An air limo picked Nestra up near one of Threshold’s rare hotels. When she stepped in, she realized there were more levels of luxuries in life than she’d been expecting. This wasn’t a fancy means of transportation designed to give corpo execs a sense of superiority for working ninety hours a week. No. Those were entirely too pedestrian. This was Shinran’s personal car. It even had custom made interior design, athmo, rare leather upholstery… The works. “Riel, is this Champagne?” It was Champagne from the Champagne region of France. There was also caviar from the Black Sea. Shit, Nestra didn’t even know they still made some! She had gobbled the small pot by the time the limo flew over the eastern district. She remembered going there a few times as a kid, back when she was an up and coming striker prospect. The richest and most affluent gleams kept their compounds here, secluded from the hoi polloi and each other by tall hedges barded with enchantments and security cameras. It was a place of privilege, but mostly, it was a place of exclusivity. Those who stayed there valued their privacy at the cost of money. A ton of money. It wasn’t a surprise that here is where Shinran would have his own domain. Damn, it was weird how he managed to keep his ascetic persona with all the obscene luxury he had on display. Maybe he used the city’s wealth? She could see the top of his manor from here: it looked like a multi-floor pagoda. Or a temple. Orange pillars emerged from the canopies of old ginkgo trees. Very nice. This place didn’t even have roads that she could see. Either you flew in or you were too poor, she guessed. Or too weak. “I can jusssst swim through the walls anyway,” she grumbled. The hover limo descended a separate spot near the main house, one of the few visible concessions to modernity. She spotted the steel cylinders she associated with hidden gun emplacements, which made sense. Shinran wasn’t always here, and he was bound to have fancy guests. Also, it wouldn’t look good if Threshold’s protector couldn’t even protect his own home, even when he was away. Nestra nodded to herself. Obviously she was justified in having a naval gun at home. Even Shinran agreed with her. She stood when the limo landed without a sound, the door opening to the scent of osmanthus flowers. Incidentally, osmanthus syrup was delicious with alcohol. Strong mana. Heat. The smell of heated metal and beyond that, the pungent stench of giant insect blood. A creature in heavy black armor grabbed Nestra. It was squat and weird, with long limbs. Nestra spotted mandibles moving under the heavy helmet. An acrid smell assailed her nose. She didn’t hear anything but clicks, but she could guess what it wanted. She was surrounded by wounded creatures bearing the same dark armor. In front of her, a thick line of similar warriors fought a pitched battle against similar entities in red armor at the foot of some active volcano. Nestra wasn’t a general but even she could tell the black armor dudes were fucked. They were cornered, outnumbered, and she could see a mage working behind enemy lines to heal wounded red warriors. The opposing force also boasted a powerful C-rank commander who killed soldiers on her side with methodical strikes using a hooked hammer. She took it all in with a glance. Could she rally her side? Absolutely the fuck not. Nestra was a disruptor, not a commander, and she knew exactly what to do to win this. With powerful strides, she sprinted towards the thick of the battle. Soldiers on her side looked back with alarm. She used momentum to bypass most of the frontlines. Red armor soldiers jumped her as she reappeared, but powerful strikes of her void-infused sword cleaved through their armor like butter. Yellow ichor sprayed her Skin, which complained a bit. The wound in her shoulder stung. It wasn’t closed yet. She was still… wait, she was still wounded? From the previous simulation? The mage noticed her. It raised a shield made of life mana, a very curious construct. She would mention it to Valerian. It was useless. Even as soldiers rushed her, and the commander fell back with a hiss, she charged herself with electricity. A bolt thundered on the shield but didn’t pierce through. Wounded warriors formed a wall to block her. She used momentum again. The electricity blast raged through the assembled warriors. The shield cracked. Using precision, she stabbed through the narrowest chink, perforating the healer from end to end. Void mana poisoned his innards. His healing magic failed to repel it. Nestra opened the armored healer like a can. Her blade hit the ground, then she was a whirlwind, cutting soldiers