused.
******
Walking into a room in the apartment they rented, Aurora watched Liam, who had already settled in.
“So how’s it going?” Aurora asked curiously.
Liam had taken a full room to himself and he was in one corner in a computer chair as he watched various screens set up.
Across the corner were square drones releasing blue lights, and those drones looked new to her.
She wasn’t an expert on that subject, but it was impossible not to know a topic or two when she had someone like Liam as a partner.
“Ignore them. I’m just testing to see if I can replicate what Andrés does,” Liam said and, seeing that she was curious, he explained. “Basically, he employs other support AIs to boost his main AI and try to assimilate with it. It’s something unique, which I don’t think I can imitate, at least not completely. I fail to get the feeling he described to me.”
Aurora nodded half-heartedly, understanding a little of what he was referring to.
‘Assimilating with his AI’ was for her, ‘becoming one with her sword’... Making it a part of her body, a well-known method and a step for great swordsmen.
So if she changed ‘sword’ to ‘AI’ then it was like turning it into a part of her body and Aurora, in that way, could understand what he meant.
“But did you manage to find anything?” she asked, focusing on the main point.
When they arrived at the hotel, she had gone to talk to the researchers who were in charge of analyzing the dimensional barrier defense and magical energy density.
In every major city, there was a team of that kind of connoisseurs with the complete technology to take care of that job.
They were the ones who sounded the alarm in an area and warned when a creature or monster was about to appear.
That kind of equipment was vital in any city and was a basic requirement similar to ‘health’ or safety.
Something very normal when it was thought that, if a monster appeared and no one was warned, many people could die before reinforcements arrived.
“Sure,” Liam replied, and putting away all his drones, he got up.
They both headed to the living room and Aurora sat down next to Alice, who had chips and a book in her hands.
“May I ask what the investigators told you?” Liam asked in a professional tone.
“It’s not a natural thing. While the abyssal portal generates some instability in the dimensional barrier, it’s not to the point of unraveling it,” Aurora replied and, with a serious tone, counted. “Unless the portal becomes unstable, then it can cause grave dangers. ‘Weakening’ the dimensional barrier is the least that can happen. The worst would be to cause a tear that will allow monsters to enter.”
The researchers gave that warning, knowing that she was coming from the allied forces, simply wanting to convey their concern.
But that information was known, the same thing had happened in Japan when an abyssal portal was attempted to form and only generated a surface instability weakening the dimensional barrier.
The ‘tearing’ was what the top commanders of the allied forces were concerned about and was the cause of the allied forces not pressing the goblins.
The ‘dimensional barrier’ was a strange concept that they could not see, but by different means, they could feel it.
It was understood as the ‘barrier’ that protected their ‘world’ from all energies and, at the same time, from all other worlds.
Basically, an isolation that the Earth Gods maintained to prevent terrifying creatures and monsters from appearing.
Or worse, what more dangerous existences could come.
Terra nova allowed earthlings to obtain a lot of knowledge and some players got to obtain knowledge that a commoner or even a Terra nova nobleman would not get.
In this case, the knowledge about the dimensional barrier was free and, according to the experts, it covered the entire universe... Something difficult to prove because mankind was focused only on the interior of this planet.
Of course, it was not as if creatures appeared in space, on the moon, or on Mars, at least from what the satellites showed nothing strange had appeared.
The point was that beyond the dimensional barrier was the ‘Void’, which was permeated with energies of all kinds such as magical energy and, most importantly, ‘Chaos’.
If a tear was caused, depending on the size would be the level of monsters that could enter this world.
“The researchers informed me that while there has been an increase in magical energy, whatever is causing this phenomenon only points to monsters going in,” Aurora added in a serious tone.
That in itself was strange and a team of investigators along with the relevant Romanian authorities were already looking into the cause, with the idea of what the hell was causing it.
They were here to lend a hand, too.
Liam nodded as if he had discovered that information before she did.
“Some acquaintances from Greece passed me some local information about some gangs. I finished infiltrating their networks and holographic clocks a while ago and have found some traces,” said the man calmly.
Without waiting for her to insist, he transmitted the report to both their holographic clocks for them to read.
The odd thing about the information he had shared was not that some gangs had some dirty dealings with the local police, but that a gang once received a shipment at the port that had a strange machine in it.
There was a photo attached, according to Liam, someone took the photo and sent it to whoever hired it whose contact was lost.
However, that gang member deleted the photo superficially and not permanent, which meant that Liam could find it at this time.
In this modernized world, most people used electronic media, which made someone like Liam a scary person.
It was an illegal job, and for that reason; Urfin sent them.
“Send the photo to the Zerzura authorities and ask the army to help me take a look to see what that machine is all about. Also, send a report to Urfin of what you found. Show him everything,” Aurora ordered earnestly.
