Collide Gamer

Chapter 210 – The Eternal City 2 – Mansion Hohenstaufen

Eventually Lydia returned to them.

“That was disgraceful!” Of course, the first thing she did was reprimand Thana. “Not only did you reveal part of your powers, but you also hurt John. Let it be known that I am thoroughly disappointed!”

“Yes, yes,” Thana sighed, utterly defeated. “I get it, I get it, I have the fucking mental state of a toddler and I don’t deserve dessert, cuddles, or anything good. Everyone would be better off if I was just barefoot and stuck in a kitchen or whatever the fuck.”

Lydia blinked twice, looked over to Aclysia, then back to Thana. “As long as we are clear on that,” the princess stated, deciding that this instance of Thana’s disrespect was not a fight worth having and finally they were on their way again.

John looked at the platform with their luggage floating after them. “Can’t we just use that to get to our destination?” he asked. It had been extremely fast, so it would save them time to just climb that.

“It has neither a lot of speed nor the windshield outside of the lanes,” Lydia remarked; “Therefore, it is best used to just take care of our luggage.”

John accepted that as a fact while they went towards the edge of the floating island and one of the many mana streets. Now that he looked at everything more closely he started to recognize that there was some sort of planned network going on here. Of course, not every island was connected to every single other island. Instead, what he was looking at was a three-dimensional network of streets that stretched through the sky. The longer he looked the more it looked like highways connecting cities. A direct path was seldom available but there was always a path. Figures in the distance, the size of ants, moved with extreme speed on top of these lanes.

“So how does this work?” John wondered, when they stopped in front of these streets.

It was at least ten-metres wide and divided into two sections by a central railing. That railing, the only solid part to the whole structure, was bolted to the island. It was made from some goldish metal. The same material also framed the street to the left and right, serving as the barrier between the people using it and the long drop to the city below. When John touched it, it felt like rubber. Not that he got a long time to test that feeling. A sensation like a reverse electric shock made his hand snap back.

“Hey!” John exclaimed and, worried, checked his health. He had used the waiting time to let Undine heal him to full. He still wasn’t psyched about losing more HP today. Interestingly enough, he didn’t lose a single life point, instead he had lost half of his MP.

“That is Romuglehn,” Lydia explained, looking at him with an amused glint in her greyish blue eyes. “It is a material of unknown composition that apparently only Romulus can create, and the best mana transmitter known to be in use. The mana streets, or Arcan Pavimentum as they are officially called, create a circular mana stream that we can safely step on. Normally it is the job of the city officials to make sure they don’t run out of energy, but I think you just saved them that trouble for the next few days.”

“Days?” John asked and shook his slightly numb hand. “I only lost like half and this street is like 500 metres long!”

“Ya have stupid high mana,” Rave giggled.

Lydia nodded, “In addition, as I just said, Romuglehn is an extremely efficient transmitter. These streets almost exclusively lose energy if somebody uses them.”

Lydia simply stepped on the blue, streaming surface and immediately was carried off at an impressive speed, roughly equivalent to what cars were allowed to drive at in inner cities. The platform with their luggage followed her and Thana simply stepped on without another care.

“Let’s go, this seems fun!” Rave said and grabbed John by the hand. Together they went onto the stream.

The feeling of the ground moving underneath John’s feet was surprisingly unsurprising. It felt like he was riding on an escalator. Similarly, he could just walk forward on it. Of course. Rave had other plans, trying to run in the other direction just to see if she could. The answer was no, she still barely moved backwards. “Hah,” Thana laughed at her, managing to counteract the mana streets natural movement while running backwards, hands folded behind her head, “you are really fucking slow.”

“I will show ya!” Rave said, challenged in such a way she put on even bigger strides and finally managed to overcome the mana street and run at Thana’s speed. Although the blood mage was still nonchalantly running backwards, while Rave was putting in the sprint of her life. ‘Well, there is only so much motivation can do,’ John thought.

“Will you stop fooling around?” Momo asked, giving Thana a clap on the back of her head while she drove by. Or attempting to, even without seeing it coming the blood mage ducked under it.

“You will have to try harder at sneaking to catch me off-guard,” Thana cackled. “I can hear your hand cutting through the air loud and clear.”

“I would ask that you stop fooling around nevertheless,” Lydia, who moved backwards on the street by holding onto the outer railing of the lane, apparently cancelling the effects of the mana street that way, commented, “We have enough to do as is. Why don’t you take a look at the city?”

That was a comment that caught everyone’s interest, as they scrambled to the edge of the road to gaze at the city below.

Rome was gargantuan. Houses, halls, towers and streets, perfectly planned out and stretching over an area that described a perfect circle, where the Illusion Barrier met its edge. The outskirts were by far the smallest buildings, John couldn’t even make out what they looked like, only knew that they were there thanks to being separated by walls from the more central district bordering them. There was another wall, taller, that then separated those buildings from the next ring-shaped district. That repeated four more times. Each time, the buildings got more and more luxurious, until, at the centre of everything, was the obelisk that tethered the floating islands.

