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Chapter 185- Terrible Weather
🕑 Added 2024-12-26 00:28:35 +0000 UTCChapter 1 of Book 5
Rain poured from the sky, cold heavy droplets that washed the world of joy, hope and all things pleasant. The sun shone brightly beyond the cloud cover, yet the frigid temperature mocked its attempts to warm the land. As far as British weather went, it was a perfectly ordinary autumn morning.
A small cottage sat at the top of a hill, surrounded by trees and foliage. It was a quaint building reminiscent of Victorian-style workmanship with a touch of more modern methods. Surrounded by a low wooden fence, the house seemed almost cut off from the rest of the world, a little slice of heaven free from the chaos and commotion of day-to-day life. If you were to ask the village locals about the cottage and its new resident, they would look at you strangely and give varying answers.
"The widow's cabin. It's been around for as long as I can remember. 'Bout time someone moved in." Or, "That haunted house. The old lady there used to give me the creeps. Can't believe she actually went and died. Thought she'd be there forever."
Except when you investigated further, you'd realise that no one remembered when the cottage had been built or ever even seeing it until the new resident moved in. It was a good thing then, for Arthur Ward, that the people of Mossley village cared little for strange mysteries. If it didn't concern them, then they'd leave secrets well alone. Life was difficult enough without going looking for trouble.
Arthur stepped out of the cottage and took a deep breath of fresh early morning air. He looked at his frosty exhale and then at the sun shining brightly in the sky. You might as well be there for decoration at this point. With how much his body had changed over the past few months, Arthur could sleep soundly in the most extreme of temperatures be it the icy tundra's of Antarctica or the scorching sands of the Sahara desert. That didn't make the weather any less depressing.
Arthur loved it.
There was something about rainy days and grey skies that made everything seem so mundane and ordinary. Arthur could do with some mundanity in his life. It had been ten days since the System message informing the world about the beginning of the second phase of integration had been broadcast. Ten days since the mother of all bounties had been placed on Arthur's head. He'd been adrift for a while when the severity of the situation hit him, quite literally in fact as he floated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
In the end, he'd decided to follow Iris' suggestion and use the jade token she'd left him. That had brought him to Mossley village, right outside the cottage that had become his new home. It was the best decision he'd made in the last six months. Arthur loved everything about England, or at least the little slice of it he'd found himself in. The homely village was worlds apart from the sprawling streets and towering skyscrapers of his former city.
Even the System's invasive touch felt muted here, courtesy to old man Tom, a retired Vet who'd adapted to ether like a fish to water. He was ranked 112th on the world's strongest list, which wasn't the highest but proved more than adequate to face any threats the small village faced.
In general, monsters of higher strength targeted larger population centres and the same rule applied with dimensional incursions. Of course, there were exceptions to this, like Wovan, who'd entered Earth in the middle of nowhere and the Harpy Queen who'd struck at the border between countries. That being said, Mossley Village experienced a level of peace and tranquillity few other places on Earth did, and whatever problems did crop up were quickly dealt with by old man Tom.
It was an interesting sight; people who had been touched by the magic of the new world and none of the tragedy. The villagers didn't view the System with the same jaded wariness everyone else did. They're cynical enough to make up for it, though. Arthur had lost count of the times people had tried to refuse free healing because they thought he was up to nothing good; though the fact that he'd tried to disguise his healing magic as an offshoot of his water affinity may have had something to do with it. Besides a few hiccups with his neighbours though, Arthur had nothing to complain about. I guess a Seer knows what's good for you.
Ten days had passed since the timed bounty had been placed on his head. He'd learned a little more about what that meant by purchasing some information from the System store. It had been expensive; ten thousand credits, the same price as a common weapon. Arthur didn't regret buying it though. He had the credits to spare and they'd do him no good if he ended up dead because he was too stingy to buy some information.
A timed bounty, thankfully, wasn't something created by the System. Arthur had felt a weight lift off his chest when he'd learned that. He hadn't broken System law and somehow become the enemy of all sapient-kind across the universe. No, a timed bounty was something noble families with sufficient authority could post as a quest, using the System as an intermediary to deliver the message to as many potential bounty hunters as possible. It cost an absurd amount of money to post, at least ten times the value of the reward being offered and was a limited privilege that could only be used once a decade.
As a native of a newly evolved planet, Arthur was offered certain protections too. Only one Timed Bounty could be placed upon him at any given time and it couldn't be done more than once a year. That meant that as long as he managed to survive the next forty-five days, he'd be safe from such System-approved machinations for the next year. Of course, he'd still have to deal with all the people who'd go after him illegally and those strong enough that System law didn't concern them, but that was a whole other can of worms. He'd deal with it when he had to.
So far, Arthur had managed to avoid any of the hunters who'd come after him. An image of his face had been plastered across the globe, though it was a picture of him taken last year from his student days. He'd changed significantly since then, lost some weight and put on some muscle. His face was more angular now, his cheekbones more prominent and his jawbone sharper. Only seven months had passed since that picture had been taken but he looked like an altogether different person.
