With an empty metaphorical wallet, a visit to the bank was the clear logical first task to handle when lost in a foreign land. Money solved all sorts of problems—namely food, water, and shelter.
Though did she even need to eat, drink, and sleep anymore? She was in the body of a mythical figure, and one pulled from a video game. It wasn't like Seven Cataclysms had a sleep resource. Even food and drink were only for receiving beneficial statuses.
In any case, she wanted to know if she had access to her personal vault. In the game, she had been able to access both her money and several pages of item stashes through the bank system.
But as she'd seen, this world wasn't one-to-one. And it had been a hundred years. She wouldn't be surprised if her bank account had been closed by sheer dint of time.
There was only one way to find out.
"Next," Cyrus called, sparing a glance at the timekeeper on the wall.
Two more hours to lunch. He'd had to skip breakfast, and he was feeling a bit ornery because of it, not that he'd let it show in his interactions with the customers today. This job was by far the most comfortable he'd had in a decade, and he had no intention of jeopardizing it. He could never know who exactly was stepping up to make a withdrawal, and all it took was annoying the wrong person to find himself in a world of trouble. He'd heard all sorts of horror stories over the years.
A young woman was the next to step up to his counter.
Er, maybe not a woman? A girl? He wasn't certain. She was a demon, and he knew those, like elves, aged differently from humans. They often seemed youthful when they were anything but. Centuries-old crones could be indistinguishable from adolescents. That said, this one did seem rather young.
She was dressed like a scholar or adventurer, in a thick black robe that went to the floor. She was paler than most demons, with curling black horns and straight white hair.
She seemed to carry herself like an adult at least. Her red eyes were calm and assured, her expression relaxed—but not in a way that put him at ease. In fact, there was a general aura about her that gave him pause the longer he looked.
He still wasn't certain whether she was a child, but he'd spent enough time working service jobs that he'd learned not to make assumptions. A certain incident with a mother and what he had been certain was her son haunted him.
"How can I help you, miss?" he asked with the same level of professionalism he offered any customer.
"I'd like to make a withdrawal." Her voice was flat, bored, and the tone erased most of his doubts. If this was a child, it was a strange one. He felt his spine straighten.
"Of course." He'd gone through this process a million times, so he reached under his desk and set the identifier in front of her before he consciously ordered his hands. "Please place your finger on the account identifier."
The woman eyed the device.
"You do have an account with us, yes?" Cyrus asked.
"…Maybe?" she replied.
"Maybe?"
"I do most of my business in Meridian," she said slowly. "Are the accounts linked?"
Meridian? She was a long way from home. He had to bite his tongue and repress his dubious tone.
"Yes, Miss. The unified banking system is over three hundred years old and spans the entirety of the continent. Unless you've been banking with an unusual," illegal, he didn't say, "third party, if you have an account anywhere in the Kingdoms, you'll be able to access it here."
"I see." She almost seemed like she was going to ask another question, but decided against it. She hovered her pointer finger above the small slate carved with runes, hesitated a second longer as if debating whether she should, and finally pressed it against the stone.
He'd honestly thought the projection screen that appeared would indicate she didn't have an account. Her lack of familiarity with the system had once again changed his mind about whether he was dealing with an adult.
But a valid account popped up, mildly to his surprise, and it was filled with the usual sparse details: name, balance available for withdrawal, and a 'notes' section for any highly relevant details that a teller might need.
Usually he read the customer's name first to know who he was dealing with. But in ninety-nine percent of cases the 'notes' section was blank. So when there was text, his eyes fell there first.
Presumed deceased. Account locked, but preserved for historical purposes.
He blinked.
That was strange. Very strange. He supposed he would have to submit a status update. Whoever this was, she wasn't dead.
He'd never filed an account update form. He would need to ask for help.
His eyes drifted upward, curious about her name, but they froze on the account balance.
He blinked a second time. Then a third and a fourth. He took off his glasses, cleaned them, put them back on, and leaned forward with a scrunched brow to squint at the numbers on the projection to make absolutely certain he wasn't imagining what he saw.
