18 Movements in the Shadows [REWRITTEN]
During the period of free time that Evan had before the week of the founding ball, he decided to explore the capital of the Great Western Empire: Gerfast.
The city was as one would expect, busy.
It was separated into three districts, the Castle town, the Nobles district and the Commoners district.
The streets of the commoners' district were steep and had irregular widths. They were crowded and full of obstacles preventing a free comfortable movement.
However, primitive urban development regulations were put in place, and one of them required that there should be at least one clear street in every section of the district, such that a horseman with a lance across his saddle could ride without being obstructed by anything in his path.
Any buildings or structures that interfered with this lance had to be demolished. The houses also reflected the ranks of those living within.
Some nobles' and rich merchants' mansions could look like small fortresses while most of the houses in the commoners' district were a lot smaller.
The guilds also had their own streets. They were organizations that managed people of the same profession, like merchants were managed by the merchant's guild and tailors by the tailor's guilds.
For organizations that had guilds managing them, it was compulsory to be registered before one could take jobs.
On a side note, Evan decided to make it his goal to secure a steady supply of strawberries from whatever guild was responsible for fruits and related products.
Another thing that Evan noticed was that the technological development of not only Gerfast, but pretty much every other major city in all of Aidos was haphazard.
Things were just all over the place.
In some aspects, they seemed like the usual middle ages fantasy world seen in media, but some other times they seemed like someone took a piece of the twenty-first century and tossed it into Aidos. A few other times, it would seem as if they were in the thirty-first century and had advanced further than Evan's world had.
For example, the main means of transportation in Aidos, were animal-drawn carriages like horse and donkey carriages, with some people opting to just ride the animals themselves.
Boats and ships existed but those were mainly used by coastal countries or in the coastal regions of some countries. Like the western part of the Great Western Empire that had an ocean right next to it.
For Air transportation, things like planes didn't exist as the major means of air transportation, was to ride monsters or magic beasts like gryphons and so on, things that could only be afforded by the wealthy.
As for means of communication, they had letters and postcards. Then they had these things called 'magic projections'.
There would be an artifact at location A, that had the ability to record video and audio, and then send this recorded video and audio as a signal over a long distance to location B, where there was an artifact that received this video and audio and played them out for the recipient.
The recipient also had their own recording artifact that recorded their own actions and sent them over a long distance from Location B to location A.
Thus, the two sides could communicate in real-time, although there was usually a slight delay depending on the distance.
There was then the existence of 'Control Towers' that helped receive and transmit the projection signals from the magic projection artifacts.
'No matter how you look at it, it's basically just video calling!'
And then they had these things that were pretty much smartphones.
They were called guild cards and they were given to every member of a guild upon registration. It served as a means of identification as a member of that guild and also a means of communication between members of the guild.
Although the exact ability of each card was different depending on the rank of the card, the ability to communicate came standard with all of them. There was also the existence of additional paid content on these guild cards.
These 1.5cm thick 'cards', had small speakers and microphones embedded inside them with magi-technology on the top right edges of the cards. These speakers and microphones aided in communication over long distances, sending magical signals which were received and transmitted by 'Card Control Towers' to the recipient devices.
Evan couldn't help but notice how similar to telephone masts/signal towers that these card control towers looked. And as for how he saw them, each guild building had a card control tower on its roof.
It was known that a saint that received wisdom from the goddess was the one who created this. The saint had also been the one to advocate the construction of transmission towers called 'Card Control Towers' that were basically telephone masts.
The only small drawback which Evan didn't really consider a drawback, was that it was impossible to contact the guild card of a member of another with yours.
For example, if Evan had an Adventurer guild card, he could only use it to contact other adventurer guild cards and could not contact merchant guild cards with it. Also, you had to register with the other person's guild card before you could contact them.
It was pretty much like adding the other person as a friend, just like how one could do on a certain social media with a blue and white logo.
'Pretty much just making phone calls and sending text messages!'
The one that made Evan nearly flip the table he was reading about it on, was the fact that there existed methods to store information on these things called 'memory gems'.
And just like their names, it was indeed possible to extract one's memories and place them in the memory gem.
You could also record an event with a recording artifact, and place the recording in a memory gem.
'No matter how you look at it, that's just like putting a video in a flash drive.'
These memory gems also had variations that were used to store the data. For example, when someone registered with a guild, their data and information were stored in 'Large Scale' or 'Scale-up' 'memory gems', and these gems were connected to other gems in other countries, which were then connected to all the guild branches, allowing for the information of a guild member to be accessed in any guild branch they went to.
Each guild usually had a secret building where these large-scale gems were kept in various rooms.
