SO it's been an eternity writing this chapter and still I'm not one hundred percent satisfied with it. It is intended to shed some light into Shirou's future interactions and set up the first big battle for the next chapters. As a result, the length is royally bloated and I've tried with all my might to keep it short and trimmed, but that might not be the case.
Type-Moon and related IPs belong to Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi. RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth, Miles Luna and Kerry Shawcross. Lyrical Nanoha belongs to Masaki Tsuzuki and Bleach belongs to Tite Kubo. Percy Jackson and all associated characters belong to Disney Hyperion and Rick Riordan. The Cruciator lore belongs to me... and the X-Men forever belong to Bryan Singer but that last one's neither here nor there.
The call had arrived late in the morning.
When Annabeth and everyone had been taking their breakfast aboard the Argo II, the peace was interrupted by the unexpected caller. Apparently, he would be arriving in London in under three hours and had sent them a clear list of instructions. The last one involved meeting for a Celebratory Dinner at the Admiralty Arch, which was the British Co3 headquarters. That part was the one the Argo II crew had welcomed most... it was part one of the instructions that had put the blonde child of Athena on red alert:
Part I: on the infiltration of the Clock Tower and retrieval of the stolen sword:
1. Retrieve Andskoti from Magnus.
down 'Saber' and her two masters and bind them.
3. Have Piper charmspeak Shirou Emiya for transfer to Co3 HQ.
From what Annabeth had gathered from Jason's recon a few days ago, she knew what they were being asked was going to be nightmarish. A fortnight before, Jason had come back with numerous wounds that had thankfully not been lethal or wounded him significantly, but it still looked as if he had fought off an army of hellhounds... or like he did the time he insisted he could take on Clarisse, Percy and Frank at the same time. Whoever Jason had fought was clearly on par with a Titan. Jason himself said it was like fighting Krios all over again. That bode terribly for the idea of restraining this subject.
And the thing was... she knew the girl Jason had met in Hyde Park... and yes, it had been a girl, probably no older than 16... was the culprit behind his wounds and their current target. Their caller had made it clear by following up the call with two pictures of the threesome they were to apprehend. Jason had pointed out right away the blonde girl in a conservative white and blue outfit was the same girl who attacked him. The fact that the pictures had their names scribbled underneath them only highlighted this fact further.
Now, to be specific, dispatching the girl would be possible even if the three of them were adept combatants. They were 10 against three and they had been Telegram'd a list of weaknesses and possible strategies to take them down. If fighting a Titan + two Laestrygonians was doable for all of them, this group would be fairly easy to deal with.
It was the 'restrain' part that worried her.
Mostly because Magnus was absent; he had stated he had errands back Valhalla, so he couldn't just tag along yet. Now, while she had been brought up to speed on his shenanigans, she also wondered where they would get another Andskoti. Yes, she knew there was no way in the whole universe that Fenrir was breaking those off, which meant if they had it, nothing would be able to untangle themselves from it... but, they didn't have it at all! All of it, if she recalled correctly, was now binding Fenrir/Fenris Wolf back in that island! Who was going to get more?
In the meantime, as a Sea Harrier soared above the English Channel, a couple were having a playful discussion in the heavily modded fighter jet, both sitting across from each other as they played 21 in a table separating the two. The redheaded girl's voice was curious when she spoke up. "Andskoti? Really?"
The reply from the auburn haired boy sitting across her was just as playful "Who do you think was the one that asked Junior for a favor?" he said as he added another card to the bunch. "I have the money and I am not Magnus... and he doesn't know we're cooperating. Of course he'd make another Andi for us!"
The girl toyed with the braided lumps of her long ponytail as she looked at the cards on the table, biting onto her lip in concentration, "...and how are Magnus and co. supposed to get to Westminster by 11 AM?"
"I told Hearth what Runes to use to do so... now... if he screws up, then it's over and we might as well roll over in our graves now... But I doubt he will... he rarely screws up in these sort of life or death situations..." he argued as he watch the girl place a card on the table and he smirked, placing a Jack into it. "21..." he concluded.
"Well, you win Amaranth, but don't you think you're gambling too much when it comes to... real life?"
Amaranth sighed as he picked up the cards, then looking towards the window as he saw the White Cliffs of Dover appear in the distance, "Maybe... But it's not like our planning ever panned out now did it Queen?"
