"Heron, you and Saki look for a hotel. Gwen, can you check how currency works here?" Yuriko said as soon as they had some privacy in the lift. The car was just about big enough to easily fit all of them along with their luggage.

"We should visit the Interfaction Bank, then," Gwendith said, waving her Autotab at Yuriko. The device from Dragon Fall City had been modified during their somewhat long stay on the resource planet. "Our Autochreds should be good here, though we only have the ones guaranteed by the Millenium State Conglomerate."

"You mean the account they opened for us?"

"Yes, and I think it's best we convert back to physical money rather than keeping them in credit."

"I agree," Yuriko nodded.

Those rotters in Dragon Fall City froze their assets once she and the others gained a bounty. Hmmm, or rather, wasn't it the Gate Consortium? When she returned to Dragon Fall, she intended to get answers out of them in that case.

Perhaps…she'd been too low-key? She'd been wary of drawing attention there since she didn't know how strong their defenders were, but it turned out that 'Chronian Gear-equipped people were little better than mortals for the most part. Although she shouldn't second guess her decisions since they only encountered troubles at the end right? Unless they could have evaded all of that by being openly Ancients?

Well, done was done, and she wouldn't underplay herself for now. According to the data they received, the five orbital rings were occupied by the same number of factions, though she suspected that it was a generalisation. The rings were a longstride in width and height, and she assumed there was a lot of living space within its coils. She couldn't imagine a single faction occupying that much living space on what amounted to several hundred cubic leagues of land.

The lift pillar was roughly a couple of hundred paces high, and soon enough, the car entered the node. This one, since it was connected to a space station, was little more than a box that was just a bit bigger than the rings. It was in the intersection of two rings, though she wasn't sure which factions controlled it.

When the door opened, Yuriko couldn't help but gasp in surprise. She had assumed that the cubical node would be like one of the megabuildings, which were essentially normal skyscrapers multiplied severalfold. What she saw instead was basically a hollow cube and structures built on every inside surface. The interior wasn't completely empty but had some kind of sphere that reflected the Radiant Sun. It was an authentic projection too, and she could feel her Radiant reserves increase slightly while basking in the light.

"Is that artificial?" she muttered before shaking her head. Her Anima perception could easily reach the center and she could tell it was nothing more than a glass sphere with nothing inside. Elemental energy flowed into and out of it, but she didn't detect any runescript lines or any other kind of technology or enchantment.

The next thing that drew her attention was that everyone was somehow floating. She could feel gravity where she stood and could feel it weaken a couple of paces away from the floor. Or was it a wall? Somehow, the lift had twisted around so that instead of being oriented with her feet pointed towards the surface of the planet, she was perpendicular to it. The pedestrians either walked or floated above clearly delineated walkways. There were also a few levels above the base floors, and the hulls were thicker than she would expect, which she supposed was a good thing since beyond it was the cold emptiness of the Void.

"Wearing skirts must be annoying," Gwendith said while she looked upwards.

The node was roughly one and a half longstrides to a side, and of the six walls, four were connected to the orbital ring. The entrances were at the centre of each wall, but it was no larger than a hundred paces across. Her perception felt restricted when she tried to get past the border, with the pressure growing stronger the more she pushed. She didn't do much more than probe, so she pulled back. She did get a better feel of the node, and she noticed labels to indicate the orientation of each wall. The one nearest to the planet was the designated one, while its opposite was two. The wall they were currently on was four, with five and six adjacent. She assumed 'three' was on the opposite side.

"The Interfaction Bank is over there."

Yuriko pointed at a tower situated on Wall One. She traced pathways and thought they could get there by walking a league or so. Or they could fly over? However, she didn't see anyone even attempting to cross Walls by flying through the air. Was it an unwritten rule?

"Hotels?" Heron muttered as he browsed the local network. "Money seems to in the gold standard."

"What do you mean?" Yuriko asked curiously.

"Well, it means that everyone here uses bills made out of paper, or through the network, as money. The Interfaction Bank guarantees that the thirty-five credits are always equivalent to a HiJin of ninety-nine percept gold. Nobody actually used the gold as coinage, or any other metal for that matter."

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"Huh. Where's the gold kept?" Saki asked with a dangerous gleam in her eyes.

"No." Yuriko tapped her handmaiden's forehead, a bit more forcefully than she intended considering Saki's skin reddened and she teared up.

"Heh, it's in three of the lower number nodes," Heron said. "Publicly anyway. It's protected by all the factions, however. Besides, we don't really need all that much. Ah, I've found a good place to stay for the night, but I assume we're not staying in this node city, right?"

"No, we're headed to the Martial Faction's territory," Yuriko said.

"The tournament?"

"Yeah."

"Well, here's the address of Hotel 626. A bit unimaginative, but it had the best amenities according to the network reviews. I'll go with Gwen to get our funds. Are you going to wander around?"

