It did not take long before Markus was released, the cops able to confirm that he was simply a victim in this incident. Although Cass had removed the arms of the assailants, these were not entirely incurable injuries if one took the proper steps. This was thus deemed an acceptable use of force in the defense of another.
Once out of police custody, Markus once again attempted to leave the city via the road. This time, there was nobody that immediately tried to disturb him, and he could not sense himself being followed. That said, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched from somewhere, causing him to become more cautious as he traveled
The next city wasn’t far at all, only a couple dozen kilometers. It was a distance where one could see the other city just by standing on Ashtanu’s walls, and as such the road between the two was typically well-maintained. The act of bandits appearing along the roads was an anomaly, and they likely only had the courage to do so thanks to their concealment techniques. Had it not been for Cass’s timely intervention, they could have attacked Markus and fled before the soldiers arrived.
That was not to say that Markus was entirely defenseless. He had just won a magic tournament, after all. However, he was doing his best to avoid using his restriction spells for fear of his title regaining its original effect. The odds of him ever receiving another chance to have the Keeper personally edit one of his titles was practically nil.
Upon reaching his destination, Markus quietly made his way to the hotel where he had been staying recently. The places in the capital were always fully occupied when it came time for any of the God-Queen’s public events, so he usually chose to stay in the neighboring city and commute to watch the event. Besides, for someone with his physical ability, he could cover the distance between the two in just over an hour at a casual pace.
Once back in his hotel room, Markus let out a relieved sigh. He still had that sinking feeling of being watched, but assumed at this point it was merely his nerves playing tricks on him. After all, there was nothing else that appeared on his minimap the entire way back.
Moving over to the small table that the hotel provided, Markus summoned the book that the Keeper gave him. If he was going to be defending himself in the future without the use of his restriction spell, he would need to learn how to use this tome to its full effect. “He said that it held the domain of water. So…”
He looked around the room, retrieving a disposable glass from the cabinet. Holding up the tome, he focused on filling the glass with clear, drinkable water. A rather mundane use for a godly power, but would anyone really want him to test out something more destructive within city limits?
The cover of the book flipped open, revealing the blank first page. Golden light traced lines along the page, forming words and diagrams. Once the page had been filled, water rose from the bottom of the empty cup, causing Markus’s eyes to go wide.
He didn’t need to test the water itself, already trusting the book to have done what he wanted. Instead, he looked at the text on the book’s first page. This text did not appear in the common language, nor in the divine script. Instead, it was another language, one that seemed vaguely familiar to Markus.
Furrowing his brow, he activated his crystal terminal, and began to browse the internet to look for the source of the language. It did not take long for him to find it, as the language was well-documented despite its age, and still in use by a select group. The language of the dungeons, which had appeared with them since the earliest travels across the seas.
Markus used a lexicon of the dungeon language, and slowly managed to translate the page of text. Quite simply, it detailed step-by-step the process of determining the target container’s location and dimensions, and then filling it with drinking water. Even the diagrams only showed measurements for how ‘full’ it should leave the container.
“Okay, so I think of what I want to happen, and it writes the ability as a page in the book… wait.” Markus’s eyes went wide, and he began thumbing through the pages to count them. There was naturally a limit to how many pages a book could contain, and Markus wanted to clearly define that limit. “Five hundred… if we assume that the front and back of each page is used, I can have five hundred abilities. And I used one to make drinking water.”
He let out a groan when he realized that, immediately trying to will the book into erasing its first page. However, there was no response. Clearly, this first ability of his was here to stay. “Well, at least there’s worse things for me to have as a divine ability.” He muttered, shaking his head.
Five hundred powers with the water domain might seem like quite a lot. However, when one considered just how often gods used their domains in their daily life, it actually seemed to be a little lacking. “Let’s… just make sure that it’s reusable, and not going to make a new page every time.” Although it might mean sacrificing another page, he had to be sure.
Markus reached over, grabbing the glass and drinking the water within in one gulp. Afterwards, he held the book up again and repeated his earlier actions When the book flipped open, Markus felt a pang of dread. However, instead of moving to the second page, the book still stopped on the first, which depicted the divine power of ‘filling a container with water’.
Once he realized that this meant he had five hundred unique divine abilities at his disposal, he breathed out a sigh of relief. Although this still put him several steps short of a true god, it was more than enough to replace his old spell cards and protect his life. Now all he needed to do was to verify whether each page represented its own ability, or if some abilities would need multiple pages to record them…
The first week of my descent upon the world was far more… entertaining than I had originally expected. First of all, we spent a large portion of our digital time playing in Dana’s online game. After the first couple of days, we had even made a livable home there, where we could sleep and relax. Given that I was insisting on doing a lot of the manual labor myself, this actually netted me quite a number of levels.
