Chapter 6 – Shaken heart

There are quite a few things I don't like. Work and businesses. My parents, for some part. As for journeys... you don't really have them with our methods of travel. The longest I've gone on was five hours long to the other side of the planet, but say whatever you want, I kinda liked them. Just like now when I had a lot of time to think as I was leisurely walking along the road next to the forest for two or three hours before anything noteworthy happened, and it wasn’t finding a stream I hoped to find.

There were monsters occasionally attacking me, but there was nothing dangerous and nothing satisfying to punch. Unless you can say that killing an enemy with one hit not even with your full power is satisfying.

For me it’s not.

As a side note, they were mostly wolves, stray goblins and zombies, the ordinary weak enemies on the edge of Beholder’s Eye.

With that said, no matter how boring the fight was, I just couldn’t get bored by my body.

I had no chance to properly check it because I still had my clothes on and they are nothing restrictive or particularly covering, but are definitely something made for battle because of the metal parts on my hips as well as my chest. And while I wouldn’t say that I can’t test my body with it on, I would much prefer to that with no armor on me.

If I had to give this thing a name, it would probably be a battle dress.

And with all the ash on me I would prefer to wash myself first. Right, ash.

I tried to burn the blood and grime on me, and I was successful in burning it, but definitely not successful in cleaning myself as I have ashes sticking to my skin instead of blood now.

Don’t ask why it is ash and it didn’t evaporate, I don’t know how my flame works, but I’d say it burns so hard that it first turned the blood to ashes and it didn’t have time to evaporate properly.

It’s better than blood and other suspicious matter at least, but I’d rather be clean than walk with this unpleasantly dry ash sticking to my skin.

As I walk, I look up, sighing lightly, and my breath hitches as I finally pay attention to the view of the night sky.

First thing that catches the eye is a lightly glowing, long line in the middle. It seems to be the source of gravity… or wait.

That can’t be gravity, at least not in traditional sense.

If we are talking about a ring world or something, then the source of gravity is centrifugal force. But here centri…petal force is what keeps the islands in their places, so centrifugal force can’t cause things to fall because centrifugal force and gravitational force nullify each other.

Well, fall is a bit of a stretch, but you get the meaning.

Or, shit, scratch that, it also seems wrong. The islands are facing the glowing ring in the middle, so the most logical conclusion would be that centrifugal force is indeed the source of gravity on the islands, but the islands themselves are kept in orbit by something else, most likely magic.

Right?

That sounds about right.

Oh, I have magic sight, don’t I?

How to turn it on? No, wait, I already have it turned o- on…

That shining ring is magic then, right?

Holy fuck, wait.

I bring out the chat window and quickly type out a question.

Zen: Hello guys, I have a weird question. If you look into the sky, do you see a long, shining line in the middle of the ring of islands?

Alex: Nope? What are you talking about?

Zen: Don’t mind it. I’m trying to figure out what keeps the islands in place, which got a bit funky when I realized that centrifugal force most likely lets us stick to the islands and something else keeps the island on the orbit. I think it is magic, but I don’t know how to confirm it.

I close my window without waiting for a reply and look at the sky once again.

That confirms it, the line in the middle is mana or some other kind of energy. I try to close my eyes and… don’t see the thing.

Assuming it’s really magic and not something purely physical, which I doubt, it’s either too far away or my magic sight works only with my eyes.

Actually, lemme test it.

I stretch out my fist and set it ablaze with my Stellar Flame with my eyes closed, and this time notice distinct white-yellow energy in the shape of my fist with my… mind? Hard to put it properly, but it’s like seeing the image in your mind from... fourth dimension, or at least similar to that, because I can easily look inside the fist and inside the film itself.

And the energy feels… powerful, primal, brutal. How do I even know that?

It’s just… you look at it and instinctively know it’s something you don’t mess with, in my case though it means the people do not mess with me.

I see another thing, and that’s something I should have expected, but well. The same flame permeates my whole body in a faint mist of white-yellow color, and there is a flame in my, uh, where the hell is it?

