Chapter 1671

When Randidly arrived in her office, Tatiana hurdled over her desk like a teenager and ran up to throw her arms around him. Randidly blinked several times as she impacted him, then reached around Tatiana’s slender body to return her hug a few seconds later. The raw excitement that she radiated was contagious. Her skin was warm and her hair smelled like vanilla and coconuts.

Randidly’s expression softened. Of all the people that followed him, Tatiana was definitely the one for whom he had the greatest demands and also to whom he provided the least direction. She was given first a company and then a city to run, generating enough materials to support all of the abrupt requests that Randidly Ghosthound made of her. And time and time again, she had succeeded.

Randidly owed her much for her loyalty and capability.

Now, seeing Tatiana after all this time, feeling the slight tremor in her thin arms as she hugged him, he felt a powerful sense of guilt. Perhaps because of small adjustments that the Grim Chimera implemented when he was remade, hugging Tatiana made Randidly acutely aware in the differences of their size.

Randidly stood fully a head taller than her. His forearms were as thick as her upper arms. The scale of their two beings was different. Her image was a tiny candle before the bonfire of his Soulspace. It suddenly seemed inappropriate to have thrown so much responsibility onto a woman with such thin wrists.

But when Tatiana broke the hug and pushed Randidly backward to examine him more closely, her eyes were filled with steely resolve and mirth. Randidly felt profoundly foolish for underestimating her just based on their relative size.

Tatiana’s lips quirked. “Randidly, I never thought I’d see the day! Are you going for a pretty boy look? Your hair is hanging down to your jaw.”

Randidly winced and shook his head wryly, which only set his hair to swishing across his face. “It’s what I get for letting Helen cut my hair as she saw fit. I think this is revenge for refusing to spar.”

“Honestly? It suits you. But Helen’s tastes always did run a bit toward androgyny…” Tatiana returned to her desk and stood over a tea set. “Want something to drink? Oh wait, you want food, right? Heh, I should have known. I’ll have something from the canteen sent up.”

Randidly nodded gratefully and glanced around the office. The layout was the same, but Tatiana had clearly been busy in the past several years. The quality of the items in the office were leagues above their past versions. The heavy wooden desk was covered with intricate carvings of trees and deer. The far wall was covered in a massive map of what could only be Expira, with a small metal tack that could only be Kharon hovering near the equator. The curtains that covered the windows were thick and luxurious. Golden letter openers, gleaming sable pens, and a sophisticated computer terminal were precisely placed in a cluster on Tatiana’’s desk, giving it an air of engine-like precision.

Tatiana typed something quickly into a keypad and then continued to speak to Randidly. “I bet you have your own reasons for coming, but a few things first: Kharon is about to host its first Kharon Academy Auction. It’s a big deal, so there are about a hundred thousand extra people clustered around the city right now to celebrate. So if you want to remain anonymous… you might have to put a little bit more effort into it than just not announcing that you are the Ghosthound. Please also don’t just walk around with some shady cloak covering your face. Oh, and also…”

Tatiana looked at Randidly directly and her lips twitched. “...you are releasing pretty heavy waves of pressure right now. Physical and mental. My instincts are thoroughly convinced that you could easily annihilate me. Maybe I’m used to it, but you should try and rein that in a bit before you wander around. Is there anything, in particular, you will need while you are here?”

Randidly scratched his chin and tilted his head to the side. Then he grinned, finally realizing what was off about Tatiana’s attitude. “...you’ve always helped me, but you don’t usually behave so nicely when I come barging in asking for things. Don’t think you are the only one with insight; fess up, what is it? What do you need?”

Tatiana rolled her eyes at him. “I must have certainly been obvious if you could notice, but… Money.”

Randidly frowned, but a tapping at the window interrupted his train of thought. Tatiana peered over at the glass but then laughed. “Ha. Well, let’s get this out of the way, shall we?”

Tatiana walked over to the window and opened it, allowing a veritable flood of moss spirits to cram themselves into the room and spiral excitedly around Randidly. A miniature whirlwind formed around him, growing in power and influence. Randidly stood and laughed in the middle of the enthusiastic moss spirits as more and more rushed in through the opening, feeling their kind spirits and ambient energy.

More so than even spending long hours of meditating to clear his mind, being bathed in the pure energy of the moss spirits left Randidly cleansed and refreshed. Since they shared a similar origin with him, their rejuvenating capabilities were extremely effective on his mental exhaustion. He likely would have continued to enjoy the experience had he not noticed Tatiana’s growing exasperation as this artificial windstorm began to rustle the neat piles of paper that covered her desk.

“Alright, alright, I’ll come to visit your core and play later,” Randidly said, still chuckling. “I understand you all are in charge of connecting the different sky islands. Very impressive. Keep up the good work.”

