Rebirth Online World

Polymath Redux – Welcome to Solaris, the capital of Xagontetia!
Chapter VI

After a few short hours of quick movement, which included an assortment of movement and acceleration based skills from Mordred, they were able to reach the capital of the Xagontetia Sun country, ‘Solaris’ which was at least 400kms away from the village that they were at. A gigantic circular and walled city.

As the capital had entered their view from a distance they could see a needlessly large, monolithic structure that was pointing to the skies. Perhaps it was around 3000 or so meters tall and stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of the circular city. One could only imagine just how much time and labor went into its construction. It wasn’t even a enterable structure, just a tall pin.

After much contemplation, Mordred finally understood what that tall pin like structure was. It was an enormous sundial. They had converted the entire city into a needlessly gigantic sundial, well he was impressed with their ingenuity. Just from a glance the buildings in the inner part of the circular city held much more importance than the ones on the outside.

On the outskirts of the walled city were several farms and such, which didn’t receive the protection of the walls, but perhaps that was because they were the peasantry.

From the outer layers were military posts and barracks that kept the walls safe and regulated the people coming in and out. The sight of armored knights was an impressive one, especially since they were working through such a hot day, Mordred was fine since he was able to regulate his body temperature to keep himself at a moderate temperature and Irina was immune to heat in general.

On the inside of the walls and against the walls were the residential districts, there were also some taverns and inns, though just from a small glance they didn’t seem very reputable. A little more inside were the merchantry, marketplace and other related buildings. A little more in were the noble’s residential districts as seen by their lavishing houses and decorations. And finally within them were government related buildings, and at the very center, built surrounding the gigantic pin was what seemed to be a castle.

In any case it was a metropolis with various attractions and vendors, with a renaissance style architecture and the general MMORPG-like feel, Mordred felt quite nostalgic about them. Somehow, even before entering the city it felt as though he was at ‘home’.

‘Odd…’ Mordred thought to himself with a wry smile. He wasn’t able to fit in or be happy back in his own world but perhaps he could live happily in this one. He didn’t really know if he wanted to stay or not, or whether there even was a way of getting back, but at least for the moment he had decided to indulge himself in this world.

In any case there were three aspects that Mordred wanted to be a part of in this country. Those there were the ‘military’, ‘political’ and ‘adventurer’ sectors. The plan was for Irina to join the ‘Adventurer’s guild’ and climb up the ranks. He needed her to be one of the top members of the guild so more classified information could flow in, but it would be a little suspicious if such a powerful person just appeared out of nowhere all of a sudden and became an adventurer.

For this reason it was necessary for her to take it step by step. Most likely she’ll have to complete many jobs to get to the position that Mordred wanted her to be in. Though to Mordred it didn’t matter too much how long it took, he had decided to take it easy for the time being as well. After all, they were in no real rush they could take all the time they needed.

The second sector, the ‘military’ sector was for Mordred himself to join. Likely he’ll be put into a squad or battalion and be sent out a few times. This way he can survey the lands around Xagontetia and gather information that way, not to mention it was a ‘fantasy’ world, how could he pass up the opportunity to run around and have fun?

The final sector, the ‘political’ sector was slightly removed from the ‘military’ sector. Though they were both governmental positions it was likely that they moved differently. Most knights probably didn’t even have much insight into politics and because of this he needed to have a mole inside the government. The problem was that there were only two of them.

There was the possibility that Mordred could use another [insignia] to summon another familiar, but in [Hellgana] only one familiar could ever be used at a time. He didn’t know what would happen if he used another one, most likely Irina would return to his [inventory]. Another possibility was to distinguish himself as a capable knight and rise through the ranks until he had gained the position of a royal knight and gain political clout that way, but that would make him stationary and defeat the point of being a knight in the first place.

At a loss on what to do Mordred went through his [inventory] and [skills list] to see if there were anything he could use. To his surprise he actually did find something useful to use. There was a [puppeteer] skill that allowed him to create illusions of himself, but that illusion was rather worthless and was incorporeal. However there was an even better skill.

A fusion skill between [puppeteer] and [necromancer], there was a skill that allowed him to summon a ‘doppelganger’ aptly known as [Doppelganger], of course this doppelganger wasn’t as strong as Mordred, in fact it only received 10% of his total power.

While that may have sounded weak, it wasn’t just 10% of his power, but 10% of the power of his equipment and weapons too, all in all it was fairly powerful depending on how it was used. There was a secondary effect to this skill, which was that when they were within 1km of each other they could swap places immediately without anyone else knowing. For the most part this skill was used to distract enemy players or play ring-around-the-Rosie.

This skill was useful, but the problem was a doppelganger who looked exactly like him would cause problems. That being the case he could claim that they were twins but that also had its own set of problems. But there was an even better skill to solve this issue, a [magician] and [assassin] fusion skill known as [Alter: Appearance].

[Alter: Appearance] was a self-explanatory skill… to most people, but just in case there were some who did not understand, this skill allowed Mordred to alter his appearance temporarily, even allowing him to change genders. He could use it in conjunction with [doppelganger].

“Hmm, let’s see. I wonder how it works in real life…”

Mordred concentrated a little and a spiral of shadows had engulfed in and after a few moments an entirely new person had come out. A gorgeous female; silky blonde hair neatly done up with a plain black hair-band, slightly less larger… ‘assets’ like Irina, a slightly skinny but slender figure, with pretty fingers. Long eyelashes that accentuated his azure eyes as the clear sky with lush pink lips.

