The Eternal City 2 – Mansion Staufen

Eventually Lydia got caught up to them. “That was disgraceful!” of course, the first thing she said was a reprimand towards Thana; “Not only do you reveal your powers, but you also hurt John, let it be known that I am thoroughly disappointed!”

“Yes, yes,” Thana sighed, “I get it, I get it, I have the fucking mental state of toddler and I don’t deserve desert. Shut the fuck up, princess.” 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 havingm 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 off the lanes,” Lydia remark; “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 there. 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 speed on top of these lanes.

“So how does this work?” John wondered as they stopped in front of those streets. It was at least ten-metres wide and was divided into two sections by a railing, anchored on the island, of unknown material in the middle. The same material also framed the street to the left and right, serving as the barrier between the walker and the city below. Said material looked like a gold alloy but, when John touched it, felt more like rubber. Not that he got a long time to test that feeling, as he got something like a mild electric shock and stumbled back.

“Hey!” John exclaimed and, worried, checked his health. He had used the waiting for Undine to heal him to full, but still, he 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 mana.

“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 out there. The mana streets, or Arcan Pavimentum as they are officially called, create a circular mana stream that we can safely step on. Normally it’s 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. Let’s stop wasting time, however.”

Lydia simply stepped on the blue, streaming surface and immediately was carried off at an impressive speed, roughly estimate to what cars were allowed to drive 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 felling of the ground moving underneath John’s feet was surprisingly unsurprising. It felt like he was riding on escalator. Similarly, he could just walk forward on it. Of course. Rave had other plans, trying to run into 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, hand 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. ‘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, too, 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 had enough to do as is. Why don’t you take a look at the city?”

That was a comment that bound everyone’s interest, as they scrambled to the edge of the street to look below.

The city of Rome was gargantuan. Houses, halls, towers and streets, perfectly planned out and stretching over an area that described a perfect circle, all the was to the edge of the Illusion Barrier. 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 ancient Greek design, devouring at least a few square kilometres just for its buildings, the vast gardens not even included, growing 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. John gulped, even from the distance it was impressive.

John looked around below. “Just how many people are there in the Abyss?” he wondered to get his thought away from the tournament and needless worries. “The abyssal mirror of the Abyss holds around 200.000 people, about 70% of which 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 that have been born, raised and have never left Illusion Barrier’s inside cities of this size. And why would they? The Sons of Rome have their own order of Fateweaver’s that connect the Italian cities through traffic tunnels, most of the landside 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 of the mana street and went onto another one, always guided by Lydia. The princess was fairly certain on her feet 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 slated ceiling.

Wide garden’s, perfect to take a stroll in where people could easily lose sight of you and intrigues could be planned in public isolation, stretched around the building. Who took care of these garden’s 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 Staufen,” 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 of Lydia’s houses, just bigger. John felt thoroughly disappointed. “Why?” he had to ask, “Why do you use the same style everywhere?!” “Because the company that does it presented me a contract over 10 years in which he would redecorate every house that I pointed him at. Not having him work would 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. “You can find the kitchen by taking the door to your right, you will find the living room behind it. Turn right and go to the door ahead, that will take you to the kitchen.”

Aclysia bowed and was off. John smirked, well, 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, like the rest of them.

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 edging on his girlfriend. It was only a matter of time until one of these situations escalated and he would be in the middle of it. Something that he REALLY didn’t want to experience.

‘Guess I’ll 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.’