drink

He could harass Hendrik some more. Maybe he’d give him some leads.

Maybe he was going about this all wrong. Maybe he was supposed to be dressing in fancy clothes and attending galas. But that seemed weird, how there were so many non-upper class. If he wanted to ‘live’, shouldn’t that be around more people? So there’s more life? But, it’s clearly better to ‘live’ amongst a hundred sophonts than a billion termites. And it’s clearly better to live amongst ten sophonts where you had room to move around, than slammed in a box, unable to move with a hundred. Eh, maybe you could weigh a life of fewer refined people against more unrefined.

He’d spent the first decade of his life at the Blisbane castle, which made it sound longer than it had been. That had been all good clothes and good food and good books. But god had it been boring. He felt bad for making Samantha realize as much… but she would’ve gotten there eventually, herself. She used to be so much more well-behaved…

Something something the poor have more freedom and less ability, but the rich are restricted by expectation or something.

He really should’ve philosophized before faking his death so he’d have a better plan…

There are seventeen universities across Bythrusia, Din and Felkner with significant magical departments. There are 3 different mages guilds, 4 artificer guilds, and dozens of other guilds who otherwise work with magic. There are military consultants. There are diviners, who try to cheat causality and branch cut straight from the future. There are cultists and insurgency groups, who would use magic to subvert ingrained rule, and who seek out any advantage they can find. There are magical creatures. There are the fey, the demons, the vampyres, who live planes away, and would like more sophonts to enslave or kill. There are civilizations far away from us who are hyper-advanced. There are the gods, some being the result of collective imagination, some being ultra-powerful, ascended mortals, some being concepts already built into the universe. There is likely a grandfather above them all. And, there is the possibility of different copies of our world existing, or people from the future coming to the past, or the leaking in of some other form of infinite.

It doesn’t make sense. If there is some god above everything, in which everything is known, what is the purpose of having us embodied? What is the purpose of a god of space or time or fortune, stitched into the fabric of reality, if they don’t have a way of interacting with reality? If one could bring knowledge back from the future, or from another reality, why hasn’t that been done more often? And, more immediately pressing, if there were gods and monsters and brilliant civilizations and military tacticians and mages and artificers and scholars for whom parsimonious interplanar travel would benefit, why is no one taking advantage of it? Surely, surely, surely, he wasn’t the first to identify it?

He’d had so many stupid piezothaumic batteries strapped to his chest when he jumped off the cliff, he’d flipped, and one had lodged itself in his chest. He’d laughed at the irony. He’d laughed the hardest he’d ever laughed. But, deciding again that yes, he didn’t want to die, he had it pulled out and patched up, and decided to read the literature to determine if there was a better way. And there was, which apparently Gordian and Howard hadn’t realized. Guess that’s what happens when you spend your life detached from reality, you lose your worldly intuition and gain an academic one.

It was still a bit above him. You use the subatomic miasma to try rotating multiple directions at once, which allows you to find the correct direction quicker, which reduces the energy required.

You know, he should’ve led with that. With no formal training (well, besides the two years he’d spent at Northpoint and the one at Felkner), he’d invented a new spell that should revolutionize the world. Maybe he should try becoming a god. Hmm.

Ah, no, all the rumination was what depressed him in the first place. Just act, don’t think.

⁂

A door was kicked open. “Salutations, engineers! I’m—”

“Get out, man, we don’t want any trouble.”

“Well how the hell am I supposed to Live if no one wants my help?”

“We’ll approach you, man, make a name for yourself first.”

“Okay, how about this, is this sufficiently name-endowing,” and he disappeared.

Unfortunately, he exhausted his thaums, and so had to wait ana for 10 hours for it to recharge. He brought some books, though.

God damn it. How does one simultaneously not depress themselves by overthinking, but not waste their time and energy with underthinking?

Oh, he should try being drunk constantly, that’d work.

Oh, wait, he knew someone he could ask about that…

…Eh. That old drunkard had become a bit too important to be concerned about fledgling adventurers…