LTSV - Harbingers of Change - 20 (Patreon)

Mira was fed and showered by the time anyone came looking for her. Adra had parked his Mason body on the sofa where Mira could lean against him while she ate. At one point, he turned on the television and tuned it to a security feed that showed the office where he, in the Illya body, was wrapping up contract negotiations. She was pleased to note there were the remains of some box lunches set aside on the big stone desk so they'd gotten something to eat too.

"…so we're agreed and signed. That's great," Alan was saying while angrily pacing. He pointed in the direction that she'd been dragged off in. "Now are you going to explain what the fuck that was and why we are letting it happen?"

"Mira's guardian needed to speak with her privately as soon as she returned from the Dungeon," Adra explained, while also looking subtly unhappy. "Her legal status is—complicated."

"Yeah, we know about the conservatorship," Alan snapped. Cece was standing nearby with her arms crossed over her chest and she nodded for emphasis. "It came up when she tried to access the System Shop."

"You…" Adra replied, looking genuinely blank.

In the penthouse, he opened his eyes and lifted his head to give Mira an incredulous look.  

"The System says its honoring as many of our laws as it can," she explained shortly and returned her attention to the screen, leaving him to put his Mason body back on standby.

"…that makes the explanation less complicated, at least," Adra continued, on screen. "We were able to persuade her father to sign a contract granting limited authority over her to Mason since he is a stakeholder of Living Shadow. Mason is a problematic man, but the worst he's ever been to her is inconsiderate."

"Hah, lies," Mira sighed, thinking of that out-of-place pill cup and the syringe that the original Mason had brought into Samira's hospital room. Well, he'd gotten what he deserved, but this was a good reminder that she couldn't get so distracted by this Dungeon nonsense that she forgot about the more mundane problems she'd inherited in this life. That crap wasn't going to go away just because she was busy.

"Is that true, Cece?" Alan asked. "You seem to have all the insider information here."

"I wouldn't call him a good option…" Cece muttered. "…but her parents don't let her eat or sleep through the night when she's at home or they'll tell her to stay somewhere else for a while and then call the police to report her missing. Then they tell all their friends she's a troubled junkie so they won't listen if she asks for help. It's not exactly subtle, but it's also the kind of thing no one believes you if you complain about it—not unless you're there when it's happening. I do think she has a lot of accidents when Mr. Dietrich is around, though." She looked up and met Adra's eyes. "Too many accidents."

Oh, someone else had been keeping score too.

"I'm having him watched," Adra replied without looking away. "Mira is a dear friend of mine and I am not being careless with her safety."

"You already know her, then?" Randall interjected. He'd been leaning against the far wall, listening with his arms over his chest. "You and Blake Heron were both acting really familiar with her ever since we got out of the Dungeon. Until you told us about Mason Dietrich, I was assuming you were her mysterious fiance. Now you're calling her a 'dear friend.'"

"She is a dear friend," Adra repeated. "Our personal relationship is irrelevant to this conversation. Regarding Blake Heron, he will have heard about her unique class. I'm given to understand that he approached her guardian to recruit her for Sun Blade shortly after Mason signed her to Living Shadow."

"I don't think Mira actually said what her class is," Randall mused out loud. "She just explained what it does."

"All registered Guildmasters in the region get an alert when someone in their area is awarded an advanced class," Adra explained. "'Archmage' is a unique class that can only be held by one living Hunter per species. She is the only human spellcaster who can design new spells that are unique to the human race. She is an irreplaceable asset and the only reason she hasn't already been disappeared into a government bunker is because the System made it clear to the people in power that governmental abuse of the Hunters will result in our planet being censured by the Hunter Network. That means the System will disappear, but the Gates won't and we'll be left to fend for ourself. So, Blake Heron might not know her personally, but he knows of her."

Mira frowned. The System hadn't mentioned that her class was unique. Why was she having to learn about this secondhand? She sank into the couch and frowned. She didn't like that. The scenario felt too familiar and she didn't realize that she was rubbing her arms until Adra stirred at her side and shifted enough of his attention to the body next to her to catch her by the wrists.

"What's wrong?" he asked, frowning. On screen, Adra asked Randall a leading question and got him to start giving a long-winded recounting of their encounter in the Dungeon.

"This 'Archmage' business is too much like my first life," she said and then corrected herself, "The first life that I remember, anyway. Once again, I'm a limited resource and I've already been stripped of most of my civil rights through the conservatorship. I can see where this is going."

Adra kissed her forehead and pulled her into his side. "It will be different. You are already different."

"You said Virgil agreed to give you some custody over me," Mira said as she let herself be pulled into the embrace. "Exactly how did he do that?"

