Chapter 834 – Remior’s golden century – Space travel (Patreon)

The stadium occupied most of the district, its sleek pale walls painting a stark contrast against the dark streets, sidewalks and smaller buildings surrounding it. Placing the venue in a black district had made sense, as those were best known for their rich nightlife and heavy focus on entertainment. Painting the structure with the opposite colour had been a purely stylistic choice, though Percy didn’t disapprove.

The stadium was admittedly not as large as the ones they had on Marador Prime or Thess’kala. And there were only two such buildings on Remior, which the eight regional tournaments had to share, since it would have been a waste of time and resources to build more. Still, Percy was extremely proud of what his people had accomplished in a mere century.

The protective enchantments weren’t perfect, since they had all been drawn by mortal hands, which was why nobody above Violet was allowed to participate in the tournaments. Even Violets had to fight somewhat carefully to avoid hurting themselves or the audience. That was something that Percy hoped to change eventually, as he didn’t want to rob the strongest mortals of the opportunity to hone their combat skills in a safe environment. Especially because the majority of people would eventually be spending most of their life in the higher grades.

However, Percy had also insisted on introducing divisions for the lower grades.

Unlike the people of the Void Hand, even Red-borns on Remior could potentially attain divinity. Percy felt that allowing Yellows and Greens to compete was a good way to discover talents early, give the people more sources of entertainment, and the weaker mages a chance to earn rewards and resources.

‘The only thing we’re missing are actual gods,’ he thought with a sigh. ‘I guess we’ve always known that it would take time for all the changes to trickle up to the Concept realm, but it’s a little disappointing that we haven’t had a single new apotheosis over the past century.’

He tried not to feel too bad about it. Even the most talented of the Order’s demigods that he’d given second cores, Cradles and Gloomy Dawn to had only recently caught up to their first affinities, so they’d lacked the time to comprehend new foundational concepts even if they’d been close to ascending before. At least, Percy had extended their lifespans and improved their odds of mastering one or both elements.

Upon nearing the gate, Percy noticed that there were no vehicles or mages flying so close to the stadium. He was pretty sure that this was a new rule, probably introduced for safety reasons or to facilitate the smooth operation of the events.

The foot traffic, on the other hand, was ridiculous. Evidently, Percy wasn’t the only wise would-be spectator trying to skip the advertisements.

‘Well… that’s a bit of an issue,’ he thought as he scanned the long, messy queue of people trying to enter the building.

The good news was that fewer people seemed to recognize him amidst the chaos, but he didn’t like his chances of making it inside on time. Not that anyone would complain if he cut in front of them or flew over the wall. In fact, the handful of people who had recognized him tried to open a path, but he shook his head to stop them. Percy didn’t like abusing his status for every minor inconvenience, as it set a bad example.

Just as he was evaluating the possibility of phasing a Percy-shaped sentry into the stadium, a human-sized portal opened beneath his feet. He’d naturally sensed the willpower and space mana accumulating long before the hole formed, but he allowed himself to fall, trusting its creator completely.

This was still technically cutting in line, but he wasn’t delaying anyone else’s entry or violating the safety rules. He just had to make sure to plug the portal behind him with his willpower to prevent anyone from losing a foot as it closed.

“Thanks for the rescue,” Percy said with a sheepish grin upon landing inside the slightly less busy corridor on the other side of the gate.

He was greeted by the graceful sight of his girlfriend, who wore a long black dress and a matching pair of strappy heels. Her attire was a version of her chainmail, shapeshifted into fashionable clothes through the much thinner bracelet on her wrist, though the individual rings were so small that they looked like fabric. And each tiny piece contained enough compressed space to bring a building down if it were to explode. Her dress, shoes, bracelet, and even her black-painted fingernails, toenails, and shoulder length wavy hair all glittered with starlight, making her look like a fairy plucked right out of the night sky.

“Cutting it a bit close, don’t you think?” she asked with a pout before grabbing his hand and dragging him along.

“Hey, it’s not like I missed any of the actual match!” he protested, albeit weakly. “Just the ads.”

“Thanks to me,” she corrected him. Percy didn’t need his sensory domain to know that she had rolled her eyes. “You’d still be outside if I hadn’t come looking for you. Besides, half of those advertisements are for gadgets that my department holds the patents for. You should show more support.”

Percy could only shrink back as he got chastised by his girlfriend, though the admonishment ended a bit sooner than he was expecting.