The moss spirits spun together and fared with radiant pride, but just as quickly they seemed to realize this display could be considered a dereliction of their duty. With the same alacrity as the moss spirits had invaded in through the window, they blasted out again and flowed back throughout the complex net of floating islands around Kharon.

Randidly’s mouth twitched as he turned back to Tatiana. He reached within himself and centered his perception in his Soulspace. With an effort of will, Randidly withdrew some subconscious image physicalizations back within the depths of his person. A few seconds later, his aura was indistinguishable from a normal person, albeit a normal person with a tail tied tightly around his waist. “Is this better?”

“You seem practically mundane.” Tatiana grinned as she gathered up some of her papers that had fluttered to the ground. When she had them all, she tapped the bottoms lightly to straighten the stack and set them back into their proper places. “And you are right, I do need something from you: money.”

Randidly was initially very enthusiastic about helping Tatiana, but his expression turned somewhat awkward at her request. “...Ahem. Well, as you know, I’m currently in a translation between jobs, so…”

Tatiana grinned at him. “No, I didn’t expect you to empty out your wallet for me; I need Expira money, not Nexus bucks or whatever. And you are the type that barely notices the role of money in your life anyway. But you have assets here, the controlling stake in Kharon, which has been accumulating capital for you for the past five years. It is… a significant amount of money. I just need your permission to use a portion of it to make an anonymous donation toward Kharon’s Guardian Visas program.”

There was a knock on the door and Tatiana bid them to come in. Six steaming trays of food were wheeled in my metal beings with featureless faces. After arranging the tray trolleys in a semi-circle, the brass beings bowed and then left. Randidly looked at Tatiana and raised his eyebrows.

“Automatons. Kharon makes them. Neveah figured out how to tap into the System’s translation functions, so they naturally understand orders,” Tatiana said. Then she pointed at the food. “I assume pleasure before business?”

“Tell me about the visa program while I eat,” Randidly responded as he lifted the lid off of the first tray. The fragrant spices of a shrimp jambalaya wafted up toward him. Immediately, his expression brightened and he snatched up a fork, beginning to eat directly from the party-sized dish.

But after a few bites, he paused. “Do the automatons cook the food too?”

“Generally. Is that a problem?” Tatiana asked.

Randidly chewed thoughtfully for several seconds. “...no. But you can definitely tell. There isn’t any life in the food. The taste… is just fine.”

Despite the fact that the food was simply serviceable, Randidly’s powerful new Grim Chimera body hadn’t been full in its entire existence. So the six trays of food became sacrifices to please his cells. In the meantime, Tatiana explained the Guardian Visas, and how the initial program was forcibly expanded way beyond its original scope due to the rapid growth of the Kharon Academy.

That earned a pause in Randidly’s feast long enough for him to grin; he liked to hear that the Kharon Academy was doing well. Not that he truly needed to be told, as the spirit of Kharon was mostly anchored in Kharon Academy at the point. The student and teachers were its loudest proponents. But to hear that the foremost institution of learning on Expira was his Academy, built to teach the young to challenge the unknown and seek redress in our world’s greatest flaws, filled him with a feeling of satisfaction that Randidly had rarely experienced before.

But with the good came the bad. As Tatiana continued to explain the problem with Kharon’s Council, Randidly’s expression sank. Kharon’s development in five years wasn’t all good. There were significant portions of Kharon’s population that were happy with their current position and somewhat unwilling to continually head to Danger Zones to blaze a path for the rest of Expira.

As they aged and escaped the chaotic arrival of the System, some people wanted to rest and enjoy the benefits to which they believed they were entitled.

Randidly pressed his lips together. Nothing remains the same forever… But giving people the opportunity to choose how they want to live is part of the reason that I need to grow even stronger. This seems like the sort of problem that should be left up to Kharon to solve.

After she finished her explanation, Randidly tilted his head and looked at Tatiana. “Will the money you’ve set aside for me be enough to cover the program?”

Tatiana nodded. “Oh, for sure. Compared to how much money is in your name, this amount isn’t even noticeable.”

That caused Randidly to pause. “Wait, I’m rich?”

“Randidly, how could you not be?” Tatiana retorted with another eye roll. “Do you know how success Kharon’s industries are?”

Randidly tapped his cheek and considered this news. “How rich?”

“Scrooge, caves filled with golden coins rich,” Tatiana said wryly. “So rich that, if you walk around Kharon and find something that you want to buy, you’d probably be informed that you already owned it.”

Randidly pointed at the six empty trays of food. “Then I want another six trays of food. But have them made by chefs with high Cooking Skill Level this time.”