This wasn’t just happening here, but in other cities near Constanta City, the same thing was happening.
Only, unlike some mercenaries like them, the others were restricted by laws and had to follow a procedure when acting.
Infiltrating a citizen’s personal network was totally and completely illegal unless there was an official order given by the judge.
However, it was for that reason that Urfin, instead of waiting for the authorities to take over, asked her group to take over the mission, mentioning Liam in the process.
She wanted to get it over with quickly and prevent it from becoming a complex situation where allied forces were threatened from two sides.
In this case, she was no heroine and her values were set on her targets... Besides; she received an order from her bosses, so even if she got into trouble, she wouldn’t get in trouble.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Liam wasn’t someone who was easily caught, if it was that way then he wouldn’t be with them... Thinking about that, Aurora remembered her past and realized that he was with them because he was caught before.
Though in that sense Liam right now was more skilled compared to years ago.
“How about I send it to Cosmos Enterprise to have them take a look at it?” Liam asked and with a smile, he reported. “I have acquaintances who will help me.”
Hearing that question, Aurora thought of Kairos, whom she had forgotten to send messages to due to constant work.
This was a good opportunity to send him a message first, but having that thought, she resisted, as asking him for a favor would not be a good start.
Strangely, though, she sensed he would be happy...
“Boss?” asked Liam back as he saw her in a daze and, with a worried tone, he asked. “Is something wrong?”
Alice was also watching her intently.
While Liam didn’t know that there was someone in her head who talked in texts and called herself a system, he understood that occasionally she would get stunned and bring up good ideas.
Seeing that even Alice was watching intently, even though she looked at her funny every time she talked about her system, Aurora controlled her expression.
“It’s all right. Just do it and when Urfin responds, we’ll see what he says before we act,” Aurora said, looking somewhat serious.
If Alice came to ask her when she was alone, she would no doubt blame her system... Inside, she was too embarrassed to say she was thinking about a young man.
Liam nodded calmly and went to his room.
Aurora let out a sigh of relief.
She understood that people who were closer to her, like Liam, noticed strange things.
Their ‘stupors’ and the capability of their system, which sometimes looked like a fully equipped support team, were far from what one person could do.
So it was normal for them to start doubting her at that point.
—And you’re a bad liar, too.
Her system gave her comment in text in her mind and even though it felt like there were no emotions, it carried a clear dissent at her excuse, blaming him.
Looking at Alice, who looked at her curiously, wanting to know what she thought, Aurora agreed with her system.
She was also a very bad liar.
The previous atmosphere passed rather quickly as Liam started using the holographic clock.
The mission they had was to find the cause of the monsters appearances and, if they were caused by demons, to catch them.
For that, Aurora asked Liam to come along.
Liam was not only someone who was connected to the underworld, but he was in contact with information networks of different nations.
Perhaps some networks were big enough to only be in the major cities, however, there were always smaller information networks that could be useful.
“There are many people in the city,” Liam muttered without avoiding looking around the surroundings of the city.
Mangalia City was not as large as one would expect, but being a port city and being close to Constanta City, it could be considered a growing city.
It took less than an hour to arrive from Constanta City and that showed the closeness of the two cities.
However, the number of people was now noticeable at a glance, and a large part of them were mercenaries and adventurers who were not accepted into the army.
It wasn’t as if they volunteered for work, most of them were paid to go and participate in the abyssal portals.
For Aurora, it was nothing unusual when her group was paid as members of the official forces of the Falion Empire.
Even though the abyssal portal still had an unknown threat level, it wasn’t to the point where people volunteered.
It wasn’t as if there weren’t that kind of people, but it wasn’t a majority.
“I’d like to feel at ease, but are they waiting for the allied forces to lose, or is it just out of curiosity?” Liam hesitated seriously.
Aurora drove slowly deeper into the city, following the map on her GPS, but her gaze was on the crowd.
It was hard to pinpoint what the cause was.
Maybe the adventurers or mercenaries thought that at some point the allied forces will have trouble and decide to hire them or maybe they expected to be hired to keep the calm around or they just came looking for some opportunities.
“I think...”
Before Alice could respond, the alarm immediately sounded, and the common people started to evacuate.
Cars pulled into the street and into the safety zone of the buildings.
“A quick evacuation,” Aurora muttered as she stopped the car and parked it.
She didn’t move to look for the creature as it appeared about twenty meters from her position.
A distortion in space slowly formed in the air, letting out a hint of ominous aura so prevalent in mutated creatures corrupted by ‘Chaos’.
“You may rest assured. I, Adala, the ‘Blue Tide’ have come to save you.”
At that moment, a voice rang out and from the sky, a young woman descended as a glow faintly emanated from her.
If she were wearing metallic armor, what they observed they would think was from the sun, but that young woman was wearing tight-fitting clothing that highlighted her curves giving her a touch of sensuality, but at the same time a unique sense of confidence and the fluttering cape gave her a very ordinary ‘superhero’ feel.