"Hmmm, yeah."

While her perception aura gave her a great overview, Yuriko tended not to look too closely at things. Aside from the fact that the few times she tried, she caught glimpses of things she'd rather not have seen, the focus and mental strain needed to look over all the data her senses gave her was annoying. She could do it, but at long stretches, she wound up cranky and ill-tempered. The truth of the matter was that the range of her perception could no longer be handled by the number of consciousness strands she had. She didn't think it would come to this point, but she had underestimated how exponential the volume her Anima occupied grew.

Her reach continued to increase in radius by about a pace a day, and she was slowly being overwhelmed by her perceptive reach. She could only close off the more detailed senses and unless she was focused on looking for something, she'd have to relegate the farther reaches to cursory examination. She could maintain a detailed scan within a hundred paces almost indefinitely, but the longer she kept it up, the worse the mental strain grew. It was like being sleep-deprived, actually. With her current physique, she could stay awake for days with little ill effect, but last week, her mental faculties slowly deteriorated. An hour or two of sleep a night, after her amorous activities, sufficed.

Either way, that meant that she still enjoyed physically going to interesting places. Fluffington remained snoozing inside her backpack while she walked down the main street. She was headed towards Wall Three via Wall Five. The others were headed towards Wall One so they immediately split up.

"Should I shadow you, young mistress?" Saki asked in a voice soft enough that only Yuriko's perception aura caught it.

"No, you may enjoy yourself," Yuriko answered clearly. Saki gave her a short bow and followed the others.

Yuriko absently tugged the hood of her coat down and hummed as she casually ambled down the road. The node didn't have cars or other large vehicles, but it wasn't as if the travellers and residents had to walk everywhere. She immediately noticed that those who were floating only did so while over a marked strip on the road. The strips were only wide enough to allow two abreast, and arrows going opposite ways were adjacent to each other. Since there were no vehicles, each road was a walking path or floating path. The float strips occupied half of the road, located at the centre, while the outer parts were for actual walking. Essentially, the strips replaced automobiles.

Curious, Yuriko walked on the strip. The floaters were at least two paces off the ground, normally high enough to avoid hitting anyone standing on the strip. The travellers simply leapt up once they were in the middle of the strip, and they simply didn't land back down. Yuriko did a hop and felt the pull of gravity relinquish its hold. Then, a gentle force pushed her along the floatway.

"Woof!" Fluffington woke up, which was odd since the pupper was well used to flying with Yuriko. His eyes were wide and his tongue lolled out of his maw, wiggling with excitement.

"What, you want to fly by yourself?" Yuriko chuckled as the pupper scrambled out of the backpack. But contrary to what both of them expected, he didn't float but fell down to the strip. It was a gentle enough landing that he didn't get hurt.

"Woof woof!" He barked angrily and jumped. This time, the floatway took hold of his body and he tumbled along half a dozen paces behind Yuriko. His paws wiggled furiously as he tried to catch up, but it was futile. The floatway only had a set speed which was close to a jog, actually. As fast as going by a horse carriage, but nowhere near what an automobile could manage. But then again, the node city wasn't that huge.

"I wonder what they use for faster travel?" Yuriko murmured while giggling at her pupper's antics. A couple of people ahead of her made a wiggling rotation with their feet, right ankle first, then left. That signalled the floatway to drop them to the ground, revealing how the people actually used the things. Hmm. Yuriko checked the data packet and found the information filed in intra-city travel. Most of the stuff Heron said came from the packet too.

Floating along, Yuriko didn't actually have a destination in mind. Even though she wanted to go to Wall Three, it wasn't as if she knew what she'd find there. However, people-watching already gave her quite a bit of information.

Dragon Fall City had been a mostly human city. She'd expected something similar here, but humans were actually in the minority in node 626. beastkin, Sylvanites, Durandal, and Sha'ledras walked the streets or floated along. Most had their noses pressed on their smartphones, or what passed for them here. Others were chatting amiably with their companions. However, there was a hidden tension between some people, though Yuriko couldn't determine what set them apart.

Clothes, accessories, and other gear weren't distinct enough to differentiate them. Sometimes, a catkin would glare at a human, and at others, the catkin seemed to be pair bonded with someone of a different race. Sylvanite turned hostile at another Sylvanite, human against human, beastkin against beastkin. So it wasn't along racial boundaries, huh? Still, most conflict only escalated to verbal sparring, which was mostly creative use of language to denigrate rather than outright cursing.

Well, it also wasn't as if the conflict was everywhere. Most people just lived their lives here, which somewhat confused her since this was a level in the Eternal Tower in a conflict-driven zone. Perhaps they were support personnel at the beginning, but a long stalemate had them settle down.

Either way, she enjoyed the sights until she reached the middle of Wall Five, where a feisty street brawl had tangled up the floatways for blocks around.

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