where they stood. Many of them were on the weaker side of C-rank but they were absolutely no match for her. Too bland and predictable. More power filled her. It was… weird power. Mostly undirected. But it was power nonetheless. This told her the creatures were probably fake, but the mana wasn’t. Her painful shoulder confirmed much of it was real. The commander struck, a powerful overhead blow that she deflected down and to the side. Basalt shards showered them both. He was very strong. Her counter ripped on the side of a magically reinforced pauldron. A skill? probably a skill. She wished she could loot his corpse to feed the Skin but it didn’t seem like it was an option. Nestra grinned. That was fine. She was having fun. She was learning. The commander tried to dig his weapon into her flank. She blocked, feet digging grooves into the blackened stone. She ducked under a second strike in the same spot, finding the edge of its shield. Her strike pushed him back but his armor held. He’d moved at the last moment. Her abyssal eyes met his compound ones, deep under the helmet. “Ah, I love defensive fighters. So fun to peel open!” It spat a cloud of pheromones in her direction. It smelled like blood. Nestra didn’t teleport, didn’t use her spell. She was going to carve it up the old fashioned way. Weak mana. The familiar smell of charred meat and offal. A strange, animal sweat. Dim light. Gray sky visible through broken windows. Nestra was tired. The commander's fight had been long and tiring, and by the time she was done, her side had managed to claim victory by enduring the assault. A painful gash on her thigh was still knitting itself back together. She was in a ruined building made of large bricks. Shapes squatted around her, stocky humanoids with bone ridges where the hair ought to be. They had almost flat faces. Padded armor clung to their muscular shapes. their eyes were flat, round, and worried. They were waiting on her. Helmets waited on the ground. They were sweating. It smelled of fear. One of the strange creatures pointed at a nearby tower, out the gash that used to be a window. A flag was there. Nestra looked at the quiet, resigned bunch. They were not real but… their model definitely was. There was something intense and desperate in the posture of people doomed to die, yet unable to avoid it. They gripped their weapons like lifelines. Those were repeater crossbows, really nice ones with pulleys and everything. She realized she had one as well. And a tower shield. And some sort of small metal pineapple. She had a pretty good idea about what those were. “Let’s try something.” Nestra signed for the squad to gather. They stood with varying degrees of enthusiasm, fastening their helmets as they went. She signed that she would take point. With natural ease, they gathered in a circle at her back. All their shields pointed towards the side where the tower was. How did those weird aliens know MaxSec signs? Probably part of the exercise. She led her merry band out into a devastated city. Smoke emerged from distant buildings. The retort of strange guns came and in the distance, there were flames. Corpses wearing her side’s uniform were strewn about, among the debris of the nearest street. They taught her that the flimsy armor her allies wore was completely useless, and the helmet as well since the bodies had sprouted feather shafts. The shields looked like they could take a beating though. She studied the distant shape of the tower, searching a way through the ravaged urban hellscape. There was a good path a little to the side that would give them cover for most of the approach. She assumed the tower’s immediate surroundings were heavily populated. Nestra moved again, only for her intuition to scream. She pivoted and lowered her shoulder at the same time. With a sound of breaking wood, something punched through her shield. It didn’t manage to get through the skin underneath, fortunately. Nestra lifted her crossbow before the squad could react. She gauged where the quarrel had come from, and found a glint of metal in a nearby window. She shot before the next bolt could land. She missed. She was just a bit low. Crossbows didn’t have recoil, dammit! Her squad reacted though. Together, they lodged enough quarrels through that opening to silence it. Nestra wasn’t sure they’d gotten the unlucky sniper and she didn’t overly care. With a gesture, her squad rushed towards a nearby building to take cover. There were charred corpses inside. Enemy combatants, judging from the melted crossbows they held. They didn’t wear a uniform. Nestra didn’t like that. She still led her soldiers farther in, past