"Any advice as to what town we should try to connect to?" Alex asked.

He, Rhyss, Claire, and Finley had all piled into the teleporter building while Orchid and Mite stood just outside it, peering in to watch them work.

Rhyss shook his head. "That does not fall under the scope of the assistance I am permitted to give you. The names of other cities is something you will have to discover yourself."

Alex scrunched his nose in annoyance. He somehow wasn't surprised about that. Unfortunately, it didn't help him too much. His eyes drifted back to the shimmering words waiting for his attention.

[Owner View]

Mirrorwane Warpstone

Connected Cities:

Towntown

Astral Connection [2/3] Available. Utilize? [Y/N]

Alex could connect the teleporter to two more locations in its current iteration. He was pretty sure Mite would be able to somehow upgrade or modify the building to add more connections in the future.

But that wasn't his problem right now. He had to figure out a place to actually connect to. The last time he'd used it, he'd had to say the name of a town. That was nice and convenient when he actually knew the name of a town.

Unfortunately, the only places he could think of were all — for reasons not always related to him — destroyed.

"Does anyone happen to know another town somewhere on 274-50?" Alex asked. "Preferrably one large enough to have a fairly decent merchant… but maybe not so large that the merchants are impossible to work with and have no reason to haggle at all?"

"Trust me. The latter part, at the least, isn't happening," Finley said. "It's too early for any family to have a truly powerful foundation. Everyone will be fighting for every advantage they can get. Even the better families. Some will just have more bargaining power than others."

"Noted," Alex said. "So… town names? Or am I going to have to start taking shots in the dark? I'm sure if I run through enough stupid names, I'll get one right eventually. Given Absolution's name, Outworlders aren't any less edgy than people from Earth are."

Claire shook her head. "None."

"I don't know of any towns other than Valley Ford in this Subsector," Orchid said. "And I would do your best to stay within the Subsector. Leaving it might put too much strain on the building. Subsectors are quite large."

"Not going to matter much if we don't have anywhere to go," Alex said.

"I… might actually know a place," Mite said. He cleared his throat as everyone turned toward him. "I listened a lot in Valley Ford, you know. I was looking for a job. Figured I might not find what I needed there. Turns out I was right."

"Where?" Alex asked, a grin splitting his lips. "That saves us from going and asking all the other townsfolk."

"Wait," Claire said. "That's way smarter than just guessing names. Why didn't you start with that?"

"Seemed less fun," Alex replied. He nodded to Mite. "Any town should work, honestly. As long as you think it should have a merchant. Your guess is going to be as good as any other."

Mite squeezed into the building and made his way over to the control panel. His brow furrowed as he dug through his memories for a few seconds. Then he nodded to the glowing words. "Can I?"

"Depends. Do you know anything about the town other than its name?" Alex asked.

Mite shook his head. "No. I only know the name. Honestly, I only overheard it in passing. I don't think it's too big. Don't want to say the name in here in case it accidentally activates the building… but would anyone even recognize it?"

Everyone shook their heads.

Alex shrugged. "Then you might as well just do it. We need a town, and you've got one. It doesn't matter whose it is. As long as there's a merchant there…"

"There definitely is," Mite said. "I overheard some of the Great Tide members talking about the town. I don't think any them would have even bothered discussing another town if it wasn't big enough for a merchant. Besides, while I'm sure some people from Earth have made a town by now, anything I'd have heard about back in Valley Ford would be an Outworlder town since you were the first one in this Subsector to make a town."

"Good point," Alex said. "Go for it, then."

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Mite nodded. He turned back to the screen and cleared his throat.

A hum rose into the air as the building activated and pressure gathered in the air. Power prickled against Alex's skin, rushing past him to gather around Mite in a buzzing current.

"Blackreach," Mite said, enunciating the word clearly and sharply.

There was a loud pop. The energy rushed into the bone walls rising around them and vanished. All the weight pressing down on Alex's chest evaporated in an instant and the information about the Teleporter shimmered as a new line scrawled itself into being.

Connected Cities:

Towntown

Blackreach

Astral Connection [1/3] Available. Utilize? [Y/N]

"Well then," Alex said, blinking. "That was… easier than I expected."

"Not everything has to go wrong every time you try something, you know," Claire said dryly. "It might be a rare occasion for you, but sometimes things actually work properly. They'd probably do that even more if you didn't go out of your way to break them."

"That just seems like its wasting good challenge," Alex said.

Mite sent him a look from the corners of his eyes. "That seems like a good way to blow yourself up when you're making something dangerous. Measure twice, cut once."

