The Outlands

Tess and her fiancées opened the door to the Outlands only to find that Alice was already waiting in their arrival room. It was only two days after they had met with her to talk about housing, and apparently Alice and her parents had already got a place in mind.

“Hey, you guys!” Alice said cheerfully. “So, like I said, my parents and I have a really nice place in mind, and it’s pretty comfortably within the budget, too. If you like it, I’ll hand you the keys as soon as we’re done and it’s yours. If not, we’ll go back to the drawing board.”

“That was pretty quick.” Tess said, giving Alice a curious look. “Only a couple of days?”

“Well, your budget was kind of a limit.” Alice said. “When we looked at the options with your budget in mind, there were really only a few viable options.”

Tess nodded. “Yeah, I figured that’d be the case.”

Alice gave Tess a smug look. “I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at what we were able to get for you.” She said. “Come on, let’s get walking, we can talk on the way.” Alice began walking out of the room, leaving Tess and her fiancées to follow.

“So, what exactly was your process?” Ellie asked. “Even if you were limited by our budget, I still think you were awfully quick.”

“Well, my parents were already thinking about places, and the budget was a bit more limiting than we had expected.” Alice explained. “With that in mind, there were really only a few properties that were feasible.”

They chatted a bit more as Alice led them through the guild, and soon they were standing outside the entrance to the guild. “Make a note of the path to the neighborhood.” Alice instructed. “It’s one of ours, and it’s the only one that had houses in your price range. Even if you don’t like this house, it’s likely that whatever you get will end up being in this neighborhood. I’ll get you coordinates and the address, too, but you might as well start learning the route.”

“Got it.” Tess replied, and began to pay careful attention as Alice led them through the streets. Within only a few turns, they were in a part of the City that was unfamiliar to Tess. The only time she had ever visited the residential areas was when she had helped Maven move out, and they were in a completely different part of the City than her apartment had been in.

Still, one thing stood out to her as she walked. “Uh, Alice, are you sure we’re going the right way? The houses seem to have been getting fancier as we go.”

“Oh, yeah.” Alice said. “These houses were out of the budget, they’re just on the way. Ignore them. Our neighborhood is a bit further on. It’s a tad far from the guild compared to the others, but it’s pretty close to a bunch of amenities, so it balances out.”

“Well, it’s not like we expected something right next to the guild in the first place.” Ellie said. “How much further is it?”

“Like five minutes.” Alice said. “So, like a half hour walk if you go at this pace, could easily get it down to ten or fifteen minutes if you jog, even less if you fly or bike.”

“Well, unless Ellie’s not coming with us, flying is probably out.” Tess said. “She doesn’t exactly have a good way of doing that yet. Well, not one that’s suitable for non-combat work.”

“You two could always just fly ahead of me to pick a job and I’ll meet you there.” Ellie said. “It’s not like all three of us need to be there are the same time or anything.”

“Whatever the case, it’s not a problem.” Maven added. “That was about my travel time to the guild before, anyway.”

After a few minutes more, Alice stopped in front of the gate to a neighborhood full of houses even larger and fancier than the ones they had passed on the way over. “Here we are. Tess, if you place your hand on the slate near the gate, it should open. When my parents registered you in our systems, they did so as someone with admin access, and that extends to all of our properties. For you two, we’ll get you keyed in as soon as the house thing is official.”

“Hold up.” Tess said. “I thought you said all those other houses were out of budget? They were…not nearly as nice as this. And why did your parents register me as someone with admin access?!”

Alice blushed, looking away. “I said I see you as a sort of little sister, and they took that seriously. And I say admin access, but it’s more like…all-purpose access? You can’t actually change anything in the system, you can just get into anywhere that isn’t like…confidential, as well as my place, my parents’ place, and our vacation properties. It’s just a higher level of access than normal, Ker and Jin have it too.”

“Okay, fine, but the budget?”

Alice faced Tess once again. “I was serious. Do you have any idea how much money you gave me?”

Tess paused. “I don’t know? A month’s worth of core costs for your company?”

Alice nodded. “And do you know just how much we spend on cores?”

“No.” Tess admitted.

“A huge amount. Even if we’re not even in the top twenty-five biggest companies, we’d probably still be larger than the largest company on Mael.” Alice explained. “And we use cores for a not-inconsiderable number of things. You gave me a sum so large that we only had so many houses that would fit the bill.”