Queen nodded, sighing in concession as she too turned to look below.
"...I just hope the gamble I played was right..." she whispered wistfully before resting her hand on the edge of the window. Amaranth's own grabbed hers, prompting her to look back at him. His smile was earnest and full of the sunny hope that made her feel the world was no longer an obstacle for both. She really liked it when he smiled like that.
"I'm sure you're right..." he said, "...and I am sure you will see your brother again soon."
When Shirou arrived at the lecture hall, he didn't know what to expect.
The Fake Janitor had many reasons not to be there. Not only was the advert for this lecture unlike anything he had been taught about magecraft so far, but he had also kind of expected Rin to be more forceful on her insistence... then there was the fact that his innate curiosity was something even Rin's thinly veiled threats couldn't rein in, so he decided to just drop by and see why this woman had caused such an stir at the Central Plaza.
The room suddenly went silent. Shirou hadn't noticed, but through the main door came a woman in a business-like outfit.
The boy was initially confused. The woman had initially seemed familiar to him... only for her appearance to suddenly not ring any bells in his head... and he couldn't remember why. It was as if a curse covered her, preventing her features from being compared but not blurring them.
He knew this because he could see her and remember her perfectly: knee-length blonde hair, sharp looking emerald eyes behind rimless glasses, a confident but somewhat soft expression and visage... all together in a body that Shirou could only find too tall or too well built. Slender, athletic and with nice but not overt curves. He could somewhat compare her to Rider... or Luvia... but when he tried to make another mental comparison, his mind suddenly failed at making the association. 'At least she seems to know her magecraft...' he thought.
"Very well then!" the woman started before taking something out of a bag too small for it. However, it was what came off the bag and not the size of the object itself, that impressed everyone.
The shiny contraption was a tablet. A bright white, Apple branded tablet.
Now, while Shirou wasn't the most tech savvy guy, the young magus wasn't stuck in the Middle Ages like other orthodox theumaturgy users were. He knew about the gadgets enough to recognize brands and had a phone of his own that he had bought to stay in contact with Taiga and Sakura. He had also found out that, surprisingly, Luvia used one as well... and Lord El-Melloi owned an older one 'just for making calls and nothing else'... However, most magi would never admit the need for a piece of newer technology, so the usage of a tablet for a conference struck him as unnaturally strange and jarring.
The woman cleared her throat while tapping a few times on the tablet and then pointing it at the empty wall behind her. Normally, there would be a whiteboard or the lecturer would use an spell for representing the visuals... instead, as she tapped one last time on the tablet, an azure beam flew from the tablet towards the wall and in the blink of an eye, the room was replaced by a void resembling outer space. Everyone briefly rose their voices and some stood from their chairs, which were no longer there... however, those who still sat seemed to be doing so in the air. Shirou himself stood up and then sat down once more before realizing the chair had been rendered invisible.
Alright, this was impressive. He hadn't expected everything to suddenly turn into a gigantic screen.
The room was brighter than before. Every star in the sky produced a dim glow. The woman then turned towards them.
"Well..." she started, "Before we start, let me just tell you... this is what happens when you let technology and magecraft converge as they should." She then turned towards them again and nodded.
"Now, my name is Doctor Chelsea Elizabeth Cameron Brighton. I'm currently the Overboss of an Association of Mages known as 'The Admiralty' that is —I'm afraid—, not part of the Mages' Association." the girl declared before a small group of five seemed to sneer at this very thought. To be honest, Shirou understood their reasons perfectly well; for all its openness towards most magi, the Clock Tower was still a group run by nobles and very ancient families, so the classism that ran amok in the organization was present everywhere. This —naturally— meant that any organization operating beyond any of the three major Association branches was seen as 'lesser' in their eyes.
Not that he shared that view mind you, otherwise he wouldn't be here... and apparently he wasn't the only one...
The young magus actually noticed there were two different groups: one, a group of five, was comprised of magi dressed in a series of outfits that seemed drab, fairly conservative and rather old; standard magi outfits, if he ever saw them. The group seemed to be in their mid thirties save for the only two females —two young girls around his and Rin's age— that seemed to be glaring holes at the other group that had splintered away from them and was now huddled together.