'Scale-up memory gems?! Those are freaking Servers!' and the rooms they're kept in are practically 'Server Rooms!'
At this point, the young hero gave up trying to understand the weird magi-technological development of Aidos.
Even during his free time, Evan did not neglect his daily training even though Finely was not coaching him anymore.
He understood that he would lose his touch if he slacked off even a bit so he didn't need anyone to tell him to keep himself in shape.
Daily morning training, going out into the city and mingling with commoners while in disguise, making preparations for his endeavours after his visit to dungeon city Merdin.
That was how Evan spent his days until the day of the Founding ball arrived.
◇ ◇ ◇
Underground Facility
Unknown Island
March 30th
Year 1051
While the citizens of the great Western Empire were preparing for their country's founding festival, a certain group of beings were also making secret preparations for their own goals.
Inside an underground facility, somewhere on one of the small islands that lay in between the Alpha and Beta continents, ten beings sat at a long rectangular table as they listened to the reports of their operations over the past few months.
"So, you're saying that all attempts to make contact with the six of them have been unsuccessful?"
"Yes, my lord.
The six of them all refused to listen to anything we said, even going as far as to utilize their unique skills on the teams sent to them."
The being seated at the head of the table, a dark-haired man that the other nine referred to as their lord, placed a hand on his chin and heaved a sigh of exasperation.
"Even after losing most of their power over the course of the past thousand years, it doesn't change the fact that they are still immensely powerful beings that we have to get on our side."
As he spoke, one of the others seated on the table, a woman, spoke up in reply to his words.
"There is a way we can get them on our side."
"How?"
To the dark-haired man's question, she answered.
"They made mention of the seventh, the eldest among them. They all said they would only listen to us if we are able to convince the seventh."
"And where is the seventh?"
"It took us a while but we finally found it, the answer was in our faces the whole time.
At the bottom of dungeon city Merdin of the Alpha continent's Great Western Empire.
That is where the seventh is."
Hearing her words, the others on the table all nodded in affirmation as they realized that the answer they were seeking was right in their faces the whole time.
The dark-haired man sighed once more before giving his orders.
"Their founding festival is close and security would be at its highest, we shall wait till they are done, only then, shall we attempt to make contact.
Number 6, you should be able to clear that dungeon single-handedly, you shall go."
"Yes, my lord."
"Until then, all executives shall lay low. Our goal is close, we can't mess up now."
The other nine bowed as the dark-haired man stood up and walked out the door behind him.
◇ ◇ ◇
In an entirely white space, a woman wearing a white suit sat on a golden throne with multiple floating screens around her.
Each of these screens was either showing the events happening in an unknown world or the graphs showing the growth progress of unknown components.
Some even had different coloured lines of code running through them as the woman's golden eyes alternated between the screens while tapping on some with her hands.
"So, you gave him 'Adaptive Evolution'?"
Upon hearing that voice, the woman turned her gaze to the being who had suddenly appeared beside her. He looked no more than eighteen years of age and had silver hair with heterochromatic eyes.
She nodded before returning her gaze to one of the screens showing lines of code.
"A fitting power as expected of the 'goddess of Evolution'."
He continued speaking as he tapped one of the screens and adjusted a few of the figures it was displaying before walking forward with his hands behind his back.
He looked around the white space before turning his gaze back to the woman seated on the throne behind him.
It was at that point that she stood up after waving her hands and causing the screens around her to disappear. All except one.
She was tall and slim with long black hair and beautiful skin. She had a body like that of a model and a relaxed attitude with no expression on her face.
"What brings you here?"
"Nothing much. Just wanted to see how you were faring after that stunt you pulled…but you seem better than ever."
The woman heaved a sigh at his words and tapped on the last screen in front of her before it disappeared.
**HUMMM!!!
Waves of energy spread out with her at the centre as she nodded before turning her gaze back to the man and speaking.
"As you can see, I am fine.
Now you can get the hell out."
"Harsh as ever, Artemisia."
The man let out a laugh as he called out the name of this woman.
She was none other than the goddess Artemisia who was responsible for sending Evan into the world of Aidos.
"I'm not being harsh, I just have things to do and your presence here would mess them up."
"Things like chatting with 'Evan'? I already made a connection to that piece of power you gave to him. You called it a 'system update'?"
Hearing his words, Artemisia frowned and replied.
"So, you were the one who made a connection first? Patching that up was a lot of work. Don't do that again."
After saying that she snapped her fingers and the light of teleportation wrapped around his body, sending him out of the white space, and leaving behind Artemisia who heaved a sigh once again.