"It's not as much custody as I would have liked," Adra explained. He sounded a bit sour about it, actually. "He has the right to make decisions about your employment and I made use of that to secure your ability to live outside of his house. I ,as Mason, offered you a job at Living Shadow and Virgil agreed right away. Fortunately, I got there ahead of Heron. Virgil hadn't realized how your abilities could be monetized yet."

"Is that why you're using Mason as your 'business partner', then?" Mira cocked her head to look up at him and Adra nodded.

"I also needed some of his liquid capital to help buy out the building. His family has a fund they can all borrow from. The System has started to interfere with legal agreements and its interpretation of contract law is very literal. This will be good for most people, but limited what I could trick him into agreeing to. It forbade any clauses that it considered to be illegal or outside the purview of employment law. Virgil is still getting your paychecks and bonuses, but he agreed to you receiving the same benefits that will be available to all our employees."

"I take it we're about to become very generous employers?" she guessed.

"In fact, we won't be paying much of a salary at all for the first few years," Adra said. His eyes glinted yellow-red. "Our employees be compensated with room, board, healthcare, growth support, dependent care, and access to our facilities. I emphasized your potential earnings to Virgil, but he's going to be disappointed with what actually ends up in his bank account. Fortunately, the penalty clauses in your contract are brutal and he'd be on the hook for it all since he's your signatory."

Mira frowned. That served her needs perfectly well, but what about the others? Would they agree to those terms? "You'll be paying Cece and the boys better than that, right?"

Adra chuckled. "I'll show you the bonus structure once I'm done downstairs. It's based on Dungeon materials surrendered to the Guild. We can get better prices than selling directly to the System, so there will be incentive to do that. That's where I've hidden their income." He paused and frowned as Randall got to the bit about setting up for the Boss Fight. "You wrote your spells on the floor?"

Mira nodded. "The System is recording any spell I make and selling it in the specialty shop for spellcasters. I can't tell what my cut is because Virgil has me locked out of my System wallet, so I figured out how to make an end run around the System. That's what unlocked the Spell Primer for everyone else."

"Hmmm," Adra sank back against the sofa and returned his attention to his Ilya body, but she noticed that both his bodies twitched in irritation when the others told him about Andrei's loot hoarding and then when he stole the final hit on the Lantern Collector.

"…it sounds like there's more Dungeons nearby, if there is more than one Guild for us to choose from," Randall was saying. "How bad is it? Are there other hunters here, already?"

"The only Dungeon Break we know of, so far, happened near the Capitol Building in Union Point, which is why the army wasn't camped outside when you escaped. They're busy containing it and trying to secure the White House. There are four more Dungeons counting down to a Break in the Santa Estrella mountain range outside San Aurelio," the Adra on screen and in the office with them replied as he crossed the room to look out his floor to ceiling window to look out onto the bay.

Mira winced. It could have been a coincidence that a Gate opened right in the country's capitol city, but she was too paranoid to believe it. She got her phone out and did a search on Dungeon appearances. The results were just inconsistent enough to cast doubt about the Dungeons being strategically placed, but she did note that most of the world powers had ended up with a Dungeon in or near their Capitols. Her news feed was full of articles about hastily relocated governments and military forces being mobilized.

San Aurelio was actually on the low side for identified Dungeon concentrations. New Oranje, one of the major urban areas of the Eastern Seaboard, had identified seven Dungeons hidden among its five boroughs and two more across the river in Jersey.

It couldn't possibly be coincidental that the Gates had arrived in exactly such a way that the System could arrive on this world as a force of order in the face of a supernatural crisis, as opposed to an eldritch invader. So far, the dungeons were too perfectly positioned to wipe out major population centers. Mira still didn't know enough about this particular System to say for sure if it was someone else's bandaid solution for a wider problem.

"The Ruined Borough happened to have a fast countdown so you're the first Hunters to have escaped their Dungeon in this country. There's been news reports of at least two Dungeons that were stabilized before they broke open; one to the north in Cascadia and one just south of the border in Anahuac. The Union Point Dungeon had a rating of S. There just haven't been many Dungeons in the world with a deadlines as tight as yours."

They were going to see more Breaks before long.

Mira had suspected, while they were inside, that they were in a tutorial dungeon. It looked like not all of them were so nice. She doubted it was a coincidence that a serious Dungeon appeared right outside the home base of a major world power. Either something wanted to cut the head off their government and hadn't managed it or they wanted to be sure that the leadership of this world couldn't stick their head in sand, pretending nothing had happened.

She got out her phone and started searching 'Union Point Dungeon Break.'

Note: Here are some references for place names in this alternate North America setting because it's been a minute.

Faux USA: Alleghania, Capitol - Union Point

Faux Canada: Cascadia, Capitol - New Westminster

Faux Mexico: Anahuac, Capitol - Atempan