a demolished building and along the broad facade of a collapsed structure. It might have been a church, or a very large factory. She couldn’t tell. Nothing was left of the architecture but rubble. As they walked along a low wall, Nestra saw movement on the tower side. She gestured for the squad to take cover just as the first bolts smashed into the wall and their raised shields. Slowly, the squad crawled forward under a rain of projectiles, and this time, they were not very precise. The cover was excellent anyway. She stole a glance up. A group of five or six creatures were pushing a stubby mortar thing towards them, above and to the side. A small railing provided cover to a group of fighters in drab cloaks. Nestra waited a bit, even as her squad moved up. “On my mark, provide cover,” she said. They put the mortar down. A young creature approached with a large ball in its strained arms. Nestra surged up and shot, soon followed by her soldiers. The foes yelped and panicked. The young one dropped the ball as he reached for his chest, which now sported a serrated quarrel. Nestra pulled the pin on her alien grenade, throwing it immediately. The soldiers kept exchanging bolts even as the canon servants screeched in alarm. One of Nestra’s men fell dead with a bolt through the skull. The grenade exploded. A fiery conflagration engulfed the canon and all those who had ignored the warning. Torched figures dancing a macabre waltz fell from the railings. Others died away. The path was clear. Several soldiers kneeled by their fallen comrade. Even though this wasn’t real, there was something poignant about their quiet pain, something uncomfortably familiar. “We can’t help. We’ve got to keep going.” They didn’t object, but one of them closed the eyes of the dead one. Maybe it was a universal gesture. Again, her immersion in the sim was broken because it was just a little too realistic. It hit just a little too close to home. She signed to move on. The squad followed her along desolate piles of rubble. They came across fresh corpses from both sides soon after. Nestra knew there was a war going, but the use of crossbows made the battlefield disturbingly quiet. Finally, they reached the edge of what appeared to be a fortified area. There were barricades on every street, and the fallen buildings were reinforced with stones when they threatened to open a gap. Nestra noticed sentries at the top of a nearby building, one of the more intact ones. It appeared quite solid. The creatures there looked the other way, towards the shortest route she could have picked, and where fires roared incessantly. The loud retort of mortars became more prevalent. Nestra made the sign to wait. Clad in shadows, she sprinted across the open ground and to the base of the sentry building. Scaling the sheer walls was easy: damage offered all the footholds she needed. There were three sentries on top. She dispatched them and then looked beyond to a fierce battle fought without words and without guns. Bolts whistled through the air as her side attempted to scale the high walls of the flag compound. Mortars and militia defended it with determination, peppering shield formations as they approached. It was a battle of attrition, bloody and merciless. Nestra found an accessway to the flag tower at the center of the main building, past a flight of stairs. Now she just had to get her squad up. Fortunately, one of them had a rope he sent her using a hooked bolt. They slowly climbed with a wariness that told her they were exhausted. Finally, they gathered at the edge of the sentry tower’s walls. Nestra made the sign for grenades, then for aim, and then for ammo. They treated theirs with reverence and quite a bit of fear. To her dismay, one of the grenades exploded mid-air. So that was why! The rest of them hit true though. Mortar shell stockpiles went up in flames in a great conflagration. Chaos spread through the militiamen. In the following screams, smoke, and confusion, Nestra led her squad through the enemy ranks and to the flag tower, shooting down anyone who blocked their path. The flag was only defended by a grizzled old creature with a knife. Nestra dispatched him easily. She touched the shaft. Light. Good mana. Perfume, and lots of it. Nestra blinked. She was sitting in a tall chair, in a tent, facing an incredibly tall and thin humanoid with large liquid brown eyes. The creature was probably female. She wore exquisite maid robes that covered her lithe shape in a long, flowing waterfall of pink fabric. A strangely shaped pot waited on a table between the both of them. “And to what do I owe this visit?” the creature asked in