In all his months as a gate guard this season, Almin had never seen something like what was coming down the road.

  It had been a slow day, with only a few farmers coming into Altrai to buy some supplies. He had been about to nod off to the soothing sound of the Plaingrass in the wind, when the tromp of huge footsteps echoed down the road.

  He’d quickly grabbed his speaking cone, a simple square wooden thing to amplify his voice with, and ran to the rampart above the gate.

  Off in the distance, a vaguely humanoid lump of metal approached faster than a galloping horse.

  He panicked and nearly dropped the cone-but managed to scream out a “HALT!”. Miraculously, the figure almost immediately stopped on a dime.

  “Identify yourself!” It felt strange issuing commands to such an imposing figure, but his duty called.

  The figure took off his actual helmet, and a brown-ish face with decently long black hair appeared a moment later. Confirming that it was merely an armored man, he went back down the stairs behind the wall.

  Reentering his booth from behind, he called the figure forward.

  Trying to contain his fear, he opened with the basics. “Good morning, sir. What brings you to Altrai?” The figure seemed to be just annoyed. “What, do I need an ID to enter? How do I get one?”

  The man’s strange manner of speaking gave him pause. Every word had been in perfect Imperial, but he had made a random noise in the middle… eye-deeh?

  Almin fearfully checked the procedure posted on the wall. Literacy was a guard prerequisite for a reason.

  “Well, uh, for a figure as, uh, important-looking as yourself, we’d ask you to run our quick power test. Nothing intrusive, and you can pay the 2 Cuaran fine if you’d rather not.”

  The man nodded and sighed. “Take me there. Make it quick.” Almin nodded fearfully. “Of course, lord, right through this door. If you’d just follow me…”

  ——-

  Kyle had only chosen to undergo the test because he didn’t have a single coin to his name. Earlier, at the tavern, he had used some ancient coins to pay the barkeep for one beer. Here, he doubted the nearly 800-year-old coins from the ruin would be accepted as an official governmental fee.

  Kyle followed the short man through a wooden door built into the gatehouse, and through a boring stone hallway. They arrived at a room, with a crystal orb in the center and a bored-looking older man at a desk in the back.

  “Hmm? Someone who isn’t a hick farmer using the eastern entrance? Well, let’s get this over with… take a seat there, please…” Kyle quickly complied and took a seat in the chair. He heard a snap and jumped up.

  It was too late for the chair, but he had avoided too much embarrassment by jumping up. I hope this won’t be a recurring issue…

  The older man shook his head and simply motioned for Kyle to stand. “Please remove your gauntlet and put your hand on the identifier orb.” And so began the 10-minute process of removing the glove. No matter how godlike the armor was, it hadn’t been designed to be removed without a specialized gantry and several assistants. The younger guard moved away and sat down on a chair in the corner.

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  Once the glove was finally off, the older man looked like he was about to pop a blood vessel. “Put your hand on the orb. Now, please.”

  Kyle quickly did so and… nothing happened. The man pushed his hand off gently and waved his own about for a bit. The orb flickered, and the man said, “Try again please.”

  Kyle did so-but nothing happened.

  “Well, that’s never happened before. Uh, onto the other test. If you would.”

  Kyle reattached his glove, thankfully much quicker than he was removing it.

  He walked over to the next test-which looked like a standard workout dumbbell.

  “Please try to lift it. Depending on how high you can get it, the enchantment will tell us your Anima capacity. Or whatever term they use in your homeland, but you get the gist.”

  Kyle rolled his arms and slid his gray metal gauntlet under the bar of the weight. For the first time, his onboard AI actually had something specific to say.

  [Structural anomaly detected. Item not affixed to the ground-physical improbability detected. Engage full servo-assisted strength?]

  Kyle instinctively thought ‘yes’ and his implants sent it over to the armor. In an instant, his strength multiplied twentyfold.

  The weight didn’t budge. [Engage overdrive?] Again, he thought ‘yes!’ and his strength again multiplied by 10. At thirty times his base cybernetic strength, he could have sent a car flying or snapped rebar-reinforced concrete in half like a cracker-but the weight barely budged.

  [Emergency capacitors drained. Draw directly from the reactor?] At that message, Kyle gave it a rest. The older man spoke up again. “Huh. Must be broken. Anyway, you're free to go. Sorry for the inconvenience. Have a blessed day.” After, he added “Ingrate…” under his breath.

  Kyle simply walked back out the door and finally entered the city proper.

  The streets were empty. The only ones out at this time were a few bored merchants in a large town square down the road and some farmers with animals pulling wagons. The city of Altrai only existed because of the farmland nearby, and the confluence of several road systems.

  That was abundantly clear to Kyle. Nearly 3 quarters of the traffic was just the huge number of farmers taking produce to and from the markets.

  There was still a guild district, and a Waggoners guild where he hoped he could buy a warehouse. Altrai was a center of commerce, and the Waggoners held a lot of sway in local politics.

  Walking the streets was an interesting experience. One thing immediately became clear to him-the armor drew too much attention. It would have to be stored somewhere, and soon.

  Most houses in the city were two-story affairs, with small fronts but presumably larger lengths away from the street. One exception was the Guild Square. Most of the houses so far had been almost like medieval row houses, but these buildings looked like huge Roman places of government. Columns on the fronts and all.

  Kyle walked towards the one with the huge “Adventurers Guild” on the front, chiseled into the white stone above the front entrance. A hugely diverse crowd moved in and out of the doors. People of nearly every race could be found.

  Humans were still the most common, but dwarves, the Folk, which he supposed were the beastmen of this world, elves, and even a party of jade golems easily as large as his armor also went in and out of the edifice.

  Marching through the huge open entrance was easy. The line that followed was the hard part.

  It was at this moment that Kyle really saw how weird whatever translation magic he had was. Signs like ‘register here’ or ‘weapon vault and refurbishment’ were written in several languages everywhere. The thing was, every single language looked like the Galactic Standard to him. No matter what it was, it blurred into the language he had grown up with. He could still kind of see the original, but he understood it as Standard.

  Also strange, he could understand every single language being spoken in the huge and cosmopolitan crowd around him. It all just sounded like accented Standard.

  Moving through the line was easy. Signing up was only a little bit more annoying. He’d taken his helmet off for ease of conversation.

  In front of him sat an honest-to-goodness rabbit girl straight out of antique anime.

  ————