06. How a planet transitioned from sci-fi to fantasy

In my new life, I was living in both a sci-fi world and a fantasy one. I was reconciling the two using logic, but it remained a challenge sometimes. The nerd I had been in the past, always thinking too much, still perspired in this new life. I wanted to explain everything, and so I kept asking.

And at school I finally began to learn the history of this world. Or rather, the history of this side of the world! Japan was on the other side and a minute point without much to say about. The history of Europe was much more prominent, logically.

It reminded me of the moon of illusions for a moment, looking at these maps of the world I kind of knew, yet didn’t really. European history wasn’t a topic of magnitude in high school from my previous life. Now I discovered what I missed.

And how many episodes did I miss!

~

Felicia and Dominika were private tutoring me at the beginning and end of the days.

In exchange I helped them mastering magic a bit better. I just had to ask the nanites to raise their authority level discreetly.

I had been Isekaied from 21st century japan and into early 23rd century European kingdoms. Where people used swords and magic against monsters, thanks to the nanites system?

Even with a new youth, I couldn’t get accustomed to this. Although it was exciting.

S - And I want to visit a cat-girls country! Where do they assemble?

O - Hm... I don’t think there is such a place Siline.

S - What? God! No! How could you do this to me!

They sighed at my apparent craziness. They just don’t understand the preciousness...

S - Well... If there is none, I’ll just have to make one myself.

Now they all shivered, cluttered together in apparent fright. Oh come on!

A bead of sweat on her forehead, Orea tried to change the subject.

O - How about we go to visit the Kingdoms of Denmark or Dutchland, after we’re done with our studies here? That could be nice.

Dominika was nodding. I was pouting.

S - Where are the elves and dwarves hiding?

F - Well, most of them live in these kingdoms precisely.

Now my ears were rising on my head, figuratively. Oh, interesting...

But as long as I could, I would remain there with my precious friends they were.

We would graduate together and visit this together. That was a dream of two lives they would grant me. I loved them, and told them. They were embarrassed.

And I continued to learn the puzzling history.

~

It was a bit like a transgender change from my taste of literacy. It was easier for me to have things clearly labelled either as science-fiction or as fantasy. But the world I knew went from one kind to the other apparently.

People expected the nanomachines to take care of the monsters, but they didn’t.

As far as the system was concerned, if humanity diminishes, that makes things easier and steadier.

Meaning they wouldn’t help, or rather they were not allowed to help humanity through this struggle...

I guessed that was one thing the seven sages didn’t foresee as being plausible. That monsters would begin to creep in.

How there could eventually be an alien invasion force coming down to wipe out humanity and take over an artificial intelligence they had not yet activated?

Being a good enough student of science in my past life, I could relate with that. That was too improbable. Even if the technology might evolve to allow it.

~

That tech had been a breakthrough in so many ways. And its implementation a world changing event.

The seven sages had changed the world and made their lives history, by designing and launching this system based on Technology Isekai™ upon our planet.

But they didn't foresee everything it would eventually cause.

The seven sages had been officially UN delegates and corporate representatives from Blackrock and the WTO. But behind the scenes, they had been a group of friends with an ideal...

And in a way, revolutionaries. Anarchists even one would have said in the time of their reveal.

Simply put, they had been a consortium of the highest powers ushering a new technology together, pulling in the resources of countries and corporations alike, lying to everyone in the world until it was too late to get undone.

And before the countries, kingdoms or people could do anything against it, they launched the nanomachines storm, along with its decentralised computing infrastructure and power.

A new autonomous and independent super power, to counteract global warming essentially. A power they had meant for the benefit of the whole humanity, and no state or corporation.

It became like a strain of super bacteria before any force could counter it, with hivemind intelligence and programming. It was meant to keep global warming in check and nothing else, but it had the potential uses of a super weapon like none other. So no one country or company was meant to ever control it.

Only these seven individuals had a different level of authority over it, for fine-tuning and occasional emergency use during their activation generation. In the meantime, the world had turned divided about them and what they had released.

But it quieted over the years where they faded. The system was restoring the climate and balancing the atmosphere composition as intended.

And after the last of the seven sages passed away, the system turned entirely independent since.