Shirou then took note of the second group; they were all fairly young —perhaps even a year or two younger than him— and comprised of eight colorful characters —four boys and four girls— all of them dressed in, as he had noted before, colorful, attention-calling outfits that seemed not only new, but also fairly expensive. Despite this, the eight seemed slightly uncomfortable rather than disdainful. One of the girls even had what he thought were earbuds plugged into her ears, shocking given how magi normally shunned technology. The group seemed to gravitate around the tallest two members: a young man with shining blue hair and spiky bangs who seemed to embrace a girl with hair dyed a warm shade of pink, cascading to her knees. Both had fairly calm expressions, but also bright blue eyes. All in all, it was clear they were either new magi or an inexperienced group, but unlike the older, more traditional gathering, they seemed fairly nice to look at and be with. Shirou didn't doubt which group he might choose to interact with once the lecture was done.
The cough of Chelsea brought everyone's attention back to the center of the room, where the vision was now focused on Earth, with the young Emiya noting how it spun.
"Right..." Chelsea started, "I take it all of you know the standard, Association Issued model of the world, right?"
The younger group didn't even budge —and in fact some even looked doubtful—, whereas the elder group immediately stepped forward. One of the men then looked at the rest —who nodded in agreement— before speaking on behalf of them all.
"Yes." the man —who sported shoulder length blond hair and spectacles— declared in a coarse voice befitting his early 40s appearance. "The Earth was created a significant time ago. It has gone through numerous eras including the Age of the Gods, the Age of Fairies and currently, the Age of Men. As the world transitioned into the Age of Men, creatures from the Age of the Gods and the Age of Fairies migrated to the Reverse Side of the World, a texture where they could live on. Textures are like layers of reality wrapped around the Planet, held in place by a powerful artifact. Sadly, that's where our knowledge of the situation ends."
Chelsea nodded. "That's right... now... who knows how Ancient History panned out according to men?" the blond girl asked as she turned towards the other group. The elder magi seemed to recoil at the very thought of going by the history of men, whereas a young girl with long blonde twin tails —that did remind him of Rin— stepped away from the group to answer.
"Yes. According to scientists-" she started before snickers coming from the other group interrupted her. She looked at the tallest guy in her group with an unnerved expression in her big blue eyes, which he replied with a firm nod that was acknowledged in kind before she continued.
"-according to scientists, mankind evolved thousands of years ago from the Neanderthals and evolved into his more advanced cousin, Homo sapiens. Us. To Neanderthals, the new Human was an aberration. 'Peaceful cohabitation', if ever it existed, was short-lived." she paused before ending with a certain air of finality... and Shirou felt she was referring to more than what she was talking about when she glared back at the crowd of magi on the other side of the circle they were around. "Records show, without exception, that the arrival of a more advanced species is always followed by the immediate extinction of their less-evolved kin."
After saying that, the girl smirked at the apparent leader of the elder camp. Much to the redheads' surprise, he seemed mildly taken aback by the gesture. Shirou himself couldn't help but smile slightly.
The crowd erupted into chatter once more. However, as the vitriol started to simmer, it was put down by the sound of Chelsea's voice slicing through it like a hot knife through melted butter.
"Alright, alright!" she said before hoisting her tablet up again, then peering over its edge at both sides of the crowd. "What if I told you which one came first, the egg or the chicken?"
The redhead arched an eyebrow as the rest of the magi looked up.
"You see..." Chelsea started, "...in the place where I hail from, our cosmology has been able to finally sum up what happened when the Earth was born, up until today, and how that affects us now... and our future..."
Chelsea tapped her iPad a few times more and the room changed altogether... now they were standing in what looked like the depths of hell itself —a never ending landscape of fire and chaos that spread in all directions and seemed to have no end— and he immediately recognized the place they were in.
Earth... Ancient Earth.
"Well... turns out that we have conducted analysis of samples throughout millennia... and we have finally devised a way to see through their 'eyes', as one might call them. At the Admiralty, we have access to something known as a 'Tachyonic Hypervisor'. This construct lets us see into the past from a neutral point of view. We confirmed it works when we saw into the Age of the Gods and could confirm everything worked as expected... so we were pleasantly surprised to find that we could go back all the way to the Hadean Eon... and we found out that Scientists were right. The Scientific Genesis of Earth is, objectively true. Creationists beware!" the blonde woman concluded before giggling slightly, then continued with her exposition, "...and this confirms another theory we had... that the laws of physics have always existed —even during the Age of the Gods— and they have simply been skipped in such scenarios due to the prevalence of faith in older times..."