The wind pushed the blue hair of the woman in her early twenties as she gave a smile to the group and getting others to pull out cameras to record.
A drone could also be seen following her to record.
“You don’t have to worry. I’ll help you,” Adala said with a friendly smile.
Alice just ate some chips as if she was watching a show and Liam looked at his holographic watch casually, making it seem as if time by stopping had been wasted.
“Thank you,” Aurora replied with a polite smile.
Denying the feeling that at some point she too wish to be a ‘heroine’ that came from the sky... And she ended up being one in an equally flashy style.
Sure, helping her group was just a joke, all three of them could be considered S-Ranks and despite her using her sword when necessary, she was confident in her strength.
Adala’s expression quivered at that look, but since she was on camera, she turned and looked at the creature that had just appeared.
“A B-Rank,” Liam muttered and, whispering under his breath, asked. “Boss, are we getting paid if we waste our time like this?”
Adala, who had come from the sky, had a personal title and that meant she was an S-Rank, but right now she found herself looking at the creature seriously.
What had appeared was a bear with sharp black claws, eyes full of madness, and jaws with too many fangs.
Aurora elbowed Liam, who retreated silently, like a scolded child.
That man commented on purpose and loudly enough for Adala to hear it and shiver in annoyance.
So it was a well-deserved elbow.
Alice let out crunches of potato chips as she laughed softly.
Only Aurora remained serious, trying to give her the proper respect due Adala, who reminded her a bit of her time as a teenager.
“Grrrr!”
“Die!” Adala declared, waving her hand and creating a sphere of water around the bear.
The bear was large and heavy, but the sphere of water covered it completely and even though the creature had mutated and transformed into a monster, it still had qualities of an animal.
That meant it needed to breathe and could drown.
In the end, the creature drowned in the waiting, and when the water that made up the sphere disappeared, it fell to the ground.
Adala kept the corpse in her space ring and gave a smile. Those who applauded then directing her looking at her for the last time revealed an annoyed expression as she realized that Aurora was the only one who nodded with a smile.
Without causing any public trouble, she disappeared completely.
“With all this show, I just lost valuable minutes of work,” Liam muttered, shaking his head in disappointment.
When Aurora gave him a look, and he hid in the car laughing, amused.
******
Walking into a room in the apartment they rented, Aurora watched Liam, who had already settled in.
“So how’s it going?” Aurora asked curiously.
Liam had taken a full room to himself and he was in one corner in a computer chair as he watched various screens set up.
Across the corner were square drones releasing blue lights, and those drones looked new to her.
She wasn’t an expert on that subject, but it was impossible not to know a topic or two when she had someone like Liam as a partner.
“Ignore them. I’m just testing to see if I can replicate what Andrés does,” Liam said and, seeing that she was curious, he explained. “Basically, he employs other support AIs to boost his main AI and try to assimilate with it. It’s something unique, which I don’t think I can imitate, at least not completely. I fail to get the feeling he described to me.”
Aurora nodded half-heartedly, understanding a little of what he was referring to.
‘Assimilating with his AI’ was for her, ‘becoming one with her sword’... Making it a part of her body, a well-known method and a step for great swordsmen.
So if she changed ‘sword’ to ‘AI’ then it was like turning it into a part of her body and Aurora, in that way, could understand what he meant.
“But did you manage to find anything?” she asked, focusing on the main point.
When they arrived at the hotel, she had gone to talk to the researchers who were in charge of analyzing the dimensional barrier defense and magical energy density.
In every major city, there was a team of that kind of connoisseurs with the complete technology to take care of that job.
They were the ones who sounded the alarm in an area and warned when a creature or monster was about to appear.
That kind of equipment was vital in any city and was a basic requirement similar to ‘health’ or safety.
Something very normal when it was thought that, if a monster appeared and no one was warned, many people could die before reinforcements arrived.
“Sure,” Liam replied, and putting away all his drones, he got up.
They both headed to the living room and Aurora sat down next to Alice, who had chips and a book in her hands.
“May I ask what the investigators told you?” Liam asked in a professional tone.
“It’s not a natural thing. While the abyssal portal generates some instability in the dimensional barrier, it’s not to the point of unraveling it,” Aurora replied and, with a serious tone, counted. “Unless the portal becomes unstable, then it can cause grave dangers. ‘Weakening’ the dimensional barrier is the least that can happen. The worst would be to cause a tear that will allow monsters to enter.”
The researchers gave that warning, knowing that she was coming from the allied forces, simply wanting to convey their concern.
But that information was known, the same thing had happened in Japan when an abyssal portal was attempted to form and only generated a surface instability weakening the dimensional barrier.
The ‘tearing’ was what the top commanders of the allied forces were concerned about and was the cause of the allied forces not pressing the goblins.
