System Change

Derek watched Sabrina’s future mother-in-law drag her out of the Throne Room—her maid, Jessica, trailed behind, and Elouise soon followed. Soon enough, it was just the men left in the room. Well… I’ve done my part, he thought.

“Okay, I have things to do,” Derek said. “I’ll come back to get you one last time for free if the teleporters aren’t connected by the time you need them. Make sure you’re all ready by then. Who knows how long that…” he pointed at where Sabrina and the others had just gone. “Is going to take.” After that, he looked at the young man whom he’d just met. “Robert, you have my condol… congratulations.”

Without waiting for anyone to reply, and to the shock of the two arrivals who hadn’t yet met Derek, he opened the void with Void Travel—which caused the new arrivals to go pale—and exited the palace. His destination was back to Astrus now that there wasn’t anything he needed to do for some time—specifically to get his items off of Alanah.

He soon found himself back in the Astrus Throne Room, surrounded by everyone who had stayed—well, everyone aside from Silvi. To his surprise, he didn’t see his companion around, and when he tried to send her a message or find her through their bond, he couldn’t reach her. All he could do was get a general sense of where she was. The only time that ever happened was when the two of them were very far away from one another.

As he looked around, everyone looked back at him with different emotions in their gazes. Edgar was sitting at the end of a table and snickering, while Edward just sighed and shook his head. In the corner of the room, Tyler seemed to have found something extremely interesting on the ground and he was doing his best to stare a hole into it, and his sister glared at Derek.

Well, it didn’t take them long to learn that I went ahead and received my rewards for a job well done, he thought as he shrugged and looked over at Alanah. “Where did Silvi go? I thought she would still be here with you.”

Alanah, Osian, and Marrick were the only ones in the room who didn’t seem to care about the treasury one way or another. Marrick was Marrick and most likely because of his age and experience, it seemed to take a lot for him to become interested in things, Osian knew that what Derek did in Astrus didn’t concern him one bit—he actually looked more relieved than anything. I bet that he’s just happy I didn’t decide to do my ‘exploring’ in his palace instead of this one. Alanah, on the other hand, was the first to find out long before the others—she hadn’t even been suspicious, she just knew.

“She… left…” Alanah replied with a shake of her head.

“She left?” Derek asked. “Where did she go? What exactly happened? She’s not exactly the type to take initiative to go do something unless it concerns… cooking. Wait, it concerns cooking, doesn’t it?” With that question, he saw a couple of the elves Osian had brought with him wince. He hadn’t bothered to learn their names.

“Well…” Alanah started. “She told me she was bored. Then, later on… she asked me what a wedding was. It seemed that she hadn’t been paying much attention to anything.”

Derek snorted. That’s definitely Silvi for you, he thought. She’s been here the whole time, and never once actually learned what the wedding they were planning was. “And what did you tell her?”

“I told her what it was, and that it was going to be a big celebration between the kingdoms, and how important it was going to be,” Alanah explained. “And… she didn’t care. At least, she didn’t care until I told her about all the food that needed to be prepared for it. That seemed to have gotten her attention.”

“Yeah, that would do it, just like I thought. Cooking,” Derek said. “But then she left?”

“She did, but not before doing some… testing. Actually, she called it ‘experimenting’ and said that it was something she learned from you.”

“Oh, what kind of experimenting?”

The half-elf grinned a little, then started to speak as her eyes drifted towards a few of the elves that Derek didn’t know. “She… borrowed some items and an empty storage ring from some others—items like potions and food… things that were perishable. After that, she opened one of your portals and began her testing. Apparently, a few of the items were destroyed in the process—not a lot, and nothing of great value. She was just a little forceful in her borrowing.” She pointed at the elves.

Ah… that sounds about right, Derek thought. But really, he was excited to see what she found out. It seemed that Silvi did one of the experiments that he hadn’t had the time to perform, and it was Silvi. She probably tested it very thoroughly—she had lost the most due to the oddities of Void Travel, after all. “Then what happened?” he asked.

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“After moving in and out of the portal dozens of times, she would leave and stay gone for a while before coming back. She’s not very good at communicating, but it seemed that she was eventually satisfied with her results, and finally took her own storage items with her. She put them in a small pot with a very sealed lid on it. Then, she put that pot inside another… then another. I… think it would have worked with one, but it didn’t look like she was going to take any chances. After that, she left and closed her portal behind her.”

“To think that she only used a single pot when transporting me. What would have happened if something would have gone wrong?” Edgar added from the side. He did have the distinct displeasure of traveling bunched up inside one of Silvi’s pots, after all. “Am I really that much less important to her than whatever is in her storage rings?”

