Brighton Manor

To say that John wasn’t nervous about the meeting with Lord? William Brighton wasn’t true. But despite realizing the magnitude of Sir Brighton taking time to meet with him, and despite having seen the size of the manor grounds on his map app, he was actually less anxious about this than he had been just before arriving at Qhila’s.

The manor itself was a huge Tudor-style building with multiple wings surrounded by an enormous garden all ringed with a wrought iron fence a bit taller than John. The top of the fence was decorated with artfully formed flower- or leaf-like constructions that still left enough spikes pointing upwards and outwards to make climbing it a decidedly unappealing prospect without giving it an overtly prison or fortress-like feeling.

Beyond the fence lay great expanses of manicured lawns criss-crossed with gravel walkways. The uniform green was decorated with a plethora of flower beds and sculpted rose brushes, a handful of statues of people and a fountain depicting an armored woman holding a round shield with a predictably familiar decorative theme.

The whole thing was abounding with magic item glitters. Common gray on the statues, Uncommon white on the building itself, Rare blue on… he wasn’t sure if it was the window panes or the frames, and Epic red on something worn by the guy in butler attire that just came out of the front door. There was an unfamiliar color as well, namely purple glitters on the fence itself. Given that he knew the colors for all but one of the rarities mentioned in the Craft spells, he had a pretty good idea what that one meant.

If John was an old school cartoon character rather than a game one, his eyes would’ve jumped out of their sockets and his jaw would’ve made a dent in the pavement. Before he got to the actual enchantments. While the Item Level and Rarity were within expectations and the second creator was close enough to expectations to be more interesting than surprising, the word ‘mithril’ did the trick.

Not because John was surprised that the material existed, he had already seen a bar of it for sale on the Abyss Auction. What made for the bug eyed jaw drop moment was that he had, at the time, also seen the price of a 1 kg bar of the metal. Materials for the front gate of this fence alone cost more than John’s house. The whole thing probably eclipsed the Hawthornes’ combined net worth.

On top of that came self-repair, a blocking enchantment that he had so far seen only one person who might be able to overpower and the ability to deal more reactive damage than three times John’s Max HP. With a vertical range of 1 km. And this was owned by one of three branches of an organization that, as a whole, was not positioned on the top level of the power hierarchy.

Before he had time to further contemplate his relative insignificance in the light of this amount of power, his train of thought was interrupted by a roaring engine. The sound heralded the arrival of a black blur of a motorcyclist that John had a brief moment of panicked fear would crash directly into the front gate.

There was no crash, owing entirely to the fact that the middle aged butler had reached and opened the gate while John had been distracted by the Observe window. Instead, the driver crossed the threshold at breakneck speed. Instead of breaking the traditional way, they swung the bike into a sideways slide along the paved driveway that came to a stop less than two meters from the fountain. Then she took off her helmet and shook out her curly mane of red hair.

’Did Moira just do an Akira slide!?! That is f- wait… Bringing a bike through the barrier alleys is not practical at all. Did she drive here? In the 10 minutes since classes ended?? No way in Hell is that possible within the speed limit!!’

Traffic regulations aside, John stepped inside the gate. Along the way, he fired an Observe at the butler as well. Since it was apparently just a sense that his powers parsed in a particular way, there should be no harm in that, and the guy’s Level warranted investigation.

Okay, so butler was apparently just a cover for being head of security. That was somewhat of a relief. If the GRO had had people this powerful to spare for servant roles and people still described their clash with the Emerald Order as a war, that would have suggested unpleasant things about what the latter was capable of.

Now, it was actually interesting in the other direction. If the Level Cap was 500, but one of the strongest in a major guild was in the 90s, that suggested that the triple digits were very sparsely populated or else concentrated in the ‘Big Three’ and the ‘Throne Guilds’ that Marisa had talked about. Maybe 100 and up corresponded, at least roughly, to the so called Demigods. Further pondering of that would have to wait though.

“Mr. Newman, I presume.” While the butler was addressing John, he got the feeling that Reginald was actually looking to Moira for the confirmation and not him.

“Indeed, and on time as well, good.” The redhead’s addition there would have rankled John significantly more if he hadn’t been severely tempted to put off the meeting and try to turn the goodbye hug with Qhila into another round of cuddles. “I hope nothing urgent has come up to occupy my father.”

“I believe not. He awaits you in the west wing study, please follow me.” Reginald touched the fencepost, causing the gate to start closing on its own, then started back towards the manor. Moira finished removing her leather jacket and left it on the bike, then followed. So John did the same.

The double doors opened into a two story entrance hall, with a polished marble floor, wooden paneling on the walls, and medieval weapons hung on display. Stairs along the sides of the room led to a second story balcony, from which hung a medieval style tapestry. It showed a woman with blue and green hair standing on the surface of water by the shore. On the shore in front of her, four figures knelt.

Three were armored women, holding respectively a sword, a shield and a spear on upturned palms as if they were either presenting the items to the standing woman or had just received them from her. The last was a man that held nothing but wore a crown on his head and a sword at his hip.