The landscape around the group started to change all of a sudden, with Chelsea accompanying the change with her narration of events. "However, there was a period of Ancient Prehistory we knew nothing of... after all, where did the gods come from? Why did they make it seem as if they created the world when this was clearly a lie? How does magic fit in all of this? Well, I have the answer for you..." she trailed off, the landscape morphing into what seemed like a vaguely futuristic city like those Shirou had seen in Science Fiction movies, "...the answer is... the gods were like us... Once upon a time, at least..."
The room shifted once more as her tale started to move forward through time.
To Chelsea, Shirou and the group of new students all seemed to be in a daze. The elder magi, on the other hand, looked ready to bolt for the door. This didn't fit their world view the way they understood it, but the cat was out of the bag right now and the young crusader knew it would leave the bag on its own sooner or later. Nothing would change the fact that right now, she was doing all the people in the room a favor.
Someone will have to explain to them, sooner or later, why their magecraft is going to stop working in around 36 hours from now... the blonde Southampton girl thought. After all, if what they said back at Spain is true, then the Axis is going to collapse in less than two days...
"This is an insult to everything I represent!" shouted one of the shadier magi. Chelsea noted the man who had spoken the most: old by the rest's standards, clearly regretting entering the room and not leaving due to some outdated sense of duty to stick with what he had set on his platter. The man of dark hair and aged factions seemed visibly shaken by the story... or history, since that term was more accurate, and instead pointed his twisted index finger at her.
"Where did you procure this information from?" he asked, "Why should we take it? Who let you into this place?!" he continued, harping on about what Chelsea thought might've been two minutes and thirty eight seconds, before she sighed and cut him off. "Are you done?"
The man seemed to catch his tongue briefly. The guest lecturer didn't waste the chance to cool him down.
"What I said is what we've found through the use of something that might sound outlandish to you: magical technology... or magitek, for short. The result of attempting to use magic to answer science. We found what we did because no one else, at least on this planet, has attempted that or more accurately, those who didn't were written off as lunatics. Well, I'm not demanding you believe what I just said, but I do ask you start questioning more the story you're fed. You're not kids anymore. You're mages!" she stressed, using the term she was familiar with instead of the outdated word for the same thing. It was one of the reasons she had liked the young girl from what she had taken to calling 'Group B': because she had voiced what she herself thought despite being an Old World Magus.
The girl sighed once more before walking back to her desk and picking her laptop bag off the chair "You really should start coming to your own conclusions if my story doesn't suit you..." she finished off, walking towards the exit, "And as for who let me in? None other than the Head of the Clock Tower. Not just Ms Lorelei, but the actual Leader in Charge... but seriously, consider my words... dogma doesn't suit anyone at all... and certainly not my group." With those last words, Chelsea left the room, causing a stir among the younger and the older group... and leaving a certain redheaded magus caught in the middle of the skirmish.
The room then turned into a war zone.
And a rather loud one at that.
This was not a good thing. Well, things weren't as bad as they sounded.
For one, Shirou was not involved in the free for all quagmire. For the other, it seemed to be mostly verbal... thankfully. Shirou had already endured many instances of Rin and Luvia quarreling over their usual research and had seen those warm up rather fast and turn into rather violent skirmishes.
Eventually, the discussion died down and he saw how the elder magi left the room in an orderly fashion. The younger group, however, remained inside with confused expressions on their faces. The eldest member turned around to ask the girl with the twintails something in a whisper, then turned towards Shirou himself.
"...Out of curiosity, do you believe anything Ms Cameron might have said?" he asked, stepping away from the group, with the young redhead noting how tall the man was.
"Kind of... actually..." he admitted. "I wasn't convinced at first but... to be honest, her tale sounds too elaborate to have been a concoction, not to mention... it actually kind of makes sense."
Shirou wasn't lying when he said so. He genuinely had been listening and something within him felt right when he listened. More over, numerous things he had always wondered, like how magic could explain myths and science, seemed to have a concise answer. Granted, he wasn't one hundred percent convinced. He wasn't one hundred percent convinced by everything Rin said for one, so of course he wasn't going to just believe everything someone said right off the bat.
But it sounded coherent enough to think of it some more later on.
