The Third Portal: Chapter Four

“There are currently four major adventure guilds with different outposts on the other slices of the island, except for the central mountains: Port Sapphire, Port Emerald, and Port Heliodor. We need more, a lot more, since they’re not even really towns or even villages. They’re hamlets with a live-in arcanist, more rendezvous points for missions than anything,” Ivy explained. “Then there are two dozen other major guilds that are here, alongside tons of smaller guilds with less than fifty members, and a bunch of independents like you, but those aren’t quite as important unless you want to delve into the political side of things.”

“Alright, so four guilds. I saw something about a Hyacinth Heart guild, are they one of the big ones?” 

“Uh. Well, kind of. They’re a guild primarily composed of healers, alchemists, and nurses, but they also have a few doctors. They run field medicine, and are currently working on setting up the first civilian hospital” Ivy said. “But they fall into the other category of ‘important guilds that aren’t part of the field missions’, at least usually. The four major adventure guilds are the Candleseers, Nightheart, and Beastbody, and Phantom Hand.”

“I’ve had run-ins with the Nightheart guild before,” I said. Mallory and Riley were both members of the guild, a powerful inhuman-centric guild. Beyond that, I didn’t know much about them.” 

“I’m not the biggest fan,” Ivy said. “They keep trying to recruit me, really aggressively, even though I told them no. Still, for sapient beasts and non-human hominids, it’s got a good support system, just not one I need. Their local leader is a Huli Jing.” 

“Huli Jing are one of the nine tailed fox breeds, aren’t they?” I asked. 

“They are, though I don’t know much about the differences between them, Kitsune, and the other types,” Ivy admitted. “I do know she’s stronger than their guildmaster, but less politically savvy, which is why she got shunted out here. She’s currently keeping an eye on Port Sapphire. And she’s taken on an apprentice, a hotshot werewolf who wound up in a similar situation – something about her mom embezzling government funds?” 

“Interesting,” I said. I had a sneaking suspicion that the werewolf would be named Mallory. Before the Idyll-Flume, that would have had me wary, but now, I honestly didn’t mind all that much. 

“So what about Candleseers? I assume they’re diviners and cartographers, trying to map the land, figure out what areas we can settle in without destroying the natural ecosystems, while also filling a scouting role?”

“Yes, exactly,” Ivy said. “Their guild leader is an older blind man who’s a little creepy. Mental and knowledge mana, and an excellent wardcrafter for mental wards. He’s not a great combat mage, but he’s helped set up wards around all of the other spots on the island.”

“So how about the last two? Beastbody and Phantom Hand. I assume I’m most like the beastbody guild?” 

Ivy snorted and shook his head. 

“No, far from it. They’re primarily life mages. They do have some interesting magic you may want to look at, but they’re not… You, so to speak. They use a pair of first and second gate full-gate spells that create a faux beast core and connect their energy to their spirit, kind of like you, then their third gate has a set of transformation spells designed to make use of their super empowered bodies. Their leader is an arcanist in Port Emerald.”

I wondered if Magister’s Body had come from an early draft of the guild’s research. It was a pretty common practice for guilds to donate any spells they created that fell outside of their goal or methods to the library. Despite Ivy’s thought that I wouldn’t find them all that interesting, I thought they sounded remarkably useful. 

“No, the one I think you’ll find the most interesting is Phantom Hand,” Ivy said. “They take on creation mages, and then use a full gate spell to attach a semi-corporeal monster limb, kind of like your tail, then use a variation of creation based summoning magic that calls magic through the limb, instead of through a summoned imitation of a creature. Their leader is out in Port Heliodor.” 

“Huh,” I said, blinking. “I wonder if I could learn any of their magic?” 

I kind of doubted that I could. Hudau mana couldn’t imitate anything too pure – Edgar had said he couldn’t even have used Foxstep, and that was an actual beast spell – and I didn’t have creation mana. Still, it would be worth looking at if they had anything worthwhile. I couldn’t get any secrets, but who knew.

“I was actually thinking about techniques,” Ivy said. “Learn to channel your huadu mana through your tail. Yours comes from a connection to your mana-garden and soul, right? Maybe you could learn to cast all your spells through it, like they do with their creation-based constructions.”

I raised an eyebrow at his suggestion, then slowly nodded. I was already capable of channeling some spells that way, like Mantle Dragonfyre, and Ikki had also suggested I work on using my tail more in combat. It was worth a look. 

“Good idea!” I said, then paused as we stopped before a low, squat door, built into a hill. The door was made entirely out of smooth crystal, glowing with seventh gate power that I recognized as Elio’s magic. Ivy tapped his ID to the door, then stepped through the crystal. I did the same, but nothing happened. I frowned, then tried to foxstep inside, but moving through solid objects was still well beyond my foxsteping ability. Dusk laughed, then threw her hands out and commanded the doors to open with her dominion. Idyll’s magic seemed to conjoin with hers, and we stepped into a hall with three glowing portals inside, as well as an older woman with curly black hair, dark skin, and severe eyes. 

A moment later, I realized that the portals weren’t actually active, but rather, were glassy flat planes of circular crystal in assorted colors. They had been enchanted with a mixture of Elio’s gemstone, standard spatial, and portal ant magic. The woman raised her eyebrow expectantly and Ivy just waved his hand. 