I can feel my Demonic Flame in my body, I can even feel it’s actually in the shape of a constantly moving flame, but whenever I try to sense where exactly it is, it seems to be in my whole body despite being just a flicker of flame hidden deep inside me.

Strange.

The only other things is that my dress seems to be absorbing a tiny bit of energy from me and twisting it in some bizzare patterns. I can't really make them out, but I don't think it's important. Not now, at least.

Actually, wait a moment, there’s also mana all around me in the air. It’s… colorless? Slightly bluish, I think, but kinda transparent. And it’s so… weak. It gives a feeling of power, but if you compare it to demonic energy it’s just… bleak. Useless.

I wonder why I didn’t realize it’s here earlier, but well. Probably that magic power was so feeble I missed it.

The range of my magic sight is around… it’s hard to tell with no reference, but it should be around ten meters? Not bad. Could be worse at least, and ten meters should be enough as long as I don’t need it for overly specific purposes.

By the way, the flame seems to be merely a product, or byproduct, of my Demonic Flame, and actual demonic energy is just a film underneath the flames. Then my magic sight is not limited to my eyes, but works much better, or at least at much larger distance, with them. Good to know both these things.

Ooops, I got rather derailed. Twice at that, uh.

I was talking about the night sky. Let’s leave the topic of gravity and islands’ orbits for later, and energies of this world for when I’m learning to use them.

Apart from the shining line through the sky, exactly in the middle of it, which I now realize is an ideal indicator where south and north is... Or actually, is there even the concept of south and north past east and west here? Dunno. There is a huge mass of islands.

It should have been a ring, well, it is a ring, but from this perspective they are all over the sky and completely irregularly strewn around. There are places where there are none on a moderately large stretch of dark sky, and at some places they overlap so badly it’s impossible to count how many of them are in one place.

But from this perspective I can confidently say that they are in many tens of thousands and maybe even more. The islands that are in reality huge masses of land seem like small, greenish and grayish splashes on the other side, quite similarly to how Luna looks from Gaia, but yet smaller.

There are also some that pass this island much closer to the shining ring of magic and with higher speed, or vice versa, further away and slower, sometimes throwing shadows at the other islands. Like the one relatively small one that’s right now half-submerged in Beholder’s Eye’s shadow... I think.

It’s not obvious at first glance, but this ring, with islands in varying distance from the center, has at least hundreds of thousands of kilometers in width, not diameter. If you ask about the scale of the thing, it is similar to the fictional Niven Ring. Just that there are irregular masses of land instead of one ring, and they are in many layers. That stretch of islands is literally the size of a planet's orbit, tens or even hundreds of millions kilometers in diameter.

Earth or Gaia or basically any planet you can safely land on is merely a dot comparing to the sheer scale of the whole ring. Considering that Beholder’s Eye, an average island in size, has two thousand kilometers in diameter, which is over one-third of Gaia’s diameter and a tad less than Luna’s, then the largest islands might as well be planet-sized.

And probably are, though their mass will be much lower because of how flat they got to be with this magic holding them in place. Beholder’s Eye might have larger diameter than Luna, but in terms of mass it is much lower on the scale, at least by a few times, because of how flat it is.

That’s a hard concept to grasp, to be honest, and I won’t even be trying to consider all the details for now.

As I am walking like that with head in the islands, I suddenly hear a loud, unpleasant sound, resembling… what the fuck iss that actually?

It is like a crack on the ice, but much more resounding and unpleasant, painfully biting into ears.

I look around, alert, and a couple hundred of meters to the front, just above the road of gravel, there is… something that definitely wasn’t there before, but I’ve no damned idea what the hell it is.

It’s black and white, looking a bit like a crack in space it might actually be, and it’s twisted in strange ways and really uncomfortable to look at. I don’t think it follows the proper laws of space, at least not how normal objects do, because there isn’t a place of this rift or whatever it is that wouldn’t be either twisted like space around a black hole or showing a landscape of crackling purple lightning.

