Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]
3.11 Seraphina’s Decision I

Chloe stares at me with a keen eye as I float over toward her. Her gaze narrows further, as though she’s… studying me? Studying my armor? Or…

“Hmm,” she mutters. She doesn’t answer for several more seconds, leaving me bemused. Finally, she responds. “Nope. The bandana doesn’t go with the armor at all. But Sera, you’re still cute.”

My jaw drops. “Well, I should hope you still consider me something a little above ‘not attractive.’”

Chloe grins at me. “I mean, I’d say you look more attractive with your armor down on the floor. Right next to your clothes. But I will wait to have another go at you. At least a little bit longer.” She adds a wink, as though her intentions aren’t made crystal clear already.

“Anyway,” I say, “I want to check my e-mail to see if I’ve missed anything the past couple of weeks. That, and I think I need to let the professors know about the Ether equilibrium array that these armors are using to power themselves.” They’ll be able to get the information out to other scientists and begin the cascading process that will eventually lead to this discovery going wide. It’s not like I have a direct connection to the media. I shudder at the thought. I don’t want that, and I don’t think the world wants that either.

I sit down, pull up my e-mail on my phone and… “Holy Hells,” I mutter.

“Something wrong?”

“I’m not sure who was handing out my contact information like candy on Halloween, but… uh… seven hundred and forty-one new e-mails in just the past few weeks.”

“Junk mail?”

“Uh…” I start scrolling through the list. “It’s… a mix. Some junk mail, some notices about graduation… Oops, I guess we missed all that while we were off adventuring. A lot of offers for credit cards. I guess they saw the ‘Seraphina just turned eighteen’ alert in their systems and thought, better saddle her with debt up to her eyeballs. And here’s one that’s… uh, okay, that’s a bit weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“Two e-mails from the local university. Definitely from different departments though. One rescinding my offer of admission due to failure to complete my high school coursework. I guess that makes sense. We did kinda skip out on our last two months of school. And the other is… offering me a job as a visiting professor, apparently. That second one even addresses me as ‘Doctor’ Seraphina Mortensen.”

“Maybe they thought those treatises on glyphs and Ethertech you wrote were a doctoral dissertation? I mean, I’m sure if we headed back and talked to Dr. Winfield, he’d probably say it counted.”

I chuckle at the idea of little old me standing up in a lecture hall in front of students twice my age, trying to explain how magic works in an actual, professional academic setting. Maybe I can flutter around for emphasis, to show that I’m not just spewing bullshit everywhere like I’m some sort of quack. Though, when I think about it a little more seriously, it doesn’t sound so bad. I doubt I’d make a good teacher, though.

“Maybe…” I mutter, trailing off to look at the others.

I scroll through a few more pages. A lot… a lot of job offers from various defense contractors. All with ‘negotiable’ salary. Pretty sure that means I’m going to get lowballed; I’ve already learned my lesson that I’m still a long way off from being able to successfully steer a proper negotiation in my favor.

In either case, accepting one of these offers is a bridge too far. This isn’t working for the government proper, nor some ivory tower. I don’t mind the latter, and I was able to tolerate the former, even though I didn’t necessarily like it. But this would working for actual war profiteers, merchants who profit upon the industry of death. I still need to be able to sleep at night, and there’s no way I’d be able to do so working for any of these options.

In truth, a lot of these offers are rather appealing. But there’s one thing that keeps me from wanting to settle down and take one of these— admittedly lucrative— opportunities. I need to continue training, exploring dungeons, getting stronger and improving my gear. No matter how nice it might be in terms of money and benefits, I’m not going to be able to fight the System if I stay comfortable, working in an office behind the vanguard. It’s not who I am, and it’s not who I want to be.

“So, are you going to hear them out?” Chloe asks.

“The defense jobs? Not a chance. The university? I mean, I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a teacher.”

Chloe just rolls her eyes at me.

“What?” I say.

“You know you’re probably not going to be a teacher, right? They’re going to have you doing research. You might lecture one class a week, maybe advise some of the students. They want grant money, and with your name and accomplishments, you’ll bring them no shortage of that.”

“Well, do you think I should at least hear them out?”

Chloe wraps her arm around me and rubs my back, which proves a somewhat difficult task due to the difficulties I have making subtle wing movements, even with [Cybernetic Body] assisting me. But we manage. She looks into my eyes, weakening my resolve with that effortless beauty and sincerity that she exudes all the time.

“The fact that you say it like that is proof that you’re interested in something like this. And remember: you have the negotiating power now. You have the power to say no. Make them agree to what you want. Because they’ve already made it perfectly clear that they want you.”

Wow, that glint in her eyes as her fingers trace underneath the back of my new armor… So full of mischief and passion and desire and so many other emotions that rile me up.