The blue haired young man sighed, "We really thought we were the only ones. Almost thought we were all crazy..." he said, turning around to the rest of the group. The girl from before nodded and greeted the Japanese boy from afar.
"It's kind of hard here if you're a first generation magus, so to speak..." she whispered, clearly sorrowful at the fact. The girl then wandered off towards one of the seats and made herself comfortable. Shirou himself was starting to feel some pain on his feet, so he too sat down in one of the nearby chairs. The man he was talking to followed suit.
"So I suppose introductions are in order..." the older man said, "I'm Dmitri. Dmitri Volkov. Pleasure to meet you."
"I'm Emiya... Shirou Emiya," the Japanese boy introduced himself, "...so I take it you're from Russia?"
"Technically, Belarus. I was born in Russia, but have been living in Belarus for a while now, learning magecraft from an old magus from Minsk..." he trailed off, looking at the group that had broken off into two smaller ones: the girls on one side and the guys on the other, "...that is kind of how we met... our teacher died just two weeks ago. He left me in charge since I was his most accomplished student. The thing is, he didn't seem convinced with our growth. The man essentially died while most of our training was halfway through."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"No need for that," Dmitri assured him, fishing something out of the pocket of his navy blue coat and then extracting a packet of Tic-Tacs. "After all, we think he did a pretty nice job. He trained us in such a way that almost all of us already know well beyond the basics."
At this, Shirou nodded in understanding. He himself had asked Kiritsugu to make him into a magus and it turned out that he hadn't even taught him a single thing about how to be an actual one. Instead, he learned that his own Magic Circuits had essentially gone unused for who knows how long. It was a daunting thing to think that he had only just started to grasp the surface of what he was capable of.
After munching on one of the candies that Dmitri offered him, his partner, the pink haired woman, came strolling back into the room. She had left unseen before even Shirou's battle hardened eyes noticed... and returned with the same willowy grace her tall body gifted upon her.
"I've tracked down the Professor..." she said, her voice airy, husky and soothing. "She actually invited us visit her place. I'm not sure if you want to follow..."
Dmitri sighed, standing up and stretching his arms over his head. He then turned to Shirou, who was still sitting down and asked him if he would join them. However, the redhead was once more deep in thought, trying to make sense of what the guest lecturer had just said.
He certainly didn't expect the voice of Chelsea to suddenly interrupt his musings. "Are you trying to find the formula to Cold Fusion?" the blonde girl's voice echoed through the room, prompting Shirou to look up and see Chelsea had suddenly manifested in the desk she had been commandeering the whole time.
"W-where did you?"
"Relax..." she interrupted him, making a snapperjaws gesture with her hand. Dmitri just smiled at the surprised redhead and walked out of the room, letting the door close behind him and the young redheaded magi alone with their lecturer, who seemed to be busy holding what looked like an smartphone, scrolling through on-screen text. "I actually have better signal in here than I do outside in that cavern, can you believe it?"
The Japanese apprentice shook his head and went over to the Briton's desk, drew a nearby chair and sat next to Chelsea. Now that he was alone, he could notice more peculiarities regarding her appearance. Her hair was very long, tied into two hanging twin tails that cascaded from below her neck to her upper legs, just like the other blonde girl from Dmitri's group. She wore a black hoodie with Black Sabbath brands on the front and neck, a pendant in the shape of the Three Lions of England dangling from the latter. Both of her hands were covered by white fingerless gloves. However, perhaps the most striking feature of hers were her bright green eyes, filled with a silent optimism that seemed extraordinarily out of place in them for some reason the redhead couldn't put his finger on.
"I wanted to ask you a few things..." he said, leaning further towards the girl.
"Let me guess... you want to know if the story I told you all was true..." she answered dryly and with minor concern, "I have no reason to lie to any of you. It is what it is. I'm not going to be shoving it down anyone's gob anytime soon."
"It's... just..."
"That it sounds unrealistic? Unlikely? Too far out of what you've learned?"
"The last one. I mean, you know plenty of stuff. The Association has existed for..."
"2,117 years..." she interrupted him once more, "My kind has sourced this information from an entity whose age was, as of last year, 38,000 years old. For one, you'd think the Age of Men you speak of means the gods no longer exist or are powerless right? Well guess what? I have another boomer for you! They are alive and kicking and they are currently gearing up for the mother of all wars."