Derek looked over at Edgar. “To her?” He looked up in thought. “Knowing the items she has in her storage rings…” Specifically the spices that were given to her by Dave, he thought, but didn’t say. “I’d have to say yes. I don’t think there are many things or people that she would want to protect more.” Probably me, Malorie, Brandi, and Thomas is all, now that I think about it. Actually, maybe not even me, because she knows that I can protect myself.

He knew that, though she never really showed it, Silvi had a soft spot for Brandi and Thomas. She may pretend to be indifferent toward them, but Brandi made her the first piece of clothing she’d ever worn, and Thomas was her first… mount. As for Malorie… well… she controlled the flow of items and ingredients Silvi received. She would put her life on the line to save her beautiful delicious lady—in fact, Malorie was most likely the most important person to Silvi at the moment.

“So, if she ended up taking her precious ingredients with her, then I’m one hundred percent sure that it all worked. She wouldn’t have chosen to do so if it didn’t. Did she say where she was going?” Derek asked.

“Apparently, Silvi is going to be catering the wedding. She seemed rather excited about it and was a little angry that we left all the important details of the wedding out until the last second. She had to rush back to her kitchen so she could begin all of her preparations,” Alanah said. “I told her that she didn’t need to worry about it, and that the Crown Restaurant would take care of everything.”

“What did she say to that?” Derek asked.

“She said that the Crown should definitely still make all the food it could, but she was going to do so, too,” Alanah replied.

“I see…” Derek said with a laugh. “I would be worried if she turned down the Crown making food, too. She would never do such a thing. The more food, the better when it comes to her.”

“That seems to be the case…”

Derek was glad that Silvi had done all the guesswork in making storage rings transportable through Void Travel. It would make his current plans much easier. Still, her Void Creation skill worked a bit different than his did, so he would need to do a test of his own to make sure it worked the same.

“You still have my storage items, right?” Derek asked Alanah. “Silvi didn’t take them, did she?”

“No, she didn’t.” Alanah reached into one of her pockets and pulled out Derek’s storage rings. Then, with a flip of her wrist, his storage bracelet appeared in her hands as well. “Did you know that you can store this storage bracelet inside a storage ring? I’ve never heard of such a thing. Usually, the Great System won’t even let you try. I’ve saw crafters try to force it, but usually, the space gets unstable and you end up losing everything.”

“I’ve never tried it,” Derek said. “But, I store rings in it pretty often, so I guess it makes sense that it works the other way around, too.” He showed this by waving his hand and causing one of the rings he’d just gotten back to disappear into his bracelet. Then, he thought of something, and tried to store his bracelet in a storage ring, but it wouldn’t go. “It doesn’t seem to work if there’s a ring stored inside the bracelet,” he said.

“How peculiar,” Alanah said. “Still, it’s amazing that you have something that works like that.” Alanah wasn’t the only person who seemed to feel that way, either. Some of the others looked at his bracelet in envy. He’d been pretty mum about it in the past, but now, he was strong enough not to have to worry about people finding out.

Derek nodded, then handed all but one storage ring back to Alanah. The storage ring he kept was one he’d used to store a lot of the dragon materials in, and since he’d given all that to Malorie, it was almost completely empty—especially since anything of importance, he kept in his bracelet. He did make sure to transfer over some food and a couple of regular healing potions, though.

Since he never closed his tunnel, he went ahead and used his Void Creation skill to cover his hand, which was wearing the ring. Actually, thinking about what Alanah said about Silvi, Derek, instead of just covering the ring and his hand, formed a thin layer of void through his skill, and went ahead and wrapped the ring three times. It would completely seal off the ring from everything that way. Maybe the pots on top of pots did actually matter.

With the ring wrapped, Derek stepped inside the tunnel. He then moved around a bit, and chose to stay inside for a few minutes, too. Then he walked back out. Examining the contents of the ring once he was out, he smiled when he saw that everything looked good. Still, to make sure, he took a sandwich out and ate it. It was perfectly fine, with no weird tastes or anything. It was as impeccable as a sandwich could be.

“Great!” Derek said, and took the rest of his items from Alanah. He made sure to store all his rings inside his bracelet, too. “In that case,” he said to everyone in the room—everyone who had surprisingly not mentioned anything about the treasury since he returned. I guess they understand the need for the reward after all I’ve done… either that… or they just know better. Besides, it’s not like I didn’t tell Edgar about it after the first fight I joined. “I’ll see you all at the wedding.”

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