And it is extremely irregular and shifts its shape constantly, so I can’t make sense of either its dimensions or what is behind it.

I don’t attempt to get close either, because who knows what this thing will do. Running away isn’t an option though, because I wouldn’t see what it is, which might be very helpful. And, hell, who wouldn’t want to see what becomes of such potentially interesting, completely unknown thing.

Seconds later I don’t regret my decision as I notice a vaguely humanoid, blackish shape being thrown out of the thing with high velocity and the rift, uh, exploding?

Kinda hard to say what it was, but explosion seems to be most fitting for the rift that suddenly appears to shape itself back into proper, seamless space, at the same time launching a shockwave that ruffles nearby trees and throws a lot of leaves into the air and releasing a large number of purple lightning, scorching and vaporizing nearby stone and foliage, as well as what looks like white and black cracks that quickly disappear into nothingness without much effect.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding after the shockwave passes over me, pushing me a bit and making my ears ring, and bolt forward to see whatever it was that was thrown out of the rift, and I am sure it was something humanoid in shape.

I pass by the trees faster than I thought I could and look to the left where the shape disappeared from my view, and spot it there, lying just on the edge of the road, half on a light slope of stone and dangerously close to the steep edge it might have tumbled down.

And now I see it is humanoid, but I have many doubts to it being human. I run up to it, eyeing it up, and the very moment I realize what, or maybe who I am looking at, my heart almost leaps out of my chest a strange feeling sprouts in my stomach.

It is a girl, because I can’t call her a woman with her size, that seems to be at most five feet four inches tall, similar to me, but with much slimmer and frailer build as far as I can see through the folds of her clothing.

The first thing that catches the eyes are her strange colors. Skin is fairly normal, if so pale it would better be called white is still normal, but her hair is the darkest black thing I have ever seen in my life, black like abyss, as if it was devouring light, and straight, long enough to reach her waist, currently laying all around in the grass and gravel.

Furthermore, what I spot next is a scorched wound through her left thigh, most likely left here by that purple lightning. And this wound is not dark red, not red from blood, but it is shiny grey with blue and violet parts and fucking mechanical.

Like, really mechanical, though it’s not crude like those construction robots or something, but it’s a wonder how the hell it is even made out of metal with these looks. The very first impression I get when I see the burned wound and consequently the internal structure of the thing is a fully functional human made out metal, and I mean that even the muscle structure is replicated.

She obviously lacks the completely unnecessary parts like sweat glands or hair, at first glance at least, but, damn, there is even a difference between muscles and tendons visible.

I then look at her face, and that’s what makes my heart go wild.

It’s delicate, but sharp, with small, pointed nose and sharp and yet frail jawline. She looks to be around sixteen years old, with fair skin and slightly pointed ears, and gives the impression of a cute, beautiful and sharp at the same time princess. Apart from that… or rather fucking first and foremost, her small lips are a beautiful, captivating bright pinkish color with violet tinge, and are full and a bit plump, enough to be soft and meaty when you bite them…

Holy fuck, why am I thinking like that? And how can a machine give this impression?

I… dare say that if she was competing in a beauty contest she would be at the very least at the very top of the ladder, if not at the first place, because I have seen the celebrities nowadays and they aren’t much better than her in most aspects.

I shake my head as furiously as my heart beats, attempting to focus back on important things, and as I give her face a passing glance while I run up to her I notice that her eyes are closed, and even her eyebrows are there, but her eyes seem to be rounded with what looks like vibrant violet circuits, though I have no idea what they are.

Let’s focus on carrying her somewhere safer for now, not like I will be able to deduce anything from just her looks.

My fluttering heart doesn’t help though.

I try to pick up the girl in a princess carry, judging it would be the safest option, and I almost lose myself, both my breath and heart hitching, in the feeling on her soft, meaty thighs and the side of her decently large, soft boob though thin fabric of the black, multiple times folded cloth with vibrant green embroidery that loosely covers her body.

Like, what the hell? This was supposed to be a machine, but this feels completely like a human. Even better in certain areas…

Her weight also doesn’t seem to follow any pattern, being even lower than I would expect of a human, not to start with what I expected from a machine made out of metal.