“Showing a newbie the ropes.” 

“Ah,” she said. “This is the teleportation hall, with connections to Port Sapphire, Emerald, and Heliodor. It’s included in most missions that need you to go out that far, but teleporting you out for another reason will require you to charge the portal yourself.” 

“That reminds me of Edgar’s portals,” I said. “Actually, I think the portal ant magic is the same.” 

“Oh, Edgar the big turtle?” the woman asked. “Yes, he helped set some of it up, and has been doing various missions for the Brighteyes.” 

Dusk piped up, her voice the sound of rocks splashing into a lake, and asked the attendant if she knew where Edgar was now.

“Last I heard, he was working near Port Heliodor, trying to deal with the aftermath of some giant wasps or hornets or something being teleported into the unclaimed lands. There are a few dozen wasps who escaped, and are now going crazy, they’re now destroying the local solbee and jewel-butterfly populations.” 

I winced, wondering who would have had the bright idea to teleport a hive whose workers were spellbinder level without due diligence. They either didn’t know what they were doing, or didn’t especially care. 

“Ah, well, thank you for the info,” I told the attendant, then we headed outside

“Why don’t more cities have portal setups like that?” I wondered aloud. “I get that actively powering the portals is difficult, but even ones like this where people provide their own power seems incredibly useful. You could get from the capital to Teffordshire to Mortshire all in a short time, as long as you had the mana for it. If there was one portal for every two thousand people or so…” 

“The wear and tear makes it untenable in the long term,” Ivy said. “The arrays to store and convert any mana type and run the portal put a lot of strain on the enchantment matrix. It needs to be maintained by an Arcanist level spatial enchanter every day. The only place I know of that’s actually got them is the Tower-City.” 

“That makes sense,” I said. “It would be like if you needed a full medical doctor to be located in every single school, all the time.” 

Ivy nodded, and we continued our tour of various facilities: the location of the Hyacinth Heart’s massive healing station, trash disposal, and some of the free housing. I was glad to see that there was some provided, even if I didn’t need it – I had a mobile home, after all, so cramming myself in with four other people in small rooms was far from needed. 

While we were in the common area of the free housing, I caught someone staring at me a fair bit out of their eye, a young person with gray hair and metallic eyes who was tinkering with a puzzle cube covered in small runes. Each time I turned to look more at them, they flicked their eyes back down to their cube and continued tinkering. I debated saying something, then shrugged and let it go. If they needed something, they could come talk to me, and if not, then oh well.

We continued working in a long loop as he pointed out the civilian guilds and the main bases of the combat ones.

“Are we going to see the walls?” I asked. “I saw them coming in, they were impressive looking.” 

“It's several miles of farmland to the wall,” Ivy said. “You’re welcome to go if you’d like, but it’s a pretty boring walk.”

We continued  before we finally stopped before a small plot of land that had a strange copse of trees growing around it. The trees were glowing with forest dragon mana in some sort of warding shape. 

“This is my land,” Ivy said proudly. “Not much yet, but I’m working on saving up points for construction and all that stuff.” 

“If you need a hand, let me know,” I told him. 

“Same to you. I might mostly be a legal functionary, but I am a pretty potent fighter.” 

“Speaking of… Let me feel!” 

Ivy unfastened his veiling artifact, and a tidal wave of forest dragon mana slammed into me. He had definitely reached peak third gate, and thanks to his legacy continually improving his mana density, he felt well beyond it. I thought that the assassin I’d fought might have had more raw mana, but Ivy’s was close, and it was both denser and far more deadly feeling. I stepped back almost on instinct before I flared out my own mana and met him. 

I was much weaker, but I’d gotten used to fighting people with huge amounts of power. As long as they were within my tier, overwhelming power wasn’t quite as scary as it had once been. Ivy noticed and his eyes widened some when I managed to push his power back with my own. 

“You’ve gotten strong.” 

“I think you’d still win in a fight,” I said. 

“Sure, but I’ve finished digging out my steps,” Ivy said. “You’ve only just begun.” 

He slapped his veiling artifact back on, and smiled. 

“Well, I’m gonna try and call my parents, let mom know you arrived. She asked about you.” 

Dusk cheerfully asked him to tell Azalea hello.

“Will do.” 

We stood there awkwardly for a bit before I headed back towards the docks, where Octavian, Ed, and Liz were all working on getting themselves set up with the port authority, getting their IDs set up, and I joined them, handing over my Mossford ID. It took a while, but eventually, I was passed back that ID, alongside a similar one made of a thin white stone material, with a different crest embossed on it. 

“What’s this?” I asked, poking at it. 

“That’s your Crysite ID,” the attendant told me, barely hiding his yawn. “It can be used to access most of your facilities, as well as connected to your point total. Once we’ve established enough to declare ourselves a legal nation, you can use it to roll over to official citizenship for free.” 

Well, at least that explained the doors not working until Dusk had called on Idyll. 

When we finished up, I toured around the city with the group, showing things off. Ed met with the Brighteyes leader, who directed him and Liz to their housing, which was slightly nicer, but far from palatial.

As we started to break up and go our separate ways, I headed back to the portal center, wanting to go see Edgar.