“Is that it? Nothing about the missed calls or the fact that I nearly forgot about the tournament?”

She chuckled. “Percy, I’m not going to get mad at you for losing yourself in the lab. I know how hard you’ve been working for everyone’s sake.”

“I recall you singing a slightly different tune last week,” he reminded her.

“You can’t be seriously comparing the two situations!” she quipped. “It was Mordred’s wedding, and you hadn’t seen him or Galahad in years!”

Percy couldn’t help but scratch the back of his head, thinking that she had raised a good point. Besides, Nesha was just as busy as he was, yet had always been more responsible than him about those things.

She was the head of Remior’s Magiscript Department, with Periphetes as her second in command. She was the one who had personally spearheaded the rWatch and teleportation platform projects, among countless others. She’d also been working on the spacecrafts and long-range teleportation platforms that Percy had requested, albeit with limited success.

Interstellar teleportation platforms were several times harder to build. There was nothing wrong with the quality of Remior’s materials and enchantments, but the runes had to be drawn by a god’s hand. Hephaestus – the Divine Order’s most skilled enchanter – had enthusiastically adopted the Vault’s magiscript and volunteered to help with the projects, but sadly didn’t possess the right affinity for the job. While every deity was capable of some level of spatial compression, Nesha’s requirements were higher.

She had faced similar issues with the spaceships.

She had technically created working prototypes that were safe enough to use and contained all the necessary enchantments for self-maintenance and life-support – provided that they were boarded by one of Percy’s clones and continuously supplied with mana through the cords. The vehicles could even accelerate to about ten percent of the speed of light in a reasonable timeframe, shield themselves from debris, and perpetually apply a modest degree of spatial compression in front of their hull to vastly increase their effective speed.

The problem was that the machines were still too slow, despite all of Nesha’s efforts. Even the fastest ones would need a decade to reach the nearest solar system, and they’d have to travel a lot farther than that to be useful. The spacecrafts would also be defenceless against space bandits, as even the weakest deity would be an insurmountable opponent for a group of mortals trapped in a glorified box.

That said, Nesha hadn’t been deterred.

Having temporarily given up on interstellar teleportation, she’d turned her sight to interplanetary platforms. The spaceships were more than fast enough to ferry people across Remior’s solar system, and Nesha felt a lot more confident about her ability to eventually link their world to the six other planets neighbouring their own.

The gods had technically always been capable of reaching the nearby worlds with ease, but they still couldn’t set foot on them without awakening the slumbering Ancients. According to Phoebe, before gathering information from the wider universe, the first human deity who had managed to leave Remior had made the fatal mistake of landing on the nearest planet. Luckily, other Concept mages on Remior had watched the attempt and learned how to avoid their colleague’s grim fate.

The other planets in the solar system were lifeless, so it was difficult to safely deploy demigods to them, and there had never been much of a reason to bother. However, magiscript had given Nesha’s department more options, and she felt that colonizing and mining the planets for magical metals would help with the department’s growing needs on top of providing her with precious experience.

“What would I do without you?” Percy asked, though the question was mostly aimed at himself.

Before his girlfriend could reply, he leaned forward to give her a quick peck on the neck, only for her to playfully push him back with a look that said, ‘wait until tonight.’

Percy had been worried that Nesha would lose her drive after achieving her revenge, but he had been relieved to discover that the exact opposite was true. Following the war, his girlfriend had only grown more passionate about magiscript and their life together, the final set of chains tying her to her past having shattered with Machaon’s death.

Percy hadn’t proposed to her, because neither of them believed that marriage would change their relationship in any meaningful way. They’d also been way too busy to even consider having a child over the past century – much to a lot of people’s growing frustration – yet Percy could hardly imagine a future that didn’t involve Nesha.

His only hope was that she would become Remior’s first space deity one day, and not just because of all the things that she would be able to do for their world.

He didn’t want to lose her – or any of his other friends and relatives. He knew that attaining divinity was hard, but he felt that the second cores, Cradles, Gloomy Dawn and first-generation tea that he had given them had extended their lifespans enough for everyone to have a real shot at it. Passing them the effects of the Divine Spark mutation should also help them comprehend their foundational concepts, but Percy would have to station clones in their bodies for millennia for that to work.

‘I should try to get them all to the right Elemental Sources for their affinities at some point,’ he decided. ‘Just to be sure.’

Percy was broken out of his thoughts when they reached the VIP section in the front row of the stadium, where they ran into a few familiar faces.