Chapter 518 - Exoria deployment camp

Tess, Lily, and I return to our current base, where everyone is already waiting—packed up and seated in my trademarked manabloc Chairs v3.1. We join them.

I let a minute pass before saying, “So, second front?”

“I’m thinking, Nat.” Tess waves me off.

“What do you mean by the second front!?” As expected, Sophie is the first one to complain, “You said we would be going to the 6th.”

“I know, Soph. It seems something changed on the 2nd front and they need the Champion there.” Tess seems really frustrated; she is often like that when things don’t go according to plan. Her frustration is shown as she plays with her pointing finger, tapping on the back of her other hand.

“We could still reject, or just run away. I don’t think they would hunt us down just to force us to join them,” I remind her.

“I know, I know. Rejecting would be easy too—I can tell them we expected to move to the 6th front. But I’m thinking if we should or if the danger outweighs what we could gain there. It’s also possible that we won’t even fight and will stay in base because it’s the 2nd front. We could also specify in the contract that we will be registered as non-combatants.”

“It is also possible the Champion-grade monster attacks the base,” Aaron points out.

“Yes,” Tess agrees, then groans in frustration. “I had everything planned out so nicely—the sixth front, the fourth front in a few weeks, gathering more information, some hunts, and all that.”

“We can split too. Just I will go there to help technicians, and you guys can go somewhere else,” I say.

Tess’s reaction makes it clear she’d already thought of that. She just nods. “How about this: we all go and sign on as non-combatants for a few weeks. If we sense any danger, we’ll leave. We can even head to the eighth floor if it gets to be too much.”

No one seems to have a better idea or is against this one.

“I will go with you to sign the contract.” Sophie stands up. “And I swear, Tess, if they try to push us into anything else other than that, we will be rejecting it.”

“Deal.”

***

The signing goes smoothly, and there’s even a salary offered—mostly materials, items, information, and the like. I leave the others to handle it, as I’m not interested in any of that.

There isn't much slacking around as we leave the camp together with three lumorans and head towards where the rest of the Champion’s group is. We reach it after 15 minutes, in what feels like the middle of nowhere.

I sense around 100 mana signatures—about half of them comparable to ours, and in many cases even stronger. Ten of them, in particular, stand out as especially powerful, likely close to or just over level 400. All of them gathered to support that one Champion, with all these men and women at his disposal.

That one signature that shines the brightest within the camp.

I don’t touch anyone with my senses directly; all this information is mostly collected from the air, where remains of their presences hang.

In the middle of the camp, there is a huge square tent with a pointy roof. It is tall enough to fit a pretty high apartment building inside, and damn, I swear it has one of the best defenses I’ve seen until now. Just looking at it with my eyes sneakily activated makes my gaze haze at the edges. All these mana threads, circuits, nodes, spirals, arrays, layered reactive barriers, and much more.

There are two slightly smaller, but still big tents, and around them dozens of smaller ones, all with similar defenses, but not to that extreme. The same as the biggest one, they are white and feel transparent even if they are not. It’s a weird, unsettling feeling. Do they do some stuff to merge with the environment? To hide themselves or something?

As two of the Lumorans split off, the remaining one turns to us. “I’m Quent, level 8 technician and assistant to Exalia Overseer Ito, level 9 technician.”

He points his finger at me, the twins, and Sophie, “You, you, you, and you will become assistants under level 7 technician, Leth.”

I force myself to start remembering the names and put the questions away, just nodding. The twins and Sophie nod after a while.

Quent seems satisfied, “Lady Healer Lily will join Lord Champion’s healing squad, with the rest of your guild serving as her assistants, companions, or protectors. As noted in the contract, none of you will be leaving the camp, and you will be stated as non-combat units under the Exoria deployment camp.”

With that, we enter the camp, heading towards one of the smaller tents.

“I’m Sarabeth, third in command and the one responsible for the defense of Exoria deployment camp,” the lumoran woman introduces herself.

Yet another name to remember.

We introduce ourselves in a similar way, and then together with Quent they register us, also giving us that circular mark with a thumb imprint in the middle on the inner side of our left wrists. It burns like ice for a while, and I examine the mark itself. It seems to take a bit of our mana signature as identification, and after confirming it, charges it into a circular crystalline structure, causing it to vibrate in a very specific way.

I’ll need to examine it further, but I already like it. The way Sarabeth presented it to us is a clear display of skill. The fact that she’s third in command, likely after Champion Feroy and someone else, speaks volumes as well.

Level 400? Higher? A bit lower? Would it be considered too rude to ask? Most likely. That’s unfortunate, I want to know.

“This will be your group’s tent. Your identification marks will allow you to enter it. Later, we will add more locations to the mark as needed. But if you try to enter any you are not meant to, you might be killed without question. Please make sure to remember that. Any modification to the tent’s arrays is not allowed. Leaving the proximity of the camp is not allowed and could trigger reactive defenses leading to your death. You can take a short rest, and in a few hours someone will stop by to lead you to your tasks if required.”

