?Might: 60/170
?Alacrity: 60/170
?Durability: 55/170
?Cunning:30/170
?Acumen: 15/170
?Quintessence: 10/170 ]
?
The spirit proceeded to run me through each of these attributes, complete with the little magic window showing me demonstrations of what they represented.
My [Might] was enough that I could lift a horse over my head and run at the speed of a fast hound, meaning if this spirit was correct, I was a lot weaker than I had been in my true body. [Alacrity] represented my reflexes and ability to perceive things as they travelled at speed.
I was a little offended when the spirit explained that [Cunning] was a measurement of how quickly my mind could react to new information, as it was so clearly much lower than my other ‘stats’ so far.
“And what about my will?” I asked the disembodied voice. “There have been many a time the greatness of my will overcame what my body or tactics could not.”
“Willpower is an observable phenomenon in human beings, but it is simply not something that can be quantified,” replied the spirit. Honestly, that was the first thing the stupid voice in my head had said that made any sense to me. Not that I had a lot of time to ponder, as only a few moments later, the dark box I was in ceased its descent.
“Now, master Lu Bu when the elevator doors in front of you open, you may find the city beyond a little overwhelming. Things will go more smoothly and you will have a more pleasant time if you don’t panic.”
“I am Lu Bu. I never panic.”
“Right,” said the spirit dubiously. “ Well, if you could remain nearby where we exit and do not act in an aggressive manner, things will go more smoothly and you will have a more pleasant time.”
It turned out that ‘may find the city a little overwhelming’ was the understatement of the millennium. When the door before me opened, what poured in was not the light of the sun but a multi-colored onslaught of bright lights and intense sounds.
Shielding my eyes, I stepped forward and out of the transportation box, cracked my neck, and stood upright before finally giving the cavalcade around me a proper look. A look that filled me with equal parts awe and horror. I was at the bottom of an artificial canyon formed between blocky mountain-sized towers of metal and glass. These impossible towers blocked out the sky on all sides, substituting the stars with thousands of their own lights, which seemed to flicker and shift.
Floating between the towers were what could only be examples of powerful spirit overlords. They appeared like huge ethereal people of impossible beauty performing arcane actions and motions I didn’t understand. Every few seconds, the giant spirits would blur and shift forms to different people, still just as stunning and performing yet more actions with strange tools I didn’t recognize, or taking time to enjoy some equally huge and ethereal meal or drink. All of which looked so appetizing, I was surprised these god sized spirits weren’t constantly fighting off their lesser’s attempts to taste them.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Despite their vast size, I noticed these spirits must also be bound by some strange celestial laws I didn’t understand, as while their forms and actions seemed to shift erratically, I quickly realized they were forced to follow some sort of repeating pattern.
Having noted that the gigantic spirits hadn’t directed their attention toward me a single time during my entire observation, I directed my own to what I now realized was an alleyway around me. It was an island of gloom in this sea of light, at the end of the alley I could hear a strange echoing growl as though repeated by the throats of hundreds of beasts. Whatever the creatures making the noise were, I couldn’t say, but my ears told me there were a lot of them.
“What is making that noise?” I demanded of the spirit.
“Which noise is that, master Lu Bu? There are over five hundred individual sources within your potential hearing range that are generating sound with sufficient volume for you to hear.”
“I don’t know. That's why I asked.” I snapped at the disembodied voice.
“Of course.” It replied appropriately chastised. “ I will categorize potential candidates and present you with a list.”
I grit my teeth in frustration and began padding towards the end of the alleyway and the source of the noises. There was a small queue of five of the metal buglike yaoguai waiting to enter the elevator box I had exited, but they made no effort to impede me,so I ignored them.
“That growling, there are hundreds of examples of it.”
“Oh! Those are cars, master Lu Bu, excuse me, palanquins or carriages that do not require people or animals to drive them. They are known as cars.”
“And the growling?“
The spirit answered, but I had stopped listening. If the sight of the towers and the huge spirits had taken my breath away, what greeted me at the end of the alley felt like it was going to make my heart burst right out of my chest.
Understand I am no country bumpkin to be cowed by the sight of a grand city in motion. I left that boy behind on the steppe long ago, when I first crossed the desert at the behest of my second father. And yet seeing what was merely a single street in this impossible city was almost unnerving.
The vehicles the spirit had mentioned were marked with boxes declaring them [Horseless Cart-Car] The boxes were small, but the sheer number of them quickly filled my vision in its entirety. Thankfully, the spirit must have anticipated my desire to be rid of the identifying boxes as they vanished before I could even say anything about it.
The vehicles themselves were boxy things made of metal and some sort of resin I didn't recognize; each one had a pair of powerful lanterns adorning the front that split the night with blinding beams. These primary lanterns were each backed up by all manner of lesser lights around the blocky-wheeled body of the ‘cars’. As the spirit had said, they were propelled not by beast or man, but some internal power I couldn't see that drove them on.
The cars themselves seemed to be confined to a center road fenced in on either side by walkways that were utterly covered in pedestrians , and I mean covered. They swarmed onto and off the street via brightly lit entrances at the bases of the enormous towers.
I felt like I was attending a parade or watching an army march to war, so great were the numbers of people I could see moving about.
It couldn’t be a parade or an army, I knew that from the lack of uniformity Just as they had been in the waiting room above the people, I could see were garishly dressed in all manner of bright, revealing garments, some of which even seemed to change shape or color as their wearers moved.
As much as the sheer numbers boggled the mind, I knew deep down that I wasn’t looking at anything special; these were just citizens of this afterlife city going about their day. Once I made that realization, the context of everything else I was seeing seemed to snap into place.
Each tower had at least a dozen entrances at the ground level, many of which were marked with identification boxes that declared them as various stores and service providers. Others were marked with strange nondescript names like [Hayview 1-199] or [Silverwoods 300-600].
“Apartments,” I whispered in shock. “These buildings are full of apartments.” The cities of my homeland had buildings and districts like that, crammed with apartments one atop the other to house the endless supply of bureaucrats that plagued the empire. Those were a breath against a windstorm when compared to these towers.
“Correct,” replied the spirit.
“Though several also house things like shopping malls, hospitals, prisons, museums, and all manner of other services the public may wish to access.”
That made sense given the size of the towers. I was about to demand the spirit direct me to somewhere that I could bathe and get some new clothes when I learned that the ‘cars’ weren’t nearly as confined to the road between walkways as I had first thought.
And this is the nice part of town...
So anyone figured out what A.M.L.B stands for yet?