The world continued to change, slowly.

And then monsters began to appear. It was weird and the correlation not obvious.

And newer species began to be born from human parents as well. That was weirder. A new form of dwarfism gave the dwarves, and a new form of gigantism gave the elves. And a most weirder form of premature child bearing made the first fairies appear.

And no one could tell anymore what was going on. This system had beacons, but they weren’t control centres, unless one had already some level of authorisation recorded.

So it was shut. The questions were unanswered and the societies struggled to adapt to an uncontrollably changing world.

And it shut down other things, like most rockets to space, planes and nuclear weaponry. It didn’t help with steadying the political situations on the ground and countries over time. When the truth became public that all nuclear deterrence had become obsolete, it increased a lot of political tensions.

And when planes soon after were no longer working, it caused massive economic shifts.

The politic steadiness of the past was rocked badly by these shifts, and the growing reports of feral animals attacking people aggressively.

But that nanites network wasn’t made for politics. Or not at a nationalistic perspective anyway.

They were a new high tech force of nature transforming CO2 and methane into carbon, O2 and water in an upside-down-enthalpy catalysis, using a confidential source of energy.

Everything else was mostly out of their field or view.

And for a reason or another, the new species were magic bearers. And some humans begun to develop these faculties as well altogether.

~

So these powerful people who began to appear were called adventurers or heroes sometimes. Like mythical or comic books ones, because they shared their power or their might.

At first they were just skilled people and efficient soldiers. But their powers grew so much, it became uncontrollable with older societies.

In this side of the Eurasian continent, they gradually were hired and gathered by the royal courts. In an ideal world they might have all answered to a UN agency, but the world had not unified so much yet. And on the contrary...

The adventurers answering to kings gave them back a lot more power over the oligarchs, parliaments and people. Because one skilled adventurer could overwhelm a small platoon of soldiers or monsters. With proper training, they could wreck any conventional opposing force. They were super humans, or demi gods.

And it's mostly the royal families who managed to tame these new generations of super soldiers.

So the realty and feudalism got a new boom really.

And the new kings and queens didn't marry outside their best interests, which means the nouveaux riches, and new heroes mostly. Because a loyal adventurer could force their king's word over a parliament or a rowdy governor in a snap of their fingers and a handful fireballs.

Another point of interest was with the overwhelming military might the heroes could have, after the battlefield. Because yes, the first purpose and utilization of magic the adventurers did, was directly for might and power. Military might.

That turned some of these adventurers loyal to their kings into heroes. Helping them reclaim absolute power, putting down rebellions from any other power in the balance.

Kings and queens were sacred again, allying with their new heroes.

And rewarding them with titles and power, at their own risk possibly.

In the past it was called Cesarism, and it remained true to my time in all too many a country.

What this word means was quite simply a little of what many politicians taught over history, or showcased about everywhere and at all times.

There is no better way to rise to political power than through military might. And the political powers will always depend in a precarious balance from the military organisations.

In already fascistic countries, the political power and the military power are one, but in most other countries on Earth, there had been a steady divide between the needs of the many and the privileges of the few, that pulls them apart into a balance of powers.

Same went for nobility. Their powers dwindled over most of the old countries because the balance gradually shifted away from them and toward more profitable mercantile oligarchies.

I’m really summarising too much, which oversimplifies everything that had been interconnected over the centuries and even millennia of our world’s history.

The point being.

How did the power balances shifted in the countries when the heroes began to appear?

And worse even, before and after the implementation of the system? When new species and powerful people began to appear?

And then the worst of all, when the new threat over humanity began hitting?

Short answer was, power to the mighty.

The kingdoms didn’t derail entirely, but the brute power of the people we call adventurers took a growingly bigger spot on the political stage.

They were the new princes in a Machiavellian way. They were the new mercenaries whom the countries ought to control or be destroyed by. And the states had to adapt to them.

When a single man or woman can topple a government, literally walking in and defeating the royal guard and policemen, what does a government ought to do?

Their duty was to protect their people. Their desire was to safeguard their privileges. All of which jeopardised by a few people they couldn’t control.

They had to find ways to defeat them, or turning them into allies. At least managing their existence in an equilibrium.