a melodious voice that Nestra somehow understood. Nestra needed to convince the creature to leave the tent with her. “Hm. Hello?” she replied. Something in Nestra’s hesitant tone alarmed the creature. She reached for a bell. Nestra stood on the table, grabbed the creature by the throat and tossed her through the nearby fabric. This time, there was nothing but gray space around Nestra, yet she was still standing. Space was bending in a weird way all around her though she wasn’t alarmed. It had been doing so for the whole test. Primary assessment complete. Combat potential: immense. Infiltration potential: immense. Magic potential: great. Leadership potential: average. Social potential: none. “Hey, someone said I have some leadership potential!” It was the first time it happened! Nestra was so chuffed. Recommendation: Assassin/Reaver training. Arcane training. Limit testing assessment beginning. Fire mana. A dusty plain swept by the winds under a merciless sun, bathing the world in a deathly embrace. A man, tall, thin, covered in bandages that dance like so many hair strands. Only his eyes were visible, and the pupils were slit like those of a cat. It removed two hand scythes from its back. They locked in front of him. Nestra charged. She thrust with great power, but the twin scythes rose and locked the blade, stopping it clean. Which was when Nestra stepped in, pivoted, and socked him in the ribs with an uppercut that sent him flying. The shock elicited a grunt of pain. Fire flew from his fingers, bathing Nestra who charged herself with electricity. She countered, and both combatants fell back, she, covered in flames, he, scoured by shadowy arcs. “That tickled,” Nestra said, and she used momentum to teleport behind him. Nestra killed the mage first, then her blade found the throat of the assassin. She blasted the archer mid air while its arrow pinged on one of her horns. Those were really sensitive. Nestra caught the knight’s blade, deflected it and used momentum to avoid a spear. A veil of shadow covered her retreat, then she went back in. Squads of C-rank fighters were pretty easy. She needed… more. The lone duelists were the best. She was learning so much! Very high mana. A bedroom. A woman, waking up with a gasp, reaching for her sword. She was standing before Nestra could react. Nestra engaged her in a whirlwind of blows that devastated the chamber in moments. The female creature with long ears and a delicate frame battled her, grace and discipline versus power and unpredictability. Every feint, every trick Nestra knew flowed into each other in an unrelenting attack that prevented her foe from recovering. The air already cut at her exposed skin as they ravaged their way throughout a luxurious mansion. Charged electricity kept the woman’s growing storm at bay but Nestra was falling behind. Time for a desperate gambit! Nestra rushed. She let the woman’s sword dig into her arm. She grit her teeth through the pain. A blast at point blank range surprised the woman. Blood seeped from a deep wound in her torso, but it wasn’t enough to kill her. Damn B-rank resilience. Still, an opening! Nestra struck, batting the woman’s sword aside. She thrust. The woman tried to parry, although it wouldn’t be enough. Nestra’s sword cut into her throat. And then, the sword burst in tiny, void-corrupted fragments. The woman stabbed Nestra in the heart. Calibration process suspended. Sending candidate back to the lobby. “No! Noooo! That piece of shit. Send me back! I’ll kill her!” Calibration interrupted by user: Emergency Sector Commander. Test will resume once the candidate returns. “Crescent,” a polite voice said. “Send me back, Shinran!” He looked worried. Nestra realized she’d screamed at him in Aszhii. ARG! She was having so much fun but now she’d lost. LOST! Fucking shit gear that couldn’t take a fucking decent fight without falling to fucking pieces. This was bullshit. “The fuck you can,” she replied in English, “you have clearance.” “The machine says you do. It speaks my language.” Shinran paused for a second, which was a really long time for an A-rank. Please enter an identifier to create a user profile. Candidate ID entered: NEZHRA! Unique user profile created. “Well, maybe you can have a conversation next time. For now, we must return,” Shinran said. “We have been here for over eight hours. Neither of us can afford to disappear for very long, Crescent.” “Oh, right. Right. I can’t disappear or my family will have my ass. This place is amazing though!” “We can raid again tomorrow, if you wish,” Shinran said with a smile. He seemed very satisfied with the situation. “Did you enjoy yourself?”