Alice paused for a moment. “Admittedly, this neighborhood would likely still fall just outside of your price range without the discount, but the fact that you even approached the cost needed to buy a house here is absurd.”

“What is it?” Alice whispered.

“Mom was just telling me how much that was worth in Mael money, and we were talking a little bit about how much I was being paid by Gramps.” Tess explained. “Apparently he puts the rest of the sale price aside for when we’re higher-level and money wouldn’t be an issue normally.”

Alice gave Tess a sort of relieved look. “Good. Because I had half a mind to confront him about how he was basically robbing you, and that was not a pleasant prospect.”

Maven raised an eyebrow. “You’d really confront Gramps about that? That’s…bold. I don’t think I’d be able to, and…you know.”

“I probably wouldn’t have actually done it, but it’s still a relief to hear that he’s not shortchanging you like I thought.” Alice admitted. “Anyway, let’s go in. Tess, if you would?”

Tess placed her hand on the slate, and the gate swung open. “What are the points of these gates anyway?” She asked. “What if someone just flies over?”

“Anti-flight wards.” Alice said. “The neighborhood’s basically in a giant cage that pushes against anyone who tries to fly in and keeps them out. It’s pointless against someone high-level enough to outmuscle the pushing, but so is the fence. All the homes in here have top of the line security, though, and smaller wards are more powerful, so don’t worry about being targets for robbery or anything.”

Alice led them through the neighborhood until they reached a house that was significantly smaller than most of the rest in the neighborhood, though still much larger than an average home. “We figured you didn’t need a giant house or anything, so we instead opted for one of our high-tech models.”

“High-tech models?” Ellie asked.

“Yeah. I don’t know how it is on Mael, but in the wider world we have a lot of tech that simply isn’t feasible for general use because of its prohibitive costs, usually because of it requiring high-level artisans to make or needing a significant number of cores to keep it running. So, we have some smaller houses that are more loaded with that sort of tech. Of course, for you, the up-front cost of the tech isn’t an issue, and core upkeep…well, something tells me that you won’t have any issue with that whatsoever.”

“Probably not.” Tess said. “I’m glad it’s smaller than the rest of the houses here, though, if we had a big house, we probably wouldn’t use most of it and it’d get really dusty.”

“Dust isn’t a huge issue in houses like this.” Alice said. “We have tools that help clean the place so it doesn’t get too bad, and to keep out pests while they’re at it. So long as you’re not actively using a room, it shouldn’t get dirty at all.”

“Handy.” Ellie said. “That one of those high-upkeep things you mentioned?”

“Not really.” Alice replied. “It is powered by cores, yeah, but you shouldn’t need to refill it more than once every few months. It’s more in the category of things that require a skilled craftsman to make. It’s relatively affordable, though, so it’s common in a lot of mid to high price-range homes. Anyway, let’s take a look inside, shall we?”

Alice pulled out a small slate from her pocket and placed it against the door. “This also has the same kind of biometric scanner as the gate, so we’ll have to key you into that, too. Oh, and it’s completely unconnected from any sort of network, so don’t worry about that, only you guys and people you key into it would have access. And this slate is a more traditional key if you need to give someone temporary access or if the scanner malfunctions or something.”

Alice opened the door, motioning for the girls to step inside. “So, for the basic rundown of the main level, we’ve got five bedrooms including the main bedroom, each with their own attached bathroom and walk-in closet. Then there’s the kitchen, dining room, a couple of offices, and few general-purpose rooms.

“Upstairs has more specific rooms like a library and a display room slash hub for large gatherings, and the basement is mostly an entertainment room and a lot of storage areas. We’ve taken the liberty to fill said storage rooms with almost all of the latest electronic and magical leisure devices, as well as some pretty beefy computers in case you need them. You can just throw that stuff into your bags and sort out what to do with it later, it was just a convenient storage place for it all.

“I know Ellie and Tess have some of their own electronics, but I wasn’t sure about Maven, and figured that it couldn’t hurt to have some stuff that wasn’t from Mael. Oh, also, none of the biggest furniture like beds or couches is actually in place yet, we have it all in storage awaiting your final go-ahead, so the place is a little bare right now, but this way you can pick where you want everything.”

“Yeah, most of our stuff from Mael isn’t compatible with stuff here.” Ellie said. “We were going to have to replace most of it eventually, so having some computers and stuff already here does save us some trouble. Also, why’s the entertainment room separate from the general-purpose rooms? Wouldn’t it just be one of them?”