Available Balance
Bronze: 62,242
Silver: 258,550
Gold: 33,239
Mithril: 8,812
Orichalcum: 2,168
Starmetal: 128
(Unified mynt: 49,263,642)
He briefly lost all capability of reasoning. Ten seconds passed as he stared.
Was it broken somehow? The banking system couldn't be broken; it was impossible.
But one hundred and twenty-eight starmetal? Kings struggled to find starmetal in smaller quantities. He had never seen the starmetal field on a customer's account display anything but zero. The wealthiest clients he'd interacted with might have a scant amount of orichalcum registered, but not a huge sum.
Not two thousand of it.
A meal might be a few bronze. A night at a nice inn, private room, a silver. A well-bred war horse, the sort upper-tier adventurers or nobility would ride into battle, fifty to a hundred gold.
Coinage went up in one to ten ratios. That meant a mithril was ten gold. Orichalcum a hundred. Starmetal a thousand.
A small stack of starmetal could buy a damn fortress somewhere. It was the equivalent of thousands of gold.
Almost dizzily, his eyes drifted to the top of the projection.
Vivisari Vexaria.
Then they slid back to the woman in front of his counter. Her red gaze was watching him warily, clearly reading his reaction.
"Is there an issue?"
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Okay. This wasn't actually Vivisari Vexaria. The idea brushed his mind for the briefest moment, but it was too absurd.
Nevertheless, she'd fooled the identifier. That was nearly more concerning than the Sorceress actually reemerging into the world. The banking system was supposed to be impregnable. There had never been an instance of abuse or exploit. It was part of the Grand System itself. Not created by mortal hands, but the gods.
It couldn't be tricked.
Yet it had. Because this wasn't Vivisari Vexaria.
Most blatant piece of evidence: she was way too short.
If this young woman had found a way to trick the banking system, why in the world would she expose herself this way? She could have pretended to be anyone, barring a handful of individuals, and he wouldn't have thought twice. Because the system was infallible.
Sure, the account she'd gone after had a truly absurd sum in it, but he couldn't pay it out if he wanted to. There weren't coin reserves in the city to withdraw that balance. Certainly not enough starmetal. The High King's vault itself surely didn't have more than a few hundred coins of that precious material. And if she wanted to scam a smaller sum, why use this account?
Was she not very intelligent? Ambitious to the point of foolhardiness? He supposed stories were full of that sort of thing. Idiocy was hardly rare, from highest station to low.
She must have lucked into the exploit.
She really was a child.
But what did he do now?
This was big. Outrageously so. The sort of thing he would be dealing with for weeks, in meetings with very important people he would need to tiptoe around. His day had suddenly gotten complicated. He felt a headache coming on.
He'd already been in a poor mood from missing breakfast.
His thoughts racing, he came to a decision.
"I'm sorry, miss," he said. "I'm afraid you don't have an account with us. Could you step aside, and we'll get you set up?"
He was taking a risk, but management would have his head if he didn't try to detain her until he could call the guards.
"It said my name, didn't it?" she asked flatly. She sighed. "Just—I don't need much. Give me a hundred of each, up to orichalcum. It didn't use to go through people, why are there tellers now? When did that change?"
She was doubling down. An interesting gambit, certainly. "I'm not sure what you mean, miss." He put on his best blank face. His acting wasn't horrible, seeing how he spent all day dealing with unpleasant folk.
He didn't comment on the absurdity of 'one hundred of each, up to orichalcum.' As if that alone wasn't a sum to make a king choke.
The demon pinched the bridge of her nose, seeming irritated. "This was a mistake."
He agreed. Really, what had she expected?
"Don't report me to the guards," she said. "Or anyone else. That would be…annoying."
He paused. It was an audacious approach, just asking. But since he had no idea whether this woman was a high-level adventurer or similar, he wasn't going to antagonize her.