"Which is why I let you make the dangerous things. I just kill them." Alex clapped Mite on the shoulder. "Thanks for the link. Anything else you know about the town?"

"Shit all," Mite said. He flashed Alex a grin. "Buy me something cool, would you? As a finder's fee. I want more materials."

"We just gave you the corpse of a Region Boss," Claire said, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "Is that not enough?"

"No," Mite replied without so much as an instant of hesitation. "Nothing about my job description ever said I had to become an abstinent. I love cool shit. Now, I'm going to go stand next to the wall like an NPC and pretend I'm doing something useful until you can come back and I can finish the wall. How's that sound?"

"Like you're probably not going to do that," Alex said.

Mite's smile grew bigger. "Damn. When'd you get so sharp?"

Then he was gone, slipping out the entrance and darting away through the log cabins. Orchid blew out a sigh and shook her head.

"He's a menace."

"I will ensure he does not damage the town," Rhyss said. "Do not forget the deadlines we face. We are running against a wall. What pattern do you desire the Teleporter to be active after your arrival?"

"Once in one minute and thirty seconds, then after a total of thirty minutes, then seven minutes after that, then an hour after our initial arrival, then five minutes after that, then a total of an hour and twenty five minutes after our arrival," Claire said. The sentence came out slightly odd — which Alex suspected likely to be because translating such specific timings might have been a little awkward. Dhampirs probably used a different time scheme on Ayrin than they did on Earth. Perhaps they had a significantly different method of saying the numbers they were counting to as well.

"Understood," Rhyss said. "I will begin counting and ensure the Teleporter is active at the arranged times starting from when it first activates."

"Sounds good," Claire said. She glanced at Alex. "Any modifications to that?"

"Seems perfectly fine to me," Alex replied with a shrug. He paused for a moment, then cleared his throat. "So long as you're keeping count, that is. I'm totally going to lose track of it."

A grin pulled at the corner of her lips. "I can keep track of the time. We just have to make sure we can actually make it back before the time runs out. The first few moments are the ones in which something is most likely to go wrong. If the town isn't friendly, we'll likely find that out fast."

"Only one way to find out. Shall we?"

Claire nodded.

Alex activated the Teleporter and set Blackreach as its target.

There was a brilliant flash of white light. Then they were gone.

The world folded in on itself and then twisted back into being with startling speed. Alex's stomach lurched and his throat made its best effort to slip out his lips before slithering back into its proper place as his feet hit hard ground and reality remembered its proper layout. This chapter was uploaded by the team at M|VLEMPYR.

A large stone room with a metal door at its far end folded out around him. He and Claire stood in its center, upon a bronzed metal dais with two curling prongs rising up above them like the horns of a demon. Fading motes of faint purple energy rained down around them like falling snow.

"It's… quiet," Alex whispered, his eyes scanning the room. "There's nobody here."

"Give it a moment," Claire muttered back. "Nobody is leaving their teleporter undefended. Unless we want to make it seem like we're looking for a fight, we should just wait for a moment. Someone will show up any—"

The metal door across from them swung open smoothly. It struck the wall with a reverberating thud and a woman with fair skin stepped into the room, blonde hair pulled back into a messy bun behind her shoulders as piercing green eyes examined them.

But Alex's eyes weren't on the woman's appearance or relatively plain clothes. They were affixed to the massive paintbrush she held slung over one shoulder like a hammer.

You've got to be kidding me.

He'd seen that brush before, back during the meeting that had been called at the end of the 2nd Initialization. This woman was one of the other people that had placed on the Local Leaderboard.

"Welcome to… wait," the woman said, her eyes narrowing as her grip on the huge paintbrush shifted. "You look familiar. Why do I feel like we've met before?"

An uneasy sensation prickled against the back of Alex's head. A warning rang in his ears like a siren — and too late, Alex realized it wasn't coming from the woman. It was coming from behind her.

A line of black cut through the air. The paintbrush in her arms slipped. It hit the ground with a heavy thud. Her right arm followed after it an instant later, joined by a large portion of her leg as the black line carved vertically across the right side of her body.

The woman blinked, blossoming surprise the only emotion that had time to form on her face as she pitched forward. She hit the ground with a wet splattering crunch and a pool of blood quickly begun to spread around her body, seeping into the glossy white hairs of her brush to stain them red.

And from behind where she'd been standing stepped a bald man with a gaping hole in the center of his chest.

Coils of purple magic that had once been a portal pulled shut behind him as blood dripped from the edge of his scythe.

"Ah," Absolution said, a cold smile spreading across his lips. "Ash. What a pleasant surprise. Who would have thought I'd harvest two fruits with one trip?"