Before an enemy would against them, in that great game theory of the countries.

That’s the thing with a game changing breakthrough in weaponry. If someone can turn pawns into queens, what was steady begins a new lawless competition.

Being a statesman takes work and time. But being a killer when you have a powerful weapon is easy and takes a blink of time.

So the heroes who by all means appeared like normal humans, became a terrible threat to governing bodies of states and companies.

The 22nd century’s arms race was not to space, but to controlling these newly emerging possibilities.

And the countries did pretty well getting some of them. The industries a little less well.

Probably because they were still people, and knowing they had in a way won the lottery, it’s harder to sell to them an ideology of profit, and easier to relate to their natural patriotism.

They were appearing everywhere randomly, so the job was mostly for the countries to make them feel appreciated and incite their loyalty. Buying them off was harder than pissing them off to go elsewhere or take revenge on something.

Keeping in mind these people were so powerful, they could only be free.

If a government tried to restrict a little too strongly the movements of one of their heroes, how badly could this turn? A government could be wiped. An army or an economic road crippled.

The UN had not been powerful enough to control their gathering under a global peaceful and united agenda. So every country gathered as many as they could find, like nuclear weapons of a new age. Thankfully for the world’s balance at the time, they seemed to appear with a relatively normal statistic throughout the populations. And the other aspects of each country, like their economy and how well they treated their people, that played too.

So overall, thinks got pretty shaky around the world and they were conflicts, but nothing apocalyptic.

The adventurers were a new form of powerful job, akin to a free mercenary collective, loosely attached to their countries. The kingdoms did their best to manage them in good terms, just like they used to do with the military. It was a little easier for these political systems to assimilate them, using nobility titles as incentives to assimilate them. Feudalism was a good way to manage inequalities.

The democracies meant to work on meritocracy struggled a bit more to control that class of people more privileged by nature, and threatening everything. They feared a pendent of fascism where it would be the adventurers and heroes taking the power over the countries and ruling it.

They feared being toppled by these unnatural citizens and being replaced by their new barbaric autocracies. So they had less rewards to give them, in order to buy their loyalty.

However they had their social systems, their humanist values to bring forward and try convincing the adventurers to work for them. Work for a greater good rather than a master.

The new fluctuating force spreading and setting through the world eventually found a reasonably stable structure. There was no big war, thankfully, caused nor spearheaded by them. But the societies of the free world took a very reactionary turn along the way...

Things were not so easy everywhere. Because alongside the humans discovering their new abilities and thus becoming adventurers, should they wish to reveal their powers; they were others not so lucky.

When children were born so deformed and marked, they were the early elements of a new split of species, their body was showing from birth they were not the same. Elves, dwarves, dryads, fairies, and all other sorts of hybrids more or less human and more or less animal or monstrosity...

Things were much harder for them bearing the marks of difference.

The new species obviously carrying the effects of magic over them... Humanity naturally began having ambivalent feelings toward them. Meaning the kindest souls sought friendship and mutualism, while the paranoid governing bodies discriminated bluntly and even sought extermination. A new dimension to racism expanded, wildly.

The growing populations of dwarves, elves and fairies quickly emigrated to the few countries willing to harbour them.

Most other countries denied them any citizen’s right, because they were different species with uncontrollable aptitudes.

And discriminations grew a lot in these troubled times.

Against all differences and any troubled to the rising new order.

.

Speaking of order, the kingdoms orders of knights renewed their meaning. In the kingdom of Sweden I was from, adventurers pledging loyalty could join the royal order of the Seraphim. That sounded cool. There in Norway, it was the order of Saint Olav that granted worthy adventurers knighthood.

And on the more public or free market side of things, ronins could work with either private military companies, or the adventurer’s guild soon establishing for their independence in every country.

S - What are the odds...

F - It wasn't called as such in the beginning. It was a nongovernmental organisation supported by the UN. But the nickname stuck with the newer generations.

S - Should we register to the local guild then if we want to fight monsters?

D - Silly lady Siline... If we graduate, we will be commended to. The guild is for scoundrels running away from their country, not proper ladies like you and me.

Riiiight.

I crossed my fingers very hard and touched wood, but it had been hopeless.

~