At this, Shirou's eyes turned the size of platters. "Whoa, what do you mean they are gearing for war?" he asked, before noticing Chelsea putting her phone away and then stuffing it into her bag.
"I mean that they are preparing to go on a mass manhunt for some things we need to save the world... because that system I spoke of? It's close to collapse. The only way to fix everything, and by everything I mean everything, is by finding those items and we need the gods to do so because we're not the only ones interested in them and the other party has no intention to use them to save our collective hides."
"So the gods are alive... and the world's nearing doomsday..." Shirou repeated to himself, his head hunching over as he let those words sink in. Nominally, he didn't believe Chelsea. 'It's just too much!' the young magus had thought. However, things turning weird recently had made him a lot more open minded and flexible as to what he believed in and now he thought that perhaps if things were going to go royally wrong, it would be a good idea to let them go wrong with some preparations... so he had been taking some possibilities into account.
Naturally, this meant preparing for an apocalyptic scenario as well. He definitely didn't want to be caught with his pants down.
"You don't believe me, do you?" the girl asked once more, prompting the redheaded boy to sigh in his chair.
"I don't believe you completely, but I do feel things are going weird," he confessed. "I can't explain it to you, but it's as if a part of me could feel danger looming and closing in."
At this, Chelsea took his hand and gave it a firm squeeze. The gesture almost made Shirou's brain short circuit as he realized he had received the gesture before... and that the skin felt the same. The warmth, the strength, the resolute nature of it... he had felt them before and he couldn't tell where.
"I'm pretty sure I could assuage your doubts..." she answered. "You should come to my actual office, where I can give you a nice rundown into what's going to be happening soon... but first..." she trailed off before fishing something out of her bag —car keys, belonging to an Aston Martin apparently— "...how about we have lunch. I am going to be meeting the rest of the new mages at my favorite place and also some friends who might be able to elaborate into what I just told you..."
"Where exactly are we going..." the redhead trailed off before asking, "...and will it be elegant?"
The blonde just giggled, standing up and walking towards the exit door, "No need to worry about dress code Shirou. Do you like Burgers?"
The redhead smiled at the question.
"Who doesn't like burgers?" he answered, walking after her and then falling into one peculiar issue...
Even though she had just called him Shirou, he had never introduced himself to her.
The world was a weird place.
For one, Rin Tohsaka never expected to be running down the busiest airport in Britain with a suitcase in tow and ashes on her face. Yet here she was. It really hurt her morale... especially given how everyone was looking at her.
"There she is! Get her!" a security guard shouted loudly as he found her among the crowd, pointing towards her for the rest of the Customs' officers to see her.
"Shit!" she hissed in Japanese, running even faster with some help from her augmentation spell as she headed straight for the gates. However, when she was nearing the glass doors, an alarm went off.
"Great..." she thought, feinting right and then going left, trying to find some opening between the crowds that had started to go haywire when the alarm went off.
"DON'T LET HER GET AWAY!" another officer said, his voice drawing closer to her. As the magus had expected, the crowds at the airport meant she wasn't able to use the augmentation to its fullest effect. The crowd also seemed to rush towards her rather than apart, which only served to slow her down even further.
In the end, however, it all seemed to be for naught, as she finally saw a pair of open sliding doors waiting for her.
"YES!" she cried out mentally, running towards the door, bolting right before she collided with a gathering of old women huddling close to the open sliding doors and then veering to her right out of the overcrowded terminal and into the parking lot where she was ready to use the full extent of her speed.
...Or at least so she thought... until she ran into a tall figure that seemed to have the density of a brick wall, tumbling over and letting go of the suitcase.
Right, so this is all done for now. Short recap: 1. Shirou goes to a Guest Lecture from an OC and learns what we already saw. 2. Shirou meets more novice, modernized magi like himself. 3. Shirou meets new friends not unlike him. 4. Old Guard and Younger Mages threaten to fight each other. 5. Shirou becomes friends with fellow Novice magi. 6. Shirou and Chelsea talk of their cosmic laws and finally. 7. Rin intercepts an important package in the airport and decides to take it with herselt and find out what it is before anyone else does...
As for those who are curious about Remnant? I must tell you now. They are different worlds, but the people of that world originated in ours. Hopefully there will be more time for clarify this later on. For now, I'm pushing this out of the door since it's the last slow chapter.