The ‘dimensional barrier’ was a strange concept that they could not see, but by different means, they could feel it.
It was understood as the ‘barrier’ that protected their ‘world’ from all energies and, at the same time, from all other worlds.
Basically, an isolation that the Earth Gods maintained to prevent terrifying creatures and monsters from appearing.
Or worse, what more dangerous existences could come.
Terra nova allowed earthlings to obtain a lot of knowledge and some players got to obtain knowledge that a commoner or even a Terra nova nobleman would not get.
In this case, the knowledge about the dimensional barrier was free and, according to the experts, it covered the entire universe... Something difficult to prove because mankind was focused only on the interior of this planet.
Of course, it was not as if creatures appeared in space, on the moon, or on Mars, at least from what the satellites showed nothing strange had appeared.
The point was that beyond the dimensional barrier was the ‘Void’, which was permeated with energies of all kinds such as magical energy and, most importantly, ‘Chaos’.
If a tear was caused, depending on the size would be the level of monsters that could enter this world.
“The researchers informed me that while there has been an increase in magical energy, whatever is causing this phenomenon only points to monsters going in,” Aurora added in a serious tone.
That in itself was strange and a team of investigators along with the relevant Romanian authorities were already looking into the cause, with the idea of what the hell was causing it.
They were here to lend a hand, too.
Liam nodded as if he had discovered that information before she did.
“Some acquaintances from Greece passed me some local information about some gangs. I finished infiltrating their networks and holographic clocks a while ago and have found some traces,” said the man calmly.
Without waiting for her to insist, he transmitted the report to both their holographic clocks for them to read.
The odd thing about the information he had shared was not that some gangs had some dirty dealings with the local police, but that a gang once received a shipment at the port that had a strange machine in it.
There was a photo attached, according to Liam, someone took the photo and sent it to whoever hired it whose contact was lost.
However, that gang member deleted the photo superficially and not permanent, which meant that Liam could find it at this time.
In this modernized world, most people used electronic media, which made someone like Liam a scary person.
It was an illegal job, and for that reason; Urfin sent them.
“Send the photo to the Zerzura authorities and ask the army to help me take a look to see what that machine is all about. Also, send a report to Urfin of what you found. Show him everything,” Aurora ordered earnestly.
This wasn’t just happening here, but in other cities near Constanta City, the same thing was happening.
Only, unlike some mercenaries like them, the others were restricted by laws and had to follow a procedure when acting.
Infiltrating a citizen’s personal network was totally and completely illegal unless there was an official order given by the judge.
However, it was for that reason that Urfin, instead of waiting for the authorities to take over, asked her group to take over the mission, mentioning Liam in the process.
She wanted to get it over with quickly and prevent it from becoming a complex situation where allied forces were threatened from two sides.
In this case, she was no heroine and her values were set on her targets... Besides; she received an order from her bosses, so even if she got into trouble, she wouldn’t get in trouble.
And as if that wasn’t enough, Liam wasn’t someone who was easily caught, if it was that way then he wouldn’t be with them... Thinking about that, Aurora remembered her past and realized that he was with them because he was caught before.
Though in that sense Liam right now was more skilled compared to years ago.
“How about I send it to Cosmos Enterprise to have them take a look at it?” Liam asked and with a smile, he reported. “I have acquaintances who will help me.”
Hearing that question, Aurora thought of Kairos, whom she had forgotten to send messages to due to constant work.
This was a good opportunity to send him a message first, but having that thought, she resisted, as asking him for a favor would not be a good start.
Strangely, though, she sensed he would be happy...
“Boss?” asked Liam back as he saw her in a daze and, with a worried tone, he asked. “Is something wrong?”
Alice was also watching her intently.
While Liam didn’t know that there was someone in her head who talked in texts and called herself a system, he understood that occasionally she would get stunned and bring up good ideas.
Seeing that even Alice was watching intently, even though she looked at her funny every time she talked about her system, Aurora controlled her expression.
“It’s all right. Just do it and when Urfin responds, we’ll see what he says before we act,” Aurora said, looking somewhat serious.
If Alice came to ask her when she was alone, she would no doubt blame her system... Inside, she was too embarrassed to say she was thinking about a young man.
Liam nodded calmly and went to his room.
Aurora let out a sigh of relief.
She understood that people who were closer to her, like Liam, noticed strange things.
Their ‘stupors’ and the capability of their system, which sometimes looked like a fully equipped support team, were far from what one person could do.
So it was normal for them to start doubting her at that point.
—And you’re a bad liar, too.
Her system gave her comment in text in her mind and even though it felt like there were no emotions, it carried a clear dissent at her excuse, blaming him.
Looking at Alice, who looked at her curiously, wanting to know what she thought, Aurora agreed with her system.
She was also a very bad liar.