“How do I look?”

Mordred asked Irina, but all he got in response was a blush from her, that was all the answer he needed. Even his voice had changed to become extremely feminine. Out of the mood he tried to do a feminine pose but after doing it he felt a little ashamed. It had seemed that his clothes had not been altered in any way, they were still the same as before, a neat vest hidden behind a lavishing white overcoat.

“I wonder if I have any female items…”

Mordred searched for his [inventory] once more. He found some dresses… which he had because they were rare drops and he was a hoarder, like every MMORPG player. He had planned on selling them, honest!

A nice white and black dress which seemed to be made of the best of fabrics, that being the case, even though it looked extremely expensive, which it was, but they weren’t that great as combat gear. At best they were at the [Exotic] tier of item ranking. Incidentally the item rankings were from worst to best, [Crude], [Normal], [Unique], [Rare], [Great], [Exotic], [Legendary]. With most of Mordred’s gear at either the [legendary] or [exotic] level, he had no need for anything else as they were a waste of [inventory] space.

“Now then, let’s try the other skill.”

[Doppelganger]. From Mordred’s shadows a shade-like being expanded and formed into a clone of Mordred, the female version of him. At first, he couldn’t believe his eyes at how beautiful his clone looked, which was him right now. He almost felt jealous at himself but decided to accept it with a smirk.

The doppelganger lifted the tip of her skirt and bowed in an elegant manner.

“How do you do?”

She said. She spoke… which was a first for Mordred, since clones did not speak in [Hellgana]. It seemed that at least in this world the clones and summons had a certain amount of sentience. Mordred tried to use ‘swap position’ and that also worked without much effort. He could use it as many times as he wanted but it would take a small portion of his mana each time, but it was a negligible amount so he paid no heed.

Feeling satisfied he undid the doppelganger’s summon and the [alter: appearance] putting him back into his original form. With everything having been tested out it was time for him and Irina to enter the city. However before doing so, Mordred changed out of his [legendary] tier wear and changed into something a little more lesser grade.

In fact he did have some [Rare] level equipment for the purposes of concealing himself from other players. They would not think that THE Mordred would go around in shitty equipment after all. Thus he had changed into a suit of low grade armor that was slightly scratched here and there, since items in [Hellgana] had ‘durability’ they would deteriorate, showing just how much he had used this suit of armor to fool enemy players.

There was nothing impressive about the armor, though it looked like it may have costed some amount of gold it wasn’t anything that normal adventurers or knights couldn’t afford. Using this he and Irina approached the gate where a few guards stood in the heat while examining the people coming in and out.

“Halt stranger you are about to enter Solaris, the capital of Xagontetia, you seem like adventurers. Do you have any ID or pass with you? If not you’ll have to go through a check up.”

One of the guards with a bushy moustache asked. Irina looked towards Mordred but all she got in return was a smile.

“Unfortunately we aren’t adventurers, we are just travelers, in fact I’m planning on joining the military of Xagontetia, and this splendid lady says she wants to become an adventurer. In any case we do not have any ID or passes with us.”

Mordred told him all with a smile.

“I see, then you’ll have to go through some inspections. It won’t take long we’re just checking for anything illegal or foreign substances that may be harmful.”

The guard pointed to the others who waved back signalling that they were ready for a check up. Naturally there were also some female guards for Irina.

“That’s fine, we’ll comply.”

Mordred said as he shot Irina a look. She understood his intentions and followed through. The check up merely took around 5 minutes and they were both deemed suitable for entry.

“Thanks for your time. You may both enter the capital.”

“It’s no problem, actually I do have one question, as I have said before I wish to join this nation’s military, how may I go about doing that?”

Mordred asked the guard.

“Well, you either came at a good or bad time depending on how you look at it. Because of the skirmishes we’ve been having with Baliazoural, they’re having recruitment campaigns all over the damn capital. You should be able to find a recruitment lounge in the registration building. It’s a large building in the inner city, so you won’t miss it.”

He explained.

“Thank you.”

Mordred replied and afterwards decided to enter the city. Before doing anything like joining they decided to go around and explore the place while enjoying its culture. After all this was the city that was to be their home for a while.

…

At the moment Mordred and Irina had entered the merchantry and shopping district portion of the city. His first task was the locate an appropriate inn for at least the first few days and plan out his movements in more detail. There were some taverns across the edge of the city walls but they didn’t particularly garner his interests and didn’t really look all that appealing.

As expected, there were also some taverns and inns near the border of the residential and shopping districts. The first thing Mordred noticed wasn’t just that the city was large horizontally, but also vertically, there were many buildings that easily spanned 5 or 6 floors high, an impressive amount of architectural engineering had gone into designing this city, once again Mordred was impressed.

Looking around closely there were many restaurants. Speaking of which, both Mordred and Irina had not eaten in two days. Though personally he didn’t feel hunger even now, but, looking back at Irina he asked.

“Hungry?”

“I am quite fine, master.”

She says, but a small grumble could be heard from her stomach. It was understandable, during the two days, she was the one who expended the most amount of effort. Listening to a rather cute grumble Mordred had a mischievous smirk.

“We’ll go to a restaurant as soon as we find an appropriate place to stay.”

“You are most kind, my master.”

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