I successfully get up though and carry the girl onto a moderately large patch of grass on the side of the road.

I look carefully at the… wound? Damage? On her thigh, anyway, and once again can’t help but notice that she is practically built like a human. With that said though, the wound is almost as severe as it would normally be. She won’t die from blood loss and she shouldn’t feel pain or anything, but she still probably won’t be able to walk.

Fuck, what am I supposed to do with it?

Should I just leave it as is? But I’m not comfortable with that idea.

I carefully poke a finger into the hole and I immediately tear my arm away with a surprisingly girly yelp I'm not sure how I feel about as I feel the tip of my finger stinging all over painfully.

I look with surprise at my fingertip that smokes a bit as if put into acid and then heals itself within moments, glowing a bit.

Duh, what?

My surprise only grows as I look back at her wound and see the hole swarming with… something, nanobots maybe? The point is, for whatever reason the hole starts closing at visible rate, though stops soon after.

I look between my finger and the girl.

Did she just… consume a bit of my finger and regenerate herself with it?

Like… consuming some of my energy and using it herself to rebuild her body?

That’s the only conclusion I can draw with the limited information I have.

I bite my lip with a frown and slowly put my finger into the large hole of her wound.

I immediately feel stinging, itching pain on my fingertip, but I keep it inside despite the sharp protests from my finger, and see a faint light glowing from it as the nanobots I assume start flowing around vigorously.

Her wound starts healing at visible speed and I take my finger back, noticing offhandedly that it starts healing the lost segment at rate even faster than the machine, back to prime condition not even a second after. As a side note, it's glowing brightly with suspicious resemblance to my Demonic Flame.

Wow, that’s some interesting shit going on there.

Half a minute and two fingertips later there is no sign of the wound on her fair skin and only the hole in the cloth indicates something happened here. And just now I notice I am looking at the girl’s juicy, exposed thigh and I gulp despite myself, turning my head away.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I don’t know anything about this feeling in my stomach, I don’t know anything about my fluttering heart, but I’m fucking sure that’s not a reaction I should get from a random girl I meet.

And I have never got a reaction like that with my history of two girlfriends and a few casual nightly escapades during which I was at most satisfied with the partner, even that only brief and fading quickly.

Even as I turn my head away, I remember her juicy lips begging to be kissed and bitten…

Fuck, bad girl, get yourself together. Girl? Yeah, let's go with that. Not with these thoughts!

I look at the sky and notice that it should be night already. It’s not dark, and I don’t think it will ever be in this place for many reasons, including that it’s an island and rays of sun flow on its side barely hundreds of meters from us, and especially because of all the islands in the sky that reflect light to us.

I glance at the girl, my heart still very not calmed down, and I see her resting peacefully. She probably has no energy right now considering she needed mine to heal, uh, repair or whatever, so if she didn’t wake up with all that happened it should be safe to assume she won’t be waking up anytime soon.

I gently reach out to her and fix her clothes so that they cover her properly, and look around.

But nope, there is no good place to sleep anywhere near, and I don’t think it would be a good idea to carry the girl around in search of one.

Welp, we’ll rest here then, no point dawdling around. A place good like any other. Any potential monster attacks are unlikely at night. At Beholder’s Eye, despite what you might think, the nights are relatively calm, save for specific areas like undead sites. It's because the forests are dark all the time and if it's day of night doesn't make a large difference for the monsters. But since most sleep in the night, well, there is less of them at that time.

I carry the girl to a grassy place under a large rock and I myself lie on her side.

There is an inventory here, right?

Hmm, fuck, I have no futon, no sleeping bag, and nothing of the sort actually. I only have, uh, five silver coins and… Space-time Linking Crystal?

Duh, what? It will activate in two weeks? No more information? What’s up with that thing?

Well, no matter, I’ll think about it later.

Time to sleep, goodnight.

…

Fuck, I can’t sleep.

I’m getting distracted by the girl on my side.