Chapter 176
The dark purple SUV sped up on Creek Avenue towards a tunnel from under a giant tower. Along the way, Caroline and Jason saw quite a lot of things they had imagined they would see, and some things they had not expected to see, in the magical underworld.
People were riding on different tools of transportation - which include brooms, flying discs that gave off a slightly annoying buzzing sound when they flew by, giant smooth stones with insides hollowed out and windows opened like a car, flying carriages with horses and other unrecognized beasts mounted in the front, and cars just like the SUV Caroline and Jason were riding in.
“I’m curious now, why are there still cars?” Caroline asked: “Shouldn’t there be more, like, magical vehicles?”
“Well, cars are an incredible invention in itself, it’s also purely mechanical and doesn’t need much magical renovation. So a lot of people still use cars to go around if it is relatively short distance. Just that most of the car owners will use permanent spacing spells to enlarge the interior like this one.” Garret answered: “And I know what you may be thinking, long running portals are extremely expensive. So they’re reserved for a few places where there's a decent amount of traffic. For other types of commute, we still travel like civilians where we have vehicles that carry us from one place to another through normal means of travel. And for destinations with decent traffic, we have jump points - which are basically entrances to magical highways, but everyone travels in similar routes going at the same speed. We’ll enter one next.”
“That sounds fun. ” Caroline chuckled and looked out from a window by her side.
“Hey Garret, you seem to know quite a lot about our world. How’s so?”
“Well, to put it simply, I am a member of the Anderson House in the Grant Academy, as was Ms. Wong.” Garret answered: “There are other two houses, Hellbruck House and Martin House. One of our primary fields of studies is civilian technology. Which is itself an interesting story, because my great great great grandfather used to be a civilian, and he was a pretty handy weaponsmith during his time. He was always fond of technology, so when he was taken into the Anderson House, he focused on adapting civilian technology for magical uses. And then he laid the tradition of studying civilian technology and sciences - his insights were that the civilian societies are just as intelligent as the magical world.”
“Well, I wouldn’t imagine his message would be well received.” Jason chuckled.
“He did okay, the Anderson House was always the place for the tech and handy types. You know the Dark Practitioner Revolt or Horror in Europe during the 50s and 60s?”
“No… our history lessons are really lacking.” Caroline frowned: “But the story sounds quite familiar - like one of those movies Jason likes to watch.”
“Yeah yeah yeah, indeed, it impacted the civilian world quite heavily and spread to America as well. And it was one of the events that triggered the founding of the Division.” Garret chuckled: “It’s kinda funny though, these dark practitioners did not gain too much ground in the U.S, they sent two plattoon of infiltrators here. But they were pretty arrogant and careless when choosing the first place to infiltrate - one of the platoons tried to take over a local neighborhood in Texas as their first base, and they were met with fierce resistance and counter attack from some organized locals and were beaten by this group of farmers and merchants with their guns and drove back to the sea.”
“Holy cow, how is that possible?”
“Well, I don’t know. Rumor was that some local wizards and witches helped the counter attack as well, portraying themselves as traveling preachers.”
“Now, that is getting hilarious.” Caroline chuckled.
“Yeah, and the other platoon gained some success initially, but was also anihilated soon after. But it was quite a shock for a lot of people in the magical world, that a group of trained magical infiltrators could actually be beaten by some armed civilians with guns. Granted, that these infiltrators were unprepared and the civilians were, and the leaders were later recruited by the Division. But still, this is an incredible feat, and one that really sticks out to a lot of people in the magical world that the non-magic civilians possess much more intellect than they previously give them credit for. I mean, civilians invented the internet and absolute majority of the information technology. And up to today there are still people in the magical world writing a lot of their information on paper scrolls.”
“Hmm, thanks Garret. ” Jason thought for a while and said.
The purple SUV soon reached one of three lines before a bridge - only half of the bridge was clearly visible to Caroline and Jason, and the other half seemed to be obscured by a giant wall of slowly moving silver blue wall of liquid. The travelers in different kinds of vehicles and carriages are waiting in the lines to go into the wall of liquid. And shortly after going into the liquid, a wave emerged from below and swept them up and they just disappeared in an instant.
“This is the jump point we will be going through. We only need to go three quarters of the way, then we will drop down to the Anderson Plaza.” Garret sounded excited: “Hold onto your seats, going for the first time through a jump point might feel shaky.”
From a giant TV screen in the room, Caroline and Jason could see that a male wizard wearing a grey suit and wearing a pair of glasses on a broom was waiting in front of them.
“Is that guy gonna get wet?” Jason joked.
“Probably not - there was a girl on a horse in the other line.” Caroline shook her head.
“The liquid looking thing is actually not liquid, it is a wall of energy generated from the array underneath. When combined with the energy the riders or the vehicles released into the wall, it will produce a special tunnel through which we will travel at high speed to our location.” Garret explained: “This is actually an invention inspired by the civilian theory of vacuum tunnels.”
Right after Garret’s answer, the man in front of them already disappeared behind the wall of liquid, and it was now their turn.
“Ready? On the count of three.” when the dark purple SUV pulled into the wall of liquid, all the open windows automatically closed up, and Caroline and Jason could see that the whole SUV was now surrounded by bubbles and flowing liquid that was emitting light blue shine: “Three … two ...”
“One!”
The entire SUV was pushed forward and upward by a tremendous force, which also locked Caroline and Jason in their sofas for a brief moment. And through the screen in the room, they saw that the SUV was shooting through a light blue tunnel, and judging from the blurred shining ripples on the tunnel wall they were traveling at a significant speed.
The travel in the tunnel took around one minute before the SUV started decelerating. And when the SUV exited the tunnel, Caroline and Jason saw that they were airborne and tumbling down towards the ground beneath them.
And their destination, was a giant round plaza with fountains and trees, positioned right in front of four very distinct buildings.