“Well, I guess we’re in agreement. Shall we go hear them out, then?”

“Right now?”

“After lunch.” Because my stomach is growling. Just like it always does.

After a rather early lunch of leftover pasta mixed with marinara and cottage cheese into an old familiar facsimile of cheap lasagna, Chloe and I take wing and head back into midtown. The temperature is actually a fair bit cooler today, with more than a few clouds overhead. I’m not confident that we’re going to actually get one of those rare early-summer thunderstorms, but I can’t deny the possibility, either. As folks in these parts are wont to say: if you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes. It’ll change.

And the breeze feels wonderful, flowing through my blonde locks that, now that I look closely, I think are just a bit more golden and less sandy. I briefly consider letting my hair out of its tail, but I’m sure it’ll be an absolute pain in the ass to try to untangle it. So I just leave it up instead.

I will say that flying is definitely the superior method of travel. No traffic, no pollution— I don’t think spent [Ether] has deleterious effects on the environment. And not being confined to roads and stop lights as well. What would be a twenty minute drive takes barely ten in the air. And if I weren’t conserving my power with [Overland Flight], we could probably make it in under five.

We touch down on the campus outskirts to no fanfare. No mass of sycophants eager to curry favor with me. No literal or metaphorical red carpet laid out for me to walk upon. In fact, if not for a couple of people— maybe students— who briefly turn their attention to Chloe and me as we descend onto the ground, we’d have not received any recognition at all. Which is a bit odd, seeing as though I’m a minor celebrity in certain circles, and yet completely anonymous when I’m out and about.

“So, where do we go from here?” Chloe asks, dispelling her wings. “Or, let me guess, we flew down here spur of the moment without a plan or a contact or even some idea of what we were going to do once we got here.”

“I mean, we’re getting out of the house and hopefully on a date that ends up with fewer wyverns trying to crash it.”

Chloe laughs despite her obvious attempts to show her displeasure with me. “I swear to every goddess you’ve ever invoked, Seraphina. If you jinxed it by saying that, I am going to go find whatever force is summoning them and tell them to knock it off.”

“I know.” And I know she means it. If anything attempts to harm me, she will protect me. Just as I would protect her. From this entire world if I need to.

According to the e-mail I received, it was neither the robotics nor the linguistics department, but actually the department of mechanical engineering that wants to talk with me. And I am going to be woefully out of my element throughout most of the conversation. In fact, I can’t even be sure that it’s not some sort of massive mistake by a bunch of people who don’t realize that I’m just a girl with a Skill that helps with glyphs. But, I’m willing to at least hear them out, on the off chance that somehow, it’s not a mistake.

We enter into the large building housing the College of Engineering and I immediately shiver from the blast of cold air that greets me. It’s not objectively super cold, but compared with the outside, it feels colder than it really is. I acclimate quickly, though, and before long, we’re inside and looking around the central foyer of the hall.

It’s big. Spacious, with both a higher level above and a basement below. On one side of the antechamber, doors give way to lecture halls currently going unused during the summer session. On the other, long hallways extend downward, with more classrooms, laboratories, and offices crammed against one another. During the bustle of the semester, when students are out and about, I expect this area to be loud, filled with reverberating echoes of conversations about everything from campus gossip to meetings and lots of complaints about homework assignments. But right now, with just a few other people around, it’s eerie, like we’ve just stepped into a ghost town whose heyday has long since come and gone.

We make our way down to the basement— taking the stairs, though it would be more efficient simply to float down. After scouring the maps of the building plastered on the walls— which aren’t as helpful as I’d like thanks to the legends being worn down— we find our way into the office we’re looking for.

Again, it’s quiet, even by the standards of the summer. Just one middle-aged woman sitting behind the desk, and no one else that even my eyes and ears can discern.

“Hello,” I sheepishly say. Confidence about fighting and crafting, I have. Confidence about trying to be a proper adult, I sorely lack. “I’m Seraphina Mortensen, and I was wondering if Dr. O’Neal was in this morning. I understand it’s unlikely to be the case since I don’t have a proper appointment, but he had sent me an e-mail a couple of weeks back asking to meet with me.”

“New student?” she asks. Credit to her, she doesn’t seem the least bit fazed by my wings, even as I struggled a bit to slip through the narrow doorway.

“I’m not certain what he wants to meet about,” I half-lie. I have a basic understanding, but I’m not going to assume I know all the details without first hearing him out.

“It does appear that Dr. O’Neal will be in, in about one hour, if you are willing to wait. Otherwise, I’d be happy to leave him a message.”

I turn to Chloe, and she nods. “Sure. We’ll step out for a little bit and wander about campus for a bit, and then come back in an hour or so.”

“Wonderful,” the receptionist says. “I’ll make sure to let him know.”