"Of course, miss. I won't say a thing." Obviously, he had no hope of detaining her anymore. She knew what was going on. He wasn't going to insist at risk to himself. He enjoyed his job, but he enjoyed his life more. So he would report her after she left.
She stared at him. He supposed he hadn't been convincing.
"It is me, you know," she said slowly. "You don't think so, do you?"
"I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," he said, lacking a more graceful option.
She stared for another several seconds, and Cyrus shifted uncomfortably.
"I need to prove it, don't I?" she said. "You'll let me go if I do? With some coin?"
"The account is locked regardless," he said, since there wasn't a point in feigning cluelessness anymore. "I don't want any trouble, miss, truly. I'll forget this ever happened."
He was lying. An exploit like this threatened the fabric of society. If he couldn't trust the banking system, what could he? He would report this event as soon as it was safe and feasible to do so.
"Fine," she sighed. "I have to prove it."
He grew worried all at once, but he didn't have time to react before he felt that strange warble in the air that came with spellcasting.
Of the various classes, mage-types were the least common. Like most people, he'd given adventuring a try in his youth. Hadn't been for him, as it wasn't for most. But he'd been around enough magic to recognize that metallic tang in his mouth.
"[Illusion]."
"[Farsight]."
"[Fly]."
"[Blink]."
The spells happened so fast he barely processed what was happening. One after another quicker than any mage should be capable of. Not that he'd been around high-rank adventurers often. Gold-ranks, on rare occasions.
But spells should have cast times. It was a mage's fundamental weakness, what made them useful but specialized additions to a party. She activated them as fast as she could speak. Faster. It didn't make sense.
And then he was floating two thousand feet in the air.
"Look," she said, gesturing down at the city of Prismarche with a gnarled staff of gray wood. Her appearance had changed. The demon had red tear-trails running down her cheeks: the iconic mark of the Sorceress. Her robes were no longer black; swirling purple designs covered them. "Is this enough proof?"
Cyrus considered himself a well-composed person. But this was too much. His mouth opened and closed like a fish's.
She sighed. "Not high enough tier magic? Fine. [Blink]. [Blink]. [Blink]. [Blink]. [Detect Presence]."
And then they were hovering a thousand feet over the wilderness, the urban expanse of Prismarche no longer visible, only endless pine forest, the snow-capped mountains many miles away.
The demon pointed her staff down toward the forest. He felt magic gather. Real magic, though what he'd already experienced eclipsed anything he'd ever seen or felt. Teleportation was already the domain of mithril-rank adventurers at least. He wasn't even certain of that. It might be much higher. It was so high rank he simply didn't know.
Whatever spell she was forming, it didn't just put a metallic taste in his mouth. It wobbled the jelly in his eyes; his throat closed; a dull pressure ached in his skull, growing by the second.
He felt very, very small all of a sudden. A glowing magical circle inscribed with the densest, brightest runes he'd ever seen formed in front of him. He could practically taste the magic it radiated.
What would happen when that monstrosity of a spell finished?
Just what in heaven's name was she casting?
The spell named itself more than she named it. It fell from her lips with enough power to make a dragon tuck its tail and flee.
"[Kaelum's Thousand-Year Pyre]."
The heavens split. A column of white fire descended. It impacted the ground and disintegrated everything in a quarter-mile radius. The heat washed across him despite the great distance. He covered his eyes with one hand, else he might have been blinded.
When the spell finished running its course, there was nothing remaining besides earth turned to glass.
He stared dumbly.
What…what tier spell had that been?
He couldn't comprehend what he'd seen. Floating in the air was surreal enough. Flight was already a rare enough spell he'd have been cowed.
That…whatever it had been…was too much. His brain simply stopped working.
"See? It's me," the demon said, still sounding mildly annoyed, as if she was dealing with a somewhat irritating haggling process, and hadn't just evaporated a swath of wilderness by whim. "But I'm here on private business, don't report me to the guards. Now, how do I unlock my account?"
Continued...