John didn’t have time to ponder that or take in the sights any further, though, as the purposeful strides of the butler and the Warden were setting a pace that would make it easy to get left behind. They went upstairs on the left, then took a few turns down other hallways. Along the way, they passed a few people who paid them no mind.

The last hallway was lined on both sides with portrait paintings of red haired women. They all had some resemblance to Moira, and what was depicted of their attire suggested that the ones he passed first were from quite a long time ago. They were also glittering gray, so he Observed them. It turned out the magic was a preserving enchantment to ensure longevity of the portraits. He also got the date of completion, as well as name and age, at the time of painting, of the women in the pictures.

The first one was from the 9th century and depicted ‘Brigit Brighton’, presumably the same one that was listed as creator of the Silverthorn Wall. From then on the paintings got newer, but continued to be paintings of a Miss? Brighton in their early twenties. As they got closer to the end of the hallway, the resemblance to Moira increased as well, until the last and newest one, dated a little more than 30 years ago, looked so much like the student council president that it could have been a mildly inaccurate painting of her. Or an accurate painting of her wearing subtle makeup.

“The young Lady Warden and Mr. Newman, here to see you, sir.” In the moment John had considered the painting that was probably of Moira’s mom, the butler-slash-knight-champion opened the door, announced their arrival and stepped aside. When John entered, he caught a glimpse of a fatherly smile at Moira who had entered ahead of him. As soon as Lord Brighton changed his focus to John, the veteran knight’s expression changed to all business, carefully appraising eyes feeling like they were boring into John’s soul.

’Well, two can play that game…’ John thought as Lord Brighton gestured towards a chair in front of his desk.

Lord Brighton’s body shape being described as ‘brick wall’ was very fitting. While it was undoubtedly further magnified by him wearing a set of full plate armor, save for the helmet sitting on his desk, the Lord Protector was huge. In the armor, he was almost rat ogre wide, without looking like a misshapen steroid freak, but even out of it John wouldn’t be surprised if he needed to go partially sideways through regular doors.

The armor was of a silvery-white metal with red trims and golden roses inside a stylized depiction of a shield embossed directly on the chestplate and right pauldron. The left one had a heraldry of two crossed blades, one long and the other short, instead. The whole thing also came with red magic item glitter, which turned out to be the ability to turn into a tie clip, a ‘pocket space’ similar to John’s Inventory and the capacity to heal the wearer for an amount that looked ludicrous compared to John’s current stats. And it was made of more mithril too.

Lord Brighton had a neatly trimmed, reddish brown beard and matching, shoulder-length hair. A thin scar bisected his right eyebrow, and the gray eyes beneath brought to bear a piercing gaze that spoke of keen intellect.

“Greetings, Mr. Newman. I would have preferred we meet under better circumstances, but needs must. In this case, it makes for a more tense meeting and less time for pleasantries than would have been ideal. Evil never sleeps, as they say, and we can similarly ill afford to. Hold this.” The Lord Protector started speaking as soon as John sat down. As he went, he reached into a desk drawer, took out a featureless wooden rod and held it out to John. Featureless except for a glitter graphic, that was.

Holding it hadn’t seemed optional, but it was nice to know that it was just a countermeasure against something he was going to try to avoid. Before John had added anything to the conversation other than taking the rod, however, Lord Brighton continued, “I understand that you have already been introduced to the basics of what the Abyss is.”

John nodded and summarized, “Magic is real, but mostly hidden away in barriers. Mundane attention stifles magic, but I should just try not to get mundanes involved with the Abyss in the first place. The Abyss has its own internet called the Abyss Web, on which is, among others, magic Amazon.com called the Abyss Auction and magical Wikipedia from the Librarians of Alexandria. Also, I’m a Late Bloomer, and they usually don’t last long, but those that do tend to have weird abilities and grow stronger fast.”

“That is, in broad strokes, correct.” Lord Brighton’s expression remained thoughtful and appraising, his tone remained polite but firm, and his RP remained at 5. Still, John couldn’t shake the feeling that he was somehow mildly dissatisfied with the summary. “If you feel like Miss Groenn left anything out or if you have further questions, Reginald can get one of the servants to answer some of your questions once we are done.”

The Abyssal nobleman leaned a little forward as he continued, “Have you been in contact with any Abyssal organizations besides the Order and using those websites?”

“I don- Actually, if the ‘Scarlet Witch’ counts, then yes.” When John mentioned his history teacher’s Abyssal identity, Lord Brighton frowned, so John hastily added, “She pretty much just told me to stay out of her business though.”

That softened the frown a bit, and John got the feeling that what remained wasn’t directed at him. “Other than that and Golden Rose members, I’ve met, like, three Abyssals total I think. I bought something from a local herbalist shop called Grave Concoctions, I guess that’s kind of an organization? I’ve kinda been trying to keep my head down until I figure out what’s what.”

“Very well.” Lord Brighton nodded once. “Next, I am told that you got into a fight with a mundane today, and won.