It helped that all his monster core consumption had made him a lot taller. People were looking for someone a hair over five eleven, not someone who stood at six foot five. The main contributor to his continued freedom, however, were the hundreds of rituals Iris had worked into the cottage. There were so many of them, all layered together in a complex web of magic impossible to read, that Arthur had only managed to figure out the purpose of half a dozen of them. He knew they protected him from being scryed so long as he remained within five kilometres of the house and it also stopped seers from having any visions of him.
Arthur owed the fae princess so much at this point he didn't know how to repay her. Am I supposed to refer to her as a hell princess now? Arthur chuckled at the thought of how she'd react if he tried to. Unfortunately, his days of idyllic peace would most probably come to an end today. Five days ago, Earth's borders had been opened for visitation for the first time in history.
Aliens had flocked to every major city across the globe and dug their roots into the infrastructure of every government and country. Rules were preventing them from simply taking over, but most only followed the letter of the law, not the spirit. There was very little mankind could do when elves with centuries of experience politicking and the power bases to back it started to throw their weight around.
Mossley, being a small village nowhere important, had managed to remain free from any outside interference. That would come to an end today. The alien nobility, who had settled in the nearest city, Manchester, had started to go around the nearby towns for a recruitment drive. They'd gone through Oldham, Stalybridge, and Ashton yesterday, hiring anyone with even a lick of talent. Today, unless they'd had a drastic change of plans, they would be coming to Mossley.
The only invasion point in a hundred miles was situated in Manchester city centre and it was quickly reaching saturation. The average person wanted to avoid dangerous situations, even if they were now a means to achieve power and grow in levels. A few months with the System hadn't changed mankind's self-preservation instincts yet. Without the incentives provided by the aliens, Earth would struggle to put forward an adequate defence against the invasion points. The governments would have been forced to start conscripting civilians.
Maybe Arthur was being too harsh on his race, but most people didn't have a hero complex. They would let the invasion points fester and grow until the enemy was at their doorsteps and they had no choice but to fight. Of course, there were the odd few who believed their powers came with certain responsibilities, but they tended to die very early on. People like old man Tom, both competent and caring, were incredibly rare. Then of course there were those who thrived on combat and became addicted to it. This category died with even more regularity than the former and those that survived didn't make for well-adjusted people.
Arthur was honestly grateful for their alien visitors. Whilst they came to Earth with dubious intentions, they provided an established framework upon which humanity could create a stable defence. Earth would have survived without them- Arthur never doubted humanity's tenacity- but the death toll would have been far higher, perhaps reaching the billions. Unfortunately, with the timed bounty on his head, regardless of how he might feel about off-worlders, he was forced to view them all as a potential enemy. Most humans too, Arthur thought morbidly as he recalled all the social media posts and news outlets telling him to turn himself in.
He didn't doubt that half the people in the village that he'd healed would turn on him in an instant if they found out who he was. It was a depressing thought, so Arthur tried not to dwell on it for too long. Even with all the magic Iris had set up to protect his identity, Arthur hadn't left things up to chance. He'd gone and bought the most expensive mask he could from the System store, going so far as to use his first purchase discount of 90% off on it. There was of course a twelve-hour time limit on the deal to prevent humanity from abusing the discount and you could only spend the funds you had in your account the second the System store was unlocked.
Arthur had paid the extra eleven thousand credits for express delivery and watched in amazement as the mask materialized before him, delivered via teleportation magic. Normally, a delivery could take anything from a few hours to weeks depending on what you'd bought and who the seller was. He'd already seen people complaining online about items being delivered to the wrong address and being lost in transit. The System had been swift in offering refunds which had mollified most.
It's like eBay but on an intergalactic scale, Arthur chuckled. Hell, you can even make a seller account for better profit margins. Stepping outside his cottage gates, Arthur materialised his new mask on his face. It had cost him a million System credits. Arthur didn't regret the purchase at all. He'd been stuck at level 103 for a while now and he no longer had a reason to slow down his growth like when he'd been classless. Earth wasn't strong enough to make him grow anymore.
Perhaps an invading realm would serve as an adequate whetstone instead.
Faceless Mask (Epic+) [Upgrade potential: Legendary-]
The perfect tool for a wanted man. Create a face of your choosing to show the world.
Allows the manipulation of the body's size by up to 10%
Five saved personas can be stored in the mask at any given time
You can create and modify the notification messages that show up when someone identifies you (Limited effect of perceived aura)
A magical affinity can be disguised as another that you possess
Upgrade requirements to [Legendary-]: Protect against ten thousand identification attempts, 2kg of Gold Bronze essence, Grand Ern Roots (500 years of age), 1000 units of Fabrication essence, 3,000,000,000 Ether
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Etherious: Powers Price, the second book in this series is about to go live on Amazon. By the time you're reading this, it may already have. As a self published author doing everything myself, my novels success lies entirely on my shoulders. As such, the first day of a books launch is by far the most important time that determines how well my book will do.
The first book did incredibly well, far better than I could have expected or even hoped for. I only hope that the same happens for my second release. As such, if Etherious: Powers Price reaches the top 1,000 rank in the USA, I'll release a chapter every day from the 15th of January to the 20th. The better my novel does, the higher the likelihood that I can get an audiobook released.
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