The obelisk was part of its own set of structures. A palace of that gorgeous Roman design, devouring at least a few square kilometres just for its buildings, the vast gardens not even included, grew tall into the sky. With the obelisk at the heart of this mega-structure, it was a truly imposing sight. John did not need to guess where Romulus was living.

“That is where we will hold the tournament,” Lydia directed their sight only slightly south. Within the layer directly around the palace stood a colosseum. No not A colosseum - THE Colosseum of Rome, the most famous of its kind. Ellipse-shaped and in perfect condition, it stood proudly, surrounded by mansions and wide streets. John gulped, imagining just how many people would be watching them from the tall viewing areas.

John turned his gaze back to the wider city. “Just how many people are there in the Abyss?” he wondered to get his thoughts away from the tournament and needless worries.

“The abyssal barrier of Rome holds about 200.000 people, about 70% of whom are human. Most of these humans are permanent residents of the Abyss however, and have no persona in the real world.”

“That’s a thing?” John asked.

“You will find that there is a crowd of people who have been born, raised and have never left Illusion Barriers inside cities of this size. And why would they? The Sons of Rome have their own order of hired Fateweavers who connect the Italian cities through traffic tunnels, most of the landscape is also covered in privately owned Protected Spaces.”

“Huh, urbanization didn’t stop in reality, I see.” John nodded. America, evidently, was pretty behind on all of this. ‘Do I want to change that once I get back?’ John wondered, ‘I mean, given a bit more time, I could probably just waltz over the USA and try unifying it. Sounds like a lot of work though… I have to give that one more thought.’

They stepped off the mana street and went onto another one, always guided by Lydia. The princess was certain in her path, as she guided them until they finally were transported towards a fairly small island. Fairly small meant about 300 metres in diameter.

On the island stood a lonely mansion. Three stories tall and partly covered by vines, it was a wonderful, renaissance style brick building. The many windows were evenly spread, its front door lay in the shadow of a balcony that belonged to the story above. The mansion was topped with a softly slanted ceiling.

Wide gardens, perfect to take a stroll in, where people could easily lose sight of others and intrigues could be planned in public isolation, stretched around the building. Who took care of these gardens was a mystery to John. There was no quarter for servants around and while the mansion was big, it didn’t look like it was there to house the servants itself.

“Welcome to Mansion Hohenstaufen,” Lydia exclaimed, as she opened the solid wooden door at the front. The inside of the mansion was…

It was the same as every other house belonging to Lydia, just bigger. John felt thoroughly disappointed. “Why?” he had to ask. His tone was agitated, the dullness of her choice of internal decorations clashing so heavily with the grandeur of the city at large. “Why do you use the same style everywhere?!”

“Because the company that does it presented me with a contract for 10 years in which they would redecorate every house that I pointed them at. Not having them work would be a waste of my money,” Lydia crossed her arms, “and wasting money is a cardinal sin.”

“This is so boring,” Rave complained.

“Yeah, way to bring down the fucking mood,” Thana added and looked around, “Nice Renaissance mansion and what do you do with it? Wooden floor and Prussian blue everywhere.”

“I like it,” Momo pushed against the popular opinion.

Aclysia nodded, a sparkle in her eyes, “The kitchen was supreme in the last house, I cannot wait to see this one.”

“Your complaints are dismissed. Anything that goes against Prussian blue is wrong by default,” Lydia said as she peeled out of her jacket and orderly hung it onto the wardrobe. “Take the door to your right. You will find the living room behind it. Turn left and go to the door ahead, that will take you to the kitchen.”

Aclysia bowed and was off. John smirked. However boring it was to be in the third house with the same, solid wooden furniture, as long as he had his girls around at least it wouldn’t get boring. ‘Oh right, I have achievements to look at,’ John reminded himself and did that while he was getting out of his winter clothes.

Yeah, there it was. Just a bit of Charisma though. Nothing new.

Great, more Libido, just what he needed. Couldn’t something give him a free Relationship Slot or something? Neither Thana nor Nathalia had joined his Harem officially yet, but the former kept clashing with Lydia while Nathalia’s existence kept egging on his girlfriend. It was only a matter of time until one of these situations, or something he wasn’t even aware of at the moment, escalated and he would be in the middle of it. Something that he REALLY didn’t want to experience.

‘Guess I’d better go grind out the two needed levels today,’ John decided. It had been a while since he had taken the time to actually level anyhow and he needed money for a few things. There were still some windows left though.

‘Oh for…’ John cried out in his thoughts, ‘Now I have two levels in that class I can use whenever, and I don’t even want to. Urgh, just stacking them for the time being.’

Wait… Wait what?