Alice smirked. “It’s not a high-tech house for nothing.” She said. “The entertainment room is probably different from what you’re picturing, but I think we’ll save that for last, it’s the most complicated room in the house.”

Once everyone was inside, Alice shut the door and began to give them the tour of the house. As she took them room by room, Tess almost found herself tuning out the explanations, a sense of awe falling over her as the amount of wealth she was capable of producing was finally put into scale.

The main level itself was nothing overly complicated…or, rather, nothing that Tess hadn’t seen or heard of before. It was big, it was fancy, and it was equipped with what seemed like every possible extra Tess could ever want, and a whole pile more for good measure. Food storage that effectively froze the food in time, a heating and air conditioning system that could instantly change a room to exactly a desired temperature, lights that could be remotely activated if you had a way of channeling Mana into them at a distance, near-perfect soundproofing, the list went on and on.

 The upstairs was similar, with the exception of the library; the library was…small, with only a singular row of bookshelves and a sitting area with a floor to ceiling window in the back. “This isn’t the whole library.” Alice said, walking over to a panel near the bookshelves. “The bookshelves are more for the aesthetic, really. Most everything is stored in a subspace, and you can swap out the shelves via this panel. It’ll automatically organize the books for you as it does, too. Just press a book to this panel, and the system will remember it.

“From time to time the system will get the details wrong, usually if the cover is extremely nonstandard or missing or something, so just give the information a once-over before hitting confirm and it’ll be fine. Oh, and that window over there isn’t actually a window, it’s a magic projector of sorts. Right now, it’s set to display what’s directly outside, but if you have the coordinates of somewhere, you can punch them in and it’ll show you that place, provided there are no scrying wards in the way.

“There are ways to favorite coordinates and stuff too, so try it out, I think you’ll like it. Just don’t leave it running, while you’re away, it absolutely guzzles cores if it’s not in the mode it is now. I mean…I guess the only time that’ll even be the slightest concern is at your current level, the moment you get into like, level forty or fifty dungeons, Tess will be getting enough cores in a day to power this thing for months of nonstop use.”

“Is there some device that’ll give us coordinates if we happen to stumble across a place we like while scrying?” Ellie asked. “Magic coordinates are…I still can’t figure out how you’re even supposed to derive them, they’re so…complicated.”

“There’s a reason we go on expeditions instead of scrying places.” Alice said. “I mean, aside from the Mana cost and the fact that going there in person is more rewarding and lets you actually do stuff there. Anyway, there’s a spell that’ll give you it, and some scanners that have the spell built into them. I think there’s an add-on for status bands that does it? Heck, you and Tess probably have it, since your bands are still the best model that’s commercially available. I’ll show you how to use it later.”

“Let me guess. The gods have some other way of getting coordinates that they’re telling you about?” Alice asked.

“Basically.” Maven said. “It’s not something that mortals would ever be able to use, so it’s not important.”

“Figures.” Alice replied. “Anyway, that’s about all for the upstairs, let’s head downstairs, shall we?”

Fighterman481

So, okay, look, I fully intended to cover the entire place in one chapter, but I realized that, at the point where I left it off, the chapter was already on the longer side and putting the rest in would make it way too long, so it'll be bundled into next chapter, which will probably be a housewarming party of some sort.

Oh, also I think I stated this in an AN somewhere before (or was it the comments?), but for those wondering, you can assume that Alice's company is around the size of Amazon. That's obviously really big, but on the sheer scale of the Outlands and the other planes connected to it, it's nothing more than a "regular" major company. I mean, I don't think I've put a hard and fast number anywhere, and it's not even fully decided in my mind, but Amy's planes have probably somewhere in the low tens of trillions of people on them in total, and even that might be lowballing it. It's a LOT. She's got somewhere in the realm of 50-odd planes, and of those Mael is by far the smallest and youngest (and it is very specifically an Earth-analogue, so it's of similar size).

Anyway, the number given for the worth of Tess's cores is probably significantly underselling how much a month's worth of core bills would actually cost (I tried digging into Amazon's electricity costs for reference but it seems they've been pretty cagey about it), but cores are quite a bit more efficient than most power sources we have, so maybe it's not? IDK. The exact number doesn't really matter, it's just big.

I've been yapping a bit much, though, next time we're gonna finish the tour and probably have a housewarming party of some sort (depending on how long it takes to get through the basement), so...look forward to it, I guess?

And, as always, thanks for reading!