With these words, Quent leaves.

I look around inside our tent. Even though it looked transparent from the outside, inside it has walls made out of thick, canvas-like material. These walls are supported by metallic rods. The flooring is made of polished, compressed stone, likely created by some stone manipulator.

There are multiple rooms as well, so calling it a small tent might be wrong. It’s more akin to a small house. Even the furniture is here, mostly wood, nicely shaped, all of it looking as if made from a single piece without any nails or connections.

I quite like the style, so the same as the others, I walk around, exploring it. Pretend-to-be-sleeping Biscuit is obviously in my arms, and I notice him curiously sniffing when he thinks I’m not paying attention.

When I pet his small head, his tiny tail twitches as if to wag from side to side, but he catches himself and stops mid-movement, his body tensing up.

“When they use us for that Champion’s armor maintenance, do you want to try to take it over and take it for a ride?” Dennis joins by my side and showers me with questions. “Do you think it’s in that huge tent? Is it simple armor? Is it as big as a building? You can make something like that with your mana, so it must be at least that big and more powerful, right?”

His brother blocks me from the other side so I can’t escape, “Nat, I’m serious now. We need to learn a lot and build similar armor for us. I want my own Gundam.”

“It sounds fun, so why not if there’s an opportunity and time.”

“Ha! I knew you’d think the same way!” Aaron, unfittingly for him, acts carelessly, tapping my shoulder with a happy smile on his face, “What do you want in exchange?”

I give that a bit of thought but can’t come up with anything currently, “We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Sophie comes closer when I gesture at her, and we all put our heads together as I say, “Remember as much as you can. Dennis and Aaron, collect and store as much info as you can. Sophie, make your memory pockets, or however you call it, and do the same. They surely won’t show the most important parts, but even these pieces of information will be helpful. For the Gundam for Aaron, for your golem and bond, Sophie, and for my Regalia.”

“Do you really want to call it Regalia? After that skill? Isn’t that lame?”

“Shut up, Soph, it’s a cool name!” Dennis quickly defends me and pokes her, which gets an irritated noise from her. He turns to me, “Does this mean we will be getting less training?”

For that, he gets a look full of disappointment from Aaron, who knows how I will answer.

“Hell no,” I reply. “Since we’re in the camp and not fighting monsters for now, we’ll use this time to train harder. I have a lot of things I want to test.”

***

As promised, we are brought outside a few hours later and led towards one of the bigger tents near the three biggest ones in the middle.

There are small entrances to the side, and we enter inside through them. Instead of the near eerie silence we heard outside, it’s noisy here, as these sounds were blocked from exiting. The sound of powerful flames burning, metal clanging, people shouting at each other, chains rattling, water sizzling. There is a lot of concentrated mana in the air, the temperature is higher, and the air smells like metal, oil, and something hard to describe.

Our guide this time is someone who introduced himself as level 7 technician Leth, the one we will be working under as his assistants. Like all lumorans, he has black skin, crystalline features on the sides of his neck and on his shoulders. His hair is pale yellow, and his eyes are golden. He also likes to smile a lot, excitedly showing us the inside of the tent.

“You have access to this. We temporarily call it Workshop Number Three! Workshop Number One is taken by level 9 technician Ito, and Workshop Number Two is for level 8 technicians only. This is where I work, and you will be helping me as much as you can!”

Me, the twins, and Sophie just nod, to his amusement. “Don’t worry! The shyness will go away soon. There is no time for these things here when there is so much work to do!”

He gestures for us to follow, and we do so, soon stopping near two more lumorans, each of them having a small group with them. One of these groups consists of three thylarin—two men and one woman. They are pale blue, each with four arms that are very muscular, unlike most thylarin I saw previously.

Leth, after greeting the two lumorans, comes closer and explains in a quieter voice, “These are two more mercenary groups like yours, each led by a level 7 lumoran technician like me.”

He gestures at the thylarin group, “That trio seems very interesting. They have experience working on armament-type equipment. One of them possesses a fragment of eternal fire, so that helps!”

Our eyes move to the other group and Leth continues in a similar manner, “That one is more experienced. We already worked with them before, and even level 9 technician Ito liked them.”

That group consists of a vyssari woman, a human man, and a tall man who is probably multiple heads taller than even Jean was—one of that giant-like race.

There is a feeling of competitiveness when I catch looks from the thylarin group, but the second group seems disinterested and confidently follows their lumoran technician to their corner of the tent.

We follow Leth as well until we reach a piece of metal that towers toward the ceiling of the tent. It’s as thick as I am, and its inner side is covered with a layer of different metal than the surface. There are inscriptions etched into it, each etching as deep as the length of my finger. There are even channels made of mana-conductive metals, leading to nodes of inscriptions.

Most of all, it reminds me of a shoulder guard. A shoulder guard for something very big.

“This is a replacement part only, but let’s see what you guys can do!”

***

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