On the other side of things, the news of the upcoming virtual reality gear sent a storm of hype throughout my territories. People from each and every world were signing up to purchase the device as soon as they could. After all, not only did it boast even higher realism, allowing one to actually train themselves as the previous generation, but it allowed one to remain within the game while handling their daily lives. This effectively doubled the amount of time they had in the day, as long as it was invested properly.
Finally, I decided to visit some more popular tourist sites together with Tsubaki and the others. While it was nice to visit the dwarven city on my own and just walk around within it… it did not feel as satisfying as sitting together with everyone and watching the tournament. The sites were great and all, but they seemed a bit empty when enjoying them alone.
Naturally, this meant that we gathered quite a bit of attention. Even if I personally didn’t try to be recognized, it was hard to disguise the other three. For a full week, the media was clamoring over where we were going next, and all the locations that we had been.
Whenever anyone asked, I just answered that this was a family outing, and that I considered each of the people working for me as I would my own family. There was no romantic involvement, and I just wanted to enjoy my time with the people I cared about.
Originally, I had wanted to use that as a way of discretely asking the media to stop bothering us, but that only made them more eager to pry into our social life. Dana, of course, found it hilarious, commenting in private that I really didn’t know how to deal with reporters. And to be fair, she wasn’t exactly wrong.
“Listen, the more you tell them, the more they want to hear. Even if you try to say you don’t want to talk about it, that just makes them more curious.” She insisted with a wide grin. “Why do you think people came up with the simple phrase ‘no comment’. It’s the one phrase that reporters hate hearing the most. Of course, if they’re really bothering you, we could just have them fired.”
Seeing Dana’s impish grin, I knew she was only joking, and that she was fully aware I wouldn’t go to such lengths. “Let’s just focus on enjoying ourselves, alright?” I asked with a shake of my head. “Are you all set for the big release tonight?”
Dana shrugged her shoulders at that, clearly expecting the change in subject. “As ready as I’ll ever be, boss. Are you still planning to do a big event?”
I gave a small nod, letting out a deep sigh. “That’s right. Since I’m making my presence public for the time being, it feels only fitting. I’ve already arranged it with Ashley. Once the Virtual servers go live, we can begin. Afterwards, we can run back to our little base and get back to work.” I cracked a small grin upon saying that, causing Dana to laugh once again.
“Sounds about right! I’ve still got to walk you through the next step of engineering, and help you set up your own mining bot.” Dana’s grin was easily enough to let me know that I was in for a rather painful lesson once we returned.
The two of us were simply relaxing in the lounge of the citadel, with Lifre off somewhere playing with the divine tome, and Tsubaki happily cleaning the halls. After having watched Markus experiment with the book that I gave him, I more or less understood how to activate them. They were simple enough, though each had their own limit to the amount of divinity stored within, and could only slowly recharge.
The fact that the books were written in English was not something that I had been expecting, though. However, I realized that it made sense after giving it some thought. After all, I was the one that ultimately made the books, and English was still my native language. Even if I had a powerful translation feature as the Keeper, that had not changed.
“Anyways…” Dana began, her grin never leaving her face. “I got something while I was out earlier. I figured that it could commemorate our time out in the town.”
After she said that, a large, framed canvas rose from her shadow. When I saw the scene depicted on it, I couldn’t help but smile softly. It wasn’t really anything all that special. Simply the four of us sitting down for a meal in a public restaurant. However, we were all smiling as we talked, waiting for our food.
Of course, the tables around us were all empty. Despite my insistence, the owner completely cleared out his own establishment while we ate. The food was… well, it was quite good, though I would not rate it above Tsubaki’s cooking. Even so, the act of grabbing a meal together like that was something that I had not done since my early days of being a Keeper, far before I ever even met Tsubaki.
I gave a nod, looking at the framed picture. Dana had clearly acquired it from a reporter, and prepared it to be mounted on the wall as soon as she saw it. “Do you have anywhere in mind for it?”
When she heard that question, Dana blinked in surprise, tapping her chin. “The hallway just past the throne room would probably be a decent place. The pictures there are all centuries old anyways, and we’d be the only one seeing it. I mean really, you haven’t updated the decorations here since the place was created, have you?” She asked playfully, her own eyes turning to look at the painting. In reality, she was right, but that was because the citadel had always been their home, not just mine.
“Well, if you all want to redecorate, you can feel free.” I promised with a nod, watching her grin grow just slightly wider at that idea. I was definitely not going to regret that, right?
